2947: How to Build Glutes | Hip Thrust vs Squats What Bret Contreras Says Actually Works

36:02You know, you don't let them squat if you're low, or deadlift if your low back is hurting. You'd be like, you go do like Bulgarian split squats and we'll squat and then we'll do leg extensions together, whatever. That's just how it is. But I didn't, but also we had to learn that the hard way through getting injured. You know, remember before you had a bad low back injury, you just thought you were bulletproof? You worked through it. And it still takes you a couple injuries to, even after the first one, you're like, I think I'm good again. And so they, so then they started pushing. And I remember I would give them, if I tried to give them like three by five at 85 % or whatever at max, they cannot just do three sets of five because they're used to training to failure.

36:44they have to at least the last set they do an amrap set and i'd be like i said three sets of five and they're like but it was easy some lifts the the percents nail it it's perfect so other lifts not quite as much like military press it's a some people could do three sets of five with 85 percent was so easy and other people not but anyway they want to get a good workout they don't no one likes to keep five reps in the tank or three even three reps in the tank if you're a serious lifter so they were so obsessed with the with the big with the big six you know i say the big three but squats squats bench deads military chins and hip thrusts and they would train through pain instead of around it when i was there if your low back is acting up no squats or deadlifts if your knees are acting up no squats we do hip dominant stuff you know but with me not there they would push through it so then a lot of them started experiencing pain and they still have it and they can't get they're more injury prone now and when i started training my squad in fort latah i had way more machines so i taught them because i don't it's three times the size of glute lab san diego so i taught my Florida squad, I want you to care about your belt squat, your hack squat, your pendulum squat, your leg press.

38:13We have two leg presses. I want you to care about your single leg strength. I want you to care about your barbell back squat, but also we have two squat machines. So we have like 12 different squat patterns that we're paying attention to and they feed off each other, you know? And then same thing with like the deadlift pattern. We have like five plate loaded deadlift pieces. They're all unique. And I want you to care about your single leg RDL, all your deadlift, also your 45 degree hypers, you know, and these, because they kind of feed into each other. And same thing with hip thrusts. I don't want you to worship the barbell hip thrusts.

38:49I want you getting strong at all the hip thrusts. Yes, they will have a favorite, but anyway, so much less injuries. We barely have any injuries there because they rotate stuff around and they know that if you can't back squat, that's fine. Do some belt squats. They know that things transfer. If you're pushing your belt squats harder, your leg press or whatever, you're not going to just lose all your squat strength. And then they build up all these things. And then if we want to say, we just had another strong lifting competition two weeks ago, all they need is just six to eight weeks to focus on that lift and it'll skyrocket.

39:26Because they have the foundation there. They have the specificity reserves left if they wanted to increase it but they're training year-round and not getting injured where the San Diego squad some of them have back pain and then I'm trying to give them like Jeffersons and stuff like that to build that tissue tolerance but it's hard with me not there so anyway lesson learned when you're obsessed with just strength on a few lifts yeah look at all the power lifters were popular back when we were coming up 15 years ago there's no one's left Now they're getting smarter. They're doing way more reps and reserves.

40:02So you have two options. Do more variety like my Florida squad or keep a lot of reps and reserve, which is hard for serious lifters. How many of us want to keep five RIR? You're communicating something that, something that we talk about on the show a lot with our own workouts, right? We always are talking about the core lifts, how they should be a foundation of your program. But then we always say like, But that doesn't mean you won't catch me on machines all the time. I'm doing unilateral training. And the way it looks like for me is these are my core lifts, similar to your six that we're talking about, that I'm always kind of focused on trying to get stronger there.

40:39But what I know happens to me, and it happens on probably every other week, where I overreach, where I have a workout. I was pumped up from Papa Roach too much. And then my knees, my back, or someone's talking to me coming into Friday's workout. And guess where I'm at? I'm on the machines. And so that's a perfect way to kind of – And so as coaches. But by the way, how old are you now? Yeah, yeah, no, I'm 45. 50. Yeah, 47, 46. And so these young, these 20-year-old guys out there, they don't get it. Yeah, yeah. Because we were all bulletproof back then. As you get into your 40s and even more so 50s, you just mentioned you overreach.

41:17I do that every week too. Every week something's a little off. And you have to pivot and train around it. You don't train through it. You don't go, oh, my shoulder is killing me on this movement. I'm going to do it anyway. you have to find something that doesn't hurt while you and that's kind of the art it's like a it's like a cool art science did is try to how can i maintain my strength while my shoulder heals up or something well there's two parts of that one as you get older you just have accumulated you know potential right just potential for injury potential for movement patterns but even for younger lifters uh if you get really strong a specific movement even if it has carryover if that strength so far exceeds let's say stability going laterally or rotation you actually increase your risk of injury so you're super strong in the sagittal plane and like you could squat 500 pounds but your lateral stability barely supports you know 100 pounds you know you're playing with your kids or something happens you need to cut to the left next thing you know you twist your knee you're like what's going on I could squat 500 pounds how did this happen it's like well it's like a really powerful car without a reinforced frame and it twisted.

42:25And so that can also be an issue. It's just I'm really strong in one direction, but I don't have the support. Most people don't consider these other planes of motion, rotation, lateral stability. So yeah, it's always something we're trying to incorporate in their programming. I also think there's a genetic element to soft tissue strength. I have friends that if they had strong soft tissue, they could have become world-class powerlifters. But, you know, imagine if you could squat, bench, and deadlift as hard as you wanted every week. And when you're 20, you can. But now we can't just go. I can't do weighted dips like I used to, like, you know, deep weighted dips.

43:04I have to stop at parallel and be real strict. Even weighted chin-ups aggravate me a little bit now. So that's where the machines become more. Every 40-year-old lifter that's been lifting for 20 years gravitates towards more hammer strength machine, more machines in general. But the hammer strength is a little easier in the stretch and a little harder in the squeeze. And a new study that we published showed that there wasn't any difference in muscle growth between making it harder in the stretch versus making it harder in the squeeze. Like everyone - I saw that. Everyone would think that it - It was a stretch.

43:36Yeah, that the stretch, in fact, the researchers who carried the study out all hypothesized that the stretch but we did four muscles we did rear delts side delts pecs and glutes and all four muscles saw the same growth so interesting so i think that and that that increases your longevity that's what i loved about west side they used a lot of bands and chains yes so less hard on the body when you use bands and chains they are they're phenomenal i got uh i hit huge prs using bands and they feel so smooth just adding them to the weights um the benefit of training uh increasing or decreasing resistance in the different kind of ranges of motion.

