12 Solcast - Episode Twelve: Arthaus Supercast - Gaining Weight, Improving Social Skills and Boosting Athleticism

Welcome to episode 12 of the Soulcast. Today we have a supercast between the Soulcast and Arthouse Podcast, uh, that's spelt @Arthouse with my friend Tiger. His Twitter is @tygrproductions, all one word. Go give him a follow, check him out, check out Arthouse Podcast. Uh, we have a bit of a user-submitted question podcast here. We talk about a number of things, uh, so I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think.

All right guys, this is Arthouse and it's also Soulcast, right? We got Sol Brah here. Again, again, to, uh, take some of your questions, have a, you know, have a good chat on some, you know, good health, esoteric, and, you know, good topics that we all like to, uh, talk about on the daily. So, so far, how you doing?

I'm very well, man. I'm so grateful to be back in the gyms over here. The whole corona situation is dying down, getting back to some sense of normalcy. So that's, you know, Can't be unhappy when that's going on.

Yeah, yeah, I'm, uh, I got my home gym. I'm, I'm still gonna roll with that because I've been doing kickboxing and I'm just keeping up with the, uh, you know, I gotta keep the gym fees in line. So kickboxing with weights at home has been, has been great. Usually when we do these casts, I like to push it to the guests initially, but I actually have something I think we could, we could start with. Sure, something that happened to me recently, and I think it could, uh you know, it's something that we could talk about, and that's my weight gain, right? So I've had a problem with gaining mass for probably 2 years.

Yeah. I—

so basically my biggest I've ever gotten to was 166, and for all the records and whatnot, I'm about 6'1". Yeah. So pretty underweight.

Yeah, quite skinny.

And I got to about 166. Yeah, yeah, definitely skinny. Yeah, about 166, and that was the night that I fell and fractured my back filming. Oh Jesus. So that happened. Yeah, yeah, that's a whole other rabbit hole. But I fell on my back and then all that, lost about 20 pounds, right? Got down to like 148.

Yeah.

And then skeleton mode. Really like skeleton. Yeah, skeleton mode. And then, no offense, ever since then— yeah, no, no, it's, it's just how— just— yeah, it is what it is. It'd be that way, bro. And, you know, I got back and I've been hovering at around 155, 153 to 155 for the longest time, for probably over a year and a half.

Yeah.

And no matter how many calories I eat, no matter how many, like, perfectly counted out all the times, perfect, extra everything like that. No weight gain, nothing like that happened. So I hit up my man Grim Hood and I'm like, dude, this has been going on way too long, what the hell is going on? So I, you know, we've changed a couple things, like, oh yeah, I'm doing this, yeah, my, my bowel movements are fine and whatnot. And he said basically, I assume it's probably something to do with thiamine, which is a part, which is vitamin B1.

Yeah.

And the fact that you eat lots of red meat and you're not supplementing with beef liver or eating beef liver. Yeah. To, you know, act as to counteract the, you know, add the copper in there for the iron and whatnot. And you could be messing up with your health because you're drinking kefir, you're doing all this other stuff and everything's fine, but those two things. So got my thiamine. Yeah. Got my high-dose thiamine. Been taking beef liver. I'm up 5 pounds in a week, and it's like, yeah, I wake up dry, 5 pounds heavier. Yeah, I'm like, okay, everything is now beautiful, everything is fixed.

No, that's awesome, man. And so I think like people don't realize that you can eat a shitload, but if you're not absorbing what's in the food, then it's just passing through you like this big tube and nothing goes actually into your body. So a lot of people will just smash calories, not really think about the nutritional processes and biological processes behind the scenes. Because if that's not optimized, you're wasting your time, you're wasting your money. Especially with the things like, for instance, vitamin D and vitamin A. Uh, you need those fat-soluble vitamins in order to absorb nutrients in other food. So if you have like— it's like the, the fuel for the fire to, you know, take everything in. And if you don't have quality sources of that, which is likely no one in like unless you're supplementing. If you're just eating like a standard Western diet with no organ meats and things like that. It's also why I recommend liver pills, desiccated liver pills, you know, the dried beef liver. It's usually from Argentina, so it's a very good quality, at least to the brands that I have. Or Ancestral Supplements is a big one.

That's the one I'm using, Ancestral Supplements.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I've just got some coming in the mail. But that's one of the things that I recommend for people to take, is work up to it. Like, for instance, I take 5 to 6 liver pills with each meal, with each main meal, right? And then like a few others with snacks throughout the day. Vince Gironda was a, a big proponent of this, you know, smashing eggs, smashing liver pills. And it makes sense to me on so many levels because it's just the most pure, concentrated form of nutrition that is bioavailable for humans in our digestive systems that it's just stupid not to take it. And you don't even have to eat it, you know, if you're grossed out by eating liver and you don't like the taste or texture, the desiccated liver pills are just a bit of an easy way to pop a few. And it's obviously worked out dividends for you.

Yeah, like that, that's the thing that, uh, that I, uh, opened my eyes to is the fact that like we have access to all these. I mean, you look at Ancestral Supplements, they got spleen, heart, liver, all these different organs, and I'm just thinking like, wait, why, why am I taking these like lab-grown supplements for things that, you know, are like byproducts of real things when I could just get like the freeze-dried, yeah, actual thing in supplement form?

Yeah, no, that's a good point.

It's crazy.

Some supplements, uh, you know, you can take for like a super dose and that has different effects, or whether it's fixing particular imbalances you have in the pure form.

But for the most part, right? Like vitamin D. Vitamin D, like you said, very good example because in foods it is in there. But I mean, you can get 10,000 IU little fish oil capsules, just tiny, tiny little capsules and you're good, especially when you're not getting sun. Perfect.

Yeah. No, I mean, obviously your first default is obviously to be in the sun. There's no replacement for that. Not only just for the vitamin D production, but for so many other different things. But yeah, in a pinch, especially in like the northern hemisphere in the winter, it can get fucking depressing not getting any sun. And to kind of hedge against that, as well as improve your mood, to take vitamin D and just make sure you're kind of buffering against that lack of sunlight.

Now where you're at in, uh, in Aussie, is there— do you get, do you get year-round sunshine? Even when it's cooler?

Yeah, we're pretty lucky. It's obviously cooler at the moment because of winter, but, you know, a week and a half ago we had a week straight of mid-20 degrees Celsius, full sunlight. So, I mean, I can't complain. Probably one of the sunniest cities in the world where I am. So, I'm very— I don't want to move, really, at this point in time.

This is too nice.

Yeah, if you break it down, it's too damn nice.

Well, Sol Brah, you said, uh, you got some, uh, you got some questions from your mates. Yeah, yeah. So, um, you want to break some of those down? And, uh, sure, let me pull out some of the other ones, just see what I got.

Um, um, let me see if there's any. I'll just preface this by saying that with my— the ones that I have, when we get to them Um, these have all come from people submitting a question to the Soulcast, which you can do on my website, solbrah.com, and just head to the podcast bit and you can submit any topic or question you have there. And that kind of goes to my list where I work through them for the Soulcasts moving forward. So that's where I've got these.

