Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1062: Get Strong... Look Better Naked

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

Ep. 1062: Get Strong... Look Better Naked How strongman training can benefit YOU. (1:58) The differences between strength that is usable in the real world vs. the kind of strength that is not applicable. (3:41) The ‘novel’ strongman exercises that people don’t do anymore. Why not all exercises are created equal. (9:30) The misconceptions surrounding these exercises. Why the only way to grow is to change. (20:33) MAPS Strong break down, The phases involved, equipment needed, work sessions & MORE. (28:57) Who is MAPS Strong for? (43:35) People Mentioned Jessica Rothenberg (@thetraininghour)  Instagram Robert Oberst (@robertoberst)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned June Promotion: MAPS Strong ½ off! **Code “STRONG50” at checkout** Mind Pump 1057: How To Get Stronger For Fat Loss & Muscle Building Oldtime Strongman Training Secrets Mind Pump TV - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. We've talked about strength numerous times on our podcast, and we recently did an episode all about strength, and we wanted to get in a little deeper, no pun intended. And so this episode is all about training with unconventional exercises, training like a strong man, not because you're going to compete as a strong man, but because you want to look better naked, getting strong in our opinion.

And remember, we have good opinions. We've been training people for a strong people a good day. Decades getting strong and doing the right way, especially with functional strength, just makes your body look amazing. So in this episode, we talk about the functionality of certain exercises. We talk about how doing different types of movements

are novel and why the body responds better to novel movements than it does the movements you're used to in terms of building muscle and burning body fat, doing things that are different, tend to get your body to respond a little bit better. Then we talk about why people don't do them. I mean, they're hard. People misunderstand them, especially women

think that some of these exercises are just for guys, or just for people who want to look big and burly. And then how to program these? Like, where do you put farmer walks? Where do you put, search your squats? Where do you put a bent press in your routine? And then finally, at the end of the episode, we talk all about our Maps Strong program.

And we actually break it down. We tell you what's in the program. All the different phases, the work sessions, who it's appropriate for, who it's not appropriate for. And of course, to remind everybody there's four days left for Maps strong to be 50% off, just go to mapsstrong.com, MAPSSTRLNG.com,

and use the code strong50, STRLNG50 for the discount. We did an episode recently on just strength and what is strength. And I think I'd like to dive a little deeper and talk about strong man type training. You know what I'm saying? Not just competing in strong man,

but some of the alternative movements and exercises and things that you do for that kind of training and the way that they benefit everyday people. You know what I'm saying? I like this topic because it wasn't that often that I would have somebody who hired me and said, out of my want to get strong.

I think the most common things I hear is, you know, I want to lose body fat, you know, I want to lean out, I want to build muscle, but I didn't get that many clients that came to me, it's not that I didn't get it, but I didn't get very many that were come to me and say, you just like sell it to them. Right. I had to sell the idea on why getting strong was so important. So I do like the idea of diving deeper into this topic because when I go back and think

about all the programs that I'd written for clients, some of the best results that my clients that didn't think they wanted to get strong, that ended up getting because we decided to focus on getting strong as a byproduct they got or as a side effect, they ended up getting in better shape or losing the body fat they wanted or building more muscle.

My number one goal always was with every client, regardless of what their goals were, I don't care if your goal was fat loss, I don't care if your goal was obviously to build muscle, become more mobile, get rid of pain. In some way, shape or form, it's all about getting stronger, isn't it? It's all about trying to get the body to move better

through improving or increasing their strength. And here's a good story to kind of illustrate, because I'd like to about like functional strength. And the difference between the kind of strength that is usable in the real world, and the kind of strength that is not as applicable in the real world. I remember years ago, and I might have told this story

on a recent podcast, but my dad used to own a tile and marble company, and he brought a crew with him one day because I used to help him in the summer to do this job. And one of the guys on the crew was this new dude that I hadn't met before, and he was a younger guy, he was in his 20s. So I'm a kid, right? So I'm like, maybe, I don't know, 11 or 12.

He's in his 20s, and he was pretty muscular, and for a kid who was interested in being strong or whatever, I thought he was like the cool guy in the world. And I remember, I came on board and I was talking about his exercise and stuff. And my dad's like, well, let's see how well he does today in the work, the mixing cement and the carrying of bags of cement and carrying buckets up and down stairs

and breaking things and, you know, breaking things and whatever. And he, this guy just, he couldn't hang. The older guys who have been doing this kind of work for a long time carried full buckets of cement up five, you know, five flights that we did worked on this massive house. We had to walk up, I was like four flights of stairs,

something silly like that. And these guys filled up their buckets full of cement. And that's heavy. If you're very held a bucket full of wet mud, which is that's a term for the kind of cement that we were using, those are heavy. And this guy, after a few rounds or whatever, he's half a bucket. And these other old guys are full buckets. And I started to realize there's a difference between that functional kind of strength,

