2859: Take a Week Off and Gain 21% More Muscle — Here's the Science

Summary

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

Episode 2859 — “Take a Week Off and Gain 21% More Muscle — Here’s the Science”
Published May 16, 2026 | Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, the Mind Pump crew dives into the surprising science of “deloads” and explains how taking breaks from intense training can boost muscle growth by as much as 21%. They reflect on historical data, personal experiences, and the practical application of strategic rest. The hosts also tackle timely fitness questions from listeners and veer into a lively discussion of current events, including government UFO disclosures and cultural trends.

The episode’s through-line is a myth-busting, science-forward approach to health and strength, wrapped up in Mind Pump’s signature blend of quick wit, expert coaching, and real-world practicality.

---

Main Topic: The Power of Deloads – Science-Backed Gains

The Case for Taking Rest to Gain More Muscle

• Research Deep-Dive

  • Sal shares he leveraged AI to analyze studies (from Soviet-era data to modern research) on deloads and periodization.
  • Anecdotal and peer-reviewed evidence both point to superior long-term muscle and strength gains for those who take scheduled deloads.

• Deloads Explained

  • A “deload” is a period of reduced training volume or intensity (often a full week off or light technique work).
  • Periodization is a structured training plan alternating cycles of hard and easy work, not just based on how you feel.
  • Short studies (8–9 weeks) show little difference, but longer-term approaches (as practiced by old-school Soviet and vintage American athletes) result in “one of the most important factors in workout programming.”
  • Modern studies show taking a week off every month for 16 weeks leads to the same gains as training nonstop.
  • Key Quote:

    “When they get back to hard training, there’s a reduction in strength... but after two or three weeks, there’s what’s called super compensation. They surpass their previous best.” — Sal (06:24)

• Super Compensation & Real-life Parallels

  • After a rest period or deload, performance not only recovers, but rebounds above previous levels.
  • Adam recalls post-competition periods:

    “The workouts for the next week to two weeks was the most anabolic feeling — more anabolic than steroids.” — Adam (08:44)

• Applying Deloads for the Average Lifter

  • Most consistent lifters are reluctant to deload; the truly inconsistent are already deloading (often unintentionally).
  • Practical tip: For consistent trainees, schedule a planned easy week every 6–8 weeks, regardless of how you feel.
  • Use the deload for technique refinement (strength athletes) or mind-muscle connection (hypertrophy focus).
  • Key Quote:

    “If you wait until you’re burnt out, you’re already behind the eight ball.” — Sal (16:06)

• Psychology and Motivation

  • Deloads help maintain long-term progress, reduce injuries and burnout.
  • Adam reframes “off weeks” as a positive, rather than something to spiral out over — helpful for those struggling with perfectionism or “falling off the wagon.”

---

Nutrition & Lifestyle: Meal Prep and Protein Choices

• Meal Prep Strategies
  • Sal and Adam discuss their Butcher Box meal routine and reheating tips.
  • Chicken thighs and ground beef are staples for flavor and easy reheating.
  • Doug reveals he prefers chicken breast, sparking good-natured ribbing:

    “You like chicken breast? Oh, you never say anything because you love it so much!” — Sal (24:04)

---

Current Events & Conspiracies: Alien Disclosure and Government Distrust

(34:00–44:29)

• Recent US government moves (registering aliens.gov, prepping statements about “non-human entities”) spark spirited debate.
• Sal suggests the coming disclosures serve a psychological or theological “rebranding” — proposing these “entities” are akin to demons.
• Adam is skeptical of the narrative, suspecting distraction tactics to divert attention from real issues (e.g., government scandals).
• Justin points out the cycle of slow “drip” disclosures and increased infrastructure for control (AI, digital currency).
• Key Quotes:

  “They’re going to try and rewrite the origin of humanity... Jesus was just one of these entities... crush people’s faith.” — Sal (30:58)
  “You could fabricate all kinds of files and stories... while something else, sleight of hand, sh*t’s going on over here.” — Adam (31:25)

---

Market Trends: GLP-1 Medications & The Fitness Industry

(51:29–59:42)

• GLP-1 (weight-loss) drugs are rapidly gaining use: 5.8% of American adults in 2024, now over 12% — possibly headed to 50% or more in the coming decade.
• Sal predicts this will spark a huge surge in gym memberships and demand for personal trainers, as people newly lose weight and seek muscle/fitness.
• Discussion of pharmaceutical investments, future obesity drugs, and why muscle-building medication is next.

---

Listener Q&A Highlights

1. [63:19] Billy from New Jersey: Flat Feet and Squatting Limitations

• Problem: Flat arches, difficulty with full squats
• Advice:
  • Practice foot and ankle mobility drills (MAPS Prime Pro: “short foot,” “piano” movements, combat stretch)
  • Use squat shoes to improve range of motion
  • Be patient – real progress takes six months or more
  • “Once you start to get good at it, just practice activating your arch while you walk around.” — Sal (67:42)

2. [71:52] Adam from South Dakota: Combining Strength Training, Jiu Jitsu, and New Fatherhood

• Problem: Balancing sleep-deprived life with Jiu Jitsu and strength training
• Advice:
  • Jiu Jitsu will maintain mobility as long as it’s practiced
  • Use MAPS 15 Power Lift for low-frequency, high-quality strength work
  • Cap total sessions: Jiu Jitsu + lifting = ~4–5 workouts/week
  • “If you’re getting stronger, even if not every week, you’re doing great.” — Sal (76:14)

3. [85:15] Jenny from New Jersey: Recovering Cardio Addict Struggling to Cut Back

• Problem: Mental battle with doing less after years of endurance running; wants to build muscle but is compulsive about daily movement
• Advice:
  • Focus on getting stronger as progress metric, not on activity volume
  • If energy for family is suffering, that’s a sign it’s too much
  • Consider working with a coach to break ‘do more’ habit and recalibrate
  • “If it was health, you wouldn’t overdo it.” — Sal (94:42)
  • “You’ve got the self-awareness, you’ve got the right attitude, you’re going to do really, really well.” — Sal (97:29)

4. [102:14] Christina from North Dakota: Post-surgery Recovery and Calorie Management

• Problem: Can she eat at a deficit during enforced time away from weight training?
• Advice:
  • Do not cut calories post-surgery — this increases muscle loss and slows healing
  • Maintain protein and caloric intake, supplement with EAAs
  • Expect a quick bounce-back thanks to muscle memory
  • “If you want to make it [recovery] more catabolic, go into a deficit. That’s a great way to slow down recovery and lose more muscle.” — Sal (105:05)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “When I take a week or two off, I come back, I’m not as strong. But two or three weeks later, it’s wild.” — Sal (07:01)
• “It feels more anabolic than steroids.” — Adam (08:44)
• “If you’re ultra consistent, every 6th or 7th week, plan to go easy in the gym... regardless of how good you feel.” — Sal (16:07)
• “If your feelings are oriented toward doing too much, you can’t trust them.” — Sal (91:25)
• “If you’re getting stronger, it’s a good sign.” — Sal (91:09)
• “You’re not gonna feel right until you really learn what it’s supposed to feel like.” — Sal (101:25)

---

Timestamps – Key Segments

• [02:34] — Main Topic: The science of deloads and muscle gain
• [06:12] — Research on week-off vs. nonstop training
• [14:12, 16:06] — How to schedule deloads/periodization for real people
• [24:00] — Protein & meal prep debates (chicken breast vs. thighs)
• [34:00] — Government UFO news, “aliens as demons” debate, and distrust in official narratives
• [51:29] — GLP-1 drugs, the fitness industry, and market speculation
• [63:19] — Q&A: Flat feet and squat mobility
• [71:52] — Q&A: Combining Jiu Jitsu, strength, and fatherhood
• [85:15] — Q&A: Breaking out of over-exercising, cardio addiction
• [102:14] — Q&A: Nutrition while recovering from surgery

---

Practical Takeaways

• Deloads Are Powerful: If you train consistently, build in low-intensity weeks every ~6–8 weeks, even if you don’t feel burnt out.
• Long-term Results: Periodization isn’t about short-term study gains; it’s about sustaining muscle, strength, and health over years—less injury, more progress.
• Meal Prep Flexibility: Find proteins and staples you actually enjoy reheating to make nutrition sustainable.
• Big Pharma & Trends: The explosion of GLP-1 drugs is set to transform the fitness industry — expect more new gym-goers wanting coaching.
• Real-life Fitness: Personalize your approach depending on life stage (e.g., new parent, post-injury, former endurance athlete), and don’t let “all-or-nothing” thinking sabotage sustainable progress.
• Trust the Process: Sometimes, "doing more" is actually doing less. Be willing to trust outside guidance or a coach if your instincts don’t match your needs.

---

Mind Pump’s Tone & Values

• Evidence-driven, No-BS: The hosts blend science with real experience and aren’t afraid to challenge fitness dogma.
• Relatable & Humorous: Banter, playful ribbing, and cultural asides keep things accessible and engaging.
• Empathetic: They champion sustainable health forces, not crash fads or reckless pushing.
• Skeptical of Authority: Whether it’s supplement companies, the government, or outdated fitness myths, nothing is above critique.

---

For more science-based fitness insights, Q&A, and coaching resources, follow Mind Pump on Instagram or visit mindpumppodcast.com.

Transcript

[T-Mobile Announcer]

Everyone deserves to be connected. T Mobile and US Cellular are joining forces. Our networks are coming together bringing more T Mobile coverage all over the country. Switch to T Mobile and save up to 20% versus Verizon by getting built in benefits they leave out. Check the math@t mobile.com Switch and now T Mobile is available in a US cellular store near you Bigger network. The combination of T Mobile and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage savings versus comparable Verizon plans plus the costs of options, benefits, plan features and taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third free line free via monthly bill credits Credit stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[T-Mobile Announcer]

Mind Pump Mind Pump with your hosts

[Justin Andrews]

Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews,

[Sal Di Stefano]

you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode we had callers call in. We got to coach them live on air. But this was after a 60 minute intro conversation. So we're talking about fitness and exercise, muscle building, fat loss, current events, conspiracy theories. Always fun. Look, if you want to be a caller, here's what you do. Send your question to mplifecaller.com now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Butcher Box. So here's what they do. They deliver high quality meats and fish to your door. So grass fed meat, wild caught fish, crate free chicken, heritage pork. They deliver it to your door at incredible prices. If you like protein, you want it to be quality and you like to save money, here's what you do. Go to butcherbox.com mindpump and now until the 18th new users will get their choice between chicken breast for a year included for free tarp sirloin for a year included for free or ground beef for life of your membership plus $20 off. Now this episode is also brought to you by Vuori. You know who they are. They make the best athleisure wear you'll find anywhere. It looks amazing. Dress it up, dress it down. Very comfortable. We have the biggest discount with Vuori on the Internet. Go to vuoriclothing.com mindpump that's V U O R I clothing.com mindpump that link will get you 20% off. We also have a sale. Buy any Maps 15 style workout program. Get any other Maps 15 style workout program for free. Buy one get one free. Go to maps15bogo.com all right. Real quick.

[Doug Egge]

If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs or training gear over atmypumpstore.com. i'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over tomypumpstore.com. that's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Every once in a while you figure out that there's one simple thing you could do to boost your gains by 20%. Oftentimes it's not true, but this time it is. There is one simple thing, literally a simple that you can do. You can add to your training and you will see over time much better gains. And most people don't do it. We're going to talk about it right now. 20% go.

[Doug Egge]

20% bump.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yep. Deloads.

[Doug Egge]

Get it?

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's deloads.

[Doug Egge]

Really?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

Is this what the research says?

[Sal Di Stefano]

So here's what I did is I had to use AI for this because there's a lot of studies on this kind of stuff. And I went all the way back to the 1960s and pulled up Soviet data and also looked at current data. Now we know as coaches and trainers our experience. We know when we work with people that if you don't do this, people just don't progress as well. And when you do it, they just progress really well. We also know it with ourselves. The challenge was when I looked at the data, there were a lot of these eight and nine week studies. And when you look at eight and nine week studies, you're not going to see much.

[Doug Egge]

It's not enough.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, you're not going to see much with deloads because that's not what deloads or periodization. Periodization is kind of like a deload. So periodization is where you, you'll go through periods of higher volume, lower volume, higher intensity, lower intensity. It's all structured out typically, so it's not based on how you feel, but it's rather structured. So, you know, over the next couple weeks, I'm going to do much lower volume or I'm going to do what's called speed work or whatever. But in short, you know, periods of time, you're not going to see much gains from this. Where this really shines is if you've been working out for a while like this makes a. This is one of the most important factors in workout programming. Just based on the data and the evidence, we can go all the way back again to the 1960s and 70s when the Soviets were destroying everybody in strength sports. They were crushing everybody. And I said, this on a previous episode, the speculation was that they had better drugs than we did. That's what everybody believed and what we said. And then when the Iron Curtain fell down and their coaches came over here and we had sort of access to their data, we realized it had nothing

[Doug Egge]

to do with the drugs, their methods.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It was their methods because then their coaches came over here, our athletes started training this way, and lo and behold, we all started crushing records. So it makes a tremendous difference.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. I'm trying to think. The only. The only drawbacks to this advice that I see is if you're somebody who's listening and you struggle with consistency, then you're already deloading. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I love this conversation. I love this, and I love that you got. You figured out the percentage, because that's. That's. That's remarkable.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. And of course, we all know this. We've talked about it many times, but to put a number on it is like, wow, that's a. That's a big difference. Right. And I do think that a large percentage of the people that listen to the show are fitness fanatics, are people that are really consistent. I mean, we get a lot of people that call in and they're like, I've been doing this for a year. I've been like that. They train consistently. And so I think those people would. Would get a lot of benefit from. From doing this.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Huge benefit.

[Doug Egge]

What was the parameters in terms of the length of the, like, week of the deload and, like, how frequent, you know, for the year?

[Adam Schafer]

Well, you remember that one study which I think is so fascinating.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Which showed no difference between two groups alternating weeks.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, this one, every month, a group took a full week off. Oh, it was just one.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And the other group took no week off.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Which is crazy. Every month. Every month they get a whole week.

[Sal Di Stefano]

At the end of the 16 weeks, they had the same gains.

