2881: The Right Way to Use a GLP Without Losing Muscle

15:02Adam Schafer:So it's better to start with a dose that is too low to where by week two or three, you talk to your doctor, say, you know, I think I need to increase the dose because I actually noticed no reduction in appetite. It's better to do that than to jump in with too much of a dose. And after the first week you talk to your doctor, you're like, I cannot choke down a smoothie, let alone food. You don't want to be in that position. It's too catabolic. So you want to start with the minimum effective dose. Step two, you want to keep lifting. Now, here's what gets crazy. I've been working out for two months.

15:34Adam Schafer:I'm finally on a GLP. I'm so excited. Here's, what am I going to do with my workouts? Reduce the volume. Now, here's why people think this doesn't make sense. What do you mean, Sal? I just started GLP. I got the ball rolling now. Why am I cutting my volume of training? Shouldn't I increase it?

15:52Sal Di Stefano:No, we're playing the preserve game at this point.

15:54Adam Schafer:That's right. And so the amount of energy that you can intake, the calories and nutrients that you can take in, so proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, it has a direct role in your ability to recover and adapt to exercise. If I reduce your intake, I reduce your capacity to adapt and to recover. There's an old saying in strength sports. It's not entirely true, but the reason why it sticks around is because there's some truth to it, which is this. There's no such thing as overtraining, only under eating. and bodybuilders and strength athletes have been saying this for a long time. Now it's not entirely true because you can push that to extremes and it doesn't work anymore.

16:30Sal Di Stefano:You still need the materials to recover. That's right.

16:31Adam Schafer:But there's some truth to it, which is why this sticks around. The more nutrients you intake, the better your capacity to adapt. So you've just started working out for two months. You're hitting your protein intake. Now you're going to GLP, minimum effective dose, brings your calories down. You have a lowered capacity to recover. So whatever you were doing before, do a little bit less. I would say cut down your sets by a third or so and keep doing what you're doing. So reduce the volume. That's what we're looking at.

16:58Sal Di Stefano:I mean, I love when you tout the study of how little strength training is required to keep muscle. It's like once every two weeks. Very little. Very little.

17:10Adam Schafer:Yeah. There's a certain amount that you would need to build, and then there's a certain amount you need to keep. And what you need to keep is a lot less.

17:16Sal Di Stefano:Which is, this is the point of the 60 days of committing before. so you build some muscle, build some strength, right? And you have that. And then now it's like, okay, now I just want to hold the line, prevent defense. It's like the goal is to just not lose muscle here. I'm certainly not going to build. We are not going to build in a consistent calorie reduction getting on this. It's like, can I just hold the line? Can I hold the line? Because I'm going to drop weight and I want it to be all body fat. And the way you do that is by playing a prevent defense on it, which is doing the minimal dose.

17:49Sal Di Stefano:the least amount, right? I want to do the least amount possible to elicit the most amount of change, which is you just sending that signal to hold onto this muscle that we've already built on our body. And any more than that puts you at risk of losing it.

18:02Adam Schafer:So what it would look like is if you did the two days a week, full body, one exercise per body part, three sets per exercise, you're now doing something like one or two sets per exercise. So you've just cut it down because your nutrient intake is lower, but stay consistent with it. This will help you keep muscle. next up uh this is where you're going to use a supplement known as essential amino acids okay so you do want to keep your protein intake high but here's the strategy or the challenge on a glp number one what you probably noticed in the first 60 days where you were lifting weights and trying to hit your target body weight and protein what you probably found was that's hard yeah it's hard to eat that much protein protein without the glp without a glp this is the first 60 days you weren't even on anything and you're normally somebody who overeats.

18:50Adam Schafer:Now you're trying to eat 150 grams or 180 grams or 130 grams of protein a day. And you're probably finding this is hard. Like I just don't want to eat that much protein. Protein produces tremendous satiety in comparison to carbohydrates and fats. And this remains true for about the first three years of eating a high protein diet. It's difficult. It's very hard. Now you're on a GLP eating your target body weight protein in our experience from food, all but impossible. It's so difficult, in fact, that even protein shakes are hard to choke down. This was the part that was really surprising to us when we started working with clients on GLPs, is they would actually oftentimes find it difficult to drink a protein shake.

19:33Adam Schafer:But what they could drink were essential amino acid drinks. They only contain the essential amino acids. They taste like a fruity drink because they're thin. It's not like protein shakes. They make pill form too if you have to. They do make pill form. And essential amino acids maintain muscle mass and build muscle in other studies. And they're quite effective at stimulating what's called muscle protein synthesis. Now, here's what you want. I'm going to be clear with this because you can find a lot of essential amino acid supplements on the internet. They need to be 40 % leucine. Leucine is the trigger for muscle protein synthesis.

20:10Adam Schafer:The leucine is the, this is what sets things in motion. Without enough leucine, you're basically wasting your time. The best essential amino acid supplement, bar none, hands down on the internet, is Keon. Keon makes the best. Every essential amino acid product they have, both pills and or the powder, is 40 % leucine. And so what you would do with this is you would drink this throughout the day. And this is going to help you preserve muscle. A little bit of strength training. you're taking three servings of this a day even in a subcalorie diet you're going to lose a lot less muscle by taking this throughout the day so essential amino acids throughout the day now here's where we get to the okay i also need to work on coming off this glp and staying off it how can i do that well here's what you do our eating habits are often connected to lots of different things it's typically not just it's lunchtime or it's dinner oftentimes connected to stress or anxiety or boredom or an activity that I do, you're still going to have those feelings.

21:12Adam Schafer:So when you go on a GLP and your appetite's lower, it doesn't mean you're not going to experience anxiety. It doesn't mean you're not going to experience boredom. What you want to do is consciously replace an old behavior with a new one. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to build a new behavior pattern. I'm bored. I'm anxious. I'm stressed. What do I do now? That's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to keep training myself to do this because what we're trying to do is have a behavior that sticks around yeah this is the real work yeah while

21:38Sal Di Stefano:you're taking it and where the real value is to uncouple uh some of these like behaviors and associations you have with you know this is where i actually go seek out that kind of candy bar that thing to help uh you know calm me down because i'm stressed out that's right whatever it is i would argue that the step even before that is learning to become aware of this right so it's like uh some of the clients that I take through this were just unaware of even some of their habits. Yeah, some of these habits that they had. They didn't realize that, oh, wow, at work, there's this bowl of nuts that I was always going by and just grabbing it.

22:19Sal Di Stefano:They weren't even counting it or thinking about it until they got on the GLP one and realized they hadn't done it in a month or months had gone by. It's like, oh, wow, I noticed that I'm not doing that thing. Or they didn't realize that they always had some sort of a snack after dinner, or they didn't realize that, you know, one drink always turned into four. Like they just, there's a lot of things that you'd be surprised that people mindlessly do and aren't even aware of it being a bad behavior. So it's first becoming aware of like, oh, wow, there there's that thing that I always used to do that I no longer do anymore.

22:51Sal Di Stefano:Okay. Well now, what am I doing during that time? Or like, to your point, like, you know, there's always that stressful time of their, their job or whatever. And it's like, oh, I didn't realize that during those times in the past, I was also always having drinks at that night, or I was always doing this thing. It's like, and now I'm not doing that. So it's like, okay, that thing still exists where you get stressed out. You're no longer doing that. What then, then it goes to the step where you're talking about, which is, okay, now I need to learn because eventually I won't be on this GLP one and I won't have that suppressed for me.

23:20Sal Di Stefano:What do I need to do now and replace?

23:22Adam Schafer:So I had a client once, and I can't believe I didn't remember this up until now, but I just remembered she had a habit whenever she would watch a movie with her family she had to eat something so she we just connected that she's like man when i'm watching tv or watching a movie it's just something conditioned i feel like i need to be eating something it was it's the silliest thing she started chewing gum she'd watch a movie and chew gum with her family and she's like it does it for me i'm chewing on something i taste the flavor there's no calories in it so

23:52Sal Di Stefano:So when I was competing, man, I used to go through packs of gum like crazy. It was a huge hack. Now, I didn't have GLP-1s to help me, so I had to, like, when I was hungry, I was hungry. And just simply getting into the habit of, like, when that hungrier cigarette would kick in and I normally would go over and snack on something, I would just go throw a piece of gum in there. And just keeping my mind chewing that was such a huge hack to do that. In fact, that's kind of a bodybuilder hack. There's a lot of guys that would -

24:20Adam Schafer:That's where I got it from. That's why I recommended it.

24:22Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, that's a common thing that they do. And again, it highlights your point. Yeah, we have this little bit of a hunger signal or we have these habits and simply switching it out for something else. The other one would be water. A lot of times I would just go pound a bunch of water until I didn't want anymore. A lot of times I would just go, oh, I'm hungry. It's like, oh, maybe I just need to drink something. And then I'd fill up on water and be like, oh, that would pass. That'd be okay. So there's a lot of things that you can do.

24:46Adam Schafer:Now, here's what's interesting about a GLP. When you're on one, let's say you're on one for six months or a year, the neural networks that you have developed with your old behaviors where you're reaching for food, they actually start to weaken because you don't practice those behaviors. You can build new neural networks for new behaviors. And it's a wonderful period of time to do this because you're not practicing old behavior. You're practicing a new behavior. And this sets you up for when you start to come off, which takes us to the last point, which is to scale down. Scale down your dose, work with your doctor, try not to go cold turkey.

25:21Adam Schafer:In our experience, it seems to work better when people lower the dose slowly over time. And also understand this, we're just being realistic here. Many people need to do the on off a little while before they can finally come off. So they tend to scale down, scale down, scale down. They're off for two, three months. Uh-oh, things are getting out of hand again. Go back on the GLP. Let me try this another couple months. Come off two or three trials later. We have a lot of success with people who are on a GLP, did it the right way, didn't lose muscle, feel great, came off, took them two or three times, off forever, and now they have a lifestyle that supports being lean and fit.

25:55Sal Di Stefano:We've helped enough people in here that I've put together some common things with the people that have to do that so many times versus who's the person who just does it one time and then they figure it out. And it has a lot to do with what we were just talking about with becoming aware of the behaviors and implementing. the people that don't do that work come off and then the habits come right back and they tend to have to do that two or three times before they realize like see what's happening yeah then they sort of see what happens like man i was so fine for the where i was on it now it's like you know and then all of a sudden this creeps back in this creeps back in and then it's like come back yeah it forces them to connect those dots and so if you skip the process where we're talking about becoming aware of your behaviors and replacing those behaviors with good good behaviors or good habits, if you skip that process and you do all the other things we're talking about, you might have success on the GLP-1.

26:43Sal Di Stefano:Then you come off and then you go right back. And then that's what I've noticed is the people that tend to have to do that a few times, that's the way they have to learn their lessons or become aware of what their habits and behaviors are.

26:55Adam Schafer:Speaking of weight loss, there was a 2025 study in middle-aged women who used a multi-strain probiotic over four months. 40 % reduction in anxiety 40 % here's what's crazy in another 2025 minute analysis probiotics led to greater weight loss including waist circumference and lowered visceral fat in obese patients we may be looking at with probiotics one of the most important supplements people could possibly take we may be looking at

27:26Sal Di Stefano:which is so crazy to think because they've been around for so long the best fat burner that's ever been around all the fat burners that were around and marketed for so long we're garbage.

27:37Adam Schafer:Fat burners all promise to make your body burn more body fat. But in reality, they don't really do that. No, no, no. Probiotics actually do that. Yeah, yeah, get you to move more. Probiotics actually do that by improving your - By influencing the bacteria. Yeah, dude. It just shows you how influential your bacteria is. Dude, it's - It's astounding. We may be looking at like an actual fat burning supplement. And then on top of it, a anxiety supplement. Yeah. It's so wild. It's so wild that we're looking at something like that.

28:03Sal Di Stefano:Watford, yeah, anxiety a lot of times is derived from the gut, right? That's where it's signaled. I mean, I'm not looking at the journey that we've had with our partnership. How many years now have we been with Seed? We've been with Seed for quite a long time. Probably five or more years. More than five years. More than five years. Probably six or seven now. And I remember when we first – I mean, you were always consistent with taking a probiotic. And I know you were big on it. But I actually didn't think that our audience would support a partnership that well with something like that. I mean, let's be honest.

28:33Sal Di Stefano:The things that are sexy are the things that sell and do the best. Yeah, like the building muscle, the burning body fat, the quick hacks or whatever, shortcuts, things like that. And a probiotic, it was like more of the wellness health category. I honestly did not think, but the reviews, the feedback, and our car. People don't stop taking it. They don't. Nope. And the stuff that I hear from the people that have taken seed is crazy. family friends people that have been listening and following for a long time and so it's one of them partnerships that i didn't see coming that would be this long-term partnership that

29:11Adam Schafer:we had because of the no and they're and they're just so they're just so far ahead of other probiotic

29:16Sal Di Stefano:companies i think that's what it is i think what they've done is there's enough people that listen that we're already taking like you like taking different probiotics and there's like this clear mild results from it yeah and then they take it and they go oh wow there's a clear difference yeah No, no, no.

