Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1662: Mind Pump’s 21 Best Tips

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin go over 21 of their best tips as chosen by their private forum. Mind Pump’s 21 Best Tips. (1:47) #1 – Conduct Full Body Workouts. (2:30) #2 – Stop 2-3 Reps Short of Failure. (4:27) #3 – Speed Up Recovery by Movement. (6:50) #4 – Sort the Silverware Before you Start the Dishwasher. (9:39) #5 – Do What you are Not Doing. (11:21) #6 – Stop Working Out and Start Practicing. (15:17) #7 – Stop Doing so Much Cardio. (20:06) #8 – Understand the Concept of Reverse Dieting. (23:38) #9 – Men, Sit Down When you Pee at Night. (26:25) #10 – Prime your Body before you Workout. (28:26) #11 – Apply Mini Cuts and Mini Bulks. (33:02) #12 – Chase Health, Aesthetics will Follow. (36:12) #13 – Eat for How Foods Make you Feel. (40:14) #14 – Focus on the Big Rocks. (44:09) #15 – Women Should Bulk. (46:41) #16 – It Depends... (48:49) #17 – More is Not Always Better. (50:48) #18 – Quit Measuring Success by the Scale. (54:49) #19 – Don't Buy a Horse for Your Family if you Can’t Afford it. (58:38) #20 – Fall in Love with the Process. (1:01:14) #21 – Focus on Strength. (1:04:37) Related Links/Products Mentioned October Promotion: MAPS Anabolic and NO BS 6-Pack Formula – Get Both for $59.99!    Visit Super Coffee for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code “MINDPUMP” at checkout** Body Part Split vs. Whole Body Workout: Which Is Best? - Mind Pump Blog Which Is Better: Low Reps Or High Reps? - Mind Pump Blog How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts – Mind Pump Blog Stop Working Out And Start Practicing – Mind Pump Blog Cardio Sucks for Fat Loss – Mind Pump Blog Reverse Dieting: What Is It and Should YOU Try It?? | MIND PUMP Priming Your Body Before and After Workouts – Mind Pump Blog The Importance of Mobility Training in Regards to Chronic Pain – Mind Pump Blog MAPS Prime Webinar MAPS Prime Pro Webinar How To Use Mini Cuts & Mini Bulks To Maximize Gains Exercise For More Than Just Aesthetics – Mind Pump Blog Why We Engage in Unhealthy Habits – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1565: Why Women Should Bulk Why The Scale Is Not Always The Best Way To Measure Progress – Mind Pump Blog Workout Because You Love Yourself Not Because You Hate Yourself – Mind Pump Blog Facebook Forum | Mind Pump Media Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Justin Brink DC (@dr.justinbrink)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, 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 Pump. Today's episode was a fun one. Our private forum actually created a thread and listed mind pumps top best tips of all time and ranked them.

So these are our most ardent fans and they listed our best tips. So we took the top 21 best tips and we broke them down for you. Now most of them fitness and health related, some of them lifestyle related and let me tell you the lifestyle ones are brilliant. Most of them coming from Adam, so you know they're really good. So we know you're gonna love this episode. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Super Coffee. Now, Super Coffee is different than regular coffee.

Super Coffee contains other ingredients to make the caffeine in the coffee much more effective. Things like theanin, for example, or protein infused coffee. They all taste good, by the way. They even have vegan options. So some of them have dairy, some of them have plant protein. Anyway, go check them out. Head over to drinksupercoffee.com,

forward slash mind pump, and use the code mind pump for 25% off your entire purchase. Also, we're running a sale right now. We took Maps and Obolic combined it with the No BS 6 pack formula and priced it at a tremendous discount. So you can get both programs for $59.99. If you're interested or you just want to learn more, head over to mapsoctober.com.

Once again, that's mapsoctober.com. Do you guys see that post in the forum, the private forum of our like, like the fans favorite tips we ever gave up like that? Yes. Yes. It was so good. No, no, I want to do a whole thing.

I told Doug that the other day I said, man, those tips were, I mean, some of them were like, really, really good tips. I think there's, and some I forgot. Some were super random and specific stories we brought up. And it was interesting to see that, like, a lot, obviously, in our forum, you know, they posted and then you see a ton of likes on certain ones. So certain ones, like, really impacted actually a lot of people.

So we took out the 21 that got the most likes. And this was basically put together by our forum, by the private forum. Yeah. Mostly people that have probably listened to almost every episode of the last six years or whatever. Exactly. Alright, so let's start with the first one. The first one, and what they listed was full body workouts. This was a big one for me way back in the day when I realized that training my whole body

three days a week was more effective than doing the classic body parts split where I do chest one day, back one day, shoulders one day. And there's a couple reasons why. than doing the classic body part split where I do chest, one day, back, one day, shoulders, one day. And there's a couple reasons why. One is you constantly focus on the best exercises. You tend to do the big mover exercises. It's more frequency per body part. And then here's a big one.

Adam talks about this all the time. If you miss a workout, it's okay because you've already hit the whole body a couple of days that way. That, to me, it tends to be. Because when I think back to the things that I was notorious for when, you know, training and missing days or whatever is, and I know that I'm not alone here,

you know, you fall off for a couple of weeks, you get busy, you go on vacation, whatever your excuse is, and you don't train for a while, and when you start back, where do you start? In a separate body part. Yeah, your favorite body part. You always start on your favorite body part. And if you're like, oh, I'm not really feeling

like going on the gym today. Well, what day is that? It's the day you don't like doing. And so over time, that compounds, and it makes a difference. And so when you're doing a full body routine, you miss a day, you miss everything equally. When you start back up, you start back equally on everything. Well, this was game changer for me because I actually enjoyed training legs, finally.

Yeah. Because before that, it's like you hyper-focus like that legs. That's a good point. And it would just, oh, I would dread those days. Those days, the days preceding leg days, especially. Well, this is the way all strength athletes and bodybuilders worked out before things got crazy with metabolic hormones and stuff. And so this is where I got the inspiration. I saw

like, man, they all worked full body three days a week. They all looked incredible. This is even before supplements were around. And they were incredibly strong. And I tried it and it worked. And it was superior. And this was kind of the cornerstone of maps and a ball like the first maps program. Well, and this way of training also feeds into the second tip, which is stopping two to three reps short of failure. And because I was training so frequently and I was hitting every muscle group two to three times a week, I got better at, okay, I don't have to go so hard because in two days, I'm

going to hit buys and tries again or shoulders or shoulders again, whatever exercise I was doing, we're in the past, you know, it was possibly one day a week I was hitting a body part, so I felt, I need to hammer it, I need to hammer it so hard, because I'm not gonna revisit again for another seven days. You know, we've had the show now on for about six to seven years, I'd say six and a half years, and some of the stuff was blasphemy.

Yeah. Telling people not to lift to failure seven years ago was blasphemy. People actually hammered us over it. Now, you, of course, one of my favorite moments in our entire career was when studies came out to confirm what we said. They started comparing going to failure,

to not going to failure, and what did they find? Not going to failure, typically results in better results for people. Doesn't fry the body too much, doesn't hammer the central nervous system too much. And again, I experienced this with myself. When I stopped short of failure, I would improve. And I would always hammer intensity.

My body would plateau. This completely shattered my entire focus of training because I've been drilled by all coaches I've ever had. That it's like, go harder, go home. It was all about intensity. It was all about how much you could put into those workouts that you would get. The results because of the amount of effort.

