Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1152: Why You Should Powerlift

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin discuss the benefits of adding powerlifting training to improve strength, muscle gain and fat loss. The importance of focusing on strength and performance vs being body image-centric. (2:32) What is competitive powerlifting? (8:36) The carry over the 3 Big Lifts have on your routine, body & MORE. (12:06) The concept of maximal strength explained. (16:06) The differences between powerlifting style training vs standard resistance training. (17:50) The speaker/amplifier analogy with powerlifting principles. (20:55) When you train like a powerlifter you feel HARD. (25:27) How strength motivators are more relevant than the scale. (28:49) Powerlifting principles are based on objective results. (30:01) The metabolism-boosting/fat loss benefits of getting stronger. (31:27) How we can ALL benefit from focusing on a powerlifting style of training. (33:12) YOU vs the iron and getting away from being body obsessed. (39:02) The new MAPS Powerlift program broken down. (43:00) People Mentioned Dr. Ben Pollack (@phdeadlift)  Instagram Ronnie Coleman (@ronniecoleman8)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned October Promotion: MAPS Anabolic ½ off!! **Code “RED50” at checkout** LAUNCH SPECIAL! MAPS Powerlift available NOW!! **Code “POWER40” at checkout** Increasing muscle mass to improve metabolism Mind Pump 1057: How to Get Stronger for Fat Loss & Muscle Building

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Alright, in this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about the principles and concepts around powerlifting, competitive powerlifting, but also just for people who might not want to compete, but utilize the principles and concepts of powerlifting to benefit their physics, to burn more body fat, build more muscle, speed up their metabolism. So we talk about powerlifting itself, we talk about the muscles that are involved with the three main lifts, we talk about maximal strength,

like what are the differences between powerlifting style or types of training versus like bodybuilding or other forms of resistance training, movement versus feel. We talk about the aesthetic effects. Like if you train with a cycle of powerlifting, how is it gonna change how your body looks? We also talk about the value of moving yourself

from being body image centric to performance centric and why this may be of benefit to a lot of people. Also, we have just released our newest maps program. It's Maps Powerlift, so it's perfect for this episode. It is the first maps program that is based on powerlifting. So if you're an experienced lifter, but you've never done powerlifting before, you can enroll in this program, follow it from beginning to end

and be ready for your first competition. Or if you're somebody that wants to just benefit from the concepts of powerlifting, you want to get stronger at those three lifts and reap all the benefits of it, follow this program. We co-wrote this program with decorated power lifter Ben Pollock. He's got coaching videos in there as well so all the questions you may have about powerlifting like how to use a belt or what do the lights mean

and the competition or what do the coaches look for what to eat that kind of stuff what do the different federations mean that's all in there as well as exercise demos and workout blueprints all designed around power lifting. Now the program is getting launched right now, so we do have a launch special which will be going on for the next four days. And that's $40 off, so here's what you do. Go to mapspowerlift.com and use the code Power40, POWER40, no space for the discount, and also you will get a free t-shirt when you enroll. I think that there's been a recent explosion in interest and in people actually enrolling

in powerlifting type competitions. Have you guys noticed this? Yeah, I have noticed that. Mainly like across the board on Instagram, I've just been seeing a lot more posts of people doing deadlift specific PRs, squat PRs, things like that. Like I've been seeing people like really focused on that. Yeah, I think this is a really good thing.

I think it's a great thing because fitness is usually so centered around image. It's so image-centric, how you look, that a lot of people lose the performance aspect of it. Now there's negatives of being too focused on either one, but I think it needs to balance out a little bit. Oh, I think we're more focused on the way we look than the way we perform for sure.

Oh, yeah, that's still outweighs it perform for sure. As a whole. As a whole. Right, as a whole. As a whole, I think generally speaking, I think it's incredible. And I wonder sometimes where it probably came from. Again, this is another area where I feel like CrossFit played a big role. I think that before CrossFit, I personally never even heard people talk about PRs, which obviously personal records have been,

for sure in powerlifting, been around forever. They had them in using the term PR. Yeah, I used to say that like max weight, what's your max weight? Right, and then it became like this, I feel like CrossFit just put everything in acronyms. Yeah, well, that was like their main thing. Either that or they popularized strength training for women,

for sure. Better than anybody else did. Better, boy. It's better than powerlifting even did, but because they got introduced to squats, deadlifting moves like that in CrossFit and watched themselves get stronger and saw the benefits from it and then that being highlighted. And I think now it's kind of coming full circle where we talk a lot about this.

