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If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only 1 place to go. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

You just found the world's most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pumped. Right, in today's episode, we answered live caller's questions, but this was after an intro portion. It was 58 minutes long today. So we're gonna talk about current events, family life, scientific studies, and much more.

By the way, you can check the show notes for timestamps if you just want to fast forward or skip around to some of your favorite parts. Also, you want to be on an episode like this 1, email us your question at live at mindpumpmedia.com. Now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first 1 is Ned. This is cannabinoid rich and CBD rich hemp oil products that help with things like inflammation, sleep, they can help with creativity, they can feel euphoric.

This by the way, 1 of the only CBD products to actually feel. Go give them a shot, try them out. Go to helloned.com, that's H-E-L-L-O N-E-D.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump and get 15% off. This episode is also by 2BI Organifi.

They make organic supplements for health, wellness, athletic performance, muscle building, and things that can help with the fat loss process. Today we talked about their vegan protein powder. It's also certified glyphosate residue-free. Go check them out. Go to Organifi.com, that's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com forward slash Mind Pump and use the code Mind Pump for 20% off.

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It's healthier to be fat and have muscle than it is to be skinny and not have muscle. Now I know this is a generalization, but it is true, generally speaking, to be fat with muscle than it is to be skinny with no muscle.

Is this for Justin? Yeah, it is for you, sir.

I feel so validated.

No, actually, whatever. Did you see this guy? Did you see his new Facebook profile? I saw it. I was gonna crop it and be like, there goes Justin again, putting his face on my body.

I'm surprised you didn't comment.

I did. I actually screenshot it, cropped it, and then never got around to post again And then I heard you're right.

I had another 1 of my asshole friends like asked me if I was on trend

You can't win are you fat or you're so buff that you must be doing

lots of drugs.

He trains

hard, man. Every day. He trains hard. He's planning to train hard.

That's so funny.

I actually really like this tip, right? Because, and a couple of things. 1, you know, you see sometimes these power lifters that have these big bellies and people are like, oh, power lifters aren't healthy. Look at their big old beer guts that they have and stuff like that. And then you also have people that carry extra body fat on them just genetically seem to have a higher body fat percentage, but then can do really athletic things.

And so it's not as simple as like, oh, just cause you look ripped or you look fit that you're fit and healthy. You can actually carry a higher body fat percentage and still be much healthier than what we would call back in the days, the skinny fat person.

Yeah, so, okay, so when I was doing research for the resistance training revolution, I was blown away by how protective muscle by itself was. Like, they have studies on obese individuals who lost no weight during the study. All they did was gain a little bit of muscle. And you saw significant improvements in things like insulin sensitivity. Because muscle's so metabolically active, it tends to balance out hormones, it improves insulin sensitivity, muscle is anti-inflammatory in the body.

Now yes, body fat itself by itself is also a risk factor, but muscle is so protective that, and of course we're not talking the extremes. You brought up the example of power lifters. So people are like, oh, but power lifters, of course, there's extremes with sports. So power lifters tend to be on the extreme end as well. I'm talking generally speaking, if you had 2 twins and 1 person had very little muscle but was also skinny, the other person had a lot of muscle but had higher than what would be considered normal body fat, the person with more muscle will probably be healthier.

First of all, muscle's mobile, it improves mobility, it decreases inflammation, improves insulin sensitivity. Little muscle is very unhealthy on the body. It just is. It causes lots of problems. The most unhealthy population are people with little muscle and lots of body fat.

That's when it gets real bad. So what's my point with this is, you know, working out, getting fit and getting strong, even if you don't get leaner, although that contributes to getting leaner, you have significantly improved your health just because you built some muscle.

Well, this also like coincides and goes right along with like our recommended advice. A lot of times in seeking muscle building as you're before even you're trying to lose weight so you're trying to actually like physically change your composition by adding more muscle to your body which is more protective have all those qualities you had mentioned but then long term is a better strategy on top of that for then getting leaner.

Way better strategy. I mean, when you also go to, you're also not including the things that could adversely happen if you all of a sudden cut calories and boost activity. So, you know, it's crazy because I think I started doing that well before I fully understood the science behind it. I just, through practice, I just realized it. I was like, wow, this seems to be a better strategy when I focus my clients on adding healthy foods, getting strong and lifting weights and not being concerned about the scale, even when they come in and say, Adam, I need to lose 100 pounds.

So I think

this just validates that. I did the same thing, but it was for different reasons. So it's kind of like I stumbled upon it. I did it because when a client came to see me 2 or 3 days a week, I knew I could at least train them right. The diet part was always hard because I'm not around when you're eating 7 days a week.

So I would always tackle the weight loss later.

Now,

when I say, look, at least you're here now, I'm going to train you. Let's just focus on getting you stronger. Let's build some discipline and consistency there. And then we can look at diet. And little did I know that that was actually the best approach anyway.

Because of course, more muscle speeds up the metabolism, improves your hormone profile, improves insulin sensitivity. It makes the weight loss easier. It makes the fat loss easier, I should say.

And so much more of a catalyst for all those other beneficial effects.

But mobility is a big 1. People don't understand this, especially as you age. Muscle is what makes you mobile. It's what makes your body able to move. And as you get older, look, there's a, there's, there's older, there's a lot of elderly people who are skinny and have terrible mobility cause they have no strength and no balance.

Their health is not good at all. Uh, versus someone who's older who might be a little overweight. Of course, there's extremes here. So someone watches like, well, yeah, if you're 500 pounds with muscle, that's not good. Like, okay, relax, everybody.

I'm not talking about the extremes and speaking generally, but if you're, let's say, 20 pounds overweight, but you have muscle and mobility, you can move, you're strong, of course, you're going to be healthier. By the way, the blood markers and the tests you'll get at the doctor will show this. If you take somebody and you get them just to build a little muscle, you'll see these improvements. Typically, more improvements with a little bit of muscle gain than you will with a little more fat loss.

So

it's just something that nobody talks about that needs to be discussed.

Okay. So I'm super curious. We, you know, when we get in here, we have the, I look up at the TV screen, I can see the notes that each of us have put up there for Doug. And a lot of times like I'll read and see, and I'm like, oh, okay, I know that's Justin, or I know where that's coming from. Sal, a lot of times, handles the partnerships and sponsors that we have, and so I'll see a snippet, and I'm like, oh, I know where Sal's going.

Okay, you've got Ned as fat loss. Like, I'm so intrigued by where you're going with this.

Bro, we've talked about this before. There's this really weird paradoxical thing that they keep finding in studies. So they find that people that consume or use marijuana on a semi-regular basis, consistently in the studies that they do, have lower BMIs.

Or leaner. Which is ironic if you're a weed smoker, like I have been, and you get the munchies and stuff.

That's why it's paradoxical.

That's why it's so crazy. Like you would think that it would be the opposite. Anybody who's, and that's 1 of the ways that I actually mitigate, well like weight gain or body fat is like I reduce my weed consumption at night or post dinner because I know that that causes me to eat and munch. So, and I'm familiar with a lot of these studies. I've always thought that's so weird.

So people were like, this is crazy. No, no, no. First of all, again, the studies are consistent on this. Animal studies show this. There's human studies that show this as well.

It's paradoxical again because everybody knows that weed or cannabis is supposed to make you eat more. It's associated with the monkeys.

And be lazy. And be lazy. Right.

You wanna move less. Like what the hell is going on? Eat onions and sit on the couch. Okay, This is how interesting the data is. Pharmaceutical companies right now, right now there are several pharmaceutical companies that have drugs in their pipeline, their development pipeline that are cannabinoid based.

Okay, so cannabinoids are the class of molecules that THC falls under, CBD falls under, all the cannabinoids found in the hemp plant or the marijuana plant fall under. There are currently drugs, like I said, there's several pharmaceutical companies right now who are researching cannabinoid-based drugs for weight loss and diabetes.

Oh wow.

Because they see the effects. Cannabinoids seem to, in many cases, improve insulin sensitivity. And the CB1 receptor, which is 1 of the cannabinoid receptors, So there's 2 of them that we know of. The CB1 receptor affects metabolism and the data is showing that it may speed up metabolism. In other words, activating this receptor may actually teach your body to burn more calories.

So, And again, pharmaceutical companies don't pursue something unless it's because, I mean, you know how much money it costs to take a drug from conception to market? It's like a billion dollars. They don't pursue just anything. They don't do that. But they are because it's really weird.

So NED and weight loss, obviously it's kind of tongue in cheek because Ned is a hemp oil product that's got full spectrum cannabinoids. The data is very clear on things like inflammation, euphoria, sleep. Those are things we know it works. But it is very interesting. And the reason why I'm bringing it up is we're probably going to see, at some point in the future, weight loss type products that are cannabinoid based.

Because again, these studies keep coming out.

So you said it's the CB1 receptor? CB1. So that's the main 1 they attributed most of the fat loss to?

They think because it does affect metabolism. And activating it seems to speed up the metabolism. But the insulin sensitivity 1 is a big 1. I know when I invested years ago, this company doesn't exist anymore, it got bought up. But GW, I think we're called, GW Pharmaceuticals.

They are the ones, they had a drug that was fast-tracked for a form of epilepsy, that's what got them known. Dravet syndrome, I think it was called. This is when Charlotte's Web, that strain of high-CBD cannabis became popular and it was growing in Colorado a lot.

Yeah, I was gonna ask because of like the ratios and all that, like have they figured out, you know, the pairings of that? Cause there's also like CBC, CBN and there's other like variations.

So THC has its own benefits, but it's the least, it's the 1 that's least likely to be used in medicine because of its psychotropic effects. Right, so like, you know, you want to take something for inflammation, you don't want to be high all the time. I mean, maybe you do, but most people don't. But you know, there's some benefits to the psychotropic effects. There could be maybe some therapeutic effects and stuff like that But they want to find the ones that affect you that have subtle, you know Maybe maybe just make you feel better, but really have effects on inflammation insulin sensitivity Anticancer, they're anti proliferative with cancer Cannabinoids have been shown the first study.

I remember out of Spain showed that it was anti cancer in brain cancer They showed to be anti cancer and liver cancer and other forms of cancer. So it's really interesting, but with weight and fat loss and insulin sensitivity, they're pursuing it, they're looking at it. And again, the data keeps coming out. And it's weird because I remember when the first 1 came out, they thought, oh, something's wrong. This doesn't make sense.

Like why are pot smokers have lower BMI? And they did another 1. Uh-oh, it's showing up again. Animal studies are showing it. This doesn't, that's why it's paradoxical, because they totally anticipated

them

to all

be heavier. Yeah, stick them

on this runner. Now, I wanna be clear. I don't, I think we all think that the science and the research around this is fascinating, fun to talk about. I don't think that you would recommend this as a

fat loss.

Although it may come out this way, right? Now, because more and more things now are moving in this direction, and maybe It's not the best fat loss type of supplement, but we're starting to attach it to health benefits in general. Do you foresee this as like a potential multivitamin stack of like becoming more of a daily usage thing that somebody takes on a lower daily dose.

