2866: Stop Adding Weight to the Bar — 5 Times It's Actually Hurting You

Summary

Mind Pump Ep. 2866: Stop Adding Weight to the Bar — 5 Times It's Actually Hurting You

Podcast Date: May 27, 2026
Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge

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Episode Overview

This episode zeroes in on a controversial but critical topic in strength training: the importance of knowing when NOT to add weight to the bar. While progress and progressive overload fuel gains for beginners and intermediates, the hosts dig deep into the five common scenarios where “just keep going heavier” doesn’t serve you—and can even set you back. Interspersed with call-ins and real-life coaching, the episode blends raw truth, evidence-based advice, and the Mind Pump crew’s signature wit.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Myth of Linear Progression (04:12–11:31)

• Justin: Kicks off by emphasizing when not to chase more weight, even though the industry often glamorizes relentless progression.

  “There are definite times you should NOT try to get stronger. In fact, if you do, you’re gonna cause problems.” (04:12)

• Adam: Notes how linear strength increases eventually plateau, especially for “mature” lifters, and that continuing to push for PRs can escalate injury risk.

  “At a certain point you have to assess different types of strength and different ways to reinforce your body, besides just loading the weight.” (05:31)

• Doug: Draws from his own shift in priorities after building the physique he wanted:

  “It’s really easy for me NOT to chase a PR … it doesn’t make sense at all now.” (05:45)

• Justin: Explains that strength is a prime correlate for muscle gain and longevity in the early years, but the return on “weight added” shrinks with experience.

  “To go from 135 to 225 pounds on the bench, I’m gonna see a lot of muscle … to go from 225 to 315, I’ll see some muscle; from 315 to 405, I’m just gonna get stronger but not see this huge gain in muscle mass.” (07:25-08:37)

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2. Five Situations When Adding Weight Hurts More Than Helps

1. After the “Newbie Gains” Window (07:20–12:19)

• Summary:
  For most, the first 2–5 years of focused training should be about getting stronger. After that, get more nuanced: focus on movement quality, technique, and other variables.
• Notable Quote:

  “If you’re an adult, first few years you’re training, get strong—that’ll give you the best results. After that … focus more on technique, range of motion, different angles, different styles of training.” —Justin (11:09–11:31)

2. Imperfect Form (12:19–15:22)

• Key Point:
  Perfect, not just good, form is non-negotiable as you lift heavier. Small breakdowns in technique can escalate risk exponentially due to leverage and joint stress.
• Notable Quote:

  “If you sacrifice form for weight on the bar, you’re playing a game of Russian roulette.” —Justin (13:33)

• Practical Tip:
  Slow down your tempo—4-second negatives are great for both safety and hypertrophy.

3. Pain or “Niggles” in Joints or Muscle (15:22–17:24)

• Key Point:
  If you feel “off”—sore knee, tweaky back, odd twinge—this is the moment to reduce intensity, NOT ramp it up. Use the same weight and focus on making it harder (more control, less momentum), not heavier.
• Justin:

  “If you don’t feel great, you have no business adding weight.” (16:12–16:40)

4. After a Bad Night’s Sleep (17:39–18:42)

• Evidence Backing:
  Poor sleep is a leading predictor of injury, even more so than poor warm-up or form.
• Doug:

  “It’s the number one predictor of injury, isn’t it?” (17:53)

• Justin:

  “The risk of injury goes through the roof if you had a bad night of sleep the night before.” (17:56)

5. While in a Caloric Deficit (Cut) (19:20–22:07)

• Key Point:
  When dieting, your body’s recovery is compromised—trying to force progress with greater load is a recipe for muscle loss and injuries.
• Adam:

  “There’s something about getting anxious that you didn’t do enough leading into competition … a recipe for possibly paring down and losing muscle, but also injury.” (20:08)

• Justin:

  “Volume needs to go down, intensity needs to go down when you’re in a cut, NOT up. This is what people have flip-flopped.” (21:03)

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3. On Exercise Variety and Longevity (33:27–38:50)

Study Spotlight:
Justin cites a new study:

“People who did the most different types of exercise—cardio, strength, stretching—had the best all-cause mortality, and it had nothing to do with doing more exercise. It was the variety that mattered.” (33:59)

• Insight:
  • Variety acts as a set of “checks and balances,” preventing anyone from going too far in one direction (e.g., endurance at expense of muscle, or hypertrophy at expense of joint health).
  • Consistency with what you like is still the most important factor.

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4. Meal Replacement as a Fat Loss Strategy (45:51–49:14)

• Context:
  Swapping one meal for a complete meal-replacement shake can be a useful, short-term, behavior-bridging tool—just don’t use pure protein shakes as full meal stand-ins.
• Justin:

  “If you have a meal replacement, you want some carbs, some fiber, a little bit of fats with your protein—it’s more satiating and complete.” (48:51)

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5. Resistance Bands—Assistance vs. Added Resistance (51:08–57:07)

• Practical Discussion:
  Using bands to assist lifts (especially for squats and bench) isn’t the same as just adding weight. The psychological benefit and reduced joint stress make band-assisted reps a solid strategy for breaking through plateaus or practicing heavier loads safely.
• Adam:

  “Band-assisted does not cause as much stress on my body … lifts a lot of that tension in the joint.” (53:29–53:36)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Justin (on ignoring pain):

  “Think of the last four times you’ve kind of injured yourself working out. I bet you every single time after you hurt yourself, you said this to yourself: ‘I should’ve known, it was there. That’s my fault, why did I do that?’” (17:24–17:39)

• Doug (on real progression):

  “When you start chasing PRs … you’re so concerned about putting more weight up, you’re using momentum. Slow it down, have perfect form, and then that has such great hypertrophy benefits, which I think a lot of people neglect.” (14:38–14:56)

• Adam (on sleep and injury):

  “It’s actually wild—the data on this. The risk of injury goes through the roof if you had a bad night’s sleep the night before.” (17:56)

• Justin (on diet and cutting):

  “So many people, when they’re in a deficit, think they need to ramp things up … You’re burning the candle at both ends!” (21:03)

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Call-Ins & Q&A Highlights

Sarah Beth from Mississippi (59:00–81:09)

• Background: 34-year-old petite female; lost 130 lbs; struggled with extreme restriction/pushing too hard (leading to a traumatic fainting/concussion), now reverse dieting and strength training.
• Advice:
  • Maintenance below 1800 kcal/day is too low for an active, strength-training woman—even if petite.
  • Focus on consistent increases in calories and prioritize internal markers: energy, strength, mood.
  • Body recomp (gaining muscle, minimal fat) is likely to continue as you raise calories.
• Quote:

  “If you don’t feel great, you have no business adding weight.” —Justin (16:12)

Chelsea from Australia (82:06–93:03)

Currently pregnant, struggling with loss of athleticism, motivation, self-image.

• Advice:
  • In pregnancy, your goal is health and self-care, not PRs or aesthetics.
  • Workout decisions should be guided by “what makes me feel better today?”
  • Social media images of pregnant women “killing it” in the gym are not the norm.

Sandy from Connecticut (93:31+)

Follow-up: major improvement in strength, community building, stress reduction since last call.

• Advice:
  • Keep celebrating wins outside aesthetics and scales.
  • Deepen friendships—let people in who can support you when you need it.
  • If you’re hungry, that’s often a sign your body is ready for more food—don’t fear eating to fuel progress.

Parker from Georgia (119:18+)

Intermediate lifter, dad, seeking balance between chasing strength PRs and longevity.

• Advice:
  • Increase protein intake.
  • Rotate through programs with built-in unilateral work and athletic movement (e.g. MAPS Symmetry or Performance).
  • When running strength blocks, avoid frequent 1–3 rep maxes; stick with weights you can do for 5–8 reps, leaving a couple in the tank.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• When NOT to add weight – 5 scenarios: 04:12–22:07
• Exercise variety & longevity study: 33:27–38:50
• Meal replacement for weight loss: 45:51–49:14
• Resistance bands as training tools: 51:08–57:07
• Sarah Beth (petite woman, reverse dieting, maintenance): 59:00–81:09
• Chelsea (pregnancy & motivation): 82:06–93:03
• Sandy (post-trauma coaching, mobility): 93:31–118:48
• Parker (intermediate lifter, progression, program selection): 119:18–125:56

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Final Takeaways

• Progressive overload is not a goal unto itself, especially for advanced lifters or anyone facing risk factors.
• Prioritize perfect technique, great sleep, pain-free movement, and health—not just the numbers.
• Exercise variety fosters longevity.
• Meal replacement shakes are a practical tool, not a dietary destination.
• Use bands for both joint-friendly strength gains and psychological wins over plateaus.
• Consistency, enjoyment, and internal feedback trump mindless PR chasing.

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Transcript

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[Justin Andrews]

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[Sal DeStefano]

Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews,

[Justin Andrews]

you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode we answered live callers questions so people called in. We got to help them on air with their health and fitness. But this was after the intro. Today's intro was 54 minutes long. In the intro we talk about muscle building and fat loss, body sculpting, diet, all the great things about fitness plus current events and family life. If you want to call in and be on an episode like this, here's what you do. Send your question to nplifecaller.com now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is RO Nutrition. That's R H O Nutrition. So they make lots of different products including creatine tmg, we talked about that today, glutathione. But it's all encapsulated in liposomal technology. This means more of it gets used by the body. You get less gastro distress from their creatine. Basically it's medical grade delivery system of supplements. So it's much better. Go check them out. Get yourself 20% off. Go to rownutrition.com discountmindpump that's R H O-nutrition.com discount mindpump Use the code mindpump for 20% off. This episode is also brought to you by Huel. This is a meal replacement shake. It's ready to drink, it's vegan, it's got protein, it's got some carbohydrates, fiber, some healthy fats. It's a great way to replace some of your meals to make them healthier. Today we talked about that strategy for fat loss and Huel is one of our best or favorite ready to drink type meal replacement shakes. Go check them out. Get yourself a discount. Go to huel.com mindpump that's H U E l that link with the code mindpump will get you 15% off. Also this month, buy any Maps 15 style workout program. Get any other Maps 15 style program for free. So it's buy one, get one free. It's happening right now. Go to maps15bogo.com Here comes the show.

[Doug]

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[Doug]

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[Justin Andrews]

All right, real quick.

[Adam Schaefer]

If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs or training gear [e-mail] I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to mypumpstore.com that's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.

[Justin Andrews]

Getting stronger through strength training is awesome. We love it and it produces great results and it adds to longevity, helps with fat loss. But believe it or not, there are times, there are definite times you should not try to get stronger. In fact, if you do, you're going to cause problems. So don't add weight to the bar if this is you and we're going to get to it right now.

[Doug]

Oh, let's hear it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So I'm going to just preface with why this conversation is coming up because, you know, I experienced this myself in the first few and this is going to be confusing for some people because we advocate for getting stronger so often and it is very important, especially the first few years of training. But there are times when adding weight to the bar becomes a problem. It actually will reduce your ability To. To get great results and. Or dramatically increase your risk of injury. And I see this with myself. For me, at this point in my, you know, lifting career or journey or whatever, getting stronger doesn't produce great results. It just means I'm lifting heavier. Yeah. And the risk is too high for the reward, or the reward is actually quite little and the risk is quite high. So it doesn't make any sense at all. For me.

[Adam Schaefer]

I would.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

I would think this would apply more towards mature lifters.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Because of that fact. It's like, it's not a. A linear progression. You know, at a certain point, like, you know, you have to assess different. Different types of strength and different ways to reinforce your body besides just loading the weight.

[Doug]

So what does a mature lifter look like? Like, is it years? Is it a certain level of development in the physique? Like, how would you. Because I agree. Yeah. And much of my lifting looks like that. Today is just like, there's no. It doesn't make sense for me to push to the limits of. Or chase a pr. Like, it doesn't make sense at all. Now I'll tell you what that justification for me is. I built the physique that I wanted in enough muscle, and so it's really easy for him not to just like, I don't. I don't need to. Sure, I like 10 more pounds of muscle, but it's not that big of a deal to me. Not like it was when I was, say, 22 and I was like, on this mission to build so much more muscle. So it's really easy for me to be like, I don't need to push those limits. Like, it was less. It was so more of that than. It was like a years that I've been lifting or.

[Justin Andrews]

No, totally. So that's actually the third point. So we'll fast forward to there and then we'll touch the other ones. So for the first. So strength is very closely correlated to muscle gain. Okay. And strength is the best correlate for longevity. When we're looking at physical performance, it's not muscle, it's strength. So when we look at, like, muscle mass, what we're really trying to look at is how strong you are. This is why a grip test is a better predictor of mortality than just muscle. It's the strength that produces longevity. It's the strength that builds muscle. But this is mostly true for the first few years of training. So to put it differently, you don't get stronger forever. If that were the case, every guy in this room we've been working out forever. We'd all be able to bench press five times.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'd be up in the thousand pound club, dude, that would have been awesome.

[Justin Andrews]

It just doesn't work that way. So for the first few years of training this is important. So like the best results that you could possibly get through strength training for probably your first, I don't know, two to four years and this could change depending on your age and all that stuff. But the first few years I would say generally speaking of training will come from getting stronger. So you should try to get stronger for the first few years at least. After that it doesn't make much sense. This is true if you're already super strong, which we'll get to in a second. And also true if you're just very experienced now. This doesn't mean you can't build more muscle because the strength to muscle correlate actually starts to weaken the stronger you get. In other words, to go, you know, let's say I'm a regular dude, I'm in the gym, I'm trying to build my chest and I can do 10 reps with 135 pounds. To go from 135 to 225 pounds on the bench I'm going to see a lot of muscle. Yeah. On my body to go from 225 to 315 I'll see some muscle. To go from 315 to 405, I'm not going to see that much more muscle. I'm just going to get stronger but I'm not going to see this huge gain in muscle mass. This is true for every single lift. So if you're already really strong then getting stronger is just getting stronger.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's interesting because I see this so clearly with powerlifting in the pursuit of just know being able to, to achieve these, you know, these PR lifts like continuously and like you do get strong and you do get like that specificity of really focusing on that, like you'll build up to the point where you get really strong. Those lifts however, now it's taking away functionality. Now it's taking away joint health. Now it's taking away like there's a trade off to that, like past a certain tipping point. And so it's like, yeah, even if you can get stronger, you know, now you have other things to contend with. And it's like is it, is the juice worth the squeeze in that regard?

[Doug]

There's got to be a good graph or formula for this. You know what you just. You did a good job, in my opinion, of describing that, because I would agree with. But is that more close to our us? Maybe that's why it resonated with me when you said it, I'm like, yeah, that feels. You're right. Like the difference of, I mean, just getting to 135 bench. Whoa, what a big difference that was. Just to put the two wheels on. I remember, like, the development of, like, my chest. And then I remember Getting up to 225, huge leap. 135. 225, huge leap difference at 220. 225, 315. Definitely starting to get there. Anything beyond that? It's like you don't see any. And now it's like, that's when I started hitting over 300 pounds. Was this is when aches and pains and started noticing you're just lifting more? Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So.

[Doug]

And I thought that's my journey, right? Maybe.

