← Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth
Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth
2595: Mike Istraetel Unplugged (Explicit Content)
01:33:10
Mike Israetel How powerful is muscle memory? (1:35) The amount of strength training required for the average person to build muscle. (10:01) Why in some cases doing less is best. (14:57) His demons and sharing his own personal journey. (19:00)...
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Transcript113 lines
- [00:00]
Sal Destefano
If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.
- [00:06]
Justin Andrews
Mind Pump.
- [00:07]
Adam Schafer
Mind Pump.
- [00:08]
Sal Destefano
With your hosts, Sal Destefano, Adam Schafer.
- [00:12]
Justin Andrews
And Justin Andrews, you just found the.
- [00:14]
Adam Schafer
Most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. All right. This episode is one of my favorites ever. We finally got Dr. Mike Isratel on the podcast. You know who he is, by the way. Warning. This episode has lots of colorful language and topics. We haven't laughed this hard in a long time, but also good stuff. Talk about fitness and muscle building, the science behind it. So it's a very entertaining but also educational episode. Again, this is not this, you know, parental advice here. This is colorful, colorful episode. So. But we know you're going to love this episode, especially if you're a fan of of his. By the way, you can find him on Instagram rmikeisratel. It's I S R A E T E L. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Vuori. So Vuori Clothing is Athleisure wear. It's the best athleisure wear, I think, in the world. It's very popular. And if you go through our link, you'll get 40% off. Excuse me, you'll get 20% off. So if you want to check them out, go to vuoriclothing.com that's V U O R I clothing.com mindpump Again, that link gets you 20. We also have a sale this month. Maps 15 Performance and the RGB bundle are both half off. If you're Interested, go to maps fitnessproducts.com and then use the code MAY50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show. Mike, welcome to the show, man.
- [01:38]
Justin Andrews
Thanks for having me, guys. Sorry I couldn't make it in person.
- [01:40]
Adam Schafer
Yeah, no problem. In fact, we just off air learned that you just had some surgery, have to take six weeks off of training, which you're probably lose all your gains. You know, of course, that's how it works here. You know, this actually leads me to a good question or a good topic because you're obviously heavily muscled. You've been training for a long time. I think you said off air was the longest you'd ever really taken off of training was like a week and a half. So you're very consistent. Six weeks off doing nothing because of surgery, of course you're gonna lose some muscle. But you got muscle memory and talk about that for how powerful of an effect is muscle memory? What does the data show on how quickly you can gain back muscle once you've built it, and then, you know, you lose it.
- [02:26]
Justin Andrews
Great question. It's actually difficult to understate or. Sorry. It's difficult to overstate the effect of muscle memory. It is an incredibly powerful effect. So if you have trained especially, the longer you've trained, the more of a thing this is. But if you've trained for years especially, and you've gotten to a certain level of muscularity and you've been at that level for a while, when you don't train for however long and you lose however much muscle, what ends up happening is when you got much bigger, you increase the size of all of your muscle cells. But if you get much bigger than a moderate amount, you end up, during the course of your gain in size, incorporating satellite cells into your muscle cells. These satellite cells are basically just cell nuclei that kind of like come into the regular cell and they help grow muscle, maintain muscle, and control all the functions of a muscle cell. It's kind of like if New York City, if Manhattan only had one fire department and one police station and one hospital for all five boroughs, it would be like, ridiculous. And all the boroughs would burn down and everyone would die, and the police would never get there. Because it's just one nucleus for a huge area. Your cells work in much the same way. And so just like if a town or a city grows, it gets multiple precincts and multiple hospitals and multiple fire departments as your muscle cel satellite cells incorporated them and give them these multiple nuclei. The thing is, once you have a lot of nuclei in a muscle cell, once that cell shrinks down, the nuclei don't delete out. They just stay there. And so when you start training again, you have multiples, the power to manufacture muscle protein because the nucleus is what does a huge degree of the manufacturing and all the ultra. All the ultra structures around it. And so now you essentially have the equivalent of like, ridiculous genetics when you're coming back. And so when you're coming back to regain that muscle, it happens unbelievably quickly. And if you've ever experienced this yourself, you're like, kind of in awe. You're like, what the hell? So I honestly anticipate that worst case scenario, after about six weeks of training again, from taking six weeks off, I expect to be about as muscular as I've ever been. And it's probably pessimistic because probably after about four weeks, I should be very close to my best ever. That's how fast it comes back. And this is such good news for People that have to take time off. Because I think there is this very understandable misunderstanding that many people have, which is they think, okay, I train and I'm big because I train and I've been training for 10 years and I've gotten quite jacked. And if I detrain for let's say a year, then I lose kind of a lot of muscle, which is like very true. And then however much muscle I lose, let's say I was pretty jacked, 200 pounds, pretty lean. And after a year of not training, whatever, motorcycle accident, whatever, I'm 170. What they do is they look back to when they were first, 170 fucking six years ago, and they go, oh my God, oh my God. It took me five years to get from 170 to 200. It's gonna take me five years again to put this muscle back on. But it really takes like five months. And so that is incredibly good news for anyone that's detrained. And it's news that's used in a really good way. Here's a good way to use this. Don't you dare get upset or down on yourself or disappointed when you have to have a layoff of training because it will come back so goddamn fast. And also because you're not pounding your joints into oblivion all the time and you're not pushing yourself through crazy hard workouts, both your joints and your mental aspects are going to be super, super refreshed. I mean, after six weeks of not training, I'm going to basically be restarting my training career psychologically and joint wise. And that's such a good thing. In the Eastern Bloc countries that were pretty good about formal periodization back in the day, a lot of times after a yearly cycle or especially after an Olympic cycle, many of the athletes, for about one to three months after the conclusion of, let's say the world championships and whatever sport they were at, they literally just disappeared and did not engage in the process of sport training in any capacity. They went on vacation. Well, back in the Eastern Bloc, days that you couldn't leave the country, you know, had whatever kind of leisure time you have in communism, all that kind of good stuff. And then after a few months, they would start this long process of getting in shape again. And it was a long process simply because they didn't want to get hurt. But they could easily be back in good shape in two months. But they took their time. And then by the middle of the year, they were at regionals, they were at the equivalent of states and nationals Breaking records again. They go to the World Championships, they'd win again. As soon as Worlds were over, they would just take months off. It's something that we in the free Western world, because we're engaged in training purely voluntarily in almost every case. It's not like none of us are getting paid to fucking do this. We're doing this because we love it and because, you know, as far as I can speak for myself, have a variety of psychosocial disorders about my body and so on and so forth, and a lot of rage to get out of these barbells. Fuck you, dad. You know, shit like that. And then so because of that, we never really take a lot of time off and because we're paranoid about it, we think any time off is going to fuck us up. But it really just. Reality is the very, very opposite of that. And I think that's just wonderful news.
- [07:45]
Adam Schafer
Yeah, it is. And it's, it's so incredibly powerful that when you experience, people have experienced it, when they have a broken limb and they'll wear a cast and then they take the cast off, they're like, oh my God, I can see my bones. And then without even training, the muscle comes back. I think it points to the protective effects that strength training provides that are unique to other forms of exercise. That's why we sell it so hard. Are you familiar with like the Colorado experiment? You know, the familiar, the, the popular experiment that Casey Viator was a part of with Dr. Arthur?
- [08:17]
Justin Andrews
Yes, that's, that's when he never trained ever before or used steroids during the experiment. And he managed to gain 89 pounds of muscle in three and a half days. Exclusively due to Nautilus equipment.
- [08:28]
Adam Schafer
Yes, yes. Now it was, it was witnessed, people. I don't know if it was 89. It was a ridiculous amount of muscle, but I think it was 60. A big part of the story, A big part of the story was Casey Viader was sick and was. Had lost a lot before that. He was a highly competitive body. Lost so much muscle going into it, and then started training and, you know, maybe using gear. So he had the additive effect plus his genetics. So I think it's. It might have happened.
- [08:54]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Well, I just went through the 22 pounds in four weeks. Yeah, I mean, that was an example. Obviously not as crazy as that example, but of course everybody thought I was lying and all this bullshit, but it was. What I knew was I was a competitor, I was a men's physique pro for years and walked around at 240, you know, 5% body fat for extended period of time. Since then, I've completely fallen off keeping that kind of muscle. And so over the course of the last three, four years, I've lost 50 pounds of muscle off my body. Still have decent amount, but nowhere near what I had before. And then I had just coming off of not training for like a month or two, and I documented the process of building back, and I told the audience, watch what I go do. I'm gonna go build 25 pounds of muscle as fast I can. I did it in four weeks. I put on like, 22 pounds. And nobody believed it. And the crazy part, Mike, is that I was doing two lifts a day. That's it. So. So not. Not only does it. The period of time is so short, but even the volume and. And level of intensity that I had to do to get it back, it blew me away. I actually was really shocked. I mean, I went about it my best I could and was a little surprised at how. How easy it was to get it back.
- [10:01]
Adam Schafer
That's another good direction. I'd like to ask you, Mike, because one of the reasons why we have you on the. The fact you have a very colorful personality, very entertaining to watch.
- [10:11]
Justin Andrews
It's a nice way to say it.
- [10:13]
Adam Schafer
Is you communicate accurately. Because we all have two decades of training clients. We worked with everyday people for years and years and years. When I hear really smart people communicating how much strength training you need for the average person to get some strength, some gains, whatever, you communicate it the most accurately. Based off of what we've experienced, how much strength training does the average person really need to reap the kind of benefits that they're looking for? Not to be a pro bodybuilder, to get crazy, but just to get the strength, mobility, you know, some of the health effects, like, what does that look like for the average person?
