Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 545: How to Get Your Body in Competition Shape... Even if You are Not a Competitor

Episode Date: July 6, 2017

There is a right way and a wrong way to prep your body for a competition (or the beach, for that matter) and unfortunately most prep coaches are teaching the WRONG way. Follow the wrong path and you will lose fat AND muscle while damaging your metabolism along the way. In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss what it takes to drop body fat, build muscle, maintain a healthy metabolism and enjoy life during the process. Get our newest program, Kettlebells 4 Aesthetics (KB4A), which provides full expert workout programming to sculpt and shape your body using kettlebells. Only $7 at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Got a beard? Condition your beard with Big Top Beard Company’s natural oils and organic essential oil blends to make it not only feel great but smell amazing! Get Big Top Beard Company products at www.bigtopbeardcompany.com, code "mindpump" for 33% off. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of your favorite podcast, Mind Pump. We took a laugh. I know what's your favorite. We had a good time. We talked about aftershave toothpaste. Why is it burned?

Tiger balm and the perception of benefit. Don't put it on your balls. Yeah, we talked about pain, like what is pain? And sometimes there's not a physical reason for feeling physical pain. I think it's your mind. There's a lot of stuff going on. Does it mean it's not real?

I see, it did. We talk about it. We talked about some cool experiments that demonstrate how the body can perceive certain things. And then we get into some pretty interesting conversation about contest prep. Should you even compete? Yeah, the damage people put their bodies through.

We talk about what people do with exercise. The big nose, like the big things that people do that tend to slow their metabolism down. A little recap on the San Jose Pro show. Yeah, we talk a little bit about that. And the metabolic damage differences between men and women, there is a difference. Also, this month, our biggest promotion yet, we're actually doing a buy one, get one free promotion.

So first time ever, enroll in the MAPS Super Bundle, which is about a year's worth of exercise programming. It's got MAPS and a ball, MAPS performance, MAPS aesthetic, MAPS anywhere, and MAPS prime. So basically you follow them in succession. It's a cornucopia of MAPS. And you use the prime, MAPS prime to kind of pre-prime and post-prime your workouts.

That's all put together in a bundle, and it's discounted greatly. Well, if you enroll in that, you get one for free. So you can do this like with a friend, a family member, your spouse. It's freaking awesome. To find out more about this, go to mindpumpmedia.com. I feel cool. Like cool air on my face.

You know what I mean? Just blasted. I haven't blasteded breeze I haven't shaved my face and like a year and Did you put on after shave on it? No? Yeah, the burning one. I love doing that. Yeah, just slap it on your face step. Oh What's the deal with that? Yeah, no, what's the What's the what's the thought process like that like it's like a has to burn yeah? Yeah, I know that yeah, but like what it's supposed to help, but let me ask you guys this like alcohol on your I know why I know why it burns I don't think I put a liquid fire on it. No, but is that really necessary?

That's it what Is it necessary? Is it just like a pain that we've always tolerated? Oh yeah, you should burn. It makes me wonder if like when you put the after shave on, if it doesn't burn, I don't know about you guys, but back when I used to shave, if it didn't burn, I was like, this is bullshit, I'm like, this is not the, I'm gonna buy another one. Yeah, I didn't go closer.

It had to burn my face. Let's, it's gonna be real. But that's it? No, I don't think so. It's the same concept as a toothpaste that bubbles up. I know, if it's a detergent in your face. Yeah, the more it bubbles up, this must be working. It's frothy.

It's nice and frothy. And soap on your body, right? And like you get soap that like lathers up. You're like, oh, it's working good. It's lathering up. Do you know how many people? You trick this all. You know how many people are losing their minds right now,

just realizing what you said, because like, same the all of shampoo Yes, like soap toothpaste the suds do mean nothing nothing It doesn't mean you're getting it's more effective. You're just somebody figured out a way to market it or like when you get like Shampoo you ever get your hair wash at the I know we have an old listener that knows where that started I can't there's somebody who's like 70, who's like, I remember I'm not out to Doug's neighbor. Yeah, let's know. Doug should know this, why did they do that?

Where did that come from? And I wonder if it all started at the same time. I wonder if bars of soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and the aftershave all put it together on the same time, it was like a eight company. It might, you know, it's funny because. Old spice figured it out, there's probably an old spice. Yeah, people like to feel stuff.

Brute. They have to feel something for, to feel like it's working. Yeah, it's true. Dude, that's true. Old man like smells. It's the science behind fucking pre workouts. Yes, it is. I mean, they put fucking niacin. All the shit that makes you feel hot and tingly and flush. It's like, what, is it really burning fat or is it just make you feel like that's probably what's in that You know when you have flakes like dander flakes like you have the dander shampoo it like burns. Yes I bet you they just put it in there to make it feel like it burns. Yes. Yeah, yeah, those fuckers So you know when you go to the salon and they wash your hair and it feels like cool. Yeah, feels the tingle it means it's working They just put a little menthol in there.

That's not really doing shit for you. Feeling cool. Sneaky bastards. And nice. Yeah, we want to feel stuff. And I'll just suck. So I remember about maybe 15 years ago, 14 years ago, there was this topical cream that you could buy.

And of all people, Kevin LeVroni was promoting it at the time. And you put it on the top. I just saw this literally yesterday, this old guy, you know, the old Mr. Olympia guys are the ones that I just saw a page with Flex Wheeler and his buddy. And I can't think of his name right now. He goes all the way back to Arnold Times and he's still competing. And he was talking to Flex at Olympia and he had the cream, you know, rubbing the cream on your biceps to get a pump and stuff. And I was just like, so this cream was, exactly that, you rub it, like,

oh, I'm gonna work my biceps today, so I'm gonna rub it on my bicep to get a better pump in my bicep. And what's in the cream is capsaicin, capsaicin, I hope I'm saying it right, which is the active ingredient pepper. Mm-hmm. There was arganine, of course, after sprinkled little arganine because it's gonna give you a better pump, Capsacein, capsaicin, I hope I'm saying it right, which is the active ingredient pepper. There was arganine, of course, that's a sprinkle little arganine

because it's gonna give you a better pump, it doesn't really work that way. And then something else in it that basically makes your skin red. So when you put it on, you get like this red... You feel it! Wherever you put it, you'll get this red, like not rash, but swollen effect on your skin.

And here's what's funny about that. It's irritating your skin. Yeah, if you're really gonna get a better pump on your bicep, putting it directly on your bicep is not gonna help because it's not gonna go to your bicep, it's become systemic. If you were targeting it, bro. If you were to absorb anything through the skin that way,

which you're not gonna absorb, or deny necessarily that way, but hilarious, right? Cause I remember buying actually bought it. Actually fell for it because- I rubbed it all over the place. Yeah dude, so- So I rubbed it on his dick. Yeah, exactly.

Just jack it. I wanna get a plump there. Things are happening. I didn't know capstase and burn. But no, I rubbed it on my arms and I worked out and they just got really hot and red. I remember thinking like, this is bullshit. It's the fuck did I just do?

This doesn't feel good at all. How many things do we try growing up trying to get a better pump or build more muscle? What's okay? I was really into Tiger Bomb there for a minute. I'm trying to think of the dumbest thing after workouts and then just rubbing that all over the muscles. So that stuff actually, that's the entire bomb there.

