6 Solcast - Episode 6: Magic Mushrooms, Chest Hypertrophy and Telling the Truth in your Life

So let's all take 5 long, deep breaths. In through the nose, really fill your stomach up. Two more. Now I bet everyone feels a lot better, so you're welcome. I wanted to open the podcast— episode 6, very good— I wanted to open the podcast to talking about this idea that I came across in a podcast. Carl Kingsbury, a very good follower that I recommend. He's into the very similar stuff that I am, but he was talking about his podcast about the heroic dose of mushrooms that he took. So this is a— I think he did a 10 or a 5 gram dose. That's quite a lot. Standard dose, probably 2 to 3 grams, 2 grams if you're just starting. So this daredevil, Kyle, he took this heroic dose, as it's called, and went through a bit of a vision, as you do. I won't ruin the story. I'll go to his podcast and look for it if you are interested in the longer story. It's fascinating. But he raised this concept where at one stage in the psychedelic trip, He was presented with him standing in the kitchen, and he could hear a humming noise of the refrigerator, that kind of in the background semi-annoying noise that some refrigerators make, probably older ones, less than new ones. But he was, he was going through this image in his head and he could feel the resistance that he had in his mind to this sound of the refrigerator, and it annoyed him, right, as it would annoy probably most people. But what he was kind of shown is that by being in resistance to the sound of the refrigerator, which he needs, which keeps his food cool and, and, you know, helps him out a lot, but he, he becomes so annoyed by this refrigerator sound, and he has for years of his life. He's just decided that this is a thing that he doesn't like. And so he experiences resistance to any time he experiences resistance to the moment, anytime he hears that noise, whether he's just walking through, he's in the kitchen making food or something. And what this trip kind of showed him was that anytime you experience a resistance to the moment, into ex— against accepting what is there at the time, uh, wishing you were somewhere else or just really kind of wishing the current situation wasn't happening because you think it's annoying or bad or whatever. There's varying levels of that. And this small annoyance, the fridge sound, wasn't that big of a deal, but because he was doing that, he was microdosing hell on a daily basis, right? So think about that. This is a stress on his mind, no matter how small. It's a little bit of hell, right? If, if hell is the worst possible circumstances and the worst time ever, then the smallest annoyance, you could be said to be microdosing it. So that kind of put it into perspective. And I think, you know, go listen to the podcast if you want his exact explanation, but this idea that you can microdose hell and you'll, you'll probably find that you're doing this. Like, if you, if you have an avoidance into doing the dishes, like, you You've had a big meal, you come to the sink and you're like, oh, gotta wash the dishes again. Like it's this thing that you build it up to be in, in your head and it doesn't need to be that. The dishes need to be washed, right? You have a dishwasher, you need to load it. Other pots and pans and things you kind of need to scrub. That needs to be done, right? So Don't make it this chore that it's like taxing on your spirit to have to do like this. Oh, poor me. It's like the dishes need to be washed. At least do it with some kind of acceptance and just be like, yep, that needs to be done. I might as well try and enjoy it, you know, get into the rhythm and just bang it out. See how quick you can do it. Make it a fun game. I don't know, like these things that we see as these huge annoyances in our lives can be massively reduced or completely eliminated. This resistance to these things that just are and your reaction to those things that are just there and happening, like you choose your emotional reaction in a way and it's stupid. All it does is it makes you stressed and angry. You know, there's many examples of this in real life and you have to be conscious of that. Anytime you find yourself getting angry at something that's happened in your day, just stop and be like, wait, was I like— you're comparing it to this idea of what should have been or the perfect day or you know, this didn't deserve to happen to me. It's like, well, it did happen. There's no grand plot against you and it's only because you have a distance between what you expect to happen, which isn't real. It's a fabrication of the mind and what is happening. So you have to try and not do that as much as you can or just be conscious of it. You know, take steps. A lot of your emotional reactions to things, once you analyze them and go, wait, why is that making me angry? And suddenly the anger disappears, which is cool. That kind of leads into what I wanted to say is that you can almost view the mind as a computer, right? New bits of knowledge, uh, software updates. To the computer that is the brain or the body as a whole. There's a level of awareness that comes when you delve into the kind of spirituality world of the philosophy world