Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 064: Things That Make You Go Hmmmm...

Episode Date: April 20, 2015

As personal trainers Sal, Adam & Justing have had some strange requests from clients. In this episode they cover spot reducing, toning, women with 18"arms, the power of the lab coat,drinking wine for resveratrol and horny senior citizens.

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, pop, mind, pop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Welcome to Mind Direction. Did we change our name? No, that's what we wanted to name it, but Doug wouldn't let us. We had to settle for Mind Puff. I do remember we were throwing names at Doug does like, No, I don't think that's gonna work. We wanted Mind Dire it, but Doug wouldn't let us. So we had to settle for Mind Pup. I do remember we were throwing names at Doug, he was like, no, I don't think that's gonna work.

We wanted Mind Direction Mind Boner. Yeah. Mind hard on, he said, no, he said, why don't we just do Mind Pump? All right, so you guys got Mind Pump. Boring, boring. So welcome to Mind Direction. Who you here with?

How you like that, Doug? I'm here with Adam Schaefer. Woo-woo, Justin Andrews. Yeah, yeah. And we we have Douglas, the party pooper in the background. Adam, what did you want? You wanted to talk about something. Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely want to go over. What makes this come? Yeah, you know, I had this, I had a trainer for an of mine.

She, she messaged me today, right? And she sends this message about a client who, and this has happened to me. I'm sure this has happened to you guys. And this is what I want to bring up. And let's just see where you guys go with this. Is the, she says, I want to do, can we do a session? Would we just do like an ablas, I want to do abs

for an entire hour. You know? And so, where clients give like these absurd requests about working, they sort of direct their workouts like they think what's best for their body. And this is one of the ones that drives me crazy because it's probably, you know, it's a good topic though,

because I think there's a lot of things that people don't quite understand with exercising your abdominals and how that works. And would that be ideal? And why would you or would you not do that? But you know, it got me thinking about like, what else have clients told me that maybe just go like, oh, well why isn't that a good idea?

Maybe go, hmm, yeah. Yeah, that's almost fresh. You can come out. I used to wear the mini dance on my big balloon. So that was the very, that was the very first CD that I ever purchased as a kid. Really? I remember that one.

Which one is it? C and C music factor? Yeah, yeah, it's the white case. Yeah, it was the first CD I ever purchased. I just, like when CDs first came out. I just remember that other song with, with the controversy with the lip syncing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the dude in the video was like flexing the whole time. He was dancing. He looked like a robot. He's like, oh, and I'm like, dude, stop flexing so hard. I'm like, no, it wasn't Millie Vanilli. It was a C and C music factor. No like dude stop No, it wasn't millie vanilla. It was a CNC music. Yeah, that was really was a shit though They actually song you mean whatever they were yeah, yeah, you gotta blame it on the rain sometimes About 80% of our listeners I like when we talk about music don't get Justin to sing everyone

So so why is that a bad idea? Why Justin, why can't you just train someone's abs for an hour? Why would you want to do that? You could, you've done an hour, you could. Oh man, they'll just tear you up, man. I don't know, I'm not really big on full, like, ab workout routines in general. I tend to work abdominals mainly in two or three different types of exercises.

You have your planks, so you can engage properly. You have your hanging type of abs, which I'll do. What's left, you transverse abdominals, you do some rotational type of movement. How much more excessive do you have to get than that? Well, I think clients think like they're going to get better results. There you go.

So they're going to see, they feel like because they've torn them down, they're going to see them all. Yeah, like I have a, hey, I have all this fat around my belly. Let's just do an hour of abs so that I can just get rid of this fat around my belly. OK. Yeah, this is where, this is what drives me crazy is that it's exactly that. It's that people don't understand for some weird reason that it's like a muscle like

anything else. So training the shit out of it's going to build it actually. And if you already have a belly that's got a nice good layer of fat covering those abs, it's actually going to end up probably protruding your stomach down. Yeah, pushing it out even more, because you're gonna build your abdominals. The only time that I would ever put that much emphasis on working abs out with a client