[Adam Schafer]

That's. That's crazy.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It is crazy. Which is wild. So here's. Here's what it feels like when you do this. Right. And here's what the data shows. And as I'm reading the data, I'm like, that is true for people who are consistent, because I could. I could see this as well. So what they would. Have you ever heard the term. I know, Justin, I'm sure you have super compensation. Okay. So what it looks like is you have these highly trained strength athletes, and they're pushing, push and pushing, and then they go through a block, let's say two or three weeks of Some. Some periodization or a deload. So the intensity drops significantly, the volume drops. What it looks like is technique training. Or if you're a power athlete, like a sprinter, it looks like speed training technique. Yeah. You're not pushing yourself. You're just, you know, practicing biomechanics and form and technique skills. Right. If you're a lifter, you go into the gym. And if you Normally squat with 300 pounds, you're squatting with 200 pounds and you're going easy, but you're just practicing the skill and the technique. When they get back to the hard training, there is a reduction in strength. They see this. But after two or three weeks, there's what's called super compensation. And they surpass their previous. Yes. Their previous best. And so this is important to communicate because if you're, you know, consistent and well trained, you may be hearing deload, you're like, I don't know about what that. What you're talking about. Because when I take a week or two off, I come back, I'm already strong. I don't feel as strong or it doesn't feel as good. I got to get back into it. But you got to wait a bit. It's actually later on that you see this progress.

[Adam Schafer]

You know, my. One of my favorite things about the competing process was the week after the leading, like one to three weeks after a show.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And a lot of that, like, not only was I like depleted in calories leading up to this show, the final week of. Of prep where you can get it before you get on stage, you don't really work out.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. I mean, at that point all the work is done and you're really just kind of fine tuning, working out with

[Sal Di Stefano]

those low calories and that low body.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

You're not a good idea.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

You're not doing anything. So you're really low. You're really deloading completely in that week. And then. And then you're also at pro post show re feeding like crazy next week. So you get this week off.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You were.

[Adam Schafer]

You totally desensitize everything. Load back up those. The workouts for the next week to two weeks. Was the. Was.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's the most anabolic feeling.

[Adam Schafer]

It is. It feels more anabolic than steroids.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

It's so hard to explain that to somebody. It's like, yeah, somebody who obviously has taken plenty of anabolic steroids and knows what that feels like. The feeling of that feels more powerful than that crazy.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I went through that on accident. Wasn't Planned. So when? Way back. And I don't know how long ago was it, Doug, that we shot Map Santabolic and the no BS six pack and all that?

[Justin Andrews]

2013.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay, so this was. God, that's a long time ago, bro. Okay, so 13 years ago, you're a different dude. So 13 years ago, this was my thought process. So we're going to put together a digital workout program. Mind pump didn't exist. So we had no way of marketing this other than some Internet marketing skills inexperience that Doug had. And so I'm like, how, how is anybody going to listen to me? I have no authority. Remember, I had no podcast back then. I'm not going to get bigger than most people online because I'm just not. So what I. The best thing I could do is get shredded. Shredded always kind of looks impressive. So that was my thought process, was aside from putting out good content, doing good Internet marketing, maybe blogs, I'm going to get as shredded as possible so that when Doug puts my picture up, people will at least see that. Right. So it was the first time I'd ever gotten down because before that the leanest I'd ever got was like 8% maybe. And I got down to like sub 4%, which was really brutal. That was an experience all in of itself. But when I did that, we filmed, we took the photos. In fact, you could see some of the old photos of that where I'm like super shredded after that I. So I, I didn't work out that much when I got that lean because I just couldn't. Yeah, we did the photo shoot, all that stuff. And then I did what you do after shows, you just start feeding yourself. I was, you know, I was eating so low calorie, I couldn't wait to feed myself. And I was eating like crazy. And it was the wildest like month ever that I'd ever experienced. Yeah, I just felt like I was just building muscle out of nowhere.

[Adam Schafer]

And this is all craziest. This is all pre HRT for you too.

[Sal Di Stefano]

This is natural.

[Adam Schafer]

So you're all natural.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I'm all natural. Oh, it was wild. I looked in the mirror and I was like, what is happening to my body? This is so crazy. And that's part of the super compensation. So you just brought that up. So this is what they would do after a deload. So after a deload and then the person gets back into training, they would actually bump their nutrient intake so they would feed them more. And so for anybody who's ever heard of carb loading before an endurance race. What a lot of people don't realize is what typically happens before the carb load is a carb depletion.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So this is. Endurance athletes got to restrict before. Endurance athletes have known this for a long time. So what endurance athletes have done for decades now is they'll lead up to an event, they'll drop their carbs. Not super low because they're endurance, but they'll drop their carbs for a little while while they're training. They'll experience drops in performance, they're more tired, whatever. And then leading up to the event, they bring their carbs up higher than where they were before they dropped them and they would get all this extra stored glycogen and energy. And that's also super compensation. It's just part of this whole process. So like people listening right now are like super consistent with their training. You can tap into this and know you're going to go through a little period of feeling like you're not as strong, but know that two or three weeks after it's going to get wild. And I gotta, I mean, let me ask you guys, how many people who are super consistent with their training even attempt to do anything like.

[Adam Schafer]

No, no, nobody.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, nobody does this. No, no.

[Adam Schafer]

Because you're. I feel like you're either on one end of the spectrum or the other. That's why I said. Well, when I.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You're inconsistent or.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. You're either a person that shouldn't use this advice because you can't string four weeks together.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And so just disregard this information.

[Doug Egge]

Stop.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Or.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Or you're the other person who's like so consistent. You never take breaks. Maybe a day here or there or whatever or we can get away. But never do you schedule like a whole week of deloading. And to me, when that study came out that showed people taking a whole week off every single month in a three, three month study that this get the same results as the people who took train every week.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That shows you.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean that's. That that number is nuts. That's almost a full month of the

[Sal Di Stefano]

three months by the way you took

[Adam Schafer]

off and you saw the same results.

[Sal Di Stefano]

If you look deeper at that study and others like it, what they see is a drop in strength and hypertrophy.

[Adam Schafer]

Rebound. Right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And then a rebound. Yeah, a drop and then a rebound. And at the end of the. I think it's 16 weeks. They're the same. Yeah. So they did like one fourth of the. They did three fourths of the work. Of the other group and had the same gains.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So, you know, you could tap into that with your training, get better growth. So sometimes people will point to other studies to show that. Well, if you periodize or you deload, hypertrophy is similar. Here's the problem with that, because that is true. But these are short studies. First off, if you look at those shorter studies, there is a modest advantage for periodization for strength. So that's number one. So although hypertrophy seems similar, strength is better in the periodized group. However, when they stretch these out over time, the periodized group, less burnout, less injuries, and better hypertrophy, because this. It's cumulative. It all adds up. Makes a lot of sense. By the way, bodybuilders back in the day used to do this. They don't do this so much now. Part of it is, I think, is the drugs they use now are just insane. But in the 70s, they all took time off. They all took time off afterwards.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Some guys still do, too. Like you. You know, our friends that are. That are been doing it for a really long time. Are they, in fact, the guys who

[Sal Di Stefano]

are able to maintain.

[Adam Schafer]

There's a term, there's a bodybuilding term. It's not a scientific term. It's that they call what hap. What they think happens when you do so many cuts and like that is your body just. It stalls out. It's like.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, it doesn't. You're burnt.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. And that's. It's. Yeah. And I can't remember the term that they use. It's. It's. It's slipping my mind right now, but it's. Basically, they need to completely reset because it's. They're. They're so adapted to the calorie cutting and all the cardio and all the stuff that they're doing to get in shape. They just need to completely.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You know who took time off after every Olympia was Ronnie Coleman. And then, you know who did this to an extreme was Kevin Levroni. So in the 90s, he's probably one of the best uncrowned Mr. Olympias. And people would trip over how much muscle he lost after a big show because he would stop everything. He would stop training, stop doing everything, and then he'd show up to get ready for a show, and people would trip and how much muscle, and they thought, oh, you must have this, the best genetics. No. And by the way, he's got great longevity. If you look at Kevin Larney today, he looks phenomenal. Yeah. And bodybuilders that practice this typically look a lot better. Dexter Jackson is a good example there. So, like, if, like, how do you apply this to your training? I think it's reasonable because you can look at like complex models of periodization and the programming gets pretty specific and pretty awesome for coaches and trainers. Like in strength coaches, like, this stuff gets really nitty gritty kind of cool. But I think an easy way to do apply this for yourself is if you're ultra consistent, is every sixth or seventh week or two, go and plan to go easy in the gym. You still show up, you still work out, regardless of how good you feel. So this is why periodization is so effective because or how it was used.

[Doug Egge]

You have to really plan it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It was scheduled. Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

Put it in your calendar.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Because if you wait until you're burnt out, you're already behind the eight ball. So. So what I'm recommending is like for those people who are consistent is every like the seventh week or eighth week or sixth week, something around there. You take a week or two where you're like, I'm going to go even. I know I feel great. I feel like I'm crushing it. But what I'm gonna do is go to the gym and go easy for a couple weeks. And you may notice a little bit of loss of muscle fullness, a little bit of loss of strength when you get back to the gym. But no. And this is very consistent. The data, two or three weeks after it, you get that super compensation where you, it slingshots you forward for better gains.

[Adam Schafer]

There's another thing that I think that this, for me personally, this is helped and maybe this will help somebody else. The way that I frame this for myself is I. Life happens inevitably and I tend to have these, these periods of time where I'm a little inconsistent. And then there's other periods of time where I'm really consistent. After that study came out, changed kind of my mindset where I used to get really frustrated and I allow days off, like five days of missing the gym to kind of spiral out and have the kind of effort on and off type of mindset versus being like, oh, it's perfect. I was on a nice rhythm for like a month there and I took five, six days off in a row.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Natural deload.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, natural deload. And I'm back at it again. And it's. I don't know, it's, it's, it's. It's similar to the me giving myself the permission to go to the gym and just do one or two exercises. It's been very freeing. And it just, I just go with it verse before I used to allow it, like, oh, I'm off now. I've been in, I've been missing. And then I fall off the diet. I fall off all these things and then. And then one week turns into two weeks versus me going like, oh, that was perfect. It was like, it was nice. I had a nice week off and now I'm back at it again. And what I've noticed when I look back, look over six months, it's like, man, I've been able to maintain really good shape, even though I would consider myself relatively inconsistent. But when you look at it, I'm still consistent compared to the average person. I don't take months off, but week a week off all the time happens these days. But then I'm right back at it. And when during that time off, I also didn't go off the rails and just completely let go of my eating, like. And it's just.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So here's what I do because I'm much better with this than I used to be. So I'm obviously a fanatic and I have a little mental block with it or connection. Like, I go to the gym. It's for my mental health, you know. And so if you're listening, you're probably like, oh, yeah, that's me. So here's what I do when I do my de load, I go. And there's two ways I can approach this. So you're either a strength guy or girl, or you're like a muscle or hypertrophy guy or girl. So there's just two ways you could do this, and I've done both. I'll go to the gym. And if it's hypertrophy, if that's the mindset I'm in, I'm going light. And all I'm trying to do is really feel the muscle. So, you know, if I'm doing incline press and let's say I work out with 225, I'm going to put 135 on and I'm just going to really try to feel the pec squeeze and just kind of like isolate and do that kind of thing, right? If you're a strength guy or girl, cut the weight in half and just perfect your technique. Can I make my deadlift more explosive? Can I make it move faster off the bottom? Can I get my squat to feel more stable? And so you just perfect the technique and then again, what'll happen is you'll come back, feel like you may be lost a little bit, and then suddenly, boom, Gains will go through the roof. So it's just a good approach for people because I think the big challenge with this isn't necessarily the information that we're giving, but the attachment, obviously.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, no.

[Doug Egge]

It's interesting because I naturally do that for I'm a big, like, movement in general, like, gross motor movements, like, less on, like, muscle groups and whatnot. But when I do take weeks like that where I'm kind of really lowering my intensity, I will either feel and squeeze, like, more hypertrophy style training or. Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go through that and really, like, do fast reps. Really light.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes. So that's what power lifters will do with their deloads, is they're trying to move the bar faster with lighter weight, and they don't go, like, to fatigue. It's not, like, faster and then also hammer myself. Yeah. It's just perfecting the speed, the bar performance. Yeah. All right, I gotta. So we talk about meal prepping on the show. I've been more consistent than I've ever been in a long time with meal prepping.

[Adam Schafer]

Really?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. You got, you know this. You see me bring my meals.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, I mean, I feel like. I feel like you've been that way for a while now.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, I'm super consistent with now with how I prep and how I schedule it. So have you.

[Adam Schafer]

Is. Is part of this door dash motivate motivation at all?

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, it's. It was really.

[Doug Egge]

Those numbers gone down, bro.

[Adam Schafer]

That was. That was mine.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I'm not lying.

[Adam Schafer]

That was like. A lot of. A lot of the motivation was like, I think I could put a dent in this.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And I have, dude.

[Doug Egge]

It's. It's. It's almost insulting.

[Adam Schafer]

It is. It is a bit insulting. Embarrassing, like, how ridiculous it is and just getting back to that. Anyway, sorry to cut you off.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, the motivation for me was health, because as healthy as you can eat, if you're smart with eating out, they're always going to use different oils and, you know, the food isn't going to be as clean as what I know I can make or whatever. So what we did is I switched my butcher box cuts to include a ton of chicken thighs because I love thighs. For. I don't know. Thighs are really good. Like, steak is good too. Ground beef is best, but there's, like, certain meats that are. Are okay warmed up again, like steak, rewarmed steak. It's not the best. It's okay.

[Justin Andrews]

I'll do it.

[Doug Egge]

Microwave steaks.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Ground beef, you could warm up, and it's great. And chicken thighs are great. Warmed up. Chicken thighs the day after, two days after. Almost just as good as when you first made it. So I switched my butcher box. We already had a ton of ground beef because my kids will eat that. But I threw in like hella chicken thighs. So now what I do is Sunday. So I do this on Sunday. Sundays after church, come home, I fire up the grill and I put like five, six pounds of chicken thighs out there, season them and just grill them all up. And then if you look in my fridge now, I have like all these Tupperwares filled up with chicken and rice or chicken and vegetable, and it's just great.

