Too Much Info, Too Little Clarity

Philip Pape 0:01

Have you ever felt like the more fitness content you consume, the less confident you are about what you actually should do? If you're tracking everything, following the right people, but you still can't quite track the code on your own body. If you wonder whether all these apps and AI tools are helping or adding more noise, this episode is for you. Today, I'm talking with Adam Schaefer, co-founder of Mind Pump, and we're gonna discuss a raw fitness truth. Having access to unlimited information like this podcast doesn't automatically lead to results. In fact, it often makes things harder. Adam's going to walk us through how he filters signals from the noise, where technology generally serves lifters, versus where it falls short, and the core principles that he's never wavered on despite building a massive fitness media empire. You'll learn how to build your own decision-making framework, how to experiment intelligently without falling into dogma, and what the future of fitness might look like. Welcome to Wit and Weight, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're talking about how to make sense of all the fitness information out there in an age where more content doesn't necessarily mean better results. My guest is the Adam Schaefer, co-founder and co-host of Mind Pump, which has become one of the world's leading fitness podcasts, scaling it into a platform that reaches millions of lifters every month. It's definitely in my feed, probably in yours. If not, go and hit follow right now. Adam has a pro card in men's physique bodybuilding and has managed some of the largest health clubs in the Bay Area. And if you listen to Mind Pump like I do, you'll know he's big on building sustainable habits while staying open to experimentation. He's someone who can tell you exactly what has not changed in effective training over the past decade or two while also sharing what he's currently experimenting with himself. Right now, I see that we're at this inflection point where AI, algorithms, influencer culture, social media are heavily reshaping how people make their fitness decisions. So I think Adam's

Meet Adam Schaefer And The Mission

Philip Pape 2:12

a perfect guy to help us make sense of it all. And today, you're gonna learn how to develop your own framework to evaluate all this information, where technology can be helpful versus where human connection still matters the most, and some non-negotiables that Adam has maintained while building one of the most trusted voices in fitness. Adam, it is really awesome to have you here on Wits and Weights. I want to welcome you to the show.

Adam Shafer 2:34

Appreciate that, man. Totally honored, love the intro, man. I'm excited.

Philip Pape 2:37

Yeah, man. So uh before we started recording, I was talking, you and I were talking about uh Jamie Selzer, who was on the show, right? And he wanted to say, first of all, that hello, and you've been and you've been a huge supporter in his process, and you're one of the nicest guys he's met along the way. Um just want to put that out there. So shout out to you, Jamie. Now so cool. Now, Jamie is um, you know, he found both of us through podcasts. So he obviously listens to a lot of different shows, found people he trusted, applied the knowledge, built consistency, got the results. Everyone who's listening right now, the you, the listener listening, I know that's what you're trying to do. But I also know that you have access to more information now than any generation in history. And so why, Adam, this is a question for you. Why are people having so much trouble putting all that wonderful knowledge to use and doing it consistently?

Adam Shafer 3:28

Yeah, it's an we're in an interesting time right now where uh, I mean, the the amount of information uh in our phone and access with AI is just it's unbelievable. I mean, and if I don't know how much you've gotten familiar with Chat GPT and just how amazing of a tool that

AI Answers, Prompting, And Bias

Adam Shafer 3:48

is and how fast you can get really good answers. The problem with that is that there's so much information on the internet that how you prompt it really dictates what it spits out. And it's so it's funny you bring this up because I I was literally just talking with my brother-in-law maybe three, four days ago, and I was venting to the guys. I he I talked to my brother-in-law the night before I come into work, and uh I go, man, I said, really interesting thing happened to me last night with my brother-in-law. I said, he he sends me, he's going through a bunch of stuff right now in his life, and uh, you know, he he is Googling me or he's uh it texting me that he was Googling uh TRT that he had started about a year and a half ago or whatever. And uh he's listing all these things, he's like, and he's he's blaming TRT, you know. Oh, and I check and he sends me a screenshot of what ChatGPT had sent back to him. And I tell my buddies, I'm like, man, this is crazy. I said, This is my brother-in-law who's been in my family for 20 years, very aware of the business. In fact, his wife works for the company, so very, very familiar with what I do, the content that I have. Uh knows that I've had some of the most world-renowned doctors and hormone specialists on my shows, uh, been on TRT for 20 years myself, trained hundreds, maybe thousands of people on it. I have a whole entire forum with a doctor dedicated to hormones. So I you would think that he'd go directly to a source like that, right? With that kind of access and experience, and just go, hey, bro, and ask, ask me the question. But instead, he went to Chat GPT, and then what it spit out to him was uh kind of alarming to me. And I said, uh, I said, no, bro. I said, I I don't agree with that. I said, um, you know, if you prompt and what I think he did was he prompted it like this, where he said, What are all the negative worst things could happen with with taking TRT? And so it spit off a list because he because he prompted that way. And I said, Well, what if you were to have prompted it? What are all the negative effects of having low testosterone as a 45, 50-year-old, or 60-year-old man? And watch what it spits off to you. I said, It's gonna send you a bunch of alarming stuff too. And it, but it was a really interesting moment, it just happened to me. And I would tell them the guys, I'm like, we're entering this time where here I have somebody close to me who has access to someone like me who's got real-world experience for a very long time with some of the brightest minds in the world in that in that topic. And he went straight to Chat GPT for whatever reason. And because of the way he's prompting it, he got kind of a bit of a confirmation bias to what he was already kind of thinking because of the way he prompted it. And it just kind of hit me like, man, this is gonna be a problem, you know. Because I I would I would say that I was one of the people that really got excited about Chat GPT, like, man, this is awesome! What a brilliant tool. This is gonna be mostly all positive things. But now I start to see where, like, oh, this could be a problem. And I've heard some crazy stories of uh, I think just recently the news hit where the kid basically committed suicide, and it was because of the conver, and then they had the whole log of the conversation that he was having with AI, and it kind of confirmed his bias on that hey, his life is worth nothing, he shouldn't be in this world, don't bother telling crying out to anybody and basically handle it yourself. And uh, guy takes his kid takes his life, and so yeah, it's it's a bit uh alarming where we're going and that we're already adopting it that fast.

Philip Pape 7:32

Yeah, totally agree, man. Like there was a South Park episode recently called Sycopancy about that exact topic where the husband was like not even wanting to talk to his wife and and was going to chat GPT to ask all the questions, and it would just keep telling him what he wanted to hear. And I've seen that too, like like you, I love to play around with these things. I was using a different AI the other day to kind of brainstorm business ideas, and someone said, Hey, train your AI to tell it to be honest with you and not do that. And I tried it out and I was like, Oh, it actually started giving me like this brutal feedback, and I can see why people don't want to hear that because it says, it said, uh, it said, Philip, you're still trying to do this, you know, you're you're being emotional about it, you're trying to do this. Here's what you want to do instead. I'm like, oh yeah, this is interesting. It's crazy.

Adam Shafer 8:16

The way you prompt this thing is gonna be uh it's gonna be really, really important. And I'm I imagine that a lot of the conversations, a lot of the education uh for the kids and the generation coming up will probably be around that because uh this is the stuff that we're starting to see unfold. I just thought it was so wild because it was so closely connected to me and something like that. That like, man, I just I I don't know if I would do that still. Like, and now I had to ask myself, like, if I have direct access to somebody who I have a lot of respect for in a field, I still think I would go to that doctor or would go to that professional before I got on to Chat GPT because I think, and maybe that's because of my own experience of just I uh in the fitness world, I believe that there's a level of importance when it comes to book knowledge, science, and what we've learned from studies. And then there's a lot of value that comes from just pure application, real-world people, and the variables that come with that, because science has done incredible things for us to steer us in many great directions. And you know, you can look up a damn near study for anything to get some idea of what maybe you should or shouldn't do, but the human element changes that always. And I for every uh great science study that I've seen and great rule that I've been told, I've seen the opposite, I've seen it um not play out that way. And so because of that, I'm I'm always a little cautious of oh, just because the research says this is the best option, it doesn't mean it's uh gonna work a hundred percent of the time. In fact, we don't have hardly any studies at all that are like that where we could replicate it a a hundred times over and it always gives the same outcome. And so, because of that, you have to keep keep in mind that you know, this is this answer, this AI tool is giving you, isn't an end-all be-all. It could possibly help us in the right direction. But yeah, so I don't know, I I caution people uh because of that, and I think that's it. We're in this interesting time when there is there's just so much information that even a young kid could get the all the information that a PhD and 20 years experience of of training could get, at least all the all the books and the and the stuff that's put on the internet in regards to that at the in the access of their hand. But what you do with that, how you prompt that, it's gonna really matter. And so, yeah, it's I don't know, I think I we're gonna get dumber. I mean, it another another another example of this, we talk about this on the show. I'm I'm guilty of this. Um, when I was a kid, I was uh you know driving at 16, and uh with this

Science vs. Real Life Application

Adam Shafer 10:49

was before pre-navigation. So I'm dating myself a bit here. Uh and I and that didn't exist. And I remember uh I lived in a lot of different towns and homes growing up, prided myself on the ability to be some go somewhere one time and I could go back again, no problem, no directions. I just had a kind of a photographic memory. I I had the tree to the left, the red house on the right, the blue door two blocks down. Yeah, I could get there, no problem. And then also memorized every friend's phone number that I had. I didn't have to write any of that down. I just knew them all, still remember friends' numbers from 12, 13 years old. Yet I don't know my wife's phone number. You know, and I don't uh I can't get from my house to work that I've driven for 10 years without putting my navigation. Like, so I have even things like that, I've outsourced those skills so much that I've lost them completely. Now, it's probably not the end of the world that I'm not the best navigation work because we all have navigation on our phone. It's pretty simple. It's not that big of a deal that I don't have all my friends and my wife's phone numbers memorized because we've all got those phone books built into our pockets now. So maybe not that big of a deal, but I think we got to be careful on how much of these skills that we outsource uh to this AI tool. And I think this thing is is so powerful. Like it's not just one thing, it's not just navigation that it's outsourcing, it's outsourcing critical thinking for so many things. So it's I don't think we've ever seen anything, any technology like this come into play. And so, yeah, I'd really caution a lot of people that are using it to navigate them through nutrition and exercise and and the end-all be all. I still think getting a hold of a of somebody who's been training people and in the fitness space for a really long time is gonna be a better option than the internet as a as a end-all be-all.

