2859: Take a Week Off and Gain 21% More Muscle — Here's the Science

15:34Adam Schafer:after every Olympia was Ronnie Coleman. And then you know who did this to an extreme was Kevin Levroni. So in the 90s, he's probably one of the best uncrowned Mr. Olympias. And people would trip over how much muscle he lost after a big show because he would stop everything. He would stop training, stop doing everything. And then he'd show up to get ready for a show and people would trip at how much muscle. And they thought, oh, you must have the best genetics. No. And by the way, he's got great longevity. If you look at Kevin Levroni today, he looks phenomenal. And bodybuilders at practice does typically look a lot better.

16:05Adam Schafer:Dexter Jackson is a good example there. So how do you apply this to your training? I think it's reasonable because you can look at complex models of periodization and the programming gets pretty specific and pretty awesome for coaches and trainers and strength coaches. This stuff gets really nitty gritty, kind of cool. But I think an easy way to apply this for yourself is if you're ultra consistent, is every sixth or seventh week or two, go and plan to go easy in the gym. You still show up, you still work out, regardless of how good you feel. So this is why periodization is so effective or how it was used.

16:49Justin Andrews:Yeah, you have to really plan it. It was scheduled. Yeah, put it in your calendar.

16:53Adam Schafer:Yeah, because if you wait until you're burnt out, you're already behind the eight ball. So what I'm recommending is for those people or consistent is every like the seventh week or eighth week or sixth week something around there you take a week or two where you're like i'm gonna go i even i know i feel great i feel like i'm crushing it uh but what i'm gonna do is go to the gym and go easy for a couple weeks and you may notice a little bit of loss of muscle fullness a little bit of loss of strength when you get back to the gym but no and this is very consistent the data two or three weeks after it you get that super compensation yeah where you it slingshots you forward for better gain there's a there's

17:29Sal Di Stefano:another thing that I think that this, for me personally, this is a help and maybe this will help somebody else or the way that I've framed this for myself is I, life happens inevitably. And I tend to have these, these periods of time where I'm, I'm a little inconsistent. And when, and then there's other periods of time where I'm really consistent. After that study came out, it, it changed kind of my mindset where I used to get really frustrated and I allow days off like five days and missing the gym to kind of spiral out and have the kind of effort on and off type of mindset versus being like oh it's perfect that was on a nice rhythm for like a month there and i took five six days off in a row natural deload yeah natural deload and i'm back at it again and it's uh i don't know it's it's it's similar to the me giving myself the permission to go to the gym and just do one or two exercises it's been very freeing and it just i just go with it verse before i used to allow it like oh i'm off now i've been in i've been missing And then I fall off the diet.

18:25Sal Di Stefano:I fall off all these things. And then one week turns into two weeks versus me going like, oh, that was perfect. It was nice. I had a nice week off, and now I'm back at it again. And what I've noticed when I look over six months, it's like, man, I've been able to maintain really good shape, even though I would consider myself relatively inconsistent. But when you look at it, I'm still consistent compared to the average person. I don't take months off, but a week off all the time happens these days. But then I'm right back at it. And when during that time off, I also didn't go off the rails and just completely let go of my eating.

18:58Sal Di Stefano:Like, and it's just.

18:59Adam Schafer:So here's what I do. Cause I, I'm much better with this than I used to be. So I'm, I'm obviously a fanatic and, uh, have a little mental, uh, block with it or connection. Like I go to the gym, it's for my mental health, you know? And so if you're listening, you're probably like, oh yeah, that's me. So here's what I do when I do my deload. Uh, I go to, and there's two ways I can approach this. So you're either a strength guy or girl, or you're like a muscle or hypertrophy guy or girl. So there's just two ways you could do this. And I've done both. I'll go to the gym. And if it's hypertrophy, if that's the mindset I'm in, I'm going light.

19:30Adam Schafer:And all I'm trying to do is really feel the muscle. So, you know, if I'm doing incline press and let's say I work out with 225, I'm going to put 135 on. And I'm just going to really try to feel the pec squeeze and just kind of like isolate and do that kind of thing. Right. if you're a strength guy or girl, cut the weight in half and just perfect your technique. Can I make my deadlift more explosive? Can I make it move faster off the bottom? Can I get my squat to feel more stable? And so you just perfect the technique. And then again, what'll happen is you'll come back, feel like you maybe lost a little bit, and then suddenly, boom, gains will go through the roof.

20:08Adam Schafer:So it's just a good approach for people because I think the big challenge with this isn't necessarily the information that we're giving, but the attachment. Oh, no.

20:17Justin Andrews:That's interesting because I naturally do that. I'm a big movement in general, like gross motor movements, like less on muscle groups and whatnot. But when I do take weeks like that where I'm kind of really lowering my intensity, I will either feel and squeeze like more hypertrophy style training or, yeah, I'm going to go through that and really do fast reps really light.

20:40Adam Schafer:Yes. So that's what powerlifters will do with their deloads is they're trying to move the bar faster with lighter weight, and they don't go to fatigue. It's not like faster and then also hammer myself. Yeah. It's just perfecting the speed of the bar. It's great for performance. All right, so we talk about meal prepping on the show. I've been more consistent than I've ever been in a long time with meal prepping.

21:02Sal Di Stefano:Really?

21:03Adam Schafer:Yeah, you know this. You see me bring my meals.

21:05Sal Di Stefano:Well, I mean, I feel like you've been that way for a while now.

21:08Adam Schafer:Well, I'm super consistent now with how I prep and how I schedule it.

21:15Sal Di Stefano:Is part of this DoorDash motivation at all? No.

21:19Adam Schafer:It was really eight numbers gone down. That was mine. I'm not lying. It's expensive.

21:24Sal Di Stefano:A lot of the motivation was like, I think I could put a dent in this. Yeah, dude. And I have, dude. It's almost insulting. It is a bit insulting and embarrassing, like how ridiculous it is and just getting back to that. Anyway, sorry to cut you off.

21:36Adam Schafer:No, the motivation for me was health because as healthy as you can eat, if you're smart with eating out, they're always going to use different oils and, you know, the food isn't going to be as clean as what I know I can make or whatever. So what we did is I switched my butcher box cuts to include a ton of chicken thighs because I love thighs for, I don't know, thighs are really good. Like steak is good too. Ground beef is best. But there's like certain meats that are okay warmed up again. like steak rewarmed steak it's not the best it's okay i'll do it microwave steaks yeah uh ground beef you could warm up and it's great and chicken thighs are great warmed up chicken thighs the day after two days after almost just as good as when you first made it so i switched my butcher box um we already had a ton of ground beef because my kids will eat that uh but i threw in like hella chicken thighs so now what i do is sunday so i do this on sunday sundays after church come home i fire up the grill and i put like five six pounds of chicken thighs out there season them and just grill them all up and then if you look in my fridge now i have like uh like like all these tupperwares filled up with chicken and rice or chicken and vegetable and it's just great i think

22:51Sal Di Stefano:that the four staple things that we have in every box is chicken nuggets which is my son yeah I don't prep those. The chicken thighs. Have to have those. The ground beef and then my ribs. Those four, we eat those on rotation and that's my box.

23:10Adam Schafer:But I would say the easiest, right? I don't know if you guys agree, like ground beef, rice, you know, you can throw in some mushrooms in there, some seasoning, a little bit of salsa after you warm it up. It's always really good. I always like it. And then thighs. You season them again, you warm them up again? I'll eat those all day long.

23:26Sal Di Stefano:Both those are amazing reheated. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I don't know. I'm trying to think right now.

23:32Adam Schafer:Because I tried steak, and I don't think we want steak. So there's a trick.

23:36Sal Di Stefano:I have a trick for that. What do you do? You cook it rare?

23:39Adam Schafer:Yes. Okay. Yep.

23:40Sal Di Stefano:So the trick is to, so I'll cook a bunch of steak, right, a bunch of ribeye. And I normally, when I cook, I'll cook enough for like Katrina and I eat that night. That night, I'll cook it to a medium temperature that we're going to be eating dinner. The other ones I pull early. So they're rare. And then I also do this. So I cook them, and then I cube them. So then I slice in cubes. Because the other thing that sucks about steak reheat is you've got a plastic fork you're trying to cut. Yeah, dude. So I actually - You guys have seen me in New York. So I cube them all up and portion it out with the rice.

24:16Sal Di Stefano:So they're rare, and they're cubed. And it's mixed in the rice. Yes. And then when you reheat, it takes it up to a medium temp. I should have asked you this earlier. and and yeah it's that's the key to that i think oh wow yeah you know what my kids like

24:30Justin Andrews:chicken breast yeah they like they like i'm with them yeah i'm a big chicken breast guy you like chicken breast you guys highlight that all the time i'm like really say anything because i you love it so much i don't you're not gonna change my mind i did not know that about my feelings yeah you're a pro chicken breast guy bro the problem is you Over the years, I feel like there's been a consistency issue with chicken breasts. I don't know if it's a certain quality. Obviously, ButcherBox has a better quality, so that helps. I kind of steered away from them for a bit because you'd get them, and it was kind of like, I don't know how to describe it, but chewy kind of consistency.

25:13Justin Andrews:It didn't have that same cooked throughout kind of feel. But I've always liked just the flavor of chicken breast better. weird what the heck i've known you for how long i had no idea i had no idea you're i'm a big breast

25:25Sal Di Stefano:guy wow yeah what so tonight we're having so dry so tonight we'll have chicken breast i mean if where i like chicken breast but katrina has this dish that she makes that has like it's like a it's like a greek yogurt it's a it's saucy okay so it's the chicken breast i like when you put it with you like your chicken like you like your women is it saucy real saucy it's spicy saucy breasty yeah whoa i didn't say that i didn't say that dude so when when she cooks the the chicken breast in uh and we have it in like a sauce or casserole that's where i like chicken breast because you got all these other fats and juices with it so then it's then it's good but straight

26:05Adam Schafer:chicken how many things about you do we not know because you don't say anything probably a lot this is a big deal chicken breast the next day how many times have me and you talk crap about chicken breast and this guy's silent and you prefer it yeah oh yeah you know what a serial

26:19Justin Andrews:killer shit bro dude because in tacos and everything else like yeah i don't want like i don't want dark meat wow you're racist too wow hey serial killer and racist hey listen

26:35Adam Schafer:it makes sense yeah you can't pin that on me it makes sense he does kind of have like a kid's palate you know what i mean like oh chicken thighs is too much uh you know too much well

26:43Sal Di Stefano:That's where it's weird to me because chicken breasts are dry, man. They're super dry. Especially reheated. You barbecue sauce the hell out of them. Yeah, that's why. That's it. Let's be honest. You have some chicken with your barbecue sauce. It's true.

26:55Justin Andrews:Listen, I need you to be honest right now. See, here comes all the hate. That's why you didn't say hate. Don't worry. You fucking put all this in there. Don't worry.

27:02Sal Di Stefano:Plenty of people will come to defend you.

27:04Adam Schafer:Hey, hold on. You seasoned it, right?