I'm not a fan of programming in CrossFit. I would never recommend that to any of the clients that I trained, but I would recommend a powerlifting protocol to clients. I, one of the best things I ever did for clients was get them to focus on strength and performance over the way that they looked, because there's, again, there can be problems with each, but when your focus just on appearance,

the signals aren't as clear. Like I can lose weight on the scale, but maybe it's because I'm dehydrated or I just cut some carbs out. I can do things to my body that aren't super healthy, but oh, I'm skinnier, my pants are looser or my dresses are looser. But when it comes to performance, if'm skinnier, you know, my pants are looser or my dresses are looser But when it comes to performance if you're stronger

The workouts working like there's no there's no doubt about it if you're if you're lifting more weight The workout is working whereas if you're just very objectives very clear It is and when I would get clients who were super focused on their appearance but getting them focused on performance as the performance improved as they got stronger, the appearance followed. It wasn't the other way around. Like appearance can sometimes, you can change your size and have performance decline, lose weight not realizing you're losing a lot of muscle or doing things the wrong way. That's a trick so you can do it to manipulate the way you look. That's right. You can definitely go down the path of not drinking enough water, not

letting a feed yourself enough, like just overwhelming your body with cardiovascular-type training and losing weight, but how healthy, how strong, how vibrant are you? It's so subjective. Like how you look is so subjective. We have a perception of ourselves and we look in the mirror. And oftentimes, it's not accurate. I don't know, I had this experience recently. I saw a picture of myself when I was like 15 years old flexing in the backyard with

my cousin. And I look at a picture and I realize something shocking to myself. I was not nearly a skinny as I thought I was. And I had this insecurity about being super skinny kid. But I look at the picture, I'm like, hey, I looked pretty damn good, but at the time you couldn't have convinced me otherwise. Now when it comes to strength, it's objective. You add weight to the bar, there's no denying it.

I also think there's a lot of value in teaching the principles of progressive overload and that a lot of clients, there's a saying in our community that you're either exercising or training. And if you're training, you're following a protocol, you're progressively overloading and you're getting stronger. If you're exercising, you could be coming to the gym and doing the same exercises every single day

and not be progressing and strength whatsoever. Yeah, you do 50 jumping jacks. And I would argue that a lot of people that I trained in my career fell in that exercise category. In fact, they were exercising and they weren't progressing and therefore that's what sent them to hire me. And I would then evaluate their programming or if they even had one, how they were eating

their behaviors. And one of the most common things that I would see is, and this was both male and female, but probably more popular with my female clients, that they had this routine that they did. And a weight that they did it with, or a class body pump class, or something that they took,

where they're using the same weights, the same routines, and they're doing it day in and day out. And I knew just by simply teaching them some better movements and or progressively overloading them properly, their body would just respond. But a lot of people have a hard time with learning to reach like that or stretch themselves like that. And so the principles that are found in powerlifting and what it takes to learn how to power lift, you have to get good at that.

I'll tell you what. Push the boundary. If I was to pick one structured form of exercise with weights that is competitive, that would benefit most people. Done appropriately, it would be powerlifting. It really would. Getting people to be able to build their maximal strength with the three core lifts, because

this is what powerlifting, this is what competitive powerlifting is. Really is about getting better at three lifts. Benchpress, squat, and deadlift. Now, those three lifts are three of the most important beneficial exercises that you could do among all the resistance training exercises. Now, I'm not saying that they're the only ones, but what I am saying is those three have a ton of value and combined, those three movements have more value

than almost any other combination of any other three exercises that you can think of. So they're extremely valuable. And so powerlifting is just getting stronger at those three things. So if you were, if someone were to pick a structured form of competitive lifting, think of all the different types, right? There's Olympic lifting, catabell type competitions, there's Olympic lifting, CrossFit, I guess you could put in that category. Which one do you think done properly would benefit most people most of the time?

Not it's saying everybody, because it's not for everybody, but which one has the principles that you think will apply to most people? And I think it would be powerlifting. Because it's, those three lifts as complex as they are are not so complex like Olympic lifting where you're gonna be spending a year just on practicing technique. It's not explosive, so it's a little safer.

It is focusing on something that when you're working for maximal strength, if you're a highly stressed individual not getting good sleep, you can only make it to the gym twice a week. You know, doing a full-blown cross-fit type workout or long cycle of kettlebells can be taxing as hell on your body, but doing five or six slow sets of three or four reps of a squat or a deadlift for a bench press, not nearly as taxing on the central nervous system. Well, it's a lot like your example with a boxer and getting really good at like one to three punches. Right. You know, and how effective that is in a fight versus, you know, your MMA fighter that has to

really worry about like, jujitsu, I said, worry about like kickboxing, I said, worry about like, like hundreds of moves, has to learn hundreds of moves just to stay competitive. And to really just hone in on those real specific skills that have the most carryover in that particular direction. That's the same thing with fitness. Those three lifts have the most carryover in getting stronger and not benefiting you in your fitness and your health.

Yeah, it's my favorite way of taking someone from being body image centric to performance. It's like, and this is one of my favorite tools with female clients. They would come to me wanting, and I would know, okay, we need to work on getting your metabolism a little faster, we need to work on building a little bit of muscle so you get that shape that you're looking for.

