How's it going friends? Welcome to another episode of The Genius life. I'm your host Max Luke of you're a filmmaker health and science journalist in the author of The New York Times, best-selling book genius Foods in this episode of the show. I sit down with my good friends at mind pump. Mine pump is one of the top fitness podcasts around these guys are experts when it comes to gaining muscle dropping fat building strength and so much more there are some of the nicest and friendliest people on the planet and so I was really thrilled to get to go up to San Jose which is where their gym is and really get to sit down with them and ask them some of the burning Fitness questions that you guys sent my way over Instagram. So this is going to be a really fun Roundtable discussion and you know, one of the one of my favorite things about the mind bomb guys is that you know as smart as they are and for the level of influence that they've achieved in the fitness Community, they are never condescending and never cynical which is something that I really really appreciate so I'm excited to get into it. But before we do this
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Check them out. All right, guys, we're just seconds away from my episode with the wonderful guys at mine pump take a moment. If you can to share this episode of the podcast on social media leave a rating and review on iTunes or join my newsletter at Max look of your.com. I know I keep harping on about these three ways that you can support this podcast every episode but it really is Meaningful and helpful and it helps me to you know, continue week after week to bring you high quality episodes featuring great guests and packed with high quality information. So again join my newsletter Max look of your.com spread the word about the genius live and leave that rating and review on iTunes very easy to do it's free and it contains no calories. Alright guys. Well, that's enough for me. Thank you so much for listening. And now on with the show. All right. So this is like my show now, right? Yeah. Oh man, the tables have turned. Yeah. Welcome guys to the genius life. It's good to have you. Thanks for having us.
On man. Yeah, so I'm a huge fan of yours. Adam. Say hi. Hey, what's up Sal? What's up? How you doing? Justin? Hello. All right. These are the men of Mind pump media. They're here to answer all of your burning Fitness questions. I've actually pulled my Instagram followers. I told you guys offline got all of the Hot Topics in the fitness world and the fitness Zeitgeist that I'm going to ask you guys later in this episode, but let's just start because I really want my audience to get to know you guys. I'm a huge fan as I said and you guys have I'm so grateful that you've had me on your show. You're amazing show a number of times but let's like start at the beginning like what's mine pump all about? What are you guys out here trying to do? Well, we all we all have backgrounds in Fitness has personal trainers managing Jim's managing other trainers and just working with clients for a very very long time and we've done other businesses as well. But our passions always were in Fitness. And the funny thing is before mine pump. I personally had never known or really known Adam or Justin.
I really met them right before we start mine pump, but I'd heard of them because we'd all been top performers at 24 Hour Fitness. That's kind of what we all started our careers and just to make a long story short. I created a fitness program with Doug Doug was one of my clients when I was a personal trainer. I had known of Adam. I wanted his opinion on this program because I had known people who we've known mutually said that this guy is really great, you know, real smart dude good with sales and marketing and fitness. And so I said no, he'd be a great guy to have get his opinion. I sent to my program I sent to my promotional materials. He loved it calls me up we get on the phone and we decide that we're all going to meet and and and I'll talk about maybe doing something together. And the first time we all sat down it was probably a three-hour conversation. It was it was chemistry right away, which is great conversation great chemistry and all of us agreed on some fundamental things things that I
Sidered non-negotiables walking into that meeting. I knew we would going to talk about going into business and there were certain things that I had, you know deemed to myself that I just wouldn't change and the funny thing is they had deemed the same exact things. One of them was Integrity we weren't going to compromise or I wasn't going to compromise my Integrity they had agreed we wanted to tell the truth about Fitness and fitness is a space that is so riddled with false information and lies. It's so driven by people's insecurities. It's driven by preying on your insecurities making you feel not good enough not muscular enough. You're fat. You're ugly the workouts. There is no science that goes into the workouts. It's all about beating the crap out of you out of you making you sweat there for making you think that you're doing a good job. People are either getting hurt or not getting good results or they get good results and then three months later they gained all the weight back and we had seen this firsthand as personal trainers. And so we're like number one. We're going to tell the truth even if that means
This we're not going to make as much money,
which is radical these days, which is
weird. It's very strange. It's funny. I was telling the truth. We were the guys that are like crazy. Yeah, because there's so many, you know, everybody's been telling lies for so long and we all agreed that our goal. You know, when we all talked about can what would be the ultimate goal of this of this podcast that we're going to start and then eventually this Media company and the goal was to take the fitness industry, which is this huge ship and shift it and just change its direction a little bit and make it so that the best way to sell Fitness is to tell the truth because if you can't change that if you can change those perceptions, then you're going to be fighting everybody and you'll lose and so our approach was we're going to start a podcast we're going to be entertaining and funny because that's what gets people's attention and then we're going to test we're going to do a good job of communicating the information that we know to be the most effective and important things to communicate.
And that's kind of how it started and none of us had any experience in any of this stuff is terrible Doug had a yeah, Doug had equipment he had you know, as a hobby he liked, you know kind of New Media stuff so he had mics and he had cameras and stuff like that but none of us really had any experience.
I do think a lot in the beginning
just a deal it's funny. And for the first year, we didn't monetize a single thing. The goal was just let's get good information out there. Let's see if we can build an audience to see if we can really help people and resonate and the rest is history and it's been a great time this whole time. It's so dope and Adam, you're like a professional you've competed as a bodybuilder, right? Yeah,
but I did it though with the intention of growing a network of people. So while Sal was building the first Maps anabolic program that we did and we had met yet. I had also been re-entering the fitness space. So I've been in the industry for a really long time. I took us a slight three-year Hiatus to follow medical marijuana for a little while and started up some businesses in that found that that wasn't fulfilling.
Me at all and wanted to come back into fitness and when I came back into fitness, I was really just starting. In fact, I met I met Taylor who works for the company now who had built this online business and he had built it through Facebook and Twitter and up into that point. I had heard of people building a social media business and made him but I have never met anyone myself. So I'm not distracted by this at this time. I'm just like I'm doing my own thing. I'm not paying attention to Instagram Facebook and all this shit. I wasn't at all to in fact, I didn't have any of those accounts until I met this kid who was only like twenty three years old. He built a six-figure business off of Twitter and Facebook and only about a 10,000 following and what I saw that was so brilliant that he did was I'm in this the sneaker world. I love sneakers and I'm one of those idiot people that will pay double the price for retail for a pair that I really want. I
know it's absurd leave the tag on his shoes. Yeah, things like that. It's guys tease me about
rifle.
This is how we got connected we met is he is the guy who broke hers or introduces me to the guy that has the shoes that I want. So it makes sense. So like there's a Jordan Jordan Fives. I want them. I would reach out to him via Twitter what that he connects me guy put us go now, that's not that wasn't revolutionary. I heard that I'd use Brokers before but what Taylor done that was so brilliant was he didn't charge anything? He saw the big picture of building a network of the people that are like-minded into the same thing that he did it all for free to gain a lot of popularity really quick in that community and then he had sorted himself as an authority in the sneaker world and then he flipped that into a online merchant account where he's selling T-shirts and air fresheners and clocks and they got sneakers on him that and it was very successful. And that was just like a mind-blowing experience for me to sit here. This kid tell me all this and that was I went home the next day literally turned on my Instagram.
I was like, okay, I'm going to figure this out. I'm just now getting back into fitness and it was perfect timing because I was in the worst shape of my life. I was 30 years old. I was at 20% body fat and I'm just now getting back into the space. I thought okay. I didn't know what to post that I thought okay, this will be perfect. I'm going to share my journey.