44:15It's just that's how you get stronger then. You know, you want to get a little stronger in the stretch, then train it there. You're going to get stronger in the contract. So by the way, that's what I think of with my hip thrust program now. It's like we have so many devices there. Like I mentioned earlier, the rotisserie is harder at the bottom. It's really hard at the bottom, heavier in the stretch. And then, so the things that get you stronger at hip thrust in the bottom are rotisserie, but also deep leg press and squats. Squats and leg press. Whenever I'm doing heavy squats, I'm so strong at the bottom of the hip thrust, but then you fail at the lockout.

44:50And then what's hardest at the lockout? Well, just regular barbell hip thrust, but then if you want to make it even harder, you do pauses, pulses, or bar plus band, add the bands to it. And then also we have the kneeling glute isolator where you can load, it's like a kneeling hip thrust, but you can load it with plates or bands. If you load it with all bands, it's the hardest in the full hip extension. How often do you have to convince like your clients to be in a surplus? Oh, calories. Calories for growth. I don't tend to talk to them much about diet. That's up to them. Well, just to be in a surplus.

45:23Because they go through phases where they need, well, yeah, if I got a client that was, you know, starts getting to under 15 % body fat, it's kind of a hard discussion to have. Yeah, but he's also, the bias that he has is that - You got a self-selection. You got a lot of bikini competitors that understand macros and diet. Yeah, they're already going to know a lot. Oh, it's so true. I'm spoiled. I don't. Right, right. Yeah, when I used to train. General Pop. Gym Pop was way different. Yeah, I guess we're talking from Gym Pop. General Pop is getting them to understand the diet. Yeah, yeah. General Pop is grossly under eating protein, never attracted macro, doesn't weigh food.

45:54You got a bunch of girls that are carrying their food with them. What I do with my clients is I have like, they tend to, in my experience, a lot of the women don't like the whey protein like we do. I've guzzled down so many whey protein shakes in my life they tend to irritate their skin and or just they don't digest it well so I have like protein yogurts you know like the oikos with 23 grams of protein and I'll just give it to them on their way out hey take a take a yogurt you know take take this take two yeah because then that's if they drank two of them that's 46 grams that's half their if they weigh 120 that's almost you know because yeah ideally they'd hit 1.0 but if they hit 0.7 on a daily basis that's still good you know but yeah a lot of the a lot of people will get 0.3 grams per protein you know that's limiting their progress also we i mean we'll hear this a lot just you know gen pop and social media it's like i want a six-pack i want to get a bigger but it's like pick one yeah we gotta we gotta work on one or the other because uh talk about building in a deficit how many people try to do that and how impossible it is yeah so and that's always the most frustrating thing when you have a competitor there's several types of clients i don't train anymore um and i and i'm so glad i don't have to that i'm at the point where i don't have to, I, I was talking to Doug.

47:23Go ahead. Okay. So there's, there's three, three types of clients I won't train anymore. And I'm so glad I'm at this point where I don't have to train everyone. The first client is the shredded, you know, bikini or wellness or figure competitor. And they're just shredded. And they're like, I want to build my glutes. And I look at their, you know, I look in there, they're, they've been shredded for three straight years. Like you can tell they're at like 12 % body fat, you know, how are we going to build your glutes when you're 10 % and they're, they're, there's, they can't have an off season. They can't raise their body fat.

48:01They're addicted to being lean. And it's so hard for some men and women when you've got those abs. See, I never had those abs. When you have this shredded, they want that look. You get addicted to it yeah um they really struggle with putting body fat on and it's so necessary especially with a female talk about when you have a female who's under you know 17 18 body fat and she's trying to build her glutes and it's just so hard to build that lower body fat and then the second type that i won't train is the person that complains after every set i didn't feel my glutes i don't feel my glutes it's like you have to realize like you have to you don't make your trainer's life a living hell too you know like if i'm saying you want you're not going to feel it on every set yeah you know i could put a band around you and have you do super high reps or trying to get these creative but it's if we want to build your glutes you're going to have to get you know get good at the basic movement patterns too hopefully we can increase your how much you feel your glutes but if you say that on every set yeah i don't want to you know i'm gonna train and then that real quick the third is the i don't want to get bulky oh god and they're like i don't want to do this i don't want to get bulky and good luck trying to get bulky you can't even do you weigh 120 and you can't even do a pull down with 70 pounds yeah i just want you to know that you just described a majority of gin pop yeah i mean that's that's a majority of the people that are probably going to listen to this episode i'm a spoiled trainer that i well that's not my point i'm making that You're spoiled by any means.

49:40I am. I have to go to a lot of commercial gyms so I don't lose touch with reality because I do. I would be oblivious to half the problem if I don't. Oh, half your conversation is convincing a woman to lift weights heavy or just to eat in a surplus. Yeah, you just talked about those three people that you won't train is literally a majority. And you're working with the girls that are saying, hey, I'm comfortable bulking. I am willing to carry my food and hit my macros every day. Like I am willing to chase PRs. I mean, those are three huge lever movers in the pursuit of an ass that you've, you got already automatic, you know what I'm saying?

50:19And so, and yeah, Jen pop is like, I got to convince those three people are those three, that those three things are okay. It's like, I can't tell you how many conversations I have around, we need to put body fat on, or you've got to consistently hit that protein intake. We have to get stronger. I mean, those are like your repeated conversations when you're talking about gym pop for sure i want to bring something to you brett because there for a while there there was this huge debate it's really not there anymore but there's a huge debate what builds the glutes more squats hip thrust remember the whole like squats versus hip thrust it was this huge debate and then they came out with studies and they showed that they're pretty both pretty darn good at building the glutes and you're probably better off doing both of them but you still see people um on social media through their experience who say squats didn't build my butt hip thrusts built my butt and my theory you'll hear vice versa sometimes too so my theory around that especially with the crowd that says squats didn't do it but hip thrust did is i think what we're looking at are people who are quad dominant uh and the hip thrust just it's easier to hit the glutes with a hip thrust it's harder to be quad dominant on a hip thrust than it is on a squat so my theory is when people can't build their glutes with a squat the hip thrust is probably going to do better for them what do you think about that Well, you still hear that debate, by the way.

51:34I don't think it'll ever go away completely. You know, like what's better, squats or hip thrusts? And it's always squats or hip thrusts. What about RDLs? Yeah. You know, what about single leg leg press or like a lunge or a Bulgarian or a glute dominant step up? They're probably all similarly effective. But here's why I like the hip thrust the most is because it just doesn't beat you up as much. It doesn't injure you. It doesn't beat you up. You can do it more frequently. So good points. Very good points, Brett, because I was just thinking this right now while we're talking earlier about getting strong.

