The Mysterious Kuwait Muscle-Building Phenomenon, The Too-Much-Protein Myth, Anabolic Triggering Sessions & More With The MindPump Podcast Crew.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. I recently had a bunch of ripped meathead freaks over to my recording studio in my basement. And I'm about to reveal to you via audio the chaos that ensued in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

One group of people, I had them do squats very heavily and then the following days I had them walk and stretch and do light body weight lunges. And the other group of people, they hammered their legs and they just bed rest for the rest of the week. Just lay in bed and don't move. The people in bed rest would lose muscle. They'd lose muscle and strength within a five day, seven day period. Even shorter.

It just changed my relationship with carbohydrates and with fat. So for so many years as trainers, we've demonized fat. And I mean, I remember telling clients like, oh, don't, don't even try and get fat in your diet, you know, when I first started, 15 years ago.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. And last night, in the wee hours of the evening, four guys from San Jose descended upon my home for a homemade meal full of chicken and organic wine and tomatillos and buckwheat pancakes and a general good time all around. And then they came back this morning and we threw down a relatively epic podcast and a podcast that you're about to listen to. These are the guys from what is called the Mind Pump Media podcast and the Mind Pump website, which we'll talk a little bit more about during the episode. It's not often that I have four people on the podcast simultaneously, so I may leave it up slightly to you to be able to differentiate between all the voices that you're gonna hear. But either way, we're gonna talk about what they specialize in, which is pulling back the curtain on mythology and snake oil and pseudoscience that pervades the fitness industry. And instead we delve into science backed solutions that specifically focus on what these guys specialize in, which is muscle building and fat loss combined with health so if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com MindPump I've got these guys, full bios, what they look like. They are pre impressive physical specimens as well as more about how you can tap into the goodness that is Mind Pump. We talk about everything on this show from how to do anabolic triggering sessions to why bodybuilders are disappearing to Kuwait and somehow coming back just a couple months later with 20 pounds of extra muscle to underground muscle building and anabolic supplements like SARMS and Clomid and injectable testosterone. Why you probably need far less protein than you think. The biggest myths in the fitness industry and a lot more. So I think you're gonna dig this one. Hey, folks, what's up? It's Ben from BenGreenfieldFitness.com back once again in a very unique situation. My house has actually been taken over by a bunch of swole guys from San Jose, the dudes from the Mind Pump podcast. We had dinner last night. First of all, you guys showed up and I put you right to work. Did you enjoy that?

Feels good. So I noticed that I got to tell your audience how this all went down. So we show up and I'm sure they know this about you, but barefoot outside, it's nighttime and he has this bale hay.

Yeah, first time. What's that all about?

Hey, guys, carry some hay with me.

Well, you guys were Targu is a test. You guys are tardy for dinner. So I started taking care of that. I had to finish off my honey do list and take care of the hay.

I see.

And if you're listening in and you haven't, you haven't moved around hay before. I was actually telling you guys this story last night. So I, I got my kicked in the recent train to hunt competition, which is basically like obstacle racing with weapons. And there's a lot of sandbag carries and a lot of unwieldy 100, 150 pound backpacks that you're hoisting around. And I asked the guy who won it, I'm actually trying to get on the podcast what his go to workout was. And he's like, I drive around to farmers fields and bail hay. Basically get paid to work out doing clean and jerks for two hours bail. And hey, so you're just doing us a favor.

That's what that was just doing you guys a favor.

I appreciate the workout.

Yeah. Getting you ready for dinner.

I feel like that, I feel like it was a test. I think it was like, you know, I got to See if these guys are going to come to my house, gonna have dinner with my family and my wife. We're gonna do a podcast together. We're gonna see if they have real, real world strength. You know?

That's right. Yeah. Functional strength.

We're not just like balloons.

We could have done concentration curls.

I was just gonna say I was fatigued because I had done those earlier. I've done some don backs too.

Oh, yeah.

I was actually. I was actually impressed with Sal's ability to carry the. The bell of hay there.

I know.

I knew Justin would be fine.

Oh, yeah.

I did that for a good portion of my life.

Well, I mean, considering I'm stronger than.

You guys, considering you don't do any manual labor. That's what we were considering.

I think functionally, one, one of the strongest times I've ever had in my life and in terms of my own strength was in college when I was painting and baling hay and playing water polo. Those three things all put together.

Oh, God.

Imagine that potent mix. Well, someone should create a dvd. The water, water polo, hay baling, painting.

We might have our next program.

That's how we'll get people to fix up our new studio and paint it and stuff. We'll just tell them it's part of the workout. It's because of the long term, frequent use of your body. I mean, when you're working, you were working for hours during the day. When we work out, it's an hour. That's the difference. And it's kind of this moderate intensity activity that we. People just don't consider a workout, but they don't realize how effective it can be at.

Well, this is something that we, we talk a lot about is, you know, frequency over intensity. Intensity and how important that is, you know, and that's you when you do something like that day in, day out. I mean, Sal talks about like a look at a mailman's calves, you know, things like that. It's not like the guys over there doing calf raises every day. Like, he's in there stimulating his calves, though, all day long, walking around. The same thing. Goes for, like someone who's doing water polo. Talk about a sport where you got to have some serious strength to keep yourself above water.

Constant resistance. That's one of the things I tell people with water polo is it keeps you fit because if you don't stop moving, you die. It's one of those. You literally, if you don't stop that egg beater kick, which is. It's a. It's A great. And I still do that, like with. If I'm at a hotel with a crappy pool, I'll use my old school tricks from water polo where I'll do the egg beater kick hardcore for like a minute. Then you get out and do push ups, jump back in, do a spri. And there's all sorts of cool things you can do without necessarily having to like Laird Hamilton, throw dumbbells into a pool and walk back and forth.

That's gotta be some incredible hip mobility. I didn't even think of that. Egg beater movements in the pool is a fantastic hip mobility movement.

Yeah, yeah. Well, if your lateral or medial meniscus are effed up, it's also probably not a good idea to destroy your knees. But it is good fitness. Now, one of the things that you guys brought up is we were punishing chicken and buckwheat wraps last night. My wife provided us with. It was a good meal. We had some wine.

Phenomenal meal.

I had a cheeseburger afterwards and. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I hope these guys don't leave and have to go to McDonald's. No, not at all. And tomatillos. Tomatillos.

Delicious.

Oh, yeah. Excellent treat.

That was a treat.

The next superfood, if you guys are listening in.

Yes. We are going to create a gently dried green superfood powder made of tomatillos. But we sprinkle tomatillos with like an Aztec salt. And if you haven't had tomatillos before, this is a new addition to my wife's garden that she's growing. Just, just hunt them down, find one and eat it. It's like a. I mean, what do you guys think? It's like a sweet tomato?

Yeah. It doesn't even taste like a tomato to me. It actually had like an. It almost like an apple. It's got a different taste of an apple. I thought it tasted like, like a green apple. It had like a really sweet taste.

Tell me about this Aztec salt.

One of those hybrid genetically modified foods that's going to give us cancer.

Yes, tell me, tell me about the Aztec salt. I've never had Aztec salt before.

Aztec salt is harvested sustainably on the Mexican coast. And by sustainably, I'm guessing that means it's not 8 year old Mexican children harvesting it, but actual full grown Mexican adults getting paid some kind of a wage.

Got it.

That's just the picture I create in my own head. It makes you feel better when you sprinkle it on your. As you Guys know sodium chloride. And I don't have to tell most of our listeners this. It's not doing your body the most favors. It's usually aluminum cake. The extraction methods are harsh, the solvent methods are harsh. And all you get usually is sodium unopposed. With many of the other 72 plus minerals that you'd typically get from a good salt, like a Himalayan salt or one of my other favorites, the black salt that you get from the Kona coast. That's another. Really?

I just bought some of that. My favorite salt is. It's the salt harvested from the tears of Tibetan monks who've meditated for years. It's very pure dry out.

