EFR 766: Top Wellness Trends of 2024, Fitness Influencer Red Flags, The Truth About Fasting, and Why Prayer Will Make You Healthier with Sal Di Stefano

0:00:00 - Speaker 1 So what's going on? Man Welcome back what's up man.

0:00:02 - Speaker 2 Thanks for having me on. You know it's been a while.

0:00:04 - Speaker 1 It's been a little while. I think last time we connected we when your book came out right kind of during COVID or towards 2021,. I think.

0:00:11 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

0:00:12 - Speaker 1 Yeah, but quick accolade to you and all the homies over at Mime Pump man. One of the reasons why I'm here doing today what I do today is what you guys started years ago and have just continued to be Trailblazers format.

0:00:24 - Speaker 2 So I appreciate that. Thank you, Thank you so much.

0:00:26 - Speaker 1 Man Appreciate that you guys are such like a beacon in the podcast base.

0:00:28 - Speaker 2 I appreciate that. I appreciate that I got so many questions for you.

0:00:33 - Speaker 1 I'm just going to like use you as encyclopedia, sally.

0:00:35 - Speaker 2 Okay, all right.

0:00:36 - Speaker 1 So on the way over here, well before coming over here, I got a new cold plunge at home and I jumped in. What's your take on cold plunging?

0:00:44 - Speaker 2 So cold plunges are excellent, for I mean that what they'll show is immune system boosting, anti-inflammatory. But really I think the big benefits and this is where the health space tends to take things and always trying to shoehorn them into fat loss, muscle building, right. I think the big benefit of cold plunging is two. I think one is it's training your body system to acclimate to temperature, which is a you know, for lack of a better term a muscle that we really don't train anymore. Okay, so we're always in temperature controlled environments, so we don't experience lots of heat or lots of cold and your body's ability to acclimate to those things like a muscle, can actually lose its ability to. That's why, when you get in there often, you'll find that you could tolerate more, just like a sauna.

0:01:28 - Speaker 1 You can slip in a little bit. It sucks a little bit. Less and less, right, right.

0:01:32 - Speaker 2 So that's one of them. The other thing is it's hard, it's a form of discipline, it's a skill of discipline to get in and do something hard on a regular basis and I think that bleeds over and everything else. Now the fitness space likes to tie it to fat loss and you know, inflammation and all that stuff and there's some connections there. Or, don't cold plunge too much, you're going to blunt the muscle building signal, yeah or not?

you know, within a certain time period after training, or you diminish gains, so it's such a small effect but nonetheless, if you do find something that diminishes the inflammatory response from exercise, thus maybe slightly reducing its muscle building signal, you can actually take advantage of that by increasing the amount of training that you do, frequency and volume. So if you're a hard training individual, if you push the limit constantly, cold plunge could be a way to help your body deal with the stress of the exercise. So I can see a lot of value for athletes, because athletes, when they're perfecting a skill, I mean they're not out there playing to necessarily develop bigger muscles, they're out there to develop better skills, performance, performance, and the more they can practice the better.

0:02:37 - Speaker 1 One second, what's up? You want to record Bob, right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Is it already rolling? Oh yeah, one second, no worries. Change the camera setting. Yeah, yeah yeah, no worries, no worries, my editor is going to freak you out, we went through this chase. Yeah, thanks, Good catch Bob. Yeah, I had Ryan Dewey, the co-founder a plunge on last week. Yeah, he was just a dude, such a dude Just like. Had a great thing, had a great idea, right product, right time right market, but really good guy.

0:03:32 - Speaker 2 Oh great, and I've been loving the plunge man.

0:03:35 - Speaker 1 It's not turned into my personality trait yet.

0:03:37 - Speaker 2 Like everybody else, I hate it, man. It's so freaking painful to me, it's so hard for me, but it's probably something I should do. A sauna I can adapt to saunas really well, love sauna. But yeah you throw me in some freezing man and I'm like no, it sucks.

0:03:53 - Speaker 1 I've been understanding like a lot more like different protocols and like some like hard science behind it. Others, I think, are just kind of. This is my personal anecdotal approach, but so far I've kind of found that the if you dunk yourself first it sucks really bad right out of the gate.

But there's such like, such like a rather slowly getting in the water your body immediately wants to go to more parasympathetic than like acclimating first a little bit, so it's a quick suck, but you actually get more parasympathetic quicker, so the rest of the time is less shitty.

0:04:24 - Speaker 2 That's why people are like, oh it's cold, We'll just jump in.

0:04:26 - Speaker 1 Right, okay, yes, just jump in full head submersion, come back up and then, like the trick is, you try to go like up to like the next, you activate more, like the brown fat. But it's way easier if you stay up like this. It's like 30, 40% easier if you're up here versus under the water like that. So like little baby steps to kind of just suck.

0:04:47 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I've yet to do it regularly. Adam does it he likes it. Yeah, he likes it. I do the cold showers, that's about it?

0:04:55 - Speaker 1 No, it does something.

0:04:57 - Speaker 2 Well, I mean a little bit, but it's not as cold.

0:05:00 - Speaker 1 Not as cold. A lot of showers wanting me to blow 50 like cold.

0:05:04 - Speaker 2 That's a trick. Damn good.

0:05:06 - Speaker 1 Okay, rolling Okay. So you heard it from Sal. It has benefits, but it doesn't have to be a personality trait, basically.

0:05:16 - Speaker 2 No, no, no. I think I think if you use it as a way to augment recovery so you could train more often, practice your skills more frequently, it could be very valuable from that standpoint. But as a practice to you know to get better at doing hard things, I think there's real value there for sure.

0:05:32 - Speaker 1 So for the listener, the viewer that maybe doesn't know, you are an OG in the fitness base. Professionally, you've been doing it as a trainer, as a coach, as an entrepreneur, as a podcaster for what? 20, 25 years.

0:05:43 - Speaker 2 No, yeah, it's been well since I was 18. So yeah, it's been over over two and a half decades, yeah.

0:05:48 - Speaker 1 Okay, so a lot of professional experience a lot of life experience here. So you were a trainer, but now you're a podcaster and create content online through. Linepump through YouTube, through social media, ie what many people would call here.

0:06:00 - Speaker 2 quote a fitness influencer and I think Hate that term.

0:06:04 - Speaker 1 Right. If I had to guess, I would assume that you would. What are some of the biggest red flags for you when you look at other quote fitness influencers in the space or people putting out fitness content?

0:06:15 - Speaker 2 Yeah, people that don't allow for nuance in their content, people that tie everything to fat loss or muscle gain. People that glorify the intensity of a workout, crush it beast mode, especially, though, when they answer questions like somebody will ask a question you know what's the best form of whatever for that loss or? And they don't answer with it depends, right. So when you talk to a good trainer or coach, it depends, is often the answer, because a lot of it depends on the individual's body, their fitness history, their preferences, which might be you guys.

