How Not to Die at the Gym
This week we are talking about something that is often unappreciated, which is gym and lifting safety. We also discuss why honey isn't vegan.
New News
- Netherlands reduces their national meat recommendations by 40%
- Morningstar Farms voluntarily recalled two products due to possible plastic pieces in the food
- The U.S. cattle herd is at a 75-year low
Chapters
0:02 Podcast Intro and News
4:22 Gym Safety Basics
8:01 Pain or Progress
14:31 Fixing Form Mistakes
21:38 Warm Up Smart
25:10 Solo Lifting Risks
30:27 Bench and Squat Safety
35:55 Kids, Pets, and Gear
44:03 Gym Safety Basics
49:07 Clean Gear Matters
51:55 Spotting Etiquette
54:01 Rest and Recovery
57:06 Equipment and Emergencies
59:47 Honey Isn’t Vegan
1:15:54 Vegan Honey Alternatives
1:18:06 Muscle Confusion Myth
1:22:07 Mean Comments Roundup
1:25:09 Book Club Updates
How to Get In Touch
- ⭐️ Deficient Vegans Discord ⭐️
Deficient Vegans
Muscle Deficient Vegan - Fitness & Nutrition
Protein Deficient Vegan - Food & Recipes
Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast. This is episode 55. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi? Hi! Hi! So this episode, we'll be talking about gym and lifting safety, and another thing we'll talk about is why honey is not considered vegan. Hmm. Hmm. But first up, new news.
Protein Deficient Vegan:New news!
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So the first piece of news we have here is that the Netherlands has reduced their national meat recommendation by 40%.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's amazing.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So in April, the Netherlands Nutrition Center updated its Wheel of Five Dietary National Guidelines, which is way cooler than our MyPlate.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, I know. Wheel of Five.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The new recommendation includes a reduction in meat and dairy and an increase in legumes.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We love legumes.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:We do. It recommends that omnivores reduce their meat consumption from 500 grams a week to 300 grams a week and reduce their cheese consumption from 40 grams per day to 20 grams. Amsterdam also recently banned meat advertising in public spaces.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Amsterdam's doing some good work.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That meat advertising thing seems like a pretty big step.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's huge. I feel like I see meat advertisements in America like every 30 seconds.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't even think we could like have a conversation about not advertising meat anytime soon.
Protein Deficient Vegan:People would lose their shit.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, there'd be riots.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Now that cheese consumption from like 40 grams to 20 grams. Now I don't remember what the serving size is like on dairy cheese, But I know the serving size on vegan cheese, 28 grams is a serving.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I assume that's pretty similar on dairy.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:20 grams is not much for cheese.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No, it's like under a serving.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's like a cube. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Next piece of news we have is that Morningstar Farms recently voluntarily recalled two products due to possible plastic pieces in the food.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You know... Even though plastic is vegan, I don't think I want it in my food. No, no.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's not, it doesn't have much flavor, really. No. If you think about it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Might chip a tooth. I don't know. Could do some damage.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. In case you eat Morningstar products, the ones to watch out for are the Buffalo Chicken Nuggets and the Morningstar Farms Hot and Spicy Sausage Patties.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't think I've ever tried either of those.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I've had the Chicken Nuggets several times. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Well, I've had the regular Chicken Nuggets. I actually, like, lived on those as a child, but...
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Not the Buffalo.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I can't do things that are spicy, so I would have never stumbled on either of those.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Yeah, we'll have a link in the show notes. And they have specific, like, manufacturer dates that fall into the batches they're worried about. So you can check that out. And then next up, the U.S. cattle herd is at a 75-year low. So the cattle herd, including both beef and dairy cattle, is the smallest it has been in three quarters of a century.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's kind of crazy.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. A number of factors have been pushing livestock numbers down, including rising costs, drought, international competition, and increased consolidation in the cattle industry. Now, there are fewer American ranchers and farmers than there were even a few years ago.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I mean, I guess that makes sense in terms of, it seems like they're becoming larger and larger corporations. Yeah. Like, as factory farming increases.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, you know, this sounds like good news for people going vegan. But I think also, you know, if you hear people complaining about the beef prices as a result of the decreased supply, you can start pushing them towards some of the vegan options.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yes, definitely do that. What's interesting in the article is it was also talking about basically like small farms are dying. And it was saying that even though the number of actual cattle is down, that the actual tonnage is not that far down just because they're basically genetically modifying them to be bigger and bigger.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. We'll see how that plays out over time. And another factor we have right now is the screw worm thing going on in the south. I think it's only affected a few heads of cattle at this point, but the big concern there is just like rapid infestation of the screw worm, the parasite, the fly, whatever it is.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So I would say if you hear people bitching about beef or dairy prices, you might remind them that tofu, seita n, also vital wheat gluten, TVP, tempeh, beans and lentils all exist, and they're quite cheap.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And if they say, I have no idea what to do with that stuff, you say, oh, I know this website, ProteinDeficientVegan.com.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You will be able to hit your protein goal. I do think it's a good time to start posting about how cheap our shit is.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No, for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I'm going to keep that in mind with my posts.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I agree. All right, let's get into the main topic here. So we're going to talk about gym safety.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Safety? I love safety.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you're a big safety fan. I'm surprised you don't work for NASA. Yeah, so I think, you know, the fitness community and people in general often say that lifting weights is great for a lot of reasons, including longevity. But we don't talk a whole lot about how to safely do it. You'll see it, you know, as kind of a side comment on somebody's telling you how to do a lift or something like that. And they're like, oh, by the way, don't do this terribly disastrous thing. Move on.
Protein Deficient Vegan:In fact, I feel like it's kind of the opposite where it's like. pain is weakness leaving the body. Yeah, there's a lot of that. You know, it's like pain's a good thing,
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You know? Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I feel like it's like actually the opposite. Like you should hurt, you should suffer.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, we'll talk about pain a little bit. There's definitely some of that mentality going around. Lifting heavy weights can be a little risky on its own without proper form, especially and mostly if the weight is like too heavy for you specifically. Yeah. But there are also other safety risks around like proper setup, having a safe way to drop the weight and lifting around other people in a way that doesn't present a safety potential for others. So this isn't all about like lifting with safe technique. It's more about kind of the big picture of being safe in an environment like this.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think it even extends like this isn't just specifically about weightlifting even as we're also going to talk about like some cardio machines or just like machines in general or like exercising in general where you might be around other people and like things to watch out for.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. You know, don't do backflips on the edge of a mountain, stuff like that. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't think we covered that, but don't do that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's an easy one.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right? Just remember that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:First, let's cover pain, like what you just mentioned. There's a normal amount of discomfort that comes with weightlifting, especially if you're new to weightlifting or starting a program. A lot of soreness is tied to the novelty aspect, which is basically like you did a new exercise. So that's where a lot of that comes from.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's like where you do a new leg exercise for the first time and then you walk like a penguin for the next five days.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you can't sit on the toilet without assistance, things like that. So a couple of the things that are kind of normal, quote unquote, are like muscles burning during a set. Like that's going to be normal. It helps you determine when you're like reaching your last rep. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that's something you'll feel to burn. So that'll be something that's not necessarily something to worry about. And you'll probably encounter it pretty often.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's not really like a sharp pain. It's more of like a dull, achy, burny sensation.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That, you know, kind of increases as you continue your reps.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It makes you want to stop.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But you shouldn't always stop just because it burns. Just FYI. Also, heavy breathing is pretty normal, but you should be remembering to breathe.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that's pretty important. I think especially at stuff like deadlifts.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:People pass out during deadlifts.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I've come close a couple of times. You really got to remember to breathe. Yeah. Also, muscle fatigue in general. You're going to get tired when you're working out. That's normal. And it also helps to know when you're reaching your last rep, kind of like the burning. Sometimes it's not a burning, and it's just, wow, my arms are really tired. And that's more of like a, like a true failure. Like I literally cannot move my arms anymore, uh, in this, in the middle of this rep. Like I can't finish this last rep. That's more of like a muscle fatigue.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think understanding what that feeling feels like and like how that applies to like when you're close to your last rep is kind of important for other safety things that we're going to talk about.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. Um, also normal, you should feel challenged. Like if you're lifting, it should feel hard and challenging. If it doesn't, you're probably not lifting enough weight.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. If you're just like lifting five pound dumbbells over and over and over and over again, and like you never get tired, it's never hard. You need to increase that weight.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Probably the most popular kind of pain that's pretty normal associated with working out is something called DOMS, which is delayed onset muscle soreness. This typically happens if you're just starting a new program or you're doing like a new lift or maybe a new technique on that lift or something like that. And basically how it works is you're doing a workout. Everything feels great and normal. You finish your workout. You probably even feel fine for the rest of the day. You might not even be sore yet, but then you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, okay, I can't walk this morning. That's cool. Or maybe like everything is sore all at the same time, something like that. And that can actually last for maybe like a week, sometimes more, depending on, you know, if you just sit around, it's probably going to stick around so you want to try to move a little bit but, um sometimes it'll even still be sore going into your next session and typically working out again will kind of help alleviate it a little um but it should never involve like a sharp pain it should just be like oh my muscles are really sore because i have a new thing, um most people have like less of this over time once they've done certain exercises enough and uh it it would be considered like a pretty normal thing for something that changed in your program.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I kind of have a funny story about something that I thought was Dom's, but it was actually a medication side effect. Yeah. So my thyroid was like highly overactive. So I was on a lot of medication to like slow my thyroid hormone down and it wasn't supposed to have any side effects. And I'd been taking it for like maybe a month. But I woke up one morning after doing a workout, like a pretty arm focused workout. And it wasn't pain. It was that I could not lift my arms at all. Like, I couldn't, I physically couldn't lift them. Yeah, literally. Like, I literally couldn't even, like, put my own shirt on. Oh, no. Like, I was, or, like, even pull my pants up. Like, my arms just didn't work. And I remember going to the doctor, and I was like, I just don't think this is, like, a good thing. Yeah. And I eventually had to get my thyroid removed. But, yeah. She, like, didn't believe me. And I was also like, okay, well, even knitting, even if I, like, knit a scarf for an hour, like, I can't move my hands the next day. And she's like, maybe don't knit. And I'm like, okay, I feel like you're not doing your job very well.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Some doctors are more useful than other doctors, for sure. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So I think, you know, Dom shouldn't feel like that. Right. You should be able to move your body. Yeah. It just might hurt. Yeah. Like a dull, achy pain.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And usually something like, you know. You can take ibuprofen for it or something like that. It's well past the workout, so it's not going to impact anything. But usually just kind of moving it around, getting some blood flowing to it will make it feel better. A little better. We'll fix it. There's also some pain that's not normal. And if you're experiencing it, you should stop the workout immediately, basically. The ultimate goal is to get stronger and healthier. So being out for like weeks or months due to an injury isn't going to help you meet your goals.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's not a sign of strength to like push through something that will actually injure you. So all of that, like, no pain, no gain. It's like, okay, maybe no soreness, no gain. I'm cool with that. But if you're having, like, pain in the middle of your rep or something.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Pain is mobility, leaving my body here.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, right. So here are some examples of pain that would be considered bad. Any sharp pain, any kind of joint pain. So if you're doing something, like, your joints should typically feel better as you go through your sets for a particular exercise. So if your joints are like hurting more as you do more reps or more sets, like let's stop that exercise for the day, maybe for a week, I don't know, until you figure out what's going on there. They should not be feeling worse as you go. Um, any kind of sudden popping sensation? Um.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Now your knees pop.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. That's not really a popping sensation. That's just a popping noise. That's true.
