Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1137: The #1 Form of Exercise for Health & Longevity

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin discuss the challenges of aging and the best form of exercise to combat them. The growing movement of anti-aging/longevity. (2:50) Why being alive is not just about dying. (5:21) At what point is ‘biohacking’ not improving your quality of life? (8:10) Could doctors tell when people are getting ready to go? (10:20) Why exercise benefits your life in MORE ways than just your health. (14:25) What defines a positive quality of life? (16:35) The loss of mobility and potential side effects from lack of movement. (24:10) The Resistance Training Revolution: The issues that are the result of modern life and how resistance training is the BEST prescription. (34:00) How most deaths link back to obesity. (45:30) What is the BEST form of exercise to tackle obesity LONG TERM? (46:35) Why Mind Pump is NOT anti-cardio, but PRO longevity. (52:50) People Mentioned Dave Asprey (@dave.asprey)  Instagram Ben Greenfield Fitness (@bengreenfieldfitness)  Instagram Dr. Jolene Brighten (@drjolenebrighten)  Instagram Dr. Andreo Spina (@drandreospina)  Instagram   Related Links/Products Mentioned October Promotion: MAPS Anabolic ½ off!! **Code “RED50” at checkout** The health benefits of strong relationships Mind Pump 1045: Dr. Jolene Brighten- Beyond the Pill Millennials May Be Losing Their Grip Army Basic Training to Drop Hand Grenade Competency as Graduation Requirement How exercise helps balance hormones Strength Training Surprises The Best Form of Exercise Effects of Physical Exercise on Cognitive Functioning and Wellbeing: Biological and Psychological Benefits Weightlifting better at reducing heart fat than aerobic exercise MIND PUMP 30 DAYS OF COACHING - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, ob-mite, up with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Alright, so in this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about the number one, most important form of exercise for health and longevity. That's a lot of things you could do exercise-wise to improve, and maybe not to shake weight, to improve your health and longevity. There's, you know, you could do yoga type classes, you could do circuit training type workouts,

you could run, you could cycle, you could swim. And ideally, a combination of a few different things is probably best for most people, but most people don't have tons of time to dedicate to exercise, we're just being realistic here. So if you had to choose one, just one form of exercise, that's gonna give you the biggest bang for your buck, the greatest return on your investment of time,

which one would that be? So we talk about that, we talk about, first off, we define what longevity is now to us It doesn't mean just living a long time. In other words, it doesn't mean just not dying It means Improvements in quality of life are having a really good quality of life while you are alive We talk about what happens when you do age What are some of the issues that happen to the body and how we can directly combat that with the best forms of exercise?

We talk about the current common recommendation. If you go on all the official health websites and government websites and look up what kind of exercise I should do, they talk about vigorous cardiovascular activity, about 150 minutes every single week. And so we discuss and debate that a little bit. We think that is outdated and we think we have a better answer. Let's replace itself. Yeah. And we talk about what we think is the best type of exercise. Before that episode starts, I do want to remind everybody that this month, maps and a

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So it trains you through different rep ranges. It takes you through different exercises. It's the program that gives us the best response always. It's 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsred.com, that's MAPS-R-E-D.com and use the code red50,R-E-D50, no space for the discount.

There's a new, well I don't say it's new, but it seems like a growing movement and that's the anti-aging longevity conversation. Do you feel like that's happening right now? Oh, that's the biohacker, like that's the cold arms. Yeah. You know what that's the biohacker, like that's the call to arms. Yeah. You know what's gonna be interesting?

You can do it all with chemicals. Do you know how much my heart is gonna break, dude, if someone like Ben Greenfield like croaks early? Oh, yeah. I don't know what to put that out there. If Dave Asprey and Ben, you know what's so crazy? If Dave Asprey and Ben Greenfield pass early, it could destroy an entire industry.

The whole thing. Yeah. It would just implode. It would implode completely. You know why that won't happen though? Because I don't know much about that. Because Ben looks like he's gonna live to unfit. I don't know much about Asprey,

but because Ben does the big things. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's what's gonna keep him around a long time. I don't think it's the injections of weird stuff. And you know. It's one of my favorite things about Ben is that, although he does a lot of fringe things,

he's there's many things that we don't all agree or see eye to eye on. If there was a guy that was going to experiment on things and try biohacking stuff, like that's the dude that I wanna see do it because I know that he is taking care of the big rock. He's doing the, like you talked the other day, Sal, you brought up that study, which I

think is fascinating about cigarettes and relationships and how important our relationships are in life. So long, Jevvety. Right. So long, Jevety. Like that it actually trumps so many other things, even exercise and nutrition by themselves. Well, it makes a huge, there's a lot of things that make a big impact

on longevity, but for most of human history, it was basic stuff like infections. Are you getting enough nutrients? Do you have enough food? Or did you die from getting eaten by another animal? I mean, if you look at the throughout history, the life expectancy of humans, it's really only recently that it's really exploded.

I mean, I think what's worldwide life expectancy now in modern nations, things like 78 or something like that? But here's a part that I like to talk about. Is it going up or down or maintaining? It's gone up, it's been going up for a long time. Like what? Like how significant has the edge? Oh geez, it's gone up quite a bit in the last 30 years.

And just in the US, I believe the life expectancy went up five years in the last 15 maybe. Really? Yeah. Oh wow, it's increasing that much. Yeah. Now here's the thing that I like to talk about though, is being alive isn't necessarily just about,

you know, not dying. You know what I'm saying? Right, right. Quality of life matters. Yeah, it's hard not to die. But that has to say something in itself though, right, that we are in a time when people seem to be sicker and dying of more diseases, right? Well, there's more chronic illness,

but people are not dying as early. Right, right, for a cute stuff, right? That and because we can keep them alive longer. But again, it's not, I don't think that's what living is all about. So I think the reason why longevity has become this big topic isn't necessarily because people are afraid of dying, although of course people,

but people have always been afraid of dying. I think it's because more than ever are witnessing people around them who are older, who are not dying, so they're alive, but they're also not living, you know what I'm saying? So it's become a big thing, like Alzheimer's has exploded, diabetes has exploded. You're seeing lots of chronic illnesses Alzheimer's has exploded, diabetes has exploded.