I'm going to show people I'm going to put myself out there because
what I'm seeing is all this superficial fake bullshit which by the way is anyone has been following me for a really long time probably knows this. Otherwise, I don't know anybody that was doing this before me in the fitness space that was posting a shitty photo of myself what I look like first thing in the morning when I got up no flex, no good lighting and I would I would present that and then I would show people like the things that I was doing in order to lose body fat and to get in shape and it was very counter the common the common message. It was what I was seeing and reading was Beast Mode no days off the leg means are going you know,
Wow, like this is just kind of the the vocabulary. I'm going like know the call the clients that I help. This is the off this awful message. This is leads to the yo-yo dieting and losing and going back. And so I when I was putting my message out, I was sharing people like hey today's day one and I made better food choices today. I ate from home all day long. I walked for 15-20 minutes and I did ten minutes awaits with the silver girly weights in the corner and I would tell people that and I would explain that, you know, my goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change and so I'm sharing this journey of me from going from fat to fit and it gained a bunch of traction. I mean, I started getting hundreds and then thousands of people because of course at
the beginning no one gives a shit,
but then after actually got some traction after seeing me go from 20 percent body fat down to 15 and then 10 and then eventually down to 7% body fat, which what I said and I called this out early and document the whole thing was okay. I'm starting day one.
I'm going to go from the worship of my my life, which is at 27 percent right now. And I'm going to go to the best shape of my life and I announced that I had never seen anything less than 9% That's the Lena said ever try to get in my life. I never cared about getting PD never into that stuff and you know 10 percent lean bodies of decent enough looking body for me, right? So I said, okay, but I'm going to go all I'm going to go further and I did I went all the way down to 7% body fat and documented the whole thing and it gained so much traction that I was going man. Maybe I'll just take this a step further like let's get crazy and go and get on stage up into this point. I don't know anything about the community. I don't know bodybuilding shit. I've never watched the show. I don't know any pros. I don't know any of this stuff, but I do know they have this category called men's physique, which looks obtainable, you know, I look at it and at that time was only two or three years in and I'm going like okay I could do that. Where board shorts I don't have great legs Betos. Yeah. I know Speedos down downside, right?
It doesn't it doesn't look like I'm going to have to take copious amounts of frickin steroids to get there. I'm like, okay I could I could do this. And so I announced that that I'm going to I'm going to try and compete in my first show and I also had gone around at this time and kind of shopped coaches for the for the industry for the area right like who who was coaching all these pro athletes and quickly found out that they didn't know shit and I didn't express that to him. I you know asked some questions found out I realize oh, wow, these guys are given really bad information. So I was like, okay. No, thanks. I'll do
the sloppy and broccoli. Well, yeah you all day. Yeah, and when I realized
that okay, if this these guys are considered the experts in our area for this and I know more than them will why am I why would I hire them to help me with the show? I'll just do it myself. So I just decided to do it myself and and shared the whole process and that just gained a ton of traction on Instagram and it was that's what originally gave the first initial audience that then could listen to mine because the same time I'm doing that Sal was working.
On
building his program. He had just shared it with me. I'm like, oh, this is great. And I'm constantly telling him I get on Instagram. This is the new platform. You need to start getting onto if you're going to catapult this and he's over there working on his program. We're getting together just and I were working on an app that time and when we finally merged everything together and launched the podcast probably my initial, you know, 15 or 20,000 people that were following me were the first few because I tell people to the conversion of what actually listened from that, you know had 20,000 probably follow me. We probably got 500 listens or so the started listening to mind pump originally from that audience and because the message I think resonated with all of them, it just started to share and literally the business still today. In fact at the end of this month when our new podcast website launches will be the first time. We allocate funds towards marketing the podcast and pushing it out there up to this point. It's been a hundred percent word of mouth and people just sharing
The information that we were
providing. Yeah, one of our first viral episodes was early one. I remember what episode it was. It was definitely before 10:00, but it was female fitness myths and it got shared like crazy and it was stuff that we had told clients for four years, but people just didn't hear on a broad scale. For example, here's a here's a good one toned is a made-up word muscles don't tone they either build or they shrink it's a term that's invented by the fitness industry to attract women to work out and then they create workouts that just tone and don't build but the reality is that they either build or they don't and so we shattered some of these myths that we had been talking about forever to our clients, but people didn't hear on that kind of a medium and it just shared it like crazy as one of the things that catapulted us to war right now. Yeah, because I feel like females can would be repelled by the word build right like who what girl wants to like get, you know, all like the GI Jane effect, right? That's right. I'll bulky. Yeah, that's
It's funny. And this was something that I used to I proud of you know, he's the pride myself in communicating to my female clients and that look toning first. All again. Like I said, it's an invented word. What we want to do is we want to build muscle now, of course, I understand that. You don't want to look like a bodybuilder, but you do want a more tight feeling body and you do want a faster metabolism. That's the best way to get a fast metabolism to build muscle. So what we're going to do is we're trying to build muscle and if you any point you look in the mirror and say to me Sal this is about as much muscle as I like to build then we're fine. We'll just take a step back and we'll go easy from there, but it doesn't happen overnight. You work out with weights. You work out pretty regularly you are man how hard is it to build a lot of muscle? So I've been trying to get jacked for 20 years. I still can't hold a candle to either of you guys even half of sell it doesn't happen overnight. And so this is what we try to communicate on the podcast and the cool thing about the medium of podcasting. It's hard to communicate that in a short medium like if I was
TV and I'll had five minutes to communicate that be very difficult my we could do my Pub wouldn't exist if it wasn't for this case. No, no because now I have an hour and a half two hours to explain this to this concept to explain to like on the topic two women that you do want to build muscle in the context of Modern Life. You want more muscle makes your metabolism faster makes you stronger makes you more sculpted muscle takes up way less space per pound than body fat does. So if you lose five pounds of body fat, but you gain 5 pounds of muscle, you're still going to be a lot smaller as a result let you get away with eating more food. You get the look in the shape that you want with way less effort versus, you know going on a treadmill and having to burn calories manually and so I can I can really communicate and sell that message much more effectively because the medium Apostle
I loved about this medium was that it was probably the closest to us just meeting in person with one of our clients because there's just there's so much to cover. It's like one of the biggest things
we all kind of shared as far as like an epiphany
was
Less is more like really like reducing your message down to what applies to them currently at that particular moment was everything and like being able to figure that out. So you didn't overwhelm them was like a huge challenge in itself. So I think like through the evolution of this podcast. It's really helped us even grow more as trainers, even though we're not physically training people anymore. We're realizing, you know, just going through that process of years. I mean, I have a over a decade worth of experience, you know these guys as well just of one-to-one interactions with people and like problem solving can like we're trying to get through, you know movement problems. We're trying to get through nutrition problems, you know stress how to cope with stress like just being able to be more consistent like, you know, what what are those like real messages that resonate to somebody who's just a never everyday average person and I think that
Podcast has been amazing for that and just start our round-robin discussions of like well, what did you experience? You know when you had this type of client and then you know, Sal has something that he just read and then we all talked about it and it's really fascinating and really cool that this kind of platform existed at the time and we all kind of found it. There was also a major division in the space that we saw and I remember us clearly talking about this before leaving the podcast started where you either were on the The Wellness side or you were on the you know, bodybuilder Sports Performance side, and I think that was part of the magic of of mine father was kind of perfect that I was in the middle of competing as a pro and we looked like a bunch of bros, but then we spoke kind of more like the wellness people. So like threw a curveball for everybody was like this doesn't fucking make sense like this for dudes for sure jacked on steroids and he's fucking tell me about like hippie shit right now, and then you got need to sleep. So you did you have you have this I think that
Curveball is really what gay got us the attention and then when they actually if you actually took the time to sit and listen to an episode, you know something I think to this day people say is like you won't listen to a mind pump episode and not walk away with filling your mind pump. Like you will have learned something you have learned whether it's a current event that we're covering and talking about it going deep into economics or even getting touching third rails and politics like we go everywhere all over the place and it's a very open discussion. We're not preaching a message and have one belief we disagree a lot and I think that that is what people that's what people really appreciate what resonates with them is that and I think the space needed it because I think both sides are guilty. I think even people that are friends of ours in the wellness space they pigeonhole themselves into that community and it's like they scoff at anything that the bodybuilder in the the look Community is all into and say okay. There's it's okay to want to look good and be fed, but still take some practices from over here and some
This
is from over here and that message I think nobody was really doing at least I didn't think anybody was doing it. Well, and and when we got together it was it was the secret sauce to what we've evolved to today. But man I go back and listen to some of those old episodes and we always cringe we're pretty
thank God little bit. Thank God. We had a lot of good information again. Yeah, you guys are mean that's why you are among my absolute favorites in the fitness world because you guys are like, I mean, you've got these like tough bodybuilder exteriors, right? But you've got it like you're sensitive like teddy bears on the inside like you've all got good relations with your mother's is the violence that I that I that I get. It's like it's a great thing and you're not Zeal. It's you're not like condescending. You're always like your message is very balanced, which is something that I feel like is totally, you know absent in most Fitness discussions, especially on social media that that message the reason why that message is coming across that way Max is because it's a message that's been home.
