Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1095: How to Break Through a Plateau

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

Hitting a training or diet plateau is frustrating. In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin go into detail how to break through plateaus and how to avoid them altogether. The frustration of hitting a plateau. (3:03) Don’t be so hard on yourself! (6:10) How would you define a plateau? The importance of looking at the WHOLE picture. (7:51) Some of the reasons your body may by plateauing and what you can do about it. (16:14) The concept of ‘perpetual’ progress in breaking through a plateau. (51:30) People Mentioned Jordan Syatt - SyattFitness (@syattfitness)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned August Promotion: MAPS Prime/Prime Pro ½ off!! **Code “PRIME50” at checkout** Mind Pump 1065: Jordan Syatt on Becoming Gary Vee’s Trainer, the Biggest Lessons He Learned from Gary Vee, Keys to Building an Online Business (& Mistakes to Avoid) & MORE! How To Boost Your Metabolism The Right Way! (FAT LOSS!)| Mind Pump TV Mind Pump 1027: 3 Steps to Speed Up Your Metabolism How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts Should You “Confuse” Your Muscles? Which Is Better: Low Reps Or High Reps? Stop Working Out And Start Practicing 5 Most Important Exercises for Muscle Growth in an Effective Routine The Other Best Muscle Building Exercises of All Time The Breakdown Recovery Trap, Why You Aren’t Progressing Should I do Yoga for Fat Loss? The Myth of Optimal Protein Intake Visit Everly Well for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout**  Are Any Supplements Worth The Cost? Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, UP with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. For sure, the most frustrating thing that can happen to you when you're trying to get your body to change, when you're trying to improve your fitness or your performance, or trying to get leaner is a plateau. It's the most frustrating thing ever. You're working your butt off. You're doing things that are working and then all of a sudden, they seem to stop working. So in this episode, oh, it sucks.

So in this episode, Adam, Justin and myself go through, well, first off, we define what a real plateau is. Sometimes people think they plateaued, but they're just not paying attention to the other signs and signals that their body's telling them that their body's actually progressing. So we define a plateau, and then if you decide that you are in an actual plateau,

we talk all about the main reasons why the plateau has happened, how to avoid the plateau or how to overcome the plateau once you're in it. So you're not gonna wanna miss this episode. Now, in this episode, I did talk about nutrient deficiencies and hormone imbalances. Now, both those not super common reasons why plateaus tend to happen, but if you have a nutrient deficiency or hormone imbalance, the only way to get yourself out of a plateau is to address one of those two things. Now, you can go to your doctor and get those things tested, but it tends to be expensive, difficult

doctors tend to not want wanna give you these tests unless there's big glaring issues with your health and your body, but you can do this yourself. You can go around your doctor and actually order tests at home, they are inexpensive. The company you wanna go with is Everly Well. We are sponsored by Everly Well, so they are one of our sponsors and one of our partners.

Here's what you do. We got a discount for you. Go to EverlyWell.com and use the code MindPump So they are one of our sponsors and one of our partners. Here's what you do. We got a discount for you. Go to EverlyWell.com and use the code MindPump to get 15% off any test. And that's it. Also, this month, I do want to remind everybody, maps prime and prime pro for the first time ever are 50% off. Now, maps prime teaches you how to do a good priming session, also known as a warmup before your work on. The benefit of this is you fire the muscles,

you wanna fire more effectively, you get better movement. In other words, your current workout becomes far more effective. Maps Prime individualizes your priming session for you. You take a test and you design one around your body. Now, Maps Prime Pro, totally correctional in nature. It's all about correctional exercise here.

Akes or pains, if you have movement issues or mobility issues, follow Maps Prime Pro and addresses all the major joints in the body and we'll get you to move better. If you're a personal trainer, both programs are extremely valuable for both you and your clients. So both these programs, 50% off,

here's what you do to get the discount. Go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and use the code prime50. That's P-R-I-M-E-5-0, no space for the discount. And that's it. Here we are talking all about plateaus, how to overcome them, how to stop them from happening in the first place. Our good buddy, Jordan Siett, right?

Love that kid, dude. He puts out incredible content, stand up guy. Very smart guy. Yeah, my pump considers him. One of the best trainers, right? One of the better ones out there for sure. Good news. Doing good things.

Did a great post, actually this morning, and kind of inspired, I think this conversation, because I think it's a really good topic. And the post I reshared it on my Instagram, you can go on his page and look him up, with site fitness, but it was talking about plateaus. And it was just a cool post, because it was like, you know,

just because you're way to stall, you're not at a plateau, just because you didn't add strength, you're not at plateau, just because you're not stronger, doesn't mean you're not at a plateau. And so you just kind of listed everything off and he says, you know, it's part of the process. And I thought it was a clever post, I think it's smart, I think it's a good point and it's a good conversation to have because there's some truth to that for sure. And then there's also, you know, you know, people do hit plateaus, but

you know, how do we define exactly what a plateau is? Well, if I had to list the single most frustrating thing that people will encounter when they work out or when they're trying to change, the way they look or how strong they are, the performance or the movement, is when you see progress consistently, and then it feels like, right, at a nowhere, it just stops. It's like,

man, I was doing this, I was following this nutrition plan. I started working out. And for the first few months, I was seeing progress. The scale was moving the direction I wanted it to. I was getting stronger. I was feeling better. And now it just feels like I'm doing a lot of work and getting nothing in return. What do I do from here? And it's extremely frustrating. In fact, I would have to say, and I don't know if you guys will agree that, I'm sure you will,

it's probably the number one reason why people stop. Oh, they're doing. Oh, I mean, the statistics already proved that. The average member falls off after two months. And the theory behind that is, you could do almost any program, a terrible program, a terrible diet, as long as it's better than what you were doing before,

which is sitting on a couch and eating Doritos, right? So if you make a choice to make better food choices, no matter what diet plan you follow, and you weren't exercising, and you come to the gym now, and now you're exercising, everybody sees results for the first four weeks or so. It's the honeymoon phase. So I think what happens is, you know, whatever everybody sees results for the first four weeks or so. It's the honeymoon phase.

