#97 Build Muscle to Increase Metabolic Rate and Promote Longevity with Sal di Stefano

Sal di Stefano (0:00)

So one thing that seems to be constant in fitness that needs to change is this worship of intensity model, where you go to the gym and you need to beat the crap out of yourself. You need to be really sweaty and super sore and punish yourself because you're fat. You know, when you look at the problems that happen to humans in modern societies as we age, a lot of it revolves around loss of balance, loss of strength, bone loss, hormone imbalances.

All those things are directly affected in a positive way by weight training, more so than any other form of exercise.

Siim Land (0:39)

Body Mind Empowerment.

SPEAKER_3 (0:41)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:47)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_3 (0:48)

Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:52)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land and our guest today is Sal Di Stefano. Sal is one of the hosts of the podcast Mind Pump that talks about raw truths of building muscle and refutes a lot of the misconceptions of the business industry.

Sal, welcome to the show.

Sal di Stefano (1:09)

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Siim Land (1:11)

Yeah, it's great to have you. And I really, your podcast is one of the, one of my go-to sources for getting some fitness advice, and it's really like not only just the science, but also like really entertaining. So I'm glad to have you with us.

Sal di Stefano (1:24)

Really appreciate that. We're actually, I'm in the podcast studio right now. That's why I got my mic and headphones here. But yeah, we try to entertain as well as educate because we find that we can reach more people that way if we make it not so boring.

Siim Land (1:38)

Yeah, it is like a critical point, so to say that you can tell people to do like you have to eat fewer calories, you have to exercise and whatever or not. But if the person isn't able to do it, then it's not going to be, you know, even important, so to say it's not going to be worth it.

Sal di Stefano (1:54)

So that's an extremely important point. That's something that you learn if you train people for, you know, I trained people for 20 years.

One of the most important lessons that I learned, which took me probably five to 10 years just to really understand, is that what I was saying was important, but how I said it was probably more important. And if I was able to communicate it effectively, and communicating effectively means that somebody is actually going to adopt it in a real way, then that was success. So rather than giving people tons of great information that I thought sounded cool and that I thought was important, and then they'd leave and never implement it, I started focusing on things that, depending on the individual, things that I thought I could get them to actually implement, and then communicate it in a way where it would get them to do it, to try it out, and actually do it and change their lives in fundamental ways. And I found far more success that way. And so with our podcast, one of the reasons why we try to be entertaining is if we just talk about information all the time, then I'll be in an echo chamber. I'll have a lot of people like you listening, which is great, but you're very into fitness. You love learning that kind of stuff, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But we also want to reach the average person who would turn it off after 10 minutes if it was just pure information. So we have to get them enthralled a little bit in different ways, slip in that information and entertain them every once in a while. And it seems to be effective.

Siim Land (3:24)

I like to think of it. You have to kind of gateway drug people into learning the science with some fun and entertainment.

Sal di Stefano (3:31)

Absolutely.

Siim Land (3:33)

I'm going to use that, but can you give a backstory of how did you get into fitness and how did you end up with a mind pump?

Sal di Stefano (3:40)

Yeah. So I started, I mean, personally, I started exercising pretty consistently and seriously at a very young age. I was 14 years old and I wanted to build muscle. I was a skinny kid and right away I fell in love with it. Fell in love with the training, fell in love with the science behind it. I bought anatomy books and muscle building books. I bought nutrition books. I bought, I mean, you name it, chemistry books to try and learn how to really train my body and get my body to react. So that's when I first started personally, but professionally was at the age of 18 I got my first job as a personal trainer at one of the large gyms in my area, the 24 hour fitness, and very, very quickly became quite successful as a personal trainer. Within four months, I was managing the fitness department.