the kind of strength that when you need to help your friend move or when you need to list something odd. There's a difference between looking strong and being strong, which I like you telling that story too, because a lot of times I had to do a lot of the selling to my female clients to convince them that getting strong was a good idea for us because rarely ever did they come in wanting to do that. And a lot of people still connect being strong with big muscles. You know, in order to be strong and you big muscles, the bigger the muscles, the stronger

the person. Right. And if I'm a lady coming in to lose body fat, I'm not really interested out of them getting that that much strong. I don't need to get any stronger. I just want to lose body fat, I'm not really interested out of him getting that that much strong. I don't need to get any stronger. I just want to lose body fat, but there's a difference between looking strong and having big muscles that aren't that functional and then actually being real world strong and able to do things that you may not even look like you're able to do.

Right. And that's a big myth too with women is that a female clients at least is that what they would be, so afraid of working out, trying to get stronger, and then waking up the next day, and looking like a pro bodybuilder. It's not gonna happen. It takes a long time to build muscle, even if you have incredible genetics,

even if you're on anabolic steroids, it can take a long time. And if you're a female, you just, you don't build muscle like a man does, what you will get is a hard solid body. And then when you're strong, let me tell you something, you wanna talk about feeling independent and feeling like you could do whatever you want,

get strong. You know, take your, I've seen, we travel quite a bit with mind pump and you'll see sometimes people trying to put their suitcase in the overhead compartment and you'll see some women struggle doing it and then the man have to help them out and then sometimes you'll see women who work out and they'll fling that thing right up there. Like, you can move things, you can do things, it just makes life easier to be really strong and the kind of body that you're going to have from training for strength

is just going to look very tight, very sculpted. You're going to look hard. You're not going to look big or masculine. The masculine look comes from the Anabolic Steroids that some of these female athletes take. Oh, and one of my favorite things about finally convincing a client that, hey, let's start to focus on strength and doing, you know, strong man type of lifts, which you would seem so foreign to anything you would ever want to do, is once I would convince them to start moving in this direction, the results would just come on so fast. And I think a lot of that is just to how novel it was for their body, right? I think that they were so used to, you know, what all the magazines and the hype was.

They didn't use the lunges and leg curls. Right. And all the pumping exercises and the high reps and low rest periods and circuit type training. And then I'll send you take that client and you convince them like, we're gonna train to get strong. And I want to give you some longer rest periods and we're gonna do some of these unconventional type of lifts

that you've probably never done before. And just that what the body has to do as far as adapting to get used to those movements, they end up burning all kinds of fat and building all kinds of muscles. Oh, they respond right away. Oh, it's incredible. Yeah, it's awesome. That's one of those things where we're always trying to introduce that to, especially our female clients was because that wasn't something that's very popular

and it's not out there. You're not gonna find a lot of videos out there, specifically showing you how to strength train properly and what that will do for your physique on top of that. Yeah, and something for me that I valued a long time ago, probably about, I don't know, 12 years ago or so, I found this website that had old, I think it was called Old Time Strongman or something like that.

And on this website were books about these, you know, men and women that were strength athletes at the turn of the century before, before protein powders even. Like, and I looked at some of the exercises that they did. And a lot of these exercises have been lost. The people just don't do anymore, because they're hard, right?

Here's an exercise that you're starting to see people do now, but as recent as maybe four or five years ago, nobody was doing, good mornings. You almost never saw anybody do good mornings. Now, good morning is an old school strength building exercise, and it's in particular, it works the butt and the hamstrings and it strengthens the low back. But you never saw them being done in gyms.

It was just, they took them out and for whatever reason, they stopped doing them. Oh, I tell you, if I saw a good morning, and I believe I remember seeing a good morning when I was like 18, 17, 18 years old, and thinking that person didn't know what they were doing. Yeah, that's how cool. You're gonna break your back. That's how foreign it is to, 18 years old, and thinking that person didn't know what they were doing. Yeah, that's how,

you can break your back. That's how foreign it is to, in a gym, is I was a workout kid or into fitness, and I remember the first time seeing someone doing a good morning, and thinking like, oh, what the fuck are they doing? I remember learning that from a Zotman curl. A Zotman curl is an old school dumbbell curl exercise

that nobody does anymore. Essentially, the way it looks is you're doing like a normal supernating curl with the dumbbell so you twist your palm up, but then you rotate it down on the way down. So the hand is, you know, the palm is facing up on the way up and the palm is facing down on the way down. Now that works the bicep through a very, very full range

of motion because the bicep doesn't just close the arm, it also supernates the hand, but it also works the muscles of the forearm different than any other, you know, dumbbell or barbell bicep exercise. And I remember throwing that movement in and because it was different, right, because it's novel. I've never, I've never done this before. I've done dumbbell curls, hammer curls, barbell curls, preacher curls, machine curls, us have never done a zamen curl. Through them in my routine and my arms just responded.

