In short
The hosts answer a listener question by arguing that overcoming isometrics (pushing/pulling into an immovable object) produce the fastest strength gains, with similar hypertrophy to traditional reps, low soreness, and added benefits for weak spots, pain relief, and tendon strength. They also discuss underweight mortality vs obesity, GLP-1 risks for muscle loss, and include sponsor segments.
Guests
No external guests. The episode is hosted by Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews (plus Jake Rez appears only in ads as “Nurse Jake,” not as a guest).
Key claims
Isometrics recruit near-max muscle fibers faster than reps (including explosive/negative/positive), are safer because there’s no joint movement, and can strengthen sticking points within ~3–4 weeks. Strength carries over to full-range lifting (about ±20 degrees around the trained angle). Tendons stiffen/strengthen best with isometrics; they can also reduce pain via analgesic effects and joint “security” signaling.
Notable examples
Anchored squat/bench/deadlift positions; powerlifters pausing at specific rep points; using a chain/board setup for deadlift sticking points; “wizard move” knee-pain holds (fully contracted/flexed) to relieve pain.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Power of Isometrics
3:24 to 5:08
Discussion on how isometric training produces the fastest strength gains.
“All right, all of you that like to build muscle and strength and look awesome, I'm about to blow your mind.”
Historical Context of Isometric Training
5:08 to 7:48
Exploration of the historical use of isometrics in strength training.
“And what's beautiful about this is that nobody's doing them.”
The Benefit of Isometric Training
7:48 to 9:27
Discussion on the benefits and effectiveness of isometric training for all levels.
“So it was like, look, it's all about what you can do.”
Addressing Common Misconceptions
9:27 to 14:01
Hosts discuss misconceptions about isometrics and the importance of commitment to this training method.
“In fact, I believe if we could just get them to do two weeks, they'll see enough benefits from it that they'll understand why we did it.”
The Safety and Effectiveness of Isometrics
14:01 to 16:52
Learn why isometric exercises are safe and effective for both rehabilitation and strength gains.
“This is true for almost every strength training exercise.”
Targeting Weak Spots with Isometrics
16:53 to 19:10
Discover how to use isometric holds to improve weak points in your lifts.
“I would put them in a position either fully contracted.”
The Benefits of Isometric Training
19:11 to 22:36
Explore the numerous benefits of isometric training, including recovery and tendon strength.
“Because it's not specific to what you're doing.”
Behind the Scenes of Podcast Partnerships
23:35 to 28:00
Hear how the podcast partners with brands and the criteria for product selection.
“I got to the point even with this invention where I presented in front of Apple.”
Negotiating Snack Partnerships
28:00 to 28:50
Hosts discuss their experience with protein pretzels and the negotiations for partnerships.
“Yeah, he's the gatekeeper when it comes to the science and does it align with our values and everything that we do.”
Nutritional Breakdown of Protein Pretzels
28:50 to 30:20
A detailed analysis of the nutritional value of the protein pretzels, including calories and fiber.
“I'm the one in negotiating the contract.”
Show all 30 chapters
Taste Test and Staff Feedback
30:20 to 31:30
Reactions from staff members who tried the protein pretzels, highlighting their approval and excitement.
“Now, here's the thing with snacks like this.”
Study on Weight and Mortality Rates
31:30 to 32:30
Discussion of a study showing surprising correlations between weight categories and mortality.
“receives it I hope it's something that they all like as much as I like, but I thought it was pretty cool.”
Insights on Health Risks of Being Underweight
32:30 to 33:50
Exploration of the health risks associated with being underweight, especially in older age.
“than individuals with a BMI towards the top of the healthy range.”
Importance of Strength Training
33:50 to 35:30
Emphasis on strength training as a crucial factor in health, especially for older adults.
“I'm more afraid for the underweight 80 year olds than I am the overweight 80 year olds.”
Cultural Shift with GLP Drugs
35:30 to 37:50
Discussion on the impact of GLP drugs on appetite and muscle preservation.
“So to me, it's actually really exciting good news.”
The Role of Trainers in Medication Use
37:50 to 39:50
Importance of working with trainers when on GLP medications for safe and effective weight management.
“I still believe that there's more people that are suffering from it.”
Navigating Fitness with Family
39:50 to 42:00
Sal shares an update on his daughter's weightlifting journey and the challenges of parenting in fitness.
“especially when it comes to building muscle.”
Navigating Fitness and Parenting
42:00 to 43:00
Learn how to balance fitness goals with parenting challenges.
“I can't believe my, you know, she's like super pissed off about it.”
Engaging with Children's Sports
43:00 to 45:00
Discover the joys and challenges of involving kids in sports.
“I could totally see how it's rad when it finally happens.”
Lacrosse and Physicality
45:00 to 46:30
Understand the unique aspects of lacrosse and its physical demands.
“and for it to be something that he's involved in.”
High-Profile Sports Discussion
46:30 to 48:20
Explore the origins and popularity of unique sports like lacrosse and jai alai.
“I mean, they definitely throw faster than a pitcher throws a ball.”
Melatonin and Growth Hormone
48:20 to 50:20
Learn about the effects of melatonin on growth hormone production during workouts.
“I found a study that is getting popular on social media.”
The Phenomenon of Driving F1 Cars
50:20 to 52:00
Discuss the amusing phenomenon of an F1 driver on public roads and its implications.
“I saw some, since you're talking about funny stuff.”
Discussing Supplements for Recovery
56:01 to 57:09
Learn about the benefits of green juice and probiotics for fitness recovery.
“And I don't know why I don't think of recommending that specific.”
Maximizing Muscle Growth in Limited Time
57:20 to 59:36
Strategies for effective muscle growth when time is limited in the gym.
“less rest per exercise, or fewer sets, more rest to maximize muscle growth?”
Overcoming Injury: The Mental Challenge
59:36 to 1:01:31
Insights on the mental side of recovering from injuries and rebuilding confidence.
“What's your advice for overcoming injuries, the mental and physical side?”
Using Exposure Therapy for Injury Recovery
1:01:31 to 1:03:38
Understanding how gradual exposure can help rebuild confidence after injury.
“Yeah, so a lot of people don't realize this until you go through it.”
Returning to Workouts After Surgery
1:03:38 to 1:05:48
How to safely and effectively get back into a workout routine post-surgery.
“What's the best way to get back into working out after a surgery that put you down for two plus months?”
Building a Fitness Business Without Social Media
1:05:48 to 1:10:03
Tips for creating a successful fitness business focused on personal connections rather than social media.
“Next question is from real life wellness with Jess.”
Building Client Relationships
1:10:03 to 1:10:21
Learn how to build your fitness business by focusing on client needs.
“And then it becomes two clients that you're helping.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Justin Andrews:Hi, I'm Jake Rez, also known as Nurse Jake. As a travel nurse, I've worked in all kinds of places, different settings, cities, and climates.
0:07Adam Schafer:Every assignment brings on a new challenge, which is why I always bring my figs. These scrubs are built for whatever the job throws at you. They're breathable, flexible, and comfortable in any environment.
0:17Justin Andrews:No matter where I land, I know they're going to keep me looking and feeling my best. And don't sleep on the details. The pockets, the features, the finishing touches, everything has a purpose and it makes a real difference when you're moving nonstop. The fit is clean, tailored, and super polished, and they come in a huge range of colors.
0:34Adam Schafer:In other words, they feel great throughout a 12-hour shift, and they always look good. See every healthcare professional on Instagram.
0:41Justin Andrews:If you work in healthcare or know someone who does, check out Figs and get 15 % off your first order at wearfigs.com with code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. Hey, Chicagoland. The Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Edens Plaza in Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette.
1:22Adam Schafer:Wayfair, every style, every home. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, we pick questions from our Instagram page at Mind Pump Media to answer, but this was after our intro. Today's intro was 53 minutes long. In the intro, we talk about building muscle, burning body fat, improving health and fitness. We also talk about family life. Again, if you want to post a question that we may pick, go to Instagram at MindPumpMedia.
2:04Adam Schafer:Now, this episode was brought to you by some sponsors. The first one, it's a brand new one, Crisp Power. These are protein pretzels, like 25 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber per bag, and they're really delicious. These are some of the most delicious snacks we've tried. They're high in protein. Again, it's a great, healthy snack. Go check them out. Go to crisppower.com. That's C-R-I-S-P-P-O-W-E-R.com. Use the code MindPump10. Get 10 % off. This episode is also brought to you by Organifi. Today, we talked about their green juice. It has ashwagandha in it. So if you want your body to adapt to stress better, you want to build more muscle and strength, and also get lots of micronutrients from greens, try it out.
2:47Adam Schafer:It's their green juice, Organifi. It's Organifi.com forward slash Mind Pump. Use the code Mind Pump to get 20 % off. Also, right now, flash sale. Maps Performance is 50 % off, half off. One of our most popular Maps programs. Head over to MapsPerformance.com. Use the code ATHLETE50. That's ATHLETE50 for that discount. All right, real quick.
3:10Justin Andrews:If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.
