Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1085: Build an Amazing Body with No Gym

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin discuss how you can build an impressive body even if you don't have access to a gym, barbells or dumbbells. Busting the common myth that you can’t build a great physique without access to a lot of equipment. (1:49) How to scale exercises to keep you in those challenging rep ranges. (10:05) The importance of correctional movements to progress and prevent injuries. (14:43) The significance of the AMP sessions. (19:26) The difficulty of working out at home without equipment. (23:00) The KEY equipment needed for MAPS Anywhere + the importance of injury prevention. (24:50) The biggest barriers from keeping people from working out consistently. (29:42) The value of adding MAPS Anywhere to your current training routine. (33:40) Breaking down all aspects of MAPS Anywhere. (38:30) Don’t let the fact that you travel a lot or have limited access to a gym from preventing you from reaching your fitness goals. (42:15) What exercises SHOULD you include in your routine if working out from home or on the road? (43:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS Anywhere ½ off!! **Code “ANYWHERE50” at checkout** Which Is Better: Low Reps Or High Reps? - Mind Pump Rubberbanditz Resistance Band Set Mind Pump TV - YouTube Activate Your Glutes & Accelerate Butt Development with Butterfly Floor Bridges Correcting Upper Cross Syndrome to Improve Posture & Health-- Prone Cobra 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 one of the biggest challenges that we encounter as trainers is people who say they don't have time to go to the gym or it's hard to get to the gym or they don't have access to a lot of equipment. Can I still achieve great results without any equipment? Do I have enough access to variety? How do I work out when I don't have equipment?

In other words, I want to get in shape, but I want to do so at home on the road or just without a gym. And so in this episode, we talk all about that. We talk all about the challenges that come along with working out without equipment, some of the benefits to working out without equipment. And at the end of the episode, so if you listen to the whole thing, at the end of the episode,

we actually give you our favorite body weight or no equipment needed exercises. So even if you just listen to the whole episode, get to the very end, you'll get a good, basic at-home workout in terms of the exercises broken down for you that you can follow on your own and get great results. Now, before the episode starts, I want to remind everybody maps anywhere, which is our program that we designed. We wrote the whole thing out. So it's all broken down for you without equipment. So everything in there requires no exercise equipment, except for resistance bands and maybe

a stick. That program is 50% off. All you got to do is get the discount. Let's go to maps white.com. That's MAPSWHITE.com and use the code anywhere 50 that's A and Y, W H E R E, 50 for the discount. Again, there's 72 hours left for this promotion. There's a common myth that I think we should talk about and address.

What is that, Sal? In this episode, what do you mean? There's so many, like which one today? Well, there's a couple things. One, and they're related. One is that I can't build an incredible looking and performing physique without access to a lot of equipment. Like that's a big one, right?

Like if I don't have access to work out equipment, I can't really take my body to advanced levels or I can't look the way that I really want to look as if it's a subpar. It's just not as effective. So that's, you know, that's a big one, that's a big myth. And then the second one is that those workouts are boring, they're not as fun, I don't have as much variety. And I think it's connected to the first part, which is that they're just not as good, they're just not as good.

If you want to get the best workouts, you have to have access to a lot of equipment. I remember the first time I really was faced with that paradigm and it was early on in my career. It's when I first became a manager of trainers. I was young. I was only 18 years old. And one of the first things that I did when I got into that position of management is I looked to hire new trainers.

And I remember I got this resume and the resume looked really good. I called the guy up. The guy comes in and he was just he had just incredibly impressive physique. Just an amazing impressive. The kind that you can tell on a t-shirt is really, really well developed. And I thought this guy must be a competitive amateur natural bodybuilder. He wasn't massive, but he did have this really, really defined looking arms and forearms, and you could really tell. So as we were talking, asked him about his fitness history. And he said, oh, he was a competitive gymnast.

And I said, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Well anyway, later on, I would observe his workouts and I noticed that he used almost no equipment in the gym. When he would work out, he would use the dip bar, the pull-up bar and the floor. And sometimes not neither the pull-up bar or the dip bar. It was a lot of stuff on the floor. And every once in a while, he grabbed dumbbells and barbells.

I never really saw him use equipment. I took him aside and I said, I never see you do curls or overhead tricep extensions. Like, do you really not do those exercises? And he goes, no, man, I built my body with almost no equipment, you know, as a gymnast, I use a lot of rings and I use the, you know, the, what do they call it, the pommel horse. And it was all my body weight. And he goes, and I've done lots of weights. And I do like the results I get from weights because it body weight and he goes, and I've done lots of weights, and I do like the results I get from weights, because it's different.

He goes, but I grew up that way, and this is the way I train, and it really impressed me that you could achieve a physique that way without, and it was just a very muscular physique, and this is, you know, back when I was younger, when I really wanted just to look muscular. And that's when I started to kind of revisit

the value of equipment-free, you know, type of workouts. Yeah, I think that a gymnast is the perfect example of, you know, a visual of somebody who can achieve a really, you know, impressive physique just from bodyweight training alone and granted it's a very high skilled pursuit in terms of like what they're doing training wise, but I think that there's a lot of challenges in terms of like how to structure a solid type of a workout with no weights. It is advanced, but they progress themselves to get to that advanced work. That's definitely a way to do it. Yeah, exactly. I thought too.

