Welcome to episode 78 of the Michaela Peterson podcast. This episode is featuring Sal from mind pump podcast. This was the first episode. I filmed when I got to Dubai and I had set up my podcast equipment, which is actually kind of complicated and Accord came loose and the camera didn't work and saw was very, very very very patient with me. I had them on because he's recently published a book called the resistance training Revolution. He was also one of the first podcast I ever did. We spoke about his experience growing a
cast and becoming quite successful online how to stay motivated to get fit sustainable discipline training and more, he has the number one Fitness podcast in the world. Remember to hit, subscribe if you enjoyed this content, this episode is brought to you by true local, TR you, local dot CA, it's where I get my meat. I've been into by not putting it in anybody's face. I'm actually pretty pleased to be here but I do miss the meat. I get from True. Local in Canada. It's hard to find me that isn't as a
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Sal. Welcome to my podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, happy to see you again.
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I was just saying off, are how it's been awesome? Watching.
Your your podcast do so well, it's pretty great.
Thank you very much. It's been a lot of hard work. We just spent 30 minutes fooling around with cameras but Saul was very patient and now I'm kind of sweaty and it's fine.
Yeah, don't worry about, you know, it's happened to us and and so I and they've given me Grace so I'm like okay if this ever happens someone else I'm going to make sure I am cool a box and how frustrating it is on the other end so don't worry.
Okay, Sal, if anybody doesn't know who you are, can you give a brief background about who you are? And what it is that you
do? Yes. So so I host, I'm one of the co-hosts of the Mind pump podcast so where the top fitness podcast in the world and before that, I was a trainer and a gym manager Fitness coach, and I did that for over two decades. And then recently, I just published a book called the resistance training, Revolution. Most people know me through the podcast, through my pump.
So is your podcast, the actual number one Fitness podcast? Or are you just one of those people that puts number one podcast in their Instagram bio?
Yeah, like when you go see when you go get coffee and it says the best coffee in the world? No, no, no. We are actually where I know where the the most one of the most downloaded generally speaking in the world. Definitely number one in the u.s. typically one of the top around the world but we consistently ranked round number one in fit.
On iTunes and Spotify. That's crazy. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's definitely a lot of fun. You know, when you listen to the show, you here are three trainers. We're not media personalities, and I guess we are now because we've been doing it for about six years, but we're three trainers who worked with people for, you know, decades. So what you hear is US, communicating Fitness through a lot of experience. So we talk about, you know, how what really works.
And how to apply what really works. And I think when you train people for, as long as we did, one of the main things that you learn is how to communicate what you're trying to communicate. That's very, very important. The information is out there. You can look it up online, how to lose weight, how to get fit all that stuff? But what you learn as a coach is, really how to communicate it and how to get people to the point where it becomes permanent. Because I know a lot of people have gotten fit and lost weight and done all that in the past, but the trouble is
Maintaining how do I stay, how do I, how do I develop a good relationship with Fitness and with nutrition. That'll last me forever. That's the challenge. And we figured out a few things working with you know I guess between the three of us probably thousands of people. So what you hear on the podcasts are just three non-media. People who've got a lot of experience so it's a very I guess I don't know real but I guess very effective people. It seems to resonate with a lot of people,
okay?
I've got a bunch of things I wanted to cover, but first off just building on that in your book, you cover discipline, and how people sometimes cycle between being super unhappy with their body and working out. And then being like, you know what, I'm just going to love myself anyway and then eating whatever they want and then just going through the cycle over and over again. So do you have any tricks for trying to maintain
discipline? Yeah. There's a couple false paradigms that have been pushed on us or advertise to us. I would say
Through the the fitness and health space, one of them is that what what is required for long-term success in Fitness or long-term success. With good nutrition is a high state of constant motivation and this is how they motivate to. This Is How They excuse me, advertise to your right? Get you hyped, get you motivated and this is how you're going to stay consistent. Well that's just that's just not true. Motivation is a state of mind and
And like all states of mind. It's not permanent. So there are times when we are motivated and I've never had to convince a client to eat right or exercise when they're motivated. It's actually quite easy. We've all been in that motivated state where everything comes easy want to do everything. It's one we're not motivated that it becomes a problem. So you see with most people's, if you are look at the average person's fitness journey. It's like this. It's this up and down. When I'm motivated. I'm consistent, I'm doing great when I'm not motivated. I'm not in the end. Result is
I've gone nowhere or even the slow backwards, crawl into worse and worse health and fitness. The reality is and it took me a long time to figure out McHale as a trainer I met. When I first became a trainer I thought motivation was key and I was the motivated. You know trainer I was the boot camp guy and I get people hyped and you know after about five years of doing that, I had an honest conversation with myself and you know, I said, you know, am I really helping anybody? I mean, yeah, people get in shape when they're working with me.
But are people staying this way forever. And the answer was no, I was failing most of the time and so I had to really change the way I approach it really. What you need to do is you need to stop focusing on that motivated state of mind and rather learn to develop the skill of discipline. In the great thing about discipline is exactly that it's a skill, it's something that you can build upon and the strategy looks, you know, the specifics are different from person to person but
Generally speaking, the way you build discipline is to start with an honest conversation with yourself. So you have to identify if you're in a motivated or non motivated state of mind but when you when you do this conversation because when you're in a motivated State of Mind, the stuff that you tend to commit to tends to be unrealistic. So to give an example, when a person would come hire me as a personal trainer, and personal training relatively expensive. So they'd come to me after probably thinking about it for a few months and they say, okay, I'm ready to die.