3:24Adam Schafer:All right, all of you that like to build muscle and strength and look awesome, I'm about to blow your mind. The data shows that there is a particular type of contraction, a particular type of lifting that produces the fastest gains. The fastest gains, and I guarantee 99.9 % of you are not using them. We're going to talk about it right now. Now, eight ways isometrics will give you the fastest gains you've ever seen in your entire life.
3:51Sal Di Stefano:If you're tired of us talking about these.
3:54Justin Andrews:Anytime we can bring it up.
3:55Sal Di Stefano:Hey, listen. Until we go into commercial gyms and see a small fraction of people doing them, then maybe. But it's like, we're going to continue to beat this drum, to scream from the rooftops, like how impactful and valuable isometrics are because you still don't see it. It reminds me. would you imagine 25 years ago being the person that's trying to convince everybody to squat like you got a squat it's so valuable it's so valuable so many benefits yes like come on 25 years ago the squat racks were dusty and nobody was doing it it's obvious now everybody gets that but it's like here's your other hidden gem isometrics it's not just a hidden gem if you
4:34Adam Schafer:look at the data on isometrics training in particular the overcoming isometrics the type where you're pressing or pulling into an immovable object. They produce the fastest gains in strength in a short period of time in comparison to any other form of strength training. They're faster than reps that are positive, faster than negative, faster than explosive. There is no form of strength training that compares if you were to do this for like a five or six or maybe eight-week period of time in terms of strength gains. This is the fastest way you could possibly gain strength. And what's beautiful about this is that nobody's doing them.
5:14Adam Schafer:Nobody's taking advantage of them.
5:16Justin Andrews:The least amount of damage, the safest to apply, the easiest way for you to ramp up and maximize your recruitment, muscle recruitment process. So it's like to be able to have more force output, there really isn't another method that does that as effective.
5:34Adam Schafer:No, and now the question people always ask is, okay, cool, the data shows that it's the fastest gains in strength, but what about hypertrophy? Comparable. So what you'll get with isometrics is very, very quick ramp up in a short period of time of strength or force output, and the hypertrophy gains are similar to traditional reps. In other words, you're not going to lose gains by doing a five-week block of isometrics. You're going to gain just like you normally do, except your strength is going to go through the roof. And then I don't think I need to make the case, but I'll just spell it out for you.
6:12Adam Schafer:With those additional, with the new additional strength gains that you made in that five week period, let's say, now you can go back to your traditional lifting and you blow the doors off of what you would have been doing before. Yeah. It's incredible. By the way, this was a favorite way of training for old time lifters. Back at the, you know, during the bronze era, you know, this is like the turn of the century, right? Late 1800s, early 1900s. Sandow and all that. They were competitions. There were people, there were men mostly, there were some women that would go around and they would do these feats of strength.
6:46Adam Schafer:And this is how they would make money. Some of them worked in circuses, but many of them would do these feats of strength on their own. And it was all about what you could do. Remember, this is before steroids. This is before supplements. They just had weights. That's all they had. In fact, they didn't even have benches. they had barbells and dumbbells and that was it and they would go and do these incredible feats of strength uh eugene sandow i believe one arm bent pressed over 250 pounds something ridiculous at a body weight of like 180 pounds they had incredible looking physiques especially when you consider uh that they were as natural as natural could be they also oftentimes had hard labor jobs.
7:24It wasn't their full-time profession.
7:27Adam Schafer:And they, this was a favorite way that they would train because in those days, if you wanted to be a successful, you know, presentation competitor, if you wanted to be a successful strong man in those days, you had to put up or shut up. And they would oftentimes challenge each other. So they would meet up and say, okay, let's see who can lift the most weight. So it was like, look, it's all about what you can do. And what they found was isometrics were super effective. They were so effective, in fact, and so popular that some of the first strength training books revolved around isometrics. Now, they fell out of favor probably for a few different reasons, like modern equipment came into play, bodybuilding became popular.
8:14Adam Schafer:And by the way, there's nothing wrong with full range emotion. If you had to compare all of them, that's the best, right? But what's happened, which is a total travesty, is that nobody does this. Nobody does this. We have no patience. Not only does nobody do this, nobody does this ever. Nobody even plays with this. In fact, if I did a poll of all the millions of people that could potentially be watching this, I bet you less than 0.01 % have ever done a training block of just isometrics. It almost never happens.
8:45Sal Di Stefano:Sal, we don't even watch movies anymore. We watch TikTok reels. I know. Talk about a major hurdle for us to get people to try to do this in a time where instant gratification and faster, quicker everything. Isometrics is slow and boring. It's just a fact. It's not - It doesn't have that built-in reward. Well, like what are you doing?
9:08Adam Schafer:If I made a video of it, it just looks like I'm doing nothing.
9:10Sal Di Stefano:Yes, you're just boring. You're sitting still. You're not moving. it's almost as if you're not doing anything although you are doing something it looks like you're doing nothing and the discipline, the patience required to actually run a full training block so you could actually reap the full benefits I mean I could see someone doing it one time in their workout like oh let me try this but to do a legit block I mean I remember when we were riding symmetry and I remember Justin wanted to make the whole first phase isometric and I remember my push back on it I was like, I just don't see anybody committing that long.
9:46Sal Di Stefano:In fact, I believe if we could just get them to do two weeks, they'll see enough benefits from it that they'll understand why we did it. But if we do a whole block of four weeks, these people are going to - They won't even follow it. They won't follow it.
9:57Adam Schafer:No. They won't fall off. No, which is why we have to sell it. So let's get into selling it. And this is all backed by data. If you don't believe me, look it up. So this isn't just our opinion. This is like, it's actually a well-studied form of strength training. There's lots and lots of studies on it. So number one, it will recruit the most muscle fibers. So whenever you're doing a lift, there's a certain percentage of muscle fibers in the muscles that are being worked that get recruited. And as the exercise becomes more difficult, you recruit more and more muscle fibers. Training to failure tends to recruit more muscle fibers than training at 50%, okay?
10:37Adam Schafer:Nothing recruits more muscle fibers like a hard isometric. against an object that you can't move. Like, what does that look like? Well, it would be like me getting under a bar, you know, towards the bottom position of a squat and trying to squat it up, except the bar is anchored to the ground. It's not going anywhere. Because you're putting maximal intensity and because the muscles aren't actually moving, they're not going through a range of motion, they're just pushing. The body recruits more and more muscle fibers because it thinks you're - There's no limiter. It thinks you're trying to do something to protect yourself.
11:13Justin Andrews:Weights are a natural limiter. You're only going to recruit and generate enough to overcome the load. And when you remove that part of the process, like really it's the limiter is just your own effort. And so to, to really squeeze, you know, that, that extra bit and, and, you know, produce more effort, it's going to stretch your capacity now to recruit even more muscle fibers then and so it's an interesting thing because i don't think people realize how powerful that is when you go back to actually lifting
11:45Sal Di Stefano:weights you keep that ability you keep it yeah i remember i don't remember what we called it or you know who like how it came to be other than i was hanging out with these older bodybuilder guys and they used to take like this was back when i couldn't even bench two plates they would take three plates you know and lift it over and you said to hold it yeah yeah i said to hold it and we i wasn't i wasn't going anywhere you know i wasn't taking a negative or anything like that it was just like just hold it hold it there and i remember being scared to death like i can't even do two plates what am i doing with three plates just trust me you know but i do remember the how i felt afterwards i mean then two plates felt controllable like it was crazy how how So they did it to me in squats too.
12:30Sal Di Stefano:I felt like those two things really got me over a hurdle in those two big lifts in my early 20s that I just couldn't imagine getting past that. And looking back and understanding now the science more is like, oh, now I understand what I was doing and why it benefited so much from it.
12:46Adam Schafer:It's the closest you could ever get to 100 % muscle fiber recruitment is with an isometric. And here's the beautiful kicker. This works for everybody. So the thing with muscle fiber recruitment is the more advanced you become, the easier it is for you to recruit more muscle fibers. So an advanced lifter, they've trained their body to be able to recruit more muscle fibers just through adaptation and practice than a beginner. But with an isometric, everybody gets pretty damn close. As long as the effort is there, everybody gets pretty darn close. So again, there is no type of muscle contraction that will induce this type of muscle fiber recruitment regardless of how experienced or inexperienced you are.
13:32Adam Schafer:Which takes us to the next thing. Rarely, rarely, rarely, rarely do you see something that is super effective and super safe. High benefit, low risk. It's almost never that way. The most effective exercises typically have a high degree of skill, so that puts their risk factor quite high unless you perform the exercise really well. Like squats, barbell squats, like phenomenal lower body exercises. It's like one of the best, if not the best. It's also very technical. Like a leg press is way easier to do. This is true for almost every strength training exercise. Well, guess what? With isometrics, you have simultaneously extremely effective type of movement.
