2944: Low Reps vs. High Reps — Which Actually Builds More Muscle? (The Answer Surprised Us)

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Are there advantages to one versus the other? Disadvantages? Which one should you train in for your goals? We're going to break it down right now based on the data and our experience. Here we go. Low reps, high reps. This is the challenge. Low reps. Fight. Done. That's the end of the episode. High reps. This was a debate for a while. The one you're not doing. Yeah. Well, we're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. But they are different. So here's the deal. There's two schools of thought. One school of thought says this is a better rep range versus the other one. Pick your choice. Then there's another school of thought that says it doesn't really matter just as long as you mix them up. They're both the same. Both of them are incorrect. They do both have value. They do both provide- Results. But they're also both different. They also do different things to the body, mostly when it comes to performance. But I'll even argue, and this is completely anecdote, I'll even argue it does create maybe a different look on the body. This is pure speculation. Bodybuilders have talked about this for a long time. I think I've noticed this as well. But I think the important thing to start with is, and the data shows this clearly, they both build muscle. Like you want to build muscle, low reps, high reps. At the end of the day, that's what matters. They both build muscle. So somebody who's contemplating this or having this discussion, what do you think is the biggest or the biggest mistakes that are made? Yeah, good question. I think one of the big mistakes is people navigate to the one that they like to do better, thus- That's what comes to my mind. Yeah, thus they completely ignore the potential value of the other one. I would say that's probably the biggest mistake. Because some people are afraid to go low reps, and other people- Focus might be wrong, too, going into that- That's true. rep range. Yeah. Especially, I know, when you're kind of jumping into the low rep range, it really takes a- Totally different feel. complete different focus and gear. So I literally think you fall into one or two categories. You either are married to one because you love it. You identify more with a power lifter, so you lift like a power lifter all the time. Or you love the high rep, superset, low rest period type of stuff because you identify with that, or like the circuit training. These are the two that I feel like you either fall into. People will gravitate toward those trap. And then the other person, who was I thinking of with the other person? The other person is somebody who is like me when I first started, where I'm like- Just throwing them around all over the place. mixing every workout. I had this idea of- The muscle confusion game. Oh, yeah. I know the benefits of all the rep ranges. So every workout included kind of all that. One exercise, I'd have short rest periods. Another exercise, I'd have long rest periods. High reps, low reps. High reps, low reps, superset some stuff. And so I really feel like you're one of those two categories that you kind of fall into. Very, I feel, few people, unless you're following somebody's written program that's mapped this out for you. Ours will have that. Yeah. Follow something like that. I think if you're doing it yourself, you tend to gravitate toward the other. Yeah. So in the past, the observation among strength athletes was that low reps built the most muscle. So bodybuilders used to say this. They used to say, if you want to build mass, this was the terminology they used, then you go, I'm going to build mass, this is going to be really heavy, and low reps. And the data, early data showed this as well. So early data actually showed that heavyweight low reps was better or built more muscle. Now, what they didn't necessarily control for was intensity. So when you control for intensity, in other words, if we do a set of 15 reps, which would be considered high reps, or a set of five, which would be considered low reps, so long as they're within the same reps and reserve, then they're both going to build the same muscle. In other words, you want to pick a weight that you could do maybe 17 reps with, which is the most you could do with that weight. You'll go to failure, you stop at 15, so you leave two reps in the tank. Same thing with the five rep set, something you could do seven reps with, but you stop at five. Here's why bodybuilders for so long said that low reps built the most muscle. It's because higher reps, it's harder to reach that point of two reps in reserve, because sometimes stamina gets in the way. So when I'm doing a set of 15, and I'm trying to get close to failure, two reps short of it, is it the muscle strength that's failing, or is it the fact that I'm gassed out? And so this is what bodybuilders noticed in the past, especially bigger bodybuilders who, when they're moving that much muscle, this was actually a strong consideration. Well, anybody who's experienced high rep squats understands this, because that's typically, give me an isolation exercise, and it's very easy to take the muscle to failure, regardless of the rep range. It doesn't take as much. Gas and stamina. But ask me to do 20 reps of squats to failure, and I'll tell you right now, the weight I have to choose is not the limiting factor on my muscles. It's my stamina. Yeah, my stamina. My cardio to do 20 reps of any weight is, I'll get gassed. And so typically, what will make me choose a weight, it's like I have to do a weight that's so light that I could really easily move through 20, but it's not my legs that have given out by that. Totally. Now, like actual differences between them, and the main ones, the big glaring differences between them is the strength that you gain in each of those rep ranges is pretty specific to the way that you train. In other words, if I'm focused on low reps, I build maximal strength better, okay? So my strength is going to reflect the way that I train. I can lift something really heavy for a few reps. This is why powerlifters train this way. That's why powerlifters don't go into competition trying to lift as much weight as they can for one rep. So they're going to train in this particular way. Well, what does higher reps do then? Well, it builds more strength endurance. So still strength, but you have more strength endurance, which is still in the strength categories. We're not talking about like the cardio endurance necessarily, but it does build more strength endurance than maximal strength, like the low reps. This is something too, like I tend to lean more towards the low reps that if I get into the higher reps, like especially grip, so everybody likes the pump. But for me, it was always like a bit of a detriment where, you know, I would hit a certain point where I would, I'm gripping and I'm doing low reps, but fatigue was, was definitely a limiting factor. And I would, you know, inevitably my grip would fail. And so to, to work on that and then really like work my way through the pump and work through that endurance of it really helped a lot. Yeah. Here's another thing too, that a lot of people don't realize until they start training both in phases, low reps are easier to recover from. They just are. It's just not as much damage on the body. And that's because the formula for volume is sets times reps times weight. So although you're lifting more weight, the reps you're doing are so low, the damage isn't as much. And look, we know this. I could do a really intense set of barbell squats for five reps. I can do three sets of five reps, real intense, three sets of 20 reps, real intense. The 20 rep sets of squats are going to fry me. Even if I had the stamina to handle it, they're just going to fry my body. So funny, like, - I agree on, from a muscle standpoint, joint and ligament standpoint i'm so glad you wanted this the opposite is true totally so uh like high reps uh so much easier for me to overreach and overtrain my muscles yes uh low reps if i lean in that direction and you start getting joint problems then my my joints and ligaments start talking yes that's where the aches and pains come from where when i stay in the high rep range i don't tend to have that as much i tend to deal with more but i'm more likely to feel uh over you know doms right to kick in way more yeah that kind of fatigue yes yeah and so here's where we're going with this they're both so valuable uh that you really should do uh both of them but here's what's important this is where i want to spend some time uh communicating this earlier adam said he used to train in a way where he kind of mixed everything up all the time um and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that but you're better off focusing on one for a phase and then moving to the other one for a phase why it's a totally different feel and mentality difficult to determine improvement too yes uh you know it's like you become a master of none at that point like we're not really being able to gauge like okay well my you know am i getting more weight you know to this lift am i improving rep wise like you don't know well that's where that i think matters the most because is there something wrong with say me training that way right now and i would say no there's nothing wrong with me training that way so long as i don't have like goals that i'm trying to achieve meaning i'm content with my fitness level i'm not really trying to get that much stronger i'm not trying to change aesthetically because that's where the programming really starts to to matter and dictate and so i always whenever when someone tells me that they train like that and they they love that oh i just you know i mix it up and i do all these things it's like cool if you're happy with stay in shape yeah if you if you're happy with your fitness level both aesthetically performance everything like that and you enjoy that and you go for it but if you tell me you have goals and you're i'm trying to get stronger i want to lean down five percent body fat or i want to build five pounds of muscle well then that's where that's not going to serve you yeah so what i so you know and i'm going to speak from a trainer perspective uh when i would train clients when we were doing low reps uh the focus was on teaching them and coaching them on how to feel the movement or how to master the movement and the technique and the skill of the movement i was not having my clients do sets of five reps and telling them to feel their pecs or to feel their lats totally different uh or to feel their glutes it was we're going to have really good biomechanically advantageous form we're going to maximize your technique and your drive and i really don't care where you feel it so long as we're having good for me not hurting yourself now when i go to higher reps this is when i'd want them to feel things like how am i going higher reps on the bench press with the client squeeze the muscles that's right i'm like here this is the movement in the pecs here's i want you to bring your elbows i want you to focus on feeling the muscles and i want you to feel the it in the pecs or we're doing squats like here's how you squeeze your quads or let's say romanian deadlifts you're going to feel your hamstrings so it's it's a totally different feel both of which need to be trained so i you know i've been working out long enough to when i know when i'm going to go do a set of heavy deadlifts or heavy squats or heavy bench presses i know i'm not trying to feel the muscle i've done this long enough i know the mentality the technique and the form and how i'm lifting the weight when i'm going with the higher reps i also know it's a completely different way of doing it so i've been doing it a lot of the time every week which uh which a lot of people do they never really get good at either one yeah and from a performance perspective like just looking at it like i would look at building a developing a skill i like fatigue is your enemy and so that's why too like the low rep model uh you know these are really demanding like the compound lifts if i'm like focusing on just loading the weight as much as my ability allows uh i don't want to involve fatigue by you know before that i did this exercise and i'm like i'm doing this exercise that now i have to carry in this muscle fatigue that i have to account for uh where you know i'm not building these these perfect patterns uh you know where i'm my body's responding the way i want it to i'm just kind of convoluting everything it's hard too to tell what's really working well for you what's where it works well for you like there's there's we're all individuals right and all of us have shared our own personal journeys of you know certain rep ranges certain exercises certain rest periods tend to lend themselves well with that right like i've had certain clients that just respond better with certain modalities and if you're doing what i was doing we're just kind of throwing the whole kitchen sink at your body all the time it's hard to tease out and be like you know what what's working the best or at all yeah and that why is that important to know well i'll do more of what's working the best yeah less of what's not doing 100 otherwise you don't figure that out that's right one of the hacks that i had with clients and i'm just going to give a general right this is very different from person to person but later in my career i really figured this out and it was such a hack because what it resulted in was clients that were less fatigued that actually built more muscle and got results better results and here's what it looked like when i would first get a client barring any major issue initially my goal was to get them to do correctional exercise so they can move properly it's always the initial goal then i tried to get them to be able to perform these basic compound lifts really well once they felt comfortable with that which could take anywhere between a month to six months or a year okay depending on the person i got to that point low rep training with my clients almost always worked better now it doesn't mean i stayed there all the time i would move them out and do different things but it just was less damaging and demanding on their bodies they weren't so strong that we were you know risking injury on their joints you know this was like mrs johnson deadlifting 135 you know mr smith who's pulling 225 off the floor but man they would leave not feel fatigued build muscle great when i would have them do the higher rep stuff it was like man you better have good sleep your diet better be good and it's going to fatigue the crap out of you and it just the cumulative stress on their bodies was always harder to manage than the lower rep stuff so a lot of my clients i trained them like this and i'd move out of it to keep them you know the body's fresh but this is where they got the best result this is why maps anabolic started with phase one yeah do you think that's because it's sending a a louder signal with just less volume or just yeah overall stress oh yeah like miss johnson yeah um you know she does three sets of five you know three sets of five on deadlifts for 100 145 pounds 135 pounds whatever versus her doing you know three sets of 15 at like 90s or 60 or something like that it's just she's gonna get she's gonna get as much she's telling her body she needs as much if not more muscle to move that really really heavy weight than what she needs to move it's not it's not a bunch of fatiguing yeah work when you know she's got a