Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1147: Eight Sure-Fire Ways to Build Strength

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss 8 ways to build strength in the gym. Strength, the foundational physical pursuit. (2:05) The eight most important factors when it comes to resistance training in order to build strength. (5:52) #1 - The importance of establishing good form. (7:42) #2 – Adding progressive resistance. (15:05) #3 – Incorporating free weight exercises into your routine. (20:04) #4 – The importance of incorporating the ‘Big 4”. (25:03) #5 – Sticking to the basics. (31:45) #6 – The value of tracking to avoid plateaus. (36:10) #7 – To NOT train or lift to failure. (43:02) #8 – You MUST phase your training. (50:42) People Mentioned  Mike Matthews (@muscleforlifefitness)  Instagram Stan "Rhino" Efferding - CSCS (@stanefferding)  Instagram   Related Links/Products Mentioned October Promotion: MAPS Anabolic ½ off!! **Code “RED50” at checkout** Stop Working Out And Start Practicing - Mind Pump Free Weights vs Machines (WHAT IS THE BETTER MUSCLE BUILDER?) When Exercising Less and Eating More Burns More Fat and Builds More Muscle Does Training to Failure Help You Build More Muscle? What Science Says The New Approach to Training Volume Mind Pump 865: Stan Efferding- The World’s Strongest Bodybuilder Which Is Better: Low Reps Or High Reps? - Mind Pump Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and to build strength, like factors. These are the most important factors you must do these. That will positively influence your strength. Now, why is this important? Because strength is one of the most fundamental things that you should work on. It positively impacts most aspects of your health. And it's something you should focus on,

even if your goal is to burn body fat. If you're getting stronger while you're burning body fat, that's a phenomenal sign. So what we did is we listed the most important factors, everything from good form, progressive resistance, free weights versus machines, the best, most effective exercises, whether or not you should get complicated or stick to the basics,

how you track whether or not you should train to failure and whether or not you should phase your workouts. So if you listen this episode and apply these principles to your routine, the odds that you're gonna get stronger, effectively and consistently, are much higher. Now that brings me to the next point. Maps and a Bolic is one of our most effective strength building programs, actually one of our most programs. We do not work for you.

It's a, it's a, if you enroll in Maps and a ballic, you've got your whole workout planned for you. Everything from what exercises to do, to how many reps, to the exercise form and technique where we demonstrate the right way to do these exercises. And what we've also done is made this program 50% off in October, so it's half off. So here's what you do if you wanna get our most effective muscle building, strength building, Metabolism Boosting Program. Go to mapsred.com and use the code red50.

That's R-E-D 50, no space in there for the discount. You brought something up on the show the other day. So, this is my idea. It is. Are you bringing up things? This whole business is your idea. Everything's your idea, right? It's important.

No, you did, actually. You brought something up, and I think it was along the lines of longevity, but I got a lot of DMs in regards to it, just about the importance of strength. And I think it's a really good topic. Personally for myself, it was something that even as a trainer years, I spent training for hypertrophy because I inspired to be like a bodybuilder type of physique and I liked

that more. It's a muscle growth. Yeah, so I was chasing that all time and I really, I didn't think I identified with strength athletes and powerlifting and so for me I used to think that, oh that's not for me, so I don't need to train that. But it wasn't until way later in my career did I realize how important strength training is, not just for things like being strong or longevity, but just in overall building an aesthetic physique and for all those other reasons too.

It's the most foundational. Yeah, strength is the foundational physical pursuit. So what I mean by that is, I've said this before, but if you get stronger, you improve in almost every other physical aspect or expression of physicality. So what that means is, if you get strength properly, you will also improve your functional flexibility. If you get strong properly, you will also improve your stamina and endurance. You will improve your mobility. You will improve your ability to burn body fat,

your ability to fight off infection. It gives you general strength, building physical strength also builds general strength. That's what those studies that you're talking about with longevity, they found that strength was a better measure of, was a better protector against all cause mortality, than just muscle mass. And it makes sense, right?

Muscle is the, I mean, what does muscle do? It moves. So without the actual function of it, then it's not going to provide a lot of actual benefit. But even weight loss, if somebody's trying to burn body fat or lose weight, one of the best possible signs I can think of, one of the most objective, it's objective,

I like that because it's either stronger or you're not. But one of the best signs you could ever get is that you actually get stronger while getting leaner. Like if this happens, because here's one of the problems with getting leaner or burning body fat, your metabolism starts to adapt to weight loss by slowing itself down. It's called metabolic adaptation.

It's a well-documented phenomena that happens in the body. Well, getting stronger, whenever I have somebody that I'm training or working with and they're saying, hey, I'm burning body fat, you know, am I doing the right thing? And one of the first things I say is, are you still getting stronger? If they say yes, I'm like, everything's going great. Yeah, because otherwise, if you're going in that direction and you're feeling weaker and you're feeling less energetic, I'm like, everything's going great. Yeah, because otherwise if you're going in that direction and you're feeling weaker and you're feeling less energetic, I mean, your body's gonna want to shuttle in calories to try and pep you back up again.

