2584: How to Cold Plunge the Right Way & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Summary

Mind Pump Episode 2584: How to Cold Plunge the Right Way & More (Listener Live Coaching)
Release Date: April 26, 2025

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1. Introduction to Cold Plunging Misconceptions

In this episode, the Mind Pump hosts—Sal DeStefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, and producer Doug Egge—delve deep into the topic of cold plunging. They aim to dispel widespread myths and present science-backed methods to harness the true benefits of cold immersion.

Adam Schafer kicks off the discussion by addressing prevalent studies:

"[04:28] Adam Schafer: I'm gonna start with some studies. So studies have been circulating showing that cold plunging reduces muscle protein synthesis."

While some research suggests that cold plunging post-workout can hinder muscle growth by reducing amino acid uptake and nutrient delivery, the hosts argue that the issue lies in improper application rather than the practice itself.

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2. The Right Way to Cold Plunge: Benefits and Best Practices

a. Boosting the Immune System
Adam highlights the most significant benefit backed by data:

"[05:14] Adam Schafer: One of the most pronounced effect of cold plunging. And the way to use it for that is about three, four days a week."

Regular cold plunging enhances white blood cell counts and fortifies the immune system, leading to fewer colds and infections.

b. Enhancing Workout Capacity
For athletes aiming to increase their training volume without sacrificing recovery, cold plunging offers a strategic advantage. It allows for more frequent training sessions by accelerating recovery processes.

Adam elaborates:

"[15:00] Adam Schafer: Athletes don't practice football to get jacked. The more football they can play, the better they can get at playing football."

c. Reducing Inflammation
Cold plunging serves as a natural anti-inflammatory agent, beneficial for those with chronic inflammatory conditions or athletes seeking quicker recovery.

Doug adds from experience:

"[07:07] Doug: ...I was not getting sick. And I... if I'm in the room with sick people, I'm less susceptible."

d. Replacing Caffeine Without the Crash
Unlike caffeine-induced energy spikes that lead to crashes, cold plunging stimulates the release of catecholamines, providing sustained energy levels without the downsides.

"[13:57] Doug: ...it's like a consistent high... no crash."

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3. Personal Anecdotes and Experiences

The hosts share their personal journeys with cold plunging, emphasizing consistency and proper technique.

Doug shares his initial experience:

"[06:03] Colleen: And that's like the holistic health approach.
"[06:05] Adam Schafer: That's right."

He recounts how consistent cold plunging kept him from falling ill despite frequent exposures to pathogens.

Adam further emphasizes the cultural and historical significance:

"[07:44] Adam Schafer: There's a long history of cold plunging in certain populations... they throw them outside in the snow and take their shirts off."

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4. Addressing Fitness Industry Myths and Misconceptions

The hosts critique how the fitness industry often distorts beneficial practices like cold plunging for aesthetic goals, leading to confusion and misinformation among the average fitness enthusiast.

Adam discusses the focus on aesthetics:

"[18:21] Adam Schafer: ...if it makes you look good, it's good. If it doesn't make you look good, then it's bad."

He argues that while practices like fasting and cold plunging have holistic benefits, the industry's skewed emphasis on appearance can undermine their true value.

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5. Listener Live Coaching: Real-World Applications and Advice

The latter half of the episode features live coaching segments where listeners pose personal fitness and lifestyle questions. The hosts provide tailored advice, integrating cold plunging and other fitness principles.

a. Darlene's Query on Diet, Sleep, and Training During Transition

Situation:
Darlene, a personal trainer, struggles with persistent bloating and intense sugar cravings despite improving her breakfast habits. She's relocating to a quieter environment to enhance her sleep quality and seeks guidance on adjusting her training program during this transition.

Advice Provided:
Adam suggests investigating potential gut issues:

"[61:11] Adam Schafer: So you should probably get tested just to see if you have SIBO or a candida overgrowth."

Doug emphasizes the importance of addressing diet and sleep:

"[62:21] Doug: ...if breakfast skipping and/or bad sleep, that's the day I'm going to crush the ice cream."

He recommends continuing her current training program with possible adjustments to accommodate her improved diet and upcoming relocation.

b. Afton's Dilemma on Opening a Private Studio vs. Big Box Gyms

Situation:
Afton, a successful trainer in Huntington Beach, California, faces the decision to open her own private studio after her current gym closes. She struggles with imposter syndrome and balancing financial obligations, especially with a new baby on the way.

Advice Provided:
Doug encourages her progress and suggests leveraging her existing client base:

"[74:10] Doug: ...You're an exception to the rule... it's a huge advantage."

Adam recommends starting in a low-overhead environment like a garage:

"[75:28] Adam Schafer: ...if you were working in a rehab facility, I'd be like, okay, that's a whole another story. But you're fine."

They also discuss the benefits of integrating an online coaching component to complement her in-person training, enhancing her business's resilience and scalability.

c. Colleen's Concerns on Menopause and Weight Loss Plateaus

Situation:
Colleen, a 53-year-old who successfully lost 75 pounds seven years ago, now faces difficulties in losing additional weight. She suspects menopause might be affecting her metabolism and seeks advice on whether to cut calories or adjust her training regimen.

Advice Provided:
Adam encourages focusing on overall progress beyond the scale:

"[81:19] Adam Schafer: ...no progress means no progress. It doesn't just mean no change in the scale."

Doug highlights the impact of hormonal changes and recommends a gradual reverse diet:

"[82:34] Doug: ...want to share the change you're going through. This is what most people you're going to charge, give them a deal."

They also suggest she undergoes hormone level testing and considers Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to manage menopausal symptoms effectively.

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6. Conclusion: Embracing the True Fitness Truth

Throughout the episode, the Mind Pump hosts reinforce the importance of understanding and correctly applying fitness principles like cold plunging. By addressing misconceptions and providing actionable advice, they empower listeners to make informed decisions that enhance their health and performance.

Adam concludes with an empowering message:

"[87:59] Adam Schafer: ...she got stronger. She's progressing. She's still doing very well."

The episode underscores that true fitness involves a holistic approach, balancing physical practices with lifestyle factors such as diet, sleep, and mental well-being.

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Notable Quotes:

• Adam Schafer on proper cold plunging:

  "[05:14] Adam Schafer: One of the most pronounced effect of cold plunging is boosting immune system function."

• Doug on immune resilience:

  "[07:07] Doug: ...I was consistently cold plunging two or three times a week I was not getting sick."

• Adam on replacing caffeine:

  "[13:57] Doug: ...this just kind of feels like it does this all day, no crash."

• Afton on imposter syndrome:

  "[97:10] Afton: ...I just want to be a fake. I don't want to."

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This episode serves as a comprehensive guide to cold plunging, debunking myths and illustrating how to maximize its benefits through proper usage. Coupled with real-life coaching scenarios, it offers invaluable insights for both fitness enthusiasts and professionals seeking to elevate their health and training methodologies.

Transcript

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[Sal DeStefano]

Your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump Mind Pump with your hosts Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews.

[Adam Schafer]

You just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, live callers called in we got to Coach them on air. There's four of them, but this was after our intro. Today's intro was 51 minutes long. Now, in the intro we talk about fitness, strength training, fat loss, diet, talk about current events, family life. It's a good time. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this where you can call in, we'll help you out. Email us your question. Just go to liveindpumpmedia.com, email it right there. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Caldera Lab. This is the best skin care products you'll find anywhere that are natural. Helps balance out the microbiome on your skin. Studies showed 91% of people who use their products notice a dramatic improvement in the way their skin looks and feels. Go check them out. Go to calderalab.com mindpump use the code mindpump20. Get 20% off. This episode is also brought to you by Jolie. So this is a brand new company we're working with. These are showerheads that filter the chlorine and heavy metals out of your water. It will give your skin and hair dramatic improvement in health. Many people notice reductions in things like, you know, dermatitis or acne or dandruff from using these shower heads. By the way, you could try them out for yourself. There's free shipping and they'll give you a refund within 60 days if it doesn't impact you in a positive way. Go check them out. Go to jolieskinco.com that's J O L I E S K-I-N-C O.com mindpump. That's where you gotta go. That's where you'll get the free shipping and the 60 day trial. We also have a sale this month on some workout programs. Maps Hit and the Extreme Fitness bundle are both 50% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code APRIL50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show. Cold plunging. Everybody does it wrong. Yes, there's studies that show that it reduces muscle growth, but everybody's freaking out over that. And that's because they have no idea how to apply it properly. We're gonna talk about the right ways to use the cold plunge to improve your health and improve the quality of your life. And of course, we'll cover the ways you shouldn't use the cold plunge.

[Doug]

I like this one. You're doing it wrong.

[Adam Schafer]

I'm gonna start with some studies. So studies have been circulating showing that cold plunging reduces muscle protein synthesis. I have one here that shows after resistance training, there was a 30% reduction in amino acid uptake and there was a blunted nutrient delivery that lasted for about three hours. So of course, everybody's like, stop cold plunging.

[Colleen]

Oh my God.

[Adam Schafer]

Because we need.

[Colleen]

Losing the gains.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, we're losing our gains. And there's other studies that showed that it reduces the muscle building signal if you cold plunge post workout. Well, I'm here to tell you that's because people are using it wrong. You're using it wrong. There are tremendous values to using cold plunge if you use it right. By the way, there's lots of benefits to strength training too, if you do it right. If you do it wrong, there's terrible effects as well.

[Doug]

Great point.

[Adam Schafer]

Everything has to be used properly in order to gain its benefit. You just have to understand how it works, how to use it, and how not to use it. Otherwise you're either gonna screw yourself or you're gonna miss out on its benefits. So I'll start with the first benefit that's clear. That's shown in the data using the cold plunge to boost immune system function. Function. The data on that is pretty amazing. It boosts white blood cell count and it strengthens the immune system. And there's lots of studies, other studies that show, even just population studies that show less colds, less infections, less flu, like literally makes people less prone to getting sick. That's one of the most pronounced effect of cold plunging. And the way to use it for that is about three, four days a week. Yeah.

[Colleen]

And that's like the holistic health approach.

[Adam Schafer]

That's right.

[Colleen]

And so it's like, yeah, you want to use, you want to use it for performance. That's a whole nother subject. But yeah, for just like obvious health reasons.

[Adam Schafer]

It's.

[Colleen]

It's definitely something you want to add in to your routine.

[Doug]

I know my personal story is, you know, anecdote. Right. So people right away are going to say that. But I, if you guys remember, this was back when we were at the other studio. I do started. And it was not. It wasn't as popular as it was now. Right. Everybody wasn't talking about it. In fact, cryotherapy was probably the more popular thing at that time that was coming on the scene. And I started doing that. I had access to it. It was really cool. And the thing that I reported back to you guys that it blew my way, blew me away, was if I was consistent with that, meaning I was doing that two or three times a week I was not getting sick. And I. Oh, I'm. I get sick. I get sick. If I'm the guy who's in the room with, you know, two. Two other people and, you know, or three other people, one person sick, I'm gonna be the guy who gets, Gets the cold.

[Adam Schafer]

That's just your history. I know that about you.

[Doug]

Yes. And when I start, the biggest takeaway I had from doing it consistently was that more than anything else. And there's other cool benefits I know you're going to go over, but that was the one that really sold me. And then anytime I fall off and I'm inconsistent, that's. I'll be safe.

[Adam Schafer]

By the way, there's. There's a long history of cold plunging in certain populations where they've been using it for a long time. Mainly Eastern Bloc. You know, Eastern European nations have been using this for a long time specifically for the reason of boosting immune system. In fact, they do this with children. Yeah.

[Colleen]

They throw them outside in the snow and take their shirts off. Right. And you could just immerse themselves in it.

[Adam Schafer]

You could watch videos of elementary schools in some of these Eastern European countries where it's snow outside of snow. The kids go outside for recess, they put on bathing suits, they play in the snow, and the teachers dump ice water on the kids. It's a part of their culture. My wife, at one point, she traveled to Ukraine. She had some relatives that were over there. And she said that the way that they bathe their babies is they finish all their baths with freezing cold water.

[Colleen]

Freezing water.

[Adam Schafer]

And you ask, why are you doing that? And it makes their immune system stronger. So there's a long history of this and there's data to support this. In fact, I just pulled up a study that was done from the University of Ottawa. This was March 28, 2025. This is in Science News. This summary of the study. Cold water immersion for seven days, that's a week. Okay. Significantly improves cellular resilience and autophagic function. In other words, cells are able to manage stress better through this process.

[Doug]

So is that separate from. Because I've never explained this. Right. The mechanism at which it's doing that. Like, I've never been able to articulate that really well. And so I thought it had more to do with your body because most colds and some of that happen in the winter time. That's when we normally spread all that. And my thought was we are in this like, controlled temperature environment all the time. You get out, you keep your AC at 70 degrees. You can get in your car, you're at 70 degrees. Like we never have this fluctuation of really hot, really cold. And the contrast of that, the abrupt change, that abrupt change is stressful on somebody's body. So all of a sudden you go into winter and we're really, really cold. Your body, it's been nice temperature for the last six months. Now sudden it hits that, it's like now you're vulnerable and so all it takes is someone with a cold nearby and you're susceptible. Now that you train that because you go in cold plunge, you are less susceptible. That's kind of how I, I, I.

