Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1077: The 7 Deadly Fitness Lies Sold to Women

Episode Date: July 18, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin expose seven lies the fitness industry continues to tell women. How there are certain things that should DIE in the fitness industry: The 7 deadly fitness lies that are sold to women. (2:27) Lie #1 – That heavy weights build ‘bulky’ bodies and light weights/high reps build ‘toned’ bodies. (5:30) Lie #2 – That women SHOULDN’T eat or bulk in a calorie surplus. (16:00) Lie #3 – That women NEED to train differently than men. (20:34) Lie #4 – How these fitness classes PROMISE to change the shape of your muscle in a certain way. (30:26) Lie # 5 – That doing heavy deadlifts/squats will give women a BIG waist. (38:58) Lie # 6 – That women need to GET OVER the scale and their size. (44:00) Lie # 7 – How supplements are marketed to women. (47:50) Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS Anywhere ½ off!! **Code “ANYWHERE50” at checkout** How To Eat If You Want To Pack On Muscle - Mind Pump Why CARDIO SUCKS for FAT LOSS?? (QUAH #14) | MIND PUMP 6 Best Band Exercises (ULTIMATE FULL BODY WORKOUT) | Mind Pump The Relationship Between Waist-Hip Ratio and Fertility 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. So in this episode of Mind Pump, we get pretty irritated with a lot of the myths and lies that are in the fitness industry. If you've been listening to Mind Pump for longer than one episode, you know this. But some myths and lies refuse to die. They just don't go away. They just do not go away.

And so we have to bring them back and re-communicate them in different ways to see if we can really hit home. Now, in this episode, we talk all about the worst deadly fitness lies that are just sold mainly to women. Now, some of these have some crossover, but the fitness industry does a very, very good job of taking groups, isolating them, and pretending like they have the answers for use that you buy their products or their programs or whatever. And women, you guys really get hammered hard by the marketing industry that is within

the fitness industry and most of it is lies. So we cover all of these lies. We talk about building bulky muscles versus toning muscles. We talk about why women should eat in the calorie surplus, aka bulk. We talk about the myths around women training versus men training. Should you work out differently because you're a woman. We talk about the myths around women training versus men training. Should you work out differently because you're a woman. We talk about exercises that change the shape and length of your muscles. That may be false. We talk about how squats and deadlifts give you a thick waist, not true. We talk about how the scale and your size tells you that you look good or that you look bad. That's also not true. And then finally, we talk about supplements

that are geared specifically towards men and women. And we talk about one supplement in particular that women should take that they might not be taking. So before we get into that episode, also maps anywhere is 50% off. That is our at home training program on the road training program. It is our training program without equipment, requires just your body or resistance bands.

It's half off. Here's what you do to get that discount. Go to mapswhite.com, that's MAPSWHIT.com and use the code anywhere 50, A and Y, W, H, E, R, E, five, zero for the discount. And that's it. So here we are talking about the biggest lies that are sold to women by the fitness industry.

This is a topic that we've covered a few times in the past, but I think we need to keep talking about it and communicating it differently each time, more effectively each time because there are certain things that refuse to die in the fitness industry and the myths surrounding how women should train the things that they should do for their bodies that are different than what men need to do and all that, they're like zombie myths

that just won't die, they won't go anywhere. And so we gotta keep hammering them because here's a thing with the fitness space. And this is actually true of a lot of markets. The women make up a larger percentage, typically, of most markets of consumers. They tend to drive markets. And fitness is like this. The female space is a very powerful market in any space.

And so targeting them has always been a smart strategy of advertisers, you know, and when gyms first started out, they were totally male-dominated. Women didn't go to the gym. They didn't work out. And people who were smart in the gym business thought to themselves, we need to tap into this very powerful market and you know try to get them to buy our stuff. And so that's, I think, where a lot of the myths that surround women's fitness kind of came from. Why do you think that is, though?

Do you think it's like the divide and conquer idea? I think what's one of the rules in advertising, right? The more targeted it is, the more it feels personal to someone, the more likely they are, the more they respond to it Yeah, yeah I think that they're able to really kind of highlight a lot of the insecurities You know people share and you know specifically women they can find these certain things where it's like Oh, I don't want to I don't want to get bulky. I don't want to work out and I don't want this to happen and that to happen

And so they they want to highlight those things to sell them products. Right. So like if you think about the old gyms, the original gymnasiums were mostly male dominated. And a lot of the representatives of gyms and gymnasiums were muscular, strong men, gymnasts, these guys that just were super human for the time or whatever. And so people deduced, right?

They said, okay, if I train like this, I'm gonna look like that strong man, I'm gonna look like Eugene Sandow, and that's very masculine and I don't want any of that. And so what they did is they came out with ways to attract women through their doors, and what they would say is things like, yeah, you don't have to look like that guy

because you're gonna train differently. So what we're gonna do for you is we have these really light weights, and if you do 100 reps, you're not gonna look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatever. You're gonna get these sculpted tone muscles or whatever. So I think we should go through some of the most prevalent in serious myths and fitness for women that are specifically

targeted to women and kind of and shatter them. And the biggest one I can think of is the one that I still hear people question to the day, which is that heavy weight builds bulky bodies and lightweight high reps builds toned sculpted bodies. This was actually even believed by men decades ago in the body building world. I know that in the 60s and 70s,

that they would talk about lifting lightweight to get cut and going heavy to try to bulk. So I think we should talk about that one first. I think that's probably one of the bigger ones. I feel like that myth has demonized building muscle. And we know that when it comes to helping someone speed their metabolism up and lose body fat, the most ultimate thing that they can do is build muscle first. And so I think that's probably the most important one to cover is because that's the one that I think hurts women those because we as I'm listening to you talk about this

I'm going, you know, there's a lot of myths out there for men too. It's not just women But the one I think the ones that were targeted to women are more detrimental to their success in health and fitness, right? Yeah, that's a great point. That's a really great point. I mean keep this in mind muscles don't They don't, they don't tone, they build or they shrink, that's it. Now, toning is a word that's used to describe the feeling of having muscles that are more firm, but as muscles build, that's what they feel like.