So it's like you're fighting this other battle. It's just a great sign. And I don't care what your goal is, if you're lifting weights, and now of course there's extreme expressions of this, Adam brought up powerlifting. Yes, you can go extreme with it and then get what are called diminishing returns, but other than that I'm talking about for just generally speaking, if you're working out in the gym and using weights, weights,

what you should, if you're for what I'm okay, what you're training for, that should have to play some role in your training. If you're lifting weights, the most important factor that you should pay attention to is how strong you are. Well, this is the part that I wanted to go deep on because sometimes I think we forget, because we're constantly talking to our peers and in our little bubble, that something as simple

as telling people, oh, you should lift weights to build strength, that that computes to the average person as, okay, I just go lift weights because lifting weights does help build strength. No matter how you lift the weights, lifting weights period is going to help build strength. So we just assume that every way of training or all the basics of lifting weights may contribute to the best ways to building strength. And there's better ways to build strength than other ways and more effective and faster. And I think that we should break down some of the most key and important things to make sure that you build strength the right way and the safest way and the fastest way.

No, that's a great point because you can, there's some truth to saying that if you just lift weights that you're going to build some strength. Obviously, if you go radically wrong and do it completely wrong, then that's not gonna happen. But like anything applied properly and appropriately, it's just gonna be much better. There's just gonna be faster, better,

and more consistent results. Done. The further away you move away from the best ways to use weights to build strength, the further away you move from that, the worse your results become, the less consistent they become, and the higher the risk of things like injury become. So that's a very, very good point. And so I think we should list, like, the most important factors when it comes to resistance training in order to build strength. Like, what are some of the things that are non-negotiables? Like, this is imperative when it comes to building strength. The first one that comes to mind that I think a lot of people

neglect and I think we should touch on first is good form. And really working towards having good mechanics and good behavior in the gym when it comes to training. And this takes a bit of education. It does. I mean, in terms of understanding what good posture is to begin with and like, spinal alignment and then also, you know, the actual intent and purpose of the exercise, that's going to take a lot of education to get to the point where you understand that fully. Right. Because you could do an exercise and then change your form so that you're not having a full range of motion or you're using momentum or you're

going off form and then lift more weight and you could say to yourself, I'm stronger, not really. There's an optimal way to do exercises and that optimal way is measured by risk prevention, maximum benefit. Okay, so there's a great, there's a one way to do an exercise perfectly. There's a trillion ways to do it wrong, or to do it less than perfect. So, good form is really about doing an exercise in the best way possible. And if you get stronger doing it in the best way possible,

then you know you're actually increasing your strength. You're not just lifting more weight. Does that make sense? If I go to a squat and I do a full range of motion squat, and then I add weight to it, and now I don't go down all the way in my squat. I've lifted more weight, have I really gotten stronger? No, I have it, not at all.

So form has got to be imperative. And that's important because I think sometimes when we communicate getting strong, especially the guys, I was one of these guys, especially as a teenager. You're just purely measuring the weight. I'm just looking at the weight. So now I'm like, you know, back comes off the bench

or don't go down as deep in my squats or swing a little bit with my current. You're on established good habits that are gonna last you lifetime and to be able to do that correctly from the beginning is imperative. So that way, you know, as you build upon this foundation, the strength foundation, you know, you have a lot more options, you know, going forward to where it's not going to head into a situation where it may be detrimental, maybe injury prone. Yeah. Determine on maybe injury prone. Yeah, you're good. It's also like sports. Like if you look at, you know, a golfer, a baseball player, an NBA shooter, like your technique will really

expand how great you can become at whatever this, the potential signer. Yeah, the potential. Thank you. The potential is much higher when you lay a very solid foundation and you practice really good form first. So anybody can come in.

The most green person at lifting could come in, do squats, terrible form, lift and do squats every single week for six weeks and they will get stronger. They will build some strength, 100%. But somebody who goes in there and maybe spends those six weeks not really worrying about adding load and getting and getting You know adding weight to the bars much is getting really good at the form and technique That person will eventually surpass the other person and building strength long time I have a great way to illustrate that. I've used this example before It's like when you first learn to type on a keyboard

You use your two index fingers and do the huntton Peck style of typing. And if you did that for a few years, a few months or a few years, you'll get faster and faster with your Hutton Peck technique. Not knowing that the real, the best technique to type is the one where you use all your fingers. And when you first start doing that, you might actually be slower, because you're really good at the... I was a better singer. Right. But once you get, but the potential for speed is much higher with the proper form.

The same thing goes through with exercise. Here's an example, okay? Or here's another way to illustrate that. So, the strength that you gain with an exercise is relatively, it's quite specific. Now there's some general strength that you get from it, but it's quite specific. In other words, if I strengthen my squat going down 16 inches,

most of the strength gain I'm gonna get from that squat is gonna be to that 16 inches. What's I move out of that? That range of motion, I lose a lot of my strength, and the further I move out of it, the more I lose strength. So for those you listening, you don't believe me, go try doing your max squat, but go down two inches lower. You're gonna hurt, you're actually don't do it.

Yeah, don't do it, don't challenge it. They will do it. You'll hurt yourself. So good form, what encompasses good form is often, or almost always, a very good controlled full range of motion. So what happens when you get strong in a full range of motion, which is what good form is, what's part of good form, is you're going to get a greater range of strength. You're just going to build a greater range of strength.

So, form is absolutely imperative. The other thing why good form is so imperative is good form has been established for you as a the best way to reduce the risk of injury. Getting stronger, there's always that risk of injury as you lift more weight. You know, if I, if I move wrong with a hundred pounds on my back, there's a certain risk of injury. If I move wrong with four hundred pounds on my back, there's a certain risk of injury. If I move wrong with 400 pounds on my back, the risk of injuries far higher. So good form is extremely important, especially as you get strong.

Well, and I don't think it's just good form when we talk like good form as far as range of motion. It's also like control in that range of motion and understanding what muscles we're trying to train when we do this. The preferable muscles. Which ones you want. Yeah, which are ideal for this movement?