[Adam Schafer]

Would agree with you, Adam. Now what they would say is that there's less sunlight exposure, we're indoors with more people. But I agree with you. I think that's part of it. Because look, I had this experience years ago. I lived in Palm Desert for a while. I had a gym down there. And I remember when I went there, it was over the summer. Now the summers in Palm Desert are crazy. Oh, 120 plus, oh, 7am It's 90 degrees. It would hit 120 routinely. It was so hot. It was unbearably hot. But I lived there for a while and I acclimated. And I remember coming up here during the summer to visit my family and it was 90 degrees. Everybody was complaining about how hot it was. And I remember being like, it feels totally fine. I had this experience with a client as well. I had a client who came from Wisconsin. She literally worked on a farm. She came and it was here in San Jose. It was like 48 degrees, which for us is freezing cold. It never gets that cold. Except for. Yeah, she was wearing shorts and short sleeve shirt.

[Colleen]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And I'm like, oh my God, aren't you cold? She's like, are you kidding me? I'm used to our winters over there. She's like, this is nice. So your body's ability to acclimate to temperatures of muscle and it gets weak because we're always in temper controlled environments. And I think that that definitely weakening, that weakens lots of other systems of the body. Strengthening it improves your resilience. And again, we have the data to support this 100%. And you lived in Chicago, right? Oh, yeah.

[Colleen]

Very similar story to that because I was exposed to like extreme, it was like 30 below because of the wind chill. And my roommate was this big guy, he was like close to £400 at the time. And so he slept with a window open. And like, I would close it and then he'd open it, you know, and it would just. I remember just nights where I was just freezing until I finally acclimated to it. And then coming back, went to like a football game to just like hang out with everybody. And I was in shorts, T shirts, like, nothing. And everybody's freezing, like, bundled up in these like, parkas. And. Yeah, it's. It's crazy how quickly though. It took me about a couple months. And then I was like, pretty adapted.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Yeah. So is that. Is back to my original question to you. So is that independent to the cellular or is that one in the same?

[Adam Schafer]

I think that's all part of it.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Adam Schafer]

I think it's your body's ability to. So there's immune system boosting that we see in the data, and then there's your body's ability to acclimate to stress. And so it's a hormetic stress. Right. And your body learn. And again, I think this is a stress that humans dealt with for a long time. You know, for most of human history, if it was hot, you were hot. If it was cold, you were cold. I mean, we had fires and stuff, but it's not like your house, where your house is always 70 degrees. So it's just the muscle. And you know this, by the way, if you cold dip or use a sauna regularly, you get better at it. You get acclimated, your body actually get better at it. And I think it's strengthening that ability. So, yeah, for sure. Now the next way to use it well is to replace coffee. So what's interesting about cold dipping is that, or cold plunging is that it produces or releases these catecholamines that give you energy, not unlike what caffeine does. But here's the difference. You don't have this crash. Yeah, no, because. Because caffeine. So, and here's the theory around it. We see this with other studies as well. When you do something hard to get the catecholamine release, you don't get the same adaptation with the, you know, with the receptors down regulating stuff like that. Like drinking coffee is easy.

[Colleen]

Wasn't it like endogenous versus exogenous in terms of, like, you're producing it because of the stre of it versus the chemical you're intaking with caffeine.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. So like, if you get a, a spike and feel good chemicals because of something easy, your body acclimates and adapts and reduces its effect. If your spike comes from doing something hard, you tend to Continue with that. So to give you an example, you know, if you get that like euphoric, you know, call it runner's high or whatever we get when you train really hard, like you always get that when you train hard. It's not like caffeine or alcohol or something like we have to. You need more and more to continue to get that same effect. And when they've examined this in the brain, that doing things that are hard to get this, this good feeling, it just sticks around. So when you do a cold plunge in the morning, you get the effects of caffeine without the wear off and without the crash.

[Doug]

And I feel like it like carries on.

[Adam Schafer]

That's right.

[Doug]

It's like this, it's like a consistent high or how you feel where caffeine tends to have this kind of like bell curve where it's like, you know, you first drink, it doesn't really hit, then it starts to hit and you're like, oh, this is peak at caffeine. And then, oh, you get about an hour of that great feeling or two and then it feels like it's. You're crashing. Where this just kind of feels like it does this all day.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Colleen]

I've noticed too. And when I was experimenting with that, because I remember you guys had suggested that and I wanted to try it and I originally was just doing my face and it was great because it would like, I would get some of that initial spike in energy. But when I went all the way and immersed myself in it now I had, I had a lot more endurance in my workout.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Colleen]

Because my, my core temperature never really got too crazy.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes. Y next is to use it for inflammation. It's actually remarkably powerful at reducing total body inflammation. Which by the way, is why it also blunts the muscle building signal. Okay. But for some people, it's a good idea to reduce inflammation sometimes because they have a lot of inflammation. Now. Who would be somebody that would benefit from this? I'll give you an example. Yeah. Hardcore training athletes.

[Doug]

That's why it's been popular for so long. We've been doing this in the, you know, professional sport world for a very long time. You've seen athletes use it to recover so they could go practice later on or got a game died by it. Yes. Or I mean you even to the point where you see this happening in game time now. Like ball players, the guys, when they sub out in the game, literally wrap ice on their knees and they wrap. They get all these cold tech boots. Yeah. Right away, they're not even Wait until afterwards. They're kind of. And the whole idea is just to bring that inflammation down as fast as they can so it doesn't hinder their play. And so that has been practiced for a very, very long time. So this, the science is very clear on the benefits of that. It just gets convoluted when you start talking about hypertrophy.

[Adam Schafer]

You also have people with like autoimmune issues that just cause systemic inflammation and they have to take anti inflammatories. You have to take immune immunomodulating drugs to try, try to reduce this kind of inflammatory response, digestive inflammation. You have, you know, osteoarthritis or joint type inflammation. And there's lots of things that you can do to help that. But cold plunging is probably, I would say is definitely a great way to reduce systemic inflammation. It can reduce inflammation in the brain which is connected to things like depression and anxiety. This is why cold plunging has been shown to reduce depression, in my opinion. So people with kind of chronic inflammation or chronic inflammatory type issues, cold plunging, you know, three days a week, four days a week, can be a natural medicine, something that you don't have to, you know, taking a drug to accomplish. And then lastly, it's which, what we just talked about, which is to increase workout capacity. There is a class of people who work out. There's a category of people that work out regularly who could care less about the muscle building signal.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

What they're looking for is can I practice and train as much as possible to get good as possible at my sport performance. And that's athletes. Athletes don't practice football to get jacked. That's a side effect. The more football they can play, the better they can get at playing football. The more basketball you can play, the better you can get at basketball. The limiting factor to how much basketball you can play is your body ability to recover. You have to at some point stop where you're just killing yourself, you're breaking things down. Well, what if there was a way to be able to add an extra practice and it was natural? Is that beneficial? You better believe it. Cold plunging post workout, this is when they say don't do it right for athletes. This is amazing. You mentioned double days. You're going hard in the morning and double days for football is brutal. You're going hard in the morning, you're going to come back in the afternoon. Cold plunging between now you can practice and practice and practice and you've increased your work capacity by 20, 30%, 50%. Is that going to make you a better athlete. Yes. In fact, oftentimes what differentiates great athletes from good athletes, besides talent, is just their body's ability to acclimate to that stress. They can just practice more than everybody. They don't get broken down now.

[Doug]

Leave it to the fitness industry to take something really, really good, Find a way to bastardize it. And now there's tons of confusion around it.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Colleen]

Yeah.

[Doug]

It's like we've known for a very long time all the benefits of this. Okay, this isn't new science, but it got popular somewhere and then everybody started doing it, and then it became popular to counter it. Why it's not good. And so now what happened? This is what despite. This is a part of our space. This is a part of our space. That frustrates the hell out of me.

[Adam Schafer]

Because everybody's so confused.

[Doug]

Yes. Because you take something that is really good and then again gets bastardized. And then you get the guys that come on and count. Use the counter science to it. And then, then you get the average person who's trying to make a healthier lifestyle do things that are good for them, and they're just at. They're lost. Is it good? Is it not good? Because I don't know, I've been told that it's bad for building muscle. I've been told it's good for this. And so I don't know what to believe. And then they just stall out and don't do anything. I feel like we do this with so many things. Cold plunging is one.

[Adam Schafer]

We do this with diet. Like everything in the fitness. In the marketing fitness space points to esthetics. Okay? Everything's about aesthetics. Everything makes you. If it makes you look good, it's good. If it doesn't make you look good, then it's bad. And if it's healthy for you, but it has maybe a potential for improving aesthetics, that's what we're going to focus on. So, like, fasting is a great example. Fasting has tremendous benefits and applications, especially from a spiritual perspective. But of course, if you don't eat, lose weight, so what do they turn into? A diet. Right? Which is a terrible diet. Fasting is a terrible diet. Well, this is what they did with cold plunging. So if your goal is muscle growth only, that's all you care about, is building muscle. And you're not going to add any more volume. But when you add the cold plunging, then don't cold plunge post workout. Okay? Now if you cold plunge post workout so that you can train more often, Then you're okay. You'll actually balance out the fact that it reduces the muscle building signal because you're in the gym more often. But if you're like, look, I only go to the gym three days a week. That's the most I can do. I'm not going to go anymore. My main goal is building muscle. All the other benefits you talked about, I'm not really interested in. The only time I could cold plunge is post workout. So I'm just not going to do it. Fine, then. Then that's totally right for you.

[Doug]

Or do it and be okay with the fact that it doesn't give you the maximum amount of muscle building too. Because that's the other. That's the other side of this, is that you use that scenario. Because I've had someone tell me that before. Like, it's just really convenient for me, Adam, to plunge afterwards, you know, because that's just the time I have. It's at the gym I go to. But I've heard it's terrible for. Yeah, it does, but it's not going to stop you from building muscle. It's just you're not, you're not optimizing it at the absolute peak level. But I mean, come on, how many other things in your life could you probably get a little bit better that would make up for that, you know, make up for that ground? Like, how about get yourself another hour of sleep, you know, or hit your protein intake consistently for a little bit longer. Like all those things are going to end up benefiting you in the muscle building.

[Adam Schafer]

You know what the irony of this too, Adam, is, is that the people who are most obsessed about this are also ones that are most likely to be redlining with their workouts.

[Colleen]

Exactly.

[Adam Schafer]

Who will probably build more muscle from the sleep recovery. And not only that, but they'll probably build muscle from plunging because they could use a reduced inflammatory signal because they're always pushing it too hard. You know, it's pretty funny. Next up, if you're just severely overstressed, right. You're lacking sleep, your hormones are off, you're not doing well at all. Well, adding any additional stress on the body, which would include an intense workout, Right. Or cold plunging regularly might not be a good idea. So you'll see functional medicine practitioners when they'll look at someone's cortisol levels and they have the inverted, you know, the bad cortisol, where it's low in the morning, spikes at night, and they have, you know, hormonal HPA axis dysfunction, they'll typically tell those person, that person, hey, let's back off on the cold plunging maybe once a week or none for a little while.

[Doug]

Well, I think it's important to know because Doug's not even that bad. But Cabral told Doug he shouldn't.

[Adam Schafer]

Right. It's just cortisol was high at night.

[Doug]

Yeah. And it wasn't like dangerously high. It was higher. And we were trying, and we are. The goal is to optimize his sleep and get better at that. It's not making that any easier. Better. So it makes, it makes sense not to.

[Adam Schafer]

That's right. Next up, when you're already sick, which I don't know what kind of psycho would want to jump in a cold plunge, the last thing I would want to do is jump in a 40 degree, like, oh, headache while you're already sick. But there's somebody out there that might think this is a good idea, bad idea, you're already sick. You're just going to stress yourself more. It'd be like working out when you're sick.

[Colleen]

I mean, I know people have done that for like a heat and they'll go in the sauna. Different, different, different animal. But like for cold, that just makes sense.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, what happens when your body is fighting an infection? What does it do?

[Colleen]

Yeah, it gives you, raises you up.

[Adam Schafer]

It raises you up because that can actually help the immune system. So sauna might make sense. Unless you're already in an active fever.

[Colleen]

You could overdo it.

[Adam Schafer]

But this, the cold now, don't go, don't go to cold dip. Don't freeze yourself when you're, I mean.

[Doug]

That same in that same thing. You could, I would say just overly stressed, period. Right. Which you kind of said that with the last one. It's just you, you don't have to necessarily have the, you know, cortisol inverted, although that might be correlated with that. It's like period. Just knowing that, okay, I've got a lot going on in my life. That's another stress. Probably not the best thing to do.

[Adam Schafer]

Talking, speaking about stress. So I got to tell you guys just, and I know this through training people. I know you guys know this as well, but experiencing it myself always reminds me of the power of food. Okay, just, are you, are you going.

[Doug]

To talk about your fat face now?

[Adam Schafer]

I'm just, that's not what I'm going to talk about.

[Doug]

But I feel so, I feel so good today. I just want to point that out that I feel like I, I, I'm not the fattest face today. I Just want to say that so camera doesn't lie. So take a look.

[Colleen]

I think been squirreling away.

[Doug]

I'm pretty sure he's got fat face today for the first time. I. I feel a little skinny right now.

[Adam Schafer]

You know what I did? So we. We did. We had Easter, you know, celebration with my family and. Which we'll talk about. I'll tell you guys all about that. But I ate terribly. Like, And I. When I mean terrible. I. I drank and I drank beer, which beer has gluten in it, which not good for me. And I drank, you know, four beers, which is a lot for me. Then I ate gluten. Then I ate dairy. Like these are things.

[Doug]

No holds bar for you this week.

[Adam Schafer]

No holds barred. And I ate the whole time. We went to a park. So it was a big family reunion at a park.

[Colleen]

And I just eggs and peeps.

[Adam Schafer]

And then I ate candy.

[Doug]

Oh, my God, you did it all.

[Adam Schafer]

And then I got home, and then we got home. And here's what's funny about eating crappy food.

[Doug]

Meanwhile, too, you're recovering from an injury too.