So I just always attributed it to the amount of intensity I could apply in every single workout. And there's a lot smarter way to do it and this was a Complete game changer for me. Well, I'm so glad the research came out to support that doing two to three reps short of failure Was superior than always training to failure But I always knew as a trainer that this was a better strategy for my clients when it came to form and technique Yeah, because when it came to form and technique I was really strict to my clients, right? And so I wasn't I wasn't concerned about training to failure hardly at all with them

And so I already kind of training them that way and it was something that I personally needed to adopt better in my own training So I was probably abusing the training to failure until we started to learn more that oh, this is not the best way to train all Yeah, and you know make no mistake. You're still training intensely, you're just not abusing intensity. And for most people going to failures is too much, most of the time. Now the next one, this one was a big one because I was under the impression for years that you train a muscle and then you leave it alone

completely in order to let it recover. In fact, I used to work out, then I'd go home and be like, don't do anything. Let the muscle grow. Move your legs up on the couch and just sit there, suspend it. And recover. This is false.

One of the best ways to recover a muscle, unless you're like in a rabdo or you're like, you need to go to a hospital. The best way to get a body to recover faster and more efficiently is to continue kind of moving it. So like your legs are really sore, you want to get them recover. Do some really light exercise and stretching for it. Go for a light bike ride, go for some walks, and you'll find that your muscles actually

recover faster than if you left them alone completely. In fact, leaving a muscle alone completely is one of the fastest way to get to atrophy to where you actually start to lose muscle. You know, I've never shared this story on the podcast, but sharing these old tips is taking me down memory lane and it reminds me. So when I first moved to San Jose, I was 20 years old, got a membership 24 fitness

when I start working as a personal trainer. And I so much adopted that philosophy that you're talking about right now, to the point where I lived across the street from the gym, right, that I worked out and I lived my grandma. I would go to the gym and I would just hammer myself and I was so in the mindset of like, I wanna move as little as possible

because I don't wanna have to eat any more extra calories and I wanna get the most out of my recovery from the work I just did. And I remember I come home and I would like, lay on my bed and my grandma would be like, are you okay, I'm like, yeah, I know I'm fine. I'm just gonna moving from it. She's like, do you want anything? Yeah, could you bring me? I would stay laying in my bed waiting for my grandma to bring me food so I could eat it I would just get up just to eat and then lay back down.

I literally was so concerned about not moving because I didn't want to burn any extra calories and Little that I know how much more muscle I would build if I would actually just do these kind of micro mini sessions or what we call trigger sessions in MAPSAN Obolic, and what it would do for facilitating recovery. It would speed up my recovery process, and I built more muscle, but I was so caught in the mind set of hammering the muscle so hard and then letting it rest. I wish I'd piece this together as a kid, because I'd go to work in the summers when my dad is a kid and I would get so upset. So I was like, oh man, I'm not gonna build as much muscle

as I could if it was physical labor. I was shoveling cement and mixing cement and sand and carrying buckets. But every summer after I'd work with them, I noticed, especially my forearms and my biceps, we kind of build faster from carrying everything. Never piece it together though. Took me so long to put that together.

But movement is great for recovery, not moving at all, not great for most recovery. Of course, unless you're ill or it's so extreme that you might need medical attention. Now here's another one, and this one's not fitness, but it was a game changer for me, Adam. I remember you brought this up on a podcast and you talked about doing the dishes

and sorting the silverware in the dishwasher before you washed them. So you put your forks in one, your spoon in another one. They all have their individual slots. And then when you put it away, it's really easy. And I remember thinking like, wait a minute, that might make sense.

I didn't do that. And I did it and it was so much faster. This one cracked me up when I had forgot about this. Like we talked about it a long time ago on the podcast and I don't even remember the context that came out and I think it was me talking about how different Katrina and I are the way we do something or some shit. And what was funny was I saw this post,

I was laughing at how many people liked that comment and comment I think this was actually the number one one. From the mind bump podcast it was the silverware tip and then to hear you and Doug both go do that was actually I changed the way I did that and I had we had never talked about that outside of that podcast So of all the tips you've given I'm known for the silverware tip for getting science or programming or nutrition It's called like a life hack at this point. Yeah, it was though

It was it was a I wish I could give the credit to whoever it was that the top me or told me first But you know afterwards it to me and like, why would you never do that? We just kind of... I used to mix them all together. I mean, right, putting them away was the biggest pain in the ass. Yeah, you hate it. I remember getting the dishes out and dreading the silverware portion of it because it's like, oh, it sucks.

It takes forever to do that, but so much faster. Absolutely. All right, so here's another one that this one's more... Now, this is a fitness one, and this is also quite impactful. And it's the do what you're not doing, advice that we give. Now what this is referring to is the novelty effect that exercise specific exercises may have,

or rep ranges, or rest periods, or just workout programming will have on your body. This is why we phase our workouts. You get stuck in a particular type of programming for too long. It stops to work. In fact, most things work in fitness, most things don't work all the time. You need to switch things up. So doing what you're not doing would essentially be something like this. Somebody who is doing sets of five reps and has been working out that way for six months and says, Hey, how do I get my body to get out of this plateau? Then I may say something like, do 15 reps,

do what you're not doing, and then watch what happens to your body. Well, this just comes up so often, because it's indicative of human nature, right? We just tend to fall into patterns and things that we enjoy, and then we never really hit this sort of wall where it's not working quite as well as it was in the beginning.

These questions always come up because you fall in love with fitness for certain reasons because you see success and you see results and you identify those things with certain exercises, a certain way of doing those exercises. It so it's just funny because us talking to clients all the time, we would have these conversations constantly to try and get them to step out again of their comfort zone and then they would see a whole new level of growth. And growth is that whole process of stepping outside

of your comfort zone. And so this just kind of speaks to that. This was a trainer hack of mine right here. This was something that I remember very vividly like getting somebody walking up to me on the floor when I was with a client or busy or doing something. And they always asked a question like, what's the best exercise for this

or what's the best piece of cardio equipment or what's the best, and my quick answer to that without trying to get, break everything down and get scientific about it, I would simply look back at the person and say, well, what are you doing right now? And then they would say, whatever it was they're doing, I said, go do this now.

And they would be like, wait, I heard this is better. No, you've been doing this, you never do that. This is now the best thing for you to do. So, and obviously there's a lot more nuance to it than just that, but that was the quick answer to help somebody break a plateau or see more results in the direction that they were trying to go. It was simply recommending something I knew they weren't doing. Yeah, what's funny about this is that as a kid working out, I would switch to a new workout program or book that I read.

I get, oh my god, my body's responding, then I'd marry it. And it took me so long to realize this. Like, oh, it's about low volume and high intensity. Oh no, no, it's about high volume and lower intensity. Oh, it's about higher reps. So it's about lower reps. All of it. This is how we get all the camps. You know, so we get all the different modalities.