You're seeing lots of chronic illnesses and issues like autoimmune diseases have exploded. Part of the reason why those have exploded is because people are living longer and so that odds that that stuff happens to you increase as you get older. And the other part of it is we don't quite know. I can have a lot of educated guesses. I think a lot of it has to do with our lifestyle and our diet.

I think we have good medications that keep us alive, but they don't give us that quality of life. So here we are, modern times, we're observing the people around us. We know people who are older, but they're not independent. They can't take care of themselves very well. I have grandparents or aunts and uncles uncles were on 15 or 20 different medications, which is not an exaggeration. 15, 20 medications is common when people get an advanced age.

No, I've got family that are in their 50s still come over my house and they've got pills. Just tons and tons of pills. This one for that one, this one to counter, this one, this one, this one. Well, to that point too, I think aging is looked more like, it's a disease, and then this is something that we can solve. And I think there's a lot of people really driven to solving this program, sort of sell death. How can we reverse this process?

Like how can science kind of intervene and make this whole thing easier for us and to stay young and to live a full life and extend our life, whereas we're not really looking at, you know, the steps we can do right now and like, you know, the quality of life that we can lead Just by implementing like real basic practices. Well my question is to what where is the where is the line to because

Quality of life also encompasses like Enjoying your life and the pleasures and the other things which contributes a longevity right? Yeah, so that where is the balance right? So where where at what point? Because then you see some people too and this is the thing that So, where at what point? Because then you see some people too, and this is the thing that probably concerns me about some of the quote unquote, biohacking community,

is their whole mission in life is to just try and extend their life. They're trying to find the secret. Right, they're looking for all these hacks to do, to try and get an extra five, 10, 20 years out of their life, and then you have to ask yourself, is that really improving quality of life? No, not at all.

So I'm not interested in, and at some point, I think science will figure out interesting solutions for aging. I do think at some point, science will figure out why death happens in the first place? There are creatures and organisms on Earth that seem to be, you know, almost immortal. There's jellyfish. There's certain species of sharks.

There was a shark that was found off of the coast of Greenland, I think that was. 500 years old. Yeah. Like there's some animals that jellyfish are longer though, right? Yeah, jellyfish is like the longest, isn't it? Yeah, besides plants, right? Yeah jellyfish is like the longest isn't it? Yeah besides plants right besides trees and stuff like that but there are some animals that we don't think die of old age they we think that they die from other causes and they don't just die of just getting older but most things do die of getting older and you know the way things operate in the

universe you've guys have heard of entropy entropy things the word you know things eventually become disorganized over time in terms of, you know, the particles of the universe. But without getting all weird, I think I'm not really interested in finding the secret or solving the problem of aging. I'm more interested in figuring out how to live better while I'm alive. Now, that does contribute to longevity as well. Like, if you live better while you're

here and you do it kind of the right way, you are going to live longer because your rate of chronic disease and illness drops significantly. As people get older, you'll start to see that what kills them is weird stuff. Like I fell, you know, I fell, I broke my hip or my leg. I was in the hospital for two weeks. Then I got pneumonia, then I got C-Diff, then I took all these medications, and then I died. Like, wasn't there a saying that goes with that fall and break your hip, diving pneumonia?

That's a common saying among in the medical community. Yeah, and you also see a loss of a significant other and then all of a sudden, like a rapid loss of the- That one is the one that always fascinates me. Yeah. And I think as you get older and you have more and more relationships that are in advanced age,

you start to see this common theme amongst couples where one dies and they're like, no, it's not always true though. There's always exceptions that there's been exceptions that rule for us. He did a really hard example. He's in a lot of examples of that. Yeah, it might be a relief for some people.

You know, like, my health was poor until my husband died. Not feeling amazing. So free. Yeah. I actually know a couple people like that. I know a woman who's husband died and in all of a sudden she's traveling, she's working out, I don't kind of stuff like,

wow, he was holding her back. It's interesting though, right? But it seems like a majority of the ones that you would think had really a really healthy or a good relationship with their partner when the partner passes, they tended to tear you. Yeah, it seems to be a mental aspect to that, right? Like your identity was so much entwined with your partner

and like your purpose was, all that stuff was like lined up with your partner and they're gone and it just seems like a rapid decay after your will to live Yeah, you know, I it's I trained a lot of surgeons for years and I loved asking them questions like this Once we became you know become close and I'd be friends with them I could ask them what kinds of whatever I wanted and I would ask them I'd say could you tell besides the The you know physiological measurements and stuff that you could do in the hospital, could you also just tell when people were getting ready to go and was

that? And they said, well, you know, we don't necessarily have studies and stuff on this, but yeah, like, I experienced this myself. I had, at the time, someone very close to me. This was years ago, I had cancer and it was terminal. And she went to the hospital from some complications from the cancer. And the doctors checked her out and everything.

She had to get her stomach cavity drained because she had to, what's called the CITES, lots of fluid build up from her cancer. And I had a conversation with the doctor, and again, because I trained lots of surgeons, the doctors at the hospital knew me, so they would take me aside and I could ask them whatever. And I'm like, okay, how does everything look?

And he says, all right, I'll be honest with you. He goes, she probably has a couple months. She has a couple months left. I said, okay, so nothing immediate right now. He goes, no, he goes, the cancer spread, but liver function is still okay, kidney functions okay, heart functions okay. Nothing is gonna, you should kill her right now,

but she probably does have only a couple months. So I said, okay, well, we have a couple months and I told, I told it at the time, you know, my wife, I told the family members. And the next day, this, my friend of mine, my family member called me and said, hey, I want you to come in, I want to talk to you. This is the person who had the cancer.

So I go in there and she tells me basically says goodbye and says all these wonderful things and, you know, how much I meant to her and then did this, did this to all the important people in her family? She died that night. It's really weird. I just lost strange. I just lost my best friend's mom,

who was like another mother to me literally just a couple weeks ago The and the crazy part about it was it was like four months ago when they they basically gave her like weeks to live and Her granddaughter her her granddaughter's first birthday was just three weeks ago And that was one of the things that she said that she wanted to see her granddaughter's first birthday. And it just blew my mind that months before, they'd only given her weeks to live, and she found a will to live. And it was shortly after the birthday that she passed.