Perfect. Let's see, let's see. Okay, just got, uh Okay, some American Psycho meme, uh, favorite, favorite song, favorite Daft Punk song. Those are kind of low level. Let's just go with one of the ones you got. Okay, we'll check back.

Sure. Um, well, the first one: places to meet people or places to pick up girls. Today people are hyper-antisocial. Good point. And either don't go out too much or are very guarded and unfriendly when they do. What are the ways to deal with this? So the first thing I would say about that is that I don't think people are super guarded or unfriendly as such. I think for the most part, uh, the average person is very willing to start a conversation as long as you're nice and you're not weird about it.

Yeah, I think, I think the, the premise with this question is already a bit wonky because that's not all people people by any means. Like, I will say too, on average, normies are very talkative. Like, they want to— at the bars and whatnot, like, they're always down to chat.

Yeah, it depends. You got to come into it with like not expecting to off the bat, you know, some weird reference or, or come on very strong, you know. You have to play that game of small talk for people that you don't know for the most part. And you don't have to be like ridiculous with it. Like, it can get fucking boring just talking. Oh yeah. How's it going? You know, you come here all the time, all that kind of stuff. And you can fade into obscurity if you open up to some stranger. She's like, okay, I don't really want to talk to this guy. But I think a good one with this, maybe in reference to just meeting people in general when you're out and about, is just to go up and say, give someone a compliment. And that usually opens to a conversation, or at least an introduction. You're not going to get along with everyone you find, but when you, when you come in with a compliment that's not, you know, hey baby, you look so fine tonight, you know, it kind of disarms them in a way and can lead to some, some good conversations. Even if it's not a girl that you're trying to get with, just a random person, it's flexing that muscle of first entering a conversation with someone is good.

Even dudes going like, dude, I like your jacket, where'd you get that? Or like, yeah, you know, you know, something, you know, you could— and then that just started a conversation. Or he has a tattoo of like a, you know, something that you like or something like that. You'd be like, oh, when you start following that band or blah blah blah blah blah, then yeah, you got a new friend.

Yeah, exactly. And you never know if they're gonna be, oh yeah, I'm here with some friends, come to the table. And then there are some girls there and you've got that kind of social in, in a way. But yeah, places to meet girls as such, anywhere, anywhere that girls are. Girls are everywhere. You know, they're just normal people just like us. So I think like the gym is a good one, you know, there's, and you know, they're going to be at least fit because you see them working out. So if you value that in a partner, you can do that.

The only thing is gym's tricky though. I will say though, if you're, if you're not totally socially there, like you don't, you don't fully understand cues. I wouldn't start with the gym because—

No, good point.

You're probably— what's going to end up happening is there's going to be a girl doing her set and you're going to be like, oh my God, yoga pants. And you're going to walk up to her mid-set and start bumbling around being a fucktard. And then she's going to look at you like, like trying to finish her set. Like, yeah, yeah. Go away, please. You know, but you're just standing there.

Okay. Counterpoint to that. Counterpoint to that.

Okay.

Do you think if the, the Brad Pitt character casually came up to a girl, said hi while she was resting and said, hey, "Your form looks pretty good. You know, have you tried doing this exercise or whatever?" Do you think she would tell you to fuck off? No.

No.

But so it's all about context, I guess.

It's all about context. It's about the social cues, right? If you're coming in like mid-set or you're coming in and you're sweating and you're like, you know, maybe you just started going to the gym and you still got some pounds on you. Maybe you're not—

maybe that doesn't matter, bro. Honestly, you can tell yourself all these things like, okay, yes, in the grand scheme of things you want to have low body fat and all that, but I've seen shabby out-of-shape guys get girls in all situations, and that's only because they've just gone in and gone like, fuck it, I'm just gonna give it a go. And they don't give a fuck about that other stuff. And when you don't give a fuck about it, the girl doesn't give a fuck about about it. But of course, the best chance—

yes, I will say at the end of the day, having just fuck it, let's do it mindset is the best. Just, I'm saying, I'm taking like an overall context. Usually the gym is not like— you have to be on your game. But if you're on your game, like, like Sol Brah said, lots of fit girls there, lots of like disciplined good girls there that like, you know, they care about their body, they care about their health. So if you can get one there, by all means, that's amazing.

Yeah, I guess it's more of a— maybe that's a higher level one. But yeah, another one would be just out of— if you have any hobbies that you like to do, to kind of go to a regular class in your community so you know they kind of maybe live in the same area as you. That's another good one. If you're into it, to do a dancing class. I know a lot of guys will balk at that because it's quote-unquote gay or whatever, but but being able to kind of communicate in that way and dance, and it's just like a fun environment, and you usually partner up with a girl and you rotate partners in the class. So I know that's a pretty stereotypical one to say, go take dance classes, but it's true. Things like that.

I will say too, I got my girl at a public library. So if you're going there, if you want, if you're looking for more, more a quieter girl when you're like just just wants to kind of like, you know, who's more into books and not really into like the big club scene and whatnot. It's a very good opportunity for that.

Yes. I personally have never picked up a girl in the library, but I'm sure that that rings true. Maybe like bookstores and things like that.

At least that's going to be, uh, yeah, like little, uh, like think of what introverts do, right? If you're an introvert, especially if you're an introvert guy trying to get a girl, like you don't want to go to a pull up because you're not going to thrive in that environment. You want to go to environments that you'll thrive in so the interaction is smooth and you're in the power, you're in the driver's seat with it.

Yeah, I definitely pay that. I also would say though, and I'm not a fan of clubs as such. They're expensive. You're going out, you're drinking a lot, which is bad for you. There's just the general environment. There's a lot of dickheads around. Um, but you know, if you treat it—

lots of tier 5, lots of tier 5 women.

Yeah. Well, like, you know, hot, good girls, they go out to the club as well. Sometimes it's fun to have drinks with your friends and, and go out and blow off some steam. And it also depends what kind of club you go to. I mean, there are gross clubs with gross people that just go there and get fucked up and You don't really want to be around those, but you know, there's got a higher-end summer clubs where there's DJs and maybe it's in the afternoon, that kind of thing. It's just a social event. So I think, you know, you can't, you can't fully completely avoid those situations just because you, you're quite an introvert as such. But to start with, of course, just, you know, get used to it maybe in a less intense environment. But the club is just a social environment just like anything else. And there's going to be a lot more girls out there. And girls that are in a club, possibly higher chance that they're out looking for a guy. So you have that working for you as well. So I think it's good to, you know, be forged in the fire in a way, in a, in the nightclub environment.

I'd say I would totally agree. But if you're, if you're like, if you're so terrified of girls, so terrified, starting with like the coffee shop, starting with the library. You're starting with the, you know, the potted plants or something like that. And then work up your confidence, then go to the club, right? Because if you just get one little win, one little coffee shop phone number, right? Your confidence goes through the roof, through the roof. And you'll be like, okay, I can start going out with more people. I can start doing this. I can start doing that. It's about getting those tiny little wins and stacking them every day.

Yeah, no, for sure. I would also add that maybe your chances would be higher in general in a club because they're out looking to be social. But if someone could be in a club, you know, in a, in a book club reading, you know, might not necessarily be as receptive. So yeah, this is all theorizing and just to talk to girls basically. That's what it comes down to.