That stuff actually works, but it doesn't work in the way that people think it works. Yeah, people think you rub it on a targeted area and it like goes through the skin, penetrate to the skin layers. And it doesn't go that deep. It doesn't even go beyond the thousands of their whole markings that it goes super deep.

No, it doesn't do that. What it does do is it, because it causes a sensation on the skin, because the chemical composition of things like menthol, stimulate the nerves and cause a sensation of cold or hot or whatever. You're not actually cold or hot, but it tricks your body into feeling that. And what happens is, because the central nervous system is getting this signal and perceiving it to be colder hot, it interrupts and confuses the pain signal.

So it's not like curing the pain or reducing inflammation and like that. It's literally just confusing the signal, so then your brain doesn't perceive the pain the same way and you feel relief. So it does work in some cases, just not- So okay, next, find that a little bit more. So you're work in some cases just not so okay next point that a little bit more so you're saying that when you put that like icy

hot on yes so you're creating a new pain that you're your your central nervous system is and why why that would work is because when you get pain somewhere right like your body automatically is in a sin fluid there right to recover because it's it's senses that it's it's not even It's not even painted because when you rub it on, it doesn't hurt, it just feels cold, but what it does, no, I mean, an area that you're having. Oh, right, right.

You have pain there. And that's the body's natural response is to send fluid there, right? Inflammation or inflammatory, right? Yeah, right. So that's what it does. So by putting this on there, it creates this cooling process.

Is that what you're saying? No, it makes you perceive what it is. So here's an example. Here's an example, you ever chew mint gum or winter green gum and then you breathe in and it feels so cold in your mouth or you drink cold Coke or something and freeze a shit at your mouth. It's not actually cold, it's not making your mouth cold,

it's just making you perceive your mouth to be cold. So it's not actually doing anything other than creating this perception. So when you're rubbing these lotions or creams or whatever on your skin for pain, because it's sending a signal to your brain and making it perceive differently, it actually can interfere with or confuse, if you will, that's a bad word, but it's interfering with the signal of pain. So then your brain perceives the pain a little differently, and for a lot of people, that could mean less pain.

So like we have this, so my girlfriend has this, maybe you talked about this on a podcast, she has this green oil that she got in, because she used to travel with a Cirque du Soleil, and so she'd go all over the world, and when I first met her, she would get migrating sometimes, and she had this little tiny bottle of this really potent green oil

with all those Chinese writing on it. And she'd dab it and put it on her head. And she said, I made her head it go away. And I remember thinking like, that's bullshit. And she was like, no, it literally makes the migraine, she's like, it's still there. I can still feel my head throbbing, but I don't have the pain anymore.

And then it came to me. I'm like, oh shit, you're interrupting. You're confusing the signal. So I do a little research and that's exactly what those things do. Well, that makes me think about foam rolling as being, you know, it's very similar concept. Yes. And that's why it's almost like you're localizing a different area of your body for, you

know, your body to respond to, like, sensation-wise. So it's a similar, the similar way that I think, and I believe Western science will explain acupuncture this way eventually, but I think acupuncture works the same way. I don't think that there's a Chinese chi energy that's flowing through the body and you're those blocked areas of chi and you gotta loosen it up. But I think that's the way they explained it. That's how they use their language. But what I think is happening is I think you're literally

interrupting or confusing signals to your brain so that you then perceive pain differently. Now does that mean it's gonna heal you faster? Perhaps the same way massage my might, right? Because if you're walking and moving a certain way because of pain, now you don't feel anymore, now you can move and walk differently or whatever, and you're no longer causing the problem or maybe causing the, you know, whatever the root issue is, that's causing the pain.

So maybe it's a long-term benefit as well. But if you consider the central nervous system as responsible for so many things, then I could see how acupuncture and these types of, you know, things may actually have an effect. To me, that makes a lot of sense when you, especially when Justin brings up the foam rolling and what we know about that and what we used to think about that, right? We used to tell people you're breaking up knots,

but in reality, it's more of a central nervous thing that's going on more than anything else. Well, yeah, and I'll have people who will have, like they'll feel their knee pain, have a foam roll, do a couple stretches, now walk. Oh, my knee pain's gone. You're such a miracle worker. And it's like, well, I don't think I got rid of the problem.

Sort of band-aided it. Exactly, but I think a lot of the pain relief is because we're, you know, kind of changing the signals that were, because pain is all perception. It's 100%. If you really think about it, like, have you ever done this to yourself, will you hurt? All the time, and you don't hurt until you look at it.

Then you look at it and say, Oh, it hurts so much worse when you see blood gushing out, right? When you see see blood gushing out, when you see the blood gushing out, also in the pain come. So they do this famous experiment, which it's so fucking awesome, you can look it up on YouTube.

Well, it doesn't, was it Volta Longo who talked about this or who was it guy who talked about it with the whole snake biting you in the ankle? Wow, yeah. Who was it? So you can look, it's very similar what I'm about to say. So you can look up this study on, or as a TED talk, you can look this, it's very similar what I'm about to say. So you can look up this study on,

or as a TED Talk, you can look it up online, but they'll have a bunch of subjects or people wearing these virtual reality glasses. And when they put them on, they look down at their body and they see this doll. So they start, they look down at their legs and they have little doll legs or whatever, because what they did is they hooked up a camera

in front of a doll, looking down at itself. So when you little doll legs or whatever, because what they did is a hooked up a camera in front of a doll looking down at itself. So when you look inside the VR and you look around, everything looks the same except when you look down at yourself, you look like you're like this little doll, right? And so that's what you see. So then what happens is a researcher, and they have you barefoot and everything.

A researcher will come over and they'll tickle your foot with a feather while tickling the doll's foot with a feather. So when you look through the VR glasses, you see these little doll legs getting tickled with a feather, but then you feel that you're getting tickled. And what happens is your brain very quickly, you can do this on yourself if you could get the setup, you could actually do this to yourself. Your brain very quickly connects to the doll and perceives that the doll is you. So then they'll do all these things to the doll's leg

while they're doing it to the left. What a fuck up chain. What a fuck up chain to just chop them leg. That's what they do. It's like a voodoo doll. That's what they do. That'll be so fucked up, dude. So you can tickle you with a feather

that also has to go butcher knife and just go, WACK! That's what they do. So they do all these things. Really? That's a fucked up thing. And you're feeling like, you're feeling your leg being touched, but you see this doll's leg being touched

as you look through the art classes. And you don't even realize that you're totally connecting to it. Except when you're a kindle and you have no nuts. Yeah, exactly. And then they take a knife and then they pretend to stab the leg so people kind of flinch and go, oh my god, this is so weird, ah, whatever. And then they actually hit the leg, people freak out.

And when they interview them afterwards, they say literally for a split second, I felt you cut my leg. Yeah. Like how fucking weird is that shit? Yeah, that's really weird. Well, they did that same experiment, split with like a false arm on the other side and put a camera on it. Yeah, and they hit the hammer on the hand.

