What is going on, guys? Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is episode one hundred eighty seven and this is our twenty twenty five rendition of our April Instagram Q &A. It's pretty wild that I have to start really providing details because this is probably the fourth or fifth April Q &A we've done, at least the fourth, I would say. um So pretty wild. Now we have a bunch of good questions, as always, some ones that I'm really, really excited to dive into before we jump into that, as always. What's going on, Brian? Yeah, man, super quick updates today. We have a bunch of awesome questions. But for me, I'm heading out on my annual mountain biking trip with the guys to Western Colorado on Thursday. So by the time this episode comes out, I will have already finished my bike trip. So uh it was awesome. Anyways, just kidding. But yeah, really excited for the trip. The the bros all go hang out, drink a few beers, uh bike a lot. And uh it's always warm out there in the desert. So Uh, really excited for this trip. Always look forward to it every year. Um, leading into my next update. I haven't been able to lift for the last four days. And even before that, it's been like maybe two days the prior week because both my kids got injured this week and ended up in the ER. Um, Bryson broke his arm while wrist, I guess we were out biking, um, last Sunday. So I guess it would be like nine days ago now and I was on one side of the bike park with Viv. Uh, she was on her little teeny bike, just doing easy stuff. And I send Bryson off and he's like seven and a half now. So I'm like, all right, dude, go check in with me every 10 to 15 minutes. just go have fun, come back, check in, et cetera. We have a, we have a pattern. We've been doing this for, for a while. And, uh, he didn't come back in 10 or 15 minutes. And so I'm kind of walking around, like looking at my watch, like, what do I do? Do I grab Viv and like, go to where I think he is? Like, I don't know exactly where he is. It's a pretty big bike park. And then right as I'm kind of ruminating on this, some lady rides up and goes, Hey, do you have a seven and a half year old son who's out biking right now? And I was like, yes. And she was like, he just sent me to come get you. He's injured. I was like, great. Exactly what a parent wants to hear. So I like sprint over across the bike park. It's probably somewhere between a quarter and a half mile. And, uh, the, uh, the bike lady. grabs Viv and kind of slowly walks her over to where Bryson is. I get there and I look at him and his wrist is like limp and deformed and uh not what a parent wants to see. ended up spending the entire Sunday in ER. It wasn't just a simple break where they could have just casted him and sent him on his way. The radius and the ulna, the two bones in the forearm uh became misaligned. So they're supposed to line up at the wrist. The radius was jutting forward by a few millimeters. On top of that, he broke a piece of his growth plate or some sort of separation of his growth plate and the bone. They did this crazy thing. They put him on a bunch of ketamine and then manually like readjusted his arm. There was like three guys on him, one on his elbow, one on his wrist, one guy like yanking and pulling. And it was just crazy. I'm sitting there like watching it and he's like, you know, in ketamine dream world, unable to process any of it. And, uh, And so the, the, the readjustment went really well, but we went into the follow-up appointment on Wednesday and the adjustment didn't hold. So instead of. If it held, he just would have had a cast and life goes on. He has to do surgery. So yesterday was our surgery day. I spent the entire day in the hospital. Um, he had his surgery. It was effective. Everything's good. He's got pins in his wrist. Everything's going to heal properly. Two days ago, Viv was doing some results in the basement and slammed her eye into the corner of a table. Had to rush her to the hospital with like a two inch gash above her eye It's been a week So I've only lifted twice I'm only gonna lift, you know Maybe one more time this week because we're going to bike on Thursday for the whole weekend So just one of those one of those weird two-week periods where I'm just trying to move as much as I can get what I can in But everything is completely thrown off Such as life, I guess as it goes, neither of my kids have had serious injuries throughout their life so far. So as it does, they both come in the same week. ah Yeah, final update. I have a new episode of my life reflected podcast out. ah With the second episode was gonna be us interviewing this ultra marathon girl, Rebecca, who's awesome. I think I mentioned that we recorded the episode, but it recorded muted. So we're gonna have to rerecord that one. ah In the meantime. Greg decided that he wanted to interview me. So in the first episode, I interviewed Greg, which I thought was a great episode talking about his extroverted nature and all of that stuff. He wanted to flip the script and interview me. So it was a two hour episode of Greg kind of getting to ask me all the questions he wants to know about my athletic development through the years, my views on exercise addiction. And we have a question on that today in this podcast, um, a lot of discussion around my nature and kind of why I'm the way I am, how I went through life to become the person I am. So Greg did a great job with that interview. If anyone's interested, that's currently available. Life Reflected podcast on any of the podcast apps. The uncanny ability of both your children to get hurt, like within days of each other, is... is only what you would expect, like honestly, which is, I'm sure, incredibly frustrating. Yeah, yeah, incredibly frustrating. And then, you know, Kim's a bit superstitious. And she's like, everything comes in threes. And so we're waiting, we're like waiting for the third shoe to drop now, you know, like I'm going to I'm going I'm going mountain biking in Fruta for the weekend. And she's just like, you better fucking not get injured, you know. Yeah, I like I have to side with Kim on this one. I may have to just be extra, extra careful. I will. Yeah, what's going on with you? ah Not too much. I am in week four of my prep now. So that is pretty much it. I have been living Groundhog Day, which honestly, I kind of like I like having this big objective. And then my goal is like, I just have to stack my action items today and it's a victory on the day. And I just have to do that one hundred and twelve times. And I'm already twenty two days into that. So it's it's. I don't mind it as much as I feel like I should. We'll see how I feel when I'm in like days 80 and 90 and stuff. I mean, I think you thrive on being regimented. Like this is literally the way more or less within a 10 % deviance, I would say this is the way you live your life for the last decade. Yeah, it's kind of, just enjoy it, right? And I know so much of what I don't enjoy in life and so far it's been pretty easy. um I've even like doubled down on like my work stuff. You know, my work has gotten more efficient and stuff. I'm going to bed early. um I'm enjoying it, right? So that I'm enjoying giving my all to something, right? And I think there's some... uh credence in that still haven't made any further adjustments. I'm still in 3,700 calories per day. Body weight is still going down. I moved a lot from the travel, right? The day before my trip back to the US, I was 231 something when I came back, I was 226. And that 231 was a low for the week. But now I'm sitting back up in like the 228. I've had like three consecutive days in the 228 back to training everything else all in place. So Still moving good, still getting leaner, and doing the best to enjoy it, per se. So two things on that real quick. One is that you had said prior to the trip that you always tend to lose weight when you travel. So no surprise there. Uh, and then second, how did you do on getting in all your workouts, say all in quotes, all your workouts over the course of all the travel you had from Bali to the U S and then being in the U S and then all the travel back from the U S to Bali. Like did, were you able to keep up with your workouts? Are you a bit behind? What's that look like? yeah, no, I missed numerous. It effectively ended up being like a D load week, you know, and for reference, like I flew out Wednesday night. Wednesday, I trained legs, right? I was traveling literally like on flights and airports from five p.m. when I left my villa Wednesday here in Bali until I got at the airport in my hometown or turn out the airport, the hotel at my hometown after midnight. Thursday heading into Friday, right? So it's now like Friday morning, funeral, family stuff all day, Friday, Saturday, more family stuff, went down to Philly to see my sister from my other side of the family and then flew out of Philly. ah It's now, you know, six p.m. Saturday. I'm going to the airport. I get back to Bali, my home one