2943: Your Bulk Is Not Working! Here Are the 5 Signs You Are Doing It Wrong

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, approaching a half a billion total downloads. This is MindPump. Today's episode, we answered listeners' questions. We picked four of them from our Instagram page, MindPump Media. We answered them, but this was after the intro. Today's intro was 62 minutes long. This is where we talk about muscle building and fat loss and diet and current events. Again, if you want to post a question that we can potentially pick, go to Instagram, MindPump Media. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Paleo Valley. Today, we talked about their protein. It's a bone broth protein, which means it's super easy to digest. It's also good for gut health. 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Use the code LAUNCH for the discount and 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. Bulking, reverse dieting, eating in a calorie surplus. You're trying it, but is it working? Here are the signs that what you're doing isn't working. If this is happening, let's fix it. Let's go. You get fat. It's a visible sign. Slow down. Let's back up. Let's back up for a second. Doing it wrong, guy. Pay attention to that one. You're doing it wrong, guy. Let's explain what bulking is. It's also being referred to as reverse dieting. Same thing. It's the attempt to eat in a calorie surplus or eat more than your body's burning with the goal being building muscle, maybe balancing hormones, boosting metabolic rate, maybe setting yourself up for a fat loss phase in the future. The idea is ultimately, regardless of what the goal is, hormone balancing, better health, better sleep, whatever, we're trying to build muscle. We're doing so with good strength training programming and we're eating in a calorie surplus. Now, bulking used to be something that only hardcore bodybuilders or dudes like me when I was a kid that just wanted to gain weight because I was skinny, we're the only ones that ever tried bulking. Nobody else. The word bulk is a turnoff to most people. In fact, that's why we say reverse dieting oftentimes because it's such a turnoff. The idea and the understanding and what it does for the body now has become so popular. That you're seeing more and more people understand the benefit and attempt to move in this direction. In my career, for all the time I've been in the fitness industry, which is well over 20 years, I've seen more women now go on a bulk than ever before. That was almost never the case in the past. A lot of it has to do with fear or just not the right information around it. I think that there is a tendency, um, between the sexes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Uh, I think, uh, and to be more specific, the dude, uh, who feels really skinny, um, has a tendency to overdo it for sure. Um, uh, the, everybody else, uh, tends to underdo. In fact, one of the clear signs that your bulk isn't where it could be, uh, or you're reverse diet, you know, if we want to call it that, is it where it could be is you've lost weight. If you're losing weight on the scale and you're in a bulk, you're not eating nearly enough. Now here's the, this is where it gets interesting. Some people would welcome that, right? They're going to go on a bulk cause they need to speed up their metabolism. Let's say they want to build some muscle. They see the weight go down, which sometimes happens when you start to bump your calories a little bit. Um, and you're working out a little harder as a result. And then people are like, Oh man, this is awesome. This is exactly, uh, where I want to be. Cause I was going to do a cut anyway afterwards. But I'm here to tell you, you are not reaping the benefits, the maximum benefits of eating in a surplus. If you're losing weight, if you're losing weight, you're not eating enough. The weight shouldn't change on the scale at all. In many cases should go up a little bit. Even if you're trying to burn body fat. We just had a live caller who, uh, did go up actually in 90 days and still could have gone up more. What was the sign? He was hungry. Yeah. He was hungry and he looked leaner. And so this was a, this was a caller who was coming from a place of being, you know, on the leaner, skinnier side who needs to, needs to put weight on. He was under eating and kind of over-training. Yes. And we adapt, we changed his, his programming. We, uh, increased calories and checked back in with him 90 days later and 90 days later, um, he got, he gained six pounds on the scale. So based off of that, you go like, Oh, he did phenomenal on the book. And he did, he did a really good job. I mean, to, to the, the, his intentions were, were right and he did well, but he could have done even better. Yes. Uh, had he, had he ate even more, which I think that's even difficult for people as they go like, Oh, so to your point, uh, if you gain no way or you lost weight, you definitely didn't go the right way. Uh, even sometimes when you gain a little bit, you could have got seen a lot better results. And I see that sometimes, sometimes people will that I would put on a book, see minimal gain on the scale. And feel like, Oh, this didn't work. And a lot of times it's because they were so fearful of eating more calories and, and, or what they might see is like, they didn't see a lot of strength gains and it's because they weren't fueling the workouts. So that, so these, so even though you obviously losing weight in a bulk is a definite red flag that you failed, but sometimes even maintaining or a small gain is a man, you could have done a lot more. Yeah. I think the reason why this is so important to speak to. Is that so in the past, bulking was always about gaining weight. It always was about gaining weight. Nobody went on a bulk in the past with the intention of their weight staying the same, but just didn't, it doesn't make sense. It didn't make sense. Well, back then, do you feel like there was, there was this mentality, like get big or die? Like it was like a, a mass, uh, focus, like, because you had kind of in, in pop culture, there was a lot more like big pronounced, like bodybuilder type people. Like, I, I feel like that, that sentiment sort of like, uh, went away for a while. Yes. But I think more than what you're saying, Justin, I think it's that more women are bulking than ever before. Well, yeah, that shifted. That shifted it. And women are afraid more than men, uh, not saying that there aren't men who are afraid of this, but more than men of gaining any weight on the scale. So in the past, when you went on a bulk, it was to gain weight. Now the idea was to gain muscle. So nobody went on a bulk to gain like just a bunch of body fat, unless you had a medical condition or very special situations in some cases. That's what you need to do. But for the most part, we wanted a bulk or everybody wanted a bulk to gain weight. What happened was we saw the other benefits of a bulk, which were faster metabolic rate, setting you up for a more effective cut later, right? Cause you have a faster metabolic rate. Now I can cut later with higher calories because my metabolic rate is higher, better hormone balance. You take somebody, you take a man or woman who chronically under eats and over trains and you feed them more and fix their programming, their hormones balance. Only. They feel amazing. Their libido goes up. So all those other effects are now what people are chasing and, but they're also saying, I don't want any weight to go up on the scale. And so this is actually a problem because part of the reason why all those things improve is because you're gaining weight on the scale, mostly lean body mass. And maybe yes, some body fat, but that's why in those cases, you notice all those improvements because you needed the extra energy. So if you're losing weight on it, you go on a, on a bulk, you go down two pounds, not enough. Yeah. You're not eating, you're failing on the bulk. Yeah. I really feel like this, there hasn't been that big of a shift in my opinion, on the male side, this has been way more, uh, unique or different for the, on the female side. Yep. I mean, just 25 years ago, uh, coked out skinny was the look. Yeah. And so it was eat as little as possible, burn as much as you can at all costs. You didn't want any muscle. You didn't, that, that wasn't even desirable at that point. Then we talked to you. Recently on a podcast about the GI Jane and terminator, you know, Sarah Connor movement where like, okay, I like a little bit of shoulders and arms. And so there was a little bit of acceptance there of, okay, I could, I'm down with some muscle, but then still fear around eating enough calories to probably build for most people. Then we've gone on to like CrossFit looking girls and okay. I want, and, and JLo and ass it's like, okay, now I want a big ass. Now I'm okay with even more. I want shapes. Yeah. I want more shape and sculpt and even more muscle. And so it's now. Now we're getting a little more comfortable. And the narrative has been, well, because you pull up G.I. Jane and look at her like that. You don't have to get a real aggressive bulk to get to her point. But if you definitely want shape like a CrossFit or you want ass like J-Lo, you're going to have to you're going to have to eat more and bulk. And so I feel like that, like, OK, if you want that look, you got to build you. If you want shape and curve like that, you've definitely got to eat a lot more calories to get there in order to build enough muscle to put on that much shape and curve. And so we've just watched this, you know, transition over the last two decades from absolute skinny, skinny. And that's what everyone was desiring to this really more, you know, muscular look. And it's a good transition. It is. You're still there. Like, I want the shape. I don't want to. But I don't want the weight to go up on the scale. Which is a mistake because it will go up if you gain muscle. That's what ends up happening. The other one, which you kind of talked about earlier, Adam, is if you're, by the way, if you're doing a good bulk, in other words, you're doing the right kind of bulk, you're still eating whole natural food. So you're not eating garbage. That's a mistake that people made in the past. Like when I was younger, it was gain weight at any cost. Just calorie driven. It didn't matter what you ate. Just eat everything. If you stick to whole natural foods, your bulk's going to be clean. And if you're on a. If you're on a bulk and you're eating whole natural foods and you're hungry and you're not eating when you're hungry, you're failing. You shouldn't feel hungry on a bulk. You should feel hungry in a cut. Like, that's normal. You're in a calorie deficit. You're going to be some hunger. But if you're finding yourself at 7 o'clock at night and you're in, quote unquote, a bulk, you're like, man, I'm hungry again. Like, what should I do? I'm not going to eat. I'm afraid of what? Gaining body fat? No, no, no. Your body's telling you, feed me. Go get that whole natural food meal. Don't go eat garbage. And eat it. And eat it. You should feel satisfied. By the way, let me tell you what happens sometimes to that person is they feel that way night one. And they resist because of fear of putting any bad weight on. And they, again, man, hungry again. Resist. And then third night, I can't do it. And then they eat something that's not ideal. Then they go off. And they go off the rails. And then they put some body fat on. And then they're like, I knew it. Exactly. Yeah. Whereas if you would have just stuck to the plan of, eat when you're hungry, just make whole foods, make the meal protein