Ready to hire trainer. Here's $1,000. Let's do this, and it's okay. Well, how many days a week would you like to work out five days a week? I'll be your five days a week. You tell me what to do and I'll show up and it's okay. Well, what were you doing before? Like how many days a week? Have you been working out on your own o 0? I don't work out at all. When was the last time you worked out, five days a week, never or you know five years ago or ten years ago. So, it's okay. Let's see, let's start from here. How many days a week? Could you commit to? Now that, you know, you could stick to Forever.
So I would use that I would use the term forever and it would change the conversation and usually it would look like one day a week or two days a week. So the key is to start with a something that, you know, you can realistically do forever. But it still needs to be challenging, has to be somewhat challenging because otherwise it won't have any meaning. If it's too easy, then is it mean anything to you? So have that honest conversation. Okay. Can I do one day a week and can I stick to that?
Trevor realistically, even in unmotivated state of mind. And if the answer is, yes, okay, that's where you start. And then what you do is you start with that, all right? I'm going to do, you know, Mondays at whatever time. This is what I'm going to stick to and then just do that, just do that. And here's what will happen over time? It'll start to become something that becomes a regular part of your life and there may be some hiccups up and down, but for the most part, if you, if you're honest and you set a realistic goal, then eventually you'll get to the point where you say, you know what, I think I'd like to add another day a week.
And over time you build this kind of skill of discipline and I'll give you an example of what I mean because this is very individual from person to person. But I have this one client, I bring her up on the show often because it's one of my favorite examples but I I know I don't use a real name that hopefully she doesn't listen, but she was, I mean, one of the, one of the loved her, I love her to death but she started out as one of the, most unhealthy people I've ever met. She didn't drink water, okay. She literally had no water at all throughout the day. She drank Diet Coke. That's why that's how she got.
Fluid. I used to be me. Yeah,
really? Yeah, that way. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing else.
Just died. Diet. Ginger
ale. Oh man. So it's so we sat down and we did this and we set some realistic goals and what where we started was, literally one glass of water a day. This is where we started. That's that was the first place. Let's start with 1 glass of water a day and then the next thing we added she hated vegetables, right? So the next thing we added was one piece of broccoli a day. Well,
Way over the course of three years. She lost 30 pounds, she made, tremendous progress. And till this day, she still consistent but it would have never worked. If I had taken her from where she had started to, all right you going to work out me. Four days a week. Here's your meal plan. No more Diet Coke. You're going to just do everything all at once. She would have totally failed. So discipline is a skill, you practice it, you build it.
Over time. But discipline is what carries you through those times where you lack motivation which is the times when we tend to fail it's when we don't have that motivation so just just build it over time.
Yeah, that's great, small achievable goals so that you can have those small wins. But yeah, that makes sense. Absolutely
absolutely. And you know this you see this echoed in a lot of you know other fields but not so much in Fitness you know for some reason infant while I know why it's much sexier to sell the you know lose 30 pounds in 30 days you know message or here's your extreme crash way of getting where you want to go but
Fails it's totally not successful studies will show those you know except like 85% fail Ray and I would even argue that some of the people that are very consistent with the hardcore application of exercise and nutrition are unhealthy and other ways. They tend to be on that or thoracic. I would say side so but it's really Michaela. It's the only successful approach that I've seen that works long term except for maybe the occasional rare.
Tiffany that someone might have when I don't know, they have a heart attack or something and they, you know, they should either laugh. Boo, the life flash before their eyes and then they do change everything. But I've seen that happen. I think one time everybody else. It's got to be through the application of developing. The skill of discipline.
I feel like that's kind of the category. I fell into with diet,
you just went too far.
Yeah, it's just like I'm gonna die Roxton and then yeah. And then every time I tried to cheat I just got walloped with symptoms. So it was like even though I tried to cheat as like no Wham, no Wham. So,
yeah, you know, it's you're a great example of another thing that that I communicate in the book and something that we communicate on the podcast which is to focus on health rather than on Aesthetics or
Parents and what I mean by that is you know in our space and Myspace. So much of what we do is focused on how we look so you know I want to work out so I can look good. I want a diet so I can look good and we were very focused on the mirror and the problem with that is when you're chasing appearance more often than not, you start to lose your health and then you lose your appearance when you chase Health when you go after the health,
'The, I'm eating in a way to make myself healthier in a real way. I'm exercising a way to make my body and myself feel better in a real way, you get a great deal of health. And then the byproduct, the side effect of that is you look phenomenal. You're an exhibit is a great example of that. I know you change your diet because you were focused on your health.
But I changed my diet because I because I had this rash that was some sorry to ruin this. But I had this rash and it started getting on my face and I was like, I can't look like
Best anymore. So it wasn't even for like what drove me over the edge it was health because you know rashes our health but it was like it was vanity. The fact that it helped with arthritis and depression was a total by product and then it also made me look better but it was pure like this rash is got to go. Sorry. Tell
what thanks for ruining what I'm trying. But yeah, for most people I mean I we try to communicate that because if you make decisions based off of Health, you tend to make the best.