you know mrs johnson you know doesn't get the best sleep she's got a job she's got to take care of her kids so this was like a this was what i played with quite a bit in fact sometimes when my clients would come in and they were really fatigued we would do sets of singles and doubles at a moderate intensity i would just have them practice the lift and it was funny i'd have to convince them in the beginning to be like am i really doing anything like i feel like we're not lifting much and they'd come back the next week and we'd add 10 pounds of the bar and i'd say look he just got stronger and it just was less damaging now when my clients started getting really strong which i didn't have a lot of clients that got to that place like doug's a good example he started getting really really strong well we got a you know we're not going to play with the singles and doubles all the time he's pulling 400 pounds at 165 pounds yeah now we're looking at risk of injury so now we're going to play with some some other things but just just something to to consider but i think the important thing to understand with this is uh do both do them in phases stick to one for like three or four weeks have fun with it learn with it yeah learn how to train that way and move into the next one for you know four weeks it's one of the best things you could do to get perpetual progress now when somebody is looking for body composition change my favorite thing to tell that person uh regarding this conversation is the best thing you could possibly do is the thing you're not doing of course like one of my go-to favorite moves with a client who was looking for a static change was asking them what do you typically do totally and it doesn't matter what the answer is whether if it's you tend to live five by five for three years yeah five by five there's awesome we're doing high reps we're super setting change will change yeah and then and and that with the with proper eating uh would send this awesome novel stimulus to the body that would it would induce muscle good example of that is stat efforting so stand efforting a bodybuilder power lifter at one point he was known as the strongest bodybuilder that there was um and even though the guy could squat 700 pounds when you see him on stage his legs seem to be lagging a little bit and so he started training with flex wheeler who would you know was a very top bodybuilder in the 90s and flex wheeler had him doing high rep leg exercises 15 20 reps and stan was like man it was so hard and i never trained that way but his legs he gained like two inches around his quads yeah from training that why his body was so used to because he's a power lifter so used to training in that way that when he moved the higher reps boom he got more muscle so that novelty effect i think is uh an important thing to communicate uh i'm gonna uh switch gears and talk a little bit about a peptide that i just started using that i've used in the past it's um it's a mitochondria uh peptide in other words it helps the mitochondria function better so i've talked about mot c before which i always love this one justin loves too loves it right now yeah anytime i've used mot c i get more energy i feel better i get a little leaner from it not a lot but i definitely notice i get a little leaner there's another peptide in this category that works differently called SS31. SS31 operates differently than mozzie so it's totally different started ss31 i think i love it really yeah dude i think i really like it more than mozzie or like a similar effect similar yeah similar with the energy the clarity the kind of good mood uh you know your mitochondria is operating well it's like every cell uh has more energy um so yeah it's a it's a pretty good one and you can get it for a second there you weren't able to get it but now you can what mechanistically are they doing the same thing they're doing something different different to the mitochondria so um so ss31 i'm reading off the screen here it targets the inner mitochondrial membrane to repair cellular energy production and reduce oxidative stress it's uh so it helps the mitochondria operate better if you look up mozzie i feel like i said that's like the same thing no it's different so this targets the inner membrane of the mitochondria to do what it does mozzie uh it regulates cellular metabolism insulin sensitivity and energy production homeostasis but how does it work it activates ampk pathway which acts as a cell's master energy regulator uh here's what a lot of people do with the mitochondria ones is they'll go one and then they'll do the other one so they'll do like a cycle of one a cycle of another one and what's cool about these cycle off and then yeah well what's cool about them is uh once it kind of repairs what it needs to do it's not like you got to stay on it then you're good so it's like one of those ones you could do like once i mean a year again we don't like to do this but i know in combination with red light therapy oh yeah it's like super charge it right well especially with the mitochondrial peptides oh yeah it's it enhances yeah um and our partners at mphormones.com they they're able to offer every peptide that is available from an fda compounded pharmacy so it's like all the good ones speaking of that is bbc available not available okay it is back right yeah bpc 157 is available again so you can get them uh get it off there and you're i want to ask you adam you're microdosing i am there's appetite i have been now for uh so you're taking like one-fifth of a normal dose of a starting dose yeah so i started i started off at five units um and then i went to 10 units actually i started off they they started me off at 1.25 or 1.5 or i mean excuse me 12.5 or 15 units i always it's i'm looking i'm thinking about the needle it's at one right um so they started me off a little bit higher it was too much i noticed it it suppressed my appetite because you're not trying to take it for no bunch of weight loss no i really wanted to use it i told you guys that when uh you know although i i went the first time i did all this the i had all the terrible side effects of losing tons of muscle and i wanted to see what that all felt like by you know treating it like a client would treat it was all experimental for me uh not trying to like utilize it to its you know maxing it out now i'm trying to counter it with all your yeah exactly now but what i did notice during that process was man my psoriasis was really good now uh was it good based off of what some of these uh you know practitioners are talking about because they think that there is some sort of or just that you're a little bit low calorie or is it just because i'm super low calorie um i wasn't sure so i wanted to test that and i was like okay well what if i took a dose that's low enough um that i get some of the uh inflammation benefits for it but not so low that i can't eat the what i need you mean that's so high that it messes up your food yeah yeah yeah yes so i had i i've been floating around trying to figure out what that number was it seems that it's somewhere between the you know five units to ten units um which is like what you said like a half or even less than a half of a starting dose and it is like perfect i can i feel the inflammation i can tell it slows down motility which has this psychological side of it too for me which is i because it slows down motility it has changed a lot of uh night eating behaviors that i've had for a long time oh you're gonna feel like you have a brick if you yes yes and it's all it only took me a couple times of testing that to go like i don't like that at all and so uh there's been it just happened last night where um i i had a good lifting session i could tell that i was still hungry my body was wanting to build uh and eat more and so you know that's normally what i'd be like oh my god i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm like oh i lifted i moved a lot i'm i'm lean right now i could afford some ice cream where i could afford some high calorie meal but i know like oh like that late at night and something that doesn't easily digest so what did i go get rice and ground beef oh yeah you know just another i had a reheated one of the meals that i think another plus side makes you want to eat better yes so uh and so i'm not sure if it there's something happening with the glp-1 that is impacting my psoriasis and inflammation as much or is it curbing some of these negative behaviors that i've had before all i know is i 100 and the inflammation is down big time i can feel it and in my hands and joints i can see it in my face and i'm holding weight like i'm not psoriasis you could tell oh yeah oh yeah you know uh so these are this is all so we have friends that um work in the space that are doctors that prescribe it uh lead researchers um so that there are studies that are going on now examining the um the anti-inflammatory and autoimmune uh protecting effects of glps okay so because there's been so much anecdote where people are like man this autoimmune issue that i have i mean yeah i'm on a glp i'm losing weight but this autoimmune issue seems a lot better or i have these lower inflammatory markers it was hard to separate like well is it the yeah glp or is it because you're you're eating less a lot of garbage we'll do that too right we'll make your inflammation go up off but there are a lot of practitioners who've been using off-label essentially these compounded just like from our partners at mphormones.com right you get compounded um you know glp so it's not a pre-loaded pen which means you can use a tiny dose you can do large dose a lot of these practitioners are i'm talking to and they're like i use them for clients all the time that way like they don't need to lose weight yeah but they have you know this particular autoimmune issue we microdose them and they're and it's a lot better first person i heard talk about that was dr tina when we got on the show i remember when she said she used it a lot like that you know i i have the same skepticism around it like which one is it that's helping yeah the thing that i find interesting is that if it's if it was from low calorie i would think i would be losing weight but i'm holding so it's not so low that you'd lose exactly so it's not so low of calorie that that for sure was probably a factor i feel like when i took it the first time and it crushed appetite and i was cut i mean i lost 20 plus pounds like quick um but i'm i'm holding about the same i i i felt like uh my body released about three to four pounds of water the the initially the inflammation that i joke about in my face and in my joints i felt like i that went and then i've just held right there i mean i'm just holding it 216 to 218 you guys should see the studies that are being conducted on them right now it's wild they're studying them for autoimmune issues they're studying them for addiction addiction yeah that is gonna be that is crazy because a lot of people are reporting and we don't have any studies yet that show that it does this but this is a lot of anecdote and the studies are going on right now as we speak so who knows the jury's out but personally i've heard again these practitioners report back that their patients are coming back and saying you know what's weird i know i'm taking this for weight loss but i don't want to smoke anymore yeah or i don't want to drink alcohol anymore or i don't want to gamble impulse is gone bro i got a buddy i got a buddy who has a friend a close friend of his who was who took it for gambling because he had a gambling issue wow and i'm like did he notice that he wants to gamble less and he goes yeah and i don't know so it's acting definitely acting on the reward centers of the brain theoretically could it affect these things uh in any way yeah theoretically it could so really weird it is weird i mean here's the deal uh for the weight loss effects alone i predict you know two-thirds or three-quarters of the american population will be on them at some point you throw an addict addiction uh you know uh positives yeah oh my god addiction and how many people suffer from autoimmune a lot yeah a ton yeah so i know yeah no i i'm i'm pretty fascinated with it i'm i'm well over a month now i want to see i'm like i gotta i'll look back and see exactly where i'm at um and when i start doing it it's it's been a while now i'm at least six plus weeks i think into into it and uh i got nothing but positive things speaking of medications and stuff did you guys see this drug i don't know if it got passed yet i want to see if it passed um the fda trials but there's this drug uh that uh cuts c-pet so it cuts sleep apnea so sleep apnea sucks if you have it you have to wear a c-pat machine um forty-four percent cuts these sleeping events or these breathing events i should say by forty-four percent it's a pill interesting it's a it's a pill so why because it treats the neuromuscular dysfunction that can that can cause snoring really yes so snoring oftentimes we're like oh you're heavy that's part of it your tongue grows side effects okay well that's well i don't know we don't need to go there yet but all right but we do know that there's some kind of neuromuscular dysfunction that happens with some people because some people have sleep have um sleep apnea that are not overweight they just have it uh for you're overweight you're a big old neck dude damn shots fired it's all right i'm the one that wears a c-pap in here uh calm down beak but did you guys all right did you guys okay so let me ask you guys this do you guys notice that uh like you don't mess you don't have um sleep apnea but do you snore if you drink oh yeah yeah or i'm really tired if i'm really exhausted or something like that so i i periodically will um i always have to ask katrina because i don't know when i do and she never complains a lot a lot of people will say they don't normally snore but if they drink they'll snore yeah yeah it's a neuromuscular issue that's happening you know what else can can contribute to snoring this is a anecdote there's a lot of them uh gluten for some people so people with gluten intolerances uh will snore more when they have gluten oh yeah that's interesting because it affects their cns huh so now side effects of this pill who knows yeah that's i mean fixes this question i know leakage come with it like it's not bleeding dude i don't snore anymore but those uh those funny commercials you know of all the drugs like that may cause you get the micro machine guy at the end and wrap up cool my rash is gone but i got 10 of these other things but i've erectile dysfunction more women want to talk to me but i can't do anything about it oh my god do you guys know what a merkin is i have a merkin yes that sounds so doesn't that sound like from the movie trolls is that what that is no the bad guys no murkin no okay so i what brings this up was because like honest it was like um can we guess courtney was talking to one of her friends was like hairstylist and they're joking because like they're talking about wigs and stuff and all this and it comes up she's like do you know what i'm working i'm like no it's a wig no for your pubes oh that's what it is that's what it is i was like i know i've heard this it's not just like a new it's supposed to be like stick out of your out of your uh it's like a whole it goes through there and it's like a little beard you know for it how do you keep it on well and two people like so so actors and actresses like they do this for like sex scenes too and they put that on to kind of cover up okay so no normal person is like no but that yes