5 Things Research Gets Wrong About Building Muscle | Mind Pump 2961

Key Takeaway

Treat muscle-building research as a starting point, not a rigid prescription. This week, replace one all-out session with a lower-intensity workout: use clean technique, stop well before failure, and leave the gym able to recover for your next session. Over months and years, sustainable volume, changing training demands, and consistent practice matter more than forcing every set to match an eight-week study—or turning every workout into a test of willpower.

Episode Overview

The hosts critique overly literal interpretations of a large hypertrophy meta-analysis, arguing that short studies in young, small samples cannot fully prescribe training for adults with jobs, stress, and long-term goals. They discuss sustainable volume, intensity, frequency, periodization, exercise enjoyment, and how callers can adjust training and nutrition around medical school, breastfeeding, demanding work, and compulsive fitness tendencies.

Full Transcript

Transcript of 5 Things Research Gets Wrong About Building Muscle | Mind Pump 2961 from Mind Pump Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MindPump. MindPump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in history, approaching over half a billion downloads. This is MindPump. In today's episode, we had callers call in, ask us questions about their health and fitness. We got to help them live on air. This was after the intro, though. So the intro is about 52 minutes long. Now in the intro, we talk about muscle growth and fat loss and diet.

We talk about current events and family life. It's always fun. Look, if you want to be on an episode like this, submit your question to MPLifeCaller.com. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Keon. So Keon makes high quality supplements for muscle building, fat loss, and athletic performance. Today we talked about their essential amino acid supplement. Using these, especially when you're cutting, will help you preserve muscle. Now using them when you're trying to build muscle in a surplus will help you build even more muscle.

They're inexpensive and very effective, and Keon's amino acids have the right amount of leucine that the studies show make a big difference. Go try them out. Go to GetKeon.com, that's G-E-T-K-I-O-N, .com slash MindPump. That link will get you 20% off. We also have a brand new workout program, MAPS Abs and Butt. Now this is a full body workout program, but the emphasis is on developing your abs and getting a nice round butt. Because it's a new program, it's 40% off, and if you get it right now, I will throw in Muscle Mommy 15, or Muscle Mommy.

It's another workout program, plus I'll throw in a diet guide. Go to MAPS Abs and Butt.com and use the code LAUNCH for the discount and the free stuff. Back to the show. T-shirt time! And it's T-shirt time! Oh shit, Doug, you know it's my favorite time of the week. Two winners this week, one for Apple Podcasts, one for Facebook. The Apple Podcasts winner is The Life Changer. And for Facebook, we have Jacob Whittaker. Both of you are winners. Send the name I just read to iTunes at MindPumpMedia.com.

Include your shirt size and your shipping address, and we'll get that shirt right out to you. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to MindPumpStore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. A huge meta-analysis of many, many studies, over 30,000 participants across all the studies, has just told us all the rules for hypertrophy, for muscle growth.

This is what makes your muscles grow. Here's the deal. They're wrong. I'm serious. They're wrong. We're going to break it down right now, why they're wrong, and what you can do to get your body to respond. Let's get to it. Wait a second. Tell me in here. Studies? This is new? Yeah. Huge, huge meta-analysis. First off, I want to say this first. By the way, that's supposed to be one of the best. The best. Yeah. A meta-analysis is when they take lots of studies, and study the studies, and try to find commonalities.

This is like the gold standard, right, of studies. I want to say this. I think studies on fitness are super valuable. I'm definitely not one of those guys that's like, who cares what the study says type of deal. They're super, super valuable, but that being said, we have to understand the context. We have to understand how, if this applies, and how it may apply to the average person that's listening right now. That makes a big difference. First off, let me just explain what these studies look like.

The vast majority of studies on strength training, the vast majority, including the ones that were in this study right here, are typically between, on average, about 12 weeks long, usually about 8 weeks long. You're looking at studies that are over 2 to 3 months on average, because that's how long these studies are done for. You're also looking at an average amount of participants in the study, looking like around between 10 to 20. About 10 to 20 people are in these studies. Some of them have more people, but on average, most of these studies that were considered for this meta-analysis, or that are generally peer-reviewed, and people say, are good.

Are they athletic, college-aged males? Now, would you consider that a lot or a wide variety? No. Okay, as in say, I wouldn't. No. We'll get to that. You're looking at typically 10, sometimes 20 people per study. The average age in the study is always less than 50, but typically you're looking at college-aged males. I just want to paint the picture. 8 to 12 weeks long, 10 to 20 people. Generally dudes that are college-aged, sometimes you'll have athletic women in there as well. That's what we're looking at when we're looking at these studies.

You've got to be very careful at taking what a study says and then applying it to yourself when you're, let's say, middle-aged, you've got normal life, and you're going to plan on working out for longer than 8 weeks or 12 weeks. You're not just training for a couple months, you're like, listen, I want to be able to do this for the rest of my life. You've got a lot more variables. That's right. You've got a lot more variables. This is why it's so important to look at a study, but also consider experience.

What you would do is you would talk to coaches and trainers that have trained people for a decade or two decades or longer, and then put them together and say, okay, does this apply? Have you noticed this when you train regular people? What you're going to hear almost every time is it depends. It really does depend. I'm going to go through some of the stuff that the study said is like this is what these studies say, and then I'm going to counter why this is actually not true for most people.

We'll start with the first one, which is how much volume is ideal for hypertrophy? I already know this one's BS. Volume, they typically count this as sets. How many sets of the exercises that you're doing? What the studies show is around 10 sets per week is the minimum. You got to do at least 10 sets total per body part per week to really start to see some muscle growth. Then on average, the best seems to be about 15 to 20 sets total per body part per week.

I'm going to say this right now. Every trainer who's trained people for more than five years will tell you this. You take nine out of 10 people. You apply 15 to 20 sets per body part per week on that person. They will be fried within three months, fried, over-trained. Nothing will happen. They'll start to hurt themselves. It just doesn't work. Even if they can tolerate it, they'll see minimal to no results because there might be somebody who's listening right now, why train that? I'm fine. You're probably not seeing results.

You're tolerating. You're probably been plateaued for a really long time too. There's also that. There's this idea that because I can tolerate and I can do it, I fall in this study category. That's right. Now, why would this be true in a study? Well, if I take two groups of college-aged males for eight weeks, okay, so it's two months. That's it. I take this group over here and I go, we're doing 10 sets per body part per week. You guys are doing 20 sets per body part per week.

I'm probably going to see more muscle growth in the 20 sets over that eight-week period. Stretch it out over a year or two and you'll start to see problems, even with the college-aged males. This is where it becomes a problem, is that it's the short duration and the type of people that we're applying this to. But the average person, everybody listen, I've been working out for years, consistent. I'm also on hormone replacement therapy, so I've got that going for me. If I did 20 sets per body part per week consistently, I could probably do this for about a month or so, but then I'll start to notice overtraining symptoms.

I can't get away with this for very long. Yes, I'm 47, but again, hormone replacement therapy, I've been doing this for years, it's just too much. I can't get sleep and extra bits of responsibility, which adds in stress to the everyday lifestyle demands. It's like to add that kind of volume on top of that, it doesn't do well. Anybody who is in their mid-30s and above can all relate to that, remembering what it was like to be a college-aged male or female of being able to just...

I just remember not sleeping, working all day, getting right back up the next day feeling fine. Yeah. That never happens. Yeah. No. Just get up and rebound. We tease each other and talk about getting older, but it's a part of life. At some point, you cross over this point where you have to take getting ready for bed seriously, you have to factor in, I can't go do that that late and then get up that early in the morning, two days in a row. You just can't do that stuff anymore.

Also, I just want to say this too. If you are in that age group and you're like, well, cool, I'll just keep doing tons and tons of volume. It actually works better for most of you as well when you cut things down. I have this kid who just, I met his dad at church and his dad's like, hey, let me hire you to help my kid. I said, no, no, I'll talk to him for free. Great kid. He came over, we sat down and went over his routine.

He was doing a five-day split, typical muscle building split type of deal. I have him train full body three days a week. I'm having him go to bed at the same time every night, wake up at the same time, and I'm also having him not skip breakfast. Three important things. He's like, you really think this is going to work? I'm like, yeah. Okay. In one month. Those are big movers. In one month, he's added 20 pounds to most of his big lifts. This guy's already been working out for him.

In one month. In fact, I saw him recently and he's like, I don't know if I'm doing enough. I'm like, well, tell me what your strength gains are like. He's like, well, I'm adding some weight. I said, how much? He's like, about five to 10 pounds every week. I'm like, it's working. You're doing a good job, bro. I know. It's good. All right. Here's what the study also showed. That lightweight and high reps or lower or heavyweight and lower reps both build the same amount of muscle so long as the intensity is hot.

Well, yeah, but this is the problem with the eight to 12 week thing. I've poked holes in this forever about like, this is that, that including with the rep range thing, all these all fall in the same category that novelty trumps all of this. So if somebody is, the reason why I'd be saying if you take one group that does all, all lightweight, one group is heavy for only eight weeks, they're both going to see this, these great results. You flip flop those groups. They're going to see great results again too, because it's a novel stimulus.

And so therefore our conclusion is it's pretty much the same. Well, so there's that, but here's a bigger one for me is that lightweight at a high intensity fatigue plays a bigger role in your ability to complete the set. It's very close to endurance. Yeah. So, so here's what I mean. Okay. So there's certain exercises. Yeah. You could go, you know, 18 reps close to failure and you'll be all right. Like curls, tricep extensions, laterals, like that kind of stuff. But you start doing the big gross motor movements, uh, and getting close to failure at 18 reps with a deadlift or a squat.

You're fried. Yeah. You're dead, dude. Try doing three more sets of that. It's not going to happen. You know, three sets of six reps close to failure. It's also hard, but it's not going to destroy you. And so fatigue plays a bigger role. And so in practice, in real life, when we do this, especially over, over time, uh, the heavyweight, uh, tends to do better because of the fatigue factor that tends to get in the way, especially with the big compound lifts. Um, here's the next one.