They just start to get more firm. Those are the beginning stages of building. So if you're a woman that's in your listening right now and you wanna have a firm body, the fastest way to get there is to lift in a way that's gonna build muscle the fastest way. If that makes any sense. The other thing too is this fear of,

you're gonna work out and somehow you're gonna wake up the next day and have a body that's very masculine. It is incredibly difficult to build muscle for men let alone for women. You could train like a bodybuilder, and you could do so for years, and what you'll accomplish is a very sculpted,

firm body. It's just very, very difficult to get that kind of bulk to your body that people are so afraid of, as if heavy weights are magic. You start lifting those heavy weights. Now, what's the terminology really? That provides this visual. They think of this enormous, really strong bodybuilder type guy.

That's just going to happen by lifting heavier weights. It's not only that. I think there's always, every girl has a girlfriend who's got that one friend who does touch weights and does build muscle really well, the genetic anomaly, right? Everybody has, or somebody they know, and I think that's what happens is you see the one girl, just like we have the one guy friend you know that could eat Taco Bell, barely touch weights and he just put it.

Yeah, and he shred it and he puts muscle on like nothing. Everybody has that girlfriend who works out and that has a little bit more masculine or muscular body type than what you want. And so it all sudden scares us away from, oh God, I don't wanna lift weights because I don't wanna look like Susie, because Susie's shoulders are too broad and big and she looks manly to me.

Right, and now this myth is still prevalent today, but it's less, it's not as bad as it used to be, right? Like you see more women lifting weights than you ever did before. But women still shy away from things like power lifting because they think, oh, you know, if I lift that heavy and push that hard, then for sure I'm gonna get that bulky look.

I don't know. Well, I thought I was necessary to bring this up too, because I've still seen other programs coming out where they're just focusing on rubber bands and they're focusing on solely like body weight and band training because of the quote unquote impact, too much impact on the joints and also that it will make you bulky. And so this is like resurfacing myths that are definitely out in the market right now. Yeah, what you want to do is you want to look at work outs and you want, okay, so look

at your body this way and say, okay, I want to achieve a body, and this is most people that is lean, that is, you know, tight muscles or tight. It's defined. It's defined. Okay, what's the fastest, most effective way and healthy way to get there? That is going to be the most effective workout, the most effective building muscle building workout. That's the one that's going to get you there the fastest. Now, what's the most effective way to work out to build muscle? It's using weights in that are relatively heavy, six to 12 reps, maybe 15 to 20 reps at the most.

It's going to be these big, compound movements, barbell squats, dead lifts, overhead presses, barbell rows, it's not going to be donkey kickbacks, it's not going to be, you know, single leg, you know, step ups, you know, where you're doing 500 reps, it's not going to be these, these, these hip bridges without any resistance or these, you or these five pound dumbbell type exercises unless the five pound dumbbells are very challenging for you, it's not gonna be those things.

Now those things will build muscle, it's just gonna take a lot longer, way longer. It'll take you maybe 10 times as long doing those types of exercises than if you did those effective exercises and you may never actually accomplish the same type of results, that would be a good point.

Because I mean, they do apply, like you will build some muscle eventually. Like so there's some truth in a lot of these, like silly exercises that we see all over the place and people wearing bands all the time over their knees and trying to, you know, get glued activation but the way that it's being professed as the glute building process,

this is the formula to get these great, huge glutes. It's not the case. I think it's the mental hurdle that happens, that makes it so challenging. When I think of the average female client that I had trained. It's the middle aged woman, had kids, needs to lose 30 plus pounds. And what I know she needs, or what's best for her, even if her goal is, hey Adam, I want to lose, if she came in and these were her words, hey Adam, I want to tone my body up and I want to lose the 30 pounds of fat and I want to feel 10 years younger.

Okay, common goal, right? The thing that I know is that, okay, the most ideal thing for her is to actually put her on a strength training program to build muscle. Now, here's the problem with that. Let's say this client who comes in and does this, more often than not, they have yo-yo dieted before. They're already in a moderate to low calorie intake.

And so what I need to convince Susie is that she needs to increase her calories and go through a strength training protocol. Now what I know happens with that, it's probably inevitable that she's going to see the scale go up a tiny bit or at least stay the same during this training program. And maybe even feel her clothes filling out a little bit, or at least stay the same during this training program. And maybe even feel her clothes filling out a little bit. That's a major mental fuck for somebody who is struggling with maybe body image issues or has been trying to lose weight their whole life. And then they pay me X amount of dollars to tell them or to get them in great shape.