And so yeah, you're looking at it like you see, like it becomes your hand. And like you feel it. So think about this, like, what does that tell us? That's a lot of pain. That's trippy. You know how many times? How many times people go,

because there are real reasons for pain? There's definitely, you know, you can definitely have an imbalance. Well, it serves you. Enjoy, right, swelling, whatever. You can have real root causes of pain, but a lot of pain is connected to our own perception and emotion.

And when people will go get massage or whatever, and they'll get emotions released from having body work or whatever, and some people will say, oh, that's ridiculous and hokey. No, it's actually legit. I've had clients who have worked through emotional issues, and all of a sudden, no more back pain, no more shoulder pain or whatever.

As a result of it, I actually had a client who I worked with for a long time on her shoulder pain, initially when I worked with her horrible imbalances, definitely some issues, we corrected it all to the point where when we would work out, I wouldn't even see an imbalancing mark. Your shoulder's working well, everything's working well. I was very confused as to what was going on,

why she still felt this pain. She went to the doctor, MRI, everything, everything came back normal. And so we started talking about these potential emotional connections to pain. And one of the questions asked her, I said, how long have you had the shoulder pain? And she said, oh, for the last four years, and she used to be very active. And it prevented her from being active. And I said, well, how did that make you feel? And she's like, it felt horrible. I felt like I was forced to not do the things that I love to do. And so she had this very strong visceral emotional connection to the shoulder that fucked up her life, basically, right?

And so I said, I wonder how much of this is you perceiving. And here's the thing, people want to hear that because they think you're saying it's not real. I'm like, it's real. You feel it. You feel it, so it's real. It doesn't really fucking matter if there is a physical cause or not. You feel it. And the funny thing is, after a couple months of having these conversations and kind of

working with this stuff, she literally just clicked and the pain went away. It was so weird. Literally just disappeared. And then it would kind of creep back and then she'd realize that maybe she's perceiving whatever and then it would go away again. It's a very, very interesting experience. But doctors will prescribe things like antidepressants for back pain that has no, you know, cause that they can see. And sure enough, people will respond to antidepressants and have no back pain. I mean, how fucking weird is that? Yeah, it's a trip. I love this kind of stuff,

because I think it's great because our industry tends to be, or at least the... It's not as straightforward as you always perceive it to be. And I think that's important that people don't just, I mean, you can get examples and you can kind of make these ideas of where you think, you know, like, this concept's come from, like, but a lot of times it's more complex than we can even, like, pinpoint.

I think when we approach things and say things to people like, for example, if you start to understand this process and you tell someone that, hey, maybe they're perceiving this pain because of some emotional, whatever, or some connection to it. Like, make sure you let them know if you're a trainer. Like, that doesn't mean you're faking it, or it's not real, or you're trying to get attention.

If you feel it, it's real. You know what I'm saying? So... Well, we try and create analogies to simplify, you know, things for people. And I think that's half of what we try to do, even to be able to communicate it better, but a lot of times, there's just so many different factors that you could keep going down this

rabbit hole with. It makes me realize as a trainer to, because I was guilty of this a lot, especially when I first became a trainer, of not really believing my clients sometimes. You guys ever do that? Yeah. I feel like I asked whole, well, I think I was, because a lot of what we talk about on this show

and also why we're so passionate, I mean, recently we just defended Paul Chek on a question and I feel like why that is is because I don't know how many times I was wrong, man. I don't know how many times that, you know, what my client was saying to me or what I was mathematically adding up, it should be what should be happening, it wasn't true.

There was always, there's always seems to be this exception to the rule, you know, more often than not too. I think that was what was surprised me after you've been doing this for as long as we have, you've met, you know, hundreds of cases where it's just like, man, just none of the things that I was taught or that I was told added up for this person and it didn't work. There was so much more going on.

So much to the point where at least in my experience, so much of the results were psychological, like as far as getting to their goals, there was so much work to be done up in their head before the physical part. And I think as a trainer, that was a major, me evolving, was learning that and putting that together and going, man, I was so focused on the exes and nos of training. And once I learned to kind of let that go a little bit and figure out that, wow, there's so much more that I can help this person with their relationship with themselves, their relationship with exercise, their relationship with food. And as I could start to put that together,

things would, everything else would start to come together. But it took, it took a lot of those cases, like you're saying that where I was wrong or I couldn't put a figure it out, like this doesn't make sense. You must be lying to me or this can't be true. I know we're working fucking hard. If I worked this hard, I would be seeing these kind of results. Sneaking candy bars, I swear. Dude, I used to get really mad at clients that I think they were lying and I feel so bad because looking back, like I have people tell me like, wow, but I'm only eating 1200

calories, I'm not losing weight, but you're full of shit because you're doing this. And now, of course course I know that man, the metabolism can adapt and slow down so much. Dude, you wanna hear a trip? Check that out. Check out what happened this weekend. So I shared with you guys maybe, I don't know, maybe a month ago on Mind Pump

that I had an old client slash friend of mine in Katrina's that was getting ready for a show. And she had hired me a couple of years, I think like two years ago to coach her. And you know, she wanted to get ready for a show that's been on her bucket list. Like I want to compete. And so it was in the heart of me competing and uncoaching. And she's like, you know, I like to do this. And I said, well, you know, she wanted to pick a show.

And I told her, you know, listen, the real work is done in the off season And we need to prepare you mentally and physically before we ever even decide and pick a show And I was really adamant about that and she was a friend of mine So I was like, I think whether she liked it or not. This is how we're gonna do it like I remember you time Right, right. I shared this with you guys. So her show her first show was this weekend. Oh, she competed She competed and she hired somebody else besides me, right? And now mind you, I'm not coaching anymore doing doing that. So, uh, and she would have loved to have been coached by me. But I still wouldn't have let her because I know that she wasn't ready yet.

She hadn't put the work in, uh, long enough and consistent enough to build a good solid frame, a good solid metabolism to get her ready for a sport, this extreme of, of cutting, right? But she did it anyways, and she competed, and she looked good. She looked better than we had got her to when I had her trying to build her metabolism. We never went on a hard real cut. I was always trying to fix her metabolism

and put some good lean body mass on her. And the most, I think the lowest that I ever got her down to was about 15% body fat. And even at that point, I still didn't want her to do a show yet. So fast forward to now. So she does this show. Well, what she decides to do is day before she gets on stage, she goes to get her body fat tested, but she tells the guy that tells Aaron, don't tell me. I don't want to know what it is until, I don't want it to fuck with me while I'm on stage.

But I do want to know, I'm in the best shape of my life So I want to see where where I'm at right at and so she and she wants to open it up with me and Katrina We go there and she's like hey, she's like She already got on stage and she's like I've been waiting to open up my body fat test with you guys and go over it and I'm like great. Let's do it, you know, so she was down it. And I'm like, great, let's do it. You know, so she was down from the weight that she was with me 25 pounds. So she lost 20. So her total body weight. Yeah, total body weight. So her total body weight, she was, so she walks around normally at about 155 around that range. And so she was down to like one, what is that? Like one, one 30 or something. Yeah,

right around there, right? A little lower than that, I think. So she lost 25 pounds during this prep. And we opened it up and she's looking over it. And I saw, I'm so used to looking at Aaron's dunk thing. So I saw the body fat percentage right away and she's like kind of searching for it. And I catch it and then like, I was like, my face, I was like, oh shit. Right?