27:06Sal Di Stefano:Plenty of people will come to defend you about their chicken breasts. Hey, hold on real quick. It's fine. It's fine, dude. I'm just being honest.

27:11Adam Schafer:Listen, I can't be honest right now. Do you ever dip your chicken breast in ketchup?

27:15Justin Andrews:Ew, no, hell no. Okay, all right. All right. I was close. He's a barbecue side. You're the mayonnaise guy, dude. I don't put it on my chicken.

27:23Adam Schafer:Really? No. You being honest? I can do it, but I don't. Mayonnaise from French fries.

27:28Justin Andrews:That's about it. I've seen you eat a cube of butter, dude. Yeah. Yeah, I'll eat butter all the time. And I'll do that, too. There's no shame.

27:34Adam Schafer:When I was a kid, my mom would go in the fridge, and she'd see that the stick of butter had a bite out of it. She'd get so mad at me. You just straight bite it. I would go in there and I'd bite it and I'd put it away. That's crazy. Not that smart of a kid though, right? I mean, it was. Yeah, yeah. You can't hide that.

27:51Sal Di Stefano:I don't think it was until I started hanging out with you guys where I'll, and I know I got it from you because I'd never did it before. Up until I was 30, if I had butter and bread, like a normal human, I cut it with a butter knife and I spread it on my thing. But I, and I know I've seen you guys do this with just the bread. You just, just, we layer them off. No, you just got, you'd use the bread and you almost like dip on the butter. You know what I'm saying? You just scoop the butter and then I do that now. I never did that before. And I'm like, I know it's a habit I got from you guys.

28:21Adam Schafer:It definitely influenced you. The bread is just to hold the butter. Yes, exactly.

28:24Sal Di Stefano:That's what it's like now. I'm like, I never, you know when you go like, it's like when you go to a restaurant now and they give you the foil ones. Yeah. Yeah. I just open it up. Just put it on the bread. Yeah. I'm like, where's all the rest? Yeah. You just scoop it with the bread where I never did that before. I would take a knife and I'd spread it evenly. All civilized. It took my one cube of butter per slice to like four cubes per slice because of that. All right, listen.

28:50Adam Schafer:I got to bring this up because this is happening and I'm going to put my theory out there. Has this been in Texas this morning? Listen, what's happening right now. Oh, God. Has this been keeping you up at night? Because this is the craziest thing. that is going to be coming out in modern history, in my opinion. Okay. So the FBI just said, what's his name? Patel? The guy that runs it? Cash Patel. He just said, we just - Super trustworthy. I know. Well, let's get there. We'll get there. He said, we just basically green-lighted a ton of information and documents on UFOs and non-human entities. That's what they're calling aliens now, non-human entities.

29:35Adam Schafer:And so it's going to come out. by the way the white house just bought a uh a url i think it's aliens.gov yeah doug look that up

29:45Justin Andrews:aliens.gov i mean we already have a space force so okay so we're gearing up no no there's more

29:51Adam Schafer:okay it's here there's more first off all these officials are coming out these are like these are like uh politicians who are coming out who are part of this like disclosure wait okay and two

30:01Justin Andrews:they've already been um working with like religious leaders right about this oh sorry

30:06Adam Schafer:all right so listen these these politicians are coming out these politicians are coming out and they're saying it's crazier than you think and what we're dealing with are interdimensional non-human entities so in other words these aren't aliens like like you would like you would see in a movie they are interdimensional so they could disappear reappear they exist in other dimensions that's what the politicians are coming out saying also there was this meeting of pastors who met with government officials this is all over social media yeah so i don't know how true it is but they're coming out and saying it happened whom they met with these officials and they said to them we need you to prepare your congregation for what's about to come out okay so do you think a couple things couple thoughts on this one okay uh if you trust everything the government says uh you can go and tune out now yeah i think at this point i don't think they have i think they've never told us anything no no so whatever they release is what they want us to see and there's a narrative behind it that's just the way it works so this is of all this you're talking

31:17Sal Di Stefano:about right now this is the area where we're we're in agreeance because i'll have my two cents on

31:20Adam Schafer:all this i think i think that it's demons i think what we're dealing with they're trying to label uh the dark forces of the spiritual realms the principalities the demons as non-human entities yeah and so i think that's what we're dealing with so of course it's been a rebrand since it's a rebrand yeah the great deceiver ancient times and what they're gonna do here's my theory aliens are spirits if i'm right then then awesome oh well no not awesome i hope not but i think i'm gonna be rewrite the origin of humanity, the origin of life. They're going to try to say things like these spiritual leaders, Jesus was just one of these entities that came and we created humanity.

32:02Adam Schafer:And they're going to try and crush people's faith through all of this. That's what I think. It's demons.

32:11Sal Di Stefano:Where we are in agreeance is that 100%, I believe, whatever we do get to hear is what the government wants you to hear. Now, because we're in agreeance there, where my brain goes right away is that it's less about any of your ideas being true, and it's more about what we're not hearing. So I think it has nothing to do. I think they could fabricate all kinds of files and stories and try to prove it's interdimensional demons and whatever. All the key is so, because that's crazy, and that's a crazy debate in itself. And so we're all over here while something else, slide of hand shit's going on over here.

32:50Justin Andrews:Not a bad theory. I feel like they've been reading every prophetic literature in history and they've been trying to literally go through each one of those things to get more land grab and power. And so it's like the belief system people already have, they're now trying to use that and weaponize that to gain more, usher us into the new world order. Yeah. I mean, there it is.

33:22Sal Di Stefano:I mean, since COVID, I think we could agree that we've lost, just in humans as a whole, have lost more trust in government than probably in human history. Yeah. Right? Well, in modern history. Yeah, in modern history, right?

33:36Adam Schafer:Yeah, average person is like way less likely to trust. Right.

33:38Sal Di Stefano:And I would say a large percentage of those people fall in the conservative or religious group of people. Would you not agree?

33:47Adam Schafer:Yeah.

33:48Sal Di Stefano:Right?

33:48Adam Schafer:No, you're right.

33:48Sal Di Stefano:So what better way to try and get them distracted than to feed into demon, spiritual, all that direction, and that these aliens are like, why that is now the narrative? To me, it's like that will get those people interested in the narrative like you are right now.

34:09Adam Schafer:But they got to use it for a reason. What was the distraction before?

34:12Sal Di Stefano:We won't know. We won't know until it's too late or until after. I mean, that's not a bad theory. That's my thing.

34:19Adam Schafer:That's very, I mean, I can go there.

34:20Justin Andrews:Because I think it's. I mean, they have to place a world leader. Like, how are we going to get the Antichrist? Yeah, see, thanks, Justin. How are they going to do that? Otherwise, you have to get everybody bought in. Yeah. And so it has to be from somewhere else.

34:32Sal Di Stefano:Here's why I'm moving. You only have to get everybody bought in if you think that it's for that reason. I think it's just purely a distraction. I think it's a.

34:41Adam Schafer:To get away with something.

34:42Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, exactly. I think it's to get away with other things. or maybe, I mean... That's been the game since day one. I mean, definitely, we're obviously more concerned about this than we are Epstein. I mean, that's already, that's getting further and further behind us.

34:54Adam Schafer:You think they're going down the playbook? Like, everybody's still talking about Epstein? Yeah. Yes, like, we're almost there.

34:58Sal Di Stefano:You know what I'm saying? We got, like, half of them to forget about it. Bro. Like, this is going to get the other half right here. This is going to get the last.

35:03Justin Andrews:You look back at, like, what was it, the Playboy Mansion and everything else, too, and they're finding, like, a lot of that was, like, a huge traffic place. Oh, yeah, tunnels and all kinds of things. Yeah, it's a celebrity. To control celebrities.

35:15Adam Schafer:It was like Epstein before Epstein. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So here's why I'm going in that demon, you know, or, you know, the spirit world type of deal. Number one, they're saying they're interdimensional. So when you're saying interdimensional, the reason why they would say that, my theory, is so they can account for the spirit-like qualities of these entities. Okay? How do you explain it scientifically that they can do what they do? Oh, it's interdimensional. Whereas people who, you know, read the Bible are like, that's what the Bible talks about. Like, that seems like the spirit world. The second reason is I've always thought alien stuff was cool.

35:51Adam Schafer:And when you look at, when you read all of the accounts that people have of abduction or experiences, they sound remarkably demonic. They'll present themselves. They'll try to communicate some new world spiritual vision. there's like a significant percentage I don't remember what the number was but it's huge of these people being abducted or being messed with and then they invoke the name of Jesus and then they disappear.

36:18Justin Andrews:I feel like everybody should listen to that podcast with Sean Ryan and that exorcist he outlines like the whole spirit world like and gives the whole hierarchy of everything and like what they're capable of it's really fascinating but yeah to like your point Like they can mimic, you know, a lot of this explanation is like, you know, stuff that we've seen throughout history. It's just that, you know, it's been rebranded. Yeah, rebranded.

36:47Sal Di Stefano:Don't you guys all find it so crazy fascinating, though, that so this is this all didn't happen in the last six month window, right? This is all we have all kinds of.

36:57Adam Schafer:Well, they've been trickling it. They've been trickling with more videos.

37:00Sal Di Stefano:I know, but what I'm saying is like, but all that stuff is like.

37:03Justin Andrews:They start on the East Coast with everybody recognizing these UFOs. And that's just to, again, socially condition us.

37:09Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, exactly. But so why choose to do it now and not 20 years ago? Or 10 years ago? Or just four years ago? Because that's the question I have. Because we got more power now. I have the theory. Do you really think that? Do you really think that all of a sudden they become more powerful right now? We now have the tools.

37:26Justin Andrews:We've uncovered it.

37:27Adam Schafer:Yeah, we now have the tools necessary to usher in real control over the world. We have AI. We have digital currency that they're selling. The infrastructure is there. Infrastructure is there. And they kind of had to warm us up.

37:41Justin Andrews:That's my— It's so funny. This sounds like a wild conversation, you know, like to have on a fitness podcast, but it's like the president's about to announce this kind of stuff, you know? Yeah. So for us not to talk about it, it's kind of ridiculous in itself. Yeah, dude. They bought the freaking URL, alien.gov. Yeah. what's going on here yeah yeah where are you at doug well i'm i'm not gonna weigh in on this

38:04Sal Di Stefano:except the alien.gov the alien.gov site you know why he hasn't been aging for a long time yeah are you working out pretty well for me the interdimensions no alien.gov is not an active

38:18Adam Schafer:website no who they bought though a url can you look that up what did the white house bought a url related to ufos i could be wrong but there was one that they did buy i just i find it i find it

38:30Sal Di Stefano:really interesting that they they're choosing now to be honest and tell us stuff you know yeah

38:35Justin Andrews:there's no honesty this is all deception to your point i don't really know exactly what it is but

38:41Adam Schafer:yeah for sure it's a deception and i think it's in the book of genesis uh these fallen angels uh they find human women attractive and they breed with them. What do alien abductions involve? Almost always some kind of breeding process, the way that they appear, the way that they speak. Angels can appear in your dreams or speak into your mind. What are aliens?