Uh, you want to build muscle and needs to be close to failure. Period. End of story. Now this is, it is important to train intensely, but it's also important over long periods of time to work out show up much lower intensity. Like you're not, in other words, you're not wasting your time, but not training almost to failure. That's, that's what this, uh, message, this is the, that's the message that sends across. Well, it's so, it's interesting that there's controversy around this. When we see, when we have great examples of the people that track and are the most consistent, which are like your, your power lifters and your Olympic lifters and they don't train.

I remember how sustained that, you know, I remember I still, the reason why I feel so strongly about that, or I think it's such an important topic is that. I still remember being a trainer. I'd already been a trainer for quite some time and I hadn't really met any power lifters or Olympic lifters. I didn't know any, but like on a serious level that we're like competing, um, at that time, uh, and then I had a trainer and then I remember watching him train in his programming and I was like, baffled by like how easy he was going all the time.

I just assumed that, oh, this is the highest level of lifter. If he's lifting the most weight. And like, I assume that he, because this is at the time where I'm also bought into the, these types of studies that like intensity is everything. Training to failure is the way to train. Like I'm training this way and thinking that I could go do more, right. Thinking that, and then meeting somebody far stronger than I am. Right. And I've at higher level thought for sure, he must be training so intense all the time.

It was like the complete opposite. Completely blew my mind. Yeah. I got, it was, so we have that example of the strongest people that do not use intensity like that. Well, for me, what's even more important. Cause you're right. In fact, the data in that study did show that when it comes to strength and power, uh, training close to failure, isn't always necessary. So they at least did show that. And now my argument with that is getting stronger, uh, and being able to perform better eventually over time will translate to more muscle as well.

Yeah. Well, so that there's that, but here's the other one is like, when I read this, if I'm some kid reading this or some person reading this, getting into fitness, what this says to me is if I'm not training close to failure and my goal is to build muscle, I'm wasting my time. That's exactly how I read it, which is, that's what I mean by that. It's like, I read it that way that if I'm, but yeah, I, like I said, here's an example of looking at this very muscular, strong dude who I was working with.

Who was training half as intense as I was. This is like, he's more muscular and more strong than, than I am. Yeah. I'm training way more intensely. This doesn't make sense to me. A hundred percent. Well, these studies are playing a short game. And so, yeah, you can kind of show like good result when you get close to failure in that regard, but you got to really draw this out for a long period of time. Like you can't sustain that kind of intensity and be able to recover and progress, you know, like you really have to be dialed and manage that appropriately.

So you can keep maximizing your next workout. Yeah. So the real question is, uh, if you're reading this, these, this meta analysis, you're like, okay, I'm trying to build muscle. This says that to build muscle, I have to train within one or two reps, you know, close to failure. Uh, does that mean then I'm tired or I'm feeling a little sore. So going to the gym and working at like 50% is a waste. The time, is it better for me to go to the gym, go through the motions at 50% or is it better to skip?

And the truth is oftentimes it's better to go and train lighter. You actually get better results. Or a third option, which is the dumb option I always chose, which is push through it. Or just keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a third option there that I think a lot of us probably chose, was either do I skip? Well, no, that's terrible. I'm going to go backwards. Should I go through 50%? Well, that's a waste of time. That's a waste of time because that doesn't do any hypertrophy.

I'm trying to build muscle here. That's right. I'm just going to push through and failure is just going to be- Eventually overcome it. Yeah. I'm just going to try and overcome it, which is as bad as, it's the worst of probably the three. That's right. And probably- You're right. It's probably the worst of the three. Yeah. It's probably the worst of the three, right? The three choices. And that's the one you choose to do most of the time if you're this young, ambitious kid who wants to build muscle and are willing to do whatever it takes to do that.

100%. All right. Next is that the studies show that more frequency, in other words, training a body part more often throughout the week is not going to help with hypertrophy so long as the volume is perfectly controlled for it. So that's the part that we need to pay attention to. Yeah. Because we know in real life that's not what happens. It never happens. So here's what they do in studies. We had previous studies that showed that training a body part three days a week was better than training it twice a week.

It was better than training it once a week. But then they said, oh, let's control the volume exactly the same. Let's make sure they do the exact same sets, the exact same weight, the exact same exercises. And then what they find is that it doesn't build more muscle. Well, in the real life, when you divide up your sets over three workouts, you end up doing more volume because you're stronger. And so the study ends up controlling something that in real life never ends up being controlled.

Because if I'm going to do, and I'll use a stupid example, okay, I'm going to do 15 sets of squats for the week for my legs. If I did 15 sets in one workout. Yeah. The last 10 are worthless. The weight and the reps that I'm going to do are going to look very different than if I did five sets three times that week. So obviously the volume isn't controlled because in real life, I'm more fresh each time, not as fatigued, I can go heavier. So of course it's going to end up.

And that's why frequency ends up doing so well when it comes to building muscle. This is why when I would train clients this way, it would be more effective because in the real world, I'm not perfectly controlling the volume, it makes no sense to me. Not to mention the other argument that we make for this all the time, which is that three times a week means more practice than a lift. Lifting is a skill. Getting better at that skill allows you to reap more from that skill too.

There's also this saying, right? Be more efficient with your energy. And you guys have heard, you've heard practice makes perfect, but then you've also heard this one. Perfect practice makes perfect. Have you heard that before? It's perfect. Okay. Practicing a lift when you're super fatigued is practicing bad technique. It just is. It is. Yeah. You do 15 sets of squats in one day. I'm going to tell you right now, by set eight, your form is starting to look crappy. I wish I, like, that's such my motto, like as a coach, but like, I wish I was like that when I was an athlete.

Yeah. Nobody really, you know, figured that out when I was, when I was training, but that would have been huge. Totally. And the, uh, the studies said, or the meta-analysis says that periodization, changing rep ranges and intensity really doesn't make a difference for hypertrophy. And I'm going to tell you something. Really? Yeah. That's even with that. Yeah. Because it's, they're 12 weeks long. Yeah. Yeah. Periodization doesn't make a difference when you're doing it for 12 weeks. It doesn't make a difference when you're doing it for, you know, maybe 12, 20 weeks, but over a year, two years, three years, it makes a big difference.

It starts to make a really big difference. The problem is studies are limited. So this is why they're never perfect. You can only have so many people in there. You can only control it so well, and you can only do it for so long because they're expensive. Yeah. So it's like, what are we going to do? We're going to get a hundred people study different ways of strength training over five years that would cost billions of dollars. You'd never be able to do that. Yeah. So periodization is applied in every sport because we know it prevents injury and we know what produces better results.

We know this. So that's why once this study comes out, I'm like, but that's not true. It just doesn't work. I'm actually surprised though still, because I definitely wouldn't be surprised if it was six to eight weeks, because it's just not enough time. But 12 weeks, at least in my experience, I can see it. But you've been training for longer than 12 weeks. Yeah. It's still not a 12 week study for you because you've been doing it for years and years. And we're also talking about hypertrophy, which takes a while.

So periodization for strength and performance in a 12 week study shows better. That's a good point. Yeah. But when it comes to hypertrophy, which takes a long time, you've got to be patient, you're not going to see much in 20 weeks with something like that. That's true. That's a good point. If you plan on working out for longer than that, it makes a huge difference. It makes a really big difference. Speaking of working out, I was, this was last week, it was really occurring to me the value of supersets.

So supersets are, for people listening, is when you do two exercises back to back. You do one, then you move to another exercise. Adam introduces to me and kills me. Yeah. Well, there's different ways to do supersets. Okay. One way, just generally, the general two ways to do supersets is you do the same body part for two exercises. Another way to do supersets is to do two different body parts with two different exercises. A lot of people like to do the same body part. The problem with that is fatigue sets in, becomes a little bit more endurance.

It's high intensity. Is it really better? Maybe, maybe not. But when you do different body part supersets, especially antagonistic body parts, it's a great way. So long as you've got decent fitness, it's a great way to save time. Yeah. Great. So if I'm, today I'm going to go hit chest and back and I'm going to do, you know, five sets of each. If I could go straight from chest straight to back and each body part doesn't affect each other. Yeah. You don't lose a lot of strength.

I don't get fatigued. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because. A little muscle endurance kicks in because obviously you're, you're constantly working without rest, but. It's almost as good as me resting in between. So I'm like, can you do the body part supersets thing? So important. But I'm like, can you do that with supersets? Totally. I mean, I've made this case on the podcast for a long time. If you've listened long enough, uh, I've always advocated for, this is how I, I don't program that type of stuff. I allow life to get, happen.

And then it happens. In a short amount of time. Yeah. And then it's so beautiful because it's like, oh, it's been a while since I've done this. This is going to be a great workout. Instead of having the attitude of like, oh, I only got 20 minutes to get this in. I don't have enough time to get my full 50 minute workout that I wanted to do. It's like, oh, you know what I'll do is I'll superset everything and I'll get out of here in 20 minutes and I'm going to, and you know what, I haven't done that in so long.

It's going to shock my body. It's going to be great. It's going to be different. You know, it's another thing we don't even consider while we do, uh, when we were trainers, this was actually one of the number one considerations as trainers, but a lot of people don't consider or at least studies don't is just the fact that you enjoy it. Like it doesn't give you better results. Yeah. But did you have fun? Way more fun. Let's go. That's the, that's the, that's the Paul check motto.

And you know, I feel like he, he preaches that so much. Yeah. Yeah. Just like that. I mean that being consistent with Justin brought up earlier is, is, is more important than anything else. You know, you could, I, and I've also made this case too, is that you could go to the gym and never train a failure and just go in there and get a good work, get good at the exercises, get a good workout, enjoy it. And just, I mean, you keep the diet right over time.

You will watch your body. And I was talking to my friend over the weekend, uh, cause we were talking about fitness and, uh, you know, I was talking about my challenges with it and he's, I, and so there's, I definitely have some, some challenges with being too obsessive with working out. But then he asked me, he goes, do you actually enjoy it? Like literally do you enjoy it? Do you have fun with it? Like, dude, I love it. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, that's played the biggest role in my consistency is I would say even if I, regardless of how I looked and what it produced, I just enjoy doing it.