It'll make fat loss a lot easier. How do I get this person to go into that mindset? Best way possible? Get them to focus on strength. Mrs. Johnson or Mrs. whatever, I'm going to get you focused on getting stronger at these lifts. We're going to celebrate the gains that you make in these lifts. And once I get them to focus on those things, so much easier to get them leaner and to

build muscle and to speed up their metabolism, because not all about appearance. Well, to Justin's point too about carryover, and I think it's important that we explain what that means to people. Like, what does that mean? You guys say that all the time, that this exercise has so much carryover. Well, when I think about those three core lifts

and if I get a client really, and I don't train them on anything else, not that I'm advocating for that, but if I only train them on those three exercises. You could only pick three exercises. Yeah, right. If I could only pick three exercises, then we only train those three, and we I'm advocating for that. But if I only trained them on those. You could only pick three exercises. Yeah, right. If I could only pick three exercises and we only trained those three

and we got really good at it, I know as a coach that I then can go teach that same client who's really good at deadlifting, they'll pick up bent over rows so fast. They'll pick up a seated row so quick. They'll do a single dumbbell row, no problem. Lap pull down, no problem. They'll figure out the skill sets to do that

because they laid such a solid foundation with a movement like deadlift. That can't say the same thing. If I taught someone how to dumbbell row, T-bar, or bent over row, and then showed them a deadlift, they could do those other three exercises for a year, and then the first time they do a deadlift, they'll be an absolute mess.

And that's the carryover that I see with all those three movements is they're so foundational and they require so much synergy amongst all the muscles of the body when you're doing those exercises that when you do other ones that are more like isolation exercises or just not as complex, they come way quicker and easier. They stand the loudest muscle building signal as measured by...

So there's something in the body called myostatin and fallostatin, which are inversely related, and they tell the body to build muscle or to not build muscle. The extra... And they can measure them after you do a certain exercise or a type of workout. And these... Those three exercises, especially the squat and the deadlift, send by far, in comparison to other individual exercises,

the loudest muscle building signal. In other words, deadlifting and squatting in particular and bench pressing, doing those movements is gonna send a louder signal than another 10 exercises combined. Another 10 random resistance training exercises combined. So it's just bang for your buck. It's like you're trying to dig a hole.

You want to dig a 10-foot hole. Now you got a backhoe. Like you only need a couple swipes of that backhoe on its 10 feet versus having to use a shovel or a spoon, in which case you're going to be there from months trying to dig the same kind of hole. What about fat loss? Well, indirectly, because it's sending

the fat the biggest muscle building signal, because it's sending the fat the biggest muscle building signal, it's going to influence your metabolism in the most positive way. You're gonna get a bigger metabolism boost from getting better at those three lifts than you will at getting better at another three lifts or another five or six or seven lifts.

So it's also gonna burn the most body fat. Calorie burn, you do 20 sets of barbell squats, excuse me, 20 reps of barbell squats, You're going to burn more calories than doing 20 reps of most other traditional strength training, resistance training type exercises. Hormones, they've even measured testosterone spikes in men after exercises. You want to guess what the top two exercises are for testosterone boosting? Squat and deadlift. They just give the most bang for your buck. Now, I'm not saying that they're the only exercises you to really develop a well-rounded body

and get maximal benefit at your workouts. You wanna do a lot of different things, but those lifts tend to be the cornerstones or they should be at least the cornerstones of your routine. And powerlifting style training focuses on those, and then it focuses on exercises that are not those exercises. So it does have powerlifting style training.

So forget competitive powerlifting for a second. Let's just say you wanna train with powerlifting principles. Okay, you are gonna make the bench deadlift and squat the cornerstone of your routine, but then there's all these other exercises that help you get better at those movements. So you're going to be doing exercise like split stance squats. You're going to be doing things like reverse hypers or you're going to be doing, you know, pull downs to get your body better at doing those major, those three lifts, but those are the corner stone. The other principle of powerlifting style training is developing what's known as maximal strength.

Maximum strength is the kind of strength where you can lift the most amount of weight one time. Now does that benefit you in the real world? Absolutely. There's a lot of carryover. You get your maximal strength to go up. Your base of strength goes up, which then contributes to other forms of strength. There's a way that you can apply this right away and actually feel this working. This is like one of my favorite things

when teaching the benefits of maximal strength and I can show somebody, anytime I can find a trainer tip where I can show somebody why this is so beneficial. So I'll take an exercise like a seated row or any major back exercise that we would do that's different from the deadlift. And most clients or most people have a pretty good idea

of what's a good amount of weight for them if they've been lifting for some time, right? Like, oh, when I see the real like, you know, 130 is like my, what's heavy for me or whatever. I love to take that person, take them over and pull, you know, a weight on the deadlift that is what they can only do like one or two times max weight and then go over, let their body rest for a few, you know for 30 seconds to a minute and a half or whatever, then go over to that exercise and let them feel it, and you can feel that difference.

