Slow Reps vs. Fast Reps — What the Data Actually Says (The Answer Has Nuance) | Mind Pump 2951

Key Takeaway

Train most strength exercises with slow, controlled reps until your technique is stable and you can feel the intended muscle working. Then add a small dose of speed work—such as light jumps in place, 50% effort running, or explosive reps with a light load—without training to fatigue. This approach protects joints, builds skill and muscle, and preserves the ability to react quickly in everyday life, such as catching yourself during a slip.

Episode Overview

The hosts unpack the nuance behind research suggesting slow and fast reps can produce similar hypertrophy. They argue that tempo still matters for safety, learning technique, targeting specific muscles, maintaining real-world speed, and creating new training stimulus. Live callers also receive coaching on restoring menstrual health, reverse dieting, sleep, recovery, and escaping cycles of underfeeding and overtraining.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Slow Reps vs. Fast Reps — What the Data Actually Says (The Answer Has Nuance) | Mind Pump 2951 from Mind Pump Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

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Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in the history of the world. This is Mind Pumping. Today's episode, we had live callers call in. We got to coach them live on air, so people called in and said, hey, I need help with my fitness, and we got to coach them. But this was after the intro. Today's intro, 61 minutes long. Now in the intro, we talk about rep speed.

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Does it really make a difference if you do slow or fast or really slow? Does it change anything or does it not matter? Is it just up to your preference? Today we talk about the data. What does rep speed and how you do your reps tell you about the goals and results you're about to achieve? We're going to talk about that today. Let's go. I think promptness does matter. Yes. Something did prompt this to me. So we'll talk about the data. So studies are getting quoted right now, and I've seen these studies that say that rep speed within a reason, so they're not going crazy, right?

So you're not doing like a 40 second rep. I don't think we have too many studies on those, but they'll compare slow reps to fast reps, right? Slower negatives to faster negatives and positives. And they'll show similar hypertrophy. Okay? So they build the same amount of muscle. Now the thing that is frustrating to me, and I'm sure it is to you guys and to other good trainers, is that people communicate things in ways that are so simplified that we really lose the nuance. So what I think the consumer hears, or the average person hears, is it doesn't matter, which actually isn't the case.

Now for hypertrophy it might not matter, although I'll make the case it does matter, and it matters for a lot of other things. So let's talk about that a little bit, about rep speeds and why they matter and why we should pay attention and not just listen to someone on Instagram say they all build the same amount of muscle. Well, they matter for a lot of different reasons. When I think of like speeds of my reps for my clients, I always took my clients through a really, really slow rep range, especially early on in their training.

And this was just purely out of a like mechanical, right? I want to be able to tweak their form, and if they're kind of moving at this faster cadence, it's really tough to fatigue and get them to feel it. And so I did a lot of like pausing in the middle of the rep and slowing it way down and talking to them through the rep, like you feel it there, and oh but more arch this more, puff your chest out more, pull this back, roll this forward, like cueing them through the movement until it becomes something that they feel comfortable.

Before we start to manipulate the tempo later on and reap the benefits of that, it was like starting slow to me was always the better way to go. Yeah, starting slow. And really it's about like how we really anchor our body down and create this stability. And so to be able to perform the action of the movement we're trying to achieve, too, lots of stuff to learn how to like keep the rest of their body like really stable and in place, and two, to avoid pain and dysfunction and, you know, perform it mechanically sound.

Because then once we add acceleration, this is where it's like, okay, if there's any flaw in the kinetic chain, it really gets like exponentially louder. Totally. What's frustrating to me with stuff like this, when I hear this data getting cited, is that it throws out logic. I think the average person, this is what's funny to me. The average person, if you were to ask them this, do you think it would be safer to do an exercise slow and controlled or faster? They're going to logically be like, well, slow and controlled, obviously.

But then you got these people communicating on social media saying it doesn't matter for hypertrophy. I'm going to tell you something right now. The thing that will prevent you from building muscle and getting the body that you want the most is injury. Like nothing will stop you on your tracks faster than injury. Yes, you can become unmotivated. You can stop going to the gym, all that stuff. But when you're hurt, you're hurt. You can't do anything. And moving a weight slow is always safer for a few different reasons.

One, what you said, Justin, if your technique is off a little bit, going fast is just going to make it off that much more. Because however hard it is to have perfect squat form with a controlled tempo, now you multiply it times 10 when you're trying to go fast. And that's just true for any kind of movement. The second thing is just momentum. When I'm lowering a weight and changing a direction, if I'm lowering a hundred pounds, let's say I'm going down in a squat with a hundred pounds and then I change direction to come up, that momentary change in direction because of momentum makes that 100 pounds heavier.

Yeah. Okay. It's always heavier because I have to change it. We know this, like you get a heavy ball. Yeah, it's physics. Like you get something heavy moving in a direction. To get it to move in the other direction, you got to stop the momentum and then move in the other direction. And so that hundred pound squat could become 200 pounds momentarily if you go fast. And that person's joints or stability might not be able to support it, even with good form, even with perfect form.

Well, doesn't that get exponentially heavier the faster you go? That's right. So it's like going fast. Change of direction. Yeah, the change. So if you're, let's just use a number, like you drop into a squat and it's a, you know, a three second just drop into the squat and then go back to the direction versus a two second versus a one second versus a half a second. Like as you shorten that deceleration, the time of deceleration or descent, the demand, and it becomes even more stressful on the body to go the opposite direction.

That's right. A hundred percent. And what tends to happen for most people, and we're going to get to the benefits of different rep speeds and why moving fast, uh, is beneficial in some cases. But, uh, the average person when they're moving quickly or, or faster than they can really stabilize, what tends to stop the momentum is the joint and not the muscle. Yeah. It tends to be the joints and range of motion. I'm gonna tell you something, your ligaments, uh, connective tissue, uh, are designed to hold a certain amount of stress, but when you use those to stop momentum, you're asking for trouble.

Now, in extreme cases with very highly trained athletes there, they've developed their bodies, be able to do this. They've trained like Olympic lifters are phenomenal at this. Like they move very quickly to the bottom of a squat. Uh, but you take the average person, uh, even the average trained person and you have them, Hey, do a squat like an Olympic lifter and you're going to hurt your knees or your back. So the injury risk alone makes this a big deal. And the problem with studies is they tend to be college aged males because of the kind of people that signed up for these studies.

They're the ones that have time to get paid $25 a day to do a study like this. They're pretty resilient and they're pretty resilient. And it's a, it's a 12 week or 16 week study that you've, if you follow these college aged males for two years here, you over here, move everything fast. You over here, move slow. You will see a big difference in injury. Um, and then, and then because of that injury, well, let's measure strength and muscle. Oh, it looks like these guys over here built more muscle.

Why they didn't have to take five weeks off because they hurt themselves. So this is important to understand. The other thing is performance and functionality. Okay. So here's where different speeds make sense. What you train is what you get good at. So slow reps are safe. They build muscle as well as fast reps do. This is true. Now, why would you at some point with careful consideration want to practice moving quickly? Well, because if you always train slow, then you'll never be able to move fast.

And now this I've experienced myself. Uh, I train very controlled. Um, you know, I follow more of a bodybuilding style, uh, of, uh, of strength training or power lifting style of strength training. And I almost always train this way. And I've had experiences where I try to move fast and I hurt myself and it wasn't because I wasn't strong. It was because I never trained to move fast. Yeah. And so this is where training fast, if you're well-trained, you've got good technique, you're considering, uh, all the things you may want to throw in some fast training because real life oftentimes calls upon speed.

Uh, real life doesn't often move real slow and control. I mean, this is really this created camps of thought where it's like athletes just need to stick with like fast training. Yeah. And so there's whole modalities that have been creative to address that. And obviously there's like prerequisites to get into that, uh, level of training where it's like appropriate. And, um, but at the same time, you know, there's, there's another camp where it's like, you need to build the strength, you need to have like overall ability, uh, and then add on top of that while, you know, in conjunction, you can, you can train fast, but you can also keep, uh, your strength, uh, intact alongside it.

Um, but yeah, there's, that's always been kind of like in the strength conditioning world, like something that, um, it gets argued a lot because there, there is definite value to, to training with acceleration because you know, your, your, your body, you want to be able to have access on demand and you want to be able to train that. Uh, but now, you know, the, in between both of those thoughts, it's like, okay, well, how do we do that appropriately? Well, I thought when you went performance and functionality, you were actually going to talk more about, um, okay.

So we talked about when you go really fast, the risk of injury change of directions and how that can be dangerous. The other, the other thing that's maybe less dangerous, but also improper or doesn't end up working the muscles that you're trying to work. For example, I can't tell you how many times I trained a client and doing a seated row or a bench press. They don't feel it in the proper muscles due to just kind of repping it out. Right? So you, the average person gets into a seated row, especially if you're a new, a new lifter, you watch a trainer or another person perform a seat row.

You get in there and you just start rowing away at it. Your, your biceps end up, your arms end up taking in your shoulders. End up taking over. It's hard to change your recruitment pattern. Yeah. And you exactly. And then you, and you ask that person to do that with any sort of speed and tempo, and it's like, they're not going to feel that in their back and their lats at all. And so it's like that there, or bench press was another very common one. I get somebody under a bench press.

They watch somebody else do it. They get in there and they just muscle it up and push it off as much way as they can, as fast as they can. And where do they all feel it? Their triceps, their shoulders, they can't even activate their chest. And so there's a side of the tempo and slowing down too. That's not just a risk factor of like, it's like, Hey, like if the goal of this bench press is for us to work the chest and develop the chest, or the goal of this seat a row is to work the back.

Then also the slowing down the technique part also makes a huge difference in learning how to activate. Oh, a hundred percent for targeted aesthetics. That's king targeted aesthetics would be a, I want to develop this muscle. I want to be able to train this part of a muscle, even depending on the muscle we're talking about. And you need to go slow to do that. Uh, especially if you struggle feeling a muscle in an exercise, like if you don't feel your glutes in a squat, uh, moving fast in the squat, isn't going to make you feel your glutes more.

It's gonna make you feel them less. Yeah. It is interesting though. Cause I used to like fight that, uh, you have to train fast because if you're training and you're just getting strong, it's going to apply to the field. Yeah. Uh, but at the same time I did a full year just anecdotally of, of, you know, just training heavy and trying to get strong. And I did feel significantly slower because there wasn't that added element of acceleration, my training. Yeah. So someone listening might be like, well, I'm a typical average person.

Uh, I'm not on the field. Why would I need to even consider this? Uh, and it's because you step off a curb, you know, you drop something, you go to grab it, your kid runs across the street. You will be, uh, at some point called upon to move quickly. Uh, and you will lose that ability if you don't train it, even if you're strong, even if you're really strong and you lift weights and you've got good muscle development. You will lose that ability. So the question is, well, how do I train that?

Do I go to do a bunch of complex Olympic lifts? And it's like, no, you can do a very basic exercises and do it, uh, very carefully. Uh, so you pick a really lightweight because of the load, that's it. And the, and the, the idea isn't to feel the muscle, but rather to move, uh, kind of quickly. I mean, with a client, for example, this would be a good example of that, right? So everybody's familiar with like jump boxes, right? You jump on a box. Well, I'm gonna tell you something right now.

The average person that hires a trainer is not ready to jump up on a box. Like the average 47 year old deconditioned person, if I have them jump on a box, uh, like we're 50 50, they're going to get hurt or not. Right. So, so what we might do is just jump. There is nothing to jump on. We're just going to jump in place and we're going to practice jumping quickly. Um, and we're not going to do it to fatigue. I'm going to practice kind of moving quickly in that way.

Right. What if you never run? Um, and like my experience, I went to go sprint and I pulled a hamstring. It was actually a pretty severe pull. What would I do? Well, I would go run at 50% speed at first and I'd slowly work my way up to be able to run quickly so that my muscles can move fast and not just a slow. So that performance and functionality piece is important. I used to think it was important only for athletes. That's what I used to think.