Protein Deficient Vegan:A popping sensation would be the time I went too deep into a leg press and then my rib popped.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And immediately I was like, that wasn't good. But you know what? I actually finished my reps on that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Probably shouldn't have. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That qualifies as bad pain. That should make you probably stop the workout.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It wasn't great.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:At least it healed very quickly though right no.
Protein Deficient Vegan:A month later it was still like horrible pain just being in a car and going over a speed
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Bump yeah you gotta be careful with that but.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like it's mostly fine now unless it's really cold outside or it's gonna storm right
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And that's yet another one where you go to the doctor and like that's crazy anyway go home.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah what if it's a rib what are we gonna do
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah uh other issues that we consider bad are like any kind of tearing feeling definitely that's probably like a er visit maybe i feel like.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Tearing is just don't do that
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah it happens though sometimes yeah um any numbness or tingling that's not a good sign there are a lot of things that can cause numbness and tingling all of them you don't want to keep doing, Um, any loss of strength. So this is different from feeling like challenged or muscle fatigue, like a sudden loss of strength. That could be a negative sign. So probably go to the doctor for something like that. Um, any pain that is bad enough that you're like changing the way you do the movement, like you're intentionally doing. So you're maybe starting to do poor technique to work around pain. That's a pretty good sign that you don't need to be doing that exercise. Um, and then also any pain that gets worse, worse with each rep. So I've kind of talked about the joint pain and again this is not like a burning thing any kind of like like sharp pain or you know you'll start to understand the difference between pain and it's like.
Protein Deficient Vegan:My elbow hurts and now the more i lift this thing over and over again it's hurting more and the pain is
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Sharp or your lower back like if your lower back is hurting from pretty much anything as you do more reps you should stop that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Don't mess around with your
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Back yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You'll be out for a
Muscle Deficient Vegan:While i think elbow and lower back are probably the most common ones for this kind of thing but it can happen in a lot of different spots so pushing through pain like this is only going to take you out for longer than if you just took a few days off there's a saying i can't remember the exact words i'm going to butcher it but it's basically like uh you can choose when to take the time off or your body will choose for you and when your body chooses for you it usually lasts a lot longer yeah for a while yeah um, yeah you could end up with a serious injury if you're not careful yeah and you might be tempted to push through the pain or lift really heavy even if it includes bad form so you can hit a new PR or something like that. But, you know, you're looking for long-term success and not just like today's PR. Like, we'll hit the PR at some point. Don't worry about it. But like, you got to take care of your body and make sure you're able. The most important thing is to make sure you're able to get your sessions in, you know, week after week after week. So that's what we probably would ask. Yeah. It's much better to have good form with less weight than like sloppy form with weight that's way too heavy for you right now. So talking about form, there are a couple of things you can see or a couple of things that might be signs that your form is suffering because the weight is too heavy or you're just not comfortable enough with that exercise yet. Poor lifting form can increase the risk of injuries, especially because poor form typically means like you progress in the weight too quickly or you don't necessarily know what you're doing. or you could have like some really catastrophic form situation like you dropped the bar and you know that you hit something you didn't want to hit.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or you have like bad balance or something.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, something like that. Balance, it's like especially with squat, like if your form's not great on squat, you might kind of tip over or something. You got to be kind of careful. It could be a bad day. I mean, there are definitely a bunch of things that make this one of the biggest safety risks. They're all related to like either increasing your weight too fast or improperly doing the exercise. It's kind of typically the ways you would get injured. Some of the common mistakes with form are like in squats. You might have your knees collapsing inward. You might have your lower back rounding. You might have your heels lifting up. So if you have any of those things going on, it's probably good to step back and evaluate like, why is that happening? Usually it's because the weight's a little too heavy and maybe you just need to practice form of lower weight. With deadlifting, it might have like a rounded spine, specifically the rounded lower back is a big issue. The bar might be drifting away from your body. So if you don't know in the deadlift, you want to make sure the bar is in contact with your body at all times. And then like jerking the weight off the floor. This is a big one. You want to make sure you get all the tension out of your arms in the bar. So when you start to pull with the deadlift, there should be no slack left in your arms. You're just pulling off the floor immediately.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It shouldn't be like yanking your arm out of the socket.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah. Um, bench press, a couple of things you might look out for are like your wrists bent backward. You don't want that. That's just going to hurt your wrist. Uh, you want to make sure it's as straight as possible. Uh, your elbows flared excessively. You want to minimize that. So try to keep them tucked in a little more somewhere around a 45 degree angle, depending on your, you know, your anatomy. Uh, and then bouncing the bar off your chest. That's a big one. So with bench press specifically, a lot of injuries that happen are going to be something maybe like a shoulder thing or like a pec tear or something like that. And that's typically going to happen if you're, like, bouncing the weight out of the bottom position because that's, like, you know, going back into another direction very quickly with a very high load. Maybe it's even more than you can lift because it's pretty easy to bring the bar down. It doesn't take much strength. So if you bring the bar down and it's more than you can push back up and you go into, like, a quick bounce and you start to push, you can have a tear. So you can be careful there.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Tears aren't good.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No. Overhead press, some things to look out for are, like, excessive back arch. You want to keep your back pretty straight. Again, with the lower back is specifically what we're talking about there. Locking the knees. You don't really want to do that just because, you know, there's always a potential if you're standing and you lock your knees, you can pass out.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Learn that in choir.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I learned that in high school as well. I was in J-R-O-T-C, so we were standing around at attention a lot and, you know, came kind of close to blacking out a couple times. But I never actually fell over. Hey. Also, with overhead press, you want to be careful about how you press the bar around your face. Make sure your face is not in the way of the bar. Because one of the things you can do if you're not familiar with how to move your head is basically push the bar straight up into your chin. And you don't want to do that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, or your nose.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You get a free nose job.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. With rows, you want to try to avoid using momentum. That's kind of the same as yanking the bar and the deadlift. So make sure, you know, you're basically you have tension the whole time. It's a controlled movement, things like that. Also with rows, try not to shrug your shoulders too much. Just let them be relaxed and pull with the normal motion. And then make sure you're also not hyperextending your neck in most exercises. But specifically in rows is something people have an issue with.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I feel like something that probably applies to most exercises, you just don't want to be like swinging weight around unless it is like an exercise specifically for swinging weight around, like a kettlebell exercise. But everything else, it's like you do want to have control of the weight at all times, right?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, in general, you should be, you know, everything should be pretty tense. You should be, you know, a slow, controlled movement. For most exercises, you should be able to kind of stop at any point in the range of motion safely. Like, if you can't, like, stop the weight, it's probably a little too heavy. There are some exclusions there. But in general, you should be able to control the weight through the entire range of motion.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Not relying on momentum. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And that obviously doesn't apply to, like, power movement, like Olympic movements. Like the clean and jerk or snatch or something like that. Those are a little different. But, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:The clean jerk and snatch. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Uh, so some of the ways you can identify if you're having some of these issues, um, the big one is filming yourself. That can be a great way to see if you have good form. It's hard to tell if your form is good while you're doing the exercise, even if you have a mirror.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, I feel like you could get hurt trying to look in the mirror even.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Oh, definitely. And that's actually one of the big issues with, um, like a deadlift specifically. People like to look really forward. So you really want to kind of be looking at like the corner of the wall and the floor in a lot of cases.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Be a silly way to get hurt.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Not only is it like maybe your head's in a weird position when you're looking at the mirror, but it's also if you're looking at yourself in the mirror, you're distracted. So you should really be focusing on the lift and your technique and getting the rep done and not like, oh, my arms look great while I do this. And that's fine for something like curls. Like, yeah, you're watching yourself do curls and watch yourself all day long. But if you're doing deadlifts or squats, like you should not be distracted.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Plus, if you take a video, it'll last longer.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, there you go. And if you do take a video, you can get a form check on, like, Reddit. It has a couple of subreddits where you can post a form check video. Or you can join the Deficient Vegans Discord, and you can post in there, and we'll give you a form check.