And the thing I tell them is, we're going to lift some heavy ass weight. We're going to grow a bit. Yeah, we're going to, and we may grow a bit, or we may see the scale say the same or go up. That's really tough, and this is the reason why I don't think these myths will die, is because of, I believe there's a lot of women out there that have tried to listen to this advice, and then what's happened is that's exactly, they go in this two-week program of doing this, the scale goes up, or they feel their clothes get tight

and they're like, fuck this, I'm not listening. I'm not listening to mind pump anymore. This is a terrible idea, but the reality is, it's the best thing you could do, go to the gym and get stronger and get stronger at the big gross motor movements. That'll make your metabolism faster, that'll build enough muscle to cause a calorie balance

where you're gonna be burdened body fat much easier. And it's gonna shape your body in a way that's aesthetic. And so you have to go in and you want to train for strength. You want to train heavy. Now of course it's gotta be appropriate. You gotta have good form, good control. So none of this is haphazard. But that's gonna be the best way to get you to your goal

and the fastest way. And again, here's not what's going to happen. I promise you, this one I don't care the most genetically gifted female on earth, on all the steroids in the world on earth. She could go and work out like this and she's not going to wake up the next day and be like, oh my God, I went too far. There's still a process. At some point, if you are one of those lucky individuals that does build muscle easily,

you just look in the mirror and you say, okay, I'm happy with where I'm at. This is where I want my body to be, but yeah, now you can change gears. Again, though, still really tough to, and I used to do this for these, because it was always tough to get my clients to understand this. So I used to draw like a picture, an image for them,

I'd say okay, here's, you know, here's two examples of Susie, what we could do right now. You came in, you wanna lose 30 pounds. I've tracked your calories for a week. Let's just say she's eating approximately 1500 calories right now and she's 180 pounds or so. And I know that I need to get her caloric and take up

and I know I need to build some muscle. And as a trainer who you just hired me, I have two options, either one, I can show you quick results to try and hook you in to buy more training for me or I can do what's best for your body in long term. So, hooking you in by just getting you to lose a few pounds or showing change right away, I could restrict your calories. So I could take Susie A and I'm going to take her 1500 calories. I'm going to move it down to 1200 calories. I'm going to do all those high rep exercises, throw in cardio in there. And in 30 days, okay, Susie drops eight to 10 pounds. Susie A. Now Susie B is what I wanna do with you,

which is I'm going to take your calories from 1500 to somewhere between 17 to 1800 calories. I'm gonna strength train you. And at the end of that month, you weigh exactly the same, or maybe even up one pound. And then I would ask the client, I'd say, which would you rather be? And all of them would go right to the person who's lost eight to a pants. And I said, you don't want to be that person because that person inevitably is going to

hit a wall and they're going to hit a really hard wall. Or stuck at twelve hundred calories. That's right. Or they go down one more time and then it gets to a point where he can't handle anymore. And I said, what you don't realize is Susie B, who decided to increase her calories in strength train for 30 days and actually put a pound on the scale, which is a going the opposite direction of your goal,

is actually in a much better position than Susie A. That actually brings up another great one, which is that women shouldn't bulk or women shouldn't eat in the calorie surplus. In fact, I don't know what these statistics are, but if I were to go, if I were to find these statistics, I could pretty much guarantee that 90 something percent of the purchasers of supplements that tell you that you're going to pack on mass and size are men. Women are afraid, obviously, of trying to put on size and gain a lot kind of stuff.

But here's the thing, oftentimes women should go into a calorie surplus to fuel exactly what you're talking about, to fuel the muscle building process because that's what's gonna benefit them, not in the long term, it's what's gonna give them the results that they want that are easier to keep because their metabolism's humming. And I used to love doing this with clients with female clients is I would take them just like you Adam and I would put them on a

moderate caloric bulk in other words I'd take their whatever they were eating and I put them in a surplus and I'd have them lift weights and build strength and after six months to eight months a year They were in a position where they were eating far more than they were before, but they were also far leaner. And it was easier to maintain, because consider this, which scenario is easier to maintain? Eating 1200 calories a day to stay 120 pounds or eating 2,000 calories a day to stay at 120 pounds. Which one do you think is gonna be easier all the time when you go to birthday parties or you go out with your husband

or your girlfriends or your friends when you're whatever. Just everyday life, it's easier to maintain with 2000 calories. But the only way you're gonna do that is if you go through periods of bulking and here's the other thing, it'll make the cutting far easier and more effective. Because women, and this is a generalization, but a lot of women will stay in this kind of permanent cut. I'm always, you ask them what's your goals?

What are you always working towards? Oh, I'm always trying to lose weight. I'm always trying to lose weight. So what does that mean? I gotta stop eating this, gotta stop. I'm always in a deficit. Always in a deficit, always cutting calories. Always, and what ends up happening when you do that

is your over time, your metabolism adapts. And the way it adapts is by slowing down to meet the caloric intake, to try to create a homeostasis, so that you're not losing any weight. Which is why you may be finding, among other reasons, because there's a lot of other reasons,

maybe you're less active as well, but which is why you may find that over time, it becomes harder and harder and harder to lose that extra five or ten pounds, or to, or to, even just to keep it off, is because you never gave your body an opportunity to speed up its metabolism, which part of, part of the formula to do that is to bulk. Is to go through, I'm telling you right now, if you're one of those women listening right now, and you don't need to lose a ton of weight, let's say you don't need to lose 50 or 60 pounds,

you just wanna lose 15 pounds, 10 pounds, maybe even 20 pounds. And if you look back and think to yourself, how long you've been trying to cut, and if it's been longer than a couple months, like that's what you're always trying to do, try this out. Try a month or two on a moderate bulk with strength training.

And the scale may move up a little bit. Most likely it'll stay the same, you'll get stronger. You may feel different in your clothes and in your body. And then when you go back to cutting, watch how fast your body responds. What'll blow you? Or reiterate the point that Adam brought up initially in terms of like it's the psychological barrier to that, the whole process. Because I mean, generally speaking, I think even women are more critical to other women in terms of their appearance and their looks. And of course, men

are to some degree as well. But I mean, I think overly so to where the idea of putting on weight to then have sustainable way to cut and be able to live in a lower amount, that just sounds like a foreign animal. Yes, and the bottom line is this, the bottom line is male or female. If your long-term goal is to have a body that has got a decent amount of muscle or tone or sculpt or firmness, whatever you want to call it, that's actually a little bit more

muscle. And you want to be lean and you want to have a lifestyle that is relatively normal. So you're not let obsessing over every calorie. Your best approach is to lift heavy and also to go through periods of a calorie surplus where you're bulking, and which leads me to another one. Women need to train differently than men. That's a general statement.

