Muscle Expert Jeff Cavaliere: You Need To Know This About Creatine! Melt Belly Fat With 1 Change!

0:00 Taking creatine can increase muscle and strength, but also improve brain health and performance in sleepdeprived and high stress states. But there's some new research coming out showing its ability to slow prevent things like Wow. Jeff Cavalier is the physical therapist and strength coach trusted by the NFL, MLB, WWE, and even Sylvester Stallone. He's built a global reputation for science-based training that delivers. What do people want? When we pull our followers, I found that for men, they want their six-pack abs, getting bigger arms, develop their chest, and for women, they want to have better legs and well-developed back sizes. So, we'll get into those exercises. But the biggest problem most people have is the struggle to get started. And in doing so, become paralyzed by inactivity and say, "I'm not going to do anything at all." And I

0:46 get emotional, but it's sad when people don't ever find that drive and and motivation cuz like the detrimental effects that prolonged sitting can have on your body, they call it the new smoking. Like if I take away your health, you're done. So finding the drive to get yourself on track with pursuing optimal health is everything. So if I was one of those people struggling to get the ball rolling, where would you start with me? I would start with and I'm not done yet. Lower belly fat. How do I get rid of that? Calories and calories out. What's your view? You say that there are five key exercises to maximize your longevity and quality of life. Can you show me these workouts? Sure. And then why did you bring the skeleton with you with the bow tie? This is Raymond and I use him to show one of the most fascinating areas of training that has yet to be uncovered. This has always blown my mind a little

1:32 bit. 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribe to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so [Music] much. Jeff, you're very much known as the the king and the OG of online fitness training, advice, support. In terms of the mission that you're on in particular and how your perspective differs from other people out there in

2:20 the market, what is it that you think makes your perspective different, unique, and more important potentially than a lot of the perspectives out there as it relates to how to how to how to build up our muscles, how to have a strong, healthy body, and how to prolong our health span. Everybody that for the most part that's out there trying to put information out, they should have a level there's a level of respect I have for everyone doing that because they're all trying to help people get better or improve themselves. I think where I was really heavily focused was on a more comprehensive more uh multiaceted way to do that because my background wasn't just in let's say strength training or in aesthetic appeal of of training but

3:07 also as a physical therapist and having a physical therapy background I understood the importance of not sacrificing the body in the process of trying to aesthetically improve the body. So I believe that when people understand the why and they do become empowered to sort of you know make this their own journey the benefits are so far reaching it's it's not just the gym or the aesthetic appeal that you imp improve it's your it's so many facets of life that improve because fitness improves like mental health is directly related to people's physical health. If you feel if you look better and feel better about yourself, your mental health improves, too. Like every element of life is improved, I think, with improved levels of fitness and health.

3:53 So, my why has always been to just use my platform to try to get people to understand that even the smallest investments, it doesn't have to be every bit I do. And I try to stress that in all my videos, especially when we start to talk about nutrition, like you don't have to eat the way I do to get as lean as I am to still benefit from being lean. You could be you could have body fat levels much higher and still see the immense benefits in terms of overall health. So, you don't have to do it exactly how I do it, but take the information and apply it to yourself. That to me is the most rewarding part of it. Because if I can show you how to do it, the whole thing, teach a man to fish, right? If I could do that, then I think I've done something right. I say all the time, I could take everything away from you. I could take all your money, I could take houses, I could take

4:40 everything away. I could take even, you know, relationships away because we could always find another relationship potentially. If I take away your health, you're done. Health is everything. And what did you study? So a few things. Physio neurobbiology was my initial degree and um I became a physical therapist which required another three years. And you became a certified strength and conditioning specialist as well. Most of the jobs that were in professional sports would require some certification in that regard. So you'd have to have a college degree, but then you'd also have to have um um a certification. And in this case, it was the National Strength and Conditioning Association. And over the last 25 years since you got that certification, who have you worked with? Who have you helped? And how many people? The most important thing that

5:27 came from that certification was that it qualified me to work for the Mets. And what's the Mets for anyone that doesn't? So the Mets are the New York Mets professional baseball team. So I work with some of the best baseball players in the world. Had a chance to work with some of the greatest football players in the world. Like it's wrestlers. was a big wrestling fan growing up and we have a lot of wrestlers that that come through and that's a cool thing because wrestling though some people may not like the storyboarding of wrestling athletically they're some of the most gifted athletes in the world. I mean, the travel schedule, the amount of days that they that they that they wrestle every week, the the rigors that they put their body through, whatever you want to say, the outcome might be determined, but the the the the bumps and bruises are not fake. And, you know, they also

6:14 have to have that aesthetic appeal, too. So, it's this combination of athletic and aesthetic that always appealed to me. When I look at someone like you and I see these bulging muscles and I see how lean you are, I it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking, well, you were just born with extreme motivation and that's why you are the way that you are. Well, I think motivation is extremely overrated, right? Because like motivation isn't what produces the results. It might get you to the to the show and get you to actually show up at the gym and initiate the work, but only discipline keeps you there. And being disciplined is the number one asset somebody can have. Now discipline comes with finding success. So at an early age if you can or an early training age if

7:00 you can experience some success early you do become motivated again self-motivated um to continue on down that path. So my genetics were never great. I I didn't if my mom was 5 foot tall my my dad's 5 foot n 5'8 160 pounds not a lot of muscle. I definitely have surpassed my dad in muscle, but like I didn't come from this genetically gifted pool of cavaliers. There's no there's no way. But I did have this desire to do something in terms of training and taking my body as far as I could. But I really found the discipline through the fact that I liked it and I found that this was feeding me in other ways. It was it was making me feel fulfilled. So it was easier for me to

