2948: The Type of Exercise That Will Get You Past Sticking Points & Why This Beats Every Other Form of Exercise

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MindPump. MindPump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in history. This is MindPump. In today's episode, we answered listeners' questions. People went to Instagram, MindPump Media. They posted questions. We picked four of them, and we answered them at the end of the episode. But the beginning is the intro portion. It lasted 60 minutes. This is where we talk about isometric training, building muscle, fat loss. We talk about nutrition. We talk about family life, current events. Look, if you want to post a question that we can pick from, go to Instagram, MindPump Media, post it there, and then we might pick it. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Caldera Lab. This is skincare that works. It's all natural. It's for men. Today, we talked about their serum, the good. It's great for dry skin, moderate skin, oily skin. Makes you look phenomenal. They have many other products. Go check them out. Go to calderalab.com slash MindPump. Use the code MindPump20 for 20% off. This episode is also brought to you by Rho Nutrition. Today, we talked about their liposomal technology and how this delivers nutrients to your body more effectively. Today, we talked about their creatine. If you have issues absorbing creatine, if it bothers your stomach, try Rho. It won't bother your gut. Go to RhoNutrition.com slash discount slash MindPump. That's R-H-O Nutrition.com slash discount. Slash MindPump. Use the code MindPump for 20% off everything. We also have a brand new workout program, MAPS Abs and Butt. This is a program designed to target and focus on, you guessed it, your abs and your butt. It's 40% off right now. And if you get it right now, we're going to throw in for free a free MAPS program, Muscle Mommy 15 or Muscle Mommy. We're also going to include a butt building diet guide and a supplement guide. All of that stuff is for free. Go to MAPSabsandbutt.com. Use the code LAUNCH. For 40% off, plus all the free stuff. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to MindPumpStore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Odds are you're missing out on gains because you're not doing a strength training technique that was used for generations. Ones that strength athletes swore by. Made them strong. Made their muscles hard. Developed incredible physiques. And for some reason, nobody does them except for high-level strength athletes. Nobody does them. And they're easy to do. You guys, you're missing out. If you don't use isometrics in your training, you are not building the muscle you could. You're not getting as strong as you could. And you're not getting the gains that you could. It's very easy to do as well. We're going to talk about it right now. Isometrics. Why you should do them. You think if we talk about this enough that we could shift the fitness culture to the point like we saw. To the point where you come up with an invention that, like, helps it. Not that much. Dang. Not that much. That's a lot of volume. I would just be impressed and happy with what we watched happen with the squatting. Yeah. Squatting and deadlifting. Yeah. Like, I mean, we all started it at a time in the fitness space when the squat rack could go empty all day long. Yeah. That is impossible in a gym now. Not anymore. Impossible. No way. There is no way a day goes by. There is no way a day goes by in a gym and that squat rack doesn't get used all day long. Definitely not. Listen, when I was managing gyms and I would deadlift, so I was, you know, 19, 20, so this is like 98, 1999. I'm not exaggerating. Every time I would deadlift, a member would stop me. Yeah. He'd go, hey, what are you doing? You're going to hurt yourself. What is that? I'm like, this is a deadlift. A what? Nobody knew what they were. Yeah. Nobody did them. So, and I agree. I would love to see people utilize isometrics. Isometrics. Isometrics. You guys, the data on them, it's one of the most studied forms of strength training. So, it's like we don't have a lot of data to support it. We have a ton of data to support isometrics. And in some cases, in some ways, they're superior to other types of repetitions. In other words, like you're literally missing out because you're not utilizing this incredible tool that can do things for you that traditional lifting kind of misses out on. Well, I am a bit optimistic with it. I have seen isometrics really. Really prevalent a lot in the strength conditioning world for like youth sports, for sports in general, and just the programming of it. It just hasn't like become more of like your commercial gym setting. You don't see that. And it's like not real relatable. And meanwhile, the same benefits, if not more benefits, because too, there's a safety component to it. And there's, you know, rehab ability. There's just so many things that would translate to your average person. It's just like, it's, it's kind of still an unfamiliar thing. I'm going to say something that. I don't know if it's a bit irresponsible or not, but it's just honest because it's what I've been doing. And it was, it was inspired by Joe DeFranco watching him do it. And it would, the irony of it was what it, why he was doing it. And then what, how I ended up using it was a little bit different. Keeped in a post of like challenging. If you could do a isometric lunge, like with your knee, just hovering off the ground, you know, and hold for like a minute on each side, which by the way, very hard to hold for one minute, you know, uh, about 30 seconds. And I'm, I'm shaking like a leaf doing that. And I, and so I saw him do it and I thought, oh, you know, I should let, let me see where I'm at with that. And again, I was like shaking, like leave 30. What I noticed was just how much it woke up my around my knees, my hips, like everything. And I felt so good after I squatted after that. So I did that first just to see where I could do it. We could do it now. And I was so connected that has become how I start leg day now. Like that's all. I do. I don't do any of my mobility work. I literally do a, like a, like a variation of what he was doing in a, a, a pure isometric getting like a Bulgarian split stance. I do a, a walking lunge and then hold it and then hold. And I hold for about 15 seconds in between each stride and I walk across the gym floor and one time of doing that, I am ready to rock. I mean, and I feel so good going into that school. I have the data to support that again, because, uh, it's. It's not like we don't have a lot of studies around ISO. It's actually one of the most studied, uh, forms of, uh, strength training. It was super popular, um, at the turn of the century, you know, strong men, uh, back in the day, um, strength athletes did it, uh, uh, Olympic athletes still use certain types of isometrics. Power lifters still use certain types of isometrics because they produce a tremendous gains in strength in unique ways. So this is what's, what's interesting about it. If we were looking at isometrics and it kind of did what traditional strength training did, then I would say, you know, okay, whatever, just keep doing what you're doing, but it's actually superior in a few interesting ways. Um, and also it doesn't create this crazy, it doesn't create nearly as much damage, uh, as traditional strength training, which makes it this interesting thing that you can kind of add to your training, uh, without running a huge risk of overtraining. Now that doesn't mean if you're redlining now that you add it, you're not going to come to completely go over, but what it does mean is, uh, you get a lot of, uh, benefit with kind of little, uh, risk, risk of injury and risk of, um, recovery is pretty, pretty quick. It is. And here's now one of the reasons why I think it's just kind of fell out of favor is, you know, if I do a social media post doing an isometric, there's not much to see. So it's not an exciting post. I'm not moving. Yeah. So it's, it's hard to sell. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm lifting a bunch of weight. It's like I'm pushing and nothing's happening or I'm holding. And nothing's happening. So I think a lot of education is continue to go out. So people will get this, but once people utilize this, I mean, within a week or two, you'll notice the difference. You'll see it. And the challenge is this with isometrics. Don't just try it once. It's not like the exercise that you saw that's like, oh, this is cool. I'll try it once. I'm gonna go back to my old stuff. No, no, do it for a while. So you can really reap the benefits of what isometrics can produce. I like to, is it actually like it's built in intention. So a lot of times, uh, people go through the motion and they're trying to get through workouts and they're trying to do reps to complete, you know, their session, uh, versus really focusing on what's going on and like how we can maximize that position by increasing tension and, you know, increasing stability and all of these things to produce more force. So you can do that, uh, just by, you know, taking your time, really feeling your way through and activating more muscle. I love that point, Justin. Cause w you know, because I've been doing this now for a while, the progression of it, um, for me. What it's look like is, you know, it went from just a challenge. Can I do it? And then reaping the benefits from it. Like, oh, this is awesome to like, oh, this is the thing, you know, to now, like when I'm, when I'm in it, I'm like, I'm thinking about my feet on the floor and how I'm kind of gripping the floor. I'm thinking about where my, my posture is and I'm really trying to drive in, into the floor. And so it turned into something like this isometric hold to this really, why I'm in this deep position. I'm spreading your feet, what's all going on right now. Yeah. My knees opened up, my feet are, my toes are kind of spreading and I'm kind of trying to grip the floor with my feet. I'm really dry. I'm trying to engage