and you kind of look at your emotions and you become aware of your thoughts more than just acting out those thoughts. That's like downloading new, better software onto your computer, right? You're going to experience less less anger, less toxicity. You're going to analyze your patterns of behavior and go, okay, where am I going wrong? What do I need to reprioritize? It's like a software update and that could come from someone telling you something or you're watching someone do something and you go, oh shit, okay, that's how it's done. Or that's how I'm messing up. That's, that's like a software update for your brain PC. Most people are operating at very low software updates because they don't know any better. And it's not, it's not like their fault or anything. They're not stupid. I was the same. It's until you know something, you don't know that you didn't know it, right? And the whole idea of you are not your thoughts, uh, you can control your emotions. Being aware of your actions rather than just doing them and, and trying to consciously make an effort to change this, it kind of feels like a level of awareness in yourself because you're more aware of what you're doing or not doing. When you, when you move away from lower vibrational emotions such as fear or jealousy or Anger, depression. You kind of transcend them in a way because you realize that they were based on false notions or they fall apart at some kind of level of philosophical analysis, which is good. You realize, well, why am I, why am I holding onto these toxic emotions? They're, they're only hindering me. They're not contributing to my progress or growth. It's immature. It's just emotionally immature. And some people never emotionally mature. We all know those people, but it's our job to kind of try and practice this awareness and this more emotionally open and loving way. We have to act by example to try and do that. Always telling the truth is such a big one. If you kind of take that as a principle in itself, is to always tell the truth, I can tell you that so many of your headaches and your worries and stresses will disappear over time the more you tell the truth, because you're not living in any kind of whether you're lying and trying to cover up something or you just— it's, it's, it's more of a lie between how your spirit or true opinion feels and the way you act and what you say to people and how you're living. It's like you need to find out what you believe, what you think to be true and what you value. Act out those values. And the way to do that is to always tell the truth. If someone asks you something, tell them what you truly feel, tell them what you truly mean or believe and stand by that. Like don't, don't be in a relationship that you don't want to be in. The horrible emotional dissonance that that produces on a daily basis, turmoil, 100% it will be better if you just tell them honestly the truth. Hey look, I'm not interested, blah, blah, blah, for this reason. I need a go and do this, or I'm not saying break up. Obviously people say, oh, I'm just saying honestly expressing your emotions in relationships and not being afraid to say something will make you all your relationships either tighter and closer for the ones that are meant to be together and kind of put an end to the perhaps the toxic relationships that you've never said how you truly felt and cutting those people out of your life, which is unfortunately sometimes essential. But telling the truth will, it'll stop all that, that processing and worrying of like the stress that comes with being in a situation that you don't really want to be in or around people that you don't like. It's like, ah, fucking hate these people, but you get stuck in the same routine so you can't escape out of that. And then you're lying all the time and then you're, your cortisol levels are always raised and it's just such a bad spot to be in. So the first step I would recommend anyone that's trying to kind of raise their, in quotes, vibrational awareness, a bit of a woo woo term, but it does make sense in a way and kind of is to tell the truth, tell the truth in your relationships. You know, everything. And live it as well. Oh, let's do an example here. Say you're out at the park and there's a group of young lads kind of walking by, being loud and boisterous, and maybe they're shouting a bit. If someone gets upset that they are out in the park being loud, having fun, being boisterous, just being a bit, you know, as boys do, you have to look at the root of what's making them angry, right? One type of person looks at them and is upset because they're having fun and living in a way that they themselves are too scared to do, that they're too scared to express themselves in public. They worry what people think of them. So when they see people kind of living in a way that they feel like they should be living, but they don't have the courage to do so. They kind of get triggered that some people, maybe they're more extroverted or whatever the reason may be, they're living in a way that this person is too scared to. They get triggered by it. Okay. They'll be like, oh, look at those guys. They're so annoying and loud. Like it's, it's, it can be because they