6 Huge TRT Mistakes You Should Know | Mind Pump 2380

you might have heard the bad news testosterone levels are dropping across the world it's true since uh about year 2000 testosterone levels have generally dropped by about 25% some estimates show as much as maybe even closer to 50% it's no wonder that testosterone replacement therapy is now an exploding business so in today's episode we're to talk about testosterone replacement therapy and some of the huge mistakes people make when they get on testosterone it's a good one yeah yeah yeah no it's um when you look at the data on this it's really it's it's crazy it's actually crazy a 20 something year- old today will have the testosterone level of an average 60-year-old in the 1980s is what they're showing in the data by the way this is not new news we've been observing a drop in testosterone now for longer than just the year 2000 for I think since the80s uh we've kind of seen this this start to happen but it hasn't slowed down they not sure what the heck is going on uh there's a lot of speculations in terms of Lifestyle diet obesity's up people don't environmental factors yeah maybe toxins xenoestrogens and stuff like that but there's a definite yeah need for it based off of our current situation environment I think what's interesting about it you know that you brought this up too is like even like growing up I had all kinds of misconceptions about what uh steroids or anabolics or you know testosterone would do uh it was sort of this uh thought that it was like the magical serum that just all of a sudden got you to look like Arnold do you think do you think there is a uh a single biggest offender or do you think it's really just the uh culmination of all those things that we're talking about you think it's got to be a culmination cuz um like if you if you try to connect it to other studies like grip strength test um grip strength in young man is is declined significantly college aged males their grip strength today is so much weaker than it was you know three or four gener you know three or four decades ago so it could be lack of activity and muscle mass um we know strength training in many cases will raise testosterone could be obesity obviously obesity's exploded ever since then um could be a vitamin uh deficiency vitamin D deficiencies are higher now than they were before and then of course the addition of uh chemical exposure like uh you know we are now exposed to hundreds of chemicals that Generations past weren't exposed to maybe on their own won't have a huge effect but when you add them all up they might have an effect nonetheless um you can greatly impact your natural testosterone levels but what many men are finding especially as they get into their 40s is that even changing their Lifestyles uh their testosterone levels uh don't change much or it's so low that if even if they doubled their testosterone they would still be considered low which is what happens with a lot of them right they'll go in and get tested and they're so low they're way below range it's like you could double it and you're still kind of in the low range so you know testosterone replacement therapy has become big business I mean I remember I mean just when we started the podcast I I never saw ads for oh yeah testosterone replacement now you see you see it all over the place you hear it on podcast you see it all over social media and so more and more men are using it because when you have low testosterone you feel like garbage it's it's a Feelgood hormone so when you don't have it your motivation low your confidence low of course libido that's the biggest sign is low you tend to store more body fat you know you don't have as much muscle um you have less energy um it can be connected to depression and anxiety so you know if you if if it's something that needs medical intervention it could definitely I mean it makes a huge difference you get someone with low testosterone you put them on testosterone they're going to feel many cases a lot better well I no I think it's it's life-changing both men and women you know both cases uh and and I think this is true for any of your major hormones uh like if your your hormone hormones are out of balance or you are abnormally low in almost any of them I think it's got major uh you know impact on how you feel and and a lot of those things are compounding like I mean coming from somebody who had uh you know very low testosterone that your motivation to train uh to get up to work to like it's and then that like snowballs so it's like you're already feel weak and and tired and then you lack the motivation to want to do any of these things and it's just like it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and you know sometimes and I I I think you know going over I know you want to go over the six you know biggest mistakes and stuff like that the first one with you know changing lifestyle I think that's the first major problem is that uh it can mask a lot of things that are going on and what a lot of people don't do is exhaust all the potential uh natural Lifestyle Changes they can make first because it can make such an impact of going straight into trt but then you could have had a huge opportunity to potentially fix your sleep or incre increase protein intake or do something else that could have naturally done it and then you just mask this this problem by I just think it's a big mistake uh because so if you don't do any lifestyle changes while going on testosterone in my opinion you're missing a good opportunity there's a couple reasons one behaviorally Speaking when you start on a new regimen or a medical intervention it tends to serve as an impetus for Change and just my experience with clients right anytime a client needed uh figured out that their thyroid was low or that they needed to uh take testosterone or some other medical intervention it was a wonderful it was almost like you're walking through a new door into a new life so let's start doing some lifestyle changes and it's a great opportunity especially with testosterone right if your testosterone's low harder to burn fat harder to build muscle less energy well now that you're taking it let's also clean up your diet