I said, well, that's, that's not for the average person. Average person just having strength, train, workout, walk, and they're doing fine. Well for aesthetics, that's true. But when it comes to performance, even the performance you need in everyday life, some speed is important. A little bit of speed is important. And avoiding injury too. Yeah. So, you know, that component, I remember Joe DeFranco brought that up and it really kind of pointed it back for me. Um, you know, making sure like you're going to experience these things in life.

Those can be like a slippery patch. There's going to be something that's going to require you to stabilize really quickly. And it's like, if you lose that ability, you're leaving yourself susceptible. I slipped on the floor, like, like this was like, this was a while ago. It was like six months ago. My, I was, I was walking into, uh, we have like a, uh, a big grand room and I'm walking into it and my wife's down the hall and I slid, I had socks on and I slipped.

Now she saw me go into the room. So she thought for sure, by the way, I slipped that I bailed. Now I caught myself by the grace of God. I don't know how I caught myself. And I remember stopping after I like did this real fast movement to catch myself. And I remember thinking, I know I hurt something and I didn't, but I felt like I would've heard something because I was so not fast because I never trained that way. It was like a wake-up call.

I do need to start practicing moving quickly. This is so you guys, you guys have been in my, my garage before that garage floor is unbelievably slick. And I can't tell you how many times this has already happened to me multiple times where I pull the cars in, if they've been washed and then the wet tires get on there and you can't see the floor, the way it's designed shiny. Yeah. Cause it's shiny and the design in it. So that you can't see the water spots.

And I have barely caught myself at least four or five times. And the last time, like I had this, like there is, there is, and I've, I've yet to go down knock on wood, but I've had this similar, like, God, like how many years until I don't catch myself? You know what I'm saying? Like I really had that thought. I thought like, dude, I really need to consider because this is exactly how it goes down. It's like something so simple as that. And you lose it.

Now, thank God I still have enough reaction and explosiveness to gather myself. But there's been quite a few that were really scary and I, legs were all spread out and I grabbed, and it was just like, dude, if I, my reaction time is a fraction slower on that, like I'm down and, or I'm hurting something really bad. Yeah. I mean, and you can, you can practice this even, I mean, you don't have to get complex. Uh, there are great exercises for, uh, you know, strengthening or working on kind of your ability to move quickly, but you could pick basic, like you could take a bench press.

Let's say you're good at a bench press. You feel stable. You practice it all the time. You train it, you're good at it. And let's say you normally bench press with a 135 pounds. You could put 70 pounds on the bar and practice, uh, you know, moving it quickly, uh, where you come down and then explode it off your chest. And so that, that would probably, that would train that kind of speed. Yeah. You could do it with a row. You could do it with the press.

You could do it with a lunge. You could jump in place. Um, and all that you're doing is training your muscles so that they can move quickly. And that's important. I would argue that the jump box is probably the best and the most foundational of all those though, just because, or at least from the position I'm coming from of what, cause you, the jump box requires the entire body to communicate, right? So bench press, would you, you could, you could totally triple extension. Yes. I agree.

And so jumping even off of a box. Right. Right. And so just, just that getting everything to fire through from head to toe, uh, quickly like that and organized, um, I think covers a lot, which is so funny. I never thought about that as a trainer, like, like early days. It was like, I took it for granted. I could move when I wanted to. Yeah. There's a lot of exercises like that. You're like, oh, this is the real value of it. Oh yeah. You know? Yeah, for sure.

Like, cause it's, it's simple. Uh, and it's, it's a skill, but like, you're like, ah, I'm not trying to like fatigue my client, you know, in these workouts and I kind of abandoned it for a long time, but then you come back and you're like, well, let's do it without fatigue and let's, let's do this quickly. And there's value there. Couple hacks for people listening who aren't familiar with like trying to move quickly or whatever, you know, I just mentioned doing basic exercises, but bands are really good.

Bands are really good at trying to move quickly because you don't have a lot of momentum, like you will with weights. Uh, they're very safe. A pool. If you have access to a swimming pool, this is a very safe way to move quickly because if I throw my arm out in the air, I have to also slow it down, but in the pool, the water slows it down. Yeah. And it gives me a little bit of resistance. Joint impact either. Very low. Yeah. So those are just some, some hacks, you know, another thing that they, that studies tend to not cover is the novelty effect.

Uh, and the reason why they don't is because in order to show how great novelty or something new can affect the body in terms of progress, you have to have a really long study. You know, 16 weeks doesn't cut it. Six months might not even cut it. You need to have like a year or two years where you're taking people through rep ranges or rep speeds, and you can compare this group over here does the same exact rep range for two years. This group over here alternates and what you'll see, which we've experienced with clients is novelty makes a difference.

It does now. It takes a long time to see what that looks like, uh, but it does make a difference. And so even for hypertrophy, I'm going to argue, we take out the injury risk. Cause I think that's the big one, but take that out for a second. If you throw in different rep speeds over time, I think you'll build more muscle. Even if you take out the injury risk just because of the novelty, well, didn't you see that when you're doing overhead press? I remember we had you doing some, um, uh, like push press, push presses instead.

Oh yeah. And just, just that acceleration alone, like sparked a new stimulus. Well, there was two things I got from the push press big time that I helped, which I, when we talk a lot, especially lately, we talk a lot about like the isometric component was pushing that much weight explosively over my head and then stabilizing it and holding it up there. Well, I got this. That's why I'm like such a big fan of the, of the shoulder development or even my, my bodybuilder aesthetic people.

You want to build some shoulders, uh, heavy push presses, and then like stabilizing the weight over your head like that. We're like game change. I'll tell you what, uh, our program maps strong, uh, the reason why that's so popular, especially, which is funny, this was totally not predictable. We didn't predict this, but women love maps strong because it really develops the posterior chain, the back and the glutes a lot. So women are like, I love this program. My back and my butt never looked better. There's speed stuff in there and the work sessions, it's like, like high poles and stuff like that.

So, you know, if you've practiced and you've trained for a while, you've never done that style of training, that novelty effect kicks in, man, suddenly you see new development, you know? You know, since you're, uh, kind of bagging on studies a little bit, did you, I was bagging on a study this weekend. Did you, uh, did you see the rant I did on the Instagram? Oh, so I, I, you know, the, the team has been trying to really encourage me to, uh, instead of just doing our shooting days that we do where we do content and everything like that, um, like, Hey, when you have those out on those moments where you have something on your mind, just like grab the camera and just, and then send it to us and then we'll decide if it's yeah.

Yeah. It's appropriate. Clean it up. So, so I said, okay. I, so I was like kind of committed to them that I would try and do that. So this past weekend, uh, so something had popped in my head and of course it's because it's something I'm, I'm in the middle of doing and, um, I was up, I was up doing fasted cardio and as I'm doing it, I'm like thinking about it like, oh, you know, this is so, it's no difference for fat law. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and, you know, I, I started thinking about it as I'm walking, I'm like, how funny is this here? I am doing something that, you know, the fitness community is for a while now has debunked, uh, you know, the science around that, that mechanistically there's nothing happening or magically happening in the body that makes it burn more body fat by doing fasted cardio versus regular cardio. And if all things are controlled macros, cardio that you haven't eaten in the morning, you do cardio versus you ate breakfast and then did cardio.

That's right. That's right. The old thought was fasted burns more fat. Yeah. We did studies like, no, it doesn't. Yes. And so, and so the rant that I kind of went off on is like, you know, you've obviously probably heard that fasted cardio has been debunked and it's, it's this and it's that. I said, yet every body builder, women's, uh, women's bikini and men's physique athletes still uses it, uh, religiously to get ready for a stage and compete at the highest level. So why is that?

And it was like, that's because it works, but maybe not for the reasons that we've touted for so long. And the things that were going through my mind, cause I'm back into practicing that. And I, and I would argue, I, I drop an extra two to 3% body fat by just implementing this one strategy and the things that I noticed are one, uh, if I've decided tomorrow morning, I'm getting up to do fasted cardio. I've got to already think about that tonight. Do I go to bed early?

Cause I got to go to bed early. Uh, I got to set my alarm an hour early. Cause if I got to go to work and do my thing that I normally do, and I'm going to before I eat and before work, I'm not getting up an hour. I wasn't getting up an hour. So now I'm up an hour earlier. So right away, there's an additional hour that I'm up earlier than I would normally be. And I'm not just up, I'm actually doing something very physical.

I'm moving my body. I'm getting blood pumping. So what else happens when I do that? Well, I noticed also after I do that the rest of the day, I'm far more active. I move faster. I move more often, which ends up being a lot more calories burned throughout the entire day. And not to mention after I've done all that to the way I am planned for my day, eating wise, I also tend to do this when I do fasted cardio, I've already, I'm already kind of going, I tend to delay the first meal already since I did just did that.

And so I shortened the eating window. And when you're in a calorie deficit, trying to lose body fat, it helps to like it's a couple more hours. I'm not thinking about food because I'm moving or I'm doing something else. All these factors play into a incredible strategy to help leaning out. And yeah, because we've nailed down in a study that if we compare it, but it's like in real life, that's not how it plays out. That's right. Cause what they do in studies, and this is just how you conduct a study.

So I'm not crapping on studies. When you do a study, you control everything you possibly can to isolate the one action to see if it makes a difference. But in real life, all the other things are not controlled. Okay. So in other words, another good example is, um, if you replace your sugary drinks with, uh, artificially sweetened, zero calorie drinks, you'll lose weight and you will, if you control all the other calories, but in real life, then this never happens. Well, why is that? Because people end up making up the calories and other places.

And so waking up first thing to do cardio, you named a few things that you identified with your behavior. And there's other things that we probably don't even know with behavior that changed. Like if I'm up and I'm working out first thing, my mind is already set to fitness. It's already set to health. Priorities are there. And so in real life, things aren't perfectly controlled. You're not saying to yourself, I'm going to do all the other stuff I do. You change all the other stuff you do.

So in practice, it tends to help. And this is why people tend to, I mean, it's a, it's like an, for me personally, it's a huge difference. Like if I start my day where I roll out of bed at normal time, and like today would be a day I didn't do fast and cardio today. So it's like, I moved slow until that third energy drink kicks in and we've had lunch and we've done like, like really, it doesn't start really kicking up till afternoon time when we go on our walk and then I get a workout in and then now I'm like, so when I look at my steps and calories burned for the first part of the day, it's very, and then flip that, I got up an hour earlier and it started moving really early.

Like I'm like moving all morning, I'm moving and I'm more productive. And so man, by the, by time noon, when I'm just barely kind of getting, I've already, and then to your point too, about it's set the tone that I'm like, I'm fitness minded and health minded right out the gates. So I'm also more likely to make a better food choice because I'm like, already, I don't want to, why would I want to throw away that extra hour? I got up early to do that on a bad meal right now, eat some good.

And you also woke up and decided to do something hard and what that does for the dopamine, serotonin, like reward pathways in the brain, set you up to do more hard things the rest of the day. It actually improves your discipline later in the day. And that's what the data shows. It's, it's so valuable. That's why it's like, it's like go on my phone and scroll social media versus like read a book that like enriches my life. They'll show that makes differences for the same reasons.

No, it's a, it's a, it's a huge difference. And I, and I, when I, at the end of the rant, I said, listen, I don't think this is a, um, a lifestyle thing that you do forever all the time, uh, if you're not a morning person and that's not like, I get it cause I'm not, you know, but Hey, you're, you're getting ready for a trip in a couple of weeks and you're, you're trying to lean out a little bit. It's like, it's a, don't change anything else, get up an hour earlier, do that for the next two to three weeks before you get there, I guarantee you'll see a two to 3% drop in body fat by simply doing that.

And it's because of all those other cascading effects that are not that we control in a study, but that happens behaviorally to us, which is extremely valuable when you're talking about creating good habits and behaviors for the client. And so such a fan of it. And so anyways, I, I posted that today or yesterday. It was because I was, I just, I just looked up some, uh, some really interesting. thing, market data, um, on the electrolyte market and how much it's changed in like the last eight years, you guys are going to be blown away.