Protein Deficient Vegan:He'll give you a form check.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Or maybe some of the people in our community.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I'll give you a fire emoji.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:We have actually several people in the community here are pretty good at doing form checks. So, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's pretty active.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Um also when we talk about safety we need to talk about not overdoing how much you're lifting so progressive overload is when you slowly add weight over time as you get stronger and your muscles get bigger, so we want to make sure we're not jumping up and doing ego lifting lifting way more than we're actually ready for yeah guys have a bad tendency to do this with the big lifts like bench and squat mainly bench, it's like oh i'm gonna go straight from two plates at 225 to like three plates at 315 it's like okay i mean there's like a year of progress in between those two things maybe more so maybe don't do that and then they'll get hurt.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think it's also like oh it's progressive overload so i should be adding something every time i do this exercise which isn't always the
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Case yeah not always wait you should be probably adding something most times you do the exercise but it's like usually reps or um sets or something like that if you're trying to add weight every time especially if you should only be adding it if you successfully did your target the week before or the session before. So, yeah, I mean, you can definitely run into issues if you're like, well, I didn't quite get my 10 reps I was supposed to do, but I'm going to increase it anyway. And they're like, okay, well, you're definitely not going to get it this time. So I don't know what the plan was there, but now you're lifting more weight than you can handle. So, yeah, that happens a lot, actually. You got to be careful there. It's definitely more important to just maintain like good and safe form than it is to move up through the weights. In general, you should also just think about it in these terms. And this helped me a lot because I, you know, I have a tendency also to want to lift heavy things, but think of it as like the weight on the bar. It's not really the goal. The goal is to get stronger. The goal is to build more muscle and the weight on the bar is just a tool to make the exercise more challenging. So if the exercise is already challenging and you're like in the right rep range or in the right sets or whatever, there's not a reason to increase the weight because the weight is just a tool. So I was, you know, there was one point where, you know, people were asking like, how should I track my dumbbells? Do I count them both together? Or like, I have different, you know, like my weight stacks at the gym don't have numbers on them or whatever. So, you know, I've told people a couple of times, like, you don't really need to think about it because the number doesn't matter. Like the weight stack at the gym might as well be like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, you know, like D is the setting I need to get, you know, my 12 to 15 reps or whatever. And eventually that gets too easy. Now I can do, you know, 20 reps with D. I got to move up to E. Like the number isn't really super relevant.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Maybe if it helps you not go crazy, you just use letters.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, exactly. And, you know, obviously if you're doing like powerlifting competitions or weightlifting competitions, the number is important. But for somebody who's just at the gym, maybe you just like start thinking about the numbers as letters and it won't matter to you. Something like that. That was just an example of like how unimportant the actual number. Yeah, yeah. One thing to think about while you're in the gym is the warm-up. So warming up is helpful for not getting injured. This doesn't necessarily need to be like a 20-minute session where you're foam rolling and doing a bunch of yoga poses and stuff like that. But if you could do like a quick general warm-up where you're doing some kind of cardio, like biking, rowing, elliptical, something like that. Walking. Walking, yeah. That can help you get just generally warmed up. I like to do that for a few minutes just so I can make sure like my body's functional. I don't feel anything weird, something like that. And then, you know, I would recommend going and doing like a movement specific warmup when you go to do your actual exercises. So if you have squats, you do a couple of sets of like lower weight squats and you can progressively build that up to what you're going to be doing for your normal sets. And then that's actually the best way to warm up for squats is to do lighter squats. I think Jay Cutler, who was a big bodybuilder, still a big bodybuilder technically, but he was like Mr. Olympia several times. He calls them feel sets. so his warm-up sets basically you just get in there and you move the weight around to feel if anything's wrong with like your muscles you're feeling anything strange or any injuries anything like before.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You really fuck it up
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right exactly so you know think about it that way.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's a good way to look at it yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You can also do like dynamic stretches. So if you know you're going to be working out your upper body that day, you can do like a couple of arm swings, maybe some like band things where you take a resistance band, you stretch your arms out, stuff like that. Those can help a little bit. But typically you can probably get away with just doing like either the cardio for a couple minutes and then doing lighter weights of your working exercises.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You know my favorite dynamic stretch?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:What's that?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Okay, it's off P90X, but it's called Stir in the Soup.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah, the Stir in the Soup.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So you basically like your legs are kind of like a shoulder width apart and then you like bend over with your legs straight and then you like take one arm to stir the soup as wide as you can.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You just kind of swing it in big circles. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's really fun. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It actually feels good on your upper back.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It feels great.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Sometimes I get, there's actually a common cramp for lifters and I get it a lot. It's kind of like near your shoulder blade. It's like it cramps up. I think the stir in the soup helps stretch that out pretty good.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I like that one. I'm sure it has, like, a real name, but that's what they call it in P90X.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's the name, if that's what they call it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Stir in the soup.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:All right, so moving away from things about, like, the specific exercise or specific technique, let's talk a little bit about gym safety in general. So, like, you're at the gym. How can I be safe in other ways that aren't just me doing this exercise?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yes. Not movement-related.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. First of all, lifting alone can be kind of dangerous in general if you're not aware of the risk And you don't have a plan for how you can safely drop the weight or fail if you can't hold on to it anymore. Yeah. This is why people usually recommend a spotter, at the very least for bench press, because out of all the things you can get injured doing alone, bench press is like top of the list by far.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Dude, it's in so many movies. This happens to people.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So a couple of other things you need to keep in mind so that you can make sure that your lifting environment is safe.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Uh, one, if you need to drop dumbbells, you might not want to use adjustable dumbbells because they're a lot more fragile and they're a lot more expensive and they'll break.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They'll break and then you'll be really sad because you have to go buy more.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And it's also your only dumbbell. Yeah. If you drop and break your 20 pound dumbbell and you have a whole set, who cares? If you drop and break your adjustable dumbbell, you can't work out anymore.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And you're out a lot of money. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So yeah, if you're in a situation where you're going to be working out alone, doing dumbbell exercises, uh, and you feel like you might need to drop them, Trying to drop your adjustables.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I would say if you're alone, probably avoid doing exercises with weight over your head. Like, you know, skull crushers. That's one of my favorites. And I've definitely done it at home alone a lot in my youth. And now I'm like, I don't think I would do that at home alone anymore. Yeah. Because, like, if you do drop it. Yeah. It's called skull crushers for a reason and you're going to have a bad time.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I'm sure people will be out there like, I've been doing skull crushers for 30 years. But, you know, there's always a chance. And there are other exercises you can do. You don't need to do skull crushers.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Also, I think where I started getting the, like, a little freaked out was I was using the adjustable dumbbells for skull crushers. And I was like, what actually holds in the plates? Yeah. Like, what if that broke? How am I checking that? Is there any kind of, like, maintenance I should be doing on this? Maybe I'm just not going to put weights over my head anymore.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Can't ever get the engineer out of your mind. No.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Is the mechanical integrity of this okay i'm not sure
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Even with fixed dumbbells you'd be like how's that weld.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah i know i don't know i'm gonna need to see the welding documents so we get good penetration i'm not sure
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So yeah things over your head definitely slightly more risky than things not over your head careful there can't get away with it um with some things but like maybe uh skull crushers you could use lots of different other triceps oh i know but if you're doing like military press with a barbell over your head um, there are ways to fail that safely for one but also you could just use dumbbells yeah dumbbells aren't directly over your head so right another thing is that you want to know your limits if you're home alone and you can't safely drop the weights have a good idea of what it feels like when you're one to two reps away from failure yeah i would also recommend like practicing failure for all of your lifts that involve like dangerous positions, like squats but with.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Less weight Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sorry, I should have made that clear. Practice failure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Don't fail with 400 pounds on your back if you don't need to.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Practice failure with little to no weight, like empty bars. Yeah. Light dumbbells.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We're not trying to cause safety events.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Thank you. I appreciate that clarification. And then also avoid distractions and make sure you can hear what's going on around you. If there's nobody else in your house, maybe it doesn't matter much what's going on around you.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, but what if? okay this is i've watched a lot of final destination movies what if you're on you're doing bench press or you're doing squats and all the sudden something happens with your rack and you would have heard it because it went you know yeah and then it like horribly fails and then you horribly fail and then you try to escape from the squad failure position and you can't and you die That's interesting.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I was thinking more like, what if the smoke detector is going off?
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's a good one, too. Yeah. No, fire safety is also important. But like, you never know what's going to happen. Or, oh, OK, what if you have kettlebells somewhere, right? Yeah. And they're on like a rack and you have like a bunch of kettlebells on this rack and you're standing there really focused on this one thing. Let's say you're doing some kind of a lunge, right? Okay. And the kettlebells are on this rack close by, and all of a sudden, the rack breaks. Yeah. And now you have balls just rolling on the ground, and then you trip over them, and then you faceplant and die. Because you're on a concrete floor in your basement. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You mean medicine balls, maybe?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I do mean medicine balls.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Okay. Yeah. I do. Kettlebells don't do much.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, they don't roll.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But no.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But medicine balls.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No, that's realistic.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And then it's like you would have heard the things dropping, but no, you were listening too loud to Taylor Swift, you know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And then she's going to have a song about your pain, so.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:This is an oddly specific example.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Sure. The things, you know, I've been in a lot. You have to understand my background. i do a lot of like phas process hazard analysis you think of like the most absurd thing but like sometimes it
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Happens that's true a lot of headphones now have a transparency mode so you can hear the stuff going on around you while you're listening to music yeah good to know i.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Don't know what if that breaks
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There's also some specific advice for specific exercises like the bench press so a couple of safety tips for that are never put the collars on the bar like to hold the weights on. Yeah, yeah. If you don't have safety arms, definitely don't do it. I would just never do it. There's never really a benefit on bench press.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If you're alone.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:If you're alone. Or even if you're not alone.