14:12Adam Schafer:that's also very safe. Now, why is it safe? You're not moving. So long as you maintain your position and drive, you're not going to hurt yourself or your odds of hurting yourself are very, very low in comparison to other forms of exercise. In fact, isometrics are how oftentimes how you rehab people with joint issues. And then again, you take someone who's advanced, who's never done these, they're like, let's do these. And they get incredible gains. Like rarely do you see that combination, but you do see this with isometrics.
14:38Sal Di Stefano:Great tool for trainers too, with clients with an advanced age. Yeah, or rehabbing, right? So to your point, rehabbing or advanced age clients, you get massive benefits and super safe to do.
14:50Adam Schafer:Yes, now here's one of my favorite things about it is it can target weak spots of a rep very easily. We all have these. Think of your favorite lift. There's probably a sticking point, right? Once you get it past that sticking point, then the weight moves up. So like in a bench press, it might be near the bottom with a squat. It might be near the bottom. Maybe it's a lockout with your deadlift. Some people pause there, have a difficult time there. Maybe it's just coming off the floor. Well, guess what? You set up your isometric in your weak spot and you're going to blow past that weak spot. You will make that weak spot a strength within weeks.
15:27Adam Schafer:Within three or four weeks, your sticking spot with your squat or your deadlift or your overhead press or whatever, within three weeks will probably become a strength. Then you go back to do your lift and suddenly. Train your central nervous system to respond at those like weak points.
15:43Justin Andrews:It's very doable. That's right.
15:45Adam Schafer:And powerlifters, by the way, have done this for years. They just pause. They do a form of isometrics where they pause and they'll pause at the bottom or the pause at a particular part, whatever. And then some of them do these, you know, where you're overcoming isometrics, which is the most powerful version. But yeah, if you look at your rep and you're like, man, I can't get my deadlift to go up. Really, it's not that you can't get your deadlift to go up. It's more like I can't get it to go up past this point. Once I get it past that point, I'm all good.
16:11Justin Andrews:And you're talking mainly about performance too. Like, I mean, this is where like mobility really shines as well. Like, so if you have a range of motion that you can't achieve because you have a weak spot there or a pain, you know, signal to now like take that point of where you either lose connection or, you know, you're just about to get that pain signal. and you just stop and pause and apply an isometric hold and recruitment there, watch you all of a sudden immediately get pain relief. I didn't even.
Read the full transcript
16:44Adam Schafer:Or immediately gain new access to range of motion. I didn't even put that as a point, Justin. For pain relief, isometrics shine. I used to do this with my elderly clients all the time. Knee pain. I would put them in a position either fully contracted. That was my wizard move. Yeah, either fully contracted or even fully flexed depending on the person. I'd have them drive while I pushed, so they just create resistance, no movement. Then they'd stand up, pain's gone. Look at the data on this. Isometrics have this incredible analgesic effect and strengthening effect for pain. And Prime Pro is all about isometrics, by the way.
17:19Adam Schafer:You go through our Prime Pro program. It really utilizes that concept, yeah. It's incredible. Here's a great selling point that I know people will love. You have a lagging body part, nothing better than isometrics. Part of the reason why you have a lagging body part is you just can't connect to it very well, especially when doing compound lifts. You're doing a squat or a bench or whatever, and there's a target muscle that's just not doing the work. Get into that position, that hard position. Drive into something that's immovable. Focus on the target muscle and drive for 20 seconds. Try this for a few weeks.
17:53Adam Schafer:This is your chest workout, let's say. Go back to your traditional way of training. suddenly lagging body part no longer is a lagging part especially in the contracted position yeah
18:02Sal Di Stefano:this is uh ben pokolsky remember the first time i talked to him about this like he made an argument that he believes especially if you actually train those muscle groups right that if you had a lagging body part that was really weak uh he said always that person was not very well connected in the contracted portion and his experience is like if you if you just focused on that that you brought that body part up so much. And so if it's a lagging body part, think about doing isometrics in the contracted position on whatever muscle we're talking about.
18:32Adam Schafer:Yeah, it's so funny too because I think we knew this instinctively as trainers. You know, you get a client who's like, I don't feel my butt when I do squats. Like, what would you do? You put them at the top of a hip bridge.
18:40Sal Di Stefano:Yep, hip bridge and hold the top
18:41Adam Schafer:and squeeze the hell out of your butt. And then suddenly when doing squats, they can connect to that area. Next up, it translates very well to traditional reps. The strength gains you get in isometrics, when you go back to your traditional reps, there's the strength. It's not like you get stronger with force production in an isometric and then you go lift weights and you don't see that translate. You will see strength gains across the board, especially if you target the weak parts of your rep.
19:10Sal Di Stefano:Why do you think that is? Because it kind of flies in the face of like the SED principle, doesn't it? Because it's not specific to what you're doing. So why is it that we see that with isometrics and not really anything else?
19:19Adam Schafer:If you focus in particular on the weak spot of your rep. so whenever you do an isometric there's about a 20 degree uh both directions that you'll see it carry over so let's say i'm at the bottom of a bench and i'm under a bar and it's loaded with you know 600 pounds so i can't lift it so i just drive into it i'm going to get strengthened the
19:37Justin Andrews:position that i'm pushing in plus 20 degrees above and below both ends so if you target the weak
19:43Adam Schafer:spot of your rep you know what your weak spots of the reps are yeah and you focus on this then you go to your traditional lift and that, because whenever you can't do a lift, I'm going to say this again, like whenever you can't do a lift, it's almost never the whole rep. There's like one part. And if your buddy's spotting you, they help you out of that one part and then suddenly you can lift the weight. You get stronger in that one part, the entire rep becomes much easier. Yep. That's it. A hundred percent. Next, it doesn't require as much recovery. It doesn't cause a lot of damage. You don't get very sore doing these.
20:16Adam Schafer:This allows the adaptation to really take place. Another plus with this, and I'm going to say this, I think it's better if people just do a whole block. I want people to really feel the power of this. But if you're not on the border of overtraining right now, if you're pretty smart with your training, you could add some isometrics and you're not going to really tax yourself that much and just see some benefits. So you could add a couple of them. By the way, at the beginning of your workout would be the best place to do it. Not at the end. People tend to do them at the end. Do them at the beginning.
20:46Adam Schafer:Next, everybody knows about this. When you try something novel, you just get great gains. I can't think, if I thought of the entire fitness community, people who worked out consistently, and if you had to pick, Sal, what's the most novel thing they could possibly do to build muscle? It'd be isometrics. That would apply to almost everybody. Well, yeah, because for that. Because nobody does it. Oh, yeah.
21:07Sal Di Stefano:The reason why I brought this all up, how we started this, is that go walk into a commercial gym and point out how many people you see doing isometric. You rarely ever see it. And so it's going to be a novel stimulus for most people. The truth is, and we wrote symmetry this way, so if you're inspired by this, symmetry is such a good program to follow if you've never followed that. but knowing what I know now about isometrics and the value of it and seeing how we programmed it in symmetry I probably as a trainer would have really benefited from starting most my clients all in a isometric phase the challenge of that is those clients who don't understand this don't know and they're just like wow I'm paying this guy for me to just stand here I squeeze and hold
21:50Justin Andrews:conveying the benefit really yeah buy into the concept yeah well the problem the big problem
21:55Adam Schafer:is this, Adam, and I think Justin tried to solve this when he had created his tool, is when you're driving into a bar that you can't move and you get stronger week over week, you can't tell because the bar doesn't move. You don't get feedback.
22:07Justin Andrews:You don't have like a tangible metric that you're sort of like taking attention to. Nothing tells you,
22:11Adam Schafer:oh, you produce 50 % more force. The time you can tell is when you go back to your traditional lifting.
22:15Sal Di Stefano:If only anybody created
22:16Adam Schafer:like stuff in the sense of it. Someday it'll be irrelevant
22:20Sal Di Stefano:and everybody will be like, oh, wow, yeah. Remember we talked about those at one point when I expected to be good. They will come in a favor. Eventually, the people will know, and then it'll become popular, just like squats. You were 20 years ahead of your time.
22:33Justin Andrews:I was way too early. And the thing is, too, you can apply this without anything. You don't need tech. You don't need – And so if you have – And what I love, too, if nobody's ever seen this before, it's just a chain that's bolted to a board. And so you could do this on, like, let's say it's a deadlift platform, and like you step on top of this board and you bolt the chain. And now you have a handle grip and you can adjust the chain to whatever height. So let's now work, let's say it's a deadlift and I need to work on, you know, the lowest part of the deadlift. And, you know, you could set it up and really, you know, get so much out of that by applying like this torque and effort.
23:14Sal Di Stefano:Old school gyms used to have that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. My old school gym that I used to work at used to have a setup like that.