a.m. heading into Tuesday morning. Jesus, that is insane. I mean, I know the time change goes the other way, but that's crazy. Yeah, it was it was the worst travel experience I've had. Everything was delayed, missed connections. My bag ended up in lost and found in the Rome airport. And just by luck, I was like, hey, just you know, I've had a rough trip. Can you guys just like double check everything's right? And they're like, we're glad you stopped in. This bag has just been sitting down and lost and found and no one knows who's it was. And I was just like I was I was holding it together, but I was furious. so mad that I'm sitting there and my watch keeps sending me the like, you should calm down, like your heart rate's above 100, you know, and I'm just sitting there and I can just, I just couldn't let it go. I was so mad about everything going wrong with the travel. um So I'm glad it's behind me and I'm never gonna talk about it again. Nice. Well, uh, thanks for the update, dude. That was interesting and very unfortunate. ah Yeah, let's let's let's dive in. Yeah, let me kick this one over to you to start. Have you ever had to refer a client for ECAL metabolic testing due to normal labs plus you believe they were telling you the truth, but they just weren't losing the weight? I have not. I'm not saying it cannot happen. I'd say the likelihood is very, very, very, very, very low. um I have had any times where things seem like really, really sticky with a client stickier than needs to be. And we also haven't lost any considerable amount of weight. Like we're in our first like five to seven pounds or something. And I asked for labs because of this. There's either something which happens very infrequently. talking about I'm in my seventh full time year of coaching, maybe like once per year. Someone's thyroid is like gutted or hormones are like non-existent or something like that. It's like a one in a hundred type of client sort of thing. So that happens or more commonly someone's just lying to you, you know, and that's and then it doesn't come out until you really push for labs. And then they'll say like, I haven't been, you know, completely honest about certain things. And there you can typically tell like if someone is like, let's say like 30 % body fat plus the odds of them line. Unfortunately, I'm just speaking in numbers here are higher. The one thing I would say from this, if you've had someone who's lost a considerable amount of weight, you're kind of run and you may be nearing the end of your runway of this first attempt. And you kind of got to go through a little bit of a refeeding period. being more kind to the body, restoring metabolic rate and stuff, and then get the rest of the fat off. um In my experience. Yeah, I don't work with as many clients in that kind of population of just trying to lose weight per se. But yeah, I've never had a situation where we were unable to lose weight. And yeah, it just always seems to be more the situation that you mentioned, where they're just kind of maybe benignly misinformed. It's not always like a malicious thing where they're like, I'm purposefully trying to be dubious here. but they just are kind of miscalculating things and not fully aware of what they're doing. And you kind of dig into that and fix the problem. And then the scale starts moving again. but ninely misinformed is such a perfect way to put it. Cool, I love that. All right, next one again to you. What's up with the new trend of upping creatine dose from five grams to 10 grams plus? I've seen this a lot, well into places that I wouldn't expect, where I typically get my finance information and stuff from. I'm not 100 % sure, but my best guess is there is a recent published research that came out about a pretty hefty dose of creatine, which I think might amount to about 20 to 25 grams in a single. like in a day can what would be the proper term here, attenuate potentially like a very big sleep disturbance. So if you have like a four hour night of sleep and you need to be like on it, if you like mega dose creatine, it can temporarily within these acute periods of time restore like uh cognitive function, critical thinking skills, et cetera, that would be typically greatly impaired by that reduced night of sleep. Yeah. So I think this is, multifaceted. There's two kind of prongs here. One is what you mentioned that on an acute basis, if there's a night where say you're out late with friends, you don't get a lot of sleep, uh, your jet lag, whatever the situation is, you take a huge massive dose, like you said, 20 or 25 grams. And that appears to, like you said, attenuate some of the maladies that could occur from lack of sleep as far as like blood sugar and cognitive function and things like that. Secondarily, I follow very closely a woman named Louisa Nicola, who's a neuroscientist. And she's also like a huge proponent of weightlifting for women, but just, I mean, everyone in general. And she was just on my feed the other day talking about a new study. She's deep into the Alzheimer's side of things. talking about how five grams per day is great for muscle saturation to get you all the creatine you'll need for, for muscle response, hypertrophy, et cetera. But to get the brain benefits, whether that's to potentially attenuate or, uh, decrease the likelihood of getting Alzheimer's later in life or just the cognitive benefits that do come with creatine that are now coming to light. it seems that 10 grams per day as an average, or a body weight based equivalent. So if 10 grams is the right amount for 140 pound woman, maybe it's 12 or 15 grams for a larger male. That would be the amount that you need to fully get the benefits cognitively and the brain function and all of that stuff. So I would need to dig into that study. But those are kind of the two areas that I've seen regarding this question. Wonderful. um The one thing I should point out is in the one study that I referenced, they did still see the digestive ah disruptions from the large doses of creatine. So if your bowels get loose and you feel all kind of your guts in a bunch, it's likely the 25 gram, you know, a single serving of creatine. Yeah, and mean, some people are just more susceptible to that than others. All right, next question again to you. What would be the least riskiest PED to experiment with oral anivar? So it is not oral anivar. I was gonna say anything oral can't be good for you because it has to be processed through the organs, right? Yeah. I there might be like one or two these one offs that are not like I believe it's 17 alpha alkylated to in that is what is like on unkind to the liver. So it's not anything oral. Right. The least riskiest is testosterone because it's bioidentical in your body already knows what to do with it. Right. um Do you just put it in in a small amount uh if you decide to go down? But I can promise you it's not oral, right? And unfortunately, if you decide to go down that route, injecting yourself is part of it. And I think it's worthwhile that it is prohibitive in that nature because it's not fun injecting yourself. I'll say that. I'll take this one to you, Brian. What should someone with extremely lagging forearms do? masturbate with both arms? No, I'm just playing y'all. But yeah, I so I actually have not had a client over the years ever say that their forearms are lagging and they want to improve their forearms specifically. It seems that over the course of the years through direct bicep work and back work, there's always been sufficient forearm development as well. I understand that's not always the case. So for this question asker, the way that I would approach this beyond just doing, you know, heavy back work and bicep work would be to incorporate different wrist flexion and wrist extension exercises. So think about, know, you could have a barbell, easy bar dumbbell, something like that in your palm with your palm up being supinated and you stretch at the back, make sure you get a deep stretch in the forearm and then contract forward. You can do the reverse where you turn your palm facing down and you stretch down and then come up. Both of those will target the forearm muscles on either side. And then hammer curls where you do like a full curl, but you're in a neutral grip. You can do those as a full curl. So you're getting the bicep brachialis and you could also do them just as wrist curls. Like we were doing the other two movements where instead of just curling supinated or pronated, you're doing a wrist curl uh matter of two or three inches of movement with the hammer grip. So I think those are great. uh I also think doing things like hangs and farmers carries and uh barbell holds. So like think of how you would set up for like a heavy set of shrugs, but instead of shrugging, just literally hold the bar and death grip the thing. So yeah, a number of different avenues that you can take to increase uh forearm growth. And then you just want to be cognizant about where you're putting that