29:31Adam Schafer:I mean, they're able to keep the bacteria alive without it being refrigerated. It's in a capsule that's designed to deliver the bacteria where it needs to go. They test it through an artificial digestive system that they've created. They have the world's leading researchers in probiotics. There's basically seed, and then everybody else is down here. Yeah. So exceptional job. Speaking of seed, I went down to L.A. to be on Dr. Seeds. Oh, yeah. Dr. Seeds. Podcast in L.A.

29:59Sal Di Stefano:I love that guy. He's hilarious. He's the Bruce Buffer of peptides. The way he dresses. Yes, dude. I'm always excited to see his shoes and his bow tie. I can't wait to see what he's rocking today. You know what he is, dude?

30:14Adam Schafer:It's like if Adam was a doctor.

30:17Sal Di Stefano:I feel that. Hey, I totally feel that. He's so unfiltered. He's unfiltered. He's definitely flashy. I feel that. A bit of an asshole, too. he's got a little bit he's got a little bit of a prick streak to him but like you love it yeah

30:32Adam Schafer:he's so unfiltered dude half the time like oh my god dr seeds but i walk in and he's sitting at this desk and he has his leg elevated and he's got like bandage wrapped around his leg i'm like what happened dude what happened your leg and i don't remember where he said he was he was somewhere where there was like this world or this like this mountain bike riding championship competition that was happening and i guess the track was open before the competition started so dr seeds It's like, I'm going to go do this track. Let me go do this. And he bailed. He like went down. Oh, my God. He tore his adductors.

31:06Adam Schafer:Oh, no. So he had his leg all bandaged up. He bombed it. Yeah, dude, I was laughing. We were laughing about it together. But it was a good time, dude. You know what he does? He's going to be so mad I'm going to share this because he told me not to say anything, but I will anyway. Do you know what? So before, he's got a podcast room where he does his show.

31:22Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

31:22Adam Schafer:He just really started it, right? He just launched it? It's only been a year. I think it's only been a year. Nice. Yeah. And he's great. Dr. Seeds is like, he's pure integrity. Like he will not, and he's unfiltered, yes, but he will say, he will only speak the truth. He doesn't hype or anything like that.

31:38Sal Di Stefano:He's also arguably the world leading expert in peptides. He is. I mean, who do we know? Been in the game the longest. Who do we know that knows more? Nobody. Nobody, right? You know, here's what I hate. And we have a lot of friends that know. Nobody does. Yeah. No.

31:51Adam Schafer:Here's what I hate about the peptide space. You've compared it to medical marijuana for so long. it's so true that whole space similar is filled with charlatans and gangsters yeah literally it is filled gangsters just hustling you meet them and you're like oh you're not like you're just to make here to make a buck um and influencers that talk about things like they know what they're talking about dr seeds is he's the only guy that i would say is an authority when we've had people on here talk peptides and we have fun with them and stuff like that dr seeds is the authority There is nobody else I would point to.

32:26Adam Schafer:But anyway, I go in and we're about to do his podcast. I'm like, oh, Sal, we have a girl who's going to do your makeup. I'm like, makeup? Is that your first time? I'm like, I got to do makeup? He's like, yeah. Why couldn't I be there for this? I'm like, I'm not going to do makeup. I'm not going to. They're like, no, but you're shiny. Your forehead's shiny. You're shiny, dude. I'm not going to do it, dude. You're too shiny. And so I'm like pushing back, you know? But I could tell that they were like, no, we really want to do this. Oh, shit. Yeah. So I'm like, the only way I'm going to do this is if I could talk about this.

32:52Sal Di Stefano:Oh, my God. Yours would probably be totally different. I'd be all like, they'd try to throw some tanner in there.

32:58Adam Schafer:She was like doing stuff on my forehead, trying to make, I'm like, I've never had someone do makeup on my face.

33:03Sal Di Stefano:You know, I actually thought for sure. Does she have lipstick? When I was with Shaleen, that she was going to offer that. But she's like, she does her own thing. So she was like, when we, before we got ready to podcast. Yeah, she's real particular about that. I mean, she was like, I remember when we had her here. and she was like critiquing evaluating just the lighting yeah yeah she was critiquing the shit out of our life like this is not working you can put me in the worst place all this stuff like that like we got roasted right by all that and then I was just like and I never I don't think any of us ever put that much thought into it right I mean Doug does enough putting into it to look to make sure it's clear on the no dude I'm not doing

33:37Adam Schafer:makeup every day but they the level

33:39Sal Di Stefano:I like food on my face that's when I care the level that some people go to I was like man we could look a lot better whatever we could We can look alive. Because I can't wait until she needs. Maybe we can go more viral. And I had no makeup, right? I didn't do anything she did. But I'm like, I could see they have a TV like we do, right? And I'm like, in the corner of my eye, I could see me. I'm like, damn, I look kind of good. I've never felt that way on my own show. I've never felt like, I never looked at my own show like, yeah, I look kind of good. I'm like, no, I always look like shit. I look over and I'm like, damn, I didn't know I looked that good.

34:10Sal Di Stefano:I look hella good on hers.

34:13Adam Schafer:But Dr. Cesar's great, dude. He's such a bro, too. super obviously brilliant he's also such a bro and so we're just having a good time just love the guy he's so great i can't wait to go speak at his uh at his event i was off air i was talking to you

34:27Sal Di Stefano:and i think it would be because i know you and him go uh go really deep especially on the peptides and i'm sure glp1 was a huge conversation with you and him and and all the cutting edge stuff and so i i mean if doug's okay with it i think it would be um really valuable for that episode to go live on our platform after they, after they do it, I think our audience would really enjoy that conversation. I know it doesn't have Justin and I, but I think that it's super valuable.

34:54Adam Schafer:We had a lot of conversations about researchers versus practitioners. So like in our, in our lingo, it would be like, you know, guys who understand fitness data and then guys and girls that actually train people. And Dr. Seeds is very much a practitioner. He's like, look, I know the data. I know the science, but I also work with people all the time. We had a long conversation about that because he gets people that communicate peptides from a, this is what it shows in the clinical data. Yeah. From a mechanistic. Yes. And he's like, yeah, but here's what actually happens when you're working with someone.

35:25Adam Schafer:So we had a lot of conversations around that. What's really cool is when I was explaining on his show, what's, what we've experienced with clients and why we coach a particular way, he was then able to explain what's happening on a molecular level, which was really, really cool. You know, talk about, and he, we were talking about adaptation versus recovery. It's really cool. It's really cool to see someone that smart who's like, yeah, you guys are on the right path type of deal. Yeah, it was cool. It was a good time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's always a lot of fun.

35:53Sal Di Stefano:Hey, what do you think right now with, I know you're deep in the weeds with your family and everything too, with the SpaceX getting ready to get launched, dude. This is, you got me down the rabbit hole of like, because I just, you know. Yeah, what's that going to look like? I don't know if we share this on air or not. I'll share it on air. I think I alluded to it at one point. Just a terrible stock picker. Like, I'm just terrible. You know, it's funny because there was a time when I was -

36:20Adam Schafer:This has got to be one of the most humbling things for a guy who's so good with business. Yeah, like numbers.

36:26Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, it's beyond humbling. It pisses me off. The market is a total different anomaly. It's super - You're usually right on point. It's super annoying to me. And you're right because I feel like I have a decent business acumen and I feel like I should be able to pick stock better than I gamble. You know what I'm saying? Apparently not. Apparently I'm better at sports picking than I am at stock picking. I have a gamble, yeah. And so I've already committed to both my son's portfolio and mine. I'm clearing all the losses and taking that, and then I'm going to move everything into an index, and I'm just going to boring old mindlessly every month, not even look at it, it just goes over there.

37:07Sal Di Stefano:Because looking back over the last, you know, two, I think it's been two, three years that I committed to stopping my sports gambling and going all into stock gambling. I look at the bottom of my portfolio and I'm like, dude, if I would have just indexed this, it just hurts my stomach. And so I've committed all that. But again, so that's where my mind has been. And then here you are in my ear about SpaceX. You know what I'm saying? I'm just like, this is how this happens. I know, I know. I got a buddy who's talking to me.

37:37Adam Schafer:I'm waiting to see if you buy or not.

37:39Sal Di Stefano:If you buy, I'm not going to get it. So I can't help myself, but at least go down and do a little bit of research. And so I've been diving into it. And, dude, I am just – I saw a breakdown of the valuation that they're getting right now in the trillions of dollars. and uh you know and i'm very aware of like how a you know they get these crazy valuations like an amazon which is like 18 times it's like what it's valued at right is what the what the what's predicted and this you have spacex is like a hundred times we've never seen anything like this in history in fact it's comparable to the entire world's gdp which is just that has to be scary

38:26Adam Schafer:for you it is so let me preface this by saying this is we're we're now talking way outside of our scope this is not our expertise whatsoever we'll get back to fitness in just a second i uh so when i go i get torn bro i go i go back and forth one side is what you're saying their value what they're what they're going to be asking for makes no sense we've never seen that before yeah on the other hand what we're looking at essentially potentially are the guys who are making the railroads. In other words, they're creating a way, and they're the only ones that have this capability. It's a real solution.

39:00Adam Schafer:They're the only ones that have this ability. SpaceX is really the only company able to launch satellites into space profitably and quickly, where they're going to be building basically these data centers that are going to get solar power, that are going to be cooled. All this AI, all this technology is going to need it. so essentially they're building all the railroads that all the businesses are going to need to transport and so the promise is well if he's doing that yeah the potential is massive but then on the other hand it's like this valuation well you've seen the backlash at the data centers

39:34Sal Di Stefano:like the way they're doing it here you know like in uh utah for instance well we can't do it you can't do it it's unsustainable there's too many resources it requires all right so i'm i'm familiar with all that and you and it so you we need the sun's power yeah we need and and getting closer to it cool too right and so cooling and all that yeah so it and we can't we can't feasibly if if ai goes where all these people are predicting it then we'll need all these data centers we'll need all this stuff all this support that we can't literally build down here and so that makes sense to your point argument about railroads but i'm also back and forth and on the fence of the arguments of the AI hype.

40:17Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Is that, you know, there's a lot of hype around it because billions of dollars have moved to that. And so it's in their best interest to keep that going. Just like the dot-com, right? When the dot-com hype was going on, it was like there was so much hype in it and everyone was buying every dot-com.

40:33Adam Schafer:I mean, they were right that the internet was going to revolutionize this. That's right. But nobody knew which company.

40:37Sal Di Stefano:And what it was going to look like. Right. Exactly. And also, to me, it's following such a similar pattern where we see this initial job loss, which everybody back then was afraid to. If you were a brick and mortar business, you were scared to death. The internet was going to put everybody out of business and some businesses did go out of business. But then what ended up happening was we got way more business and way more jobs. And I feel like AI is following the same trend. We saw this initial fall off, software engineers, so at that beginning replaced, and oh, this one AI tool can replace 10 of them.

41:09Sal Di Stefano:But that, you know, that's spiking right now. Well, you got to talk about Chris Williamson data that he found out about AI. I think I only sent that to you. Did I send that to everybody? Or was it just a thread? It was so interesting because it's like it was talking about how humans have been affected by social media and how they can now measurably show how it's lowered IQ. Guess what? The same thing's happening to AI because it's aggregating all this junk data.

41:38Adam Schafer:Did you watch this? Yeah, when they plugged in, I saw it. I saw it. So what they did is they plugged AI into and had it just absorb and learn from social media. Yeah, it consumes everything. It became dumber. Dumber. Not only to become dumber, but they couldn't bring it back. It lasted. Yeah, even when it - It caused permanent brain damage. Permanent. Yes. To the AI.

41:57Sal Di Stefano:This is so trippy to me, dude.

41:58Adam Schafer:Which is so wild. Yeah. Which is so crazy. Yeah, I wouldn't even have thought of that, you know?

42:03Sal Di Stefano:I don't know. But the other thing, too, is - Did you guys see the speech that I shared at Harvard? Yeah. I brought that along. Yeah, there's like a big pushback with students, you know, because it's like, dude, you set us up for what? Like they hate AI. Yeah. At least a good majority of like graduating students have a problem with it. It's going to make us dumber. Well, it's different than like what we've seen before with things like navigation, which is like this narrow scope of like, okay, and a calculator. Everyone tries to make that leap. Yeah. Like, well, you used to do math long form before calculators.

42:40Sal Di Stefano:And, oh, you used to pull a map out to go figure out. That's just a very narrow scope. This thing is replacing everything you think about. You know what we might have? Like, that's getting to that place where people are just outsourcing to that for everything.

42:52Adam Schafer:So I hung out with a friend of mine, John, who I had recently just met. And he invests in startups and AIs. And he said, the dumb companies are using AI to try to figure out how to do more with less people. He goes, or get rid of people. He says, no, no, no. Smart companies are trying to figure out how they can do more with more. Can we have this AI produce so much more and we have more people producing so much more? That's what the smart companies. Well, and that's the curve we just saw.