a little bit and you're probably more motivated to do so right let's do a little bit more activity maybe you're more motivated to do so and you'll get better results right maybe you you were experiencing in the past with your workouts maybe you were trying to work out but you just weren't recovering very well and you just couldn't figure out what was going on and it wasn't you know you just and you thought maybe it's cuz I'm older you know maybe I'm I'm 43 now it's not like when I was younger maybe that's what's going on but then you go get tested you're like oh your testosterone's in the floor you get on testosterone it's like okay now let's use this let's use this and maximize uh all of the an intervention to be a catalyst totally it's yeah you want to use it like that so it steers you more into a healthier lifestyle path you can make better decisions with your nutrition you can train a little bit more effectively and and more consistently um but yeah I did I and that was one thing I did notice was some of my friends who were in that predicament where it was like their testosterone was in the floor but you know they they get this uh intervention and then they feel good for that for that amount of time but then they don't maximize and capitalize upon dude that feeling onlys for so long and then what you end up wanting to up your dose or you get sort of in that sort of dependency uh cycle now no change in in lifestyle is a bit of a broad statement and so when you think about all the major lifestyle changes that somebody should be making while on or off trt um what are the common offenders that you you would see where somebody would just they would hop on and then they would like I think right away uh sleep has to be one of the the main totally one it's one of the one of the biggest things that can impact your testosterone levels if you're getting really bad sleep and like high levels of stress which normally go coincide um it's one of the quickest ways to crush testosterone levels in men uh and a lot of times when you take this exogenous testosterone you raise those levels up you feel significantly better but still are getting really poor sleep which plays such a huge role in still how much muscle you build in today's program giveaway is Maps aesthetic to enter to win leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours we drop it subscribe to this Channel and also turn on notifications if you win we'll let you know in the comment section this episode is brought to you by a sponsor element elemente this is an electrolyte powder you add to your water no artificial sweeteners no sugar but it's high in sodium it's the right amount of sodium to fuel you through your workouts if you don't need a heavily processed diet a low carb diet you work out law you got to use this it makes a huge difference in your performance it also tastes good go check them out go to drink element.com sline pump and on that link you'll get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase also this month's program sale Maps split half off and the sexy athlete bundle of workout programs also half off if you're interested click on the link at the top of the description below all right here comes the show yeah the other one is um you know not adding appropriate strength training you know strength training so now you're on testosterone you know when you when you send a signal to build muscle you also increase the amount of Androgen receptors that you have in your body it's Androgen receptor density this has been shown quite reliably so you strength Trin and what happens is so testosterone think of testosterone as a signaler in the body but it needs to attach to receptors that's how it tells the body what to do well not only can you take testosterone but now you can actually increase the amount of receptors that it can attach to so you're going to make this medical intervention much more effective now make it appropriate strength training but not adding any strength training while going on testosterone to me is a huge it's like oh my God you can make whatever benefits you're feeling from going from low to normal testosterone which you will notice you'll feel so much better when you add a little bit of strength training and you optimize your sleep now it's like okay now we're putting everything together and it's making a really big difference now what about the mistake uh in regards to adding training volume uh on the like say training you know Fanatics that get on testosterone that's number two yes cuz that was a this was a mistake I made uh as a young kid who dabbled with steroids uh early on was thinking that I was invincible and that the more I trained now I won't overtrain yeah and so and because you get away with a little bit of that and you see some results still even with that you know overtraining uh you don't realize how much you're actually holding yourself back by not having the appropriate amount of training yeah two ends of the spectrum right the person who does nothing and then the person who goes oh now I'm on testosterone yeah I haven't been working out I'm going to the gym five days a week I would get that as well as a you know managing gyms you would see that like oh I'm getting a new membership I just went on testosterone I'm going to be here six days a week take it all on at once it's like whoa whoa whoa whoa you're you you still need to train yourself appropriately you're you could have the most testosterone in the world but if you overtrain your body you're going to feel like garbage and you hurt yourself so yeah don't and so for someone listening right now who's like okay I'm just I'm about to go on testosterone I have been working out uh this whole time um what should I change about my workout nothing yeah you change nothing about your work if you've been working out and you go on testosterone here's what'll happen to you the volume will naturally increase and what I mean by that is that's right so people think volume meaning I need to add sets and I need to add exercises no no no when you add weight to the bar that is increased volume so the testosterone that you're now taking is going to take your normal workout whatever the weights you're