It's a general belief, and it's also a lie. It's a total and complete lie. And I'm gonna break down why it's a lie. Now, there are studies that show that women have a slightly faster recovery ability than men. That women may respond differently to nutrition in some ways, like they're less resilient to fasting. The hormones start to go out of whack

if they fast for too long, resmen tend to be a little resilient. Of course, women store more body fat than men normally do. But here's the problem with all of that. When you go down to the individual, you throw it all out the window. Yeah. You throw it all out the window.

You know who needs to train differently? You as an individual needs to train differently than another individual. And it has nothing to do with you being a male or female. And if it has anything to do with that, it's tiny. Everything that you need to consider in terms of how you should work out, has to do with your own personal fitness history

and your own personal goals. You know, it's ironic about that when you say that, what comes to mind right away to me is that the stuff that's probably presented to men on the way, they should lift all time and the stuff that's presented to mind right away to me is that the stuff that's probably presented to men on the way they should lift all time and the stuff that's presented to women all time. Most people listening would probably benefit from doing the opposite. Yeah. Does that make sense? Like most guys, or at least I fell on this category as a young man trying to build muscle. I was reading all the muscle magazines and everything I read was to build muscle strength and that six to 12 rep. Right. I should be doing plotties. Right.

No, seriously, I mean, it would be so different for your body that the adaptation and response that your body would get from doing a new modality like that, you would see great results. For everything from probably even building some muscle to flexibility, to burning some body fat, and then the same thing goes for the women that are always told that, you know, these types of classes are the most ideal for them, or these high-rep exercises, and machine exercises. Best thing they can possibly do is probably go over into a heavy, strength training protocol. It's like a 1-5 rep range. So, the irony is, it has nothing to do with sex to Salis Point. It's like, it's what the individual needs, and what most individuals listening, both male and female need is probably the opposite

of what you're doing. Yeah, and you know what's funny is that some, the female markets a little bit starting to become privy to some of the baloney and bullshit marketing. For example, when Doug and I first made Maps and Obolic and marketed it, we talked to marketers and they suggested that we create a women's version of maps and a bulk.

And I said, no, I said, you know what, funny is that if I did anything that was geared towards women, not a single man would buy it. But if I made something geared towards men, men would buy it and some women would buy it because I could see that in the market, women was starting to realize that the programs advertised to men really had nothing to do

with the fact that it was for men. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was for men. It had everything to do with the fact that it was a more effective workout. And it's true. If you take the typical workout programs online and you get the ones that are like, just for women, just for men, and you compare them. And if you're a really good coach or really good trainer so you know workouts, here's the real difference.

The one that's market to men, it's a more effective workout. It's a little bit more challenging, a little bit more intensity, better program. The one for women, they throw stuff in to make it look like it's more for women or whatever. It's actually a less effective version of the more effective workout. Well, it normally tends to be cardio with weights.

Yes, normally the exercises that you see geared or pitch towards women are these high reps, you know, super setting things in between sets. I mean, this is what I see all the time in the gym is you see the girl that's doing, you know, 15 squats and then she's doing jumpal lunges and then she's getting down and she's doing banded glute kicks and in this circuit style, no rest type of circuit. And it's just, I think that's the problem. I really do.

Yeah, that's a big one. The cardio, cardio is the answer. Resting is a waste of time. No, I want to burn calories. I need to keep moving. And that one, that one, you know, goes after men a little bit too, and who really, really want to lose weight.

But I see women falling prey to that one a little bit more. And we've covered that, I mean, ad nauseam on our podcast, that if you're going to do resistance training, do it in the most effective way possible, which is straight sets, rest, maybe a super set, depending on the phase that you're in, but not this wide ranging circuits where you're not right. You're basically, like Adam said, doing cardio with weights. It's a waste of time. Yes, it's burning calories, and sure, if we compare on a time for time basis, a 30 minute circuit

versus 30 minutes of straight lifting, 30 minutes circuits gonna burn more calories, but the 30 minutes of lifting is gonna cause the metabolism to adapt in a way that gives you a faster metabolism, which overall will burn more calories. I also want to address again, I always try to think of the mental hurdles that my clients had that you would be speaking to with something like this. For example, it's tough to explain to a client that has hired me that in the past has done either the circuit-based classes or is just currently have done their own routine where they are restricting calories, they're doing higher reps, and they've seen

results. Their body has changed. They've lost some body fat, they've felt that their body's built some muscle, they feel a little tighter, and so here I am as a trainer telling them that's not ideal for them. So I think we have to explain why that happens and then why it's still not ideal. Because what ends up happening is, if you've done nothing, if you've sat on the couch for three months, six months, year, however long, and you haven't been exercising,

anything that you do is going to show you the results that we're talking about. Yeah, you get some results. Right, losing body fat, building some sort of muscle. You move any sort of weights around or your body around and do exercises for any amount of reps, doesn't matter, and you restrict calories. Your body is gonna reduce body fat,

you will stimulate muscle growth because it's a new adaptation. Problem with that is it's a very short window and this is why a lot of people, no matter what modality they come into, they see these great results in the first four to six weeks. First four to six weeks. So they have the answer now, this is it.

Right. And then they just keep pounding away at that, but the reality is that even that's okay for a short period of time, but eventually we need to move out of that and in fact the best place to move would be moving into this, you know, strength-based type of protocol.