0:06:49 - Speaker 1 I hear more often than not. Yeah your episodes, especially like a Q&A or like you're even driving home like a hard hitting topic. Yeah, it depends.

0:06:57 - Speaker 2 Yes, yes, and it does, because you're working with a person, it's not a robot. So a lot of it depends, right? So, like the best, what's the best form of cardio for endurance? Right, the one, which one do you like the most?

0:07:08 - Speaker 1 right, that's the one that I'm probably gonna have you do, because the one that you're gonna keep doing you're most likely to do it.

0:07:12 - Speaker 2 That's right. So those are all red flags, and then a lot of information that is centered around their body and how I look and how hot I look and all that stuff. They might have good information, but they typically don't. And if they do have good information, they're making it very body obsessive, which is the wrong direction in an hour, opinion for sure.

0:07:34 - Speaker 1 Would you say? It's that kind of more like they're starting off with the wrong goal or focusing on the wrong goal instead of factual evidence.

0:07:40 - Speaker 2 Well, not just that, but if you fall in love with the results and you fall in love with the how it makes you look, you're not really approaching this from a sustainable, long-term, healthy way. Right, you fall in love with the goal, you're gonna have problems, really have to understand the whole journey, but also just the body obsession around it. I'll give you an example. We sell fitness programs. This is one of our main ways of monetizing, and we sell a lot of programs. We have yet to use a before and after to sell it. Now, I have, no, we don't. I have thousands of before and after pictures, right, people send us before and afters all the time they're like volunteering it.

Yeah, like, look what I did, look how much weight I lost, look how much different I look, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And we refuse to use before and afters. And now anybody in marketing will tell you it's. The most effective way to sell anything in fitness is to show before and after.

0:08:27 - Speaker 1 And our marketing team that's it.

0:08:28 - Speaker 2 And our marketing team, like, hates the fact that we won't use before and afters. But it goes against you know what we feel, what we understand and what we talk about. And it does make it more of a body centric, you know, body obsessed type of model which we're fighting against. You know, fitness, if it's all about how you look, you're gonna, you're gonna run into problems and that's what we communicate. So that would be counter, counter our message and it wouldn't be very authentic for us. So, yeah, we could make a lot of more money using before and afters, but we don't Because, again, like, that's, that's not. That's one of the ways we think the fitness industry has gone wrong.

0:09:06 - Speaker 1 Props to you guys on that. That's huge. It kind of makes me think, too, of a lot of the fitness influencers that I have known over the years, even before. Really, that was a title of thing which is hey, I like to work out, I like to shoot video and pictures and put it up online.

And you know, in my space has kind of been about 10 to 12 years and the amount of people that I know that have kind of titrated down a little bit of it's all fitness, all gains, all looks or nothing that has shifted. Now you give anybody a goal, a passion, for 10 years they're going to think I extract really what they want out of it instead and, you know, kind of shed all the other bullshit.

0:09:47 - Speaker 2 Yeah.

0:09:48 - Speaker 1 It's not to say that they don't look as good now or it's not as big of a priority. Actually, it's not as big of a priority. They've just now adapted life around it. Yeah, it around.

0:09:56 - Speaker 2 Well, look, if you, if you, if you pursue health and fitness long enough, you figure that out, you figure out body acceptance, you figure out that, ok, this is not all about aesthetics.

In fact, the aesthetics is really a side effect of what the main truly of the main things are and you start to figure that you have to learn, that you end up learning that for yourself. I also think the space learns from what the market and what people are showing can work and what doesn't work. And now people want people who are authentic. Of course, there's a lot of inauthentic people trying to mimic that, but I think you'll be more effective, especially in the long term, if you do it the right way. I really do.

Otherwise, you can turn into kind of the flash of the pan, and the fitness space has been around long enough to where consumers are getting a little bit more privy to the old tricks, absolutely. So I think it's kind of a breath of fresh air to present things in a different way. You have to be effective. You still have to be effective, but present them in a different way. The other thing is look, if you build a business around how you look, unless you're like the top 0.001%, you're not going to monetize that. You're not going to build a business. I mean, I know a lot of people with lots of followers where they post half naked pictures and they have a tough time monetizing because what the people are interested in they're already getting for free.

So what are you going to sell me Exactly, so I don't think it's a great business model, except for a very, very, very, very, very small percentage of people. And also with them, I think it becomes a personal health. You really want people to love you and follow you because of how you look, and how long is that going to last?

0:11:25 - Speaker 1 So then do you think now in 2023 or 2024, we'll call it? Is there more information or misinformation out there when it comes to fitness?

0:11:35 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's both. It's a big space, right, it's growing. There's a lot of information that's out there, way more than when I first started. When I first started, there were a lot of gatekeepers. So if you wanted to present anything about fitness, you had to go through the gatekeepers of the publishers of magazines, maybe get a book deal. But it was really tough, really tough to get out there.

0:11:54 - Speaker 1 You could just put it out on your own. You could not like today.

0:11:57 - Speaker 2 No, now anybody could post a. You know it's not hard to make a podcast and post. It's not hard. Obviously, social media very low, buried enter. So there's just more information. That being said, there's also more good information because you know those gatekeepers, like I mean, when we started Mind Pump nine years ago, we wouldn't have been able to do it in the magazine era because we were not going to sell supplements as the BLN doll. Well, good luck. No one's going to want. No magazine is going to put you in there saying that supplements don't do much. So it allowed us to have a loud speaker, it gave us the opportunity to communicate. So I think it's open the door. Just in general, this also means that the consumer is going to have to be a little bit more responsible. But look, I believe I'm pretty optimistic with this. I believe, in the context of open dialogue, especially in long form format like this, that the the the right information, will win Eventually. The battle will continue, but the the right, correct, true stuff will win out.

0:13:02 - Speaker 1 It might just take a little time, but of course it. You know, shit usually falls downhill right. Truth rises.

0:13:07 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so we're going to sift through it. But look, I'll give you some positives. I've never seen so many women's strength train. That was non-existent when I was a trainer. When we started mine pump it was a fraction of what it is now just nine, just less than a decade ago. So way more. Women's strength strength training in general is now being accepted as a form of exercise for longevity, whereas before it was just for bodybuilders or maybe for athletic forms.

0:13:33 - Speaker 1 I think we single handedly have Gabrielle Lyne to thank for that. She's part of it. I mean she's a big part of it. You know she's getting that medical side.

0:13:39 - Speaker 2 I mean my book. The resistance train revolution was on that. We've been preaching this now for a long time. But again, because there's so much more information or ability to listen to more information, people are hearing more. People say wait a minute, this is the way I train and this is this is really effective. This is not what I thought, right. So that's you know. That's a big one. I think nutrition all those always very cloudy and murky we're starting to see better stuff come out with nutrition. I think a lot of the old myths are being challenged, a lot of it. Even the current myths are being challenged openly, like when they try to say that if we just got everybody to not eat meat, they'd be so much healthier, like that's getting a lot of pushback and I don't think that that would have been possible with the gatekeepers of the past. Cause where's that messaging come from? It's coming from the powers that be. So there's, there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel, but is there a lot more bad information to? Yes, yes, there is.