[Justin Andrews]

So I thought heavily about this because this is so different from person to person, right? It is very. Because some people are just based on their leverage, just how their CNS is, their morphology. Now I know what my numbers are, so I can give you my numbers. In fact, I was having a conversation, conversation with my cousins this morning because I just. There are certain numbers that when I get close to them, I just end up feeling my joints. Like, for bench press, when I get around £300, it makes no difference. Now I'm just wasting time. I'm just starting to hurt. When I get my deadlift. Close to 5, 55, 70, it's like, what am I doing here? I'm just starting to increase my risk of injury. My squat, when I get it closer to 400, it just. And those seem to be my numbers. They just seem to be my numbers. If I go beyond those, I can lift more weight. I get no more gains. I just hurt more.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And so it is different from person to person. But I think you'll know this for yourself. Like, you've been working out for a while. You're like, yeah, this is. This is really strong for me.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Pushing beyond that, you're just lifting more weight at that point. As far as experience is concerned, unless you're a kid, you know, I said around three years. Well, if you're 16, you know, you probably want to get stronger, too. You're in your mid-20s. Right. But if you're an adult, you're not

[Adam Schaefer]

going to actualize your true potential.

[Justin Andrews]

Potential. If you're. If you're an adult. Like, the first few years you're training, get strong. That'll give you the best results. After that, you could still get great results, better results by not focusing so much on getting stronger by focusing on things like technique, range of motion, different angles, different styles of training is where you're gonna get your gains. Recruitment, it's not the straightforward. Like, let's just get.

[Doug]

Now, you. You said two to four. The number that came in my two to four years, the number came to mind was three to five for me right away. And I guess the way I thought about it and like, okay, so why. Why someone at 2 years versus someone at 5 years? I think it has to do with how consistent you.

[Justin Andrews]

Truly, totally.

[Doug]

Right. Like.

[Justin Andrews]

Like two years dedicated.

[Doug]

Yeah, exactly. But that's to me. And the reason why three to five years came to my mind is because, like, very few people are. I don't miss a workout for two years, you know, and diet, and they're dialed right. So it's like, you know, if you're super crazy dialed, you could start to get to those peak PR numbers or reach potential. You know what I'm saying? Diet and training for two, three years in a row. But most people, you'll probably be able to focus on this for a good four or five years, being relatively consistent. Yeah, because most people aren't that crazy, dialed in for that, that many years. So that was why I thought like 3 to 500%.

[Justin Andrews]

Now, now, here's another time you don't add weight to the bar. It's when your form isn't perfect. Okay, not good, but perfect. So what people need to understand is that when you're holding a weight, the joint that's moving, it's a lever. Okay. In other words, if I'm doing a curl, the elbow joint is moving, the dumbbell is in my hand, so there's a lever there, meaning that the weight that is being the tension at the elbow is actually higher than the weight that's in my hand. So a good example of this would be like picking up a broomstick. If you pick it up in the middle, it's kind of easy. You pick it up at the very end, you try to lift it. So if the end comes off the floor suddenly, it feels a lot more difficult. There's a lot of. There's leverage that's happening there, and it's a disadvantage. So let's talk about a barbell squat. If I have £200 on my neck or my bar on my back, I should say the. The tension at My spine, especially my lumbar spine is actually a lot more. And If I add £50 to the bar, I'm probably adding more like a hundred pounds to my lumbar spine. And if my form is off by a little bit now, that extra hundred pounds becomes exponential. So I don't know if you guys have ever seen those diagrams. Chiropractors will have them where like four forward head and they talk about how much weight is on the neck every time the, the face moves forward.

[Doug]

The head weighs like average eight pounds

[Justin Andrews]

or something like that. And it's like you're putting 30 pounds of stress. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So it's like that. So it's like, you know, you need to have good form when you work out. When you get to heavy weight, you need to have perfect form. Your risk of injury goes through the roof as your strength goes up. And so if your form isn't perfect, you have no business adding any weight of to the bar. Just don't wait until your form is absolutely perfect. That's when it's safe. And if you sacrifice form for weight on the bar, you're playing a game of Russian roulette. This is, this is why if you ever meet an experienced lifter, you ever meet that guy in the gym that walks up to you and he's in his mid-40s or 50s, and he tells, he says stories like this, like, I used to squat 400 pounds, but now I can't anymore. I can't do that anymore. You know why? It's because he did what I'm talking about where. And I did this. I did this as a kid too.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is why wrist wraps are a problem.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And so I find now it's like I have certain little nagging areas. And I know why I have those is because I compromised my form even by a little bit as a kid to try to add, you know, weight on the body.

[Doug]

I mean, I love that tip because it feeds into my hypertrophy tip that I'm always giving people, which is slowing down your tempo.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Because very.

[Doug]

Because most people that are chasing PRs are rarely doing a 4 second negative.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

You know. Cause they're so concerned about putting more weight up. Yes. Throwing the weight up. And so they're using momentum. And so it's like teaching someone have perfect form, slow it down. And, and then that has such great hypertrophy benefits, you know.

[Justin Andrews]

So if you're always, you're adding tension by the way by doing that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Doug]

And so I, I like that for not Only safety and what you're talking about. But then it feeds fuels right into the benefits of hypertrophy training, which I think a lot of people neglect. When you are chasing strength so much, when you're so focused on strength, we tend to speed up the repetition so we could just put up more weight. And there's tremendous benefits, not just for safety reasons, but for hypertrophy reasons, for slowing the tempo down 100%.

[Justin Andrews]

Next one is if you feel anything that isn't good. So you're squatting, you're deadlifting. You're like, I feel a little bit in my back or my knee hurts. Just, it's nothing bad. It's like you hurt yourself, but you kind of feel it. Here's what you should do instead. Try using the weight that you're normally using and. And try to do it in a

[Adam Schaefer]

way to make it harder.

[Justin Andrews]

Make it harder and your knee stops hurting or your back stops bothering you. What you don't want to do is go past it by adding weight on the bar, because, again, you're asking for issues. So this happened to me this morning. So the reason why this conversation come up is once I get around £300 of my bench press, I start to notice certain issues. And one of them, it's just like this repeating issue. I start to feel like my pec insertion, my left pec insertion. And it's not injured. I just kind of feel it a little bit now. I could ignore it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And I could go up and wait and. But you know what? I'm playing with a torn pack if I start pushing it. And so I'm backing down. So the next three, four weeks, I'm going to go light and make the weight feel heavier. Now, in the past, I've done this to myself where I feel a little bit of something. I'm like, well, it's not bad. It just feels. Let me just stretch it. Let me just do a little mobility. And then go back to adding weight to the bar. And then, boom, I end up hurting myself. Like, if you don't feel great, you have no, no business adding weight.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is such the conundrum for, like, strength athletes or just athletes in general, because any of those little, like, indications and signals your body's sending itself, it's like, you know, you're kind of, like, programmed. And this. This happens when you're, like, performing, right. It's like, well, we need to ignore that because we need to keep performing. But it. In reality, when you're training, you have to listen, you have to Stop. You have to slow down. And so to your earlier point of, like, slowing your reps and, like, you're not gonna pay attention to that if you're just focused on getting through the movement and getting up with the weight. And so to kind of slow it down, really pay attention to, like, how your body's, like, signaling. You can make those little micro adjustments and save yourself a lot of pain.

[Justin Andrews]

Let me ask you guys this. I already know the answer, but let me ask you guys this. Think of the last four times you've. You've kind of injured yourself working out. I bet you every single time after you hurt yourself, you said this to yourself.

[Adam Schaefer]

I should have known was there.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I should have known better. Telling me.

[Adam Schaefer]

It was yelling at me.

[Justin Andrews]

That's my fault. That's my fault. Why did I do that? Oh, every. Every single time. Every. Every single time. All right, next up is if you have. If you've had bad sleep the night before. This is a. This is actually quite crazy. Like. Yeah. This is wild. The data.

[Doug]

It's the number one predictor of injury, isn't it?

[Justin Andrews]

It's worse than warming up. It's worse than poor form. It's bad. It's like the risk of injury goes through the roof. If you had a bad night of sleep the night before. You know why this one is so confusing?

[Adam Schaefer]

It's good to know.

[Justin Andrews]

Here's what can happen. This happens to me if I have one bad night of sleep because I'm stressed. Sometimes the next day, my stress hormones make me feel like I can push myself.

[Doug]

I'm glad you said that because I actually think it's really common that people that get a bad night's sleep, then they'll say things like, you know, I just gotta get going. I break that first sweat. And then I had this great. I had my adrenaline workout. It was a terrible night's sleep. And so they try and make this case for.

[Justin Andrews]

They've got all this cortisol.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

Hormones.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Pumping through their body.

[Doug]

Yes. But you're at. You have no idea what high risk you're at in that situation. It's just. The squeeze isn't worth it.

[Justin Andrews]

No. And it's well studied. So I don't think I've ever shared this before, but the very first time I pulled £600 was the four night of sleep. No. Well, it was the day after we initiate. I initiated my divorce with my ex wife. It was the day after. Wow. And I was in such a high state of stress that I was in this kind of like stress hormones, you know, like, I gotta go, I gotta, you know, figure this out type of deal. And I went and I pulled £600. And looking back I'm like, yeah, that was all, that was all stress hormones

[Doug]

and lucky you didn't get hurt and very lucky.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, I didn't get hurt. Yeah, yeah, that was a blessing. Last, lastly, it's, you're in a cut.

[Doug]

So this one is my favorite to talk about because it was so crazy to watch this at the professional level again. I think it was one of the things that gave me an advantage of being in a, you know, kind of fish out of water in a space that I wasn't familiar with. Didn't have coach with that, but I saw this and I was like the, the amount of pros that were ramping up intensity and volume when their nutrients were low, when they're in a cut for a show, they're in a eight week cut, doing cardio, doing this thing. And then they're also ramping up intensity inside the gym. And I'm going like, what are you doing right now? Like, talk about not only a recipe for possibly paring down and losing muscle, but also injury. Like, and I saw it all the time. So guys get hurt getting ready for a show, like, and, and a lot of it had to do with this.

[Adam Schaefer]

Just start with the, like just being anxious that they didn't, you know, do enough like leading into competition.

[Justin Andrews]

Trying to make it happen.

[Doug]

Yeah, trying to like last minute thinking they're either going to make gains coming into the last bit, which I thought was always ridiculous. It's like at this point you're not building any muscle, you're just revealing what you, what you've done or increasing that intensity and so that thinking that they're going to burn more calories which will help them get lean and shredded. And so I think the, the two of those is what fed that way of training and going like, dude, this is cruise control time. Like you did the work to build muscle. Like now it's all about reducing body fat and keeping the muscle. And you talk about the studies all the time about how little we have to do to keep the muscle. So I'm training every day, so I definitely don't need to be training super hard. Like you train once a week or once every other week, you'll hold a lot of muscle, so you don't need to do that. So the, this idea of pushing really hard while you're also in a cut is just counterproductive.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So the question that people have is, well, what if I feel strong? Like I'm going to cut and I feel strong? Well, you are if you're gen. If you're genuinely in a calorie deficit, you're in a stress place anyway, right? Your body is intaking less nutrients than it's burning. And so here's what you do. If you feel strong, you still go into your workout with moderate intensity. So, so long. If you can add weight to the bar and not hammer yourself, then that's totally fine. But oftentimes what people do is they hammer themselves. And you're better off this way. You're better off this way. Cause the biggest challenge with being in a cut with your workouts is that the workouts your body can't recover from very well. That's the biggest challenge. So volume needs to go down. Intensity needs to go down when you're in a cut, not up. This is what people have the flip. They think if they're in a cut, they need to ramp things up. It's actually the opposite. And that causes so many problems for people. Like you said, it's not just competitors, Adam. It's like, oh, I'm on this diet. I'm going to burn this off. I'm going to ramp. It's like you're burning the candle at both ends. It literally is what you're doing to your body.

[Doug]

So I'm smiling and laughing because something happened to me this weekend that. That feeds right into what you're talking about right now. So I had my. My big Hampton group thing, right? We're in Miami beach, and one of the guys has. His company is really cool. It does all these corporate events called Boom pop. Awesome company. I think it's the largest corporate event planning company in the world. And Blake is. Shout out to Blake. He's awesome. And he always plans our whole trip. And they're. They all. Everybody I go with are they're into working out and fitness stuff like that. And he plans all this stuff, and one of the things that he had planned was this, like, group boxing class.

[Justin Andrews]

Did you do this?

[Doug]

So listen. So listen. And so, you know, I'm. I'm.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm.

[Doug]

I'm on a trip, right? So one of the things I do when I'm on vacation, like this is I'm not getting all my meals. So I already know that I'm like, lower calorie, lower protein, time difference. Yeah, yeah. And didn't get good sleep at all. And so I went in and I got my lift in the morning. And followed that up with a good breakfast and a protein shake. So I at least get some protein. My lifting was very moderate. Like I wasn't just all the points we're talking about right now. I know I'm not slept. Slept well. I know that I'm under caloried and stuff like that. And so. And then the second day there's this boxing class and I'm just like, yeah, I'm not going to that, you know.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

And I don't want like, you're the fitness guy. Yeah. And I'm the fitness guy. And so there is a part of me that's just like, you know, you should probably run it by me and ask me some questions. Because I'll tell you why none of you should probably go to this place.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Right.

[Justin Andrews]

That's bad for all of you.

[Doug]

Yeah. It's not good for. Because I know what everyone's goals are and I'm like, this is not a good idea if you want to. You know what I'm saying? So. But I don't. I just like, I want to bow out. And then like he like made me feel guilty because he paid for it ahead of time. And so like, I just, I don't, I don't show up. And I, I Venmo. Venmo him money for not going so like that. But I could tell he was a little frustrated and upset that I didn't go. And I, and I, and I feel bad because I also don't want to be that guy lecturing everybody on the thing. But, but the logic that that's going through my head is exactly that. It's like, why would I. My goal is be muscle sparing on a trip like that. Right. And, and, or build. I'm not in like lean out, get smaller guy version right now. I'm in smaller me already. So I'm already trying to preserve what I got. And I, and I had already trained that morning, so I already kind of know like what I should or shouldn't be doing for the rest of the day. And then there's this high intensity boxing class and I'm like, yeah, no, there's. I'm not going to tell all of you. You shouldn't. Even though I don't think you should either. I'm gonna. Whatever. But I'm definitely not going. And so it was pretty funny that, you know, I was that guy. You know what I'm saying? And I'm like. But I don't want to preach too, you know.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, dude.

[Doug]

I think I feel like so I'm caught in, like, his predicament.

[Justin Andrews]

I feel like fitness professionals, I don't know, trainers, coach, whatever. Like, I think often we're in a situation like this where family's like, we're all going to do this, like, fitness. And they all look to the fitness guy. Yeah, you know, your eyes roll.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're like, oh, God, the way to do it.

[Justin Andrews]

No, I don't want to do it.

[Doug]

And I know. And I know.

[Justin Andrews]

I know you're all going to watch me because I'm the fitness guy.

[Doug]

And I'm sure the way they think and I'm sure there's somebody who's. Who's listening, thinks, too. It's like, oh, come on, Adam. It's like one class. You're not. And it's not like, I know I'm not going to lose five pounds of muscle in one class. It's not that either. It's like, it doesn't even sound like fun to me. It doesn't sound like fun. And it's not good for me. So I'm like, yeah, I'm probably not

[Justin Andrews]

going to do that thing.

[Doug]

So that's where I feel, like, bad. And I'm like, just. I opted not to, like, lecture everybody online, like, all their goals and what they're doing.

[Justin Andrews]

I had a good conversation. Similar. I had a real good conversation. I do this. I volunteer at our church, and I was at this table and they served dinner. And so we all had dinner. And then I had, like a couple bags of chips because I barely had any dinner because I'd eaten before. They had potato chips there. And so I had a couple bags. And of course. And I'm not even thinking about it. I'm just like, whatever, it's too small bag. Who cares, right?