why i don't know i didn't know that was like a desirable thing yeah i mean guys wear muscle shirts now but i don't i have to my knowledge i don't know i have i did not know that women are like yeah you know he's come on doug pull it up yeah my landing he searched he's over here delaying over here he doesn't want to pull it up i really don't want to pull it i mean i don't think that's a thing is it is that a thing you're like you're insecure because you don't have enough well because back in the day again this is like the syphilis days marking trends yeah like yeah people experience high fashion resurgence in popularity through high fashion pop culture high fashion there you go you guys are i thought you're the fashion guy yeah no i'm not claiming that wait a minute public figures like doja kat and julia fox i don't know who they are but they're famous rappers oh yeah they bring back the 1970s full bush so what i don't understand is why not grow it themselves you know what i just grow it maybe i don't know maybe they maybe they went too hard and then lasered it at some point now they're like oh no yeah they probably lasered it off dude what the yeah why not why not why not dress it back up listen i'm i'm suspect back to the but i don't think there's a single sicilian that needs to wear a merkin it's like we're fine yeah we don't need those bad boys i just thought it's fun it's like of course you know they make wigs but i'm like i didn't know they made wigs for that ew dating back to the 14 and 1500s they were originally used historically by sex workers to mask the physical effects of sexually transmitted infections oh just hide it you got a bunch of crabs you know it's funny when you see like these new people that do it as a trend right now they don't know the origin of it why are you wearing that what's going on so you must tape it on it's got to have like sticky tape on it yeah or it's or just sitting in the underwear you know we should probably just sit it's probably just sitting you know what we should do we should buy them like a velcro we should buy them in a different in a different hair color and see for whatever i wear a red one i just don't i just don't get why not just grow it out i mean find me an irish merkin please does the carpet mash the droids you know wow bro you could also wear that as a goatee though yeah yeah the murky downstairs or upstairs yeah it's uh just don't switch them up it's versatile just don't put the wrong ones to the wrong place yeah hey you like my new beard yeah it's like that's my merchant oh it's itchy i don't like it oh gross yeah oh my goodness all right i thought that was interesting all right this total good segue because now i want everything filtered uh did you guys read the story the study on hepa air filters did you guys read this have you been seeing this doug i'm surprised you haven't what are hepa air filters so air filters that use a hepa um uh like purifiers so this is like one of the best um like air filters to clean out the air so we have uh the big one in here yeah the ones we have in our homes because we all have the same ones they are very very good at purifying these micro level yeah check this out trip off this this was a study adults age 40 and older performed 12 faster on a test of executive function after using a hepa air filter in their home for one month wow 30 days wow 30 days isn't that wild imagine what could possibly like what would it be for a year dust and another particulate matter for the air and by the way microplastics microplastics there's a lot of them we breathe in jeez isn't that crazy wow do you know that some cases indoor air pollution is worse than outdoor well if they have makes that makes sense because you're locked in your clothes just like you know you're in a box yeah yeah yeah isn't that crazy trapped in there so i wonder if like um how much of our like degenerative diseases uh like dementia and stuff might be connected uh to some of those things so 12 in a month there's not a supplement that would do that that's crazy dude isn't that amazing that's interesting do you guys have air filters in every room at home no not every room two rooms yeah i want another one we have them in every single room you do remember we moved out of that the art the old place because i'm old oh yeah yeah and so i got really paranoid you're able to not you have to burn anything like it didn't transfer with you no we threw we threw so many things about all new stuff dude but i put filters in every bedroom and um yeah so good i'm glad i did wow that's that's pretty wild actually it's a big impact i wonder how like uh the the biggest offenders i know those like glade plug-ins are bad right those are really bad you don't use those anymore no i don't do it anymore i used to you love i used to love those that's such a hormone destruction especially when i had dogs it was like my what was your scent vanilla yeah i'm a big vanilla guy yeah me too yeah i like that too me back to high school though remember i told you guys that yeah my high school no no i don't know jesus guys just i'm sorry i don't mean sorry i assume i assume he was in high school first of all a strip club in high school dude no it's like my first kiss dog it's like yeah where were you yeah what were you doing in high school guy i worked construction yeah yeah i'm over here copping a feel and make it out you know what i'm saying that's all i'm doing guys over here drugs and and strippers dude calm down dude i was a rock star at all dude calm down arrow i just assumed you were that's all right right right oh shut up hey did you hear about the otter attack justin you were saying where okay so no it's not santa cruz but you were saying earlier yeah we have a uh local like famous otter that uh it's off of westcliff because it's like this is this is um so i didn't know where it lives i didn't know this about otter territorial i love otters they're so cute they look like little puppies in the water it's one of my favorite animals they're super cute they're vicious yeah so it was it would swim up to surfers and bite them and it was funny it was like otter 841 that's his name wow yeah it became it became like people wear shirts like with the otter no way yeah he's like a mascot of uh santa cruz it's funny i like the name eight four one is that the zip code or something no they tag them they tag them so check this out a veteran open water swim instructor from reno so lynette baleen 38 stitches and intensive medical treatment 38 stitches after being aggressively attacked by a river otter while swimming along the east shore of lake tahoe wow like wow that's vicious they're not even that big i didn't think that like they could get big otters i thought it was just like little bites i didn't think like you get decent size i think dude i thought they were the sweetest animals ever how heavy can they get doug yeah how big can an otter get because that's like a it's like a a river dog i feel like i feel like they can get pretty heavy no no no dude they're 35 to 54 inches long 11 to 35 pounds i would have guessed 80 to 90 pounds at least oh good lord yeah yeah 90 pounds yeah no i thought so they looked they looked fat to me the river ones yeah no they're like oh i guess the river ones are meaner i don't know hey look at those little teeth oh yeah they look different is there a difference between the the river and ocean ones size-wise i don't know but you know what's funny it's either cute because they're furry maybe that's why i would be very i would not think they're cute totally how big are they they call a sea otter yeah um 35 to 60 to 90 pounds oh god big difference that's the southern sea that's like the ocean ones dude that's right we know so much about animals sometimes oh is it the animal shows your son watches no i just i mean every once in a while you throw out like a fact about animals and i'm always like how did he know 90 pounds i mean i was wrong on the river i didn't know i just assumed that they were like the same size i didn't know that they were they were that dramatically different like half the size yeah yeah i tell you guys i didn't tell you guys about speaking of kids my daughter my three-year-old daughter she uh we go to the pool um at the gym we go to and she got her a bikini finally and she called she was so excited she calls it a boob mask the top look i have a boob mask oh my gosh i look like it works speaking of that we're at we're at this interesting crossroad or phase i guess with max that you know he's at that age now where he's he's he's getting too old to like he's been so comfortable with mom like you know grabbing her boobs oh yeah like you know he does the same thing yeah see my son does that yeah yeah and then katrina's like trying like hey you can't do that why i don't you know he doesn't why why can't i do that they're so they're so soft yeah he's all dad does it yeah you know or should we get out of the hot tub and he'll like stick his face between her butt cheeks and like try and blow oh my god bro listen can i tell you something i feel so much better now i thought my son had a problem i was like part of me was like man they don't know i was like oh my poor kid he's really bad like i was instate so it's yeah yeah yeah unless our kids are just taking it yeah yeah i don't know i don't know max is doing i mean you know and maybe that's the thing i have to be careful like i like we've and i've also started to go like hmm is this is probably where i need to stop doing this too where it's just like you know him and i swim naked in the pool it's our point i'm saying that's different i feel like that's different too okay but i've told you that but i mean i think we've just been so comfortable with our bodies open there's no there's my son does the same thing he grabs my wife's boobs yeah you know we'll do the same thing with the butt yeah she gets really she gets really mad yeah so she's like those are private areas and she's like yeah i don't know i don't know i don't you can't do that katrina's at that right now giggles and thinks it's funny yeah and it doesn't help that i laugh you know in the background because when he first does it it makes me laugh too we're trying to we're trying to transition out of that right now and like he needs to know and you know he's he's rubbing up against katrina and he can't control his body yet so he doesn't know he doesn't know what's going on and so she's like okay we need to we need to learn to have a little bit of our this would be great to remind him when he's a teenager he's all weird yeah he used to grab your mom's boobs all the time remember that remember his girlfriend's over i mean it's it's there's there's parts i think that are really cute so i'll come in um because this is like the new talking point and like he's learning that and i told you too he likes to sleep naked right so uh if i if i come in and uh like there'll be times where i you know i get in late or you know i was doing something i hadn't said good night to him and so i'll come in after katrina's already tucked him in lights are out so like that and also come in and kiss him good night and stuff like that sometimes i'll lay there for a little bit and remember the first time it happened i didn't know what was going on so i obviously know what's going on now but i was like i don't know what's going on i don't know what's going on go in and you know it's pitch black and i'm trying to find my way into his bed and i'm gonna crawl in lay next to him just kind of rub his head and kiss him good night or like that and uh the like the first time it's happening like all of a sudden he pops up he gets up and he's like in the coverage he's moving around i'm like what is he doing and i realized that he's he's putting his underwear back on oh so he's feeling a little more conscious yeah yeah well he knows that well he's been told that like hey when you're laying in bed next to mommy and daddy like you're okay you can because he's been told he can sleep naked he wants to i tell katrina like let him sleep naked if he wants to sleep naked he can sleep naked if he wants to sleep naked but she's like yeah but then he wants he crawls in next to me and he's naked and his thing gets all hard she's like so she's like i was like well then just tell him when he when he's laying these kids are gonna listen to these episodes oh my god they won't care by the time by the time they finally you know what our kids are gonna care is when they're 30 something yeah yeah so but anyway so she she's coached him on like you know you can sleep naked when you're by yourself but when you're with mommy and daddy you put your underwear on so but i didn't know that what was going on i'm like what are you doing buddy he's like oh i'm putting my underwear on oh okay i think it's hilarious i can never i can never sleep naked because always the thought of my head is if i have to jump out of bed to like defend my family i'm naked oh i feel like that's one of the best defenses it's scarier yes i feel like if i come running out ass naked with my gun bro you are more scared yeah i feel like that's way scarier this guy's crazy he didn't even put on shorts yeah i feel like that's it i think i just don't want to be grabbed or yeah yeah or you go like you're gonna grab him you don't even need a gun glad you're here jump on you that would be the best way yeah you didn't even have to knock dude why'd you break wasn't there a guy wasn't there a dude i think i read this a long time ago this article where someone broke into his house and the dude tied him up and then like abused him the whole time no way yeah dude like yes i think this is true it was like so yeah do you remember that so we were in high school there was a guy we used to tear him up and he was like oh my god i'm gonna kill you i'm gonna kill you that would be called under underwear anderson and it's because he used to we used to like we used to like toilet paper the house and be like kid shit right oh older guy yeah older guy and well oh i mean he was probably our age my age you know what i'm saying and he used to come out and chase us in his underwear you know what i'm saying and so we were all scared to death underwear listen oh here it is dude i told you look at this a local shop so this is orange of course orange county florida a local shopkeeper and his brother caught two individuals attempting to burglarize the commercial property rather than contenting law enforcement the store owners took matters into his hands held them at gunpoint forced relocation so they moved in the back bathroom then they were ordered stripped naked and were severely beaten wow yeah when the intruders were arrested for the break and the shop owner was also arrested and faced charges of assault battery battery with a deadly weapon torture and sexual battery wow but you know what they're never gonna break it i guarantee you don't turn an electric fence change their life they'll never do that again no you've never done that spread the word what was that pulp fiction it's just like full fiction yeah i feel like i feel like you you know that's the f around and find out i feel like you do something like that that you know i don't know i feel like that should be that's part of the gamble your little heist didn't go as planned yeah i feel like you get that that goes down that way it's like i mean obviously you can't kill them and like what does torture mean does torture just mean like they you know they handcuffed him stripped him down whipped him a little bit like that so you deserve like you just getting a little naked ass whooping is like that's a luck you're lucky you're