Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1257: The Best At-Home Exercises for Your Entire Body

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the best at-home exercises for all parts of the body.  Why working out without equipment doesn’t mean you have to have bad workouts. (2:46) The biggest challenges of at-home workouts. (4:33) The best at-home exercises, proper techniques and ways to see the greatest progression for all parts of the body. Chest. (5:40) Back. (13:55) Shoulders. (23:17) Legs. (29:03) Core. (40:35) Arms. (44:30) Mobility. (48:00) How to piece it all together and structure your workout. (48:44) Related Links/Products Mentioned March Promotion: MAPS Powerlift ½ off! **Code “POWER50” at checkout** Special Promotion: MAPS Anywhere ½ off!! **Code “WHITE50” at checkout** Mind Pump TV - YouTube Rubberbanditz Resistance Band Set 30 Days of Coaching | Mind Pump Media Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind up, mind up with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. All right, everybody, in this episode of Mind Pump, look, I'm still on quarantine, just playing it safe. So I am calling in through my phone, but Justin, Adam, and Doug are in this studio. It'll be like this for about another week. Now, we wanted to address a few things in this episode in regards to working at home.

We talk about the best exercises and techniques that you can do while you're working out at home to give yourself the best results possible. Just because you don't have equipment doesn't mean your body needs to flounder. So we actually broke it down. We wanted to give you guys some real tangible things that you can do. We went through every single body part and we listed our favorite equipment free exercises. We went through the chest and the back and the shoulders, arms, legs, the core. We went through the whole thing. We talked about techniques for each of these exercises,

how you can make some of them easier. For example, a pull-up, great exercise, but what if you can't do pull-ups? Are there versions of that that are much easier? Yes, there are. But what if you're really strong and you can do a million pull-ups? Can you make it more difficult? Yes, you can. We do that with all the exercises and then we teach you how to put it all together, how to piece everything together to get your body to continue to be fit, strong, lean, and healthy. Also, this month, Maps Anywhere is 50% off. Now Maps anywhere is a very effective at home workout program. It's all planned out for you. So if you don't want to put your workout together for yourself, not quite sure how to organize a program or workout, Maps anywhere takes all the guests that work out for you.

You literally log in, you have your exercises, your reps, you have video demos on how to do the exercises You don't need hardly any equipment to follow maps anywhere all you need are resistance bands a Broome stick or any stick will do PVC pipe you can even use in a pull-up bar That's it. You don't need any dumbbells barbells. You don't need benches or machines anything Just follow maps anywhere as we've laid out and you'll get exceptional results. And it's 50% off. Here's how you get the half-off discount. Just go to mapswhite.com.

That's MAPSWHITE.COM and use the code white50. That's WHITE50, no space for the discount. I'm getting a lot of questions from people in regards to at-home workouts because I think a lot of people are pretty well-burst on the varieties and the different methods of programming when you're in the gym. But then when it comes to working out without equipment, let's be honest, most trainers just don't have as big of a repertoire. They don't have as much of an arsenal and the techniques and methods that they use in the gym may not necessarily work at home, so they're stuck

doing the same squats, push-ups, type movements, they're hammering their bodies with lots of intensity. So what I wanted to do is give people lots of different exercises and different ways to do the exercises. Because working out without equipment doesn't need to mean that you're not having good workouts. Right. You just have to know how to write your workout properly, program them well. And if you do it all well, you're going to have a great workout.

So I think it would be cool if we went through like. Yeah. You write up the idea of going through and Basically addressing every major muscle and some of our personal Favorite at home type of exercises for that muscle group. I think it's a great idea. Yeah Totally The hardest part is I think too is people just don't have that creativity a lot of times like you you can't think of a A lot of options and There are quite a few options for just body weight training by itself. So if we can kind of give people some ideas, I think it'll

help. Yeah, and then the other thing, because what are the challenges, I should say, of at-home workouts. One of the big challenges is resistance. If I'm doing a bench press, one of the ways I can change the exercise and get my body to respond again, is just to add weight. Just add more weight. But when you're at home and you're doing a push up, OK, how do I add weight? I mean, I could have my kids sit on my back

or do something like that. But if that's not available and that's weird or you know, not consistent, there are techniques that you can do to certain exercises to increase the perceived resistance by the body. The body will actually perceive it as more resistance without you actually having to put more weight. So not only do you want to go through exercises, I want to go through techniques and things you could do to tell your body that you're using more resistance to really send an effective adaptation signal through just utilizing different exercises and different techniques that bring those exercises. Well, let's start there. I mean, you started off with referencing pushups and chess. So let's talk

about some of the ways to progress chess exercises. Now, the obvious one is everyone knows to start off with a push up or a push up variation, right? So a standard push up from your knees, if you can't do a full regular push up, or if you can do a full regular push up, then that's your kind of your basic. But I think there's a lot of cool variations with just that that you can mess with, like for example, a close grip or wide grip or elevating your angle, elevating your feet to do it.

