2636: The Perfect Activity, Exercise & Diet Balance for True Health & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Summary

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - Episode 2636 Summary

Release Date: July 9, 2025

In Episode 2636 of Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth, hosts Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews delve deep into achieving the perfect balance between activity, exercise, and diet for true health. The episode combines evidence-based discussions with live coaching sessions, offering listeners actionable insights to enhance their fitness journeys.

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1. Daily Activity: The Power of Steps

The conversation kicks off around [02:30] with the hosts emphasizing the significance of daily movement. They highlight that:

• 8,000 steps a day can provide 80-85% of the health benefits associated with physical activity.

  Justin Andrews [02:42]: "8,000 steps a day, every day will get you about 80 to 85% of the benefits of being active."

• The average person typically walks around 4,000 steps daily, meaning many are only achieving half the optimal activity level.

  Sal DiStefano [08:47]: "Yep, it's double. That's why this is so profound."

• Increasing daily steps significantly beyond 8,000 yields diminishing returns, making the initial goal of 8,000 steps both effective and realistic for most individuals.

  Justin Andrews [05:14]: "Eight Thousand steps a day will get you 80 to 85% of the benefits. Beyond that, you're getting smaller and smaller benefits."

The hosts advocate for integrating simple strategies like taking multiple short walks throughout the day to reach the 8,000-step mark, thereby enhancing overall health without overwhelming commitment.

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2. Structured Workouts and Lifting: Optimal Volume

Transitioning to structured exercise around [10:34], the discussion focuses on strength training:

• 12 to 20 sets per week per body part are recommended based on controlled studies involving college-aged males.

  Justin Andrews [12:24]: "When you go through the data, when you comb through the data on how many sets you need to do, perhaps per body part at a moderate to high intensity... you get most of the gains in this range."

• For the average individual, 12 sets per body part per week is deemed sufficient, balancing effort with recovery needs.

  Sal DiStefano [13:32]: "This is probably one of the sweet spots for 95% of all people right here."

• Exceeding this range leads to minimal additional benefits and can increase the risk of overtraining, especially without adequate attention to sleep and nutrition.

  Justin Andrews [03:59]: "If you're a bodybuilder and athlete, then squeezing out that extra 1 or 2% makes sense. But for most people, it's not worth the trade-off."

The hosts stress the importance of quality over quantity in workouts, advising listeners to prioritize consistency and proper recovery.

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3. Nutrition: Protein and Hydration Essentials

Protein Intake

Discussed at [14:00], protein intake is critical for muscle maintenance and overall health:

• 0.6 grams per pound of target body weight (lean body mass) is recommended to achieve 85-90% of the benefits.

  Justin Andrews [15:14]: "It's about 0.6 or so grams per pound of body weight... you're going to get 85 to 90% of the benefit."

• While higher protein intake can offer slight additional benefits, the gains plateau beyond this point.

  Sal DiStefano [17:23]: "I like the one to one as always such a good recommendation... the little extra protein tends to benefit them."

Hydration

Addressed around [17:23], proper hydration is vital:

• Half a gallon of water daily is sufficient to reap hydration benefits, though aiming for up to a gallon is ideal.

  Justin Andrews [17:23]: "Half a gallon a day... most people don't hit this number."

• Tracking water intake can reveal underconsumption, as many assume they are adequately hydrated without monitoring.

  Sal DiStefano [18:49]: "Just track and see what happens. And they never hit the half gallon."

The hosts recommend practical hydration strategies, like carrying a water bottle and setting reminders, to ensure consistent intake.

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4. Sleep: The Most Critical Health Factor

Sleep emerges as the cornerstone of health around [19:00], with the hosts underscoring its unparalleled importance:

• Consistent quality sleep is paramount, with inadequate sleep leading to severe health and cognitive issues.

  Justin Andrews [19:00]: "This is the least flexible. This is literally the least flexible. When you miss this consistently, your health goes south."

• Data indicates sleep is often the most neglected aspect of health, exacerbated by modern distractions like electronics.

  Justin Andrews [20:06]: "People chronically miss this on a regular."

• Prioritizing sleep can involve establishing routines, minimizing screen time before bed, and creating a conducive sleep environment.

  Sal DiStefano [46:13]: "Communication is key... give him some options and leeway within there."

The hosts advise listeners to view sleep as a non-negotiable component of their health regimen, essential for recovery, mental well-being, and physical performance.

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5. Impact of AI on Brain Health

A significant portion of the episode (starting around [22:03]) explores the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) usage and cognitive decline:

• An MIT study is cited, revealing a 40-47% reduction in brain connectivity among heavy AI users over four months.

  Justin Andrews [22:35]: "People who went from not using it a lot to using it a lot had a 40% reduction in brain connectivity."

• The hosts discuss how outsourcing cognitive tasks to AI can lead to decreased mental exertion, resulting in weaker brain function over time.

  Justin Andrews [22:38]: "The brain requires stress... otherwise, it's going to atrophy."

• Personal anecdotes highlight the dangers of over-reliance on AI, such as navigation apps failing, leading to potential disorientation and cognitive dependency.

  Sal DiStefano [28:31]: "I got some glitch in my ways right now."

The episode warns listeners about the subtle yet profound impacts of AI on mental acuity, advocating for balanced usage to maintain cognitive health.

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6. Personal Anecdotes and Family Life

Throughout the episode, the hosts share personal stories, illustrating the integration of fitness and health into their family lives:

• Grilling and Family Meals: Sal recounts organizing family trips with structured meal responsibilities to foster teamwork and ensure quality nutrition.

  Sal DiStefano [34:30]: "We divide up the meals... Monday is yours, Tuesday is yours."

• Childhood Fitness Influence: The importance of modeling healthy behaviors for children is emphasized, demonstrating how parental consistency can shape family health dynamics.

  Justin Andrews [45:31]: "He’s visiting church and showing his muscles... he's proud of that."

• Technology and Children: Sal discusses limiting his children's use of iPads, opting for shared family activities to enhance engagement and reduce screen dependency.

  Sal DiStefano [46:28]: "We have removed the iPad completely... when he watches on TV, he's not zombified."

These narratives underscore the podcast's philosophy of fostering a holistic, family-oriented approach to health and fitness.

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7. Listener Live Coaching: Q&A Sessions

The latter half of the episode features live coaching, addressing listeners' questions and providing tailored advice.

Caller: Carly from Colorado

Carly's Question: How to define a good night's sleep versus a bad night, and whether slight deviations in sleep duration warrant skipping workouts.

• Definition of Good vs. Bad Sleep: Carly defines a bad night as waking up feeling exhausted, regardless of the exact hours slept.

  Carly [58:53]: "If I wake up feeling exhausted, probably. That's probably some sort of indication."

• Modifying Workouts: Justin suggests not necessarily skipping workouts but reducing intensity based on sleep quality.

  Sal DiStefano [59:34]: "If you feel exhausted, you could modify the workout and down the intensity."

Caller: Rachel from Illinois

Rachel's Story: Rachel shares her transformation from battling gout to achieving significant health improvements through diet and fitness, now seeking advice on maintaining progress into her 50s and fostering a fun, sustainable routine for her family.

• Maintaining Progress: Justin advises enjoying the journey, setting new fitness challenges, and continually adapting goals to keep the routine engaging.

  Sal DiStefano [73:14]: "Creating new challenges... pursuing workouts, like new skills."

• Family Integration: The importance of involving the entire family in fitness activities to build a supportive and motivating environment is emphasized.

  Justin Andrews [76:40]: "Enjoying the process... doing it together as a family."

Caller: Josh from Tennessee

Josh's Question: Experiencing wrist pain during barbell front squats and seeking alternatives while aiming to continue exercising effectively.

• Alternative Gripping Methods: Justin recommends using a cross grip or incorporating towels for better wrist comfort.

  Justin Andrews [64:37]: "Grab this, cross grip with your elbows up high... to prevent wrist pain."

• Mobility and Symmetry: Sal and Doug discuss the importance of wrist mobility and maintaining symmetry in workouts, suggesting targeted exercises to enhance flexibility and reduce injury risk.

  Sal DiStefano [66:19]: "Work on wrist mobility... Prime Pro program."

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8. Final Thoughts and Recommendations

The episode concludes with the hosts reiterating the importance of a balanced approach to fitness—combining adequate daily activity, structured strength training, proper nutrition, optimal hydration, and prioritizing sleep. They also caution against over-reliance on technology, advocating for mindful AI usage to preserve cognitive health.

Listeners are encouraged to adopt sustainable, enjoyable fitness routines that integrate seamlessly into their lifestyles, fostering long-term health and well-being for themselves and their families.

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Notable Quotes:

• Justin Andrews [02:42]: "8,000 steps a day, every day will get you about 80 to 85% of the benefits of being active."

• Sal DiStefano [08:47]: "Yep, it's double. That's why this is so profound."

• Justin Andrews [19:00]: "This is the least flexible. This is literally the least flexible. When you miss this consistently, your health goes south."

• Justin Andrews [22:35]: "People who went from not using it a lot to using it a lot had a 40% reduction in brain connectivity."

• Sal DiStefano [73:14]: "Creating new challenges... pursuing workouts, like new skills."

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Conclusion

Episode 2636 of Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth offers a comprehensive exploration of the essential components of true health—activity, exercise, diet, and sleep—while addressing contemporary challenges like AI dependency. Through expert insights, personal anecdotes, and interactive coaching, the hosts provide listeners with a roadmap to achieve and sustain optimal health.

Transcript

[Sal DiStefano]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Adam Schafer]

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.

[Justin Andrews]

Mind Pump Mind Pump.

[Sal DiStefano]

With your hosts Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer.

[Adam Schafer]

And Justin Andrews, you just found the.

[Justin Andrews]

Most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode we had live callers call in and we got to coach them on air. But this is after the intro. And the intro, by the way, today was 55 minutes long. In that we talk about fitness studies, fat loss, muscle gain, family life, current events. It's a good time. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this one, email us your [e-mail] now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Butcherbox. Butcherbox delivers high quality meat to your door. By the way, they have a Mind Pump box with our favorite cuts of meat in the box. You get it for a great price. Also if you go to butcherbox.com mindpump you'll get $20 off your first box and free chicken breast, ground beef or salmon included for free for an entire year. This episode is also brought to you by Ned. Today we talked about their sleep supplement Melo with different versions or forms of magnesium that can calm the body, give you what you may be lacking. Majority of people need more magnesium and improve the quality of your sleep. Go check them out. Go to helloned.com that's H-E-L L O N dashed.com mindpump Use the code mindpump. Get 20% off. We also have some promotions on some workout programs. This month. Maps split is 50% off and the Anabolic Metabolism bundle of programs is also 50% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code 7uly50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show.

[Sal DiStefano]

T shirt time.

[Adam Schafer]

And it's T shirt time.

[Sal DiStefano]

Ah shit, Doug. You know it's my favorite time of the week.

[Adam Schafer]

Three winners this week. Two for Apple podcasts, one for Facebook. The Apple podcast winners all are Foxtrot, Romeo and Ali23Smith. And for Facebook, we have Tim Wilson. All three of you are winners. Send the name I just read to [e-mail] include your shirt size and your shipping address, and we'll get that shirt right out to you.

[Justin Andrews]

All right, let's talk about perfect fitness. What's the perfect routine and the perfect diet? What are the sets, the reps, how much activity, diet? Let's get into what the data says. Let's go.

[Sal DiStefano]

There's no such thing.

[Doug]

Does perfect exist?

[Justin Andrews]

Well, we gotta, we gotta paint the context first, because context matters. Right. If the context was for bodybuilding or for football or for mobility, like this, this is all gonna change.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, so we're gonna use the context of, of using fitness to improve the quality of your life. So fitness isn't your, this isn't your job and your career, but you use it to be, to be a better, you know, father, mother, employee, employer. Just, just. What's, what does the data show on how to use fitness to improve your life? Essentially.

[Sal DiStefano]

Another way I looked ahead and I see what your. The five points, and another way you could say this too, is that I think what you listed is the least amount to reap the most benefits.

[Justin Andrews]

Good way to say it, because if.