centric. And that both those nights in a row ate that and been satisfied. Totally. You would have built muscle. But what happens sometimes is we play this, they play this, we or any client in this situation. A lot of times we'll play this psychological game of like, I already ate my four meals for the day. I can't eat anymore. Yet they just had a great training session. They've had a week in a row of consistently. And their body is wanting to build. And it's telling them that they need to be fed. And they're afraid to do it. And so they resist. They resist that feeling. And that feeling then turns into cravings. And then that cravings makes it even more difficult. And they finally go like, oh, I've been so good for the last two weeks. I'm going to eat this. And they go all out. Yeah. Cause if you eat garbage food, heavily processed food or fast food or whatever, um, you'll eat way more than your body needs in terms of calories. Those foods are engineered to make you overeat. So it's one thing to reach for, you know, my bowl of ground beef and rice, uh, and, or versus hit reaching for pizza. You know, if I have that pizza, yeah. I'll satisfy the hunger, but I've eaten, you know, a good 500 more calories than I would have. And probably not even hit my protein targets, uh, as a result, here's a huge red flag that your bulk isn't moving in the right direction. Your strength's not going up. Like if you are, if you're in a bulk and your strength isn't going up, uh, it's either I'm not eating enough. I'm not eating enough protein or my programming is wrong. It's one of those three things, or all of the above you should 100% get stronger in a book. In fact, this is what I pay attention to the most with my clients. When my clients are reverse diet or going to bulk, what I'm looking at most closely is strength most closely. Why? Cause it's so objective. It's nothing subjective about it. You either lift more or you don't. So it's very clear. And I know this, I know if strength continues to go up consistently muscle follows. I know this every single time. So someone who's attending a bulk that falls in this category, two things that I see the most common, uh, uh, programming is inappropriate. Um, so either they're the, they, they're on, on the wrong program. They're doing the same thing for too long, inappropriate amount of balance of, of intensity and, and volume and all the things. And so they need a better program or two, uh, they don't eat enough protein, but they're eating a bunch of other calories or both. Right. Yeah. Right. So it's like a lot of times it's that, right. So that's what I mean is like someone who feels very confident I'm in a bulk, but I'm not seeing the results on my strength. Isn't going up. It's normally those two things, or one of those two, or both of those things that you're looking at. Your programming isn't appropriate or good for you. And two, uh, and or two, you're, you're eating extra calories, but not hitting your protein. And by the way, I, I, oftentimes, oftentimes I've heard this, I'll talk to somebody like this, who's afraid of gaining the wrong way, but we're convincing them to go on a bulk or reverse diet. And I'll ask them, are you stronger? And the answer they'll give me is like, yeah, yeah, I think so. Okay. You're not stronger. That's, that's you thinking you're a little stronger, uh, or hoping that you're a little stronger. Because you're either afraid of adding, uh, more calories or usually that's what it is. You'll know you're stronger because it's, it's pronounced and it's clear you're you've added 10 pounds to your lift or 15 pounds to your lift. Are you doing five more reps? It's not a, I think I'm a little stronger. Uh, your bulk should clearly produce some strength gains clearly. Otherwise it's a big red flag. Here's another one. Your energy isn't any better. So here's, this is the, one of the characteristics of eating in a proper calorie surplus. With proper strength training or workout programming is you feel better. You've got more energy to work with. You feel better. A cut, by the way, a cut. Now, in some cases, a cut starts initially make someone feel better, especially if they reduce inflammation or most importantly, change the kinds of foods that they eat. Yeah, but all things being equal, a whole food based diet, both ends going on a cut versus going to surplus. The cut can oftentimes cause a little bit of a dip in energy or athletic performance. In fact, that's expected. Why I'm eating less energy that I'm burning. Yeah. So that's just, it's like anything I have less energy wasn't there when you're in a proper bulk or reverse diet, uh, you should have more energy. You should feel better. In fact, this is almost, this is pretty much always the case when it's done properly is people come back and say, I just feel a lot better. So you think it's mainly the, the types of foods that they're choosing within this bulk that would kind of, you know, determine that energy and also like inflammation and things like digestion or not enough. Yeah. All things being, yeah, all things being equal, uh, like still good, whole food based diet, high protein, more calories or surplus, you'll have more energy. Obviously there's more energy that's available. You know, it's interesting when you look at the, on studies, uh, on individuals, when they take people and they cut their calories. So they've done these really cool studies where they'll put trackers on people that will, um, track their movement. Okay. So it just tracks their daily movement. Then they'll cut their calories or bump their calories. Whenever you cut someone's calories like clockwork, their daily activity drops, even though they're not aware of it. Oftentimes people ask them, are you moving less? Like, no, I'm not moving less, but they pick, they pick up on it less. They're standing less. They're walking less. They're, they're moving their hands less. This is how your body, you know, convert, conserves energy. When your calories go up, you tend to move more and have more energy. So you should feel more energy on a good bulk. There's a, there's a compounding effect there too. I've noticed this. My own behaviors, like, uh, calories go up, uh, energy goes up, uh, strength and consistency in the gym goes up also daily activity all goes up. Like it's like, and the reverse is true. And to your point, if you were to ask me, and I know because I've tracked so diligently for so long. And so obviously I'd have the right answer, but if I didn't have all that data and you asked me, I would think on the days that I'm really sedentary, that it's really not that big of a difference than on the, on the other days, because it feels the same. I feel just as tired. Tired from work. Yeah. I feel like I accomplished the same amount, but it's like, it's wild how much of that subconsciously when you are fueling the body properly, you're training properly, how much you're just, your neat goes up. Totally. Your neat goes up, uh, organically and yet subconsciously it feels the same. Yeah. Because you're, you're counting structured movement and exercise. You're not counting the, like, you know, I'm sitting in my chair swinging side to side or standing up more and stuff like that, which all like. Like I said, it's very well documented. They track this, your body will modify that movement, uh, and you won't even be aware of it, um, unless it's. It's, it's, to me, it's, we've talked about it on the podcast many times. I've, I've shared my own, uh, journey of like, you know, I've connected it to like, I'm a better husband and father when I'm training and eating well. And that's part of what keeps me motivated. Yeah. Why don't you talk about what it's like being a husband or a father, uh, pre-contest, you know, this is a well-known fact. No, you're, you're a hundred percent right. Nobody wants to be around. I have friends that are bodybuilders and their wives know, all right, we're going to pre-contest so-and-so is going to be a jerk and we just got to deal with it. Low calorie or low energy. You don't want to do stuff like that. And the opposite is true when you're fueled properly and you're, and you're working out and then in a bulk like that, it feels amazing. And I don't, you like you, I just get up and do more stuff. I see the kitchen's dirty. I just get up and I clean like that versus put me in a calorie deficit and, and, or missing workouts. And it's like, yeah, I don't have, I just don't want to do it. I just sit there, you're not going to get up. And it's taken years of really peering into that to connect those dots and go like, oh, wow, there's a significant difference. difference remember in the extreme case adam when you were doing the experiment with the oh yeah where you were just eating very little just to like let's this let's see what people experienced i remember you telling me the thing you noticed the most was the low energy yeah you were like i i have to decide to either clean the house or workout can't do both yeah oh yeah no it was it was an either or for sure because i knew i didn't i didn't want to do either but i knew one of them yeah i was like i can't i can't fail on the workout thing and fail as a husband it's like i gotta i gotta choose yeah i wasn't doing both though there was no way i it just i just didn't have it in me to do both and i i battled that daily daily felt that now you're highlighting an extreme example of that but i mean i think that i think that's is happening to us on a smaller scale that you just don't realize it and that's why because it's not as extreme so it's not as obvious to people but that's happening it's well it's so well documented that people will often argue that the metabolism boost that comes from a reverse diet is more to do with this this kind of activity outside of exercise now that's not doesn't cover it all but it is so well documented that it does happen no i don't that's one of the things that are the arguments i've always made in defense of when people try and argue that like one pound of muscle doesn't burn that many more calories it's okay fair enough like if you cut out the tissue and you measure it in the lab and it doesn't tell the full story and you're right it doesn't account for um a guy with five more pounds of muscle what it what he has to do inside the gym to have built that muscle keep that muscle and the energy and the food he has to fuel in order to do all that it gives him more energy that then so there is this massive compounding effect that happens subconsciously that all plays in the factor at the end of the day when we're training clients it doesn't matter how we come i don't care how i got her metabolism to 800 more calories a day but we do it all the time yeah it happens exactly like predictable i don't care to fight over the science exactly the mechanism at which got there i just know the facts of i've done hundreds of people i've seen that happen to and at the end of the day if it works for them and they now have attached and created those behaviors for the rest of their life it's it's working that's right and lastly your sleep isn't better so one of the characteristics of being in a deficit is you don't have good sleep or your sleep doesn't feel restful so anybody who's been a deficit for long periods of time knows what this is like it's either i can't get enough sleep or man i'm going to bed and i got this kind of restless feeling uh being in a surplus having that much energy improves sleep across the board of course again this is in the context of a healthy bulk whole natural foods appropriate training but if you're going in a bulk and your sleep isn't better or or or worse it's worse um then that's kind of a