Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1582: 15 Surprising Reasons You Don’t Feel Well
Episode Date: June 24, 2021In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover 15 reasons why you may not feel well and what to do about it. 15 Surprising Reasons You Don’t Feel Well. (1:38) #1 – Not drinking enough water. (2:33) #2 ...– Following the wrong diet for your body. (5:47) #3 – Not consuming enough sodium. (9:27) #4 – You may be having too much caffeine. (12:25) #5 – You might be taking too many supplements. (19:35) #6 – You are working out too much. (23:41) #7 – You are not changing your workouts. (27:12) #8 – Your sleep quality sucks! (30:58) #9 – You may be indoors too much. (36:46) #10 – Wasting time on social media. (40:48) #11 – You may be surrounding yourself with bad people. (43:56) #12 – Having no purpose. (47:57) #13 – You do not take any responsibility. (50:43) #14 – Maybe you are lacking focus. (54:56) #15 – You need to lighten up a little. (57:18) Related Links/Products Mentioned June Promotion: MAPS Prime, Prime Pro, and the Prime Bundle 50% off! **Promo code “JUNEPRIME” at checkout** Visit Paleo Valley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “Mindpump15” at checkout for 15% discount** Visit Drink LMNT for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! The Breakdown Recovery Trap, Why You Aren’t Progressing – Mind Pump Blog How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts – Mind Pump Blog Why You Need to Mix Rep Ranges After Periods of Training – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1345: 6 Ways To Optimize Sleep For Faster Muscle Gain And Fat Loss Visit ChiliPad for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! The health benefits of strong relationships Mind Pump #1415: 7 Ways To Find Purpose Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? The Alchemist The Accountability Ladder - Talent Strategy Group Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks) Instagram
Transcript
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If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.
Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts.
Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.
You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast.
This is Mind Pup Right in today's episode.
We talk about the 15 surprising reasons that you might not be feeling well.
So these are things that you might not be considering
that can definitely negatively impact your well-being.
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code June Prime with no space for the discount. So, I wanted to do a podcast on things that, or
reasons why people tend to not feel well that are not obvious, you know, things that, or reasons why people tend to not feel well
that are not obvious, you know,
things that we identify and clients often
where people are like,
I'm not just not feeling good.
And you do the usual checklist of things
and everything looks okay.
And then it ends up turning out to be something
that's not, that's surprising, you know,
that's not conventional.
So I wanna talk about some of the things that we've noticed
that have caused people, or even ourselves,
to not feel so good, that are just not typically not so obvious.
And once we say them, I think they're obvious sometimes,
but we don't often go to them.
Oh, no, they sound obvious.
Actually, what I think kicked this conversation off,
I really like this was fun to sit down and kind of all three of us
rack our brains of, you know, trying to recall the clients that we had in like the AHA moments.
And the very first one that we'll talk about of the 15 is the one that I mentioned recently
on the podcast that I actually heard Justin was giving this tip.
So I had already been a manager.
So I was leading trainers five years in or so.
And I have Justin and he'd already been working with me for a while. been a manager, so I was leading trainers five years in or so.
And I have Justin, and he'd already been working with me for a while, and I overheard him talking to this client
about, because she was complaining of fatigue
and not feeling well or what that.
And he was talking about water.
And up into that point, that wasn't on my list.
It wasn't on my top, check asking them questions
and I thought, because you just think it is so basic
and simple that, oh, everyone knows.
Everybody's already drinking water.
Yeah, everyone knows that you're supposed to drink water,
so I just didn't think to ask that.
And when I saw him do that, and then I began to kind of
apply that with my clients going forward,
I found that more often than not
that actually solved a lot of problems for clients.
It's kind of funny because that was one of those things that seemed super obvious, but
unless you're intentionally constructing your day and making sure that you're seeking
out water, a lot of times you fall behind and then that carries over into the day after
that. And for me, it was really, you know, eye opening because I had, I don't know if I'll
clamped you guys.
You need some water.
Yes, you need some water.
I had headaches a lot and this was something that I didn't ever attribute that to drinking
water and being dehydrated and also was experiencing fatigue and started to really be intentional
about drinking water and it made a massive difference.
And then also, as I was conveying this over to my clients,
finding out that this was a rare thing.
Like, more than not, they were eating,
they were drinking a very low volume of water
and it was also affecting things like joint pain
and all kinds of other things.
That's a big one.
I noticed with my clients with pain and inflammation,
they would come to me and be like,
oh, this is stiff, I feel tight.
And we would do correctional exercise.
We do all the tools that I had in my tool belt to help them.
And it would help, but sometimes it would kind of linger.
And I remember hearing this from another trainer
that worked with me in my studio
was to drink more water.
And so I said, you know, why don't you try drinking, you know, half a gallon of water a day
or a gallon of water a day depending on the size of the person.
And they would do it and they'd come back and be like, my joint pain's gone.
Yeah.
And I couldn't believe that water would do that.
Now, for me, I pieced this together for something that is I didn't even consider, which was
the pump.
Oh.
I had no idea that the, and now obviously this is a huge part of the process. This is obvious now because you think about the pump and it's fluid in the pump. I had no idea that, and now obviously,
this is a huge part of the process.
This is obvious now because you think about the pump
and it's fluid in the muscle,
but if I drink,
if I don't drink enough water,
can I work out first thing in the morning?
If I don't wake up and have a couple glasses of water,
my pump is severely reduced.
If I wake up,
have a couple glasses of water before I work out,
makes a huge difference.
So now I like to tell people to try to aim for
about a half a gallon till gallon of water dates.
It's a nice, rough estimate.
And it makes a huge difference.
Suppress us, people's appetite, that's another big one
that I noticed.
People would have less cravings as a result,
less headaches, less inflammation.
And then the other one is more energy,
which is strange, because you don't think water
gives you energy, but not having enough water
saps you of energy.
The next one, this one's another big one, and this reminds me actually of DMs that I get
quite often from people.
So, I'll give you an example of a DM, right?
Someone will send me a message and they'll say, you know, Sal, I've been following this
ketogenic diet, and I've been doing it now for three months, but I still suffer from constipation
and I'm not feeling so good.
How long do I need to stick to it before I feel good?
I'm sorry, kids.
Yeah, or what's that you?
Yeah, it's not working for, right?
Yeah, and this is basically people following
the wrong diet for their body.
There's a pretty wide individual variance
with how people feel eating particular ways.
I've had clients who thrive on a diet
that's much higher in carbohydrate,
lower in protein, and I've had clients
to do much better on a higher protein, higher fat diet.
I've had clients where eating plant-based
made them feel the best.
I've had clients on the other than the spectrum
where they mostly meet and they feel best.
This one really has to do with listening to your body.
And sometimes we stick to a diet because we read about it
and we see the studies and we see the articles
and we say, this is what I'm supposed to do.
But we ignore the fact that maybe that diet
is just not working for our body.
I actually think this is more common than not.
And a lot of times it's because everybody has that friend
who follow the adkins or follow the ketogenic diet
or follow the zone diet or followed the ketogenic diet
or followed the zone diet or does intermittent fat.
They do something and they go, oh my God,
like, sushi transformed right in front of your eyes.
