February 22, 2017

Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2017/02/ben-greenfield-mindpump-interview/

[0:00] Introduction

[5:32] Biohacking, Wine, Salt, Chocolate, and Shrooms

[17:40] Adam’s Go-To Meal

[24:30] Adam’s Testosterone Stack

[31:40] The Difference Between THC Strains Now and THC Strains of Long Ago

[33:25] Ben’s Sleep Edible

[36:14] HumanCharger

[37:35] Four Sigmatic

[40:00] Sal’s Go-To Meal

[46:40] Increasing the Effect Of Kratom and THC

[54:25] The Mindpump Guys’ Go-To Workouts When Travelling

[1:01:15] The New MAPS Program

[1:11:15] The Most Interesting Takeaways From Last Year’s Mindpump Podcasts

[1:13:15] A Special Way to “reboot” Your Tolerance to Weed

[1:22:51] End of Podcast

Ben:  Hey, what's up?  It's Ben Greenfield, and you're about to listen to a rather unconventional, slightly explicit, but very fun podcast that I recorded right here in my studio in Spokane, Washington with four highly entertaining fellows who flew out from San Jose to join me for the second time for what promises, it actually doesn't promise, it is, I've listened to it already.  I was there.  It's a pretty epic podcast.

Before we jump into this one, I want to ask you about this stuff called moringa, and whether or not you've actually heard of it.  It's spelled M-O-R-I-N-G-A.  It's a plant, it comes from this tree in India, and Pakistan, and Nepal, bless their heart.  They produce so many superfoods, it seems, these days, those mysterious Easterners.  Anyways though, this moringa, it's got a lot of really interesting properties.  Like it's been tested for cognitive function, and been shown to improve cognitive function almost like a natural tree-based nootropic.  It has a huge number of polyphenols in it, specifically ones that help protect your liver, for any of you out there who like to teetotal, or however that's pronounced, every now and again.  Moringa can actually help to detoxify the liver.  And I'm not just saying that to use the word detoxify, it actually can help specifically to reduce oxidative stress in liver and restore liver enzymes that may have been elevated to normal levels.

The list of properties of moringa to go on and on, use Dr. Google sometime to look it up, but the reason I'm telling you all this is because one of the best tasting green super foods on the face of the planet that I dump a tablespoon of into my smoothie every morning is called Organifi Green Juice.  It's a coconut and ashwagandha-infused green juice, and among a host of other things, a plethora of other things, a butt load of other things.  It's got moringa in it.  I'm sorry, mom.  I shouldn't have said butt load.  Anyways though, you can get this stuff at bengreenfieldfitness.com/FitLife and you use discount code Ben to get 20% off.  So you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/FitLife and use discount code Ben to get 20% off this Organifi Green Juice.

This podcast is also brought to you by GainesWave.  Quick story.  I stopped off down in Florida on my way back from a yoga retreat in Costa Rica a couple of months ago, meandered into this health clinic, went through a health consultation with a physician, and then proceeded into a small room where a nurse blasted my genitalia with acoustic sound waves to open up the formation of new vessels.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I could tell you that that night had quite a few fireworks when it comes to feeling as though I was a 13/14, 15, 16, 17, 18 year old boy again with no Viagra, no Cialis, no prescriptions, no pills.  It's just this completely natural, noninvasive, new treatment, and you can get it done too, whether you're a girl or a guy.  It works on on both member the sex when it comes to enhancing orgasm, vascularity, you name it.  You go to, well you go to your phone, basically.  You text the word “Greenfield” to 313131, that's “Greenfield” to 313131.  And when you do that, they'll give you 150 bucks off their treatment.  And if you want the white glove treatment, no, not that white glove treatment, just the I'm-going-to-be-nice-to-you white glove treatment, and a discount, and you want to go to the same place that I had it done, it's in Miami, yeah, you got to travel there, unless you already live in Miami, but it's well worth it in my opinion.  To do that, go to GainesWave.com, where you can click to find a doctor anywhere in the country, including Miami.  Tell 'em I sent ya'.  GainesWave.com.  Check it out.  Or text “Greenfield” to 313131.

In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:

“The most I'll put some good old fashioned butter, MCT oil, or coconut oil in my coffee, and go with that.  If I eat early in the day, I find myself getting sleepier.  So really, my go-to meal in the morning is nothing.”  “Never in my life had I ate that much fat in a day.  My whole career as a trainer, like we demonize fat.  I mean that's what we were taught.  When you first started training, like you would tell clients like, ‘Stay away from the fat!'”  “I'm totally into mace bell swings, I'm totally into Indian club swinging.  Lots of rotational work there that I can apply with to get some good tension there.”

Ben:  Should I explain what we're doing?  Are we recording right now?

Doug:  I'm recording both.  Yeah, audio and video.

Adam:  Okay.

Ben:  Okay.  Alright, so I've got Adam over here to my left.  Adam, how are your legs feeling?

Adam:  You know what, dude?  They feel pretty fantastic.  I can't bend them.

Ben:  So Adam is decked out in NormaTec Graduated Compression Boots.  He's very, very sore from his long, what'd you do yesterday?  A scooter session?

Sal:  He did walking lunges in aerobics class.

Ben:  Oh!  Yeah.  He did a lot of Zumba.

Adam:  Yeah.

Ben:  So his legs are pretty sore.  And he's standing in the, I've never actually stood in those.  I usually lay in them.  How's it feel to stand in them?

Adam:  Well, it would be a little more comfortable probably to lay down.  But I'm not going to lie, standing up's not bad either.

Ben:  Mhmm.  Yup.

Adam:  It actually, the air fills up underneath my feet so I feel like I'm walking around like down pillows.

Ben:  You just have to make sure you don't have your dick caught in either the left or the right side of that.  That graduated compression can get a little bit uncomfortable up towards your hips.

Adam:  I think I…

Sal:  Well, he puts it down his leg pants.  So I don't know [0:06:30] ______.

Ben:  Right.  It's like occlusion therapy for your genitals.  And then we've got Sal over here, now Sal has a probe up his nose, possibly elsewhere, but right now the one we can see is in his nose.

Sal:  Yeah.  We're not filming the other one.

Ben:  And he's got laser lights up on his head.  He's wearing a Neuro, that's photobiomodulation for your head that causes nitric oxide to get released in neural tissue and activates mitochondria in neural tissue.

Sal:  Is that why I'm having weird thoughts?  Or is that, no, that's actually normal.  That's how…

Ben:  No.  It's most just why you didn't get Alzheimer's in the past 10 minutes.

Sal:  Okay.

Ben:  Yeah.

Sal:  Well, there you go.

Ben:  No, they actually did develop that for Alzheimer's patients.

Justin:  See, you didn’t get Alzheimer’s.  It works!

Ben:  And then Justin is wearing the Re-Timer greenish blue light producing glasses.  He's also got the HumanCharger in-ear phototherapy device going on.  So basically, a.) he's not going to sleep at all tonight.

Justin:  Aw, man.  I'm so alert.  Let's do this!

Ben:  It's like he's bathing in natural sunshine.  And then I've got electrostimulation pouring into my shoulder, electrostimulation goodness pouring into my shoulder.  And I have gifts for you guys!

Sal:  Oh!

Ben:  I come bearing gifts!

Sal:  Thank you!

Ben:  So you guys get to decide who gets what, but I've got a bottle of organic Pinot Noir

Sal:  That's…

Ben:  This is microfiltration old world wine with no sulfites, no additives, completely organic.

Sal:  Beautiful.

Ben:  That's all I drink, unless I'm drinking tequila, vodka, rum, whiskey, beer, or other wine.  That's all I drink.  I have a bag of extremely fine Mexican sea salt.

Adam:  Oh, wow.

Ben:  This stuff is bomb.

Sal:  Wow.

Ben:  It has over 80 different minerals in it, which is frankly just a bunch of marketing (censored) 'cause just about all salt has 80 different minerals in it.  But what I like about that is it's clumpy.  I like put that on top my smoothies and it's like salt that you can chew.

Sal:  And this might be worth a lot more money coming up here now with the wall and everything.  You might not be able to get this.

Ben:  It makes anything taste good.

Sal:  I'll keep this.

Ben:  When we go out to dinner tonight, if the food is (censored), you just bring, and I actually travel with a bag of that in my bag, and I'll bring it out to restaurant, like you go to Whole Foods salad bar, right?

Sal:  Excellent.

Ben:  It'll just make any salad taste amazing.  I have a bar of extremely, extremely fine, from New York, custom-made for me, peanut butter dark cacao raw chocolate from Fruition Chocolate in New York.  I interviewed a guy named Kevin Rose on my podcast a few weeks ago.

Adam:  I'll take that one.

Ben:  Now if you really like dark, dark, dark choc, my kids don't like it.  ‘Cause it's like bitter cacao.  We're talking like nootropic level of cacao where you can feel the nitric oxide.  It's just like eating beets.

Sal:  Oh, wow.

Ben:  Extremely good stuff though.  That is some of the finest chocolate you can get from New York.  And then since we're going to play laser tag tonight in the biggest laser tag castle in North America, I figured each of you could use a little microdose of shrooms.

Adam:  Yes!

Sal:  Oh, shit!

Ben:  Zero point four grams of fine psilocybin extract.  I've got one for Doug too.  Doug, I'll put yours over there.  And if you pop that about an hour before we hit the laser tag castle, I can't guarantee you'll win laser tag, but you'll have a lot of fun.

Adam:  Well, I feel like, I don't know what your thoughts were on this when we go, but I kind of want us to be on the team and (censored) little kids up.

Ben:  Well, that's the thing is we can take my kids and just basically (censored) up my kids, and run around and shoot them.

Adam:  No, they can be on our team.

Sal:  We could be so good.

Ben:  The only reason I bring my children to play Laser Quest is to boost my score.  I tell them I love them and stand in front of me, guard me.

Sal:  They do make good shields.

Ben:  We're going to be on a “team” when we play.

Sal:  Excellent.  Thank you for optimizing us.

Ben:  We're all boozed, salted, chocolated up.  All biohacked.  We're ready to rock and roll.

Adam:  Let's get this sucker fired up.

Sal:  Boo-yah!

Justin:  3, 2, 1, go!  Boom!

Ben:  That was quite the task, to get everything, do you think we should have called the Geek Squad from Best Buy?

Sal:  I don't know.  ‘Cause Doug's pretty geeky.

Ben:  They have a pretty cool car, so they must be good at fixing shit.

Adam:  I guess so.

Sal:  You can probably get, no, you're good Doug…

Ben:  Don't they have like a…

Adam:  VW Bugs?

Ben:  I think it's like a Toyota Scion.

Adam:  Is it?  It used to be the Bug.  Like when they re-did the…

Sal:  It was.  It was.

Justin:  It's like, “Oooh.  Cool.”

Sal:  I'll tell you what.  Your hospitality, man.  Really appreciate it.

Adam:  Yeah.

Sal:  Every time we come here.

Ben:  Yeah.  Absolutely.

Sal:  Very, very nice.  Thank you.

Ben:  You even got to try some emulsified MCT oil.

Sal:  I poured it right on my face.

Ben:  You asked a stupid question, you idiot.

Sal:  I did.  You said you guys…

Ben:  Like the blender to blend the emulsified…

Adam:  You idiot!

Ben:  That's redundant though.

Adam:  C'mon, moron!

Sal:  Write it down.

Ben:  You don't have to blend emulsified (censored).  Don't you know that?  Idiot!

Sal:  I poured it in the side of my mouth straight anyway.

Ben:  Yeah.  Emulsified pumpkin MCT oil.

Adam:   I think I did it the wrong way too.

Sal:  Now the question was can you do it as an enema and he thought that was a stupid question.

Adam:  Exactly.

Sal:  ‘Cause of course you can.

Ben:  You know, both of our podcasts are occasionally sponsored by Kimera Koffee, and they may just burst through the walls and crucify us today because that wasn't Kimera.

Sal:  Oh, it wasn't?

Ben:  That was my mom's redneck blend from Idaho.

Sal:  That's why it sucked.

Ben:  She orders, actually, no.

Adam:  I enjoyed it!