Philip Pape 12:41

And you know what's cool about it is like when you think of podcasts like yours where you do the the qua, right? The listener questions, you're effectively doing that. You're answering very specific contextual questions. And if you guys listen to enough of that, you can start to learn to think about those for yourself. And then just reach out to these guys you you follow or and trust, like Adam, like me, like anybody. Just send them a note because that's gonna be probably a more accurate response. And they're not always gonna hopefully just try to sell you on a program, right? You don't have to follow those guys who are just immediately like, here's my product, here's my paywall. It's funny you mention like your was it your brother not coming to you or or yeah, it's my brother-in-law, right? And and I don't know if it's partly because people are I've seen a change in generations as well as since the pandemic of people not wanting to just like reach out to people. Maybe they're they're they're kind of nervous to do that for whatever reason, even if it's your own brother. But also, uh, I've talked to my own clients who've said, I looked up on ChatGPT, I said, What would Phillips say about this? And I bet they do that about you, Adam. There's like, what would mind pump say about this? And it's like, you can't even trust that because it'll spit out something. And I'm like, nah, 80% of that is wrong. Yeah. So it just cobbles together, you know, what it thinks. So, all right, then that that's a so that's good advice about the AI side of things. What about just in general? Like, you guys cover a lot of trends and info that's constantly coming up practically every day, because you publish your episodes every day. How do you even decide should I pay attention to this or talk about it or like what people care about and need to know about? You know what I mean? Like it's current event in fitness, so to speak.

Returning To Timeless Training Basics

Adam Shafer 14:16

I mean, I think that uh the positive side for us as content creators is it provides endless content for us to talk about. I think rarely ever do we not cover it. Like I think that if there's something new, a new trend, a new modality, uh a new tool, a new exercise somebody's doing, uh, we tend to we tend to talk about it. I think it's it's it's good conversation for us to discuss it. But then at the end of the day, I think we always go back to the, I mean, things that we've known for a hundred years around training. And I mean, in fact, we did an episode the other day, I don't know, it was maybe last week or week, two weeks ago, where we were sitting down, we're like, if if someone said you could only do you know six to eight exercises, what would the you know, six to eight be? Could could we put together something that they could do this just those six to eight exercises for the rest of their life? And and could we build a good physique and bulletproof their joints? And we we wrote something down, and we and in there were all the basic movements. It was the overhead press, it was the squad, it was the deadlift, it was a row, there was a rotational movement, like a windmill in there, there was an and then like a full sit up. Like so, I mean, we basically went, okay, well, multi-planar exercise, some sort of rotational, right, some sort of ab exercise, and then the big, the big four lifts. And if you did those movements for the rest of your life, and only those movements, you could build an incredibly fit-looking and moving physique uh forever. And yet we have so many different exercises and so many different ways to organize them and debate over what's better for hypertrophy and what's better for this. And I just think that we've overcomplicated a lot of that. And I think what we try, and we don't just dismiss people, I think, that are asking that or talking about that. I think we what we really try to do is distill it down to what makes this new thing good, you know, or what is interesting about this new thing, but then reminding people that, you know, aside from the novelty of this exercise, it doesn't trump these movements that we've known about for a really long time. Get good at those movements, uh, and it will serve you far more than this new thing or new modality or new technique or new study that just came out and said, oh, this burns more body fat. So uh yeah, I think that that's that's what we've that that's the core of the show. It's been, you know, here's all these neat things that we're always learning about and we're watching, but there's some really fundamental things that we've known for a really long time that if you stick to those basics and you master those, you'll be far better off than you know, figuring out a million other. I mean, what's the it's the Bruce Lee quote, right? Master one one punch. I I fear the man who knows who's done one punch a million times than a man who knows a million different punches. It's just like it's the same thing. It's like nail those, nail those four or five things down, really get good at them because it takes time. Like, I mean, I've been squatting for 20 something years. I still don't consider myself a perfect or a great squatter. So it's like it's a movement and that you you have a very long window to get really good at. And what's great about that, that it's challenging, is that it provides a lot of novel stimulus to you and a lot of opportunity to get gains from it versus something that's very basic and simple, a machine or a new tool, a new tool that came out. That's okay, cool. This is a great novel stimulus, get some cool benefit from it, but then uh then what? Then then there the benefits start to diminish, and then again, you're back to the core movements that are really moving the needle. So, I mean, that's that's kind of how I look at it. That's how we talk about it, I feel like. I think, but it's interesting to discuss. I mean, I have been in the space for a long time, so I enjoy the conversation around these tools, these ideas, but at the end of the day, we know what it takes to build a really healthy, strong body.

Philip Pape 18:05

Yeah, and I think that's that's like the dichotomy is all the all these cool things at the top, and then you end up steering the conversation slowly back to the principles. And I like the way how you put it. If you realize that there are a core set of bedrock principles in the choice space, isn't that big, you can focus in and develop depth in those, treat them like the skills they are and master them over time, which means you don't have to be uh hopping all over the place with different techniques and tools and uh the latest gadgets. And it's funny because like I know he's controversial, Lyle McDonald, but recently he posted somebody, somebody said, So how do I build muscle? And he's like, You train and you do a surplus, and that's all there's ever been to it, right? Like, you know, people are looking for the complicated answer. And I hear it too. Like, people are always when you do the Q ⁇ A's, you want to kind of fill up the podcast episode with some

How To Get Unstuck And Start

Philip Pape 18:50

decent thoughts and content. And also keeping in mind people are new to this, to them, it is very confusing, right? Because there's so what do they trust? So yeah, I guess that's the next that's a good segue to like um, all right, let's say they're listening to Mind Pump, they're hearing you guys come talk about this. They're gonna hear the themes start to solidify over time. They will. You'll hear squatting mentioned, you'll hear compound lifts, you'll hear, you know, energy balance, right? The evidence. But somebody needs to take action on that. Like the people want, you know, the listener right now wants to do something about it. How do they like get unstuck? What's how did they start moving the needle and take that next step?

Adam Shafer 19:27

I I love that question because I think this is the part. I mean, if there was anything controversial about mind pump or that we talk about, I would say it's it's our approach. And I it's not, it's not sexy, it's not even a lot. What we've learned over decades of training so many people is you really have to meet people where they're currently at if you're gonna be successful, you're gonna have success with them being consistent. Sure, I could sit down, take your measurements, do your body fat, track your steps, figure out, take a metabolic test to figure out where your calories are supposed to be, and write you up the perfect diet and exercise plan that will get you jacked. I mean, I could do that, I could do that with anybody, but that's not the real art of training somebody or getting somebody to be very successful and consistent. The real art is figuring out that individual where they're at in their life and building something that kind of complements their life that they can do for the rest of their life. And that is so unique because now other than just their physiology, now the psychological psychology is being played into this equation. And that part is a massive part because if I have all those breakdowns of your numbers of what you should do, but then you look at me and you go, Man, Adam, I just I hate going to the gym. It's awful. It's I every time I go, I dread it. I don't like being there. I feel insecure about the place. I feel like everyone's staring at me. I always go for a couple weeks and then I quit after a while, or it's just, I can't believe, you know, I can't commit to going five days, whatever. You're telling me all this information. And then what if what if my perfect plan for you includes some of these things that you're telling me? You just don't like to like and and an experienced trainer will hear that and go, like, okay, I've got to find another way to move this person in in the right direction. Or maybe you're telling me you're a really busy dad and you've got three businesses and you got four kids and you travel all over the place. And again, I've got all your physiology down, and I know the macros and the perfect program to get you jacked, and you're telling me you want to get jacked, but then you're also telling me you've got all these other priorities in your life, and you really don't care that much about getting the gym, and you also travel a lot. So being really consistent with your nutrition has been really difficult. So, you know, then I then I have to go, okay, well, maybe he's not ready for a meal plan this constrained and this strict. It sounds like he's never even gone two weeks of consistently hitting his protein targets. So, you know, I'm gonna figure out this individual, and then I'm I'm gonna listen to where they're at, what they've had troubles with, how they've been challenged in the past, what they really want. And then I'm gonna go, okay, what are a couple things, really simple things that I can add into this person's life that doesn't completely flip it upside down. Now, granted, if they follow the exact plan that I know is perfect for them, they would get to the set goal faster. But what we what I understand, because I've been doing this so long, is they're not gonna do it. They're not gonna follow. And so that, and to me, that's the real art of what we do is the ability to know the perfect plan for this person to get to their exact goal, but then recognize that that path is different for every individual, no matter how much their physiology matches the other person that said the same exact goal. It's oh, this individual, these are our obstacles. This is and and also their commitment level to that, and going like, okay, like I I sometimes will hear somebody who has been trying to get into fitness for so long and they've never been consistent. But every time they've attempted, they they get into these four to five weeks, five to day week type of programs to go, and it's like, hey, and and they'll tell me, all right, I'm I'm I'm motivated again, I'm I'm I'm ready, my calendar's clear, I'm gonna go do this, and they're like, I can do five days a week, and you'll hear me or you'll hear us on the show talk somebody out of that. No, why don't you why don't you start with one? Let's go one day, and they're no, no, no, I'm I'm ready, I'm ready to go now. It's like, well, no, you've done that a hundred times before, and it's it hasn't worked out. Maybe we try something a little bit, maybe we commit