So there has to be something to say too about your will to live. There is. And this actually is an excellent segue because the obvious reasons why exercise, and we're going to get into this in this episode, but the obvious reasons why exercise are so positively impactful on longevity, the obvious reasons are, you know, it improves your physiology, your leaner, your organs function better because you're stressing your body and you're challenging about it, you become stronger, you build more muscle,

you're more able. All that stuff. That's the easy reasons, but I think there's other reasons why exercise benefit your large evidence. You have to think of the mental aspect of it because you're going out and doing it. Right, you care.

Yes, you care. You're there to it. If you're going out and doing it. Right, you care. Yes, you care. Yes, you're there to it. If you're in the gym, which doesn't matter what modality you're doing, if you're in the gym, you care. You care about bettering yourself and proving yourself from your current state. And there has to be something to be said

about the mental space of that. And how powerful that is. 100%, 100, 100 fucking percent. I think that's why I think if there was a pill that you could swallow, that gave you all the physiological, physical benefits of exercise, you still would not get all the benefits of good old fashioned exercise,

where you actually make the choice to go out, to take time aside, to feel pain, to challenge your body, to care about yourself. I think that right there is part of the reason why exercise is so good for you and why a hack, a biohack or whatever, won't be the same. Now, I'm not saying that we're not going to just make some discovery in the future. I think we probably will. But again, look, I'm not, and none of us in this room

are gonna discover that. I think the important thing, and I don't think anybody listening to this podcast is gonna be the person to figure it out, and I don't think it'll be figured out in our lifetime, I think the important thing to focus on, rather than what will keep me alive the longest, or prevent death the longest, is what will improve the quality of my life and then

through that, what will improve the quality of life best and then through that, how is that going to make me live and then will I live longer? I think that's the important question in conversation. Well, how would you define that? What are some things that would define exactly what you're talking about? Quality, right? Independence is a big one. Full independence.

If you've ever had a broken leg or arm or injury and required somebody's help, you know how difficult that can be. Now we all need people, of course. But you know what I'm talking about. Like needing people to do everyday things for you, needing people to help you get around, needing people to take care of things for you. I think that does a can.

I don't think it always will, but I think it definitely can decrease your quality of life, especially if you've lived most of your life not needing that. Yeah, and also to, you know, in that terms, like having the relationships around you and benefiting people around you is massively important for your quality of life. So to be able to contribute to them, yeah, like, like, pour it back, like, you have to fill

yourself up to be able to pour out into, you know, other people's lives and to really be a good friend and to be a good partner. Yeah, I. Yeah, when I would train people in advanced age, and we would do strength training, the biggest, by far, they were the ones that got impacted the most. Anybody I ever trained, it was advanced age people. I've gotten people lose 50, 60, 70, I got someone to lose a hundred pounds a couple times.

I've had people rehab injuries and that was was impactful but I but training somebody in advanced stage and having them become more independent in advanced Age like I had one time. I was training a client. I had an older woman that I trained she was 80 I want to say 83 and She I trained her for a few months and I was in my studio training another client, wasn't her session, so she wasn't even supposed to be there. And I'm training this other client and in she walks through the front door

and she had like a little cane or whatever. And she's just standing there watching me, she's trying to be polite. So I, excuse myself and I walk over, I was like, hey, I thought maybe you had, I don't think you have a session today. She's like, oh no, I'm not supposed to work out. She goes, I just wanna tell you

that I was at the grocery store next door because my gym was located next to a grocery store. And she goes, and I took all my groceries out of the basket myself and I closed my trunk, all shed in SUV. She's like, I reached up and closed it all by myself. And she started tearing up. And she goes, I haven't been able to do that

for the last seven years. She used to have to have the kid come out, help her, unload it, close the thing. So she went from less independence to more independence through exercise. And so I think that makes a huge impact is how can I maintain my ability to take care of myself and help others?

It's amazing how important those things become once you lose them. Totally. Oh yeah. Remember when you had your Achilles? Right. What that felt like? Yeah.

You know, it's a humbling. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think that's a big one. The next one I would say, which is connected to independence, is just maintaining strength. Like being strong enough to do every day things

that we take for granted. I had a family member who's passed away now, who in their age, advanced age, had to get a toilet that you, it actually, you push a button in the toilet lifts, the seat lifts to help you get out of the toilet. And you think, and you realize like, wow, that's a, I totally take that for granted. The fact that I can sit down and get up, what prevents that from happening in people, loss of strength, you know? You gotta have strength to be able to keep it going.

Move your body, get in a car and get out of a car. Like that's another big one, right? Reach up above your head, pick up a bag, just open a door, all these things, you need to have strength in order to do that. Well, strength and muscle is also what protects our bones and our joints too. So I mean, if you're weak, and if your muscles are weak,

and you have weak strength, that's where you're also at a higher risk of injury when it comes directly to breaking a bone or tearing a ligament. So strength is just getting sick. Like the fragility is a factor in people just being more susceptible in their immune system being compromised. The more strong you can be overall. It's going to protect you. It's funny. We're talking about this right now as if we're just talking to people who are in their 70s and 80s. But the reality is, I know a lot of people in their 40s

30s and 40s who are losing this story. I know this has had to happen you guys in the least the last decade. I know it's happened to me at least a handful of times. And every time it happens to me, I do have the presence of mind to think about like, wow, that's important, I can do that. And that is like, I'll be walking down my stairs

and malt like an idiot on my phone or doing something else and miss a step. Oh man. You know, miss a few things, right? And you go to fall, you see my balls in the pool. And you actually recover though. Yes. Because, and I think to fall, you made my balls. And you actually recover though. Yes. Because, and I think to myself like, you know,

fast forward myself 30 years from now, and will I still be able to do that? That's important to me that I could still do that because there's a very good chance that will probably happen to get in my lifetime where I'm walking downstairs mindlessly and miss something and have to have that reaction and that strength and that stability to be able to regather myself real quick to prevent myself from getting

really hurt. And I would venture to say that a lot of the people in advanced age, that's normally where these types of injuries, it's always something stupid. At least for me, all my clients that had crazy injuries, it was never deadlifting or squatting. I didn't have a client that got hurt doing that. I had clients picking up a shampoo bottle in the shower, coming down the stairs one morning,

gardening in the backyard, doing some really basic ass shit, but they didn't have the strengths, stability or control. Well, dude, this is what I'm trying to say here is that everything you're saying at them used to be because you were older. That's all happening now to people in the 30s and 40s. This is now, so the injuries and pain that people have now is the result of inactivity.