End of the day, if you're talking to girls, if you're talking to other people, just work wherever you are, you're gonna make progress in that.

Yeah, girls or otherwise, just be social.

Yeah, yeah, just be social. Just be social. Oh, and also too, just like, this is what I'll say too, this is what kind of made it hard for me initially, is don't be so judgmental of people right off the bat. Like, if you talk to them and you're like, oh, they're normie, fuck these people, right? You're, you're destroying an opportunity for a connection right there. You're destroying an opportunity to like, you know, build a conversation, build a relationship. Because maybe he isn't— can't be your friend, but maybe his friend, you know, can be your friend. Or yeah, he introduces you to a girl and she's really cute, right? So you don't want to just be breaking those connections because you don't like the first impression right off the bat.

Yeah, I agree with that. There's, there's something to in general not judging as much, and I think it, it kind of correlates to when you first develop the philosophy side of it and become aware of your ego and that whole concept. It's like you catch yourself if you see someone, maybe it's amongst friends, um, being like, if you're watching the TV or something, oh, look at this dude, he looks so fucking stupid with his, you know, what kind of shirt is that? Like, it's a very default toxic mindset that seems to be prevalent in people that might not be aware of what they're doing and everything. So I think that's a great first step in general in mindset development, is to catch yourself when you're about to say something unnecessarily negative about someone or judge them for their appearance, because you don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And I'm not, I'm not saying like sometimes it's funny to just roast people in like a lighthearted manner amongst friends and, you know, talk a bit of shit. But like if it's every single day and every time you see a new person and you Now if you're listening and you're conscious of this, you'll start to see other people do it. And most of the time it's a bit of insecurity coming through where people might not be as confident in their own image and be threatened somewhat by someone else because it reflects something in themselves that they're upset about. So they kind of lash out as a defense mechanism to bring the other person down. And I think it's important to be conscious of that. And when you're in general less judgmental you'll definitely, um, you'll just be like a more— a happier person in general, and that itself is attractive as well.

Yeah, I mean, if the default reaction is negative right off the bat, it's probably— you probably need to have— you probably need to rewire your mind a bit. Yeah, look at yourself.

Yeah, definitely. What?

That— hopefully that helps, uh, helps that guy out.

Whatever.

Yeah, did you get an or something?

Uh, no, I've just had it anonymous for the submissions. Maybe I'll change that. Okay, but gotcha. Just easier for people especially.

Well, yeah, yeah, there we go. All right, you got another one?

Yeah, sure. Um, let's see if—

let's see if them— let's see if my mates said anything.

I got one here.

Oh, perfect.

Um, okay, so what are the best exercises to gain abdominal muscle? How many sets and reps? Uh, thank you. So this is a pretty standard one, I guess. Um, I think it's important to talk about, you know, the general approach that people have to ab training is a million bodyweight reps and That's fine to start with. It's fine if you don't have access to any weights or anything, but the abdominal muscles respond very similar to every other muscle group. You know, they, they respond to a higher load in the lower rep ranges. You know, you're not doing 50 sit-ups. Um, so what I personally do for abdominals is, uh, my favorite ab exercise is probably a weighted cable crunch. So You'll take like the tricep rope attachment and you'll put it high up on the cables, kind of have that in front of you and holding it and then just, yeah, you got it, you got it. And then curl right down to the bottom.

Yeah.

And really kind of curling up like a armadillo, that kind of motion. And using a weight so that you're— Yeah, roly-poly. What do we call them here? Millipedes or something. Um, anyway, that— so you're doing a full rep of that but doing about 4 sets at a weight where you're failing at around 10. So it's a, it's a proper decent weight, you know. I think I use like 45 kilos or something. Um, and, and pulling that down, um, of the stack and doing that at the start of every workout, it's kind of like if you've never trained your abs with any decent amount of weight, you'll, you'll notice a difference within 2 weeks of doing that, that kind of treating as a warm-up set for everything else. Uh, but the frequency is, you know, 4 times a week, um, as well as some extra leg raises and things. Sometimes I'll do supersets, so I'll throw in an ab exercise in between when I'm training like back and chest or arms or whatever. I think that's a great one to kind of think about just to make your workout a little bit harder so that the rest period that you have is used for like a bodyweight ab exercise. So higher frequency as well doing that. Leg raises as well are quite hard because you're lifting obviously your entire leg weight, which is most of your body weight. So that is another way of doing like a bodyweight ab exercise but still has decent weight behind it, so you're not going to have to do 45 million reps in order to feel anything.

And I'll tell you too, I'll tell you too, leg raises are a great exercise to test if your hips are tight. Yeah, because if you're bringing up your legs and you have that pop in your hips, your hips are tight. You gotta, you gotta get that out. You gotta stretch your psoas, and you got to just probably do some lower back strengthening as well.

Yeah, if, if you don't have that mobility, then sometimes people use their hip flexors to pull up their legs rather than, uh, kind of using the abdominals to lift their legs up. So that's an important distinction that people might want to look into. It's kind of hard for me described here, but just making sure you're actually using the ab muscles and not the hip flexors.

Very key. For mine, I would say, I would say two. Sol Brah covered all the good ones, and if you do his, you know, you're golden. But two things to look out for on my end is that if you're doing a compound exercise, if you're doing a deadlift, be sure to really focus on that core. Because if you're keeping that core tight when you're doing your pressing, when you're doing your squats, you're doing your, your deadlifts, that's going to help develop the core too because it's putting it under so much stress. And not just the abs, but the obliques and the sides and the lower back area. That whole core is going to get so tight from just lifting up that, like you said, high, high load but lower rep, uh, lower rep work. And then the other thing too is we do a lot of L-sits in, uh, kickboxing. Yeah, and L-sits are great because It's a great stable exercise. Your legs are up, so you kind of get that same feeling of the leg lift. And then, but also there's a progression that you can do as well where you start sitting on the floor and then eventually you're, uh, you can, you can hold it up by your hands. You see gymnasts doing that all the time, and that trains scapula strength like a motherfucker. Oh yeah. So it's a great just all-around, you know, I call, I call it the tiny muscles, you know, like the stabilizers, all the things that you train. Yeah, the stabilizers, the things you train, you train, you know, not directly, you train them indirectly. The, the L-sit works all of those in a great way. Works the wrist because you're holding it like that. Like, it's, it's really good. It's really good. So L-sits and holding your core when you're doing your compounds is the big two things.

Yeah, I think it's important to mention that the core is used in stabilization for every fucking exercise that you do. Um, it's, it's important for so many different things, keeping your spine straight. So that's another good core exercise, is to hold a weight, a dumbbell or a kettlebell, on either side, but just on one side, and just keeping straight tension and holding your body up is using the abs. So when you're introducing that weight that's pulling you down on one side, so to speak, if you're just stabilizing the spine and holding it there you're going to feel that burn after holding that for like 25 seconds or so. So that can be another good one that people can use a bit more weight. And that's also going to translate to real life because, you know, for instance, if you're walking in with shopping in one hand and you have, let's say, you know, 20 pounds of stuff on one hand, and then you got to walk up some steps and balance your keys and all the rest. These are just like little life things that seem to improve when you train in in, in these kind of unconventional exercises that might mimic, or more closely mimic, um, strength, practical strength in a way.