Right, they transform, they look amazing and like,
you're sold.
That's it, I don't need to read no studies.
I know my friend Suzy, she did this in a changed her life.
I've known Suzy, she's been fat her whole life.
Now she looks amazing, so I'm sold.
And then they do it and they stick to it just because
it had success for Susie.
And they come to me and they're just trying to figure out
why is this not working for me?
And they're trying to force it and you're trying to force a,
you know, square peg and a round hole.
It's like your body's trying to tell you, it's not for you.
And so I think this happens more often than you would,
you would think because people hear about something
or see something work for somebody else,
assume that it must be great for them too.
Yeah, now in our space, we see this often
with people who eat a lot of protein,
because we're told a high protein diet is good for satiety,
it's good for muscle building and recovery,
which is true, but there's definitely cases
where it affects someone's digestion wrong
or in a way that's negative or it makes them feel sluggish,
but yet they doggedly stick to it because that's what the
article says.
That's what literature says.
The literature says I need to eat a lot of protein.
And it's like, no man, you might not be feeling good,
even though you're eating, you know, quote unquote,
healthy foods and you're following the diet to a T, it might not be the good, even though you're eating quote unquote healthy foods and you're following the diet
to a T, it might not be the right diet for you.
Well, another aspect to consider with this, something that Doug
actually brought up was food intolerances.
And so, you know, so that's something, too, that makes a
massive impact on individual variances based off of, if this
diet that you're following and you have foods included in there that may
actually be causing you inflammation or you have some kind of reaction to it without going
through an elimination process and figuring that out, that could be a component there as well.
I had a lady who suffered from psoriasis and we were trying to isolate what could possibly be contributing to this.
And it turned out to be bananas.
Bananas were triggering autoimmune issue or response
and she would get psoriasis.
And her response to me was,
but I eat bananas every morning.
I've been eating bananas for years.
I'm like, how long have you had psoriasis for?
You know, it's not working for your body.
So you got to pay attention to these things
and listen to your body.
All right, this next one is a bit controversial.
And I love talking about this because we've been pushed so hard in one direction, not realizing
that in many cases, especially with athletes or especially with people that eat a whole
food-based diet, people that work out a lot.
Oftentimes, they don't feel good
or don't have a lot of energy
because they're not eating enough sodium.
This is a big one.
Now, if your diet's very high in heavily processed foods,
you're probably fine.
Heavily processed foods are super, super high in sodium.
But whole natural foods, even if you salt them,
even if you add salt to your steak and your baked potato and your rice
and all your whole natural foods,
even if you add salt oftentimes it's too low
for someone who's active,
for someone who has a lot of muscle or someone who sweats a lot.
Adding sodium can dramatically improve your energy,
improve your pump, improve your sense of well-being.
I think this is even more common with our audience,
because a lot of people that are listening
to this podcast are obviously health conscious,
they are working out, they're trying to better themselves.
And many times they're coming from the opposite side
of not eating very well, not exercising,
not doing those things.
And also when you make this switch,
I'm going to increase activity and exercise,
and I'm also going to cut out all the fast food and garbage.
So you take somebody who's used to eating thousands,
tens of thousands of milligrams of sodium
to all of a sudden reducing that dramatically
because just by simply cutting out fast food
and switching over to better choices that are whole foods,
you cut your sodium like more than in half, like
it becomes like a tenth of what your body was used to vent taking.
And then in addition to that, you introduce exercise, which is also the body's going to
want more sodium for that.
So I actually think our audience benefits from things like this more than the average person
even.
Yeah.
When we were first introduced to, this is just a product now that we work with.
When we were introduced to element, I thought I saw an electrolyte powder, big deal.
Like there's so many of them.
It's not that big of a deal.
Then, you know, Monica, just like two months later, I took a closer look and I said,
oh shit, they put a thousand milligrams per serving in this.
They're actually doing it the right way because most electrolyte powders, remember, they're
targeting athletes, they're targeting people who eat either low carb diet.
By the way, when you eat low carb diet, you need morsodium.
Low carb diets, your body loses lots of water, you need morsodium.
You actually lose lots of sodium with a low carb diet or if you do a whole natural food
diet, again like we said earlier, your sodium is very low.
Now, I remember when we all tried it, the pumps improved, the energy improved,
because it had a decent amount of sodium along with, of course, the potassium in magnesium.
So if you're that person who's active and fit and you eat whole natural foods and you're
still like, ah, man, my energy's not super good. Like, what's going on? Try increasing your
sodium. You might just trip yourself out at how big of an impact it has.
All right. This next one, this one's near and dear,
I think, especially to you guys,
and I'd say probably just an even more so.
Yes it is.
You might be having too much caffeine.
You know, caffeine is an incredible chemical.
It's, of course, it's naturally occurring.
It's one of the most effective,
if not the most effective.
It's a godsend.
Yeah, athletic performance enhancing compound.
It reduces risk of dementia.
It can improve health of the brain.
It can improve mental function.
It's beautiful.
It's wonderful.
We've been consuming it for thousands of years.
However, it comes along with side effects,
which include fatigue.
By the way, caffeine can produce fatigue at two higher levels. You'll actually
find that you'll crash hard and be more tired than you were before. It contributes to anxiety,
heart palpitations, hormone imbalances. I find this often with women where their cortisol
is very high and estrogen and progesterone levels are off balance. And that's because
with caffeine, there's a sweet spot. And taking more caffeine
just results in more of the negative side effects and very little or none of those positive
effects. So you just may maybe take, especially if you have coffee and a pre workout, like
a lot of people do this, they have coffee every morning, then they throw a pre workout
before they're workout, they never take a day off off and they're not realizing the caffeine that they're taking
in is just too much.
It's just,
a lot of times it's the glue that's like barely
holding everything together too.
A lot of uses, and myself included,
have used caffeine to really just keep me going,
keep me productive throughout the day,
and really mask over a lot of the symptoms,
like my body's trying to tell me,
like in terms of not getting enough quality sleep, being not drinking enough water, a lot of these other things that I
should be doing, I tend to then overcompensate with caffeine because now I can get this sort
of false energy at least for an extended amount of time, but then that inevitably adds up
to up in your dose and then this causes, you know,
interrupts your sleep later on in the day and all kinds of things, you know, spirals out from there.
So I actually don't think this was that big of a deal when we first started as trainers.
I've seen this increase dramatically in the last decade. Yes.
The first 10 years or even first five years for sure
that we were trained, I mean, that Starbucks was like still
on that wasn't even on the scene yet.
So when Starbucks hit the scene.
Only people that drink coffee were like old people.
Yes, hardcore truckers.
Journalists, like teachers.
You didn't see fitness people drinking coffee
after that.
It became something that became normalized
after the introduction of Starbucks.
And then after that, you started to see, because up to that point, too, it was an old person
thing.
It was like, I didn't taste very good.
Not very many people I knew drank it.
Then it became like this ritual that everybody stopped and had their Starbucks coffee.
Then came all the positive studies that would start to come out because before that, too,
it was like, oh, it's just like any other drug.
You get addicted to.
It's not ideal for everybody.
And so we didn't really normalize it yet.