Well, yeah, gymnasts are doing iron cross and muscle ups and all that stuff. But they started somewhere. And they progressed themselves to this point. The other time this paradigm, I faced this paradigm, was when I grand opened one of the gyms that I grand opened. And what happens when you grand open a big box is, there's a couple phases of opening that they do,

they do pre-sale where you sit outside and you sell memberships before the gym opens. And then they'll typically open like part of the gym. That way they can have people start to work out. And this one location, they opened up the cardio, but the rest of the gym had it opened yet. But we were still allowed to sell personal training. And so I had a meeting with the cardio, but the rest of the gym had it opened yet. But we were still allowed to sell personal training. And so I had a meeting with the trainers because a lot of the trainers like, well, how are

we going to train people? I wouldn't have equipment. And I'm like, we're going to use bands and we're going to use body weight. And the irony of this was the clients loved it. The results they got were phenomenal. You had to get more creative, of course, which I'd like to talk about because our challenge is with designing a workout without equipment. People loved it and they got were phenomenal. You had to get more creative of course, which I'd like to talk about because our challenge is with designing a workout without equipment. People loved it and they got great results. And then when the rest of the gym opened, a lot of these clients and trainers

just kept training the way they were working out before. Well, that's interesting. And I've talked about this on the show before about taking a year basically off of lifting weights and focusing completely on body weight training alone. And there was a little bit of internal conflict in terms of like, I mean, am I gonna keep going? Is my body gonna, you know, am I gonna lose muscles? Or am I gonna look completely different? Like, what are the detriments that I'm gonna face with this?

And to be completely honest, maybe I didn't gain a substantial size like like muscle-wise, but there was so many benefits I got out of that experience that actually fed back into when I transitioned back to lifting weights that I became a big advocate to a bodyweight training and there are definite levels of intensity that you can create within your workouts to challenge you.

And also to look different and change your, and alter your physique along the process. I remember when we wrote maps anywhere together. This was one of my favorite ones that we did. I've enjoyed the process of writing all these programs with you guys, but maps anywhere, one of the things that I enjoyed the most about that was it really took me back

to being a personal trainer in a gym, because real quick, if you scale inside of a gym and you have eight to 10 clients a day, you have to train clients during the five to nine PM. And the prime time. Yeah, the prime hours when everybody is in the gym, every trainer is in the gym with every client they have, and if you require equipment and weights

to do all of your exercise programming, you're gonna have a tough time. And quickly I figured this out and had to get creative and learn how to program body weight type of exercises and exercises that's required little to no equipment because what I found out was like, man, if I tried to fight for machines or equipment, I found I was standing around with my clients more than I was

putting good work in. And so I used to just take a client over to a corner somewhere and it literally would be like a 5 by 5 corner with nothing but a mat, a pair of dumbbells or a band or just their body weight. They did the same thing. And I would train them for the entire hour right there. And clients did love it. The clients loved it. And it just, it stretched me as a trainer too to learn how to get creative, know how to regress and progress that because obviously what I'm doing in that little corner with my 65-year-old

lady is different than what I was probably doing with my 25-year-old young man in college. So learning to a scale and adjust accordingly to the people. So that's what I enjoyed about maps. Anywhere when we wrote that was learning to take all that stuff into consideration. Like, okay, how do we write a program that is all either bodyweight or band limited weights, right? No weights or no equipment required and give somebody at all stages a really good workout.

And I think that's where a lot of programming that's at home or equipment free where they fail. It's pretty generic. It's like, you know, here it is. It's all plyometric type work and it's all kind of the same level, same intensity where we still took a lot of the core principles of all the maps programming and phased it correctly and scaled the intensity and volume. That's a great point because a point because the way that most at home

or equipment free workouts scale is simply about, you go from body weight exercises to jumping to like extreme difficulty and lots of intensity. Scaling is, I would say, one of the more difficult aspects of training without equipment. And here's why, okay. If I'm doing a leg press machine and I get stronger, how do I scale that?

I just had weight. Super basic, super easy. If I'm doing a body weight squat and 10 reps is hard for me, how do I scale that? I do more reps, but at some point, which at some point you do a hundred of those. Yeah, it seems obvious. Am I going to sit and do 500 squats of body weight

because that's how I've had to scale it? Well, at some point, you get diminishing returns because as we've discussed in previous podcasts, there's effective rep ranges. And they're quite wide. I mean, everything from two reps up to 25 or 30 reps is really can be quite effective at building muscle and shaping the body. But once you get past that starts

to become more aerobic. So if I'm seeing they're doing 500, you know, reps of body weight squats, I might as well be running outside and doing cardio. I'm not getting the strength building or resist or the benefits from resistance training because I've scaled past the point of its effectiveness. And so that can become a challenge. It's like, okay, I can do pushups. I could do a million of them now. Now what do I do now?