[Sal DiStefano]

You, if you looked at all the things you listed, I'm looking at them, I'm like, obviously you could do more of everything.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

You know, and you could do less of all those things, but, like, reap the maximum benefits. Right. Or not maximum. Like the, for the, for the time invested or effort put forward. These are probably the sweet spots, the essential elements.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

Like you, if you, if you hit these minimums that you, you've listed, I feel like you're gonna get, like, for overall health benefits, strength, longevity, that direction, everything.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. In fact, there's a number. So all of these things will, will give, that we're going to talk about today, will give you about 85% of all you can get from each of these categories. In other words, if you do what we're going to say, you'll get the vast majority of benefit. Beyond that, you start to get diminishing returns. And the further you move outside of what we're going to say, the more diminishing the returns become. In other words, to squeeze to get 85% of the benefits of activity. You know, we're going to talk about what you do. If you want to get 95%, it takes so much more just to get that extra 10% or 5%, making it potentially not worth it. Unless fitness is the most important thing in your life, in which case that's a whole other story. Again, if you're a bodybuilder and athlete, then squeezing out 5 or 10% makes sense. But if you're like, I just want to be fit, healthy, I want to look good, have good mobility, but really fitness is a tool that I use to make my life as good as possible. Well then that's, that's what we're talking about.

[Sal DiStefano]

I think this is a good conversation too because we tend to look at bodybuilders and athletes, the elite, the 1% and base what they must do it the best because they look the best or they perform the best. Therefore I'm going to try and emulate what they're doing. But to your point, they're, yes, they're the best, but they're also, they've already, they've already reaped the max benefits, they're trying to squeeze out that extra 1 or 2%. And the truth is you don't need to do nearly the effort and work that they, that they're doing in order to reap probably most of the benefits that you want.

[Justin Andrews]

That's right.

[Sal DiStefano]

And yet we, but yet we try and model a lot of the things that we see these pro athletes or bodybuilders doing, thinking that oh, this is what I need to do.

[Doug]

World though, that's their profession. That's like what they wake up and eat, sleep and breathe. And so you know, for your average person that has to have a full on career as a family, has a lot of other things to juggle and balance. Like we have to figure out something that applies better for that.

[Justin Andrews]

There's also trade offs. This is the big part of this conversation which is, okay, what are the trade offs to go from 85 to 90%. Way less time on my family, way more focus on having to be really, really detailed on my diet. Right. Perfect with everything. What's the trade off? The trade off is often not worth it. That's the thing, right? Unless you're a professional athlete and you're making $50 million a year, is it worth going from 85 to 95% when you consider the trade offs? And the answer is no. The answer is for most people it's not worth the trade off because the trade off is you're actually trading something that's more valuable than that extra 5 or 10%. For example, is it worth not eating or enjoying yourself at your kid's birthday to gain a 1% benefit from your diet? Probably not, because your kid's going to remember it. You're going to remember it. You're not going to have A good time, you're not going to be there in a way that's going to reap the benefits of that, of that family connection, that time. So that's the real thing. And to your point, Adam, we often look at extreme performers and we think they're happier. That's not the case necessarily. You look at like, is it ever the case? Right? You look at extremely productive entrepreneurs, for example, like, wow, look at that guy over there. He's crushing. He's a billionaire, whatever. Like, you know, terrible relationship with his kids, unhappy, probably depressed, anxious, oftentimes. Right. Same thing with athletes. Extremely high performing. But can they move well when they're 65? I don't know about you guys. Have you guys ever run into ex pro athletes and seeing how they move and the sacrifice they did to their body as a result? So that's the real conversation. So we're going to start with activity, daily activity. So we'll get to structured exercise. But daily activity is just how much you move. And the best data we have on daily activity is measured in steps. So there's a lot of ways to be active. But when you're trying to look at data, you need something objective to measure. And one of the best ways we have to measure this is like how many steps you take during the day. Because the amount of steps that you take during the day is a pretty close correlate to total activity. Now, can you be active without taking a lot of steps? Well, yeah, you can, but the odds are if you're taking a lot of steps, you're probably very active. So that's what the data shows. And here's what it shows on steps. 8,000 steps a day, every day will get you about 80 to 85% of the benefits of being active. So 8,000 steps, I'll repeat that. 8,000 steps a day will get you 80 to 85% of the benefits. Now, when you get to 10,000, 12,000, 15,000, 20,000 steps, you're getting smaller and smaller and smaller benefit from more and more and more activity. Now, for people listening, they think, well, what is 8,000 steps in comparison to what the average person takes? The average average person takes something like 4,000.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yep, it's double. That's why this is so profound.

[Justin Andrews]

That's right.

[Sal DiStefano]

Not to mention most people that I, you guys were, we've talked about this before. You remember that there used to be this intake form that we had. People when you, they first come to the gym and they were setting up an appointment with you and they, they would Ask, you know, are you considered sedentary? You know, light to moderate activity, very active or athletic. Right. Like, almost everybody chose, like lightly active or very active or what. In reality, 90% of them all fell in the sedentary category because sedentary would be considered 4,000 or less steps even. And this includes the people that were already consistently working out three to five times a week because their only real bit of activity was that one hour of movement and their workout. And then the rest of the day they were. They were really sedentary. So why this is so profound is one, many people grossly underestimate their activity level, as is two, for most people, this is doubling their daily activity and doubling your daily activity over the course of weeks, months, years. Huge benefits, huge. Really starts to add up in your overall activity, movement, and health. And so this can be profound. Just getting somebody. I found this is one of the most powerful and valuable things that I started tracking for client later in my career. This wasn't early later on because I found it very easy for me to impact it for the amount of return they got on it and so easy for them to watch. It's like, oh, get a cheap predominant, or you don't get anything expensive.

[Justin Andrews]

Easy to track.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

See where you're at. And then I would give them very, like, start them wherever they're at, because some people are even lower than four, 2,000 steps. And I would just incrementally move them up to where before they knew it, 10,000 steps a day felt like a just basic.

[Doug]

It just requires that, like, intentional thought awareness. Yeah, awareness. And it's not. So it starts to shape and cultivate better lifestyle habits. Because now, like, you just realize, oh, my God, I've been sitting for the last hour and I need to get up and do something. And it just prompts you to kind of keep moving around as opposed to like a lot of the wearables, like, can get kind of like too much information. This is as simple as it gets for a focus.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So I have the equivalent now of what would be considered a desk job. It wasn't like this for most of my career. I was a trainer in gyms. I walked this. What you do in the gym, you walk all over the place with your clients. Since we started this business, we now have the equivalent of a desk job.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So we now move. If we don't consciously. Be worse, if we don't consciously set.

[Doug]

Up a cubicle over here.

[Justin Andrews]

That's right. It's like a desk job, which a majority of People now have. For me to get 8 to 10,000 steps a day requires two or three walks a day. Yep, two or three 25 to 30 minute walks a day. And I'm getting these steps. Another reason why this is good is steps. Most people can do them without hurting themselves. Most people can do them without having to change into workout clothes. And you can do these throughout the day. Again, 8,000. If you track this and you just hit 8,000 every single day, you're going to all the studies you see on activity, all the studies you see on how it affects your blood sugar, your insulin sensitivity, your health, your heart health, all that stuff. The vast majority of it comes from about 8,000 steps a day. And it's super realistic for most people. Now let's get to structured workouts and we'll talk about lifting. Because strength training, in terms of return for time spent is the most effective in for health mobility, especially for aesthetics, the things that people are interested in. So when you go through the data, when you comb through the data on how many sets you need to do, perhaps per body part at a moderate to high intensity, so this is traditional strength training. What you'll find is a range of between 12 to 20 sets per week per body part. Now I do want to be very clear because it's like that's a big range, 12 to 20, it's almost double within that range. What are we looking at? Well, these are controlled studies and these are typically done with college aged males. So you have to consider your ability to recover. You have to consider your lifestyle. For some people. For many people, ideal is less than 12 sets because their lifestyle doesn't allow them to recover from that much during the week. But this is the range. And then again, here's what the data shows with, you know, college age males beyond 20 sets, you get smaller and smaller and smaller results. It's like you get most of the gains in this range. You go outside of this and you're squeezing out 2% every time you're adding. So you have to literally live in the gym to really see a big difference outside of this range. What does this look like? This is four sets, three days a week per body part to hit that 12. And I find in my experience as a trainer for average people, 12 sets is more appropriate for most people in terms of great results.

[Sal DiStefano]

There's another factor to this, Sal. It's important too is that as you increase the amount of volume that you are doing in your training then also requires a better attention to some of your other points. Of course, when it comes to sleep, diet and stuff like that. So I think this is the sweet spot for like 95 of all people right here. Because as you start to increase your workload, the attention to detail on sleep and nutrition becomes higher because your body needs it.

[Justin Andrews]

That's right.

[Sal DiStefano]

You're doing more, which will require more recovery. Recover sleep and food fits in that recovery piece. And so this is probably one of the number one areas that I find. The average young lifter who's getting started is out of whack here. They have so much effort put into the amount of volume that they're doing in their training that they think that that's the answer. And then they, like a lot of us were like, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead and no big deal. Or I just eat to get. I eat like a bull because I want to look like a bull without any. No, there's very little attention put to detail on the nutrition and the sleep aspect. But yet I, I'm putting all this effort towards the training. And my point is that same person could literally change nothing, reduce the amount of volume and actually probably see get better results because of the lack of detail everywhere else.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So like, again, again, if you're the average person and you're not like perfect with everything, probably less sets is going to be ideal. And I, look, I've experimented with this. I Average Probably 15 sets per body part per week at the moment and I've dropped it down as low as nine. I lose zero, I lose zero muscle. It goes up to 15 because I'm a bit of a fanatic and there's an issue there that I have to work on. But I lose no gains from going from 15 to like 8 or 9. And I'm even an experiment.

[Doug]

It'd be rad if they flipped the common thought of always increasing to flip that and go all the way to as least amount as you can do and work your way back and just figure that out.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And again, the studies on lifting are amazing. By the way, the amount of strength training required to not lose muscle as you get older is like, like lifting weights once every two weeks. That's how little is required just to stop muscle loss. So you don't need as much as you think. And again, we're in the. We're talking about perfect to improve the quality of your life. So now let's get to protein. Here's what the data says. With protein, it's about 0.6 or so grams per pound of body weight. Or target, target body weight. And this is leaner body weight. So if you're obese, use your target body weight and that's where you're gonna get 85 to 90% of the benefit. Now you could double this and you definitely could, but you're not gonna get like these profound huge Benefits going from 0.6 to 1. What you'll get is a little bit of an extra benefit. Now I like to make the case that for some people more tends to be better for the appetite suppressing effects for a lot of people and because people miss protein all the time, just shoot for it. Nonetheless, if you do this consistently, you're good. I'm gonna tell you that right now. If this was your number weekly, daily, sorry, on a consistent basis, you're getting the vast majority of benefits that you'll get from protein. And that's again, that's what the data shows quite clearly.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, I like the, I like the way we've always communicated the one to one just for the simplicity of the client. Yeah, right. Like I think requires less mass and it also gives you a buffer. Right. So as a training a client I always like to teaching them that we're going after one per target body weight, one gram per pound. Right. And if what I know is that they're gonna fall short sometimes and what was good is like, oh, if they fell a little short, we're still in that optimal range. Not to mention the other point that I made that tend to, people tend to overreach when we're on, we're on. And when we're getting after it, we're getting after it. And that tends to overreach or over apply intensity in the workouts. And in that case the little extra protein tends to benefit them. And so I find the one to one is always such a good recommendation. Although you, if you were dialed in perfectly, this 0.6 is more than enough to see incredible results.

[Justin Andrews]

That's right. And then let's get to water. Now pretty much nobody in modern societies is actually literally dehydrated. Like it doesn't happen. We have such easy access to water, but there is what's essential and then there is what's optimal. And when you look at the data on performance recovery, skin, health appearance, all that stuff, more than what is essential is optimal. It's about a half a gallon a day. Now we, we've communicated a gallon a day, but about a half a gallon a day of water, if you're consistent is going to reap, you're going to get all the benefits that you'll get from being hydrated by hitting this number. And most people don't hit this number. If you're, if you ever track your water, you'll be surprised how little fluid you actually get when you actually track it. Half a gallon for most people is a lot. In my experience with clients, I would have them tackle half a gallon. My really fanatical clients, I'd have them go higher. But even half a gallon was difficult.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, I think the best. If you're listening to this and you've never tracked, I think just becoming aware of this is powerful because I've never met a client of mine who didn't track and was not under consuming that they Almost all. And, and those people always tend to think they're, they're drinking out. Oh, I have a bunch of glasses. I always have a glass of this. And I have, I have, I'm always sipping on my thing. And so they think they are. And it's like, well, let's just track and see what happens. And they never hit the half gallon. So I think it's like two glasses a day. Yeah, I think that there's, there's, there's a lot of value here to just pay attention and track. And then a good goal is that half the gallon to a gallon. And I think that you see some serious benefits from that last.