[Adam Schafer]

So this is where I'm gonna go. So I hurt my back on my hamstring like a week and a half ago. And it's been getting better, but it's still iffy. Right. So anyway, I'm eating terribly. And here's what happens too. When you eat terrible, it's so funny. You'll eat terrible, and even though you feel like dog crap, you'll crave more of it, which is really weird.

[Doug]

Sure.

[Adam Schafer]

So then I get home and I'm like, babe, I'm just going to order cheeseburger. So then I eat cheeseburger, more gluten, more dairy, more garbage. And I had. Then I have jelly beans. So go to bed, wake up. And my back, which was getting better. It's like the day after I got. I heard it. It's terrible. You guys see me walking.

[Colleen]

Oh, that beautiful inflammation.

[Adam Schafer]

It's just inflammation city. My whole body is super inflamed from it. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

[Doug]

What is that? That causes that. Like you said, immune response. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not. I know that. I'm talking more about like the way that you. You pointed something out that I think is such a. It's such a true statement. Like you. You do something like that. You eat a bunch of bad food, it makes you feel worse, but that. Yet you train more insult to injury. Yeah. It's like sadistic. Like, what is it about us that's going on that Caus where some temporary reward. Weird, is it?

[Adam Schafer]

That's part of it, but there's all. It's also drug like effects.

[Doug]

That's how I. I feel more like that. Like it's like. Like a pull towards it. Like I shouldn't be pulled towards this. I know how it's making me feel, but man, it just sounds good right now.

[Adam Schafer]

The best thing I could have done when I came home was fast for the rest of the day and just drink a bunch of water.

[Doug]

Right.

[Adam Schafer]

But you know, it's a drug like effects. It's like I start going through withdrawal and I know what it is. I could feel it. And I'm like, why am I ordering this cheeseburger? Whatever. Give into it because I'm weak and I eat it well.

[Doug]

And you know that what you're saying is true because the reverse is true. If you've ever stayed away from all that stuff, craving it, you don't even crave it. You could be around and be like, it's okay.

[Adam Schafer]

You guys remember Super Size Me, that documentary?

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Remember what he said? At first he was kind of forcing himself.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And he's like, I feel like garbage.

[Colleen]

But I don't even like it.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Colleen]

But I'm eating it anyway.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Colleen]

He started to cry.

[Adam Schafer]

So.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

I woke up at 3am and I'm like, oh, man. I could feel my back. You know what it is, by the way? Just a little more detail. It's my psoas muscle that I pulled when I was working out. So the psoas, it's actually a hip flexor, but it goes through the body, attaches at the spine. A lot of times people have psoas pain and they'll call it back pain. But yeah, the psoas muscle in the low back, the psoas, goes through the.

[Doug]

Digestive system and you inflame that too then. So just double whammy.

[Adam Schafer]

So what happens when you're. When your digestive system's inflamed, it bloats and it gets inflamed and it changes the recruitment pattern of all your stabilizers for your lumbar spine, including the psoas, which was already injured and now it's inflamed on top of it, so it's just working poorly. Plus inflammation.

[Doug]

The best. The best.

[Adam Schafer]

So bad.

[Doug]

The best irony of this is that.

[Adam Schafer]

What did I know better?

[Doug]

Yes, that you know it. Because you know, this happens. This happens to people, clients all the time. And they just don't know. They don't realize it. They don't realize, like, you know, you just pulled your back, you know, that you just inflamed all your digestive system. Like, that is just going to exacerbate that whole situation. The irony is that, you know. Yeah, you know damn well what's. What's coming. And then you still do it. Where the average person's like, this makes no sense. Why is my low back.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, most people don't know that your food can have a pronounced effect on pain. Everybody thinks obese. Yeah, you know, fat. I gain fat, I, you know, lose fat, whatever. They think maybe cognitive performance. There's a lot of data support that. That, you know, the way you eat will affect how you think. The way you eat will affect your mood. This is all backed by data. And the way you eat won't affect pain.

[Colleen]

I just had this conversation with my oldest because we were in Palm Desert. He actually is missing practice for the week. So we decided that we would look into. Go into this gym that was there already. Like, a gymnastic gym that was there. And they let him. And so he came in. But, like, their equipment's different, and it's really, like, the floor for Tum is really hard. And so he, you know, the first day was okay, but he's like, man, I was really stiff and my joints hurt and all this stuff. And what is he doing? He's eating, you know, candy and all this stuff. And I'm like, this is not going to help you. Trust me.

[Adam Schafer]

This is a horrible idea.

[Colleen]

Goes back the next day, and he's just, oh, my God. Like, it just, you know, all kinds of pain, and it totally was just inflammation, bro.

[Adam Schafer]

I had a client that was a doctor that I used to love to train because he was. I love him. He's funny. But he was also, like. He had that, like, you know, like a hole attitude, right? Where he would always talk crap to me about something. I'd say. He called. He would say, like, oh, what is that Frou frou science that you like to share? We would have debates like this, right? And one time we were talking, and he's in pain, right? And he just had told me about how much wine he had the night before. Whatever. I said, what probably was your diet. He rolled his eyes so hard, like, right in front just to show me rolls. Like, oh, yeah, my diet's why my back's hurting, Sal. It's not because I have this, that. And I'm like, no, no, your diet will affect how you feel. We had this. This whole discussion for the whole session.

[Colleen]

That's so great.

[Adam Schafer]

And then he. I said, I tell you what. I did a challenge. I said, eat the way I tell you, and if you don't get significantly better, I'll give you 10 sessions free. Now, I charged a lot for 10 sessions. So he's like, I'll take that challenge.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

He came back. He's like. He's like, I actually want to lie to you because I like the 10 sessions because my pain is way better. And I looked it up, Sal. There's lots of data to support it. Get out of my face, man. That's so funny.

[Colleen]

That's such a common doctor.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, we became. So. We became such good friends.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

He used to talk so much crap to me.

[Doug]

We were all in different places. You were. You were Palm Desert. Yeah. Doug, where'd you go?

[Greg]

I was in Texas.

[Doug]

How was it. How was this? How was the. The event name? What's the call? How do you call it? What do you call it?

[Greg]

The World Shakuhachi Festival.

[Doug]

I have to have him say that there's no way. Which. Which means what?

[Greg]

It's a. Well, the shakuhachi is a Japanese flute, and so it was the flute.

[Doug]

That's what it was for. Yeah. Some reason I thought food. I don't know why I thought.

[Adam Schafer]

It's the flute that's in Karate Kid, right?

[Doug]

Maybe you've been learning how to play.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Greg]

So I went there. There was around 220 people from around the world. I mean, I met people from all.

[Colleen]

Over the world a lot for that little.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

How many? 200.

[Greg]

Like, 220 people.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, okay.

[Greg]

And I would say about 25, 30% of them came in from Japan, and some of these were the top players in the world.

[Adam Schafer]

How much. Let me ask you a question. How much pleasure and joy do you get out of looking the way you do and then speaking Japanese? Japanese people, they must be, like, so excited.

[Greg]

Well, so I would. I would like to say that that was a great experience of mine, but there were some people there, like white people that could speak Japanese way better than me.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Greg]

So I was not anything special in that setting.

[Doug]

It's not that cool in the other settings. It's probably way cooler. Like a restaurant when no one's ready for.

[Greg]

Yeah, exactly.

[Doug]

At a party when no one's ready.

[Colleen]

Order for you.

[Doug]

But there you probably.

[Greg]

I kind of wanted to give up after hearing some of these guys. Well, they've lived, like, 20, 30 years in Japan, some of these people.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Greg]

And so they. They speak Japanese very fluently.

[Adam Schafer]

Did you buy any special flutes?

[Greg]

Yeah, I actually did buy a flute.

[Colleen]

Did you jam with, like, a bunch.

[Greg]

So there were a lot of workshops.

[Doug]

Do you call jamming with flutes?

[Greg]

They jam.

[Doug]

I swear, jam.

[Greg]

So there are a lot of workshops I went to.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Greg]

And I'm pretty much a beginner. I started in August of last year and we have people there that were playing 20, 30, 40 years.

[Doug]

Right.

[Greg]

And so some of these workshops are way over my head. A little discouraging, to be honest, but when you talk about jamming. So every night they. Well, they had many concerts during the day, and then they had like big concerts at night in like a legit hall. And they invited the local public to them as well. And it's just amazing what these people can do. Yeah, but they. All kinds of genres of music. It's pretty remarkable. I mean, and is it.

[Doug]

Is it common that, like, someone who plays this to be solo or are they part of a band?

[Greg]

No, both.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Greg]

Yeah, there's a lot of solo stuff.

[Colleen]

When you go that. Like a harp and.

[Greg]

Well, the shamisen, which is a Japanese basically stringed instrument that's really long.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, I've seen that in kung fu.

[Greg]

Movies and in a koto, which is like a three string guitar.

[Doug]

Why would you know that? Why would you know that?

[Colleen]

Because I've just seen, like, compilations from. For movies.

[Greg]

Oh, yeah. So that's oftentimes played with like, traditional Japanese music.

[Adam Schafer]

I've seen kung fu movies too, where, like, kung fu fighters who use it, but they'll like. Like use it as part of their fighting and stuff. Really? Yeah, dude.

[Colleen]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Greg]

So one of the really cool things that happened was I was there till Sunday. The. The event actually ended Sunday evening.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Greg]

So I missed the last day. But the night before, they took us to this little town outside of where we were in College Station. Where Texas A and M is. Yeah, it's called Round Top and it's like a little western town. And they have a really nice theater there. But after that concert, there was a dinner and they had a country western band there, but a couple of these American flute players. They had the band back them up with some blues chords and things like that, and they were just jamming. I mean, it was really cool. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

You gonna start a band, Doug?

[Greg]

I gotta get a lot better before I do anything like that.

[Doug]

Good place to meet chicks or. No.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, he paused.

[Greg]

I paused.

[Doug]

I mean, put him on the spot.

[Greg]

There's some attractive Japanese girls there, but, you know, I. I spoke to a couple of Them.

[Doug]

Did you end up making friends with anybody? I mean, obviously, you're talking to people.

[Greg]

Yeah, I met.

[Doug]

How many times you exchange your number?

[Greg]

I really didn't exchange numbers. I did. I did meet this one guy on the bus on the last day. Japanese guy. He's kind of sitting there all alone, and I started talking to him, and he didn't really speak much English, so that was great because I could speak Japanese to him. And so I did get his information.

[Doug]

Is there a type of person that's into this? Like, there's, like, as far as, like, their career path, or is it just so diverse like there?

[Greg]

It's super diverse. That was one of the questions I asked a lot of people is like, what drew you to this instrument? Because it's so obscure in my mind. Especially if you're a Westerner. Right. A lot of them were musicians, and it was interesting that some of these people like pro musicians and they used to play stringed instruments. And they said, I've stopped playing all my other instruments because it's a super challenging instrument, but there's so much you can do with it. It's just. Yeah, it's a real fascinating trip. One of these days.

[Adam Schafer]

Not right now, but, yeah, you open.

[Colleen]

Up one of the episodes.

[Adam Schafer]

I just want to see Doug do that. You know what? Doug's so undercover. You said you're a beginner. I bet he's way better than you making a statement. I bet he starts playing it and we're like, oh, dear.

[Doug]

He'S only been going for less than a year.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, but you know Doug, bro, he dives. We're all like that.

[Doug]

We're all obsessive about whatever our thing is. It takes time.

[Greg]

I think I'm doing well for how long I've been doing it. But, yeah, you know.

[Doug]

You know, you'll know when he's starting to feel confident about he'll start carrying it to work. And between podcasts, a little crack open the case.

[Adam Schafer]

Did you play for those two girls that you talked to or they. No.

[Greg]

Trust me, I. It's not like. Like a guitar, right. You pull it out and the girls flock, you know, I don't think it's that kind of instrument.

[Colleen]

Took that guitar and smashed it.

[Doug]

How was the spot in the hotel? Did you stay in a hotel or Airbnb?

[Greg]

You know, Stay in a hotel. It's actually a nice hotel. It's part of the Valent Valencia, or the Valencia, like the one up in Santana.

[Doug]

Right.

[Adam Schafer]

Nice, dude. That's great. That's great, man. Would you, Justin? You were down in Palm Desert.

[Colleen]

Yeah, I was down there. And we were right there. Because Coachella is good the same time.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, yeah.

[Colleen]

And I'm like, oh, man. Like, it was.

[Adam Schafer]

Did you see any people from Coachella?

[Colleen]

I didn't think we were going to because, I mean, the airport was really busy. And then I got picked up, like, my wife and kids got there early, like, a couple days before I did, and then we went there. When I did run into some Coachella people, though, so we one day we went to the living zoo that's there. It's actually a pretty rad zoo. And this is the first time I've been where it's not, like, in the summer, so it wasn't, like, unbearingly hot. And, like, all the animals are hiding. And so we're having a great time. It was great weather. And we're kind of walking around, and then we get into this one spot where they have, like, kangaroos, and you can, like, you know, check them out, but you can't touch them or anything. But they're all open. They're kind of just jumping around you. And these two. These two girls in this guy. They're like. They must have just come from some rave or I don't know what.

[Adam Schafer]

Must have been Coachella.

[Colleen]

It must have been Coachella because they're, like, in miniskirts and like. Like. Like really high mini skirts where their cheeks were hanging out.

[Doug]

Oh, wow.

[Colleen]

And. Yeah, exactly. And it was like, I'm. You know.

[Adam Schafer]

And you're with your family?

[Colleen]

With my two boys. Yeah.

[Doug]

My wife, who were totally bummed about.

