Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2275: The 8 People Most Likely to Overtrain

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

What is happening on a hormonal level that makes these avatars believe this is healthy? (4:15) Defining overtraining. (7:30) Clear signs you may be overtraining. (8:59) The 8 People Most Likely to Overtrain #1 - Competitors. (12:32)  #2 - Type-A people. (16:52) #3 - People who use exercise as a drug. (21:23)  #4 - Post-partum moms. (24:26) #5 - Just divorced. (27:52)  #6 - Ex-high level athletes. (29:47) #7 - New Year’s resolution people. (35:31) #8 - Fitness professionals. (37:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Entera Skincare for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Promo code MPM at checkout for 10% off their order or 10% off their first month of a subscribe-and-save. ** February Promotion: MAPS Performance | Extreme Fitness Bundle 50% off! ** Code FEB50 at checkout ** Mind Pump #2010: Seven Reasons Your Workout Isn’t Working Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded Fitness Health and Entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about the eight people most likely

to over train. This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Intera Skincare. Intera is a skincare company that makes peptide-based formulas for skin and hair. This is cutting-edge stuff you will not find over the counter. Go check them out, get 10% off.

Go to interaskincare.com, that's E-N-T-E-R-A, skincare.com forward slash N-P-M. Use MPM use the code MPM for 10% off your order. We're also going to sale this month on some workout programs. Maps performance is half off and our extreme fitness bundle of programs is also half off. If you're interested, you want to learn more or just want to sign up, go to maps, fitnessproducts.com and then use the code F E B 50 for that discount. All right. Here comes the show.

Here are the eight people who are most likely to over train. Ooh, let's talk about this. Our goal today is to piss off everybody watching. That's how you should. Hey, listen, one of the, one of the benefits of working in gyms for as long as we did is you start to see patterns, right? There's, you start to see avatars, if you will. And so, and I know I wrote this list out and sent to you guys and you guys are all on

board. I mean, you know, when we get into the list, but I mean, wasn't it like, as soon as you saw these, we were like, oh yeah, these are totally these avatars are the ones that tend to open. Yeah. And I think the, I think the idea is to shed light one on the average person who probably, uh, you know, uh, spires to be like one of these people or put these, put these people on the pedestal or help somebody who, uh, maybe just doesn't have great self awareness,

maybe look at themselves a little bit and they're training a diet. But in every category that you have listed here, there's also exceptions to the rule that do it in a very healthy way. Of course. I don't think that's the point of the conversation. I think the point of conversation is that these types of people tend to be the most likely. So if I have a client, I'm sitting down, right? And I think that's the point of this episode or what you wanted to do is, and I'm asking the, you know, I'm going through with a park you and finding out about them and they, they fall in one of these red flag categories. Yeah. Right away. It's like, right away, there's, it's a flag for me. And it's,

Oh, I need to inquire more about their behaviors around exercise and nutrition because there's, there's a more likely chance that they abuse nutrition or they abuse exercise, whether they realize it or not. And obviously if I'm, if they're hiring me, my job is to help them and help them work through that. And so it gives you some insight. Yeah. Here's the thing with, with exercise, it's a stress on the body.

Essentially the reason why your health improves and you get stronger and all that stuff through exercises because of what's known as a hormetic effect. It's like it's a like it's a dose of poison that your body then bolsters and strengthens against for future potential insults. But that also means that you could give yourself too much of the poison. You could give yourself too much of the stress. And there's data, by the way, very clear on this. You look at longevity when it comes to exercise and there's this interesting bell curve. It's like people who don't work out, they die early. People who work out the right amount,

they live a long time and are real healthy. People that overwork out, they die early too. So it's, uh, overtraining isn't just the like, you know, a term you hear when it comes to athletes and all that stuff, like literally overdoing it is not just not good for you. It's terrible. I feel like the message of recovery just isn't really a popular message in general. Like it's always about the work. And so like people's perception of, of when their training and fitness in general is

like, how much can I accomplish? And then it's like bragging rights. And so it's like, you know, they, they forget the fact that all the real magic actually happens after the insult when you're recovering. And so you have to like factor both of those in together in order to have a successful result. I think there's, there's actually a common theme amongst all eight of these people. And they fall in the category that we've talked about before the show,

which is a cortisol junkie. Yeah. And I think before we get into the people, I think it's super important. I think you articulate this better than I do on what is going on inside their body that makes them believe what they're doing is actually really good because it feels good and it seems healthy. And so that to me was always the biggest hurdle is try convincing somebody who did one of these workouts or trained in this manner and can recall, Adam, I know I felt good. I feel good. One

of my favorite feelings is after I accomplish said workout. So I don't care how knowledgeable and experienced you are, you're not going to convince me that this isn't good for me. So I think it's first important that you explain what, what is happening on a hormonal level inside of their body that's giving them this response that makes them believe that this is healthy. Yeah. So, and this is eventually this stops working as well, but the spike in stress, chemicals and hormones gives you energy. Okay.