- [10:52]
Justin Andrews
It looks like a few sets per muscle group. A few times a week is gonna get you, like, a humongous fraction of gains. So, like, if you do three sets of work for your quads two times a week, and each one of those sets is pretty fucking hard, close to failure. You can do that for literally years and see continued radical improvements and just get really, really great results, are they going to be your best results? No, your best results would be doing 30 sets per week. But the difference between good results and best results is, like, maybe double. I mean, the degree to which there's a hyperbolic kind of asymptotic relationship of how much work you put into how much jackness you get is really impressive. A little sad for those of us who want to be exotically big, because it's like, look, if you want to get 20% bigger, you have to do one and a half times the work. The fuck? That doesn't add up. You want to be twice as big, you have to do, like, four times the work. Like, oh, God damn it. But the opposite end of that is really good news. But if you want to make an awesome body transformation and get incredible health, incredible strength, incredible mobility, finally get some fucking blood in your cock. And am I allowed to swear on here? Family podcast. Podcast. How dare you. So if you want all those amazing benefits and you want to look like TRT dad or whatever, you really just have to do, like, two to four sets per muscle, two times a week. Go pretty hard. You're going to get incredible benefits. And that's such a big deal, I think, for most people to realize, because there's this thing which is getting very understandable, but people see pretty jacked people, pretty lean people, and they automatically assume that this is, like a lifestyle, that this person doesn't do anything else. One of my friends, actually the COO of RP Strength, our company, he had already been working. He's been working since he was a teenager. Like, three jobs at the same time. This is a fucking workaholic. Works all the time. And he really got in really good shape at one point. He's done this a few times in his life, but, like, very noticeable. Like, lost a bunch of weight, gained a bunch of muscle, and he went over to a family function. And these are people. These are Azerbaijanis, right? Like Central Asian, Russian type folks, and very old world culture. And they noticed he was in great shape. And one of his uncles or whatever was like, oh, you look great. He's like, thanks. He's like, you know, I would do the same thing, too, but I have a job. And Yasha's like, you think I'm a fucking. You think I don't have a job? Of course he didn't say anything because it's all respect culture. Oh, yeah, you know, true. But it's like, oh, no. Well, I can't get in shape. I would need to, like, eight, you know, train eight hours a day. Another thing I get all the time is, you know, like, when I'm in my fairly jacked look, I, you know, travel a lot, talk to random people at airports. They just assume that it takes, like, hours a day. Like, you. You guys, I'm sure, get this question all the time. Like, how, how many times a week do you train or like how many hours a day? And then they're looking for like, I train 12 times a week. I train eight hours a day. I like train. My treatment training is like a union job in the fucking 70s in Pittsburgh. I fucking clock in, I can get in the iron mill, I fucking clock, lock out. I fucking look at my family all wrong and eat the fucking Salisbury steak while looking at my wife all wrong. It gets a fucking lifestyle. The thing is, you can get a huge amount of gains doing fractions of that work. And I think a lot of people, two things want to hear that because, like, oh my God, like I didn't have these great gains and really only spend like three hours at the gym per week. But also I think some people, low key, kind of subconsciously don't want to hear that because thinking that getting a better physique and getting much leaner and looking way younger and it's going to require some effort, thinking that it requires so much effort that you will never be able to do it is a great, like cope mechanism excuse to keep in your back pocket. Because when you look at that guy that's your age, but he's jacked and shredded and you're like, well, I have a family and I have kids. And then you see he has like triplets. He's walking with, you know, fuck, that excuse doesn't work anymore. At least you can tell yourself you're a hardworking American. You pay taxes. Well, he's a degenerate that lives at the gym. And the reality is, like, you can have most of what he has and spend two or three hours a gym a week. A lot of people want to hear that. A lot of people don't fucking want to hear that.
- [14:57]
Adam Schafer
Yeah, I think the other, the other part of it too, Mike, and I'd love your input on this, is a lot of us, we don't do what's optimal. We just push what we can tolerate. And so we're in the gym more than is necessary to the limits of our ability to recover. And we think that's what's necessary to look the way we do when oftentimes you scale back even with that person and they get better gains. They get better gains from doing less.
- [15:23]
Justin Andrews
Yeah, there's no way to figure out how you're going to get your best gains unless you experiment with training much less than you typically do, around the amount that you typically do, and much more than you typically do. And you do each one of these for weeks. And weeks and even months if you can. And you very objectively analyze the result. In some cases, doing way less is the best. In some cases, you know, what you figured out over the years probably works really well. And in many cases, good news or bad news is like, well, the more you do, the better you get. I have a friend who just. He's in his. Fuck it. It's Eric Helms. I don't know if you guys know he's a natural pro bodybuilder. He's in his early 40s, and he just kind of discovered that, like, the more volume he adds to his program, the better he gets. And he's making, objectively, the best gains ever in his fucking early 40s. And he's like, man, it's like low key. I didn't want to figure this out because I didn't want to have to do this. But I love training and it's great news. It's kind of like, damn, I really do have to do 35 sets for my biceps every week. But for many people, they are 100%, to your point, pushing it way too far. And it's just a matter of figuring out, I guess, through mindfulness. If that sounds kind of lame, why am I doing this? Do I really believe that throwing up after every leg day is my best path to success? Logically? Like, I have to talk to ChatGPT and justify how I train. Could I do it in a way that makes sense? Or my doing this shit for vibes? And because, you know, my dad didn't love me when I was between the ages of 7 and 10 or some shit like that, I made. I didn't make the Class 1 peewee football team. I made the Class 2 team. And I never fucking let that down. I'm never going to fucking hang my head down in front of another man. So you bet I'm doing 9 cents a hack squats today. I don't care if I have rabido every fucking workout. I'm a goddamn human adult male and I will be granted my respect if that's where the shit is coming from. Like, listen on vibes dope. 100% dying fucking hack squat. What a goddamn honor. But unlike optimality and getting the best results, then it's a different question. You have to experiment with yourself. It could be more, it could be less. Could be way less. And I always get a bunch of shit, you know, in the comments, like, like with as many as a fucking ego move with as many followers as I have comments. But, you know, once you hit a certain level of bullshit, fake social media fame. The number of comments you get is like intractably large. And it's so many people when I say like, hey, here's a way to train. Here's a volume that you can do at science seems to show is kind of probably the best way to do it. I get a lot of people real fucking butthurt. And number one reason they're butthurt is they're doing some shit that's not bad, but they're really fucking emotionally attached to it. Like it matters to them that they get to like, like I often say, like, training all the way to failure is typically unnecessary for your best gains. And in many cases a few reps shy failure is even better long term, sustainability wise. And like, I almost never hear a technical refutation and I almost always hear like, you fucking pussy. Like you fucking. I was going to use another F word that might get you guys canceled, you know, derogatory term for homosexual. And like they, you know, they say the shit and I'm just like, oh, I get it. Like, you just have a lot of feelings. And for me it really helped to do Brazilian jiu jitsu because all the bullshit feelings I had about being a man or whatever got real sorted out on my fifth time getting bellied by the fucking local blue belt. I have no more ego after that. But if you don't have that fucking combat sport outlet, I get it. Like you go to the gym and you fight your demons, which again is dope. But it's a very different question than what is optimal. And optimal could be a lot less and a lot less glorious than you want. And so those are questions you have.
- [18:59]
Dr. Mike Isratel
To ask your, like, where are you at in, you know, this is. So since we're here and I've heard you kind of tongue in cheek talk about your drivers and your, you know, body dysmorphia and stuff like that. Where are you personally at in your own journey with all your wisdom, your experience, obviously your level you've reached already. Like, what are, what are the demons you're trying to fight or sort out? Or like, where are you at with your own personal journey?
- [19:22]
Justin Andrews
You see, my uncle, he got in the same bathroom as me when I was four. And what happens? I actually enjoyed it, believe it or not. And that's the fucked up thing. I liked it and told me it was wrong, you know, but he was really good at his job. Job paid for it maybe. He was paid for so bad. Fuck that. That's a hell of a great question, you know, so like, I don't actually have body dysmorphia on the technical qualifications. And I'm not saying I'm defending myself here. I am a fucking lunatic cocksucker with 50 trillion flaws. I am not anyone's hero. Do not look up to me. I will disappoint you inevitably. But like when people say, oh, you have body dysmorphia, they forget that like body dysmorphic disorder is like a diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders diagnosable disorder. You have to meet certain conditions. Yeah, but just don't. So here's a really good start to how to figure out if you have body dysmorphia. If you are objectively way bigger and leaner than the average person, let's say in your age group and you don't think that you are objectively bigger and leaner and you resist accepting that you might have some body dysmorphia. Now this might come off cocky. Whatever. I know I'm jacked. For the love of God, look at my head shape. It's ridiculous. I typically walk around at like 5, 6, 230 pounds with like faint glutes, diations. I would have be insane to think that's not like Tank. Of course it's Tank. I actually had a. This one guy who worked at a gym, a security guard when I was a professor at Temple is only, only black people have certain phrasings that are just unbelievable. He looks me up and down. He's like, man, you want some Tank shit, huh? I am on Tank shit, sir. Thank you so much. So, you know, I don't actually think. I'm not jacked. However, there are parts of my look I do not like. The love handles, fucking lifetime of combat against that I finally was like, fuck it, I'm getting cut out. That's going to be a big deal. And I have another like one really big demon. I have yet to put a physique on the bodybuilding stage that I think is like, that's it right there. That is appropriately shredded and has all the things I like in a physique. I'm not trying to look like Dexter Jackson or some shit. Phil Heath, that's never gonna happen. But can have I reached my best look that I could. No. Do I have a hang up about that? Yeah, I'd like to do it. And so I'm still fighting the good fight. I'll be competing again almost certainly in 2026. I think I could have bigger arms. I think I could have Bigger shoulders. But is it more of, like, I already know I'm jacked and lean, and this is just looking for, like, that extra, extra. Yeah. Do I love my physique all the time. I'm not in love with it. So, like, for example, now the love handles are gone. I look way better, but I also, like, genetically just have, like, a bigger gut. And, like, I don't know if you guys have seen, like, I. I can do this thing where I, like, relax and my gut looks huge, and then I can do a real legit vacuum pose in the next second. It looks kind of wild. Like, I don't love having a gut. I've had a gut my whole life. Am I, like, infatuated of that? No. I think it looks fucking awful. Think it looks objectively awful. There's no one that's like, no, actually, it looks great. Like, that's bullshit. So at the same time, I have, like, ridiculous pecs. Like, my pecs are, like, straight up obnoxious looking. I have humongous triceps. My quads, I haven't trained in a year because they got outlandish and threw off the rest of my physique. And to be honest, they barely shrunk, but the fuck. Okay, fine. So now I'm just going to, like, start training my legs again. And full send the shit. Who cares? So, like, there's parts of my body that are fucking awesome, and I love and there's parts of my body that I don't love. It's like a marriage. You don't love everything about your wife, or in some of your case, fellas, husband. I know y' all from California. That's how you do. And so just a guy, you know, at the bar who cares, and, you know, it's a. It's a mixed bag. So do I have demons about the shit? Yeah, but they're like, you know, like, they're not for real demons. I'm not, like, waking up in the middle of the night screaming, looking for my ability, you know, from iCock. Absolutely. And it's usually the nightmare that's real because I can't find it.