Then Starbucks everybody's doing it.
And then we found to connect, make all these great connections to help beneficial caffeine is.
And now we've swung the complete opposite direction where you see kids in Starbucks.
Now you see the, they've, they've made drinks now that attract these little kids.
Yeah, milkshakes with it.
So it has become very normal for people to,
and then you see the pre workout market also come out
of nowhere during.
That didn't exist.
That didn't exist either during our time.
So the beginning of our career, this was not a conversation
at all.
No.
Midway I start to realize, wow, how much this is growing,
it's not until not that long ago, do I start to piece together?
Oh, wow, this is starting to become a problem,
because it's becoming so normalized.
Everybody is drinking multiple cups a day
and then now this pre-workout market is exploding
and now the race on the pre-workout market
is to stay ahead of everybody's addiction.
So the original 150 to 200 milligram.
That was the original dose.
100 milligrams.
Yeah, 150 to 200 was like a big deal originally
and that became not a big deal anymore
and then it became 250, then 300,
then you see some of these pushing 4, 450 milligrams
of caffeine in a pre-workout on top
of them probably having a cup of coffee.
Yeah, and it's immense the idea that you need
that before every workout, which is not true.
And in a lot of times, I've noticed some people
like they won't even work out unless they have
the pre-workout ahead of time, which is a problem problem because then that dependency is really something that you have to work.
The biggest negative effect that I see from it is how much it disrupts people's sleep
when they don't even realize it disrupts their sleep.
Because you don't think sometimes when you have this pre-workout at two or three o'clock
in the afternoon before you go get your workout in, that how's that, how's that have anything to do with me
at night at nine, 30 or 10 o'clock in bed, tossing and turning
and you don't connect the two,
unless you've paid attention long enough
and you tease it out to measure it, which I have done,
and it blows my mind what a difference it makes
when I have either limited or no caffeine
on how much better sleep I get.
But do you know that studies show
that almost always caffeine effect sleep?
Almost always.
Even if you have it in the morning,
now there's a degree, there's of course degrees
to how much it affects your sleep.
But in fact, if you go to a sleep expert
and you have issues with sleep,
the first thing you'll do is have you reduce
or eliminate your caffeine.
You know, you didn't even cover the energy drink market.
I remember, okay, I don't know if you guys remember this.
When we were kids, there was one drink that advertised itself as having a lot of caffeine,
Jolkola.
Remember that?
You know how much caffeine, Jolkola has?
Like 50.
It was like 60 or 70, you know.
It was in a can.
It's called cup of coffee.
Yeah, and you drink it and be like, oh my God, it's so energized.
You know, then Red Bull comes out
and now you've got rock stars
and all these other drinks that are just packed full of caffeine.
There's also this huge individual variance
when it comes to caffeine tolerance.
You know, I know if you read the studies,
they say, up to 300 milligrams a day
or three cups a day is perfectly fine.
That's so bullshit.
It's not true for a lot of people.
For some people, it's true.
For other people, anything over 100 milligrams
causes more negative than positive effects.
You have to figure this out kind of for yourself.
I have in comparison to my co-hosts at low tolerance,
but I know people who haven't even lower tolerance.
In fact, I was working out with a friend of mine
the other day and he said, if he just has a green tea,
which is like 50 milligrams or less, he feels negative.
He totally stays away from caffeine completely.
So he's on the other end of the spectrum, but you need to notice for yourself, caffeine
in high doses because it causes a stress response in the body.
It makes you hyped.
Can really negatively affect your hormones as well.
So keep this in mind.
If you have hormone issues, you can't figure out what's going on. It just might be the excess.
And it's a vicious cycle because you start to do it. It throws off the sleep. You're
miserable the next day. You need more, you need more just to get you up again. And it's
like, you can't imagine going a few days without it. And so, yeah, this has been one of those
things that early on in my career, I never thought to ask it where now it becomes one
of the first 15 things that I was, I'm going to ask it where now it becomes one of the first
15 things that I'm going through the list of, have we done your water? Have we checked
your caffeine? Have you tried to go a week without caffeine and pay attention to your sleep?
Totally. Now, this next one I feel like is targeting me a little bit, but it's true.
And this is that you might just be... That was it, me hard last one.
You might just be taking too many supplements. There's a couple reasons why this is a problem.
One, you don't know what's doing what.
If you're taking four different supplements or five different supplements, you don't know
which one is making you feel good, which one is making you not feel good, which one is
causing gut issues, or none of that stuff.
You have no idea because there's just so many products and supplements that you're taking.
By the way,
some supplements that are supposed to make people feel great
actually can make other people feel really bad.
I'll give you guys an example, right?
If you look up the studies on Rodeola,
Rodeola is a supplement that's an herb or plant.
It's been around forever,
it's been used for hundreds of years.
It's a tonic,
it strengthens your immune system.
It's an adaptive genic, meaning it allows your body
to adapt to stress better.
It improves athletic performance and energy
and alertness.
All the studies show this, okay.
All the studies show this.
It's very, very, it's pretty conclusive.
It does all these wonderful things.
It makes me feel like shit.
If I take Rodeola and I take anything other than the smallest dose of all time, like if
I take a normal dose of your Rhodiola, I literally feel bogged down and feverish. I don't
feel good. Now, if I'm taking five different supplements or ten different supplements, or
I'm taking one supplement with ten different ingredients, one of them is Rhodiola, like
I don't know if it's the Rhodiola or is it the cordioseps in there?
What the hell is going on that's making me feel real terrible?
You just might be taking too many supplements.
Yeah, no, I knew and I had the same way when it comes to that.
I didn't piece this together until I started to notice
I had clients that were like you and like myself.
I think we're all a little bit this.
I definitely as a kid,
tried every supplement under the sun.
And a lot of people are searching for that.
Even if they don't realize they are subconsciously, they're always asking, what's the best pill for this
or what's the best for that? Or I heard about this or what do you know about that supplement because
they've been marketed to or a friend told them about it. And then when you find out what they're
taking, they've got seven different pills that they're taking to try and help them burn fat
build muscle, sleep better, wake up better, like all these things. And sometimes a lot of them are conflicting with each other.
So you're taking one upper with a downer
and you're doing all these things
that you're in pursuit of this better physique
or more energy and what you don't realize is it's just,
they're counteracting with each other
or just a combinational of them is upsetting you.
And so that becomes a now on my list.
Well, I think in general too,
because it's in the health category a lot of times
You're going to the store and
these are all
Vitamins and
Supplements you need to assume like more is always better
Obviously if I'm obviously if I'm not getting it in my food
It's gonna benefit me and it's a lot of times. Yeah get into that sort of mode of, I need vitamin C, I need vitamin D, I need fish,
I need this, I need that.
And not really even associating a lot of those things
with what your current diet is providing.
That's a really good point too.
This was something I found out later on was,
especially if you do a lot of like shakes and bars
and things that have.
They're all fortified.
That's right, they're all fortified.
And many of them will give you the total RDA
of like one nutrient that you need for the entire day.
And so did the other thing, and then so did the other thing.
So you got three things that are giving you
your complete RDA for the day, and you're overdoing it.