0:14:34 - Speaker 1 Let's say I'm a person right now. Right, I'm listening to this, this podcast. I'm hopping on my phone, I'm looking up information, looking up people, looking up you even. I mean someone like myself in my late 30s looking at someone as early 40s, looking like you do. I would listen to what you have to say. Sure, do you think it's more important to take advice or to kind of lasso our game plan for fitness, for our health, to somebody that has experience or credentials which?

0:15:00 - Speaker 2 is what we're doing. Oh gosh, they're both valuable. The most valuable would be somebody who's got some of both. Okay, but I think experience is. Well, it depends what you're looking for. Experience, what you're looking for, let me. Let me put paint that context. So you're an everyday person. You want to get more fit and healthy. Listening to someone who's worked with everyday people for 10 plus years extremely valuable, right? If you're a bodybuilder and you want, you know, bodybuilding advice like listening to someone who's worked with and in the bodybuilding space for 10 plus years I've been training Mr Olympia.

0:15:35 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, very valuable, right, mrs Jones?

0:15:37 - Speaker 2 Yeah, if, you're an athlete, if you're whatever. So experience is very valuable because this is such a there's so much nuance to what we do, how people respond and react. I mean, you look at diet alone. Right, like we know now with CG, with a CGM, you know continual glucose monitors. We now know we see this like.

Some people will eat a avocado, right, avocado, there's no sugar, carbs in it whatsoever, it's fat and fiber. Yeah, and they'll have an insulin response. Well, what's that? How's that? What's happening? Well, they must have an immune response to the avocado. That's very individual. Had we not had that device, we would never know. Coaches and trainers have known that. We've worked with people for so long that I know that how to listen to the signs, how to pay attention to what's happening with your body, and although taking an avocado out and replacing it with something else wouldn't make technical sense, I've worked with enough people to know that I got to listen to you and your body. So experience is extremely, extremely valuable. But the most you know value comes from people that have a mix of both. But I can tell. I can tell right away when I have a PhD in front of me. That's never worked with anybody.

I can tell by the way the answer Questions and by the way you know and look, I always laugh at these 12 week exercise studies. Oh great, you got better results doing this thing in 12 weeks. Nobody works out for 12 weeks, right?

0:16:55 - Speaker 1 We're trained in such controlled environment.

0:16:57 - Speaker 2 We're just we're doing this. Look, okay, if you look at studies on what rep range builds the most muscle, you're going to find the 12 weeks. You know 12 to 16 week studies which show eight to 12 reps. Okay, have that person stick to that rep range for the next year or two and watch what happens. Or have them switch out of it and move to low reps, move to high reps or the next two years and then watch what happens. You wouldn't know that without experience. So I think right now, experience is definitely, is definitely King is so long as it applies to what you're looking to do.

0:17:26 - Speaker 1 I'm curious do you maintain any of your professional credentials, like certifications?

0:17:30 - Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. I. You know I. I stopped after I started my own business. I'm always learning, always reading, always, constantly pursuing it, but I don't, who cares, I don't. I didn't need it to do it because I own my own business, so I didn't need, as long as I stayed up to date myself and learn and grew and was doing a good job with my clients.

0:17:49 - Speaker 1 You kind of maintain.

0:17:50 - Speaker 2 You know you were kind of walking talking billboard of course you know, cause I mean I believe what I say, right? Otherwise, it would be weird if I was obese. You know preaching this, but but yeah, I mean my customers, my clients would tell me if I was doing a good job or not, and the results and the sustainability of the results would tell me.

0:18:05 - Speaker 1 I think, I think after this year I'm done, so I just renewed my certification. Okay, the ACE, american Council on Exercise Certified Health Coach is the one I've I've had since 2015.

0:18:18 - Speaker 2 Okay.

0:18:18 - Speaker 1 So I got my bachelor's in exercise science, masters in health promotion and have been certified health coach for almost a decade now. I don't know if it's like a little bit of that like fear mentality left in my mind of Chase, if you ever need to go back to a real job, your credential, you got the shit. But also I feel like nowadays kind of staying on the topic of you know, fitness influence or people just talk about and give advice to things you could be doing to change your body. I kind of feel like it just holds a little bit of weight still, I don't know. No, it doesn't matter. Okay, no, no, I Sal says no, yeah.

0:18:48 - Speaker 2 No, I think. I think if you have a look, if you have a PhD that still holds weight, people like to see doctor.

0:18:53 - Speaker 1 So and so Right Right.

0:18:54 - Speaker 2 Yeah, but otherwise I don't think it makes a big difference. I mean, I think experience matters more. I think how you communicate, how effectively you communicate, and your staying power. Have you been doing this for a while? Right, you flashed in the pan. I think that that matters more.

I look at the P. I look to the PhDs when it comes to studies to help me decipher the studies and what's going on. What does the latest research say? But I always look through the filter of experience with that, always Like I'll give you an example.

Okay, Study just came out that showed that if you reduce people's sodium and this was they took people from regular to low that everybody's blood pressure was going to get goes down. And they like oh, this is a, this is a study that shows, you know, conclusively, lower your sodium, lower your sodium, get better Bad. Right, Now, I know through experience. I didn't. I didn't even have to look at the controls and I said there's other stuff at play here. Let me look. So I did. I looked through the study. Well, what did it show? Well, they took a bunch of people they gave the high salt version was we're going to give you these two bullion cubes. Consume these. It's an extra 1500 milligrams of sodium. That's your high sodium diet when you come back. So eat your regular diet plus those bullion cubes. Okay, when you come back, we're going to prepare your low sodium foods for you.

And you're going to do everything that we I mean, come on, we're not compare. How can you call that a two totally different things? And they're totally, and they literally constructed and made the meals and drinks for them and said you eat whatever you want plus this. And then, or you eat this low sodium diet, here's your meals, here's everything that we're.

0:20:24 - Speaker 1 So they made this study to get the results that they wanted.

0:20:26 - Speaker 2 It doesn't make. I don't know if that was the goal, but, uh, you, how can you consider? I mean, I couldn't even take that seriously. There's, there's the controls, they're terrible. So you know, and I knew right away through experience was like this doesn't make any sense. You know, let's, let's see, and there are populations, well, it does make sense. But, um, you know, that was just my own experience.