So I think what happens is, you know, whatever the routine, whatever the diet, whatever they're doing, they see those results for four or five weeks, maybe six, they stretch out to, and then they continue to try and keep it going for another two to four weeks, and then that's what happens is eventually, two to four weeks of doing kind of the same things

and not seeing any results anymore, the average person goes, well fuck. I'd rather be five pounds heavier like I was before and eating all the shit I want to and sitting on my couch because it's not that bad, you know. And it feels more valuable than the ten pounds I lost and now I can't go any further. Right. And I completely understand what that feels like. I just experienced the same thing or the same feelings when I first started working out. I think before we get into why your body stalls in terms of results, we also need to change the thought process around the whole thing. And the way you open this was perfect at them. It's part of the

process. Now, first off, understand that progress isn't just the scale, isn't just performance and strength. There are other ways of measuring progress. Are you feeling better? Do you have more energy? Are you noticing changes in your posture, changes in how you present yourself and your confidence? All these things can signal that your body's still progressing. It's just not showing you the super loud and obvious

progressions that you saw early on. The second point I want to make is this. There is nothing on earth that you'll ever attempt at getting good at where you progress consistently all the time. Nothing moves up in this consistent pattern. Doesn't matter if it's business, education, I don't care if it's a relationship, and especially not with fitness, nothing consistently progresses day over day over day. It just doesn't work that way. So when you get into a new fitness routine or a new way of eating, already understand

there are gonna be pitfalls, there are gonna be periods that are difficult, and they're usually the periods of time when I'm not seeing phenomenal results, because it's not hard to stay motivated when the scale is moving and your strength is going up and everything looks like it's working, but boys are hard to stay motivated when it seems like what you're doing just doesn't working. But an except the fact that that's going gonna happen and then come up with a strategy to either avoid it or to get things moving again when that ends up happening.

So, plateau, what is a plateau? Well, a plateau is when your progress stalls, just to put it plainly. And this can be any kind of progress that you're looking for. So, if you're looking for fat loss or muscle gain, if you're looking for fat loss or muscle gain, if you're looking for strength gain or endurance gain or mobility improvements and flexibility. Or change in your physique.

Yeah, or just a change in your appearance. A plateau is when your body just seems to have stopped responding, it feels like your stuck. Like you're totally stuck. Like why isn't this, why isn't anything happening? And I would say a real plateau, you gotta give it at least, I mean, how many weeks would you say you should give something before you realize, like, okay,

what I'm doing isn't working anymore. I think that's, I think it's gonna be different on each individual, but personally, I mean, every time you go through a diet, a routine, or a program that you're following consistently to make change or make progress. It's inevitable that it happens.

And for me, it's like, I never adjust anything that I'm doing before I've allowed at least two weeks to go by of what I would think has stalled progress. So if I'm following a plan that I'm doing eating wise and I just feel like, man, I look in the mirror and I don't feel like feel like, man, I look in the mirror and I don't feel like my body's changing. I get on a scale. I feel like the scale isn't moving. Oh, before I also just start changing macros

and bumping cardio or doing a bunch of different things, I wanna give myself a good solid two weeks of being consistent and true to whatever the plan is that I set forth before I even consider making a adjustment. Yeah, it's tough too, because I think a lot of those other metrics that you kind of presented, you may still be progressing, but not realize,

some of these other attributes that you are getting benefit from, whether it's sleep, whether it's strength, and it's not necessarily your body composition. It's still kind of stalled. That's a tough thing to evaluate, but some of those things do take a bit more time, and you do have to trust the process and go through that even further than your comfort zone. Yeah, it's a really good point, because I would get clients sometimes that their main

goal was weight loss and they wouldn't lose any weight on the scale for four weeks or five weeks or even sometimes longer. Now as a trainer, I know when I'm looking at other things and I see you're stronger, you're eating more food, okay, here's why you're not losing weight on the scale. You've actually lost body fat, but you've gained some muscle. So you've done a trade, you've changed your body composition. It means you're smaller and you're tighter and you look better, but the scale isn you've actually lost body fat, but you've gained some muscle. So you've done a trade, you've changed your body composition.

It means you're smaller and you're tighter and you look better, but the scale isn't moving. So that's a good point, Justin. Look at everything. A real plateau, in my opinion, is when nothing's improved. Yeah, when nothing improves. I can't see that too. Yeah, and nothing has changed at all. Not your energy levels, your strength, your performance, your fat loss, the scale, how you look, nothing has changed.

Now, if you're very sensitive to your body and how it changes on a day-to-day basis, like Adam is, for example, like I am or Justin, then two weeks seems very appropriate. But for a lot of beginners out there, sometimes I say, you know what, let's wait five, four to five, maybe even six weeks before we decide, okay, we're totally in the plateau. Well, sometimes it's just, well, that depends on your, like how we're defining those two right now. Like I wouldn't move, I wouldn't move anything in my plan

for a minimum of those two weeks just based off of like a single indicator like that, where if I am seeing progression in other places, I know I'm doing well, like it doesn't matter to me. If I'm, and I think that's probably one of the biggest things that I'd have to teach clients is that there's so many ways that your body can be progressing and making change and improving and it's not always this reflection in the mirror. It's not always going to be on the scale

which tend to be the two most common, right? The ones that, and the ones that, and they tend to be the two that fuck with your head the most. Totally. And I, one of the things that I got when I went through my little stint of competing that I think made me an even better coach to speak to this was when I had to track the water and sodium and carbs to the detail that I had to, what I found. And of course, I'm never in my life.

Have I looked in the mirror so many times and got on a scale so many times? That was your job for a second. Right. So I'm doing this obsessively for the first time in my life. And so I'm paying attention to all these details. And something that I would notice is, man, if I took in an extra 20 grams of carbs,

an extra 1000 to 2000 milligrams of sodium and drank two, three extra glasses of water, it could completely make my physique look different in the mirror and completely change the number on the scale in a direction that I may not like. And the same is true, the opposite, right? I could have a lower sodium day, less water, less carbohydrates, and have a great look. And then also in the other day goes the opposite direction, which is this what I think happens to a lot of people.

Because your water in your body can change quite dramatic daily. Oh, it's constantly fluctuating. Right. And it can be held on to for up to 72 hours. So the body can hold on to a bunch of water and not release it for up to three days. So that's another thing too. Like if I had a client that this was a common conversation where they'd hit me up and they'd be like, Adam, the scale's up by two pounds and I'm

like, well, show me your food log and they show me their food log and we'll look, you went out, you went out to eat this day and she's like, well, yeah, but I ordered something really healthy. I had this nice, but here's something I'm gonna take in consideration. Anytime that we eat out, okay, even at healthy restaurants, they load it full of sodium. I'm like, if you are used to making all your meals at home and also you have a meal out, even though it's healthy and you didn't probably put on any body fat whatsoever, you probably took in a bunch more sodium than you're not used to, now your body,

and you're probably a little bit thirstier because that happened, that ends up making you drink a little bit more water, that water pairs with that, you hold on to that extra water, now you look a little softer, a little bloated, maybe even the scale goes up a half a pound or a pound on the scale. But you're doing excellent. Nothing is wrong with what we're doing.