7:45 stick to it. you you must deal with so many people that are struggling that come to you and they say, "Listen, I've got these big goals. I'm I'm overweight. I don't feel good. I've got diabetes here, cardiovascular problem here, inflammation here." And they say to you that they want to change. Yeah. You know, you can see it in their face. They're desperate, but they don't change for whatever reason. We live in an age now where you have access to the internet. You have so much access to information. use it in whatever way you can to get started on your journey because the earlier you start the better. But it's it's it is quite sad when people don't ever find that spark. And trying to play catch-up, it's no lie to it. You're not it's going to be harder as you get older. Starting or initiating a training program in your 40s and 50s, though way better than not

8:32 starting one, is much more difficult than if you had started in your teens and 20s. you know to develop that habit to maintain that habit it's very difficult to initiate that the older that you get but I do think that it's possible so my best advice to people who have that struggle to get started is to figure out ways that you can eliminate thinking right because the longer you think the more likely you are to not be able to do it you know the thing that stops most people there's that saying the start is what stops most people right but at the same token, it's not the obstacle that's in your way. It's the fact that the path of least resistance is more inviting. So, you wind up saying, "Well, I you know, I could just sit on the couch and watch this. I'm not going to go to the gym."

9:18 And believe me, there's even nights now for me where I'll be with one of my sons and we'll be in his room putting him to bed. I might fall asleep in there, you know, and wake up and it's late at night. I don't even think I let my dogs out. I go right outside. I walk. Sometimes I'm literally half asleep as I'm walking, but I know if I can get to the gym, get in there, turn on the the music, and kind of put the lights on, and do one warm-up set, I'll I'll be good. And if I even sat down for a second, I might find that path of least resistance to be a lot more inviting and that couch to be a lot more comfortable. And then once it becomes something that you enjoy, because for the most part, I think you probably enjoy it now, right? The process, it becomes a lot easier to make that automatic step. But there's still going to be days, you know, maybe

10:03 a long day of shooting, you know, and you're going to be like, h, not maybe not today. But if you stop the negotiation with yourself and you just go and make that first action, that's all it usually takes to get you through the door and you realize that you know what you're what you were set out to do. When you think about all the many millions of people that have watched your videos, I mean, it's actually billions of people that have watched your videos and consumed your content, you must hear a lot of different types of spark. When I say spark, I mean the moment in someone's life where they something happened and it stuck. It finally stuck. What are the kind of things that you hear? Oh man, they're life-changing. Like that it it is it's part of the why that keeps me going, you know, hearing some of these stories. I had a live event a few years ago, first woman that we ever had. So, I was I was

10:49 a rookie. I didn't know how it was going to go, but part of that event was a competition that we ran. So anyway, we we had a guy who was in his uh late 50s, first one to do the competition. So he he drew number one. Okay. So he goes and the first thing we had was a 300 yard shuttle, which is just a 50 yard distance. They had to run to the cone and back. That's 100 yards back and forth again and back and forth again. It was extremely hot that day. It was like 95 degrees because of course I ran the event in July and it was like, "Okay, this is not going to work out so well." So anyway, he goes out, he comes back on the last run. He uh he starts to windmill his arms. He's he's losing his balance forward. And I'm like, "Oh no." And he crashes down, wipes out, scrapes up his knee, blood all over the place.

11:36 Okay, next kid comes up. He He's up now. He goes by the second station, he's overheated. He tried so hard. He has to stand out the rest of the competition because he overheated from I was ready to to put a stop to the games because I said, "We just weren't prepared for this heat in this first time." And anyway, we continued. So, the fourth drill up for the man that I talked about in the beginning was a sled push. And we had put 225 lbs on the sled, but that sled was on the pavement out in the parking lot from this gym that we that we hosted it at. And the friction of the of the sled on the ground was not really something that was accounted for. It made it even more difficult. Well, again, he's got that bloodied up knee. He's he's pushing it. He gets it to the

12:21 end struggling. And now he has to pick up at the end 100 pound kettle bell and walk it back. He goes down there. He grabs a kettle bell after a long, you know, multiple attempt to get the sled down there. And I finally run down there and I said, uh, his name is Craig. I said, "Craig, dude, you don't have to do this. You're good. You're good. It's okay." And he's like, "No." And he says, "I'm gonna do it." And he starts walking and he's crossing the legs over each other. It looks like he's gonna go down again. I put my arm around him. I said, "Man, listen. you don't have to do this. He says, and I get goosebumps from think. He goes, Jeff, I have to do this. He goes, I was diagnosed with MS, you know, four years ago, and I can't feel my feet. I got to do this. And it's that kind of drive and and

13:07 motivation. And you never know because you don't know who the what they're dealing with, you know? And I get emotional, but it's it's like that's the kind of stuff that gets me going. We had another guy who uh competed at our event and he was doing uh the push-up portion of the competition. It's the second year and he was doing his push-ups. He wasn't going all the way down. So got down to like I don't know two three inches away from his chest. So I go over to him. I'm like um hey dude just a little bit lower. Get your chest down. He says, "I can't because I have a port in my chest and I have stage four cancer and I can't get all the way down because of the port." He wound up dying two months after the competition. So, when you realize that

13:53 people do this for reasons that you don't like, it's not just to go to the gym to get a six-pack. It's it's going there to for reasons we'll never know. And I think that those those kinds of um moments are more than touching to me as you can tell. But like they're they're they're just they show the power of will and that is something that we'll never be able to quantify within that as well. I was thinking about how that guy who wouldn't put that 100 pound kettle bell down for him. It it was actually about a story he wanted to tell to himself. It's something that he wanted to do for

14:40 reasons that are much more about one's identity and one's self-story as we call it. And uh on that particular point, it's one of the things that I often think about with fitness and working out is if I can be the guy that grabs the keys that day when I don't feel like it, then how that permeates through the rest of my life and how I show up in the rest of my life when there's things I don't want to do and how that then shapes me over time into somebody who is able to have the difficult conversation, is able to confront the thing, I think is like really understated. I actually was reading this um I think Andrew Hubman told me this. He said that they've neuroscience has found a part of the brain which is associated with doing hard things. Yes, I saw that. And I think he said basically that that part of the the brain and I'll put this up on