[Adam Schafer]

I think that the four staple things that we have in every box is chicken nuggets.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I don't prep those.

[Adam Schafer]

The chicken thighs have to have those. The ground beef and then my ribs.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Those are.

[Adam Schafer]

Those four. I eat, though. We eat those on rotation. And that's. That's my box.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But I would say the easiest. Right. I don't know if. Would you guys agree? Like ground beef, rice, you know, you could throw in some mushrooms in there, some seasoning, a little bit of salsa after you warm it up. Super. It's always really good. I always like it. And then thighs you season with warm up again.

[Adam Schafer]

Both those are.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Eat those all day long.

[Adam Schafer]

Both those are amazing. Reheated.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. I. In fact, I. I don't know. Trying to think right now because I

[Sal Di Stefano]

tried steak and I don't steak rewards.

[Adam Schafer]

So there's a trick. I have a trick for that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

What do you do?

[Adam Schafer]

So you cook it rare? Yes.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay. Yep.

[Adam Schafer]

That's so. So the trick is to. So all. When I. When I'm. I'll cook a bunch of steak, right? A bunch of ribeye. And I. Normally when I cook, I'll cook enough for like Katrina and I eat that night. That night. I'll cook it to a medium temperature that we're going to be eating dinner. The other ones I pull early, so they're. So they're rare. So when I. And then I also do this. So I cook them and then I cube them. So then I, I slice in cubes. So I don't. Because the other thing that sucks about steak is like, you got a plastic fork you're trying to cut, dude. So I, I actually, you guys have

[Sal Di Stefano]

seen me in here.

[Adam Schafer]

So I take. I cube them all up and portion it out with the rice. So they're rare.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And they're. And they're just mixing the rice.

[Doug Egge]

Yes.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh.

[Adam Schafer]

And then when you reheat, it takes it up. It takes it up to a medium.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I can't ask you this earlier.

[Adam Schafer]

And. And, yeah, it's. That's the key to that, I think.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, wow.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You know what? My kids like chicken breast. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

They like. They like chicken breast.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Them. Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

I'm a big chicken breast guy.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You like chicken breast.

[Doug Egge]

You guys highlight that all the time.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I'm like, really?

[Doug Egge]

You never say anything because I. You love it so much.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I don't. You're not gonna change my mind. I know.

[Adam Schafer]

I did not know that about you Hurt my feelings. Yeah. You're a pro chicken breast guy.

[Doug Egge]

The problem is, you know, over the years, like, I feel like there's been, like, a consistency issue with chicken breasts. I don't know if it's, you know, certain quality of. But like, obviously butcher box has a better quality, so that helps. But, like, I kind of steered away from them from a bit because you'd get them, and it was kind of like. I don't know, like. I don't know how to describe it. Like, chewy, kind of, like, consistency. Like, it didn't have that same, like, cooked throughout kind of feel. But, like, I've always liked just the flavor of chicken breast better.

[Adam Schafer]

We.

[Sal Di Stefano]

What the. I've known you for how long?

[Adam Schafer]

I had no idea. I had no idea. You're.

[Doug Egge]

I'm a big breast guy. Wow.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Yeah. W. So tonight we're having.

[Sal Di Stefano]

They're so dry.

[Adam Schafer]

So tonight we'll have chicken breast.

[Doug Egge]

I mean, if.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Where.

[Adam Schafer]

I like chicken breast, but Katrina has this dish that she makes that has, like. It's like a. It's like a Greek yogurt. It's. It's saucy. Okay, so it's a chicken breast. I like when you put it with

[Sal Di Stefano]

you like your chicken. Like you like your women.

[Adam Schafer]

Saucy. Real saucy. Real spicy. Saucy and breasty.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, I didn't say that. I didn't say that, dude.

[Adam Schafer]

So when. When she cooks the. The chicken breast in. And we have it in, like, a sauce or casserole, that's where I like chicken breast, because you got all these other fats and juices with it, so then it's. Then it's good. But straight chicken.

[Sal Di Stefano]

How many things about you do we not know? Because you don't say anything.

[Doug Egge]

Probably a lot.

[Sal Di Stefano]

This is a big deal. Ch. Bro.

[Adam Schafer]

Chicken breast the next day.

[Sal Di Stefano]

How many times have me and you talk Crap. And this guy's silent.

[Adam Schafer]

And you prefer it?

[Doug Egge]

Yeah,

[Christina (Caller)]

bro.

[Doug Egge]

Dude. Because in tacos and everything else, like. Yeah, I don't want, like, I don't want dark meat.

[Adam Schafer]

Wow, you're racist, too. Wow. Hey, serial killer and racist.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Hey, listen, it makes sense. Yeah. Pin that on me. It makes sense. He does kind of have like a kid's palate, you know what I mean? Like, oak chicken thighs is too much, you know? Too much.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, that's where it's weird to me, because chicken breasts are. Are dry, man. They're super reheated.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Barbecue sauce out of them.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that's why. Let's be honest. You're having. Bar, you have some. Some chicken with your barbecue sauce. It's true.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I need you. Listen, I need to be honest, right?

[Doug Egge]

See, here comes all the hate.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's why I didn't say, don't worry. Put.

[Adam Schafer]

Don't worry. Plenty of people will come to defend you.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Hey, hold on.

[Doug Egge]

Season it, right?

[Adam Schafer]

Plenty of people will come to defend you about their chicken breast.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Hey, hold on real quick. Be honest.

[Adam Schafer]

Fine.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Dude.

[Doug Egge]

Just being honest.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Listen. Okay. Be honest right now. Yeah. Do you ever dip your chicken breast in ketchup?

[Doug Egge]

Ew, no.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Hell. Okay.

[Doug Egge]

All right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, I was like. I was cool.

[Doug Egge]

The mayonnaise guy, dude.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So I don't put it on my chicken.

[Doug Egge]

Really.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No. You're being honest. I can do it, but I don't. Mayonnaise from French fries. Yeah, that's about it.

[Doug Egge]

I've seen you eat a cube of butter, dude.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll eat butter and

[Doug Egge]

I'll do that too. When I was a kid, there's no shame.

[Sal Di Stefano]

When I was a kid, my. My mom would go in the fridge and she'd see that the stick of butter had a bite out of it. She gets so mad at me.

[Adam Schafer]

You just straight bite it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I would go in there and I bite it and I put it away.

[Adam Schafer]

That's crazy.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Not that smart of a kid, though, right? Like, I mean.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

You can't hide.

[Adam Schafer]

I don't think it was until I started hanging out with you guys where I'll. And I know I got it from you because I'd never did it before. Up until I was 30, if I had butter and bread like a normal human, I cut it with a butter knife and I spread it on my thing.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But I.

[Adam Schafer]

And I know I've seen you guys do this with just the bread. You just.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Just we layer them.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, just. No, you just got. You'd use the bread and you almost like Dip on the butter. You know what I'm saying? You just scoop the butter and then I start. I do do that now. I never did that before, you know,

[Sal Di Stefano]

And I'm like, I know.

[Adam Schafer]

It's a habit I got from you guys.

[Doug Egge]

Definitely influenced you.

[Sal Di Stefano]

The bread is just to hold the butter.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes, exactly. That's what, that's what it's like now. I never.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I.

[Adam Schafer]

You know when you go like. It's like you go to a restaurant now and they give you the. The foil ones.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

I just open it up.

[Doug Egge]

Where's all the rest?

[Adam Schafer]

Scoop it with the. The bread where. I never did that before. I would, like, take a knife and I'd spread it evenly and then I'll civilize it. Took my. Yeah, my one cube of butter per slice to like four cubes.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, per slice.

[Adam Schafer]

Because of that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

All right, listen, I gotta bring this up because this is happening. And I'm gonna put my theory out there this morning. Listen, text listen. What's happening? Right. Oh, God.

[Doug Egge]

So has this been keeping you up at night?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Because this is. Listen. Okay, this is the crazy. This is the craziest thing that is going to be coming out in modern history, in my opinion. Okay, so the FBI just said. What's his name? Patel. The guy that runs Patel, he just said, we just.

[Adam Schafer]

Super trustworthy.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I know. Well, let's get there. We'll get there. He said, I. We just like, basically green lighted a ton of. Of information and documents on UFOs and non human entities. That's what they're calling aliens now. Non human entities. And so it's going to come out. By the way, the White House just bought a URL. I think it's aliens.gov. yeah, Doug, look that up.

[Doug Egge]

Aliens.gov. i mean, we already have a space force, so. Okay, so we're gearing up.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, no, there's more.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay? It's here.

[Sal Di Stefano]

There's more. First off, all these officials are coming out. These are like. These are like politicians who are coming out, who are part of this, like, disclosure.

[Doug Egge]

Wait, okay, and two, they've already been working with, like, religious leaders. Right. About this. Oh, sorry.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Ruined the whole stories. All right, so listen, these. These politicians are coming out. These politicians are coming out and they're saying it's crazier than you think. And what we're dealing with are interdimensional non human entities. So in other words, these aren't aliens like you would see in a movie. They are interdimensional. So they could disappear, reappear. They exist in other Dimensions. That's what the politicians are coming out saying. Also there was this meeting of pastors who met with government officials. This is all over social media, so I don't know how true it is, but they're coming out and saying it happened. Who? They met with these officials and they said to them, we need you to prepare your congregation for what's about to come out. Okay, so two couple things, couple thoughts on this one. Okay. If you trust everything the government says,

[Doug Egge]

you're not going to tune out now.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, I think at this point I don't think they have. I think they've never told us anything.

[Doug Egge]

No, no.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So whatever they release is what they want us to see. And there's a narrative behind it. That's just the way it works.

[Adam Schafer]

This is of all this you're talking about right now. This is the area where we're in agreeance. I have my 2 cents on all this.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I think, I think that it's demons. I think what we're dealing with, they're trying to label the dark forces of the spiritual realms, the principalities, the demons as non human entities.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And so I think that's what we're dealing with.

[Doug Egge]

So of course it's been a rebrand since.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Rebrand?

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

The great deceiver.

[Doug Egge]

Ancient times.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And what they're going to do. Here's my theory.

[Doug Egge]

Aliens are spirits.

[Sal Di Stefano]

If I'm right, then awesome. Well, no, not awesome. I hope not. But I think I'm going to be right. I think that they're going to try and rewrite the origin of humanity, the origin of life. They're going to try to say things like these spiritual leaders. Jesus was just one of these entities that came and we created humanity. And they're going to try and crush people's faith through all of us. That's what I think. It's demons.

[Adam Schafer]

Where, where, where we are in agreeance is that, that 100%. I believe whatever we do get to hear is what the government wants you to hear now because that we're in agreements there. Where my brain goes right away is that it's less about any of your ideas being true and it's more about what we're not hearing. So I think it has nothing to do. I think they could fabricate all kinds of files and stories and try to prove it's interdimensional demons and like whatever, all the gear. So. Because that's crazy and that's a crazy debate in itself. And so we're all over here while something else, sleight of Hand shit's going on over here.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Not a bad theory.

[Doug Egge]

I feel like they've been reading every prophetic literature in history and they've been trying to literally go through each one of those things to get more land grab and power and, and so it's like, you know, the belief system people already have, they're now trying to, you know, use that and, and weaponize that to gain more. Usher us into the new world order.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

I mean, there it is.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, they've. The last. Since COVID I think we could agree that we've lost just in humans as a whole. I've lost more trust in government than probably in human history. Yeah, right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Well, in modern history.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, in modern history. Right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

The average person is like way less likely.

[Adam Schafer]

Right. And I would say large percentage of those people fall in the, in the conservative I, I or religious group of people. Would you not agree? Yeah, right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, you're right.

[Adam Schafer]

So what better way to get, to try and get them distracted than to feed into demon, spiritual, all that direction and like that this eight. These aliens are like, why that is now the narrative. To me, it's like that will get those people, like, interested in the narrative like you are right now.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But they got to use it for a reason.

[Adam Schafer]

We won't know. We won't know till it's too late or till. Or until after.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I mean, that's not a bad theory.

[Adam Schafer]

That, that's my thing.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I mean, because I, I'm.

[Adam Schafer]

I think it's.

[Doug Egge]

I mean, they have to place a world leader. Like, how are you going to get the Antichrist? Yeah, see, you know, how are they

[Sal Di Stefano]

going to do that otherwise?

[Doug Egge]

You have to get everybody bought in.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

And so it has to be from somewhere else.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Here's, here's what. Here's why I moved.

[Adam Schafer]

You only have to get everybody bought in. If you, if you think that it's for that reason. I think it's just purely a distraction. I think it's get away with something. Yeah, exactly. I think it's to get away with other things.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Or maybe.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, that's been the game since day one. I mean, we definitely. We're obviously more concerned about this than we are, Epstein. I mean, that's already. That, that's getting further and further behind us.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You think they're going down the playbook? Like everybody's still talking about it. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes. We're almost there. You know what I'm saying? We got, we got like half of them to forget about it, bro. Like, this is gonna get the other Half right here. This is going to get you look

[Doug Egge]

back at like, what was it, the Playboy Mansion and everything else too. And they're finding like a lot of that was like a huge traffic tunnels and all kinds of tunnels. Yeah, it's a celebrity control celebrities and

[Sal Di Stefano]

yeah, it was like Epstein before Epstein.

[Doug Egge]

Exactly.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. So here's why I'm going in that demon, you know, or, or you know, the spirit world type of deal. Number one, they're saying they're interdimensional. So when you're saying interdimensional, the reason why they would say that my theory is so they can account for the spirit like qualities of these entities. Okay, how do you explain it scientifically that they can do what they do? Oh, it's interdimensional. Whereas people who, you know, read the Bible are like, that's what the Bible talks about. Like that seems like the spirit world. The second reason is I've always thought alien stuff was cool. And when you look at, when you read all of the accounts that people have of abduction or experiences, they sound remarkably demonic. They'll present themselves, they'll try to communicate some new world spiritual vision. There's like a significant percentage, I don't remember what the number was, but it's huge of these people being abducted or being messed with and then they, they invoke the name of Jesus and then they disappear.