[Colleen]

They were just. They were just like, stop dead tracks. And I'm like, they're gonna say something. Like, please don't say anything. Like, trying to coach him. Like, okay, let's just.

[Adam Schafer]

Let's.

[Colleen]

Let's talk about this later. But right now.

[Doug]

Talk about this later.

[Colleen]

Like, please don't say anything. You know, and it's like, oh, my God.

[Adam Schafer]

And then.

[Colleen]

And then Ethan's just like. Like, praying for, like, a breeze. And I'm like, oh, I remember, you know, because he's a teenager, of course, at that age. Oh, my God. But it was just like that.

[Doug]

I bet you the whole weekend that's what he remembers more than anything else.

[Colleen]

Yeah, exactly.

[Adam Schafer]

It.

[Colleen]

I just. I was like, I've never. Like, there's kids.

[Adam Schafer]

There's a family that would piss me off.

[Colleen]

They literally look like strippers. Like, just cheeked out, like.

[Doug]

So where are you at at this moment? You're at, like, A restaurant. Where are you at when you.

[Colleen]

No, we're like in the.

[Adam Schafer]

This is the zoo. The zoo.

[Doug]

Oh.

[Adam Schafer]

Like families with kids and stuff.

[Doug]

Kind of a random.

[Colleen]

And they have, like, high heels and they're, like, bending over and picking like. They were like, completely like, laissez faire about things.

[Doug]

That's weird.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that would. That would really annoy me.

[Colleen]

I was just like, there's kids and stuff.

[Adam Schafer]

You don't want your kids. You know, I mean. I mean, you have teenage boys even. That would piss me off. I know that you have a little.

[Colleen]

Kids, you know, I was hard for me to explain.

[Doug]

So weird to be at a zoo like that.

[Colleen]

It was so random.

[Doug]

Dude, that is random.

[Adam Schafer]

Weird. Dude. They don't purpose. Yeah. They want people to look at pictures.

[Colleen]

It was such, like, an influencer thing. Like, I think that they were, like, trying to.

[Doug]

Now I get in front of an animal.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh.

[Colleen]

You know, and I'm like, totally.

[Doug]

What that was.

[Colleen]

That's totally. Places where kids are, you know, go do your thing.

[Adam Schafer]

At Coachella, you know what that required? What that should happen there. It should be not dads, because that can be intimidating. It should be moms going up to them and just chastising them or just smacking them.

[Doug]

Girls, honey.

[Adam Schafer]

You know, if my grandmother was alive.

[Colleen]

Put on granny panties.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, my grandmother. If she was alive. She was there. She was.

[Doug]

I wonder what Katrina was. I don't think Katrina would say anything.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, my God.

[Doug]

Would it be Courtney say anything or what did Courtney say?

[Colleen]

She just kind of rolled her eyes and was just, like, trying to shield the other, like, the boys. I'm like, they're gonna. They're gonna watch. And of course, they're like, following the next station.

[Adam Schafer]

They're just like, hey, dad, let's go look at the bird area. Bird area, you guys.

[Colleen]

Oh, my God. Dude, I don't know what to do here.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Did the boys bring it up later or no.

[Colleen]

Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Adam Schafer]

Hey, dad, did you laugh about it? Did you lie about it? I was talking. I was looking at your mom.

[Colleen]

Weird, huh? People dress like.

[Doug]

That's terrible now, do they? Probably an opportunity for you to explain what Coachella is. And that's probably what I mean. Yeah.

[Colleen]

I mean, and that's. That's other kind of weird thing. I was realizing, too. I was just reading that a lot of people were kind of. Of complain about Coachella now because it's not like, necessarily a festival for just regular people. It's like, no, dude, it's like such an expensive ticket to get in. And then they have like all these like special exclusive packages. And it's literally people were like maxing out their credit cards to go there to do their whole Instagram and like influencing picture moments.

[Doug]

I've always wanted to go just to check it out at least one time.

[Colleen]

It looks fun.

[Doug]

Yeah. Every time I'm about to. I just like, it feels like so.

[Adam Schafer]

Much effort and it's like. So it's a lot.

[Doug]

This is a lot. Such an old man reason not to go.

[Adam Schafer]

Plus, you are an old man. They're gonna think you're a narc or something. Yeah.

[Doug]

I mean, I know there's a lot of people that are even our age that go, can't wear those outfits, you know, but it is like a bro.

[Adam Schafer]

If you're in your mid-40s and you're partying at those places.

[Doug]

Like, I mean, I don't know, that's. I feel maybe the same way too, but that's. I'm not. I haven't experienced it, so there's a part of me that's like, I wish I could experience so I can. Could. So I could say that so I can go. Like, that's not for 40 year olds.

[Colleen]

You know that though. Like. And I didn't bring this up last time. Podcast. I wanted to. That they have like these new fitness events that are trying to model after like. Oh, yeah, and Burning man and all that. And it's like the one's called like Running man. And so they, they have. It's like overnight stay and everybody camps and then they have like slip and slide.

[Doug]

I brought that up when, Remember when I talked about. I think I shot this guy Duplo running. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Or whatever.

[Doug]

Yes. Yeah. Where they're starting to start this whole thing. Yeah. So I brought that up. I was shot. I think I was shouting out that kid who does a lot of. And he was talking about how they're kind of combining like these. They had cold plunges. Were out there. Had all. Yeah. Had all this stuff where they were. It's like fit.

[Adam Schafer]

That's kind of cool.

[Doug]

It was cool. I mean, I thought it was cool. Diplo Run was the one that I was talking about. And they have a. A dj, right. So they got a sick DJ that's spinning. There's a run, there's cold plunging.

[Colleen]

I see value in that. And it's too. Because it's, It's. It kind of takes a little bit of the air out of like competitive, like, you know, like the people are just there to be hardcore. Like you can have fun and, and still do like, they call it a.

[Adam Schafer]

Fitness and wellness festival. Yeah. Doug, pull it up. Well, that's kind of cool.

[Colleen]

It's, it's interesting.

[Doug]

I, I, I think it's really cool. I think it's a cool way to kind of merge, you know, have fun.

[Colleen]

With it instead of like, yeah, be subs.

[Doug]

That's the only way you would get me to do a run like that?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Like, if you're like, let's go, let's go have a good time. We'll, we'll watch a concert, we'll party, had a festival, and then we'll, you.

[Adam Schafer]

Know, I would do something like that.

[Doug]

I would too.

[Adam Schafer]

I could walk it if you guys want.

[Doug]

Well, you know, that's just it. There would be, there's less pressure around the run and what I'm trying to do. Time wise, it's more about the whole event. And it's like, hey, why not burn all these calories off that we're gonna eat and drink, you know?

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's great.

[Doug]

That's cool.

[Adam Schafer]

We did, we did, we did Easter at, at a park and we had like a family reunion because we have, we have such a big family now that we stopped all getting together when I was a.

[Colleen]

Houses don't make sense.

[Adam Schafer]

It just doesn't fit. You know, when I was, when I.

[Doug]

Was like, you know, your family's big when you're like, yeah, we can't use houses.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, yeah, right, Right around the age of 13, 14, we stopped all getting together for like Christmas and birthdays and stuff like that because it was just, we didn't fit. We'd have to.

[Doug]

Do you have a memory of the last biggest one?

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, yeah. It was Christmas and we had the garage set up. The house was set up. It's in the winter, people still have to go outside. And there was a room of presents. Like, you open the door and you couldn't walk in because the people just had to throw presents in because there's so many people. So we stopped doing it. But we did, we did Easter all together at a park. It was, you guys. I'll have them post up a picture. I don't know how many people. 100 something. 100 maybe. And there was a lot of people missing, so there's tons and tons of people that were there. It was a good time. And then also my church aired our testimony, my wife and I's testimony at the whole thing, which was I heard.

[Doug]

From other, I heard from random people that Messaged me about that. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

You know what's weird is, did you watch it? So we attended because we're gonna go. It's Easter, so I'm gonna go.

[Doug]

That would feel weird to me.

[Colleen]

I know.

[Doug]

So, like, sitting in the church and then watching.

[Adam Schafer]

Listen, I don't get people like this. Yeah, well, you know what? He did. So Tim Lundy is the pastor. He's really, really good. And he tied in the story of the disciples that left Jerusalem after Jesus died because they were so disappointed. And then Jesus shows up, and he's walking with them. They don't even know it's him. And they're talking with them, and they're like, you don't know what happened? And they're telling him, and then he's quoting scripture. And then they go home. He's about to leave. They're like, you know, why don't you come inside and eat with us? They bring him in. As soon as they eat. Their eyes are open. They see who it is, and they're like, oh, my God, you're back. You were resurrected. So he tied our story into that, and it was really cool. So he literally broke it up into three pieces. So the entire sermon, he was showing our testimony throughout the whole thing. Right.

[Colleen]

Weaved all in, all of it.

[Adam Schafer]

It was really, really well done. My parents came. My dad. I've. I mean, obviously, I've known my dad my whole life. I've never seen my dad cry ever. My entire life, never. I've never seen tears come down his face.

[Doug]

Wow.

[Adam Schafer]

Not when his dad died. Not when. Never seen. I know he does, but I've never seen it. Saw my dad cry. He actually.

[Doug]

Did that get you hard or what? Oh, I mean, that would make me. Probably.

[Adam Schafer]

Kidding me.

[Doug]

Yeah. Senior dad cries, like, kiss me on the cheek.

[Adam Schafer]

And he just. And he. Yeah.

[Doug]

And it was big cry fest.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, man. And we got really vulnerable. We told our whole story and how hard. Jessica and I, our marriage was on the rocks.

[Doug]

Did you go up and do that or. No, no, no.

[Adam Schafer]

I was playing on the thing.

[Doug]

Oh, got it. Got it. It.

[Adam Schafer]

I would have be honest with you. I would have preferred to speak to.

[Doug]

Everybody interesting than watch it like that.

[Adam Schafer]

You know how weird it is to sit and watch yourself with everybody else watching you're getting at. Yeah, I was anxious. Oh, bro. My hands were sweating. I was just like, I'm uncomfortable. I'd rather be talking. Yeah, dude. Yeah, dude.

[Doug]

So I. I. So I want to go back to the. The family thing. Anytime you talk about family stuff, it's always intriguing to me because I feel it like we have the reverse. You and Jessica are like the reverse of me, me and Katrina like that. So in a family situation like that, where it's like it just because this is Katrina's, her and so much of her family, like, there isn't. Who cares? Let's just more people we can fit in. The more family, the bigger the better. And I get it, and I totally get it. But then there comes a point where me, I'm like, this is ridiculous. Like, you know, you got grown ass adults sleeping in twin beds and you got people stacked on the floor.

[Adam Schafer]

Like, logistics just doesn't make sense.

[Doug]

Yeah, it just starts to get ridiculous. Right? And then it's like almost like uncomfortably. It's like. And yes, we're all together and I get the love thing. But then it's like, so in your family, are there some of you that are like that or are in like that are pro. Keep. Who cares? Just as long as we're all together. And then there's others that are just like, okay, this is ridiculous.

[Adam Schafer]

Like, where we stopped doing a lot of family.

[Doug]

Like, who was the person who said, like, okay, this is too much?

[Adam Schafer]

Well, everybody decided, okay, so, yeah, because the matriarchs started getting older and the families, the kids started having their own kids. So we all started dividing up for the main holidays and stuff. We, we do this now maybe once a year as a family reunion. So we timed it on Easter.

[Doug]

So now how does that work too? Because I know this is. This happens in Katrina's family. Is that because you've done that for so long, like, and then you start doing things like that, there always ends up being like somebody in the family that kind of gets that we didn't invite or didn't get left out.

[Adam Schafer]

Everybody got invited. So.

[Doug]

No, no. I mean, after. Oh, once you start separating, it's just like, oh, yeah. Do you have that? Sometimes that happens where it's like we have a party going like that. We're like, oh, what side of the family am I bringing? How much of my family? Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

So here's what happens. If I invite, invite one of my aunts and I don't invite the others.

[Doug]

Right.

[Adam Schafer]

I have to invite. So if, if I invite like one aunt, then I have to invite all the sisters and the brother.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

If I invite these cousins, then I probably should invite. Otherwise people feel, yes, I can't have my brother come over unless inviting my, my sisters over as well. Because otherwise people get their feelings.

[Doug]

So this Is so, like a good portion of planning for, like, we just. Obviously we just had a. Mom's 75th birthday was this weekend. And so, so much is like the planning. And it's exactly like that. It's just like, well, if we can't bring. If I bring this hand, then we have to bring all of them, which means all their kids and all this. And that's another 30 more people that we weren't planning on, so we can't invite them. And so. And mom's, well, I want this person. I want that person. It's like, dude, it's such an ordeal to, like put an event on like that. It's. It's wild.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. So we had. It was huge. Had a great time. And then there was a moment where I took. I'll let the guys post it up. My. So I grew up with a bunch of cousins, male cousins, right around the same age. And in the picture that I'll show you guys, there's a couple that are missing. There's a few, actually, but we all took a picture together. And we're like all these old dudes now, right? Taking a picture. And it just brought back so many memories. And I was telling my friends because I said to my friends, like, oh, you guys grew up together. I'm like, we. When we used to get. We were all boys growing up, every family party we got together and there were like, at least there were a good, like 10 or 11 of us boys that grew up together, we would get in fistfights every time. Like full on fist fights every time. Then we're best friends afterwards. Up until we were like 14. Then, you know, they get too serious. People get hurt.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

So then we kind of stopped. But up until 14, there was always a fist fight at a family party. And we're telling the stories, we're like, hey, remember we used to just beat the crap out of each other. And then of course, the debate start.

[Colleen]

Who beat who?

