2858: 5 Weird Tricks That Trigger Fast Muscle Growth

Summary

Podcast Summary: Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth – Episode 2858: "5 Weird Tricks That Trigger Fast Muscle Growth"
Original Air Date: May 15, 2026
Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Mind Pump team dives into unconventional, science- and experience-backed “weird tricks” for stimulating fast muscle growth. While they emphasize that sustainable progress always relies on fundamentals — resistance training, high protein intake, calorie surplus, and consistency — the hosts share five unique methods that can be strategically deployed when individuals hit plateaus or need a rapid boost in muscle gains. The conversation is dynamic, evidence-informed, and peppered with personal anecdotes and practical tips, making it especially valuable for both novice and seasoned gymgoers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Context: When and Why to Use These "Weird" Tricks

• Short-Term Tools: Most tricks are not for continuous use but can "interrupt" plateaus and create rapid gains in a 3–5 week window. Only one is suitable for long-term use.
• Prerequisites: These methods work best for those who are already well-rested, not overtrained, and properly nourished. A "deload" or rest week is recommended before starting (05:12).

Quote:
"If you go into these overtrained and underfed, they're not gonna work... So what might be a good idea is to have a deload week."
— Sal Di Stefano (05:04)

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1. One Set to Failure

Timestamps: 05:59–15:28

• Background: Inspired by Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty system and Dorian Yates’ “Blood and Guts.”
• Protocol: After warming up, do only one set per body part, to strict failure, with nothing else for that bodypart in the session.
• Experience: Rapid gains for 3–4 weeks; often inspired by reducing volume from higher previous workloads.
• Caveats: Not sustainable long-term. Risk of injury increases if form is not perfect.
• Programming Advice: “Back out before you hit the plateau.”

Quotes:
"This is the one set I have to make it count. But I think most of it was, I was just overdoing it so much that I scaled the volume way back and saw crazy progress."
— Sal Di Stefano (08:43)

"For a good three weeks, you’ll see gains. Most people will see [them]. My advice is back out before you hit the plateau."
— Sal Di Stefano (12:56)

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2. Blood Occlusion Training (BFR - Blood Flow Restriction)

Timestamps: 16:12–17:59

• Overview: Use bands or wraps to restrict blood flow to extremities while performing lightweight, high-rep sets.
• Application: Effective for arms, delts, quads, hams, calves—but not trunk muscles.
• Result: Dramatic pump and rapid growth (quarter-inch gains possible in a few weeks), but not a sustainable, all-year-round tool.
• Burnout: The effect diminishes if overused.

Quote:
"This burns more than anything you’ve ever done your entire life... but you’ll gain a pretty quick, you know, quarter inch of muscle."
— Sal Di Stefano (17:20)

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3. The All-Day Workout

Timestamps: 17:59–22:40

• What Is It?: On a free day, do multiple mini-sessions (every 1–2 hours) with moderate intensity.
• How: Choose 2–3 compound exercises (e.g., squats, bench, rows), perform a couple sets of 5 reps at moderate intensity each session.
• Why It Works: Mimics how some elite athletes and old-school trainers practiced lifts all day, with total volume adding up but without exhaustion.
• Notes: Not feasible for everyone—best for people with access to a home or workplace gym.

Quotes:
"What you’ll find is by the third session, you’re stronger than you were in the first session... a few days later I was like, stronger."
— Sal Di Stefano (20:40, 21:39)

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4. Ultra-High Protein Phase (2g per lb of Target Bodyweight)

Timestamps: 23:00–24:15

• Protocol: For 1–2 weeks, double your protein intake to 2g per pound target bodyweight.
• Pairing: Can be combined with any of the aforementioned tricks for amplified effect.
• Difficulties: Logistically and digestively challenging; supplement with shakes and fiber.
• Results: Noticeable gains in muscle and strength in a short window.

Quotes:
"If you do this for too long, you’re not going to feel very good for most people. But... they’ll typically see strength and muscle gains pretty quickly within the first week or two."
— Sal Di Stefano (23:00)

"You can’t add the other [tricks] to each other, right? But this one, you can stack it."
— Adam Schafer (23:29)

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5. Post-Workout Sauna (15–20 minutes)

Timestamps: 24:15–25:14

• Unique for: Improved recovery, VO2 max, and neural drive (CNS adaptation); measurable improvements to stamina and endurance.
• Health and Recovery: The only trick on the list that's always safe and can be used continually. No additional physical stress; in fact, aids recovery.
• Mental Reset: Also offers a modern "digital detox" benefit.

Quotes:
"15–20 minutes post workout, go sit in the sauna, get out and you'll see some improvements just by doing that."
— Sal Di Stefano (25:14)

"I just find there's so much value in 20 minutes of no phone and silence, just sitting there."
— Adam Schafer (25:35)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Overusing Short-Term Tools:
  "You kind of just, like anything else, you pull that lever all the time, and then it takes away from the other volume that you’ll be doing, and that's not better volume."
  — Adam Schafer (16:30)

• Protein Intake Hack:
  "Have protein snacks in between your meals. Like the Paleo Valley meat sticks... you throw one of those in in between, you know, breakfast and lunch and then before bed, like you've got yourself 20 extra grams of protein."
  — Sal Di Stefano (26:24)

• On Modern Life and Time:
  "In 1967... they said... all these time-saving inventions... will mean by 1985, we work 22 hours a week and only 27 weeks a year. We went the other way. We have less leisure time, we’re far busier than we’ve ever been, which is wild."
  — Sal Di Stefano (29:42)

• On Human Behavior:
  "All these [technological] things are supposed to reduce stress... and we do more of all that stuff. So I don't think it's gonna change. I think human behavior is human behavior."
  — Sal Di Stefano (31:04)

• On Social Disconnection:
  "We have stopped going out and being social... Alcohol works as a social lubricant... we're just not going out."
  — Adam Schafer (50:08, 50:42)

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Listener Q&A Segment (Starting at 57:35)

Q1: "Is it realistic to progress every week?"

• Summary: No; only in the newbie phase. Progress is often cyclical or stepwise (58:00–59:10).
• Key Point: Zoom out and measure gains over months, not weeks.

Q2: "How to prevent stretch marks when losing weight?"

• Summary: Genetics play a big role. Slow weight loss, high-protein diet, and red light therapy may help. Cocoa butter’s effect is minimal (60:38–61:41).

Q3: "Can I hit weekly step averages, or should it be daily?"

• Summary: Daily is far superior for health, mood, and sleep. Consistency counts more than just the weekly total (62:04–64:49).

Q4: "High protein, high-calorie snack options?"

• Summary: Meat sticks, dairy, deli meats, chicken packs, Greek yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, cottage cheese. Snacks should be considered as ‘incomplete meals’ for more mindful eating (65:01–67:34).

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Tone & Podcast Style

The Mind Pump crew keeps things evidence-based, but light-hearted and full of banter. They freely share their own experiments (both successes and fails) and always stress practical, realistic advice. They’re quick to use humor and real-world analogies to anchor abstract concepts.

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Timestamps for Main Segments

• 03:37 – Episode’s Main Topic Introduction
• 05:59 – Trick #1: One Set to Failure
• 16:12 – Trick #2: Blood Occlusion Training
• 17:59 – Trick #3: All-Day Workout
• 23:00 – Trick #4: 2g Protein per Pound Protocol
• 24:15 – Trick #5: Post-Workout Sauna
• 57:35 – Listener Q&A Begins

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Final Takeaways

• These “weird tricks” are effective for busting short-term plateaus or energizing stale routines—but are not substitutes for consistent, foundational habits.
• The hosts reiterate: Monitoring and adjusting workload, prioritizing recovery, and not falling victim to over-intensifying are keys to sustainable muscle gains.

Quote:
"The desire or belief that you need to progress every week is one of the biggest reasons why you won't."
— Sal Di Stefano (59:36)

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For more minds-on fitness advice, science busting, and uncensored camaraderie, check out Mind Pump on Instagram @mindpumpmedia or mindpumppodcast.com

Transcript

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[Caller/Listener]

If you want to pump your body

[Sal Di Stefano]

and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts Sal Destefano, Adam Schafer and Justin Andrews, you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast in history. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, we picked questions that our listeners wrote in on Instagram. We picked four of them and we answered them. But this was after our intro. Today's intro is 52 minutes long. Now in the intro we talk about fitness, fat loss, muscle gain, current events, family life, supplements. It's always a good time. By the way, again, if you want to post a question that we can pick, go to Instagram indpump Media. Now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Paleo Valley. Today we Talked about their meat sticks. This is grass fed meat. It's fermented so it's not dry. High in protein, long shelf life. It's a high protein snack. It tastes delicious. You gotta go check em out. Go to paleovalley.com mindpump on that link. You'll get 15% off. This episode's also brought to you by zbiotics. This is a pre alcohol drink. So it's a probiotic that's been genetically modified to break down acetaldehyde in the gut. What is that? Well, when you drink alcohol, some of that is released in your gut, goes in your bloodstream, makes you feel like crap. So drink zebiotics, enjoy a couple drinks, you feel way better again. By the way, this is the only company that has it. It's a patented product. You got to try it. Go to zbiotics.com, the zbiotics.com mindpump26 use the code mindpump26. Get 15% off. We also have a sale on some workout programs. Buy any Maps 15 style workout program. Get any other Maps 15 style workout program for free. It's a buy one, get one free sale. If you're interested, go to maps15bogo.com all

[Justin Andrews]

right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs or training gear? [e-mail] I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to my pumpstore.com that's it.