I don't want to change anything. But now you have that mind-fuck because you see that, you see yourself in the mirror, you see your scale, and now you want to freak out and you want to make some weird adjustments. And I would always have the tell clients, hold on, stay right the course what we're doing, hang on for three more days, see what happens, three days would go by, and you'd see that get released, they'd feel good again, they're like, oh, you're so good.

Such a good point, especially if you're burning body fat or losing body fat at a good, consistent, and maintainable rate. So let's say you're burning body fat and you're doing it in a way that's going to make it so that you can maintain it long term. So you're burning one pound of body fat a week in a way that's going to make it so that you can maintain it long-term. So you're burning one pound of body fat a week off your body.

That's four pounds a month. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but it's a decent pace and it's typically what you can expect for something that you can maintain long-term. Now you throw in potential water retention or whatever. If you just look at it for a week, you might look like you gained two pounds because you're holding three pounds of water and you burn about a pound of body fat. So that's why it's important to be patient and to also look at the whole picture, progress, incremental progress on a daily basis might seem like there's no progress. That progress adds up over time and that's why it's so important to look

at the whole picture and to give yourself a little time. So, and the reason why I'm speaking to this is because I think a lot of times people think they're plateauing when they're not. No, you have a plateaued. It's only been a couple of weeks, give it a second, see what happens, stay the course, especially if you're a beginner and you're not super in tune with your body haven't been working out for long. Well, this is where things get dangerous. I used to use the analogy with clients of like, this is, you know,

we're, we're, we're flying along with our car and all of a sudden the back end starts to get squirrely because maybe it's not perfect or we didn't see as much results as the previous week. And the biggest mistake you can make is to over-correct. Yeah, you crash your car. And you spin out. And it's like, it's okay. It's like, you just got to kind of work through it slowly and relax. The same thing you would do when a car gets in that position. You're not going to grip it and yank the opposite direction because then you over-credit. And that's what I see is most common with people is they freak out because of the scale or something or the way they look in the mirror.

And then all of a sudden the next day they're on the treadmill for an hour or there. Cutting their calories. Yeah, cut. Cutting their calories or even worse, the combination of both. You know, get on there and they punish themselves on the treadmill and they cut their calories in half. And it's like, great, you just sent a signal to the body to be even more efficient with calories.

Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Exactly. Don't freak out. Okay. So now that we've made that point, we've made the case like, okay, take a look at everything from a big picture, give it some time. You may not be in a plateau.

Now that you understand that, okay, you're still in a plateau. You're like, all right, I've waited five weeks, body's not moving, tracking my phone. I'm doing all these different things. Nothing is progressing. What do I do now? Because it is an extremely frustrating place to be. Okay, so here, I'm gonna cover some of the reasons

why your body may be plateauing and what you can do about it. Now, one of the first and probably easiest and most obvious reasons in my opinion is why your body plateau be plateauing and what you can do about it. Now one of the first and probably easiest and most obvious reasons, in my opinion, is why your body plateaued is because your calories are not where they need to be. You're either not eating at a deficit if you're trying to lose weight or you're not eating in a surplus if you're not gaining weight. Now I know some of you thinking or thinking to yourselves, hey, you know, the calories I was eating was working for the first two months while the sudden are these same amount of calories

not causing me to learn body fat to lose body fat. Well, your body adapted. Your metabolism adapts to the signals that you send it. And if your calories are low and your activity is high, over time, your metabolism tends to become more efficient and slow itself down. So if 1500 calories before was enough to get you to lose body fat, it may not be the right amount

to get you to continue to lose body fat. Now, as two approaches, you can take to this. One is you can continue to cut your calories, and that's an easy way to do this. The other thing you can do is to change gears a little bit and try and get your metabolism to adapt in the opposite direction. Maybe what you need is to do a couple weeks where you're eating at maintenance or higher, so now you're eating a little bit more calories than you were, and you're kind of focusing on building some muscle. Because

always cutting calories every time you plateau, I don't have to, I think it's quite obvious where that leads you. Well, this is, I think, the number one mistake. I hands down, I can count on one hand how many dream fat lost clients I got. And what a dream fat lost client for me is the guy or girl who walks in, who's over a hundred pounds, and I asked them to show me their food log,

and it's fucking five to $7,000, or five to 7,000 calories of garbage all day long. Like, that's a dream client. It's easy. It's so easy. Yeah, all I have to do is literally just exchange that garbage for good whole foods, reduce to a few hundred calories, and that person is going to be dropping, and I have plenty of room to go.

That has happened to me less than five times in my entire career of training clients that want to lose body fat. The most common person that comes to me and hires me that wants to lose body fat has already tried on their own many, many times and has already slowed their metabolism down is probably eating somewhere between 1,800 and 2,600 calories and is also 30 pounds to 100 pounds overweight. And they've crashed dieted a bunch of times

in all these methods. And that person, I don't wanna start with a calorie restriction. And I think that's where a lot of these plateaus come from is they decide, hey, I'm gonna make a way, I'm gonna change my habits, my behaviors, I'm gonna get started in the gym, I'm gonna try that new maps program out there,

they hire a trainer, whatever. They're pretty good. Yeah, they get going on it. And the first thing they do is they start to restrict calories. Well, when you start off at 1800 or 2200 calories and you restrict a good 500 calories, which is about what you want to do to lose some body fat. That's about a pound a week, right? So, if you want to lose anything, you're probably going to restrict about 500 calories. You take 500 calories from somebody who's eating 1800 to 2200 calories, which is extremely low already. Sure, they might

be able to handle 1300 to300 to 1,500 calories for a few weeks and see some results from that. But then eventually what Sal is saying is true, you will eventually hit a plateau, now where do you go from there? Well, you either have to now kick up more activity, you know, add cardio or add more intensity into your workouts or reduce calories more

to create that deficit, because that's one way to keep losing. And that, if you keep on that, if you continue with that strategy as your body continues to hit plateaus, because then that'll work, right? I'm burning more calories by moving more and I'm eating less calories

because I gotta drop my, you know, drop my food and take down. Okay, now that works for four or five weeks. Then it plateaus again, what do you do now? Increase your activity even more, drop your cup. Obviously you can't do that forever. And that doesn't seem like a good long-term strategy, does it? It seems like at some point I'm beating

a thousand calories a day, and I'm gonna be working out like crazy. And maybe I did hit my goal, but now I gotta stay here forever. Not such a good idea. So if we go back, yes, you do need to burn more calories than you're taking in, why not teach your body to burn more calories automatically?