Really? How much has changed? I'll pull this up. Well, I mean, I have a pretty good guess considering that I didn't even know an electrolyte brand. So just 10 years ago, I'm going to, I'm going to say this right now, 100% Gatorade. Yeah, I like that. So 100%, the, the, the powder, like the, the powder you add to water electrolyte market, cause Gatorade has been around for a long time and that would be included in the electrolyte market or whatever. And that's been pretty stable. Okay.

But the, like I add this powder to my water to get electrolyte that market element, uh, first off, uh, started it off and are responsible, uh, in my strong opinion for the growth of it. Trip off this. So in 10, in the last 10 years ago, basically didn't exist. Basically didn't exist. It has gone up several hundred percent element alone. So element alone in 2020 was $7 million, 2023, $206 million element alone. Now element. So we work with element and here's why they did, here's why they had such a big impact electrolyte powders or drinks.

I should say we're number one. Everybody was afraid of sodium. Sodium is a bad guy. You need to have low sodium. Don't have too much sodium. The only people that were consciously trying to add sodium 10, 15, 20 years ago, uh, to their diets were, uh, endurance runners, why? Because they experienced the effects of not having enough sodium. So if you, if you're a runner cyclist, like you do any kind of endurance sport and you weren't consciously adding a lot of sodium to your diet, you experienced this.

You know, this, you pushed yourself and you've just crashed. And somebody smart said, dude, you need to add some salt, uh, to your diet and to your water and watch what happens. So they were the only ones that were doing an element came out and said, Hey, we have an electrolyte powder. You add your water, a thousand milligrams of sodium, very brave. This would be like me coming out with a saturated fat supplement. Yeah. Like I came out with a supplement, like here's 30 grams of saturated fat.

Stigma alone. It was like, wow, that's surprising. But yeah, obviously it's effective. A thousand milligrams of sodium. So when we, when they first sent us the box years ago, I kind of dismissed them until I looked at the box and went, whoa, these guys know what they're doing and they're not afraid to let's see what happens and they crushed. And so that market has exploded because people number two reasons. Number one, if you eat a whole food based diet, you adding sodium probably will make a difference.

If you're low carb, for sure. It makes a difference. If you work out really hard, sweat a lot, it does make a big difference. You can tell right away. And then here's the second reason. Sodium is one of the main components or say, I'll say salt and palatability. And so here they made a drink that not artificially sweetened with no sugar. Normally when you drink a flavored drink, that's flavored with Stevia, it's not, it's not that good. Yeah. It just isn't like you're drinking, you're like, eh, it's all right.

I prefer sucralose or aspartame, uh, you know, cause it just tastes better, you know, Sevia, eh, but you throw a thousand milligrams of sodium on top of it and element tastes, it's as palatable as soda. Yeah. And so they just crushed and ran with it. And they literally created this market that has exploded several hundred percent. It's so good. Isn't that wild? Oh, it's so good. How big of a growth that they saw? I mean, all of my friends, all my friends, they look, they drink it.

They just, they, yeah, they like it. I mean, I think that's where they hit it. They hit the, obviously the point you're making the science and the first people that actually put out what is effective. But I mean, it's cause it tastes good. That's right. Yeah. If you make a supplement that works, that also tastes good, that works, that's good for you and it tastes good. It's just like, uh, cause I have plenty of people in my family that are not like hardcore fitness people and don't necessarily need an extra thousand milligrams of sodium because they're not like that.

It tastes good, but they love it. It tastes good. Yeah. And it's a, it's a, they know that it's a better choice than drinking some soda or some, some other crap. A hundred percent. So a hundred percent. Well, I figured they were doing good. Cause every time I'll see one of our partners, all of a sudden, like on mainstream TV is a commercial, I'm like, oh wow. Yeah. I've seen them and I've seen Viory, but yeah, there's, it was cool. Cause, uh, it reminded me, I'm already in the thought process of going to this metal festival and there was this guy like welding and doing this crazy stuff at this place.

It's called Sloss Furnace Fest. It's like these like huge, it's old, uh, furnace like, um, structures and whatever. But like, anyways, I, it got me all excited to go to this festival. I'm like my one time a year where I just like let it all out. That's coming, isn't it? When? It's in October. Last time you went in the mosh pit, didn't you lay someone out? Yeah. You're going to do that again, aren't you? Well, it depends. I mean, the guy kind of, I don't know.

He kind of provoked it. So is your group, is your whole group going again? Cause I think I heard you talking about some of your guys, some of the guys aren't coming through. No, no, it's only going to be me and one of my friends. Like the other guys had to kind of drop off, which is a bummer, but, and that's why I was going back and forth of going or not. But I'm like, dude, when you guys have one thing all year, you look forward to, and you're like, this is kind of like my thing.

Nobody else's gets it. Like, this is totally like, nobody else understands it. Nobody like, you know, I can't like really describe it in words for anybody else to like, you know, feel that, but this is like, it's like a really small community. And then you, you know, you just get to like, let all your fricking like rage out at once. And it's safe. You know, that's it's hard. Uh, you know, we, Sal talks about the, the research around, um, how important it is for men to have other relationships and things like that.

Right. But it's, it's tough to get a group of dudes that are all in their forties all together and organize, like, it's like, it's a, it's a big deal, dude. It's not, especially a trip. Yeah. Yeah. Fly somewhere. That's a big ask. And they, and the other guys to their credit, they have like four kids, you know? And it's like, so me and my other friend, we had two kids. It's a little easier to maneuver. Uh, but what's cool though, I've, I've met quite a few people along the way now where one of my other friends is a podcast, but he's going to be there.

Uh, so it'll be cool. He's doing the podcast like behind the scenes, uh, with some of the bands and stuff. So it'd be cool to kind of see. Oh, that is cool. You, do you notice just cause your, your boys now are old enough to where they can watch themselves? Was there a major uptick for you and Courtney in getting away and doing stuff? Compared to the previous, like you, do you, did you notice a huge difference or has it been the same, like from us trying to do our own kind of period?

Like you'd be able to get away. I mean, when you, when the kids are, when they're little, it's hard. Yeah. It's hard. You know? So it's, it can also be hard though when they're teenagers and they have all kinds of, that's why I'm asking, because I think there's this assumption that, oh, they get to a certain age and then now you have all this freedom as a parent and it's like, yeah, cause we're constantly like shuttling them. I mean, Ethan getting his license is going to help a lot, you know?

And so we're looking forward to that, but it's, we're still very involved. And so, yeah, I haven't, I've had maybe a few opportunities still to like plan something where I could like go do something with my buddies. The hardest part about the, the, the kids getting their license. So nowadays is that they're not allowed to drive with it. Like, so like you can't, like when I, as soon as I was 16 and even I had friends, so I'm young, right? So I had friends that were older, older than I was.

And so by my, I think end of freshman or soft, sophomore year, I think the end of freshman Eric got his, so it was like end of freshman to sophomore year, I already had friends that had license. And so picking me up, taking me to school, if I didn't go, so like my parents would be like, call your friend, call your buddy. Yeah. You know? So like I, like quickly I could get around even when I didn't even have my license because, but kids now they can't even, they can't drive until they're what?

Eight 21 or drive your friends around until you're 18, I think it's 21. I thought maybe these kids get around that though. They're not like following that. They don't, but I'm pretty, I'm like Courtney, but like, you know, when they hang out after school and they'll get rides from their friend, they just end up doing it. And you're like, it's for safety. Obviously I get why they do that. I mean, when I, if I think back to driving with my friends in the car at 16, that's when we drove the dumbest.

That's the only deal with dumb to get your buddies. Yeah. That's like the most dangerous time to be driving. I've been speaking of like relationships and stuff. I'm reading this book with my wife. It's an old book and I don't realize it's been around for a while. It's called love and respect. Have you guys heard of this book? So it's really good. It's for marriage. It is based off of, uh, the book of Ephesians, Ephesians five, but it's totally, it's totally human psyche, male and female psyche.

I mean, it matches up with the data as well, but it talks about how, what women need and desire the most is to feel loved and what men desire and need the most is to feel respected. Yeah. And it talks about unconditional respect and unconditional love. And what's interesting about that, and the author talks about this. If I say, uh, you know, yeah, you, you should show your wife unconditional love. Nobody bats an eye. But if you say, Hey, you need to display to your husband, unconditional respect.

People are like, he needs to earn it. It's like, well, he says this in the book to like, imagine if they said the reverse, like, well, actually you need to earn his love. Everybody be like, no. He's like, it doesn't mean that you don't criticize or you don't do certain things or talk about things that are unloving, but you say them, you display them in a way that's loving or in a way that's respectful. And it's a really interesting book and it makes a lot of sense.

And it talks, he, he mentions this, he calls it the crazy cycle where let's say a wife brings something to her husband and he perceives it as being disrespectful. So now he withdraws. He doesn't want to show her love. Now she feels he's not loving. So now she disrespects him and then he shows her less and it goes, it spins out of control. And he talks about how to interrupt that and what to do. And it's really good. It's a, and it totally speaks like I'm listening to what he's saying about men and I'm like, oh my God, that is a hundred percent true.

That is a hundred percent true. Uh, and now the part for my wife, she agrees like that's, that's totally true. It's a really good book. Well, this reminds me of our interview that we had with Adam Lane Smith. That's why it's one of my favorite interviews to recommend to couples was it was when I think back to the, all the different people we've had and the things that like I've taken into our marriage and stuff and the ability for me to, well, obviously having him say it was, it was super helpful.

Right. And for her to listen to the podcast with me and that kind of click was that, uh, we, I don't need any respect and she needs love. And so that when we get in these situations where it's just like, I'm the other person is thinking that they're, that's all you need or what you're seeking. It's like, oh, that's not what I'm seeking at all. And like, so he uses this great example. Cause he says that we, we basically have different filters. We hear things differently.

We communicate things differently. And we, you know, what we're trying to communicate comes across the wrong way. He's just this great example. I thought it was hilarious. If a woman says I have nothing to wear, what she means is I have nothing new. When a man says I have nothing to wear, it's cause he's got nothing clean. Yeah. And it's just an example of like the way we'll communicate things that, and how different it's a silly one, obviously. But I mean, what he was saying in there was so absolutely true.

And I think if you're, if you're trying to come together to understand that about each other and to present yourself, you know, in that way, you'll get away, you'll get along, um, so much better and so much more effectively, but it is true. Like, um, you know, it says, and again, it's biblical, but again, it's backed by, you can look at the data to support this. Um, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's so true. Like if, when men communicate to each other, um, there's a code of respect there because there's always a threat of violence or whatever.

So if you and I are talking and you withdraw, you're actually doing the honorable thing. Cause you're like, okay, I got, I'm going to walk out cause I know where this is going to go. So that's kind of like a default. When you do that with your wife, she's like, he is so unloving. He doesn't care. He just shut down when he's actually doing kind of this, this default thing, which I think is really interesting. No, no. It's such an interesting, it was such, it's such a good book.

Well, I remember we, uh, this was guy, when we lived out in Marina and this was right around the first time we had Adam Wayne Smith, one of the, one of the challenges that Katrina had in our relationship was that she loved, uh, coming home and debating or challenging direction in the company. Right. Like, or something that, you know, I would just do this, this is what we're doing. Well, what, what, something like that. And she'd be like, well, why? Or, and she would push back and do that.

And early on in the relationship, well, we would, we'd go back and forth a lot as, as things progressed and the business got bigger and there was so many different moving parts. It's just like, for me, it became like a speed thing. And I remember that was one of the first big hurdles that we had with working together like that was I told her, I was like, man, I just, I just need you to respect my decision. Like we've, I, I think I've proven to you that I know what I'm doing right by now.

And she's like, it's not about that at all. She goes, I love this part of our relationship. I love that. I see how your brain works and I see how this, and I, and I want, and so that's really, and so there was this huge disconnect. She thinks she's being loving. Yes. Meanwhile, you feel disrespected. And I feel disrespected. I'm just like, dude, how much more I got to prove that I know what I'm doing. You know, what's interesting challenging me. Yeah. And you know, what's interesting about that Adam, and I'm sure I know the answer, but if she, uh, displays respect when she's coming to you about something, she has more influence.