And a lot of people don't have the creativity of the understanding of how to scale exercises to keep them in those challenging rep ranges. Now, with the example of a squat, if we were to use just a squat of in terms of how we would scale it, you could slow the reps down, you could do single leg squats and variations of those. You don't have to go straight from a bodyweight squat to a pistol squat, but you can go from a bodyweight squat to a Bulgarian split stance,

then a Bulgarian split stance with less assistance from the back leg. Then you move to a version of maybe on a box where you're using just one leg, then you can move down to a pistol. And a pistol squat is damn hard. I don't care how strong you are, you're not doing 500 of those. Well, you can even just increase your own internal tension. You can squeeze your body with your own intent more

in the exercise, which makes it more intense, more difficult. And that's just a mentality, I think, that not a lot of people realize, will also contribute to mobility, will contribute to generating more force when you actually add load again. So there's elements like that, I think that a lot of people don't really understand isometrics or how to create more muscle tension throughout your body, just doing like a lung, a squad, a pushup, your staple sort of exercises,

we can make a more difficult internally. Right, and when you're trying to scale a workout that doesn't include equipment, you have to fight the urge, it's very tempting. You have to fight the urge to throw in plyometrics, okay? Because plyometrics are extremely effective for a very narrow band of individual. They're effective at improving explosivity,

which mainly is applicable to sports and there's a very very small percentage of people who Will benefit from plyometrics in terms of the risk versus benefit and plyometrics are often applied the wrong way often times plyometrics are done to fatigue as a way to make the workout intense. Biometrics, when done properly, look more like an explosive, you know, jump, for example, rest, weight, compose yourself, explosive, jump again, rest, weight, you know, gather yourself and repeat the game. Yeah, to gain that explosive output,

not jumping until you get tired. You have to fight that urge and with a lot of equipment-free programs, that's where people tend to progress. I do push-ups, okay, what's the next level? Jumping push-ups. Plometrics have a high risk to reward ratio. You can get, there's a lot of potential for injury.

I'll tell you what right now, of all the clients that I train are very small percentage that it apply as on and unfortunately most equipment for e-type programs jump right to apply as no pun intended because it's an easy way to make workouts harder. There are more appropriate and more effective ways to progress the intensity of work.

Well, not only that, but very few at home workout programs address like correctional stuff. You don't see a lot of emphasis. Most programs period. Right, right, right. No, because it's even more challenging there. It's already one thing to address it when you have the gym and machines and equipment, but to find ways to incorporate movements that we know are the most common areas where people need to be addressed.

For example, like a upper cross-endron, we talk about that on the podcast all the time, which is the rounded shoulders and the forward head. One of the most common issues. You could say today, probably everybody has this, it's just a matter of how bad it is. And there's movements in there that address this. And it's funny too, because we're talking,

they were doing this episode, which will be great, because I'll post it on my Instagram, this coming week, I did a video of a movement like Pro and Cobra, which, you know, I remember when, as a trainer, when I first learned this exercise, I remember learning it, and then I remember never really doing it with any of my clients.

I was like, this is like a young trainer. Didn't know that. Is that burning tons of calories? Right, it wasn't burning tons of calories. It wasn't super challenging for clients and it didn't seem unique and different. So I moved it right along from it. But the importance of a movement like that that addresses the post-ear chain like that that because when you look at somebody who's got the rounded shoulders like that, all those muscles in the front on your anterior delts, your chest, they're all tight, overactive,

and those muscles that are responsible for pulling the body back into good alignment are underdeveloped and are underactive. And those ones are the ones that we need to address and do exercises for. And it's tough to do that when you are only doing bodyweight movements. You have to be very creative to make sure you address all that stuff. And that's an area that I think I was really proud that we made sure to incorporate that into maps anywhere. Yes, and one thing that is important to communicate is it's not just important to have a correctional phase or correctional component to your workouts to prevent things like injury

and to make it, you know, your movement better. It's also important to get you results faster and more consistently. The number one thing that'll prevent you by far from progressing is poor movement patterns, which lead to injuries. That's obvious, right? You hurt yourself, you can't work out,

or you can't work out as hard, or you can't do the most effective exercises. You're not gonna progress as fast. But let's say you're lucky. Let's say you're one of those lucky individuals that you just keep doing your workout, you keep having bad movement patterns, but you can keep working out and you haven't hurt yourself.

Well, here's a deal with that. An exercise done with better mobility, with better and greater ranges of motion that you have control over, is a more effective version of that exercise. So, to put it plainly, if you can do a full squat with good control, good mobility, good tension, you'll get better results from that than you will

from a not as full squat because of poor mobility and poor connection. So correctional exercise, even if you're not afraid, even if you're 20 years old right now and you're listening, I'm not worried about hurting myself, I feel fine, I feel indestructible, which you're not, but fine, whatever, you'll get better results if you move better as well. So it's not just about preventing injury. It's also about getting you there faster and keeping you there longer. That's the importance of correctional exercise.

It took me years to realize that. I always thought it was like, oh, you don't hurt cool. We don't need a correctional exercise or, oh, you're not old. We don't need to do correctional exercise. Then I started realizing that when I would apply it to people, man, they would just get better results. Their bench press would go up faster.

Like, for example, if you have forward shoulder and you're really, you know, a heavy bench press is important to you. You want to be able to bench press a lot and you have forward shoulder. Correcting your forward shoulder will make you stronger in your bench press. You know, if you want to develop amazing glutes and your squat is in super, super great, but you do them anyway and you're not hurting yourself and you're young. Correcting the imbalances that prevent you from doing a perfect squat or a great squat or going to make your squat that much more effective. Well, it's ignorant to think that you know your average person or even like an athlete

isn't going to have all these repetitive patterns that are going to end up into like a problem, a movement problem that you're going to face whether or not that's going to end up into a problem, a movement problem that you're going to face, whether or not that's going to lead towards an injury or just a lack of range of motion or something that's not ideal in a movement pattern. So to be able to continually address that by adding in these corrective exercises is crucial towards your long-term success. Absolutely. I'm also really proud of how we created AMP sessions in here.