Cortisol is an energy producing hormone. It releases energy. It breaks down tissue in order to release energy. Now over time, this can be really bad. And I don't think I need to go into that too much. I think everybody knows now by now that, you know, too much cortisol over long periods of time breaks down the body. It encourages fat storage around the midsection. It degrades muscle, can break down bone and ligaments and all that stuff.

But in the short term, if you're feeling like we're tired or depressed or whatever, and someone was able to make your cortisol spike, you would all of a sudden feel hyped. So what happens is people, they're, they overwork themselves or over trained, then they go take this crazy, you know, workout class and they temporarily feel like, oh, hyped and I feel good. And then they add caffeine on top of it, which, you know, makes it even stronger. And so let's say that I feel good, but they're not counting the times in between when they're starting to feel bad and how much caffeine they have to use. And now they have to

use sedatives to go to sleep type of deal. So, and that, and now by the way, here's some characteristics of a cortisol junkie. They over intense workouts, over restrictive with diet. They tend to be late for appointments often. By the way, this is a subconscious way to produce stress in their body. They tend to have stressful relationships. So the people that are active tend to be stressful. And it's literally their body is addicted

to this constant spike in cortisol. Over time, by the way, this can turn real bad. Well, and many of these people are completely unaware of all these behaviors. Like you just listed off a bunch of things that over time I started to piece together. It's like, oh, that's interesting that this client of mine that is this falls in this cortisol junkie

is also the one who is always rushing in the door one minute after their appointment started. I also know that they're in a very toxic relationship to hang around a bunch of friends that love to gossip and talk shit about other people. It's like stressful work. And yeah. Yeah. And so they had the type of job that they have is super high pressure and they

don't even realize that subconsciously they're attracted to that, that cortisol spike all the time. And so they, they subconsciously put themselves in all these situations, constantly chasing that natural high. That's right. So overtraining essentially is defined as doing more than is necessary to accomplish your health and fitness goals. So that means you're over doing it, right?

So you send the stress, your body's adapting to it, but now you, you're adding more stress on top of this. And all you're doing is compromising your body's ability to adapt, to recover and adapt. By the way, recovery and adaptation are separate. Recovery is healing. Adaptation is above and beyond healing. So it's like, if I scratch my skin, my skin will heal so that it's back to normal. But then if I do that enough times, I'll start to develop a callus. So that would be the adaptation, right? Doing more than is necessary is considered overtraining. Now, over time, now this compromises your progress.

Okay, so if you send the right signal, everything's perfect, maybe you build, I'm gonna use a fake number, but let's say you gain a pound of muscle in three weeks if you do everything right. If I add more to that, all I'm gonna do is reduce the amount of muscle that I could build because now I'm dipping

into my resources for more and more recovery. So it compromises progress, but over time it actually starts to result in worsening performance and then degrading health. Over time you start to dig a hole and a deeper hole and a deeper hole. So not only are you coming back to the gym and with no performance improvements, but now you start to notice you're coming back to the gym and you're performing worse. Less strength.

It's like I'm working so hard, but why am I, why do I have less stamina? Why do I have less strength? Like this is weird. Before I wasn't improving, so I added more to my plate thinking that's what I needed. Now I'm going backwards. Some signs, some really clear signs of overtraining.

The first one is poor sleep. That'll be the first thing that's affected. You're just broken sleep throughout the night. Lower libido, very strong food cravings. This is an interesting one. You'll find that you'll either have no appetite or you'll have these crazy cravings for hyper palatable foods, right?

So processed foods, sugars, those types of things. Hot and cold intolerance is another big one. This is one I noticed for myself. Um, inflammation, just stiffness. And then a high rate of fatigue and injury, uh, overtraining is a very, very fast, easy path towards injury. And the, and the data on this is pretty clear. I would also add, um, putting in tons of work, get seeing no results. Yeah. Super common, right? So this category of people, all of these people fall in this, like, I can't figure this out.

I'm training four or five, six, seven days a week. I'm sore. I'm sore. I can't possibly do more. Yeah. I'm pushing my, I know I'm working harder than the next guy or girl and I'm eating good. I'm not making any bad food choices yet.

I'm not seeing the progress that that is a common theme that you see amongst all of these people that are suffering. Now, here's the good news is that if this is you and you're putting like ridiculous amounts of work, you're burning yourself out, you're, you're, you're cutting your calories or low, your body is stalled. There's no progress. You can't figure out what's going on. The answer is literally to do less and your body will progress.