Yes, it's very anabolic, preferably alternative lifestyle 1 Armed Tibetan monks so that you just. You fire on all cylinders. And the Aztec salt is a very clumpy. You guys probably noticed some people even put it in a salt grinder to grind it. But I like it clumpy. I like to be able to chew my salt.

I'm the same way.

And what I do is I travel with this everywhere. I get strange looks at restaurants, but I'll pull it out and just sprinkle it on anything. And it enhances the flavor profile of just about anything that you put it on, but it also provides you with minerals. And for a guy like me who's working out a lot with the adrenal glands, being a storehouse of minerals and, you know, needing to retain water well and eating all the other things that minerals do for me, that's. That's one of my go to sources. And it's a heck of a lot more tasty than like one of these trace liquid mineral droppers.

Where do you find, where do you find it?

I order it.

Yeah. It's not something you can pick up at Safeway.

I don't think you can find it at Safeway. No.

It's not as harsh as regular salt. It was very tasty. It didn't have that bite that regular salt does. Probably because it's lower in soda here.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But. But it's a really great flavor profile. Plus it's Aztec. You can't go wrong with something. Has the badass title. Anything. We could. We could do Aztec tomatillos. You could have Aztec milk, Aztec ketchup, anything. That's Aztec it.

This is brilliant. I think we should all collaborate and make an Aztec warrior workout.

Yep, exactly.

If you don't do the workout, then you get sacrifice.

Run some pyramids or die.

I would like to ask you guys about something. That came up during dinner last night. And honestly, I know for those of you listening in, when there's four people talking, it's hard to tell who's who. But Adam here is the house bodybuilder.

Right, the house bodybuilder.

The husky voice, knows a lot about getting swole. Yes, the husky voice. And Adam, we were talking a little bit about things like underground things that are coming up now that I get a lot of questions about HGH frags and peptides and sarms and a lot of these newer muscle gain, fat loss, growth hormone increasing type of compounds that people are now turning to as an alternative to say, amino acids and creatine and fish oil and all the old boring, proven stuff. And you mentioned that guys are now going to Kuwait and coming back swole. Tell me about this.

Yeah, and this is completely speculation on our part because I have no proof, but it's pretty crazy when you see. And there's been a handful, you know, I'd say about five or seven professional bodybuilders that I know that have gone over there. And these are guys that have been competing for 10, 15 years of life. You know, at that point. And you know that, you know, every one pound of muscle, you adds a victory at that point. Right? They're taking already tons of gear and they're doing.

Because you've, you've put on so much muscle by that point that, that even just getting tiny, tiny increases in muscle is considered a win.

Yeah, exactly, because you've, I mean, you've already. Not only have you reached your genetic potential, but you've also done everything you can almost chemically to enhance that. You know, when you see guys, you know, add even the smallest amount of muscle at that level, you're extremely impressed. And we, we're seeing these guys right now that are going over there and they're coming back and they're not spending more than a couple months there. I mean, I'm talking, you know, 60 to 90 days and they're back and they're. They look like they've added 20, 30 pounds. Something crazy is going on of lean mass to their body.

Something crazy is going on quite.

It's. I don't think I, I would. I mean, I mean, again, this pure speculation, but I highly doubt that they've. That they're. It's. It's having anything to do with hor. Because they've maxed out. I mean, these guys at this level are using testosterone, grams a week, growth hormone, they're using insulin, they're using you know, IGF1 and all these different compounds that they've been using now since the. The 90s at high doses.

Right.

And these guys are already walking around 280 pounds. They're shredded massive guys. They haven't added muscle in the last five years because they've hit that limit. Then they go over there and two, three months later, they come back and like, what just happened? I don't think.

What do you guys think? What do you think? What do you think?

My money is on I. Because we know the science on myostatin inhibition is developing. Right. You know, you.

He thinks that. I don't know if we're there yet. You know, I'm not sure if we're there to it.

But seeing pictures of the cows that.

Yeah. So myostatin backing this up a little bit. Like my myostatin would be a specific gene. Is it a gene or an enzyme?

Myostatin is a protein that, when it's elevated, it inhibits muscle growth. It's a. It's a muscle controller. And when they do studies on animals, well, they'll genetically, you know, modify the animal so that it has.

It works like a safety mechanism for us as humans, stops us from continuing to build and build and build.

There's actually an animal that naturally has very low or defunct myostatin. It's the Belgian blue bull. And it's been bred this way. They didn't know they bred it this way. And these extremely muscular bulls, and if you look them up online, they look freaky, they look crazy.

It's a myostatin knockout bowl.

Yes.

People could literally Google myostatin dog. My myostatin bull. And you'll just see crazy.

I'll find a picture, by the way, if you guys are listening in, I'll put the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com mindpump that's bengreenfieldfitness.com MindPump and I'll be sure and put a swole bowl in there for you to look at.

So when they do these studies on animals, they'll take mice and they'll, you know, they'll take one and switch off their myostatin gene and leave the other one normal or whatever. Here's the crazy thing. They don't exercise anymore. They don't feed them any differently, and they just build muscle, like ridiculous amounts of muscle. The kind of muscle that you would expect on an animal that was given high doses of, you know, androgens and put through exercise and fed differently. Very crazy stuff. That's like the next generation.

There has to be a biological trade off to that though. I would, I would imagine these animals get cancer.

I haven't read anything about that yet. I don't think they quite understand the other functions of myostatin besides like you're saying, I mean, I mean, turn that off. What could it possibly.

I think anything I've read is it's more like their heart giving out. To be able to handle all that, right, to be able to move that we just. You weren't made to.

Does the heart give out or does it get hypertrophic?

Well, it's probably. Yeah, I don't know.

You know, that's a great question.

It is a great question. There's not a lot of studies on it. And that's why it's. And that's why. I don't know. You know, Sal says that that was his theory on that's what they're doing over there. I don't know. Yeah, you know, for sure. If that's speculation.

You're meaning Kuwait. Yes.

You know, because. But I tell you what, and you know, this, you were in bodybuilding. That, that, you know, if there is anybody that's doing the crazy and that's really, you know, going after the, the out way out there and I mean bodybuilders, they've been doing it forever. You know, they pioneered a lot of stuff that we, we have now. A lot of people are afraid to take that next step and that's one of the things that we do appreciate about them. You know, a lot of people talk trash at all. They're a bunch of steroid freaks and this and that. But a lot of these guys are, you know, kind of like bro scientists a little bit. You know, they go in and they're playing with these things and.

Sorry, some of the most intelligent writings on the entire Internet are on bodybuilding forums.

Proceed with caution, I would say, for knowledge on using, you know, hormones. They're right up there with the Soviet, you know, coaches that, you know, coach the athletes. I mean, the timing and the doses and what to use when and how to use this to prevent, you know, your estrogen levels from going to a high and all this other stuff.

I want to ask you a little bit about some of these like lesser known techniques for, for muscle gain and but by the way, that, that photograph behind me that you guys can see here in my office, that's me bodybuilding and I, I was completely natural and extremely impressive. By natural I mean. And I was telling you guys this last Night, literally. Tuna fish cans with ketchup and relish.

That actually doesn't count because tuna fish is extremely anabolic. They found.

So it's the mercury. Yeah, the mercury just pumps you up.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean I eventually got a sponsorship with abb. I don't even know if they're around anymore. But they made these protein cans. Right. Like the protein coming in like a soda can. Right. And just pop it open and drink it.

It's full of super high quality thermostats.

Tasted awful too.

BPA and other you're going to out of straw components that lord knows what. The ingredient label takes up half the can, which is always a warning sign. But that was my go to was ABB Bodybuilding shakes and tuna with ketchup.

I was right with you, man.

I remember drinking.

Horrible.

You guys remember Blue Thunder?

I do.