Everybody gets entrenched in these ways of doing it and they fight over it because it was so impactful for them and then they don't want to admit that there's other ways to skin the catch. Such a good point and I feel you need to attach that to this tip is that it's not the thing that I have you switched to that is so magical. It's not new. Yeah, it's that it's new, which means it too

will be just like the last thing you were doing after you've been doing it for six to eight weeks. And what you get at it. So that the understanding that it's the novelty, like you said, to it, it's not that that's the best exercise for your abs or that's the best form of cardio, it's that you've been doing this X for so long that you definitely Y is better for you

because you've adapted to this. But when you go do Y and it changes your body better than or more than you ever have in your life before, don't fall in love with why and it now becomes the default. It's that the same rule will apply again when you ask me that question six weeks later. Yeah, this next one, which is basically labeled as practiced and get good at lifts. This particular tip came to me years ago when I witnessed people running. I was going for a hike and I saw people running

and as a trainer, it's very challenging or it's actually difficult for me to not notice people's biomechanics. I noticed everybody had some kind of issue, right? This person's feet are pronating. Oh my God, this person's feet are supernating. Their pelvic tilt is, you know, anterior or this person's got poor upper body, you know, stability.

And I noticed all these things and I thought, gosh, man, all these people are gonna hurt themselves. They're not gonna get great results for running. And then somebody passed me who ran beautifully. And I thought, why is it that nobody runs really well? And then I dawned on me. People are running as a workout and don't realize it's a skill. Nobody goes and practices how to run. They think, I'm going to start running to burn calories. I'm just going to do it until I get tired. A lot of people do it this

with exercise as well. They say to themselves, I'm going to go work out my legs. I'm going to go work out my shoulders. I'm going to work out my chest rather than thinking that the squat or the bench press or the row or the overhead press, they're all skills. If you get better at those skills, you're going to reap more benefit. So rather than working out all the time, sometimes go and just practice learning and perfecting the skill of each exercise. This is one of those things that just over time has really irked me in terms of how people view workouts, right?

There's this common thought that you just need to get through the workout. And then it's like you check off for the day. I did it, I completed, I endured my way through that. Instead of taking real intention and focus and trying to get what the actual exercise is promoting and gaining the value of that through practicing the skill of it and getting better at that in order to train your body

to respond the way you want and get stronger too. And like, you know, you're going in there to achieve something, right? You're not just going in there to get through some sort of, sort of, got went that you're trying to endure. Yeah, this really came together for me when I started to study and watch strength athletes because I mean, when you look at their programming, most of their programming is practice-based. It's not hitting PRs or really pushing the weight,

they're practicing the move it, and they're doing it, their intensity level is very moderate to low most of the time. And I remember thinking like, oh my God, you're talking about some of the strongest people in the world, and this is how they train their body. I know the benefits of getting strong just for the average person, for that's looking for overall health, longevity, building muscle, burning body fat.

So why are we not trading that same way for people that have goals like that inside the gym? That was the first thing that kind of aha moment for me to start to apply it that way. Not to mention it puts a lot of emphasis on the mechanics of the movement than it does like you were saying just in the punishment or getting through it, the sweat of the movement than it does. Like you were saying just in the punishment or getting through it, the sweat, the burn, and focusing on that, which that's splitting hairs as far as how beneficial that is to you,

but getting really good at a movement, well that could be huge. Well here's a good comparison, right? If you're trying to throw a football as far as possible, a large portion of your training is gonna be on technique. The technique of throwing the football. I know I'm stronger than most high school quarterbacks. I cannot throw a football as hard

or as far as I should say, as most high school quarterbacks. Is it because I'm not as strong as them? Is them? No. It's because they have better technique. Okay, what's the goal of an exercise? It's to build muscle and prove strength, mobility, burn body fat. The better your technique is and the better your skill

is at that exercise, just like with football, the further it's gonna go for you, the more you're gonna get out of that exercise. And you're right, strength athletes do this all the time because it's a very objective sport. You either lift more weight or you don't. Other than, you know, unlike bodybuilding where you look a particular way

Which boy genetics plays such a massive role not the same genetics don't play a role in strength But when it comes to strength it's it's about how much you lift and if you look at Olympic lifters They practice practice practice often and frequently to develop that skill if you took two and I'll make this claim all day long You take two groups of people and you follow them for five years and one group goes to the gym to hammer body parts and the other group goes to the gym to perfect their skill at exercises at the end of five years all day long.

The perfecting skill group will have better results, less injury and much more quality of enjoyment of the workout. So that's a very, very important one. All right, here's another one. And this one, sometimes we get mislabeled, which is stop doing so much cardio. Now, what we aren't saying is that cardio is bad for you.

Cardio is not a great form of exercise. It's not to have value. All form of exercise done properly and appropriately will bring you benefit. The reason why we talk about cardio sometimes in this way is because people believe cardio to be the number one form of exercise for fat loss or weight loss. That is totally false. It's actually a terrible way to try to approach fat loss and weight loss.

It can actually result in your body usually pairing muscle down and slowing your metabolism down, which makes then long-term success, all but impossible. Well, I just remember the hardest clients for me to help as a trainer was not the client who was a hundred pounds overweight, eight fast foods sat on the couch and did nothing all day long. And then now they came to see me and changed their life. That client actually was pretty easy. Get them eating the correct foods, get them moving a little bit and their

body would just respond. And then we would be building muscle burning fat and the clients that were fucking really hard to help with the clients that came in and saw me and they needed to lose weight and they had tried so many things on their own and their ways of trying things included reducing calories and doing high-intensity classes or cardio to get there and what I got a hold of them they would look at me and say Adam I need this I need to lose 50 pounds and here's what I'm eating and when I look at it I'm like that's all you're eating and you're doing all this cardio and we're here still that person had

their own yeah they're in such a hole with their metabolism that I'd have to spend the next six months not getting them much results as far as fat loss but just rebuilding their metabolism so that we can then lose weight and then they can maintain it and keep it off. So that's why I think I all of us hammer cardio so much is because that is a very common scenario if you're a trainer. If you've been training long enough, this is actually, I would argue, a bulk or a majority of your client falls in this category.

So you wonder why we hammer that shit so hard, because it was probably one of the number one things that made it difficult for me helping people out. Yeah, it's really hard because, I look at it very much in the same light as like crash dieting. In the sense that you see results from it, like in you see sort of this like your body definitely changes, you lose overall weight.

And they come in with like, well, this worked for me. Like this worked. I got down a couple dress sizes, you know, weight on my scale went down and they come in with like, well, this worked for me. Like, this worked. I got down a couple dress sizes, you know, weight on my scale went down, and they have like this sort of success story, but like, then they can't keep it. They can't keep that off. They can't, they have no more energy.

Like, they're in this hole, like you said, and like, to be able to tell them now that, you know, we need to rebuild and work on that specifically and not do what, they thought in their mind, led them toward success is a whole challenge in front of us as coaches to deal with. Yeah, now cardio training's got health benefits and if it's applied and used appropriately

for the right person, it's got tremendous benefits across the board, but it's a terrible cornerstone of your workout if your goal is fat loss. It's not good, it's actually will shoot you in the foot. The best form of exercise, if your goal is fat loss, is resistance training, all other things being equal. And now that brings us to the next one,

which is about reverse dieting. Now this is not something that we invented. However, this is something that we talk about a lot because one of the best strategies for long-term success is to build up your metabolism. It's to end up with a metabolism that's faster at the end of your fat loss journey than it was when you went into your fat loss journey.