All right, all right, because practical strength isn't really— it's not unilateral, it's not even, it's oftentimes, you know, single leg, it's oftentimes awkward, it's, you know, it's one-sided. Yeah, so you really got to train for all those scenarios. Like Lobo says, train everything, trying everything.

That's Yeah, so I think that's one of the best things that has come out of Twitter recently, popularized by Lobo, of course, um, or created, I'm not sure. But yeah, training everything. Train, train your flexibility, train your, your cardiovascular endurance, train your mobility, and, um, train your foot muscles, your neck muscles, the hand muscles, the wrist muscles, all these things that kind of fall by the wayside when you look at the traditional big lifts in the gym. But when you start to actually focus on them, you'll notice the difference. And that goes to the brain as well, you know, training your brain, training, flexing your brain muscles, your idea muscle, which I think is a great one to, um, to do as well. Have you ever done that?

No, I haven't.

Okay, well, I'll explain it. So I got it out of, uh, a book that I have recently read called Choose Yourself by James Altucher. I might be saying his name wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So in, in this book Choose Yourself, he, he writes— I think it's a pretty common thing anyway, but the idea that you flex your idea muscles. So you, you block a certain time of day, just 10 minutes or 15 minutes, where you sit down with a pen and paper and you think up 8 to 10 ideas, you know, whether that's for a business, a new product, um, you know, a social movement, just, just an idea of anything, and kind of sit there and wherever these ideas come from, you just write them down. And as you sit down and you practice this skill, the certain area of your brain that comes up with this stuff gets better, you know, you do more reps at it, so it gets more efficient. And what ends up happening is the ideas start to just come at you all the time, and you know, whether you're conscious of the action or not, when you sit down and write the ideas, they'll come through better quality and more often and more easy. But your ideas will start popping up about businesses or optimizations you can make in your life, or all these different things that are, you know, the basis of a possible business or a life change that you need to make. And, and sitting down and dedicating the time to flexing this idea muscle in your brain, whatever it is, um, is, is super important. And I think a good thing for people people to kind of do.

I'd say that and taking walks. Just let it— just having time for you to think and to know— you know, yeah, no phone, no music. Yeah, you don't need that. Just you, your ideas, and you just let your mind go. Yeah, you, you just follow everything. And then you get— and then you rush home, right? Because you have all these ideas and you write them all down. You're like, oh yeah, look at all that. It's Millions.

Take a notebook though, because if you're doing a decent walk, you'll fucking forget shit. I do that all the time until I started taking a little notebook.

That's a good idea. Yeah, right there. Tiny little notebook. Yeah, bring it every day. And you know, get your exercise, you get your, you get your ideas down. It's, it's the best little leisure activity you can do.

You're out, you're usually out in nature as well, which is great in terms of the air quality and all the different things. Barefoot.

Yeah, yeah, the whole, the whole nature part. Yeah, nature's just objectively good. So yeah, all right, we got a— let's see, I got a couple interesting ones that have been dropped. Okay, into, uh, another thing. So Breakfast Quiche, @BreakfastQuiche, says, keys to growing athleticism. Now this is a pretty, uh, it's a pretty broad one, but I think it's interesting because, well, you know, in this, in this corner of Twitter, there's lots of talk about weight training, there's lots of talk about, you know, bodybuilding and stuff like that, but pure athleticism isn't really as, as hot because it's not, you know, you can't really like show it off in a picture. That's my, that's my thing on it. There's a guy, uh, Kdot, that did sprinting and whatnot. But there's not really— there's not many tips that go around for just increasing, you know, the athleticism, the explosivity, the, you know, jump height, speed, you know, things that make you a harder, better, faster, stronger human. So, Jeff, what— how would you approach that question?

Yeah, so it's, it's kind of several-faceted, I guess. Um, first thing to mention would be what kind of athleticism, you know. There's, there's many different types of athleticism depending on the sport. That you're pursuing, whether it's track related or, or just a ball sport of some kind. So there's lateral movement, there's explosivity like you mentioned, but first of all is obviously practice the skills that you need to get better at. You know, there's a lot of— if you want to get better at something, you have to do it that more. If you want to get a better tennis serve, you have to practice your tennis serve. You know, you're not going to be able to do a rear delt exercise exercise to improve your athleticism of your serve. You will to some degree, of course, but it's not gonna mean your technique gets better. So athleticism in general, I would say obviously focus on the movements that are going to be the most important for your chosen athletic, um, but otherwise just to spend time doing athletic things. And it's, it sounds very, uh like recursive in a way, but it, it's true. Like, the more time that I spend, you know, fucking around on the rings, climbing trees, going on hikes where you have to haul your whole body over an uneven surface, leaping from rock to rock and things like that, they're just the kind of natural human movements that, uh, are athletics just in a different way. You're not really thinking about training as such. But spending more time out in nature doing that kind of stuff, uh, really translates to better mobility and flexibility, which is going to make you more athletic. More specifically to the, the weight side of it is, is making sure that you're getting an explosive push-up on the concentric movement for most exercises. Um, things like sled runs can be really good if you have a bit of weight behind you and just do like a 15-minute 15-meter sprint with that. Um, but yeah, any, anything where you're increasing your strength in the gym with exercises, but then also practicing real-life athleticism in the sport that you're working on, or just as a more general sense and increasing range of motion and feeling better, uh, is going to help you out. Yoga is a huge one to improve that mind-muscle connection and just awareness of the body. When you're more aware of the the range of motions that you have and deepening that range of motion and that end range strength, uh, in those kind of super flex positions, that contributes to athleticism as well. Like, since practicing yoga, I have much more control over my body and, and my balance is so much better, um, to the point where I can kind of chill on, on one leg while the other leg's out, out behind me and my arms are forward fairly comfortably. And that all, that all happens just from daily repetition of yoga or just more of a lifestyle change overall in spending more time doing those activities rather than just sitting on the fucking couch or sitting in a chair.

Right. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the stuff you can just do in your normal day that's not, uh, you know, you don't have to like carve out time for your day. It's just, you could just work it in already. All that time you spent watching TV, all the time you spent watching YouTube at night, you know, when something's in the oven and cooking, you could be stretching. You could be doing some, some dead hangs. You could be doing some, you know, some, some yoga. You could be doing some, you know, some, some Michigans where, you know, you know that jump squat thing that all the wrestlers do?

I don't, but go on.

Okay, yeah, there's a guy, Kevin Randleman. He's a, he's a former MMA fighter. He would do these Michigans where he'd jump up and, you know, Kevin's about I think he's about 5'11" or 6' tall, and he would jump up over his opponent's head and down. He was that explosive and that athletic.

That's cool.

So just, you know, doing things like that and just training, you know, having fun with it.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, you don't have to just do the bicep curls and that's fitness. Like, you could— it's about movement. So move, move your body, fly through the air.

