2874: The Best Variations to Explode Your Squat, Deadlift and Bench Press

Summary

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

Episode 2874 — The Best Variations to Explode Your Squat, Deadlift, and Bench Press

Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge
Date: June 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Mind Pump crew dives deep into the best variations and strategies to dramatically increase your strength in the squat, deadlift, and bench press — the foundational lifts of strength training. The discussion covers why these lifts matter for everyone (not just powerlifters), the most effective alternative movements, and real-life coaching insights. The episode also features engaging live coaching calls, delivering practical advice to listeners at all stages of their fitness journeys.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Focus on the Squat, Deadlift, and Bench Press?

• Foundational Strength: These lifts create a solid base that supports all fitness, athletic, and health pursuits. (03:09)
  • “No matter what your pursuit is, you get strong in those lifts. That lays a very solid foundation for whatever thing you’re going to pursue...” — Adam Schafer [03:33]
• Carryover for Everyday Life: Significant carryover to general life quality, mobility, and muscle gain, regardless of a client’s age or athletic status.
  • “When they would get stronger at the squat, the deadlift, and the bench press, there was just so much more carryover than when I would pick other big exercises.” — Sal Di Stefano [04:00]
• Technical, Skill-Based Movements: These lifts require higher skill and reward consistency and practice over time.

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Squat Variations to Boost Strength

1. Box Squat (First and Deepest Variation)

   • Popularized By: Westside Barbell (Louis Simmons) [07:14]
   • Technique: Fully sit down and pause on the box, breaking up eccentric (lowering) and concentric (lifting) phases.
   • Benefits: Increases strength at the bottom, teaches control, safely improves range of motion, and is lower risk.
     • “The box squat... is the one exercise I would say is interchangeable with the squat. Meaning you want the benefits of a squat, you want a safer version of it.” — Sal Di Stefano [08:58]
   • Setup: Adjust box height for your personal range of motion; lower box if trying to deepen your squat. [10:01]

2. Belt Squat

   • Description: Unloads the spine by attaching the weight to a belt at the hips.
   • Advantages: Great for those with back issues; helps reinforce proper squat mechanics and can help increase range of motion.
     • “A belt squat will pull you down into a perfect squat, and that’s one of my favorite ways.” — Sal Di Stefano [12:44]

3. Front Squat

   • Highlights: Underutilized but massively effective for core and quad development, assists back squat strength.
     • “If you’re stuck at your back squat for a long time, you could swap it out for front squats for like a month, go back, and then watch what happens.” — Sal Di Stefano [14:44]

4. Split Stance/Bulgarian Split Squat

   • Revelation: Many strong squatters are humbled by the weakness exposed in single-leg work.
   • Carryover: Dramatic improvements in both bilateral squat strength and overall leg development.
     • “Talk about carryover… man, when I could Bulgarian split squat some serious weight, getting back over to the barbell back squat — holy crap, I felt so...” — Adam Schafer [16:59]

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Deadlift Variations to Explode Your Pull

1. Trap Bar Deadlift

   • Lower Skill Barrier: Easier form, safer for most clients, particularly those not ready for conventional barbell deadlifts.
     • “With clients, I use the trap bar far more than I use conventional...even though I can agree with Ripito that the conventional deadlift is king.” — Adam Schafer [18:44]
   • Athletic Applications: Trap bar engages slightly different biomechanics and is favored for many athletic populations.

2. Zercher Squat

   • Hybrid Movement: Loaded in the crook of the elbows; bridges between deadlift and squat mechanics.
   • Benefit: Tremendous for learning how to brace the core and improve overall hinge strength.
     • “If you get in order to get strong in a Zercher, you have to brace your core...Then you go over back to a deadlift or a squat and...see your weight go up.” — Adam Schafer [20:49]

3. Suitcase Carry & Reverse Hyper

   • Suitcase Carry (Farmer Walk w/ One Arm): Trains lateral stability, bulletproofs low back and QL area — vital for injury prevention. [21:25]
   • Reverse Hyper: Popularized by Westside Barbell, protects and strengthens lumbar spine, improves deadlift performance.

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Bench Press Boosters

1. Weighted Dips

   • Direct Carryover: Heavy, deep dips improve bottom-end bench power.
     • “You get really strong at dips, your bench press will go up for sure.” — Sal Di Stefano [24:17]
   • Technique: Focus on deep range of motion, pause at bottom—especially with added weight.

2. Incline Press

   • Underrated: Making incline press your primary pressing movement can skyrocket bench strength.
     • “Focus on the incline. Make that your primary pressing movement. Get really strong at it. There’s carryover to the bench press for sure.” — Sal Di Stefano [25:49]

3. Adding Bands & Chains

   • Accommodating Resistance: Heavier where you’re strong, lighter where you’re not — especially effective for lockouts/power.
     • “Bands and chains just add what’s called progressive resistance… a great tool. Most gyms have the ability to set up chains or bands. Bands are easy to carry in your bag.” — Adam Schafer [27:24]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Front Squats:
  “The front squat is the barbell squat of 20 years ago. Like, 20 years ago, nobody barbell squatted. Today, I never see.” — Sal Di Stefano [13:45]

• On Bulgarian Split Squat Humility:
  “I still have a vivid memory of my first day of training Bulgarian split squats...I couldn’t hold the dumbbells heavier than what [a girl at my gym] was holding, and I remember, I was just roasting from the...‘Oh my God, I’m so weak here.’” — Adam Schafer [16:07]

• On Dips for Bench:
  “You get really strong at dips, your bench press will go up for sure.” — Sal Di Stefano [24:17]

• On Chains and Bands:
  “Bands are easy. You walk into a gym with your chains, you’re hardcore.” — Sal Di Stefano [27:49]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:09 — Importance of foundational lifts
• 07:14 — Box squats: why and how
• 11:36 — Using box squats for squat depth and safety
• 12:06 — Belt squats explained and why they’re trending
• 14:44 — Why you should do front squats for back squat progress
• 16:07 — The humbling power and benefit of Bulgarian split squats
• 18:10 — Trap bar vs. conventional deadlift for strength and safety
• 20:17 — Zercher squat: the core-bracing secret
• 21:25 — Suitcase carries & reverse hypers: bulletproof your deadlift
• 24:17 — Dips: the bench press game-changer
• 25:49 — Make incline press your main push for bench gains
• 27:04 — The value and feel of bands vs. chains

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Live Coaching Highlights

Caller #1: Aaron (Indiana) — Cutting vs. Bulking Cycles

• Advanced lifter, former strongman, now at 260 lbs, 29% body fat.
• Key advice: Focus on maintaining consistency with whole foods and moderate beer intake. No drastic bulk or cut — patience and sustainability are key.
  “If you get impatient, this is where you’ll mess things up, dude. Then you’ll go too far...stick to this, and you’ll slowly get into a nice body fat percentage range.” — Sal Di Stefano [63:01]

Caller #2: Derek (California) — Is My Bulk Working?

• 5’7”, former runner, now 158 lbs (up from 139) and bulked to 18% body fat.
• Advice: Don’t trust home smart scales. Focus on performance (strength doubled!), and slightly cut calories while swapping to MAPS Anabolic and increasing steps. Best-of-all-worlds physique sits at 14-15% for most men; don’t chase unsustainable leanness.

Caller #3: Nick (Alberta) — Low Testosterone After Head Trauma

• 27, 300 lbs, history of multiple concussions, T levels at 325.
• Advice: Stick to new healthy habits for at least 90 days, then re-test. Significant improvements possible; if levels remain low, consider hormone replacement (with HCG to maintain fertility), especially given history of head trauma.

Caller #4: Kathy (Florida) — Maximizing Muscle with MS & Osteoporosis

• 55, postmenopausal, consistent lifter, very active, eats clean but struggles to gain muscle/bone density.
• Key correction: She’s under-eating and overtraining with too much volume (MAPS Aesthetic isn’t appropriate). Switch to MAPS 15, bump calories +300-400, consider working with a coach.
• Goal: Gain 10 lbs muscle, 5 lbs body fat for optimal health.
  “If you do what we say, the changes are nothing short of dramatic... you've got to go through that period of trusting the process.” — Sal Di Stefano [102:03]

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Notable Broader Discussions

• The rise of advanced equipment (belt squat, reverse hyper) in mainstream gyms. [24:06]
• Marriage and happiness data in young adults: Happiness remains stable among the married, has plummeted among the unmarried in 22-35 age group. [39:06+]
• Alarming increases in strokes among young adults and connection to unknown causes. [51:40]
• Rise in alpha-gal (tick-induced red meat allergy) — up 3000% in some U.S. regions. [54:23]
• Importance of leucine content (40%) in essential amino acid supplements for muscle growth. [57:23]

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Final Thoughts

This episode unpacks the practical, battle-tested strategies for breaking through strength plateaus in the squat, deadlift, and bench — emphasizing safe, effective variations and sustainability over ego lifting. On the coaching calls, the team masterfully customizes recommendations to real people’s lives, goals, and limitations.

Overall tone: Supportive, straight-shooting, science-based banter, dotted with humor, real-world client stories, and no-BS myth-busting.

If you want to explode your “big three” strength, optimize your health, or troubleshoot your specific training roadblocks, this episode is a must-listen (or a must-read!).

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Transcript

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[Sal Destefano]

mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews, you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, callers called in and we got to coach them live on air. But this was after the Intro. Today's intro, 57 minutes in the intro we talk about muscle building and fat loss and exercise. We talk about current events, diet. Always a good time. If you want to be a caller on an episode like this, here's what you do. Send your question to mplifecaller.com now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Caldera Lab. These are all natural skin care products for both men and women that visibly reduce lines and wrinkles, firms and tightens skin and minimizes the appearance of pores and it evens skin tone. By the way, this was shown on studies of people using their products. We love Caldera Lab. Go through our link. Get 20% off. Go to caldera lab. Use the code mindpump20. Get 20% off. This episode is also brought to you by Kion. Today we talked about their essential amino acid supplement. 40% of it is leucine. Why is that important? Leucine is the trigger for muscle growth or muscle protein synthesis in essential amino acid supplements. So if you take an essential amino acid supplement, doesn't have enough leucine, it's kind of like wasting your money Kion has the right stuff. Go to getkeon.com that's G E T K I O N. That link will get you 20% off. We also have a massive sale. It's the summer sale on all of our workout programs. Every single maps program is 40% off right now. Go to maps fitnessproducts.com use the code summer40 and get 40% off. All right, real quick.

[Justin Andrews]

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 my pumpstore.com. that's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.

[Sal Destefano]

All right, look, we're going to talk about hacks that will explode your strength and the squat, the deadlift, and the bench press. We got five of them. We're going to cover them right now. Let's get to it.

[Justin Andrews]

Let's go. The main ones.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes. First we should cover why they're so. It's so great to get strong at those lifts. Yeah, they are. They are the power lifts. They're not perfect by themselves. I want to be clear. It's good to do lots of other things as well. But if you get really strong on the squat deadlift and bench press and you have some good programming with other exercise, like you've got really good overall general strength, you've got a lot of things covered there.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, it's the foundation of pretty much all pursuits. Fitness, athletic, aesthetic, health, longevity. No matter what your pursuit is, you get strong in those lifts. That lays a very solid foundation for whatever the thing you're going to pursue for the rest of your life or whatever you're going to move in and out of if you decide to change your mind through it. Like laying this foundation is the, is the best way to build a long term.

[Sal Destefano]

Now, when I train people, when I train clients, I was always, my goal was always generally to get them stronger. But the lifts that I would oftentimes look at the most for strength gains were the squat, the deadlift, and the bench press. And here's the interesting part. I didn't train power lifters. I actually never trained a power lifter. I trained with power lifters. But most of my clients, all of my clients were regular people who just wanted to improve their fitness, get leaner, build some muscle, have better mobility, better quality of life. And the payback, the return that I always saw, that my clients always saw with getting stronger generally, but specifically with the squat, deadlift and the bench press was always phenomenal. In other words, when they would get stronger at the squat, the deadlift and the bench press, there was just so much more carryover than when I would pick other big exercisers.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, and it's, it's one of those things too. Like there's been controversy over the years. I've, I follow like, you know, a lot of strength conditioning coaches, some of them like deter their athletes away from these types of lifts. But at the end of the day, I always brought my clients to these lifts specifically for that foundational strength. They can maximize their effort, generating as much force as possible. There's really not a lot of exercises that you could hyper focus and gain all the benefits from.

[Adam Schaefer]

Even, even the brilliant coaches that you're referring to, like the Mike Boyles and stuff like that, that are like heavier on the Bulgarians and lunges and things like that, I still would make an argument for laying a foundation in the squat first.

[Justin Andrews]

Absolutely right.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, I totally can get behind everything. And his philosophy for athletes and one

[Justin Andrews]

of the most longevity wise. Yeah, yeah, one of the most, like it makes sense.

[Sal Destefano]

But they're also high level already.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, exactly. They've already built that foundation straight. So this is why it, it makes sense for me always. We start here.

[Adam Schaefer]

Agreed. 100 agree.

[Sal Destefano]

And I mean even, even applied to my, I had even older clients in their 60s, 70s and even 80s when I would get them. And of course, I want to be clear, like all strength training exercises, you have to have really good technique. And these are technical exercises, meaning they're higher on the skill required to do them properly than other exercises. So a good example would be like, there's a lot of skill required to perform a squat properly in comparison to like a curl. Right. Not much skill involved with the curl. So you're probably gonna do it right the third time you try it with a squat. It's gonna take lots of time, lots of practice to really get good at it. Which by the way, that skill acquisition is one of the reasons why there's so much carryover to the rest of your life. But my older clients, like these were the lifts we would focus on when I could get them to be able to perform them, because oftentimes they couldn't do them at first, but we would get to the point where we could do them and it would just, it was remarkable to see the difference in their lives from getting, adding 10 pounds to the squat or being able to deadlift off the ground versus just off the rack as an example. So yeah. Let's start with the squat. Okay. So aside from doing more squats. So that's always the best way to get better at squats. So aside from doing more squats, there are squat variations that have a lot of carryover to the squat. And I'll start with the first one. And this one was popularized by strength athletes. It's the box squat.