It's just, it's an old school exercise that people don't do anymore. Another one is Ben Presses. Oh, Ben Presses. I started doing those when I was really getting into shoulder exercises specifically. I was going through all these rotations doing Indian clubs, which is another old method that they used back in the day to provide strength and mobility in the shoulder joint. But then I saw people doing bent presses

and you remember this, is a very iconic type of an exercise that you see old strong men do, where they're actually bending over to the side and lifting and then supporting and locking their elbow or locking their shoulder out and supporting something heavy over their head. Yeah, this was actually because in those days when they had benches back then, right? Well, what they used to do in those days is strong men would travel the country performing

shows. Like one of their show pieces. Yeah, they would show like how much they could lift and oftentimes they would compete with each other and they challenge each other. So you'd like like Eugene Sandal, you know, would put out a challenge and then they'd have local strongmen come and challenge them.

And one of the main challenges of the day was to see who could lift the most weight over their head and then who could lift the most weight over their head with an arm, with one arm. And the bent press was invented because technically speaking, biomechanically, it's an advantageous way to lift something with one arm. It's a technical movement. Now, on the flip side of that is, I mean, you're working, definitely

working your shoulder, but you're working your arm and you're working your core, your quadratus lumborum, your obliques, you are working your whole body. But it includes a lot more muscles. But these guys, I mean, UG and Sandal, one arm bent pressed, 300 pounds. That's crazy. Okay, here you're talking about 185 pound man before Crateen was even invented.

But this exercise is phenomenal. Another good one is a zircher squat. Zircher squats, here's a funny thing. So people think of a zurcher squat as a strong man exercise because it simulates holding like an atlas stone or holding something in front of you. It gives you a little bit of that rounded back lift, kind of lift. You're supporting with your arms but it's a hip exercise. There's a lot of posture, your chain involved, a lot of glutes, a lot of hamstrings, a lot of back. And you think like, oh, that's an exercise that either just strong men do or just guys want to do, right?

Because it's kind of hard and it's uncomfortable. Super popular among women. Because when you do a zurchar squat, you do it properly, you feel that in your glutes, you feel in your hamstrings. And again, because it's novel, because it's so different, when you put some of these odd lifts into your routine that you can do with a barbell or a dumbbell, you don't need weird equipment to do some of this stuff. Your body just responds,

another one's like a circus press or snatch grip, dead lifts or cleans. Throw these exercises in, and you'll find them to be, I mean, I'll tell you what, far more, they're far more effective and beneficial than machine exercises. Oh, I would argue that a searcher squad is maybe the most functional movement that you can do.

Oh, very close, yeah. And when I think functional, I think of like, what has the most carryover into real life movement? And there's not a lot of exercises that simulate a front loaded squat like that, that when I think of all the things that I've done in my life on a day-to-day basis or working at jobs, I get the ranch or things like that,

and I have to carry things or pick furniture up. It's exactly what you have to do. You frontload it, so it's in front of you. Nobody carries furniture on their back. No. I guess it's funny. We do back squats all day long, and we call the back squat the most functional exercise known to men, but it really isn't, in my opinion.

I think you'll never take something evenly distributed on both sides, throw it over your back and then squat it down in real life. This isn't happening. But how many people can say they've picked up a couch, picked up dog food, picked up a baila hay, you know, grabbed it. Pick up your kid. Yeah, pick your kid up. And that, to me, is exactly what you're doing in a goblet or a zircher type of squat, which

that's why I think that exercise is, it's crazy that it's not in a lot of programs because I feel like just because it's different people avoid doing it, but when you think about one of the things that will benefit you in real life, it's one of the best things. Right. And those are examples of ways of incorporating conventional exercises with a little bit of a twist, so it emulates more of a real-world situation where, too, like something that I love working with sandbags for the purpose of it, it actually shifts weight.

So think about having weight, like you mentioned with dog food or you have something that has, like moments where the weight may move on you and you have to adjust to that. So that's something too that I think people don't really think about that very often. They always think that the weight is just going to be pretty much balanced and standard, but that's not the case in real life all the time.

No, one thing we have to really hammer home that I think is so important that we communicate to people is that not all exercises are created equal. Some exercises are far more effective than others, and there's a lot of movements that are out there that we just don't do anymore. We just don't teach anymore. And you're gonna get the double benefit of doing these exercises, A, because you're not doing them, so they're totally new,

and any time you throw something new at your body, your potential for adaptation is highest, because it's new. And the second thing is, these were prized exercises among strength athletes because of the effects that they had on the body. So if you want your body to change more rapidly and get better results and see more muscle, more definition, these unconventional type movements like the ones that we named in my opinion are absolutely prices. They are part of my routine on a on an almost weekly basis. Now, another one's a farmer carry. I thought a farmer carry for a long time.