lucky i didn't shoot you dead it's like a gift or you give them an option listen yeah either call the police or i whip you around a little bit what do you want to do or i'm gonna do some things let me call my friend i don't know what kind of things let me call my friend anyway so uh i want to talk about um manuka honey the company worked with manu such a good transition yeah they're gonna love it strip them naked throw some honey on them you know what i'm saying like okay okay okay leave them out in the woods get the pet bear to finish actually i was gonna ask you something about monocore because uh so i yesterday i asked you about uh the stack for me for the things it was that it was the one i forgot i knew it i knew it and i actually we were all trying to think i gotta give creature in a credit because she actually remembered so it's funny so i so yesterday it's antiviral yeah so the audience knows because we're like talking in code here yesterday uh so my son got sick he didn't go to school um and i was telling sal i'm like man you recently talked about one of our sponsors and it's like benefits for like not getting sick or something i couldn't remember what he had said and i'm like so and i said man i should really add that to my stack and i'm like so i went through the list of things like stack the vitamin d the zinc the um echinacea or yeah no elderberry no it was a it was a zinc uh elderberry was um uh what was the other one i told oh thymus and alpha yes thymus and alpha so that's a peptide and ad and glutathione and then and then the thing that we couldn't remember and so i did all i did all the stuff i had to treat it and then what made me remember it was last night so we have we have tea like every night and we had that she had just had this she had bought this other um off-brand honey because our guy next door who does the does the um does his own honey was out so we just happened to have this random honey that i had on the counter and so i just used it and she's like why are you using that why would you use the monocore because like right now max is sick and i'm like that's the thing that sal that's what we couldn't figure out it was that right yeah because it's antiviral antibacterial um and especially when you're being exposed right before you get sick use it yes yep yep so there's the there's the monster stack for you right there so nad glutathione zinc elderberry thymus and alpha monocore monocore you want the ultimate defense of your body you want the ultimate defense of your body you want the ultimate defense of your body you want the ultimate defense of your body you want the ultimate defense to getting sick well to getting sick well to getting sick well you haven't gotten sick in a while um i you haven't gotten sick in a while um i you haven't gotten sick in a while um i mean knock on wood right now but you've mean knock on wood right now but you've mean knock on wood right now but you've been sick inside this room with us uh been sick inside this room with us uh been sick inside this room with us uh max has been sick katrina has been sick max has been sick katrina has been sick max has been sick katrina has been sick i that that's been sick no justin never gets i that that's been sick no justin never gets i that that's been sick no justin never gets you don't get sick either him and doug don't you don't get sick either him and doug don't Don't get sick. You've been sick three times the whole time I've known you. Both my kids have been sick quite a bit. What's interesting about that is the two of you are the more cortisol stress junkies out of all of us. Maybe we're too relaxed. Yeah. Maybe we need more stress. Maybe. I'm less stressed than I was. When was the last time you had to test it? Too busy to be sick. Last time Cabral did it. But last time I tested normal. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah, wow. What would you attribute that? Because that was something you- Oh, I worked on that so hard. You did? Yeah, I mean, like so hard, meaning I slept more. Yeah. Like, oh, oh, oh. I mean, it was- I tried to change some lifestyle things, such as beating the clock, you know. Yeah. Is he late more often? No, no. No, you're not. I'm not late. No, you're not. I was. No, you're on time. Was that- No, that's a fair assessment. I think it's been a long time since I've seen it. There have been many times before that where, like, you were scrambling, doing multitasking, coming in. I haven't scrambled for a long time. Yeah, you haven't. Which is a good sign. No, you're right. But my stress is way down. But sleep, I will say- It's actually rare that I get here, because I'm normally one of the first ones here. It's rare I get here and you're not already here. Yeah, Doug's always here. Which was not the case before. That wasn't. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I've turned a new leaf. Good. I wonder how much that is playing a factor. The sleep for me is a big one. the sleep is huge i got a 60 last night oh no yeah just because i didn't i didn't go to sleep on time i didn't go to bed uh well what were you watching no i was trying to get some for my wife all night long and okay and she yeah she was like and normally she's game always but she was she knows that it gives her energy and it puts me to sleep so that you know that's how i need to sleep yeah and i'm yeah i'm like i need to sleep and she's going like she turned you down that never i know well that is because you know what i missed my window so which i don't like that no i don't like putting me in a window yeah like and so she she's like you know hey let's go it's like six o'clock you know so that's too early i want to relax a little bit i want to do my thing and then i will or whatever with that and then because i missed my window she's like no it's gonna wake me up and then all night long i'm trying and then i can't sleep because i'm like yeah yeah yeah so you know it's i don't know about you guys but that's my like you know she says her move she says no and then like an hour later yeah you Just keep wandering. It's like there's something subconscious. I don't think I'm not even doing it, like trying it just subconsciously. Like, let me see if I can. My wife tells me I'm just incessant. How are you receiving this? She says I'm incessant. Like, I'll come on to her, and then it's always at the wrong time. She'd just have told me she has a migraine. Ten minutes later, I'm like, hey, you in the mood? She's like, I just told you. I don't want to fix that. Like, I told you it'll feel good. You want to feel better? And then I'm just kind of like persistent. It's the sales guy in me. You know what I mean? Maybe that's the TVA. It makes me good at sales. I think that's what I think it is. It's hard for me. I'm like, well, there's, you know. Yeah, circle the wagon. Yeah, that's another objection. It's only been five no's. I got two more to go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm getting better, though. So that's what happens is that I go to bed, and there's at, you know, 10 o'clock at night, and all night long, I still think I have a chance until 3 o'clock in the morning. You know what I'm saying? Oh, no. Wow. And then I realize. Now you're bad. Yeah, now that I'm mad. Say no to her next time. Get her back, dude. That's a good marriage right there. I got a study for you guys on homeschool. Did you guys hear about this? No. So this is a peer-reviewed study that was the first nationwide homeschool achievement study in 15 years. You want to know what they found? What? From homeschool kids? What? They scored 29 percentile points higher in reading, 25 percent points higher in language, 25 percent points higher in math, 26 percent points higher in social studies, and 27 percent points higher in science. So generally speaking, they performed better. You know what I find so interesting about that is how different that is from what I felt like the narrative was. Yes. Totally. It's so opposite of what I think people thought before. Or is it, Sal, has public education just got that bad? Or is it just a combination of the two? I think it's a combination. Like maybe homeschooling isn't that much better. It's just that public schools are so bad. Here's what I know. Because now I know. Because we homeschool. And I know enough parents that homeschool now because we homeschool. One thing that always, this is consistent across the board from everybody I've met. It takes them an hour or two hours to do all the schoolwork of the day. That's it. Yeah. So you normally go to school for like seven hours. These kids are done. You don't have to start super early in the morning. No, dude. Like no kid performs awesome like that early. And nobody has as much of a vested interest as a parent. I look at this great example. I look at this example in front of me of my son's age and three different approaches to this, right? So we've got you and Jessica with homeschool. I've got my best friend who's public school and they're teachers and Katrina and I who have max in private school. And I would say all of our kids are excelling, but strategically for different reasons, right? Like your point about homeschooling. Different benefits. Yes. Like, so exactly. Like you've pointed out the benefits of homeschooling. So that. Obviously I've seen what with max in his school. Like I'm so impressed with like, I know that I don't have the, what Jessica has the disciplines you need. If you're going to homeschool, I could never do it. If it was on me, I know there's so much, so much more outside of just parenting structure that, that you're, you're, you're teaching them. And it's not as simple as just, you're not teaching them math and education. Like there's values that his school is teaching him beyond education that I love. Right. And I was like, man, I wouldn't even think to do that. And it's so cool. That this school does that. Then I see my, my best friend who's his kids are going to public school, but they're teachers. And so school doesn't end when school ends, like they spend a lot of afterwards. They're very, and their kids are wicked smart. But I also think it's because they don't just, it doesn't end at school. When they get home, they're, they're, they're both teachers. So everything is a lesson. And I remember my mom, my mom's like this. If you watch my mom, when she's a teacher, she's a teacher. So when she, she doesn't play with my son, she teaches when she plays with my son. So like everything is a teaching lesson and that's a, if you've ever, if anybody who's been married to, or knows a teacher and their family, that they have that, especially good ones, right. They have this gift where everything they do, is it like every meal, everything. And I feel like homeschool moms have this trait. They tend, they start to learn how to do that, how to build a lesson and everything. And the other thing too, is there there's a, I don't, I don't know how you would control for this, but I would imagine that the kind of parents that want to hold a homeschool are generally more vested than the general, you know, group of parents who sends their kids off to school. In other words, less like disconnected. Yeah. Like how much of this percent, you know, 25% better at these, you know, categories. Is it that just cause the parents are care and they're involved factor, because I wonder if you took the parents whose kids go to school, public school, and then took the ones that actually are involved. Would we see the difference? Well, the other thing you could also ask yourself, you should ask this too, is like, you know, how important is love, right. For a kid, right. In the process of raising and how much of love is translated as, as in time for them. Yeah. So in other words, you homeschooling them, you spend more time with them. You spend way more time with them, which is perceived as more love. You're right. And so is the more love playing a bigger factor in all those, those categories. There's a downside to it too. And people don't want to talk about this, but I'll say it as a parent, if, if I had to homeschool my kids and it was all me, you get no breaks. I mean, I'm not going to lie. Sometimes you send your kid to school and they're, and it's good. You like to school, you get a break. Yeah. You get like a three hour break when they're little, a six hour break. When they're older, you get to do other things. That's rough. My wife gets no breaks except for the ones I come in and step in and give her. Otherwise it's all shifting. And then it's hard for you to share that break with her. So no, a hundred percent. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I have so much. So much respect for somebody who does do that or chooses to do that. I think that it's, it's incredibly, especially to be good at it. Right. I think it's incredibly challenging. It's again, what I, uh, I have, I'm so grateful for that. We have is that we can send him to a school that I feel is teaching a lot of things that one I want. And then two, I wouldn't even have thought of that. I think it's so valuable. One of our big motivations for it. Well, a couple, one is we want to be able to teach them some of the stuff that we want to teach them that you, that you'd have to like specifically find a school that's going to teach you. That's hard. The second thing is there's things that I don't want them to be taught that a lot of the, especially public schools around here where I'm like, you know what? You don't even find out till after. That was my biggest consideration was, uh, was diving into that. Yeah, no, a hundred percent I've had that talk many times. I said the, the day they teach something that I don't want my son teaching. I'll, I'll pull them out. I have friends who found out after, after the kid learned the, the, whatever they were teaching them. And it's like, yeah. It's like, dude, well, yeah. And there was this like idea that they could opt out. Like, like my kids could just walk out, you know, not have to like, it was like sex education and that was just like the, the teacher was literally like, no, you can't leave and you can't like hold on. And you know, this became, yeah, it's became, and it's like, you can't, you can't say that's how the experience is going to be. And then now you're like literally going against what you're telling me is going to happen in the class. So it was like, dude, we're out of here. Yeah. I mean, Katrina and I, we went down to the principal and asked all the questions. Do you teach this? Do you teach this? Do you like, I want to know, like, I want to know, I want to know before it happens, not after the fact, because I didn't ask the questions because I want to, I want to find all that stuff out. So I agree with you. I think it's not just, uh, the stuff that you want them to be taught. It's also stuff that you don't, you don't feel that your kid needs to be taught, especially at a young age. It's like at one point, you know, he can learn about age appropriate. And some of it seems innocuous. Like I'm not even talking about the controversial stuff necessarily, although that's part of it. Some of it's just. You don't, I don't think you need to be teaching a third grader that we're destroying the earth and that, you know, if we don't change directions in 10 years, like what are you teaching my third kid who can't have zero control over that to panic and freak out fear, fear, fear, and all these animals are extinct and we're killing them all, you know, and it's kids in third grade and they're like, what, what are we doing? It's like, why do they need to know that? Right. So they can do what? Nothing. They can't do anything about it. Why are we placing them in activists? Right. And when there'll come a time when we, when they will learn. And then we can talk about it. We can discuss that. But at that age, the worst thing you could do is learn about something extremely stressful that you have zero ability to influence or control. That's a very, that's a, that's a, not a good place to be for a kid. It's scary. Yeah. I think a lot of that stuff too, is predicated on how a teacher delivers it, because I think that can play a huge role too, because you could talk about an animal being extinct and you can do it in a way that makes people, you can make the kid feel like we're killing these things. That's right. Right. There's two, there's two things. There just used to be a lot of them. They've died off is one thing. 