You have a deadlift, really, really heavy, and then go over, do a pull up, all of a sudden, you fly up on the bar because of that, training that maximal strength like that, and so you get a small little taste of those benefits, like immediately, and you can show that to you. One of the biggest differences, I would say, with powerlifting style, training versus training to build muscle or shape the body, sculpt the body or whatever, one of the biggest differences

is this. When I'm going into the gym and I'm training with more body building principles, a lot of what I'm doing is I'm trying to feel muscles while I'm training them. You know, I'm trying to feel my chest when I bench press. I'm trying to feel my lats when I do a pull-up. I'm trying to feel my delts when I do an overhead press. Powerlifting style training doesn't care. It's all about the weight that you're moving and the technique and form that you're using to maximize your biomechanics.

With powerlifting style training, your form is crucial, but differently than it would be for bodybuilding. Bodybuilding form is crucial because you're trying to feel something with powerlifting, your form is crucial because you're trying to make it the most effective as possible. Effectively, the most biomechanically, it advantageous and safest. I'm trying to squat in a way that lets me lift the most weight in the most advantageous way possible, the safest way possible. Now, what is the carryover, what is the benefit for the body?

Well, I'll tell you something. I could do a slow squat where I'm focusing on building my quads and really feeling it my quads and use 200 pounds or I could lift 300 pounds with really good form and just focus on my my technique The one that's gonna give me the loudest muscle building signal is gonna be the the movement and this is a Very important thing to learn in fact It's one of the first things I teach clients when I train them with some with certain lifts It's like okay, I know you're deadlifting and you're working your glutes with the deadlift In fact, it's one of the first things I teach clients when I train them with certain lifts.

It's like, okay, I know you're deadlifting and you're working your glutes with the deadlift. We're not gonna work on feeling the glutes right now. I want your form perfect. I want to maximize the biomechanics of this movement and the leverage of the movement so that you can lift the most weight safely. Yeah, one thing I've learned about

like optimizing strength is unlocking my true strength potential because what I found is that we're capable of so much more than we realize and a lot of that is that synergistic effect of all the parts working together most effectively and so that's your mindset that's the way that you're mechanically moving through that exercise But that's the way that you're mechanically moving through that exercise. That's activating the right muscles at the right time. That's the ability to get the most force from your central nervous system as possible

to be able to now take that weight and bring it up to your body in the way that the exercise is structured and To be able to do that it takes a lot of different moving parts to all work together at once And so this is this is why these three lifts they really display that orchestra where I do need all those things to work harmoniously for me to be able to then Add weight and this is a completely objective process. I'm either getting stronger or I'm not. And where are the pieces of this process that I need to hone in on and refine?

This is why I love sales, you know, analogy of the speaker and the amps. And I know that it's an oversimplication of what the central nervous system is, but I think the central nervous system is such a complex thing to try and explain to clients that when he said that the first time on the podcast, I've probably repeated it probably maybe more times than he has now, because I think it's such a great way

to get... It's a good visual. Yeah, it's a great visual for a really complicated thing to explain to people. And that is simply this for the point across that, you know, in bodybuilding, we do a lot of, you know, focusing on the muscles and building the muscles and that, the mind muscle connection. And so, you know, thinking of the muscles like speakers. And the central nervous system is more like an amplifier. And obviously they both need each other.

They both work together without one. The other one doesn't work. But the central nervous system is that important. Anybody that's familiar with buying a stereo system or is ever put one together understands how speakers put out the music is you need the amplifier to do that. And you could have smaller speakers and an extremely strong amp and you are gonna get the most out of those speakers. And sometimes we'll put out a better sound

than bigger, more impressive speakers because the amp is so strong. And so that's what I love explaining to people as the importance. And I, and I, this didn't really click for me until way later. Like I had been training for, you know, 10 years as a, you know, more like a bodybuilder because I didn't identify with a power lifter. I saw power lifting and I thought, I don't want to be a power lifter. So why should I do heavy deadlifts and heavy squats? I just didn't see the value and it didn't make sense to me. And because I knew that he was sculpting the body already with neglecting those things,

I didn't see enough value in it yet until I actually applied it. And when I saw how much value it was, it blew my fucking mind. And then forever changed my conversation with clients and people that are questioning whether they should be training like a powerlifter or not. It could be the single best thing that you ever do in your train.

It was for me. It was probably the single best thing I ever did was starting to move in that direction of heavy dead lifting and squatting because I didn't do it for so long. Yeah, and remember, when your body's building muscle or changing, it's a process of adaptation. And your muscles grow because your body thinks

it's advantageous to to grow them. Let's say that you're using the same analogy of the speakers and the amplifier. Let's remember the speakers being the muscles, the amplifier being the central nervous system. Let's say you just increased the output of your amp. Now you're getting more juice out of the speakers. You're getting more out of your muscles. Do you think that's going to send a louder signal to the body that says, hey, we're asking these muscles now

more of their full capacity, maybe we should develop them more. Absolutely. In fact, if you train just for strength, oftentimes with powerlifting principles, oftentimes it's one of, and again, it's not the only thing you should do, but if you haven't done it or you haven't done it

and focused on this, sometimes it's the single most effective thing you could do to build the most muscle. By far, just getting stronger. Again, because it's an objective thing to measure in my experience, it's one of the best things to go after if I want to build muscle. If I want to build muscle on it's one of the best things to go after if I want to build muscle.