Uh, one last thing about athleticism, I think, um, is important to mention is to grow your glutes. They are the powerhouse for any, uh, athletic movement really, especially sprinting. Um, so just to maybe— if you haven't programmed glute lifts or, or heavy hip thrusts in like you do deadlifts, like, they're super important. And you know, it's not just a girl's exercise, but you know, do you do your cable pull-throughs with heavy weight. Um, do your frog pumps and things like that just to improve the strength of your glutes, and you'll see a translation into improved athleticism from a few weeks of doing that.

Also helps too if you're sitting a lot. Yes, lower back work. Yeah, keeping that strong, super important. Yeah, super important.

Agreed.

All right, you got— okay. Oh wait, I got one and then let's roll. And then after this one, let's get another one from you. Yeah, so this one's interesting. It's: what are the benefits of smelling salts, ammonia, and music on training performance?

Okay, look, I don't actually know what ammonia does personally. I've never tried it, um, so I can't really help with that one. I know that it I think it's something to do with the blood flow. I think when you inhale it, it gets your nitric oxide firing and it makes you feel kind of high in a way. I've seen like big powerlifters smash it and they seem to get very amped up from it. So I don't think it's something you should take on the regular. I know, you know, it's pretty intense chemicals. So maybe if you're not a powerlifter or competing as such, then— but yeah, I don't really know. Do you know about it?

Didn't even know— didn't even know powerlifters use that. Um, if you're looking for energy, you know, something like before workout, honestly, just like black coffee, you know, something like that. It's probably better and won't kill you if you do it the wrong dosage.

Yeah. Um, just Googling now.

Yeah, I don't know anything about it.

Ammonia works by stimulating the nerve cells in the nose causing a fight or flight reaction in the body. There you go. Uh, you get a sudden burst of energy and have a muted sense of pain. This lets you lift more weight than you could during a normal lift. So yeah, that seems like it would— like, I don't— maybe thinking not feeling pain is a very good thing. Like, you maybe want to feel pain if you're hurting. But I guess for Powerlifting, does it make sense? Because they just want to— they don't really give a fuck about their body. They just want to put up the most amount of weight possible.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, if you're crazy and you want to hit a PR, I'd go, yeah, probably. But definitely not something you want to take before every single workout, 4 or 5 days a week. That's probably not good.

Yeah.

And then the other one's music on performance. Do you train with music?

Oh yeah, hell yeah. Um, I think it's, it's partially like, I wish I could try training without music. The other thing is that my gym plays like Top of the Pops music just on the radio during, so like, even if I don't want to listen to music, I'm forced to listen to shit music. So I just put my good music on, you know. So that's maybe something that hopefully if I, if I get a setup of my own, I'll be able to try lifting without music. But it can, it can be a blessing and a curse. Um, you don't want to rely on music, um, to get you amped up because then if you— maybe your headphones fail or whatever else, you're kind of going through a bit of a lower energy workout. But I, I like to listen to music for cardio. Uh, seems to— if you're listening to like house music, you can get into a very good rhythm and go further than you would otherwise, especially if it's an upbeat and energizing song. But yeah, I mean, I listen to music all the time. So in my workouts, I'll listen to, depending on my mood, I've got obviously house music, uh, outrun style music. Vaporwave is really cool, um, very energetic. But then sometimes I'll listen to like Viking war chants during a heavy squat session or something, which is fucking awesome if you can into the swing of that.

Yeah, I, uh, I train with music and for the same reason as you, because so when I was going to my gym, it was a commercial gym, you had the Katy Perry play on the radio, so you have to have something in your ears just so you don't go insane. Yeah, brains out mid-session. Um, so yeah, like I'll listen to house music, I'll listen to throat singing, I'll listen to, you know, Viking chants. Um, yeah, I just kind of pop around whatever I'm feeling like that day. And then what I started doing recently before the gym closed down is I was just playing a 432 Hz white noise just in my headphones, and it was pretty sick because everything else was outside. I felt no— I just— all what that does is it makes you hear your breath inside your head. So you get this really like visceral experience when you're doing your lifts, and it just, it focuses me really well. So that's something I definitely need to experiment with more. Um, once I get my—

that's like, uh, binaural beats, right? Similar kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, binaural beats.

Cool.

I think they're like, I think they're in, uh, they're in alpha waves or something like this. There's alpha, beta, theta, all those stuff. So I think I stay in the alpha because if it's theta, then I start, you know, getting woozy and getting low energy. Yeah, you want to keep it up high, but you want to, you know, the point is for you to focus. It's not for you to doze off and fall asleep in your astral projection.

Astral plane. Yeah, exactly.

Astral plane. Yeah, just fall into there. Yeah, so that's, uh, yeah. And I do want to start training without music. I think you know, doing some A/B testing and just seeing like, yeah, how reliant I am on music for a good session would just be interesting.

Yeah, I think it would be. But I also like— music is one of the great pleasures of life, you know? Like, listening to an amazing song can, can evoke such pure emotion in you sometimes. And I think, I think it's important to not, um not be too brutal in, in the rejection of the modern world to the point where you don't have any fucking fun ever, you know. Like, oh dude, you can't train with music, otherwise you'll, you'll be reliant on that. But it's like, uh, but if you're getting a better workout with it, you're enjoying it, like, um, it's not the end of the world. And I think some people sometimes have a, a too black and white, uh, definition on, on these things to avoid, or whatever else for the sake of like being a trad LARPer in a way. And yeah, I don't think it's healthy in the long term.

No, no, it's— that is a good point too.

There's a—

I find this a lot with the, with the, you know, the diet culture too, where it's like they become so restrictive. I see people that are like, I only eat raw ground beef. It's like, you have no fun in life, do you, man? You've just rejected the idea of fun.

Yeah, that would be— I, I've yet to try the raw meat, uh, gang, so I'll have to post about that if I ever try it. Have you tried it?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, no, I, I've tried raw milk, I've tried raw kefir, not raw, not rough Not raw beef yet.

Not, not that—

whoa. Yeah, I feel like, uh, but so here's the thing, like, you cook, you cook these amazing meals. Like, yours look like restaurant quality freaking high-end perfect meals. All right, like, why would, why would you want to eat raw if you can cook like that?

I don't know, is there a nutritional benefit? I mean, I know that it's better to have like a rare steak than a completely cooked steak because, you know, it's a lot tougher. I feel like it's harder to digest. So you can extrapolate that concept to completely raw, I guess. Um, but then, yeah, that's my thinking. Then there's that whole theory of like, we were able to gain, uh, brain mass evolutionarily because we started cooking our meat and we— those calories were more available to us. But I don't know whether that was just one of those of meme things that you hear, and it's actually just based on like one scientific study or some archaeologist's theory that might not necessarily be backed up. And maybe it was just the fact that we started eating meat in general that enabled the same kind of brain change. Yeah, yeah.

Now that we're, we're on the topic of meat and diet, whatnot, I got a question. What are your thoughts on veganism and vegetarian, you know, cutting out meat completely?