Asians or better decisions than if it was just for, you know, for
appearance.
Yeah, fair enough. Do you think the type of person do you think it depends? What type of person you are for? For how easy discipline is like, conscientiousness is. Got to play a role there. Some people have got to have it
easier. Yeah, I do. But I also think, you know, I'll use the example of, you know, maybe athletic ability. There's a, I'm sure. I know there's a genetic range of gifts for athletic ability. You know, you have like, Michael Jordan over here and then you have, you know, maybe someone
Here who can barely, you know, walk without stumbling. I'm sure there's a there's a genetic range of natural, you know, ability to develop discipline. But that being said, everybody can build upon the skill of discipline and wherever you end up with Pat was far better than where you're beginning at. So and I, you know, I I do try to tell people to not focus so much on, you know, on the, on the things that you can't control. I think that's a losing game, you know.
It's like you know, if I'm if I'm trying to build muscle like and I look at a bodybuilder I'll never build as much muscle, is that bodybuilder? I'll never be as strong as that athlete. Well, you know, so what there's you have your own potential and you're probably not reaching your own potential as focus on
that.
Yeah, I quit playing piano when I was in grade 6 because I figured out YouTube, you know, in the internet and I saw all these tiny like three year old Asian children just nailing Mozart and I was just like, that's it. I'm done. I've never going to be even close to that and they're three and I'm 12, which was a mistake because I was actually pretty good at piano. But yeah, don't do that. It's about it.
Yeah. Yeah. What are they saying? Comparison is the thief of
joy.
yeah, but it's also at least for me I find it's also what encourages me to grow
So It's tricky because you can't compare yourself to something that's absolutely unachievable but that is kind of like I find that this is super unhealthy but I'll follow maybe I should not do this II follow. These really fit women on Instagram just to make myself like feel slightly worse about how I am to encourage myself to exercise more. So you don't encourage that kind of thing.
It depends right.
I think the were we naturally compare ourselves to other people and especially to our, you know, I think to ourselves how good we did before versus how we're good. We're doing now, I think, if it becomes your identity, then you might have a problem. So, in other words, you know, if I'm looking at, if I'm comparing myself to someone who say is a better podcaster than I am and I'm saying OK I want to improve my skills by that person's really good speaker. They really communicate well and I want to get better. That's different than saying
While there's so much better than I am, I'm garbage, you know, I'm not worried. I'm terrible. I suck. I'm not a good person. I think that's where the trouble begins. So, like, when girls, for example, compare themselves to Bodies online, it very quickly, oftentimes turns into that, you
know.
Plus a lot of them aren't real which is the shitty thing about Instagram. That's the problem with actually following influencers, especially women on Instagram is a lot of their bodies are just not real. They're just edited
it, they are. And I'll tell you what, I'm in the fitness space, okay? I meet a lot of these Fitness influencers and whatever perfect bodies. And so, I have also trained, lots of Everyday People right. There are far more poor relationships with diet.
And Body Image issues in the fitness space, especially the fitness influence our space. Then there is in the general population. So when I train General Pop, there's food issues, you deal with food. Everybody has some kind of, you know, food issue. It's just the way our society's, kind of I guess our culture is. But in the fitness space, in the health space especially the in the influencer space, extreme problems, Big Time problems fanatical issues. You know they may they may eat the perfect amount of calories and macros.
But they're obsessed and they, they don't have good relationships with people and they're very, very insecure. So, you gotta, you know, I think we're comparing ourselves to this perfect picture and then we paint them as also, these perfect people, but it's not what it, what it seems
do you think that's partly because of just, how many followers people have and how many eyes they have on them or do you think it's the type of person that just becomes a fitness influencer?
I think. They're, they're really good.
Good at getting at advertising themselves because that's kind of what it is. It's kind of like you're advertising. So they're really good at that and they're really good at painting and narrative. So just remember that you know, it's almost like social media is relatively new but you know, it's like it's like commercials. Like when commercials first came out, I'm I can only imagine that, you know, the first people to watch commercials were like, oh wow. This commercial says that this soap is
The most out of soap that there is I'm going to buy. This is totally true. And then when I was a kid you know in the 80s and 90s by that point, everybody's I add are all full of crap. It's just you know, nothing's the they're all lying, its all advertising. I think social media is like that. I think a lot of people are still being tricked but I think at some point we're all going to get to that point but like, oh, it's it's all marketing. It's all, it's not real.
Yeah, I wonder if younger, people have an easier time with
it, I don't know. It's, it's a, it's a good question.
Shit, I don't know, I see more, especially in the fitness space, I see more younger people, confusing followers and attention with real, I guess, friendships and relationships. So and I have I have a 15 year old son at 11 year old daughter. So it's a little bit concerning to me that it might replace real relationships or there's that kind of that that potential there.
But I don't know. It's new so I don't
know.
Are you doing anything to monitor your kids social media use? Like are they allowed on Instagram and Facebook? I'll it's also it's been covid to. So people are isolated in their naturally, gravitating towards something, that's already addictive. But what are you doing there? Yeah, okay, no
no, my my son is on no, he's on no social media, but he does go on read it and he does do YouTube and I do tell him that, you know, we do have conversations about the stuff my daughter she's not on
She's only 11 so she's not really on much of it. My wife is off all social media, she turned it all off, as if she was already kind of teetering and then the election season happened and she was like, all right this is just toxic so she's off, she's completely off everything. I'm on social media as because my business and to be quite honest with you, if I didn't have my business, I don't think I'd be on there. I really don't.