43:19Sal Di Stefano:So this is what I'm talking about. We saw this massive layoff of software engineers and all the fear mongering around. Everyone's going to lose their job. And now it's on this huge spike back. And I think that's because the smart companies. Did you see, was it Chase Bank? and now they're putting more money into actually having more actual people in the branches. I was like, why? Oh, I didn't see that. Yes. It was really interesting. I don't know if there's a movement now for actual human-to-human interactions because of some kind of pushback of AI.

43:48Adam Schafer:Well, you can't get around the fact that we need to be around people. Right. We're super relational, period, end of story. And all the data will show this. We just need to be around people.

43:57Sal Di Stefano:But like a bank, that was surprising to me because it's one of those things like – I mean, I have a theory on that. Who needs them to tell me? Well, I think you're talking about somebody's money. Like if I'm skeptical ever to like send money or do something like that, it's like doing it all automated. Not having a person who I know is like, hey, my money's going like you. So there's probably a lot of fraud. There's probably so much fraud that's happening on the banking side with AI tools and people hacking into emails and things like that, that they're probably going back to like, okay, we need to have people who answer the phone, who sit down with somebody and actually do a wire.

44:34Sal Di Stefano:Reassure them. Yeah. Reassure them because I think there's become, that would be, that's my theory. I'm totally, that's a valid theory. I'm just throwing. You know,

44:39Adam Schafer:it's interesting back to what you said about we're going to get dumber. You know, what happened with the internet is a lot of people became dumber, but some people became a lot smarter.

44:47Sal Di Stefano:So we actually have most people lost. That's fair. It'll, it'll create a bigger gap. Yeah. There's,

44:51Adam Schafer:but some people were, were used the internet and use technology to become even more, even smarter. Well, I mean, AI may do the same thing. Yeah, but that's not sure.

45:00Sal Di Stefano:That goes into your, I mean, that's how uprisings and throwing over, throwing empires happen. Then comes the wealth gap, greater, right? Because if you've got all these people that are way smarter and way dumber, then they're going to make way more money. More civil unrest. Yeah, exactly.

45:16Adam Schafer:But, you know, back to the SpaceX, you know, there was a huge sell-off in the market. There was, like, a huge drop. The speculation is that people were trying to liquidate.

45:24Sal Di Stefano:That's what they say about SpaceX.

45:27Adam Schafer:Get rid of all the stuff. Yeah, Bitcoin.

45:28Sal Di Stefano:That's why I was listening to my boy Nagibi talking. That's what Bitcoin was, the big job on Bitcoin was. He made this argument that a lot of big, bullish Bitcoin people are also huge Elon Musk fans. Sure. And so they're bought in that the next big run is going to be on SpaceX. And so they're liquidating Bitcoin to go over there. The thing too about - Which makes sense why it's like huge lows right now, right?

45:52Adam Schafer:And the thing about Elon, which is very fascinating, because you're also betting on a guy. Anytime you buy a person, right? Anytime you buy a company, you also have to look at the person and kind of buy the person. And that dude, he comes through most of his ideas. I definitely bet against him. Whether you like him or not, because you can not like him, you can like him, but it's an objective fact that he's the greatest entrepreneur in the history of the world. He's built more. God, did that trigger some people? It does, but it's just a fact. How many companies has he turned into billion-dollar companies?

46:24Adam Schafer:But not just that. if you look at his companies, he's got SpaceX, Tesla, he uses Grok and X. What else does he own? These are all things he can integrate and work together. He can take all these things, integrate them. You know the Tesla? All the Teslas, when they're parked, become a supercomputer. And they're collecting all kinds of insane data. I mean, he can integrate all that. I was listening to... It's all his own ecosystem.

46:49Sal Di Stefano:I was listening to one of my car shows today, and there's a guy that's one of the most famous tuners who tunes all the cars so he gets in there and it takes the computers out and then retunes and stuff um and he was talking about on there that people have no idea that you know there's this big scare of like the cars being able to be controlled and so he's like he's like that technology is in all cars for the last 20 years he goes i i my job is to go in and and and write that code and do that code he's like and you i can see it in every single every car that has a computer in it it can be can be taken over and controlled that makes me feel good so this whole a fear of like oh it's coming it's like that's it's been here it's that that he goes it literally can be somebody can go in and do that on if you make you crash yeah yeah i know yeah now let's go back to accidents you know that are suspicious so that code that code's been written in cars If someone made a future dystopian movie like that,

47:49Adam Schafer:you'd see the heroes all be driving muscle cars.

47:52Sal Di Stefano:I believe they did make a movie like that.

47:54Adam Schafer:I feel like they did already. Dude, speaking of which, did you look at that channel on YouTube I showed you, Dust? Yeah. Bro, I don't know. You guys will probably like it. You guys like Black Mirror, right? Do you guys like Black Mirror? Yeah, I like it.

48:04Sal Di Stefano:I didn't watch all of them, but it's very interesting sci-fi.

48:07Adam Schafer:It's like one of the best YouTube channels I've ever found. There's sci-fi shorts, but they're also really good stories. Some of them are better than others. Some of them are really good.

48:16Sal Di Stefano:That's like Black Mirror. I feel like Black Mirror is like hit and miss.

48:18Adam Schafer:Yeah, but it's like all these really well-produced, like, Are they like, is that what it is? Like short versions of Black Mirror? It sounds like it. They're like eight to 20-minute short films, and they're all kind of sci-fi-based.

48:31Sal Di Stefano:I wish some of them were like full-fledged movies, dude. Which ones did you watch? I'm trying to remember the one that, I don't know the names of it.

48:39Adam Schafer:Did you watch Immortal?

48:42Sal Di Stefano:Remind me.

48:42Adam Schafer:I'll give this one away. It's really, I'm saying nine minutes long, But this dude eventually, this guy figures out how to become immortal somehow. So he figures out how to become immortal. And it really explores what would the real challenges be with becoming immortal. So it shows him at first he's like he can never die. It's cool. Then it shows him living through, continuing to live as Earth continues to change. And there's like an uprising of machines. They can't kill him, so he's still alive. Then there's a new civilization. Then there's another civilization. He's married. he loves his wife but then he watches her slowly die she's dead then eventually he he lives until the until the sun expands and and destroys the earth and he's just in space lonely by himself oh my god and you watch you're like oh my god this sucks dude it's depressing it was so good though

49:30Sal Di Stefano:you know as a you know as a kid that's like one of the like probably as an adult if i still mess with myself and sit down and think about the the thought of eternity is more scary than dying oh Oh yeah. Just the thought of existing for that long. Like everybody dying around you and stuff like that. Just period. Even if it's not on earth, even if it was like in space or heaven or another place, the thought like you're, my brain can't fathom what this ongoing forever. Cause, cause you logically I go like forever means I would check the box on everything that's capable of doing. And then, then what?

50:05Sal Di Stefano:Then what? And it's like, that sounds really like,

50:08Adam Schafer:how long are you going to be good? Yeah.

50:10Sal Di Stefano:you know like at some point you just turn into a freaking super villain yeah i don't know that's but as a kid i used to really trip me out dude watching that i did not expect that i did not

50:19Adam Schafer:expect him to show him live until this you know you know they say the sun's supposed to expand eventually destroys the earth and it contracts and he's just sitting there in space dude by itself

50:28Sal Di Stefano:oh this sucks dude did you ever go watch uh the movie our buddy released we had on the show the interview we did? I cannot for the live interview.

50:38Adam Schafer:Yes, I did. You did go watch it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was The Theory of Everything. Was it The Theory of Everything? Maybe you could double check. You did go see it. Steve Meyer. It was so good. Yeah, I talked about it, I think, on the show.

50:50Sal Di Stefano:I know you talked about you were going to go do it. No, I didn't watch it. It was really good. I missed it in the theaters. It was really good.

50:56Adam Schafer:Can we watch it on streaming now? I don't know. If you can, you guys got to check it out. No, that's actually that. No, it wasn't. It wasn't that one. No, the story? I'll have to look it up. Look up Stephen Meyer. Yeah, just Stephen Meyer, new movie.

51:09Sal Di Stefano:Well, it'll pop up. Yeah, just look up Stephen Meyer. I did go see a movie last week. It was kind of funny because we were going to watch Obsession, which is like this thriller, scary movie. And I heard really good things about it. And it was supposed to be at 4.55. And we got there. And apparently, it was at 4.15. And my friend hadn't showed up yet. So we were like. Yeah, the theory of everything.

51:33Adam Schafer:You sure, Doug? That's the new one? Well, that's what it says here. All you have to do, Doug. April, no, you don't see it? Yeah. It's Stephen Meyer's Theory of Everything, April 30th.

51:45Sal Di Stefano:I'm listening, Justin. Anyways. I'm listening. I'm listening to your story, Justin. Okay, I'll talk to you. Anyways, we're going to have a side conversation here. Go ahead, Justin. Yeah, so anyways, we thought it'd be funny. This is really like one of those jokes that you have to painfully sit through because you made the decision to do it. You know, because he's like, oh, this is going to be so funny. And now you're waiting. You're waiting. You're committed. Now you're committed. So, you know, we're buying the tickets because, and the guy's like, oh, no, you're going to be missing. It was at 4.15.

52:15Sal Di Stefano:And so we're like, oh, crap. Like, what are we going to do? Well, what's playing right now? You know, 4.55. And so the only thing that was playing was Scary Movie. Oh, the new one. Yeah. Okay. So.

52:27Adam Schafer:Was it good?

52:28Sal Di Stefano:No. It was awful. But so my friend comes in and we just give him tickets. We go sit. We don't tell him anything. He still thinks we're watching this movie. Oh, God. We're just going to wait to see when it starts to hit. When it clicks. Oh, my God, dude. The opening of Scary Movie, it's like this lady that's very animated. And it's like she's – I don't even know who it is. I guess it's somebody famous, like actress or whatever. And it's just like, it's very like, how do we say this? Like, uh, not white humor. It's very, he's just like, what were we watching? And then the whole movie was like, it was great.

53:13Sal Di Stefano:They literally like, we're trying to just like push white people out. They're like, yeah, this isn't for you. You know, we're just sitting in there and I just started laughing at like really like random parts that are like making fun of white people. You know, just to have fun with it. but dude it was so awkward how long did it take you before he it took a good like 20 minutes he was still trying to figure it out that was the whole joke and so we had to like sit there and now we're watching this stupid movie there's some funny parts but it was really just dumb I saw a thing on this what is the scary movie franchise worth the amount of money that they've been able to make piggybacking off of all these I thought there was only three There's like seven.

53:56Sal Di Stefano:There's a punch. The first one was hilarious. That was funny. Yeah. Like the first two to three were hilarious. Well, they did a good job of mocking all these popular scary movies back then. Yeah, it's worth over a billion. Bro, a billion dollars. And literally no original ideas. You're just mocking all these. Yeah. It's just a complete. All the franchises. Yes, it's a complete spoof. You know what movie I'm going to be watching soon?

54:20Adam Schafer:Have you guys heard of Obsession at the theaters? That's what I was talking about. Is that the one you were going to watch? No, hold on. But you didn't watch it, did you? No, no, no. That's what we were playing on. I wasn't paying attention. Hey, bro, just to show you how much you went.

54:31Sal Di Stefano:Well, the best part about that was I was still adjusting. Like, I'm listening to your story.

54:35Adam Schafer:Because you and Doug were obviously not listening to what Justin was in the middle of a story about obsession. Hey, listen, listen. But you didn't watch it, did you? No. I wanted to. My son watched it, actually.

54:46Sal Di Stefano:That's so you right there, dog. That's so you right there. Listen, I was trying to find the right movie. This is one that was selling it to me.

54:50Adam Schafer:Because I was watching Doug's horrible Google. and he was like Googling the name with the dog like dude that's not how you look it up I'm catching strange now oh man alright anyway Obsession is this soup it was a very it was a low cost scary movie basically a horror movie like independent those always end up doing well it's crushing

55:08Sal Di Stefano:those do well it is crushing for some okay for some reason that genre look at Rotten Tomatoes 99 95 %

55:15Adam Schafer:it was like it was making as much money as Mandalorian and Grogu don't you guys remember

55:20Sal Di Stefano:I was like what Would you guys say that who really kicked that off was what was the one that got - Blurred Witch Project. Yes. They were the ones that made low-budget horror super popular to do it that way. Is it because it feels kind of like why we see this trend in social media right now of this going back to just holding your phone and doing ads? People want this authentic feel real. And I think something about horror - The music is the same right now, and I'm getting a lot of intel with that. It's really interesting. Garage bands are, like, way on the rise. Right, so people don't want to see overly produced horror.

55:57Sal Di Stefano:What's scary to me is, like, this feels real. And that's what Blair Witch. Remember Blair Witch? People thought that was, like, a real, that really happened. Everyone thought that really happened.