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I'm not even thinking about it. And of course, one of the guys looks at me and goes, I feel so much better now that I see a fitness guy like you eating two bags of chips. So I'm like, you know, a nice conversation about nutrition. I'm like, I almost never eat this. I said, but also I have the ability to eat stuff like this. It's not that big of a deal because of these. And so we had this wonderful conversation. People think that fitness, like, being fitness minded, means that you're like this crazy, rigid robot. Yeah. Like, perfect. And I'm like, that sucks. Does anybody really want to live that way? That's not what I preach.

[Doug]

We're so aligned right now in stories. So listen.

[Justin Andrews]

So they see you again.

[Doug]

Listen so now. Now I'm in the airport. This is me getting ready to FL.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Back.

[Doug]

So I'm getting ready to fly back. I'm. I'm.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm.

[Doug]

Where you go to ch. Get on the plane, right? Waiting. It's like 10 minutes till we're boarding. And I'm leaning against the wall. My. My. My head's kind of down. I'm, like, looking at my phone. So that. And I'm holding the bag of Doritos because I had just got a chicken sandwich and it came. And it came with chips. Chips also. So I'm holding this bag of Doritos, and I'm just. I'm just sitting there.

[Adam Schaefer]

Protein.

[Doug]

And I'm right on a corner of a wall.

[Adam Schaefer]

And so this.

[Doug]

This couple comes up and they're in the corner of my eye, and my. My head's down, and they're like, is the plane boarding or not? And I look up and the. Both. The couple goes. And they. They point at me. They're like, mind pump. And I'm like, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So I. Yeah.

[Doug]

Introduce myself. And hey, while we're talking, I could see them, like, looking down at me holding this bag of Doritos, you know, say, the whole time, overall, talking.

[Justin Andrews]

They were super friendly.

[Doug]

Talked to him for a long time, actually. The guy is. It was so great. The. The wife turned him on to the show. He was a pilot, and so they were looking to see they could jump on the plane. And they were. I forgot where they were going hiking somewhere, and they were just making a stop along the way. Great, great couple. And he's a pilot, super in good shape, and he helps other pilots stay in shape. Takes a lot of the information and stuff that he's learned from the show and applies it to the clients and things that. That he helps out. But he specializes in helping other pilots stay fit and get in shape.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, that's cool.

[Doug]

Yeah, Yeah. I invited him to come down. I said, hey, you guys should come for a live recording. He'd email, so I'll set up a time, so hopefully you guys get a chance to meet him. But that was so funny, that. Just so random like that.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I had.

[Doug]

I did it up eating them, but I was like, even on the fence of, like, throwing them away. Like, I should throw these away. I'm going to snack on them. But I could see.

[Adam Schaefer]

I could see a lot of stories like you guys, but, you know, because my physique's a little different, but. But I do get all the time is really annoying. Like, when I go to buy energy drinks. I get a lecture from, like, the gas station guys.

[Justin Andrews]

What?

[Adam Schaefer]

These really are good for you, you know, like, all red, terrible entrepreneur. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm buying from your store.

[Doug]

Well, I was going to say that if the. The person owns that gas stat, the person who owns that gas station would be pissed. That's how they make their money. They don't make no money on gas. Exactly. Yeah. It's just.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's bizarre, dude. Like, I've gotten so much grief every time I drink an energy drink, and I'm just like, that's interesting, dude.

[Justin Andrews]

That's hilarious. This is not saying this is not the same at all, but it does remind me of this one. I used to have this client who was an oncologist, so cancer doctor. Right? And great guy. Super great guy. Obviously a stressful job. It's like, I can't imagine a more stressful doctor job that you could do. Right. And I'll never forget, we were scheduled to train the client that I had before him didn't show up. So I go for a walk, and I walk by him, and he's out, like, nearby, smoking a cigarette. And he's a cancer doctor. And I'm.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, my God.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, dude. I'm like, oh, my God. I remember thinking to myself, like, how could you?

[Adam Schaefer]

You start scratching your head.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So he came in and we start working. Knew the guy. I was. I was friends with him. We've been training for years. I'm like, dude, I gotta tell you, bro. So I walked by you, I saw you smoking a cigarette, dude. I said, aren't you like, you know the stats? I'm like, aren't you a cancer doctor? And he goes, yeah, that's why I smoke. I remember my heart broke. And I was like, oh, yeah, dude, of course you smoke, bro. You see people dial, say, you're so stressed.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm like, it's actually outlet. And then I told him, like, I'm. You know what? Oh, my God, you're. I said, I'm surprised you don't do more than smoke cigarettes. I'm like, good job, dude. Let's work out, bro.

[Doug]

Now, I would not put that on the same category. Yeah, definitely not. Definitely not the same as a trainer who eats. Eats a high cow.

[Justin Andrews]

We're not stressed out. That's not why we eat Doritos. You know what? It's like podcasting. I gotta eat these Doritos sneaks in there. No. Anyway, so I was. I gotta talk about. So I finally did. I know you guys did too I think you guys did right. I did my first appointment with our partners at MP Horn.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Oh, yeah.

[Doug]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Just finish that. Yep.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean, their service is great. So fast.

[Doug]

Very, very good.

[Justin Andrews]

Listen, two days later, turnaround's amazing. Two days later, I got my stuff

[Doug]

and so I. I had two days. I had an hour call with a medical professional. Yeah, an hour. We went over everything. Everything.

[Adam Schaefer]

Very thorough.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Anyway, so I want to tell you guys. So first off, they definitely like the reviews. Their service is great. Super fast, which is crazy. Our old partners, it would take me like two weeks, three weeks to get my stuff. I know it was two days was at my door. But anyway, they set me up with a peptide called 5Amino 1 MQ. I know it sounds like this long. Whatever. It's a capsule.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wow.

[Justin Andrews]

So what it does is it inhibits an enzyme called nmnt. By doing so, it increases NAD in your cells. It's a fat loss peptide. But that's not why the guy recommended to me, he said it's good for energy. And I'm gonna tell you guys, this is day three of me taking it, and it's phenomenal.

[Doug]

So explain to me how is this better than just taking straight nad?

[Justin Andrews]

Because this prevents. This raises NAD way more effectively than taking NAD will. Because it prevents the breakdown of NAD or the conversion of NAD to something that's not usable. So you already have nad.

[Doug]

Comparing arginine versus citrulline.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Great job, dude. That's right. Absolutely. That's right. Nitric oxide more than.

[Adam Schaefer]

Are you doing the injectable CMAX too?

[Doug]

I know.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's like, I just. I'm so happy.

[Justin Andrews]

Did you get that?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, I got that and nad. Yeah, I do. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's like.

[Justin Andrews]

Like turning clarity. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's crazy.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, the. The 5Amino One MQ, this is day three or four and like, crazy stamina. Working out, sat in the sauna. Normally it's a 200 degrees, 20, 25 minutes. And I'm like, I got to get out of here. Yeah, it was 25 minutes, 200 degrees. I had to get out because otherwise I was gonna be late for work. I was like, I could sit in here for another 10 minutes. This is wild. So that stuff. Yeah. I was thinking Doug would be. Should probably use something.

[Adam Schaefer]

I was trying to, but it's order everything.

[Justin Andrews]

It's in capsule form. If you look at the reviews, people like the fat loss. That's not why I'm taking it. Yeah, I could care less. But the energy part was, you know, Made me excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

How crazy did you get? Because I was. You know, it's funny, they were asking me like, are you sure you don't want any? And I'm like, oh, I just want my basic.

[Justin Andrews]

No, I just got a couple things. Okay, I did that.

[Doug]

I said, wait for your call with Sal. I said, yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

I was thinking Sal brain. I was like, I don't know. I'm in a kid in a candy store. I'm like, give me everything. I'm trying to get as much stuff as I can think.

[Justin Andrews]

No, I, I think I should try the CMax. So I haven't done that a long time.

[Doug]

Yeah. Is it also.

[Justin Andrews]

Is it nasal injectable.

[Doug]

That's injectable version.

[Adam Schaefer]

And, and then finally got some good hexa again. So I'm happy.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah, you like that stuff? Yeah, he loves that stuff.

[Doug]

All right, now you've had, you've had, you've had the, the nasal and the injectable CMax, right. Do you prefer one or the other?

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, so far I like the injectable.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Over far as feeling the difference. So yeah, I definitely feel a little bit different.

[Justin Andrews]

Awesome. All right, I got a cool study for you guys on exercise and exercise variety. I'm going to pull it up because I think it's pretty interesting. So they studied people who did different forms of exercise and single forms of exercise. And here's what they found. The people who did the most different types of exercise. Okay, so people who did like cardio, strength training, you know, stretching, like the people have the most variety.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Had the best all cause mortality. And it had nothing to do with doing more exercise. It had everything to do with more variety of exercise.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Justin Andrews]

So. Which is kind of cool. So people who kind of do this kind of like makes sense, you know. It does make sense. Yeah. So doing a variety of exercise is for mortality. Longevity is better.

[Doug]

Well, this, I mean, this is what.

[Justin Andrews]

Which I would have guessed.

[Doug]

I would have guessed that too. I mean this is the, the thing that I think I've talked about with you guys, like early years, how I used to. Every workout I said, didn't I never repeat itself. Yeah, lots of benefits of like I could see of just overall health.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Like joint health, mobility. Like I felt good, but I wasn't really strong, I wasn't really buff, but I was a little bit of all that responded well. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so for somebody who could care less about getting much bigger, building a bunch of muscle, or could care less about getting that Much stronger. And they just want to be relatively strong to their body weight and they want to feel good and beat longevity. It's a pretty good way to train.

[Justin Andrews]

So you know why I was so I was thinking about this a lot because I read this study last week and I've been thinking about this because there's a couple things we need to, we have to kind of tackle as coaches. And this one of them is more important than the other. Yes, variety of exercise, and this makes sense, is a good idea. But the main thing you need to tackle is that is what are people going to do consistently. This is just the number one factor.

[Doug]

Yeah, that too.

[Justin Andrews]

And so in my experience, and I think most coaches would agree, getting somebody to exercise, to do a structured form of exercise twice a week is a win period, end of story. So at the top of the list is what they like. And if they like few different things, but they want to get the most bang for their buck and they're not going to do a lot of variety, strength training seems to be the best. That being said, if you like to exercise and you don't mind the versions or types of exercise you do, I think the reason why this shows that it's so protective is because there's checks and balances with different forms of exercise. In other words, if I chase just building muscle, at some point I go beyond benefit and I start to sacrifice health benefits and go into just getting as big as possible. But if I'm running at the same time, it's going to prevent me from pushing that too much. If I only run lots of benefit from getting endurance. But at some point, if I push too much endurance, I'm sacrificing longevity. Strength training counters that a little bit. Flexibility, all the, all these things are kind of checks and balances because you could go too extreme in one pursuit and start sacrificing longevity. And each one of these is kind of a plus.

[Adam Schaefer]

All the different stimulus is going to help cognition, the brain and that connectivity there. So. Yeah, and I just think your, your body overall as a whole like it, you know, you express all these different types of movements. I think it's healthy.

[Doug]

I think, I think it's, it's very important though that you, you know what you want. Right? So, because this takes me back to the conversation I had with the, this group that I was with too, because, you know, they, they like, they may like to train classes and do all this stuff like that for these reasons of longevity and help it, but then when you're also sitting down you're going like, man, I want to build about 10, 15 more pounds of muscle.

[Adam Schaefer]

Now we're talking specifics.

[Doug]

Yes. And so I, I think that's the important thing because you'll have people. I like the variety and I like the training. I like all this stuff with that. But then I want to lose, you know, 10, you know, 10 pounds or I want to build fight. It's like, okay, well, there's a better way to go at that than this. Like all these random exercises all the time. Like, okay, they might benefit you longevity and it may, you might, it might be entertaining for you and you may not get a lot of joint pain from it because you're not hyper focused on something. But it is not the fastest, best way to build muscle or to lose body fat. There is a. And so I think that's people hear, hear one, one part of that and they go, oh, well, that's what I want you. It's like, yeah, but then they follow it right up with, yeah, but I want to, you know, I like to put, you know, ten pounds or I want my chest to look this or my shoulders. Look at that. It's like, okay, well, now we're talking about something different now. So it's like being very clear with what, what you want to get out

[Justin Andrews]

of it is important. No, 100%. Because now why is that important? Because results make somebody more consistent. Yeah, it's just a factor. It's not the factor, but it's one of the factors. And so if somebody does all these varieties of exercise, but they really want to see like a change in the way that their, I don't know, their arms look, they want to build little muscle. It can become very disheartening and unmotivating suddenly.

[Doug]

Well, this is how I, this is how I used to talk to my orange theory people is, you know, they come to me after like a class and they tell me how much they love the class. Like, listen, I'm never going to tell somebody who shows up to this thing three, four days a week and loves it and loves everything about it. But then you're like, I'm having such a hard time. I can't do this, I can't do that.

[Justin Andrews]

You're starting to feel disheartened.

[Doug]

Yeah, exactly. It's like, well, if, you know, if you're, if you're okay with how you look, how you feel from, from showing up to this class all the time, then keep going for it, keep doing it. But if you don't like the way you look or feel and you're doing this, there's a better way. And so, like, getting them to understand that, like, and. And every case is going to be different.

[Justin Andrews]

Totally. Totally. Doug, how. What's your. Have you been using the TMG from.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, I started to use it, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay, so I'm reading more about it.

[Doug]

What is that?

[Justin Andrews]

So betaine is another name for tmg. Tmg.

[Doug]

You brought that up once before, but I don't remember.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes, so I have some studies here because Doug was kind of talking about it. How long have you been taking it now, Doug?

[Sal DeStefano]

Just for about a week now.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. Are you noticing anything with your workouts yet?

[Sal DeStefano]

Not specifically, no.

[Justin Andrews]

What it says in the data is it does increase maximal strength and vertical jump. So it's athletic performance.

[Doug]

Wait a second. The studies show that that's.

[Justin Andrews]

It helps just that basically strength power is what you're gonna see in the studies from supplementing with it. So you'll see it in some.

[Adam Schaefer]

Sometimes I'm gonna take now.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, so sometimes they put it in pre workouts. You'll see it now. Roe has it liposomal, so the dose is getting more of it's gonna get absorbed in your body because it's protected by these kind of like these little lipid molecules.

[Doug]

What mechanism is. What does it do?

[Justin Andrews]

Increases ATP production. Really.

[Doug]

Like creatine. So paired with creatine.

[Justin Andrews]

Paired with creatine is amazing. That's the best. That's the best.

[Doug]

Oh, I wonder if a lot of creatine supplements carry it then in it. It's probably popular.

[Justin Andrews]

Some do. Some will include betaine or tmg, but. But if you're already taking creatine, take it. If you don't, take it. Also, it's got all these athletic performance benefits. Interesting. That's what I was wondering.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yes. You know, Thomas DeLauer has been talking a lot about it on Instagram, so I've been seeing his stuff come up. And one of the things that was interesting to me is the body recomp aspect of it. Losing body fat.

[Doug]

It helps with.

[Sal DeStefano]

I'm just looking at their website now. Normal liver fat metabolism. So that's interesting.

[Doug]

We should link up with. He's local.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah, he's local.

[Doug]

Yeah. We haven't seen. It's been like two years.

[Adam Schaefer]

Really?