23:20Adam Schafer:Yeah, if you have a home gym, even what you could do, if it's like it's in your garage is you could bolt you could put two anchors into the concrete attach chains to it and then you could put your bench underneath it you could stand there and it depends you know you can make the safety bars on the squat rack you could also load it up
23:36Sal Di Stefano:real heavy and just yeah yeah yeah you could use the safety bars on the squat rack and and do the same you could rest raise those and to your point with the deadlift you figure this is your sticking point this far off the ground you put the safety bars there and you put the bar underneath it you
23:49Justin Andrews:It's funny because I might have told you guys. I got to the point even with this invention where I presented in front of Apple. And I'm in this big meeting. And they have all the tech and stuff with the closing the loops. And so they were all privy to try and work on human behavior. And how do we get them engaged and all this kind of stuff. So they were somewhat mildly interested. But one of the guys kind of compared it to BOSU ball. Here's the thing. nobody knew the value of like balance training like that had to be something that you build and develop into you know the consciousness of society first like they have to like understand like this is something that is really beneficial and is something that like people have seen it before and like you know so it really has to be a cultural thing for people to to really buy in to that type of training because it's just so like well why that's right why do i want to do it as
24:46Adam Schafer:soon as some people do it and then get blown away and post the results then it's going to start to
24:49Sal Di Stefano:fly that's 100 it will i i believe i believe it will i mean uh 25 years ago we all talking about squats nobody nobody nobody was questioning why nobody was doing in the gym it was just kind of the norm it was just like oh yeah nobody really does them you know we leg press instead we hack squat instead it's like there's stuff they're like yet we now look at how many people tout the deadlift the squat and it's just like so i don't know i think there i think there'll come a time when all it takes is the right famous person at the right time to share something like that. Imagine Phil Heath during his eight championship run or something like that, attributing it to his isometric training.
25:32Sal Di Stefano:That would have blown up. It would have blown up. Every magazine pick it up. Yeah, yeah. People just be aware of it. It's just going to take that. And then when people go actually truly apply it, it's like what we see with symmetry. When the clients actually go through that phase, they're always blown away by, oh my God, I can't believe how well that worked. It's like, yeah, it's pretty powerful.
25:50Adam Schafer:And last, the data shows, this is where isometrics really blow the doors off of things. For tendon strength, it's the best. It's the best. Now, why tendon strength? Why is that so important? So I don't tear a tendon or whatever? Yeah, but let's talk about strength for a second. When you see an athlete or a strength athlete, and we've all seen them, right, where you look at them and you go, how is it on earth that that person can lift that much weight? They're not even that big. That's like a 160-pound guy. He's deadlifting 550 pounds. How is it that some people just are so much stronger than they look?
26:31Adam Schafer:There's a few different reasons, but one of them is their tendons are incredibly strong. It's like steel cables. Oftentimes, what limits your strength isn't your muscles. It's your tendons. because if your body senses that the tendon cannot support the muscle, this can be a governor. There's no strength. There's no strength there because you're going to injure yourself. Tendon strength, dare I say, is more important than muscle strength when it comes to performance. Oftentimes it's a limiting factor. And if you have tendons that are like steel cables, you are strong. You are very, very strong.
27:02Adam Schafer:And again, the data shows it stiffens and strengthens tendons like nothing else.
27:06Sal Di Stefano:Do you think that also plays a role in the point that Justin made that you added, which was what it does for relieving pain too. You think that has a factor there too?
27:14Adam Schafer:The analgesic effect has more to do with literally releasing pain-relieving chemicals in an isometric. Also, with how the central nervous system then starts to communicate with that joint. It provides security around the joint.
27:30Justin Andrews:So that's the feedback it's getting. But yeah, it does release chemicals as well.
27:35Adam Schafer:Yes, yes, yes. Pretty cool.
27:36Sal Di Stefano:All right, we got a new partner I'd like to talk about. I saw this and want to talk about this. Yeah.
27:41Adam Schafer:Doug, pull them up so we can look at the macros. I want to be specific.
27:43Sal Di Stefano:Okay, first of all, for the audience that doesn't know this, we've shared probably maybe a handful of times in the past whenever we've had a new partner. So the process in which a new partner comes on here is ran pretty much by Sal. Like Justin and I have just opted out. He's the gatekeeper for sure. Yeah, he's the gatekeeper when it comes to the science and does it align with our values and everything that we do. And so he normally approves. Then I go with Katrina. We negotiate contracts. It's kind of this. So we got these protein pretzels that came in. And I loved them. The staff loved them.
28:19Sal Di Stefano:Everybody was eating them. The staff was gobbling them up. And Sal kind of poo-pooed them at first. And I was like, oh, man. And I get it because I know that they have gluten in them. And so, but I was so bummed because I really liked them. My son liked them. Like we, we, they sent us cases over, we ate them all up. I saw the staff eating them. And then now I see them on there. So something has opened your mind a little bit to allowing them to be a partnership with us. And so I want to hear where, what was the change of heart? Did we just guilt you enough? No, no. They offered a lot of money. I know it wasn't that either.
28:57Sal Di Stefano:I'm the one in negotiating the contract. It wasn't, it wasn't even a big money deal.
29:01Adam Schafer:No, we've turned down a lot of partners because it didn't work. So it does have gluten, and one of the main ingredients is wheat, and I'm sensitive to gluten. However, they source their wheat from Australia, and they hydrolicize the gluten, which for many people allows it to be tolerable. Plus, not everybody's sensitive to gluten, okay? So a good majority of people are actually not sensitive to gluten. There is a sizable minority that has to stay away, but a lot of people can eat gluten, especially if it's well-sourced wheat.
29:32Sal Di Stefano:So that was my argument on why I felt like, come on, we have to be open. I get that you can't. And so understandable. But I had a bag.
29:41Adam Schafer:I had a bag. I felt okay. It didn't feel like I ate a bag of - Bread or something like that. No, I didn't feel like that. I felt okay. I didn't have more than one bag. They tasted really well. They were really delicious snack.
29:55Sal Di Stefano:I mean, they're lower on the calorie for 26 to 28 grams of protein.
30:01Adam Schafer:Okay, so what does that say, Doug? This is a bag of their protein pretzels. I haven't had those. The Flamin' Crunch. Yeah, it looks good.
30:08Justin Andrews:Yeah, so it's 200 calories for the bag and 26 grams of protein. Of protein. Yeah.
30:13Adam Schafer:Of protein. And how many grams of fiber?
30:16Justin Andrews:Let's see here. 10 grams of fiber.
30:18Adam Schafer:10 grams of fiber. Yeah. So it's a high fiber, high protein snack. Now, here's the thing with snacks like this. They taste good, hyperpalatable, could make you want to eat more. We've talked about that many times. But it's so high in protein, so high in fiber. I think if you're going to grab a bag of something, it's a good choice.
30:39Sal Di Stefano:Even two bags. Two bags is 400 calories. Now you're eating a 50-plus gram protein snack with 20 grams. I mean, macro-wise, taste-wise. So if you're not gluten intolerant, this is an incredible snack.
30:54Adam Schafer:And even if you have a mild intolerance, I'd say try them because of the – so you've heard people say this before, right? like oh I go to Europe or I go overseas I have the gluten and it doesn't bother me it's a little bit
31:05Sal Di Stefano:of a different effect
31:05Adam Schafer:I think there's difference I definitely think there's a difference so anyway I'm just glad
31:09Sal Di Stefano:that you were open minded enough because I know originally it was like one of those well what sold me
31:14Adam Schafer:is I had the staff try it I put the whole box out there and I told all the trainers say you guys try these let me know what you think they're big fans I came back the next day and they're like it's delicious it's really good they're awesome I'm a fan
31:27Sal Di Stefano:so I'm excited I'm glad we'll see how our audience receives it I hope it's something that they all like as much as I like, but I thought it was pretty cool. It was actually connected to somebody too, who we interviewed, I want to say in the first 100 episodes.
31:42Justin Andrews:Was his handle Keto Head or something?
31:43Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, it used to be his handle. I don't think that's his handle anymore.
31:46Justin Andrews:Keto Head? Yeah. Do you remember? Yes, I do. Yeah, I remember him. It was at the Spartan Race.
31:50Sal Di Stefano:Yes, it was at the Spartan Race when we were doing all those interviews. I don't remember what year that was early on. Like seven years ago, maybe. Oh, at least that. Probably 2017.
31:59Justin Andrews:Oh, wow, even longer.
32:00Sal Di Stefano:Oh, yeah, yeah. It was early mind pump. It was well before this studio. It might have been the last studio. So it was a long time ago when we did that first Spartan thing.
32:11Adam Schafer:So I got to study. I'm going to change directions. I got to study that. And I think you guys are going to know the direction I'm going with this. But I'll tell you guys about the study. This was a large analysis. There was a lot of people in this study. And what it found was that individuals in the underweight category were almost three times as likely to have died than individuals with a BMI towards the top of the healthy range. But here's the crazy part. Individuals with a BMI of 40, so now you're obese, okay? People who are categorized as severely obese had a lower rate of death than people who were underweight.
32:48Adam Schafer:For what though? And just in general? Overall death, overall. So overall mortality. So people who are underweight have a higher mortality rate, slightly higher, which you wouldn't expect. I wouldn't even expect it necessarily to be the same as people who are obese, severely obese.