It was, it was, it was literally a bottle of everything. Like you looked at the ingredients like, oh, it's got smilax. Oh, it's got salt palmetto.

ABB had one too. And I forgot the name of it, but it was a. It had like, it was the everything.

Did they make the speed stack? Was that abb?

Yeah.

Okay. Because that's my favorite thing of all time. This guy.

I just remember the chalk chocolate protein shakes that. And then my other go to is red line.

Yeah.

Which is like the pre workout.

Yeah. You ever inject that?

No, but. But actually that I have much experience injecting that I'm using now. Like I have a bum ankle right now for my last Spartan race.

I saw it. You had a little bit of swollen swallowing.

Yeah, so. And I was actually running when you guys showed up this morning. I was running the Mark Pro electro stem on it just to pump out some of the inflammation. But I've been injecting a fragment called or a peptide called BPC157 into it, which is just basically like a, a healing peptide that initiates that inflammatory cascade. They isolate it from gastric juices because that's where you'll find it in humans, where it can be used to heal gastric mucosa, for example. And that's actually. You can take an insulin syringe and you can draw a BPC157 back into it and spray it into your mouth to help with healing of gastric mucosa. Interesting. But there are a lot of these things now that I'm seeing pop up on the Internet that might be old news in the bodybuilding world, but that I'd like to get Kind of your guys's opinion on as far as like, you know, obviously there are things like I mentioned like creatine and fish oil and a good high quality protein that can help people with something like putting on muscle. But as far as these more underground things, you know, like sarms, for example, is something I recently touched on on a blog post. And peptides or growth hormone fragments, are there things that you think, think folks could be using, should be using, don't know about or that would be extremely efficacious for the people listening in that may want to put on muscle and add things in to like.

Well, we talk, we talk down a lot about SARMs just because there's just not a lot of, not a lot of good studies yet. You know, it's, that's kind of like buyer beware, you know, if you're gonna go, I mean, and we, when you've seen stuff, I mean, people are, you know, there's that. What is the latest one? We just talked about one recently.

Well, you know, here's, I mean, here's the thing with a lot of these. So, so yes, bodybuilders have been messing with SARMs now for at least maybe five years. And they're all available as research chemicals, by the way. They're not legal.

Right. You have to buy them from like Peptide Warehouse or Blue Sky Peptides or one of these other websites.

Exactly.

So SARMs, for example, explain what it is and what it would do for someone and why you do or you do not like it.

Well, a SARM is. A SARM stands for Selective Androgen Receptor modulator. So it attaches to the androgen receptor. And the goal of a SARM is to elicit the positive effects from those receptors and not so many of the negative effects. So some of the problems with taking testosterone, for example, is you get anabolic effects, but you also get androgenic effects, which are the masculinizing effects or the acne or, you know, the hair loss and those kinds of things. The undesirable effects of anabolic steroids. SARMs are supposed to, you know, kind of mitigate that a little bit. You're not going to get some of those negative effects. It supposedly, at the right doses won't affect your own hormone levels. Although they're finding at high doses, or at least the doses that people are using on the gray market that they are getting some shutdown of testosterone. But the drugs themselves are being studied for osteoporosis for male, what do they call andropause? Just as an alternative to testosterone and testosterone derivatives. The problem that we have, and We've talked about SARMs a few times now on the show, the problem that we have is with testosterone. We have a really good idea.

We know so much more about that.

We know what it does and what it doesn't do. We know what your side effects are going to be. We know what the doses you know, you can take. We know you know where you can get it from, especially if you get a prescription. It's, you know, with SARMs, we don't quite know all of the effects it has and if there's any long term effects and it's still undergoing, you know, testing at the moment. But if you go on the forums, you can read about some weird side effects. Like I don't, I think S4 SARM, I think it's called S4. People are like complaining about like vision changes, you know, like they'll, they'll, like there'll be a yellow tint to everything that they look at or it'll change the, their, their ability to see at night, which is a little weird. It's a little, you know, I mean it's like take some steroids kind of cool. Yeah.

Save money on blue light blocking glasses.

I just feel like if you're, if you're somebody, somebody who's considering going that direction, you know, and I'm not, I'm not one to advocate taking, you know, steroids, but if you're going to go mess with something like that, I feel like you're safer going in a direction where we know more, you know, and it's, it's kind of that gray area right now. We're still learning so much about them.

You know, what would be a direction where we know more? What do you mean?

Well, like as far like, like Sal was saying, like testosterone, like we know, we know more about testosterone, how that affects you. I mean there's hormone, but you can go see a doctor now and actually get it prescribed to you if your levels are lower than normal and they monitor your blood and see that SARMs, like I've just, I've always been afraid to mess with something like that. I'm afraid to mess with something that it just hasn't been studied for a very long time. I'm not quite that risk. I'm not that quite risk. I don't care that much about getting the extra edge or performance from some of that when I still feel like there's so many other things that we can be getting better at. Like you're a perfect example of somebody who I think is neat to see, like, mess with all the different little tiny things to just. Just get better performance, better sleep. But that's because you're doing all the. The big pieces first. You know, you got people that are taking sarms or taking steroids or.

You mean the goat milk and the tomatoes? Yeah.

No, but you. I mean, even the way you treat your sleep and the lights in your house, and there's so many other things that are natural, that are safe, that are going to help you first. And I feel like that's the order of operation that we should all strive for first before we add, like, this next bit of. Of performance.

You know what I'm saying?

That's not sexy.

You're right.

You're right.

But you're also, I mean, you know, you're also, you know, you're a biohacker, right? This is something you really enjoy. I think, you know, experimenting on yourself is excellent. I, I think that's. If you're gonna do. Look, I believe everybody should be able to do what they want to their body. They own it. You're also very educated. And so this is something you do for yourself to show, you know, to see what the effects are so you can report on them, which I think is actually quite responsible. You have an audience that's going to listen to you more than they're going to listen to some other person, but to the average person, you know, average listener that, you know, like on our show and stuff, I mean, we're always like, look, if you're going to do anything that's out, that's fringe, that's different, that has nothing to do with food or exercise or water or sleep, and you want to inject yourself with something, go to the doctor, get prescription testosterone. We know what it does. It'll definitely build muscle. You'll definitely have increased libido. You'll definitely get some of the. You'll get maybe some negatives, too, but we know what they are. But some of these, like, research chemicals, it's crazy. You can go on these sites, these research chemical sites, and you can get your hands on all kinds of stuff. You can get your hands on, you know, Novodex and Clomid and, you know, all these estrogen blockers, and you can get, you know, Arimidex and all these drugs that are normally, you know, scheduled substances.

Clomid is another one that you hear a lot about. Can you explain what Clomid is? Because wasn't there a UFC fighter that recently Got.

Got.

Got banned. Why would he have been using that? And, and what. What is it about Clomid that would allow you to have some kind of a performance enhancement?

So Clomid and nolvadex are both SERMs. So we had. We just talked about SARMs, right. Selective androgen Receptor Modulators. A serum is an estrogen receptor modulator, so very similar. It attaches to the estrogen receptor. And the goal of serms is to block the estrogen receptor. Just block it and try not to activate it. And so.

So more than likely he wasn't.

He wasn't taking me from getting man boobs and weepy during chicken.

Yes, exactly. To prevent the. The. The negative effects of all this excess testosterone that might be building up, however, the way that I would speculate that he used it, because they test. They're tested for steroids in the ufc. However, if you take testosterone and you get off in time, by the time they test you, you'll be. You'll. You'll show up. Okay. Your testosterone levels will be back to normal. However, to get your testosterone levels back to normal can take some time after going off, you know, large doses of, you know, testosterone. And so one of the ways you can speed up the process is by using a serum like Clomid, which tricks the body into producing more testosterone quicker. Now, a healthy man taking Clomid won't get a boost in testosterone, but if it's low, it's. It does. It can accelerate that rebound.