56:04Adam Schafer:The captured video of, like, this witch. So I think Blair Witch, and we'll look it up. I think Blair Witch Project had the greatest, like, revenue to cost of any movie ever. I believe it was. Yeah, yeah. So Obsession cost them a million dollars to make Obsession. It's already grossed over$250 million. So$1 million. Now, I don't think it's filmed in the same way. I saw the trailer. I think it's just low budget because they don't have any star actors, and I don't think there's lots of crazy special effects. So it's all about the story, which, again, I wish they would pick up on that.

56:35Sal Di Stefano:It needs to have a legit story. I don't care about all this. Well, you know the reason. So I've read it. Wow.

56:41Adam Schafer:What is it?

56:41Sal Di Stefano:Let me see.

56:42Adam Schafer:Blair Witch Project had an initial production budget of$35 ,000 to$60 ,000, which increased to$200 ,000 to$700 ,000. And it made$248 million. Back then. But the principal photography,$35 ,000. Now, this was back in, when was this made? It was in the 90s, right?

57:02Sal Di Stefano:It was the 90s, something. Maybe early 2000s. Like, 01 maybe or something. Yeah, maybe past the years.

57:09Adam Schafer:But obsession, you know what the story is about obsession, right? This dude. You know I don't watch any of that shit. This dude. Well, I'm not going to give. I mean, the trailer shows us. this dude likes this girl he's totally like infatuated with her and he makes a wish somehow he gets this thing makes a wish that he wants her to love him yeah but then it turns into her being like super obsessed 99 wow blood witch was you know justin to your point that you brought up

57:29Sal Di Stefano:there's a reason i mean obviously you probably know the reason but like uh i've read up on that before like what like we lose this like originality of like risk of like storytelling because there's such a a easy formula for success yeah because there's so many full business around yeah Yeah, that's, I mean, scary movies. Predictability. Yeah, scary movies are a perfect example of that. It's like there's a built-in cult following already that you could throw garbage out there. And as long as a percentage of that cult goes and sees it one time, you already make your money back. Where coming up with a new idea is 100 % risk.

58:03Sal Di Stefano:And I think the success rate is so small. It takes a lot of risk.

58:06Adam Schafer:You know what's interesting? Of all the genres of movies, I think the most successful genre where you see the formula of low cost to high revenue is horror.

58:17Sal Di Stefano:Well, yeah, but don't you think it's for the reason why I just, what I was saying earlier is because you don't want something overly produced for horror because if it's overly produced, it makes it even more fake. Where if it feels kind of gritty and like low budget, it feels more real.

58:33Adam Schafer:I don't know if that's necessarily true because some of the, some of the most, some of the highest producing horror movies were highly produced, like The Shining, or I think what it has to do more with is the story. Was The Shining highly produced? It was. It was a well produced. Yeah, it was a major Hollywood production. It was a major production. Really, it's the story. I think when we look at horror, we get caught up with the gore, or the special effects, or the jump stuff jumps at you, it makes you scared. But it's really about, think about the scariest movies you ever watched. It was all about the story.

59:03Adam Schafer:It was just really, really good storytelling. The Blutter Witch Project, as wild as it is, is actually a really interesting story as you're following. I actually couldn't watch it

59:12Sal Di Stefano:because it made me sick. Yeah, a lot of the

59:15Adam Schafer:jumping camera angles.

59:18Sal Di Stefano:It's because I got scared. That probably didn't, I'm sure that played a little bit of a role too.

59:21Adam Schafer:When you watch this, because I know you're like a big wuss with this, when you watch scary movies, I don't watch scary movies. But if I do, I've watched a handful. Okay, let's say all of us together go and watch Obsession or something like that. You're covering your face? I don't watch it like this. No, you're not. Shut up, bro. For real? Yeah. No, you're not, dude. No, you're not. Oh, God. Listen, white knuckling. How does it affect you? Tell me, how does it affect you?

59:45Sal Di Stefano:I get anxious, and I don't like that. I want that when I ride a roller coaster in the middle of the day. Okay. I like that anxious. I like to be scared in the middle of the day in the sun on the beach, riding a ride, and go like, ah, this is great,

1:00:01Adam Schafer:and my adrenaline's going, and I'm hyped for the day.

1:00:03Sal Di Stefano:Eight o 'clock at night when I'm eating popcorn with my wife, I do not want that feeling. Okay. There's nothing about that.

1:00:08Adam Schafer:Now what happens after the movie's over? Do you have, do you not, you can't sleep?

1:00:11Sal Di Stefano:And I haven't watched enough to connect patterns, but I don't feel good going to bed after that. I'm not a person who can watch a horror film and go right to sleep. I'm more like my wife. Katrina and I don't both. That's one of the things that was connected to us. She's anti-scary. She can't even watch an action-packed movie and go to sleep. She's got to watch something like that. I can at least do that. But boy, if it's a thriller or on the scary side, it's like, yeah.

1:00:39Adam Schafer:So I don't like scary movies like I used to because if they get too demonic, I don't like them anymore because now, you know, obviously I'm different now. But when I was young, I could watch this. I could watch the most demented, twisted thing right to bed. No, no. That was a good movie. I can't do that. I can't do that. I can only take it like the slasher movies. Those are still fun. Some of them are so – Rob Zombies were too much though. Dude, no. It's not because they were too scary. It was just evil shit. It was just excessive. It was just too much.

1:01:04Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, see, I really don't like gore. like really gory over the top stuff like that there's some stuff that like I liked Sixth Sense I watched the first two Saws yeah there's certain things again that's the storyline and the whole idea

1:01:20Adam Schafer:did you guys know that scary movies can induce physical arousal in women did you guys know this? Google this you've talked about this before I have but I want to make sure I'm right and I should make this up right now that I think it can induce physical signs of arousal in women.

1:01:40Sal Di Stefano:What is the thing that it's doing? Anxiety and excitement.

1:01:45Adam Schafer:Scary movies can induce physical arousal in women. This happens because physiological signs of fear closely mirror those of sexual excitement. Scroll down, Doug. See what else is happening here. Scroll down, but slowly. It's sort of... I'm going to watch a scary movie with my wife. Yeah, blood flow redirection. blood pumps to your extremities and genitals. Wow. This doesn't happen for men. Yeah. This doesn't happen. Doug, look up if this happens to guys. No. Because I don't think it does. No way. But then you add into this, I remember I read an article about this, you take a girl to a scary movie, she gets scared, physical arousal, but she's not aroused.

1:02:21Adam Schafer:It's different. Physical arousal and actually being aroused is different. I wonder if they don't realize it's happening. No.

1:02:26Sal Di Stefano:Also, too, their obsession with serial killers.

1:02:29Adam Schafer:Then what happens is then she's with a guy who then makes her feel safe.

1:02:32Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Boom. I know that was like a go-to formula It says it can happen to dudes too It's called scare-rousal I feel like if that happened to me I would like it I feel like if that did happen to me I wouldn't

1:02:46Adam Schafer:I know you're scared right now But you got a boner If that happened I'd be like

1:02:51Sal Di Stefano:Okay I can get into this I get all the anxiety

1:02:56Adam Schafer:I have never been aroused from a scary movie So that's definitely not true No I don't know

1:03:02Sal Di Stefano:I've always had groups of buddies that are into them that want to. Where's this going? I've now left your sexual mindset. That's weird because my buddies just watch scary movies together. No, I've always got buddies that want, they swear that I haven't watched the right one. You've got to introduce me to this one or what that, and everybody's so cute.

1:03:25Adam Schafer:I want to watch a scary movie with you only because I want to see the anxiety. I just want to be there to watch that. You want to see him just in torture.

1:03:37Sal Di Stefano:I mean, I've done enough times now that I would fake it well enough. I wouldn't give you the pleasure of seeing that torture.

1:03:45Adam Schafer:It's the same pleasure you guys get when you guys watch me try and do something athletic, when you guys watch me over the side and laugh. I hear you guys laughing. Pretty sure. Oh, there he is. There it is. Look at him move the way he does. He'd be like taking me to a bodybuilder show or something. We did. I know. I went to Adam's show. I know, and I was squirming the whole time. I know that guy. We didn't get enough footage of him. You should have done. You should have had him go backstage. You know how uncomfortable he had done? I'd have him be the one to rub the door. With dudes putting oil on each other?

1:04:11Adam Schafer:Hey, bro, could you oil me up? Come on, dog. You're my boy. You're my tan guy. It's the business, bro. I can't reach my glute. Come on, tan boy. We've got to grow this podcast business. Nobody's listening to us yet. Come on. Paint them cheeks. I need your help. I don't want to. One of the most important components when it comes to fat loss, muscle gain, health, hormone health, it's sleep. If you get better sleep, everything gets better. In fact, studies show poor sleep makes it much more difficult to burn body fat and definitely more difficult to build muscle. And you want to throw your hormones off, have suboptimal sleep.

1:04:46Adam Schafer:Look, there's a company called 8Sleep that makes a device that goes over your bed and it warms or cools your bed. and it uses AI technology to change on the fly to maximize your sleep. Here's what people report when they use the 8th sleep. They have lowered resting heart rate on average by 2.3 beats per minute. They have better heart rate variability scores, 13 % on average. Up to 34 % have more deep sleep and up to 60 % have more REM sleep. That's that restorative sleep. You guys, this makes a huge difference. It's not chemical. It's not a supplement. It's not a drug. It literally just changes the temperature of your bed and adjust itself to your sleep.

1:05:29Adam Schafer:It individualizes itself so you get better sleep. If you go to 8sleep.com, that's E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com forward slash mind pump and use the code mind pump, you get a massive discount on the POD 5 Ultra. By the way, you may qualify for a medical expense. If you have a health savings account or flexible savings account, on average, people save 30 To see if you're eligible, go to trumed.com slash eight sleep. That's trumed.com slash E I G H T sleep. Go see if you're eligible. Get that discount. Back to the show. Our first caller is Carrie from Utah.

1:06:08Sal Di Stefano:Hi Carrie. Hi Carrie. Hello. Good morning. How you doing? I'm well, thank you. I'm so, I'm kind of nervous. So I've been listening to you guys for a very long time. So kind of fangirling over here. So I will just start by reading my email and then I do have an update. since this meal was sent a little over 30 days ago. Okay, all right. It says, hi, Mind Pump team. I'm a 45-year-old mom of five who lives with Hashimoto's. I finally was making real progress with strength training, and after a year of trauma, survival, and rebuilding my life, I've gained 35 pounds, despite being physically active every day, and I feel completely lost in my body.

1:06:42I started listening to you guys back in 2018, but it took me until 2023 to let go of cardio and start actually lifting. I ran MAPS anabolic and transitioned to MAPS strong, but my body couldn't handle it at the time. High stress, joint pain, and full recovery, and I stopped. In March of 2024, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's anemia and low cortisol. I was exhausted, gaining weight, barely functioning. I worked with a functional medicine doctor for about eight months, focusing on stress, sleep, gut health, and slowly rebuilding my tolerance to exercise. Eventually, I was cleared to lift again, and I ran MAPS symmetry for the first time ever.

1:07:16I saw real results. I lost seven pounds. Sorry, I'm trying not to cry. I lost seven pounds of body fat and gained five pounds of lean muscle. I finally felt like I was doing it right. Then my life fell apart. In February of 2025, I left an emotionally abusive, sometimes physical relationship and went into full survival mode. I lost everything financially and I had to rebuild from scratch. And I stopped training. Shortly after I started this sedentary job, I started my own cleaning business in August of 2025. I now clean one to two houses per day and physically active, but since May 2025, I've gained 35 pounds.

1:07:52That's what's confusing me the most. I'm not sedentary. I move all day, but I feel softer, weaker, inflamed, and further away from myself than ever. Recent labs show my testosterone had dropped significantly. I had to stop therapy due to cost and my ferritin is low again. Nutrition is a big challenge. I don't feel hungry during the day and because I'm constantly on the go without access to refrigeration or heating, I rely on quick options like drink full yogurts, fruit, and snacks. I eat a solid dinner, but I suspect I'm under eating protein and possibly under fueling overall. Recently, I've also started waking up in the middle of the night starving.

1:08:26I'm not lifting right now because I feel exhausted, weak, and unsure of how to fuel properly with my current lifestyle. I feel stuck. I've done a lot of emotional healing, but my body feels like it's going in the opposite direction. And most of my life, I haven't struggled with weight. So my questions are, how should I approach training with Hashimoto's low ferritin, hormone changes, and physical demanding job? Is it possible that I'm under-feeling in ways that are contributing to my weight gain? How do I rebuild strength, body composition without pushing myself back into burnout? Thank you for everything you guys do.

1:08:55Your podcast has completely changed how I view fitness. And then here's my update. Since sending the email, I've gotten a much clearer picture through comprehensive labs and a DEXA scan. My DEXA scan shows that my RMR is only 1 ,320 calories. My visceral fat nearly tripled in 14 months. And my body went from 32 % body fat to 40%. The fat distribution is centralized, trunk and midsection, which looks mostly like a cortisol-driven pattern. But what's interesting is my cortisol looks reasonable. My AM cortisol was 26.5, five days after leaving that abusive relationship. Acute stress makes complete sense.