Part of that is what's called a reverse diet, right? I start lifting weights, the goals to build muscle, boost my metabolism, in order to fuel that extra muscle building, I also have to feed my body appropriately. And through that process, I build this roaring metabolism to where I lose 30 pounds, but now at the end of my 30 pound weight loss, I'm eating more than I did when I first went in, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how much more sustainable that is,

than the opposite, than losing 30 pounds and ending up with a very slow metabolism. Yeah, no, this goes hand in hand with what we just talked about. This became a necessary tool for me to have as a coach, like how do I do this? And I failed for a long time because I didn't understand reverse dieting as a coach, like, how do I do this? I mean, and I failed for a long time because I didn't,

I didn't understand reverse dieting as a young trainer. And I think how I finally came to this and we didn't call it reverse dieting back then. I know it's been labeled as that, but it wasn't until someone made it very clear what was going on with their metabolism. And because I used to think clients were lying. That was like, I used to really, I used to really think that my client,

oh, she's got to be lying. She's telling me, she's a hundred pounds over a way and she's telling me she's eating 50 hundred. These are law of physics. Yeah, that's how I figured this, this is impossible. There's no way this lady is eating only 1500 calories and she's a hundred pounds of, she's lying to me. But no, you absolutely can't,

especially if you've destroyed your metabolism through, and I shouldn't say destroy, would you, because it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. You've adapted. Yeah, it's adapted to you, exercising like crazy and eating very little. So now that's where we're at right now. So you had to figure this out.

And I'm talking about an extreme situation, but this is actually kind of where I start almost everybody. It's rare that I don't reverse diet someone first, no matter what their goal is. Normally when I get somebody, they've done enough of dieting on their own up and down, and so that, when we first assess kind of like their size, their body type, their goal,

and where their cows are, almost always I have to do some sort of result. I don't care if it's male, female, build muscle goal, burn body fat, maintain health, whatever. Almost always I have some sort of a reverse diet protocol to start somebody off, because enough people have tried exercising and dieting on their own, and they've done it so poorly because they've taken the old, old adage of eat less, move more, and that's the way you get

results, and they've taken that to an extreme, that their bodies adapted and slowed the metabolism down, that I now have to reverse diet them out. Now this next one, another non fitness tip. I think this one also came from you, Adam. And this is one I haven't done because I refuse to do it. However, I will admit, there's some brilliance in this. You say, you one time you told a story about how and in the middle of night, when you get up to go pee and the lights are, I don't want to turn the lights on. I don't want to miss you don't want to pee off the side of toilet and whatever you sit down when you pee

Can we a lot of people love that one? It's so cute. I thought that was so great. Can we please give me the credit for the science ones too because at the end of this podcast people would be like wait a second so the tips that were atoms were the fork so that no there was some fucking other ones in there that were science related. Yeah, I know you're my great domestic artist. That was me.

Or my tips. This one Justin and I just refused like yeah. I don one of my brain domestic kids. Or my tips, dude. This one Justin and I just refused. I don't know, we refused to subscribe, but that's okay. You know, I think this came from, you know, at early age I had my own place and having probably a girlfriend at the time that we split, you know, cleaning and keeping the house clean together

and the times that I even had to clean my own toilet. And I remember going like, God damn, man, I just cleaned this thing last week and there's spots all over the side of it, this and that. And no matter how much I try to aim perfectly and shake not too hard so it doesn't go fly anywhere, it's inevitable. That's a hard shake.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so, and then of course at night time, you're half asleep and flipping a light on, wakes you up and so you don't want to wake up and so the idea of going in and sitting here. I mean, I will give you credit in this, I just made the shirt look, it's not on the list, but like the wet wipes, okay, instead of just the toilet paper,

I think that should have been on there. Yeah, instead of this, was it? Was that not in the game changer? I didn't see it You know what that was when you said so early on in the podcast I think people forgot about it, but honestly, yeah, I've forever since like had that in the bathroom Yeah, another non-science I'm telling you bro, you've changed my life You're the life hacker bro. Just move you along. All right

So next next one this is a fitness one again. And this is what we talk about priming and mobility. You know, this isn't, now I don't want to take the credit for this in terms of, you know, mind pump taking the credit. This was hammered into us as coaches and trainers because we trained a lot of everyday regular people and most of them came to us, de-conditioned. And most of them came to us, deconditioned,

and most of them came to us and couldn't do the most basic exercises with good stuff. It's the unsexy stuff. And we were taught, you got to get them to move well before you do these exercises because if you don't, they'll injure themselves. So we just always started there, and I always saw such tremendous value in doing this, and then I would apply it to my advanced clients, which was more rare. Usually, clients came to us who were, you know, kind of like I said, everyday people. And then I applied it to myself. And all it does, it improves the quality of your movement, improves your

ability to connect to your muscles. This is how you squeeze out more out of your exercises by working on your connection and your mobility. This is what priming is. This is what we talk about. We're talking about mobility. I mean, I got really, really into this. And mainly because I, again, I saw the value personally when I decided to put a lot more focus on a lot of these mobility moves and what that did in terms of just my overall athleticism improved, but really just like the reduction of pain and joint pain specifically, I just

would notice that yes, I would be getting stronger in the gym and I could lift quite a bit on the bar, but I would always end up hitting this wall. I would get to a point where my joints would just start to scream at me, louder and louder and louder to where I would think that inevitably have to start reducing weight and kind of start the process all over again and see if I can get past that this time around. Instead of really focusing on the stability

and mobility of my joints and reinforcing that more. And so taking my time through that and then also working with clients because that's the other part about I think trainers and coaches is a lot of times worse so much better with applying these things with our clients and we are our own bodies in the way that we train because, you know, for some reason we think we're impenetrable, you know, towards this. So, it was just so substantially different in terms of, you know, my overall performance increase,

but also just, you know, everyday life was just so much, so much better because I was like pain free. Yeah, I can give credit here for someone. I mean, Dr. Justin Brink, there you go. Who is a TPP movement specialist who really blew my mind in this arena.

Like I was familiar with priming and mobility stuff, but it wasn't until he applied it to me and I saw how poorly I moved. And I never really was assessed like that. Like I never had, we always did like your generic squad assessment. And I, yeah, real basic stuff. And for the most part, I've always thought I had pretty good posture. I thought I had pretty good joint mobility.

Like I thought I was pretty, pretty okay until he broke me down. And when he, when he broke me down and showed me where all the breakdown was in my movement, and then never putting me on a table and adjusted me like so many chiropractors do. He just assessed the moving and then taught me how to prime. Oh my god, like it completely changed the way I thought about training and even preparing for training. And so, you know, even though I was familiar with it before, I've got to give him credit for the one who

really solidified that for me. And then obviously that's why we designed Prime Pro with him. Yeah, just real quick, if you don't even know what Prime is, it's like, you know, you warm up before your workouts and then it helps you move better and it reduces injury. Prime is much more specific to your body. What parts of my body do I need to get to fire better? What areas do I need to get dynamically warm so that I can perform this particular exercise for how I moved? If my shoulders roll forward, I may need to prime by bringing my shoulders

back with a particular exercise. If I have an anterior pelvic tilt or a posterior pelvic tilt where my butt sticks out or it tucks under, there's different priming movements for each one of those types of posture to make me better at, you know, for example, squats, right? So priming is individualized warm-ups, they improve the performance of your workouts and make your workouts far more effective. That's essentially what they're all about. Now the next one, mini cuts and mini bulks. You know, the first time I really figured this out

was when I realized that the best period of time whenever you're cutting your calories and noticing fat loss tends to happen in the beginning. It's towards the end of the cut that you start to notice a lot of strength loss and muscle loss. And the same thing was true for a bulk. I'd bump my calories and go above my caloric maintenance.