[Adam Schafer]

Enjoy the rest of the show.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Building muscle is a slow, arduous process. Process. It could take a while. And yeah, the rules apply, right? Resistance training. Eat high protein, eat a surplus, be consistent. But there are weird ways to quickly trigger muscle growth. Now these aren't long term solutions, but they do work. If you want to see some quick gains in a short period of time, keep listening. We're going to list them, break them down.

[Adam Schafer]

I'd say the biggest mistake people make in regards to these five that we're going to go over is, is pulling the lever too much, too long. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's like one of those things. It's like, oh my gosh, it works. I think, I think all of us have probably, yeah, experimented with this and had this happen where you do it, you go like, oh, this does really work. And then you're like, go. It becomes your go to move.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's addicting.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. For a long time and, and then you, then it ends up not only not working, but then you probably even

[Sal Di Stefano]

have you go backwards.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, no, these are more like interrupters. Like something that I could. A tool that I could bring in. If I'm a stalled and you know, plateaued a bit. It's like, let's bring this in and shake it up.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Totally. Only one of these could be used consistently to augment your progress. It's the last one. But the rest of these kind of produce these kind of short term gains and they're proven by experience. We've all experienced these for ourselves and for our clients. But the gains are short, but they're fast. You're looking at three to five weeks, maybe six of some rapid gains. I'm gonna just also paint the context here properly. If you go into these overtrained and underfed, they're not gonna work.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay. So you have to go into these well rested. You're not overtrained. The reason why you're not getting gains because you're burnt out and over. So if you're not getting gains because you're just overdoing it, doing, we're about to say might not work. One of them may, may work a little bit. And I'll get to that one first. But a lot of them won't work. So make sure you go into them rested. So what might be a good idea is to have a deload week. I was just going to say jump in.

[Adam Schafer]

I was just going to say I was going to recommend our, our reset

[Sal Di Stefano]

over training seven day reset guide.

[Adam Schafer]

Our reset guide, that's.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Where's that, Doug? Mindpumpfree.com.

[Adam Schafer]

yeah, probably a good strategy for most people, pretty much. No matter what. If you're already, unless you're somebody who's like just getting into it or you know, you're not, you do that every.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Every eight to 12 weeks.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Anyway, and so not a bad idea to just start with that and then go apply this and then watch what happens. I think would set most people up for success.

[Sal Di Stefano]

All right, we'll get to the first one. One set to failure. So this is the first time I learned about this. I was, I want to say 16 years old. So I'd already been working out for two years. And at that point my strength training looked like very traditional bodybuilding style workouts. I got my advice from Muscle and Fitness, Flex Magazine, Iron Man. These were the muscle building magazines at the time. And I also had Arnold Schwarzenegger's encyclopedia bodybuilding. So my strength training at that point looked like your traditional bodybuilding. You know, I'm doing lots of Sets per body part. I'm hitting each body part once or twice a week, spending, you know, a lot of time in the backyard working out. And then I read, or actually I should say, I saw an ad for a book called Heavy Duty. And it had a picture of a bodybuilder by the name of Mike Mentzer. And he had this really wild looking physique, kind of a square shouldered, kind of herculean looking physique, which caught my attention. And so I bought the book. And Mike Mentzer has a way of communicating where it sounds very scientific. And a lot of the stuff he does say is true. Not all of it, but a lot of stuff he does say is true. And so he talked about the theory of building muscle that was championed by Arthur Jones, who was the inventor of Nautilus equipment. And he said that bodybuilders build a lot of muscle in spite of the fact that they overdo it. So what he said was all you have to do is set the muscle building process in motion and then stop. And so he, in the book, he says, well, what sets that motion forward, what gets it going? It's intensity. And once you've surpassed that trigger, anything above and beyond that just takes away from your progress. And there's some truth to that. He just went way too far. But anyway, I got this book and the routine was two or three days a week. It was like one workout. Then you take two days off, do another workout. It was a chest, shoulders, triceps, back, biceps and legs. And he said one set per body part to failure. And that was it. Which was such a wild departure from what I had been doing at the time.

[Justin Andrews]

It's a drastic difference from a lot of the hypertrophy style training.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And so the first time I tried it, I had strength and muscle gains every week for like six weeks, which, you know, for a 16 year old kid is mind blowing.

[Adam Schafer]

Now, do you think that that's because from a recovery point of view, because you're coming from a place of you were training everything to failure or is this pre. That?

[Sal Di Stefano]

So back then I, you know, I would train pretty intensely.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But also do a lot.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And so I think it was a combination of this is the one set I have to make it count. But I think most of it was, I was just overdoing it so much.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That I scaled the volume way back.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And saw crazy progress.

[Justin Andrews]

So was this in the protocol? Did he do any kind of warmup set or is this just like the one set?

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, you got to make sure you did. Now you make sure you warm up. And he had another theory where he would use what's called a pre exhaust set. Because he said, well, if you bench press and you go to failure, maybe it's your, your shoulders and triceps that fail before your chest. So do a set of flies to failure, jump right to the bench press. And so this was all his, his theory. And I saw these really rapid, like really consist like 10 pounds added to my lift every week for a while, like five weeks, six weeks. And I was like sold and everything stopped.

[Justin Andrews]

Yep.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And his protocol or his advice at that point was we were over trained again. So now train even less frequently. So I went to one workout every three days, one workout every four days. And what I ended up getting was zero gains. And I started to go backwards. And that's when I started training in different ways. I've done this with clients, uh, the clients I've done this with relatively well trained, they've got good technique going to failure, like going to real failure. You know, the risk of injury goes up because your form breaks down. And I'd see the same thing with my clients, but it's like three, four weeks of pretty consistent gains. And then we would hit like a super hard plateau or wall. Until this day, if I do something like this, I've got now at this point, at my age, with the amount of strength and muscle I've built, I've got a good three, maybe four weeks of gains before I start to notice, you know, issues with the program.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean, at least the, you know, the volume is accounted for, which, you know, I see a lot of people trying to apply the failure method, but then their volume is way too high on top of it and it just kind of defeats the purpose.

[Adam Schafer]

You know, I pulled this lever a lot in 20s and 30s, not so much in my 40s. This is just, and maybe to the point that you just made that I've, I've built enough muscle now. I'm not, I'm not looking for another 10 pounds of muscle in my body. I'm just like, it's like trying to maintain and so it just doesn't require that. Like this makes, made more sense to me when I was still in the mode of like I was trying to build and grow.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Did you do this where you would just do one set and nothing else?

[Adam Schafer]

No, I would do. So what it would look like would be like on a, on a day where I was working chest, whether I was running a full body routine, like anabolic Or I was running something more like aesthetic, didn't matter when I. The last set of that exercise would

[Sal Di Stefano]

be the work set.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Now Dorian Yates popularized this in the 90s as well. So he comes onto the scene, becomes Mr. Olympia, ushers in the era of mass monsters. And he was very much an advocate of this. He called it blood and guts, which is just, it was, it was very similar. And he saw, he went from second place to first place in the Olympia. And I think he gained as a pro bodybuilder Something like 13, 15 pounds of muscle. And so it popularized kind of the style of training. But I'm going to say this straight up because we know that volume also contributes to muscle growth. So it's not just intensity. Volume does this as well. And we also know with studies and again through experience that failure training is a button. But it's really not a button you need to push. And if you do, you use it very infrequently. And when they do comparison studies, really good comparison studies, not going to failure seems to produce better long term gains. Yep. That being said, more sustainable. That being said, if you've never done this before, here's what'll happen. So long as you're not overtrained and you're doing everything else okay for probably three or four weeks at least, you'll see consistent strength gains across the board. Now the problem I have with it now is that my strength gets so high.

[Adam Schafer]

Yep.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I start to hurt.

[Adam Schafer]

Yep. So when I do this, that's what exactly what happens. I get the adverse effects that I get from it aren't worth the little bit of gains in strength PRs that I get from.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So last time I did this, I went for my squatting with 315, which is heavy for me, and I got up to 385 in a very short period of time. And I was kind of hurt. It didn't feel good on my joints. Just give you an example. But again, if you've never tried this before, try it for a few weeks and you will see some pretty rapid gains back out of it. My advice is this. Back out before you hit the plateau. Yeah. So you see games. Three weeks.

