2656: Machines Vs. Free Weight... The Final Debate! & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Mind Pump Episode 2656: Machines Vs. Free Weights... The Final Debate! & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Podcast Information:

• Title: Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth
• Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews
• Produced by: Doug Egge
• Release Date: August 6, 2025
• Episode: 2656

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I. Machines vs. Free Weights Debate

Introduction to the Debate: At [03:55], host Adam Schafer introduces the central theme of today's episode: the long-standing debate between machines and free weights in strength training. The hosts aim to provide a comprehensive analysis to determine which method is superior based on various factors.

a. Muscle and Strength Gains ([04:11] - [08:36]): Adam Schafer posits that while both machines and free weights can build muscle and strength, free weights offer more significant long-term benefits. He explains that initial studies often show machines aiding muscle growth more effectively in the short term ([06:19] - [07:21]). However, free weights require greater skill acquisition, leading to continued muscle and strength gains over extended periods ([07:24] - [08:36]).

Adam Schafer ([07:21]): "Free weights getting stronger. Free weights get you better at free weights getting stronger."

b. Carryover Strength ([11:26] - [13:24]): The concept of carryover strength—how well strength gained from an exercise translates to other activities—is discussed. Free weights excel in this area as they mimic real-world movements, enhancing functional strength. Machines, conversely, offer strength gains that are largely limited to the specific machine being used.

Adam Schafer ([12:05]): "If you get stronger at free weights, then you're going to get stronger at the free weight exercises. You get stronger machines. It tends to be pretty closely contained to machines."

c. Taxing the Body More ([14:22] - [17:05]): The discussion shifts to how each training method impacts the body's overall stress and recovery. Machines allow for higher training volumes without as much systemic fatigue, making them ideal for bodybuilders who require extensive volume. Free weights, while more taxing, contribute to overall physical resilience and functional performance.

Adam Schafer ([17:05]): "If you feel like you're pushing it and your stress level is kind of high, go do a machine workout. It's gonna, it's not gonna beat you up as much."

d. Functional Flexibility ([17:26] - [19:20]): Functional flexibility—meaningful flexibility that enhances daily movements and prevents injuries—is better developed through free weight training. Free weights require balance and stabilization, engaging more muscles and supporting better movement patterns. Machines, lacking this dynamic component, do not contribute as effectively to functional flexibility.

Adam Schafer ([18:34]): "Free weights are superior for this because functional flexibility requires balance and stability."

e. Addressing Weak Body Parts ([19:20] - [22:01]): For individuals with lagging body parts, machines offer superior isolation to target and develop specific muscles without the need for balancing. This targeted approach helps in correcting imbalances more efficiently than free weights alone.

Adam Schafer ([21:26]): "So if you have a body part that's lagging and you're like, okay, I want to really develop this, machines might be a great way to go to, to get that body part to catch up."

f. Injuries and Rehabilitation ([22:01] - [23:47]): When it comes to preventing injuries, free weights are preferable as they enhance stability and balance, reducing the risk of injuries in real-life scenarios. However, for individuals recovering from injuries, machines provide a safer means to continue training without exacerbating the injury.

Adam Schafer ([23:12]): "Free weights are better at preventing these kinds of injuries. But what about if you are already hurt and now you need to rehab? That's what the machine is now."

Conclusion of the Debate ([24:02] - [26:30]): The hosts conclude that the debate is nuanced and that both machines and free weights have their rightful place in a balanced training regimen. Utilizing both methods appropriately based on individual goals, limitations, and training phases can lead to optimal results.

Adam Schafer ([26:30]): "It's more nuanced than they make it sound. And ultimately, if you're smart and you're doing this for a while and you're consistent. Use both when appropriate for best results."

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II. Listener Live Coaching

A. Issa from New Jersey: Managing Hypothyroidism and Weight Fluctuations ([60:39] - [75:35])

Background: Issa, a 23-year-old female actress, shares her struggle with subclinical hypothyroidism, exacerbated by a strict ketogenic diet and recent lifestyle changes due to full-time waitressing. Her journey involves fluctuating between under-eating and binge-restricting, leading to significant weight gain and sluggishness.

Key Points and Advice:

• Reverse Dieting Success: Despite challenges, Issa increased her caloric intake from 1,200 to 1,900 calories, improved her energy levels, and gained strength ([66:01] - [70:05]).
• Thyroid Management: Current treatment with Armour Thyroid 60mg has improved her symptoms, but she experiences high T3 and low TSH levels.
• Hormonal Balance: Hosts advise focusing on how she feels rather than strictly adhering to lab numbers, emphasizing the importance of maintaining strength training and muscle mass while managing caloric intake.
• Mental Health: Emphasis on reducing self-scrutiny and focusing on overall health and strength rather than the scale.

Adam Schafer ([72:18]): "If you were my client, I'd like to keep you in the low 20s for body fat percentage, and I'd watch your strength in the gym."

Sal DeStefano ([73:02]): "You're in a healthy place. You're doing good. And I think if you just keep building muscle and focusing on getting strong. And you... you're going to sculpt, sculpt that physique."

Outcome: Issa receives encouragement to continue her current regimen, focus on strength gains, and leverage Mind Pump's support through their private forum for ongoing guidance.

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B. Lindsay from Tennessee: Reverse Dieting Amid a High-Stress Job ([79:25] - [99:21])

Background: Lindsay, a 33-year-old female, has been reverse dieting for three months after a history of restrictive eating and cycling between under-eating and bingeing. She reports increased strength gains but concerns about not seeing corresponding aesthetic changes.

Key Points and Advice:

• Strength vs. Aesthetics: The hosts clarify that reverse dieting aims to build muscle and strength, which may not immediately reflect as leanness on the scale.
• Muscle Gain Assurance: Emphasizing that significant strength improvements (e.g., a 40-pound increase in squat) indicate positive progress even if visual changes are not immediately apparent.
• Mental Focus: Encouraging Lindsay to trust the process, avoid obsessive self-monitoring, and acknowledge the internal changes such as increased strength and improved energy.
• Consistency and Patience: Reinforcing the importance of staying the course with the reverse diet and strength training to achieve long-term aesthetic and health benefits.

Adam Schafer ([82:28]): "If you're strong and you're strength training, 117 to 119 pounds is fine. It's actually a good body weight. 100 pounds is a bit light, unless you were absolutely shredded."

Sal DeStefano ([84:10]): "You probably are in a pretty healthy good spot right now, and I don't know how much we'd want to change that."

Outcome: Lindsay is advised to continue with her current reverse dieting strategy, focus on strength training, and utilize Mind Pump's private forum for additional support and encouragement.

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C. Bradley from Texas: Balancing High-Performance Training with a Demanding Job and TRT ([89:46] - [99:21])

Background: Bradley, a firefighter-paramedic for the Dallas Fire Department, seeks advice on optimizing his training regimen amidst a physically and mentally demanding job. He is currently undergoing Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) to manage hormone levels and improve overall performance.

Key Points and Advice:

• Training Adjustments: Emphasis on microdosing training—maintaining a base level of strength training while accommodating the unpredictable and high-stress nature of his job.
• TRT Considerations: Advised to be cautious with TRT as it can mask natural hormonal signals that typically regulate rest and recovery. The hosts stress the importance of not overtraining despite feeling energized due to TRT.
• Functional Fitness: Encouragement to focus on functional movements that enhance endurance, strength, and injury prevention specific to his role as a firefighter-paramedic.
• Training Integration: Sal DeStefano proposes integrating Mind Pump’s Maps 15 Performance program to complement his endurance and stamina training, allowing for flexibility based on his shift schedule.

Adam Schafer ([93:43]): "The pro of hormone replacement therapy is your hormones are always optimized. The con is that your hormones are always optimized, meaning they don't react and respond to your life."

Sal DeStefano ([95:27]): "And you heard, I don't know if you heard Justin Time in. He's like, some days you stack that so you have the Maps 15 protocol which is, you know, basically six days a week of 15 minutes."

Outcome: Bradley receives tailored advice to balance his training with his high-stress job and TRT, emphasizing the importance of adaptive training strategies to maintain both performance and long-term health.

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III. Conclusion

In this episode, Mind Pump effectively navigates the complex debate between machines and free weights, highlighting the strengths and appropriate applications of each training method. The expert hosts provide nuanced insights, emphasizing that a balanced approach tailored to individual goals and circumstances yields the best fitness outcomes.

Additionally, the live coaching segments underscore the podcast's commitment to addressing real-life fitness and health challenges, offering personalized advice grounded in scientific understanding and practical experience.

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Notable Quotes

• Adam Schafer ([07:21]): "Free weights getting stronger. Free weights get you better at free weights getting stronger."
• Sal DeStefano ([84:10]): "If you keep focusing on getting strong and building muscle, you will tighten up and be more sculpted on that path."
• Adam Schafer ([93:43]): "The pro of hormone replacement therapy is your hormones are always optimized. The con is that your hormones are always optimized, meaning they don't react and respond to your life."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the episode, providing a clear and informative overview for both regular listeners and newcomers alike.

Transcript

[Sal DeStefano]

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[Justin Andrews]

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[Adam Schaefer]

Mind Pump Mind Pump with your hosts.

[Justin Andrews]

Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews.

[Adam Schaefer]

You just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast ever. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode we had live callers call in and we got to coach them. We helped them with their fitness on air. But this was after the intro. Today's intro was 56 minutes long. In the intro we talk about fat loss, muscle gain, studies on diet, longevity. It's a good time. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this where we can coach you on air, send us your [e-mail] now. This episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is a new one, fatty 15. This is the fatty acid C15 which has been shown to have remarkable health and longevity benefits. Better cell integrity, lower inflammation, better cognitive function, better gut health. This is a must have supplement. I'm very excited to be partnered with them. Go check them out. Go to fatty15.com that's F A T T Y15.com mindpump on that link you'll get yourself an additional 15% off their 90 day subscription starter kit. You got to use the code Mind Pump plus some potential additional discounts. This episode is also brought to you by Caldera Lab. This is natural skincare that really makes a difference. Studies show over 90% of people notice remarkable changes in their skin. Go check them out. Go to calderalab.com that's C-A-L--E-R-A L A B.com mindpump. Use the code mindpump20. Get 20% off. Also, big news maps 15 is 50. Now this is some. This isn't some random quick workout routine. It's a fully structured program that solves the number one fitness problem. Staying consistent with Matt's 15. You'll get short 15 minute daily workouts that you can stick to. They build muscle, they burn body fat. It's just 15 minutes a day. And you can do them at home with minimal equipment. Or if you want to use barbells and dumbbells, there's a version in that for those as well. Head over to mindpumpmedia.com maps 15 minutes and use the code Muscle50 at checkout for the 50% off. Back to the show.

[Sal DeStefano]

T shirt time.

[Justin Andrews]

And it's T shirt time.

[Sal DeStefano]

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

[Justin Andrews]

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[Adam Schaefer]

This is the debate to end this debate. You know, free weights versus machines. It's constant. It's been happening for decades. Which one's better? Which one's better for what? What is this? Debt data show. What do we think? This is it, the final one. We're gonna break it down.

[Sal DeStefano]

Final countdown. We're still doing this.

[Adam Schaefer]

We are.

[Sal DeStefano]

It's something prompt this. What happened? Or you just. This is on. On top.

[Doug]

Somebody arguing with you in the gym.

[Adam Schaefer]

There's always clips on social media. Yeah. About this particular debate. And it typically looks something like the studies show that they build the same amount of muscle. Muscles only, no tension, blah, blah, blah.

[Sal DeStefano]

You know, it's a bit. It's a bit silly that this is a thing because imagine the. You know, imagine if there was like a. Maybe there is a big. Is there like a big following of, like, contractors that follow each other on the Internet?

[Adam Schaefer]

I don't think so.

[Sal DeStefano]

Could you imagine like the big, like, nails or hammers? Which is more important? There's this big debate on which one Is more needed for building the house.

[Doug]

Put screws in a day.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, well, I think to prep to set this up right, because here's what we're going to talk about, like which one builds more muscle and strength, which one builds it faster? What has the best carryover strength, which one taxes the body more? What about functional flexibility? What if you have a weak body part? You go machines, free weights, and then injuries, like which one prevents them better? And if you have an injury, which one should you choose? Machines or free weights? Now to preface this, it's important, I kind of did already. But it's important to understand that strength training provides so many benefits. Strength. So when this debate becomes silly to me is when we focus on one benefit of strength training, like build muscle as if that's all strength training does. That's one of the things it does and that's the thing that people like because it makes you look better. But there's so many benefits that strength training provides besides just building bigger muscles. And so we're going to go through all these different points. We're going to talk about the data, the studies and why it's so nuanced, why this is a silly debate when it's based just on data or it's based just on a particular athlete. Like we got to really break it down so people understand, well, which one do I pick for what?

[Doug]

Isn't it just people arguing their preferences? You know, it's just like I prefer doing this and therefore I'm going to, I'm going to reach to the one that makes the best argument for the thing I like.

[Adam Schaefer]

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about which one builds more muscle and more strength. And we're going to also break this down into the short term and into, into the long term.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, that's a good one.

[Adam Schaefer]

And the reason why I did that, you know, I've seen studies, yeah. And I've seen studies that'll compare like a hack squat, like a sled to a barbell squat, and they'll take relative beginners, they'll put them on them and they'll do like an 18 week or 16 week or 12 week study and they'll map the strength gains. And then what they'll find in those studies sometimes is that the strength gains in the hack squat or muscle gains to a particular muscle, like the quads in that period of time, which is short. Right? 12 weeks, 16 weeks, it might be a little better for the machines. Now I'm gonna explain why strength training with free weights requires A lot more skill. It's just harder to do a barbell when you're a beginner. It takes you a longer time to learn how to do a barbell squat than it does to just push your body on a sled. That's relatively easy. I could take almost any beginner so long as they don't have injuries. And if I pick the right weight on a sled, they're going to do it right. Barbell squat, if I take a beginner, it's going to take me a. Oftentimes, even if they're healthy, it'll take me a month or two.