Wow.
You're like unicorns, most people are on social media, it's you happy wife, happy
happier. Now that she's off for sure. Totally, it's weird. You know, it's who was I having this conversation with Arthur? Brooks Arthur? I was talking to Arthur. Brooks real smart guy love him. He's a expert on happiness and we were talking about how its it amplifies mob mentality.
Social media. So it's like fear, you know, explodes and rumor explodes. And the News cycle is even more in-your-face 24 hours a day, which, you know, it's like, it's okay. It's great to be informed, but not to the point where I'm like, terrified of stuff that's happening, you know, hundreds of thousands of miles, of thousands of miles away or whatever, hundreds of miles away. So, yeah, I don't know. I think, like I said,
Said, if I was off, if I didn't do this business, I think I would just turn it off for the most part and but then again, you know, I grew up without social media so I don't know. I don't know how easy that would be for for someone who's, you know, 10 years younger than
me.
Yeah, I've no idea, I'm kind of torn about what to do with social media. With Scarlett, I have an Instagram account for her already, but he's arrived at and it's just, well, it's for family, I upload pictures to it so that they can see her.
So I don't know if that's evil or not, I was already uploading pictures to a different platform online and it sucked. So I switched over to Instagram because it was better but we'll see how that works out. Okay. Switching directions. I want to pick your brain for a for, as much time as we have left. Okay. Do you do fasted exercise, or do you recommend eating first or does it matter
very? This is a very individual thing. So there's a, there's a variance here. Some people work.
Out better or feel better when the exercise in a fasted State other people, notice that they get a little dizzy or woozy or they don't perform as well. Now studies do show athletes do perform better when they've had like a carbohydrate protein meal about two or three hours before their performance or whatever. But I've noticed as a trainer, there's an individual variance. I personally
I do great fasted. I work out in the morning and I don't eat anything before I work out and I feel best when I do it that way. So and again we're splitting hair so you know the studies that talk about athletes performing better, you know if you're not competing in a Spore or you're not trying to hit your PR or whatever and you feel better waking up in the morning and having some coffee and then doing your training, just do it. I think we tend to get caught up on the in these nuanced differences when it comes to Fitness and we
About the big thing, which is how do you feel like what works better for you?
Okay, next question. If you have an injury on one side of your body and you're trying and it's healed and you're trying to regain strength, is it better to do even sided exercise or should you isolate?
Each side. So you do the amount. Same amount of exercise. That question make sense? Or do I need to
know? I think I know what you mean. So in other words, let's say I injured my right shoulder and now it's healed, and I'm ready to start training it again. Should I do isolation on my right? And then
to catch up? Yeah, to kind of catch up the Lost strength.
Yeah, so two things. This is actually kind of interesting. The belief used to be or I guess the if you will the common knowledge or bro, belief or whatever was if you have an injury
On one side, don't train. You know, let's say I hurt my right knee. Don't train the left leg because then it'll go way past the right leg and they'll have this huge imbalance studies actually show. Well, here's what's interesting studies, actually show that. If you train the good side, you lose less muscle on the injured side which is kind of interesting. So continue to train all the parts of your body that are working. It'll actually minimize the muscle and strength loss in the injured. Part muscle memory is a real thing. So when you are able to train
that muscle and strength that you had before comes back very, very quickly. So to give you an example. Let's say, it took you six months to gain 10 pounds of muscle and then you lose that 10 pounds of muscle due to an injury, it will take you a month to gain it back. So it's not going to it's won't take nearly as long as it did the first time. Now, to answer your question, specifically you're better off doing unilateral exercises, you are. Yeah. So what you want to do is if
Want to balance out faster. I suggest using the weak side as your guide, so if I can only do 10 pounds with my right arm, then I'll do 10 pounds. With my left arm, wait for it to catch up which actually happens pretty quickly. And then go back to your regular training.
Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I'm just using you to figure out how to retrain my left. Broken leg with my stupid
ankle. Is it bad? Is it back? Are you able to train
again?
I am, it took it took a year and a half for the swelling to go down in my ankle after I had it. Replaced the second time a year and a half, it was like, feet are a pain because I guess they're at the bottom of your body. It's still larger. But so, actually, I don't even know, but it's working really well now compared to how it was before I. So I'm going back to the gym, which is exciting.
Oh, good deal. Yeah, I would do balance and stability exercises for that leg.
Doing those things I don't know, balancing exercises for like my entire life, stupid leg. I want to do Romanian deadlifts.
Well, okay, so here you go. Do the balance stuff at the beginning of the workout and then do your Romanian deadlifts. So do 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes of that single leg stuff and then go right into your unilateral exercises, you'll be fine.
Okay, cool. Great, that answers, that question, can I ask you some business questions to sure. Okay, how did you guys start mine pump? When did that start first? And how did that start?