Ben:  No, seriously.  Growing up, my dad used to order coffee beans from all over the world.  Costa Rica, Guatemala, Tanzania.  All these different green coffee beans in big burlap sacks would show up to our house, and my dad would roast coffee beans using this like $30,000 old school classic, what's called the Diedrich coffee roaster from Sandpoint, Idaho.  That was like what he did as a job was just to roast coffee and sell it.

Adam:  Oh, that's cool.

Sal:  So being abnormally into things is obviously genetic.

Adam:  Oh, yeah.  It's passed down.

Ben:  It's a little bit odd.  Yeah.  Of course, he also eventually became a monk over in Vashon Island in Washington.

Adam:  You lie!

Justin:  What?

Ben:  So next up for me is celibacy.

Sal:  Are you kidding me?

Adam:  You liar!

Ben:  If I use that ball light over in the corner of this office…

Adam:  Hold on.  Back up.  You can't just graze over…

Justin:  You keep sitting on that seat with the thing…

Adam:  You can't just say you're dad's a monk and graze over that.  Dude, is that true?

Ben:  He was a monk for a couple of years.  And then he moved to India and started doing like water treatments and providing structured water for animals in agricultural facilities in India.

Adam:  Are you (censored) with me right now?

Ben:  And now he's importing minerals from China and making special like water filtration units that mineralize your water.

Sal:  You literally just answered every question.  Like it all makes sense now.

Adam:  Yeah.  It does.

Sal:  Makes complete sense now.

Adam:  The dots are all lining up right now.

Ben:  But before that, he was a paramedic.  So there's that.

Adam:  What happened?

Ben:  Relatively normal job.  My dad is a serial entrepreneur.

Adam:  Okay.

Justin:  Our kind of people.

Ben:  So my mom moved from Detroit out to Moscow, Idaho because in Detroit, she was involved heavy with drugs, sex, rock and roll, and basically got attacked by these, and I'm sure she loves me sharing this kind of stuff on a public podcast, she got attacked and there was an attempted rape by these four big black guys that broke into her office, and she like ran down the hallway, and they were all chasing her with guns, and she hid under a bunch of boxes, and they eventually couldn't find her and left.  That was like the last straw for her.  She's like, “(censored).  I'm moving to Idaho.”  So she moved out to Idaho where her sister was living.  At the same time, my dad's brother got murdered as they were dealing crack cocaine to Cubans down in Miami.

Adam:  What?

Justin:  Holy Moses.

Ben:  He got murdered in a knife fight with Cubans.  So they moved, or he moved up to Idaho as well and then met my mom.  And so…

Adam:  So when does this motion picture come out?

Sal:  This is crazy.

Ben:  So I grew up in a full Miami/Detroit city slicker family out in the backwoods of Idaho.

Sal:  See, if I didn't know you, I'd think you were making it up 'cause it sounds so crazy.  But because I know you and I see…

Justin:  It all totally lines up.

Sal:  It makes perfect sense.

Adam:  Yeah.

Sal:  Yeah.

Ben:  Right.  So that's where I came from.

Sal:  Wow.

Adam:  Okay.  Give me time.  When was, how long ago?

Ben:  I only know this 'cause I did 23andMe.  It tells you everything.

Adam:  (laughs) Wow!

Sal:  They get really descriptive.

Ben:  It comes with little cartoon people…

Justin:  Is that how you do your commercials now?

Ben:  Exactly.

Sal:  23andMe…

Adam:  Try to feel it out.

Ben:  Yeah.  Exactly.  So, just to set the context, for those of you listening in, perhaps you heard all the gifts, that was kind of like, you guys have read Chronicles of Narnia, and like Aslan gives all the, like Lucy, and Edmund, and everyone gifts.

Sal:  Yeah.

Ben:  Gifts of like dark chocolate and psilocybin.

Sal:  Yeah.

Justin:  Yeah.

Adam:  I'd rather do that.

Ben:  This was just like Chronicles of Narnia.

Sal:  What is that one thing that the kids eats in there all there?  They're something, the little gummy…

Ben:  Uhh..

Adam:  Oh, yeah!

Sal:  Turkish delight!

Ben:  Turkish delight!

Sal:  You ever eat a Turkish delight?

Adam:  Nah.

Sal:  It's the most delicious gummy candy of all time.  It's the original gummy candy.  It's so good.

Adam:  So there was something to that, huh?

Ben:  Yeah.

Sal:  It's definitely a delight.

Ben:  I've actually had Turkish delight before in Israel, I had Turkish delight.  It's like a chewy, date-y, I don't know if it's made with dates, I think it's made with dates.

Sal:  It's almost like a gummy candy, but's it's natural-ish.  And it's covered in powdered sugar.

Ben:  And it's ketogenic.

Adam:  Very keto.  You got to stay keto.

Sal:  It's got high levels of branched chain amino acids.

Ben:  All you have to do is say that and everyone's going to be rushing out to buy Turkish delight.

Sal:  You know what, I would like to, by the way…

Adam:  I'm so glad you just said some (censored)…

Sal:  By the way, there's affiliate code…

Adam: That's keto wine that you gave me, right?

Ben:  Emulsified Turkish delight.

Adam:  Okay, the goal today is to see how many sponsors that you can slide in while we're…

Ben:  Right.

Adam:  Little commercials as we're going.  Let's see how many you can do.  We're talking about all this stuff.

Ben:  Right.  Exactly.  So you guys, this is your second time here, and really, I think, like the 4th that we've podcasted together, and there's so many questions I wanted to ask you about you.  And if you're listening in, you can go to, I'll link to the other two episodes that I did with these guys if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/mindpump3.  bengreenfieldfitness.com/mindpump3 is where you can get the show notes for this episode, and also the previous episodes that I've done with these guys.  You guys, you live down in San Jose, which is where I've been to see your facilities.

Sal:  Yeah.

Ben:  Cool.  Cool gym, cool studio down there.

Sal:  Thanks, man.  We had a great time with you there, man.

Adam:  Yeah.  You were like one of our first guests there.  It was awesome.

Ben:  And we talked about so much on previous episodes, and so listen in to those episodes if you're listening in.  But I've got some other questions that I want to ask you guys because I'm so curious where you're coming at with like meals, and diets, and supplements, and workouts, and all these little things that we haven't had a chance to talk about.  So little bit a rapid fire here to get going.  I want to start with you, Adam, former IFBB bodybuilding pro.

Sal:  By the way, the sound you hear in the background are his air pants.

Ben:  They're just farting.

Sal:  You can hear it like (making hissing noises).

Adam:  It's very air…

Ben:  Right.

Sal:  It's very nut-hugging.

Ben:  You had lentils for breakfast.

Adam:  I see.

Ben:  Slow release.  Those are ketogenic, by the way.  They're slow carbs.  Slow carbs brought to you by Tim Ferriss.

Justin:  Cricket protein.

Ben:  Anyways though.  So, slow carbs, lentils.  There we go.  Go-to meal.  Like what would be, now when I say your go-to meal, I'm not talking about like what you fantasize about when you're wasted, like pizza and French fries, but I'm talking about like for supporting the body and brain.  Do you have like staples that you eat that you would say, 'cause I've got like my big ass smoothie that I talk about and my big ass lunch time salad full of vegetables.  Like do you have that go-to meal?

Adam:  I have couple that I go to that I do like.  First of all, like a morning, Sunday or Saturday morning, I'll get up and I'll have six whole eggs, I'll get some organic cheese, a whole avocado, and then I'll have about 8 to 10 pieces of bacon, and that's kind of like my, that's my morning starter first thing in the morning.

Ben:  Now is that like a once-a-week, kind of like refeed on calories type of thing?

Adam:  Actually it's the opposite.  It sounds like a refeed, right?  But it's really not.  What I do is I find on Saturday and Sunday, I don't move as much as I do during the week, and what I've found that, like if I have too much carbs in the morning, it kicks up my appetite, and then I'd want to eat all day long.  So actually having a big, heavy, high fat, high calorie meal like that that's not really high on carbohydrates early in the morning satiates me all day.  So I'll actually only eat that meal and then maybe like a small dinner, like a salad or something at the end of the night because I'm not moving…

Sal:  Yeah.  It's really weird…

Ben:  I want to ask our resident biochemistry expert.  Sal, why is it that those carbs aren't like making him hungry?

Sal:  So it's really weird, if you eat a 2,000 calorie breakfast, you won't be hungry till much later.  It's kind of a weird science going.

Ben:  It's crazy.  If you put 6,000 calories of butter into the blender into your coffee, it keeps you in a fasted state for a very long time.

Sal:  No, I think, one of the things is Adam, for a long time, especially when he competed, he was a high carb eater.  He'd average anywhere between like four to 600 grams of carbohydrates a day.

Ben:  In bodybuilding?

Sal:  And he used to say he needed that to maintain fullness.  He felt like his muscles would deflate if he didn't have that many carbohydrates.  And when we started MindPump, we started talking a lot about different ways of eating, and I was a very big advocate of trying ketogenic style diets.  And Adam went and gave it a shot and tried it out, and really, I think what probably happened was he really improved his insulin sensitivity to where now, the comments still stays, he'll eat 200 grams, or 300 grams of carbohydrates, and that does the same thing that 600 grams of carbohydrate used to do.  So I think if you probably have a high carb breakfast now, you'd probably get that insulin, you're so sensitive to it now.  You get that insulin spike and then crash.

Adam:  Which is fine during the week.

Ben:  Right.  So the insulin is driving glucose into muscle tissue to be conserved as glycogen.

Sal:  And then it's gone, and then you're hungry again.

Ben:  And then you run out, and then you're hypoglycemic.

Sal:  That's it.  Exactly.

Ben:  That's really interesting though with bodybuilding because I used to restrict carbohydrates when I was a bodybuilder, for almost like that carb loading effect.  And the same idea could be said for like endurance sports.  So when you restrict carbohydrates, what that does is it upregulates your glycogen synthase so you can actually stock way more glycogen when you actually do eat carbs.  So I would keep myself low carb until before the show…

Adam:   The whole way or cycles?  ‘Cause I cycle.

Ben:  As much as possible.  And then I'd eat a bunch of carbs before the show so that I amped up my glycogen stores and the fullness of the muscle before the show.  And they do the same thing, now they've done some studies with cyclists, for example, where you restrict carbohydrate as much as possible, then leading up, or in the days leading up to the event, that's when you load if you want to maximize your glycogen stores.

Adam:  I actually did like, every show I did something different.  Like so, and I typically ran cycles, so between three and five day cycles where, and I would mess around with how low I would go.  So the Sal says, it was right, about four to 600 grams of carbs was like, it would keep me around my caloric intake that would either be putting me in a slight deficit.  400 was a deficit, 600 was like maintenance for me, give or take.  And then I would cycle down, so I'd run like a day that would be, I'd go 400, then I'd go like 200, 150, and then I'd push below 100 one day, and then I'd go back and refeed again.  But I started to find like when I was so dependent on carbohydrates, this was before we got into ketogenic, I felt like if I had anything under about a hundred, I'd start to get headaches and it was really, really rough for me.  And so competing was kind of miserable, those couple weeks leading into show time, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

But once I got out of competing and we started kind of doing research on ketogenic, we had Dom D'Agostino on the show.  Sal was the first one to get into it, and he was like, “You got to do this, bro.  You just got to see how you feel.”  And I'm like, “Why?  I love carbs.  And the fact that I could eat four to 600 to maintain the physique that I want.”  But then I thought, “You know what?  That's totally opposite of what we talk about and what we preach on our show is like, I'm like, “(censored).  I'm going to do this.  I'm going to go through the process, and I'm going to assess it, and see how I feel.”  And I was blown away actually, because never in my life had I ate that much fat in a day.  Like my whole career as a trainer, like we demonized fat.  I mean that's what we were taught.  I mean when we first started training, like you would tell clients like, “Stay away from the fat!”

Ben:  Now did you have to take a bunch of, because I find this happens with some of the people who like come to me for nutrition coaching, or read a book on ketosis, or something like that, and they have a bunch of stomach issues because they need to take bile extract, and lipase, and all these enzymes to help their bodies actually be able to digest the fat.  Do you have to do that or did you have to do that when you switched your diet?