And it was that first few weeks where I could, stronger, and oh my God, I'm not gaining body fat. I'm just gaining muscle. It was after that when I started to notice diminishing returns and just started gaining body fat. And so what I started doing with myself and my clients was what if we shorten these? Instead of doing a 12 week bulk period,

what if I did three weeks of bulking and interrupted it with a week of maybe a 12 week bulk period, what if I did three weeks of bulking and interrupted it with a week of maybe a little cut and then went back to bulking? Would I end up better off at the end of the 12 weeks with more muscle gain or less fat gain? And sure enough, that's what ended up happening. This is kind of like that novelty thing that we talked about, do what you're not doing.

There is a novel effect when you cut calories or when you bump calories to where you get the most benefit and also psychologically, of course, staying on a cut for a long period or on a book, both for a long period without interrupting it with the opposite. Boy, can that get tedious. Yeah, I understood this philosophy earlier, but I didn't really apply it to myself until competing. When I competed and time was crucial was crucial right like timing was crucial you know and I was trying to everything I was trying to do was the fastest most effective was the first time I really was measured about this. You know in the past I would know oh I've

been bulking for long enough I shouldn't be bulking too long let me transition out but never where where I was you know super methodical about it. I was for competing and it does. It makes a huge difference. It makes a huge difference when you switch back and forth. And both goals, so it doesn't matter if your goal is fat loss or your goal is building muscle, switching out of the diet that you should be kind of following for that and going the opposite direction

for a short period of time. So the mini cut version or the mini bulk version of that, interrupts that. And I think it is that novelty that the body was getting so used to being overfed all the time that you got to think that it starts to adapt to this. And whatever all the all the mechanisms that that slow that process down or whatever switching gears and going the

opposite direction seems to reignite that and then going back to what you were doing. I've just found tremendous success with that while I was competing and then forever have taught other people to do it that way. Yeah, it's very parallel, I think, to what we've found with training as well. There's a sweet spot to maximizing your benefits in certain phases and the same thing with like eating. It's like you want to maximize those benefits and you want to be disciplined enough to move on in order to keep challenging

your body so that way, you know, you keep progressing as opposed to just sort of stringing it out a bit too long. Yeah, and the studies, by the way, support this. You can look up studies on diet breaks and they find better results, less muscle loss, more fat loss in dieting. And I don't know if they've done these on bulking but I'm sure if they did they would find similar more muscle gain less fat gain with bulks. All right, so this next one

was really you know for me at least it was my way of selling my clients on doing the right thing. You know one of the things that I had to figure out as a trainer was how do I sell the right thing. One of the things that I had to figure out as a trainer was, how do I sell the right thing better than the bad guy sell the wrong thing? How do I convince this person in front of me to stop focusing so much on how they look and focus on their health? Health is not sexy. Everybody says they want to be healthy, but most people don't sign up at the gym and start working out because they think to themselves I want to improve my health and vitality most people do it because they want to look better They want to burn body fat. They want to look hotter in the skirt or better in their t-shirt Or they want to look better at the beach most people don't really think too much about

Really maximizing their health and it's just the true thing And so I was like how do I talk to my clients about getting healthy, this person that just wants to look better? And this is it right here. It was this line right here, which was, and this is very true. If you focus on your health, the aesthetics will follow. If you only focus on aesthetics, not only will your health start to decline, but then of course, because you're unhealthy, your aesthetics will also start to decline.

And this is very true. If you think of yourself as being healthy and imagine what would you look like if you were healthy in the truest sense, you're probably gonna look pretty damn good. You're gonna look pretty aesthetic. You're gonna be relatively lean, have good strength, good muscle, move well and be attractive. Aesthetics follows good health.

Good health does not always follow aesthetics. The misconception is, you can't pinpoint a lot of times like why somebody looks so radiant and so good. And it's because their health is just so vibrant. And so that is sexy. I think people wanna achieve whatever that it is, and so that is sexy, you know, and it's it's I think people want to achieve whatever that it is like somebody they know has, but a lot of times they they go towards that based upon, you know, aesthetic goals or, you know, some of the more more surface things that they notice, but what they really don't pick up on are all those other indicators of health.

I wish that I had your silver tongue, Sal, when I had pieces together because I had put this together with my clients that I needed to get them to shift and focus on health and not the scale and the mirror, right? So I have been saying that took clients for a very long time. I had never sold it the way you have you the first person that I ever heard Position it that way and I thought it was brilliant because I had known from the previous training before we all met that oh if I could get my clients to think about their skin their hair their mood their energy their sleep their sex drive and Get them to connect the dots to all these other things and attributes that they get from training and Exercising and dieting then then I can get them to not worry so much

if the scale goes up one pound or down one pound, or they wake up one morning, they feel a little bloated or bad lighting that day, or they have one bad off day of eating and not spiral out of control. If I could just get them to focus on all that, then I know that they're more likely to be consistent and not worry about all the little ups and downs

of what they looked like visually or what the scale says to them. But I had never heard anybody communicate it that well before. And I do think that you were the first person that I know that had ever said it like that. And it's very, very true that you can chase aesthetics all day long. It doesn't necessarily mean you'll be healthy.

And in fact, I remember that being so confirmed when I got into the competing space and met all these competitors who I just assumed would be some of the healthiest people I've ever met in my life and in fact the opposite was true some of them were the most unhealthy people I'd ever met in my life just because they looked great didn't mean they were taking care of their health and the worst part is if they continue to pursue that if they continue to ignore health and always go after aesthetics the irony is they lose the aesthetics as their health starts to decline. And that's a selling point to a kid

who doesn't care about health and just wants to look good. And that's what makes it so effective. The next one is eat for how foods make you feel. So I'm going to get a little bit more specific because most people, all people eat for the way foods make them feel. But they only focus on one feeling, which is the enjoyment and palatability of the food, right? Nobody really connects to all the other ways that foods make you feel. And so they're ignorant to them.

And so when they rank foods or they make food choices, it tends to be about, well, you know, what do you want to eat for lunch? Why don't I let me try Mexican? Let me try pizza. Let me try, and I think try pizza, let me try, and I think to themselves, which one's gonna taste the best? Which one's gonna give me the most hedonistic feelings? Now, there's nothing wrong with that, by the way.

There's value in enjoying those hedonistic feelings that you get when you eat food, but you can't just concentrate on that. If you do, you'll end up obese, unhealthy, inflamed with chronic illness, and with a bad relationship to food. What we have to start to do is connect other dots to food. And when you do that, you'll actually start

to crave these things. And I found this for myself. When I had all my terrible gut issues in my early 30s, I was forced to focus on this. I was completely forced to focus on this. And I started to figure out the foods that helped my gut, and then made me feel good. And then later on, when I would go traveling,

and for example, lots of vegetables, well cooked, were very important for me to have good gut health. When when you travel, it's hard to get lots of well cooked vegetables, right? It's hard to get them. So when I come home, I'd have a craving for a bowl of boiled broccoli or spinach, which doesn't taste very good. It's not very palatable. This food's

that tastes way better than that. And yet I crave these foods because I connected them to how I felt. And it wasn't just again, the palatability. So it's very important. And you can do this to yourself. And if you practice this, you'll find eating healthy becomes enjoyable. The last key word is practice. It's not easy. It takes training just like anything else we're mentioning and this is something that I had personally had to work on quite a bit with like changing the associations around food too and there's really being a little more self-aware as to why you're seeking out certain types of foods. And then figuring out, you know, when I do eat these foods, you know, how can I trace back as to which foods, you know,

were involved in, you know, proceeding the way that I feel right now, this moment. And to be able to kind of track and trace that, it takes a bit of work and discipline, but once you can start to go through that process, you realize like that's where you find those healthy foods that really do help with digestion. They really help with, you know, I sleep better when I consume these types of foods.