And I don't say anything. I let her kind of, she it. And she's like, is this right? That's not right. And I go, yeah, no, it's right. And she's like, I don't understand. I'm like, well, this is what happens when you cut this extreme. So he had her up to three session, three bouts of cardio day for her 10 week prep. She didn't have, she didn't have any fruit. So no fruit for 10 weeks. She, the very first week right out the gates was doing an hour of cardio plus reducing calories.

I think he had less than 1500 calories at one point and up to three hours of cardio every single day plus all of her training. And she came in at 17.5% body fat. She actually, well, because she lost the shit tons of muscles. So she got on stage and competed. That's gotta be eye opening. At a higher body fat percentage than what I had.

All that work. When I had her eating 2,600 calories, okay, 2,600 calories and no cardio and weight training. Who is this fuck stick coach? You should shout out to him, nice little shout out. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's actually a big name pro guy out of New York that coaches a ton of people.

He came highly recommended for someone else to her. Yeah. And you're an idiot. So and more than any, what was great though, was your suck. And what I might do, so I, and I told her this that she's actually, she's actually going to come in today. So you guys are going to see her. Okay. She's going to come by today and And I'm gonna talk to her about helping her,

you know, come out of this. Yeah, because this is what happens. And this is what's really scary for her. And she looks great. So if you look, I mean, she's 25 pounds less. So she's the smallest. She's been in forever, right? So she's a weight-wise. Yeah, but the rebound, you gotta be careful now. Yeah, right. So can you imagine that you lost all that lean body mass? That's the trap. Yeah, where all these competitors get into. I look so great. Dude, yeah, it's important they see that.

The hormone changes, the metabolism changes, the changes to, everything from, you know, production of catacole means to the receptors that these catacole means attach to. I mean, you're in such a damaged state. Coming out of that is so crucial because what your body, what her body's gonna want to do is blow up, like in a big way to where it's going to be very difficult to get back to where she was before. Oh yeah, I know this is, and this is happening all over by, you know, and when you lose that much weight and she looked good, so if you look at her pictures, the average person

would see that and they would be like, oh my God, they were all everyone so proud of her, you know, they're, which they should be. I mean, she disciplined herself for that long and she busted her ass to lose all that weight to get on stage and she looked smaller than she's, you know, ever really looked in the last 10 plus years. And so imagine like if you were somebody who didn't get tested, didn't have the resources of someone like me who attract her body fat before and because I had her do all that stuff when we were, when we were coaching.

And this is exactly why I don't think that people should get ready and go do a show just to do a show because there's so much work that needs to be done to your metabolism and your lean and your mass before you. You want to have a bunch of good lean mass and then you want to do it very slow and strategically and this is what happens. A lot of these competitors and then they get on stage and they see themselves

lean or smaller than they've ever been and in their head they think, I'm in great shape. You know, I'm in good shape, they think, but really you got fatter. I mean, it doesn't register for a lot of people. You could lose 25 pounds and actually get fatter. So people don't understand why. So if you took, let's say I'm walking around, so I'm 100 and I don't know how much I weigh right now, 190 something, and let's say I'm 9% body fat.

So 9% body fat, or let's just say 10%. And let's say I weigh 200 pounds. So I got 20 pounds of fat on my body. If you took that, if I lost 50 pounds of muscle but kept 20 pounds of fat on me, my my body even though I didn't gain any body fat My body fat percentage went up because now it's a greater percentage of my overall body weight And this is what may happen she may have in fact She may have less total pounds of fat on her body at this much lighter weight

But because she lost so much muscle on her body at this much lighter weight, but because she lost so much muscle, however much body fat she has is now a greater percentage of her body weight than it was before. Well, which is not, I gave her the equation this. I said, you lost 25 pounds, right? And of that 25 pounds, at least 15 of it was actually muscle.

10 of it was fat. So you lost 10 pounds of fat, which is why you feel better, right? 10 pounds of fat came off your body. So you're waist and your legs and your arms and areas that you had body fat, you feel better, but what you don't realize is 15 pounds of muscle also came off. And people are probably going like, how the fuck does that happen to somebody who's lifting weights

and training and eating good food? Let's see if this is, just keep hammering that signal for cardiovascular endurance. And you're telling your body to become efficient with calories. Calibrate of mass. It's trying to become efficient with calories. And the thing about this weight,

you're spending three hours a day in the gym doing cardio. You're feeding yourself very little, and you're doing maybe an hour of resistance training, which your intensity's probably bad, because you can't train hard, because your calories are low. you're doing so much cardio. So you are sending a signal to keep some muscle, but the signal that's overriding all of that is become very efficient, which your body tried to do by losing 10 pounds of muscle.

It's just adapted in that direction. It's slowed itself down. Well, I don't think it's an equal one to one, but when you think about it like this, to me, it's almost obvious. Like if you're spending more time doing cardio than you are lifting weights, what do you think is going to become more of a priority? Yeah. I mean, to me, it's kind of obvious like that.

It's like, if I'm spending more time on a treadmill than I am in the weight room, then the signal I'm telling my body is all easy. Even then, I would guarantee that the weight training itself, I mean, there's probably like barely any rest. Yeah, of course. Of course, I'm sure. It's all cardio. Yeah, I didn't even ask probably like barely any rest. Yeah, of course, of course, it's all cloudy. Yeah, I didn't even ask for that. I didn't have to.

You know, I'm saying I know like everything he was doing already was ridiculous. It's coaches are more on. Yeah, and well, and the reason why I wanted to share so bad with you guys was that, you know, people don't put this together because they see the smaller frame. Like, it had she not done her body fat test, there's a good chance. It's a good thing she did. That she would connect that this is the best shape

she's ever been in her life. And this is what it is. Always strive to get back at it. Yes, and this is what it takes to get there. When in reality, it couldn't be further from the truth. So I'm going to say something. I'm going to say something a little controversial here with this because, but it needs to be said.

And that competing on stage and doing what it, you know, doing these kinds of things is bad for anybody. It's bad for men and for women, but it's worse for women. It's worse for women because the female body didn't, it evolved, needing a certain amount of fat on its body. And a woman's hormones get affected in a very, very big way with extreme dieting and extreme exercise, more so than a man's and they take longer to recover. And this is evidently, you can see this in female athletes who get too lean, they lose their period.

A man is fertile. A man's always going to be fertile. I mean, you have to do a lot of bad shit to a man's body to cause it to stop producing sperm, but a woman will lose her period just getting too lean. They find this with fasting, although fasting is healthy for everybody, there are studies that are now demonstrating that women, their ability to fast for long periods of time without negative side effects is lower than a man's. Now, we can speculate why. I mean, we can think, okay, evolutionarily speaking, if men evolved to go off and hunt, we probably evolved to handle not having food for longer periods of time, looking for

food, whereas the women may have stayed back and, you know, foraged and found nuts and roots and seeds or whatever, so they didn't have to necessarily go for longer periods of time. But also the female body, much of the reason why she evolved the way she did is to bear children. That's like, I mean, that's really the defining characteristic of humans is that we procreate, or at least the defining characteristic of evolution, is that we procreate. Those of us that procreate are the ones that pass on our genes, and those are the genes that we have now.