- [23:09]
Dr. Mike Isratel
So that was about as honest as somebody could have answered that question.
- [23:13]
Justin Andrews
You guys want me to lie? No.
- [23:16]
Adam Schafer
No.
- [23:16]
Dr. Mike Isratel
I appreciate ptsd. So, okay, I love that answer.
- [23:21]
Adam Schafer
You.
- [23:22]
Dr. Mike Isratel
What does that balance look like with your. Your personal relationships, your business? Like, is there anything like that? That. Do you see yourself? Like, okay, I'm going to reach a point where it's like, yeah, I'm good. I've presented that Physique and then maybe I'm going to cruise or like, how does that all work? Like, how's the balance of relationships, family, business work with this obsessive. I'm going to go become a monster still.
- [23:46]
Justin Andrews
Yeah, that's a great question. So this past summer I had planned to do four shows. I did the first show as a tune up show. I didn't look that great. And then right after that show I realized that with the amount of steroids that I was taking and the amount of really huge degree of focus that you have to have to do prep, especially multiple shows in a row, I was going to be passing up a lot of opportunities in like the YouTube Insta famous land. And that's when I was like blowing up, fucking like crazy. And I was having like all these invitations to go on these crazy ass, like diary of a CEO type of podcast, like a gazillion views. And I'm like, well man, either I continue to compete right now or I put the shit aside for now and focus on the YouTube shit. Because like, glory's dope, but like money, I. It comes around, these opportunities come around. They may not come around after. Like, you know, man, it's like there's like movies every now and again in which like this person is like trying to become a singer, song songwriter and they, they go through these trials and tribulations and they finally have their crazy audition. And like, you know, typically like the, the people signing them to the record label are kind of cocksuckers. They won't let them do it. They somehow get the audition, they blow it out of the water and the record label's like, do you want a deal? And they're like, nah, I'm good. It was just to prove that I could do it. They walk off my Jewish ass. I'm like, motherfucker, are you out of your minds? A 50 million dollar record deal? You crazy? Where are you going? Someone bring that bitch back to sign that fucking contract. You must be out of your mind. So when this whole YouTube bullshit happened, I was like, oh fuck, I'm like junior league famous or whatever. I was like, I'm gonna milk this shit out for everything it's worth. So I had to, I had to take a step back, take way less gear, focus on more like balancing my physique instead of just training everything for size. And so that was a big deal. And then in addition to that, like, you know, being on trend and shit, not exactly good for my relationship with my wife. And so I was like, okay, that ship has sailed. Now I'm coming back into my physique phase. But it turns out that I came basically back to TRT and I functionally lost almost no muscle and I was fucking blown away. I was like, oh my God, I've been taking way too much gear for so goddamn long. And so that was. I would have never figured that out had I not backed off. So now I'm going to be coming back in the competition and I'm basically going to take no more than like 500 migs of total gear. And I know for a fact I can put a physique on stage. It's like 210 pounds shredded, like the shredded thing. We'll see if it works out. That's aspirational but like muscularity wise, no problem, no problem. And so I'm going to do that. So luckily the trade offs aren't as big, but next time. So then 2026, when I hope to come back to bodybuilding competitively, I'm going to have to carve out a lot of time from my day away from work and to really do the thing right. Because like, there's a reason they call it professional bodybuilding. There's actually two reasons. One is you have a pro card from whatever federation you're competing in. That's reason number one. Reason number two is you are professional athlete, which means that's what you do. You fucking don't. You have some, you know, commitments to your sponsors, you post some fucking tiktoks for them every now and again, you wear their T shirt to the gym, but that's it. You play PlayStation, you, you bang your toxic Latina girlfriend and you just fucking train and you fucking go to sleep and that's what you do. And you eat your meals. That is a reason. It's not that the guys are lazy, is that like you need everything possible to recover as much as you can. That requires trade offs. I was kind of trying to do it all at the same time. That pretty decent results at everything and then decent isn't good enough. And so for me, next time I come through competition, I'm going to have to lessen the shit for a little while and then come back into it. But as far as will I ever want to back up and focus on other stuff, Like I could, I could tell you, yes, but what I want to look like and what I look like now are far enough apart that until and unless my health just throws the middle finger and I was like, nah, you're done, I'm Gonna try to improve my look. Like, I want significantly bigger arms and shoulders. I want a wider back, I want bigger upper pecs. And my legs are good now, but they'll probably get bigger anyway just because this is what they do and so I can improve my physique. For me, the most important part of working on my physique is the art. It's the science in the art of actually doing it. I don't give a fuck. Like, competing is whatever. I'm not a big fan of competing. I've won my class in shows before. It was no more fun than losing my class. You stand around, you look at everyone's you. Like 30, 40 minutes later, you don't have a pump anymore. They say, you're going up on stage, whatever, it's fine. Competing is fine. And a lot of people love it. And I'm trying to get into the mode where I love it. But the thing I love most is improving my physique and eating the meals and getting the sleep and knowing that I have a purpose. And I treat my body as a sculpture. And I'm always trying to improve it. Am I gonna be able to give that up? Yes. Do I wanna give that up? Not really. Are there drugs already in the pipeline that are gonna allow us, with no anabolics whatsoever, to radically go a fuckload of muscle and get super lean? Yes. I could talk about those. I'm waiting for them shits. Cause when your boy gets his hands on that, I'm going want arms that are more inconvenient to live with now. Like, now, if I sleep on my side for long enough, my arm goes dead because my delts and arms are big enough now. The way they cut off their own circulation. Fellas, I'm trying to get the whole shit. I'm trying to get my arms amputated because they're so goddamn big. That's when I've considered a fucking success. Is that body dysmorphia or not?
- [29:19]
Dr. Mike Isratel
I can't.
- [29:19]
Adam Schafer
True one percenter. What do you. What drugs are you talking about? Are these myostatin inhibiting drugs? Are they correct?
- [29:27]
Justin Andrews
Correct. So there's a. There's a drug that just passed primate trials and it's a dual agonist. So sorry, dual antagonist. It antagonizes myostatin. Myostatin is the molecule that exists in all of your skeletal muscle that caps your muscle growth. Myo is muscle statin, a stopper blocker. And man, the Latin's really did figure all this shit out. And so basically, that is a Hugely powerful molecule that if you uncork, you just fucking grow muscle all the time. If you guys listen to this podcast, Google like double muscle mouse or muscle greyhound or muscle co, you're going to see pictures that you're like, what are they fucking, what steroids are they feeding these things? None. And they don't train and they have as much muscle as physiologically possible given all their other genetics. But there's more. There's another compound called activin A that also antagonizes muscle growth. And so this dual agonist and it antagonizes myostatin and alpha activin. So these are blockers of muscle that these drugs uncork, they unblock. And the recent study that came out on these was. Let me try to summarize the study really quick. So they had four groups of monkeys and they gave them all the fucking plague virus and they just released them into New York City. Wouldn't that be sweet? After outbreak with Dustin Hoffman back in the day, I can't ever see research monkeys the same way. Keep them fucking demon monkeys the fuck away from me. However. So group number one, this is a 20 week diet they put these monkeys on, calorically restricted to a decent amount. Group number one, they just did it. Natty, Natty monkeys, you know, they're real proud of themselves and shit. They talk about how they're natty all the time in monkey language. But the other monkeys, they just gave him semaglutide. So like, you know, like GLP1 classic. The other group, they just gave him the myostatin inhibitor plus semaglutide. And then the fourth group, they gave him the active and alpha, the active in a inhibitor, myostatin inhibitor plus semaglutide. So three fucking vectors. And what they found was the group number one, the natty monkeys, they lost almost no muscle and they lost a bit of fat. Group two, the semaglutide monkeys lost like almost double the fat, but like a significantly more muscle. Not a ton, but like you can tell. Group three, that had the myostatin a drug plus semaglutide lost like almost double the fat that the, that the semaglutide monkeys lost. Almost triple the fat that the natty monkeys lost. And they lost about the same amount of muscle as the monkeys who were natty, which is to say almost none. So we're talking about a drug that you can lose like 2.7 times X the fat but with zero added muscle loss. Check this out. The triple monkeys, myostatin activin and semaglutide, they lost even more weight by a little bit. So basically three times the weight that the natty monkeys lost in in fat. And they gained in muscle at the same time what the drug free monkeys lost in fat. Wow, wow, wow. So let me put this really quick into common terms. I translated these numbers into proxies for like a 200 pound person at 20% body fat. If the results hold for humans, which they'll similarly hold for humans, especially if you adjust the dosing. The natty human would be like two identical twins. One twin, 20% body fat. After 20 weeks, he's gonna weigh a 200 pounds 20 body fat. He's gonna weigh about 192 pounds at about 16.5 fat. 20 weeks of dieting, drug free. Cool, right? Cool. That's good. That's good, right? You know, Janice at work notices and tries to suck your dick in the bathroom as usual. And then, you know, but you're at work. Janice, get the. Away from me. I got to do. And then the other identical twin, in this case with the TR. With the three drugs started at 200 pounds 20 body fat in 20 weeks would have gotten to 181 pounds, which is okay. He lost like 10 more pounds. 11 more pounds. Cool. 6.5% body fat. Wow. Wow, you guys, this is coming. It is only one of the drugs that Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is working on. It's already a drug. They already know it works. It just has to go through FDA trials. And don't you bet against this. All the other pharmaceutical companies are catching onto that shit too because they realized Semaglutide and all the GLP ones and the GIP drugs that they have out now, they're unbelievable at helping people lose weight. The problem is people in a huge caloric deficit like that will lose some muscle. And you can't have older women and older men and obese populations losing muscle because it tanks their metabolic health. It makes them fucking unable to take care of themselves. That's no good. And so these companies have been working on these non androgenic anabolics, these drugs that through no, nothing to do with steroids. No mood swings, no ball shrinkage, no yelling at your girlfriend and then crying afterwards and begging her not to leave. None of that shit. Some of it's fun, right? Trent is fun. Said no whenever and then. So none of that. They just. These drugs are here and they. In several years, probably three years or less, depending on the FDA regulations, will be hitting the market this Will change everything. And I can't fucking wait. Cause your boy's gonna get fucking nonsense arms.