I You know, I think it's all been said before, you know. It's like a— I don't want to be a broken record in that sense. I could think— I wish I could not harm any animals and have a good healthy diet that, that did the things that it needed for me, you know. I love animals. Um, my dad was a vet and I have— I've had that influence of looking after animals my whole life, so I Ideally, if I could live off just eating plants and fruits, you know, there's still organisms that die. You know, how deep do you want to go into with that? But yeah, as far as I think, if your veganism is rooted in you don't want to do any harm to animals, great. But also just be aware that you probably won't be able to get a complete nutritional profile from the foods that you're eating, especially how the majority of vegans eat is they'll be like, I'm vegan, uh, what'd you eat last night? Okay, I had McDonald's chips, some Cheetos, um, you know, some other lollies. Like, it's vegan, bro, it's good. But then they're just fucking garbage that if you stick to that and then coupled with like an uncooked vegetable smoothie with, with a lot of anti-nutrients— and it's all well, well and good vegetables having vitamins and minerals in them, but if you can't absorb them because we only have one stomach as predominantly omnivores. Like, we, we can't get the nutrition that horses can out of grass because we don't have— cows have 4 stomachs to deal with those kind of things. So unless you're really heavily deep into the veganism, like fermenting all your vegetables, uh, washing and preparing beans so that they're not just going haywire in your stomach, like all of those things which increase the nutrition available to you, vegetables. But in general, like, at least eat eggs. That's my thing, is like, eggs aren't harming anyone. You have some free-range chickens, you feed your scraps to them, they pop out eggs which you collect. You know, they're not doing anything with the eggs, it's not harming anyone. And the eggs are, you know, one of the best sources of nutrition for all these fat-soluble vitamins and, and protein and all the rest of it. So I think eggs and vegetables and fruits is very doable. Um, but obviously the red meat and the liver and things being a bit, a bit more nutritious.

Yeah, I mean, if you're able to get eggs in there, that solves so many problems.

Yeah, so many, so many that Vegeta doesn't have.

So that would make things easier because I, I know a lot of people are skeptical about, you know, the quality of meat, especially if you don't have the, uh, you know, you don't have the ability to afford or, you know, high-quality grass-fed organic.

Yeah, like that.

You have to buy the store-bought, you know, the, you know, those, those weird grain-fed mass-produced, you know, the market. Yeah, yeah, you have no idea where they came from. Where you could only buy like Johnsonville sausages, stuff like that. Yeah, then yeah, maybe you do, maybe you do cut out meat and just put some more money towards getting some good quality eggs or some good quality, you know.

Yeah, I think something It's still meat. It's still got the, like the better you can eat, the better, obviously the better quality you can eat. Free range, organic and everything. But I know Sean Baker, the carnivore diet guy, he only like, he only eats grain-fed steaks and I don't think he really gives a fuck about the quality of his meat. And that's kind of like part of his thing is like, you can still just eat meat and just eat meat and be fine. And you know, he's fucking strong and looks healthy. So. The other thing is looking at like people that are proponents of a certain diet, uh, that to look at how successful they are or how good they look. If they look healthy, does their skin look good? You know, is that their eyes have a lot of light and energy behind them? If that's the case, then usually that person is doing pretty well in the realm of health and, and all that. And you can apply that to a lot of different practices like Um, like the rest of the stuff that comes out, like if someone's telling you soy is really good for you and then you look at them and they're like, you know, 110 pounds soaking wet, uh, and look like shit, then it's like, okay, maybe soy isn't the best move, you know?

Yeah, it's a, it's a really good heuristic. Look at who's telling you. Yeah, look at who's telling you what, and so many questions are answered right off the bat. Yeah, so many.

It goes through everything.

There we are. You got a— yep, you got a question now? Sure.

Um, so I guess this one's more of a general, general point. Um, thoughts on life, dating, and work after the whole coronavirus kind of mixes up or finishes up. I think it'd be good to talk about. At least I think one of the biggest things we're gonna see is One, businesses realizing the folly of office space a lot of the time. It's like how much time is wasted, people commuting an hour and a half to work, an hour and a half home to sit in an office where they, you know, now the technology is available so that you can just email and voice chat and whatever else. And obviously, obviously the office lends itself to certain culture that I think some companies will go back to. But I think a lot of companies will realize, hang on, we don't have to pay rent here and people can just work from home, or we can save a lot of money on that. So I think that's going to be one of the transformative things to look out for, uh, in businesses. But also this idea that I think we're going to see a, a huge— a bit of a boom, you know. People are gonna have all this pent-up energy and they haven't been spending as much, or just being unsocial in general, that I think all of the, all of the business areas or disciplines that are more leisure-focused, I think we'll just see a massive boom because people will finally be able to get out of the house. And, and, you know, comedy festivals, things like that, performance, I think it's going to be a bit of a, bit of a boom in that sense.

Yes, I definitely agree with a lot of that. Yeah. Yeah, the corporate real estate is going to be really interesting to me because I don't think offices are going to go away. I think there will be a purpose for an office.

Yeah.

But that purpose is going to get redefined. And that's like, okay, why do we have this fucking, you know, 14 floors of this building in the middle of New York? Right. Yeah. And we're paying like, I don't know, even like a million dollars.

Yeah.

I don't even know how much business rent is, but you know, absurd amounts of rent. Yeah, for this space when we get the exact same thing done with less overhead at home. So I mean, I think a lot of it's going to go under. I think a lot of things are going to sell. And honestly, like, this, this could be a really good opportunity for some like newer companies that are a bit more, you know, decentralized, a bit more mobile. Yeah, to, you know, come in, sweep up a couple floors, sweep up a couple offices, and just have that for their, you know, and make it like an open office sort of team, team home base for their little operation. Yeah, there's sort of, you know, get the big corporate guys out of there.

There's a lot of opportunity, um, in tumultuous times. So I think it's important to realize that is that yes, it does seem all very scary and changing and everything, but with that change and with people adapting to a new environment, there's the potential for you if you, uh, you know, put the effort in or find a little niche or something for you to capitalize on that change and, and really make use of it in that sense rather than just worrying, oh, it's all changing, sucks. Like, yeah, it's changing, but change is inevitable, so you might as well try and make the most opportunity of it and, and yeah, get good stuff out of it.

Yeah, definitely agree. You can't stop change, you know. Yeah, I mean, you're a bit older than me, you probably, you probably remember, uh, the two, you know, the, the the media hysteria behind the 2008, uh, you know, stock market crash and whatnot in America. But everywhere— or the housing bubble crash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, um, yeah, but like immediately after that, like boom, you know, that's that— when, when the stock— when the stock market crashes, that's when people swoop in, pick up a bunch of stuff that's really undervalued.

Yeah.

When it inevitably goes up, that's when all the millionaires are formed. So these are perfect times for you to start that business, perfect times for you to, you know, go out and do the thing that you want to do, start that project that you want to do, because the world's kind of stopped right now, it's in haywire. So you can kind of like, you know, sneak your little operation in there, and then when everything kind of comes back online, things start resuming again, you can— you'll have a head start playing the game from a— yeah, yeah, you have a head start and you got some footing already when everything everything was kind of slowed down, it wasn't so cutthroat.

Yeah, no, for sure.

Okay, but, uh, yeah, how has it been for you in Straya?