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h-i-y-a health.com slash mind pump that link will get you 50 off your first order this segment of the podcast is brought to you by mind pump fitness coaching this is the number one course that teaches trainers and coaches how to build sustainable six-figure plus businesses and careers in fitness look it's round table based so you can hear adam justin and myself teaching you how to build a better business get more leads close more deals close bigger deals and be more effective trainers by the way our course is nationally recognized in fact it gives you 1.9 ceus with or for your nasm certification and we're going to talk a little bit more about that in just a moment we're going to talk a little bit more about that in just a moment certification find out more at mind pump fitness coaching.com our first caller is mark from wisconsin mark what's up what's happening hey guys this is cool thank you you got it man how can we help you well i'll keep the intro short uh got into fitness a few years ago been listening to your show for a couple of years now i want to thank you very much for your no nonsense you know just delivery on fitness right keeping to your core principles finding unique ways to you know continue to to just get those across but i'm a guy that focuses on goals and i kind of had a weight loss goal when i started i got there uh noticed i was starting to get a little stronger which was awesome and every couple months i'd have to go to the local gym and pick up a couple more weights right pick up a couple more weights and i i i'm an older guy i'm in my late 40s but i feel really strong and i and i i want to set a goal of maybe going like to a potential strongman competition so i went online and started looking at like some of the categories and things you have to do um but i just don't know like you know it seems like there's not a great separation of age weight limit uh skill level and i'm looking for some advice like if that's not the right thing to do tell me like i'm not a i want to get strong and i want to have something to look forward to and see if i can compete with other late 40s gentlemen all right good question so let's back up for a second mark so i'm reading your email uh and it says um essentially you're talking about needing a new goal and it sounds like without a goal you kind of feel bored or you lack direction is that does that resonate 100 um i got my personal trainer certificate uh about two years ago and i put programming together would go to the gym all the time uh and now i'm you know again life just gets in the way and when i go outside in my garage and work out it's i i just don't have the programming set i'm always doing something a little bit different uh not working on progressive overload not focusing i'm just happy that i'm out there and doing something but i've noticed the strength kind of go away a little bit so i i want to get back so the root the root issue uh and just correct me if i'm wrong the root issue is just kind of you're losing that spark you want to kind of reinvigorate that spark okay so there's a couple things here uh that we want to address with that now one uh and i do want to say that having goals is great i mean we always encourage people to have goals that's a big part of fitness but there is a downside uh to goals which is that you always need to have a goal in order to find yourself uh having the motivation to be consistent or to you know like i said earlier to have that spark with fitness and that now it's not often something that someone runs into because most people just run into the problem of not being consistent but when somebody's really consistent constantly meeting a goal can actually pose a challenge and what you sometimes find with people is i would have clients that were like this is that they had to sign up for something all the time yeah this is the only way they could be consistent with the workouts and what it what it can what it did for many of them is it just moved them in directions that wasn't really good for their bodies uh or they would uh over or burn themselves out because they had to get the next marathon the next triathlon the next whatever so keep that kind of in mind so there's nothing wrong with goals okay but what we also what we also want to do and you've been working out for a while now we're in the same age category is we want to find uh workouts that are just fun for the sake of the workout itself yeah and that's a great place to be like if you just enjoy the workout because it's fun if you enjoy being active because it's fun you'll never run out of that spark it'll always be there and you'll never because the spark really is just that workout itself it's not that i'm necessarily aiming for something it's that i just enjoy doing uh what i'm doing and that's a that's a really really good place to be well we have to talk a little bit about why that is too because at some point you you reach these goals or you you hit peak right so like one of the things you've been going through you lost all this great weight that was a huge goal you've accomplished that you know now let's say you're seeing strength go up so now we start we set this strength goal and strong man we're but eventually you get to a point where at four you're you're late 40s you're strong as you know you're hitting your 90 percentile strength you got good cardio like all these things and so it can get really discouraging when you don't see progress and part of you know like i'm definitely way weaker than 35 year old adam i definitely don't look as good as 32 you're like and so if i'm always drawing back to like if i have to have this competition i'll look like i'm failing all right so if i were to go try and chase something that i've already peaked at i and that's the driving motivator then it can also work against me as like uh well shit i'm i remember when i was so much stronger than this and it's like so that's part of why that that strategy of always having this like serious goal you go towards can be a failing strategy especially as we age and we've been doing this for decades yeah there's a psychological phenomenon you'll see with people when they accomplish a massive goal and they'll have a period after that and they'll have a period after of uh what can feel like depression so like i want to be a best-selling author i get there this the year after that it's like one of the hardest years of my life type of deal um and so those are some of the things you might run into now i will say this uh you are interested in doing a sport that does have a small but very uh tight community so like power lifting strongman tends to have a really great tight community and so my recommendation to you if this is something you're interested in is to find a local strongman training gym or group if one exists near you uh go to it and you ask them and say look i've never done this before i'd love to try what does that look like is there something i can sign up for uh or what do you recommend and then become a part of that community and then take it from there and i think that would be the best strategy moving forward and i would recommend that to you if you were 26 instead of 46 i would say the same thing i'd say go find a strongman club uh introduce yourself and they love that i mean you go in there as long as you're serious and you're not you know and you're like hey look i want to do this i want to learn this like what should i do uh they're typically very welcoming encouraging and then you just go from there yeah i also think too like i mean it's finding another thing to stimulate uh to to keep the training fresh there's nothing wrong with that i think too like so if this is more of a long-term goal it's like a a macro goal right and then you have all these micro goals in between so if strongman is something that you are really kind of into there's a lot of unconventional movements love that idea within that okay so now we have to break that up it's like okay can i can i learn you know some of these like really unique lifts and can i just start there and and you know how do i how do i approach that and then get good at the skill of each one of those different types of lifts and i think just like tackling that piece by piece and then really seeing you know the result of that and the overall strength that that's going to provide and then bleed into the rest of your training i think would be rad and then at that point you're like wow i've accomplished all these new you know sub skills that now i can apply and like maybe i can you know be in this community and i can compete and i can you know you know move forward with this and so for me it would be like tackling a program of ours like old-time strength and really kind of breaking it down uh you know on a micro level of like you know can i can i really sustain and hold this heavy weight overhead you know with one arm and can i control that and and can i own that and uh and then kind of move and progress from that because it's totally different than than you know going to the gym just showing up building muscle like this is really movement focus this is really uh you know technical and i think like each one of those is super technical so if you geek out on that and that interests you uh yeah there's a lot of room for that i love it i love that advice that just and probably will serve you uh for much longer right i mean you could spend the next five years uh working at strongman specific lifts getting good at a circus press right getting good at getting good at specific movements uh and and that's kind of how I would go after like our strongman or I mean our um our old-time strength program is I would look at it as like here's all these movements several of them will be very unfamiliar I'm gonna pick one of them I'm really gonna hyper focus on to get really good now obviously you're practicing kind of all of them but it's like the goal is I'm really gonna try and get strong and perfect this movement on this one and just keep cycling through it and uh probably interrupt those every two to three times you're in that program with either symmetry or our performance programs to dress Mobility and joint health and uh and then after you've done it a few times and feel very proficient at it then you could also go join a club or sign up for a strongman competition and do that so okay that'll probably set that goal out nice and long so you have something to work on for a while and probably a safer smarter approach towards a goal like that too I love I love Justin's advice yeah thank you that's awesome we'll send old-timey over to you Mark oh well thank you guys so much that'd be great yeah yeah yeah you got it man give it a shot let us know how you like yeah yeah keep us posted love to hear how the journey goes yeah you're gonna have a good time I will well thank you guys so much I appreciate your time all right brother right on you guys remember we have more when we had Mark Manson on the show a while ago yeah yeah and his his like life goal was to be a best-selling author yeah yeah the subtle art of not giving an F uh it crushes crushes and he was depressed for I think a year right afterwards afterwards and I've seen that with uh with people with fitness goals yeah you peak and constantly needing to chase the next goal uh and then it stops serving you and starts becoming an issue um and then the people that I know when I would manage gyms people that were so consistent that were in their 60s and 70s even uh they're they didn't really have a specific goal it was just they loved it they loved it they loved coming in they loved the way they felt they loved the workout they look forward to each one and they it was never an issue of you know I got to get this next like lose this body fat build this muscle it's just they just enjoyed the process and when you enjoy the process forget it everything else takes care of itself yeah our next callers are Leah and Audrey from Wisconsin oh hey how you guys doing hey nice to meet you guys how can we help you yeah you got it so we want to ask a little bit of a mother-daughter programming question for you guys so I'm 36 I've been in law enforcement for 15 years I've trained consistently for about 11 but took a little bit of a break in 2021 after I had sort of a traumatic injury issue happen um and then kind of restarted again last year with Audrey um she's big into wrestling and I wanted to introduce the weight training aspect of it along with her wrestling training so I just kind of want to get your advice on what we can be doing together to help um help her the most with her wrestling she's going to be a sophomore this year um last year she did in competed in the 107 category so awesome awesome that's awesome yeah all right so so there's gonna be a bit of a difference between but so are you looking for a workout for both of you or something for your daughter that you could help with yeah no I think something for both of us we've been running with maps anabolic for like the last three months we've been doing like we did the intro portion really nice and slow and steady to teach her the foundational like the big three movements we really want to focus on making sure her body's doing the right mechanics when we're going into squatting and dead lifting in particular just so we're not developing any bad habits um so we've been we're still phase one of that um but yeah just kind of looking for something that both of us can do together um I think since I've got a relatively decent history of working out that I can keep up with her to some extent she can definitely kick my butt in the like the cardio aspect of things but yeah that's awesome okay so it's gonna be very different in season versus off season for your daughter so it when she's in season it's gonna be very little strength training so I'm very familiar with wrestling training and it's brutal low volume there's a lot so in season uh her strength training is gonna be minimal like very minimal like like maybe three exercises once a week like that's it okay off season a traditional strength training program is totally fine um and and what does let me ask you this what does off season look like uh for her is she doing anything at all for conditioning or what does that look like yeah so right now we have her meeting with a wrestling specific coach once a week and then her and I are either in the gym resistance training once or twice a week depending on what our schedule looks like that's perfect oh yeah okay off season it's gonna be very basic strength training uh for her so the most bang for her buck is going to be in getting good at the super basic compound lifts no it's not specific like wrestling specific strength training that doesn't come into play until you know three or four years from now right now