52:07The stronger you get, you have a higher risk of injury. Oh, yeah. And some exercises, it's like, you got to be very careful. Hip thrust is really safe. Yeah. Think about the most weight you've squatted. You know? Yeah. Could you get back to that? And once you get to all four of us, like the most I've deadlifted and squatted, Could I get back to that at age 50? What happens, you start getting there, and then you always injure yourself. It's like you've got to, unless you start taking steroids and stuff like that, I feel like you have a natural limit where it starts to be hard on your connective tissue.

52:45You might strain a muscle or something gives. And you can still get that way with hip thrusts, not like you're going to injure yourself. It's just you hate, you get so sick of hip thrusting, doing all the volume. But if the four of us, when we're, if we were doing top sets, really hard sets, how many really, really hard sets of squats could we do a week? Yeah. And how many really hard sets of deadlifts could we do a week? Right. Probably twice a week. Max. Twice a week, maybe two really hard sets. Yeah. I can't do four sets to failure. No. And then do it three days later. Like you might, we could have in our twenties maybe, but like now that we're all in our forties and me in my just turned 50, it's just harder now.

53:30And, and you have more margin for, you know, once you start getting to that level where you're like, shit, I might snap, I might tear something when I come down, you know, squats and even deadlifts off the floor, you're like, God, please don't, please don't snap. Whereas with hip thrusts, it's, it works you at a shorter muscle length. and so you don't have that injury risk and you can do more volume but you still have the same issues of then that's why with my program I rotate the focus I never heard of anyone doing that but I think it's so wise to do because first of all periodization seems to be important with strength but not with hypertrophy right but I believe periodization is important with hypertrophy But like, I like to think I made a video once and I never posted it because it just didn't come out right.

54:24But I'm like, imagine you're trying to juggle six balls. All right. Those are my favorite lifts. You guys have your different lifts. But mine, as I mentioned, are squats, bench, deadlifts, military chin-ups, hip thrusts. And it's really hard to juggle six balls. But if you're a really good juggler, maybe you can pull it off. But think of progressive overload as the ball getting a little bit bigger each time. So if you go up on your squat, that ball gets bigger. And as the balls get bigger, you know, especially if you're going up on all six of them, it gets to a point where you cannot juggle those six balls.

54:58They're too big. So you, you take two of those balls, one, an upper, one, a lower body ball and one, an upper body ball. And you focus on those two. And then you set the other four on maintenance. Maintenance is easy. You know, do two sets a week, hard sets a week. You can maintain it. Do it at the end of the session. You can maintain it. But, and I realize there's kind of a separate strategy for each lift. If you guys were trying to go for a chin-up PR, you could probably hit an all-time chin-up PR. You just start training the chin-ups frequently, you know? And I'm like, if I want a chin-up PR, I got to do it three times a week, first in the workout.

55:37And yes, you can do different grips. Yes, you could do band-assisted and weighted one day or try variety. but you got to hit that pattern first a few times a week and then you'll do it. So I realized there's a different, but with deadlifts, you can't be like, I'm going to do deadlifts hard three times a week. No way. But you could do a lighter stiff leg session and then a harder, maybe one day start off with 45 rehypers because it's a similar pattern. So I mix around the focus. So one month we have a strong lifting focus, which is just get, it's a well-rounded program. Get focused on your total body strength.

56:11then the next month it's a squat and bench press focus then the next month after squats your knees are feeling beat up you know so it's wise to switch to hip thrust now it's hip thrust and chin-ups okay and i used to do deadlifts with chin-ups but if you do chin-ups after deadlifts you're they weaken you a little bit my my my girls are like don't put chin-ups after i get My Buddha by Brett members get mad at me if I forget and put, because like during the strong energy month, if I ever put, they love their chin up strength and they know it's affected after a deadlift. So anyway, I put deadlifts and military together.

56:52So you have those. And then after deadlifts, your low back is feeling it. So it's a good time to do variety and single leg. Then I have the, I call it just a glute squad special month where it's a lot of variety and stances. that's where we do sumo curtsy rotational a lot of stuff like that because in theory a sumo stance you might have heard this everyone's saying well sumo is all adductor yeah and i'm like when did sumo become all adductor i know i know but when they say they think about it here's your stance when you length when you spread the legs you're lengthening the adductors you know what else you lengthen the lower glute max but you shorten the upper glute max because the glutes go over the center of rotation.

57:36So when you go out, the upper glute max will shorten, the lower glute max will lengthen. Now, when you go deep, because of the way the glutes are, how they wrap under the pelvis, you can get a better stretch going real deep with narrow stance. But with a sumo stance, a lot of stuff we do isn't rock bottom. You know, even like sumo squats, sumo deadlifts sumo leg press we're not necessarily going like you weren't like mm-hmm so theoretically that might work more lower glutes And then it's opposite with curtsy and this like single leg rotational RDL where you twist on the way down. Yeah, I think that lengthens the upper glute max and it shortens the lower glute max.

58:25So that would be a strategy to work more of the shelf, more of the upper glute max. And you might be saying, is there any evidence that you can target upper versus lower glute max? There has never been until now. Even our Plotkin 2023 study that you mentioned earlier, squats versus hip thrusts, tied for glute of them in all three regions. We measured lower glute max, middle glute max, and upper glute max. Squats and hip thrusts tied in all three. We thought that squats would grow the lower glute max more and hip thrusts would grow the upper glute max more. No. Same. Pretty similar all three. So I was kind of wondering, maybe you can't target them that well.

59:05EMG shows you can target them, but we didn't have a study. And then it's going to be published real soon. The researcher posted about it on social media. So I can mention it. Um, Joe Nunez, he had one group do, um, cable kickbacks and the other group do, uh, cable standing hip abduction. So the group that did cable kickbacks was leaning forward and then, you know, kicking the leg back. And then the standing abduction was leg would go and go out in front and then straight to the side. It wasn't back at an angle like the glute medius kickback. It was just straight to the side. And what they found was that the cable kickback group grew mostly lower glute max, a little bit of upper glute max, and then not much glute meter min at all.

59:53And then the standing abduction group grew mostly upper glute max, barely any lower glute max, and not much glute meter min either. We always thought abduction is more glute meter min. based on the research, you don't, it's kind of, the glute meat in men might not grow that much, but it's upper, it was upper glute max. So we, we, so basically I've always said, throw in your abduction, throw in your abduction for upper glutes. But I always just said upper glutes thinking it would be glute meat and upper glute max and glute men, but it's, it seems to be mostly upper glute max. Interesting. So you can target subdivisions.