Like I know you take somebody down to 500 million, sodium performance will drop, energy will drop, they're going to be cognitive functions Not going to feel good. I've never seen anybody get better results. There's, of course, those cases where that might be necessary, but um, but anyway, that's just one silly example. So oftentimes we'll see stuff like that and we'll know through experience, or it'll say this works better, Like, for example I'll give you another example you take beginners, okay, and you have this group do a barbell squat and this group do a leg press beginners and they'll do, let's say, a 10 week study and they're going to find very similar or equal hypertrophy strength. You might even see a superior in the leg press.

0:21:22 - Speaker 1 So the average person is going to be like oh okay, you can usually press way more on the leg press than you can squat.

0:21:27 - Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, but I that's not really what it is. Here's what it is. Chase, take a beginner. How long does it take you to teach a beginner to leg press effectively? How long does it take you to teach a beginner? So there's a lot of skill acquisition with the barbell squat and the big benefits of the squat start to happen when you start to really learn how to squat, which is going to take you for your beginner months.

0:21:49 - Speaker 1 So I know for years and I see if, like, I'm critiquing my form right.

0:21:51 - Speaker 2 So I know with my experience if I see a study like that, I throw it away. That means nothing to me. That's not going to tell me much at all.

0:21:57 - Speaker 1 So you're an expert, you're a fitness expert. Who do you look to?

0:22:00 - Speaker 2 Oh God um in the health and fitness space besides Adam, you know. Yeah, he said that. You know, I, if I see a study or something that comes out where you know I can't really decipher what's going on and I would like someone's really good, smart opinion. I'll send it to Lane Lane Norton. So I'll text Lane hey, what's up with the study? What do you? What do you think? What's going on?

0:22:25 - Speaker 1 And then either love him or hate him.

0:22:27 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's just his personality, but but you know all all. All joking aside, lane is uh of all things objective honest and honest, so he'll.

He'll do that for me. Brett Contreras also very objective. I love the way he breaks things down, whether it's you know it's something that could support him or not. He'll be honest about it. I like him. Um, andy Galpin oh, some really really good cutting edge great. You know stuff that's out there. Uh, we've had some really good uh athletic coaches. Come on um Corey Schlesinger um, really really good. Um he's. He's taught me some some pretty interesting things. Um, uh, paul check on the wellness side. You know he's great. But now where I look more is I look more towards the things that I am now relatively new in. I would say, um, like the spiritual side. I, you know I have friends that we look up to, like Arthur Brooks. Uh, Bishop Baron um, you know we're you know we're going to get to him, or fatherhood.

Right, I'm looking in those because those are not. I haven't been doing those for two and a half decades, obsessively, like I have with fitness.

0:23:38 - Speaker 1 So kind of looking at the the then and now aspect of the fitness industry. You open a wellness studio over 20 years ago and I've heard you describe some of the services and services really that you offered, like functional medicine, hormone health, metabolic panels 20 years ago. That was like you're a quack or who's going to pay for that really. Now it's all the rage. Yeah, what, um, what was your mindset behind having that approach then and do you think with that same approach now? Or are we hitting the mark?

0:24:11 - Speaker 2 Yeah. So back then I was very much just exercise and diet, and the diet, uh, aspect was really macros, calories, okay, so I was really good. That's basically. I knew exercise technique, what workouts are good, and then diet for fat loss or muscle building. So it was very limited in comparison to you know the things I talk about now and what I understand now.

But I did understand credit to myself, uh that that there was a lot of value in other modalities in health and fitness and I knew this because you know and looking back, I'm really happy that I did a lot of things wrong, a lot of things wrong, and I trained a lot of people terribly in the early days. But one thing was that I really cared a lot about people and I would pay attention to the clients that I trained and what seemed to work for them. So I'd have clients that I didn't understand acupuncture. I thought it was weird, I thought it was you know hocus pocus, you know pseudo science, but I had a lot of clients that would get benefits from acupuncture. I would have a lot of clients that you know would would talk about gut health and that you know, or some clients that would talk about gut health and I can see the value of that bodywork massage therapy. You know I'd have clients that would get these incredible benefits, so I understood.

0:25:36 - Speaker 1 They're kind of bringing it to you.

0:25:37 - Speaker 2 So I understood that there was okay, this is going to bring value to people, so let me have a facility where I train people. I'll have other trainers like me and then we'll offer, we'll bring these people in who offer these services who people will probably gain value out of, and I from the business side you're hearing they're already paying for these services.

That's where, yes, yes, and now, serendipitously, it was the best thing I could have ever done. It's really what shaped and molded me into who I am now, because I was exposed to them. You know it was a small studio, so you're with your client over there and you're talking about their hormones or their gut health test, and the bodywork specialist is talking to somebody right before they go in the back and I could see people going through acupuncture and I'd hear her talking to people at the front desk and I'm listening.

0:26:22 - Speaker 1 So you were just connecting all the dots.

0:26:24 - Speaker 2 I'm just listening and absorbing through osmosis and just it was. And then, you know, they helped me at one point with some health issues and it just it was great. I learned a lot. I learned a lot from being around those people. Looking back, it was, I mean, you know there were two people in particular who I owe a lot to because they taught me so much with. I mean it wasn't like I told them, hey, teach me this, but just watching them and seeing how they worked. And you know, one of them was also a physical therapist and her, her correctional exercise expertise was just absolutely incredible. And so I learned so many things just from being around them.

But yeah, I think probably made you a better trainer way better and I wanted to bring that to the people that came into my facility. I do think it's valuable. I think I would like to see more of those with people working together with different modalities, so that we could, you know, when people come in with health issues. It's a very holistic approach.

0:27:16 - Speaker 1 You know, I think a lot can be said of back then. Right, Eric would hear of the approaches we had to, what we could do to our bodies, the tools and resources and services that we had access to. I feel like maybe I just wasn't privy to it. We probably had a lot to pick from, but it seemed like it was just fundamental. It was just basics, like you were saying.

We're just going to work on fitness, we're going to work on nutrition, and that's kind of it. Now, I feel like that's kind of where the industry is coming back to. At least on my social media, it's just all I hear is just get good sleep, hydrate, wake, go to bed at the same time wake up. The same time, move your body you know body positivity, but you know be real about your body at the same time, do you kind of see this coming back to the basics as well, or are we kind of hit?

0:28:03 - Speaker 2 No, I mean well, okay. So back then leaky gut syndrome was laughed at, didn't exist. The medical community was like that's dumb. Now they call it intestinal wall hyperpermeability, food intolerances. Oh, that's baloney. Now they're like okay. So all that stuff was great. Talking about the basics, I mean, yeah, that's you're talking about 95% of the way there and I love it. I love that we're talking about the basics. The only thing I don't like is they connect everything to fat loss and muscle gain. Things have so much more value and sometimes doesn't affect either, or sometimes indirectly. It affects those things like fasting. God, I knew fast fasting became this whole like diet to lose weight. Fasting's benefit is, and always will be, a spiritual practice of detachment. That's the value of fasting.