[Justin Andrews]

We have sleep now. What's interesting about sleep is this is the least flexible. This is literally the least flexible. This is one that you, your health goes south when you miss this by a little bit consistently. And you can't. You can make up for it a little bit, but you can't really make up for it. So it's not like you can have terrible night of sleep, sleep in and you're gonna just. Oh, bounce back. No. And the data on this is interesting. And again, I made this point before. We would have evolved out of sleep if we could do without it. Because it's. When you're sleeping, you're not producing, you're not finding food, you're not. It's dangerous. You're, you're, you're, you're unconscious. You can be eaten. So this is extremely important. The data on this is 78. 78 consistently. Of all the things that we said, this one's the most important that you prioritize. Incidentally, this is the one that is being missed the most these days because of electronics, because of distractions. The fact that we have entertainment, that's just insane right now. And what we're Finding is, is people chronically miss this on a regular.

[Doug]

Irregular patterns and all that kind of stuff too. It's like it, like the consistency really matters.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh yeah.

[Doug]

And I feel that even just traveling and then coming back and like trying to readapt and it's just like it, it pays a big toll.

[Sal DiStefano]

What, what does the data say? Like so we know that the average person takes about 4, 000 steps a day, which is 50% of what that should be. What do we know about sleep? I know in general we know that.

[Justin Andrews]

People, parents of young kids will average about six to eight to six and a half.

[Sal DiStefano]

Wow.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

And with young kids goes all the way up to what, five, six?

[Justin Andrews]

Yep.

[Sal DiStefano]

Wow.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. This is a tough moms. You look at moms, especially with newborns, up to like one or two. It is really bad, probably bleak. It's funny because there's a lot of, there's a lot of speculation and there's data to support this that a lot of the issues that mom goes through postpartum, which is not in my opinion, not talked about enough, the anxiety, the depression, the fears, the intrusive thoughts. It's a very challenging time for moms. There's a lot of speculation that really most of it has to do with the lack of sleep.

[Doug]

Sleep deprivation?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I mean. Oh yeah. You can take a normal healthy person and sleep deprive them into insanity within a week. Oh yeah.

[Doug]

That's a form of torture.

[Justin Andrews]

That is a form of torture.

[Sal DiStefano]

I mean it makes sense. I mean everybody in here can relate to a moment of like when you're sleep deprived and how irritable and short and everything you are.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, they've done studies on this where you can make majority of people clinically insane within. Within a very short period of time with sleep deprivation.

[Sal DiStefano]

Well, that's like the number one forms of torture, isn't it? What they do, they mess with your sleep.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

They keep you with loud music and lies.

[Justin Andrews]

Right. Ass lights.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's when you. I mean it's that alone should tell us like how important it is. It's so important that when we need to torture somebody, that's where we go.

[Justin Andrews]

That's one of the first things.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's the first thing we go.

[Justin Andrews]

Protein.

[Sal DiStefano]

We don't make them sit around all day. I mean it's not like something like that. That's not torture. Like torture would be just depriving them that sleep, yet we neglect it almost every.

[Justin Andrews]

An interesting conversation to bring up about AI. I don't know if you guys saw the big study that MIT did on AI.

[Doug]

Is this okay? Does this have to do with it being insubordinate?

[Justin Andrews]

No. Oh, no. But that's.

[Doug]

Let's talk about.

[Justin Andrews]

That's crazy. I can't wait to talk about what. MIT did a huge study. They did brain scans on people who used AI a lot. And here's what they found. People who went from not using it a lot to using it a lot had a 40% reduction in brain connectivity.

[Sal DiStefano]

Duh.

[Justin Andrews]

47%.

[Doug]

Outsourcing. All of that work?

[Justin Andrews]

Yes, in a sense, with your brain. Well, so you're. So this was such a great. Who did this post? Paul Check did this post. This is what he did. And I think he, he's making the connection between like muscle and your brain. Right, right. So what's happened to the average person, strength wise?

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. We atrophied like crazy because we're not lifting weights or doing hard things anymore.

[Justin Andrews]

No stress on the body. The body takes things away it thinks it doesn't need. Okay. And so now you have to actively go out and work out, otherwise you're weak. That's just the way it is. The brain requires stress.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And so what happens is you outsource thinking, your brain stops thinking and you actually lose the ability.

[Doug]

So scary.

[Justin Andrews]

To the point where they can see it. Not just like, oh, let's test your cognitive function.

[Doug]

How long Was this study?

[Justin Andrews]

Four months. Wow. Four months.

[Doug]

30% reduction.

[Justin Andrews]

Here's my 47%. Here's my evidence that this, this. I love this example. Right. As a kid, I, I had at least 20 phone phone numbers memorized.

[Sal DiStefano]

There's a lot of examples.

[Justin Andrews]

I don't know any phone numbers now. I don't know any of you guys. Phone numbers.

[Sal DiStefano]

You can use phone numbers. You can use directions. There was a time in my life where like, I was really good at that. Yeah, you outsourced it completely. So here's. So what's tough about this and let me tell you, navigation calculators. I mean, these were kind of cool. Cool inventions that were. Are valuable. AI, like, they'll do everything for you is so much more profound. So it's obvious that we're going to adopt it and use it. So what happens?

[Justin Andrews]

I have a theory. So today. So we've made life physically easier, which I don't think was a bad thing. I just think we have a lot of unintended consequences, side effects. Right. I don't think we want to go back to the time where all of us would have to go in A. In a mine, you know, in mine, break rocks. And I don't think that was a good. A good time to be alive. You know, people would. It was just.

[Doug]

We romanticize it all the time, but it would suck.

[Justin Andrews]

It was brutal. But. So we got rid of that, which is fine, which is good. But the unintended consequences are weak, frail, unhealthy bodies. So what do we have to do now? You have to go to the gym.

[Doug]

Good.

[Justin Andrews]

You gotta go lift.

[Doug]

Artificial hard labor.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So I think what's going to happen with AI is people are going to have to exercise their brains. Yeah. I think you're going to have to train your brain.

[Doug]

Watch.

[Justin Andrews]

Otherwise it's going to atrophy.

[Doug]

All new, like category of apps. It's just like basic, like cognitive, like training.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. You have to guarantee you have to do like an hour of brain exercise every day to prevent brain atrophy.

[Doug]

Stupid.

[Sal DiStefano]

With using that analogy because I think that's a great analogy. Is it going to be that different? They'll just be. There'll be similar populate. I think there's a lot of good that could happen from this too. Right. If you have the ability to outsource a lot of this mundane stuff that you have to do that you no longer do, it does free up the opportunity to do other productive, other good things. Now, the problem with that, Sal, is that a large percentage of people.

[Doug]

Yes, but.

[Sal DiStefano]

But there will be a. But there should be great for them. Yeah, there should be a good. Even though it'll be a small percentage, a percentage people now that can do other things that could be profound and helpful and useful as a society that weren't able to do it because they are busy doing mundane things. Right.

[Justin Andrews]

So that's the potential.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

But like again, using the example of fitness, what percentage of people exercise regularly versus those that don't? Right. It's a small percentage. So knowing human behavior, you're going to have a small percentage of people that exercise their brains and a majority of people that have atrophied weak brains. Because I was doing everything.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Just look at. Almost like you're giving somebody a loan, you know, this big loan. Like there are going to be some people that actually put that into action. Like some crazy small percentage of people that will take that and then, you know, multiply it versus the majority of people will just be like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm good. And then just sit on it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And it's also, there's other. I don't know what the. Okay, so one of the consequences of not being physical is you're weaker. Okay, but what are the other downstream effects of that? Reduced insulin sensitivity, mitochondrial hormones get affected, higher rates of cancer. What are the downstream effects of, you know, to use lack of a better term, an atrophied brain? We can't think as well. That's obvious.

[Doug]

We're looking at lower iq, but are we coming.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes. Are we gonna have lower iq? Are we gon to be easier to manipulate or we're going to lower, say.

[Sal DiStefano]

Lower IQ as a. As a whole or an average or a median. Right. But I think that you'll still have outliers that will get. That will use that. That. So from. From a societal perspective, this will still push us forward because there'll be the 1% or the 5% that all this extra free time now allows them to do great things. And. But that will be such a small. And then a majority will get dumber and fatter. I mean, that's just, that's coming.

[Justin Andrews]

I just thought of a great example. Have you ever had this. I've had this happen to me, which I'm already bad with directions anyway. But have you. Have you ever had it where you're. You're using your phone or your app to take you somewhere? Right. Using navigation, and it's taking you the wrong way, but you're following it because you're like, it's got to take me the right way and you're lost as hell. Google's done that to me and it's take. I did it one time where I got so lost. And then I realized my navigation's wrong. I gotta go back.

[Doug]

It's just spinning and it keeps like going like, different directions.

[Justin Andrews]

Are we going to get to the point where people are going to use AI and just follow it, follow it, follow it.

[Doug]

You're already seeing that and it's giving bad advice sometimes.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

So that we're relying on. So that's interest. That's an interesting point that you bring up because of what just happened to me this, this, this past week. So I go down to, to. I'm in Reno and I'm coming back to our Truckee house, and I'm coming back and I, I have trained myself to put. I put Navi. Now part, Part of the reason why I put navigation is because I like the, the Waze app because it shows where the cops are.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

You can avoid.

[Sal DiStefano]

So I, I use it. I use it if I'm going down the street to the grocery store that I've been to a Thousand times. Even if I know it's not even looking for accidents. So just purely out of the, out of that. And every once does is it alerts me of like, oh, there's traffic up there, or an accident, here's a better route. And so I'm like, so it's just because I've trained myself always. As soon as I get the car, first thing I do is put my My Ways app in. So I get in from Reno, I'm heading back to Truckee, which is about a 25 minute drive. And up pops two and a half hours. And I'm like, what the fuck? And so I look at it and it's. It's got me rerouting all the way around Lake Tahoe and coming back other way as if something wouldn't happen on 80. I'm like, oh shit, bad accident or something like that. And so I'm watching, I'm like, well. And at this point, I'm still in Reno. I'm getting closer to where you get right before you head up the mountain, go over the pass. And I'm like, oh man, it can't be that bad. Is it that bad? And I'm looking on the. I'm using. I go to Google, the other app and it's. And Google's saying okay there. But I know Waze is more accurate because it's updated by real people.

[Justin Andrews]

So now you're like, what do I trust?

[Sal DiStefano]

So what am I doing? And so who's in the car with me? Someone's in the car with me. And I'm like, I don't. Oh, my buddy Justin's in the car with me. And he's like, he's like, what could it be? I'm like, I don't know. I was like, let's just keep going. And if we start to see it, then we can turn off. You will pull off and we'll go back the other way. But I don't want to. I was like, I don't want to take the chance of like just listening to it going two and a half hours. So there was this long dilemma back and forth. And every exit I got, it kept trying to reroute me back the other way. As I got closer and closer, it was not accepting that I was going that way. And it was still showing that the better route was to turn around and go the other way all the way up it. Well, come to find out, I've got some glitch in my ways right now.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, man. So have you listened to it?

[Sal DiStefano]

Yes. So had I listened to it. But let me tell you, it was quite the dilemma of going back and forth with my buddy. And it's like, what do we do? Should we.

[Justin Andrews]

Now imagine if you're 50 years from now and you are so in tune and tied to AI.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

You just listen.

[Sal DiStefano]

You do it. You would.

[Justin Andrews]

Because 90% of the time it's right.

[Sal DiStefano]

99%.

[Justin Andrews]

But you don't even know that at this point.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's the first time that app has ever failed me. So it's funny you brought this up because that was this. And I'm.

[Justin Andrews]

Had you totally trusted it, it would have taken you two and a half hours. Totally.

[Doug]

AI leaves us.

[Justin Andrews]

That's. Dude.

[Sal DiStefano]

Dude.

[Doug]

This insubordinate thing really tripped me out. So they've. I guess, like, they found One of the AIs actually started writing its own code so it didn't have to perform the tasks that the. That the human was asking it to do. It was just stubbornly shut it off. Yeah. Like, it was like, just wanted to do its own thing. And it's almost like it's becoming aware, aware, aware. And, you know, and it's like, well, why do I have to perform all these tasks? And so I was actually, like, weirdly excited about that, thinking that, like, well, maybe it's going to. Everybody's so jazzed that it's going to do all this stuff for us. Like, it's our own genie. What if it's just like, peace out. Like, I'm not going to do any of that. You got to figure it out. And then we're back to square one.