[Doug Egge]

I feel like everybody should listen to that podcast with Sean Ryan and that exorcist. He, he outlines like the whole spirit world like and gives the whole hierarchy of everything and like what they're capable of. It's really fascinating. Yeah, but yeah, to like your point, like they, they can mimic, you know, a lot of this explanation is like, you know, stuff that we've, we've seen throughout history. It's just that, you know, it's been.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Rebrand.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah. Rebrand.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Don't you guys all find it so crazy fascinating though that. So this is, this all didn't happen in the last six month window.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Right.

[Adam Schafer]

This is all. We have all kinds of.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, they've been trickling it. They've been trickling with more videos.

[Adam Schafer]

I know, but what I'm saying is like, it, but all that stuff is

[Doug Egge]

like the east coast with Everybody recognizing these UFOs and that's just to again, socially condition us.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it's exactly. But so, so why choose to do it now and not 20 years ago or 10 years ago or just four years ago?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Because that's the question.

[Doug Egge]

I have, I got more power now.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I have the I have the.

[Adam Schafer]

You really think that? Do you really think that all of a sudden they become more powerful?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Right now we now have the tools.

[Doug Egge]

We've uncovered it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. We now have the tools necessary to usher in real control over the world. We have AI, we have digital currency that they're selling.

[Doug Egge]

The infrastructure is there.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Infrastructure is there. And they kind of had to warm us up. That's my.

[Doug Egge]

Like, this sounds like a wild conversation, you know, like to have on a fitness podcast, but it's like the President's about to announce this kind of stuff, you know, so for us not to talk about it is kind of ridiculous in itself.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Dude, they bought the freaking URL. Alien.gov.

[Doug Egge]

yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

What's going on here?

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Where you at, Doug?

[Justin Andrews]

Well, I'm not gonna weigh in on this, except the alien.gov. the alien.gov site.

[Adam Schafer]

You know why? He hasn't been aging for a long time.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Are you working out pretty well for me? The interdimensions. No, alien.gov is not an active website.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No. Who they bought, though? A URL. Can you look that up? What did the White House bought a URL related to UFOs in Alien. I could be wrong, but there was one that they did buy.

[Adam Schafer]

I just. I find it really interesting that they. They're choosing now to be honest and tell us stuff, you know?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, there's no honesty.

[Doug Egge]

There's all deception. To your point, I don't really know exactly what it is, but. Dude, yeah, for sure, it's a deception.

[Sal Di Stefano]

In. In. In. I think it's in the book of Genesis. These fallen angels, they find human women attractive and they breed with them. What do alien abductions involve? Almost always some kind of breeding process. The way that they appear, the way that they speak. Angels can appear in your dreams or speak into your mind. What?

[Doug Egge]

Aliens wasn't the whole, like, the senator, Matt Gates and somebody else was bringing up, like, some of these alien breeding, like.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, they're saying it.

[Doug Egge]

The programs like this is from a. A senator, dude. Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, there you go. The government registered the domains alien.gov and aliens. So alien and aliens.gov in March 2026. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

They're not live, though.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. I told you, though, they did something with it. Told you.

[Doug Egge]

Okay, you're right.

[Adam Schafer]

Own it.

[Billy (Caller)]

Damn.

[Justin Andrews]

They own it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

So now they can profit off of all these people that are going to.

[Sal Di Stefano]

They're not going to profit off a website. I think they have ads on it.

[Billy (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So I wouldn't put it past for bunkers. Hey, what do you guys think. Let me ask you this since we're having this fun conversation. Yeah. How. What do you think the. The reaction from the population will be if indeed it does come out and if indeed they confirm.

[Adam Schafer]

Won't care.

[Doug Egge]

Lackluster.

[Adam Schafer]

If you.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You don't think people are gonna.

[Adam Schafer]

If you did not care enough about the Epstein files.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

To even do a little bit of homework, to know, like, I have so many people connected to me. Like family.

[Doug Egge]

That's not real.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Doug Egge]

Like what.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Here's why.

[Justin Andrews]

And that.

[Adam Schafer]

That was on a government site that you could go look at the emailing with names on it and conversations.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. But here's why I think this is evidence. Here's why I think this.

[Adam Schafer]

Tell me why this is different.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Because they are going to want us to talk about this. The reason why Epstein disappeared is because they made it disappear.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

They're gonna pump this like crazy.

[Adam Schafer]

They're gonna pump it until they don't need it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay. I mean, I guess. Okay. So.

[Adam Schafer]

So, like, what makes you think too. Epstein wasn't pumped for a certain amount of time, and then now they don't. They don't need it no more.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's not a bad point.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, that's like. It's a while.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay. While they're pushing this out, while they're doing this, what do you think the reaction is going to be from people, you think.

[Adam Schafer]

Numb. Numb. I. I still. My back to my point.

[Doug Egge]

People are getting confused, bro.

[Adam Schafer]

Trafficking children and sacrificing kids. It has to be the top for me of.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Egregious, scary, bad, evil things. I'm less scared of demon aliens.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Of course I am.

[Adam Schafer]

I'm more scared of humans trafficking and killing children.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, me too.

[Adam Schafer]

That's. That's way more. That's way more evil, tangible.

[Sal Di Stefano]

More scary. Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Way more scary.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Honestly, if these demon alien things have this much power, they could have killed us already. It's like, I'm more worried about real humans. We live with that potential, potentially do that. And then the fact that we don't care enough to put anybody in jail.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So do you. So, you know, here's another thought.

[Adam Schafer]

I feel like everyone's asleep.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Here's what's crazy, though, by the way.

[Adam Schafer]

Nobody's gonna care.

[Sal Di Stefano]

The pastors. The pastors that they brought to discuss this with were evangelical pastors. They didn't bring Catholic or orthodox leadership. And I have a theory around that. I think, personally, because of the way the, you know, evangelical churches are there, there is no, like, strong hierarchy. There Is no strong tradition, which is true. Now I go to a non denominational, so I'm not talking crap. But I think it'd be harder to manipulate the Vatican and the orthodox traditions to say, no, you're going to fall. So I feel like they're part of it. I feel like they took these pastors in that are not really genuine. We're going to put up.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, I totally think that too.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. I don't think they're taking in real.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Propaganda is espoused to the flock.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, look, it's not going to. Bro.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's not going to change. I'll say this. Look, I'm going to say this to our audience right now because to prepare for this, you should just exercise, get real strong. Fit.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Because you don't know what's going to happen.

[Doug Egge]

Take them on

[Sal Di Stefano]

program and pray.

[Doug Egge]

It's not a metaphor anymore, really.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, it would take.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Can we make a side.

[Adam Schafer]

It would take an independence movie day to, like, really get anybody going. Like, we would need like one of them ships, you know, coming over the skies, like forever. And even then I think people would be like, I wonder if that's AI

[Doug Egge]

or a hologram, you know, See, remember the one that was like the comet that they were like, oh, my God. This is like a ship that went around the sun and then slingshotted its way out. Like, why not? Then?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Have you got Perfect? Yeah, dude, I don't know. I don't know. This will be interesting. I would def. I definitely think this will be interesting. It'd be fun to talk.

[Adam Schafer]

We have a timeline.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's coming soon. Because they just released the. The.

[Adam Schafer]

They just said that to a theater near you?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

It's a movie, dude.

[Doug Egge]

The world is a theater, dude. Yeah, you know, it is.

[Adam Schafer]

Absolutely.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, Project Blue Beam. That's what I say. Are you familiar with that? Yep.

[Adam Schafer]

I think you've talked about it before. Remind me what it is.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So Project Blue Beam, which is how did we figure out, Doug? Look it up.

[Doug Egge]

It's holographic imagery in the sky.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So what they're going to do is they're going to project religious figures like

[Doug Egge]

Jesus, Buddha, whatever your religious figure is in the culture, they're going to.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And all of them are going to communicate to them and say the truth is. And they're going to say actually and then converge. And there's also technology in Project Blue Beam. Some people say that they. That they could project.

[Doug Egge]

They can do sound voices. Yeah, they could like literally project voice. Like Audio into your head. They can already do. That's real technology that exists.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. So what's the staged event? Scroll down, Doug. Let's see. So using holograms to project extraterrestrial beings, UFOs or religious figures. A second coming in the same sky. The goal, to induce global panic and hysteria, forcing humanity to submit to a totalitarian world government. Alleged use of specialized technology sometime sometimes linked to HARP to project these images. Where did the theory come from? Does it make it up? Or was this like from the 1990s?

[Doug Egge]

Yeah, someone come out in Canada, I believe, and they tried to debunk it.

[Adam Schafer]

What if they're deceivious? Like master plan like backfires on them. That because it all. It started with all this tech and getting us addicted to it. So like that, that all this stuff's going to happen. We're all be too busy scrolling like

[Sal Di Stefano]

we got them so addicted. We got them so addicted to their

[Adam Schafer]

phones, they don't even care. They're not even looking up.

[Doug Egge]

Dude, my name is vaporized. What?

[Sal Di Stefano]

You start hearing trumpets, let's see what happens. Anyway, let's change, change, change directions for

[Adam Schafer]

people we have lost.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I know. So. So, Adam, you have. I've seen you wear this jacket a few times. This is a viewer jacket.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Sal Di Stefano]

What's the name?

[Adam Schafer]

Because every time I ask you, V1 coach jacket.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, I looked at the reason why. I know because I, I order.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Picked one up yet?

[Adam Schafer]

I ordered the truffle one today. So they have a truffle colored one, they have a black one, they have an olive color one. And then they have like this kind of blue color.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Is it like light? It's like a light jacket.

[Adam Schafer]

I love it. It's light. It's got this like Velcro so I can make the wrist tighter, looser. It's got a pocket inside. Yeah, it's kind of windbreaker esque. But I like it too because I mean, this is one of the things I love about Vuori is a lot of their stuff like depending on like I'm wearing it in a sweats. I'm comfy today. Right. I can dress up.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You have the seaside sweats on.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I'm vori'd out today. Right. So good timing for an ad for them. I. I can dress it up or down because it's collared and it's sharp and it's button.

[Sal Di Stefano]

If you put slacks on it. Oh yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

If you were with like one of Justin's like meta pants or whatever that he likes like with the kind of. The slacky pants. You could put it on with a white shirt. And now it looks like sharp like dinner. I can go out to a nice dinner. That's one of the things I love about Vuori is a lot of their gear. I can put it with different stuff to make it look fancy, or I can be super comfortable and I don't look weird or overdressed. So it's like one of my favorite. But this jacket is probably my favorite piece.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You wear it all the time.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it's probably my favorite piece that I've bought most recently. But I need another. I need the other color. I need the. The truffle color would have went with what I'm wearing today. So next time.

[Sal Di Stefano]

All right, I gotta. I got an annoying thing to talk about. So there's apparently I never. You ever. Guys ever go on Reddit. Oh, God, I never do.

[Adam Schafer]

I definitely don't like too far.

[Doug Egge]

I used to back in the day.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I never go on negative. It's. I never go on there. But one of my friends is like, oh, there's a thread or a section in there about mind pump. And then I got to address this because it's super frustrating, annoying. And there. And in some recent threads are talking about how you're constantly sending people to your coaches. Like when we answer people's questions, when people call in. Yeah, that we're just trying to push them to our coaches.

[Doug Egge]

And that's the problem.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's so frustrating because here's the deal. Like, the truth is, we didn't offer coaching and personal training for a long time. And the reason why we didn't do that is because we, we have very, very high standards for coaches and trainers. And we knew if we went in that direction, it would take a lot of energy to build it. First, a lot of training on our end and good leadership on our end. Like, we needed people in leadership positions to do this because the last thing we would want. We were all trainers for. For a long time. The last thing I'd ever want would be a trainer coach representing us. That wasn't doing an excellent job. So we finally did it. It's been almost two years now. And here's why we recommend coaching. Nothing's better. Yeah, we've said this for forever.

[Adam Schafer]

I was just gonna say, you know, the irony. We've always said the irony of this, Sal, is when long before when the business first started and the only way that we monetized was through Maps Fitness products, one of the consistent things we would Always say is, you know, yes, this is great programming these programs, but nothing beats a good coach, A good coach and trainer. We have said that for 10 plus years. Still need a coach about our own, own programs. When we didn't have coaches to make money or do any of that stuff off of. We've stayed consistent with that and we waited, like you said, for a very long time before we would even offer some of that. Now that we have it offered, it would be doing people a disservice when we, if we don't recommend it to some of the people that need it. If you listen to live callers too, I mean what do we do, 8:12 a week or whatever like that. Not everybody needs it. Some people, it's straightforward. We give them an answer, we help them out. In fact, I'd say 50% of them are that way. But then there's 50% of them that need real help and that they need real guidance. And it's just like, hey, you would benefit by seeing a coach.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Here's the deal.

[Adam Schafer]

So funny.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Here's the deal. Like, and this is just the truth. In our, in our industry, there's a lot of coaches and trainers out there. There's not a lot of really good ones.

[Doug Egge]

Yep.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So if I have a family member that needs help, I don't just tell them, go work with a personal trainer. If this is before we had coaches, I would say here's what you do. Talk to a fitness manager at a gym, come back to me, let me know what happened. I'll help you pick a good coach. Because good coaches are valuable. Bad coaches are terrible. And unfortunately there's a lot of bad ones out there. We just know that the ones that work here are really good because we hire, train, develop them. So that's why we run.