Why All‑Out Effort Backfires

Adam Shafer 23:50

less to and so that comes off a bit controversial. In fact, I we've had you know uh people critique us and say, oh, they're the the podcast just for beginners, or you know, oh, they're the the low intensity guys, or oh, they're the guys that that hate on cardio and they don't want it's like no, is what what it is is that we've trained a lot of fucking people between the three of us for a really long time, and we understand human psychology, behavior psychology really well, and we also understand physiology, understand macros, nutrition really well, and how to marry those uh for most people. And it doesn't mean that we get it right a hundred percent of the time, but I'd say we're pretty good at it, and I can hear somebody tell me their goals, tell me about their history, and I can know what I think is the perfect path to get them there the fastest, but then also understand that that path is probably not gonna work for that person based off of the information they've told me. And so I've got to find a different way to get that outcome, and that looks different for every individual. And so I'd say that's probably the most like, and that's where these like arguments or debates that people have online where they're debating who's who's more right, or my study that just came out contradicts your study, and this is what the science says, and it's just like, well, that's great. I mean, I could I can have, for example, if if if the science said that waking up at 5 a.m. burned you 20% more body fat if you just exercise at 5 a.m., well, then would we all work out at 5 a.m.? We still wouldn't. Some of us hate to work out at that time. And so just because the studies say that that client could burn 20% more body fat, which I know that's not true, but it lets us say it was, doesn't mean that I would still would tell every client to work out at 5 a.m. Because after I get to know somebody and I hear somebody tell me something like, oh yeah, I stay up till one in the morning every morning. I I've I never get up before seven o'clock. But yeah, okay, if I can burn 20% more fat, I'll get up at five. I'm like, no, I'm not even gonna do that because I know you're not gonna follow that. And even if you do follow it for a short period of time, it's not gonna become a lifestyle for you. It's not gonna become something you do for the rest of your life. And that's my goal. My goal is to not only get you to whatever said fitness goal you have, but it's also to make this a part of your life for the rest of your life. And that can come off, I think, controversial sometimes because sometimes the decisions that we make with callers or when we help people flies in the face of the science sometimes. And boy, science guys just don't like that. That they just chomp at the bit to try and tear that apart or talk shit about that. But it's just like, but that always tells me when someone critiques what maybe we say about uh you know exercise or nutrition or cardio or walking or whatever the the commentary is, that they probably have a lot of book knowledge, but they haven't probably trained a lot of real people in real life. And fortunately for us, we've got both. We've got a lot of a lot of studies, a lot of science, a lot of national certifications. Uh, and then we've trained a lot of people for a very long time. And the combination of that has, you know, forced my hand to not always go in the direction of what the research tells me. Uh, sometimes, sometimes my heart, my mind, and what I'm hearing tells me something else. It says, hey, you know, I know what the science says I should do right here, but I'm listening to this person and I know what the behavioral psychology is around what this person is saying. Yeah, I'm gonna go this direction because I think that's the best. Learning to discern from that. And if you're a listener right now and you're interested in like finding good advice, like you're looking for somebody that has that. You're looking for somebody who has got not only the science, and so they can they can communicate the questions that you have around physiology and nutrition and exercise science, but then also tell you, but this is what I've seen work really well with a lot of my clients, or I've trained a lot of people just like you, and this works really well. Like, you want to hear a blend of both of those, I think, to get yourself a really good coach or a really good guide in your journey. And I think that's going to trump these AI bots and tools that we're gonna have. And I think that's I think that's I don't think uh because everybody has the answer and the knowledge in their hand, we're gonna have all of a sudden way fitter people. Because I don't think it's a I don't think it's a lack of knowledge that has kept all these people from getting in shape. I I think it has more to do with the behavioral psychology side, is that people have a lot of insecurities that are driving a lot of people are exercising because they hate their body. They're exercising working out because they don't like the way they look. And if you do it, if you work out in because you resent yourself, that'll never last. That'll even even if it's it's a motivator in a short period of time to maybe get you to lose a few pounds, or you can muscle your way through it for a season to get in shape, but you're not gonna make it a part of your life if you're doing it because you don't love yourself, because you resent the way you look or you're insecure. And until you fix those psychological things, those hurdles that you have, you're you're gonna keep, you're gonna be on the hamster wheel of gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, or being in shape, falling out of shape, being in shape, falling out of shape. And uh I, you know, we just know that from training so many people that you you've got to find, you've got to get to the bottom of both.

Philip Pape 29:07

Yeah, and if you're listening, like the wisdom Adam's sharing is gold because I've only been in the coaching space about five years, and it it only took a few months before I realized this is not about information at all, like you suggested. There's the classic quote, I know what to do, I'm just not doing it. And you realize, well, it's not the problem, isn't it you know, that it's uh the psychology. And that begs the question like, shouldn't psychology be the foundational science and not nutrition physiology, for example, because that's just nuts and bolts like gravity, you know?

Adam Shafer 29:36

Like I tell you what, I whenever I meet a trainer, um, you know, of course, obviously we've met a lot of trainers that listen to the show so I doubt, and they have a psychology background. I always encourage them, go down, you're gonna be great. Because I think I I got into that later, not realizing what an important so it wasn't like uh somebody told me, Go learn psych read. Like I got into reading behavioral psychology, psychology. Books in my mid-20s, uh, out of a necessity of realizing, like, man, I'm starting to pick up that a lot of my job is I feel like a kind of a counselor, you know, like a lot of these conversations I'm having with people is a lot less to do with the X's and O's about nutrition and exercise, and a lot more about what's going on in their head. I'm like, I'm not really qualified for this. And so that's what really sent me down the path. And so when I meet somebody who's get just getting into training, or maybe they had a background in psychology, I always go, oh man, you'll probably make a great trainer because so much of our job is getting down to a lot of these behaviors that drive us, because you can know what foods are right for you to eat. But if you have past

Protein, Muscle, And Cardio Myths

Adam Shafer 30:45

traumas and behaviors built around these poor decisions that you've been making forever, just because somebody tells you you can only eat these foods for the next six weeks, and maybe you could adhere to that for six weeks, doesn't mean you fixed the root cause of what drove you to those behaviors in the first place. And they're they'll rear their heads and you'll eventually go back. And this is what happens to people is they don't address the root cause of what got them out of shape. They think it's an X's and O's thing. They go hire somebody or they search Chat GBT, get the X's and O's. Maybe you have good discipline, and so you have the ability to like white knuckle your way through the next six months or whatever through discipline. But then eventually that fails because you never address the root cause. Uh, and so it's like we got to get to that and how you got here uh first and understand those behaviors so we can unpack them, we can work on them. And then along the way, we're gonna start adding some of these great tips that I know about nutrition and exercise along the way, and that's the path. And so I do think that uh psychology, behavioral science should be a big piece of the training that trainers, and it's just not. I mean, we it's uh none of none of us that get a certification get taught any of that stuff, but I think it's it's paramount to being a good a good trainer.

Philip Pape 32:05

Yeah, man, it's true. I I think there are probably four or five fields that get neglected in this space. Like one of them is behavioral economics, which is a good understanding of why people make decisions, you know, and how you incentivize people. And another is positive psychology, which is a field that I got exposed to through through someone else a couple of years back, but it's the idea of having uh separating positive and negative as two different spaces. Like a lot of people think negative is the opposite of positive, but really you can add in positive to your life and it tends to spiral up and crowd out negative. And I hear you guys talking about a lot of that yourselves, of this kind of what let me focus on the approach and the process and adding in, like you said, the two simple things I need, and that's gonna nudge you in the right direction for you in the most low friction way, least resistance because it's built to you for your life. And it's funny that that's controversial still, Adam. I mean, those people can pat and sand, honestly, because if anything you've done, like listen, think about yourself, listener, like um anything you've gotten good at, you didn't go hog wild and like 100% put on the pedal on day one on that. Like learn a musical instrument. Oh man, you gotta learn that note of C. You gotta learn how to like get your weed right, read what. You know what I mean? It's like these little things that move it forward. So if you were to say to someone listening, hey, we, Adam, with my experience and mind pump and everything else, most people have these five things that are like usually the big roadblocks for most people's lifestyle. And I know I'm asking you to generalize a little bit and you just said it's not general, but still, there are certain things a lot of people do struggle with. What's that like short list that the listener can kind of think about intentionally and then take that step?