15:25 the screen grows the more hard things that you do. So you basically build the muscle of being able to do hard things. And the minute I learned that, I oh, this makes a lot of sense because the more I was able to make the workout stick and the health and fitness stick and now my diet is like as we sit here now is extremely disciplined. I've like changed as a person in other areas of my life. Like I've got more organized with like my my possessions and well, you realize what you're capable of too, right? Because I think we underell our capabilities. And I think that in reference to those two men that I just talked about, like when you're staring at the face of something that seems to be much more dire than again what level of fitness you have, you realize that there's a much deeper well that you can

16:12 tap into to do things that you don't want to do. Yeah. And I think the people that are lucky enough like yourself to have found that have found the keys to the kingdom to be able to you know take themselves to another level of awareness and self-awareness that does 100% like you said play out in other areas of your life. you know, when you can do the difficult thing, it's still not an automatic that you're gonna be able to have that difficult conversation with somebody, you know, but you know that you have the capacity to do things that you didn't really think you could and it gives you that confidence to actually go and carry those out. Interesting thing on that that uh study that uh Andrew Hubin was talking about was that if you start to

16:59 like the thing that you actually didn't like in the beginning, then it no longer challenges that area of the brain. that area of the brain starts to shrink again. Oh, really? So, it it has to kind of which is cool because it means that you need to continue to seek challenge. I was thinking a lot about this over Christmas and New Year's. I was I sat down with one of my best friends and said to him, I said, "What exercise and what thing do you dislike the most and we basically made a list of them and then we started doing those things. For me, it was actually running and it was leg day and squatting." Yeah, it also made me cuz when I asked him why he didn't do those things, the list of reasons he gave were things like my legs aren't insert excuse, my brain insert excuse. And we both came to realize together that that was just a bunch of that we like made our

17:44 identities and it was now limiting us. Are there things like that in your life that you just Oh gosh, you avoid conditioning, running, I try to address those things and do them knowing that I should do more of them, but there's always more more to do. One of the things you must have figured out from all the content you've produced across all the these channels is really like the essence of what people want and and I you know because you'll see from the views and the engagement and these things you'll build this sort of mental pattern of oh okay people are really interested in this. So if you had to summarize for me the essence of what you think people are looking for and when I say the essence I mean like the why why why the very bottom of that what are those things? Oh, I think I think insecurity is definitely a factor. I

18:33 think um a feeling of wanting to be accepted is is part of that. I think a feeling of wanting to be more capable, right? Because I think a lot a lot of men carry insecurities of how capable they are. You know, if the moment arose that they needed to, let's say, protect their family or do something that was physically needed to be done, how capable would you actually be? And I think a lot of us feel insecure in our preparedness that way. So I think that's a driver. Um I heard this quote many years ago. It says change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change. And I was thinking if you were my trainer and I was one of those stubborn people who were struggling to get the ball rolling. Where would you start with me? Like what would you do if I was super stubborn? I tried for three

19:18 years. I'd never made it stick. But but clearly there was health consequences playing out in my body. Where would you start with me to get me going? Probably the conversation, you know, I I would start with always with the conversation. I think it is important to see if you can understand the why for somebody because if you if you ask this question, this is an interesting exercise to do, but if you ask the question of like why do you want to get in shape? Um you might say I'm too fat right now. And I would say to you, well, what would it mean to you to not be as fat as you think you are? Well, I it would be better because I'd have a six-pack. What would be important if having a six-pack? Well, I would like how I looked in the mirror more. Why would it be important for you to like who you're looking at in

20:04 the mirror? Because I don't feel like I'm enough right now because I'm letting myself down because I know that I'm not doing the things I need to. Why is it important to not let yourself down? Right? So when you start to ask the question multiple keep digging you find the why very quickly and a lot of times it comes from pain from childhood. It comes from pain of of letting others down. It comes from a feeling of inadequacy that you developed either because it was you know drilled into you from your parents or or others or because you just never lacked the self-confidence to actually feel better about yourself. I always say that most people who are lifelong gymgoers, they all have some level of pain in their life that caused them to seek this out

20:51 because it's the one thing they can control. It's the one area where it's like I can I don't have to listen to anybody. I have to do what I have to do for myself and I'm in control of my body. And I think that a lot of times people or or it's an escape, you know, where you benefit from the endorphins that are released through exercise and it's your escape for doing something to make yourself feel better. But that a lot of times people get into fitness as an escape from some of that pain. So if if if I had you had come to me in the very beginning, I would have started with that conversation and tried to find out why is it that you can't stick with this? You've tried and you stopped. And I think that people need to understand that. And finding the why to get yourself on track with pursuing optimal health is everything. What about the very top then? Like how does it manifest like the the title of the video or the

21:37 thing? I mean the top is uh abs, biceps, chest and uh and you know low back pain. I mean people actually come to me for one of two things. Again I think it's having the two the two hats of physical therapist and uh strength and conditioning coach. I think people come to me to fix something or to improve the look of something. So we have lots and lots and lots of views obviously based around fixing issues um low back pain, postural issues, knee pain, shoulder pain and how it disrupts their ability to carry on in life or through their fitness pursuits. Then there's the other side of it where people of course they want their six-pack abs and then they want their arms and they want their chest. And I I highlight those because

22:24 the fact is that is where people are most interested because it's, you know, it's it's the it's the beach muscles. But that's it's a fact of life. People want to improve those areas. What I try to do when I when I bring people in through that track is to also make them aware that it's okay, this is cool. You want your abs, that's good, you know, but obviously it's going to require a healthier eating plan. So I know I can have a much broader impact on their overall health and life if I can get them to eat much healthier than they are right now. So I always feel that you can come in for whatever your top level interest might be. But my mission and goal is to make sure that you understand there's more to it than that. I've kind