Sal:  No.  You have a good tolerance of fat.

Adam:  Well, yes and no.  Like for example, mess around with like high fat coffee and stuff like that, with the whole butter, MCT, and everything.

Ben:  Mostly up my butt, yeah.

Adam:  The first time I ever did that…

Ben:  No, I actually, by the way, I don't.  You guys asked me this morning, “Where's the stuff you put in your coffee?”  And I was like, “I don't know.  I don't put (censored) …”

Adam:  I thought you did.

Ben:  No.  I actually only drink my coffee black.

Adam:  Oh.  I didn't know that.

Ben:  I like to eat my calories.  Unless it's booze.

Adam:  Well, the point is that when I would do this, I think the high fat coffee calls for like two tablespoons of butter and two tablespoons of the coconut oil, and it was just way too strong.  Like my stomach, I would get upset and bubbly guts afterwards.  When I cut that into half, I could handle it.  And it took a while just to get fat adaptive.  My body was, it was, I mean, for years didn't eat more than probably a hundred grams of carbs.  And then when I first tried to switch to ketogenic, I thought going to 200 grams was like just, “Oh my god, this is double what I've ever had.”

Ben:  You mean of fat?

Adam:  Yes.  200 grams of fat a day, which actually still was not enough.  I was kind of caught in this limbo.  My body was like, “Are you going to give me glucose, or am I going to get keto?  What am I getting?”  And I could feel that, and I actually didn't like it for like the first week or so.  And I remember telling Sal, like, “I don't know if I'm into this thing.  I don't like how I feel.  It doesn't feel right.”  And we looked at like how many grams, he's like, “No, you got to push more fat.”  And I'm like, “More?”  And then I started working up to I where I was getting like 400 grams of fat, which I just thought was, that's insane.

Ben:  And you were still bodybuilding?

Adam: I wasn't competing at that time, I was still in competitive shape.  But when I was sort of messing with ketogenic, I was actually out of the circuit.  I was done competing.

Ben:  Did you test your hormones or anything to see if they changed when you started doing stuff like six eggs for breakfast with avocado and bacon?

Adam:  No.  I check my blood 'cause I take testosterone.  Every like six months to a year, depending on what was going on, I would go get my blood work, kind of see where I'm at.

Ben:  You mean you do like testosterone injections?

Adam:  Yes.

Ben:  How much testosterone did you take?

Adam:  When I'm competing, the most I ever got, I got up to 500 milligrams, but I had to go back down because when I did my, it was my second or my third show, the judges were like, “You're way too big.”  And I've been on TRT since I was 30.

Ben:  What do you mean the judges said you were way too big?  Was it like a natural bodybuilding show?

Sal:  No.  He was physique.

Adam:  ‘Cause I'm men's physique.

Ben:  Oh, okay.  Gotcha

Adam:  Yeah.  I'm men's physique, so I was starting to flirt with that bodybuilder look, and they were like, “You're too much,” and so I actually had to pull off.  Pretty much most of all my pro career and competing, I was right around 250 milligrams a week is where I'm at.  And then when I'm like off season, like right now, I'm anywhere between 50 to 125 milligrams.

Sal:  What's interesting too is even at his highest dose of 500 milligrams of testosterone, that's actually considered a very low dose in the professional world.

Ben:  And in like the sports performance and doping world, that's not considered to be a lot, right?

Adam:  No.  They would consider…

Sal:  No in bodybuilding.

Ben:  Now is that enough to give you like man boobs?  Did you have to take, 'cause you hear about, who was the fighter that just got DQed?

Justin:  Jon Jones?

Ben:  Yeah.  Jon Jones cause he had…

Sal:  Oh, was he on Nolvadex or…

Ben:  Was it Clomid?

Sal:  It could've been Clomid.

Adam:  I think it was.

Ben:  Which is something you take, if I'm not mistaken, you take that after you've been on testosterone.

Sal:  So Clomid is a SERM, just like Nolvadex.  They're both selective estrogen receptor…

Adam:  Yeah.  I use Nolvadex.  Nolvadex and HCG is how I…

Ben:  HCG?  Okay.

Adam:  Just to shoot it back up after I come off.

Ben:  And that keeps your estrogen levels low when you're taking testosterone?

Sal:  No.  HCG…

Adam:  No.  It's going to promote my natural testosterone production to come back up.

Ben:  How do you keep, when you're using testosterone, from getting like man boobs, from getting a lot of that aromatized into estrogen?

Adam:  Yeah, you would use Nolvadex for that.  Really most of the guys that battle with that, it's because they're taking so much testosterone.  And now, everyone's unique, just totally unique.

Sal:  Yeah. So let me backpedal a little bit before everyone like, “That's not true.  I mean I take this much.”  Well, everyone's different.  But you could be super sensitive to gynecomastia, and then you could be somebody who's not and you could handle three times the dose.  But typically the guys that I know from competing with my peers, the ones that battle with side effects were, they were just stacking so much stuff with no rhyme or reason, or understanding what they're doing.  I mean, in the competitive world, I found it really crazy how everybody, that's what everybody wants to talk about.  Like you meet a guy, you never met him before, and everyone looks great backstage, and it's like it's not, “What's your workout routine?  What's your diet?”  It's like, “Oh, what are you running?”

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  “What steroid…”

Ben:  What do you call it?  Gear?

Adam:  Yeah.  “What gear…”

Ben:  What's your gear?

Adam:  Yeah.  “What's your gear?  What are you on?”  And it's like, “Really?”

Ben:  Nothing.  I just do the intranasal light therapy, bro.

Adam:  I would love to say that.  It turned into more about that.  And when I started hearing how much these guys in the men's physique, and men's physique, there's guys on the Olympia stage that are natural.  So there's some guys with good genetics and could make it all the way to the profession level, and I salute that.  It's a very small percentage…

Ben:  Natural meaning their great grandparents were like Viking kings?  More or less.

Sal:  They're super genetic.

Adam:  Yeah.  There it is.  Exactly.

Ben:  Little bit of a lottery.

Adam:  It is.  Definitely.  I mean we know that when it comes to competing, there's very much so a genetic component.  Most all the guys at the high level are not only genetic freaks, but then on top of that, they're synthetic freaks at the same time too.  But the men's physique level, I mean it's more about symmetry, and conditioning, and stuff.  And so it's crazy how out of control though the steroid use is because it's just bleeding in from the bodybuilding world.  “Oh, you take this?  So take this now.”  “Yo, you got to get ripped?  Oh, take this now.”  And you just keep adding more, and more, and more, and more.  So I thought that was pretty wild.  And I was a guy, I was a kid in my early 20's, I was probably 22 the first time that I experimented with testosterone, and it was the worst thing I ever did because I took a huge stack that some bodybuilder guy told me about.  I didn't do enough research on it, and I had huge side effects down the road.  So I got gynecomastia from it, I had a huge drop in my sex drive.  By the time I was 30 years old, I was testing like below 200.

Ben:  A situation like that in the bodybuilding industry, are you guys getting this from like online pharmacies or do you just like find doctors who prescribe it.

Adam:  Well, when I was young, when I first experimented with it in my early 20's, it was, we would go over to Mexico and get it.  Believe it or not, the stuff that you could get back then was more legit than what is out there now.  Now it's become so huge that everybody is making (censored) in their bathtub and making their own label.  I remember that transition, it was right around like 27 years old or so when I remember looking for testosterone out there and all the stuff that people were sending me, I'm like, “This is not,” I used to have the anabolic bible that you could go through and like, “Okay, that's not real,” or, “That's fake.”  Everything that's on the market now, probably a good 80% of it is made at home from somebody.  It's hard to find like pharmaceutical type…

Sal:  Yeah.  The stuff that was being done when we were in our 20's was predominantly Mexican veterinary steroids, which wasn't the greatest either.  It wasn't pharmaceutical grade, FDA approved, but…

Ben:  I don't know though.  If I want to get swole, I want the stuff they give the horses in Tijuana.  I mean that's…

Adam:  Let's be honest…

Sal:  In fact, the bottles would have pictures of like pigs, and cows, and…

Justin:  And chicken, yeah, yeah…

Adam:  Those donkey sells everybody…

Ben:  Wow.

Sal:  But now, what they do is they buy bulk powdered testosterone from China and then they mix it themselves, and put it in oil themselves, and then they sell it.  So you have all those underground labs.  And it's really, that's probably the biggest risk you take with taking anabolic steroids nowadays is that you're getting some black market (censored) that's probably, could be tainted, probably not accurate.

Adam:  Yeah.  I doubt the guy's using a clean room.

Ben:  Yeah, but China's really good at the Olympics.  There's that.  Alright, so we got the skinny from you, Adam, on your giant eggs for breakfast, the avocado trees people are chopping down to make…

Adam:  Yeah.  That is just weekends.  I've given that as a strategy to a lot of clients.  I think it's it works really well for a lot of my people.  But on a weekend, when you know you're not going to be active is having just a high fat, obviously that's a lot.  I'm a big guy.  I'm almost 230 pounds.

Ben:  I'll still out-eat you at sushi tonight, by the way.

Adam:  Alright.  It's on, bro.

Justin:  A challenge.

Sal:  Wow.  Did that just happen?

Adam:  The gauntlet's been thrown.

Sal:  This is going to be so good.

Ben:  If I do more THC than you do, I will out-eat you at sushi tonight.

Justin:  I'll referee this.

Ben:  It's kind of funny because these guys just rolled in from California, and obviously here in Washington, the dispensaries are just a dime a dozen everywhere.  So you guys, were you privy to some of the high quality Washington extracts last night?

Sal:  You know in California, it's been medicinally legal forever.

Ben:  Yeah, it's true.

Sal:  And so we've got incredible marijuana there.  It's just weird to walk into a place and have it look so commercial.  Like the labels and everything, it looks like…

Ben:  Oh, it's like a candy store here when you walk into any of these shops.

Justin:  That's what it is, yeah.

Sal:  It's pretty cool.

Adam:  It's very fascinating for me.  I started two of the first cannabis clubs in the Bay Area.  So I was a part of the very first wave that came through before they were pretty much anywhere and it was very, very underground when we first started, it was very, very sketch.  I was also a part of the first company, Steep Hill that did all the testing for all these facilities.  So they were the first ones that really started to make you test and then give you back, “Okay, there's nothing in here,” or they could tell you if it was organic or if they used any supplements for the plant, you could tell the THC level, CBD levels, all that stuff.  Now the thing that I think is kind of funny is, and we were talking about this last night because I got this, I think I have it with me, I do have it with me.  So I'm looking at it and I'm going, “All the years that I grew in all the years that I've been through around testing it so that…”

Ben:  What is that?

Adam:  This is actually…

Sal:  It's a joint.

Adam:  It's a pre-roll.

Ben:  Oh.  Okay.

Adam:  It's a pre-roll from your local dispensary here, and the breakdown on here is crazy.  25.14% THC.

Sal:  You couldn't find that, not that long ago at a very high amount.

Adam:  That's really, really high.  So when I was growing seven, if we were getting between 17 to 21% THC, we were pretty much the super top shelf guys, what we were producing…

Ben:  And what'd you say that one was?  24?  25?

Sal:  25.

Adam:  25.

Ben:  Yeah.

Sal:  They've done a good job at pushing these plants to produce, I mean 'cause they grow 'em indoors, they pump in nitrogen, they make the room cold at the right time, they add the right nutrients, and they squeeze out like ridiculous levels of THC which…

Adam:  That nitrogen [0:33:12] _____ .

Sal:  Carbon dioxide.  Sorry about that.  It's not nitro infused coffee.

Adam:  I just…

Justin:  Nitro-infused weed.

Adam:  I'm fascinated with what they're pushing out of these, what they're getting out of the plant.

Ben:  Two days ago, I made edibles up here in my kitchen.  I have one of these Magical Butter machines.  Have you seen this?  It's like an immersion blender that will go for like eight hours on your kitchen counter.  Yeah, so and I broke open 40 of the CBD capsules that my company makes, and it's like turmeric, and ashwagandha, and lemon balm.  Very, very kind of sleepy time.  But then I blended that with ghee, coconut oil, a little bit of dark cacao powder, some Stevia, an entire bag of Reishi spores, and if you haven't had Reishi before, it's like one of the most relaxing medicinal mushrooms that you can get.