1:00:29so that's why after the deadlift month you're beat up throw in the curtsy curtsy lunge or the rotational single leg rdl throw in some sumo stance just get have fun and don't focus on prs that's the one kind of deload month where i'm not i would say focus on the mind muscle connection get some quality workouts but we don't have to beat prs that much because every other month we're focusing on setting records and it's daunting but i also try to periodize the individual weeks week one learn the lifts week two three and four go up with week four hopefully culminating in a all-time PR on the focused lift and they anyway that's my system with booty about brett and I think it's you know I think it's really smart and wise to do I've just never heard anyone periodize that way back in the day we read all the books on periodization all the Russian texts and tutor bump and all these books and stuff they only talked about manipulating volume and intensity where you can prioritize anything, why not switch the focus of the lifts?

1:01:28It was always like you're going to do the same core lifts and tinker with the volume and the effort and all that. But instead, I think a better way to prioritize is switch the focus of the lifts and the prioritization, and then the others go on maintenance mode. So exercise order and then exercise selection variation. It makes sense. And the challenge with studies, because I think periodization does help with hypertrophy, but the problem with studies is they're not long enough to show the benefit. So periodization helps prevent injury and pain. And injury and pain, you get hurt, you're not building anything.

1:02:07And so as a trainer, having trained lots and lots of people, I periodized, and I don't care what the data says on hypertrophy. I know when I do it right, my clients don't get hurt as much. But that's why I did, that's exactly why I started doing with booty by breath. I'm like, I don't want people getting hurt. That's right. I want you training year round injury free and pain free, hopefully. And it's hard to do if you are utilizing progress. So I 100 % agree with you. And I see these people that are like, you don't ever have to switch your lifts around. You can do the same lifts year round. Okay.

1:02:37Are you using progressive overload? Because A, that's boring as hell. But B, you don't get achy joints. I got to ask you this because you're, although, so there's a confusion around workout programming. People think complex programming involves five million different exercises when really it's fewer exercises, but there's variables that we're playing with. You mentioned your favorite six. Do you ever get criticized? Like, oh, that's so basic. Why aren't you doing all these other exercises? I keep talking about this post I made two days ago that did really well. It got like, you know, it was just, I made it myself.

1:03:13That's what I was proud of. I have a team that does. I was bored and I made it myself. And I could do this still. Yeah, I still got it. But I had her do, I had, cause lately I'm hearing all this stuff and you guys might see it and it annoys you. You're like, the secret to building big glutes. You see these influencers say the most obnoxious, literally like the most obnoxious stuff I've ever heard. Like unhinged stuff. And it's like, the reason why you're not building glutes is because you're not training your hip flexors. Like hip flexors. I'm all about gaining hip flexor mobility, but that's not going to make you grow your glutes.

1:03:52Is that a real post? Did somebody really say that? Yes, that was going around. And it's like when one person says it, it goes viral, then 50 of them crop up. And because it's entertainment algorithms, a scientist can't keep a lid on it. It's just this is now out there. And then it's like some functional type guy being like, you're not training your spiral chain or your the serope effect or your posterior oblique sling or whatever they say and so what I did with this post like it was my client ryan she was in she was in inside the house um drinking her yogurt and I go oh let's go back out to the garage I want to film something real quick and she's like I'm all sweaty and I'm like no we just have to do this one thing and I put a band around her knee, like laterally.

1:04:42Oh, I saw that. I saw it. I actually caught my tip. What the hell is he doing? Brett went to the dark side. And then another band like wrapping around her body and she's holding it out like this and a dumbbell. And I put up her before and after picture. I said, here's how we took Raya's glutes from flat to fat in four months. We start off by doing this deep, whatever I called it, like deep lunge, deep split squat with lots of bands to activate the spiral chain and the, like what's the spiral chain? The spiral chain and the deep core. Because that's also, yeah. Did you not see this? No. Oh, it's so caught my attention because it was on your page.

1:05:21And I'm like, what is this I don't know about? Is this a functional pattern? Yeah, yeah. Nadi was shaking his head. Yeah, he's like, yes, now you're onto something. but um but uh uh and then i said just kidding we didn't do any of that what we did do was straight up progressive overload and then i showed her using a lot of weight and so yes i do get criticisms and you do get in my experience a lot of women want to do like six to seven exercises per session yeah and it's hard to get them not to because they but when they really when you really push yourself you four four is good enough maybe five but yeah a lot of times they're not pushing themselves hard enough so they try to compensate their for lack of effort with more volume but a lot of it's junk volume and when you really do have quality volume you don't you rest more you don't want as many sets you know because that's what i train my women they're like coach what else should i do go home well i want to do one more go home you got to train in two days you just crushed heavy squats or like leg, what you just killed it today.

1:06:28You got to train in two days. If you train Monday, Wednesday, Friday, sometimes I'll give them a little more on Friday, but other times on Friday, they're beat up. We have to go. So yeah, it's really complicated because they train and a lot of guys don't understand it. They don't understand glute training because they have never trained glutes three times a week. There's an art to it. It's, and you get guys chiming in wanting to be expert at it, but then they'll be like, here's what I like to do. Because remember back in the day, it was like where we grew up, when we grew up, it was one leg day a week.

1:07:00That's right. And you would do death sets. You could walk. Yeah, I liked to do. That was the test. Did you fall off the curb walking out of the gym? If you did it, it wasn't enough. I couldn't push the clutch on my car. German volume training, drop sets, super centered with it. It was like there was no, like Arnold's book. He's like, I would go into the forest and do 50 sets of squats. Like what? And drink milk. Yeah. So we grew up with that. But you try that three times a week. No. And that's something I've done in my own training. I've eliminated the drop sets. The stuff I realized I was doing to impress people.

1:07:39Because if you're a trainer and you give them a drop set or just really high reps or super sets, they love it. They feel like you get them sore the next day. They're like, I've never been that sore in my life. And you're like, sorry. And they're like, no, I like it. or you get them to have some crazy glute pump or burn, which just have them do something new for super high reps with a controlled tempo, and they're going to burn like crazy. They will love you and think you're the best, but I try to tell them that stuff is fluff. That's me winning you over for session number one, and then by week two, we aren't doing that stuff.

1:08:11So great. So great. It's such a veteran trainer move right there. Give them a taste of some of the water, then do the bait and switch. We don't need to do that shit, just so you know. So you know I can do this. Yeah, yeah, just so you know. Now we're not doing it, yeah. Let's talk about frequency because you said three days a week, and you'll see some data that says so long as the volume is controlled, you know, two days a week versus three days a week versus four, all builds the same amount of muscle. I always disagreed with that because I know if I do 15 sets for back on Monday, it's not the same as if I did five on Monday, five on Wednesday, five on Friday.