is if you had like severe low back pain. Yeah. If you had low back pain, and so then I want to build and really focus on strengthening those abdominals to support your low back. Otherwise, there is a probably, I don't know, off the top of my head, a thousand things

that we can do inside the gym, that would be more beneficial for you seeing your abs than actually doing abs. And what I mean by that is, if you actually did 45 minutes to an hour of abs, I don't know, when you guys, you need to crunches and sit ups and all the stuff that Justin was talking about, I mean, I've never really broken a sweat

just doing abs before and it's a very small contraction. The range of motion is very small for a dog. When you get a fatigue, I'm pretty quickly. If that's all you're doing. So you're not gonna be productive after a certain amount of time anyway. Exactly. And if you want them to show,

you wanna do a total body workout so you're burning more calories, right? You gotta get lean, you just gotta get lean. Every, look, here's the fact that a lot of people freak out over when I tell them like, really? Everybody has a six pack. Yeah, everybody does. Everybody, the fat is dude, you know.

Underneath has a abdominals that, if you might have. Probably has a better six pack than some average people do. Maybe because he's supporting it. Yeah. Absolutely. And you can't spot reduce, you know, study after study after study will show that spot reduction, either A happens to such a small degree that it's pretty much non-existent or B, it doesn't happen at all.

So if you work out your abs, you're not going to burn more body fat from your midsection. But that's not what the bender ball told me. The bender ball. What a great piece of it. I get so pissed off when I see like, that was the commercial stuff. That was a little ball right there. Yeah, I like, no, I love the added range of motion.

It provides, you know, to get more flexion. That was great. That was great. We need to come up with a piece of shit like that. Yes. I feel like I keep thinking about that. Yeah. Like I mean, they got the slide, the vowel slide things and it's just like,

what other like moving shitty piece of equipment can we turn into a fitness? The shake weight. There is, there's another one. Yeah, no, it's, it's a, it's a, but you know what, what's so great is how it gets everybody is that, you know, all we have to do is have some PhD, put a stamp on it saying that something something going

on there. Not even that. You just need a guy in a lab coat. Yeah, I approve this. I know that it's it's it's it's going to sell it though. So let's be honest and okay. So if your primary goal is you want to flatten your stomach or you want to see six pack abs and that's your focus, then I would say that abs are probably one

of the last things I actually do. And that just sounds crazy, I think, for most people to think that way, but it's a fact because there is a bunch more things that we can do in the gym that is going to burn more calories, build more muscle, and in turn speed my metabolism up. And overall, help me towards my goal of leaning out faster than doing abs like crazy. Right, that's the whole point to lean out. So you can see him. And I mean, there is like definite value in training your abdominals for strength

and support and all that. And that's, I mean, really you should be addressing that like as part of the phase one, you know, of your program and as far as like structural integrity goes. But, you know, aside from that, as far as the aesthetics, just like Adam's saying, you need to focus on other things that are gonna benefit you more, you know, as an overall.

You know what else I hate that we've all heard? When you, this is female clients, what typically say this, I just want a tone. I don't want to build anything. I don't want to get any bigger. Yeah. I hate that. That is like one of the worst Yeah, as if getting bigger was really easy like I'm gonna train I'm gonna train you today tomorrow

You're gonna wake up looking like Adam. Yeah, and you'd be like oh fuck. Oh, man. I'm a linebacker Why'd you do this to me? You know I'm gonna get a text from them. Sal you fucker. I got 18 inch arms now I told you but he doesn't happen that way No, you know what, I actually have this conversation two day with a female talking about this exact thing, right? Because we just switched up her nutrition. We switch up her nutrition. And of course, a couple of pounds come up on the scale.

We increase or we're increase, introduce, reintroducing more carbohydrates into our diet. And quite frankly, the purpose for it is because she's been running low carbohydrate for, you know, about four or five weeks now. And I know it's about that time where her body is sort of slow up, real somewhere to what Justin's dealing with right now and then he's switching gears. We reintroduce the carbohydrates and only about about 50 grams of carbs additional into

our daily intake right now. The idea is for us to combat that with either more lifting or some sort of cardio to counter that so we don't see a major weight gain. But seeing some sort of weight gain, it's going to be natural, especially if you're in taking more calories, more carbohydrates, more food, and then you're lifting weights. But here's the thing, like if you're doing it clean and you're doing it right, and it's that incremental, more than likely, a good percentage of that is going to go all the muscle and it's going to be good weight.