I feel like my workouts, I perform a lot better because I'm introducing these foods instead of always kind of leaning on that taste, know, taste, pleasure, and all those types of signals. Well, this one goes hand in hand with the last tip. Yeah. So many times when you say the statement, you know, chase health and aesthetics will follow, the next follow up question that you always get is, well, what is chasing health look like and how is it so different than aesthetics?

Well, this is what that is. It's learning to connect the dots to all these other health markers, skin, hair, mood, sex drive, all the things that I was talking about. So, you know, they go hand in hand. If you, if you understand that and if you can get a client to focus on it, then the aesthetic part will follow, but this is what we mean by pay attention to how the foods make you feel. Yeah. This is how I got myself to enjoy fish. I hated fish growing up. Couldn't stand fish growing up. And then I learned about the health benefits

and said, let me give it another shot. Let me pay attention to how I feel. And I went on vacation. I was in Southern Italy. Lots of great fish places to eat there. And I started kind of eating more and more. And I noticed my joints felt good. My digestion felt good.

Once I connected those two, I created this subconscious connection between the two. Now I can actually enjoy eating fish. And I swore to God I hated fish before that. So it's really, really interesting. All right, the next one is focus on the big rocks. What does that mean? There are things that have big impacts on your lifestyle

and the quality of life and your health and your fitness. And then there are things that have small impacts on those things. We tend to get caught up in the small things because it's the small things that the supplement companies in the fitness industry can typically sell you, right? So what are the small things? Make sure you have protein right after your workout.

Incidentally, I make this protein shake that's really convenient. Or, you know, here's a slow digesting protein over a fast digesting protein. Make sure you eat super fast digesting carbs instead of complex carbs, post workout. This one's a little higher in the loose scene. Loose scene is an amino acid that triggers muscle growth. Here's a fat burner that shows and studies to increase fat oxidation or whatever.

We focus on all these little things and we forget that 99% of your results come from basic exercises, practice appropriately, done properly, good programming, decent nutrition, don't overeat, get good macros, kind of avoid heavily processed foods, get good sleep. That's like 99% of all your results. And the rest, all that other stuff, honestly, don't even focus on it if you don't do the big things first. Yeah. Oh, you said that perfect.

There's nothing to add to that. It's literally the whole point of this. I use that one all the time as you get people who ask questions about the latest supplement or this new study that came out that this edges this out, but instead of doing it this way to do it that way. Oh, that's you know, estrogen's out there. I gotta get them all out of here. Yeah, and I'm like, listen, if you're not checking the boxes that you just listed right

now, if there's no reason for boxes that you just listed right now, if there's no reason for you to worry about that one thing, go visit one of the big rocks first and get, and by the way, even people that are, quote unquote, checking the boxes still probably have room to improve the big rocks, right? So maybe you get, you consider yourself a good sleeper, but you really haven't put together a sleep routine

or really made an effort to actually prepare yourself before to go to bed and try to optimize it. Well, go optimize your sleep before you look for the latest supplement or the new cutting edge science that says this edge is this how. And so I think that the big rocks are everything. Not only should you have to check all the boxes, but then you should go back and revisit am I optimizing all those boxes before you even get into a little nuance?

Do you all that before you were about EMF exposure? Yeah, actually, I think it was one of you guys that said, it was like trying to get your card to go faster and spend your money on the spoiler and the racing sticker on the side and then it really amounts to stickers. Exactly. All right, so this next one is about women and bulking.

Okay, the word bulking, just the word bulk. You never would want to say that to a potential client or a potential new member. That's a female because bulk, what do you mean bulking? This is, and so women never try, or typically don't go into a caloric surplus to try to build muscle and boost from metabolism because God forbid I gained a pound on the scale.

It's all about losing. This is terrible because there's a lot of benefits to going to a caloric surplus, namely building muscle, getting stronger, getting your hormones to balance out and boosting your metabolism. So we did an episode telling women, you need to bulk and here's why and here's the benefits.

And man, it went crazy because women never hear that message, it's something because women never hear that message. It's something they're never told. I think this one, and this isn't on the list, but this goes hand in hand. The women bulking and then women strength training, five by five heavy lifting. Right, so.

And I think the reason why it's so impactful is because this is kind of common knowledge for how we train men forever. It's just for some reason We've decided that oh, it's not for women shouldn't bulk or women don't need to live heavy But you do light reps a thousand times. Yeah, but the fact is that they benefit just as much as men benefit from doing those things But the reason why I think that was such a Saud after or powerful tip for so many people is because that's not what's being communicated, right?

And advertising and things like that still. So it's still not common knowledge that that is the same for women, that they get tremendous benefit from going on a bulk, they get tremendous benefit from lifting really heavy. So us coming out, and I believe that was actually one of our first episodes where we addressed things like this, was I think one of the most impactful things that we've ever said, but the truth is it's not anything revolutionary or that we made up or we created. It's just something that's basic science. Yeah.

When you're trying to build muscles, same rules apply. It's just not advertised at all or marketed to women like it should. This should be a movement to help women really build a physique that they want in the appropriate way. So this is something we had to bring to the surface. Now the next tip just says it depends. Now what is that? I love this. Yeah, how is that a tip?

Well, okay. Here's how you always know a good coach or a trainer versus a bad one. When you ask them a question, hey, what's the best exercise for my legs? Or what's the best form of cardio? Or what's the best exercise for my legs? Or what's the best form of cardio? Or what's the best food to eat to build muscle? And the answer you with, it depends.

You know you're talking to someone who knows what they're talking about. Now while they're considering the individual. That's right, there's so many things that you need to consider before you could ever get the best answer for yourself. For example, someone says, what's the best form of cardio for me? I'm gonna ask what form of cardio do you enjoy the most? Why is that important? Because the

one you enjoy is probably the one you're going to be most likely to do consistently. If someone says to me, hey, what's the best rep range to build muscle? Well, I'm going to ask you, well, what's the rep range that you train in the most? Because that's going to determine the next answer I give you. And it's typically going to be the different one, the one that you're not doing right now, which actually goes back to one of our other tips. So, it depends is very important because a lot of things depend on the context, the individual, their goals, their fitness history, their psychology, what they enjoy, what they don't enjoy.

All that matters before we can give the best answer. So this was another hack that I figured out early on. In my career, I was, became a fitness manager pretty early. So for most of the career, I was training trainers and running a club. And so I had a ton of members that would always talk to me and one of the most common questions about, how do I know which trainer is better?

How do I know as a good trainer? I was like, if they answer, if she or he answers, it depends first before they answer your question, that's a sign of a good coach. If they give you an answer right away to your direct question, like you said, what's the best exercise for this, what's the best food for this, what's the best this for that? And they respond with an answer without asking you more questions first and then saying depends. That's how you know you don't have a good trainer.