0:28:47 - Speaker 1 What a hell of a definition that.

0:28:49 - Speaker 2 That is why fasting has been around for thousands of years. That's why every major religion has fasting. That's the value you get out of fasting.

0:28:56 - Speaker 1 Yeah, thousands of years ago they probably weren't like all right, I'm going out of cut, you know, let me fast.

0:28:59 - Speaker 2 No, nobody did that. It's literally a very effective form of detachment. So what do we attach to a food? Right, so go without it. Watch the personal growth. Well, you're going to blunt that. If it's all about fat loss, you're going to turn into a restrict binge. You know behavior, but it's as a spiritual practice, as a practice of detachment. By the way, you could fast from electronics. You could fast from sex. There's a lot of things you can fast from that you may feel attached to, but that's just. That's just one example. You mentioned earlier the cold plunge or the sauna, and everybody wants to connect it to like how about the fact that it's just, it's hard and we don't?

0:29:37 - Speaker 1 do things that are actually choosing to do something difficult.

0:29:39 - Speaker 2 That's right. That's right In an age of convenience, that's right, that's right. So, and that's the thing that I get upset, or they'll take small things and make them seem like they're much bigger. Right, like you know, make sure you wear a blue blockers for two hours before you go to bed. There's some benefit there, sure, okay, yeah, but you know what's got more benefit? Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.

Wake up with the sun, go to bed or just go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, instead of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday comes go to bed late, wake up late, go to bed late, wake up. Then Monday comes your jet lag. So once a week you're jet lag yourself throughout your circadian rhythm. If you just went to bed and woke up at the same time every day, that has more of an impact, far more of an impact on your health with sleep, than wearing blue blockers or not eating at a particular time or taking magnesium before you go to bed or whatever.

0:30:30 - Speaker 1 It's like the same thing with I'm sure you've heard this a million times Monday through Friday disciplined AF weekends go crazy, screw my diet, all the calories, all the everything. And then it's like why can't I make the progress? Or why am I so unhappy come Monday and I can't keep to my goals? Right, right, if you just choose what you want to do and do it as consistently as possible.

0:30:49 - Speaker 2 Or how about this? Like you know, if you're eating to take care of yourself, like okay, I'm, I should be, I deserve to be healthy, I should care for myself, then you're always going to have balance in them. So you know, if you're doing pretty damn good, you're eating pretty well, and your friend invites you out for a burger, well, right now, what's healthy is I'm going to hang out with my buddy, you know. So that balance is already in there, versus the like on off switch that people have.

0:31:13 - Speaker 1 What are maybe some a thing or some things you're doing now in your early 40s that maybe 20 years ago in your early 20s, when you're really getting going and fitness like you like, pass out? We'll never believe future sales doing this shit?

0:31:26 - Speaker 2 Prayer.

0:31:27 - Speaker 1 Prayer.

0:31:28 - Speaker 2 Yeah, very, very, very I mean it's.

0:31:31 - Speaker 1 I want to let me pause you right there I want to get there. Actually I know that's a big kind of part of your journey. Let me re ask that question specifically to fitness.

0:31:39 - Speaker 2 Sure.

0:31:39 - Speaker 1 Is there maybe like a training modality that you're doing now, or approach to fitness that you couldn't believe you would ever be doing now?

0:31:47 - Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, when it comes to training, let me think you know I never used tools like sled, like the sled sled work. I always thought it was just for athletes. I didn't think I had a much hypertrophy benefit or anything like that. I thought other exercises were superior in that case. But I'm finding that from a muscle hypertrophy standpoint, the sled is phenomenal. It doesn't damage the body as much as other exercise. You could do it, so it means you could do a lot of it. It's one of the best yet easiest exercise movements to do. Almost anybody can push a sled, and yet it's also appropriate for as advanced as you want to be. It includes triple extensions. You're connecting your foot to the whole movement, so strengthens your foot, your calf, your quad, your hand, your glute.

0:32:35 - Speaker 1 So I remember you made a post about this, I don't know how long ago like having squatted in X amount of like weeks or something, only been doing sleds and posted up some pretty juicy quads and I was like, damn shit, sled game, all right sled's amazing.

0:32:47 - Speaker 2 It's amazing. I don't think I would have. I would have never done it because I didn't consider it like a muscle building exercise, was more like oh well, that's for athletics probably more for an endurance aspect as well.

0:32:56 - Speaker 1 I mean, because if you're, you could do whatever it kind of you know you're getting a lot more long state training in there you're, instead of just maybe knock out a couple sets on the squad.

0:33:05 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean you could, you could modify it, but I mean it's so I didn't use it enough as a trainer. I mean now, if I became a trainer, now that would be a staple, but you're one of the first things I had people do.

0:33:17 - Speaker 1 It's tricky, it's uh, it's one of those things that every time I come back to it I'm like fuck, this thing smokes me. Yeah, you think you. Oh, it's the X amount of weight, or I can deadlift this or squat that or bench this or whatever, but you put your whole body into it. Yeah, Also depending on kind of the day that you've had, you know your energy, your sleep, that shows up.

0:33:34 - Speaker 2 Yeah, One of my favorite ways to do it, though, is to do it very frequently at a moderate intensity. So I'll put a weight on there that's somewhat challenging, but not kicking my ass, and then I'll start every workout with two or three sets of this, and because there's no eccentric in the rep right, there's no lowering of the weight, you're not getting as much muscle damage. Um, the frequency is exceptional for mobility, just for overall movement, it's easy to do. Two sets, moderate intensity, and, um, it just feels really good. I mean, if I did that every day, I wouldn't need to do a targeted leg workout. Um, you know, for myself I mean, except for the occasional, like if I noticed some mobility issues, something like that, but I wouldn't.

0:34:16 - Speaker 1 What are some maybe fitness trends? You know, by the time this is going live, we'll probably early 2024 here, going into the next year. What are some trends that you are most excited for, Like, oh, I'm glad this is a thing. Finally, Uh, or some other ones that you're like Come on, people, what are we doing?

0:34:32 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so you know the title of the book I wrote a couple of years ago was the resistance training revolution. I think we're we're here. I think the big, the trend that's happening now is real strength training. You know it used to be like, oh wait, it's, but like it's a circuit, so not really or whatever. I think now we're seeing it's, it's about to go main, main stream. I think part of it we've been communicating the message for a long time. The other part of it is social media shows like people are presenting women or adopting it. They're a huge consumer. Dr Gabriel Lyons book from the medical side is tackling it. You know, I, I know, yeah, I know people in the gym industry. I mean, I'm like big players in the gym industry. They are for the first time in a long time when they're building gyms or redesigning them. They're reducing the footprint of the cardio and the other spot and expanding the free weight, not even the free weight area.

0:35:24 - Speaker 1 So that's that's got to be one of the biggest telltale signs that the public is demanding that, because the industry would only provide what's working from the business side.