1:09:35It came down to 13.1 by September of 2025. And my most recent reading is 15.1, which my functional medical practitioner says is actually the best it's been in years. So chronically elevated cortisol doesn't fully explain the visceral fat accumulation. The fat distribution pattern looks more like a cortisol pattern on DEXA, but my modern cortisol looks fine. Here's what's most frustrating. I identified the under-fueling issue and I corrected it. I increased my calories to 2 ,000 to 2 ,200 on lighter cleaning days and to 2 ,600 on heavy days. I'm tracking consistently and hitting 130 to 150 grams of protein daily, and I'm still gaining.

1:10:14The DEXA does show a small lean tissue increase from 14 months ago, but I started creatine about six weeks ago. So it's likely water and glycogen in the muscles rather than new muscle tissue. Lab shows my estradiol dropped 68 % and my progesterone dropped 92 % at match cycle phases over 13 months. My thyroid dose was reduced in October, which caused a downstream across multiple markers, including 3T3, total T3, cholesterol jumping 48 points, and my hemoglobin trending down. I have since started TRT, progesterone, and iron bicarbonate supplementation, and I got a thyroid dose increase. but I'm only a few weeks into that.

1:10:52So nothing has had time to fully take effect. So my question is now, given the suppressed RMR, centralized visceral fat accumulation hormones in the process of being corrected, physical demanding job, burning calories. What should I be doing to, with my nutrition and training right now to stop the bleeding and start moving in the right direction?

1:11:11Adam Schafer:Yeah. Thanks for calling in. I appreciate that. So you've been through a lot. Yeah. and it's very reasonable. It's extremely reasonable that going through what you've been through with five kids and trying to support everybody on your own and what you described about the relationship that you kind of came out of, it's very reasonable that it would be reflected in things like how you feel, body fat gain, not being able to exercise because you're exhausted, all that stuff. Like that's actually expected going through what you went through. So, Carrie, what does taking care of yourself or what does caring for yourself right now look like?

1:11:55Right now, what I do is I make sure I get good sleep. So, I'm sleeping seven and a half, eight and a half hours every night. I have an aura ring, so I track. So, I know I'm getting good sleep. I'm supplementing at night with glycine and magnesium. And then I'm taking progesterone at night, which also is like I'm on 200 milligrams. So kind of like a mild sedative. So it really helps me like get into sleep. So I'm sleeping really good. So my recovery feels really good. It's just, I think the, you know, some days I'm six to nine hours of straight cleaning all day long, nonstop. So that's where it's getting hard is that there's no break in between sometimes just to keep going.

1:12:34So I tried to get that rest at night lights off. Blue light blocking glasses, eight o 'clock, which I've done for years. So low lights, just relaxation at night just to recover.

1:12:44Adam Schafer:That's really good. And you're doing a lot of good stuff. I hear your frustration. Are you giving yourself grace? Yes. I journal a lot. So I have a stack of journals back there that I'm pouring into where I'm feeling frustrated, where I'm feeling stuck and just understanding this is just a season of life. Wonderful. But yeah, it's still, I still want to make forward progress when, you know, everything I'm doing feels like I'm just either stuck or I'm going backwards. No, I get it. Okay, so you're doing the right stuff. Yeah. And what it's going to look like, which is what you're doing, is going to be caring for yourself in ways that improve the quality of your life and your health.

1:13:28Adam Schafer:And so sleep is the first place I would go. You're active. So you're already moving a lot. you're fueling yourself better which would be the next place i would go and then the next place i would go would be adding some strength training when appropriate and it might look like very

1:13:45Sal Di Stefano:little and she's also just now getting like her hormones really balanced too so you're really with your thyroid and getting that all aligned like it hasn't even been that long so that's just

1:13:53Adam Schafer:that's all the next place too it is and so you're in the beginning so what it feels like to me um and i feel pretty confident in this i could be wrong but i feel pretty confident that you're kind of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. So you've been going through this dark tunnel and you're like, okay, I think I see some light at the end and I'm moving in that direction. In other words, this season looks like it's starting to improve. You're starting to come out of it. Would you say that that's true? Yes. I'm actually going to be transitioning out of cleaning all day just because of the amount of load on my body.

1:14:24It feels like, you know, it's not sustainable, especially with my Hashimoto's. So I'm working on slowly launching another business that is um not physically demanding so then i can transition out of one business into this other one um so that like i said it will give me so there won't be so much

1:14:42Adam Schafer:physical stress yeah you're tough man you're tough how old are your kids uh my oldest is 25 and my youngest is six yeah you're you're a badass yeah can i do something for you uh sure okay i think you're you're managing a lot how would you feel about not having to manage some of this and allowing us to give you some free coaching. Now you're really going to make me cry. Um, I would love that. Okay. I'm going to give you a couple months with one of our coaches and I don't want you to worry about some of this. You let the coach handle it and you just do what they say. So you don't have to think about all this stuff.

1:15:16Adam Schafer:Um, and they're going to walk you through nutrition and they're also going to be able to modify the program, give you exercise recommendations and modifying because at this point right here, Carrie, what it's going to look like is a little bit of like dipping your toe in the water, seeing how you react. That's too much, not enough. Okay. Let's bump it up or let's pull back. And we're going to have to go through that process for a little while, while your body heals, because I have a good idea of where I'd want to start you, but I'd also want to see how your body reacts and how you feel through the process so we could change it.

1:15:46Adam Schafer:And the only way we could do that is if we have somebody work with you through this. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Okay. I'm going to have somebody call you today and we're going to give you 60 days of coaching. and they're going to work with you through this process. You guys are wonderful. Thank you so much. You're doing really something that's been really challenging. I've always been, you know, I've always been really strong. I've never had to actually lift because I just have always been, everyone's always like, you're so strong. You don't, you know, so like the only time I ever did cardio, I was like, oh, I want to look a little better for X, Y, Z, you know?

1:16:18So I do a little bit of cardio and I would be just fine. And I would just go back to living. I've just always been active. So this is where it's really frustrating is to feel so weak. all the time, you know?

1:16:29Adam Schafer:Well, of course. You're kidding me? You're running a business. You got five kids. You're doing this on your own. You left an abusive relationship.

1:16:36Sal Di Stefano:You have Hashimoto's. Yeah. I mean, you're actually taking it all on. Not a lot of people could handle half of that.

1:16:43Adam Schafer:You're pretty damn tough. And that's why I want to take some of this load off of you in the ways that we can, which would be the coaching part of it. And if it's okay with you, Carrie, I'd love to hop on some of those calls with you when you get with the coach, if that's all right. Yeah, I'd love that. Thank you. Okay. That's what we're going to do. We're going to set you up with a coach, and then we'll see what happens. I'll hop on a couple of those calls, but I'll tell you what, I'm very hopeful because you actually are doing all the right, like you're already moving in the right direction. You're tackling the right stuff that needs to be tackled first.

1:17:13Adam Schafer:There's really not much I can add other than let's start, let's take some of this load off you.

1:17:18Sal Di Stefano:Start a new path here, yeah.

1:17:19Adam Schafer:That's it. Hang in there. Yeah. Thank you guys so much. Strong. You got it. Very strong. We got good coaches. You'll be working with somebody good. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate your help. You got it, Kerry. Thanks for calling him.

1:17:32Sal Di Stefano:I'm going to start out the gates with an emotional one, by the way. Here we go. I'm going to strap in. Dude, can you imagine? Hey, five kids. Five kids. Hashimoto's. Hashimoto's. 45. Crappy relationship. Hormonal changes. Abusive relationship. And start a business. Starting a cleaning business. And then another business. Another one to get out of the cleaning business. The last thing that she needs is to try to manage more stuff. You know?

1:17:54Adam Schafer:So I'm hoping that this takes some of that load off. And also, here's the deal, just for people listening right now. I have a good idea of what I think she should do. But I also know, considering all those variables, probably going to have to change it like four times in 30 days.

1:18:09Sal Di Stefano:You could call an audible multiple times. It's going to be impossible. Managing is going to be tough.

1:18:12Adam Schafer:Yeah, dude, there's so much stuff going on.

1:18:13Sal Di Stefano:You know, I didn't get a chance to tell her this, but to go from, I'm assuming that she was under 2 ,000 calories to 2 ,400 to 2 ,600 calories.

1:18:23Adam Schafer:And have a little bit of water waking.

1:18:25Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. It's great. It's actually a huge win. And focusing on sleep like she is. And so one of the hardest things when you get a client that's gone through all this, is battling all this, is weight, fat loss, and muscle building is a long process when you're healthy and everything is perfect. When you're hyper-stressed. Yeah. So when everything is perfect, this process is still slow. That's right. But when you got all of this that you're tapping at the same time, boy, it just feels like you're not moving. But you are. And it's understanding that to be able to increase your calories like that and also get rid of what she was doing before.

1:19:08Sal Di Stefano:We didn't even mention, too, all the cardio. Sounds like she was doing excessive cardio before and overtraining her body and under eating. And so, man, it's going to take a minute for the body to feel safe enough to do what you want it to do for you.

1:19:20Adam Schafer:That's right. Our next caller is Kyle from British Columbia. Hey, what's up, man?

1:19:24Sal Di Stefano:Welcome back.

1:19:25Adam Schafer:Damn, Kyle, you look jacked now.

1:19:27Sal Di Stefano:That's right. How's it going? How's it going? Good. Nice to see you guys again. Thanks for taking my follow-up call here. You got it, dude. Give us an update. All righty. So, yeah, just to briefly recap. First of all, it was a great timing to have this call with you guys previously because I went through quite a good journey this time. You guys sent me on quite a trail. so it was awesome so essentially when I called in last time I had been kind of weight training for about a year on the split and then I managed to gain 10 pounds in that first year but I still really wasn't sure what I was doing I was looking for a good plan and I was feeling tired and just kind of hit a plateau so you guys sent me on a path to eat 200 grams of protein and a day and then train the anabolic program.

1:20:17So yeah, it was great. I'll just start with there. It was quite a change for me. And my journey started with quite a rude awakening, actually. So my first goal was to gain as much strength as possible during this time. So I was definitely going to be eating a lot more lower volume based on the split and stuff like that. So I just really want to focus on strength, as you guys mentioned. And I was actually at a town for a week during some work stuff. And then the last day of the week, I went to a gym because I was just doing some dumbbell hotel stuff during the time. I was like, I'm gonna go push some weights.

1:20:56And before like at home, I'm using just plates on more like a lever. I got like a little lever system thing. So I was never really free weighting. And I had all my numbers in my mind based on that. And I went to the gym, I loaded up the bar. And I was like, all right, I got these mad numbers, I'm doing good. And I could barely move the bar. It's like, this is this is terrible. I was like, I had to stop. Yeah, I had to stop D rack and I just felt so defeated. So I got home and this was the beginning of the anabolic journey. And I traded in, I just got a basic rack. And I've been just upping my numbers on that.

1:21:30So now I've got some, you know, more calculative measures. But anyways, I'll start with how the diet worked so far based on upping the protein. and then I'll get to the strength and numbers and the training and stuff like that. So I'll sprinkle in some questions because I had to do a couple modifications along the way just for my lifestyle. And I want to, I took your guys's advice from the podcast to try to make the best decisions. So I'd love to have your real-time feedback on that just to see if I'm doing well. Um, and if I can make any better changes, but, um, yeah, so essentially diet wise, the 200 gram goal was definitely an up for me my digestive system was having a hard time with that with that volume at first the first two weeks I was like trying to figure out how I can get the protein but stop burping all day kind of thing I get those digestive juices going I don't know so I've worked my way up now to about 180 grams a day that seems to be doing well so far I'm still trying to get up there but um to get these numbers and to um digest well i guess um without lack of better terms i've had to utilize uh protein powder cottage cheese greek yogurt those things i could more get the numbers higher um i've even been adding some just liquid egg whites to my eggs to try to boost those numbers too and i know you guys always say like um stick to whole foods as much as possible.

1:23:03And I wasn't sure if adding those to rely on is still in that whole foods category, or if it's kind of like, um, like a crutch right now for me. Um, or if it will eventually get easier to digest, uh, more non-protein powder type stuff. Um, so that was my first one.

1:23:23Adam Schafer:All right, let's start, let's start there, Kyle, before we get to that one. So let's talk a little bit. So what were your calories at? Um, go ahead. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Um, I wasn't actually tracking calories. I was just tracking protein grams. I just had like a protein gram number kind of going on throughout the day. But if you suggest I can do that and see what that's like for the next week or so. I'd like to see that, but also tell me about the rest of the meal. Were you having vegetables, starches? Is there fiber? Gotcha. Yeah. So essentially like for breakfast, I would have some boiled eggs and then a little bowl of some Greek yogurt with a scoop of protein.

1:24:01Like I can easily get 50 grams doing that for breakfast. And then, um, lunch would be some veggies and then some egg whites scrambled with another, probably a few eggs in there. Actually lunch is kind of variable because it's usually like leftover dinner from the last night. I just pour some egg whites in there to try to boost it up with some veggies on the side type thing. Dinner is usually meat and rice and whatever veggies my wife is making.