And that's also how you know you probably have a really good one is if they start with that because it is. It's so important to get other information before you recommend anything. Now, the next one is it says, I don't have to train six days a week to see results. I'll take it even a step further. Six days a week of training is too much

for optimal results for most people. This is just true. Now, I think we believe that more is better because that's what's popularized, that's what sexy when you see the super fit whatever influencer on social media. Just videos. Yeah, they talk about all the crazy workouts and what they do. By the way, you need to understand is most of these influencers are part of what's called

fitness entertainment or fitness media. And you better believe if they show you their workout, they're going to show you the craziest hardest workout that they ever do, and they probably will add a little bit to it, because why would I tell you that I did three sets of squats and three sets of rows, right? I'm gonna tell you I did the craziest workout possible because that's what's really cool. This is why you see fake weights. That's why it doesn't even exist otherwise. That's right. No, the truth is the optimal dose for you, which has to be appropriate for your body, your body's ability to recover, your current fitness level,

that's what's gonna get you to the fastest. Any more than that will get you there slower, and less than that will get you there slower. And six days a week of training tends to be too much for most people. That's someone who's real advanced, who's really built themselves up to a certain level. That's the person that might want to train that much.

This was up there with one of the biggest tips or game changers for me, because I kind of, you know, applied training the same way I applied almost anything. Anything else I do, just more. More is better, work harder at it. Like that's the answer to more results or getting better at something.

And even though there's a sliver of truth of that in this situation, it's normally counterproductive for many people. And I fell into that trap for many years training six, seven days a week, even double days, just piling on more and more and more to try and get there. And I'll never forget one of the things that completely catapulted my gains was actually pulling back like three days out of there. So I remember, I can't remember what I was reading or when it was, but I do remember this was in my mid-20s

and I was in the heart of this, I was playing basketball, I was playing, I was doing snowboarding and wakeboarding and I was training seven days a week and I wanted to build muscle and I just, I was at a hard plateau and I couldn't, it wasn't an exercise, I couldn't change anything to do that. And I can't remember or remember reading about

like volume and over application of intensity. And I remember going like, okay, well I've never actually tried to do less. What would happen if I scaled back to three days a week? And I swear I added like 10 to 15 pounds. And at that point in my life, like it was really hard to get a couple pounds. And to see like 10 to 15 pounds. And at that point in my life, like it was really hard to get a couple pounds and to see like 10, 15 pounds come on,

I went holy shit, this is crazy. I'm doing less and I'm building more muscle, but it is. It's a balance, it's not as simple as the more you put in, the more you get out with this, which is how we kind of approach everything else. And that's the problem. And that's also why I think this tip is so powerful of people, because I'm pretty sure a lot of people approach their health and fitness the same way.

It's very similar to me with our leave-tune the tank sort of advice in that, you know, just the common thought is that always more is better. More is better, more intensity, you know, more volume, you know, all this, more is better, more is better, more intensity, more volume, all this, more is better stuff. You start to realize that it's dose dependent. So there is the sort of perfect dose, the amount of stimulus that your body's gonna have the best chance of growing in adapting towards. And so that's where the science is in fitness. And I think that people,

a lot of times don't realize there's a legitimate scientific process to this. And the closer we get to that, the more success you're going to reap from. Yeah, and to be clear, I mean, if you're a beginner, like two days a week, we'll get you the best results to start. Honest of God, two or three days a week maybe. And there's a long way to go with that before you add an extra day. All right, here's another one, right? Quit measuring your success by the scale. Now, I love this one because when I, I use this as a sales technique when I would get someone to get a new membership, they would talk about how they want to lose 10 pounds so bad, and you know, that's all that matters, and I'd say, well, we could cut your leg off, and you would lose 10 pounds, bad. And, you know, that's all that matters. And I'd say, well, we could cut your leg off

and you would lose 10 pounds, but that's not really the kind of weight that you want to lose. And you'd see them laugh, but I think I'd make my point, which is the weight on the scale, I mean, it's one, that's one metric that you can use to measure.

But what is that weight made up of? That makes a bigger difference. Like, if you see a 200 pound six foot male at 10% body fat you see a 200 pound six foot male at 10% body fat or a 200 pound six foot male at 25% body fat, they look very, very different. And they have very, very different health and performance yet they weigh the same. The 25% body fat guy, he's gonna be much bigger in the waist.

He's gonna much bigger jeans, he has to wear. Not gonna be as bigger in the waist. He's gonna much bigger jeans, yes, the wear. Not gonna be as healthy or as fit. The 10% body fat person, of a six pack, small tight waist feel really good. This is true for women as well. I know I've had female trainers work for me, five, one, 135 pounds, but lean. And people thought they weighed 100 pounds,

because how can they only, how can they win 135? They look like they're weighing 90 pounds or 100 pounds are so small. I say, well, muscle is very dense. And the scale tells you some of the story, but it doesn't tell you anywhere near the whole story. It's not just that. It's also how much our bodies can change.

The look and the scale can change hour by hour and day by day. It can flood, I mean, stress will change the look and the scale can change hour by hour and day by day. I mean, stress will change the way your body holds on to water. So you gotta rough day at work. You're diet was perfect, you trained, but at a really stressful day, either at home or work, and also in your body will hold on and retain water.

And also in your look bloated or fat, but you didn't get fat, all you did was hold on to some water. You might have that day decided to eat, you know, couple handfuls of sunflower seeds and season your food or eight out twice and you normally don't eat out at all. And now you've, you know, taken in, doubled a triple your sodium intake

and now your body holds on to more. You might have been 50 to 60 grams more carbs that day and so your body holds more. You might have drank two or 60 grams more carbs that day and so your body holds more. You might have drank two or three more glasses and you're going to all those things and I'm talking and you could fluctuate to nine pounds. That's how crazy it was and I'm 200 something pounds. So obviously if you're 130 pound person you're probably not going to fluctuate nine. But someone my size as fluctuated as high as nine pounds through the night. And that wasn't me gaining or losing fat or muscle. That was just a fluctuation of water.

And that makes a big difference on the scale and how you look in the mirror. So being attached to the ebb and flow of the scale and how that changes can really throw you off on what you're doing. Because what I would see would happen is many people are guilty of this, they're doing the right thing, they're doing a great job,

and then they have exactly what I said, a stressful day, a little bit more sodium, drink a little bit more water, some of that. And all of a sudden, the scale goes up two pounds, and their goal was to go down. And what do they do? They over-correct now. Now they go, oh shit, I was overeating,

or I didn't do enough cardio, so then they ramp up cardio, cut calories, yet they were right on target They had no idea. I'll never forget having clients and typically so be female clients that would say this they go They have to cancel workouts for the week because they'd get the stomach flu right stomach virus Then they come back and they say oh I had this stomach, but you know what the good news is I lost 10 pounds They were all happy about it because they had a stomach virus. It's like probably 10 pounds of muscle and it's probably going to come right back because they tied their success to the scale. And again, it's one metric. There's many, many metrics you should pay attention to. And if it's

just the scale, it will lead you in the wrong direction. All right, here's the next one. Again, a non-fitness one. There's a story behind this. And it says, don't buy a horse for your family if you can't afford it. Oh, dude, wisdom. Do you remember where this one came from? Well, of course, yeah, no, of course I remember. This is you making fun of me right here because my people are aware of me sharing my childhood before of not of having electricity out, living in nine different homes, being evicted before.