And so my strategy with that particular plateau is, let's take a break for a couple weeks. Let's have you increase your calories a little bit. Let's bump them up a little bit. And let's focus on strength training because what that tends to promote is a faster metabolism. And that is a better strategy than just trying to move more because eventually you run out of space and time to keep moving more and more and more. But there's a long way we can go with metabolism.

There really, really is. Plus, it's automatic. If you're burning 200 to 300 more calories a day, every day just by being alive because your metabolism's faster, that's a great place to be. But if you have to do an extra hour or a card you every day, well, that tends to be a bit of a burden,

especially long-term. So that's one, I'd say, one of the more common reasons why people plateau, especially with fat loggers. And to that point, I think it's important to share this. And I like sharing it even though I get blasted by my peers all the time because there's a lot of argument on the exact number, because it's too hard to pinpoint exactly what this number is. But I like to use it as an example

so my clients understand how valuable and important this is. And that is, for every pound of muscle you add to your body, it burns more calories to stay on there doing nothing to Sal's point. So more way more than body fat, doesn't it? And the argument is somewhere between 20 and 60 calories more than what fat would. So if you had one pound of fat, it's burning X amount of calories. If you have one pound of muscle, it's burning an additional 20 to 60 calories a day, just by having it on you. So not to mention that one pound of muscle takes up less space because

it's far more dense. So if you just lost 10 pounds of body fat, but gained 10 pounds of muscle, although your weight would be the same on scale, you'd look a lot smaller. Yeah, that's another thing we need to point out. So it's smaller and burning more comfortable. You would look small and your metabolism would be going a lot faster. Imagine it's now picking up

because you've added five to 10 pounds of muscle. You've now kicked your metabolism up to where it's burning naturally all on its own, an additional three to 500 calories a day. That's a big fucking deal. It is. And also, if your idea of, or the way you're approaching weight loss is with lots of cardio, no resistance training,

and calorie restriction, one of the ways your body adapts to that is by reducing your muscle mass. And studies will show that when people approach fat loss with just the cardio and calorie restriction approach, that their total weight loss is comprised of about half muscle. So you lose 10 pounds, five pounds of its muscle, and the tab is slower. Now the calories that you were eating before

that was causing you lose weight, are calories that are now at your maintenance, and you're not gonna lose any weight on that. So if you get stuck at that point, and it's a calorie thing in your goal's weight loss, focus on strength training, and bump up your calories for a couple of weeks. Then go back on your cut, your normal cut,

and your body should start to respond again. And then just keep up that kind of pattern of up for a little bit and down for a little longer to get your body to continue progressing. All right, so one of the other big things that tends to cause people's bodies to stop progressing is that their body is completely used to and adapted to

the stimulus. They're a workout. If you do a workout, here's an interesting fact. This was a study I read a long time ago that compared the calorie burn of a very high level swimmer versus somebody who's not a good swimmer when they compared one hour of swimming for both of them. So both of them swam for an hour, both of them swam, you know, the same amount of distance or whatever, the same amount of time. Yes, you burn more calories. Oh, the person who's new.

The person who's not as good as swimming. They spend so much energy trying to do it. Just their body hasn't adapted and become good at what they were doing, okay? So that's just an example. If you're lifting weights a particular way and you're doing a good routine and your body's improving and getting stronger and you're building muscle,

eventually if you stay on that same routine long enough, your body will get so good at it and it's not gonna recognize that stimulus as the same loud signal and your body will stop progressing. You've seen this guy in the gym. Oh, you know, the guy that's in there, he's doing the same routine. He's done since, you know, whatever, 10, 20 years ago. And I just keep wondering, like, you're showing up,

you're putting the work in and you look exactly the same in that. This is everybody. Yeah, this is everybody in my opinion. I think that we're all guilty of this one right here. I think it's so, or creatures of habit. It's easy to get married to a program. We are.

We are creatures of habit. It's easy to get married to a program. We default to the things that we're good at. We do fault to the things that we're comfortable with. And the reality is that everybody needs a little bit more of this in my opinion. I think that we're all guilty of gravitating towards similar mode.

And then it's a comfort thing. It's extremely a problem, a huge problem when you look at like your zoom but your classes where people are, you talk. Yeah, it's the same class, the same format, the same thing. And just because you're sweating and you're exhausted afterwards, you think you're putting in great work that should be resulting in change for you,

but it's not anymore because the body's become so efficient. Now, to be clear, it's not like there's no benefit. Like you're still maintaining good health, you're still keeping your body moving, so it's not like it's all bad, but to get your body to progress is a completely different thing. Maintaining is different than progressing forward

and keep this in mind, becoming stronger, building more muscle, being leaner, your body doesn't wanna do those things. Now why? Why doesn't it wanna build more muscle? Muscle's expensive, we just talked about that. It's expensive, costs a lot of calories. Remember, your body is the result

of thousands of years of evolution. And for most of human history, food was scarce. It was not easy to come by. So your body isn't gonna add a bunch of, it would be like, it would be like if we had some kind of oil crisis and gasoline was super hard to come by. You, I'm pretty sure car manufacturers would not be putting out V8 engines on their cars.

Because we'd be like, that's crazy. I can't afford to buy. Well, your body is not looking to burn a ton more calories because it evolved during times of scarcity. It needs a good reason to build that extra muscle. Same thing with burning body fat. Body fat on your body is like money in the bank. You know, if we're living through a very, very tumultuous,

economic time, you better believe people will be stashing money in their bank account or under their mattress because they're like, I don't know what it's gonna look like tomorrow. Well your body again is a result of Thousands of years of evolution your body loves to walk around with body fat because it's it's it's survival It's advantageous. It's advantageous. It's your bank account. It's gonna protect you against more scarcity Your body has no idea that today and look all the evidence you is this. How easy is it to gain fat versus gaining muscle? Gaining body fat, peace of cake. Very, literally, a peace of cake.