1:08:45Yes, yes. And you can't control the volume. In the real world, when I do five, five, five, I'm stronger. the volume naturally goes up. So talk about that a little bit because I hate it when that debate comes up. So when you work out in real world and in real life, breaking it up, you just tend to have better workouts. So it's kind of what you said earlier, like there are some problems with research. One of them is that it's short term. It's, you know, it's usually universities doing it during a semester. And so, you know, you've got a 16 week long semester, but you can't just have them started on day one.

1:09:19So they're usually eight-week studies, 10-week studies, that's it. But they're short-term studies. But also another pitfall is you want to have advanced subjects and you say, I want you to do one exercise. It's not going to happen. No serious lifter would just do one or an advanced lifter. I want you with your left leg, we're going to do this. And on your right leg, I would have like OCD, asymmetry, OCD, paranoia set in and be like, wait, I'm going to be off balance. Newbies are like non-lifters. They're game for anything. So you're going to have way more research on newbies than advanced lifters.

1:10:07And it's always going to be eight weeks, 10 weeks long. So is three times a week more effective than twice a week. In the literature, not really. It might be, we might get that data over time, but it's not going to be like it's crazy more beneficial. But I will always say, my programs are three times a week. Could you see amazing results doing twice a week? Yeah, of course you could. How much percent better as doing three times a week. Well, it is under these conditions. My booty butt breath, for example, and it's funny because they do see good upper body results. I do one press. So it's three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for example, I do one upper body press three sets and one upper body pull three sets.

1:10:58So it's any compound press and any compound pull. So basically either push up or bench press with dumbbells or barbells or overhead press, you know, some shoulder press variation. And then it's a chin up, a pull down or a row, you know, and they do three sets of that. Okay. The, the, the glute component is four, typically four. It's hard to throw kickbacks in one of these columns because technically it's a hinge, but what if you bend the knee and kick, but what if you do more donkey kick? Is that a squat? Not really. So it's hard to program kickbacks in there. Then I just say, if you want, add in a couple sets of kickbacks.

1:11:36But I do a thrust bridge pattern, a squat lunge pattern, and a hinge pull pattern. What I like to do, if I'm just training someone in real life, and we're not doing like booty by breath style programming, is I alternate the thrust pattern. By the way, you can do it in any order too. So we might do squats first. With the squat pattern, I alternate between a double leg and a single leg, the double leg being squats, leg press. And I try to make them glute dominant still, but there's no way to take your quads completely out of any squat. Even if you're doing glute dominant box squats, your quads are still, in my opinion, still the prime mover.

1:12:17But then two days later, you'll do a single leg variation, a glute dominant step up, single leg leg press. Reverse lunge, I try to stick to more on Friday because you get two days off. You do it on the day where you have two days afterwards because those beat you up pretty good or a Bulgarian, but then you alternate between those. Now, if you do the hinge pattern, alternate between a vertical and a horizontal, meaning one day it's RDL or stiff leg or good morning. The next day it's 45 hyper or reverse hyper back extension. Those don't make you sore. And then with the thrust bridge pattern, it's a full range movement and then a lockout focus because the lockout focus doesn't beat you up as much.

1:13:00Hip thrusts don't beat you up in general, but get really strong at hip thrusts and they do start to beat you up. So the lockout focus is a little less daunting. So the lockout focus would be bar plus band, which is my favorite, or pauses or pulses, pulses being just the top half or the top third. And then with the abduction pattern, so it's, yeah, with the abduction, did I mention that the four? Squat lunge, hinge pull, thrust bridge, abduction. Abduction, it's frontal plane one day, transverse plane the next day. So if you're thinking of a seated hip abduction machine, one day it's leaning forward, the next day would be bridged or leaning back.

1:13:35But there's also a ton of different movements you could do. For the leaning, your options would be kind of like basically leaning seated hip abduction, sideline hip raises, band seated hip abduction, or the dumbbell hip airplanes you see now, which you want to be stable, but that kind of works a similar pattern. Or any of these 3D abductors that are getting more and more popular. Okay. And then the other day would be the frontal plane. That's all of your cable standing or your bridge seated hip abduction, your cable standing variations. And then like the, you could do straight out to the side or kind of angled to make it more glute medius kickback.

1:14:17And then you have your extra range sideline hip abductions with or without a band or ankle weight. You could do any band, any lateral band walk type thing where you're more upright. But basically with bands, with ankle weights, or now we have like the snow angel machine, which I call it. I just made it up. Someone tried to copy the hammer strength, seated hip abduction just made it way too big. So we just put the seat all the way back and you lay down on it. And it's like, I call it snow angel because you just, you're going straight it out to the side. But yeah, basically it's a good system. But what you talked about, it's a system and it prevents injuries.

1:14:58If you stick to that, it's less injuries and less pain. And you just mentioned that pain and injuries are everything. I think it's everything with, with, I think it's more important than we talk about. And the reason why, and you have to get older to appreciate it because me, I had my, like four years ago, I had my, no, it was six years ago. My God, my camera guy, Alex, he was living with me when I moved to Vegas. He lived in the upstairs. There's like a 1200 square foot studio up there. And I'm like, you can just live up there and then we can film more, but he's younger than me. And he's spry, you know, he's, he's, he's like, no, I think he's like 30 now.

1:15:37So he's like, yeah, like 20 years younger than me. So when he's around, or if I have a girlfriend, um, I'm always like, Hey, because I'll be like sitting down and I'm like, hey, can you grab me an energy drink or can you grab me a gin? Can you toss this on your way out? I don't want to get up because my knees hurt. My knees hurt and I'm trying not to move. But think about it. Remember when you were a kid, you could be like, jump up right now and try to touch the ceiling and then take off in a sprint. You could do that. Right now, if the four of us tried that, we would - Have you seen the viral video?

1:16:13I shared it on my story just like three days ago of, uh, the twenties, your thirties and your forties. Uh, and it was like these 20 year old kids jumping off a roof and I did see that jumping off. And then it's like the 40 year old trying to get out of the truck. Yeah. He's trying to get out of the truck. The, the, the, the bed of the truck. Yeah. I can relate. Yeah. That's me going, uh, if I just jump, I might, yeah, it's better to sit down and put my legs. You know what you got to do? Because that, because that's true, but you've got to compare yourself against the average. 50. In which case, it's a kick in butt.

1:16:45I'm not too hard on myself, but what I realize is it decreases your NEAT. We always say your metabolism goes down. No, it doesn't drop that much. It's your NEAT. I agree. And it's because of pain. If you didn't have any pain, you'd go play sports all day long. You would do everything. It's pain. Pain is related to NEAT. I've seen no studies on this. No, no, no, no. That's obvious. It's obvious. You glossed over something I want to highlight for the audience that I think is so important. we talk about this a lot and you just went right over it and I think it just highlights what a great coach and programming that you do is a lot of times when someone will hear an episode like this they hear us all talking about glute and they want to build their glutes they go take all these great exercises that you're throwing out and what we're talking about and they pile it on to their kind of routine if you notice that you have a very minimalist upper body oh my god that's what I didn't finish that's what I meant So I was describing my system.