39:04Justin Andrews:The whole, like the Senator Matt Gaetz and somebody else was bringing up like some of these alien breeding, like the programs,

39:14Adam Schafer:like this is from a Senator.

39:17Justin Andrews:Yeah.

39:18Adam Schafer:Oh, there you go. The government registered the domains, alien.gov and aliens.gov. So alien and aliens.gov in March 2026. Yeah, they're not live, though. Yeah, I told you, though. They did something with it. Told you.

39:29Justin Andrews:Okay, you're right. They own it.

39:30Sal Di Stefano:Damn. They own it. So now they can profit off of all these people that are going to. They're not going to profit off a website. You think they're going to have ads on it? Yeah. So I wouldn't put it past 10-point ads for sale?

39:43Adam Schafer:Bunkers. Hey, what do you guys think? Let me ask you guys this, since we're having this fun conversation yeah how what do you think that the reaction from the population will be if indeed it does come out and if indeed they confirm let's won't care lackluster if you you don't think people

39:59Sal Di Stefano:if you did not care enough about the epstein files yeah to even do a little bit of homework to know like i have so many people connected to me like family that's not real yes like what and that was on a government site that you could go look at the emailing with names on it and conversations evidence because they are going to want us to talk

40:25Adam Schafer:about this the reason why Epstein disappeared is because they made it disappear they're going to pump this like crazy they're going to pump it until they don't need it okay I mean I guess

40:35Sal Di Stefano:so like what makes you think too Epstein wasn't pumped for a certain amount of time and then now

40:41Adam Schafer:they don't they don't need it that's not a bad point i mean it's like it's like okay while they're pushing this out while they're doing this what do you think the reaction is going to be from people

40:48Sal Di Stefano:you think they're numb numb i i still my back to my point people are gonna be confused bro trafficking children and sacrificing kids it has to be the top for me of yeah egregious scary bad evil things i'm less scared of demon aliens of course i am i'm more scared of humans trafficking Suffoking and killing children. Yeah, me too. That's way more evil, tangible to me. It's more scary. Way more scary. Honestly, if these demon alien things have this much power, they could have killed us already. It's like I'm more worried about real humans we live with that potentially do that. And then the fact that we don't care enough to put anybody in jail.

41:31Sal Di Stefano:What the? Here's another thought. I feel like everyone's asleep, dog.

41:34Adam Schafer:Here's what's crazy, though, by the way. Nobody's going to care. The pastors that they brought to discuss this with were evangelical pastors. They didn't bring Catholic or Orthodox leadership. And I have a theory around that. I think personally, because of the way the evangelical churches are, there is no strong hierarchy. There is no strong tradition, which is true. Now I go to a non-denominational, so I'm not talking crap, but I think it'd be harder to manipulate the Vatican and the Orthodox traditions and say, no, you're gonna fall. So I feel like they're part of it. I feel like they took these pastors in that are not really genuine.

42:08Adam Schafer:Oh, I totally think that. Yeah.

42:09Sal Di Stefano:Oh, yeah. I totally think that, too.

42:10Adam Schafer:Yeah, I don't think they're taking in real. Yeah.

42:13Justin Andrews:It's propaganda to espouse to the flock.

42:16Adam Schafer:Well, look. It's not going to, bro, it's not going to trip anybody out. Well, look, I'll say this. Look, I'm going to say this to our audience right now. Because to prepare for this, you should just exercise, get real strong. Fit. Yeah. Because you don't know what's going to happen. Just take them on. You might have to rest them. Follow the demon. Follow the MAPS program and pray. Eat high protein. It's not a metaphor anymore. It really is. I mean, it would take.

42:37Sal Di Stefano:Can we make a side? It would take an Independence movie day to really get anybody going. We would need one of those ships coming over the skies. And even then, I think people would be like, I wonder if that's AI or a hologram. You know what?

42:54Justin Andrews:I've never seen it. Remember the one that was like the comet? They were like, oh, my God. This is like a ship that went around the sun and then slingshotted its way out. Why not then? It's not even perfect. Yeah, dude.

43:07Adam Schafer:I don't know. I don't know. This will be interesting. I definitely think this is going to be interesting. It'll be fun to talk about. Do we have a timeline? It's coming soon because they just released the – To a theater near you. Yeah.

43:19Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, dude. It's a movie, dude. The world is a theater, dude.

43:21Adam Schafer:Yeah. You know.

43:22Sal Di Stefano:It is. Absolutely.

43:23Adam Schafer:Oh, Project Bluebeam. That's what I was going to say. Are you familiar with that? Yep. I think you've talked about it before. Remind me what it is. So Project Bluebeam, which is – how did we figure out – Doug, look it up. It's holographic imagery in the sky. so what they're going to do is they're going to project religious uh figures like jesus buddha

43:42Justin Andrews:wherever whatever your religious figure is in the culture they're going to portray and all of them

43:46Adam Schafer:are going to communicate to them and say the truth is and they're going to say actually and then converge um and there's also technology in project blue beams some people say that they that they

43:57Justin Andrews:could project uh voices yeah they could like literally project voice like audio into your head. They can already do that. That's real technology that exists. So what's the staged event?

44:09Adam Schafer:Scroll down, Doug. Let's see. So using holograms to project extraterrestrial beings, UFOs, or religious figures a second coming in the sky. The goal to induce global panic and hysteria forcing humanity to submit to a totalitarian world government. Alleged use of specialized technology sometimes linked to HAARP to project these images. where did the theory come from did this make it up or was this like from the 1990s yeah did someone come out what if they're deceivious

44:39Justin Andrews:is there journals in Canada I believe and they tried to debunk it it is a Canadian journalist

44:42Sal Di Stefano:what if their deceivious like master plan like backfires on them that because it all it started with all this tech and getting us addicted to it so with that that all this stuff's gonna happen we're all gonna be too busy scrolling uh huh they're like shit we got them so I missed it we got them so we got them so we got them so we got them so we got them so we got them so we got them so we got them so we got them so we got them so

45:02Justin Andrews:vaporize.

45:04Adam Schafer:What? I know, man. You start hearing trumpets. You guys, it's like, it's on, dude. Let's see what happens. I know. Anyway, let's change directions. For people we haven't lost. I know. So Adam, you have, I've seen you wear this jacket a few times. This is a Viori jacket. Yes. What's the name? Because every time I ask you. V1 Coach jacket. Okay. Yeah, I looked at it. The reason why I know, because I ordered the truffle one today.

45:30Sal Di Stefano:So they have a truffle-colored one. They have a black one. They have an olive-colored one. And then they have this kind of blue color.

45:35Adam Schafer:So is it light? It's like a light jacket?

45:38Sal Di Stefano:I love it. It's light. It's got this Velcro so I can make the wrist tighter, looser. It's got a pocket inside. Yeah, it's kind of windbreaker-esque. Nice. But I like it, too, because this is one of the things I love about Viore is a lot of their stuff, depending on... I'm wearing sweats. I'm comfy today, right? Yeah, yeah. I can dress up.

45:57Adam Schafer:And you have the seaside sweats on.

45:58Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, yeah. I'm like I'm Viori'd out today right so good timing for an ad for them um I I can dress it up or down because it's collared and it's sharp and it's buttoned up like that if you put slacks on oh yeah if you were with like one of Justin's like meta pants or whatever that he likes like with the kind of the slacky pants you could put it on with a white shirt and now it looks like sharp like dinner I can go out to a nice dinner that's one of the things I love about Viori is a lot of their gear I can put it with different stuff to make it look fancy or I can be super comfortable and I don't look weird or overdressed.

46:30Sal Di Stefano:So it's like one of my favorites. But this jacket is probably my favorite piece. I see you wear it all the time. Yeah. It's probably my favorite piece that I've bought from there most recently. But I need the other color. I need the truffle color that went with what I'm wearing today. So I'll have it next time.

46:45Adam Schafer:All right. I got an annoying thing to talk about. So there's apparently, you guys ever go on Reddit? Oh, God. I never do. I definitely don't like to for our business. I used to do back in the day. I never go on Reddit. I never go on there, but one of my friends is like, oh, there's a thread or a section in there about Mind Pump. And I've got to address this because it's super frustrating and annoying. And in some recent threads, we're talking about how you're constantly sending people to your coaches. Like when we answer people's questions, when people call in, that we're just trying to push them to our coaches.

47:19Adam Schafer:And that's the problem? It's so frustrating because here's the deal. The truth is we didn't offer coaching and personal training for a long time. And the reason why we didn't do that is because we have very, very high standards for coaches and trainers. And we knew if we went in that direction, it would take a lot of energy. We had to build it first. A lot of training on our end and good leadership on our end. Like we needed people in leadership positions to do this because the last thing we would want, we were all trainers for a long time. The last thing I'd ever want would be a trainer or coach representing us that wasn't doing an excellent job.

47:58Adam Schafer:So we finally did it. It's been almost two years now. And here's why we recommend coaching. Nothing's better. We've said this forever.

48:07Sal Di Stefano:I was just going to say, you know the irony of this, Sal, is long before when the business first started and the only way that we monetized was through MAPS Fitness Products, one of the consistent things we would always say is, yes, this is great programming, these programs but nothing beats a good coach a good coach and trainer we have said that for 10 plus years still need a coach about our own own programs when we didn't have coaches to make money or do any of that stuff off of we've stayed consistent with that and we waited like you said for a very long time before we would even offer some of that now that we have it offered it would be doing people a disservice when we if we don't recommend it to some of the people that need it if you listen to live callers too i mean what do we do 8 12 a week or whatever like that uh not everybody needs it.

48:50Sal Di Stefano:Some people, it's straightforward. We give them an answer. We help them out. In fact, I'd say 50 % of them are that way, but there's 50 % of them that need real help and that they need real guidance. And it's just like, Hey, you would benefit by seeing a coach. Here's the deal. So funny.

49:02Adam Schafer:Here's the deal. Like, um, and this is just the truth in our, in our industry. Um, there's a lot of coaches and trainers out there. There's not a lot of really good ones.

49:11Justin Andrews:Yep.

49:12Adam Schafer:So if I have a family member that needs help, I don't just tell them go work with a personal trainer. This is before we had coaches. I would say, here's what you do. Talk to a fitness manager at a gym. Come back to me. Let me know what happened. I'll help you pick a good coach because good coaches are valuable. Bad coaches are terrible. And unfortunately, there's a lot of bad ones out there. We just know that the ones that work here are really good because we hire, train, develop them. So that's why we -

49:39Sal Di Stefano:You know, the other part that annoys me about that is that, because I guarantee if we were offering coaching for free yeah those people wouldn't have a complaint like we go get a free coaching for the next year or whatever that they'd have no problem but it's because they charged and the the part that it's annoying is that we have 40 employees that work for mind pump uh whether that person that we recommend you get coaching does not put a dollar more or less in the four founders pockets it funds that business that side of the business so whether that person decides to do it or not does not change our income.

50:14Sal Di Stefano:So the idea of this, like, oh, like we're trying to money grab or something. No, it supports the coaches and trainers and the leadership team that runs that. And whether that person does it or not doesn't affect us.