So, we started that six about six years ago. So I met Adam, who's my co-host, what we all. We all came from kind of the similar from the same industry and we all started at in one Jim organization. So we were all top
As if you will a 24 Hour Fitness. So I knew of him but we've never met before anyway about six or seven years ago him and I start connecting through social media through bully of all things cannabis. He had actually left the fitness space and started some of the first cannabis dispensaries here in San Jose. At the time, I had a family friend who was fighting cancer. So I do a lot of research on alternative treatments and ways to help her through chemo.
Whoa. And so we met through that and started talking and then we started talking about Fitness, I had created a fitness program that we were going to Market online this and when I say we it was dug my producer him and I were actually Partners at the time, sent it over to Adam and said, hey what do you think about this? He loved it and we got on the phone and decided let's start a podcast. He brought Justin who's my other co-host, they were partners and the idea was to start a podcast in the fitness.
Ace communicate, just like we communicate to our clients, make it fun and entertaining. Just like we do with our clients because you want people to enjoy listening to you, you'll reach more people that way and the goal was, let's see what happens. So we started the podcast and we for a full year, we didn't monetize anything. We just watched our audience grow getting feedback and we started to get it. A lot of people asking us how they could support us, you know?
How can I support you guys? Can you guys go on patreon? Can You guys sell t-shirts? Like what can we do to help you guys at? And so at that point, we knew we were providing enough value to turn it into a business and then we sold our first online fitness program which is Maps. Anabolic. I was a program that I had created and we monetized. And shortly after that, we basically quit our day jobs and did it full time and never
look back.
Damn, that's so cool.
Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's been a lot of fun.
Yeah, that is fun. Okay good I'm keeping tabs taking notes. Okay, how do you feel actually? Let's do this one. Instead, what are the effects that you know, of stress on the
body?
So stress is an interesting one, right? Stress is necessary to elicit adaptations in the body physically, but also emotionally and mentally. Without stress, we tend to stay in our comfort zone and so does the body, right? So what when we're trying to improve our fitness build strength burn, body fat, improve, our stamina endurance, flexibility, whatever you have to give your body a reason to use resources to.
To to adapt to get your body to improve Any, Which Way, when any of those ways that, you know, I talked about, and in order to do that, you actually have to stress the body a little bit. So it's really no different than like your skin tanning. When you go out in the sun, right? You go out in the sun, the UV rays, stress the skin a little bit and the skin, then your body says, okay? Let's darken to protect ourselves from further stress. Well, that's what happens when your body get stronger for example. So stress is a good thing when it's appropriate. Now, when stress
S. Overcomes your body's ability to adapt, then your body's only worried about healing and it starts to put everything else on the back burner. So to use the example of exercise, let's say I go to the gym and I work out and I'm trying to, let's say, improve the shape and strength of my legs. So I trained them really hard. I think to myself the harder, I train them, the faster, they'll progress. The problem is, I've gone too.
Bard. And I've exceeded my individual body's ability to adapt. Well, now my body's not worried about adapting. It just wants to heal. So what it ends up looking like, is I work out hard, I get really sore, I heal, I go back to the gym. I work out. I got really sore, I heal, and I never improve. I never get stronger. I never noticed the, I never improve the shape of my legs. Essentially I'm stuck on this. What's, you know, this kind of
Every break down cycle, this, this trap. So stress is a good thing when it's appropriate when it's, when it exceeds your body's ability to adapt, then it can start to. Cause a lot of problems that being said your body gets stressed for many, many different things. So, generally speaking, you want to maybe imagine you have a stress bucket. And when that overflows, that's it, your body can adapt anymore. And what goes in that stress bucket?
Argument with your spouse goes in there, not sleeping enough back goes in there. Poor diet that goes in there. I worked out that goes in there. You know, my kid is, you know, being a pain or whatever that goes in there. So all the that stress goes in there. And when you're overflowing, you add more stress to that, you're not going to get any, you're not going to get anywhere any faster. So let's say your bucket is already at the brim because
you know you got a newborn at home, you're not getting a lot of sleep as a result, your diets bad and you're so your stress buckets, like up here and you're like I'm going to work out real hard. That's going to get me you know I'm going to get more fit. No it's not actually you're going to make yourself much worse off. So this is a very individual thing. You cannot, you can improve your body's ability to withstand certain amounts of stress, you know? Like as your body adapts, for example, and becomes more resilient
To physical stress, then you can handle more of it. You know, if you took someone that was completely inactive, then 10 repetitions of bodyweight squats. Might be the limit of physical stress for their lower body, but if you've been training for a long time, then you could do much more. So you can in, you can train your body to, to be able to handle more stress. But this is something that you have to assess for yourself, and you have to be quite honest and in my space.
And the fitness space. I see a lot of people just over, do it all the time, especially women, I see women over, do it quite a bit in the pursuit of looking better, and they can't figure out why their body is so stubborn. Why is it holding on to this last 10 pounds of body fat? Why is my skin, not looking good? Why am I sleeping? Why is my sleep poor? You know why is my libido low? I'm you know, I'm running everyday, I'm lifting weights all the time and I'm on 1200 calories a day. Why
Cycle. You're just your body's overwhelmed. Let's back off and give your body inability to give your body. The capacity at least at the space to adapt. Then you start to see them improve quite a bit. So this is something that you have to identify for yourself. If you don't and you're going to be in trouble and I'd say as a trainer I used to communicate this to my clients all the time. It's better to err on the side of too little than too much. If you apply, if you overdo it, you've got a
It's harder to backtrack. Now you got to let your body rest and depending how bad it is. It might take you months to get out of that hole. It's better to do too little and then slowly ramp up and have your body start to catch up.