I think it'll, I don't know if it'll go that far to where they give it to everybody, but I think it'll be very commonly used because the endocannabinoid deficiency syndrome hasn't been identified, but it's been speculated that a lot of people aren't producing enough of their own natural endocannabinoids because of stress, because of gut issues, because of maybe toxins and so when you produce less of your own endocannabinoids, well, the effects may be more inflammation, gut issues, you may have issues with sleep, you may have issues with anxiety and mood. And so supplementing with like hemp oil, which isn't gonna get you high, you'll notice it by the way, If you supplement with, if you take Ned, you'll feel it, you'll feel something, but you're not high. It's not like you're smoking. It's a

relaxed sort of calming. Yeah.

You just be like, wow, I kind of feel good. And you can tell, it's not like a, like, do I feel something? Like you can, you can tell you feel something. I think a lot of people who have like kind of just don't feel kind of good. They have inflammation, their sleep is kind of crappy.

Like this is, it's effective for a lot of people. I have family members, okay? My dad, my mom, I have an aunt, my grandfather before he passed away, they were using Ned on a consistent basis. I get texts from my dad all the time. I'm running low, you know, and he always offers to buy it, but of course I'm not gonna let my dad buy it.

I'm like, no, I'll give you some, but he used it on a consistent basis. My dad's got, you know, he's got lots of arthritis and joint issues just from hard labor working since he was a child.

Your dad's a savage, buddy.

Oh, yeah. I heard

his motorcycle crash story and it just blew my mind. Oh, yeah.

Oh, we were all in Hawaii

together. Yeah, he just rolled his way through the whole thing. And just because of his judo background and everything, like knew how to kind of fall through, but just like literally got thrown off his bike.

85

mile per hour

motorcycle crash.

That's so crazy.

At his age, dude, it was like a year or 2 ago or something.

Yeah, he broke his foot a little bit, but it's funny because he tells a story to Justin and he goes, and I'm in the street And I'm trying to get up and people like don't get up. He's like, I'm gonna get run over for it Yeah, dude, my we had an intervention My siblings all went to my mom afterwards to my mom's house and we're all like you can't stop riding motorcycles. Yeah, you stop riding motorcycles Yeah Were you are you

in the thread when I was giving him what he was talking all sweet and appreciative of his parents and shit all over it. We're talking about my family.

I don't know if I saw that.

Yeah, you didn't respond, so I don't know if you saw it.

I forgot what it was.

You were just talking about how appreciative you were of your parents and your family there. And I was making a comment about, oh, I was telling you, like they were asking, they wanted to pay for everything. And you're like, no, no, no, no, like what you've done has been so much

for you. And I

made a comment, I said, tell them how much money you made for the last 10 days while you were on vacation. And you're like, no, no, no, it's about this or that. My family has done so much, I could never repay them. And you were kind of like jabbing back at me when I was just like, bragging, telling you to brag about how much we made, so you shit all over my point. And so I came back and said, well, I guess if I had your parents, I would say

that too. 0000! Sounds like, wait, sounds like, wait. I have no sound, I just dropped the mic on. My favorite way to make you like shit.

Oh, what a dude. Yeah. I had a father. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Dude.

Well, I guess my. Killing me, dude. Yeah. What a jerk. Yeah.

No, it's all. No, I know.

It's all fair.

Fair play.

Yeah, you should. If we hung out a little more, Justin, I Guarantee you at some point my dad would have he would have told you some strength story or something like that And then he would have done something

yeah I forgot about that cuz I I would want I would like put him to the test I want to see his

he looks hair naturally strong to me.

He's He's in a lot of pain. He's older. He's a fraction of how he used to be with that, but still.

And he doesn't lift weights or train. He's like, you could so see that your brother got his genetics. Like your brother has that same look. They just

have this kind of build

to them. They look like they can lift heavy things, yet they don't lift

heavy things. It doesn't

even try,

it just has it. I told you like 4 years ago, my oldest thought I was making this shit up and he told my dad, he's like, you know, dad tells me all these stories, he goes, I think he's making them up. And my dad has that old, he's like this really old, heavy, like solid wood dining room chair or whatever and my dad goes, uh, can you pick it up from the leg on the bottom with your arm straight on the floor? I sounds like nobody could do that. My dad, he does it.

He's like, what the fuck? Yeah. My grandpa was a lot like that same same kind of cut, you know cloth Like he would do the same types of things where you'd like show me something where he would just like crush You know like like I was like a baseball or something He like just crushed it And like he could do things that like with his grip. Yeah. It was something about the grip back in the day was like a lot more emphasized.

Like, especially when you shook somebody's hand, you'd basically break. I was just to shake his hand. It felt like he was like breaking my bones. Well, they use their hands

all the time. I wonder

if that has to do with anything with that, right? So we've talked before about the huge decline in grip strength in men, and that's like 1 of the predictors for testosterone levels, stuff like that, right? I wonder if there's like a, in addition to that, there's also less emphasis on that. Because you're right, the generation before, the firm handshake and forearm. That

was their bench press.

You know what I mean?

It kind of was. Like the handshake and like the grip, like that was like the signal.

Arm wrestling, like arm wrestling was so popular when I was a kid. When I was a kid, like the whole family, everybody, all the men in the family arm wrestled. That was like a thing. You don't see that anymore.

Well, look, listen, if you do anything manual, anything hard, if your hands are weak, I don't care how strong your arms are, your back, your leg, it doesn't matter. You have to be able to hold it. And everything they did back then, working on your car back then, you would mess up your hands.

He was an airplane mechanic in the Air Force. So he was just like always cranking, yeah, and doing stuff with his fingers. And so, yeah, it got real strong.

Yeah, well, my dad, when he would put mud on the, because he did tile and granite marble and stuff. He holds, I don't know what it's called. It's got a handle and it's a flat metal like square. And you put the mud on

it. Scaffold, scaffold, scaffold?

I don't

know what it's

called. But you hold it and then he has a trowel in the other hand, which is like another flat rectangular thing. So he has a big pile of mud. It's like half a bucket of mud he would put on this thing. And he'd take the trowel and he'd throw it on the wall and then spread it while holding it.

Now when you're a kid and you see your dad doing this, it looks easy. It looks light. Yeah, like nothing. I was like, I don't know, 17, and I went to work with him I was helping him do a family member's house and And I look at him like that looks easy I said, but you know, I'm old enough to know that's probably not easy and he goes here try it out Yeah First of all holding this thing was exhausting because it's heavy, wet mud, and then like flipping it into

this stuff. Isometric load, just like the whole time you're doing it. It's funny we're bringing this up because I was putting Everett to sleep last night and I found myself like watching this YouTube video is just like at home and it just kind of came across And it was these 2 guys. I don't know if it was from like Thailand or Philippines and They literally like their whole YouTube is about they just make Huts and I've seen a set of my rules

like yeah, It

was literally just out of the dirt. They dug the whole thing out, this amazing modern looking like steps all the way down to this pool that they made. They had a running river nearby that they put like bamboo poles to like come all the way down do all the plumbing to basically like Pump into the pool and then they had like the hut they put like grass and everything for for the top

It's like a time-lapse

video beautiful. It's like it was like I was just sitting there. I'm like, I'm such a pussy

I Know you're so motivated because I know you've seen the price tag for what it's gonna cost to do your pool. I know how that came up, bro. You're YouTube-ing like, if I did this shit myself, what would it look like?

What would it look like? Oh, guilty, dude, oh no. That's totally what that is. That's why it came up. That's 100% why it came up.

I was just showing him, like, this is what hard work looks like. We were just mesmerized. You're gonna

show the workers trying to build your pool? Oh, really? Look at these guys. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do

that. You guys got all these machines. They just had a hoe and some fucking shovel.

And They made it happen. You should DM them

Hey guys, I fly him in

Tiki torches will do this.

Oh Yeah, I got I got stuck on that rabbit hole once. They got crazy videos, bro. The shit they build. It's insane.

It'll suck you in, watch.

It's funny. I bet you that's how you came across it, though. I know you were considering it. Yeah, what if I did this myself?

Yeah. That's hilarious. You

know, I gotta give Sal, you your credit where it deserved, right? Because I don't remember how long ago, and I don't remember if this was made it on air or not, but we talked about affirmative action. And you predicted, and it was quite a while ago. Again, I don't remember if we made it on the show or not, but I know you did say this that That's that's gonna be gone. It's only a matter of time before it's gone and that's exactly what happened now Of course, there's some people that are up in arms about it and think it's crazy and ridiculous but I wanted you to share your thoughts on it because it's something that you kind of foresaw a long time ago that it would that it would get thrown.

First off, California banned affirmative action in the 90s, in

90,

I want to say 97 or 98. So we banned it a while ago and on vote, everybody voted like this is ridiculous. Um, so this is a case that went to the Supreme court. That's basically saying, uh, that these, these, any of these colleges that receive any federal funding, which is all of them, basically, even the private ones can't use race as a way to, um, you know, admit people or not admit people, first off, I'll say this literally, literally people talk about racism. Okay.

It's 1 of the few remaining affirmative action was 1 of the few literal, in its legislation, racist laws, meaning race is in the law or the legislation or the description itself. Meaning if you're this race, this is your qualification. If you're this race, it's your qualification. In fact, I saw a chart that showed that if you were Asian American, if you were Asian, uh, and you scored better than 99% of everybody else,

you

were less likely to get into a college than if you were African American and scored better than 40%. Okay. Just to show the disparity based purely on race. I think I'm so happy it got destroyed because first off people say it's not fair this and that. No, no, no.

There are far better metrics if you're trying to help with opportunity, then race. So you're gonna tell me somebody who's a certain color, regardless of where they grew up, regardless of their education, how much money they have, whatever, that that is a better indicator than some certain other things. Like I'm the son of poor immigrants. My parents were very poor. My dad went to second grade is how far he went to college.

Okay. Because I'm quote unquote considered white and I didn't go to college. I don't care, but if I did, I would be in a different category than somebody else because of my race and Asian Americans You can be an Asian immigrant whatever Because Asians tend to perform so much higher in some of these tests there because of the race gets it scored they have to score so much better or get in. And that was the case. The case was that was discriminatory against Asian Americans.

Now I brought this up, not just to give you your credit, but also, I don't know if you heard the episode with the all in guys. They talked about this. And the part that I thought was most interesting was how this is going to potentially disrupt and change, you know, college applications altogether. Meaning this is also going to be the first domino, basically, to really disrupt the way they recruit athletes and also legacy.

Yeah, so here's why I disagree with that. Neither 1 of those were protected under the constitution. So meaning if you're a good athlete, you get recruited to a college, you could have worse scores, but that let you in because you're a high-performing athlete. That's not protected. Now, maybe it doesn't look good.

Maybe they're gonna get attacked because-

Well, so that was the argument that Chamath made, and he spoke to a Supreme Court judge who said that this is going to set the table-

It was a lawyer, Supreme Court lawyer. Was it

a lawyer? Fact. I thought it was a judge. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Okay, so anyways, they made the case that this is going to set the table now for those lawsuits.

Yeah. For someone else basically to say, now that I'm being discriminated against, here you have this dumb kid who's getting into, just cause he can dunk a basketball and I can't.