Now, if I were to be riding this for a client though, the same similar type of rules we talk about, the way we program or you do a phase for two weeks and then we transition into another phase, I want to start with a chest exercise, no matter what variation I'm talking about, and I want my client to get kind of good at that movement before I change it and make it completely novel by elevating the feet or manipulating the hand position. So I can reap the benefits from the standard push up first. And then as I progress and move into other variations, they start to get the benefits of the novelty of the new, the new variation. Right. So, you know, one of the obvious things for me is to really start with a nice slow cadence and like

really hone in on the technique of it. So pushups, and I know right now pushups, that's the hot one, right? It's tag your friend for 10 pushups and everybody's sort of jumping on this momentum of doing these with their friends. But let's make sure like the technique and we're getting the intent of what we're trying to do with exercise down first. And really, the first part of that is stabilizing correctly with your shoulders and with your core.

So what I do see a lot is when people start to, you know, their lower back starts to arch and they're not keeping themselves nice and rigid in a plank. And so the first thing I would have them do is to just hold a nice extended plank for a certain amount of time to then really kind of get set in good position. Yes, and a couple techniques I learned a long time ago from a martial artist. You know, martial artists really value pushups quite a bit for whatever reason. They do them a lot and a couple techniques that I learned to make pushups more effective. One of them is to grip the floor with your hand. So one of the big problems I think some people have with pushups is it starts to bother their wrists because they're in that extended wrist

position with their palms. What you don't want to do is relax your hands and your wrist and sit on the joint because over time that will start to cause problems. So one thing you can do to prevent that is by spreading your fingers and then grip the floor with your hands. What you're doing is you're activating the muscles of your forearms and wrist and they'll help support you. So that's number one. The other thing is you want to create a twisting tension

into the floor with your hands. So you want to pretend like you're turning a door knob with both hands. I'm taking my hand, I'm gripping the floor, and I'm turning them both out. Now don't actually turn them out. Just create that tension like you're turning them out. And what you're fine is you're going to get way more stable in your shoulders and you'll

activate your last a little bit and you're going to find that you're just much more connected to the pushups just by doing those two things. The other thing you can do. Yeah, I love doing that. If you can think of the perfect pushup, these have those handles that kind of rotated out, but your hands are basically glued to the ground. So sometimes I like spread my fingers out, even my clients, and then have them emulate that.

But obviously they're not turning their hands, so that way you can activate all the stabilizing muscles in your back as well. Right, now the other thing you can do if your wrists still bother you when you do pushups is you can use towels, you could place a couple towels on the floor and then roll up another towel and grip that towel and then do pushups on your knuckles on the towels on the floor that way that they're

soft. So now your wrists are in a more of a neutral position while you're squeezing the rolled up towel in your hand. That's been a great solution that I found with a lot of clients. Here's something else you can do. This one's a lot of fun. This is more of an advanced version, so if you're really, really strong to push up, you might want to try this out. When you get on the floor to do your push-ups, on underneath one of your hands, take a soft towel. So place your hand on a soft towel. This works when you're on tile, a linoleum or wood floor.

And as you go down, slide the hand that's on the towel out while keeping the other hand planted. So the other hand is perfectly planted. So at the bottom of this push up, one hand is further away from your body and the other. Then when you come up to do your push up, slide that hand back in. And it's almost like a combination fly and a push-up. It's a very advanced technique, but if you're really strong and you're fine yourself doing

50, 60 push-ups and you need more resistance, try that out, try sliding one of the hands out, bringing it back in, and then switching hands. What do they call that bow and arrow pushups? Isn't it name something like that? Yeah, because you can do that a variety of ways with the medicine ball. You can kind of roll it out as you're pushing up or you could also do that. I used to do that with a TRX or like a hanging suspension trainer with one hand on the hanging suspension while the other one was on the ground and I would fly one arm and push with the other.