Gaining muscle is a very difficult strategy. So you have to always give your body a reason, and that's the stimulus that your exercise provides. I remember when I was 16 years old, you know, I wanted to build muscle. I was a skinny kid, I was trying to build more muscle, and I wanted bigger arms, I wanted bigger biceps in particular, my triceps responded well, my biceps tended to lag behind, and I did all the best exercises,

barbell curls and dumbbell curls, and I got really good at them, and I remember I didn't do preacher curls for one particular reason, I didn't do them because I wasn't good at them, it wasn't a strong at them. Once I went on the preacher bench, I had to cut the weight in half, and I wasn't do preacher curls for one particular reason. I didn't do them because I wasn't good at them. It wasn't a strong at them. Once I went on the preacher bench, I had to cut the weight in half. And I wasn't very strong, especially at the end portion of the rep where a preacher curl tends to be the most difficult.

But I remember a friend of mine who did lots of preacher curls. He had nice arms or whatever, and I asked him, I said, what do you do for your biceps? He's like, I do preacher curls. So I said, okay, I'm gonna try him. I'm gonna try doing them.

I wasn't good at him, but I'm gonna do him anyway. And I remember seeing my biceps progress almost immediately. And part of the reason was I did something I wasn't good at and I started getting good at it. And the rate I got good at it was so much faster than the rate I was getting good at things I was already used to.

And that's kind of what happens with your workout. If you're doing something all the time and you're really, really good at it, your body doesn't have a lot of room to progress, does it? But if you go and you try something you're not good at and then you have all this room to progress, you know, if you always barbell squat, but you never do a barbell lunge and your barbell squats at 300 pounds, but you go do a barbell lunge, you could barely do 95 pounds in your back because you're just not good at it. Your barbell squat, if you stick to it, you know, at that point, you know,

you might gain five pounds of strength on that over the next month. The worst part is you're not going to get this message from the fitness industry, because it's, this is a difficult one to wrap into a product and sell you on one size fits all solution to your problems. And that's, the consumer wants it to be a simple process. They want everything to be done by just doing this one thing.

This Zumba class is going to produce this ultimate physique in this body I've been hoping for the whole time. And you know, and it's great. And you know, and they're there and they have value for certain aspects of whatever the modality is. But really, like you have to consider the long-term effects of doing the same thing over and over and over again. You need new stimulus.

Your body needs to react to something else that challenges it. Totally. Now, there's a lot of different ways to change the stimulus. There's a lot of things you can change. The easy ones are, change the exercises you're doing. Try some new exercises start getting good at them. Here's another one. Change your rep range. If you always train at the five rep range, try training at the 12 rep range or

the 20 rep range. You can change the tempo of how you live. Maybe the way you lift weights, you lift the weight pretty fast. Try slowing that down. See what happens. Rest periods. Try changing the the rest periods try changing the amount of days you work out or the amount of sets that you're doing There's a lot of different factors that you can change now I recommend when people change the routine that they don't go from one to routine to a completely different routine I think it's a good idea to change two or three factors get the body to progress again and then move from there That tends to work for most people. You know, this is part of the reason why squatting

and deadlifting and overhead pressing on the big lifts, why they are such a big bang for your buck is because the difficulty of the skill. Oh, takes a long time to master, right? It takes a very, very long time to master that, and it's also the same thing that makes people run away from it. Oh, it's so hard. If I don't feel good when I do it, it's challenging.

I'm not strong. So we avoid it because of that. But what you don't realize, that's the golden it is that it is difficult. It is going to probably take me years to even be decent at it and years on that before I get good at it and even years beyond that before I'm an expert at it and years on that before I get good at it and even years beyond that before I'm an expert at it. And that's the beauty of it though, is that you can be working towards being better and better and better and better at squatting and deadlifting and you're going to continue

to see nice bits of progression for a very long time. That's why that X, those exercises are so beautiful. Well, a great point because if I compare two leg exercises, if I compare a leg press to a barbell squat, a leg press, I two leg extras, if I compare a leg press to a barbell squat, a leg press, I can get the average person good at a leg press within a day. A whole lot of gotta learn. I mean, I can get off me.

Yeah, it could take a month or two. And now you're doing it pretty well. You could be doing squats for a year and you're still not excellent at the skill of our bell squatting. Me, 100%. I mean, I still am very critical of my squat. There's lots of work for me to do right now.

And the amount of progression that I've had in the last couple of years of putting that effort towards that is done wonders. I mean, I'm stronger, with less work. My legs are built with less work. It burns a ton of calories. I mean, guy, when you, you could do a squat session for an entire workout and it'll be tougher than most people's

entire workouts where they bounce around to five, 10 different machines. So that's one of the beauties of these exercises that we're always trying to talk about that we should be working towards and why I don't like when other fitness professionals are not encouraging people to do these movements because yeah, they are fucking hard.

What a great, what a great second point. I don't even think of it like that because even when you do feel like you've mastered things like the squat or deadlift, your body starts to give you feedback like, oh no, but we didn't reinforce the joints and along the process because you start to get good at it, you start lifting more weight and you have to build up the support system along the process because you start to get good at it, start lifting more weight,

and you have to build up the support system along the way at the same time. And that's almost impossible to have all that working together at the same time. Yeah, and that's a great segue to another reason why I think people plateau is they're not doing the most effective exercises. Maybe the exercises that they, and here's a thing,

when you're not doing anything, doing anything after that is effective. So if you're just sitting on the couch and going to work and that's your activity, and now you're starting a workout program, you could do the most ineffective exercises, but because there's so much more than what you were doing before,

your body is gonna respond. But because they're the ineffective exercises, it's not gonna respond for very long. And so another reason why I see people plateauing is I look at their routines and I say, okay, you're doing donkey kickbacks, band curls, you're doing, you know, maybe some pushups against the wall, like, okay, we need to pick some exercises

that get your body to progress long term that are really, really effective. So if you're not doing barbell squats, barbell deadlifts, overhead presses, bench presses, rows, if you're not doing good rotational movements, split stance exercises like lunges and Bulgarian split stance squats, if you're not doing good hip hinge movements like good mornings or Romanian deadlifts or one leg of toe touches, if you're not doing any of hinge movements like good mornings or Romanian deadlifts or one-legged toe touches. If you're not doing any of those movements, you're missing out on the most effective exercises known to the fitness space ever. Right, and they're hard. Yeah, they're hard. They take a long

time to learn something. And you shouldn't be good at it right away. You won't be. It just, it takes time. That's the beauty and the movement is it's going to take a long time and you could spend months on years trying to perfect it and what's beautiful about that is just working towards that. Hey, I want to have a better squat. And what better squat doesn't just mean how much weight you get up either. It's like the movement. Like, look at the movement.