And I used to, this was both my favorite and least favorite type of client, least favorite because it was so hard to convince them that this would work. Favorite because when I would convince them, it would blow their mind so much that it was almost the oftentimes are in disbelief. Like I remember one specific woman that I trained who was like this and I cut out two of her cardio days and replace them with a Yen yoga class. And she's like, should I adjust my calories? I'm burning less calories. I said, no, let's keep your calories the same. Let's see what happens.

And she lost body fat. And I remember her coming in and she was tracking everything. She was like super meticulous. And she was almost in tears. She's like, I didn't believe you when you told me this. She goes, but it's really weird. I'm doing yin yoga, which was like sitting on the floor holding a stretch.

Whereas before I was doing these crazy hit cardio workouts for an hour and I'm getting leaner. This doesn't make any sense. So there were my favorites, I blow their mind, but at least favorite cause convincing these people. These are my favorite clients as we go through the list. I mean, this like you, you talk about how you train so many advanced age clients. I, as we go through this list, I mean, this was my clientele list.

Like literally like, all these people, yeah, all these people were my clients. But what I liked about what I found was that most of them have a very high level of discipline and consistency. They just were going about it. It's just misplaced. Exactly. And so if I could do what you said, which was convince them that less is more or there's a better way for us to do this and it's not beating ourselves up or pushing more or dieting harder, if I could get them to buy in in once I got into buy in, these were some of the best clients because they, they already showed the crazy discipline and sacrifice and all the other things that take to be very consistent at training and

nutrition stuff. Boy, once I got them to switch that, these were some of the best results I ever gave people. So although they can be hard to break from these habits or get them to believe or trust in you, once I did, I felt like these were the people that I did the best with. Yeah. Okay. So number one has to be competitors.

Now this category is both stage presentation competitors, bodybuilders, physique competitors, bikini competitors, but also people who enter and sign up for competitions. It's rare for somebody to sign up for a competition who's already working out. Okay. So let's just, let's just paint the context. They already work out. I'm already running. I already run, you know, four days a week or I already work out or whatever.

Then they sign up for a competition. They almost always dramatically increased the workload on their body to a, to a ridiculous level. So it's like, I run, you know, four days a week now, you know, total of, you know, 30 miles a week or whatever. Oh, I send it for a marathon. I guess I got around 80 miles a week now. I'm going to double my efforts. Yes. And I would see this all the time. It's like signing up for competition almost always meant over training.

And this was always a struggle that I have with clients that was signed up for competitions. Well, bodybuilding competitors in particular, I was so fascinated by this. And obviously, if you've heard the podcast for a long time, you've heard me probably talk about this at Nazion because it was, it was so mind blowing to me to, to see you the common thing that I found. And what I found in the competitor space was the thing that was most common in all of them. They just had this ability to suffer longer than the average person. They just, they, that's like a skill that they had that like most people just cannot punish themselves and suffer for that long of a period of time.

And these individuals that could get up on stage and present and actually win had that ability. And they, and they ended up getting good physiques in spite of their approach at it. And this was, again, I built a side business. This was my first entry into the, entry into the, you know, online digital, you know, coaching space was unintentional. I did not mean to build this or start this. I just was into competing. I was building a following for the app that Justin and I were building, but I found so many of these people training improperly and dieting improperly. And I remember being backstage and trying to convince them all like,

listen, it doesn't have to be, it does not have to be this hard. Granted, I know that the final weeks going into the show are tough. I don't care how healthy you are, how healthy you do it. There is a sport side of it that's a bit extreme, but it doesn't need to be eight or 10 or 12 or 16 weeks of suffering like this. There's a much more methodical approach to this. Let me help you, let me show you. And then that's how I got all these clients because of how bad they were abusing training. Well, I mean, yeah, you see that a lot. Because they also do that with nutrition and, you know, their training as well. But, you know, even with just regular athletes that I would train, just to convince them that they don't need to go after our workout to go do cardio and keep sprinting and maintain this kind of level of cardiovascular endurance to really shift and

adapt, you know, and solely focus on just strength training. That was always a hard sell for me because they'd feel like they were just going to lose it. And like there was always that fear of like what I've built and put into this, like I'm going to lose this at some point. Yeah. I experienced this personally, um, when I competed as an adult in Brazilian jujitsu, my first tournament, I did jujitsu four days a week and I lifted three days a week. Okay. So seven days a week, I was doing Jiu Jitsu. My first tournament, I did Jiu Jitsu four days a week and I lifted three days a week. Okay, so seven days a week I was working out.

And I remember in that tournament, I got so gassed out. And I was training so much and it was so frustrating. Like why did I gas out? Why did I have no stamina or whatever? The next tournament I did, I did four days a week of Jiu Jitsu and I did one day a week of strength training. And the one day a week of strength training I did was 30 minutes. And the fitness level that I brought to that competition was vastly different.