Okay, so your book, you talk about 60 Minutes a week being being enough to antique to be anti-aging and just to be to be able to grow muscle. So, is that true?
Yeah, so now we have to look at the context of what I'm talking about here. So I'm in the book, I in the, the title is the resistance training, Revolution. The reason why I put revolution in there is because I'm trying to
Change the, the Paradigm around around Fitness, in particular, for the average person who lives in a modern society, okay? So let's look at the context first before we get into what you're talking about. So, modern life is very sedentary, right? So we've done a really good job of making life physically easy, so we don't move much. In fact, the average person walks so little throughout the day that if they just walked four.
About 45 minutes to an hour. They would double the amount of steps that they took all day long. So that's how little we end up moving. So very, very very sanitary but simultaneously very busy. Our schedules are packed all the time. You know we kids bring the kids here got work, got to do dinner. Got a. So we just kind of pack our schedules with and then the little bit of time that we have in the middle we sketch. We tended you know Smash in more distractions or whatever. So very busy very sedentary. We're also surrounded by
Why hyper palatable easily accessible heavily processed foods today? The average Americans diet is generally about 70 to 80% heavily processed foods. Now, you know, why is that an issue generally speaking? There's and there's a lot of, there's a lot of issues, there's a lot more issues than what I'm going to say. But generally speaking heavily, processed highly, palatable Foods makes us overeat. They're just, they're designed to do that.
Some really, really good studies that have been done on heavily processed foods. And they show that when you eat a lot. When you, when your diet is comprised of heavily processed foods, you will naturally eat about 5 to 600 more calories a day. So we have a diet that makes us one eat more or a lot. We don't move much and we're very busy. So, that's the context, right? So what is the best form of exercise in that context? Well, the original Paradigm where I'd say the most popular,
And I'm around Fitness is burn calories. Okay, that's what you. That's what you want to do. When you workout, you want to burn as many calories as possible and and its face value. This makes sense weight loss and most people are dealing with with weight that they want to lose. That's the most common goal weight loss. Happens from an energy imbalance. Okay so that means that, you know, if I'm taking in so many calories I have to burn more calories in order to lose weight or take in less calories and burning. If that energy imbalance doesn't happen, then weight loss
It doesn't occur. It's just, it's a law of thermodynamics now. There's a lot more detail that goes into it and there's a lot of individual variances in terms of what people should eat, but that one general rule is true. You burn more calories, you take in and you lose weight, you know, burn less calories and taken and you gain weight. So our thought was, let's just move. We work out for an hour. Let's pick the form of exercise. That burns the most calories. That'll be the most effective way to work out. Well, it's not
Not it's actually a terrible Paradigm around Fitness and here's why number one. If you exercise intensely for an hour and I mean until you pick the calorie burning form of exercise running, I'm going to go run because that burns the most calories. You're lucky if you burn about four to five hundred calories in that hour. Now I know treadmills will say you burn 800 calories, whatever they're lying. They're trying to get you to use their cardio. The truth is the average person will burn for to 500 calories and a full hour of
Vascular hard cardiovascular activity. Now four to five hundred calories isn't much. I can I can eat that in 15 minutes. I could drink that in five minutes. No problem. Here's the other problem with that I have to do it every single day. If I don't do that hour of intense activity, I'm not burning an additional four to five hundred calories. Here's another problem exercise isn't just calorie burn. It's also telling your body to adapt and get better at what.
What you're doing. Okay. So when I'm doing lots of cardiovascular exercise, okay yeah. What I'm telling my body to do is to improve its endurance, which requires very little muscle, doesn't need lots of strength. In fact is a require much strength that all needs lots of stamina, but it's also telling my body to become efficient, become more efficient become more efficient over time, you actually burn less and less calories doing that form of X activity. And in fact, if when you look at studies of people who do this,
When they look at their entire day, they stopped burning extra calories. Your body fight is a really, really good at becoming more efficient. And there's some really good studies on Modern hunter gatherers where they find that, they don't burn that many more calories in the average Westerner because it's it made its evolutionarily speaking. It makes perfect sense. Yeah. So think about it, this way, if you lived in the wild and you're, you know, a hunter-gatherer and you're moving all the time, right? You're chasing down your food and your Gathering. It doesn't make any
See sense for your body to burn. 6,000 calories a day. Be very hard for you to find 6,000 calories. Support yourself. Yes. Your body. Just learns to become more efficient. And so what it looks like when you do lots of cardio or lots of exercise to burn calories to lose weight, is you initially lose weight. And then you plateau real hard. And then you're doing an hour of exercise every day to maintain it. Which maintained that little bit of weight loss, which is unrealistic for most people. It's just, it's just most, people are not going to be consistent with structured exercise.