1:24:33Adam Schafer:Okay. So you're having carbohydrates once a day. Oh, I do eat fruit throughout the day as well. So I'm having like apples. I usually have rice with lunch as well. And then I have some beans mixed in there as well. Okay. Okay. So sometimes when you increase your protein, you will notice a slower digestion, or it'll be difficult to break it down. There's a couple of things you could do with that. one is you can introduce digestive enzymes with your meal. So there are digestive enzymes for protein. And then you can also use what's called psyllium husk. This is a fiber that you take after you're done eating to help with motility.

1:25:10Adam Schafer:There is a bit of an adjustment period when you bump protein sometimes. So I've had this with clients sometimes where some clients, you bump protein, food intake, no problem. Other times people are like, oh my God, I kind of feel like things aren't moving really well. And those two things almost always make a difference. So, so that'll, I think that'll help a lot. I'd also like to kind of get an idea of what your calories at, but I think it's okay to fall at 180 grams of protein. I think that's

1:25:35Sal Di Stefano:good. Kyle, give me an example. What was dinner last night? What'd you have for dinner last night? Dinner last night was actually, I went to my parents' place. They invited us over. So, but we have like a big pork shoulder and some. Well, give me, give me the last time you made dinner? What was it? What would you, what are you normally making dinner? Give me an idea of what it looks like. Yeah, for sure. Um, when we had dinner mostly cause the kids eat ground meat, we always have ground meat for like our meat base. So it's usually, um, ground meat with some mixed veggies in there. And then rice is always, it's either like mixed with the rice or rice on the side.

1:26:07So that's, yeah, that's basically our 90 % of the time dinner.

1:26:10Sal Di Stefano:Okay. I love that. Uh, I mean, can I make a suggestion based off of the meal choices that you're kind of doing? Like, have you tried to cook 4x that in a night um no i have not okay so cook 4x that so instead of cooking i'm imagining you and your family are probably having one to two pounds of meat cook four or five pounds of ground beef and cook double to triple the rice and that now becomes breakfast and or lunch the next the next day and throw a man that meal exact meal ground beef rice with two or three eggs on it is amazing breakfast bowl. I absolutely love to have, and then have that for lunch the next day.

1:26:51Sal Di Stefano:And then also in the middle, you can have that Greek yogurt and fruit and snack like that. Like that's a beautiful day right there of that, what you have for dinner now carries over to breakfast with a few eggs cracked over the top of it and lunch in between those meals, Greek yogurt or cottage cheese with your favorite fruit. Like that's a, and I bet that'll sit really well on you you won't need to have to just keep pumping egg whites into everything you do um and enjoy it and I mean if you want some cheese throw some cheese on there to bump the calories uh that would be my suggestion you're already making dinner like that try making it in in a larger bulk so it carries you over another day or two of of meals but yeah

1:27:30Adam Schafer:as far as the digestion is concerned uh when you radically increase a macro sometimes your body's not, it takes time to produce more of the enzymes that break those down. And so digestive enzymes can help a lot. And then the psyllium husk is a, it's a non-soluble fiber. It just gets things moving through the body and typically helps with all of that. Are you noticing, did you notice any increases in energy through the bumping of calories? To be honest, I, yes. The first two weeks, not so much, but around like week three, four, there was a bit of an increase, but honestly, the last two to three weeks for me has been significant.

1:28:09Uh, like it just like a switch happened. I don't really know. Like it was kind of like a little bit, a little bit, but then all of a sudden it's been quite a bit more. So it just, yeah, the last few weeks have been pretty awesome. Yeah. You're on the right track then.

1:28:22Adam Schafer:Tell us about the workouts. Tell us what's going on there. Yeah. So the workouts have been fun. Um, I really enjoy it. I've never done a full body, routine before. And so that was great. However, I this is my biggest modification, I stuck with the full body, the first two and a half, I'd say three weeks. But then I did notice like, because I like to rest a bit longer in between, I was getting up to like an hour, like over an hour, and then my mornings are a bit tight. And I liked I don't like to feel like rushed in between. So So what I ended up doing was the full body. I was listening to your podcast and then you're always talking about like, keep the volume the same.

1:29:02I know you're talking a lot about like the 15 minute workouts and stuff. So anyways, I tried to implement that into what I'm doing. So I said, okay, to avoid this rushed and get my breaks in between, I took all the upper body exercises. I did that on the Monday and then I took all the lower body exercises. Then I did that on the Tuesday.

1:29:20Sal Di Stefano:That's fine. Yeah, that's great. That's great. That's a perfect, that's a perfect way to split. that's how we tell people to split maps anabolic if you if you want to cut the workout in half beautiful okay so um yeah so that's what i did um because of that i haven't been doing the trigger sessions just because there's that other workout the following day but it has been consistently going through that and that's been yeah yeah i've been enjoying that and the time has been working out great i don't feel rushed i can take my breaks in between and push those weights um as i go and And honestly, in terms of my so far, like throughout this program here, I have gained about four kilos, which is pretty good.

1:30:03I was pretty surprised. I actually didn't weigh myself for my son. He's in there. He weighs himself because he's still super young. And he's like, oh, I gained like point two today or whatever, you know, but he's like, so how much are you? I was like, I'm not weighing myself yet. I got to wait at least a month or whatever. And then we did that. But yeah, as of today or not today, like last time I weighed myself, which was within the last week or so, it's like four kilos more. Wow. That's excellent.

1:30:30Adam Schafer:Yeah. I was pretty. And your strength? How's your strength? How's the strength? Yeah. So I wrote down my numbers. I got my numbers. So I was having a good time with this. And it honestly felt like throughout the anabolic, every other workout, it's like, oh, maybe I'll add another, like put those 2.5s on there for this last one. or go up another five or whatever. But then I was kind of finding my sweet spots. But anyways, my numbers for me, I'm happy because I've seen progression. I know there's a lot of people who can lift a ton more, but I'm happy because I've made progress. So my lifts, my deadlifts when I started, I was at just 140, but now I'm up to 175 doing like, yeah.

1:31:10So that's a huge increase for me. For anybody, buddy. Yeah, awesome. My bench. So this was the funniest part when I went to the gym. So anyways, on my lever weight machine there, I was going I was at 170. And I went to the gym, I put that on there, I just I was gonna die. So I had to just stop. I don't want to kill myself. So I stopped. And then when I got back home with just the free bench, the free bar took me like took me a couple workouts to get the feel. But so I was only doing 115. But now I'm up to 150 again. So that's significant. for me and I'm just like yeah I got the feel of it now I'm used to it I got I got the safety bars on there now so I know I'm like even if I dropped I got confident doing that I was like sometimes I'll just drop it on the safety bars in the last one and then just rest and then put it back up so I'm feeling good um so I got that so my bench went from 115 to 150 real free weights now which I'm pretty stoked um squat I've never done like um a barbell I was never yeah never did barbell squats before always just dumbbells and I even had to rig up a backpack with an extra dumbbell just because I never had a bar in a rack before so try to get the weights but now with the barbell my squat I started at 135 I'm up to 185 now so I'm feeling good with that um overhead now this is my main problem I've noticed strength gains overall um however my shoulders are just that one part that's just kind of like stuck and you know like my my overhead press is stayed at just like 70 pounds however my reps have doubled um so i've gone my reps are up yeah but um i just i have a hard time adding weight to it and it seems like my shoulders are a bit laggy in terms of growth um

1:33:03Sal Di Stefano:dude we're looking at your pictures right now for the first time yeah uh yeah you have made Kyle. Incredible progress.

1:33:11Adam Schafer:The vast, first off, your strength, this is 90 days. Is that how long it's been? Has it been 90 days? February to April, yeah. Okay. The strength gains you're describing in 90 days are not, they're not ordinary. They're actually remarkable.

1:33:24Sal Di Stefano:I wouldn't even advertise that as something you could expect.

1:33:28Adam Schafer:So you made tremendous strength gains in 90 days. And based off of your pictures and your strength, I would say you just gained muscle. That's all you gained was muscle.

1:33:37Sal Di Stefano:for sure look at your what your weight his waistline and his abs are still like yeah it's

1:33:42Adam Schafer:not you're not just doing a good job you're blowing it away yeah in fact i don't i mean i

1:33:47Sal Di Stefano:know sal asked for your calories but you're fine you are fine you're fine what you're doing you're what you're with your thing you're humming you're you're eating you're eating what you need to yeah you put on you put on good all good weight dude yep yep yeah you look awesome yeah i think

1:34:02Adam Schafer:the next thing to do would be to change your program keep pushing the calories add the digestive enzymes in the fiber so you can

1:34:09Sal Di Stefano:digest. Bro, you're crushing. So I don't want to change. I want him to run anabolic again. He just now is getting used to free weights. Yeah, that's fine. Oh yeah, that's true. You run anabolic another time and watch what happens your second round. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, your second round of free weight.

1:34:21Adam Schafer:By the way, if you're using the same weight on your shoulders but you doubled the reps, you got way strong. Exactly. I wouldn't trip on that at all.

1:34:28Sal Di Stefano:So this is another reason why I want you to do anabolic because you're familiar with it. Watch when you come back around and you run it a second time and and pay attention to all your lifts in that phase. So that's the true measure. It's like now that you're back to phase one of anabolic, what does my five-rep squat look like? What does my five-shoulder – and then watch how you feel and move that way.

1:34:47Adam Schafer:And push the protein up. Keep trying to get up to 200. But yeah, this is like the results you got with strength and muscle would be exceptional if it was over a year.

1:34:58Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. You look great. Okay. So you did that in 90 days. Yeah, dude, you look good.

1:35:01Adam Schafer:Which tells me your body was like, I need this. I was ready for it.

1:35:05Sal Di Stefano:Keep feeling yourself. You're hungry. Feed. Definitely. I'm definitely going to encourage you to feed. And I would take the advice I was giving you about the, like, more of those dinner meals like that. Like, make double it, at least double it up and start doing that in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're doing great, dude. Yeah.

1:35:19Adam Schafer:You're good, bro. Yeah. Like, way more than good. Yeah. You're crunching it. Yeah.

1:35:23Sal Di Stefano:You're killing it. Very good. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a great time. Like, honestly, just, like, learning. I really like you guys talk about, like, learning the movements, like, practicing. And I felt like I really got a good chance to practice the exercise because there's a whole new system, like just free weight barbells, learning that. You are just warming up. Let me tell you. I can't wait to see 90 days later. I want you to send us a check in, check in with us again, 90 days, send us some photos and updates on all your numbers.

1:35:49Adam Schafer:You got more crazy gains coming, dude. Yeah, you do.

1:35:52Sal Di Stefano:Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great to hear. Well, I appreciate that.

1:35:55Adam Schafer:You got it, man. Yeah, yeah. We'll see you in 90 again. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right on. All right, Kyle. All right. sorry, may I ask just one totally random question? Yeah, let's go. Go for it. Okay. So this was something I've been kind of, my wife's really starting to get into training too. And I've been helping her. And so recently, like she's, I'm still teaching her. She actually did some measurements and she said she checked in, her strength has gone quite a bit up and her measurements are the same. And based on what I know, it's like, oh, that's a great outcome. Like you're obviously getting more muscle and all that stuff.

1:36:28However, one totally weird thing, I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this with anyone before, but when we started upping her protein, we were focusing more on dairy-based stuff, but she started getting migraines. And then we were like, okay, that's the only thing we've changed. So we kind of dialed that back, and her migraines have gone away. But she doesn't have any digestive issues with dairy, so I wasn't sure, but I'm not sure if that's ever come up.

1:36:55Adam Schafer:Yeah, so food intolerances can look like digestive issues. They could look like skin issues. They could look like energy issues. They could look like pain, inflammation. Migraines are a very clear sign. If you reduce the dairy and the migraines went away, stay away from dairy. Okay, good to know. Yeah, I just wanted to.

1:37:15Sal Di Stefano:There's some good companies out there. Huel is one. Some of their vegan powders and protein drinks and stuff like that that she can use to supplement. Isolated or something like that. Perfect. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to know if you've heard of that and experienced that. So perfect.

1:37:31Adam Schafer:No, you're good, dude. Yeah. All right. Good job, brother. Keep it up. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks guys. I appreciate all the help. He gained 10 pounds. Bro, when his picture came up, I went, oh, bro. Hey, 10 pounds of muscle in 90 days. That's not, that's, that's phenomenal. He's building muscle. Using that window. Fast. Yeah.

1:37:49Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

1:37:49Adam Schafer:He's like every workout I'm adding weight. Like that's great.

1:37:52Sal Di Stefano:Oh, I mean, so it sounds like, and I don't, I don't, I didn't remember. hearing or noticing this the last time we talked to him, at least I don't remember, it sounds like he's coming off of a whatchamacallit machine? A Bowflex. Oh, yeah. Like a Bowflex type of machine. I think that's what he was rocking. And being introduced to. Now that he's on free weights? Oh, dude. That's why I wanted him to run anapolicy. Yeah, no, that's fine. You're right. His whole first round was just like, I bet you he spent the first two weeks of every phase feeling out the weight. And so he only got one good week of really getting out.