50:26Adam Schafer:Well, I'm just going to be super transparent. There's two things that we wanted to address with personal training coaching. One is the obvious one, really good coaches and trainers for customers because they're so valuable. We were trainers for a long time. And there's a lot of things we can do on this podcast. We can give great advice. We have five episodes a week and it's great. You listen to the episodes. It's going to help you. We got a lot of great comments and emails, but nothing comes close to a good coach. We were coaches. I know the impact I made when I did a good job with a client. It's life-changing.

50:57Adam Schafer:So it's the best possible thing you do when you, if you're trying to really solve your health and fitness issues and do it in a way where it lasts for the rest of your life. There's nothing more powerful. The other side of this was to be a coach and a trainer in this industry, it's tough. It's a tough industry. And it's not for often, for many people, it's not a good career. So I love fitness. I love doing all stuff. I want to be a trainer, but I also want to support my family. And it's kind of a crapshoot. Where do I go? How do I build this? I can't make enough money to support my family. And so one of the reasons why there's not a lot of good coaches and trainers is there isn't this like straight forward way of really building a good business so the two problems were can we employ coaches and pay them well so they could build a life here and also provide good service so yeah you

51:44Justin Andrews:got to pay for it because we pay our trainers really well otherwise it wouldn't exist we ask

51:48Sal Di Stefano:for the best yeah i think it's bad to go on reddit dude i just feel like the that's just the person i mean in fact i had somebody tell me though about they're like you actually have a lot of really positive stuff on reddit which is not normal like having anything positive yeah no

52:00Justin Andrews:There is positive stuff, but then there's also QAnon stuff.

52:04Sal Di Stefano:It gets wild on there, dude. The people that are going to go on there are normally going on there to complain. Very few people. It's a surprise that there's actually some people that go on there to say positive things.

52:15Adam Schafer:I got some up-to-date data on GLP use in the US.

52:21Sal Di Stefano:Oh, I heard something the other day I meant to bring to the podcast.

52:23Adam Schafer:Check this out. Let me pull up the stat. What was the number I heard? Let me see. Let's see. In 2024, 5.8 % of adults in the U.S. were on a GLP. Today, it's 12.4%. Almost tripled. 5.8 % to 12.4 % from 2024. It doubled in 18 months. More than doubled. In 18 months. Exploded. The anti-obesity market, which is what they're calling it.

52:52Sal Di Stefano:You said three and a four.

52:54Adam Schafer:I think we're probably going to see, in my opinion, between 50 % to 70 % of Americans on a GLP. Yeah, 70 % is a lot.

53:02Sal Di Stefano:50 % is a lot. 50 % is a lot. I mean, do you even think there's 50 % of people care about being overweight? Well, what percentage of Americans are overweight? My point is, do you think that even 50 % of those people care?

53:16Adam Schafer:Yes, I think they do. And I know that Trump just said that - You're going to lower the costs. What's the insurance you get after you retire? Medicare. Medicare covers it now. Yeah. So Medicare is going to cover GLP.

53:30Justin Andrews:Yeah, that's huge.

53:31Adam Schafer:Insurance companies are going to be forced to cover it more openly. Doctors are recommending it a lot more now. So when that happens, 50 % for sure. You're looking at a medication that promises to solve what 15 other medications are trying to treat with blood pressure and blood lipids and all this other stuff. So I think so. Because, look, that's from 5.8 to 12.4 in 18 months.

53:54Sal Di Stefano:I mean, I think it's good. Oh, that's what it was. No, it was, okay, the stat was how many people per week were adding on to GLP-1s. Oh, yeah. It's a crazy number. Well, Doug, what's the total? It's tens of thousands of people every week are starting a year.

54:11Adam Schafer:Well, how many adults are in the U.S.? Like, what's the population of adults in the U.S.? Good question. Because I want to see what 12.8 % or 12.4 % of that is. Man, I wish I knew the number. I'll see. See what that is. But they're saying that the global anti-obesity market is projected to go from 19 billion today to 104 billion by 2035. So in nine years, it'll quadruple. 267 million adults. Okay, so you're looking at what, 30 million? Is that what 12 – what's 12.4 % of 26.7? I'm just close to 30. How much? I'd say close. So almost 30 million adults right now, Adam, are on a GLP. Almost 30 million right now.

54:50Sal Di Stefano:Isn't that crazy? yeah one in eight adults right now um i'm looking for this number well usc 700 increase over four years in a number of patients without yep okay yeah man i saw this stat or and it was a number it was like like i don't quote me because i don't remember the exact number but it was like 20 000 people new people every week or just yeah like it was it was a big number this is with uh

55:18Adam Schafer:The available GLPs are semaglutide, the more common ones, semaglutide and trisepatide. Red atrutide isn't even approved yet. When that comes out, oh, my God.

55:30Justin Andrews:Because that and the data crushes the other two. Yeah. Well, they just came out with the orals, right, which I'm sure is moving up a bit. I don't know how effective they are. I don't know either, but I know it's ushered people in.

55:42Sal Di Stefano:And the orals are like, so right now it's NBA playoffs, so I'm watching a lot of the game stuff. A lot of the advertising right now are all the companies that do the oral, and they have all kinds of celebrities that are promoting it. Oh, yeah.

55:55Adam Schafer:I wonder how effective the oral ones are. Because with the injectable ones, it's like a once a week insulin needle injection. But still, that still stops people. So when they have an effective oral version, yeah, for sure. So if it went from 5.8 to 12.4 in 18 months, it's definitely within the realm of reason to think that that number could get up to 50%.

56:16Sal Di Stefano:in like 10 to 15 years well here i'm going to send you salad chart in our group thread right now that it shows a chart on it looks pretty good yeah i can't find the exact numbers but it was it was alarming i was like wow that's a that's a lot so what i think is going to happen is i think

56:31Adam Schafer:this is going to usher in different coaches though it's going to it's going to usher in an explosion of demand for um personal trainers coaches and for gyms yeah well it should be standard that

56:43Justin Andrews:you have to train uh you know as you embark on it when this first happened i remember a lot of

56:49Adam Schafer:trainers were like and gym owners were afraid like oh no no one's gonna want to work out anymore i think more people more people are gonna want to work out is there a popular medication or drug

56:59Sal Di Stefano:that is prescribed by doctors when someone comes in with uh osteoporosis there's a few there's a few popular ones but they're not that great yeah it doesn't matter no i think i would i would i I would bet on the ticker on that. Oh, just because you think people are going to get more prescribed? Of course. It's not that effective. Because it doesn't matter. It's what the doctor will default to. Because you got to understand that it'll cause a rise in personal trainers and stuff like that because just simply millions of more people will need it. 10 % of those people will go to trainers. The other 90 % will just go to their doctor and be like, oh, my God, I have osteoporosis.

57:33Sal Di Stefano:What do I do? Here, take these medications.

57:35Adam Schafer:How effective are osteoporosis drugs? They're not. It doesn't even matter. And they've got crazy side effects. It doesn't matter, dude. Yeah. I think what's going to happen, I think more people are going to work out for two reasons. One, the obvious ones, I'm losing muscle. Doctor says I need to. Here's the other one. When you're overweight, let's say you need to lose 70 pounds and then you lose 50 pounds, you suddenly become a little bit more motivated and comfortable. Highly effective. 25 % to over 50 % decrease in fractures. But I don't see a huge reversal of -

58:07Sal Di Stefano:But that right there,

58:08Adam Schafer:that's enough sal to get people taking it okay so now look up to me you look up for me the leading

58:14Sal Di Stefano:companies that sell those drugs or whatever you're gonna start throwing money at that

58:18Adam Schafer:i mean don't bet on don't put money in what adam says yeah what happened last five you know what

58:23Sal Di Stefano:i won't do it i'll just i'll talk about it i won't do it so for everybody i'll buy it so everybody else can go make money because if i buy it won't happen i'll do everybody a solid that would i mean right away that's where my brain goes because let's be honest even though there's going to be a huge surge in personal trainers and people that need help like that that will still only be a

58:43Adam Schafer:percentage of people here's where i'll put the money which company is uh making red or true red or true tide it's in phase three right now so let's see what company that yeah that's the

58:51Sal Di Stefano:company is there no crush don't more than no it's only one company who has yeah so if you buy it at

58:57Adam Schafer:compound for let's say you go to eli lily yeah no let's say you go nphormones.com and they'll They have trisepatide and some aglutide. Oh, Eli Lilly. It is Eli Lilly. So there you go, Eli Lilly. They've already skyrocketed. Sure, everybody's projecting that.

59:08Sal Di Stefano:Through the roof.

59:09Adam Schafer:So that's who I would put my...

59:10Sal Di Stefano:What is their ticker, Doug? Eli Lilly's ticker? I don't know. I looked at them a while ago because I was going to, and they were already through the roof.

59:19Adam Schafer:Yeah, I was looking at... I'm looking at companies that are going to have GLP-1s, like Eli Lilly. L-L-Y. And there it is,$991. I'm looking at those companies. I'm also looking at companies that are researching myostatin inhibiting drugs and muscle building drugs that are non-hormonal. Because I think those are the ones that are -

59:37Sal Di Stefano:Oh, they actually might not be a bad buy right now.

59:40Adam Schafer:Oop, don't get it.

59:42Sal Di Stefano:They would have been a great little purchase about - Right on that dip we just had, they would have been a nice buy. We're down at 934 for a minute, but they've been averaging well over 1 ,000.

59:52Adam Schafer:I think what you're going to see is you're going to see a flood, a huge surge for people interested in gyms. I see personal training because of all these new motivated people who are on a GLP. Cause I've already talked to a lot of people who want to work out because they lost weight, not because they're, there's afraid of losing muscle, but rather they're just like, yeah, now I feel motivated because I can finally lose weight. Now I want to work out. So I think you can see that. I also think it's going to fuel what's already happening in the gym industry, which is, uh, the, the more expensive gyms.

1:00:23Adam Schafer:Cause you have all these people with, with,

1:00:26Justin Andrews:and they're going to want a plan to get off the GLP one as well.

1:00:29Adam Schafer:I think it's going to be a huge boom to the fitness industry that's what I think

1:00:33Sal Di Stefano:I mean it has to I mean how long it'll take and what percentage of people I mean that's unknown but there'll be enough people that will be forced to having to lift weights

1:00:43Justin Andrews:so many people are going to do it wrong and going to need help so yeah we're going to be here for them

1:00:47Adam Schafer:unless this is a little wrench in it the aliens show us something else that's perfect I mean they may do that we can solve obesity

1:01:00Justin Andrews:I was laughing because there was, I got this, this like request. We're selling our house right now. And like, they're like, you know, asking details of like things that are, you know, we pay for services and whatnot. And somebody was like, do you guys have DSL? I was like, DSL, dude, like you're talking about like dial up. Like that's like the oldest. Is that DSL?

1:01:24Sal Di Stefano:Is that what he's asking? DSL.

1:01:26Justin Andrews:Yeah.