red flag that you're not doing it uh in the right way so you know you didn't list this on here but i think it deserves an honorable mention that i've connected the dots to you i've heard from clients who have been in a deficit for a lot of times um impact on libido i i've seen a lot of clients who goes up who yes when they and it goes down in the cut right when when they when they are eating when i put them on a bulk it's one of the things i constantly would hear feedback of like within a week yeah i know libido and and a lot of times when you have been underfed for such a long period of time libido is one of the things that is crashed even for people who thought they had an okay libido oh right they'll be like oh i'm no i'm fine yeah and then they go on a bulk yeah then they go to bulk and they're like wow you know and again there's probably a compounding effect there they're bulking they're building more muscle extra calories perfect dude totally all right uh yo i was gonna i gotta bring this up again so recently i talked about how uh how old machines because i'm going to a gym right now that has both new and old machines because the gym's been there for a long time and everything's kept up really well so i like older machines like machines from like the 90s early 2000s uh none are from the 80s although i'd love to find those but they made them different back in the day i talked about this uh on a previous episode where old machines were really designed for bodybuilders and athletes new machines are designed to have a small footprint be easy to use safety and safety in the average person so a lot of things are different between the old machines and the new machines the old machines were more hardcore than the new machines and there's one other and i talked about some of the differences but there's one big i just picked on pick this up today i went and i haven't done a leg extension in a long time okay i haven't done a leg extension i rarely ever do leg extensions when i work out my legs i prefer doing other exercises but anytime i do do a leg extension at a gym i could do the whole stack the stack is never heavy i'll do 25 reps with the whole stack heavy the old ones are bro the stacks on old machines were made for bodybuilders just the levers i automatically went whole stack and i was like oh boy that's way too heavy and i'm like oh yeah i remember like old machines were for strong dudes yeah yeah so you whole stack the starting point is already there kind of yeah yeah i typically just i'll typically use the whole stack on new machines and any exercise so funny that's a good point i trained in the gym yesterday and i used a machine i used a dip machine and i was stacking stack the whole thing it's just silly bro use a dip machine from 97 bro you're gonna go halfway down the stack old school ones where they have like belts on them yeah it's gotta hold you down yeah i was cracking up a radiator belt holding it together i literally i literally just took the pen and i went all the way to the bottom just out of habit and i'm like pick myself up in the chair oh no dude what is going on anyway i gotta tell you guys about my uncle who um he got back to me so we did yeah i told you guys last weekend we did tomatoes so my whole family came together and my uncle comes up and he doesn't work out or anything uh but i guess i'm on his algorithm so he comes up to me and he goes hey he goes one of the products you talk about i've been using for a while i've been putting in my coffee i'm like in your coffee i'm like paleo valley protein he's like yeah i love it i'm like how do you feel man i feel great i have more energy he's like i gained a couple pounds though i'm like what do you mean you gained a couple pounds so we started talking more and found turned out my aunt has been making meat sweets i don't think that's what's happening dude i don't think you're 100 calorie of protein but he loves it he loves how he feels he loves adding it to his coffee normally he would just have coffee and now he's having you know the paleo valley protein in there and he likes the way it tastes doug and i just had uh our final walkthrough on one of the properties and uh the that was doing the walkthrough with us uh you know afterwards she was so she was curious about what we did and so she went and must have researched this and then after that like the algorithm has been falling it's all over her yeah yeah so she she the last time we this last time when we walked through she's like so tell me about this this paleo valley bone broth because my i can't i'm lactose intolerant oh yeah yeah i'm like oh man i was like boy that algorithm is pretty good the fact that she didn't know who we were she went googled us within and then within like a day paleo valley and i was like oh my god i'm like that's uh that's a pretty good advertising there by far and this is what my uncle told me because again he doesn't work out he doesn't care and he's like i was afraid to buy it because i hate protein powders like they always taste gross he goes this one is so good as i told you bro yeah yeah it's the best i was telling her i'm like i think it's for especially for somebody who is lactose and you can't have you know dairy can have way because way way typically is one of the best tasting protein the better ones yeah that you or it bothers them a little bit right and so the bone broth is just so good and i love that i can do it's easy to digest i love that i can go high yo i can do 70 grams of protein to be able to but like i can't even with i can have way again i've talked about this before where i can i can do whey proteins i just have to have a moderate amount yeah once a day is enough for me and i definitely can't do like a double up shake like if i had like 60 to 80 grams away in one sitting like that'll mess me up but i can do 60 to 80 grams of the bone broth i do all the time and it digests so easy like water yes i know yeah so that's a huge win uh did you guys uh have you guys seen the new dating app it's real by the way that's kind of going around a new one yeah doug look up how do they change it look up the dating app so this is interesting dude and i almost could have predicted this so it's called doug look this up it's unjected so u-n-j-e-c-t-e-d unjected instead of rejected you're unjected nope it is oh for people people people who want to date people who were never vaccinated with the covid vaccine it's literally a dating website for people who never got the covid vaccine i mean i feel like this is kind of a way of being like uh the non-political way of saying the political thing i feel like that's what that is not necessarily this but like um so way back when like i was when you guys like one of my my sister-in-law was looking at you know getting a donor uh you know and so like one of the parameters i'm like did you find out like you know the history like how much detail do they give you and it's like i did i don't think they were revealing or not but then they start revealing if they had the the vaccine or not yes i i'm so i heard this not confirmed but i heard that that uh donors like sperm donors that are unvaccinated they'll charge more or more demand yes that's what i heard yeah is our our uh sperm donors who did not get the covid vaccine in higher demand let's look that up but it's crazy that they have a i mean don't you feel like that's just like a like a like a subtle way of being like well there's a lot of like there's a lot of conjecture and conspiracy theory stuff out there some is it true not i don't know we won't get into that but um but people want it yeah i wanted to they want to date people about it whoever like threw that my way on my story isn't like this oh you had somebody you had somebody yeah they're like challenging me on our our covid science and it was what yeah all the stuff that you listed yeah everything you listed was a fact well yeah no i i listed that as a response yeah as a response because it was like i i think they they had a hard time because we mentioned a lot of studies all the time and you know back a lot of what we say with science and they're you know obviously just looking at one specific study that was like you know making it look like uh the you know the vaccines like had a pretty high effectiveness which is like oh that's interesting because like i've seen a lot of conflicting studies oh there's people that still believe that yeah oh that's funny oh yeah that's hilarious like you know i still do you guys get i get cvs it sends me the get your covid 19 like a robot one or that i'm so petty i like to say i send a message back laugh out loud no you don't to the robot yeah you like i'm really gonna go get that come on well are you serious there's people that really believe that it had that much of an impact wow that's interesting yeah yeah it is interesting and it you know it just goes to show too like how segmented we are and like how much no you know no no no no what it goes to show which is such a perfect transition for this because i wanted to bring it up anyways is what chris nagibi just talked about oh yeah how well media media paints a narrative and how well and today how crazy it is where yeah it holds all the power what i what i love about this episode chris did such a good job on this episode it's one of my favorite episodes he's ever done higher standard yeah yeah so yeah our good friend we've been on the show before chris nagibi uh higher standard podcast and what i love that he set the table before he went just telling hit like history like this has been happening for 200 years yeah so just a little context so historically speaking so you if you live in a first of all this is important in all societies but it's especially important and valuable in a free society where people make choices so if you live in a society like you do if you're listening to this podcast you probably live in one of those societies where you can choose for the most part what you can buy what you don't want to buy where you want to live um who you can vote for when you have that kind of choice uh the the who controls the narrative which is done largely through media has a lot of power right because you can sway people in different directions and this is not new we've known this for forever we've done this for a long time but like look at the first newspapers and who bought those and on those and why and when uh when it was tv how tv became influenced radio became influenced um magazines magazines now it's like social media so whoever controls the narrative that's very valuable yeah for either companies the platform dictates politicians or anything is who can control the narrative tends to control uh the situation and so and by the way the reason why this came up and you know our one of our friends is involved in this and i so i respect the guy i think you know he does a good job but it was really interesting to me when i saw um our friends podcasts be the highest selling podcast of all time so this was the tbpn i think that's called tbpn podcast so this was a they called it like sports center for silicon valley so it was a podcast uh and they kind of treated it like sports center where they're reporting on what's going on talking about silicon valley it was this super new podcast that got bought recently for hundreds of millions yeah so some so just under uh joe rogan yeah like around 200 million dollars now the reason why this was interesting was because uh joe rogan gets 10 million views or listens it's a million an episode they got they like very little very little in comparison they weren't producing there was nothing that justified the selling of their podcast for nearly