[Adam Schafer]

Remember I beat you. No, you didn't, bro. I took you out. You know, it's a good time, bro. Oh, my God, my uncle. Oh, I gotta tell you guys, my uncle was visiting from Chicago. My. You know, my. My grandfather's generation, him and his. A lot of his brothers now have passed away, but I have a couple uncles left. So one of his brothers came. Haven't seen him a while. And as soon as he sees me, he's like, you always look. You look so young. How are you? You. You keep your skin, whatever. And so I sold him caldera lab I use this oil on my face. My company or whatever, he's like, get out of here. Put oil on your face.

[Colleen]

That's a weird conversation I've had a few times.

[Adam Schafer]

Dudes, remember, this is like, this is my grandfather's generation product for you. So as soon as I said this to him, I said, no, it's this oil I put on my face. He goes, you put stuff on your face like a girl. Like, it works.

[Doug]

It is so true. We are in this, like, you know, generational shift of men doing stuff for their face. Like, you know, there's, there's. We're, we're like in the middle of it. You know what I'm saying? And so the generation coming up, it's like widely accepted. But for our generation or older, it's like they did.

[Colleen]

They didn't tell anybody.

[Doug]

You do what? Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

So I got to make sure to send him some because I was talking to him about it and he was making fun of me, but I'm like, why you think my skin looks so good? That's because I've been doing kill their left the whole time.

[Doug]

Hey, you know, speaking of partners and brands, we are introducing a new one, right? I'm like the one. I'm the late to the party here. I know I have it, but obviously we've been with the move and stuff like that. I just haven't got around to doing it. But. But I know, Doug, you've used it now, right?

[Adam Schafer]

Jolie?

[Greg]

Yeah. So what it is is a shower head that has a built in filter. And so all you do is remove your old shower head, which is easy. They actually include a wrench. You take off that shower head, you wrap this tape around it, which they include, and you put it back on and there you go.

[Adam Schafer]

And it filters out chlorine and heavy metals. But the chlorine is the big one. A lot of people, chlorine's in your water. It messes with your skin. So here's what happens with a lot of people that don't know this with chlorine. Chlorine kills bacteria. That's why it's in your water, right? That's how they clean our water. There's a little bit of chlorine in there. Not necessarily a bad thing. However, constantly putting it on your face and on your body dry it out. It disrupts your microbiome.

[Doug]

Okay, so Sal, is that. Is that what makes it considered hard.

[Adam Schafer]

Water versus no, that's different.

[Greg]

That's mineral content.

[Doug]

Oh, that's different mineral content. Okay.

[Adam Schafer]

So chlorine, constantly putting it on your face and your hair, it disrupts the microbiome. A lot of people don't realize this, but they get acne because of the chlorine, because when you kill all the bacteria, it allows these bad bacteria an opportunity to outgrow the good stuff, because otherwise, everything's in balance. So what you see with a lot of people, the reason why we're working with them, is when you read the reviews and you look at the data, there's people who are like, my skin issues are gone since I started using this filtered shower head.

[Doug]

I wonder if that had. That's so weird. You just bring that up right now. Because I was off air, Justin. I were talking about face pimples, and I'm like, dude, I had more face pimples. The audience has probably already noticed, like, in the last month. Oh, bro. They were. Bro, they were like, in. Don't you remember everything, bro? I had two.

[Adam Schafer]

One.

[Doug]

I had two episodes where I had to keep a freaking piece of towel because it was, like, bleeding. It was like, I haven't had this. 17 old pimples. Yeah. Like, so weird right here. And I had. I'm kidding. I'm not. I'm not kidding you. I've had.

[Adam Schafer]

Hilarious.

[Doug]

I've literally had, like, album. Dude, either way, never. I had, like, five. So my point of bringing this up.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay.

[Doug]

Not to go.

[Adam Schafer]

I did see it. It was a big one.

[Doug]

Yes, dude, it was. I went here and then here. I want each side.

[Colleen]

Came at your fat face earlier.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it was there, but it.

[Doug]

My point of bringing it up is that I now, for the first time since I was a kid, have a pool, and I've been swimming in it all the time. So I'm wondering the chlorine probably to what you're saying right now, because I'm. It's so weird. The amount.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, I'm.

[Doug]

And that's the only. I was like, I haven't changed diet. I don't have, like, breaking out any stress anywhere else.

[Adam Schafer]

You're breaking out?

[Doug]

No, just my face. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. When you. When you take a shower, you wash your face with soap.

[Doug]

I use Caldera.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay.

[Doug]

Yeah. Okay. I'm still out. I just, you know, the. Lather up the bar and then do my face and my hair.

[Adam Schafer]

So. Yeah, their products will balance.

[Doug]

I'm a one, one, one thing. Oh, yeah. So.

[Adam Schafer]

So, you know, it's a good idea. Then you use the shower. The jolie shower head, right after you get out of the Pool. Wash yourself.

[Colleen]

So that's a great.

[Doug]

So this is why I'm bringing all this up is like, we just. Not. You haven't been to the place yet, but we have an outdoor shower. Oh, we had. All right, when you get out, remodels for that. I'll. Maybe what I'll do is I'll put it on.

[Adam Schafer]

That makes perfect sense.

[Doug]

Yeah. So I didn't even. I didn't even think about that.

[Adam Schafer]

You know what some people do with their pools now is they have saltwater pools.

[Doug]

So even. Even. I will tell you this, though. Even saltwater. Our Jacuzzi up in Turkey. Saltwater. Yeah. Yeah. So it's so you. You. You still use a little bit of chlorine.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, you do?

[Doug]

You just don't use as much.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, I don't know.

[Doug]

Yeah. Yeah. So even. Even the salt, it makes a huge difference, though. It does make a big difference.

[Colleen]

Everett's skin is, like, always an issue. Like, he's just very sensitive with it. And so, like, yeah, getting out of the pool. We have to, like, get him in the shower right away to, like, because otherwise he's gonna get rashes and all this stuff. Like, it just. It happens almost immediately.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

I gotta bring up a study on probiotics. You know, another one came out with athletic. We're talking about, you know, bacteria. Let me pull this up. Did you guys know there's another study connecting probiotics to better athletic performance?

[Colleen]

Another one?

[Adam Schafer]

Another one. Wow. Yeah, dude. So it's. It's turning out to be. This is so funny. Probiotics are going to be like, performance that's.

[Colleen]

I mean, people like me will start paying attention.

[Adam Schafer]

A recent. So they had 30 healthy male recreational athletes, and they were randomized. This is a double blind placebo controlled trial. So they either received this probiotic or placebo for 30 days, and then they did blood sampling after a 20 kilometer cycle time trial. So they went hard for 20 kilometers and they looked for oxidative stress performance mechanisms. You know, whatever the findings, improved time trial endurance performance. Ready for this? 21%.

[Doug]

What? Come on.

[Adam Schafer]

Double blind placebo control study, dude. 30 healthy male recreational athletes. Okay, that's not a bad study. I'd like. And by the way, if this was the only study that showed improved athletic performance, I'd be like, let me see more. But there's a lot.

[Doug]

20 is what I'm tripping about, because improved performance, like, okay, it makes sense. Like, your gut's healthier, you're in a better situation. You're going to Perform a little bit better. Like I would expect that. But 2020.

[Adam Schafer]

This backs up other studies though, which is why this is interesting. There was a 22 reduction in intestinal fatty acid binding protein. This is a marker of damage. So that may be why. It's because a lot of people don't realize inflammatory process of exercise. There's a lot of it that's systemic and it can also attack your gut. In fact, leaky gut syndrome is far more prevalent.

[Colleen]

It's exacerbated in athletes.

[Adam Schafer]

In athletes.

[Doug]

Well, I was just gonna say, you know what also makes this really interesting is that they just obviously they took a bunch of, of random people. But I mean imagine the person who has really major issues. It's the probably the difference is even bigger. Like that's, that could be like life changing. Getting that much percentage of in performance increase by taking care of that. Wow, that's really. Is that new?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it's a recent study. So I'm, I, I, I will predict that probiotics will be promoted as performance enhancing supplements probably five years from now. It'll be like a top. Like take this to improve your athletic.

[Doug]

Interesting. Wow, that's really cool.

[Adam Schafer]

Brain fm. Listen. You listen to their engineered music and sounds and they will induce different brain wave states. This is built by scientists. It actually works. In other words, if you listen to sleep, it puts you to sleep. If you listen to focus, your brain waves will become those that are best for focus. It really works. Don't believe me? Try it out for yourself for 30 days for free. See what happens. Listen to it for 10 minutes. It literally blows your mind. Go to Brain FM. Forward slash mindpump. Again. Try it for 30 days for free. All right, back to the show.

[Greg]

Our first caller is Darlene from California.

[Adam Schafer]

What's up, Darlene?

[Colleen]

How you doing, Darlene?

[Adam Schafer]

Hi, guys.

[Darlene]

First, I just want to say thank you so much for selecting my question and most importantly, thank you so much for all the content you all put out. I've been listening to you religiously for the last three years and you've made my journey as a personal trainer just skyrocket. So thank you guys so much.

[Afton]

That's great.

[Adam Schafer]

Thank you.

[Doug]

Awesome.

[Darlene]

I'll jump into my question. I'm going to read it if that's.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay with y'all, please.

[Darlene]

All right, so since submitting my last question, I actually made one key change. I started or I guess I should read the first one. So my original message says, here we go. I'm a personal trainer and have been dealing with persistent bloating and feel wider around my midsection for the past six months. While there are occasional days I wake up feeling lean, most of the time my body just feels off. My weekday schedule is packed. I'm up at 4:30am and often only manage a pint of bone broth and an almond milk latte before 11am Due to early sessions and lack of meal prep. After my Tuesday Thursday morning clients, I have a 30 to 40 gram protein breakfast. And then despite that solid meal, my sugar cravings have become intense. I've gone from being able to enjoy a few bites of something sweet to completely losing control polishing off an entire pint of ice cream right after a full meal. Could this be in because I'm not eating enough calories or carbs in the morning? Should I be increasing my total calorie intake? I'm hesitant to raise calories because my body feels so off, but suspect that might be the solution. Since submitting that last question, I actually made one key change. I started eating a proper breakfast earlier in the day and it immediately helped bring that sugar craving way down. They dropped from a 10 out of 10 to a 3 out of 10 in just a couple days, which was wild. So now I know under eating in the morning was definitely a part of the issue. That said, I still kind of feel off in my body like a little inflamed or puffy, especially around my midsection. I've realized this might be more related to my sleep sleep quality. Waking up at 4:30am for early clients and I live above a noisy intersection with a stop sign where people are constantly revving engines blasting music and I think it's been suddenly wrecking my recovery. I move into a quieter place May 1st and I'm really curious to see if that helps me feel more like myself again. So now I'm wondering should I change anything about my training during this transition period while I'm still kind of in this in between of stress and less than ideal recovery? I'm currently running Maps Anabolic. I'm in phase one, just finished week one last Friday and seeing good gains. I have access to map symmetry, anabolic as I mentioned, aesthetic prime, beginner and resistance. If there's something more recovery friendly, is there something more recovery friendly I should be doing? Should I scale back my volume intensity, stick with my current program or pivot while my sleep is Compromised?

[Doug]

Yeah, maybe Maps 15 until the sleep gets better.

[Adam Schafer]

Are you still getting the bloating?

[Darlene]

Yes and my like the sweet tooth cravings have gone down. I eat mostly like Home cooked meals a lot. I hit my protein targets. So I am still feeling like digestive, like inflamed maybe.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Okay. So you should probably get tested just to see if you have sibo or a candida overgrowth. The solutions for that are actually not bad. There's actually herbal treatments you can do now that have been shown in studies to be as effective as the pharmaceutical ones that people used to use. So there's a few products you can look at. One of them is called a trantil and then there's another combo product, FC cidyl and dysbiocide that they'll often use for sibo. But if you're getting bloating and if you notice it, especially after meals or at the end of the day, there may be something going on digestively which by the way, poor sleep will contribute to. So poor sleep can definitely contribute to that. And when are you moving by the way? Is that happening now?

[Colleen]

May 1st.

[Darlene]

May 1st.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay. Okay, that's good. So hopefully that helps. And are you getting like at least eight hours of sleep at night?

[Darlene]

Yeah, I literally go to bed at 8:30.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay. All right, good.

[Darlene]

At 4:35.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. So I would look into Sibo to some gut testing. You can also just try treating it without testing, which I don't necessarily recommend, but you could do that with some of the products that I mentioned. You'll typically go through a few weeks of herxheimer effect where you get this die off so you may feel worse before you feel better. So you could, you could try that out. And then as far as workouts, I think mass anabolic, the 2 day a week version is great and then mass 15 afterwards will be great as well. And then after that, depending on how your sleep is, you're probably fine. Moving into any of our other programs.

[Doug]

I think that that will actually even the fact that you started eating, aka a real true full breakfast made a huge a 10 down to a 3. I think the improved sleep will take it down to a zero. I think that because that will contribute to the cravings. And I know too from firsthand those are the two big things for me. If I am breakfast skipping and or bad sleep, that's the day I'm going to crush the ice cream. If I can tackle those two things, it keeps it in check. So I totally feel you on that.

[Adam Schafer]

Do you train privately or do you work in a gym?

[Darlene]

Currently privately. I just transitioned full time out of a gym in August.

[Adam Schafer]

Wow. So August till now. So. So since August you've been doing this Privately?

[Darlene]

Well, kind of. I was a contract worker since 2022.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay.

[Darlene]

At a gym.

[Doug]

How's the. How's the course been for you?

[Darlene]

How's the what?