1:01:26Sal Di Stefano:Oh my God.

1:01:27Justin Andrews:Yeah. Is there anything else you can do with DSL? I was like, do you want a fax machine? Do you want me to throw in a fax machine while I'm at it? Was it someone who was really old? Was it like a really old person? I don't know. It must have been. I was like, this is so weird. I would never have thought of a request for DSL.

1:01:45Adam Schafer:It's a broadband internet technology that transmit high-speed data over existing copper. Maybe you could use normal. Does it still exist?

1:01:52Sal Di Stefano:Well, maybe, Justin, it's evolved. Maybe DSL is no longer just dial-up. maybe it's net level. It says it's broadband internet now technology. So it's just, it's competitor. Wow.

1:02:02Justin Andrews:It'd be cheaper to miss something. Cause I would,

1:02:04Adam Schafer:I hate Xfinity. You guys know, we were working with a company that Doug had to go send them information and they requested facts only. It wouldn't take email. So Doug had to go.

1:02:12Sal Di Stefano:Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

1:02:15Justin Andrews:there's a lot of places that still use that.

1:02:17Sal Di Stefano:Why? How?

1:02:18Justin Andrews:Yeah. I think even like nobody owns.

1:02:20Sal Di Stefano:Do you actually like legitimately, if I do, do you scan and then send?

1:02:23Justin Andrews:I usually scan. Yeah. He's a fax service. Yeah. But they have, But it's legitimately a fax.

1:02:28Sal Di Stefano:Why? Yeah. I don't know. Let's bring back faxing. I think faxing is good.

1:02:32Justin Andrews:Yeah. Faxing and pictures. Can you write me a letter?

1:02:35Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, fax me, dude. Let's do that.

1:02:37Adam Schafer:Let's talk about a super food. Now, look, I'm normally skeptical of anything marketed as a super food. Manuka honey is the one thing that has the science behind it. So most honey is basically just sugar. It's just a lot of sugar. Manuka is in a different category entirely. It comes from bees that feed off of the manuka tree in remote New Zealand, and the bioactives from that plant transfer directly into the honey. So it has three times as many antioxidants and prebiotics than regular honey, plus MGO. This is a naturally occurring antibacterial compound that's unique to manuka. No other honey has it.

1:03:14Adam Schafer:70 to 80 % of your immune system lives in your gut. Prebiotics feed the good bacteria. This isn't a supplement you add. It's a food that does work. One teaspoon in the morning is all it takes. That's the protocol. Simple, repeatable, and sustainable. It's a habit that makes a big difference. So go to manukora.com slash mindpump. That's M-A-N-U-K-O-R-A.com forward slash mindpump. Use the code mindpump. You can save up to 31 % plus$25 worth of free gifts with the starter kit. The kit comes with an MGO 850-plus Manuka honey jar, five honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon, and a guide box. One more time, it's Manukora.com forward slash Mind Pump, and the code is Mind Pump.

1:04:00Adam Schafer:Back to the show. Our first caller is Billy from New Jersey. Billy, what's up? How you doing, Billy? Holy cow, what's going on, guys? How you doing? How can we help you, dude? I'm good. This is so real. I feel like I'm really here. That's nuts. Nothing. And obviously my name is Billy from New Jersey, 34 years old. I guess let's talk a little about myself. 61220. I've been listening to you guys since like right before COVID started and pretty much been going from there. And, you know, just been following your programs ever since then. I don't know if you guys can see all the programs. I bought it pretty much by everything you guys put out, which is awesome.

1:04:41Right now currently in Maps 8. Love it. I think it's just an amazing program. Also, I guess my main question would be, And my ankles, I have, since I was early 20s, I guess I lost the arch in my foot. So I pretty much have like a flat foot, as funny as that sounds, on both feet. So it kind of prevents me from doing squats fully. It's mainly just doing box squats. I know you guys talked about box squats before saying like you don't really get as much out of it as a full squat. so I guess wanted your guys opinion like where I should go about trying to improve that

1:05:24Adam Schafer:yeah good question Billy and just to be clear it's pretty darn close but that doesn't mean you shouldn't improve or seek out to improve places where you have mobility challenges so the arch of the foot does provide some stability the foot's got a lot of muscles but then what typically follows a fallen arch or flat foot is ankle mobility issues. They typically go hand in hand. Do you have prime pro? I know you said you have a lot of our programs. You have prime pro. I do not. Okay. I'm going to send that to you. So in prime pro do the foot and ankle mobility movements and practice them throughout the day.

1:06:06Adam Schafer:So short foot, uh, piano. Yeah. And, uh, things like combat stretch and just practice them regularly continue to do box squats and then when you start to feel like you're ready start to practice traditional squats go really light and what you want to do when you're doing the traditional squats once you get good at short foot so that's a movement that you're going to feel really weird uh it's going to feel like you can't even do it but once you feel like you can do it then what you're going to do is you're going to get into a squat with light weight you're going to do a little short foot so you're going to activate the arch of your foot kind of ground your feet and you're going to practice really slow, controlled, shallow squats and work on a range of motion without going heavier while maintaining that strong arch on the foot.

1:06:49Adam Schafer:Um, but it's going to take some time, uh, probably a good six months to 12 months of strengthening and practice to really make a difference.

1:06:56Sal Di Stefano:During that time, would you, uh, recommend or allow him to use like, uh, squat shoes?

1:07:03Adam Schafer:Totally. I mean, he could, uh, so I do use squat shoes now. Okay. You're fine. Yeah. So So I, cause any advantage I need, cause it's sad. I don't know how even how this happened. Like I got it diagnosed when I was like 21. So I've been dealing with this forever now.

1:07:20Sal Di Stefano:So it's, it's more common than you think. Yeah. Yeah. We've had a lot of, oh yeah, yeah. I've had a lot of clients like that. So it's, it's, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's pretty common, dude.

1:07:28Adam Schafer:So if, yeah, it's just, there's muscles in the feet that provide that arch. And it's just, it's literally a strength training exercise. They're under stimulated.

1:07:36Justin Andrews:they're you know you're wearing shoes that are kind of limiting your range of motion so if you walk around the house uh with bare feet it's going to help a lot just to you know reconnect but you know like you're saying those drills another good one is to like you know get a towel and kind of squeeze uh between your toes and pull uh and that's an exercise on its own to kind of work your way into short foot short foot's a really hard one to kind of conceptualize um but once you do get that you'll you'll be able to make progress in that direction for sure billy do you

1:08:06Sal Di Stefano:make an effort to walk around barefoot much?

1:08:09Justin Andrews:I walk around barefoot all day.

1:08:12Sal Di Stefano:Here's the thing though, Billy.

1:08:14Adam Schafer:If you walk around barefoot without trying to actively engage your arch, it won't do anything. I'm not really thinking about doing that. You're just walking around. It doesn't make sense. When you practice short foot and you start to get good at it, it'll take a little while because at first it's going to feel like you can't even activate. But then as you start to get good, you say, oh, okay, there it is. I can think I'm moving it. And then once you start to get good at it, while you're walking around the house, just whenever it comes to mind, just try to activate your arch while you walk.

1:08:47Sal Di Stefano:I mean, you can even do it when you're, I mean, I'm doing it in my shoes right now as we sit here and talk. So once you learn to do this, you can be sitting at the desk, working, doing your thing, and you could just be practicing. And the more you do that, the better this will get. And so It's more of a repetitive thing of just constantly thinking about it and doing it. The movements in Prime Pro will help you out. Practicing on that will help you out. You're already doing the squat shoes. That's a good way to get a little bit more range of motion right now, but keep working on it. You can definitely improve this.

1:09:20Adam Schafer:Oh, yeah. There's a belief that when you're flat-footed, that's it.

1:09:25Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, no. You're stuck. You can totally fix this.

1:09:27Adam Schafer:yep you can totally you can make a big difference uh in uh the strength and stability or foot it just takes time so it'll take you billy like like i said six months to a year to really notice uh big improvements and you'll you'll just notice you'll just start feeling it while you're walking

1:09:41Justin Andrews:and standing like oh there don't overdo it you know it's just kind of like a more frequency thing yeah it's like the bucket right yeah exactly yes exactly dude yep okay all right um i guess why I have you on. If you mind, if I ask the second question, no, let's go. Um, I recently have a, uh, four month old, so I'm doing maps eight in the morning before I go to work around like four, like 5. AM ish. Good for you. Pretty much before I hit, before I head in. And it's like the only time I can get lifting during the debt in that morning. Cause I have a home gym in my basement, barbell, squat rack, everything.

1:10:19I have everything I need.

1:10:21Justin Andrews:Sweet. Um, I'm just, I guess the question I'm trying to ask is I just want to get I want to get strong but I I only have time to do like the MAPS 8 style. Yeah. I do have MAPS 15 like the power lift but I don't know how to go about it or I should try to put it to the side and just focus on just doing like MAPS 8 style just not as much as intensity because of the baby and work and everything. Yeah. What do you guys think about it?

1:10:49Adam Schafer:No that's it. Stick to MAPS 8. when you feel good you got good sleep you push the intensity a little bit push it a little you know progressively overload if you can when you don't you just go in and practice the movement i mean you got a new baby dude so you got you got a good year of suboptimal uh you know sleep and all that stuff but that's okay it's just a season but you go in the you go in the you go in your basement and you're like man i got crappy sleep last night so i'm just gonna go through the movement and then you're like man i got good sleep for a couple nights in a row i feel good you push yourself a little bit that's it okay okay perfect yeah perfect well thank you for everything guys you got it man thanks for calling in dude and we'll send that to you yeah awesome thank you so much take it easy man easy man recording yeah that's great um you know i'm glad he said that because i had very flat feet yeah and i still have some issues but through doing things like short foot and awareness the very first time we were short you guys remember when bring showed us

1:11:44Justin Andrews:short foot i think we all sucked at that yeah it didn't work i'm like what i can't do that like

1:11:48Adam Schafer:there's nothing there no connection at all but now i can do it i actually have a connection to it so now when i'm aware i can activate the arch and if i squat it's definitely something i'm conscious of

1:11:59Justin Andrews:and it does change my technique i've definitely because i changed my shoes typically i'll wear minimus shoes that really helps a lot to be aware yeah and have the wide toe box the cool part about

1:12:09Sal Di Stefano:this is like you said is that if you it takes you know six months a year of consistently putting work towards it but once you do that it's like what i talk about with my my whole mobility kick it took a long time to really get that squat depth and ankle mobility and hip mobility but then once i got it maintaining it's actually really easy it's just a few things i just have to be aware of it and keep up some exercises that i do occasionally and it'll keep it up it's like and you won't lose it again but it's the work to get there it just seems a little uh laborious yeah our next caller is adam from south dakota what's up adam what's happening guys it's pretty cool um i just want to say thank you guys for taking the time to do this uh i mean it's really fun to listen to the podcast and all the knowledge you guys put out it's really cool thanks man how can we help you um so right now kind of in between i'm kind of finishing up uh maps performance right now uh but it's kind of harder to do the three days a week I normally split it up to uh five or six days a week kind of try to turn it into like a maps 15 performance um just a little backstory I just had a baby about six months ago now so it's kind of tough to kind of count on getting a full night of sleep I don't I mean I don't do half the stuff that she does in the middle of the night, but, um, still like hearing him the next room and stuff like that kind of, kind of cuts off the sleep.