[Adam Schafer]

Three weeks.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. And then you load after that and then jump out, do a week of deload, go back to your old style of training and it's a pretty awesome thing.

[Adam Schafer]

I'd be willing to bet that because of all you have, you have several things on here, this is probably the one that most of our audience uses. I Think this is one of the most controversial things that we talk about. When I look around at our peers in the fitness space, they, a lot of them preach intensity.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. But nobody does. Most people don't do this. So I'm not talking about going to failure. I'm talking about doing one set.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

No body part of my point is that they. This is going to training to failure. That part is touted so much. My point is that a lot of people listening, more than likely if you're, if somebody, you never do this, then absolutely take this advice. But I'm willing to bet a good percentage of people listening still are the people that fall in the category of overdoing the intensity.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

And because. And one of the things I think that we, we tend to, when we get somebody that is a caller or somebody that's been listening for a long time, they finally go through our program and they take the two in the tank advice and they fall. It blows their mind.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Always.

[Adam Schafer]

It always blows their mind. They feel like they're doing way less than they ever been for getting way better results. And I think that's because the fitness space has pushed trailer or failure training and intensity so much that everybody thinks that that's what you need to do in order to see.

[Justin Andrews]

But especially plateaus are like, well, what are you gonna do? I gotta go harder. Yes, that's the first.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I'll bet, I will bet that the vast majority, like 90 plus percent of people listening who train to failure don't just do one set to failure.

[Adam Schafer]

No, you're, you're right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So this is very different.

[Adam Schafer]

This is, you're right. Because this is, this was my personal journey. And I think a lot of people fall on. This is like not, not realizing then finding out, oh, failure training works and then doing everything to failure. And you do that for a really long time. And then I remember my next big gains from failure training was reducing the amount of failure down to just. Oh, I would just do my last set of every exercise for a muscle group and then I was like, oh, wow, that's all. But then I even stuck to that for way too long. But that's typically, I think the journey of failure training for somebody is they never do it. Then all of a sudden they do it. They do it all the time with everything. And then you learn to back off a little bit.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So I'll say again, just be clear. If you're going to try this, it's one set to failure per body part. Warm up. No working sets. Warm up. So you Feel ready? Go to failure. One set for chest, one set for shoulders, one set for tricep, one set for back, one separate. That's it. And for a good three weeks. You'll see. Most people will see.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, you program this in.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But different.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it is. It is different. But if you want. If you had somebody. Because what I'm trying to think about is, like, what would I recommend to our audience? Because I feel like of all the five things we're going to talk about, this is probably the one that most people don't need to go to, in my opinion. Unless you're already somebody who's overdoing and this is scaling back. But then I would say go follow anabolic advance. I'd say that protocol teaches you how to. Well, that alternates it better.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It does. It periodizes it and alternates it so you don't hit that hard wall. But to keep it simple. Again, like, you want to try this one set to failure per body part per week. That's it. And for a good few weeks, you'll see gains pretty consistently. Next up, this was popular, like, I don't know, eight years ago. I don't really. Nobody really talks about this anymore.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Is blood occlusion training or.

[Justin Andrews]

Kind of.

[Adam Schafer]

It was. It was hot. When it was like, eight years ago, when we first talked about it and made a guide about it, it was a hot topic. And a lot of people were using it. Maybe because a lot of people found what we found, which was that it does really work.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Stop.

[Justin Andrews]

Just not for long.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. And then what ends up happening is like, oh, you. You kind of just like anything else, you pull that lever all the time, and then it takes away from the other volume that you'll be doing, and that's not better volume, I would say.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It also works on the extremities. It doesn't work so well on the muscles of the trunk.

[Justin Andrews]

Compound lift.

[Sal Di Stefano]

There's no advantage. No. You can't really include your back or your pecs. Yeah, it doesn't work. But for like, delts, arms, quads, hams, calves, what you'll do is cut out a set. Your traditional exercise, do an occlusion set, and you get knee wraps and you essentially occlude the blood. So you. So if I'm doing it for my arms, I'm going to tie it around high in my armpit, tight enough to where I feel the blood is being occluded. Not so tight that I lose feeling in my hand, but tight enough to where there's occlusion a bit. Then you grab lightweight and you rep it out and you do three sets in a row. You do, you rep it out, wait 30 seconds, wrap it out, do 30 seconds, do it again, and grab a lightweight. This burns more than anything you've ever done your entire life.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

You do not need heavy.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Feels like your arm or your calves or whatever are on fire. The pump you get from this is extreme. It looks silly, but you'll gain a pretty quick, you know, quarter inch of muscle on your calves or your arms. For a lot of people, maybe a little less. But you'll see gains if you do this for like a few weeks. So it works. Next up is the all day workout. This is fun. It's a, it's a big commitment, but it's a lot of fun. And so what you do with this is you lead into a day where you have nothing scheduled.

[Justin Andrews]

It's a good, like weekend event.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

You know, you could really have fun with it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, since you brought this up, a little off topic, but it's been on my mind a lot because I'm getting ready to set up a gym at my house and I'm gonna do something. And it reminds me of a trainer that used to work for me a long time ago when I was in my early 20s that I always thought, like, what's he doing? And he, I never saw him do like full workouts. He just throwing a couple sets all day long.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I had a trainer, the same thing, and he was a strong jump on the bench.

[Adam Schafer]

And he was an older guy, like, older guy and just jacked. Was jacked, you know, And I always thought, like, back then, I used to scoff at what he was doing. And it's like, I, I'm inspired to try this and I need, obviously I need it at my house where I'm going to have like a real routine. I'm just going to make it a habit to like every day go over and do like a set or two, walk over to my dumbbells, walk over to my squat rack real quick and just try and do that all day, all day, every day, whenever. Never doing more than two or three sets. Like, like literally in, like, that's got

[Sal Di Stefano]

to be moderate intensity.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes, exactly. Moderate intensity too. But it's like every time, walk past the rack or walk past it, just go grab and do it. I'm so curious.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Like, so when I was an assistant man, when I first became an assistant manager, they put me at Saratoga that Tiny little club that doesn't exist anymore. 24 minutes. And there was a trainer that worked for me who could bench 405, which. That's a lot of weight. You rarely ever see someone bench four plates. And I could see him, and he could do a single or a double of four or five. And I was like, wow, bro. Like, you're. It was like two. He wasn't a huge guy. Maybe like 215, but muscular. But what he was doing all day long is in between clients or whatever, he put 315 on the bar. So remember this guy who could bench four or five?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Who put 315 on the bar and do, like three reps? And he'd leave, and he'd just do that throughout the day. And I asked him, I said, how are you so strong at the bench press? Like, how often? He's like, well, I just practice it all day long. And I'd watch him do this, and he was so strong. That's when I first kind of, like, peeked into this. So here's how this works. You want to lead into this with a few days off. So take like, three days off from the gym. Let's say it's a Saturday. Pick two or three exercises. You're gonna do moderate intensity, maybe five reps of each. And you do a couple sets of each in the morning. Then you take an hour off, and then you repeat it. Then you take an hour off, and you repeat in between. Make sure you feed yourself. You'll have probably five sessions of doing this. The strength and muscle gains from one of these workouts is pretty weird. It's actually kind of weird. And what you'll find, by the way, by the third session, you're stronger than you were in the first session. You're not going to failure. You're doing five reps with something you could probably do nine reps with. But you're just, you know, five reps of squats, five reps of, you know, bench press, five reps of rows or pull ups.

[Justin Andrews]

You do like, three exercises.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's it?

[Justin Andrews]

Pretty much, yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Two or three exercises. I mean, do the same ones.

[Adam Schafer]

A cluster set is like an example of this in. In the large context, Right. In other words, if you've ever done a cluster set, it's kind of interesting how it works. You choose this weight that, you know, is probably difficult for you to lift, I think, like, say, 10 times or whatever, like that. But then you're only doing, like, these sets of five or whatever like that, and you put it down rest just for 15 seconds, do it again, and you end up being able to do way more than you would ever do in five sets or whatever. And it's just, it's mind blowing. And it don't.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You don't feel like. Well, this, the inspiration I got from this, besides seeing here and there, a little, little glimpse of it, was how the Russians trained their Olympic athletes. And they would do this, they'd spend

[Justin Andrews]

hours, way less weight than you would think.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Less weight. They weren't training, weren't maxing out. They're just practicing their lifts all day long. And they, of course, they broke records. And so I tried this. The first time I tried this was probably six years ago. And I just, I did it and then I took a few days off, went back to the gym. I was like, stronger.

[Justin Andrews]

This is a funny one because I think too, I was reading about these Olympic lifters that would do this and then, you know, like some of the days they'd even fuel up with like candy and all this, like, whoa, this is wild. But it was like, because it was like no days off. They wouldn't even take one day off a year. It was just like continuous.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, when I did this, I ate the. So I do it and it would only take me, you know, 20 minutes. Then I take the next hour off and in that period of time, I eat a real small meal. Yeah. And I did like five of these throughout the day. And it's wild. You count up all the reps and how much weight you lifted and all the volume. Like, oh my God, I did hella volume. Yeah, I don't feel like I did though. And then a few days later I

[Adam Schafer]

was like, for the average person, this is probably the least feasible at all

[Sal Di Stefano]

the ones you can have a day off.