Typically, that's actually the direction that most doctors like a hormone therapist. If you were like, let's say your free test is like 200 range or whatever they typically would.

Which would be low.

Yes, would be low. Like your free range is 300 to 1200 range. Right. Is kind of what they would say is normal. Normal, yeah. Which is. Obviously, there's a large range there, but typically people fall in there, and if you're down below that, that's kind of the first. That's actually the first place they'll go. A hormone therapist will first go.

And then number two, what, hcg, Probably.

They'll go to something like Clomid.

Yes.

Before giving you testosterone.

Yeah, they'll try to do it that way.

Don't start your body's system.

They'll try and do it that way first. And then if it's not bumping you into the normal range. And it depends, like, I've had different hormone therapists that I've met and talked with, and, you know, because this is. It's kind of A newer industry, really, it hasn't been, it hasn't been around that long. And so different doctors are more stringent than others as far as what they'll do, how they'll dose or what they will offer or what they'll tell you you should take.

Take.

But it really doesn't take that much synthetic testosterone to get you into that normal, that normal world. I mean most bodybuilders, you know, we're taking cycles that are much larger than that. But that's a lot of what I was when I got into it and you know, started competing. That's kind of like most of the bodybuilders, that's what they, they typically just focus on, you know, like that's another thing, right. I talked about what I enjoy.

They typically just focus on the, the.

Hormones, how much and how much more this can I take.

Enhancing themselves.

Yeah. You know, instead we talk a lot about program design and nutrition and the importance of all that. Where, you know, a lot of the locker room talk is, you know, what do you want and you know, how much, how many grams of this are you taking and what are you taking after? This is cycles.

What do they call it? Gear.

Yeah, gear. Yeah, yeah, gear.

How much gear are you on?

Yeah, what gear are you on? What are you taking?

And this is why you look at their routines and they look the same. I mean you look at bodybuilding routines and their workouts are almost identical. It's the same body part split. You start with the compound movement, move to your finishers, get a pump. Nothing really groundbreaking with program design. If you want to see good program design, you got to go strength athletes, Olympic lifters, power lifters or old time bodybuilders. You know, if you go back before the introduction of steroids, bodybuilders worked out very different.

The guys in the back back MAD magazine.

Yeah, I mean you look at like the old routine with, with what, what.

What are those kind of dumbbells that, where they're, where they're round. They look like balloons on either end of the.

Oh yeah, the old school hoisting those. Oh man. But those, they had some incredible feats as well.

Feature strength.

Twist your mustache on the side.

Exactly. They, they, they, they come up onto the circus stage right after the girl who rides with, with one foot on, on a horse. Oh yeah, two horses.

Exactly.

Yeah. So program design. These old school guys, what were they doing?

So the old school. So this is interesting.

The old timey, Old timey bodybuilder.

So a while back, so I developed a program. And then we worked on some subsequent ones called maps. And MAPS stands for Muscular Adaptation Programming System. And some of the basis of that was studying the old time strongman and bodybuilder routines because I found, and I saw that they were very different. You know, the old time strongman and bodybuilders trained full body three days a week. They trained movement much more than muscle. So it wasn't like they were like, I'm hammering my bicep or my tricep. It was like, I'm pulling in this direction or I'm pushing in that direction. And these guys, you know, this is before creatine and protein powders were incredible. They looked incredible, but their feats of strength were mind blowing. I mean, you're talking about like Eugene Sandow bent pressing. I don't know if you know what a bent press is. It's a one arm kind of side, almost looks like a windmill.

Not a bench press, a bent press, bench press.

This is a one arm technical press. It's almost like a windmill movement with £300 in one arm. And this is a barbell. It's a long barbell. So these, these features.

So you're like pressing the weight overhead and kind of bending your body to get under the weight with rotation. Yeah, I think I've seen this picture.

And it's, it's the, the feats of strength are incredible. The, the muscle that they built especially for the time was incredible. And the workouts were very different. They, they did full body workouts because they had them all written down. And some of them even sold workout plans so you could buy them and see these old tiny, you know, barbell dumbbell workout or whatever. And there were some muscle magazines back then that would publish some of the workouts. And now I'm talking a little later, you know, the 1920s, 30s, 40s. But they didn't train to failure. They did train intensely, but they did a lot of frequency. So, you know, whereas a bodybuilder today may hit chest once a week really hard and hammer the hell out of it. It. They would do some kind of a chest movement three or four days a week. They wouldn't go completely to failure. And they, you know, got great results. And so I played with this type of, you know, programming on myself and on clients, and I was blown away, blown away by the results.

Did you wear the leopard skin?

I did. That was part of the, that was part of Tarzan. Absolutely. But I was blown away by it.

Well, that was the, this is also the evolution of the Trigger sessions too, which is a concept that, you know, Sal came up with with the original maps, which is instead of just hammering the body every single time, is getting these low doses of frequency of just sending that anabolic signal to the muscles.

How were they getting a good anabolic muscle growth signal without training to failure?

So this is an interesting, and this is a very good question. It's interesting because the muscle building community has hammered home the fact that you need to go to failure in order to send a muscle building signal. But there's lots of factors that you want to consider when you're trying to build muscle. One of them is are you sending the signal? And then number two, are you teaching your body to adapt or are you simply wanting your body to recover each time? Because recovery and adaptation can be two different things. Your body can simply want to heal from damage. And you see a lot of people like this, right. They go to the gym and they get really sore, they beat themselves up, but there's no progress. They're not adapting. All their body's doing is healing, heal, beat down, heal, beat down. What you want is you want adaptation. And for anybody who wants evidence of muscle building without failure, look at, go look at a plumber's forearms or a mechanics forearms or go look at somebody who does hard labor. They don't train extremely intense at all. They've been doing it for years. And yet their muscles start to develop from this low levels of frequent stimulation.

Yeah, but I mean, like when I've, you know, when I'm working on it, I'll admit I work on, on a bicycle more than I work on a car or you know, when I'm, when I'm screwing something to a wall here in my house, like I'll, I'll screw and screw and screw the screwdriver, for example, and my forearms get to the point where they just can't go anymore.

Sure.

And then I have to stop and then start up again or yell at my wife about where the, where the, where the automatic screwdriver is the drill. But that's not considered to be failure.

It's, that's different. I mean, that's fatigue. I don't know if it's necessarily that you would call that failure.

Okay.

But I think, and what I found with training, because, you know, between the three of us, who's probably trained, I don't know, thousands of clients going to failure for most people is more intensity than is necessary. And the thing with getting the body to adapt is you want to send the signal, but you don't want to go beyond what is necessary because now you're tapping into the body's ability to recover. And you know, studies will show that muscle building signal lasts for about 48 to 72 hours. So if I hit my legs super hard to failure, hammer the crap out of them on Monday. By Wednesday, even though I'm still sore and I'm still recovering, that protein synthesis signal, that muscle building signal fades quite a bit. And so it makes sense to hit it again, to send that signal again. And rather than sending one super loud muscle building signal and then let it dampen until the next time you work out, send one. That's intense. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a hard workout, but not to that, quite to that point. But you hit these peaks more often throughout the week and you, and you build more muscle. And it's pretty crazy at how effective that simple philosophy is.

So you'd go full body. Let's say, for example, if you're gonna do like kind of the old timey, I want to build strength routine without spending copious amounts of time in the gym doing eight different types of exercises for my biceps.

Correct.

I'm gonna go full body three days a week, but I'm not gonna go to fail. I'm gonna push hard but not go to complete failure.

We always say stop about two reps short of failure.

Would that be like, what if you just decide, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do, and I want to ask you like an example of what a full body workout would be here in a second. But would that mean maybe you're going to go do your workout without say a spotter or somebody to help you out and just basically decide, okay, once my own body isn't able to do it anymore, that's when I stop.

No. So you would, so it takes, when someone starts training this way, it usually takes a few weeks for them to get, get in tune with what that means for their body.