I think this is another thing that was really unique and special about this program. To your point, Sal, you mentioned earlier about the leg press. How do you scale somebody on a leg press? Okay, it's very easy. You could do 150 pounds this week and then next week you can do 200 pounds. I mean, you can go for a very long time just adding weight or regressing it by pulling weight off. So if I have two people that own the same program and I say leg press on there, I can have a 60 year old person do it and only do it with 50 pounds and I can have a young,

strong person that's 20 something years old, do it and do 300 pounds. And it's for both of them, right? Equally, it'll be challenging. Well, how do you do something like that when you have a bodyweight, you know, bodyweight dominant program? How do you scale that for a different individuals? And that's where the AMP sessions came in that were so unique that I really, really liked

that we did where you have these different levels of intensity and difficulty that we allow where you have these different levels of intensity and difficulty that we allow the flexibility of the client to be able to pick. Like, okay, if you know you're a first time coming through this program or you're an advanced age and you need to do something that's a little bit lower intensity, you'll choose from this category of exercises. If you're somebody who's more advanced, you've been training for a long time, you've done at home workouts,

and you're at the much higher level, you have exercises you can choose from there. So we have scaled it that way too, that allows all levels to follow this program, and it still be very challenging. It was important that we did it that way, because I think, again, like you have to get creative

when you're creating this workout with just body weight exercises because like you could just go scale the way easy. It's like, oh, I'm gonna go get a little bit heavier weight and that's how I'm gonna progress. But we give all the examples of like, well, on a scale, we had to discuss these exercises too. Do you think this one would be in this category

of being in like a little bit more intense than this version? So we put a lot of thought into that to make sure that it was appropriate for somebody that was like really advanced or somebody intermediate or somebody that's just kind of coming out of being beginner. Yeah, it's funny. It's funny to just stay on the topic of maps anywhere. That was the first program that we ever created where a lot of the accolades that we got, a lot of the positive reviews, came from personal trainers. I was one of the first times we put something out in personal trainers,

we're writing us and saying, oh man, you guys did that really, really well, you programed it right. And I think I know why. If I think of all the categories of workout programs that are out there, and if I break them up into two categories, workout programs that involve gym equipment and workout programs that involve just being at home or working at home, I can say with full confidence that the at-home workouts generally are much more terribly written. And I think mainly it has to do with the fact that they're hitting a different demographic, right? Like they're aiming for people who are beginners who don't have or maybe intimidated by the gym. If you write a workout for people with gym access, you're kind of assuming that they already work out in a gym. When you write a workout for people at home, a lot of these fitness program

manufacturers or whatever, they're assuming that they don't work out at all. And so all the energy goes into just making it super hard, sweaty, and burn a lot of calories. And so it was a space that was kind of easy for us to tackle in terms of making a superiorly program workout. Now, of course, that doesn't mean it wasn't challenging for us. There are things you can utilize at home

that really augment your workout. I guess one of the, I don't know, I guess this is actually true. One of the difficulties of working out without equipment is variety. Now we know that the body to an extent thrives on some novel stimulus. Now it's not everything. So I don't want to confuse people.

And I want people to think in the muscle confusion, bullshit principle or whatever that. It always has to be different all the time for your body to respond. That's not true. You can actually do the same exercises in a particular way and get better. For a while and get better at the skill of them for a long time, depending on how difficult the exercise is. For example, a bodyweight exercise that's relatively high skill would be a handstand pushup. You could practice handstand pushups and do handstand pushups if you've never done them before for a few years and consistently progressing it stronger because it's such

a technical exercise that it will take you a long time to practice and master. Yeah, you might spend three months just learning how to do it. Just getting into the position. That's right. Right. Which has some benefits to just doing that. That's right. But that being said, at some point you want some variety, there's got, your body does respond to novel stimulus.

And when you walk into a big gym, you have 150 pieces of equipment to choose from. You have dumbbells and barbells and cables to choose from. So the variety's easier, I should say. You don't need to be as creative, especially even if you're a beginner, you can walk in and be like, well, I did this bicep machine.

Now I'm gonna do this bicep machine, or I'm gonna try, I'm gonna look at all these 10 chest machines and pick these three for the next four weeks and then do those three for the next four. So it's kind of easier, it's laid out for you. Variety and that novel stimulus, is a little bit more difficult with bodyweight exercises.

Now, the truth is, there's a lot of different bodyweight exercises. I could list as many bodyweight exercises out there as there are machines that are out there. Not only that, but if you have access to extremely inexpensive at-home equipment, like resistance bands, or inexpensive. You could get really good quality,

like the best quality resistance bands won't cost you more than $70 to $100. I don't know if any resistance bands that are way more than that. And you can get some really inexpensive ones that'll do the job as well. You might have to replace them after a few months of heavy use. That'll cost you about 20 bucks.

Resistance bands add almost infinite number of variety of different exercises. Emulates cables, right? Yeah, especially if you can get the ones like we partnered with a company that rubber band. It's they have an attachment for the door that can go wedged into the door. So now you have a new anchor point too,

to pull from, which that's another difficulty with at home training with rubber bands, even, is that you're not really, sometimes you don't have something to hang it around. Right, right. And so that becomes a difficulty, but you always have a door. So they solve that problem.