So if a woman places herself in these kinds of positions, the body senses that this is not a hospitable situation for pregnant, whether you wanna get pregnant or not, it just senses that and it will make drastic changes to your body that are very damaging. And so when I've worked with clients, men and women who both have metabolic damage, 10 to 10 times, it's easier to get a man to reverse that metabolic damage. Women take a much longer period of time.

We just, they did not evolve to build muscle as easily or just get nearly as lean as we do. And women can get very lean, but again, a guy can get down to 4% body fat and get on stage. If a woman does it, she has to use male hormones and you get all kinds of, you know, masculizing effects and all kinds of weird stuff that happen. So I hope women are listening right now and like, you really will do some serious damage. You know, staying on the being controversial

or probably offending some people, where I'm gonna just pick you back right off of that Here we go. Well, it's it's fresh on my mind. It's You just triggered out of I was I was I haven't been to a show again since we we stopped by and saw Arja and we saw him for a a pro show so it's different so I was actually watching NPC and NPC is NPC is the is the amateur level right so this is these are all a lot of these people are in you know the first first one to five shows or potentially more if they haven't placed in the top five. Was it like a national qualifier like that? No no no this is

no no the MPs if it's NPC like that, this is at San Jose, well, I don't know if this was a national qualifier. It doesn't matter, it's amateur, right? So, and I was telling Katrina this why I'm sitting here and I'm watching these girls come out and the class that my friend was in, I think she had 18 just in her height category alone. The total in the entire bikini class

was somewhere between 50 to 70 women. Between the 50 to 70 women that I saw on stage, I can count on one hand how many of them I believe their bodies were ready to be competing at that level. And let me let me explain what I mean by that and what's wrong with this fucking sport is if you were to play, okay, so we've already talked about that competing is the 1% of the 1% of the right. Like if you're getting on stage, you're like the 1% of the 1%, competing at that level. Okay, so there's, it's already a very, very small part of the population get into that

ridiculously low body fat percentage. That's what I mean by 1% of the 1%. And then to get on, not only are you a very small percentage of the population, but now you're also getting on stage and competing against others that are exactly your height. So it's a very, very, very small sliver of people that this, these, they fall in this category. Now that very similar to like basketball players or football players or baseball players, but there isn't any sort of a filter to get you there and what I mean by that is

anybody can sign up for an amateur NPC show and say I'm gonna do a bikini show and To me that there's a problem with that. I don't think anybody and everybody should be able to to play a sport Just because they want to sign up for a sport not at that level because at that level it becomes dangerous. It becomes dangerous and it becomes unhealthy if you don't know how to play the sport, right? And so that's what I look when I look at these bodies, so many of these bodies I saw on stage and I'm going, most of these people I can tell by their frame and the way they look, they haven't put the fucking work into the gym yet. You haven't even built a physique yet, but you look cute in a bikini So you think that you should get up on stage and you hired a coach who started the fuck out of you and ran you on a treadmill for eight weeks

Fucking your metabolism up and you have no idea Because you wanted to say I got up on stage and I competed or you want to get more Instagram likes and so that I have a major problem with that. And and people didn't understand when I was getting ready for a show. I remember talking to my peers and they were like, why don't you get on stage now? I mean, you'll do well at an amateur show. And I said, well, I haven't my body, I could not even hang at a pro level when I was first training to get ready for a show. I trained for a whole year before I even got on stage. So a year I spent building my physique. Now mind you, I've been lifting weights for 15 years. And I still didn't think that I had built a frame that could compete with the 1% of the 1% years. So why would I put myself through extreme dieting to get my get up on stage to present

myself knowing that I haven't put the real work in, which is building a metabolism, building a solid frame up, before I go shred and cut down like this. Yeah, and really it's just, I mean, you're trying to warn people, like, you know, it's, here's what I would recommend, and I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying, you know.

Be careful because, put the work in. Dude, we've seen some horrible, like horrible shit people have done to their bodies. And they've done it to themselves, through going through this process. I don't know about you, Adam.

Let me know what you think about this, but in the past I've had people ask me, should I compete and what I've told them is, why don't you train kind of like you're gonna do a show, but don't actually do a show? And take pictures of yourself and just kind of see how you feel do a show but don't actually do a show and take pictures yourself and just kind of see how you feel rather than going all the way just so you get an idea of what's going on and you can monitor yourself and

see what's happening to your body. Well no 100% that's exactly what I recommend to people is that you know you should prepare yourself or train as if you're gonna get ready for a show without the pressure of having to get ready for a show because there's a lot to get ready for a show. Because there's a lot more that comes with it, and this is what ends up happening, right? And this is what these coaches do. Is they take anybody on

because they want to take the money, right? I want your money, so I'll shoot, pick a show, I'll coach you along, I'll help you out. Forget that you're not ready for it. Forget that you haven't put the real work in for your body. Forget all that shit. I'll take your money and tell you how to get ready for the next 10 to 12 weeks, which is basically a hard caloric restriction, followed by intense training, followed by a ton of fucking

cardio. And I know that, you know, any knucklehead can put together that put that together and lose someone a bunch of weight, just like they did my girlfriend. And now she's down 25 pounds, but really you did a ton of harm to her body. And she has got an uphill battle now, reverse dieting and coming out of this. And it's not as simple as, oh, just add a little bit more calories back, dude, and you'll be fine.

No, it doesn't work that way, bro. Not to mention the signals that you get post-show where you start to feed yourself, and then you get this, it's ravenous. You get this ravenous hunger to eat. Your body is going to override your logic. I mean, logically, people don't gain 30 pounds in three weeks. You know what I'm saying?

Just, and eating just horrible food doesn't happen logically, but it happens all the time after the shows on people with small frames. You know what I'm saying? I mean, when we went to the show, I went to, I've been to a few shows, and the thing that always sticks out to me is when you're walking around and you see these, you know, these girls sitting on the floor,

they look like, their faces look like they're dying. And they're, they're, they're, and they're like chewing on like a dry rice cake and they don't even have any spit in their mouth because they've probably been restricting water. And it's just like, oh man, what's going on here? Well, you're watching right now when I'm going through with prepping myself,

like as if I'm going for a show and I'm not. And a lot of people have asked me are you gonna compete again and you do this I don't know I don't have any real desire to do it, but I will tell you right now that my physique isn't even ready for it like so if I said hey I want to show in six or eight weeks I can get lean enough for a show in six to eight weeks, but I'm not in I'm not in a static shape to compete with the best of the best, so I wouldn't do it. I can, I could, but it wouldn't be smart, doesn't make sense. So I think that a lot of the bikini, men's physique, a lot of it, because it's growing like crazy. It just blows my mind every time I go to these shows and I see... Was this one...

Look, did this one look massive? Massive. They're all massive and there's just hundreds and hundreds of competitors. And I think, you hear, when I speak passionately about this, it's more cautioning people because I know the popularity is growing. It's not going the other direction. And so what I'm talking about is getting worse

before it's getting better. And so I think, and somebody asked recently, like, what does a good coach look like and a good prep look like? Well, before we pick on the coaches, I wanna address the things that people that are listening right now, they can control. If you're even thinking about doing a show

and you've never put yourself in shape and you had a good enough shape to where you can look at yourself objectively and say, hey, is my physique aesthetically put together and what I mean, some metrical balance? Do I have, like a judge would look at you, okay? Or like the cover of a magazine. If you look at yourself and objectively say, where am I, my body, my muscle mass, if you're not

there yet, then you shouldn't be even trying to pick a show yet. You should be putting your time and consistency in the gym, training, and building a frame and building a solid good metabolism. Because, and why that's important, not just from aesthetic reasons, it's important for aesthetic reasons because you're getting judged by the way you look and you're symmetry. So obviously it's important for that. But even more so, it's important for metabolism.