23:10 of broken everything you've said into three sections which is people want to look good, they want to perform in whatever that might be and they also want to be able to do it for a long time. They want to live long. Yeah. So under if we start with looking good as a topline category, what are the things that you think are the subcategories of looking good? The amount of fat that someone carries. So how lean they are. Yeah. The aesthetic development of their muscles. what their bodies are shaped like because, you know, you could lose weight, but as you've described before, skinny fat isn't really an attractive look. Um, so I think they want to develop their muscles in specific ways. What is it the difference you see between what men say they want versus what women say they want? What do men come to you and say that they want to,

23:56 you know, as a a trainer of athletes, it's it's sacrilegious to me, but they really discuss anything in the lower body, right? They're not talking about, I just want really big legs or I want to have, you know, strong developed glutes. I mean, it's just not really high on the list. So, pretty much everything is going to focus on, you know, from the waist up in terms of the aesthetic desire, bigger neck for men. For women, it's the opposite, right? For women, they focus first and foremost below the waist. They want to have better legs. They want to have stronger legs. They want to have well-developed backsides. They want to like, and there's probably, I mean, a cultural importance upon that. You know, people are, you know, men are being judged aesthetically on their upper bodies more than women are, and women are being judged more aesthetically on their lower bodies. So,

24:42 we're we're feeding into those desires, especially, you know, one scroll through Instagram and you're just reinforcing everything I just talked about in that category as well of looking good. Um, nutrition. Most importantly, the level of body fat that you carry is going to be impacted by nutrition. So, let's start with fat and lean. Mhm. If I want to be lean like you and I want to have low body fat, where does one begin? What happened with me and what I always advise people to do is start just by looking at globally from 30,000 foot view. What do you know you're doing in like not well right now? Like are you drinking excessively? Um do you end every night with you know a pint of ice cream? like you know you're doing some

25:28 things wrong. So you make one pass at the obvious stuff and you just do it for a couple weeks, you know, and you see how you progress and what will normally happen is usually those are the most offending the biggest offenders when it comes to nutrition that you will notice some quick weight loss when you stop it. What do you think are some of the offenders that we don't realize are offenders? I've had so many in my life even like ketchup and Yeah. I thought white rice was great. Yeah, I mean, white rice is actually there's a place for carbohydrates in people's in people's diets, I believe, but um you have to have a healthy respect for them because they're the most likely to be overeaten. Like the desire to eat five steaks is not there for most of us. Like you but you could pound a whole plate full of rice and then some or pasta and

26:13 then some because they're they're they are much more chemically pleasing to the body. So, I think people need to uh be c cautious of overconumption of carbohydrates and they're not aware of portion sizes really impacting them because they'll say, "No, I had I had rice and uh and and pasta and and I would say I have rice and pasta too every day, but like I probably don't eat as much as that person does." So, portion sizes when it comes to that is one of the areas people do not have a good awareness about. the kind of hidden offenders. I mean, there's sugar in a lot of things that is used just to make these things more appealing, especially, you know, like yogurts, right? People will have, you know, fruit on the bottom yogurt, but it's like loaded with sugar or I my first experience was oatmeal. I

27:00 was reading the bodybuilding magazines in my teens that every bodybuilder ate oatmeal in the morning. So, of course, I was buying Quaker Oats, but I was buying those little packets and they have brown sugar in the bottom and it's like they were loaded with sugar. They were not the equivalent of Quaker Oats from a from a like a a canister. And so here I'm thinking I'm doing something right, but I'm not because there was more sugar in that than there was in a in a a bag of or in a a bowl of tricks cereal. What do you look for in the on the package? I always look for sugar and fat. That's what I look for. So B dietary fat there are nine calories per gram of fat versus four calories per gram of protein or carbohydrate. There are much more calorie dense foods. So when you have

27:48 fats on your plate in any way, shape or form calorically the that dish is going to increase pretty quickly. So you have to be mindful of them. If you if you want to lose weight and achieve a hypocchloric state to get there, you're going to have to take in fewer calories than you're than you're than you're burning. That's why I would look at fat content. But sugar is just really not necessary. It's just one of those things that our bodies do not need and um tends to be uh too inviting to the point where people have a hard time stopping eating sugar. So, I think that's one of the fastest ways to um to get yourself on track is to is to try to minimize the sugar content in the food. And then I look for protein because I think that protein has a lot of benefits in terms

28:34 of improving that ratio of fat to lean muscle and also for its ability to satiate you. So, if you're eating a higher protein food, you're likely going to find yourself feeling satisfied and full faster than if it's just a carbohydratebased meal. So, those are the three things that I look at every time I turn a label around. Protein, sugar, and fats. And what does your diet look like? I eat uh breakfast in the morning. And I have usually, again, I'll give you typical meals. I have uh oatmeal. I even put like some pumpkin in the oatmeal itself, some canned pumpkin just for some additional uh vi vitamins and minerals, protein shake, um and some maybe some egg whites. So, I get good amounts of protein. And for lunch, I'll

29:20 have like a grilled chicken wrap. Again, trying to prioritize protein at every single meal. And I'll try to have a Greek yogurt that has limited sugar in it. Um, then I'll have a protein shake usually after work only because I know that when I get done with work, usually at 6:00, I come home, the kids are there, they want to play. I wind up just having something to tie me over, realizing that my dinner's going to occur later at night after my workout. What happens though is that workout occurs at around 10:30 to 11 o'clock at night. So dinner happens at around midnight for me. Um that's always again based around a protein first. So usually chicken or steak or fish and then fibrous carbohydrates. So it's going to be something like uh I I I like