But there's also, there's a couple other pieces of equipment that were really like household items that we threw in there as well. One was a stick and this was something that I was experimenting with quite a bit back when I was messing around with an invention idea. And we incorporated some of those tension moves into this program, which I was actually excited about because I was curious to see people's reaction to it because I knew it is something you immediately feel.

You get that feedback by pressing into the wall or pressing into the floor to create tension. To create tension. It really helps add in, it gives your body a way to understand how to create that internal. Yeah, because creating internal tension, if you know how to do that and you start to master that, you can attack and target and stimulate any muscle on your body. Why is that important?

We'll think about it. You have a particular way you wanna sculpt your body. There are areas of your body that you wanna develop. Some exercises, some of the most effective exercises, don't just work the muscle that you're trying to target. They work a lot of different muscles. And if you don't have the ability to activate those muscles very well, then you're going to develop

the other supporting cast of muscles. And you may not get the results that you want. Using a device like a stick, literally, it's a stick, like a broomstick, there are ways you can use the stick to irradiate your body, activate the central nervous system, and create tension with your body.

Then when you, that alone, by the way, would build muscle and strength, but then when you combine it with full range of motion, exercises, I mean, the results of phenomenal. Not only that, but the entry prevention that comes from that. This is something that I used to always try and teach clients. It's why when Justin brought this element, and I remember we were first testing and doing

a lot of stuff with him, and I was like, oh man, I absolutely love this. Because when I think back to all the clients and the injuries that they had, they were always these weird, you know, freak accidents, lifting the dog food bag up or gardening outside or, you know, just rotating to the, just real basic type movements. And a lot of that is because people don't know how to connect to all those internal muscles and use that internal weight belt to support themselves when they do a rotational movement or when they hinge over and they pick something up. And sometimes we take that for granted as trainers because we've trained ourselves so long to do that that, hey, when I do pick up a laundry basket or do something that's

weighted more than 10 pounds and I pick it up off to immediately brace. Right. I know to brace. I know to brace and it just happens automatically. Right. Because I've trained that for a really long time. Well, not a lot of clients understand that. And so I love incorporating an element like that

that helps teach people how to connect to that. And the use of the stick really helps show and help people make that connection to all those internal muscles. That really supports your body. So when you think of the average client who, yeah, we all wanna look a little better, lose some body fat or build a little bit of muscle, but at the end of who yeah, we all want to you know look a little better or lose some body fat Or build a little bit muscle, but at the end of the day

We all want to feel better and definitely want to protect ourselves as we get older and that to me is one of the coolest parts about that Peace that was added and Jeff Justin was definitely responsible for adding a lot into the into the program when it came to that And I just love that because like I said, when I think back to all my clients, it was always those little things. I rarely ever had a client. I don't think I ever had a client who was dead lifting 100 and some pounds and I hurt them or they were squatting. It's never that.

It's always some little thing outside. It's a natural unconscious movement. Yes. That tend to cause problems with people. The other thing is this, and I think this is a really important thing to consider, that sometimes we tend to forget because our mindset may be so different. But if you think of the average person who's trying to work out consistently and make fitness

a part of their life long term, if you think of the average person, one of the most difficult things for them, one of the biggest challenges is being able to find the time to be consistent with their workouts. The day can get away from you, if you have kids, maybe you travel for work. There can be barriers, can be placed in front of you in order for you to get your workout. And it can be, it can make it very difficult to work out even just three days a week. And so one thing that I learned as a trainer years ago that really helped people become consistent was to remove the barriers, get rid of those barriers or, or, or leave as little as possible between the client and their workout. And to be quite

honest with, with everybody listening right now, one of the biggest barriers to getting people to work out consistently is the fact that they have to drive to a different place, put on workout clothes, get in there, do the workout, it's crowded, whatever, then shower, whatever, drive home, and that extra time it takes to go somewhere else, to fine parking, do all that stuff. Sometimes is enough

to tip the person over the scale into from, I'm gonna work out to, you know what, I'm just not gonna work out. And if you're listening right now, this is totally normal. I know exactly what that feels like where you're like, okay, I'm gonna work out. I kind of don't feel like it, but you know, I know I should. And it's like, oh man, you know what? All those barriers in front of my way, I think I'm gonna skip that workout. Well, I'll tell you something right now, if we can get rid of those barriers, if your workout is anywhere,

if your workouts at home or at the office, or while you're traveling, now those barriers are out of the way. Now, it's harder for that side of you to convince you to not work out, or it's harder for it for things to get in your way. When your workout is wherever you're at, you can literally do the workout. I know this because I have a garage gym, for example,

and I know I don't have to like change my shirt. I don't have to even brush my teeth. I can just go in the garage and work out. And I can feel. And I can feel how much more consistent that almost makes me, even me, somebody who's a fitness enthusiast. So you eliminate those barriers. One of the greatest benefits to having a good,

effective workout, a long term effective workout that requires no gym access is there's less barriers between you and consistency. And if you're listening right now, and the number one reason why you're not where you wanna be in your physique, your performance, your fat loss and your fitness, if one of the number one reasons why you're not there

is inconsistency and I can guarantee you right now, majority of you, it's one of the top, it's top three. Then what you wanna do is is you want to create a solution that increases the odds that you're going to be consistent. And one of those things is make it so that you can do this damn workout wherever you want. And again, a lot of you may not know what to do. We created a program that outlines all that.