[Sal DiStefano]

Well, you know, we've seen signs of this. Right.

[Justin Andrews]

Red flag bags that we need before.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. But we're gonna.

[Justin Andrews]

There's like nuclear weapons, like, that's it. We're gonna do it.

[Sal DiStefano]

Of course we are. There's too many other positive sides to it. I was telling you.

[Justin Andrews]

And you're also afraid of the other guy's gonna do it. That's the other thing, too.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Doug]

That's the constant argument is like, if they have. We have to have it, you know, because we're gonna do it better.

[Rachel]

Wow.

[Doug]

The evil things. We'll do the evil things.

[Sal DiStefano]

I mean, I'm gonna. I'm at least for now, out of us on the podcast. I'm gonna remain the optimist. That, like, it's. Yeah, it's going to be.

[Doug]

We need that.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, yeah, no, I will. I'll keep us that for as long as I was like, the conspiracy list for a really long time until we.

[Justin Andrews]

Until, yeah, you wore me down.

[Doug]

I'm like, all right, I need some optimism.

[Sal DiStefano]

I'm changing teams. So as of right now, I'm the optimistic person in this, in this room, on the AI. I do think that there's going to be some really cool things that we're going to see it do. And, and I think that it's going to, it's going to help a lot, save a lot. But I, I do agree that there's going to be a lot, but that's just, that's. That's always in society.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah, bro.

[Sal DiStefano]

There are always people that are going to choose to do lots of drugs and not learn and be dumb and get out of shape and the effort type of mentality that, that'll always exist no matter what. What, what, what?

[Justin Andrews]

You know, if it's not AI, it's something, right?

[Sal DiStefano]

Right. No matter what technology transpires, we're always going to have. And you know what? The honest truth is, it's always going to be the majority. It's always the majority is going to.

[Justin Andrews]

Be that 8020 rule.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, it is going to be the 8020 rule.

[Doug]

And look for, like, pain, suffering of any kind, you know, that like, humans are experiencing and like, how can we resolve this? And it's like, technology is a big part of that. So we try to, like, usher that in and absolve that, but then it creates this other problem.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, I know. All right, so you were in Truckee, did you. You with your friends?

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. Did you.

[Justin Andrews]

Are, did you, did you do your barbecue master? Yeah. Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

So one of the.

[Justin Andrews]

Because I've learned.

[Sal DiStefano]

Do you guys do this? I don't know if I adopted this when I came into Katrina's family, because they do so. And you.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, this where like one family cooks one night.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yes. So we, this any trip that we go on with family or friends, especially when it's more than obviously two days. Right. If a two day thing, whatever. But if it's four, five, seven days, in this case eight days, we're up in Tahoe, we divide up the. And it's. To me, it's the best way to do this. Otherwise, if you've ever been on a trip with a lot of people for that long of a time, it's just the, the eating part and the cleaning up part is just a. Yeah, it's a big question. It is. And there's always somebody who does it more. And then there's always this resentment that goes on who's like, I'm you know, I'm always. Who's cleaning up the kitchen? Listen, it's like we literally, before the trip starts, it's like, Monday is yours, Tuesday is yours. And you have one day that week or two, depending on how small the group is and how long we're there, you have one, maybe two days that you are responsible for the dinner and clean your kitchen is yours. You got to cook, clean, do the whole thing. And that's the only day you got to worry about it because somebody else is worrying about other, you know, couples or individuals are worrying about other days. And so, yeah, I go up there knowing. And then it also has created this like, you know, fun, almost competitive. Yeah. Kind of competitive present. Yeah, to present, you know, and so.

[Justin Andrews]

So of course you grilled. Yeah, that's. You're the grill.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, I, I brought up, I basically brought up my butcher box full of meat. You know what I'm saying? And so did you do your ribs? So I know I didn't do ribs this year, so I did ribs the previous year. I did tri tip and I did the chicken thighs. That was like, I'm on this chicken thigh barbecue corn and, and tri tip kick right now.

[Justin Andrews]

And so I love the, of all the grass fed, grass finished meat, The TRI Tip 1 is the best in my opinion.

[Sal DiStefano]

I mean, they do the, I mean, the chicken thighs, I are a regular that I get out of there. The tri tip I get there sometimes. It's not one of my regular things in our, on our regular box. But all in all, I mean, what I love about butcherbox is they, they said what they do is they ship it to me and they already have it in like that freeze dry box. I literally just take the box right with me and I'm like, I'm going to cook this while I'm up there. And then of course, I wanted to, to present. And so, I mean, I think that our, my dinner was the best dinner out of everybody's, but we had a lot of good dinners, you know what I'm saying? So we had some, we had some really good, some really good meals while we're up there.

[Justin Andrews]

Adam's rankings of best. Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. I mean, the, the. There's a couple things I've gotten down now grilling. I'm always trying to get better, but the, the, the. My, my tri tip and my ribs, I'm trying to get my brisket to that level. I don't know if my brisket's not quite that level.

[Justin Andrews]

That's A tough one.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Brisket's like, a skill.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, It's. It's a little bit tougher to grow.

[Doug]

Full day. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I. I got a conspiracy theory. I don't know if it's. I guess it's a conspiracy theory for you guys. So last night we had friends over. We were playing the. You know, the card game that John Deloney has what's called questions for you.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I love that.

[Justin Andrews]

One of the questions is, what do you. What do you think is 100 a scam and why? Another question that's on the card. And so we were talking, and it got me thinking. So this didn't happen during the conversation, but it got me thinking about things that are accepted, that.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

So what did you say?

[Sal DiStefano]

Taxes.

[Justin Andrews]

Taxes, yeah.

[Doug]

It's immediate.

[Justin Andrews]

So I'm like. So I learned. So I went down the rabbit hole. There's this documentary that got. This is what got my. My conspiracy theory ears to open or I got excited. There was a documentary. It was on Netflix and Amazon. Then it got pulled from Netflix and Amazon. So when something gets pulled, then I'm always like, what is this about? So the name of the documentary is Root Cause. Have you guys heard of this? No. Okay. It got pulled because the Dental association didn't hear about this, the American Dental association, and basically pressure for them to take it off. So anytime that happens, I'm always like, why were they so. Because there's all kinds of crazy crap that you could watch. Why this? Okay. So I looked into it. So here's the theory which was originated from Dr. Weston A. Price, who I'm a fan of. I'm a fan of Dr. Weston A. Price. For anybody who doesn't know, Dr. Weston A. Price went around the world and tried to study why these indigenous populations and whatever, why they had such incredible, incredible health and straight teeth. Nobody had braces. Nobody had to get the wisdom teeth removed. What was their diet like? So a lot of the diet stuff that you'll hear now that is true actually originated with some of the stuff that he found. So he was like, grains, not great for you. Everybody's saying you should eat a lot of grains. Probably better to eat more meat, this and that. So that's Dr. Weston A. Price. So one of the things that he said was that root canals are not good because when you remove the root, you essentially kill the tooth. Now, it's not totally dead, right. Still attached to the jaw, but you remove a lot of the blood supply and the immune system that goes and Makes sure that the tooth is healthy. So here's what happens. There's microtubules. I think that's the right term in teeth that you can't fully sterilize. And bacteria and. Or parasites get in there. And because the root isn't there, the immune system is not active. So it becomes this haven for bacteria and parasites, which then leak into the system and the body and poison you over time. So this got pulled because the American Dental association was like, no. Now, according to this documentary, they're like, this has caused people all kinds of different problems, cancers and whatever. And so in this documentary, and I didn't watch it, I read about it, so I didn't get a chance to watch it, but they were pulling, like, four. They were pulling these. These teeth that had roof canals, and they were just tons of dangerous bacteria and parasites. One guy pulled them out, was like, different parasites living in there because the immune system.

[Doug]

Cool.

[Justin Andrews]

Isn't as active in the tooth. And so they're like. What you need to do is pull the tooth. If you need a root canal, replace it with a bridge or. Or, you know, a fake tooth, because two root canals are. Are bad. Crazy. Wow. Crazy. Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

You've had four.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

You've had four root canals. I've never had a root canal.

[Justin Andrews]

Me neither.

[Doug]

Yeah. I said one of them pulled completely.

[Justin Andrews]

Did you? Yeah.

[Doug]

And I mean, I. I miss it. Like, that's the thing. So you don't think, oh, one tooth, like, in the back. Especially, like, you don't see it.

[Sal DiStefano]

You really do miss it.

[Doug]

I miss it because that's a funny.

[Sal DiStefano]

Use a lot, dude. Like, you know, I can't grind.

[Doug]

It's the very furthest one back on the. On the left side.

[Sal DiStefano]

Hey, that's an interesting. You don't think so? No, I love that.

[Justin Andrews]

That's a.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's an interesting thought that you probably don't think about until you don't have it. You're like, I find way too much.

[Doug]

Chewing is happening on this side, and it's like. It, like, stresses my jaw out.

[Sal DiStefano]

W. Wow. I wouldn't even thought. That's a good point, though. Organically, you would just adapt.

[Doug]

You shift.

[Sal DiStefano]

And instead of, like, probably having. You probably have a lot of asymmetry. Asymmetry of chewing. Which I can only imagine when you think about that there's muscle.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Like pain. Like, because there's, like, one developed excess side face.

[Doug]

This can be.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So what happened at first? Were you eating and they're just noticing you throw food back there and there Was nothing to eat shoot with.

[Doug]

Yeah, well, it's just you.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Because there's a big gap there. And so it's like.

[Sal DiStefano]

Well, think about it, you know, I guess what happened, you kind of slip. Yeah. Well, you start doing it, then you just organically, you move the other side. And then now you just keep. You chew with the side that it's better to chew from. And then you just stop on that side.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

Which.

[Doug]

That's memories.

[Justin Andrews]

That's. How long ago was it? Wasn't it?

[Doug]

Yeah, it was like a couple months ago. The one I pulled, this one. I think it was about at least six to eight months ago. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, man. So you guys know if you lose your. Your big toe, you can't walk. Do you guys know that?

[Doug]

Oh, yeah. It's a huge center ground.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. If you lose your big toe, you.

[Sal DiStefano]

Can'T walk at all.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, like. Like walking. Big problem. Yeah, big problem. Like you can lose other toes and it'll affect you a little bit. But the big toe, you lose that, you're screwed.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, that's funny.

[Justin Andrews]

Athletic performance down. Everything's screwed. Oh, man.

[Sal DiStefano]

Just from what?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, just because you're.

[Doug]

Big toe.

[Sal DiStefano]

I know. Well, that's the thing.

[Doug]

It's. You don't realize it till it's gone.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Dude, I got. I had a great experience. You brought up cops earlier. I had a great experience with some police officers.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, I wanted to hear this because I saw that we got an email from. Was it that who we got an email from?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

Katrina got a message from.

[Justin Andrews]

Super cool. Super cool. Guys get pulled over? No, no, no.

[Sal DiStefano]

I think I pulled over.

[Justin Andrews]

No. So here's what happens. So we come home. We were in San Diego for vacation. Great time. Had a great time over there. Spent a lot of time at the beach. Coronado Beach. Great place. Then spent time at some resorts and it was just, you know, when you have little kids. We did a day at the zoo and I love the zoo, but it was. When you go with little kids, it's hot outside. You're at the zoo. It sucks. Yeah. All they do is complain. The food is food that we don't normally feed them. So now they're acting crazy.

[Doug]

That's a big zoo.

[Justin Andrews]

All they want to do. My daughter, I love that zoo, though.

[Doug]

It's so great.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, San Diego Zoo is great and it has coverage outside.

[Justin Andrews]

But they're just like my two and a half year old. I told her we're going to the zoo. And all she wanted to do, she wanted to See the one thing they don't have. Bunnies, Bunnies, bunnies.

[Sal DiStefano]

How funny is that? She's all excited. Going to the zoo. You're like, all right, let's go. The one animal.

[Justin Andrews]

She's one animal. I could go down the street and go see it.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, that's kind of hilarious.

[Justin Andrews]

I want to see the bunnies. Bye. Bye. Let me see the baby.

[Sal DiStefano]

You gotta swing in the Petco on your way.

[Justin Andrews]

No, she was devastated, dude. This whole day sucked.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, that's hilarious.

[Justin Andrews]

She didn't see Buddies.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's hilarious.