And there's a lot of things that are not better
than more you do.
No, fat soluble vitamins, like okay, so vitamin D deficiency is quite common. But if you're somebody that it and there's a lot of things that are not better than more. No, fat soluble vitamins.
Okay, so vitamin D deficiency is quite common.
But if you're somebody that's got high levels of vitamin D at the upper limit and you supplement
with vitamin D, you can cause yourself some big problems because you're taking a supplement
that your body specifically doesn't need.
You brought up an excellent point, Adam.
Look at your pre-workout, look at your protein shakes, look at all your products, and see how many of them contain the same stuff.
Not realizing that you're overdoing a few key nutrients that could be building up your
body.
There's fat soluble vitamins and minerals, they get stored in the body.
So you got to be very, very careful with that kind of stuff.
Here's another one.
This one's very common, especially in the fitness space, which is you're working out too much. In fact, we just answered a live question the other day
on our live Q&A episode. And this young lady is talking about all her exercise and workouts,
and she wants to know why she can't push her body to get to the next level. And it became
very obvious to me that she was overdoing it. You know, there's a big difference between
how much workload your body can tolerate
and how much workload is ideal to get your body to adapt and feel good and get stronger.
There's a very big difference. They're not the same. Like, there's a certain amount of
volume, sets, and reps that'll optimize my performance, will build muscle, will make
me feel good. And then there's an amount that's much higher than that that is pushing the
limit in terms of how much I can tolerate. But by because I pushed it
to that point where I can barely tolerate it, I've slowed down my progress, I'm tapping
into too much energy, and my body is always kind of tiptoeing that line between overtraining
and the right amount, which means you don't feel good. You don't feel very good when you're
constantly pushing how much exercise you can tolerate versus
what's optimal for adaptation.
Well, I think, so this has made it number six on our list
and they're not necessarily in any particular order
because I would actually rank this up even higher
because I found, and this is true with myself.
I mean, and this is where the whole saying of,
my goal is to do as little as possible
to elicit the most amount of change and that's a mantra that I continually tell myself.
Because you have to.
Yeah.
Because we tend to overreach.
And that's talking for sure to the fitness fanatic.
But even the person who is not a fitness fanatic, but is just motivated to get started on their
journey.
They're fired up.
They're tired.
That's right.
I want to do as much as I can because you assume that the more you do, the more results
you get, and it doesn't work that way.
So I actually think this is one of the top reasons why someone's not progressing or not
feeling well is they are just hammering their body.
They're giving it too much at once.
Many times they're doing that also in a coloric deficit.
So they're on a diet.
So they're restricting their body of some of these things
we're talking about water, sodium, calories. And then on top of that, you're also pushing it way more
than you need to. And then wondering why I'm not getting the results. Yeah, a lot of times it's the last
thing people even consider because what's promoted so much in general in the general population in the public view
is that you need to be exercising more
and you're never doing enough.
And so for somebody that has been actively motivated
and pushing their body to its limits,
it has to be good for me.
And so that wouldn't have been even something
that they would have thought.
If I reduce this, it's gonna make my body feel better
and I'm actually gonna progress more
towards the direction that I want.
Yeah, the dose has to be perfect for your body,
and that considers your lifestyle, your sleep,
your goals, your fitness level.
The right dose will get you there faster.
More than that will get you there slower.
A lot more than that will get you to go backwards.
Always remember that.
I can't tell you how many times I had clients hire me,
and I got their bodies to progress rapidly
by cutting their volume down by a third.
Like that's all I would do.
I'd look at their work and be like,
here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna do a third less work
and they would always argue with me.
And I'd say, look, here's a deal.
You're paying me and you'd trust me.
Let's do this for a few weeks.
I promise you, if you trust me this one time,
I'll never have to ask for your trust again
as one of my favorite lines.
And they would listen, I'm like, okay,
oh my God, I'm getting stronger.
What's going on?
I'm doing less work.
You were doing too much before.
It was too much.
Your body couldn't adapt.
It was only worried about healing.
All right, here's another one.
That's a big one.
This one you see, I used to see in gyms all the time.
Remember, we managed big box gyms for years.
That's how we all kind of started our career.
And when you're in a gym and you're running it, you're there a lot, right?
So especially as a general manager,
I would be there from 9 AM, typically till 9 PM.
And you start to see the same people.
There's certain percentage of your members
that are real consistent.
And you see them come in and you see them work out.
And then after a while I'd notice,
these people do the exact same thing
every single time they came in.
I mean, there's one guy, remember,
who come in literally always exactly the same thing. And not only the exact same thing every single time they came in. I mean, there's one guy, remember, he would come in literally always exactly the same thing
and not only the exact same thing,
the exact same piece of equipment.
So I'd have a row of stairmasters.
Nope, you would get on the third stairmaster,
15 minutes, the same favorite one.
They need to go over to this chest press machine.
They need to do this row machine.
And it was always the same way.
It was used the same way.
And I would watch this guy do this all the time.
And I remember talking to him,
and we got in this conversation,
like, hey man, you're real consistent.
I see you coming in, every day at 3 p.m.
doing your workout.
Do you have any questions or anything?
He's like, well, you know, it's really fun,
but my body's plateau.
Like I don't, but just stopped responding.
Like, well, I watch you workout.
You know you do the exact same thing every single time you come in.
Well, yeah, I got a good routine.
Well, yeah, but your body got used to it.
Let's change it up and watch what happens.
And of course, he did and he got results.
This is actually quite common with people where they do the same stuff all the time.
Maybe not the same like the guy I just talked about, but they do the same rep ranges.
Or they always do the same exercises or the same kind of body parts split, or they're always body building, and they never try powerlifting,
or they never try functional exercise.
If you're always doing the same thing, you're always pressing the same weaknesses, you can
cause joint issues, you tend to cause imbalances in your body because you're not working in different
planes.
This can cause problems if you never change up your workouts.
Yeah, or they're the kind of person that has always done a specific type of plan,
but they've taken a few years off,
and now they're jumping right back into that kind of plan
that worked for them years ago.
So they didn't change it.
So they didn't change anything,
but they try and apply it,
and it doesn't have the same type of success and progress
that they had before,
because their bodies different now,
and they haven't accounted for that, And they haven't really gradually brought themself back
into shape, even to meet and face
that type of demand on their body.
So it's the creature habit.
It's the something that's the familiar.
Like we're all guilty of sort of being drawn back
into what's familiar to us and what we know we can do.
I really think this is the difference between people
that exercise and people that train.
So movement, any kind of movement can be exercise.
Zumba class is exercise.
You can do the same exercise forever.
And your heart rate elevates.
It's better than nothing.
It's right, it's not bad for you.
It's just movement, really.
It's right, it's not bad for you.
But many times this is confused with training.
And training is a goal.
I have a goal in mind.
I come to this gym and I am trying to either get stronger,
get faster, lose body fat, build muscle.
I have a goal in mind and therefore the work that I'm doing,
the intent is that I am bettering myself towards that,
where if you're just going to exercise to exercise,
that's fine.
I mean, if you want to do the four machine-style, talk to about the guy and then you're happy with it.
I bet you guys know what I'm talking about.
I do not manage the same gym.