30:05 edetamame. It's um you know it has good protein uh in it and I'm not fearful of the soy protein that's there especially in that limited amount. broccoli and then I have my f my starchy carbohydrates which my favorite of all time is uh sweet potatoes. So I'll have sweet potatoes or or pasta or both. I'm still shocked that you're eating dinner at midnight and that what So what time do you train? So I train around 10:30 or 11 until around4 to 12 or so. Is that suboptimal? It's it's only optimal because it's when I can consistently do it. Okay. If I could change that, I would probably work out at 5:00 p. p.m., you know, but I always find that there's still work going on. People still need me at that point in the day. Why not the morning? I

30:50 have a very difficult time waking up. I'm one of those people that act like a zombie for probably uh 15 minutes before I'm feeling ready to go. I'm very much the same. I probably eat a bit too late. I train a bit too late, etc. And as I'm listening to you, I'm almost listening to myself. And I know the rebuttal is that, well, Stephen, if you went to bed earlier and you ate earlier, then you'd wake up and you'd be able to train in the morning. Yeah. Well, how do you feel when you wake up? Do you feel energetic as soon as you wake up? Or do you feel No. Yeah. Um, I'm very similar to you. I wake up late. Yeah. And if I wake up late, then I feel fine. But if you try and wake me up at 7:00, the chances are that I went to bed maybe at midnight or 1:00 a.m. So, there's not enough sleep taking place there. But having worn this whoop for a while, who are a sponsor,

31:36 I'm an investor in the company, hashtag ad hasha. Um, one of the things I came to learn was that when I eat close to the time I go to sleep, my body isn't actually asleep cuz I could see my resting heart rate so high through the night. So, my body's actually just working on the the food, so it's not restoring my body. So, what are my goals for this year is to try and not eat after 9:00 p.m. I I think it's a good goal in terms of establishing a more regular sleep or or or time to go to bed because the number one thing I think people need to understand is that when it comes to sleep, the the routine of sleep is what's most important. I believe even in cases of lower sleep totals um there's

32:22 actually 27% of people report sleeping uh less than six hours a night and 20% of people sleep four to five hours. I actually fall into the category of sleeping probably 5 to 6 hours uh most nights because I get to bed late and I get up around 7 o'clock each each morning. Do you sleep track? Uh I don't sleep track. I did for a while. Um, I don't sleep track. I actually, you know, I've tracked my cortisol levels and my levels of cortisol have actually improved even as my sleep time, my total sleep time has diminished. Now, there is, and I hold on to this um as a possibility, but I haven't tested myself. There are two genes that are actually responsible for uh short

33:08 sleeper syndrome. In other words, where you can get away with less sleep because it it optimizes gene expression for wakefulness and brain stem activity that allows you to wake up easier. And the downside to that is that only 1 to 3% of the population has that. So unless I got really lucky in terms of that, then I might be, you know, playing a game that I ultimately can't win. Um, but I think that there is a possibility that some people can operate better on lower sleep totals than others. On this point of being uh lean, one of the things people are most obsessed with getting rid of is lower belly fat. This stubborn belly fat that occurs right right there. Right there on our little mannequin here. You

33:55 don't have a pouch. That's what we call it. Me and my friends, we call it a pouch. um we can be, you know, very lean elsewhere but still have a little bit of a pouch there. Some people think doing sit-ups is the way to get rid of that stubborn belly fat. What is the answer in your view? It's the level of strictness of nutrition. And when I mean the level of strictness, it's not just in the foods that you choose, but the consistency with which you choose them. So, how long can you sustain this really clean diet? And I hate the word clean diet because usually when people say they eat clean, it's actually the first thing is a red flag that they don't. Um, but I think it comes from having a sustained ability to eat in a very restricted way. When men put on

34:40 body fat, that is the first place to go on and the last place to come off. And one of the biggest areas for that, you mentioned that I don't have one, but I mean, as as ridiculous as that's this is going to sound, when I start to see a little bit of fat on my body, it's right there. And it's because that is the absolute first place to go on. This the shamefulness of of how your body does this. And what it does to us is that it kind of works from this top down approach. Like you lose fat first from here and then it kind of goes down and the last place is here. So it works in this top down approach. Well, by the time you get all the way down there, you've lost the fat in your face. You've lost the fat in your neck. So, like, you know, I I sometimes I look at myself in the mirror, I'm like, man, you're gone, you know? And I hate the way that like my my face gets sort of caved in. But

35:26 it's sometimes the price that you pay in terms of maintaining a lean physique. Um, especially naturally because that's how your body starts to lose fat and especially as you age, you start to lose collagen and skin thickness. So, it looks even it's even more of a challenge. But this top down approach is sometimes good because it allows you to start to see like the upper row abs underneath the chest or so when you start to get into better shape. You might have noticed this yourself. You start to see like okay my my lower chest isn't as saggy anymore. It's actually starting to take some shape. Well, what's cool is that's actually that little spark of motivation that like I want to keep going. I can see the top ab, right? I can see the top ab like there it is. I can see I have them, you know? I actually have them. You I got a two pack, but I have them. Well, you continue down that path. Sometimes you

36:13 sharpen up the diet a little bit more. Sometimes you take one extra night of, you know, uh, socializing or drinking out of the schedule and you start to see it, you know, go even lower and you start to get that second row of abs, then it becomes a question of how motivated you are to actually discontin what level of sacrifice is required or is worth it to you to continue. And that's the caveat that I always say I mentioned early on like is it that important to you? Because I could tell you that at 10 11 12% body fat, you're going to look amazing and you're going to look better than 98% of all men. So whether you have that little tiny, you know, area of fat around your waist, you're still going to have your abs. You're still going to have defined