33:05Sal Di Stefano:Well, I mean, okay, so these are all going to be or mostly predominantly advanced age people. Somebody who is carrying themselves underweight, malnourished, is at a higher risk than somebody who's carrying extra body fat because they have extra sources of fuel and energy. Yeah. I don't think it's that crazy. I mean, this is one of those situations where you can look at a study and you can get it kind of twisted on what you're really reading into. That's how I'd read into it is that you've got, let's just say, make it easy, 100 people, 50 of them are, and they're all old. They're all 80 plus. And you've got 50 of them are obese and 50 of them are underweight.
33:52Sal Di Stefano:I'm more afraid for the underweight 80 year olds than I am the overweight 80 year olds.
33:56Adam Schafer:Yeah. I mean, so this is what this points to for me. So when I see this, we're so, people are so aware of the dangers of being obese and rightly so that there are lots of health issues with being in that upper, upper category that I think we don't, although naturally when you see someone that's underweight, it's like, oh man, you don't look very healthy. I think it can push some people in the wrong direction or at the worst, or at least I should say, they're just not aware of their own mortality risks because they're underweight. So it's like, oh, I'm not, I'm not obese, you know, but it's like,
34:33Sal Di Stefano:well, you're under underweight. Well, okay. So take that a hundred people again too. You know, what happens when an equal percentage of each of them get a cancer? The people that are underweight and malnourished are going, they're going to die so much faster than the person that has, because cancer is going to etulate the body. You have so much extra body for them to eat at. So you're going to sustain a little bit longer than that person also.
34:56Adam Schafer:But it's even, this is all cause mortality, meaning they had heart rate, heart attacks. It's all in there, right? So what we're looking at is under muscled. That's what we're looking at. What we're looking at are skinny, under muscled people. You're better off, by the way, the data is clear on this. You're better off being overweight and strong than you are being underweight or lean and weak.
35:17Sal Di Stefano:There's a bit of a very positive narrative from that, though, which is even if you've never mastered diet or got a hold of your habits with eating, if you just lift weights. That's right. If you just lift weights two or three times a week and get strong. Huge difference. Huge difference. That's right. So to me, it's actually really exciting good news. It's positive. It's that because the diet part is by far the hardest part. Oh, yeah. Every client you've ever had that's ever been challenged with weight loss or getting in shape is always the adherence to diet, to figuring the macros out, to being consistent with protein, all the things.
35:55Sal Di Stefano:But getting them to show up to my appointment that they paid for was never that difficult. In fact, most clients always showed up. I rarely ever had people no-show me. So if you just made an effort, whether you show up to see your trainer and lift weights two times a week. and greatly increase your chances. That's it, 100%.
36:16Adam Schafer:But here's the part that it points to for me. We are entering into this dramatic culture shift with the power of GLP drugs, right? The first generation, second generation, third generation. And what's happening, and there's people reporting this. They're going on them, under eating because their appetite's destroyed, right? It's crushed, that's part of what they do. And then they're coming back with sarcopenia or osteopenia. And I'm going to tell you right now, guys. I'm not preserving muscle. If you just lose a bunch of weight and you don't strength train, you may be trading one problem for another.
36:51Adam Schafer:Yeah. So, and we, in some cases, glamorize being underweight because we're so aware of the negatives of being obese. But I got, you go on these, if you go on these medications and they crush your appetite, which sometimes they will, especially if you're going on a high dose, you got to lift and you got to not under each the point where you lose lots of muscle because yes, you're losing weight. And here's the other part of it. Your blood work may actually show you're healthier. This is the other thing. If you look at diabetes and heart disease, there's a substantial minority. I say substantial because it's a big percentage representing millions of people who seem to have good blood work, but then suddenly they get diabetes or they get heart disease and it's like what's going on i'm not overweight i'm skinny what's the big deal you don't have protective muscle you don't have protective muscle and that's uh part of the problem so uh it i get strong and be active that's like number one
37:54Sal Di Stefano:that's number one this is why we have so many trainers in the fitness space that are uh you know screaming from the rooftops about glp1s um to a detriment in my opinion like i think that this is this thing has a tool it is a tool it has value and the right person using it correctly i think it can be life-changing and super beneficial but like anything else uh when abused when not used properly now it becomes dangerous i think if you use these i still stand by my original stance on this was if you go back far enough when we first got introduced to this and we were all kind of talking about it and debating it even when we knew very little, I believed it would be a net positive.
38:40Sal Di Stefano:I think it will be. I still believe that there's more people that are suffering from it. Now, what makes me worried about it is that if the thing that we talk about that is so scary and dangerous obesity is less about being obese and it's more about being under muscled well and that kind of flies in the face of my my thought process and i might not be right it might be a uh you know net negative in this situation because if you're if we are mostly under muscled and that's more of an issue than us being obese and and a majority of these people because that's what will happen a bunch very very rarely will the people do it correctly and and do a majority people will do it incorrectly which means a greater percentage of them will abuse it won't hit protein won't lift weights and they just lose a bunch of weight well they just lost a bunch of muscle too and so we'll be in a worse situation than what we were before that's right because
39:37Adam Schafer:what you have is you have doctors prescribing them which i get it it's a medical intervention but doctors don't understand exercise. They're not training it. They're not supposed to, right? They don't understand exercise. They don't understand nutrition, especially when it comes to building muscle. And they take, I think, a semester of nutrition.
39:57Justin Andrews:And it's just like a one size fits all still. I think if you go on a GLP-1,
40:01Adam Schafer:you need to work with a trainer, period. If you're somebody that I know, and you're like, hey, Sal, I'm going to go on a GLP-1, I'm like, only do it if you hire a trainer. otherwise I don't think it's going to be a good idea for you
40:12Sal Di Stefano:I totally agree with that
40:16Adam Schafer:I'm going to give you guys a little update on my daughter's lifting remember how I had that debate over my program this is not enough how am I getting gains on this
40:29Adam Schafer:imagine that she's getting stronger every week is she loving it oh yeah dude I'm calling her mini Sal right now because she's getting all into it. I mean, just last night we were at home, and I took her phone away from her for a separate reason, so she didn't have her phone with her. But she doesn't miss her workout, dude. So she's like, I see her get her headphones, get her ready to go back there. She's like, hey, can I at least listen to the music on my phone? I'm like, all right, you can do that. And she goes back there, and she's lifting, and I'm like, are you tracking how much you're lifting and stuff?
41:00Adam Schafer:Are you getting stronger every time? She's like, yeah. And I could see it, too, on her. I could see that she's building some muscle.
41:06Sal Di Stefano:Now, is there, you know, interesting. It's so cool. Interesting that you're getting a front row seat of that while you're simultaneously doing this series that you're doing on YouTube right now. Is there any part of you that is reluctant to her excitement around this?
41:22Adam Schafer:Oh, she's going to go, she has to go through the journey of developing a relationship with it. That's proper. Thankfully, you know, I'm there to help guide her. And I got to be real careful and smart or judicious with how I try to influence her. Because again, with teenage, with your kids in general, like it's very hard to influence them. Because they're more influenced by their peers. Luckily, however, many, some of her friends listen to the show. and so they're the ones that are like oh your dad is you know and so that's helping her be like oh maybe i should listen okay but she's seen the evidence now but yeah jessica and i talk about this and she's like i think she might be is she gonna get obsessed is she gonna right like she probably will she probably will go too far you know get a little obsessive i remember there was a one point where she she this was weeks ago she got sick so she couldn't work out then she went back and her lifts went down and she was like so mad.
42:20Adam Schafer:I can't believe my, you know, she's like super pissed off about it. And so I was in there with her talking her through it, talking about muscle memory and this is normal and this is what happens. And you don't always go for, you know, progress, but she's going to go through that process. And I'm just going to try and be there for her when she's open to the conversations around it. But this is a journey, but you guys know that you get into this, you're going to go through the process of like.
42:43Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. I mean, that's why I was so curious to how you hang because obviously when you know, the tendency that a, that a parent can do sometimes when they have, is to overcorrect, right. You do that way. So then you go the other extreme with her. And so I feel like you have a level of awareness around that, that you won't do that. So I was just curious to like how you're navigating that of like about the balance of standing back, letting her have her own journey, but then also knowing like keeping a close eye because it's like, I want to be able to insert myself or be there for that conversation when that does happen right so it's got to be probably yeah it's cool too because we'll be hanging out and
43:18Adam Schafer:then uh she'll like she'll look at me she'll like but watch this and she'll flex my heart just smells like oh this is so great dude you know i always had this dream that i'd have like these lift sessions you know with my kids one day yeah i mean so we're not there yet but i'm sure at some
43:35Sal Di Stefano:point you know it'll be fun i mean i can only imagine that'd be like max coming out and wanting to shoot the ball around with me i feel like that's like i still wait and you're trying to Hold in the excitement. Yeah. You don't want to overdo it. Totally. I could totally see how it's rad when it finally happens.