And in shaped through, you know one and a half or two decades of working with clients. So like all of us have a deep passion for helping people. Like if you're a personal trainer and you do it for a year, you know part-time or whatever. That's one thing but if you do it as a career and you do it for 10-15 and I was doing it for over 20 years, you you at some point you really learn how to connect and communicate effectively with people because about five years into being a personal trainer and it's your career you start to examine things. Am I being effective? Why are people losing weight with the me? But then gaining it back? Why are some people stopping? How can I change this? I know what gets people lose weight. I know it P gets people to get fit but why isn't this working? And so you start to hone your message and one of the things that you learn is being vulnerable and being real is one of the best ways to get people to connect with you and then
they'll kind of a double
then the listen they'll start to listen to the other thing is, you know, I have all this information, you know, I have like I could sit down with a new client and I can think about
Things that I could teach them right now that'll benefit them. But all I need to do is communicate one of them and do it in a such an effective way that it gets them to change a fundamental behavior. However, small if I get them to change it in a permanent way then I'm going to be very effective and it's a slow process and that's any major change happens in a slow way. And so it's all just it's just been honed through, you know, God. I don't know tens of thousands of conversations and of clients and successes and failures. We were all terrible Trainers for probably the first few years were personal trainers all of them. We talked about this openly on the show. It took us a long time. So what you hear now is just you know, this is what we know that works for the thousands of people that we work with and I've there's been a lot of trial error and error along the way. Yeah, what would you say have been some of the biggest like learning lessons of your guys careers in terms of fitness and you know, maybe preconceived notions that spelled once you really got your hands we're gonna be here for a while. Yeah, that's what the show is all
about is a sharing that I think that because we come from that place as another thing that people appreciate it's not us.
Beyond our hightower's pointing the finger. It's like I fucked up, you know, I was doing these I was a trainer thinking I'm doing the right thing saying the right things. Meanwhile, I wasn't because I didn't know better, you know a simple one. I never talked about walking in sleep. I mean that was just I if a client that I can remember these conversations. I can remember a common compensate conversation. You would ask the client is what do you do currently right now for exercise and if someone said walk to me, I would scoff at him. Well, that's not exercise. I'm saying like that's you bird and then I would compare like your sleep calorie burn to your walking calorie. I would do that like, you know, just to almost be little their effort at walking and what I look back now at that my what an asshole like now, that's the first place I go to help somebody the very first thing that I do is I actually have them assess like I love I love tools like trackers and iPhones. I do steps. It's become incredibly useful tool for me as a coach and the very first thing that I ask them to do is hey,
I
want you to track for a week. Don't try and impress me. Don't go extra exercise for me just be you because I need to see where you're at right now. And I have them track their food and I track their movement and when they come back I assess it and I look at it. And then I just try to create like Sal said small new behaviors like, okay looks like we're only like the average American lot of people don't know this is between three and four thousand steps a day, you know fucking little that is that three to four thousand steps if you and I were to walk out this door right now and walk for one hour we would surpass that That's how little the average American is actually walking throughout the day. Well, so if I can take that person and I can get them just up to 7,000 or 8,000 more steps. And by the way, I don't go from three to seven that's more than double their effort of what they were. I slowly incrementally move them up and I do it by saying hey, you know it lunchtime. I want you go for 20 minute walk and hey before you go to bed now before you rest go walk for 20 minutes or get up 15 minutes earlier shit like that that I start to teach them to implement arrived and men when you
Get somebody like Sal said earlier to fundamentally change a behavior the ripple effect of that towards the the overall health Journey for them is so great so much so much greater than the client who I used to they come in and they go Adam I want to get shredded for summer and six weeks and
30 minutes of cardio twice, right and right. I
prescribed the crazy routine. That's
hella volume. I prescribed a ton of
cardio exercise that I write the perfect diet that's going to restrict them calories. Make sure that gives them protein for muscle and I push them and I push them all the way to get to that goal and they achieve that goal. I did that person. No good. I didn't know that that was Paradigm shattering for me like you talk about this moment. There was a moment in my career when we used to get these glass trophies if you were number one, you know in the company for whatever and it was the way we were considered number
one is by sales if I
sold more personal
training I was the number one trainer. Yeah
our club got the most right and I was great at this and I remember looking
Back about five six years in and looking at all these glass trophies and then actually like really evaluating all of my clients and going how many of them did I are like, it's still our fit like who did I train taught them things? And then now they don't have me I run into them later and they look fitter than what they serve. No, none of them. Like even the ones I got great results. They just went back and in fact, it would feed my business was like, oh if you weren't training with me, you couldn't be in shape because you needed me to push you through your workout. I wasn't really changing people. And so then I was like fuck I'm not really a good trainer and that was the beginning of me starting to dive and read and learn and and I really got into
so I was you know, this is another nice
blend of us is you know, I think Sal has gone really heavy into studies and he's the guy who could sit there and read pubmed's I love psychology. Like, I went deep that direction. Wow, and recognize that all of our job is psychotic like it's 99%
Everyone's like oh diet 75% and this is that we try to bring it. Fuck you.
90 something percent of this
is psychological because if you can't make them make that connection there the none of this other bullshit matters in the how smart I and so that began my journey down that direction and everything that I've learned now and that I apply comes from that place it comes from how can I make a fundamental change in this person psychology to change their behaviors that then in turn long-term will overall benefit them and it's not short not a quick 30 60 day thing. It's a years maybe.