But it's really the breaking down of the form.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, at that moment when you.

Once you start to notice.

Once biomechanics starts to suffer.

Yeah, once it starts to really suffer and you think to yourself, like, I could squeeze out maybe two more reps and then collapse. You should stop before. So you stop one or two reps short of that, and then you're able to hit the body more frequently as a result.

Okay, so walk me through what a typical routine would look like if I, if I were going to, to go into the gym and use one of these old timey routines. Or like you, what'd you say MAP.

Stands for Muscular Adaptation Programming System.

And that's kind of like your adaptation of some of these things that you found when studying.

Yes, and there's a lot, there's a lot to the program. But if you were to do a very basic rundown of a full body routine, very, very simple. First off, you'd want to, if you're looking for maximum muscle gain and strength, you'd want to focus on the big compound movements, right? Your squats, your, your, your rows, your pull ups, your deadlifts, your, you know, overhead press, that kind of stuff. You want to do maybe one or two exercises per body part, maybe three sets each, and start with the big body parts and go to the small one. So a workout, a typical workout would be like barbell squat two and then a bench press and then either a pull up or a row, an overhead press, maybe a bicep or tricep exercise, something for your, for your core and something for your calves if you want to. And that's it. And then you're done. And then, you know, you rest on Tuesday or whatever and you go Wednesday and you do something very similar. Maybe change it up. So rather than doing a back squat, you might do a front squat or you may do a deadlift or some other hip movement.

You forgot the part about the old timey putting in the vinyl record.

Yeah, that's true.

So on the in between days, were these guys really just sitting around? Because we were talking last night about like Dan John. I interviewed Dan John. He's like, dude, like watch, watch college football games and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in between. You know, three days of a week full body workout and you're gonna get swole. But in my opinion, you know, for cardiovascular health and perhaps even boosting recovery and lymph flow and blood flow and everything else, you know, I'm a bigger fan of like, you know, sauna and yoga and active recovery and stuff like that in the off days. What do you do on the off days?

So you have so a couple things to consider too. When you look at guys that are just guys and girls that are just big muscular people, many times the information they're gonna give you may, it's probably not going to work for you or for most people because these people tend to be genetically gifted. Their bodies respond very, very, very well to resistance training. So they can hammer the bodies, relax, hammer the body's relax, eat peanut butter jelly sandwiches like you said, and they'll build muscle, whereas a lot of us may not build as much muscle or we may gain body fat as a result of resting and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So that's one thing to consider. But active recovery is superior to just, just resting. Now just resting is important too. But if you're just run of the mill sore, you know, if I worked out my legs and yesterday and they're a little bit sore today, one of the best things I could do is move them again with some low level intensity the following day. It facilitates recovery. It actually sends a very small muscle building signal, or at least it keeps the one that you sent the day before elevated. And so this active recovery is extremely important.

What do you mean it sends a muscle building signal.

So let's say you like again, like you worked out yesterday, very, very hard, you sent this loud signal to your body to build muscle.

I did one of these like full body routines you described.

Yes. The following day that signal will start to drop a little bit and they find they show again, like I said, 72 hours. Usually it's down to almost baseline. If the next day I do some low level activity, and this is the concept of trigger sessions that we put in the MAPS program. If I do some low level activity the next day, target those muscles, hit them with low intensity, get a little bit of a pump, a little bit of a burn, it facilitates recovery, but it also keeps that muscle building signal loud and clear versus resting and letting that signal start to dampen. And again, you know, here's a great example. If I took two people or two groups of people, and one group of people, I had them do squats very heavily. And then the following days I had them walk and stretch and do light body weight lunges. And the other group of people, they hammered their legs and then they just bed rest for the rest of the week, just lay in bed and don't move. The people in bed rest would lose muscle, they'd lose muscle and strength within a five day, seven day period even shorter. I mean, all of us have experienced that where we had to lay down and not move or have a cast on for a short period of time, you lose muscle very, very quickly. So that activity the following days, even though it's not the same high intensity, tear up your muscles type activity definitely contributes to adaptation. It's important.

Well, what do they say? I think the studies say that it's after three days or so of recovery from training, atrophy already begins.

Yeah, I mean the body wants to Recover, but it doesn't always want to build. It's not hard to make yourself to damage muscle. That's easy. Any idiot can do that.

Yeah, yeah. What about the use of. This is something I've heard, for example, Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about the muscle maintenance effect of something like heat. Right. Like the heat shock protein response and some of the other, I guess, like muscle maintenance effects of doing something like sauna and heat on the off days.

Excellent question. So with heat shock proteins to elevate those, it actually you need a lot, you need a lot of heat, you need a lot of exposure. But there's some theories out there saying that it could help with building muscle, with recovery. My theory on it is this. When it comes to things like extreme temperatures, cold and heat, heat and hot, it's a stress on the body. And if there's one thing that I've learned over the years, it's that stress applied to the body appropriately will elicit an adaptation response that the body and the body is basically trying to get stronger or tougher, if you will.

Hormesis, right?

Exactly. So if I go out and if I go in a sauna too long, I'll exhaust my body's ability to adapt and to recover. And I can damage myself and run.

Out of magazines too.

Exactly. But if I use heat appropriately and elicit that adaptation response and over time work my way up, just like you do with exercise, you'll get some adaptations that are favorable to making you stronger and healthier. And there's cultures that have used heat and cold for thousands of years. I know for myself, I've recently been using sauna and steam room regularly and I never have before. And evidence of the adaptation is my heat tolerance is, is dramatically better. Like I can go out in the sun. I mean, we live in California. Gets pretty hot there. I, I can handle the sun way better than I could before. And I mean that's, that's a form of adaptation. Something happened.

Yeah. No, I do it almost every day now. Well, I, I sweat more, I'm able to handle the heat more. And vascularity goes up too. So you get increased, you get that vasodilation. Yep, yep. There's a few crossover benefits.

Do you ever alternate with cold?

What I do with, with, with my sauna practice is I'll do the infrared sauna because the infrared sauna takes a really long time to kind of like heat the sauna up. And then I'll finish up 30 to 40 minutes of that with. I don't know if you guys are running around outside earlier and you saw that. Did you guys see the pool house?

Yeah, we did, yeah.

So that, that pool's at 55 degrees.

Oh, nice.

So I'll go out there and jump in that and do like hypoxic underwater swimming responsibly. No shallow water blackout.

Can you explain hypoxics breathing for us to a.

So normally, really good hypoxic training to allow for that big increase in nitric oxide synthase and also an activation of what's called your mammalian dive reflex. Right. So you get a little bit of vagal nerve tone. Normally you'd be looking at holding your breath until it's pretty uncomfortable. Right. You're getting some diaphragmatic contractions, like you.

Want to swallow water.

Right, Exactly. And then you come up for breath and you recover and you do it again. And you'd preferably want to do that with a partner to just in case you did have shallow water blackout. What I do is kind of like the baby version of that. So I actually swim back and forth under the water until I feel like I probably should come up for a breath. But before those diaphragmatic contractions begin. And I just go back and forth for about five to 10 minutes, you know, coming up for a breath when I need to. And it's very therapeutic.

You do this post sauna. You do the sauna and then head over there.

Yeah.

You feel like you're in mommy's womb, like a little baby. And there's something very therapeutic about water. It's really interesting. Then I get out, out, and I don't get back in the heat. I just allow myself to air dry. So my body has to generate some heat, get some of that brown fat conversion, the adipose tissue to brown fat conversion to activate the metabolically active fat and heat up. But when I am doing a normal dry sauna protocol, because the dry sauna heats you up faster than the infrared sauna does, I'll go dry sauna to cold shower or cold plunge back to dry sauna to cold. And that's one of the. One of the best ways, in my opinion, to get over jet lag, like when you're traveling a lot is I'll Google name of the city that I'm in or name of the hotel that I'm staying at, plus the word sauna or use like the Google maps find near here and I'll find a sauna and just go do sauna to cold plunge. It's not at a cold plunge Japanese saunas Turkish saunas, and Russian saunas all typically tend to have a cold pool or one of those little cold showers where, like the old school cold showers where you pull the handle. Oh, right. And the water comes out. It's just like this big.