Protein Deficient Vegan:What if you have kids crawling on the floor? Oh, yeah. we have a kid section later
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Uh you the reason is you need to be able to drop the weight somehow so with bench press if you don't have safety arms or something you're basically going to be pinned under the bar it's going to be sitting on your chest and if you don't have the collars on the end then you can kind of lift one side up potentially and dump the weight off that side and let it you know fling back over and dump the weight off the other side that's kind of the the, I wouldn't say recommended but that's like last case scenario worst case scenario recommended way to fail yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like if you don't have a spotter and you also don't have a safety arm but I also wouldn't use this method unless you're sure you can safely dump that and no one else is getting hurt yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's true like if you have pets or kids yeah like that yeah um and in general you should just know what your plan is to safely dump the plates or safely fail the exercise make sure you have enough space to do that make sure it's not going to drop on like your foot or another body part or something like that. Of course, if you dump a bench press on your foot, you're in a pretty awkward position, but just in general, be aware. Um, and then, you know, you should use the safety pins or better yet, call your buddy over and use a spotter.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Um, make sure he can lift it though.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or they can lift it. It could be a girl. Sure.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Especially if it's like you're going for a new PR or you're lifting like extremely heavy, something like that. Cause like maybe different parts of your program, you're lifting different kinds of weight, whatever. But if it's like, oh, this is going to be a hard set. I'm not sure if I'm going to get it done. A spotter is a good idea for bench press and or well set up safety arms. Or squats, always use the safety bar. I mean, there are situations, especially with weightlifting, people are squatting out of open racks a lot. And I know a lot of people will squat on the outside of the squat rack. If you have the option and you have equipment to use the safety bars wherever you're doing squats, just use the safety bars. I've failed a lot of squats, and I'm really glad I was always using safety bars.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or I guess like dumbbells. If you can go up high enough in weight that it's helpful, right?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, which most people can't.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like some people could. You don't know what people are squatting. That's true.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you can't, if you don't have another way to safely squat, I would definitely switch to like a goblet squat with a dumbbell or even just usually doing like lunges one leg at a time. Something like that. I would not squat in an unsafe way, especially alone.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Not a good plan. Yeah, no.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No. And again, if you're into Olympic weightlifting and you know how to ditch the weight, you know, you do you. But most people are not in that boat. So make sure when you are using the safeties, you're not setting them too low, because the safety should be like maybe an inch or two below where the bar naturally goes at your lowest position. If it's a lot lower than that, it's not going to help you much because you're going to be down in the bottom position of your squat and looking at the safeties eight inches below that and thinking, wow, those are useless.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We're just falling to the ground, all of us together.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And you also want to make sure it's not too high because that's going to interfere with your squat. Yeah. So you should have like a setting on the rack that you know is like your setting for the safeties. Maybe keep a note in your phone, something like that. Put them in the same spot every time. Easy peasy.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And that kind of goes in line with what you were saying about. basically like try a failure position yeah with less weight or no
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Weight you should know all this because you practice failing yeah um with deadlifts, um again don't yank the heavy weights know when you're done deadlifting if you're like seeing stars and you've got three reps to go you're done you're done yeah please.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Stop don't pass out people pass out during deadlifts
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's fairly common to pass out during i mean.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It makes sense you're doing all of that strain and then you're also like upside down
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah and you don't really control what direction you fall when you pass out for the most part no.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And you're around a bunch of metal shit you get pretty fucked
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Up yeah bad situation all around so make sure to breathe learn how to breathe during the deadlift and then stop once the world starts going a little black and.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Maybe like take some breaths in between each
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Rep yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:This is something you're worried about yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Try to you know ditch the caffeine is my recommendation although i know that goes over like a lead balloon so.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Don't piss people off we want them to listen
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah things that raise you if you already have high blood pressure you keep that in mind definitely don't combine high blood pressure and caffeine and deadlifts i wouldn't recommend that it's not medical advice but i wouldn't recommend that, definitely don't combine all and cocaine well definitely don't combine all that with cold medicine which is what i did 10 years ago fucking.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Pseudo fed damn
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah no that's a bad situation but anyway yeah be careful there, and then for machines don't assume that a machine always has a safe way to fail built in, you need to understand the machine and what happens if you fail a rep like you know i've got one client now who uses a hack squat that doesn't have safety pins so we're constantly like okay how can i adjust the reps so if i have to fail i'll figure it out or i'm not doing like really heavy reps and i can't get out of it it's like yeah that really sucks but hack squats are really good so what do we want to do and they're like i want to keep doing hack squats we're like okay cool but we have to have a plan, um you can also in machines like uh pinch your fingers if you're not careful there are a lot of like they're all just metal moving parts and stuff like that you want to make sure your fingers are clear of any weird situations so, Um, they could be like moving arms, uh, things with a weight stack that are weird. Yeah. You want to be careful.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Pinchy pinchies.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Pinch, pinch. And you need your fingers. They're important.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You got to have your fingers.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Now, if you have children and pets around your home gym, or even there are actually some gyms that have like a gym dog.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Which I'm not a big fan of that. Oh, I know. I love dogs. I'm like, yay, I get to pet this dog. But also, please, I'm so worried about your safety. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I thought the one in Pittsburgh had a dog, right? It did. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Honestly, I feel like people don't really talk about child or pet safety when it comes to gyms as much as they should. I remember a couple of years ago, there was that Peloton incident with the treadmill. and it was like basically it was too high up and like very very small children and like pets were like basically they got crushed under it right yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Because they could fit underneath.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah you know and their parents didn't know they were underneath or like there so i mean and they probably never thought that could happen yeah who would think so i think this section is really important if you like your children or pets yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think you know children in general love to copy what their parents are doing even though they don't have knowledge so even if there's a situation where it's like no there's two aspects to it it's like you're actively working out and your kids in the room and you have to be careful but also you have to worry about like your kid going back to the gym after you're done if it's like a home gym situation and trying to do the stuff you did and getting hurt.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah plus like honestly the weights and the different machines and like your medicine balls and all of those things like maybe they're fun colors or maybe they just look cool they look like toys they do they look like toys they're like
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Death traps but they look like.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Toys they're fun little death trap toys.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So, I mean, you know, kids are very curious, especially younger kids. So, that can cause accidents and injuries and you just need to be careful.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Because that would be pretty awful. Yeah. You know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, some tips there and I think number one for that situation is like lock up your home gym.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. If you have the ability to have a door or I guess, you know, even if you don't have a door, maybe like a gate or something. And then I would say really try hard to not let your children in there unless you're going to be there to watch what they're doing. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Um, also try to store plates vertically or use storage on your rack. Uh, plates are pretty heavy. They can pinch your fingers, smash little toes, things like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, I know. And kids are always running around barefoot and stuff.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Imagine their little baby fingers.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I will say, uh, this isn't really kid specific, but using the storage on your rack doesn't necessarily prevent these things because I did pull a 45 off of a rack once when I was tired from doing squats and dropped it like four feet onto my toes. Luckily it didn't do anything too crazy, but it did hurt.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So also wear steel toed boots in the gym.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't know about that one. Don't leave dumbbells laying around. They might play with them or trip over them. If they're like running around in the gym, it's also like the area of the house that's the biggest. You know, there's like a play area in the basement or something like that. You got to be careful. Never leave a loaded barbell unattended. I think this one's more for probably older kids who could actually lift it up. But if they don't know what they're doing, it can be really dangerous. Yeah. And, you know, if you have an older kid that's interested in the gym, then conversation number one should be, let's do this, but gym safety.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Gym safety always first. Yeah. And then, you know, resistance bands you should probably keep out of reach because those things, like, they snap freaking hard.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's probably the easiest one to hurt yourself with on accident.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Plus, like, kids like to chew on that shit, especially if it's, like, a really little kid, they might chew on it. It's, like, a choking hazard.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it's not good.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You might not think about it, but the collars you use to attach weights to the barbell can be extremely finger pinchy. Like, even if you know how to use them, like, I'll snap my fingers or pinch my fingers, you know, pretty regularly on those damn things.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I always make you close them for me.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you definitely want to keep those away. That will definitely pinch the shit out of a kid's finger.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And like benches. Yeah. You want to make sure your benches are secure too because like a lot of them are adjustable. Yeah. You can pinch your fingers on that too. Little pinchy fingers.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Even if it's a flat bench, they might crawl up on it and fall off. Yeah. Things you don't really think about. Um, most importantly, yeah, keep your, teach your kids the rules and dangers of the gym. You know, if you can't go in the gym, if that's the rule, make sure it's a rule.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, for all intents and purposes, it kind of looks like a playground.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like a fun school playground.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. That kind of is. Just, you know, more for adults.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. There's an age limit.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Or at least teenagers.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And then, I mean, just in general, like, be aware of all the crushing, pinching, and tripping hazards.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because there's a lot. Yeah. And this is really just like.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's for you, too.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If you're not there. Yeah. Like, there's a whole lot of other safety issues if you are there and your kids are around. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's like a lot of heavy equipment. You just have to be careful.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I would say if you have no way to keep your kids out of the space where you're working out, you need to be very careful and aware of where they are at all times. Especially if there's potential, like, where you're failing in exercise and you don't know where your kid is and you can't keep them out of that room.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, the last thing you want is to be like, okay, I got to put this weight down. and you're like, oh, wait, I can't. My child is right underneath the spot.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Little Timmy's right there.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Timmy the Tooter.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And then, like, also, like, kind of like we were talking about earlier, like, beware of running equipment. So, like, treadmills, stationary bikes, row machines. I mean, even stationary bikes because you're, like, whipping your legs around really fast. Like, you could just come up behind and get smacked in the face.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Animals are also real bad about this one. They love stuff like that that's, like, moving. It looks like you're running. Like, they want to come run with you.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, they want to run with you. Yeah. Yeah, I mean... It can sound really obvious, but kids, especially, like, little kids, don't know to stay away from that stuff. Yeah. They get struck, crushed, nothing good. Yeah. And then, you know, pets are actually pretty similar to small children in their way of thinking. And I really like how they like to mimic their pet parents and, like, do the things they're doing and be involved all the time. Yeah. They're just very unpredictable because they have no idea what's happening and they just want to be around you.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Can you imagine you're doing, like, heavy squats? You got like 400 pounds on your back and then a dog comes over and he like jumps up on you to play. Like, what are we doing?