1:17:41So think about it. It's 36. If you do that Monday, Wednesday, Friday, pick these extras. Pick a squat lunge, thrust bridge, hinge pull, abduction, and then an upper body press and an upper body pull. Do that three times a week, three sets each. That ends up being 36 sets for glutes, nine sets for quads and adductors, nine sets for hamstrings. Because the squat lunge works your quads and adductors. The hinge works your hammies. So it's nine sets for quads and adductors, nine sets for hammies, nine sets for the upper body pressing musculature, nine sets for the upper body pulling musculature, and 36 sets for glutes.

1:18:17It's a permanent glute specialization program. Yes. And that way you can recover. If we were trying to do… Everything 36 sets, you're dead. You could not recover. People don't get that. And by the way, because we're alternating with the things I mentioned, like abduction doesn't get you too sore. Yeah, yeah. You know? It doesn't fry you like that. It's not, people say, well, 20 sets is enough for most muscle groups. And I agree. Like chest, like 20 sets a week. I can't do 20 sets a week for chest anymore and still recover. But think of the delts. The glutes are kind of like, you know, you've got upper glute max, lower glute max, and glute medium in.

1:18:53The delts, you could do 20 sets because it's front delts, side delts, rear delts. You could do a bunch of laterals, a bunch of rear flies. And then you've got your military presses, your upright rows, and then all your delt raises. You could easily do 36. if you're on a delt specialization program, which I did in 2024, I didn't increase my weight on anything. I just started doing more volume. And I was like, I'm going to do cables. Like with lateraries, I've always just done dumbbells. I'm going to do the lateraries machine, dumbbells, cables, and bands. And with cables, sometimes just length and partials.

1:19:27And my delts grew just from doing more volume. That's awesome. But yeah. But real quick, you get so sick of it. I got so sick of it. That's why these guys are like, they see a movement. They're like, just do a Romanian. Just do a, just squat. You don't get this. You don't train glutes. Yeah. I've been working out for decades. Well, the girls, they don't different. They want variety because it gets really freaking boring. So you want a new program every four weeks, in my opinion. Four weeks works out well. Yes. You can do an eight week program. Yes. You could do a 12 week, but like four weeks, that's what another thing I learned from Louie Simmons like they would pick a movement stick with it for three weeks and then switch because all of our masterminds three or four weeks there's different phases every three or four weeks within the same program and that's part of the reason the other part of the reason is avoid injury and just keep things fresh you know when you work with people avoid plateau yeah those two things are equally important that's right avoid injury and keep it fun that's right 100 % otherwise you won't be consistent I got to ask you a question, not glute related, but you brought something up and it just makes me laugh.

1:20:37Talked about if you have a girlfriend or when you have a girlfriend. How is it dating women when you do what you do and you're surrounded by bikini models and stuff all day long? Like all your posts. Champion bikini models. Yeah. Like how is that for you as a guy trying to date? Are they okay with it? Does it cause problems? My client, Angela, she's Chinese. I mentioned how I've had Chinese clients with really round glutes. She has great glute development and she hip thrust 600, barbell hip thrust, 610 pounds at 120 body weight. That's crazy. Yeah, but she's so freaking strong. But anyway, she once said, Brett belongs to all of us, not in a sexual manner.

1:21:25I'm always, you FaceTime me, I answer. but I've been single for 18 months now. And that's, I've always been good at business. I've been good at social media. I'm good at being a personal trainer. I'm not good at business. I'm a good personal trainer. And then there's just some things you're not as good at. And I've just, I mean, I'm still single at age 50. I would like to, you know, settle down. I would love to get married, but it is hard. And I think if I want to make a relationship, we're going to have to quit training. I mean, first of all, I go back and - Yeah. I go back and forth between, I have a house in Fort Lauderdale trying to sell it and it will not sell.

1:22:03It's a bad market there. Right now it's crazy over there. Yeah. And then I have two houses in San Diego and one in Vegas. And I just go back and forth between my three houses and train my clients and I don't have any schedule. It's when I get bored and I get a flight like that day. Wow. That's pretty cool. It's a, it's a great life, but I do miss, I do miss having a girl. I miss having, I would like to have a life partner. I would like to have a best friend to go do life with. I'm a little lonely. Like, I don't mean, I wanted to say lonely, but I like watching, I love watching Netflix with someone that is interested.

1:22:40And I feel like there aren't a lot of us left that like to watch TV at night. I'm going, can I get a girlfriend? I make good money. I don't, you don't need to work. If you want to work, I'll support you. I'll even help you with it, but you don't have to work. Just travel around with me, eat food with me and I'll pay for it. And then watch some TV with me and give me quality time. And I realized over time that I like, you know, the love languages. When I first learned about it years ago, I was like, this is like, this is so gay. And then now I'm like, okay, I realize I like all the love. Well, not gifts, but I like quality time.

1:23:15I like words of affirmation. I like, I like physical touch. It might be all the pictures that your, your clients send you. You think? Of their glutes all day long. Well, I think if I want to make a relationship work, I think I have to quit training so many women. I'm going, what do I do? Switch to training bros? But you know, in Fort Lauderdale, you just need the ultimate confident woman. Yeah, you need a real confident lady. She just has, like, because there's a lot of - But I need to make her, like, in charge. That's what I've never been good at, making her feel so special. and I wish, so taking the last 18 months off and being single, I was like, and I also moved back to Vegas and I've been alone a lot and not to switch and get all sentimental here, but I've got a lot of downtime.

1:24:06And I also thought, I follow this guy, Arthur Brooks, and he's always talking about - He's a good friend of ours. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, very good friend. I just talked to him yesterday. He's been on the show like four times. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, this guy's great. Oh, he's beautiful. Okay, so he talks about how, like, So I'm like, I need to put my phone down and like live life. So it's hard for me to just go 20 minutes without my phone. But I'll use my jacuzzi or like red light sauna or something and put the phone down. And then sometimes I'll be in the jacuzzi for half an hour and you just think.

1:24:34And I've been thinking a lot. And you reflect on how I could have been a better boyfriend, how I could have. I don't think back and like be like, I was a victim. This person never loved me. I don't think that way. I always think of, I'm used to being, like, I've got like five people mad at me at all times, and I'm always trying to use humor to gloss it over and keep everyone happy. It's like the balls I mentioned earlier, juggling. I'm trying to keep everyone happy, and I tease everyone, so I always piss some people off, like, you know, like going too far. So I'm always trying to make everyone happy, but I realized I never made anyone feel that special, and I could have been a lot better.