36:59 shoulders and arms and, you know, some veins popping out and other places. like is that is that good enough so that you experience the health benefits you already would be you you be there aesthetically you're probably really happy with where you are now compared to where you came from and you still get to live a life that's not as filled with sacrifice yeah to get there and that's the battle people have to have to um wage and ask themselves what is how worth it is it to me is is the game of weight loss basically calories in calories out I I just need to have less calories than I burn. Yes and no. So, to lose weight, you're going to need to be in a calorie deficit. Um, but if you took that approach and just ate whatever you wanted to, let's just say you ate

37:45 Twinkies in a deficit, you're not going to get the same outcome because the type of weight lost is going to vary depending upon what you ingest. So, if you don't ingest enough protein, you're just eating Twinkies. might lose weight, but you're also going to lose muscle in the in the in the process. So, if you want to deter the loss of muscle and and maximize the retention of muscle and maybe again even slightly build in that deficit, then you're going to want to prioritize protein. So, it's not just the calories in, calories out that will get you to lose the weight. But when you ultimat loss, they really want to make sure that they're maximizing lean muscle at the same time that they're losing weight. if they want to look a certain way, function a certain way, it's it it

38:30 it's gonna matter. What are the big misconceptions we have about abs to get rid of the body fat by doing those crunches and stuff like that doesn't work, you know? Um I think that's probably the biggest misconception. I always remember Llo. Lazlo was a was a guy who worked on my house as a contractor when we were building it. He would come up to me just he was like the typical male, right? He was in pretty decent shape. He worked every day, active. He's like, "I gotta get in shape, man." And I was like, "Well, you know, how many days a week do you train?" He said, "Well, I don't really train. I just, you know, do a couple push-ups and stuff." I said, "Well, you're gonna have to probably train. What do you do for your nutrition?" I kind of eat what I want. And I was like, "All right." But he wasn't really overweight, you know, but it's the typical. And I He goes, "Just tell me what I could I just want to know what I can do for this. What's a good exercise I could do for this for for his belly

39:16 fat?" For the belly fat. It's just pointing at his stomach. And it's like there's still that belief that there's just an exercise or two that you need to do for that. That's not how that's not how it is. Abs are not going to be gotten through just the exercise. It's always about nutrition. It's always about nutrition determines body fat levels above everything else. Now, when you get lean enough, if you're not doing any type of uh ab training, you'll probably have less defined abs because you won't have the development of that muscle. There's nothing different about the abdominals and the biceps or the quads. There's still muscles that can be developed. And because of the anatomy of the abs, there's that line down the middle and the packs, right? That's just caused by a suturing down of something

40:01 called linear alba. It's just a tendonous sheath. When you develop the muscles themselves through either crunches or resistance training, right? Even weighted ab work is is helpful in this case. The muscles are just growing just like a bicep would grow. And as they grow that you can't change the suturing down of the tendonous sheath. So they're sort of growing out more prominently from that area. So you get more visible abs. But that's the only way to really do that is through training to hypertrophy the abs. But you're not going to get there if you don't first attack the body fat that's over them. And that's only going to come from nutrition. You know, sometimes you see um older bodybuilders, like former bodybuilders, and they kind of look a bit bloated. What is that? I mean, that's usually anabolic steroid use that

40:47 causes that or growth hormone. Um, that doesn't generally come from natural occurrences where your where your belly gets so bloated like that. I mean, sometimes if you have um different types of hernas, you can get hernas actually within the abdomen, not just in the ingral um, you know, in the groin area. That could cause some of that distension in the abs, but not that global bloating that you get there. That's really usually a tell a telltale sign of like growth hormone use. Something that they've that they've abused that causes the the organs underneath to actually grow and cause distension pushing out of the belly. That's the organs growing underneath. Yeah. It's actually is a pretty disturbing visual when you think about it, but it's not a it's certainly not a healthy thing to have. And uh you

41:34 know, there's always a lot of repercussions to um going down that path. you know, they might look short term the way they want to look. And I would argue that even in those cases, you know, the the the the large super large Mr. Olympia look, I don't even know if that was ever aesthetically appealing to me or even a lot of people, but um it it definitely leaves behind a lot of a lot of damage. And people do that at a variety of different ages now. I think even people that aren't training to be bodybuilders, I can think of several people that I'm aware of who have started taking like TRT and growth hormones pretty young. And I'm actually seeing a little bit of that same body shape. I don't even know what it is, but

42:20 yeah, I mean I think it look at TRT is becoming such a prevalent path for people. I don't like that that's a prevalent path. I don't want to come across as somebody who is anti-TRT because I've been I've been reminded of that and that on some of the videos I've made about it that look Jeeoff there's a lot of cases where people have extremely bottomed out testosterone levels and there's nothing medically that can be done other than replace the testosterone that's not being made. I completely appreciate that. But as you've noted, the rise in interest in TRT is coming from a lot of the documentation of people talking about their use of it and and how, you know, they it's it's physically changing

43:06 them and they're doing it at at a rate like it's it's becoming option one. Like what about maximizing your natural potential first, you know, before declaring yourself as low testosterone even at levels like of 400 and 500 and then going and using testosterone like you're going to be on that for the rest of your life if you pursue that path. You know, once you decide to replace your body's own natural testosterone level with exogenous testosterone, you're going to have to rely on that for the rest of your life. Now, some people can get off of that and then try to restore their body's ability to produce testosterone, but that's not a given. So, be prepared that once you go down that path, that's one you're going to have to be on for the rest of your life. Have you ever taken TRT? No. No. Would you ever?