Can I get deeper? Can I be more upright? Can I be more controlled? Can my feet be less kicked out, all these little nuances about the squat, can I improve it and just keep working towards that, along with pushing strength and going that direction, and you'll see progression in that area for a very, very long time. Totally, totally.

So here's another one that I see that's common. This one's more common with the overzealous fitness enthusiasts. This is the person who gets so fed up, you know, with the lack, you know, with the fact that they're not active and that maybe they're overweight and they're like, that's it. I'm gonna do everything. Or the, this is also for the fitness enthusiasts

that's been working out for a long time and it's just a maniac and is doing workouts all the time and applying lots of intensity. And that's just not respecting the fact that your body needs adequate recovery in order to progress. If you work out too hard, or too, and by the way, too hard and too long,

changes as your circumstances change. So, you know, for example, Adam just had a baby boy, baby boy was just born. His sleep is not like it used to be, right? He's not sleeping as much. What would tip him over into doing too much work is less than what it might have been five years ago when you didn't have to worry about not getting enough sleep.

So you want to examine your entire sphere of your activity and sleeping on stuff, and many times you're just doing too much. You're not giving your body a chance to adapt. You're not giving your body a chance to get stronger to build and repair. Your body's just in a, I need to heal stage. I call this the breakdown recovery trap where you work out, you get sore, go to the gym,

work out, get sore, no progress. All you're doing is breaking things down, barely recover, really good at getting sore. That's it. And there's no progress. You're spin, you're literally, you know what it's like? It's like having a car with a lot of horsepower and you're just spinning the wheels in the dirt. You're just hitting the gas as hard as you can, not going anywhere. We're hitting a lot of gas. We're putting a lot of energy. We're not moving. We're not a horse power there, but go nowhere. Extremely common with like my type A

personalities. These are actually, this is like probably what I dealt with the most because I just, I don't know, I think I identify with these people a lot. So I trained a lot of clients that were high performers that love to get after it, that were motivated, they didn't lack the motivation to get to the gym and work out. What they did lack though is learning to read these signals and no win to let off the throttle. And so, and I see this a lot, I see this a lot with the people that gravitate towards the group training classes, like Orange Therese and the F-45s. And the races and the marathon. Yes, Crossfits and all these modalities. And then on top of that, they have a high-powered job.

And a high-powered job doesn't mean you necessarily have to be an executive at some company. It could be something as simple as that, part of your job is talking to 30 different people and fielding complaints and that's all stress. Those are all, the body doesn't know the difference. It's just, it's an insult to the body. Like to take in all this mental stress,

to take in on all this personal stress that you got going on personally at home possibly, and then on top of that, you're going in hammering physical stress on the body with your workout and it's good. You're kind of dude, you're hitting me from all these different angles and then on top of that what ends up happening is those are the same people too that are also normally chasing fat loss.

So they're also in a calorie restriction. So like think about what your the signal your body is getting. It's getting like I'm being attacked mentally, I'm being attacked physically and you're fucking not feeding me. It's like survive, survive. Yeah, it's like and you want me to do not feeding me in a sec. It's like survive, survive. Yeah, it's like, and you want me to do, you want me to build some muscle and lose some body fat

to look better for you, fuck you, I just want to live. Yeah, you want me to get rid of the insurance, the bank account that we have, you want me to build more muscles so that you have to, you need to eat more calories to survive. Yeah. No way, that's not gonna, yeah, that's not gonna put me in a position to survive. And so your body holds on to body fat

and lots of other things will happen with that hormone imbalances and your appetite will go up. And so oftentimes with those people who are overdoing it, getting their body to progress is to change gears a little bit. Less than more sometimes. I remember years ago I had a client who, and this was before I understood all this,

I was a new trainer. And she was super type A, man. She was active every day. She was cutting her calories. She couldn't figure out why she couldn't lose the last 15 pounds. High power job, just like you said, Adam. And I remember, you know, at this point of my career, I didn't know the impact of stress on the body.

I didn't really appreciate how you need to respect recovery. And so I told her, look, you got to cut your calories, you got to move more. And she's like, I can't you got to cut your calories, you got to move more. She's like, I can't. I'm moving so much and my calories are so low and because I didn't understand this whole process, I kept telling her to do those two things. Well, she went against my own wishes

and what she did was, if she cut out her run, some of her runs, so she was running every single day. And instead she did a relaxing vinyasa yin yoga class. Now, this is a yoga class where it's super low intensity. You're getting into these poses, you're holding them for long periods of time, you're focusing on your breath and you're relaxing. And I remember telling her,

you're gonna burn less calories, you're gonna gain some body fat. I don't see how this is gonna help you. Well anyway, she did it. And the funny thing is she didn't gain a single pound and then she started losing body fat. And I started to realize, and I started to realize, oh, wait a minute, you're burning less calories, yes,

but now you're telling your body it's okay to speed up at some metabolism. And so after a couple months of not losing any weight, even though I thought you should be gaining weight because you're not burning as much calories, your body started to learn body, lose body fat. That's why I started to realize that not respecting the recovery aspect

is just gonna kill you in the gym. And there's nothing, that is the most frustrating way to plateau is by working out six days a week, eating low calories and nothing's happening. And it's literally the hardest sell ever. Because I mean, trying to tell somebody who is putting in like not just regular work, like an excessive amount of work towards their goal, it just doesn't even compute.

That's like everything that I've done in work and in my career, you know, the harder I work, it pays off. Like I see progression, I see more income coming in and you know, to apply that same mentality towards fitness just seems like, I mean, that seems like a rational way to approach it. Totally. Another thing that I would change sometimes with a client, and this is because I'd see what their nutrition

look like because they would track for me and all that, is sometimes I would look at their nutrition and I'd be like, your protein is just a little bit too low. And all I would do, and it was like, I loved it when I had this. Now, that's not super common. I loved it when I had this. Now, that's not super common. I'd say it's more common.

