Kratom as a Pre-workout/Is Personal Training a Good Job?

What's up everybody? Have you ever heard of people taking kratom as a pre-workout addition? Well, I decided to give it a go and see what happened when I took kratom before the gym.

Also, in response to a listener email about whether or not I thought personal training was a good job, I give my blunt and honest feedback.

Thanks to everyone for following and listening! -JD

Click the play button below to listen to Kratom as a Pre-workout/Is Personal Training a Good Job?

Prefer to read? You'll find a transcript of the podcast below!

(Podcast transcript is abridged for easier reading.)

What's up, everybody? I hope you have all been well. Thanks for joining me for another JDB podcast.

Alright, first topic at hand kratom. K-R-A-T-O-M. What is it, what does it do and should you use it or not? And how does it work as a pre- workout or when combined with a pre-workout formula?

Kratom is like ground leaves. Sometimes it comes in capsule form. It's from Southeast Asia and it gives you a euphoric feeling. It kind of makes you feel a little bit high and increased sense of well being.

It doesn't last that long. I'd say that you're probably going to feel like this for about 90 minutes to maybe a couple of hours max after you ingest it.

It doesn't taste great. I do the dump and rinse method and I haven't been using it for a long time.

I know that I'm going to have a bunch of people be like, no, don't do it. The withdrawal symptoms are terrible. But I'm going to give you my experience with it and if I think you should use it or not and who shouldn't use it.

My experience with it has been pretty good. I've been taking it as a pre-workout. I take it about 20 minutes before I leave for the gym. I'll take it with a pre-workout drink and it gives me just enough to feel pretty good. I noticed a slight reduction in the pain threshold when I'm in the gym. It kind of puts me in the zone. Okay, I don't know if that would be considered a nootropic type effect. I don't know. I was never really big on nootropics, but it does put me in the zone.

I believe you can take too much and a lot of people, they talk about the withdrawals of Kratom. If you take too much, you can vomit. You can have extreme irritability and depression and fatigue and all this other crap. I don't take a lot of it and I only do it as a pre-workout.

This is where I think that people are fucking up. If you're trying to take this stuff throughout the day just because you like the way it feels, I think you're fucking up and I think maybe you could get dependent on it.

I think a lot of it has to do with the person. If you can use it as a tool just for a pre-workout and to feel those effects in the gym, but not use so much of it that you do have the comedown effects and the withdrawals, then I think it's good.

I've been using this white strand of Kratom and I've taken up to 4 grams of it pre-workout. I do the dump and rinse method, so I have a digital scale and it looks like something out of the TV show Breaking Bad. I'm putting it on the scale because I want to know the dose that I'm getting. I'm not a guy who's going to take the stuff dump in my mouth and think that it's 2 grams or 3 grams, when in actuality it might have been five. I want to know what I'm getting.

The first time I took it, I took 2 grams and I felt the effects and I felt pretty good. I had a good workout. I've noticed a slight reduction in the pain threshold. I don't think it's crazy like people say it is, but it's there and just a really good euphoric feeling. It really just kind of put me in the zone. It kind of helped me focus more on what I was doing when I was in the gym. It kind of helped the mind muscle connection a little bit.

I think when combined with the pre-workout, which right now I'm using Redcon1’s Total War. No, I'm not paid by them to advertise shit. I'm not paid by anybody to really advertise anything. I just talk about what's good. So I like Total War. That new flavor they just released, it's like a black tea. Lemonade is fucking amazing. That's a really good flavor. I think that's one of the best flavored pre-workouts I've ever had.

So I take my pre-workout drink and then I dump the kratom in my mouth. What I do is I take a piece of paper and I'll put the piece of paper on the digital scale, and then I tare the scale back to 0 gram. Then I weigh out 2 grams. I have taken as much as 4 grams. I honestly didn't notice a big difference between 2 grams and 4 grams. Although I did notice a little more of a comedown effect, I probably noticed it a little bit.

One of the things about it that it will do is it kind of blunts your appetite. I've noticed that with it. That's another reason that I use it as a tool because right now I'm back to dieting. I would like to take off another 10-15 pounds, but I fight like hell to lose any weight at this point because it's mostly muscle and I would like to get to a healthier weight. I don't really want to be 230-240 anymore. I would like to get back under 220.