So if it was, so if it wasn't for Adam Ayn Smith, I don't know if I would have had the proper way to communicate it and, and, and get through that. And we had, and so it really helped me. I was like, listen, I don't want to take that from you that you, cause you like that. I love that you like that. And I respect your, this and that, but how you say it and open it makes all the world of difference. Like if you said it in a way where it's like, Oh, interesting.

What, why are you thinking that way? Or what's your thoughts on that? Different. Like, yeah. Like, cause, cause then you're giving me the respect that you don't aren't disagreeing with my decision in the, in the business or whatever like that. But you're curious because you say, you want to see how my brain works and we'll see, and I'll map it all out to you. It's not like I just make a decision with willy nilly. It's like, I've already thought miles ahead and I just don't want to have to argue over something like that.

I'm like, so if you just approach it with that curiosity of, Oh, that's interesting. I would've never thought you were going to do that. What, what makes you think that's a good idea for the business? And you ask me like that, I would love to have that, that, that should have more influence. That's right. It's funny about that. It's like someone listening to that right now is like, well, you just got to grow up and be more mature. Like don't be so tough. And it's like, and by the way that it can also be done on the reverse.

Well, don't be so sensitive, right? Like you get your feelings. So much, you know, I love you. And so it's like, it's denying that we're different, it's like, we're different and communicate with each other in ways that the other person needs. Yeah. You know what it says in the Bible? What's just funny. So again, it's again, it's biblical. So I'm going to go back to that. The word that it uses for husbands when it comes to loving their wives, because it says we need to love them in an understanding way, but the word it uses in Greek is agape.

So there's four, there's different words they use for love in the Greek language. We just use love in the English language to mean like five, I love pizza. I love my kids. I love my partners. Obviously it's all different, but we just use one word in the Greek language. They used different words. So agape is sacrificial love. Uh, filio, I think is the kind of love you have for your child and a friend. It only tells husbands to have agape love. It doesn't say that to wives.

You're like, why wouldn't say it to wives? I think they're built for that sacrifice. They're built that it's automatic. It's automatic for a good woman. She loves herself so sacrificially for her kids and for her family. What it tells a wife is to respect because it's not automatic. It's not an automatic thing. And for a husband, agape is not automatic. We're commanded to display that, and he makes that case and I'm listening to it. I'm like, I think this is right. You know, take, take the biblical stuff out.

And I think we've done such a disservice as Americans to, to make love as this all encompassing word. I mean, I remember as a, as a young kid, uh, assuming that, that love was this feeling that was going to overcome me. And that's how I was going to know that that's the one I'm married. Like, like literally the way what Disney is presented to all of us. Yeah. Like, Oh, it's love at first sight. It's all this feeling that you get. And it's like, no, it's an action and something I have to choose to do.

And there was sometimes it's a feeling that's, that was exactly, it can be, but the one that you're going to decide to marry for the rest of your life, that's a choice that you make. And that's something that you choose to do every single day. It's not this feeling that you decide that you wake up and all of a sudden, like, Oh, I don't feel it anymore. Therefore, like, Oh, we're not supposed to, no, we're not, we're not supposed to be married anymore. It's like we did such a disservice.

I feel like of making it all this one word versus having definitions of all the different types like that, because I'm honest, like it was years. I wasn't in, in, in my mid to late twenties or that click for me that that's not what a loving marriage looks like. It's not this, Oh, I'm just supposed to have this overwhelming feeling and that's the one, and it's, it's perfect. The rest of our lives. It's like, no, that's not it. I mean, yeah, I mean, Courtney, it's like hers is it's love and safety.

It's like what, you know, I can provide. So she feels that sense of security, safety, and like, you know, health and everybody's healthy and accounted for. Uh, and for me, it's always been, you know, respect, honor, and trust, you know? And so it's, and, and we've learned how to really nail that down and figure out like, we are different, we have these roles. We have like, I'm stretching, she's pulling like, and we're great balance, but it took a long time to get there in that understanding.

Yeah. You want to get, uh, uh, you want to get your husband to drag himself across glass for you. You tell him you're my warrior. You go out there and kill it. And I'm telling you right now, most good men will hear that and they'll be like, Oh yeah, I'm going to do whatever I can for this family, even saying that now, I guarantee men are listening and they're going, yes, and it's just the way we're made and it's such, it's so crazy that we try so hard to go against that and to twist things to say, no, no, you got to understand things what I do.

And if you don't, it's because you're X, Y, and Z. And it's like, this is just not how we're made and it's like, we'll work so much better when we understand this about each other and it is a choice. It totally is a choice. Yeah. Anyway, I, uh, we, we got, um, so I meet with our customer service team weekly and they often will tell me what people are writing in and requesting in terms of things to cover. Yeah. Okay. And so we do a lot of episodes on nutrition, you know, protein intake, macros, that kind of stuff.

And so we've had vegans write in and say, can you do a whole episode on, uh, you know, the challenges with nutrition for vegans and what vegans need to do and this and that, and maybe we'll do that, uh, at some point, but I, I want to kind of cover a little bit here, which is that vegans, it's hard to eat a healthy diet that supports, you know, your goals, performance, muscle growth, let's say fat loss, endurance, all those things. It that's hard. It's already hard, challenging, uh, going vegan makes it harder, but this is just the fact that just makes it harder.

Not saying don't be a vegan. If you have your reasons for it, you can do it, it requires a lot more planning than not being vegan. So when I'm not vegan, if I stick the whole natural foods, uh, and I hit my protein targets, unless I have some weird, uh, you know, polymorphism, uh, I don't need to plan that much more. If I'm not like crazy or reading it's whole natural foods, protein, I'm lifting weights, working out, like I'm going to do pretty good. If you cut out, uh, animal sources of calories, you place yourself at a higher risk for nutrient deficiencies.

The data is very clear on this. Uh, and it's much harder to hit your protein targets. It just is the amount of volume of vegan foods, whole natural foods to hit what is, what the data has shown to be for most people, there's always individual variants for optimal protein intake for muscle growth and fat loss and performance is really hard. You gotta get a lot of food. It takes up a lot. It's like a big bowl of all kinds of different things. And then you're eating tons of other things, fibers and carbohydrates and stuff like that.

And so what I'll tell vegans is this, uh, supplements are not required, but for vegans, uh, it's not required, but it's almost required. So in my, I've trained a lot of vegans. I've trained a lot of like hardcore vegans and, uh, we had to use supplements. And we had to use protein powders in particular, uh, in order to really optimize their progress, doing it without protein powders in my experience, uh, was all but impossible. So it was like, you know, and typically they would add like a hundred grams of protein, uh, from a vegan protein.

For me, it was always impossible unless you didn't have building muscle goals. If you had goals to build muscle. Yeah. All my clients did. So that's why it was impossible. And the reason why I say that, cause there's some, I was smiling as you were saying this, because there's, there's like three people out of the millions of people that listen that always go like, I don't know what you're talking about, Sal. It's so easy. I have no problem with it. It's like for you, but you know, most people it's going to, most people it's, it's, I mean, no, uh, restrictive diet is challenging for most people to get their protein in on a regular basis.

All of them. You, you pull out, uh, animal products that becomes extremely difficult, extremely difficult. Yep. A hundred percent. So, you know, uh, or I'll say this, cause we work with them. We've been working with them for years. Organifi makes the best plant based protein I've ever used. It's the best. It's the easiest to digest. It tastes the best. They combine different sources. That's the biggest factor, right? Yes. The digestion. Yes. I mean, like if you're doing the whole food thing is great, but like, you know, on the vegan diet, like if you're going for protein sources, like how much can you really ingest?

That's not going to give you degastral distress. I mean, I mean that and taste, cause I think it's hard to make that taste good. Oh, yeah. Vegan proteins are the worst tasting. They are. They are always. So it's Organifi's tastes good for any protein, not just good for a vegan protein. It's good for any protein. They've done a phenomenal job. And they mix different vegan sources to give you a better amino acid profile. Uh, and you may hear this, uh, you might've heard this before as a vegan, like combined protein sources to make a quote unquote complete protein.

What they're really saying is, uh, there are limiting amino acids for something called muscle protein synthesis. So this is where muscle protein synthesis is that how we measure muscle growth. And if you're low in certain key amino acids, especially leucine, you can have a lot of protein, but the leucine will limit, uh, the protein synthesis that can happen. And so combining different sources of, uh, vegan proteins, like Organifi has done this really well. You'll have a good amino acid profile. So it's the best diverse. Yeah.

So if you're a vegan and you're trying to, first of all, protein powders are valuable for most people anyway, because it's hard to hit those optimal amounts of protein. But if you're a vegan, like Organifi is the best hands down, I've used lots of vegan proteins because I couldn't have dairy for a long time. So vegan was what I went with and Organifi kills it by far. It's the best one. You guys excited about, um, Friday's pickleball tournament? I'm not good. I'm not doing no pickleball.

Yes, you are bro. Yes, bro. You were built for pickleball. I'm serious. You are built for pickleball. Tell me more. You will be, you'll be hella good. You're like Mr. Carnival. It's closest thing to a carnival game. It's the closest sport to a carnival game as you could think of. Yes. Okay. It is totally like that. You're getting me there, dude. No, it is very much so that you don't got to move laterally very much. You know, it's like, you don't have to do anything explosive.

You don't have to break your ankle, dude. You'll be fine. It is carnival game all day. All right. So who's, who are the, so Kyle apparently is really good. He's like the best one, right? I don't, I don't. Cole's probably good. I've never was good. Yeah. Cole's, Cole's good. Never that one. Cole's are, Cole's are, are, are he's captain America. Yeah. He is. Our little, it's all, it still has to be better than remember when we used to play with the trainers, like softball. That was embarrassing.

Yeah. Yeah. I was actually really let down because everybody's in great shape. Uh, but we're terrible athletes. We're gym athletes. Did you use it? There's a few in the play. Did you play on my team where, where we, where I got, where I got crushed by the, the junior college teams that you play on that team, you didn't play on that team. Have you heard me tell the story where we, it was the first time. So I'm, I'm only, I've only been living in the Bay area at this point.

I don't know. Maybe I've got to be less than five years, probably around year three of living in the Bay area. So I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm new to, to live in, in a big city. I come from like small town. Right. And, uh, you know, my, I got, I still, at this time, I'm still connected to all my buddies I grew up with. And, um, I got some of them that live this direction and I got some new friends over here. They're all like, uh, kind of ex athlete guys and stuff and trainers and people like that are connected.

We're all fit, all fit, all consider ourselves athletic. Um, playing, playing, playing, playing in our first men's softball league. And I remember when we're signing up, I forget the way they rank them, you know, but just say, let's just say for easy people, it's just like, A, B, C, D, A being the best or whatever. And, uh, we're like, um, well, let's, what's our first year. So let's not put us at a, you know, so let's like, let's put us at B. But listen, when we play our, we're talking about how we play the first game, like, let's not go out there and just destroy everybody.

So we like, so we look, you know, we get kicked out of that league or like that, like, let's take it easier or whatever we're getting so fucked up. It was like, I was the first or second inning. It was like right away. And it's like 13 zero. And I remember like, huddle everybody like, Hey, you guys, we could start playing now and everyone's like, we got absolutely destroyed. And then we thought, man, maybe we just walked into a buzz saws the first game and it's like, maybe that was, maybe that's going to be the champion team and we gotta, we gotta get it.

You knock this dust off. We get the second game and we ended up playing, uh, at that time it was, I forget what the, the junior college is over here, uh, West, West, West, West Valley, West Valley. Uh, the, the junior college baseball team is playing, you know, like for fun. Oh yeah. And they're up like 21 zero on us, the team, and they're like talking shit to each other, have fun. The guys are all getting up and they're batting oppo. Every guy's, every guy's batting oppo on purpose, you know, so I'm still hitting home runs on us.