And so that's such an important thing for people to consider, like find a way to enjoy your workouts. And if that means you do a less effective quote unquote workout, so be it, you're more likely to be consistent cause you're just having fun. I mean, that's also gotta be one of the hardest things for you when you think about like trying to work on the obsessiveness of it because there, there is such an enjoyment factor and positive health factor that you get, you know, even though you know you could probably take it to the edge and it's too much and it can, it can affect other things, some other things negatively.

And that's so many positives that it's got to be really a hard thing for you to like reconcile. Totally. Did you see that, uh, Stallone interview I sent, Oh, I didn't watch it. I saw like half of it. It's really short. It's really good. Sure. Yeah. Really good. I never heard him say that before. Yeah. I was like surprised. Um, you know, on some level, obviously I wasn't surprised on the fact that like him, he was kind of like tormented by being so shredded at that point where he was like, you know, trying so hard to maintain this look, this physique and all that's where he was like became bulimic.

And it happened right around Rocky three, right? Yeah. We started getting shredded, started getting super shredded and then he just, it became like an identity for him and like tortured him and so, but yeah, he, he became very obsessed and like, you know, and like was taking all the things to, to keep it up and keep the facade up. It was, it was cool to see him like, you know, be vulnerable about that. He was very honest. I've actually never borderline talked negatively about, yeah, like I've never heard him talk like that where like he was, Oh, big problems.

Yes. Yeah. Like, like total obsession. And I couldn't imagine teetered off into, yeah, the darkness. Well, I couldn't imagine being that famous and B and it being connected large, a big part to how you look, remember that in the eighties, in the nineties, he was one of the action. Oh, I mean, he's ours. Yeah. He's right. Him. I mean, Arnold was like competing to, to look like him at that point. Like just the shreddedness and all this, he's like, whatever Stallone is doing, I have to do it even better.

You know, you'd have bigger guns. If that's our identity and you get all this love for it and make all this money and get all the success, like letting go of that, that can be so hard. So hard. I heard him even say he was bulimic. Yeah, he did say, that's what he said. Did you, did you know that? I didn't know that. I did not know that either. Yeah. I did not know that. That's crazy. It's way crazy. Uh, it was Rocky three, four Rambo.

I know he tore his peck, uh, training for Rocky four. I want it. I think, uh, he had Franco Colombo train him and they were trying to go, he was trying to compete with Franco with lifts, which is stupid. That is crazy. He's so strong. And he tore his peck. So when you see, when you see him Stallone, you'll notice one of his pecks is a little, looks a little different. Cause that thing I got going on now. Are you going to go get it? You mentioned or what?

Yeah. I got to go get it. I'm all right. I've actually been waiting to see, um, uh, your boy come back in here cause I want to talk to him more because, um, if, I don't know if you do remember, I actually had huge bruising on my bicep right here. So, um, I'm wanting to, I want to hear his opinion if there, if I did something both to the bicep and the pec major, like if it, if there was, if there's cause I get so much pain from bicep, I try to do bicep curls the other day again for the first time, even in the, in the, in the forward position, I still can't do more than 35 pounds.

Yeah. I still, they're like, and I pushed it and just to see, you're going to have to get an image, dude, have them look and see what's going on, dude. I mean, there's definitely, I mean, there's definitely some serious damage there. It's like, what, what I'm curious about is like, can we fix it? Um, uh, what will they do, you know, to fix it? I mean, it'd be awesome. I mean, surgery is probably inevitable. I mean, there's no way that, uh, this long, I mean, this has been, this is almost two summers ago.

It's been, yeah. And it still hurts. Yeah. Oh yeah. A lot too. It's not like kind of weird enough for me to not train biceps. Like I'm not trained biceps at all. And then I do what I did the other day, which I was wondering, I was looking at your arms. I was like, oh, that's it. I sent myself, I sent myself over that way. Thank God. I overcompensated for a really long time. So, um, but yeah, I mean, I, it's crazy. It's, it's, which is really tough because, uh, even though I had already worked through like how much I love to train that.

And then I've talked many times on the podcast, how I rarely have to train him. I still enjoy it. You know what I'm saying? It's still a good body part. So tell me, so, so, cause you're, I'm now trying to move away. I'm still trying to eat, you know, eat only when I'm hungry, which means I'm eating less. Uh, but it turned in now I'm getting shredded. I talked about this on the last episode. It's like, I'm going extreme here, extreme in that direction. But I know you're still kind of focused on getting lean, your trip got canceled or whatever.

Are you, I saw you using Keon's, uh, essential meals throughout the day. Oh yeah. Three times a day. I mean, I, I mean, I tracked, I don't know if you guys remember when we, when we did that whole, uh, when I did that series, uh, which was so great because I was tracking everything. I was tracking with the Dexter scan. Yeah. I've done that forever with competing. So I w I know what, uh, what a normal cut looks like. I know what to anticipate. Yeah. What to expect.

And I thought, oh, this will be great. Cause that was right around the time when we were starting to take Keon as a partner and you know, we were all kind of, you know, that's, it's not that often where our, our paradigm has been shattered. Our paradigm was shattered in that situation where we had, we had talked a lot of shit about, um, amino acids for building muscle, that they're overrated if you're preserving muscle. Yeah. Or yeah. And so, uh, we got presented with some pretty interesting data.

No. And so it, so it was fascinating. Like, okay, cool. Let me put this to practice. So I've been doing this for a series and I already did a DEXA scan. I'm going into a cut. I know what to expect on it. And so what I mean by that, so the audience understands is that when you are cutting, especially cutting to get single digit body fat pretty aggressively like that, like for a show or trying to get down to single digits, um, you know, it's inevitable you're gonna lose some muscle.

You expect it. The goal is as little as lose as little as possible and shred all body fat. It's almost impossible. Okay. So nobody who, nobody gets to single body for a single digit body fat without losing some. I mean, that's, that's what you should expect. Yeah. And hence why so many bodybuilders put on so much mass in the off season so that when they shred, they shred down, they know they're going to lose some. But again, the game is how little can you lose? I lost none.

That was wild. That was, that was like, you're taking what, seven capsules three times a day. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So I just got a bottle here cause I'm going to start throwing those at myself. I took it before we podcast it right now and took it on my trip. Back when we were working with them, I did experiment with them, but I was not in a cut. I was just actually just trying to build and they didn't notice. Well, I know he made the case. He made the case for a positive, even if you are hitting protein.

I think it's really probably important when you're as low as, especially right now, I'm low calorie. Yeah. A perfect example to this, this trip, which is also, um, you know, Interesting thing to talk about as I'm going through this like strategies for people, you know I had a three-day trip where I was on the road ten hours a day every day And so just and I brought a cooler with my protein shakes and some bars I'd beef jerky when I could get to it So those were like my like safe foods, but I was I had to eat out It was I didn't have a lot of I couldn't even I wasn't even home in time to prep food before I go out and so And we're in cars with no access to anything.

So Prepping wasn't even an option. It was just and so the strategy for me becomes Just do as little damage as I can to the physique right now as I possibly can and what that looks like for me Is keeping the calories just really low and so and getting trying to get as much the protein target as I possibly can I'm not being able to train I'm not being able to hit adequate calories and everything that I need and So I'd rather caution because I don't want to put body fat on on a trip with that We're very easily as we're hitting truck stops and burger joints and bars And like that's what we're eating at places like that every day two three times a day So I was the guy that was you know Pulling that out or I was ordering a chicken salad when I could and stuff like that And you know, I came back and I didn't make any progress But I also didn't I didn't have a slot I didn't slide back and so it's like like you do the typical like when I do Eat, I'll avoid You know carbohydrates.

I'll get protein first and hey, if there's no good options fast yeah, so I even like so like I like like one of the places like the best healthy choices like pulled pork or brisket or Something like that. It's just like, you know, I'm not gonna have that on the bun with the fries without just straight Give me the brisket. Just give me the brisket and I'll just I'll eat the brisket, you know Like so I did things like that because there's plenty of oils and butter and extra calories I'm getting in there and I'm not gonna throw that on top of the you know carbs and the other everything else You know where I ate yesterday And they actually have the calories on the menu and it's hilarious to see what the calories on the menu.

Yeah cheesecake factory Find me a meal under 13 Crazy all the salad even the salad sounds like 1300. Yeah, it's full of 300. Yeah, it's nuts dude Crazy People have actually like decided to get the burger and the fries instead because it was like the same calories as the cell Yeah, forget it. My wife made even if she made such a good point about salad So when you eat a salad and it's just leaves and dressing sometimes you'll go to what you'll go somewhere and that'll be it It'll be leaves.

Maybe a couple tomatoes. Yeah and dressing. Yeah Waste of time, you know what? You're basically doing just drinking dressing. Yes Cuz lettuce is nothing the Lettuce is not the leaves. I'm gonna piss off some people the leaves and salads have almost no nutritional value They have almost no. It's good health value. It's arguably the closest thing to water. It's nothing Got you got leaves and celery of like one or two of like water all the time It's nothing and also you like you get no nutritional value at all You put your buttermilk ranch dressing even if you put like even if you use the different leaves like the arugula and that look at The nutrient content.

No, it's like nothing. It's nothing. Yeah, you're all you're doing is you might water? Yeah, she made a joke. We were at a wedding and a little bit of fire bad salad And she's like you just asked him for a cup of dressing So you have to have like the burner or the butter like croutons you got to have the cheese you got the bacon and all That's actually make it Well speaking of that to like if you guys so I always love paying attention to like companies that do something cool and creative and Like, you know marketing wise and like they know their audience really well like back in the day It was like, you know jack-in-the-box.

I knew that their whole thing was like stoners like So Wendy's knows like, you know, I guess like they have a big demographic or like, you know Kids that go to rock concerts and like, you know emo and really yeah yeah, so Dude so they actually like hired a legit band to create a song for them and It's like a hit song. It's it's a sick song, but really it's blue just about like some girl not wanting fries They wrote this whole song about it It's like a like a like a screamo kind of song and I think it's like Memphis Mayfire Or Emory or the lead singer from it like did it and like I was like is this a real song and this is an Ad, it's just an ad and it's a full song.