But it's one of the greatest benefits to out-home workouts. This is the tool in your toolbox. This is something that I feel like anybody can benefit from learning if you are in that situation. Again, if you're an experienced lifter, if you're an athlete, if you think you know what you're doing in the gym already, just to have that backup plan. Even if it's a plan B plan, this is something that's still going to propel you forward. It's going to maintain what you've been working on. It's very complimentary.

I always made sure that I had like either as like an outside workout or some kind of workout at my house that I could always just get up and go do just for that specific reason of consistency. Well, I know we're talking about building an amazing body with no gym and we've, we've touched on maps anywhere and like, you know, how and why we programmed it. But I think it's also important to note like how this program is used with people and one of the things isn't just, yes, you can build an incredible physique just by doing it at homework out. But I also think there's a lot of value to those people that

are listening right now that train inside of a gym, but still utilizes program. And we have quite a few people that use maps anywhere, like a D-load. And this is just for variety. Yeah, this is kind of more how I use this. Like I use this maps anywhere a lot when either we travel or as like a D-load or variety into my training routine, because really, really easily I can get stuck in the,

you know, stuff that I like get stuck in the, you know, stuff that I like to do in training inside the gym. And so making sure that, oh, I checked myself like, oh, wow, it's been a long while since I put a lot of focus on bodyweight type of training, you know, let's pull myself out of this current program that I'm running right now. And let's run a two to four weeks of all bodyweight training. And just the way you feel when you pull away from the weights for a while, the difference that I feel on my joints,

and you're always intimidated to do that, or a guy like me is intimidated to do that because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose all this muscle. Like, oh God, if I can't squat my 300 pounds or I can't be bench pressing 200 pounds, I'm gonna also just, all this muscle's gonna fall off my body. And every time I do it, it never happens. And I always come back stronger

and feeling better than before. But there's a lot of value in that using it like that also. Yeah, and oftentimes you build more muscle because it's a different stimulus. And here's the other thing too, the thing I like about body weight movements, especially as they become more and more advanced, they increase your body awareness way more than weight.

Here's where body weight movements really shine. Is they give you a higher level of proprioceptive ability. Now, proprioceptive ability is your ability to, you kind of know where your body is in space. This is why fighters, boxers, wrestlers, jujitsu guys. Now they lift weights, but they also do more, typically body weight type movements than they do weights, because it translates to sports quite effectively.

It makes you more body aware. You know how to move your body. Like if I do a, again, if I do an overhead press, I need to brace my whole body. If I do a handstand push up, I need to brace my whole body differently, and I need to add an element of balance, and I need to be able to be okay

with pressing my body while it's upside down. So think about that for a second. Your body's upside down. I have to be able to exert this pressing force while I'm oriented to the world differently. So weights, you tend to orient the weights differently. Okay? When you're using your body, it's your body that you're orientating differently.

And that's a skill. And like all skills, you can develop that skill, become better at it. And when you become better at it, your body progresses. This is why I think if you're listening and you only ever training the gym, try this out. Just do two weeks or two to four weeks, two to four weeks of no weights, just body weight movements. Watch what happens to your body when you go back to the weights. one of the biggest benefits was body awareness. It was going through that old process for a year of training just body weight was just how connected I was to my body and how in space I was familiar with more ranges of motion,

which if you think about when most people get injured, it's usually in a place in a body position that their body doesn't really know how to get out of it, right? Like I'm or I don't know how to connect to that certain range of motion that now my leg is in And that's gonna leave me compromised and so to be able to take that time and put your body in certain positions that are different than Your typical ones of just lifting weights is massively beneficial Yeah, and this is the example of like the super strong bodybuilder lots of muscle lots of strength But they can't like lift their body over a wall or if they do they tend to hurt themselves or it's very very difficult versus somebody who's also very strong

Who practices body weight movements probably orient themselves pretty well to the wall and can jump over the wall. Now, what benefits is that to the average person? Well, let me tell you, it feels different. It feels different to walk around and move around with that level of body awareness. And that level of body awareness contributes positively to traditional resistance training workouts, which I think it's important for everybody to go through a cycle of body weight training.

I'm going through all the exercises too. And one of the things that, you know, thinking of like the difficulties of riding a program or following a program that's at home also is addressing every muscle group, right? It's, you know, some exercises are pretty basic that most people understand like, oh, if I wanna do legs doing a squat or lung is pretty obvious It's, you know, some exercises are pretty basic that most people understand like, oh, if I want to do legs doing a squat or a lunge

is pretty obvious, but, you know, hey, if I want to address my rear delts or my shoulders or, you know, all the different muscle groups on your body, I think that's what was really unique also. I think that's what took a lot of expert programming in this too, because I was going through, and I'll just, I'll read them to everybody

so they can kind of get an idea of the type of movements that are inside these. So I'll go through like a foundation. So we have the foundational days. So you have your foundational days, and then you have your amp sessions, and we have two phases inside there. And just to hear some of the first phase stuff.