Adam Shafer 33:44

Well, I'll I'll address one that I think that you you kind of just pointed at right now that I think is a really important topic. The thing that's interesting about um exercise science is it is so unlike anything else that we do in life. Meaning, if I read more books and and and work harder at that, um I'm gonna get more information, I'm gonna be smarter. If I work harder at my job, I'm probably gonna get better at my job and make more money. If I study for that thing, I'm gonna have a better, like real hard, stay up late all night, three nights, like I'm gonna get, I'm gonna learn. It serves us a lot of times to overapply intensity towards a goal. Almost everything else you will get better at if you do it harder and more. Uh working out is not that way. Uh, there's a there is an optimal amount of intensity and application towards exercise and nutrition that will garner the most results. And then there's things that you can do that will give you the opposite of your results. And so understanding that sweet spot is probably where a lot of people miss and they tend to swing from one extreme to the other, meaning I'm in a place in my life right now where I'm just I'm too busy, I'm stressed, I'm not going to the gym, I'm not looking at my food, I don't give a shit right now, and I'm just I'm eating when I eat, I'm taking whatever, I'm not taking care of myself. And then it piles up. And then one morning we go, oh my God, or somebody says something to us, or we show up to the doctor, and the doctor says, You've got high blood pressure now, or your cholesterol's through the roof, or whatever, and then it scares us into or light or wakes us up in that moment, goes, Oh my God, I need to do something about it. And so then you go from doing nothing to oh my god, I gotta change this. And so you're like, Well, the harder I go, the more I do, the faster I'm gonna get to to said goal. It's not true with fitness. You can absolutely overapply the intensity and do too much that will result in less results or no results. And why that's difficult is initially it doesn't look like that. So this is a really common pattern that I just described the average person enter and insert whatever reason got you to start the gym, but that's kind of what happens is we're so busy, we're not working out, we're not tracking food, we're not doing any of that stuff. Then all of a sudden something happens, wakes us up, and we go, or a birthday or a wedding, or whatever, and we go, now we're gonna go do this. And then you go from here to all the way over here instantly overnight. And what here to over here means, not only does it mean going, you weren't going

Better Wins: Strength And Biofeedback

Adam Shafer 36:25

to the gym at all to now you're going four, five, six days a week, it also means you're also adding in probably cardio in some of those days or on off days. And then in addition to that, you went from eating all this crappy food to now I'm doing chicken and salad, you know, and that's what I'm that's what I'm eating, or I'm doing now, or I'm doing fasting and I'm intermittent fasting all the way till six o'clock at night, and I'm only eating in this little four-hour window or whatever. And so you went, and what what happens when you do that is you send a signal to the body that you're training all these weights and you're doing stuff that the body goes, Oh wow, we're lifting weights now. We need to adapt, we need to build. But then it goes over to the nutrition side and goes, Oh, but he or she's starving me compared to what I was eating just two weeks ago, and there's not enough material to do anything with all this signal that I'm getting. So I'm getting this loud signal because my body's getting hammered in the gym every day, but then my nutrition doesn't align with the way I'm training. And so, yeah, I burn a bunch of calories because I'm moving, which ends up sending the wrong signal to somebody who probably wants to lose body fat or lose weight, because that's what most people motivate the majority of people to get back in the gym. So, what happens is that person in the first two weeks sees the scale go down. Why? Well, because you reduced your calories by a thousand to two thousand calories a day because you went from not tracking, eating like shit, to all of a sudden salads or a small eating window. And so your calories got cut in half. You were doing no physical activity, now you're doing activity every single day, whether that's running or all the gym or your favorite, you know, orange theory type of class. So, yeah, you did this with the calorie balance game. And so, what does that result in? Well, you probably pulled out a bunch of water weight and you definitely burned some calories, and so the scale does this, and so you get this false signal of doing the right thing in the first two weeks. You go, Oh, hell yeah, I'm down 10, 15 pounds already in the first two weeks. Let's keep it rolling, and then the next week you see about five pounds more, and you're like, all right, all right, man, I gotta get a little bit harder, you know. And so then you get to like week three or four, and you're starting to hit this hard plateau. And you're like, whoa, I'm not, I'm not even halfway to my goal yet of where I'm trying to be, but I'm training five days a week. I'm eating four in four-hour windows, I'm only eating this many calories, I'm kicking my ass in the gym. Where do I go from here? And that plays out unique and different for every individual, but it kind of looks a lot like that in a lot of different ways, as far as insert the different types of cardio, insert different types of training modalities, insert different diets restrictions that they went to, but similar approach and similar type of results. And the that lever that they pulled, the eating less and just moving more, you can only pull that so many times. And so maybe somebody got longer than the three or four weeks I said, maybe they got to seven or eight weeks because they were they started at three days a week and then they went to four and then they went to five, or maybe they didn't start with running yet, and then now they've added running every single day. But that's what it looks like. And so it either happens at week three or it happens at week 13, but it's gonna happen somewhere in those first few months where pulling just that lever doesn't result in any more weight loss, and the body adapts. The body goes, Oh, okay, she's gonna beat me up like this every day, make me run, and only give me salads and chicken. I'm gonna learn to survive. Our bodies are incredible and resilient, and it goes, I'm gonna learn to survive off of all that she's giving me and how much I'm training, and then it adapts, and then it no longer sees any more results. And this is the point where people end up going, well, fuck this. I'm training seven days a week, I'm running, I'm barely eating everything, and I'm only 15 or 20 pounds lighter than what I was when I was eating everything I wanted, wasn't going to the gym at all. And it's very logical reason to quit. I would quit. I'd go, uh, all this work for a little bit lighter. I mean, nobody's even really saying anything to me yet. I can barely tell that I look different or feel different. And no, I'll go back to Fat Me. Fat me was happier eating Doritos and sitting on the couch, and I wasn't doing all this extra activity, and it's like, and I'm it was a trade for 15 pounds. That's not worth it. And that's where they throw their hands up, and or they throw even more crazy stuff, which what we see when people throw more crazy stuff and more restriction and more movement is eventually a hormonal dysfunction and then the the really doing a lot of metabolic damage that we have to unpack later on. That's a really common pattern for a lot of people is to go from one extreme to the other and then get a little bit of false hope because initially that does move the scale down. But if they actually were, if if we had uh an ability to do a real-time body fat analysis on that person of what happened and those 10 to 15 pounds, what you would see is the 10 to 15 pounds they lost, half of it was muscle and half of it was fat. So from a body fat percentage, that person didn't get any healthier and in fact might have gone the opposite direction, even though the scale showed them that they dropped 50-15 pounds. And so this is what happens to these people is they don't even realize that the the what they thought was good results were not good results at all. In fact, they were already early signs that you're losing muscle along with this with this body fat, and you're not getting any healthier, all you're doing is slowing the metabolism down and getting your body to adapt. That happens to so many people when they first get inside the gym. And so understanding that probably an a second huge mistake that I see that I think I we speak to so much is I don't think I trained a client. I mean, maybe maybe under five percent, definitely under five percent of all the people I've ever trained, when I first do a diet assessment. And the way it looks like for me is what it used to look like when I was a young trainer was I would do what I told you before, where I figure out your your physiology, your steps, your movement, your age, all the calculations have a calculation of this is your macros, and then I'd write a diet out for you to follow. It was a terrible idea. What it looks like today, or what I've been helping people for decades now, looks like is like I would tell you, I'd say, All right, Philip, here's the deal. I want you to just track what you eat for the next week to two weeks, 10 days typically is what I do. Um don't try and impress me. What I want to do is I want to learn about you. I want to learn about your eating patterns. So if you eat a Snickers bar at lunch every day and it's pretty consistent for you, I want you to actually do that. I want you to eat how you eat so I can see your eating patterns, and then I can then I from there I can make minor adjustments and they're and get us moving in the right direction. What has happened when I've learned to go about this approach is I see I one of the things I see always is the under-eating of protein, especially for somebody who's going to be strength training. So maybe they're not under-eating essential protein, and so I so people need to understand this. There's a big difference between your RDA, your recommended daily allowance, right? So you what you just which your body just needs to survive protein, versus I want to build as much muscle as I possibly can on my body, optimal protein, huge difference. So a lot of people get close to their essential protein, what they just need to survive and be okay. But the goal when we introduce strength training is to build muscle. That's what it's the most protective thing that we can do for not only your joints, your heart, your metabolism. So building muscle is paramount to your long-term success. Well, if we lift weights, that's only part of the equation. That's the the the part that sends the signal to the body

The Aesthetics Trap In Physique Sports

Adam Shafer 44:20

to then go build this muscle. It feels the working out is just a stress. So it feels us lifting weights, and it goes, okay, uh, he's gonna, Adam's gonna make me do this thing every day. This is this is tough on my muscles. I need more muscle to do that. So there's the signal telling my body to build it. But then if I don't give it the nutrients, I don't give it the protein, the additional calories, not under calories, the additional calories and what I need to just maintain, it's not gonna build any muscle. So all I'm doing is burning. So the movements that I'm doing become almost irrelevant and don't really get the benefits of what they should because we're not giving it the material to build the muscle, to then protect the bones, to then speed the metabolism up, to then make fat loss much easier down the road. And so I'd say those are two of the biggest rocks or things that somebody can focus on when they're getting started that I think we do wrong is we go throw the whole kitchen sink at it, we undereat what the body needs to build muscle, and then we don't hit enough protein intake. That the two of those tend to be the kind of the first two things that I look at with anybody any goal. So I don't care if you're a skinny kid trying to build muscle, the borderline osteoporosis, 80-year-old woman, or the uh obese 400-pound guy who's trying to lose 100 pounds. Uh, what I do is I focus on building muscle, doing it slowly, hitting your protein tank. And I'm sure with you interviewed uh Jamie, this is one of the this is why it works so well from here. You have this huge overweight guy who's listening to our podcast and he's hearing this information, going like, okay, this is counterintuitive of what I've heard, but I'm gonna I'm gonna do it. I mean, and and look and look at how much weight this dude lost without ever doing any cardio. Yeah, and so that that would probably be the third thing that people do is they the the the amount of cardio people do it with the it the intentions of burning fat. When we preach that cardio is a terrible tool for fat loss, but it's been taught to us and told to us by even the medical field and doctors saying, Oh, get on the treadmill or go run because you're obese, it's like it is a terrible strategy for long-term fat loss, short term in the in a quick window, and somebody might go, Well, that's fine. I just want to do it short, and then I'll keep it off. It's like, no, that's the problem, is if you lose fat through cardio in the short term, what that does to you metabolically makes it very difficult to keep it off because on your way of reducing the calories and increasing all the cardio to burn that, say, 10 pounds of fat, you also reduced your metabolic rate by 500 calories a day. So you can now eat 500 less than even when you started this journey, which that's even worse, and that's even harder to stay in shape. You just made it harder for yourself. So, yeah, understanding that um and and and approaching the the gym a little bit different is probably the main things I'd focus on for most people, no matter what the goal.