Right, right. And also keeping in mind, kind of going back to the original example I gave of, you know, Suzy A, Suzy B, and why is Suzy B who is gained a pound, even though our goal was to lose 30? Why is he in such a better position with this added muscle? And I used to give this number to my clients

so they got an idea, but it's heavily debated on how much this is. So there's a range of somewhere between 20 and 60 calories a day that a pound of muscle actually burns or utilizes to maintain on your body. So you got to think of if you can go through a month and the scale stays the same or even goes up one pound and you're exercising, you're strength training, you're eating better. For sure your body composition has changed, meaning that you've lost some fat and you've probably built some muscle. Now the ratio may be dead even.

You lost three pounds of fat and you've added three pounds of muscle and so the scale shows no difference, but you have completely altered your metabolism. In fact, your metabolism is probably burning somewhere between 300 more calories a day. That's a big difference. It is. And think of it this way. Remember this. Muscle is very dense. Okay. So when you gain three pounds of muscle, it doesn't look like three pounds of gained body fat.

Body fat takes those things. Remember the things that Jim used to have? Yeah. You ever seen those the five pounds of rubber pound of fat? Five pounds of fat used to be like this big. It's something like... And then it muscles like this. Yeah. I think muscle takes up something like two thirds or half to two thirds of the space that body fat has. So it's less than half.

Something like that. So if you look at like five pounds of fat versus five pounds of muscle, it's like five pounds of iron versus five pounds of plastic. Think about five pounds of plastic. How big of a space that would have to take up in comparison to five pounds of iron? Well, when you gain three pounds of muscle

and lose three pounds of body fat, you're smaller. Your weight is the same on the scale. You don't weigh any different, but you've lost size because fat takes up more space. But it's more than that, right? It's not just that fat takes up more space and muscle is dense. It's also muscle looks different.

When you add three pounds of muscle, you gain shape, body fat, unless it's going to specific parts of your body, like when you go to a plastic surgery. Some girls look out with this. Yeah, yeah. Some girls get all their fat go right to their tits and ass. That's that one. Not everybody is like this though.

You can go to it, thanks Adam, for putting it so eloquently. You could go to a plastic surgeon and have them place body fat where you want, but muscle, when you gain muscle, especially if you do the right exercises, it's gonna add shape to your body. For example, if you want more weight on your butt, you could try gaining more body fat, but your body's gonna put that body fat

where you tend to store it. So it might go on your love handles and might go on waist, it might go in places you don't want. If you gain three pounds of muscle on your butt because you lifted weight through your butt, guess where all that muscle's going on your butt. So when you gain that muscle, not only are you smaller and you feel tighter, but you also have better shape and better aesthetics, which leads me to something else that is infuriating, it's super annoying to me. It's all these classes and workout programs and exercises

that promise to change the shape of your muscle in a specific way. Like the Pilates elongate your muscles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you do this, look at leaner muscles. Yeah, longer leaner muscles. So here's a deal with muscle. You're born with your muscle attachments.

So now it's a little bit more complex than this, but think of it this way. You have your muscle attaches at one point, so point A, and then it attaches at point B. And when your muscle contracts, it squeezes, it brings those two points closer together. So if you look at your bicep, and you flex your bicep, you're bringing your arm in your hand closer to your shoulder because it's bringing those two points closer together, okay? That's a hundred percent. Do you really want those points to elongate and be longer?

You can't. Yeah, you couldn't anyway. Anyway, you would have to wicker. You would have to surgically remove your muscle and reattach it on a different point in your bone. So, I don't care what exercise you're doing, you ain't going to make a muscle longer. It's got those two points.

Now what about the shape? What about changing the shape of a muscle? On large muscles, you can somewhat do this, although it takes years, and you have to build a lot of muscle. So if I want to really change the shape of my pecs, for example, which is a larger muscle, I can focus on the upper part, the lower part, and change that shape.

But for smaller muscles, it doesn't make a difference. My biceps, they get bigger, they're gonna look the way they're gonna look based on my genetics, same thing with my triceps and other muscles. So to a large extent, changing the shape of your muscle, not really. If you train in a balanced way, your body's gonna develop, the way it's gonna develop,

and how your muscle shape is, how they shape. And trying to do different classes to change the length of your muscle, and I don't want bulky muscles, I want long-leave muscle. Could total bullshit, total, total bullshit, especially the length part, unless you remove a muscle from its attachment or reattach it somewhere down the bone, which I don't recommend doing.

It's not only that. It's heading back again to the mental hurdle, but you have to get over is the woman that started to take Pilates or the woman that started to take this class or whatever that she's seen results. So again, even something like that that guarantees all these promises of elongating the muscle or toning and firming and shit like that, and you get enrolled in it and you start for the first four to six weeks, yes. You feel the changes and it may look like elongating the muscle or the toning and the firming of the body. It's just an access to more range of motion.

Is part of that is being like, I feel more like, I have more ability, I have more flexibility, and I feel like I can get into certain positions of my body easier, and so therefore, I must be doing my body a benefit, which you could do the same thing with weights, so you can go through full range of motion, but gain access to strength in that range of motion,

which is a totally different concept than just having access to flexibility with no strength. You're not going to put yourself in danger with that mentality. Right. And my point is that it's not that those classes or these different modalities don't work. It's one, just it's not the most ideal for that person. And two, even if it does work, it will only work for a short period of time and then you need to phase out.

You need to move on beyond that. So if you're listening and you're going, oh, I've been following this program or I've been taking these classes and I saw great results or I'm seeing great results, that's great, there's nothing wrong with that. But it eventually you need to move out of that. And eventually it's normally right around that four to six week range,

any more, any more than that. And the returns are just diminishing. Yeah. And the problem is, is if you go on social media and you look up, like best, like look up body parts that women typically like to focus on, right? Like legs and butt. For example, but. So if you look up like best butt workouts for women on Instagram You would find a bunch of these these influencers these women doing

Band exercises to blocking donkey kickback Curzy squats. Yeah, just just a bunch of extra look in their exercises. So they do something But they're not nearly as effective as other exercises now if you look up Best lower body mass building workouts, okay, on Instagram, you find a bunch of dudes, probably write it out or whatever, doing squats and dead lifts and Romanian dead lifts and lunges and stuff like that.