what we're looking at is building foundational strength so things like squats yeah deadlifts overhead presses rows pull-ups you know that kind of stuff um really good wrestling uh exercises are you familiar with the zurcher like deadlift zurcher squat okay really really good for wrestling because uh it's you know like a zurcher deadlift for example uh the weight is in the crooks of your elbows and it's like you're holding somebody so it simulates what it would be like to clinch with somebody uh to do a throw or a takedown split stance lower body exercises are also excellent for wrestlers because it's strengthening her leg now squats are great too but you also want split stance exercises because when she's doing like a takedown a single leg a double leg she's shooting and it's usually one knee that's forward uh when she's driving through to do the takedown and so uh what you would essentially do in the off season is you would pick two it would be two full body workouts it'd be one leg one push one pull maybe a core exercise and then you're done one of those workouts should have a split stance one of them should have uh like a bilateral um and that's off season in season she's doing like two or three exercises once a week and that's it so right now i'm doing power lift 15 with my son um and we're doing it three times a week and to his point about just doing you know focusing on the compound lifts from what you're talking about i think like what do you guys think about like a 15 strong yeah but like split up so you'd probably do it like three times a week not like the full you know five day cadence uh it just because the volume of it i think is more appropriate the focus of it's more specific to those like compound lifts and then you can get introduction to you are you take are you taking uh because it's got that's got that's six workouts are you are you pairing two of the workouts so is it four exercises in her workout are you only doing two workout two lifts i'm only doing two lifts okay so i just want to make sure that's clear so she knows that when we send it to her so it's like we'll send 15 strong to you in there will be six workouts basically what justin's saying is taking you're doing three of them one week do the next three the next week and so on mainly uh because of the skill of wrestling i want her to stay specific to that uh you know when conditioning wise or movement wise uh the the weight training itself if you just like stick with those two exercise but you ramp that intensity up like progressively i think that'll serve her a lot better yeah the name of the game uh with a young athlete especially in a sport like wrestling is injury prevention uh and building good stability and strength and she's especially in season she's going to be towing the line uh constantly between overtraining and you know what she could tolerate type of deal and so we want to build resilience um in her body in the off season um and in in season we're trying to manage uh stress quite a bit so i'm sure you already know this and this is very i have teenage kids myself like most important thing is going to be sleep and nutrition uh for both those things um those make the biggest difference but 15 strong is a great program for her to follow now lee for you doing the wrestling in season so your volume can be higher uh than hers probably do double that yeah so you'd be doing twice as much essentially than your daughter uh with the strength training but you'd be there of course watching her technique and form and doing all that do you have maps 15 strong by any chance no we don't okay that'll be that'll be the program we'll send you i'll send you that yeah and we'll do that that'll be awesome and then is there anything specific that i need to be looking for with her just cues that she's over training because that's what i'm worried about come wrestling season right now we're she's right around 116 115 for body weight but when she gets stressed out she tends to not eat enough and then she drops decrease in strength uh you know stiffness and tightness and achiness irritability yeah those things so is it okay if i go a little deeper into that uh while your daughter's here okay so the big thing to consider uh with a with a weight class sport like wrestling and this is just as true for the guys okay uh the body dysmorphia is very high in weight controlled sports so constantly cutting and trying to make weight uh what you see with young uh girls is uh and you see this common with with girls sports anyway but especially with a weight class sport is they don't they lose their period that's a big sign right there you lose your period uh we're not eating enough and we're over training uh and it's it tends to be accepted as like oh that's just what happens uh but that right there is a big sign um and then also with weight class and i know coaches hate it when i say this they really don't like it but when i would train young wrestlers I mean, if they're within five pounds, that's fine. After that, I'm like, you're wrestling in a higher weight class. Because the constant like – Try to stay at that weight as much as possible. Some of the hardest clients I've ever trained were clients who had been in a sport for high school and then especially college where they were always fighting to be in a weight class. And then they get out of those sports. They're trying to live a regular life. And their relationship with food and training is so difficult to unwind. It's very, very difficult to unwind. And another way to say this is that she will do better with five to ten pounds more muscle on her in a higher weight class than she will do cutting eight pounds down to the lower weight class that they might originally say she's in. And this will also impede on our ability to build muscle and build strength if we're constantly always trying to cut down to a weight. And so these coaches sometimes, they want to put a kid like, oh, I need somebody at this weight. So she's close to that. So we're just going to put her there. I mean, if this was my daughter or son, it would be like, no, we're going to build muscle and get strong and do all the things that you're trying to do right now. And kind of where her weight lands, that's what class she's going to be in. That's kind of the attitude I would have is in the offseason, you guys build, get strong, do all the things you were talking about and what you're already kind of doing. And then when season comes in. This is where you're at. Yeah, wherever she's close to, that's the weight class we're going to. I'm not allowing some coach to tell me like, oh, I want her in this weight class. Right now. And then all offseason, she's trying to keep her weight close to that and not build when that's what she should be doing right now is building strength and feeding, fueling her body to build strength. Then we'll dictate where she's going to be. And Lee, like coaches are very convincing. And so what they'll, and that's their job. Like you're a coach. Your job is to win. So I get it. But what they're going to say is she's got a lot of talent. If she's this weight class, she could totally dominate that. She's got a lot of potential here. And so as a parent, you're like, oh, I don't want to take away from my kids. Potential success. And so it starts to become compromise. And I'm telling you later on, this can turn into some kind of big issues. And so the weight class part, I'd be very careful with. And so my goal, the goal would be make sure my daughter eats, make sure she eats enough protein, make sure she sleeps. Does she feel good? Is she getting stronger? Your mom, you know, better than anybody. So you'll be able to know, oh, you know, she's a little irritable. I think she's overdoing it or whatever. And in this. And strength is a great metric. Yeah. Like if she's getting stronger, she's probably doing a lot of things right. If her strength's not going up or it's going backwards, sometimes, oftentimes that means we're doing a few things wrong. And sometimes, oftentimes it means just doing too much. Okay. That sounds great. Yeah. And as far as deadlifting is concerned, we, I started her off on a straight bar and then we moved over to trap because I noticed that she was struggling a little bit with just the positioning of the bar. And feeling what felt right with her body. Good call. And now we're back to a straight bar. Is there a preference versus one or over the other? I love what you did. Typically with athletes where trap bar is kind of where we stay. I think the skill of learning how to do a good deadlift is a great skill for her to have. Yeah. So if, and I think what you did is perfect. If you notice form techniques off, let's go to a trap bar. Let's get good at it. If she's having good technique in a conventional deadlift, I love that. Yeah. If you, but you see it off, then I, absolutely you're not. But by the way, there's a few ways. Losing out by going trap. And there's a few ways to measure strength increases. So I'm glad we're going here. One is the obvious, there's weight on the bar that you're adding. The other one is her technique's better. Technique's sharper. And I, you know, when I'm training a kid, like technique is everything. Like I just want to perfect your skill, perfect your skill. That's going to translate better to the sport anyway than just adding weight to the bar. So if she's, you know, if you got weight on the bar, she's doing a straight bar, you notice her technique's a little off. Lighten the load. Let's get perfect technique. That's the most, that's going to be the most important thing. You also want to consider, you know, body coordination isn't where it's going to be eventually. Her body's still changing. So that's going to change how she moves or how acclimated she is to, you know, doing certain exercises. So technique is going to be paramount. And that'll serve her much better than being like, I think we can add five pounds to the bar. Technique's a little off, but okay, you're not hurt. We'll just keep going. Like. Yeah. Don't go in that direction. Right. Definitely wanting to avoid any injuries long-term. Yes. Yes. But 15 Strong's got a lot of exercises that I think will translate to her sport. But honestly, here's the thing. You don't need to overthink a lot with a young athlete. It's like if they get better at certain basic exercises, the carryover's massive. Oh, yeah. It gets much more specific when she's, you know, 18, 19, 20. Now the strength training gets very specific. But at 15, 16, it's just like, let's just get you overall better. Oh, man. If you, in the next year, if you guys just get proficient at the major lifts, meaning your form looks flawless and you add a couple pounds to the bar on top of that, that's a huge win. Yep. Yep. Like that's just, that's a good goal. It's like, let's get the most beautiful deadlift, the most beautiful squat. And if we can add five or 10 pounds to the bar along the way too, that's an awesome. This is complimenting her skill. So, yeah. Yes. You just doing that, uh, in building, you know, overall strength and just add, it's going to translate so well, but really the skills, the highest important. Yeah. I'm glad you said that, Justin. Uh, nothing. So she wants to be good at wrestling. Wrestling more is going to do that better than anything. Yep. Strength training is literally supplemental. It's very supplemental. So don't make that the focus. It's not the focus. The focus is not lifting weights. The focus is wrestling. And then how do we support that, uh, in, in the most effective and slight and also gentle way? So if you feel it's starting to kind of impede on, on, you know, your performance with wrestling, this is where we kind of talk about if she's like, Hey, I came back from wrestling practice and I was sore from our workout and it was hard to do wrestling practice. Okay. We got to back off on the strength training. Yeah. That's, that's good to know. And we've been trying to be very, uh, listening to our bodies and be intuitive with what's going on with, if she's having a really hard time at practice, we back off on the weight training or if training's a little bit hard, then we take a break from that too. Yeah. I don't overdo it. I don't overdo it with her at all. And then I, I can't stress the fueling, the body, fuel that body, give it what it needs. Protein is so important. Um, the challenge with teenagers is that is, that's why I'm saying that is for every, every young athlete I've ever trained, uh, getting them to hit protein consistently is one of the hardest things. And it is one of the biggest game changers. Yes. Here's the, here's the two challenges with, with teenagers, always teenage athletes go to bed on time. That's a very difficult one. Yeah. Sleeping in doesn't make up for it. It's better than nothing, but it doesn't make up for it. So that's number one. By the way, teenage girls need about nine to 10 hours of sleep, especially if you're training hard, not eight, it's like nine to 10. So go to bed on time. Eating breakfast. That's the other challenge. Eating a protein heavy breakfast is very, very challenging, but if you do that, it sets you up. Yep. So I just want to get it on the record that, uh, Parmesan bagel with cream cheese is not a protein breakfast. No, it is not. No, she would probably, you want 30 grams of protein. Uh, in her breakfast. Yeah. So some kind of meat chicken or something that's easy. Like, uh, those Greek yogurts that have 20, 30 grams of protein in it. That's a real easy, that's normally where I got to start a lot of my young athletes because maybe they don't have a big appetite or they want something on the go and fast. And so I love those. What are they? Oikos. I always say the name wrong. Oikos or however the hell you say it. They have, they come into those little, those little things, they're 20 grams of protein in one and they're little. And so they can like shovel those down real quick before they head off to school or do something. Yeah. And that's a great way. And, or double it up. If you have enough of an appetite and I got 40 grams of protein, starting your day like that is huge to being successful with and know that the way protein works is that you could have a really good day on Monday. And if two, you know, a huge day, you go over on Monday, Tuesday, you're low. That extra doesn't carry over like carbohydrates and fat. That means you missed. That's a not successful day and you don't want to have too many of those not successful days of hitting your protein because it'll impede your pursuit of getting stronger. Getting stronger and building muscle. There's two directions here, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, highlight for your mom. So one is restrict, which is going to be very, that's like the natural, easy direction with a weight class sport. The other one, which you can start building now is I got to get my protein and one of those will serve her for the rest of her life. The other one will be a challenge for the rest of her life. So hitting protein, if that's the target, uh, that's number one, that's going to serve you. It's going to make you recover faster, stronger, even get stronger than the other girls. Yep. You're going to feel faster. You're gonna feel like you got more gas in the tank. Uh, the other one, you might make your weight class, but it's not going to feel as good. And so it starts in the morning. The way I would, I motivated my young athletes to do this. This is our competitive edge because this is one of every athletes, young athletes. So one of the, so we felt like athletes focus so much on their sports or that. And it's like, listen, if