43:51 If it's proven down the road that it's something that could be beneficial and safe, I want to say I want to I'm aching to say 100% safe because that's what I want. than maybe I would if I felt like I was really suffering from, you know, the the the loss or the change that my body was going through. Cuz I don't want to just let myself get old. I want to try to do what I can, but up till now, the journey for me has been completely natural and to do it in a way that it feels most rewarding because I haven't had to do anything. So, I feel like I'm most inspired by my ability to keep going. And I'm I'm going to be 50 this year. What about let's do living long then. Um, when we think about longevity and what it's going to take for me to be live a long time but be strong into my

44:37 later years, where what areas do I need to focus on training and and staying strong and where do I need to invest my energy and time? So, this is where I think when I say if you want to look like an athlete, you got to train like an athlete because like the hallmark of their training is that it's multiaceted. So, you can't just have one element developed and be a great athlete. Even if you look at someone as one-dimensional, I'm not doing this saying this to put them down, but onedimensional as an arm wrestler, right? They could have grip strength and forearm strength and rotator cuff strength, you know, to be able to actually turn somebody over, but if they have poor nutrition, poor sleep, poor recovery, they're likely going to lose, especially because your neurological

45:25 output and grip is directly correlated to your ability to recover. If you don't have more than one element de developed, you're not going to be your best. So when people are looking, the general population is looking to become healthier and feel better, it's not going to be one thing. First and foremost, I believe that getting on a training plan that prioritizes the building of muscle, so hypertrophy and strength building is going to be really important because we are going to again like I talked about before, you're going to naturally lose strength every passing decade. You know, up to 8 to 10% per decade as you as you pass the age of 50. So, you need to make

46:12 sure that you are doing something to save that off. You can dramatically slow that down by engaging in strength training and engaging in regular weight training with the purpose of trying to build muscle. But you you have to do that. The brain ages. So having challenges to your balance, having challenges to your ability to maintain muscle recruitment because that's again neurologically your brain your neurons start to fire at a slower pace. You need to train these things. reactivity, reaction, your reaction skills, again, balance drills. These are all little parts of things that people can do. I always remember seeing this old man. He was in a he had an obstacle course he built. I don't know if you ever saw this, but it was a video. He was like 89 years old and he made this

46:58 obstacle course and he used to add every week or so he'd add one more obstacle to his course and he built it in his backyard and it was like a balance beam and then a net that he had to climb and all these things. He used to run the obstacle course once a day. Wow. And he said that like he would try to find new ways to challenge his body so that he would keep his brain guessing as to what's next. And again, whether or not it he was he was uh finding this thing to be something he didn't want to do, maybe it was also feeding into his his his uh increases because of he was doing the things he hated to do. But the but the idea was he maintained his fitness by being completely multiaceted and by incorporating some of these balance and reaction type drills into his approach

47:44 because it is important. The fall risk improve uh increases exponentially as you get older. Um a lot of it has to do with something we'll talk about um with the thoracic spine and losing mobility there, but like you need to factor those types of things in. Flexibility and mobility feed into that. Like you can't I always talk about there's a there's a pyramid, right? If you look at the the the old nutrition pyramid, there's a bottom which is supposed to be represent the the like all the things you're supposed to work on and then it kind of fine-tunes and works its way up. At the bottom of the pyramid, most would say is strength, right? You got to you got to maintain your strength. And then above that, you got to maintain your your muscle mass, like the amount of lean muscle you carry. And above that, your ability to perform because of those two attributes. So to be able to actually do

48:31 things and if it was an athlete it would be like their skill work would be at the very very top. So could you if you're a baseball player you know how well do you swing the bat? You know how well do you feel the ground ball? Like it's that top level skill work that comes up here. Is cardiovascular in there? Cardiovascular is in there as well as well. Yeah. Your your conditioning would be right you know depending upon who you talk to in terms of longevity and performance and the sport you play is going to fall right above or below strength. Now, I would argue that there's a few things underneath the whole thing. It's just like a tree. You see the tree above the ground, but you don't see the roots. And this in the pyramid sits on the ground, but what's underneath the pyramid? The roots, your stability, your flexibility, your mobility. Because if I took the strongest person that could squat 600 lb, but now I'm going to put

49:18 you on a stability ball and tell you to do the same thing. You're not doing it. I just took away your amazing strength because I took away your stability. And if you can't obtain certain positions of your body because you lack the mobility or you lack the flexibility, then I've also taken away and I've weakened the strength that you have. It's there. Your strength is there, but it can't be expressed because I took away the stability. So, the real root of longevity in fitness is really in your ability to maintain mobility, flexibility, and stability. Flexibility is the muscle length and in the in the ability to change the length of the muscle. Mobility is the joint excursions, the ability to move your joints and in and um their full range of motion. So, it's it's a muscle or joint thing. Still the same concept, but

50:04 they're working on different elements. Do you think people realize that that's so important? And do you think they enjoy it? No, I think people hate it. And I think that I mean some people like it. If you're into the practice of yoga, Pilates, you you will likely gain a quick appreciation for how much better you feel when you do those types of uh exercises that will improve mobility and flexibility. But for the average gym goer, no, it's either going to get relegated to the last thing they do uh before they leave the gym or not at all. And I think that that's going to have a big impact on how well they feel. I think that when they talk about the fountain of youth, stretching and mobility is probably the thing that makes people feel the best. I've heard that people say that and I agree to

50:50 almost a full extent, but I think that if you are just limber and loose, but you lack the the strength, you are never going to be as functionally capable as you can. Actually, I I have this band to sort of show that like if somebody was just completely flexible, right, and you were trying to shoot this band across the table, I don't have a lot of tension to be able to generate to to get any kind of force to do that. On the contrary, if somebody was um strong, right, maybe even muscle bound, I don't have any flexibility here to again really create much of a elastic output here or to get a lot of force generation. But if I were to take this band and sort of get that optimal amount

51:37 of flexibility, but also the strength in this case, the muscles, the tension, I can shoot that band a lot further, a with a lot more force and a lot more ease. Our goal should be not just athletes should be striving for this, but our goal should be to have the right amount of muscular tension and force capability with the flexibility and mobility because that's only at that point that you actually can express probably the best performance possible. How much work have I got to put in to become more flexible and to improve my mobility? Not not much. It just has to be consistent. So, I mean, I think if you were to devote even five to 10 minutes a day of stretching the areas that are tight, and again, this is very individual. Like, one thing that I