[Doug]

How's the course been for you? Because I know you're in our course.

[Darlene]

Yeah, it's been really helpful. Luckily, I had a really good mentor when I was, like, training clients out of a gym previously, and he helped me a lot with the financial parts of it, talking about leads and stuff. But going through your course, I wish I would have learned that back when I was doing nasm, because it would have just set me up a lot better. That being said, a lot of the content is super helpful, and I'm glad I'm in there.

[Adam Schafer]

Awesome.

[Doug]

Well, good to hear.

[Adam Schafer]

Good. I'm glad to hear. So, yeah, get back to us, Let us know. We'll send you maths 15 if you don't have it, and then I'll make sure when Doug sends that to you, in the email, he writes down the name of those. Those products that help treat things like, you know, Candida, Sibo, Sifo, which, you know, if you have one of those, they should help.

[Darlene]

Okay, thank you so much. And I actually did have Candida before and went to a gut specialist to get that treated. I have been having feelings that it might be flaring up again, and that could be the issue. I was just really hoping it's not. But you're saying that there's a medication I can take now instead?

[Adam Schafer]

It's over the counter. They actually did a study a while ago where they compared herbal antimicrobials to the antibiotic style ones that were previously used. And they were as effective. They were just as. In fact, I would say they're more effective. Like antibiotics kills bacteria, but it can cause fungal overgrowth. The antimicrobials that are natural do all of it. So the functional medicine practitioners that I know, they work with, the herbal ones first, and the ones I mentioned were the best ones that I've seen.

[Darlene]

Awesome. I'll definitely look into that. Last time I had it, I had to do, like, 90 days of only eating five things, basically. So hopefully this will help.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Yeah. So check it out.

[Greg]

Cool.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Get back to us. Let us know how it goes.

[Doug]

All right, darling.

[Darlene]

Will do.

[Adam Schafer]

Thank you. That's. So. I'm so glad that she's doing well. She had a good mentor, which is huge.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And then she's in our course, which helps a lot as well. But, yeah, bloating is. There's. There's gut stuff. Going on there. It's typically, you know, there's something that you need to look at. Yeah. And that's not normal. Like, you should.

[Doug]

Not especially when she's got the other stuff in check. Like the diet's got back in check, and then she. She's still suffering from that a little bit.

[Adam Schafer]

And you shouldn't, you shouldn't. Like, a lot of people, they think that, oh, this is just what happens. I just get bloated after meals. Like, you shouldn't. You shouldn't feel that way.

[Greg]

Our next caller is Afton from California.

[Adam Schafer]

Afton, what's happening?

[Doug]

How you doing?

[Speaker 9]

How you guys doing? I know everybody says the same thing. You guys are the best, and you guys have helped us so much. And so I'll pass all that. I'll save all that because you guys hear it all the time. And it's so true. I always agree with all the callers.

[Doug]

It's okay. It never gets old. It's good for Sal's ego.

[Speaker 9]

I know. And I love. Oh, my God, you guys are always so funny too. I laugh out loud. Okay, so you tell me when you want me to start my question.

[Doug]

Go ahead, go ahead, read it to us.

[Colleen]

Let's go.

[Speaker 9]

I'm gonna read. I'm gonna read it because they said I have to. I can't, like, go off. And I always go off. So I'll just stick to the point here. So, okay, so I'm a pretty successful trainer here in Huntington Beach, California. I got a good following, I got a good clientele. But recently the gym I was training at for 12 years closed. And I've tried a few other gyms. We already know where I'm going with this, right? And I just can't find one that I'm sold on. So I go back and forth. I'm like, oh, maybe I should open my own space. Now all my clients are like, open your own space. But, you know, shoot. I've been in the gym business so long, I know that I already know, like, the gym owners aren't making, you know, that much more money for as much more work that they're putting on. So I have a really good lifestyle. I got to work a great work life, balance. And I'm married. I have two kids. I have a nine year old, a six year old. My husband supports me. He's like, open up. He goes, you talk so much crap on everybody else's gym. Let me see you do it better. I'm like, you know? But he also says too. He's like, you should just stop all in person training, just go all out online. I'm like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that either. So the question is, should I open my own private studio? Even though I got a great work life balance right now, but I'm not super happy with like the gyms I'm training at. So I want to hear your answer. I already know your guys answer, but I need to hear it.

[Doug]

I'm going to throw you a curveball because I do normally tell everybody, don't do this horrible idea, you're an exception to the rule. And I'll tell you why. You mission one, you suddenly have an incredibly supportive husband and family who's like, go get a babe. I don't care if we big factor. That's huge. That's huge. Like, you know, because you, you don't have a lot of pressure of oh my God, I got to make this much to survive and pay the bills. So you have that. So that's a huge advantage. You've got a lot of experience. You've been doing this for a long time already. Sounds like you're already really successful. So to me those are like the, those are big qualifiers for me. Before I would tell someone to go do something like that, hey, you one, you need to have proven to me that you were already really successful, successful for a long time already. Which you've done that already. It's awesome. You have somebody who can help support you while you do that. You're a bit of the exception, the rule of somebody. I'd say, hey, maybe, maybe you do open your own studio. I will say this though, and I'm assuming you don't have our course because you probably would have mentioned that the trainer course would be incredible for you because not only do we talk about the starting a studio or doing those things in there and the steps that we go about, it's it. I do think having your online business compliment your in person would be a superpower. I mean that's kind of, that's kind of one of the things that we talk about this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna reveal a little more than I have publicly right now. But one of the things we're doing is we're building this massive online coaching business right now underneath Mind Pump and we've got six trainers working for us already. We've been behind the scenes developing that and our kind of, of strategy is going to be we're going to build a very successful online business and then eventually do the thing that I tell everybody not to do. Go open a gym. But guess what? When we open that gym, we already have consistent revenue virtually that will fund that gym. And it doesn't need to be profitable, which gives me all this leverage to take my time and scale it correctly and be super successful in person. And so I think you sound like you have that kind of working for you, and you could kind of use that same blueprint of, of, let's go. You, let's go build a big virtual business. Then maybe we start in a small kind of warehouse, small footprint type of gym and make it profitable and then grow from there if you want to, or enjoy the work life balance because you're the owner and operator.

[Speaker 9]

Yeah, right.

[Adam Schafer]

How long have you been training people?

[Doug]

12 years.

[Speaker 9]

Oh, man, it's, it's. I, I think I'm already go. I think I'm going on almost 20, 20 years. I, you know, and when I moved to California, I'm originally from Wyoming. I mean, I didn't have a client, I didn't know anybody, and I built my business and I'm like, you know, I know I can do that. I get a lot of my clients.

[Darlene]

Are just referrals now.

[Speaker 9]

And I do a little bit of online too, but I enjoy going in. I enjoy. You guys get it. You guys talk. I mean, I like what I do. I truly do. And I also know if I open my own business, is it. Do I enjoy that as much anymore? Is it become more of like, now I'm a boss now. I imagine Jean having to get some trainers in there, you know, to help pay. It's like, dude, does it take the fun out of it is where I'm at.

[Adam Schafer]

That's the question I was gonna ask you. I can see why you're successful, by the way. You have a magnetic personality. So, okay, so do you want people to work for you? Do you want employees or do you want to just train?

[Speaker 9]

I think I would have to, especially the amount of rent that's here in Huntington. I mean, I go back in the industrial. I've already done all the research on the, you know, the numbers have to make sense, and right now they're just not making sense here in Huntington Beach.

[Adam Schafer]

You don't have to. Here's my, my point. You don't have to. So. But, but if you do, if you want employees, you got to find a space and do the whole deal. If you don't, I, So I know. Very successful because you're, you're in a great area Huntington is a great place for. For personal training. Okay.

[Speaker 9]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Have you thought about doing it out of your garage? Your clients will probably.

[Speaker 9]

Oh, my gosh. We. My. Everyone says that dude out of your garage. And my husband, he's like, he's got it dialed in there and he's got his truck, you know, his trucks on. Yeah, I've thought about it. I just don't know if I want somebody out my house at like 5:00am, 6:00am I mean, it makes sense though, because I have young kids and my husband's a fireman. So when he goes, you know, that's.

[Adam Schafer]

The only way I would do it if I were you. And you don't want employees because opening a studio means you got overhead. You got to buy equipment. Now you're paying rent. That means you're going to have to have trainers that you're going to manage. You're not just training your clients. It sounds to me like you truly enjoy just being a trainer and having your own space to do it is the only thing that makes sense for me. For you, it would be doing it out of your house, out of your garage or a space like that, or finding a space. Like there are places and I don't know how easy it would be for you to find, but there are places like chiropractic offices or healthcare places that have a gym that then you can rent and be the only trainer in. There would be the other way, but the other. It's like do it out of your grand. I've met now several trainers who are very successful, who have incredible clientele like you. Your clients probably been with you forever. Probably stay with you forever.

[Speaker 9]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

And they do it out of their garage. They do it right out of their garage. And that's that.

[Doug]

We just got done exactly what I'm thinking. Ben Bruno is one of the most successful.

[Speaker 9]

I follow him. I know. And he does it all out of his.

[Doug]

Out of it out of his garage. And he's got probably the biggest A list clientele I've ever made for you.

[Adam Schafer]

They love it. And you don't need a lot of equipment, you know, that you squat rack, adjustable bench, some dumbbells, maybe a cable, maybe not. And your clients would love coming. And you have no overhead. It's in your home. You could write off your garage as a business expense actually will save you money. Right. And it's. And all you gotta do is keep. Make sure you maintain that wall. Right. Like it's business. And then this is, you know, my home life. And that's It. I think that's the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise, go. Go rent. Go pay another gym to train your clients or go work at another place. But it doesn't make sense for me for you to open a studio and employ people because that's not what you want to do. And that'll. That'll, that'll make this very different.

[Doug]

I also, I want to see you in our course with our. We have a community of over a thousand personal trainers that are all over the country.

[Adam Schafer]

You know what she would do well with.

[Speaker 9]

You know what? And I want it and I got it. And I'm not supposed to veer off this question, but I got it. I read I'm in that growth personal whatever or something that's with you guys. And I asked a question in there a while back, and I know Doug killed me for going off the question, but I have to ask now. I said, do you guys. I've had clients that have been with me for like 10 years. Like, they stay with me. They're. They're lifers. Right? I'm like, do I raise their. Do I raise there. And everybody in there is like, you don't raise your, you know, your, you grandfather and them in. Well, here's the problem. I have so many clients that have stayed with me. It's like now my. It's. So do you raise your client, your old client, like the clients that have been with you forever? Do you raise their prices?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that's. That's a good question.

[Doug]

It is a good question. It's a case by case situation.

[Speaker 9]

I know I went off and you don't have to, but.

[Doug]

Yeah, but it's okay.

[Speaker 9]

But everyone said no.

[Doug]

Here, listen, listen how these feed into each other really well. Like, what a great way to transition into raising my clients. I'm going to be moving my gym into my garage. I'm going to spend some money to be doing this. I now have to have operating costs for a business because I'm no longer working at a gym.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

I've got to move my clients up a little bit. I just wanted to give you the heads up. That's that when we go to resign next time, I'm gonna. I'm gonna boost. I'm gonna boost most people this much. I'm only gonna do it this much on you because you've been with me for so long. But I just wanted to give you the heads up that I've got to move in that direction. I hope that you're okay with that. And like, I think you could present it like that. This is what, this is the change you're going through. This is what most people you're going to charge, give them a deal. So going forward, new clients will be this premium. You've been a long time client of mine, so I just need to bump you a little bit to cover overhead stuff and that's how I would do something like that.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Well, let's get into the numbers a little bit. You were paying, were you paying rent at another gym? Is that how you were working at another gym?

[Speaker 9]

And I was at a chiropractic place for 12 years and that's. Yes, I was. And I was paying like about 1500. I just got found another gym. I do a flat rate and it was, it's of 800 bucks. So I'm like, I'm like loving the rent there, but at the same time I don't love the space.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay, so you were paying, you were paying 1500 for 12 years. Now you're paying 800, but that's closing. So doing it out of your garage, you automatically pay zero. And then what are you charging with the. If you. Do you mind me ask, what is your per session rate with these long term clients?

[Speaker 9]

Oh my gosh, you guys are gonna kill me. I'm about 80, 80 right now. But any new person coming in is a hundred. And I heard your guys'I. Already heard. I'm like, and somebody just said afton, you need to be higher. You need to go way higher.

[Adam Schafer]

You could go, you could tell those clients that you could bump them $10. They won't blink.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, they won't.

[Adam Schafer]

They're not gonna blink it. Hey, look, I haven't changed the price in 10 years, but I got to do this. And I'm going to be moving my gym. It's going to go up to, it's going to go up 10 bucks a session. That's. They're not going to blink at that. But then you're not going to pay no overhead with your garage either. I think that's, I think that's a win win right there if you, if.

[Speaker 9]

You ask me, I was, I was for sure. You guys are like, no, don't open your own gym. I wasn't expecting that. I already told all my clients today. I move clients around. I'm like, they're going to tell me no. I'm, I'm ready.

[J]

Okay.

[Doug]

You're the exception of the rule. You really are. But I'm going to keep pushing the. I want you in the course because we haven't even touched on this because it's a whole nother hour with you is the CRM that we're doing now too. So that would be a ma. And by the way, massive easy way because of how sophisticated it is and all the new things you're going to be able to do with it, with what we're providing you. That's an easy way too. To start to bump them up is now that you have this great software that'll provide them workouts when they travel and all this great stuff. Like. So I have a whole presentation for you on how I would present to these clients where your prices are going and why they're going there. But I got to get you in the community. We're in there. We're in there helping coaches and trainers like that and working through this. And so get your butt in there.