They are losing their quality of life because, and that's longevity, by the way, sure, you're not gonna die from it at 30 because your neck and shoulder hurts because you're always at your computer in your week. But add 30 years to that and then- Did you see my motor function? Did you see my buddy's post, Isaac this morning?

No. It said enjoy your 20s and 30s because at 40 the check engine light comes on That's hilarious pretty good. That's hilarious. Well, how about how about just let's talk about mobility But from a from a a general standpoint You know, I was at the park not that long ago with my cousins. We're all around the same age and you know Everybody has little kids and we're throwing footballs and first-bebees, and the next day we're on a group text, and my cousin's like, oh man, he goes, I don't know what the hell I did,

like my shoulders really hurting. And he couldn't figure out what he did. And so I texted it, I texted and I said, we were throwing the frisbee yesterday, and he's like, holy shit dude. I heard my shoulder throwing a frisbee. That's a reduction in your quality of life, and that's what I mean through it. I heard my shoulder throwing a frisbee. Oh yeah. That's a reduction in your quality of life. And that's what I mean by longevity.

This reminds me too. It's interesting to me right now. There's seems to be a major division in the hardcore strength community and the hardcore mobility community. And it's funny because when I look at the people that are talking about strength and like kind of mocking the mobility community, it's always people under 35. Yeah. It's like show me somebody who's 50 in their 20s running testosterone. Yeah. I just don't need all that. No, I just got to

literally that hippie, hippie bullshit where you sit on the ground and you work on mobility. It will work itself out. Yeah, guy, you're fucking 30. Talk to me with the ground and you work on mobility work itself out. Yeah guy. You're fucking 30 talk to me You're 45 and you still fucking do it true true. What about mental clarity? I think that's something else that people take for granted. You know, it's funny They'll do studies on people and they're younger, you know 20s 30s 40s studies in children even and they'll show improvements in cognitive function children even, and they'll show improvements in cognitive function from improvements in health. So diet changes and exercise. So it's not like, oh, I'm preventing Alzheimer's.

Yeah, that's part of it, definitely. But you want to think better now, then think about doing things that improve longevity right now, and you'll actually find that you're sharper. That's a real easy one to measure. I mean, we've known this for a long time, people, most of your creative thinkers or your big CEOs, like they know like if you're at a row block

or you're stuck at something, the best thing that you possibly could do is to get up and go move and get- Go for a walk. Go for a walk. Stretch it. Right away, 100%. Right away.

So I mean, that's like something you could see that like implemented. I mean, it's not like, oh, if I keep exercising, it's gonna help my mental health, hopefully 40 years. No, you could fix that right now. That's one of my favorite benefits of the trigger sessions in MAPS and Obolic. I notice when I'm doing trigger sessions regularly,

which are the short, or eight minutes long, three times a day, is that because they're spaced out throughout the day, it's like a boost in cognitive performance each time. Oh yeah, you get sharper, yeah, the more frequently you're moving. And I know like Courtney even, in terms of like balancing out hormones and everything else, like she has hypothyroidism and knows that like,

like if she's working out consistently, like it helps to kind of level it out, she's like experienced a lot of brain fog and you know, would try to come up with like a witty comeback and just wasn't coming, you know, like when she was at work and like once she started really kind of focusing back in on training and getting all that movement back in, it was like a totally different thing. I'm so glad you brought up hormones because hormone changes as we get older is one of the reasons why we start to notice decreases in quality of life, but these changes are happening

very soon now. You know, if you look at, and this is widely well, this is actually well known and widely accepted in the medical community. They've been doing these studies now for, for I don't know, four or five decades. Men's testosterone levels have been declining. This one, that one blows me away.

Yeah. Because we've been doing this now for two decades. And I don't know if it's because of the space that we're in now in podcasting, and I openly talk about my own hormones and the things that I've gone through or what. But the first 10 years of my career, I don't think I ever had anyone under the age of 35 talk to me about having low testosterone, unless they did something. I took anabolic steroids for 10 years, but even that rare, rare for me to have that conversation, it is a consistent message that I get in DMs on a daily basis from kids 20 to 25 asking for my advice

on should they get on hormone therapy and it's like and they're only 24, 25 years old. It's extremely common. Well, there's that. Women are experiencing hormone imbalances, progesterone estrogen imbalances, quite a bit more and more women are on hormone therapybalances, progesterone estrogen imbalances, quite a bit more and more women are on hormone therapy, not because they're trying to not get pregnant, but because they need the hormone therapy to control symptoms of hormone imbalances. We had Dr. Jolene Brighton on the show,

and she told us all about that. We're also noticing bone density loss in people younger and younger, osteopenia. Now this is much more common in women, but you're starting to see now in age groups that we never saw bone loss in age groups that are in their 30s. Women in their 30s are now getting diagnosed with, oh, you need to start doing stuff to strengthen your bones because you're getting weaker. That was something you didn't see until women got much, much older.

Muscle mass loss, sarcopenia. I don't need to, I don't know if there's any studies that talk about the muscle loss that we're seeing in people, but there are studies that talk about strength differences. There was one study that compared the grip strength of college aged men today to the same test done in the 80s and they found that men in their, and college age now have the grip strength of men in their 60s back in the 80s and they found that men in their and college A's now have the grip strength of men in their 60s

back in the 80s. So that's getting that's getting much big. That's that's just as good as what was it the the grenade throwing statistics. Oh, and the arm remember in the army. Yeah, they they it was like alarming. They had to shorten the distance. Yeah, they were to throw. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, you look at those things and it's, it's, I mean, it's an example of our environment that we have now. And like, the ease that, I mean, we're so focused on trying to, to

solve what we think are problems. And what we think we can, we can, we can fix this process and make it easier for us. But is that really helping us as a human being in our, you know, what we need in terms of like our health? You and I had a great discussion yesterday and when we were at the sauna at club sport, and you know, it's so interesting to me, like how much I have to modify and change my training and diet due to our job today versus what my job was like 10 years ago.