You know what the irony of that is, which is interesting, maybe a little controversial, but it's not just objective. So people saying, oh, this is gonna hurt in particular African-Americans if we don't use affirmative action. Now let's eliminate athletic scholarships, which I think will disproportionately hurt also African-Americans, because objectively, there tend to be more that compete at that level in many of these sports. So I don't know how you can hold both sides of that argument,

to be

honest with you.

Well, yeah, no, it's gonna be, that's why it's gonna be really interesting to see how this all shakes out. It sounds like it's going to disrupt how education is done completely with as far as admittance to school.

Yeah, no, the legacy thing I kinda understand, which is like, You know, I went there, so now you're more likely to get there.

So are you pro that or not? This is also why I wanna bring this up. I wanna hear your guys' opinion on that, because

in terms of like alumni and like how

much they're funding. Yeah, I feel like I have probably like a controversial, like I feel like I like that, And I know a lot of people probably don't like that. And the reason why I like that is if I, if I came from what I came from, I worked as hard as I could. I educated myself. I went, went to college.

I got into Harvard as hard as it would be, Man, part of me, I would want that to be a little bit easier for my son because I killed myself to get there. And so I'm not so anti that as everybody else is because everybody I'm sure would think that like, oh, that's so unfair that your kid has a leverage. Well, he does because I fucking sacrificed a lot for him to do that. I want him to have a little bit of leverage. So, and if it was truly a private school, then I would think that would be fair.

Now where it becomes unfair in my opinion is that they're federally funded.

Yeah, there isn't really

a few. So what

I don't think is fair is that you have to pay taxes that go to helping my son get leveraged to get in. That part is where I don't think it's fair.

And that's the argument, is that there's very few that are 100% privately funded. The private colleges receive millions of dollars in federal funding. So when it goes like that, then the arguments can be made. The athletic 1, look, you're a good basketball player, football player, you're bringing the college money. Like you're a valuable asset, that makes sense to me.

Or like, okay, whatever. It's also a talent, by the way. It's not just the color, you're not born, it's not like color your skin, where you just walk in or you write on

a piece

of paper.

Yeah, but again, that goes back, that goes, I agree with that too, if it's private and you're not taking federal funds. But if you're taking federal funds, how's that fair to my son just because your son's my your son's gonna be more athletic than My son the way it's going sure, right? So so so So what but my son maybe ends up being smarter, right? And but your son gets to get into Harvard and I have to pay tax dollars to help him out because he can dunk a basketball and my son gets a better test scores than yours. You know what I'm

saying? So- I can see an argument for that, but it's not in the same category as purely based off of race.

Oh,

I agree with that too. But I think that's why the lawyer was making that case was like, this is like the first domino to make the rest of those fall because it's going to be really easy to make a legal case against the athletes and the legacy students.

It would be the federal funding aspect of it that I could see being iffy, but race is a protected, you know, it is protected and it is literally racist to say, Oh, your, your score is this, but you're Asian or, but you're white or, but you're whatever, or you're Hispanic or you're black. Therefore we can adjust the scores and do all this other stuff. By the way, people who are like, Oh, um, you know, uh, people of this color or people in this category they tend to suffer from more of this other stuff. If you wanna use a better metric, use like did they grow up with money, without money?

Economics. Yeah,

also. A dad without a dad.

Yeah, like single parent household. That makes more sense to me and I can get that. And then the other part is like, you wanna talk about disparity, forget the higher education. That's bullshit, don't look at that. Look at public elementary, public junior high and public high school.

You know, that was the first time Jason Calcanis said something on the show that I like 100% agreed with. I thought his opinion on the way that we should solve education, and not only is the voucher direction

and

make schools competitive, but also if you want to address disparity, you got to do it from K1, kindergarten. Kindergarten up is where it begins. And if you're not giving, I mean, it's crazy. I'm so intrigued by this conversation too, because Katrina and I were just talking about this. Like, you know, I didn't start any sort of formal school until I was 5.

My son's been in school since 2. And like watching him like right now, and right now 1 of the things that we do at the dinner table, we do a lot of like these like math problems and tracing and alphabet stuff. And I'm thinking, dude, I've been doing this with my son at 3 years old and 4 years old before he even gets to his, like he's gonna have such an advantage compared to what I had in school. I struggled in school. School didn't come easy to me.

And I think that that is a major advantage more than anything else, is the ability to be able to educate at a young age and get them started.

Look, if you ever wanna see a gross disparity, the kind that you're like, how is this even possible? Go to public schools. Go to public schools in an inner city, go to 1 in a wealthy suburb. It is the biggest disparity you've ever seen. And they're all publicly funded.

And they have no other option.

It's insane. And the problem is you have no choice. You live in this neighborhood, That's the school your kid goes to whether you like it or not

Yeah, that's the biggest glaring problem

and it's all publicly funded Do you know much a public school in California gets per student per school year on average? Yeah, like $16, 000 a month Excuse me a year a school year.

Imagine if he gave that voucher to the parents here So they could decide yeah, you

know pick the school your kid goes to. And then the school has to accept it because it's whatever. It makes it much more, that makes it much more fair. But basing things off of race, that's, I mean, that's the literal definition of racism. So I'm glad it ended.

And it's so funny to me how people position it as being racist by ending affirmative action. Uh, it's interesting. Those people tend to be the racist ones because what they're literally saying is if you are this color, not if you grew up in this area, not if you didn't have 2 parents, not if your dad or mom was incarcerated or you grew up poor, not any of that. If you're just this race, then we need to lower the standards to let you in. Those are the real racist people, not the people who are saying you got to be let in based off of your scores.

And if we consider anything, consider your individual life and what happened there, not just, you know, the color of your skin.

Yeah.

Insane to me. So I'm glad it ended.

You guys want to talk about title 9 and trans or? No. I didn't know if you want to keep going on this. Really big Doug Puffer up over there. Controversial train.

I just, I just tweeted. I just retweeted.

Wait, didn't that, didn't that girl actually just go through court by the way I don't know if he said didn't the girl who refused to play. I think that's the 1 right? Is that what's going on? She got, she got, went all the way to court, didn't? Are you familiar with

this stuff? I don't know where it's at right now. So I was half joking.

Yeah. No, oh, you were? I thought you were serious. That's why you were like alluding to that.

No, I mean, I wanted to know if you guys had heard any like developments.

So you remember the girl that I can't wish it. I'm hoping my producers can save me right here because I can't, I want to make sure my facts are straight on like, I

don't think it's been heard yet, but I

think what college, what college she went to and she was the 1 who refused to play in the,

it was a swimming, right?

Yeah. Uh, track.

It was a track.

So I don't think it's that either swimming or volleyball.

Okay.

Yeah. That's what I thought. Or that's what I thought it was. But I mean, I, I know that court case just happened. So I was actually looking to ask 1 of you, hoping 1 of you guys that had followed it because I know I

had your

mic is not plugged in Andrew

no no why it's not that's all right so so it's already happened multiple times we've seen different court cases so okay so it's interesting You said that I literally retweeted this insane article, insane article. It's just so crazy that we're discussing this. Someone wrote an article and said the re the same, the same people who tried to oppress women, uh, are the ones trying to keep trans women from competing or something like that. Like it's, it's still the patriarchy and it's still oppression of women or whatever. I think this is so crazy to me.

Again, like I said, with the affirmative action, the real sexist people are the people who are saying that That trans women should be able to compete with biological women. There's no differences, whatever Let

him not acknowledging any of the differences.

It's yeah Biology it's so crazy to me that they're doing that because it's going to destroy women's sport.

Well, it's crazy to me that like this, even a discussion like this, you can't have it without being attacked in somebody calling you transphobic. It's like, wait, we can't have an intelligent conversation around the biology and science advantage that this person has versus another person and just discuss, is this the best approach to it? Because I'm not necessarily saying I know the answer to how we solve this. I think I have some better ideas than what we're doing, but I definitely don't know all the answers. But just to have that conversation, you get thrown in a category of being transphobic because you're worth discussing it.

I think that's ridiculous.

Let's just make believe if you're just going to dismiss the fact that there's differences. There's biological characteristics that are completely different. We have to be able to stick with the actual science and biology in order to make decisions on what's fair and what's not. That's what sports is,

what's fair.

At least have a conversation about it.

Well, look, it's so crazy we even have that. Look, you can't erase the differences simply by changing hormones. You just can't. If you put me, you shut my testosterone off. You put me on estrogen.

Yes, things are gonna change. Yes, I'm gonna lose muscle. I'm gonna lose strength. I'm gonna lose bone density. But not enough to make it so that if, like I was born a woman.

Now, people always like to use this example of like, oh, there's a woman that could squat 500 pounds, is stronger than you, and there's guys that can barely, you know, do a single pushup. But no, no, those are only extremes.

They're outliers.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, but generally speaking, it's not just testosterone that makes men stronger. There's other things that also make us stronger and faster and that kind of stuff.

Well, you also, the way to squash that argument too is you can't, you don't compare the strongest deadlifting woman to us. You compare her to the strongest deadlifting man. And the strongest, the fastest, everything. When you compare the sexes like that, it's not even close, it's not fair at all.

And what it does is it shuts, I mean, the reason why there were categories to begin with is so women could compete so they could get scholarships. So they can have their own, and they're going to race trying

to elevate women to you have a,

by the way, you don't see this argument. You don't see this

argument with

trans men.

I know, I know.

You don't see a bunch of dudes who are like, hey, I'm not competing because there's a trans guy. They don't do that, why? Because they get their asses kicked. That's just, I mean, there may be an outlier here and there, but they just lose.

So the fallout is happening, right? We're seeing these court cases. Andrew says it's already, there's already been several. It's only gonna get crazier and worse. What's the outcome?

What happens? What do you guys think?

I think eventually they're gonna have to-

Separate category?

Yeah, there has to be a different way to allow competition, obviously, but it can't be integrated. There needs to be separate categories.

I mean, is it that or do you just have to compete in your original sex?

I don't think they're going to do that because you do lose performance.

I mean you do but that's by your choice.

Yeah, I mean that's another option.

I mean I feel like that's the-

That's true,

that's another option. I feel like that's the only option until there's enough to actually create a league. You think there's actually a big enough league for trans women basketball or trans basketball? Like I don't see enough to actually create a league to create, and that's why they can't do it that way. So they've got to go somewhere right now.

That's kind of where, why we're where we are.

So to me, yeah, exactly. I think, and I think that's where we made the mistake was thinking that, oh, this is the best place, you know, to, to put them is where they are, what they identify as now. But I think the more fair way to place them is what you originally

were. You know, and people need to understand this because the threat from a lot of this how they're pushing it and what I mean by pushing is like the same sports and this other stuff is Is to women it's not really 2 guys like, you know If they like like restrooms separate restrooms, okay, the whole the whole argument separate restrooms Men don't typically feel threatened by going into a bathroom and a woman walks in. Some women do feel threatened, and rightly so. Like Men are several times more likely to assault women than vice versa. We tend to be stronger, more aggressive.

We commit more of the violent crimes. And people who deny like, oh, the threat thing, like that's a real reality. So it's the women that feel threatened. Why do we have

laws? It's to protect people.