So I think if you use it as a tool and you can be disciplined enough to say, hey, I'm only going to use it pre-workout and I don't even use it every workout, three or four times a week maybe, and that's it. You don't use it at any other time during the day and you don't take too much because the problem with anything that has an opioid like effect, which I've never taken opioids… Well, maybe like painkillers and shit when I needed them. I had a prescription for them. But I've never been like a painkiller addict.

The problem with anything that's an opioid type substance is when you take too much, it makes you drowsy and you're out of it. But if you take just a little bit, it gives you energy. So the easiest way to describe this stuff is almost like coffee with a little bit of a high feeling, a little bit of a euphoric feeling.

So I've been taking a pre-workout. It's nothing that I want to get hooked on. I don't know about the extreme withdrawal issues that people talk about, but I'm a pretty disciplined guy, and I don't see myself having those issues with it. So if you are a person that can look at something as a tool to be used for something beneficial and you don't need to be high all day, you don't need to keep taking it all day because the effects don't last long. 90 minutes, a couple of hours, and it's gone.

So I say, hey, if you're not like that and you want to try it as a pre-workout, then I see the benefit of it. It's benefited me. But again, not something you want to get hooked up on. Based on everything I've read, I've heard a lot of horror stories about it.

I mean, there's people out there that can take cocaine when they're at a party and not touch it again. And there's people out there that could take cocaine at a party and then buy it every single day for the next five years. If you have a very addictive personality and I'm not talking about hormones here. I don't consider that an addictive personality. It's not like I shoot some test and feel high. Maybe I get high on life, but then I think it'd be okay idea to try it, but again, use it as a tool.

All right, so onto the main topic of this podcast, I had a listener that sent me an email, and he wanted to know my thoughts on personal training as a job. I'm going to be honest with you guys, okay? Some of you might not like this, and this might not be everybody's story. If you already are a trainer, I'm going to give you my experience with personal training for a big box gym. One on one personal training

It's an okay job. Let's say if you're a college kid and let's say you’ve got 3:00 pm To 09:00 pm available and you want to make some extra money. Then yeah, you could make a little bit more money than you would working at a lot of other places that college kids would work at.

If you are a stay at home mom that just needs to get out of the house and I doubt a lot of you guys guys are stay at home moms, but I'm just throwing it out there. If you need to just get out of the house for half a day. If you need something to feel productive and to interact with people, then it can be decent.

If you're somebody who maybe in the past you didn't have a lot of confidence, you didn't have good social skills, you didn't interact with people well. I guess that's what fucking social skills means, but and now all of a sudden you're fit and people recognize it and you are more comfortable in your own skin and you just want to kind of expand your horizons, then, okay, it might be a good job.

There's a difference between a job and a career or something long term. Is it a good career? Fuck no, it's not a good career for me. Was it a good job? Fuck no, it wasn't a good job. Personal training is like you are like the bottom of the fucking barrel, babysitter. You deal with fucking idiots, live at the gym all day long with bullshit fucking people and it takes something that you once loved and it steps on it. It ruins it.

So I thought that I could make a difference. I'm not talking about what I do with the coaching online, okay? The coaching online is rewarding for the most part. I can get more into detail with things that I know. I'm not just an accountability system, but I can actually provide knowledge that people really want to learn to enhance their results and speed up their progress. That's totally different.

So I went and got one of those ISSA certifications. I can't remember what I paid for it. It was like $600 or $700 or something. I got this book, like 6700 page book. I actually read the fucking book. I studied. I mean, I didn't take my sweet ass time, but I actually read through it and I did it the way I was supposed to do it. Then you get the test, which at the time, I don't know how it is now, was an online test. And you realize, what the fuck did I wait so long to do this for? For the most part it's open book test and it's like such bullshit, man. Like any fucking retard can get a personal training certification.

Let me just say that there's a couple out there that you have to have like a bachelor's degree to get. I think NASM is one of the better ones, that there's a lot more involved. But for the most part, any fucking retard can be a personal trainer and get one of these certifications. All they give a shit about your money, man.

Most of them, they're open book. It's just a formality. Just read through the shit, open the book up when you take the test and do whatever you’ve got to do. Don't spend a month studying it, okay? It's not some big accomplishment. It really isn't. I hear these people talk about, “I worked so hard, I got my trainer certification.” It's a fucking idiot certification, to be honest with you. 90% of them, they're idiots. Anybody could do it.