[Adam Schafer]

But if you're somebody who is able. If you work from home and you have an at home gym or you're a trainer and you work in a gym, like, this is totally something that

[Sal Di Stefano]

you can live close to your gym.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that was, that's all the staff.

[Sal Di Stefano]

There's like, what are you doing?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that would be, I think going to a gym, this is way less likely. This is someone you have, you have an at home gym and it's a weekend.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Or you, you work, you work in a gym. Yeah. Or you work in a gym. And, and it's, it's totally feasible to do something like this. And I, I just, I think it's a really interesting strategy and it's something that I, I've never really Tested for a long period of time. And it's. It's been on my mind that when I get this, this is going to be like, one of the first things I experiment with is these, like, random two sets at a time.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's cool. All right, next up is to hit 2 grams of protein per pound of target body weight. If you do this for too long, you're not going to feel very good for most people. But I've done this before. I've had clients do this before, and they'll typically see strength and muscle gains pretty quickly within the first week or two just from doubling their protein.

[Adam Schafer]

I love this one. Because it pairs with any of the other ones.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

So.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, you're right. You can add that to anything else.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes. So this.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Because you can't add the other ones to each other, right?

[Adam Schafer]

That's right. This is this one. You can this one standalone, doing what you're already doing. I think it has. Well, it'll. You'll garner some benefits and gains, to your point, but you could stack it with one of these other ones. And I. You're for sure gonna see gains from that. I mean, because. And I love that idea of boosting the protein while simultaneously, by the way.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's hard.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So you're.

[Adam Schafer]

If you're planning.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, my God, listen, if you're a girl and you're trying to eat 130 grams of protein a day, because that's one gram per pound, you're gonna go 260. Yeah. For a week. That's not easy, you guys. It's really hard. You're gonna definitely have to use shakes. And it's gonna be a chore.

[Justin Andrews]

It's a job. Yeah, it's a chore for sure.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And make sure you hit your fiber. You probably want to take psyllium husk while you do this. This is a road to constipation.

[Justin Andrews]

You're not gonna be hungry either.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No.

[Justin Andrews]

You just gotta keep eating.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You do? Totally. And then lastly, this one's interesting. And this one you can always do. This one is healthy for you. And it doesn't add stress to the body. It actually contributes to recovery. It's not a workout thing. And it's just 15 to 20 minutes of sauna post workout. What's crazy about this is the benefits of this. Most of the benefits you see in the Data is to VO2 max and stamina. This is wild. Like, you add this to your post workout and you'll have measurable. And this is tested like they've tested this Several times. Measurable improvements to stamina and your VO2 max. Now, when it comes to strength, what we tend to see is an improvement in neural drive. So your CNS seems to adapt really well, which makes you stronger. And this is, this is kind of easy. It's like you're not working out more, you're not doing, you're just 15, 20 minutes post workout, go sit in the sauna, get out and you'll see some improvements just by doing.

[Adam Schafer]

I think there's there another benefit that is overlooked in, in today's society with the amount that we're inundated with social media and being distracted. Just, I just find there's so much value in 20 minutes of no phone and silence, just sitting there and sitting there.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We never do that.

[Adam Schafer]

We never do that. Very few people, I mean, obviously there's some people that have put in yoga practices and things like that. And good for you if you do that. But very few people make this something consistent. And so something that can benefit your gains in the gym, it feels good, improves VO2 max and then also helps you disconnect. And I, and I think that it's, we don't have a lot of studies yet that show, you know, how addicted we are to social media and our phones and being connected to disconnecting and what that potentially do. So I think there's like an underlining benefit here that we're not even tracking.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, I agree.

[Justin Andrews]

All that blood circulation without the stress too, you know.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Exactly.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

So it's like, yeah, you need that for recovery. And it's like, yeah, it just seems like it pairs super well.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Now just to speak to the protein, just to head back, you know, a little easy hack for increased protein intake is to have protein snacks in between your meals. Like the Paleo Valley meat sticks are such a great example. Yeah, it's like 6 to 8 grams of protein, still my favorite for one meat stick. You know, you throw one of those in in between, you know, breakfast and lunch and then before bed, like you've got yourself a, you know, 20 grams, 20 something extra grams of protein.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

From grass fed meat. It's got a long shelf life, which is great. So you could pack it and bring it anywhere. And then because they ferment the meat,

[Justin Andrews]

it's not all dried out, it's not dry. You get that everywhere else. You get like dry. I had this the other day just like even from Costco and I was like, oh my God, I'll just try this. Super try. And like it's not good. Hard to eat.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, no, the Pale Valley ones are, are the best. They taste fresh, they're the best. And they're grass fed.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean we've been with them for a long time but before we were with them it was their beef sticks, it was beef jerky that we were looking for. Right. And there's a handful of other really popular companies that had reached out to us and sent us product before.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Like really popular.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, big ones. And it wasn't even a close call. Like Paleo Valleys was so much better than any other these brands. And so I rarely though ever have one I normally go to. Yeah, I normally pair them in two or three. So you know, it just, it's a, you can, if you're like trying to stay low calorie, do that.

[Justin Andrews]

But I mean, yeah, but to bump your protein up. Yeah, always like something you're trying to do.

[Adam Schafer]

So yeah, it's a, it's a good source, it's a good source of, of a protein snack. And so two or three of them isn't bad to have together either.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So I'm reading this book right now because you mentioned being in the sauna and it's. You're off your phone and you're off. I'm reading this book right now called Praying Like Monks and Living Like Fools. Tyler Staten, great author, I read his other book, Familiar Stranger. So good. My wife read this book, recommended it. So I've been listening to it and in the book he starts, he's, he gives some data and some statistics and there was something that was, just blew my mind. Yeah. So I don't know if you guys, I didn't know this. I think most people don't know this. In 1987 there was a joint Senate committee that they brought together because what was happening around this time and before this time were huge advanced advancements in time saving devices. So you had like in the 60s and 70s, washing machines, dishwashing machines became popular, microwaves became popular before that, you know, way before that. Right. Light bulb and clocks. And so we had these crazy, these devices that took so much of our labor and shrunk it down. So we had all this time on our hands. Right. Presumably. So this joint Senate committee came together and they unanimously predicted that. Sorry, it was 1967, I think it was that by 1985 that we would work 22 hours a week and only 27 weeks a year. So they said, because it was 1967, they came together, they said, you know, all these crazy technological, technological advancements are Saving us so much time that within 20 years, we're only going to have to work 22 hours a week. Yeah, we're going to have all this leisure time.

[Adam Schafer]

We went the other way.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We have less leisure time. We're far busier than we've ever been, which is wild. It just, I think it points to just how messed up we are as humans.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, okay, so that's. So that's a really interesting thing to talk about because one of the biggest arguments and debates right now around AI is it's going to replace all the work. It's going to take over all the stuff that we're going to do. And we're. And is that. I mean, that's probably how they thought in 1967, that, oh, all this. All this stuff is going to save us so much time and we're going to work way less and vacation way more. Oh, we're going to have all these robots now. They're going to do your daily chores. Like, will we do less?

[Sal Di Stefano]

I think our best predictor is to look back at consistent human behavior.

[Adam Schafer]

And that's not happening.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, I think what's going to happen is we're going to fill our time with a bunch of who knows what, and we're not going to have time to, like, all this time to sit around and, you know, go through philosophy and art and, you know, connect with each other. I think it's just going to make things worse. Like, it has, like, we, you know, we got jet airplanes, roads, you know, cars. Like, these are crazy inventions that were supposed to reduce stress, reduce anxiety, reduce depression, reduce the amount of time we had to work, and we do more of all that stuff. So I don't think it's gonna change. I think human behavior is human behavior.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And I don't think there's any time saving device that's going to make it better. I think it's us that has to change.

[Justin Andrews]

You know, I still go back to my prediction of we're just going to be looking outward into space because, you know. Yeah. Because we're. Yeah, there's more work. Where's the work going to take us? You know, in the places that. Where it seemed, like, outrageous, like between that or, like, you know, the depths of the ocean or. Or whatever. Like, we're going to be, you know, venturing more into that because we need something to do. Not only that, like, parents already know that. Like, they're not going to be happy when their kid's dumb. They're not going to sit there and Be like, oh, well, this is how, like, everybody's already anxious and upset about it. Everybody is. And it's like, what are we going to do about. Let's wait till the government does something about, you know. No, they're just going to end up doing something else and just teaching them, you know, the old school way, you know.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You know what? Yeah. How much the average person slept before the light bulb was invented? 10 hours.

[Justin Andrews]

Wow. Really?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You had gas lamps.