Now, what is called a bow and arrow pushup? I think so. Yeah, I think it's called a bone arrow push? I think so. Yeah, I think it's called a bone arrow push. Because when your arm's extended all the way out, it looks like almost like you're pulling a bone arrow. Right, something like that. And if you want to get really crazy, then you can put both hands on a towel, go down,

slide the hands out, and then slide them in as you come up. Now you're doing a push up fly, both arms, again, it's advanced, but if you're strong and you want like a muscle building Push-up variation give that one a try to do that one right you're doing like five reps Well, you know and something I want to make a point as as before we move into the back now is with all of these There's a there's a smart way to progress still So what I what I don't want to do is provide a bunch of crazy exercises that everybody just goes and doesn't.

Like if you, you'll notice that there was obviously a method to the madness when we wrote maps anywhere that, you know, the idea of it when we wrote it was that it could be a standalone program that somebody who will never go in the gym can continually progress their body. And so I think there's a lot of fear around, oh, I'm working out at home now, I'm not gonna be able to see gains. But if you do, if you use these exercises strategically and you progress them correctly,

then you should see great progress over the next couple of months doing an at-home workout. And one of the keys of progressing that way is, if you can barely get 10 perfect slow tempo pushups, there's no reason for you to do a bow and arrow pushup yet because you're not even there yet. Wait until you're getting to a point where you can rep out 15 pushups, no problem.

Now we can start talking about progressing to these other moves. So you get a new stimulus, a new novel exercise that will then promote more muscle work. That's why I start out with the isometric position of being able to just hold and stabilize the position. Now, something we didn't talk about was the hand-free push-ups. This would be another kind of a natural progression where we can work on retracting the shoulders.

If that's an issue while you're not gaining the depth that you need to gain or you're not being able to get the strength to push yourself back up. So you're going to go all the way to the ground and then you're going to retract and pull your elbows back behind you and lift your hands off the ground and then put your hands back on the ground and push yourself up. So that's, I mean, that's challenging on its own and it's definitely something that you could put in place first before then wrapping out

these regular standard pushups. Excellent, excellent. All right, let's talk about back. Now, the obvious best exercise that I can think of that doesn't require much equipment at all is a pullup. Now, I love pull ups. It's one of the best exercises you can do, period, ever, anywhere.

Whether you're at the gym or at home. Always challenging. It's also a great one that you can very easily overload, right? Like it doesn't, it's a pull up for most people is already challenging. Let's say we've been doing these at home workouts for a couple of months and you've gotten really good at pull ups.

You know, hold a 20 pound or a 30 pound weight around your waist and watch how quick it gets really difficult. So, you know, of all the exercises that are, you know, mostly body weight, it's probably one of the easier ones to overload and to continually see strength gains and muscle gains by just barely adding a little bit more weight week over week by doing pull ups. Before I add weight to pull ups, one thing that I like to do is I like to go all the way down and hang for three seconds and then do the next pull up.

So what I'm doing is I'm pausing in between reps at the bottom of the reps. I'm going all the way down, stretching, count to three, so 1,000, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, then I do another pull-up. Now, if I just rapid fire pull-ups, I could probably get 15 to 20. When I do where I go to the bottom and stretch for three seconds, then pull myself up. Oh, yeah, five, 10 is hard.

Yeah, I'm not doing more than eight. Yeah. You kill all momentum that way, for sure. Oh, it's in the pump you get in your Lats is It is exceptional now if you're somebody that has a tough time doing bullets because there's probably more people listening that Have a tough time doing pull-ups than people who who have to add weight

One thing you could do is you can use a resistance band to give you help. And the way you do this is you tie one end of the resistance band to the pull-up bar, let it hang down, and then step into it with one of your feet. And it comes to that end front. Yeah, so it's pulling you up. And that'll definitely give you some help. The other thing you can do, if pull-ups are still too difficult for you with that is you can do something you can do a body row. Now you can fashion a body row with a towel. And the way I've done this before in the past is I'll take a towel and I'll wrap it around a doorknob or a banister or something very solid and secure. Then I'll place my feet in front of me,

lean back, hold onto the towel, so I'm kinda hanging by the towel, and then I'll pull my body up with a body row with the towel. Just a require nearly as much strength as a pull-up, and it's a great way to get started with pulling body weight exercises before you get to the pull-up. And then for, go ahead.