43:48Justin Andrews:It's so fun. Yeah. I just had Everett. He just started his lacrosse this weekend. And so it was his first real practice and just learning the skill of it and everything. And the one thing that stood out to me was just how inviting and friendly that community is. Really? I think it's because it's like not a thing here really. Oh, so they're trying to make it popular. Yeah. Like it's like an East coast kind of sport. Such a dope sport. It wasn't around. Like I totally would have got into it when I was growing up, but it's just, it's so what he needs. Like he, he puts on, he's like, he has all the pads and everything and, and he's, he puts his helmet on and he's like, dad, I feel like a weapon.
44:35Justin Andrews:I was like, Oh no. Oh no. He is so my kid. And I see him out there, and what was great was the coaches. It wasn't just like, you know, I thought, you know, they'll probably work on their handling, stick handling, and like, you know, passing and, you know, some shots on goal, whatever. But they did that, but they're like teaching them defense, and they're bodying up against each other. And they're like, already the physicality of it was like, oh, it's so great because it's hard to find that at this age range as well. and for it to be something that he's involved in. So I was like stoked just watching him, like getting exhausted, and just like physically smashing into everybody else.
45:17Sal Di Stefano:That's so cool because at his age now, most places have converted over to flag football, right? Yeah. So like contact football at his age is not even a thing. It's not really a thing.
45:26Justin Andrews:Yeah, a lot of the, and I looked into it like Pop Warner and all that, and it's just, yeah, it kind of died off in our area. I really didn't want to – I didn't get to do it. Like I played football when I was a freshman. That's my first introduction. And so I was playing soccer up until then, like getting red cards and yellow cards. I just want to hit someone. Yeah. It's just this weird drive. Like you just – I don't know. Like it's a violent tendency, you know.
45:52Sal Di Stefano:I can't wait to hear how he does it if he's into it. Because I think it's a cool sport.
45:58Justin Andrews:Yeah.
45:58Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.
45:59Justin Andrews:It looked like he really enjoyed it.
46:00Adam Schafer:Aren't the roots of lacrosse Native American? Was it a Native American game? Yeah, I believe so. Is that right? I believe so. Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, it was like a Native American game. I mean, it's like football meets hockey.
46:11Sal Di Stefano:I mean, it's super cool like that. I mean, I think that's -
46:14Adam Schafer:It's harder than it looks, too, because my daughter played it. Of course. And she's like, here, try to run with it. And I'm like dropping the - Yeah, exactly. Cradling it. It's a fast game, too.
46:22Sal Di Stefano:It is.
46:23Adam Schafer:I mean, it's pretty exciting to watch. I wish we had something like that.
46:26Sal Di Stefano:We didn't have that in our neck of the woods.
46:28Adam Schafer:No, and it's hard to find other schools that play. uh yeah north north american uh indigenous peoples as early as 17 was that 1180 wow as what
46:37Justin Andrews:stickball yeah didn't they like hyalai was like from mayans right i don't know something like that like i know it's like it's down south america that's a big sport but that's like where they throw the ball like it's like a crazy like i don't know if it's like 150 something miles an hour
46:54Adam Schafer:i can see what's that sport where they have that it's like it looks like a long scoop and you And they whip a ball. It's like the fastest. Yeah, that's high lie. That's high lie?
47:02Justin Andrews:Yeah.
47:03Adam Schafer:How fast does that ball go? Yeah, that's what I mean.
47:05Justin Andrews:I think it's like. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, it's like crazy fast. It's like hundreds of miles.
47:09Adam Schafer:It's more than 100 miles.
47:10Sal Di Stefano:It goes fast.
47:10Adam Schafer:Maybe faster. I think it's the fastest ball sport.
47:14Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.
47:14Adam Schafer:Oh, that might be right. It is.
47:15Sal Di Stefano:I mean, they definitely throw faster than a pitcher throws a ball. So it's like.
47:19Adam Schafer:Yeah, look at. Oh, it's spelled J-A-L.
47:22Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, J-A-I. 150 up to 190. Oh. Oh, see? Yeah.
47:28Adam Schafer:190 miles an hour can you imagine getting hit with that
47:30Sal Di Stefano:no that would kill you is the ball too kind of like a lacrosse ball is that what they it looks like it I don't know with their whipping
47:38Justin Andrews:like somewhat hard
47:39Sal Di Stefano:it's an Olympic sport
47:40Adam Schafer:isn't it I don't know it feels like a like a wealthy sport I always feel like it's like a rich sport
47:44Justin Andrews:yeah it's like really up there with like polo really it doesn't look like it to me
47:49Adam Schafer:okay well tell me
47:50Sal Di Stefano:where's it popular in Brazil but I mean it's not like maybe Spain like polo polo is that I mean it's a club and horses and like, okay, that totally does to me, you know what I'm saying? Or like, you know, fencing, you know what I'm saying? That's up there. But I wouldn't have thought of that as like a really -
48:06Adam Schafer:I think it's a wealthy sport. I think it's considered a sport that like upper class, whatever, originated in Spain. How'd you know, Doug?
48:17Justin Andrews:You know, it's a Basque region. He knows things.
48:20Adam Schafer:He's got the Google. I have the Googles here. I found a study that is getting popular on social media. So I can't wait to talk about it because there was a study in 1993 or 4 that came out about this. And of course, when I was a kid, if I saw anything that looked like it would build muscle, I'd try it. And there was a newer study. And so people are circulating. So taking five milligrams of melatonin before a workout will dramatically boost growth hormone production in the workout. Something like 150 % higher. Okay. Really? Yes, because melatonin downregulates something. Is the body fighting against it?
49:02Adam Schafer:No, there's something that I can't remember what it was, but it lowers something that controls growth hormone. So when you work out, growth hormone spikes. anyway when you take melatonin you get this much larger spike of growth hormone so now as a kid you know in the 90s and anything that said hormone on it because i'm like oh it's gonna make me jacked it sucks if you want to be sleepy in your workout it seems like that would be awful what's crazy too in the study they're like it didn't affect performance baloney i've tried this so many times right you take melatonin before you work out sucks it made me so i mean it's the opposite of what we
49:38Sal Di Stefano:do right like you take caffeine to get jacked on one like take some melatonin that sounds like a terrible idea i don't know who could be stimulated it's like trust me i've tried the same people who
49:47Adam Schafer:smoke weed before they lift weights no it's worse than that dude trust me it's what i've tried it for stretching i've tried it so many i was stubborn about it at one point so my growth hormone is gonna make me huge this sucks dude so what's the new study is there a new study yeah the study came
50:01Sal Di Stefano:out showed it raised growth hormone like 150 oh okay so this is you remember this back in the 90s That's when I saw the study. And so it's coming out. It's making its way. Yeah, and I saw people sharing it. Of course.
50:10Adam Schafer:Oh, my God, this is crazy. And I'm like looking at it. Yeah, go apply it.
50:13Justin Andrews:Try it, bro. See what you feel like.
50:15Sal Di Stefano:Take your melatonin pre-workout and gummy bears afterwards and let me know how it works out. Get it right to bed. Yeah, it totally sucks. Oh, it's so funny. Did you guys see? I saw some, since you're talking about funny stuff. Okay, I don't know if you saw this. Obviously, we all kind of follow different stuff. This is in the car world. there has been a guy for four years now that has been documented driving an f1 car on regular highways yeah it's like it's like an instagram phenomenon too that people have somebody who owns an f1 car actually has one of these is driving on main roads and has been for like four years pulled over four years he's gotten away for four years oh yeah and so they you know but and it's been this kind of phenomenon that everyone catches everyone catches it posts on instagram and then sharing it and so uh just recently he's been arrested and he was he was they finally caught up with him and i think they had like a big standoff where like a you know helicopter and like they cornered it my it was a big deal oh there you go doug's pulling it up right now yeah phantom ferrari driver yeah 51 year old guy does it yeah wow dude have you guys ever is that hilarious could you imagine like on the freeway on one-on-one over here and also like an f1 car pulls up right next to you that's so dangerous yeah and so expensive aren't they like 10 million dollars they are really expensive what that much f1 yeah i don't know about 10 million but they're they well look up how much no he's probably right 10 million is probably right i think they're like i know they're millions oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah no you're right 10 million maybe more they might be 20 to 30 actually the engineering that goes into those cars is like yeah yeah put up average price of an f1 yeah i mean they look like 12 12 to 20 million 12 to 20 million what's even crazy what's crazy is they've always got two of those on hand and they wreck them all the time and so you're like repair i mean so you want to talk about expensive sport oh god that's the have you guys ever you know what you know how you speaking since you since we're talking about f1 like how unique that is too there is there is name another sport where there's only 20 total athletes in the world oh yeah it's the only one there is only 20 f1 how What about the one where they jump with the squirrel suits?
52:23Sal Di Stefano:Oh, yeah. That's probably - Well, they die. That's why. Yeah, there's a lot of them, but they die. Those numbers. That's the highest desert. But there is only 20 F1 car racers in the world. You know how skilled you have to be? You have to be the most skilled to even get there. Like, you can't just go, oh, I want to drive F1 cars. You have to work your way all the way up all the cars. All the different classes to get there. Yeah, the classes to become -
52:43Adam Schafer:Are the classes like, is it like F10, F9? Is that what the F1 is?