- [34:36]
Adam Schafer
Yeah, well, the, the motivation behind this has got to be the, the GLP1s, because those are blockbusters are changing, they're shifting culture. And yeah, the, the motivation before was for things like muscle, you know, muscular dystrophy and muscle wasting disease, which is a big deal, but it's not that big of a deal from a market perspective, like the obesity. So we're basically gonna reach the exercise in a pill, you know, mythology that people, you know, we'll bring up with those two. With those combinations. Are there any downsides to myostatin inhibiting drugs and. Cause you're not working out, you're not getting fit, you're just building a bunch of muscle. Do you still get a lot of the same effects? Insulin sensitizing, the.
- [35:18]
Justin Andrews
Yes.
- [35:19]
Adam Schafer
Okay, but are there any downsides? Why does myostatin exist in the first place? Like, you know, one of those, like it's natural, therefore it's good type of deal. Are they seeing any negatives?
- [35:30]
Justin Andrews
2% of the people become insane and homicidal. It's maybe just a chance. I'm kidding. Oh God. The CEO of Regeneron's like getting, you know, I think all CEOs have like one of those old revolvers in their desk that they take out to, you know, and, and the whole thing when the stock goes down. So that's what's happening. There's a reason that myostatin exists and all of the other related compounds exist. And that is because muscle growth is two things in the natural evolved environment. At some point totally useless. Because like, take Ronnie Coleman in his prime. What exactly is the adaptive value of being 287 pounds of 3% body fat?
- [36:10]
Dr. Mike Isratel
None.
- [36:10]
Justin Andrews
Like, I mean, you're not really any better at hunting. You're not gonna be picking pear trees any better to gather the shit. You don't weave baskets any better. So in a typical human evolved environment, it's just fucking pointless. And the second thing is, it is metabolically insanely expensive to build muscle and to maintain muscle. And so your body evolved in an intermittent starvation environment. Like sometimes there was food and sometimes the fucking buffalo herd didn't zig by your village and half of you fucking starved to death. And so the body is incredibly, incredibly efficient with its calories. Such that. You guys know this from. Sure. From personal experience. When you work out a lot, you get really tired and you sit around a lot more and your body doesn't even let you lose more weight. There's a reason it's really hard to diet off a bunch of weight because your body's just not interested in the shit. It's really economical. If we uncork the muscle growth process in the wild, we start to divert so many resources to muscle growth that we just don't have much food, then you're fucking pretty jacked. You're pretty shredded. And you're dead on the side of the road because you couldn't fucking like, your liver can't fucking get enough calories to operate. The good news is we have capitalism and fucking grocery stores and we're all by, by, by historical standards hyper, hyper fucking rich. And so because we have infinity food now, yeah, there may be no functional big downsides now. Of course there's going to be some adverse effects like that with every drug. There's going to be some people that just don't take to the. And they have some bad downsides. But on the whole, you're likely to see a side effect profile with these drugs that you do with semaglutide and tirzepatide. Like, yeah, there's some. And if you take it wrong, it you up a little bit. But on average, almost everyone tolerates it really well and it's probably healthier to take the shit than not take the shit. One really cool thing about the GLP1s, the GIPS. More and more research shows that regardless of if you lose weight with them or not, they have like 10 incredibly beneficial overall health and metabolic effects. These are fucking wonder drugs, you guys, to be used responsibly. And they can have downsides, but if you figure out the dosing and figure out your diet for, for most people, these drugs are awesome. So myostatin inhibitor drugs, the active inhibitor drugs, and I'm sure the fucking eight generations of even better versions of those that are coming up afterwards. It's gonna be one of those things of like, what's the downside of Viagra? Like, you see slightly different shades of blue and your head kind of hurts and your nose is puffy, which is a problem. Because if you're doing cunnilingas, how the fuck are you supposed to breathe through your nose and your mouth at the same time? This is the only problem. Otherwise your dick just gets engorged and you're out there slain, fellas. So you know what I'm saying? Like, talk some shit about Cialis. I'm not gonna be here for it. It's a fucking wonder drug.
- [38:44]
Adam Schafer
We should have everyone on it, you know. Okay, so I wanna circle back. I'll circle back to GLP1s in just a second. But you, you brought something up that I'd like to touch on. Because there's a bit of a debate in the fitness space around reverse dieting or, you know, strength training for fat loss. Because we can see a metabolic boost type of deal now. We trained people for decades. I've reverse dieted people, I've used strength training. For me, it's always been the most effective way to get fat loss for the average person for multiple reasons. But what are your thoughts on reverse dieting? What are your thoughts on being able to impact your metabolism in a positive way through building muscle or the strength training process? What's your opinion on all that?
- [39:28]
Justin Andrews
I mean, it holds a lot of water. It's not magic. But it also depends on how extreme it is. If you have a client who's £230 and they lose £15, you don't need to do crazy protocols to get their metabolism backfiring. It's probably better than it's ever been. If you have a competitor who's gone down to 4% body fat, you can't even reverse diet them. You need to bulk them out of that. One of the big myths with reverse dieting when it came up was people realized it worked pretty well. And so a lot of competitors were like, oh, my God, if I reverse diet out of my show, I can stay 5% body fat and gain back all these benefits. You just can't stay at 5%. You gotta bulk your way the fuck back up out of that. But if you are adding lots of muscle to your body over time, and if you are careful to not crash your metabolism during a diet, or you slowly weave back in some junk foods and just increase the amount of healthy food, you're gonna get a lot of really, really big advantages that are way, way better than the kind of quote unquote, traditional method of dieting, which is don't weight train, don't put on muscle, starve yourself for a while. You guys remember shit like the cabbage soup diet, dumb shit like that, like shit housewives would do. They would just lose a bunch of muscle, lose a bunch of fat, and then just get right back to their normal eating. They would be really hungry, really tired, metabolism is slower, they would regain all the weight and then some. And then they would be, you know, fall prey to marketers for their next fucking diet. If you properly reverse diet out of that and combine that with weight training about two or three months after your last diet, you're down 15 pounds, you feel amazing, you look amazing, and you can totally sustain it. And if you want another run at it, you can do another bit of weight loss and kind of keep going. That long term periodized approach to weight loss and management, including using resistance training to build muscle. I mean, it is 100% the correct answer. Does everyone do it now? No. Are more people doing it than ever? Yes, 100%.
- [41:21]
Dr. Mike Isratel
What about, what about the metabolic boost and what the research, I'm familiar with the research says. And you know, when they compare a pound of muscle to a pound of fat and calories per day, it's very minimal in the research. But in my experience, and this is, I've tons and tons of times, I've had a client, she came in, she's reports eating 1400 calories. I reverse dieter, I build only probably 5, 6 pounds of muscle, but for that size of a girl, that's a decent amount of muscle. And now she's eating 2600 calories and not putting on any body fat and staying lean or getting leaner. And that does, it doesn't math, it doesn't add up to what the studies say. So do you think there's something more going on? Do you think like, what's, what's the answer to that?
- [42:03]
Justin Andrews
Yeah, there's like one answer that probably explains 80% of the variance. It's not very nice, but it's probably true. She was not eating 1400 calories. The way that people report their diet is typically like how you tell your dentist. You guys go to the dentist, right? Clearly you're all handsome men with great teeth. The dentist is like, you've been brushing and flossing. You haven't, you've just been, you know what I'm saying? Like, is eating pussy away, flossing?
- [42:28]
Adam Schafer
Yes.
- [42:30]
Justin Andrews
Then no. But you know, like, you know, we're not great about it. Like technically, the American Dental Association I think says like, ideally you should brush and floss after every meal. Fellas. What. Who the does that? You don't do that. But when your dentist asks you, you know, have you been brushing and flossing? A lot of us are like, yes, yes, ma' am. And yeah, like, that's just how it goes. So when you seek out the help of a trainer, there's this kind of like, it's, it's like going to a religious figure, like a pastor, and he's like, how have you been? And you're like, great. Really? Trying to live a Christian Lifestyle. And it's like, no, you haven't, dude. You basically a professional gambler at this point, but when you talk to Pastor John, you're gonna tell him a nice story. And so when people go to trainers, there's that halo effect where they like want to present their best case. I had a. I was working for a fitness company with my co founder of rp, Nick Shaw. Him and I were working for a fitness company in New York back in the day. I'm not gonna say which company it is, but they were basically like, it was a training company. They have regular people come in, you train them as a private personal training studio. And the boss was like, here's a worksheet. You can give them a little thing for nutrition. It's like a little mini diet. He's like, I'm going to tell you what's going on with diet. These people all are going to tell you that they eat in the following day. They're going to say they wake up and they have some eggs or some egg whites for breakfast and maybe some oatmeal. They're gonna say they either skip lunch or they have like a turkey sandwich or a salad with chicken. And they're gonna say they have some fish and some brown rice, maybe a glass of wine for dinner. And they're all fucking liars. And I was like, holy shit, this is the real world. I was just out of college. I was like, God damn, he's talking about real people. And he think is like, he was a mean curmudgeony Jewish man, but he wasn't wrong. And so 1400 calories is some shit. Like on their good days they 100% eat. And man, they might have six good days out of the week, but when that cycle hits of the time of the month or just like a, there's like a, you know, Netflix special on the real story behind the Friends series. They don't want you to know. And it's a five pound episode series. You're gonna go and you're gonna basically get Ben and Jerry right in front of you and you're gonna tag team them. You're gonna have four pints of ice cream, you're gonna have eight cookies, you're gonna cry a lot. Guess what gets the tears out? Lasagna. Works every time you lasagna pizza. You're so starved out from that whole week of dieting that you're like an insane person. And like, yeah, you can do damage. You guys. Like there is, there are a lot of documentaries about how sumo Wrestlers eat that. Typically people are like, oh my God, I can't believe they eat this many calories. They'd be like, have you been around a post dieted sorority girl in college? I've seen that bitch suck up 12,000 calories in a matter of hours, no problem. And so if you average 12,000 calories on Saturday with 1400 calories the other six days, that maths. Because then they're like eating like 2,500 calories a day and they're not losing weight. And then if you get them to train and you put on a good deal of muscle and you get them to move more, be more physically active and weight train, which is more calorie burn, then yeah, 2650 is not what they're eating. And they're like, oh my God, it's fucking magic. But because you made them eat more healthy food through the week, they don't have this temptation to go eat the fucking kitchen sink every Saturday. And then their average really is 2700 calories. And it really does work like that because you're right, it does that math. And the muscle is not enough to offset it. Now some of them are so fucking starved down, their metabolisms are actually lower. When you feed them more food, they actually burn even a couple hundred calories extra, but it's not a thousand calories. And so the between the metabolism resetting up a little bit, the teeny effect you get from muscle, and the 80% of them just not gorging themselves every fucking other meal sometimes or every few days. That is what explains most of the variance. Because like, I've dealt with clients like that. Sometimes you hear the darndest fucking shit. Like, I had a woman be like, I eat like 1200 calories and I can't lose any weight. I'm like, thermodynamics is undefeated. And I'm like, just tell me about your day. And it turns out she was like walking by, like she worked from home, she was walking by her living room and like getting her hand into the pecans and almonds mix and just jamming it down her throat like four times a day. And not counting that, that's 300 calories every time. Are you out of your mind? I had another client, no offense, former clients, she was like, I can't lose weight of eating 800 calories. She wasn't counting fruit juice juice. And she had it all day long. And so if the question is, are your clients bullshitting themselves low key with good intentions, or did like the founders of Modern Physics misunderstand thermodynamics, man. You know, unless that builds a gravity canceling spaceship and is like, see, thermodynamics was wrong. I'm gonna believe the fact that she's just cramming hot dogs behind my back, which is, you know, like it's sobering, but it's probably true.