the glute when I'm deep down in that position. I'm thinking about where my posture, my chest is like, and because you're in this, in this, you're holding this position for 15 to 30 seconds, I've got plenty of time to think about all those things. And then as I think about them really intensifying all of them, man, it just, boy, does it set my body up getting ready to go into a squat or a deadlift. There's two main ways that you would use asymmetrics, uh, in strength training. One of them is called yielding, and this is where you just hold a position. So, um, yeah. Give an example, I could take a bench press uh, bring it down halfway and hold it. So that'd be yielding. Then there's something called overcoming. Overcoming is where I'm pushing against something or pulling against something or squatting against something that won't move. And so what strength athletes would do, for example, is it get under a barbell and they'd set pins above the barbell and they'd have so much weight on the rack that there's no way I could lift it. And I push into the pins as hard as I possibly can. Uh, and I'm doing this for like three to 10 seconds. So it's kind of a short drive as hard as I can. Uh, nothing's moving. Yielding is just like I said, you're holding a position and you can also do, uh, the yielding ones intro rep. So I'm in a squat, I'm doing traditional reps, but then I'll hold at the bottom or something like that. A lot of times overcoming, you're going to exert more effort. And so therefore, yeah, it's more taxing, but so you'd look at that as like, if you could like more of a, uh, compound lift versus like. Very good. I'm glad you said that overcoming will, will fatigue you way more than yielding well. So, all right, here's what the data shows, uh, with isometrics and where it's better than other forms of strengthening. So I wasn't interested in looking up where it's the same because otherwise why do them? Why do an isometric if it's the same as traditional lifting, you're doing traditional lifting, like why add anything else? Who cares? So I looked up, where is it better? Oh, here's number one. And this was really interesting for me. I wasn't actually familiar with this until I saw the data. It's actually the best form of strength training to lower blood pressure. In fact, it works as good as first line blood pressure medications. Did you guys know that? Wild. Interesting. I didn't know that. It's remarkable. So now here's how it works, right? When I do a hard contraction where I'm holding, so let's say I do overcoming, let's say I get under a bar, um, and it's loaded with 500 pounds and I can't lift that. Uh, and so I push as hard as I can. My, all the blood vessels are in the muscles that are contracting. Are, are constricting. They're squeezing. They're constricting. Blood pressure goes up. When I let go and relax, I get this rebound effect where they dilate and they relax. What you're actually doing by doing that besides strengthening the body and all that stuff is you're actually, uh, training your endothelial system. You're training your vascular system to be able to dilate. Now, is there any risk to that? If you already have high blood pressure and you're, you're straining that hard? I mean, is that, is that puts you at a higher risk? Yeah. It depends on how high your blood pressure is. Yeah. Cause that sounds like that. Cause it's obviously working as a stress, you know? So you, if you can lift weights and you're cleared to lift weights, you're probably okay to do something like this. Okay. But double check with your doctor if you're like really high blood pressure, but otherwise like to lower blood pressure and strengthen vascular health, this trains the body system that, that, that dilates blood vessels. And so when they compare this to other forms of strength, all exercise will lower blood pressure. All strength training lowers blood pressure. This one crushes. All the other forms. And so this is actually a method that's been used in the past to help people with that. Now, is that similar what's happening when you sit in a sauna? Different. Okay. Yeah. Different. Yeah. Different. So both very good though for lower. Yeah. I know that. Yeah. Yeah. I know they're both good. I was just curious to, if it was a similar stress, that's obviously it's not as strenuous to sit in a sauna and you're not putting nowhere near as much demand and risk on the body. But I was wondering if that's what's happening from a vascular standpoint. No, it's very, it's different, but both beneficial. Next up is strength at the angle. You're doing the isometric. You'll gain more strength in a specific position with an isometric than you will with a full range of motion. Okay. Now, how can I make this valuable? Well, you got sticking points in your lifts. You know where they are. Maybe it's at the bottom of your bench press, or maybe it's that lockout. Maybe it's holding a barbell overhead, or it's the beginning part of an overhead press where the getting the barbell off your shoulders or off your chest. Maybe it's the bottom of the squat. This is where I can, I can build more strength at that angle faster, practicing an isometric there than I can just practicing the exercise overall. So for smart lifters, like you want to get through sticking points, uh, do this, this will blast through them faster than you can see where we, uh, this science has been applied, um, at the highest level at like, uh, sports. Um, I think, uh, Corey Sussinger, he was on the, on the show, uh, shared and talked a little bit about this and how he, remember how he uses his box. Yeah. And one of the things he would do is, is put his athletes in these kind of like compromising positions and then do isometric. Yeah. Isometric holds so that when their ankle is contorted in this position, which it gets contorted in that position in a basketball game. Yeah. And then it do an isometric contraction. It's like those 45 degree blocks. Yes. Puts their feet on you. Yeah. And so, and then you see this too, like if you want, if, uh, if, I mean, sometimes you catch it on TV, not as much. Um, but at a game, you can see pregame, uh, all the trainers are out on the floor and almost every superstar athlete has their own personal, like private trainer. And, uh, you could see them doing a lot of stuff where the athlete will get in this position and then the trainer will push against them. And that's what they're doing is they're doing their, their, their resisting against, uh, them and creating that in a position that they would get in, in the game. And so I think in my opinion is the best form of sports specific. Totally. As opposed to like, yeah, you trying to explosively move into these, like, you know, I, I tend to save a lot of that kind of stuff in the conditioning for, you know, sports, just like the practice of it. But, uh, to, to your point of like getting those positions, you could find a lot of those precarious positions where a lot of ankle rolls, a lot of like knee, a lot of, yeah, shoulders in a compromised position. You can really reinforce the stability there, uh, with isometric safely. And then when you get in that position or you're, uh, throwing acceleration on top of that, you can really reinforce the stability of that. You're way less susceptible. It's like one of my, it's one of my favorite things to watch before the game. Uh, cause I geek out on the, the fact that I can tell like, oh, that's a good, that's a good trainer. You can tell by what they're doing. Cause some of the guys don't have that. So they have like a general trainer that like helps for every team. And then you have like your superstars that have gone out and like hired somebody else and they're all kind of doing different warmups. Now, granted each guy has specific needs and so that, so he probably should be doing some different stuff, but I can always tell the guy who's like on another level of because you see them doing a lot of movements like that and doing a lot of isometric holds and positions. And I'm like, oh, that's really cool. Yeah. So, uh, I have a little bit of experience with this developing strength at an angle. Um, I used to get stuck at the bottom of a bench press and it was significantly weaker than when I was up like four or five inches. So there was a period of time there where I got under a bar, um, that was stuck in that position. I drove against it. And mainly because I read some old Soviet studies on how they would use these. And then I read a book called dinosaur training that talked a little bit about this. Not only did it get that sticking point to not become a sticking point anymore. I did it so much that that now is no longer a sticking point. It's actually a strength. If I get stuck on a bench press, it's not halfway up. It's on the lockout. It's never in the beginning anymore because I did this and I haven't gone through the training of working on the other than I should, but it's remarkable because I remember literally when I got here, if I couldn't move here, I couldn't now it's the point where I'm going to get it up at least four or five inches. I'm going to get it up at least four or five inches. And then I get stuck. And that's because I made it a strength, training your body to recruit more. Yep. And it's not, it like repeats that process. If you do it enough times, it's pretty magical. I did this with a deadlift as well. So you can actually, this is a great little home gym setup. You can set up anchor two chains to the ground. So if you have concrete in your garage, you bolt them into the ground and anchor these two chains and put collars at the end of the chains and you can attach them to a bar and you can pull against the floor or you can push against the floor and you can make the chains long. You can make the chains long. You can make the chains short or whatever, and work on all these different sticking points, which by the way, you guys, everybody listening who wants to just build a better looking physique, getting through sticking points and strengthen your body in different angles is going to contribute to