1:25:14so I've been following like the Gottmans. They're like the relationship experts. You've had them on the show too. They're awesome. You've had them on the show? Yes. Oh my God. Yes. I don't listen to podcasts, by the way. I don't even listen to - I don't expect you to know that. I was the same old Joe Rogan episode or anything. That's all the stuff we like. I love you guys. I love Huberman. I love Joe Rogan. I just don't listen to podcasts ever. Yeah, we had the Gottmans on a long time ago. Okay, so the Gottmans. I've been listening to John Gottman. I'm like, man, that's how you're supposed to be?

1:25:40Yeah, now I know why I'm single. but yeah have you have you have you uh since you're going down this rabbit hole i mean i find all this stuff interesting this conversation um have you have you connected it to um childhood stuff or like what is what is because a lot of times it's there's something that subconsciously you're running from you don't even know it have you connected it so that's another thing i've been doing i've been going to therapy twice a week for three years now and it's it's luckily I make good money, but that's expensive. If you didn't make, I mean, if, if your therapist is, you know, 250 bucks an hour or something, that's 500 bucks a week, you know, 52 weeks a year, you're looking at 26 ,000 a year just for therapy, therapy.

1:26:23But anyway, um, yeah, so I've, I've figured out a lot of things about myself, like an anxious attachment style, things like that, but also just watching John Gottman, he got through to me and I'm like, what a loving man and a supportive man. And he's like, when Julia sits down to talk, he'll take out a notepad. I feel like I was always arguing to win in the past. Being the scientist, like I want to win. Oh, cool. You won the argument and then you're sleeping on the couch that night. So you lost. You lost. I'm sure you are fascinated with all the research they've done. They've done some really cool - I've never pulled up the actual studies.

1:26:59Oh, dude, yeah. Some of the most duplicated studies in mental health because mental health studies are very difficult to duplicate. 60 % of them, they can't. But Gauntman studies, they've repeated. Their prediction on divorce is like crazy. Well, I quote them like the four horsemen of relationship, like contempt being the worst. Yes. Have you seen - Back to, I think it was Arthur Brooks that said this the other day. This was another, and I'm going off on a tangent. We said the dark triad. Yeah. If you have narcissism - Machiavellianism. Machiavellianism and psychopathy, it's like that's the dark triad like i i i it's all about me yep the end justifies the means i will do whatever it takes to get what i want and i will feel no guilt no guilt yeah but anyway i've been i've been paying more attention to this stuff have you seen the podcast with arthur and his wife where they taught esther no those are the ones you gotta watch really they're phenomenal they're phenomenal it's it's it's you realize all right what what was i good at in life i was good at personal training.

1:28:02Go figure. I love it. I'm naturally love. If you love something so much, you're going to be good at it. I loved relationships, but I wasn't ready to settle down. A lot of guys can be there in their twenties. I feel like I took to like my late forties to really, really want to prioritize a relationship. And, you know, Chris Rock said it in a skit a long time ago, like a man is as faithful as his options. And as I got more popular, I realized, wow, I have more females that are into me. But then you reach 50 and you're like invisible. I don't get hit on. People will be like, nice thirst trap you posted on your story.

1:28:41I'm like, you think that people respond to me? Like in their minds, I'm getting like 50 women being like, heart, heart, heart. Like, no, I'm posting that for me. I'm making myself feel good. I'm invisible. And in my thirties, I didn't make any money in my younger thirties, but I was, I was getting hit on by, you know, supermodels in, in Spain and stuff. And I'm like, now I have all the money and I, I don't get hit on at all. And even though I've noticed with my clients, like, like I feel like they all have admiration for me and they love me, but they, like the 30 year olds, I'm too old. I don't want to date someone in their twenties.

1:29:24You're transitioning to dad now. I'm dad now. And the women that get formed the closest bonds with me are the women who had daddy issues. And I'm like a father figure to them. And I love it because I like the closeness. But then I sabotage my ability to have a girlfriend. And I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. It's always been my fault. Every relationship I had, I feel like I was good at blaming. I'm good at like and everyone takes my side you know because I can describe things in a way but then I this whole last 18 months of sitting the jacuzzo I'm like oh my god it's been me the whole time I'm the problem well have you have you uh any any recent breakthroughs going through therapy have you had a recent breakthrough no it's it's more like for me trying to like you know express things but not dwell on them like I don't ever want to go down the road of I had a therapist years in 2020 and she was like, Brett, what I was going through at the time, she said, I have sympathy for you and I do believe you've been dealt a bad hand here.

1:30:31Like you're a victim in this case, but I just implore you, never have victim mindset. And she said this to me and it changed my life. It made so much sense. She goes, if you develop a victim mindset, you stop in your tracks. you will stagnate the rest of your life. I have a couple that I've been seeing off and on for 20 years. And the man and the wife split up. The man went and remarried. He has two kids. He's happy. You know, I barely see him in where he's so happy. He moved on with his life. And the woman is still complaining to this day, 20 years later about the relationship. And that's all she wants to talk about.

1:31:08And I went, oh, I do not ever want to be like that. So for me, it's like realizing I need to take time and the women that I pick, I thought it could work out. What I realized is I need to notice red flags, not necessarily like red flags for everyone, but like what would be red flags for sustaining relationship for me? If, you know, cause I'm older and people are sometimes like, you should be with this influencer. I don't want to date a popular influencer. It's all about them. I don't want to be their, you're their photographer in life, you know? Yeah. And I want to mention you've lived that life.

1:31:48I want to settle down and I want, and you think, I also think the world changed a little bit and men have always been so had the upper hand and it's been all about men and we've been, um, but now women, the world changed and women are more picky now and they want, they want to have, um, they, they want their men to have the, the whole package and I see and it's because of OnlyFans it's because of social media being an influencer you can crush it as an entrepreneur now if you want you can crush it not just only like I have people like clients that aren't OnlyFans they don't post nude they post sexy pictures but it's never it's not nude and they might make four grand a month that way and then two grand a month in this then like this avenue and another two grand this way and they're making 10 grand a month to being influencers, you know, and having fun.

1:32:45And they wake up, they don't wake up to alarm. They don't have a boss breathing down their neck and they're loving life. And they tend to get free stuff all the time. So they're loving their life and they don't need a man. So if they're going to be with a man, what do you add to my, how do you add to my life? And so in Florida, I realized this in South Florida, there's a lot of transactional relationships and neither side are happy because you have the woman that's with the man just for money and it's never enough. It's never enough. And the man who, yeah, he can, if he has money, he can upgrade.