Yes, yes.
You guys know exactly what I'm saying.
Yes, I'm an extermaster.
I know who he is, for sure.
So, you know, that's fine.
But if you tell me you're wanting to make change or you don't feel good or you don't like what's happening,
and this is how you approach it, it's like you got to change your routine up.
And it's hard because we do.
We get stuck in the things that we like in our habits.
And you know, but if you have a goal or you want to change,
the idea is that you're training and not just exercise.
Now the next one, this one people are always like,
oh, yeah, I know that.
Yeah, I do that, but do you really?
And that's sleep quality. Your sleep quality sucks. Now, I do that, but do you really? And that's sleep quality.
Your sleep quality sucks.
Now, I've talked to many people about sleep, many clients,
and oftentimes I'll hear, but I get eight hours
every single night.
I'm not talking about how long you think you sleep,
or when you go to bed and when you get out of bed,
but rather the quality of sleep within.
Now, I'm gonna use an extreme example,
just to kind of illustrate my point.
I remember I had a client who was dealing with fatigue
and inflammation and just couldn't figure out
what the hell was going on.
Finally, we narrowed it down and they went and saw,
did a sleep study.
I don't know if you guys know what a sleep study is,
but you go and you actually sleep in a lab,
they watch you and they figure out what's going on.
And they found that this person had sleep apnea
and that they were actually waking up several times
in the night, and they weren't aware of it,
but they were waking up several times a night.
So this person got one of those CPAP machines, put it on,
and it was life, I'll never forget, the day after they wore it,
they walked into my gym and they're like,
if I knew this years ago, I would have done this,
like I am a different person because of last night.
I had no idea that my sleep quality was that bad.
So although they went to bed and woke up,
you know, had eight hours,
the reality is they got like five hours of quality.
Say, well, every night they were sleep deprived.
Now that's an extreme example.
But if you're waking up in the middle of night
to go to the bathroom or you wake up
because you're uncomfortable or because you're sweating
or because the sheets are,
and this is common for you.
Your sleep quality probably isn't great
and you need to focus on things
that improve sleep quality.
Like turning off electronics an hour before bed
or wearing blue light blocking glasses,
making sure your room is really cool, 66, 67 degrees,
maybe wearing minimal clothing in bed,
not eating too close to bed time.
Like those are just a few common things,
but they make a huge difference.
And you'll go to the bed at the same time,
wake up at the same time, but the quality within.
Having a plan and preparing for sleep.
Yes.
I just think that that's still a common thing
that a lot of people don't consider.
They just want to, okay, now it's time for bed
and whether or not you're watching TV
or you're on your phone, answer in your last email
and then you set your phone down
and now it's just close my eyes
and it's magically gonna happen
and I'm gonna sleep and all of a sudden it's gonna be great.
Meanwhile, your brain is still completely active
and you haven't been able to really shift over
into that different mindset.
And so to create that is going to take a lot of intent going into that.
So the hour proceeding that to really be conscious of how much blue light
you're introducing yourself to and making sure you actually have a ritual
leading up into taking, you know, going to sleep is going to be a huge difference.
I can't remember who it was that I first heard that from,
but I remember that was probably some
of the best advice I'd ever heard.
And up into this point, I was somebody who just,
oh, I'm sleeping, I'm sleeping, I'm dead and sleep is over.
That's so great.
Yeah, I was definitely that asshole for a very long time.
And it wasn't until later did I start to really appreciate
quality sleep and then it wasn't until later did I start to really appreciate quality sleep
and then it wasn't until I heard this
and I wish I remember who said this first
but it was kind of like an aha moment
for even somebody like me who's a trainer
and who should know better is that,
we put all of this effort into starting our day off,
so we have such a great day
and that you're productive throughout the day
and you have this, everyone has a morning routine.
Whether you think you do or not, you do.
Whatever you do, every single morning is your routine.
And most people at the bare minimum have the go-to-the-bathroom, brush your teeth, shower,
you know, get your-
We're not talking about that.
Yeah, I have a cup of coffee.
I mean, but you have a routine that you do every single morning to set the tone for
your day.
And some people even more extensive.
And then you ask the majority of people,
what does your night look like?
And most people, well, you know, sometimes this,
sometimes that around this or.
I mean, I just close my eyes, try to go to sleep.
Yeah, there is no effort put towards maybe
some of the most important time of the day.
When you talk about recovery and energy
and building muscle, longevity, overall health,
mood, all the things that sleep impacts, you can make the case that eight hours right there
is probably the most important eight hours day yet.
There's no effort whatsoever that's put around that.
So a great place to start somebody and what I began doing with clients is just asking
that, like, what is your sleep routine?
Nine times at a that attend getting a,
don't really have one.
Well, let's build one.
And then that's kind of how you start with this.
And you know, it can start off very basic
to get in some good habits that you both alluded
to the television and phone.
I think that's the easiest thing
that I'd always tell clients to do first is like,
okay, let before I build this huge routine for you,
let's first just get rid of what I think
are some of the worst habits,
which is laying in your bed,
staring at a screen because you're basically telling
the brain it's daytime when it's 11 o'clock at night in your bed.
So let's agree that one hour before you lay down,
there's no more screen time, no television,
and start there, and then you start to build,
and what you find is the more healthy habits that you build around the evening
to help you get better sleep, the better sleep you get,
and then the better all those other things are.
And so this is something took me a long time,
but then has become probably one of the top five staple ones
that I address when talking about.
Yeah, and figuring out things like you'd mentioned
in terms of being like overheated and sweating
in that wake, and you have like,
there's beautiful technology out there now
that exists to be able to cool you and keep your temperature
pretty much controlled at night.
And these are products that are game changing for a lot of people,
just like finding out, you have sleep apnea.
So to go through that process and figure out what it is
that's really like preventing you from quality sleep.
So a dire importance.
Yeah, so this next one I noticed quite a bit, especially with my kids since they were not
able to go to school during the pandemic, because they did their school at home on their
computers.
Therefore they stayed in their rooms all day long until I got home.
And I noticed that they were just starting to look more and more like the
walking dead. Like I'd come in and I'd see my kid and I'd be like, man, you look like
Neo from the matrix before he wakes up, you know, that real pale. And so I started just,
every day I would come home and like, we're going for one hour walk no matter what going outside
and they would him and hot. I don't want to. And we go outside and within 20, 30 minutes,
their moods would totally change. So one of the problems might be that you're just indoors too much
You just never outside going outside makes a huge it was so much energy you get just from the sunlight
Or just from being outside and getting fresh air we notice it here
We're in a studio when we're recording the podcast
But and there's many times where in between podcasts we're like like, we need to go for a walk, even if it's only 20 minutes to squat outside.
Man, we come back inside and we're invigorated.
It's total different energy.
Well, I would say that this is, for sure, one of the ones that we all are hard on ourselves
about or we would agree that if there's of these 15 we're going through, where do we slip
up the most, I would say here because we do have this job that we're in this cave where we work.
And so it's very easy that we can get stuck in here all day long.
And so this is one that I'm always having to remind myself
to get out there and get out.
And I always notice, I know it's a different immediately.
That's why this one's easy for me to show clients
the difference.