I would do farmer carries and I thought, okay, this is kind of good for posture and good for my grip, which is true. It is good for your grip. It is good for your posture. But no, when I did farmer carries as part of my program, we're actually practice them. I got to the point where I would on my track bar load it with 450 pounds and I'd walk for a hundred yards and I remember my back building, my calves building. I built my core. I could tell my core and it's why because I'm doing a very fundamental foundational movement walking,

and I'm doing it with a heavy load. Again, probably one of the most functional things you could possibly do. You know, if we ever, as humans, and throughout all history, if we ever did anything that was, you know, if we ever manipulated something that was really, really, really heavy,

what we probably had to do was pick it up and walk with it. We probably had to move things. You know, whether it's a kill that we really, really, really heavy. What we probably had to do was pick it up and walk with it. We probably had to move things. You know, whether it's a kill that we did, we just hunted an antelope excel, we got to pick it up, carry it, for a dish, whatever. And the farmer walk really emulates that. And I noticed, like this whole,

and here's the thing too about these exercises. There's a localized effect from an exercise. Like, if I do a bicep curl, the muscle that gets affected the most is my bicep. But there's this systemic effect that exercise has in the whole body. We've proven this. There's studies where people will work out just one side of their body. And what ends up happening is definitely most of the muscle and strength goes to the side of the body that's being trained. But there's also muscle and strength being gained on the opposite side.

That's not being worked, which just kind of highlights the systemic effect. And some exercises are better at that than others like farmer walk. Well, not to mention, and we've already made the case already, the importance of training your central nervous system. And we've, I've mentioned your analogy so many times on here like it being the outside. There are certain exercises that lend itself very well to training the central nervous system. That's an example of that right there.

Everything is engaged when you're doing a former work. There's literally from the traps down to your toes, everything is being fired. So you think of something, if the amplifier is, if the CNS is the amplifier that sends out the signal to all the muscles in the body to work, then exercises that engage and incorporate all of those muscles are what's going to train and develop that more than anything else. So of course, a heavy farmer carry like that with a trap bar, 400 something.

Now, everything has some work in harmony. Yeah, talk about building your amp. Talk about building your central nervous system, which then has tremendous carryover and all the other traditional lifts that everybody loves to do. Not just that, but think of it this way. If you have a healthy, well-functioning, strong central nervous system, you have a part of your body that can withstand stress. Think about all, what do you think gets affected the most in your body when you're under too

much stress for too long a period of time? It's your central nervous system. That is what gets depressed. That is what starts to become damaged. That's why you feel tired when you're under too much stress. That's what gets stimulated when you take a stimulant like caffeine, it's your central nervous system. So training it, improving the tone of it,

the strength of it, benefits your, not just your performance, it benefits your overall health. Here's some of the problems though, with some of the stuff that we're talking about. Like a farmer, let's talk about a farmer walk, for example, which, again, I think is a phenomenal exercise. Because modern workouts, especially modern resistance

training workouts, now for so long have followed this pattern of body part training, where today I'm focusing on my glutes, tomorrow's my legs, the next day's my chest, the next day's my back. The problem with an exercise like a farmer walk. Where do you throw that in? How do you program it into your routine?

If it works everything, what day do I put it on? What about a bent press? Yes, I know the shoulders pressing the weight up, but I'm also using my core, I'm also using my back, I'm also using a lot of the hip and hamstring of one side of my body depending on which arm I'm using, which day do I put that on? What about a snatch grip, high pull or a deadlift?

There's a lot of biceps involved, there's also a lot of back and hips involved. And so I think people look at these exercises and think, okay, you know, the guy, mine pumps sold me on these exercises, they're effective. I just don't know where to put this on. Is it chest day? Is it back day?

I also think there's a fear too of getting injured, right? So because they're complex movements and they're different and they're unique and you can't peak over at the the fit buff guy and the gym doing it. You know what I'm saying? He's not. He's over on the cables. He's no examples. He's over on the cables. He's on the hammer strength machine. You know what I'm saying? So he ain't doing the hardship. Right. So you don't you don't get very good examples of these movements.

And you know, I remember what it's like coming into a gym the first time and feeling intimidated. It's already an intimidating feeling for a lot of people to walk into a new gym or a gym period and go exercise to better yourself. Then it's really intimidating to do movements that you don't see anybody else doing. So I do get that. I get that that's a major challenge and a hurdle for people is seeing those things and then also not and then not being afraid that am I gonna do them wrong, do them wrong and end up hurting myself.