that much except for this is what we speculated on i think this is what's happened that ai companies in particular first off they have really low approval ratings so ai is like it's this emerging technology tons of potential money in it everybody knows this like this is why so many trillions of dollars getting dumped into it but ai uh there's been some backlash though like public perception around it is like iffy yeah and you know public perception uh public perception goes the wrong way it'll get regulated into into smithereens have you seen all those commencement speeches oh yeah that are flying around yeah and then mention it and everybody's just that's why this has become so important so owning the narrative is very important for an ai company okay and who bought their podcast centers all this stuff and and who bought their podcast for 200 million dollars right it was uh anthropic yeah was it anthropic but sam altman yeah i think that's the one right well anthropic yes uh and they didn't and then they bought it and they canceled their app so whatever money they were making they stopped no advertising yeah how can a podcast who first off wasn't earning nowhere near what would be worth uh 200 million dollars in purchase and how could they sell for that much and then on top of why would a company buy that and cancel advertising anyway so it makes no money it's because they want to control the narrative and they need a propaganda arm or an arm of of media and there really wasn't a good popular one in silicon valley and you got these guys on there one of them we know well he does a good job yeah uh good looking kids smart sharp smart as a whip it's like hey let's buy this and let's use this to to to control the narrative that's and by the way that's why i speculate when i saw that i'm like oh god i know what happened well and what have i been saying about the whole ai movement right now too that so much of it is propped up and so they they need to keep all the money flowing there and you ask why why well of course there's uh all these companies that want to ipo where they make big money but even if they don't ipo and this was like so it's huge for me to kind of see behind the curtain in the last like five years being a part of um a lot of people that are vcs and do seed rounds and funding and have close friends people that are on forbes magazine stuff like that that i got to talk to in and talk business intimately on how all this i was so i remember sharing with you guys and i don't know how much that i've shared publicly on uh on here but i know we've talked about it that i was like so blown away by the the hustle yeah and the vc yeah just said like so when when something when something especially like this like ai when billions of dollars are flowing in a direction of a movement and they're they're popping up all over the place you don't even care if that company ever makes it to ipo so long as you can keep it growing and and and raising money yep every six months to a year you know seed rounds and then series a and then you keep going keep going what these what these founders can do is every round that comes around you go oh we're right we hey we grew this much over the last year even though we spent this much to grow that much so we're still negative but we're growing we need another 10 million dollars cool so we get 10 million dollars and he goes like this i'll take one million for myself and we'll pump nine million back into it to make it to the next and to be clear many of the biggest companies in the world that we know about did that for a long time before they became extremely like amazon wasn't profitable for like 10 years tesla like so it's the game and what they're doing is they're betting well yeah so you're you just you just named uh two outliers that's right some of the winners yeah how many hundreds yeah of losers a huge percentage don't ever even come close to that and making that way meanwhile they're still making a ton of money and so it's like a good old boys club where it's like hey let's all agree just keep pushing this narrative this direction we all eat because if if we keep and that's this by the way this is this is good news and bad news this is scare stuff too that's why that's my point like when you bring oh my god all like it's keeping it top of news yeah so whether whether it's there's fear-mongering happening on what ai is going to kill all of us or it's going to be doing our dishes in the next month it doesn't matter so long as it's top of the news and everyone's talking about it and it's going to revel it's like it's dot com all over again and here and here's the big thing so for a long time tech has uh enjoyed the advantage of having good public perception for a while up until relatively recently relatively recently there's been criticism there's been cynicism around tech you saw it affected the elections yeah like like when the iphone first came out like it was everybody was like let's go this is awesome apple's the best company in the world amazon's amazing now people are more cynical and skeptical um public policy is starting to move in that direction social media is starting to get regulated tech moguls are getting criticized they're looked at as bad guys in some cases facebook they were heroes before you know steve jobs was the guy like every they were all heroes because it was new so what my point with that is today more than ever and definitely next five or ten years they are going to need to control the narrative they are in investing heavily in controlling no no different than politicians no different than politicians have throughout the past so you're going to see more of that kind of stuff because your options are this you're anthropic you got two options you're looking at public perception you're one of the top companies like guys we got to change everybody's opinion on us and what we do either a we build a machine we build our own show that pumps out good information about us and makes us look good good luck with that it's one thing to build an incredible ai company it's a completely different thing to build a media company yeah or you look at one and you go they're promising let's give them some money and they'll do what we say anyway and let's rock and roll which that's by the way if you're listening to this and this conversation at all interests you the breakdown that chris does on the timeline such a good episode and uh in the links to everything to back up all the stuff that he's talking about and the connections to everything it's fascinating it's such a good and by the way if anybody is like questioning this like does anybody question that elon musk buying x which was twitter at the time didn't influence the last election yeah of course it did yeah it totally did he's just they're playing the game that's been played i didn't realize the part did you hear when chris talked about uh the uh when elon and biden both text the same day and and biden's text he was like 29 million and then he was like 9 million so that was like that's what set off the buying of uh twitter or his tweet you mean yeah his tweet that went out so he biden's tweet crushed crushed and his was suppressed and he went in and like fired fired a bunch of people that was responsible that changed the algorithm like that and flipped it like completely so i mean just do you know you know that one of the reasons why uh this is connected one of the reasons why cannabis went through this whole period of prohibition was because uh who was it was it william hurst who owned the paper mills yep and hemp was starting to compete yeah and because william hurst owned the newspapers he started printing a bunch of uh articles going talking about how dangerous cannabis was and the goal was to get rid of madness the goal was to get rid of competition because because hemp was because hemp was so much or so so much cheaper and inexpensive to produce and more durable it's like yeah it's such a missed opportunity it's such a great material and i did the point of all this because they were bleaching that's the part that i think chris does a really good job of this is like he he talks about what's going on with tbbn and and that the narrative and the purchase of all that but he sets the table of like like this is not new it's not new it's not new strategy no this has been and nor am i like forever and he's like nor am i hating it's just like it's i mean if you're them it's an old game dude yeah but it's like but it's like people needs people need to know you know what i'm saying you just need to know like what's what what you're but all back to my point of going on this tangent with you is just i just feel like that's what's so much of the the narrative whatever you're and boy it's today it's crazy once you like something and you want something and the algorithm figures out what you like or the information that you that you just hover over so oh it just can it just get ready because the next six months everything will just confirm i've had people i've had friends of mine for sure i've had friends of mine that i'll meet like friends at church for example who don't know the show they don't know mind pump they don't know who i am we meet we start talking the next day they go listen i don't look you up or anything but now you're showing up on my algorithm i'm like is your phone listening is it listening sure it is well it's a thing yeah they and uh i forget what it was but they had shown um you know through drive-ins that predictably you know they already knew your order i don't know if it was mcdonald's or one of these franchises was using this technology before it was legal you know then they had to stop because it was like an invasion of privacy but they were like tracking license plates and like you know so they've been doing these things like that that's the first rollout is like you know you're testing it and you're getting the beta testing you guys have seen it with your navigation haven't you oh where it's like it predicts where i'm going all the time it's really wrong i know it's i mean it's wrong sometimes i'm like dude this like this it could be like literally it's are you gonna buy a burrito it's a random day in the week and i'm heading somewhere it's like it populates you know it suggests where i'm going and i'm like how does it know i'm going but it's it's been tracking we're creatures of habit we're yeah our patterns are predictable do you guys know that back in the day i don't know when it was and maybe you can confirm this dog but uh they experimented movies experimented or they tested subliminal messaging yeah and they had to make it illegal uh-huh where they flash a picture yeah but that you don't necessarily perceive that movie uh thank you for smoking talked about that show that highlighted that where they flash a cigarette smoke and and you had to you had to freeze it to see it but if you didn't see it look at this the 1957 market researcher james vickery claimed he flashed drink coca-cola and eat popcorn during movie boosting concession sales oh wow well okay so it says i mean subliminal messaging there's you know what movie does this by the way there's a movie that does this that you can actually you can actually find the frames fight club fight club does certain flashes thank you for smoking does it too they did it they did it in there they did like little like cigarettes burn mark yeah and then it like yeah they did they did they did stuff like that i mean they do this with um grocery stores with music and and and stores yeah yeah there's certain music played to keep you shopping yeah certain temperatures you know like coffee shops you keep you know