Philip Pape 47:15

Yeah, and I like how you brought it back to, I mean, it all comes back to the principle of hey, this is a systematic, you know, methodical, patient process. If you want, if you want quick weight loss or quick fat loss, you can get it, but you're gonna sacrifice a lot and you're gonna you're gonna gain the weight back and you're not gonna have learned the skills that you need long term. So you've got to make that uh, I would argue, really great trade-off of spend the next few months doing the two things you talked about, which is first of all, tracking, or not first of all, the second thing you mentioned was just tracking to get your baseline. People, a lot of people don't want to do that, right? They just want to jump in and take action. Uh, but if you're doing, if you're changing 10 variables at once, you have no idea what's causing what, and then you reinforce this negative uh feedback loop of, like you said, I lost 15 pounds. So of course what I did equals the result, and it's not the case. So I mean, you're preaching the choir, obviously, here, and hopefully people who listen to this show understand that, like, you know, I don't, I I want you to take a good three months, six months, sometimes two years. It's gonna be the process to like slowly build that muscle and change your body composition. The cool thing is though, and and Adam, you can chime in on this, you can get wins along the way. You can get this sense of internal motivation from what you're doing along the way, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I think people want a win, and they may not even know the right win, but what is it, what are those things people then get when they do this to know that it's working right?

Adam Shafer 48:37

Yeah. So so let's talk about what they get, and then let's also talk about why that's difficult psychologically. So, what you get when you feed the body properly, you hit protein intake, you strength train properly, you apply the right amount of intensity two, three times a week, full body, moderate intensity, and you hit protein, is you get you build muscle and you get strong. And this is really exciting. Now, what happens and why what what why people struggle with this psychologically is because they don't see huge movement on the scale and or maybe even the mirror, because it takes a while. When you stare at yourself in the mirror multiple times a day, it's really difficult for you to see the movement, like somebody who hasn't seen you in two or three weeks, who probably comments, like, Oh man, Philip, you look really good. You've been lifting weights, and you're like, Really? You notice I feel like I haven't seen any change because that's how we are. We're our worst critics, and we're looking at ourselves every day. So it's hard for us to see that incremental change that's happening. So you don't see a lot of change in the mirror, you don't see a lot of movement on the scale, even though you're doing really well. And so, one of the things you can see, and why we tend to let tell people to focus on strength as such an incredible metric, is that if you're getting stronger in the gym, it is very, very likely you are building muscle. And if you are building muscle, we know we're moving in the right direction metabolically for this long-term health journey that we that we've we've put you on. And so what you can see and feel, if and again, this is other things to focus on because we focus so much on the mirror on the scale is you know, energy goes up, libido goes up, better sleep. You notice your skin is better, your hair feels better, your stool looks better, your mood gets better. Like there's a lot of these other metrics that are being impacted from this feeding your body properly, strength training properly, just a few days a week, will start to garner right away. But we ignore it because we've been taught to care just about the mirror and the scale. That we go two weeks go by and the scale stays the same, and you don't really see a difference in the mirror, and you go, I'm not seeing any results, or this trainer's terrible, fire him. When in reality, you've built some muscle, you've lost a little bit of body fat. So you say just say hypothetically in those two weeks, you built one pound of muscle and you lost one pound of fat, which means you've actually made a big dent right there. You've actually added a pound of muscle on your body, you actually burned a pound, but then the scale says zero change. So you go, Oh, I haven't really changed. Like, no, absolutely, you built a pound of muscle and you lost a pound of fat. That's incredible, it's a perfect place to be. And all those other markers I'm talking about has probably improved. You just weren't looking at them because all you cared about was the scale in the mirror, and because that's not moving fast enough for you, you actually think you're not seeing as good of results as you're actually really seeing. And so when I get a client, especially, and here it just goes back to how this whole conversation started with its psychology and listening to the things they're saying. If I have if I I can hear from a client how much they are married to the scale, and many times, even with a weight loss client, I will not allow them to use a scale. And a lot of times that's difficult for them because that's their met way of measuring what they think is success. And I have to train them and teach them that. No, it's not. And in fact, it's been sending you the wrong message for a really long time. This is why I'm not gonna let you use it. You cannot get on it. You got to throw it away. We got to get rid of it, and you got to trust me as your guide to take you through this journey. And that's really difficult for some people to do, but they have to do it, they have to move away from that because they're interpreting the information incorrectly. And I've got to get them to look at the other information that their body is already telling them. And then when I can help them make that connection, and what that used to look like when I was a personal trainer is you know, you see your client two, three times a week, you wouldn't see them a couple days between, and then they see you and you see them and you say, Hey, Susan, how'd you sleep last night? You know, how was your productivity at work? How's the libido doing? You notice a difference in your stool? Notice any difference with your hair or your skin? Like, so I have to be, I'd have to be prompting and asking these questions all the time to get them thinking about a lot of times when you first do that, they're like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. Well, well, pay attention to that. I want you, okay, now between today and when I see you on Monday, really pay attention to those things they're talking about and see if you notice a difference. And then they're starting then they start looking, right? And then they go, Hey, you know what? Actually,

Reframing Goals: Chase Health First

Adam Shafer 53:10

now that I think about it, I haven't I haven't had a bad bathroom experience in the last two weeks. I'm like, yeah, that's your your body is thanking you. It's your digestive system is working better and your stool is better because of your eating properly, your exercise properly. You know what's crazy too? I've had some really good nights of sleep, and I noticed my energy through the day. I used to crash at two or three in the afternoon, and I've been able to have sustained energy throughout the entire day. And yeah, you know what? My sex drive is up. Oh, my husband and I are, you know, you start hearing and you're you're letting them know like this is all these signs are signs that your body is telling you you are moving in the right direction, the right way, the fastest way, the best way. Um, and so if we can get people to focus more on those those other metrics, uh, it would serve them in their long-term pursuit. Even if your goal is crazy goals, like you want to get shredded and get on a stage and be a bikini athlete or a bodybuilder, or you want to have six percent, like I don't have the most extreme goal, you still approach it in that manner of learning to listen to your body, guide you through this, these decisions of making healthier choices for your body versus only the mirror and the scale, because that will steer you in the wrong direction. Because many times when I'm doing the perfect diet, the perfect training routine, the scale doesn't give me the feedback that maybe I want. A lot of times, sometimes it even goes the opposite direction a little bit because I'm holding a little bit of water. You know, that day I'm a little inflamed. Maybe I ate something that was uh didn't agree with my gut, and so my body retains water. Maybe I over-reached my training a little bit, so I caused a little inflammation in the body, which then retains some water and held on to it, which then made me look a little puffy and bloated and added one pound more on the scale. And I go, Oh my god, I'm getting fat. No, I'm not. I'm holding a little bit of water. I over-trained a little bit or didn't sleep so well last night, or I ate that thing that even though the calories were okay, it didn't agree with my gut, and my body, my body got inflamed for that. And that makes me look different in the mirror. That makes my scale go up a tiny bit because I'm inflamed. And now I, even though I'm I'm on a perfect routine, I'm reading those signs thinking I'm doing the wrong thing, and then I overcorrect. And I go, Oh shit, I gotta, I gotta cut some. I I got I got fatter. The pound went up on the scale. I need to cut my calories more, or I need to add cardio now and burn more. And you and then you start to over and people do this all the time when they're actually doing really well and they don't interpret the signs correctly, and then they overcorrect, which is also why I think people like you and I have a job. I mean, I think that the a lot of what we're talking about is easy, I think, to understand. It's hard to apply and read in real time. And I think it takes somebody with experience and professional people to kind of help somebody learn that about this. But then once you like it, like education, once you learn it and you figure it out and you understand this, it's so invaluable because you'll have this for the rest of your life. You'll go, oh, this this life, you'll go, I get I get it now. I know what I need to do. Uh, and that is very empowering and life-changing for most people.