52:47Sal Di Stefano:No, it's different names. Okay. Yeah. I was just guessing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's different. It's different. But you have to work your way all the way up before you're even a possibility to make that. So it's literally, there's not a lot of sports to say if you're actually just playing in it, you're top 20 in the world.
53:01Adam Schafer:Have you guys ever been in a situation, either personally or seen it, you don't have to give yourself, you know, write yourself out, where you saw someone literally outrun a highway patrol or a police officer? You ever seen that?
53:13Sal Di Stefano:I saw it. You know, it's hard to say is if I've seen it for real or I just watched so many clips of somebody
53:19Adam Schafer:doing it on a bike. I saw a guy in a Hayabusa. Yeah, I think I seen it on a bike. And I saw the lights turn on, and he was gone. Yeah. The highway patrol turned his lights on. That guy was gone. Yeah. Gone, dude.
53:30Justin Andrews:Those street bikes is going to be the easiest to elude.
53:34Sal Di Stefano:I bet you there's a pretty solid percentage, I bet, of people run on those bikes. I bet a higher percentage they probably want to admit and talk about. You know how the bank robbing thing is an undercover thing? That's what I always think about. The bank robbing thing is something that you act like it's so rare, but it's like oh that's because 50 of them get away with it so they don't want to stop the stat
53:53Adam Schafer:yes 50 of bank robbers get away yeah but here there's a caveat to that listen the average
53:58Sal Di Stefano:dollar amount is like chump change because they only keep so much in the register so that's including everybody just does a quick stick up give me what's in the cash and then they and they run out so that guy gets away but he gets away with the vault he gets away with five grand you know it's something like it's it's crazy when you hear like what some of these bank robbers get away
54:15Adam Schafer:with like you risked that for that like that's crazy my half my family works in banks and a couple of them have been in a bank that's gotten uh robbed that's how frequent it is but it's never like the movies like where they come in with the mask no it's never like it's always like someone comes in they hand them a letter it's really my commute twice like there's been uh people at rob
54:33Justin Andrews:bank here in san jose and then drove up through to get to santa cruz and have like taken all the side roads and they're like closing it off this happened twice i was like sitting on the side of
54:43Sal Di Stefano:road like waiting i mean it happens caught him all the time it happens a lot and they they just don't report them they're not gonna they don't want people to know that 50 percent of the time they're getting away with it or else more people would do it yeah so i gotta i gotta mention uh one
54:55Adam Schafer:of our partners again because oftentimes we get people on the show who we're talking to who are on the borderline of like too much stress and so their workouts aren't working we're talking about them about their sleep. We're trying to find a way to get them to apply the right amount of stress to induce adaptation, but not too much.
55:16Justin Andrews:Mitigate their stress.
55:17Adam Schafer:Right? And so oftentimes I'll recommend, well, not often, sometimes I'll recommend a supplement that'll help with that. Ashwagandha is always at the top of the list. It's the most supported by the data. It does, I mean, literally does help your body adapt to stress. If your total stress was at 100, using ashwagandha with the same amount of stress would lower its impact on your body. I'm going to use arbitrary numbers, but down to like 85 or something like that. It actually does make a big difference. It's why when they do studies on ashwagandha, athletes will gain strength and muscle on them. Not necessarily because it's like this muscle builder, but rather their body can adapt better to the stress.
55:57Adam Schafer:And Organifi Green Juice has an efficacious dose of ashwagandha. Yeah. Plus all the other micronutrients. And I don't know why I don't think of recommending that specific. It's green juice. I forget it's got ashwagandha in it.
56:08Justin Andrews:Yeah.
56:08Adam Schafer:But it's one of the best supplements of all of our partners. If you're like one of those people that's like, man, I keep feeling like I'm overtraining, I'm burnt out. What can I take that help?
56:18Sal Di Stefano:The green juice. Well, remember I told you guys just the other day, the last time we talked about Organifi, I brought up the green juice because I took it as trying to be preventative before getting sick. And I just forgot how good it feels to do that. I want to get in the habit of like making that like the first thing I drink. In the morning, I've made a habit of drinking caffeine, coffee or Celsius or whatever. I'd like to see the difference if I make an effort to do that and see if I notice the benefits. Because I noticed it when I drank that day. I was like, oh my God, that feels so much better.
56:47Adam Schafer:Yeah, I'm implementing it again in my routine too. Probiotics have documented data-backed benefits. Like they improve your gut health, obviously. They reduce inflammation. There's also some fat loss effects. helps your skin and mood. You probably know this already, so you're probably wondering, which probiotic should I go with? Seed. It's the world's best probiotic. Go to seed.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code 25mindpump, get 25 % off. Back to the show.
57:16Justin Andrews:First question is from RLE 1987. When limited for time in the gym, should I prioritize more sets, less rest per exercise, or fewer sets, more rest to maximize muscle growth?
57:29Adam Schafer:You know, it depends on the person I'm talking to. Often, you know, oftentimes, so this is a general answer because it really does depend on the person, but oftentimes, focus on the big lifts and leave out the other ones is what I would say, generally speaking. Now, that being said, none of the things that you asked are bad. Sometimes speeding up the workout is great. Sometimes doing just a lot of sets of one exercise is great because you don't have to switch movements. Other times you do less of the total exercises so you can maintain the rest periods. It really depends on the individual. But generally speaking, if you're the kind of person that's super, super, super consistent and pushing it all the time, then just focusing on the core lifts and cutting out the others is probably beneficial.
58:16Sal Di Stefano:I'm glad you went this way because I totally agree. And the way I was going to word it was they're all tools. And ideally, try and use all of them.
58:25Adam Schafer:Yeah.
58:25Sal Di Stefano:um now what we don't know is the rest of the story meaning let's say the same person has this exact same question and depending on the context uh i.e what are what are they currently doing in their life that may look different like for example the underslept you know does it hit their like why do you have less time yeah exactly right so the underslept overworked high stress person i'd say oh well let's just do less exercises and focus on a couple of the big lifts and get out. Like that's all you need to do. That would be more appropriate. But let's just say it's just a random, this is a random day because, but your stress level is good.
59:01Sal Di Stefano:Your sleep is good. You eat well. Hey, like sometimes there's a huge benefit in shortening the rest periods and doing a kind of faster paced workout. In fact, this is how I've always communicated this on the podcast. I've never intentionally did these like circuit type training, but I've definitely circuit trained. And when I do it is like when I'm limited on time, when I have those random days that, oh man, I got to go to this appointment. Yeah. And so I only got a half hour to work today. Oh, you know what I'm gonna do today? Today I'm gonna, I'm gonna no rest periods. I'm just gonna keep going through my workout.
59:28Sal Di Stefano:And because that's novel and I don't do it all the time, what a great idea. So it really depends on the context to give precise, but the truth is both are valuable. Yep.
59:37Justin Andrews:Next question is from Becca fit. What's your advice for overcoming injuries, the mental and physical side? I recently tore my Achilles and had a great recovery, but the mental side was harder than the physical. The mental side is always hard.
59:50Sal Di Stefano:You guys remember this when I shared this? Yes. Remember how hard it was? Remember I told you that would have afraid to like stress it or
59:56Adam Schafer:push it.
59:57Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. And, and, uh, I didn't realize how difficult, um, this is actually what got me back into listening to music again. Also got me back into listening to audio books, what I had to do personally. So this may or may not work for you, but I definitely, and it was an Achilles tear that, that actually threw me for a loop like this. Um, I had to find something else, uh, in my life that I could kind of focus on that I knew that I loved. I love reading audio books. I love music to occupy that space. And to make the books made me feel like I was progressing and growing and moving forward, even though my body physically couldn't do it.
1:00:33Sal Di Stefano:The music was something that was a passion that I loved to do that was entertaining me and kept me in good spirits. And so I found attaching myself to two things like that that didn't require my body. Like I didn't need a healthy body to do either one of those things. and made me feel good. And I didn't realize that this was going to hit me the way it did, but it took a toll on me, and I remember how powerful it was to find that situation.
1:00:58Justin Andrews:Yeah, like working on your relationships, like working on other things going on in your life that you can kind of redirect your focus. Because, yeah, I mean, you'll feel like you're at least being productive. I know that's the hardest part is when you get down for the count and it's like this injury is really limiting you from feeling that you're moving forward when in fact there's so many, I mean, there's so many aspects of progress, you know, spiritually, physically, mentally that you can address. I think that it'll open up a space for that. So that's great advice.
1:01:31Adam Schafer:Yeah, so a lot of people don't realize this until you go through it. It's like you have - I didn't know until it hit me. You have a major injury and you heal and you have a great recovery. So for all intents and purposes, like, wow, oh, my knee is back to normal or my Achilles is fully healed. But what we don't take into consideration is the fear, the mental trauma that it left. And I use the word trauma. People are like, oh, it's not that. Yeah, it is. I mean, you blow out a joint, especially doing an exercise and it's unexpected or doing something that you love doing and it's unexpected. There's a memory there of what that was like.