I do love good marketing It's sick Does it speak to the fact that when you go to a restaurant like that with your girlfriend or your wife and she says no I don't I wouldn't like anything that she's gonna eat off your head that pain point. That's it That's it. I was like, this is brilliant and even he even threw in like the square patty, you know The name of the song is she said she didn't want fries. Yes I Got I got some data that is so amazing right now.

It's going viral It's so amazing because it's all right more more vile than Justin's number seven steak It's like the most viral thing we ever posted on Instagram and it's all because you said you like your steak well done Which was an accident, which is so funny Cuz like again, like I get it like people who are just pissed, you know No, it's like blasphemy and it's funny you guys know I've been like to restaurants I order it medium to medium rare Yeah, we we were every time so you just mistakenly just was like in when we do When you look at the picture to your defense like you it's it's hard to tell.

Yeah. Yeah It's not and I again like I was in again I was way overthinking this cuz I'm like eight million people like in like, oh my god Like how do I defend myself? I can't defend myself Pointed to that so I was like, I guess bring on the heat, you know, like I fucked up but at the same time I was like, I don't know Do you maybe my subconscious like cuz I had a rare steak and I went more in the rare side and it was like so chewy and gnarly and like grizzly and I don't know that was the last time I had like it was like one of those restaurants that are kind of like Maybe like overcompensated like muscle overcompensated and like Anyways, but that's that's my only thought process behind it, but we do these like shotgun like video and like boom-boom-boom I had like this this this and I just was looking at it and I'm like, oh cool, dude I went to a friend flame roasted.

I had a friend order a steak blue. Have you heard? Yeah Yeah, that's literally like this What yeah, yeah, it's like really sting it on each side and then put it back on the plate. Yeah You know, it's so funny about that too. It's like that's the hack I guess so we just you just need to say one thing Wrong. No, it's true. And then the entire like you oh you get all these views and millions. It's so dumb Yeah, like literally like just I messed up and so it's like that's how it is.

This is range, right? No, it's range base. Yeah. Well, I mean I've Danny set me up eyes this way I was stressing about the marriage when I'm like, oh man, she put me on the spot with some questions I'm like, I'm actually surprised it didn't get as bad as it got like sounds like calm down, bro You're so worried Cuz I knew it when I did it it's like it's like him doing the steak He's like, I know I don't order a seven. I'm like that sounds really bad the way that company comes out What was weird is you've never told me to not tease you publicly which was weird if Adam Adam ever said that he's always like Yeah roast me.

Yeah, and I'm like, oh watch this. Look what I'm gonna say. No, don't say anything, bro Don't don't yeah, like oh my god Probably cuz it's only a comment cuz I Know why something like that something like that? I feel like Katrina's an innocent bystander in that one. So if it was just me, but she's so secure I know she is she don't care which is even more reason I'm like, I don't want to bring it on to her You don't say it like so it's like that if it was just me It's like bring it on like I like it, but it's like I already probably Didn't make her look the greatest in that light already, you know Cuz the way it was positioned and then it's like if you lean into it It's like I don't want to add any did not that one It doesn't feel like cuz I don't mind getting her getting her burn when she's when she's already like not not a fan of it But I think she's I think I don't know if she's going to or not But I heard Danny and I heard her say fine.

I will she said she goes can I do a video with you? Yeah She doesn't even have a social media. I know I know so I think cuz it did get enough Like I think people want to hear like her thoughts like who's this at this asshole? This girl can absolutely So I just hope she doesn't like she doesn't roast me too She doesn't put me on blast like that. She like gets my back. Maybe I'll like serve you guys steak Well, you know so hockey puck I I mean looking back now It's kind of obvious that something like that would happen because it's it's funny to me So Katrina is is a well-done steak person and it's the big joke whenever we go out She does order like she likes it ruined you.

Oh, yeah Well, then she tells she tells the the waiter to leave it leave it on the grill and walk away like that's what's how she orders it she goes Well done, and I always follow up with a joke like just go pick up some beef jerky across the street from the gas station She won't know the difference. Yes, so ever I got a fine dining You know restaurant and so most people at this point there most people are pretty good But there's some places will go and the chef will refuse to do it.

The chef won't even do it So she'll ask well done. It'll still come back medium like there's some places where Chefs are like refused to cook a steak like that and it's just like you get old restaurant and meals was like that Yeah, French fine dining. Yes, dude. Nothing past like medium rare. That's right That's like like some places so I get that so like that's like a big I know I was thinking about that It was like why so much hate? Yeah, that's why I worked in the restaurant industry.

Yeah, I know better there's videos on on on social media where people go to a tie-in coffee shops and ask for like soy milk and just look at The guy's face like no So on this on this trip where we were talking about all these trends that I didn't even know were happening on the internet right now that some of them were hilarious if you guys seen the Airport buddies with the pants trend. No, okay So like five or six but five or six buddies all go to the airport now We all so we could do this together because we fly together so much shirts, too So they so we all buy pants for each other and you don't know what it is You just have to go to the bathroom on and wear them on Bro, they're they're over the topless chaps.

They're like over-the-top pant. Oh, yeah, right that right there the guy with the Hilarious we would do that. Oh we would I was like I would do that with the guys We are so much together. It's like that. Can I tell you what the ones that we get dude? Do you have tell you what I would get? Cuz if once I say these pants you tell me where you'd see these cookie monster pajama bottoms. Oh, yeah That'd be hilarious. Yeah Walmart special Late night, you know shopping.

I didn't even know I didn't know it was a trend at all We went down the rabbit hole of my buddies watching them and I'm like, oh, these are hilarious We would we would do we would agree to do it to each other It's like you don't know what it is until you go So it's just like I we hand you like me the three of us would know what we got done Yeah, you know the three of you would know, you know, so like you but you don't know what you get And so it's just like you go that bathroom.

You open up you just come out and then all the guys are just like Oh, yeah. Yeah, I thought that was that was hilarious. Let me go back Let me go to my study now that I brought up earlier that I think is so so awesome So did you guys know that they're noticing? In it's a trend that they've noticed now Since the 90s they call it the sex recession Okay, people are having like less sex couples in particular are having less sex Do you guys know that there's one group that has avoided the sex recession?

So if you look people look this up sex recession married people, you'll see in the data No, we're talking couples now in the data Couples married couples are just having less and less sex. This just seems to be how sorry we don't want an age group Well, there's a there's a there's a group There's a subgroup of married couples that are having great sex and reporting great sex And it's the people who people you would think are not doing it. They're great. Yeah, the Christians. That's right Oh people who go to church regularly because they held out for 20 years They held out for 25 years, but they're making up for time right there Yeah Husbands and wives who attend religious services at least twice a month are having the best They're reporting the best sex and they're having the most sex and these are couples who've been married a long time So like they're like young couples They're like in their 50s 60s and it's going viral right now because there's a funny argument to that You know, right they have nothing to compare to well, that's great.

This is so what so it's the best sex They've had so they're eating at a three-star restaurant, but they have no idea what a five-star I don't think that's what it is There's a there's a funny comeback to that that you have to also throw in that so here's why here's what and I know people will say that but here's what the data shows because we think that What we think the world would tell you that good sex is lots of tricks lots of stamina Sexy young body.

Okay. Here's what the data shows. It's about connection These are people in their 50s and 60s who've been married forever. They're not doing all this crazy stuff They're just have really fulfilling sex lives because the sex comes out of connection of love. It's not sex by itself Do these polyamory influencers have really fallen off? Yeah Weird They were so involved First or the podcast dude everybody in our space every one of our every other one of our friends was like Swinging and open relationship and all that.

I remember that it was big Which is funny cuz isn't sex at dawn, which was the the Bible for them, right? Yeah was a older book wasn't it or did that come out around around that time? Oh, that's explains it Can you pull up when it's sex at dawn come out? Yeah. Yeah, look Chris Nolan, right? You know when you know, what's crazy is when you read study books like that or studies around that 2010. Yeah, see When we point to our I guess you could call it primal instincts That is not that does not mean that's the way we should be.

Yeah, right. That was a you know, I Read that book with Katrina. Um, and it was or we listened to that book together and it was a really good list That's right around when you proposition Justin. Yeah I know you like his calves No, it was it was a great exercise for us to do that What it did do is create great dialogue in conversation with her and I and her and I did not go into it like Hey, what's think about we weren't as your tongue-in-cheek, right?

It was so popular in the in the space that just straight curious and her and I that was the time when we were we were Listening to books a lot together. Okay, let's let's listen this book together But and it was it was great dial and one of the best takeaways though I thought I thought that We got from it is what you're saying right now is how much our animals things are. And then actually the, the, the, the resistance of that and the value of resisting of that, and then also having empathy for the other person of like, they have to, have to, have to be able to do that and resist them because the animal instinct is to do these types of things, but the benefit of us resisting and how much more that would bond and connect us and there's way more value.

Yeah, I remember, I won't say who it is. Yeah, we took a very different, uh, take on it than what I felt like the community did, because I, you actually read it and it's not like this, like what I thought everybody was presenting it. Like, like I thought it was makes this hard case for, no, it doesn't really, it really makes a case for like how animalistic we are and how natural that is to do that doesn't make the case that you should natural quote unquote or not.

Isn't best. Like when you look at, well, this is what we naturally, so, uh, back then I also used to kill the weakest and it's, it's how you, so, so the fitness space, uh, the fit, especially media, social media fitness space was going weird in that direction. So he had all these fitness people were like, Oh, we're polyamorous. It's so evolved, you know, whatever. Um, and all of us were kind of rolling our eyes and there was one person in particular who was kind of, you know, blowing his trumpet.

We'll say who it is. And I remember he did a whole post. Thanks. He did a whole post about how it's great. It's evolved. It requires lots of communication and connection between your partners, this and that. Meanwhile, they're a fitness person. And so I remember I commented underneath it. I said, you know, what do you say to the person whose desires are to eat donuts and candy and not move? Yeah. Do they listen to their animal instincts or is there more value in denying some of those things for a greater value?

And it was crazy to me. It was, I blew his mind and you could see that lots of people liking it and saying, absolutely. And it's like, how do you piece that together with health and fitness? But you can't piece it together with your hedonistic desires to just have sex with lots of different people. Right. Disconnect there a hundred big, big time. Yeah, but very great, great parallel to those two things. I thought, yeah. And I felt like that was, that was why it was such a, uh, an interesting read for her and I, because we got, we got that from that.