Because again, you could come in, you could squat, you could squat down, get up, and have terrible form and still build strength. But what ends up happening is you start to build in areas that are that should not be taking the most of this load and moving this weight most optimally. And then that just exaggerates what you're saying about as you start to load the bar.

You get a really good at bad form. Yes. Which that it just makes the risk go up that much higher. Not to mention the results go much lower. Because the risk-henshaw of the results. Yeah, and because the risk goes up higher, like you said, now your potential was a 10, and now there's no way you're gonna get above a seven

because your form is off, so that's real important. So just the final way to close the loop on this point is, I always tell clients at the beginning as much as it's important for us to add weight to the bar and to load and get stronger, it's more important that you practice this as a skill. And we talk about this on the show a lot. Like, man, sometimes it's great just to go to the gym

and for the entire hour, practice the skill of squatting. And when you're practicing a skill of squatting, you're not loading the bar really, really heavy. You're paying attention to all the detail of your ankles, your feet, where your knees are at, your head, your chest. The tension. Yeah, the tension that you're keeping throughout the move at the control of it, the tempo of it,

and just get good at it, get good at moving through that range of motion like you were pointing out so, and practice that, even though you may not think that you're getting stronger, or that's your laying a really good foundation for getting really strong in future. Now here's another one I think this one almost goes without saying, but progressive resistance.

In order to get stronger, you have to continuously challenge the body. Your body, so progressive resistance means as you get stronger, you add weight and continue to challenge your body. There's a couple of thoughts I have on this. One, it doesn't happen perfectly in a linear way. You're not going to add weight always to the bar.

It's more of a step ladder approach. You're going to have some weeks where you're going to add weight, and then you're going to have some weeks where you need to drop down, focus on perfecting your form, allow your body to recover, and then start to move back up in that pattern. Yeah, you can't weigh your results purely on whether or not you're increasing constantly because there are those moments. And there's lots of other factors involved in terms of whether you got a good night's

sleep, like how much stress you're under. Like, there's lots of factors going into the actual workout where, yeah, it may limit performance that day specifically, but it is a good way to measure progress in the overall scheme. When I first became a trainer, I remember it shocked me to see this, but then as I continued training clients, I would actually see this not a ton, but I'd see it enough to where I was like, oh, this is a pattern. This was much more common with female clients, but they'd come to me, they'd wanna hire me,

we'd talk about working out, and they'd say, oh, do you work out, do you lift weights? Oh yeah, I lift weights three days a week. I'd be, okay, let's, let me see what your workout looks like, and I'd go through and then they'd grab their 10 pound dumbbells or whatever, their 15 pound. They'd say, well, how long have you been using this weight? The whole time.

What do you mean the whole time? This is just what I do 10 pound chest press. Well, how many reps do you do? 10. 10. Every week. Every single week. For 10 years. Yeah. Okay. Your body will not continue to progress. If you do not give it a reason to progress. And that is, and one of the ways to do that, and one of the more important factors is to add resistance progressively. As you get stronger, you add weight or repetitions. That keeps sending a signal to the body to continue to get stronger. Otherwise, what will end up happening is whatever weight you start with, initial strength gains come, and now

it's easy, but you keep doing it, you're at best going to stay where you're at. I'm so glad you're bringing this up because that is probably one of the most common things that I used to get, especially with my female clientele, was they found a weight that they could do with good form or that they like to do for an exercise, and that was just, they just stuck to that. Forever.

When I do chest flies, I do these dumbbells. Right. When I do bicep curls, I do these dumbbells. When I do this, I do this machine and I do it on this pen. Like, and it's like, I've been doing that for months on years a lot of the time. And it's like, well, yeah, that's going to maintain

kind of where you're at right now. But if you're in search of progressing and progressing your physique and building more strength, I mean, you've got to slowly add weight to the bar. Totally. Now, on the flip side of this, here's something that I would see that was more common in my male clients.

They were adding resistance when it wasn't time. Way too fast. To add resistance. It's like, oh yeah, you added five pounds to the bar, but your form went to crap. That's not a proper either. It's usually, let's see what I can do. That's really like the mentality coming in instead of

an real methodical approach that's gonna give you the right dose that's gonna help you to actually progress as opposed to, well, now I have to heal. Yeah, you already get those clients where the guys, you know, they do a set and you're watching their formula like, ooh, it's a little iffy, they push it, and then I would add more. Yeah, I think I could do the 45s. Actually, you can't.

You can't do the 45, so let's stay away from that. Isn't that funny how we are? It's the opposite to the sex. Like if you can blend the two of them, you make like the perfect client. Oh, totally, right. Actually, I'll be honest with you, women are easier to train typically than men.

Oh yeah. Well, because I've always rather have somebody who has been training with more caution and control and created at least good because the female client that you addressed, that client actually a lot of times has decent to good form. She's been practicing with those 15 pound dumbbells for years doing the same exercises. She's got pretty good mechanics, you know, I'm saying where the guy, he may be doing five times the weight as she's doing, but he's all over the fucking map. And I gotta end it.

And it's tough because you gotta take him. And I mean, it's so challenging and having a male client that you have to strip them down. Oh boy, wait a minute, here you go. Right, and you gotta tell them, and they're telling you, I can do more. Well, yeah, I know you can do more. I don't really do two plates.