buying dude we were talking about uh um dating dating app earlier and uh do you guys know what's the topic of the show i don't know i don't know it's a trend right now on social media with uh the younger generation what pheromone maxing look up pheromone maxing you know what this you know what they're doing what do they do dudes are not showering what so when they go on a date that their pheromones are maxed out and that'll maybe get the they just smell like a viral online dating trend where men intentionally skip showering ditch deodorant and wear uncloth unwashed clothes before dates weird does that work so okay so here's the funny thing about this because someone's listening like that's gross this is here's what's weird i mean there's a woman who's ovulating versus a woman who isn't ovulating same woman she will perceive uh if a man wore a shirt or not as attractive or not so if she's ovulating and a man wore a shirt she'll smell like oh this smells really good so this might only work if she's ovulating bro but if she's not you're gonna so you think okay because they're also like trying to capture this with um like cologne and there's like one that's like it's always trying to market i think like my son and it's like you know it has pheromones in it and it's like you know the only one that has it and it's like super expensive and you know so that way too yeah like women will will you know pick up on that like subliminally so isn't there isn't there science to support that we like that we we pair and match with with the appropriate like pheromones for us in other words like so one of the things unless you're i remember like connecting this a long time ago through dating it's like there's i would date a girl and um one girl could be that let's say one girlfriend uh could be all sweaty not shower come to the gym and i like the way she smelled another girl that i dated i would notice i was repulsed by that smell right so both sweaty not showered so that but one of them that smell i'm attracted to you know if you pick up on something different yes 100 percent where another one i would date and they would have a smell and it'd be off-putting you know it's funny you know it's crazy about that i uh i tell my wife she doesn't believe me but this i tell her this whole time her her she i don't necessarily smell anything but i love to smell her and she'll and she'll be like oh my god i didn't shower and i'll be like yes don't you don't you think that we love it don't you think that there's certain there's got to be yeah so to me that makes sense which by the way when women are on birth control versus not completely changes how they like now the funny thing about this that i think is it's like talk about a quick way to like know you're not matched up it's like oh yeah yeah because the right person probably is like oh they they smell either they it's either neutral to them or they smell i don't even need to think about that dude you don't like someone's smells they ain't happening i'm not i'm not gonna be with someone that i don't like their smell bro well they're they're bad i mean i don't know there's a there's a there's a oh god just no that's a no for me i didn't hear what he said i heard what he said did you uh you know speaking of of dating and relationships and stuff i shared with you that arthur brooks post oh yeah happiness that's old data so i'll read i'll read his post because it's really it's really good it's good i have thoughts around it's good and the reason why i brought this up a long time ago because there was this you have and i wanted to revisit it because i wanted to no there were these studies that would come out actually article and the title of the articles would say because of studies they'd say uh parent couples without kids are happier and they'd quote the study and i hate stuff like this because it's not telling the full picture so here's what his post says and because he knows the actual data so it says couples without children enjoy their lives more than parents do but they suffer a hidden cost when researchers compare parents with otherwise similar couples the childless report more day-to-day enjoyment more sleep more restaurants more finished sentences so are the couples deciding against children reading the data correctly well they are reading only one line of it happiness has three meaning and satisfaction and meaning and they're all fed differently children are a trade between macronutrients they draw down enjoyment sometimes for a decade at a stretch and they deposit meaning so when researchers ask people to rate their daily activities caring for children lands near the bottom for moment-to-moment happiness been near the top for meaning and nothing splits the two so hard and then he talks about his own experience uh with his own kids so i wanted you to bring it up because there's something that i've always tried to figure out about meaning and that's why i'm talking about my own personal journey with this because i i've i fell in the category somebody who would be like uh thought about not having kids for the longest time and one and one of the cases that i made for is man especially katrina and i dated for a long time without max right we had a really really good life yeah like we had a lot of fun a lot of you know a lot of basketball games a lot of concerts a lot of fun travel a lot of cool stuff and and really really enjoyed each other and so there was this possibility like i could see not having kids yet i also say you know seven years later katrina and i have done more of all of that and so i've always like what that's kind of weird because that's that's the opposite of the the narrative around that and and so another reason why i don't like those studies that show that because it doesn't tease out um what i have and because when i compare it to my like two best friends because i don't think they would say that they would definitely say the children gave meaning but they would say man when we were single we definitely had more of those well there was a period of time when you didn't right when max was really little you know it was a couple years right or a year where you're not going all over the place when he he was three months old we were already up at our tahoe house we were flying with him by the time before he was six months old we were that's not the that's not the typical right so that's so this is this is me so why i'm saying why that story doesn't tell everything because here's here's and and the reason why what i've unpacked for myself is how valuable family has been for for for us and and what i have found is because we have family so willing to help and support which i think is so important for us to be able to be able to be able to be able to be so valuable i think katrina and i have been even more intentful to do those things because it's like we uh uh we we got friday mom's my my mother-in-law's got our son so we're we're we got this we're gonna go do and then we got this and we're and so we plan even more not to mention we do a lot with max and so then on top of that i find that we go out of our way to do even more because we get that one night or two nights off a week and then we so it's like i think that there's it's like yeah if you tease out uh somebody who is uh married and has a kid and also isolated from family and of course they're going to see a dramatic difference in that yeah when you look at there's other there's other my point is that there's other factors at play of course of course when you're looking at studies you're looking at the general yes and so there's always outliers but generally speaking i think it's uh reasonable to expect that you're not going to have as much when you have kids especially multiple kids especially for the first five years uh that they're around i think that's a very reasonable thing to expect that's also what the data supports but i think what more important about this data is my own personal enjoyment if i just do that all the time and that's the most important thing to me you know what that turns into a hedonistic hell a treadmill of hedonism and all of us know some people like this right they're in their kind of late 40s they've lived this life it's all about them they still don't have any kids and they're now at the point where they're like this like this is worn out like this is worn out uh i'm either on some kind of antidepressant or i'm not happy or what's going on and sometimes it takes that long for people to figure that out because if you look at all the data again we're speaking generally because some people are way more miserable with kids for whatever reason but generally speaking uh when you interview when you do this these studies people are generally better off having kids than they weren't not yes you are trading personal freedom and enjoyment for meaning 100 yeah i think i think it's a good i think it's a good way to frame it that you should go into expecting that but i also don't think that's i don't think you have to no i i think that if you if you go into that situation and you're intentful about it and you you make that like hey this is what you know mother-in-law or auntie or uncle if you have that right not so i definitely think if you don't have that you should you're you're not going to go to as many concerts you're not going to go as many of these things right as you did before because you don't have you're just going to grow in an incredible other way yeah so you can expect it exactly so you're going to get you're going to get the meaning part you're going to get heavily on the meaning part but i i do believe that there is i mean i know that i was exceptional and i know that i was a person who probably was afraid to having kids because of a fear yeah of giving so much of that up like that was going to happen and the opposite was true for me and i did not see that coming and so it changed a lot so funny i have a buddy who's uh now how old is he he's mid-40s and he's lived that life so work made money did whatever he wanted dated girls never settling down type of deal now he's in his mid-40s and now we're having conversations and he's like yeah dude i'm kind of lonely like i think i'm like ready to settle down i think i'm like ready to do this and uh and i'm living this other way for so long are you willing to like trade this freedom and whatever to be with somebody who and now you're also 45 so not only that's like you're decent looking and you make good money but you are you going to find you your age group or below in an appropriate age range you're probably going to find someone with kids who's divorced not only that so we're we're having this funny that we went this direction in this conversation because katrina and i were having this discussion and i was like i'm going to find someone who's not only that so we're having this conversation last night i've got three people in my life that fit this category yeah and one of the other things that becomes also extremely challenging is that you're in your late 40s or 50s and you've you've established these patterns of how you live your life and when you've lived it for that long a certain way for and i'm not going to sell out one of the people that i was having this conversation with one of my friends i was talking to about this is this is one of my female friends and uh she's like i am she really wants a partner she wants all these things and she's expressing that and i'm like you got it you can't keep doing the same thing you've been doing for the last 30 years you and and well i joined a gym and i'm doing this i'm like yeah but the time you go you're not going to meet anybody going that time yeah