And you freak out. Yeah, well, not totally freak out, but she was like, yeah, I don't like the way I feel it. But really, it's reflected because the scale, as I'm looking at it, I'm telling you, like, hey, listen, I'm very, I'm like the bluntest ever with clients. I'll tell you, you look fat, you look soft,

you're not looking better. You know what I'm saying? You're a reflection of me, so I'll tell your fat ass. Like, no, you ain't doing it right, because whatever I'm telling you to do, you must not be listening, because you're looking soft right now. But she looks great.

She looks good. She looks tighter. You know, she looks like she's got even better shape than what she did the last time I've seen her, but she's up a couple pounds on the scale. But it's like, hey, listen, building muscle is so hard. You know, you should be happy that we have, we've done this. Let's give it a couple more weeks. See what happens with your scale weight. See what happens, how you feel and look. And then we can always switch and go back to the other direction. And when we go back to the other direction, watch how much faster

you lean out this time because now you've built your metabolism up to get used to actually handling these extra carbohydrates. And let's not forget how dense muscle is. I mean, you could gain two pounds of muscle and you're not gonna be bigger, you'll just be tighter. You'll just feel tighter. Whereas if you gain two pounds of body fat,

body fat takes up roughly like almost the third more space or if not more. So you lose two pounds of fat and gain two pounds of muscle. The scale says the same thing, but you're smaller. You're much smaller. So it's softer. And softer. Which is that's a great point because that's also why people are deceived by that because

they see that they could be gaining body fat because their diets off and not balance right but because they see the scale going down. They get motivated by that. They get motivated. It's like, no, you're going the wrong way. No, no, no, no. You're not working out. I feed the body the wrong way. I don't.

No. One thing I kind of remember, like, so that the people ask me or it kind of irritates me, do you guys notice like whenever a study comes out, like say it's like, for instance, for me, it was risk of risk of air trough. So there's like some fat burning effects to like risk of airtrol And so now like all of a sudden and get all these well Well, it says that and so therefore I'm just doing like one glass of wine a night You know, so I'm gonna be fat burning and you know, it's all part of the program like oh, that's so crazy

This is working out for you. You know, like It's just like, oh, it's so irritating because every time you start making progress then something in the news will come up and people just gravitate to that. Yes, validation that goes back to the lab coat thing like we were just saying is like, all said somebody with a some sort of authority comes out and says the benefit, you know what?

We could probably go through everything and I'm talking even drugs that are illegal and talk and pitch you guys on the benefit of that. Something has a benefit. Yeah. I've ever said something like cocaine has got to make you run and jump and hop and skip. Yeah, right. I'll say some cocaine is a fat bird. What about the fat burning effects of a crystal meth? Yeah.

You ever seen a fat meth user? No. No. Just the rest of the leg syndrome. That's calories, right? You can take any chemical, any supplement, anything out there, and you can put a positive spit on what it could do for you. And absolutely, there's things out there.

There's certain things that are found in red wine that are beneficial and stuff, but it doesn't outweigh the damage of the rest of the bottle that you pound in some good. Because that one glass is never like, you know the difference in sizes, like, you have like the goblet size, whatever that is, and then you have like the real, you know, one glass, like a five ounce pour. I'm just saying, yeah, and then they feel like all the way to the true measurement for the true measurement for a glass of wine

What it is it's four ounces? Yeah, and if you don't if four ounces is four little shots tiny four little shots is what you guys shot glasses one ounce That's four little shot glasses of wine. Well people do not Whatever benefit you get from four ounces. That's why I'll drink 16 ounces. You just get four times the benefit benefit you get from four ounces. That's why I'll drink 16 ounces. You just get four times the benefit. Yeah, I'll work. Science. Yeah, okay. Science.