Right, you should be doing a half, half a plate. Right, you know. half, half a plate. Right. You know. So stripping them down. Yeah, so add weight, but stick to the first principle we talked about, which was good form. If your form is still good, then you can, and you add weight, excellent. You've progressed, and that's going to send more

of a signal to continue to build strength. Those are very, very fundamental. What about this one? In my experience, the best exercises to build general, overall, real world effective strength are free weight exercises. If I had to pick, and I don't, and I hear it's a deal, I'm not saying only do free weights.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying that. But there is a deal. I'm not saying only do free weights. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying that. But there is a hierarchy. There is. We have to acknowledge it. And free weights just do a better job of building overall general strength. And studies show this.

You get really good at a barbell squat. Your sprint speed and your vertical gets better than if you do a machine squat, for example. They just translate much better. Part of it may be the balance factor. I think a lot of it has to do with just the difficulty of them. I mean, I have been consistently squatting and deadlifting now, more so than I ever have in my life in the last probably six or so years. And I mean, very consistent. I'll easily miss bicep curls and

lateral raises for weeks on in, but I won't miss squatting or deadlifting longer than I think I'm on one of my long streaks right now. I think on day six, I haven't squated or deadlift. Like that's, I've been extremely consistent with the point of me sharing that is I am still trying to perfect the form. I'm still working to get better at it. There's so many nuances with the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press, these movements are so complex that there's somewhat of novelty still to them, even to this day, all those times and reps I put into it,

where when you sit in a machine that takes out a lot of these other things, like it doesn't take long for the body to adapt to this restricted movement and you can get good at it. And then my only tool to progress it is to just overload it by adding weight where the deadlift or the squat or the overhead press, there's like I said, so many nuances to the movement that I can be practicing all these little details and improving it and that gives me more room I think to progress.

I think that's a lot of the reason why. And free weights are, you know, we're talking about all the benefits of strength. Free weights are also more like a real life. In real life when you're lifting something, it's not on a track. You know, it's not on a cam or whatever. It's clean and clear cut.

Yeah, there's a lot more variables that you have to be like flexible and on the fly with. Like, how do I account for this asymmetrical load? Like, something that's like shifting weight even as I'm picking it up. Like, I have to be able to resist that. And that's a whole different skill. That's right. And earlier in the episode we talked about form, and I'll tell you what,

when you use a machine, oftentimes you have to adjust your body to fit the machine, because the machine is built within a certain parameter. In fact, the last time I read about this, I think most machines are designed for a average, I think 30 year old male, who's five between five eight to five 10 or something like that. So, and that's when they have adjustable seats

and arms on stuff, but still, you're limited. Free weights adjust to your body. You put the free weight on your body or you move the free weight in space. That's why it's called free. So I don't care how tall or short or wide you are, or how long your femurs are, or how long your arms are,

the free weights match your body. I mean, you got a guy like Adam who's got long limbs, wide shoulders. You put him in a machine and he has to figure out a way to get the machine to work his body properly. You don't gotta do that with free weights. You just have good form and it works. You know, when I would train clients that were little short,

I would put him in a machine. And sometimes I'd do the machine, I'd be like, oh, it's not gonna work for you. We'd move the seat all the way up. It's not, now that the person wouldn't know this because they're not a trainer. So they would go and use the machine and end up not being able to maximize their progress.

Free weights are not like that. Free weights, I can train anybody with free weights. I can modify the hell out of free weights. You can't do this with machines. And I think because of this fact that it fits your body better, you're going to get better general strength gains as a result. So if we're talking about, again, strength, and you want that specific but also general strength,

free weights just crush, they absolutely crush machines, and athletes have known this for a long time. You don't see too many athletic coaches primarily training their clients or their athletes on machines, but you get almost all of them primarily training their athletes with free weights. They're just much better.

And the strength you build with a, I'll tell you something right now, adding 50 pounds on a leg press is not the same as adding 50 pounds on a barbell squat. No. It's just not. You add 50 pounds on a leg press. Yeah, you got stronger. That's cool. You add 50 pounds on a barbell squat, you can feel it. It feels like it's like adding 150 pounds on a leg press or something like that. Far, far more carryover, overall to the type of strength that you build. Well, that leads me to the next point, which is the importance of incorporating the big

four and sticking to the big four. Oh, the best exercises. Yes, in a routine. I remember when we first launched Maps and Obolic, and if there was anything that we ever got pushed back on, it would be people going like, I already know these exercises. Right? You remember that? Yeah. would be people going like, I already know these exercises. Right, you remember that? Yeah. You remember people being like that?

And this is, this is, there's a secret exercise. And it really, it frustrates me and it frustrates me because it's a reflection of myself, right? I know that I was part of the problem as a trainer early on in my career. I train clients with the wow factor of, let me show you an exercise you've never seen before and you know dazzling them with these crazy balancing type movements and sitting

weird and standing weird and using machines differently and all this stuff to try and get their attention that let me show you something new that you have done all while not knowing that I was really doing more harm than good because my clients were missing out on the movements that are going to give them the greatest bang for their buck and not only not avoiding them is or avoiding them as ridiculous, but not keeping them in your routine as a regular movement that should stay in there probably forever. Yeah, now the big four that Adam's referring to are your barbell squat, your barbell deadlift, your barbell bench press,

and your barbell overhead press. Those are the big, now the reason why they're called the big four is because of this. I could take those four exercises, and I'll compete better. I'll win over any combination of 20 other exercises you can think of, no joke. You pick at 20 other exercises, and no cheating, no using exercises that are almost identical. You can't be like, okay, I'm not gonna bench press with a barbell, but I'll use dumbbells.