Philip Pape 56:19

Yeah, that's super empowering. I mean, you're creating a system that you've never had before. And the confidence that comes from that, I know from personal experience, because I'm 44, didn't figure it out until I was like 40. And once you do, you're like, whoa, this is life changing. It's, I mean, it's like having a financial planner or having, you know, a professor or whatever kind of teach you the ropes and the system. And I I got two really good takeaways here I want to reinforce for the listener. The first, the idea of paying attention cannot be understated because what I hear you saying, it's not just this casual listen to your body. It is more of an objective, like specific things you should be paying attention to, potentially documenting, tracking, whatever that makes sense for you, where it becomes objective, even your biofeedback, your stool, you know, I have my stool's gotten firmer over the next the week, you know, whatever. And then combining that with like a hierarchy of the things, you know, the metrics, a dashboard, I think of it, where you have the PRs and the strength at the top. Maybe then you have biofeedback, maybe your blood labs are in there if you care about health or whatever. And then maybe body comps at the bottom, because it's kind of measuring the lagging output of all this stuff. But then you also mention physique competitors, which is interesting because there's a lot of misunderstanding there. If you go through all this, you do it well, you're eating right, you're feeling great, and then you get shredded, which is gonna take a fat loss phase to do that. Yeah. I know you've said that some of the most insecure people you've met are, you know, physique competitors and coaches and whatever. And so let's reconcile that thought

Experimenting With Diets And Training

Philip Pape 57:48

for people that it's not like, okay, you got shredded, so you've won the game and life is over, right? You could just die the next day and you're happy.

Adam Shafer 57:55

So I was lucky to get introduced to the um it's funny too. I'm sitting in it. This is my wife's office. So for the people that are thinking that I'm not narcissistic, that I have a picture of myself. And this is not my office. I'm in my wife's office this morning, but I'm looking back at a picture of when I was when I was competing. And uh I was lucky I was introduced to that at 30 years old. So I'd already been a personal trainer for over a decade and had a lot of experience, had worked on my own insecurities around fitness and had a really good grasp of nutrition, exercise science. Uh, and so I went into it. Uh, and the whole purpose of why I got into it was it to actually build uh mind pump, was to build, I didn't know what mind pump would look like at that time, but I knew I was trying to build an online e-commerce fitness business. Didn't know Sal and those guys at that time, but I I knew I was moving in that direction. I had already started my YouTube channel and I had started Instagram and I was moving in that direction. And I thought, okay, maybe in my little town, I'm a very popular trainer, but to the world, I'm nobody. So how can I get known? Um, well, uh, I've never competed, um, but I I think I have the knowledge and the discipline to do it. Um, what if I document the journey of getting shredded for people and show them how to do it? And I don't hire a coach, I don't hire a trainer, I do it all myself, so I get the credit for it, right? So people are like, oh wow, this guy knows what he's doing, right? And so that was the whole purpose of it for me was to do that. And uh, and of course, I I and I was one so when I would I got on Instagram back in 2014, so early days when when if you had 10,000 followers, you were kind of a big deal. And so when I got on there, what I saw, at least from my perspective right away, was oh, the the handful of people that were really famous in this space were just these good looking people that were super ripped, that had all these professional photos taken of themselves, or they were taking, they had, I mean, they had the professional lighting, they would take get a pump, then they were in a good studio. And I'm like, this doesn't really look like real life to me. Like, I know what it's like to try and get in shape, get people in shape. And this is doctored, this is you know produced to look way better than what it is. I don't, I don't look like that first thing in the morning. And and so my plan was I'm gonna be very authentic, transparent. I'm gonna wake up first thing in the morning in my terrible lighting in my bathroom mirror and take a picture of myself, not flexing, not pumped, just this is what I look like, and then tell you what I'm doing to get in shape. And that actually got a lot of a lot of traction and a lot of attention. It grew me to over 10,000 followers back when 10,000 followers was a lot of people. And I got a lot of attention for that. And that was the the reason for doing the training. It was like, oh wow, if I just did this first transformation of getting down to 7% body fat, if I take this all the way to the competing level, maybe I'll get more attention from more people. This will help build the business. I also was a bit excited because at this point I've actually never I didn't follow bodybuilding, I didn't know much about it. I knew there was a men's physique category, which I thought my body type fit. I'm six foot three, long wingspan, small waist, very skinny kind of build. I thought, okay, I could do that. I'm not gonna, I couldn't do bodybuilding. Uh I didn't want to take the amount of steroids I would need to take to even come close to competing with that. And so I was like, men's physique, I could, I could probably do. Uh and uh I thought, well, this will also be cool because I'll get to meet probably some of the brightest, smartest people in the world because these are the best physiques in the world. And so I was really intrigued. And I remember getting backstage, my first show, I was completely shredded. I got down to like 3% body fat. Um, in fact, I was too shredded. That was the feedback I got um from the judges. Was like, oh my God, you were like bodybuilder shredded. Uh, that's not what we're back early on days. If you look at the journey of men's physique, it used to have a little bit of a uh board short model look more than it had like a heart. I that I was a part of that evolution of it getting really hard. And so I came in really hard, and they were like, Yeah, no, that's that's too much. Um, and then I got backstage with all these amateurs and I'm talking to them. Now I'm a trainer for over a decade, and I'm meeting these incredible bodies, and I'm talking to them, and I'm listening to their training protocol, and I'm listening to their diet, and I'm going, like, that is not, that's not an ideal. And I started helping a lot of them, like, you know, maybe do this. And I, because I looked so good so quick, I got a lot of respect from my peers who didn't know who I was, and and they're and I'm and I'm explaining kind of the science of like, yeah, this is probably a better approach to do diet this way, or probably you know, scale your exercising this way. And when you're in that much of a calorie deficit, you should probably modify the intensity here. So I'm kind of like teaching them in the background, and I'm and I'm like, wow, I got these amateurs really, even though their bodies look great, they really don't know what they're doing. They just have some crazy discipline to eat hardly anything and train like a monster for a year straight, you know. And so I thought, well, maybe when I get to the national level, you know, that's where the like the where the smart guys are at, you know. I made my way, I won my first show, make my way to the USA's, get backstage there, same thing. I'm like, okay, well, this has got to be the difference between professional league and just the people that don't don't make it there. And I'm so, and I win, I win USA's, I go pro, and I get at the professional, and I find the same thing. And what I find is that these are some of the most disciplined people I've ever met in my life. So disciplined that they have gotten in shape in spite of what the science says, and in spite of a healthy relationship with exercise and nutrition. These are not the brightest, smartest, balanced, healthy people. In fact, most of them had crippling insecurities. Most, most of these people I was backstage with that were 3% body fat and looked better than 99.9% of the world were insecure about the way they looked and thought they were fat or their arms were too small or their chest, like they were massively insecure about the way they looked. And this is what drove them to train so hard and restrict so hard and to be so consistent for so long is because they had these crippling insecurities about how they looked. And I went, Whoa, this is crazy. It was super enlightening to me. Um that and I'm talking all of them. This isn't like me, and I'm I I I may sound like I'm overgeneralizing, and I'm sure somebody listening who competes that would would argue with me that they have a healthy. Okay, I'll give you five percent that I I were was unaware of or I didn't get a chance to meet, might have had a healthy. I I'm sure I wasn't the only guy who was mature and and and got into it and passed after he'd worked through his insecurity. So I'm sure there's a percentage that are so I'm I'm overgeneralizing a bit, but I everybody I met and talked to, massively insecure. And I found that in the podcasting spaces, I got to meet a lot of famous people online, that some of the people that we all look up to and aspire to be like and revere is like, oh my God, the most healthiest people are some of the most unhealthy people, not from a body fat percentage, but from an internal, yeah,

Maintenance, Minimums, And Consistency

Adam Shafer 1:05:20

mentally and psychological. They were crippled and by these these either traumas they had early or insecurities around body, they had body dysmorphia just from a different, a different level. A lot of times we think body dysmorphia, it's these people that do weird things to their body or allow themselves to get super obese, but there's you know the opposite. You know, you have these people that uh think they're fat when they're not, and they have to they they they're orthorexics, and that's what bodybuilding was full of. And you hear more people like friends of mine like Ben Pikolski and uh Phil Heath, they're coming out now talking about it, and it's it's become you know in vogue to come forward, be authentic, share your insecurities now. But that wasn't a popular thing when I was going through it. Nobody was authentic like that, nobody was being honest with how insecure they were about their bodies because they were being told how amazing they were, and they were getting all this publicity and all this fame and attention for how amazing they were. So it was just feeding that ego and feeding that insecurity.

Jorge 1:06:22

Hello everyone. Um, my name is Jorge, and I just kind of want to share a little bit about my experience uh with Wits and Weights. So I've been blown away from day one, honestly. The best thing about uh Wits and Weights University is that Coach Phillip has everything that we need all in one place. It's easy to follow, it's easy to understand, it didn't give you like an introduction course at the beginning so you can know exactly what to do. It kind of made me very conscious of my nutrition and it's kind of set me in the right path in the right direction. So honestly, I cannot recommend it enough. One of the best things is that whenever you have any type of question, it's answered within 15-30 minutes. You feel welcome, you feel good, and like somebody's helping you. Everything you need is there, all you have to do is basically come and join us. See you there.