It wasn't like that. This was like, Hey, green light. We should fuck everybody. Now it was like, Hey, this is like, it was actually more like so much more respect for the other person for being able to resist that, like knowing like, man, your partner probably, no matter what, no matter how much they love the prison, like there's an animal instinct that makes you want to do this. And the discipline to be able to resist from that is because of the love that they have and respect for the other person.

And it's like, and that the thought of that gain more value and more connection. So that was like what I got from it. Uh, all right. You guys ready for an interesting statistic? Sure. Did you guys, I just, this just, uh, just read this the other day. The assisted suicide deaths in Canada. So you guys know this. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so Canada a while ago now they, they do this now. You're terminally ill, mentally ill. If you're like, Hey, I don't want to live anymore.

It's they've made it, they've reduced a lot of friction. Yeah. Very accessible. Essentially puts you to sleep. Yes. Assisted suicide. In fact, there was a recent story I talked about in last podcast where this grandmother with, with cancer was forced, the doctors forced it. She resisted it. She fought it and they forced her to die, which is crazy. And they're under a lawsuit right now. Anyway, there are more assisted suicide deaths in Canada. Then there are firearm deaths in America. What? Yeah. So, you know, they always talk about how dangerous it is that we have guns.

There's more medically assisted suicide deaths in Canada than firearm deaths in America right now. That's an interesting, isn't that wild? That's crazy. Crazy. That is a crazy, crazy. How many? Yeah. It's it's to me, it was so wild that they allowed even mental illness to be. So if you want to kill yourself essentially, then they'll let you, they'll help you. Yeah. Like what about treatment? You know, assisted dying. What does that say? One in 20 Canadian deaths. One in 20. It's so anti-human dude. It's so evil.

What are you doing? Is it a crazy? That is weird. I know. Wow. I mean, people, what is the math on that? What's like, how many, how many? Yeah. Look at the total numbers, Doug, Doug, uh, say how, how many assisted suicide last year, 15,300 people underwent assisted dying last year. 15,000 people last year alone. Now, is there any, is there, is there something, cause I'm not, obviously I'm not, I'm not thinking of all the potential cases, like what are there any situations where this makes sense?

I mean, we're not thinking of pain, like terminal illness. It's a super slippery slope. No, I get that. Cause we either, we either, what I'm trying to do is trying to do, I'm sure I'm trying to do some, some, you know, they'll make the case that there's like terminal, yeah, there'll be lots of pain, the pain thing. And that's, that's a very slippery slope. Here's, here's the way I look at it. We either value human life, uh, above all things and consider it special. We don't.

Cause, cause the reason why I'm asking that is just cause, okay, give me those cases and then go of the 15, 3, 3, 15,300. What percentage of those? Is it 99% of them are those, and then there's 1% is this weird outlier thing, or is it, or is there a lot of these? All of them had some kind of, uh, illness, uh, or something. So they were all in the medical system. And no, of course, but I mean, like the mental illness one, I can't believe that they could qualify with that.

Yeah. Like you're depressed. You know, but you see where I'm going with this, right? It's like, okay, it's, it's okay. So yes, it is highlighting the extremes. And so I don't want to be as like this alarmist where it's like, uh, there was three cases that were actual mental people. And what we don't know is how extreme those cases were and all these things and 15,298 of it were actually ones where if it was your family member, you would have been like, let them go. You know, they are, they're on their last one.

They're in so much pain. Let them go type of deal. Like, that's what I would want to know. Cause you got to know that this, this, this is the stuff that makes news and headlines and go viral and people talk about it because that's so alarm. Yeah. But you gotta, you gotta dive deeper in the data. I lost my grandmother. My grandfather had somebody who was terminal cancer. If my, with my close family member who had terminal cancer was trying to kill herself, I would try to stop her.

I just would, I wouldn't be like, all right, go ahead and do it. I just wouldn't. That's why I'm asking the question. What's the case where you would, I don't think I would. I don't think I ever would. I don't know. I think you either look human life has to be deemed really special and different than in separate from like your dog. Like you put your dog down because he's suffering. That's a dog. But for human, if I, if I'm, if I'm on the bed and I'm in horrible pain and a tube is in my mouth and I'm just, I can't even really communicate with you guys other than typing on something and I'm just, and I'm, I've been there and I'm not leaving there anytime soon.

And I ask, I want to say my goodbyes and go versus drift away. So like, uh, I don't know. I don't know if that's, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't want you guys to not let me go in that case. Yeah. I don't know if I'm asking for it. There's a difference between like brain dead vegetable. Yes. I'm talking about, these are people that are, that would be a different case. In my, a lot of these are just like ham terminal. I'm in a lot of pain.

There was a case of this woman who had severe depression. Um, and she was, she just, you know, cognitively make that decision. Yeah. Yeah. So none of the other ones are in that category or in that 50. So here, let's, let me put it this way, because that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom. Let me put it this way in America. If someone's on life support, you can turn off life support. Yeah. If they're not, and that won't go in that, in that, that doesn't go in that suicide.

Okay. So that doesn't go into that category. That's what I'm trying to get at right now. It's like, how much of like, are we lumping convoluting like things that would have been like, so like we have a, my dad has a family friend right now who's been in a coma for like three months and there's some, and so they're now discussing, should they take them off life support? That's not the same as assisted suicide. Okay. So they wouldn't even, they wouldn't even count that in the 15,300.

Okay. No assisted suicide is its own, its own category. This is literally every single person in this 15,300 is saying like, Hey, kill me. They could literally vocalize that and say, I don't want to live anymore in some way, shape, or form. And there's like I said, there was a case of the grandmother who they forced it on her to the point where she got bloodied because they were trying to jab her and she was blocking it. There was one case I read about with this woman who was like in her, I want to say forties who had chronic depression.

And she made the case that she was suffering and her family was fighting it. They were going to the, and they were saying, please don't do this. And she was fighting and she won and she got, she, the courts in Canada said, yes, she can, she can go ahead and do assisted suicide. And the family was begging them not to. That's a case that happened. So this is what we're dealing with, which is wild. It's just crazy. Yeah. That's sad, dude. All right. So what is dose for your liver?

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That's dose daily.co slash mind pump three five. Use the code mind pump for 35% off back to the show. Our first caller is Cole from South Carolina. Cole. What's up, dude? What's up, man? Hey guys. How are we doing? Good. Good. All right. How can we help you? Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago, um, I had a parathyroidectomy and, uh, after some tests and everything, they realized my calcium was super off and they were like, well, we see this tumor in your neck and so we need to get it removed.

And then they did August 10th. And one week later I started medical school. So it was quite a quick journey, quick turnaround. Here I am now in my fourth week of medical school and I follow a few of your programs, but I'm just trying to look for the best balance, you know, as far as trying to get back in recovery and get back to the gym and manage this new lifestyle. Yeah. Good. I'm assuming you're on a thyroid medication now. I am. Okay, good. So that's balanced and you, I'm sure you know this already, but, uh, you know, that's one of the things that you can solve relatively easy with modern medicine.

So just taking thyroid seems to be a pretty good job of, uh, replacing, uh, when there's a missing thyroid. The thing that I want you to consider the most, the most important thing is the load, the workload that medical school places on you. Now, the type of person that tends to go to medical school and the type of person that makes it through medical school is also the kind of person that has a poor gauge on stress. Uh, it tends to fuel them tolerating it. Yeah.

So, and I've, I've worked with a lot of, uh, doctors and surgeons and it's just consistent across the board. It's just, you know, um, no, I'm good. I'm fine. In fact, they kind of thrive on it a little bit. And so my job as a coach was always to try to train them appropriately, which always felt to them like too little pulling back. They always, in fact, I got a buddy right now that I'm, he's an ER doctor surgeon and he'll come in and be like, no man, I need you to kick my ass.

And I'm like, listen, dude, no, we're going to train this. We're going to, you know, and I trained him. He's like, that was too easy. And then meanwhile, he's getting stronger. Yeah, but it's a constant conversation. Okay. So where am I going with this? Your program is math 15. Yep. That's it. Yeah. None of our other programs will be appropriate for you while you go through medical school, while you're in residency. And also depending on what kind of medicine you practice, where are you going to be, what kind of doctor do you want to be?

I really don't know yet. Uh, I'll be honest after this recent, uh, kind of chapter I'm interested in oncology, but, uh, I've still got plenty of time to make that decision. Well, if it's oncology, you're going to be doing mass 15 for the rest of your life. So yeah, I will say I love PPL. Uh, I did that during the summer. And so, uh, I was kind of interested in like the, the two up or two lower that came out, but I had a feeling that y'all would recommend that 15, you just won't get, you just won't get good results doing it, bro.

It's just going to, it's just going to be even if you did, cause you're still young and pretty resilient, you would get better results on maps 15. So that's just it. It's just that, yeah. Uh, and PPL not too bad. That's probably our, one of our moderate volume. Like it's not a super high, it's not overwhelming. Um, but definitely you'll get better on mass 15, mass 15 is just more appropriate for what you're heading into. And you'll get better results. And I want to, do you do things outside of the gym?

Do you like to do other physical activities? Yeah. So I started picking up basketball again. Uh, then Charleston's a huge running community. So like to do that. Good. So here's, here's the thing. So, uh, the, the workout, the structured workout portion is mass 15, but that doesn't mean don't be active outside of that. Okay. So the way you would treat outside activity is not like a workout. So what, the mistake you can make is be like, I gotta go play some basketball so I can burn some calories.

The proper way to do it is, man, I'm going to go have some fun. Yeah. And so if you treat activity like that, like, man, I'm gonna go have some fun. And then your base program is mass 15. You're going to do great, bro. You're going to get great results. You're going to consistently get stronger. It'll take you through medical school. It'll make you resilient. But if you're like chasing the sweat and the workouts all the time, you're going to burn yourself out real quick. And we'll, we'll send you maps 15 and then, uh, and then go through, just go through the library of those.