So anyway, I thought I would do this part time. I never did it full time. So I went up to a Gold's Gym. I got hired. They were subbing their training out to some other company, one of those idiot names Built Fitness or Life for Fitness. I can't remember the name of the thing.

But anyway, so here I am, and I’ve got to build my client base, right? So naturally you want to be there more because you want more clients, because you want to make more money, right? The problem that I was running into is you just seriously deal with people's lack of fucking discipline and commitment. So you could go there at 5:00 in the morning for one or two clients, and then you don't have anyone else till, let's say 2:00 in the afternoon, and you don't have anyone else till 3:30 or 4:00. And then from 04:00 to 8:00 or 09:00, it's one right after the other, and you're pretty slammed because everybody wants the same time.

Everyone wants was convenience, right? Everybody's fighting for that 5:00 spot. They get out of work to come in the gym, they get it over with, and they go home. But not everyone can get that 05:00 spot, right?

The biggest problem that I ran into is I was dealing with people that signed up because they were pushed into signing up. They might have signed up on a whim and their lack of commitment was terrible.

For starters, they were 30 minutes training sessions. Well, it didn't help that 75% of those people couldn't get there on time. Everybody was late. Which goes to show why the fuck they look the way they do, because they don't have any accountability with anything. So why would they be somewhere on time? So now they walk in 5-10 minutes late. You’ve got 20 minutes to train them.

Half the time they want to talk. They want you to load the machines up for them. Don't do that. If anybody gets into this, do not fetch the weights for these motherfuckers. You tell their fat asses to go get the plates, load their own machines, because this is part of the workout. That's not life. Not everybody's going to spoon feed you everything. You sit all nice and comfy on the machines.

I mean, you get these dumb, fat, sons of bitches that they'll be with you for two or three months, and they still can't adjust a fucking machine. One or two levers. They can't even adjust the machine. They want you to adjust it to fit them just right. They want you to load the weights up for them. They want you to take the weights off. And you would think that this light bulb will go off in their head saying, “hey, I hired this guy as a trainer, not someone to fetch weights.” But no, they think that's part of your job. It's absolute bullshit.

A lot of them, they just want to say they have a trainer because they feel like if they say they have a trainer, then the results will be better or it shows people that they're serious or whatnot. It is just the biggest bullshit crock of shit fucking job that I've ever had in my life.

It got to the point where I would have rather have made less money, not that it was good money anyway, but I would have rather have made less money working a real job than dealing with these fuck off people that just want to wander in there with a shit attitude, cry about how they can't stay committed to a diet. They can't stop eating McDonald's, and they want you to say that you're sorry for them. I wasn't sorry for them. It pissed me off.

The fat loss clients were the worst. They were the worst. They're people that were very emotionally weak and beat down. I've had clients cry in the middle of workout sessions. I had a 43 year old man one time break down crying just for no fucking reason in the middle of a workout.

It just wasn't for me. I'm not that person. If all I am is that guy to be here waiting on you with a clipboard, not that I ever carried a clipboard, I wasn't going to do that. I don't need to carry a clipboard. You look like a fucking douche. But if that's all I was and you did not care to learn and to put that knowledge to work, I wasn't satisfied with what I was doing.

That was the way probably at least 75% of people in those big box commercial gyms that sign up for training were. They brought me down, man. It was these fat fucks coming into my world. It was something that I once loved, and it was like I didn't want to do my own workouts. I was just around this fucking negativity.

You think you're going to get involved in something like, oh, you're going to change lives and you're this positive influence? No, you're fucking not. You're not going to change shit. I started realizing that I couldn't get past any layers with these people. I couldn't start talking about things that I really knew. They just weren't ready for it. They didn't want to hear it.

It's like all they wanted was you to stand next to them, count their fucking reps, strip the weights, and load the plates. That's all they wanted. And then they're so stupid. I mean, their accountability is so bad that let's say you try to work out at the same gym.

That was another thing. I couldn't work out at the same gym I trained at because you'd be in the middle of a workout, and then one of these dumb fuckers can't remember what time they were at, right? Because they can't remember anything because like I said, they don't have any discipline and no self accountability. “Do you remember what time I was?” And then, hold on, let me stop my workout, go in here and pull you up on the computer because you're a douchebag. that can't write down their time or whatever. It was absolutely ridiculous. It was a bullshit job.