[Doug]

Benefits are going to take a bit for you to learn and adapt properly.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right. So in the short term with the sled, you're going to, you're going to be able to push the weight harder and just focus on the muscle faster. But in the long term, here's what I'll argue the case for free weights, because of the skill acquisition, I believe that the muscle gain effects will just continue to happen over time in a, in a better way from free weights. Now this is a bit of a, again, we're a little bit of a nuance here because here's the, here's where you hear a lot of fitness influencers say muscles don't know, they just know tension, they don't know what you're doing. Well, that's true. But we'll start with strength. It's, it's, it's specific. So here's what the data shows. Free weights getting stronger. Free weights gets you better at free weights getting stronger. Machines get you better at machines. Yep. So, and we'll get to the other points like carryover strength, why that might be important when it comes to building muscle and strength. They're both pretty damn good. They both work very, very well. But I would give the nod to free weights long term. Like if you just did barbell squats for two years or just did hack squats for two years, I believe the, and I would bet money on this, that the barbell squat will produce more muscle gains over a two year period, not just the 12 week.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. If you've never hit a baseball before, you're going to hit it further off of a tee than someone throwing the ball at you.

[Adam Schaefer]

But first.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, at first. But learn how to hit with someone throwing you the ball and eventually you'll hit that ball significantly further than the tee.

[Adam Schaefer]

Great, great example.

[Sal DeStefano]

And I feel like that's a similar. If you did that, if you took someone who's Never hit a ball. And he said, here's it on a tee, or here, this guy's gonna throw it at you 80 miles an hour. See what you can do.

[Adam Schaefer]

Less variables involved.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. And so, you know, it's similar, but similar in the sense of like, I think the skill acquisition part, right, it's going to take longer to get better at hitting the ball getting coming at you, but once you do, you're going to get a lot further. I feel the same way with a barbell back squat. It's going to take you a little bit longer to get good at it, but when you do it, it's going to take you a lot further.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'll use another example just to piggyback off you. If you take somebody who's never used a keyboard before, a computer keyboard, you tell them to type as fast as they can, they're going to be faster with their two index fingers like this. At first you teach them how to type properly, it's going to take a while to learn the technique, but over time, which one types faster? Proper typing technique does. So I think that's also true with the free weights. It just. Over time, free weights provide more because of the skill involved in doing them. So although that might make it more difficult in the beginning, after six months, a year, two years, three years, especially when you get past the year, it's like, come on, it's not going to be.

[Doug]

It's one of my only regrets. I never learned how to like properly type.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh my goodness.

[Doug]

Classes. I'm just still hacking at it.

[Sal DeStefano]

I did and I still suck.

[Adam Schaefer]

Did you learn?

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, I got up to 30, 32 or 34, which is not impressive.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think that's pretty slow, isn't it?

[Sal DeStefano]

It is pretty slow, yeah. It's pretty like that's what I mean. I got up to that. So, yeah, so I think it was, it was in the 30s, maybe high 30s if I'm lucky. But I know it wasn't impressive, but I got to. But then still I didn't, I didn't keep it going.

[Adam Schaefer]

I got remarkably fast. My. Just my two. I forgot when I was like 50 or 60.

[Doug]

Do you work with what you can now.

[Sal DeStefano]

Now you're. This, you know. You know what's, what's interesting about this conversation for us as trainers is and why this is why it's a bit of a silly argument is because no matter how pro I am, free weights. There's also plenty of examples where I went to a machine first client and so it always depends on the Client, what the desired outcome is, what their limitations are, where they're currently at. Right. Which also potentially other loads of stress for that week. Like, so there's so many other factors that I'm going to take. And this goes for myself. There's times where I might come in and I might choose a leg press, leg machines, and not choose the barbell, even though I know the barbell back squat provides me more return. Because there's other variables that I'm also factoring.

[Adam Schaefer]

No. And we'll get, we're going to get to those. That's great. So next is what about like carry over strength. Now carryover strength means if you get stronger in an exercise, how much of that strength translates to anything else you may do?

[Sal DeStefano]

Now, do they have specific studies for this style? Because I think it's not even close.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, it's not. And they do. They have athletic studies. So like barbell squat versus leg press for football, for sprinting, for jumping. Free weights are superior. And the reason why is because free weights are. If you lift anything in the real world, it's a free weight. Like anytime you have to use strength in the real world, it's almost never on a track.

[Doug]

Lateral and rotational forces apply.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's it. You're going to pick up a table, the table's free. You're going to move a couch, the couch is free. You're going to, you do a sport like wrestling or football or whatever. Nothing's on a track. Everything is free. And the data on this is very clear. If you get stronger at free weights, then you're going to get stronger at the free weight exercises. You get stronger machines. It tends to be pretty closely contained to machines. So. And the world is not made up of machines. So if you're gonna, if you wanna get stronger, they're both great, they're both gonna get you stronger. But if you want the kind of strength that then you can tell that you got at the park, on the field, moving furniture, whatever, free weights, because they're closer to the real world.

[Sal DeStefano]

I think too, if you, if you compare the two of them, like you, let's use leg press and squatting. Find me a guy that can squat 500 pounds, barbell back squat. And I. And he never leg presses. He'll get on that leg press and he'll leg press.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. A thousand pounds.

[Sal DeStefano]

Thousand pounds.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Be a champion.

[Sal DeStefano]

Find me a guy. Okay. And I was this kid who could leg press a thousand pounds but could barely barbell back squat. Two. Two plates.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right.

[Sal DeStefano]

You know what I'M saying. So it's like the carryover for the leg press over. You could be really strong in a leg press. But that's a. Those are respect. Eight hundred to a thousand pounds in a leg press is very respectful.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, you got strong legs.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. And this was my early years of training my legs was this. I did more leg pressing and hack squatting and leg extension work and got really strong at those, those exercises. But then I go over and barbell back squat and I could barely do two plates. But once I got to a place where I was squatting over 400 pounds, I didn't have to even leg press anymore. I could come back and still. Yes, keep that leg press strength.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes, yes. All right, next up is. Now this one's titled which one taxes the body More? And believe it or not, there's pros and cons to this. So I'll give everybody a good example. You may see pro bodybuilders who are the most muscular strength training athletes in the world. Right? So you have lots of different athletes that utilize strength training as a primary form of exercise. Power lifters, strongman, Olympic lifters. But I don't think I need to argue that pro bodybuilders have the most muscle. They're just big, lots of muscle. Now why do they use a lot of machines? Because they do. They use way more machines than Powerlifters, strongmen, and especially the amount of volume. Because, yes, free weights tax the body a lot. And when you're walking around at 5, 9, 280 pounds, relatively lean, and you got that much muscle on your body and you need to hit a certain amount of volume to continue to train your body. Free weights is too much, it's just going to fry you. But you can go do 20 sets of machines in the gym. So bodybuilders oftentimes start with free weights, but end up with a lot of machines because that they tax the body. Now, what about the average person? Well, if you feel like you're pushing it and your stress level is kind of high, go do a machine workout. It's gonna, it's not gonna beat you up as much. If you're feeling great and you wanna get after it, then go strength training with free weights. Now you, some people would say, well, you could modify. So instead of doing 20 sets of machines, why not just do 10 sets with free weights? And that's totally viable argument. 100%, that's credible argument. Now here's the problem with it though. It's not easy to equate. There are Some free weight exercises that two or three hard sets will fry you, whereas 15 sets of machines, you feel perfectly fine. You know, you're doing an Olympic lift in particular, or you're doing, you know.

[Sal DeStefano]

Even a barbell, squats, deadlifts, even a barbell back squat tents will do that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes. And so if you know your body and how you feel, then you, you need to adjust and say, well, today machines are more appropriate. That's what's going to give me better results. And other times, well, I'm going to.

[Sal DeStefano]

Use free weights to give an example how this is probably one of the most common ways that I end up using it. This just happened last week where I go into a week and I, I, I tell myself I'm lifting Monday and Wednesday full body. So Monday I start with barbell back squats. Wednesday rolls around and I'm a lot more sore than I thought I'd be. I end up find leg pressing, leg extension, leg.

[Adam Schaefer]

Got it.

[Sal DeStefano]

And so even though again we, I would make the case all day long that free weights is better, but because I overreached on Monday, it now becomes more appropriate and better for my body to do machines like that. And I think this is one of the best ways, per, this is my personal opinion on how you interchange or use the both of them. I think that the foundation should be built around these free weight type of movements. The reality is sometimes you're going to push it a little more. It's time to train that body part again. You're still pretty sore from that. I want to train, I don't want to not just not train at all. I want to move those and I want to facilitate recovery. But I don't need to tax it that hard because I already taxed that hard. So then here's a great time that you use machines to add that volume.

[Doug]

Totally without a great option to have. Like, especially when you are, yeah, you're overtrained, you're taxed and you just want to make sure you keep that signal going. And it's like to get the volume without a lot of this, the intensity. And the intensity is something you're always trying to gauge based on, you know, where you're at. Like, you don't want to overdo that. So to have machines as an option, you can still train, get the benefit.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, work together with it totally 100%. Now let's talk about functional flexibility. Now functional flexibility is the kind of flexibility that actually matters. Like, it's cool if you can get into the splits, but if you don't have any strength or support. You're just unstable. It's like a baby. Like you have a baby who's super flexible, but, you know, they could hurt themselves because they don't have any strength or stability around that. Functional flexibility means you're flexible, but you're strong and all. You don't hurt yourself. You can get out of that position easy. That's right. Free weights. This is not even close. Free weights are superior for this because functional flexibility requires balance and stability. Machines require very little. Now, one of the arguments that really annoys me with this is you'll often hear people use EMG studies to show, look, the stabilizer muscles are just as active in the leg press as they are in the squat. Active versus. Are they able to stabilize in unison, or is the central nervous system coordinated with these muscles, stabilizing the body? Very different. It's very different. You can activate the muscles all you want and develop them, but that doesn't necessarily equate to more stability. This is why, like a bodybuilder who's got all this muscle, more muscle and strength than the average person, will hurt themselves throwing a Frisbee because they don't have their CNS hasn't been trained to have the right amount of stability. Free weights provide this. Like, they provide this because you have to balance, because everything has to operate in a stabilized way because the weight is free. So. And if you do free weights properly, lots of different, you know, full ranges of motion train appropriately, different planes of motion, you'll actually get incredible functional flexibility. You'll get really, really good protective functional flexibility.

[Sal DeStefano]

Would you guys are. I would. I would argue of all the points we're making, this is the most applicable to, like, all for Gin and pop. This is. This is why most clients, their programming was built around free weights is for this.

[Adam Schaefer]

Totally. Yeah.

[Doug]

Because I mean, look at the opposite. If you just train with machines, you can look at the dysfunction that creates when you go to move in unison and organize your body for these other types of movements. Like, it's dysfunctional because you've been training it to be limited to these certain ranges.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's 100%. And when you train clients, they want to look good, which is, of course, that's their number one goal. But if they hurt themselves, you failed. If your client comes to you after you've trained them for six months, and it's like, I got to cancel my session. What happened? Oh, man, I went to go pick up my kid or I stepped off the curb wrong way. And I hurt myself. You got to ask yourself, am I trained this person? I mean, they're fit in the gym. How the hell they hurt themselves?

[Doug]

Picking up for success.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right.

[Sal DeStefano]

This is, this is an area that, admittedly, I think I failed a lot of my early clients.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, totally.

[Sal DeStefano]

I think I, I defaulted to the machines so often because it was easy, it was safer, it was less work. You know what I'm saying? I get a.

[Adam Schaefer]

Less coaching.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, it was way, way less coaching and easier. And I justified it because, oh, you know, she's older and she has this. And the risk, the risk, injury, this. That's like. I would have been far better off just reducing the load to next to nothing and teaching them free weight stuff versus machines. It wasn't until later in my career did I realize the value of we could literally spend this whole hour just trying to get the barbell back. Squat, and you'll get more value than me taking you through 10 machine exercises every single time inside the gym.

[Adam Schaefer]

All right, next up, what if you got a weak body part? Like, what if you have, you've been working out and everything seems to be developing well, but you got that one body part that's lagging. What's better for that weak body part? Free weight or machine? Well, this one goes to the machine. Machine. Yeah. Machines are superior for weak body parts because I can sit on a machine and isolate and think about the muscle I want to develop and not have to worry about balance, not have to worry about stability. In fact, oftentimes the machine is on a track that puts me in the right position. And so this is another reason why bodybuilders like machines is they can go on there and isolate the rear delt, the rhomboid. They can get just the lats. They can get just this part of the quad even, they'll say, or this part of the hamstring or my outer glutes. Machines are great for this. So if you have a body part that's lagging and you're like, okay, I want to really develop this, machines might be a great way to go to, to get that body part to catch up. Now there's more that goes to it, like programming considerations, but when it comes to weak body parts and getting them to activate, because free weights, you can do this with free weights, but free weights require so much more that oftentimes you'll revert to your old patterns, which is what developed the, the lagging body part and.

[Sal DeStefano]

Or just tax the CNS more. Like when you don't you don't want. I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions around why bodybuilders seem to be doing so many machines is because they're, they're. You don't see that they're in the gym seven days a week, sometimes twice a day. And they are still probably barbell squatting and barbell bench pressing and doing all those movements as much as the average person, if not more. What you see though is the, all this volume. Yeah. All the little detail lifts like that. And so then a lot of. I think people think that, oh, they must lift like all. They must only train like this way. And it's like. No, it's, it's just a part of the, their, their training and their programming is so they can focus on a small body part.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right. All right. Lastly, which one's better for injuries? This is actually divided if you want to prevent injuries. Free weights. If you get good at free weights, you have more stability, more balance and strength that carries over into the real world. And all injuries that where you hurt yourself, not the ones where get hit by a car, but the ones where you actually hurt yourself, all of those are because you lack the strength and stability to deal with what you just did. Okay. And free weights are better at that. But what about if you are already hurt and now you need to rehab? That's what the machine is now. Machines.