Single day, just not, we just need to be honest. So what we need to do is shift our Paradigm a little bit and look at exercises away to, to get our bodies to adapt in ways that are favorable. Okay? So let's look at resistance, training, lifting, weights using resistance bands using our body weight. In other words, using resistance in a way to build strength and muscle, what is the adaptation that happens from that we build strength, we build muscle, we speed up the metabolism. So we actually tell the body,
D to burn more calories as a side, effect of getting stronger and building muscle. If you build muscle, if you train your body to get stronger, your body's tendency is to burn more calories, more muscle burns more calories, but your body also becomes less efficient with calories as you start to Trend towards getting stronger. This is why, you know somebody who's you know 5 pounds heavier with more lean body mass who trains for strength is going to burn, maybe 200 more calories a day, every single day than
Who's not so resistance training Bert teaches your body to burn more calories. You see the good part about it. You don't need to do resistance training every single day to do this. For most people a couple days a week of resistance training, the average person is going to build muscle is going to build strength. So long as it's done appropriately and will result in a positive effect on the metabolism. So now you end up with the metabolism, that burns more calories on its own.
And you've also had a little bit more muscle on your body, which is very protective to the body protective tool to, you know, in the context of being an active protective with, you know, insulin resistance, diabetes Alzheimer's. So, we just need to shift our Paradigm because right now if the average person thinks to themselves I'm going to start you know let's say the average person goes to the doctor and the doctor says your blood pressure is a little high. You need to lose about 20 pounds.
You should go start exercising. The average person will say think to themselves. You know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go jump on the stationary bike. Roma, go to get on the treadmill. The average person doesn't think they're going to grab a pair of dumbbells or go do some resistance training that needs to change because resistance training is far more effective again considering the context of Modern Life.
That's really interesting. And totally makes
sense. Yes. And I'll tell you, when, you know, I had tremendous as the main still, with our podcast, we have tremendous success, teaching people. This this in part of the reason why this message hasn't really been effectively communicated is because resistance training is, you know, very stereotyped. Now when I say, I mean, definitely with women. But even with men, you know, you get the average man that just wants to lose weight. If I tell him you should go. Do you read?
Just trying to lift weights, oftentimes I'll get the reply. Oh, I don't want to get big, that's not my goal. I just want to lose a little bit of weight and get more healthy. Got to be from women, especially from women, especially in fact. In fact, women have suffered the most from the, the way that the fitness industry is advertised to them. Now, luckily, more and more women are starting to see the benefits of proper resistance training are starting to do it. I mean, when I started as a trainer in gyms in the late 90s you didn't see very many women at all.
Working out in the, in the weight area. Now you see quite a bit more but still, women are still advertised not to lift heavy weights to do High Reps to do circuits, essentially do cardio with weights because it builds, you know, bulky muscles, and it'll make you look, you know, way you don't want to look which is totally false. The way most women want to look is much. You can accomplish it much faster and more effectively through resistance training. So that's really the message of the book. My goal is to get people
To look at resistance training as the primary form of exercise that they engage in. And by the way, I'm not saying that are benefits to other forms of exercise. I think a well-rounded routine will give you the best overall health results, but knowing the average person is not going to do more consistently. They're not going to consistently work out more than two or three days a week. You know, most people are not going to do multiple forms of exercise. Most people want to lose weight. Most people want to improve how they look and how they feel, improve the hormone progesterone.
profile, you know, maintain it or whatever, for those people, you're only going to pick one form of exercise pick resistance
training
Okay. Okay. And if you're optimally trying to grow muscle in a short period of time is working out, more doing more resistance training, more helpful like is doing five days a week like logically that's going to grow muscle faster than doing it two or three times. Even though in the long run, you're probably not going to continue doing
that, it depends. No, it depends on the person. The, when you're when we're talking about resistance training and we're trying to, again, we're focusing on the
The adaptations that promotes the appropriate dose will get you there faster. So, less than the appropriate dose will get either slower, more than the appropriate. Dose will get you there. Slower, the right dose will get you there, the fastest. So, if I'm taking somebody who is, you know, they're not Fitness Fanatics, maybe they'll work out here and there, but they're not like super in the gym all the time and they want to get there and they want to get their effectively.
Oh my gosh, two days a week done properly. That's probably appropriate. That will probably get you there. The fastest, I mean, it's funny. You say that, you know, my producer Doug, I met him because he was a client and he came to me with experience working out five days a week, and six days a week and following all these routines. And I brought him down to two days a week and in his late 40s, got in the best shape of his life doing that. So, and I mean, that's very common, right? Very common for us to think if some is good, more is better.
This is not true with any form of exercise, but especially with resistance
training,
Wow, that's really good news. Is that that's, that's really good news. So is that like two hours in the gym, twice a week or your book? You talk about the 60-minute thing. So why why where's the 60-minute thing coming from?
So, for the average person who is not really exercising, consistently to 30 minute workouts of proper appropriate, resistance training will reap them phenomenal. Phenomenal results will get them. Great results. Now, at some point,
Point if they're very consistent and they've been doing that for a year and they feel great at some point, they'll need to increase that in order to to get their body to progress any further. But most people, you know, to 30-minute like I said, appropriately done resistance training workouts will get them there, we'll get them pretty
far.
Wow. Okay, that's very cool. I need to go back on something I said, so I made a self-deprecating joke at the beginning of the episode about the rash on my face. Yes. That is what initially started my research. But as soon as I connected it to the autoimmune portion, I went like full head speed into overall General Health, so that wasn't exactly true. But it is what initially started at was rash. On the face
appearance in Aesthetics is what always?