They're complex exercises, which means that they require a little bit more patience to learn and practice. They're high skill. And they're unfamiliar. It's unfamiliar. People have seen a bench press or a pull down or a row, at least a hundred times, tell me how many times you've seen a snatch grip high pull. Tell me how many times you've seen a circus press. Tell me how

many times you've seen someone do a proper farmer walk. And so they're just unfamiliar as well. And people like you said, Adam, they're afraid of getting hurt. But I'm here to tell you right now, just like any exercise that's out there, if you learn to do them and you practice them, don't go in with the intention of hammering a body part, go in with the intention of practicing these exercises, you're not gonna get hurt, you'll get good at them, and you are gonna reap tremendous benefits from them.

I also think that they're greatly misunderstood too. And this isn't just in these strong man type lifts. I find this across the board in a lot of exercise. We do this stupid thing of putting ourselves in camps. It's like, oh, you're a bodybuilder, so you don't do dead lifts. You don't venture out of that. Yeah, you don't venture out of that because you most identify with bodybuilders, you stay there or you most identify with power lifters,

you stay there or you most identify with strongings to that or you most identify with mobility people and yoga people that you stay there. When the reality of it is there's so much great things to get from all these different modalities and we just gotta get out of our own fucking heads with this, oh, I don't, why should I train that way? Like, absolutely, if you don't train that way,

you should train that way. Because you're gonna get some of the best benefits, even for your goal, that seems different than that. Well, it's intimidating, but if you wanna grow, the only way to grow is to change. And this is one of those things where a lot of these exercises are very foreign, like it's intimidating. That's, it's something that, you know, looking at it,

like it looks like it's probably not for me because of my comfort zone and what I, what I already know ahead of time, but that's all the more reason for you to educate yourself and to go through the process of not being super good at it for a while, but seeing like the, I mean, what, what happens right away with that as you respond. Yeah, and here's a big, big misconception,

is that a lot of these exercises aren't for women. That only guys do them, I'm not interested in super big muscles, I'm not interested in, you know, crazy amounts of strength. Right, because all you see are these like huge, like goliaths out there doing these things. Ladies, if you're listening right now, and this is you, I'm gonna tell you something, okay? It wasn't that long ago.

I mean, I've been training now for, or I've been in this industry now for a little over 20 years. It wasn't that long ago that all weights were considered just for men. Any weights, it was women, when I first started out as a trainer, I used to have to convince women to lift weights. And then I had to convince them to use free weights.

I remember that discussion. Oftentimes I would have a female client and I'd convince them, no, let's use machines and they'd be like, okay, and I'd say, okay, we need some free weights. No, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to use free weights. That's just for guys who want to build big muscles. I don't want to look like a bodybuilder.

And I had to have these discussions and tell them, look, if you want to get results in the most effective way possible, you got to do the most effective exercises. And trust me, if you're one of the, you know, one in one million women that can build muscle like a man, it won't happen overnight, you'll get to the point where you'll look in the mirror and you'll tell me, hey, this is about as much muscle I want,

and I'll be like, perfect, we can then back off and what a great place to be. but these exercises that we're talking about we're training Like a strong man in the context of in your normal gym not to compete But rather to get your body to really respond and change these exercises are for anybody who wants effective results Man or woman doesn't matter. They're for anybody who wants effective results I've got I've got a client friend of mine right now who has gone through Annabella, has gone through performance,

has gone through aesthetic before, has been training long before that, did Orange Theory, done all these things. Been in great shape on third, excuse me, second kid and seen herself fall out of shape, get back into shape, and she's been consistently training again and she recently reached out to me just like two and a half months ago and asked me like,

you know, for guidance and direction. And I said, well, have you gone through the map strong program yet? And she's like, no, I didn't really think that would be one for me. And I'm like, you're kidding. I'm like, you're going to love it. Just trust me. Like, she's like, yeah, but I was looking at the pictures of the girl and the guy and you know me, I just add them. I want to lose like 15 more pounds and I feel all feel great and just want to tighten up a little bit. And that's my goal. I'm like, oh, you're going to do this.

So I made her do it. I made her buy strong. And she's tripping out because she's seeing more results in her body right now than she has in any other program. And she's asking me why. And I'm like, well, you've been somebody who's been working out for a really long time. So even though the programming and aesthetic and anabolic and performance is so killer, and you still saw great results of that, you're seeing the most results was strong because

it's the most foreign to your body. The movements in there, there's so many movements you've never done before. And so because you're an experienced lifter, it's harder to get that same stimulus. When you're a brand, when you're a newbie, you can throw almost any modality, any exercise program towards that person, and their body responds and change,

and then they fall in love with it and think it's the best thing ever. But when you get somebody who's been training for years and years, and they've trained lots of different programs and change intensity levels and change reps and sets and all the basic stuff. It gets a little bit more challenging to show them and move the needle and by putting her on strong,

even though her goal wasn't to be a strong man or get really, really strong, her body is seeing the most change when it comes to reducing body fat and tightening her body up, which is what she wants to do. MAP strong is Jessica's favorite program. I know. Every time I introduce introduce to one of my female clients, it ends up being theirs.