using and it's going to increase them so your volume will naturally go up you don't have to think to yourself I'm going to add a bunch more volume or add extra days in the gym you don't have to do that not to mention you want to use as your lpness test anyway so you want to make sure that you train at at the same kind of pace the same type of protocol that you're doing before so you could see whether or not there's like substantial difference in energy and strength and and and keep paying attention to those type of metrics uh but yeah like like Sal it's going to naturally increase so you're going to want to be motivated to add a little bit more you know intensity to to the exercise by adding load or uh you know down the road we'll adjust volume as we go such great advice assuming that the person has uh the appropriate dose of training already right because that that could also be an issue too is uh somebody already over tring over training like crazy get on trt oh now this masks their Sy they see a little bit of a bump and strength and more like that oh great more and keep piling on so assuming that you you know and like let's just let's assume that you are listening to this podcast and so hopefully you follow a maps program so you're you're following something that is got that keeps you in check with your your volume uh hopefully that you're on something like that and then you just allow the strength gains to add the volume naturally through getting stronger uh and you're not somebody who's training six seven days a week double days and then you slap on the testosterone you see a little bit of gains muscle and you think you're heading down the right path yes now next this one is is a mistake that you would see you see with high level athletes quite a bit but you even see this with everyday people who go on uh to sterone now with athletes they use them as performance-enhancing drugs the mistake is to put no focus on Mob ility training so if you suddenly start to get stronger um your so your muscles will build faster than your ligaments and your tendons do that's what happens when you go from low to high testosterone this is what happens to athletes when they go on anabolic steroids as well a lot of injuries you see as a result yes so it's like it's like you have a car you you increase the horsepower but you don't strengthen the frame because it takes longer to strengthen don't go hitting the hitting the gas as hard as you can you'll twist the frame right this is what happens uh to your body as well not to mention testosterone also is is to some extent in central nervous system stimulant some of the strength gains you get from testosterone are have nothing to do with better stronger muscles that's part of it or or should I say bigger muscle fibers that's part of it but rather the central nervous system's ability to fire with more Force um a a central nervous system that fires with more Force requires better organization uh of using that Force to reduced risk of injury this is why the higher this is why you see this kind of injury uh curve uh or inverted curve with uh with people when they work out like if you're super detrained deconditioned high risk of injury you start working out appropriately your risk of injury goes down you start really pushing the training and get real strong injury risk T start to go up because you can generate so much force so Mobility needs to be a a place in your training especially if now you're about to go through and this is what happens when you go on testosterone when you go from low to to high testosterone that initial six 6 to 12 months you'll see some if you do everything right and you train yourself properly don't overtrain eat right and all that stuff you'll see some really nice significant uh gains in comparison to how you were before not adding Mobility to that uh can increase your risk of injury stiffness um and just just overall lack of of of movement quality yeah I think this point highlights the um the musclebound uh meat head misconception right this idea where comes from yeah this is where this comes from this idea of oh if you build a bunch of muscle you you're not flexible and you lose range of motion and and that's because of somebody who abuses stuff like this and you know trains in this shortened range of motion and is just getting muscle bound muscle bound muscle bound in One Direction and doesn't take the joint through its full range of motion and then you get this misconception that oh big buff strong guys uh that it ends up losing their Mobility because of the muscle and it's like well no that's that has to do with their programming and their training and the lack of attention to mobility and taking the joint through full range of motion not because they're on trt or not because they lifted weights it's because how they lifted weights how they used the trt they're just adding more reinforcement to to strengthen those specific ranges of motion you're focusing on and so it's like you you were getting strong just uh by doing those before but now that's you know you're enhancing just that process and not uh you know reinforcing uh which too if you look at mobility and this is always something I have to bring up uh you know even if you're not an athlete or you're an athlete it's going to enhance your overall strength it's going to enhance your overall physique yes uh the the more you get into full range of motion training uh you know to be able to have that kind of strength stability and control squeezes out so much more potential for your body I'm glad you said that because uh people sometimes think it's a trade um okay more gains or more Mobility so oh I got to work on Mobility it's going to take away from my gains no no no more Mobility is a factor that will contribute to better gains and and again to be clear tightness immobility issues stiffness it comes from your central nervous system feeling like or assessing that you cannot move a particular way without some kind of instability in other words it feels like it's not safe to allow you to move a particular way this is why you see that stiffness if I train always like this and no other way and I get really strong that way my body's like okay