Yeah, I love that. I was gonna actually take us back a bit to the pull-. And then for, go ahead. Yeah, I love that. I was going to actually take a, take us back a bit to the, to the pull up in terms of the technique. So when you're talking about going down to the bottom and holding for three seconds, I would also kind of cue and coach into that to really brace and,

and connect to your core and then tighten your legs as well. So the more stable your entire body is, you know, the more overall strength you're gonna output to get right back up to the top position. So to be able to connect even further with your body and be able to have control so you don't, you know, have any like dead limbs,

like you're fully connected all the way down to your toes, it's gonna really help enhance your pull up. Well, anybody who's been following any of our programs, the same principles apply, right? Well, the way we do a strength, a hypertrophy, and an endurance phase where we're looking for something in the kind of five rep range, then we're looking for something in that eight to 12 rep range, and then we're looking at something like 15 to 20 rep range, you are trying to challenge yourself in phases at home the same way. So if I'm going to be in a, you know, strength phase for, let's say, my first two weeks,

you know, I'm looking to do exercises and challenge myself that like five pull ups or five of whatever I'm doing is really challenging. And then after I've done that for a while, and I'm now going to move into a phase where I'm going 10 to 12. So that's, I think that's the real goal of of throwing all these different exercises that people is, you still want to apply the same rules of programming that. You want to be targeting an exercise that's really challenging for five reps for a couple weeks. Then I want to find an exercise that's really challenging in the 10 to 12 rep range.

And then I want to find something that I can rep out 15 to 20 reps. And I wanna pick exercises around that. And I wanna phase in and out of that over the course of the next, one, two, three, four months, however long that we are quarantine home so I can see great progress. If you can do this,

you will see great gains from lifting in home. I know there's a lot of shit around the internet right now. It's talking to people like, oh, just don't worry about your gains and oh, you're, you know, it's, you know, it will be back in the gym. It's like you can still progress if you program well in this situation.

And you just need to understand that instead of what I see right now from a lot of fitness professionals is just this randomness of workouts. You know, the Tabata, the E-MOM, the freaking, all these hit type of workouts, where they just throw a bunch of random exercises in there that you just go to failure,

you go to, you can't breathe anymore, and it's designed to make you sweat. It's like, no, if you want to see great progression in your development of your muscles right now, the same principles of programming apply, that we would apply inside the gym with all the tools. We're just now trying to figure out how to structure those at home. So you as a listener have to be thinking about that when you choose these exercises.

You know, make a goal, okay, this can I do five pull-ups without any assistance? And that'll be the first goal, you know, for the first couple weeks. And then I'm going to progress that. Like, if I can get 10 to 12 and I have it assisted, what color band am I going to use to help assist me in that and then progress my way through that phase accordingly. And then we'll get to tension exercises and how we can kind of add that into the mixes that's own phase as well. Such a great point, Adam, in your points too, Justin, I think programming your workout and planning it, not only will you not lose gains,

but a lot of people are gonna actually go back to the gym, stronger and more fit because they're gonna be working on things that they've neglected or not done before or because the workouts were different. So definitely, you know, structure your workouts and phase them just like you would in the gym, you know, whether you're working on five reps or 10 reps or 15 reps or super sets, stick to a theme for a couple weeks before you move to the next theme to allow your body to progress and adapt and then you can move the next one. You know there's a there's a there's a lot of you can also have a lot of fun with some of these

exercises as well like something that I like to do with pull-ups that you know there was a while there where I just I wanted to be able to get to be able to do 30 pull-ups. It was a long time ago, and I had set a goal for myself. And so I did pull-ups all the time. And one thing that I did that was a lot of fun is I would do one rep, close grip, one rep, one rep, medium grip, one rep, one rep, wide grip. And then I'd cycle through again.

So I do one pull-up, go all the way down, get a different grip, do one pull-up, all the way down, get a different grip, do one pull up, all the way down, get a different grip, do another pull up. And this is just, I mean, it's not a special exercise. There's nothing particularly, you know, different about it or more effective than if I were just to do the exercises straight. But it's fun because I'm moving from one to the next, it's causing me to let go of the bar and reset each time. This is something you could do with a lot of different exercises where you just find different ways of adding a little bit of variety.