Sal:  I have.

Ben:  And then, what else did I put in there?  A little bit of sea salt, and then I decarboxylated some of this like high high strain THC, like the stuff that you just took out.  So I cook it in the oven for about 40 minutes, grind that and put that in there, and that all gets blended together.  And you melt one of those in your mouth, and about an hour later, you're just like deep into a lucid dream.  Just dead to the world.  And I met, I track all my sleep cycles, and every like, I should show you my sleep.  I took one last night, I should show you my sleep graph from last night, but it's like every single congratulatory note that you can get from the OURA app, which is this ring that I wear.

Sal:  Wow.  So it really took your sleep to the next level.

Ben:  Look at this.  REM sleep through the roof, deep sleep through the roof, sleep latency through the roof, sleep timing, just everything like rock solid.

Sal:  That's awesome.

Ben:  Compared to like taking like an anti-histamine or something like that.

Sal:  Now let me ask you this: how often would you do something like this to optimize sleep?  Is this something you would do regularly or…?

Ben:  I was so excited about you guys coming over, I just had to shut off my brain.  No, I'll usually do something like that after a really, really busy day at work where I would have a hard time shutting off my brain.

Sal:  So it's scheduled, or you use it as a way to improve recovery, or…

Ben:  I would take something like that two to three times a week.  And again, I mean it's got a lot of really good stuff in it.

Sal:  Now how do you feel when you wake up?  Do you feel groggy at all?  Or do you feel…

Ben:  Freaking amazing.

Sal:  Amazing?

Ben:  Yeah.  Amazing.

Sal:  That's awesome.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I want to try it.

Ben:  Yeah.  Well, it…

Adam:  Where did you get the butter?  I saw the little butter machine…

Ben:  I've got some little Miron, you guys ever use Miron glass jars?  I order all my spices and herbs in these Miron glass jars, or keep them in these Miron glass jars which eliminates like UVA and UVB from coming through.  And it also eliminates any plastic degradation, et cetera.  A lot of times, you'll get like high quality supplements, or high quality powders and herbs that come in these, they're like a dark blackish purple jar, and the technical name for that in the industry is Miron glass.  So I'll…

Sal:  Keeps them fresh longer and…

Ben:  I'll grab a couple of those upstairs before you guys leave and I'll put them in a Miron glass jar.  You guys can pop 'em tonight after sushi or whatever.

Adam:  That would be awesome.

Sal:  Aww, man.

Justin:  Sweet.

Ben:  Miss your plane flight tomorrow.

Sal:  It's going to get even weirder.

Ben:  Yeah.

Music Plays…

Ben:  Hey.  I want to interrupt the show to tell you about exactly what Justin from MindPump was wearing during the first 20 minutes of our podcast, and that is something called a HumanCharger.  It's in-ear light therapy.  Ask him how he liked it.  He seemed to dig it.  Anyways, you have proteins on the surface of your brain that are similar to those found on the retina of your eye.  And when the retina of your eye get exposed to light, you get this dump of serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline, all these feel good chemicals, and you eliminate things like jet lag and seasonal affective disorder, a.k.a. SAD.  Anyways though, you get similar reactions when these photosensitive proteins on the surface of your brain get exposed to light through your ear canals, and that's exactly what this HumanCharger does.  You put the LED ear buds into your ears, they blast your ears with light for about 12 minutes, and it was originally designed in Finland for jet lag reduction, but it works for a ton more.  I use it every morning, obviously, my podcast guests who come to my home to record use it, and you can use it too.  20% discount.  You go to HumanCharger.com/Ben and use code BFitness for 20% off.  So that's HumanCharger.com/Ben and use code BFtness to save to 20%.

This podcast is also brought to you by shrooms, shrooms that are completely legal, but that are chock full of a ton of benefit.  What I dumped into my coffee this morning, and I kind of like pick my poison depending on what happens to be in my pantry that day, was something that promises to make me as tough as a Viking.  No, seriously.  It's this mix of Arctic herbs and wild harvested mushroom ingredients, the greens, the berries, the tree bark the root, it's all in this one powerful blend.  Yeah, I do personally put a few drops of stevia in there, and then I dump my tea over it, and it's like a fantastic morning brew.  The stuff I use this morning that I just mentioned, it's called Viking, Viking Superfood.  Got a whole bunch of stuff in it including Indian gooseberry, which is known to help improve muscle tone, metabolism, and protein synthesis, and also rhodiola, which was used by the Vikings before fights to give them strength.  So since I plan on fighting a lot today, I guess, I took it.  It's an adaptogen.  It's going to turn me into a Viking.  I wish I had my Viking helmet on right now because I had Viking in my tea.  It's five different wild crafted superfoods, whole bunch other stuff that you can get from these people.  They're called Four Sigmatic.  Not the people, the company.  The people are called Vikings.  FourSigmatic.com/Greenfield is where you go.  And when you go to Four Sigmatic, FOURSimgatic.com/Greenfield, use coupon code Ben Greenfield to get 15% off.  FourSigmatic.com/Greenfield, use coupon code Ben Greenfield for 15% off, and enjoy the little Vikings in your coffee cup.

Music Plays…

Ben:  Alright.  So Sal, what's your go-to meal?  Not that Adam's rabbit holed it all.

Sal:  Yeah.

Adam:  Exactly.

Justin:  There's plenty of room, man.

Sal:  I'll tell you what.  One of the meals that I'll eat that'll just make me feel amazing, and I have a tendency towards having gut issues, so a lot of the things that I'll eat are things that I find that really improve my gut health, or make my gut feel good.  And as you already know, the gut is such an integrity part of our brain function, our moods, and everything.  So when I put this particular meal together and eat it, I just notice I feel fantastic and I feel very good for a couple days, even in a row.  And so it starts off with a very, very large serving a very well cooked rapini, or broccoli rabe, which is…

Ben:  A rapini?

Sal:  Yeah.  In Italian, we call 'em rapini, but it's R-A-B-E.

Ben:  Oh, that's right.  You're Italian.

Sal:  That's right.  That's why I'm handsome.  R-A-B-E is what you would look up, rabe.  It's a type of broccoli, but they're very leafy.  So it's almost like, it looks like a cross between either spinach and kale and broccoli.  And what I'll do is I'll boil those and cook 'em really well because I eat a tremendous amount of them.  So I wouldn't be able to digest them if I didn't cook 'em so well.  So I'd make myself a massive plate of that and I…

Ben:  That's from the broccoli family?

Sal:  It's from the broccoli family.  And I cover it in olive oil, so I got a nice plate of rapini with olive oil, then I'll have some sardines, which I absolutely love, I love for the omega-3 fatty acids.  Very easy to digest.  And then I'll have an avocado.  And that is literally my go-to meal.  So it's very high fat, the protein isn't even that high, it's about 20 grams of protein.  But after I eat that, I feel absolutely incredible.

Ben:  Do you know much about sulforaphane?

Sal:  Sulforaphane?

Ben:  Sulforaphane.  Yeah.

Sal:  Yes.

Ben:  As compound that you'll find in like, well my wife does broccoli sprouts now.

Sal:  Yes.  You know, Rhonda Patrick talks a lot about them.

Ben:  Well, I went to Finland with Dr. Rhonda and we spent a lot of time like in the saunas over there.  Her and her husband Dan and I spoke at a biohacking conference there, and they were just like hot on the sulforaphane research they'd been doing, and they were telling me all the broccoli sprouts and brocolli.  So I but I came home and I bought some BroccoMax by Jarrow Formulas, and then I also bought a bunch of broccoli seeds for sprouting.  And we have a whole bunch of broccoli sprouts upstairs, and you can also take the seeds and just blend them.

Sal:  And they're super easy to grow, apparently.  You can you grow…

Ben:  Get a whole bunch of sulforaphane.

Sal:  Yeah.  You can grow sprouts super easy.

Ben:  Yeah.

Sal:  The thing about sulforaphane, so because I cook my rapini and I boil them, I probably destroy a lot of the sulforaphane that's in them naturally.  You want to eat, if you're looking to maximize your intake of that, you want to eat your vegetables relatively raw.  Now, there are…

Ben:  Or frozen.  I didn't realize this, but when you freeze, you concentrate the sulforaphane even more.

Sal:  You do as long as the blanching process isn't part of it.  What a lot of people don't realize is when you buy frozen vegetables, the standard way that they'll freeze them is they'll blanch 'em and then freeze 'em.  And when they blanch them, the heat will destroy or degrade a lot of the sulforaphane.

Ben:  But if you're just buy broccoli seeds and freeze them, or make brocolli sprouts and toss 'em in the freezer.

Sal:  That's totally different.

Ben:  That's what Rhonda and Dan told me that they do, and so that's what I…

Sal:  Absolutely.  And so there are definite benefits eating your vegetables raw because you get some of these compounds that are still intact.  However, there are also benefits to eating cooked vegetables, and one of them is the sheer volume of vegetables that you can eat when you cook them is so much higher.  So I get way more fiber, there's still nutrients that are in cooked vegetables.  So because I'm eating so much more, I'm still getting a good amount.  But I like to eat lots and lots of vegetables, and I just can't handle that many raw vegetables.  It'll (censored) my stomach up.  So when I cook these rapini…

Ben:  Your colon will adapt.  It'll eventually become the size of Jabba The Hut, and you'll get like colonic distention, and then you'll just be able to store it all.

Sal:  Yeah, no.  I don't want a big colon like that.

Ben:  You'll turn into a gorilla.  You have like this big pouch.

Adam:  What is the benefit of that?

Justin:  Endless storage.

Ben:  You're like those really obese people in the jogging pants you sometimes see like walking through the mall where they'll just have the huge pouch.  Like you'll have that.

Sal:  But I don't eat this meal in the day, or in the morning.  I find I have so much more energy when I'm fasted.  Or at the most, I'll put just good old fashioned butter, MCT oil, or coconut oil in my coffee, and go with that.  If I eat early in the day, I find myself getting sleepier.  So really my go-to meal in the morning is nothing.  You just give you some water and I'm fire, man.  I feel fantastic.  That meal that I had just told you would be something that I would eat…

Ben:  That actually sounds really delicious.  It remind me, and…

Sal:  You like sardines too, right?

Ben:  I love sardines.

Sal:  These guys make fun of me all the time.

Ben:  And what I do to get more of the DHA absorption, I put them with turmeric.  And like today for lunch, I'll go upstairs and I'll take out my cast iron skillet and some olive oil or some avocado oil, some of this sea salt, but then I'll put turmeric and black pepper along with the sardines, and I cook those up with what are shirataki noodles.  They're a special noodle made from Japanese yam, a lot of insoluble fiber, no carbohydrate, but it's like this pasta sardine dish that I'll serve over vegetables for lunch almost every day.

Sal:  That sounds amazing.

Ben:  And the turmeric and the black pepper concentrates the DHA, so you get more DHA.

Adam:  So you're throwing the sardines on the, you're cooking…

Ben:  Oh, you grow 'em.  Yeah.

Adam:  Okay.  That sounds kind of good.  I would do that…

Sal:  Not to mention the turmeric, when people take turmeric, they don't realize that it's fat soluble.  You need to have a fat with it to absorb it, and the black pepper increases it's absorption as well.  So when you're eating turmeric, 'cause I know people who will take a (censored) ton of turmeric powder and supplements thinking they're going to get the benefits from the turmeric, the anti-inflammatory effects, the anti-cancer effects, all the cognitive boosting effects, but if you don't take it with a fat it's not going to be absorbed.  It's like a fat soluble vitamin.  Think of it that way.

Ben:  That's one of the reasons, when I mention that edible that I made, I blend it with ghee and coconut oil because the turmeric enhances the bioavailability of the cannabinoids.  The other thing I put in there was black pepper, 'cause bioperine is the active ingredient that plays well with turmeric when you blend it with things.  So it's just amazing.