So I did way less work and felt so much better. And I was like, Oh God, it was so obvious to me. I also experienced this with, um, triathletes. I, at one point I had a few triathletes that I was training and they were competing at a pretty good level one of them in fact went on to compete in an Ironman and I remember we Kept backing off on his training and seeing improvements and I said let's see how far We can go to see improvements because I have a suspicion that we're still overtraining

And it got to the point where he was doing like three strength training exercises a week That was it. And we got the best performance that we'd ever seen from, uh, from that particular individual doing so little. So the competitors got to be up there. The next one are the type A individuals. These people are very difficult to convince otherwise because they found success in every other aspect of their life.

Yeah. With just grinding, they're mastering their everyday lifestyle, like with that same formula, but doesn't work here. Yeah. It's like if, if I, if it doesn't work, work harder, if it, oh, and it's still not working, work harder. And that seems to work for these people with business and me, you know, say what you will about their work life balance and all that.

I'm talking about just what they may deem as successful. It came from them being able to outwork everybody, being able to be super disciplined, 12 hours a day, work, work, work, work. Then they decide they want to work out and they take that same approach. And I know they would hire me and it was like, okay, so five days a week, right?

Five days a week. And then what do I do on the days off? I'm like, no, you're not working out at all now. That's way too much. These are for sure the clients that would go do things even after your session. Yes, you see them. And it is purely what you said. It's that they have over, you know, depending on how old they are, you know,

decades of their life applied this philosophy of the more I put in, the more I get. The harder I work, the more return there is. And that is everything from their education to their work life, their work, their work to a sport they might apply to everything that they've done in their life. It has always served them to outwork the next guy or girl. And for the first time in their life, they're, they're running into this challenge because nutrition and exercise doesn't work that way yet everything else in their life is proven to them that it does. So getting them to shift their paradigm is extremely difficult to overcome.

And this one always does take time to get them to understand. But once again, when you get this person to turn, they have created such good disciplines and habits. But these clients, like it always blew their mind how little effort they had to put forward towards this in order to see those results, especially if they could dial in the nutrition side with it. Because if you were super regimented about the diet and then I just got you training

a couple of times a week, we would see tremendous change in your physique. We didn't have to train six days a week and be doing all these biohacking things. You had to be careful, in fact, with these people because you could, if you presented it as, and I'm thinking specifically of some people that I work with, if I presented it as you don't need to do that much to get great results. They would interpret it as, no, no, no, I can do all that work. You don't need to give me the easy way to do it. Give me the more and I'll get there faster.

So I had to be very, I had to learn how to present it as no, doing that much will actually not get you progress versus you don't have to do that much because we're here in Silicon Valley. The people that would fall in this category for me with these tech executives, I get these high level VPs or whatever presidents of tech companies and they'd come in and I, you know, I'd ask them what they did for a living. And they'd say, Oh, I, you know, do this for Apple or whatever, for good, and I'm like, okay,

we're going to have to have the conversation of, I only need to see you twice a week and that's it. I don't need you to do anything else. I actually had one person, no joke. I had this executive come in. I don't want to say the company because they'll know who they'll know I'm talking about them. But they came to see me, I talked to them and I told them,

no, I'm not going to train you five days a week. You're not doing anything now. It's way too much or whatever. They went hired another trainer Oh, yeah, because the other trainers said yeah, I will do that for you and guess what happened a year later They came back and hired me because I said you were right everything you said was right and I got sick and my body broke down And now I'm ready. Yeah, see I had the same experience except I would took them on five to six days and those off days We did like the yin yoga, the mobility sessions, the recovery. That's a good approach. But it was all structured.

But yeah, you really had to like, you know, keep them actively doing something like in order for them to feel like they're productive. And so that was just the mentality that they had that they brought. These are also the ones that are drawn to this was something we were just talking about off air. You know, they're, these ones are drawn to all the biohacking tools yet they don't sleep. Yeah, they work, they work a 16 hour day. They only sleep four hours, you know what I'm saying? Trying to convince them to get better sleep. And then they're like, you know,

what's the latest red light therapy thing I could do? Or I was like, I heard this cold punch thing does this or like, and it's just like, how about we get better sleep and we pull back on some of the stuff that we're doing and watch how much you're better, how much better your body responds. So this personality not only wants to overdo it, they also tend to be attracted to all the hacks and gimmicks versus versus rest versus rest and the simplicity of focusing on sleep. Okay. The next,

this next category makes me sad because, uh, you can, and oftentimes we get callers that fall into this category where they'll call in and they'll start talking to us about how they're working out. And I'll ask them a little bit about their history because I know that I have a, like a, you know, a hunch that they may fall in this category. And then oftentimes they do. And it makes me sad because people who use exercises, a drug are typically dealing with some kind of

trauma. And the exercise and the workouts are is a literal way to distract themselves. And you can see this, like you'll see this is the this is the girl that lifts weights, does cardio, walks 15,000 steps, like just, she just won't sit still. Or this is the guy that maybe he just quit drinking alcohol, but now he's turned in, he's turned exercise into drugs. So now it's like he is doing, working out two times a day, three days a day.