We have so many of them just rotate. You already got mass 15. Don't you already have it? Yeah, I've got a couple of them. And actually that's one of the things I wanted to ask coming out of the summer. Did PPL and I'm kind of coming back slowly to the weights, uh, just as more and more, I get cleared. What's your take on maps 15 symmetry. Should I do that a little bit later? Should I go ahead and run that now? No, let's go, dude. I'll give it to you now.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You'll love it. Yeah. All right. Appreciate it. You got it, man. Good luck, dude. Yeah. Good luck, bro. Well, thanks guys. And I just got to say, uh, truly other blessing. Listen to y'all all through the hospital. I've got my family and friends listening to y'all. So I really appreciate the content and what you stand for. Right. That's great, brother. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks guys. Take it easy. When I hear, uh, someone want to be an oncologist, I'm always like, why? Like I get it.

It takes a special, you need that. We need them. Holy crap. I can't think that's one of the most stressful. Yeah. It's like all your patients. Yeah are dying. Yeah, like for real. Oh, let's take that home with you. Yeah, you know the thing people understand is that The appropriate amount of volume and training and intensity will give you the best results Always more than that won't less than that won't either but more than that definitely well It's it can be deceiving to win like for example He pushed four legs and maybe he gets good results on that and it's not that That is perfect or great for you said you could have done something even better and he wasn't a medical school He's starting medical school.

Yeah, the whole new ball game for sure. Yeah Our next caller is Ellen from Indiana. Hi Ellen. Hello. Hi. Oh my gosh. I can't see you guys Ah, oh, there you are. Okay Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. How can we help you? All right, I'll go ahead and read my email so that way I don't stray too far from it Hi mind pump team first, I would like to thank you for everything you do and for all of the great content you put out I've been a listener for five years now and I never miss an episode My husband recommended your podcast to me when I was struggling to get pregnant at the time I was working out six to seven days per week lifting with minimal rest breaks daily cardio intermittent fasting Restricting calories and carbs while excessively tracking my intake taking minimal rest, etc.

Basically everything wrong I believe the harder I worked the more results I would see I was frustrated because I wasn't seeing results and I also was Not having a menstrual cycle at the time Fertility doctor recommended that I try to lose five to ten pounds to help me ovulate But little did he know that I was already so restrictive regarding my nutrition and had been trying to lose those same five to ten pounds for years One of the first episodes that I listened to you spoke to a listener who was trying to get her cycle back You spoke with her about the importance of reducing training volume and eating more calories so that her body could feel safe again I felt like I had nothing to lose So I gave up my daily cardio and intermittent fasting and purchased maps anabolic and focused on daily steps taking rest breaks between sets I Also started intentionally eating more calories and carbohydrates on a daily basis I was able to get pregnant naturally with my son who is now three years old, and I also have a one-year-old daughter Wonderful, beautiful.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart My kids are my entire world and I'm not sure I'd have them today without your advice Fast forward to today. I am 32 years old 5 10 160 pounds I work full-time. I averaged 10,000 to 11,000 steps per day I Enjoy lifting weights and I've really enjoyed your maps 15 style workouts because I like getting up every morning and moving my body before my kids wake up and Before I go to work every day My question is what my current goal should be My husband encouraged me to reach out to you over the last few years I have watched him completely transform his body through reverse dieting and running your maps programs It's been about a month since I wrote in so I have a few updates this next section I'm still nursing my 16 month old daughter, but I'm slowly trying to wean her My cycle has recently returned And just preparing for the call.

I've been tracking over the last few weeks. So that way I could give you guys some more specific numbers So I have been averaging 2,700 calories per day, and I've been hitting 160 grams of protein every day I feel as though I'm eating a good amount of calories based off of what I hear you recommend to your other listeners However, I'm just feeling stuck I would like to lean out my midsection as this is where I have always carried my weight even before kids And I would also like to gain more muscle specifically in the glutes and legs.

I realize that these are contradicting goals Since postpartum I have worked my way up to a 200 pound deadlift a 145 pound squat and 105 pound bench press I'm currently feeling somewhat stalled and I was a little bit stronger than this prior to having kids I want to be a strong healthy and confident mom for my kids I want to be an example of a healthy relationship with nutrition and exercise while also feeling confident in myself Should I continue eating? 2,700 calories per day as I wean from breastfeeding Reduce my calories as I wean or attempt to increase calories to focus on building muscle any program recommendations would also be appreciated And since having my daughter I have completed maps starter maps 15 advanced maps muscle mommy power lift 15 symmetry anabolic the female edition and I'm currently in phase one of maps 15 strong and I often Split the non maps 15 workouts in half and complete each day on separate days just to fit my schedule And I apologize for the long-winded email.

Thank you so much for your time and everything you do Ellen. This is amazing What a tremendous success killing it. You're doing phenomenally and So there's you're at this phase now, which is a great place to be It is a phase of growth in fitness where you Initially, it's like I need to reach this finish line. I have this goal. I want to get to this place Then you get there and you're like, well, what do I do now? and honestly what you do now is you enjoy it and you will continue to progress and I want to remind you you just Just got your cycle back and you're still breastfeeding, but you're starting to wean Your daughter off.

Is that correct? Yes, that's correct So you're at this place now where you really just enjoy what you're doing and have fun with it and you will continue to progress But again, I was gonna remind you that you're weaning your daughter off breastfeeding You just got your cycle back And so you're gonna see as the hormones start to come back because that's what's happening, right while you're breastfeeding There's a difference in hormones than when you're not You're gonna see faster results start to happen here soon, even though you've been kicking butt and you're crushing It typically in my experience Takes about two years Postpartum for a woman who's fit to start to really feel like she used to And that's gonna happen for you.

And so really there's not Much I would change your caloric intake is good. You're following good programming. You're strong I mean could you cut you could could you reverse diet more you could I don't think you should Because as you come off of breath, so breastfeeding you're burning extra calories every day And so it's naturally gonna put you in a natural reverse diet. Yeah, so by coming off of breastfeeding That's gonna start to become like a slight surplus of additional calories and that should fuel right into your workouts Yeah, and so really just I would stay the course Keep getting strong and and watch what happens in my experience when my female clients stopped breastfeeding about two or three months after Things seem to turbocharge a little bit.

Like if we kept everything the same it's like everything started to Move a little faster. And so I'd say hang tight and stay consistent I mean your calories are good. Your strength training is good. Your steps are good. I mean you're doing phenomenal I wouldn't do anything until probably the first of the year like considering to like cut or do something like that It's like I would stay the course As you come off of breastfeeding you like Sal said give it a few months of being consistent with that watch what happens We should see strength increases.

You should continue to feel better stronger. You probably will kind of naturally recomb So you'll kind of lean out and naturally it'll be a nice slow process You get build a little muscle lose a little bit of body fat and then come January or so Like you should be feeling back to yourself a hundred percent yourself and you're in a good place calorie wise if you feel like okay I kind of want to lean out a little bit Now you're in a place in a position to cut some calories cut three five hundred calories a day And then watch you just lean right out.

That's it. Yep Okay, so this process is taking a little bit longer than I imagined it would with her So I feel like I haven't made much progress in the last month Even though my strength has stalled Do you think that I should try to bump calories like a little bit since I were kind of she's still Needing that right now. Let me ask you this Do you feel do you feel like you'd be stuffing yourself if you add a more calories? Do you think you could do it and be okay?

Are you hungry? Um, I yeah I think I could do it and be okay, but I just I've been afraid. Oh, no. No, you're in that case Yeah, if you're hungry If you have an appetite and you're hungry and you feel like you're actually keeping yourself from anymore eat more, you know And it doesn't have to be much 150 200 dollars. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and I think you'll like it I think you'll see the strength games go up in that case. Yeah, okay. Yeah my other question so I Wrote this in before you guys dropped your latest program last week Do you feel like I'd be a good candidate for that program?

I know it's like a four day a week and I I know you guys recommend like the 15 style to like parents with young Kids a lot of times. I like you on the 15. I like you. You're also working you said too, right? So you've got two little ones your breastfeeding and you're working. I think 15 is a perfect program for you Yeah, we just cycle our way there. But yeah, I think the 15th, you know, we're just cycle through those 15 program So that's gonna get you the best results consistently Okay.

Yeah, thank you so much You got it and man what a wonderful success story I really hope somebody's listening right now I think there's going through that for sure. The only part of your whole story that makes me Just oh is I cannot believe a fertility doctor told you to lose weight. That's crazy to get you That's crazy to me, but thank God you went in the opposite direction I'm so glad you communicated that and and don't feel guilty about continuing that breastfeeding. That's liquid gold Keep up that liquid gold.

Yeah, I have a strong healthy, baby Yeah Thank you guys so much again. I really really appreciate it. You got it. Thank you. I You know, let's see. I love that. You know why I like that so much somebody listening. He's gonna hear that and go Oh, maybe I should try that that works. Think about it crazy workouts tons of calories burn doing everything restricting carbs restricting calories Lose five to ten when the opposite direction Way less workout, especially eating more. Did you see her height and weight?

Yeah, I know five ten one sixty No, that's not a muscle. That's not a lose weight place No, she's now strong lean her metabolisms on fire and she works and she's got kids everybody pay attention you guys It works. Our next caller is Michelle from Maryland. Hi, Michelle Hello, it's so cool to see all of you. I listen to you all day every day Well, I wouldn't say that but a lot of the day every day. Thank you. How you doing? I'm good excited a little nervous, but excited.

Yeah, how can we help you? Yeah, I Guess I'll just read from my email My so this was like a month ago that I sent this So I've been a listener for about I guess nine months now binge listening Loving every minute of it. I laugh often and love how compassionate you all are to the overtrainers and overachievers like me Feels like you're talking to me and I thank you very much and I think listening to three very understanding compassionate caring men it's kind of like You're like fathers.

I can look up to even though you're my age Thank you So I don't understand that but my question is in relation to Sal and his commitment and somewhat compulsive need for supplements and training Consistently I can relate strongly with Sal and thought to ask a question to see if Sal Adam or Justin know anything about OCD or working with clients that had OCD or how to support them. So I was I was Informally diagnosed with it, but I think it's more like OCPD which is like obsessive-compulsive personality disorder So it's slightly different if you've done the research, but I wouldn't say I'm officially OCD, but yeah Yeah Listen Michelle, we do the answers here.