[Adam Schaefer]

Was it. Is this Louis Simmons who's responsible for this? Is he.

[Sal Destefano]

I would say west side opponent of it? I believe west side. They were the ones that really.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, it was. I wasn't familiar with it until seeing, like, west side barbell type stuff like that before that. I don't remember too many people communicating or talking it. And then I feel like they popularized it for sure.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. So the box squat is. So a lot of times people do this wrong. A box squat is not putting a bench under your butt or a box under your butt and tapping it and coming back up. Okay. That's not a box squat. A box squat is you lower slowly, you actually sit down, you end your momentum. You end the momentum, then you stand up. So you're actually sitting on the box for, you know, a second and a half, two seconds, three seconds, and then you stand back up. Now, why is that such a great way to improve your squat? It breaks up the eccentric from the concentric. So eccentric is lowering the weight. Concentric is lifting the weight. Both two different types of muscle contractions that transition from one to the other can oftentimes make things more difficult for people or increase risk of injury. Why? Was a couple reasons. One, you're changing directions. Two, that slight change in directions temporarily makes the weight heavier. So if I'm lowering with 135 and I squat up the 135, that changing directions actually because of the momentum actually makes the weight more.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. What is. I've seen the formula before for the. The physics breakdown on that. Like, it's. It's significantly more. Like if it.

[Sal Destefano]

Like depending on the speed.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So if. Yeah, if you're dropping down in a. Lowering in a squat, 150 pounds. Like you're saying, like, it's. For that moment of changing direction, your body is feeling like two or three times the weight. I don't remember what it was. Maybe Doug can look that up.

[Sal Destefano]

Like, it depends on how fast moving the weight because that momentum makes a big difference.

[Justin Andrews]

A lot more force on the joints to contend with.

[Sal Destefano]

It is. And I'll be straight up. Box squats. I did probably as often with my clients as Traditional barbell squats, probably as often. In fact, I will say this, and there might be a little controversy around this. It's the one exercise I would say is interchangeable with the squat. Meaning you want the benefits of a squat. You want to do a safer version of it. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Lowered risk factor.

[Sal Destefano]

Way lowered risk factor. Now, from a strength perspective, I'm going to say this right out the gates. Like, when I implemented box squats into my routine, I added. It was a big number. It was like £30 to my barbell squat. Over time from doing the box squat, just the ability to sit, pause, stay tight, come back up. I saw immediate improvement in my traditional squat from doing that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Now, recommendation for height of a box, because that. Because the limiting factor of a box squat is the potential range of motion. So if you take a standard kind of box that you see in gym or like that west. West side barbell squats that you see very different than the range of motion that somebody who has a full range of motion for a squat can. Can do.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, you want it exactly where you want to generate the most force in that bottom position. So wherever that range is for you specifically like that, you're trying to optimize, like, I guess for some people, you know, you could go a little lower. Like, you're. You're trying for a full. A fuller range of motion. You can work on that with the same, you know, just lowered position with the box. But, you know, for athletes, it's going to look different because.

[Sal Destefano]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

They care about squad.

[Justin Andrews]

They care about where you're generating the force primarily.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think that's why I bring this up, because I think it's an important conversation. Because if you just looked at, like, what west side barbell is doing, they are. They are training to compete in powerlifting. And they only have to hit parallel.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. They have to break parallel.

[Adam Schaefer]

Just slightly break parallel. So that's your target and come back up.

[Sal Destefano]

So that's where they put the box.

[Adam Schaefer]

And so that's where they put the box.

[Sal Destefano]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

We recommend that people learn to take a fuller range of motion squat. And so if you already have the ability to, say, go six inches deeper than that box.

[Sal Destefano]

Get a lower box.

[Adam Schaefer]

Get a lower box.

[Sal Destefano]

That's right. Because like an aerobic step I've used before with clients. And what's cool about what you're saying, Adam, is let's say you're working on your depth.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Let's say you could squat to parallel, but once you go below parallel, my technique's a little off. I Feel my knees shift. It just doesn't feel as comfortable. You can get a box that's an inch or two lower than your normal squat, but because you're lowering it slowly, sitting, pausing, and then standing up, it actually offers a safer alternative to challenging your range of motion.

[Adam Schaefer]

To your point about the ch, what we're bringing up about changing direction, that's much more force that is on the joints to change those directions.

[Sal Destefano]

This is how I got my squat a lot lower than parallel than what I could do before was by getting a lower box, lightening the weight, going down, slowly sitting on it, pausing, and then coming back up. It actually trained me to be able to get a. A deeper range of motion. Then you have belt squats. I love belt squats. Oh, yeah, we didn't.

[Justin Andrews]

Haven't done enough of them because. Yeah, exactly.

[Adam Schaefer]

There's not a lot of gym. You see more of them now, but they were really uncommon.

[Sal Destefano]

No, they're in every gym I've been in nowadays. Really? Yeah. Every gym I go to now will have a. Will have a belt squat. They're really popular.

[Caller/Guest]

Wow.

[Sal Destefano]

And you can buy attachments for your home gyms now that are.

[Justin Andrews]

They have, like, flywheel setups for that

[Sal Destefano]

as well, which is cool. So a belt squat, it's a belt that goes around your waist with a cable that goes down and it's pulling you at your hips. So if you have back issues, core stability issues, or you want to just train your squat more but not overload your spine and your. Your back, you can add in belt squats. Because a traditional barbell squat, I mean, yeah, it's a lower body exercise, but it's really a full body exercise, especially when you're. You got that weight on your back, but you use a belt squat, and it's all at the. At the lower body. This is also great for. For working on range of motion. A belt squat will pull you down.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Into a perfect squat. And that's one of my favorite ways.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I love the ones that have, like, kind of the bar in front of you, so you can. They can assist. Assist the bar to keep your chest upright, and then slowly.

[Sal Destefano]

If I had access to a belt squat with my clients, this would have been my primary way of helping them train.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, we never. I never had it in any of the gyms I trained in.

[Sal Destefano]

I don't even. I didn't know if they even existed. They did.

[Adam Schaefer]

They've been around for a long time. They just weren't. They weren't popular.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, you just didn't I never saw one.

[Justin Andrews]

Like physical therapy clinics Powerlifters have had

[Adam Schaefer]

access to for a long time.

[Sal Destefano]

I never saw a belt squat.

[Adam Schaefer]

They just, they were such a big machine. Yeah, it was such a big machine that you, you got to have the space in the gym to do it and then justify like, okay, well, people use this. And so I think that's what. Why. And I imagine they were probably pretty expensive when they first came out, but I didn't realize that you've seen that many. I still don't see every gym I go to now, but I'm also not in. I'm rarely in commercial gyms, so I'm not throwing talk.

[Sal Destefano]

And I went to one that's got like a lot of strength training equipment. Then I go to the other one that's more. The country club. They have a belt squat as well.

[Caller/Guest]

Wow.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Yep. Then we have the front squat, which I will. Right. I'll say it right here. Super underutilized. Okay. Oh, yeah. The front squat is the barbell squat of 20 years ago. Like, 20 years ago, nobody barbell squatted. Today, I never see.

[Justin Andrews]

I was program that in.

[Adam Schaefer]

I was going to say the front squat is the incline bench press. The bench press.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's just, it's so complimentary. It's. It's such a great movement that nobody wants to do because you're so much weaker than the traditional.

[Sal Destefano]

That's true.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's like, like nobody wants to do incline bench press.

[Justin Andrews]

Uncomfortable. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Because you're so much better at flat bench and you can put more weight up. So you, you neglect incline bench press. Yet it's so good for developing your chest and getting a strong bench press. I think the front squat is so good for developing your legs and so good for getting better at your back squat. But because you're so much weaker at your front squat, you never do it. You just do back squat. I feel like it's so similar.

[Sal Destefano]

It' forces you to be more upright, a little bit more quad focus. It's very complimentary to a back squat.

[Adam Schaefer]

A lot of core strength.

[Sal Destefano]

If you're stuck at your back squat for a long time, I mean, you could swap it out for front squats for like a month, go back to back squats and then watch what ends up happening. You'll see.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, I, this, I went on a, a kick. I remember this when I. Because again, also, like, everybody neglected front squat. And like, I was with the incline bench press, I'm like, I'm going to try and get my front squat up to my back squat. And I never passed what my. My max, but I got my front squat over 315, which was a lot for me, Kai, because I think I started at like, 135 and I had to start really low. And boy, going back to my back squat after I could front squat 3:15. Like, I had never felt so comfortable with 405 on my back as I did after getting strong in my front squat.

[Sal Destefano]

Like, same here.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, I noticed it even really helped a lot, my overhead press, because it's just holding the weight and then, you know, really getting comfortable in that racked position. Plus, it's. It's such a transitionary move. So it's like anything you want to do for Olympic lifting. Like, we. We have to get solid with front squats.

[Sal Destefano]

Then you have the split stance squat. This looks like a lunge, but essentially you're splitting your stance in a lunge position. You just go up and down before you switch your stance, but it places a different torsion on the pelvis and this in the core. And if you never do these, you will be shocked at how weak you are. Yeah. In comparison to your squat. This is how you know, this is how you know you need to do these. You could squat 315. Suddenly you get a split stance, and you're like, 105.

[Adam Schaefer]

I still. I still. I still have a vivid memory of the, like, first day of. Of training Bulgarian split squats. And. And I remember. And I remember, like, seeing actually a. A girl in the gym doing it. Yeah, Like. And I know. And like, I. I know logically the benefits of it. I'm like, I need to train that. I never trained that. And I remember going to do it. And I remember I couldn't hold on the dumbbells heavier than what she was holding on to. And I remember I was just roasting from the. Oh, my God, I'm so weak here. And then of course, right after that experience, avoided it for a really long time because embarrassed that I was so weak in it. And then again later on coming back, being like, setting a goal, I'm going to get strong at that. Talk about, again, carrying over to your squat. To the whole point of this conversation, man, when I got to the point when I could Bulgarian split squat, some serious weight, getting back over to the barbell, back squat. Holy crap. I felt so.

[Sal Destefano]

Dude.

[Justin Andrews]

The reinforcement of control, stability, like, what that provides your hips when you go back to, you know, bilaterally.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, my God.

[Justin Andrews]

It was. It was phenomenal.

[Sal Destefano]

And it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, it was very humbling. Very humbling exercise to just jump into that after being good at squatting. But I actually, yeah, it took me a while, but then I finally really, like intentionally tried to get stronger in that and then started using like a barbell with it.

[Sal Destefano]

Y.

[Justin Andrews]

Like, oh, my God, my, my potential for squat went crazy.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, and the. And I know this, that's not the point of this conversation, but the leg development and glute development I got from that, of course, the instability of being in a split stance like that and getting really strong, all those stabilizer muscles having to come up. I mean, that's what contributes obviously to the bilateral squatting, which is the point of the conversation. But for somebody who was aesthetically motivated like I was, man, I had incredible leg development by focusing over on that.

[Sal Destefano]

Totally. All right, let's get to the deadlift and I'll start with the trap bar deadlift. I think the trap bar deadlift is exceptional. I think it's a wonderful supplement and or replacement. So deadlifts with a straight bar, great. Love them, practice them, get good at them.

[Justin Andrews]

Ripito hates them.

[Sal Destefano]

But if you're really, if you're really, if you're really afraid of the deadlift, if you're like, man, my skill around it, I'm not sure, like a trap bar. The skill required to do a proper trap bar deadlift is much less than a traditional barbell deadlift. And there is some carryover. It is a different lift. And I know some people argue the difference, but I'll tell you what, it's lifting something off the ground while you're holding it. The weight is more to the side of your body on either side. So it's a little bit less of the hip hinge, but it's still a hip hinging lift. Athletically speaking, it's a bit. Athletes do more trap bar deadlifts than they do traditional deadlifts.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, I mean, I can, I can get behind the rip a toe type of camp from that day. It's just the conventional deadlift covers all that and some. Unless you're an athlete, because then I can see the carry over that. But I use the. The truth is, with clients, I use the trap bar far more than I use conviction. So it's like the. The reality is, even though I can agree with someone like Ripito, that the conventional deadlift is the king and the place we want to get to, the reality is the average person who comes into the gym that hired me as a coach, we couldn't get there without trap bar deadlifting. First and so there's tremendous benefit for for sure the beginner. And then to your point, if you're somebody who's been stuck at let's say a 400 deadlift for a very long time, you might get comfortable with being able to do a trap bar at like 450, 500 and then go back over and see. And so there is, but there is, there is benefit there. So I don't think it's one of those things where it's just like it's a. Oh, it's terrible. It's horrible. You shouldn't do it. There's useless. No. There's lots of application for it. I still think conventional deadlift is the king. But if you're stuck in a plateau and you can't break through that totally and you're scared to feel what £500 with, it's like go over there and trap bar dead left that and you'll be able to do that 100.

[Sal Destefano]

Then we have Zercher squats. The Zuricher squats is a kind of a front loaded squat. I know it's helping you the deadlift. It says squat, but it's kind of a in between exercise. You have a short lever in front of you because it's on your elbows, you're squatting down. There's some hip hinging involved. And I've noticed with myself and with people I've trained that this has a nice carryover. Actually more carry over to a deadlift than a squat.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Is a Zercha squat.

[Justin Andrews]

I think it really highlights the importance of like your core 100. Yeah. With the 100 left and the hinge like it really just lights up your core.