I remember managing gyms and there were some members I would see that would come in several times a day that were doing this and it was hard because it's like breaking an addiction to a drug. It's like, and, and, and because also exercise is not in a category like drugs. People think exercise is always healthy. So trying to convince this person like what you're doing is not good for you. Really challenging.

Really challenging. The easy thing on this is like, this person almost always suffered from addiction somewhere else. They were an ex sex addict. They were an ex gambling addict. They were an ex-sex addict, they were an ex-gambling addict, they were an ex-drug addict, they were ex-there was, they were already, they had that addicted personality and at some point in their life, they gave up whatever that other unhealthy drug or addiction was and they traded it for what they thought was a better or healthier version. And at first, maybe it did and at first it probably served them a lot. And if you had to say, Oh, man, is it better for you to be addicted to exercise and training

than probably doing cocaine? Probably. Yeah. But it still doesn't mean that it's healthy and ideal. It just means it's one, one more step in the, in the better direction. It doesn't mean that we've solved the root issue. And so this is super common in somebody who has an addictive personality and is already another one is food addiction. That's the one I was just going to say. So you have people that... They get gastric bypass and now they can't eat like they used to. They were addicted to eating food and they were hundreds of pounds overweight.

They finally snipped that in the butt, but then they became obsessive. A lot of times the people that have these great transformation stories, that's what has happened is they've gone from their addictive personality and the addiction that they had around food to now being addicted to the exercise like that. And they, and then they have this, I need to do the outer of cardio every single day. I need to train seven days a week. I need to be in the, and when they say things like that, you know, they're still suffering from the same thing that caused the addiction with the food. It's just they've now transferred over to the exercise. And many people that are listening to this right now are probably, well, so what? Isn't that a healthier, better way? It's like, man, they can

healthy or doesn't mean healthy. That's right. And it can, and it could definitely lead to a lot of bad things by going that direction also and, and or eventually they break. They go back to that. So they're other drug to another drug or other, their old addiction. That's right, that's right. All right, next up, this one's also a tough one, but I would often see this with postpartum moms who would hire me after having a baby

and who just had such a tough time with the fact that their body changed, they maybe had a tough pregnancy, and they don't just wanna improve their fitness. They wanna get- They to get they want to jump right back like I want to bounce back. That's it. I don't care Let's do whatever it takes. I got a nanny. I got whatever I'm gonna hire you train me and this one's tough because it doesn't take much as member overtraining is Just doing more than is necessary and the in the context here It depends on the individual like you take a postpartum mom who just had a baby,

wasn't able to exercise, over-trained and it's not hard. So you may think to yourself, I just had a baby, like three days a week, like I used to work out, it's not over-training, it is for you. So this person may not look like they're over-training in comparison to like the competitors or the typing, but they often overdo it. And what ends up happening is injury or hormone imbalance as a result of this,

which is really hard. They're dealing with different physiology at that point. They're, they're, you know, and that's the thing is it's, they'll think back when they could do X amount of reps and they could do a longer workout and like what they used to do, uh, versus like what their current state is in terms of their physicality, what they're able to take on like stress-wise. And so like a lot of times it's way less than they anticipated, which is really hard for a lot of ladies to cope with in terms of getting back on track.

So I found this most common with a type of mom. I trained a lot of clients like this. And it seemed to be this common theme around the, my moms that really like identified with their, the sexy young version of themselves, right? Where before they were a mother, they were a model or they, they had, they just super hot body was tight. And then all of a sudden they have a baby and they went through this time of not training,

gaining all this weight. Maybe we got some stretch marks. So you have things like this. And they have a real hard time accepting that their body is different than what it was. Or that accepting that it may take some time. Yeah, right. And so, and they want to get back to that so bad

because that's what they were. It's an impatient. They were celebrated for a lot of their life for being so gorgeous and beautiful and fit and thin and all these things that they have attached themselves to and they're struggling with this transition into motherhood and it's like they want a race to get back to that. And it's not that you can't get this amazing body.

If I had plenty of moms that look better post child than they did, I think my wife is an example is I think Katrina looks better after she's had a child than before she had a child. So it's not that you can't have the best body of your life afterwards. It's that they were so, they were so attached to that and identified so much with that, that they struggle with the patience that it takes to build that, to build that physique.