So you have your stationary lunge, you have a single lake toe touch, you have a prone cobra, you have a stabilization push up, you have a one arm band row, you have a full plank to a downward dog, you have a plank toe touch, you have a prone cobra, you have a stabilization pushup, you have a one arm band row, you have a full plank to a downward dog, you have a plank shoulder touch, a hollow body rocker, you have body weight squat, single leg hip bridges, maps handcuffs, you have maps posture pushups, you have band straight arm pull down, you have band pull apart, the perfect windmill, ISO dead.

You're hurting everything. Maps roll over. Yes. It's just a, it's such a cool, unique program. And then you get into like your AMP sessions, man. The AMP sessions, there's so many different exercises that we included in there to intensify all that. You can pick from.

And then on top of that, we have all the suspension trainers. Oh, I forgot all about suspension trainers. Yeah, that was something too. I loved experimenting on, especially to intensify these types of exercises, to add that element of gravitational forces, and to make the angles a little more extreme, the something like a suspension trainer TRX really is a great tool for that.

And it's very versatile. There's lots of different exercises now that I can either regress or progress by using a suspension trainer and use that anchor point to now determine how intense I can go. I love suspension training. And you had mentioned that you might know that, you know, the most popular suspension trainers

by the brand name TRX, but the suspension trainer refers generally to those kinds of, the bike Olympic rings, it could be, there's lots of different forms of that. I know there's like the jungle gym. Now that adds a whole new level of variety and it also adds a whole new level of intensity.

So if you're like, oh, I'm really strong, I need heavy weights. You could do some exercises on a suspension trainer. That'll challenge even the strongest individuals. Well, this is what I've told somebody who is not going to ever progress to a gym. They want to stay at home training forever, how I typically tell them to progress themselves through maps because you could literally go

through maps anywhere multiple times and multiple rounds, progressing through all the AMP sessions. And then eventually the only investment you really need to make are rubber bands and then eventually a suspension trainer if you want to, which you know, a hundred or so, you can go get yourself a pretty decent suspension trainer and then progress to those. And then it gives you a whole nother volume of life. We put that in as a bonus. Yeah, it's not, you don't have to have that in order to do the program. It's something that we did in addition to that.

It's a great way to scale it. So if you're somebody who wants to, let's say, all year long train at home, you know, you could go through this program, use the tools that are in there to scale this thing multiple times and get incredible, incredible results. Yeah, well, at the end of the day, you want to look at and weigh everything out. So if consistency is hard for you because you're're you travel or because you're at home And you don't have access to a gym If you're somebody that likes the variety of being able to work out anywhere they anywhere you possibly can if you're somebody who Trains at the gym and you need to add some new novel stimulus and get your body used to doing some you know

Close-chain body weight movements. I, consider all these factors and also understand this. Working out without gym equipment does not mean your workouts going to be subpar or not as effective. That's false. It does require good exercise programming. I would say you probably have less wiggle room in terms of getting results. Like you could have something not be programmed as well with equipment and maybe get better results. But if you have a well programmed workout, at home workouts or equipment free type workouts, can be extremely, extremely effective.

So don't let that prevent you from your fitness goals. Don't let the fact that you travel a lot or that you don't wanna go to a gym, prevent you from your fitness goals. You can accomplish incredible things with a well-planned workout that needs no equipment whatsoever. All right, well now that we have kind of gone over and really made the case for why you can achieve an incredible physique and get good results without equipment, I want to

leave people with some good tangible takeaways, right? I want to go through and talk about maybe like that our favorite equipment free exercises or minimal equipment, right? Like with bands or whatever. Like what exercises would we for sure or should they for sure include in the routine if they're working out at home or on the road or just not with the gym?

Well, right away I think of the ones that you have to be doing so you address all the major body parts that are important. And so the first one that comes to mind for me is you have to have a squat with the variations of that. Absolutely. So the fundamental movement. Absolutely.

Now, if squats are too hard for you to do with good form, a easy regression would be to get a chair and to slowly sit down, control the sit down sit, and then stand up. Now, for those you're listening that are like, well, even body weight squats are too easy for me. Practice doing a single leg squat or a pistol. And you can do this holding onto something to get used to at first.

Another way to do it would be to stand on something and squat down with one leg with either leg hanging off to where you touch the floor. But doing a squat with one leg, very difficult even for the strongest squatters in my experience. What's another good exercise? Push up. You have to have push ups in there. That's like the epitome of body weight exercises. And there's a couple of ways to regress this.

So there's one way to kind of half your body weight by, you know, going on your knees. And so you want to make sure that you extend your hips all the way down. So there's no hinge in your hips. Like a diagonal plank or whatever. Right. Or you could take that and place your hands on something a little higher, like a bench and do it from there, which will actually lower their gravitational force. Yeah, I used to have a client's, use a countertop or a coffee table or a Smith machine and so these roads. Yeah, and she's great. That's my favorite. But when you get really, really good,

then you start to do them on the floor and then when you get really good at those, you widen your stance and go ahead and do one arm pushups. That is a killer shoulder and chest exercise. Oh, yeah. That can take a while to master pushups, that is a killer shoulder and chest exercise. Oh, yeah. That can take a while to master, and it creates great shoulder stability. So, we cover the two most popular squats, pushups, what else?