[Adam Schaefer]

I so you went this direction. I was going to go with the huge benefits that I got from this was the core was bracing. Such a big piece of both. Getting a stronger squat and deadlift is learning how to brace really well.

[Sal Destefano]

Totally.

[Adam Schaefer]

If you get in order to get strong in a zercher, you have to brace your core just to do one.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It forces you to do that. And so as you progress and get stronger to Zercher you get really good at bracing. Then you go over back to a deadlift or a squat and you really learn how to lock in that core. And all of a sudden you see your weight go up in that squat of that deadlift. I this was the big notice that I got from the search result because I think the average person will scratch their head. Even the average trainer that understands biomechanics be like, how is that really helping that much that you can't even load that much is that. But the amount that you have to learn how to brace. And because it still is a hinge pattern, it's like the carryover is actually far better than you would you imagine.

[Sal Destefano]

And then we got a couple movements that really help prevent injury. The suitcase carries is the first one. So suitcase carry out a heavy dumbbell on one side. I'm walking nice, good, tight, controlled form. And I got. Like I said, there's just a heavy dumbbell on one side. What it's doing is it's strengthening the. The opposite side Ql muscle and the lateral stabilizing muscles of the other side. So why is that important? Well, when you're deadlifting, especially when you get really strong, you get really strong moving in one direction. Those lateral stabilizers, although they're active, can fall behind. And this is where you often see back injuries. One of the more common back injuries with deadlift is not because of a herniated disc or something like that. It's because a Ql got pulled. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Shifting weight.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes. It's like the weight came up, and it came up a little faster on one side. It was a little twist. Boom. Ql gets hurt. And what that feels like is a lot of low back pain on one side.

[Justin Andrews]

I love that you brought this up for bulletproofing that, because it's. It is. One, I actually got injured from that, you know, deadlifting, and it became one of my staples. And two, that just. The walking patterns with weight, I think really like, highlights and emphasizes a lot of those, like, opposing forces pulling you left, pulling you into rotation, you know, and to be able to stay fixed and concentrated and you get your body to really respond just in that vertical line. I think it's. It really tests that 100.

[Sal Destefano]

Then we have reverse hyper. Reverse hypers were popularized, I think, by Westside barbell. Again, very interesting movement. And you look at it and you go, how does this help me deadlift? It bulletproofs your low back. It really does. Bulletproof. And more than a traditional hyperextension, reverse hypers is where you're lifting your legs up, and I don't even need a lot of weight to do this. And what I noticed with this when I do these is it's. It's hard to get my lumbar spine to move through because it wants to stay tight. And so it just improves my lower back mobility. And I've seen recently carry over to my deadlift.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, that's another one that you see the more like, you don't see them in a lot of gyms. CrossFit gyms have them. Yeah, but you don't see them in

[Sal Destefano]

a lot of the two gyms. I go to have them.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wow. You go into powerlifting gyms.

[Sal Destefano]

Powerlifting gyms will have them. But I think, you know, as, you know, just side note, as strength training becomes more common in mainstream, you're seeing more strength, like really good strength training machines in gyms. And I just think, like squat racks, for example. Now squat racks are in every gym, whereas they weren't, you know, 20 years ago.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's kind of. It's. I mean, it's an interesting point. I mean, the fact that a reverse hyper and a belt squat are in two of the commercial gyms that you go to is such. And the. And that we've all. We've talked for a long time, like what we've seen the transition in the. The, you know, squat rack and the deadlift platforms, like, that's been insane. Like, to see reverse hypers and belt squats and gyms, it's kind of a cool time.

[Sal Destefano]

Well, you see bumper plates. You see, you know, squat racks. You're seeing people do all these lifts

[Adam Schaefer]

that normally you see hardcore hip thrust machines, too, everywhere. Yeah, I never saw that before. So kind of cool.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's get to the benchmark press. So here's an exercise that will give you some carryover that I don't see a lot of people doing, especially not with weight added, which is dips. You can get really strong with dips, everybody. If you practice dibs, you can get really. Let me tell you, you get really strong at dibs, your bench press will go up for sure. And I almost never see anybody doing weighted dips. I'll see people doing dips. I don't see people challenging range of motion on dips often. Definitely don't see people.

[Justin Andrews]

I love deep range of motion and even an isometric contraction down at the bottom. You know, a pause rep to. To really, you know, emphasize that. But yeah, so much carryover to that when you go back to the bench press in terms of.

[Sal Destefano]

Especially at the bottom.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, the bottom. Bottom position power that you can.

[Adam Schaefer]

Now, that's how I start them. I always start them with an isometric. So it's just a great way for me to prime and kind of warm up before I even get into. I get in that as deep as I possibly. Shoulders. Yeah. And then just do a couple isometrics in that position. That's kind of like my first set, and then I'll get into like loading it and going. It's a great way to start those. And man, get it. Teaches you how to dig out of a bench press.

[Sal Destefano]

One of the.

[Adam Schaefer]

One of the sticking points on being able to increase your bench press is obviously the dig getting it out of the bottom, out of the bottom position. And it's kind of like deficit deads, right for deadlifts. It's like that ability to get deep out of it like that and get strong in that position. And you're right, it's not one of those movements. You see a lot of people grabbing the belt chain and loading it. It's normally something you see body weight reps and rarely as deep as they can go. But getting deep and doing single double triples loaded on that, well, you want to see your bench press go up. That'll do it totally.

[Sal Destefano]

And then we have the incline press, which, you know, people typically treat this as like a, you know, kind of a secondary lift. But one thing that I did, and I know lots of people have done, is they kind of abandoned the bench press for a little while and just saw how strong they can get on the incline. Then they went back to bench press and suddenly they were able to bench press more weight. And because people treat the incline press as kind of a secondary exercise, a lot of people don't realize their full potential in the incline press. But I'll tell you this much right now. Focus on the incline. Make that your primary pressing movement. Get really strong at it. There's carryover to the bench press for sure. And then we'll get to a couple of things you can add to all these things. Bands and chains. This just adds what's called progressive resistance. Bands added to the bar makes the weight heavier where you're strongest and it lighter where you're weakest. So when I'm bench pressing with bands added to the bar, it's lightest at the bottom. As I push up and the band stretches, it's heaviest at the top. Well, I just so happen to be strongest at the top. So now I'm training my strength. Curve chains do the same thing as I lower the weight. Chains at the ground, it's lighter. As I lift, chains come up. This is a powerlifting tool, but the carryover for people wanting to build muscle strength, who just want to look better. Like, I love using bands and chains, and I love using and alleviating a

[Justin Andrews]

lot of that needless stress around the joints too. It's kind of nice to. To apply that Technique and you know, really focus on some like either the lockout or digging yourself out of the hole.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I, and I know we've talked about this before, but you, you just described how the strength curve is the same on the two things, but they feel different.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So they're both different tools.

[Sal Destefano]

Bands versus chains. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Even though, even though they. They match the strength curve. Right.

[Sal Destefano]

Of very different.

[Adam Schaefer]

They feel different doing it. And so chains take more out of you. There's a. There's a value to you doing both of these. Both of these to help you with this. I just. They're a great tool. And I'd say most gyms have the ability to. To set up chains or bands. And bands are easy to carry them with you. You know, chains are a little bit more ridiculous to carry in your gym.

[Sal Destefano]

Bands are easy. You're right. You walk into a gym with your chains, you're hardcore.

[Justin Andrews]

Dude, that is like your neck.

[Adam Schaefer]

That is like the junkyard dog.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, that guy, the wrestler dog.

[Adam Schaefer]

That actually be like a funny reel to do. You know what I'm saying? Come and show up.

[Justin Andrews]

You Mr. T. Dude, bring it back.

[Sal Destefano]

I used to use chains on dips. I used to do just bring some

[Justin Andrews]

big old gold chains and like throw

[Sal Destefano]

it on the bench. It's so awesome.

[Justin Andrews]

That'd be a move.

[Sal Destefano]

Justin, you look nice and tan, which is weird for you.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm glad you noticed.

[Adam Schaefer]

You do. You look like gray. You know what I'm saying?

[Sal Destefano]

Little bit of a mauve. No, you do look. No, you went.

[Adam Schaefer]

You working outside.

[Sal Destefano]

You were down in Palm Spring or pon.

[Justin Andrews]

More freckles.

[Sal Destefano]

And usually you come back sunburned.

[Justin Andrews]

Usually.

[Sal Destefano]

But you came back 10. What are you doing?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, so. Well, I'm trying this out. Like my sister in law. Like we used to 4th of July we'd go to like quarter Lane and. And they're just as fair skinned as us. And so it was like they're out on the boat like all summer and you know, some of their kids are like very fair skinned. But they weren't putting on sunblock. We were like passing around like, no, no, we're good. We don't have any sunblock. And she was telling us about astaxanthin. Is this. They've been taking the supplement to help which I don't even know how to describe this like. So don't rely on me for that.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think I feel like I've heard you sal bring it up before, but

[Sal Destefano]

I don't know what it is in certain seafood.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's a pill.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, you know what? It's from flamingos.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes.

[Caller/Guest]

Algae is another way they get it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, well, flamingos eat it.

[Sal Destefano]

No, no, no. Look up astaxanthin and sunburns, Doug. So you can, if you take this.

[Adam Schaefer]

Justin, is it a powder or pill that you're taking?

[Sal Destefano]

It's a pill, and it's a precursor to vitamin A, right? Is that what that is? It's an antioxidant internal sunscreen. Yeah, dude. You take it before, during, and after you're in the sun.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

And, like, your skin is. Your skin is way more resilient to the UV rays.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I was like, I don't know. It's a risk, you know, like, with me, because it's like, I'm gonna leave, and if I don't put anything on, like, usually I'll get to the point where it's gon a blister if I have, like, that much exposure. But I was like, you know, around the pool, and I kind of started taking it a week before we went to Palm Desert, and I was like, okay, I got a little bit red, you know, and I was hot. But then I kind of went back, you know, inside, and I was fine the next day. And so then we spent a lot more time, like, at this water park. And like, all day long, you know, you're at a water park, there's no shade. Like, it was constant. I didn't have anything on. I was nervous, dude. And I. I came out, I was, like, hot and red. And then, like, once we. I cooled down, I was, like, fine. And. And there was no. It wasn't even. Like, you could. Like, I didn't have any, like. Like heat that night. Normally, like, even my. My skin would be hot when I'm trying to sleep. So. Yeah, it was. It was wild.

[Sal Destefano]

It's so weird.

[Adam Schaefer]

Interesting.

[Sal Destefano]

Whenever I hear Justin talk about, like, him and his kids and wife and

[Justin Andrews]

the stuff you guys don't have to worry about.

[Sal Destefano]

I've never, never had. I've never thought of that. It's never been a thought for me when I go out in the sun, like, oh, crap. Yeah, I'm gonna sunburn. Yeah, I'll put. If I put sunscreen on, it's day one for a little bit one time. Yeah. And the rest of the time there. I never in my life do I. Am I worried about something.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm always looking for alternatives, though, because I hate it. It's so many chemicals and, like, I just, you know, it's a whole process and. Yeah, I'm always jealous because, like, you know, these guys, like, you just, let's go. And then no big deal. I'm just like, you know that dad

[Adam Schaefer]

that put all on my nose and

[Justin Andrews]

they get a place I missed, you know, like a total dork.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's okay. You have great calves.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So, I mean, I've changed the. The. The skin complexion for the calves.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So, yeah, dude. I mean, it was nice. Like, I was like, oh, this might be a thing. You know, I'm gonna try it again and. And see if it.

[Adam Schaefer]

So Doug had it pulled up it. It. So it says, ideally you.

[Sal Destefano]

You.

[Adam Schaefer]

You load it for a couple weeks.

[Sal Destefano]

You do it for like a week

[Adam Schaefer]

before a week or so. So it's something that I. I'm assuming it's healthy for you to take on a regular basis.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, it's good for you to take anyway.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah, I. Yeah, we were reading up on it and it. So in Courtney's kind of like, particular about sourcing, and so she found a good, like, mom and pop kind of place that does it, you know, in house. And so, like, okay, we'll try this. But yeah, I mean, I. Now it's like, you know, the whole dryness and all that. I'm like, oh, maybe I gotta keep it if, like, you know, if I'm getting dark or.

[Sal Destefano]

Are you doing the hydro layer? The caldera lab hydro layer to keep you all.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah. All the moisturizer, all the serum on my face and like, mainly my face because, like, you know, like, I never keep a tan on my face.

[Adam Schaefer]

I use. I use their sunscreen on Max. So.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah, it's 30 SPF.

[Sal Destefano]

And it's all chemical stuff.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's not chemical. It's all natural. So that's. I use that for him.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, that's a great option.

[Adam Schaefer]

So, yeah, they have. They have a great. Because it's hard to find these sunscreens that don't have all the in it.

[Sal Destefano]

I know, dude.

[Adam Schaefer]

And that was like, one of the biggest fights with Katrina. And I was. Because she's. As soon as Max would go outside, she'd like, lather. I'm like, let him be out for at least 15, 20 minutes out there and get a little bit of a base, and then I'm okay with you put on it, but you go lather him up with this chemical right away before he goes out there. And so that's why we switched over to that. And I know it's like a kind of a smaller pile. I don't care that's what I use on him. And it's 30, so it's. And it's all natural, so that's the way to go.