better gains in muscle, uh, and in, in aesthetics. So this isn't just an athletic performance thing. And then lastly, here's where isometrics are phenomenal. And this is what you noticed Adam for pain relief. Isometrics are remarkable. It's like, someone with like Oshkosh slaughter, right? Where they have that, like that knee tendon pain. If they sit in a leg extension position, just drive against something that doesn't move. The data shows a 45% reduction in pain after one rep of doing that. That's crazy. One rep. So what you're probably noticed with your warmup is when you're doing that with your lunge, you get into your squat and you're like, Whoa, everything feels really good. It's more stable now. Yes. Uh, and then it's, and then for tendon strength, tendon strength and stiffness improve faster with isometrics, uh, than other forms of exercise. I'm going to tell you right now, like muscle strains and stuff, they really suck. Tendon and ligament strains are far worse. They take way longer to heal. Uh, it's muscle strains heal much faster. And sometimes when we do lots of bodybuilding and lots of hypertrophy training, our tendons and ligaments lag behind. Um, and that causes issues. Got the big, strong muscles and tendons and ligaments that can't really support them very well. Counter that with certain strength athletes where it's the opposite. Uh, their tendons are way stronger than the muscles. Yeah. I'm convinced, especially like, um, seeing a lot of people get like rapid strength gains and big muscle growth, uh, but then getting these injuries and, you know, sometimes that's due to taking anabolic steroids or something, you know, with bodybuilding or, or with sports or, you know, just your training, you're getting after your building strength so quickly, but you're not reinforcing that strength and to be able to, have something that can still like build strength and reinforce your tendons is going to keep you, uh, on tact. I feel like, uh, we'll know when this has really started to become, a trend or a wave is when somebody invents a little machine station that has like a i can even feel like you're in my head i was literally thinking can you not picture like this like platform cage thing that has like all these and you just push into it and just yeah and there's just like a on it on it is like a wall i'll tell you all about it of all the different really there is where there is so if you guys have ever seen like a stretching cage yeah that's exactly that's what it is so there's the so me and my friend were going off on this when we were geeking out on you know doing it with a stick and you know different angles and different positions you could place and so um we put like blocks on that stretching station and then somebody actually like welded and created one so it's like you could push and then and then if in the middle yeah you had like the chains where you could pull a different chain it exists yeah what's it called well that's the thing it's not like commercial oh okay well that's somebody somebody oh of course there's somebody who's who's made one it's not that mainstream that's what that's my point it's like when we know when it's when we see a it goes mainstream mainstream in a gym someone's got a there was a line i'll make one in our gym well if it was if there was a line of machines uh that were basic and simple to use so it's like chest press isometric yeah exactly leg press isometric overhead yep then people would use literally it literally would be like for every body part you'd have a little thing yep and show people how they could yep yeah and you just drive it wouldn't take up that much space no no it would it'd be a little corner spot yeah yeah and and like like you said like a little i i envision it with like a like a stretching cage priming station listen if you're a personal trainer and you don't use this with your clients you're stupid this will give them so much better it'll blow their minds when it comes to pain alone this was one of my favorite ways to to help somebody feel i wish it in pain right off the gates i wish i i did this i'd never did this with my clients uh to prime them before they did like a squat or deadlift what i see it working with me right now i'm like man i'm not gonna do this with my clients i'm not gonna do this with my clients man that would have been such a cool tool uh to use that i didn't use that i didn't i wasn't aware i did this all the time i learned it from the physical therapist that i worked with so all credit goes to her but like if i had a client who had hip pain when we'd squat it was literally it'd be literally as simple as this we'd sit in a chair i'd have their leg up against the wall and sit next to them so don't slide on the bench press as hard as you can for 15 seconds against the wall and they do they push real hard we'd stop we go to the squat hip pain gone it was the fastest easiest like uh thing to do and i'm like man i'm not gonna do this with my clients thing you could possibly do now it's not gonna replace correctional exercise uh because that's still necessary in some cases but in the case it unlocks movement though that's that's how i used it i used it so they could do the exercise if you're a trainer you're not using isometrics like you are i mean it's dumb it's so easy it's so easy to use and so valuable anyway i want to ask you adam because i see part of your pre-podcast ritual is to use caldera lab all over your face and i was watching on youtube i almost never watch our show on a big tv at home if i ever like review our show i'll go on my phone you had to watch it because there are new lights or what yeah so i was at home and i was with bed with jessica yeah hey i want to show you the new lights so i showed her an older one and then the newer one with the new lights and it looks so much better but you know on the big screen see our big old faces she's like justin adam mcgway handsome well i was this whole time first off i was like man the light's really good and then like your skin looked really really good and so then i see you rubbing oil all over and you've been doing that for a while oh i've been for almost two years now it's been a very consistent regimen for me before we start the podcast maybe just now the audience can tell with the lighting and stuff like that but maybe maybe before they're like i don't know adam says he's using that caldera it doesn't look like it's working that well and then all of a sudden you just got a cheesecloth yeah yeah now you put some like good lighting and maybe you can see it see the difference of it but no i i swear is it the good before the podcast yeah yeah i use it i use the good the most um yeah yeah i use the good the most for sure that's just because it's that oil is really easy and i've talked about this before with my psoriasis it's like the key to that like psoriasis dries you if you're not familiar with it dries your skin out um and so having some sort of an oil and before i was using i mean back in the days when i didn't know any better was using all the steroid creams and all that crap not the fun steroids yeah no these are not fun didn't make me any stronger or look better at all it just helped but uh once we started working with caldera the first time i had used it uh and noticed that it's just become this like staple thing that i use on a regular basis and i keep it everywhere i got one in my car i've got one i've got shoot i got you know i told you i got three next i tell you all my cousins use it do they none of us were like skincare like none of us now everybody because they come to our christmas party so every year oh that's when you guys introduce every year mind pump throws a christmas party and we invite uh for staff and then some family and friends and i got a big family so my cousins come and uh we give out goodie bags and so that we were giving out uh caldera lab stuff and they all you they all buy it not regularly dude funny you bring up the the christmas party i was going down memory lane with our christmas parties because we're only on year six of throwing one of throwing christmas parties and katrina's like why did we do that i'm like well because we didn't really have a staff it wasn't until we started to grow a staff yeah i was like i mean the four of us could go have dinner anytime we want so it was about six years ago uh i think i think this will be the seventh uh i gotta remember i was going through all of them um it was crazy because uh the very first couple it was like a big deal that we we didn't have a staff you know and it's like look at the staff and look at all all of us all there together some of that and uh we didn't do that last year i mean we had 105 people there and so we obviously didn't get everybody together for a picture we didn't do a group photo no we couldn't i mean come on and then you know we got we get we just reserved a new place because we outgrew that place as we're expecting 150 uh this year and so it's so crazy to think that you know we went from no christmas party because we don't really have a staff to like the first couple of them like it these pictures and i'm like i'm going back looking i'm like oh those are so cool and then i'm like oh we didn't do it last year and i'm like well of course we did it like could you imagine trying to organize everybody yeah can you try and organize that's every family function i have bro at the end my sister or someone's always like everybody get in a picture we got little kids i'm like oh god here we go crow's nest or something yeah and we gotta organize everybody and one kid runs away and they're getting threatened by their parents i'm like this is not a happy picture you guys this is not a happy picture every time yeah dude speaking of kids dude i was telling my kids love especially my son loves it when i tell him stories from when i was younger he loves it tell me a story papa tell me a story so this time he's like what did you guys do that we don't do anymore i'm like oh that's an interesting request so i was thinking i'm like you know what you guys