That's too strong. I'm gonna do a Bulgarian squat, so that's cool. No, no, no, no. I'm not gonna bench press with a barbell, but I'll use dumbbells. Yeah, that's too straight. I'm gonna do a bulk hearing squat. So, squat. No, no, no. I'm talking about like exercise that way different. Those exercises, those four will destroy in terms of just overall strength, muscle building, fat loss, and progress, over all those other exercises.

You get really good at a barbell squat. That's better than doing leg extensions, leg curls, abduction, abduction, and any other combination of leg exercises you can think of for most people. Now I'm not saying you, you know, if you don't squat, some people can't do some of these exercises, I get that, but most people can, and those that can't should figure out a way to be able to do those exercises and correct them balances and figure out why the hell they can't do some of these fundamental movements.

But these exercises just have by far the biggest bang for their buck. Yeah, and they're all high skill. I mean, and that's to your point of always learning and always like revisiting these very specific exercises. There's just so many nuances and so many things to pay attention to and and feedback that you're gonna get provided while doing these exercises that little things can can then lead you down to accessory lifts.

Like I need to improve this part of my body because of what's happening in one of these gross motor movements that I'm working on. Like it reveals itself as you're going through the exercise. For most people listening, and of course there's always individual variance, but I can make this statement a lot of confidence. Most people listening right now, if you're lifting weights, I don't care what your goal

is, if you're lifting weights, you should have those four exercises in your routine weekly, or almost weekly at the least, right? But probably weekly. They should definitely be in there. You can modify and change everything else. You can throw in exercises, take others out. You can change the rep ranges and do a bunch of other things. But those exercises belong in most people's routines pretty regularly.

That's how important these exercises are. Not all exercises are created equal. Some exercises are far more effective than others. I mean, if you're going to spend 20 minutes in the gym, you don't want to spend that 20 minutes doing stuff that's not effective. Heck, if you want to spend an hour in the gym, you want to spend it getting the most out of that hour. Those four exercises.

Well, they have the most. They have the most carryover to all other exercises. Very true. There's a lot of things that you can do. They have the most carryover to all other exercises. Very true. There's a lot of things that you can do. You can get amazing at lying leg curls and progress your strength this night and then go grab a barbell deadlift

and be terrible at it, right? But the reverse. But the reverse, and I've shared this example on this show I'll never forget how much it blew my mind. I completely eliminated lying leg curls for a year and did nothing but deadliftlift came back to lying leg curls And it was PRing the first time I did it

I'd done it two times the weight that I was doing before it was just blew my mind and the same thing went for Exercises like a seated row Seated row was something I used to do at first back exercise if I wasn't doing pull-ups I was doing seated row to warm up every single back every single back day, completely eliminated that for almost a year. Deadlifted like crazy, came back to Cedar Road, stronger in Cedar Road ever been in my life.

I could have Cedar Road my whole life, then go to Deadlift and it does nothing for me. So those four movements carry, and this goes for everything too, like bicep curls and tricep extensions and all these other movements. When you do a heavy overhead shoulder press or a bench press, the shoulders and the triceps are getting work. When you're doing a pull on a deadlift, especially when

you're pulling two, three, four hundred pounds away, the biceps are getting worked. They're going to get stronger. So then when you go to those other movements, you're going to see carry-over to them. You'll get stronger in So then when you go to those other movements, you're going to see carry over to them. You'll get stronger in all those secondary muscles. But if all you train is all these isolation exercises and you target specific muscle groups and you eliminate those four, and then you go try and do one of those four big movements,

you won't see shit from it. Oh, no. I mean, for as long as people have been lifting weights, certain exercises have risen to the top. And now we've had people lifting weights consistently now for six, seven decades, a lot of strength athletes and athletes, you know, and other sports and bodybuilders, not stuff. And this is a pretty wide accepted consensus that those are the four, those four exercises, that's why they're called the big four, right? They're some of the most effective exercise.

So this is based off of the experience of decades of athletes training and people noticing like, wow, when I get really strong at a squat, my progress is amazing. My body looks incredible. I build more muscle way more than when I get strong at other leg exercises. And that's true for all of them, brings us to the next thing stick to the basics Strength is built by getting good at the most at the basics and getting good at the most effective Exercises if you're if you're constantly throwing Crazy variety of of exercises at your body if you're balancing on, I remember for a while there,

it got really popular to stand on a balancing ball or do everything one leg it or do weird, versus different exercises. You're not going to get, you're not gonna be good enough at those to get to build lots of general strength, like you would with some of those other basics. Keep it basic, there's some basic principles that apply to building strength. Stick to those. When you get super creative,

the body actually doesn't progress very well. It starts to stall. You're throwing too many variables at your body. We were teasing our friend the other day, Mike Matthews. It's funny because we were teasing him about how boring his workouts are. But after a few minutes of teasing, we also, you know, chuckled and said the truth is. You're doing the most effective stuff. Yeah, the stuff that he's putting out there and he's posting on his Instagram stories is better than 90% of the shit that you see trainers out there posting. You know, the thing that you see, especially in social media world, you see these

trainers always showing and teaching the new creative exercise. Try this out. Use this, check this out. Look at this new move, look at this fancy thing. The reason why I don't like that stuff, it's not that having some creative new way to work your triceps or do some cool shoulder supers set isn't neat. What I know is that I've trained the general population for a really long time. And most people don't even need that, those tips and that advice. Most people need to be reminded how important they are that they stick to the basic movements and get good at the basic movements.