[Sal Destefano]

I have a friend of mine, so I'm training my. My buddy, and we've been working out together now for about, I don't know, five, five or six weeks. And it's so funny. He's like. He comes over, you know, to work out. Train him in my garage. He's like, hey. He's like, does that caldera lab stuff really work? I start laughing. I'm like, did you see one of my commercials? He's like, yeah, I did. And I'm like, it really, dude, it really works. We had this whole conversation about it, and he's like, I've never really used anything. He's a guy, right? So he never really used anything. And then he gave me a compliment. He's like, your skin looks really good. I thought maybe it's because you were sicilian. I said, well, I also use their stuff, but it really does. In fact, Doug, show me the. So I was looking at this earlier at some of the ingredients to. Oh, by the way, Hydro layer one. Best moisturizer in Men's Health and Esquire.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

They got first place in both of them.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, they're killing it.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. And they. They have compounds in their hydro layer that holds up to five times its weight in water. So it attracts. So there are two.

[Adam Schaefer]

As far as, like, keeping you hydrated, your skin hydrated.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes. So 5,000 times its weight in water. It's polyglutamic acid and hyaluronic acid. So those are two primary ingredients in their hydro layer. So it keeps your skin.

[Adam Schaefer]

So basically, you rub it in and it gets absorbed in your skin, and then it holds the water.

[Sal Destefano]

That's right.

[Adam Schaefer]

Almost like what creatine does in the muscles.

[Sal Destefano]

Me? Oh, yeah. Kind of interesting. Yeah, kind of interesting. It's got exosomes in there. They're patent pending, too. 20 times more active in the skin. So. Yeah, so I was telling him all this stuff. He's a doctor, so he likes the science.

[Justin Andrews]

So we're kind of going through it and speaking out.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Now he's gonna use it, which is kind of cool.

[Adam Schaefer]

What did everybody do on their memorial? I mean, I know I was laid up sick and did absolutely nothing. You.

[Justin Andrews]

So you went down, Drove down. Yeah, yeah. It's a long drive, man. And it's funny because every time. Yeah, every time. We do now. Well, kiss, dude. Flights right now are so dumb. And it's like, dude, it takes forever to get through security and like there's delays and like all over the place. I don't know if you guys noticed. Like, you've obviously just like, why are there delays everywhere? I don't know, it's just, it's like

[Adam Schaefer]

cuz all the, they had all the, all the whatchamacallit, all the protesting and stuff with the. The again we went through that whole thing with. What are they. The. What are they called? They work there. Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

Oh, the tsa.

[Adam Schaefer]

Tsa. That old tsa.

[Sal Destefano]

Why are they protesting?

[Caller/Guest]

Testing or striking, whatever.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's what I meant. Strike. Yeah, same. Same thing. They went through that whole process again. You didn't know that just happened again? No, yeah, that happened again. So there was.

[Justin Andrews]

So. Yeah, we were avoiding all that. Yeah. So we just.

[Sal Destefano]

So you drove for 12 hours? Yeah, basically.

[Adam Schaefer]

Is it eight hours?

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, that's a long drive.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, well, I mean we cut it to like seven five's like my limit. Yeah, we took ways like Waze has taken us on so many. I've gone like, I want to say at least six different ways down there now, like, and it all through like Central Valley desert and like all that. Like. So it's been, it's been weird, you know, like finding all these new paths to get there. But yeah, we, we went down there and then just, just hung out and I actually took the boys to the gym and I think I might have brought this up on another podcast. But yeah, we got to work out, so I got them. That was like my first time of having like a real in gym session with them like two times and it was.

[Adam Schaefer]

Did you guys go up there the whole time or did you guys. Were you here for a few days then went down?

[Justin Andrews]

We were here for a couple days and then we left because we're. We're in the process of like trying to sell my house. So we're kind of in and out with like people coming to show the place and then wanted to look at it. We gotta hurry up and leave, grab the dogs and everything. And it's been kind of stressful, but it's.

[Adam Schaefer]

Have you, have you transferred a bunch of stuff to the other house yet?

[Justin Andrews]

You have?

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, you already have moved some stuff?

[Justin Andrews]

Lots of stuff there. Yeah. So it's really just like the stuff we have on display for show and you know, few clothing items. I'm like literally rotating like, I don't know, maybe like 10 or 12 different outfits. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Now is. I'm like, is the other house Done enough for you, like, to have your master bedroom and be able to put some there or, like, it's.

[Justin Andrews]

It's got walls and it's. We got lighting upstairs now, which is great.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I've not seen any updates. You haven't painted a lot. You haven't shared any updates with us. Like, you've. I haven't seen any updates in your place at all.

[Justin Andrews]

It's. I mean, like, we're getting there.

[Sal Destefano]

Like, it's like, it's not like, your

[Adam Schaefer]

car, because I know it exists. I've seen it. I've seen it. I've been there, so I know it's for real.

[Justin Andrews]

I drove my car once, so I know that it does exist. Which. This is great. Once I finally get it, I'm gonna. Yeah. Reveal it. Everybody's gonna be like, whoa, you have this.

[Sal Destefano]

You actually had it for a long time.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's going on, like.

[Sal Destefano]

Like two.

[Justin Andrews]

Almost two years. Two years, almost. Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

That sucks.

[Justin Andrews]

Probably not getting a recommendation

[Sal Destefano]

for anybody else.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, it's like. It's so tough because everybody I know, everybody I have that's done a build, it's just.

[Sal Destefano]

It's just forever.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's just part of the process.

[Justin Andrews]

Classic cars.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And it's. It is one of those things where I was, like, very. I mean, not to say I'm naive, but, like, I knew it was going to take a while, but not this long. I didn't.

[Sal Destefano]

Not two years.

[Justin Andrews]

Come on.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Like, what?

[Adam Schaefer]

But.

[Justin Andrews]

But then again, it's. It's tough because, like, two. I know the guy, and, like, he's downsized. He had, like, a whole full staff working for him. Now he's just. Just him. Like, the last year has been just him. And so it's like, you know, I'm

[Adam Schaefer]

like, what's crazy is you chose to build a classic car and build a house at the same time.

[Justin Andrews]

That was not intentional, dude.

[Caller/Guest]

At all.

[Sal Destefano]

Just a lot of stress.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I really do. Like, I'm like, I'm not. You know, I don't like chewing.

[Adam Schaefer]

He's like, I don't have enough stress in my life.

[Sal Destefano]

You should buy a puppy and have a kid.

[Justin Andrews]

Another puppy on top of.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, dude.

[Justin Andrews]

We already got two cats, like, in the mix. Like, Courtney snuck those ones in.

[Sal Destefano]

What?

[Justin Andrews]

Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they've been rad because they're actually productive and they kill things, so I'm cool with them, but. And they're pretty low maintenance, but. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Did you guys keep your chickens, or do you bail on the Chickens.

[Justin Andrews]

They bailed on them. We actually gave them to one of our friends. I didn't eat them. Started. Yes, she started one. They're good egg producers, so, you know, they're happy to take them.

[Sal Destefano]

Dude, I got it, I got it. I got a chart I want to talk to you guys about, so switch directions a little bit. I just read this today. It was a study on young adults. So 22 to 35 year olds, they, their happiness has dropped significantly, but not all of them. You guys ready to hear this? It's pretty wild. So in this is this chart. This study starts in 1980, and it goes all the way to a little bit past 2020. So young adults were.83% of them in 1980 said they were pretty or very happy. Today it's 68%. But there's one segment. So that's a huge drop from 83 to 68. But there's one segment of young adults whose happiness has barely changed or not changed at all. Married young adults. So the young adults who are single, their happiness plummeted. All the married ones, same 91. 1980, 90% today.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're so pro young man.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, well.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, let's sell marriage.

[Sal Destefano]

This is data. This is Data. These are 22 to 35.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is data of what they were report.

[Sal Destefano]

Right?

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, how many, how many married guys are sitting next to their wife? And he was like, are you happy? Yeah, I'm happy.

[Justin Andrews]

You happy too?

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Market over your shoulder?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

He's like this. She's looking at it like this. Like that? Yeah, yeah, I'm happy. We're real happy.

[Sal Destefano]

Just so you know. Just so you know, these surveys aren't done together. They're done individually. Okay, but.

[Adam Schaefer]

And you don't think she goes like this.

[Sal Destefano]

What?

[Adam Schaefer]

How did you answer? Yeah, how did you answer?

[Sal Destefano]

Hey, I'll tell you what. If there's. There's no change since 1980.

[Adam Schaefer]

Happy.

[Sal Destefano]

The other one plummeted. I mean, listen, this is good to bring up. And these are 22 to 35 year olds. Adam, this isn't like 19 year olds.

[Adam Schaefer]

But what's, what's it. What's the divorce rate between people that get married between the ages of 20 and 25 versus 25, 30.

[Sal Destefano]

22 and 33. 35.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, no, what I'm saying is, I'm not talking about that. That's one study. I'm saying I'd like to see what's the report say on people who get married between the ages of, say, 18 to 23 and then 23 to 27 and then I don't know.

[Sal Destefano]

But if you, but the older you get married, the divorce rate goes up typically. But that's, that's typically because it's second and third marriages. So when you look at people who get.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, that's. I like to see first marriages between all those ages and what the, what the divorce rate is, I don't, I don't know. So that would be interesting to me to see. Teen marriages have extremely high risk with nearly 48.

[Sal Destefano]

So the ideal zone is 25 to 29, where the divorce rate is the, is the lowest.

[Justin Andrews]

Is the lowest. That's your sweet.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is statistically one of the most stable brackets, boasting a divorce risk of only 10%. Ages 30 to 44. Sales.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, yeah. So as you get older, it gets hot, it gets worse.

[Adam Schaefer]

No. 10%.

[Sal Destefano]

The odds of divorce actually increase by roughly 5% for each additional year you wait. This is age 32 and older.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's 32 and older. Between 30 and 34, statistically, is the best time.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes. But 22, 25 to 29 is also, is also very good. Anyway, My point is 23, 26. My point is that the data from 22 to 35 year olds, there's a huge discrepancy from married and not married. Huge. Why is this such a big deal? Because, because everything would have you believe otherwise. They would have you believe the happiest people in that age group are not married. Not true. And this is data. This isn't my opinion.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'm just pulling up your opinion. I mean, it's not. I mean, you're using that to, to make your, your opinion.

[Sal Destefano]

It's like just that they report less

[Adam Schaefer]

because they report that. I mean, there's so many other variables that could be going on there. Just not like, it's not that.

[Sal Destefano]

I mean, you can make up things that you think because then you just.

[Adam Schaefer]

Because when you read, when you read that, when you read those right there, then if they're not getting divorced, their divorce rates the lowest at 30 to 34.

[Sal Destefano]

This goes from 22 to 35 years. So that falls within this.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right. So again that, that the, the better age could be say 30, 34, and it's not really getting married at 22, 20. My point to your counter. Your point is I'm not pro getting married between 20 and 23 years old. And you're so pro getting young. And it comes off that way when you say that. So I'm coming back the other direction, being like, okay, I understand that married people are happy. And I agree that we've sold this dream of. Or we've told people that, oh, be single, make all this money, bang lots of girls and the Peter Pan syndrome. And I don't agree with that. But I also think that people getting married at a really young age is not always a good idea. Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

I'm not saying that.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'm just saying it can come off that way. When you read it. When you read what you just.

[Sal Destefano]

I'm reading exactly what the data says, which is that the happiness rate from 22 to 35 year olds has plummeted among those who are unmarried.

[Caller/Guest]

Right, right.

[Sal Destefano]

Whereas those who are married has stayed the same.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Which would account for even divorce and all that stuff. Which is what you're looking at.

[Adam Schaefer]

I know, but when you report a study like that and you give a range like that, it could be interpreted to somebody who's 21 years old that hey, it's a good idea for me to get married right now.

[Sal Destefano]

Do you know how many people or how many women who are childless are childless? And it was not intentional. You can look that up. Significant.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Because that is the. I agree with that. I mean, so when you look at.

[Sal Destefano]

So when you think of it this way. Okay. Especially if you're a woman and you're looking at this, you know, I'm gonna wait till I'm 33. Now you're 33, like I gotta get married, have a kid right away.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

And the odds that you're gonna remain.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think, I think, I think the conversation is different for men and women, in my opinion. So I would encourage a woman to get married a younger age. I would encourage a man to get married at an older age. I think a 25 year old woman is totally different maturity wise than a 25 year old boy.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes. You want to know what's interesting about that? Young men place getting married today, which is really weird. It was never like this before. Young men place marriage and having children higher.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Than women do these days.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And I think that's because of the stupid narrative that we've pushed on women for.

[Sal Destefano]

That's my last.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And agree with that. But again, that's a. I think that. That women are far more mature at middle 20s than men are. And so I think in an ideal world, it's like guys are waiting till they're closer to 30, especially girls are probably around 25.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Especially when you look at the age difference when people get married, it typically be is like two to three years. Yeah. So a guy will typically be two to three years older.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

But again, I think that there's. I know there's this narrative which is don't even think about it until you're in your 30s and just enjoy your life. And here's what's happening. They're not enjoying their life. They're less happy. Yeah, they're far less happy.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think the commentary that I want to bring to that conversation is because I don't want to happen what I feel like we always do in society, which is swing from one extreme to the other extreme. Oh, we don't get married. Da, da, da, Go this way. Oh, get married right away. It's like there's actually somewhere there's some logic.

[Sal Destefano]

Do you think people were less happy when it was in the other direction because it was in the past when

[Adam Schaefer]

they were really young?

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Do you think they were less happy 40 years ago when the narrative was get married early and have kids?

[Adam Schaefer]

No, I know they weren't. I mean, you're bringing up the studies that prove the opposite of that. But I also think that 30, 40 years ago, there were a lot of the things. 30 years ago, a family, a single. A family could have one person working and they could survive in a single home.

[Sal Destefano]

We've talked about this. The. The data on that's not true.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, they're. Because we have live in bigger houses and things like that. Well below.