[Justin Andrews]

Smart guy. You know what? I gotta say this. So the most common side effect of creatine is gastrodistress. And so some people will have to take smaller doses throughout the day. It's very common, by the way. You take a big enough Dose of creatine, everyone's going to get that. So, like, if you're taking creatine for brain health, you got to probably take closer to 10, 15, maybe 20 grams a day. You take that all at once, you're gonna have some. Some stomach issues. We're getting messages from people who are using rose creatine, and they're saying that they don't get gastro distress. Might be. So they're trying the bigger doses with the. With roe, and they're like, I have.

[Doug]

No, I didn't even think about that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

And I have, and I didn't notice anything. If I do the gummies, I have to break it up, which is.

[Justin Andrews]

You take too many at once, then.

[Doug]

Yeah, but I can drink a big dose. Interesting. I didn't even think of that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So I've got a few messages from people who are like, hey, I've tried the larger doses with row, and it doesn't bother my gut. And I think it's because it's liposomal. Yeah. So which makes sense. Which kind of makes sense. It's still the same. Still creating monohydrate. Yeah. You're not gonna. It's not like it's gonna give you.

[Doug]

Yeah, but that's good to know because there's.

[Justin Andrews]

There's.

[Doug]

There's times where I'm. I'm taking it and I'm thinking, like, okay, I want to. I want to boost it, you know, especially after, like, a poor night's sleep. Right. So that'd be a time I'd want to do a mega dose. That would be a better way to do it. I didn't even think of that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Cool, huh? So I. I read something the other day that I wasn't fully familiar with. So do you guys know who Pope John Paul was? You guys?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

When we were kids, he was.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay, so he was. He was famous for a few different.

[Adam Schaefer]

Pope Mobile.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes.

[Adam Schaefer]

After you get.

[Justin Andrews]

That's right. So a couple things he did that were really interesting. One was he gave a speech in Poland. I believe that they. That people believe. Historians believe was one of the contributing factors to the fall of the Soviet Union. Of the Soviet Union in Poland in communist, you know, territory. He had people chanting, like, millions of people chanting, we want freedom. We want freedom. Which is like. Like, you say that in the communist country. And. But anyway, so there's that very brave guy. So he. There was an assassin assassination attempt on him in 1982. Maybe Doug, you can confirm this. So he got shot. Dude in the crowd pull Out a gun. There's a picture of this guy holding a gun, like you could see when the guy shot him. He gets shot. Was it 1981?

[Sal DeStefano]

Let me see here. 45 years ago.

[Justin Andrews]

So let me just see it. Said it earlier when you were in the.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, 1981.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So he gets shot. They rush him to the hospital, like, straight in the chest. The surgeon pulls out the bullet. And he said that the bullet went straight for his artery and went around it. So it went for the artery and it went around it. He's like, I've never seen anything like this. It's so wild. This should have totally killed you. So, of course, the Pope's like, it's a miracle. And he's got this famous quote where he says one hand pulled the bullet, pulled the trigger, and another hand guided the bullet, which is kind of cool. So anyway, there's a picture of him with the guy that tried to shoot him. He met.

[Doug]

Wait, that's a picture of him with the guy who tried to shoot him?

[Justin Andrews]

That's right.

[Sal DeStefano]

He didn't try to shoot him. He actually shot him.

[Justin Andrews]

So he didn't shoot him.

[Sandy (Caller)]

He.

[Justin Andrews]

He visited the guy in prison. So the guy that tried to kill him, and he talked to him, and basically like, I forgive you. Right. And he's like. Like. Like talking this guy in this. In prison, the man finally gets released. Later, converts, becomes a Christian.

[Doug]

No way.

[Justin Andrews]

There's a famous.

[Doug]

I didn't know that.

[Justin Andrews]

There's a famous picture of the guy at the. The funeral of Pope John Paul, and he's basically like, you know, this horrible thing that I did, and it got me to become.

[Doug]

Wow. There's all kinds of pictures of him meeting with him right there.

[Justin Andrews]

Huh. Isn't that wild?

[Doug]

That is wild.

[Justin Andrews]

Isn't that crazy? Such a crazy story of redemption, you know, it's like the guy tried to kill you, and then you visit him genuinely.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And it changes the man.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's sad we don't hear more stories like that.

[Doug]

Did you know that's already. Yeah. Oh, you already knew. I didn't know that story.

[Justin Andrews]

There's another crazy story. You can watch the video. People can look this up. You can. You can hear these guys get interviewed. You guys know Billy Graham was. Yeah. So, like. Like greatest evangelists of the modern times. There were these three men. I don't know where they were. They have an English accent. Because I watched the video of these guys. They went to one of his. I don't know, what do you call it when he gets. When he's speaking to like huge stadiums.

[Adam Schaefer]

What is that, like a big, like, altar call or.

[Justin Andrews]

I don't know what it is. Evangelist event or something. Yeah, he would do these all over the world, right?

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

These guys showed up with a gun and they're like, when he does the call. So at the end of these, at the end of him preaching. Yeah. What Billy Graham would do. That's the video right there. Would be what? What Billy Graham would do is he'd call people up to accept Christ, right? He'd say, come up and whatever. So they're like, we were gonna wait till he did that. We were gonna walk up and shoot him. We hated him. We wanted to kill him. So they sat in this, in the lawn waiting, listened to the whole thing. Listening.

[Doug]

And converted.

[Justin Andrews]

And converted. And they went up there and got baptized.

[Doug]

Dude.

[Justin Andrews]

Isn't that wild? Yeah, it's such a crazy story that. Watch that whole video right there.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wow.

[Doug]

Oh, is that it right there?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, that guy right there, dude.

[Doug]

Oh, was he one of the ones that was plotting to kill?

[Justin Andrews]

He was one of the guys that wanted to kill him. Yeah, I guess there were gangsters or something that were. Oh, wow. Yeah, dude, I know.

[Doug]

That's wild.

[Justin Andrews]

Such crazy. Such crazy stories. Anyway, I'm changed topics here a little bit. Want to talk about a strategy? I don't think it's a long term strategy, but it is a strategy that people can use to help them with fat loss. And I don't like talking about it too much because people can get carried away with it, but it is a strategy and it can be used especially initially when you're trying to get things kind of under control. And that is to replace one of your meals with a meal replacement shake. Now, people have gone too far with this in the past, but I could definitely, I've definitely seen this be a successful strategy to do with some of my clients. And I've gotten them to move from there to whole natural foods, but just as a way to get them to get things under control.

[Doug]

Well, I'll tell you a way I've done it as a strategy. Where I like it is post reverse diet. So what I'll do and I've done before with somebody is slowly increasing their calories through whole foods. Like we all talk about. Get them up to a place. Let's say I like, say I have a female client that hires me and she's at 1800 calories. And over the next six months, I get her all the way up to like 26, 2700 calories. And she's like, this is, this is so much food and like a good place to go because it's so much food. And I still want to say our protein is. I'll take one of those meals and replace it with like a ready to drink or a shake.

[Justin Andrews]

There you go.

[Doug]

Some sort of a drink.

[Justin Andrews]

I've never done that.

[Doug]

Oh, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, that's great.

[Doug]

That's a great way to cut, cut the calories back, still get protein intake in easier for them to digest so they're not force feeding themselves more food. And then it's a nice way for us to start to lean out. So it's a perfect way after a reverse diet.

[Justin Andrews]

Here's how I've done it with clients. So I've done it with like clients that really struggle with nutrition. And then what the conversation typically looks like, like this. I'll say, okay, which meal is the most difficult for you? And typically it's breakfast or lunch. Sometimes it's later, but. But typically it's like breakfast, I'm coming out of the house, I don't eat anything. Then I overeat later or I grab this really fast garbage food or it's lunch. I don't pack a meal. I'm terrible at meal prepping. Lunchtime. I end up ordering out or whatever. So with these clients, what I've done is I've said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna do a meal replacement shake in the morning or for lunch, you're just gonna have a meal replacement shake. And it worked for a lot of these people. And what I mean by worked is it was a good bridge, it was a good starting point. And then we move to different behaviors. Now here's the key with this is protein shakes were okay, but they're not a meal. So protein shakes are just protein. And what you want, if you have a meal replacement is some carbs and some fiber and a little bit of fats with your protein, it's going to produce more satiety and it's a more complete meal. It's not just pure protein. Yeah. Because sometimes people use just protein.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Well, you explain the differences. People have heard us talk about. So example of that would be like, like Huel replacement, actual meal replacement. Then you've heard us talk about things like whey protein powder, which is just protein. Just protein. And so this is different. And then so you have to explain the difference.

[Justin Andrews]

What's the benefit? Why, why would I want meal replacement? Because I'm going to get some Carbohydrates, I'm gonna get a little bit of fats, I'm gonna get some fiber. And so it's going to give me more satiety. And it's more of a legit meal because it's more complete. Like you would never have a meal that was like a boiled plain chicken breast. You know, it would always include some other macros in there.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And so Huel is much more of an appropriate. That's a good example. Much more of an appropriate way to do this.

[Doug]

What is there. What is their Mac? Could you pull up their site, Doug, real quick? What is their. Their macro right now? I know they're high protein, 35 to 40 grams. Normally.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, 35 grams protein, 7 grams of fiber.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And look up their complete macros, Doug, if you can, because there's also a little bit of fat, some. There you go. Yeah. What do we got?

[Sal DeStefano]

And let me pull it up. It's pretty small here. Oops, I just made it smaller.

[Justin Andrews]

So one bottle is 400 calories, which is a meal. Yeah, yeah. You know, versus a 160 calorie. You know, just protein, nothing else.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, clients on the go, that was always like hard, you know, when they make bad decisions. So to have a replacement was always a good option.

[Doug]

This is also vegan too. So.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Can you read that?

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So.

[Sal DeStefano]

So they.

[Justin Andrews]

I'll.

[Sal DeStefano]

You want all the macros in.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Protein, fats, carbs.

[Sal DeStefano]

So. Yeah. So fat, 17 grams carbohydrates. It looks like 30 grams and protein is 35 grams. Plus there's some other.

[Doug]

What's their. What's their micronutrients? What's their protein blend? What are they using?

[Justin Andrews]

Pea protein is one of the main.

[Sal DeStefano]

So P. Faba bean. Yeah, P Faba beans.

[Justin Andrews]

Looks like the pea protein's got a pretty good amino acid profile for. For vegan protein. And it tastes really good, which is. Which is important.

[Doug]

They do taste good.

[Justin Andrews]

It's important.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

People need to eat something.

[Doug]

They have a. You guys. They have a. They have a coffee one.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Have you.

[Doug]

Did you finally get a chance to have.

[Sal DeStefano]

I've never tried the coffee, but, you know, I've just been avoiding the caffeine. Probably is the real reason.

[Doug]

Yeah, they.

[Justin Andrews]

It's not a lot of caffeine.

[Sal DeStefano]

Yeah, I'll try it. Maybe after this.

[Doug]

I actually didn't even check the amount of caffeine, to be honest with you. That's.

[Justin Andrews]

That's just not immune.

[Doug]

Yeah, I know. I knew it wasn't no high caffeine to me, I don't count under 50 grams, dude. It's got to be at least 100. At least for me to even count it. But it's the flavor I like. I like coffee flavored stuff. So the. The iced coffee one is. Is bomb.

[Justin Andrews]

Have you. Have you guys ever used. Maybe Justin, you have. We've used bands to. To add resistance to, you know, the bar. Have you done reverse bands? Reverse bands?

[Doug]

Yeah. Or helps you.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes, you.

[Doug]

Oh yeah. I saw you doing your video.

[Adam Schaefer]

I made fun of one time because I posted a video about that when I was doing Bench and I was just like, I was inside the rack and I had it set up. Yeah. So I could. And I was just experimenting with it because I had seen power lifters do that before.

[Justin Andrews]

You know what's weird? So, you know, you would think it doesn't matter.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

If I put bands as to add resistance or if I put bands totally different. It feels way different. But here's why I would think it's the same. Because if it's pulling up, I'm gonna get. It's gonna pull up the hardest at the bottom. So it's gonna make it heaviest at the bottom line. At the top. If I'm doing it to add weight, it's also easiest at the bottom.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Doug]

The lock opposite happens. You can load. You can load more when it's assisting.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, it is. But then the weight would be the same because the band.

[Doug]

Yeah, but. Yeah, but mentally unfairly.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Doug]

But now I can. Can feel heavier weight of real weight. In other words, like. So I like it for. Actually squatting is awesome in the cage with assistance. So I used. When I was getting used to moving 405, like when that. When I was getting to that place. I started with getting assisted with the bands when that would be like a single PR. But I could put some heavy bands on the 405 and get like 3 reps. 3 reps out of that feeling that you're built in spotter feeling that 405. Yes. 405 on my back. But I've got the.

[Justin Andrews]

You would think if you added enough band resistance it would be the same weight. So I'm trying to.

[Doug]

It is, but it's a different field now. Now I have 315 on my back and I'm adding bands. So sure at the top they. They both feel the same. But that's not what I. I want to feel what 405 free weight feels on my back. So when I unrack it, I'm feeling like, oh my where that would be. So we're at the top where you're re. Racking and stuff. You're. If you're.

[Adam Schaefer]

If it's heavy at the top.

[Doug]

Yeah. It feels different. Feels way different.

[Justin Andrews]

I think it. Maybe I've been thinking about this because I'm like, doing the math in my head. It says I'm doing the math. It does feel different. It feels way different. So I'm doing the math. I think it might have more to do with the fact from attention in

[Doug]

a resistance place, those studies would show it's the same.

[Justin Andrews]

It's the same. Yeah. I think it has more to do with where the band is anchored because it's. It's pulling me in a direction versus pulling me in a direction. Yeah. So he has more to do with the anchor. But here's a. Here's a funny thing.

[Adam Schaefer]

Thing.

[Justin Andrews]

Band assisted does not cause as much stress on my body as.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it lifts a lot of that tension in the joint.

[Justin Andrews]

Weird.

[Adam Schaefer]

I know.

[Justin Andrews]

It's like I could do more volume with band assistance. Even if I felt when I was

[Adam Schaefer]

benching, it was like, sometimes I'll get a little bit of a tweak in my shoulder, like at a certain point, a certain weight. And it was just like it wasn't there because it just had that little bit of extra bit of elasticity.

[Justin Andrews]

It's why it's like my favorite. My favorite way to get stronger fast is to use bands.

[Doug]

Yeah, that.

[Adam Schaefer]

And then like using them fast, like, for fast.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, I have yet to do that.

[Doug]

When you. When you reverse the. The direction is when the most stress is on the joints. And so now that's being assisted by the band versus the opposite.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

So think about that for a second. At the bottom of your bench when you're. When you're coming down the most. The most stress is right here. When you reverse direction, you now have assist there. When you have band the opposite way, the most amount is at the very top. At the bottom, it's not.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And so what I mean is it's. It's the same strength curve. It's easiest the bottom, hardest at the top. Whether the bands are on the bottom or on the top, it's the same. But it definitely feels less stressful on the body. And I'm really trying to think about why, but I don't know. 100%. I think just something. What you're saying, maybe it has to do with where the bands are directing.

[Doug]

So that's. I think that's one. And then the other thing again, That I find, I find beneficial when you're trying to get. Because most time you're using these bands because you're trying to want to get through a, a plateau.

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Doug]

If you want to get, get stronger. There's something about feeling that weight that you wouldn't do by yourself on your back or on your chest. Knowing that you have these bands to assist it, to get it, get it off.

[Adam Schaefer]

Psychological lift.

[Doug]

Yeah, like a psychological. It's just like I just feel. Getting me getting used to. I remember I've told this story before, back in the days when I was just like a 20 year old kid and those guys that were. At this time, I could barely do a plate squatting. They put like three plates on me. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Just like.