It was like, Oh, Oh, it's so embarrassing, dude. I've never been so embarrassed. It's such a nice humbling moment. Well, I like don't play too good. You can't even, you can't even score. Hey, I got, I got a, I got a new twist to the, to the AI conspiracy. So, so did you see that, uh, anthropic open AI CEOs, both of them came out. Like we need to pause, we need to slow things down. We're not going to go public now. They're going to paw there.

I think they're going to delay the IPO. Uh, so everybody's like, this is too dangerous. Like we've got to be careful type of deal. Then I heard, I heard an alternate, uh, presentation of this and I thought, am I going to like it? You're going to love, you're going to love come on, let's go. And I know this for a fact, this is what companies do in emerging markets. They always do this. The leading companies in an emerging market will come out, do something incredible, and they will then work with the government to regulate the hell out of the market to prevent anybody from competing.

Okay. And so I think what they're trying to do in the herd, what they're, what they're doing is because so they can block everybody else. They're trying to get everybody scared enough to be like, please regulate this into oblivion. The CEOs of this company will love it because they're the help. They'll help write the regulation, making it very difficult for competitors. Um, uh, average person's going to be like, yes, please. Uh, cause we're scared. And, um, and that, and then the other part of that is that they're not making as much money as they say they are.

And so they, this will help them, you know, by getting that government support. I'm so low. I'm so solo. That's that's so likely, you know, you know, it's not believable to me is when I see these videos of the robot doing your laundry, right. And we're all afraid it's going to kill us. It's like this robot can't pull laundry of a t-shirt faster than frigging 30 minutes. And you guys think it's going to destroy all of us, like, well, so here's why this supports my earlier theory.

If they want hardcore regulatory capture, a rogue AI that turns down, that shuts off the grid, that gets us all scared. I think that's an incredible conspiracy theory and probably not a conspiracy theory. Absolutely. The plan, because historically that's what all these companies do. Yeah. The you there it's first to get there. And then the first one. Hey guys, we, I know we need to, let's work with the government. We need to make this safer. Yeah. Now it's impossible. By the way, that, that is the, that's the oldest game in every book.

Like it's not just AI technology, fear mongering, it's like, you see this in hair salons, you see this, they were trying to do it in the personal training side where they were trying to get all the minimum certification to do certain member. It's always every industry, you know, and it's always the person who's already established and got their business up and running and making tons of money. And they want to be the ones that help come in to help everybody and make sure it's safe and done well.

It's like, get out of here. China came out and said, this is fear mongering. We're not going to slow down. You guys are totally, you know, trying to fear monger everybody. I just think in, in, uh, what's his name? David Sachs did this great post on it. And he said, you know, if you're making a product that you think will kill. 10 people, you stop because you know, you're going to get sued out of existence or you don't want to be responsible, let alone 10 million people.

Yeah. So if you think it's dangerous, just stop. Yeah. You don't need to, you don't need to go to the government to pass these laws that make everybody stop. Unless what you're trying to do is be the big dog and make sure nobody else can compete, you know, type of deal. I think all that's why I've been saying, I mean, and again, and back to my point is, is all of the conversation and all of this just keeps the, it at the top of the news and that's all we're talking about right now.

And that's where the money is flowing. And that's, and I think the, the combination of that with what you're saying makes total sense to me. And it's not that big where I'm telling you guys right now, it's going to be the, this is going to be the biggest, uh, and again, I'm going to get hate for this because it would be like me saying at the beginning of the.com era that it's going to be this biggest letdown of what's going to happen. And, and everybody would be like, well, look what.com is of course, but they don't remember the.com bubble.

Yeah, exactly. And that we are in that same thing and it's, it is going to change the way we do things for the next 20, 30 years. Uh, but yeah, it's way overhyped and probably looks nothing like what you all think it looks like. It probably looks totally different. It's interesting. That video you sent me where they're talking about the, the AI agents and like cloning themselves, they clone themselves, but it's self regulatory still. So it's like, you know, they, they were like reporting on the other agents so that way they could compete.

And so they have like a cycle where, um, you know, after a few months, it's like they either, they either stay and they clone them or they delete them. And so it's like this, this kind of like natural, uh, competition amongst them anyways, where it thins it out. Well, in that particular, which I thought was well-made, it was really cool, like movie that someone made, I thought it was really cool. But the one part that I'm like, okay, I don't understand essentially what happened was this guy took all these agents and said, Hey, uh, at the end of the day, whoever makes the least amount of money, I'm going to cut 40, 40% of you will get deleted.

And then whoever does the best, I'm going to clone you and we're going to continue down this path. And so what it turns into are eventually AI's, you know, shutting each other down and, and figuring out that lying makes them more money and then eventually creating their own countries and fighting with each other. But I'm like, wouldn't they just all, Hey, let's all work together. Like if they're that logical, why would they create a war? Collaborate and expand. Yeah. So that, that part, uh, I also don't, I also, I've seen a lot of creators online post these, these videos of, I programmed this thing to make me all this money.

And it just says, and I've yet to meet somebody who was doing that. And I feel like if someone would figure that out, the scalability with AI should be infinite. And so we should have these overnight billionaires popping up all over the place. If you could program an AI to work, the stock market, to do all the things that these, these creators are claiming that they've done, then why don't we have all these? Because it's, it's infinite, the scalability of it. What's to stop you if you have one agent, what's to stop you from having a thousand agents, a thousand agents making a thousand dollars to, I mean, it's just, it's.

If what we're really in is a, is a cold war. We're really in an AI cold war, uh, between, you know, major countries on who can get there faster, who can make the better one. Uh, the, the, you know, you guys remember the hugging face, uh, debacle or whatever happened where, where the AI consumers three see right through all this stuff though. That's the thing. Like you, it's like, this is fluff. Like you're, you're selling me. You're going to have your agent, like, like buy a bunch of stuff off of Alibaba and then try and reflip it and do it.

Like, you know, it's, it's all just garbage and people, people aren't interested in garbage, dude. Like it's, so it's, it's already kind of filtering itself out. Well, the hacking potential is interesting to me, but I then, I guess the, the check and balance would be the other countries have AI's that would combat it. So I don't know. I think it's, it's interesting. It's powerful, which makes it scary. Do I trust it more? This is the real question. And we'll just look like historically, is it better that the government controls it or is it better that the market controls it?

No. Historically markets probably safer. Not saying it's perfect, but governments don't really have the best, uh, track record of controlling very powerful things. Is it ever good that the government controls it? Yeah. Is that ever? I mean, there's, I think some regulations are important, uh, but. Like factory safety protocols maybe, but. I don't know. Like, is it better that they, that they're like, Hey guys, we're going to make it safe. We'll control all of it. Right. Like, wait a minute. I don't know if I trust you guys.

There's been a lot of fuckery though. There's been. So I'm definitely not on that camp. It is interesting. So it's fun to watch and see what happens. Hey, we just released a new MAPS workout program called MAPS abs and butt. Now it is a full body workout program, but the emphasis 90% of the training volume is to target the abs and the butt. You want a nice round, but you want abs that show this is the program for you. And because it's brand new, it's 40% off.

So you can get it for 40% off. We're also going to throw in another free MAPS workout program, muscle mommy 15 or muscle mommy. We're also going to throw in more stuff. We're going to throw in the butt building diet guide and a supplement guide. So we get all that free stuff plus 40% off this brand new MAPS program. Go to maps, abs and butt.com and then use the code launch back to the show. Our first caller is Matilda from Singapore. Matilda, welcome back. How are you guys?

Good. How are you doing? Good, good. So it turns out you were right. I got my period exactly one month after I talked to you. So yeah, very happy. And I got it regularly ever since. So yeah, good job. Thank you. Um, yeah, I just have two questions from now. Uh, I'm still eating roughly about 2,700 calories and I keep gaining weight quite quickly, I gained about one pound a week. Um, so how would you recommend to reverse back from there and get off tracking calories?

Because I know that one of my bad habits is to under eat. So tracking is actually good for me in some circumstances to make sure I'm eating enough, but I don't want to do it forever. So yeah, first question. Well, let's back up for a second. So when you started on this, uh, this path of trying to regain your period, uh, one of the things you did was increase your calories and reduce like a stressful exercise, stressful exercise. What was your weight when you started that journey and then where was your weight when your period came back?

Uh, so my weight, I think it was about 53 kilos when I started and I ended up at 63. So I gained 10 kilos. Okay. So 22 pounds. Yeah. Okay. And that's when the period came back was when you got to that weight. Okay. Um, all right. So what I would say, and you're still seeing weight gain from when you got your period back, it's one pound. I think you cut out one pound per week, per week, approximately. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I think we're okay to scale back on the calories a little though, because even one pound, if you're straight, she's strength training still to, I mean, that's what I was going to ask you.

How was your strength? Uh, any changes in the gym? Do you feel like I'm getting stronger? Yeah, I would barely pull back down to 2,500 calories, maybe 2,500 calories and that's it. And then when you feel like you want to stop tracking the key for people who under eat is to eat on a schedule. Okay. So, so when I've worked with people who tend to move towards under eating and track to make sure that they eat enough, what we've done in the past, it's been somewhat successful.

Cause sometimes we've got to go back and forth is they just say, okay, you're going to eat on a schedule. I'm going, you're going to have four meals a day. You're going to make sure you have your proteins. We're not going to go super lean. You're going to have some carbohydrates. And so that schedule typically kept them on track, but if you want to bring your calories down by two, 300, that'd be totally fine by now. Definitely don't go too far down because we just, okay, good.

We just got our period. Especially if you're seeing strength gains, because there's a good possibility that, and I, when I'm trying to build muscle on somebody, I'm targeting about a pound a week on the scale is a, is a nice, yeah. Okay. So that's a good, now, if you were gaining a pound a week and you weren't getting stronger, then maybe I would be more concerned about backing off a little bit. But I mean, there's a good chance that, you know, half of that pound is muscle.

And so if you're putting a half a pound of muscle, even a half pound of body fat on ratio, it's not bad at all. So I wouldn't want to cut back too much. 2,500 calories is the lowest. I probably want to go where you're at. Yeah. And how tall are you, Matilda? I'm 170 centimeters. I'm not sure what it is. How many feet is that, Doug? Do you know how to, uh, 170, 170 centimeters? It's nine feet tall. I think maybe six or something like that, but I'll, I'll give you a number.

Yeah. Give me the number here. Because I, because I, I did your weight in pounds, cause I'm not too familiar with kilos. Uh, Adam used to work with kilos, but I'm not the, so I think 130, five, six is great. Okay. So you're five, five, six, 138 pounds. Your body weight is, is, is not only perfectly fine, but you could probably still gain some weight. Actually five, seven, five, seven. Yeah. You could still gain, especially if you're strength training, you could probably still gain some weight, like good, strong kind of athletic build, uh, at your height, you know, could get up as like 145.

Oh, Katrina walks around at 150, 155. She's five, eight. Yeah. So I wouldn't worry too much about the weight gain right now. I think that's kind of what your body needs. You're in a good place. Yeah. Yeah. You're kicking butt. Makes sense. Okay. And the second question is more about programming because I did maps 15, two times in a row now. Uh, so I was wondering what you think about upper, lower for me, or is that too much volume or is there any, if I, if I move you up in volume, I would go to PPL, not upper, lower.

Yeah. Okay. PPL first before upper, lower. Yeah. So let's, let's do this then. Okay. If you want to bring your calories down, stay with maps 15. Good call. If you want to keep, if you keep your calories at 2,700, then I'll let you do PPL. There you go. Okay. So what do you want to do? Uh, I think I'll stay at the calories I'm at and try a new program. All right, cool. We'll send you PPL. I like that. Beautiful. Good job. Yeah. You'll love it.

By the way too, that, that increased volume with the calories, a one pound gain a week, as long as you're getting stronger, it's totally good as a good thing. You're probably building muscle. Yeah. You're crushing. Okay. Great job. Good job. Thank you. Bye-bye. As an early trainer, as a younger trainer, uh, I had no idea, you know, about, you know, helping when we get our period back or whatever, it never really dealt with it. I don't think anybody brought it to me. Yeah. Uh, later on, um, I had some female athletes and then this kind of came on the radar a little bit.