0:35:33 - Speaker 2 That's right. Yeah, real, real strength training deadlifting, squatting, bench pressing you know pressing rowing, you know sets, not circuits, building muscle, the value of it, the longevity aspects of it, the health aspects of it, the metabolism boosting effects of it. I think that that's poised to really start to take over, and we're starting to see it now.

0:35:53 - Speaker 1 When we're embarking upon our fitness journey let's say a newbie do you think it's more wise for somebody to focus on going higher reps for that hypertrophy, like building muscle mass, kind of the size or building strength, maybe going lower reps, heavier weight?

0:36:09 - Speaker 2 When you very, very, very first start out, you need to make sure that you've built some stability with the movements that you're doing. That typically means you're doing some more reps and you're going lighter. Once you've built like a prerequisite of stability, then the lower reps are extremely valuable. You just have to do them properly.

0:36:27 - Speaker 1 More from like a you need to kind of build a technicality, develop a form, familiarity thing.

0:36:31 - Speaker 2 Yeah, like you, high tension squats are going to be hard when you don't have squat row. So let's first figure out how to squat well, get the technique down, make sure that we're we don't have any leaks in power or imbalances that we need to work on, and then, when that feels good now, we can start to go with the lower reps. There's lots of value in low reps as well, but they all have lots of value. But typically when I train somebody as a beginner, I tell them to stay in the right around 10 to 12, 15 rep range, because I'm trying to get them to develop the skill of the exercise.

It's not the hypertrophy aspect of it, it's just if I go high tension, you take a beginner and they haven't practiced a dead lift or a row and they're just don't have the exercise down. They don't know how to do it right. They're putting them in a high tension position is going to make their form go out the window.

0:37:19 - Speaker 1 So higher potential for injury as well.

0:37:21 - Speaker 2 Yeah, injury, and you're just not going to do this. It's not going to be effective, it's not going to work. Well, what you train is what you develop. So if you strengthen a bad recruitment pattern, well, that's what you're going to get.

0:37:30 - Speaker 1 Yeah, honestly, I think I got a couple of injuries to blame for that. Oh, years of uh moving some weight, but the wrong, the wrong patterns.

0:37:38 - Speaker 2 Absolutely, absolutely. And then the stronger you get of course now you've been doing this for a while the stronger you get the uh, the, the, the smaller the margin for error before you hurt yourself. So, like someone's dead lifting up a hundred pounds and they, they shift to the you know the left, a couple of inches they're probably going to be okay. Yeah, you're dead lifting 500 pounds. That's like be a major injury.

0:37:59 - Speaker 1 Perfect segue. I want to talk to you about injury as well. Uh, kind of selfishly here, because in the last year and a half I actually was on path to hitting a 500 pound deadlift Awesome First time, which for me with you know, I've got a lot of prior injuries. My hips have been redone.

0:38:13 - Speaker 2 It's a big deadlift. It's a big deadlift, yeah.

0:38:16 - Speaker 1 And I was feeling strong, feeling great, and probably like eight months ago now, I was deadlifting training outside of the gym and, maybe like my last set, it started raining and I was like fuck it, I'm just going to go anyways. You know, I went up to the bar, wiped it down, but it was getting wet again. I went, I was coming up barely Clear the knees Slip off.

0:38:34 - Speaker 2 Yes.

0:38:36 - Speaker 1 My left hand like grip loosened and it was, uh, I was pulling like a 440, 445 and I like caught it just when I left hand side and I heard and felt this.

I thought I tore my bicep. It was like this my bicep tendon, forearm tendon, just like flipped, like completely, not like a complete tear, like a partial, heavily bruised, like. It's still pretty sore to this day and so I haven't even gone back to a deadlift, anything since then. Let's take that particular, you know, a deadlift or arm injury. Can I, can someone really navigate the injury and train compound movements? What are the best ways to navigate that injury and not lose, you know, strength or hyper?

0:39:14 - Speaker 2 Well, first of all, this is an interesting um phenomena. They've done studies on people where they'll, they'll, they'll literally restrict or disable one arm, so that so they'll put in a cast and then they'll have a sorry for this study.

0:39:26 - Speaker 1 We have to cut up your arm yeah, they'll just sledgehammer your wrist.

0:39:29 - Speaker 2 No, they just they just they say okay, we're going to put you in a cast for five weeks, Okay, uh, voluntarily, okay, so they put on the cast, then they'll have. Half the people exercise the right arm, the other half the people not exercise the right arm. The people that exercise the right arm lose less muscle in the arm. That was restricted.

0:39:46 - Speaker 1 Well, so the people that had one arm restricted but still worked out the other side had less loss than the people that did nothing. They did nothing, yes.

0:39:54 - Speaker 2 So so the body seems to have this kind of cross talk, um, systemic muscle building signal obviously not as strong as a localized one Like training that arm, this arms going to get more gains, but it also reduced loss from the other arm. So one train the whole body. So people are like, oh, I can't work out this part, I'm not going to work anything out. No, train everything else. Number two occlusion training is very, very good for injuries.

0:40:17 - Speaker 1 What's that?

0:40:18 - Speaker 2 So, uh, so, let's say, your left arm, your bicep, informed, uh, you know, injured, so you can't curl more than like 15.

0:40:24 - Speaker 1 It's the only reason why, by the way, I don't have biceps Like you were today. I've been out of commission for like eight months.

0:40:28 - Speaker 2 So let's say you can't curl. Uh, you know, more than 15 pounds, like more than that. It just hurts, which is about right, okay, but what's? You know, 15 pounds is not enough for someone as strong as you were. What do I do?

Well, occlusion training. You'll take a knee wrap. You'll tie it around the top of your arm, okay, tight enough to where it's restricting Venus outflow, so you'll feel it'll feel nice and tight. Now you don't want to go numb, you'll feel it nice and tight. So what it's doing is it's it's, it's restricting the amount of blood that's going to flow out of the lower extremity, out of your arm. Then you take that 15 pound dumbbell and you do curls and what you'll notice is it'll burn real fast because you're not able to get rid of the waste byproducts nearly as quickly. So you do three or four sets of that, with the shorter rest period, 40 seconds in between. That 15 pound dumbbell is going to stimulate hypertrophy response. That's similar to heavy weight because of the waste buildup. So, occlusion training for rehab or preventing muscle loss, there's nothing because you get to use lightweight, but you'll get the effect of like doing a heavy weight.

0:41:30 - Speaker 1 So I also think injuries kind of they shine a light and other weaknesses or maybe other areas that you've been neglecting in your training. An example for me with this injury is what I've been doing is to just maintain strength on my left side is I've been doing a lot of farmer's carries. I've been doing a lot of just like grip training and just making sure that I can grab a dumbbell, a free weight, a kettlebell, whatever, and reduce injury potential as much as possible.