[Doug]

I'm like, I can't. Two plates.

[Justin Andrews]

Why I got three on here.

[Adam Schaefer]

I applied that same principle and I was like starting to approach the, you know, overhead press. It was like, I just need to feel the weight for a while.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

I just had to like hold it. I'm like, oh my God. It felt like lead weight, dude. Like the first like few weeks and then you start adapting, you start responding and like, okay, it starts to really kind of like your body produces.

[Justin Andrews]

So I love the way band assisted feels. It works great for pressing and squatting. Deadlifting. I don't. I'm like, where would I attach this for the deadlift? It doesn't make any sense, but I thought of an idea. So, you know, out there we have that platform where the bands go across and you could put the bar underneath it and pull up. Imagine if those attachments were higher. You put bands across it and put the bar on top of it. Yeah. Now you get a little bit of assistance.

[Doug]

Couldn't you do it inside the cage?

[Adam Schaefer]

Put it on your back.

[Doug]

You can do it.

[Justin Andrews]

Good. But it's gonna pull it straight up. And when you're trying to deadlift it, the bar is going to want to move away from you or towards you.

[Doug]

Because when you deadlift, your bar path

[Justin Andrews]

is straight a little bit. Yes. I mean, I haven't experimented with it, so.

[Doug]

Yeah, I bet you, I bet you could make. Inside the cage. You could do that.

[Adam Schaefer]

It'd be an interesting experiment.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. But it works. Really.

[Doug]

The challenge about inside the cage that I'm thinking about right now is that there's, there's a, the. The bar goes across.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah.

[Doug]

So I don't know if it would.

[Justin Andrews]

If the plates don't hit the ground.

[Doug]

Yeah, that would probably be the, the challenge.

[Justin Andrews]

Can you guys imagine what I'm thinking like higher, higher attachments, bands across. You put the bar on top of it.

[Doug]

Yeah. I've never done, I've never done band assisted deadlifts before. I've squatting and bench presses.

[Justin Andrews]

I've done band resistance, did deadlifts. I do those all the time.

[Doug]

You know what I haven't done with it to your. What you. Did you ever try that actually with shoulder pressing? It would be kind of cool to shoulder press with it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes, it feels great.

[Doug]

Yeah, that would be. I haven't done. I had never done it with shoulder press before.

[Justin Andrews]

It feels really good. Band assisted anything.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Feels really good on my body.

[Doug]

Shoulder press would be cool. I want to do that now. I never thought to do that with shorter press.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, well, the landmine. I'll do, you know, some of those presses where I actually stand on a rubber band and then have, you know, have the

[Justin Andrews]

bar.

[Adam Schaefer]

The bar. Yeah. And just like do some like shoulder presses, like single arm. And then so you get this like cool dynamic of. You could do speed reps with it or you could just do like. It adds to the resistance, but it's smoother.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And so, yeah, it's a totally different feel, but I've, I've experimented with that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. You know what's cool about what we're saying? So if somebody listening right now has a home gym and you want more variety, bands are phenomenal. And they're cheap. You can go on Amazon and get yourself a thick pair of like weightlifting bands. Yeah. And with your cage everything up.

[Doug]

Yeah, we also sell them too.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Do we have just the bands or do we have the ones with the handles?

[Sal DeStefano]

No, just bands.

[Justin Andrews]

Go on our site. Yeah, yeah. No, no, go on our site. Yeah, we got the best ones.

[Adam Schaefer]

We do sell them or you go

[Doug]

on Amazon if you want.

[Justin Andrews]

Element is an electrolyte powder that you can add to your water. No artificial sweeteners, no sugar, and it's got enough sodium to actually make a difference. So this is great for eliminating headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue or other symptoms of electrolyte deficiency. So who could benefit from this? Well, if you have a low carb diet, if you eat a lot of whole natural foods, you don't eat a lot of processed foods. If you sweat a lot, you work out a lot. This can make a difference. And again, no calories in it at all. It's just electrolytes with 1000 milligrams of sodium. Go through our link and get yourself set up. Go to drinklementee.com mindpump that link, you'll get a free sample pack of their most popular drink, mixed flavors with any purchase. Back to the show.

[Sal DeStefano]

Our first caller is Sarah Beth from Mississippi.

[Justin Andrews]

Hi, Sarah.

[Doug]

How are you doing, Sarah?

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Hi, guys. How are y' all doing? It is so cool to meet you.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, awesome. Thanks for calling in.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

This is awesome. So before I start, have to say I have to be mama bear for just a minute and let y' all know how absolutely proud I am of y' all as men and fathers and husbands just for being so open and vulnerable about your lives and your struggles and your accomplishments and all those things and, like, putting that out there publicly. I think that is so important for other men to see, and I just thank y' all for being a space for that. That is doing so much good work out there. If you ever, whatever you do with mind pump in the future, please don't ever change that. So

[Justin Andrews]

thank you, Sarah.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Okay, so my question is, what does a good, appropriate cut maintenance and bulk look like for a very short female? So I know that, like, being a woman, I am already at a lower metabolic rate than a man, obviously, but being I'm five foot tall, like, on a good day, so that puts me at, like, the lowest of the low when it comes to metabolic rates and feel like all the fitness content out there is geared towards, like, the average male or the average female. So I feel like whenever I hear these goals and numbers and everything to reach, I almost have to, like, filter it of, like, okay, like, that's a good thing, but, like, it doesn't completely apply to me. So that's kind of my question. And I wanted to give you a little background information on myself just so you can know kind of where I'm coming from from a psychological standpoint with my question. So I am 34. I was overweight my whole life. My heaviest point was in 2020, about a year after I had my daughter. I got all the way up to £248, which is insane to even say. I sent Doug pictures for y' all to see because it was just. It was insane. And I really got to a point where I was like, this is not healthy. Like, I've got to do something. So I didn't really know where to start. And I picked up a book about processed foods, and it scared the crap out of me. So I immediately was like, all right, no more processed foods. That's insane. We're going to go all to whole Foods. And that's the only thing I did. And over the next three years. I lost about £70 just doing that alone. Then I got on Ozempic for one year. I gave myself the deadline of just one year. And in that one year of still not really changing anything else, still doing Whole Foods, I lost an additional 60 pounds. Well, when I got off of the Ozempic immediately, of course my hunger came back and it kind of hit me. I was like, oh, if I don't like for real make some lifestyle changes here, all of this weight is going to come right back. I've got to actually change something here. So that's when I dove into the fitness space for the first time. And I immediately fell in love with it. I was like, how have I never discovered this before? This is amazing. So I started integrating one thing at a time. I started by hitting my goal weight protein and then I got my steps up and then just kind of incorporating other, you know, movement type of things. And then it eventually led me to strength training. That's always the last thing for women is strength training. So about it was about seven months ago that I started like a real structured strength training program for the first time. And I am type A overachiever, goes way too hard when I do things. So of course that's exactly what I did and I overdid it. And I was going to the gym four days a week doing an upper lower body split. Each session was an hour or longer and then I would follow each session by 20 to 30 minutes of cardio. I was getting 15 to 20,000 steps a day. And the kicker is that because of my height, I would use TDEE calculators. And combined with my complete fear of gaining any weight, I would not let myself go above about 13 or 1400 calories while doing all of this activity. So as you can imagine, that very quickly took its toll on my body. And after about five months of doing all of that, I am super consistent. I don't miss a workout, I don't miss anything, don't miss my steps. Five months of doing that. I wake up one morning and of course my body is exhausted. I'm under fueled, I'm just completely worri worn out. I got out of bed and standing up too quickly. I passed out and fell face first, hit the floor and some other things on the way down to the floor, had to go to the emergency room. A huge deep gash on my forehead. They had to sew together. They took a CT scan. Thank God there were no broken bones or internal bleeding, but I had a very, very nasty concussion. And the Doctor who treated me after asking me, how did this happen? And I told her that little history of what I doing. She kind of looked me dead in the face and was like, I'm going to need you to go home and get in your bed and recover from this concussion. And then I'm going to need you to eat. And at that point, I had only been listening to you guys for about a month, so I was just dipping my toes in the water and I had been hearing you telling people about reverse dieting and about under fueling their bodies and how you can try all you want to build muscle, but if you're not giving it enough calories, not going to happen. And you're going to put yourself in some real risky situations here. And after that accident, when I came home, it was like, it hit me in the face. I was like, oh my gosh, they were talking to me. Like, I always put myself out of these categories because I'm like, oh, I'm a short woman. It doesn't count for me. But no, it totally did. And I put my body in some real danger doing that. So I really. And at this point, I'm listening to you guys 24 7. So I, I'm just soaking, I'm like a sponge. I'm soaking it all up. So after I heal from my concussion, I completely revamped my strategy and my goals and everything here. I went down to three days a week in the gym doing full body workouts that only lasted 30, 40 minutes tops. I cut out all extra cardio, brought my steps down to about 10 to 12,000 steps, and I started my first ever reverse diet, which was, was terrifying, absolutely terrifying. But I looked at, you know, what had just happened and I was like, you got to do better. You're not, you're not treating your body with respect and well, and you're, you're gonna just keep driving yourself into the ground if you don't do something different here. So I very incrementally worked my way up and I am proud to say that as of this week, I am like between 1900 and 2000 calories. And I'm still going to, we are still pushing. And just like you guys said, I saw all the things that you talk about all the time. My energy skyrocketed, my mood skyrocketed. I thought I felt great beforehand. I realized I didn't know what great felt like. My period normalized, my sleep got better, my strength, I am not kidding, y', all during this reverse. At some point, I can Remember, there was one week where I, I went to go do my hip thrust and I added a couple of pounds and I was like, I can go more, I can go more. I can go. I literally added 20 pounds to my hip thrust in one week, and then another 15, 20 pounds to some my other compound lifts in the week or so after that. Crazy. Crazy. So here's where my question comes in. I believe it. I'm a believer. Reverse diet is the way to go. It's amazing. But I am still a 5 foot tall woman, and I listen to you guys advise women all the time. And you know, advising some women to push all the way up to almost like 3,000 calories or more in a reverse. And I'm looking at myself and what I'm eating now at 2000, and I'm like, there ain't no frickin way that I could push myself up to that point. And since, like I said, there's not a lot of content out there geared towards petite women, I just wanted to hear your thoughts on, you know, as I'm doing this reverse, how far do I go? And then really, from my health standpoint, when I do eventually want to go back into a cut to reveal all this muscle that I know that I'm building right now, what does that look like in a healthy way? Because I obviously did not do it correctly first time around, and I don't want to make that mistake again. So any advice you guys have, I would really appreciate it.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, great question and great job. Yeah, yeah, really, you're doing a really good job. It's really hard to get out of the fear. Fear of gaining weight. And now you see, now you see, like, okay, that fear was, it was, it was just that. It was a fear. It's not happening like I thought it would. In fact, the opposite's happening. I'm stronger. I feel better. So here's the, here's the context with reverse diet, and then I'll get to kind of your question. The reason why we often recommend that women get up to 27, 28, maybe even 3,000 calories is because oftentimes women are interested in losing body fat. And so we just want to give them Runway. So it's probably not a maintenance, but it's going to give you a nice Runway to go back down and to end in a nice comfortable place. Okay. Number two, there's such a wide individual variance with someone's, let's say, metabolism, with activity. And yes. Does your size play a role? It does, but it's Pretty amazing how high somebody can get their metabolic rate, whose strength trains, is active and is petite like you are. I've trained women like you who've gotten their calories above 3,000. And it wasn't.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

That's wild.

[Justin Andrews]

And it wasn't an issue. You actually have a healthy metabolism. The fact that you've already reversed and you're seeing great results tells me that you're gonna respond really well. Because sometimes it's more challenging. Sometimes a reverse takes a long time to get the body, the person's body to not be so afraid to build muscle and it still wants to store body fat, you know, type of deal. So where do you stop? Well, there's a. There's a couple things to consider. One, I don't like a fit, active woman who's working out ever to be at a maintenance that's below 1800 calories. It's just, it's too low. If you were walking around at 1600 calories, strength training three days a week, hitting 10 to 12,000 steps a day, you know, if you have, if you have you got kids and a life that is too low to maintain, what you'll almost always run into is at some point, burnout, at some point, hormone issues at some point, it's just too low. So 1800 is like, that's kind of like the limit where I'll have somebody maintain with who's active and strengthened, do all the things that you're doing, doing. So now here's the other side of it. You're gonna reverse diet to a place where you're gonna be like, this is so much food. I feel like I'm just overdoing it. Then that's a good place to cut from because where you'll fall at is going to be at this comfortable place considering your activity level, your strength training, the fact that you're a mom, all that stuff. I'd like to see you at a maintenance that looks like 2000, 20, 100. So if you want to cut, we got to get above that. So we could cut 2000, like 1900 that you're at right now. 1900, 2000. Now, I'm not going to put you in a cut. If I put you in a cut right now, you'll see a little bit of fat loss. You'll also see strength loss. You'll feel like crap. You'll plateau, and then you'll be back kind of to where you were before. So I wouldn't, I'd have you reverse out. Now here's the other part of it. If you reverse properly, especially if you see strength gains, oftentimes you see yourself get leaner through this process. If I put 10 pounds of muscle on you and you gained no body fat, your body fat percentage went down, you actually got leaner.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Right.

[Justin Andrews]

And you're going to look well.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

And that's. Yeah, that. That's one thing I was kind of going to ask too, is I. Obviously, I'm gaining muscle because my strength has gone through the roof. I went to go throw a baseball the other day and way overshot my target. Like, I know I'm getting stronger, but I can kind of feel and tell in my body. I know that I am putting on a little body fat too, which I know comes along with it. So kind of what you mentioned earlier, I feel like I may need to move a little slowly through this because I was at so low calories for such a long time kind of thing.

[Justin Andrews]

So, you know, here's the deal. If I was coaching you, it would be based off of how well I could coach you through this process, because do you know what your body fat percentage is? You look like you're in the.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

I don't.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

I don't.

[Justin Andrews]

If you're in the low to mid-20s, keep going. That's a good, healthy body fat percentage you'd be at. You look good. It's all good. It's fit. Everything's fine. Keep going. Now, I would. If I'm coaching you and you're just like, sal, this is too uncomfortable. I. I used to be overweight. I'm really scared. Then I might slow it down. Then I might slow it down. But if I could get you to relinquish control and trust the process, I don't care if I get your body fat up to 25, 26%, because I'm gonna set you up for a nice cut later that's gonna have you sit around 21%. 20% with a maintenance at 21, 20, 200 calories. Now you live your life, and it's like, it's no big deal.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

And that's the goal. Honestly, I think I wrote in my question, my, like, honestly, my fainting thing was kind of a big scare for me. So it's like, my goal at this point is I just want to be healthy. Like, I want to be here for the long run. I want to be independent as I get older. And, you know, if it means body fat goes up a little bit in order to maintain that, like, so be it. I'm not going to lie at one Point it was, let's get as tiny as possible. But, you know, I kind of got scared out of that, honestly.

[Doug]

How many weeks have you been at the calories you're at right now here?

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

I've been probably three weeks, so taking it. But, you know, at the same time, because I restricted calories for so long, and this is kind of like a, oh, I get more calories. I have kind of made the mistake of like, all right, my goal this week is 1900 calories, but I can have the extra cookie or two, but I can have the extra that. So, you know, in reality, if I average out my week, I'm probably. I've probably gone above a little bit. So, you know.

[Doug]

And how during that three weeks, is your scale weight kind of maintaining? It's fluctuating up and down a few pounds. What's it looking like?