in your program so that it doesn't interfere with any of the other stuff that might be around it on, you know, surrounding days. My only addition there is I would stop using straps if they are seriously lagging. um Now there's certain exercises like heavy RDLs, um know, certain things that just you're going to need the straps for like Bulgarian split squats, those sorts of things. But your pulldowns, your rows, I would stop using straps. So you feel like that's a worthwhile sacrifice to turn back work more into forearm work in that case versus just using straps for the back work and then adding in some direct work for the forearms to compensate? I mean, I think you could do either. um It's it's it's really hard for me to say like my forearms have exploded. But let's be clear, it's because of the PEDs. But it also at the same time was right around when I stopped using the straps because I had such such bad forearm pain. I it's really hard to say, I think. But like now my back works not limited by my forearms because they've gotten so insanely strong. um Like I don't notice a difference in performance when I use my straps or not. But I would say like if you don't have the time and your forearms are like enough of a problem where you care to make them better, I would maybe temporarily eight weeks or so take take a reduction in back capacity to bring them up. If you do have a lot of time, then I would do what Brian said and put the forearm work directly in and continue to use them on your back days, the straps. Yeah, regarding the use of straps on back day, I'll say that on any of the exercises that I can do with the uh prime rotate handles or the mag grips would be like a similar formation of handle. I don't use straps on because it's ergonomic. It's ergonomically sufficient that I feel like my grip is not compromised. But when I'm doing something like a wide grip pull down with the straight bar or a T bar row. those movements don't have that mad grip handle that's really nice and comfortable for me. And so I do feel a little bit of a slip if I'm going close to failure on these sets on these movements without kind of the mag grip handle, I need to use straps there. And one thing I think that's really interesting as a not interesting. Another point, I think your hand size plays a role, right? My hands are probably slightly larger than average. So like wrapping my hand around like the the pull down bar or whatever, it's I can do it. But ironically, I'm kind of the opposite when I use the mag grip and stuff like that's where my hands will slip and I'll get like a lot of hand fatigue. But then if I'm doing like a pull down or something like that, like I can just lock it on and I have zero issues. So it's must be individual here and based on hand size and all that good stuff. Yep. Cool. Okay, I will kick this one to you to start. What kind of RIR do you recommend training to in a deficit? Go to failure ever, question. Yeah, we've actually talked about this quite a bit on the podcast in prior episodes and you and I, think both are proponents of lowering volume and increasing effort in a deficit because you just have fewer recovery resources available and lower attention and focus. And so having to do two or three sets to a couple RIR, you're still having to do the, the un-rack. as the data-driven guys call it, you still have to mentally get yourself into the machine or the movement. You have to focus. You have to really put that kind of extreme energy into the set. And every time that you, quote, un-rack and have to do a set, there's a cost psychologically to that. And so I think for that more than any other reason, The benefit of going to failure allows you to do fewer sets, which allows you to have to focus fewer sets and therefore probably get more out of the sets that you're doing. Yeah, I mean, I think everything Brian said is true. To elaborate slightly on it, I think different body parts have different RIRs because of the tendency of a movement to be more lengthened versus more shortened. Like back stuff, very low risk of injury. Most of it's almost always short overloaded. You can probably train pretty much everything to one RIR. Maybe do like final set to failure or something like that. Lateral delts, you can probably just train directly to failure. Calfs, if you train them regularly, you can probably take them to failure. But things like your heavy hip hinges, especially if you're in like, you know, week two, week four, week six, maybe of a deficit, you're probably still good at like a one RAR. But if we're pushing eight, twelve, sixteen weeks, you might want to start being a little bit more conscious of of just higher risk injury of certain exercises and those sorts of things. So Things like RDLs, maybe to, know, try not to get pinned in the bottom of a pendulum squat or a hack squat because of injury risk and in fatigue, CNS fatigue absolutely skyrockets when that happens. So it's a little bit of a uh different scale based on the body. Yeah, I agree. think that that's always important in the context of where you are in the diet, what movement you're doing, all of that stuff is super relevant. I still like I still would err on the side of lower volumes on those big compound movements, even if you're not going to failure. So like one set of hack squat and one set of RDL to one or two RIR is probably still sufficient to give you the stimulus that you need to maintain muscle, because you got to remember when you're in the deficit, unless you're a newb, you're very likely not. gaining muscle. So any of the training that you're doing is essentially an attempt to maintain your muscle and your strength. And we know that you can do that based on the research in significantly lower volumes than you would need to grow. Yep, yep, definitely. All right, this one for you. If not building muscle in a deficit, how important is it to keep increasing weight reps weekly? I mean, this is related to the last question. Yeah, very related to the last question. I think it's important to keep your intensity level very high, like we just spoke about. think if you there, there should be a period where you are still able to increase weight in reps. And I think this is a very like a misunderstanding. People think, OK, I'm in week one of my deficit. I can't train as hard and all my progress stops. That won't happen for. It. It's hard to say a number of weeks because it depends on your rate of loss. If you're like super mega cutting and you're dropping like 2%, you know, total body mass per week in three weeks, you might start running into like, you know, training stalls. But if you're taking a more moderate to slower approach, like you can probably progress through 12, 15 weeks of dieting. last, I guess two years ago when I did it as a natural, I should point out I was progressing. months into that diet. dieted for six months and it wasn't until like months five and six where things really started to dry up on me. So um I think it depends. I hate saying that, but if you're new, if you're a newbie, you know, you're there's so much more to be gained. Even in a deficit, you could still progress because there's, neurological benefits. There's movement improvement, movement efficiency improvements and things like that. um But once you get deep into a deficit, You're probably going to, even if you try your hardest, will not be able to progress. Yeah, I agree with all of that. I've been able to progress through the first two to three months of diets as well, and then usually end up hitting a wall at some point. Oftentimes, it's psychological. It's like, just don't want to go in there and keep banging this in the same way. But I'm sure there's there's a physiological impact there of just, you know, being in the deficit over time. But ultimately, I think that depending on whether the movements that you've implemented into your program for the deficit are a continuation of movements you were doing before the deficit or whether it's a new movement that also changes the calculation. So if it's something you've been doing for a while and carry that movement over into the deficit, you might stop stall on that significantly earlier than you would if you introduced a new movement and you have the neural adaptations and kind of the skill piece that's still progressing. So you might not actually be gaining muscle per se, or even like true strength in a sense, more just that you're neurologically still adapting to the new movement pattern. So you might be able to progress a movement like that a little bit longer than you would something else. Well, on the next question, I clumped two questions together because they're both related. the first one is, where is your gym? Are you still in Bali? And the next one is, can Erin discuss the business aspect of starting a gym, pricing, membership, hiring, personal training, group classes? Yeah, so I am still in Bali and the gym is in Bali. We are on the outskirts of a town area called Changu, one of