1:13:38Um, so it'd be nice to do a little bit more of a 15 program and, uh, kind of trying to chase some strength goals for this year. So I was looking at either maps 15, uh, strong or power lift. And I was just wondering if I could get your guys' opinion on kind of which would be the best to go forward with.

1:13:58Adam Schafer:Yeah. Good question. I'm looking at your question here too. And, um, it says you're also doing jujitsu. Is that still happening? Yeah. Yeah. And it depends on the week, normally two to three days, but, um, yeah, still, still doing that. Okay. And part of your question was how you maintain mobility while getting stronger. Is that still part of your question? Yeah. Okay. So this is actually easy. Okay. Uh, if you're doing jujitsu, uh, you're going to maintain mobility as you get stronger. So you just got to keep doing jujitsu. Now, what would happen, the way you would lose mobility is if you stop doing jujitsu completely, or let me correct what I'm saying.

1:14:36Adam Schafer:The way you would lose mobility for jujitsu would be to stop doing jujitsu and then just start training. You start losing the skills of how you move and all that stuff. So as long as you're doing jujitsu, getting stronger at the same time is going to be fine. MAPS 15 power lift would be great for you. But the way you would follow it is I don't think you should work out more than maybe four or five days a week. What I mean by that is if you do jiu-jitsu one day a week, then follow the other four days you do MAPS 15 power lift. If you do jiu-jitsu three days a week, then you only do two days a week of MAPS 15 power lift.

1:15:15Adam Schafer:And you just follow the next procession of the routine the following week. In other words, the routine is laid out, I think, six days a week. but if you only do two of those weeks then you just continue on with the following weeks with whatever's left over and that's it it's very easy very simple but more than five days a week uh maybe even more than four days a week might be too much with jiu-jitsu and a newborn yeah yeah definitely yeah yeah so that's that's it yeah very very simple oh sorry so you're you're saying kind of lean towards four days a week and then like kind of if i feel good maybe throwing a

1:15:50Sal Di Stefano:fit they in yeah exactly more so that just i would just base it off how much jiu-jitsu you do so say say uh you're only allowed to work out you know five or six days tops or five or six workouts a jiu-jitsu workout counts as a workout so if you do two of those workouts or jiu-jitsu then take away two of the maps 15 days yeah so you understand if you do one yeah so so

1:16:13Justin Andrews:then your volume will be appropriated yeah and it's probably going to look like four or five

1:16:18Adam Schafer:days a week total because i know jujitsu is pretty uh strenuous uh on the body so i think i think look at four or five days a week total and then you just trade you just pick what you're going to do that week so if i go to jujitsu today then i'm not doing maps 15 power lift but if i don't go to jujitsu tomorrow then i'll pick the workout from maps 15 power lift and just keep in mind we always

1:16:39Sal Di Stefano:talk about this it's not what you can tolerate it's what's ideal and optimal for you right so you might be thinking like well i feel like i can do six days i'm sure you can do it but what's probably ideal for you if you want to maintain or actually build strength during this time is you you balance uh what you're doing with jiu-jitsu with your weight train doing more is

1:16:58Adam Schafer:not necessarily going to give you more results if you're getting stronger uh you know maybe not consistently because that's not realistic but if you find yourself generally getting stronger then you're doing great if you find yourself just kind of maintaining and you're doing a lot or even going backwards a little bit, you might be doing too much.

1:17:16Justin Andrews:That'd be a good measure for you to back off. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. So if it's something where like maybe jujitsu is not very strenuous that day, like kind of just doing drilling and then not a lot of people stay after for like kind of live rolls, would you still consider that a workout day or is it just kind of like it's got to get intense to count that?

1:17:37Adam Schafer:No, I would still count it that because you have a baby and your sleep isn't that good. Yeah, that's a strong consideration, dude, is the lack of sleep.

1:17:46Justin Andrews:It really takes a lot away from your recovery.

1:17:48Adam Schafer:A lot. It's actually, when they do studies on injury, the greatest increase in risk of injury is lack of sleep. It's more than like no warm-up. It's more than bad form. It's actually lack of sleep. Injury risk goes through the roof. So if your sleep is just inconsistent, suboptimal, which is normal when you have a new baby, then you just got to take that into consideration. But you know, your baby's what, uh, would you say six months old? Yeah. Yeah. So you got another maybe three to six months of that. And then after that sleep will probably get better. Um, and then you can start ramping it up a bit.

1:18:25Okay. Yeah. So, so if I have, I don't know, maybe three or four days that like I could go to jujitsu, but I'm going two days out of it, would it be better if I don't get like an ideal night of sleep? Like maybe just stick to a workout that day and then try for jujitsu later on the week. if I do get better sleep?

1:18:42Adam Schafer:Depends on how you do jiu-jitsu. So, you know, I did jiu-jitsu for a long time. And there were definitely times where I'm like, you know what, I'm going to go easy today. And then you get caught up, you know, you start sparring with somebody. So it depends on you, dude, how disciplined you are. Like if you can go in there and just do a light roll, that's perfectly fine. But if you know yourself, you're like, look, that ain't me, dude. Like light rolling just doesn't work. It ends up getting out of hand. Then you might want to skip it. Um, and then same thing with the strength training. Uh, there's nothing wrong with going, just going and practicing versus really pushing yourself.

1:19:18Okay. Sounds good. And then, um, like is, are the, are the 15 ones structured differently at all? Or is it kind of laid out the same? Cause I mean, I know the other programs like performance, it says like you want to hit a certain percentage of like the weight with these amount of reps. Is it, is it still structured the same power lift?

1:19:38Adam Schafer:is like that. Yeah, PowerLift has some of that in there, but it's not super important. You can totally go by feel. How long have you been working out? I mean, probably like 10, 15 years. Yeah, go by feel. You're fine. Yeah, totally go by feel. For someone like you, I wouldn't, don't worry about percentages, because there's going to be times you're like, well, today I'm supposed to do 90%, but man, I don't feel good. Like, go by percentages.

1:20:00Justin Andrews:Yeah, that's really, PowerLift's the only time that really matters, but even in our 15, we don't really focus on that as much because it's really low volume.

1:20:08Adam Schafer:By the way, strong would be great too. So what we'll do is we'll send you power lift and then I'll make sure Doug sends you a bunch of discounts for other 15s. That might be good for you. Okay, sweet. Thank you. And then another real quick question. It would power lift be something good. Like I know it's like a little bit longer rest sets. Would that be something that like we could do together for our workouts? And like while I'm resting, she does a set and then kind of changing the back and forth. She's six months postpartum. Yeah. So I think starter would be more appropriate for her. Okay. Yeah.

1:20:42Just have her run a cycle of starter, uh, and then have her jump into power lift afterwards.

1:20:47Adam Schafer:Yeah. Uh, because she's just six months. Plus you said something in the beginning that she probably gets worse sleep than you do. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'd have her go for a cycle of starter, you know, um, low back and hip pain and stuff gets really common postpartum just because of what happens during pregnancy and birth and all that stuff. and starters is much better for that yeah once she gets back to normal though she can definitely do that yeah probably a year out like you know then she's great dude that doesn't mean she won't make gains on starter by the way she's gonna make progress still okay sounds yeah because that's that's her i mean i've had a pretty tough time trying to even convince her to do like a 30 minute workout she used to do two hours a day for oh yes okay you have your work cut out So it's like, yeah, I know.

1:21:33Trust me, I'm trying. So it's like, if I can steer in a direction where it's like, because she'll work out for 30 minutes and be like, well, this doesn't compare anything to what it was when I did two hours. Well, yeah.

1:21:45Adam Schafer:Well, no crap.

1:21:46Justin Andrews:There's a big difference.

1:21:48Adam Schafer:No crap, dude. But you know what? She's also, just a reminder, she's got muscle memory. She was trained like crazy before. The mistake that really fit women make postpartum is they compare themselves and their workouts to what they were doing before way too soon. Yeah. And it takes a lot longer than people realize for a body to kind of get back to normal. She'll feel good soon if she's not already, but she's still not quite where she was.

1:22:17Justin Andrews:Pushing too hard will actually set her back. That's right. So she needs to kind of consider that. Okay. Sounds good. And then is there any way I can get this recording so I can play it first? Bad advice from someone else.

1:22:31Adam Schafer:Yeah, dude.

1:22:33Justin Andrews:For sure.

1:22:35Adam Schafer:Yeah, so when it airs, then you can just be like, hey, honey, check it out.

1:22:38Sal Di Stefano:Plus you can go to – so there's quite a few episodes where I talked about this exact challenge. When Katrina, after we had Max, she wanted to jump back into Maps Aesthetic, and I forced her to do Map Starter. I talk about that a few times in the podcast. guys, if you go to askmindpump.com and use the AI, it'll probably find you all those clips of that discussion. So you can hear me talk about my wife wanting to do more and me explaining to her why she just needs to do MapStarter and the benefits of that. So you can look that way. So that plus Doug, you'll get this live on May 15th. Okay, sweet.

1:23:14Thank you guys.

1:23:15Adam Schafer:You got it, man. Thanks for calling in. Yep, thank you. You know what I like about what he said? He was real humble in the beginning. He's like, you know, I'm not getting good sleep but you know my wife's doing a lot of it was a really nice thing for him to say which uh which be good when she listens to well you keep probably because he knew he's gonna get that right but you know you know when people are playing a sport and their strength training at the same time yeah you know there's always the question of mobility am i gonna get tight am i gonna lose function if you're concurrently practicing the sport and you're doing everything with appropriate volume because the other mistake is that you overdo everything this is where the

1:23:50Justin Andrews:muscle balance myth comes in.

1:23:51Adam Schafer:That's right. Like if I'm still playing soccer or football or jujitsu or whatever, while appropriately strength training, cause you could also overdo it. Sure. Then the, whatever strength gains I get will get implemented and incorporated into my movement. If I take three months off, go strength train, build some strength and muscle, then go back and play my sport. Now I'm clumsy because I've got new strength. My body's a little different, throws things off a bit, might feel tight.

1:24:15Justin Andrews:So it's like, just keep doing both. Yeah. If it's important to you you want to maintain that skill by just light drills and going through the movement so it doesn't have to be with intensity but uh to maintain your body's recognition of those movement patterns is really essential i think i think the hardest thing to convey to a person like this is more to do with this so he's been lifting for 10 to 15 years sounds like he's

1:24:37Sal Di Stefano:got a it sounds like he's also married somebody who is very fit yeah fitness related active uh Does jiu-jitsu, works out. He's got great. We didn't do all his numbers, but he squats, deadlifts, good weight. He's strong. Telling that person that a MAPS 15 and take some days off on MAPS 15 sounds like, are you sure? What if I only do this much in jiu-jitsu? It's like that'll be the greatest challenge for him is because he'll have the desire to do more, thinking that more is going to get you more results. And that's the hardest thing to tell somebody who's used to doing so much training volume that it may not suit you or serve you with the lack of sleep that you have plus what you're already doing with jiu-jitsu.