It's pretty obvious if you're somebody who sits
in a desk under fluorescent lights all day long,
take that same person and give them a day at the beach
for a day and then ask them how the hell they feel a day.
It's like you night and day different.
So you can feel it immediately.
It's just you have to be conscious of the fact
that you may not be getting it on a real or basis
and then you have to make that effort.
Otherwise you could string, I mean, I could string weeks together.
Without seeing the sun.
Yeah, without almost seeing the sun getting to work so early,
it's barely coming up and you're in your car and then you go straight to a building
and then you stay here all night and then before you know, you go like, oh,
shit, it's been like a week since I actually speaking to the beach.
I mean, just going there and getting that kind of sun exposure and how your body
just, it just absorbs and craves that type of stimulus.
And what that does, too, later on for the night, like some of the best sleep I have ever
had is after I've been able to kind of introduce more sun, again, when I've been deprived of
sun.
It's really interesting.
Yeah, you know, it's funny, evolutionarily speaking, if you spent as much time indoors
for most of human history as we tend to do now,
it's because you were sick.
Humans never spent this much.
We, if you were in a cave, 90% of the time,
it's because you were sick and you were away
from the rest of the tribe
because you had some weird disease
or you're about to die.
So our bodies almost read it the same way.
I'm inside all day long, no sun exposure, no fresh air,
and my body's receiving the signal that's almost like,
I'm sick, I guess I'm not well, and you feel that.
Well, there's a healing aspect to it,
and this is something I talked to Courtney about.
She's a nurse and with sick kids would make a point
to take them outside and move them outside
and get them some sun.
It was like really important for their recovery process.
Well, have you ever felt that loop before that you're describing?
I mean, I was just sick not that long ago and I felt this, right?
Where you feel terrible.
So you lay in bed all day and it's dark and you just feel worse and worse and worse.
And then I know I got to get out and so I'll drag my ass out to my back yard, sit in there
and just absorb something like instantly feel better.
I know. So it's like this the sun and like instantly feel better. I know. I know.
So it's like this loop that you don't feel good.
You tell yourself you're not feeling good.
All the signs you're around in this dark room, it's just telling you not you're not getting better anytime soon,
but simply dragging your ass outside and getting the sun immediately.
You can feel it.
Oh, yeah. And if you work on a computer, take your laptop outside.
That's all right. You can look and work outside and get some of the benefits of being outdoors without having to stop what you're doing.
Alright, so this next one is really interesting because over the last year, my wife has almost eliminated social media.
So she's taken herself off of social media for the most part, and the improvement of her in terms of her health, her mental health.
She tells me she's way less stress, way less anxious, it's been tremendous.
Social media, although it's a valuable tool,
and a way you can communicate to people.
Man, if you spend a lot of time on social media,
you're gonna feel like shit,
because you're either A, comparing yourself to everybody's
highlight reel, or B, you're getting targeted
with trigger type articles that are guaranteed to do that.
You're arguing all day long. or B, you're getting targeted with trigger type articles that are guaranteed to do the arguing.
All day long for no reason with somebody
that may not even be a real person,
but they've obviously got you,
you got it under your skin, got you going
and you're very much like engage
and that follows you throughout the rest of your day
which affects your mood
and the way you interact with other people.
I mean, it's definitely something you need to check.
So go on social media with intention.
So tell yourself, I'm gonna go on for 30 minutes
to just, you know, scroll,
or I'm going on for 30 minutes to learn something,
or to write something, and that's it.
The whole like wasting time on social media
makes you feel like shit, in fact,
I know psychologists today, a lot of them now,
are recommending to people, reduce their time on social media,
to reduce people's anxiety.
Yeah.
I think this is a conversation that I was not used to having as a trainer and I had it
more now as a podcaster than I ever.
It wasn't a thing.
Yeah, it wasn't a thing at all.
And I do see how important it is to have, if you're a coach and a trainer today and
you help clients out, I think this should be in your top three for sure
because I think almost everybody is on social media.
And what happens with clients when they set these goals,
and I don't know, client, I'm sure you guys have heard
people that are signing up with training today,
almost all of them will reference
like an Instagram person is like what they want to look like.
Like when I look at my niece and I look at,
they have goals, when they want to look like. Like when I look at my niece and I look at, they have goals.
They, when they talk to me about their goals,
they refer to another person on Instagram or on Facebook.
Like, oh, I want to look like her.
I want, and that is such a terrible place to start.
I mean, you shouldn't even, you shouldn't ever go there.
You definitely shouldn't start there.
It's like, oh, I have this goal in mind.
And you're already comparing yourself to this other person who, again, like Sal oh, I have this goal in mind and you're already comparing yourself to this
other person who again, like Sal said, presenting a highlight reel of their life.
Like, one, who knows if it's even real, two, that's a terrible place, psychologically,
to be, to be constantly comparing yourself to other people.
So I feel like if you're feeling down, you don't feel good or you have your anxious or
whatever, one of the first things that I would tell someone today
would be to, I would go ahead and go through their Instagram
and say, let's get rid of all this bullshit you're following.
Yeah, I think definitely that,
the comparison part of that,
but also like, what is your input?
Like, what are you taking in and consuming and reading
and allowing within your day?
And so like social media, like you're gonna get a lot
in a short amount of time in terms of your feed and what kind of people are you following? Are they positive? Is
it all negative doom and gloom? Like what are you bringing in psychologically that you're
gonna carry with you throughout the rest of the day?
Yeah, here's another one. You just might be surrounded by shitty people or your friends,
your friends might just suck. I remember reading, remember, it was like three years ago
that I brought up the study that blew all of our minds.
It was a Stanford study, and it showed
that having bad relationships in your life
was as bad for you as smoking, I think,
a packet cigarette's every single day.
There was a lot, I think it was even more known.
Yeah, that's how bad it is for your health.
Now, you might be thinking, well, what do you mean?
How do I know that my friends suck?
Or a lot of people don't know that.
Or they're the sucky friend.
Yeah, well, maybe you.
You're, no.
Here's a litmus test.
Good friends celebrate your victories.
They're more excited about good things that happen to you
than you are, and they also mourn your losses.
So if you have friends that you bring like good news,
oh my God, I just got promoted,
and they kind of come off a little negative or a little bit critical
Like well, yeah, probably not a good friend or if you have something bad happen to you and your friend kind of doesn't care or doesn't really come to
Your to help you or show that they're sad along with you
That's probably not a good friend and this mean, and I've done this in my life,
actually several times, that you need to prune
certain people off your life.
There may be some friends that you just slowly start to ghost
and start over and find better people
because you tend to become kind of the average
of the people you surround yourself with.
Are your friends growth-minded?
Are they doing things that you aspire to do?
Are they motivating things that you aspire to do? Are they motivating and showing you,
how to live a certain way that you really admire?
And just those things,
you wanna be able to surround yourself
with people that elevate you,
but also our examples of different aspects of life
that you can incorporate within yourself.
And so to find different groups of friends really hard because it's comfortable to be around
the ones that have sort of stayed the same and it's very predictable and obvious.
But is that going to be good for you long term?
Something you have to kind of deal with and really address.