[Justin Andrews]

There's nothing to do.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. And you're right.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And we just slept. People took naps, especially in the winter.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. You read and you fall asleep, then

[Sal Di Stefano]

you go to sleep. So people would sleep a long time. They'd have naps. This is just 10 hours. So we've dramatically reduced the amount of sleep because of the invention of light bulbs.

[Adam Schafer]

I didn't know it was that much. 10 hours.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Wow.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I know. Big difference.

[Adam Schafer]

A huge difference.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Now take it.

[Adam Schafer]

It's like, that's. Bro. You get eight hours of sleep. It's like a huge.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Take it to the next step now. Right. Next level. Right. Light bulb gets invented, sleep goes down. Internet, iPhone gets invented. TV, less light all day long, even less sleep.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And. Yeah. Just kind of staying on this track about, like, human behavior. I saw this woman. So we didn't know this because we weren't around when this happened, but I did not know, and I confirm this, that when birth control got invented, do you know what they. How they sold it and what they predicted? No. So they said, this is going to strengthen marriages because it's going to give you control over your. Over having a child. So it's going to be way better.

[Justin Andrews]

Who said. They said it was going to strengthen me. That was how they're selling it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Everybody who was promoting it. This is what they did. Look it up. Go back to when birth control was.

[Adam Schafer]

I know, but I mean, that's like. That sounds like such a marketing statement.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Not like someone really proved that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Everybody believed because at the time, marriages were far more stable. And one of the challenges people had was like, oh, my gosh, we got pregnant again. It's going to make things more difficult, more strain on us. So they said, you have control over your fertility. This is going to strengthen your marriage. That was number one that they said. Number two that they said is it's going to reduce abortion because of this, we're going to have way less abortions, you guys. It's going to be way better. And number three, they said, this is going to reduce unwed pregnancies. So out of wedlock, pregnancies, all the

[Adam Schafer]

opposite of what it did.

[Sal Di Stefano]

They're all worse. They're all completely worse. There's more pregnancy outside of wedlock. Divorce is higher by the way. Birth control, there's a bit of a correlate with divorce and, and being married.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, you've talked about this before.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, the going off of birth control and then there's that dysfunction and abortion

[Sal Di Stefano]

has gone up per capita. So it's like all, it's like human behavior, like, oh, we're going to fix this thing. The solution is.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you'd think there'd be less like abortion, I mean if obvious. But yeah, it's just, I guess they just. That's an education thing or.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I don't think it's an education thing. I think it's a human behavior.

[Adam Schafer]

No, you know, it's interesting we're staying on this human behavior talk. So I'm reading a book right now called Psychology of Money. And the argument that he makes in it is that the biggest determiner of, of wealth is not education, anything like that, it's actually your behaviors and psychology around money.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Of course.

[Adam Schafer]

And just the, your relationship with it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Of course.

[Adam Schafer]

Like it's, and it's. They, you know, they dropped this stat that I thought was really interesting or that the people that buy lottery tickets are, are predominantly lower income by four times. By four times amount of the lottery tickets than the wealthy. You know, crazy when you think about that. And that same, that same group or is the same group that would say they don't even have $400 for, for emergency.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Listen, my family came to this country poor and uneducated. Okay. My dad had, he didn't go to, he didn't go to high school, he went to second grade. That's how far he went.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Poor and uneducated. But they had this mentality of saving, only buying what you need and working hard. And they ended up raising a middle class family in Silicon Valley, which I know it's way more expensive now, but it was still expensive in the 80s.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And four kids. So I've seen that. And I also know people who, you know, are kind of always in that like struggling and you look at their spending habits and it's just total like really bad financial health or behaviors.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Disconnect.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I know. Isn't it, isn't that crazy? Yeah, Doug brought it up. Doug, go back to that screen.

[Adam Schafer]

The sleep one.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, the proponents of birth control.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, before that he brought the sleep cycles up. Did you see that?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

So a lot of the way they did the 10 hours was actually they had a first wake and a second wake up. So it wasn't 10 hours consecutively, which that makes more sense now because I'm like, God, I can't imagine. I don't even.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It was cumulative. It was a cumulative 10 hours a day.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So look, I'll go back to the other one, Doug. Proponents of widespread contraception in the mid 20th century, particularly with the introduction of birth control pill in the 60s, argued that increased access to fertility control would fundamentally strengthen marriage and significantly reduce the need for abortion. So if you scroll down, Doug. So these were the arguments that they made in the 60s because there were people that pushed back, in particular the Catholic Church. Catholic Church was like, no, it's not a good thing. And they're like, you guys are stupid. It's going to work. And they said. Proponents predicted that enabling couples to plan their families would lead to happier, more stable marriages. It was believed that the ability to separate sex from procreation would reduce the burdens of unplanned children, allow for better economic stability and improve the emotional connection between spouses by removing the fear of unwanted pregnancy. Sounds reasonable. Like when I read that to you, it's like, that sounds reasonable. And reduced abortions. A major argument for making birth control widely available was that it would eliminate unwanted pregnancies which were viewed as the primary cause of abortions. Sounds totally reasonable. Went the opposite direction. So see human behavior, man, we are just.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, we're broken over. I did it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, we're super, super backwards.

[Adam Schafer]

So what happens when we have all this, these AI tools that are going to support.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We're not going to solve anything, dude. We're going to have more stuff. Yeah. Is what will happen.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, I think, I definitely think that like I'm. I'm always on the hunt for productions, storage units for sale and stuff like that. I just think people just going to have more. Oh, it's going to be crazy. That's all that's historically for the last. I don't know how many years. I mean how many decades has been a great business. Actually one of the best business models as far as profit margins. It's going to get just exponentially worse with 3D printing, AI and the tools, stuff like that. It's good. Which is we think is going to be a good thing. Right. It'll drive costs down, it'll make things easier or whatever. But what it'll actually do is just over consumption. It'll just cause it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well we already have evidence of that. We have more stuff now and more economic, like freedom now than ever before. And people are just less, you know, speaking of less happy. Human psychology, what area. I think you guys probably answer this properly. What, what segment spends the most time and energy and money studying human psychology for the purpose of trying to figure us out, manipulate us? What, what part?

[Justin Andrews]

Government.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Politics. Politics. They spend so much time and money.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And energy figuring out human psychology.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, that goes all the way back to the Roman Empire though. Right. I mean, the whole coliseum was designed for that purpose and the thought process into that. And so we figured they figured that out way back then.

[Justin Andrews]

Distract the, the people.

[Adam Schafer]

And we've only gotten so much. You know, it's, it's funny you bring that up because I've, I've had several dms in the last, I don't know, three to six months of, you know, you guys don't talk a lot about current events and I'm like, you know, it's not something that we, we all talked about said, hey, let's stop talking about it. I think without any conversation was brought up until today. Right.

[Justin Andrews]

I think it's at such a, an unrealistic level that it's like, it's, it's like every day there's just so many things that it's like, it's overwhelming. And I think that I, I, we can't be the only ones that feel that.

[Adam Schafer]

We went full retard.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

It's like the news cycle is so crazy.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. It's just too much.

[Justin Andrews]

There's really nothing. Yeah. To, to absorb that's going to benefit your everyday life.

[Adam Schafer]

Right. Left. Everything is just awful.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I'm gonna, I'm gonna point to that. Right. So, for example, we talk about this on the show all the time. Avoiding heavily processed foods is a wonderful strategy to eat appropriately. If you try to eat appropriately while eating heavily processed foods, you're going to probably lose because they're so well engineered. You're going to constantly be fighting the urge to overeat. You're going to fight it all the time and you'll lose. Right. So with politics, arguably they invest the most time, energy and money on how to manipulate people through human psychology. How do you win? Don't pay attention.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

If you pay attention, you'll lose. They'll get you. Yeah, they're going to get you. So your best bet is to turn it off, which is what we did. I kind of stopped paying attention because it got so wild.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, that's what I was getting at was that for the audience, there wasn't any sort of conversation that was had by the three of us that were like, hey, let's not talk about this. I think we just all simultaneously stopped paying attention.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's too much.

[Justin Andrews]

Once.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

For me, it was like, once Doge was out, I was like, I'm out.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

You guys aren't going to pay attention for anymore. We're not going to do anything about this. See you later.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, totally. 100%.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. So for me, it was the Epstein files.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, to me, that two are, like, the biggest. To me, that was this. That was the most evil, egregious stuff that we've ever publicly been, like, aware of. Right. I think all the conspiracy theorists and people have been talking about that type of stuff. But, like, there's documents and emails and a track record of all this evil.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And we just keep it moving for people to just blow up right past

[Justin Andrews]

the most evil, like, despicable things you've ever heard in your life.