1:25:18Sal Di Stefano:Totally.

1:25:18Adam Schafer:But again, just to make the other point, again, I'll say it differently. If you took an athlete, because I think we tend to negate the skill aspect sometimes with sports sometimes. Like the skill is the most important thing, obviously. Like if it was just about being strong, bodybuilders would be the best athletes. It's not. It's a skill. If you snap your fingers and make an athlete 10 % stronger instantly, they're going to go out in the field and suddenly be slightly off because they're used to moving in a particular way. And now timing is off a little bit. Things are off a little bit and you actually start to trade skill.

1:25:51Justin Andrews:Deceleration, that kind of, you know,

1:25:52Adam Schafer:that whole balance gets shifted. So it's so important to do them both at the same time so that they can grow together. Our next caller is Jenny from New Jersey. Hi, Jenny. Hi, Jenny. Hi guys. How can we help you? I feel like I know you already, but it's nice to sort of meet you for real. Thank you. Thank you. How can we help you? So first of all, as usual, I want to thank you guys for all the great content you put out. I'm a lover of learning about all things exercise. So your podcast has been one of my number one sources these days, and you guys are very much appreciated. I'm going to read my question, and there is a little addendum that I have at the end.

1:26:31So I'm a recovering cardio addict. I spent the last seven years doing very little strength training and a whole lot of endurance running. Two marathons, nine half marathons, and three pregnancies and postpartums later, I think I've officially burnt myself out. I've been listening to the podcast for a couple of years, and I've heard you tell countless callers to cut back on the running, and I'm finally ready to take this advice myself. My question is, or one of my questions are, should I still limit the amount of walking and other low-impact cardio I do to try to get the most muscle gains as I focus on lifting?

1:27:06I know you guys give walking the green light, but with my personality and background, I will take a two-mile leisurely walk and turn it into a five-mile hike at any chance I can get. I also am trying to gain a little bit of weight. I had a recent DEXA in February that put me at 19.1 % body fat, and I know I feel a little bit better with a little bit more meat on my bones. so I'm trying to figure out how do I know if I'm overdoing it physically even though I feel like what I'm doing mentally is not enough compared to what I'm used to and then my little update is since my DEXA two months ago I've gained about four pounds I'm filling out my clothes again in a way that I like and I feel like I'm on the right track with my body composition but it's really just the mental aspects that I'm still struggling with I found that since I'm running less usually once a week, if that.

1:28:00I'm trying to find other ways to move my body and I'm getting a little bit compulsive with it, like going for a couple of walks a day, taking the dog for a walk. I feel like I've sort of developed two identities. So there's the lifter who wants to lift, eat and recover. And then there's the runner who was always rewarded by doing more, which I'm learning is not always the best case anymore. And social media doesn't help because my algorithm is constantly showing me hybrid athletes who can do it all, which makes me feel like I can do it all too. And then I end up exhausted at night trying to take care of my three kids and I regret my decision to even try.

1:28:39I've basically just been feeling pretty run down. I had labs done last week that were all normal. So at this point, I'm pretty sure it's self-inflicted and I'm taking a load this week trying to get my figure out my uh where i want to go from here so any advice would be welcome as i try to navigate this transition from being a runner to a lifter while still trying to enjoy both aspects of the different modalities right yeah yeah it's all you're doing

1:29:10Sal Di Stefano:kudos to you for reaching out just question on the um any uh you track the steps when you when you do these days you walk all where you at great idea i have a gorman watch and my typical um steps are between like 12 and 15 000 a day that's an active day and then i shoot for 8 000 minimum so even on a rest day it's 8 000 okay it's not bad okay i thought you were gonna say something crazy like 20 some thousand plus we need to calm down all the walks walking is good um you know obviously you don't want to be neurotic about it and obsessive um and it should be something more leisurely and stuff like that.

1:29:47Sal Di Stefano:So it sounds like you're mindful of that. You can see yourself getting away with it. But 12 ,000 to 15 ,000 steps is not bad. It's not like an obsessive crazy. I've had clients before that it's 20 ,000 plus and that's all they do is they constantly have to be moving. And it sounds like you're an active person and it sounds like you're moving the right direction. Are you following any of the MAPS programs right now? I'm not right now. Well, I have not yet, I should say. I work out from home, so I'm limited. I have a barbell. I have plates, a bench, but I don't have a rack, so I'm kind of limited.

1:30:24I can really only lift what I can pull up, what I can power clean. And I have dumbbells and kettlebells, so I wasn't really sure what would be an appropriate program with my limited equipment.

1:30:38Adam Schafer:We have dumbbells. As long as you have dumbbells. Of a lot of our program. first off I gotta say that you're a self-awareness and the way you communicated everything was amazing so it gives me a lot of yeah like this is like very hopeful like I'm very hopeful uh because the way you communicated your struggles and challenges with all this was so good it was such great self-awareness so that's the good news the bad news is the answer to your last question which is how do I know if I'm still overdoing it and you're not going to uh that's not something that you have a sense of yet uh so your best bet there's a couple directions we can go with this uh one road is to focus on just getting stronger and that's gonna kind of that can kind of be a north star it's not perfect but it's hard to get stronger and overdo it uh and often you won't get stronger if you're overdoing things so if you're getting stronger it's a good sign that's what i'm saying the better road is to work with a coach and then let them coach you through this process so you can relearn or learn what it feels like to do it in an appropriate way.

1:31:43Adam Schafer:And what that means is you trust them because you're going to always feel like you're not doing enough. This is just how you are right now. Like for you right now, doing an appropriate amount feels like way too little. So I've continued to cut back and despite cutting back. And then I look at my numbers and I think I'm cutting back. And then my activity numbers show that I'm still getting just as much activity in per week that I was. I'm just doing it in a different way. So like I'm cheating myself. So you're so self-aware. It's so great. So you're, you're just, you just can't trust your feelings because your feelings are, uh, oriented, orientated towards doing too much.

1:32:22Adam Schafer:So, uh, when you work with a coach, you trust them, you work with them for, let's say six months and you're like, all right, tell me what to do and I'll just do it. Tell me what to do and I'll just do it. And the whole time you're like, this feels like way too little. I'm feels like I'm eating way too much. And you just kind of trust it. And then you'll start to learn like, oh, okay, this is what it feels like. And, whoa, I'm starting to feel good. And I have energy at night. The one thing that you said that I really appreciate that I think is important to focus on is less about how many steps you're taking and whether or not that's too much.

1:32:50Adam Schafer:It's, hey, man, at the end of the day, when I'm taking care of my kids, I'm exhausted. And so your numbers could look great. But if you're feeling like you can't do that job at night that you obviously value, then it's probably too much. So if you're feeling exhausted, it's probably too much. Whatever the numbers are, it's just too much. And taking care, people who don't have kids, especially people who don't have multiple kids, don't understand just how much work it is, just how much mental work it is. And it definitely is something that hampers recovery and all that stuff. And you got, how old are your kids?

1:33:27Four, two, and 15 months.

1:33:29Adam Schafer:Yeah, good luck. This is a lot. It's a lot. So, you know, walking 15 ,000 steps and lifting weights to do it, plus taking care of three kids is like, it's going to burn you out. So those are the two things. So one direction, let's just see if we can just keep focusing on getting stronger. Use that as your gauge. If working with a coach is an option for you, I could have someone call you. That's the best option. And then they'll really guide you kind of through this process. The other thing, too, I want to ask you that would help with this is, is, and I think I know the answer, but I just want to be sure.

1:34:02Adam Schafer:Is the connection to movement a body image thing, or is it more of a, I don't like to sit still? It's more of a mental, I don't like to sit still. So does it help with anxiety, racing mind, like sitting still feels like you just want to drive yourself crazy? I think I just strive to be the healthiest version of myself. So I always feel like more movement. Like I work from home, so I do sit during the day and I'm working. Sometimes I'll take my laptop, put it on the treadmill to get my steps in. I just want to be the healthiest version of myself that I can. And I know that there is an upper limit to how much movement I can do while accomplishing that.

1:34:47But it's not body image because I've found the more I'm lifting, actually the better my body image is becoming i sort of building myself in a way that i've never done before because i've always kind of just ran and felt like i was breaking myself down so it's been a refreshing change of um exercise in a different way so yeah it's more just like you're doing to take care of myself you're doing you're doing really good you're you seem really

1:35:17Adam Schafer:smart and you seem like someone i can challenge is that okay do you mind if i challenge you a little bit. If it was health, I don't think you'd be overdoing it right now. So it might not be health. I think in your mind, it's health, but in your heart or your body, it might be more like, I don't like to sit still because I feel like, what? I'm not being productive. I'm not doing something. I should be doing something. I'm being lazy or I'm anxious. So that's where I think you want to go because if it was health you wouldn't overdo it i would know when to limit it yeah it's only been recently that i felt physically like my routine is wearing me out though i don't know if it's because now i have my mom of three and i'm in my mid-30s and i just don't recover

1:36:04Sal Di Stefano:like i used to but yeah all the above you know what this might look like to to get to where sal's going like if i was coaching or if you were getting coached what it would look like is we what a normal week of this activity looks like. And you've told me some things already where you walk while you work with your treadmill desk, you go out for a walk or a couple walks. So I'd let you kind of have a week like that to assess and see where we're moving, what we're doing. And then I might challenge you the next week. Okay, what I want to do is let's cut out that evening walk that you do every night for this long or whatever, but leave everything else the same.

1:36:38Sal Di Stefano:And then I want to know how you feel when I made you do that. How did you feel when I wouldn't let you go for your 6 p.m. or whatever your last walk or thing is? And then that'll help us get to the bottom of what's driving you to go do that. When I'm like, you don't need it. You've already made plenty of steps. We lifted weights. You're healthy. So what is making you want to go do that? And then that would help us get to the bottom of the feelings that you're having and then trying to work through that and then focus on the getting strong thing. And so it might be this slow process of pulling back a little bit on it, assessing what's going on with you, how you're feeling, and then connecting the dots.

1:37:13Sal Di Stefano:Because if I do my job good and I scale you back, you should see an increased energy level with your kids and sleep and all those other things. And so hopefully you then can connect the dots of this is what healthier feels like. Then you start to like it. Yeah, and then you like that, how you feel. And it's like, okay, this is all I need. I don't need to be doing 15 ,000 steps. I can do a 8 ,000 step day and that's still active with my lifting and all my kids I'm chasing around and be very healthy and fit.

1:37:38Adam Schafer:Is coaching something that you'd be interested in? I can have someone call you. Yeah. Yeah, I would definitely consider it. Okay. Let me have a coach call you. And worst case scenario, we'll send you a program that I think would be appropriate. Yeah, Mass 15 protocol. Yeah, Mass 15 would probably be the best workout for you. I thought I was going to recommend it. But I'll have a coach call you. but I want to tell you, when we work with clients, there's an attitude and a self-awareness that if I hear it, I'm like, this is going to work. You have that. You're going to succeed for sure. You've got the self-awareness.