you know what kids don't do anymore there's games that we played as kids that are now illegal in school they don't let they don't let them play these games anymore i was like what are you talking about so i'm like first i brought up red rover you can't play red rover steal the bacon steal the bacon you don't remember butts up yep did you ever play butts up oh yeah is that where you do you smack someone's butt with it no no the tennis ball yeah dude oh and you go good against the bench you basically assume the position that's right and then that's if you don't catch it they throw it at you if you if you so what you do is you throw it up against you throw it up against the wall and it bounces once and you catch it you're okay but if it bounces more than once you got to go up stand up against the wall with your hands on the wall and they get to throw it as hard as they can at you and so there's a few different like options with that right so they have to like spread you know the feet out and then hands out like this and so and you're like your feet are i don't know maybe like two feet away from the wall it's so the move is always to like try and like bounce it underneath their legs that game was that played that was played against a handball wall and we played with a red ball is what you play with not a tennis ball oh yeah it was a red ball and you threw it as hard as you could it was exactly what you're right if it bounced more than once my kids thought it was the funniest they think you throw it against their butt and he's dying i forgot that was the name of this butts up butts up dude illegal you will never see anybody play that in school today that's such a they would get kicked out it's such a good game kids are missing out dude you know what play battle pong too or you take your shirt off and then if like you miss and like you you lose you throw it you'd be able to hit and it'd leave like crazy marks on there body you know there's a so i understand why they banned some of these games because red rover definitely you know kids got their arms broken sometimes or whatever i get it yeah but i almost think like over asphalt it was trained oh yeah dude it was especially boys because they would see this is what guys would do you'd see a girl that you like and she's holding hands with someone else and the goal is to run through and break through the chain sure and so you're always trying to show her how like i'm gonna run through her arm and end up breaking the girl's arm but what i was gonna say is i feel like these games childhood games like they kind of toughened you up and prepared you for life dude because it's like you know yeah stop me so soft yeah we need more asphalt i kind of think we do dude i get why we banned them but i also i'm like yeah everything's you know estrogen out with like rubber everywhere you know and then they get into a job or something and the boss is in a bad mood and now they're like yeah you know and it's like really no yeah let the aggression happen we used to play bloody knuckles that was a real game you guys it's good to get it out you know i feel like people are calmer that you can't pencil fight we used to pencil fight yeah we're doing stuff like that baby britches there's a lot of stuff baby britches was a great one if your buddy said something that starts with a b you could punch him as far as you could that was like slug bug yeah unless he said baby britches first and this game would last all day years yeah it was never you never stopped so you just yeah it's an ongoing game right there - Oh my God, dude. - Kids are missing out, dude. - They are. i'm gonna talk let's talk fitness for a second uh just something that's frustrating always frustrates me generally but then more specifically generally i really hate it when uh people in our space so fitness people attack each other yeah this is part of their brand their brand is to attack each other now i get calling people out for for advocating for dangerous things or for just lying to the public i think this is just for attention even then i'm not the biggest fan of that because i feel like there's a way to do that by educating yes it's like you could say hey some people say this you exactly you could call someone out without calling someone out and without clipping you know putting a clip of them and trying to be that guy but anyways frustrating because somebody who's famous for this the the functional patterns people love this is like part of how they build their brand yeah and they did go after someone whole marketing who does this a lot. too so they're kind of like you know it'll be wonderful it'll be great to see you win this but it's funny that they've waited this long to find each other no no no they've been going for years okay oh yeah years they've been going so they were poke they were recently seen a lot oh yeah no they've been they've that in fact i would argue that the two of them built their brands off of going after each other early oh oh yeah this is this is a five year plus feud yeah wow so they were going after lane norton and they were talking about how he did a post where he deadlifted a bunch of weights obviously lane's really strong and in the post lane's like i got bad sleep last night i woke up with a headache but i'm still working out so they're like this is why he gets injured and this is why it's like no at the highest level when you're that strong or you're it's like when people point at a pro athlete getting injured and go oh it must have been his lack of correctional actually no that's a that's a pro football player mobility yeah that's getting hit by a 300 pound person that's trying to cut angles and whatever like the reason why people get injured when they're dead lifting 700 pounds is because they're dead lifting 700 pounds yeah it's because they're getting after it yeah and you're you're at such a high level that the smallest thing to your point uh lane could do 500 dead lifting for the rest of his life and probably never get an injury again well the comment i put underneath as i said if if he was dead lifting what you could lift he would never get hurt yeah yeah but it's so frustrating yeah it's so frustrating yeah it's tacky yeah i'd like to go back and see because it's a quagmire i believe because i've been paying attention to both uh those guys for a really long time um and i think probably what happened was uh both had a bit of a this is early before everybody knew who both of them were um they had a bit of a cult following for each of them for different reasons and they probably both saw the the algorithm right i mean they saw i mean what why why it goes viral why it does well is because it's drama yeah you know people love people you will go to indy 500 to not see the car win they see it to watch the crash right and so people are here for the fight for the drama and they and so it just it just goes that's and so i don't even know why why would you want to build a business with that kind of attention that's got to feel so well because crappy i i think angry i think you don't um yeah i don't think you think about that early on i think you are you are especially let's go back you know eight years ten years ago when social media is just becoming popular and you're trying to figure it figure it out i mean i'm i'm guilty of using shirtless pictures and and my physique to get to get all the you know what i'm saying because of that i'm trying to figure out like okay how do i how do i play yeah how do i get attention how do i play in this game um and i and i and i had a moderate success um early actually really good success because back then 10 000 followers was a big deal you know 10 years ago or that was more than that that was 18 18 years ago before mind pump so 17 18 years ago if you had 10 000 followers you were one of the the bigger pages on there um and all the attention what i i quickly realized that none of it was converting to business and then i was like okay well that was the whole point of this was to do this for the business and then i so i learned that way and so i think a lot of people just don't know i think they think that just more eyeballs what's that old saying like even bad news is good news you know bad publicity yeah and so i hate this i know but people still live by that yeah they operate from from that place and so i think the theory is like oh it's just it's more eyeballs so it's good for the business i think uh somebody like ourselves who've been doing this for a really long time now have a little bit more experience and wisdom to know that like okay you may get more eyeballs faster on you but the type of attention that you're going to attract uh that's negative and drama far exceeds the the benefit of the business side of it and you're far better off going slow servicing and taking care of the five people paying attention to you over delivering on them making them radical fans and love you and growing that way not to mention it's so so this is such a great segue uh i just discovered um this i gotta find his name he's a scientist who specializes in um brain essentially brain training or um uh neuroplasticity uh his name is dr lee warren okay and i found one of his videos uh jessica showed me him and i started watching his video and what he does he talks about how you can train your brain to change and what i mean by that is uh where they actually can do an fmri or an mri they can look at your brain and see that the brain itself changes in structure through different types of practices in other words uh it's strength training for your brain so like you could change the shape of a muscle through different exercises you can actually change the shape and function of your brain by doing certain things and so he was there was a few things he was talking about one of them was gratitude which is the data on this is wild you guys so he calls it neuro rehab so gratitude activates the the medial prefrontal cortex this is the part of the brain that regulates emotion it literally reshapes it and grows it so that so when you practice daily gratitude