Well, you have to consider what you're trying to get them to do like how we eat and how we move is literally huge chunks of our life and food alone food alone. Gosh cultures are create around food events are created on food. There's birthday foods and there's Foods you have at the movies and there's breakfast lunch and dinner foods. We eat because of emotion we eat because of context very rarely do we eat because we are hungry and so what you hear we hear I am a new trainer and I think I'm going to change that right away by giving them a meal plan. Oh, you just need to eat 15.
Calories just eat this here's your answer just follow that now my job is just to motivate you to stick to this and it's all about discipline. No, it's not. It's about Behavior changes Adam brought up walking. Do you know why walking is so much more effective than getting on cardio because walking if you if you track your steps, you can actually implement it into your life. Then you get to see if I park at the end of the parking lot. I get more steps. If I go to the bathroom on the other side of the building I get more steps if I stand instead of sit I might get more steps. It's all about getting those big changes of those small changes that equal that that big change is one of the biggest moments for me. I remember this like it was yeah. I brought this up several times on the show. I still feel bad about it. I used to have these like what ice-cold come to Jesus talks with clients where if they weren't progressing at sit them down and tell him you're not progressing you need to do this that and the other well, I had this young lady that hired me and she trained she told me she want to lose 30 pounds. I also trained her husband and I trained her three days a week. Well, she wasn't progressing we would test her body fat. Nothing was happening there.
And so her husband would kind of tell me what was happening on the side and tell me. Oh, she's eating these Foods. She's not supposed to and so I kind of had this this this information that I wasn't supposed to have so I thought I decided I'm gonna have this come to Jesus talk with her. So I sat her down one day and I basically I mean, I basically a murder and told her you're lying to me. You're don't really want to accomplish this goal. If you want to do this you got to do what I tell you and if you follow what I say, you're going to get your goal. But if you don't you won't Whatever She left upset I felt so happy in my ego felt great and she never came back and I realized I had not only did it done are no good. But now she's not even working out anymore. Well and I felt terrible I still feel terrible about it and I did that to so many people and I see trainers do this all the time and I realized like, okay. This is a slow process. We're making small changes. It's going to take time. Let's focus on all these small changes. You come to me and you say you want to lose 30 pounds. That's fine. I'm going to tell you that we're going to do it the right way. I'm going explain what that looks like and I'm going to focus on the small changes. You haven't lost 10 pounds yet, but that's okay because it's a long process.
But how's your sleep how do you feel look you're stronger? You've got more energy. I'm going to make the workouts enjoyable. I'm going to give you a good association with exercise. I'm going to change your perception or your motivation behind exercise from South hate. I hate my ugly body to self love. I want to take care of myself. Once I started to do that with my training. And of course I have the right techniques. I know what works. I know what exercises work on all that stuff. Once I started to do that my success was incredible man. I've had clients who would stay with me for 5 10 15 years. I would train them once a month once every other month just to kind of come in and assess the workouts and they're off on their own we had we've been on mine pump now for four years. I haven't trained idea these clients for over four years every single one of them. I keep in contact with them every single one of them still working out still doing well still on their own and now I can finally say that I succeeded at you know at what my ultimate goal was, but it took me a long time to learn how to do that. Yeah. I think there's this misconception that well my
Personal experience working with personal trainers which is very, you know sparse but I've always worked with trainers at that kind of apply the equivalent of like giving me a fish whereas it sounds like you guys are more like teaching the person to yeah. Absolutely. That's the only way for long-term success. And in order to do that. Unfortunately, the fitness industry at large has now been around now for at least a few decades, we've all seen the before and after pictures we've all seen the take this pill or do this thing to lose 30 pounds. We've all seen the crazy diet books. So unfortunately a large part of our job now is first dispelling all that crap, you know getting through and cutting through that crap like, okay, let's talk about the realities in the truth of things. And yes this specific diet may work better for you on paper, but you hate it. Therefore it's not going to work for you. And yes this one workout burns more calories. However, we're also looking to burn more calories automatically not just manually we want to speed up your metabolism.
Awesome, you know dispelling all those myths. How do we get your body to change through exercise? What does exercise do to you that gets your body to become more fit? That's a big one. We talk all the time about how exercise really just serves as a stimulus for your body to adapt. That's all it is. Yeah, when you go to the gym, you're sending a signal to your body to adapt that signal must be appropriate to your level of fitness and to your current lifestyle. What now? What does that mean? Well, if you're a very high-stress individual if you're not getting good sleep you're working like crazy. Maybe you just got divorced. Maybe you'll single parent whatever your you go into the gym and beating the crap out of yourself is not going to work that feeds right into
what my most paradigm-shifting sort of moment in terms of like me like finding myself into fitness and making it a career I come from an athletic type of a background. So I went all the way up until college football was like basically where I ended up and I play
And throughout my entire process of Fitness. I always Associated Fitness with being performance driven and you know, this is something I felt that most people shared and that most people were pretty conscious of how they move and their abilities and if I kind of showed them something they could pretty much figure it out and that was something that was like completely not the case when I when I started training in dealing with like your everyday average person, I'm like showing them the move I'm going through this process that like, I would just respond and I would get it just let just by watching and that wasn't happening. And so I had to I had to really reassess and figure it out and like what why isn't this working for them and like it was a very frustrating long process for me to start then sort of reverse engineering the process of how I got there and and even then now still I'm just figuring out, you know, like what that took in all those practices that I put in place along my
Journey of trying out all these different sports in the training that was involved going into those Sports. It was the practice it was the practice of these movements it was you know, the rituals I had established. It was all these little nuances that I was expressing, you know movements in the joint to wear to me it was intuitive, but it's not intuitive to your everyday average person who just isn't they're not doing these movements. They're just they're fixed. They're going to work there sitting in a chair, you know, they're getting up they might be moving to you know, like play with their kids or do something but they're really not expressing, you know, their body on, you know high level and so for me to then teach the process it takes a lot of time and there's there's an order of operations there that you know, I feel like is very undervalued and there's prerequisites to being able to get into these fish type workouts like so right so you get these trainers that they want to wow you
They want to show you like. Ah, this is the most hard fucking exercise workout routine you're ever gonna do and I'm gonna buy your business by kicking your ass, you know, and that was me initially. Like I was like, I loved it. You know, I'm like, you know, yeah kick my ass like all you know make me puke whatever I was into that and I was into the intensity of it and it's it's one of those things that I had to I had to understand like there was a whole process years in the making where it brought me to that level where I could I could handle that type of stress in and go for those types of Pursuits.