Now, here's the irony. You know which one's gonna build your butt and shape your lower body the fastest? The hardcore mass building one. But it's so aggressive. It's, right, it looks aggressive because of the people on there, but that's the more effective work. Now, I know a lot of people listening who take Pilates,

and by the way, if you like doing these classes, it's activity, it's fun, it is gonna do more than nothing, for sure, I'm not demonizing it. I'm just saying, if you want to shape and sculpt your body in the most effective, efficient, fastest way possible, it's just not the, it's just not, that's not what it is. It's more effective route.

Much more. But if you like doing it, there's not a problem. And I know a lot of people listening, you're like, oh, I do Pilates and it kicks my butt. It's so hard. And I dared you to try the class because it would kick you, and you know what, yeah, it would. It's a hard class.

We've done them. Actually, we took a class down the street over here. We did like a bar class and the girl teaching it. Obviously took a, good look at us, it's like I'm gonna kick these guys out. And made us do all these, and it is difficult. It makes them look silly. It does fatigue the body, but it does not change the body

visibly, nearly as fast as a full range of motion, traditional resistance type training. So those workouts, if you only have three days a week to dedicate to working out, and you could really care less about the modality, and you're like, well, you know, Pilates, take it or leave it, I just wanted to do the most effective thing, I don't have a lot of time,

skip those female women targeted classes, and instead go to the gym and lift heavy. I want to touch on the band exercises, because we did a recent trainer seminar, and I was talking with somebody afterwards about this Because this is something that I saw that was really common in the you know men's physique and the bikini bodybuilding world The bands got really popular and it became this thing that they just they do all these exercises banded and then they or they superset All these glued exercises in between good exercises banded, and then they, or they superset all these glued exercises in between good exercises like squatting and deadlifting.

And what I see them doing is I see them get under the squat rack, they squat, which is awesome. And then right afterwards they go over and they do these banded two walks like crazy, or they do these jump squats, and then they go back to the squats and they do this little superset back and forth. And what I tried to explain to this girl that we were talking to that was wanting to

build her glutes was I said, you'd be far better off. So here's what's great about these isolation exercises, these banded two was the two walks are great because they incorporate the glute meat, which is a common area in your butt that gets kind of deactivated or that people don't utilize as much. Like you have three parts of the glute and the glute mead is responsible for that external rotation of the femur and it's just a push. Turn your foot out. Yeah, where you rotate your feet out and we just we tend not to do it. It's an area that because we don't do a lot of movement in the transverse plane as we get older, it gets dormant.

It just, it does, and so doing these side walks with the tube lights that area up and you feel this burn and you get this soreness that you haven't felt in forever. So then you assume that, oh my god, I'm building all this muscle and I'm like, well, there's some value to the tube walk to turn on that area. And to get as a primer and to wake that area up. But what you don't want to do is to superset it and do so much of it in between your squatting and deadlifting that it fatiques you a little bit so you can't lift your, your, the most amount of weight on the deadlift or the squat. You'd be better off doing the tube walking as a primer to wake up the glute mead so that

your brain goes, Oh, okay, there's that muscle that needs to be turned on and it's awake and then you go into a squat or a basic strength squatting, you know, sort of set where there's five sets or three sets of squatting or deadlifting and you're giving yourself adequate rest between and you're not super-setting with anything else. That person is going to be able to load more because she's going to be able to load more. She in turn then will build the glutes better

than doing all these superset kickback band walk type exercises in between. Speaking of squats and deadlifts, I've heard this come out of, and I've heard men say this as well, in particular men who compete in physique, you know, type competitions. But I've heard more often than not everyday women talk about deadlifts and squats and say things like, well, don't, won't that give me a really big waste?

Like, doesn't that make my waist any bigger? And I know where that, that myth kind of comes from. I mean, you look at pictures of heavyweight power lifters and old school lifters and they did have big waist, but it was mainly because they were fat, right? They had big, big bellies. It wasn't big. Because, yeah, and those exercises do activate the muscles of the core in particular of the obliques, but the worst case scenario thing that'll happen

from doing squats and deadlifts real heavy in terms of your waist is you're just gonna build nice looking core muscles as a result. The last thing you should worry about is having a bigger waist from doing these extremely effective exercises. Also keep this in mind, and this is an interesting

thing that you wanna maybe pay attention to. We've established this now, there's been studies done over and over on this particular thing where they've identified this kind of ideal hip to waist ratio that both men and women find most aesthetic and attractive in women. Now here's the kicker, the size of the hips and the size of the waist varies from culture to culture, but the ratio is around the same. I can't remember what that number,

what that ratio is, but there's a ratio that we've identified regardless of if a woman is 100 pounds or 170 pounds, that both men and women seem to find the most aesthetic. And studies have shown that when women have this hip to race ratio, their odds of having a successful child birth and a healthy baby are higher. So there's a reason why we find certain things,

you know, attractive or aesthetic, it's because it signals fertility. So let's say that you're squatting in deadlifting a lot and you grow the size of your butt by an inch. It just gets rounder and higher and it grows an inch. But you grow your waist by one fifth of an inch. So your waist got bigger, but guess what got better?