1:38:13Adam Schafer:You've got the right attitude. It's the biggest hurdle. You're going to do really, really well. You're already on the right track. Yeah, you are. I think it's just the runner in me. I've heard you guys say before, when you're doing aerobic and endurance, it's always more, more, more is better, more miles, more time. and when you shift to strength work it's that's not the case so i'm just trying to kind of dull that part of my brain and relearn how to exercise in this we've got to create a new identity you've

1:38:40Sal Di Stefano:identified as a runner you've identified as a runner for a decade you know and so yeah and and so it sounds like that's what this is and it just takes a little bit of time reassurance reps that's all it's gonna take but i already feel like sal said i feel really confident in you because you're already connecting the dots of what it feels like to build a body instead of, you know, tear down or beat up and cut into your body. You're going to build into the body and health you want. And so you already have the right mindset of where we need to go and you're heading the right way. So you'll do great, Jenny.

1:39:10All right. Thank you. Can I ask you one more quick question? So I had the DEX in February. I was planning on doing a repeat in like about six months to make sure I'm on the right track. So theoretically, if I were to gain like six pounds or so total, What proportion of that would I expect to be from fat versus muscle? Like what is the ultimate ratio there that I should be looking for? Is it like pretty much even in someone who's looking to?

1:39:36Adam Schafer:I would look at it more like this. Are you getting stronger? And then a body fat percentage that typically means good overall health and leanness. so hormone health uh energy resilience um so if you're getting stronger i think your body fat you would be best probably in the low 20s so like 22 23 and that's a nice uh good range once you start to go below 20 then you start to mess with health a little bit uh for women i i also have

1:40:10Sal Di Stefano:you been listening to uh me talk about uh me coaching right now corinne yeah so i just i want you to be careful of getting hung up on that percentage too because that could really spin you out in the negative way so you might need to just gain body exactly so what could happen is was similar to what happened to her was her body just needed a higher body fat percentage to be healthy and we put on we put on weight and then according to dexa it was all body fat and so that could really negatively impact you like oh my god i'm doing this all wrong when no you're not your body that's your body telling you you needed some more body fat on you and you're

1:40:46Adam Schafer:still actually heading the right direction and here's what i mean by the strength side okay when we see that muscle is connected with longevity what we're looking at is a correlation to strength strength is a much better predictor of longevity and health than muscle so what

1:41:01Sal Di Stefano:corinne experienced was an increase she's hitting pr crazy she saw her body fat percentage go up

1:41:07Adam Schafer:no muscle gain on the dexa but her strength went up like 40 and so it's like we are going in the right direction yeah but the dex that would conf would make you would mess with your head like oh my god i gained five pounds of body fat no muscle yeah you just hit a 30 pound pr on your deadlift and your uh your body fat percentage needed to go up yeah so we're doing the right things yeah okay got it all right well thank you guys you got it thanks for calling him yep take care bye-bye love her attitude yeah yeah self-awareness around very much so yeah but three three little kids

1:41:38Justin Andrews:what she say 15 months to she's got her hands full bro that's a lot yeah you know you're at

1:41:43Adam Schafer:home you work at home on top of it and then you got your kids yeah yeah dude like of course you're gonna it's gonna what you did before now all suddenly feels like too much well yeah this is

1:41:51Justin Andrews:a radical shift and so if you have for her point it's like it's gonna take some time to really

1:41:56Sal Di Stefano:adjust that mindset totally she's doing good though she really is i mean it sounds i mean even her gaining some weight and got rid of the running and she's turned it into just some walking she she recognizes that her leisurely walk for two miles turns into five aggressive really quick

1:42:10Adam Schafer:and so the only challenge is like at the end she's like how do i know yeah it's like you're not gonna it's not gonna feel right until you really learn how to what it's supposed to be

1:42:18Sal Di Stefano:well and if you try and probably the best gauge and if you try and measure it through dexa scans and things like that it could really steer you in the wrong direction um again using the example with karen and i what happened is just like i know we're doing all the right things but it's just that her body needed a higher body for it and she was similar i mean karen was like 17 and so still it

1:42:37Adam Schafer:it is funny, right? Because we use muscle as the, uh, uh, measurement of, of, of health. And part of that's because it's visual and it looks good. But if you actually look at the data, it's strength, more muscle usually means stronger, but having a lot of muscle and not having a lot of strength does not mean longevity depending on your health. Right. So it's actually the strength. That's the most important thing. Next caller is Christina from North Dakota. Hi, Christina. Hello. How are you doing? Hey guys. Thanks so much for taking my question. Yeah, you got it. How can we help you? Um, can I give a little bit of background before my question?

1:43:12Justin Andrews:Of course, go for it. Um, okay. So in about January of last year, 2025, um, I started listening to women like Stacey Sims and Gabrielle Lyon. So it was that time that I realized I was not lifting often enough or heavy enough, and I definitely wasn't eating enough. So in February, I increased my calories and started training like three to four days a week, focused on progressive overload. However, I was only at like 12 or 1300 calories at the time. So an increase for me was going up to like 1500 a day. And I definitely saw improvement by doing that. Over the next several months, just by lifting more and increasing my calories, but then it started to stall.

1:44:13And eventually I felt like I was regressing. I don't know, I just kind of felt like I was losing muscle mass and getting soft. So January of this year is when I discovered your podcast. And that's when I realized 1500 calories still was not enough. So I again started to increase my calories got up to around 1900. But then two weeks ago, I had surgery. So I have to take six weeks off from any heavy activity. So all I can do is walk. So what I'm wondering is during this time, can I go into a slight deficit? And would I still be able to preserve muscle while doing that? Because during this most recent calorie increase, I did put on a few pounds that I would like to take off.

1:45:08So but I don't want to compromise any muscle, which I know I probably will by not being able to lift for six weeks, but just wondering what a good strategy would be.

1:45:20Sal Di Stefano:Definitely not cutting your calories. Yeah.

1:45:22Adam Schafer:That's the worst thing you could do.

1:45:24Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. I mean, cause you're, we're not sending a signal to, with lifting weights to build muscle or keep muscle. And then in addition to that, cutting calories would be the fastest way to lose muscle. I would recommend, especially where your calorie intake is, this is where I think something like EAAs would benefit someone like you? And actually I did add those in two weeks ago. So every day I've been adding a scoop of EAAs to some water.

1:45:50Adam Schafer:Yeah, Christina, when you increase stress on the body and you simultaneously go in a deficit, you've added more stress. So post-surgery recovery is catabolic. There's nothing you can do about, right? It's a catabolic state. It's also a stress state you're healing. If you want to make it more catabolic, go into deficit. That's a great way to slow down recovery from surgery and accelerate any potential muscle loss. And this is good news. If during this recovery process, you gain a little bit of body fat, that's actually going to be a bit protective. And I would not be worried about what's going to happen afterwards, you'll bounce back pretty quickly.

1:46:35Adam Schafer:By the way, the reason why before you noticed your gains flattening out at 1 ,500 calories was because you were just not eating enough and you were still overtraining. So no, don't cut your calories. Keep your calories where they're at. Keep your protein intake high. Don't keep your fat too low. You need the fat for recovery as well. Maintain appropriate movement. So whether that's walking or whatever. And when you start to heal, uh, slowly get back into exercise. Don't, don't rush into it. Muscle memory is a beautiful thing and you'll see the muscle come back, especially if you're feeding yourself and you'll feel great.

1:47:13So change nothing.

1:47:15Adam Schafer:That's right. And do you think, I mean, I guess for context, I'm five one and I'm about 116 pounds. Um, and I'm 46. So, So, I mean, I guess, I don't know what you can do with that, but I mean, is 1900 calories, does that sound like it's. Right now it's fine. Yeah. But when you get back into working out and I see in your, how many days a week when you're like training and everything's going good? Like how often, what do your workouts look like throughout the week? I would do like a four days a week. So upper body, lower body a day off, then upper lower. and then walking every day. And walking every day.

1:47:59Adam Schafer:Yeah. 1 ,900 is probably still a little low. That just freaks me out. Yeah, of course it does.

1:48:04Sal Di Stefano:Well, it's also, you're heading in the right direction and we'll slowly get up there. So it's not like, hey, 1 ,900 is so low, get yourself to 2 ,500 right now. It would be a process of slowly increasing, potentially and or reducing the training volume. I'm assuming you're talking about like about an hour workout every time you work out too? Yeah, it's about 45 minutes to an hour. So I would lift in the mornings and then walk. I mean, now I've been walking twice a day since I can't lift.

1:48:35Adam Schafer:Honestly, you'll probably end up somewhere around 2 ,300 calories at some point. Yeah, no problem. I mean, if I were coaching you, I'd probably get you up higher, but I'd work with you. But it'd probably end up around 2 ,300 calories. Feeling good, strong, lean, everything feels good. You don't want to be too lean, by the way. I don't know what body fat percentage you were maintaining yourself at before. Do you know? You know, I have a home scale, but I know that those are not super accurate. But according to that, it was around 22%. Yeah. You look lean. Yeah. You're good. You're good. You were doing the right stuff, but right now you can just keep it where it's at.

1:49:13Adam Schafer:Don't cut.

1:49:14Sal Di Stefano:Did you already do the surgery? How far are we? Tomorrow is two weeks since the surgery. And you have six weeks is the recommendation to be off? oh yeah so i have another four to go oh that's not bad yeah you're gonna be good yeah you're

1:49:27Adam Schafer:fine you're gonna be good muscle memory is amazing yeah christine you're gonna see like you're gonna train for like two weeks and be like whoa it all came back but keep taking the ea's

1:49:34Sal Di Stefano:keep the calories where they're at um that if you want to hang on to the work that you the muscle you have built that's the best way and that's also the fastest way to recover like sal said yep do you have a red light uh panel i don't i've wanted one okay let me send you a link with a

1:49:50Adam Schafer:discount code because red light therapy, muscle preserving, good for skin, can also accelerate healing from surgeries, reduce scarring, all that stuff. So we'll send you a link with the partners that we work with with a discount code. So that could be useful during this period of time. Awesome. Thank you so much. You got it. Thanks for calling in. All right. Thanks, guys. Actually, a great question. Someone might be like, okay, I'm not moving much because I'm recovering yeah yeah so i'm gonna go in a deficit oh boy you want to make your muscle loss really

1:50:21Sal Di Stefano:fast oh yeah well i mean it's like i said you're not healing we're we're not sending a signal to hang on to any muscle and then in addition that we're reducing calories it's the fastest way to super fast way to lose muscle to lose yeah to lose muscle you're gonna lose some muscle no matter what right but you want to make it happen worse yeah and like you said also slow down the recovery process. So if you want to get back to the gym and get healed and get back, like low calorie is not going to speed up that speed that up either.

1:50:48Adam Schafer:Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. 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 and maximize your overall performance. Check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mind pump media.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.

1:51:33The 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 If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5 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.