If I want to build muscle on someone, one of the easiest things I focus, unless they're already a powerlifter. So if I get somebody who's already been powerlifting for years, then I'm not going to train them with powerlifting principles. I'm going to, and they want to build more muscle. I'm going to move them away and try some different stuff.

No, bodybuilding for that person, right? And normally it's the thing that you're not doing. That's right, you're right. But if somebody's coming to me like, hey, I want to build more muscle, I've been bodybuilding or I've been training with weights or I've been new crossfit or whatever. One of the easiest things I can do is be like,

cool, we're just going to get you really strong. And then watch what happens to the muscles of your body. And it works all the time because that amp now is sending more juice or more power to the existing speakers that you have. And your body's saying, hey, we need bigger speakers to deal with this louder signal. But it goes beyond that.

You want to talk about functional strength. Here's a deal. You get strong because you train with some powerlifting principles. You're strong. In real life, you're strong. You walk around and you're a strong dude or a strong girl. You're going to pick up just random heavy things.

And you feel that's the idea. Training this way feels different. When I have a strong deadlift, a strong squat, a strong bench press, and I'm training with those principles, with the rest of my workout, and I'm walking around everyday life, I feel solid. It's a very different, even if I weigh the same, you know, I'm 200 pounds one way or the other,

I feel very solid. Not just from the inside, I feel that way from the outside. In fact, this is something that I could, that I've noticed for a while, and I'm not the only one. This is a commonly recited anecdote that strength athletes and bodybuilders have been talking about for decades.

When you train this way, you feel hard. Your muscles feel solid. They feel more dense. They actually even have that appearance of looking a little bit more dense. So you want to talk about aesthetics, you know, how you look. How would you like to look like someone could bounce quarters off your body? Well this kind of training kind of does that. It gives you that that solid, hard feel.

And I noticed it in the way I feel. I know in Adam, and you switched and started training this way as a competitive physique competitor, there was one post you did where you showed your back, you know, and it's not like you weren't never training your back. You always train your back. It's been a focus forever, right? It's just a quarter to say. You, your, your, your back looked vastly different from one, it was like a three, no, maybe a six month period. Yeah, it was six to eight months. I think that I had been training consistently deadlifts. That was the time when I was chasing after the numbers that you were hitting deadlifting wise. I had also at the same time completely stopped doing seated

row and a bunch of other machine exercises for my back. And then because again, I was focused on catching up numbers. I was programming that way. I was dead lifting a lot. And boy, it blew my backup. And not only did it blow my backup and talking about aesthetics,

I also became much stronger in all these other lifts. That was the part that, because I understand the said principle and if I'm not doing something like lying leg curls or a seated row, I assume that my body would adapt. I'd get weaker at it. I'd be just strong at doing the deadlift, but that just proves the point of how incredible the carryover is for the movement like a deadlift is, I completely neglected those movements for almost a year. I came back to them and I was stronger than what I left them at. And that just, that blew my mind that I could neglect them because that rule doesn't really

apply in everything else. Like I said, we, you talk about the said principle and when you focus on a specific adaptation, the body gets really good at that specific adaptation. If you don't, it atrophies, it doesn't anymore, but that's how powerful squatting and dead lifting and benching can be is that you get really good at those movements and you're going to see this not only a physical carryover like you're explaining with me, but also practical with and functional strength. It's blew my mind. It's also one of the best ways that I ever got clients to enjoy

working out. You know, showing a client strength gains is one of the best motivators that I've ever seen with clients. Even more than the scale changing, honest to God, you go into the gym and you bench press 100 pounds at the beginning of our package or whatever, let's say you're training for three months. Now you're bench pressing 150 pounds. Like, that is a very awesome experience. And this kind of training or this kind of focus is awesome. It's so different.

It's the difference between going to the gym, I'm getting myself sore, I'm sweating. Do I look different? Do I look different? Do I look different versus go to the gym, work out. Hey, I got stronger. Hey, I'm getting stronger. There's this, I don't know.

There's the fact where I feel like it provides more independence. For people, when you get stronger, you just can do more things and you don't need to, like, it doesn't require you to now gather other people to help you do all these things that might require some real strength feats. There's something that's really empowering about that. And here's another thing that I like about powerlifting type training or powerlifting principles.

And this is similar to Olympic lifting. Because powerlifting is a competitive objective sport. In other words, if you win a powerlifting competition, it's because you're the strongest bottom line. There's no disputing it. There's no judges. There's nobody saying, hey, I don't know if you look better than me. I didn't lose to that guy's glutes.