themselves are jealous in a way. Right? Another person sees those lads, you know, being boisterous and goes, oh, that's, you know, that's a bit, they shouldn't be doing that. So same kind of reaction, but they have come to it from a place of love as opposed to a place of fear. The place of love is a kind of like, They know when to be loud and boisterous and they think that in this park, maybe there's babies around or kids or something, they think it's like not appropriate just to be that loud and boisterous and they choose not to do that and take that behavior because they think that, you know, it's just a bit more polite not to be so loud and garish in public, right? So same kind of reaction to these lads having their fun, but one is from a place of jealousy and spite and like, ah, look at those guys just kind of wish I want to beat them. And another's kind of come from, guys, shouldn't be doing that. It's just a bit inappropriate. And it's more of a secure place to come from, right? So two different ways of framing the same thing, but it's, it's, I wanted it to kind of highlight why people get triggered by things and, and how it can be a bit different. This is also why people will try and bring you down in a way. This kind of crabs in a bucket mentality. And the crabs in the bucket mentality, if you don't know about it, basically if you have a few crabs in a bucket and one tries to climb out, the others will pull it back in. Just as a— that's a funny sort of behavior they do. And the corollary to real life is that if you try and put put effort into a side business or work out more, you get, you'll get people that will try and pull you down and, and get you to fail on your diet and get you to skip the gym or, or drink more, or maybe they'll bag on your business or whatever. It's, it's a toxic mentality because they want to bring down that which they are jealous of because they're too scared to do it themselves, or they're too, you know, whatever reason they've, whatever story they've told themselves that they can't do this thing that you're now doing, it's, it's, it's very jarring for their egos because they then have to look at themselves and go, oh wait, actually, was I doing that because I wasn't doing that because I was scared? Or was I— is the story that I tell myself why I couldn't do it actually real? And they always— it's always like, no, obviously the story that you tell yourself as to why you start is never real. It's just an excuse because you, you— it's, it's tough to take that first step and, and put yourself out there for whatever it is that you're doing. To admit that you want something means there's the potential of like failure or whatever, but that leap of faith you have to do. Um, and for those that are too scared to take the leap of faith, they try and denigrate the worth of people that have done it and have kind of improved a lot in life. It's a toxic mentality. Crabs in a bucket mentality bring the other crabs down. Crabs being people in this metaphor. I wanted to touch on the Twitter thread that I wrote yesterday. I talked about how in terms of purely hypertrophy, that focusing on putting out the biggest numbers isn't always the best, uh, the best strategy. When you get further into bodybuilding and interested about developing particular muscles, specific muscles in the right ratios to look the best, the most aesthetic, and you don't have overdeveloped body parts compared to the rest of your body, you have to take into account what exercises are doing in a way and what muscles they're working. You have to be much more conscious about this because if you're putting up bigger numbers on a bench press, barbell bench press, how much of that is from your chest, right? I think it's, it's, it's quite a front deltoid focused exercise and if you're smashing bench press and just being like, oh, why, why won't my chest grow? Or why won't my tris grow? Because you think that the bench press is a chest, shoulders, and tris exercise, which it is in a sense. But if your shoulders are putting up the extra work and you're trying to develop your chest, it's not really the most optimal way to go about it. Well, the most optimal way to go about about it would be is to find an exercise that you feel utilizes the muscle purely on what the muscle is meant to do, right? If you stick your arm out straight to the side, to the right, say you're doing your right arm, and bring it as if you wanted to slap someone in the face that's standing right at the maximum extension of your arm So that movement, bring out to the side and slap someone in front of you, that's your chest doing that movement, right? That kind of flap of the wing in a way. That's why pigeons have such huge pectorals, or birds in general, I guess, because they're flapping their entire weight and they have to use the pectoral muscles to do that. Okay, when you're pressing it's a lot of the, the anterior deltoid and not really that, that big fly movement that really utilizes all of the, the different angles in the chest. So that's why if, if you're looking to develop a muscle, you really have to look into what muscles specifically target that. So for chest, my favorites are dips, uh, done with your knees kind of