[Sal Destefano]

I'll tell you what, right now, I had this conversation with my cousins. They're like, oh, no, no. My grandfather, he was able to buy a house and support. And I'm like, okay, let's do apples to apples. Yeah, he didn't have Internet, so cut that cost out. Yeah, he didn't. He only had one car, so cut the other one out. He didn't have TVs, so cut that out. He didn't eat out, so cut that out. He didn't buy clothes all the time. So if we actually do apples to apples, sure, that's.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's a logical argument. Problem is perception is reality. And this young generation perceives you're right this way. That's. So that's why I don't disagree with the logic that you make. But the average person who's 20 years old doesn't see it that way. And if that's their perception, that's the reality, which then will cause them to be depressed, sad. And yes, I can't afford both me and my wife have to work.

[Sal Destefano]

No, 100. That's why it's important to talk About. And there are many places I know we don't live in one of these places. Where we live is one of the most expensive in the world, but there are many places in America which very affordable.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

And a lot of the issue, like I have family members or friends, I have friends like this who both couple, you know, both husband and wife work. They work like crazy. And it's like if you just moved, you're so stressed out, you're both working crazy hours, your kid is going to daycare. If you just moved, you'd be okay. Like, I don't want to leave the area. It's like there are options. There are definitely options.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, I think there, I think there is a, I think, I think great advice is for a young man to build himself, Grow, learn, educate, build skills, get mature. Wait till you're 25 to 28 and then you find a girl who's three years younger than you and you live somewhere in the middle of the country

[Justin Andrews]

and you absolutely be disciplined and happy already. So you can be confident.

[Sal Destefano]

I'll even add to that. Especially if you're in that age group. I think you should date to marry. Not because I'm just, I need to get married, but yeah, with an objective like, hey, I'm gonna date, but I'm gonna date because I'm looking for somebody I want to be with, not just some, you know, whatever. And it's the opposite. And people are less happy. People are way less happy living that life. And when I saw that data, first of all, I expected everybody to be less happy because that's what you keep seeing the data. Yeah, but people who are married stayed the same.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, I believe the dating process is part of what I, when I'm, when I allude to, you should grow, learn. And like, I mean, that's part of that. Like the, the best experience for dating for me in my 20s was not like, oh, just because I was trying to have fun. It was like I was learning about myself. Like, that was like that whole process was. I mean, when I, when you're, I mean, this is why I'm not a fan of 21 or 22 year old young man getting married is because at 22 you think you know what you want and most men don't. By the time you're 30, you get a little bit better idea of what you want. Probably 35, you really realize, oh, this is what I value, you know, what I want.

[Sal Destefano]

You know, like that's, you know, it's interesting. I was just at a wedding, young Couple, they're in their, I want to say, early to mid-20s. It was the most Christian marriage ever. Wedding I've ever been at. So I've never been at a wedding that was that like both. But the support and the families that they had around them and how they talked about marriage at the wedding, I was like, man, they have such a high odds of success because they're going to definitely change. There's going to be challenges. Of course, if you're with someone long enough, there's going to be massive challenges. But they have all these people around them. The way they were communicating marriage was incredible. And they have all their parents around them and grandparents and this culture. And I think that's another big part of it. And I think a lot of us

[Adam Schaefer]

don't grow up in that culture. That's a huge part of it. I mean, and also a great art.

[Sal Destefano]

I mean, imagine having people to talk to that, you know.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, even. Even just having a. I mean, it's unfortunate, but we don't have. A lot of people don't have. Don't come from a family that's all together, like.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Having an example of a mother and father that stuck together and didn't work through things and uncles and aunts that did it. And like, you know, if you had this big family that you. That.

[Sal Destefano]

I just imagine, like, them having straws watching this. I was thinking about this, like, imagine have big, big challenges, and he goes to his buddies who also are in this kind of culture. His buddies are not going to say, dude, just leave her. They're going to say things like, no, man, you got to stick it. Let's work it out. Let's figure this out. Let's get you guys together. We're all going to. And when you look at successful families and marriages, they have a lot of that, but a lot of people don't grow up in that, like you said, which makes it very, very difficult.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, no, agreed, agreed. I mean, that's all part of the growing process.

[Sal Destefano]

It's just wild to me when you look at. When you start to look at the data, objectively speaking, we should be happier today by the things that we tend to measure, which is material success, access to health care, you know, education and freedom. And we have more of those things, but so many people are less. Less happy. There's something missing. Oh.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, I think it's one of the greatest analogies to that or examples is when you talk about, like, what kings and queens had.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, like somebody who is in, like, Poverty is. Has more luxury, I know. Than somebody. And yet this, I mean, so think about that for a second. Like, that'. Wild. That's like. And that wasn't that long ago. We're not talking about, like, you're only talking about a couple hundred carrier pigeons

[Justin Andrews]

and we have, you know, freaking like doordash, so.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, it's. Yeah, yeah. No, it's.

[Sal Destefano]

It's.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's. I. I mean, I catch myself.

[Sal Destefano]

Oh, he's probably gonna die. Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, man, he's gonna die.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Well, I mean, I. The convenience that we have in. In everything and convenience and luxury in our daily lives is. Is wild just compared to say, 20, 30 years ago. It's. And so you're right, we have of. And it's only accelerating with 3D printing and AI robots to come do everything for you. Like, I mean, it's. We're only going to have more. And the irony of that is we're only going to get more depressed and sad and lonely and all those things because we keep.

[Justin Andrews]

Creates meaning and we're, you know, eliminating it.

[Sal Destefano]

That's crazy. All right, speaking some more good news for young people. Dude, this, this is crazy. And I'm not gonna say the elephant in the room, but I know you guys are going to think the same thing. So there was there. There's some, some data coming out showing. And I'll pull it up here showing how strokes. So the instance of strokes is spiking in young people. So doctors are now seeing people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who are getting suddenly. They're seeing a spike in these young patients getting strokes and they're confused as to what could possibly be a couple

[Justin Andrews]

years back if we like go back in time.

[Sal Destefano]

Dude, I keep seeing like data like this in the comments. Underneath, everybody posts a little emoji of a. Of a shot.

[Adam Schaefer]

Really?

[Sal Destefano]

Dude.

[Justin Andrews]

Dude, it's. Of course we're gonna inevitably hit this reality and face this reality, you know, of what we all went through and endured. It's like, it's hard because you just can't talk about it, you know, like, we can't talk about, like this might have had an impact.

[Sal Destefano]

I know.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, you know, you. Meanwhile, we're. We're trying again. Right? What's the. What's the one going around right now?

[Justin Andrews]

It's already dying.

[Sal Destefano]

It does?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Is. What was that called? Yeah, Hantavirus.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. I mean, they felt like they kind of rolled it out. Like, let's see if we could do a part two and just like every part Two, Norway. It flopped.

[Justin Andrews]

It's just like, oh, no evidence, like, in terms of benefit, you know, it's just it. If you go back and look at benefit versus, you know, us like saving people, like, I would love to see, like, real statistics.

[Sal Destefano]

It's wild though, to see.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, it's not good.

[Caller/Guest]

Good.

[Justin Andrews]

It's not good.

[Sal Destefano]

It's.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, like overwhelmingly not good.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Yeah, dude. And then that one. There's that one tick disease that's exploded over a thousand percent. They're now starting to investigate it as bioterrorism.

[Justin Andrews]

I brought that up and I was like, ah, this is like freaking super conspiratorial. But, you know, it's.

[Sal Destefano]

What is it called? Gal. Something like you get bit by this tick and then you don't want to eat. You can't eat red meat. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Red meat.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. What's it called?

[Justin Andrews]

Some kind of enzyme that. It.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, what's the.

[Sal Destefano]

What it.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's the. The stats on people that are.

[Sal Destefano]

It's called alpha gals and creates. That are.

[Justin Andrews]

Allergy.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's. What's the. What's the allergy increase to red meat in the last decade, do we know?

[Sal Destefano]

Oh, a lot. Is it a lot? Yeah, because of alpha gal. Mainly alpha. So. So it's gone up a thousand percent recently.

[Adam Schaefer]

Whoa.

[Sal Destefano]

Thousand percent? Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. Doug, look up.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, there's like. There's like a heat map over the US of like where they're.

[Caller/Guest]

They're.

[Justin Andrews]

They're getting reports of it.

[Sal Destefano]

It's pretty.

[Justin Andrews]

Pretty alarming.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Look at this. Scroll down, Doug, because you can see the last. There's massive spikes in positive test results for alpha GAL antibodies over the last decade. But I read in an article that was something like a thousand percent increase. So it's like suddenly exploded.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's crazy numbers.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

So they're now trying to potentially look at it as a bioterrorism.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Like maybe. Maybe someone did that. Yeah, There you go. Alpha gal on the rise. The alarming growth. Oh, There you go. 3,000 adults, 25 to 49 had increased 16. 3,000%.

[Justin Andrews]

That doesn't sound like a natural occurrence.

[Adam Schaefer]

3,000%. Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. So weird, right?

[Justin Andrews]

Well, so weird.

[Adam Schaefer]

What state's most common?

[Sal Destefano]

It's not coming. It hasn't been in California yet, right?

[Justin Andrews]

No, it doesn't need to be. Doesn't make sense. This is the Lone Star ticks. I don't know if it is start in Texas or like, like the Midwest.

[Sal Destefano]

All the south, where all the meat

[Adam Schaefer]

is eating conveniently Conveniently hitting the south first.

[Sal Destefano]

I'm going to be going to Yellowstone and I need to be careful. Not really.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, when are you going to Yellowstone?

[Sal Destefano]

When we're all taking that time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, that's where you're going?

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, how fun.

[Sal Destefano]

Are you.

[Adam Schaefer]

Are you staying in Yellowstone the whole time?

[Sal Destefano]

We're going to stay like 30 minutes outside of it. I got a. I got like an Airbnb and so we're going to stay there.

[Justin Andrews]

Wow.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'm surprised you're doing something like that.

[Sal Destefano]

Why? I've been to Yellowstone before. I know.

[Adam Schaefer]

It was so not like you to do anything.

[Sal Destefano]

What?

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, that's like an adventure. Like to actually go out into nature and do that for all.

[Sal Destefano]

It's a national park. I really like going out. I'm gonna go where I'm supposed to.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, but you still see some people like, like going too close to those buffalo.

[Sal Destefano]

Why do you do that?

[Justin Andrews]

It's a freaking huge, like wild animals.

[Adam Schaefer]

Just you and the kids or are you doing out?

[Sal Destefano]

Me and the kids? Kids. My niece and my mother in law and my brother in law and sister in law. Oh, cool.

[Adam Schaefer]

And you're all gonna get a place you can all fit in?

[Sal Destefano]

We all have one. One big place.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, cool.

[Sal Destefano]

Have you ever seen, by the way, like a buffalo? One of those. Buffalo, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Or a moose is crazier.

[Sal Destefano]

It looks like a dinosaur.

[Justin Andrews]

Dude. There's. They're like one of the scary. It's funny because they look all like cute and whatever.

[Sal Destefano]

Dumb.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, like dully. You think like Bullwinkle or something and you're like, no, dude, it was terrifying. It was so big. It had to be like over a ton.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And so I was like canoeing actually. This was in Minnesota, like at the Boundary Waters. And I was there with the football team. We all like had this like canoe trip that we did together. And I'm like just canoeing and all of a sudden it just came out of the woods down this hill.

[Sal Destefano]

We're in the water.

[Justin Andrews]

It goes in the water. It starts walking in the water and it like submerges completely. And then we lost it. Or like it was like walking on

[Sal Destefano]

the bottom of the lake and we're getting like.

[Justin Andrews]

You get the hell out of here.

[Adam Schaefer]

I got video of one as close as me and you. When I was up at whatchamacallit. Yeah, well, Jackson Hole, When I was in Jackson Hole, there was one walking around where we were all staying and stuff.

[Justin Andrews]

They get pissed. They'll come after you.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Especially they have their babies with them or whatever too.

[Sal Destefano]

They just look, they just look cartoonishly big. Yeah. You look at it. Wait a minute, that's.

[Justin Andrews]

That's way bigger in real life. It's insane.

[Sal Destefano]

It makes a cow look tiny. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Or like a horse. It makes a horse look a little tiny. Tiny.

[Sal Destefano]

Anyway, I want to talk about essential amino acid supplements because. So we work with Kion. So this is for our listeners. They need to know this, that essential amino acid supplements, when you look at the data on how effective they are, the thing you have to look at is how much of it is coming from leucine. So leucine is one of the branch amino acids but leucine is considered a trigger for muscle protein synthesis. Makes a massive difference. So if you see comp. If you see an essential amino acid supplement that's not 40 leucine, it almost does nothing in comparison to the ones.

[Adam Schaefer]

So is it, is it more expensive? Other things? Because that's typically what you'll see with supplement brands. If they're going to try and cut corners, it'll be the.

[Sal Destefano]

That's a good question.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, because, so like, because it makes sense. It doesn't make sense to cut it out unless it saves the supplement company a bunch of money to cut it out and to claim they're still an EAA and then do that. So it'd be interesting to see if the leucine is one of the more expensive parts.

[Sal Destefano]

But when you look at the studies, like there was that one study that was done on women where they took just the century amino acid supplement, compared it to a scoop of whey protein

[Adam Schaefer]

and how they got higher, it is typically a bit more expensive per serving.

[Sal Destefano]

It makes sense.

[Adam Schaefer]

So talk about. I didn't know this.

[Sal Destefano]

So it's the primary, it's the primary driver for muscle protein synthesis. So muscle protein synthesis is what we measured. If you're building muscle, building, building tissue, it's the leucine that triggers it. Now you want the other amino acids in there because when it's triggered.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Then it uses those amino acids to do what it needs to do. But it's the leucine that basically pulls the trigger.

[Adam Schaefer]

But leave it to shady supplement companies to skimp on that because they can save for the margins.

[Sal Destefano]

That's right.