Yeah, I lifted more than you, and so I won. So now, what does this mean? Well, what it means is that the training principles around powerlifting have been forged around objective results. So I have seen, if you pull me 10 or 15 workouts off the internet, or 10 or 15 bodybuilding workouts or fat loss workouts, I'll show you 99% of them are terrible, terrible workouts.

You show me powerlifting workouts that have been used by powerlifers for competitors. I'll show you, for the most part, good exercise programming. Like they work. Yeah, same thing with Olympic lifting, because it either works or it doesn't. It's not like the other stuff which is so subjective.

So power lifting principles are based off of objective results and that's why oftentimes why they work so well. It's because they've been passed along and been shown to this will get you stronger at these different lifts. Here's the other thing I love about focusing on this type of strength. It lets say you're working with a client, and your client is cutting calories. They're trying to get leaner,

and you're analyzing what they're doing. And you noticed that they've dropped two pounds on the scale. Their calories are down 500 calories, noticed that they've dropped two pounds on the scale. Their calories are down 500 calories, but whoa, you're stronger. How awesome of a signal or sign is that? What does that tell you about the client that you're working with? It tells you that their metabolism

probably isn't slowing down, even though they've reduced their calories, and the weight that they've lost is probably all body fat. Strength is one of my favorite signals. If I want to see if something's working or if something's not working, one of the first questions I ask is,

besides how you feel is, well, how are your lifts? Oh, I'm, I don't know if this diet's working for me. I lost five pounds, but I don't know if it's all, you know, body fat or what's going on. Are you stronger? Yes, I am. You're going on the right you stronger? Yes I am. You're going on the right track.

Strength is such a wonderful sign. This goes back to the point that I was making about exercising versus training. If you come in and you exercise in burn calories for an hour, that might be okay for some people to maintain where they're at. But if you're trying to progress and get better or, you know, get leaner or get stronger, then being able to progressively overload

and challenge yourself strength wise, then in turn, ends up speeding up your metabolism because you're sending a stronger signal to the body to adapt and grow. And because of that, you reap the benefits too from the metabolism side. So huge. I also like how it gets rid of a lot of the kind of subjective guesswork because you're going to the gym and your goal with this. And this is why I think everybody, everybody, now I've done appropriately, of course, and you know, for people who aren't injured or this is gonna hurt them, whatever.

I think anybody who lifts weights should go through a powerlifting-like cycle of their training. In fact, the first MAPS program, MAPS and Obolic, that first phase was loosely based off of these kinds of principles. It wasn't a powerlifting program, but it's loosely based on it because it's a great introduction. Yeah, yeah, everybody benefits from it. I don't care what your goals are fitness-wise. I think you will probably benefit from doing a three-month focused, you know, on powerlifting type training type of a workout.

Whether it's bodybuilding, bikini, I just wanna lose fat, I just wanna, you know, lose weightini, I just want to lose fat, I just want to lose weight, or I just want to build muscle especially, focusing on it for at least three months out of the year, you're going to get huge, huge benefits. I just think it simplifies it down to the core. It's one of those directions I like to steer clients into because there is so much information out there and so many different ways to skin the cat in terms of like getting in shape and feeling like you're making progress on your

body and your health and your fitness. And this is one of those, once you go through learning more about these three lifts specifically in what they can do for your body, what they can do for your strength, it's just very revealing in terms of what actually has benefit. And maybe some of the surface stuff that, I mean, what's the point? Well, let's be honest, it's a terrible name for this, because it scares a lot of people away.

It does. It does. You hear power lift, and if you're a girl, that's really intimidating. If you're a guy, you're like, if I don't really identify, I would try to be a power lifter, I don't really think it, that's really intimidating. If you're guy, you're like, if I don't really identify with trying to be a power lifter, I don't really think it's that valuable to me.

But the reality of it is, it's the three best movements done, probably the best way anybody possibly can, and probably one of the most neglected ways of training for the majority. But because it's been put in a box, or a category of this is for power lifters, it's completely done something that I think has got people to stray away from that way of training.

But in reality, when I think back to all the clients that I've trained, the principles that are found in it, which is learning to lift mechanically, getting your entire body to speak to it, focusing on the three best lifts, strength training versus worrying about my weight on the scale and how I look at them here. I mean, when I think about the core principles behind it, those are some of the most important core principles

that I was trying to teach clients. Yet, most people are scared to dabble in it because of the name and the stigma that's around it. You visualize this guy with a big beer belly and choc all over his body and wearing spandex and screaming and blood coming out of his nose and ripping a bar off the ground or something. That's the image we have. Yeah, smelling salts and people slap each other. Yeah, no, no, that's extreme. Yeah, no, that's an extreme. But you know what's funny? It's changed quite a bit.

Like I've seen more women enter into powerlifting competitions than ever. It's exploding super office. You see a lot of bikini competitors also in the offseason power lift, because they found that when they power lift in the offseason, their metabolism is faster. And when they hit the stage for bikini

competition, they look a lot better in particular in their glutes, hamstrings, and backs because the deadlift and squat, you know, when you train them for strength, really develop those areas. Bodybuilders for a long time have dabbled in powerlifting. I know Arnold and Franco used to do powerlifting cycles every year in their training. Ronny Coleman. Ron and Coleman, some of your most impressive bodybuilders definitely are more powerlifting also. Oh yeah. You know, there was obviously there's been a new generation or new breed.