Okay, we do the tell we tell people what's going on. We don't do the other way I'm not super familiar With OCD aside from what I think a lot of people would assume OCD is but I'm very familiar with like body dysmorphia very familiar with insecurities and stuff like that, so What's the difference what what's characteristic of OCD OCD is more like unwanted thoughts and like of harming yourself or other people getting hurt unwanted things where OCPD is more like the perfectionistic like you're obsessively doing things to make it like perfect or to In completion or like for instance like my morning routine It's very like I like to do certain things at certain times or like my meal timing that type of thing and it's all things that Help me function well in a day, but it can be on the like compulsive side So OCD is more like where you can't function.

It keeps you from functioning through the day So what do they call denial OCPD? No, actually no, so neither one of those You know what would resonate with me, but I do I do have an attachment now. Here's the deal with exercise I can now miss it and it doesn't really bother me like it used to really yeah And I work out way less. I work out like three days a week now Which is very low for someone like me So that doesn't but I am I definitely am neurodivergent.

I'm sure there's a connection Yeah between the two But it doesn't it's like, okay, you know, so so I don't have like the unwanted thoughts or Wanting to hurt anybody sometimes Adam, but that's that's wanted. It's a one More of a fantasy. No, I'm just kidding I don't know none of those though that doesn't really resonate, but I'll read more into it because I you know Admittedly, I don't know a ton Yeah, either one of those. Yeah, I would do you do you do you work with anybody?

Do you have Okay, cuz I would think that would be one of the most powerful things that you could do is to be able to Get some of those thoughts out also, you know Have somebody else who you kind of relinquish a lot of the direction from and you're just kind of more following Their direction orders versus you're getting in your own mind and doing that. I would think that would be Really useful. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I'm listening in the 2024 year I'm kind of like back listening and I heard you recently stuck talk to a Person that called in they had like this almost exact same thing as me like they like to eat at a certain time They like to walk after they're eating they like to do this certain amount of thing.

And it like makes them feel settled. And I think it's a control thing ultimately, because I feel like I have a lot of stress in my life. It's kind of like rigidity. And if I don't work out, I feel very anxious. And I remember Sal mentioning that back in 2024 anyway. So I'm cool if you're like not as attached as you used to be. So maybe I'll get to that one at one point. Yeah, but I will say I can identify with some of those things and how, now missing workouts doesn't really bother me like it used to, but it is a powerful antidepressant.

Just movement is for me. So moving in the morning helps me podcast. It helps me feel better, especially because the workouts are also prayer time and gratitude time. So that's kind of more what it is now than what it used to be, I would say. But I'm gonna look more into it. I think that's a great, yeah, I think that's a great place to look into. Yeah, I always like how Adam is very like chill about things when it comes to like, oh, I go on vacation, I don't work out.

And I'm like, what? Like, I can never imagine that. I mean, what would you say Sal has been the big shift for you that's allowed you to go from that? Because I think you were very much so, you couldn't miss a workout not that long ago. And now you have been able to. And so what has been a big unlock for you to be able to do that? My faith, 100%, 100%, my faith, nothing. Nothing's had an impact on it like that. I mean, it always helped me to train people.

So coaching other people is a really, really, it's a really effective mirror. And I always talk to coaches about this. If you genuinely wanna help people, so if you just wanna train people because you like fitness is different, but if you really wanna help people, like you really care about them, you'll find yourself saying things to them that you should also say to yourself. And so that was kind of a check and balance for me for a long time, but it wasn't until I found Jesus and that made the biggest difference.

I imagine there's a lot of people who have faith or believe in Christ, but that still struggle with that. Is it a prayer, a conversation that you have? Constant repentance, conversation, and turning to. And I mean, I don't wanna go on a tangent, but if you look at the data on, so self-proclaimed Christians aren't really a good data set because we're in Western society. A lot of people identify that way. So what they do is they take the data, they look at people who attend church and read the Bible three or more times a week.

And so what they're trying to look for are people who really have a faith, right? Not someone who just says, I'm a Christian because we're in a Western society and that's not a big deal to say that. What they find with the data shows is a far lower rate of addiction, far lower rates of depression, anxiety, more likely to volunteer. They tend to have more kids. So it helps for sure. So I think it's the dedication, but I mean, if I sit here and tell you like, this is what I did exactly, I guess the clearest thing would be just constant turning and praying to God.

I've been sort of doing that kind of like with my therapist has kind of been, she's been pointing me that way. And I think that's like, it's a really good way to like learn letting go of control, I think. Yeah, there's a difference between I can do this, I can fix this under my own strength, which there's some value to that for sure. But the Christian faith very much says you can't, but you need a savior. That's the whole point. And then there's a supernatural component that comes from that.

And I don't want to ever dismiss that because that's real. So, and what you're saying is the relinquishing of control can feel like giving up to somebody. Like, what do you mean have no control? I just give it up. And it's like, yeah, you trust, you trust. You're like, I've gone as far as I can. I'm not, this ain't working. So I'm just going to give this to you and try not to do the thing where you like throw out the fishing line and then you wheel it back in.

So it's a constant giving up. It doesn't just happen once, it's constant. Yeah, yeah. And then what you meant about, said about helping people, I've actually been, there's going to be a big change because my husband's in the military and he'll be retiring soon. And he wants to kind of like do this big change. So it'd be like 20 years, he'll be done and it'll be great when he is. But he wants to do this big change, which will make us move. I might have to change my job.

I'm like, I really would love to get into the personal training field. Oh, there you go. Yeah, and that was like my side question though, like with my rigidity and perfectionistic and that type of thing would, and like, especially with wellness and diet, it's my way of controlling my life is my wellness and my diet. It's kind of like, and it's been known like kind of orthorexic like, but is going to training other people a good route to take? Yes. Like I would. Yes. Well, I got to ask you this, do you really want to help people or is it just because you want to be more fit?

Oh, I think helping people. Oh, then yes. Yes, then absolutely. Then the answer is yes. Because that's part of what Sal's saying that was such a big thing for him is he would come on the show and he's giving this communication. He's telling other people, hey, take some days off. Hey, do this or that. Hearing himself going like, I need to take some of my own. You have to take your own advice. Take your own advice. It's really hard to hear yourself love someone else and not do that for yourself.

Exactly. So then doing that would eventually help me do that for myself. Yeah. Thinking outward will help you come back inward. Yeah, and it'll also make you a good coach. Yeah. Because you're going to see a lot of people like you. Yep, and you'll be able to connect to them. And relate. And I tell you what, this is an extreme example. Okay, this isn't you, but a drug addict who's trying to become sober will connect more to somebody who used to be a drug addict than somebody who's never touched drugs before.

That's true. So someone like you, you're well positioned to communicate to people who struggle with fitness in the ways that you do. And a lot of people do, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. It's a powerful thing. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I love that idea. Good. I was worried. I was like, I don't know if that'll be the right route. I think it'll just make it all worse, but ultimately, you're talking it'll be good for me. It'll be great. And also, yeah. It'll be great.

And when you're ready, you let us know, because I think going through our course, it would be great for you. Yes, our course is around that. Really, how to build your business and be a great coach. Exactly, that'll be the plan. And you all recommend NASM first. And then your course, or? You can do them in conjunction. They're very different. NASM will be very focused on the exercise portion of training. It'll make you very proficient with biomechanics and things like that. Ours is much more on the business, coaching, communication with client side.

So you could do them simultaneously. Our course is recognized by NASM, so you'll get continuing education units with NASM for taking our course. And if you're looking to work in a big box gym, you're gonna need an NASM cert or something similar. If you plan on working for yourself, you don't need that necessarily. Our course would be more valuable because it's more based on building your business. Let's see. And I think I'm not that good of a business person, so I definitely would need your help.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my sister, I have a twin sister. She's got four businesses, so I could always lean on her too for a little help. She does bookkeeping, so she could be my bookkeeper. You'd love it. We have a school group that's an ongoing community where they meet, and we have an educator who's, so it's not like you just take the course and you go away. You're in a community that we're all helping and supporting each other. Exciting. I'd love to do that. It kind of gives me excitement, so I appreciate all the recommendations.

And what's one recommendation you have? One thing, because I hear you all say it all the time. Go for walks after your meals. All the benefits of it. And I do that, but then I get comments from people that I, like my family, they're like, why do you always have to go on walks? Why are you so obsessive about it? So I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place because it really helps me, my mental health, and obviously my physical. And I need a break sometimes like that, but I get all this judgment from people, so how do you navigate that?

Well, so sometimes don't take the walk, and I would tell someone like you that. Okay. And let go of it. And then the other thing is, and you got to be careful with this because people like us can thrive. We can feed off this, so this can go in the wrong direction. But being healthy oftentimes is a little bit of being a rebel. Countercultural. And so it's a big countercultural. Now, I'm careful with that because you could also wear that like a badge of honor and be like, yeah, I just do all this stuff.

Everybody's out to get me. You know, and so it can also fuel that, but it's, you know, just miss the occasional walk. I mean, I'm huge on taking walks after we eat. Katrina and I are big fans of it, but I'll tell you an example of when I don't and when I do. I'm over at her family's house. There's 12, 15 family members. We're all eating and we're having dinner. I don't get up and take a walk after that. Her and I go out for a restaurant Friday night together.

We absolutely go for a walk after that because she loves to do it. I love to do it. It's something that's important to us. Anytime I'm by myself and I eat, go for a walk. I mean, with these guys, we eat, we go for a walk. So I think there's times to do it. And then I think there's times when it's probably more important to stay with the family and converse and have a good night. Now, if the whole family wanted to get up and go for a walk, we do together, awesome.

But I, most of the time, it's not the case. They want to stay there and have drinks and eat food and do their thing. And, you know, I'm going to sit around and enjoy the family and be there for that. And I'm not going to be kind of a weirdo and get up and leave down their neighborhood and walk around the neighborhood just so I can get my steps or walk in. I'm going to take that time off. Unless you take them with you, right? Right.