Um, you know, my life hasn't really changed that much apart from the gyms being closed. I'm not a particular nightclub guy. Um, yeah, I mean, the nature has still been open for me, so, you know, you It is what it is, and not spending all of my time inside is a big one. But yeah, hopefully we're on the other side of that and can get back to, uh, better, better times.

Yeah, get back to better times. Honestly, they, they really overhyped the whole thing so hard.

Yeah, look, that's, that's kind of another, another topic in itself, but media is always going to want to hype things up and make it seem worse than it is so they get more clicks. And then that on overdrive, um, with everyone, you know, sure, let's, let's, uh, just kind of see what this thing is for real and make sure the hospitals don't get overrun and shut down for a bit so we get everything in place. But don't stop people from being able to work to support themselves based on something that is now turning out to not be as dangerous as we thought. So it's— I feel like the initial, uh, protocols maybe were okay and just everyone— just till we got the hang of it. But now we know, okay, let's expedite this reopening process because it's all a bit BS at the moment.

Yeah, it is. It shows just how slow governments are at the end of the day. Yes, it was like, wow, weird people on the internet are 10 weeks before government. That's, that's funny.

Yeah, government is never the most efficient, um, workflow, let's just say that.

Never. All right, let me check the, uh, let me check the thread, see if there's a good one that, uh, you got time for. How many more?

Uh, I'll probably do, do one more of mine, and then if you have a good one as well.

All right, let's do one, one more of Oh, this one's good, and we can kind of like parlay this into a slightly larger topic. So this one is by 10 Inch Man, and it is, how do I prevent wrinkles when I'm always getting that healing sunlight? So I guess this is kind of a— we can parlay this into the, you know, like skincare and, you know, sun exposure because Because I know a lot of people get sunburned even when they have good diets and whatnot, and they're like, why, why, blah. So yeah, what do you— I mean, do you get sunburned easily, or do you, do you just kind of, um, I, I tan very well now.

Um, obviously this is years of kind of working my way up and exposing myself to sun, and you're not going to have, you know, a complete elimination of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which A lot of people, um, say if they remove that from their diets and they don't get sunburned anymore, that's one of the big things that carnivore people say. I'm only eating meat and now I can stay out in the sun 4 times as long with no sunscreen and not be as burnt, but rather just get like a nice richer tan or, or just feel better and kind of absorb the sunlight a bit more. I don't know about the super validity of all that. Like, I'm sure that if you stay out in the sun long enough, you'll still get burnt, you know, that's just the nature of the, the sun. Uh, I think it's, it's very important to work your way up, you know, go outside for 5-10 minutes with your shirt off if you haven't exposed your chest to the sun in, in months, you know, like that's just a no-brainer to bring in any new stressor on the body. Uh, the sun's very good and helpful for you and benefits you a lot, but it's still, you know, it's still a big source of radiation and, and all that. So I don't think you can immediately just go out and, and not use sunscreen. Um, limit the amount. If you're, if you're forced to be in the sun, wear a cap or something rather than, you know, to create shade, rather than putting on a facial sunscreen. Like, I don't think there's the need for sunscreens. And so, well, what do you do instead of sunscreen? You know, either limit the amount that you're outside in the sun, um, or just use like a t-shirt instead of having to slather yourself with, with those chemical kind of mixes that we don't— definitely aren't good for you, and we don't know the long-term effects of using for like a whole summer. And I've done that, and I kind of cringe about it because I'm like, fuck, what was this stuff that I was absorbing into my skin? You know, anything you put on the body is effectively like eating it, so you wouldn't eat a big thing of sunscreen. Seems kind of weird, and for good reason. So yeah, I think just thinking about that— what else did they say in the question? I feel like I've gone off topic a bit.

Uh, it was due to wrinkles and wrinkles in the sun.

Well, I, I don't know. There's— I know there's things you can do, like always keeping your skin moisturized, like a good kind of natural moisturizer is a good one. Um, making sure if you're super worried about wrinkles, you're not you know, relax your face as a default setting. Like, you, you get those wrinkles because you're constantly, you know, frowning or, or whatever else, forcing your skin, your skin into that position, which creates the wrinkles. So helping to bring your stress down in general and not always furrowing your brow and being upset about things definitely contributes to, to eliminating the wrinkles. But I know also, like, I just recently got this red light this therapeutic red light. And I have a thread about this on my Twitter if listeners are interested. But there was one study that, that shows a benefit— or sorry, an improvement in fine line wrinkles through like a few weeks of this red light treatment. And the mechanism through that that works is because the red light stimulates the mitochondria in the cells. So mitochondria obviously are responsible for energy production in the body. So it seems like wherever you shine this red light seems to get a bit of an uptick in, in metabolism and activity. And of course, that is a carry-on effect of clearing away waste products, you know, healthier skin cells. So that helps to, to improve wrinkles. The other use of that red light is on the testicles. Uh, I don't know if you've read about that, but This— there was a study about sunning. Yeah, so similar thing, exposing your balls, uh, to natural sunlight, or in this case the red light therapy, actually promotes in the same way. Obviously you're boosting the mitochondria in what are called the Leydig cells, L-E-Y-D-I-G, and they're responsible for the production of testosterone. All of your body's testosterone is pretty much made in the balls. So when you're applying these light sources, whether it's the sun or the red light, um, you get a bit of a boost in general, which when locally applied to testicles improves the rate that testosterone is produced in the body. And that's kind of the mechanism and why I recommend, you know, getting out in nature, getting the fellas out and exposing them to a bit of sun. And you definitely notice the difference, uh, doing that.

Definitely. Yeah, well, do you have— you, uh, how long have you had your red light, uh, set up?

Um, I've had it for like 2 weeks now. Took ages to come because of the shipping and corona and things. But you know, you put it on a certain area of your skin and feel something. You definitely feel something. It's a similar kind of feeling to being out in the sun where your skin feels a bit flushed and like there's blood flowing around and just like a nice feeling. Um, so yeah, I've been in that for a few weeks and definitely noticed a difference, especially in the mornings. It's a good one to do to kind of wake up and get that light on different areas of your body, and it seems to help wake up, uh, the body and everything. So definitely a big fan of that. I need to get one of the huge panels that does the whole full body, but they're like a couple grand, so we'll see.

Is it— so is it just basically a big bulb? That you just turn on and hold? Or is it like on a stand?

Well, you get the bulb and then I've just put it into a lamp and you can, you know, angle the lamp whichever way you want and put it behind you or whatever. Oh, that's another good one for hair growth. Like if you were to shine it on your face, you'd get more hair.

I can't— I got this big ol'— it's too far away, but I got this big ol' Pixar lamp, so I'm just gonna wake up every morning and shine it straight at my balls.

Yeah, no, that's literally what I do. I have a similar Pixar lamp that just, you know, sits at the right height and I'll stand there maybe.

Yes.

And it looks funny if you will look out the, like, outside my door, it's like, what's going in there? Fucking Amsterdam red light district party or something. So that's a bit of a conversation starter for people if they see it. And, you know, but yeah, it's good.

It's good.

That's fun.