Again, should I, when I get back to that, position of loading it a lot, and so I've just been doing a lot of like single arm carries, farmer's carries, but like really focusing on grip strength, and it's really showing me like where maybe, okay, maybe it wasn't, maybe the injury site wasn't what was actually weak, it was another area in the chain.

0:42:13 - Speaker 2 Yeah, typically I mean look all injuries come from your body not being able to tolerate what's being asked of it. So, usually there's a break somewhere in the kinetic chain right and oftentimes, basically, you're not strong enough. That's the answer. But what does that mean?

0:42:29 - Speaker 1 Thanks, yeah, but what does that mean? Is that a general?

0:42:32 - Speaker 2 So it goes deeper. It's. It's literally like okay, you know, let's say you're real strong lower body, then you go to sprint, pull a hamstring. Your hamstring was not strong enough to support the power that you could generate. Right you. What happened to your arm? It couldn't support the rapid letting go and gripping of that kind of weight. Now, I don't know if you would have been prepared for that, because that seems like a freak accident, but that could be what the issue was, or, you know, maybe it was something else.

0:43:01 - Speaker 1 Or just don't train in the rain. Chase, that's right.

0:43:05 - Speaker 2 We'll leave it at that. Was it the supinated hand or the pronated hand?

0:43:07 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so whenever I go above three plates, three 15,. I supinate or I switch, so my left hand excuse me.

0:43:14 - Speaker 2 When you got an injured, it was supinated.

0:43:16 - Speaker 1 My left hand supinated when I go above three plates. So it's like this I would see, and that's the other thing.

0:43:20 - Speaker 2 So that's okay, but you are putting that arm.

0:43:22 - Speaker 1 I'm loading the bicep a lot more than the other side.

0:43:25 - Speaker 2 Just in a in a, in a more shortened position. It also can. It also can cause some asymmetry in your back just slightly. But if you train you get strong over time, you'll see it. So you know, I tell people to practice overhand hook grip which sucks, but I'm building back up. I'm building back up, but hook grip can help with the grip Like I could pull. You know I could probably pull within 20 pounds of my soup my alternate grip with a hook grip now, yeah, which is fine. Cause I never go.

0:43:50 - Speaker 1 I'm not ever pulling singles, except for super rare which is again, I think, an opportunity to kind of like rebuild and really go back to fundamentals, and I'm really focusing now. I don't think I'll go back to supinated at all. And so I'm going to, like you know, equilaterally have strength.

0:44:03 - Speaker 2 That's right, that's right. And then work on that Olympics. You know that hook grip where you wrap around the thumb and some people get really good at. I mean Lane pulls his record right weights with a double arm hand hook grip.

0:44:12 - Speaker 1 Yeah Well, kind of shifting gears a little bit out of the typical and obvious fitness stuff. Man, getting towards the end here you've kind of hit on it a little bit and it's. You know, we are human, we have a lot of unique variables that play into what works, what doesn't work, everything else that people might not think matters. And you talked about spirituality before you talked about prayer. Correct me if I'm wrong. It used to be atheist, right, and from hearing you talk and getting to know you more of the years, I've actually heard you say you're back in church for a couple of years now right.

How did that happen and why? And why is that important? No-transcript. What pulse can you put on to your fitness if you can say that your spiritual life, that you have one now, is creating?

0:45:00 - Speaker 2 Yeah, well, look first off the data is clear. This isn't me Telling you, just my experience. Whatever data is clear people who have a regular spiritual, religious practice Okay, who have a faith they're healthier, they live longer. They're less likely to be on antidepressants, less likely to get divorced, less likely to be on anti-anxiety medications independent of Religion.

Just, we're just saying they have a faith practice if it's a regular faith practice, they're, across the board, healthier. Wow. They're less likely to get in trouble. They're more likely to be successful. They're more so it is. That's the data.

Okay, so if we're gonna be arrogant and say there's no value there, well, I think that's exactly what it is. You're being arrogant. There's something there. Now you might not Need to believe in the metaphysical, and this is where I this is how I started for me. So I was atheist, but always on the pursuit of personal growth. That fitness is how it started. It's want to be a better person, whatever Atheist. But I couldn't argue with the data. There's something there. Is it the community aspect? Is it Social aspect? Like you know what's what's going on here. There, maybe, is some value. I'm also a big fan of economics and history and you know I remember I watched this video series, but with Milton Friedman called free to choose, and it dawned on me watching this like what a strange, not natural idea that we now take for granted, known as individual rights or liberty. That makes no logical sense for all the human history. If you're bigger and stronger than me, you could you tell me what to do? You control?

my conquer or you own me right, yeah, okay. Every corner of the world. This is just how it's always been. It's there. It's a crazy idea to say, hey, you over here and you that's disabled, and you that look like this and you woman and whatever. We all are born with what we would say here in the alieble rights.

So I got oh my god, that is such a wild like. Think of that all human history. And that's natural. If you and I, right now we're born and there were no rules or anything, that's how everything would be. So I said, and I knew where that came from. That came from the Judeo-Christian religion. There's some roots in Athens and philosophy, but ultimately it came from the idea that you know the Judeo-Christian Traditions were, you know, we all created in God's image. Therefore, okay, and by the way, people argue like, oh well, you know these, these countries also practiced slavery and they said, yes, this they did. But it was those, those beliefs, that are the reason why the West was the first countries to abolish slavery. There are the first countries to give women the right to vote. So it was not practice and I still don't think practice perfectly but it drove all these very non, you know obvious things that now we take for granted. So I said, okay, there's got to be wisdom.

0:47:52 - Speaker 1 And I also find I can just say real quick I think that's such a huge, that needs to be acknowledged. Yeah, because so many of us, we, we are so blinded by our own bias, yeah, we just Do not even acknowledge truth. That is before, or even an area that deserves to be explored more listen, we people will say science.

0:48:14 - Speaker 2 You know people who are like yes, I believe in science. Do you believe in evolution? Yes, I do. Ideas also have to pass the test of time. So if a religious practice has been around for 2000 years, has created some of the most equal and successful Successful societies not perfect, but way better than any that we have seen in history and All these people throughout all of history have said this is extremely valuable, and many of them say it's the most valuable thing to me. What kind of arrogant people are we to think that we know better or to at least not say there's something there, millions and billions and billions of people over thousands and thousands of years and it's produced these outcomes. There's something there, that's all. So that's where I was. Okay. There's probably some wisdom there. There's something there. I wasn't at the place at all where I was gonna take that leap of faith, that metaphysical aspect of it, the you're like, I love me.

0:49:10 - Speaker 1 Let me scratch this itch.