That's what I mean. That's what they all want to do, which they don't. So. What if you're in a house with five crazy kids and you need, all under 10, and you need a breather. Then you get the hell out of there. Yes. Take 10 minutes. You don't want to, yeah. Beating kids is not a good. Yeah. Me and my sister, we get together, there's five kids under 11 and it's a lot. That is a lot. Yeah. That's a different type. That's a different type of walk.

Yeah. I'm not going to, I don't want to kill somebody walking. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So just judge the moment and see what it, okay. Thank you. Yeah. Do a good job, Michelle. I'd love to see you in the trainer program. That'd be awesome. Michelle, I love the fact, I love your question and your input. I'm really going to look into that. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You got it. All right. You have a good one. All right. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Bye. She's sweet. Yeah. She's sweet. I like what she was asking. And I think I'm definitely going to look into. Yeah. I never thought of OCD, but I'll look into it. Yeah. I mean, I should look at the definition. I mean, I do check the door lock 15 times a day. Well, that's what we all think it is. That's what I think it is, right? But I'm very aware that I don't know much. Yeah. So I'm like, I don't know. Is there any OCD? Totally. Tendencies?

And will knowing that help? Or does that one of those like more labels? I know. I've got enough labels to test me. I don't need any more necessarily, so. Our next caller is Beth from Georgia. Hey, Beth. How you doing? Hey, good to see you again. How are you guys? Good. Good. How's it going? Really good. Thank you. Let's hear the update. Justin, good to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Good to see you. He had a great time over there. Yeah, he did. He said, thanks again for inviting me.

That was really good. Oh, I'm so glad it worked out. Yeah. It was fun. That was a good time. Yeah. So give us an update. I think Ethan and Everett might have been a little bored while Justin and I geeked out on all those sports science stuff. I mean, half of it was for us, but that's okay. They loved it. All right. Let's hear your update. Should I jump in on my email? Yeah, let's hear this update. So a few things to report back on. I had a DEXA scan since I last spoke with you all.

So between September of 25 and July of 26, my weight was identical. My body fat went from 20.5 to 17.6, but my bone mineral density increased. So I know you challenged me on that. Oh, good, good. A little bit after the call, I think. Beth, real quick, where is your range of bone mineral density? I know it improved, but on the chart, because I'm not familiar off the top of my head with what the numbers mean, where does it rank? Because DEXA typically will tell you if it's in the middle, if it's low, if it's high.

Yeah. It looked like it was, let's see if I can interpret this thing. I mean, it went up slightly from- Should tell you in what percentile you're in. Not sure I know how to read that exactly. Or it'll have like a little bar graph where it's like you're in the middle, left, or right. Does it show that? Similar to how it shows where your body- Yes. I'm on the bar graph. I'm looking like a little, I'm in the bottom of the green zone, top of the yellow zone.

Oh, that's not bad. That's not bad. Not bad. And how long have you been strength training? Oh, 30 years. Okay, so very good. I would expect someone who's been strength training that long to be- To be in the green. Yeah, way on the high end. Oh, okay. Yeah. But not bad. But I would expect it to be on the high end, is where you want to be. Okay. So moving in the right direction. Like keep going- But yeah, at least I'm not going backwards. No, no, exactly.

That's a good sign. We're moving in the right direction. Okay. So sorry, I still can't see you guys. So I'm just going to keep rolling. Yeah, we're here. Okay. Okay, so anyway, I was going to say like credit. I know my body fat percentage went down, but I wasn't trying, I wasn't eating in a deficit or anything. I kind of credited the programming just because it was, you know, the last couple of years have been my first time with really solid programming, that I wasn't creating myself.

Okay. So anyway, okay. So I'm in the last week of performance 15 advanced. That was what Justin recommended on my last call. I really, really liked it. It was a nice change up from my regular, you know, traditional strength training. I'm doing slightly better with resting between sets. That was also a challenge, but I'm definitely trying to take more notes about where I'm lifting and what I'm accomplishing during that time. My sleep quality's been better. I still eat a lot. I weigh out, eat my counterparts at work.

What I'm struggling with still, I still get a lot of steps a day. I still do yoga daily, trying not to make everyday power yoga, but I like it. I like the mobility aspects and the flexibility. So my questions are, programming-wise, since we're starting the regular season this week, should I stick with a 15-minute protocol throughout the football season? Yes. Yes. You're super busy right now. Yes. This would match you best. Stay in that, keep pushing calories, keep doing the sleep, focusing on the sleep. Keep moving in that direction.

Okay. Is there a particular one you recommend? Like, I bought PowerLift and Upper Lower, so I was really eager to try those. I guess maybe only PowerLift has a 15-minute version. It does. Yeah, Mass 15 PowerLift would be great. Mass 15 PowerLift, and then when you get in a time, like maybe after season and life slows down a bit, then maybe we can go play with Upper Lower. But now, I would say stay in 15 during the season. I can only imagine how busy you are in season.

Yeah, it's a lot with travel. Seven-day work week, a lot. Yeah, I imagine it's crazy. So yeah, 15, and keep pushing calories. Where are your calories at right now? I don't track calories because I don't have a great history. I track protein, I mean, like I estimate my protein, but I eat a lot of protein, and I supplement with like cottage cheese and Greek yogurt to help hit my target. You strike me as someone who's pretty consistent with the types of foods and meals you eat.

Are you pretty regimen about what you eat? I mean, I am. We have the lovely cafeteria, which Justin visited here, which is really nice. They do an amazing job with food, so I get to mix it up a good bit at lunch, and lunch is probably my biggest meal for that reason. So I eat a lot of meat, chicken, fish, shrimp, beef, and last time I think you challenged me a little bit to eat fattier cuts, which I mean, I generally will choose like a ribeye over something else, so I try to do that.

So continue that. I would just, since you don't track, and we're not gonna do that, I want you to add one more meal. One more meal. Yeah. Just add another meal of the day somewhere in there. Yeah, and here's the thing, Beth. You were in a deficit. That's why you got leaner. So I know you said you weren't trying to be in a deficit, but you were. And this is why I'm telling you more calories. And you need more body fat, okay? So if you're walking around in the teens, and you have something bad happen, you have a bad injury, you need a surgery, you have illness, you need body fat to bolster you through that process.

You're actually placing yourself in a vulnerable position by being too lean all the time. Now, it's okay to get into that leanness and get back out of it, but if you wanna feel more recovered, if you wanna feel more vitality, if you want better health, I would want your body fat percentage like 21, 22%. Okay. Yeah, you need more. 17, walking around is 17% for a woman. It doesn't give you much wiggle room if something ever happens, like you get real sick, or you need that on your body.

I mean, you're like really lean. You're shredded, essentially. And so adding like four or 5% body fat is just gonna improve your health. And so adding that extra meal will help do that. And so what it's gonna feel like to you, Beth, is gonna feel like you're purposely trying to bulk. Okay, I've never really done that. Yeah. That's our goal right now. We'll do that. That's our goal is to do that, is to do that right now, is to add another meal and bulk. We need to push.

You'll feel strong. You'll have a lot more energy. Yeah. You'll feel really good. Stronger. Yeah, a lot of benefits from it. Okay. Okay, a couple more questions. So if I do 15 power lift, what after that? I mean, does it matter, any kind of 15 vertical? They're all good. I like 15 muscle, mommy. I like 15 symmetry for you, 15 strong. Yeah, I mean, they're all great. As long as you hit 15 performance or symmetry once a year, it doesn't matter kind of what you pick after that.

So just because that'll address the unilateral work, you know, rotational stuff, and that'll just keep us. Now you do yoga too, which is great. So you're probably covering a lot of the basis by incorporating that too. So yeah, really pick the ones that you enjoy and rotate through those. Yep. And you think I'm good with, like sometimes I combine the days. That's kind of a typical, like it's a little easier if I do like days one and two on a 15 protocol. And like that third day, I'm doing like trigger sessions or something.

You can do that, but don't organize. There you go. Don't organize it that way so you can do more. Yes. Because if that's what you're doing, then don't do that. Yes, you should take a day off. If you pair a day up, you've now. You've got a day off the next day. We've programmed the total volume we think you should be doing for the whole week. So because you pair a day, it doesn't mean it gives you permission to go do more. It gives you permission to take a day off, take a walk.

So even though those are trigger sessions, you're like, nope. No, nope. You don't need to do nothing. You don't need to do anything. You know what, I tell you, Beth, I'm telling you. If you just, if you add an extra meal, keep following Mass 15, you're going to hit PRs in the gym. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. If you just do that every day, you add that extra meal every day, watch what happens to your progress. Don't change the workout. Watch what happens. Okay. Yep. All right.

Anything else I'm missing? No. No. That's it. Just the meal. That's the only thing missing is the meal. Give yourself that meal. And everything else can come. And thank you so much for the hospitality that you showed, Justin. That's so phenomenal. You're welcome. If y'all want to come to a game now, I know. We're not the Niners. I promise I'll give you a fun game day experience. Hey, Robinson was my number one draft pick in fantasy last week. So that's my guy. That's my guy now.

I'm watching every Falcon game this year. So I'm a Falcon fan this year. I love it. We appreciate it. And listen, I did want to shout out Jackie and Katrina. They've both been awesome to work with. So they are very much brand ambassadors for you. Like you, like you. We have super women over here working for us too. They're awesome. So appreciate you saying that. Yeah. Well, thank you guys for having me back on. I really appreciate it. Keep us updated. I like to hear how it goes, okay?

Keep us updated. All right. I will. Thank you. All right, it's great to see you. Thanks, you too, bye. I've had more than a few experiences with clients. She's jacked, dude. Where the goal, where I had them train, gain body fat. A couple of them were to gain fertility. And a couple of them were just like, like what do I do now? And like, you're walking around too lean. Let's put, it's like the goal is to gain some body fat. Yeah. And they were all blown, because we're told, we're constantly hammered how fat is bad, your body fat's bad.

But there's an amount that you need. And all of them were just like, I didn't know that this would feel so much better. Yeah. You know? And that's one of the things that she needs to do. Yeah. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com.

The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee. And you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources, at mindpumpmedia.com.

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