[Sal DeStefano]

I mean, this is the, this was actually the reason for the invention.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

It was designed for rehab, their best use. Yes. So this makes total sense for, for machines is I just got knee surgery, but I still want to train my quads. I am not going to barbell back squat with that client when they're six weeks post surgery.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right.

[Sal DeStefano]

But you absolutely could sit them down. And I remember even my rehab starting that way, sitting down with like an ankle weight and you're doing leg extensions. And so in that phase where you're keeping the na. The knee in a very fixed and stable position. This makes a lot of sense.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And I'll give a more real world examples like oh, my hurt, my low back. How do I train my back? How do I train my legs? Machines. Machines will hold you in place and you can still work out without hurting it. But which one will prevent. Done properly, of course. Which one will prevent these kind of injuries? More free weights. So it is divided there. I think what we're getting to is it's more nuanced than they make it sound. And ultimately, if you're smart and you're doing this for a while and you're consistent. Use both when appropriate for best results. Anyway, I got to tell you guys about. I looked something up over the weekend because I was super annoyed. One of. And I'll tell you what was why I was annoyed. One of the dumbest features in new cars that I'm like, why do they put this in here? Does anybody actually use this? It's so stupid. Is the stupid start stop function.

[Sal DeStefano]

I hate it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, does anybody keep that off? Turn off immediately every time I gotta hit the button to turn.

[Doug]

Because like the gas saving elements.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Like I don't like my car turning off every time. I didn't.

[Sal DeStefano]

You also look it up though. It actually saves pretty.

[Adam Schaefer]

I looked it up. It does read you guys.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, I bet it does.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'm gonna read you guys how, like how much of it that's what worth putting up with? Well, I was looking at. I'm like, how much of a difference does it actually make? Like why do they have this? Like, what's the deal? So check this out. If you're in a, if you are in start stop conditions like traffic or, you know, you're in a city like constantly, bro, it could save between 10 to 20% fuel.

[Sal DeStefano]

10 to 20?

[Adam Schaefer]

10 to 20%.

[Sal DeStefano]

20 is a lot.

[Adam Schaefer]

A lot. That's if you're like in really bad traffic, start stop.

[Doug]

You live in LA.

[Sal DeStefano]

But even 10%, I mean everybody in here is probably spending north of $600 a month in gas.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So if you're. So now if you're like on freeways all the time, it's a waste of time. Obviously doesn't make a big difference.

[Sal DeStefano]

But it's also not kicking in then either.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, exactly. So that's why it's a waste of time.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So I looked it up and I said, okay, well what's the average like car. How much would the average car save? This is based off of 287A gallon, which. It's a lot more.

[Sal DeStefano]

287.

[Adam Schaefer]

I know. This is what I got off 20, 21. We also live in California.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Is that in North Dakota or something?

[Adam Schaefer]

So based off that. So it's going to be more than this. If you live.

[Sal DeStefano]

I mean it's going to be double to triple this. So go ahead.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So this would save the average driver about $10 a month. So. Yeah. So. So here probably save the average driver 20amonth. That's not, that's not nothing. Enough. That's not nothing. So it would take like a year or so to offset the cost of the actual saving thing, now, they did it for EPA standards, Right. So I think if you add it up on all the cars, all the cities actually makes a difference. Yeah. Yeah. But it's so annoying. I hate is.

[Sal DeStefano]

Especially because you're probably trying to race everybody. No, you get to the sea, you get to the stop sign, you get ready to race. I just like it. This thing's turned off on me.

[Adam Schaefer]

I just hate stopping. And then you hear the car turn off, and then you hit the. You know, you take off a little bit, turns back on, like. This is so dumb, dude. Yeah. You know who keeps them always getting.

[Doug]

You on the job?

[Adam Schaefer]

That's why, like, Uber drivers and taxi Dr. They always keep.

[Sal DeStefano]

Well, then. Yeah, because they're. Because they're.

[Adam Schaefer]

They're saving every. Every dollar. Yeah, because they're going to increase their margins.

[Sal DeStefano]

I got a ticket this weekend, dude. First ticket.

[Doug]

I was just bragging about you guys getting out of tickets, dude. Here we go.

[Sal DeStefano]

I know.

[Adam Schaefer]

I can't believe you didn't listen to the show, dude.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, bro, I didn't even try. I. You know what? For sure screwed me.

[Adam Schaefer]

You should have. Name drop.

[Sal DeStefano]

He had a carry. He had a ride along, dude. And I'm. And I. I knew it when he pulled me over and I saw her, because first of all, CHP gets you. You're.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's tough. They almost never let you.

[Sal DeStefano]

They almost never let you off.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

And then on top of that, a ride along, I'm like, sure, man. I'm for sure.

[Adam Schaefer]

He's gonna show him how it's done.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, he was really friendly. I tried being friendly with him too, and. But it still didn't. It didn't go over. Just. Bro, the worst timing. I mean, it was right where the. The freeways converge, and I was passing on the right side right before this shoulder disappeared, and so I gunned it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Plus, you drive exotic cars like you're driving just.

[Sal DeStefano]

And I like this. And then look right to my left, and he's looking right at me, and I'm. Look down. Oh, man. Instantly speeds right behind me, and I'm like, ah. So there was a moment where I. Because he was so friendly, I thought maybe he was gonna let me off. But when I saw him talking to the. The kid in the back and was like, oh, he's. He's teaching this guy how to write.

[Adam Schaefer]

Me a ticket right now. This is a horrible time. Name drop. Justin, bro. They all like, Justin. I'm gonna go meet my friend Justin Andrews from Mind Pump.

[Sal DeStefano]

So I think the C. The CHPs all have body cams, don't they?

[Adam Schaefer]

I don't know.

[Sal DeStefano]

I think they do. Okay, Remember I told the story about the last guy that, that let me off because of the. The. That car?

[Adam Schaefer]

Say anything. He just let you go.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. So I think you. They. I think they're being recorded, so they got to be undercover about it. So you can't, you know.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

You can't be like, hey, I'm Mind Bumpy. Last one saved me because that one was registered to Mind Pump. So this one's registered me personally. So he don't give a.

[Adam Schaefer]

Last time I got pulled off it.

[Sal DeStefano]

Say, what's it say?

[Justin Andrews]

So they don't have them yet, everyone, but by March of 2026, they should.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's good.

[Adam Schaefer]

I like body cams. I. I got pulled up a little while ago with my son in the car. So I had my. My four year old in the car and we get pulled over, and because I had gone past the line at the stoplight, there's this weird light by my house and I went past it and then I, you know, turned green, I passed and it took off. And then he pulls me over in my small city, so it's kind of embarrassing, but I pull in a parking lot and I'm like, you know, this is good. Is a good time to show my son how to be. How to be respectful to police officers. So I was very respectful. And before the guy pulled me over, I told him, I said, hey, I'm getting pulled over. I think I might have broken a law. I said, these guys do a really good job. So I was trying to show my son because I don't want him to be fearful or hate.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Police. Because I think sometimes people can be like that and their kids pick up on that.

[Sal DeStefano]

You know, it took me until I was deep into my 30s before I got rid of that, like, anxiety from cops because of my bad experiences as a young kid.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

So it's. It's wild how that sticks with you. Yeah, I remember, like, it was. It was a long time.

[Adam Schaefer]

How many bad experiences you have?

[Sal DeStefano]

Quite a bit. I mean, I. I mean, I almost lost my license in one year, so yet that's four that you. You hit your fourth ticket in a year and they'll pull your license. And so I got. I got four in a year. And luckily I went to court for the fourth one and the cop didn't show up, so I got to keep my license. But yeah, when I Was in. When I was in high school.

[Adam Schaefer]

Same.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. An idiot, you know?

[Adam Schaefer]

And so Justin never. Did he. Look how white he is.

[Doug]

I mean, I did a lot of dumb things.

[Adam Schaefer]

They look at you like, oh, he's one of us.

[Doug]

Well, now I got the mustache.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

He's like, hey, you off duty.

[Doug]

I'll show you my car.

[Adam Schaefer]

I got thrown on the hood. I got thrown on the hood at 16 years old.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, wow.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, dude. I did a burnout. I was in the car. Girlfriend. My cousin with his girlfriend in the back, and I was showing off. It's like I had a car to show off with. But, you know, you're 16. You think you're. And I did a little burnout. And three of them came up. I don't know where they were, but they both came. They all came up to me. And he looks at me. Do you know why I pulled you over? I said, no. And he started yelling at me, get out the car. And he, like, threw me on the hood. Wow. And I think he was trying to scare me.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

He was trying to teach me a lot. And it did scare the out of me. I was like, what's happening?

[Doug]

I saw this happen to my friend. We were in Milwaukee, and we were. It was like a blizzard, and you couldn't really see these cops directing traffic. It was very hard to see. But they were trying to tell him to turn.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, turn, turn, turn, turn.

[Doug]

And he just kind of went past him, was like, oh, oops. And then turn. Then they pull him over, and then they're talking to him and pulled him out of the car and then literally grabbed him and slammed him on the back of the truck. And we're like, hey, hey, hey. Then they're just, like, manhandling him. And then they took him off and left us by ourselves. Took him to jail overnight.

[Adam Schaefer]

Did he have a. Did he have, like.

[Doug]

No, he.

[Sal DeStefano]

No.

[Doug]

They were trying to make an example out of him. Like, we were pulling that away from a concert. We were, you know, in college. So I'm sure we were just like. They thought we were just dumb college kids.

[Sal DeStefano]

Was Marcelo CHP or is he local?

[Adam Schaefer]

He was. He was lapd.

[Sal DeStefano]

He was lapd.

[Adam Schaefer]

Lapd.

[Sal DeStefano]

I couldn't remember if he was chp.

[Adam Schaefer]

He's like, a great example of a good cop.

[Sal DeStefano]

Super integrity. He looks and talks like a cop. He's as a trainer as well as a trainer. So for all you cops that might want to be trainers, you want to know?

[Adam Schaefer]

It's funny.

[Sal DeStefano]

People love. People love him.

[Adam Schaefer]

I love him. I, I talked to him the other day. Oh, I've talked to him about this. I said, hey, because you hear stories. Lapd like this, some crazy areas down there. Like, do you have any crazy examples? He's like, no, man, never. I'm like, what? And he goes, I. Here's what he told me. I hope I don't get him in trouble. He goes, I firmly believe that the way you treat people, it really makes a big difference on whether or not they're gonna comply. Yeah.

[Doug]

The energy put out.

[Adam Schaefer]

He's like, I was always respectful. I was always, you know, and people just kind of, you know, I got. Yeah.

[Doug]

You know, in trouble. It was like I was an, you know, so I put that out there. I got it back.

[Sal DeStefano]

Well, they have that option to be like, the guy was really nice to me. Like, even though I got the ticket, like, I couldn't be mad because he was polite. Even. Even said, hey, man. He's like. I said. He was like, you're probably doing over 100. I clocked you at 90. Goes. I put 75 on the ticket. It's like, well, your ticket.

[Adam Schaefer]

75? Yeah. That's nothing, dude.

[Sal DeStefano]

I. Well, bro, I don't care about the dollar. I would rather pay the. Pay me the.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'll shouldn't brag about your tickets.

[Sal DeStefano]

I don't want. It's not cool. It wasn't a cool ticket. Yeah, no. I care more about the insurance than I care about the actual fine. I'd rather pay a higher fine.

[Adam Schaefer]

Does that mess up your insurance? You doing just 10 over.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, yeah. You get a speeding ticket, period. It doesn't matter if it's 5 miles hour or now. If you go reckless, you can get.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, then you're screwed.

[Sal DeStefano]

You get big time trouble. But it affects the insurance all the same.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

But I still have. Because I haven't had a ticket since I was God, remember how old I was that I can do traffic course? So I haven't. I wonder what it's going to be like today. I ever tell you guys my traffic court story? I'll never forget what I. When I got. When I was getting one of my tickets off when I was younger and my first traffic school that I ever done. I got so excited to go because it was pizza. Comedy and fun was the title of the thing. And I'll never forget showing up and there was pizza, but there was no comedy and there was no fun. And even the instructor, there's a point. I raised my hand at one point. I was like, hey. And he Said some stupid joke. I was like, oh, my God, it's a ploy just to get you. Because when you go to this, how it was back then, I don't know how much this has changed, but when I was a kid, there's.

[Doug]

You just look at the title.

[Sal DeStefano]

There's a list. Yeah, there's a list.

[Adam Schaefer]

And they get paid by the city. Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

And there's just tons of them. And they all have these different titles.

[Adam Schaefer]

And names, so they're trying to attract people.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yes.

[Doug]

Was smart.

[Sal DeStefano]

So I chose pizza, comedy and fun. Traffic school. And nothing funny about this Traffic school. The only thing that was on point was we got pizza for lunch.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know what they used to do in traffic school? They stopped doing this when we were going, but they might have been doing this before. I don't know. Doug, have you ever been to traffic school?

[Sal DeStefano]

They make you watch the scary videos.

[Adam Schaefer]

They make you.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

The videos of dead bodies.

[Sal DeStefano]

That's what we had to watch.

[Adam Schaefer]

Brains and.

[Doug]

Yeah, that was a staple.

[Adam Schaefer]

Did you watch.

[Sal DeStefano]

That's it? Yeah, that's the name of it.

[Adam Schaefer]

I never saw anything.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, I saw that. So they. They played. We had to watch that, bro.

[Doug]

It was so probably too traumatic for the, you know, gen zers and everything.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wow. It is traumatic. You want to see something? It is.

[Doug]

Yeah, that's real.

[Sal DeStefano]

It was from the Scare. You straight model?