1:33:25He might be a six and he can date a 10, but he knows he has to pay for it. So the woman is like, man, I could date this short king in Dubai paying me a million a month. This guy's giving me 10 grand a month. I could get a hundred grand a month if I dated this guy. So she's always comparing because they talk, they tell stories. Things I've ever heard in my gym sometimes in Florida, oh my God. so they tell stories but then the man is going i could get someone who just loves me and wants to be with me without money so they're both resentful and it doesn't work in my opinion what you're looking for is a wife not a girlfriend yes and a mother is what you're looking not your mother but a mother to your children yeah and so those are the qualities you want to look for what kind of a mother do i want for my kids what are those qualities and what is a wife what are the qualities i'm looking for in a wife and and when you pull from that pool of women then i think you'll find somebody different.

1:34:21That's what my therapist says. Go do things. Because I just travel around and I'm always in the gym and I need to do pick up that. I'm also not on dating apps and I don't put out the vibe that I'm looking. I don't. This episode will come out. We'll see if it's in the episode. I know. You're going to get flooded. I don't know if it's right. Too exhausting though. Filtering through. Yeah. But I also realize that Well, you pay me your therapist money and I'll call you once a week and I'll filter all the data. I'll kill two birds, one stone. I got you, dog. There we go. But I also realized this is kind of funny.

1:34:58I dressed up for a wedding two weekends ago. And then a couple weekends before that, my squad threw me my 50th birthday party. I saw that. And they made me dress up. It was like a fancy dress. And I'm like, I would have rather had a jorts and tank top party, you know? But I realized I get way more attention. I realized this because one time it was like St. Patrick's Day. This is a funny story. I was walking down in San Diego. I was walking down the street and it was St. Patty's Day. And I went to the gym. I'd bring a backpack. I'd have my computer in there so I could work while I lifted. And it was late.

1:35:32I'd lift. This was like 20, 20-ish. And I'd lift weights late at night. I don't do that now. Now I try to focus more on sleep and my health. But anyway, I was walking by this bar thruster. It's kind of by my house. And there's a big old long line. And I'm like, excuse me, I need to get through. And this guy was drunk. And he's like, he's like, you know, I was like, excuse me, can I get through? He goes, walk around. And I'm like, you know, I don't need your permission, right? I could just remove you. And his girlfriend goes, babe, listen to me. It's a lot bigger than you. And he goes, he looks at his girlfriend.

1:36:11He goes, honey, he's homeless. it was like the end of the movie where the mug drops in slow motion and you have all these realizations oh my god i've got this scraggly beard jorts and tank top and a backpack i don't even know what to say right now and you know i drive oh man i drive a 2012 toyota tacoma and i drive so little it's about it's like 98 5 000 miles like it's about to get the 100 i don't even have a hundred thousand miles on my truck, but I have a 2024 in San Diego. I like the 2012 more. I mean, that's truck. I couldn't sell it for five grand. I don't think. I don't care about cars.

1:36:53I bought this just to wear for things like this. I don't wear this in real life. This Rolex, I don't even know what the heck. I'm so glad to ask you the bottle because you aren't going to be able to answer it. Are you? I know nothing about Rolex. I know nothing about jewelry. I don't care about and it's kind of a cool feeling like i don't care about money that all my people my family and friends care more about my money than i do i'm happy i go to the gym every day i don't need anything else i'm not trying to buy a nicer house i'm not trying i don't care about cars um and i clearly don't care about dressing but i did notice the two times i dressed up i got so much attention i'm like oh my god maybe that's just don't look homeless and don't look homeless Don't look homeless and you'll get a chance.

1:37:33That's the lesson here. Maybe we'll find a wife if you do. That's all I got to do. Get you out of fights, I guess. So good. Well, Brett, this was great, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a lot of fun having you on. Yeah, it was too long. I can't believe we let that much time. We won't let that much time go by next time. But yeah, you're one of the good guys in the fitness space. We appreciate you, the way you communicate things. You do a good job. Thank you. We need more. It's good to have people like you in our space because there's so much noise. And you've been doing this for a while. but in through that period of time, you've seen people come up and down.

1:38:03If you listen to the podcast, you hear how many times we pump your tires. We pump your tires all the time. We do talk about you quite a bit. People tell me. Okay. I always tell anyone ever says what podcast would I listen to? I say mind pump for fitness. Yeah. I don't think there's any better one out there. But yeah, it's, it's, we've seen, we've seen the industry change and we've seen that's the, the era of the fake trainers. Like think about most of these popular people. they've literally never trained anyone ever had a client 23 years old and they're a million followers arguing with me on Instagram.

1:38:38And like, imagine feeling confident and like arguing with someone when you've never had experience in the field. It's crazy. It's crazy. And that's what we're dealing with. So it's nice to, that's why we can, and that's why I always say I will always train people. Cause you know, Arnold said that in his like, I watched his documentary, be useful. yeah you got to stay useful that's the secret yeah so it keeps me being useful but also keeps me interesting have one of those guys on the podcast what would he talk about he only has his own experience that's why we never have any of them on our podcast you know louis simmons you knew he really trained people he'd he'd go i train this you know this guy this guy kenny patterson had this much, he was benching 600 pounds and blah, blah, blah.

1:39:32And he'd be reeling off numbers. And I realized I kind of do that too. Like when you really train people, you're like, I took this person's strength from this to this, or I built their, I put two inches on this person's glutes doing this. You have actual, have stories to tell. And so you will, it's how to stay marketable when you're 50 on social media. I don't understand social media the way the younger crowd does anymore. And so I have to stay competitive. I do that by staying on top of the research, lifting weights myself, and then training other people, which is the most important component.

1:40:06And it's what I love doing anyway. So I had that, to close this up, I had this epiphany that if you don't care, if you saved up enough money and you don't really care about it that much and you found what you like to do and I would be doing this if I won the lottery or if I was dirt poor, I love training people and being in charge of their fitness. And I love when people are like, I need to step it up. I need to get in shape and they can call me and I will be equally as enthusiastic as they are about it. It's a lucky way to live life. And I think it's the missing element. It's what Arthur Brooks talks about.

1:40:39A lot of the younger generation, they don't have a purpose. They have a missing element to themselves because they're always on their phones and you don't figure out the meaning of life when you're staring at your phone 24 hours a day. You figure it out when you're bored. and we came up in an era where we had to be bored. We had to figure stuff out. So I'm glad that we came up when we did before social media, before the internet was huge, before AI. I love the prospects of AI and everything and we've benefited very much from social media, but I do like that we've been able to experience two extremes of life, you know?

1:41:16Agreed. Agreed, man. Well, Brett, thanks for coming on the show, dude. Great time, dude. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you. 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 mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs.

1:41:53With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on itunes and by introducing mind pump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and until next time this is mind pump