So yeah, I mean, it's probably a really quick road to getting injured to like injuring yourself. I diving headfirst into a hundred percent. Well, that was one
of our biggest qualms that we had with Crossfit. I mean talk about other episodes that went viral for mine pump very very early on this is also when CrossFit was still on the rise we came out and said why mine pump doesn't CrossFit and that whole episode
It was geared around what Justin's talking about right now is you know, I for most of my career I train trainers but most most every year. I had anywhere between 15 to 30 trainers working underneath me. And that was the entire culture. That was it was literally that literally all about who could come up with the craziest workout for their clients and it was all about the wow factor and it wasn't really about getting these people long-term results. And when we looked at programming like CrossFit that was heavily intensive based type of programming and you look at the majority of people that are coming to gyms that are looking how it's not not only is it not ideal. It's one of the worst ideas that you can do for those people. So I think that was something that definitely gave us traction, but also ruffled a lot of feathers when we first started because this thing was becoming so popular and everybody's raving about how amazing CrossFit is and we're coming out there going like well, probably not that great for a lot of people
challenge that idea dude exercise is a skill like anything else if you went to go learn
So here's here's an interesting. I'll take you down the stop process. This is something that I think we all realized about halfway through our careers as personal trainers. When you go to let's say you want to learn how to play basketball you go and you learn the fundamentals, you know how to dribble you learn how to do a layup you learn how to shoot you learn how to hold the ball how to move properly. You don't just go and play as hard as you frickin kidding right when people go to the gym and squat and deadlift and press and row what they're thinking in their mind is I'm going to hammer my legs. I'm going to hammer my back. I'm gonna Hammer my shoulder. So I'm going to go until those muscles hurt, right? That's the wrong approach treat exercise like a skill go to the gym and practice practice squatting. So what does it look like when you practice squatting versus when you're squatting the hammer your legs, you're probably going lighter much more better much more of an emphasis on your form and technique and control and you're practicing the movement over and over again. Am I getting better? Am I getting better at squatting that am I getting better at hammering myself, but I am I getting better at the skill when you start your
Exercise like a skill and you go to the gym to practice rather than to go beat yourself up. You'll see better success in the short term and especially in the long term because you'll treat the exercises in the most effective ways possible and that is a complete and I had that that that understanding watching people run outside. I'd see people go for runs outside of like, oh my gosh, they're mechanics are all off and it's like, oh I know why nobody's treating running like a skill. Everybody's just running so they get tired in which case you don't need to run to do that. You could just you know, jump jump on place or whatever. Yeah, but if they treated running like a skill then instead of seeing all these people run with terrible mechanics, you'd see people running with really good mechanics and in the running would be really good for them. No different with with lifting weights or exercise tree like a skill go to the gym and practice you'll get way better results brilliant advice. So important what what have you guys found to be we won't get into like what the question of what causes obesity because that's like a, you know can of worms right there. But what have you guys found to be the most effective advice?
To get your clients to lose weight. You you
said something when we interviewed you that I really liked and we should have circled back and brought it up again, but
we'll do it right now on your show
was and this was Paradigm shattering also for me when I assess a diet. So just like I do the steps for the first week. I actually try to add to the diet. Even if you come to me, you're a hundred pounds overweight and you need to lose weight. And when you come to me and it always is like a mind-blowing thing to try and tell somebody who's sitting in front of us as I need to lose a hundred pounds and you say okay great. I'm going to add these foods to your your diet. But what I have found is a lot of people that have gotten to this place have had crack of dawn it dieted chronically for so long that their metabolisms are just beat to shit. Yeah. I got a 300-pound guy standing sitting in front of me and he's only eating 2500 calories or so and he's and he's holding on to his Mass. I'm like, oh my God, your metabolism is just shot like
That person the one of the worst things I could do to them and what I did as an early on trainers, okay, if his metabolism that he's not losing weight at 2500. I guess we're going down to 2000 or going down to 1500 and you just keep doing that. It's like at what point though, is that unsustainable for them long-term? And so then really what I should do is probably try and build this person's metabolism. And that should be the focus. And if that's the focus then adding good nutrients and a good balanced diet is more important than me restricting calories at this time. And let's go ahead and add some muscle and that's always a challenge to help somebody at the beginning and to convince them that I know you're here to lose fat and lose weight with me. But really what I want to do with you is this first and this is why I think that's part of why we're losing this obesity battle is because of the information that's perpetuated in our space that it's just eat less exercise more. Yeah, and it's getting us in this this really we're up shit creek without a paddle. Yeah. We are in a situation where
What do you tell a 300-pound man to do what he's only eating 2500 calories? You know what that's like that's crazy.
Well, there was a study that can't remember what it was a modern hunter-gatherer tribe that they studied and actually is quite sophisticated study and they tested their metabolic rates and what they thought they would find would be that these that their metabolisms would be or that they be burning tons and tons more calories in the average person because obviously they move a lot there what they found was it wasn't that big of a difference now, it makes sense. If you really think about it from an evolutionary standpoint the metabolism in the body adapts in a way to become efficient, especially if you're moving a lot and so when you get a new client, the goal isn't part of the goal is to have more activity because it's good for you, but that's not the reason why we're doing that to get you to lose weight. It's making more healthy, but to lose weight. What we want to do is we want to train you in a way to get your metabolism to speed up. Yeah weight training nothing speeds up the metabolism or get your body to burn more calories naturally like resistance training.
Because the priority signal that's getting sent through resistance training is strength strength requires muscle the side effect of that is more is more of a calorie burn. Yeah, then when it comes to food, you know, I like to do one thing at a time and one of the first things that I do just like Adam is I'll add something so it's okay. You're not eating your vegetables. All right, we're not going to cut anything so far. But what I want to do is I want you to eat one serving of vegetables a day. Can you do that? Is this something that is you think you could do on a realistic level? It's always got to be realistic. By the way. If you if you tell a client to do something that they can't foresee themselves doing long-term realistically then take a step back in to get to that realistic point. So if one serving a day is like no I can't do that and okay. Can you do two days a week? Yes, perfect. Let's start there and little by little we start adding these foods and what you end up finding naturally, they start to reduce other Foods out of your diet and they start to feel better. Yeah, so it's just it's just that slow of a process, but it's about speeding up someone's metabolism because Modern Life
Is sanitary even if you try to be active it's not that active and we're surrounded by hyper palatable Foods all over the place. And so it's probably makes sense to get someone who's 300 pounds to be able to lose the weight but still eat 2500 calories or 3,000 calories versus cutting them down to 1200 calories. Good luck. Trying to maintain that for the rest of your life. Just not going to hell
it's not even if or maybe it's a hundred percent for sure. I mean, you'll never meet somebody and even if they stick it out for a year and I've seen people get crazy enough to eat these low calorie diets for a year or two, but eventually you break. Yeah. So then what's your guys like what's going through your head when
because I have my own perspective on this, but I'm not like a fitness. I mean I know about Fitness but I wouldn't say that I'm like as expert, you know level as you guys when it comes to body composition strength mass building weight loss all that stuff
when you read the advice that to lose weight. All you got to do is eat fewer calories
if it's simple as that
It infuriates us it in fear. I think
that's we came out with a Vengeance on that on that shit almost to probably to our detriment. I think yes, it resonates some people like that, but we've had to like cool our Jets a little because now we got to a point where we're so big that we look like we're bullying people but I think it infuriates all of us when we see posts like that especially when it's from peers and people that we know that our have dr. Type positions that are putting out information like that. It's like men that you know what that's it exists because you fucking haven't sat in front of had thousands of overweight people that you've had to deal with or else you wouldn't say these things you've been you know, what's great. This is and here's the thing and this is a put a notice out on all the doctors that live in there are labs. This is this is what happens you become so they're brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant in that lab setting the reality of and this goes back to what I said to you earlier is that 90% of this game is psychology. It really
is. Well, they lack wisdom, you know wisdom is knowledge combined with experience. So as an early trainer, I had that knowledge as well.