[Adam Schaefer]

Scary straight. Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

That's.

[Doug]

Our whole childhood is scary.

[Sal DeStefano]

So what is it? Has anyone in here. Doug, have you done travel school?

[Adam Schaefer]

Never have. He never did. Doug's a good.

[Sal DeStefano]

Goody two shoe.

[Adam Schaefer]

He's ever broken a lot you get caught breaking. Have you ever even sped any of your tickets ever?

[Justin Andrews]

You know, I've sped, all right. Following you. No, I've. I've had a couple tickets over the years.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Two.

[Justin Andrews]

Like, two.

[Adam Schaefer]

Your whole life.

[Justin Andrews]

Two or three?

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wow. That's good.

[Doug]

That's good.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's good. Good for you. Yeah.

[Doug]

Good job.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm pretty good at spotting, you know, I shouldn't give out my secrets.

[Sal DeStefano]

Dylan, have you done Travis school lately? I want to. I want to hear. I want to find out what they're.

[Adam Schaefer]

You want to go with a friend? Yeah.

[Doug]

You know what they're like now. I have no idea.

[Sal DeStefano]

I have no idea.

[Adam Schaefer]

Could you imagine? Hey, could you imag.

[Sal DeStefano]

Can you do them online now, you think?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, maybe.

[Sal DeStefano]

Really?

[Adam Schaefer]

I think so. Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

That'd be awesome.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Are you gonna have Katrina do it? You gonna do it?

[Sal DeStefano]

Come on, bro.

[Adam Schaefer]

Stop. Hey, could you imagine three of us in Travis school? We get kicked off super fast, bro.

[Doug]

You know, I was that guy, like, going through their manuals and books and just, like, drawing.

[Adam Schaefer]

Drawing dicks. Why stupid things. Why can't I draw something else? I don't know. It's relevant. That's. It's my favorite thing to draw.

[Sal DeStefano]

It's iconic. Justin Andrews, you saw a therapist about this?

[Adam Schaefer]

It might be something. There might be something going on there.

[Doug]

I avoid therapy.

[Adam Schaefer]

All right, all right. I'm going to change topics. I just learned. So rarely do I get excited about a new compound or supplement. And I just learned about a fatty acid called C15. So this is. We just started working with them.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, I couldn't wait to ask you about this. So I saw fatty 15. Well, so the audience.

[Adam Schaefer]

The name of the product.

[Sal DeStefano]

I don't know if we've ever told the audience how. How, like, a lot of partnerships work. Not all, but most our partnerships get run by Sal. I just. I help manage and run it with Katrina. But she would always be asking me, well, what about this? I'm like, I'm not going to be the one who's going to say yes or no to this. I'm like, so just direct it to Sal. So now we've gotten so good with our systems, sometimes I don't even know. We come in here and I'm like, we have a new partner I have no idea about, but I know it was approved by you. So I'm always curious to like, what is it? What are we doing?

[Adam Schaefer]

Really? Slow down. So I'm actually really excited about this. So C15 is a fatty acid, and there's debate as to whether or not it's essential, because if you don't have enough of. Can cause some. Well, it can actually, to put it bluntly, it can cause accelerated aging in the body.

[Sal DeStefano]

So which, by the way, okay. Super common, especially when we were trainers in our early years, still is common. How often did you have a female client that grossly underate protein and fats?

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, and you can see it.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, yeah. Hair, hair.

[Adam Schaefer]

Hair loss.

[Sal DeStefano]

Skin was actually really common. And we still people that listen to our callers. Many times we'll have someone break their macros down. We're like, you got to bump your fat.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's.

[Doug]

Where's the fat?

[Adam Schaefer]

So. So C15 is a fat that's found in full fat dairy. Okay. And a lot of people just don't have a lot of. And it's. It's a healthy fat. Yeah.

[Doug]

Most people avoid it.

[Adam Schaefer]

It contributes to cell integrity and structure and strength. And if you have too little of it, which about, about 25 to 35% of people get too little C15 and what happens, you have accelerated aging in the body. So they can actually test this. So C15 in my strong opinion will be one of those fatty acids like, well, like omega 3s that you're going to hear, they're going to hear talked about a lot. Wow. Like take this, you need to take this. It's a big deal.

[Sal DeStefano]

Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

And it makes a big difference. The data on it's pretty remarkable because.

[Doug]

Of the dairy intolerance.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. I was gonna say if you have a dairy intolerance, can you still take it?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes. Oh, it is not dairy, it's just the fatty acid. But that's where you would get it naturally.

[Sal DeStefano]

Right. So it makes sense that if you're somebody who already eats a lower fat diet and or has an intolerance to dairy, this would be probably beneficial.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'm gonna take this for sure. 100%. So anti inflammatory, pro cell integrity, it's gonna help basically your body function more.

[Sal DeStefano]

Is it? So pill powder, what is it? Oh, it's capsule.

[Adam Schaefer]

Capsule, that's it.

[Sal DeStefano]

Nice.

[Adam Schaefer]

So this is so I like the brand again. I think that this is going to be like, for a lot of people like Omega 3s. You start taking omega threes.

[Sal DeStefano]

Is that the company's name right there?

[Adam Schaefer]

Doug Fatty 15.

[Sal DeStefano]

I like the branding.

[Adam Schaefer]

And so we're gonna, we're gonna be working with them TedX. So it's one of those supplements that, you know, it's an it. Like I said, you got fats, carbs and proteins. Fats and proteins are essential. This one for a lot of people, you'll notice, you'll take this within a couple months.

[Sal DeStefano]

You'll notice it says on the website, obviously healthier skin balance, metabolism, that's all.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, better. Oh, deeper sleep.

[Justin Andrews]

Deeper sleep. That to me is very interesting.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes, deeper sleep and better. And microbiome health. Well, when your fatty acid profile isn't ideal, your inflammation's up and your brain isn't operating well, your brain isn't operating the way it should.

[Sal DeStefano]

So more cellular benefits than Omega 3.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's, that's what the data is starting to show now. Three times more cellular benefits in some cases. Yes. I wouldn't go as far as to say like you're not going to switch out omega threes for this, but I think in combination with your omega threes, you should take this. Interesting. But it's a, it's a supplement that I would put based off of what I'm reading, this is pretty close to a must have for a lot of people. So it'll be interesting.

[Sal DeStefano]

That is interesting.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

So maybe, maybe if this is a new partnership, maybe I see. Maybe one of the doctors get somebody on here, we actually talk.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, we will.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

I want them to break down the science and the data on it. Yeah, I. I dug deep.

[Sal DeStefano]

No, I know. I know you do. If. If we're talking about it, then it was obviously something that you would approve, and so. And people probably have no idea how.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, when you get your fatty acid profile, here's what it feels like, because people like, all right, what would I notice? Here's what you'll feel. Your joints will feel better, you'll recover faster. You'll notice better sleep, better digestion. You'll just feel and move better is what it's going to feel like when fatty acid profiles are off, you just feel off and you feel more stiff. That's what it feels like. More inflammation. More inflammation isn't just pain, by the way. It's also grogginess or I can't think straight. That's also what inflammation.

[Sal DeStefano]

It makes sense. This would be super valuable, too. Like, I mean, I think back to, like, my dieting days when I'm cutting really hard and aggressive.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, totally.

[Sal DeStefano]

And then I would supplement with something like this.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. This would be interesting.

[Doug]

Nutrients.

[Adam Schaefer]

There's. Yeah.

[Doug]

Oh, dude, I. I mean, can you guys tell I got, like, sunburned over the weekend a little bit. I mean, it's. It's a lot better than it was. I was, like, so red, dude. My kids, poor. Like, I. I was that guy that didn't put the suntan lotion on them. Like, I just was like, hey, let's just, you know, we're going to be fine. Like, the weather was nice. We went to the drag races up in Sonoma. Of course, Sonoma. It's like, once the sun comes out, like, it makes you a laser. Yeah. So, dude, we were there, and I.

[Adam Schaefer]

So you.

[Doug]

Have you ever been where there's, like, nitro?

[Adam Schaefer]

Never.

[Doug]

Oh, yeah, dude. Nitro fuel is so crazy and loud and. Anyways, they started up this funny car, and we went and, like, walked right behind it, and we were all excited. We're like, you know.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Like, it's so cool and loud and.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, all the smoke was billowing up.

[Doug]

And we're like, you know, immersing. I'm looking around and all of a sudden this huge crowd, like, just dissipates and everybody's leaving and, like, you know, running for the hills. And I'm just sitting there like, yeah, yeah, this is great. And then all of a sudden my eyes start tearing up and start burning. And then I'm like, oh, I can't breathe. And like, oh. Oh, my God. I was like, in panic mode and my son behind me. The same thing. And we're just, like, scrambling, dude. It felt like I got maced, like.

[Adam Schaefer]

In the face, dude.

[Doug]

I don't know if you've ever got from the fumes.

[Sal DeStefano]

I've never been that close.

[Doug]

And I look and like, some of the guys there, like mechanics, they had, like gas masks on and everything.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'm just standing, like, yeah, this is awesome, right? Like, filming, getting blasted, like, crying, like.

[Doug]

My eyes were like, bright red.

[Adam Schaefer]

Go away quickly. When you moved away. I mean, it went away for.

[Doug]

I could taste it the whole day. So I was like, oh, this is great. I'm sure that's healthy, you know.

[Adam Schaefer]

Did you.

[Sal DeStefano]

Did you look up and see if our homegirl was there? The mind pump list.

[Doug]

I actually reached out to her.

[Sal DeStefano]

She. Was she out there?

[Doug]

No, because it didn't have her class of drag.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh, damn, that would have been cool.

[Doug]

I know. I want a Meg.

[Sal DeStefano]

I think. Yes. And we should shout her out on. I forget.

[Doug]

Yeah, she great. And I was hoping she was there.

[Sal DeStefano]

To watch, but did you talk to her at all? Did she.

[Doug]

Did you said, Yeah, I talked to her, but she was like, no.

[Adam Schaefer]

So, okay, so this is great. Great segue. But you didn't use the. The Caldera lab sunscreen.

[Doug]

I didn't. Yeah. Which was stupid because I. I did have it in my backpack and I left my backpack in the car and.

[Sal DeStefano]

I was like, I'm actually. I've been using that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. I didn't realize it was 30 SPF, so. And feels like I'm rubbing like, any of the other caldera creams. Like, it just. It goes into my skin. Like sometimes when you rub like, suntan lotion on it feel. I feel like I'm rubbing plastic on my skin or what that. And it actually feels really good. And so we've been laying out the pool and I've been using it.

[Adam Schaefer]

I don't know.

[Sal DeStefano]

It's not all oily and. No, no. It absorbs right in. And I know that it's all natural, so I know I'm not putting a.

[Adam Schaefer]

Bunch of crap on. You need to know the difference between sunscreen that is mineral based and well made versus the chemical ones. So the chemical ones, I mean, those they get in your blood and they're the levels when they do tests on these. The levels of these chemicals in people's blood are higher than what the FDA says is actually safe. And they have hormonal effects in the body. Maybe carcinogenic, but not good for you. Mineral based ones sit on the skin and they reflect the UV rays. And I would argue that 30 SPF with mineral based ones, like the caldera lab one, is stronger than the 30 SPF with the chemical based ones. Really?

[Sal DeStefano]

You think so?

[Adam Schaefer]

Because it reflects it off. I've used both of them. My kids have used both. We don't use the chemical ones anymore. Like, I use that. Yeah, that's it. We're done for the day. So I would imagine reflects it off.

[Sal DeStefano]

It doesn't. Imagine if it's going on your face. It has to be safer than even the mineral.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah. Oh.

[Sal DeStefano]

So I've been using it on Max completely. So I know it's not a huge bottle, but it's like. I'm like, okay, this is good for my face. It's 30 SPF. I just rather. Because I don't know the stuff that Katrina has been getting him. And I haven't done my own digging on hers, but I know that's good. So when him and I have been going to the pool, which we've been.

[Adam Schaefer]

You don't break out from it and all that stuff because I'll get. I'll break out a little bit.

[Doug]

Oh, yeah, I know. Yeah. And Everett's, like, real sensitive with his skin, so. Yeah, some of those, like, do not do well.

[Adam Schaefer]

No. I gotta tell you guys, my dad, he cracked me up this weekend, so he. So a while ago when I got baptized, we had a bunch of people from the church come over our house. And my dad was so excited to make people espresso. He loves doing this, right? He loves making espresso for people. Yeah. And he was making. Yeah. And he's got. He's like. It's like his famous espresso and it's like a thing, right? And Italians are really funny about. About their foods and things. They're very like, no, there's only one way to do it.

[Doug]

So he told me, like, it's a lot of the secret is the. The water, right? The purified water.

[Adam Schaefer]

Of course. He talked to you about it?

[Doug]

He talked to me about it.

[Adam Schaefer]

I was like. So he makes these espressos and my friend Charlie, who does, he runs a lot of the operations at the church. He had Some. He's like, oh my God, Dominic, this is so good. And he's like, hey, I got to tell you, we're going to open up a coffee shop at the church. I don't know if you guys know this adventure. They have a coffee shop now. Yeah, it's really cool. And he's like, when we were open, I want you to come and give me an honest. Like, give me your honest opinion on our espresso. You got to tell me.

[Doug]

Oh, no.

[Adam Schaefer]

So they made. They did it. They opened it. It's beautiful. It's really popular. Church run coffee.

[Doug]

Come on, dude.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's actually, it's actually step above Folger. No, no, no.

[Sal DeStefano]

Using holy water.

[Doug]

Well, now that might help get into selling Point.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, so much. The fruit of the spirit. It's, it's. I mean, they made it professional. Like they have. It's like you're going to like a Pete's or Starbucks.