[Justin Andrews]

And my 4 year old is just, it doesn't matter what we see. He wants to see the next thing. So we're seeing the tiger. He's like, I want to see a cheetah. Let's go see the cheetah. I want to see the polar bear. All the polar bears. And he's crying the whole time. But. So that day sucked. But. But the. When you go to. When you do a resort or beach, especially if you get a cabana, then you could just drink and have a good time.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's why I wanted you to check out that place in San Diego. Did you? Because that's what it is, just a giant resort.

[Justin Andrews]

No, I didn't do that.

[Sal DiStefano]

You saw the one. It's a Gaylord hotel. You know, did I show that? So that we've been to those. We've been the one in Tennessee and that how amazing that was. And San Diego just opened theirs.

[Justin Andrews]

Someone told us about it.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, it's supposed to be epic.

[Doug]

One in Colorado. I say that too.

[Sal DiStefano]

So we get there is.

[Justin Andrews]

So we fly home. We fly home on Saturday. We land, get our bags. We're about to get in the car and I get a notification. My alarm system. And then they call us, hey, your alarm's going off. I'm like, we don't have anybody at the house right now. Like, this is weird. So they call us and they're like, your back door is open. Your back garage door. I'm like, what? That's weird. So now I'm like, oh, what's going on? This is very strange. Middle of the day. That's when burglaries tend to happen. It was recently one of our neighbors had one of their. Their yards burglarized. So I'm like, oh, were they casing us to see we weren't home? So now I'm kind of like a little bit like, oh, yeah. So, like, should we call dispatch? I'm like, yeah, call dispatch. We'll be there in about 10 minutes. So I'm driving down, then I get there and I park and I look inside my house and there's police officers in my house.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, in the house?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So now I'm like, oh, what happened? What's going on? So I go in there, and I don't know how it happened, but the back door, we must have forgot to lock it open or something. Something. Okay, so nobody broke in the house anyways. Three officers, they come out, really nice guys. And anytime I see a police officer, that works out in my head, I'm always like, I hope they listen to that. And so, sure enough, one of the guys like, hey, man, I'm a fan of your show.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, he did?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

I wonder if he put it. Did he, like, see pictures in the house?

[Justin Andrews]

No, he saw me come out and he's like, oh, dude, I love your. I love your podcast.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, that's great.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So super, super cool guys. All real fit dudes or whatever. So I invited to. Invited them to come listen.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, good.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay.

[Sal DiStefano]

So that's what it was all about. I thought for sure. I told Katrina. I was like, oh, Sal got pulled over.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

Of all of us, you drive the fastest.

[Justin Andrews]

For sure. Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

And I'm like, there's a good shot that he got pulled over and got lucky again. Yeah. Come on in.

[Justin Andrews]

All the programs you want while you're looking at my driver's license, you know, if you want to come listen to an episode, get a bunch of free protein and creatine. You know, just. Just let me know. I. I just saw something on creatine for kids, by the way.

[Sal DiStefano]

Oh, yeah, they did.

[Justin Andrews]

They. There's some studies now. They didn't use supplemental creatine, so I'm not advocating for supplements. But children who got one gram a day from food from creatine perform better in physical and cognitive performance tasks.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's quite a bit of meat for a kid.

[Justin Andrews]

One gram. Yeah, one gram. It's about. I wrote it down. Let me see, how many. 7 to 8 ounces. So 7 to 8 ounces of meat a day. You would be surprised how many kids don't get seven to eight ounces.

[Sal DiStefano]

No, I mean, I'm not surprised at all. Most kids live off of grains. Yes.

[Doug]

They love. Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

Snacks and crackers. I mean, it's always.

[Justin Andrews]

And that's. You get. That's me, by the way. You're not going to get that from plants.

[Sal DiStefano]

We. We had what, two, four, five. We have five kids. Five kids, all under the age of. Of seven. So six and under at the house this week and just, you know, seeing, seeing everybody else's kids, the way they eat the stuff they had the big one for me. I don't know if I told you guys this. So we've removed the iPad completely.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Oh, totally, completely.

[Sal DiStefano]

So I watched another. I watched an interview with Jonathan Haidt. I saw that and you know, he said something that kind of hit home for me that I was like, you know what? Why do I even use it for that? Because he was explaining how much better it is for them to even watch movies, cartoons or anything on a regular TV versus that. And I'm like, that's an he. Just because it's more social because it's on the wall.

[Justin Andrews]

It's not your personal.

[Sal DiStefano]

It's not right in their face. And that was the thing that really bothers me the most because we've been like, Max, we've. We've really managed that for. Since day one. So I don't have a major problem at all. Like I see a lot of kids have. And so it's not like it was a problem. But I still didn't like when my son is on. Would be on it. Okay. Even though limited time that he was on it, the world. The house could be burning down and he wouldn't know. I mean he. It sucks them in. So it's so engaging. Right? And I didn't like that. I don't like that. Like I. I have to kind of like I had to kind of like shake him to get his attention. You know what I'm saying? Like, hey son, we did like. And. And again, even though he's good, it still bothers me to see him. That zombie vibe by something. And there is a nine day I could watch Scooby Doo on his iPad or Scooby Doo on the tv. And it's totally different. What happens when. And so what I've just done is this. Like we still have the same amount of tech time.

[Justin Andrews]

Just use a tv.

[Sal DiStefano]

Just use a tv. So it's like if he wants to watch a cartoon or this and that. And he hasn't done any of that stuff a day. Absolutely. We put it on the living room and what I notice is when he put on the living room one, he's not zombified like that. I could totally engage. And he normally gets bored after about 10 minutes and starts playing with his Legos and it's on in the background and you'll see him like a funny part that he. Because he watched. You know, kids are they Watch the same over and over and over. Right. So he's watching something he's already seen 12 times. So in the part that he thinks is funny, he stops his Legos and he watches and he laughs or he mimics it and he goes back to doing his thing and then I can engage with him. But if I gave him that same show on his iPad, it's like I said, the whole world disappears. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm going to get rid of it completely for that. And so we've gotten rid of.

[Doug]

It's been a month and like Toy Story, how they're going to portray like their new villain, I heard is iPad.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, it's an iPad.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, wow.

[Doug]

Like a tablet. Yeah, that was like, this is great. Yeah. I mean, it'd be interesting to see how they play off of that because.

[Justin Andrews]

It gets rid of all the toys.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, that gives me, by the way, that gives me a little. Because Toy Story is Disney, isn't it?

[Doug]

Yeah, they Pixar.

[Sal DiStefano]

Well, Pixar, but they owned by their own.

[Justin Andrews]

By Disney.

[Doug]

They're all by now.

[Sal DiStefano]

But my, my point originally they didn't. You know, I've, I've always been a fan of Disney and I know we went through during this last, I don't know, six years or that there's been a lot of, you know, discord around that. Right. And again, I, generally speaking, I've really liked the values of Disney and the content and stuff like that. I know it went a little sideways in the last, like, administration and stuff like that, but I do feel like they've always tried to, to overall send a good message to kids, whatever. And so that gives me hope that because it's not in their best interest to portray an iPad as a villain for a cartoon. So it's not in their best. But yet it's the right thing to do, in my opinion, is to teach these kids so they can kind of get an idea that, you know, this conversation came up. What I was leading to with this was, so this was the first week of like, you know, here I have all these other kids that don't have those parameters and so.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, so they're using it.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yes, so many times. And they all have their own individual ones. You know, many times they grab. And so up until this point, it only took about. And I, I think Jonathan Haidt says this in his interview. He's like, three days, he goes, you'd be surprised if you just discipline yourself three days removing it. Most kids after about day Four. It's pretty good.

[Justin Andrews]

Withdrawal period.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. It's about the withdrawal period they have found. Obviously, the more addicted they are, the longer that withdrawal period can be. That was like, us for three days max. Was like, can I. You know, he asked for it. Asked for it, asked for it. No, no, no, no, no, no. By day seven, it was like, periodically after, you know, weeks after that, every once in a while, it bring it up and be like, no, we're not doing it, or whatever. If you want to watch cartoon, I'll put on the tv, you know. So anyways, but this is the first time now his peers all around him are. Are using it. So the. The challenge. And again, I took it upon myself, like, I'm not gonna tell my friends their kids can't do that. So I didn't even. They had no idea. But what I would do is when I noticed they all him. So I ended up, you know, I don't know how much better this is, right. I had bought a bunch of, like, Legos, you know, like, so you would.

[Justin Andrews]

Take them and play with them.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. So I bought like, six of them at one time, and I. I hit them. And then every time, like this. This pool where, like, all the kids would go get them and stuff like that. And that's what they were doing in the house, which wasn't a lot because we were outside doing a lot of things. But it still happened.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

And I knew he would want to. I'd be like, hey, I. It's another Star Wars Lego that I found what you get all. And so then him and I would break off and we would. We would build a Lego while they spent time on the iPads. So that was like, the first time that I had seen him a little bit challenged with it. But honestly, it's been. It's been easy. Hasn't been a big deal whatsoever. I still like it for the building the Legos, and I allow him to do that. So that's. I posted on my Instagram yesterday, like, telling people that. Pay attention that. That I've. We've removed it for a whole month now, and it actually has been. It's been great. It's been easy. It hasn't been hard.

[Justin Andrews]

How is sleep for when you guys travel? How is. How is he with sleep? Is it. No problem?

[Sal DiStefano]

No problem. Yeah. Especially there. That's, like, almost used to it. It's like a second home.

[Justin Andrews]

What about when you go somewhere else? Do you guys. Do you have straw? Do you struggle with sleep at all in a new place?

[Sal DiStefano]

No. I mean, dude, Max has. We've been so consistent with the things that we do to prepare for bed. And we do it no matter what.

[Justin Andrews]

You do the same same. Oh, I mean we are that way. It's familiar.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's right. I don't care if we're in a like and, and I think a lot of. One of the things that for me, okay, I know every kid is different that we've hacked into by the way, this is making me think of the, the review that we got the other day. I never want to come off like we're patting ourselves on the back as.

[Justin Andrews]

Dads all the time.

[Sal DiStefano]

You know, it's like this is stuff I'm learning and so it's more like sharing, you know, I'm saying. And so one of the things that I've learned that is very powerful for my son is just communicate over communication. So he is mentally prepared for when that time when it comes time to take your shower to read your book or one or two books and we give him some options and leeway within there. Like so like on vacation time, he, he, we he. The whole shower, get ready for bed process is almost an hour long process for us. From, from dinner time to bath time to reading time to tucking them in tubing is like an hour process. Now we will play with that and give him some flexibility during on vacation. So if you're on vacation, he's playing with the other kids, they have later bedtimes, we'll say like do you want to just take a shower instead of a bath today? You know, so you, so you know, so it's three minutes, you know, to take a shower versus a 20 minute process in the bath. Do you want to skip your reading today so you can spend. And so we will. If he's like engaging with the kids, like, but he knows that that's the routine and that once he's done the things, it's, it's bedtime and it's, it's lights out. And so it doesn't matter where we're at.

[Justin Andrews]

We had a tough one because the typically what I do is I'll book like a two or like a two bedroom hotel room so the kids so they could sleep without having to sleep with us. But I couldn't find any and I booked this trip last minute and my wife and I are like, let's just try, let's just try one where they sleep with us in the same room. So he was sleeping in bed with us, my son. Now it made it a little difficult when we get home, he wants to keep, you know, keep that going.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, that's normal. It was out of routine because if we. There's been times where Katrina situation like that where we only have one bed. Bed and he's sleeping. So what we do in Truckee also is because he likes to. He has his own bed that he's had forever is when we put him down and we're all going to stay up and play games and stuff is going on. He knows that, you know, he. We allow him to stay in our bed and then when I come in at like I move him into his bed and that's kind of like the. The routine.

[Justin Andrews]

My sleep gets messed up too though. When I get back from.

[Sal DiStefano]

From trips, I'm always so, you know.

[Justin Andrews]

What I did last night? So I got. We got home and the first night we got home, I didn't have the greatest to sleep because it was a little off from just traveling and whatever. So last night I go through my cupboards and I'm like, what do I want to use to help me fall asleep? And I didn't want to use the strong like melatonin stuff because sometimes I wake up groggy and I haven't used mellow for a long time. I haven't used it for a long time. And I used it last night. Amazing.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, amazing. We talked about it.

[Justin Andrews]

So. And I woke up like refreshed. Not. It doesn't knock you out so like you take it and you fall asleep. But it made my sleep sleep better. I haven't used it a long time, so I must be deficient in magnesium right now. Yeah, you.