we got 100% power moving forward and back we got 15% power moving left and right let's limit left and right let's keep this person stiff and have them move a particular way and you see it like you said Adam you see the guy who moves around the gym like you know he's made out of wood and it's because his central nervous system is controlling everything trying to keep him in range of the motion that it deems as safe the next one is that you know because testosterone is a feel-good hormone it can often mask other signs of poor health so to give to to kind of illustrate this natural testosterone fluctuates okay so if you have good healthy testosterone naturally you'll see it go up in the morning when it Peaks it kind of starts to drop it'll go up when you're rested well and you're fed well when you're depressed and you lose sleep it tends to go down when you win a you know at a sporting event they've shown spikes in it right when you're when you're with someone you're attracted to you it you tend to have spikes when you get your ass kicked in something it tends to drop down my the point is testosterone fluctuates okay um when you're on testosterone replacement therapy there's no fluctuation it's high that's it like you take your testosterone it gets up high it starts to level out towards the end of the week when you take your next dose and then it's up regardless of sleep regardless of diet regardless of lifestyle you have high testosterone what that does is it tends to mask certain symptoms and it can it can actually drive you to continue to engage in behaviors that aren't so healthy so in other words if you know before your lack of sleep was lowering your testosterone and you could feel it well now your lack of sleep you feel like you're okay you're not you feel the testosterone's masking you're still getting the damaging effects of lack of sleep so you need to pay attention to all the other aspects of your health because now you this artificial High signal of testosterone that's uh masking a lot of things I I found this one really interesting in my experience with uh coaching competitors so I used to get a lot of female competitors related to the the diet stuff right so a lot of these coaches uh put them on Extreme diets and then they would come to me to help them fix that a lot of the guys would come to me because they found out how low of a dose of testosterone that I was taking and all the copious amounts of drugs they were taking and not seeing the results they would want to see I can't tell you guys how many times I took on a client and then they would lay out like this is what I'm taking it was just like so much stuff and then when I'm like they have the crazy acne they're having these crazy sweats at night they're having like they're having all these bad symptoms of like dude this is not healthy you you like are you not realizing that your body is trying to give you all these signs that this is not right this is too much and you thinking that more more of this stuff is going to be a better route this it was really surprising to me how many people ignore some of these signs that you would think are just so obvious and so when you put this up here like it it it brought me back to some of these conversations that I'd have with some of these guys that like you don't first of all we're men's physique guys so the amount of testosterone needed to build a men's physique body is not like a you know Olympia bodybuilding physique and so you're already way overdoing it then in addition to that you're listing off all these things that are going on like that's your body trying to tell you like this is not this is not good for you it's too much you got to pay attention to all the other uh things in your life uh and health signs because the testosterone can sometimes mask those things again because it's this kind of Feelgood thing like depression for example you know um low testosterone cause depression but so can shitty lifestyle and things in your life well if you go on testost artificially start to feel better you may ignore problems in your life that maybe you would have paid attention to it's another example uh next is uh inconsistent dosing this one's interesting to me um and I you know this is one that my doctor clients would tell me about uh when the ones that I had that worked on hormones because with testosterone the it's the most common dosing there's two there's either creams uh where you rub them on or injection and you know most you know I guess Forward Thinking doctors or ones that talk about performance recommend injection because I guess the creams have a tough time sometimes getting people's levels up high maybe not for everybody but the problem with the injections was people would time it weird throughout the week oh I forgot to do it today I'll just do it tomorrow the next day you need to be very consistent because of the spike and drop and testosterone and if you wait too many days or you take it too soon you could cause too high of a spike or you could cause uh it to get uh too low and then get symptoms of the kind of you know low to off so you got to be really consistent with your dosing same day same time every week or if use the creams same time every single day so I this is I I was guilty of this I was totally guilty and exactly what you just describe was oh shoot I forgot today or oh I you know normally do it at 7: a.m. when I get a shower I forgot to I'll take it tonight at 8:00 p.m. or what that not realizing the effects of that and another point you didn't make on that too is the cascading effects with the other hormones that because you your uh testosterone drops or spikes and your estrogen moves with that also some of it gets converted to estrogen yeah and so that was one of my big problems was I was uh struggling keeping that from converting over to estren one of the major reasons for that was because I was really bad with the consistent around that not realizing what it was doing to me with converting over to estrogen so this is and and the more I train people that were on trt the more common I realized this was was people having a hard time being very consistent so if you are using this or doing this and you find out and