Adam Shafer 1:07:11

And so it's a very dangerous thing that we use that as the main metric of what we think is success and what are the best, the smartest, or the brightest people in the space is well, you know, and and you you could you take me for an example. Like I don't carry myself ripped year-round at all. I have a very average body fat percentage, somewhere that hovers between 11 and 15 percent, 90% of the year. Every once in a while, probably once a year, I get a kick where I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get lean and I drop down to single digits for a short period of time. But for the most part, I look like a pretty average-looking guy who works out. Now, I don't look uh so average that you wouldn't look at me and you think I work, I've been working out for two and a half decades, so I've definitely got some muscle on me. But I'm I don't look impressive to my peers on Instagram. I mean, there's a lot of fitness people that look shredded year round. And I'll tell you right now, they look if you carry yourself shredded and buff and perfect body year round, you've got something going on. You have dysfunction. Yeah, you've got this, you have dysfunction going on. And if you as a consumer are following that person for it advice, buyer beware. That person that you think is so healthy or you admire so much because the way they look, I'm telling you right now, from experience of hanging out with all of them, because I've been around all of them, is they are as unhealthy as you are. The difference is your body fat unhealthy. You've you're you're at 20, 30 percent body fat and you need to lean out a little bit. They're psychologically trauma and security broken inside. And that is they've used that to discipline them to keep their body fat a certain way for some personal. And we live in a world now where these people are idolized because of a platform like Instagram or YouTube, and it's unfortunate because you have a lot of people that these people are leading, and sure, they understand macros and exercise uh decent, but they're leading them down a path that is probably not gonna serve them. And this is super common in our space in bodybuilding, in women's bikini, men's physique, bodybuilding, and these Instagram people that we follow that are ripped year-round.

Philip Pape 1:09:27

And that's why I wanted to bring it up with you because that is what a lot of people's content is coming from, you know. And it's funny because I'm not shredded, ripped, or anything. I started in my 40s. I feel like I have good things to say and I want to help people. And I don't know if it's a benefit or not that I'm not at that level because I don't claim to be and like I have to lean on the way I've improved personally and help people improve as opposed to that. But like there is a lot of messaging around uh the best fitness coaches are the ones that look the best, you know, that kind of fit of messaging we hear. And also your mess, your message here that a poor relationship with your body that gets fed, that feeds this uh obsession to get shredded just gets worse and worse once you get there. And so having said that, when someone, if someone's listening, kind of thinking that way, I'm no, we're not gonna solve everyone's like deep mental struggles on this podcast, but how do we either reframe or redirect those motivations? Like what is what is the exercise or is the or the tip to redirect that?

Adam Shafer 1:10:26

Sal, Sal said something on our pocket. My co-host Sal said something on the podcast that went viral a long time ago. And uh, we made t-shirts out of it, and and uh it's something we bring up all the time, which was chase health and aesthetics will follow. Chase aesthetics, and you will most certainly lose aesthetics efficiently. So you chasing health will actually lead to that body that you really want, focusing on health. If you use all those markers that I was talking about, always trying to get better sleep, always trying to improve your libido, always working on better skin, better digestion, better stools. Like if you are using those better strength, like if you are better stamina, you are using all those metrics as the things that you are always focused on, and you're incrementally getting a little bit better at all those over time, and they just keep getting better, better, better, better. Well, when you look back after a year or two years of chasing that, you're gonna be ripped. You're gonna look amazing. You're gonna you're gonna have achieved that thing that's driving you. If you do anything and everything you could to achieve aesthetics, and that's all you care about, and you ignore all the other signals, then it will lead you down a path of hormone dysfunction, um, cortisol junkie, like

The Future: Human Connection Returns

Adam Shafer 1:11:45

it'll cause a whole host of problems, of health problems in your life eventually. Maybe not at first, maybe taking the steroids, doing all the things will serve you initially, but over time, a lot of those things will have adverse effects, and you'll eventually lose the aesthetics, even if you got them by chasing them at first. Yeah, so chase health, aesthetics will follow. And I think that it's it's a way better guiding principle for people, and you will, you'll get what you want. Because I get I get too, yeah. I was a young kid who said, I used to say, I'll show, no go, all I care about is the way I look. And I used to I used to tell people when they asked me, like, oh, what do you? I was a trainer for years, never did a PR, never cared about how much I bench press. And somebody would ask me, How much do you bench press? And I'd say some line, like, Listen, I've never taken my shirt off, and a girl asked me how much I bench press, so all I care about is what it looks like. Does she does her jaw drop? Does she go, oh, he's good looking? Like, and so I that's how I train. Like, so I don't care. And so I get it. I get what it's like to have that mindset of like, I don't care, I just care about how I look. But if you chase the health, you will get the look thing. You will get the body you want, and you'll do it in a way that is healthy and maintainable. So if you want that aesthetic look and you want to keep it for the rest of your life, then chase health and you'll get it. You will only get it temporarily if you chase aesthetics.

Philip Pape 1:13:09

Long-term aesthetics are an expression of long-term health. So love it. That's perfect. And it ties exactly to what we were talking about with the metrics. So pivoting just a little bit because you personally are at the at the point now where I know you're experimenting with lots of things and you talk about it on the show, and and I can't keep track of the whole list of things you've done, but I know you've experimented with very long fasts. Uh, I know you've experimented like strange macros, like really high fat macros or something. Like, is there any one of those that's that you're testing right now or something or and or something you've learned? Hey, my my body responds very differently from what the science might suggest as a default. And that was what I learned through the experimentation, or something like that.

Adam Shafer 1:13:49

Yeah, no, that's an interesting question. Uh current currently, right now, I'm not doing anything in particular nutrition diet. Um, I'm very intuitive eating right now. Um but you're right. I've I have literally I've ran every popular diet you can think of. I've messed with peptides, I've messed with GLP ones, been on hormone therapy since I was 30 years old. There's a lot of things that um I've tested. And what I have found is that there's different there's different ways of eating, there's different ways of training that serves different versions of me, even. And so it really depends on uh the the period of like life that I'm in at the moment. Right now, I'm in a in a stretch where I'm heavily focused on business and my son. So a lot of my attention outside of the actual workout of the work is working on more work because I'm trying to build another business and I'm scaling and we're hiring, and that requires a lot of my attention. And I have a six-year-old son that I'm absolutely uh addicted to and want to be so much of his life, and so those two things tend to take a lot of priority, and so my training and diet right now look very minimalistic. I'm lucky to get two days of lifting in a week right now. Um, sometimes they're a little 15, 20 minutes. Sometimes, I mean, yesterday, all I did was I squatted five sets and left. That's all I did. And my diet, I'm not weighing, chasing macros. I do, we do, we're really good in my family about targeting uh whole foods. I I eat we eat a lot of meat um and I eat protein. So I do follow a lot of the things that I I coach on the podcast of like for somebody who's trying to stay healthy and fit. And I find when I prioritize healthy foods, whole foods, and I just eat the protein first, I can really I can play this game of telling myself, like I have ice cream in my freezer, and that's ice cream is one of my my total uh kryptonite, right? To staying in shape. Likewise. But I find I find if I stick to like my, if I'm training two, three times a week, I am going after whole foods, hitting protein first, then I can enjoy uh a bowl of ice cream here and there, a couple times a week, no problem, and enjoy that and still maintain a very healthy fit physique, maintaining that

Where To Find Mind Pump Resources

Adam Shafer 1:16:10

11 to 15% range that I'm talking about uh while only training that much. And so I'm in that phase right now of very, very minimalist around my diet, very minimalist around my training, really heavy focused on my son and my business right now. But that that always flips. I mean, there they're all like just last year, I did a series uh on YouTube where I documented me getting in really good shape again. I I think I was up, I think I got all the way up to uh 17% body fat or something like that, which is would be considered high for me at this point in my life, and uh documented me coming all the way down to single digits and uh and showed people actually how little I did so uh to to get there. So it was, I mean, I would go in two exercises, that's it. I just do two exercises, moderate intensity, and then I would just like we talked about that we started this podcast, I would make little adjustments every week. I wouldn't go throw the whole kitchen sink at once, I wouldn't go hard strict diet. I would tell it, I would talk to the camera, like, all right, this week I'm just gonna do these things and focus on that. And then next week I'm gonna tweak this and I just turn the night and then I showed this progression, and you know, then I was in shape for a while, then I was a little bit more into tracking and paying attention. So I think it's important that you find things that that like I know uh if I want to be on a podcast like this, I do much better in a fasted state or on a ketogenic diet. I just have better mental clarity. If I were to get up, if I would have got up before you and had a stack of pancakes, um, and then I I would feel a difference in my conversational skills with you. And so I'm just I'm way sharper when I eat that way. And so that's a classic example of how I'll modify something day to day based off of something that I don't do a lot of podcasts at eight o'clock in the morning. And so if I'm gonna do something like that, I'm gonna pay attention to what I ate last night or what I eat in the morning. Where if I wasn't podcasting with you today, then maybe I wouldn't care. Maybe I'd get up and I'd have the normal breakfast or whatever. And so I think one of the most awesome things about playing with different diets, always using the those metrics that I talked about, scan, hair, libido, all those things as like the movers, is you can start to tell, like, oh, I noticed when I I eat this way, for example, I have a better libido and sex drive when I actually have carbs in the diet. So even though ketogenic diet and low carb serves me really well for maintaining body fat or staying kind of on the leaner side, like when I eat high fats, low carb, it's really easy to keep calories down for me. It's really easy for me to kind of stay in shape and not put body fat on. But I also notice my energy levels kind of dip and my libido kind of dips. Well, you know, I'm married to a beautiful woman that I don't want my libido dipping. So I'm gonna modify that and I'm gonna introduce that. Now, maybe there's a week where her and I are in different places of the country and I don't need a I don't need a strong libido. I'm not traveling and I just want to stay fit. I don't want to make bad choices, so maybe I'll go ketogenic. And so what's so fun about this journey that we're all kind of on is trying different things and then paying attention to those metrics that we're talking about and seeing how all of them, all the different diets, all the different ways of eating, all the different peptides, all the different supplements, all these things affect that, and knowing that I can kind of pull from each of them depending on what part of my life or phase I'm in. And I personally, and this is my opinion, that I think that's a very healthy relationship with exercise and nutrition. I don't uh you probably get somebody else on this show you'll interview, and they'll be like, I work out these days, eat this way, I train these, and it's like that. That's not me. Like, I I uh I want to be healthy, and healthy for me is typically somewhere between 11 and 15% body fat, training a few times a week to where I maintain strength. I will I always want to be able to deadlift north of 300 pounds, squat north of 300 pounds, bench press 200 plus pounds, and rotate, move, sit down in an Astograss squat, play with my kid and his Legos in a squat position comfortably and not hurt. These are the these are the metrics that I pay attention to, and I want to do as very little in the gym to maintain those. And so, and that way I can allocate that extra time to the other priorities of my life that I think fulfill me way more than being two more percent leaner or five percent stronger. Like that's it. Like, if I can deadlift, squat that way, get down like that, rotate and move like that. Uh, one, I can kick most dads' asses that my son goes to school with. I can do all the things in my life that I want to. I feel healthy, I'm not gonna have health problems, my blood markers didn't come back good, and I'm applying very little effort towards it. Like that's the ultimate goal for myself. And so, yeah, it looks different and it ebbs and flows based off of what's currently going on in my life.