the very popular hotspots here. That's where the gym is. Now the business aspect, I'll just run through it really quickly. So hiring, I have nothing to do with. Jackson handles all of that. Personal training, we're not doing anything, at least right now with that we had. Talked about some things potentially down the road that could be like really cool around having like really high level trainers because one of the things that happens here and I'm injecting my opinions and it's just my opinion for what it is. People will bring it. Other gyms will bring in like, hate to talk. I don't want to talk down about people and I'm not really trying to do that. They'll bring in like your average run of the mill personal trainer from somewhere in the US, somewhere in the UK, you know, somewhere. It's a very standard person. And then they'll say, this is master trainer, you know, Mike from the States book a session with him. It's like 200 and $200 an hour or something like that. And they just put like Bali is like the capital in the world of like fake premium sort of thing. um And then then the gym takes like 60 or 75 percent of the fear or something like that. So there are just things that I don't agree with morally. And, know, I. Can't say that we will not absolutely do it because I do not have 100 percent voting power on that, but there's things that morally I just don't agree with, and that's one of them. um So at least right now we don't have any kind of personal training offers group classes. We will not be doing it again. It's another thing that we're a bodybuilding gym. You know, no one's really figured out how to do bodybuilding group classes in a way that doesn't hog every machine that other people want. So again, it's just a model that we're not interested in doing um pricing. Another thing, Bali is one of these places that gym membership is very pricey here. And that's just standard, right? very normal here for your gym membership to be about like 130 to like $180 US per month. That is pretty much the standard. Don't get me wrong, that comes with, you know, recovery center access, the pool, the hot tub, you know, all those things. But it's pretty much the reason that I agreed. I can't say the reason. One of the reasons I agreed to be a part of the project is it's lucrative here. You know, whereas parts in the States, like you have these amazing gyms. with all this old, awesome equipment and they're fighting over like a $30 per month membership sort of thing. uh And it's more of like a, what do you call that? love, not a love affair, but a sort of that sort of thing, like a passion business, know? um Their membership, we are still in our special access membership because we're not a hundred percent open as there's still some like construction things going on, a lot of things being. fixed because our first contractor massively had issue made just built things poorly and now we're a lot of them are getting like torn out and rebuilt which is incredibly frustrating and disheartening to be completely honest. So we're at like a limited membership limited hours. We're not doing day passes or anything yet. We just want like members who want to be there who are there for the reasons we built the gym around the equipment in that sort of thing having a place to like train. And one thing that I'm very happy about is. There's no one's fucking about inside undefeated, everyone's in there training hard, like you get people spotting each other and stuff like it's it's a good environment to train in, and that's all that I ever really wanted, which is which is pretty cool. And I believe that covers everything from the questions, business aspects. It's incredibly expensive. um It's really scary. Things go wrong. Constantly. ah Every corner is a new lesson and it's been incredibly stressful, incredibly incredibly, which I'm sure Brian can attest to. Yeah, as a a as a previous gym owner in the CrossFit space, our model was obviously different than your model, but all of the stresses still exist. think that. Like you alluded to that in the US, it's not a super lucrative market and there's a lot of, you know, slim margins and overhead and things like that. And I understand the margins are maybe a bit better in in Bali, but all the headaches are still there. So, yeah, it's. It's a it's a tough sled, if that's what you want to do. All right, next one. This is a long question. I'll kick over to you. We know adding body weight in general, whether muscle or fat typically increases strength. Do you think there's any benefit from a pure muscle building perspective to be more aggressive with bulking phases to get the benefits of being at a higher body weight for a longer period of time, and thereby able to lift heavier loads for a longer period of time? The thought is that a higher body weight would allow you to lift heavier and add more tension to the muscle thereby increasing muscle mass. I think about all the former NFL offensive linemen who maintain super high body fat percentages and then lose all the weight after retiring. They are always jacked. There's a lot in this question. One thing that I would encourage people is to not use freak NFL athletes as your basis. I mean, you have a job that every pretty much American boy, not every, but you like a very large percentage, like aspires to be incredibly few make it those that do make it the proportion of those that have like a definition of a career that's more than like two to four seasons long is even disproportionately lower. Right. So even at the like the genetic elite, they weed out very quickly sort of thing. So that's one part. um I think that I think the theory is sound enough, but there's a lot of practicality holes, I think, in it. Do you want to live your life at 30 percent plus body fat and the probable health consequences that come along with that for such a prolonged period of time to hopefully be jacked when you're 35 and decide to go on this monster diet to lose it all? I think one of the things with the NFL linemen that's also a bit of an outlier is like, they're really large, yes, but they also like, they're really conditioned. They play football as a job. Like they're in football shape. They're not just lifting weights and being 300 pounds, right? There's a little bit of a difference there because the training is so much more than just lifting weights. um Then the other big risky question is when you go through this massive, you know, Deficit to lose all this extra body fat that you've carried You have to you have to keep the muscle which is Easier said than done. So I think like I said, I think the theory does make sense the practicality of it playing out of being super overweight for Long enough to really put on a lot of muscle probably loses Its luster when you have to live your life at that size Yeah, I think that's all like super well said. And then I just want to double down on the genetic card here of, you know, maybe comparing yourself to elite NFL athletes is maybe not the right move. So I was just curious because I was thinking, man, Saquon Barkley is pretty jacked. So let's look up his height and weight real quick. And I Googled it. And this dude is six foot tall, 234. And there's like, there's there's pictures of him and he's he's ripped. Like, I mean, this dude must be like 12 % body fat at 234. So he's the same height as Aaron. He's the same weight as Aaron at his peak of doing roids. And he's just a natural dude playing running back in the NFL. Like if he had decided that bodybuilding was going to be his sport instead of being a running back, it's over. Like it's just over. So it's just, it's, not exactly uh a great comparison. Exactly. You should you should if you saw what I looked like getting up and down off the floor at 235 and doing anything remotely that required athleticism it I looked pathetic. So to to see and I'm sure everyone can picture that that clip of Saquon Barkley where he like jumped over someone like backwards sprinting at full speed like You can't compare yourself to NFL. It's a terrible thesis to build off of. I'm sorry. crazy. But yeah, mean, the idea in theory is decent. I think if you're going to look at it from a practical implementation aspect for a regular person, I think that you're just talking about the dirty bulk and you're talking about the dirty bulk that you maintain for a bit longer. I just for the reasons Aaron mentioned with health and stuff like that, like you just don't want to maintain that uh because like he also said, they're exercising every day. They're doing 15 second sprints and recovers over and over and over throughout practice. all day long games on Sundays, like the whole thing, they're moving their body a lot. So internally, they're likely still quite healthy. If you were to try to implement uh a dirty bulk, you would probably not be doing any cardio because that would mean that you would then have to eat even more food. ah so most people, you know, in that situation that you're talking about