[Adam Schafer]

The other part that annoys me about that is that because I guarantee if we were offering coaching for free, yeah. Those people wouldn't have a complaint like we go get a free coaching for the next year, like that they'd have no problem. But it's because they charged. And the, the part that's it's annoying is that we have 40 employees that work for Mind Pump. Whether that person that we recommend to get coaching does not put a dollar more or less in the four founders pockets. It funds that business, that side of the business. So whether that person decides to do it or not does not change our, our income. So the idea of this like, oh, like we're trying to, to money grabbers. No, it's, it supports the Coaches and trainers and the leadership team that runs that and whether that person does it or not doesn't affect us.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, I'm just gonna be super transparent. There's two things that we wanted to address with personal training coaching. One is the obvious one, really good coaches and trainers for. For customers because they're so valuable. We were trainers for a long time and there's a lot of things we can do on this podcast. We can give great advice. We have five episodes a week and it's great. You listen to the episodes, it's going to help you. We get a lot of great comments and emails, but nothing comes close to a good coach. We were coaches. I know the impact I made when I did a good job with a client. It's life changing. So it's the best possible thing you do if you're trying to really solve your health and fitness issues and do it in a way where it lasts for the rest of your life. There's nothing more powerful. The other side of this was to be a coach and a trainer in this industry is tough. It's a tough industry and it's not for often for many people, it's not a good career. So I love fitness, I love doing all this stuff. I want to be a trainer, but I also want to support my family and it's kind of a crapshoot. Where do I go? How do I build this? I can't make enough money to support my family. And so one of the reasons why there's not a lot of good coaches and trainers is there isn't this like straight forward way of really building a good business. So the two problems were can we employ coaches and pay them well so they could build a life here and also provide good service? So yeah, you got to pay for it because we pay our trainers really well.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah. Otherwise it wouldn't exist.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We asked for the best.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, I think it's bad to go on Reddit, dude. I just feel like the.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's just the person.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, in fact, I had somebody tell me though about they're like, you actually have a lot of really positive stuff on Reddit, which is not normal like having anything positive.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah, no, there is positive of stuff but then there's also like qanon stuff and you know. Yeah, it gets wild on there, dude.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean the people, the people that are going to go on, they're doing, they're normally going on there to complain. Very few people take, I mean, so it's a surprise that there's actually some people that go on there to say positive things.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But most people I got some, some, some up to date data on GLP use in the U.S. oh, I heard something the other day I had to

[Adam Schafer]

bring to the podcast.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So check this out. Let me pull up the station.

[Adam Schafer]

The number I heard.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Let me see. Okay. In 2024, 5.8% of adults in the US were on a GLP. Today it's 12.4%. Almost tripled 5.8 to 12.4 from 2024. It doubled in 18 months. More than doubled in 18 months. Exploded the anti obesity market which is

[Adam Schafer]

what they're calling what you said, you called what you said three and a four.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I, I think you're going to pro. We're probably going to see my opinion between 50 to 70% of Americans on a JPS.

[Adam Schafer]

A lot. 50 is a lot. 50 is a lot.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I, I, I, I, I mean I don't.

[Adam Schafer]

Do you even think there's 50% of people care about being overweight?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, how, what percentage of Americans are overweight?

[Adam Schafer]

Well, that's what my point is. Do you think that even 50% of those people care?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes, I think they do. And I, and I know that, that Trump just said that.

[Doug Egge]

What's the lower the cost?

[Sal Di Stefano]

What's the insurance you get after you retire? What's Medicare? Medicare covers it now.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So Medicare is going to cover glp?

[Doug Egge]

Yeah, that's huge.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Insurance company is going to be forced to cover it, you know, more openly.

[Doug Egge]

Doctors are recommending a lot more now.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So when that happens, 50% for sure, you're looking at a medication that promises to solve what 15 other medications are trying to treat with like blood pressure and lip, blood lipids and all this other stuff. So I think so because look at bro, that's from 5.8 to 12.4 in 18 months.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean I think it's good. Oh, that's what it was. No, it was okay. The stat was how many people per week were adding, adding on to GLP.1. It was, it's, it's a crazy number.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well Doug, what's the total?

[Adam Schafer]

It was like, it's like it's tens of thousands of people every week are starting.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, how many adults are in the U.S. like what's the population of adults in the U.S. let's see what, because I want to see what 12.8% saw this.

[Adam Schafer]

I wish I knew the number.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I was here see what that is. But, but they're saying that the global anti obesity market is projected to go from 19 billion today to 104 billion by 2035. So in nine years it'll quadruple 267 million adults. Okay, so you're looking at what, 30 million? Is that what 12. What would 12 point. What's 12.4% of 26.7?

[Adam Schafer]

Close to 30.

[Sal Di Stefano]

How much?

[Justin Andrews]

I would say close.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So almost 30 million adults right now, Adam, are on a GLP. Almost 30 million right now. Isn't that crazy?

[Doug Egge]

It's really.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. One in eight adults right now. I'm looking for this number. Well, USC 700 increase over four years in a number of patients without.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yep.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay. Yeah, man. I saw this stat or and it was a number. It was like, like I don't quote me because I don't remember the exact number, but it was like 20,000 people. New people every week are just getting here on one. Like it was. It was a number.

[Sal Di Stefano]

This is with the available GLPs are semaglutide. The more common ones. Semaglutide and tirzepatide. Redatrutide isn't even approved yet. When that comes out. Oh my God. Because that and the data people are all antsy for crushes. The crushes. The other two.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So that's.

[Doug Egge]

They just came out with the orals. Right. Which I'm sure is.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I don't know how effective they are.

[Doug Egge]

I don't know either, but I know I should.

[Adam Schafer]

People in the big there and the orals are like. So right now it's NBA playoffs. I'm watching a lot of the game stuff. A lot of the advertising right now are all the companies that do the oral and they have all kinds of celebrities that are really. Oh, promoting it. Oh yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I wonder how effective the oral ones are for versus because with the injected injectable ones, it's like a once a week like insulin needle. But still that still stops people. So when they have like an effective oral version. Yeah, for sure. So if it went from 5.8 to 12.4 in 18 months, it's definitely within the realm of reason to think that that number could get up to 50% in like 10 to 15 years.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, here I'm going to send you, Sal, a chart in our group thread right now that shows a chart on it was pretty good. Yeah. I can't find the exact numbers, but it was. It was alarming. I was like, wow, that's a. That's a lot.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So what I think is going to happen is I think this is going to usher in good for coaches though. It's going to usher in an explosion of demand for personal trainers, coaches, and for gyms.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah, it should be standard that you have to train, you know, as you embark on it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

When this first happened, I remember a lot of trainers were like. And gym owners were afraid, like, oh, no, no one's going to want to work out anymore. I think more people. More people are going to want to work out.

[Adam Schafer]

Is there a popular medication or drug that is prescribed by doctors when someone comes in with osteoporosis?

[Sal Di Stefano]

There's a few. There's a few popular ones, but they're not that great.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it doesn't matter. No, I would. I would. I would bet on the. On the ticker on that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, just because you think people are gonna get more prescribed.

[Adam Schafer]

Of course, because before. It doesn't matter. It's what the doctor will default to because you gotta. You gotta understand that it'll cause a rise in personal trainers and stuff like that, because just simply millions of more people will need it. Ten of those people go to trainers. The other 90 will just go to their doctor and be like, oh, my God, I have osteoporosis. What I do. Here, take these medications.

[Doug Egge]

This happened.

[Sal Di Stefano]

How effective are osteoporosis drugs?

[Adam Schafer]

Doesn't even matter.

[Sal Di Stefano]

They've got crazy side effects.

[Adam Schafer]

It doesn't matter, dude.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, I think what's going to happen. I think more people are going to work out for two reasons. One, the obvious ones. I'm losing muscle. Doctor says I need to. Here's the other one. When you're overweight, let's say you need to lose £70 and then you lose £50. You got. You suddenly become a little bit more motivated.

[Adam Schafer]

Highly effective. Highly effective.

[Sal Di Stefano]

25 to over 50, decrease in fractures. But I don't see a huge reversal of.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, I mean, but that right there, that's enough Sal. To get people taking it. Okay, so now look up to me. Look up for me. The. The leading companies that sell those drugs.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You start throwing money at them. Don't bet on. Don't put money in what Adam says.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Remember what happened last five?

[Adam Schafer]

I'll talk about it. I won't do it. So for everybody, I'll buy it so everybody else can go make money. Because if I buy it, it won't happen. I'll do everybody a solid. That would. I mean, right away, that's where my brain goes. Because let's be honest, even though there's going to be a huge surge in personal trainers and people that need help like that, that will still only be

[Sal Di Stefano]

a percentage of People, here's where I'll put the money. Which company is making red or red or True Tide? It's in phase three right now. So let's see what company that is. That's the company.

[Adam Schafer]

Don't more than. No, it's only one company who has.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. So if you buy it at compound for. Let's say you go to Eli Lily or let's say you go nphormones.com and they'll have, they have tirzepatite and semaglutide.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, Eli.

[Adam (Caller)]

It is Eli.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So there you go.

[Adam Schafer]

They've already skyrocketed.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Sure. Everybody's projecting that through the roof. So that's who I would put my.

[Adam Schafer]

What is what, what is their ticker at? What is their ticker, Doug? Eli Lilly's ticker?

[Sal Di Stefano]

I don't know.

[Adam Schafer]

It's. I looked at them a while ago because I was going to and they were already.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, I was looking at, I'm looking at companies that are going to have, have GLP ones like Eli Lily Lly and there it is. 991. I'm looking at those companies. I'm also looking at companies that are researching myostatin inhibiting drugs and muscle building drugs that are non hormonal because I think those are the ones.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, they actually might not be a bad buy right now.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oop, don't get it.

[Adam Schafer]

They would have, they would have been a great little purchase about right on that, that dip we just had. They would have been a nice buy. Yeah, yeah. They were down at 9:34 for a minute but they've been, they've been averaging.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, I think what you're going to see is you're going to see a flood, a huge surge for people interested in gyms. I see personal training because of all these new motivated people who are on a glp because I've already talked to a lot of people who want to work out because they lost weight, not because they're afraid of losing muscle, but rather they're just like, yeah, now I feel motivated because I can finally lose weight now I want to work out. So I think you can see that. I also think it's going to fuel what's already happening in the gym industry, which is the, the more expensive gyms because you have all these people with, with and they're going to want nicer gyms.

[Doug Egge]

Plan to get off the GLP one as well.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yes. I, I think it's going to be a huge boom to the fitness industry. Yeah, that's what I Think.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, it has to.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, how long it'll take and what percentage of people. I mean, that's unknown. But there'll. There'll be enough people that will be forced in. Into having to lift weight.

[Doug Egge]

So many people are going to do it wrong and going to need help. Yeah. We got to be here for them.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Unless. Unless this is like one. This is a little wrench in it. The aliens show us something else.

[Doug Egge]

I mean, they may do that. Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We can solve obesity. There I was.

[Doug Egge]

I was laughing because there was. I got this. This like, request. We're selling our house right now. And like, they're like, you know, asking details of like, things that are, you know, we pay for services and whatnot. And somebody's like, do you guys have dsl? I was like, dsl? D. Like, you talk about, like, dial up. Like, that's like the oldest.

[Adam Schafer]

Is that. Is that DSL? Is that what he's asking?

[Doug Egge]

DSL? Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, my God.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah. Like, what are you, 19?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Like, is there anything to do with DSL?

[Doug Egge]

I was like, do you want a fax machine? You want me to throw in a fax machine while I'm at it? Yeah. Was it. Someone signals.

[Adam Schafer]

Was it like a really old person?

[Doug Egge]

I don't. I must have been. Dude, I was like, this is so weird. I would never like have thought of a request for. For dso.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's a broadband Internet technology that transmit high speed data over existing copper. Maybe you could use normal.

[Doug Egge]

Does this still. It still exists?

[Adam Schafer]

Well, maybe, Justin, it's evolved. Maybe DSL is no longer just dial up. Maybe it's net. Well, it says it's broadband Internet now technology. So it's just.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's competitor might be cheaper too.

[Doug Egge]

Missing something, you know, because I hate Xfinity.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You guys know, we were working with a company that Doug had to go send them information and they requested fax, only it wouldn't take email. So Doug had to.

[Adam Schafer]

Is that true?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean, there's a lot of places that still use that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Why?

[Adam Schafer]

How? Yeah, I think even, like, nobody owns you. Actually, like, legitimate factor. You scan and then send.

[Justin Andrews]

I usually scan.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

Service.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, but they have.

[Justin Andrews]

But it's legitimately a fact.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Why?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Adam Schafer]

Let's bring back faxing.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah, faxing and fax me.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Can you write me a letter?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, fax me, dude.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Let's do that. Let's talk about a super food. Now. Look, I'm normally skeptical of anything marketed as a superfood. Manuka, honey, is the One thing that has the science behind it. So most honey is basically just sugar, just a lot of sugar. Manuka is in a different category entirely. It comes from bees that feed off of the manuka tree in remote New Zealand. And the bioactives from that plant transfer directly into the honey. So it has three times as many antioxidants and prebiotics than regular honey plus mgo. This is a naturally occurring antibacterial compound that's unique to manuka. No other honey has it. 70 to 80% of your immune system lives in your gut. Prebiotics feed the good bacteria. This isn't a supplement you add. It's a food that does work. One teaspoon in the morning is all it takes. That's the protocol. Simple, repeatable and sustainable. It's a habit that makes a big difference. So go to manukora.com mind pump. That's M A N U K O R A.com mindpump. Use the code mindpump. You can save up to 31% plus $25 worth of free gifts with the starter kit. The kit comes with an MGO850 plus Manuka honey jar, five honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon and a guide box. One more time. It's manukora.com mindpump and the code is mind pump. Back to the show.

[Justin Andrews]

Our first caller is Billy from New Jersey.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Billy, what's happening?

[Adam Schafer]

How you doing, Billy?

[Billy (Caller)]

Holy cow. What's going on, guys?

[Adam Schafer]

How you doing?

[Sal Di Stefano]

How can we help you?

[Billy (Caller)]

I'm good. This is surreal. Feel like I'm really here. That's nuts. Nothing, obviously. My name is Billy from New Jersey. 34 years old, I guess. Let's talk a little about myself. 61612 20. I've been listening to you guys since, like, right before Kobe started and pretty much been going from there and, you know, just been following your programs ever since then. I don't know if you guys can see all the programs. I bought it pretty much by everything you guys put out, which is awesome right now. Currently in Maps 8.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Love it.

[Billy (Caller)]

I think it's just an amazing program. Also, I guess my main question would be my ankles. I have since I was early 20s. I guess I lost the arch in my foot. So I pretty much have like a flat foot, as funny as that sounds on both feet. So it kind of prevents me from doing squats fully. It's mainly just doing box squats. I know you guys talked about box squats before, saying, like, you don't really get as much out of it. As a full squat. So I just wanted your guys opinions of like where I should go about trying to improve that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, good question, Billy. And just to be clear, it's pretty darn close. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't improve or seek out to improve places where you have mobility challenges. So the arch of the foot does provide some stability. The foot's got a lot of muscles. But then what typically follows a fallen arch or flat foot is ankle mobility issues. They typically go hand in hand. Do you have Prime Pro? I know you said you have a lot of our programs. Do you have Prime Pro?