Philip Pape 1:21:17

Yeah, and that connects perfectly to what you started saying with the matching the initial part of the journey to someone's lifestyle. And then as you track the things, as you care about metrics that aren't weight on the scale, as you learn what works, this flexible approach means it's sustainable, right? It means that you can go with the flow of what's happening in your life, even day to day, week to week. And then it's, I'm glad you mentioned maintenance because obviously a lot of people are trying to get to a place, but then what's after that? And I know you guys talk on Mind Pump all the time about how much less training is required to maintain your muscle mass, for example, you know, like as little as maybe an eighth or whatever the studies say. And it's a good metric to see that this isn't like chasing all out everything across the board. Fitness is your number one priority for the rest to the day you die. It's you know, ebbing and flowing, which is a great message of flexibility and sustainability.

Adam Shafer 1:22:07

So that's one of my favorite studies that we, I mean, I found that study while we were podcasting. So I wasn't even aware of that. Uh and Sal brought it up I don't know how many years ago. And I don't, I mean, I didn't know it was that little. It's if you worked out one time every two weeks, you could maintain your muscle. That is so little. And what I love about that study is it gave someone like me who probably earlier in my years, not probably for certainly in my earlier years, was all or nothing. I either was on the diet, training hard, or I was off, letting myself go until I get to a certain point, then I would be on again. Versus now where I don't really ever have an all-off or really an all-on either. It's like I have moments or weeks or maybe months where I have very low training volume. But what I realized, and I've been able to give myself permission, is like nothing wrong with going to the gym yesterday and just doing five sets of squats. Like just that, lifting that right there is gonna send a signal to my body like, hey, we still need muscle in them legs, don't lose it. And I may not hit those legs again for another week or two, but I'm okay. Like, I'm not gonna atrophy, go way backwards because and so since now that I have given myself that permission that hey, sometimes my training looks very minimal because that's all I want to go there and do, and it's not a focus, but I can do that and I can be okay. I'm not gonna be the most jacked version of me, but I also will still be able to maintain a lot of muscle and stay pretty healthy and stay pretty strong, even doing that little. And so I love uh that study, and I think it's so important that people realize that you're doing it more than just trying to look like the shredded version of yourself all the time. Like, and if you can get in there and do one or two things, it is absolutely better than doing nothing at all. And I for me, at least for me, and maybe people who are listening that resonate with the all or all or nothing type of mentality, moving away from that was a game changer for me. And and uh allowing myself the permission to just go do a couple exercises every now and then, or maybe the diet isn't perfect, but I I'll make a couple better choices than what I did the day before. That uh that gave me a lot of freedom, and uh it has allowed me to stay healthier and maintain a fitter physique longer by having that attitude. And so uh hopefully somebody who's listening who is like me that resonates with is giving yourself that permission to do less because it doesn't take a lot to maintain the muscle that you've built in the past.

Philip Pape 1:24:32

Yeah, yeah, super important. I mean, I remember with the one of my fat loss phases where I was just wiped and I had so many other priorities with business and family. And I'm like, you know, I don't have to train four or five days a week. Let me try two, let me try three. Hey, now I could get extra sleep on those other two days, and all of a sudden you start feeling better and training better. And so it's kind of interesting. All right, so as we wrap up, man, looking ahead to the future, I'm an optimistic guy. I get the sense that you are as well. Even though we talked about the dangers of AI and all of that and social media, everything that's happening, I know you're trying to scale your business, you're always doing something. What really excites you the most right now about where this industry is heading in the future?

Adam Shafer 1:25:09

Um, so I do think we're moving back to a connection. So this is also why we pivoted our business to now we actually train people, right? So we were not training clients. Um, what we did was digital products online. It was far more scalable and we could reach millions of people that way. And so it served us for the first decade. But what we all agree and we recognize is that, and I think COVID really pushed us over that edge to realize how important human connection and interaction is to us as a species. And we've become so digital and disconnected uh because of technology for and not to demonize it, but it's because it's done a lot of great things. I mean, the fact that you and I can be across the country and get on a Zoom call like this or a uh uh you know rest stream is is incredible, right? So technology is awesome. But if this was the only way I ever connected to people, which I think some people do, I think they can be really unhealthy for you. And and we we don't get that oxytocin until you get in the same room as another human being. And that's a very important hormone for health for us. And so I think what the future looks like optimistically is the resurgence of in-person and getting back to human connection. Uh again, that's why we moved to personal training in studio, having clients come in. We're gonna hold more live events. So it excites me. I like that. I like, I mean, what got me into personal training, why I loved it so much. I did not have the vision that, you know, when I was in my 40s, I'd have the biggest health and fitness podcast in the world, and I'd sit on a mic and I'd talk about it, and that's how I would make my living. I did not think that at all. In fact, I got into it because I love people. I have a genuine passion for helping others, and I'm I curiosity about humans, and I like people that have different ideologies and ways of living than I do, and I like connecting with those people that shatter my paradigm, and I love that. And so I'm excited that I think that the industry and our society in general is moving back to human connection and getting back to people. That's what you'll see in my business, and I think that's what we're gonna see across the board. And so if you're a business operator uh in the fitness space or any business for that matter, and there's opportunity for you to do things that help people connect. I don't know if you recently saw one of the one of the viral apps that's making the news and going all over the place right now is this app. It's like a, you remember, I think Wags is the dog app where you could look for a person to walk your dog for a fee. You know, there's a human walking app that has become super popular now. So people are getting onto an app, looking up people that they can pay to walk with them as a service in a business. I think it's hilarious. I don't have a I don't have a dog on the fight if I think it's bad or good. But what I think it more and more importantly, what it highlights is how thirsty we are for human connection that an app like that would go viral and people would sign up for it right away because we want that. We crave that. Um we've been deprived of, I think, a bit in the last five years, maybe even eight, 10. And I think that is the future. I think going moving back to that, we've gone so digital and all these great things have complimented our businesses, but I think the future in fitness, the future in this business is getting back to uh getting in front of people in real life.

Philip Pape 1:28:33

Human connection. Yeah, I wasn't aware of that app. I know there's the apps in Japan that let you like hire a family member uh you know for a funeral or something like that, but I hadn't heard of the walking one. It's funny, you know, for a guy like you who has this, you know, big business and like you talk scaling and you talk about the maps products all the time, to say that obviously is very powerful, right? Because people are always thinking as entrepreneurs, okay, we need to reach as many people as we can, but then you lose that. So I if you have any live events, I would love to come to one of those. I'm curious to hear when the when you guys start announcing something like that. But we want to hook people up with you and and mind pump and everything you guys are doing. So where do you want them to reach you? Obviously, they're gonna they're gonna hit up Mind Pump. I'm gonna throw that in the show notes. You go to witsandweights.com slash mind pump, get access to all the maps products, which we just said uh probably go really well when you have human connection tied to it, which you know, um, where else do you want people to reach out to you, Adam?

Adam Shafer 1:29:26

Yeah, uh, you know, I tell everybody if it's the first time you've ever heard me, don't go buy anything from me. Go consume all the free content that we've created on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes. Uh, you could literally Google uh Mind Pump, Mind Pump Media, and uh everything you see connected to that is us and the stuff and the content that we've created. We have a website called mindpumpfree.com, which is a ton of free guides to help people uh that you can download for absolutely free. Then we have uh we actually have an AI tool called Askmindpump.com, where it's uh we built An AI tool probably four years ago, and it's incredible. So if you have literally any question related to health, fitness, hormones, anything, anything related to your health journey, you can literally go to askmindpump.com, pose the question to us, and you'll get an answer from one of us hosts. And then you'll also get links to show notes and content that we've created around that specific topic. So incredible tool. Go use all the free stuff, uh, enjoy it, and then uh hopefully uh become a listener. All right.

Philip Pape 1:30:30

We'll throw throw all that at the show notes, Adam. And this has been a pleasure. Uh, I've been following you for years, and it was great that we could connect. And you can come on Wits and Weights and share all of your wisdom with my audience, listeners. Reach out to Adam, say hello, check out Mind Pump, and thanks again, man, for taking the time to come on the show.

Adam Shafer 1:30:44

Appreciate it, Bill. Thank you, bro.