I knew that if we got the energy balance, right you would lose weight. It sounds simple but it's not that simple then you don't learn that until you work with people
over and over to you failed hundreds of time. And you say you failed to using that formula right play out and you realize that these hyper Powell it's the
foods that drive Behavior. It's part of it absolutely part of its emotion part of its context like, you know, this isn't right for everybody but there are certain individuals in this is just one tool by the way, and I never recommend this for weight loss but there are some individuals when I'm working with them and I'm trying to get them to connect to the Natural signals of hunger. I'll have them practice fasting now, why will I haven't practiced fasting? Well, most of us who've been, you know born and raised in modern Western societies have never felt true hunger. We just haven't we had food that in itself is mind-blowing my book. It's great. We've had food several times a day since we were born. Yeah. And so what we've associated with Hunger is actually more like emotion Cravings boredom.
Like I go to the movies I crave popcorn. I'm bored. I'll eat some food. I'm stressed. I'll eat some food. I'm saddle eat some food. It's a wedding. I'm supposed to eat this type of food. And so for some people have them fast for 24 48 72 hours. And again, it depends it has to be the right person and then we'll come back to me and be like well, like I know I know now when I'm hungry and I know what that feels like, I know that during that fasting period I was bored and I wanted food all these different times, but I knew I couldn't eat so I had to deal with my boredom in a completely different way. And so that's what you're really dealing with when it comes to when it comes to nutrition. It's not yes. It's simple in the sense that energy balance ultimately is what helps determine wait, you know gain or weight loss but it's definitely not lie not easy and when I have people tell me that like, oh, it's simple I tell me I climbing Mount Everest is simple to just take one step after another but it's way way way not that easy. Yeah, we're talking another analogy that I like is you know, it's telling somebody whose stock in the in the sandpit that is, you know, extreme poverty that the way to get out of poverty is
Make more than you aren't it's like wow, it's like okay. What so where do I go? Next? It's all skills. It's also along those lines. They've done these studies where people will win the lottery and they'll be bankrupt within a few years and people are like, how could that happen? They won 10 million dollar. This is by you can look this up on Google's it's a famous studies. Just like the biggest losers. Yeah. That's yeah and the reason why this happens is because they didn't develop the skills that it takes to dip to build that wealth. So when they got that wealth all of a sudden it was difficult for them to keep it. So the key to real permanent weight loss real permanent health is to develop the process in the skills along the way the practice is the behaviors along the way to wear when I'm bored. I don't reach for these Foods when I'm hungry and I do want something to eat. I crave foods that are healthy. Here's a good one for here's a good one for you Max the what we attribute pretty much one trait to food. Only most people taste palate.
Hillary like we know about food by either how it tastes and how much we like it or we don't but food brings a lot more to us than just that like I had a client years ago. Probably the unhealthiest person I'd ever worked with love her to death. So she's listening right now. She won't mind. She didn't drink water. Literally. She had Coke that's where I was when she drives how she got her fluids. Well didn't have a vegetable till since she was like six years old like never had vegetables nothing and so my goal with her was okay. How do we change some of these behaviors? So one of the things I did with her as I said, okay, I want you to eat one piece of vegetable every day pick the one that you hate the least. And what I want you to do is I want you to take notes about how you feel before during and after and let's take notes and be aware of our health now through the slow process. I got her to eat little by little shootie more and more and here's what she started to tell me how when I eat vegetables I notice I go to the bathroom much easier like, okay, I was the first day. Okay. So now you have a better bowel movement. That's cool and
Started notice. My moods are a little bit better. Like I noticed if I eat the vegetables, I just feel less irritable. I get better sleep. My skin is improving. So what's happening now? Is she starting to associate these other positive traits to a food now still taste the same. We didn't sprinkle sugar on it. We didn't throw flavoring on it's the same food, but now she's associating that food with all these other positive traits. So what do you think started to happen? She started to Crave the vegetables she started to because of these positive associations. She started to want to eat these Foods, even though the The Taste hadn't changed now. This is not I'm not inventing this. Okay. This isn't something I'm creating right now. This isn't my breakthrough thing food manufacturers have known this for decades. They have known for a long time that if they associate food with certain feelings, you're going to eat more of them. There's famous studies where they'll serve people foods and they'll serve them like something that's hyper palatable like ice cream, but they'll serve it to them in a toilet for example, and people eat less. I
Scream why because of the negative association you go to the grocery store foods are you know packages are certain color the place in a particular way. There's a certain type of music that's playing restaurants have a certain Ambiance all of these things that you associate with food help you want to or not eat these types of foods and so you can do that with yourself. And one of the first things you can do is start to become more aware of all of the things that food provides for you aside from just the taste of it. So and this happens in the negative 2, I love pizza. It's so great. We'll start identifying the other things that it may have met Duty like gives me poor digestion. I get heartburn. I feel terrible afterwards think about that write it down and naturally will start to happen is you may start to Crave the pizza less than you had before and so it's behavior modification. It's a slow process but it's the only way that I found to make those permanent changes. Yeah. I love that. So what I want to before we, you know wrap up we still have some time but I want to get into sort of like a rapid-fire like round.
Abel, you know Q&A with you guys. I'm sure what some of my followers so one of the questions that I get very frequently because you know a lot of the conversation in the fitness Community online centers around weight loss. What about for people that are trying to gain weight? Like what's the what's the what's your guys prescription for that? Okay. So you want these quick right? I mean relatively quickly. All right. I want to try to get to like a bunch of these questions. There's I got some really good quest for sure. Okay, you guys are such a wealth of information. All right. So lift weights full-body two to three days a week focused on getting stronger on the core lifts bench, press squat deadlifts overhead presses Rose, like the good old fashioned lifts, focus on operational ones increase your caloric intake one of the things you can do to increase your caloric intake is try drinking some of your calories. So for people who have trouble gaining weight. Typically it's hard for them to get you like all Tom eat more like I can't eat more so I'll tell them. Okay. Can you have a smoothie in between meals? I will add high quality calories.
Maybe met with some fruit. If you can have dairy some quality, you know Dairy and there's some protein powder that maybe one of the things but usually when you send the right signal with resistance training, you'll notice an uptick in an appetite and muscle gain does take even with fast gainers. It is a relatively slow process. So just be patient. Are there any ways you guys recommend like, you know, maybe macro nutrient composition.
Yes you my shirt like
yes, I have a different person. Yeah. Is there a such thing as a clean bulk or whatever,
you know, well, here's the tip I'm going to give is this this is not necessarily the best way to do anything. It says the strategy that I have found because this question totally connects to me on my whole life. I struggled with being the bigger guy. In fact, I never leaned out until I turned 30 my whole entire life was trying to be the bigger guy always skinny always struggling to get enough calories in food in obviously when I got into the professional bodybuilding world. I had to get very good at manipulating my way putting size on taking size.
If I had to be able to do this and one of the best and most successful strategies that I had was I learned really early on that. I needed to stay ahead of my macros early so early on a day. One of the hardest ones to get is my proteins for me to getting enough protein for my body at that time. I was about 200 230 pounds or so. So I'm in taking about 200 grams of protein between 200 and 230 and so for me to get that much I have to get ahead of it early on and then I also found eating leaner protein and and fast-acting carbs help me keep my appetite up all day long and I piled the higher fat type of foods later on in the evening. So I would be hungry enough to want to eat. So at one point, I had got my metabolism up to where I needed about 4,500 calories to sustain my size at the professional level and that was fucking incredibly hard for me and required a lot of prepping and getting having my meal.