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

It's. It's maintaining. Honestly, if I do have a night where I'm like, oh, let's go get pizza, of course it'll spike up the next morning, but within two or three days, it's right back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would say it's maintaining.

[Doug]

So that's okay. So kind of a good rule of thumb when I'm reverse dieting someone like you, you is that I want. I want to increase you by about 200 calories, give or take, whenever we get to a place like this. When you are holding weight, scale weight, like you say you are right now that you're. And you're feeling good in the gym, it's like, okay, let's go up another 200 calories. Then I'm gonna hold there again. And you might see scale go up one or two pounds. I'm looking for it to level off again and hold again. And so I want to see it hold for like a week or two. And then I'm gonna go up again. I'm just gonna keep stair stair stepping you up, up with your weight kind of maintaining. I like, we're ready for the next bump. And just keep doing that until you get to a place that Sal's talking about. And really, it's less about your height, because I've seen really, really petite, short women eating 3,000 plus calories. And I've seen people that are tall and lanky barely be able to eat 2, 500 calories. So it's has everything to do with your muscle mass, your training volume. Like, it's unique works. And so getting it to a place where you are like, this is a lot of calories, because what we know now is like, you feel great at where you're at right now. So this would be the ideal place to cut back down to. So if, you know, if you, if this feels like a good amount of food, you have nice flexibility with the food. Like you can enjoy a cookie every once in a while. Like, you can do things like that. Like, then this should be a good goal of, like, this is where we want to end up. But if we're going to end up here, that means we need to take it up a little bit higher so that we can come back down to this place.

[Justin Andrews]

Let me ask you this. So you said, said you really want to be healthy, have energy, feel good. If we look at the whole context of all of that right now, what's happening with you, your energy, your strength, how you can perform at home for your kids, the amount of food that you're able to eat, the way you look, would this be a great place for you to be forever? Would you be happy?

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

I mean, yeah, I would. Like, maybe a little bit less body fat. Like I said, I feel like I've added just a little more body fat in the past several weeks, but it was just probably just fluctuations. But I mean, overall, like, yeah, like, I say that, but then I go out with girlfriends this past weekend and every single person is complimenting, like, oh, my gosh, you look so good. That fits you so well, you know, So I know a lot of that is a mental thing.

[Sandy (Caller)]

It is.

[Justin Andrews]

So the reason why, the reason why I'm saying that is, you know, 25 body fat for a woman with more muscle objectively looks better than a woman with less muscle at 22. So that's number one.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

But number two, you really want to have a complete relationship with this. Not a one, not a narrow. A narrow relationship is the mirror, the scale, body fat percent. A complete relationship is like my energy, how I feel with my husband, what I'm able to do in the gym. Do I feel like I'm overstressed with my food or I kind of feel like it's kind of relaxed. So that's the complete relation. And if you're feeling like, you know what, I feel kind of good.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Good.

[Justin Andrews]

If even if you just went on this path, you're going to kind of have this nice body recomp may be slow, but over time it's probably going to happen.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Right.

[Justin Andrews]

The other side is this. Is this. If you want someone to guide you through this process, because that makes a big difference to outsource it, then I would say Work with a coach, and we have coaches that are really, really good. And then you don't got to think about this. You give it to your coach and your coach does the reverse for you. Your coach asks you the question, your coach is monitoring all this stuff and working with you when you're having the, oh, am I gaining weight? What am I doing? Whatever. And they'll just take you through this process. And considering where you're at, you're probably six months. It's probably a six month process which includes a reverse and a cut. Six months will give you the reverse and the cut. And then you'll have. You'll kind of be where you're where you want to be, but you're kind of getting there. I think your relationship to it sounds. Sounds like you're getting in the right place. So if you want a coach, I can have somebody call you and they could just take. For the next six months, you have them do it. Otherwise, just to encourage you.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Yeah, because I was gonna say. I was gonna say too. I. Through this entire process, like, I have never hired a coach. I've never talked to a nutritionist. I've never even owned a gym membership. I don't even have, like, friends and family who are into fitness. So it's just like me and podcasts and chat GPT, like, we're all dogging it out here. And so I'm like, you know, I'm figuring everything out on my own. I feel like I've done a pretty good job, decent, you know, learning everything.

[Doug]

You've done a great job. You've done a great job.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Yes, it's definitely, it's definitely one of those things when you don't have someone to bounce the ideas off of directly. You get in your head and you overthink and you overanalyze and you second guess and all that.

[Justin Andrews]

Honestly, you're like six months away from being in a really good place with all of this to where you know, you have someone coach you, teach you, and then you're like, now I can do this and I can maintain this, and I know what it feels like. I know how to go through the process. I know how to modify this. I know how to improve the quality of my life through this process. Because what you want, Sarah, is for the rest of your life, you want to be comfortable with this. What you don't want to do, you don't want this to be the stressful tracking, you know, like, lifestyle forever. That's not going to work. You're like six months away just based off of talking to you. If you want to coach, I'll have someone call you. And I think you would do really well with them. But again, I'm going to encourage you. You're on the right path. Path. Like, you're really doing a good job.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Thank you all. That is really encouraging to hear because like I said, doing it by yourself, you're kind of shooting in the dark. You don't really know. So that's why I really wanted to talk to you guys and hear your opinions, because that's very encouraging, everything that you're telling me. And I was going to say, you know, there was a day, you know, six, eight months ago when I was in the 1300 calorie purgatory and working my butt off in the gym where I thought to myself, like. Like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to do this every day for the rest of my life in order to. And so, like, finding you guys and hearing everything that you have to say and everything that you tell people, I know you hear it all the time, but it has literally changed my life and made me realize, like, no, you don't have to do that. You can actually enjoy it and enjoy your life and have energy to play with your 6 year old when she wants to and all that kind of stuff. So you have to really, really appreciate it.

[Justin Andrews]

You have to get to a place where you enjoy it, because I promise you, if you hate this, you're not going to do this forever. There's no. No way. There's no way.

[Doug]

You're doing great, sir.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you're doing really good. If. Would you want somebody to call you? Because, sure, we have really good coaches. Okay. I'll have somebody reach out to you and let them know that, you know, based on our idea, we think probably six months will be good, but they're going to ask you more questions and probably get a little more. At the very least, we'll send you a free program. Are you following any of our programs?

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

I'm not, no.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. All right. I'm going to. I'll leave it up to the coach to which one we should send you, but you get a free program regardless.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

So thank you guys so much. Y' all are amazing. Can I say one more thing to you before I go?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

So I want each of you to do me a favor when you go home tonight and give your wives a big hug for me. My husband also owns and operates his own business, so I see how much work and dedication and time and stress and all the things that it takes to do that successfully. And I know that you guys have seen all this success that you've seen because you have someone at home to love and support you through that and take care of all the other things so that you can do it. So I, I really appreciate everything y' all do, which means that I really, really appreciate everything that they do at home for y' all to make this possible.

[Justin Andrews]

That's 100.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Y' all could do that for me. I would appreciate it.

[Doug]

They'll love that.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it.

[Sarah Beth (Caller)]

Good. Thank you guys so much.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it here. She had a great attitude and she did a great job. Yeah, so far. Great job.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

It is scary reverse dieting when you're, you know, we're. She lost over 130. 130 pounds. Yeah, she lost, but she had that little wake up call which was obviously a blessing. She's feeling the benefits. She has no idea how much better she's going to feel.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

When she keeps moving this direction.

[Doug]

I mean, I think she's doing really good. I think the fact that she can even recognize that in this reverse diet, yeah, I put on a little bit of body fat, but I don't care. She knows and she's okay with it. Says a lot about how well she's doing.

[Justin Andrews]

So I think six months is going to give her time to continue to reverse and then cut with a coat.

[Doug]

Coach.

[Adam Schaefer]

She's very coachable.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, she's very receptive to information and I think she's going to do well.

[Doug]

Best use of raw dog I've heard yet.

[Adam Schaefer]

I did catch that.

[Justin Andrews]

Doug doesn't know what that means.

[Doug]

That's good.

[Sal DeStefano]

I've heard it before. Our next caller is Chelsea from Australia.

[Justin Andrews]

Hi, Chelsea.

[Adam Schaefer]

Hi, Chelsea.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Hey, how are you?

[Justin Andrews]

How can we help you?

[Chelsea (Caller)]

First of all, just the usual. Thank you, as everyone else does, for everything you guys have done. You guys have helped me through a lot of, from like training to even like eating disorders. It's been crazy. So thank you, guys. Second of all, so I September, October, around last year, I was about 76 kilos, super fit. Had quite a lot of muscle on me for a female. Dabbled in some retro tide. Lost about six kilos, pretty much all muscle because I didn't hit my protein. Couldn't train because it just, it killed my drive. I knew better, but I still did it. And yeah, kind of paying the consequences of that. Ended up quite like skinny fat. Around January, found out I was pregnant. And then from about January, obviously came off Everything January to April, wasn't training, wasn't really eating. Kind of lost my motivation for the gym. I'm now 18 weeks pregnant and I hate the way that I look and I hate going to the gym. I have absolutely no motivation. I have been going now a little bit, maybe like once or twice a week if I can. But from being like the really strong girl to, you know, I did 30 kilo back squats the other day and that just absolutely took it out of me. Whereas I'm used to being able to do like 80 kilos and yeah, I just don't know where to go because like I want to train for health, but I am still kind of chasing that aesthetics. But I know it's of kind, kind of probably pretty far away in reach.

[Doug]

Be careful, Chelsea. Like this is your, your goal has to be totally different or you're growing a baby. You're growing a baby right now. How, how you look, aesthetics and even strength goals are not important anymore. Just not right now.

[Justin Andrews]

I got, I got to say this too, Chelsea. Not enough is communicated to women on just how challenging this process is, especially if you're, if you identify with being a fit or a fitness fanatic beforehand. It is very challenging because a lot of our identity, especially if you're a fitness fanatic, was probably wrapped into how you looked and how you could perform. Maybe if you don't mind me saying, a little body dysmorphia, which is probably what led to the retta true tide. Super common, super common with fitness fanatics addicts. I'm raising my hand because I'm one of them. And so now it feels like your body's not yours, it's not yours. It's doing things that you, you, none of your old tricks work. You probably don't want to eat anything except for hyper palatable food. It's probably the only thing you keep down because you, otherwise you want to throw up, you're tired. When you do work out, all your stamina and strength is like, where'd it go? And you're injury prone on top of it and your hormones are totally different. And so it's this radical like, who am I, what am I? It's out of control. And a big challenge that people that fitness fanatics have is a sense of control. So oftentimes one of the reasons why we are so fanatical about our fitness, it makes us feel like we got things under control. I got my schedule, schedule. I got my eating, I got my supplements, I got my workout. And now it feels like, you have no control. So it's extremely challenging, but it's also a blessing. And I'll tell you this. I'll tell you why. Besides the fact that you're going to have, you know, bring a human into this life, into the world, it's a blessing because it's going to help you face some of the biggest challenges that you probably had that you maybe didn't want to face before. You're just kind of forced. So here's what it looks like. Looks like, and I'm going to ask you this. Okay. I'm going to ask you a question. Are you someone who is worthy of being taken care of?

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah, of course.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, okay. But really, what's the answer? Really?

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Do you feel that or do you just know that in your head?

[Chelsea (Caller)]

No, I do feel it. I do feel it. I just don't relay that into, like, gym and fitness, but I relay it into the real world and other. In other, like, aspects. Definitely. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So that's going to lead you. So if you can tap into that, like, if you had a best friend or a sister that is going through exactly what you're going through, you would probably advise them and come and comfort them and give them empathy in ways that you probably don't give to yourself. And so, yeah, definitely that. If you let that guide you, your fitness and nutrition is going to be exactly what you need. And so what it might look like your first trimester or you're kind of in that space. A lot of nausea, probably. You feeling that? Right? Okay.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah. I've just gone into the second. So the nausea's finally disappeared and the energy energies come back a little bit. But, yeah, the first trimester was like, I couldn't. All I did was sleep and vomit, basically, yes.

[Justin Andrews]

So taking care of yourself during the first trimester, probably look like sleeping. And the only thing I can keep down is pizza or the only thing I can keep down is Lucky Charm cereal or weird. I know this. My wife went through it with my daughter. She didn't have it so bad with my son, but with my daughter, she literally had to walk around with a bucket because she was throwing up so often and she struggled with it. And I'm like, honey, right now, taking care of yourself is like being able to hold down food. So I don't care what it is, let's eat it. But now that you're coming out of it, it might look a little different. So you might look like, okay, what's going to nourish me? And then when you go to the gym, what you need to think is not what workout I need to do or what body parts I need to train. When you go there, you literally have this conversation with yourself and, and think what's going to make me feel better. And maybe that's walking on the treadmill, maybe that's stretching, maybe that is lifting weights. And so how long were you working out for before you got pregnant? You're a fitness fanatics.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

You've been doing it for a while, five plus years.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. I don't care what your workout looks like if you guide it with what I said. So when you get to the gym, all right, what does taking care of myself look like this today? Is it skipping the gym? Is it walking? Is it yoga? Is it two exercises and get out and, and how do I know I'm taking care of myself? I feel better when I leave. Like I leave the gym feeling better than I did walking in. Let that guide you.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And then, and then let your body do what it's going to do. Now if you do that and you're, and you're able to do that properly, your bounce back is going to be so much better than the average woman. But I'll also say this to you, it takes a lot longer than people realize and this isn't communicated well on social media either. They like to tell you, oh, four months later, I mean you'll definitely be better than the average woman or if you had never worked out, but give it it, it takes like a year or two before you're like, oh, I feel like my old self, like completely. Okay, so it's all, it's all about caring for yourself in the right way. And you're going to develop, if you do this right, you'll develop a relationship with fitness. It's going to last you for the rest the of your life.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah, I think the hard thing is seeing a lot of like, and I know I know better but like social media, I see like pregnant women and they're like this is my workout and they've got this big bump and they're like jumping around and I'm like how are you doing that right now? Like, and I thought that would be me just because I was so fit beforehand and it's just most, most, very,

[Justin Andrews]

so much a very big percentage of women feel like you. They're just not the ones posting about it. Yeah, yeah, they don't want to talk about it. Go, go talk to.

[Adam Schaefer]

Pregnancy is different too. My wife had two separate complete pregnancies. One was like, that she could work out. And then the other one was, like, completely, like, bedridden. So you just never know.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sandy (Caller)]

And.

[Justin Andrews]

And talk to other moms and be like, hey, how was it for you? Because this is what I feel like. And I guarantee you're gonna hear a lot of moms be like, oh, my God, it was horrible. It was so hard. I felt so sick. It was so difficult. But I will say this. It's better than had you not been a fit per. Like, however bad it's been, it'd be a lot worse if you went into it without your fitness background.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah, definitely.

[Justin Andrews]

So that's the context. I'd like to sell you a program. Excuse me? Send you a program that has, I think, good workout programming for someone through pregnancy. So if you need some structure and some exercise tech, you know, exercises, I can send you one.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah, definitely. I've got anabolics, but that's probably not really appropriate right now.

[Justin Andrews]

No. Starter. Yeah, I'm gonna send you starter. That's. That's a great one for during and postpartum.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Amazing. Thank you so much.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. And this is gonna be hard, especially for someone who's. Who's identifies so strongly with their fitness. But lead with like, okay, how can I take care of myself today? How can I take care of myself today? And that's gonna just kind of to help move you through this. And then talk with other women who've had kids, because they're not the ones posting on social media. They're not the ones standing on a soapbox. When you feel great, that's what you want to tell everybody. Nobody wants to talk about how hard it is, but when you sit down, actually talk to other moms, I promise you, you're going to get a lot of women that are like, oh, my gosh, thank you for. Yes, definitely. That was really difficult for me.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Doug]

How does hearing all that make you feel?