Protein Deficient Vegan:I'm going to pet the dog is what I'm going to do. Yeah, I mean, they could walk behind your deadlifts, your squats, any exercise really where you're like facing a certain direction and you can't see the full view around you. Yeah. But you're moving heavy weights.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That might be a good reason to have mirrors, I guess, if you have.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I guess so, yeah. I think like, yeah, solution number one, what you should definitely try to do is keep them out.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Probably just don't have them in your gym. If you like your pets, if you like your kids, keep them out of your gym. Unless you have a partner or a friend that can be there and monitor the dogs or the children.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. They could also be like laying underneath or calling underneath the benches while you're on them. You're like looking up when you're doing a bench press or something. You can't see them at all. You might not even know they came in the room. So you got to be careful with that, especially if you're going to drop the weights. Plus you can just kick them.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You can kick them. You don't want to kick a dog.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Or a child.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or a child. or like honestly any exercise where you're like flailing your arms or legs for any reason um jumping jacks jumping jacks i like uh kettlebell swings i'm thinking what's that weird thing you on the bench where you flip your legs up
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Like leg raises.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah i know that's very fast and violent looking you could you could fling a dog or a child
Muscle Deficient Vegan:They can also chew on a bunch of stuff there's a bunch of weird stuff you keep in the gym usually like electrical cords resistance.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Bands Oh, yeah. Which, you know, bad for you because they might fail on you now but also bad for them because it's like a choking hazard or like i don't know horrible things can happen
Muscle Deficient Vegan:This is like the final destination episode for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah you're realizing how paranoid i am it's very paranoid
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also if you have like a cat they climb things.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They climb stuff they could be climbing your rack while you're doing a 400 pound squat and then jump on your head and then you guys are both like totally screwed i guarantee this has happened to somebody somebody somewhere happened to you tell us about it or even like kids climb on equipment i i don't have kids i could totally see like a three or four year old climbing on a squat rack like like a jungle gym oh
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Absolutely like especially since they're.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Colorful yes yeah and they have like bars at the top they'd be like oh yeah we're gonna swing from that yeah this looks like a good time and even
Muscle Deficient Vegan:If the kid's not in the way they could leave something in your way so they like roll up their little dump truck right behind you when you're trying to do something and you don't know it's there.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They're setting up with traps yeah so i think you know if you have a gym that you can block off that's like the best option yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And then you know try to do your exercise while you're like pets or your kids are occupied somewhere.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Else yeah give them a tablet or set them up with spongebob or whatever children are watching bluey i hear that's good
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Have somebody else in the house yeah hang out for a little bit.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I just told them if they do like my parents did when we were kids and they say, okay, go outside, come back when it's dark.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't feel like people are just like sending their children out on bikes anymore to like go. I wouldn't. You can do whatever you want. I don't have kids.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:We didn't even have phones back then. It was literally like my parents had no idea where I was from like sunrise to sunset.
Protein Deficient Vegan:My parents didn't do that. They like, they always knew where I was at every moment of every day. And that's why I'm alive today. Yeah. Thanks, parents.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I'm here too.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You got lucky. And then, you know, always, always check your surroundings before you go to do anything. Like, if kids can get in there, even if you don't think they can get in there, just like, you should be looking around if you have kids and small pets that you like.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Even if you don't, you may not remember what you left laying around that time.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's true, too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You know, I take stuff off the rack all the time and it's like, okay, I put it here just for now and then I'll go to use it again and I'll almost trip over it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you're kind of bad about that. I've been meaning to talk to you about that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Or like leave weight plates because you're like i'm not i'm not re-racking this isn't that yeah it's our gym i can leave the weights out i'm gonna put them back yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If i trip who gives a shit
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh yeah so i'll run down and i'm like wait wait wait i left the thing you do that yeah, So now if you're at like a commercial gym or a shared gym, you know, there's a couple of different things to think about.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You have to care about your safety and also about all the people around you safety.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. In general, like there are a lot of kind of unspoken or sometimes actually written rules around gym etiquette. It's actually about gym safety for the most part. Sometimes it's like don't take pictures in the locker room. But mostly it's about gym safety.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Honestly, that's about gym safety too, though.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I guess that's true.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like safety does extend past physical harm. That's true. You know, you don't want to be sharing other people's, like, personal photos and stuff.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You know?
Protein Deficient Vegan:That makes sense. What if they're in witness protection? Now you just outed them. Now they're getting hit by the mob, and that's your fucking fault. So don't take pictures at the gym.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's true. You're making some really good points there. Yep. All right. So a couple things at a commercial gym. One big one is, like, don't walk behind somebody when they're deadlifting, squatting, or doing any position where they could, like, be spooked by your presence. It might cause them to lose balance or injure themselves or you. or if they need to, like, fail and walk away or something. Like, you don't want to be right there. A lot of things.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, now your foot's getting crushed by a bunch of weights.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Why are you doing that? Yeah. You don't need to be that bad.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Also, don't reach across equipment while they're using it. You can get hurt. They can get hurt. Just don't do it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Don't do it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Give people space in general. Gyms can be pretty crowded sometimes, but if you need to do a specific exercise and you don't have the space to do it, just wait. You don't need to risk yourself and risk another person. Lateral raises are a big one. Like, they take up a lot of space and people are, like, swinging their arms into your face all the time in a crowded gym. It's annoying. Never stand in somebody's lifting path. So, again, nobody wants to get smacked in the face or stomach with a 50-pound dumbbell.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No, nobody does. Yeah. And they don't want to smack you in the face with a 50-pound dumbbell.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You're going to mess up their set.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Now they're going to have to, like, come in, comfort you, and probably get you Kleenex.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There's nothing I hate worse than I'm, like, doing a new PR, and somebody puts their face right in the way of my dumbbell and messes up my set. I know.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Speaking of that, watch for, like, swinging kettlebells, because those are really fast. Oh, yeah. And whoever's doing them usually doesn't have any control to, like, stop that movement abruptly.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Or maybe they'll just accidentally let go, and it'll go flying.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It could be even worse. Like, you're probably going to get hurt if you get in the way of a swinging kettlebell movement.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Another big one, if your gym has, like, lifting platforms and they're actively being used, don't cut across the platform unless there's, like, literally no other way to walk in your gym for some stupid reason. People are, like, typically on a platform, somebody's, like, either doing a deadlift set or, like, a powerlifting set or an Olympic lifting set or something like that. Or they're, like, mentally preparing to, like, start at the exact moment they feel ready. Right. So when you throw them off their game in a platform, that is, like, a little more high stakes situation for, like, screwing up their session.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think something else to consider is just like everyone's probably lifting close to their max that they can lift. So like anything where they get thrown off balance or something could be really dangerous for them. Oh, definitely.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Um, also be aware of where you're sitting down equipment. Uh, don't make tripping hazards for other people. There's a lot of gems that actually don't let you carry bags on the gym floor for this reason. Um, you know, also your water bottle can be an issue.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or your phone or whatever. Yeah. Just don't set up tripping hazards for others. Like keep any personal property really close to you. Have an idea of where it is. Yeah. Also, you don't want to get stolen. So like double win. Keep an eye on that shit. Good point.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Um, you also want to make sure you wipe down gym equipment when you use it. This is a little different than what we've been talking about.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And you might think, oh, that's just like some prim and proper thing to do. But actually, it prevents the spread of harmful bacteria, viruses, and fungi, like staph infections and ringworms.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You want to be responsible for that?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Those things are actually fairly common in a gym environment. Yeah. So it's like, I know it's like, well, I don't want to wipe down my thing. But like, it's actually kind of a big deal.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You should do that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't want whatever the hell you have going on.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. If you don't want to do that, go work out at home. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Um make sure you're using the equipment the way it's intended don't use it for weird shit that can hurt you hurt others around you.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I see some weird shit on tiktok where people are like using a squat rack like um that bar at the top for like spinny do's like you would if you were a gymnast and i'm like you really shouldn't be doing what are you
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Doing yeah people use squat racks all kinds of crazy ways um there's also like one thing i don't really like even I know there's an official product for it now. It's like the gym pin thing where it's like on a weight stack. You put a pin in and add weight plates to it to add more weight. Yeah. The machine and the cables are usually rated for like what's in the stack.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right, right. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And I'm sure there's some tolerance there, but I've seen plenty.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You don't know what that is, though.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, and I've seen plenty of videos where you put a gym pin on and the cable snaps.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You don't want that. Like if you're doing face pulls and the cable snaps, you're going flying across the gym.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And then you're probably going to hurt someone else that had nothing to do with your stupid decision.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And you've got this metal weapon in your hand when you're flying across the gym. now by the way.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But also like if it doesn't snap on you and you're like weakening cables or like screwing up gym equipment it's probably going to fail on somebody else and then they're going to get hurt.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah and even if nobody gets hurt you just broke a thousand dollar piece of equipment.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Just do what you're supposed to do okay. You don't need to be creative.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also if you're doing something like walking lunges make sure it's an area of the gym that you can do it safely without you know screwing somebody else over.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh my gosh there was this one you remember that one girl that was like doing walking lunges through our gym and she was like right in the way of everybody and And she did it for, like, five minutes. It was so rude.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:She was walking right behind all three racks.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It was ridiculous.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I mean, honestly. Not a great space.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There wasn't a great space to do it in the gym, but there were better spaces than that for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But also, you don't have to do, like, ten walks forward if there's not space for it. Yeah. Do two. Turn around and do two and just keep doing that. Yeah. You don't have to.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that one was. It seemed like everybody involved was pretty annoyed with that one.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I know. Everyone was just, like, watching it. Yeah. Just so pissed.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And just make sure you always check your surroundings in general before you start any exercise, especially at a commercial gym. You never know like what somebody's doing, where they laid a bench, how they set up a machine, what safety things they took off the machine.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. Trip hazards they created behind your feet. Yeah. I mean, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There's also some etiquette when it comes to spotting. So spotting is something that will happen at a commercial gym quite a bit, whether that you're asking for a spot or other people yell out and ask you for a spot, maybe. um you might think you're being helpful when you're spotting but always make sure the person who's lifting knows you're going to be spotting yeah so sometimes people will like go over and grab the bar no yeah without even like they weren't even involved in the lift this happens.