Sal:  Now bioperine, if I'm not mistaken, it changes the way the liver metabolizes things and it increases, the half-life is it of whatever you're eating, or keeps it in circulation more?

Ben:  Well, specifically curcuminoids increases the amount of time they spend in the bloodstream.

Sal:  There you go.

Ben:  So it doesn't work with all compounds.  It's kind of like the opposite of grapefruit, where if you have grapefruit juice with a pharmaceutical or a drug, it increases the rate at which it's metabolized.  And so sometimes you get a very pronounced effect, which can be dangerous.

Sal:  In fact, I actually…

Adam:  You know what reminds me of?  Remember when that Cell Tech was big and they used tell you to mix it with orange juice so it gets into your system really fast.

Justin:  Oh, yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I used to be drinking Cell Tech like crazy.

Sal:  Well that's for the sugar effect is what they were doing.  But grapefruit has a, is it naringin?  Am I saying it right?  There's a compound in grapefruit that actually increases the concentration of certain compounds, caffeine being one of them.  This isn't a little biohack.  If you want to increase the effects of caffeine, be very careful, have it with grapefruit seed extract or grapefruit, and it'll hit you much faster.  And I learned this the hard way.  I'm sensitive to caffeine.  I had taken some grapefruit seed extract 'cause I felt like I was getting a cold, drank my coffee, and it was jittery as hell.  That was like too much.

Ben:  Grapefruit seed extract's a good way to do it though 'cause you're not getting all the fructose and the sugar from grape juice.

Sal:  Exactly.

Ben:  The other couple of things that come when you say that pair well with cannabinoids, in addition to turmeric and black pepper, mango, any mango extract.  I read this…

Sal:  I've read about it.  Have you tried this?

Ben:  Well, you can get mango flavored marijuana blends, et cetera, but I've never actually tried to put like a mango extract into like an edible, or eating a mango at the same time that I've, say, like vaped.

Sal:  Supposedly it makes it feel stronger.

Ben:  Let's try tonight.

Sal:  Oh my god.

Adam:  Does sound good.

Ben:  So you bring the grapefruits, you bring the mangoes.  The other one is any anything citric acid based blended with an alkaloid.  And so I don't know if you guys are familiar with or if you've used, not to turn this into a complete drug show, but Kratom.  You used Kratom at all?

Sal:  I have used Kratom and I…

Adam:  I just heard they were trying to ban that recently.

Sal:  Well, here's the thing…

Ben:  Last year.

Adam:  Last year?

Sal:  Here's the thing about Kratom: I used it because I heard all the, and I love trying things out, I did notice a tolerance building effect, which I always am a little weary of, where I felt like I needed more and more, and I felt like you could.  Because of that tolerance building effect, there could be some addictive properties, physical addictive properties.  But nonetheless, it's one of those substances that I think freaks out the pharmaceutical industry because people are saying that it's a good way to replace opiates.

Ben:  It acts very, and this is how I found it.  I hurt my low back, and I was down in California, and the guy whose house I was staying at, he's not into painkillers.  It was actually his mom was there, not him, but his mom's even more hippie than he is, all she had around was Kratom.  And she said, “Well take a teaspoon of this, it'll knock out the pain.”  So I did, and it not only knocked out the pain, but I had this extreme sense of euphoria.  So I started to research it, and it comes in different strains.  Like white strain for wakefulness and a coffee-like effect during the day.

Sal:  Shut your ears, Adam.

Adam:  Yeah, I know.  Look at this guy.

Ben:  Red strain for euphoria, and sleep, and sexual enhancement at night.  And if you make it into a tea and you use a little bit of lemon juice or lime juice in the tea, the citric acid concentrates the alkaloids in the Kratom.  And so similar to like grapefruit mixed with some kind of a supplement, or like mango mixed with marijuana, same thing.  You mix citric acid with Kratom and you get this double whammy effect.

Adam:  Interesting.

Ben:  It's really interesting stuff.

Adam:  Like what type of plant is it?  Like what does it look like?

Ben:  I get it in powdered form.

Sal:  Now where's it native?  Is it South America?

Ben:  Thailand.

Sal:  Thailand.

Ben:  Thailand, yeah.  Yeah.  So I'm really interesting stuff.

Sal:  Missed your opportunity.

Ben:  Yeah.  But I you can you can order it online.  The FDA tried to schedule it as a class one substance unsuccessfully last year.

Sal:  It definitely…

Ben:  Kind of like CBD.

Sal:  One caveat, look, it's definitely something you feel, and there's definitely a dangerous amount.  I think you could, I don't think it's toxic, but I know some people have had some negative side effects.  So it's something that works.

Ben:  Oh, I mean I don't make a (censored) hamburger out of it.

Sal:  Yeah, yeah.

Justin:  This guy's talking about like…

Ben:  You took a teaspoon!

Adam:  Don't take like a pound of it your first time.

Sal:  Well, you got people like…

Ben:  But actually, no.  When you look at the standard way to take it, because this is how I'll use a lot, and I get a hard time for this sometimes.  When someone a give me greens powder, or a Chinese adaptogenic herb compound, and I'll just dump it in my mouth, right? because you get a lot of that mucosal absorption.  So I research Kratom, and apparently the go-to way to take it is to try to chew on the leaves in your mouth, or to just take the powder, to put it in your mouth and then just get a little sip of water and swish it around your mouth until all the powder goes away and dissolves.  So you don't get the same citric acid effect of making the tea.

Sal:  So we'll throw that to our evening stack we're going to do tonight.  So far we have your butter…

Justin:  This is getting crazier.

Sal:  You have turmeric thing, we've got the microdose psilocybin…

Adam:  Are you sure we're not going to a rave after that?

Sal:  It might feel like a rave.

Adam:  Okay.

Sal:  A personal rave.

Ben:  No.  We're actually just taking my children to sushi.  That's all.

Adam:  Father of the year award.

Ben:  I won't mention to my wife we'll be taking an Uber to sushi.

Sal:  Don't worry.  Doug's going to be with us…

Adam:  We'll keep it on the hush.

Sal:  He always keeps us under control.

Ben:  Thanks, dad.  Alright, so Justin, and by the way, if you're listening in right now, if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/mindpump3, MindPump, the number three, I'm going to twist these guys' arms actually send me to these recipes that they are describing to you, and I'll put 'em in the show so you guys can get Adam, Sal, and Justin's go-to recipes.

Justin:  Mine'll be easy.  It's just coffee.

Ben:  Justin is just coffee.

Justin:  There you go.  Yeah.

Ben:  No, seriously.  What's your go-to meal?

Justin:  I mean for me, it's real simple.  I like to tend to restrict what I'm eating for the most part to get me energy.  So if I want to kind of refocus and get one meal where I feel like, “Okay, I'm optimizing my nutrients and all that,” around like 3 o'clock, I'm going to build myself a nice salad that, I'm going to get every color I can possibly get in there.  Usually from like bell peppers, and that's a good way for me to really diversify.  If I can, I'll add in some eggs and get in some avocado and make sure I get…

Ben:  You mean like scramble eggs and put 'em on the salad?

Justin:  No!  Like hard boiled eggs.  I always have a hard boiled.  So here's why: 'cause I have chickens, which, you have chickens here, right?

Ben:  Yeah!

Justin:  Yeah.  So I got like six chickens now, they're finally producing again.  I almost was this close to sending them out.  I'm like…

Adam:  Chick fillet?

Sal:  We almost had…

Justin:  Yeah, exactly.  We were going to have some chicken sandwiches.

Adam:  We are also sending chick fillet real quick?

Justin:  And I was telling 'em, they were on borderline right there, but yeah.  So they started producing again, and it's interesting 'cause each one of them has a different colored egg…

Ben:  Why did they stop producing?

Justin:  Because two of them were brooding.  And then after that, so we tried to fix the problem by actually getting them eggs that they could sit on and…

Adam:  Fake eggs, right?

Justin:  No, they weren't even fake.

Adam:  You put Cadbury eggs…

Ben:  We have some of those fake eggs.  They work.

Justin:  Oh, you do?

Ben:  Yeah.

Sal:  You should've heard Adam's advice.  You got to go in there and show 'em who's boss and beat one up a little bit.

Adam: That was inappropriate.  Let's be honest.  But, yeah it was funny.

Ben:  Chicken raping is one way to get them to produce eggs.

Adam:  See? I knew he would go there.

Justin:  I said it last time.  At least he said it on his show.

Ben:  This omelette is fantastic.  I finally raped a few last night and they're producing.

Sal:  You mix the eggs before you take 'em out.

Ben:  Beautiful, yokey eggs.

Sal:  That's horrible.

Justin:  There you go.

Sal:  Damn it.

Justin:  So, yeah.  They have different colored eggs, which is interesting.  I'd just like to see like what naturally is going on based off of like what they're eating out.  I let 'em free range all over my property, so…

Ben:  Yeah.  Natural chicken eggs, and it has like a little bit of chicken (censored) on the outside of the shell.  That's how you know that it's like a real chicken egg.  I actually wash that off that makes me a little…

Sal:  I like getting the diversity in my microbiome, so I'll sprinkle some of that poop.

Ben:  So you just basically do eggs with a bunch of salad?

Justin:  Eggs with a bunch of salad.  And chicken, or whatever else like meat…

Sal:  He throws a hot pocket right on there.

Justin:  Yeah.  Like I said, I keep it really simple.  So it's a pretty easy recipe for your listeners to throw together.

Ben:  Easy peasy.  Easy.  Almost boring.  It looks kind of like…

Justin:  Real boring.  Dude, you're asking the wrong guy.  You can ask…

Ben:  I thought you were going to talk about emulsifying the eggs with…

Justin:  I don't get on your guys' level with that kind of stuff.  I like to keep it real simple, man.

Ben:  I am a fan of bell peppers though.  One of those things that you have to buy organic, because they're notoriously high on pesticides and herbicides.  But, yeah, for vitamin C.

Justin:  How do you feel about that with like with certain fruits and certain vegetables that have like a harder shell or something that's…

Sal:  Like avocado.

Ben:  Yeah.  Like I honestly don't go out of my way to spend the extra money on the organic avocado, or the organic bananas, or anything that's got a shell just because I like to fool myself that herbicides and pesticides have absolutely no way of creeping through anything.  Like the human skin, that can't absorb shit. So why would a banana skin be able to absorb anything.  I do go out of my way to go organic on the dirty dozen.

Sal:  That's what they call 'em.

Ben:  Strawberries, peaches, et cetera.  Yeah.  So a couple of other questions I had for you guys.  I wanted to talk to you a little bit about supplements, but we kind of kicked that horse to death already.  So, workouts.  You guys are obviously on the road right now, travelling.  We're going to go tackle the Lazer Quest castle tonight, so you can get 20,000 steps in.  But do you guys have go-to travel workouts that you do?  Like you add 'em when you're out and about to keep yourself shredded.

Adam:  We created a program called MAPS Anywhere, which is specifically for that.  But if I'm being completely honest, it really depends on what I'm currently focused on right now.  And I don't know how you guys are and you guys train, but for me, I like to become like hyper focused on a specific goal.  That's why the whole bodybuilding, competing thing was super entertaining and fun for me, but then I was over it once I kind of made my way to the professional level.  Then I was like, “Okay, I did that, now I'm on to something else.”  And right now, I've been addressing a lot of my lack of mobility.  So during all that hypertrophy training and meathead-type of lifting, I really didn't realize how bad of a position I had put my body in until I started to try and do some mobile-type…

Ben:  I'm sure a 150 pounds of dual compression on each leg right now is really helping with the mobility.

Adam:  Yeah.  Yeah, I feel stiff as (censored) right now standing in these things.  Yeah, so…

Sal:  So do I.

Adam:  What I'll do on a trip right now, like seeing you, we're here just for a couple of days so I got a really heavy session in of squats, deads over at my basic big compound movements before, 'cause I know I'm probably not going to get that while I'm here.  But then when I'm here', I'll work on a lot of my mobility stuff.  So I'll pull some of our moves from MAPS Prime and some of our moves from MAPS Anywhere, and I'll combine that.  MAPS Anywhere is a lot of bodyweight-type stuff, so I just played with that for the…

Ben:  I've seen one of these before.