Yeah, we're susceptible to it too. Yeah, no, and you have to be cognizant of that. Everybody has to be. But I feel like a lot of people are not. A lot of people are just enjoying all the new pleasures that we have and the ability to have food delivered to you wherever you're at or to try to. I'll just take the scooter to go down the road.

Right, and we don't really think about what the repercussions of that or the side effects of this new piece of technology or this new ability that we have, and it can even be out of positive. It's a very positive thing that we have the pleasure to be able to show a podcast and talk and educate other people.

Because I mean, they're on side effects. Right, I mean, it're on side effects. Right. I mean, it's a very positive thing. I think that's where you got to be careful. It's like, it's not always a negative thing that's going to give you a negative. Yeah. I'm not trying to turn back the clock and have everybody live. You're like, it was 1758.

Right. I, not at all. It's a bit a net positive, but there are potential side effects from the way we live. I mean, look at the loss of mobility. You have now back pain, for example. If you look at back pain and the ages of people who are going to the doctor for back pain, we almost never, almost never saw any kids or peak

in adolescence or people in their 20s complain of back pain that was not due to acute injury. Like if a kid fell down or you got in a car accident in your 20s, you would see that. But almost never did kids or people in their 20s go to the doctor and say, I have back pain, the doctor's like, why? I don't know. It just hurts. It just hurts when I sit. It hurts when I, you know, why I stand, I don't know why my back hurts. That is actually growing rapidly. 100%. That's of all the predictions that we've probably thrown out

on the show, it's the one that I'm gonna keep saying because it's gonna be, in my opinion, it's gonna be one of the number one things talked about in the health space. It's gonna be a big mark in this, yes. In the next decade, so have you been listening to my pump since early years, and you guys see this come out because it will happen, we're gonna freak out.

We just haven't seen, we have not seen the iPhone generation, and you guys see this come out because it will happen. We're gonna freak out. We just haven't seen the iPhone generation, the kids that were born with iPhones one, two, and three where it was totally acceptable to let a five year old, a seven year old, a nine year old have a phone, and then allowed them to be on it for six, eight, 10, 12 plus hours a day, every single day, to think that we are not gonna see a huge backlash

from that and speaking of posture and even like ADD, things like that, the inability for kids to focus, you're gonna see that it's coming. It is 100% come. It's the unconscious behaviors, like it's gonna sneak up. Like it's a. It is 100% conscious behaviors. It's going to sneak up. It's a matter of your creature of whatever patterns that you're doing every day. That's one of those things. It's

alarming because we can visibly see other people crunched forward with their shoulders and looking at their phone and sitting down a lot, but I don't even think they're really conscious of that. Right. And so this is why, and if you look at the common recommendations, the accepted recommendations of activity to combat all of this, if you go to your doctor or you read on the, you know, American Heart Association or any of these official websites in terms of what form of exercise, how active should I be?

Google that. What should my activity level look like every single day? What do they recommend? 30 minutes of vigorous cardio. Yeah, it's always cardio. It's literally, I can look it up, the number is 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity. That's the recommendation.

Now I think that's way better than nothing, 100%. Way better than nothing. But I think it's the wrong prescription for the problems of the modern life. I do not think it is the best prescription. In fact, I think this is one of the reasons why I think resistance training, the resistance training revolution is coming, is because if you examine everything that we're talked

about right now, everything that we talked about, your hormone, your testosterone levels going down or hormone imbalances, loss of bone density, loss of strength, loss of mobility, balance, everything cognitive function, virility we didn't even talk about that one. If we talk about all the issues that are the result of modern life, which is, you know, again, let's look at what modern life is. Very sedentary, naturally. It's naturally sedentary, made life easier for ourselves

for physically speaking, which is not a bad thing, that's a good thing. But again, we talked about that there's side effects. So we're just not moving. We also have access to lots of food, there's a food everywhere, and again, we talked about their side effects. So we're just not moving. We also have access to lots of food. There's a food everywhere and it tastes really, really good. So our metabasms are slower because they have less muscle. Our bones are weaker.

We're not moving as well. Our test, men's testosterone levels are going down because we're not telling our body we need testosterone. And one of the number one functions at testosterone is to build muscle in the body. So you look at modern life, is vigorous, moderate aerobic activity, 150 minutes a week, the best prescription. And let's stay within the timeframe, 150 minutes. Okay, so I'm not saying we need to do more,

although more will be better. Let's stay within the timeframe. If you only had 150 minutes a week to dedicate to exercise, is moderate aerobic activity the best exercise solution for modern problems? Hell no, not even for a few days. Three days of 50 minutes of strain training.

Well, crush it, well, crush it. Absolutely crush it. Not even close. Absolutely crush it. And the science 100% supports this. Let's start with testosterone, okay? No form of exercise has reliably shown a to raise low testosterone in men on a consistent basis.

No form of exercise has been able to show that except resistance training. This is widely understood. This is a fact. Now of course, if you just improve your health through cardio vascular activity or through yoga or through other forms of exercise, will testosterone go up? It probably will. I'm not going to lie, it probably will. Does it have the impact that resistance training has? Not even close. Resistance

training directly, not indirectly through improvements in health, but directly through the signal that you send through lifting weights, because what you're telling your body to do when you lift weights is build muscle, and your body needs testosterone to build muscle. So as part of the process of adapting to strength training,

it raises your testosterone levels. And it's actually the most consistent, easiest thing you could do of all the things you could do to raise testosterone in man. Cardio doesn't, moderate aerobic activity doesn't do that. When it comes to women balancing progesterone and estrogen, there's not that much science showing how what forms of exercise can benefit it

in which different ways. But I will say this when you talk to wellness practitioners, people who have been working with people for a long time, they also consider resistance training to be the best form of exercise because it is a pro tissue form of exercise. In other words, it's telling the body to build. It's also extremely modifiable in the sense that you, how I resistance train completely different than the way someone else resistance trains, whereas with cardiovascular activity, although you can modify intensity, if I'm

running and you're running, we're both running. If I'm cycling and you're cycling, we're both cycling. When it comes to resistance, there's a million and one different ways. It's much more of a fixed position. Yes. And you know, the resistance train provides so many different options and so many different ways to move in different spaces. And so like multi-directional, multi-planar type move, which is very important for, again, maintaining a certain ableness with your mobility. Totally. So to be able to throw a ball, to be able to turn in directions quickly.