Well, that's the threat feeling, right? I don't feel threatened. I could go in a woman's bathroom, I'm not gonna feel weird. Woman going to a man's bathroom,

she

might feel a little, oftentimes feel a little weird, threatened, right? If I walk down the street, if I go down a dark alley and I see a group of 5 women sitting down by the street drinking beer, I'm gonna walk by them, I'm not gonna feel threatened. Most women are gonna feel maybe some threat or some fear, right? Rightly so. Like I, like I, there's, there's some statistics there that backed it up.

Sports, those categories exist not to protect men. Men didn't create this, the category to be like, we don't want women competing against us because we're going to, you know, we need our own category. It was for women.

So

a lot of this is, is, uh, is, is, is it's women that are feeling some of the stuff. And so, and look, rightly so, we got to have a real conversation, you

know, and

it's not transphobic and other stuff.

It's just real life. Yeah. Live and let live. But at the same time, we're talking about like sports and the integrity of the sport. And I just think that it does need to be discussed.

You know, speaking of men committing violent crimes on women, Did I tell you what happened to my sister? What? Yeah, my sister Cassie.

What happened?

This just happened when we were all on vacation. In fact, it was the day before. I freaked the shit out of me.

Oh, no.

We're all getting ready to get... We're at the house, at the truckie house. I'm getting ready to get in the truck, Katrina and me and the baby. And my sister calls, and my sister never calls me. She knows to text me first.

You know, what are you doing, and stuff like that, and then she'll call. So just to directly call me, I looked at her, and I'm like, that's weird. I better answer it, right, even though I was in the middle of loading the truck. So I pick it up, and she's hysterically crying. And she's, like, catching her breath, and she's just like, -"This guy tried to kill me."

-"What?"

Is what she starts her fucking sense of. -"I fucking run." -"Oh,

my God." I'm like, tell

Katrina, get back to the car. I'm like, where are you? Where are you? I'm coming right where, and she's just, and she's trying to catch her breath. And I'm like, what happened?

What's going on? Where are you at? Who's by you? And she catches her breath. And she tells me that this guy tried to run her off the road, literally.

Like a road rage thing?

Bro, destroyed the side of her car, run her off the road.

He actually hit her car?

Oh, bro, slammed her car. What? She was freaked out. Did she

get his license and everything?

No, none of that. Didn't get a description, license, nothing. So she was wedged between a semi and another vehicle that was driving really slow, and the guy behind her was aggressively riding her ass and coming up, kept trying to push her forward. So that she brake checked him. And after she brake checked him, this dude comes over on the side, comes up, gases it, gets alongside her and fucking wham, slams her off the road,

dude. Wow.

Yeah, scared the shit out of her. Scared the shit out of me, man. She started it with this, someone's trying to kill me. Oh my God, my heart's

gonna sing, man. Now does she live? Awful. She lives in Nevada. Yeah.

Does she have a firearm? Does she carry? Because I know the laws.

So she does have a firearm. And at that moment, I didn't ask her if she had her gun on her or not. I mean, the

guy- Because that would be legal defense, right? Because that's a deadly weapon, a car.

That's right. So she could have- So Tom got there, her husband got there to make sure that when they filed the report that it wasn't an accident, it was an assault with a deadly weapon. Like that's what they were trying to do. And so it did get filed as that, but I mean, there was no, I mean, the guy got away. I mean, he hit her and then took off.

Yeah, I didn't tell you guys that. It was so brutal.

So you

just made me think of that with like men acting out in violence. You know,

dude, that's why, so I tell, I actually had this a while ago.

I know where you're gonna go

with this. I had this conversation with my daughter.

Yeah.

And I said, you may feel emboldened at some point to flip a guy off, get in his face, maybe slap a guy and lots of guys won't do anything back, but there's the occasional piece of shit that may, and you could get very hurt. So I told her, I said, don't ever do anything. Um, and not consider that there may be a violent response, um, from a man.

The exact thought that's went through my, I mean, obviously my sister is hysterical in that moment. The last thing I'm going to do

is yeah. Yeah. Scold her. And his response was not, she didn't deserve it.

Right, right, right. 100%. But I mean, it really was like that a way. I mean, I'm careful that, you know, even being a male that I know can do some damage, you just never know what someone, what someone's carrying. And then you also have to consider this, when somebody is driving like that and has that kind of road rage, so with that, you have no idea what happened in their house.

You have no idea if they're in fuck it mode. They're in fuck the world.

They could have a

psychiatric break. I mean, we've all had a day like this before where you've crossed the line of what your limit is and you're going like the next mother. You're just looking for a reason. You're looking, I'm looking for the next motherfucker to cross a line with me. And it's gonna be his worst day because I've already had mine and I'm looking for a reason to get all this rage out.

And if someone's already acting that way on the road, there's actually probably a high percentage that person is in that state of mind already. So risking flirting with that when you're not protected or you're not with more people is, boy, is that really dangerous.

I remember years ago when I was dating my ex-wife, this was a long time ago, she flipped off a guy that cut us off and I had a conversation with her and I said, listen, I said, when you do that, you're basically saying my boyfriend's gonna fight you because you don't know what the other guy's gonna do. So you ask me before you do something like that because it ain't gonna be you that's gonna, have to trade hands with somebody, it's gonna be me. You gotta think of that when you do that kind of stuff. But yeah, I've had this conversation a couple times with my daughter, said don't ever, don't ever think that a guy's not gonna do something back to you just cuz he's a guy a lot of guys won't That there's a jury

that will but there's always that asshole out

There's always that piece of shit that'll do something and then you're gonna get hurt. So I'll be very careful

Yeah, Anyway, I saw 1 of you had the the recession notes up there and stuff And I was curious to let what you've been paying attention to like with what's going on in the economy The housing market is that you sell?

No, it isn't but from I have been kind of hearing that it seems like it's reversing Yeah, seems like things are coming out

That's what I think is yet So you that but then also you have this this looming what might happen with some of these loans The Airbnb fallout have you read what's

a percent drop

right Airbnb?

Yeah, yeah,

So there's a lot of people that used to play the arbitrage game on Airbnb, which is basically where you rent from somebody else and then rent.

And then do Airbnb.

Yeah, you Airbnb out.

Is that

what's happening?

Yeah. So there's that part of it. That's having a massive fall. Then there's the other part of I think they're called DSCR or DCSR, I'm probably get the acronym wrong, types of loans, which basically you do not have to show income on like the old, like kind of old loans where you just prove that it, the income. And because Airbnb was blowing up in the last 4 or 5 years, I could go get this property and say a random area or let's use our example of Park City, what we have and I could go, hey, this rents this a night times 70% occupancy over the years and that.

So I'll be cash flowing this much and then they would approve loans even if that person only made 40 grand a year on- Because

of how much they potentially could make on the market.

That's right. And those are falling out because of the decline in the Airbnb, so they're not- Wow.

What are the rules with that in terms of like, if you catch somebody, let's say you're the owner of the house and like they're listing it on Airbnb and like getting rent.

I don't know what the ramifications are, but it is illegal to do that without approval. So but you

can do it. You can't be legal.

So it's it is if you approve it.

So

yeah, yeah. So like our buddy Lawrence, I remember, was doing the arbitrage thing a couple years ago over here on a property, but he worked the deal out. Like he literally told the owner who wanted to rent it.

I'll pay you the rent.

Yeah, he says, I'll pay the rent, but I'm gonna short-term lease this.

Well, that makes sense if they're transparent with it. But imagine if you're the owner of the house, and then you look under your listings there. Bro,

I bet that happens all the time.

Right, I wonder about that.

I bet that happens a lot more than you hear about. I'm sure that happens. I mean, we know as homeowners and our landlords, like, you know, it's not like you're checking up on every 1 of your properties all

the time. And if

you're collecting rent every month,

there's no reason to go.

Yeah. I mean, we have a company, I don't know if you guys know this, 1 of our Oklahoma properties that is rented to us does that. So they do arbitrage, that's their business. Is they rent from us, we get the stable income for us of the rent, but they turn around and they actually have a business that specializes in finding like engineers and companies that are businesses that have a lot of employees that-

They'll rent it.

Yes.

And then have people-

And then they rent by the room to like that company.

And if

you're a landlord, you're like, sure, You're paying me.

Yeah, we don't we don't care like we I mean for us as long as the Agreement on the price per month was cash flowing for ours that we're more in the long-term game not about cash flow for us So it was like hey, it's no-brainer. We're cash flowing a few hundred dollars a month on that property They can go try it They can risk trying to make thousands of dollars as long as we get our stable.

Try and

make a

cream on top of it.

Yeah, our stable monthly. That also brings up though why that was like 1 of our headaches when we first rented out. They tried to, they had a hard time renting it out right away. So for like 3 months, they were losing money because they were in a contract with us to pay and they tried to pull some shady shit with us like over the corner lot and there wasn't a fence there and people driving over it and oh, we couldn't get the internet guy to find the address because it was on Zillow.

Trying to nitpick.

Oh, they were. And I remember because Jerry manages this for us, right? And so I'm-

Remember those days when Adam was super mad and you're

like- Yeah. Adam's so pissed off now.

So, hey,

those were some

of those days.

I was super heated about that because I'm getting it from Jerry going like, hey, they're trying to sue us over this. I'm like, what? I'm like, that's not even possible. And then I do a little bit of digging, go, oh, okay, I know why.

They're doing the whole, they're playing that game.

Yeah,

they're playing that game because they lost a bunch of money in the first few months. Their whole business is built off of leveraging that they can rent it out for more, if they lose 3 months of rent on us, they can already chalk up the whole year not being profitable even if they

rent it out. So they do

the nitpick game. Yeah. Oh, cover this month when I can.

They try to hedge it by, yeah.

Yeah, I'm like, oh, okay, I see what's going on.

And Adam don't buy it. Gouging.

Adam's the wrong guy to

do that with.

Hey, so I'm gonna take a left turn. I think I brought this up on a past episode. I told you guys I was considering ketamine therapy. Did I tell you guys about this?

You did. Can I

ask you how the therapy's going? Where are you at with that?

Sorry. I think I'm gonna pursue ketamine therapy. So ketamine therapy's approved, FDA approved. It's legal here. This is done with doctors and therapists.

It's all legit. And so I'm diving in deep before I sign up for this and see what it's all about. Fuck, this is remarkable. It's remarkable how much ketamine improves neuroplasticity. Literally, they could see it.

They could see the dendrites that come off the neuron in a stressed brain are short under ketamine. They grow. And you have this period of time after 1 session, it's like a week long, where your brain is hyperplastic. And you can influence changes, actual physical changes in the brain during that period of time. And so the way that it's organized, this is an eight-week period.

Once a week, you do the therapy under the influence of ketamine. And I was talking to this individual about its effectiveness and she's, she, she, she administers it and does it. And I said, so how effective is this? And she goes, I have people who are severe trauma, like we're talking about like severe, severe, like think about the worst case scenario, abuse and that kind of stuff. She goes, and after 8 weeks, it's like they're a completely different person.

She's like, It's like years of therapy in this short period of time. Super crazy exciting.

So I've been hearing tons of stuff about that and we've talked already about MDMA and psilocybin and stuff like that. Now, are you abandoning the other therapy or have you already abandoned that?

No, no, no, I'm gonna keep doing all of it.

And have you done more since we've talked last?

I know we've

only- A little

bit, but then we were on vacation and stuff

like that.