[Adam Schafer]

It doesn't get any great, like, crazier and worse than that. And we are on to the next news.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, you just see how mad they get about, like, the most surface issues. You're like, wait a minute, what about eating kids?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, I was just gonna say, like, because we all kind of tuned out because it was just, you know, kind of crazy. But if. If the hardest people to manipulate through this process are people who don't pay attention to it, so they're not paying attention to all the stuff, so it's hard to get to them. And people who are unstable, married families, so they're the hardest to manipulate. It's easy to manipulate depressed, anxious, or scared people who want to consume lots of things and don't have a family. Much easier to manipulate them. So now it makes sense.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Why things would go in that direction and why they would promote those things while they promote consumerism, while they're going to promote the next big thing, while they're going to promote fear and anger and anxiety is because we can get you to do what we want if we do those types of things. So it's like, turn it off. Yeah. It's like one of the best things you could possibly do.

[Justin Andrews]

It's been great.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It has been. And, you know, my life hasn't changed other than feeling better.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I don't need. I don't need to know everything. More optimism every five seconds.

[Adam Schafer]

And the best thing you can do is clean your own room. Right. So Focus on, on, on your family, your neighborhood impact it totally. And whatever your beliefs are, whatever your, your moral foundation and things that are important to you, do that within your house and do that within your neighborhood. And that's the best thing that you possibly can do. Getting in these debates online over these sides back and forth is just, it's, it's such bullshit now, dude, it's not so obviously bad.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So I'll go in, I'll go into like a more positive note. So they had, they just did a big, Harvard did a big study on multivitamin use. So people who used a multivitamin for two years showed up as five months younger at the molecular level.

[Adam Schafer]

Now don't you think that's really hard, Sal? Because we've talked about this before. Because the person who is disciplined enough to take that multivitamin every single day also probably works out makes better food choices.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's the healthy user bias. Right. And they found. And so no, they controlled for that.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh really?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, they did.

[Justin Andrews]

This is the quality of the cell that they're saying is more youthful.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I think it's were we're constantly new like real hard. Nutrient deficiencies are not super common. They're more common than you would think, but they're not super common. But suboptimal nutrient intake is very common. So you're getting just enough vitamin D to not get sick, just enough zinc to not have these crazy symptoms. Yeah, your levels are low, but it's not optimal. And so again this is another study support. It was 958 adults over 60. It was a randomized trial that taking a simple multivitamin made them all five months younger at the molecular level. Such an easy, simple, like cheap, inexpensive covers the bases. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys remember who was it? I forgot what organization did this but they said can we make a 2000 calorie diet hit the RDA and dietitians couldn't do it.

[Adam Schafer]

We can't.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You need.

[Adam Schafer]

I, I, I've seen, I used to keep this as my desk is a

[Sal Di Stefano]

2000 calories and the food quality. But they tried with healthy. They tried.

[Adam Schafer]

They can't, they couldn't. So the number is okay, this, I don't know how much this has been revised or whatever, but I've had this at my desk for years. I used to use this to help

[Sal Di Stefano]

to sell multivitamins

[Adam Schafer]

that and like personal training and help with nutrition so that it takes a 3,500-calorie diet and a serving of liver once a week or something like that. It was like a weird thing like that. It was like a weird number.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It was like 3,500 calories of healthy. Healthy.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like planned healthy food. 3,500cal plus a serving of liver, I think. I can't remember how much liver in a week to hit all your RDAs on all macro micronutrients. I'm like, that's crazy. Nobody does that. No, yeah, yeah. Nobody does. I don't know if that's still true or what the number is now and how accurate that was, but I totally remember that because I used to keep it. I used to keep it, like, printed out on my destination.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's such an easy supplement. You get a quality one, but you just take one a day, and you're not gonna notice huge gains. Like, that's. I think that's the thing with multivitamin. You don't, like, take it. You're like, dude, I feel it. I feel it. Unless you have a nutrient deficiency, you'll feel it.

[Justin Andrews]

If you're.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But you probably just like. I think I'm just taking the supplement. I don't know what it's doing, but yeah, dude. Two years, five months decrease at the molecular. For people over 60.

[Adam Schafer]

That's interesting.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Isn't that cool? Yeah, I think that's. So. I want to hear. Justin's had this note up there for a while, and I just don't.

[Justin Andrews]

I totally just talk about my Mesoamerican Batman.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. What is that?

[Adam Schafer]

I feel like Sal has to up out your weird notes because I'm like, what is the. Well, never going to. He's never going to shoehorn that.

[Justin Andrews]

I know. I wait for, like, a random, like, pause.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Where.

[Adam Schafer]

Where's the transition? Mesoamerican bad. Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Usually we talk too much.

[Adam Schafer]

That's why I said blame it on us.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We should just be quiet.

[Justin Andrews]

At one point, even right now, I'm trying to talk about it. You guys keep going.

[Adam Schafer]

All right, all right. Let's hear it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Go. Let's hear.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. No, so. Thank you, Doug. I gave him the link ahead of time. Look at that. Like, it looks exactly like. Like, that's real. Christopher Nolan's version of Batman.

[Adam Schafer]

That's real.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes. So he used to be a. So this was like a. An underground God, like, in. In mythology for. For the Aztecs, I believe. But, you know, they feared this. This bat creature that dwelled underneath. And it was just interesting to me that, like, this depiction, like, looks literally exactly what they designed for it looks

[Sal Di Stefano]

like a Batman costume.

[Adam Schafer]

So he. He has to know about this then.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Right?

[Justin Andrews]

I'm sure they must have referenced this. Like, it must have been the inspiration for it. But I've never seen this. I. And I wouldn't even have thought that they. They pulled from an actual historical, you know, thing. And I'm kind of like.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Caller/Listener]

Because I read some of the comments, and there's a lot of people saying that this was generated after the fact. Not necessarily original.

[Sal Di Stefano]

They did have a shit. But the costume.

[Caller/Listener]

Yeah, There was a deity, but.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So here's what I want you to do, Doug.

[Adam Schafer]

Google.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So its name is Kamazov.

[Adam Schafer]

It's on that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Because he looks.

[Justin Andrews]

It is. You know, Doug's play, Right. Because it is.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Too bad. Many.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Doug, type in the name. They call them Kamazo.

[Caller/Listener]

I've already got it typed in here.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Pull up the images. Let's see. Let's see what we see if there's any, like, ancient art or whatever.

[Justin Andrews]

Because, I mean, I could just see Christian. What's his name?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Bail. No, Bell.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Because that looked.

[Justin Andrews]

Just rocking that suit.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay. Oh, so there's the actual version of it. Click on that, Doug.

[Caller/Listener]

Yeah, it's Mayan, actually.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Is it Maya? Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, Mayan.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh. So it just looks like. Just looks like a bat. Yeah, it looks like a bat, but

[Caller/Listener]

I think the one that is on social media was generated.

[Adam Schafer]

Cool. You got it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You.

[Adam Schafer]

I'm telling you right now, nothing is real. That was on a historic Instagram page, too. You cannot just take anything. No more. This is. This is also why I'm, like, so disconnected from all the Back to the political talk a little bit. Is that.

[Justin Andrews]

Look how cool that is.

[Adam Schafer]

I feel like I have to go. I have to spend a half hour to 45 minutes just to confirm whatever.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Real.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Is this real?

[Sal Di Stefano]

So the deity is real, but what they did is they used AI to

[Justin Andrews]

make easy AI to make the.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, they made a mystery version of it. So it looks like it's like.

[Justin Andrews]

Damn it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Dude, that's hilarious.

[Caller/Listener]

Sorry to bust your bubble here.

[Justin Andrews]

It's okay, Doug. You got to keep it real.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that's right. That's what you're here for.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's. I think.

[Adam Schafer]

But I feel like that's what it is now. You have to do that. Like, you have to triple check now and make sure. Because so many things are manipulated with AI and stuff, you know?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh. So I want to comment. So I'm going to change subject so. I know. So alcohol consumption is dropping right now, and for most people Probably a good thing. But then some experts are like, maybe not all a good thing, because appropriately used alcohol is a widely used and accepted social lubricant. And so they're saying that the reduction in alcohol consumption isn't necessarily. This is a speculation because people want less alcohol, but rather they're hanging out less.

[Adam Schafer]

So. Did you. Have you heard Scott Galloway talk about this before?

[Sal Di Stefano]

No.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, so Scott Galloway, it's. It's like he's gone viral with this.

[Sal Di Stefano]

This.

[Adam Schafer]

I don't know if it was an interview or what. He, when he first originally said this, but he makes this comment like his, his advice is to go out, get drunk, make bad decisions.

[Justin Andrews]

He's like, I've heard this. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

I don't think it's. I mean, it's a bit far. I think it's a bit tongue in cheek. But his, I think his point is making is that we are, we have stopped going out and being social.

[Justin Andrews]

Anything.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. And taking risk and being social and interacting with the opposite sex and doing that. And alcohol works as a social lubricant. And so that's like his.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's a very effective one and it's also widely accepted. So you can go. It's not like shunned. It's not like you're pulling out, you know, a joint or something else. And speaking of which, that's not necessarily a social lubricant that can cause a lot of anxiety. But alcohol is like a really easy one. One drink, two drinks. People, like, are a little bit less fearful to talk to other people. And so they're like. Yeah, it's probably a result because people are hanging out less.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You know, as a result.