Anyone that tries to make a career out of this, I actually feel sorry for you. Unless you are in a specific niche, right? If you're somebody that trains celebrities, if you're somebody that maybe gets more money for training, okay, you're not getting $20 an hour because the gym is taking half of it. You're charging $100 an hour, and you're putting that money in your pocket. You might pay a fee every month to the gym to use the gym to train. If it's that type of situation, that's a little bit different. But to just go to a gym like a commercial, big box gym and be a fucking employee that's a trainer and deal with these kind of people, hell, fucking no.

I dealt with women that would come in and all they would do is complain about their husbands. Meanwhile, their husband is the one that's working his ass off, and he's the one that paid to sign them up, and they're in there bitching about him the whole time. Not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what your goal is to be a trainer.

And while I'm on that topic, I think that's a great goal if you're a trainer. If you go in there with that mind frame of like, “look, I'm going to bang as many fucking chicks as I possibly can.” I think it's the right job for you. You might as well get something out of it.

And I'm sorry, man, but hey, if she's going to do it, she's going to do it anyway, and it might as well be with you. Okay? I'm sorry that her husband signed her up. I'm sorry I have to do this, but it's just something I got to do.

A lot of people might not like this part of the podcast, but I'm just being real. She's a slut. She's going to do it anyway, and it might as well be with you. So if you're in there for that, then I think it's great. Okay?

Get yourself around. Network. Get to know her friends. But most of them, they're not going to be like that. They're going to be these nasty bitches or chicks that are fucked in the head. But there are some that you're going to get, some that are like that and I say to take advantage of that situation. Perfect job for a college guy. Just wants to bang, make a little money on the side and stays fit. Yeah, great job. But career? Nah, fucking terrible career.

But I tell you about the straw that broke the camel's back, okay? Let me tell you what made me just say, “fuck this shit.” So I had this dude. He was, like 43, 44, the one that I said busted out crying in the middle of a workout one day. This guy was a fucking slob, all right? He was, like 335 pounds, and he had a drinking problem. At least on the weekends, he did. The guy's breath smelled like vomit every time he came to the gym, okay? I couldn't even look at this motherfucker because his breath smelled so bad. Straight up puke.

I had to see this guy four times a week, man. He was with another trainer. That other trainer was leaving. I guess that trainer got smart and went on to something better. Then I got handed this dude, all right? So the guy seemed super motivated at first. That was another thing. I always found that the ones that seemed like they were going to be the best when you first meet them, they were the worst.

But then occasionally, you get somebody that you thought they weren't going to do shit, and they turn their life around, and they actually did it. And then they actually enjoyed it. And they loved the results. That's when it was rewarding. But this dude, this dude was not rewarding.

I got sick of his face, man. He would come in there, he would bitch. It was the typical weak, fat guy mentality. He wasn't losing any weight and it was like, wait a minute. Why is this guy not losing weight? I wrote a diet out for this guy. He's in here, he's working out. I'm telling him to come in here and do cardio, but yet he's not losing any weight.

Well, somebody told me that they knew about this guy, and they said this dude would go to happy hour on the weekends, and this guy would sit at a bar and do nothing but eat and drink his ass off all night long because there was some chick that worked at that bar and he would stare at this chick's ass because that's the only place he could see her, right? So, like a fucking stalker, he would just keep going back to this bar on weekend nights and do nothing but eat and get fucking shit faced and stare at this chick's ass.

He didn't know that I knew this. So he comes in this one day. It's been a couple of months, and I'm thinking, all right, what the fuck is going on? I put him on the scale. The guy hasn't lost a pound. So I bring him into a little office, and I'm like, “Danny, what's going on?” And he says, “I'm doing everything you tell me to do.” Which I knew was he was full of shit because he wouldn't look at me when he's telling me this. And I was like, “Listen, man, I don't want to see you throw your money away. I'm trying to help you here, man. But you you've got to be honest with me. Here's what I want you to do…” Because he he did talk. He eventually he brought up the happy hour thing. And I was like, look, let me try to meet this guy halfway, right? Let me at least see if I can get him to somewhat commit to something. So I said, “listen, I'm not going to take that away from you, but I'm going to tell you a way you can do it and not totally fuck yourself. If you were to go there, get something to eat off the low carb menu. I want you to cut it at three low calorie beers, all right? Michelob Ultra, Miller Light. Whatever. But once you get to that third one, that's it. You're not going past three. I want you to come in the gym afterwards, and I want you to walk on the treadmill for 45 minutes. There's got to be a compromise here, man. I'm trying to meet you halfway.”