[Billy (Caller)]

I do not.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay, I'm going to send that to you. So in Prime Pro, do the foot and ankle mobility movements and practice them throughout the day. So short foot pianos. Yeah. And things like combat stretch and just practice them regularly. Continue to do box squats and then when you start to feel like you're ready, start to practice traditional squats, go really light. And what you want to do when you're doing the traditional squats, once you get good at short foot. So that's a movement that you're going to feel really weird. It's going to feel like you can't even do it. But once you feel like you can do it, then what you're going to do is you're going to get into a squat with lightweight. You're going to do a little short foot. So you're going to activate the arch of your foot, kind of ground your feet, and you're going to practice really slow, controlled, shallow squats and work on range of motion without going heavier while maintaining that strong arch on the foot. But it's going to take some time. Probably a good 6 months to 12 months of strengthening and practice really make

[Adam Schafer]

a difference during that time. Would you recommend or allow him to use like squat shoes?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Totally. I mean, he could.

[Billy (Caller)]

So I do use squat shoes now.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay, you're fine too.

[Billy (Caller)]

Yeah. So I just. Any advantage I need. Because it's sad. I don't know how this happened. Like, I got it diagnosed when I was like 21. So I've been dealing with this forever now.

[Adam Schafer]

So it's. It's more common than you think. Yeah, yeah, we've had a lot. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've had a lot of clients like that. So it's.

[Doug Egge]

It's.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, it's pretty common, dude.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So, yeah, it's just there's muscles in the feet that provide that arch and it's just. It's literally a strength training exercise.

[Doug Egge]

They're under Stimulated. They're, you know, you're wearing shoes that are kind of limiting your range of motion. So if you walk around the house with bare feet, it's going to help a lot just to, you know, reconnect. But, you know, like you saying those drills, another good one is to, like, you know, get a towel and kind of squeeze between your toes and pull. And that's an exercise on its own to kind of work your way into shortfoot. Shortfoot's a really hard one to kind of conceptualize. But once you do get that, you'll. You'll be able to make progress in that direction for sure.

[Adam Schafer]

Billy, do you. Do you make an effort to walk around barefoot much?

[Billy (Caller)]

I walk around barefoot all day.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, okay, good.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Now here's the thing, though. Here's the thing, though, Billy. If you walk around barefoot without trying to actively engage your architecture, it won't do anything.

[Billy (Caller)]

Yeah, I'm not. You know, you don't really think about doing that. You kind of just like just walking around.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Billy (Caller)]

You know, so.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. When you practice short foot and you start to get good at it, it'll take a little while because at first it's gonna feel like you can't even activate. Yeah. But then as you start to get good, you say, oh, okay, there it is. I can think, I'm moving it. And then once you start to get good at it while you're walking around the house, just whenever it comes to mind, just try to activate your arch while you walk.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, you can even do it when you're. I mean, I'm. I'm doing it in my shoes right now as we sit here and talk. So once you learn to do this, practice it. You can be sitting at the desk working, doing your thing, and you could. You could just be practicing. And the more you do that, the better this will get. And so it's just. It's more of a repetitive thing of just constantly thinking about it and doing it. But prime this. The movements in prime pro will help you out. Practicing, then that will help you out. You're already doing the squat shoes. That's a good way to get a little bit more range of motion right now. But keep working on it. You can definitely improve this.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, yeah, you can make.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

There's a belief that flat. That once you're flat footed, that's it. Yeah. No, you're stuck.

[Adam Schafer]

You can totally fix this.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yep, you can totally. You can make a big difference in the strength and stability your foot. It just takes time. So it'll take You, Billy, like, like I said, six months to a year to really notice big improvements. And you'll. You'll just notice. You'll just start feeling it while you're walking and standing. Like, oh, there.

[Doug Egge]

Don't overdo it. You know, it's just kind of like a more frequency thing.

[Billy (Caller)]

Yeah, it's like the bucket, right?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly, dude. Yep.

[Billy (Caller)]

Okay. All right. I guess why have you on? If you mind if I ask the second question?

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, let's go.

[Billy (Caller)]

I recently had a 4 month old, so I'm doing maps 8 in the morning before I go to work around like four for like five Amish.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Good for you.

[Billy (Caller)]

Pretty much before I get. Before I head in. And it's like the only time I can get lifting during the debt in that morning because I. I have a home gym in my basement, barbell, squat rack, everything. I have everything I need.

[Doug Egge]

Sweet.

[Billy (Caller)]

I'm just. I guess. I guess the question I'm trying to is I just want to get. I want to get strong, but I. I only have time to do like that maps 8 style.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Billy (Caller)]

I do have maps 15, like the power lift, but I don't know how to go about it or I should try to put it to the side and just focus on just doing like Maps 8 style. Just not as much as intensity because of the baby and work and everything.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Billy (Caller)]

What do you guys think about it?

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, that's it. Stick to Maps 8. When you feel good, you got good sleep, you push the intensity a little bit.

[Doug Egge]

Push it a little, you know, progressively overload if you can.

[Sal Di Stefano]

When you don't, you just go in and practice the movement. I mean, you got a new baby, dude. So you got. You got a good year of suboptimal, you know, sleep and all that stuff. But that's okay. It's just a season. But you go in the. You go on the. You go in your basement and you're like, man, I got crappy sleep last night, so I'm just gonna go through the movement. And then you're like, man, I got good sleep for a couple nights in a row. I feel good. You push yourself a little bit. That's it.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay.

[Billy (Caller)]

Okay.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Perfect. Yeah, Perfect.

[Billy (Caller)]

Well, thank you for everything, guys.

[Sal Di Stefano]

All right. You got it, man. Thanks for calling in, dude. And we'll send that to you.

[Billy (Caller)]

Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Take it easy, man.

[Doug Egge]

Easy, man.

[Jenny (Caller)]

Recording.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, it's great. You know, I'm glad he said that because I had very flat feet.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And I still have some issues, but through doing Things like short foot and awareness. The very first time we were short, you guys remember when Brink showed us short foot?

[Doug Egge]

I think we all sucked at that. Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Didn't work. I'm like, what? I can't do that. Like, there's nothing there.

[Doug Egge]

No connection at all.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But now I can do it. I actually have a connection to it. So now when I'm aware, I can activate the arch. And if I squat, it's definitely something I'm conscious of. And it does change my technique.

[Doug Egge]

I've definitely. Because I change my shoes. Typically, I'll wear minimous shoes. It really helps a lot to be aware.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Doug Egge]

And have the wide toe box.

[Adam Schafer]

The cool part about this is, like you said, is that if you. It takes, you know, six months, a year of consistently putting work towards it. But once you do that, it's like what I talk about with my. My whole mobility kick.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

It took a long time to really get that squat depth and ankle mobility and hip mobility. But then once I got it, maintaining it's actually really easy. There's just a few things. I just have to be aware of it and keep up some exercises that I do occasionally, and it'll keep it up. It's like. And you won't lose it again. But it's the work to get there. It's just seems a little laborious.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Our next caller is Adam from South Dakota.

[Sal Di Stefano]

What's up, Adam?

[Adam Schafer]

What's happening?

[Adam (Caller)]

Yes, it's pretty cool. Just want to say thank you guys for taking the time to do this. I mean, it's really fun to listen to the podcast and all the knowledge you guys put out. It's really cool.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Thanks, man. How can we help you?

[Adam (Caller)]

So right now, kind of in between, I'm kind of finishing up Maps performance right now, but it's kind of harder to do the three days a week. I normally split it up to five or six days a week. Kind of try to turn it into, like, maps 15 performance. Just a little backstory. I just had a baby about six months ago now, so it's kind of tough to kind of count on getting a full night of sleep. I don't. I mean, I don't do half the stuff that she does in the middle of the night, but still, like hearing them in the next room and stuff like that kind of kind of cuts off the sleep. So it'd be nice to do a little bit more of a 15 program and kind of trying to chase some strength goals for this year. So I was looking at either Maps 15 Strong or Power Lift. And I was just wondering if I get your guys opinion on kind of which would be the best to go forward with.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, good question. I'm looking at your question here too, and it says you're also doing jujitsu. Is that still happening?

[Adam (Caller)]

Yeah, yeah, it depends on the week. Normally two to three days, but yeah, still. Still doing that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay, and part of your question was how you maintain mobility while getting stronger? Is that still part of your question?

[Adam (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay, so this is actually easy. Okay. If you're doing Jiu Jitsu, you're gonna maintain mobility as you get stronger. So you just gotta keep doing Jiu Jitsu. Now what would happen? The reason, the way you would lose mobility is if you stop doing Jiu Jitsu completely. Or let me correct what I'm saying. The way you would lose mobility for Jiu Jitsu would be to stop doing Jiu Jitsu and then just start training. You start losing the skills of how you move and all that stuff. So as long as you're doing Jiu Jitsu, getting stronger at the same time is going to be fine. Maps 15 power lift would be great for you. But the way you would follow it is I don't think you should work out more than maybe four or five days a week. What I mean by that is if you do Jiu Jitsu one day a week, then follow the. Then the other four days you do. Maps 15 Power Lift. If you do Jiu Jitsu three days a week, then you only do two days a week of Maps 15 Powerlift and you just follow the next procession of the routine the following week. In other words, the routine is laid out, I think six days a week. But if you only do two of those weeks, then you just continue on with the following weeks with whatever's left over and that's it. It's very easy, very simple. But more than five days a week, maybe even more than four days a week, might be too much with Jiu

[Adam Schafer]

Jitsu and a newborn. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's it. Yeah. Very, very.

[Adam (Caller)]

Oh, sorry. So you're saying kind of lean towards four days a week and then like kind of if I feel good, maybe throwing a fifth day in.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, exactly.

[Adam Schafer]

More so that just. I would just base it off how much Jiu Jitsu. Yeah, so get, say, say you're only allowed to work out, you know, five or six days tops, or five or six workouts. A Jiu Jitsu workout counts as a workout. So if you do two of those workouts or Jiu Jitsu, then take away two of the maps 15 days. So you understand. Okay, if you do one. Yeah, so.

[Doug Egge]

So volume will be appropriate.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. And it's probably going to look like four or five days a week total. Because I know Jiu Jitsu is pretty strenuous on the body. So I think, I think look at four or five days a week total and then you just trade. You just pick what you're going to do that week. So if I go to Jiu Jitsu today, then I'm not doing Maps 15 power lift. But if I don't go to Jiu Jitsu tomorrow, then I'll pick the workout from Maps 15 Power Lift.

[Adam Schafer]

And just keep in mind, we always talk about this. It's not what you can tolerate, it's what's ideal and optimal for you. Right. So you might be thinking like, well, I. I feel like I can do six days. I'm sure you can do it. But what's probably ideal for you if you want to maintain or actually build strength during this time, is you balance what you're doing with Jiu Jitsu, with your weight training. Doing more is not necessarily going to give you more results.

[Sal Di Stefano]

If you're getting stronger, maybe not consistently because that's not realistic, but if you find yourself generally getting stronger, then you're doing great. If you find yourself just kind of maintaining and you're doing a lot or even going backwards a little bit, you might be doing too much.

[Doug Egge]

That'd be a good method for you to back off.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay, sounds good. So. So if it's something where like maybe Jiu Jitsu is not very strenuous that day, like kind of just doing drilling and then not a lot of people stay after for like kind of live rolls. Would you still consider that a workout day or is it just kind of. It's got to get intense to count that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

No, I would still count it. That because you have a baby and your sleep isn't that good. Yeah, that's a big strong. That's a strong consideration, dude. Is the lack of sleep. It really takes a lot away from

[Doug Egge]

your recovery, a lot of sleep.

[Sal Di Stefano]

It's actually when they do studies on injury, the greatest increase in risk of injury is lack of sleep. It's more than like no warm up. It's more than bad form. It's actually lack of sleep. Injury risk goes through the roof. So if your sleep is just inconsistent, suboptimal, which is normal when you have a new baby, then you just gotta take that into consideration. But you Know your baby's what, what'd you say, six months old?

[Adam (Caller)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So you got another maybe three to six months of that. And then after that sleep will probably get better. Uhm, and then you can start ramping it up a bit.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay. Yeah. So. So if I have, I don't know, maybe three or four days that like, I could go to Jiu Jitsu, but I'm going two days out of it, would it be better if I don't get like an ideal night of sleep? Like maybe just stick to a workout that day and try for Jiu Jitsu later on the week if. If I do get better?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Sleep depends on how you do Jiu Jitsu. So, you know, I was, I did Jiu Jitsu for a long time and there were definitely times where I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna go easy today.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And then you could go full throttle and then you get caught up. You know, you start sparring with somebody and you just. So it depends on you, dude, how disciplined you are. Like, if you can go in there and just do a light roll, that's perfectly fine. But if you know yourself, you're like, look, that, that ain't me, dude. Like, night light rolling just doesn't work. It ends up getting out of hand. Then you might want to skip it. And then. Same thing with the strength training. There's nothing wrong with going, just going and practicing versus really pushing yourself.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay, sounds good. And then like, is. Are the, are the 15 ones structured differently at all or is it kind of laid out the same? Because, I mean, I know the other programs, like performance, it says like, you want to hit a certain percentage of like the weight with these amount of reps. Is it, is it still structured the same?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Power lift is like power lift. Yeah, Power lift has some of that in there, but it's not super important. You can totally go by feel. How long you been working out?

[Adam (Caller)]

I mean, probably like 10, 15 years. Pretty consistent.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Go by feel, you're fine. Yeah, totally go by feel. Someone like you, I wouldn't. Don't worry about percentages because there's gonna be times you're like, well, today I'm supposed to do 90%, but man, I don't feel good. Like, go. Go by percentages.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah, that's the really power lifts, the only time that really matters. But Even in our 15, we don't really focus on that as much because it's really low volume.

[Sal Di Stefano]

By the way, strong would be great too. So what we'll do is we'll send you Power Lift and then I'll make sure Doug sends you a bunch of discounts for other 15s that might be good for you.

[Doug Egge]

Yep.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay, sweet. Thank you. And then another real quick question it Would Power Lift be something good? Like, I know it's like a little bit longer rest sets, would that be something that like we could do together for our workouts? And like while I'm resting, she does a set and then.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Adam (Caller)]

Kind of changing the back and forth.