[Adam Schafer]

No, I, I agree with that. I don't think it's like we're a bunch of healthy people that were. We're making this decision. Like, it's not, I think it's. We're just.

[Sal Di Stefano]

They're not going out. No.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, I remember when we had Enzo here and where I was asking him about, like, high school part. Like high school parties is like different now too.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Remember he said if you wanted to talk to, if you saw a girl at a party. Yeah. He would first go to her insta. He wouldn't approach Facebook.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, Facebook.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So she was over there.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

He would go on social media, find her, friend her on Facebook, and she accepts. If she accepts, then you send a dm.

[Adam Schafer]

Then you send a dm. Well, then if she responds, then you

[Sal Di Stefano]

walk up to her. Wow.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, and then if you're going to Compare which. Which are the most prevalent ones and, like, socially acceptable. Now it's like you have your vapors, and then you have, like, the people that still drink. It's like, I would prefer, like, you at least have a drink. Like, if I was, like, a teenager, let's just say, just because you're more likely to be socially engaging.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So I.

[Adam Schafer]

We have a mutual friend. I won't say that friend, because I want to put his personal stuff out there, but he has. He has a daughter. He has a couple daughters, and one of his daughters just went off to college. And, you know, this is becoming really common, too, where kids go out and they think they want independence and. And leave, and then they go and they're like. They're just like. They want to come back home really bad. It sounds like a good idea and everything like that. And so his advice, I thought was really interesting because she was like, I want to come home. I don't want to. I don't want to stay here. And this and that pork, like, just lonely, you know what I'm saying? Like, doing classes hard, man. And. Yeah, and so he. He. His. You know, his advice was. He's like, I want you to throw a party. I want you to just throw a party. Meet some people.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And have them. Have them come over, have a good time, be safe, you know, stay in the house. Do your thing with that. But invite some people over and throw a party. And she did that and completely turned a 180. And she met a few people. They started hanging out. And it's just. It's crazy to think that that's parental advice.

[Justin Andrews]

I know, but how.

[Adam Schafer]

And how effective right now. How effective it was, because. Exactly. That is that granted, I. Every case, I'm sure, is different and unique. You know, the parent that probably had the kid that was partying or doing drugs, don't do.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Don't party.

[Adam Schafer]

It's probably not good advice.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

But this was a 4.0 girl that was, you know.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I know.

[Justin Andrews]

Let your hair down a little bit.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, yeah. Good kid. Good kid. And like that. His. And his. And her dad was just like, hey, you know, like, it's. You're. You grow up. You're grown up. You did a great job. This. So they could be social. Go throw a party, Go meet people. Go do that stuff for a little bit, and then. Then tell me if you still want to come home.

[Sal Di Stefano]

How often. I know, Adam, you have the occasional. You started to enjoy whiskey a little bit, right? How often? It's not a ton Right. I know you do. Like a couple days a week.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. I mean, for me, I was going

[Sal Di Stefano]

to ask you this because I know you're like me. Like, there's a very fine line between I can have some alcohol and I just feel crappy and it's not drunk. I don't have to get drunk. I just drink a little too. And I just don't feel good.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

How often are you using Z Bot? Is it every time?

[Adam Schafer]

Every time. So if I.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Every time you have Z bodies?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, every time. Because it. Because what you just said. If this is new to me. I have never been somebody who would make a glass of whiskey on a Tuesday night or something like that, which I admittedly have done now. It's not crazy. Like, I don't think I'll go more than maybe two nights in the week. And that's not consistent. There'll be weeks. I don't.

[Sal Di Stefano]

At all.

[Adam Schafer]

But if I do do that, even if it's just one, I absolutely have the Z Biotic. I like. You know what I like to do with the most? It's what I've noticed. If I'm like sitting here talking about it like I like to. When I grill, when I'm barbecuing and I'm like. And I'm in.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That does sound good.

[Adam Schafer]

And I'm in the kitchen working for like four hours, sipping on a. On a whiskey while I do that. There's just. And I got my music. I don't know. There's something about that vibe for me.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It does sound fun.

[Adam Schafer]

Is like, I enjoy that. It loosens me up a little bit. I'm not trying to get hammered. I'm not putting four back. But if I do that, I'll have a Z biography before. And that keeps me feeling just fine. If I do that and I have one or two, I don't get the after effect at all. If I feel so fine the next day, that's how I can do it. That's how you do it during the week. I couldn't get away with that if I didn't have zbiotic to take before.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I wonder how many of our listeners know that we did a drinking game with the biotics. That was. That was a test.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But I was.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, it sold all of us. How profound it was.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, we went too hard. Yeah. So the goal was. They don't recommend this. You can actually. I think you can find this on YouTube. Right. You can find. On Instagram.

[Caller/Listener]

Instagram, I believe.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it's on Instagram.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We Did a drinking game. This. A long time ago. How long ago was it?

[Caller/Listener]

Probably good. At least seven years ago.

[Justin Andrews]

Wow.

[Adam Schafer]

You think it's seven?

[Caller/Listener]

I think so.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So we did a drinking game, and it was to do a.

[Adam Schafer]

This was pre Max. Did I not have my son yet? So, okay, maybe I don't think I had Max.

[Caller/Listener]

No. Maybe it wasn't seven. I'm thinking it was right before 2020.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, Max is six going on seven.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay.

[Caller/Listener]

So I think was around 2020 that we did it. And the reason I remember that is because we were in Ohio for the Arnold.

[Adam Schafer]

Right.

[Caller/Listener]

And I remember, I think Eli was editing the video at that time, if I recall correctly.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay. So what we did was we're gonna do a commercial for Zbotics, and we thought it'd be fun to drink one and then had do a drinking game.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And we changed the rules of the drinking game because we thought it would take too long. So it's like doubled up the amount of drinks you had to take.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

For every loss in the game. And we got way more drunk Smash. Like, it was bad. It was like, we all can't remember.

[Adam Schafer]

You can keep track. We count the drinks in there. I think we had, like.

[Caller/Listener]

I know I did seven shots.

[Adam Schafer]

Between seven and 10 shots, we were destroyed.

[Caller/Listener]

And I didn't do the most.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We were destroyed, and we had to come back to work the next day. And I was like, this is not going to work.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And I came back and I felt tired the next day, but I was okay.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, tired. That was it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I was sold. I'm like, dude, did they really just invent something that made that possible? Yeah, I know, I know. It was pretty, pretty, pretty crazy.

[Adam Schafer]

God, that's 70. I'm still stuck on probably six years.

[Justin Andrews]

Let's say six.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, do you remember if I had Max? I don't.

[Caller/Listener]

I don't remember. I don't remember. No, I don't.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Katrina might have been pregnant because I know she had to pick you up.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, she might have been pregnant, but even, like I said that, so that means it would have to.

[Sal Di Stefano]

He's over.

[Adam Schafer]

He's going to be seven.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. So seven years ago. Wow.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Crazy.

[Adam Schafer]

We've been working with him for that long, huh?

[Caller/Listener]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

They go back, you know, I want to look at someone, look at our partners and see, like, who goes back. Obviously, Organifi goes back some of the furthest. Right. But Zbiotic is up there. Then with some of the furthest back, I would say, too, then, because that's quite a Long time ago.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, it's a long time.

[Adam Schafer]

That's why.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Anyway, don't go get smashed. But it is good for the occasional.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, we did it for you.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Most children's multivitamins are just candy or they don't have adequate nutrients or they don't have the nutrients that kids. So there's a company called HIA that makes a multivitamin for kids. It's not a candy but it does taste good and it's got the nutrients that your children actually need. This is the only multivitamin for kids that we recommend. Go check them out. Go to hyahealth.com mindpump that's H I Y A health.com mindpump that link will get you 50% off. Back to the show.

[Caller/Listener]

Our first question is from Haley Valine. How realistic is it to progress in workouts every week? Sometimes I go a couple weeks without progress and I think I'm doing something wrong. Even if over a long period of time I do see strength.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It is not realistic.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it's not realistic at all.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No. The only time this happens is in the beginning. New begin.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, newbie gains. Newbie gains. You know why? And that's just in spite of all the other factors that are going on.

[Sal Di Stefano]

There's a lot of central nervous system adaptations.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that's happening.

[Sal Di Stefano]

A lot of the strength gains is your muscles are learning to work better. And so it's pretty reliable that for the first couple months of proper strength training, maybe longer, you're going to see strength gains almost every week. It's a beautiful window so long as everything else is being done. But if you're strength training for a while, no building muscle and strength valleys. Slow incremental step ladder. Sometimes you take a couple steps down progress.