These are all very important things just for real life. We're talking about hormones right now, but resistance training also allows you to directly combat chronic pain. If you have got chronic pain in your hips or in your neck because you have poor posture and you have in your week, you know, you can, and this is what this is what we did for most of our career. I mean, this are at least for me of the things that I spent most of my time doing. You think as a personal trainer, it's like always fat loss muscle building, but actually probably a majority of my career was spent assessing somebody's posture and the way they move and asking them questions like do you have any pain and almost everybody

that's above 35 has got some sort of chronic pain where they'd be that nagging knee from that old high school injury or that shoulder pain that they've constantly got or elbow pain or neck pain. And even though they wanna lose whatever pounds they came in for or build X amount of pounds of muscle, even more importantly to them, they want to feel better.

And a lot of times clients didn't know that they could fix that. They've just accepted that, oh, I gotta take my glucosamine and my pain killer and my muscle relaxer and- I gotta move slower. I mean, people think that that's part of the aging process. I'm gonna experience this kind of a pain. My body's gonna be sort of in this position fixed like this,

you know, pretty much indefinitely. And it's just gonna get worse and worse and worse. Instead of knowing that you do have the ability to combat this. Yes. And if you, if you, if you're, let's say you're run, let's say you do the, you follow the advice and you do 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity and let's say you choose cycling.

Okay, you're like, okay, I'm gonna do something, not low impact, I'm gonna cycle every single week. And you do that and you do it for two months, three months, four months and then you're like, gosh. My knee kind of hurts a little bit or my hip bothers me a little bit and you're still cycling, you're trying to stay consistent

and it hurts too much. I gotta kind of stop. I gotta go to the doctor. You a little bit. And you're still cycling, you're trying to stay consistent, and it hurts too much. I got to kind of stop. I got to go to the doctor. You go to the doctor, doctor looks at you, and you're like, okay, we don't see anything on the imaging. We're going to send you to physical therapists. You know what the physical therapist is going to do to help with your pain? Use resistance training.

Resisting training is the solution for chronic pain that is not the result of an acute injury. Chronic pain that comes from movement patterns that are poor, so in other words, you didn't hurt yourself, you didn't fall down or hurt yourself, and now you have to heal, you just hurt. Resistance training is a solution. Now, why is resistance training a superior solution

to pain than any other form of exercise? Because you can customize it. If you have shoulder pain, and I identify why your shoulder's not moving well, now I can do resistance training to fix your particular issue. Rowing can't do that because rowing has a particular technique. Swimming can do that because swimming has a particular technique. There's a form that you follow with moderate aerobic activity

or other forms of exercise. Resistance training, I can train, I can strengthen your body exactly in the way that it needs to be strengthened to prevent pain. And it is the best tool from an exercise standpoint to alleviate or prevent pain, because bringing you back to alignment. It's making, it's training you in balance.

And then Justin, you were talking about proprioceptive ability. Yeah. So when they do studies on exercise and they see cognitive benefit, there's two reasons why exercise improves cognitive function. One is you just become healthier and your brain is part of your body. So because you're healthier, your brain's going to work better, just like any other processor, you know, your computer processor or anything else.

If it's got good energy sources and it's healthier, it's going to perform better. But there's more to it than that. There's also skills and things that you strengthen with your brain that help you with your cognitive function. And the way you do that is by challenging your brain through movement. Now, if you're moving the same way all the time, and initially you'll get some challenges, but then your body becomes very good at, or your brain becomes very good at processing that movement. So if I run, and I walk, or I cycle, or I row, I'll learn that pattern, and my brain will learn it, and then it's going to stop in terms of how much more it's just, it's just going to want to keep being more and more efficient at it. Like every single time you go to attempt the same thing. But it's the

same neural, it's the same neural pathways, the same resistance training because of the variety and because of the fact that I can move in so many different ways, I mean, I can lift ways a million and one, you know, I can lift weights a million and one different ways. The cognitive boost that you get from resistance training from that standpoint, massive, superior. It's superior to the traditional recommendation of aerobic activity when it comes to just improving your cognitive function. What about, here's an easy one, bone density. You want to make your bones stronger?

Oh my gosh, there's no comparison. Just cardio strength and bones? Yeah. There's no comparison. Just cardio, strengthen bones, yeah. It will, a little bit, you know, running or cycling will on the bones that are being affected, but resistance training done properly is targeted and strengthens the entire body. And because the adaptation with resistance training

is strength, the adaptation you're gonna get for your bones is stronger, stronger, stronger. So you could take all the calcium in the world or all the vitamin D in the world, but if you don't have that signal, and I, again, because I trained lots of people in advance, I had one lady who came to me who had osteophenia, and she had some other strange conditions that were, or blood platelets were always real low, and she had, she was on all kinds of different medications to prevent her bone loss, and doctors couldn't figure out what was going on. And she came and started lifting with weights with me,

and once a year she'd go get this bone density test, her doctor freaked out. She went to the doctor, he tested, and he goes, this is the first time in 10 years, not only did you not lose bone density, but she reversed it. What the hell are you doing? She's like, I'm deadlifting, I'm squatting,

I'm overhead pressing. Doctor literally gets on the the phone with me and you have a phone call. He actually did a case study on her on how a resistance trick, because he could not get her to her bones to stop weakening. She walked every single day, she did all the moderate aerobic activity, she had an extremely healthy diet. She took her calcium. She took her supplements. They even had her on these very powerful. I can't remember the name of the drug that she would take, but she'd have to go and get this shot that would make her feel terrible for a couple days that she went every, I forgot

I think it was every quarter because it was like an autoimmune drug or whatever. Resistance training was the only thing that for her that caused that reversal. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm trying to remember, like Dr. Spina kind of talking about, like how, you know, force is the communication to the cell. So it's a way that you can actually like tell the cells

and provide the right information that we need, you know, to keep building. We need to keep fortifying this area. And bones are the same process you're gonna get with building muscle. It's gonna be affected because it is another tissue of the body that we're trying to build in fortify. Well, muscles anchor at bones and stronger muscles

pull harder on bones and those bones then adapt to get stronger to accommodate for the stronger muscle. So it's all part of the same adaptation process. Now if we look at all of the, if you go to modern societies, you look at all, you know, like America and Europe and in countries where people are living to their 70s and 80s, but you look at the number one causes of death, the number one causes of death can all be related to obesity.