We've talked about this with a lot of our, you know, hardcore bodybuilder friends that, you know, that have begun to rely on pharmaceuticals to try and obtain certain looks that you couldn't get in the past without doing this type of training. You had to power, if you had to get to a point to build that kind of muscle mass. I'll tell you what, the principles of powerlifting, all the techniques and principles, not competitive powerlifting, but the principles around it, not competitive powerlifting,

but the principles around it. I applied to most of my clients, I really did. And I remember, I trained, you guys remember, I've talked about this before, the back half of my career, a lot of my clients were in advanced age. So I was dealing with 60-year-old and plus people. And you think, was it appropriate to have them powerlifting?

I trained them appropriately, of course. I made sure that they did things properly. I made sure we did mobility work. It's all relative. It's all relative. But the results that they got from it, they blew everyone up. I did this with Doug when Doug hired me.

When Doug came to hire me, he came to hire me because he had a bad back. I trained him radically different than anything he was used to. And we did a lot of the principles that you find in powerlifting. And what Doug ended up getting was the best physique he'd ever achieved in his entire life in his mid to late 40s,

and the guy had worked out all the time since he was in his teens and 20s, and it was because of this focusing on building strength, the right way, using these kinds of concepts and principles. I think it's a very good thing, and I really love that I see a lot of, and I see this, especially with women, I was also saying, they're starting to realize

the metabolism boosting fat loss affects, of just focusing on strength, but the biggest thing is this, and here's what I hear from these people all the time, because I've had a few online clients that I coach or whatever, and they tell me they like to do powerlifting cycles because it gets in the stop worrying about the way they look.

Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? They're not going to the gym worried about how they- Probably why it's most important today. Totally. I mean, we just had a podcast where we talked about, you know, raising kids in this generation now and comparing ourselves to the Instagram pages

that we follow and to get people away from that a little bit. I mean, I think it's always been important, but I feel like it's more important today than it ever has been. It's you versus the iron. Right. I mean, it's so liberating that way. It's, you're just not, your eyes aren't outside

of just that moment you have with that weight and just trying to do your best. No, imagine this right now. If you're listening to this podcast, just hear me out. Okay, imagine going to the gym and rather than worrying about how you look and how the workouts are making your body look and looking at yourself in the mirror

and am I losing weight, am I shaping? Is this working? And just that kind of obsession that we all have or that we've all experienced going to the gym. Imagine if you took three months out of your life and now you go to the gym, you don't give a shit about any of that stuff. None of that matters. All that matters is am I getting stronger? Imagine the feeling of liberation that you'll get from that where you're worrying about, am I eating in a way that's getting me stronger, am I sleeping in a way that's getting me stronger,

am I lifting weights in a way that's getting me stronger? If I'm getting stronger, I'm doing the right thing, and I really, how I look at this point, doesn't matter. Now, some of you may be listening, be like, oh my God, if I don't worry about how I look, I'm gonna look terrible. I got some news for you. The opposite actually happens. In fact, this was my main strategy for a lot of my clients,

especially my female clients. I would tell, I just, we just had this event in San Jose, where we did a live Q&A with mine pump listeners, and we had this VIP area where people could come and have dinner with us and hang out before the event. Well, one of the people that came and had dinner was the guy who'd lost a ton of weight by cutting his calories, cutting his calories. So we're talking, and he was telling me about how stressed he was because he's like, man, I'm counting my macros,

I'm looking at my calories, I'm weighing myself every day, I want to make sure I don't get any weight. So I told him, I said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to bump your calories by about 500 calories a day. I want you to focus entirely on getting stronger and I want you to take your scale. I want you to put it in the closet and don't weigh yourself anymore. Stop weighing yourself for the next couple months, two months. Just stop weighing yourself and do what I just told you. And so he, luckily, I have enough influence because he listens to the podcast that he trusted me. So he did this. Got an email from the guy.

You wanna know what happened? He gained two pounds on the scale, got tremendously stronger, his pants looser. What do you think happened? He built muscle and burned body fat. And all he was focused on, that entire time was, not his weight, not how he looked in the mirror, he was focused entirely on getting stronger.

I'm telling you something right now, now, unless you go nuts for three months, where what this means to you is I'm gonna go eat donuts all day long and whatever, but if you eat relatively healthy, and all you focus on strength, that's all you focused on. I'm just how strong I'm getting. And you take that, it is so freeing.