That's ball shrinking, Rachel.

Yeah, but that's, that's the way that I do the, the, the hot cold.

Have you, have you messed with cryo at all? Have you done cryotherapy at all?

Yeah, there's, there's one down the street from my house and I like it, but I like water. I mean, cryotherapy is nice because you don't have to get wet, right? It's quick. Put your clothes back on. Always back to back, right? So. So you do the three minutes that they'll let you do and then you have them measure your skin temperature and you want the skin temp to get back up to, I think it's 170, and then they'll let you back in. If you do back to back three minute sessions, you get a way better cold thermal response. Like 10 minutes later, I'll be driving down the street and just shivering. But I still like water because water, like I mentioned, that dive reflex, it activates that you get the actual compression of the water compression, the cold against the skin. And from what I understand, that actually deactivates some of the lymph fluid backflow that can occur when you are doing cold without compression. So cold for recovery should be accompanied by compression. Ideal scenario.

So, so like massage, would you say?

What do you mean?

For compression?

No, what you would do, for example, is you would get compression gear and put ice packs underneath the compressor. Or you would use water and, and you would get in the water and, and the, the, the pressure from the actual water, the hydrostatic pressure from the water forces the cold up against the muscle.

Now I would imagine the cold water would probably stimulate that wanting to breathe effect even more because I get that from a cold shower.

Yeah, that's what you're looking for. For vagal nerve tone, which you can increase through freaking like chanting, singing, gargling. There's all sorts of weird things, Justin.

Gargle.

Big, big gargle. My favorite thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I wanted to ask you guys, since, since you are into the, the whole muscle building thing and we kind of went down that avenue a little bit. You mentioned the word triggering and I wanted to actually ask you what you meant by that. What do you mean when you say triggering?

So a trigger session or triggering. So triggering the term Triggering in the context that we use it is basically you're triggering a signal to tell the body to adapt in some way. So, so in this particular case we're talking about building muscle. So lifting heavy weights intensely triggers a muscle building adaptation or strength building adaptation. Running long distances would trigger adaptation, improve endurance. So that's the term triggering. But trigger sessions are something that is very unique to some of the programs that we've created. And the concept behind trigger sessions is on the off days, and I'm doing the air quotes here, on the days that you're not in the gym, am lifting heavy weight, you are doing short five to ten minute trigger sessions throughout the day, up to three a day of targeted exercises. So if you have a particular area that you want to work on, let's say you want to work on your mid back or your shoulders, you could target those a little more specifically. What I like to do and what I tend to advocate is a whole body trigger session. Because I'm trying to again facilitate recovery and maintain that muscle building signal or keep it elevated from the workout that I did the day before. It's very low intensity. All you're aiming for is a little bit of a burn, a little bit of a pump in the muscles. I recommend using bands because bands cause less damage typically than free weights would. Body weight is okay, but you have to be careful. Some people don't have the ability to recover from bodyweight. Trigger sessions, you definitely would. I use them all the time. But beginners, I always recommend bands. And so you do this several times a day. So what you're doing essentially is you're getting a little pump in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening and real short too.

You're only.

So I could keep like a band next to my desk for the days that I'm not doing this full body, three day a week routine. And I could do like, well, like some presses, some twists, squats.

Exactly.

Basic full body movement, but not to failure. Just like light stuff.

Just get a little bit of a burn, a little bit of pump. Exactly. And what you notice is you recover fast. You build muscle faster, you burn fat faster.

Energy too. You made a comment about the way you feel when you come out of the sauna. That's how I feel after a trigger session. Right, right after you get a little 5, 10 minute. Just that light pump charges you up. It is. It's a nice little charge and surge of energy.

Think of also, you know, obviously you're at a very advanced level. Think about how you can Train recruitment patterns. Think about how you can train. Like, if you're, you know, you're trying to get a very, you know, efficient recruitment pattern for a particular movement, like a press. Like you have an issue packing your shoulder or, you know, elevating your, your press to lockout. What a great way to use a trigger session.

This is typically how I use them because, like, I'm working more on skills like, say I'm working on my overhead press or I'm working like, specifically just on improving my squat depth or something like that. I could actually, actually focus on that more in those days with lightweight, but really, you know, work on enhancing that technique.

Yeah, got it. Cool. By the way, I think that's one of the first times that you've talked so far.

You guys ran the show.

That's hard. When we got four guys podcasting. So Sal and Adam have been talking a lot. Justin, not so much.

You guys are talking about like, like hormones and all that. You can have that.

You guys, you guys are visiting.

I'm not into that.

You guys are visiting from, from San Jose Camper Spokane. You'll be here a few days. We'll hopefully get. Go and, and see the, see the proving ground fights tonight maybe. And go, go have a good time. But when you are on the road like this, how do things change for you? Like, as far as your workouts go, are you all body weight, hotel room style workouts, or do you guys have any, any unique little twists that you do when you travel that you think folks should know about?

Sal's probably the most anal, wouldn't you say, Justin?

For sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. Was Sal the only guy actually worked out?

He is, he is the only guy.

I worked out right before I got on the plane. So that was like, like, you know, I had to make sure I established that. But yeah, if it's only a couple days, typically I don't sweat it too hard.

So, yeah, I feel, I feel like when we get a chance to do something like this, this is, this is fun for me. You know, we're up somewhere where I've never been before. Get a chance to hang out with you. And even though my workouts and fitness is a priority, that's why we have a program that's called Maps. Anywhere where I can do it with my bands inside a hotel room. So. And I have them with me. I brought them. But it becomes less of a priority for me when it's a short trip like this.

This.

If we were here for four or five days, I'm not going to take.

I definitely have a plan.

So I drove up. Right. So I've made this kind of part of a little vacation. This is kind of the end of it.

Oh, you drove here?

I drove, yeah. So I did some kayaking in Lake Tahoe, went to Crater Lake, stopped in Portland, Seattle, now here. And I brought kettlebells with me and a. About a five foot long stick. So I can do tension movements with the stick, do kettlebell movements. And then at the hotels that I'm at, if they have a gym, I'll do workouts.

What do you mean a stick?

Literally a dowel. So are you familiar with like stick mobility and tension?

Oh, you mean like, like a broomstick?

Yes, yes.

Not like a Johnny Appleseed walking stick?

No, no, no. You could use it.

Leaves and stems.

Old timey training.

But I'll do like old tension movements on it. Kettlebell exercises. And I try and do 30 to 45 minutes every single day. And when I go back to my regular workouts, many times, not only have I not lost any performance, many times I've gained performance just because it's different, you know?

Yeah. And you're probably a little bit rested and recovered.

Yeah, I mean, that's. I think that's part of it. Maybe eating more on the road.

Well, I find, and I'm curious if you're like this. Typically when I find guys like us that are so passionate about what we do that if I ever do anything, it's normally over training. It's normally not letting my body rest, not letting myself recover. So I kind of use these type of trips as that extra excuse to like, hey, you know what, let's focus on business. Let's enjoy company, let's kind of rest a little bit. Because when I'm home, I'm, you know, not to your extent and level, but I'm constantly experimenting with my body and hammering it on this and trying that all the time that, you know.