I can get you strength training and I can get you hitting your protein every single day, that is going to give us a massive competitive edge against everybody else. But I know that 90% of them won't do those two things. Oh God. A hundred percent. I guarantee a hundred percent of them are not eating a fruit. So that those two things are a huge lever that we can pull that I'm here to help you support you through that. And so drill that home, you hit that protein and take consistently, you compliment the strength training, get good at the technique like we're talking about. And that will give you one of the greatest competitive edge against your peers. Mm-hmm. I love that. Love that. And we very much went into the whole wrestling journey with the mindset of once we start calories and really focusing on what weight class we're supposed to be and that's when it's time to pull the plug on wrestling because I was a 15-year-old girl once upon a time, and we all think we're fatter than we are, and I'm like, we don't need to add any of that to the equation. Just be strong, be healthy, be happy. That's all I need. Yeah. You're doing it right, Mom. Yeah, good job. You're doing it right. Good job. Awesome. Well, thank you, guys. I don't know. Audrey, do you have anything you want to ask about? No. I would love updates. So as you get into the season, please keep us informed. We love hearing from our young athletes that we help out. I would love to hear. For sure. Thank you guys so much for everything that you do. We appreciate it. All right, guys. Thanks. Weight class sport. So men, I've trained a lot of men. We just helped somebody not that long ago. I've trained a lot of guys. Remember the last caller? Not like the last caller, but one of the last batches, the guy who struggled, and we had a 90-day follow-up. Remember when he blew his mind? Because he was one of those ex-athletes that was forever. I think it was at wrestling. I don't remember what sport it was, or running. It was some sport that kept him dieting. He was dieting his whole life, and he was so afraid to bump his calories. Yeah, yeah. And then we bumped his calories, and he was just leaner, stronger, felt better, everything. So no, it's for sure. I tell you what, though. I mean, I don't know how long. Did she say how long she'd been listening to the show? Because she definitely, great approach. Maps anabolic. They sound like they stayed in the pre-phase for a very long time. She worked on technique. She backed her off deadlifts. She put her trap bar, and she saw the technique was off. I'll add this, because you kind of made this point. Now, this changes as you get to higher levels, you know, you get up to college. But at this stage, if you want to have a huge advantage over your peers, you just eat right and go to bed. Eat right. Because nobody else is doing that. Everybody else is staying up late. You eat right, go to bed. You're like way ahead. And somewhat get good at these movements. Yeah, I know. Yeah, you're so much further ahead of your peers. Our next caller is Liz from Utah. Hi, Liz. How you doing, Liz? Hi. Great to be on. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. You got it. How can we help you? Well, I just have a question. I love helping older populations, senior citizens get stronger. I help them with their metabolic health, healthy habits, all of that. Often, they are not comfortable with going to the gym or say they don't have time or they have a lot of injuries. So I typically start them just with like walking and band workouts from home. But I also teach aqua fitness at our rec center. And we use. Dumbbells and noodles, different forms of exercise there. And I'm wondering if there is a program that I could help with building strength for older people that maybe have injuries or can't get into the weight room. Yeah, good question. So give me a little more detail. When you say older, what is the age range we're looking at? Oh, typically mid-fifties to, I mean, I have a couple ladies in my aqua fit class in their eighties, so. Awesome. Okay. Big difference. Yeah. There's a big difference there. And these are deconditioned kind of beginners? Yes. Okay. So it's going to be very, very basic. We have a program that you can pull from, but even some of the exercises in the program I send you might be inappropriate for like, let's say some of the 80 year olds or people who just aren't unable to perform certain movements. But map starter would be the program that I would send you that you can pull from. And then really, you really want to scale things back to meet the person where they're at. So I'll give you an example. Okay. So very basic exercise. I'll give you two examples. Uh, one basic exercise, uh, is a squat, right? A standing body weight squat. Oftentimes when I had somebody in advanced age come in to hire me, they could not do a basic body weight squat. And so what I would do is I would take a bench and I'd put some, uh, support pads on it. So I'd elevate the, the bench essentially, and I'd have them sit down slowly and stand up. And so that was the regression. Uh, for a squat. And then as they got better with that, I would remove a pad. So the squat was a bit lower. Uh, and I'd wait until they could get like 10 good ones. And then I'd lower it again until they could sit all the way down on a bench and stand up with control. Another example is like a very basic exercise. Like an overhead press. Oftentimes my advanced age clients couldn't even fully extend their arm. So without weight, they just couldn't get a full extension. Their arm would stay bent or they'd have to lean back or do something like that. And so what I would do is I would have them hold onto my fingers. Uh, and then I would do a squat. I'd have them push up as high as they could. Then I'd pull their arms up to the full extension. I'd put them in good position. And then I'd say, try and hold your arms here. I'd take my fingers away and have them do an isometric at the top. And so this is where your mindset needs to be with modifying movements for people so that they can, uh, progress, uh, in an appropriate way. I would say teaching a class setting to advanced age has to be the most difficult thing to do. It's class settings. Things are already tough to try and appeal to 10 or 20 people that are all uniquely different and have different capabilities. That's, but if I'm dealing with at least 20 year olds to 40 year olds that can do a lot of basic movements, you can probably put together. But to Sal's point right now, like you could have some great exercises I put together, but then they're, they're totally inappropriate to an 80 year old to possibly do. And I would, I would say that most of the people are probably, I would say like 50 to mid sixties, there are, there's just a couple older ones, but the nice thing about working out in the water is I have ladies that come with a Walker, you know, can hardly walk, but once they get in the water, they do fine. And that's one thing I love about Aqua is they can go at their own pace and they can adjust things. And so I teach pretty intermediate, um, and we do lots of weights and reps, but I just wondered like, as far as an Aqua class, um, I teach how to activate muscle protein synthesis. This is through nutrition three times a day. So I'm actually seeing muscle mask or muscle skeletal muscle go up every week just through nutrition, but I want to accelerate that with exercise. So as far as like working out in the water, would you say that that's doable to increase muscle strength? Absolutely. So isometrics are great in the water with, uh, older populations. And so what they would do, like an example would be, uh, you're standing, uh, maybe supporting yourself with the side of the pool. You lift one leg up straight as high as you can, and then hold it. And so there's a lot of these isometrics you can do in the pool because the pool provides buoyancy, they can get themselves in a position and then hold for an isometric and isometrics are great for building strength and muscle, especially in people, uh, who need to regress to that particular level. So think of that, like what positions can I get this person in that they can hold in the, in the pool because the pool allows them to do it for like 15 to 30 seconds. Okay. And as far as progressing, um, you know, when I follow your progress, I'm going to follow programs. We typically progress in weight to get stronger, but in the pool, when we don't have a lot of options of increasing weight, would you just say more reps? Um, would that be the best route to go? More reps, more time, uh, increased tension. Yeah. And then here's the other thing. Do you offer one-on-one to any of them if they want it? Um, I haven't, most of my clients that I coach are over phone and zoom. So I'm not in the gym with them personally, unless I'm teaching a class. Okay. Cause that would be another thing would be. Do you offer one-on-one with the people that need it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And what about for someone like myself? I mean, I've been very consistent in the gym for about four years, um, really increased muscle strength, but it seems like over the past year, like I'm just kind of really in the thick of perimenopause, all my joints, um, hurt. It seems like I'm nursing a lot of injuries, shoulder, um, hip knee. Um, and so I don't feel like I am progressing so well in the gym. Um, would something working more on the water, um, with it being better on joints, do you think I would see, um, results in the water? Cause right now I teach on the side of the pool, but if I myself got in and really worked on weights and exercises in the water, do you feel like someone that's maybe not a beginner would see results? I don't think that would be your workout. No. Uh, but there's. Although that wouldn't hurt you to do that in addition to what you're doing. I think getting in the water, the benefit of that would be, it would be, make you a better coach, uh, because you're in the water. Yeah. And you are feeling the water. And so it allows you to adjust technique a little bit better. But, uh, I don't know what the recommendation would be for you without knowing what your workout looks like right now and what your nutrition looks like right now. And we can go into that if you want. Oh, if you have time, I typically, I love to follow like your, um, anabolic and, um, aesthetic. I've been kind of playing around with the kettlebell workout. Um, and I feel like my biggest problem. Um, is I probably don't warm up or, um, I have an hour in the morning, hour and a half to get in and get, and some of those are longer. And so I, I probably don't prep enough. And so I probably trying to lift too heavy without warming up. Yeah. So typically when I'm with this, so if I'm looking at an avatar that you kind of fit, right. So you're a, you're working fitness, you've probably been doing it a while. Um, and now you're starting to notice a lot of aches and pains and also based off of the program, one of the programs that you mentioned, which is maps aesthetic. I can pretty much, I think I can, I can confidently guess that you're overdoing it. You're probably doing too much volume and you're training. I don't think it's an issue of warmup. I think you're probably doing too much. And so the cumulative stress is now turning into lots of aches and pains. So like maps aesthetic for sure is too much volume for probably 99% of the people who listen to our show or just people who work out in general. Maps anabolic is not bad, uh, but phase three can get really high. with the volume, so scale if you're feeling pain scale the volume down that's 15 performance is what i put her on yeah mass 15 performance would be a great it would reduce volume uh address uh you know unilateral multi-planar type movements which would benefit joint health and i think that would be a great uh a great program for you to follow and see how you feel from that we'll send that to you if you don't have it oh that's awesome i haven't tried any of the 15 i i always feel like that would be too short but every all of all of our fitness people think that and then we get them on it and they go strong i like that too because we need to yeah really focus on movement in uh different planes of motion to uh the programs you had mentioned are very you know uh sagittal plane focused only so uh to get that variation is going to help a lot uh to complement that strength stability there in the joints yeah i love 15 performance for you be perfect okay all right i was thinking maybe i needed to spend more time like priming or you know like those kind of things but um you think just cutting it down that won't hurt so it's so it's great that idea if we're setting you up with 15 performance and you're used to running an anabolic or aesthetic it's going to give you more way more time because you don't need your now you have all this extra time so if you do anything more apply that to mobility and priming yeah so spend uh spend time doing some 90 90s and do some thread the needles and wall circle like do do some of these movements to benefit your hip and your shoulders in in in conjunction with the two exercises from 15 performance so that would be wonderful so if in a perfect world you follow the weight training from 15 performance and then absolutely with your more with your free time that you have uh because the program's a lot shorter use that and apply that to hip and shoulder mobility thoracic mobility and do that every day uh with it would be awesome okay perfect i spent a lot of time kind of physical therapy exercises on my shoulder and then i'm like okay i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this and i'm on my hip i have a torn labrum so that's kind of like prime probably like just yep lighter lighter reps but um i like that idea of doing that yeah we'll send that we'll send you a starter and uh 15 performance you get two programs oh i would love that thank you so much and then as far as the older you know older population um how are you saying try to get them out of the water um and doing doing things or i think i think what sal said that is great advice like you can you can right so if you can coach it's uh hard virtually but if you can communicate well enough to them how to intensify the isometric that's like progressing an isometric so first it's like learning how to just hold your leg up and that alone will be challenging and they'll probably be shaking a little bit and then it's like okay now you're there now intensify it you know activate your glutes activate you know so learning how you know squeeze extend your extend your leg flex your quad flex it as hard as you can like so coaching like that and getting them to intensify it will actually progress that and then if they want more and and then it would be trying to get them to come out of the pool and let me do some of these exercises for a map starter that's why we're sending that to you is that you can pull from some of those movements and then ideally coach one-on-one with some of them if you can pull is a little difficult it's mainly cardiovascular so do you have any of those actual dumbbells that like push yeah we have we have a variety of different size dumbbells we have noodles we have kickboards we have buoy belts for deep water so we um we actually you know get a pretty good workout with all of the dumbbells i try to do you know a typical um routine that i would do like in the gym with weights but move it to the water and then i'd like to teach them a lot while i'm teaching things that they could do at home like calf raises while they're brushing their