Protein Deficient Vegan:To girls a
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Lot yeah yeah some stranger just comes over and helps them out they're.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like seeing a girl do something and it's like obviously all these exercises are hard so you see like struggle but it's not like a struggle of i can't do
Muscle Deficient Vegan:This i'm unsafe.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah it's just like it's hard it's heavy man they come over and they just yank it out of your arms yeah you could injure the person right or scare them or like who knows
Muscle Deficient Vegan:What yeah or make them not want to come back to the gym anymore yeah too, If you're offering to spot somebody, make sure you know how to spot. It's not a hard thing to do, but make sure you're understanding how spots work.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, don't offer to spot if you don't really know what you're doing or if you can't actually lift whatever they're going to need you to hold on to.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Number one rule of spotting, by the way, just a tip here, is you don't touch the bar unless they ask for help or the bar starts going the wrong direction. So if you're doing bench press, unless they ask for help or the bar starts going back down, don't touch the bar. Be very ready to touch the bar, but don't touch the bar.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, because you could really make it unbalanced pretty easily.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And some people, most people, once you have to reach in and intervene to spot them, they'll want to finish the set. Some people like forced reps, which is where you're like helping them spot them through the last couple reps. So you probably also want to agree on that before you do it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I will say, if you're thinking you want someone to spot you, but you don't want to go grab somebody and you're just hoping like, if I fail, hopefully someone will come save me. You should probably just maybe check with someone first. Don't assume someone's going to come rescue you because, like, everyone's doing their own thing and people have headphones on.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Most people are happy to spot you, though, because it makes them feel cool.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think so, too. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Plus, you know, people at a gym are mostly helpful. There's definitely some not helpful people. Yeah. Mostly helpful.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I feel like other than Tripod Girl and the girl that did walking lunges, everybody at our gym was really nice.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So one other aspect of, you know, staying injury free and staying safe is knowing when to skip workouts and knowing how to manage your recovery. So make sure you listen to your body and skip workouts when you need to. And some of those situations might be like any kind of illness or a fever. Dizziness is a good reason to skip a workout.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No. Or like if you're super tired, like you're running on like two or four hours of sleep. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Something like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Maybe call it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Also, if you have some kind of injury, like an existing injury and it's flaring up. So maybe you have like a golfer's elbow or something like that. And it's like, oh, my elbow is killing me today, but I need to work out. Maybe you still go to the gym. Just don't do arm stuff. I don't know.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or skip it. Yeah. Or like maybe you're out in the heat all day and you're like not feeling real good.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Probably don't push it. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Or if you're dehydrated.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that's another good one.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Drink more water. But if you couldn't help it, you know, probably wouldn't go to the gym dehydrated.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Another thing that can help you stay healthy is making sure you're recovering properly. So some of the important things for that are like your sleep, your nutrition, your hydration we just mentioned. Protein specifically helps with muscle recovery. Mobility exercises, especially if you have an injury or you're doing some kind of rehab or something like that, or you have like a problem area, doing some mobility exercises around that can help a lot to keep it healthy. Also, make sure you have some rest days built into your program. You shouldn't be working out seven days a week in most cases, and that doesn't really count cardio. You shouldn't really be lifting seven days a week. Also, stress management is pretty important. So not necessarily directly related to the gym, but it can definitely impact your results if you're distracted or stressed.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Also, it's like you want to be thinking clearly if you're going to go be lifting heavy stuff. So if you're too stressed that you can't even focus on what you're doing, that's probably not a good thing. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, stress increases your cortisol and like chronic cortisol can cause issues with muscle building and your diet adherence and things like that. So it can actually be impactful. And then, you know, know when you might need to take a deload week. So that's basically a week where maybe you skip the gym entirely or maybe you go to the gym, but you do like half the weight and one set less on everything. So you can like let your muscles really recover. And then you come back the week after that and get back to your normal program. Typically, people like to do that something like every eight to 12 weeks. If you're a beginner, you can probably go quite a while without needing one. But if you've been lifting for a while, you'll probably find yourself wanting a deload week, like maybe once a quarter, something like that. And then some other tips that don't really fit into the other categories we mentioned here are like staying hydrated, especially in the warm weather.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, especially if you're like running outside or walking outside for long distances.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And hydrated does not necessarily mean just water. You also want to make sure, like, if you're having a day where maybe you're not getting a lot of food or you're just eating a lot of whole food, maybe you want to make sure you add salt, too. Make sure you get your electrolytes.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, or, like, Gatorade or something just to— Or if
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You've been sweating a lot.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, if you're sweating excessively.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You also want to make sure you're wearing stable shoes for lifting heavy. It's also pretty important. You don't want to be wobbling around while you've got heavy weight over your head or on your back. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Inspect all equipment before you use it you want to look for frayed cables any damaged resistance bands like if benches are loose or maybe like missing a screw or something or a bolt maybe i'll use that one
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah or.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Just damaged equipment in general like we were talking about um adjustable dumbbells like maybe make sure that the like the plates that are on there don't feel like wobbly or anything
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Even something weird like an excessively bent barbell can throw your form off enough that it's like you can be a little weird.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah just check all your stuff out
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah learn how to use machines that you're not familiar with so you can usually watch videos or you can just ask somebody who works at the gym they'll usually show you how to use the machine but a lot of machines now will have like a qr code where you can go watch the video from the manufacturer and stuff like that or they just have little diagrams on them so just take the time to make sure you understand how to use it sometimes you'll see people using the machines at the gym yeah not the way that's documented sometimes it's intentional other times it's just they didn't Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They just kind of guessed. Also, know your basic emergency procedures at a gym, especially if it's like a new place you haven't been very often. You want to make sure you know of emergency exits in case there's a fire or something else, you know, horrible. And you also want to know where the first aid kit's located in case something crazy happens to someone around you or, you know, you.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Maybe even you know where, like, the defibrillator is. Yeah. Or if you know how to use that kind of thing. Yeah. Practicing new exercises without weight or with lightweights is... That's typically a good idea, just so you can understand the motion, understand what you're getting yourself into, and then also to make sure that you don't have any weird injuries you didn't know about or anatomical things that make it really tricky for you to do. That's much better to find out with lighter weight than it is with heavy weight.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Definitely. When you're leaving the gym, be aware of your surroundings, especially if it's night. Make sure you can hear and that you don't have headphones on if you're in a dark parking lot or something. And then if you are in a dark parking lot, always park next to the lights. This is, if you're a girl, you probably have already heard this your whole life.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, this is like baked into your core.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, yeah. Hold the keys between your hands in case you need to stab someone.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's a good tip.
Protein Deficient Vegan:In the same vein, if someone's being like creepy or weird towards you at the gym, I would make sure you tell one of the gym employees. And just maybe have them walk you to your car or like make sure you're safe, keep an eye on you. Yeah. Those are just things to keep in mind because like, yeah, you don't know anyone's intentions around you, especially if you're in new places and alone.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's true. Okay. So that is pretty much our spiel on safety first.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If we didn't cover anything, which seems unlikely because I'm kind of like a worst-case scenario kind of girl. But if we didn't cover any and you'd like to give me something else to be paranoid about, drop it in the comments.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:All right. Let's move on to our next segment and another thing.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And another thing.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So honey seems to be one of the things that people really struggle to understand why vegans don't use it. Uh, there's also some debate in the vegan community on whether honey is or is not vegan. But I think the answer is fairly obvious because the bottom line is we don't exploit animals for our own gain. So it's not vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So I will say honey is one of the things I didn't really understand before I went vegan because I just assumed there wasn't like any harm. What did you think?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, honestly, even for a little while after I was vegan, we hadn't had honey yet, but I had to like understand like why we couldn't do honey. Because I always thought, like, kind of some of the stuff we're going to talk about here, like, honey is just, like, a thing that exists.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. No, that's true for me. I think as soon as I went vegan, I was like, oh, we're not supposed to have honey, so I'm not going to eat honey. But I actually, like, never looked into the whys behind that. And then I think this is a question that's often asked to vegans. It's like, if bees are naturally making honey and then no bees have to die in the process of producing honey, then why isn't it vegan? Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And it's really, I mean, this is really, I don't know if I'd say a gray area, but it's definitely contested because I've been to vegan restaurants that use honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think there are a lot of plant-based restaurants that call themselves vegan restaurants. And it's like, I think they're like health-focused plant-based restaurants, but they like to use the word vegan, which can be a little confusing because vegans aren't eating honey. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I mean, I've seen at least one restaurant that has the word vegan in their title, and they apparently use honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah and i think um another thing that confuses non-vegans is that because honey is seen as like a healthy thing a lot of non-vegans think that vegans are vegans for health so they're like if honey is you know unquestionably healthy then why aren't vegans eating it
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah i mean that's not really a great argument.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because i know yeah but i've seen it yeah for sure and then um so i think let's start with what is honey So, first off, bees are not making honey for humans, obviously.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, they make sense.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They don't care about us. They don't care about us. We're just these big, giant things. That they hate. Yeah, that they hate. They want to sting you. No, no, no. But honey is actually their primary food source, and it's their energy supply for the winter season.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't think I really realized that it was their primary food source. Like, I think I knew they ate it, but I never really considered that that's, like, why they were making it, is to make food for themselves.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it's interesting because, I mean, I guess unless you go seeking out this information, I think everyone's limited knowledge is... So Winnie the Pooh steals honey, of which there seems to be an abundance in beehives.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Way more than the bees could ever use.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So then that seems fine, I guess, question mark. But then also honey is pitched as like this like super healthy thing that will keep you from being allergic to wherever you live or something like that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. It hasn't been proven to be a thing. Never say never, I guess. Yeah. But they've done a lot of research on it. So far, it does not appear to be a thing. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So honey is actually for the bees. It helps them survive through the winter, and it's also incredibly important to just colony survival in general because there are certain bees within the colony that don't actually produce honey. Do you know how honey is made, and will you tell us?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, I learned how honey is made. So worker bees collect the nectar from the flowers.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Such little good guys. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:They fly the nectar all the way back to their hive, and you've probably seen bees with, like, stuff all over their back. That's how they get it there. They just, like, basically get in the flower, roll around in it. It's all attached to them, and they fly back to the hive.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Okay, you want to know what I have seen? What? I've seen really cute pictures of a little tired bee that's all fuzzy that falls asleep in a flower and he has pollen on his little butt. And it's so cute. That's how it works. And they're just sleepy and they just sleep in the flower. Yep.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So once they get back to the hive, they basically regurgitate it over and over again and they pass it between multiple bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Honestly, this is kind of gross. I'm not sure why people eat it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You're eating bee vomit. And it lets pass between many bees. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, and then the enzymes in their little bee mouths break down the complex sugars and turn them into simple sugars. Hmm. Um, then the bees fan their wings to dry it and remove the excess moisture. What do you think about that?
Protein Deficient Vegan:That part- That sounds kind of adorable.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it's pretty cool. Um, then they seal it in wax honeycombs so that it stays good for a long time.