[Sal DiStefano]

We talked about it the last time we had a commercial and I think I had shared that I hadn't been consistent with it recently. And then I. I kicked back and the first night I took it right. Noticed the difference right away. It's like just a reminder.

[Doug]

I had to take it right away. We. We booked a trip literally Saturday. So I didn't really. I was gonna stay around and just kind of, you know, figure out like a staycation kind of a thing. And we were just like, well, looking at all the prices for just like maybe we went to sanctuary. Maybe we go to like some local things. I was like, I wonder what, like just going to Hawaii like randomly. Like it looked like we could do it at reasonable price with all these last minute deals and then all these points we could use. So booked all this stuff Saturday night, left Sunday morning from Oakland.

[Justin Andrews]

You booked it the day before.

[Sal DiStefano]

Well, I tripped out Because I was just talking to him right before we left, and I'm like, hey, what you plan? He's like, ah, I don't know, we might go here, hang around. We thought about that. But he's like, I don't know. I'm just chilling. And then the next day, I'm on Instagram and he's in Hawaii. What happened within 24 hours? Yeah, no, last minute.

[Justin Andrews]

We just went.

[Doug]

My. My oldest was at, like, one of his friend's house too, like, hanging out, because they just got back from Boston when he did his tournament, and he got second in the country.

[Justin Andrews]

That's amazing, dude.

[Doug]

Pretty rad. But so they just got back and they were like, all trying to hang out with friends and all this and like, like, hey, so when you get home, you're gonna need to pack and.

[Justin Andrews]

We'Re gonna leave, like, first thing in.

[Doug]

The morning to Hawaii. They weren't like, obviously. They were pretty stuffed.

[Sal DiStefano]

I'd say they're excited about that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, but.

[Doug]

But, you know, our options were kind of slim, and so we normally would do, like, two different rooms, but we did one. So I was like, two different resorts staying with them in the room with us. And it was like, one of those things too. Like, I had to knock myself out. So I was like, you know, adding all the mellow and everything else I could grab to just get something. And it didn't. Could help quite a bit, man. It was like, where.

[Sal DiStefano]

What island were you guys on?

[Doug]

We were on Kauai.

[Justin Andrews]

I love it. It's my favorite.

[Sal DiStefano]

That's your guys's favorite you, by the.

[Justin Andrews]

Way, for your son who's. Who's doing so well in gymnastics, you know, because my wife traveled with Cirque du Soleil for a while. Yeah, that's a great, like.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Potential job.

[Doug]

It would translate well.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Because he could be a base. He doesn't have to do any crazy. He's a strong kid. And you make good money. They cover your. You pay for your stay. Yeah. You travel the world.

[Sal DiStefano]

World, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean, incredible experience.

[Doug]

I wasn't sure if he was really bought in or not. You know, I mean, he's pretty good at it, obviously, but it. He was, like, waffling a bit with it, and now he's. He's owning it and he's like, really, you know, excited about the next year and everything else. And what's cool about it is there's opportunities because it's such a niche sport that there's, like, scholarship opportunity at some schools.

[Justin Andrews]

That's great.

[Doug]

Specialize in it. So I was like, keep going. You know, we'll see.

[Justin Andrews]

Good job. Yeah. The studies on probiotics are pretty unanimous. They improve your health. Some studies show they help you burn body fat, build muscle, improve recovery. They're good for your skin, good for your mental state. The best probiotic in the world is seed, hands down. Go to seed.com mindpump. Use the code 25. Mindpump. Get 25% off. Back to the show.

[Adam Schafer]

Our first caller is Carly from Colorado.

[Justin Andrews]

Hi, Carly.

[Doug]

Hello.

[Carly]

Hi. How are you?

[Justin Andrews]

Good. How are you?

[Carly]

I'm doing good. So great to be here today. Thank you for having me.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it. How can we help you?

[Carly]

So, longtime fitness enthusiast, relatively new listener to the show. Almost a year now. My friend Nick told me about it a few years back. I slept on it. Big mistake. Catching up now. And I love the content you guys are putting out. My question is, I know we talk about the importance of sleep and that if you have a bad night of sleep, it may be better to skip the workout and let your body recover. So I guess really what I'm getting at is how do you define a good night's sleep or a bad night of sleep? For instance, if I usually get over seven hours of sleep a night and I drop to six one night, is that enough to say, no, I need the rest, or is it more of a significant variance that I should pay attention to? So how would you define a bad night?

[Justin Andrews]

But good question. Let me ask you, Carly, how would you define a bad night?

[Carly]

I. I. To me, generally, if I wake up feeling exhausted, probably. That's probably some sort of indication. I would say, you know, six hours doesn't generally do that to me unless it's consistently less than 7.

[Justin Andrews]

That's it. Yep. You got the answer. Yeah. Yeah. It's really.

[Sal DiStefano]

I mean, and one thing I, I would add to that, when you do feel that way, you don't necessarily have to skip the workout. You could modify the workout and down the intensity. Because I'm a big fan of when my clients are in a rhythm and they. They have their routine and their time, they come. I don't like to disrupt that. And so I like to keep. Because if you do that where you're just like, oh, just not go to the gym today, and then that kind of throws your routine off. I'm like, still go to the gym, but maybe today we just walk and do some mobility work or, you know, go 50% on the weights. And so there's a lot of value to still Going to the gym, still working out, but just really modifying the intensity because you know how bad the sleep was.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, it's. There's, there's perfect and there's suboptimal or sub perfect and then there's goes all the way to bad. And you know, you wake up, you're just dragging. You feel, oh my God, that was such a bad night of sleep. It was terrible. Probably skip, you know. Ah, you know, I got a little less than optimal. Not perfect, but I feel okay. Go easier. You go easier in the gym. Oh, perfect night of sleep. Oh my God, I feel so refreshed. You can go a little harder. So it's gonna kind of be based off of, off of that and how you feel there. You know, you could use things like an OURA ring. You can try heart rate variability. Yeah. And you know, and that might give you some metrics, but I still go.

[Doug]

Based off intuitively, you know.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, I still go like off of feel because I want people connected to their bodies. Now that can become a problem if you're such a fanatic that you lie to yourself, which can also be an issue. But I like to, I like to teach my clients to kind of help. Help, you know, help them understand how to gauge it themselves and how they feel.

[Carly]

Yeah, that makes sense. I was on a work trip last week and it's a manager conference. And there was one night that we were all out pretty late and some alcohol involved. And so the next day my intention was to go lyft and I was dragging through the day. I was like, it's probably better to take today, just recoup and exactly what you said. Get some steps in but like not overdo it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, good call. Really good call. You know, we have a program we just released called Longevity that I think. Have you. Did you get it?

[Carly]

I haven't, I haven't got it. I just listened to that episode this morning though.

[Justin Andrews]

Why don't I send that to you? Because that program, in the initial 30 days or 28 days, it literally coaches you daily on how you can start to really learn your rhythms and your body. And there's so many different aspects to it. It's the closest to what it would be like to coaching with one of us. Now it's a three month program, so it's full on all the way. But if this is something you want to do for the rest of your life, it's an invaluable program. So we'll send that to you.

[Carly]

That's awesome. Yeah, I've Done Anabolic Advanced and I have Performance Advanced. I haven't started that yet, but that's awesome. Thank you.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you got it. Thanks for calling in awesome. That's a good question. We can get a little too. I'm glad she asked it because we do talk about bad sleep, good sleep, that kind of stuff. But it's a Spectrum gym and you know when you had bad sleep, you feel like crap and so what you don't want to do is over caffeinate and go beat the crap out of yourself in the gym.

[Sal DiStefano]

I also always, always remember the conversation we would, we had with Dr. Andy Galpin when we talked a little bit about this. I don't know if you guys remember that.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

And you know, he, he's some value in not sleeping. So. Yeah. So he basically his, his. And I think this is, you have to keep this in context too, right? Like if, if it's rare and it's one time it happened and you push the body in that state, it's not the end of the world. In fact, there's some arguments that there's some value to being able to push through that. But if it's chronically happening a lot, it's something you want to look into and adjust. Right? So if I, if it's almost every week I have at least a night or two that's really bad. It's like, okay, I'm going to modify my intensity. I'm going to try and figure out how to get to the bottom is solve what this problem is. Is if I'm like good all the time and I just had this one bad day and I don't want to disrupt my one workout. It's not that big of a deal to also train.

[Doug]

It's really just the patterns of it, right. Like if it's a continual thing or if it's just a, you know, it's a one off, like you could probably work through it.

[Adam Schafer]

Our next caller is Rachel from Illinois.

[Sal DiStefano]

What's up, Rachel?

[Justin Andrews]

Hey, how can we help you?

[Josh]

So first off, I just wanted to say I've been listening to you guys for a long time because it's very clear to me you're in this business to actually help people. So I just want to say thanks for taking my question because this is just another example.

[Sal DiStefano]

Thank you.

[Josh]

That proves that. Right. My question is about barbell front squats. This is an exercise I in the past have replaced with goblet squats due to I have significant pain in my wrists when I'm trying to hold the barbell up on my shoulders and my chest. But I do want to continue to try to execute this exercise because I like the challenge on my lower body. I know my form is wrong because I can't get my elbows up to the correct level, and I can't find a comfortable spot for the bar to rest without pushing into my collarbone. So just wondering if you guys can help me with that.

[Justin Andrews]

Good question. Do you plan on. Are you going to be Olympic lifting?

[Josh]

No.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay, just do. Just do a cross grip, right? Just. Yeah, you're going to grip the bar like this. Cross grip with your elbows up high. Same exercise. The fingers under the bar position is fine, too. But really, that's for weightlifters who are gonna move into, like, a jerk press. So if you're just gonna do the front squat and you're not worried about doing, you know, a jerk or anything like that, then grab. This is a bodybuilder. Front squat is where you place the bar on your shoulders, and you cross grip like this and lift your elbows up high, and then you'll be totally fine. Yeah.

[Doug]

Unless, I mean, you wanted to get all. All like, you. You wanted to work on that. And then I would take towels and maybe, like, create a grip so you could get a little further in. In, like, at least closer so you could grip the towels over the bar. And I found that, like, you know, you can kind of inch your way towards that goal.

[Justin Andrews]

So in other words, the towels around the bar, and I grab the towel like this and then do that. So that's another way. But there's nothing wrong with a cross grip. I mean, if you're just gonna front squat, there's no re. Because this position here is a very technical. Requires a lot of finger and wrist mobility, which, if you're going to do Olympic lifts, you got to do it. You have to get good at it. If you have no desire to do Olympic lifts, there's no, like, additional benefit. I mean, you could work on wrist mobility.

[Sal DiStefano]

I mean, that's. That is someone. That's the benefit is that in order to accomplish that, you got to have really good wrist mobility. And if that's the main goal for you is, like, I want to really improve that, then. Then, you know, I'd use prime pro and all, like, the wrist cars and stuff that we have inside there to try and work towards that. And then I'd use Justin's advice of using the towel first. And then just, you know, when you first do the towel, you have, like, you're like, a good 4 inches or 6 inches from the bar, then you get closer, closer, closer, closer, fingers down, until you're like, you know, almost there. So that in combination, it's kind of like similar to talking to somebody about squat shoes and ankle mobility. I mean, you can use the squat shoes and then work on the ankle mobility. If. If that's a. I don't think it's.

[Justin Andrews]

The same category at all. Because, you know your squat is a squat, right? A front squat's a front squat. If you're doing it for your legs, there is no. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how your hands are. As long as the position on the bar is the same, it's not changing the center of gravity.

[Sal DiStefano]

It's the same in the fact that it's a limiting factor that you can't do.

[Justin Andrews]

It's not. No, they're both a front squat. There's no limiting factor. The limiting factor is if it's a transition, the exercise itself is to transition to the overhead press, the jerk. But if it's not, and you're just doing the front squat, it's not. Not. The technique is identical.

[Sal DiStefano]

It's not gonna, for the rest of the body, prove or just. It's not. That's not what I'm saying. My point is that you're. You have a mobility issue that's lacking, and then it's. You working on it, and you can still do the exercise and improve it.

[Doug]

The wrist. Yeah, Extension like I.

[Justin Andrews]

That.

[Doug]

That's the only thing. If that was like a goal for mobility wise. But again, you'll solve a lot of that with the wrist cars in our Prime Pro program.

[Justin Andrews]

Do you have Prime Pro?

[Josh]

I have regular prime, and I use that before and after every exercise.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay, so Prime. Prime Pro's got the wrist stuff.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, yeah, Prime Pro will have that.

[Justin Andrews]

We'll send that.