It's just I have to convince them, which is why I know it's a barrier. We were inspired to do this episode, because it's like, you know what, we need to talk about this, because for some reason, people tend to avoid it because they feel like, it's not really for me, or I'm not really looking to do that. But in reality, there's a good majority of people probably listening right now that it's probably the most ideal for them.

And they'll probably see the most benefits and the most change by going through something like that. Again, I did the program with Jessica. For me, I've done obviously all of our programs, right? I was a part of writing all of them. And map strong is, I would say probably the best muscle builder that I followed. I'd say it's up there with maps and a ball, like maps and a ball, it's another great muscle builder.

But map strong because of the different exercises, many of which I had done in the past, but never had really trained. Because of that, my body just, remember when I was going through it, I would come to the work and just rave about it. The work sessions were insane. In MAP Strong, we have our foundational workouts,

but then there's something called work sessions, and it's the work sessions where you're, I mean, the work sessions were harder than the foundational workout. You're building that motor. I mean, the whole point of that is to really like build up that muscle endurance, that work capacity. So you're able to endure hard labor, labor intensive type work.

Right, right, right. The first, and here's the thing with map strong. It starts out different than a lot of our other programs. And remember, we wrote this with a strong man competitor because we wanted some insight on what made him and what made them such incredible competitors in the sport of strong man, which if you look at strong man, forget the way the guys and girls look who compete in it. You are looking at the 1% of the 1%. These guys, many of these men are giants.

I mean, Robert Obersd, there's a picture of him sitting with us. I remember where we were eating lunch, and he's sitting across from us, and we all look like his children on the other side of the table. But when you look at having to compete in this thing, would you need to be an effective strongman competitor? You're not a power lifter. It's very different. Powerlifting is, lift a weight as heavy as you possibly can for one rep.

That's not strong man. Strongman is, you got to move with the weight. You gotta be strong, you gotta have stamina and you gotta have strength endurance. You gotta have all those things. Not to mention, you're also doing new movements. This is why I loved actually the way, we kind of flipped this program on its head

and compared it to other ones the way we did the first phase because the very first phase, you're doing 20 reps. There's no 20 rep phase. Lots in deadlifts. And in any other program that we've done. And it makes a side from what you're saying right now, it also makes sense because if you're teaching a client, if I was coaching a client on a new movement that they're trying to learn, it's, I wouldn't want them doing

really, really heavy weight. I'd rather them do a lighter weight that we do 15 to 20 reps to practice, to get good at it, to get the mechanics down really well. So I really love that about this too. I love that we did that, because not only does it build your motor, which to your point you're making,

I think is important, but it also gives this person, hey, I'm doing all these new exercises and movements, it gives me a lot of repetitions to practice. You practice something. Yeah, you do it five times and you stop. It gives me a lot of repetitions or practice. You practice something. Yeah, you do it five times and you stop. It's hard to get good at some of that. You do it 20 reps. Oh, I love that.

And then it like peaks up so you can do like your one to four reps, you know, once you really hit your stride and really like hone in on those specific movements, while you're building up your motor to it, it's the highest capacity. Yeah, phase one, the Z-Press, which the Z-Press is. Favorite. Favorite, one of my favorite movements.

Oh, it's a game changer movement. It's absolutely one of my favorites. And there's different varieties or versions of the Z-Press in Map Strong. One of them is the legs apart version, which is the way that you should start doing them. But then it gets more difficult as we bring the legs together.

And this was Robert's suggestion. He says, why don't we try some versions that are more difficult the legs together. And let me tell you, when you try these, first of all, I can overhead press in my workout standing 135 pounds. When I'm doing a seated Z press, I have maybe 90 pounds on the bar and I am focusing on that full extension at the

top and you have to, you have to go lighter and focus on that real good full extension. Now why do strong men like doing this exercise? Because they want to, the time when they miss lifts, when they're pushing something over their head or putting something over a wall, it's usually the last two inches. It's that lockout. What I noticed from an aesthetic standpoint is my shoulders got better development and my upper back.