teeth or squats or you know like just more movement and nutrition to go with it so if your goal is is to help them improve their longevity and vitality which is what it sounds like okay the two most important things that trump everything else number one is consistency and number two is community so if you look at the data on uh older populations what improves their longevity and vitality uh when in regards to fitness it's consistency that trumps free with their joints that trumps the most perfect workout it's just that they do it and then community is massive for longevity and health so as a as a coach as a teacher number one for you is to make them want to show up i know that sounds crazy but it's like how do i like i got i want to make this they love coming they want to come they want to do this kind of thing they want to see each other afterwards you can even organize things outside of the uh of the class itself those things will do more for the longevity than going from a okay workout to a perfect workout i agree yeah we have a great community we'll get 50 people you know in a class that's awesome and they love coming so i think that the community is there and they're loving like i'm just really trying to teach them healthy habits and and learn why they're getting stronger not just you know not just for strength but for blood sugar balance and all of those things that go with it so is this a is this your main business liz or do you do something on the side also is this your main business um not water fitness that's just something i started on on the side just because i wanted to be able to help um older people and i don't see them in the gym you know like i see them in the water so i do that more for fun i um i'm just i'm a metabolic health coach for the past 15 years and i just help people balance blood sugar i teach muscle protein synthesis activation like to build strength and healthy habits exercise sleep water hydration um so just kind of a overall healthy lifestyle yeah i was just asking because i think the ideal thing is to to kind of do all the things we're talking about in the water and then when people are wanting more than i would i mean if you're open to like individually say hey listen suzy you're doing so great in the water if you want more you want to do more i would do these one-on-one sessions with you and i would do these one-on-one sessions with you and i would do these one-on-one sessions with you and i would do these one-on-one sessions with you and so i would just have an just have an offer uh for that progression because you can do a lot in there for in like sal saying that the big things for longevity are making sure they show up they love it but you might have the occasional person that is maybe in their 50s and they're like they want more and they're loving the progress and it's like i would have an offer if i was you that was like hey for those of you that want to keep going and progressing you're doing great i have this uh one-on-one thing that i do yeah well i have to fit it in with the five kids and that's all holy cow my 93 year old grandma like all the things so i don't do a lot of one-on-one in the gym okay but um five kids mention that yeah a great idea um but i do recommend um your programs to a lot of people that are just getting started just because i i love your programs and i usually recommend like the bands program like if they're just starting perfect wanting to do something from home right on but you mentioned um your map starter would that be better than the bands for someone that doesn't have a lot of equipment and doesn't want to start at a minimal they're both good they're both minimal equipment the the starter includes a stability ball and some dumbbells that's it so it has a little bit more to it uh than probably just bands bands is probably the easier like just getting someone started they don't have much just get some bands suspension trainer would be another good option yeah okay like a trx yep yep okay perfect all right i love that um yeah i just because i'm trying to build consistency without them going to buy a bunch of equipment first i'm just trying to build like sure that consistency first so perfect you guys are awesome i appreciate your help right on okay that's my favorite uh my favorite group to work with it's so fun yeah it's so fun working with people like that yeah pool stuff you know it's funny as a young trainer this is just this just shows immaturity right as a young trainer stupid you thought oh i just pull workouts oh what a waste looks ridiculous yeah like what like how couldn't have been more ignorant well i mean it's what you i mean it's funny it's very helpful we talk about the things that drive us crazy some of us are all guilty of at one point uh you know as a 20 early 20 trainer everything you viewed was through the lens of building muscle or burning body fat and a perfect workout yeah well just i mean the ultimate everything is building muscle and burning body fat and that's when you in the context of that or through that lens that those do suck but through the lens of longevity and health and community and well she said it you get someone in a walker who can't stand up straight they can stand up straight in the pool yeah and that is a wonderful way to strengthen that position yeah i mean our next caller is justin from florida what's up man how you doing justin hey guys how you doing good man how can we help you yeah not a whole lot man first of all i just want to say uh thank you to you guys i started uh listening to you guys back in 2022 and through the years i mean on and off my fitness has kind of been a up and down roller coaster uh going to the marine corps and such um to where they pretty much play your body in one direction and it's not a healthy direction and then um getting out i mean i've always struggled with my weight and whatnot but from 2022 i started listening to you guys and i got connected with the maps anabolic program and when i started that program i was probably weighing around 245 ish and within three months i scaled down to 199 um so the program was very effective um i loved it i loved what you guys um preach on a daily basis about fitness and not only that about you know just self-care uh mental health wise um you guys have helped me out a lot when it comes to my mental health as far as even you know i listen to you guys about your father figures you know how you guys live your life with your families and such um i live my whole life with my family and i've been listening to you guys for a long time and i've without even knowing my dad, you know? So I commend you guys. i thank you guys for everything that you do for the community thanks man thank you so with that um after anabolic i did a little bit of i did power lift and then my work life changed i changed careers um i went into the post office i'm a letter carrier with them um and then i started getting on the program maps transform and when i was doing that program i was i was in the second phase and i was doing preacher curls and when i just went down i think i hyperextended it too far down and uh my right distal bicep tendon ruptured off the radius uh forearm bone and they had to do a complete reconstruction uh surgery on that um so with that i you went out of uh work for a little over a year with that injury and it just uh mentally wise really you know set me back and even health wise it really set me back um even to the point to where when i wrote my letter i mean i don't have it in front of me to read it um but you know i'm i'm one of the heaviest points to where i've ever been in my life being around like 260 or plus you know and uh i've been in all the way down to you know when i was it's funny listening to you guys and everything that i was doing wrong you guys called out and i started trying to slowly change over that time you know as far as even counting my calories i was so particular and everything that went into my body i was tracking and you know i just got really too much for me um mentality wise that i didn't want to do that anymore um to where that's when i really went into power lift and i just stopped tracking calories and i just started feeding protein into me and then um so i don't really know why i got the injury maybe it's because of bad form or whatnot um or just my body i'm not sure but i'm just at a point to where i'm trying to really figure out what's the direction of my health and the best approach to take it you know to uh to go i guess yeah i'm just trying to figure out what's the direction of my yeah dude yeah thanks for calling in man thanks for the kind words and uh thank you for your service uh thank you do you mind if i get more into your email because there's some stuff you sent in your email that you don't really mention do you mind if i bring some of it up oh yeah no that's fine okay so um so some some underlying things that we want to uh that we need to place in context to help with how we approach fitness and nutrition um so since you got back from afghanistan ptsd depression anxiety have kind of played a little bit of a role in your life so what are some of the things that you think could be helpful in all of this okay um exercise uh and nutrition are phenomenal uh for helping with things like anxiety and depression uh and as those get better ptsds tends to get a little better as well but it can also make those things worse a lot of people don't talk about how fitness and diet can make anxiety depression and ptsd worse but there are ways they can make it worse and one of the ways it can make it worse is by trying to control everything through diet exercise and lifestyle like trying to control every calorie that comes in my mouth looking at all my workouts like i need to make uh progress every time i train or if i'm not progressing in a specific way that i'm failing and that can actually make things a lot worse and i don't know if that resonates with you justin uh with you know yeah it's home a lot okay so what we need to do number one and this is going to help you with a lot with the other goal which is like hey i want to get in better shape and lose some weight what i want to ask you is forget the goals forget weight loss forget getting stronger forget all that stuff with exercise what makes you feel the best what makes you feel good when you're done my energy okay so you want just uh go ahead go ahead go ahead sorry no i just um one thing like i said my energy but you know coming home and just my son seeing you know what i've done and everything he just his uh sense of pride that comes over him really yeah does it a lot for me i hear you dude i hear a little underlying something there too which i think all dads uh struggle with which is uh we want uh we want to make our kids proud yep uh but i think your kid's probably pretty proud of his dad uh regardless so and i can say that pretty confidently so uh all right so the energy makes you feel good so when we're doing exercise to improve the way we feel there's two ways that exercise improves how we feel one is in the short term so when we're active appropriately in the short term um all those feel-good chemicals go up and we feel good then in the long term the way fitness makes you feel better there's two ways one it makes you healthier and a healthier brain and body tend to be happier and two uh is the sense of accomplishment and the consistency you're doing something hard you're doing something good and that just makes us feel uh really good so what we want is we want something that allows you to tap into both of those every day so what would be better probably for you would rather than rather than doing three longer workouts or two longer workouts a week would it be to do a short workout almost every day so almost every day you do this workout that gives you that kind of like feel good in the moment uh but also long term is going to contribute to better health so the maps 15 style program would be ideal for someone like you now ideally i don't know what your schedule looks like but ideally you'd want to do it uh first thing in the morning because it does uh when you look at the data it does tend to set the stage for most of the day now if that's not possible it's not a big deal but if your schedule can work around that maps 15 in the morning uh would be great the second thing i would do now you're a mail carrier so you probably get tons of steps already fifteen thousand fifteen thousand okay so i heard you say fifteen to twenty thousand steps a day is that correct yeah it's got he's got it written up there too okay yeah maps 15 is your workout now let's talk about diet with diet i just want one rule that's it we don't need more than one rule eat whole foods try to eat whole foods try not to eat anything that's not whole foods that alone is going to help with the weight loss goal but it's definitely going to help with making you feel better and it's also not so controlling that we're you know creating this anxiety around everything that we're putting in our mouth and counting things it's just whole foods maps 15. here's the other thing once when you cut out uh the fellas and i's talked for a second so you lost connection but we're going to set you up with our concierge coaching for free for two months thank you so much that way you meet once a month with a coach a mind pump coach and then you report back to them and they'll help move you through the process give you some accountability it'll give you 60 days of that and they're going to walk you through uh this process modify anything you need or whatever and kind of coach you for the next 60 days and i'd like to see if i can hop on one of those calls if possible so i can talk with you personally on one of those coaching calls sure and i appreciate that so much really from the bottom heart thank you so much you got it dude and then if i can add one more thing it's just because i i uh i have a little bit of knowledge around um ptsd because i have people close to me who've had some of that and one of the most impactful things you could do is be a part of some type of a community um and so if you're not a part of a community that helps support that it makes a huge difference uh the place that you know i would recommend is a church uh and so there's something to look into to have those people kind of do life with you makes a big difference can make in the data it shows makes a huge difference so just something on the you know a little extra there okay yes sir all right dude all right we're gonna hook you up with one of our coaches got you justin we're gonna work through this whole thing with you dude got you oh that's tough dude that is very tough but i what i said about exercise and diet with anxiety and depression is true it can make it a lot better it could also make it worse well yeah it's like um you know somebody who has body dysmorphia or eating disorder and you know exercise and working out and eating healthy becomes a part of the problem could be a yeah could be a good could be a good thing but it can also be a really bad thing if it becomes this massive uh form of tyranny like you talked about and that's what it is is he's tyrannizing himself through it which will force him eventually to rebel and swing the other direction and so but we'll help him we'll get him uh we'll get him on our concierge and have our coaches to walk him through this get him going look if you like the show come find us on instagram it's mine 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 mindpumpmedia.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. 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