Yeah, we only vacationed.

Oh, you mean the EMDR?

Yeah, thank you, EMDR. EMDR, yeah. Because I've actually, I don't know if you've seen, we've had several people that have asked me about your updates on how that's going because you had been sharing that with us.

Yeah, I've done a couple of them. 1 of the sessions was so impactful that it really did change how I viewed certain things in childhood, like in a fundamental way, 1 session. So it was pretty remarkable. I'm excited to experience what therapy under the influence of this, they call it a psychotropic, so it's not a psychedelic, right? Ketamine, psychotropic, of what that's going to be like.

The research on it is fascinating and remarkable. You guys know that, by the way, the reason why FDA is approving these now is because of all these continual wars that we've been in. Such a high percentage of suicide among soldiers because of, do you know the leading cause of death of American service people?

Suicide.

Suicide. More of them die in suicide than in war. So the government is like, and they see the data and they're like, all right Let's look at this because this is not this is not working out well for us

Is it is it getting too personal to ask you what you what shifted fundamentally? Oh, man I'm so fast in therapy style.

Leave all

the listeners Oh my God. I'm just so fascinated. I'm so fascinated

in therapy. So I'll just leave all the listeners on. But so he's still having then great, I guess the takeaway though, is still having great breakthrough.

I mean, you know,

still been incredible.

Yeah, I mean, our generation stigmatized, I think, a lot of, you know, kind of therapy and that kind of stuff. The way I look at it, and I stigmatized it myself, to be quite honest, but the way I look at it is, if you're growth-minded, then being able to self-reflect with an expert or person who understands how to do that with you. You're just gonna grow faster.

So you

wanna be a better person than, and my motivation is I'm a father, I'm a husband. I wanna really be a good, especially a good father. So I'm like, all right. And I know ain't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. So like,

it's such a super hack because even if you're somebody who's into reading self-help, right. And you are growth minded, you still have your own bias and you have a lens that you see things through.

You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you don't know. The bias and the narrative they've already written

about you. Yeah, so I mean, and that's not to knock self-help or knock being personal growth on your own because I think either you can make a lot of headway just in that alone, right? I think you can have a lot of breakthroughs, but there still is this filter that you look through because of how you were raised and just having an outside non-biased person help you reflect on that is paramount. The benefits of that is tremendous.

But again, with these substances, what they're finding is, because emotions, especially strong emotions, strengthen thought patterns, okay? So if you had a scary thing happen to you, or Like a lot of people don't necessarily have like a big trauma, but they have what are called little traumas, right? So it's like, well, none of these crazy things happen to me, but you know, I was kind of neglected throughout most of my life. Or there was a lot of, you know, it was kind of tumultuous when I was a kid or whatever. Those things can, when you think about them and really address them and talk about them, invoke those strong emotions.

And you can't really process through it because those strong emotions just strengthen that same behavior. So what these substances do, like ketamine, ketamine is a disassociative. So let's say something really bad happened to you, you get in a car accident, you almost die, you try to think about it and process it, all it does is bring up those emotions, even though intellectually you can process it, those emotions still strengthen that visceral response that stays with you. So now every time you get in a car, for example, you get scared or you feel anxious or whatever. With, for example, ketamine, it disassociates you from that.

So now I don't get that, ugh, that feeling.

You get like mentally reframed, but you can't like change what you feel.

You can emotionally reframe. Now I can visit this scary thing and I don't get the same reaction and I've created a new pathway. And then I can strengthen that pathway through, you know, repeated therapy.

Now, how is that cell different than psilocybin? Because that's actually 1 of the ways that I was, we were just, we had this conversation with 1 of our best friends and they're a married couple, good friends go back way back. And we were expressing like we've utilized psilocybin for these, and I described it with that exact way. So how are they different? Are they similar in that way?

They're similar in what they're showing in the studies, but they're different substances.

Right, they're very different substances.

Yeah, but they're similar. Like the psilocybin studies that blow me away are the end of life ones, which are crazy. So people who are terminal, Like you go to the doctor, doctor's like, you're gonna die in 2 months or 3 months. Like depression, anxiety, obviously skyrocket. They did a study with people who were terminal who did psilocybin therapy.

I don't remember what the percent, it was crazy number. It was something like

80.

I thought it was almost

90%.

It was crazy. It was like a vast majority. It was like 80 or 90% of them felt at peace. So you're gonna die in 2 months, imagine how you'd feel. Oh my God, my wife, my kids, my family, my business, what do I do, what's it like?

They came out of therapy at peace. How crazy is that? Nobody's ever been to a show that with that type of stuff, except for maybe like really powerful religious experiences, which is what people are kind of equating it to.

So

anyway, the research is gonna be, the research on it's pretty amazing.

That's why

I suggest. Speaking of research, I wanna bring this up because this continues to come up with people and protein quality and stuff like that. And I know this we've hammered this home, but I want to say this. If a majority of your protein is not from animal sources, you're going to need more protein to do the same thing as the animal sources. Okay, so if you're a vegan or a vegetarian, you hear us talking about, you know, 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight is optimal.

You're probably gonna need more like 1.2 of plant protein to equal the same benefits and studies just support this. So protein powders can be very valuable for a lot of people. If you're a vegan, you probably need a lot. You probably need a lot of vegan protein powders to get those benefits of protein.

Now, is that because it's singly sourced or like, what about things like Organifi where they use a blend of different things?

Better than single sourced plant proteins. Still though, the assimilation of bioavailability is still better with animal sources. But yeah, so Organifi is a good example. If you're a vegan or you don't eat a lot of animal sources of protein and you want to supplement with a vegan protein, Organifi is a great 1. And have 2, 3 servings a day.

Really boost your protein up with it to get those protein benefits.

Because- The beautiful part about that is that like my digestive system can handle 2 or 3 servings of Organifi.

Yeah, me too.

Where I can't handle 2 or 3 servings of whey.

Yep, same here, same here.

For a

lot of people it seems to be easier to digest.

Oh, hey, so I have a good shout out for us today. And it's a good friend of ours. And I was blown away the first time. And then I'm now, I think, episode 3 that I've seen him in. And That's our buddy Robert Oberus on Righteous Gems.

He's in the Righteous Gems though? Isn't that so cool

to see him there? He's just in it.

Yeah, he's a...

He's like got a role, dude. Like legit. Wow. Has lines. Good for him.

Yeah, I was like so blown away. Cause I had seen like he did a post a while back when maybe he was doing some filming.

Yeah, I'd seen him hanging out with the other actors.

Yeah, and I thought, oh, maybe he just has some friends on the set, or maybe he's got like an extra, because he's got this big, massive physique, so they found a way to make him like a cool extra, or whatever like that. No, dude, he's got like legit role. Super excited for him. He's a

great guy. You should follow him on, if you don't follow

that guy.

He's a World's Strongest Man competitor. He's a giant. He's also super nice guy, fun, great dude. He's the

only guy that's made me feel like

a little baby. He picked you up.

Remember, you guys already picked me up and threw me in the pool and almost like slammed my head

in a bottle of soda. I still have that picture. I'll share that with Andrew for the

YouTube channel. By the way, we created MapStrong with Robert Oberst because he's a World's Strongest Man competitor and we wanted to bring him to get a real strongman perspective on how to program that workout. It was actually written with him, so. Yeah, this

is how he became friends, right? We all hit it off so much after that and have remained in contact. So probably due to have him back on the show, but shout out to Robert Oberst. I think it's so cool that he's on Righteous Gemstones.

Legion is a company that makes excellent athletic performance enhancing muscle building fat burning supplements. These are the best Hardcore high performance supplements you'll find Anywhere and they're legit go check them out go to buy legion.com. That's be yle gion Calm forward slash mind pump use code mind pump and get yourself a discount. All right back to the show.

First caller is Noah from Maryland.

What's up Noah how can we help you?

Hey guys Thanks for taking my call. I know now is usually when people tell you how much they love the show, so I'll skip that. But I love you guys. I love listening. I love your programs.

I'm 29 years old. I've got about a 15 year training background and, uh, started listening to the show. I liked it. Ran a handful of programs back to back to back, and I've gotten as strong, muscular lean as I have in that time and most injury free. So

thank

you all for that. Can I give you a quick compliment with a little bit of detail about split? Because I feel like it doesn't get enough love.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

All right. I don't want to give away any secret sauce, but I really like the way it, uh, it's the um, double split and it mixes a little bit of bilateral, uh, barbell work for each and then, uh, comes back around unilateral and more split stance on the second time around for each push pull legs in the week. I just think that's really cool.

Yeah. Keep part of the programming. Yep. Thank you.

Yep, absolutely. Um, anyway, I just went through a phase of, uh, training a little bit like a maniac. I had a ton of free time on my ends. I just finished PT school, passed my board exam and started up my first job as a physical therapist yesterday, actually. And yeah, thank you.

And so in that downtime, I kind of took it as an opportunity to really push myself. I had all the free time in the world right before I'm about to have none of the free time in the world. Um, and I'm worried that I had great results, um, progress towards all my goals, but I'm worried that I got myself in the trap of doing that with a lot of increased volume and intensity. And if you guys have any tips for ways to not regress now that I'm going to have to pull back on the amount of time that I'm spending in the gym and focused on my fitness goals.

Yeah. Well, so there's a myth, uh, that I believe for a long time when it comes to fitness. And it goes something like this, like whatever you do to get in shape, you have to keep doing to stay in shape. That's actually false. It's actually false.

The amount of volume and intensity and frequency that someone may need to build muscle or progress is much more than the amount that that person would need to do to maintain. So you could probably cut, and this is the data supports this, okay?

Data supports 1 seventh. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it could go way down. You can cut your volume in half and you're not gonna lose anything. You might lose a little bit of stamina and endurance, because that might suffer from the reduced volume, but in terms of strength, muscle, how you look, you're not gonna lose anything. If anything, knowing what I know about fitness fanatics, knowing what I know about human behavior, you may actually progress by cutting your volume down in half, all things being equal. So I wouldn't worry about it.

I would just follow a program that has less volume, less training, 1 that fits your schedule. Um, and then that's it. And you're probably going to be, not only are you gonna be fine, you might actually do better.

Ideally knowing what you're about to head into, cause I do know how rigorous the schedule can be for a PT. Uh, I'd have maps, anabolic and maps 15 in my arsenal. And I think scaling back to maps anabolic is gonna do a body good, probably feel good. But if it gets to a point where even 3 full hour workouts in a gym becomes too hectic for you or too much on your crazy schedule, then maps 15 is a great default to that or toggling back and forth between when you have crazy loads, you kind of do more of a map 15 type of routine when you have weeks or stretches when you have less of a load, you can get after maps anabolic. But I think Having those 2 at your disposal will probably be 2 of the best programs to have in your arsenal.

If you don't have those already, do you have those?

I have anabolic, but not 15. All

right, we'll hook you up with 15. So you got 15 now too.

What is your workout schedule look like now? And what do you think it's going to look like in terms of time?