It was more common among some of my female clients. I would just bump the protein by 20 or 30 grams. Alright, let's see, 20 or 30 grams more protein, and let's see what happens. And like magic, I'd see them get stronger in the jam. Just by bumping up their protein a little bit. Now here's the thing with protein intake, and some people eat too much of it,

but the reality is this, and studies are actually quite conclusive. You need, if you consume up to about 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight, and this is for relatively lean individuals, you consume around that much, you're gonna maximize your body's ability to build muscle into adapt. You're going to maximize it.

In other words, when you eat less than that, you're not maximizing the effects you can get from your nutrition. So if you're one of those people that's eating, and I used to get clients like this, like they would eat 30 grams of protein all day. That's all they would have is to, I would just double it, which isn't even the max. I would double it. Here you go. Eat 60 grams of protein. Let's see what happens. Boom. They gave more muscle and get strong. So this was really common for me. This is why when

we used to talk about protein a lot, I used to always make sure that I cautioned, you know, who's listening because we were coming after a lot of the fitness, you know, the fitness influencers and the bodybuilder community, which is pushing, you know, two, three grams of protein per pound to bodyweight because they are selling you a protein powder. And so that was something that we came after. But on the other side of the spectrum, I did have a lot of these people, which are, and they tended to be more, more often than not, my female clients, and they would, they would be stalling with building muscle. And when I would dive into their diet and see that the same thing, they'd be eating somewhere between 30 to 60 grams.

Oh, day. Yeah, all day long. And I understand when you only eat 1500 to 1800 calories, you know, that's two or three relatively small meals. And unless you're a female client that loves, you know, big six, eight ounces of chicken and steak at all three of your meals, you're probably not getting

adequate protein. It's just, it's hard to do that. It's hard to get that much protein consistently day in and day out. And you need that. You need that when you're, especially when you're weight training. When you're, you don't need that for to live and to survive. But if you're going to push the body, put a stress on it, ask it to build muscle. It, it needs part of those building blocks to do that. And so, making sure you're getting adequate protein, and not just protein. So, I think another one was fats. Oh, yeah. Especially because the low fat was a big deal. Yes, because I think when we came on, came on the scene as trainers, that was still popular.

Back then, it was, you know, we were still demonizing fat. Everybody was eating nonfat everything. And I noticed this a lot with my female clients, also that they were eating really low protein, low fat, and just by bumping their fats up, I would notice a difference. Now, keep in mind, protein and fat are essential macronutrients. In other words, if you don't eat

an adequate amount of protein or fat, your body will fail to thrive. Okay, so forget about building muscle, burning body fat and all that stuff. Your body will literally fail to thrive. And if you push it long enough or you do this bad enough, you will die. You don't have enough fat in your diet. Things start to break down. Hormone starts to change, you start to get nutrient deficiencies and you can die. Same thing with protein.

So those are essential macronutrients. So when I would get, same thing Adam, I'd get clients, especially when I was a trainer because it was low fat was the big, you know, the big craze at the time. And I'd look at their diets and I'd be like, whoa, your fat is way, way low. And they'd be like, well yeah, because I'm trying

to be healthy and I know I want to get leaner and I know fat, you know, makes me fat. I'd be like, no, no fat is way, way low. And they'd be like, well, yeah, because I'm trying to be healthy and I want to get leaner and I know fat, you know, makes me fat, I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, you need fat. You literally need fat. Let's increase your fat intake. Let's have you eat some avocados or some nuts or some olive oil or some coconut oil. Let's bump up your healthy fats.

Sometimes saturated fats, saturated fats also have their health benefits if they're too low and in the right people. And all of a sudden, you'd see their bodies progress. You see their skin change, their hair would start to change, the hormones would start to feel a little bit more balanced out. And then they would burn body fat. So one of the reasons why I think the Atkins diet was so popular in the 90s, I think

people were sold so hard in one way that when they switched and they bumped their fats, they felt these miraculous changes. And it wasn't that the Atkins diet was necessarily the answer. It was that they were eating too low fat to begin with. All they needed to do was bump that up a little bit. It's funny, I'm just thinking about back to our training conversation. It was the same thing with like P90X and like changing it up constantly. Like people just didn't think to interrupt their continuous program

that they were doing all the time. Totally, totally. Here's another one. And this one might not be as common, but I have trained people where this was an issue. And this has to do with nutrients, not macro nutrients, but micro nutrients. Having a micro nutrient deficiency will stall progress hard and will affect your health in huge ways. Now one of the more common nutrient deficiencies that I would see in clients was a vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D in the body, some scientists would even say that it's a hormone. It acts like a hormone in the body. When your vitamin D is low, anxiety goes up, your body's ability to adapt to stress is reduced and remember building muscle, burning body fat, improving performance. Those are all adaptations to stress, the exercise. If the vitamin D levels are low, you notice changes in your skin, your hair, your energy. There's more likely to be like I said, anxiety, anxious and depressed and then you can forget about your body, building muscle and burning body fat.

So the only way to know if you have a vitamin D deficiency and by the way, it's probably the most common deficiency that we see nowadays in modern humans, mostly because we're just never outside. Yeah. Really aren't like. If you think about all the time, you're really exposed to the sun, it's probably, the sun. It's probably less than an hour a day. You have to punish kids to get them outside. Oh, it's getting worse, right? So the only way to know if you have a nutrient deficiency is to test yourself with some kind of a nutrient test.

And you can get this done with a doctor and there's also good companies like Everly Well, that will send one to your house and you can test yourself. But there is an ideal amount of vitamin D that you wanna have in your system. And there is some differences in opinion on this. But you typically, the consensus is you wanna be in the higher range of normal for that particular vitamin.

But that's not the other one, not the only one. Zinc, oftentimes people are deficient in. If you are vegetarian or vegan, look at your B vitamins, look at iron. I mean, if you have any of those any nutrient that's essential is in a deficit. You can forget about getting your body to progress. It's just ain't gonna happen. Well, I'm so glad you went this direction too because this is in my opinion, like, how you should supplement. Like, I hate, this is what I hate about the supplement industry

and how we're always, we're always looking looking at the the supplement that burns the body fat Or the supplement that's gonna build the muscle But we neglect to look at all these micro nutrients that is just ideal for the body running optimally and you being healthy And it's amazing that if you can just get yourself healthy first on how much the body starts to respond for you And it will respond better than any of these performance supplements. Those are all short term for you. They might give you a burst of energy for that workout,

or they might make you feel like you recovered a little bit faster than you did the previous workout, but nothing is gonna make you feel better, long term, and give you long term results and actually getting the balance right in all the other ones. I'm so glad you said that. That's such a great, I'm gonna hammer that home.