I know what food stamps look like, yada yada yada. And I've also shared other stories about us having a ranch and having horses, and I remember you called me out one day and said, wait a second, I thought you guys didn't have money. I thought you have horses. Who has a horses are expensive. They're expensive to buy, they're expensive to feed. I said, yeah, well, it shows you the relationship

that my family had with money growing up, right? So yeah, no, I think that's the thing. Why did electricity turn out well? We got best of you. We got a feed boomer last night. That's why we did that dinner tonight. Yeah, so I think that's the advice is here is to... Well, you know, here's how I'll tie it into like a real advice because I think it's silly.

But I think that financial health is really important too. We talk about stress and people don't really talk about how important it is to have a good relationship with money. Now because of how I grew up, it definitely, I swung the complete opposite direction, which doesn't mean that I necessarily had a good relationship either with money. It wasn't until almost 30 years old that I kind of find balance with my relationship with money. And I think a lot of people's relationship with money

is out of whack. They have a very poor relationship. So I do think there is tremendous value in looking into that. If you're somebody who's never really analyzed or been self-aware about, you know, what is my connection to money and my relationship to it? Do you hoard it?

Do you blow it? Do you flaunt it? Like all these things are signs of your relationship with it and assessing that. So important, like financial health is skills, it's skills and discipline. Like I have friends that I know are often in financial trouble.

I know often, if they've got evicted or they've had to sell their car or things got reposed. And you see the gifts that they get, their kids and each other for Christmas. And I'm like, you bought your kid, you know, the new Xbox and three, like that's like $800 or $1,000, like what are you doing? And it's just, it's poor financial health, right? It's not really, you know, having a good connection

to money and it just results in poor health and that often results in a lot of problems. All right, so the next one, fall in love with the process. So here's, here's where I'll go with that, right? So if you have two people and one person is just in love with walking itself, they just in love with walking itself. They just love taking step after step. The other person really isn't in love with getting to a particular destination, which

person is going to walk farther in their life. The person that loves the process, how do we apply this to exercise? Imagine if you enjoyed the process of eating healthy. Imagine if you enjoyed the process of training your body. You would never have to worry about reaching a goal or hitting a new PR or hitting a body fat percentage. It would happen as a result of loving the process and it wouldn't be nearly as much of a struggle

is if you're like, my goal's lose 15 pounds and then you get there like, all right, what do I do now? My goal is to gain 20 pounds of my squat and you get that in there, all right, what do I do now? My goal is to gain 20 pounds of my squat and you get that in there. All right, what do I do now? The process is everything. If you love the process, the goals hit themselves. Yeah, because a lot of times the opposite is like,

I'm so fixated on this goal that I'm gonna ignore that there's certain things I'm doing right now. I just really can't stand. Like I have this view of getting up early in the morning, like beating myself up, it's like all of these negative associations early in the morning, beating myself up. It's like all of these negative associations involved with the process, but for a pretty long amount of time, you could sort of go through that and push. Push through all the pain, and honestly, that's the majority of the message that we see

all over the place on Instagram. We see it from all these influencers out there, you know, the 5am club, you know, like, like, defeat your inner bitch or whatever they call it these days. And to be honest, that is such, I mean, inevitably you're gonna, you're gonna get so fed up with that process that, you're gonna fall off,

and then it becomes this on off relationship of, you know, wagging and off the wagon. Well, this is the exact way to break the on and off cycle, right? So that's exactly what I was going to say was that you, you know, most everybody falls in this trap of on and off the wagon and that's because they're so focused on the goal. Either one, they fall off the wagon because it's so hard and they have a reach their goal or two, they reach their goal and then they're like, okay, what do I do now or I'm over it and they stop. So to break that on and off the wagon thing is to fall in love with the process. I mean, I think of the same thing. It's funny. We just recently

we just talked about financial health and money. The same process happened for me with my relate. I was so focused on a dollar amount. I'll never forget reaching that dollar amount. I got there. Oh, I got my amount of money. I knew I needed to be happy. And what happened? I was fucking miserable.

It's the worst time in my life. I'm crazy as that. My whole life I was driving towards this. When I stopped focusing on the actual money and focus more on what is my why and the process and relationship building and the things that I would like to do regardless if I get paid or not get paid, well guess what happened?

The most money ever in my life ends up happening. So that's the same concept I think happens with your health and fitness journey. When you get out of this, oh, I need to have this goal, this destination to get to versus learning to love all the things that come from the process of exercising, working out, then you break that on and off cycle and you fall. And the irony of that, guess what we'll probably follow after that. Absolutely.

Now, the last one, focus on strength. Now, why do we say focus on strength so much? Is that the most important or the only metric you should measure? No, of course not. But here's why strength is so great. It's objective. The problem with a lot of other metrics, especially the mirror and how you look is it's so subjective and we fool ourselves so much. And this happens to all of us. I mean, I love I used to I love doing this with family members. Well, they'll look at old family photos and they'll look at the picture and be like,

oh my God, I looked so good back then. And then I'll remind them, yeah, back then you used to say how bad you looked. And you'd see their face like, I guess I did. This is really weird. I thought I looked terrible. I looked so good. It's all subject, most of the things

that we tend to measure and follow with exercise are these subjective things. Strength is objective. And here's the other thing about strength. If you're getting stronger, of things that we tend to measure and follow with exercise are these subjective things. Strength is objective and here's the other thing about strength. If you're getting stronger, you're probably doing a lot of things right. It's hard to get stronger and do a lot of things wrong. It's very, very challenging. So if you're in the gym, you're working out and like, wow, I did another rep.

Wow, I added five pounds. You can pat yourself on the back because you're probably doing a lot of the right stuff and you're probably putting it together in the right way. It's also the gateway of breaking that bad relationship with the mirror in the scale. So this is the advice I think that we all give when all of us got the same question from a client about,

oh my God, I'm so worried about the scale was up, down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I know exactly what both of you would say, the same thing that I would say to that client is, throw away the scale, stop worrying about that, all we're gonna worry about is getting stronger right now. So even though client comes in and says, all they care about is I wanna look this way

or I wanna be here, I wanna weigh this much, or I wanna look like this old picture of me or what that, I know exactly how the two of you advise the same thing that I would advise is, by hearing that, I know right away, I need to break that person from that relationship that they have, and then I need to get them focused on something that is more objective, and then put them over focusing on strength,

and I know that that stuff will come later. Yeah, this first, I first figured this out years ago, I trained a therapist and then she loved my training so much that she referred to me a patient of hers with her permission, of course, who is a recovering anorexic. And so I had the opportunity to train this person and work with the therapist on the training. And I remember the therapist telling me no scale, no mirror, no body fat percentage testing because this person, it'll set them back and they have a bad relationship with their

body. And I thought to myself and I said, you know what I'm going to focus on? I'm going to focus on them just getting stronger. And the therapist said, yeah, I love that. Let's do that. And it worked. It worked so well, this client enjoyed working out, focused on getting stronger. And it encouraged them to eat more, developed a different relationship with food.

It's, again, it's a subjective metric. And again, if you're getting stronger, you're probably doing a lot of things right. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you build muscle or burn body fat or get a better relationship with food or improve your health. Again, it's mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin is at Mind Pump Justin.

I'm at Mind Pump Salon. Adam is at Mind Pump Adam. 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 MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic.

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