What I'm doing right now, I was just sharing with Sal before we got on the show and I can fuel my metabolism picking up. I mean, I'm now losing weight off of 4,000 calories. It only took about four weeks for that of me of getting back into the training volume and increasing all the,

but this is all part of the process that I would have to do before cutting. If I were to just start cutting for a show four weeks ago. Man, you'd be down to, you know, under 2000 calories. Yes, yes. For a big guy like that. And I would be starving and my body would be losing muscle mass and I would look terrible,

I would feel terrible. So right now, part of me building a frame is also building a metabolism right now. I'm building this roaring metabolism that will now allow me to cut down to 3,500 calories and that will just consistently drop. Wait, well, it's no different for women. It's just a different number. Like for me, I'm saying numbers like 4,000 calories. Well, you get these female competitors. They hire a coach and they're only eating about 2000 calories a day or less. And then they want to get cut for a show.

Like what's he going to cut you to? You know, he's going to, he's going to cut you to 1500. You're going to lose the first couple of weeks and you're going to hit a plateau. Then what's he going to do? He's going to drive you to 1000 calories. You can hit another plateau. Let me ask you again. Let me ask you this. When people are getting ready for a show, let's say they do like typical what, 12 weeks, right? Typically it's a 12 week prep before getting on stage. Of that 12 weeks, how much of it should feel like shit?

In other words, you know, because I know people who prep for a show and all 12 weeks are fucking nightmare. Like they're exhausted. A last, the last seven to 14 days tops. That's it. That's it. So if you're listening right now and you've done this and your whole 12 week prep was just a murder hell.

Yeah, just a nightmare. I mean, even murder hell, it should feel, you should feel great for most of your prep. You should feel great. I can't imagine. You should not feel at all miserable and so, and when I say seven to 14 days, I never was miserable.

I mean, that's just the hardest. That's when you start to get hard. Yeah, that's when it's like, then that's when I'm like, oh, I'm hungry a lot. You know, like I really feel like the last seven days or so of heading into, and really it's not the last seven

because it's the final three, I'm refeeding the body up. So it's like this small window of five to seven days of that last bit, because really the healthy, our body is only gonna lose about a half a percent to a percent of body fat per week. Okay, so you're talking, and these are all obviously arbitrary numbers,

everybody's uniquely different, but it's a good estimate. It's a good general number. Yeah, to give people talking, and these are all, obviously, arbitrary numbers, everybody's uniquely different, but it's a good, estrogens, to give people an idea of what this should look like. You're not losing more than one to two pounds of fat and a week. So when you come to your last couple of weeks, if you don't look about stage ready already, what you're gonna do in the next two weeks is,

you're not gonna make that much change. You're gonna kill your metabolism though by cutting even harder and pushing even harder on the treadmill and training hell intense and reducing calories. You're gonna do more harm than you're really gonna do good. You can't possibly lose that much more body fat in that last week or two.

So you should already be shaping up the way you should be getting on stage well before that. And what sucks with this whole mentality is then when, you know, like if I go to coach people, and luckily, and I don't coach very many people, and I never coached anyone for a show, and I refuse to, mainly because I don't have any experience doing it. You know, so I wouldn't be a great coach for it, but also because I just refuse to get someone to a level that I know or do something that I know isn't necessarily good for them.

But the tough thing is that when you're working with people and it's three months, now you've been working with them for three months, like, you know, the weight hasn't really come down that much. You have to explain to them what's going on because they were so brainwashed to think that you get these crazy results right off the bat and that people, it's all about short term. It's all about what's happening right now and not the long term. And luckily, people know me through the show so they know what my mentality is and my philosophy. So I don't get too much of that, but I still get questions. I can't imagine trying to be a coach who doesn't have a podcast where people know this.

Someone hires them and they say, okay, cool, check this out. You're not going to lose any weight for about six months. You're not getting any clients. It's almost like you have to do the shitty stuff to keep people happy, otherwise you're not going to build a business. And it becomes, it's very difficult it's tough it's tough for people and it's almost like who's fault is it you know I mean I mean who's the blame is it the coaches and the trainers or is the people who pay for this and who demand it and

then you know are they're happy when they get it and then when they don't get it they're not happy right you know like well we we had a question in the QA, and I don't know if we will get to it and answer it, but a girl did ask me, like, you know, what I thought, a, you know, I talk all this, like, this is all the bad, bad, bad. Well, what's a good coach look like? Well, honestly, I don't blame the coaches as much because there's, I feel like a competitor should know

what's good or bad before you hire coach to get ready because I feel like a competitor should know what's good or bad before you hire coach to get ready for a show, whether that be through with... That's actually an interesting point. So you're saying, don't go into it, so blind and ignorant that you just do whatever the coach tells you because you don't know it. They're gonna try and get you to look

whatever best they can in that short amount of time that you're giving them. You're giving them that get you to look whatever best, you know, they can in that short amount of time that you're giving them. So you're giving them that amount of time. Exactly. Great point right there, Justin. And that's why you can't get that mad at these bad quote unquote coaches because you hired them. You gave them a show that you're gonna do in eight to 12 weeks.

He's gonna try and get you as small as possible for that show. And he's gonna be looking at you week to week and when he sees you hitting a plateau, he's gonna make adjustments and he only has a handful of things that he can do, which is reduce calories, add cardio, or pick up intensity. Those are his three tools that he has in his bag.

That's it. And when you give him a time, he's going to do that. And so, is it really the bad coaches, or is it the bad, you know, bikini, men's physique athletes that are hiring these coaches that really don't belong competing at this level yet? And this is why... That's why you got to ask yourself. And this is why my advice to ask yourself. And this is why my advice has been, more recently, as I've evolved as a trainer,

to try to teach people that when their motivation behind their training and their nutrition is that they love themselves and love their bodies, they tend to make decisions that are long-term beneficial, and they tend to make less decisions that are short-term beneficial. Versus, I hate my belly, I hate my legs, I hate my, you know, whatever, my arms. So I'm going to go in the gym and say, I hate these things about myself, and it's a very powerful motivator.

It'll get you in the gym if you hate yourself enough, it will. But the decisions that you'll make are because they're motivated by hate are going to be ones that are short term, not long term, the ones that get you out of pain now rather than later. So it's going to be more, if you go to the gym, like if I go to the gym and I hate my body and I hate my legs and I hate the way they look and I'm tired, you know, I'm going, I'm like, God, I'm so stiff, I'm so tired, but I fucking hate my legs. I hate the way they look. They're so fat. I'm going to beat know, I'm going, I'm like, God, I'm so stiff, I'm so tired, but I fucking hate my legs. I hate the way they look, they're so fat.