[Sal DeStefano]

Okay, okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

So they made it very professional. Okay. So now the problem is my dad would say nobody. He just let the story says it. Nobody in America knows how to make espresso. So anyway, it's nobody. Nobody makes. It's always. What does he call it? He calls it octopus water. You know, the ink octopus. Because I don't know why they book so much water. So anyway, we go to church. My dad, Charlie sees my dad. He's. Hey, you got to come see this. I want you to try it. Give me your honest opinion. So my dad's like, okay. So they go in and they got this really fancy like espresso machine, like one of those real expensive ones. And he's like. And this guy, he used to run a Pete's Coffee. He knows what he's doing. He introduced to my dad, this is, you know, Sal's dad. He's. He's from Italy. Make him a really good espresso. So they got the real good coffee. They prepared it. So my dad's telling me the story, right? So I guess they made it for him. They gave it to him. And my dad drinks it. And he's like, you want me to be honest? Yeah, I give it a six. And he goes on a scale of what? One to ten? I'm sorry. Like, dad, that's me.

[Sal DeStefano]

Dude, that's great. It was awesome.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's okay. It's not bad. Nobody knows how to make espresso. Oh my God, it's so good.

[Sal DeStefano]

Hey, the water.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think I heard his feelings.

[Sal DeStefano]

The water thing is actually a major hack for almost. I want to Say a year or two. In fact, this is actually what moved me from drinking coffee in the morning on a regular basis. When I was at my last place, for some reason, my. My coffee just. And I actually thought it was a beans. I'm like, I've been using these and I. I wrote there's like three beans brands that I like that I kind of rotate through. All of them are just teaching. Then I thought it was like the coffee pot. I bought a whole new one still. I'm like, what is. Why is my coffee taste like shifra? And I. And I remember one day pouring in, like already, like, you know, crystal geyser water in there. And I said, it's a tap water. And I just assume so funny.

[Adam Schaefer]

You said crystal geyser. That's the one my dad says is the best. Oh.

[Sal DeStefano]

And it made. It was like on one side. I just. I was. I just thought that because it was boiling, it's like, oh, it should, I don't know, neutralize everything. It should be the same mineral content, bro. It was a huge difference. And I thought this whole time I had no idea that I should have been doing that.

[Adam Schaefer]

No. My dad is Crystal geyser. That's. This. That's the secret water.

[Sal DeStefano]

Secret.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

That you have to use everything, Dude.

[Sal DeStefano]

I'm telling you right now. It was a. It was. I stopped drinking coffee because. And I was so irritated that it wasn't. It wasn't right. It was like, I've been making the same coffee, same everything for so long, and they just went through this phase where I was like, it tastes like.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

And I was using the tap water.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. You got to talk to Mike Salemi. He's got it down to science. He'll break it down about what?

[Doug]

You're a chemist, Doug.

[Sal DeStefano]

You have espresso quite often, don't you?

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Every day.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

I should have my. Have my dad come over soon.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, he should come over. I'm pretty serious about it.

[Sal DeStefano]

I'll take the challenge.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know what it is? I'll tell you right now the mistake a lot of them make. According to my dad, when they make espressos here, they're just like a lot of coffee. You go to Italy, it's a little bit and it's thick. Yeah. So it's like, it's gotta be thick.

[Justin Andrews]

Like a 30 gram pull.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Like he said, you gotta do a short pull. It's got to be concentrated. That's the. Yeah. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean, I take it seriously.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So, I mean, I would like to take the challenge. Just because you have a nice piece of equipment doesn't mean you know how to use it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right. Your five million dollar coffee espresso machine.

[Justin Andrews]

Not just that.

[Sal DeStefano]

I've told you guys about people like Jimmy Butler and stuff like that. Like, they're, they're so particular about it that he flies all over when he.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah, he has the same machine I have.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yes, yes. And he flies with it. He flies with it. He takes it on.

[Doug]

You're not gonna go to a coffee shop and get it. You know that same experience. Yeah, they get all crazy.

[Adam Schaefer]

I used to train this old guy. So in the 90s is when Starbucks started exploding. And then of course, it took off. And I used to train this old guy to make fun of Starbucks all the time because he would go to Dunkin Donuts. He was from the east coast. Dunkin Donuts is the best coffee. They've always said people spending all this money on coffee, they're so stupid.

[Sal DeStefano]

So I, I had a coffee expert guy tell me spit game on me about Starbucks. And you know why Starbucks is considered shit coffee? Is because they intentionally burn it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. They make everything. They make it uniform.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yes.

[Doug]

Consistent flavor. That's all they care.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know who gets high ratings for coffee? McDonald's. And they do.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And Dunkin Donuts. Look it up.

[Sal DeStefano]

Dunkin Donuts has for sure.

[Adam Schaefer]

But just their drip. For just the drip McDonald's gets. There's no high reviews. Look it.

[Sal DeStefano]

Really.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes.

[Sal DeStefano]

I knew that about Dunkin Donuts.

[Adam Schaefer]

But just their drink.

[Doug]

I mean Verve is great, but you know, no standard.

[Adam Schaefer]

Doug gets angry.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, I would think. I would think. You're small, like mom Pa. Type of places like verb. That have like.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Somebody back there doing it.

[Doug]

It's probably better care a little bit.

[Sal DeStefano]

More because they probably McDonald's being compared to Starbucks. Dunkin Dun. All the like commercial.

[Justin Andrews]

Starbucks used to care a long time ago.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Used to have the machine shops. That's probably how they started.

[Justin Andrews]

Everything's automated.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, they're more, they're more well known.

[Doug]

They branched out.

[Adam Schaefer]

So far, Starbucks is not. Is more well known not for their just coffee, but for their flavored drinks. That's where they make all the money.

[Justin Andrews]

Everything tastes kind of.

[Doug]

Yeah. The food that they brought in, that's where they serve real money. Yeah. When you look into. Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Incorporating food, so much more money on that. Way more on the. The.

[Doug]

The margins in coffee aren't that great to begin with.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, so that makes sense. Yeah.

[Doug]

It became like a, like a place.

[Sal DeStefano]

It's like gas stations. Gas stations don't make their money off gas.

[Adam Schaefer]

They do. That's true. That is competitive.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh yeah. They don't. They make. They A lot of gas stations damn near lose it. So close on the gas itself, all the snacks and stuff on it. They make all the money.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wow.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, that'd be interesting to see what the average actual gas profits are on the gas. But yeah, they're subject to whatever is going on in the market and this and that and so. And it's so competitive. It's like you can only profit.

[Doug]

Yeah, that's already fixed. And so yeah, for them to make money they have to like add all these.

[Sal DeStefano]

It's all the other stuff. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

They make a few cents per gallon.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's because it's so competitive. There's a gas station every corner and you're gonna go to the one that's cheaper. Right. So they push as low as you can almost.

[Doug]

Yeah. It's smarter to go lower and eat that profit a bit and then bring people.

[Sal DeStefano]

This is what like people like places like Costco and stuff does is like.

[Doug]

Yeah, they, this is great gas. Like we had one of those open up and that's what they do. They bank it on people showing up.

[Sal DeStefano]

It's the same strategy that like Costco does with their chicken. Like they lose on that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like there's certain things people buy other things. Yeah, that's. This is what people. I wish people understood about markets is the more competitive you make a market, the better gets for consumers. It's always better. They're fighting for you, your, your, your, your service or your purchases. And if they compete overpriced and that's great.

[Doug]

Come back down.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right. And the less competitive a market is, the bigger the margins.

[Sal DeStefano]

You know speaking of that, I think this is like this is in our, our space or our wheelhouse. You know, watching the gym industry evolve right now is really interesting.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh it's so funny you said that. I just have this conversation with my cousin.

[Sal DeStefano]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

That middle. That mid range gym is gone.

[Sal DeStefano]

Gone.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's the dirt cheap or the really nice.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yes.

[Doug]

Luxury or.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Dirt. That's it.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. It's really gone that direction. Which is cool to see some of these really posh ones. I've been forever. The bay is just done terrible with that for considering we're in Silicon Valley where you would think we have one or two.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

And they're just okay. They're not even that like there's way better. I've seen been Better gyms in Reno, you know, than we have here in the Bay Area. And it's like, why. It doesn't make any sense to me that we haven't catered that market. Somebody has to.

[Adam Schaefer]

I, I made a. I made a semi viral post on X that where I said, I think there. I see. I think now might be the time where a gym can put forth a dress code and ban pulling your phone out during workouts.

[Sal DeStefano]

Ooh, really?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes. I think those two things need to happen. I think a lot of people, you know, with, with gyms starting to become less serious, you're seeing people film themselves. And I think a dress code should be important in a gym. I think you got. You're in there to work out.

[Sal DeStefano]

That is. That's a hot take. Yeah, that's a hot take.

[Doug]

I don't know anybody's really brought that up.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, I think that. I don't know if. I don't know if I agree with you just because I think, I think people will be.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think a lot of gyms will be afraid.

[Sal DeStefano]

Well, I mean, that sounds like three. Talking about the good old days.

[Adam Schaefer]

It could be.

[Sal DeStefano]

But as things are evolving and changing, I mean, there's probably more case to be made. Like you have people like what's his face? You know, Bradley Martin and something that, that encourages the shirt off even more. Oh, yeah. They make it very, you know, social media friendly and so it'd be interesting to compare.

[Adam Schaefer]

I feel like what model is more profitable? And I could be totally wrong, but I feel like a gym that really tried to create a serious fitness culture. Not serious, like, you have to be hardcore, but, like, that's what we're here to do. We're here to work out. You're not going to film yourself, film other people. You're going to, you know, dress appropriately. Like, this is a gym. And I feel like if you create that culture, I feel like enough people would be attracted to that.

[Sal DeStefano]

It has to be.

[Doug]

People who've already done it know, because. Because like, you know, the outside perspective, I own a gym. Best thing you can do is get more marketing by people like promoting it on social media and reinforcing it and bringing awareness, you know, so it's like their mindset's going to be there. So to talk them out of us can be hard.

[Sal DeStefano]

I mean, here's, here's where I'll agree with you in your point. I, I don't think that's. I don't think generally speaking that would do well. I do think there is A market for somebody who would pay a premium.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right.

[Sal DeStefano]

For an experience.

[Adam Schaefer]

Of course.

[Sal DeStefano]

For example, Katrina pays to go to this gym that nobody knows about. Pretty small, but it's very private. Yeah, she likes that. Yeah. And it doesn't have a lot of amenities, but she likes that. It's quiet, private, you're not a lot of people and stuff like that. And so, you know, we're at that point in our lives where that's more appealing to us and we're willing to pay a premium price for that type of experience than the, you know, super busy, everybody there, cameras out or something. So I mean, so I think there, there's a market there and I. But I think that leans more towards the super high end place.

[Adam Schaefer]

I also think a gym definitely that would be trainer focused would, would do really well with really good trainers for the same reasons. One that is like, like, you know, this is about really helping people become fit and healthy. And a trainer centered gym would do that because they're instructors, they know what they're doing.

[Sal DeStefano]

I think we'll build one within two years. Mark the date. Doug, when I said that what is whatever, two years, 28th, I think, I think within two years of the today we will, we will build one.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think that would be awesome.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, I think the way with what's going on with our training staff right now and the way it's growing and it's how it's going, like, I think that, I think that's for sure in.

[Doug]

Our, in our future interest there for sure.

[Sal DeStefano]

Would not have said that a year ago. I didn't think that was.

[Doug]

Been avoiding that idea.

[Sal DeStefano]

Like, I don't think it'll be our most profitable thing, I'll tell you that much. But I think it'll be cool. I think it'd be really neat to go in with. And I do like this idea because I, I have no interest in the Race to the Bottom being one of the cheapest gyms. I love the idea of something that is, you know, semi private, high end, results driven, very cool amenities, results driven with hot things. That's a great culture, very best of the best trainers. Like, I think that, I mean, we're. This area is, is ripe for that. I don't know why we don't have.

[Adam Schaefer]

Something like, I think you, you would need something like us because we have such a wide ranging podcast. We could do it. If you just open one in the middle of the city, you'd have to really do a lot of outreach to get people aware of what's Going on.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

But I think. I think we would be able to know how.

[Sal DeStefano]

I mean, you're pretty close to the. The UFC gym guys and stuff like that. You talk to them more than I do. How is that. How is that chain doing in general?

[Adam Schaefer]

Great.

[Sal DeStefano]

They are.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

They're still.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Really good. They do really, really well.

[Sal DeStefano]

Of course, Mark is behind that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, of course. Right. Mastroff is just. He's the.

[Sal DeStefano]

I. I. Do you have any idea how many they have? I mean, I remember when they, you know, they had just a couple. And Doug, look up UFC gym. How many. How many locations they have, and if you have any numbers on money and stuff, too. I'm curious.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Just curious how they're doing. Had an opportunity to open, what, the second one. The second one in Concord.

[Adam Schaefer]

You did? Yeah. I think that was number two.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. I mean, I almost did it. I mean, I. I met. I met with Adam and Gallup over there, but it was going to be a lateral move for me, so it didn't make a lot of leave. Leave, what I've been doing for 10 years. I already had a name for myself to make this same, you know, so it was interesting. And I. The. The idea of switching at that time, I wanted to, but I think it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Was a smart move, too, because look how much jiu jitsu has exploded. And they offered things like. They offered jiu jitsu.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Those classes are really what.

[Sal DeStefano]

I mean, that was mainstream. I remember when they first partner, which. What do you got, Doug?

[Justin Andrews]

150 locations.

[Adam Schaefer]

They're at the.

[Sal DeStefano]

150.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Wow.

[Sal DeStefano]

They are.

[Justin Andrews]

Each brings in about 3.7 million per year.

[Sal DeStefano]

Brings in gross.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, revenue.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Gross.

[Sal DeStefano]

Okay. Gross still. That's pretty good.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. 3.7. You're looking at probably close to a million in profit.

[Sal DeStefano]

That's pretty good for a gym.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's not bad.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. No. If you're. If you're pulling a quarter to a half a million in a gym, you're doing good.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're doing really well.