Yeah. You make me sound like a freak, dude. There's nothing shoved up my ass or in my. I was showing you guys my little nose dildo earlier. My little laser. Laser light for my nose. Yeah. What I. What I tend to find myself doing when I'm traveling, especially when I know I'm of kind. Going to be at like a conference where you wake up in the morning, you want to work out, but it doesn't happen because somebody invited you to breakfast and then the conference goes all day and then you're planning on working out in the evening, but it turns out there's A cocktail hour. So you don't make it to that. Like my, my strategy is I just, I smash it before I go. Right. So, so then you use that for your recovery. And you know, so I'll, I'll take, I'll take one day before I'll go to like a conference and that'll be a double day, right, Where I'll do like a two a day hard morning, hard evening workout. You show up, you recover, and then when you come back, you're, you're fitter a lot of times because you've super compensated.

And that's, that's exactly how I think. I mean, I had a heavy, heavy deadlifting and squatting day right before I came up here, and I'm still sore from it. So that's the way I look at it.

Yeah, four big muscular guys in my house last night and my wife had a tiny bowl of chicken. I think I told her there were, I told there were either two or three of you, but either way the chicken actually didn't disappear that quickly. You guys were pretty responsible. You did manage to polish off a, a couple bottles. Try to be responsible. Yeah, but dude, usually I'll see guys like you just like. Honestly, the last time I was in Dubai, for example, I went out with a couple of crossfitters over there and literally, I think they ordered all the beef tartare and everybody had a whole chicken. Like a whole freaking chicken with like, you know, you know what I'm talking about? Like a whole.

Protein's the holy grail, right?

Because protein. Yeah. What is it with you guys and protein? Because, because I, I didn't get the impression that you were, you are proteinaholics. Like a lot of the bigger guys. I've seen.

No, like anything in bodybuilding, they'll take something that's got some merit and then they, they apply the whole. More. If this much is good, more is that much better, which is not true with anything. I don't care what it is. And it's not true with protein either. Protein intake. The best studies that we have will show an upper limit of benefit from about, I don't know, 0.7, 0.8 grams per pound of body weight. The guys now.

0.7, 0.8 Grams. Grams per pound.

Per pound of body weight. Yeah. So.

So less than a one to one ratio.

Less than a one to one ratio.

150 pound.

Female.

You don't need 150. 50 grams of protein.

No, any.

Any.

And what happens? I mean, any more. I mean, of course you can eat one gram per pound of body weight. You can eat a little bit more. Is it good for you? Maybe not in the long term. Is it gonna give you lots of negative side effects? Maybe not. Probably not. Is it gonna give you any benefit? No, I think you're, you're missing out on a lot of the benefits of, of fats, healthy fats and maybe even carbohydrates for carbohydrate consuming.

What about like, what about like the aging effect of protein or like ammonia buildup, that kind of stuff? Do you, do you guys focus on.

That at all or, you know, when looking at protein too much? The thing that worries me is this very, very high protein diets have been implicit, have been loosely connected to increased risks of cancer. It does stimulate the MTOR gene at a very high level, which as we know helps build muscle, but also can cause cancer growth. So that's the big one for me. It's you know, eating that, eating tons and tons of protein all the time consistently. You're probably not doing yourself any benefit. On top of that, these bodybuilders will advocate, you know, two grams per pound.

Some of them are doing, my peers are doing three.

So like that, that's like, you gotta move products three times as much as what you guys would recommend.

If you're a, let's say you're a 200 pound male that would be eating 400 to 500 grams of protein every single day. And you, you know, many of them.

Eat like this, many of them eat like this. And you have to, you know, you, it's hard to get that with whole foods. So then you end up going over to the process, right? You're getting bars and you're getting shakes and all this artificial stuff.

Well, that's why it's been pushed. It's been pushed and as, as truth because the businesses and companies that run the fitness industry are supplement companies companies and they know if they tell you to eat, you know, if you're 150 pound female and they're telling you to eat 300 grams of protein a day, there's no way in hell you're gonna eat 300 grams of food.

Good luck. Eight to ten chicken breasts for a girl.

Yeah, you're gonna be taking you know, four shakes a day. So that it just benefits them to promote this myth. A relatively high protein diet, probably safe for the, the kidneys which filter protein. A super high protein diet. There's no science, there's no studies showing 2 1/2, 3 grams of protein per Pound of body weight over the course of five to ten years is safe. And it's probably not. Yeah, it's probably not good for you.

There's the idea about aging too, right? Like a protein restricted modified fasting diet appears to, from what I understand, like decrease longevity. Yeah. Decrease the telomere shortening.

I think intermittent, I know intermittent fasting, protein restriction, definitely calorie restriction in general. Intermittent fasting gives you a lot of those benefits as well. So if you're an athlete that likes to consume the, the amount of protein to maximize performance, which again is probably around 0.7, 0.8 grams per pound. Still high protein, but nowhere near what we just talked about. You can get a lot of the longevity benefits from some of these studies by simply incorporating fasting even when you're trying to bulk. And I even say, especially when you're trying to bulk or you're eating excess calories, it's a good idea to throw that fasting day in there. As a matter of fact, we sell a fasting guide. I think we're the only three, you know, bodybuilder type guys that talk about.

Don'T eat, don't eat.

Yeah, that, that will promote fasting.

That must have been easy to write.

Very easy.

Don't eat this.

I had a great commercial for it. It's like all you got to do is not eat.

It's crazy.

But you would, you'd be surprised. People, I think, think that fasting means don't eat and then eat garbage or donate, you know, for, you know, there's different methods of, of using fast.

Wear a toga, go to the desert, meditate.

That's the real way to do it.

That's Scorpion.

Yeah, that's the legit way to. But yeah, if you, you know, if you fast properly, it will also improve your sensitivity to protein. So you may not need as much protein as you think. Your body just maybe become inefficient at using it because you eat so much of it all the time, you know, and reducing it sometimes might be good.

Well, I really noticed a lot when, when I switched over. So I went ketogenic about six months for the first time ever. And my, the biggest takeaway that I had from it because I still enjoy my carbs, I don't eat a full blown ketogenic diet now was, was it just changed my relationship with carbohydrates and with fats for so many years as trainers, I mean, we've demonized fat and I mean, I remember telling clients like, oh, don't don't, don't even try and get fat in your diet. You know, when I, when I first started 15 years ago, especially saturated fat, Watch out.

Broccoli, chicken and rice, right? I mean, not very much six times.

A day, by the way.

Yeah, that was, that was the prescription. And you know, I was, I used to, and I remember when we first talked about it and I was like, why would I ever want to do that? I eat 4 to 600 grams of carbs and I can still stay lean. I love that, you know, which allows me all this flexibility and freedom. But when I, when I started to replace all the carbohydrates with fat and reduce it just, I could feel my skin, my hair, my sleep. I didn't lose strength, I didn't lose energy. Like I thought I noticed too that now when I would reintroduce carbohydrates, hydrates, the responsiveness of my body. Now when I would have 50 grams of carbs, I would, I would feel those surges where before that was just, I was eating 75 to 100 in almost every meal and that was just the norm. And you know, I really started to notice the difference. I could feel it when I went, so. And even though I'm not a full blown ketogenic person right now, and I still incorporate carbohydrates in my diet, I, I see the huge benefits behind that. And like we, this is the type of stuff that we talk about and it's just, just we knew that we would be outside the norm being these meathead guys. You know, normally when guys look at us right away, how dare you label us like that? Right? But most people, most people do when they, when they, they see us, they.

You know, they're pretty meatheady. A little bit of facial hair. Well, a little bit, a little bit of a neck beard going on over there. We got the traps. Sleeve tattoos, best quality. Yeah.

So you, you're a relatively muscular guy, especially for being an endurance, quote, unquote, endurance athlete. How was your protein intake? Because if anybody needs to eat higher protein, believe it or not, it's probably endurance athletes.