1:02:10Adam Schafer:And so then you get fully healed and then there's a fear there. And I've heard this so many times from clients. It's like, I'm scared to push it. I'm scared to go fast again. I don't know what's wrong with me. And that mental side is just as connected to the injury as the physical side is. So when you look at the data on overcoming these kinds of fears or any fear in general, one of the most effective strategies is known as exposure therapy. And you'll see this with people like scared of spiders or scared of balloons or whatever. So this is what it looks like for an injury. So you tore your Achilles, full recovery.
1:02:44Adam Schafer:For all intents and purposes, everything's back to normal. You slowly expose yourself to movements and exercises that challenge your Achilles. You expose yourself mentally to these movements and slowly rebuild confidence in the fact that you can go back and do what you did before. But it's frequent exposure, okay? Because if you don't do that and you're expecting to just jump back in, that fear will hold you back. that fear will hold you back from really pushing yourself or worse the fear changes recruitment patterns actually makes an injury more likely so it's very slow so you tore your achilles okay now it's fully recovered you start with calf raises then you start with heavier calf raises then you start with jumping then you start with light running or whatever right to slowly move yourself towards the point where you can then exert yourself fully but you have to rebuild that confidence and again the process is known as uh exposure therapy and it does work and it does take
1:03:42Sal Di Stefano:time there there are people afraid of balloons yeah that's a real fear that's a real fear attached
1:03:47Adam Schafer:to clowns no it's like there are people that you'll put a terrified of balloons because they for whatever reason uh when they were a kid it exploded in their face and they're just scared
1:03:59Justin Andrews:i had a client that was allergic because of the latex so she got crazy over that but that's funny Next question is from the Matthew Holcomb. What's the best way to get back into working out after a surgery that put you down for two plus months? Slowly.
1:04:16Adam Schafer:Yeah, it's kind of similar to the last one. Very similar. Yeah, slowly. You slowly ease yourself back into the routine. For the physical purpose is to rebuild muscle and stability and strength. And then for the mental reason to rebuild confidence. so it's just a slow process uh there is no such thing as too slow yep so take your time technique that's it slowly work in completely slowly challenge yourself um and before you know it you'll be totally fine but the key word here is slowly um it's it's safe and uh with if you have muscle memory because you used to work out uh muscle will come back very quickly you know the
1:04:58Sal Di Stefano:the challenge is the the same psychologically but the opposite of what the last person that we're talking to is like and i remember this is this was when i had my knee injury i was so uh so ambitious i was so like as soon as i felt better i was like each workout i was trying to progress you know and it was jump boxes by like two months later i'm like and then i re-injured myself and it was so stupid because i was like i got competitive with like how fast i was trying to come back and that was such a terrible strategy the better strategy what you're saying you can't go too slow you know if you are just consistent yeah if you're being consistent and you're slowly progressing, you're perfect.
1:05:34Sal Di Stefano:Like this is the, the, like trainers, this is common. Even some people with athletic backgrounds where they have the opposite problem where they're, they are healed. And now they think they're going to go right back to where they were, where they left off. And it's like, that's a recipe for an injury again.
1:05:48Justin Andrews:Next question is from real life wellness with Jess. How can I grow an online nutrition and fitness business if I hate doing social media?
1:05:56Adam Schafer:you know what's funny is people forget especially with fitness okay uh you can build uh an incredible nutrition and fitness business even online world yeah without ever being on social media you can i actually think this is going to make a comeback doing it without social media yeah no yeah yeah
1:06:15Sal Di Stefano:i think that we've moved so much in this direction that it really opens the opportunity for the person that wants to do this old school just go to your local community so i i suggested this so we had we have a new trainer who's coming on board with us and she was talking about her hometown she has a one one street one light you know hometown like you know a couple thousand people in the whole town and she was just like you know how do you build a fitness business there and i'm like you know what i would do is i would uh start a walking group at 7 a.m every monday whatever pick your day that you can do it and do it for free and walk downtown where there's only one street where every car that goes through that they got to go through there that everybody in town and they start seeing this group and maybe it starts with four or five ladies and when you first get it going and then it's 10 and then it's 20 and 30 people are walking with you you get a movement going on right and it's a free service so it's easy to convince people to do it and you're helping you're doing a good thing and it'll just create this buzz in the town and then i'm gonna to go work with the, you know, the hobby shop, the local hobby shop and the local grocery store and, you know, and, and start networking with your community and doing things that, I mean, and you could become the fitness guru of the town.
1:07:29Sal Di Stefano:And that's just, if you have a small town, you have a big town, you have lots of opportunity and lots of these things you can do. But I do think that there is a more of an opportunity today than there was, uh, 20 years ago, because that was the only way you built a business back in the days. And now Instagram and And YouTube and Facebook is the way everyone tries now. It's like, dude, go.
1:07:50Justin Andrews:It's funny you actually say that because, like, Gary Vee was asked, like, a similar kind of a question. And it was mainly, like, he was talking about the need for people with human connection again. And that what he, like, thought might actually be an opportunity was to create, like, just a walking business. Like, I will walk with you for this amount of time. Like they'd pay for them just to like chat with somebody and walk through the city and whatever. And he's like, and it's already happening. And it's just, it's interesting. Cause like, like you can see how disconnected we've been and how, how, you know, human connection, people are craving that right now.
1:08:29Justin Andrews:And so to, to add a bit of a fitness element to that, I would feel it'd be an easy combo.
1:08:34Adam Schafer:Look, if you, it's, it's created, social media can be a powerful tool. So don't get me wrong, but it's created the illusion that that's the only way you can build your business or that's the best way to build your business. even is a bit of an illusion. If you took two trainers brand new that needed to build their business and one of them hit the pavement, one of them went outside and talked to people and the other one only stayed online, I would bet all my money that the one who hit the pavement will build their business faster, much faster. Now that's not to say you shouldn't do all of it because if you're smart, you want to use all of it, but you'll build a faster.
1:09:06Adam Schafer:I mean, when we started Mind Pump, I remember Adam would get on me about starting a social media something because I had nothing. In fact, my business had a website that didn't even work. And I built a six-figure personal training business just being in my community. That's all I did. I would just go out and talk to people and do body fat test booths and do stuff like that. And it works and it works faster. In fact, when I talk to trainers now, I say, start there. When you start building something there, then do the online stuff to support what you've already built. It's actually a better strategy.
1:09:37Sal Di Stefano:A way better strategy is to go hit the pavement and document that process. But you don't have to. If you're trying to do this with no social media, you don't have to. You absolutely can go build this without social media. But the easy way to do both is focus on the pavement, document some of that process. And when you meet people in real life and train the only one client that you have, the things that you post about on social media is related to helping that one client. And then it becomes two clients that you're helping. And so the two things that you're posting about are to help those two clients.
1:10:08Sal Di Stefano:And so your content online is really to serve your handful of people that you met in real life. And then you start attracting people virtually. That's the way I would build if I was building this thing all over again.
1:10:21Adam Schafer:Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. We'll see you. It's at Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,
1:10:31Justin Andrews:and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com.
1:11:17Justin Andrews:If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.
From the publisher
In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin answer four Pump Head questions drawn from last Sunday's Quah post on the @mindpumpmedia Instagram page.
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Mind Pump Fit Tip: Eight Ways Isometrics Will Give You the Fastest Gains You've Ever Seen. (2:00)
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New partner alert! Crisp Power. (26:12)
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Being too thin can be deadlier than being overweight. (30:46)
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Mini Sal. (38:52)
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The welcoming lacrosse community. (42:25)
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Melatonin, pre-workout? (46:58)
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Phantom Ferrari driver. (48:58)
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Ashwagandha to mitigate stress. (53:29)
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#Quah question #1 – When limited for time in the gym, should I prioritize more sets, less rest (per exercise), or fewer sets, more rest to maximize muscle growth? (55:52)
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#Quah question #2 – What's your advice for overcoming injuries? The mental and physical side. I recently tore my Achilles and had a great recovery, but the mental side was harder than the physical! (58:12)
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#Quah question #3 – What's the best way to get back into working out after a surgery that put you down for 2+ months? (1:02:41)
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#Quah question #4 – How can I grow an online nutrition and fitness business if I hate doing social media? Help! (1:04:23)
Related Links/Products Mentioned
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Visit Crisp Power for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP10 for 10% OFF. Give your snack game a serious upgrade. Crisp Power Protein Pretzels deliver super crunchy and delicious snacks that are up to 28g of protein, low carb, zero sugar and high in fiber! **
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Visit Organifi for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout for 20% off**
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Flash Sale: MAPS Performance 50% off! ** Code ATHLETE50 at checkout. **
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Being too thin can be deadlier than being overweight, Danish study reveals
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Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code 25MINDPUMP at checkout for 25% off your first month's supply of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic**
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Trainer Bonus Series Episode 1: The Successful Trainer Mindset
People Mentioned
- Mind Pump Fitness Coaching (@mindpumppersonaltraining) Instagram