uh things you're grateful for uh throughout the day and you're really paying attention to it your brain gets better at noticing good things so it gets it actually strengthens its ability to notice positive things and what they find is that people who do this they are far more resilient during hardship and they're just more resilient in general so you know the whole like you know try to find the positive that can be really difficult uh because our brains are naturally wired to notice negative always it's always about safety right keep me alive but when you practice gratitude the part of the brain that does that which is this part that that i mentioned actually grows and strengthens and it becomes more natural so it's like i practice squats what happens i get better at squats if you practice gratitude yeah your brain gets better at noticing things to be grateful for and it becomes much more automatic which i think is fascinating well i mean you know i just shared with one of the last podcasts uh i'm on that kick right now um and i think the part about the practice is really important because i think a lot of people um at least this is at least this i'll speak from my experience my experience with it um i kind of it didn't really work for me at first and i think it was because it was kind of like this afterthought or like yeah it was like just real general stuff like i know exactly what you're talking about thinking for my wife i'm thinking for my kid same thing my job yeah it's like the same five things kind of like every day i was like oh you know i hear all this research around how beneficial this is let me practice it and so i'd go through this thing and you know every once in a while i get lucky and something landed new in my lap of like something happened that was like and it was like oh i was thinking for that thing today or what it was like real i'm like yeah i just didn't feel a difference from it i really started to challenge to go deeper into the most kind of simple and mundane things like that like or that i was grateful for and i've told you that what i where that's evolved to now um because i finally connected the dots like oh that's what i was doing wrong was these generic answers versus like unpacking my day and moments of like oh you know what i'm that big argument i had with sal like i'm so grateful for the way he brings it yeah you know i'm so well this is something that you i don't think you would think about right right right right and then that's the point of this right i think maybe i should should say that right is that uh not to tease you or anything like that it was more like that would not normally make a gratitude list that's right right and it was like but it was uh the way we handled our relationship after that i'm so grateful he's my partner like that's like versus just saying i'm so thankful for my partners yeah like that that's like one way to do it and i learned this and what connected the dots for me was i've shared on the podcast um many times one of my favorite books was one minute manager one of the exercises that i put into place and practice the whole premise of the book is to instead of leading from a position of correcting your employees and the things they do incorrectly and wrong all the time focus on pointing out the things they do correctly right and so what that looked like for me was okay and what the generic version before i like i evolved it and thought it was like going over and being like hey justin i'm so glad you work here you're great like that like that's the job specific not specific versus going over and saying hey justin i saw the way you were just with your client rich and man i just i appreciate the detail that you put into his programming and your attentiveness when you work on them and then walk away it was like huge difference on having this very specific detailed thing that i appreciated in that like the response i got from my employees i i needed to learn how to do that to myself like instead of like these big generic like my wife my house my family my job like the stuff It became like a very specific moment in the day or thing or what like that. And then that- So that's what I was doing. And I stopped doing it. And I'm gonna start doing it again. This is where like every other hour, I would reflect back on the previous hour for what I was grateful for. And what they show with neuroplasticity, practicing things changes it. But if you really want like effective neuroplasticity, if you touch an emotion to it, it's very powerful. So I could think about something that just happened. It's easier for me to attach an emotion to. Like I'm thankful for my kids. I can definitely think about my kid, but the way I tend to attach emotion to is I think about something my kid did. Yeah. And so, and then when that happens, the neuroplasticity is much more effective. Well, that's like the- And then you start to see more positive things naturally. And it's literally reshaping your brain. Yeah, I know. For me, it's the, when we talk about like stress, well, there's also good stress. Like there's a way to look at it as like, this is moving me forward. This is all part of growth. Right. Versus like, it's a negative thing. Like, and it is, I mean, I've been in that same state right now where it's like, I'm trying to constantly see that. And I'm like, this is moving me forward and this is a good thing. And this is, you know, it's hard, but it's like, I'm through this phase now. And like, just construction in general is going to like force that upon us. But like, you know, we keep looking at like, this little thing just happened and then we acknowledge it. And then instead of it just being like, oh my God, overwhelming. Like anxiety over all these things. Post-traumatic growth is a real thing. So it's post-traumatic stress and there's also post-traumatic growth. Well, and understanding that as you go through the stress is magical and learning to reframe that. You know, I also have been doing since, I don't know how many weeks it's been now since we had Jim Quick in here, but I've been really consistent with first thing I do, I go read. Yeah. So the first- Makes a difference. He made so many good points about that. Huge difference. Huge difference. I had a couple of days where I missed, noticed the difference. I told you where I break my phone. So I don't even have, I don't even have a phone. I don't even have access to social media or text until I go in my car. Yep. Makes a big difference. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's been a couple of times where I went to go grab, to go check on things because I already got up, shower, kind of brush my teeth. I still hadn't looked at my phone yet, but then it was like, I was like, oh shit, I haven't read yet. Get over, read a quick page or two and stuff like that. Like even that slight bit, it makes a huge difference. By the way, what this points to is you can strengthen other parts of your brain that you don't want to. You're right. So if you're constantly focused on the negative, on the criticisms, on the problems, on the challenges, on the hopelessness, you will strengthen your brain's ability to notice those types of things to the point where those things become larger and positive things become smaller. So it's like, you want to change the filter by which you see the world? You could do it through training your brain. And the crazy part for me that blows me away is we can see this in studies in terms of people's outlooks, but it's all subjective. Like, yeah, I feel happier. Yes, I feel less happy. All right, what's going on? No, no, we can look at your brain and see parts of the brain are larger. It's wild. That is crazy. Well, what's the thing that Arthur Brooks is doing right now? I've heard him on multiple podcasts. Like, he's touring on this, like, and he's doing, like, this, I don't know, what do you call that? Like, a negative bias or whatever where he's, like, saying, like, these are the five ways to guarantee you'll have a terrible life or whatever. Yeah, and he's pointing to that direction. Yes, and he's pointing to all those things. Like, go on your phone first. Get on your phone first. Like what people normally do. Yes, yes. Scroll through social media this many hours a day. Like, he's nailed it. Don't exercise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, like, it's totally amazing. Another one that he talked about is that, so prayer or mindfulness thickens the cortical areas of the brain that help with emotional regulation and attention and memory. Brain scans show this. It is, it's so crazy to me that you could change the structure, the physical structure of your brain by enacting some of these things. And it's cool because it's something under our control. Yeah. So it's, like, do you want an outlook that is generally more, by the way, I'm going to say this right now because sometimes people are like, well, yeah, but your life doesn't really change. You just think it's better. First off, that's not nothing. That's awesome. But second off, what do you think a more positive, hopeful outlook will do to your behaviors and the actual objective things in your life? It'll change those too. Yeah. So it's not just, I notice more positive things, but the more I notice more positive things, the more positive things that probably create an influence. Yeah. So it's, like, this feedback loop that is incredible. I'm pretty sure a lot of, if not all of that research stems back to Daniel Kahneman. Daniel Kahneman, thinking fast, thinking slow, Nobel Prize winner. And he's, yeah, he's the one who did all the research around that. And you would, I'll try to get you to read this book before. Neuroscience guy. Yeah, thinking fast and slow. Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman, am I saying it right? Kahneman. Kahneman. Damn, bro, you remembered that? One of my favorite books. It's a little heavy for the average person if you're not into neuropsychology and neuroscience stuff. Like, so if you're into that, you, it's a really cool read. The gist of it, though, is that your brain toggles back and forth between these two modes, basically the monkey brain or, like, your critical thinking type of brain. And what you're training it to do, you're training it to get better at switching from that. We all default to the, like, monkey brain, which I forget the terms that he uses for. That reactive. Yeah, that reactive animal instinct, whatever. Like, we, and so much, so many people live in that. But you can actually train to kick into the second one. And those are exercises that all do that. And he won a Nobel Prize for all this research. And I believe that's probably where a lot of it comes from. Speaking of exercise, a study came out on exercise and its effects on cortisol. You guys want to trip off something? This is really cool. So when you exercise, it's a stress on the body. So we've talked about this many times. One of the reasons why you get stronger, more fit, your body, tries to adapt to the stress by becoming more resilient. But for all intents and purposes, if we were to measure all of your stress markers while you're working out, it would be, it's a stressor. Okay. This is pretty cool. So you get a cortisol spike when you work out. You're supposed to. It's a stress. But the cortisol spike from exercise suppresses the next cortisol response from another stressor. In other words, if you're about to do something stressful that you know is going to spike your stress hormones and your whatever, work out before. Oh, interesting. You'll go into it and you'll have a less, you'll have a lowered stress because you did something hard before. Yeah, I know that. It makes total logical sense. I'm trying to, what I'm trying to think of right now is like where I've done that accidentally. Oh yeah, that's it. Boy, what a great, what a great argument for that. What, ice bath before? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because you know everybody's always trying. So people reported that because it is a hard commit. Wow. Like psychologically. Like before you're about to get an argument or something like that. Well, I mean, this is why you think it's such a great way to start your day, period. That's, hey, not a bad point. You do something hard and resilient. This is why I've always thought all the arguments back and forth with ice bath and building muscle and post-workout. I know, they just point to the wrong stuff. Yeah, you've now bastardized something that I think is extremely valuable and that wasn't even the main case for it. Yeah, nobody was doing saying, hey, ice bath to build muscle. Yeah, yeah. Who's doing that? Nobody cares. Yeah, so it's like, you know, starting your day off with that is an extremely valuable thing for a lot, a lot of different reasons to Justin's point right now, bringing this up is like, I mean, that's a great, great case for that. It's pretty inevitable that you're going to run into something difficult in most days. And so you've already primed. You're just more resilient. Yeah, it's what life throws at you. It's funny, like, even back to the reframing kind of conversation, it was like, I could do that all day through it, but man, I could not account for the soreness I got afterwards. Like, we had to move, Oh, gosh. like four tons of rock. Dude, Justin. Who? Justin. Me and my family. Oh, that's right. He wasn't there. I forgot you were. Wait a minute, you and just, that's it? Hey, listen, let me hijack your story. Okay. Yeah, just because I tell your story better. Hey, last time you told him that, he left the studio. The last time we said that, dude, he got so mad. That's fine. No, it's not. I'll set you up. I'll take a break. I'll set you up. Do an ice bath. I'll set you up. Hey, some of our audience, our audience gets held. At least he's going to hype it up and then all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll just set the table for you. I'll set the table for you. By the way, our audience gets hella mad about this stuff too, by the way. You don't let Justin talk, tell a story. Fuck off. I know a story better than he does. No, stop. No, stop. You're just making it worse. No, no, no. You're supposed to be a part of it. Yeah, I do. We went to go look at that building, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. The day you didn't show up. Right, right. And this dude shows up. Oh, yeah. Not that you needed to be fancy. I mean, I wasn't fancy or anything like that, but we're showing up to look at a building, right? And as the four founders, right? And here comes this founder, rolls up, dude, and he is from like head to toe in like sawdust. He looks like he just chocked up. Yeah, he's all chocked up and dirty as shit. Just a plume. What are you doing? Just flying off me. Yeah, and then he shows me all this stone that he's moving because they couldn't bring it to his house. So dude has got to roll from Felton all the way back and forth with all this. Yeah. And, you know, we've been dealing with certain issues because our driveway is so incredibly steep and a lot of trucks that are any anything bigger than like a even Sprinter vans can't make it up. Really? Yes, sometimes. Yeah, because it's just it's too much of a pitch. So we had them just like, OK, fine. They're just going to like take off and like, well, no, just drop it off at, you know, where we're at right now. And it's like 45 minutes away, but it's still like, you know, we'd rather have the material and figure it out. Courtney was like kind of like going back and forth with the delivery. And so they end up dropping off these huge crates like in and we had how many crates was it? So it was four. Four huge crates. Four of them. Each one was like a ton plus. Wow. And so it was like, so it's not only that, it was the fact that like that weekend too, we were having an open house. And so we couldn't have those at the house. And so we have to get rid of these. So you have to move it. We have to move it. And like, I don't know, like a service or somebody or like, I was thinking, man, we need to get, we need to get a forklift and we need to be able to like put this up on a truck that's like a flatbed truck or like, you know, I'm like, this is crazy. And it's like, well, let's see how much we can just take out and then move. And I'm like, are you serious? You understand what this is going to, and I'm like, I already knew I was in for it. And I'm just like, whatever. I just started going and I just started going. And then I put like, I emptied it. So first you have to empty it out. Then you got to like restack it and everything inside the truck. So we ended up doing like three trips back and forth between two cars. 45 minutes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so it, it got to the point where is that? Like even after I came, I still had like, you know, a crate and a half left and had to come back and finish. And then by then, like the kids are exhausted. Like Courtney's like, I'm like, no, you guys. And so I was like, I'll just do the rest. And I'm still out there with like the little, you know, headlamp on and just like stacking and back and stacking and back. Oh my gosh, bro. Yes. And I was just torched, dude. I haven't been that torched in a long time. I wish you had an aura ring. So when you do crazy shit like that. Did you sleep good or bad? Cause sometimes. Terrible. Yeah. Sometimes over a journey. Cause you went, you went beyond. Yeah, I went past. Oh God. When you go that beyond. I was adrenaline. Yeah, fried. Fried. Totally fried. Yeah. Like. Ugh. Yeah. Now did you have beer and pizza after? Cause that's the only thing that I would want to eat or something like that. You know what I mean? Yeah. High calorie. Yeah, dude. Yeah. High calorie thing. No, we didn't. We, I'm trying to think what we had. It was like, uh, yeah, it was like some barbecue, I think. Okay. Still. Yeah. I ate a lot. You didn't ask me to. You didn't call any of us. I love you, dude. You know why? Cause we would have helped. For sure. If one of you guys asked, I'd be like, I gotta go help. Yeah. But you're just such a good guy. I just, yeah, I don't think it's like that. Cause I just, yeah. No, I think we all have that in common. We're like, I'm going to be miserable. Yeah. I'm going to just, I don't want to make my boys miserable with me. You know what I'm saying? Everybody else can be miserable. If I call you guys for help, it's an emergency. It's like something real bad. Well, now you know. Yeah. It's going to be a real big job if I call you guys, dude. Wow. You know what? You know what? Okay. So cool. That's a bitch. We would, we would have been like, well, see how much this costs. If we hired as many people. That's how we would help. Yeah. We're just going to buy someone. We're going to pay a bunch of people to help, dude. Let's all hang out and go out to lunch. It'd be so nice to sell my house and then move over. Oh my God. I'll get there. I'll get there. When he showed up, I died laughing. And then I'm like, what is this fool doing now? Dude, you know what you got to take? Cause you're probably so, uh, probably sore and stiff. Roe has their curcumin bottle. We have some in the fridge. Okay. Take that three times a day. It's got curcumin and resveratrol. It's really good for inflammation. Anti-inflammatory. Very effective at that. By the way, speaking of, uh, of Roe, cause they use liposomal, uh, technology, which if people aren't familiar, this was a, a, a medical technology that was, uh, designed in the sixties for medications. And now you can find it in really, really high quality products. Roe is, they're experts at this. So what liposomes are like little, basically little fat, uh, liposomes that encapsulate whatever you're trying to deliver and it protects the compound and increases bioavailability. So I went on and I looked up a study and I said, okay, I'm gonna look up something that already has pretty good bioavailability. So I get it with glutathione glutathione. If you're not taking glutathione liposomal, you're basically wasting it. Uh, you need to take glutathione liposomal form. Um, curcumin, it better be