They're all obesity-related deaths, right? We're just, people are just getting fatter and fatter, and it doesn't seem to be slowing now a little bit, but it definitely doesn't seem to be reversing. Obesity now, we're sitting at almost 50% of Americans are obese, but a majority are overweight. I don't remember what the distinction was between obese and overweight, but it was. Thought it was 60, 80.

So I thought it was 60% or considered obese and 80% are considered overweight. You might even be right. You might even be right. It's a chunk, it's a huge chunk. And the obesity-related diseases are diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease. I mean, most of the chronic ailments

that we're suffering from that kill us are related to obesity. Okay, let's talk about the recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity. Is that the best prescription for obesity? No, it's not. And here's why. 150 minutes of aerobics activity will burn the most calories per time being spent. So if you do 150 minutes a week of aerobic activity and compare it to yoga, if you compare it to lifting weights, if you compare it to other forms of

exercise, it definitely burns the most calories. But here's why it's not the best in terms of tackling obesity long-term. Which, by the way, I think it's important that you note, though, it's not even when we're just comparing that, it isn't that much of a difference. It's not a huge difference. If you were to compare somebody who, let's say, we just straight up,

you straight up ran or you straight up squatted, you know, for 150 minutes, The calories would be really close. It wouldn't be like crazy difference. Running doesn't burn that much. It's not double the calories that somebody who is squatting and bench pressing and overhead pressing is burning. It's not that significant. It's a little bit more.

Therefore, I think that's why this old science stood for this long. Oh, if we just looked at exercise head to head by itself, which one burns more calories? Yeah, cardio, running would burn more calories than strength training, but that's not the real magic is afterwards. Yes, and that's the point. The point isn't that you're burning the most calories while you're doing it, is which one is going to get my body

to burn more calories all the time on its own. Because we may be talking about 150 minutes of exercise per week, but how many minutes are there in the week total? There's a lot, I don't know, I'm not gonna do the math, but maybe Doug can do the math for me. There's a lot more minutes during the day than 150. So how can we get your body to burn more calories

all the time, all the time time not just while you're exercising But while you're sitting down at work while you're watching TV while you're asleep even While you're alive how many a thought what is that number there 10,000 80 minutes? Okay, so 150 minutes that's a tiny fraction of the total amount of time your life How can we get your body to burn more calories all the time? Well, we need to speed up your metabolism. That's what we need to do. We need to tell your metabolism to burn more calories

just to keep you alive and resistance training does that. Now does cardiovascular activity do that? It can at first, but over time, no. In fact, in many cases, over time, it may actually teach your body to become more efficient. Now, for people listening for the first time, no. In fact, in many cases, over time, it may actually teach your body to become more efficient. Now, for people listening for the first time, because I've talked about this so many times on podcasts, I'll give you a short explanation, so this kind of makes sense. If we look at the types of physical activity that humans evolved to be really, really good at,

we actually evolved to be really good at running and walking for long distances. This is what humans do really well compared to other animals. For most human history, we didn't have modern technology, we didn't have electricity, we didn't have food at the grocery stores. We had to go out and find the food and hunt and kill the food. And the way we did that is we would throw something at the animal, stab it, and then we would follow it until it was too tired to run, and then we would kill it. And most estimates, anthropologists will say that there's probably, it took us anywhere between 10 to 20 miles in a day.

So 10 to 20 miles a day to kill one animal. That's a lot of steps. So you're, so we got really, really good at that. Okay, so we're good at that. Does that mean that's the way we should exercise all the time? Not so fast. Remember, we live modern life now. First of all, we don't have the time to do that every day all day long.

Just doesn't, 15 days, miles a day, you're not going to have much time to do anything else. But also, our bodies learn to be like hybrid low gas burning engines. Our bodies became efficient machines because calories were hard to come by and we had to burn a lot of them to get to kill this or achieve consuming these calories. So we became very efficient. So what ends up happening by doing lots and lots of lots of cardio is you teach your body to become very efficient, which is great if we're living 5,000 years ago, terrible if you live today where food is everywhere

and you're just not moving that much. You want a faster metabolism. Now a faster metabolism 10,000 years ago is probably a terrible thing. If you're the guy or girl that's burning 5,000 calories, you're gonna waste the weight. Yeah, if you need 5,000 calories to be alive about that 5,000 years ago,

unless you're killing a buffalo every day for your village, your screwed. But Yeah. Unless you're killing a buffalo every day for your village, your screwed. But today, if you're a person who has a super thrifty metabolism, let's say you're somebody whose metabolism is running off of a thousand calories a day, whoo, that's tough. That means you eat anything over a thousand calories, you're going to become obese and then you're going to have all these problems. You want a faster metabolism. Resistance training does that because it tells its protissue.

It tells the body to build muscle. This extra muscle burns more calories. It also tells the hormones to be in a position to build more muscle. The hormones that are in the position to do that also tell the body to burn more calories. I have done this firsthand with clients. We're all take a client,

and I'll get a female clients metabolism to increase by five to 800 calories within a year of resistance training. Doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a lot. You know, it's cardio you have to do to burn five to eight hundred calories hours, a couple hours a day. How would you like to burn as many calories as it took to do an hour and a half to two hours of cardio every single day, but doing nothing. You're not, you know, you're not doing anything. That's why resistance training,

it's way more bang for your buck. It's an investment that gives you more. And in the context of modern life, it's superior, it's just superior. And of course, in terms of longevity, now you burn more calories, therefore you're not as easily obese. Now you don't get those obesity-related diseases.