[Speaker 9]

Okay. All right, you guys. Thank you so much.

[Adam Schafer]

You got it.

[Doug]

Thanks for calling in.

[Speaker 9]

Have a good day.

[Adam Schafer]

You too.

[Darlene]

Bye.

[Speaker 9]

Bye.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, I mean, you see why she does well, she's got great. Yeah.

[Doug]

I always tell people I'm the first one to be like, don't. Don't Huntington Beach.

[Adam Schafer]

80 for people are like 80 bucks. That's a lot for.

[Doug]

Don't even be.

[Adam Schafer]

No, that's cheat. Yeah. Yeah. You're probably a good trainer. An experienced good trainer is about at least 110, 120. At least.

[Doug]

@ least.

[Adam Schafer]

At least. But yeah, dude, she doesn't want to have employees. But yeah, dude, in your garage, if you had clients have been with you for that long, they'd love coming to your garage. And you.

[Doug]

Not only that, but it's also a really good step in the direction of maybe getting your own place. Right. So let's. Let's first run it out of the garage. Let's see how that. And then. But I get her concerned too. Like I wouldn't want people coming to my house just. Just how I am too. Like, I got a family this now. I don't want them coming to my house cheap.

[Colleen]

I mean, too. I. Again, we didn't get into like her square footage or what she has option wise.

[Doug]

Do a warehouse, dude.

[Colleen]

Yeah, exactly. There's. There's shed options that are pretty cheap. And then you could just, you know, house like equipment in there.

[Doug]

So it's cross. There's a lot more options that already built this model for you.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean it'll be more than 800 bucks a month is what she was paying.

[Doug]

Well, yeah, but I mean, she's been up initially 1500 you bump every one of those 80 clients to 110, 120, you could, you could easily see your being there. But anyways, the garage idea is a great transition to. Yeah, let's see, this is something I want to do and whatever and, but also wanting her in the community because I know we have trainers down in Huntington beach and so that. So who knows, maybe she meets somebody who they can partner up and do something together or they should. Somebody else is like, I have a gym, come work for me. I would love for you to be in my place. So I hope she gets in there.

[Greg]

Our next caller is Colleen from Illinois.

[Adam Schafer]

Hi, Colleen. Hello.

[J]

Hi. How are you guys?

[Adam Schafer]

We're good. How are you?

[Colleen]

Great.

[Doug]

Good.

[J]

So I just wanted to thank you as a woman who has three sons, I have six brothers and I work in a male dominated field. So I'm around a lot of men. I appreciate the way you speak about the women in your lives and how respectful you are discussing women's health issues. So I just wanted to thank you for that.

[Doug]

Thank you. That's an awesome compliment.

[Colleen]

That is a good compliment.

[J]

Yeah, your podcast has been such a blessing. Anyway, let me get to my question, give you some details. So I'm 53 years old. I lost about 75 pounds about 7 years ago and it took a couple years to come off and I started with a personal trainer about five years ago and that's when I started strength training. So I worked with him for two years and now strength training is my go to. I love it and I can lift some weight. But this last year I'd been having difficulty with continuing to lose additional body fat and pounds. So struggling with like £10 off and on. And I'm wondering now if it's because I'm officially in menopause. The past couple months I did make some changes after listening to you guys. I did reduce some gym time and I go to the gym about three times a week. I walk eight to ten thousand steps a day. But I do have a full time desk job. I eat about 140 to 150 grams of protein a day, 1900 calories. And I would previously eat these 1900 and drop weight. That's not happening. Now I'm 5 foot 8, about 205 and I'd like to get to 175. I like my body, but I'd like to see more muscles and to be honest, look a little jacked. So even though I do feel healthier physically, mentally than ever, I am still hyper focused on the Scale, especially this year with no progress. And I was working out way too much. I was constantly sore and completely felt the effects of overtraining. So I'm not sure if I should cut or I should bulk. And what program would be best. I hesitated cutting calories because I did not want to mess up my metabolism or even lose any muscle. So that's my question.

[Adam Schafer]

Great. No, that's great.

[Doug]

Great question. And you're doing good right now.

[Adam Schafer]

So you said. You said you're not. You haven't progressed in a year. But let's, let's. Let's talk about that for a second. Have we seen any changes otherwise? Or aside from the scale not changing? So in other words, have you seen any strength gains, any performance changes?

[J]

Strength gains, for sure.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay, so you have progressed this year.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And the reason why I want to point that out to you is because we could get so focused on one metric, we ignore. Yeah. The progress in the other areas. And if you've gotten stronger this year, you are moving in the right direction. And eventually the body fat percentage will start to reflect that. And sometimes we pause. I remember where you were seven years ago, 75 pounds heavier than you are now, and you started strength training recently. I think the picture you sent us was the same weight, but before you started, and then after you started listening or started lifting weights, I should say, okay, you look different.

[Doug]

The same way. You should have the same weight.

[Adam Schafer]

No, no, no. There was more than one picture.

[J]

Yeah.

[Doug]

There was no weight change in those pictures.

[Adam Schafer]

No, there was one picture.

[Colleen]

Five pounds.

[Adam Schafer]

Wow. Yes.

[Doug]

Wow. Yeah. You look way different.

[Adam Schafer]

You're doing great.

[Doug]

That's incredible.

[Adam Schafer]

You're doing great. Here's what I would say, by the way, menopause or no menopause, does menopause affect how your body reacts and responds and feel? Yes, it does. But the same rules apply whether you're in menopause or out of menopause. Meaning calorie deficit helps with fat loss, surplus helps with gain. But you're at 1900 calories. I wouldn't want to cut you at 1900 calories. I'd want to do a slow reverse diet and try to maintain the same weight and try to build some more strength before we cut back down. So maybe slow reverse diet till you get to about 2, 500 calories and then bring it back down to 1900 and we should see some fat loss.

[Doug]

We have an incredible. What's the doctor's name that we just had on the podcast, and we're dropping that.

[Greg]

Mary Claire Haver.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, she talked about paranoid.

[Doug]

When's that going live?

[Greg]

In a week or so.

[Doug]

Okay. So in a week we have an incredible episode that you'll love that we talked. Nothing. Everything about perimenopause and menopause is the whole conversation. So it's a great conversation. Do you have somebody right now who is regulating your hormones? Are you taking anything? Are you, Are you. Have you. Let's tell me a little about that.

[J]

So I just listened to your hormone broadcast. I. It's. Do you. Anyway, so I'm going next Friday, a week from Friday and having my hormones tested.

[Doug]

Okay.

[J]

So I am doing that just to see where my levels are.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay. Are you gonna. Is this with a general practitioner or is this a hormone replacement specialist?

[J]

It's a hormone specialist.

[Doug]

Okay, good, good. Because. And I know Sal is right. Like it you. The same rules still apply with somebody who's in. But my. The hardest time I ever had with clients, the most difficult ones were my clients that were going through menopause. And it was because the. Yes, all the same rules apply. Reverse dieting, building muscle, slowly losing body fat, that. But boy, it just moves really, really slow for somebody's. Somebody who is struggling with their hormones going up and down and fluctuating like they do when you're in menopause like that. And so having somebody regulate that can make. Can be a life changing difference. So they're going to do that.

[Adam Schafer]

Hormone replacement therapy can make a big difference.

[Doug]

Huge difference. Huge, huge difference. The, the clients that, that we were doing all the right things, but, but they weren't doing that and they went and did that. It was like night and day difference for them.

[Adam Schafer]

But nonetheless, I mean the picture you sent us with a five pound different. There is a much bigger difference in body fat and muscle that doesn't show up on that scale. And if you've gotten stronger this last year, you're doing everything right. And so I would slowly reverse diet, add 150 calories at a time, stay there till things stabilize, continue to get stronger, stronger. Once you get to 2,500 calories and you feel comfortable there and you stay there for a while, cut back down and we should see some fat loss.

[J]

What program do you recommend? Because I have three of your programs now. So I have Muscle Mommy, I have Muscle Mommy, I have maps 15 and then I have anabolic.

[Doug]

What are you doing right now?

[Colleen]

Those are great programs for you.

[Doug]

Which one are you doing right now?

[J]

So, so, so here's my problem and I need to do better. I try to do the 15. But then I was going in and doing more. So now I'm working on Muscle Mommy and I'm just going in on three days a week.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay, Finish Muscle Mommy. Finish anabolic finish 15. All three of those programs are great for you. Yeah. But do them as they're laid out. Okay. So it's like, imagine getting a recipe for like a particular type of cake and then you add your own ingredients on top of it. It's not going to be good. That's what happens. That's what happens with workout programming. So when you add stuff to what we, what we write in there, you've just messed up the whole thing.

[Doug]

Trust. Trust the process. Trust the process.

[J]

Okay. And then the only question I have is to go from 19 to 2500. Like how, how much time should I do in between those?

[Adam Schafer]

So I like how many. I like bump 150 calories. Wait three weeks or so, see how things feel strength wise. If everything's stable, you're not gaining weight. You're not, but you're getting stronger. Then try it again.

[Doug]

Yeah. The reason why that's such a hard question to ask for the individual is because, like some clients, I'm able to go like 150 and then we didn't move on the scale at all. I can go another 150 the next week, they still almost go 150. And then others, we move 150 and then we see a little bit of increase in the scale. We got to kind of hold there for a week or two or three. And then they start to see either a little dip or leveling out and then I can do it again. So really fill it out. What you don't want to see is any major swings. And if you see weight stay the same or go down, that's your green light to definitely keep adding calories. And I would keep doing that. Every time you can maintain weight with adding calories, you should try and add again after that. That.

[J]

Okay. Okay. Well, that's good.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay.

[J]

And then that's all I had. I appreciate.

[Doug]

Let me have Doug put you in our private forum, too. So as you're going through this reverse diet process, if you have any more questions, you can just message us there.

[J]

Okay, awesome. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

[Adam Schafer]

You got it. You got it. Doug. Hold on real quick. So this is off air. Colleen, do you want somebody to help you reverse diet, coach you through the process? We have coaches that can do that.

[J]

Yeah, I, I might, I might be interested in that. Only because, like, just to have. Because the trainer I was using, he's not training anymore. Right. So just to have someone talk me off the ledge. Right. It would be nice to have something to reach out to.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[J]

Because I do, and I know the process works, but it would be nice, especially with reverse dieting. That's why I've hesitated doing it.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Reverse dieting can be very individual. So, like, so, so this part's not on air, but I'll have somebody reach out to you, and they'll coach you through and work with you through the reverse dieting process.

[J]

Okay, great. I appreciate it. Thank you. And you guys are the best. Seriously, you are. I share your program with everybody, and my teenagers love you. I got them listening to you. So just, thank you very much. I do appreciate that.

[Adam Schafer]

Thank you. Thank you for the compliments.

[Doug]

We'll be in touch.

[J]

Have a good one.

[Doug]

All right, bye.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that's. I love when people send pictures where the weight is almost the same and you could just see.

[Doug]

Dude.

[Colleen]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Like radicals.

[Colleen]

Yeah, very.

[Adam Schafer]

And I did want to make a point. You know, when people say I've had no progress. No progress means no progress. It doesn't just mean no change in the scale. So she got stronger. She's progressing. She's still doing very well.

[Doug]

Yeah. I mean, that's why it's so deceiving. Because.

[Adam Schafer]

So deceiving.

[Doug]

And, and I tell you, my, the, the, the clients that I had the hardest time were my clients that were going through menopause. If you're, if your hormones are out of balance, it is really tough to build muscle. It's really tough to burn body fat. And so, so even if you're doing all the right things, it just, it slows down the process even more. And then you add, like, what you just pointed out was just that she actually is seeing progress, but because it's not dramatic or she didn't see this major screen, it makes it feel like she's not doing the right thing. So I, I, I look forward to her going to get those checked and then balanced out, too.

[Greg]

Our next caller is Greg from Colorado.

[Adam Schafer]

What's up, Greg?

[Colleen]

What's up, man?

[Afton]

Hey, how's it going, guys?

[Doug]

How you doing, man?

[Adam Schafer]

How can we help you?

[Afton]

You just wanted to let you know, appreciate everything you guys do. I've been listening to you guys for a year now, and you definitely help with my imposter syndrome of trying to become a trainer with all the knowledge you guys put out there. So just want to let you guys.

[Colleen]

Know that that's great.

[Afton]

Quick question, let me just get to my email now. A heads up. Since I've sent this, a few things have changed but you know, we'll go over that after I ask the question. So a few years ago made a big physical transformation from 245 to 183. After bodybuilding for two years after that I realized how amazing I felt, how clear my brain worked afterwards. Didn't know how out of shape I was until I looked back at all the pictures. In the last year I decided I wanted to do this for other people. So I decided to start my own nutritional coaching company. I've coached a few people that I work with currently. Haven't really got much traction with kind of strangers yet. Just trying to get my, get my company out there. Currently I'm a residential electrician. I've been doing this for over three years now, but feeling kind of burnt out. Don't really have any passion left in it. I've been listening to you guys for a year like I said and you guys been mentioning a lot of times about how working in a big box gym just to get started, whether you're doing online coaching or anything is a great idea. Figured I'd just kind of get your guys insight on that. Currently I'm certified in Issa for nutrition, nutritionist, strength and conditioning. And currently I did start my CPT through Issa as well. So I'm kind of making that transition to jump into that personal training at a box gym. Big concern starting that was really just kind of financial obligations making sure seeing if that's possible with obviously bills and stuff like that. So obviously I want to follow my passion and do something I'm, I'm passionate about. It's just kind of get some advice from you guys and what, what you think about that. Hopefully working in a big box gym can contribute to my, my online company and getting that started.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, definitely. And you said some things have changed since you asked this.