Mind bump. Mind bump. Yeah, the other one that gets on my nerves a little bit, I'll have clients and this, and I've actually, I hate to say this, I've actually quote unquote, top clients a lesson. When they'll come up to me and be like, I didn't really get sore from our last workout, because they think the equate soreness with an effective program or sweating. Yeah, and so I'll explain that to them. Actually soreness is a really bad indicator of how well you're doing and it doesn't really tell you much unless you get too sore.

Yeah, but I really like to get sore, I like to feel sore. So I've actually had clients do this and kind of argue with me. So it's like, okay, we'll get you sore. You know, drop sets and negatives. Squats for an hour. Yeah. And they'll call me the next day, my legs are bleeding. Well, I didn't feel great.

And that what you wanted. Yeah, right. No, that's the other one too is the, I get my cardio queens. Oh, yeah. That, you know, believe that the only way for you to burn fat is you got to get on the cardio. You're going to lose weight. You're going to be on this actually all day. So this is actually, so this happened to my wife. She, she's been working out for a long time and she would do a lot more cardio. She'd, and I've been telling her for years,

lift more weights, focus on getting stronger, watch what happens, focus on getting stronger. Finally, it, you know, it clicked, and I think just because for those you get, so those you listeners who are married, you know, if you say something, it's usually they won't listen just because you said it. Yeah, exactly. They wait till somebody else. Yeah, yeah. And that's normal, absolutely normal.

So anyway, so now she's lifting more and she's doing less cardio and she's getting stronger. Low and behold, her freaking clothes aren't fitting her because she's getting leaner, smaller, but she weighs the same on the scale. She's got more muscle and less body fat. There it is. So that cardio, not nearly as effective.

No, I have the same thing going on. The same thing that happened with my girl. So we've been together a little over four years. And when we first met, she was like running queen. She's always been in a lower body fat percentage. She's always been an athlete. But that was kind of, we talked about this before in a podcast about she had the athlete mentality where she was a collegiate level athlete. She ran, she played basketball seven days a week pretty

much. She could pretty much eat whatever she wanted. She just trained hard. She lifted weights hard. She ran hard, and that was just it. And then when she really wanted to lose weight or drop, you know, body fat because maybe she had like back to back weekends or drinking or eating pizza like crazy or something, she would just run like run, add more running. You know, just be like, okay, I'll run now. I normally run, I run like five miles now, I'll run 10 or 15 miles, you know,

and just keep adding the running to negate what she was doing nutritionally. And it was like, I remember, I'd tell her at the very beginning, just like you said, Salto, I mean, I must have told her for two years before I finally got her to switch. But then now it's just, it's fun to watch her now because now she like teaches like all her niece

and all her girlfriends and I really, that like teaches her like how to do things. And she's like, and the first thing, I'm like, God, you look so great. How much cardio do you, she's like, I don't do any cardio actually. It's crazy. I don't do any cardio.

She's like, I probably couldn't run a block right now. She's like, you know, I live in all of this girls' heads just explode. Oh yeah, they're like, what? That doesn't make sense. I don't get it, you know what I'm saying? She's like, yeah, no, I lift, I lift weights. I lift weights heavy and hard,

harder than I ever have in my life. And I eat correctly according to what I should be trying to do. And it's just as completely altered her physique. Yeah. Which for her, it's been a real, a real treat to watch too, because like I said, when she started, she was already pretty lean. So when we met, I've never seen her higher than 14% body fat.