For the first guy, for the first guy, right, the first guy that asked the question about being social, right, get the girl, right, invite her over. When she opens, tell her to open the door, right? She opens the door, have that Pixar lamp right over your balls with the red light, have it just slightly covering your crotch. You'd be like, hey baby, how you doing? Oh, this?

I'm just doing some red light therapy.

Yeah, I got— yes, uh, you know, you follow Sol Brah on Twitter. Yeah, she said he talks all about this. Follow him.

Yeah, just be like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Exactly how you, uh, how you do it.

How you get chicks.

So, all right, exactly. So you got, uh, you got one more question?

Uh, yeah, so just a quick one, I guess. Um, with the nutrition side of it, could you point us towards good sources of nutrition/biomechanics biochemistry-related knowledge that you recommend for further reading? Um, and then I, I just— two books that I think are pretty good, obviously, uh, Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan. I'm sure you've, you've delved into that a bit, but that's like the classic standard one that, that really— it's quite a modern book, so it has a lot of references to modern studies if you're into that, and just, and just kind of talks about why we need the nutrition that we do. And, and it talks about, uh, seed oils and vegetable oils in depth and the harmful effects that they have, you know, like contributing to Alzheimer's and things like that. So that's a really good one, uh, pretty accessible. It's not too, uh, wordy or anything. Um, the other one that comes to mind is, uh, the book by Weston A. Price. It's called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. So this was written a while ago by a guy called Weston Price. So it's a bit of an old book, but it's been updated and, you know, it's still completely relevant, probably even more relevant now because we've seen like a further degradation of our food quality and the minerals and vitamins that everyone's getting in their daily diet. So It's a really good one. And Weston Price is— so he did like a massive around-the-world study of remote villages, you know, in Africa, in Switzerland, Scotland. He just went to all these different places where they were untouched by the Western diet as such. Like, they would just have been eating the natural things that they have been eating for hundreds of years. And what he found was that dental decay is caused primarily by nutritional deficiencies. So you get narrowed facial structure, crowded or crooked teeth, or, you know, people needing braces and all these things. And he found that that was non-existent, literally non-existent, in these, in these remote villages. And you think, well, what the fuck's going on? Where if, if a random remote tribal village, they all have perfect teeth. You know, they— you think they don't have access to the same foods that we have, but we've got it the wrong way around in that sense, because all of the food that they're eating is unprocessed, it's natural, it's fresh. Um, he also found that these native tribal diets contained at least 4 times the quantity of minerals and, and water-soluble vitamins of the traditional American diet back in the day, which has gotten even worse compared to now. But then they also found that they've got 10 times more fat-soluble vitamins. So the really important ones like vitamin A or vitamin D, those, those ones we talked about earlier that enable you to process and digest everything else, is, you know, you need those fat-soluble vitamins to absorb nutrients and everything else. So it— yeah, it's, it's a really interesting read. It's kind of the basics of— and tells you about what we need as humans again, um, and kind of why what we're eating now, even if you think you're eating healthy, might not necessarily have enough of the quality from it. And how if you were to kind of mimic the tribal diets as such and try and get better sources of the food, of animal foods and all that, then, you know, that's— it's a lot better for your health.

100%. Yeah, I mean, those two books— I haven't read the second one, but I've read Deep Nutrition. Yeah, it's a fantastic book and covers basically all the things you need to start, yeah, you know, buying and cooking foods that are healthy.

Yeah. Um, I don't—

the two things I would say are, one, follow Grim Hood.

Yeah, on Twitter. Seconded.

He's, like I said in the beginning, he helped me, uh, get my came out, didn't start gaining mass, but he has— I, I've never seen somebody with just so much knowledge on top of knowledge on top of knowledge when it comes to biochemistry, nutrition, how bodily functions, hormonal health, all that stuff. He's an encyclopedia of knowledge. He's currently writing a book, which—

oh, that's good.

By the end of the year.

That's cool.

Um, yeah, that's gonna be perfect. So, and he takes questions daily, ask him whatever, and he'll answer it. So start following him, start reading his stuff, start, you know, to take his consultations, all that stuff. Get your health in line. Second thing I would say is just go on, just go on Wikipedia or something and just look up like, what is serotonin? Look up what is, what is testosterone, you know? And then you kind of just follow the paths and then look up how they— look up how all these hormones interact with one another. Yeah, because you'll find, uh, you find a lot like Wow, like what we're doing just in terms of what we're consuming, you know, what we physically do out in our daily life, it's so bad for our hormonal health. Yeah, so bad. You know, everything from sitting to staring at screens to, you know, breathing polluted air, all this stuff just wrecks your hormones.

Yeah.

And when you see the processes and how they all interlink and how that just one thing can screw up like 50, you realize that Your body is precious and you need to do everything you can to make sure it's running in tip-top shape all the time.

Yeah, no, for sure.

Well, beautiful.

That, uh, that doesn't even—

my list, I think. Yeah, I, uh, we just got about— there's a bunch of other random ones that are not really quite— people haven't formulated questions. There's glycine question mark. It's like, okay, yeah, helpful. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. I, uh, I do want to end on one thing that's health-related, and I think that'd be interesting, is that I started using pine pollen, and I Telegrammed you about this and, uh, whatnot, and it's been, it's been enough to where I think we can give, I can give a good synopsis on that. Yeah. Um, my key takeaway is that pine pollen does nothing whatsoever if I'm not exercising. Absolutely nothing. Don't even notice I take it. But when I exercise with it, like, that is like Second Wind times 10.

You're taking it before exercise, right?

Right before exercise, just in some— just teaspoon in some water, stir it up, drink it, you know, normal stuff. Dude, that gets you so jacked up. Like, in the workout, you are so focused. You're cool. You're your heart is pumping and you know, you don't feel like you're gonna, you know, you feel like you can keep going forever. It's really crazy and you're really just like, you're dialed in.

I'll have to try it.

It's nice. Yeah, it's pretty cheap too. It's like $25 and it's, if you get the extract, you can use like a quarter teaspoon and then you'll get the same effects.

So do you know what the, like the mechanism is that might be boosting your physical endurance or whatever?

Or, you know, I, I just kind of got it recommended to me, but I did, I did some cursory research on it, and from what I can tell, it basically acts as a natural steroid, um, a low-level steroid. It just like boosts your, um, you know, yeah, it just, it just makes you high energy. It's like, it's like if you've ever tried maca root.

Yes, love that. Same kind of thing.

It's like maca root. It's like maca root, but like, it, it, it's like super concentrated. Yeah, with maca, like, I get it, and then like an hour later I'm like, oh yeah, I'm feeling pretty horny, I'm feeling pretty crazy. Yeah, but like with the pine pollen, you take it, you start working out, you're like fucking immediately just like jacked up on, on it.

Cool.

So definitely right there, especially too if you're looking for get some more pep in your workout and you're not wanting to like drink coffee or tea or a pre, you know, like a crazy pre-workout with dimethylamine or whatever, then Pine Pollen is the way to go. Definitely say, all right, Pine Pollen is the way to go. All right guys, well this has been an amazing cast. Sol Brah, thanks for coming on.

Uh, Art House, no worries, thanks for having me once again. It was fun.

Delicious cast, and we will see you guys Next week.

Bye, ciao, later.