- [47:27]
Dr. Mike Isratel
There's got to be something, there's got to be something to be said too though, about, okay, now that they're exercising, they built muscle, okay, that what it takes to maintain that muscle is more activity, more movement, more volume. They're also, you know this when you're, you're feeling good, you're healthier, you're just more active throughout the day. So there's probably, there's probably a kind of three different things happening there.
- [47:48]
Adam Schafer
And there's also, you know, if they become healthier or hormones can oftentimes change. Hormones can affect fat storage, muscle gain. And I do think the human metabolism is super complex. You know this Mike and I, I, I, I'm. The data does show that your metabolism or energy expenditure with the same lean body mass, there's a, there's a range there. Your body can decide to become more or less efficient. Which I think that explains the people who, because you get competitors or people who chronically train, chronically track like orthorexics and they're just overdieted, overtrained. And those people, I've seen some radical transformations in their metabolism, but those are pretty extreme examples. And I think the metabolism is a little bit more mysterious in those particular cases. But I think it has to do with those three things for sure.
- [48:38]
Justin Andrews
And it's like, especially the part where they've been dieting for so long that their energy expenditure subconsciously is just way lower is a big part. It's not the biggest part because I think misreporting intakes the biggest. But in some cases that, that reduced energy expenditure can be the biggest part. And in many cases it is a large part. And so not chronically dieting anymore. Giving your body enough food to just kind of breathe free can be hundreds of calories difference. And I mean like, it's really fucked up. It's really sad because you can have a whole six month period where you were starving yourself and you weighed 132 pounds. And then after four months of reverse dieting, you're eating like 500 calories more food per day on average and you weigh 134 stable.
- [49:25]
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
- [49:25]
Justin Andrews
But you're like even the same body fat because you built back More muscle. What a ripoff. To think, man, for months and months and months, I was needlessly starving myself, which is a big deal once. Months. That's why, like, I don't know, I think we made up this term, but at rp, we made up a term called diet fatigue. Like months of dieting fatigues you in a big way, and it resets your body and your metabolism to work in a way that is very much against you. If you reverse diet intelligently out of that, you can have amazing, amazing results because you were in a state of incredible fatigue. And a lot of people just think that's how it is. And a lot of people live their lives like that, like supermodels, and they're always starving because for them, it's psychological. For them, if I allow myself to eat more food, I'm failing and I'm just going to be a fat again like I was in seventh grade and no one's going to love me. And how the hell am I supposed to get free cocaine if I don't look like a model anymore?
- [50:21]
Adam Schafer
Yeah, well, you know, by the way.
- [50:23]
Justin Andrews
I pay for my coke.
- [50:24]
Adam Schafer
That is expensive, by the way. You know, what I appreciate about you, Mike, is that you're speaking from a combination of education and experience. I could tell you've trained people. I can also tell you've competed as a bodybuilder. And I can also tell you you're educated because sometimes what happens in the social media space with the, with the science crowd that has never trained anybody, has never competed, is they just stick to the data and the science, which doesn't explain a lot of the experience, which I think will eventually. I think that eventually the science will catch up to what bodybuilders have expressed, been expressing and what, you know, coaches and trainers have seen with their clients. I don't think the data supports reverse dieting in speeding up, quote, unquote, the metabolism as much as what bodybuilders and coaches have seen. I think that that's why you get the pushback as we see on one end what the data doesn't yet support. But I think the data will eventually catch up 100%.
- [51:20]
Justin Andrews
And also most of the data is on recreationally trained undergraduates who are not diet fatigued. And so, you know, if you have someone diet down like 3% of their body fat and you show that reverse dieting doesn't make a big difference. Well, yeah, no shit. But if they diet down 12% of their body fat, you might see some very different results. Most data is not collected on bikini competitors or anything like that. And if you do get data collected on that, you can see very, very different results. I think a lot of people who hashtag science, they just don't hashtag science that well. And so they forget that ecological validity is a thing, external validity is a thing, internal validity is a thing. They basically just read abstracts or read like the last line of an abstract, the draw script conclusions and assume that this like unanimously applies to every single case. And that's just wrong. It's just science ain't bad. Science is a small sliver into the truth, but it is not like this just giant, like, you know, telescope that shows you everything. So it's a huge part of the equation, but it's not standalone, a thing you can rely on. And it's dope. If you're a fucking pencil neck motherfucker and you've never lifted a lot and you can't look a woman in the eyes even as an adult to like do PubMed searches and Jack off a lot and then dunk on stupid meatheads in the comments. It's dope, it's a cool vibe, but it doesn't get you all the way there to explaining all of the human variation. You're going to see if you've done the shit yourself, if you've competed and if you've coached other people, you start to be like, man, the science makes a ton of sense. And in addition, there's all this other stuff from the real world that can super, super help figure a lot of shit out.
- [52:48]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Yeah, like behavioral psychology. I mean, talk about, I mean, I'd love to hear because you've, you have a PhD, right? So were you at one point were you the, the pencil neck nerd who was like that, all science, all study, or did you have a nice blend of experience and hands on while also going through your PhD? Tell me a little bit about your personal journey of coming kind of full circle as a coach of kind of knowing how to meld all the science with the psychology with everything. What's that been like for you?
- [53:14]
Justin Andrews
Yeah, well, thank, that's a great question. I started out as a person who was good at science science, like in school, but I hadn't read any exercise science because there was hardly any. And so I started out just doing meathead shit and then I started learning more science because I was like, yeah, some of this shit sounds dumb, it doesn't make any fucking sense. And so I came into the science with a lot of my own preconceived notions and a lot of information, both from meathead shit and about how my own body was responding. But I hadn't really coached a lot of people yet. And then I started being very adept at the science, very adept at understanding my body, but I still hadn't coached a lot of people. And then as I coached more and more people, it's that third tier that probably helped me learn the most. To be completely honest, maybe not the most. It was indispensable because you can learn all the science you want, and that's dope. It's actually the most straightforward part. Like, if you're smart enough reading all the science and understanding, it's not that complicated. It's very accessible. Learning about yourself is just going to require, like, years and years of trials and tribulations. But a lot of people learn stuff about themselves. They just assume it applies to everyone else. And then you can really tell apart who has learned science, who has learned science, plus learned a lot about themselves through experimentation and then. And then who's actually coached a bunch of people, only through working with tons of other people, especially competitors, to learn. Oh, shit. Just doesn't quite work the same way that I thought it did. And so for me, the last thing for me to happen was coaching enough other people, coaching enough competitors, and then competing myself to learn. Like, oh, fuck. A lot of this does make sense. For example, a lot of the stuff that was I read in, like, Flex magazine and all the muscular development, all those magazines back in the day was advice that I thought nonsensical when I was doing it myself. I thought it was nonsensical when I read all the literature that I could. But then when I realized, like, oh, there's a drug game, and growth hormone is something you take X, Y, Z times during the day. That's why these guys eat like this. That makes total sense. And so a lot of that stuff you just can't have access to unless you're in the thick of it. So there's a way to be a really good scientist, There's a way to be a really good practitioner. But I always have a lot of time, even if they don't know science, even if they don't train themselves for hearing the experiences of, like, elite sport coaches, like someone like Hani Rambod who has coached, like, dozens of Olympians, basically, and like, thousands of clients, like, in Hani's brain is a lot of goddamn treasure from just seeing that many human beings go through a transformation process. It gives you a color to the world that you'll never ever see in your life analogy here quickly is like the best communicator, the one, the person that's talked to the most number of people is going to be amazing at talking to a bunch of different people. But there's levels to this. ChatGPT talks to like 600 million people every week. You can't ever beat it as a conversationalist. It just talks to more people. It's talk to fucking everyone about their wildest dreams or craziest fantasies, their biggest nightmares. It's just a wisdom machine. You can't beat on numbers. And so until you've coached lots of people and you've been around the process and you've done it yourself and you've read all the science, you, you can't confidently say well and I know it all. And of course as you work with tons of people, as you do the shit yourself, as you read all the science, you realize well, you know a lot, but there's always more to learn. And it like, you know, people say like let lame like oh, I'm a lifelong learner, like it sounds dumb, it sounds like something you say at an educational conference and then go have fucking refreshments afterwards. But 100% is a real fucking thing. There's always more to learn. And especially working with tons of different people, people you start to realize because real quick, while I'm on this rant, there are a lot of people that are really good at bodybuilding, for example, and they're gifted, like they're just gifted. They just have incredible genetics and they'll tell you shit that they do. And you're like that's ridiculous, it works for me. And then incels on the Internet will be like it works for him. You're not doing Yates, you can't say shit. But when that person tries to coach others, a lot of time it's real bad deal because that person's like, oh, they're not responding how I used to respond, they got just a whole laundry list of problems. They're getting these side effects from drugs, they're crashing in the diet. I never used to do that. And a lot of times the amount of wisdom you can increase in yourself if you have good genetics, is only be increased if you work with people that don't have great genetics. One of my biggest gifts ever, so to speak, was working with regular clients. Clients fuck. Competitors, competitors, sometimes just the elite, just cuz. And you learn a ton with competitors. But with regular fucking average clients, middle aged women, if you Know your shit, you're gonna get him in shape. If you don't know your shit, you're gonna do nothing. Because it's easy to get a 22 year old dude on steroids in shape. No Fucking wonder he's 22.