Adam:  I just used one the other day.

Ben:  So this is a vibrating massage ball.  Check this out.  Since we've already got the sound of the pump in background, this shouldn't, so this guy, I'll work on this.  You know where this works.  I mean you could put it anywhere, like on the outside of the hips or whatever, but have you guys ever done work on the psoas?  Like laid down on a ball and…

Sal:  Oh, that's gnarly.

Ben:  Plus you'll poop like a baby.

Adam:  Right, on my piriformis.  Just last week, I actually…

Ben:  What's this thing called?  The hyper sphere?  It's a vibrating ball for deep tissue work.

Adam:  I actually just laid on that exact tool last week for the first time.  One of our athletes, Mike Salemi, he's a kettlebell sport pro, he had it.  He brought it with him, and I was like, “Let me check this thing out.”  The first place he told me to put it to, “Put it right there on your psoas.  Check that out.”

Ben:  What do you mean one of your athletes?

Adam:  So we sponsor a kettlebell sport, are you familiar with kettlebell sport yet?

Ben:  Yeah.  I'm the world champion.

Justin:  You are, huh?

Adam:  That can't be true.  We have that…

Justin:  I think Mike will challenge you.

Adam:  Yeah, right?  So he was the first athlete, and we wanted to sponsor somebody different.  Like we didn't want to go, we wanted to do a sport that we were really interested in that I think is kind of underground a little bit right now, and kettlebell sport, a lot of people aren't familiar.  We weren't familiar with it until we got tied up with Kettlebell Kings, and in that community, and then we kind of found, it's kind of like Crossfit for kettlebells.  It's that same type of mentality…

Ben:  You mean like there's actual workouts and actual defined competitions that you do?

Sal:  The events, like you'll do…

Adam:  It's like long cycle snatches and stuff like that.

Sal:  For time.  Yeah.  And it's, I mean the Russians have been competing forever in kettlebell type sports, and kettlebell sport is a little bit different with the rules and the way they put things together, but it's going to be pretty big.

Adam:  You'd like it.  It's cool.

Ben:  So you'll do an event and it'll be like you're going to do this exercise with the kettlebell and see who can do the most reps in X amount of time…

Adam:  There's weight classes.  So if you weigh X amount of pounds, then you would get a 70 pound kettlebell.  This guy would get, say, 80 pound kettlebell.  This person gets a 50 pound kettlebell.  And then it's like 10 minutes, who can get the most out.

Ben:  They have kettlebell preacher curls?  I can totally dominate that.

Adam:  That's what I feel like I could…

Ben:  Oh, wow.  I'm looking at this on your phone, kettlebell, also known as Giveroy, Girevoy Sport.  A power endurance feat of cyclical nature.  Wow.  Lifter's success involves proper breathing patterns, aerobic capacity, stability, mental focus.  Interesting.

Sal:  This is seriously right up your alley.  In fact, we're going to be hosting, we're hosting a competition…

Adam:  You should come down for that…

Sal:  And anybody can come.  You don't have to be in the sport.  They're going to have an event that has nothing with kettlebells, and we're going to surprise people…

Adam:  It'd be great to have Ben come host it with us.

Sal:  I think Ben would kill it.  ‘Cause it's a very endurance, like you have to have serious mental fortitude to be able to complete…

Ben:  Plus, as you guys know, after walking in my front door, I have a yoga swing.  And so there's no way I can't rule a kettlebell competition.

Adam:  Automatically qualifies right there.

Ben:  It's a yoga trapeze.  They keep telling me that.

Sal:  I thought it was a…

Ben:  The company that sent it to me, they're like, “Quit calling it a yoga swing.  It's a yoga trapeze.”  It's 'cause it turns you into a beast.

Adam:  You would like our buddy Mike Salemi, man.  He's a very, very, what does he weight?  About 150, 160 pounds?

Sal:  You want to talk about a strength to weight ration that will blow your (censored) mind, this guy's just a phenom.

Adam:  All natural superhero.

Sal:  Always been natural, very, very into gut health, mobility, and just very well-balanced, intelligent gentleman.

Adam:  He has all the [0:59:23] ______, he's got all the check…

Ben:  I'll link to, does he have like a webpage or something?  ‘Cause I'll link to it in the show notes.

Adam:  Kettlebell Lifestyle.

Sal:  That's his Instagram page?

Adam:  Yeah.  That's his Instagram page.  And then you can find him through us 'cause he is now an official athlete of ours, and we've had him on the show.  We just had episode with him recently on there.  They'll see his name out there.

Justin:  Shot quite a few YouTubes with him.

Ben:  It sounds to me like what you do Adam is you crush it when you're at home.  And then when you hit the road, you hit a lot of mobility work, basically.

Adam:  Yep.  Totally.

Ben:  I like that.  That's a good approach.  How 'bout you, Sal?

Sal:  So I just got back from a long trip in Thailand, which by the way, Thailand is probably one of most amazing places…

Ben:  Speak of the devil.  I love Thailand.

Sal:  Oh, it's (censored) gorgeous.

Ben:  I used to go there every year.

Sal:  Really?  So…

Ben:  I used to compete over there.  They have the best triathlon in the world in Thailand.

Sal:  It is (censored) amazing.  Like you've never seen.  I was just telling these guys, we were at Ko Phi Phi and some of the resorts over there, and we went to some of the islands with the high speed boats.  It's incredible.

Ben:  Did you go to Railay Bay?

Sal:  Aw, gorgeous.

Ben:  Railay Bay is my favorite place on Earth.

Sal:  Gorgeous.

Ben:  I go there and hire a rock climber, like a rock climber guide, you can get a rock climbing guide for like five bucks a day, stay in a beach bungalow for like 10 bucks a night, and you basically eat barbecued swordfish and corn on the cob on the beach.

Adam: That sounds awesome.

Sal:  And you see…

Adam:  That sounds awesome.

Sal:  And they rock climb these massive boulders that are in the ocean.

Ben:  They're these huge like limestone karsts that have, they have like…

Adam:  So if you fall, you drop in the ocean?

Ben:  Yeah.  And they have a tacky surface, so it's like your Spider-man, a ton of bolted routes.  And there's no cars there.  You can only get there by boat.  I don't want to be talking about too much on the podcast because I don't want a lot of people there.

Sal:  You don't want too many people to go.

Ben:  ‘Cause right now, it's just like a bunch of half-naked college students and random rock climbers and hippies.

Justin:  Once people find out, it's over.

Sal:  Lot of hairy armpits.  But it was amazing.  But anyway, while I was there, and this is what I like to do when I go on trips, is I like to do bodyweight type work.  So like MAPS Anywhere will highlight kind of how we do that, where we put together foundational type workouts, and then do these what are called AM sessions if I want to bring up the intensity.  But another thing I like to do…

Ben:  And MAPS is just your guys' special name that you give to any of these workout programs that you create and sell online?

Sal:  Yes.  So we have, they're different…

Adam:  Why don't you tell 'em the acronym?

Sal:  MAPS stands for muscular adaptation programming system.  Us being trainers and having taken that approach with exercise, we understand the importance of exercise programming, how to program a routine.  And people don't, they don't give any credence to that anymore.  It's just a bunch of, “Oh, you work your biceps, you work your chest, these are the exercises you do.”

Adam:  Well, they're all very intense-driven.  That's typically what you see now is that the workouts that a lot of people sell online, it's just like who can put the most crazy workout together…

Sal:  Make you the sorest.  We understand adaptation, so our programs are designed around different types of adaptations.  MAPS Anywhere is the one that we do that doesn't require any equipment.  But the other thing that I like to do is I like to improve my control in new ranges of motion.  So what I'll do, let's say I'm somewhere for 10 days, is I'll dedicate two or three days to static stretching to gain new ranges of motion.  Then I'll dedicate one or two days of activating the muscles while I'm in a static stretch.  So first let's say I'm doing, let's say I'm doing the splits, and relaxing in the splits so I can get range of motion.  I do that for a couple days.  So now I've got a new range of motion.  Then the following couple days, I'll get in that new range of motion, and then I'll do sets where I'm tensing the muscles, I'm stretching, and then tensing the opposing muscles, and going back and forth.  And all I'm trying to do is get connection within that new range of motion.  And then the final days that I'm there is I'll do exercises where I'm actually moving within the new ranges of motion so I can get some control.  Then when I come back home and I lift weights, I am training within new ranges of motion.  I lighten my load and I start to build it back up…

Ben:  So this is called MAPS Anywhere?

Sal:  MAPS Anywhere utilizes some of the exercises in AMP sessions, what we call AMP sessions, which are an intensity based workouts that help you scale up the intensity that you would do with workouts without any equipment.  So very effective program.

Ben:  Let's check it out.  You guys gave me access to the back end of the website where I can download these…

Sal:  You can have any of them.

Ben:  I'm about to take off in like a week for about two weeks of travel.  So if I download that, it'll walk me through exactly what you just described?

Sal:  Yeah.  And I think MAPS Anywhere, you would like that.

Justin:  And MAPS Prime.

Sal:  Prime would blow your mind.

Ben:  What's Prime?

Sal:  So Prime is the newest.  That's probably our most ambitious creative program that we've that completed to date.  The program that we created, I don't think there's anything out there that tries to address these particular issues.  One of them being how do you prime the body properly before you work out.  Because we understand that priming your body properly will make a tremendous difference in terms of the type of signal you send while you're working out, will make a difference in terms of muscle recruitment patterns, getting the proper recruitment patterns in terms of recovery.  And people treat what you do before you work out as just the warm up.  They think, “Oh, I'm going to warm up and prevent injury.”  But what they don't realize is preventing injuries is  the absolute least that what you do before you work out should do.  What you can really do with when you prime your workout is you can make your current workout much, much more effective.

The problem we encountered was how do you individualize that because that's one of the keys with priming is the way you would prime, let's say you have forward shoulder, let's say you have upper-crossed syndrome, and I have, let's say my problem is I'm hip flexor dominant and I have anterior pelvic tilt.   We're going to prime differently for the same exact workout.  Because you're going to try and encourage a certain type of recruitment pattern, and I'm going to try and encourage a different kind of pattern.  Or let's say you're going to go and do an event that requires lots of explosive power.  There's going to be different way you prime than if you were going to go and do something that requires more control.  Or if my central nervous system tends to be overactive, and I hate to use that term because that's not really accurate, but let's say I tend to be real tight intense, and athletes listening right now can relate, if you're tight intense before an event, you tend to be exhausted very early.  Well, priming will help optimize your central nervous system.

On the flip side, let's say you're too loose and you need to get amped because you're about to go power lift, or you're about to throw a spear, you need something explosive, priming properly will improve your central nervous system to give you more power.  And we included in MAPS Prime, this is the part that we had to really invent, was something we called the compass, which takes you through different movements, helps you grade yourself, and then it directs you to design your own priming session.

Justin:  Which you're only also able to find previously in other things like FMS and all these functional movement type screening where you'd have to kind of go through a whole course to get there.  We wanted to be able to teach people at more of a service level, like here's how…

Sal:  Anybody could do this.

Ben:  You know what though?  (censored) That whole priming shit.  I just wear one of these.  So this…

Justin:  How do you like the Halo?

Ben:  This deadens your motor cortex.  No, I recently podcasted, it's a Halo.

Sal:  Now this is what I want to try.

Ben:  Transdirect cranial stimulation

Sal:  I want to try that.

Ben:  Any workout you do after this feels effortless.  You wear this thing and it stimulates your motor cortex skill acquisition, so you can use it before you like do ukelele practice or…

Adam:  The Warriors use it.

Ben:  Yeah, Golden State Warriors used it.  You wear it for 20 minutes, and then you're primed for the next 60 minutes, for your workout.

Sal:  You're primed in your brain?

Ben:  Yeah.  All it does is it activates the motor cortex.  Anything motor skill related…

Adam:  Combined that with…

Sal:  I would like to try something like this that primes the brain with our program, which is really a body priming type program.

Ben:  You prime while you're priming.

Sal:  Double prime.