but that's what that's the problem everything you do is like this is what works for me and this is my schedule and this is when i do this and this is when i do that and you have this routine that you won't break out of yet you want something different so it's like you got to break out of that same friend's circle meet new people you got to stop the like this is the time i always do this and the time i always do that because you've already met all those people like you got to shake all that up and boy that's hard to do for somebody who's been doing that for a long time and we've also just and this is we talked about this earlier controlling the narrative and the narrative for a long time has been the most valuable thing is personal freedom personal enjoyment uh is hedonistic pleasure and we've been hammered this into us for so long people believe this but the data is showing we've been wrong it's been wrong everybody in fact in fact you know you know when birth control because birth control plays a role in all of this that we're talking about when birth control was first brought to market do you know how it was advertised it was advertised for married couples to help them stay married longer because now they have an option to control you know whether or not they have children because back then they were like oh it's a stress you have a kid you can't afford it that causes a lot of strain but now you have a you can control your fertility and you can sleep you can have sex with other people without the risk and you know what that's better because now you can see if you're compatible and this was kind of the narrative you know what happened since since that became mainstream divorce rates went from eight percent to fifty percent childless held households went through the roof and people are less happy men are less happy you know who's especially less happy women are way less happy in fact they call this a parrot they uh this is like a paradox why are they so much less happy than they were when they had you know perceived less freedoms and it's because we've sold this idea so long that the most important thing in your life is having a lot of stuff having all this personal freedom and having all this personal enjoyment and pleasure that's just not the way it works the data doesn't support it we can see it and you know what marriage and kids is it hard do you do you have a lot of responsibility you give up personal freedom do you give up personal enjoyment you do but when you get in return it's well worth it purpose and yeah because that the other two aren't the formula for purpose no so that's exactly why no totally anyway you were talking about working out earlier and i was excited i don't know if you saw this adam because i thought of you what viore now has pickleball paddles yes i did i already put a call in did you really yes i'm trying to get some paddles how first off yeah so so very smart for i mean last time doug brought up when he went river rafting they had the rash card stuff for the whatever for them smart i just they're on top cool backpack they had snowboard last winter i saw when they had all the snowboard they're like man they're expanding into all all different areas real quick what are these sweats called again we have the same ones seaside they're the best oh the seaside best best best best sweats i wear those pretty much every night comfortable warm chill they last forever oh look there's the paddles right there yeah viore does a good job look at that dude it's so good dude is is so paddle uh excuse me pickleball has literally exploded yes and popularity is it one of the i think i would imagine so i should look that up i'm curious it's got to be yeah i never heard of it did you guys see suddenly did you guys see the uh the uh the the pickleball movie i've dink dink yeah did you watch it or did you see the i just watched the trailer i didn't watch i mean it's not i'm not promoting it's the fastest growing sport in the united states yep yeah the fastest growing so the whole i told you what's the rate of growth doug i'm interested to see over the last five years the u.s has more than 24 million players cool yeah uh let's see i'll find pickleball rate of growth over the last five years popularity rate to jump on that so smart they're very you know viore is so crazy i know how long we've been with them just 10 years has it been 10 years almost they went from being this kind of unknown like cool company to like dominating yeah like crushing that's all now it's it's it's got to a place where when i see someone in athleisure where it's all it's almost always i always see viore now both women and men it used - It used to be just men, I would see that, but now, It's women and men, I see. It's like, they definitely. It'd be interesting to see how much of the market share they have now taken, you know, because Lulu dominates so much for so long. Bro, look at the growth of pickleball the last five years. 479%. What? It went from 4 million players to 24 million players. Well, didn't you hear, was it Gary Vee who bought a team? Should we buy pickleball courts right now? Bro, he bought like a team. No, it would be a brilliant investment. You know how hard it is to get on a pickleball court right now? We should buy some land, put pickleball courts on there, let people rent it, and then sell it before the craze, because the craze will go down. Yeah, it'll drop. It'll crush, and then it'll go down. It'll drop at some point. But I mean, it has longevity. I mean, I don't know about that. It's been around forever, so it's not like it's a new thing. Yeah, but it's suddenly exploded. I think because it's multi-generational. Well, I think. It's like it's going to stick, because everybody can do it. I think there's multiple factors, and I would bet against you that it's going to go away. Well, it slowed down 100%. It can't grow at that rate forever. But here's the thing. You've talked about this all the time. We don't meet up. No, it's a great way to socialize. And the barrier to entry for pickleball is low. It's a perfect formula. You can be 70 and go play, and you can be super athletic and go play, and it's competitive at all levels. It's not like tennis or racquetball. That's right. It's running groups. So, I mean, listen, I would bank on this ain't going away for quite some time. Now, I can't predict 20 years from now what we're doing or whatever with that, but it's going to be hot for a while, and I don't think we're going to see a slow. Are you going to try and talk us into maps pickleball? I mean, I like your idea of some land, like an acre, and throw on some pickleball courts. I've got a little crush right now. It would absolutely work. And then you'd sell it. After it grows, just sell it real quick, and then somebody else will buy it for a profit. I'm going to start promoting jazz mitten. I'm not against that at all. What is jazz mitten? Yeah, I told you guys. I got, for one of the Christmases, I got the boys this game, and it's like a pop-up square. So, it's a square that has like. Oh, I saw that. Yeah, and so you have paddles, but it's like basically bad mitten, but you have to hit it through this little, this square, jazz mitten. Oh, I love that. I'm telling you. Oh, that's it. Yeah. Oh, my kids would love that. Yeah, exactly. That would be like the next follow-up to pickleball. When I was a kid, bad mitten was popular for families. Yeah, bad mitten never really took off, but that was always another easy one. So weird. I totally forgot this. My family used to get together and play bad mitten. What were a group of Sicilians doing playing? I have no idea. Because it's more of a European thing, I think. So, you remember Quran? You had to say that. It's right there. It's what it's called, you guys. Our trainer, Quran, who comes in here, was like a bad mitten champion. He was in India. He was world ranked. No way. Yes. Yes. Was he a pro? I remember he won tournaments. He was like a champion. Yeah, yeah. No, he's like- Really? Yeah, which is why he'd surprise you. He's pretty athletic. He's been on my softball team. We play basketball. He's athletic. He can just pick a sport up and play it, and I remember always being like, hey, dude, I would have never guessed he'd be- And then I found out years later after being, and knowing him, he's like, oh, yeah, I was a bad mitten champion. You know what sport fascinates- I beat him in ping pong, though, Quran. You know what sport fascinates me? I've never seen it live. I've only seen it on videos. I don't know what it's called, but they have this big hook thing on their arm, and they whip a ball. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it goes- High lie. High lie. It goes, the ball goes so fast. Is that what it's called, high lie? A Brazilian sport? Yeah, and it goes like 120 miles an hour or something. It looks- With those scoops? Yes, dude, it looks crazy. High lie, yeah. Whip it. Yeah, and they throw the ball super fast. It's- Oh, that's a crazy sport. It looks- Yeah, there it is right there. I don't know if it's hurling, or there's a sport, too, in Scotland that just, it's so brutal. What do you do? Well, you can throw it really fast, and, like, it's dangerous. People, like, lose teeth all the time. What? Oh, yeah. Oh, that? Yeah, it's pretty fun to watch, actually. We'll smash each other. We'll say field hockey. Listen, there is no sport- But it's way more brutal. There is no sport that's crazier or more brutal. There is no sport that's crazier or more brutal than Calcio Storico in Italy. Oh, is that the one where they fight each other? It's an ancient sport. They've been playing it for hundreds of years. They fight, playing- It's like football where you fight, too? Is that what it is? It's like gang fighting, but then they add, like- It's C-A-L-C-I-O, and then separate word. It's like polo, but they beat the shit out of each other. No, dude, it's literally- Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we've looked at it. You have to be from the town- That's right. To play for the team, and it's four major cities in Italy. I would love to go to one of those and watch. Bro, and literally, you get a ball. The goal is to get one ball into the other goal, and you can- Is it a once-a-year thing that happens, or is it- It's not happening anymore. No, it's a once-a-year thing. Yeah, I was going to say, it's like a traditional thing that they do. And you can do whatever you want to stop the guys. I'm sure Russia has one that's competitive to this. Oh, well, Russia's got great- But this has got a pair degree. This sport has been around for, I think, a thousand years, a hundred- It's like a town pride thing is really what it is. Yeah. That's like where the history- Watch, let me see how old this is. This was like kings and queens were competing with each other with their teams. That's the ancient roots. The Roman army, well, keep going, 1400s. Young Florentines revived this game and evolved into the sport for wealthy aristocrats, noblemen, and even future popes. What? Whoa, dude. Or that one Mayan sport where if you're the winner- You die? Yeah, you sacrifice. It's like, what? Yeah, when you win, like, it's like- Your prize is you die. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, it's a game I would suck out on purpose. Yeah. Everybody sucks. Whoops. Both sides suck. Nobody's scoring. This game's going forever. Pocket talk. Or pits. Yeah. What is dose for your liver? So dose for your liver is a clinically-backed liver health supplement. It's not just another capsule or powder. It's a liquid supplement. You take it every day, two ounces a day. Tastes like orange juice, and it helps cleanse the liver, but it also has the benefit of unwanted stressors that are slowing you down. So it promotes daily liver function, so your liver can do its job. No sugar, no junk, no calories. So what does it feel like to have a healthier liver? More energy, better skin, better sleep. You adapt to exercise better. In other words, your workouts are more tolerable, and you see better progress. By the way, they did some trials with dose, and they found that the majority of people that used dose for your liver, they got enzymes at the end of the study. So it really does work. Go to dosedaily.co/mindpump35. Use the code mindpump35, get 35% off your first month. Here comes the show. - Our first question is from Kathy Steinhilb. What is the best way to improve leg strength when you do not have a squat rack? - You know, split stance exercises are right up there. - Oh yeah, carrying split squats would be for sure. - If you look at the biomechanics of the split stance movement, like a lunge or a Bulgarian, the front leg is squatting. - It's a one-legged squat. - Yeah. - It's, by the way, some people, athletic coaches, I should say, some athletic coaches argue. - Yeah, Mike Boyle. - That split stance movements are better than squats. - It's a solid argument. - I agree. For athletics, I think I can see that. - Yeah. - You can actually really load it, too. It's not like something that's impossible to do. Like, it's just, it requires a lot of skill, and like, you have to, like, master, you know, the balance of it, but you can really, like, increase strength with that movement effectively. - The challenge, so the thing with a squat is because you start to get really strong and you're able to load it very heavily, a squat rack starts to become necessary. So it's like, okay, I can't pick this weight up off the ground and put it on my back, but split stance exercises give you a lot more room 'cause you're not gonna use as much weight, but the intensity and the tension is up there. - Still there. - I mean, that being said, some Bulgarian split squats, some wrist wraps, could take you a long ways. - Very far. - A long ways. - Very far. - Like, I mean, you could literally, if I have wrist wraps. - Oh, yeah. - I can hold on to 120s, 150s, and eat, I mean, that's a 300-pound single. - That's if you can do that. - Yeah, I couldn't do that. But that's my point. My point is-- - Yeah, the heaviest I can go now. - You can even front rack it, too. - Well, that would be, I couldn't front rack that much weight, but I could wrist wrap that kind of weight, you know what I'm saying? - Yeah. - The other one is your front-racking 150 dumbbells, dog. - Sure, dude. I'm impressed with the rack and the squat. The other one is like, heavy step-ups are also really good. Now, there's a balance component, so it's not gonna be as much of a strength builder, but it is phenomenal. So you could load, you know, grab a couple heavy dumbbells and do a very heavy step-up onto a bench or a step. So there's a lot of great exercise you could do, and you're really not missing out on a ton, because you don't have a squat rack. - Next question is from Make Wellness Elizabeth TWP. Before I started lifting, I was rather flexible. Now I seem to be tight all over, which is a bit frustrating. Am I not stretching enough, or is this a normal part of the process? - Cut out that last part, huh, dude? They also added Adam, Cowboy Seth. Why do they say that? - It's 'cause it's football season. - Ding! - Yeah, yeah, football season starts this week. - Okay, okay. So here's the deal. When you're building strength with certain exercises, let's say I only do five exercises and I get really strong at them. Here's what happens. I get really strong. In those movements, my body starts to recognize a discrepancy between the strength I have for that movement and the strength I have outside of that movement. And so what it starts to do is it starts to tighten you up so that you move less outside of where you have that strength. So you start to feel tighter. Now, the remedy to this with strength training is to do lots of different movements, to move in all different planes and use a full range of motion, in which case you won't feel tighter. You'll have more stability. But let's say you only do squats, deadlifts. Bench press, overhead press, rows, which are great muscle builders, but that's all you ever do. Yeah, you're going to feel tight going laterally. You're going to feel tight moving outside. You're going to feel tight rotating because your body is just rotating. really strong in this one uh particular way yeah and it's beneficial too for producing more force so it's like you know you don't want to be all flexible uh you know trying to approach these like heavy lifts so you know it's it's really it's about yeah like managing that uh based upon like range of motion and then getting more familiar with it do you think this can be sometimes too uh people that are overreaching in their training too a lot can cause tightness yeah because sometimes sometimes uh this can be me and this is always like my sign that like i'm i'm overreaching it's like i'm i'm pushing so hard the intensity in my training that i'm like constantly feeling sore and tight uh versus the appropriate amount of intensity i normally feel really good i normally leave the workout feeling really good i feel like i lifted the day before but i don't feel restricted and ah every time i move like oh wow really sore they're like that's all signs of overreaching for me yes um so possibly pure you now if you're following like a maps 15 protocol and not training to failure you're that's probably not your situation but sometimes that could be the possibility there's also this like you know you're what determines your tightness it's not the muscle it's the central nervous system that controls the muscle and so if your central nervous system is uh maintaining a certain amount of let's say tightness with a small muscle when that muscle is larger it can feel tighter because you're working with a tight muscle and you're working with a tight muscle and you're working with a larger muscle with the same kind of central nervous system signal so it's important when you build muscle and strength to train in a well-rounded way because it's not without its own risks like moving different planes of motion move with the full range of motion involve uh mobility and static stretching and what'll find what you'll find is this isn't going to be a problem and there's bodybuilders there have been pro bodybuilders who've maintained uh good balance and their flexibility like flex wheeler would do the splits on stage you know tom platts was famous for his flexibility and that's because they kept it up while they did their strength training and both of them were very going to maintain it yeah while you're building strength that's right next question is from sapir 25 24 how do you feel about not following a specific program but rather letting your body kind of guide you on what to do in the gym i find i'm more consistent and enjoy the workout much more when it's not a structured checklist i focus on getting strong at compound lifts and i track and progressively overload i just have a hard time staying on a program winging it makes my workout feel more like play hence the consistency i love this so long as you're not also going but i wish i could see this and i'm not seeing the change i want like so the follow-up statement to this is what matters to me because this is actually the place i want all my clients to get this is where i i operate from this place i don't go into a workout with structure because i'm not going to do a workout with structure i'm going to do a but i also i'm not trying to make crazy change right now i don't i'm not like i'm not going no specific goal yeah i don't have like a specific goal that i'm trying to achieve so i'm enjoying my workouts i do them for the sake of it makes me a better father it makes me a better husband it makes me feel strong i have good energy i sleep better i move more throughout my day those are the desired outcomes and treating my workouts like play will do that but if i'm like i'm trying to lose three percent body fat or i'm trying to get my my squad up to this i'm programming because then it makes it makes it different for this person i'd say you're fine uh because they're saying it keeps me consistent i'm having fun consistency trumps uh so long as it creates the workout isn't horrible kind of trumps everything uh but here's a deal like the people there are people who can wing it and also have excellent workouts but these are people who know how to work out they've been doing it for a long time they have the experience they have lots of experience like adam goes into a gym winging it but he's also got you know 30 years of experience training his body training other people you know somebody who's been working out consistently for six months suddenly says they want to wing it i'm going to say no yeah that's you you have nowhere there's there's you have no base to wing it from no so long as you're able to structure it appropriately so long as you're happy where your results are though yeah right i mean because i've you know what happens with people no experience wing it they either hurt themselves overdo it or they usually do the same thing too many times or the same thing over and over again right right which again my point if you're happy where you're at and you're not trying to make make change what if you're happy where you're at clap your hands stupid my bad if if you're not trying to make change you're happy this is like how i i would tell people that we're doing things like orange theory yeah like hey if you love coming here the community's fun you enjoy the workout and you're consistent and you're not trying to make change keep doing your orange theory keep doing your fun workouts it's on my heart but if you come to me and you go i don't i can't get this last you know five pounds of body fat off right man i'm not getting any stronger i can't my butt i can't yeah if you have goals that you're trying to do and you're winging the programming well i mean there you go there's your problem let me add to that adam i've had this happen too where someone's like i don't like structured workouts i have so much more fun doing my thing but i have these goals that i you know want to focus on and i'll say okay well give this a shot uh follow the structured program you know you know what ends up happening most of the time they come back and say they say you know what i like it better because they like the results yeah there's way more fun yes i mean you're exactly that's my point is that if you there's there's you you want more from your workout uh following a structured program is going to give you more but if you don't care like i know i know i'm sacrificing up a more aesthetic version of me or a stronger version i don't give a shit i don't care right now i'm not trying to do that i'm just i'm trying to do the things i said i'm trying to do and going with like winging it also to your point with 30 years experience i can go like this is probably best for my body it may also be the complexity like or it's that they're having to draft it up themselves versus like a lot of times it's alleviating for somebody to have this all just like oh here it's it's it's you know simple enough to where i can just go do this because it's right here i just look at it i do it now i'm just taking my mind out of the equation um so there's that part of it too which i like it's just like oh well you know and two why we reduce it down like a 15 minute protocol that's like the ultimate because it's like two exercises