I'm telling you right now, it will be the most relaxing, fun, three months of working out you've probably had in your entire life because you've been liberated from being so body obsessed. At the end of that, you're gonna end up with more muscle, faster metabolism. You might get leaner, but for sure at the end of that,

if you're goal is to get leaner, with the working with the faster metabolism, makes it a lot easier. This is one of the reasons why I think powerlifting style training, unless you're already a powerlifter, will benefit most people. I think everybody should do a cycle of that kind of training. It's one of the reasons why we created a powerlifting maps program. We get a lot of questions when we're going to do a program like this.

We knew the value of it. We knew how it would benefit most people. So that's why we created a power lift program that was maps. We also had somebody work with us who was, because none of us have competed in powerlifting, although we understand the principles very well, we wanted to make sure just to maintain our integrity. We had somebody who was a champion competitive powerlifter, help us write the program. Now there are some potential drawbacks or some potential risks with powerlifting training.

The main one is maintaining mobility and reducing risk of injury. Joint stress. Joint stress. Now here's the wonderful thing you got guys like us who are very focused on mobility and preventing people from getting hurt. So that component we put in there.

So one thing you will see in a lot of directions when you're looking at powerlifting and things on YouTube if people are promoting it, there's ways where they try to help aid. There's lots of aids involved in the sport of it. And also once the numbers become hyper focused, it tends to sort of take over. and you'll see a lot of sleeves, you'll see a lot of different accessories and things

like promoting. Nearab, because it does put a lot of stress on the joints. So maintaining that integrity and really having that focus simultaneously alongside gaining more strength and ability is super critical. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I would say this right now. simultaneously alongside gaining more strength and ability is super critical. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I would say this right now, if you plan on competing in powerlifting,

then you're gonna wanna train with the tools that they allow you to compete in just so you can get used to using them, like a weight belt. A weight belt does a technique to using one. You just put one on in your automatically stronger. Some people in fact, will be very uncomfortable the first time they put one on.

There's a technique same thing with knee wraps. If you plan on competing in powerlifting though, you got to get good at those things as they can help you. If you don't plan on competing in powerlifting, there's no need in using any of those things. Just train with those powerlifting principles. Don't use any of these knee wraps and belts and that kind of stuff, focus on priming your body, mobility work, and the results speak for themselves.

Well, this is the first program too, that we've included coaching, right? That's what I thought was really cool, right? And unique about this is, you know, there's a lot of questions I feel that surrounds the sport of powerlifting or training like a powerlifter.

And I think Ben Pollock does an incredible job of giving great coaching cues to really answer a lot of the questions that probably somebody probably has right now. It's listening to me like, okay, I think I want to get involved in this, but I'm not quite sure where to start or what to do. And, you know, that was kind of, I think our main goal was to introduce the general population to something that we think there's a tremendous amount of value in. It's not necessarily we're trying to attract somebody who's been powerlifting their whole life, and we're trying to say our powerlifting program is better.

No, I think that we took our years and decades of experience and what we know is really important. Training like Justin was pointing out mobility and we have like priming and cooling down parts to the program that I don't see in a lot of powerlifting programs. And that's just kind of our piece that we added to that because it's like, okay, we're not just speaking to power lifters. We're speaking to the general population that we want to encourage them to train this way because of the value of it, but we also don't want to neglect the other things that we think are extremely valuable to everybody.

So you get that inside this and I haven't personally been this excited to follow a program of our own. Like, I'm on day three now of the program. I waited until we launched for me to go through it and I'm excited as shit because I've personally never programmed the three lifts to get stronger. I programmed the deadlift a little bit when I was chasing Sal, but never to this and to really focus on that. So I'm super pumped to go through this and plan to share that journey with everybody else that's going through.

Yeah. And what's great alongside to tag on to the coaching portion of it. There's a lot of little nuances and different federation requirements and different pauses of the reps to consider. And you know, Ben really does an amazing job of laying all that out. So you just really don't have that much confusion going into your very first meet if that was your goal

was to eventually go into just, hey, I've always kind of wanted to try this and compete in this, even if it's just at the local level and this is something that is attractive to me. Well, now it's like, I have a lot of this in this program. It really highlights, you know, like, at like, advantages with how to eat,

with how, like, what to wear and like, what to look out for. And so it's just, it limitates a lot of the mystery behind. Yeah, so if you're somebody that like works out on your own to look out for. And so it's just, it limitates a lot of the mystery behind it. Yeah. So if you're somebody that like works out on your own and you want to compete in a power lifting competition, you can follow this program from beginning to end and be ready for a competition. If you just want to train with the concepts and principles, same thing, follow the program, you'll be training like a power lifter and what you should experience are significant

improvements in the three lifts that we talked about, the deadlift, the barbell squat and the barbell bench press. Now this, because we are launching Maps Power Lift and it's totally new, we have a lunch launch special. As of the airing of this podcast, there's going to be four days left for the special. So what you got to do to get the discount is go to maps power lift.com Use the code power 40 P O W E R

For zero no space for the discount also We have free t-shirts for the first people that enroll in this program So we get a free maps power lift t-shirt by using that discount code and signing up during this launch special period Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, and Math Sestetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming

designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review

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