52:23 always stressed, even when I was in baseball, every player from me got an individual program, and it was based off of a comprehensive assessment. So I would go through the assessment on each player and you would find that either based on position um and the demands of that position, body type, you would find certain requirements of a program that needed to be in place to maintain optimal health. You would get tight in certain areas. You would have things that would need to be strengthened more than others. People have to be willing to a seek out where these the deficits are and b to actually pursue a program that would work on those deficits. And then when you have that, again, the comprehensive list doesn't have to be an hour a day of doing those things. You

53:09 prioritize that list and you focus on 5 to 10 minutes of extra work with it. It's funny. I make a lot of videos on, hey, do this every morning, do that every morning, do this every morning. But it's only appropriate to the people that have the deficits that I highlight in the video. People think they have to combine all of those things into a whole separate career in order to be able to pull them off. That's not necessary. You can you find the ones that have the biggest impact. But I don't think that having, you know, doing stretching requires long duration of these things. It just simply requires consistency of them. You you say that there are five key exercises you need to be able to maximize your longevity and quality of life that kind of dovetail into this. the single leg Romanian deadlift, the squat and reach, the sumo stance hold, the posterior chain push-up, and hip abductions.

53:54 Can you show me these workouts? Sure. As you can see from the space I'm in, you don't need a whole lot of room to be able to do these exercises. They're incredibly accessible. They're actually scalable with a low barrier of entry. So, no matter what level of ability you bring to these exercises, you're going to be able to do them. All right, so the first exercise up here is pretty simple, but it does demand some balance. And it also will teach us a very critical biomechanical requirement, which is a hip hinge. So, it's called the single leg RDL. What you want to do is you want to hinge. Pretending that there's a drawer behind you that's open, you're going to close it with your butt. Then, you reach forward, but at the same time, you kick back the opposite leg and engage the glute on that side, lifting it up to create a bit of a counterbalance. So, your goal is to see

54:39 if you can get even up to 10 without losing your balance or having that other foot have to contact the ground. Next exercise is something that we call a squat and and reach. And what we do is we get down to the ground like this, down to a squatting position. And we anchor our elbows into the sides of our knees. Okay? And then from here we post up on one hand, reach up and rotate and follow it with your head as you go up as high as you can to the sky. Now the goal here is to try to hold this position for up to 60 seconds. That is what is lost when we get into these chronic positions like this right with our devices at our computers. We get to this rounded thoracic spine, this upper portion of the spine. Doing this will give us the

55:27 mobility that we're lacking. So the next thing is something we call a sumo squat stance. It's a squat stance hold and it's based off of something called the horse stance which again we work on getting hip mobility and hip stability. Right? And again we're going to still work on the hip in all three planes. So what we do is we get down feet wide and squat down into this position here. Now the beginner version of this is to simply keep your elbows on your thighs for a little bit of support. But what I want to see as tall of a chest as I can get the same way that we just did through that rotation to maintain that area of the spine, that thoracic spine, and getting extended because we know that when that spine is extended, the shoulders will go with it and the posture will get away from this position

56:12 and more to this open upright position. If we don't do it in that beginner format, then what we're going to do is cross the hands over. Okay? Get in that down position. Reach up and out. Okay, that is a 30 second hold up to a 60-second hold depending upon how far you can take it. The next thing we do is we got to work on that upper body a little bit. So the upper body, you should still be able to do the exercise that is often times the benchmark for upper body strength, which is the push-up. But we can do it in a way where we get bigger benefits both front and back side. So we call this a posterior chain push-up. For a push-up, you want those hands underneath the shoulders.

56:57 Okay? I'll demonstrate one, then we'll do it together. You want to be able to push up all the way to full extension. You also want to have tightness through your quads and glutes. So you squeeze your butt together. You straighten your knees out by contracting your quads. And then you get a good firm holding plank position here. Now, when you go down, normally people would stop here or they wouldn't come up all the way. You go all the way down to the ground. At this point, you slide your hands out in front of you, point your toes, keep those quads contracted, squeezed, tight, and then lift up into what we call a superman. Right? From here, you're going to train all the muscles in your posterior chain from the back of your heels all the way up to the tip of your fingers. Right? Come down. Slide it

57:44 back. Come up into that good firm push-up. Don't lose any of that stability. Come down. Slide up. And lift. The final thing is something that looks so darn simple, but it actually has a lot of functional carryover. We're talking about just a sidelineing hip abduction. Okay? And what we do is we get in this position here. We position our toe down in front of us. So, you want to basically point your toe down into the ground. Okay. From there, you're going to slide your leg back behind you. Okay? As far as you can take it and then lift up. And right when you do that final lift, you're going to feel a contraction right here in the glutes. in particular in the glute medius.

58:30 That's the muscle that's controlling that rotational element of your hip joint and the stability and the strength that's needed to propel your body even on a regular walk without your hips dropping down side to side. You don't want to let that happen to you. You want to be able to hold this position for 30 to 60 seconds. Some of the mistakes people make is in order to feel like they're getting the lift, they'll just rotate their body to let the hip flexor do the lifting. Remember, we don't need the hip flexor to do the lifting. We want the glute medius to do the lifting. So, you need to make sure that you're rotated forward the entire time. And that's it. There's the five essentials. Quick, simple, and incredibly effective. No fancy equipment, no gym required, just a little bit of space and consistency. Now, back to the diary of a CEO studio. This one change has transformed how my team and I move,

59:16 train, and think about our bodies. When Dr. Daniel Lieberman came on the diio. He explained how modern shoes with their cushioning and support are making our

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