[Chelsea (Caller)]

I guess I kind of knew some of it.

[Justin Andrews]

It.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

But I. I don't know. I thought maybe they'd be like, I'll just go three times a week. That's all you need to do like that. Like, I've tried, you know, I put it in chat gbt, and I'm like, tell me, what do I need to eat? Like, I know the answer, but it's like, there's got to be another way. There's got to be, like, a minimum criteria of what I just should be meeting. But, yeah, I guess kind of just resting up and utilizing this time to just train to feel good. Opposed to trying to still kind of, I guess, chase somewhat aesthetics.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, listen to your body.

[Justin Andrews]

Listen to it. Listen to it. And I've trained pregnant women that. That were like once a week. This is all I could do the rest of the week. I could do a little bit of walking. And then other pregnancies look totally different. So if you're like, I feel like garbage. And I do not. I can't move, move. I think what I'm gonna do is

[Doug]

go for a walk.

[Justin Andrews]

That's your workout.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm studying fitness as well at the moment and should be qualified by the time the baby comes.

[Justin Andrews]

So wonderful.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Utilize that towards other women.

[Justin Andrews]

Good. Yeah, that'll. This will make you a good trainer for women through pregnancy, which is very, very needed in our space.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Awesome. Alrighty. Thank you, guys. I really appreciate your help.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it. Chelsea. Thanks for calling in.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

No, I spent. Thanks.

[Justin Andrews]

All right. That's tough. Yeah, that's tough, dude. I couldn't imagine getting pregnant and then

[Adam Schaefer]

being like, oh, I can't do different now. Yeah.

[Doug]

I can't get a read if she's going to listen or not.

[Justin Andrews]

I think. I think she knows. I think maybe it confirmed it. And I'm hoping that starter will help her a little bit. But here's the deal. She's. She's got no choice.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Because she. If she goes too far, her body's going to shut down.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

She's going to go to bed.

[Adam Schaefer]

Any. Any favors?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal DeStefano]

So our next color is Sandy from Connecticut.

[Doug]

Hello again, Sandy. How you doing, Sandy?

[Chelsea (Caller)]

I'm good.

[Sandy (Caller)]

How are you doing?

[Doug]

Good.

[Justin Andrews]

Welcome back.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

All right, give us. Give us a little update on the last 30 days. Catch us up. Yeah. How's it been going? What's. What's going on?

[Sandy (Caller)]

Thank you so much for having me back. I. I have to say that the. What. What you. A month ago, you know, what I expected to hear was not. Not what I heard, but I think it was exactly what I needed to hear. So thank you. I was really focused last time on all my failures and fears and my setbacks and things, so really turned things around. Your advice really turned things around for me. And I spent this month, you know, just trying to change my thinking. I've gone from focusing on failures, fears and setbacks, backs to just understanding this is my year for recovery, so.

[Justin Andrews]

All right.

[Sandy (Caller)]

And I'm going to be okay. So just some updates. So the. As far as retirement stuff goes, I'm just going to read my notes, keep. Keep from babbling too much. You Know we went from having no information for so long to being overwhelmed with information. This past month. The person that's responsible was finally charged. Charged. He did, he did plead guilty. Every week this past month I've gotten either an email or a letter or a phone call with more information and next steps, what to expect, etc. So it, you know, that's, that's been very stressful. I mean, I'm glad things are moving along and getting towards the end of this nightmare. But, but just all that contact and all this information is just like the kick in the gut again and again and again. So there's, there's no good news as far as getting any money back, but it seems to be wrapping up so we can move on with life. I did reprioritize my goals this past month as you suggested. I made community and stress reduction number one. I did find a church that feels just right and you know, it's already brought me a sense of peace and, and hope again. So, so that's been great. I need more time to really connect and you know, form a community there. But I've been going to, to these services and it's been pretty great. I do have a community of friends at the gym. I kind of made it sound last time I had nobody and you know, for community, but they don't know everything going on. I mean, it's my happy place and they just think I'm this happy go lucky exercise freak. So very few of my friends and family know what's going on. I don't like to burden people with my stuff. So other than you guys, I'm kind of dumping all over you. Sorry. So that's kind of what's going on there. My coach changed my workout based on your, your advice. I now am doing one exercise in each set and two minute rest between each exercise. And Adam, I know you said closer to five minutes would be good, but I'm telling you, two minutes was an eternity.

[Adam Schaefer]

It always feels that way.

[Sandy (Caller)]

You know, all the same people are at the gym around the same time. So you know, they bunch of all these guys were coming up and they were like, what are you doing? I've never seen you stand around. Like usually you're flying around here. And so people were calling me out on this two minute thing so I didn't know what to do with myself. But I really, really am seeing the benefit of that. So I, I just can't stress enough. I, I mean you guys stress it a lot, all the time. The rest how important it is. And so Somebody approached me and said, you know, why, what's going on that you're. I started walking circles in the gym because I couldn't just stand there and wait for the. I literally was standing there watching the clock. And so actually the. The other day I was dusting during my two minutes which they appreciate. So I told. So this woman who walked up to me who you know, said Sandy, what is going on? And I said listen, you build muscle during recovery, so you need to increase your rest time. I said, and you need to listen to mind pump. And they're like, what's that?

[Justin Andrews]

And so,

[Sandy (Caller)]

so anyway, that, that's what's going on there. Just. I really see improvement in my strength. Like already in 30 days. It's. It's pretty crazy.

[Doug]

That's right.

[Sandy (Caller)]

I know you know, my numbers aren't that impressive, but just to give you an example, I'm doing a trap bar deadlift and I started at 115 pounds yesterday. I'm at 150.

[Doug]

Whoa. That's a huge difference. Awesome.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's a big jump.

[Justin Andrews]

That's huge.

[Doug]

It's huge.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah.

[Doug]

That's awesome.

[Sandy (Caller)]

So I'm pretty proud of that.

[Adam Schaefer]

So you should be right on.

[Sandy (Caller)]

I did do the any volt body scan at the gym and for a baseline I didn't look at the numbers. It's. It's would wreck me if I did. So Greg didn't let me look. My coach, he, he, he has it. He has the printout. The plan is to repeat it in 90 days and then review it and look at it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Smart.

[Doug]

Good.

[Sandy (Caller)]

So I'm dreading that to be honest. So true confessions. I have not stopped going to my two classes. It's. You said the intensity was a bit much, but honestly it's my crack. They're my people. I'm still going to. I did miss one week and, and not. You know, I. I had two for work and my phone phone was blowing up. Where are you? Where are you?

[Justin Andrews]

That's nice.

[Sandy (Caller)]

So that's nice. So I'm not ready to give that up. I did watch the video on the Maps prime webinar. Doug, you're a beast. Holy cow. You're hard act to follow. I will was a bit surprised. I failed miserably. Let me tell you, Justin. It was not good.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's okay. Everybody does in the beginning.

[Sandy (Caller)]

So I like that you kept saying 90% of the people you know don't do great. I was surprised how hard it was to put my arms up straight on the wall. My back arches. So Much and my lower back pain is a huge problem. So I, I would say I was a good foot from the wall with my arm and, and yesterday I was about 3 inches. So I'm getting there.

[Adam Schaefer]

Progress.

[Sal DeStefano]

Nice.

[Sandy (Caller)]

But I have not been do practicing consistently at home like I should. So that's still a top priority to keep going with that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Have you noticed any reduction in pain a little bit or. No, not yet.

[Chelsea (Caller)]

Pardon me?

[Adam Schaefer]

Have you noticed any reduction in pain yet?

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yes, I have. Yeah, as a matter of fact I have in the. Yeah, that's really good.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yep, yep. Keep going.

[Sandy (Caller)]

The squat I'm pretty happy with. I can't keep that pole straight to for anything but the fact I can squat. I mean a year ago I couldn't squat because my knees were so bad and my new knees are wonderful. So I'm squatting with a 50 pound kettlebell at the gym.

[Justin Andrews]

Nice. Very good.

[Sandy (Caller)]

And doing, you know, elbows to knee squat with it. So I'm, I'm getting there. I'm back to planning me meals and prepping on Sundays. I've been eating protein like it's my full time job. I consistently gotten about 160 grams and so that, that feels good for the most part I feel pretty good. I will admit I'm hungry, hungry a lot. I am back to tracking and I eat a lot of the same things so but it just feels good to have some control so that's helping with that. I am walking with a friend a couple days a week. I'm averaging about 10,000 steps a day. My sleep is better. It's not great but it is better. I, I've been sleeping, I've been going well first I did do tweak my evening routine a bit. I stopped checking emails after like five because I just want to avoid in case there's any triggers in there anymore. Any more news that I don't want to know about at bedtime. I did add the chamomile tea. I've been going to sleep pretty easily and sleeping four hours so solid before I wake up. They may or may not go back to sleep after that. Most of the time I do. So if I had to guess, I'd say I don't wear anything to track the sleep so I don't know for sure but I would say five, six hours max.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay.

[Sandy (Caller)]

And it's not solid but so that's better. Not great. So anyway, overall I think I've made progress and you know, I don't feel so hopeless anymore. I'm trying really hard to see Progress in other ways besides a scale in the mirror. And that's. I think it's too soon to see much. I'm struggling seeing much. I'm focusing on these numbers, the weights and stuff, the going up and those kind of things. So I do have a couple questions. Do you think 90 days is too soon to redo the, of the body scan and look at results? Anything else I could do for my lower back pain and just a reminder that's, you know, the pain is the degenerative scoliosis of arthritis in the spine and lower lumbar disc disease. The doctor, there's absolutely no restrictions. Said the best thing I can do is keep working out and working with a trainer and strength training and things. So there's no restrictions. If it hurts, stop. That was the only thing he said. So, so, and then not really a question. But you know, I understand focusing on stress reduction and you know, sleep and building my spiritual community is still the most important part right now. It's also the hardest. I mean I am white knuckling it in that area. So any other advice or thoughts about that I'd appreciate. So thank you.

[Doug]

First of all, Sandy, you're doing, you're

[Justin Andrews]

doing phenomenal in 30 days.

[Doug]

30 days, remarkable progress and strength like that. To see your upper mobility in your upper back and arms and like getting to the closer to the wall is incredible. Noticing stress, building community. You got so many wins that are happening right now. The 90 day body fat test, that's not for you, that's for your coach. So don't I, I wouldn't want you to if you were, if I was coaching you, I'd do exactly what he did, which I like. I like that he didn't let you see it. That's for me. It's for me to make sure if I need to tweak anything, it's not, I'm not giving that to you to go, oh, this is what you did or didn't do. Like you need to let that go. That's for, that's his, that's his compass to make sure that he's got the right plan for you. So you, you don't dwell on what it does or doesn't say. You need to let that go and you need to focus on the things that you're. What you already are focusing on and seeing great improvement. Continue to, to try and practice the Zone 1 test in prime as much as you can because that's already showing you improvement. That's going to continue to make you feel better. Keep getting stronger in the gym like you're doing, you're walking, all those things are great. I wouldn't take the, you know, the crack classes from you yet because I think that, I think that part of community is valuable to you. So I think. But I would continue to point out to you, notice what happened when you gave yourself two minutes rest. Look how strong you got in 30 days. Days. Keep leaning into that, you're going to see continued progress that way. But you're doing a hell of a

[Adam Schaefer]

job stacking wins right now. Yeah, you're doing a great job, doing so good.

[Justin Andrews]

So, so we're, we saw you 30 days ago and you're very coachable and you're doing phenomenal. So I think I can add a couple more coaching tips now moving for the next 30 days. So one, find something you enjoy to listen to or do for your rest periods. When you're strength training, if you're sitting there watching the clock, you're going to hate it. So if you have a book or a podcast or you like to read or write down notes or music, or music, learn something or learn something in between sets, that's going to make that feel productive and it's going to also make it enjoyable. Okay. Otherwise it's going to be very difficult for you. And what will happen, Sandy, is you're going to, eventually the two minutes will become one minute. Go back to 30 seconds. So find something you can do in that two minute period where it's like, oh, now's my time to, you know, read or listen to this book or something you enjoy.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Okay?

[Justin Andrews]

So I think that'll be a good practice for you. Here's the second part, and I totally identify with this. It's building community, super important. But doing life with friends where they know all of them, you, that's community. So what tends to happen with a lot of us, and I can be like, this is we have what are called duty free friendships. So duty free friendships are like, hey, happy, how you doing? And then we go off on our own way and I don't let you in, I don't really let you in on what's going on and you don't let me in on what's going on. And so what that means, Sandy, is that when you need somebody there with you the most, you don't have somebody. You have someone there when you don't need them necessarily, which is when you're having a good time. But when you're really going through the tough stuff, that's when the value the real true value of having relationships lies. And so that's a difficult one, because I know I heard you say, I don't want to dump on anyone. I don't want to scare them away. And so think of the people you know and the people you think that people most might be open or maybe at your church, and you tell someone, hey, look, I got some struggles and some challenges, and I just need to talk to somebody, and I'm really scared to do so. And you would be shocked at how loving people could be. And that is so different than just, you know, having your gym friends, which is great, but you got to have those real relationships where you can let people. Because you're. Otherwise, you're on your own. You're doing this by yourself.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Well, I've always been the one that everybody else comes to to fix everything and help everybody, and being in this position is different.

[Justin Andrews]

So maybe, and forgive me for saying this, maybe it's because you feel like you're. You're only lovable when you're a value, and when you're not of value, you maybe feel like a burden.

[Sandy (Caller)]

I think that's right.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay, well, just so you know, people love the opportunity to love you. They love it. People love to help, too, just like you do. Just like if somebody came to you, you feel like it's, oh, my God, let me help you. So. And you, like I said, you could try at your church or maybe the people you know already and see if you could pursue those kinds of relationships. When it comes to stress reduction, there's nothing's more powerful than that. Nothing is more powerful than that on that. And so I would say, you know, maybe seek that out and then also make peace with the fact that for the next year, none of your goals are aesthetic. For a whole year. You're not even gonna. Now, I'm gonna tell you this just to encourage you. Your aesthetics are going to change. You keep getting stronger. You keep doing this the right way, your body's going to look better and better. But your goal for a year is none of that. My goal for the next year is I need to take care of myself, just make peace with it.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah. And I think I wanted to. I've already gone through two years of hell. I was like, I can't do another year of not getting reaching goals. So when you kind of stressed that last time, I was like, I can't do another year of this. And it's like, well, you have to. Well, you have to. Well, you know, and that's the Recovery, I guess.

[Doug]

Well, the goals are just different. And, and, and it's not going to

[Adam Schaefer]

feel like getting healthy and strong.

[Doug]

And by the way, you might be ready. I know we didn't get into this because we didn't get into, like, calories and stuff like that. And I'm sure your coach is mon. Monitoring that with you, but the fact that you're hitting protein as high as you are, you're seeing strength gains up, and you're telling me you still have an appetite, you eat more, it might be time to eat more.

[Sandy (Caller)]

And that scares the hell out of me.

[Doug]

I'm sure it does. Just like the rest periods did. But I'm, I'm telling you, okay, I'm telling you that when my client tells me that she's hitting protein every single day, I'm seeing her hit numbers in lifts she's never done before.

[Justin Andrews]

£30.