Adam:  New program.  Super Prime.

Ben:  Priming Squared.

Sal:  We put the prime in primal.

Ben:  There's a man standing outside my office with a shovel.  Should we just keep going?

Adam:  Do we know who he is?

Ben:  I have no clue who he is, but we'll just let him do his thing.

Justin:  Hey, he's working though so…

Ben:  He looks like he's working.  He works for the government.

Adam:  Dude, you got employees working around your house and you don't even know?

Ben:  So I want to be able to give Justin a chance to squeeze in his workout, his go-to workout.

Justin:  And you'll be happy…

Ben:  Hopefully it's more exciting than your salad.

Justin:  I was just going to say.  I know, dude.  Where I lack in nutritional…

Ben:  Put an egg in a bell pepper and it's amazing!  It's amazing!

Justin:  I go to the Himalayas and I get some like specific berry, and I like smash it, and they do all these very, if I get some cinnamon…

Ben:  Yeah.

Justin:  I'm not that specific, bro.  I'm sorry.

Ben:  I do that too.  It's called a…

Adam:  That ridiculous.  Some people have to live.

Justin:  Yeah, no.  What I do, and it's very similar to what Adam was kind of describing as far as if I try to plan for travelling, what I do with my workouts is I want to get a good solid workout, and a foundational type workout is what we kind of call them.  So whether that's with barbells or kettlebells, I'm going to make sure and get these compound lifts in and really exhaust my body.  Then when I get into a situation in like the hotel or something where I'm limited on different types of tools that I can access, so what I'll do is…

Ben:  What do you mean?  All hotels have an elliptical.

Sal:  Exactly.

Justin:  Yeah.  All they have is like these treadmills.  That's about all you've got.  So what I like to do is more isometrics, isokinetic type exercises where I'm holding certain positions for long, and I'm ramping up my tension of my entire body and learning new ranges of motion.  So really it's expressing range of motion, but now adding tension to that.  So I want to build my strength, which we would talk about mobility, but I take it a little bit step further where I'm really increasing my tension.

Sal:  I'll tell you what.

Ben:  Adam's showing me a video right now.  I'll link to this in the show notes.  Are you just like throwing these big-ass clubs around.

Justin:   Yeah.  So like I said, I'm more interesting working out-wise than I am nutrition.  So I'm totally into mace bell swings, I'm totally into Indian club swinging, lots of rotational work there that I can apply with, get some good tension there and response out of the retraction depression of my shoulder blades.  There's wrist rotation, elbow rotation.  So all these movements that you want to make sure that…

Ben:  These are huge too.

Sal:  You know if you don't…

Ben:  These clubs, I got to embed this video in the show notes, because dude you're not doing it justice.  These clubs that you're swinging around are freaking huge.

Adam:  This is why I had to tell you 'cause Justin, just you know, he's terrible about talking about himself.  So, Justin, if you haven't put that together, yeah, he's horrible…

Justin:  Thank you for mentioning that.

Ben:  How's that stick with like a built in computer going that you're using?

Justin:  Yeah, man.  Yeah.  So we're excited.  Yeah, that's my invention that…

Ben:  What's it called again?

Justin:  It's called the Axon.

Ben:  The Axon.

Justin:  Axon.

Ben:  Yeah.  I remember we talked about that in the last podcast, and so I'll link to the podcast in the notes, but it's like a stick that measures muscle tension.

Justin:  Exactly.

Adam:  And you can see it lights up with the LED.  This is the prototype.

Justin:  Yeah.  So I've been able to…

Ben:  It looks like a lightsaber.

Justin:  Exactly.

Ben:  I'll have to show you guys listening in, I'll put a link to this and show notes as well.  It's sick.

Justin:  Yeah.  So that's the prototype.  That's the second prototype.  What it actually looks like, I posted some pictures of that as well but it's going to be made out of bamboo, and it's going to look really slick.

Ben:  It looks like you straddling a giant lit up dick is what it looks like, actually.

Adam:  Well, if that's what that what you see, that's what you see.

Ben:  Yeah.  MindPump.

Justin:  Some people think it's a stick.

Ben:  MindPump Justin on Instagram.  Okay, cool.  I'm going link to this.  That's really cool.  You can use this to basically create a bunch of muscle tension, but then at the same time, the light tells you how much tension you're creating?

Adam:  Exactly.  And it's guided.  So think of if you're a coach even, right.  So I want to be able to prescribe a specific exercise in programs entirely.  They're going to be able to send that to their athletes, and then they're going to able to download that actually where…

Ben:  Oh, so it actually collects the tension…

Justin:  It tells you your max output, all that stuff.

Ben:  Wow.  That's really cool.

Justin:  Yeah.  It quantifies it right here.

Ben:  Dude, I can't wait 'til this comes out.  It's going to be sick.

Justin:  I'm definitely going to hook you up with one and have you play with it and give me feedback and stuff.  So I'm excited about that.

Ben:  Only us would get excited about giant stick with lights on them that measure muscle tension.  No, it actually is cool.  I like it.

Justin:  Disney, call me.  ‘Cause it definitely could be a lightsaber.

Ben:  Alright.  I got a rapid fire question for you guys to finish up here.  You have the MindPump podcast, you've had a lot of people on there, aside from just me, surprisingly, you've actually interviewed other people.  A lot of cool interview that you guys do.  So with all these people that you've interviewed, if you could tell me one piece of enchanting, intriguing, or interesting advice that was like your highlight for the past year of people that you've interviewed, would be like your top go-to?  And you can't say sticking the thing up your nose that I showed you.

Adam:  No, no, no.  Right away what comes to mind, probably my one of my favorite was Steven Kotler.

Ben:  I just interviewed him.   Have you read his new book about…

Adam:  I just finished “Rise of Superman”.  Stealing Fire's next.

Ben:  Yeah.  His new book, “Stealing Fire”, about like Burning Man, and the CIA, and the FBI.

Adam:  So I have it, and I started to open that, but then I was so excited about him and his story after we interviewed him that I was like, “Okay, I got to go back and read his first great book.”  So I started back and I've read “Rise of Superman”, fell in love with it.  He was an awesome interview, so he was just a fun guy to be around.  I'm super fascinated with “Flow”.  I'm a snowboarder, I wakeboard, I do all this stuff.  Extreme sports was like my childhood.  I grew up around that, I loved that.  I was the one who wanted to snowboard really bad with you while we're up here because that's my thing for sure.

Justin:  Aw, me too.

Ben:  There's a bunch of powder on the mountain, we're 20 minutes away from the base right now.

Adam:  Dude, when you said that, I was like, “(censored).”  You have no idea how bad I want to do that.

Sal:  I'm so crapped out.

Adam:  He's so unathletic though.

Ben:  So you're glad you brought the California kids with you.

Adam:  So Steven Kotler, it's hard because, I feel like I'm not giving justice to some of our great guests, like Dr. Brent Mccabe was awesome, sports psychologist.  But Kotler really, for me where I'm at currently, like I just happened to be, and you actually inspired some of this.  The last time I've seen you with the, I'm trying to like turn off all my electronics by 7 o'clock, I'm going from all my lights in my house to candle light, I'm starting to try and meditate more at night, I'm working on my breathing.  A lot of these things, I'm trying to…

Ben:  You are going to become a monk?

Adam:  Well, no.  Here's what I was trying to do.  Honest truth, I smoke weed every single night, and I don't want to become dependent on that as the main thing that settles my brain down.  The truth be told, it does.

Ben:  Actually have a computer right there that's hooked up to neurofeedback equipment that lets you reset your tolerance to weed.

Adam:  Oh, no shit.

Justin:  Don't tell him that!

Ben:  I have a full neurofeedback protocol that completely resets your tolerance to weed.

Sal:  He doesn't help with weed.

Adam:  I might have to, I'm going to have to spend an extra couple days…

Ben:  No, seriously.  I do it once a week.

Adam:  Oh my God.  We're going to (censored) for sure.

Ben:  It keeps you as a cheap date.

Adam:  So because of that, I was like, “You know what?  As much as I'm pro-cannabis and everything, I don't want to become dependent on it as it's my main source of what gives me all this relief and settles me down.”  So I've been working on all these things to intrinsically do that.  And so Steven Kotler's episode just totally hit home for me.  Right away I got his book, and both my girl and I both went through it together, and I'm getting ready to do his newest one that, I actually don't even think that's released yet.  I believe people can't even buy that.

Ben:  “Stealing Fire”?

Adam:  Yeah.  I think it comes out the 24th of this month…

Ben:  It's back behind me on the bookshelf.

Adam:  I know.  I see it.

Sal:  How did you get one early?

Adam:  He interviewed him, right?  You said you interviewed him?

Sal:  So did we.

Ben:  I threatened him.  I bought a hitman on the dark web.

Adam:  How did you like the interview though?  Did you…

Ben:  I loved it.  I interviewed him and Jamie Wheal.  Fantastic book, fantastic…

Adam:  Right.

Ben:  Alright.  So Steven Kotler.  And I'll link to that book for those of you want to preorder on Amazon.  I'll put it in show notes.  How 'bout you, Sal?

Sal:  They've all been pretty interesting, but two of my favorites were Dr. Terry Wahls, who created the “Wahls Protocol” and cured her own MS, and talks a lot about how she progressed from taking certain nutrients that would help her, to eating a Paleo type diet, to then creating her own protocol to include foods that were very, very nutrient dense.

Ben:  Did she have her eyes popped out her head when Adam said he was eating 400 grams of carbohydrates per day?

Sal:  Well this was actually after.  At that point, yeah [1:15:04] ______.

Ben:  20 grams max, you're going to die.

Sal:  But one thing that she said that really struck home was that she was giving us advice on just how many vegetables we should be eating a day.  And it was, I thought I was eating a lot of vegetables until I heard her talk about why we needed to eat like three massive dinner plates a day or four.

Ben:  Seriously.  Her colon must be huge.

Sal:  Maybe.  I don't know.  We can ask her.  But I started eating…

Adam:  Let's not.

Sal:  I started making vegetables a much bigger part of my diet, where in the past, I didn't consider a meal a meal unless it had some kind of protein in it.  Like if I just ate a bunch of vegetables, it wasn't considered a meal.  Whereas now, I have entire meals that are all vegetables.

Adam:  I think we all did, right?  That's the neatest part about having great, like really intelligent guests…

Sal:  You could take something away from her.

Adam:  Right away when you get like these doctors are great authors, and it's like, “Man, you know what?  Let me play with that,” and start to incorporate that in…

Ben:  Honestly, for me being a podcaster for the path 10 years, almost my entire life from a health, and a fitness, and a nutrition standpoint has evolved from podcast guests.  I was like, “Oh, that's cool.  I'll try that.”  I never would've heard of that.

Sal:  And then you see what works.

Ben:  It's an awesome job.  I get to talk to super smart people, except you guys, every…

Justin:  You're such a nice host.

Ben:  Two days a week.  Like these people who I'd normally have to like probably pay 500 to a 1,000 bucks or more an hour to even be able to get on the phone with them, I can just sit there on the microphone with them and chat.  It's crazy.

Sal:  It's absolutely awesome.  So Dr. Terry Wahls really influenced me to eat more vegetables, larger servings.  I saw tremendous benefit from that in both energy, health, my skin, sleep.  I mean everything.  It just felt so much better.  And that's what I do now.  And then Zach Bitter, who's the American world record holder in the 100 mile race, and he's a keto athlete.  From an athletic standpoint, a keto diet is it going to benefit you?  Maybe if you're an ultra-endurance type of athlete, and he really confirmed that.  And he talked about how during these long races, he used to have to constantly feed himself with hundreds of grams of carbohydrates.  Whereas when he's keto and he's doing these runs, small doses of carbohydrates, they utilized much more effectively.  He doesn't have to carry as much stuff with him, he doesn't have to fill up his stomach with as much sugar or whatever to keep himself fueled, and his body's so hyper sensitive to these carbohydrates that they just, they get utilized very well, and that's how his performance went to the next level.  He also talked about how his inflammation went way down.  So I thought that was fascinating, how you could, if you're an athlete and you use a ketogenic type diet, but you want to maximize performance, how you can utilize or take advantage of, I should say, that insulin sensitizing affect.  Throw the carbs in when you're ready to perform and you get better performance.