Ready, and I'd have to eat and I have to eat six not because of the the bullshit science that people think that it speeds my metabolism up from trying to time my windows because for me to eat 5,000 calories required me breaking it up and multiple meals. So somebody that is having a hard time eating. These are some strategies that help is breaking it up in smaller portions that your body digests breaks down really fast and easy and utilizes keeping the higher fat type of foods till later in the evening after you've actually got enough of your Macros in it. So I got to a point where I Knew by noon if I had x amount of carbs calories and protein in I would be fine. I could Cruise the rest of night and I knew that by noon time if I didn't get x amount that I was going to be struggling to get that in and I might have to use strategies like Sal saying like pounding a shake or something with my meal. Yeah.
Do you there's still I mean you can still eat
healthily while trying to
gain yeah. Yeah. I think that's and I think that what I
try to do
I was competing was I
tried to show people that I came out and said listen competing is not healthy for the body. Okay doing anything that extreme is not healthy, but I'm going to try and show you guys how to have the healthiest approach with it. And so that was and I remember all I had a very very healthy good relation of food. Everything that I think is good until about two weeks before and I would tell me that says this is I'm going into the dark place. I'm going into the I'm now doing things to my body. I'm fully aware are not healthy for it to achieve a look on a stage to win a trophy. Yeah and but up into that point though II definitely tried to be as bounce. I all Whole Foods all real foods. I didn't you I didn't need supplements. I wasn't running a bunch of stuff like that. But I did find the strategy of eating leaner and faster digesting foods early on in my day that would promote more hunger more food. Help me hit the targets. I need to for somebody who's struggling. So if you're somebody who's struggling to put
It on that was a major strategy. Yeah, love that
next question fasting or working out while fasted totally up to personal preference. Yeah, unless you're going to do a really long grueling intense workout. You're probably gonna want to have a meal a couple hours before but most people's workouts which last anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour and a half fast it or not totally up to personal preference. I there's for me personally, I don't mind working out fast and I get a lot of great energy when I do. I don't Adam hates it. So the really isn't a huge. I mean, we're splitting hairs if we talk about oh, you know cortisol and Insulin in testosterone growth and you know Rising all the stuff, we're really splitting hairs at the end of the day, whichever one you prefer. That's probably the one that you should do because you're going to be more consistent doing it.
Yeah. I definitely think people need to you know approach if I've never done it before, you know, this is something you need to get adapted towards this whole, you know, being fast and then doing rigorous movement.
I know some people can get lightheaded. Like I know for me like I the first couple times that I tried to like lift heavy and I had done it where I was not like filled up with any kind of like carbohydrates or any kind of food ahead of time was was a bit challenging at first, but you know, the more consistently I kind of got used to it. I was able to navigate a lot easier through that but yeah that's fasting is one of those things. It's like we know the health benefits to it but a lot of times like when we kind of stay in our bubble, we forget that it's pretty challenging for your average person to abstain from food for amount of time. Yeah, and you know, it's this whole Hangar thing, like if people don't really like experience that very often in this is a new thing. So I'm trying to always kind of keep that in mind.
Yeah, if you are working out while fasted what kind of
attention should you pay to your post-workout
meal? Is there a quote-unquote post-workout anabolic window of opportunity? No, sir.
Studies show again, we're splitting hairs, but studies show that regardless of when you eat you're going to replenish glycogen. Just fine. Okay repair just fine. If you plan on working out again later in the day, then you do want to have a meal in between because studies show that that improves performance. So like I say you work out twice a day. I work out in the a.m. And I'm fasted you probably want to eat after that workout. So you have some fuel for the next workout that you do later on in the day, but otherwise it doesn't make a and by the way, you know, why the supplement industry push that anabolic muscle building window so hard? Yeah because right after your workout what they'll push is, you need to have fast-digesting digesting carbohydrates and it has to happen 30 minutes after your workout. Well, the only thing that's convenient 30 minutes after your workout a protein shake is a shake and so they're going to sell more shakes. That's really all it is. There's right. There's really splitting hairs here. And in the in the scheme of things if I were to list the, you know, the top 15 priorities of building muscle and burning body fat eating.
After you workout would even make the list. Yeah. This is a question that wasn't asked through my Instagram, but I'm just curious to know where you because you guys are so aligned and that's what makes you guys such good, you know business partners, but
where do you guys disagree?
There's there's probably
in the fitness stuff not as much because I think you know, it's all said this before to once you've been doing it so long we all kind of come to the same truths. Like I think it's inevitable at one point. I think we have different strategies and philosophies. Even how I was just sharing like, I'm the only one that would carry six meals around you know, but I also am the only one to that one that does cardio. Yeah. Yeah is so hot. Yeah, so we don't you guys do cardio. No, I'm swimming right now. So that's not true. Okay, but
that's a joke. It was a joke. We've been coined T. No
sweat forever because we're like, well, we're just trying to highlight the importance of resistance training I think overall and so we're healthy. I think the common thought process of losing weight is to jump on the treadmill and
Yourself? No, that's a good that's a great Point. Another great topic is in and it goes back into this whole theme of this episode of Paradigm shattering moments. And one of those for me was I never prescribed if someone would go back to that client was 300 pounds sitting in front of me eating 2500 calories. I am absolutely not prescribing cardio for sure not because that is not going to help that's like going to assist us in speeding the metabolism up. That's just making the metabolism more efficient. So if I add more intensity more work, like cardio to this person who's only got 2,500 metallic calorie maintenance of 2500. I'm going to just drive it down even more so walking, you know, I'm saying I'm going to tell somebody to walk and I think because we promoted that message so much people think that we're allergic to
cardio. No. No, there's definite health benefits to card it. We're against people were against the message that you should just do lots of cardio all the time to lose weight. Right? It's not a good long-term strategy. Yeah. I think you called it. Um, what do we it's the calorie but oh Manuel calorie-burning versus like automatic.
Again, absolutely. Yeah, it just look your body tries to become better at whatever you ask it to do and cardiovascular activity. If you do lots of it, it's telling your body. Okay, let's get good at Cardio. We don't need a lot of strength, but we need to be very efficient. And so that results in a slower metabolic rate, that's all and so we see look if you man if you've worked in gyms for a long time, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They call these people cardio bunnies. These are men and women who are on cardio they come in every day. They do the 40 minutes of cardio or an hour of cardio and they're all still overweight and they can't seem to lose the weight. Those people would would be served very well by starting to reduce the cardio and lift some weights and change the signal change it so that their metabolism speeds up. Yeah when it comes to Fitness, I mean, you know, like Adam said if you get enough people searching for the answer to what is 2 plus 2 you have a bunch of different paths at the end of it. Everybody's going to come up with the answer of 4, we disagree on business all the time. I mean we get in arguments almost on the regular over how
What we should you know promote and how we should do a particular thing. But I mean it
pulled in so many directions, you know, when you create something like this. It's interesting what opportunities present themselves and it's like do we put most of our eggs over here? Do we put them in this direction? And I think that we all kind of have you know, sometimes we have different ideas but we respect each other enough to hear like everybody's opinions and then really assess which one is probably best for everybody and then we arm wrestle and then you all right? Yeah. Why don't you teach other on the show? We've definitely had like debates over stuff that it's always over like philosophical stuff. It's not over like science like this. I mean, we don't we don't refute each other science at all. It's not like that. It's like approaches like, oh we both have had these types of clients and I said well now I think this has been a little bit better approach and I know that sounds good. I think I've had more it's so it's like that also what I think I think people appreciate about the show is that dynamic because every time that happens, I know he gets a plethora of DMZ people saying like I
The agree with you Sal that's how I do things always were all right, and then I get the same amount of people that do the same thing like, oh sounds crazy. I would never do that. What you're saying is right on you know, so yeah, I think that we disagree on may be things like that or approaches but I think we we all have the end goal in mind. We all get the same truths. There's not a lot of things that we get into like heavy debates unless we're speculating on future Trends or what might happen. It's again, it's what you want. You've done been doing this long enough. We all end up at the kind of the same place. I think
I love it. You guys are awesome. Okay last audience question. What are your guys thoughts on protein shakes who who needs to take protein shakes who should avoid them? You guys take them? Nobody needs to take a protein shake real food. Okay, so we talked about processed foods, right? Okay. So and you know, we're sponsored by a supplement company that sells protein but still at the end of the day, it doesn't get more processed than a powder that has a life Shelf.