liposomal cause it needs that otherwise you could take a ton of it. You're not gonna absorb much, but what about something like vitamin C or creatine? So one of those, right, right. What about like, look, well, I looked, I looked at vitamin C vitamin C. You could take vitamin C. You'll absorb quite a bit. If Vi, if vitamin C is liposomal, one and a half to 1.8 times higher bioavailability, uh, bio bioavailability, vitamin C. Wow. So you'll absorb way more, uh, if it's liposomal than if it's not. And vitamin C already has pretty good, uh, absorbability or bioavailability. Um, now with creatine, which you mentioned. One of the things that liposomes do is they protect, they can help reduce things like gastro distress. Yeah. This is why I've got so many friends now who are like, Sal, I take creatine. And if I take more than two grams of creatine, that's Courtney, it messes up my gut. Some people are sensitive to crazy version for that. I mean, even I noticed that the, the difference of that, like with the bummer about the gummies is I have to break it up through the day. I can't eat all of them at once. Yeah. Try Rose, creatine and push it to 50 or 20 grams. I mean, I'm I'm. I got friends of mine who like, again, they're like, man, I've tried crazy. And I can't, it bothers me after two grams and there are no issues with the row. They're like, it feels way better on the gut. Yeah. I've got to, I've got to try it like that. Cause I haven't done that. I've just, I've been like, I just, if I want to make a dose, the creatine, I just have to do it throughout the day. Yeah. Just bring it up. That's another strategy. Here's the problem with that. That's a pain in the ass. It is. How hard is it to get clients to take supplements? I'm not consistent. Yeah. I know. I'm just honest. I'm not, I'm not consistent. Getting them to take it once a day is hard enough. You want to, oh, here, take this three times a day. Yeah. Not going to do it. Yeah. So with the row you could, yeah, you could take your dose, uh, and it doesn't bother your gut and it's super, it's absorbed very, very well. What were we talking about off air? And you were asking me and I was like, oh, I'll tell you when we, when we get on the podcast and I can't remember what we were talking about. I don't remember. Yeah. We don't remember. We were, we were talking about something and you're asking. Weekend. There's something over your weekend or I don't remember. Yeah. I don't, I don't remember. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I remember now I was like, well, it was over the weekend. So my aunt came in, uh, for her birthday and we had a, uh, a hibachi chef come to the house and serve. I saw a Doug's video where he threw the egg up. Yeah. So it was the same, it was the same one that we, the same company that we used before. Remember that we did with a shallow and Dr. Connery, right. Right. So, uh, yeah, good time. Right. So we sit this in same company, different guy. Oh, uh, this guy shows up and. Um, there, there's a major language barrier between him and I trying to like figure out like where he's going to put, I really wanted him to come all the way up to my, you know, in my backyard where I have the, um, the countertop and everything. Yeah. We had exactly eight people and that's what I have seats wise. I'm like, oh, this is perfect. I'll just have him come up here and, and, and he'll do the thing right behind my barbecue. And it'd be awesome. And he was just like, uh, you know, he, he was telling me basically, no, not a good idea. He couldn't do it. You know, at least that's what I got from it. And I'm like, okay. And then I'm like trying to ask him like, well, where do you want to do it? I've got this area where all kinds of different areas, I got all these tables that I can set up wherever. And, um, you know, there's, there's this back and forth of like, well, like he's asking me and I'm asking him cause he's telling me he can't do that. I'm like, I can't understand why he can't do that. So why don't you tell me how you want it? I'll lay it out. Anyways, took forever. We finally make this like kind of U shape and you know, the way you do it is so, uh, you make it a U shape so they can come in the middle and they can do their thing. Right. So I make this U shape and then he sets up like two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 10 feet out of it and underneath my balcony. And I'm like, okay, whatever. Let's just get this party started and like get going and everything. So, so he starts, which, uh, you know, he starts to do some of those, those tricks with the flames of that and flames are hitting the bottom of my, the bottom. And so I'm like stressing out while he's doing that. Uh, and he, and you know, he's, he's starting to do his like juggles and some of that. And he like drops the spatula the first time he starts showing him, but this guy is like, brand new or somebody's B team uncle. They like sub because the real, the real guy's not supposed to be here or whatever. And then, uh, and by the way, I'll, I'll get to the part where Doug was alluding to. And I, by the way, too, we, we sent a message in the company cause I was actually really kind of disappointed in this part. So the guy, uh, you know, he, he has this little squirt gun with Saki and he's like coming out for Saki, Saki. And he's like shooting it in all of our, our mouths and everyone's kind of laughing and he's, he's trying to do that. Like every, I don't know, a couple of minutes to, or a couple, you know, 20, 10, 20 minutes to break up the cooking and stuff. And that's fun and all. And everyone's kind of laughing. Some people are, you know, no, thanks. I'm good. And, uh, then he comes out and he pulls out this like little man and this squirt comes out of his, where his, his, his penis would be. And so it's like squirting in your mouth. I know, right? I know. So he does all this and, uh, whatever, you know, yeah, a little aggressive and then outcomes, a dildo. What? Oh, what kind of party is this? Yes. And then he squirts and I'm like, of course, Max is there. So my son is there. No, dude. Yeah. And so, and so we, you know, we're like, oh, you know, we cover his eyes and we're like, uh, and so it's like, okay, he sees me. If you went to the wrong place. Yeah. Yeah. So he did. Gay celebration. Yeah. And I, again, there's like a language barrier there. So I'm being kind of patient about it and I'm not, and my peepee, the adults are kind of like laughing a little bit through it, but then everyone's like covering. Max's eyes and try. And I thought, okay, once we did that, like maybe he would know, he would know, brings it out again. Does it like three more times, bring this out. And so I'm like, well, whatever. And thank God. So my aunt is like, but my aunt and cousin are there who are like super strong Christians and conservative. Oh, wow. What did they do? Thank God it wasn't my, my, now, even though they are, my uncle is the most, my uncle would have got up and left. Like it would have, he would have been so offended by it. My aunt's a little roll with the punches. She's kind of cool type of deal. And so she was like, yeah, so she was like, okay, for you guys. Yeah. She's going to party out. Please forgive my, so that all went down. And they think you hired this guy to do that. Oh yeah. And I was like, I was like, Hey, I had no idea about any of that. The last guy. Last guy to do any of that. And I was disappointed, but I wasn't as upset. I became upset when I realized that we – Katrina's like – because I was like, man, I can't believe he didn't pick up. And I'm giving him a bit of a doubt, like the language barrier. Maybe he didn't understand that we – like that was not the right vibe or whatever. But then I found out that when we hired them, Katrina actually gives them a list who's there, and Max is on the list as a 7-year-old. So that pissed me off because it was like, oh, you showed up. You know, you sent somebody here. I don't care, bro. If you're working and you see a little kid, just don't do that. I mean – Just don't do that. It's a huge – I mean, I don't know. Duggan, is it culturally okay over there? I mean, is it more appropriate? No, of course not. Okay, so I don't – that's why – for me, I'm being like more patient. Like, okay, maybe – I don't know where he's from, to be honest. Maybe it's more culturally accepted where he's at to do stuff like that for the kids maybe. But then when I thought, well, as a company, if you know that it's a kid, a kid's going to be there, there's like – you shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have even – Because he could have just done the squirt gun and it would have been totally fine. Totally. It was like, okay, bring it out. And it escalated. Like, as the party went on, it got – and then he made like a – for Doug and Rachel, he made a balloon penis and a balloon vagina. What kind of a – Yeah. Yes, dude. Yes. What kind of a party? Bro, it's the same company that we are. They did none of that. You're just eating food. Yeah. None of that happened when we had that company come out for us. They didn't do any of that. Normally, they just do the tricks. The volcano fire, flip the egg, you know, some of that. So that's all I – I didn't realize I was going to have to be like, hey, don't bring any of the pornography stuff. Yeah, dude. I don't want to drink sake out of a penis. It's all hot dogs and bananas here. Yeah. Wow. Like, why? Yeah, it was crazy. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was a little – Jeez. Thank God, like I said, my aunt was cool, you know, and she – I mean, at least I think she was. She's praying for you. Yeah, she's like, hey, don't throw me any more parties. Like, yeah, talk about not reading the room. Oh, totally not, dude. Oh, that would have made me so mad. My son, dude. Too much. Element is an electrolyte powder. You can add it to your water. There's no artificial sweeteners, no sugar, and it has the right amount of sodium. So here's the problem with most electrolyte powders. They don't have enough sodium to make a difference. If you need electrolytes, it's the sodium you need the most. So this can help prevent things like headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue. It can help with gastric. It can help with getting a better pump in the gym. It can help with endeavors in the heat, in the sun. If you eat a diet that is whole food-based and you work out, you probably could benefit from using electrolytes. If you're on a low-carb diet, oftentimes people say going on a low-carb diet makes them feel crappy, especially at first. They need to get their body to adjust. That's because their body gets rid of a lot of sodium in a low-carb diet. 