[Justin Andrews]

Expensive.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, totally. I mean like the margins are so slim in the supplement industry and the fact that they're not regulated, then a company can easily put 10% in there.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Save money. So they. And charge a premium like that. Even though it's less so Kions is

[Sal Destefano]

40%, 40% is from, is from leucine and then the rest of the amino

[Justin Andrews]

acids are in there.

[Sal Destefano]

So this will make a difference. So if you've tried essential amino acids before, like didn't do much, try theirs and see what happens. And that's the one we, that we started taking.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Because we had the interview with the founder. It made a big difference.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

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[Caller/Guest]

Our first caller is Aaron from Indiana.

[Sal Destefano]

What's up Aaron?

[Adam Schaefer]

How you doing Aaron?

[Caller/Guest]

How's it going guys?

[Sal Destefano]

Good, good. How can we help you?

[Caller/Guest]

So I guess my question is should I do a bulk cycle and cut cycle like every six months to achieve the body fat percentage I'm looking for? For reference, I'm currently 510 and 260 at about 29 body fat. I would consider myself a advanced lifter. I competed in strongman for several years and then life happened, got away from me and now I'm trying to get back down to my original size.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's the original size? What were you before?

[Caller/Guest]

When I was competing I was 220.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay, okay.

[Sal Destefano]

Now what was different about your lifestyle when you were 220 and what are you weighing right now?

[Adam Schaefer]

Sorry, 260.

[Sal Destefano]

So what's, what's the difference in lifestyle? You know, would you say that accounts for the £40 extra?

[Caller/Guest]

Life really happened. Advancements in careers. I got married, had a kid. So time got away. I wasn't working out twice a day. It's only working out once a day.

[Adam Schaefer]

It says you came from 300 something right now too. How long that take you to get down to that?

[Caller/Guest]

That was about 12 years ago.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh you so 12 years ago is when you were at your highest at 360.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Now, Aaron, was the only difference when you were 220 versus 260. Working out twice a day versus once a day. Or are there changes in diet as well?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, my diet was way better when I was competing as well.

[Sal Destefano]

What's the. What are the differences, would you say the big differences in diet back then versus now?

[Caller/Guest]

Now I've got it dialed back in, but that's just recently.

[Sal Destefano]

And what does that mean specifically? Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Are you tracking it all? Do you know calories and protein and what you.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah. So, yeah, I'm currently at 260 grams of protein a day and about 28 to 2900 calories a day.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. And where were you before? So what were the things. What were the knobs that you had to turn? What were the things you had to change? Because you said you're dialed in now. So what was it that you had to change?

[Justin Andrews]

All or what was.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, yeah.

[Caller/Guest]

A lot of it was like, I cut back on the beer drinking.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. And then.

[Adam Schaefer]

Really? Why?

[Caller/Guest]

I started eating whole foods again, not eating fast food and processed foods.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, you're good. I was gonna say you don't have to do anything.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're probably in a sweet spot now. I wouldn't want you to cut too much lower calorie unless you're pretty sedentary. What you have any idea, like, what's your, what your step count? Like, how much you move throughout the day?

[Caller/Guest]

I make sure I get 10,000 steps a day.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah. Okay. Your size, moving that much, lifting, I'm sure, good weight.

[Sal Destefano]

Here's the mistake.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'm not sure I want you to go much lower calories than what you already are.

[Sal Destefano]

And here's a mistake that, that you can make. Here's where I see the big. The big challenge. And this is just based off of the fluctuations in your body weight. You know, at low 220 up to as high as 360, it seems like it's like an all or nothing kind of thing. And so consistency or sustainability is the main thing to consider. And so you've already made a couple big changes. Cut down on the beer, probably substantially based off of what you're saying, and changed from eating, you know, processed food and eating out to eating whole natural foods. Those are two pretty big damn big changes. Yeah, I would not want to add on top of that, chasing a calorie deficit. I think you're probably already in a deficit just from doing those things. I don't think you should chase A bulk or a cut. I think if you just focus on that. If you just did that consistently as consistent as you could, and when you fall off, jump back on and just focus on the whole food protein. Not having too much beer. I don't know what your limit looks like right now with the beer, but just keep it limited. You're gonna slowly get into a nice body fat percentage range. So if you're at 29, I think just doing that alone will get you down to probably 18, 17. Yeah, you'll probably get down to 18, 17. Just nice and consistent with all these crazy drops in strength or all this hunger from going on a cut. I think that's just the way to go. If you get impatient, this is where you'll mess things up, dude. Because then you'll go too far, and you'll only be able to stick to it for so long before you swing in the other direction.

[Adam Schaefer]

How do you. How do you feel in the 28, 2900 calories? Like, do you feel hungry? Do you. Does your workouts feel, you know, fueled and, like, how. Tell me about how that feels when you eat that amount of calories.

[Caller/Guest]

So on the days that I do lift, because I follow Maps aesthetic right now, so on the days I lift, I'm a little hungry.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Caller/Guest]

But on the off days, it's okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay.

[Sal Destefano]

You're good, dude.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, you're probably good.

[Sal Destefano]

I mean, honestly, if you just. If you just stayed consistent with that, you're going to see some nice changes in your body. You'll probably still feel good, feel strong, athleticism will improve, good recovery, and you'll see yourself drop some body fat without any drastic changes or. Or any more changes to your diet.

[Adam Schaefer]

What were you running before? Maps Aesthetic. Have you been on aesthetic for a while? What were you doing before?

[Caller/Guest]

I ran map Strong.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

Before then.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Good.

[Adam Schaefer]

How are your results on that?

[Caller/Guest]

I saw a lot of gains.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, good.

[Caller/Guest]

Some of my lifts that I competed in when I was competing came back.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, wow. Oh, that's really good. And so were you eating about the same through map Strong too, or have you changed eating the way you are now? Or is that about the same? Same?

[Caller/Guest]

It's about the same.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. I would just keep going, dude.

[Sal Destefano]

You're good.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, I think. I think you're at a good. A good calorie place.

[Sal Destefano]

And after aesthetic, I think symmetry would be good for you. I think that'd be a good program to follow up with. Do you have that one?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Oh, good. Oh, you're all set, dude. And then just. Just to get a little deeper into this. How. What was. How big of a change in the beer consumption? Was it because that's such a high calorie beverage, it really doesn't contribute to gains and all that stuff. Was that a pretty big change for you?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, I may do it like once a day now or once a week now.

[Sal Destefano]

What was it everyone like once a week? Was it daily before?

[Caller/Guest]

No, it's probably all weekend.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. Oh, good for you, dude.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, bro.

[Sal Destefano]

You got do nothing else.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

You're gonna get nice changes. Keep chipping away if you get impatient. This is where you're gonna mess up, dude. And then what it's gonna look like is you'll get where you want, and then you'll swing again and you'll be stuck in this, like, this, this back and forth type of deal. But if you want to maintain this, like, that's it, do nothing else. Just stay consistent with those two things.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, I think you're in. What we always talk about is a little Goldilocks area, which is. Is tough psychologically. Right. You want to see the quick moves down or the quick moves up. But I think you're at a really good intake that you're going to continually lean out. And as long as you have enough energy to get through those workouts and you're feeling good, I'd say you're okay on the calorie.

[Sal Destefano]

If you get really hungry, you just eat more whole foods. Yeah, that's the other thing, too. If you're like, man, I am starving. My energy's low. Throw on some whole natural foods. But stay. Stay in that. Those parameters, and you're good, dude.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, I agree.

[Caller/Guest]

Awesome.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're kicking ass, Aaron.

[Sal Destefano]

You got it, man.

[Adam Schaefer]

Keep it up. I love. I'd love to hear where you're at the next three to four months after you get through this and get into symmetry.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay.

Yeah, that sounds good.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Check back with us.

[Sal Destefano]

Thanks for calling in, man.

[Caller/Guest]

All right, thanks.

[Adam Schaefer]

You got it.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. I mean, again, just.

[Adam Schaefer]

Just takes time.

[Sal Destefano]

Well, it does. And also, like, when you're looking at. When you look at someone's history of these really dramatic swings, that's 120, 130 pound difference. And he competed at one point, so he was obviously very fit with good athleticism. Strongman is very athletic. Strength, sport. When you see that, the thing you want to really consider is like, okay, let's not go too crazy, because I have a tendency to go all or

[Adam Schaefer]

nothing in either way, by the way.

[Sal Destefano]

In either way.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like an extreme cut will cause him to see maybe leaning out for a little bit, but then inadvertently will have a bench that probably. And a bulk, a quote unquote bulk tends to turn into a dirty bulk or an excuse to eat outside the boundaries or have a couple extra beers where he's eating in a place. And that's why I wanted to hear how he felt. If his workouts feel fueled, he's hitting numbers that were like what he was hitting strongman.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And he has. He feels a little hungry on days that he lifts, which is normal. Right.

[Sal Destefano]

Especially if you're in a dead any

[Justin Andrews]

intuitively like switched up his training. So it's like, you know, my more hypertrophy, which I thought was smart.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, yeah. And I'll say this, like if he's go. If you went to one beer to drinking all weekend and went from fast food and processed food to whole natural foods, his calories probably dropped 13, 1400 calories on average.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

A day. Yeah, on average.

[Adam Schaefer]

I probably was eating closer to 4, 000 a day. Easily easy.

[Sal Destefano]

You throw them beer calories and all that stuff and then, you know, beer lowers your inhibition. You eat more garbage, the whole deal. So he's already made some big changes. Just stay there. There.

[Caller/Guest]

Our next caller is Derek from California.

[Sal Destefano]

What's up, man?

[Caller/Guest]

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question.

[Sal Destefano]

You got it. How can we help you?

[Caller/Guest]

So I'm five seven and I started weightlifting in January of last year and at that time I weighed 139. About a year and a half later, I'm now 158 pounds. I did gain four of those pounds just in April, but I also started taking creatine then, so that might have helped. Helped, but prior to last month, I was gaining less than a pound a month on average. And I've been eating 3,400 calories. I tried to get enough protein and my main goal was starting lifting was to build muscle and get stronger. And I have seen some progress through my lifts and a little bit aesthetically, but it's just been a little bit slower than I would have thought. And additionally my body fat percentage has gone from 10.7% to 18%. And I'm actually glad to have more body fat fat overall, but it seems like it mostly goes to my stomach. And at some point I would like to see my abs again, but I don't necessarily need to be back at 10% body fat. But I'm not sure at what point I would cut if my body fat Percentage keeps getting higher, and my concern is that I will lose too much weight if I do try to cut. And it'll be really hard to build this back up again later since I've been trying to bulk at 3400 calories already and it, you know, been slow going. Do you guys have any thoughts about this?

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, let me do some math here real quick. So you started at. And you were. And by the way, how are you testing your body fat? What are you using?

[Caller/Guest]

Well, I have a smart scale. I mean, I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it's just been. I've just been able to see the practice through that.

[Sal Destefano]

So you just. Every time that's what you use to test yourself?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. By the way, those things can be really thrown off by hydration. But we're going to take the numbers at face value. How much did you.

[Adam Schaefer]

What was your body weight when you started?139.139 to 153. 10.77% to 17%.

[Sal Destefano]

So let me see here. You had 125 pounds of lean body mass. I just want to see how much lean body mass.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

You gained through this process. So let me see here. Minus 153. So. So your lean body mass didn't go up that much based off of the body fat percentage, which could be true.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's most likely. Here's the two things. One, really inconsistent with the training and. Or not really progressive overloading, or two, you're focused just on eating that many calories and you're not really focused on your macros, I. E. Protein. Consistently. Would you say that's true or how are you with your protein?

[Caller/Guest]

So I'm shooting for like a pound or one gram per pound of body weight.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Caller/Guest]

So I, I sometimes get like 140, 150. Like so a little bit less.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

Are you consistent with that, though? Do you consistently do that?

[Caller/Guest]

So I consistently get it when I track, but I'm tracking maybe like 80% of the time.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. And then let's talk about your strength. Give me an idea of some of your key lifts and if. What any changes in those through this process.

[Adam Schaefer]

So.

[Caller/Guest]

Well, I've been. I know you guys won't like this, but I've been just doing like an AI program. But I. It's kind of like, you know, upper body, lower body, like, okay, splits. And so I've done some like, like for squats. I mean, I have it in my email, but I'm not really sure.

[Sal Destefano]

Oh, I Can see.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it's right here.

[Sal Destefano]

No, no, I can see it here. So your bench press went from 85 to 140. Your back squat went from 95 to 205, and your deadlift went from 105 to 220. Those are huge.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it's great.

[Sal Destefano]

You got to be careful. So here's the thing. Without. Without seeing a picture of you before and after and all kinds. You got to be very careful with those stupid smart scales because they're really strange. And the more you build and the more hydrated you are creating will do this, the more it throws it off. And it's. It's really not that actual. It's very difficult. The, the one objective metric that we have here is your strength. Because that's not something that. There's no error there. You know, you're stronger if you're lifting more. Your bench press, back squat deadlift went through the roof.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Your deadlift more than doubled, right?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

So those are the things I would pay attention to more than anything else.

[Justin Andrews]

You're not gonna be building that strength without muscles supporting it.

[Sal Destefano]

No. Now, here's the other thing. Okay, so just for, you know, just to play devil's advocate, let's say you are around 17% body fat. A good, healthy, strong, fit, maintainable body fat percentage that's also gonna give you good hormone profile is probably only 2 or 3% lower than where you're at. So most guys, 14, 15%, it's kind of the best of all things. You're fit, you don't have a belly, you're strong. Testosterone is good. It's maintainable for 95% or more of men going down to 10%. There's a lot of trade offs. Your performance, your strength, your testosterone, your energy just plummet. It's typically not an ideal body fat percentage. We like the way it looks in pictures, but it's just not great. It's not, you know, it's not as athletic, you're not as strong. It's just not as good. The only difference is, cool, I have abs and 15, I kind of have abs, you know, type of deal.