you know and it's so freeing you're right do you justin do you work out this way do you kind of go in and you kind of have a rough idea i have like yeah four or five compound lifts that i typically if i'm not doing the 15 protocol like if i do like a three-day schedule that's usually the same here i don't follow a program but i have a general idea of where i'm gonna what i'm gonna do and then based on how i feel but again this is i've been doing this but it changes as i'm there yeah i know this completely like i right now i'm all how i feel like right i know over the week i gotta make sure i hit every body part once or twice yeah it's i'm more of a 15 protocol so the two exercises are typically compound lifts yesterday was uh front squats and dips so those are nice those are my two movements the way i decided it uh i had leg stuff to do i hadn't front squatted in a long time yeah i've been doing a lot of back squatting so my time to switch it up and do front squats so i did front squats hadn't done dips uh chose the machine if i had the the belt and the weight i would have done weighted body weight but i didn't have the belt and weight so i did heavy on the on the machines um and then i walked for 20 minutes that was my that was my workout and that's how i say uh today my legs are really sore uh so if i go in i probably won't do anything for it if i do i'll do something very light maybe hamstring focused i'll do some like leg curl stuff just to touch them or something like that um and the last time i did any uh upper body stuff i did chest and shoulders so maybe a back exercise probably some back some back a pull-up or something will happen like that's and so i'll literally go off of how i feel and what i've done and that's kind of how what winging it looks like for me but you're to your point there's 30 years of experience of knowing how my body feels what are the best bang for your back exercises what have i been doing consistently so all that is even though i'm saying i'm winging it to just to nail home your point i also know what the hell i'm doing you're pulling from something yeah yeah next question is from burke himself what would each of the four of you do if you had to choose between the two of you would you choose between the two of you be doing if mind pump never happened so we have to we should guess for each other and if we do that are we being funny or are we being serious i don't know because i think sometimes it's both funny and serious at the same time so yeah uh i feel like justin would be a football coach yeah oh isn't that like isn't that like a can you just see him you would either a continue down the path of of being a personal trainer and just becoming more exclusive with clients and stuff like that because at one point he was training some pretty uh important people and he was like oh i'm gonna help people in the area because he's an excellent coach but i could totally see him do some kind of coaching maybe it's not far off i could see yeah i actually really enjoy i just it's such a full-time commit like i think that was the biggest reserve for me coaching yeah it was just like what am i doing i don't have time you know like to to give and like you really it's a year-round commit like it's not just like the season so yeah yeah you were also doing it while you're running this business though what's i mean so it's like if that if you didn't have this if i didn't have a all yeah maybe you would enjoy you'd enjoy the commitment sure that's that's not a bad call what about doug what do you think what doug would would would be i think you'd be in arizona because your daughter's there so you probably would have followed her out there i think he would lead iohaska trips yeah i'm big into that does he seem like he'd be a good sedona iohaska like uh wow wearing a feather necklace yeah dude giving up 30 man guides you know what i'm saying yeah i could see him either teaching language or uh or something involved cooking i could see you doing oh man yeah oh the cooking thing's good guess because i know he did insurance he did uh life insurance which paid the bills but i don't feel like you're are you you're not passionate about sales are you not sales no i'm not i'm very interested in marketing though so before my mind uh mind pump you know that was the thing that i presented to sal is like let's market maps anabolic let's create something and market it and so i was very fascinated with marketing and how you could sell things online so if it wasn't sal it would be somebody else yeah yeah that's true you were really into that for sure that's definitely true i don't know about you adam adam let's see exotic car sales that's a really good guess actually yeah that's a really good guess you can see that because i have always i've always said that if like everything fell out uh i would do something in sales obviously selling things that are that you like like inherit very expensive so because you need a big rip otherwise yeah exactly so yeah exotic exotic cars yachts mansions i would fall yeah yacht salesman yeah for sure or or private jets i would totally be into one of those i could totally get down like yeah so i mean i would love that i would love how do you get leads to sell a private you don't that's referral yeah i've matter of fact that i heard i heard someone say something one time that that was really interesting that so you've never seen uh a rolls royce commercial or a bagatti commercial but you know where they were what you don't see is that if you go to like a private jet event or whatever that where they're they'll bagatti will be there oh because they know that the buyers for private jet that's right that makes sense right and that's really why the rest of us have never seen any that said we're like how does rolls royce get these companies how do they get these customers they don't even waste their time with us you know what i'm saying they're at those and that's that's their customer base right there and so yeah no i would be super interested that's a that's a pretty good guess right there doug i think i could see myself i feel like uh so i might be like a baptist preacher no it's a good guess now dog i don't know i know i'm just throwing it out there you know that or you start his own religion no that is what you would do right now uh if you were not in mind pump right now i'd be serving somehow you'd be a pastor i would not be i don't think yes you would i don't you had to scratch that you have to go to school for that no you don't don't no you don't yeah you do no you do not you have to be no you just start your own church i guess you don't but i would not do that i would i would i would go all of them i know what do you mean you don't have to do that for anything for any church divinity school they will hire you yes i've asked yep not because i'm trying to become one because i'm curious i'm curious i'm like what does it say oh so i mean i mean that's not like a law that might be a standard that a certain church might have so maybe the church you asked has that standard yes yes but there is plenty of churches that would hire you to be especially with your background oh gosh especially with how charismatic and and and good you how you have a photographic memory you could read something i mean you would be great at it so i totally think that i would have five years ago if you asked me this question five years ago that would have not been yeah yeah the answer yeah yeah i think i would have liked to have been a teacher college professor yeah i like that uh but i mean it's hard to say without fitness what i would do because i love it so much i love every aspect of it working with people i love the science behind it i love how it helps people so to think like what i would do outside of fitness is really really difficult well i mean i don't know this is all i've done i don't think it's a difficult thing to do i don't think it's a difficult thing to do i don't think it's a difficult i think what we all hit on things that out outside of here doug you probably still loves reading books around marketing and researching the latest trends on that you love the conversations you have with eli and them on that that side justin's definitely on his side doing coaching stuff i'm obviously researching exotic car markets and stuff like that you i would argue you're probably reading watching or consuming biblical content more than you are fitness content for sure so i mean i think it all aligns pretty well for sure probably what i gotta say though the fitness stuff it translates so well do you guys know that oh it's such a parallel it's so wild uh how do you remember how do you remember yes okay i feel like i should get my flowers sometimes i gave you flowers all the time when you say what he's saying i used to tell you it was like bro wait until you start to dive in the word everything you start connecting all these crazy here yeah it's all in there it's crazy you know it's so funny when i said that forever and i've said it to you many times and then i do post the other day i do the the guys give me by the way you guys when we do instagram content it's like we're we don't that's not us coming i know yeah read this do this we're like that right so they they give me like uh you know five or six books that they pick randomly out of the books that i've read and they're like hey i want you to rate these oh cool yeah and then like in the comments is like you know where's the bible you know it's just like well i didn't get well that's number one yeah i know i go first of all it's like yeah great definitely you know that's a study because it was like it was the uh pass uh read or study oh you know and so i did that for like these like i don't know five books so that i've read or that i didn't pick they just randomly give me and then people are like what about this what about that i'm like well yeah you think i just run around flashing everybody oh my god hey i did so good and it's so good we had we actually had a ton of my favorite ones so we had a ton of t-shirts that was first off what you know was so good about that was i had no idea what that was yeah that's my favorite so my favorite part about today okay is is that we divide danny dude that our our our media team like i said does all the stuff none of us have any know what's going on and we're all where i don't see you justin doing his work dude i don't see you and vice versa so when i see it on instagram when i see first time it's first time and obviously when i see stuff that's odd when i see sal break down the science and something that's like okay i've heard that a million times but yeah but when i see something that i haven't seen like justin running around in a robe looking like he's naked i'm like what am i watching and i'm like what i have no idea what's coming and then i see they go oh that was what people don't know he was doing it to everybody he's got clothes on underneath but when he did to doug he surprised them so that was a real reaction that was yeah it was i'm still scarred i shout out to our media team uh they do such a good job i'm so proud of them and that that it makes it fun for me like i injured a little bit that was one of my favorite ads fell into the my favorite ads i've ever it's hard to fake fall you know like i'm glad other people are realizing they did a good job everybody did good look if you like the show come find us on instagram it's mind pump media thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted rgb super bundle at mindpumpmedia.com the rgb super bundle includes maps anabolic maps performance and maps the static 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