Your hip to waist ratio. So in reality, even if it did increase the size of your waist, aesthetically speaking, you're gonna have better proportions and look better. So even if it did make your waist bigger, which it most likely will not, even if it did, it's gonna offset it by the size that you're gonna add and the shape that you're gonna add

to your hips and your butt and your legs, and you're gonna have a better ratio with better aesthetics. So that one right there just absolutely gets on my nerves because if you're doing those exercises and you're afraid that they're gonna damage your aesthetics, you're afraid that they're gonna to damage your aesthetics, you're afraid that they're going to make you not look as good, not true at all. It'll only improve your aesthetics.

Well, this is a massive pain point still where, you know, they're marketing directly towards this with squeams and with these corsets and these things that, you know, are, you know, like that they come back from like the 20s, the 30s, like this stuff like resurfaces all over again because what does it do? It does provide that, you know, that facade of a, you know, of a smaller waste and basically what we're doing,

we're just atrophying muscles that are integral to the support of your spine. And so, you know, we're compromising that entire process just to look a certain way and provide that illusion. We're not, didn't the Kardashians at one point promote those devices? Yeah. Those the corsets or screams or whatever. Right.

I think so. And with those R's, you put them on, you wear them all day long and then wow, look, I lost size around my waist. And that's because, like Justin said, it is causing the muscles of your core to shrink and weaken, not what you want to do. Unless you want to cause major back problem risks for yourself in the future, not a good idea. There was actually one female competitor who wore one of these things to try to shrink her waist and wore it so tight because you're supposed to wear it real tight. It's like a cast, right? So it causes the muscles to shrink. So and wore it so tight because you're supposed to wear it real tight. It's like a cast, right? So it causes the muscles to shrink.

So it supports you. She actually caused an obstruction in her bowel. That's not one female competitor. That's one that you know person. That one that I know personally. And as I say, there's been stories of that happening to lots of different women that have done that. It's not a good thing.

I mean, it's literally what happens. Anybody that's had a broken bone and been in a cast or a torn ligament and had to get in a cast for something for an extended period of time and you've seen what happens, how much muscle you lose, that is exactly what's happening. You're losing all the muscles that are wrapped around your waist. And so absolutely those things work.

You will drop and answer too. And it's crazy how insane it is that we, I think some people actually know that and they still don't give a fuck. It's like, I just wanna lose the inches off my waist. I don't care that it could be dangerous for me. We gotta stop being so obsessed. Here's a big one.

And this is big for men and for women, but in particular in my experience, this is something I need to communicate more often to women. We need to get over the scale, and we need to get over sizes for a second, okay? Because the reality is this, you're not walking around, and I'm not even taking us off of looks.

Let's stay there, fine. You wanna look a particular, you wanna look good, fine. We'll stay there. You're not walking around all day long with a placard stuck to your back that tells people what size clothes you wear and your body weight. You don't do that, nobody knows. They just know what you look like, okay?

And I could take a female that's 140 pounds, that is 17% body fat, and have her stand next to 120 pound female at 30% body fat, you don't know their body weight, having to stand next to each other, not only with 140 pound female look like she's lighter because she's leaner, but she's gonna look far better. I used to love, when I used to manage gyms,

I had a lot of female trainers that worked for me, right? So guys and girls were working for me, and the female trainers because they're trainers, lifted weights, and had a lot of muscle. I worked for me, right? So guys and girls working for me. And the female trainers because they're trainers, lifted weights and had a lot of muscle. And I still love doing this. I would give someone a tour of the gym. And if it was a woman, I'd give her a tour and I'd talk about weights or whatever.

And she'd say something like, oh, I'm not interested in that. I just want to take the classes and say, well, why aren't you interested in the weights? I don't want a gain weight, I'm trying to lose weight. I don't, you know, so I'd go through my whole talk about speeding up the matavbs and whatever. Then I would call one of my female trainers on the intercom.

So I'd be like, you know, tension staff, Jennifer, please come to Sal's office. Jennifer would walk in one of my female trainers. She'd stand there and I'd tell the person sitting, you know, this potential member and I'd say, how much do you think Jennifer weighs? And they'd always be like, um, like 115, and I'd be like, um, like 115.

And I'd be like, nope, Jennifer, how much do you weigh? 145 pounds, the person sitting there would always lose their mind. That's not true. And I'd be like, yes, it is. We'd walk over to the scale, wayer, then she'd show her, she's 145 pounds, she'd leave. And then I'd look at the potential member and say,

nobody falls you around with the scale. The reason why she looks like she's 115 pounds is because she doesn't have a lot of body fat. But she's 145 pounds of muscle, which is what gives her that shape. That's why she's got those round glutes. That's why she has that nice hip to waist ratio, and that's also why she can eat 2500 calories a day and not gain a single pound. That's what we need to get over the scale and size thing.

Nobody gives a shit about that type of stuff except for you because nobody else knows it. If you are only focused on your looks, we could talk about that type of stuff, except for you, because nobody else knows it. So if you are only focused on your looks, we could talk about that later. That's a different conversation. You want to look the best, build muscle, burn body fat, stop worrying so much about the scale, stop worrying, here's another thing about size. Women's clothes are not designed for women

who have any type of athletic background, or muscle. So if you start to... That's for men, it's included. Oh, totally. So you you start to... That's where men are included. Oh, totally. Yeah, closer. Close your design for the average person. Yeah, if your butt and hamstrings grow some muscle, you're gonna look way better.