Well, remember over training is a spectrum. So you just had a baby, you couldn't work out like you used to, or maybe you didn't work out. Maybe it was a tough pregnancy. You had the baby, so you're told you can't work out. Now you're ready to work out and you got lack of sleep on top of it. Your hormones are... The dose is totally different now. And so, yeah, the dose is totally different.

You may even think of the workout you did before you had the baby. And so I'm just going to jump right back into that. That's over training. Yeah. So that's why this is such a common category, uh, is, is precisely because your body's different. It takes a little bit of time. Now you will get back, but you got to give it some time.

This next category was, uh, an interesting one because when these people would go to hire me, first off, I knew it was a done deal. They're going to hire me. This person almost always was going to say yes to hire me, but then the struggle was then convincing them, sorry, there's a right way to do this. And these are the just divorced clients. You ever, you guys ever get that? Oh, they come in, they just got back on the market.

I'm looking to hire a trainer and you know, like, they're going to hire you for 40 sessions, like they're just, they're down, right? But then they're like, yeah, I wasn't working out. You know, let's, are you open five days a week? Can I come in here? Five days a week is that what you can do? And it's like, no, no. Take it all on at once.

Take it all on at once. Let's just make this happen as fast as possible. And I had, you know, I always had to convince them like, there's not a fast or slow way. There's a right way and a wrong way. And there's one way that works and one way that doesn't. And the way that doesn't work is overdoing it. So we have to do this the right way.

This one's also closely related to the person who uses exercise as a drug too, because a lot of times this is, uh, aside from the, I'm newly on the market. I want to put myself in the best shape. I'm also probably mourning from a divorce. And there's a part of me exercising that's making me disconnect from my body and from what's going on and distract me from what's hurting inside. And so there's a couple of things that are happening here, right?

It's like one, I'm super motivated to get out there and build this body because I'm now newly on the market again. Then there's also this, I'm broken inside because my marriage failed and I don't want to deal with that. And so one of the best ways to distract me from that is keeping myself moving busy, sweating and beating myself up in the gym. It's therapeutic too.

So that's a hard thing to refute. Yeah. Cause the motivation is there. What do they call it? The revenge body. You know, they come in and it's like this, this total hustle to try and yeah, just feel better, but also too, like, you know, they have this like drive to, to make themselves reflect like this, this awesome, uh,

package that they're presenting out there. Yeah. Yeah. Tough one. Uh, next is our, the X high level athletes. So these are people who probably in my opinion, very hard. They competed at a high level in high school or college. Um, they haven't worked out for a while. Maybe they had some kids and now they're ready to start working out.

So, you know, the kids are going back to school You know in college, I played basketball or I swam or I played water polo or I was football whatever You know now I want to hire you the the reason why these people almost always Overtrain is because their conception of appropriate intensity appropriate levels of frequency and volume is based off of their peak training, which no longer applies. Even their diet is so hard to scale in because they had to eat a particular way to perform at a high level. Like you take a water polo player in college, who's now 30 and hasn't trained forever. You tell them to work out two days a week.

They're going to look at you like, you don't want me to work out. Like this doesn't make any sense. I was doing five hours a day. Like this doesn't make any sense. I was doing five hours a day. Like this doesn't make any sense. Very hard to convince these people otherwise. Oh, I have people come in. It's just muscle memory, right? Yeah. Like your muscle, your body has amnesia.

That's, that's way far back. You know, like you're a whole different person. Like it's just, it's just funny to me. Cause you know, and that's a tough thing because like we all kind of have those glory days that we remember in our head and like to like, even if it's not an athlete, it was just like me at this point in my life, I want to be like that person again. And it's like, to just take inventory of where you're at now and be methodical and be smart about your training approach is, that's a tough thing. We all have this fantasy that we could like do all these like moves

still and then really get after it like we used to. But you know, that's, that's, that's something we definitely have to overcome to be smart. These are the hardest in my opinion by far. I always had a hard time with this client. And I think there's, there's a few things that are happening here. One, the, like all the other people have uh, have other things in their life that have made them want to drive in the gym. These people, these ex athletes actually drove in the gym for decades, many times, right? They were all through high school, all through

college. They trained a certain way. So they've already been conditioned to know what it's like to push, to know what it feels like to train the gym. They go way too hard. And then also they've attached how they felt, how they looked back then to where they're at now. And they're like, I know what I was doing back then. I've done it before. I've done it before.

I know what it feels like. I've accomplished it before. I felt it. I've seen it. I like, and so getting that, and then, and then if you talk about someone who's trained anyway for years, they've created habits around that. So you as a trainer, not only are you trying to convince them that it's not the best approach, but you also have to break habits around their training for a long time.