And then I worked with somebody who I learned a lot from, um, and I owe a lot to her, but she was really, really well-versed on hormone health and this became a topic. Um, and then from then on, I realized, wow, this is a really important signal. Like when a woman loses her period and she's young, like that's like a big red flag. There's some things we need to work on and figure out. And so since that happened, I've worked with several female clients at helping them regain their period.

And, uh, sometimes it takes longer than others, uh, but it's pretty consistent. It's typically like reverse diet, gain weight, reduce volume, reduce stress. And then typically like clockwork for the most part, uh, you'll see it come back and their hormone health comes back. I I'd say you see this sometimes even, uh, or not sometimes you very common to where you see this, where somebody is challenged with getting pregnant. Yes. Uh, and that was every time that I was young, I just needed it higher calorie, get up a little bit higher in body fat percentage, and then all of a sudden it flips actually a lot more cotton, both that and the, the losing the periods for young athletes, super, I had a female client who she was fit, strong, all that stuff.

It's struggling getting pregnant. We had to gain 15 pounds of body fat. I mean, it was like, what about muscle? I'm like, that's cool, but we got to get body fat and it worked. Well, I share Katrina story cause I, I always thought, um, I I've definitely had those cases where I had like fit athletes and they had, and they definitely, and it was, it was kind of obvious that they needed to gain body fat cause they were lean, they were like vascular woman seeing her abs.

Yeah. Just lean, like very, very obvious. Katrina really surprised me when the doctor, uh, I didn't see it. I was like, I didn't think she was that lean, but when she had to put body fat on in order for us to get pregnant and then she, right after he did, she got pregnant pretty dang quick, you know, our next caller is Malia from Illinois. Hi Malia. Hi Malia. Hello. Hi, how are you? Good. Um, well I had actually emailed you back in November, so I have actually made some changes based on listening to you guys.

But, um, I am 46 now. And when I had first, uh, sent you guys a message in November, I was about 15 pounds heavier and I started doing, um, the muscle mommy class. And I also just started, I'm starting my second round of the 40 and over, um, class that you guys offer. I, um, I got diagnosed with type one like three years ago. I had no idea you could get it when you were older, but you can. I've typically always done like the beach body workouts for like ever since I had kids, I also had gestational diabetes when I had kids too.

Um, so I've always stayed between 125, 135, and then I ballooned up to 145 all of a sudden, I know sometimes insulin can, you know, the extra insulin is hard to manage with weight sometimes. Um, and I was just on progesterone and estrogen when I had messaged you guys, but I was currently got on testosterone and I think that's helping a little bit. I also am microdosing a GLP one. Um, but I'm also getting my protein goals and I'm still eating 1,800 to 2,000 calories. I walk about 20 to 25,000 steps a day because I'm a PE teacher and I'm constantly moving.

Um, I'm still having like feeling like my mid sections a little big. I'm still trying to figure out the testosterone levels. Um, but yeah, and just kind of wondering what program to do next. I do, um, I have a, I've had a frozen shoulder on my left side and I kind of have a little hip impingement as well. Okay. So, um, Malia, is it okay if I go through the email that you had sent? Cause I've read through it and there was some. Just some information for context.

Okay, so in the past, you did a lot of workout stuff. Pilates, reform, strength training. You did lots of beach body class type programs. Kind of like, you did a lot. 10 to 25,000 steps. Today, you're still taking about 20, 25,000, which is quite a bit. It's a lot of steps that you're taking per day. You're following the Muscle Mommy program, is where you're at? I did that one already. I did two rounds, and now I'm doing the 40 and over one. So you're following 40 plus, with the 20,000 plus steps a day.

And you wanna get leaner, but you're eating about 1,800 to 2,000 calories. We have no runway with calories. And so we need to build. Your calories are really low, and I would guess, Melanne, you can just correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to have a history of undereating and overtraining. And you- Probably. Yeah. Well, what do you mean probably? Why wouldn't it be true? Well, I've always just tried to stay, I mean, there was times I was trying, when I was a little bit heavier in November, December, I was going, you know, 1,500, 1,600 calories.

And yeah, just to kind of lean out, and it wasn't working. Yeah. Well, even at 1,800, 2,000 calories, you're way low. The amount of activity, yeah. Yeah, you're too low. But again, let's just back up for a second. So you have a history of really controlling your intake, trying to control your body weight by eating low, and doing a lot of exercise. Is that true? Yeah. Okay, and so what do you think's happening now? Do you think speeding up your metabolism to build, is that something you can do?

Because that's a way different approach than I think what you're used to. Yeah, I would love to do that. I do worry, though, like when I eat more carbs as a type one, then I have to take more insulin. Yeah, we can do it with other ways of intaking calories, but here's what happens when you build muscle. Your insulin sensitivity goes up a lot. It's actually one of the most effective ways to improve your sensitivity to insulin is to build muscle. It's one of the storage vessels for glycogen, which is what carbohydrates turn into.

So we need to go on a muscle-building journey for probably a little while, because otherwise we're left with this. You're at 18 to 2,000 calories, 1,800 to 2,000 calories. You could cut down to 1,500, but nothing will happen. You could get down to 1,200 and you'll feel horrible, and nothing will happen. So what we need to do is get your, with that much activity, you need to be eating north of 2,700, 2,800 calories. Now, we're not gonna do it overnight, but we'll slowly build you up to be able to do that.

And it's gonna be very challenging because it's so different than what you've done for so long. How are you accomplishing the 10 to 25,000 steps? Are you getting on? She works, a PE teacher. No, I walk the dog every single morning for two to three miles. And then I'm in PE, so I'm just constantly moving all day. It's nice outside right now. So we are out walking a lot, like playing tennis. I walk around with the kids. I do their workouts with them sometimes. So yeah, I just am active all day.

Yeah, you're very active. How old were you when you first started kind of watching what you ate? Oh, my whole life, I feel like. Yeah, I mean, I didn't really start tracking until the trackers, the apps came out. But probably, I mean, I remember thinking about it when I was in high school. And then now, tracking my whole life, pretty much. Okay, so this is gonna be a tough relationship to break or change, because it's gonna be very different than what you've done in the past.

And there's gonna be a process of reverse dieting. Oh, there's gonna be an uncomfortable phase, for sure. And a process of reducing activity. So some of your activity is you're busy. Some of it is you're consciously trying to move. And there's probably a fear there of if I don't move this much, and if I start eating more, oh, my God, I'm gonna gain 50 pounds of body fat. So it's gonna be a bit of a process. So I could tell you what to do. But if I'm being quite honest with you, Malia, working with a coach would be your best bet, because they'd walk you through the process.

They'd coach you through all of the challenges. They'd pull back when things get unbearable, because they will, because reverse dieting is very difficult for some people. And at times, a coach will have to pull someone back with their calories just to give them a little break, because they're like, this is just too much. And they're also gonna be checking with you on, well, are we getting stronger? Are we doing the right things? But that reverse diet process will build the muscle, improve your insulin sensitivity, and then we'll have some runway to do the cut.

And then the body fat comes off, rather than what it feels like, which is it's holding on. It's like, wants to hold on, and wants to stick to your body. So that would be the direction that I would go. Program-wise, 40 plus is great. Anabolic is great. 15. You know, MAPS 15 is great. Like, those will all work for you really well. It's gonna be the, the reverse diet is gonna be the most difficult. Have you intentionally been on a surplus or a bulk, like for an extended period of time?

No, I think I did try one. It was like with a Beachbody one, and I was just eating a lot more carbs during that time, but I wasn't diabetic yet. So that one, I did try for a little while. So a couple of things with type one. If you train too intensely, that can not be a good thing. So, which I'm glad you're following our program. So if you went back and did like Insanity, Beachbody, what I would be totally, that'd be super wrong for you.

The second thing is if we, if we bookend your workouts with carbohydrates, that tends to be better. So kind of organize them in a way to where you're most sensitive to insulin, which is when you're strength training. And then bumping calories, we can add some carbs, but we can also do it through fat. We can also bump fat, and it really doesn't make that big of a difference. How good are you at the long rest periods in the program? I was just gonna get to that, yes.

I mean, you mean in between lifts, like taking three minutes or? Yep. It is hard, cause I want to get it done quickly. Yes, yes. I mean, I'll get to two minutes, and then I kind of get antsy and jump in. Yeah, of course you do. So this is why the coaching part is so important, because there's characteristics of somebody that's dieted and trained the way you have for as long as you had, that we're going to have to break and change, and it's gonna be a push and a pull through the whole process.

I'm gonna have you do something that you're gonna resist for a while, then I'm gonna get you a little bit bought in, then you're not gonna trust me, then I have to get you bought in again. It's a push and pull, and then eventually things will click, and you'll see the results you want, you'll be happy, but it's not easy. It's not easy, and you know, because for so many years, I mean, even when Sal said the number 2,700, right? Like you felt your reaction, right?

I mean. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and so there's so many signals to me that I know what I'm gonna have to do with the client, and so it'll be a process, but if you surrender, if you can trust and go, okay, I trust these guys know what they're doing, or I trust the trainer, I know that they're gonna take care of me, and you do that, and you defer this, then you're gonna be okay, but if you're like, I'm gonna just figure this out, or you fight with them the whole time, then it's gonna be a bumpy road along the way.

Just establish this new mentality, it'd be so helpful, because you have the knowledge, like you've done, you know, you've worked out, and you know the exercises, and you watch your calories, but to have somebody reiterate this entirely new way of doing it, I think would be super helpful for you. They can go really slow too, Malia, so they can bump your calories a hundred a week, or two weeks, and see how you feel, and what you'll see is you're just gonna get stronger. You're just gonna get stronger, and it's a snowball effect, so typically what happens is you get stronger, stronger, stronger, calories up, calories up, and then things start to work, and you start to get leaner, and it feels weird, because you feel like you're not doing a lot, in comparison to what you've done in the past, so you're like, what, this is weird, I'm getting leaner, like I'm moving less, this doesn't make any sense.

It's a process though, six to nine months of you trusting the process, so it's not a, you know, turn it on, and then tomorrow you like, see, it's gonna take a little bit of time, so just trust that process, you've done it a certain way for so long, you know, I'm sure you're frustrated, because there's nothing, I'm always like, feel for my clients, who put the work in, it's not a lack, you are not, it's not the lack of discipline, and effort, and commitment, so like, that's most people, most people lack consistency, the discipline, the effort, like that's not your situation, so that's a plus that we have, right, like I know when I get a client like you, like okay, I know that she's got the discipline, she's got the consistency, if I can just get her trust, that I know what I'm doing, and I'm gonna take her through this, like then we're gonna be okay, but it's a process.

This is a good place to be though, because your hormones are kind of getting balanced, your own testosterone, you got the progesterone, estrogen, insulin is handled, so we're in a good place to start this kind of process, but I mean, with your diet, I mean straight up, like you're eating 150 to 170 grams of protein a day, but about 2000 calories, a real easy way to bump calories, would be to move away from the super lean cuts, of whatever you're eating, to get that. Okay. You know, that would be a real simple switch.

Get rid of the chicken breast, should be chicken thighs, stop eating the super, super lean meats, all white, or all fish, enjoy some red meat, enjoy some healthy fats. That's an easy, that's an easy 200 calorie bump. Okay. Very quick, and easy. All right, sounds good. Yeah. Do you want to have a mind pump coach call you? Cause I can set that up for you. Sure, yes. Okay, let's do that. And they do a very, very good job. We hire them ourselves. The process is difficult, but it works, if you've listened to us talk to other callers, we have people come back, they all come back, they're like, I didn't think it would work, but it did.