And that's not that easy. You know, you could, you could practice a lunge, a squad, a deadlift and overhead press, a chest press. You could, you could barbell press. You could do that for the next 10 years and still never get perfect at it. So stick to those basic movements and continue to try to progress and get better

and get better. And that will give you way more carryover than this whole muscle confusion idea of throwing around yourself. A lot of specificity. And I mean, this is something that's been sort of an abused statement too. But if you look at what you're teaching the body,

I'm refining that and I'm getting better and better at these movements that have the most carryover. That's why we're sticking with those in the mix. And then every now and then it's good to throw an interruptor in. And that's going to create a new stimulus. But you're always drawing it back to these core exercises because they have, you know, the most effect on your overall strength. It's, you know, this is one of the best compliments I ever got on Maps and Obolic was, its strength coach told me the beauty was in its simplicity.

Maps and Obolic, and don't let that fool you. The way that program is written, a lot of thought and energy went into creating this program to be as effective as possible. But if you don't understand training, you look at it, you think, wow, this is a lot of basics. And it's true, it's because they work. Yeah, the idea wasn't to create a program to razzle and dazzle people.

The idea was to create a program that worked. And the basics work. If you apply them properly, there's definitely complexity in how you apply the basics. So when I say the basics, that doesn't mean, you know, it's easy, but there's definitely complexity there. But when you stick to the basics and you do it right, you'll get way better results

than when you throw a million and one different variables to your body. I mean, here's a good example. You look at a boxer. How many punches does a boxer have in his arsenal? Yeah, four. Yeah, four or five punches, right? You gotta, you know, some You got a, you know,

some guy who's, you know, a black belt and some martial art that's got 50 million different moves and kicks. And then he goes and gets in the ring with a boxer who's been practicing those four punches for the last five years. The boxer is going to beat the crap out of him. Bruce Lee said it. He says, I don't fear the man who knows that who's practiced a thousand kicks one time. I practice, I fear the man who's practiced one kick a thousand times. Very, very true when it comes to resistance training. Now, there's another one that I found that was extremely important to me.

Like, I remember, again, training for a really long time, always just building a bot, trying to build my body. I cared about the way I looked. I was never a strength athlete, so I never followed like a powerlifting protocol to progressively add strength week over week. And even though I understood progressive overload, I never really tracked.

I never really tracked everything to see, like, am I actually putting it in and slowly increasing my volume or slowly increasing my weight week over week or month over a month. And I didn't do this complete transparency to the level that I did, I did kind of when I was younger, but not to the level that I did here as I did when I started competing. Because now I had to, right? Here I am, I do a show, I work real hard, training and dieting, I get out there, I present my physique, and my first show,

I got fourth place. So next show I wanna win, I wanna do better. Well, if I wanna do better, I can't go back and do the exact same routine or follow the same formula that I was doing to get to that physique, I needed to be able to overload it. And the only way I would know for sure that I was overloading it would be if I was to be tracking it and paying attention to it.

And one of the things that I noticed when I first started tracking was what would, what kind of naturally happens, and this is my theory on why a lot of people get stuck in plateaus. This is why this one's so important to me, is I think just natural habit, this is what we do, you know, because a lot of people don't track you have a week and it's a good week You hit your four days or however many days you plan to whatever is a good week for you of training You know three five days in in the gym and you ate well you slept well You train great, you know you hit that extra set when you we're gonna go home or you push a little extra harder You add a five more pounds because you're feeling good. And you do that for a week, then you do it for a second week and oh man,

maybe you hit a PR and you're feeling great. And then the next week after that, it's just your busy, your busy, or you didn't sleep as well. And so then you go in and you train and you don't even realize it, but you do one less set that workout. And then the next one,

you can't quite load at the bar as much, so you pull one less set that workout. And then the next one, you can't quite load at the bar as much, so you pull back about 10 pounds. And then the next week after that, you know, another crazy week or whatever, you don't feel as motivated, you don't have your workout partner. And so then the volume dips, you know, and then the next week of that, you go back up again. And then you, we all, we kind of hover in this comfortable zone. And we kind of stay there and we don't progressively overload over time. And I noticed that I was doing this and so when I was tracking, it caused me to be very diligent about how much I loaded.

And knowing that I don't need to do a lot more and if there's a sweet spot because you don't, and that's the other thing, people go, because you can look at the big picture. Right. You can look at a month or weeks rather than just the last workout. Exactly. And so I think everybody else treats it like they're on or they're hot or cold. They're either I'm not training very hard or well. And then I'm training really hard really well. And it's kind of the same thing. You're off or you're on and off looks like X amount of weight and volume. And on looks like another like another one versus methodically

adding a little bit of weight every single week, over week, over month, over month. And our creatures of habit, I mean, the path of least resistance is human behavior. So there's times where I'm in the gym and I know this is my favorite lift. This is what I'm good at lift, right, versus the one that's gonna be the struggle always.

And I'm like, yeah, we'll just naturally avoid if I'm not consistently riding it down or looking at what the plan is for the day. I will avoid things unconsciously. Yeah, at first glance, when you say track as an important factor to building strength, at first glance, I'm like, is it really, and then I think about it, I think about all the clients that I train. Now, I tracked oftentimes when I would train clients. When I train myself maybe not as much, but when I

train clients, I would track. And here's what would end up happening. I'd have a client do an exercise, and it'd be like, phenomenal. You did two more reps. They'd be like, I did? That's how much I always did. Or do an exercise, like, oh my God, use the 15 pound dumbbells. That's the ones I always use, like, no, it's not. You use the 12s before. I mean, it's an important way to self reflect.

And I think you're right, Adam, to look at the big picture because you're not going to progress your resistance every single week. So it is important to look at the big picture because this week over last week, I may go lighter because I'm not feeling as good. But when I look at the big picture, I see, wow, my dips aren't as low as they used to be.