[Sal DeStefano]

You're doing really good. So to think that you could actually.

[Adam Schaefer]

Pull a million now people are listening. Like, I'm gonna open a gym.

[Sal DeStefano]

It's hard. Yeah, I know it's hard. It's really hard to be very profitable. It's. I think most people that I have met that have had a lot of success in it or love it is because you love the culture.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes.

[Sal DeStefano]

You love.

[Adam Schaefer]

You want to live.

[Doug]

You're cool with living.

[Sal DeStefano]

You love. And I get that because that's a man. I It's, I stayed there.

[Doug]

You make it work.

[Sal DeStefano]

I stayed at that gym making a lot less money than I could have made for most of my 20s because I love the environment so much. I just, you know, it was one of even working for a company that I, that I watched go downhill. I still put up with a lot being there because I enjoyed the culture so much. And so if you, you love that vibe, owning your own place and, you know, making a living is a very respectable way to live a life. And so, you know, it's not, I would not encourage somebody who, who wants to be a millionaire. It's not a good course of doing that.

[Adam Schaefer]

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[Justin Andrews]

Our first caller is Issa from New Jersey.

[Adam Schaefer]

Hi, Issa.

[Sal DeStefano]

Hi, Issa, how are you?

[E]

Hey guys, thank you so much for taking your time. It's an honor to speak to you, honestly.

[Adam Schaefer]

Thank you so much. How can we help you?

[E]

So, yes, I do have an email that I sent and it's very specific. Would you like me to read that out or would you prefer me just to ask my question at the end? Whichever you prefer.

[Adam Schaefer]

Why don't you give us some context, give the audience some context and kind of talk a little bit about your email and then you can ask your question.

[E]

Gotcha. Of course. So, yeah, for full context, I'm a 23 year old female currently recovering from subclinical hypothyroidism for three years. And I'm very sorry to say, but I followed a strict keto diet and I felt great on it and it was just, it would serve me. I would travel, I would do many different things and I felt my, and did blood work and it was always, everything was always stable. But then I started waitressing full time and that's when strange things started happening. I started having these cycles of kind of like under eating and then kind of binge restricting. I accidentally underestimated my calories. I would do Stupid fasting things to make sure I don't gain too much weight. And then I ended up just crashing my thyroid, leading to a 15 to 20 pound weight gain and just sluggish energy, bad psychological function, et cetera. And I checked my blood work, did extensive things, background checks, and I don't have Hashimoto's or any other autoimmune markers, but just a sluggish output on my thyroid when it comes to my thyroid levels and my hormones. So I began to actually work with Transcend Telehealth and they prescribed me about 60 milligrams of Armour Thyroid. I started feeling much better. I started losing weight steadily and of course I'm eating carbs again finally. And I'm just following just a more relaxed protocol when it comes to working out. I'm actually following Max 15 advanced with just some core work, maybe some things tailored for combat because I'm a martial artist on the side. I began losing weight steadily, then I was switched to a lower dose of Armour Thyroid. But then I had a lot of stress happen in the family, just like conflicts and job loss, etc. And that triggered just again the water retention, the weight gain, everything just came back. Even though I was on the Armour Thyroid, I increased the dose to 60 milligrams. I started feeling good again and currently I'm just in a weird place. So I weigh about 117 to 118 pounds. I used to weigh about 100 pounds and I'm a little under five foot. I eat rather, I would say I came from eating 1,200 calories to eating 1900 calories. So I'm pretty happy about that. And I make sure to eat enough carbs. I eat between, I would say 120 to 150 carbs. Nothing too crazy, just lax. But enough. I follow maps 15. I have a rather active lifestyle. I travel. I used to waitress, now I don't do it anymore, but I still, I work like receptionist work, so it's not too much stress. I make sure to supplement. I take multivitamins, I take Omega 3, I take D3, I take like what's called the Ashwagandha, like adrenal restoring supplements. Yeah. I'm currently taking Armour ThyroidOne 60mg. The only issue is that like I have a very high T3 and suppressed TSH. And I remember they wanted to put me down to a lower dose because they don't want that causing any issues long term. I feel great on the 60 milligrams and it's like I don't know what to do. So my main question is basically, how can I most effectively return to my weight, which was like around 100 pounds or kind of not deal with this constant hormonal flux going back and forth of weight gain, drop, weight gain, drop, just recover a steady weight without doing any aggressive cardio restricting, Basically, how do I continue the reverse diet that I have, Strategically maintain my energy, keep my thyroid supported long term, given my current routine, stress level and lifestyle, et cetera. I hope I didn't lose you guys.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, you didn't. That's a good question, by the way. It's not uncommon. There seems to be a correlation between, especially for women, long term ketogenic diet and thyroid issues. So not quite sure why, but we do sometimes see this. I'm assuming you're already avoiding gluten now, even though you eat carbohydrates.

[E]

You know, I. I cheat with Ezekiel bread because I like it, but I make sure I'm very, very, I would say, very strict with it. Like, if I were to eat gluten, it's only maybe like whole grains, like quinoa or something like that that's usually organic or something.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay. Quinoa I think is gluten free. But. But yeah, typically with thyroid, you want to stay away from gluten because that tends to be something that's reactive. Do you. How much fat are you eating every day?

[E]

Oof. I would say around 60 to 70 grams. I make sure to eat like, you know, I love fish.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[E]

So fish, walnuts, avocado, like, usually nut butters, that kind of stuff.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, you're good. And what makes you feel like your ideal body weight is 100 pounds?

[E]

Oof. I know. Oh, that's a. This is a question. So what happened is that I used to. For a long time, I was £100 and I felt great at that weight. Honestly, it's just a psychological benchmarker. I just feel like I still am retaining that water and I just want to get rid of that. That kind of fat that I've accumulated, so to speak. So £100 is like a rough gauge for me.

[Sal DeStefano]

I think it's definitely important to point out something that I heard you say that I think is really a positive thing. The fact that you went from 1200 to 1900 calories and you also went from a waitress job where you're probably moving on your feet like crazy to a little more sedentary, probably in the job you're at now that. And you didn't put on a Bunch of body fat you actually have. I'm assuming that you put on some muscle with some of that weight gain. And so kind of back to Sal's question is like, I. I don't know, you know, and it's. It's. Obviously, it's your body. You could do whatever you want with it, but you. You probably are in a pretty healthy good spot right now, and I don't know how much we'd want to change that. And also, keep in mind, when you increase those calories and now add carbohydrates, which you weren't really eating, your body's going to naturally hold a little bit of more water. I mean, you can literally reduce that in a day or two just by cutting that by. Or having a low carb day one day. And you probably see water come out. Like, you would see yourself lose some of that. So as long as it's just your basic water retention and it's not inflammation that we're talking about, it's good, it's healthy.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. If you went ketogenic now, you'd probably lose 10 pounds on the scale, but it wouldn't be body fat. It would be water.

[Sal DeStefano]

It'd just be water.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So what you might be thinking is, like, too much water is that you're used to having very little water from going ketogenic for three years. So here's the formula, and right now, you have it reversed. Okay. You want to look at your energy, your health, your strength, your function. And if those things feel good, like, I'm getting stronger, I feel good, I've got good energy, no pain, then you look at the scale and say, okay, well, this seems to be an ideal body weight for me. What you don't want to do is chase the body weight. Because if you chase the body weight, then what tends to happen is you sacrifice all those other things. And at your height, let's say you're four' 11. If you're strong and you're strength training, 117 to 119 pounds is fine. It's actually a good body weight. 100 pounds is a bit light, unless you were absolutely shredded, which you don't necessarily want to be. As a young woman walking around at 14% body fat, probably not a good idea. It'll probably have a negative influence or impact on your hormones. I'd like to see if you were my client, I'd like to keep you in the low 20s for body fat percentage, and I'd watch your strength in the gym.

[Sal DeStefano]

Have you tested that by any Chance.

[E]

My body weight, I think.

[Adam Schaefer]

No body weight.

[E]

Sorry, sorry. Yes. Oh, my. It's hard to find an accurate model.

[Adam Schaefer]

Of course.

[E]

I've done a DEXA scan when I was in Poland, and I think it was like, 24%. And the thing is that I still feel fluffy. And sometimes when there's a photo, I'm like, I hate the fact that I see a double chin and all that. Just. It drains my confidence. And I think for context, I'm an actress and I work in the uk. I work in the US and when I audition, I'm like, oh, crap. I see myself. I often go out for young roles, but because I look younger and I'm like, I. I don't want to look. Like, I don't want to be chubby, because that's not me. I'm always disciplined. I'm always on top of myself.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, you're not.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're not chubby.

[Sal DeStefano]

You know, if you were my client and I'm hearing. Hearing you right now, like, I would show you something in a week's time just to show you that all we're doing is letting go of water and holding water and then just remind you that. And you could do that before an audition if you really wanted to, like, look a little leaner when you go do an audition or whatever. But you. I think you're in a really healthy.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're a great. You're doing great. How's strength? How much strength have you gained since doing the reverse diet?

[E]

Well, I mean, my deadlift, I would say, is about 170 pounds.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're good. That's all I needed here. Yeah. You're strong, too. Yeah. I'm going to tell you something. This is really hard to do, especially in the field that you're in, but stop studying yourself. Like, stop staring at yourself and trying to find things that you don't like, because you'll find them and that'll become the focus.

[Sal DeStefano]

Not only that, you'll always find them.

[Adam Schaefer]

You'll always find them.

[Sal DeStefano]

No matter where you're at, body fat percentage, you'll always do that.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's just human nature. Now you're also a young woman, and you're going to have. You have a young face, which is good. I'm gonna tell you something right now. When you're in your 40s, you're gonna be like, oh, my God, I loved it when I was in my 20s and I had this young face. Cause then that starts to hollow out as you get older. So, yeah, I think you're being very Harsh on yourself. I think your body weight's good. If your strength is good, your energy is good, you're kind of finding, you know, you feel great.

[Sal DeStefano]

Do you also want to have kids one day? Do you plan to have kids one day?

[E]

I mean, yes. Sometime in the future. Like, I'm not thinking about it now, but yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Well, the reason why I say that is because even though you're not thinking about having kids right now, the way you diet and exercise right now will impact that. And you're at a very healthy place right now. And you came from somewhere where you were starting to go down the wrong direction. And where you're at now is to go from 1200 to 1900 calories. You.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, that's 411.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, yeah. You almost doubled your calories. You reduce the amount of activity and movement. You, on a daily basis, you are strong. As long as you're hanging around that 20 to 24 body fat, you're lean. So, I mean, yes, we can push lower, but then now we risk what Sal said, we risk health. You're going to be. I mean, yes, you could look that way, but it would be unhealthy for you. You're in a healthy place now.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'll sell it. I'll sell it to you. Okay.

[E]

Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

Keep strength training. Keep. Keep your calories where they're at. Slowly increase them if you want to keep increasing your strength and just keep getting stronger. And what'll happen over time is you'll develop more strength, more sculpt, more shape to your body, and you're going to continue to progress and you'll continue to feel better. So aesthetically speaking, you're gonna keep progressing as long as you continue to focus on getting stronger in the gym. And your calories can. They can hover. They could probably get up as high as 23, 20, 400 calories over time. So I would continue to just kind of move in that direction. If you feel uncomfortable eating that much, like, oh, my God, I'm eating too much, that's fine. You can pull back, but keep working on strength. 170 pound deadlift at your size is phenomenal. That's excellent. So.

[E]

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that.

[Sal DeStefano]

I. I'm with Sal, too. You. If you keep focusing on getting strong and building muscle, you will tighten up and be more sculpted on that path. If you try and cut right now, you'll just end up sacrificing muscle. So you might lose a little bit of water and maybe a percent of body fat, but you'll also lose Some of that good muscle that you're building which impacts your metabolic rate, it'll make.

[Adam Schaefer]

It much more difficult later on.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. But if you just stay the course and keep on the reverse diet, keep getting stronger.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, you look healthy right now. You got good skin. Your hair looks healthy. From what I'm hearing, you're totally doing the right things. Just stay the course and be very careful with. With judging and studying yourself in the mirror or pictures, because that. It'll never go right if you do that.

[Sal DeStefano]

How much. How much MMA are you practicing too?

[E]

So mma, my sister loves it. I'm. I'm more like striker, wing chun based. But I honestly, it's like an inspired thing. It comes on a daily basis. Like, oh, if I have five minutes here, I'll work on something. I also fence, so I'm like, oh, let me grab a sword and do something so it comes inspired and I don't have a regimen about it.

[Sal DeStefano]

Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah, you're good. Yeah, I like Mass 15 for you. I think the other original Mass 15 would be another good one to toggle between. Do you have the original mass 15?

[E]

Yes, I do, because I've purchased it and I have also T. Rex.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, she's doing advanced. Sorry. Do you have maps 15 performance?

[Sal DeStefano]

No.

[E]

No.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, let's send that to you. You'll love that.

[Sal DeStefano]

Toggle between those.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, you'll love that.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[E]

Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate it. And I know I do have TRX and that's fun Naps trx. I enjoyed that. I just have. Just because I remember. We thank you so much for the advice. I did kind of touch on the armor thyroid and the fact that I like taking the 60mg. I have. I have a pretty high T3 and low TSH. I do remember there was an episode that you spoke to Dr. Lawrence Fitzgerald and she did mention something that she has clients that walk around with kind of higher t, t3, low tsh. I was wondering, would you say that is safe for me even though it's out of. Kind of out of range in my labs, or should I find something a little more in range? Because I feel great on it. I tried the lower dose and it's not bad, but I feel sluggish.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, I'll speak from the interview. So this is not my field of expertise, but she would say it's. You want to base it off both labs and. And symptoms.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. How you feel.