that are just regular humans, not professional football players are just going to end up fat and unhealthy from that approach. Let's kick this one over to you because I believe it is not for me. What is going on with the appetite decrease that you mentioned? Yeah, so I talked two weeks ago in our updates, how I just haven't been super hungry after my my spring break trip, I gained a bit of weight, I ate everything in sight, I didn't move for four days as we were driving to Scottsdale driving back from Scottsdale. uh So yeah, my appetite went way down for a decent period of time, it was like 10 or 12 days, I dropped weight all the way down to like the low one 90s. And then it kind of came back for a few days. And I ate a lot because I was hungry. got back up to like the mid one nineties and then it's kind of been low again since then. So I'm now plummeting back down into the low one nineties. I think that ultimately, if I'm looking at this retroactively onto trying to discern why it's happening, I think it's more like kind of what Aaron said that I overate so much. was compensation. Once my body weight got below what my set point is, I got hungry again. Then I ate up to my set point and then I got not hungry again. And so the good here is that my body is responsive to appetite signaling. Like it's like, hey dude, you're getting too big. You know, we'll turn the appetite off or okay, you're starting to get pretty small. We should turn the appetite back on again. So I really appreciate that for my body. I'm like, thanks dude, that's great. But it is a little bit annoying that it keeps fluctuating in this manner. So I think the next time that I get my appetite back, I need to go less ham on food. because that will keep me from this oscillation of up, down, up, down. And I just need to kind of find more of a homeostasis. This one I think, I'll kick it over to you and then I think you can frame it up a lot better than I can and I'll put some tidbits underneath. Can you guys discuss slash elaborate on the fine line between habitual exercise and exercise addiction slash dependence? Brian discussed this a lot on his other pod and curious to hear you guys chat about. Yeah, I think this is something I've been thinking a lot about as it's come up as a topic on both the first two episodes of the Life Reflected podcast that I'm doing. uh I'm very much in that gray line between the two. I think there is an extremely great benefit in making exercise habitual. And I've seen this from a lot of people in my life, whether it's like extended family or other friends from my past that really struggle to implement habitual exercise because they don't do it often enough. And I mean, that might seem like that doesn't make any sense because habits mean that you're doing it consistently, but so much of it is about establishing a routine and making it habitual. to the point that it's almost becomes a non-negotiable. And then that blurs the line between that and addiction or dependence. So I'm oftentimes by these people in my life that aren't exercising consistently or very much, maybe even at all, they're looking at what I'm doing and they're framing it as Brian is addicted to exercise because he feels like he needs to do it every day. And the accurate part there is that I do feel like I need to do it every day. And my, my life is actually impacted negatively. If I think that I'm going to exercise and then something comes up and I don't get to exercise that really throws me for a loop. If I go into the day planning not to exercise and I don't exercise, it's not that big of a deal. Um, so I think it's, it's less about it being addictive. And it's more about it being a positive aspect of my life that has such downstream effects on my cognition, my sleep, my food choices, uh my general sentiment and ability to be a uh even keeled and uh good quality parent. All of these things are downstream of habitual exercise. And so I can understand from the outside how it can often be perceived as addiction, but I think that's where that fine line exists. And I think that for those people in my life that don't have a habitual exercise routine, that they would be benefited by implementing one. And it doesn't need to be scary or feel as if it's going to become an addiction or dependence. It's a habit, which is certainly a fine line. I don't know that I even explained that super well, but I do agree that it's a fine line. And I think that oh the goal is to make it habitual without feeling like it becomes an addiction or dependence. What do you think? a of thoughts that I'm kind of struggling to put into a logical kind of framework here. I definitely can think of like examples where we have like the exercise addiction and the immediate one that comes to mind is like in the CrossFit days, right? You have people who do like four workouts in a day. You're well past habitual. You're in a recovery debt. Your performance can't be good because you have way too much overlap and those sorts of things. I definitely think that exists there. I also think there's the people whose cardio gets so voluminous without a goal, right? Like if you're an ultra marathon runner, like you need to do that volume because your sport requires it. But you get the person who's just habitually. On the stair climber for like two and a half hours in the morning every morning with no goal changes, do that day in and day out out of like fear or something like that. Like I think that's that addiction. Like what is the purpose of it? you. think that's actually a really good distinction is what is the emotional state that's driving you to do this. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't. I would like to think that. In my life, I will get to a point where. I enjoy the exercise like like Brian kind of does, but but right now everything is is is purely goal based, you know, and I kind of fantasize about. A point in my life where I like get up in the morning and I go do like 20 minutes on like a spin bike in the garage or something like that and I put back in a little bit more like. meaningful movement because I want to get my heart rate up and feel good a bit. But admittedly, mine's always just been purely goal dependent. No, I I've very rarely have I ever just like gone out and done this because it makes me feel mine is like hiking once a week or something like that. But that again, it there's an action or a purpose behind that. want to get up into the mountains and I want to see this view. And I want that like that nature green feeling. Right. So it's a little bit different. Exercise is just like a medium. to get me those other byproducts of the thing that like hiking in the mountains provides. um But yeah, I think the intent is really, you know, we're a fear based around it. I have to do this or I'm gonna get fat, right? And that's like a very common fear. And it's really rooted in a misunderstanding, right? That hour long cardio session, right? Maybe it's 300 calories, maybe 400 or 500 if you're a bigger dude like me. It's a lot better time investment just to Learn how to manipulate your nutritional intake around that from a pure opportunity cost on time. And then put the cardio in for some inherent benefit other than just caloric expenditure. Yeah, like I'm pursuing health long term or it's something that makes me feel a great like, the catecholamine experience with all the different endorphins and stuff are really what's driving it. So for me, I think it's, it's a bit of all of that. Like one of the, don't want to belabor this point because we still have nine questions to go. But, uh, one of the other topics that kind of came out of this on the podcast, the most recent episode was a discussion around whether everything is training or whether sometimes it's just exercise for pure enjoyment. And, and I'm kind of still at a point where I'm pursuing training most of the time, like almost always I'm tracking it on my watch, um, diligently assessing my, uh, metrics to diagnose, you know, my performance post-workout. Like I'm speaking more about cardio at this point, but, it could be applied broadly to, weights or cardio. doesn't really matter. And so I think that there's, there's a piece of that too, that maybe even further blurs that line between like, habitual healthy habits and exercise addiction is like I want to get to a point eventually where I can treat my cardio kind of like I treat my weights now where I don't feel like I have to so religiously track every single thing. because I've been doing it for 27 years and it's just habitual. Whereas cardio for me still is like this new novel thing where I'm improving so much and I wanna see my improvement and maybe there is like more of an addictive nature in the sense that I need to see how I performed on each workout and that's partially what's driving me to do it. So anyway, it's an interesting question and I'm sure I'll continue to develop further thoughts on it over time. Yeah. This one, you me to kick you to