a little bit in front of you and your chin tucked down. Incline dumbbell press— dumbbell press in general is, is very good, but a tip for that is you, you need to push up to the top of the rep and touch all 4 bells of the dumbbells together, right? So you're bringing pushing up and forward and then turning them in almost so they all touch. And you're really going to get a much better pinch in your chest muscles and feel that, that kind of inner and upper chest pump from doing that in any dumbbell press exercise— bench press exercise, not shoulder press. Those, flies, cables, and dumbbells, awesome as well. Big finisher sets doing that. Similarly, if you wanted to grow your glutes but you maybe had a bit of hip inflexibility or you were just quad dominant in the squat, a lot of people don't get glute engagement as well. So you'd look at something doing hip thrusts. I recommend for glutes, or lunges, people feel their glutes more. And focusing on those exercises that you actually feel the muscle working and where the muscle can be focused more. This is if you're actually focused on developing a specific muscle part, which most of us are. We want bigger shoulders or, or bigger triceps or, or bigger calves. You have to learn about the muscle see where it inserts, all the different angles that the muscle fibers may, may work on, and find the most optimal path of movement using an exercise with weight, usually much lower because you're, you're going for those controlled, very slow eccentric phase, kind of a bit quicker but still controlled concentric phase. So concentric is lifting up, eccentric is lowering. If you didn't know, your muscles are a lot stronger when they're in the eccentric phase, when they're extended, than they are contracted. This is why you can lower heavier weight than you would be able to lift up. So you can— if you're taking a deadlift off a rack, you, you'll be able to lower the weight pretty well, but pulling up that same weight, you, you wouldn't be able to do. So you want a slow decline. If you've never done this before try and get on, uh, even just curls actually, just dumbbells and holding maybe 5 kilo dumbbells, 6 kilo dumbbells depending on how developed your, your arms are, and lifting them up, really kind of turning your pinky inwards as you curl, and then lowering down and taking about 6 to 8 seconds to lower. And I want you to focus on relaxing every different fiber in that bicep. And that's, that's the only thing that you want to be lifting that weight up, kind of flexing your, your arm there. You don't want your shoulders taking the weight. You want your elbows slightly forward, pinned to your sides, curling these dumbbells in these kind of really controlled manners. And I guarantee if you If you do that, you're going to see a lot of muscular development that you wouldn't otherwise just from putting up raw numbers and getting stronger. It's, it's more about strengthening the muscle— sorry, developing the muscle through every plane of its movement and, and properly analyzing what muscles you need to do for your— sorry, what exercises you need to do for your body type and proportions and everything. To make that happen. I mentioned hip flexibility. Perhaps that's impinging your, your ability to squat properly. So I don't want to say like avoid exercises where you, you don't feel something, but there are methods, particularly with the squat, in order to help you feel your glutes more and get that proper hip internal rotation. I hated squatting for a while before I kind of really knew what I was doing, and it partly was the reason because I didn't have the internal hip rotation flexibility in order to get a proper deep squat where I could feel my glutes engaging, and it felt good to kind of get in a deep squat with, with a heavy load on. The things that I did to kind of fix that, um, it's usually a matter of weak or tight hamstrings and glutes, very common for office workers or a lot of people that maybe they don't play sports or anything. The tightness in the hamstrings from sitting all day and the weakness and tightness in the hip flexors as well, all of this contribute to a kind of lack of internal hip rotation, which is essential for a good squat. Things you can do to mitigate this: stretching, of course, yoga positions where you're stretching out those, those hip flexors, like a lunge stretching your hamstrings. Pigeon pose is a great one for stretching the glutes as well. Most yoga poses will stretch something in your body. So I don't, I don't have a stretching routine as such as I do yoga every night. When I'm training, obviously I'm stretching what I'm, what I'm training afterwards. But as far as a regular stretching routine, especially now when you're not going to the gym as much is, uh, just doing yoga. So I was doing lower body focus yoga, opening up the hamstrings, getting that in-range flexibility, and that enabled me to really enjoy squatting because I'm getting that glute engagement and it feels a lot more secure. It just feels nicer. There's, there's less tightness, there's less stiffness, and less pain. So if you're not really feeling an exercise, perhaps look at if there's maybe a shoulder flexibility issue that could be