by the way too like for example like when you work with transcend one of the things that we would do is uh because everybody's different right so first of all the the testosterone has a halflife uh some people are major responders so as soon as they take a shot they have a huge Spike and then a steep crash afterwards some people have a nice rise and climb and then kind of steady uh and some have this kind of like you know a lot doesn't do hardly anything and it kind of plateau and so you have a lot of people that respond differently to the shots and that will need it at different days and so we would test uh uh you know 3 days after a shot four days after a shot five days after like to to watch to see where I'm at so crucial you go through this process with a doctor and I never until my experience with them and and getting that granular about it uh did I ever really get my dosing up and it's the best I've ever felt uh in all the years that I've either did myself doing testosterone or actually went through a clinic uh this was the best I've ever felt and a lot of it had to do with my dosages and timing it can it can greatly impact even splitting it sometimes throughout the week is like a massive difference for a lot of people because of what you're describing in those highs and lows so yeah it's really important to kind of go through because too you want to avoid all of you know the side effects as much as possible and so there's a totally a way to do that but it takes a lot of conversations about how everything's going you know mentioning side effects and you mentioned this earlier too Adam more is not better uh a lot of people have the idea that more is better uh but that's not true more can cause more side effects it can cause more conversion to estrogen requiring the addition of other Pharmaceuticals with their own risk uh profiles you know a lot of men you know if they go too high they have to take uh medication that that prevents the conversion to estrogen and those medications have uh many cases many people would say or Worse free than the testosterone itself um more is not better now the the belief is more is better because we get this like high testosterone is great and so more must be better and then you got like the bodybuilding world the athletic world who pushes more of the limits because they really don't care about uh quality of life as much as they care about like how they look or how big or strong they get it's not more is not better there is a right uh level for you and this is important to work out with your doctor I I've had look we we've had many listeners that have gone through um our partners at mph hormones. comom who then will message me and say they started me at this dose and I actually lowered it and felt much better um when you know if you asked me that 10 years ago I wouldn't have thought that that that was the case I thought well yeah if you go in the upper limits it's probably better for everybody there's a lot of men that like no no no I felt worse at at those high level at two high levels I felt much better bringing it down right around wherever they were so it is important to understand this and that means that when you're on it if you start to notice you know certain side effects like water retention you know being a common one is too high uh maybe poor sleep sometimes too high can cause poor sleep good optimal testosterone makes your sleep better too high or too low makes your sleep uh your sleep starts to get affected uh negatively so you talk with your doctor about this um and then they can kind of find that that right dose for you but definitely more is not better that's that's not the case at all I didn't learn how impactful this was until I started to go through a clinic so early on in my early 20s uh Black Market experimenting with myself uh assuming adding more or doing more of uh whatever testosterone I was taking I thought was the better answer to everything like that uh not realizing uh the side effects I was causing the adverse things like with SW sting through the like trying to sleep and my bed would be soaked in sweat like all these side effects that of course my body's trying to tell me is is not ideal for me just assuming that the the more is going to be better and then going through a clinic where they bring my dose all the way down be like this is just a therapeutic dose this is where you're supposed to be and me thinking like oh I'm not going to I'm not going to get jacked off this I'm feel it's some of the best shape I ever got in like when you you look at my run in the competing world that was done on trt that was not done on the stuff that I took that the irony of that is that the best physique body I ever built uh was during obviously competing years uh when I was younger I was taking three four times the amount of testosterone with half half the physique and it didn't realize like wow the appropriate dose really allowed my body to do what it was supposed to do and allow my diet my training everything else to take over and build a ton of muscle just by simply being in the therapeutic range versus what I thought was going to be better of oh the more I take the more muscle I build doesn't always work that way it is important to find a good clinic or place that really understands working with testosterone that doesn't just look at the range um that says you're supposed to be within this range but rather looks at the range asks you about your symptoms asks you about how you feel follows you and adjust it to individualize it to you because everybody's a little different with how they respond to a particular dose of testosterone we work with Partners at mph hormones. comom we vetted them ourself they're the best and they will do that with you they will work with you to make sure that the amount that you're on is ideal for both your health and uh your performance look if you like the show head over to mind pumf free.com we have a free guide there on testosterone it talks about how to raise testosterone naturally it's at Mporn uh it's it's at mump free.com excuse me you can also find all of us on Instagram Justin is at mine pump Justin I'm at mind pump to step and Adams at mind pump Adam [Music]