1:38:23Sal Di Stefano:Shocking for him. Like, watch when he comes back around. Switch. Watch, yeah.

1:38:27Adam Schafer:I wouldn't be surprised if he gained another five pounds of muscle.

1:38:29Sal Di Stefano:The only thing that will keep him from not is feeding. Yeah. He'll guarantee he gains another five. I'll even say ten if he pushes the cow. Free weights for the win. If he fuels his body and eats, the way things are going right now, he's in newbie gains range right now. A guy who's never done free weights is now doing free weights. He's a good example. I hope he's – it sounds like he's pretty diligent, so it's going to be cool to see him. That would be fun. Yeah. Our next caller is Jai from Ohio. What's up, Jai? What's happening? How you doing, man? Hey, what's up, guys? What's up, guys? Hey, thank you so much for taking my call.

1:39:00Yeah, you got it, man.

1:39:01Adam Schafer:How can we help you? All right. So here, let me just fire off this question because my laptop is dying here. But so, yeah, my name's Jai Faraji. I'm currently a personal trainer locally here in Cincinnati. And also I'm trying to actually grow online as well. So I'm trying to take more of a hybrid approach. What I'm looking to do is improve my marketing and client retention and my overall business structure. So I have three questions for you guys. So if you're starting from scratch today, what would be your top strategies for consistently acquiring clients and how would you structure your content to convert, not just get attention?

1:39:38Secondly, what systems and habits have you found most effective for improving client retention when motivation drops? And lastly, I've been exploring ideas like seeing Ask a Trainer Boots and different workshops at local businesses and corporations. Also, another idea that I had in mind is I'm trying to maybe get like a program together, like maybe an eight week program just to start bringing that idea to some different businesses here, like such as Procter & Gamble and TQL. Both of these companies have top notch gyms over there. So I'm trying to, you know, maybe get something going on over there.

1:40:14you know, with their staff in order to obviously build my business locally and hopefully convert a lot of those people into one-on-one clients also. So, like, what I would like to know is how would you recommend structuring and marketing something like this so that it converts into paying clients? And are there any key materials or systems you guys suggest having in place? So I really appreciate everything that you guys put out, and I'm looking forward to hearing these answers.

1:40:42Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, I mean, I love you. first of all, I love all the questions. There's a lot there. So let's go back to number one and just start right there. Okay. So, so when you're getting started right now, and this is like the number one thing that I talked to new coaches about every hour, you don't have a person in front of you is, is like a failed hour. I don't care if it's free or not. And that, and since you're trying to build online and in person, I'll take either one. So it's like, if I, if I meet somebody and I have an opportunity to get a free hour with them in front of me versus me not training somebody like that's so and that not only is that important for reps for you okay so like you're this part of this process when you're building is the educational process like you are this is you getting people in front of you getting good at your craft and your skill nothing will serve you more than that and so every hour not having a body in front of you whether it be virtually or in person is is wasted time like that like you got to do that like that's first and foremost and that that's going to give you that now while you're doing that that also provides the content for social so i let's just say you are the person i you i meet you at the store or supplement store we're talking it up and i get you in front of us hey man tomorrow i got some free time you want to come in i'll take you through a workout i'll go over some of those things i was talking to you about with your shoulders that you were asking me about you're like yeah cool totally free it's on me yeah rad so then so then you and i are in there i'm gonna work you out talk to you teach you about whatever it was we talked about in the supplement store about building your shoulders and some movements.

1:42:10Sal Di Stefano:I'm going to teach you some things. And then the things I'm talking to you about are now ideas for content that goes on social. So if I gave you a tip for, say, shoulder health and mobility, because I noticed that on one side you kind of have a rounded shoulder. And so whatever it is that I notice about you or I help you with, that now becomes a piece of content that I put out free on social. And I'm just rinsing repeat. Every day, if I got three or four people in front of me, whether they're paying me or not paying me, that's three or four pieces of content i should be able to at minimum put up on social you see how that just starts okay you see how that compounds yeah i get practice and reps i get content ideas and then guess what all those three people are also opportunity to maybe become a client and this also right so now this becomes an opportunity for me to get work on my presentation skills because one of the best one other than being a great trainer the other number one thing that you can get good at is sales.

1:43:05Sal Di Stefano:And so this is going to give you that practice of doing that. And a lot of the other stuff that you talked about, all good ideas, but what I just said should be 99 % of your focus right now. Bodies in front of me, repetitions and practice, both on my sales pitches and my content that I want to create and teach other people. Like that is what's going to, that right there will, will start to scale your business by itself. And then we start to the other things, what happens to a lot of trainers where they're at, where you're at that are highly motivated, intelligent, like all the things I can tell about you, you kind of want to do all the stuff.

1:43:45Sal Di Stefano:and it's like I'm what I'm telling you right now is the biggest thing that you can go do and and and like a huge success if you were if I was mentoring you would be right now you maybe have one or two people at most in front of you every day by next month you've you've always got five people in your book like I don't what I'm trying to do that's right and I don't care if you're making money I don't even care if they're paying you just you you come to me and you're like adam i'm seeing five people a day every day now and i was only seeing one person at most a day and now we're seeing five four of them might be for free i don't give a shit but that's four bodies you got in front of you that's going to make you a better personal trainer give you a better opportunity for presenting sales and give you more content to produce on social media and it

1:44:27Adam Schafer:all come together okay okay okay how many clients do you currently have what are you at what are you doing right now uh so currently um okay so i i just started um as as an entrepreneur so outside the gym. I used to work at Crunch Fitness. This was like maybe about two years ago now. So I was doing really well over there at Crunch. But I mean, you guys probably know, like working over at Crunch, you have to work there for so many hours. You have to be there for so long with so many clients in order to make a good amount of money and things like that. And honestly, I was starting to get burned out.

1:44:59So I just decided to try to move on and work on building my business outside of the gym. So at least I've been doing it seriously for about the last six months. It's been a little bit of a journey. I don't really care to get into all the details, but I've just kind of been going through a lot. But six months ago, I finally decided to take it seriously. So I've been able to acquire four in-person clients. And right now I actually have five online clients. So a total of nine clients so far. But I'm actually, I'm trying to work on building that obviously as well. I do have a goal in mind as far as a number of clients that I would like to have so that I can kind of be comfortable.

1:45:37But so far, I'm at nine. I actually have a goal of 30, so I can just kind of give you my goal. So far, my goal is 30, either in person or online. So right now, I'm at nine. So I guess I'm looking for about 21.

1:45:48Adam Schafer:No, that's great. So one of the challenges, so social media is great. It's this wonderful tool. But here's one of the things that it's done that I think is a negative to trainers, is we look at social media and, like, this is how I'm going to market. This is how I'm going to get clients. Yes. Jai, listen. Huge distraction. Once you hang up with us, you go outside your car and start talking to people. I could get 10 clients walking out of my studio faster than if I was trying to get them on social media. Just walk around outside. That's what I've realized as well, which is why I wanted to show.

1:46:21Because at first my focus was online, but I just realized how difficult that that can be. It's so much easier to just talk to people around me. You know, so that's why I really wanted to try to focus on building my presence here locally as well.

1:46:33Adam Schafer:That's right. Yeah. Literally, you go outside. You set up a body fat testing booth at the grocery store. You go to the park. You talk to people. You do like, let's predict your all-cause mortality with a grip tester. Like you just talk to people outside. People, trainers don't like it because it's scary. And when you look at social media, it lies to you because, oh, my God, look at these guys with all these followers. They must be building a series. I'm going to tell you right now, if I was going to turn a trainer into a six-figure trainer, I wouldn't even have them start a social media. Like, we're going outside right now.

1:47:02Adam Schafer:We're going to go get you a client.

1:47:03Sal Di Stefano:Where are you training out of right now? Like, what gym? Oh, so right now, I'm training at, it's a gym called Lion's Pride. So, you know, they do Olympic weightlifting, personal training, yoga, MMA. Like, it's, yeah, they offer a lot. So, it's called Lion's Pride, and it's located downtown here in Cincinnati. So, that's where my in-person clients are.

1:47:21Adam Schafer:And just to back up with what Adam said, your social media is to support what you're doing by walking around and talking to people and meeting people. It's a reflection of that. Your social media. I'm sorry. Go ahead, guys. No worries. Your social media is not your business. Yeah. That's not your business. Right. So the focus is I'm talking to people. I'm getting them in front of me. I'm getting as many people in front of me as possible. And this is how I'm going to build my business. And then as an afterthought, the conversations I have, whatever, I'll post it on social media to support my business.

1:47:50Adam Schafer:But that's not your business. Your business is literally, and trainers today really mess this up. It's no different than it was 20 years ago. And like I said, what's happened is people have gotten confused. And I'm meeting a lot of coaches who are like, I don't understand what's the right post and how do I do the right engagement and how do I convert people? I'm like, walk outside your door. Walk outside your door and talk to people. It's a million times easier. You're going to immerse yourself where people are.

1:48:16Sal Di Stefano:On that note, okay, I'm going to say this to you, and I feel like I say this to people all the time, and they still ignore it and don't listen to it, but this is so important to understand. It is more powerful for you to add three new followers to your Instagram that because you helped some guy out with his shoulder pain and that are talking to you about their shoulder pain than it is for you to get 10 ,000 followers because you did the latest TikTok dance or did something viral that you just have a bunch of looky-loos on your page. I'm telling you. Totally. That's right. Mind Pump Media. I want it to be meaningful.

1:48:57I want to actually educate people. The type of content that I want to post on social media is that I want it to be informative and actually helpful. I'm not trying to entertain this much. I'm trying to educate.

1:49:07Adam Schafer:If you had 100 people who followed you because they want to hear what you got to say. They DM you questions. They're interested in Jai, the coach. That is worth way more to your business than 10 ,000 followers that just like your content.

1:49:23Sal Di Stefano:Yep, yep. I agree. And the way you build that is through the people in person. That's it. You help people in person. And my buddy, Michael, does a really good job of explaining this with, your goal is as soon as you coach somebody and you gave them a tip or you helped them out in that hour, as fast as you can, you get on that phone and you put that as social content. Don't let hours or days go by and then try and come back and do it. Why it's fresh in your mind. I just talked to you about shoulder health. I helped you out with a couple of mobility drills. That's a piece of content. Don't overthink it.

1:49:57Sal Di Stefano:It's literally, hey, I was just with my client, Jai, and I noticed that he had forward shoulder on his right side. I showed him a couple of mobility drills that totally helped him out. He felt all that pain go away when we did our shoulder presses. Here's those two mobility moves that I showed him. Do this three times before, like, boom. That's it. That's a piece of content right there. I'm glad you said that, yeah, because do it now. Do it now is usually that's my problem, you know, just because I kind of overthink these things. Don't overthink it. So I usually have those. Thank you. Thank you, yeah, because I usually have those moments, you know, where I'm having interactions with people and things like that.

1:50:33I'm like, man, this can be a great idea for some content, but I kind of put it off and then just kind of forget about it, you know?

1:50:38Adam Schafer:So I definitely do need to work on being more proactive. Jai, do you have our course? Because our course is all about building your business. No, and this is the thing. This is why I'm glad that I got a chance to hop on a call with you guys. I've been trying to sign up with your academy for the last two months. Every time I go on the website, it gives me the option to fill out a form. It's like a two-step process, right? It only allows me to do the first process, and then it just thanks me for filling out the form, but then nothing else happens. I've even communicated with customer service, but no one's reached out to me yet either.

1:51:08so weird that's why i'm just glad that i hopped on a call with you guys yeah because i don't know if i'm going to the wrong link or something but i've been trying to um join your academy

1:51:16Adam Schafer:i'll take a look at that but i'm gonna have i'll have somebody i'll have someone call you today

1:51:19Sal Di Stefano:this is all the stuff we talk about though just so you know that's everything in the everything you're asking i'm like these are all great questions way in depth yeah so yeah yeah i've got so many more questions which is why i wanted to join that academy you know because i i need a teacher i know how to train but i don't know shit about operating a business you know so I need that leadership, and I trust you guys in your leadership for sure. No, you got it, dude.

1:51:42Adam Schafer:I'm going to have somebody call you today. We'll get you in the academy. That way we can see you as well. Yep. You got a great attitude. You got great energy. You're going to do great. Just don't get lost in the like looking at what social media and the guys. Total waste of time.

1:51:53Sal Di Stefano:You'll be fine, though, if you're in our course. This is part of the guidance that we give all our coaches, so you'll be good. Yes, yes, I believe I will. Thank you so much, guys. I appreciate it. We'll see you in there. All right. See ya.

1:52:04Adam Schafer:You got it. But it's so funny that, I mean, social media has really skewed what it looks like. But it's literally just walk out your door. I had a studio, you know, not too far from here, small personal training studio. And whenever a trainer would come in to work in my studio, to rent space in my studio, I would always spend 30 days with them walking outside the doors, getting clients. And it was 100 % successful. It was like, you just go outside. Talk to people. But initially they're like, how do I do ads on the internet? How do I get my website? Should I make flyers? I'm like, no, no, follow me.