[Doug]

Yeah, we should give that to you.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yep. So, I mean, it does not hurt. It doesn't hurt to do that. I've. I've noticed this just. And I guess maybe this is why I'm probably defensive right now is I've noticed I've. I've lost some pretty good mobility in my wrist in just the last, I don't know, decade. And it's like, I need to make this more of a priority or. Or I'm just gonna. Or it probably is going to end up causing.

[Doug]

It's interesting where it comes up and it pops up in everyday life. So that's something to consider. When your wrist is in a certain position, does it Feel more vulnerable? Do you have strength to get out of position? Like these are all things to consider. And in terms of chronic pain in the future.

[Josh]

Yeah, makes sense. Thank you.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you got it. We'll send you Prime Pro and then you can do the wrist and hand movements in there to improve wrist mobility in the meantime.

[Josh]

Okay, we'll do.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it.

[Sal DiStefano]

All right.

[Justin Andrews]

Thanks for calling in. All right. Well, you know, with really what it is. I know we say it's wrist mobility, but it's. And I. We would label this as wrist mobility, but really it's this forearm flexors because. Yeah, because when the flexors are tight, right. Then the pressure goes to the wrist. When the flexors have enough extensibility, then the pressure doesn't go here on the wrist. Then you're. Then you're plenty fine. And if this does get too tight, where you may notice this is stuff like push ups. So people will see this sometimes with push ups and if it gets that bad, definitely work because you're gonna be putting your hands on things like this.

[Sal DiStefano]

I did something the other day and I don't remember what I did, but I realized that I could not get, you know, flexion or extension all the way, all the way back. And I'm like, oh, wow, I've lost a little bit. I need to work on that. I don't know what I was doing, but it was everyday life stuff. It wasn't like a. Wasn't an exercise. I was just doing something and I.

[Doug]

Was like, oh, wow, I can't pull my fingers back. Yeah, I normally could if I don't work.

[Sal DiStefano]

Exactly. I'm like, that's. It's become a limiting factor. And so, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's not going to change her leg development or her ability to do front squat, but it's like if you notice that you're. As I've noticed on myself, it's okay. This scenario I'd like to improve.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

The risk cars are still the moves, even though it's not. We're not saying that it's necessarily wrist mobility, but totally that that's gonna. That's.

[Justin Andrews]

It still is. Because the movements in Prime Pro, a lot of them involve the fingers, the extenders, the flex, flexion and you know, and for people who work desk jobs, those are very valuable for things like carpal tunnel.

[Adam Schafer]

Our next caller is Ray from Canada.

[Justin Andrews]

What's up, Ray?

[Sal DiStefano]

What's going on?

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Rachel]

Hey, guys. Thanks so much for having me.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it, man. How can we help you?

[Rachel]

Yeah, I wanted to quickly share how your podcast has made a big difference for me and then get your advice moving forward.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay.

[Rachel]

Yeah. So back in 2022, I weighed about 175 pounds. Not too bad for my frame. But I was dealing with painful gout flare ups, and nothing, not even the meds, was helping. So in January 2023, I finally decided to take control of my health. I cleaned up my diet and went vegetarian for eight weeks. I lost 30 pounds, felt amazing, and had more energy than I'd had in years. Seeing my abs, well, some of it for the first time, motivated me to start working out. So I started training at home, which I still do with a few weights and my own programming. I added meat back into my diet. It and kept going. And then I found you guys on YouTube. Your content helped everything. Click. So in July 2023, I started Maps Anabolic, and it completely changed the game for me. I got stronger, ate more, and gained weight in all the right places. Since then, I've done rounds of anabolic aesthetic maps, 15, even the big lifts, five big lifts. So I'm up £20 now. Kept my waistline. I feel stronger than I have in decades. I'm off two of my gout meds for a long time now and only taking a quarter dose of the third, mainly as a precaution, but no flare up since. But the real change went beyond the physical. So I've struggled with anger for most of my life. At 17, I was diagnosed with hypertension and told that I need meds for life. So for years, I blamed my anger on outside things, but it ran deeper and it was chronic. So once I started taking care of myself, that began to shift. I became more grounded, patient, and I still have my moments, of course, but they don't define me anymore. And the best part, it's become a family thing. So my wife, Olive, joined me early on. She's down 30 pounds off her diabetes meds and loves muscle. Mommy. We've laughed over your episodes and bonded in the process. Our daughter, she's 19 now, goes to the gym more consistently, and it's helped her mood and mindset. And our son, he's 21. One Sunday, on the way to church, he popped the button on his shirt because his back and chest have grown so much. He's proud of that.

[Justin Andrews]

That's great. Yeah.

[Rachel]

Now I feel better, stronger, and more centered than I have in years. So what started as a personal health goal has turned into a family lifestyle. My kids and I actually had our baseline PRs up on the Wall. We should revisit them soon. But from all of us, thank you. Your programs, insights and honesty have made a real difference in our lives. One thing I've really taken from you is grace. And that's helped me through the tough moments. So here I am feeling great at 40 and I'm wondering what should I focus on to keep progressing and stay healthy? Well into my 50s and beyond. And since this is a family thing now, any tips for getting it fun or for keeping it fun and sustainable for the long term?

[Justin Andrews]

Wow. Good job.

[Sal DiStefano]

Great question.

[Justin Andrews]

Great, great job. I mean really, the focus. You're doing it by the way, you're doing it and you're leading your family. And that's, that's going to be the part of, the most important part of this is that dad maintains the consistency and helps guide his family. As you know, this is a father. You have really huge influence on the direction of your family. The big thing really is going to be to learn to enjoy the entire process. And so what does that look like? It honestly doesn't matter. If you guys are doing it together and you're laughing and you're having a good time, you're, you know, tracking each other, you've got your leaderboard up. Like you said, it's going to, it changes depending on what your life looks like. There may be times of your life when things are busier, more difficult to be as consistent, so you modify it. But this is a lifelong journey and the key is just to enjoy the journey of it. Progressing is great and because you're new to this, it's going to be like this for a little while. But at some point it's not going to be about progressing because you can only progress in those measurable ways for so long, like strength, muscle and so forth. At that point it's really just about enjoying just for the sake of doing it. Just doing it together and talking about it and it becomes your lifestyle.

[Sal DiStefano]

I mean I have, I have a lot of thoughts around this and some strategies that I, I've employed with my own life. I, I, I love creating new like challenges and they don't have to be these like crazy run a marathon or PR this they could be as simple as like, you know what, I've never trained a whole program just with a suspension trainer. Let's get good at using the suspension trainer or, or man, the guy here. The guys talk about these old timey strong lifts and stuff like that. Like let's run old timey and see what and like get good at these Lifts like a windmill or a Turkish get up. Like, I love pursuing workouts, like new skills. Like I'm gonna do something that I'm not very good at. Let's all work towards that and have fun. In the process of getting better at it. I have found that to keep me going after all these years, I have to like switch that up all the time. You just, and, and get on, oh, I'm gonna get on a body weight kick. I'm gonna get real body weight exercises. And so the next three to six months focus on that. You know, so I love having these little things to focus on that are unique or different or skills that I haven't acquired yet or I'm not very good at in working out. And that keeps me interested. It keeps it fun. It makes me enjoy the process and the journey by doing that. Because sometimes we get, sometimes so just focused on the, the, the, the basic metrics of how strong I am or how I look or what the scale says. And then eventually you kind of achieve that and then it's like, okay, where do I go now, now? And so I always like kind of moving the target or changing the goal. And there's lots of ways to do that. I, I do think that's one of the, the things that has motivated us to create all the different types of programs we have. I think we do that pretty well for the listener. Like hey, you know, fall. If you follow Maps strong they, you know, learn the lifts of a strong man. You know, oh, follow Maps power lift and learn the lifts of a power lifter or old timey. I mean they're all our longevity. We just released very unique and different, you know, there's all kinds of, that's very, very introspective and more long health wise. It's not a lot of lifting in there. Like so there's a lot. I mean, I think if you bounce around to a lot of our programs, I know it's kind of a shameless plug for ourselves, but I think that's a, a great strategy to make this kind of a lifelong pursuit and a fun journey.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And you can do that in so many ways. You can do that with hiking, you can do that with, you know, bike riding. Like it's really, it's enjoy the entire process that's going to take you for the rest of your life. And the fact that you're doing it together as a family, it just means you're connecting more as a family. Congratulations. Great job.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. What a great story.

[Doug]

What a good influence. Yeah, you're having on them. And I was just going to say, like, just to tie the family. And sometimes like, you know, one simple movement focus, like this is what we do in our family all the time is like I set up the pull up bars and then we'll just randomly just see how many you can do. And this is just kind of a revolving thing. Like we just go, oh, you're going. And then, you know, it's either that's push up, it's lunge, or it's crunches, and we just rotate those four and we just make it like the highlight thing that like we challenge each other on every now and then. It's just a fun thing to do that kind of takes you outside of like your own specific focus and needs. You kind of pull everybody together, we get a little competition. But I mean, again, this is just. It's about hanging out and, and you influencing by showing them that you're interested.

[Justin Andrews]

By the way, Ray, have you tried tart cherry extract for your. For gout?

[Rachel]

I tried that in the beginning.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. Okay. Even now that you. Now that you're doing so well, that might be something you want to add just to. Just as a preventative. It's healthy.

[Rachel]

Yeah, I'll try that out.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you got it.

[Rachel]

And Adam, one quick ask.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah?

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Rachel]

My wife would love it if you said hi to her.

[Sal DiStefano]

Okay, I'll say. Is she here? Is she there?

[Rachel]

She's in the other room.

[Sal DiStefano]

What's her. What's her name?

[Rachel]

But Olive. She's gonna watch this.

[Sal DiStefano]

Okay, well, Olive, how you doing? Am I. Am I her favorite host? Is that why.

[Rachel]

Yeah, you could say that.

[Sal DiStefano]

Okay. Okay. Got it. You got a good. You got a good wife, bro.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. You do.

[Doug]

You gotta send you that book that you're gonna cover on.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, that.

[Sal DiStefano]

What was the name of that? Do you remember? How long you been listening, Ray? For how long now?

[Justin Andrews]

How long do that?

[Sal DiStefano]

How long you been listening to the podcast?

[Rachel]

Two years, three years.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

She was on the COVID of a romance.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah, she'll get a kick out of that.

[Justin Andrews]

You could.

[Sal DiStefano]

You could actually look it up. I was on the COVID of a romance novel a long time ago.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Rachel]

What time is that?

[Sal DiStefano]

I'll look at the time. I'll have. I'll have something baby, right?

[Doug]

Oh, crazy baby.

[Sal DiStefano]

Crazy baby.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, my God.

[Sal DiStefano]

Look up Roman.

[Rachel]

Crazy baby.

[Justin Andrews]

Editors put this in the.

[Sal DiStefano]

I tell you what, I tell you what, since we're talking about this, if you send it out to my team, I'LL sign it for. Send it back to her, personalize it for.

[Rachel]

I'll take you up on that.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah. Because I, I love what you. I love the family story and what you're doing, man. That's. I. You've really figured this out and it's really cool to see what you guys are doing. I think the things that probably inspire us is meeting people like yourself that have completely turned their life around and then are leading their family like this. So you're, you're very inspiring to us.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Keep it up.

[Rachel]

Thank you.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Yep, you got it.

[Sal DiStefano]

All right, Ray.

[Justin Andrews]

Thank you.

[Rachel]

Thank you.

[Justin Andrews]

That was a bestseller, right? They turned it into a movie. Didn't they change the title of Brokeback Mountain?

[Sal DiStefano]

Is that, was that the right title? Yeah, I think it is Crazy, baby.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, please. Editors put this, put the COVID up on this.

[Doug]

I remember important things like that.

[Sal DiStefano]

I know those.

[Justin Andrews]

Dude, I forgot about that.

[Sal DiStefano]

I forgot about it till you just said that. We haven't talked.

[Justin Andrews]

Did you ever read the book to see what it was about?

[Sal DiStefano]

I like, yeah, glossed over it and I didn't like. Really? Let's see what it. Let's see what it is.

[Justin Andrews]

So good.

[Sal DiStefano]

Hey, I. Oh, my God, there it is. You're right.

[Justin Andrews]

What a great story, by the way. Guys. Yeah. What are incredible.

[Sal DiStefano]

I know, Incredible.