[Adam Schaefer]

So how you feel. And. And you're going to have low TSH when you're supplementing with thyroid, that's a. There's a negative feedback loop with hormones. So of course your TH is low because your body's sensing that you have more thyroid. So that's. That's. That's to be expected. And thyroid is one of those hormones that, you know, if you. If you. If you optimize, it's typically a good thing. And it's a pretty easy hormone to optimize versus other hormones.

[Sal DeStefano]

So it seems like you've kind of figured this out too, because you went down a little bit, and you noticed when you went down, you feel sluggish. And If I know Dr. Lauren, that's what she would say back to you is like, how do you feel? And if you lowered the dose and you still felt great, she'd say, great, let's keep it low. But if you lower the dose, feel sluggish, as soon as you go right back, you feel great. She'd say, looks like this is where we should be. That's probably what she would say to you.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right.

[E]

And it seems that I will be taking this for a long time, if not forever or typically.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, you were subclinical, so maybe you could go off and have thyroid come back up. You could experiment with that later. But if I had to choose a hormone deficiency, if I had to pick and someone said you have to have a hormone deficiency, which one would you want? It would be thyroid. It's the easiest to remedy.

[E]

All right, I see. Damn. The keto diet.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'm so sorry I ate it. I.

[E]

The age of the Internet literally screwed with my mind, and I do not like that because there's not enough. Literally, you guys were the main source of information that I followed that has no bs so thank you guys for that, and thank you also. You guys inspired my sister to pursue a master's in kinesiology. She's a personal trainer. She loves you guys, so she kind of referred me.

[Sal DeStefano]

Listen to them.

[E]

They know what they're doing.

[Sal DeStefano]

You know, very positive thing is you caught this early.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. You're young. You're 23.

[Sal DeStefano]

You're doing well. A lot of people don't listen and don't try and figure it out, and they just keep hammering themselves until they're in their late 20s. And then a lot of the stuff. That's why I was asking about kids and things that then they have struggle having kids and stuff in the future. So you're in a good place. You're doing good. And I think if you just keep building muscle and focusing on getting strong. And you. You're not going to build muscle cutting so that you just know that. Right. So if you get tempted to want to go back down in calories just so you can lose a little bit of water weight, you're not going to build muscle there. You need to be where you're at in calories or above. And so if you keep focusing on that, the sculpting and shaping of the body is going to happen over time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yep.

[Sal DeStefano]

You're very young in your lifting career. The more years you're, trust me, you keep getting better and better.

[Adam Schaefer]

If.

[Sal DeStefano]

If as a. A woman who's lifting how you're lifting already, you continue down that path and that body will continue to sculpt and get better and better. I think my wife looks better at 45 than she did at 29. Way better. And it's just from years and years of. Of lifting and sculpting. So stay with it.

[E]

Thank you.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[E]

Bless you guys. And, like, in even the stress, I. I assume that, like, it's a natural part of life, but, like, I hope that's going to balance out, too, because I hate the fact, like, oh, you stress as a woman, and you put on so much water, and then you get puffy, and then you can't, like your hormones. You guys are lucky.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, I know. Well, thank you very much.

[Sal DeStefano]

Keep it up.

[E]

Thank you.

[Sal DeStefano]

We'll send that over to you.

[E]

Awesome. Thank you, guys.

[Adam Schaefer]

Bye. You know what this makes me think of, Adam?

[Sal DeStefano]

What?

[Adam Schaefer]

You know in bodybuilding, how they talk about muscle maturity?

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know what they're talking about is in muscle maturity, they refer to bodybuilders who are, like, in their 20s, but they're Jacks, but they have a look, and they'll say, oh, in another 10 years, you're gonna. It'll look way better. Even though even if they're not bigger, same muscle, there's a different look to muscle. What it is is your skin gets thinner as you get older, which you don't necessarily want. Like, you want, like, when you're younger, you have thicker skin and dermis, and it's what gives you that youthful look.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And so sometimes, you know, when we're, as a young woman or even a young man, and you're like, like idolizing these shredded bodies, and you're like, man, I kind of look puffy. No, what you're looking at is youth. And believe me, when your skin gets thinner, you want it to go. You look back and go, man, I wish I had that.

[Sal DeStefano]

It also Takes, I mean, think both your journeys, our wives journeys. Like it takes a long time to build muscle. Muscle doesn't just come on overnight, especially when your calories are moderately low. Takes a long time to do that. And I mean, I 100% Katrina at 45 post kid has a better body than she did at 29.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

And, and I know a lot of that is just through the muscle. Yes. She's built a lot of muscle in the last decade and a half and that's. And that. So she'll keep getting better. If you start lifting in your early 20s as a girl, your body will continue to get better as you continue to have that. As long as you feed it appropriately and take care of it. If you cut hard all the time and carry, you know, then good luck. It's going to be really tough and then you're not going to be healthy and not get the body you want, but stay the course. You'll continue to sculpt, sculpt that physique.

[Justin Andrews]

Our next caller is Lindsay from Tennessee.

[Adam Schaefer]

Hi, Lindsay. Hi.

[F]

How are y'?

[Adam Schaefer]

All? We're good. How are you?

[F]

I'm well. Okay, I will read my question. So it is regarding whether or not I am failing my reverse diet. So I've been listening to your show for around six months or so and as a result, I started a reverse diet three months ago and I've gone extremely slow. I add 70 to 100 calories every two to four weeks or so. I started at 1500 calories and I'm now up to 2000 to 2200 depending on the day. I subjectively feel I have more fat around my abdomen, legs and arms. Just for context, I am 33 years old. I am 134 pounds and I'm 5 foot 2. I eat 140 grams of protein every day and I track my calories but not my other macros. And I haven't gotten back on the scale since I started my reverse diet because it messes with my mind. Currently, I am in phase three of Muscle Mommy and I've gotten much stronger. I went from no weight on the bar for my squat to adding £50 to the bar and my deadlift is around £100. I'm discouraged that I'm not visibly leaner as we often talk about on the show with people who reverse diet. And if anything, I feel like I've put on more body fat. I am encouraged that I get. I am stronger. I just was hoping my aesthetics would follow. My strength gains. I feel that I'm in a surplus, despite me really trying to slow my reverse diets. So what advice do you have?

[Adam Schaefer]

Wait, what makes you think.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, what makes you. You're doing good. You're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

You added 40 pounds.

[Sal DeStefano]

You need somebody in your ear telling.

[Adam Schaefer]

You you that to your squat.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. You're doing good, and you don't look any different.

[Adam Schaefer]

Are you married? Do you have a husband or someone that can tell you, like, you know, do you have somebody there that can tell you, like, you look different?

[F]

I do. Yes. I can ask because if you added.

[Adam Schaefer]

40 pounds to your squat, your butt probably looks way different.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. In, in, in. In addition to that, you've also added a significant amount of calories already. You're doing good. You're heading the right direction. And by the way, it's a very short period of time right now.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

By the way, it hasn't been that long.

[Adam Schaefer]

Here's the thing. A reverse diet is not design. The goal of a reverse diet is not to make you leaner.

[Sal DeStefano]

No, no. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's to get you stronger, build muscle. And the other part of it is to set you up so it's easier to get leaner later on. But in a reverse diet, by the way, the reason why we call it a reverse diet is because when I say bulk, which is what we used to call it back in the day, women run the other direction. But you're doing what's called a bulk and a bulk in the old days and the new. And today, the idea of it is to build muscle, to build that metabolically active tissue that burns calories, that makes your hormones move in a more optimal position and way, and then later set us up for a more effective cut for fat loss. Let me ask you some more questions. How do you feel otherwise? How's energy, sleep, libido with the higher calories? Are you noticing any improvements in those things?

[F]

Yeah, I feel the best that I've felt a really long time.

[Doug]

All positive.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wow.

[Doug]

I'm hearing yes.

[F]

I think it just. Aesthetically, I feel a little fluffier.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, you gained 40 pounds of squat. You probably build some muscle.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. Lindsay, have you ever had a personal trainer? Have you ever considered having a personal trainer?

[F]

No, I've never had a personal trainer. I'm. I'm fairly new to strength training.

[Sal DeStefano]

Okay. Oh, yeah. I mean, and the reason why I say that is I think just to have a trainer kind of in your ear, letting you know what's going on, why, why you feel the way, where we're at, how good you're doing really, really worth its weight. And gold, because this is very common, especially somebody who's early in weightlifting, to get in their own way, to get in their own head. And because I don't care how good you look, we find a way to look at all of our flaws. And the worst part, you're not assessing.

[Adam Schaefer]

And building muscle will make you feel more full in your body.

[Sal DeStefano]

I used to have to do this with clients, okay. Where I would. And I would tell them, I don't care. I just want you to take this photo, do this. And then what I do in a moment like this, I'd be like, hey, those photos that I had you take, I want you to take them again. And I'd put them side by side. And I have to. I would have to. Have to tell a client like, you, Lindsay, look at. Look at your butt right here. Look at your shoulders right here. Like, I'd have to point out every positive thing, because all they was like, I feel like my waist is bigger, Adam. Or I feel like my thighs are bigger. And I'm like, yeah, you built muscle. And look at all these. And look at. And I'd have to. I literally would have to take them through their own body and point out all the things that I could see that you were doing so well and to get them to trust the. Continue trust. So you're doing great. Don't give up on it. You're heading the right direction. It is still really early. Give it some time.

[Adam Schaefer]

You have. You have. You got a couple years of getting stronger. Let me give you some. Let me just, like, put this in percentages so it makes more sense, Right? You started squatting with the bar, right? Just the bar. You almost doubled. Now you added 4%. You almost doubled your strength. You got. In three months, you got twice as strong. So you right now versus you three months ago, you're two times stronger. That's crazy. That's, like, superhuman if you actually think about it. And you've done that by increasing your calories, 600, 700 calories. So you're doing great. Keep going.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yes.

[F]

How long? What should I shoot for in terms of calories?

[Sal DeStefano]

When do I stop with someone like you? My goal always is this is. I want to get you to a place where you look back at me go, adam, this is. Is. I can't eat anymore. It's so much food. Because then I know that I've got you to that. Where it's like, okay, this is almost uncomfortable, how much I have to eat, because just A lot of volume. And then we just go, okay, let's cut back a meal or let's reduce your portion size in half. And then you get lean and then you just lean out and it just comes off. But we got to get there first in order for that to work. If you do it too soon, then you might notice a little bit. Definitely. The waste will come in a tiny bit. You might even drop a pound or two, but then it'll plateau really hard. And so we want to get to a place where you're built up, where you feel like you're eating more food than you ever had. Your energy level is great, your libido is great. So everything's strong and you're just like, man, there's a lot of, okay, let's cut a little bit out. Let's cut a little bit out. And then you land in a place where you feel satisfied still. You don't feel like you're starving or having to restrict hard, but yet the body is just leaning out. That's what it looks like.

[Adam Schaefer]

But yeah, you're only three months into it too. This is like, yeah, you're. You're actually going to start seeing accelerated results if you keep moving. You can go, you can reverse diet as slow as you want, whatever you're comfortable with, and just keep focusing on, on getting stronger.

[Sal DeStefano]

It says you, you said you've been listening to the show for six months. Are you pretty consistent with listening?

[F]

Yeah, I listen every day.

[Sal DeStefano]

Okay, good. Okay, good. So I feel like if you don't have a trainer, at least have us in your ears every day talking to you to hopefully keep you on the path, because I think you're doing, I like to. If you're not already in it. I'd love Doug to put you in our private forum too.

[F]

Okay. No, I'm not in it. That would be nice.

[Adam Schaefer]

The other thing too, Lindsay, is before three months ago, were you kind of a chronic dieter? Were you like, oh, I cut. I'm trying to always cut. I'm trying to over, you know, work off these calories. I'm trying to eat little by.

[F]

Yeah, yeah. I grew up in the ERA of 1200 calories, lots of running.

[Sal DeStefano]

So. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta give it some time.

[Sal DeStefano]

Well, I'm putting you in the form now, so now you got direct access to us. Okay. So every time you start thinking like this, I want you to, to message us in there. Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Write a post, tell us how you're feeling, tell us where you're at. What's going on? And then let us. Let us talk you off the ledge and keep you heading the right because you're. Because you're doing a great job. You're doing.

[F]

Yes. I'm. I'm gonna finish muscle mommy in a few weeks and start anabolic, so.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, you're gonna. Beautiful. You're gonna get strong.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yes.

[Adam Schaefer]

This will be great.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yep.

[F]

Thank you so much.

[Adam Schaefer]

You got it. Good job.

[Sal DeStefano]

Stay close to us, okay?

[F]

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Thanks, Lindsay.

[Sal DeStefano]

Bye.

[Adam Schaefer]

So I know what this feels like in the reverse. You know, Adam and I. Adam, you and I have talked about this before. Like, I never went on a cut because as soon as I started a cut, I would start to feel smaller, and I freak out and I get back on the bull. So I never got, like, really lean because I was. I would just get in my own way.

[Sal DeStefano]

Paranoid. You were losing muscle.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

And I remember she's the opposite. Paranoid. She's putting fat on.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yep. And I remember there was, like, one summer where I was just like, I'm gonna just do the course. I'm just gonna stay. It was really hard for me. And I'd cover myself up. Cause I freaked. You know, I'd look in the mirror, and I'd ended up up messing with myself. And I got. For the first time ever, I got, like, lean. I got 7% or something like that. Body fat. And then it was like, I got through it, like, okay.

[Sal DeStefano]

Not only that.

[Adam Schaefer]

I know what it feels like.

[Sal DeStefano]

I know. I know this happened to you too. I. I. Because I. I vividly remember this moment. Is people seeing me.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. You look like you're bro.

[Sal DeStefano]

You're jacked. How much. How much muscle you put on? And I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm down 15 pounds.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

I'm smaller than what I. But that just shows you how we mess with our own head psychologically. Just like she's feeling right now. She's in her head. She's going, oh, my God. I'm putting on body fat where probably her husband's like, oh, you look great. Yeah, we're going the right direction. I like this. But you tell yourself this story that's trapped. So I hope.