If you aren't healthy, if you don't have good general health, you can forget about progressing. Your body's not gonna want to adapt, build muscle or progress. So what does that mean? Boy, that's a big question, right? That covers a lot of different things.

But you can ask yourself this. When you're plateauing and you're not progressing, ask yourself, am I healthy? Now what is that encompass? My sleep, okay. Am I getting adequate sleep every single night or am I exhausted?

Am I relying on caffeine just to function? How are my relationships? Oh, okay, maybe I'm plateauing because I'm going through a divorce or maybe I just got fired or something real stressful is happening. Look at your skin, wait a minute, I'm not plateauing and I have really, really bad skin.

Maybe there's something off with my health. Look at your shits. That's a great, look at your gut health. Okay, I'm not progressing, but I also have terrible constipation or I'm getting diarrhea or I'm severely bloated all the time. Maybe that's why I'm not building muscle

and burning body fat. Overall, at the end of the day, if you're not healthy, you can forget and burning body fat. Overall, at the end of the day, if you're not healthy, you can forget about your body progressing. Now, some people will push past that point. Some people will have terrible health and the way they get their body to respond is by taking drugs or steroids or crazy supplements

or by pushing their bodies harder and harder. Here's what happens when you do that. Yes, you may start to see some progress in your eyes. You may see the scale move, or maybe your strength goes up because now you're on anabolic steroids. But if you keep pushing your health further and further south, at some point, not only is your body gonna stall, but you're gonna lose all of it.

There's an internal breakdown. And I know a lot of people like this, who, you know, in their 20s looks phenomenal, because they completely disregarded their health and they forced their body to look a particular way with some unhealthy practices. Now in their 30s and 40s, they have poor health and what do you think they look like?

They look like they have poor health. It's reflected. So that's a, I'm so, and that covers all the things, right? If your hormones are in balance, let's say you're a man and you're like, oh, I'm not progressing, you go get your testosterone levels checked. Oh, my testosterone levels are low. Get healthy. Oftentimes, that'll bring your testosterone levels back up, rather than automatically opting for the testosterone replacement therapy, which then just erases

that signal and kind of mutes it out. And you ignore them. You're just masking all the signals that your body wants to get back to that homeostasis, that point of health where everything's working optimally. That's it. Now, and again, here's the thing. And here's a point that I want to make. The best way to get through a plateau is to never hit one in the first place or to put it more accurately because you're going to hit plateaus. Try to avoid them before they happen. So what does that mean?

That means regularly phase your workouts or change the routine up. Now we like to change our programming every three to four weeks. If you follow a maps program, you know this when you follow a maps program, it's got you've got at least three different workouts in the program. The reps tend to change, the sets tend to change, and some of the exercises tend to change. So change them up every three or four weeks, anticipate the plateau, change those things up. This is also true for nutrition. Let's say you're eating it away to get yourself leaner, so you're eating it a deficit.

Well, rather than staying in a deficit seven days a week, week in a week out, every four weeks, throwing a week where you're eating at maintenance or a slight surplus, or alternate deficit days with maintenance days, which overall should end up to be a deficit. So in other words, if you let's say you want to be at a 500 calorie deficit every single day,

which is 3,500 calorie deficit, rather than being at 500 every day, maybe one day is 1,000, one day is at no deficit, one day, which is 3500 calorie deficit. Rather than being at 500 every day, maybe one day is a thousand, one day is at no deficit, one day is at a hundred surplus and so on. At the end of the week, it equals out to the deficits that you want, but you're kind of moving in and out of them to avoid plateau.

Take care of your sleep. Also check in with yourself. Am I being healthy? These are the best, because once you hit a plateau, now you gotta kinda go in and put out some fires and correct some thing. But if you change things before things plateau or you anticipate them, that is, that's the best way to have what I like to call perpetual progress. Now, there's no such thing as perpetual progress, but the odds of you getting stuck

in a hard plateau are much lower when you anticipate them. Don't be afraid to try different diets. I used to love to make my clients go through all different types of diets. And what I would try and teach them is that let's not become dogmatic about the one that you loved or you felt we got the best results. Let's learn why that probably was. Like, you know, all of a sudden you go on the,

what's the all fish diet? So, pescatarian diet? Yeah, like a pescatarian diet. And all of a sudden you feel amazing. Inflammation is down, your joints feel better. Instead of saying, oh, this diet is what gives me all these results. Let's talk about what foods are in that diet

that probably cause that to happen. And let's make sure that you keep fish now in the diet. Or, oh, let's run ketogenic diet for a while. And let's see what goes on with your gut or you notice your skin or things like that or your hair. Like, try different diets, but don't get stuck on the diet just because you saw results.

Try and unpack what it was that you've changed in the diet that is either one that you eliminated that's no longer in there that was probably potentially causing problems or something that you've added now because you're following this new diet that you've added in your, and that's how you start to piece together which you may have been lacking.

And there's a psychological benefit to that as well. I mean, if you go low carb for too long, oh boy, psychologically that's gonna start to mess with you. If you go low fat for too long or if you eat mostly vegan for too long, it could start to mess with you psychologically. It's one of the reason why I think competitors like to carb cycle so much.

I don't necessarily think it's the fact that the carbs are cycling. I think there's a big psychological benefit, and it may avoid some plateaus because it gets the body to change from lower carb to higher carb. But I think the main benefits of psychological, some days I eat more carbs and less fat

and some days I eat more fat and less carbohydrate. I would agree. That's where I think a lot of the benefit comes from. And if you're looking to test your body's nutrients and hormones to see if that's an issue, and I'm gonna be quite honest with the listeners right now, those are the more rare reasons why your body's plateauing, but if they happen,

the only way you can fix it is by fixing those two things. You can test yourself at home. Everly well does make good tests and they are one of our sponsors. You can go on, you can get vitamin tests and hormone tests as well. With that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download some of our guides. They're all absolutely free. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find me at MindPumpSoul, at a MindPump Atom, and Justin at MindPumpJustice.

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