Yeah, no, that's interesting you should ask. I'm actually at about 0.7 grams per pound around in that range now. Do you keep it like around around 23%? But, but here's the deal. Like, I don't freaking count. Like, and everybody thinks that about me being like the self quantification biohacking guy that I'm using like chronometer.com or some special app. To count everything thing I really like, aside from taking my heart rate variability every morning, I don't quantify that much at all. You guys were at dinner last night. My wife puts out the chicken and the buckwheat wraps and the vegetables from the garden, and I eat that. Lord knows I'm not fast this morning because I just went out to the garden and threw a crap ton of vegetables in the smoothie and some coconut oil and made myself a smoothie. And I have no clue how many carbs were in that or how much fat. And the coconut oil, literally, don't tell my wife I told you this, but I just stick my fingers in there and grab a gob of it and throw it into this, throw it in the blender and, you know, I don't count.

It's amazing, though, when you, when you eat like that, though, intuitively, when you're just making good, healthy choices, you don't really have to. People are blown away with. The same with me because I don't pay it. I don't. When I'm getting ready for a show, totally different when I have to take myself to an unhealthy place and get to 2, 3% body fat, then it takes the TR. Which I'm sure you did the same thing, too, when you competed. You probably did track and count. But the rest of the year, like, who wants to live like that? I don't. You know, I want to be able to have a dinner with you and not be like, hold on, let me pull out my. My app real quick.

One of the macros.

Don't be that guy.

So I want to ask you guys, I want to do the whole cheesy roundtable, ask a cool question towards the end of the podcast thing. So make it good, guys. And I know this might be tough to be relatively spartanescent, but what's the biggest lie or the biggest myth or the biggest mistruth in the fitness industry that you want to debunk right here, right now that maybe you think flies under the radar.

There's so many.

Well, not. Something like not eating for four weeks is going to put you into starvation mode, but I don't know, something maybe folks haven't heard of or something that's really near and dear to your heart?

Well, I think going kind of in that direction of that.

I.

There's this big fear of if we don't get food for a certain amount of time, that our body lose gains. Our body's just going to start metabolizing muscle. And I don't think a lot of people realize that the body does not want to do that.

Start peeing out your biceps.

Yes.

People really feel this fear of. I've. As soon as I get done with my workout, I got to get within the 20 minute anabolic window. I gotta get this shaken.

My God made Jamba Juice right in.

So I think that's probably the biggest one that I. Because maybe this is where I deal a lot with this, with bodybuilding, competing, the six pack bags. Everyone's carrying around their food and it's so crucial to get it in when they don't realize how six pack bags.

Tried to sponsor my show.

And I have you listen to my show?

No, I told them, I'm like, I don't carry food barely ever because I eat when it, when it comes in handy. And otherwise I'm just going a long period of time between meals, including my workout.

Well, I think you. And I don't know if it was dinner. You, you mentioned this or maybe it was one of the, the interviews I was listening to you do. But you, you did, you mentioned that, like example, like when we travel a lot of times I'll just not eat.

Right. Right.

You know, I just won't eat for a while.

We're like okay with that.

And it's, and I don't come back home with 10 pounds less muscle on me. And in fact I feel great. You know, and I think that's the big thing that we like to, to really debunk is that you can be very muscular, you can, you know, be strong, you can be all these things and you don't have to be stuffing your face with food all the time.

Well, and everybody wants flexibility. Talk about the ultimate flexibility. When you can just say, well, I don't have to eat right now. Like, it's not like I have to venture out and find this very specific restaurant right now to fit my needs. Like I can actually go without it.

Honestly, I do. That's it. Like going, going ketogenic on international flights, right? Like, that's one of the best. You just don't eat right. You just sit there, you watch your movie, you drink some water and dude, it, it's, it's, it simplifies life too.

It does. There's so much less stress when you. Because if I ever hear anybody complain like in, in the competing world or people that are so focused on their aesthetics is, oh my God, I gotta, I gotta get here. We gotta go pull over and go get this. Or do they like why? Yeah, well, you know, you know, much more benefit you would get actually for just not doing that. You'll get more benefits if you actually probably skip this meal.

We've been a gas station stop for the beef jerky and macadamia nuts so you can stay swole.

Right? You know what I'm saying? You're sedentary anyways. Your body is not needing very much fuel right now. There's no need to go fuel it.

There's.

So I think that's something that we try to press. I try to talk a lot about that. You know, you can be buff and you don't gotta eat all the time. In fact, I think that's gotten us as just as a population in general in a lot of trouble. I think that's what, you know, we're just a bunch of carb addicts, man. We are just addicted to the sugar and that instant, that instant rush of carbohydrates. And you don't really. It's not essential. Carbs aren't, you know, we don't necessarily need them.

So that wasn't very spartanesque.

But Sal biggest myth, biggest myth he covered. We covered protein intake, we covered frequent eating being a myth. I think in the muscle building world, one of the biggest myths is that in order to build particular body parts, especially the arms and the legs, that single joint exercises do them great, when in fact, you probably never need to do a curl again if you do really good pull ups and rows.

My preacher curl bench on Craigslist.

Waste your time. Yeah, that, that would be the biggest one. Focus on movement and skill and then focus on muscle, not the other way around. Look, learn how to get good at movements and you'll build all the muscle you want.

Yeah, it's like my underground go to exercise for bigger biceps. I. I don't know if you guys saw the keg in my garage. I carry it my one of my go to workouts. I carry that around my house 10 times.

Times. Wow.

You set it down in between, do some mobility exercises, pick it back up, carry it around.

Well, here's something I noticed. Not to go off topic, but you have very muscular forearms and hands. And this aside from being very attractive, I was gonna say you switch hands.

Wow.

Double pumper, huh? But you know, when you look at people who have what I like to call real world strength, that's what you always notice is their hands and their forearms because that's what connects you to the world. And there's a lot of guys and girls who are very muscular. Weak hands, weak Forearms not very good carryover to the real world. They can't do it. Can't grab anything.

You're not using wrist wraps. Right.

Can't milk a goat for longer than a minute.

Seriously? Is that what you call it?

Yeah, exactly, that's what you call it. No, I actually have goats and I can. I do milk, but we sell them. I mean that too, Justin.

Yeah. So I think for me it's really just the, the over intensity factor. Being an athlete and coming from that background, just, just always wanting to exceed and. And get to that max exertion, that was always just my focus. Whereas, you know, maybe doing that, you know, in spurts and planning it out better where I do that maybe three times a week, but I'm doing a low to moderate day in between. That was like earth shattering for me. So just.

You don't have to crawl out of the gym.

You don't have to beat yourself up so hard to. To get what you want. Like, there's a way to adapt, Adapt and, and train your body to get better results without having to hammer yourself.

You're destroying everybody's Pukey the Clown murals.

Yeah. I will take a dump on Pukey the Clown.

Yeah. And that will be the title of today's.

Okay.

I love it. How to take a dump on Pukey the Clown. Take that. Hey, thanks, guys. Thanks for coming up.

Appreciate you having us.

I'm looking forward to getting to know you more to. To giving a few listens to the Mind Pump podcast. So it's mindpump.com mindpumpmedia.com mind pump. What's my. What will happen if you go to Mind Pump?

If you.

If you literally Google Mind Pump, though, we'll.

The Internet will explode probably.

If you. BenGreenfield.com used to be literally some guy. I'm totally not kidding. Bent over. Right. Wearing a pair of shorty shorts. And up right above him it said, Enter BenGreenfield.com. it was that bad? No way. I think it's changed since then, but it just. It was my bane for a while. Amazing.

No, Mind Pump Media is similar now you just go. It's got all of our programs on there and it breaks down. The show talks a little bit about us. Our show, very informative. It's also comedy. We're also in the comedy category. Very raw. It's very old timey. Yeah. Don't listen to around because it's a little explicit. Yeah.

We've been coined as the Howard Stern of fitness, so. But don't worry, we're going to get you on there real soon here and I think so give you a really.

Little bit there, buddy. I'm game. I'm game. I'll bring my Howard Stern wig right in there with you guys. Hey, thanks for coming on, you guys.

Thanks, man.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Go to BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

SA. Sat.