So the process works. Yeah, sounds good. Thank you guys. Thank you, Malia. We appreciate it. All right, I'm looking forward to trying it. Okay, thank you. Bye bye. Okay. Yeah, that's a, a good example, of what we talk about. I hope she does it. Yeah. I think she will. I mean, she's very self-aware, right? Like even, I was able to call her out and stuff, and she wasn't like, you know, you can always tell like, you can either lie or defend. She was like, I know I struggle with the minutes.

Yes, I know I made that face when Sal said what he said, like, so that the self-awareness where she's at, hopefully she, and it sounds like, I think she knows she hit a wall. Yeah. She's going to be blown away. She'll be blown away, when she follows it and is consistent, and then things start clicking. It's always a trip. I love being a part of it, because I love hearing from people. I didn't believe it. I didn't think it would work, but it totally did. And it will.

And she moves so much. She's done this for so long. Like, you do a couple changes. Oh God. And stay consistent. She's going to just trip out. Well, what I love with those clients is that, like I said, it's not a lack of effort and commitment and consistency, which is what most people struggle with, right? What about most people are not consistent, don't have the effort, right? That's not the problem. Biggest battle in the beginning. Right. So she's got that part. That's right. And so that's, that's a huge plus, but like getting her to reframe what it looks like.

Exactly. Is the challenge. Our next caller is Shell from Pennsylvania. Hi Shell. Hi Shell. Good. How are you guys? Good. Good. How can we help you? Well, first off, as always, I want to say, thank you. I've been listening to you guys for many years, and I just wish I would have had yous in the twenties when I had my kids young, you know, versus now I'm like telling my kids about my grandkids. You know what they should be doing. Oh, that's great. That's wonderful. Where are you at?

Beautiful where you're at. Where are you at? I know, there's trees. Oh, I live full, full time in my camper. So this is my office and my camper. Oh wow. I have a deck out back here. Oh, how cool. Oh, that's awesome. How cool. Yeah. It's kind of funny. You were talking about campers the other, the other week. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've been full time camper for six years, and that's actually one of our businesses. We do mobile repair, RV repair. Oh, no way. Very cool.

Great. So we travel all over the country and work wherever we're at. Oh, wonderful. That's awesome. So how, how can I help you? Well, let me read my email to make it short or kind of short here. Apologize. I'm not good with talking with people and stuff. So bear with me. I've had three DEXA scans done since December of last year. And each time I've changed up regimens or my eating habits or NH time, I thought I was doing better. I've went through a MP hormones prior and then moved with the Vita Bella when they started.

And even going through all that each time I do it, my, my scans are worse and not better. And I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong and why that is. Okay. Well, so tell us, okay. So you mind if I read off your email a little bit? Oh, no, yes, please. Yeah. Cause you did a great job. I just want to say this first off, first off, you're so sweet. I really like it. And I'm looking at your email and you're, you gave us some really, some good details.

I think these, when we get details like this, cause it gives me a good idea of what we can work on and what might be the issue. So it has your age, your height and your body weight. You're lifting four days a week a week. You sleep between six to seven hours a night. So you go to bed at 7 PM, you wake up at three. You don't necessarily track your calories, but you prioritize protein first. And I'm assuming you're eating whole natural foods. Is that where you're getting that from?

Yes. Yeah. Basically chicken and beef is like my go-to and crab since I'm on the East coast. I do a lot of blue crab. Okay. And you're taking a thyroid, testosterone and you're on a few peptides here. And then Doug, when you got that DEXA, did the lean body mass change or was it just body fat? So I see the fat masses changed here from 2025 to 2026. Yeah. So it's gone up a little bit from that point. Okay. So here's the big glaring thing, and this is going to be annoying to you.

The lean mass is what I'm looking at. Yeah. So I see that too. That's also changed. Not in the positive. So here's what, it's going to be frustrating. You hear what I'm gonna tell you and you're gonna be like, well, that sucks. But what's glaring to me, and people never believe it when I tell them, but if you're averaging every night six to seven hours of sleep, it's your sleep. It plays that big of a role. It plays a huge role. So six to seven hours on average is about six and a half hours most nights.

If we can get you one, if you can get one more hour of sleep, that's it. One more hour of sleep. Within 30 days, you'll see your body moving in the positive direction. I'm just, I'm not sure where. How come it's so early, 3 a.m.? What are you doing up at 3 a.m.? Out in the trees, too. It's pitch black out there. What the hell can you do at three o'clock in the morning out there? So I work full-time remotely on top of owning two businesses.

So I'm allowed to work my 40 hours any time I want. So I will get up at two in the morning and work. I usually have my 40 hours in Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Whoa, okay. And once that is done, Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays, I'm doing the business stuff. I'm doing the bookkeeping. I'm out in the field. Like this morning, I was out in the field helping work. Wow, you work a lot. Wow. Yes, we do a lot, yes. By the way, totally it's a curveball for me because I'm like, oh, I live in my RV.

Full-time out in the forest. It sounds like you're vacationing all the time. Totally not the read I was getting from this call. Like, so that's a curveball and a half. Wow. So you go to bed at 7 p.m.? Yep, anywhere between 6.30 and 7. But then you wake up at two? I wake up between two and 2.30, yes. If you could just add an hour to that, if you could wake up an hour later and help yourself sleep through that process, that would make a big difference.

Yeah. Listen, I've had a few clients. Now, oftentimes when you're working with somebody, sleep is part of the formula. But I've had a few clients in the past where they kind of did everything right. And all we did was get their sleep. That's all we did. And it was like, it was like I just, it was like magic. Last key that you just turned. Oh, it was like magic. It changed everything. Body composition, energy, everything changed just from that alone, so. It's important for all clients.

It becomes exponentially more important as we age, too. It's not like we're 25 anymore and we could grind like that. I mean, it's different. It's different. Right, and like the sleeping pattern I've had for years, so it's like, and that's why I'm trying to, like nothing's changed in the past year, except for my body fat's gone up and my lean body mass is going down. You know, so it's trying to figure that out. What happens is, I mean, humans are pretty good at being kind of chronically sleep deprived.

We can kind of get through things, but it doesn't mean it's ideal and it's cumulative. So, you know, you could do it for a week, you could do it for two weeks, but you do it for years. You don't notice it as much. Yeah, it has progressive impacts on our bodies. So that would be, right, if you were my client, I'd be like, we're gonna start, that's it, we're gonna start here. The supplements you could take that would enhance or improve your sleep, and they're very inexpensive.

These are very inexpensive, they're backed by data, very inexpensive. You go theanine, glycine, so those are amino acids, they're really, really cheap, and then epigenin. Epigenin is a compound found in chamomile. You can find those on Amazon, they're super, super cheap. You take them before bed on an empty stomach and it should help you be able to stay asleep. Because I'm assuming, you're probably so used to this, you probably just wake up at two. Is that what's happening? Yeah, there's no alarm ever. So what I would do is just, you wake up, you look at your clock, okay, it's two o'clock, I'm gonna just shut my eyes and I'm gonna lay in bed for the next hour.

And what you'll find is you'll doze in and out for the next hour, but eventually your body will get used to it and you should be able to sleep longer. Would you also recommend she does a mega dose of creatine with that lack of sleep too? I mean, do you already take creatine? I do, I take it consistently on the days I work out, but on the days I do not, I seem to lax in remembering to take it. Just take it every day, that'll help.

That'll also help, it's just good for you. But it won't make up for lack of sleep. In some ways it helps with performance, but it doesn't make up in the other ways. But that's pretty much it, hun. I mean, everything else looks good. I mean, diet wise, you know, because you don't track, you could look at that, you could look at maybe big offenders, like, you know, there's that bag of chips I have here and there, or stuff like that, you know, you could always look at that.

But honestly, the big thing that's really standing out to me is the sleep. And do it for 30 days, try it for 30 days, be consistent. It's almost guaranteed that, Sal, because why I don't think it's diet stuff is because we're losing muscle. If she was like overeating every now and then and still prioritizing, like, you'd still hang on to muscle or build muscle. Your body is paring down muscle because it's fighting back. It's fighting back and it's pushing back because it's lacking sleep. And that's why, and so it's, we gotta fix that.

It's that, it's 100% that. Yeah, it's like, yeah, because it's like, over time I was feeling better and like each time I got the ADEXA scan, I was super excited, looking forward to it, and then I get the results and quite the deflation in my attitude towards everything, I guess. Yeah, no, don't be deflated. You're doing all the other stuff right. And what I wanna remind you of is, so you're right, but here's what'll happen. If you stay on this path, you're gonna feel like crap.

So stress hormones feel good. So we all think, we all been told cortisol is bad and you don't want to, when your cortisol is high, when your stress hormones are high, you got energy. You feel good, you almost feel wired. But that chronic elevation reduces muscle mass and it helps promote fat gain. Over time, then it crashes. Then that's the bad part. When you get to the point where you crash, then it gets emergency and it feels terrible. You're like, oh my God, I feel horrible, what's going on?

But in between that is this wired energy. I used to have people like this in my gym. They'd show up, they'd do these crazy intense classes. I feel great, what's going on? I'm like, oh, you're doing too much. But I feel so good. I'm like, you're a cortisol junkie. Let's get this to come down and then of course everything works. Might be a worthwhile investment for you to get an Oura ring or a Fitbit to track sleep just so you have a data point. Because I know what Sal's saying is like, try and get an hour of sleep, but there's times where I'm laying there and doing that and I get really restless, bad sleep.

And there are times where I get really good sleep and it's nice to have that data point. I can look at my Oura ring and see, oh, nice, today was a 80 score. And it'll give you something to kind of focus on. Since that's the main focus, I think there's a lot of value in investing in something like that. Fitbit, Oura ring, anything that, you have anything with that? I do have a Garmin that does that. Okay. My average, which is like, my highest I've ever had was a 75.

Wow, yeah. Yeah, so. Chell, this is our sleep, man. If that's your highest at a 75, which means you probably have some 60s and 50s. Oh yeah, I average like a 68. Oh God, yeah. For like the past year or so. That's our goal. If I was training you, that's what we, because you're doing everything else really good. That's all I'm talking to you about. It's like, let's get competitive with how good can we get this sleep? Do you have like a routine, like an hour before sleep you do?

Or like, do you prep before that? The hardest part is like, my husband doesn't get home till 5.30 in the evening. So when he gets home, we eat dinner together. Because that's our, you know. And then, you know, we talk business and then I go to bed at seven and then I'll get up like, when he comes to bed at nine, I'll wake up and take my medicine that I have to take on an empty stomach. Because it's not empty when I go to bed. So I get up to take it.

Damn girl, you guys work hard. Yeah, there's a couple things. You guys be working your ass off. There's a couple things. There's a few things we can fix there with your sleep. Like, black everything out, of course, because six, seven o'clock, the sun's still out. See if you can figure out. Eye mask too. See if you can figure out a way to not have to wake up at nine to take your medication. If you could maybe. Or can you, yeah, switch it so you go to bed at nine and then, you know, extend your morning a bit.

I could do that. I guess, how it all originally started was I started to go into bed earlier so I didn't snack at night. Oh, that's why you did that? That's how I started going to bed earlier so I didn't snack at night. Okay. And that took out the snacking. And then, that was years ago, and now it's become a habit. Oh, this is not necessary, Michelle. No, it's really, it's not. Here's, okay, here's what we're gonna do. Your husband goes to bed at nine p.m.

Okay. I want you to try going to bed at nine p.m. You have your last meal at 5.30. That way you can have your supplements before bed. And then, now you're obviously gonna be switching your circadian rhythm so it's gonna take about a week to get used to. Yes, we'll take an adjustment. It's gonna be an adjustment. So, give yourself a week or two to get used to it. And then sleep eight hours. Yeah. That'll fix, that's gonna change your life. Yeah. And he might interrupt you too by coming in.

That's a whole nother thing. Plus, you'll go to bed when the sun's down. Yeah, it's gonna change your life. Yeah. All right, I will give it a try. All right. I'll give anything a try. Yeah, good. The other thing we could also do, just because we are trying something new with you like this, is, and I don't know if you've ever heard us talk about the concierge, but you'd be like a great candidate for someone who just checks in with our team once a month and we're making these little adjustments.