[Afton]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

What are they?

[Afton]

So financial obligation wise I ended up moving up to my in laws ranch property that they've owned since the 1800s. We're currently in the process of selling our house now. So all that money from that I could use to kind of just mitigate all my bills, pay everything off. So I'm not going to have as much overhead bills wise still it's kind of obviously personal training. The income can vary depending on whichever gym you're working with, what they decide to pay you hourly and how much per training session. So maybe just kind of talk to you guys about what that might look like some advice on getting myself started and, you know, being successful in that. So I don't really have to stress too much about the financial.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, that's good. Do you have any dependents?

[Afton]

I do. I just had a baby in June, so she's nine months now.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, good for you. So you got a baby, but you've cut down your financial obligations. Let's talk about the big box gyms that are around you. Which ones have you looked at?

[Afton]

So I, I talked to a, a branch manager at a 24 Hour Fitness. That seemed pretty promising working, working with them. But there's. I haven't talked to too many gyms yet, but there's. Was it lifetime Anytime Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness. You know, they kind of got a big mix of different gyms in the area.

[Adam Schafer]

You're good.

[Doug]

Lifetime and 24 are probably the best. 2 Lifetime will pay a little bit more. 24, depending on their size and their location, will get comparable traffic. But the two of them will be high traffic, offer benefits full time, the whole deal. Yep. So both, both those would be great. Either one of those would be a great option. I mean, I bet you're probably making pretty good money doing the career path you have now, so it's probably going to take you a minute to, to catch up to that, just being realistic. But it sounds like you're already planning for that with what you're doing. So I think that's a great strategy. You definitely should be in our course. Okay. Because that's literally what we take you through and the mentoring that we give you and a thousand other trainers that are going through that with us. And so. And it's not just the course, what you learn from that, it's also the fact that you're now. Yeah, it's, it's ongoing mentorship from us. And I think that's where the value really. So as you're going through this and you, and you come up with challenges, hopefully we're there to help support you and work through those.

[Adam Schafer]

If you do a good job in a big box gym.

[Colleen]

Gym.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay. If you step foot in a big box gym and you apply yourself and follow the things that we teach in our course, for example, and really apply yourself, you could, realistically, you could be full time within a few months, like full time with clients. So, so you can figure your payout there, how much they pay per session, what does that look like? Full time with benefits, you'd be there if you applied yourself, followed kind of what we taught, probably within 90 days, really talented people within 30 days. But most trainers, when I get them under my wing, within 90 days, we're doing, we're doing well.

[Doug]

I say 90 is a good goal. 90 is a good goal. Could take as long as six months depending how fast. But if you, you apply yourself, it's very realistic to be working full time within 90 days.

[Adam Schafer]

And then, and then from there you just, you just crush, you do a good job, build your business in there and then from there there's lots of, there's lots of different potential opportunities. Both Lifetime and 24 Hour Fitness offer great, you know, they have a great corporate ladder. You can move up, up to fitness manager, fitness manager, general manager. Now you're doing, you know, really well. Or you could take that, build upon there and go private. But I honestly think that your, your odds are high so long as you have good, you know, like I said, you follow what we teach you and you go in that big box. It's, you get the leads, you're going to be in a busy gym. Really, it's just a matter of just applying yourself and doing the right things.

[Doug]

Yeah, the goal, if you, if I was mentoring you, the goal goals would look like this is that go through the course, learn everything we teach about building your business, getting lead, selling all that stuff. Your first 90 days, the goal is just get your schedule loaded up. I think it's a very realistic goal. Then after that, from that point to the end of the year or beyond is go become the best trainer in that gym, can I prove to be the top dog. And that means asking a lot of questions, shadowing the other trainers, continuing to pursue education and learning and just burying yourself into that. And that's what you have your sights on is can I learn enough, shadow enough, get enough, acquire enough practice and knowledge to become the best guy or girl in this gym. And that's, that's my next big goal. And then once you do that, that really opens the doors of do I want to stick in this career and get promoted within this company? Do I want to go off and open my own thing? Do I want to branch out and do semi like private plus online? Like the doors really open after that, like as far as this career and what it has to offer you.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, yeah. But just so you know, like you have, first off you have a good story because of the weight loss that automatically is going to give you an advantage with connecting with people. But you know, when you go into big box, like the hardest thing, period, end of story for trainers is getting enough potential leads or potential clients, that problem is pretty much solved. When you're in a big box gym, like if you get hired, which you know, that's, that's another process but I don't think it's an issue with your passion. Present yourself well, you already got the certifications, will hire you. It's, you walk in, you just say, hey fitness manager, can I please have a list of all the new members over the last 30 days? I'd like to call them like instant leads. Like you don't get that as a trainer doing things on your own and that's very difficult to get otherwise. So I mean, right, it'll happen. If you want to do it, it'll happen. Yeah.

[Colleen]

Take advantage.

[Afton]

And I, I knew you guys, obviously I knew, I've watched enough of this. I knew you guys were going to recommend that, that trainer course, which I fully plan on doing that as soon as my house sells and you know, kind of got some, some extra cash. That was an automatic thing for me.

[Doug]

Cool.

[Afton]

You know, obvious right now, like I said, residential electrician, most of my job is sales. You know, I show up, obviously I have to do a lot of technical work and stuff, but I do have to talk to the customer. I'm inside their house, they're vulnerable. You know, I understand how that might feel and I, I got to speak to people to kind of not exactly convince them, but just inform them on why this is necessary for them. Unfortunately in this field it's like, like I'm, I'm a, I'm there because I, they have to be because something's broken where I think carrying that communication skills and the sales skills over to fitness is going to be super beneficial because.

[Doug]

Very much so, you know, they're there.

[Afton]

To better themselves, you know, so I just gotta reassure them. Yeah, this was a good move, right? Like this is why you want to do this. But yeah, I mean after making my. I, I've pretty much been lifting since I was 19 years old. I'm about to turn 32. Mostly bodybuilding stuff. I think the biggest concern now in my head because I, I've always made like real, not real quick, but never been scared to make that leap of change. You know, I took a eight dollar pay cut to become an electrician, you know, a lot of different things. So I'm not worried about jumping into it, it anymore financially. It's more about that imposter syndrome. Right.

[Adam Schafer]

No, you're fine.

[Afton]

I don't, I want to be a fake. I don't Want to.

[Adam Schafer]

Greg, you're fine.

[Doug]

You're fine. Great. You're going to be good, bro.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, shut it down right there. You're fine.

[Doug]

You're fine.

[Adam Schafer]

By the way, what you. What you know, what you said about your experience talking to people and the sales skills. Make sure you say that in your interview. Hired. You said that to me? Hired.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, that. Because that translates.

[Adam Schafer]

I would have hired you.

[Doug]

That translates so well to what? And no different than probably how you handle it right now. When you are doing an electrical job and somebody asks you a question that's out of your scope, you probably just tell them that it's no different than training. And don't the trainers make this mistake of being afraid to say that? Like you just saying like, you know what? I don't know the answer to that, but I'll definitely find out for you. Like I haven't had a client yet that's had that issue or I haven't done that. But don't worry, that's my job is to solve that for you. To be clear, you go learn.

[Adam Schafer]

That's and to be clear. Greg, listen, okay. In a big, especially in a big box gym, 90 plus percent of your clients you're not going to, you're not going to apply even a tenth of your knowledge.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

You're going to do like a leg exercise and like a shoulder exercise. And here's how you use this machine properly. And here's what a squat looks like. Oh, you can't squat. We'll start with this. That's 90 plus percent in big box gyms. Now if you were working in a rehab facility, I'd be like, okay, that's a whole another story. But you're fine. You're imposter. Yeah, get rid of that right away. You're totally fine. Time.

[Doug]

Yep.

[Afton]

Yeah, I think it was mainly because I was been one track with bodybuilding so like implementing a lot of mobility and like kind of hit training and you know, mixing things up based off of who the customer is. What they want was really kind of just more something that I just got to look into.

[Doug]

Greg, you also, you also have at the tip of your fingers askmindpump.com and use that AI tool. I mean this is how we're able to hire customer service teams that don't have trainer backgrounds and still yet support people is our team is trained. When you get a question that's above you or you don't understand, ask my pump.com and then it comes out and then you get to see an Episode where we talk in depth about that, you see the AI spit off exactly how we would recommend it. So just use it. Use that tool to help, to help support you when you run into those situations.

[Adam Schafer]

But the vast majority of what you're going to do with your clients is traditional strength training, which, you know, and it's just appropriate exercises, that's all. So, yeah, it's in a big box gym. You're totally fine. Fine.

[Doug]

Yep.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay.

[Afton]

If you guys got time, can I ask one more, please. Aspect for. For me, fitness wise.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's hear it.

[Afton]

So since I moved up to the ranch, been a lot of ranch work, you know, cutting down trees, stuff like that. I haven't really actually been in the gym or lifted in like two months because I've been so busy with. Between that work and I do also train Jiu jitsu. Go first thing in the morning before work most of the time, about two to three times a week. Obviously getting back into lifting resistance training would be the best bet. But most of my week, almost every other day, maybe every day in the evening or on the weekends, I'm chopping wood for hours straight because we got to cut down like 40 trees on the property. What would kind of be a good idea and like programming, because I know you guys talk a lot about over training, not, not pushing it too hard, but to mix that stuff together, I'm finding myself. Ever Since I hit 30 years old, I keep. I've never had an injury. And then 30, I had a major ankle injury. And since then I'm just getting weird shoulder tweaks and knee tweaks that just put me out of training jiu jitsu or, you know, kind of squatting or anything like that.

[Adam Schafer]

If you're training Jiu jitsu two days a week, three days, days a week, and you're chopping wood every day, all you got to do is correctional exercise.

[Colleen]

Yeah, supplement it.

[Adam Schafer]

Just correctional exercise.

[Doug]

One, one day a week of working out, four exercises is more than enough.

[Adam Schafer]

More than enough.

[Doug]

More than enough.

[Adam Schafer]

And even if you don't do that.

[Doug]

Just do correctional, you technically could not do that and be fine.

[Adam Schafer]

Totally.

[Doug]

Or like a maps 15 type of protocol. Just one or two movements throughout the week. But yeah, you're. You're already doing a lot that is going to require strength, require mobility, require endurance. Like, and you're gonna. And by the way, this is a great story to tell your clients at. I'm at a. I was at a place in my life where even as a personal trainer, I wasn't lifting weights why I was doing Jiu Jitsu three times a week. I was chopping wood, I was staying healthy, fit, strong, all those things require those things. It wasn't the right time in my life to be lifting weights. And then I've been a bodybuilder where I was training six, seven days a week to be a bodybuilder, like so it's a great story, a great example to give your clients and teach them that, that you don't necessarily have to be lifting weights in the gym six days a week to be healthy and fit. So scale way back one day a week of training or less and, or like two exercises like for max 15, that, that type of style is what you need right now.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay.

[Afton]

And then once that obviously the chopping wood's gonna go away eventually maybe drop into something like anabolic. I, I have maps 15. I just, I started it and then ran into do all this work on the ranch, so I, I had to stop it. But you know, obviously with Jiu Jitsu, two to three times a week, maybe something like Anabolic or like Maps 15 would be a good route to go to.

[Doug]

But even though even anabolic one or two days, that's it, if you're doing, you gotta think your Jiu Jitsu is like a hardcore lifting session. Think of it like that. So if you're already hardcore lifting two to three times, you can really only afford to do maybe one, maybe two on a good week when you feel amazing, well rested. And so you, your training would be one day of anabolic, maybe two on a day where you.

[Adam Schafer]

That's right.

[Doug]

Don't make the mistake of even doing three days of that. Three days of strength training with two to three days of Jiu Jitsu is a lot too much, right?

[Afton]

Yeah, that's something I, I've definitely had to learn after listening to you guys because beforehand I was, I was still trying to train like a bodybuilder and do Jiu Jitsu two to three times a week. It was. And that probably explains why I got these injuries for sure.

[Doug]

Common mistake, bro. Very, very common.

[Afton]

Okay, awesome. Well I, I appreciate it guys. It's awesome. Another quick fact. I know you guys have talked about your faith before. I just wanted to throw it in there. Hearing you guys talk about your stories amongst a lot of other people recently, in the past like two weeks, I, I found God and it has already changed my life for the better. So I love hearing your guys story and, and you know, I, and now I get to experience the Same.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Doug]

That's amazing.

[Adam Schafer]

God bless you, bro.

[Doug]

Yeah, Good for you, man.

[Afton]

All right, well, I appreciate it, guys. Keep up the good work and thanks for everything you do.

[Adam Schafer]

You got it. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it seems like a no brainer. He's already got rid of his overhead. He's got a big box right there.

[Doug]

Those skills carry over those skills.

[Adam Schafer]

When he said that, like right away as he was talking about that, if I was interviewing, be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he knows how to work hard, like, done deal.

[Doug]

Done deal.

[Colleen]

He'll do champion in that setting and it's all gonna fall.

[Adam Schafer]

I gave him 90 days because that's what I would see with average trainers that applied themselves. Good ones, great ones. A month, they would crush.

[Doug]

They'll do well.

[Adam Schafer]

Yep. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at mindpump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump. To Stephano Adams at Mind Pump.

[Greg]

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super [e-mail] the RGB Super Bundle includes Maps, Anabolic Maps, Performance and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and open 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 [e-mail] 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.

[Justin Andrews]

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[Adam Schafer]

Stage and the site is live.

[Justin Andrews]

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[Doug]

Globe Stage this one's going to Thailand.

[Justin Andrews]

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