So I can what it did look like right at the end is I really ramped up at the most I could equate it to it almost be like peeking for a bodybuilding show, which I wasn't doing, but it was like that kind of level of spending time I was spending a few hours in the gym, getting home, making myself some food, walking after I ate, doing some chores around the house, try to keep moving, eat again, and then walk again. And that was pretty much my day. So there wasn't a whole lot of anything else going on, but I had nothing else going on. Now on my schedule with physical therapy, I'll be doing 2 10 to 8 shifts and 2 7 to 3 shifts. So I'm trying to figure out if I'll do mornings on some days, evenings on other days, or maybe take some rest during the week and pick up the weekend days instead.

Map. You're fine. Maps, anabolic. You know what? I w if you didn't tell me anything about your new schedule, I would still tell you to do maps and a ball.

Like, cause what you were doing before was probably too much. You got away with it cause you recovered, But I bet going back to maps anabolic, you're probably going to see progress. You're probably going to build muscle and strength. So I would do that. That's that's 3 days a week.

That's 3 days a week in the gym.

Yeah. Yeah. And as I mentioned in my question, what I did before was intended only to be a very short term push and then get away from it. I would never do that long term. I did have 1 thing to add.

I've heard you guys talk about how you don't need to train as much to maintain strength and muscle. The specific backslide I was worried about is actually putting on body fat because I got myself used to staying lean through using a ton of movement, which I know is the trap. And now I'm worried about, um, you know, continuing to hit protein, but dropping my calories So that I don't lose the muscle which I know I can keep but not being in a calorie surplus When my activity is so much lower

Do you know how much you were do you know how much you were hitting calorie wise during this time of like super high activity? Where are you at?

Based on the times that I've tracked before I was probably around 200 grams of protein and probably 3, 000 calories or so and I was I was building strength and dropping fat in that time

You know, it'll probably happen is I would say don't change your diet yet. I would go maps anabolic on your days off just keep track you know try to pay attention to how much you walk so maybe do a few walks a day you know 15-minute walks and what will probably happen is it'll probably feel more muscle growth. Okay yeah

I don't think you're I don't think you're too high a cow. I would have said if you were like 4, 000, I'd say, Oh, I just dropped your calories 5 to 600 calories. Why? But at 3000 calories and you

were getting leaner and building muscle, you're probably, you're probably going to just build more.

Yeah. Yeah. That, that was in a cut intentionally.

Okay. Oh, it was, I would keep it the same then. I wouldn't change it. You're gonna be fine.

Yeah. I think you're going to be

just fine, man.

All right. Well, thank you guys. Oh, can I have a, put in a quick question about bands?

Yeah.

Um, so I was considering looking into bands just for future use, nothing now, but does that require any gym equipment on top of bands or is it like even things to anchor to or like, would they be around a barbell that I'm pressing or is it just pure band work?

Yeah, ideally. Yeah. Pure band work. But ideally you'd have like a pull up bar or we also use like a bench. I tried not to like incorporate a bench.

So there's ways around it. But those would be the only 2 items like in addition to just having a band

Okay. Yeah. Thanks very much. And Justin, thank you for all your hypertrophy and fat loss input

Thanks for your question I'm here for you, bro

All right. Thank you all 1 last thing when I started listening I wanted to tell you this probably the hardest I've last laughed in the last year or so Was your story about going into the woods with a milk jug and a barbell and squatting? Didn't go to school the next day.

True story. Painful story. You did fun stuff. I don't know. His pillow fights was the funniest for me.

I like the shitting outside.

All right, Noah, thank you, brother. We'll send that math 15 over to you, brother.

All right,

thank you.

You got it, man. Yeah, this is a hard 1 for people to believe that they can do less. This is for fitness. I didn't

know that.

I know, and you know what's funny, still even for me, I literally, so if I'm training and I'm pushing volume, I'll do between

16

to 20 sets per body part per week total. Okay. I recently dropped everything down to 9 sets. So that's pretty significant drop. That's like half.

And what

do you think is happening? Progressing like every time, you know? So, um, it, it, it's usually that you're overdoing it and doing less will probably get you better results, but at the worst doing less maintains.

Not to mention when I know, I don't remember recall what the group in that study that referred to the 1 seventh to maintain what their training experience is, But I would speculate that as that compound, so do the results and the ease of being able to maintain. Meaning, when you get someone like him who's been training for 15 years consistently like that or like us, 20 plus years, it just gets even easier to maintain. So if I were to have stopped or fell off when I was 21, I had like, you know, made minimal gains. Well, there's not a lot to maintain because I haven't gained a lot because I had just started. But as you progress through years and add more and more training volume, add more and more muscle to maintain, that becomes easier and easier.

So a guy like this, I think he's going to be surprised when he reduces down to like a maps anabolic program, he'll probably stay just as fit or maybe even get fitter by doing

it stronger. I can guarantee.

Yeah. Next caller is Alicia from Ohio. Hey Alicia, how

can we help you?

Hi guys. I just wanted to say thank you for having me on here I've been listening

to you guys since I started even touching weights. So like you've helped me throughout my journey of Not even doing anything to now why I'm here

awesome

so I'll

give you a little background. I've been doing your guys's powerlifting program. Um, I've ran through it twice now. Um, So I've been powerlifting for about 2 and a half years training for about 3 years in that direction. Um, the first time I ran it, my squat went up tremendously, like 15 pounds.

Bench went up. It was great. Deadlift did not change at all. Um, And then the second time I ran it, um, I was doing like a bulk through both of these phases back and back. So within that bulk, I like gained like 10 pounds and everything.

Um, weight wise, but my deadlift didn't increase it actually. Like I couldn't even pull my 1 rep when I tested it just now. And then my squat went up like 5 pounds and then bench still goes up 5 pounds, but my basic question is, is with that and kind of being more experienced in everything, is there a way I can modify your guys' power lift program to gear it towards increasing the squat and deadlift and kind of breaking through that plateau or anything like that.

Let's talk about where you're at right now. First, where are you at? Where are you at in those 3 lifts?

So bench is about 240 right now.

Whoa, wait, 240 bench 240. Yes. Holy shit.

I already have an idea. What's going on? Anyway, keep going. Yeah.

We wrote these programs too effectively. What's the next 1?

What are

you squatting?

Uh, squats. They're not as oppressive as the bench.

They're only like 330 is what I hit.

Jesus Christ. Okay, that's good.

What's your deadlift?

Deadlift is stuck at like

309, 310,

maybe if I'm pulling like good, but like when I just tested it, I couldn't, I couldn't even lift like 2

95

off

the ground. So

how old are you? What

I'm 27. And

you've been, And you've been powerlifting just for a few years?

Yes.

Do you remember what you lifted when you first started?

When I very first started ever touching a weight, just the bar would bruise my back. And that was about 4 years ago.

OK. Yeah, yeah. So here's the thing. You're killing it. So this is when stuff gets fun, but also potentially frustrating, okay?

It's fun because you're legitimately stronger than 99% of women in the world, okay? Those are numbers that I, I mean, I trained a lot of clients. I never had a female client that could lift that much except for like super high level competitors.

Especially bench.

Yeah, like that's insane. Your bench press in particular, I don't think I've ever seen a woman bench. No, that's- That I've trained in that realm.

You

should check out like Jen Thompson.

Yeah, I know. I know that there's people there.

But my point is, you should not actually check it out. You should not.

Yeah, exactly. Why compare?

Yeah, you're talking about a 1 in a million person, maybe 1 in 10 million.

My point is, you're really strong. You've gotten to such a high level.

Yeah.

That It's really hard.

Everything's incremental now.

It's really hard to progress from here. So okay, so you follow MAPS PowerLift. This is the second or third time through?

Second time.

And then do you do anything in between?

Normally I take like a week off of rest.

Okay.

Um, do you have a,

do you

have a specific competition coming up or something you're training for?

I do have something coming up in November, November 15th. Um, so I'm hoping to get 1 more cycle in before then.

Okay. So, so here, here's the sticking point oftentimes for people at your level has to do with, um, imbalances, technique, mobility.

You

tend to improve some of that with someone like you. Um, and you start to see some, some power output, uh, improvements or increases, like a unilateral training would probably benefit you really well. Now, during that period of time, you're not gonna be lifting nearly as much as you normally do. And then when you go back to bilateral, You might initially find that your strength is lower, but then because you've corrected certain balances and improved your symmetry, right, from left to right, then you'll see that you'll surpass some of your old lifts. I think that would probably do you really well.

Yeah, I'd love to see her run symmetry right now and then go back to power lift.

Yeah, the problem is time though. I don't know if she has enough time

for that.

Well, that's okay. We have, we're in, what are we in? June. We're in June. Okay.

End of June.

July, August, September, October, November. So you could technically go symmetry right now. And then when she goes to the 5 by 5, instead of going to the 5 by 5 and symmetry, go right into power lift.

So skip the last phase of symmetry and then get back into power lift.

Okay.

Yeah. Do you, where do you, now let me ask you this. Obviously you, you, you're, You're strong. You've been doing this for a little while. Where do you feel the sticking points are for you?

And do you feel pain anywhere? Like when you deadlift a lot, do you notice any issues?

Um, talk

me through this. I have had some like lower back pain, but, um, That was started like a year ago. So I've been training the core mostly to like help that,

um,

and kind of stabilize that. And I've adjusted my technique in order. Like I don't feel that anymore.

Okay.

Um, but that was like previously, and then it's just like getting it right off the ground is kind of like

you pull sumo. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Sticking point for sumo is usually when

you say you've, you've experimented with deficit deadlifts a bit.

Yes. So this previous time, um, when I did the first phase, I did, uh, deficits with like just the smaller, like 25 pound ones that you see, like at the commercial gym. Um, that was like about how much of a deficit I did. And then I just kept loading those up for those for the first phase until like about halfway through, um, power lift.

You can also do pause. So where you get, you take a weight that you can lift, lift it 2 or 3 inches off the floor, pause for 4 or 5 seconds, and then finish the lift. So you're pausing about 2 inches, or 2 to 4 inches, or 2 to 6 inches off the floor. And then lift. So you're gonna have to go lighter, much lighter to do that.

But that'll help build the strength and tension in that lower part of the rep.

But I mean, single leg deadlifts and Bulgarian squats, I mean, are gonna be fantastic for you just for like strengthening and stabilizing around your, your hips and everything else. And it's just, that's 1 of those things that I think a lot of power lifters don't really consider. And then if you spend enough time there really strengthening that and then go back, it's gonna be, hopefully it's gonna be a mind blowing thing.

That would be my recipe with you going forward would be to interrupt after every, like let's say you do a meet, then right after a meet, I would run symmetry and then go back to power lift. And then I would run symmetry and go back to power lift and run symmetry. That would be like a good formula.

You can even do mass performance. You know, that's another program that might benefit you. Cause you're at the level now where your limiting factor is not, it has more to do with like these small imbalances or your body protecting itself because you're lifting a lot of weight. So if there's a little bit of instability and your body senses it, you're losing power, you're losing strength, you're gonna prevent yourself. Now, a lot of powerlifters use, they try to push past it.

This is when they start to get injured. And you're in injury territory. I don't mean in the sense of your technique is off, but you're so strong that if your form is off a little bit, like if your form was off a little bit and you were squatting 100 pounds, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, you're squatting 300 pounds as a female. If your technique is off a little bit, um, the risk of injury goes up quite a

bit.