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Sometimes runners get caught up and they eat really little and so they can't recover. That being said. Yeah. Tibialis raises, phenomenal for shin splints. Lateral sled drags, forward sled drags, reverse sled drags, they will really help. And here's why a sled drag is so good or a sled drive is so good. When I'm pressing a sled, yes, I'm strengthening my glutes, my hamstrings, and my quads, but I'm also strengthening my calves and my foot. So I'm pressing through my foot and so it's going to give me strength that really translates to stability when I run. And I like the sled just across the board. If running is your main thing, the sled is going to help you. Mm-hmm. So the sled should be one of the main things you use for your strength training. Lateral sled drags is great for IT band problems. So people are like, oh, you know, my IT band hurts all the time. I've got to foam roll it. Like, you do lateral sled drags. You can strengthen that forefoot as well, too. So it's like, yeah, now you can work on your mechanics of not, you know, running. A lot of times people are getting caught up and they're running a little more flat foot. And so you can really drive and, you know, be in good position with that and add load to it with the sled. So I totally agree with that. That, too, and then some rotation in their legs. Like a windmill would be a good supplemental exercise. I mean, to stay on par with our conversation today, I think that even better than tibialis raises would be tibialis isometrics. Sure. Is to do something like where you're trying to overcome. So I would get my foot under, like, a couch or a lip or something like that. Try and pick it up. Try and pick it up and drive as hard as you can on that. That would be, before I go on a run, priming with that every time would be ideal. Yeah, because you have shin splints, knee pain, IT band pain are probably the most common. So shin splints, tibialis raises, or isometrics. Knee pain, pulling a sled is really good. It's where you hold on to a rope or something attached to a sled, kind of squat down, and you extend each knee. Really good for protecting. We've got a great YouTube video on Mind Pump TV of the sled drags like that. And then the lateral stuff, man. That lateral strengthening with a sled drag is really good for helping with IT band tightness. So if you find yourself having to always foam roll every time you run, it's a lack of stability in that lateral position. Next question is from Olga Lee. How do you avoid overeating but also eating enough to gain muscle? High protein. Yeah. High protein diet. Yeah. You actually gain less body fat in a surplus with protein. So that's number one. And number two is this fear is overstated. Oftentimes, people who ask this are so afraid of eating in a surplus that they think they're going to balloon up. Okay? So if you're in a modest, surplus of like 400 calories, 500 calories, I wouldn't be worried about this. Where I get worried is when people undereat so much that when then they go on the other direction, it's like they open the floodgates. Well, especially when it's whole food based. It's really hard to, first of all, overeat with whole foods because there's natural limiters in there and you get satiated pretty easily. So I would say, yeah, if you stick to that, like it's pretty, you're going to be pretty fine. I've had so much success with my clients. I still, to this day, this is what works for myself. And it's not easy. There's so many times where it's nine o'clock at night. I've kind of had my meals or whatever like that. And I'm hungry again. And what sounds good at eight or nine o'clock at night is a giant thing of popcorn or ice cream or something savory or something. What doesn't sound really great is to go downstairs and reheat my ground beef and rice. But what works is going to do that. Yep. And if I just, if I just eat that way with a high protein whole food meal, I don't overeat. And I, and I hit my protein intake and I give my body what it needs because it's obviously it's saying I want more. And it's probably because I trained really hard before that or I was extra active that day. And if I just discipline myself to eat the whole foods and eat a big high protein meal, you land perfect. It's wild. Not to mention this is sometimes happens to Adam where you're like, I'm hungry. It's nine o'clock at night. All right. I'm going to go eat a whole food meal. You're like, I don't feel like it. I wasn't really hungry. I just had a craving. Right. You know, oftentimes it's the case. Yeah. Yeah. Next question is from Sylvia Gossa. If a man wants to develop strength, but doesn't want to develop big muscles is one gram of protein necessary. So one gram of protein per pound of target body weight isn't necessary for any of it. It's just better. So you'll gain more strength by doing that and you'll build more muscle by doing that, but it contributes very well. Uh, to both. But I will say this cause there are people who want to get stronger and not get bigger. Um, especially, um, athletes that are in like weight classes. So I get this, like you're a wrestler or you do judo or jujitsu or whatever. And you're like, I want to get really strong, but I want to stay in my weight class. Like, what do I do? Um, body weight exercises are really good for this. They're really, really good for this. Why? Not because they don't build as much muscle, but rather because what they do, uh, is, uh, if I get, if I gain weight while I'm performing a body weight exercise, my performance doesn't necessarily improve. In other words, if I'm doing pull-ups, the bot, I'm pulling my body weight up. If I'm doing a pull down, I'm using the weight stack. So body weight exercises can kind of help keep that in check and give you that strength that tends to translate. And the other thing is just to practice lifts and have really good neuromuscular connection to lifts. Uh, because a lot of your strength comes from that. You could toggle back and forth between a building cut too. So what you could do is, uh, like, and I would run more of a cut than I would run a bulk. And so I'd have two weeks where, uh, I am trying to get big muscles and eat like that and train like that. And then I go back to a three week cut and then I toggle back to two weeks where I'm eating a surplus and I'm trying to get big muscle. And if you do that, you're not going to get, you're not going to get huge. I mean, that's not enough of a surplus consistently long enough that you're going to grow a lot. It'll keep you lean. Uh, it'll get you stronger. Like, I mean, it's, it's tough to get really strong and not feed the body, uh, what it needs to grow and build. - Yeah. tough uh tough to do that if like you're saying this is a question coming from like a you know an athlete that just can't and doesn't want to do that then i think body weight uh is a great strategy but this is somebody who's concerned they're gonna get too big and too bulky and they don't want to be that way just toggle back and forth between a bulk and a cut limit your calories more than anything right yep next question is from holly bear three i have knee arthritis in my left leg and plantar fasciitis in my right foot should i train completely unilaterally both upper and lower body to correct movement patterns or can i get away with just doing lower body exercises unilaterally and train upper body like i usually would you can you can get away with it but here's what we notice uh when you have unilateral issues uh in the lower body it tends to also run with the connection yeah so you might not have pain but you might not have pain but you might not have pain but you might not have pain in the upper body it's all connected there's probably some stuff going on there uh as well well you can think about just just visualize this for a second if you have uh what plantar fasciitis she said in her right foot is always she said and then knee arthritis right so you you have that going from the and you're doing a standing overhead press the driving forces into the ground on your right side compared to your left side is going to be different that's going to ping pong its way all the way up the kinetic chain in your body and that will absolutely change the way that bar moves above your head whether you can see it visually or not it will change the way that does that and so uh tremendous value in running like a program like symmetry where you do full unilateral work on upper and lower um i don't i don't think that you you i mean we recommend that to anybody anyways regardless if you had these for someone like this it would be something that i would force them to do as a client uh we recommend to everybody regardless of of plantar fasciitis or arthritis in their knee that you should run with a bar and move above your head whether you can see it visually or if you can't see it on your back or if you can't see it on your face you should run around of symmetry every single year and it will benefit you so i mean why not 100 look if you like the show come find us on instagram it's mind pump media we'll see you 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 mass performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by sal adam and justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on itunes and by introducing mind pump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and until next time this is mind pump