start the low volumes? If low volumes give you some results and high volumes maximize gains, then wouldn't they eventually meet at the same place where your genetic limit is? Yes, I mean, I almost feel like I could have written that question myself. It's uh it is exactly true in my in my opinion. If you put two people on the same 15 year path of lifting weights, and one of them was training with MEV, uh minimum effective volume, but it's effective, it's still making gains. And one of them is training at maximum recoverable volume, the most volume you can do and recover from. My hypothesis would be that the person doing maximum volume would probably get to their genetic limit slightly earlier, maybe eight to 10 years instead of 15 years. But yes, at the end of the day, 15 years later, 20 years later, whatever it is, in theory, those two things should probably meet at a right about what your genetic limit is. ah Maybe there's a few things you can do to manipulate that genetic limit a little bit higher once you get there. So say you get there, and then you're like, Okay, now I'm going to implement some specialty phases, specialization phases. like we've talked about in some of the prior episodes with chest and glute specialization, stuff like that. You know, maybe you can eke out a little bit more gains from when you think your genetic limit is reached globally across your body. Maybe there's a little bit more that you can get on specific muscle groups, but ultimately, yes, when it comes to your physique as a whole, my view is that those two things would meet at your genetic limit. Yeah, I agree. think there would be numerous other factors that would... impede or facilitate that genetic limit way before the high volume versus the low volume sort of thing. You know, like all these genetic variations, like how resistant you are to like CNS fatigue. If you are training with really low volumes, like let's say you are trying to take the low volume, high intensity approach and that really hard set on the hack squat or. Leg press like makes gives you kind of like a It makes it really dizzy and gives you like a headache, right? You're going to gravitate away from that because it can't be productive, you know, uh long enough with that. So, like I said, I think there's all these little like other life practical things that would impact that and kind of steer you into one way or another. Like we all there's a reason why for someone low volume, high intensity works like a Dorian Yates style. And then there's reasons why. the higher volume, you know, further from uh failure approaches work. it's because of these like genetic differences and things like that, that we don't really have any research on it. And I think it's, we probably won't have any real research on it for like decades still, if not ever. um But yeah, I think eventually you're gonna find your sweet spot if you continue to prioritize this long enough and continue to search and have a high enough interest in it. Yeah, I think that there's ultimately also going to be some potentially like psychological limiting factors on doing the high volume. For example, like, can you get up for those high volume workouts for 15 years or 10 years or whatever it takes? And can you do it while you know, not just maintaining motivation to do it, but also remaining injury free because of the continued beating on your body. So there's a number of different aspects in there in context that could potentially change the equation along the way. Definitely. This one I'll kick to you. What is the equivalent of 180 minutes of zone two? For example, if I do not have enough time for zone two, how much zone three, four or five do I need to do to equate? Trying to find out a rough formula for this. Yeah, I think it I do have an idea on this and I will I will answer at the end. But I think that, you know, as we've talked about many times, the benefit of zone two is that it's this low fatiguing stimulus. And when you look at studies, the stimulus that you're getting to your mitochondria from zone two is more or less equivalent to what you're getting in the higher zones. You're just able to do it. ah You just need to you just need less time to do it in the higher zones. So that kind of brings your question about, is like, how much fatigue am I willing to accumulate or do I need to accumulate to achieve a similar response to, you know, benefit my mitochondria and my cardiovascular system and all of these processes. And so. All right, before I say the other potentially mitigating factor here is that zone two raises your floor, the base of the pyramid. If you're not doing zone two and you're just working on the pointy tip. of the pyramid with the higher intensity stuff, you can increase the pointy tip. You can get better at doing the higher intensity stuff, but eventually you're likely going to reach a sticking point at those higher intensities because you ultimately need to raise the base, raise the floor by doing zone two. ah So just keep that in mind. But for those weeks or those times of life where things are hectic and you just want to get your cardio in and kind of check that box, I think that Zone three generally is about half of zone two. So I find about 20 to 30 minutes of continuous zone three is probably equivalent to about 45 to 60 minutes of zone two. So that would be your like full kind of in you go San Milan, Peter Atiyah, like do your zone two for health thing. Yeah, 20 to 30 minutes of zone three probably gets you close. I think the zone four, zone five stuff, like I usually combine those zones together. We don't have to. but I will usually say if we'll, zone four is kind of in the middle of the two. So I'll say if my workout is zone three slash zone four, I usually try to get about, oh man, I am thinking about me and I do higher volumes. So I said it's about 20 to 30 minutes of zone three. It would probably be about 15 to 20 minutes of zone four. And then if you're really working on that pointy tip and going super ham, you know, where you're at 90 % of heart rate or higher, like zone five. You can probably do that in eight to 10 minutes if we're talking about equivalent ah stimulus to what we'd be getting from zone two. These are just, you know, my thoughts on the matter. I don't know if that's accurate to science or anything, but that seems pretty reasonable and obviously a little bit more time efficient. Okay, there's nothing I could add to that whatsoever. cool. I'll ask you this one since you've been kicking them over to me. Worth it to do any calf lifting or is a few runs a week enough? Feels like training calves may not be worth it. I mean, if you feel that way, I feel like it's hard pressed. I feel like calves are one of those things you care about or you don't, right? And it can even change. Like there was many years of my life, probably 10 or more where I didn't train calves at all. to any, uh in a stereotypical way that we would train calves. And now do I think running a few runs a week is going to... be equal to the amount of hypertrophy that you could get from training your calves for hypertrophy. If you're looking at maybe 12, 15 feet behind looking at them, probably. If you were to do like uh a circumference, probably not. But I think it really comes down to like, if you really don't wanna train your calves, I wouldn't go out of your way to do something you really don't wanna do, especially because it probably will be a. pretty minor difference unless you have just the ultimate, you know, dad calf genetics. Yeah, I went through periods of my life where I never trained calves. I haven't for years leading up to the last few months where I started running more consistently. And one of the things I noticed is that I was getting a bit of Achilles tendonitis from running and it was actually doing really heavy single leg calf raises for like five to eight reps with a two to three second pause at the very bottom, like super deep stretch under load position. and then, you know, exploding up into the concentric doing those once or twice a week actually really helped alleviate some of that Achilles tendonitis and made me feel more stable and confident running. So, um, I feel like if you're running, there could be, you know, that kind of tangential benefit to doing calf work, even if hypertrophy isn't the goal. That's also a really good point. Yeah. All right. We have six questions in 15 minutes. So we got to move. Let's do it. It seems that lengthened bias training has lost some popularity. What is your current stance? I think that, you know, the research still overall leans toward length and bias training being marginally more effective than full range of motion or short range of motion training. It's lost some popularity, I think, because there have been a few studies that have come out that have shown that it's, you know, equal to training a full range motion in a few different exercises. that doesn't mean that lengthened bias training is not effective. it's