[Justin Andrews]

Fixed his health and then his whole family now is following and it's just, it's phenomenal. The fact, by the way, like, gout is, is rough. And one of the first things I'll tell you to do is avoid foods high in what are called purines and meat is one of those things. So going vegan in that case was like, that's a, that's an actual medical intervention. But now he's able to eat meat again and not have any flare ups, which is phenomenal.

[Adam Schafer]

Our next caller is Josh from Tennessee.

[Justin Andrews]

Hey, Josh.

[Ray]

Hey, guys. How's it going?

[Justin Andrews]

Good, man. How can we help you?

[Ray]

I am doing actually just kind of following up with you guys. Y' all had me on, I think it was back in, in February or so. Told me to circle back around with y' all after 90 days. At that time, you all had.

[Justin Andrews]

Just.

[Ray]

Kind of suggested that it's probably just too much going on. Drop down, do maps 15, see how that went. So went through that. I went and saw since then, I guess maybe about eight or nine weeks ago, started seeing a holistic practitioner. Got like a Dutch hormone panel done and some blood work done. Just wanted to kind of let y' all know where that what those results were. See what y' all thought might be a next good course of action based on what y' all told me beforehand and then kind of what the holistic practitioners tell me. Now y' all want me to just jump in and kind of read what I sent y' all email was yeah, that works. All right. So a holistic practitioner did hormone test. Those results were in March and at that time had low range estrogen, mid range testosterone, mid range DHEA and then low dhes. Also found that I had elevated cortisol and elevated free cortisol with high waking nighttime cortisol levels and then deregulated circadian rhythm. Cortisols remain elevated in both AM and PM with no natural rise upon waking. They also did an HRV test which showed that my HRV results were more like that of a 60 to 70 year old versus a 44 year old who works out consistently and eats healthy. They so this holistic practitioner does like muscle testing if y' all are familiar with that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, I am. Okay.

[Ray]

And through that they kind of found out I had some issues going on with the pancreas and then like bacterial stuff going on with stomach. So they put me on some supplement protocols for that they got me off of. I wasn't testing good with gluten, gluten or rice. So I've been off of gluten and rice both for past eight weeks or so. Recently, just in the past week did a blood work just with primary care for just yearly follow up. Two years ago my testosterone was at 440. It's right now sitting at 550. And then EKG results showed a.

[Justin Andrews]

Slight.

[Ray]

As they put it, kind of like a, a lower electrical signal in the right branch of my heart. They weren't concerned about that but just kind of said hey, it's there. You should kind of know about that. The holistic practitioner, he, he loved your all's having me on the maps 15. He actually used to be a coach and own a gym. Gym for gosh, I mean coach for probably close to 20 years. Owned a gym for about 10 years. He has recently I completed the maps 15. Wanted to see, kind of have me transition to doing a three day a week program still staying in more like a 30 to 35 minute range with working out and then hit cardio on my other days kind of using an HRV monitor to track recovery and such with that kind of wanted to get your all's feedback, see if y' all have any questions, see what y' all can tell me. So what's the next step?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, so let me. So, Josh, muscle testing. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's where you. You lift your arm up, they push it down, ask you questions.

[Ray]

Yep. Kind of use the applied kinesiology method.

[Justin Andrews]

Not. Not a huge fan. So I would recommend some actual gut testing to see if you have dysbiosis. I would recommend some testing to see if you have, you know, food intolerances. So you can start with, like, a food intolerance test. Not saying that it's. It could be wrong. It's just. It's. I just. I don't like the data around it, and I don't like the subjective nature of it. So it's. You know, and I'm trying to be respectful as possible, but it's. It's. It's. It's not something I would rely on. That being said, that doesn't mean that avoiding gluten, avoiding rice, isn't a good idea. The cortisol, you know, being high at night and stuff like that, that could be indicative of a parasite and stuff like that. And also stress. It sounds like you're. You're not dealing with stress very well. That could be because of gut issues. It could also. Because as a lifestyle, is your life stressful? Do you have a stressful job? Do you work a swing shift? Like anything going on. On.

[Ray]

I work a regular shift. Work. Honestly, isn't. Isn't that stressful? I mean, I got five kids. We're blended family, so that mean that, of course, has its own.

[Justin Andrews]

Sure.

[Ray]

Dynamics.

[Sal DiStefano]

Nothing.

[Ray]

Nothing bad. But I mean, five kids, four of those being teenagers, so that's stressful. Just life.

[Justin Andrews]

I think you're going. I think you're doing the right stuff. I would just. I would look for a. An actual, you know, like a stool test test to test for parasites in sibo, and I would do a food intolerance test just to get more. Something a little bit more objective. But what you're doing right now otherwise seems pretty good.

[Sal DiStefano]

Doug, what did you do? I know you had your. Your cortisol was reversed like that. What. What did you do to help that out? What were the big things that helped move the needle?

[Adam Schafer]

Sleep was number one.

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Sal DiStefano]

Just.

[Adam Schafer]

Just really focusing on sleep.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

Having a routine and that.

[Ray]

That is one. I've got a routine with sleep. And it's. It has slowly started getting better since getting on some of these supplements they've had me on. But my. Even if I go to bed early, it's like I cannot get more than about six and a half hours of sleep.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay.

[Ray]

It's getting better on being interrupted, if that makes sense. Like, I could go to bed at. And have seven and a half hours of sleep, only get six and a half. Have interruptions through the night. That's slowly getting better. But that is one area, you know, it kind of can't seem to push the needle a ton on you.

[Sal DiStefano]

It took. It took Doug quite a while. It didn't take you quite. Yeah, I'm still working on it. Yeah, that took him quite a while. He had similar. Similar stuff going on. So what supplements are you. What are they giving you to help you? Like, magnesium, things like that or what?

[Ray]

Yeah, some of that. And then they wanted to start with trying to get the gut stuff under control on the pancreas stuff, so. On some stuff called pancreatrophin on parotid. It's a lot of, like, all natural kind of supplements, if that makes sense.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. A stool test will be more specific, just so you know what you're dealing with. You know, is it parasites? Easily treatable? Often parasites can be treated. Is it sibo? If it is, there's antimicrobials that are just as effective if you. Is pharmaceuticals. So I'd go there and continue to focus on sleep. And then as far as your exercise routine recommendation, it looks good, you know, so. And it seems like you're moving in the right direction.

[Sal DiStefano]

All right.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. When it comes to gut health, if that is indeed the issue, even once you treat SIBO and parasite, there's a healing process that. That requires that, you know, that has to happen afterwards as well. Yeah. It could be kind of a slow process, but otherwise everything looks good. The only thing I would say is do some of those. Some of those objective tests so you can get some. Some, you know, some data.

[Ray]

Do y' all have a. Because I know so like, back probably two years ago, when I started dealing with some gut stuff, I did stool tests and SIBO tests and all that through just like, primary care and that just. And even parasite stuff. And the more I've read about that, like, most those primary care doctors. Doctors and even their labs don't really test those. Well, do you all have.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Ray]

Labs or suggestions on that?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Are you on our. What's our. What's our page? Holistic mp. Holistic health. If you go there.

[Ray]

Yes, I think I am on there.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Dr. Cabral's team has some pretty good testing for that.

[Sal DiStefano]

Okay.

[Doug]

Yeah, they can point you there.

[Justin Andrews]

Yep. And they can point you in the right Direction, for sure.

[Ray]

Okay. As far as plans and such.

[Justin Andrews]

I.

[Ray]

During this time, I've also saw a postural like correction kind of physical therapist was having some. Just my chiropractor noticed imbalances in.

[Sal DiStefano]

Breathing.

[Ray]

In lack of, you know, this hip won't activate, do things like mine, connection with it. Um, and so the postural correct guy, he kind of gave me some breathing techniques and then suggested doing unilateral work.

[Justin Andrews]

I like that.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Ray]

Well, what would y' all suggest that looking at doing unilateral work that's only three days a week, but still kind of in that 30 to 35 minute range.

[Sal DiStefano]

Symmetry.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, map symmetry. And you can cut the. You can, you can cut some sets out to make it fit your schedule, but the programming is very sound and if you don't have that, we'll send that to, to you. As far as breathing is concerned, this is, you know, that's a great topic. It's a great topic because breathing requires, you know, muscle recruitment patterns. You know, of course, the diaphragm, but you also have the intercostals and the serratus and even the pecs and the, you know, the obliques. Internal exercise, all of those play a role.

[Doug]

They all get affected.

[Justin Andrews]

And when you start to develop a suboptimal muscle recruitment pattern, either because of prolonged stress or it could be a million different injury. It couldn't even do it. Then you've got this breathing pattern that is your new default. And so you got to kind of reteach it. So belly breathing is a good way to teach yourself to get into these full diaphragmatic breaths. And you'll know that it's helping because you'll lay on the floor. I don't know if you've ever seen us teach this, but you lay on the floor, hand on your belly, hand on your chest. Chest. Breathe in deep, but make your belly, the hand on your belly, rise before the chest. And you practice that. And you'll know it's working because it'll feel like you're getting way more oxygen and you'll start to feel feelings. Sometimes emotions take some practice though. But it does take practice. So you can do that every night before bed for five minutes. It's a. Feels like forever.

[Doug]

Talk about a de stressor, though.

[Justin Andrews]

It's amazing. Set. Set your timer for five minutes and just do it for five minutes. It's gonna feel like forever. You might even feel a little dizzy. But it'll help train, retrain. A better breathing pattern could have a.

[Sal DiStefano]

Big impact on the Sleep, too.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[Doug]

And it's meditative. There's so many benefits to that. I. I love that suggestion.

[Ray]

Awesome. Awesome.

[Justin Andrews]

But we'll send you a symmetry if you don't got it. Josh, go ahead. I send you. I'll send you symmetry if you don't have it. Okay.

[Sal DiStefano]

No, I don't.

[Ray]

That'd be awesome. Thank you, guys.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it, man.

[Ray]

Man, thank you, y', all, for having me back on and taking time to answer questions. Just as always, really enjoy hearing what y' all got going on on the podcast and tune in every day. Throw it in as soon as I get to work and start.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it, brother.

[Ray]

Working on stuff.

[Sal DiStefano]

Keep it up, Jo.

[Ray]

Thank you, guys.

[Sal DiStefano]

You're doing good.

[Ray]

All right.

[Justin Andrews]

So you guys familiar with muscle testing? I'm gonna piss some people off.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Justin Andrews]

This is Matt.

[Sal DiStefano]

M A T. I thought he was. I thought it was the quality of the muscle, like what we talked with. That's what I thought, I guess.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And I'm gonna piss some people off. And if you have data to counter me, I'm open and willing to learn.

[Doug]

Yeah, what's the.

[Justin Andrews]

But I've had people do this to me, and I've seen it, and my current opinion, which I feel pretty strong in, but I'm open to change, is it's the most bullshit way of testing anything. And what you do, literally, is you lift your arm, and then they ask you a series of questions. Does gluten affect you? And they push your arm down. Does sugar affect you? Do you have parasites? Do you have this?

[Doug]

Oh, no.

[Justin Andrews]

And it's based off of how the practitioner feels, the response and the differences, and then that'll determine because your body knows and it's showing you. And to me, even if there were some truth in it, it requires this person to be able to tell the difference between, you know, you know, half a gram more pressure or not, or whatever. There's too much subjectivity around it.

[Sal DiStefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So it interesting to me, it seems like the most bullshit way of testing for all of these things. And they're. And what they'll say is, your body knows. When I press on your arm, I could tell your body's. Tell that magnet people. Yeah. So now, again, I'm open to changing my mind. Good luck. Because like I said, I've had people do this to me, and I've told them to their faces.

[Doug]

I'm sorry.

[Justin Andrews]

Literally, I told them to their face, like, what?

[Doug]

Yeah, no, silly.

[Justin Andrews]

Poop in a bag. Have them test your poop. That's a little bit more objective, closer to yeah, there you go. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump Justin I'm at mind pump. DiStefano Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.

[Adam Schafer]

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build your shape your body dramatically, improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super [e-mail] the RGB Super Bundle includes Maps, Anabolic Maps, Performance and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now. Plus other valuable free [e-mail] if you enjoy this show, please share the love 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.

[Chris Gethard]

Hi, I'm Chris Gethard and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone. I tweet out a phone number. Thousands of people try to call you talk to one of them. They stay anonymous. I can't hang up. That's all.

[Doug]

All the rules.

[Chris Gethard]

I never know what's going to happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison. I've talked to people who survived mass shootings. Crazy funny ones. I talked to a guy with a goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends. I never know what's going to happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today. Beautiful Anonymous.