[Adam Schaefer]

1.

[Sal DeStefano]

I hope she stays listening to the show. I wouldn't mind. I would. I like one of the trainers to call her, because I think her having somebody who's.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's the value of working. One of the values of working with a trainer.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. So having. Having someone coach her along because she's doing a really good Job.

[Justin Andrews]

Our next caller is Bradley from Texas.

[Adam Schaefer]

Bradley, what's happening?

[Doug]

What's going down?

[G]

Oh, it's good man. It's weird to see you guys. I've been following you guys. I don't want to say day one, but I want to say episode around 100.

[Sal DeStefano]

Wow.

[Doug]

Right on the old days.

[G]

Been a long time. So I know you got a lot of callers, so let me get to the question. Kind of like what everyone says. So I've been listening to you guys, like I said, for over eight years. I want to say longer than that. Have similar stories to all y'.

[Adam Schaefer]

All.

[G]

I've been a per. I was a personal trainer in the beginning of my career after college when I graduated 2013, played sports in college, baseball and football, managed. I was a personal trainer for Big Box Gym, wound up being general manager and eventually DVP for Big Box Gym in California. Originally born and raised San Diego and then moved out to Texas a little over 10 years ago. Even though I 100% agree with all your philosophies on correct dosaging of training, intensity, sleep, recovery, all this kind of stuff for the average person, I'm no longer the average person job and I'll get to that in a sec. But my sleep is interrupted consistently and I have to perform at a high mental and physical level. I'm a firefighter paramedic for the third busiest department in the country, the Dallas Fire Department. And I work 24 hour shifts on and then I have 48 hours off. Some shifts I only ride the ambulance where it's more busy, more calls where I just do my paramedic duties where I have to be mentally sharp to help people, I have to think fast to help others. Even in the middle of the night, two o' clock in the morning, analyzing rhythms, correct drugs to give and so on. Um, some shifts I ride in other shifts I ride the engine and truck, you know, where I'm doing more of the physical stuff. Going to, you know, multi alarm fires. Not only at any time where it could be 2 o' clock in the morning, 10:10am But I'm also wearing, you know, all the gear where it's extremely hot. It's also Texas, so it's always hot. Wearing the gear, carrying tools into the structure, my training wise and all that, I'm required to have, you know, incredible cardiovascular strength and endurance to be able to breathe on an air bottle. I always tell people this, you know, the air you and me are breathing right now, you know that, that if that's at 100% the actual air we're breathing's at about 70% of that. So we're not getting the full amount. You know, climb upstairs confined spaces, climb over objects, meanwhile carrying, you know, a hundred pound hose that's charged, carrying tools, finding people, being in a fire, not being able to see all that kind of stuff. Understand recovery and understand your philosophy on the average person doing traditional strength training two to three times a week. When I was a trainer, I mean I preach that all day, every day. Fortunately, that kind of training won't cut it for what I need to do now. I know you guys talk about stress on the body, adaptation, not just that kind of stress, but obviously I'm married and I have a two year old daughter working on child number two. I'm active in my church and serve on the medical team so I have obligations there as well. Justin, you're going to love this. I'm going to say a bad word here But I think CrossFit is the best type of gym for me or types of workouts saying that, you know, I'm not a huge believer on their programming and all that kind of stuff. So I totally get it. Just it might be better towards me but obviously I want to get Yalls input on what that looks like. Not just in the acute training job now, but obviously I need a long healthy life and healthy, not just outside but internal stuff as far as heart health and all that kind of stuff goes.

[Sal DeStefano]

So that's, that's interesting you say that because the first thing that comes to mind as you were listening is I was thinking microdosing my training and then doing what I need to do, endurance and stamina. So I stay at the top of.

[Doug]

My game performance, you know, when you can.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yep.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. I'll say this Bradley, first off, thank God for people like you sacrifice just to help people. I don't think people realize how difficult it is to do the job that you do. By the way, what big box gym did you work for in California, L.A. fitness. All right, good deal. So, all right, so here's the deal. It's a shift in mindset, Bradley. If you are chasing progress, fitness progress, this is where you can run into some problems while doing your job. So if I'm trying to simultaneously do a stressful job or my sleep is interrupted and try to gain strength and endurance and stamina at the same time, you have to tread very carefully. So what that's going to look like is when appropriate you can push yourself a little bit but you got to be very judicious. With it for the most part. For a job like yours, Brad, you're already fit and healthy.

[Sal DeStefano]

We train you more like a pro athlete.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

And yes, that's how we train you.

[Adam Schaefer]

What you want to do with your training is to prevent injury and degradation of health. So if you chase performance while doing what you're doing, you are going to, they're gonna cross and you're convolutes it. You're gonna get into running some problems. Okay. You're gonna actually lose performance. You're gonna start getting hormonal issues. You'll start to really degrade your health. So think like this. 90% of the time, I'm preventing, I'm just trying to keep myself healthy. And then every once in a while, when the stars align, you got some time, you feel good, you'll throw in that challenge and workout. So that's what that looks like, that's the mentality. But if you're, if you chase, if you're trying to chase performance gains consistently while doing what you're doing, it's going to be a problem.

[Sal DeStefano]

I mean I'm, I'm microdosing your training and we're doing on your off days, you're some of your endurance training. That's what it looks like. It looks like you're doing 2, 2 lifts 15, the 15 minute maps 15 type of lifting. And then when you have days off, that's my, when we do some of your endurance running and stuff like that to keep your cardiovascular endurance up and stamina up like you need to. And that's what it looks like that and, and, and it goes off of how you feel in your shift. And you heard, I don't know if you heard Justin Time in. He's like, you know, some days you stack that so you have the Maps 15 protocol which is, you know, basically six days a week of 15 minutes. But sometimes you're not going to be able to lift at all. But that's okay because on other days you're going to be able to stack two of those workouts because you're off. And so it's like you're following the 15 protocol. And then when you have the days of rest and you feel good, we could stack two of those workouts. Other times you just do the two lifts and that's all you do lifting wise. And then the days that you have off, we do our, our endurance stamina training.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So I've trained quite a few people that, that work in a field like yours. Firefighters, paramedics, ER doctors. So and what it typically looks like, and correct me if I'm wrong, is you go through periods of time where it's like, no, nothing really stressful happening. You're just, you're at the station, whatever, and then there's like all of a sudden, shit hits the fan and it's like, okay. So that's how you got to gauge this. Right? So it might look like you take, you know, you just kind of maintaining, maintaining, maintaining. You're like, wow, I've had a few days where it's been slow. You throw in that hard workout. But there's times, and I know this right. You probably have times where it's like, oh, my God. It's like, I don't know what's happening, but this has been a lot. And that's kind of serves as your training. Like, you're out there carrying the hose and you're, you're like, you said, you're in the fire. You're putting fires out. That's not the time to challenge your body with your workouts. You're already getting challenged.

[Doug]

Do you have mass performance as well, or.

[G]

I don't. I was thinking about that one. I just didn't know what the layout looked like in including, you know, a cardiovascular type.

[Doug]

So phase four has, has pretty intensive of like cardiovascular type workouts in it. And again, this is. I would compromise and. Because like CrossFit, you could use like one of those Metcons for one of those intense days. Like, I know I could do like my intense workout now because I've had like, you know, X amount of days where it's not like super stressful, but you're going to undulate your training based upon like, you know, the stress at work and lifestyle and everything else. And that's why Maps 15, the, you know, the 15 performance, I think is a good compliment because you can kind of tailor that for your, you know, just, just microdosing. And then we, we hit like that, that hard, intensive day.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Doug]

As it comes up, I would love.

[Sal DeStefano]

To give a Maps 15 performance and give a mass performance.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

Your base that you run 90% of the time to Sal's point is, is Maps 15 performance. On the days you feel great, you pull from the, the full Perform Maps performance program.

[Adam Schaefer]

Exactly.

[Sal DeStefano]

Which is like a full workout. So when you want to get after it. Because by the way, we built that to kind of counter the CrossFit philosophy. It's like our answer to what you get from CrossFit. It's our answer to that, but better programming. So you pull from that. And, and that's kind of you. If you haven't listened to the episode we did with why Is My Boy's Name Slipping Me Right Now? Basketball coach for the Corey Schlesinger. Corey Schlesinger. Did you listen that episode?

[Adam Schaefer]

It's been.

[G]

Yeah, but it's been a while.

[Sal DeStefano]

Because we listen to that. Because I'll go back to it. Yeah, because all the science and things we're talking about in that episode applies to you. Like, he's. The way he treats his basketball players in season. You're a basketball player in season. You train like that, you perform. You, you train like that. And then when in the off season to when Sal's talking about when you get those weeks that might be total downtime and not crazy, then you can pull from Maps Performance and you run those workouts. That's when you, you can handle.

[Adam Schaefer]

I had clients like this, and what I would do is I would judge it for them because people like you tend to be terrible.

[Doug]

Yeah, that's a good point.

[Adam Schaefer]

So I'd always ask them, like, hey, how's it, how's it been? Or whatever. Oh, my, you know, did you get any calls last night? No, nothing's going on. Or whatever. So sometimes what it looked like was once a month, they'd have a really hard workout. And then most of the workouts were like, mobility, taking care of the body. And then other times, we'd have like, like one or two hard workouts a week, just depending on what work look like, because it's so unpredictable. Like, your job is so unpredictable that you're gonna have to kind of feel it out. But think, like, like I said, like, it's prevention most the time. And then during those times, and you're like, oh, this is, it's, it's slow. I'm getting sleep. Everything's good. Then you can push.

[Sal DeStefano]

And by the way, you will build more muscle and you will get in better shape training that way. It doesn't feel like it because it feels counterintuitive. You're like, oh, I'm doing way less. But that's what your body needs.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

And you'll, you'll get better that way.

[Doug]

If you try just grinding it, you know, all the time is gonna spin out.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yep.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[G]

And that's what I'm worried about. I, I, I feel good right now. It's been about, what are we in? I started TRT about eight months ago. My, my levels were in the ground. So not just from the job necessarily, but life had A newborn, all that kind of stuff. And really they've come up obviously huge and feeling great right now. And so I've been consistently. Every workout's been solid, solid, solid. I also, they just put me on because we're trying for kid number two and it's been a couple months and nothing happened. No, it actually it's called yes. And I started that a couple weeks ago and I'm feeling even better. So it's like, oh, I want to drive off that.

[Sal DeStefano]

So, so you have to be careful. You are getting an artificial signal right now. So that's the one thing I always tell my TRT guys, is that you, you feel better than what really is going on. You got to be careful. Right?

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay.

[Sal DeStefano]

So of course you feel better. Your testosterone was. It was in the dumpster and now it's. Now it's optimal all the time. And so that sometimes will make you think I'm optimal. Be training hard all the time. And that's not necessarily true.

[Adam Schaefer]

So to put it careful. So to put it differently, the, the pro of hormone replacement therapy is your hormones are always optimized. The con is that your hormones are always optimized, meaning they don't react and respond to your life. So what would normally happen in a normal situation is if you overstress your body, your hormones move in a direction that force you to rest because you feel like dog shit, but because they're always high, you're like, oh, I'm good. Yeah, I'm good. But don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. Because you can mess yourself up on trt. In fact, I've seen more men go on TRT and over train for that reason, for that particular reason, because they're like, oh, yeah, this, you know, so you gotta, you gotta kind of look at things objectively because your, your testosterone is always gonna be high no matter what, because you're taking testosterone. So, so don't necessarily just listen to.

[Sal DeStefano]

I, I mean, I remember telling the guys this all the time off air about my experience with all the pro body builders. I'd be like, dude, these guys train so stupid. They don't know what. And I be. And the reason why is because they have the. All these drugs in them. They're like, I feel great on zero calories and I'm crushing these work. It's like, yeah, because you have an artificial signal that's telling you you're better than what you really are. And yet it's not. The more. It's not the appropriate way to train. There was. There would have been a better way for them to train, but because they could get away with it, they keep doing it. This is why guys like that have.

[Adam Schaefer]

So you don't progress. That's right. That's right. So. So there's. There's actually way better progress on the other end of this. If you. If you're a little bit more objective and.

[Sal DeStefano]

And the fact that you are on TRT, man, a beautiful dose of microdosing maps 15 is going to be perfect for you, bro. That with compliment, with some endurance and stamina training on your days off, you're going to be. You're going to be good.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right. Yeah. Okay.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah. Cool.

[G]

Yeah, that works. I appreciate it, guys. Thank you for the time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Thanks, brother. All right. Yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah. I'm glad he said he's on trt.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, me too.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Cuz, you know, it doesn't just affect your muscle. It affects your central nervous system, your mental capacity. And so then you suddenly are like. And now here's the thing. Oftentimes people will look at, like soldiers and look at their training, and what they got to understand is that they're not training in many of these positions. You're not training someone to make them improve physically.

[Sal DeStefano]

Mental. It's a messenger.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. You're like, yeah, we're trying to beat you up so you can get.

[Sal DeStefano]

You.

[Adam Schaefer]

You can be okay with getting beat up all the time, because that's what's gonna happen. Happen. Yeah. So, yeah. Surviving. Yeah. So he. You don't want to. I mean, if he's doing this as a job and hopefully he does this for 20 years, you can't just survive for 20 years. You're gonna break yourself down.

[Sal DeStefano]

No.

[Doug]

Build yourself up.

[Sal DeStefano]

And getting on the TRT is a quick path for him to head the wrong direction because he feels just like you said. Like, I feel so good. Like, yeah, definitely you're gonna feel like that because of that signal you're getting. But the danger of that is that now you don't have those natural signals for the body to go like, like, hey, today we should probably take off, but yeah, no, less is more here.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right. Look, if you like our show, come find us on Instagram. You can find us at mindpumpmedia.

[Justin Andrews]

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super [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 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.