I'm going to beat myself up in the gym. I'm just going to go crazy and go hard today because I hate myself so much. Versus, you know, God, I love my body. I really want to take care of it. I really want to nourish it. I'm really tired today. I think I need a low intensity day. I think I need to go in and just really take care of myself.

Two very different decisions based because the motivation was very different. And, you know, I had a client years ago, good, good friend of mine. She's actually a trainer now, an excellent trainer, but before she was a trainer, she was a client. And she was just a war course. She could do, she could put her mind to anything.

And that was part of her weakness, one of her detriments, is that she could just outwork anybody. So she got to the point where she was running 10 miles, five to 10 miles every single day, plus weights every single day, plus she was doing Pilates, plus she was doing bar classes, plus she was taking yoga classes, and so she was she was doing bar classes, plus she was taking yoga classes. And so she was super active all the time. And she would get skinny and lean, but not as lean as she wanted to. And I would have these conversations

with her and say, look, you need to reduce the amount of activity. This is insane. You're active at a pretty high intensity for hours and hours of every day. Your calories are really low. And the only, you know, what you keep doing to try and get leaner is increase your activity or decrease your calorie. I mean, at some point you're going to hit a wall. There's nothing, no, you're not going to be able to go any further. And we have this conversation, this debate about this and we go and go and go. Well, she ended up becoming my workout partner for a little while, so I ended up working out together.

And because she was hanging around me so much, she started finally kind of trusting what I was saying and adopting what I was saying. And little by little, she reduced her activity. And the reason why that's a good thing is if she just reduced her activity, point blank, she would've gained a shit ton of weight. So she took her time and started focusing more on resistance training and started increasing your calories and it took

Little over a year it took a little over 12 months of doing this to where you know She came to me and she goes I can't believe it. She goes. I'm doing no cardio Barely. I'm just going for walks with my friends. I'm lifting weights with you and I'm leaner. I feel amazing. I've got way more time on my hands and I'm eating more food. She's like, this is crazy to me.

She's like, I didn't realize it. There's no way I'm not burning nearly as many calories. And I said, that's not true. You forget that your body's ability to burn calories isn't just depending on activity. It'll burn it on its own. It'll prefer depending on what adaptation signals you're sending to have more muscle, less muscle,

to burn more calories, less calories. And that's really the determining factor. The amount of activity that you do and the calories that you eat when you drop them so low will give you immediate results. But in the long term, your body adapts. It's very effective at doing this. It can adapt the treatment.

I'll tell you what, they did studies on prisoners of war. These are, you know, men who got captured by the enemy and were fed, you know, 200 to 300 calories a day. And yes, they looked like death, but they survived on like hundreds of calories a day, a couple hundred calories a day, a couple hundred calories a day. Human body is an incredible ability to adapt. And so I want people who are listening, it will take longer.

I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to be honest. It's going to take longer to do things right. You're not going to get in shape for the summer. You know what I'm saying doing it this way, like, oh, I have a month to get in shape for the beach. It's not gonna work that fast. You'll be better off doing the crash diet shit for 30 days.

But if you wanna deal with this problem for the rest of your life and make it harder for yourself, as you get older, every year, it'll get harder and harder. I promise you, every year, you're gonna store more and more body fat. Every year, you're gonna get closer and closer to having health issues as a result, whether it's something severe like autoimmune you're gonna get, you're gonna store more and more body fat. Every year, you're gonna get closer and closer to having health issues as a result, whether it's something severe

like autoimmune or just chronic fatigue syndrome or whatever. You're gonna cause those problems for, or, or, you can ask yourself every time you go to the gym, I'm gonna do the things that I wanna do for my body because I love my body. And every time you take a bite, every time you sit in front of food, is this food nourishing me. Forget about weight gain weight loss.

Is this nourishing me? Is this what my body wants to be healthy? Is this how I will feed my child who I love? Which by the way, sometimes you do that, it's easier because we can do things for our kids that we tend to be blind for ourselves, right? Would I feed my kid this way? Would I tell my kid to restrict their calories like this? Would I talk to yourself this way? It might take you a year, it might take two years, but here's the result of that effortless, effortless lean, effortless muscle, health.

It'll be, you'll just walk around and exude it. It'll be who you are. And I promise you, it's possible. It's possible to get there. It just takes long time. It takes a while. You got to be cool with it You got to stop fucking hating yourself But when you get there boy is it fucking awesome. It's it's a great place to be because it's no longer imagine you think about this right now for those For those you this is resonating with think about this right now. How much of your day? How much of your week how much of your day, how much of your week, how much of your months, how much of your life is consumed with worrying about how you look, worrying about you have to take in so little calories, I have to work out all these hours because I hate the way I look, how much of your

life is consumed with that. Now think about how much of time that takes away from your friends, your family, your personal development, your growth as a human being. You are literally creating all this is a detriment to your life. Now think of when you eliminate all that, when you eliminate that incredible stress and worry and just it just consumes your day, eliminate that, what can you do now? What are you capable of doing now? And you would be shocked.

You'll be shocked at who you become through going through this process and doing it the right, but give yourself some fucking time. Give yourself a little patience because it does take a little while. Well, when we talk about contest prep type stuff, it's funny because it reminds me a lot about when we first came out and we talked about CrossFit. And so everybody was like, oh, my pump doesn't like CrossFit or we're ants. And I'm like, no, dude, I actually really love CrossFit. I like CrossFit.

And it's a very similar relationship that I have with bodybuilding. They're both sports and they're both for elite level athletes. They really are. both sports and they're both for elite level athletes. They really are. And the biggest problem I have with both of them is people that aren't ready for it doing it. That's it. I mean, I think there's definitely some dudes that are amazing and girls that are amazing to watch,

do CrossFit. And I'll tell you right now, the ones that are, what you're watching on TV that are killing it, those people were, they have been training their whole life and most of them are genetically built for it. And it's the same thing goes for bodybuilding. When you see some of these specimens up there and just amazing physiques, they didn't do that

after a one or two shows. They've been training for a very long time to get that way. And so I have a problem with doing bodybuilding, doing crossfit, to get in just good shape, which is what the average person signs themselves up for either one of those. Now, what do you feel is a problem like having this new category of physique and some of these bikini categories where it seems like that's a lot more achievable and it's almost like

they can achieve a certain look by just pretty much starving themselves versus you know, building up like the bodybuilders' vault really had to, you know, put in the time to build and develop that size. Well, what I'm seeing is, and what I saw at least last night, what I saw was the girls that took, so there was a class, like for for example the class that my girlfriend was in. There was a class of 18 I believe for her her height. And the top five girls, they all look like they had been training for a while. All the rest of them for the most part didn't. So it's still you're they're probably you're not going gonna win a show that way.

You're not gonna come in just by starving the body and win a show. Unless you genetically have it already, right? Because we know, we all know girls that have got these just symmetrical bodies, have a mesomorph kind of type to them already. And then if you shred that girl down and die at her, she's gonna look pretty good on stage. So again, we always talk about genetics play the number one role, right? So if you're genetically built to be a bodybuilder and you just, you know, cut down really hard, you could get on stage and actually do pretty well. But what I saw was a lot of, you know, cute girls that look cute in a bathing suit

that, you know, decided to sign up for a show and compete with these other girls and the ones that take the trophies and win have obviously put the work in. Now Adam, I don't have the experience in this world like you do not even close, but I'm going to make a speculation and let me know if you think I'm on the money with this. I would say because we're talking a lot about being ready physically for these shows, but would you say that... Both of the mental side. Yeah, a bigger piece would about being ready physically for these shows, but would you say that? But the mental side. Yeah, a bigger piece would be being ready mentally.