But I do want to be clear, get really good at an exercise before you mix things up and try to throw different things at your body. Yeah, the idea of us giving you guys all these different movements and techniques is not to just take them and randomly throw them together and just try and do them all. It's, you know, use this as a tool belt of all the things that we're saying that I can apply and then still apply it the same way that you would if you were following any of our other programs. The same thought process into programming maps anywhere was done just

like anabolic and performance and aesthetic. We still phased the workouts. We're still very methodical about what ones we choose in each phase. Pull ups are an incredible place to do a strength building phase. Then when you move into something like a high-perture refaze, you want to probably use a rubber band that's going to assist you to help you get 15 to 20 or choose other exercises that are easier for you to get 15 to 20 reps. Still the same rules apply. Yes, and bands are so valuable for at-home workouts.

You can use bands, you can actually do more exercises with bands than you can even do with dumbbells because the resistance is not dependent on gravity Right. The resistance is dependent on the band. So I could do a tricep press down for example with a band and I wouldn't be able to necessarily do a press down with a dumbbell. So that takes us to shoulders. Now shoulders, band raises are phenomenal.

Band raises to the side band raises to the front or band pull apart for the rear deltoids I'll tell you what I've done band full shoulder band workouts in gyms that's how effective band exercises are for shoulders where I was in a gym full access to machines, barbells, and dumbbells, and I still chose to do a full shoulder workout with bands, with all the the the the raise, you know, varieties, and I got phenomenal results, excellent results just from hitting all the different angles. So those are my favorite exercises for shoulders right there. The side raises, front raises, and then pull it apart.

But there are more. I love those. I think this is where it gets a little creative when you have to do bodyweight exercises for shoulders. I mean, the first immediate one that comes to mind is like a handstand push up, but there's definitely a regression to that. So if you're looking to do some kind of a press for just your shoulders,

one thing you can do is elevate your feet and get in sort of a pike position. So you fold your body in half so your hips are up high and your head is facing like basically you're coming down on the top of your head, but your hands are doing a press like you would be emulating a shoulder press with body weight. So that's one way to do it is to just elevate your feet up, pipe your hips, so you kind of fold yourself in half, and then come down on the top of your head and push your way back up.

Well, you can regress that with not elevating your feet, right? So the first, you know, or the regression to that is to just pipe on the ground, you know, create a pike, and then you're doing these shoulder presses with dropping your head down. That'll be the easier way. As you start to elevate your feet, the higher you elevate your feet,

the more weight that you're leveraging on your shoulders. And so that's an easy way to progress it to where you start piking on the ground, then you pike on a chair, and then you eventually put your feet on the wall, then you eventually go straight up and down in a... Keep walking your feet up the wall, keep walking your hands back closer to the wall. Make it, I mean, it's a nice gradual way to add more intensity using gravity.

And this is shoulders because they are a little more challenging. This is where I do like isolation type exercises or isometric, excuse me, exercises like a side plank. I mean, you, you know, you'd be surprised how much you're, I mean, I know that's, most people think of that as a oblique and core type of movement, but man, if you don't do a lot of sideplanks and you start doing those, a lot of shoulder stability there. Yeah, that's a major shoulder stability exercise and one that most people neglect,

it's just not an exercise, especially men, men don't get down and do sideplanks a lot and it's a phenomenal exercise and you'll be blown away by how much you get in your shoulders. Not often are you stabilizing your entire body weight in that position with the shoulders so you want a great stimulus for the shoulders that you probably don't do try a side plank. Yeah and you hit the nail in the head with the isometrics so back to like the handstand pushups and the pike, you know, pike pushups.

Those are pretty hard exercises. And if you're like the average person, you're probably not able to even do one rep. So instead of doing a rep, just hold yourself. Just get into a pike position with your arms fully extended and hold yourself and time yourself for 10 seconds or 15 seconds or if you're strong, you can go as high as 20 or 30 seconds and watch the burn and the pump you get in your shoulders. And you can advance that to where you're in a push, you know, a handstand position with your feet up against the wall.