Yeah. So we're going to send you map symmetry. Don't do the last phase. Just follow the first few phases. And then when you get to the last page, switch back to mass power lift.

And I'd love to hear back from you. Oh yeah. I'd love to hear back from you and how you feel and how it all worked out for you.

Of course. That would be awesome. Thank you guys.

No. And you're crushing it, man.

Yes. That's super impressive. Congrats.

Yep. Good job.

My goal is to get to nationals in my Federation. So I have a while to go. Cause my weight class, they're lifting like 500. Um, for like, that's very, very top, but it's like 4, like 400 would be the getting me there.

That's incredible.

I got still some ways to go.

And you're young, you know, you're young pot, like powerlifters peak in their mid thirties, you know, sometimes forties, I mean, you got your, there's, there's a lot of strength left in it. Oh, we're watching a video of you squat more weight than Adam. That's incredible. That's amazing. Good job.

Great job. Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

You got it. Represent, huh?

Yeah, I'm glad to.

Thank you. You know, I didn't realize this.

I'm so glad I asked

before we started giving advice. This is something I didn't realize. I didn't realize that with all these people buying our programs. We're literally making everyone stronger than us

like seriously, though

I don't

think never touched weight.

I don't think I don't think I've ever had a female bench over 230 I don't think I've ever had

a female bench. I'm trying to think if I even had a female bench to like 225. Yeah, 2 plates. I haven't seen that.

No. Yeah.

Honestly, except for like, I

mean, obviously competitors do it. We're talking about like in the real

world, Steffi Cohen's and all them.

Yeah. I'm not counting like fucking super high level anomalies. I'm talking about the thousands of people combined that we've all trained and seen in the gym. Like you just, that's in, those are incredible numbers. It's squatting over 300.

Yeah. Yeah. It's unbelievably impressive. Yeah.

I mean, when you, when you get to a really high level, uh, the, the, the higher, the level you get, the stronger you get, the harder it is to continue to progress. And little small changes make a big difference when you're at that level.

Well,

especially when, okay, so like, and you know this too, is like, when you're like very PR focused, You know, you've been training for a long time, you've been super consistent, you're squeezing out every last bit, and then you like, sleep was good, nutrition was good, program was perfect, boom, you hit a PR. Boy, it's hard just to replicate that again. It's hard to even come back, and that's why she's feeling that. She's like, oh man, I was just pulling 295, like even though she knows she's done 309. Well yeah, that's because you got all the stars to align to hit this PR and just to replicate that is very difficult to do, much less exceed that.

And so yeah, no, she's at a frustrating place, but an amazing place.

I think it's

so impressive.

I think if high level power lifters all did, like, at least 30 days, but probably more like 60 days a year, okay,

of unilateral

30

to 60 days a year

to break it

up of unilateral training, they would all see such

so much better results. All right. Next caller is Nicole from Florida. Hi, Nicole.

How can we help

you? Okay. So, um, first off, I think y'all are awesome. Um, I listen to you every single day when I walk my dogs around my neighborhood. I love the fact that you are starting to, at least the podcasts I've listened to are more geared towards women, which I think in every podcast I've heard, you don't have a whole lot of women followers.

And so being a woman, and I've been in the fitness industry for 12, 13 years, I have constantly been trying to build muscle, but There's only so much you can find out there to help do that. So I guess my main question is, is there a way to build more muscle as a woman to get more past that, what women don't like that bulky phase.

Yeah, that's a good question. So this is really about the kind of the mental, psychological blocks that you may have with the size thing growing, right? The best thing that I've ever done, well, there's 2 things that I did to communicate this very well. By the way, I read in your question that you're a trainer and a coach yourself. So I'm assuming you're asking this question to help you coach other people.

Is that what this question is for?

I mean, I'm not 1 of those trainers that walk around and say I know everything. I believe fitness is always evolving. I'm always learning. I'm open to learning. I don't know everything.

So yes, it's more knowledge for myself and for my clients. But I mean, I get the typical, I train a lot of women and a lot of them come to me and say I don't want to look bulky.

Yeah, yeah, that's still very common.

1 of the most important skills that you can have as a trainer or a coach is your ability to sell your ideas to your clients. Okay. And so what does that mean? Right? So like, obviously you have the answers as the expert, someone hires you, they want to get more fit.

They want to lose weight. You have the answers, or at least you have more of the answers than they do. The challenge is getting them to, to follow them, to trust you, to follow the process, to trust the process, because it doesn't happen overnight. So how you communicate what you're trying to get them to do is everything. It really is.

You have to sell them on the idea that they need to eat more calories. You need to sell them on the idea that they need to lift heavy weight and do compound lifts and avoid excessive cardio and all that stuff, right? So the most effective ways that I was able to do this was 1, focus on the metabolism boosting effects of muscle building, okay? Because What I'm doing essentially is telling the person it'll be easier for them to be lean. Okay?

Because a lot of female clients, that's their number 1. They just want to get lean. They don't want to have a lot of body fat, but you're telling me I need to eat more calories and lift heavy weight? What does that have to do with body fat? So I sell the metabolism boosting effects.

That's what I focus on. And then the second thing I focus on is their strength, how strong they are in the gym. And we just celebrate that strength. Now, why is that second part so effective for women? Well, a lot of people don't know, especially men don't realize, just how disempowered a woman can feel when trying to do certain things in everyday life, lift a heavy luggage or move some boxes.

And all of a sudden, when a woman who's never lifted weights before starts to get stronger, she finds that she could do these things that were really hard for her to do before. And it feels very empowering. It's an amazing feeling. I can't tell you how many times I had female clients tell me getting stronger made them feel more empowered and secure in their own bodies. So that's it.

I would focus on boosting the metabolism and feeling strong, the feeling of being stronger and celebrate that. And if you do those 2 things, then usually you can move them along. Now, if they mention that they feel bigger, that they feel tighter, then you got to defer back to the metabolism boosting, defer back to getting stronger and let them know this is part of the process. As we speed up the metabolism, it's gonna be so much easier for you to be lean. You'll be able to eat more calories, maintain a lean body fat percentage.

So this is the process.

I also think that This is where I find a lot of value in the kind of the picture that I like to do. I like to take I like to have my clients take this like front side back shot. First thing on Fridays, every Friday morning. And I always tell them, you know, give me give me like these 1 month shots of just trusting the process of I know what I'm doing. I'm going to take you to the place you want to go.

And what they see is like they compare their getting bigger to their, you know, their thighs filling out and their jeans and their jeans are getting too tight or their the shirt they used to wear and other arms are filling out. And they right right away think that they're they're getting bigger or putting fat on, but what is happening is we have you in a calorie surplus, so you're filling out your muscle bellies more. Let's take a look at the picture that we took before we started this process, and then let's take a look at the picture that we did 30 days, And yeah, your jeans are fitting tire, but look at the shape of your butt and your legs.

Like you're better. Yeah.

We're, we're sculpting your physique right now. I can't sculpt your physique. If we're always in a calorie deficit, I need those calories to help build you the physique that you're telling me that you want, but that's a process. And part of that process is us first building the muscle and building the metabolism and then doing what Sal saying afterwards, then I'll reduce calories and cut you and then reveal all the hard work that we've done. And a lot of times when I have

that, So for like, I get, I understand that for clients, but when it comes down to like myself, I'm probably in that 5% of women that actually want that bulkier, bigger build. Like I have kind of hit that plateau and want to move past that.

Oh, let's go. Calories.

Yeah. Calories. Yeah, bump your calories. Yeah. And lift.

I mean, is there like a standstill to women how much they can potentially build?

Of course. Sure. Of course. How long have you been lifting weights or strength training for Nicole?

So I started lifting when I was 18. I did my first NPC competition when I was

20.

I was in between 3 years of bodybuilding. I was in figure and then took it to powerlifting. And that's kind of where I found my love and what I really noticed my body responded well to. Um, so combining those 2, both, I noticed that during my books, which. Typically, um, I do more of many books than these big calories.

So I just find that it works better for me. And of course, living in Florida, we're in bathing suits a lot longer, so feeling comfortable being out in a bathing suit and not feeling that fluffiness, I just feel like I've hit that plateau and can't get passed. Um, so maybe it is more, I need to go on a longer bulk or more calories.

Yeah. I hear a couple of things there. Right. So 1, yes. Uh, I mean, you're advanced, right?

You've been lifting consistently. I mean, you've competed at the pro level. Yeah, you've competed. You've also done power lifting. So you're definitely starting to squeeze a lot out.

The other thing I hear is, you know, maybe you just, you really start to get a little fluffy and then you go reverse back out because psychologically to the point of being in a bikini and not feeling comfortable getting a little fluffy,

what body fat percentage do you stop that at

or weight? Like, or weight,

do you know what your body fat percentage is?

I mean, the, I kind of go based off of like my floor scale. I haven't done like the calibers, but I kind of know where my baseline is with that. I kind of stop around the 28 to 29 area. And then I also try to focus more on my strength too in the gym. Like once I haven't, like once I noticed my strength has stopped, that's kind of when I start to say, okay, I need to now start to cut back down.

I mean, you're, you have dieted at the competitive level. So you, as well as almost anybody that's at that understands how to cut, how to get shredded, how to do that. I may play with a little bit, like if you were my client, I'd probably stretch you a bit and go, let's see if we can put a little bit more weight. Let's not worry about exactly what the scale saying, let's push your bulk a little longer. Let's increase the calories a little more.

Knowing that you have the tools, you know what it takes to get shredded if you have to. So if you say you give yourself on the scale to 30 or 32 or your weight 5 pounds more than you normally would, allow yourself to do that. See how your body responds in the gym. Maybe that's all it needed was that extra additional calories for a longer period of time to start to see strengths go back up and stuff like that, knowing that we can always come back down. So I would probably push you in that direction, trying to do that.

Also, uh, How, I mean, you're a trainer sometimes, and we, we forget to ask this sometime because we just default that coaches are programming, know what they're doing. Uh, do you follow maps? Have you followed our programs?

Um, just 1. I did the, uh, the power, it was the power lift.

Okay. So that might be the other recommendation is because we're all guilty of this, that

we novel stimulus. Yeah.

We default to the training programs that we like, or we kind of follow the similar stuff. So you knowing your own tendencies as far as how you kind of train yourself and program, maybe look at our programs and go like, you know, like a, maybe a map strong, which is really unique and different performance. I think

it would be totally different from what, what it sounds like you've been doing previous to this.

I'll say maps, anabolic advanced. You're the perfect person for maps.

That'd

be great too. That, That I think is going to squeeze out some more muscle out of your body. But now back to what they're saying, you're at a point, you're advanced, okay? You're at a very high level. You've been training for a long time.

The best way for you to continue down this path now is to start to just enjoy the workouts and enjoy different types of fitness. So training through segments of mobility through strongman type exercises, again, back through powerlifting or bodybuilding, because each of those things is going to, is going to take your body to another level and you're going to learn more things about exercise and, you know, different workouts.

Yeah. You look awesome. We pulled up your page. Yeah. Yeah.

We just pulled up your page so we can get an idea of where we're at too. Yeah. You are, you're definitely, you're

at a very high level. Yes. Okay. Maps, anabolic advanced maps, Anabolic Advanced was designed for someone like you. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, dude, you look incredible. I'm going to

send you

Maps Anabolic Advanced. Follow that. And you're probably going to squeeze out a little bit more muscle out of your body

from fat. I use that during like my bulk phase.