[Justin Andrews]

How clean is your bulk? Like, is it all from Whole Foods? Are you incorporating?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, it's pretty, pretty clean. Like, it's a lot of, like, me, eggs, rice, avocado.

[Adam Schaefer]

Derek, what are you coming from? Like, you meaning like you were at what, 1, 30 and 10%? What were you doing to be at that? Was that just low calorie eating? Were you a runner? Like, what, what, what was keeping you at 10%.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah. So I used to be a runner, so I ran a few marathons and things like that, but, yeah, my lowest, I was like 1:25.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

But I. I was starting to get sick, like, running, like, long distances, and so I kind of just wasn't doing anything for a little bit. But that's why I got into lifting, because I was like, oh, I wanted to do something still where I'm, you know, challenging myself and trying to, you know, get new PRs and that kind of thing, but something that wouldn't be maybe so hard on my body.

[Adam Schaefer]

Good.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, so. So I got more questions because I really want to get a full context here. Subjectively, any differences. I know you're stronger and you're eating more, but any differences in how you feel from when you were 139 to. Yeah, 150. Like 153.

[Adam Schaefer]

Energy, libido, sleep.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Do you feel subjectively better?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, I feel good. I don't know if I feel necessarily better than I felt before, but. Yeah. But I've been feeling, like, healthy, feeling energized. Well. And all that stuff, so.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. Would you trade your current body strength, size, feeling for what you were at,139, or are you, like, long? If I had to pick one or the other, I'd pick this.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, I would pick this.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, good. This helps a lot. This helps me a lot with. With the kind of advice I'm going to give you. So if you want to get a little leaner, you're at 3400 calories. At your size, a small cut in calories will get you there slowly and nicely. But we don't want to sacrifice your quality of life, your strength. You know, you were kind of overtrained before getting sick, like you said. So you could go from 34 to 2,900 calories and stay there.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

And you'll see nice, slow, consistent fat loss without these crazy drops in strength. In fact, if you change your programming, your workout programming, if I put you on a MAPS program, I bet you I could get you even more strength gains even at 2,900 calories versus 3,400.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay, which one would you recommend?

[Sal Destefano]

Now you're working out, what, four or five days a week?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, let's put you on maps. Anabolic. And I want you to do the three day a week version. I want you to keep your steps high every day. Do you track those?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, and I usually get on average like 5000, so.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, let's double your steps to 10,000. Follow maps, anabolic. Cut to 2900 calories. And I bet you get stronger while getting leaner. On a protocol like that, I don't

[Adam Schaefer]

even think you need to go that high in steps. I think you just go, you add 2,000 steps and you cut those calories like that and you put them in a ball.

[Sal Destefano]

Seven thousand.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, that's more enough.

[Sal Destefano]

Let's do that. Seven thousand thousand steps a day. Maps, anabolic, Long rest periods. Even if they say short, keep the rest periods long because we're in a little bit of a deficit. And let's, let's see what happens. And then what I want, Derek, is I want you back on in about two months. And we're gonna get you back on and hear what's happening.

[Caller/Guest]

All right? Thank you.

Cool.

[Sal Destefano]

You got it, man.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, thanks.

[Sal Destefano]

Got it. Body fat tests are just. I mean, they're okay, but sometimes they're not good.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, but especially those home scales.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's your. What's your. What's your intuition tell you what, what went on here?

[Sal Destefano]

I think the scale is off. Yes, by quite a bit. I also think some of the strength gains came from energy and rest. So you don't have to gain a bunch of muscle to get a lot of strength. You can also just have more rest and energy. But I also think he gained more than one pound of muscle during that period of time, which if those body fat percentages are accurate and it says he only gained a pound of muscle, I doubt it. When you double your strength in a lot of those lifts, I doubt it's

[Adam Schaefer]

just £1, but that's a, that's quite a. Even if, even if you're right, like, let's say he gained five pounds. It's still a lot of body fat.

[Sal Destefano]

It is.

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

So my, my hearing, only 5, 000 steps, he's only 100. He was only 139 pounds.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

We just got off the call with a 260 pound strong lifter eating 2900 calories. So his and 10, 000 steps. Right.

[Sal Destefano]

So too much of a bulk.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wait. Yeah. Too, too much of a bulk. Even if it was clean, which the next question I'd have. And he said too, when he tracks, he's close to those numbers, which is 80% of time he tracks. In my experience, the 20. The 20 of time that people don't track is the weekends. That's when they missed their program, and that's when they. And if you're already kind of a. Like not A big stepper and mover. A sedentary. You're even more sedentary typically on the weekends when we don't work. And then you also over consume. So I have a feeling that he's just been really over consuming on his calories. I think a better program like you put him on, I think even just, just bumping those steps a little bit and cutting those calories, watch what happens.

[Sal Destefano]

And here's the other thing, too. This is why I asked those questions. Part of it was for him. The other part was for people listening. We don't, we tend to ignore quality of life in favor of metrics in the mirror. But he doubled his strength. He's eating way more food. He said he feels energized. Even if those numbers are correct, who cares? You're better off. We get so caught up with numbers and aesthetics that it's like we think, oh, I'm going to be happier. Yeah, leaner. Even though I feel more like garbage. It's almost always never the case. So. But again, I think if he, if he does a little bit of a cut, does what you said, Adam bumps the steps a little bit and follows a better program because I, I'm pretty sure maps on a ball will be more appropriate for him. I think we'll see some good progress.

[Caller/Guest]

Our next caller is Nick from Alberta.

[Sal Destefano]

What's up, Nick? How you doing, Nick, how you doing?

[Caller/Guest]

Hey, how's it going?

[Sal Destefano]

Good, man. How are you?

[Adam Schaefer]

Good.

[Caller/Guest]

Basically, I'm just going to jump right into my question here. I'm 27 years old, I'm 300 pounds, and I've been having issues with my energy and libido. I went to a doctor, got blood work done, found out I have a total testosterone of 325, and free testosterone is 305. I'm worried about having issues with fertility and stuff because of such low numbers. So I've started taking some supplements and eating mostly whole foods.

Right.

I'm kind of 90. Right. I've been listening to you guys for a little bit of time and just kind of going off what you guys say for that. I've always been into sports. I played a lot of hockey, lacrosse, football, that kind of stuff growing up. I had my last pretty bad concussion when I was about 18, and that all kind of just stopped. And I sat in a dark, dark room for about three months. And then I've had a lot of, obviously neck issues and such to go along with it. So I was pretty inactive for a couple of years and gained quite a Bit of weight at my biggest, I was 330. Right. Right now I'm down to about 295. So I'm doing a little bit of good there. Basically my question is, what do you guys recommend for kind of going, going forward here? Right. I've always kind of like, I've got into the gym a bit.

[Sal Destefano]

Right.

[Caller/Guest]

But, but in the past when I did it, I would try to cut calories and start working out more, and it never really worked out. What I've been doing here for the last month, I've lost about £10 in the last month. And what I've been doing is just trying to eat better quality food, not so much processed and, and just trying to go to the gym four days, four days a week sort of thing. And just, just getting moving is basically what I've been doing so far. I've been basically doing some squat deadlift, like compound movements as opposed to just hitting one particular thing. So basically just wanted to see what you guys think I should do. How much, how much protein you think I should like? I don't know how much I'm supposed to weigh, to be honest with you. You know, I mean, I've always just been big.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right.

[Caller/Guest]

So I don't know how many grams of protein I should aim for for my target body weight sort of thing. Right. So.

[Sal Destefano]

Good question. So I'll answer the protein one for you. How tall are you again?

[Adam Schaefer]

Six foot?

[Sal Destefano]

I, I think 220 to 240 or 50 grams of protein is perfectly fine for a big guy like you. Yeah, I think that's a good target to start with. I do have some more questions though, if you don't mind me asking.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, for sure.

[Sal Destefano]

When you, you, you're trying to eat whole foods, your strength training, you're. You're kind of adjusting your lifestyle. Were you doing that when you got your testosterone checked or were you doing. Or did you start doing that after? You guys?

[Caller/Guest]

I've just started, I've just started doing that after the last month.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

So I got my, I got my test done at the end of March and that's kind of when I started doing all this. So it's only been about a month.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay.

[Sal Destefano]

What did your lifestyle look like before when you went leading up to the hormone test?

[Caller/Guest]

You know, we mainly ate kind of more processed stuff, you know, like chicken fingers, craft dinner, that kind of thing. Right. So we, we've transitioned into a lot more roasted potatoes and some beef and chicken and mainly trying to eat as, as much whole foods as Possible. It was my birthday on Sunday, so I didn't have a great weekend when it came down to what I ate and drank.

[Sal Destefano]

But that's all right. Now, were you exercising leading up to that? So processed food diet before and what was the activity? Exercise.

[Caller/Guest]

Like it's very off and on again. Like I was never consistent. I've been. I've been quite consistent going at least four days a week for the last month.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, Right.

[Caller/Guest]

But otherwise my activity is not great. And I work at a body shop. Right. I only get probably 5,000 steps a day would be my guess.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, Right.

[Caller/Guest]

So that's another thing I wanted to talk to you guys about because a lot of people say don't do cardio and. And resistance training in the same day or same sort of thing. Right. So I wanted to talk to you guys if I should be hitting the treadmill for half an hour as well as doing my resistance training.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, I think it's a good idea. And sell your phone does this, but you can also get a real cheap pedometer.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Just getting steps.

[Sal Destefano]

Check your steps and try to aim for like 7 to 8,000 a day. And if you need to walk on a treadmill to do it, I think you should just because activity is good for you. Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

Get it through walking though. Don't get it through. Don't get on the treadmill and start trying to burn away, like running.

[Sal Destefano]

Just move.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, just. Just getting your steps up.

[Sal Destefano]

And if you could do that without getting on a treadmill, you know, like take a little walk at lunch, park a little further in the park. Like little things like actually add up. If you can get seven to 8,000 steps just moving without having to get a treadmill, I would prefer that because the consistency and sustainability with that in my experience is just way better than having to schedule walks. Since you've been doing these changes, it's only been 30 days, but have you noticed any changes in libido?

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, I mean, it's gone up a bit for sure. I noticed I'm a lot warmer now. I feel like my metabolism was kind of kicking up a little bit. Right.

[Sal Destefano]

But good sign, dude, because here's what I would want you to do. So going from an. Unless I'm just going to be generalized. Right. You go from an unhealthy, inconsistent activity lifestyle to a much more healthy act, you know, more active, including strength training. Right. Appropriate strength training lifestyle. It's not unheard of to see a man's total testosterone double. Like I've seen this many, many times. Okay. So I would. And since. And libido isn't perfect, but it is a pretty strong. For most men, indicator of testosterone levels. So if you're noticing a little bit of a bump now, it could mean that your testosterone is going up. It could also mean you just feel better. But what I would want is 90 days of consistency, and then I'd want you to get retested. Now I'm gonna go back to the concussion. Okay. It was. It sounds like it was a really bad concussion.

[Caller/Guest]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had, I think, five diagnosed concussions.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

And then, yeah, I've had some. Some ones that I don't remember a whole lot about. Right.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. So here's why it's so important, Nick, that you get retested in 90 days. Okay. There is a moderate association, depending on the. The severity of the concussion. It sounds like you had a bad one with concussions and low testosterone because of damage to the pituitary stalk and the hypothalamus. So you see this with athletes across the board, especially athletes that.

[Caller/Guest]

That.

[Sal Destefano]

That really get after it and bang their heads is. You'll see this, like, correlation, and it's coming from just damage to those parts of the brain. But we don't know. We don't know because your lifestyle wasn't healthy before, which is also very strongly correlated with low testosterone. So try to stay consistent. You're already in 30 days. In 60 more days, get your blood work done again. If it comes back and they're like, you know, it went up to 400 or barely changed, then I would look into hormone replacement therapy. And they can maintain fertility with hormone replacement therapy. So a lot of guys are afraid because they're like, oh, if I go on testosterone, I can't have kids. That's not true. They'll put you on something called hcg, which maintains fertility. I mean, my wife got pregnant, you know, while I was on hormone replant. No, Adam, same thing. So it's not an issue. They can just. Like I said, they could put you on HCG at the same time, but there's no way of knowing until we do this consistently. So 60 more days, get retested. If it comes back low, then it would be a good idea to talk to someone about hormone replacement therapy. And we have really good [e-mail] they're super great. It's the. Probably the least expensive, just pure hormone replacement therapy place you'll go with. And they're doctors, so you're not dealing with salespeople so you could go there and get retested and see what's, what's going on.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay.

[Sal Destefano]

Workout wise, is. Are you following one of our programs? You're doing your own thing?

[Caller/Guest]

No, I, I haven't got one yet. I've just been kind of just doing like, typically. I, I'm. What I'm doing right now is I'm doing two leg days a week. And like, and when I say leg day, I, I mean, like, I'm doing like three exercises. So I'll do squats and like yesterday was squats, Romanian deadlift and calf raises. And then I go home.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

Right. So I was only there for 30 minutes.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. I'm gonna give you maps, anabolic. Do the three day a week version of it. Long rest periods in between sets. So you're only gonna be at the gym three days a week. You want to go back for an extra day? Just walk on the treadmill and I think you'll get better results with that versus kind of what you're doing. 220 to 240 grams of protein, whole natural foods. Make sure you get good sleep. And let's see what happens in 60 days. In fact, let's get you back on in 60 days and so we can get back on the phone and see what's happening.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay. Sweet. Is there, is there any supplements you guys, you, you recommend I take to help with this or just kind of stick to the whole foods and see what happens?