preventing you from optimally doing an exercise, or, or a very common one is, is the hip inflexibility. Shoulder flexibility exercises include dead hangs, both pronated and supinated, overhand or underhand grips. Just kind of hang there, relax your, your shoulders, and let your weight kind of pull you down and relaxing into that and kind of feeling how the shoulder is in that position can really go a long way to preventing a lot of the, the hunched over posture that a lot of people have. Strengthening your rear delts with face pulls. YTWs is another great exercise for that, that anterior rear deltoid strengthening, which is gonna pull that shoulder socket back and make sure you're not rotating too far forward. If you're doing a lot of bench press but not a lot of rowing, that's probably overdeveloped as well. It's, it's, it's mostly overdeveloped in, in bodybuilders because they're benching more than they're doing pulling exercises, and then not stretching as well, not, not strengthening the internal rotator cuff muscles, which is also very important to do. They're very small muscles in the, in the very inside of your shoulder. So you need to work up maybe doing bands or low weights, doing rotation exercises. If you look those up, I try and dead hang for a few minutes a day. If you hold on to the bar, whatever you're holding on to, maybe walk your feet back a little bit and then let your hips kind of fall forward and sag, and obviously keeping your hands on the bar, that's a good way to stretch out your spine as well. Get that, a good spinal extension. You'll, you'll likely hear a few cracks because the lower back gets kind of, it all expands get that connective tissue kind of open and to blood flow. So that's a great one to do as well on a daily basis, just a stretching thing. You, you'll often, whether it's a question of posture or actually elongating the spine, uh, you're opening yourself up. You'll likely be taller or seem taller or feel taller because your posture's being— you've got those, those pulling muscles on your back, kind of being strengthened for the first time properly, uh, the shoulder muscles keeping your shoulders back, which is great for posture. So you'll likely feel a lot better doing those kind of things. A listener writes in, he says, would you recommend cutting down to a lower body fat before pursuing any bulking? A lower aesthetic body fat percentage. Yes is my short answer. When you're lower body fat, you feel better, you feel lighter, you look better, you have less— you have a better hormone profile when you have lower body fat. Uh, you're just— there's so many benefits to it that I would always recommend trying to lose body fat before you bulk as such, before you put on any extra weight. You're also going to see the results of your quote-unquote bulk, if you decide to do that, a lot easier. So it can be more motivating to first get to a lower body fat. Everyone looks better with a lower body fat if they, if they are in the higher ranges. The higher body fat is not essential to growing muscle, so it's really better if you just kind of focus on getting rid of that before you get, get on any time type of caloric excess. If you're untrained, you will see a bit of both. Or if you're kind of upping your volume, like, I do think you can lose body fat and, and gain muscle, especially if you're just beginning weightlifting. It just depends on what type of training you're doing, your nutrition, your sleep, if you are creating the right optimal environment to put on muscle mass and lose body fat. I think it can happen. The other thing about bulking as a concept is you don't need to go overboard. I've had bulks where I ate an entire serves-for package of pasta with a pack of sausages cut up in that bowl, and I would just have this massive salad bowl kind of thing full of pasta and cut-up sausages drenched in olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, and I would just sit there until I ate that all. And that would have been 2,000 calories more in one meal. And I put on weight, that's for sure. I, I did a few months where I just kind of— I was, I was a bit younger. I was, I think I was like 20, yeah, 2021. And I was like, fuck it, let's just try and get big. I'm gonna commit to the bulk, I'm gonna train. And I had this mindset of just like, you need that excess calories. And it's true, obviously you need excess calories in order to properly put on muscle or repair your body and all that, but you don't need as much as I was eating, this kind of big bulk mode where you just eat everything in sight and you eat to the point of where it gives your digestion system trouble. You need about a 10% excess per day of your caloric needs to put on muscle at a rate that is sustainable and isn't going to make you feel like shit and won't result in a lot of fat gain. Because fat gain, yeah, if you're putting on fat, you kind of, you know that you're at least getting enough calories to repair the muscle from training and things, but you don't need excess amounts. You're just going to put on extra fat that you then have to cut down later. And this is what happened to me. I got, I got pretty huge. It was the heaviest I've ever been. It was 105 kilos. Um, that was