This is a really, really tough client to break through to because there's so many things that they're attached to that way of training. Well, it's difficult too because like I was just helping out some of my friends that played football and you tell them to just squat and deadlift and overhead press and all these things and the loading of that will be like what they did when they were training for football and it's like, it's just, and then all of a sudden now it's like, I, well, my shoulders hurt when I've been doing your workout and my knees are starting to talk to me And I'm just like you have to like progressively scale yourself back up. You can't just jump right back to this intensity There's also the pain tolerance

I mean when you exercise you do that hard and you do it for years you develop a relationship with pain from the workouts That can be quite beneficial, but if you train and compete at a high level, you ignore pain quite a bit. I mean, you find me an athlete that competes at a high level who isn't competing with an injury. It's almost always something is always hurt. So they have that in their head. They go to the gym, you know, 15 years through it after they stopped and their knees starts to bother them or the, they just, they just don't know how to

not push through it. It's like, I got to push through it. It's like, I gotta push through it. There's also this massive misconception around training to be an athlete versus body composition. Yeah. And health. This, yeah, and health, this ex athlete, they have two decades of training like an athlete, and they're, you know, long retired now and have an exercise for 10 years and they're way overweight. And when they hire you, they don't come back and go, Adam, I want to get ready for the NFL. They go, I just want to be healthy.

I want to get rid of this gut. I just want to feel good. I want this pain to go away. I want to be, and so they're thinking body fat percentage, body composition, right? Build muscle, lose body fat, be healthy. They're not trying to be the next athlete, but yet they still think that that's the way to train.

So there's this misconception of like, just cause I was an athlete and I train that way. High performance is not health, it's high performance. Right, exactly. And so there's a lot to have. To me, this is the hardest of all the ones that we listen to. They also, not to keep more on this, but they tend to have the hardest time with diet.

Like I remember when- Right, cause they could get away with a bunch of shit. Oh, bro, I remember specifically this woman that I trained, she was in her 30s. She had some, she just had some kids that were old enough now to go to preschool or whatever. So she came to hire me and she was a high level water polo competitor.

And she's like, I don't know why I'm not losing weight, Sal. I'm all I'm eating is I mean, I mean chicken and rice and turkey and broccoli. I'm eating really healthy. And I said, well, can you bring one of these meals and let me see what you're eating? So she brought me one of the meals and I'm like, that's like 14 ounces of chicken it wouldn't be.

She's like, it is. I said, yeah. I said, six ounces is your serving. And she's like, oh, she's like, I thought this was, I said, that's what you used to eat when you played water polo because you had to. You needed the calories. You needed the calories, but you don't need 14 ounces of chicken with every meal. You know what I mean?

We're not trying to eat that much anymore. All right. Next up are the New Year's resolution people. These people all overdo it and then disappear typically by March or April. And that's because New Year's resolutionists tend to come in under this umbrella of hyper motivation. It's the beginning of the year. I'm ready to start ready to take things seriously. And so they make promises to themselves and they, and they, they create habits where they try to create habits based off of being

motivated. And when you're hyper motivated, you will always overestimate your ability always. You ask anybody in a hyper motivated state of mind what they think they can do in a week or a year or whatever. And it's always gonna be way more than what they say they can do when they're not in that hyper motivated state of mind. So these people come to sign up and they start,

and this is why the gyms are packed from January till March. So you get all these people come in at all the time and then they all fall off. Yeah, I feel like these ones are easier of the group. They just have a total misconception around what's realistic, how they should set goals. They were drunk on December 31st and told themselves this is what they're going to do tomorrow. And so I think they just don't have an idea of what it's like asking a kid when he gets older, how much money he wants to make, and he just throws some random, I want to be a billionaire. I want to be like, So I think they just don't have an idea of what it's like asking a kid when he gets older, how much money he wants to make.

Can you just throw some random, I want to be a billionaire. I want to be like, how about we start with learning how to make money or building a business or getting a job? How about getting a job first? Like we'll figure that it's like the same thing. It's like these people just throw these pie in the sky things that they want to do. I want to compete for the first time. I'm going to lose a hundred pounds or whatever it's like, but yet you haven't

even proven to yourself. You can go to a gym for 30 days. Like let's first start there. So these clients, if I can get a hold of these like, but yet you haven't even proven to yourself. You can go to a gym for 30 days. Like let's first start there. So these clients, if I can get a hold of these people, well, you know, sometime in that first, that first month and help them out. You can get them to stick. Yeah. I feel like I get the mistake.

I think it's just reframing, uh, their goal and actually setting a more realistic expectations and then small steps, small goals, small wins. But, uh, absolutely if left to their own devices, these are the people that will go in balls of the wall and they'll be out within three to four weeks. Yeah, totally. And then lastly, little self reflection here, uh, but people who work in the fitness space, fitness professionals, they almost always over train.