And she wavres between 10 and 12 is pretty rip Yeah, she's very lean she's very lean, but she's a different and even though like I said she's always kind of been around there And two years time, you know She's really only seen like one or two percent body body fat percentage get a little bit lower But the composition is completely like the way the way she's oh the way it's shaped on her body her you know her waistline Is came in like she has definition in arms, like she just had this picture, someone took a picture of her,

and she's like, oh my God, I've never seen my arms look like that. Like they actually have separation. They've never said, yeah, you know, you weren't just genetically born in a way where you can't ever have shoulders and thighs and tries and separated. I think that's a big myth that a lot of people think, a lot of people think that they can't sculpt

and shape the body because they don't, they don't spend the time trying to. They spend the time, you know, all they care about is losing fat or gaining weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, gaining weight. Yeah, it's like, up and down. And here's what's neat is when you actually go at it with the mentality of sculpting the body,

you can enjoy surplus, calorie surpluses. It's kind of like what's going on with me right now. Here I am on this mini bulk. And it's like, I can cry about it And be like oh, I'm putting it as this extra weight on that I want or I can put it to good use and hit the weights good and really focus on what I'm trying to do and as long as I keep that that surplus in moderation a good majority of that is going to go where I wanted to go you know and then it's going to help build my metabolism Up some then when I switch gears going leaning back out again. It's kind gonna be ramped up, and you're gonna see me see for results even faster. Well, I've also had clients complain

about resting between sets. Like, why don't we just do another exercise right now while I'm resting? And so I have to explain to them, and I'll explain to the listeners here, when you're working out with resistance and you're trying to build muscle, and I'm gonna use the word build, okay,

because the fitness industry likes to say things like tone, sculpt, atom, just said sculpt, reality, it's all building, right? That's the old, that's what muscles do. They they're build or they don't When we're trying to build muscle, the the type of fuel that we want to utilize primarily is ATP Which is your the type of energy your muscles use for lifting heavy weights for sprinting basically it burns quickly And it gives you strength and power ATP stands stands for Dinosign Triphosphate. It burns up very, very quickly. And once it burns up, if you continue to move, then you start to burn glycogen,

you start to focus more on endurance. So this is a difference between like running a, you know, five miles versus running a 50 yard dash, a 50 yard dash, ATP, you know, five miles glycogen. So I explain that to them and I say, listen, we rest in between because we allow ATP to replenish so that we can burn it again And this is what builds muscle again. We want to stay in that anaerobic stage to really get the body to change Because if we just go from exercise to exercise, yes, you're gonna sweat more

Yes, you're gonna burn more calories for this workout But overall you burn less calories and you're not gonna get the same kind of results So they think you know, and this is of course the mentality, even some high level people have, is the, I have to beat the crap out of myself every time I work out to get results. Well, I wanna say something that is not totally off topic, but I think it's a perfect thing to piggyback off

what you just said. And this explains why the first introduction of cardio that I do is a 12 minute hit right after I work out. And the purpose of that is, because what Sal was just talking about, First, introduction of cardio that I do is a 12 minute hit right after I work out. And the purpose of that is, because what Sal was just talking about, our body, when I'm lifting weights and I'm giving myself rest periods,

is primarily using ATP. I'm not completely fully depleting my glycogen stores. In fact, when you weight train traditionally, you're only gonna utilize about 80, 85% of your glycogen stores. So my body still has a little bit of fuel left in the tank. So by me going and hitting hit cardio for 12 minutes hard, I basically Deplete and empty that tank out when I'm finished. So therefore when I'm finished, I'm completely gassed out. I can be walking home to my car And now my body is just utilizing fat as its primary source of fuel because I've tapped out all my glycogen.

And so that's the purpose of when I decide that I'm going to start to introduce cardio, that's the first bit of cardio I do. I first start doing that because it's quick, it's easy, it's 12 minutes, I can already start to see a nice little change from that in itself, and then I start adding additional time, doing my steady state and fast it and things like that down the road. So people, maybe if you follow me, you've heard me on Instagram or you've seen me write about this, that's exactly why it was here in South, sp Spain that I figured that was a good time to explain. That's why that's why I would do something like that. So it's not to say that it's the only way it's the best way. It's the reason why I do it. It's the reason why I do that first Instead of introducing steady state or fast at first, which I know a lot of guys when they're competing the first thing I do as soon as they add cardio. It's double day cardio, one hour in the morning, fasted, one hour at night,

and that's kind of like their regimen. It's like, dude, there's no reason to come out the gate like that. You can build up. Well, this is, I mean, it just keeps reiterating the importance of specificity as far as I'm concerned. Like, if you're training for a specific aesthetic, a specific strength, a specific endurance,

you know, you want to run on the proper energy for that and operate, you know, you wanna run on the proper energy for that and operate, you know, your body properly to get there. So, you know, you just gotta consider that. And like, all these other programs, like I'll throw CrossFit on the bus again, like, what are they running on? You know, what are they focusing on? What's your end game for that?