1:52:41Adam Schafer:We're going to go outside right now for an hour. And we come back with two or three leads or two or three free workouts, sometimes a client. It took 30 days.

1:52:48Sal Di Stefano:Easy. You know, when I talk to trainers about this and our journey with Mind Pump Media, I talk about this. This was like our greatest weakness in building this business, and it played out to be our greatest strength. And what I mean by that is we have no clue how to do social media or media. But what we do know how to do really well is help people and teach people. That's right. And so we just leaned heavily into that. It's like, hey, let's just give value. Let's just teach. Let's just help. It's a core of it anyway. Let's just share all of our experience, our knowledge, all of our mistakes that we made, everything we learned.

1:53:21Sal Di Stefano:Let's just give and come from that place. Did not know what we were doing on the media and the social media side. And so it was very slow growth. We never had a hockey stick moment. We never went viral. We never had this huge moment. It was just, we did a little bit better every year, every year, every year, every year. But then when you look at the sustainability of that, we have this incredible foundation that we've built. And I think this is to your point, what social media, you have some of these overnight successes. It gives us an illusion. Yeah, an illusion of that this is a good coach. All of a sudden, this coach goes viral.

1:53:50Sal Di Stefano:He's got a million followers because he knows how to do social media. But really, he hasn't even trained that many people. He's not that good. Right. And so it's like, that will only last so long. That's right. Eventually you're found out. Eventually your people don't see results. Eventually you don't change lives.

1:54:04Adam Schafer:You're successful for three years. Exactly.

1:54:05Sal Di Stefano:So you make a little bit of money for a year or two and then nobody gives a shit anymore because you haven't done that. The reverse is true. It's a slower process, but it's how you build a sustainable business. Our next caller is Jana from Texas. Hi, Jana. How you doing, Jana? Hello. Guys, how are y 'all? Good, good. Welcome back. What's happening? Oh, not much. It's a little cold here in Texas today, so it's really cold. So hopefully we'll get some rain out of it.

1:54:28Adam Schafer:How can we help you? Well, I am here to give an update, my 60-day update from you guys. I don't have a script prepared today, but I've got some data for you and some things to talk about to maybe help me decide what I want to do moving forward. So I was on the Mime Pump on March the 4th, and I had started a combination. I took Sal up on his idea to alternate strength weeks and cardio weeks. And I have to say, it's been a fun adventure. So I started, I went ahead and did the full seminar programming and alternated that with base run training. So on my weight week, I did three major lift days. And then on my non-lift days, I did some easy runs and some form drills because I was trying to get back to good running form after some injuries.

1:55:27My run week, I did three quality run days, and then I used the mobility and the trigger sessions on my non-run days so that I can A little bit of everything every day, but I definitely had some alteration in my intensity. So moving into this, I kind of gave myself three metrics to do. I actually did a one-mile time trial. I did measurements, and then I also did a DEXA scan before and after, just to kind of track the progress of things. So that's what I've got today. So I didn't know how y 'all wanted to. Let's hear it.

1:56:10Sal Di Stefano:I want to hear it. I want to hear the results. So my mile time, I was able to decrease it by 17 seconds. So pretty good improvement. Considering that I was running every other week with quality work, I'm really happy with how my form has come back in. And so I feel like I'm, you know, kind of kind of back on track that I can start to push again. um my measurements were actually um they're actually quite interesting they my measurements actually stayed pretty much the same um except um i'm happy to report that symmetry has done wonders for some of my side to side discrepancies so yeah so that's that's that's the huge um difference that i saw so when i was looking at the um and it really wasn't anything that i saw on the measurements, it was more on the DEXA scan of actual muscle mass changes that I saw.

1:57:03I have always had a left leg that's smaller than the right because of an old ACL injury and probably the way I recovered afterwards. But I've actually got my left and right quad as close to the same number as they've ever been. So I'm now only a quarter of an inch difference in my quads, which is huge because I was almost

1:57:24Sal Di Stefano:three quarters of an inch to an inch smaller for wow that's awesome so and that's all it's all run in symmetry um so i was super excited about that um i'm left-handed i feel stronger with my right hand but my left my left arm always comes up higher and my um my arms have also they've grown but they've also become more normalized as well so i'm super super stoked about that so shout out to the symmetry because I'm only, I have one more week in phase three. And so I haven't, um, so I'm kind of getting through all of that, but, um, that part's been really awesome for me. So, um, and then let's see, um, yeah, I put on here that my mile time trial was a 17 second improvement.

1:58:08I said, um, and both of the half miles, I was stronger, um, in that. And I said, it always hurts, um, but it's just over a little faster. When it comes to, I thought this was also a fun thing that I saw. I had it, when I went to the in-body scan, my skeletal muscle mass has increased 0.7. So I went from 53.8 to 54.5 muscle mass. And I'm a pretty small person. So I think that's actually carrying a pretty significant amount of muscle for my size. I'm only 5 '2", about 125 right now. So I was pretty happy to see that. That was probably the same amount of muscle mass that I had when I was at my leanest a couple of years ago.

1:58:55So I was excited about that. I think the only downfall is I'm gaining weight in order to gain the muscle too, but we'll talk about that in a minute. So my positives that coming from this style of training is that I felt like I was able to focus more on all the things. One of the things that I tend to not do as much, which I can't really get away with anymore since I'm in my 40s, is that I would drop the mobility, the focus work due to time constraints. And so the cool thing about the way that I had it set up is that I was able to focus on all the things. I could fit everything in and not feel like I was limiting myself in any way.

1:59:36I'm happy to report that I feel like my recovery is a thousand times better. I mean, my recovery is more like I was in my twenties and thirties. Every day is not intense anymore, but every day is intentional. And I've really liked that mental and physical change to see that. I had a lot of fear going into doing this because I thought I might lose some ground. But I actually feel like I've gained a fantastic fitness space and my body composition changes are actually trending back in a happy direction again. Just changing that up with training. A couple of my cautions is that in the early days, because I was feeling so recovered, I had a little bit of trouble letting intensity creep in just a little bit, especially in the early phases because when the wait weeks felt easy with the isometrics, I wanted to do more.

2:00:34And so there was a little bit of I had to hold myself back from doing a little bit more. But that patience was good because I'm also learning that it's OK sometimes to feel a little bit bored because that's when your mind kind of wanders and you can do things. I think Sal kind of talked about that. What he did on the treadmill on his walking days is where you let your mind go. But I think that actually helps a lot with my mental load with training and also alternating that with a busy life. So it actually made my exercise kind of more therapeutic in a way. So I liked that. My reflections on the last 10 weeks is that I have to keep my goals in mind.

2:01:13I have to make sure that I decrease that urge to compete versus progress in training. One of the hard things for me has been the weight scale. isn't paying, isn't really telling me the big pictures because some of my clothes are fitting a little tighter, but the measurements show that I'm trending in the right direction. And I have to realize that being doing this, as long as I have the change in my current fitness chapter, there's small increments. And sometimes the changes that I think I might want to see may require commitments that I don't know if worth it or time, or maybe I'm not willing to do, or maybe it is time to do it.

2:01:52So that's kind of where I came up with after my 10 weeks. I have, I think, pretty much I have six more weeks left to continue on this course. I would like to finish alternating until I get all the way through symmetry. um so uh that's kind of my progress moving forward is do you got what do you think of how i've committed to the to the training and what would you say to keep doing or maybe caution with um moving into kind of the later stages of symmetry you're killing you're killing

2:02:25Sal Di Stefano:keep going you're killing don't change anything don't change anything yeah you're doing great i mean let's uh some things to highlight for maybe the listener who didn't hear the first one like if i recall we've we reduced the volume and intensity of running correct and you've seen improvement on mile times improvement on muscle mass improvement on balance of symmetry yeah i mean i don't think i could ask for better results from my client i mean you obviously all that everything's great you obviously followed everything through a t i mean it's and i didn't change anything about um i didn't change anything with nutrition i'm not messing with i'm not messing I didn't mess with any of my macros or go into a cut or anything.

2:03:05This is just straight training. I want to do. And, you know, for a 46 year old female who's, you know, kind of on the brink of menopause, you know, the perimenopause stage, it's really scary to try those things. But I I'm actually shocked.

2:03:22Sal Di Stefano:Trust in the process. Yeah, you do a great job. And that was kind of one of my remarks that I put on here is that I really want to thank Sal for talking about this and helping plant this seed for me. Because this last 10 weeks has really been kind of a love letter to myself in a way. Many times I compare myself to my 28-year-old self, my 40-year-old self. And it's really not fair to me. So I think that's a testament to just kind of continuing to pour into yourself where you are. You know, I live in a more demanding time. I've got kids. I've got a career. I've got all these things. And I have this limited amount of time.

2:03:58But if I keep showing up for myself, give myself some recovery, we can still do great things.

2:04:06Adam Schafer:You're moving. You're trending great. I think you should continue to alternate. Keep doing the run weeks. Totally. And the strength training weeks. Stay in symmetry. And after symmetry, you could go MAPS anabolic. You could go MAPS PPL. You could go performance. Those are all great programs. And continue the alternating. It's working great for you. And I think it would work great for most people who are looking for what you were looking for, which was like a combination of endurance and stamina. Yeah, the hybrid kind of endurance. And strength and muscle. It works so much better than combining them all in one workout.

2:04:38So I guess that's my next question. A couple of days ago, I'm a little behind on your daily podcast, but y 'all actually alluded to maybe making a program that's alternating cardio.

2:04:50Adam Schafer:We haven't made it yet, but as of right now, use our current programs and do what you're doing.

2:04:57Sal Di Stefano:You could do it with any of them. I could have you run Muscle Mommy 15, and you could run it just like that. Take a week on, week off, week on, week off, and you would see great results. I've done Performance. I've done Muscle Mommy 15. I've done Performance 15, and I've done, I can't remember the other one, but it would be interesting to me to actually go back to one of those other programs, doing the alternating, and see how much difference, how much better I could actually do in those phases. I mean, I think that would be a great suggestion is to actually go do something you've done before so you can compare of when you now are doing the appropriate amount of volume and intensity and mobility and you're taking care of yourself, how much better you perform in the program.

2:05:37Adam Schafer:You're going to continue improving. I think your run times and your strength are going to keep getting better here for a little while. Yep. We're moving in a great direction. Yep. Thank y 'all very much for your support. Yeah, no, this is great. I appreciate you taking the leap because that's a big leap for somebody who's used to doing it all the time. I'll check back in with y 'all after I finish phase four, and I'll compare how much stronger I was from some of the other 5x5s I've done in my life. Yeah, beautiful.

2:06:02Sal Di Stefano:Please do. Keep us updated. It's exciting. Good job. You're killing it. Thank y 'all. You got it.

2:06:08Adam Schafer:Yeah, for people looking for just overall fitness, right, stamina, strength, this approach I strongly believe is best for most people yeah it's pretty sound the only time I wouldn't do something like this is when you have to really practice a skill often like you're an athlete you got to practice your swing off and you're so but for somebody who's like no I just want endurance and I want strength yeah instead of doing it all in the same week one week of strength one week is endurance and uh the data seems to suggest it's better and the experience that people are having from it everybody's coming back saying this is weird but I'm actually stronger

2:06:41Sal Di Stefano:and faster i mean talk about one of the more difficult goals to achieve right we always talk about like how hard competing yeah you have somebody who is uh like borderline competitive running yep uh wants to keep uh body composition in check wants to work on i mean wants to build

2:06:59Adam Schafer:muscle also wants to get more stamina endurance like the unicorn and i don't know if you could

2:07:03Sal Di Stefano:have asked for better results in in that period of time to to reduce the amount of intensity and volume of your running yet improve on your running time no everything she did better to yeah work out every other week and gain muscle and not just gain muscle but gain it were to balance your body

2:07:21Adam Schafer:out more this is over 60 days yeah that's phenomenal i think i feel like because justin's the most athletically minded i would love to see you do something like this well because i think

2:07:31Sal Di Stefano:you'd love it more than i would i i agree because i remember when you're talking about it and i was we'll see. But I think I was actually considering it because I wanted to move more

2:07:42Adam Schafer:effectively. And it's also, this is the other part of it besides it being really good programming for the body. It's also a nice mental switch every other week because I don't know about you guys, but I know when I focus on strength, I have a different mindset than, okay, now I'm focusing on stamina and to alternate so quickly, especially in the same workout versus like, Oh, this is my stamina. It's a hard shift. Yeah. Oh, all week I'm focusing on stamina. Oh, now all week I'm focusing on strength. I feel like mentally it would even be better. Totally.

2:08:06Sal Di Stefano:I think too.

2:08:07Adam Schafer:If you like our show, come find us on Instagram. It's 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 mass performance and maps. Aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB super bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price, the RGB super bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee, and you can get it now.

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