You also, you're also stronger. You move better. Hormones are more balanced. You have better mobility, better cognition, because of all the movement patterns that you gain through resistance training. During a time where you're just going to be sedative during most of the time.

So again, if you have 150 minutes to dedicate to exercise, resistance training is totally superior. Now, I know there's, I'm sure there's probably people listening right now who are like, wait a minute, what about the heart? What about heart health? I thought cardio was the best for heart health. Studies have just come out and they've compared resistance training to cardiovascular training. Guess what they found. Yeah. Resistance training is better for the, to burn the visceral body fat, the serons, the organs, including the types of fats that can be found around the heart.

So resist, and this was, these were long-term studies. So again, resistance training, superior in those terms, right there. Yeah, you haven't heard that in a long time. I mean, it was always just hammered that cardiovascular training was what the best option you had for training your heart and making sure your cardiovascular system was healthy and vibrant.

And, you know, we didn't have that kind of study back to back resistance training. I would have loved that, you know, to throw that to my clients. Yeah. I think the case is funny that we're making right now with resistance training because I feel like we've got this stigma about us that we were anti cardio. No, no. And I don't I'm not by the way we're not making the case don't do cardio. Right. And I just think that the and I think that's this is it's good that we're doing this episode

because I feel like it's it's important that we're very clear about this that you know, in a perfect world, my my clients, you know, stretching and doing yoga, they're eating well, they're strength training, they're doing some cardiovascular training in a perfect world. But the reality of it is, I spent most of my career trying to convince people to be consistent with just three days a week of exercise. And if I had only 150 minutes a week, and I had to choose the best thing that you could possibly do for yourself for longevity, what would that single thing be? It's strength training.

100%. That's why we reduced it down to that. That's the top again hand. Right. Because it's it is it has the most carryover in terms of you know, longevity and like maintaining carryover in terms of longevity and maintaining abilities and maintaining your health and vibrancy. It is what we wanna highlight the most. And all other physical pursuits. Yes. Mobility, strength, build muscle, burn fat, all those sets.

That's a clarity. All of them. It has the single most carryover to all pursuits. And therefore, if you are only committing to three days a week of some form of exercise, you bet your ass, it should be strength training. Right, and again, you have to look at context. Okay, what's the best for longevity while living in the modern world, which is sedative,

so you're just not gonna move a lot, okay? Which is a good thing, but again, it's just a reality. Your job, if you're listening right now, the odds are that your job involves very little, strenuous physical activity. Unless you're in construction, and you're a blue collar worker, you're probably not moving that much every single day.

So, that's number one, number two. When was the last time you had to chase down your food? When was the last time you had to struggle to get any food? When was the last time you didn't just have a craving and you could have it delivered to you or you could have it within 30 minutes or less? So we live in a time where every flavor that you can imagine, every texture, every type of food

that you can imagine is available to you. I was just imagining like a pizza company, having a delivery guy, you had to chase, you know, to go get your food or the 30 minute or less guarantee. Yeah, zero calorie pizza. Come on man, you had to go tackle them together. Zero calorie pizza. We'll make sure you chase us long enough to burn the calories and eat the calories. The pizza.

No, but that's the world that we live in today. We also live in a war, by the way, the fact that we're sedative, it doesn't mean that we're not busy. I think that our days are more packed and busy today than they have been in a long time. We have crazy schedules. If you're a parent, you know, it's a funny thing

as a father of two children. Our involvement as parents today, far exceeds parent involvement, you know, 20 years or 30 years ago. I mean, we're scheduling play dates and sports and activities and when I was a kid, it was like, you had one activity and then that was it, parents are like, all right, go outside, come back when it's dinner time. Now it was like you had one activity and then that was it parents are like all right Lots I've come back when it's their time right now. It's like you're running so you're just busy

You're you're sedentary, but you're busy as hell so you don't have a lot of time to Dedicate to exercise for I mean you really don't I mean yes You can prioritize I get that whole deal, but let's be honest and real like you said Adam our job as trainers was all right You know I can and I used to do this when I was a trainer early on. I'd get clients and I'd do the whole like, prioritize your time, make time for exercise. You need to do whatever, never worked. What actually worked was okay fine.

You don't have a lot of time. Let's figure out how to maximize the one or two things. Yes, let's maximize the time. Yeah, then build on that. Exactly. So people don't have a whole lot of time. So we want the most bang for the buck. Resistance training is the modern solution

for modern problems. And when it comes to longevity, nothing is gonna be better than it. There isn't anything that's superior to it. Now of course, again, doing everything is best. I think if you had a decent amount of time, I think you should incorporate lots of different ways of exercise. I think you'll get, if you lifted weights and did cardio and did stretching, you'd be

way better off than if you just lifted weights. But again, if you just have to pick one, don't make it the 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity. Go to the gym, squat, row, deadlift, overhead press, bench press, rotate, curl, press down. Those are the exercises you want to do. That will give you the biggest bang for your buck for the best longevity. And something that we did, this was a couple of years ago we did this. I think we did it for new years actually, a couple of years back.

I've Jackie put this in the show notes, but we put together a month of just very basic strength training and mobility exercises on the YouTube channel that it's a great place to start. So if you're somebody who's listening to this episode and wondering, okay, you sold me, I'm going to stop doing my running, I'm going to switch it out for learning strength training, where do I start? We created something specifically free. It's totally free for you.

It's on our YouTube channel. Jack, you'll put the link in the notes for you, but this is a great place for you to start if you're listening to this message for the first time or you have a friend or a family member that you've been trying to convince to get into strength training. We've created something very easy and basic for them to start with, and I would urge you to share that. Excellent. And with that, go to MindPumpFree.com, check out all of our free guides that can help you with all of your physical fitness pursuits, and we have some nutrition ones on there as

well. And also, if you want to ask us any questions or you want to follow each of us individually, you can find us all on Instagram. Justin can be found at MindPump Justin. You can find Adam at Mind Pump Adam and then you can find me Mind Pump South. 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 Superbundle at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, The RGB Superbundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle 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!