Protein Deficient Vegan:This is kind of stupid. But, like, I, for some reason, never thought about where does the bees' wax come from. So I was reading about it when I, like, researched this. And I guess young female worker bees that are like between 12 and 18 days old, they make the wax by consuming honey and converting its sugars into wax inside their bodies. And then the liquid wax is secreted through their special abdominal glands and it hardens into tiny flakes.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So they're basically like a little manufacturing plant.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And then they just like mold it into like hexagonal honeycomb cell. Hexagonal. I think it's hexagonal. What are you saying it is?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Hexagonal.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Because hexagon.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think it's hexagonal. Okay. We're going to look that up. Let's look it up right now. Hold on, please. This is really important to me. Hexagonal. That's not what either of us were saying.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:We've lost the plot. What were we talking about?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Anyway, I think we're all wrong.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But that's also why we don't use beeswax.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Because they make it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They do make it. And it's for them.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:For them to put their honey in.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They got to put their honey somewhere so it's all sealed and kept safe. Right. This is really sad to me, but apparently a single bee can only produce one twelfth of a teaspoon in their entire lifetime.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Of honey?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Of honey. And they spend their whole little lives making it, and then bitches are out there eating whole spoonfuls of it in their tea. It took like 12 little bees entire lives for your one teaspoon. And you're using more of that. You're not just using one teaspoon. You're using like a tablespoon. That's 36 little bees entire lives.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's crazy, actually.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Doesn't that make you sad? That kind of does make me sad. It makes me so sad. I mean, I might be close to my period, but I was almost crying reading this. I'm very upset about the bees.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's, wow, 36 bees for three teaspoons of honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's sad. It's nuts. Apparently, tens of thousands of little bees work together to produce a hive's honey stores. Yeah. Tens of thousands of little bees that are so tired all day they have to fall asleep in flowers. That's how tired they are.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Teamwork makes the dream work. So now why are the bees making that honey? So to survive the winter, droughts, things like poor flowering seasons, raising baby bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Baby bees.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's really the entire bee colony in general. Like it's literally their main food supply. And then humans just come in and take it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's evil. They take it so fast. Yeah. Okay. Now bees scare the shit out of me. But like I think reading about it made me like bees more. But they still scare me, but I'm never going to hurt them.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I respect them. And I also think they're cute, but I just really don't want them to touch me because I don't know why. They just scare me.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But I saw this guy the other day on TikTok. He got stung by this bee. And apparently, okay, so you know how their stingers get stuck in your arm. If they get stuck in your arm and then they pull out and they don't get their stinger out, they die. They hemorrhage.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think that is only certain types of bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Sure. This was the bee this guy got stung by. Yeah. So instead of like trying to get rid of the bee, he let this little bee zoom around in like different directions for like five minutes straight to get his little stinger out so he didn't die.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, my gosh.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And he was just like, he looked so, the little bee looked so embarrassed too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:He was just like.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Man, I'm really sorry about this. Sometimes it just gets stuck places, but he was like doing circles to the left and then doing circles to the right. Cause I guess they have like ridges on them and stuff.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's got a barb on it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So he's like trying to work it out of this guy's arm. It was kind of cute. I don't know what I would do. I'd be really scared.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I've seen you around bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I get so freaked out around bees.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't know if he'd get the chance.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Not by any malintention on your part.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think I just wave my arms kind of maniacally. Yeah. That guy's a hero. He just let that little bee wiggle its butt out. Anyways, so that's that. So let's talk about how beekeepers are assholes.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So it sounds bad enough that humans just steal the actual bee food they work so hard to make, but it does get a little worse from there.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It gets so sad.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So let's talk about what happens during commercial honey production. So beekeepers use smoke on the bees to keep them calm. I think everybody kind of knows that part.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, but I don't think most people know why. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So it makes the bees believe that the hive may burn down, which causes them to, like, gorge themselves on honey because they think all their hard work is going up in flames.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That is really, really sad. They basically think their house is on fire and they're trying to get as much as they can before they escape.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. And so they get so full on honey that they become less defensive. And beekeepers kind of intentionally manipulate the bees to have a stress response.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That doesn't sound very vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No, I don't think that is very vegan. So when the bees are at their most vulnerable, the beekeepers come in and they take a lot of the honey out of the hive while they're all docile from eating honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because they thought their house was all burning on it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Obviously, this stresses the bees out even more. They spend a lot of energy trying to replace the honey that was taken. And also the beekeepers will sometimes replace the bee honey they took with like corn syrup or sugar syrup.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's a shitty replacement. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And the reason it's a shitty replacement is because honey contains things like enzymes, amino acids, antioxidants, and some nutrients and natural antimicrobial compounds that keep the bees healthy and well-fed. But regular sugar syrup doesn't really have most of those things.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Humans suck at bartering. That is a horrible trade.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's sad.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It actually is really sad. And then apparently other common commercial honey stealing practices also include artificial insemination of the queen, which we don't like that, clipping the queen's wings. They're clipping her wings. That's sad. She needs those. Then sometimes they'll even replace the old queen if she's not being productive enough with her like, you know, little army of bees. That's shitty. They should get to vote on when the monarch's replaced. Yeah. But even worse, they kill older queens.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Wow. It's like some Game of Thrones shit.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I know. Why are humans messing with the monarchy of bees? And also stealing their food.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, this does seem to make the argument that honey's not vegan for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's really upsetting because I'm just imagining, okay, the closest I'm going to be able to get is Bugs Life. But I'm just imagining like the ant queen. I loved the ant queen in Bugs Life.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I loved the little ant princesses.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I'm just imagining them clipping their little wings. It's super sad.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Some of the other things that happen are the male drones are often removed because they're consuming the resources, but they don't produce honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Most people assume that bees don't die during honey production, but that's not really true.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, apparently there are accidental deaths where bees can be crushed during inspections, killed by machinery, and trapped during transport.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It makes sense because you're pulling the honeycombs and stuff in and out all the time. Surely you're going to crush some bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They're not super careful. Yeah. Also, I read that sometimes they will kill off entire colonies of bees after their pollination contracts are up. Because it's cheaper to buy new bees than it is to keep those alive through the next season. No, that sucks. That's fucking ridiculous.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Especially when we have, like, I keep hearing about the bee shortage.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I know. You know. We'll get into that, too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And we're not saying every beekeeper does this, but it is a practice within the commercial honey industry. I know there are some beekeepers out there that are very protective over their bees. I still don't think it's vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I mean, I think if they wanted to be really nice to their bees, they'd let the bees keep their honey. That's true. So that's that on that. So now we're going to talk about some environmental impacts. Did you know that honeybees aren't actually the only bees or the only pollinators?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, I knew they weren't the only bees, but I guess I didn't know. Well, I guess bumblebees are pollinators, so I guess I knew that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So apparently honeybees are managed as livestock in many parts of the world so that humans can steal their honey because they're very efficient at producing honey. But there are actually a lot of native bees as well. Like you said, bumblebees, mason bees, leafcutter bees. Isn't that a cute little name? I don't know about that. Mining bees, sweat bees, and carpenter bees. And a lot of the native bee populations are decreasing.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah, I've heard about this for a long time now.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Well, so high densities of honeybees can actually be bad for the native bees. Oh, interesting. Because they're basically competing for nectar and pollen with the native bees. Okay. So, like, they're coming in from places that they shouldn't be. And then they're competing with the bees that already live there.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So because we're breeding honeybees to make honey for us, that makes more honeybees, which are worse for the other bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Okay. So because we're breeding them, they can spread parasites and diseases more.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And alter plant-pollinator interactions. Yeah. And in general, it just kind of hurts the natural biodiversity, which would have a bunch of different pollinators. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It wouldn't be the vast majority honeybees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. And if you think about it this way, if we are like forcing a large majority of honeybees and then you have like a disease that could potentially wipe out one specific type of bee and like now all we have is honeybees, how are we going to pollinate our food?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because like you basically like screwed over the native bees. And, you know, a lot of people assume that our crops won't be pollinated if not for beekeepers keeping the bees. But that's not really true because there are lots of pollinators. Yeah. And then wild pollinators can sometimes pollinate certain plants more effectively than honeybees can.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, they, you know, that's what they do.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's like just, you know, their natural skill set. And then, you know, other pollinators, some of the other native bee species, sometimes they'll visit flowers under different weather conditions than, like, honeybees would.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, they work a different shift.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, exactly. They complement the honeybee population.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That makes sense.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So protecting the native pollinators is actually more beneficial for the long term than managing honeybee colonies. Which, I mean, I think makes sense because, like, that's how it's been for thousands of years before we started, like, fucking around honeybees.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Who would have thought that nature is better at doing nature than corporations are?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Me. So even if you're buying locally from beekeepers who seem to care for their bees and don't kill their bees, we are still taking food from bees that is meant for bees. So definitely not vegan. And I think that's that. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And I know one thing, like, I think the bees make more honey than they'll use, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should take the honey. Because, again, they are stocking...
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right, it's for, like, other things.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, they're stocking up so much because, like, things might happen. They think, like... And I guess maybe these things wouldn't happen in a honeybee farm or something, but they don't know that. So, they're just stocking it up for issues that might happen. Maybe the beekeeper will die and they need all the honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right, exactly. But also, they don't understand that they're being bee-kept. Yeah. Right? Like, they just think, I need all of these stores because, like, winter might happen or, like, something might happen with the flowers. Yeah. And I may need the stores. And then... Even if those things don't happen and they have excess, if the beekeepers are taking it, that kind of freaks them out because they're like, well, oh, shit, I don't have as much as I need. So then they work harder and harder and harder, which reduces their lifespan, and they just live a very stressed life. They're just little preppers.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You won't let them prep.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I feel such a kinship after hearing all of that because I'm also a prepper.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:What are some of the alternatives to honey?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Well, we have- There are a ton.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Some of them are like maple syrup. that's a big one that just comes out of trees yeah um agave syrup date syrup.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We have some agave in our fridge brown rice syrup sorghum syrup
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Dandelion honey you can.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Make your own dandelion honey
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Apple honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We should make dandelion honey i get kind of stressed out like is there a good way to wash dandelions and make sure they're not like dirty
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The pollen and flowers isn't typically what people are allergic to but i just don't know how i'd feel about like eating dandelion honey because i do have a pollen allergy so we have to look at a little more i.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Mean i guess you're just gonna have to not be a little bitch about
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It yeah i guess i will um there's also uh bee free vegan honey Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We've bought this before. It tastes very similar.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It tastes basically the same.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and I think with the Bee Free vegan honey, I'm pretty sure that the people that are making it are actually, like, throwing it up and stuff over and over again.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Bonus!