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Let's go. Multivitamin. Make sure you take separate vitamin D supplement and a zinc supplement. And you could take creatine on top of it. You want. There's really nothing else unless you need protein powder for. To hit your protein targets. I think that's it.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay, perfect. With my creatine, does it matter if I take it all at once? I've got like a big water bottle and I kind of just drink that water bottle throughout the days. And I just put creatine in that in the morning. Right. Or should I make a separate glass with creatine in it and just drink it out?

[Sal Destefano]

I don't, I don't want you to leave creatine in the water all day long.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, it might degrade.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. So what you do. How much are you taking a day?

[Caller/Guest]

Just five grams.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. I want you to take a bump. I want you to take 15 to 20 grams a day because it's going

[Justin Andrews]

to be good for your brain cognition. Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

But don't take it all at once because you'll get diarrhea so what you're going to do is you're going to take 5 grams with breakfast, 5 grams of dinner with lunch. 5 grams of dinner. So 15 grams a day. And you should notice some, some mental clarity and energy.

[Justin Andrews]

I was gonna say any nootropic. I mean, might be exploring.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, let's, let's, let's, yeah, let's just do that for now and see what happens. I'll have you back on in 60 days and let's get, let's get reevaluated.

[Caller/Guest]

Awesome, guys. Thank you very much.

[Sal Destefano]

You got it, brother. Thank you.

[Caller/Guest]

Thanks.

[Sal Destefano]

A lot of people don't realize the, the correlate with, oh, head trauma and low testosterone.

[Justin Andrews]

I've read up.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, he had some serious ones.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. He was in a dark room for three months.

[Adam Schaefer]

Five documented.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. And, and three months in a dark room.

[Justin Andrews]

Debilitating. Yeah. Yeah. And I know a few of my buddies have had that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Is that the protocol if you have a really bad one is to keep you in a dark room, you can't handle light?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, it's his sensitivity.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Like he's.

[Adam Schaefer]

I don't think I know anybody that's, that's had a concussion that bad.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, yeah. Brutal, dude.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. No, I don't know if I don't know anybody personally who's had one.

[Sal Destefano]

You know what's crazy too about concussions is, and this was, this is not recent data, but when they came out with this, everyone was shocked. Soccer players.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Have a high rate of ct. Yeah. They're just heading the ball. They're not like playing football.

[Justin Andrews]

It's even.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, that.

[Justin Andrews]

Even when it hits the chest too.

[Caller/Guest]

Too.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean, you're getting that kind of like impact and it's getting the brain to hit.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. So it's not just the severe ones. Those are obvious. It's also just the repeated banging.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

And there's kind of long term effects of that.

[Caller/Guest]

Our next caller is Kathy from Florida.

[Sal Destefano]

Hi, Kathy.

[Adam Schaefer]

How you doing, Kathy?

[Sal Destefano]

Hey, guys, how can we help you?

[Caller/Guest]

Thanks for having me on the show.

[Sal Destefano]

You got it.

[Justin Andrews]

Sure.

[Caller/Guest]

So should I just go right into my summary of my email?

[Sal Destefano]

Yes, please.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay. So I'm 55 years old, five three, 103 pounds, postmenopausal. So I started my fitness journey after being diagnosed with Ms. About 23 years ago in 2003. I didn't have a lot of energy to train back in those days, but over the years I've become very consistent and I'm a very disciplined gym person. I also Stopped working about years ago, which gives me more time to work on my health and my fitness. Then last October, I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, which, when I started watching your program. So my goal is to build as much muscle as possible for my health and bone density. I train about five days a week. I stay very active, 12 to 15,000 steps a day, and my nutrition is very consistent. I'm currently eating about 1800 to. No, 2000 to 2100 calories, and my protein is about 100 to 120 a day. So my question is based on my age, weight, activity level. Do you think that I'm eating enough to build maximum muscle or am I just maintaining? And my next question is, if your goal was muscle gain and bone density at my stage, would you prioritize first nutrition training or recovery?

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Great, Great question. Can I ask a few more questions?

[Caller/Guest]

Of course.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, so tell me about your symptoms from Ms. I know you got diagnosed 23 years ago. You said, do you have a lot. Do you have a lot of symptoms now or does it feel like it's pretty manageable?

[Caller/Guest]

I'm in remission. I'm in remission. I haven't had relapse in eight years.

[Sal Destefano]

Wonderful.

[Justin Andrews]

Awesome.

[Adam Schaefer]

Awesome.

[Sal Destefano]

So there's a few things so that. But that is a strong consideration. And I've trained a few clients with Ms. And as you probably already know, too much stress can definitely trigger, you know, a flare up in the symptoms of Ms. Now the answer to your question is actually kind of easy, and I think it'll work well with what you're trying to do and also with not pushing you into any kind of a flare up. You're definitely overdoing and undereating for sure. That's what's happening. Yeah. So, and it said here you're following maps aesthetic. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Not the program for you.

[Caller/Guest]

I am.

[Sal Destefano]

That is entirely the wrong program. That is way too much volume for most people, let alone a postmenopausal woman with osteoporosis eating, you know, 2,000 calories a day, who also has Ms. That's like the absolute worst, one of the worst programs that you could follow. Now the challenge is I'm going to recommend something to you, but it's be a lot less. And so I need your honest. I need your honest feedback here. Do you think you could do a lot less and stick to it?

[Caller/Guest]

You know, it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard to do a lot less.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Caller/Guest]

But I called because I want to get Your opinion.

[Sal Destefano]

So, okay. I think the program you should follow,

[Adam Schaefer]

I would love it with one of our coaches.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. So two pieces of advice here. I'd love to see you, and it's going to sound crazy. Okay. So forgive me, but I'd like to see you follow a Maps 15 protocol. You can keep your steps as high as they are. That's a lot of steps, but that's fine. 12 to 15. Okay. Unless you're going crazy, you know, getting on a treadmill all the time. No, I won't take that away from you. And I'd like to see you get your calories up by like 3 or 400.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay.

[Sal Destefano]

Now, when you're at the gym and you're done with your workout and you're like, what do I do now? I don't mind if you do mobility. I don't mind if you do stretching. I don't mind if you do, like, really low kind of stress type movement. But this is the protocol that'll help you build muscle and build bone.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. Now here's the other piece of advice I have, because this is going to be really hard for you. Like, going from maps aesthetic to mass 15 is going to feel like you went from working out to not working out. Even though you're going to see strength gains. Even though you can see you're going to be like, I'm losing my mind. Working with a coach, I think would be a really good idea to walk you through this and also to individualize the whole thing. So what a coach will do is take, you know, maps 15 and turn it into Maps Kathy, and we'll just individualize it for you as you go through this process, coach you through the hurdles, which are going to be mental, and also encourage you in the right direction when you're seeing progress in the areas that we want to see progress, but you feel like you could or should be doing more, which is probably what's going to happen. Okay. So, okay, that would be ideal, But I think maps 15 muscle mommy would be fine. Traditional mass 15 would be fine. Mass 15 power lift would be fine. All three of those would be awesome.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay.

[Sal Destefano]

But definitely a bump in calories and reduction overall training.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay, That's. I mean, I can do that.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

All right.

[Sal Destefano]

Would you want a coach to call you to see if you'd want to work with a coach or do you want to get out, go after it yourself and see what happens?

[Caller/Guest]

I mean, I can. Whatever you think I mean.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay. The odds of success are way better if I have one. Of my coaches call you and work with you through this process. I just know just from experience. Yeah. You're gonna do this for like two weeks and you're gonna. Yeah, I want to pull your hair out. And it's like, oh, I'm eating too much. I'm not exercising enough. What am I gonna do? And having a coach work with you is gonna be so valuable. Plus they'll be able to individualize it, modify it as you go along.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay. I want to question it. So you definitely think that I'm over training for sure?

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Oh, no. No doubt.

[Caller/Guest]

Because the aesthetics is what I mean, it's your program, but I know I like it. I'm on. I have one more week left. I'm on phase three right now.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Caller/Guest]

My second camera.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's, it's inspired by what I did when I was bodybuilding.

[Sal Destefano]

He was a pro physique competitor in his early 30s and he was enhanced with performance enhancing substance. So it's very different. Yeah. With the amount of volume. He's also. His life was dedicated to it. He didn't have at the time. That was his job.

[Caller/Guest]

Right.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So I wouldn't, I wouldn't train like that right now. It's just not appropriate for my lifestyle right now. And I mean, I'm still fit and strong and all those things, but it's just too much. Just too much. It's not, it's not necessary. That's why we'll see better results.

[Justin Andrews]

We have other options.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, yeah. The reason why you're seeing bone density issues, even though you strength train and probably have been strength training for a while and even hitting your protein is. It's too much.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

So too much exercise combined with not enough nutrients. I don't care how much strength training you do, you're going to see bone mass go down. I've seen that with, I've seen it with girls in their 20s and bumping

[Adam Schaefer]

the calories and reducing the training volume will send it the other direction. So that'll fix it. I mean, that's what will send us in the right direction.

[Sal Destefano]

And if we see some really good strength gains and muscle gains, bone is going to follow. It's just, it's very predictable. Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay. Do you think the scale is going to eventually go up or.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes.

[Caller/Guest]

It's not.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

The coaching.

[Sal Destefano]

It's going to go up. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And that's to Justin's point, this is where the coaching really helps is because it's, this is the tough part psychologically is challenge. You're going to see that. You're going to see the reduction in activity, the increase on the scale, and it starts to be a bit of a mind. Mind thought.

[Sal Destefano]

So I just. I'll give you what this would look like. It's gonna sound shocking, but this would be a process. Okay. You know, if you were my client, Kathy, and I'm working you through this, I'd want to see you gain 15 pounds on the scale. 10 of it being muscle, 5 of it being body fat. Totally.

[Caller/Guest]

How much?

[Sal Destefano]

15? Easy.

[Adam Schaefer]

Easy.

[Sal Destefano]

15. 1 5.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

You gain 10. If I got you to gain 8 to 10 pounds of muscle, 5 to 7 pounds of body fat, that we would be moving in a beautiful direction.

[Justin Andrews]

Great.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Caller/Guest]

So I like the skill to go to 107, at least 110. I'd be fine with that.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. I think what you need to do is really not weigh yourself through this process. It's going to mess you with you. I'm just telling you that right now. But, yeah, I really think working with a coach would be so valuable. You give it six months with the coach. You just do what they say, no matter what you. How you feel. And I think probably four or five months into it, you're going to be like, okay, this is. This is great. I feel good. Good.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay. So you think that just the scales go up. I'll listen to you.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, it has to go up.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Caller/Guest]

I'm not one that weighs myself to see it, you know, go down. I want it to go up. I just keep an eye on it so I don't slip too much in the wrong direction, which is going down.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah. Okay. Oh, good.

[Adam Schaefer]

All right. That's good.

[Caller/Guest]

That's how I got on the scale, because when I see 101, I'm like, oh, God, I need to be 103, 104. And it goes down to 101. I get nervous, I start eating a lot, and it goes back to 103, 104, and comes right back down.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Well, that's good.

[Sal Destefano]

That's good. All right. I'm gonna have a coach call you when we get off the phone here, and they'll talk to you, and I'd love to see you in it. I'll probably pop in on some of the calls, because now I've talked to you, but I think six months would be a nice start.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

All right, Kathy, we got this.

[Sal Destefano]

We got it.

[Caller/Guest]

Oh, you guys. I love you guys.

[Sal Destefano]

Thank you. Thank you. This will be great. We'll see you.

[Caller/Guest]

Okay, Bye.

[Sal Destefano]

Bye. It's it's, it's. It's. It's remarkable to me how many people follow the least appropriate programs that we have. For most people. Yeah. Because they see how much is in it. Maybe the name. Because I think it's.

[Justin Andrews]

I think that's part of it.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

It's marketing.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's the power of marketing.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, It's.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, it's.

[Sal Destefano]

We should put a warning label.

[Adam Schaefer]

We also, we also.

[Justin Andrews]

That wouldn't matter. To make them want it more.

[Adam Schaefer]

We also have a bit of a bias. I. I would. I would argue that a large percentage of the people that listen to a fitness podcast or the ones that call in. Both. Right. Yeah. So you're. I mean, these are avid listeners. These aren't just somebody who listen one time.

[Sal Destefano]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

Most people that call in have been listening to us for quite some time are fitness people.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're into it.

[Sal Destefano]

You want to learn about it. You're in.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know what I'm saying? This is not something that you're not interested in more than fitness.

[Sal Destefano]

Fanatic side.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, exactly. And so you're gonna have people that tend to teeter like, this is not your average client or average American. Your average American. You're doing everything you can't.

[Sal Destefano]

You're. You're just trying to get them to

[Adam Schaefer]

get them to move more.

[Sal Destefano]

They're not doing anything.

[Adam Schaefer]

Show up to the gym consistently for a while. You know, very few are going to be attracted to this level of activity and training. But because we have this bias of people that are already interested in fitness, we tend to see this more often than. I think is the good news for

[Sal Destefano]

people listening, like, if you, if you sound like this woman and you're able to do what we say, which is hard.

[Caller/Guest]

Hard.

[Sal Destefano]

So I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna, you know, lighten that or diminish that. It's hard. But if you do what we say, the changes are nothing short of dramatic.

[Justin Andrews]

Big time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Dramatic changes. It's just you got to go through that period of trusting the process. And it takes like half a year.

[Justin Andrews]

It's a 180.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Your mentality.

[Sal Destefano]

And it's not a half a year of. Because you need to see results in a half year. It's a half a year of you trusting and letting go and then finally

[Justin Andrews]

being like, oh, wait, restoring the body. The body needs it.

[Sal Destefano]

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

[Caller/Guest]

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 of Phased Expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now. Plus other valuable free [e-mail] if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.