I noticed great development in my upper back from that posture. What I noticed from a coaching point and actually teaching others how to do it, it's such a great way. So I'm notorious for teaching the split stance with a bicep curl, right? Like when we first started Mind Pump,

I remember showing the guys, like this was a staple thing that I did with all clients that if they were doing any arm exercises, I always put them in a split stance. And it was like a trainer trick that I had figured out a long time ago that if I made them a little unstable, it forced them into good posture,

which then helped with proper mechanics with doing a really basic movement. So an overhead press is a complex movement, but yet it's very basic, right? You're just putting something over your head. So most people believe they can do that pretty well, but most people actually fail to do that with really good form. So I love the Z-Press to teach really good shoulder press

mechanics because you are forced to, when you press up to retract the shoulders and the fully extend because if you at all lean your back, you're deviated all your back super exposed. Oh, I'll throw you back on the back. You can't lean on your backwards. You're far backwards. And you can't lean on your legs to support you anymore.

Right. And you can't arch your back. You can't do any of that. The bar has the movement that the bar has to travel in order for that exercise to work, you have to have really, really good mechanics. So I love, it's something that didn't get introduced to me till later into my training career. I think I'd introduced you,

I think when we were all, when we first met, right? Or was it before that? A little bit before that. I was doing, I was doing, because I did it all through my bodybuilding training. Oh, you did, okay. It was one of my, it was a little bit before that, but not long before that, and became something that I like it all through my bodybuilding training. I did, okay. It was a little bit before that, but not long before that,

and became something that I like taught all clients to do. In fact, how do I know about the ZPress as an early trainer? I would have actually replaced it with any standing overhead press first. I would have taught clients ZPress first, because again, it forces them into good mechanics, and then once they got that understanding, then I would allow them to use their lower half to help stabilize the exercise more

and get a generate a little bit of power for like a push press. So that's how I love the Z-Press. I believe that it should be in everybody's routine. And what's cool about MAP Strong is it's not body part broken down, it's movement focused. You're focusing on movements, you're focusing on lifts and hip hinges and presses and rows. You're focused on being able to get strong and these different kinds of

movements and if you're used to training body part style, you know back and shoulders and body and then you switch to something like this, it's so different for your body. Watch what happens, just watch what happens to the type of muscle development that you end up going through. And then with strong, we progress you to from higher reps to lower and lower reps, but more sets, and of course, heavier weight.

The second phase is the eight to 10 rep range, which is more bodybuilder style. Yeah, high perch of Easter. Yeah, and in that phase, you're doing the zircher squats, you're doing the oberst crunches, which is a new exercise that we were, had never done before. You're getting strong with that hip-hinging.

You know it's a great exercise too, that's in there that I forgot to talk about. Penlay rows. I love that. I didn't learn that staple from it. I didn't learn that one till much, much later. And really, it's funny, the back, yes, I'm working my lats, I'm working my rhombones and all that stuff

when I'm rowing or I'm doing a pull down. But when you throw hip extension into a row, something magical happens with the back. And I think it has to do with how we evolve. I really do think that there's no time in human history except for when we invented gyms, where if you were pulling something, you weren't using hip extension. I feel like they go hand in hand. This is one of the reasons why I think the deadlift builds the back better than any

other exercise, even though if you look at the anatomy of how muscles in the back work, you would technically be like, oh, you know, you get a full range of motion with a dumbbell row or a lap pull down or whatever. Deadlifts just build a bigger back because it involves a hip extension. I pinlay a roll does the same thing. Oh, yeah. I think that has a lot to do with, you know, all the muscles in your back, all the way from the rectus bane, all the way up, are having to support the spine. And when you're rowing like a pinlay row or a bend over. And you're doing it explosively. Yeah, it's heavy, which is fast twitch, which your muscles respond differently to that type of like a power, like a max force kind of effort. And

every and the entire back, even though you're like to your point style, you're you're really working mostly the rats, lads, a little bit of rawm boys, but your entire back is being engaged. The CNS is firing the entire back, stabilizing, saying, support this spine, hold it in this neutral position. Why this guy rips up this weight up off the ground, that in itself is, is I think that's what stimulates so much strength and growth in the in the back. Also, the way that it's the way that it's taught and map

strong is a little bit different. I thought it was fascinating. The way that Robert Obers enjoys doing these pen-layed rows is he likes to explosively lift the weight up and then drop it. Then start at the floor, explosively lift it and drop it again. Now the benefit of that? Oh, the power. That's the eccentric.