Protein Deficient Vegan:They're not. You should still buy it. It's not gross.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It really does taste just the same as honey to me. It does, yeah. I can't notice any difference at all.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I tried it because the only way I can eat tea is if it's 50% honey because I hate the taste of tea.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So, tried it in that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It also, like, looks the same, same consistency. Yeah, it has the same. I mean, it's, like, identical.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it is pretty much.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, if you want to help bees, some of the things you can do are plant native wildflowers. We plant, you know, not a huge patch, but we plant some wildflowers in the backyard. Also, we plant flowers, like, in the middle of our garden. Yeah. So, the bees can come and help pollinate our garden plants and stuff like that. But, you know, it's a win-win.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. We don't know where their hive is, but we wouldn't steal their honey even if we did.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, try to avoid broad-spectrum pesticides. That could cause issues for the bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yep. This one, I mean, this is like if you want bees in your yard, but the suggestion is to leave some areas in your yard less manicured so that they can, like, nest.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Maybe not if you have, like, dogs or, like, small children running around. I don't know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I mean, we're growing the flowers. I don't know if we're going to let the grass grow wild for bees, but we do have the flowers.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, you can grow flowering plants that bloom across multiple seasons. Not necessarily flowers, but plants that flower.
Protein Deficient Vegan:All right. And then moving on to bite-sized coaching. Remember, I get to ask you the questions. All right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Ask me the question.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So, if you didn't know, Muscle Deficient Vegan here is a personal trainer. So we started this new segment where we're going to cover a question he's been asked or a question he could be asked, and he's going to give you an answer that's short and concise.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, very brief.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So this came from an AMA that you posted on Reddit.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Here's the question. I just saw a vegetarian personal trainer at my gym, and he said I have plateaued because I've been doing the same routine for over six months, and I need muscle confusion. And then he recommended changing my exercises every two to three months. Is that bullshit?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, the short answer is that's bullshit. Usually a plateau is going to be like lift or exercise specific. You're going to plateau in one thing or the other. You're not necessarily going to plateau across your entire program most of the time. If your progress across your entire program has plateaued, you probably have a recovery issue, but it could be some other things. So it's not going to be like because you haven't changed your exercises. If it's just one or two lifts that are plateauing, changing the lift can help mentally with keeping up motivation just because you get to see progress again and you get to try something new. But it's not because of muscle confusion. Like, even if you want to keep the same exercises, there's always going to be something you can do to keep progressing. It's going to be like you add sets, you switch from doing low reps to high reps, maybe change like tempo or you switch from doing it with a barbell to a dumbbell, maybe something like that. But it's not a muscle confusion thing.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I feel like muscle confusion implies that your muscles have the capacity to think.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So your muscles, they just contract.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I mean, no matter what you do to it, like your muscle just contracts to, you know, move the bone basically. And it does the thing. So it's not going to get confused because it doesn't know what it's doing. It just knows it's contracting.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Would this be a good case for like a deload week like you were talking about earlier?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, definitely. if you if you like i said if your entire program has plateaued maybe it's time for a deload week so i would do a deload week and then try to get back in there um basically pick up where you left off and go from there something else it could potentially be is like if you're doing shoulder press or something else with small muscles um, maybe the the jump and load that your plates at your gym can give you is a little too high so you can get fractional plates and what i mean by that is let's say you have plates that are like you have a 45 a 25 a 10 a 5 and a two and a half so if you add a two and a half to each side of a barbell, that adds five pounds. But with something like shoulder press or maybe even with bench press sometimes, you can progress a little smoother if you only add two and a half pounds at a time. So you can go get fractional plates that are one and a quarter pounds each. And you can find these online. They're very common. And then you can progress, you know, from session to session by two and a half total pounds instead of having to progress by five pounds, which can help smooth out your progression quite a bit.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They even have frack plates that are like what a quarter of a pound they can go down pretty small they go down
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Like a quarter half a pound three quarters they have a lot.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Of them I feel like that's like a an easier way to move up in weight. Yeah. You know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. People don't like to see the number go up that slowly, but I mean, you know, if you wanted to do the smallest fractional plate and just add that every time you take, you take longer to progress in the weight and a lot of muscles are too big to need that. But if you're doing something really small, maybe doing like wrist curls or something like that, you know, it would definitely be a good.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or like lateral raises.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Lateral raises are a good one going from 12 pound dumbbells to 15 pound dumbbells. That's a jump. Pretty big jump. So yeah, stuff like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So if you're not loading a barbell where fractional plates would really work, you can also buy like wrist weights.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And then you can kind of wrap them around whatever you're lifting, whether that's a dumbbell or, well, yeah, probably a dumbbell, maybe a kettlebell or something.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You can use them on a barbell too. Yeah. If you didn't want to get fractional plates. Yeah, exactly. You already had ankle weights or whatever. You can just kind of wrap the ankle weights around where the plates go on the bar. Yeah. You're basically adding a pound to each side. It's easy.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You can buy them in like one pound, two pound, whatever. But yeah, that could help too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I want to do my favorite part now where you read the mean things that people said to you on social media this week. Do you have anything cool to share this week?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Boy, I have a lot to pick from. Facebook people are kind of mean. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of really nice people on Facebook, but, like, the mean ones are, like, way meaner than any other apps. So here are some of my mean things that have been said to me on Facebook.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:All right, let's hear it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I don't know what this means. Maybe it's not mean. We're not like super sure. We're pretty sure, though, that it's mean. People, get your act together. Protect yourselves. Be not unguarded. Watching carefully. You're not stupid. Don't get deceived or turned around. Blood brought you to us at the time we needed to be encouraged and strengthened. Amen.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I literally have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Do they love you? Do they hate you?
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think they might hate me, but I'm not sure.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:All right. Well, that's a comment.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Then here's another one. Okay. Okay. Now this, I said the edamame puffs are 80% protein on a calorie basis. Right. Which is factually true.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:This person said 80% calories sounds extremely misleading. And I said, well, in what way? And then they said, nobody measures protein in calories. We all measure it in grams. Trying to reference protein in terms of calories is an instant red flag.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think they might have been a little confused. I don't think it was like, there's 80 calories of protein in this protein bar.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Not really sure. I tried to talk to them and they just got meaner, so I blocked them. Okay. And if you're mean to me on Facebook, you should know I'm going to block your ass. I'm going to take screenshots of your rude things first, though, for my entertainment.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Only if you're mean, not if you disagree.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No. If you're a dick, though, you'll be blocked. See, I didn't block this guy. He's just kind of odd. he this was on this is in a video where i make cheese from silken tofu okay why would i eat cheese that's made from beans and i said for the good of animals and the environment and he said if i want bean protein i'll eat beans i'm not gonna try and make something taste like meat when it's not meat and i said well cheese is dairy and he said so i'm not vegan don't ask why I'm on a vegan page because I'm not. Your page is on my reels.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Why does this guy get an accent?
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't know. But he also left another one that said it doesn't taste like ground beef. So he's just kind of like all over my shit.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, he likes yoga.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But I didn't block him because he's kind of entertaining me. So he just looks like he needs an accent. I'm not really sure. That's maybe unfair. Pretend I didn't have an accent. And that's that for the week. There are probably 20 others I could have chosen, but those are my favorites.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I do remember some pretty mean ones. I think you really picked some of the nicer ones, to be honest. All right. So a couple of announcements we have. The book club starts on Monday the 22nd. There's still time to join. The book is Eating Animals. That'll be actually the day this podcast comes out. But feel free to jump in.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But you can still join because we're going to be talking about, we're basically breaking the book into four sections. And we're going to be talking about one section per week. So the book club is actually going on for a whole month.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Even if you want to join halfway through.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Do whatever you want to do.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You can catch up. You can definitely catch up. Also, we're going to be doing something similar to Book It. So if you join our, this is our first time announcing it. I'm really, really, really excited because I love Book It. But if you don't know what Book It is, it's this thing that was happening in the U.S. in elementary schools. And I guess it's still kind of happening.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Owned by Pizza Hut.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So there's that. It is. But so basically, now I can only tell you what my experience was as an elementary school because I don't have a child and I don't know how they're doing it these days. But they give you a pin, right? Like a little button. And the button would have spots for stickers. Yeah. And you have to fill up the stickers. And then you could go to Pizza Hut and be like, look, I filled in my pin. And then they would give you a personal pan pizza for free.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's pretty cool.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So we're doing something similar. We even made buttons that are going to say, like, vegan book club. Yeah. And we're going to do animal stickers. Yeah. So any book club that you participate in, you're going to get... Well, first, we're going to send you the button. Yeah. And then for each book club you participate in, you're going to get an animal sticker. And then once you hit four, we're going to do something special. And we don't know exactly what that is, but it will likely involve pizza.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It probably will not be a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza because those are not vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Well, they are vegan if you don't get cheese, but who wants that?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, that's true. I also can't really mail those. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We have been, like, you know, toying around the idea of, like, Blaze is pretty popular where we are.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And like maybe if someone has a Blaze near them, we would do a gift certificate so they can go get a Blaze pizza. But yeah, so it'll be four. If you complete four book clubs, then you'll get whatever it ends up being. But, you know, we're only doing one book club every quarter. So that's a year in advance and we will figure it out by then. But if like Book It is appealing to you, you should definitely join the book club so you can get your first sticker. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And again, the book club is virtual in our Discord chat based only. no specific time commitments, no live calls, anything like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Which means we can have people from every country. And we have a few people from different countries. So that's exciting. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, if you want to join our Discord in general, we are almost at 200 people in the Deficient Vegans Discord.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's getting kind of cool.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, very busy in there. If you need some vegan friends or you just want a place where you can ask, like, fitness or nutrition questions or ask about some of the recipes or anything like that, you should definitely join. And it's down in the show notes.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We even created a channel where people are sharing their vegan origin stories, which has been really fun to read because we just, we created that today. We've been watching them roll in.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's a lot of fun.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Thank you for listening. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a rating or a review. That really helps us out. If you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, if you can leave a comment, we love seeing those. You can check out our websites, our social media if you want to get in touch down in the show notes.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We've even started adding blog posts to the Deficient Vegan website, so those will be rolling in too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and those will be more like veganism focused, maybe intros to veganism, stuff like that. Cool. All right. Well, I think that's it. Do you want to say bye?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Bye, guys.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Bye, everybody.