Five years and tastes like strawberry shortcake or whatever. It's about the most price is somewhere down. The line protein shakes became a health food, but they're not it's a process food. Now if you have sore evil, if you have trouble getting enough protein in your diet because having a diet that's relatively high in protein and I say relatively because in our space high protein means eating ridiculous, you'll fart producing amounts of protein no high amounts of protein for athletic performance is about point 6 to point eight grams per pound of body weight for lean individual. So right around there if you want to maximize muscle building if you want to increase the satiety of your diet, so you don't eat as much right around there. And if you have trouble eating that much a protein shake can help you do that, but is it is it you do protein shakes instead of food? No food. Number one whole Natural Foods number one. Yeah, sometimes I find it can hard. It can be hard to hit my protein goal for the day and you know
13 it's very economical. I mean like high-protein density foods can be very expensive and they're satiating and you know, not that I'm like a shill for big protein. But like I do think that they can be useful. No II know it's useful
to why I use them I use them on prowl. I probably use in the most because and this is something I guess. This was something I wouldn't say we disagree but this is something that different. Yeah, we were different about our opinions early on in the podcast was you know, Sal was coming from the place of and I agree with him in this that you know, our space the bodybuilding world has been preaching the 3x and these guys are just over doing it. He was overdoing it like crazy for many years. I come from the space of I've trained a lot of women that struggled with getting their protein intake and I struggled most of my to this day. Yeah, if I were to just not really pay attention and eat. Yeah, I mean we could go through my yesterday and I had I probably had about 60 grams, you know, I didn't have a lot of protein and
Three meals and that's three meals with a meat in there. But sometimes you know
six ounces of meat or 8 ounces of meat
is only like 25 to
40 grams worth of
protein. And if you have three balanced meals that is not enough for a guy who's 220 pounds in lifting weights 3 to 5 times a week trying to build muscle. At least it's not enough if I'm doing that every if I'm that low every single day, I'm definitely missing my targets. So I think one day like that not a big deal, but I keep it on hand for that exact reason. So either way I use my protein is because I was aware that happened yesterday. And if I am going to run if I notice that today it's going to happen again. I'll probably add a protein shake into my day because I know that's two back-to-back days one low protein day. I know it's not a big deal. In fact, it's probably healthy for me to have a really low protein day occasionally, but when I see that I'm I'm grossly under eating my protein. I absolutely introduced and used the Shake in a my diet because I do think it's useful not point. But again, it's a it's a lesser evil or it's I'm not looking at it like the way the industry is
Hold it for so long, which is it's a health food. I don't think of it as a health food I think is hey, I'm missing some macro targets here. I should get more protein in my diet. So I'm not doing it like I should be through whole food. This is better than not doing it at all.
Yeah, and when you do have a protein shake is it is a way
so I go back and forth and is funny you bring that up. I have way at my house and then I have our organifi vegan nice and way just tastes so much better. It really does
and we always just as so such a palatable protein give it a
mix. Yeah, and I make we make protein pancakes and waffles and we and make dinner our own homemade smoothies and I like the way flavor adding to whatever I do, so I'm drawn to that but I'm also
I also am curious to if it is affecting my gut at all because I do seem to notice if I'm having that on a regular basis. I do notice that I start to kind of blow all the little water. I might be gassy this things I start to notice those things and so I may have some sort of issue thats related to way. So I try and minimize that and I try and go towards the vegan way as much as I possibly can
but they're occasionally there's certain things
like like I brought up the pancakes for that exact reason is I don't like the way the vegan protein tasting my pancake mix it ruins the experience for me for eating them. And so I leaned on the way on those cases.
Yeah, I've definitely stopped eating protein bars because I feel like there's so many additional non protein calories in those things just to make them palatable way protein powder is just you know, it's like pure yeah it is I do the I do vegan organic vegan, but I can't have any dairy and he all Dairy proteins. I have an intolerance.
To so I've been doing vegan protein for a long time. But I do like Adam I use it when I think I need it. My proteins were low. Okay, I'll throw some protein powder on it. But food food should always be number one always weird up. I agree with that. All right, so we got one last question. The question that gets asked to everybody that's on my podcast. But before we get to that and wrap up where can listeners connect with each of you guys on the Social Web you guys if you're listening you have to listen to mine pump radio. It's my favorite Fitness podcast these guys, obviously as you are now well aware know their stuff but where can you know listeners find you guys on?
Oh, we're all of our mainly on Instagram. That's probably where were the most active. So if you want to engage and have conversation with us, I'd go to our Instagrams. They're all very easy Minds mind pump Adam. I'm pump Justin my pumps Al what's kind of cool about what you did today to with these kind of Rapid questions. This is actually the flavor of mine pump and what grew the podcast is what we call our quas rqa we pronounce QA, right? Sure. So what?
It's actually what we do three times when we found it is we choose for random questions right before we get on the mics and then we answer them just like that. So this was definitely a flavor of what mine pump would be like if you were to listen to
us. That's awesome. Alright guys, so everybody on this podcast gets asked, you know, so the question is what does it mean to you to live a genius life and you could interpret that however, you'd like but because there's three of you I feel like each of you should get a stab at it if you're if you're feeling up for it. All right? Hmm for me, it's living a life of meaning and fulfillment. I guess the simple as that and write what that means for me is my family is very important to me what we do with our business is very important to me because it is something that I feel like is part of my meaning and the world which is to communicate, you know, good health information to people and be try to remain humble through the whole process and I guess that's pretty much it. I think that's a all that so I think
for me just
A constant student and just always approaching each interaction with everybody I meet as a potential for me to learn something. Oh my God. So I mean that's basically kind of what the whole podcast is provided is just an endless supply of new people new faces new ideas, and I'm just like super receptive to change my mind and to grow. All right. I know that I'm wise because I know that I know nothing so I'm with Justin on that. I definitely think that living a genius life to me is that pursuit of consistent growth day over day that I'm a better version of myself yesterday. I'm competing with nobody but myself and that Pursuit never ends. So and you're right. I think this the this environment that we've created for ourselves feeds that and it's such a privilege to hang out and be friends with people like yourself and to stretch those limits. It's been it's been an absolute pleasure,
man. What beautiful answers you guys. Thank you so much for spending the past.
Our with me this has been so fun and you guys are welcome to come back. Obviously whenever you want onto the genius. Laughs I feel like this is gonna be the first of many you guys listening. Be sure to share this episode on social media. Take a screen grab post it up on your Instagram stories. Get your you know,
highlight your favorite quote from Adams style. Justin tag them mine pump Adam. I'm pumps almond. I'm Justin tag me spread the word about what we're doing here at the genius life. As always. I value your time and attention. Peace.