Well, I don't know who coined the, you're the average of the five people you hang out the
most with.
I believe that. And I think it was referring originally to like financial health, right?
Like you know, if you took what your four best friends' incomes are like you typically into blending an average of those four
What do I thought they say and I think that's where the origin of it?
I think but I really do believe that it applies to all aspects like you're just your average if they're of their
They're how positive they are,
how growth-minded they are, how physically fit they are,
you know, you really are like an average of your five.
Because that's your circle who you compare yourself to,
whether you believe you are or not, you're doing that.
And that means if you change them, your average changes.
Yes.
How many times have you done that?
And how many times have you noticed you wanna improve
something your life, look at the, you know,
maybe there's a few friends that you have,
you're like, man, they do not support.
Like, maybe your friends like to drink a lot
and you're thinking, I want to improve my health.
And so you say, you know, we only really connect
over alcohol, I'm going to kind of stop hanging
around with them and I'm going to start hanging out
with maybe more health oriented people.
And then that changes your average
and brings you up to a completely different one.
Well, and a lot of times, that's,
who's the client that I get that's guilty of this,
they're the best one of the five,
and the other four are bringing them down.
And there's a part of us that get attracted to that.
It feels good.
It feels good to look at your peers and go,
oh, I'm kind of winning.
You know what I'm saying?
Sal doesn't have a job, Justin's really fat.
You know, I feel like I'm doing things.
You know, I'm killing it.
I have a job, I'm not so fat.
You know what I'm saying?
I feel pretty good about myself.
But put yourself in a room.
Adam's a hoarder.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Put yourself in a room where now you're the bottom of that five
and what it will naturally do is bring your average up.
And so this is definitely, especially when I'm talking
to younger kids or my nieces or nephews that are in their 20s,
like this, I think this was some of the best advice that was given to me.
Took me a long time to be comfortable with letting go
or moving on with relationships that I was attached to
for a long time, but 100% elevated my game.
Yeah, this next one is actually becoming a bigger deal
these days, and that's that you feel like you have no purpose.
You know what this reminds me of?
Fight Club, remember the movie Fight Club?
Where not Brad Pitt, who's the other guy?
What's his name?
That actually were Norton.
Edward Norton, remember his character initially?
He'd get up, go to work, do the same thing.
And he was taking care of himself.
He was earning a living.
But obviously, you could tell, he felt like he had no purpose.
Like he was just floating along.
This is much more common these days
because of all the distractions that we have.
There's so much entertainment.
There's so many things that we can do.
We're very comfortable.
Luckily, societies become quite wealthy.
So for the most part, people got kind of what they need.
And they feel like something's missing.
I have no purpose.
And by the way, purpose tends to come with challenge.
This is a no. I've had friends no joke and this is
You know shout out to people in the military
I've had friends who felt like this so strongly in high school that they went and enjoying the military because they felt like it
Would give them purpose and many of them it did many of them they came back and they said it was life-changing because it gave them a
Sense of purpose and of course there's many different ways to do this.
But if you lack purpose in your life, you can have all the stuff that you need, but you
feel like you're just floating around in the wind.
And that doesn't feel good.
And I think that community is a big piece to that.
It's a big component.
And I think that people might think that they're part of a community based off of who they
interact with occasionally
or they have communities online where they might have this type of communication between
other people, but really to find that community that you feel like you're part of something
that's greater than yourself and you're giving a lot of yourself to it is something to really
consider and really find that opportunity to serve and to do something
outside of just your own needs. I think if people could work more in that direction, a lot
of times purpose reveals itself. Yeah, volunteer work is a great way to do that.
Yeah, I'm not going to try and because I think this is a hard one. It's a hard one to tell
somebody, right? So I know that it's important. I know that a lot of people lack this and I feel
like it's growing, how many people lack this. But I also know there's important. I know that a lot of people lack this, and I feel like it's growing.
How many people lack this.
But I also know there's such a huge individual variance with this looks like.
I will give you some books though that I think that are really good.
The ones that come to mind right away are start with why, the purpose-driven life, and
then the alchemist.
I think those three books, if you are somebody right now who's listening and you're like,
oh, this is me, I just don't really have the drive
or feel like I have any purpose
and I'm kind of waffling around,
like what should I do?
Like read those books.
I mean, I think that will help,
it can help maybe guide you in the direction
that what your purpose looks like
because it is very different for every person
and you have to figure that out for yourself.
The next one is connected to it,
which is you don't take any responsibility.
You don't take any responsibility for the circumstances of your life.
It's easy to sit down and say, wow, life sucks because all these uncontrollable circumstances
I only had one parent or I grew up poor or this terrible thing happened to me.
There was this accident that happened
that I was at, you know, I didn't control.
And although all those things probably impacted,
or had very strong impacts on where you're at,
because you can't control them,
you're just, you're leaving yourself
to the whims of the uncontrollable,
rather than taking responsibility and saying,
what am I responsible for?
And what can I do about those particular things
that I'm responsible for?
It's also just not taking responsibility in life.
You know, years ago I had this kid that I trained.
I trained this couple, and then they brought me their son,
and he was a bit of a troubled youth.
They were quite wealthy, successful.
He was a smart kid, but he was starting to have
some trouble with drugs and he, you know, some certain issues.
So they signed them up for one of those like camps for troubled youth and what the camp did with this kid is they actually put
They actually made him a squad leader and he was responsible for all these other kids and getting their you know
Breakfast set up and make sure they set up camp the fact that he had responsibility over these other kids made him rise to the occasion.
In fact, when he came back from this,
what he told me said,
you know, the changing, the thing that really made
a big difference for me was I actually had a responsibility.
And it made me rise to the occasion.
So oftentimes, and Arthur Brooks talks about this,
it's a key to happiness.
You have to be responsible for stuff.
You have to take responsibility.
Yeah, this reminds me of an image.
You know, used to be in one of the offices that I worked in.
I don't remember which one.
Just remember seeing the image.
And you talking about this right now made me Google it real quick.
And that was an accountability ladder.
I don't know if you've ever seen the image of that.
Not a long time, see.
Yeah, so it's an eight step ladder.
And the first four steps represent victim behaviors
and basically being powerless.
And then the top four, when you start moving your way up,
up the ladder is where accountability, behaviors,
and powerful becomes.
And so the very first wrong, the very bottom of it
is unaware and unconscious.
It's like you've no clue that you have no clue, right?
And then the very first step up from there is you blame others.
Okay, you're aware of shit's going wrong and it's all bad,
but you point the finger and blame others.
And then the second one is you make personal excuses.
I'll tell everybody else this fault and it's like, oh, life is so hard for me.
The third one is I can't.
I just can't do it.
It's as impossible for me to do this.
And then the last one on the victim is the the wait and hope.
Like, okay, I recognize I have things that are hard, but it's going to get better.
I'll just wait for it.
I'll have faith.
I'll have faith that it'll end up working out down the road.
It's not until you get to the next wrong where you start to move into accountability
That's acknowledging reality like this is waking the fuck up the owning your situation
And second one that the next wrong up is embracing it realizing like okay. I'm in this situation. What do I do here?