Gets people initially there, but the only way to stay there, consistently is to do it through health because health is Self Care. Health is truly caring for yourself and that feels good when it's always and forever about appearance it. That's when you start, that's when you get the person who says, you know, you talk to your friend, you're like, hey, are you still working out? Like what's going on now? I stopped working out. I stopped the diet thing. Well, how come? Because I just want to enjoy life.
You know, like what are you okay? Yeah and that's because you hated it because it was always focused on appearance when you're focused on health, it's great. You are enjoying your life and of course, and here's the other thing, you are more likely to make decisions that are that are good. You know, I'll give you an example, okay. If you're always like, oh, my belly's disgusting, I'm fat. I need to get this fat off. Hate the way I look. I need to whatever and then you start working out, you start dieting or whatever and you're really
Because you're motivating yourself through that that Paradigm or whatever and then I don't know, you fall off the wagon you know you go out with your friends. You have pizza, you had a burrito whatever. Then the next day you wake up and you're like I can't believe I did that. I'm so disgusting. I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to, I'm going to sweat it out. I'm gonna beat myself up, right? So you start treating exercise, like a like a punishment, the person who's focused on health, might say something like a man. Yesterday, I ate some things and I can feel in my body they're not really
Didn't really do myself that good. So I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to take care of myself and I don't feel very good right now. So I'm going to stretch, I'm gonna go easy. I need to, you know, care for myself or or they may say, wow yesterday, I know, I hate that burrito on that pizza, but I had a great time with my friends. We really connected that was awesome. But, you know, today I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to, I'm going to exercise and I can't wait to do that again in four or five weeks when I see them. Again, it's totally different and it's much it's going to your
The result in the irony of that is the Aesthetics or the appearance. The results are far superior over the Long Haul by focusing on your health. So and I need that's what you were doing.
Yeah, that is what I was doing. I just sell to you self-deprecating humor constantly. Probably too much. Okay I have like I just have a few more questions. Sure. If you if you had to tell people to use one type of like weightlifting
An exercise. If you choose or like top to what would they be?
Oh man. That's hard. That's gonna be real hard to pick just to I mean I could give you let me give you let me give you some of the best exercises and then tell you kind of what they do, right? So a squat is one of the best exercises you could do. It's a it's a foundational human movement. If you can squat. Well then you can, you've got decent movement from a
Foreman standpoint, the carryovers huge. So you get good at squats. You tend to get better at other stuff. It builds. Good muscle. It does work. The entire lower body with some upper body activation. It's hard to compare to a squad to have any other exercise really in the same category as a squad. And this is all squat. So body weight, squats, all the way up to barbell squats and overhead press is a great exercise. It another fundamental human movement. Reaching up over head.
Ed working on shoulder Mobility. We tend to lose that as we get older. So I, you know, towards the end of my career, I trained a lot of people in advanced age, and many of them could not fully extend, their arm above their head because they had lost that ability.
Oh yeah. That's what that's from
okay. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a really really it's really great for the upper body for the shoulders for the upper back, the arms some kind of a pushing movement horizontal so it could be a bench. Press could be a push-up is going to be really good. Some kind of a row.
Is going to be really good helps work on posture and really help strengthen the muscles that we are. We tend to have that are really weak nowadays due to working on computers, and, you know, being on our phones. You see a lot of forward shoulder posture. You see that in kids nowadays, so, some kind of a proper row, so it could be a barbell row, a dumbbell row, a cable route, can be a band, row will be really good, so I those exercises are probably up near the top and then for your
Your core, you know, a proper physio ball, crunch or some stabilization like a like a proper plank. I say proper because most people do it wrong is going to be good for for core strengthening and stabilization. You know, here's the thing too. I think there's a misconception is around resistance training that you need to do like 5 million different varieties of exercises. You actually don't. If you just got good at those, I think most people would be happy with their, with their, the progress in
the
Okay, that was great. What happens if you can't Squad? Can you replace that with glute Bridges or something?
Yes, you can. So I'm assuming you're asking for yourself because you're limited income Mobility. Yeah. So that's
why I use this podcast is just just to learn things for me.
No, no, that's great. So if you have limited ankle Mobility, you could do. You could try variations of lunges that limit the ankle, you know, ankle extension and flexion you could try, you know?
Step up. So you could try machines. This is where machines come in handy leg presses where your legs are real high on the platform, might limit some of that ankle, you know, like I said, ankle flexion extension hip thrusts are perfectly fine for the What's called the posterior chain, the glutes, and the hamstrings. So yeah, absolutely. And your case obviously is not the majority, but in your case, you know, if I was your trainer we would assess and then we would come up with some good
alternatives.
Okay, thank you. Your cell. If people don't follow you, where the can they find you online?
So you obviously can find me through the podcast, which is mine pump. If you want to check out the book that is going to be coming out soon, you can go to the resistance training Revolution.com and then if you want, you can find me personally on Instagram at mine, pumps. Al
I would also recommend checking out the program and I will link the program below and the book and your social is for people interested. Thank you very much for coming on. Sorry, there was a huge delay and a camera switch.
Yeah, no problem. And again, as I guess, I appreciate you, I appreciate what you're doing. So this is fun.
Anyway,
Thank you. We'll talk again soon. Okay.