Yes. Yes. Go into calorie surplus, follow MAPS Anabolic Advanced, and then get back to us. Let us know how

it happens. Yeah, you're at 300 to

500?

Yes.

Calories?

Yes. Okay. Yeah, what's your maintenance?

I said about

21, 22.

Okay, Yeah. I'd say, yeah, bring it up to 26 or so, 2, 600 calories. Okay.

Yeah, that would be a good goal is to

get your calories up higher than that. For the amount of muscle mass you have on you, and as good

as you can be. Yeah, you

got great delts and arms.

Good job. Yeah, no, she looks

phenomenal. I'm very trapped. Everybody, all the guys always ask me, what do you do for your traps? I'm like, I don't do anything. They're just genetic.

Yeah, no, you, you have a great physique. I mean, my, my, if you were my client slash friend or what, that, my only thing would be like, Hey, you just, just also recognize like how phenomenal shape you're in and don't get obsessed about always chasing like the next level or whatever like that. I think that's important in your journey too, because I think you look absolutely phenomenal right now. And we are just trying to squeeze out the last bit of everything with you here.

Yeah. Always shooting for the stars.

Follow maps and a bulk advance and then get back to us.

Yeah. I'm really curious. Yeah.

All right.

All right.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's another, look, there's another person like you get to a certain level.

This is exactly hard

to continue.

This is exactly like the power lifting girl only on the aesthetic world.

Yeah.

Like she has reached a

peak performance.

I'm glad

we looked at the pictures, too, because it's so hard to tell when you're looking at these Zoom calls.

Just the face?

Yeah, I mean, here's, again, to add on what I was saying to her, is like, If she's a friend of mine, this is where I'm starting to tell her too, like, okay, like, I mean, what are your, like, lifelong goals? Because if you can just, you know, stay close to this shape for the rest of your life, I mean, you are, you're killing it.

At this point, when you're at that point, that level of training, that consistent, you really have to shift away, and I hate to say this, because people don't like it when I say this, but you gotta shift away from trying to hit goals all the time.

Yes, yes.

You just have to, now it's okay to throw them in there, but make them different, right? Like make

it- Like now she would be great to like focus on mobility.

Yeah, exactly.

And also become this mobility queen.

Or pick an exercise that she never, you know, she never focused,

she never done before. Yeah, become good at Turkish get up.

Yeah, let me get good at it. Yes. But really move away from being so goal focused. She's not gonna stop. You're never gonna stop working out.

Obviously She loves it. Move away from being so goal-focused and just love the workouts. More aesthetic focus. Yeah, and love the different facets of fitness because that'll take you to the end. That'll take you to the very end.

So otherwise, you're gonna end up hitting the wall because you can't constantly, you cannot progress forever. It's just impossible.

That's why these other programs would be great for like her to just experience different avenues of fitness and not get so obsessed with, you know, body composition. Totally.

She has a kid too?

Looks like it.

Yeah, no, She's winning.

Next question is Chad from British Columbia. Chad, what's happening? How can we help you?

Hey guys, uh, this is pretty cool right now. Thanks for having me on. Uh, just wanted to say start by saying thanks for all the content you guys put out.

You got it.

I've gained so much knowledge from listening to you, like fitness wise, but other areas in life like being a dad. So it's pretty cool.

So I

just wanted to start by giving you a little bit of a background about myself. I thought that would better frame the question. So back in 2017, I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor that impacted my hormones. And my testosterone levels at that time were like really low, like around

100.

So under doctor's supervision, I started to take androgel. And then finally, by the time in January 2019, that was in the normal range. Um, last year, my wife and I started like wanting to start having kids. So we, uh, tried to wean me off the testosterone, but this January we found out I couldn't make my own testosterone anymore. So it was back down to 0 this January.

At that point, my doctor put me on HCG. So now my levels are higher than normal. So like 1200, 1300 range, and those have been my level since. Uh, I've been weightlifting for around like 10 years now, but I don't feel like I've made 10 years worth of progress. Uh, like prior to this year, uh, last November, just to switch things up, I took up running and was running 3 times a week and strength training 3 times a week.

Back in 2019, I was at peak weight of around 225 pounds. And I didn't really like the body fat percentage I was at probably around 30%. So the next year I cut down to all the way down 177 pounds. And I would say I was around 12% body fat. Not sure, just guessing.

Um, it was pretty brutal. And then this January, just slowly gaining weight over the past few years, I was around 193. So I cut down to 187 pounds by March, but I was eating like 1800 calories a day and running 3 times a week. And I was listening to you guys too. So I knew that probably was an ideal.

So in March, I started to see an online coach with the goal of increasing my metabolism, having my body fat percentage around like 13 to 15 and being able to increase my strength. So he got me started eating like 3, 100 calories in March, which was a really big jump for me. And then now 3 months later, I weigh 206 pounds, but I'm put on quite a bit of strength in that time too. So finally to my question, did I gain weight too fast in that 3 months, like around like 19 pounds in 3 months, or is it possible that like my higher than normal testosterone cause most of that to be muscle. And based on my goal, should I decrease the number of calories I'm eating or increase or keep them the same?

Chad, in that period of time, your body fat percentage only went up 1 and a half percent.

Yeah, it's phenomenal. That's

yeah. Yeah. According to those like in body machine things,

1 to 2 times what's happening, 1

to 2 pounds a week. And the fact, too, that you're on TRT. So you got to know that when there's a big difference when somebody is on TRT versus natural because your body is primed to build muscle basically 24 7, which everybody else is kind of this ebb and flow of peaks and valleys. And yeah,

but it's more than that. It's more than that, Chad, because you didn't go from normal to HCG because, okay, so you got your numbers up to your total, right? I don't know what your free testosterone is, but you got it up to 1200. Well, if you were, you know, at 800 and you went up to 1200, eh, you'd notice a little bit, not a big deal. But you went from 0 to 1200.

Okay, so it's like when the government, like when we did the lockdowns, and then after the lockdowns, like, look at all these jobs that we had. It's like, those are the ones that we, we lost because the lockdown. So it's not the same. Like we're just, we're just coming back to where we were. So the amount of muscle you gained, um, is, is because you were at such a deficit to begin with.

Okay? So you fueled yourself with more calories. You got your testosterone in the upper levels versus you're probably eating too little and you had no testosterone. So that's, and your body, and you already know the answer to this. You tested your body fat, you only went up 1.5%.

Yeah. It's not too fast.

And your question is to stay or cut or what? No. Stay there. Yeah, I'd stay right where you're at. I think where you're at or even slowly increase.

I mean, if I can, if I can increase calories and only put on, you know, as significant as you didn't only put on a percent of body fat every 2 to 3 months, I mean, you're, you're doing great. You're doing great. So I

keep it right where it's at.

And you're in a place right now, 3, 100 calories, 14 to

50.

I mean, this is like optimal health right here. Your testosterone levels in a healthy place. Your body fat percentage is in a healthy place. If you like where your weight and how you feel is and your calories, I mean, everything is in a really good place. Now it really is.

I mean, what do you want to do? I mean, what's your primary goal? And then we would adjust eating and training accordingly.

Right. Yeah. So I would say my primary goal is just to, I think, keep increasing strength, but not get like too high of a body fat percentage. Cause I've always been scared of gaining weight. And I think that's why I was really scared when I saw that 20 pounds in, in 3 months, cause that kind of heard like the max you should be gaining a month is like 2 pounds.

No, you're a muscle bro. You test your body fat and everything. You're fine.

Yeah. And remember the point I was making for Sal interrupted me. It was just that you're, you're, you're primed to build muscle when you're taking TRT, that that's 1 of, that's 1 of the perks of it is that you are primed to build muscle. So most of those additional calories are going to get applied over to building muscle for you. As long as you don't over like, and 3, 100 calories for your size, that's a good amount of calories, but still you could still, you probably have room, probably have room to get up to 3, 500 calories and be totally okay.

So I would keep slowly moving in that direction until I get to a place where it's like, this is a lot of food. I don't want to, I don't want to eat anymore. Forget the fact that, um, I want to continue to gain more muscle or not. It's like, this is just so much calories for me to handle. That's, that's kind of where are

you following a maps program?

Uh, no, I'm not currently.

How many days a week you're working out?

Do you

really work out the game?

The

coach has to be on 4 days a week,

4 days a week.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going

to send you maps and a ball follow maps and a ball. Like do the 3 day a week version, do the trigger sessions on the off days. Keep your calories the same or bump them a little bit. You're gonna gain more muscle.

Oh, that's amazing here. Thanks guys.

Yeah, you got it, man. Absolutely. Hey, so you guys trying to have a baby? Pregnant yet or are you still working on it?

Well, I don't have, I got my testosterone at a good level, but, um, my sperm hasn't started to come back yet. That takes a bit longer.

Does your doctor have you continually to take HCG as they should?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm on that for now. Yeah.

I don't think they'll take me off.

Yeah,

they shouldn't. I mean, so I got Katrina pregnant while being on TRT and the doctors just kept me on. I was on HCG at the same time. So you should be able to get that kick back up.

I'm not a doctor. I heard that Kegel's.

All right, Chad.

So we'll send you maps and a ball. Okay, follow that.

Oh, thanks so much, guys.

You

got it, man.

You too, man. You got

it, man. Go get her pregnant. Do it right now.

Right now.

I'll try.

Yeah, I mean, he tested his body fat. So it's like, listen, it's only too fast if you gain a bunch of body fat. He's just anabolic right now, man. He's in a prime state. I had to make that point, Adam, because-

No, you're right. He was at a deficit. That's a factor too.

Yeah, it would be like if 1 of us got sick, lost 10, 15 pounds of lean body mass, then got healthy and then worked out.

And by you explaining that, it also explains for him what potentially might happen in the next 2, 3 months, which is he doesn't build as much again. So he may experience that where he goes now 3 months and now you only add say 2 or 3 pounds or 5 pounds. Which would

still be great.

Which is still exactly phenomenal. It just means that you you had a lot to make up initially. He made most that up. But I mean this is also 1 of the the nice perks of TRT is that you are at you are at like prime build muscle mode, which is not how it works. Most people, bad night of sleep, you know, a little bit of overtraining, a little stress.

Yeah, testosterone drops. And then that puts you in a less advantageous place to build muscle When you're taking it synthetically, it's your prime. By the

way, a study just came out, showed that TRT, because the worry is, does it contribute to more problems with the heart or whatever? No, nothing, no negatives. And by the way, if you're listening to this and you don't know, or you suspect you may have hormone issues, go to mphormones.com. We have partners there. And this is what they specialize in their doctors and they can test your hormones.

They also work with peptides. Don't do this on your own or don't just guess you want to get tested. Uh, for sure. Look, If you like our show, if you like our information, and you want great fitness information, go to askmindpump.com. It's our AI model.

It'll answer your question based on our episodes only. So it's our answer, so you know it's true. Askmindpump.com. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is on Instagram at mindpumpjustin.

I am on Instagram at mindpumpdestefano and Adam is at mindpumpadam.

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. 9 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.

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