equal to full range of motion, then that means you have a choice, which is great. You can decide to do lengthened partials or you can decide to do full range of motion and both will likely get you pretty similar hypertrophy over the course of time, where I think there's actually some exercises and some body parts that likely will respond better to lengthened bias training and potentially maybe some body parts that it's less effective or even maybe we'll respond better to some short overload stimulus. ultimately at the end of the day, think that like it's potentially lost popularity because of the studies that have come out, but it's also partially because people now just accept that, Hey, this has been a huge focal point for the last few years. The studies have been pretty confident since 2020 when the seated leg curl versus lying leg curl study came out. And then there've been 10 or 15 of them since. and they generally tend to lean one way. So when you accept that things work, you then need to focus on them less. You don't need to constantly sit there beating the drum for length and bias training once the majority of people kind of accept that length and bias training is as effective or potentially slightly more effective. Yeah, that's really, really well put. I don't think there's anything I need to add. didn't change my training styles or anything to add in like a bunch of lengthened partials or only lengthened partials or anything. And I just think it's one of the things that people were hyper fixated on, which I mean, it's very sensationalist, like so many other things, but I think it's, we really haven't learned like earth shattering new things in a very, very, very long. the physiques are not natural on gear, whatever you want to call it. Like they're not orders of magnitude different than they were 30 years ago. I think it's, you eventually just kind of accept it enough and you typically cover all of your bases. And that's a very, very intelligent way to go about things. um Okay, what does someone just getting into biking need? Heart rate monitor, accessories, clothing. What do you know now that you wish you knew earlier? The only thing that I would say you need other than a bike is probably a shammy. And that is the one thing that I wish I had done earlier. So my entire first year of biking, I didn't own a shammy and I every time I would bike about 30 to 60 minutes into whatever length ride I was doing, I would start to feel some discomfort in my butt. a little bit in my in my testicles, like the whole thing just felt a little bit uncomfortable. I even got a new seat, which really helped. got it set to my sit bones. So that might be something that you would consider doing if you think you're going to be on your bike a lot is get a fit for your seat. They'll measure your sit bones and make sure that that it's a good fit for you. But beyond a shammy and potentially a seat fit there, I I don't think there's anything you need. Um, like yes, a heart rate monitor would be cool, but not completely necessary in some ways. think that using RPE, especially when you get started would be super helpful. Like if you have a heart rate monitor or a watch that can track your heart rate for you, I think that that's cool to look at in retrospect, but I think what I would have loved to do for myself is not been so keen on the data when I first started and more just to kind of build that sense of RPE using Like I talk about when you're in zone two, that you should be at about 15 breaths a minute, like anything over 15 breaths a minute. It's likely that you're above zone two. So I wish I had kind of. Learned my body a little bit better through some of these RPE ways of assessing effort and not relied so much on digital data, but understanding that maybe it would have been cool if I then retroactively could finish my ride and look back at the data without having to be focused on the data throughout the entire ride. So. Just this last year, I bought a mount for the front of my handlebars where I can put my phone in. And now I have all the data in front of me all the time, like right there, boom, in my face. And um sometimes I just turn that off and I'm like, I want to do this ride based on RPE. And then in retrospect, I looked at the data and that's great because then I can kind of see how I was feeling and if that matches up with what the data was telling me. So I would encourage you to spend more time with less data in the beginning, get a shammy, get your seat set. And beyond that, just I would say the other piece of advice you said, what do I wish I knew earlier? I would just say if you're doing this as a hybrid athlete, combining it with weights, don't try to do both maximally. Like that would be my biggest piece of advice is choose one that becomes the priority for a given period of time. Focus on that one. Put the other one on kind of, I don't want to say the back burner, but you know, more maintenance level. And then when that switches, you know, elevate one up and put the other one on the back burner or on maintenance level a little bit. And that's going to allow you to actually see your progress without having to end up in a state of kind of burnout or overtraining or anything. very, very well put that last point. I remember you've talked about that a number of times. This next one, guess I can kick to you as well. I don't have any lower lat specific work in my program. Do I need to add one, which is best? Yeah, it's interesting when people say lower lat specific because something like a wide grip pull down, which we've now kind of considered to be like a Terry's or an upper back movement. Like any time that you're taking your arms from overhead and bringing them down where your elbow is coming into your waist, there's going to be some lower lat work there. Even if it's a wide grip pull down, it would obviously be better if it was a neutral grip, you know, shoulder width pull down. But all of those are going to work your lower lats. So no, I don't think you need to go like out of your way to add in one of those really super specific N1 type, you know, lower lat movements where your body is like contorted to the side and you're like reaching over your sternum and getting like that full deep stretch in the lat across the body. I don't think you need that. If you look at development of lats of athletes over time throughout history, some of them probably needed that. Like there's probably a few guys you could look at and be like, yeah, that guy would have been benefited by doing some more lower lat work. But in most cases, you know, people got fine back development from doing pull downs, pull ups and bent over rows. And so I don't think you need to overstress it too much. Yeah, agreed. All right. Do you ever recommend intermittent fasting during a deficit or is it more important to have protein evenly spaced throughout the day? The only time I will use intermittent fasting with clients is when we are going into a period, maybe like one or two weeks where we, it's like an inversion of control. A client is heading to Europe for business trip and we're in like the middle of a deficit, something like that. um Or client is going on vacation with the family and still wants to ensure, you know, we have like a week of progress on the fat loss. So I'm gonna say, we're gonna be having dinner. you know, out with the family, out with potential clients, whatever business kind of networking things you need to do for work, that's inherently going to be significantly higher in calories, significantly higher in fats. from from and knowing that we're estimating so much of our food anyway, let's just pull breakfast. It is not optimal, but it is practical in our current context. We can also leverage caffeine, coffee in the mornings to help bridge some of that hunger that we cannot do. at the end of the night for obvious sleep purposes. And then I'll typically have them do a little bit of protein. So I'll do like intermittent fasting, know, air quotes with like double scoop of whey or something like that in the morning or one egg, some egg white, something just to get a some protein in the morning. But no, you know, no significant or anything of substance in terms of carbohydrate or fat. And then a protein sparing modified fast. Yeah, I am biased because I love intermittent fasting and I've been eating this way for the majority of my life since 2012, I think, like literally over a decade at this point. I do it whether it's a deficit or not a deficit. So it's just kind of like the way I prefer to live life. As far as the question about evenly spaced protein throughout the day, I do think especially in a deficit, there's probably benefit to that. My general advice would be that you probably have at least three protein servings throughout the day. You can do that with intermittent fasting, something like noon, three 30 and seven or something like that. That's usually the way that I generally go about my feedings is making sure