Next one is finding that solution and then the last one is making it happen. So I still love that
That's a great. I haven't seen that a long time.
It's so good.
Right, so powerful.
And I think we, a lot of people tend to find themselves
in that lower portion where they're powerless.
Totally.
And they, they're really not gonna see much advancement
or feeling better in life until they sort to make their way
at that.
Yeah, it's hard to face adversity a lot of,
a lot of times like that.
And realize like you're a big component in that.
And you know, to be able to acknowledge it, I think,
is a major step in the right direction.
You know, this is the key to health and fitness success.
This is the absolute key.
In fact, what you'll find,
this is one of the things I love most about fitness
is if you stick to it long enough,
it makes you feel empowered because,
in order to get fit and to stay fit, you have to take responsibility.
You can't say it's my genetics. It's the way I was brought up. It's my bone structure.
You know, my parents were overweight. My parents are an athlete. At some point you stick to a long enough, you say,
okay, all those things are true. So what?
This is what I can do about it. Here's what I can do about it. I can work out this way. I can eat this way.
I can be consistent. It Now what? Here's what I can do about it. I can work out this way. I can eat this way. I can be consistent.
It's a part of fitness success is taking responsibility,
owning what you can own and forgetting the stuff
that you can't own.
The next one, this is one for people who,
when they get in a kind of a motivated state,
they tend to wanna do like 15 things at one time
and that's that they lack focus, right?
Maybe you lack focus.
Maybe you think you want to make yourself feel better
so you do 85 different things all at once.
You often times I would see this in fitness
where a new client would hire me.
This is someone who doesn't eat right,
doesn't sleep good, doesn't work out.
And they come to me like,
I want to hire you, I want to work out six days a week,
I want to meal plan so I can eat perfectly every single day.
And when I do like 15 different things,
it never works because it's not sustainable.
Focus on one thing, do it really, really well until it becomes a habit.
Then you can move on to the next one.
Or you can advance that client to listen to you, right?
And everything is going really well.
And we've reduced a lot of the activities and a lot of the things that they used to be a
part of.
But, you know, inevitably,, the results aren't enough.
It just seems like they're drawn back into
bringing in some more of those chaotic components.
And I've found a lot of battles between clients
where it's like, okay, but I also wanna do plows
and I also wanna do the yoga class
and I also wanna go running on the weekend.
And I wanna do this.
And look, everything is working right now.
Let's not mess this up.
And you know, and this is something
I have found myself guilty of doing as well.
Like when things are going so well,
but we also are just like drawn to like adding
these chaotic components back in.
This is a common one in business, by the way,
where you have a business and it starts to succeed
and you have one thing that you do good.
And so then you end up wanting to do
25 different things.
Yeah, instead of that one thing, it's a big problem. I think Mark Randolph, in fact, he touched on it in our
recent interview with him.
Yeah, you got to, you got to trust the process. And this reminds me to the, the quote, you
know, how you do anything is how you do everything. And it reminds me of people that can't stick
to one thing very long. They're always wanting to try something new and, and lack that ability
to just follow through on something
and just trust the entire process.
They're always trying to add more or do more.
Very tough to measure.
What are you doing that has success when you're constantly throwing the whole kitchen sink
at it?
Many times with clients, I'd have to have this conversation of, okay, listen, this is all
we're focusing on.
I know you want to do this.
You want to do that.
You want to do all those things.
Let's hit this out the park. Let's be consistent with it.
Then we'll build upon this. So a lot of times the people that are not feeling well, it's because
it's just you're throwing too much at the body at one time and you're not focusing on one or two
things that will really move the knee. Yes. Now here's the last one and I feel like this one is a
big one of these days. And that's that you probably need to lighten up a little bit. Humor, laughter,
they probably exist in humans. And the reason why we laugh audibly, probably exist in humans,
precisely to break tension and relieve stress and to let others or people around you feel
that break intention and that break and stress. I can think of many situations that I've been
in that were very stressful and very terrible
and what allowed me to kind of get through
was a little bit of humor, that little bit of laughter.
And now it doesn't change the situation,
but it definitely changes how I feel for a second
and it makes a big difference.
It's funny because you guys know on my Instagram
I've been reported a few times on my memes
because people get offended or whatever.
And this would have happened 20 years ago.
People would have either liked it or just not watched.
But nowadays people seem to be not just easily offended,
but ready to be offended.
What can I possibly be offended by?
And it's because they're just not,
they need to lighten up a little bit, like okay,
it's okay, like don't take things so damn seriously.
Because serious is good when you wanna be focused
and accomplish certain things, but being serious all the time, that's stressful.
That doesn't feel good.
You need to lighten up and relax about things sometimes, you know?
Yeah, this has been one of those go-to's for me when I'm in a really challenging situation.
I mean, even physically challenging where I've been under the most extreme stress or like football camp or something
where I just, I feel overwhelmed and I have to really just turn that mindset and have fun,
have fun with it and work my way through it and it helps so much.
The mentality of that will carry you so much further. And like there's studies right with the POWs
about they've been able to get through
like insanely grueling situations
where they pretty much, if their mentality was basically
like any different, they would have died
a long time ago, but just because that they were
stayed positive and that kept their mind in that direction,
they were able to make it through.
Part of what comes to mind for me when I think of lighten up or have joy or laughter is also learned to be present,
because part of what causes us to be tense and have anxiety, you're stuck in the future of the past aren't you?
Exactly. You're constantly in the future or you're constantly in the past.
You're constantly thinking about all the bad things that have happened to you or you're constantly stressing
about what may come versus literally being in the moment,
being happy with the breath that you have right now,
the day that you have, the freedom that you have,
and like being content and happy with your current situation.
It doesn't mean you can't have goals that you're pursuing,
it doesn't mean you can't have things
that you aspire to be or whatever.
You can still do that, but also make sure you take those moments to become present
and where you're currently at today.
That's what comes in mind when I think of light enough.
Somebody who was tensed up, stressed, angry, frustrated,
not feeling well, all those things you want, many times they're not in the moment.
They're worried about what's to come,
or they're still hurting from what happened in the past.
Yeah, I can't help but think of the example
you brought up with people trying to change the world
and like so serious and so intense about that.
But that same intensity towards acknowledging
like all the good things that are going on in life
and around them and to have these affirmations
and be like frequently addressing that
and bringing that up, their mentality,
I just, it would do wonders for that individual,
and it would actually then spawn off
to more positive things around them.
Yeah, you know, studies show that laughter,
and joking, and fun, speeds up healing, you know that?
They actually, they'll do this in hospitals oftentimes,
or they'll bring in people to have entertainment
or to make jokes, especially in children's hospitals.
Why?
Because it shows, studies show that it speeds up
the recovery process.
Like, this is a very important part of health.
And if you find yourself taking everything
so damn seriously all the time,
that might just be why you're not feeling so good.
You know, lighten up a little bit and have some fun. Look, if you like our information, head over to
MindPumpFree.com, check out our free stuff. We've got lots of free stuff for our viewers that
are exclusive just for you. Again, it's MindPumpFree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram,
so you can find Justin at MindPump, Justin, me at MindPump, Sal and Adam at MindPump. Adam.
Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.
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