You may go up a size. We got fat mannequins now. Yeah, it's true. To be honest, you may go up a size on your clothes. What you'll find is your jeans will be loose around your waist and really tight around your thighs and your butt, but you're gonna have the proportions and the aesthetics that are gonna look healthy and also look very attractive. So we need to get off that and stop worrying so much about what the scale looks like. Here's another example. I'll tell people if someone's so obsessed with losing weight

this is one of my favorite things to say to someone. They'd be like, well, I just want to lose 20 pounds. I don't care I want to lose 20 pounds. I'm like, no problem. We'll cut your left leg off and you'll lose a lot of that weight. Instantly, obviously, it's not just the weight you wanna lose, it's the kind of weight that you wanna lose. And really, at the end of the day, does it even matter? Even if you're only focused on aesthetics, no. Nobody cares, nobody knows. It's all about the leanness, the shape, the health,

which is accomplished through it. Like I said, eating properly, lifting weights, which is accomplished through it, like I said, eating properly, lifting weights, building that muscle, and getting a fascia metabolism, which brings me to another one. Supplements, let's talk about this for a second. Now, we've talked about many times on the podcast how supplements really don't play a huge role

in your progress. Both men and women are marketed to hell with supplements and promise that they can get crazy results if they just took this fat burner or this protein powder or this new supplement. The truth is supplements account for less than 3% of your success, maybe even less than 1%. Now there is one supplement that's out there that does have some real effects. It's been studied a thousand of times. There's actually probably well over 500 peer-reviewed articles and studies done on this supplement. If you take it, it will speed up the muscle building process.

It will make you stronger. Now it's subtle, so it's not like the difference between following a crappy workout and following a good workout, but you'll gain about five pounds worth of strength on some of your lifts or two reps worth, and you will gain a little bit of muscle or you'll have that appearance of gaining muscle. And that's creatine. Creatine is a very effective supplement. A lot of women are afraid to take creatine. A lot of women think that creatine is not for women because they heard it makes you gain bloat or waterway.

Now here's the truth. Crating does for women what it does for men. It causes you to build muscle a little bit faster. The way it does this is your body takes creating and it converts it into ATP, which is one of the main sources of energy that your muscles use. Now, the more ATP that your muscles have, the more water that your muscles will also store. Now, I wanna be clear, this is not bloat. When you're bloated, that is water outside of your muscles.

That's water under your skin. It's what gets rid of definition and makes it look kinda puffy. Not the same. Water in your muscles just makes them feel fuller, more firm, and like they've built a little bit. So yes, if you take creating, you will gain a couple pounds on the scale, and yes, a lot of this weight initially

is water weight, but it's inside the muscle, and it will give you the appearance of having more tone and a little bit of a performance. And of performance boost. And in the long term, it builds more muscle. So creatine just as good for women as it is good for men. There is no difference between the two. I think if you're going to take a supplement, take creatine regardless and don't be afraid of the damn scale.

Get rid of that stupid scale. In fact, that was one of the number one things I would tell my female clients. I used to tell them, don't weigh yourself anymore. We're gonna go based off of performance. And if when I could convince people to do that, oh man, the results were just... Exceptionary too.

Oh, exception results when they would do it that way. I think a good general rule for the women that are listening is that you should already be skeptical to anything that is marketed to your sex. Work out for women, supplement for women, anything that's for women and it's marketed that way to you. I remember when we first hired our marketing team, this was one of the hardest hurdles that we had to get over was they were just so adamant about we had to do this. You can't, it doesn't matter what you guys think. It doesn't matter that this is the right way or not. It's the average consumer wants to be told that they are different and they're separate

and they're in their own niche. And the truth of the matter, when it comes to exercise and building muscle and burning body fat, we're actually not that different as far as what we should do. We are different as far as our makeup, our physiology is different, but as far as how we exercise and build muscle, we're not that different. No, and the problem is, this is it,

now this is a, we'll talk just about math when it comes to probabilities, right? If I flip a coin heads or tails, and we know that there's a 50-50 chance it's gonna be heads or it's gonna be tails. Now that might now show up if I flip it four times or three times. I may get heads all three times,

but if I flip it a million times, it's gonna be very close to 50-50. And so when it comes to probabilities, the larger the number, the more accurate probabilities start to apply. So I can say generally speaking, when it comes to men and women, that women tend to be more interested in these types of things and men tend to be more interested in these type of things, boys tend to be more interested in this.

And there's lots of psychology studies that show certain things. And they seem to be pretty conclusive, but things tend to change with studies. But up till now, there seems to be some some conclusiveness with these studies. But what happens when I go down to the individual? If I take a girl, and I think to myself, well, studies show that girls are more interested than this, and I just start training her and teaching her in that way, I may be doing the exact wrong thing because she's an individual. So when it comes to fitness, you may read studies that show that women do, you know, we found

that and these studies women tend to do this a little bit, their bodies respond this way or men respond. But at the end of the day, when you go down to the individual, none of it matters at all. When I train somebody, a client, I don't, male female, it doesn't matter to me at all. I'm asking you about your, your fitness history. I'm asking you what your goals are. I'm doing an assessment. It's all based completely on your individual body.

So when it comes to workouts and whatever, those generalizations that you hear, throw them all completely out the window. The only generalizations you should pay attention to are what kind of exercises tend to be the most effective to get people to build the most muscle, because whether you wanna lose weight, gain weight, tighten sculpt and shape, get stronger or whatever,

you wanna do the most effective exercises. Whatever your goal is, the most effective exercises will get you there the fastest. And try them out. And again, as an individual, if let's say you squat, because you heard squats are the best, but squats, you can't do them, because you got poor mobility, don't do squats, right?

At the end of the day, look at yourself as an individual. But generally speaking, lift heavy weights, that's gonna get you there the fastest, do those big gross motor movements, those are gonna get you there the fastest, and ignore most of the things that tell you this is for women These are the workouts for women. These are what's gonna change the length of your muscles not stuff. It's all total and complete bullshit Consider the long game. It's all about sustainability as well

That's it and with that go to mind pump free calm and download our guides They're all absolutely free. You can also find us all on Instagram. You can find me at mind pump sal You can find Justin at mind Pump Sal. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin and you can find the ever eloquent 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 mapses Maps and Obolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Esthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

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