- [58:07]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Every meal he'll weigh and he'll track too, right?
- [58:09]
Justin Andrews
100%. He's completely compliant. He's the best genetics, best youth, best everything, best drugs. Course of course you're gonna get in shape. But when you work with a 45 year old mother of two that's also a Wall street broker and she's like Jewish and dog shit. Fucking genetics. No offense, Jews then like if you get her to lose 10 pounds and keep it off, you're gonna have to figure some shit out. The, the way I learned about basically people fucking their metabolism up through dieting is with regular female clients in New York City. It was not with competitors. And you think like how can someone have the amount of diet fatigue a typical competitor has after a 16 week prep in just 8 weeks of dieting? Genetics, man. It's a. But you learn a lot working with people like that.
- [58:53]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Let's go there. You just reminded me of like I talk about this on our show a lot. One of the clients that I remember, the type of a client I remember helping a lot, was exactly that. Maybe not Wall street, but they were busy moms under eating. Love the orange theory. Boot camp classes six days a week. Couldn't, you know, couldn't lose weight whatsoever. So that what I used to call cortisol junkies, you know, I'm saying I swear that, that this is the workout they needed. And many times getting them to eat a little more, scale back their training like half the days long rest periods and boom. All of a sudden this, this client who was training six days a week, eating so little, pushing their body all of a sudden starts responding what's going on there.
- [59:41]
Justin Andrews
So much. One thing is getting them to weight train in a way that builds muscle, starts to alter their physique in a way they didn't think was imaginable. But what they're after is to be leaner and shapelier. And the way you do that fundamentally is by losing fat and building muscle. And because no offense to Orange Theory, a lot of that cardio bullshit, he doesn't do a whole lot of that. In addition to that cardio, it doesn't really do a whole lot of much for weight loss because your body just reduces your energy expenditure competently and you just don't get a lot of it's healthy for you. If your diet is very set in stone, more cardio can help you lose a little bit more weight, which is meaningful for, like, competitors and stuff. But it's not this big thing. And probably one of the biggest variables is diet control. It means knowing what you're putting in your body by tracking, slash programming what you put in your body and then maneuvering from that. Because people will say, oh, I can't lose weight. I'm like, well, how much do you eat on average? Like, well, I don't know who the. No. Like, how. How theoretically would be able to help you if you don't even know what's going in your body? So getting these people to eat four meals a day of high protein and some veggies, knowing what they're eating and then going, okay, we have your maintenance now. We're going to crank it down by 500. We're going to have you wait weight train. We're going to track your steps. All of a sudden, fat melts off, muscle builds because you're actually doing the thing for the first time. It's like people are trying to build like the Lego spaceship or school bus or whatever they got, but they don't look at the instructions on the back of the box. They're like, it's not a school bus. No. Do you ever try looking at the instructions are like, why? I thought I could just figure it out. Like, well, that clearly didn't work. And here's the thing. If you're some kind of genius savant, maybe you can figure it out. The big irony here is that as a busy mom who doesn't get enough sleep, whose diet is. And she's in her late 40s, and she. There's no one in her family that had very good genetics to begin with. She is working completely at a deficit on all of these things. And so for her to get in remotely good shape often requires a level of intricacy and effort and organization of diet and training that's like damn near competitor level. And the thing that, you know, that makes sense once you think about it, like, well, yeah, if you have everything going against you, you're going to have to do your best to, you know, to be as good as possible. So that is always kind of a little bit of a shock to people when they're like, wait, I have to do all this to get in shape? Like, yeah. And another thing is that's crazy to me is this is understandable, especially with tech getting as good as it's Getting with tech getting as good as it's getting, you just expect things to work. Like if, if chat, GBT doesn't get back to me with a perfectly polite, incredibly, incredibly intelligent answer in three seconds, I think there's something wrong with the Internet. And I start getting pissed. And that is understandable because tech sets such a high bar. But a lot of people who have everything going against them, not so great. Genetics. A lifetime of doing nothing about it. They're in real bad shape to begin with. They have tons of stress, very little sleep. No. No organized diet. They somehow think that when they see a personal trainer twice a week and they take like one tip in their diet, like, just eat more protein, Karen. Okay. That they're somehow gonna like, accomplish the body of their dreams. And I had so many people tell me, like, well, like, so my goal physique is like Jennifer Garner. I'm like a perfect angel. Are you out of your mind? Someone who's 27 years old and trains three hours a day to look perfect. Because that's her job, is to look perfect. She's elite. Genetics. And as a private chef, that's low key. Your goal. Like, how many people come into like a basketball camp and they're like, I don't want to be LeBron, okay? Like Steph Curry. That'd be great. Could you get me there? Like, no, you delusional. But with the way that the service industry works and the fact that you go to a restaurant and you're like, I want a perfect steak and they give it to you in 15 minutes. I think you get used to the shit. And then you're like, I just want. You go to a personal trainer. Like, I just want amazing results in all, almost no time. And you're like, no, that's not how the fuck it works. It works by you pounding it in and being ultra consistent for months and getting decent results. And if you think you can do it better somewhere else, be my guest. Now, good news. Combination of these weight loss drugs we already have now and these crazy muscle building drugs coming up, hey, the standards are going to elevate, but we're not there yet. And it's just going to take a lot of work. And so one of the things that always baffled me working with regular people is most of them are dope, but some of them, them come with these absolutely ridiculous ideas about what's going to happen and a total unwillingness to work for it with all the odds stacked against them. And it's just, to me, it was always kind of Like, I was pretty good at real talking people. We're like a polite way, but, you know, a little curt, little humorous. I always be like, look, you want big changes? I'm here to tell you that JLO is unusual. Yes. They're like, well, I guess, yeah. So having her as your goal is kind of ridiculous. They're like, I guess, like, okay, so let's just try to get £10 off of you in 12 weeks and put on a few pounds of muscle. And after that, if you're still with it, we're gonna try to do a little bit better. What do you say? And then all of a sudden, they don't have these crazy goals. They're more realistic. They're much happier with their transformation because they didn't think they were supposed to be able to do it all in three fucking weeks. And then everyone wins. So one of my biggest pet peeves is when clients, or sorry, when trainers allow their clients to hold on to delusional goals and promise them a ton. So they get that $600 up front, and then inevitably, the client quits halfway through and goes on to the next trainer.
- [65:29]
Adam Schafer
Agreed. And I 100% agreed. And I think a big part of that also is just people are kind of redlining with stress anyway. And so adding a ton of exercise, your body not only is not going to adapt, it's going to try to survive and hold on to what it can. And making makes fat loss very difficult. I just, you just, you're not sleeping well, you got kids, you're stressed out, you're gonna add a bunch of extra stress on your body with six days a week of exercise, and you're gonna, you're not gonna eat properly. Good luck. It's not gonna work, dude.
- [66:00]
Justin Andrews
Yeah, let me riff on that really quick, if that's okay.
- [66:03]
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
- [66:04]
Justin Andrews
There are so many clients who, again, have everything stacked against them, and they come to you with non negotiables. And it's like, well, you can't negotiate against physiology, so you're just not going to get what the you want. Two non negotiables that are, to me, crazy, but understandable, but also, like, it's your job as a trainer to weave clients out of these. One is alcohol. Like, I gotta drink for work. No, you don't. Well, I go to these things where you have to convince the client to sign the deal. Yeah, you got to be drunk to do it. Are you out of your fucking mind? It makes you worse at your job. You drink because you like how alcohol feels. You like Feeling drunk and you like vibing with clients and it's really fun. Yes. Yes. There's nothing to do with the demands of a job. Yes. Like, okay, fuck, no, it doesn't. Okay, great. And they're like, well, clients insist that I drink. Really? Fucking CEO of Oracle wants you to be hammered at a New York restaurant at 9pm on a Tuesday. Otherwise he doesn't sign the deal. If you had a mind, you're like, oh, you're just ordering, like, diet, diet sodas. And you'll be like, aren't you drinking? You're like, well, honestly, I'm trying to do some, like, health, and I gotta, like, stick to the diet sodas. They're not gonna be like, come on, that's ridiculous. You're gonna be like, dude, that's really awesome. Good for you. And then you can work on discussing the deal and all its technicalities. So that whole alcohol is non negotiable is such a dog shit. 99 times out of 100, like, when we, Nick and I first got to New York, we just, like, revere these people because they're rich, they're successful, all the shit, they know what's going on. And a few months in, we, like, not that we lost respect for them, it's that we woke up to the idea that they're paying us to call them out on their bullshit. We're like, oh, oh, oh, we're allowed to call you on your bullshit. Stop fucking drinking. And they're like, God damn it. All right, fine, they try the shit. Well, I have to. We're like, no, you don't. They're like, okay, I don't. You're right, I don't have to do that. And the other non negotiable, it's also. This one's a little bit more nuanced, is sleep.
- [67:57]
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
- [67:58]
Justin Andrews
They will be like, okay, so, like, I can't sleep but four hours, and that's just gonna have to be how it is. And I'm like, dope. I can't give you hardly any results. And that's just gonna have to be how it is. And they're like, are you joking? I'm like, no. I mean, yeah, but no, I'm not fucking joking. And then you have to, like, work with them. And this is actually a great part of being a trainer and a coach is getting people to articulate their daily schedule and articulate why they can't go to bed at 9pm and watch them tell you that, like, well, like, I don't know, like, I Just like to stay up with my husband and, and watch track TV for three hours and drink like three bottles of wine and order sushi at midnight. I got it. Do you want to look like what you told me you want to look like? Yeah, take three months off of that dumb shit. Have a protein shake. Go the to sleep at 9. Aren't you tired? Well, yeah, go to sleep. All right, but it's kind of boring, no? You know those people you look up to in the fitness magazines? You live the most boring lives in the world. I remember once Jay, they asked Jay Cutler, like after his second Olympia win what he was gonna do. He's like, well, you know, typically, you know, I, I like to party it up at the Olympia. So, you know, I normally go to bed at nine and I think, I think after the Olympia, I'll go to bed at 11. And everyone's like, what the.
- [69:16]
Dr. Mike Isratel
What?