100%. Because I could imagine someone I feel like that's the biggest mental sport there is. Dude, imagine if you're a person going into, because I had body image issues when I first started lifting weights. Boy, if I competed in bodybuilding, how much worse they would have been?

Exactly. You know what I mean? Yeah, having somebody judge and evaluate you, and you're putting yourself out there, you're already insecure, and they're just hammering on things that they're pointing out that you're already insecure about.

That's the mind fucker. That's what I'm thinking. What's his name? And securities are more prevalent in bodybuilding than I think any other sport I've ever seen. Yeah. For sure.

I mean, most of what can, most of what these guys and girls, what drives them to keep going is that is that insecurity of not looking a certain way or wanting something so bad. So yeah, no, the. So it's like you have to have, you should have a healthy, I mean, ideally, right? God, they'd have like no competitors if this is. Yeah, that's it. But you should go in having healthy body image issues.

Well, it's healthy connection. We're talking to, we're talking to mind pump people, you know what I'm saying? There's gonna, there's plenty of idiots that are gonna continue to do that. And they're gonna, they're business will thrive. NPC, IFBB's not gonna go anywhere, WBFF, all those federations are gonna do just fine, regardlessBB is not going to go anywhere. WBFF, all those federations

are going to do just fine, regardless of what mind-bomb has to say. But I hope that I can impact some of our listeners positively that I love the sport. So I sound like I'm bagging on it because I love it. I might do it again. I'm saying like there's, I do just like I feel like I talk about CrossFit, is that I think there's a lot of cool things about it. It's just, I think what's happening is a lot of people are trying to do it for the wrong reasons. They have a misguided view of what it takes.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I have an idea. What if, God, there may even be a market for this where people who get ready for shows, they hire a coach, who does their, obviously they're training and they're, you know, they're diet and stuff, but then they hire someone who they can check in with, who they give the ultimate power to, where they say, look, if I start to get, if my image,

if my body images is get too bad, if I get, if I start to, psychologically, you see that I need to back off, or I need to stop, or I need to eat more, whatever, I need your input. It might even be wise to have a second person who that's their job. Like they're the ones that are like, okay, my goal is to make sure you stay healthy.

And my goal is to make sure that you go into this and come out of it without horrible psychological issues or even damage to your body afterwards. There may even be. Well, I would hope that. The coach should be able to do that, but. We've kind of created, you know, not intentionally, but we kind of created that on the MindPump forum.

I mean, we have so many aspiring competitors and current competitors on our forum that, you know, they use the forum as a place for moral support and checking in. What do you guys think? Am I doing this right? So we've kind of created that through Mind Pomp already, which is kind of unique.

So if you're somebody who's aspiring to compete one day or in contest prep with potentially another coach, I mean, feel free to join in on the forum and be a part of that because I think that's a great place for that. I think it's a little crazy to have to pay two different coaches. I got one coach who's telling me badger than my other coach who's trying to keep me that. I think it's a little crazy to have to pay two different coaches. I got one coach who's telling me bad shit than my other coach who's trying to keep me

together. I don't know. I'm just thinking like, how could we possibly, because I feel like I could help people, you know, doing that on the flip side, I probably went into telling most people, you know, don't do this. I feel like you'd be good coach if you, you know, they're going along the process. You start seeing the signs and then, maybe help them.

You sit them down, well, even sort of restricting them from going, you know, entering into the show and like going to the next show, you know, sort of like, well, you know, we're not hitting our markers and you're not doing that in a healthy way. So let's, let's draw this out a little further. You know what makes it really bad too, is that, and what happened, this is happens, this happens a lot,

is these coaches, even big name good coaches, right, that everyone knows really well. They get, you know, 20, 30, 40 competitors, you know, per month that are hiring on them for their services. And what ends up happening is, some of them have great experiences. And the ones that have great experiences typically are the ones that are genetically built for the sport

or two, have built a really good frame and have potential to winning. And the coaches put all this extra F, which is funny. The ones that are most ready to win and do well. Need the least amount of coaching? Need the least amount of coaching, but they get the most amount to win and do well. Need the least amount of coaching? Need the least amount of coaching, but they get the most amount of coaching and help because the coaches see the potential in them

and go like, that's a first place winner right there. I'm gonna attach myself to him or her because I know they got a winning physique. And then the ones that are getting involved, I mean the pro maker? That probably shouldn't be getting involved are getting the least amount of help when those ones are the ones that are are most at risk and need the most

guidance get kind of thrown to the wayside because I'll tell you and I've said this before in the show many times I can look at your physique and tell you if you're ready I can see way before show I can look at your frame and go like, you've got what it takes to place in top five and so can any other really good coach. He knows. Now, he ain't gonna say that to you if he wants your money, I would, because I don't give a shit, I'm not coaching anymore.

So I would look at someone and go like, yeah, I think you're ready to do a show. This is how much you're eating right now. This is how you're not doing any, oh yeah, you're ready. You definitely are in a good place to try and do something like this.

And the reverse is true. If you talk to me and told me, I'm doing this out of my done that and I'm looking at your physique and I'm going like, yeah, you're just not there. I would say, you're not ready yet. You're not ready for a show. But that's not what's happening. What's happening is we're taking everybody's money.

And the ones that I already see have the real potential. I'm putting all my energy in them, because they're gonna represent my... The rest of them just like, yeah, just start with some. Yeah, exactly, the rest of them. Just keep running. Just keep cutting her calories. Keep running. Yeah, yeah.

And more cardio cutters out. Just go up there and kind of do your thing, and get a picture. She'll be down 25 pounds if I keep starving. Jesus Christ. Crazy. Everything's a nail when all you have is a hammer. Right.

Here I'm saying. On the 13th, we are having a free live webinar where... It's an event. Me, Adam and Justin and Dr. Brink are literally going to go through our newest Maps program, which will be released at that point, Maps Prime Pro. It is a correctional Maps program

that focuses on all the joints and parts of the body that nobody else does. So your feet, your ankles, your hands, your fingertips, your elbows, your neck, your spine, and more is done with this particular program. And what we're going to do is we're going to take you through, this is on the webinar, we're going to take you through assessments, teach you how to do these assessments, and teach you movements to work on these areas, and it's all free, so we're basically giving away

a lot of what Maps Prime Pro is. All you gotta do is go to mapsprimepro.com and register for the webinar, again, it's absolutely for free. Also, you can find us on Instagram. Well, we like to answer questions from people to ask us on Instagram. It's kind of our favorite social media platform. Our page is Mind Pump Media, and we all have personal pages. Mine is Mind Pump Sal, Adam is Mind Pump Adam, Justin is Mind Pump Justin, and you can check out our producer Doug at Mind Pumped Earth. 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 Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on the ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout nutrients in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a 430-day money back guarantee And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes And by introducing MindPump to your friends and family

We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump I'm pumped to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is Mind Pump.