I get three protein servings in that kind of seven hour timeframe. But In most cases, this wouldn't be my recommendation to others that are looking to diet. think that making sure that you have muscle protein synthesis responding throughout the day, multiple protein servings, making sure you don't get too hungry at any point, because then you're likely to overeat if you're in a deficit, I think is important. ah I will use it with clients and with myself specifically, like Aaron said, on days where you know that you're going to be having a large bolus of calories later in the day. So in that case, yeah, if you can not eat until noon and you know that you're going to be having a huge dinner, then maybe it's a small meal at noon, a small meal at three, and then a huge dinner or something like that. So you can still get your three protein servings in. All right. I am a female who is lean, but working to get leaner and want to see more AB definition. Do you recommend any direct AB training in this instance and how would you implement? Yeah, I mean, I think so. And one of my favorites for implementing is simple, right? The abs we have attached up at the rib cage and then down at the pelvis, we take that through flexion and we take that through extension. So one of my favorites and it's really simple to implement is like crunches on the lat pull down. You turn around and face out and you put that pulled those pull down quad pads into your lower back. Right. And then you use that as leverage to press against and crunch forward. And then you let it pull you all the way up at the top and you stretch that achieve that extension and then go into flexion. Like it's really foolproof. um One of my favorites. I also really like foam roller. Would it be called foam roller like knee lifts foam roller reverse crunch foam roller reverse crunch? Yes. Yeah. Yep, that's it. The foam roller really simplifies it by putting the foam roller behind your your hamstrings in terms of like a leg positioning. Those are some of my favorites and most programmed apps. Yeah. Yeah. I also agree that you should include some abs as somebody who has, we've actually had a series two years ago where you and I both stopped training abs for a long time and then started and we kind of. four years ago. Before it was it that long ago, Yeah, so uh we started trading apps again after a multi-month or year hiatus of not trading apps and we kind of compared. I didn't notice any increase in app definition and I think Aaron did. Yeah, is that right? Yeah. But what I will say is that when I do train apps, I feel like it's tighter. Like I don't necessarily feel as if I have better app development. necessarily, but I feel like the skin is tighter on the abs. And I don't know what, what to really prescribe that to. Cause everyone is, know, you talk about how there's no spot reduction, like you can't train your abs and then lose fat on your abs, which I believe is true. But there is something about the skin being tighter across there. And I do notice that when I, when I train abs regularly. So I think that's helpful as far as direct, uh, ab work and how to implement it. Aaron alluded to two movements he likes. I generally feel like it doesn't matter what two movements you choose, as long as one of them brings your, shoulders toward your knees and one of them brings your knees toward your shoulders. Uh, and so that's kind of like, could think of that as your upper abs and your lower abs, but really it's two different functions. So to speak. Um, I love three movements. I love super setting the cable crunch. Like Aaron just noted, we have a video in our paragon training methods group for that specific exercise. We just call it seated cable crunches. It's amazing. I like to superset seated cable crunches with hanging knee raises. So then you get the upper ab quotes and the lower ab work back to back. I like that superset. It's really painful. also really like the stretch, the extension and flexion piece that comes where I put myself in a GHD sit up. But instead of doing a GHD sit up like you would in CrossFit where you're firing your legs down, You just go to the very bottom of the movement and then you just extend by kind of arching your back and then roll your shoulders forward and, you know, compress, essentially contracting the rectus abdominis. And so I'll do that one. If you're an advanced person that has strong abs, that one's great. If you're not quite strong enough to do that, sticking with the first two is totally fine. I also, you know, I like AB rollouts. They're more of a isometric, but they're extremely effective. Um, yeah. Okay. Last question here. I have to bounce. So let me answer it first and then, and then I'll kick it to you. Dr. Mike is an advocate of GLP one meds for everyone because of the health benefits, even for those who are not obese. He cites blood sugar, kidney function, digestive support, and numerous other health benefits. What are your thoughts on this? I've heard him talk about this with these benefits. I didn't realize that that came with a sweeping recommendation that everybody go on it. I don't know that that's actually true. I probably need to investigate this because I have heard him say these things do help these things, but I don't know that that means that he also says everyone should do it because of that. If he does, I think that's kind of crazy. Because I think that there's nothing is free. There's no free lunch. You can't just take something, get all of these incredible benefits and have no negative impact at all on anything. It could be your cognitive function. could be your sleep. could be your, I mean, there's so many things down the line that could be affected from putting something into your body that's foreign that I just err on the side of putting fewer things in my body. When given the choice of you can put more things in because you'll get this benefit and this benefit and this benefit, or you can put less things in and just be healthy overall by like doing good lifestyle habits and things like that. That's more where I would tend to gravitate. And that's not to say that I don't think GLP ones have great benefits for people that need them. Like we've stated on the show that if you're in the obese 25, 30, 40, 50 % of people that really do need these meds to be healthier, I'm all for it. I can't say that I'm on board with everybody doing these for the reasons that are cited. Yeah, I just I think Brian hit the nail on the head. Anytime that something is stated as everyone should be taking this, there's just too much genetic variation, right? There's going to be some people that are going to have horrible side effects in some way, because they're just too vast of a species. Simple as that. um So I would be very weary. um Also. I'm very hesitant to say this because it's just my opinion and it is not law. Dr. Mike has had some very bad takes lately. um I don't know if it's a strange push to get move him from like the fitness sphere into other things, but. I have been privy to information of people in a let's call it a higher educated circle. Right. Think like your PhDs, doctors, these sorts of things. I'm not going to say who it's not. Also, it's not Jackson, by the way. That's what everyone would probably think. And I quote right from this higher group of people. Dr. Mike is now a joke in the ah like scientific community. Right. No one takes him seriously anymore. So I again, some of that's my opinion. Some of that is things that have been I have directly seen. I think when people make blanketed statements, especially around a medication for everyone, you have to be very weary. um The thing that I would say for this question asker is if you are someone who is curious, right? I always encourage experimenting yourself. You can run something at a very low dose. get blood work every four weeks, see what you notice subjectively, see what you notice objectively, but therefore then you at least have your own individualized response. You can formulate your own opinions around your actions and experience. But like I said, I would never recommend something for everyone from a medication standpoint, because like Brian said, there is no free lunch, right? um While I think it's... quite clear how efficacious the GLP ones are for a massive population of um our people that need it, there is likely going to be some downstream effect somewhere that we just do not know about yet. How big or how small? We have yet to determine that. And for the people that it helps, it will probably be a very easily trade off cost because of the massive amount of health and life that has been gained back. But again, we just don't know. And I think it's um dangerous, reckless, maybe even to say that everyone should be taking something like that. So uh last question, very, very good question. Hopefully helpful. um As always, any questions for Brian and I can follow up with us on Instagram. Thank you for listening. We will talk to you next week.