- [69:17]
Justin Andrews
That's crazy. Like, yeah, that's just, that's how he lives. Is life like a fucking machine? You want to look like a machine, you do not have to live your life like a machine, but you're going to have to live three months of your life like more of a machine. And so when you say, I can't get any sleep, I know you're lying because you only work so long during the day and you just have a lot of entertainment built in. You're going to have to curtail that a little bit and start entertaining yourself in three months when you have the body. And good news, once you lose a lot of fat, you gain a lot of muscle. Maintaining that look is like, I don't know, five times easier than getting it. Then you can start having wine and mimosas. And the ultimate killer of female physiques in, in the big cities brunch. There's no amount of physique progress one fucking brunch can't undo. I'm convinced of this. There's like, the menu items in a brunch seem like they were make made up just to see how much, how many grams of saturated fat we can cram into products needlessly. Like, it's like salmon. You're like salmon, but it's dipped in a fat reduction and then it's panko crusted. And then a fat based oil, a fat based sauce is strewn on top of that and it's dipped again in fat flakes. What the fuck? Oh my God. But you gotta try it. It's so good. I get that it's good. You have to back the away from that For a short amount of time. One of my colleagues, Dr. Melissa Davis, who's a fellow coach at RP and helped co author a bunch of our books, she made a huge, huge point of this a ton, where the diet, quote unquote, to get you in shape is not a lifestyle, it is temporary. And one of the things I used to love to do to my high, like elite clients was talk that shit. Because they would be like, it's really hard to diet. I'd be like, oh yeah, no, for sure. You're totally right. Like, yeah. I'm like, so you never went to school, did you? They're like, I graduated top five at Harvard Law. I'm like, but that was easy, right? Like, no, it's brutal. Harvard Law. I'm like, oh, so you're capable of doing difficult things for a short time, right? They're like, fuck, you should have seen that one coming.
- [71:16]
Adam Schafer
Oh, dope.
- [71:17]
Justin Andrews
See you tomorrow on your diet. But clients a lot of times try to weave their way into the easiest shit that they can, which is understandable, right? Like you do this every day in every life. Like, you know, not trying to go out of your way on your way to work, you're trying to cut with your car the fastest route. But if you understand that all of the routes are blocked except for the difficult. And going down the difficult route is how you're going to get in shape. And then after that you can back up to a maintenance lifestyle, live your best life, have your mimosas, dip your fucking salmon in whatever bullshit fat that you want and still have that look. But just gonna take 12 weeks of low key, some fucking effort and some restriction. You either buy it. You, you, you, you, you, you take the red pill and you do the or you don't. And if you don't, you can just be like you were five years ago and like you're gonna be in five same shape you were in, making excuses every time you meet a fit person. Dope. That's cool. I don't care. I think you look great either way. But you give a. So it's time for you to step up and do the. Or not so well said.
- [72:14]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Hey, you know, Mike, if you can you think of a piece of advice that you've, you've won aided on in your journey, I'll give you one, a big one. For me, like, I started personal training, was 20 years old. I'm 43 now and I remember doing intake forms and asking the client, you know, what do you do for exercise right now? And they'd say things like, oh, I walk with my husband for an hour every day. And I would scoff at that. That's not fucking exercise. Because I'm doing the, the math of you're only burning this many calories and we got this far to go. That is me. And I would laugh at it. Yet I look at myself in my 40s. That's typically the very first piece of advice I now give to somebody. Well, what are we doing? Let's try and take a couple 10 minute walks a day. And, and so that's something that I used to scoff at as a 20 year old. As a somebody who's been training for two decades, it's one of the first things that I advise. Do you have some things like that that you remember saying one thing when you were first getting into the industry to now you've completely 180.
- [73:09]
Justin Andrews
Yeah, yeah, right. How long do you have? One is meal frequency. I used to think that if you weren't eating every two hours, you're just an idiot. And that eating four meals a day was not the way to get jacked. Like about 800 studies later and my own experience and tons of bodybuilders is like, oh, actually if you eat four times a day, you're almost certainly covering all of your bases. That is a huge one. Another one is the if it fits your macros thing is something that works really well on paper. Like if you just combine whatever foods you need and get your macros, you're good to go. But it turns out that eating mostly healthy foods, like kind of traditional bodybuilding, clean foods, is such a huge energy leveler and a huge reducer and controller of appetite.
- [73:58]
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
- [73:58]
Justin Andrews
Like if you have to eat a fuckload of broccoli and kale and a bunch of chicken and some brown rice, you're just not like, you're not going to overeat that.
- [74:05]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Yeah, good luck getting fat on that 100%.
- [74:08]
Justin Andrews
No one's doing it. And so the idea that like I can have potato chips and still succeed in my diet is cool. And if you ignore the temptation of junk food to eat more of it and you ignore the hunger signaling part, it works. But the hunger signaling and that shit is real. And so as I've been, when I matured more in the industry, I realized, you know, there is a reason that bodybuilders eat like they do and maybe we should all be eating a little bit healthier with more protein, more veggies and stuff like that. Even though it's not sexy, it's not super convenient sometimes if it's. Your macro is great for when you're in maintenance, when you're in bulk, and it's awesome when you're like, oh, fuck, I have to get some food in me somehow. Let me just do macros. That's cool. But as far as, like, a sustainable thing that really causes change, eating meals that are high in veggies and fruits, whole grains, lean meats, healthy fats, all that bodybuilder shit, that it really does produce results. And it's not a thing I want to admit. Like, I wish we could just, you know, protein shake and Snickers bar our way into better physiques, but unless you're slamming a ton of semaglutide or something, it's much easier said than done.
- [75:15]
Dr. Mike Isratel
I love that you said that. So one of the. One of the big waves that we made 10 years ago when we started this podcast, we actually made these shirts that were. Was Dunkin Donuts. What? Not Dunkin. Krispy Kreme logo. And it said our brand in the middle of it. And then it said, iifym sucks. And we. And it was right in the. It was in the height of that being for trouble. Oh, yeah, totally. But then this was what we tried to articulate. And this is again, through years of experience, I realized what you just said is I could tell a client if you ate whole foods. I said, we don't even gotta track calories. Go eat it. I tell clients, go eat as much as you want. So long as it's these foods from this group. And I give them a whole list of. Of meats and veggies and starches that you could eat and just be like, eat from that list. When you're hungry, eat. And all I want you to do is eat your protein first. And that's the only thing if we're track is that. And. And I, they. Everybody lost weight. Everybody got in shape as soon as I start to allow them to introduce processed foods, snacks, and quick things. And this is even sometimes the negative part of even like protein bars, because they're basically glorified Snickers bars, You know, a little bit extra protein is they. It. They were engineered to hijack that, satiate that feeling that our body tells us to stop wanting any more food, and it just made it ten times harder. So I love that you come out and you say that because, of course, if you've been a bodybuilder, ifym is something that you've definitely, you know, understand, follow you found a Way to get your treats here and there or have your cheat day and make it work. But for the average person, never, never. It's a terrible strategy for most people.
- [76:48]
Justin Andrews
It really is.
- [76:49]
Adam Schafer
I wanted to circle back to the GLP1 for a second. Mike, what are you seeing on the other effects of the GLP1s? Like, you know, there's lots of reports of people who stop smoking or not drinking anymore or like, like interesting effects on maybe the hedonistic aspects of certain activities. Are you hearing about any of this?
- [77:12]
Justin Andrews
Tons. Yeah. People. It just, in many people causes a reduction in want generally. It fills that hole. It quiets not just food noise, but desire noise. And it's not a guaranteed thing. It doesn't happen for everyone the same extent, but it is a meaningful, meaningful effect. And so people will quit smoking by accident. They'll reduce or quit drinking by accident. Another thing is these drugs are insanely powerful systemic anti inflammatory drugs.
- [77:49]
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
- [77:50]
Justin Andrews
And that is incredibly beneficial for almost every aspect of health. Another really great part of these drugs is indirectly foods that are very processed, they're very tasty, that are very high in calories and fat in a very dense package, tend to gel very poorly with these drugs. Because if you dump a load of calories really fast in your stomach and you're on these drugs, you get sick because your gastric emptying rate is really slow. The food ends up sitting there and your body's like, that's not supposed to be sitting in there. I'm going to make you feel like you need to throw it up. And so it turns out that whole foods, foods that are pretty filling and healthy foods, just feel way better on these drugs than the alternative. And so it's kind of the softer nudging effect to get to eat better. So a lot of people, you know, personal trainers and fitness industry people often have a lot of feelings about these drugs because they just have a lot of feelings about a lot of stuff. And so, like, this drug's a cop out, man. You gotta earn this. I'm like, why do you have to earn it? You didn't design a microchip, but you use it every day on your cell phone, you hypocrite. But that aside is they'll be like, people could just eat junk and still lose weight. I'm like, first of all, what's wrong with that? And second of all, they can't, because most people will figure out that they really can't tolerate junk nearly as much. They feel worse eating junk than before. There was that drug back in the day called Chantix or whatever, it was like a smoking cessation drug. And if you tried smoking on it, you felt fucking incredibly awful and sick and you're like, fuck that, that doesn't work anymore. So low key. Some of these drugs do that for food and so they actually encourage a healthy lifestyle. They're crazy systemic anti inflammatories, they improve your blood glucose control independent of weight loss. They improve your blood lipids independent of weight loss. There's tons of other benefits of them. They really are like kind of not panaceas, but like just ubiquitously really awesome for your health. And a lot of people have a problem with that because they exhibit what's called the naturalistic fallacy, the argument for nature that anything that is natural is good and anything that is artificial is bad. And it's just not true. There are some natural things that are amazing. Whole foods, good, clean water, that stuff is fucking dope. Sunshine and shit. Children's laughter, all that bullshit. That's awesome. But then there's artificial shit, there's natural shit that's bad for you. You know, you don't see like a bear out in the wild and you're like, it's natural, it's fine, honey, like, fuck that. Like, don't do that, don't go over there. Snake bites, bad for you. If you think natural things are good for you, just go randomly eat berries off the trees in the forest. Do not do that, you will die. And the artificial, a bunch of, it's not great for you. Junk food and stuff is terrible, right? Especially in excess. But you know, air conditioning is great, antibiotics are awesome, vaccines are dope. And then like all of a sudden you're like, okay, okay, so natural versus artificial doesn't work. I actually just have to go and find out what's good and what's bad. And it turns out some artificial things, things like these drugs are really just awesome. And I think we're entering a world more and more as AI especially starts to decode our biology and produce all these drugs that are incredibly awesome. You're just going to be in a world where if you stay drug free, you can be totally fine. But if you're on more and more of these advanced drugs, you're just going to feel, look and be better overall. And I think embracing the very best that artificial stuff has coming for us is awesome. And there's nothing wrong with it. And it's just a matter of are you doing healthy or unhealthy? And the shortcut of natural versus Artificial is not a shortcut because it just does not give you much information at all.