And just hold, just hold and stay tense. When I did these tension movements with overhead carries and other varieties and versions of this, my shoulder gains went through the roof and my strength went through the roof because that tends to be an neglected part of the strength curve with our shoulders because we tend to not lock ourselves out when we're doing an overhead press. Oh, stability is everything in the shoulder and to add into that too. Same position in the extended plank position for a pushup, but really adding more elements to stabilizing the shoulder, one thing you can do is raise one arm off the ground. So now we're just stabilizing on one arm,

and then we're touching the opposite shoulder with that arm that you took off the ground. And then add another intensity to that, is to then take that arm, you lift off the ground and rotate your torso up towards the ceiling and then back down and stabilize. So there's other elements like that. If you can get really good at stabilizing your shoulder through these types of movements,

watch what that does when you go back to your overhead presses. And these are all bodyway things that we're listing right now. And man, if you have bands, it's really unlimited. What you, I mean, you could do almost everything you can with dumbbells for your shoulders with bands. Yes. And the way the way I would progress it is if you're pretty advanced, then you're doing a lot of volume in your workout, you start with the more difficult exercises and then move to the easier exercises. and typically the band exercises for shoulders are easier than the handstand pushups and pike pushups. Definitely.

Yeah, so I would finish off with bands rather than start off, although you can always switch them around, but for the most part, typically I would start with a more difficult exercise. And I've already seen people that have been tagging us that are finding creative ways, movements like the Z press that are found in some of our programs, and they're sitting on rubber bands and doing the press there. So there's a lot of creative ways that you can work your shoulders if you've got bands.

I mean, there's no part of your shoulder that will be neglected if you have a good set of bands. Right, right. Now, legs can sometimes, I mean, there's a lot of lower body body way to exercise, but sometimes these can be difficult because we can get stuck in the, you know, I'm doing a million reps, you know, type of thing because the legs are, you know, naturally the strongest part of our body. And so, you know, when we go to do a lower

body exercise without any weight, people, any weight, the complaint that I always get is, gosh, I'm doing 100 million different repetitions. One thing that you want to understand about tension in the body and bodybuilders, by the way, are experts at this. One thing that you can learn from bodybuilders is how to make a lightweight feel much heavier. They're so good at this. A body builder will take half the weight that a power lifter will squat with and they'll get more muscle gains and activation because of the form and technique and the mind and muscle connection. This is what I recommend if you are

find yourself doing exercises that you think are too easy. So my absolute favorite lower body exercises without weight are lunges. I like them even better than squats. Like a much better. For sure. For sure. Yeah.

It's just that they're more difficult to do than squats. Squats, you might be able to sit there forever, whatever. But here's what I like to do. I like to slow my reps down and really focus on the muscles. I could do 10 lunges and get a better workout for my legs than if I did 100 really fast lunges, you know, where I was just loosened, repping through them. Yeah, talking to that, making each rep harder, like they, like bodybuilders do do a fantastic job with this in terms of

like really emphasizing the squeeze. And so like this is something that's hard to coach a lot of times, the people to intentionally make it harder. And you have to think about time under tension and being able to increase that tension by not ever allowing yourself to kind of sit in the rep. You're just squeezing your muscles the entire way through the whole thing. Yes, yes, and you can also break your reps up into different ranges of motion.

This is something that I really like to do even when I lift weights. So what I mean by that, so there was an exercise that I learned a long time ago for biceps called 21s. And this is this, it was just an old school, you know, a variety of version of a curl where normally when you do a curl, you curl the barbell all the way up right from the bottom all the way up to the top. Well with 21s what you do is you do seven reps where you curl the weight from the bottom halfway up, right, from the bottom, all the way up to the top. Well, with 21s, what you do is you do seven reps where you curl the weight from the bottom, half way up, then you do seven reps where you curl the weight from the middle of the rep all the way to the top,

and then seven full reps. So you're basically just breaking up a range of motion into different pieces. You could do this with exercises that are, you know, that you may think are easy. So let's say you're doing lunges and you're doing 50, 60 reps and you're like, wow, I'm going to be here forever. Try doing this.

Try doing 10 reps from the bottom halfway up. Then try doing 10 reps from halfway up to the top. Break the reps up, shorten the ranges of motion for each repetition, and watch what happens. The tension you get from it, and the difficulty goes through the roof, whereas before you were doing too many reps, you may find yourself finding that you're doing way less reps now because of the technique that you just employed. Well, speaking of tension and trying to increase that, right? And one of my favorite times to incorporate stabilization is here. So you want to make a lunge really difficult, added a balance element to it. So every time I lunge, I come back to stabilization.