Now when I drop weight, I'm still stronger than I was when I was at my strongest two months ago. And so that tracking just gives you that birds eye view that I think long-term, that is necessary for long-term success. Well, it's the same thing, the same way that I would approach a client with their nutrition.

A client's used to always, oh, I'm eating good. I'm eating so good, I'm eating perfect, I'm following the plan this time, I'd be like, okay, well, show me, did you write it down, or did you track it in your app, or whatever? Oh, no, no, no, I'm eating what you tell me, like, oh, okay.

How do you know? How do you know? Let's track, and then what would happen? They would track, no, I'm meeting what you tell me like, okay, how do you know, let's let's track. And then what would happen? They would track. And then I could see all the holes. Oh, well, here on this day, we, we weigh under eight on your protein that we were supposed to. Oh, this day, we didn't get enough fiber like we're supposed to. This day, you over consumed by 250 calories. You didn't realize you did like all that shit fucking matters. And there, all of that could be, and that could be and what's the human nature to Justin's point We do we just we're creatures of habit and we just kind of fall into these natural behaviors and those natural behaviors A lot of times result in these plateaus because you think you're doing one thing

But you kind of naturally gravitating to your normal behaviors and one of the easiest ways for me to point that out with someone's Programming or training is to have them track. And then I can look at it. I'm like, well, look, over the four weeks that you were consistently tracking, you actually averaged the same volume every single week. So in the grand scheme of things,

we're really not progressively overloading. We're staying about the same. Sure, you had a great week right here, but then you had a shitty week right here. It averages out to be this. Now, don't fall into this trap when you track that you have to beat your numbers from last week. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Don't fall into that trap. Look at the big picture. That's how you use tracking properly. The way you use tracking in properly is last week I did 10 reps. I have to do more this week. At some point, that'll cause problems for you. All right. Here's one that blew my mind the first time

actually learn and apply this. In fact, if I think of all the singular mind blowing things that I learned in resistance training, this next one I'm about to mention is in the top three, definitely top five, but probably top three, might even be the number one thing that blew my mind and that was to not Train or lift to failure. God. I love I love this one because the state that we're in in the fitness space the

Beast mode the all out everybody's chasing PR's the cross fit mentality of exercise and lifting weights We're always chasing this muscle failure and going after it. And this was, I'm right with you on this cell. This was an area that I abused this for most of my training career. And it was a very tough thing for me to learn this two-in-the-tank theory. Oh, dude, it was this, the reason why I blew my mind

is because this was a staple, it was a commandment, that in order to get your muscles to grow or to you for you to get stronger, you had to lift a weight until you could no longer as much as possible. Yeah, you could no longer lift it again with good form. So if I'm bench pressing, the 10th rep is gotta be the absolute last rep I could possibly do because the theory went Then you know that your muscles that you surpass the point where you send the signal to build muscle You know that you're gonna send that signal it creates the most damage and therefore

Every always train and lift to failure and so I just assumed this was a law and so I trained like this for the first ten years of my training career, at least 10 years. That's how I trained my body. And then I started to read the studies and papers on Olympic lifters. Now here's why reading this was so important. Olympic lifting has got the most science supporting it in terms of training methodologies.

A lot of this is because Olympic lifting is an Olympic sport. So there's a lot of countries that fund studies. A lot of this comes from Russia, right? A lot of it came from the Soviet Union, right? They invested a lot of money on trying to make the best strongest athletes in, in Olympic lifting. And the way Olympic lifters train rarely is to failure. In fact, one, the only times they ever lift to failures on the day of competition. Power lifters also. Power lifters rarely lift to failure. So when you look at these strength athletes, I remember reading this going, huh, yeah, that's kind of weird. And so here's what I started to do. I'm like, all right, let me test this out. Rather than lifting to failure, I'm going to stop about two reps before I fail. No joke, instantly got stronger.

Instantly, the next workout, I got stronger on lifts that I had been stuck at. Yeah, this totally blew my mind too. And again, looking back at the training and I used to know a couple of Olympic lifters and they're kind of breaking down how they trained and it was like seven days a week. It was every single day they're training.

And so to think that they were trying to max out every single workout was just like idiotic. And they just were trying to tell me like how much they had to work at this skill. And they had to treat it like they're practicing this skill constantly, constantly, and then they would challenge it. And they would stress their body by upping the load on a day, but then making sure they're

still going through those movements again with light load. So it was really just about that management. That management of stress was key in having the right dose was everything. Well, we didn't put this up here as a point, but I feel like this falls in the same category, and that's the frequency as King. And that, that was, you know, I used to be in that category of guys that trained where they hammered them a single muscle group for, you know, one time that week, I'm doing 15 to 20 sets in it. And I'm going to failure. And then I don't touch it again for another week where when I started to pull

back from the failure training, it allowed me to hit that muscle group two times and then three times. And I remember it was like, it took me a while to really, really learn it. Because I kind of scaled back, like I didn't go to crazy failure, and then I went to do like almost kind of failure, but still was training quite a bit of volume.

And it was like, okay, that's reduced my soreness. I can actually hit the muscle again a second time the week, but God Jesus, if I'm gonna do three times a week, I've gotta really pull this back. And it was a mental struggle to go in the gym and do only five to eight sets of chest. And then call it a day.