[Sal Di Stefano]

She's six months postpartum. Yeah. So I think starter would be more appropriate for her.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, just have her run a cycle of starter and then have her jump into Power Lift afterwards. Yeah. Because she.

[Doug Egge]

Strength, stability, she's just six months.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Plus you said something in the beginning that she probably gets worse sleep than you do.

[Adam (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. So I'd have her go for a cycle of starter. You know, low back and hip pain and stuff. Gets really common postpartum just because of what happens during pregnancy and birth and all that stuff. And starter is much better for that.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Once she gets back to normal though, she can definitely do that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Probably a year out. Like, you know, then she's great, dude. That doesn't mean she won't make gains on starter, by the way. She's gonna make progress still.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay, sounds. Yeah. Because that's, that's her. I mean, I, I had a pretty tough time trying to even convince her to do like a 30 minute workout. She used to do two hours a day for. Oh, yes.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay.

[Doug Egge]

You have your work cut out.

[Adam (Caller)]

Yeah, I know. Trust me, I'm trying. So it's like if I can steer in a direction where it's like. Because she'll work out for 30 minutes and be like, well, this isn't compare anything to what it was when I did two hours.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Well, yeah, well, no crap. Your body's no crap, dude. But you know what? She's also just a reminder. She's got muscle memory. She was trained like crazy before. The mistake. That fit, that really fit women make postpartum is they compare themselves and their workouts to what they were doing before. Way too soon.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And it takes, it takes a lot longer than people realize for her for a body to kind of get back to normal. She'll feel good soon if she's not already. But she's still not quite where she

[Doug Egge]

was pushing too hard. Watch we set her back.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's right.

[Doug Egge]

That's. She needs to kind of consider that.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yep.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay, sounds good. And then is there any way I could get this Recording so I could. I could play it for her.

[Doug Egge]

That advice from someone else, for sure.

[Adam Schafer]

2015.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. So when it airs, then you can just be like, hey, honey, check it out.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Plus you can go to. So there's. There's quite a few episodes where I talked about this exact challenge. When Katrina, after we had Max, she wanted to jump back into Maps aesthetic

[Sal Di Stefano]

and I had to.

[Adam Schafer]

I forced her to do Map Starter. I talk about that a few times in the podcast. If you go to askmindpump.com and use the AI, it'll probably find you all those clips of that discussion. So you can hear me talking about my wife wanting to do more and me explaining to her why she just needs to do Map Starter and the benefits of that. So you can look that way. But so that. Plus Doug will. You'll get this live in May 15th.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah.

[Adam (Caller)]

Okay.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Sweet.

[Adam (Caller)]

Thank you, guys.

[Sal Di Stefano]

All right. You got it, man. Thanks for calling in.

[Adam (Caller)]

Yep. Thank you.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yep.

[Jenny (Caller)]

Record.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You know what I like about what he said? It was real humble in the beginning. He's like, you know, I'm not getting good sleep, but, you know, my wife's doing a lot. It was a really nice thing for him to say. Which. Which be good when she listens to.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, probably because he knew he's better. Get that Right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But you know, you know when people are playing a sport and they're strength training at the same time.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You know, there's always the question of mobility. Am I going to get tight? Am I going to lose function? If you're concurrently practicing the sport and you're doing everything with appropriate volume. Because the other mistake is that you overdo everything.

[Doug Egge]

Muscle bound myth comes in.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's right. Like if I'm still playing soccer or football or jiu jitsu or whatever, while appropriately strength training. Because you could also overdo it.

[Doug Egge]

Sure.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Then the. Whatever strength gains I get will get implemented and incorporated into my movement. If I take three months off, go strength, train, build some strength and muscle, then go back, play my sport. Now I'm clumsy because I've got new strength. My body's a little different, throws things off a bit, might feel tight. So it's like, just keep doing both.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah. If it's important to you, you want to maintain that skill by just light drills and going through the movements. So it doesn't have to be with intensity. But to maintain your body's recognition of those movement patterns is really essential.

[Adam Schafer]

I think. I think the hardest thing to convey to a person like this is more to do with this. So he's been lifting for 10 to 15 years. Sounds like he's got a. It sounds like he's also married somebody who is very fit. Yeah. Fitness related, active, does jiu jitsu, works out. God, he's got great. We didn't name do all his numbers, but he squats, deadlifts good weight. Like he's strong. You know, telling that person that you know a Maps 15 and take some days off on Maps 15 sounds like, are you sure? Like if I'm, what if I only do this much in Jiu jitsu, It's like that'll be the greatest challenge for him is because he'll have the desire to do more, thinking that more is going to get you more results. And this, that's the hardest thing to tell somebody who's used to doing so much training volume that it may not suit you or serve you with the lack of sleep that you have. Plus what you're already doing with Jiu

[Sal Di Stefano]

Jitsu, you know, totally. But again, just to make the other point, again, I'll say it differently if you took an athlete because I think we tend to negate the skill aspect sometimes with sports. Sometimes, like the skill is the most important thing. Obviously, like if it was just about being strong, bodybuilders will be the best athletes. It's not there's. It's a skill. If you snap your fingers and make an athlete 10% stronger, instantly they're going to go out in the field and suddenly be slightly off because they're used to moving in a particular way. And now timing is off a little bit. Things are off a little bit and

[Doug Egge]

you actually start to trace acceleration, deceleration, that kind of, you know, that whole balance gets shifted.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So it's so important to do them both at the same time so that they can grow together.

[Justin Andrews]

Our next caller is Jenny from New Jersey.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Hi, Jenny.

[Adam Schafer]

Hi, Jenny.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Hello.

[Jenny (Caller)]

Hey guys.

[Sal Di Stefano]

How can we help you?

[Jenny (Caller)]

I feel like I know you already, but it's nice to sort of meet you for real.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Thank you. Thank you. How can we help you?

[Jenny (Caller)]

So, first of all, as usual, I want to thank you guys for all the great content you put out. I'm a lover of learning about all things exercise, so your podcast has been one of my number one sources these days, and you guys are very much appreciated. I'm going to read my question and there is a little addendum that I have at the end. So I'm a recovering cardio addict. I spent the last seven years doing very little strength training and a whole Lot of endurance running, two marathons, nine half marathons and three pregnancies. And postpartums later, I think I've officially burnt myself out. I've been listening to the podcast for a couple of years and I've heard you tell countless callers to cut back on the running and I'm finally ready to take this advice myself. My question is, or one of my questions are should I still limit the amount of walking and other low impact cardio I do to try to get the most muscle gains as I focus on lifting? I know you guys give walking the green light, but with my personality and background I I will take a two mile leisurely walk and turn it into a five mile hike at any chance I can get. I also am trying to gain a little bit of weight. I had a recent DEXA in February that put me at 19.1% body fat and I know I feel a little bit better with a little bit more meat on my bones. So I'm trying to figure out how do I know if I'm overdoing it physically, even though I feel like what I'm doing mentally is not enough compared to what I'm used to. And then my little update is since my DEXA two months ago, I've gained about four pounds. I'm filling out my clothes again in a way that I like and I feel like I'm on the right track with my body composition, but it's really just the mental aspect that I'm still struggling with. I found that since I'm running less usually once a week if that I'm trying to find other ways to move my body and I'm getting a little bit compulsive with it, like going for a couple walks a day, taking the dog for a walk. I feel like I've sort of developed two identities. So there's the lifter who wants to lift, eat and recover, and then there's the runner who was always rewarded by doing more, which I'm learning is not always the best case anymore. And social media doesn't help because my algorithm is constantly showing me hybrid athletes who can do it all, which makes me feel like I can do it all too. And then I end up exhausted at night trying to take care of my three kids and I regret my decision to even try. I've basically just been feeling pretty run down. I had labs done last week that were all normal, so at this point I'm pretty sure it's self inflicted. And I'm taking a de load this week trying to get my figure out my where I want to go from here. So any advice would be welcome as I try to navigate this transition from being a runner to a lifter while still trying to enjoy both aspects of the different modalities.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Great.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah, yeah, we're doing kudos to you for reaching out.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Real.

[Adam Schafer]

Just question on the any you track the steps when you, when you do these days, you, you walk off. What do you have?

[Jenny (Caller)]

I have a Garmin watch and my typical steps are between like 12 and 15000 a day. That's an active day. And then I shoot for 8,000 minimum. So even on a rest day it's 8,000. Okay.

[Adam Schafer]

It's not bad. Okay. I thought you were going to say something crazy like twenty something thousand plus. We need to calm down all the walks. Walking is good. You know, obviously you don't want to be neurotic about it and obsessive and it should be something more leisurely and stuff like that. So it's, it sounds like you're mindful of that. You can see yourself getting away with it. But 12 to 15,000 steps is not bad. It's not. That's not like a obsessive crazy. I've had clients before that, you know, it's 20,000 plus and it's like that's all they do is they constantly have to be moving. And it sounds like you, you're an active person and it sounds like you're moving the right direction. Are you following any of the maps programs right now?

[Jenny (Caller)]

I'm not right now. Well, I have not yet, I should say. I work out from home, so I'm limited. I have a barbell, I have plates, a bench, but I don't have a rack. So I'm kind of limited. I can really only lift what I can pull up, but I can like power clean. So. And I've dumbbells and kettlebells. So I wasn't really sure what would be an appropriate program with my limited equipment.

[Sal Di Stefano]

We have dumbbell dumbbells of a lot of our program. First off, I got to say that your self awareness and the way you communicated everything was amazing. So it gives me a lot of like this is like very hopeful. Like I'm very hopeful because the way you communicated your struggles and challenges with all this was so good. It was such great self awareness. So that's the good news. The bad news is the answer to your last question, which is how do I know if I'm still overdoing it and you're not going to that's not something that you have a sense of yet. So your best bet, there's a couple directions we can go with this one road is to focus on just getting stronger. And that's going to kind of. That can kind of be a North Star. It's not perfect, but it's hard to get stronger and overdo it. And often you won't get stronger if you're overdoing things. So if you're getting stronger, it's a good sign. That's what I'm saying. The better road is to work with a coach and then let them coach you through this process so you can relearn or learn what it feels like to do it in an appropriate way. And what that means is you trust them because you're going to always feel like you're not doing enough. This is just your, this is just how you are right now. Like for you right now, doing an appropriate amount feels like way too little.

[Jenny (Caller)]

So continue to cut back. And despite cutting back and then I look at my numbers and I think I'm cutting back and then my activity numbers show that I'm still getting just as much activity in per week that I was. I'm just doing it in a different way. So like I'm cheating myself.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, see, you're so self aware. It's so great. So you're just, you just can't trust your feelings because your feelings are oriented, orientated towards doing too much. So when you work with a coach, you trust them. You work with them for, let's say, six months. You're like, all right, tell me what to do and I'll just do it. Tell me what to do and I'll just do it. And the whole time you're like, this feels like way too little. I'm feels like I'm eating way too much. And you just kind of trust and then you'll start to learn like, oh, okay, this is what it feels like. Well, I'm starting to feel good and I have energy at night. The one thing that you said that is really, that I really appreciate that I think is important to focus on is less about how many steps you're taking and whether or not that's too much. It's, hey, man, at the end of the day when I'm taking care of my kids, I'm exhausted. And so your numbers could look great. But if you're feeling like you can't do that job at night that you, that you obviously value, then it's probably too much. So if you're Feeling exhausted, it's probably too much. Whatever the numbers are, it's just too much. And taking care. People don't. People who don't have kids, especially people who don't have multiple kids, don't understand just how much work it is, just how much mental work it is. And just. And it definitely is something that. That hampers recovery and all that stuff. And you got. How old are your kids?

[Jenny (Caller)]

4, 2 and 15 months.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Good luck. This is a lot. It's a lot. So, you know, walking 15,000 steps and lifting weights to do it, plus taking care of three kids is like. It's going to burn you out. So those are the two things. So one direction. Let's just see if we can get. Just keep focusing on getting stronger. Use that as your gauge. If working with a coach is an option for you, I could have someone call you. That's the best option. And then they'll really guide you kind of through this process. The other thing, too, I want to ask you would help with this is. And I think I know the answer, but I just want to be sure. Is the connection to movement a body image thing or is it more of a. I don't like to sit still.

[Jenny (Caller)]

It's more of a mental. I don't like to sit still.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay, so it's like. So does it help with anxiety, racing mind? Like sitting still feels like you just want to drive yourself crazy.

[Jenny (Caller)]

I think I just strive to be the healthiest version of myself. So I always feel like more movement. Like I work from home. So I do sit during the day and I'm working. Sometimes I'll take my laptop, put it on the treadmill to get my steps in. I just want to be the healthiest version of myself that I can. And I know that there is an upper limit to how much movement I can do while accomplishing that, but it's not. It's not body image because I've. I found the more I'm lifting, actually, the better my body image is becoming. I sort of building myself in a way that I've never done before because I've always kind of just ran and felt like I was breaking myself down. So it's been a refreshing change of. To me, exercise in a different way. So, yeah, it's more just like you're doing. I want to take care of myself.

[Adam Schafer]

You're doing really good.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You seem really smart and you seem like someone I can challenge you. Is that okay? Do you mind if I challenge you a little bit?

[Jenny (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

If it was health, I don't think you'd be overdoing it right now.

[Jenny (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So it might not be health. I think in your mind, it's health, but in your heart or in your body, it might be more like, I don't like to sit still because I feel like, what, I'm not being productive. I'm not doing something I should be doing something. I'm being lazy or I'm anxious. So that's. That's where I think you want to go. Because if it was health, you wouldn't overdo it.

[Jenny (Caller)]

I would know when to limit it. Yeah. It's only been recently that I felt physically like my routine is wearing me out, though I don't know if it's because now I'm a mom of three and I'm in my mid-30s, and I just don't recover like I used to.