- [81:26]
Dr. Mike Isratel
So let's, let's, let's play out because I think we're, we're totally aligned on GLP1s. Now let's say these, the muscle building, like let's say, let's say we get literally fitness in a pill in the next five years and everybody can be fit by taking this pill. And it does happen. What are some of the downstream effects negative that you see that it's obvious what's positive? I mean the amount of obesity that will go down and health markers that will go up and maybe we'll see even longevity. But what, what do you, what do you think? What else is fitness and training, working out, the discipline around it, the routine of it? What else is it benefiting us that we're going to potentially lose out on because we can now just get it in a pill. What do you, what do you see?
- [82:11]
Justin Andrews
At least two things. One is your sense of identity and career. Lots of people in the fitness industry and they might have to shift to doing some other kind of work because everyone's just fit already. Now the work can be fitness industry adjacent. Instead of like taking people through sets of squats in the gym, you might be taking them on guided hikes through the wilderness because like that shit is dope for its own vibes and even if you're fit, it just makes you better at hiking. So I think once people get in really good shape, they're going to have this unlock of being able to go out in nature and do cool shit that they just can't. You know, the average 300 pound person is not going a five mile hike through the Colorado wilderness for obvious reasons. You make excellent bear food. If a bear finds you, that's not really advantage to you. So I think there's a massive pivot that many people will have to make into a very similar kind of profession, but different. And another one is I think that there's a certain amount of doing hard things and a certain amount of just raw human movement that you have to have. And if you don't do, you're kind of get massive cabin fever and you're pent up and you're pissed. And so just suffering through super long hard workouts is really good psychotherapy. Now there are no doubt will be many psychotherapeutic drugs that mute that response, that you actually will be able to be fit and happy and not need to beat the shit out of yourself. But there's a Certain amount of challenge just because it's challenging, it sharpens your mind, it makes you healthier and all that stuff. It's not going to be a disaster because I think there's an easy solution to this, but it's easy on paper and maybe a little bit harder in practice. A lot of people are going to have to shift to finding challenge somewhere else, and that's a big deal. Right now. Many of us find our challenge in fitness, but if we have fitness in a pill, maybe the challenge is pick up Muay Thai or Brazilian jiu Jitsu or boxing. That's challenging. And if you're already in shape, that doesn't mean you can box, get hit in the face a whole bunch. All of a sudden the there goes your catharsis. You might get into endurance stuff, you might get into mountain biking, 50 other things to do. But fitness isn't the only thing. Every time you go to work out because it's challenging and because it's good for you, you are not going in and helping children in need. You are not hanging out with old people at old people homes or dying fucking alone. You are not volunteering your time in the third world to help them build up the kind of structures and institutions that we have so they can have a good time. So maybe once we sort out more and more of our own problems, we can have more time and energy and desire to go out and make sense of the actual world and help in a really big way. Because in one sense, and you look at gyms right now, people are doing wonderful things to their own psychology, to their physiques, to their health. But another sense, they're just literally wasting energy moving plates up and down for no goddamn reason at all. If we can get the chemicals to do all the fitness shit, we can open up ourselves to like 2 hours extra per day where you're doing anything but moving weights up and down in a straight line. Which, listen, moving weights up and down in a straight line is the passion of my life. But also there's like a lot more shit to the world that you could be doing. And I think that is something that humans are going to have to, quote, unquote, grapple with. But it's great. It's a great problem, but nonetheless a problem. And a bit of a speed bump.
- [85:42]
Adam Schafer
Yeah, I think a lot of those questions have been pondered and asked by ancient spiritual practices, by religions, because we're going to get to a place here, maybe in our lifetime where we can get everything we want. We're going to get everything we want, and then we're going to be sad and we're. And we're not going to know why. Why am I sad? I have everything. I mean, look what we did with money. We now have shelter and food and, you know, but people are worse off than ever. So I think it's just going to force us to really look at, like, what gives us purpose and meaning in life. And so I don't think it's going to. It's going to answer some questions and solve some things, but it's not going to solve the big things. And I think it'll pose other questions. So it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to see.
- [86:26]
Justin Andrews
Yeah, I think there's two solutions to that. One is going out into the world and making inroads and on real problems instead of just fitness. I think that's a big unlock. I can just look at our fucking inner cities for love. God, who the fuck's cleaning it up? Nobody. Who the fuck is mentoring children have nobody in their lives to mentor them. Nobody is fucking. Yeah, some people, it's not enough. We need 10x the number of people helping everyone out. So that's a big thing. The other thing is, this is, like, fucking weird, but I think it's true. Advanced pharmaceuticals that interact with your brain are 100%. Many of them are here already. More of them are inevitable. You won't have to be sad because you will be pharmacologically incapable of feeling sadness. I'm gonna say something wacky. I always have at least one of these or 50 of these things on every podcast I'm on. There is no reason to think based on first principles and how the brain works, that eventually AI and scientific researchers can't figure out how to make a drug that makes you feel like you do at a peak ecstasy high, except permanently and with no downsides and with no adaptations that is 100% theoretically possible. So you can have a pill, maybe that's developed in five, seven, or 10 years, that if you take it every day, you are like, do you guys have any friends that are just genetically happy for no goddamn reason at all? They're just like, I broke my leg. But it's not opportunity to learn. You're like, what the fuck is wrong with you? I was depressed before I broke anything. How the fuck are you doing this? They just have different brain chemistry. And there's no reason to think that all of us can't have that brain chemistry times 10 in the future, if you think that taking a Pill to be ecstatic and happy and optimistic and hard working is bad. I would love to hear why. Maybe there are some good points, but at the same time, a lot of people are going to want to take that pill. So we have pills for our body coming up that seems straightforward forward. There are going to be pills for the brain coming up that deal with a lot of existential angst and all this other that might just go away after you start taking a pill. And is that really like. Yeah, but you should be suffering. Like, I don't know, should you be? Maybe, maybe there's a compelling argument against that. But I, I, I'd love.
- [88:33]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Have you, have you, have you seen the Twilight Zone episode where the bank robber gets shot? Have you seen that episode before?
- [88:39]
Justin Andrews
No, I'm not 55 years old, so I.
- [88:42]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Off, off, fatty.
- [88:47]
Justin Andrews
I haven't. What's the up, what is this?
- [88:48]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Sal tells it better night.
- [88:49]
Adam Schafer
He gets shot and then he, a guy approaches him and is like, hey man, you can have anything you want. And he's like, what, what are you talking about? And he can have everything. And he's, he's gambling and he's winning every hand and he's got beautiful women, he's got food. And then it fast forwards like nine months later and he's like, he hasn't shaved. And he's pissed off because every time he rolls a dice, he wins and everybody agrees with him. And the guy comes back and he's like, man, this sucks. He goes, I didn't think heaven would be like this. And the guy looks at him and says, what makes you think this is heaven?
- [89:18]
Justin Andrews
Oh, that's like people's concept of hell from hyper capitalist abundance. Like, you know, having like, you know, known people who went to Russian prison. I'm telling you, hell's a lot worse than fucking winning a bunch of rounds of being fucking models. Existential angst. Like, have you ever been beaten by five prison guards daily for 20 years? Like, no. I guess there's levels to this. Well, I'm just gonna go to, back to fucking the strippers. I'm just going to learn.
- [89:39]
Adam Schafer
Well, here, here's my pushback on that. Because you have, you have people who have dedicated their lives to doing what you're talking about. And they're tired, they're physiologically depressed because they're so exhausted, but they're joyful. And so you hear the spiritual leaders, you know, Mother Teresa, they find joy, which is different than happy than the chemical happy that we feel. So I personally think, I think My opinion, Mike, is what you're explaining is going to reveal hell to a lot of people. They're going to be chemically happy. In fact, I think they wrote a book about it. Right. 1984 might have been one of them. I'm not sure. It's one of those books where everybody's fed happy pills all the time. They can never feel sad, but they feel like something's missing. I think that's a much bigger question. I think it'll be an interesting experiment, but I think people are going to be. If we do get to that place, I think there's going to be. A lot of people are going to be like. Like something's missing. I don't know what it is, but something's missing. That's my opinion.
- [90:39]
Justin Andrews
Joy is also chemically mediated.
- [90:41]
Adam Schafer
Maybe.
- [90:42]
Justin Andrews
So if you attack the right chemical pathways, you can just have joy all the time, too. Like deep, meaningful joy, just straight up. How do I know that ecstasy exists? Like, if you're on ecstasy, you love everyone you see as much as you loved your mother. You really do feel that.
- [90:55]
Adam Schafer
Do you have kids?
- [90:57]
Justin Andrews
No. Fuck, no, man. They don't let a person like me with these crazy, beautiful children who are nuts.
- [91:01]
Adam Schafer
All right, then. Forget it. I was gonna give you. I was gonna ask you a question. Yeah, no, you've been great, Mike. Yeah, it's been great talking to you, man. You're absolutely hilarious. Very, very smart. Lots of experience. We appreciate a lot of what you communicate on social media and other outlets because again, you communicate like someone who knows the science, but also has the experience. And oftentimes you get one or the other and you don't get the combination. And so you're quite. Your answers are nuanced, and we think you're pointing people oftentimes the right direction besides being absolutely hilarious and entertaining. So, yeah, we appreciate.
- [91:37]
Justin Andrews
Awesome. Thank you so much.
- [91:40]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Yeah, we'll have you come out here next time for sure.
- [91:42]
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
- [91:42]
Justin Andrews
Yeah, man. Well, you guys are in the Bay Area, right?
- [91:44]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Yeah, yeah. San Jose.
- [91:46]
Justin Andrews
I'm never coming out needles covered in.
- [91:50]
Adam Schafer
We're not in San Francisco.
- [91:53]
Justin Andrews
I like the mumbling.
- [91:54]
Adam Schafer
Like, it's a little safer here. Don't worry.
- [91:58]
Justin Andrews
Thank you so much.
- [91:58]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Yeah.
- [91:59]
Adam Schafer
Good talking, Mike.
- [92:00]
Dr. Mike Isratel
Take it easy, man.
- [92:00]
Justin Andrews
Peace out.
- [92:01]
Sal Destefano
Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle@mindpumpmedia.com. the RGB Super Bundle includes maps, anabolic maps, performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now. Plus other valuable free resources@mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.