So, you know, I thought that was a good point though. What about some weird things? You guys ever have clients make weird, or just like out there, you know, questions or suggestions? Or requests or whatever? Or requests. Yeah, I've had, I've had funny requests. I'm like, if they want like a specific body part or something I want to focus on,

that's like all day of, all day, all they ever want to do. I actually had a lady once tell me that she couldn't, she couldn't do any chest exercises because she didn't want to rupture her breast implants. Yeah, I've had that. I've had it a little bit until then. And I was like, wow, you'd have to lift a lot of weight, I think you could do that.

I don't think you're gonna lift it. I'm bouncing it off real hard, mowing. I actually had to look it up. I came back at her and I said, you know, I looked it up and those things can handle quite a bit of pressure. I think you're okay. My favorite is the ones that come over to tell you when they're really coming over probably just to show you. I get it a lot in the club. So I know you have us doing chest presses

right now, but you know, they're like this gesture, this gesture like towards their tits like for me to look at like, yeah, I see you have fake tits. What does that have to do? And I'm like, I'm like, then I go at like, yeah, I see you have fake tits. What does that have to do with that? And I'm like, I'm like, then I go, oh, like, did I assume that maybe she had surgery like last week or something like that? Like, oh, did you just get them done? That's really, oh no, no, I've had them for like two years,

but do I really need to do this? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, aren't they awesome? I'm ready. Yeah, you're, like, yeah, okay, yeah, good point. Actually, they're are pretty nice. You go ahead and do some back.

Yeah. You can support those things. Like yeah, okay, yeah, good point actually there are pretty nice you go ahead do some back Some of the other stuff that's kind of blown me away. I train So one of my favorite groups of people to train are people are in advanced age like people over the ages 65 or 70 That's so crazy me like that. I enjoy it because you know their lives change You know you train a 40 year old and they get better shape. You know, there's definitely some life changing stuff, but you train a 75 year old

and all of a sudden they can go up and down the stairs again. Yeah, that's, you know, it takes patience though. I think it takes a lot of patience. You know, their bodies respond just as fast and as anybody else, as the difference is, is that their potential is lower. You know, an 85 year old, not gonna squat 300 pounds, but an 85 year old who's not active at all

And I do a very and of course the workout has to be extremely has to be appropriate But I train them appropriately and all of a sudden like within two weeks You know, they went from barely being able to stand up off of a chair to now doing body weight squats Just standing which is which is life changing, but one of the things I hear from them Almost I can almost count on it every single time as they'll come up to me This is usually about maybe two or three months into our sessions working out. They'll come up to me and they'll be like, and they're always embarrassed. And while I got some old guys that are embarrassed,

but the ladies will be like, um, Sal, you know, I, you know, what kind of changes happen with when we lift weights. I'm like, oh, well, you know, you build muscle, you burn body fat and I, you know, go through some chis. Um, I've noticed any changes in like how you feel, but like, yeah, you supposed to have more energy. Yeah, that's not what I'm talking about. I mean, she's like a lady doing sex. Yeah, and I'm like, you're being around the bush. I'm like, your libido goes up.

Yeah, is that normal? Yeah, that's totally, that's it. And then I want to sleep with my husband again. This is crazy. And then the old guys, the old guys look up to me, like, hey, Sal, a salad in boners again Like oh, there you go Congratulations high five let's keep doing this. That's one of my favorite

You sick fuck that's why you like trade all these old guys. I like it old people horny. Yeah Viagra Well, thank you for listening to mine pump for more information about this show and to get valuable free resources from Sal, Adam and Justin, visit us at www.minepumpradio.com. Until next time, this is MindPump.