This guy looks at me and starts cursing at me, and he's like, “wait a minute. If you mean to tell me, that you want me to come in here Friday night and do cardio for 45 minutes and then come in here again Saturday morning, I'm going to get up, walk out that fucking goddamn door right now.” and I lost my shit. I said, “Then fuck off! There's the door.” I said, “let me tell you something. I didn't come to your apartment, drag your fat ass off your couch, bring you in the gym, and make you sign up for personal training while I had a fucking gun to your head. You signed up because you're tired of being a fucking slob.”

And he goes, “yeah, yeah, but you're making it so I don't have a life.” I said, “You don't have a life now! You call going to happy hour on Friday and Saturday night, sitting down amd eating (the cat was out of the bag at this point. He knows I know.) I say, sit down, eating, drinking your ass off like a fucking slob to stare at some chick's ass. You're never going to get a life. That's right. You go there to stare at a chick's ass that you're never going to get. You know why you're never going to get her? Because you're a fucking slob, Danny. You know what a slob is? That's what you are.”

Motherfucker busts out in tears, puts his head down on the table, and starts banging his fist into the table like a fucking toddler that's pissed off. And he's going, “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck my life. Fuck.” Then he's like, “all right, so what is it you want me to do?”

I said, you know what? Fuck this shit. This isn't for me. But those are the kind of people you're going to get. You might get some people that they're very, very negative, and it's almost like they're directing their anger and the fact that they're a piece of shit towards you.

Like, I had one guy well, not everybody could be Mr. Bodybuilder. I'm like, yeah, no shit. I mean, they talk like you're just a special case and the odds are stacked against them, and it's almost like they're there for your help. But at the same time, they're mocking you, right? Because they're just unhappy, miserable fucking people.

And a lot of them, they need to go see a shrink. So when you get involved in this, guess what? You're going to be a trainer, a plate loader and fetcher and their fucking therapist. You're going to listen to every reason of why their life sucks a fucking dick.

So you know what I say? If you do end up doing this for a commercial gym, when you get these kind of people, just go on autopilot. If you’ve got to pull a workout out of your ass just to get them doing something, whatever, it really doesn't matter. You could have them do 20 sets of curls, five sets of cable rows, whatever. You could have them do chest and legs and back in the same workout if you have time. Doesn't matter. One set of each, whatever. Just pull something out of your ass and have them fucking move, because that's all they give a shit about.

You can't get into what you know. You're there to get a check and to network yourself to the women. That's what you're there for, all right? Get something out of it. Fuck these chicks, all right? Don't go in there. I know you think that you're going to be like Dr. Phil or some great famous person that can just change shit and make miracles happen, but you're not. You're fucking not. So what you need to do is just bang, man. All right?

That's all I got for you guys today. Is personal training a good job? Fuck no, it's not a fucking good job. It's a shit job. It's only a good job if you're networking your dick.

You might be a college kid or you might just need to get out of the house for a few hours a day. I wouldn't live at that gym, though. It's going to take something you love and it's going to fucking crush it, man.

You don't want to go in there and catch the morning crowd, which you're not going to have that many. You might go in there like 5:00 am for one or two people. It's not worth your fucking gas money or getting up out of bed. And then you're going to go home for a little bit. You might try to squeeze your own workout in between, which makes you there at the gym even more during the day. And then you might go back at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, and then next thing you know, it's 9:30 – 10:00 at night, and you had maybe six 30 minute sessions the whole fucking day.

What do you do when you get somebody at 2:00 in the afternoon? It's a 30 minute session, and you don't have another one till 3:30. You're sitting on your fucking ass, you're dicking around.

So, you know, that's why I say, if you're there anyway, just network your damn dick. Just just go there to recruit and fuck. So that’s all I'm saying. This is JD. Train hard. Is personal training a good job? Fuck no. I’m out.