Ben:  Exactly.  That's what a lot of ketogenic athletes don't emphasize is the fact that ketosis isn't necessarily a performance, it's a definite longevity and health aid, but it's not a performance aid, and unless you take advantage of that maximized insulin sensitivity and you have those periods of time where you use sugar as a sometimes drug, where you're like, “Okay, I've been in ketosis for six months, now I'm going to go and do my hundred mile race and just like eat a shit ton of sweet potatoes right before that.”  And then you're like god.

Sal:  It's a noticeable boost in performance.

Ben:  Right.  So Zach Bitter, and I'm going to link to all these.  So Terry Wahls, Zach Bitter, Steven Kotler, I'll link to all the episodes that you guys did with these folks.  How 'bout you, Justin?

Justin:  I liked Dr. Brent Mccabe.  It was refreshing because we, me and Adam always like to talk about sports.   ‘Cause we spent a lot of time growing up.  I played on three different sports, baseball, basketball, football, and just to hear that type of mind from a coach and how he motivates people, it was just refreshing to hear.  It reminded me a lot of like some of my real influential impactful coaches that I have experienced…

Ben:  What does he coach?

Adam:  He's a sports psych…

Justin:  A sports psychologist.

Ben:  Okay.

Justin:  Yeah.

Sal:  Think he like, works on the athelete's mind.

Adam:  He specializes in baseball.  It's where most of his…

Justin:  And golf.

Ben:  Is he down there in San Jose?

Adam:  No, no.  Where are we flying him from?

Sal:  I don't remember.

Adam:  Doug, do you know…

Doug:  I don't remember.

Adam:  Should ask the assistance?

Sal:  Is he in Florida?

Adam:  We're flying him from somewhere.  I don't know.

Sal:  I don't know.

Adam:  He's coming in though.  He's coming in the studio and he's, he was a great, great guest, just like Justin said. Justin and I don't get a chance to talk about sports very often 'cause of the science nerd over here.

Sal:  Huh?

Ben:  Yeah.  Sal.  Kid who can't dribble a basketball.

Justin:  Yeah.  Completely disgusting.

Ben:  Can we go outside and throw a football after so we can laugh at you?

Adam:  Absolutely.

Doug:  Let's do it and video it.

Sal:  Is the one you kick?

Doug:  Here, catch.

Ben:  It's like the kid in, what's that show what Michael Cera was in where every time his dad would throw him a football, he'd just like curl up in the corner and shield himself?

Sal:  No, I'm not scared of a football.  In fact, we actually played a…

Ben:  Not Modern Family.

Justin:  Oh, here it comes.

Sal:  No, it's okay.  We have it on film.  It's actually recorded.  You can go on our YouTube, it's on our YouTube channel, MindpumpTV on YouTube…

Justin:  So me and Adam got this hug pump and our arms were really tight…

Sal:  We played horse and I won.  So that's just one of those things.

Justin:  You should've seen his shot though.

Ben:  My kids and I play pig right out here in the hallway behind you where all the carpet is torn up, 'cause I just had a flood last night.  So we're all going to die of mold, by the way.

Adam:  Ew.

Ben:  I know.

Sal:  Don't tell Dave Asprey about that.

Ben:  If you guys were Dave Asprey, he wouldn't have even ventured down here.  That all the blue cheese in the refrigerator.  But we set up a target at the end of the hallway and have bow shooting competitions indoors where we'll play pig and horse with the bows.

Sal:  Oh, awesome.

Ben:  Yeah.  It's fun.

Adam:  Mccabe was cool.  He was a pitcher for LSU, so he was on the college world series team.  He goes into like this whole story with like the dynamic between him and his coach, and the mental warfare that he had of like getting out on the mound and going out there to save the game and stuff.  So he gets into all that.  It's pretty cool.

Justin:  Yeah.  Well, it was all how his coach really was able to challenge him, and like really tell him what you need to hear that got him into the point where he could reach, a lot of like what they we're talking about with flow.

Adam:  Yeah.  We had them back to back.  I think we had Brent Mccabe first, and then we had Kotler right after that.  It was like such a great back to back episodes to interview someone like that.  First you get into the sports psychology side of it, then you dive into like the whole flow.  It was great.  It was great to have those two guys back to back.

Ben:  Well, I'll put these, if you're listening in, bengreenfieldfitness.com/mindpump3, that's bengreenfieldfitness.com/mindpump3.  Fellows, we've got to date tonight at the biggest Laser Tag Castle in North America. We've got a lot of different things to experiment with beforehand, some excellent sushi afterwards.  We've got sea salt, wine, and a dark chocolate spread out here on the table.  Plenty goodies to go around.  Thanks for coming on the show, guys.

Sal:  Thanks for having us, man.

Adam:  Aww, dude.  Always fun.  Always!

 

 

Meet the guys from MindPump podcast. 

For the second time, the hosts Sal, Adam, Justin and Doug traveled all the way up from San Jose to descend upon my my house in Spokane, Washington to record this podcast.

Our previous episodes include:

–The Mysterious Micro-Workouts, Turning On Your Butt, Overdosing With Melatonin & More With The MindPump Guys.

–The Kuwait Muscle-Building Phenomenon, The Too-Much-Protein Myth, Anabolic Triggering Sessions & More With The MindPump Podcast Crew.

These guys claim to “pull back the curtain on the mythology, snake oil and pseudo-science that pervades the fitness industry and present science-backed solutions that result in increased muscular development and performance while simultaneously emphasizing health.”

And as you can see below, they seem to have the body composition and transformation equation pretty well figured out. They include:

Sal DiStefano…

Sal was 14 years old when he touched his first weight and from that moment he was hooked. Growing up asthmatic, frequently sick and painfully skinny, Sal saw weightlifting as a way to change his body and his self-image. In the beginning, Sal’s body responded quickly to his training but then his gains slowed and then stopped altogether. Not one to give up easily, he began reading every muscle building publication he could get his hands on to find ways to bust through his plateau. He read Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding, Mentzer’s Heavy Duty, Kubrick’s Dinosaur Training, and every muscle magazine he could find; Weider’s Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Iron Man and even Muscle Media 2000. Each time he read about a new technique or methodology he would test it out in the gym. At age 18 his passion for the art and science of resistance training was so consuming that he decided to make it his profession and become a personal trainer. By 19 he was managing health clubs and by 22 he owned his own gym. After 17 years as a personal trainer he has dedicated himself to bringing science and TRUTH to the fitness industry.

Adam Schafer…

Adam Schafer is a IFBB men's physique Pro and fitness expert. Adam made his entrance into the fitness world 14 years ago and has continued to send shock waves throughout the community ever since. He is a man of many talents who wears many hats. He is first and foremost a certified fitness expert who has an insatiable desire to help people in need of major lifestyle changes and daily accountable motivation. He is also incredibly driven entrepreneur and business minded individual with a vision that continually challenges his colleagues and peers to think bigger and achieve more.

Justin Andrews…

Justin has an incredible passion to disrupt the personal training industry and create ground breaking programs and tools that fitness professionals and clients alike can benefit from. The fitness industry in general needs a massive face lift to speak more to the generation growing up with a more advanced technology tool kit. Justin’s approach is to create programs that utilize technology as it advances and cut through the millions of options people face everyday when seeking specific information relating to their fitness needs. The great thing about where we are today is how easy it is to access information, the bad part about accessing all this information is how much misinformation is out there to weed through. As a health and fitness professional with a proven track record here in the heart of the Silicon Valley, Justin Andrews will keep working tirelessly to keep people educated and connected to quality personal trainers long into the future.

Doug Egge…

Doug received his first gym membership as a gift from his dad when he was 16 years old. Rocky III had just come out and he was determined to build a body like Stallone. It never happened. Despite following the advice of muscle magazines and busting his butt in the gym, Doug saw minimal gains over the next 30 years. Then he was introduced to Sal Di Stefano by his chiropractor who recommended he work with Sal to eliminate muscle imbalances that were causing lower back issues. Sal's unique approach, often 180 degrees different from what Doug had read in books and magazines, produced more results in a matter of months than he had experienced in the 30 years prior. Doug with an extensive marketing and media production background, recognized Sal's unique gift and perspective was missing from the fitness world and suggested that they should join forces. Doug and Sal have since produced life-altering programs such as the No BS 6-Pack Formula and MAPS Anabolic. Doug is very pleased to have the opportunity to work with Adam and Justin as Producer of MindPump.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-The craziest biohacks in Ben's office…[5:35]

-Why Adam has six eggs for breakfast, along with tons of avocados and bacon, and how his body responded to that when he switched to it from a “high carb” bodybuilding diet…[17:40]

-What Adam recommends for stacking with testosterone to avoid things like man boobs and excess estrogen…[24:30]

-The difference between THC strains now and THC strains of long ago…[31:40]

-The seven secret ingredients in Ben's go-to custom sleep edible that he makes…[33:25]

-Why Sal uses a special form of broccoli in his go-to meal, and what it does to his body…[40:00]

-Which produce to buy organic, and which not to worry about buying organic…[53:35]

-The unconventional, go-to travel workouts each guy from Mindpump uses to stay fit when on the road…[54:25]

-What you cran mix with THC or Kratom to make either of these plant-based medicines far more potent…[46:40]

-What is the newest MAPS program and how does it work? [61:15]

-The most shocking, intriguing, and interesting things the guys from Mindpump have learned from previous podcast guests this year…[71:15]

-A special way to “reboot” your tolerance to weed…[73:15]

-And much more!

Resources from this episode:

–My podcast with Kevin Rose about fine chocolate

–Fit Vine Wine

–Mexican sea salt

–Normatec boots

–Halo Neuro Photobiomodulation therapy

–Marcpro Electrostimulation Device

–Retimer

–Human charger

–Ben's custom nighttime CBD blend

–Rhonda Patrick's video on “How To Increase Sulforaphane in Broccoli Sprouts by ~3.5-fold”

–Japanese yam noodles (Miracle Noodles)

–Grapefruit seed extract

–Kratom

–Hypersphere vibration therapy ball

–Kettlebell lifestyle

–The Halo Sport for TDCS/Motor Cortex priming

–Videos of Adam training with his clubs and tension stick “Axon” on Instagram

–Steven Kotler's “Stealing Fire” book

–Dr. Terry Wahl's “Wahl's Protocol” book

–The special form of neurofeedback that reduces weed tolerance

–The Mindpump podcast with Zach Bitter

–The Mindpump podcast with Brent Mccabe

–The Mindpump MAPS Anywhere training programs

–The Mindpump MAPS Prime training programs

–The training/tension stick that Justin is developing to train and quantify muscle tension

–Ben Greenfield's podcast with Mindpump: Biohacking Fitness Icon & NY Times Best Selling Author – Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth.

–Ben Greenfield's podcast with Mindpump: Elevating Testosterone Levels, Achieving Epic Erections, Benefits of Swimming Naked, Worthless Fitness Products, Raising Health Conscious Kids & More.

–The Mysterious Micro-Workouts, Turning On Your Butt, Overdosing With Melatonin & More With The MindPump Guys.

–The Kuwait Muscle-Building Phenomenon, The Too-Much-Protein Myth, Anabolic Triggering Sessions & More With The MindPump Podcast Crew.

-Recipes mentioned during this episode:

Sal's recipe:

-Rapini
-Sardines
-Avocado

-Boil a large bushel of rapini until well cooked. Drain the water and add olive oil liberally.
-Can of sardines.
-Avocado with sea salt and olive oil drizzled over it.

Justin's recipe:

-Arugula
-Spinach
-Bell peppers (red and yellow)
-Beets
-Mushrooms
-Green onions
-Avocado
-2 boiled Whole eggs
-1 egg yolk
-Olive oil (liberal)
–MCT oil (1 tablespoon)
-Apple cider vinegar (2 tablespoons)

Adam's recipe:

-4-6 whole organic eggs
-1 oz organic cheese
-1 avocado
-8-10 pieces of bacon
-1 cup spinach
-Diced bell peppers