That's the power that you generate. It doesn't damage the body as much as doing the controlled lowering, which there's nothing wrong with controlled lowering. But again, because I never lift in this way. It's different. Once I started doing these pen-lay rows, I was like, this is insane. I'm getting the most insane back pump

of probably my life and why I had such great results with it. Phase three, you get into the real low reps, two to four reps, that's when you're doing stuff of probably my life and why I had such great results with it. Phase three, you get into the real low wraps, two to four wraps. That's when you're doing stuff like the circus presses. Lots of good, effective pressing movements. There's even some pressing movements in map strong that you think only bodybuilders do. Like what's the one where you have the dumbbells pressed together

and I can't defend press. Svened press. Svened press. He said it really helped him with some of his strength as kind of an exhilarating movement. That's also a map strong. What's really an interesting sort of Easter egg to the program too is watching Robert Overse do speed ladders. Oh my god. Your time. I'm a favorite part. There is a section in map strong. So if you can follow the whole program with regular gym equipment, I did it in my garage

and I have barbell, I have a squat rack barbell, adjustable bench, dumbbells, and I have a trap bar or I did dumbbells for the farmer's walks. And I did the whole program with that. So if you belong to a regular gym or you have a well-equipped home gym, you could do the entire program. But we did throw in there optional exercises

with unconventional equipment. Well, I just love it because like, I mean, he really does have great like athletic coordination for how big this guy is like doing this and he's like performing it well. And I love that this is an option, you know, it's something like as an athlete to, I wanna keep that nice speed.

I wanna keep those cuts. I wanna keep my feet fast on the field. And so this is another way to kind of incorporate that within your training and build up your work capacity volume. Yeah, so you have sandbag exercises in there, sled exercises, ladder drills. And so you can do these exercises with unconventional equipment.

Yeah, we give it the option in this one. Yes, yes. This is an optional. A few programs where we did that where we had like, okay, here's options. If you do have access to all these cool tools, this is how we program it. If you don't have access to all these tools,

this is how you use your conventional dumbbell, barbell type tools inside the regular gym. This is program right here more than any of other maps program that I followed I felt at the end of it my capacity for hard work and my my body's recovery ability improved dramatically I able, I can handle more volume and more intensity than I think almost at any time in my lifting career. And at the age of, you know, when I did this, I think I was 38 or 39. I just felt like I had developed this incredible work capacity. A lot of that goes to the work sessions that ramp up each phase that are just, I mean, they are kick-ass. They are going to kick your ass, but if you do them right, like we have them laid out in the program, your body's ability to recover and build just improves.

When I got out of map strong and went back into my normal traditional resistance training type routine, I was stronger than almost all my lifts and my recovery ability was just insane. It was also probably one of the most challenging programs for us to write, too. I think, or what I remember, is I remember us going back and forth on the exercise order, because that's what makes, I think, this one so unique and so difficult in comparison to, you know, your, your more standard type of, of programming is it's very easy when you're doing something for the biceps, for the triceps, for just the shoulders, to like what order of operation they should

all go in. But when you do a lot of these really unconventional type of lifts, like asking yourself, okay, you know, how much of that can this person handle in a single workout? When do you run a back and exercise similar to it? I remember us going back and forth and arguing like, no, no, we can't put that there because they're post-traumizing. Just to compromise you here. Right.

Yeah, that was all the big conversation because we wanted to make sure it did flow and it did make sense to the order. And so you'd still maintain composure for more skilled lifts and then we could add in less technical ones after that. No, I love the program. I did it. I love the way it worked. Again, it's Jessica's favorite.

She's done all of our programs. It's her favorite one. And I love the reviews that we're getting from people because I think partially people didn't know what to expect. And the reviews are coming back and people are loving. I'm getting a lot of comments from women on glute development. On the backside.

Yeah, they're noticing a lot of glute development. From the man I'm noticing a lot of what they're saying is back. Like I'm just, my back is getting really strong. We had one, didn't we have a power lifter in the forum who followed Map Strong and then competing in power acting competition? We've also had people that have actually gone in a strong competition after doing it.

Super awesome. You burn a ton of calories with these workouts, the work sessions, like I said, are harder. That's a good point right there. This is more advanced. I would say, I would recommend if you were like a brand new listener, a brand new person into Mind Pump. It is a more advanced program. I would definitely recommend going through

our more foundational stuff first, which is maps and a baller, maps performance or a maps aesthetic to kind of ramp you up to strong. Strong has definitely got a lot more volume. You're gonna have to. Yeah, there's strong. More volume, more intensity, definitely a challenging work. It's a good time. I intensity, definitely a challenging, challenging.

It's a good time. I saw, I remember when Doug went through it. I noticed the same thing with him, his results. So great program. I think when this airs, we should have about four days left for the 50% off sale. So we put it on sale half off this month. It's the only month of the year that it'll be on 50% off. If you're interested, here's what you do. Go to mapsstrong.com, M-A-P-S-S-T-R-O-N-G.com, and use the code strong50-S-T-R-O-N-G-5-0 for

the discount. Also if you would like some free information, make sure you check out mindpumpfree.com. We have a lot of guides on there that are absolutely free. You can also find us all on Instagram. You can find Justin at MindPump Justin. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, you can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy

and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal, Annam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now

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