What else would be a good? Floor bridge is a must for me. I just think that we talk all the time about it in any sort of programming that getting connected to the glutes using your butt so it's the strongest muscle in your lower half. So doing a floor bridge is great. And also too, all the exercises that we're talking about right now, our YouTube channel has all of these movements and how to do them properly for someone who's listening that doesn't maybe own one of our progress. Glad you said that. Yeah, and you want to know detail on how to do

this because the floor bridge is one that looks really basic and simple, but I see a lot of people do it wrong. So I think starting off with a floor bridge, that's a very, very basic movement that most all people, all levels, can do. And if it's really easy for you, then it's really simple to progress that to a single leg. And I tell you what, a single leg floor bridge done properly. Yeah, it can be very challenging. Very hard.

The goal is to connect to those hip extending muscles, the glutes, squeeze them. And then those of you with weakness pushing out. So if you have like weak, mead muscles, or you want to develop the outside of your glutes, you can even use resistance bands around your knees and press out. And those of you whose knees automatically go out

when you squat, you can even squeeze something in between your knees while you do a floor bitch. So there's a lot of variations of the floor bridge, but it is a phenomenal exercise. How about the prone crowbar? You brought it up earlier in the episode, Adam. I think that should be a must. It is.

And everybody addresses everybody's postural issues with their upper body right away. Oh yeah. And watch the video that we did on YouTube on that one as well, because there's a hand rotation at the top of the movement, but it really works on squeezing back the shoulder blades and bringing them down, which is the counter to the common posture issues that people have with the forward shoulder. Everybody's going to say pull-ups, but I like to say body rows.

I think a pull-up is a progression from a body row. I think a body row is more appropriate for most people. And this is just, you can do this with the suspension trainer. You can do this with a, with a bar, where you're just hanging, but you're kind of underneath it. Almost like an upside down push-up is what it looks like. Right. Where your legs are straight, body's tight, pull your chest to the bar, great back exercise. And then if you're not strong enough to do a body row or a pull up, you can do this with a light resistance band that you anchor in a door.

And you can also switch your grip around too. So if you wanted to go more with a supinated grip, so I'm gonna focus a little more bicep involved then we can do that as well. That's right. Plank shoulder touch. What do you guys think about that exercise? I think we put that one in maps anywhere as well, didn't we?

Well, I like that. I like that as a core exercise and a shoulder exercise together. So I think that's a great movement. And Justin loves to talk about anti-rotational stuff. So it has an anti-rotational element in there. So I think, and these are the little things that, you know, someone sees a movement like that and they're like,

oh, that's lame or basic, but, you know, making sure that you're getting benefits like that, I think are important. And so the programming of that inside of a bodyweight routine, I think is crucial. I think it's a great exercise that's overlooked just like the prone, prone coagre. Yeah, and if you do it with good tension,

you'll get great core activation with that one. That one looks like, like Adam said, it looks like a basic one, but I do them, and I use it as an advanced exercise. Single leg toe touch, which is essentially a one-legged balancing deadlift. Such a good movement. I love that.

I don't care who you are, where you work out. I almost always program single lake toe touches into the workouts that I would write. Almost no, there's almost no exercise I feel more on my glutes than a single lake toe touch. And then the balance factor, right? Oh, yeah, there's lots of factors. And doing it right and without again, the rotation element of it and really focusing down

on the intent of the exercise, that's another one where if you really master the mechanics of it's gonna help to translate back to, if you're doing any type of hip-hinging movement or anything like that. Well, I think it's also, it touches an area that, I think to your point, Sal, this is something that we ended up being programmed into every client that I had.

I always had single toe touches in there because many people that have low back pain, it stems from the hip issue, like not having full range and control of the muscles that are responsible for moving the hip and all the stabilizer. Right. And so, and it's just because as we age, we don't move in all these different planes anymore. And so a lot of those muscles that are responsible for stabilizing the hip or taking the hip through its fullest range of motion become dormant.

And a single-legged toe touch really wakes up all those muscles that are surrounding the hip that help stabilize that really, really good for helping alleviate somebody that may have low back pain caused from the immobility of their hip. So this is such a good exercise and it's challenging. And it's one of those ones that you know with just your body weight alone You can make really really tough Before you can progress from that right and then a band chop I like rotation to the side a resistance band allows you to use resistance

And you can go downward Chop you could do an upward chop or just a straight sideways chop, really strengthen the rotation of the core, and of course, works on the obliques. And so I think we listed some of our favorite exercises that you can either make more difficult or make a little easier, and even if you just did,

even if you just listened to this episode and just did those exercises, and it gets more complicated later on as your body adapts, but even if you just did those exercises. And it gets more complicated later on as your body adapts. But even if you just did those exercises at home and you did them right with the appropriate intensity, you're gonna get good results. So I'll list them again, thanks Doug for writing them down.

We have squats and variations, pushups, floor bridges, prone cobras, body rows, and their variations, including pullups, the plain shoulder touch, single leg toe touch, band chops, those are some of our favorites for body weight exercises. And I believe at the airing of this, at the time that we're gonna air this episode, maps anywhere should still be 50% off.

So we've took the pricing cut in half. I believe there'll be like three days left in the promotion, if I'm not mistaken, Doug's nodding at me. So yeah, you'll have three days left when this airs for 50% off. For that discount, go to mapsy.com. That's MAPSWHIT.com and use the code anywhere 50

that's ANYWH, ERE50, no space for the discount. 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 Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble 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 Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money backback guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. And until next time, this is Mindbomb.