There's a few different reasons I'd say the first one is you love working out. Well, you love it so much. You would rather do more than do less, even if you got the same results. And by the way, what I just said, to the person who's not a fitness professional, probably doesn't make sense. But to fitness professionals, it makes a lot of sense.

If I said to you, if you're a fitness pro and I said, hey, what if you had an option to work out seven days a week and get the same results you would get working out, three days a week, both of them ideal, what would you choose? A lot of them would be like, I'll choose a seven day a week and get the same results you would get working out three days a week, both of them ideal. What would you choose? A lot of them will be like, I'll choose a seven day a week one because they love working out so much. I just love being in a gym.

That's part of it. The other part of it is, is, is just the body image issue. That's, to me, that's it. To me, it's one, it's one, one common theme that causes all of this. Almost all of us got involved in this space because we were insecure about something. We had some sort or some form of body dysmorphia, whether you want to label it as that, or you just think you had you're insecure about your calves, you're insecure about your flat butt, you're insecure about

your small shoulders, you're insecure about your waist, you're whatever it was, there was something about your physique or your body that you, that we were insecure. You were teased about that you wanted to change and you went after figuring it out and you figured it out and it changed your life, made you confident, made you feel good. You got, then you got the things that you were insecure about. You got compliments about, and now it has just fed into this thing.

And now I'm in this place to teach others and help them to get through their insecurities also. And then you make a career out of it. And you never work past that and you get stuck in that. And it's tough because especially in today's time with social media and we get praised for the way we look. How are you going to inspire people if you're resting? Yeah.

Like it's just not, it's not something you would think about. Like, uh, they get in this conundrum of like, I always have to kind of show people like all the work and I just have to show them that I'm constantly doing things and improving my body. And it just, you know, it can be a beast to where it's like you, you're continually trying to feed this beast and it's not benefiting you. Well, you're, you, I get these results and I get, and I, I build this physique and then I get celebrated by my peers and outs at all these other people.

And yet I never really solved the insecurity. Like I've got this deep rooted insecurity that made me go after this thing. I accomplished it because now I'm getting compliments on that body part or that thing that I was insecure about which gives me this temporary bit of confidence and feels good and then and the more I put it out there and the more I share it with everybody else and the more I teach others the more I get confirmed back how great I am how good I look and how and it's like you never really worked on the thing that caused that and it just Manifests in all these different ways which ironically if you did you'd be a better trainer on top of it.

That's right. It would actually make you far more, because I think sometimes they feel like, well if I don't do this much am I going to be a good trainer? I'm really the leader representative. You know, I mean, you know, speaking personally, I mean I dealt with all those things, but then as I got through some of them, just I loved working out, like one of the best things I ever did was not working a gym. Because if I'm around equipment and I'm working in a gym, I kind of want to uh, just I loved working out. So like one of the best things I ever did was not working a gym. Cause if I'm around equipment and I'm working in a gym, I kind of want to go

work out all the time. I like it so much to have a addictive attachment to it. And that's another part of it. Like the, the, the, the feel of exercise, the feeling of movements, the, you know, trying different things out, like you can get carried away, but I'll, I'll, I'll say this right here. You'd be hard pressed to find a fitness professional that didn't overdo it. I'd say a majority of them do. Oh, that's because a majority of them are there because the insecurity thing.

Listen, we talk about this on the show all the time, that health is this massive sphere of all kinds of things, relationships and sleep and your, the, all these other, other things aside from just lifting weights, lifting weights is only one piece of the pie. Yet we don't ever take a day off from the gym. What does that say? Yeah, you're sacrificing all these other things. Yes.

So one of the best things I ever did was to actually lay off training the weights all the time. That was like one of the best things because, and then go focus on other things. Like where, how's my relationship with my wife? How's my relationship with my kid, my partners, my business, myself, my self love, my diet, how I eat, like, oh, there's so many things that encompass health and lifting weights and building muscle and looking awesome. Which again, ironically would make you a better coach. Yes.

To understand those things. And some of them have made it through that, but most of us are still stuck in that. And that is what drives a lot of us to be these great fitness professionals. And we live in a time where we were social media glorifies these bodies. And so it just glorifies the dysfunction, which is really, and so then you get trapped there because you're now known for this incredible physique or these physical pursuits. Well, look, hopefully this episode, if it's you, uh, this helps you with some self-awareness. And if it's not you and you have some friends that fall in this category,

send them this episode. Also, if you love the podcast, do this, go to mind pump free.com. We have a bunch of free fitness guides on there that can help you with health and fitness. You can also find us on Instagram, Justin is at mine pump, Justin. I'm at mine pump to Stefano and Adam is at mine pump. Adam. Thank you for listening to mine pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance.

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