pretty heavy. And looking back at pictures of myself, I was like, yeah, it's probably a little tubby. Like, there was no benefit to all those thousands of, or hundreds of extra calories a day when a 10% excess— say you're, say you're having 3,300 calories a day a decent amount. You only need 300 extra or so on top of that in order to put on muscle. The muscle rate of gain is not that quick when you've been training for a few years. In terms of cutting, I've never— well, first of all, I've never really calorie counted or macro counted. Just kind of eyeballed it. And over the years, you roughly know what your body needs. And if you're not— I kind of went by the, the system of if I wasn't putting on weight and I wanted to put on weight, then I would just eat a bit more. And if I wasn't losing weight and I wanted to lose weight, I would just lose a bit more, so eat a bit less. When I was cutting, I would just remove carbohydrates from dinner. If I was regularly having rice and meat, uh, with dinner, I would just cut the rice out. You're gonna feel a lot lighter going to bed, which is nice. You don't want to sleep with too heavy of a stomach. And that change, keeping my training relatively the same, was enough for me to kind of maintain the muscle and cut the extra body fat and not really reduce my quality of life of eating too much, still eating carbs, uh, still having sourdough toast in the morning, but just having meat and eggs with dinner was usually enough to, to cut a little bit of extra weight if I, if I wanted to do that. I haven't really gone through many purposeful cuts in my life just because it's, it's harder for me to put on weight than it is for me to lose weight, uh, ectomorph, if you believe in body types like that. So just a few thoughts on, on bulking and cutting. Definitely cut down if you are on the heavier side before you attempt a kind of a bulk, but definitely at least like always be lifting weights no matter what your goal is. If you're cutting as well, you can just simply walk more, and walking more is going to expend a little enough calories that you need to, to cut weight at that point. If you're walking a couple of miles, then that's a couple hundred calories, and that can go a long way over a week if you're doing that every day. A Twitter post that got a bit of attention was the screenshot I posted from someone who had taken my advice of stopping shampoo and using coconut oil as a conditioner. And he'd been doing it for 3 weeks, and he said that for the first 2 weeks, as is common, your hair kind of is a bit unclean, uh, smells a bit perhaps. But if you stick with it, after 2 or 3 weeks, your scalp starts to renormalize in terms of the amount of oil that it's producing. You don't need shampoo to wash your hair. I haven't used shampoo in years now. My hair is perfectly fine. I don't think it's healthy to have these kind of harsh soaps right absorbed into your scalp. It's not necessary. Can coconut oil— can be used as conditioner, just kind of rub it through your hair. Kind of the residue on your hands, say if you've just used it for skin, for your body skin, which I highly recommend as well, the residue on your hands, you just kind of run that through your hair and the ends of your hair, and that could be enough to— you don't need any expensive shampoo and conditioner to really take care of your hair. It's an indication of if you're, if you're healthy on the inside, your hair is going to be healthy. You don't need to wash the oil out of your hair, the natural oils out of your hair. In order for it to be clean. I'll do kind of warm water on the scalp, rinse the hair thoroughly. You're still moving water through and kind of scrubbing it with your hands, but getting rid of the regular shampoo use often fixes your hair's kind of natural regulation of oil and naturally keep his— keeps it clean. So try it. Anyone that I've recommended it to have reported back that they— their hair is, you know, healthier looking than it's been in forever. Kinda, it sits better. If you have unruly hair, a little bit of coconut oil can help to kind of style it without putting all kinds of weird gels or pomades in your hair with these chemicals you just don't need to be introducing to your body. Coconut oil, of course, just made from a coconut, super healthy, super good for you. It's, it's not, you know, hasn't been through any processing where you don't know what they're putting into the moisturizers to keep the— keep it long-term or shelf stable or whatever. So I recommend doing that, using coconut oil as a moisturizer for your body skin as well as your hair. Everyone seems to have been having good results from that. So that brings us to the end of episode 6 of the Soulcast. Thanks once again for listening. If you haven't already, please go subscribe on gumroad.com. Check out my Twitter for the link to that. We're also now on Apple Podcasts. So if you have that app, go give us a 5-star rating if you're enjoying. It helps us out. More episodes to come this weekend. I've got a few guest Soulcasts coming up from people you might know from the Twitter world, as well as other friends of my own talking about health. Hope you enjoyed And have a great rest of your day. Peace.