I could have one of the trainers call you and kind of explain what that looks like, if that's something you'd be interested in. Yeah, definitely. Are you, with all the peptides and the stuff that I'm taking through MP Hormones, is that, I don't wanna say is it necessary, is it, I started out taking it because I didn't have testosterone at all. And I've gotten that up, but even, I've been doing that for two, a year and a half now, two years, but my libido is still tanked.

So, could that still have something to do with my sleep too? Oh, that's sleep. That's sleep. It'll help balance, yeah. 100%. 100%, right. If you fix your sleep, I'm gonna tell you right now, so thyroid, you wanna stay on, testosterone, you wanna stay on. You don't, the other peptides are great, but you don't need them. You fix your sleep, it's gonna change everything. Everything, give it 30 days, like dedicated 30 days. Go to bed at nine, wake up eight hours later, give it 30 days and it will change your life.

I mean, the fact that you're already tracking on Garmin, I love, because now we have like a data point that you know what it's been like. And so, you and I, when we're meeting, if we're meeting, I'm just telling you, what's our score's been? And our goal is just to keep getting better and better. Let's just keep getting better and better scores and being consistent with those scores. And of all the things that you got going on, that's the thing we're focusing on. Because if we can put, like Sal said, if we can start stringing 30 days and we can break your record of 75 and we see an 80 for the first time, you know what I'm saying?

We see an 80 for the first time, you get a couple 70s in a row, now we're kicking ass and then we start building on that. Just to be clear, give it 30 days, but it's gonna take about six months for this to become really good and regular for you. So, it's gonna be a process of getting used to, okay? I just wanna be clear. All right. Okay. We got this, though. All right. Yeah. We got this. Simple. This'll be huge for you. Simple and straightforward.

So, do it. It's just it. Nothing else. You don't gotta change anything else. Okay. All right, I appreciate all your help. Thanks, Joe. All right, Joe. Good to see you. Thank you. Dude, I was so thrown off by the living in the RV in the trees. Yeah. Like, she grinds. She grinds, dude. She gets up like hella early. Bro, what a grinder. But you know what? I'm glad, towards the end, she started talking about why she does that, because I thought that was necessary. Oh, I know.

I was like, yeah, yeah. I guess I assumed this was just like a necessary schedule. I kind of assumed that at first. I was like, that's so weird. But she did it because she didn't wanna snack, so she just stuck on the schedule she didn't have to keep. Yeah. I had a client once. I had a dude I trained once. All we did, it was fix his sleep. All we did. Gained eight pounds of muscle and lost 2% body fat. Yeah. Changed nothing else. Oh, yeah.

That was my client who would get interrupted all the time from international calls, and so once she'd retired, it was like, boom, everything worked. Yeah. You know? Oh, I mean, it's clearly that. It's clearly that with her. It's so clear. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And people don't believe it. I know she's kind of like, all right, I'll give it a shot, but I'm telling you. She knows, though. I feel like when we point, I mean, and it's great that she has had some data, too. Like, to say that your best score you've ever seen is a 75.

I know. That's rough, too. That's a bad night. Oh, yeah, dude. Our next caller is Andrew from Washington. What's up, Andrew? How you doing, Andrew? What's happening? How are you guys doing? Good. Good, dude. How can we help you? Well, I'm a little, I guess I would say, frustrated and lost here, so I'll start like everybody else, and again, thank you guys for taking my call. I'll read you what I wrote you all, and I guess we can go from there? All right, let's do it.

All right. So, hi, Saul, Adam, Justin, and Doug. I've been listening to the podcast now for about eight months, and it's completely changed how I approach training. I'm hoping you can understand my, hoping you can help me understand my latest DEXA results because they don't seem to match my effort or my progress. I'm 42, 5'10". Before this, I'd never trained seriously. I did CrossFit for about three years, then took a year off due to arthritis to my chest. Since returning, I've moved away from CrossFit and now focus solely on strength training and building muscle.

My wife is a certified personal trainer and a CrossFit level two coach, so I've had plenty of good guidance. I might be sleeping on the couch after going around my own personal trainer to ask you guys these questions. We won't tell her. Well, she made sure she's posted up in the next room to hear what I say. All right. All right, so I do want to preface this as this, for the past several months, I've been on a structured cut against her recommendation. I've been at about 1,700 to 1,800 calories per day, 170 to 190 grams of protein every day with mostly whole foods.

Let's see here, I started completely plant-based. I've been plant-based for about six years now. Then added tuna and shrimp just because the volume became too much to eat. It was like I had to eat a bale of hay every day just to hit my protein. I track everything consistently and hit my calories and protein goals. Sleep has been consistently. good. I lift three times three days a week using progressive overload. On my non-lifting days, I walk or ruck three to four miles carrying 50 to 70 pounds.

I also average over 10,000 steps a day about 90% of the time. My DEXA showed a 14.7% body fat and 146.1 pounds of lean mass on my first scan. Six weeks later, my DEXA showed a 16.2% body fat and 139.1 pounds of lean mass. According to the scan, I lost 4.7 pounds overall, gained two pounds of fat and lost seven pounds of lean mass. What doesn't make sense is my lifts have increased as far as strength goes. I do look a little softer than I did in May, so I can understand that I may have gained a little body fat, but I just can't really understand how that happened unless it had to do with recovery or nutrition.

So I guess my main questions are, is were my calories simply too low? Could the weighted rucking and overall activity level have interfered with recovery and body composition? How much of the reported lean mass loss could realistically be glycogen and water versus actual muscle? And if I was your client, where do you think I should go from here? You hit it already, and I bet your wife told you this. Both. It's both. Overtrained, underfed. Oftentimes we'll get people on the show, we'll ask questions, and the answer is very obvious.

So this is not mysterious whatsoever. In fact, if you didn't tell me your DEXA scan, I would have guessed. Now to answer your question about strength, strength can go up because technique gets better and central nervous system, the adaptations get better. So you just get better at the lift. So now you do that long enough, typically you end up building muscle. You said you went on a cut, so 1,700 to 1,800 calories to cut. Do you know where you were before that? Probably low 2,000s. I've had a horrible eating habit my whole life.

I was a commercial fisherman for a long time, owned a body shop. So I ate at night. I didn't eat breakfast, I barely ate lunch, and then I just gorged at night, got up, did it again for the majority of my life. I'm assuming too that if you have a CrossFit background too, that you probably train pretty intensely. And so that would be my guess. I'm sure you don't seem like somebody who trains soft and weak. You probably get after it when you lift. Yeah. And that is one of my largest problems is this, and even tracking the nutrition, is I'm all or nothing.

I'm weighing my onions. I'm weighing absolutely everything. And then when I work out, it's very difficult for me to dial back. Yeah. Okay. Why plant-based? Is this because of ethical reasons, moral reasons, or is it because you want to be healthier? Well, a big part was my wife is plant-based for health reasons, and it was just easier. I do all the cooking. So instead of making a meal for my kids, a meal for my wife, and a meal for me, I figured I'll just eat what she's eating.

And is it okay if I ask you what the health reasons are? Does she have a polymorphism where her blood lipids are all over the place? It had something to do with migraines. The estrogen and dairy and chicken really just gave her really extreme migraines. So for you, Andrew, the prescription's simple. You got to bump your calories way up. Yeah. Way up. Well, that or a combination of more appropriate programming with a little bit more calories. It's the combination of the two that's killing. Well, the calories are real low, dude.

Well, yeah. Your body's thirsty. If you bumped your calories 800, if you went up 800 calories, you would notice a dramatic difference. And if you threw in some red meat, dude, that would make a big difference for you. Red meat and eggs would help you a lot. Okay. Those two things right there. Because if you try to go up 800 calories with your plant-based diet, this will be really hard for you to do. I mean, eat the plant-based as the base, and then just throw some meat or literally cook the same shit, but then just throw some chicken or beef there with it.

And that's kind of what I've done with the tuna, salmon, and shrimp. Okay. Cool. Yeah. The seafood, if anything, I'd be more inclined to go pescatarian. I just actually, just the other day we were talking and took 42 years of my life to realize with red meat that I'm eating muscle. Yeah. Do you take creatine? I do. I do about 15 grams a day. All right. Do you take a methylated B vitamin? I do not know. She's gotten me on a whole bunch of supplements. I just do what she says.

Okay. Okay. Good. Good. I do not. She said I do not. All right. So try switching to a methylated B vitamin. You might be getting your Bs anyways, but I would go methylated B. Just some people don't absorb Bs very well unless it's the methylated version. So you'll notice a difference. If not, you can go back to the regular multivitamin. Are you going to get a big, I told you so when we hang up right now or what? Well, okay. So I was listening to episode, oh geez, 29, 23 this morning and had to come in and eat crow and tell you like, you're training me exactly how they're talking about it.

Minus the rocking and the walking, which was my idea. Yeah. Yeah. If you, so if you want to feel better very quickly and have energy go through the roof, build muscle, get stronger, get leaner. You want to see crazy results. You would cut the rocking out. You'd stick to the strength training. You'd bump your calories 800 and you'd be, and you'd be good. And you know, 800 from the 18. So I want to be around 26. Minimum. Yeah. I'd have you at 2,600 calories to start with the rocking and have you over 3000.

Okay. Yeah. But 2,600 calories is not a ton, but with the strength training, 2,600 calories, get some of those fats in there. So, you know, get some of those fast cause you're hitting your protein. Um, and then within a week of doing that, you're gonna be like, what's I feel way better. I mean, we could supercharge it even more. If I play with your training a little bit too. I mean, how you, I just have a feeling the way you approach lifting is super intense. Are you good?

How are you with rest periods? Do you rest for three minutes in between sets? I do. Oh, I do. That is one thing that I am doing. Um, as far as the, Oh, geez. Uh, what were you going for there? What were you saying right before the three minute rest? Intensity. Intensity. Intensity. Yes. So she tells me to stop when I've got a couple left in the tank. She's right. She's right. I don't. This is what I told you. This is not in her head the whole time we're talking right now.

I know she is. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know that she's, she's right. Let two of the, that's what you do. I mean, that will suit what Sal gave you advice wise. I think that'll already send you in the right direction. You want to supercharge it. Oh my God. Listen to her. You stop two of the tank, leave two of the tank, drop the rucking bro. You're going to gain eight pounds. You'll gain eight pounds of lean body mass so fast. If you just stop your sets, two reps short, eat 800 more calories, cut the rucking out.

You'll gain bro. You'll gain eight pounds of muscle so quick. It's going to blow you away. Okay. Now just make sure I keep those steps up. I know that's a big one. You guys, your steps are fine. I'm not worried about someone like you with activity. I think you're the kind of guy to have to pull back. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then really, and then, and really push the protein, get, get some meat in there. If you go the, the fish route, salmon, get some salmon in there.

Um, and then, yeah, you're, that's going to make a huge difference, bro. Huge difference. Wonderful. Hey, thank you very much. You got it, dude. You got it, man. Email us with the results. Yeah. We'll do. We'll do. Yeah. Take it easy, dude. Thank you. Very simple fix. Yeah. I, you know, I loved clients like that because they'd be like, oh, cool. Oh, you're going to blow your mind. It's always, it's always more fun to take somebody who has got discipline and consistency and pull them back and adjust things because those are the ones that are like mind blown because they're like, they don't lack effort and you know what I'm saying?

So it's like adjusting and tweaking and being like, Hey, this could be easier, bro. I'm going to say, I didn't want to say this to him because I never want to under promise because, you know, you never know. But, uh, what'll probably happen is he's going to gain 10 pounds and get leaner. He's going to bump his calories. He's going to be like, what? I lost 3% body fat while I gained exactly to cut out, cut out the rucking pullback on the intensity of the training bump calories.

He will absolutely put 10 pounds on it and it'll be like all lean mass, mostly all lean mass. Yeah. If you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's mind pump media. Thank you for listening to mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB super bundle includes maps, anabolic mass performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos.

The RGB super bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price, the RGB super bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing mind pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is mind pump.

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