[Adam Schafer]

All the above, what this might look like to get to where Sal's going. Like, if I was coaching or if you were getting coached, what it would look like is we would. I would see what a normal week of this activity looks like. And you've told me some things already where you walk while you work with your. Your treadmill desk. You go out for a walk or a couple walks. So I. I'd let you kind of have a week like that to assess and see where we're moving, what we're doing, and then I might challenge you the next week. Okay. What I want to do is let's cut out that evening walk that you do every. Every night for this long or what that. But leave everything else the same. And then I want to know how you feel when I made you do that. How did you feel when I wouldn't let you go for your, you know, 6pm or whatever your last walk or thing is, and then that'll help us get to the bottom of what's driving you to go do that. When I'm like, you don't need it. You've already made plenty of steps. We lifted weights. You're healthy. So what is making you want to go do that? And then that would help us get to the bottom of the feelings that you're having, and then trying to work through that and then focus on the getting strong thing. And so it might be this. This slow process of pulling back a little bit on it, assessing what's going on with you, how you're feeling, and then connecting the dots. Because if. If I do my job good and I. And I scale you back, you should see an increased energy level with your kids. And sleep and all those other things. And so hopefully you then can connect the dots of this is what, healthier.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Then you start to like it.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. And then you like that, how you feel. And it's like, okay, this is all I need. I don't need to be doing 15,000 steps. I can do a 8,000 step day and that's still active with my lifting and all my kids. I'm chasing around and be very healthy and fit.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Is. Is coaching something that, that you'd be interested in? I can have someone call you.

[Jenny (Caller)]

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely consider it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay, let me have a coach call you and worst case scenario, we'll send you a program that I think would be appropriate. Yeah, Maps 15 would probably be the best workout for you. But I'll have a coach call you. But I want to tell you, you have like when I'm work, when we work with clients, there's an attitude and a self awareness that if I hear it, I'm like, this is gonna work. You have that like for. You're gonna succeed for sure. You've got the self awareness, you've got the right attitude.

[Doug Egge]

It's the biggest hurdle.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You're gonna do really, really well.

[Adam Schafer]

You're already on the right track.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, you are.

[Jenny (Caller)]

Yeah. I think it's just, it's the runner in me. I've heard you guys say before, you know, when you're doing aerobic and endurance, it's always more, more, more is better, more miles, more time. And when you shift to strengthen work, it's. That's not the case. So I'm just trying to kind of dull that part of my brain and relearn how to exercise in this.

[Adam Schafer]

We've got to create a new identity. You've identified as a runner. You've identified as a runner for a decade. You know, and so. Yeah, and, and so it sounds like that's what this is. And it just take a little bit of time.

[Doug Egge]

Reassuring process reps. That's all it's going to say.

[Adam Schafer]

But I already feel, I've, like Sal said, I feel really cool, confident in you because you're already connecting the dots of what it feels like to build a body. Instead of, you know, tear down or beat up and cut into your body, you're going to build into the body and health you want. And so you already have the right mindset of where we need to go and you're heading the right way. So you'll do great, Jenny.

[Jenny (Caller)]

All right, thank you. Can I ask you one more quick question? So I Had the decks in February. I was planning on doing a repeat in like about six months to make sure I'm on the right track. So theoretically, if I were to gain like 6 pounds or so total, what proportion of that would I expect to be from fat versus muscle? Like, what is it? What is the ultimate ratio there that I should be looking for? Is it like pretty much even in someone who's looking to.

[Sal Di Stefano]

I would look at it more like this. Are you getting stronger? And then a body fat percentage that general, that typically means good overall health and leanness. So hormone health, energy, resilience. So if you're getting stronger, I think your body fat, you would be best probably in the low 20s. So like 22, 23%. And that's a nice good range. Once you start to go below 20, then you start to mess with health a little bit for women.

[Adam Schafer]

I, I also. Have you been listening to me talk about me coaching right now, Corinne?

[Jenny (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

So I just, I want you to be careful of getting hung up on that percentage too, because that could really spin you out in the negative way.

[Sal Di Stefano]

So you might need to just gain body.

[Adam Schafer]

Exactly. So what could happen is, was similar to what happened to her was her body just needed a higher body fat percentage to be healthy. And we put on, we put on weight and then according to Dexa, it was all body fat. And so that could really negatively impact you. Like, oh, my God, I'm doing this all wrong. When. No, you're not. Your body, that's your body telling you you needed some more body fat on you and you're still actually heading the right direction.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And here's what I mean by the strength side. Okay. When we see that muscle is connected with longevity, what we're looking at is a correlation to strength. Strength is a much better predictor of longevity and health than muscle. So what Corrine experienced was an interesting.

[Adam Schafer]

She was hitting PRs like crazy.

[Sal Di Stefano]

She saw her body fat percentage go up, no muscle gain on the Dexa, but her strength went up like 40%. And so it's like we are going in the right direction, but the DEXA would make. Would mess with your head. Like, oh my God, I gained five pounds of body fat, no muscle. Yeah, you just hit a 30 pound PR in your deadlift and youryour body fat percentage needed to go up. So we're doing the right things.

[Adam Schafer]

Yep.

[Christina (Caller)]

Okay.

[Jenny (Caller)]

Got it. All right, well, thank you, guys.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You got it. Thanks for calling.

[Jenny (Caller)]

Yep.

[Christina (Caller)]

Take care.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Bye. Bye. Love her attitude.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And self awareness around it.

[Adam Schafer]

Very much so.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. But three. Three little kids. What she say 15 months to.

[Doug Egge]

She's got her hands full, man.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Bro, that's a lot of. You know, you're at home. You work at home on top of it, and then you got your kids.

[Doug Egge]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, dude. Like, of course you're gonna. It's gonna. What. What you did before. Now all suddenly feels like too much.

[Doug Egge]

Well, yeah, this is a radical shift. And so if. Yeah, for. To her point, it's like, it's gonna take some time to really adjust that mindset.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Totally.

[Adam Schafer]

She's doing good, though. She really is.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, dude.

[Adam Schafer]

I mean, it sounds. I mean, even her gaining some weight and got rid of the running and she's. Some walking. She. She recognizes that her leisurely walk for two miles turns into five aggressive, really quick.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And so the only challenge is, like, at the end, she's like, how do I know? Yeah, it's like, you're not gonna. It's not gonna feel right until you really learn how. What it's supposed to.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, and if you try, and it's

[Doug Egge]

probably the best gauge for that, and

[Adam Schafer]

if you try and measure it through Dexa scans and things like that, it could really steer you in the wrong direction. Again, using the example with Karen and I, what happened is just like, I know we're doing all the right things, but. But it's just that her body needed a higher body fat, and she was similar. I mean, Corinne was, like, 17, and

[Sal Di Stefano]

so still, it is funny, right, because we use muscle as the measurement of health, and part of that's because it's visual and it looks good, but if you actually look at the data, it's strength. More muscle usually means stronger, but having a lot of muscle and not having a lot of strength does not mean

[Doug Egge]

longevity, depending on your health.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Right. So it's actually the strength that's the most important thing.

[Justin Andrews]

Next caller is Christina from North Dakota.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Hi, Christina.

[Doug Egge]

Hello.

[Adam Schafer]

How are you doing?

[Christina (Caller)]

Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking my question.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, you got it.

[Sal Di Stefano]

How can we help you?

[Christina (Caller)]

Can I give a little bit of background before my question?

[Adam Schafer]

Of course.

[Doug Egge]

Go for it.

[Christina (Caller)]

Okay. So in about January of last year, 2025, I started listening to women like Stacy Sims and Gabrielle Lyon. So it was that time that I realized I was not lifting often enough or heavy enough, and I definitely wasn't eating enough. So in February, I increased my calories and started training, like, three to four days a week, focused on progressive overload. However, I was only at, like, 12 or 1300 calories at the time, so an increase for me was going up to like 1500 a day. And I definitely saw improvement by doing that over the next several months, just by lifting more and increasing my calories. But then it started to stall, and eventually I felt like I was regressing. I don't know, I just kind of felt like I was losing muscle mass and getting soft. So January of this year is when I discovered your podcast. And that's when I realized 1500 calories still was not enough. So I again started to increase my calories, got up to around 1900. But then two weeks ago, I had surgery. So I have to take six weeks off from any heavy activity. So all I can do is walk. So what I'm wondering is, during this time, can I go into a slight deficit and would I still be able to preserve muscle while doing that? Because during this most recent calorie increase, I did put on a few pounds that I would like to take off. So. But I don't want to compromise any muscle, which I know I probably will by not being able to lift for six weeks. But just wondering what a good strategy would be.

[Adam Schafer]

Definitely not cutting your calories.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. So that's the worst thing you could do.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. I mean, because you're. We're not sending a signal to. With lifting weights to build muscle or keep muscle. And then in addition to that, cutting calories would be the fastest way to lose muscle. I would recommend especially where your calorie intake is. This is where I think something like EAS would benefit someone like you. And.

[Christina (Caller)]

And actually I did add those in two weeks ago. So every day I've been adding a scoop of EAs to some water.

[Adam Schafer]

Good.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. Christina, when. When you increase stress on the body and you simultaneously go in a deficit, you've. You've added more stress. So post surgery, recovery is catabolic. There's nothing you could do about. Right. It's a catabolic state. It's also a stress state. You're healing. If you want to make it more catabolic, go in a deficit. That's a great way to slow down recovery from surgery and accelerate any potential muscle loss. What's probably a good. What's going to. And this is good news. If during this recovery process, you gain a little bit of body fat, that's actually gonna be a bit protective. And I would not be worried about what's gonna happen afterwards. You'll bounce back pretty quickly. By the way, the reason why, before you noticed your gains flattening out at 1500 calories was because you were just not Eating enough and you were still over training, so. So, no, don't cut your calories. Keep your calories where they're at. Keep your protein intake high. Don't keep your fat too low. You need the fat for recovery as well. Maintain appropriate movement. So whether that's walking or whatever, and when you start to heal, slowly get back into exercise. Don't rush into it. Muscle memory is a beautiful thing. And you'll see the muscle come back, especially if you're feeding yourself and you'll feel great.

[Christina (Caller)]

So change nothing.

[Sal Di Stefano]

That's right.

[Christina (Caller)]

And do you think. I mean, I guess for context, I'm 5:1 and I'm about 116 pounds and I'm 46. So I mean, I guess I don't know if what you can do with that, but I mean, is 1900 calories. Does that sound like it's.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Right now? It's fine. Yeah. But when you get back into working out, and I see in your, in your. How many days a week when you're like training and everything's going good, like how often. What do your workouts look like throughout the week?

[Christina (Caller)]

Week, I would do like a four days a week. So upper body, lower body, a day off, then upper, lower.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And what are you doing?

[Christina (Caller)]

Walking every day.

[Sal Di Stefano]

And walking every day.

[Christina (Caller)]

Yep.

[Sal Di Stefano]

1900 is probably still a little low.

[Christina (Caller)]

Yeah, I think it just freaks me out.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, of course.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, yeah, it's, it's. Well, it's also, you're heading in the right direction and we'll slowly get up there. So it's not like, hey, 1900. So low. Get yourself to 2500 right now. It would be a process of slowly increasing potentially to or. And, or reducing the training volume. I'm assuming you're talking about like, about an hour workout every time you work. Work out too?

[Christina (Caller)]

Yeah, it's about 45 minutes to an hour. So I would lift in the mornings and then walk. I mean, now I've been walking twice a day since I can't lift.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Honestly, you'll probably end up somewhere around 2,300 calories at some point. Yeah, no problem. I mean, if I were coaching you, I'd probably get you up higher, but I'd work with you. But it'd probably end up around 2300 calories. Feeling good, strong, lean. Everything feels good. You don't want to be too lean. By the way, I don't know what body fat percentage you were maintaining yourself before.

[Christina (Caller)]

Do you know, you know, I have a home scale, but I know that those are not super Accurate. But according to that, it was around 22%.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. You look lean. You're. Yeah, you're good. You're good. You were doing the right stuff, but right now you can just keep it where it's at. Don't cut.

[Adam Schafer]

How did you already do the surgery? How far. How far are we?

[Christina (Caller)]

Tomorrow is two weeks.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay. And you have six weeks. Is the recommendation to be off?

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, yeah.

[Christina (Caller)]

So I have another four to go.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Oh, that's not bad.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, you're gonna be good.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah, you're fine. You're gonna be good. Muscle memory is amazing. Yeah. You're gonna see like, you're gonna train for like two weeks and be like, what? Whoa. It all came back.

[Adam Schafer]

But keep taking the EAAs. Keep the calories where they're at. If you wanna hang on to the work that you or the muscle you have built, that's the best way. And that's also the fastest way to recover, like Sal said.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yep. Do you have a red light panel?

[Christina (Caller)]

I don't. I've wanted one.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Okay. Let me send you a link with a discount code. Cause red light therapy, muscle preserving, it's good for skin, can also accelerate healing from surgeries.

[Christina (Caller)]

Awesome.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Reduce scarring, all that stuff. So we'll send you a link with the partners that we work with with a discount code. So that could be useful during this period of time.

[Christina (Caller)]

Awesome. Thank you so much.

[Sal Di Stefano]

You got it. Thanks for calling in.

[Christina (Caller)]

All right, thanks, guys.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Actually, a great question. Someone might be like, okay, I'm not moving much.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Because I'm recovering.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yeah. So I'm gonna go in a deficit. Oh, boy. You want to make your muscle loss really fast.

[Adam Schafer]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like I said, you're not healing. We're. We're not sending a signal to hang on to any muscle. And then in addition that we're reducing calories. It's the fastest way to.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Super fast way to lose muscle.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. To lose muscle, you're going to lose

[Sal Di Stefano]

some muscle no matter what.

[Adam Schafer]

Right.

[Sal Di Stefano]

But you want to make it happen worse.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. And like you said, also slow down the recovery process.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Yep.

[Adam Schafer]

So if you want to get back to the gym and get healed and get back, like, low calorie is not going to speed up. Speed that up either.

[Sal Di Stefano]

Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Mind Pump Media.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[T-Mobile Announcer]

Everyone deserves to be connected. T Mobile and US Cellular are joining forces. Our networks are coming together bringing more T Mobile coverage all over the country. Switch to T Mobile and save up to 20% versus Verizon by getting built in benefits they leave out out. Check the [e-mail] Switch and now T Mobile is available in a U.S. cellular store near you. Bigger network. The combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage savings versus comparable Verizon plans plus the costs of options, benefits, plan features and taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third free line free via monthly build credits. Credits stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required.