[Adam Schafer]

It's like a child growing, man. It's like. It's like nothing for a long time. Then all of a sudden you see this thing and then you see nothing for a long time or you go

[Sal Di Stefano]

backwards a little bit.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that's the only difference. It's not. You don't see your kid shrink.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true.

[Adam Schafer]

But other than that, it's like that though. So no, it's. I think you really have to, to, to zoom out and, and, and look at your, your programming and your training and your diet in more like 30, 60 day type of windows than like the week by week. Week by week will really mess with your. That was even at the competitive level where I was tracking and super dialed. I noticed that that like I got to be careful not to over critique my week to weeks.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Because then you really get in this like game of overcorrecting and manipulating too much when it's just like so I'd have to like shut it down like so I would allow, I even like as let's say a bad reading. You know, scale went the wrong way, body fat percentage went the wrong way. I would still allow like two more weeks to go by before I would make any sort of adjustment. And most times I would see some sort of positive swing or, or gains or something in the right direction after I just waited that time.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And I'll add this. For fitness fanatics in particular, the desire or belief that you need to progress every week is one of the biggest reasons why you won't. Yeah, thinking like, oh my God, I, I'm not making strength gains every week or I'm not building muscle every week, or I'm not burning body fat every week and pushing to try to produce linear progress is the number one reason fitness fanatics go backwards is this constant idea. And you know, we saw this with the science of strength training. You go back in the 60s when scientists were figuring this out, you had lifters in the US which is what they tried to do. And then you had the Soviets who were like, no, this is not what you do. We're going to do some strength gains and we're going to back off for a while and then come back and you make better gains by accepting that this is not a linear process, trying to push the linear gain after gain. This will almost always cause problems.

[Caller/Listener]

Next question is from Jimmy Jacobs. 423. How can someone prevent stretch marks when trying to lose weight?

[Sal Di Stefano]

So this is a tough one. There's a few things, it is largely genetic.

[Justin Andrews]

It lose weight slower.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But there are a few things that might actually help. So one of them is to eat a diet that's high in protein because collagen is made up of protein. If you have a low protein diet, it's like it's a great way to not to promote poor health or elasticity in the skin. So high protein is number one. Number two is to lose weight more slowly. And then red light therapy. Red light therapy is one of the few things in data to consistently show reductions in stretch marks. It actually shows it pretty consistently. This is largely genetic, but there are a few things you could do there.

[Justin Andrews]

Any validity to cocoa butter? You know, that's, that was like a,

[Adam Schafer]

I don't know, my wife did it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Some women swear by it, she did

[Adam Schafer]

all the other stuff too. You know, make the argument that red light therapy and the, and the strength training and the high protein was probably the main thing.

[Justin Andrews]

Sure, sure.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But there's again, a lot of this is genetic. But the red light therapy is the one thing. Like if you look at the data on red light therapy.

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It shows an effect.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So if like you're pregnant or you're,

[Justin Andrews]

you're, you're losing weight for the skin,

[Sal Di Stefano]

you could put this on your skin daily. And the data shows that it does reduce.

[Caller/Listener]

Next question is from a working mom. I'm focusing on my step goal. Is hitting the goal on a weekly average sufficient or do you need to hit the goal steps every single day?

[Adam Schafer]

Sometimes struggle with long workouts in the office and not getting all the steps in, but it can usually make up low step days. 3, 3 times 3,000 with. With getting in much higher steps on the weekends or. This is not ideal.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Ideally it's better than nothing.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh yeah. I mean, it's better than nothing, but you're far better off trying to get those steps in on those, those low activity days.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Totally.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. The benefits from steps is less to do with the calorie burn and more to do with the activity.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And what we find in the data is daily activity is far better for your health and longevity than infrequent high activity. So in other words, if you add it all up and it averages out to the same. But this group over here does a bunch of low days and then a bunch of high days to make up versus this group that does some every day. Consistently, the sum every day has better quality of life. Less depression, less anxiety, better blood markers, better longevity. It's just better. So this is not like strength training. So strength training is interesting. Right. Because a couple days a week of good strength training is enough to set that the gears in motion. But the activity, the benefits of activity are it's best to do it daily.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Than to do a lot. Sometimes.

[Justin Andrews]

A consistent baseline. Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

Just to speak from personal experience, something that I've like noticed just in the last maybe year or two of really paying attention to this with myself. And I've shared this a couple times on the podcast, there is a noticeable difference when I get 8 to 10,000 steps or more on my days in the week with my sleep than when I don't.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

If I have a low step day and for sure if I have a low step day and no workout, I just, I'm restless at night. I do not so many Carryovers I do not get. So it's not, this is not like a, a calorie burn game thing. It's just overall health. Like you're, you're going to increase blood flow, oxygen, so it'll speed up recovery. So it'll, it'll promote better recovery. Mental health, it'll be better for mental health, it's going to be better for

[Sal Di Stefano]

sleep, better for digestion.

[Adam Schafer]

So the same joint, two groups of people, one group, they all hit the same amount of steps per week, but one group gets almost all of it on the weekend. The other group divides it up over the week. The group is going to get way better results.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Now if you don't have another option,

[Adam Schafer]

yeah, it's better than not.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Then it's better than not. But if you have an option, you know, here's what you do, right? If you're in the office, this person says they're in the office. And so that's when they're getting A few steps is to break up your day with really short walks. And here's what you'll notice. Number one, you'll hit better step counts. They add up. And number two, you're more productive. So you're gonna be better at work. Because I think that sometimes people like, well, if I do that, I'm gonna take away from my job or whatever. Now you do a five minute walk, you know, four times during the day or five times during the day.

[Justin Andrews]

Productivity and focus jumps.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's way. You're way better at your job.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Caller/Listener]

Next question is from Tricia. Eric Sundstrom from Facebook. This question is what are some high protein, high calorie snacks to hit your calorie and protein intake?

[Adam Schafer]

Well, we talked about one today.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, meat sticks. Yeah, Valley meat sticks are really the best. Yeah, I, you know, if you can have dairy, dairy is wonderful for this. Like a little cottage cheese, high protein yogurt, Parmesan cheese. Have you guys seen the protein on Parmesan cheese? They now make Parmesan cheese like, like crisps and it's just Parmesan cheese. And you look at the macro. I wish I could have dairy. I'm like, man, if I could have dairy.

[Justin Andrews]

I've been on that way before that study came out, as it turns out.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, I, I have with me today, I have my 20 gram of protein, Greek yogurts, little tiny servings of Greek yogurt that has added whey into it for 20 grams. Those are easy to crush. Those. There's a, there's a lot of stuff like that we have partners that we, we work with. You know, the crisp chips are like incredible. Like, those are high protein.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You could also just like. And I've seen this. They sell these at the grocery store where you'll get like chicken that's chopped up already for you. So it's like designed to be put on a salad.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But you could buy a pack of that. It's 20 grams of protein.

[Adam Schafer]

Hard boiled eggs.

[Sal Di Stefano]

They've seasoned it.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Hard boiled eggs. Another one. Deli meat is another one.

[Adam Schafer]

Yep.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That you could just have and you just grab and eat and it's a high protein snack. It's not that. It's not that big of a deal. I mean, you said vice clients with this all the time. And you know, I had some clients were like, no, I just have to have some snacks in between my meals. And a lot of them would grab Turkey slices. Was a real popular one with my clients. Or cottage cheese with some fruit in it.

[Adam Schafer]

I used to, I used to. I remember the trainer just. I get like a pound of turkey deli meat and some slices of cheese and I used to just eat it wrapped like.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Totally.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it was. Tastes good like that together is easy. High protein. Yeah, you just have to get creative. You know, I always, I. Although I want to comment that the, I'm not a fan of like the, the promoting snack. I love the, you know, beef jerky, Payload Valley. I love the crisp pretzels. I love things like that. As an, as a, like emergency, it's. There you have it. I'm always trying to teach client though, to.

[Sal Di Stefano]

What was the thing that you said?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, there's no such thing as snacks, only incomplete meals and complete meals. And so. And I just, I try to communicate that to clients. It's like that snacks is a made up marketing term that we use to tell people that you need these things between meals. It's like, no, you have either a complete meal or an incomplete meal. And most snacks are incomplete meals. And so the goal should be to just try to have more frequent meals. So you hit your.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You know, one of the problems with snacks is besides the fact that they're usually processed, but we're naming a bunch that aren't to process that are good. But the problem is you tend to eat snacks while doing something else. And the data shows that when you're distracted, it lowers the satiety signal so you're more likely to overeat. In fact, they've done studies where they had people eat while watching TV or on their phones. Great for your digestion versus eating when they're not. Same meal and people will eat 10 to 15% more calories because they're distracted. And snacks tend to be like that. Like when do you eat a snack? You don't sit quietly driving or you're.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you're often doing.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Or you're at work, you're on computer, whatever. And so it tends to result in overeating versus making it in the meal when you sit down and actually eat. Yeah. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media.

[Caller/Listener]

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 you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.

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