[Doug]

And she's. And she's telling me she's hungry, I'm gonna say eat.

[Justin Andrews]

Yep, you need to eat, Sandy. Just.

[Doug]

That's your body telling you, I want to build muscle. So if you want to see aesthetic change, you want to see body change, that's it. Then let that body build some muscle

[Adam Schaefer]

and it take over for the fat.

[Justin Andrews]

And let me just say this. Like, adding 30 pounds to a trap bar deadlift would be phenomenal for a year. You did that in 30 days. Like, that's a crazy amount of strength.

[Doug]

And it's probably why. It's probably why the appetite's up. The appetite's up because the body's saying, like, hey, we need some more fuel.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're ready to build.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

So feed it.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Eat what? More protein or like I.

[Justin Andrews]

A whole food. Whole meal. A whole food meal?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Protein. Yeah. Something healthy like what you were already eating. Just eat another meal, more portion or add your. Or make your portions a little larger. That's all.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Okay.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. But look, let me, let me, let me rephrase. Let me put something in a different context that will help you. If somebody reduces the amount of stress in their life or is able to reframe the stress to add meaning to it and then deepens the relationships with people. People. Is that more enjoyable or less enjoyable? Is that a better quality of life or a worse quality of life?

[Sandy (Caller)]

Definitely better.

[Justin Andrews]

So you just went through hell. Yeah. The next year is not going to be hell. No, it's going to be enjoyable. It's going to be better. But you got to do those things that are scary, like let people in and take your eyes off of the aesthetics and it's going to feel so much better. It's going to be way better.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah, I mean, I still that freak out on about, you know, how to, how to, how to get through these years with, with my nest egg gone, you know, but,

[Justin Andrews]

well, it's, it's a really scary. By yourself?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah, let's, let's people want to help.

[Justin Andrews]

Let some people in. Let some people in. Maybe one person or two people for the next 30 days, if you can. Can and start deepening those relationships. You're very lovable. I barely know you and I, I, I like you.

[Adam Schaefer]

So our audience loves you.

[Justin Andrews]

By the way, you know how many, you know how many emails we got after our first episode? Are you, did you look at your episode to see the comments underneath on YouTube?

[Sandy (Caller)]

No.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. Go on YouTube, find your episode.

[Adam Schaefer]

Go read the comments, your homework.

[Sandy (Caller)]

So last week I was. Or a couple weeks ago, I was driving to New Hampshire, her work meeting, and it came on the radio. I was, I always listen to you guys. You're always in the car with me, like I told you. But I was listening and it came on. I was like, oh, my God, that was, that was wild. And I, I heard a lot of things I didn't hear the first time, honestly, because I was.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sandy (Caller)]

So that was cool. But no, I didn't know. Yeah. Okay.

[Justin Andrews]

Are you in our private form them?

[Sandy (Caller)]

No.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, oh, put her in there right now. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

We got people to talk.

[Justin Andrews]

I got homework for you. Yep. Okay. Okay, so three things. Find something to do that you like on your rest periods, not dust.

[Doug]

I mean, actually, you could dust. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure the owner of the gym appreciates that.

[Justin Andrews]

If you're a psycho and you think dusting is enjoyable, go for it.

[Doug]

Right.

[Justin Andrews]

I feel like you just want to be busy, but that's fine.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Sure.

[Justin Andrews]

If you want to. But find something enjoyable that, that really feeds you on your. In your rest periods, try to deepen some of your relationships. And then here's your third assignment. This one I want you to do right after you get off here with us is I want you to go on the private forum. Doug's going to give you access to it. It's on Facebook. I want you to introduce yourself. Hey, I'm Sandy. I'm the one that was on the episode where this happened and that happened. And just tell the, Tell the forum that I'm the one that I talk to the guys and they just let me in and I just want to meet everybody, everybody. And that's It. I'm just gonna let. Let the rest happen.

[Adam Schaefer]

Let them talk to you.

[Justin Andrews]

Just watch what happens.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Okay.

[Doug]

Do you work out with headphones or no headphones? Are you headphones or no headphones?

[Sandy (Caller)]

Either or.

[Doug]

Oh, you do both.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

Maybe play some gangster rap. I feel like that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, dude. A little Tupac.

[Justin Andrews]

Don't do that.

[Sandy (Caller)]

The. The wicked stressful days. I. Listening to Pink Floyd.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah.

[Sandy (Caller)]

All right.

[Doug]

All right. There you go.

[Sandy (Caller)]

I like that I tell you a story that Sal. I know you'll. You'll get something out of this. It's pretty wild. Oh, sorry. I don't want to cry today. That was my goal. So I left church one day and I. After. After the service, they always have a coffee hour to get to meet people and socialize and things. And a couple people approached me. You know, it's a small church. This church is 250 years old. The floors are the wooden planks that are scratched up. The pews squeak when you sit down. The windows are drafties. You know, it's small. Maybe 40, 50 people were there. So it felt like home. It was great. The sermon was about hope. And. And I had the day before. I know we weren't getting any money back, but we got something that kind of confirmed that. So I felt hopeless. So, anyway, I go in the sermons about hope, and honestly, it was like you would have thought. I sat with the pastor and told them everything. And he was talking to me. I was like, holy cow. This is like spot on. Pretty wild. I leave, I'm in my car, and I was thinking, why. Why did I not go to the social thing? I haven't done that yet. And this is where I'm gonna build my community. This was my homework. I'm failing, you know, and, you know, and I was like, I am white knuckling it through this. This part, you know, hanging on my steering wheel. And that phrase, white knuckling it came to a mine. I had on a rock station. I was listening to Bob Seeger and Pink Floyd and all my stuff. Carrie Underwood came on the radio. It's country on that station is unheard of. And she was playing and she's saying, let Jesus take the wheel.

[Justin Andrews]

Wow.

[Sandy (Caller)]

I was like, okay, that. That's a sign.

[Justin Andrews]

Wow.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Right, right. I was like, that's. That's crazy.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Well, if. If the guy. If the guys don't get annoyed with me, I'll go. I'm going to just preach to you a little bit. Remember. Remember when Jesus was washing the feet of his Disciples. And one of them said, no, I'm not going to let you wash my feet. And he said, if you don't let me wash your feet, you'll have no part of me. That's the part of us that we don't want to let people in. It's the, it's the dirtiest part. It's the part that's dark. We want to hide it. And so you let, you let people. People in. Let people in. That's how you get those relationships and that's how you're going to get some of this. That's how you're going to feel supported. Sandy, you can't be by yourself. We're not made to be by ourselves.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah, I have a couple very, very close friends that, you know, they know everything and. But I, I worry that I make them worry about me and they don't. Nobody needs to worry about me. I'm gonna be fine. You know, I'm this, this too shall pass and I'll a white knuckle it through, you know, and so I, I'm careful what I share.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

But you know what's more stressful? When people guess.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah, that's true.

[Justin Andrews]

I know with my kids when they don't tell me things, I'm more worried than when I know.

[Adam Schaefer]

So.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Yeah, it's a myth that's true.

[Justin Andrews]

Go, go in the forum. Go post in there right now. Tell them your whole story because I know a lot of people in there looking for you.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yep.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Okay.

[Justin Andrews]

And we're gonna see you in 30 days.

[Doug]

Yep.

[Sandy (Caller)]

All right. Thank you so much.

[Doug]

See you soon, Andy.

[Sandy (Caller)]

Thanks. Take care.

[Justin Andrews]

She's so much better than last time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Wow.

[Doug]

Huge progress, dude.

[Justin Andrews]

30 days progress.

[Adam Schaefer]

Keep pumping her up.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean I really, I hope she realizes like what a win that was in just a 30 day period.

[Adam Schaefer]

30 days. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And remember the people in the forum were like talking about her. So I was like, oh gosh, she's got to get in there cuz people are total.

[Adam Schaefer]

Good call. Yeah, I think they want.

[Doug]

I'm surprised we didn't do that the first time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Communicate.

[Justin Andrews]

I just, I guess we forgot.

[Doug]

Yeah, we're just twice tied up in her conversation.

[Justin Andrews]

Didn't think about it. But I can't wait to talk to her in 30 days. She's going to do. All right, man.

[Sal DeStefano]

Our next caller is Parker from Georgia.

[Justin Andrews]

What's up, Parker?

[Parker (Caller)]

Hey guys, how's it going?

[Justin Andrews]

Good, man. How can we help you?

[Parker (Caller)]

I appreciate you having me on. I am going to read my question to you all Right. So some background on me. I did not start lifting seriously until my senior year of college. And I learned powerlifting style training from a friend. Ran programs like 5x5,531, things like. Like that I was able to hit lifts of a 405 deadlift, 385 squat and 250 bench, which is nothing special, but I enjoyed hitting those numbers. Then life happened. Multiple kids, demanding job, inconsistent sleep training and diet. Over the past four years, I've inconsistently run some maps programs and just kind of tried to keep training as much as I can, but it's been highly inconsistent. I'm in a much better season of life now. I can reliably train three days a week. I get good sleep. I'm working on improving my protein and movement. But my question is, as an intermediate lifter who still has okay strength, how should I approach progression? For example, I can still full pull 300 by 5 on a deadlift whenever I want to, but then it beats me up pretty significantly. So I don't know if I should aggressively push my strength back, back up or intentionally undershoot. I don't want to spend nine months getting my working weights back up to just 225 pounds because it feels like I'd be spinning my wheels, wasting my time. Kind of reminds me of Jeff Goldblum's quote in Jurassic park. Though they were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think whether they should. So how would you guys structure progression for someone like me whose goal is building muscle strength and longevity? If you were me, which MAPS program would you run for the next year and how would you progress the lifts?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, great question number one. I see in your question here that you're not. You're hitting only 100 to 120 grams of protein a day.

[Parker (Caller)]

Yeah, typically when I track, that's what

[Sandy (Caller)]

I end up hitting.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay, I right away change that. Yeah, get that up. Because that'll make a huge, huge difference. Like 100, 120. Between the difference between that and 180, 190 grams for a guy your size is, is like 30, 40% increase in recovery strength gains performance. So make that a priority. That's number one. I could set you up on a succession of MAPS programs that I think will be good. But the, the thing you want to consider is you have muscle memory, which is going to, it's going to come back in a hurry, especially if you're consistent. The thing you need to be considerate about is mobility and injury. That's the thing that'll stop you because you're probably going to get strong real fast, but you're going to want to temper it even though you feel like you could go faster because injury risk can be a bit high when somebody's strength, because it's not like you're weak, you're still pulling 300 pounds. So going from 300 to 330 to 370, like those are big jumps. Now you're playing with heavy weights and you want to be play. You want to take it easy even if it takes you longer. Because injury risk starts to go up with when you start to move heavy, heavier weight.

[Doug]

I mean, it's not a bad idea because of that to start them on something like. More like a mass performance. Yeah, Symmetry. Symmetry first and then go to anabolic, then would be. Exactly. Would be more ideal. So if you were to, if I were to lay out like the full year for you, symmetry or performance would definitely be in that rotation. I'd probably start it with that since you are already, I mean you're not, not strong. 300. If you're pulling 300 pounds, you're already moving good.

[Justin Andrews]

And remember symmetry taxing you.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So. So to kind of reprioritize it, do more unilateral work and more plane of motion focus, that's going to reinforce all these main lifts that you were already pretty strong in to begin with. So I think it's a good break from that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. If you did symmetry and you hit your protein targets, you could probably follow it up with power lift. As long as you're smart with your training and you'd be be okay.

[Parker (Caller)]

So take, take my for instance, deadlift, take it down to maybe 225, 240, something like that, and jump by 10, 15 pounds a week and see how it goes.

[Doug]

Or is that switch.

[Justin Andrews]

We're going to switch you over? Just follow map symmetry. At the end of map symmetry, there's a five by five where you get to deadlift. Then go and pick your weight. Yeah. And go ahead and go for moderate to high intensity.

[Adam Schaefer]

Shift your focus completely. I think is a good time to do that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, but go map symmetry and when it's done, then jump to mass power lift and then you got percentages and numbers in there that you can play with. Yep.

[Parker (Caller)]

Okay. And then after power lift, how do I need to approach? Like if I'm running anabolic, how do I approach progressing those weights weekly monthly? How, how do you recommend approaching that?

[Justin Andrews]

You want to go by feel, but don't ever, you know, maxing out, like, maxing, maxing out. I would keep that super rare.

[Doug]

Yeah, you should be fine if you're running. If you're running reps of five where you get. Where. Where guys get in trouble when they start getting strong.

[Adam Schaefer]

Ones and threes.

[Doug]

Yeah, they start testing ones and threes and so. And they're going 100 and so if that's. If your goal is to stay healthy and we're not. You're not trying to do some match. Right. You're not going to go compete and go do some like that, then there's no real reason for you to push ones and threes unless you feel amazing and you just want. But I would avoid that if your main goal is health, longevity, and you're going that direction. It says stick with fives. If you're running five by five type of protocol, you're. You're moving a weight that you. You easily can do singles, doubles, and triples with.

[Adam Schaefer]

So it's.

[Doug]

You should be okay. And if you do a good job of doing programs like symmetry and performance, as long as you get those in you every year, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna bulletproof yourself.

[Justin Andrews]

And just to add to that, you would do five reps with the weight you could probably do eight reps with. So that helps you judge the intensity.

[Parker (Caller)]

Okay.

[Justin Andrews]

So you're not doing five with what you can max out with. Five. So that's, that's where you start to get into trouble.

[Adam Schaefer]

Leave like two in the chamber. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Yep.

[Parker (Caller)]

So doing that plus the protein, I'll still build muscle and be just fine.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Parker (Caller)]

Oh, I have to be ratcheting it up too much.

[Justin Andrews]

Your strength is gonna go up. You're gonna get stronger. Yeah, for sure.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

But it would be symmetry. Hit your protein targets, follow them with maps. With maps. Power lift, and I think you're going to be great.

[Parker (Caller)]

Excellent. Well, that was easy.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you got it. I'll send you symmetry. We'll send you symmetry right now. If you don't have it.

[Parker (Caller)]

I think I've actually already got it.

[Justin Andrews]

Do you have power lift?

[Adam Schaefer]

Cool.

[Parker (Caller)]

I've got a lot. So I may actually do performance instead of symmetry because.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay, yeah, I'm okay with that.

[Doug]

Either one. Either one of those. Yeah, both those. Either one of those would be great.

[Justin Andrews]

It's a good rule.

[Doug]

A good rule of thumb, I don't know if you've heard me talk about in the podcast, is just once a

[Justin Andrews]

year, one or the other.

[Doug]

One of the. One of Those programs should be in everybody's rotation, in my opinion. I don't care what your goal is. I think running either symmetry or performance once a year should be in everybody's rotation.

[Parker (Caller)]

Okay, Yep. Well, that's good advice. I appreciate it, guys.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it, man.

[Parker (Caller)]

Thanks for your time.

[Justin Andrews]

Thank you, man. Have a good one. Yeah, that's good. It's the challenge just for people listening when you got muscle memory. It's one thing to have muscle memory in and not be like really strong for your weight. He's pulling 300 strong. He'll be adding 30, 40 pounds really quick if he's consistent his protein target. And then you gotta be careful with injury risk.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And you're running, you know, this program and, and you're noticing these lifts and you're starting to feel restriction and pain and this is something to really pay attention to and this is where we need to kind of shift and alter our focus. So yeah, that's where like a symmetry or a performance comes in because it's going to address a lot of those, you know, variations that you need to address totally.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[Sal DeStefano]

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