0:49:11 - Speaker 2 There's something there, yeah, let me learn from. Maybe there's just some spiritual truths I can learn and adopt, and so that's that's what opened me up. And once I opened up, I started becoming more and more, you know, privy to the wisdom that I was reading and the first thing that dawned on me, where there was, there are teachings in every major world religion that that seemed to coincide like Fasting. I'll use that one because we're, you know, fitness, right, fasting is present in every major world religion. That means there's some value there, there's some spiritual truth there, right? Yeah, you know, treating others as you'd like to be treated. That's one way that we say in the golden rule, that's common, a common theme in all these world religion is probably, it's probably something there.

Yeah, so, so anyway, that's got me to open my eyes. Then I started looking a little deeper and then you know, I said you know, we're a health and fitness podcast. There's obviously value here. I have a lot of questions. I would like to talk to somebody and interview them, for selfish reasons, but also because this is obviously part of health. So I had Bishop Aaron on the podcast.

0:50:13 - Speaker 1 Yeah, which you guys have had. He's been on a few times.

0:50:16 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and now the first episode with him was me genuinely asking questions. Wow, that was me like searching, like what's going on here, meeting him, meeting his team?

What a gift, oh, what an opportunity, oh, incredible Wow incredible, you know, and also I'm the kind of person that you have to. To get to me with that, you had to go through my intellect. Some people are through their feelings, other people through music, so it's a CS Lewis. I love his writing because he does that. So Bishop Aaron is very intelligent, very articulate. I love listening to those episodes so good so that first episode was me like really searching.

Met him and his team and they were just such good people. He was preaching to me, nobody was there was just such genuine, wonderful good because he had. They treated each other how they treated me. I just had this overwhelming feeling like these are just really nice. Met some guys and like, hey, how you doing that I met this guy is he's like, oh, I got five kids. He's like a young, like oh, my god, you got five kids. And he's like talking about them. And then you just get this great feeling. So I said, alright, this is pulling me, I'm gonna keep looking a little closer. Eventually I reached the point where it was like, okay, it's either believe or don't believe.

Wow but I got to the point where I said there's lots of wisdom here, whether I believe in God or not irrefutable.

0:51:28 - Speaker 1 Yeah, like this stuff here I can take home.

0:51:30 - Speaker 2 This is wisdom. Man, I'm stupid if I don't look into the wisdom. But again, at some point it was the question of like do you believe this? Do you believe in like? The ultimate part of this, and I had it. I took that leap of faith, wow yeah.

0:51:41 - Speaker 1 You know, I kind of I kind of blend in a lot of um spiritual, mental, emotional. Those Aspects of the human condition kind of blend over a lot for me and you know I grew up Southern Baptist, going to church. You know religion and God Christianity basically being. This is the way and I kind of struggle a bit with it.

I'm not fully wholeheartedly, just blindly accepting it. I'm young, you know, go through life, life happens. My dad gets sick ALS and one of the times I'm home on leave he falls out of his chair right. And he's physically incapable of picking himself up. My stepmom can't do it and I'm 18, 8, maybe 19 at this time Can't pick him up myself either.

I'm just I'm struggling so much to pick him up off the floor and I had this experience years later, kind of going through my own spiritual journey Mental health, emotional health and I traced back kind of to tie it all up here with, like fitness and the spiritual self. I trace back one of the biggest through lines of why Working out, why fitness why, particularly the deadlift, was such this like mountain that I had to climb, yeah because I was like, oh my god, every time I walk up to the bar I had this flashback of like wow, trying to pick up my dad again.

0:52:58 - Speaker 2 Yeah, trying to pick my dad again.

0:53:00 - Speaker 1 Yeah and I'm not saying you know that led me back to God, but it did open up this big can of worms for me of of Wisdom, yeah, of wisdom in the spiritual side of things that we can't explain like why do we do what we do? Yeah, we can't explain it like oh no, I just love working out. Like no, I couldn't pick up my dad. Yeah off the floor, yeah you know, I had that realization.

Last thing I'll say here is that once I kind of put two and two together there, hitting 500 would be really cool for me, but I just really don't care anymore.

0:53:27 - Speaker 2 Yeah.

0:53:27 - Speaker 1 I'm gonna take care of my body, but, like once, I connected those dots you saw, why I was such it it's, it's this bigger picture.

0:53:34 - Speaker 2 I don't think I've ever you tell a story that's.

0:53:36 - Speaker 1 I've said it a couple times yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty amazing. It makes a lot of sense.

0:53:40 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, you know, real atheists are More likely to become religious than people who are not really. Yeah, well, you're searching if you're an atheist, like a real atheist now, like, oh, I'm an atheist, but I was an atheist, but I wasn't an atheist just cuz whatever, I was an atheist, as I was like no, this is. I think there's no God. Because I've read this and I've seen this and I'm looking at this and I'm searching. This is important for me. So, you know, I don't know about you, but when I believe something, I don't just like, you know, I always want to confirm it and challenge it and solidify same yeah. So I was searching and that's where it led me. So that's why you know, like, if you're wrestling with it, I mean that's good, that's good.

0:54:22 - Speaker 1 If it's being in different, is where it's bad.

0:54:24 - Speaker 2 In fact, indifference is bad with any growth Right? If you're always searching for growth, I think you'll end up finding growth.

0:54:29 - Speaker 1 Well, so, man, I could sit here and talk to you for hours more, but I think what you just said is a great kind of segue into the last question. Okay, you've asked, you've answered before, but Sitting with it, I think what? Tell me back? What did you just say about that? I'm gonna try to get this quote right. Would you say?

0:54:44 - Speaker 2 sitting with it. If you're, if you're, if you're searching for growth, then you're gonna find it.

0:54:47 - Speaker 1 I don't remember what I said about sitting yes everybody just rewind, but I want to take that and apply it to that's what ever, for it is all about.

0:54:54 - Speaker 2 That's living a life ever for right about those two words, man, here one more time.

0:54:59 - Speaker 1 What do they mean to you when you hear that, what does that mean to you to live a life ever for?

0:55:02 - Speaker 2 it means the constant pursuit of being a better person. It's it's it's being Grateful and satisfied, but also Wanting to become better and grow. Not sitting still, but moving, moving forward in whatever way that looks to you.

0:55:23 - Speaker 1 Man, there's never a right or wrong answer. I got to go back and check, I think, the last two times that you've been on the show, and I'll compare notes. I'll put together a little coffee table book cool, awesome. But for anybody that doesn't know who you are, where can they go to check you out? Listen to your work, please do this guy's Fountain of information.

0:55:41 - Speaker 2 Thank you, it's just mind pump, mind pump podcast. You can find us on YouTube. You can find us on itunes, spotify, anywhere. You could watch us on YouTube or listen to us on on podcast platform.

0:55:50 - Speaker 1 And you guys definitely want to check out more of his content on the show. I'll make sure to link in the video notes the show notes. I think I think two times I've had you one. I believe, Adam had been on together with me and just I know back I've had all you guys on, I think twice before over the years.