Like it was just a failure. Yeah, especially when for 10 years of your training career, you've trained a way to where you do that last, at least the last set, if not every set, to absolute failure. And then where you do that last, at least the last set, if not every set, to absolute failure. And then to go like, oh, I'm only going to train five to eight sets, and not only am I only going to train five to eight sets, but I'm also going to leave two in the tank, and I'm going to leave training my chest for the day, feeling like it's not destroyed.

Like, this doesn't feel right. But to your point, so, holy shit to the strength, start to pile on when that light ball went off, and I pulled back on the intensity, I increased the frequency, and I focused on this, and focused on not training a failure, just blew my mind.

Oh, the study supports this, by the way. There's a few studies now that show that trained a failure, it's too much intensity most of the time, and that when people trained a failure is too much intensity most of the time and that when people train to failure They actually progress slower than if they stop about two to three reps short of failure It's a good rule of thumb now. I'm not saying you should never train to failure Every once in a while lifting a weight until you can't lift it anymore with good form Might be beneficial part of the reason what main reason why I think it's beneficial is not necessarily because it makes you stronger, faster,

but because it helps you re-gauge where two reps, yeah, like we're two reps before that. It's a tool, it's a tool like everything else we talk about. It should be used intermittently in your training routine. I think for the most part, most people shouldn't. No, in fact, you don't ever have to. No, no, no. You could train your whole training career

and never train to failure and build a ton of muscle for a ton of body fat and build a ton of strength. This is not an exaggeration. So again, this is roughly 10 years, 10 to maybe 12 years of my training career. So I'm like 27 or 26, maybe even more, right? Cause I start lifting weights at 14. So I'm like 26, 27, I remember kind of late 20s.

And now consider this, it's very difficult to gain lots of muscle and strength after you've been training consistently for 10 years. At that point, it's really hard to get the body to continue progress, right? Very incremental, though. Very, very slow. Like you gained a couple pounds of muscle a year

after 10 years of training, like you're kicking butt, right? Especially because I did a lot of my training through the teen in early 20 years where you've got the most testosterone. I went from lifting to failure all the time to stopping to rep short, I gained seven pounds. Seven pounds of muscle came on my body like I was like when I first started lifting weights and my strength went through the roof.

I remember telling my cousin who had also been, he'd been lifting weights at this point probably for five years consistently. He didn't believe me. Luckily, I'm a good salesman and I closed them on it. He did the same thing. He gained six pounds of muscle the following month. I remember because we would go back and forth and he would tell me, I gained three pounds, I gained five pounds, my strength is going through,

I'm like, I told you, going to failure, is it one of the most terrible lessons that I think people were taught in the lifting weights community? And it's actually not only is it not necessary, it's actually detrimental for most people. Okay, here's another one. Facing, phasing your training. Here's a rule of thumb when it comes to all forms of exercise,

but especially true for resistance training. Most things work, nothing works forever. Nothing works if you just keep doing the same thing over and over again. All rep ranges, most rep ranges between one to about 25 reps can build strength and build muscle. Okay, so all those rep ranges have validity. All of them have value.

If you stick to one rep range all the time, your body will stop progressing in a hurry. Not only do they have value, but I wanna add that whatever rep range you haven't been doing the longest will probably add the most value. So if you're somebody who loved the burn and the pump and you're conceded in that 12, the 20 rep range and supersetting, the single best thing that you could probably do to build strength is dropping down to that one to five range. It will blow your mind.

And the same thing is true for someone who only lifts in the one to five rep range or below six reps. And that's how they always train. Bring them up to 12. Oh, bring them up to 15 to 20 below their mind, blow their mind. Absolutely. Remember Stan Effarding was on the show. Stan Effarding is known right

He swears by the 20s. He's squatting to 20 super strong guy power lifter Whatever hired flex wheeler to get him to so he could win his first bodybuilding competition All flex did was be like we're gonna do the 12 to 20 reps We're gonna move away from the low reps and when it ended up happening He actually got stronger and built more muscle was able to win his I, I think he won his pro card, and his body progressed. Yeah, this speaks again to the tracking point, I think, you know, previously, paying attention to what you've been doing

like over the last, you know, week to months to, like it's really imperative that, you know, you're paying attention to all these different trends and where you are in terms of Progressing within that type of a phase and when to phase out So I think one of the hardest things to do is to phase out before you hit that plateau Totally true. Totally true And now this phasing is a integral component of all maps programs

But it was definitely was part of the first one. Maps and a ballacle. And when that one was created, I made sure to put in there that people would train for a few weeks within a particular rep range and move out of it into the next rep range. This is one of the best insurances you have to continual progress. If you want to get your body to progress consistently, one of the most important things you do is phase your training. One of the worst things you could do, if you want your body to plateau, here's what you do. Same rep range. Stay in the same rep range. At some point, it'll stop working and it stops working fast. Like, that's it. No more progress. My body's not progressing anymore and then you got to figure out, oh, my diet or I'm going

to take more supplements or whatever. No, man, just switch out of your phase, move into another one. Now, here's how I like to phase workouts. Here's how I was written in maps and a bulk. There's a really low rep range that I think there's a lot of value in. This is like the one to six rep range.

You know, you're gonna get benefit from all of that, kind of that low rep range. Then there's the eight to 12 rep range. This is that, kind of that low rep range. Then there's the eight to 12 rep ranges to the traditional kind of body building rep range. And then there's a 15 to 20 rep range. So those are three, now those aren't the only ways to phase your reps, but those are the three general applies

to most people categories of how you should phase your training in terms of rep ranges to get your body to continuously progress. Absolutely. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download our guides. They're all absolutely free. And you can find us on Instagram.

You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal. And Adam, he's at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. You can go lose to building shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPump Media dot com.

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