And you know, try doing 15 to 20 reps of that. Just the portion of you having to stabilize doing 15 to 20 reps of that. Just the portion of you having to stabilize on that leg after each rep and balance, you'll see how much your butt is on fire from having just to stabilize that. So I love throwing, or like a walking lunge, and every time I take a step, I come up to a balance, I stabilize for a few seconds,

then I lunge again, up to a balance, stabilize again, and then lunge again. And we're just, on really what we're feeling when we do that aside from all the stabilization muscle can you do, is just the time and attention. What ends up happening when you do a squat or a lunge typically, and you come back to both feet as you lock out and you rest.

And so it's that rest, that time and attention that you're not getting when you're stabilizing, or when you're going back to both feet versus when you're stabilizing, there's constant tension in the glute and legs when you're actually having to stabilize on one leg. So it'll be on fire after 10 to 15 reps. And a lot of people neglect stabilization type of elements and their training. And we tend to mock people that do that inside of the gym, but here is a great place where I see a lot of value of implementing that into your routine to help intensify a basic exercise.

Yeah, and there's there's so many different versions of lunges. Obviously your basic ones, you're you could step forward and step back so that's a front step lunge. You could step back and step forward. forward and step back. So that's the front step lunge. You can step back and step forward. That's a back step. Both of them work. The muscles a little bit different. Differently, a front step lunge. You tend to hit a little bit more quad back step lunge. A little bit more glute. There's the lateral lunges, which most people never do. Yeah. Um, those are exceptional. They're very difficult. They're going to work on your mobility. Um, probably more than your traditional lunge. And then here's a fun variety. Here's another fun version that I like to do

Let's say I'm going to do a back step lunch rather than stepping back with the back foot I put that foot on a towel on a smooth surface So let's say I'm on my wood floor or you know tile or whatever and instead of stepping back I slide the foot back into the lunge and then I slide it forward when I come up. You can also do that with a lateral lunge as well where you're sliding out, coming down and stepping up. And it just adds a whole new element to that exercise. Right, this is where, you know, too. I love the emphasis on movement and really like taking this opportunity body weight wise to improve

your overall coordination function, but also strengthening different patterns of movement. And so like that, this is where I get a lot of feedback from the matrix lunge that's in performance specifically as well, because it challenges people in a completely different way through lateral lunges, which you mentioned, and also through a rotational lung. So you can kind of combine the three together and get a whole new experience with that. Yes. And then, you know, we've been talking a lot about tension. Fry this out. Now this is a very valuable practice, but it requires a lot of focus and concentration. Do a tension squat or a tension lunge.

The way you literally do this is you go really slow, but while you're going down into your squat or your lunge, try to activate your muscles as much as possible. Try it. Everything. Just create a shit ton of tension in your lower body as you train. Now, the value of this, yes, it can definitely challenge your body, it can work your muscles,

but this trains your central nervous system in a very, very different way. It really does help you learn how to sum in the full power of your central nervous system. And I learned this years ago when I was a kid, when I started working out in the 90s, I would, I used to read Bodybuilding magazines. And I remember reading an article by Arnold Schwarzenegger where he talked about how something that he liked to do during the season of competing, is he liked to do about 20 to 30 minutes of bodybuilding poses

every single day. And he said it made his body, in the article, it said it got him real cut. He got real good definition from it. He felt his muscles. And I thought, flexing, what's the big deal? And then I read about how these guys flex. And if you're a bodybuilder, you're posing on stage, and're flexing your bicep, you don't just flex your biceps. You have

to flex the entire, you're presenting the entire body, the tense and hold the entire body. So I actually practiced this as a kid and I was astounded at how exhausting it was maintaining kind of this full body tension. It is a workout, make no mistakes. So you're gonna sweat, oh man, it's brutal. Well, all lifting weights is flexion of the muscles with resistance. So the better you are at flexing a muscle, the more you get out of resistance training.

So I mean, I ton of value in this, this was one of my favorite things to do when I was competing was that that's how I would think when I was flexing and posing. It wasn't just about how am I presenting my physique. It's that, boy, does it really start to encourage a good, strong, mind muscle connection? Because when you don't have any resistance and you just got to stand there and really think about contracting a muscle without using any resistance, just by intensifying it intrinsically. Boy, when you use that same technique with resistance, whether it be your body weight

bands or dumbbells or a barbell, boy, does it really enhance that exercise? This is what you're right. Bodybuilders it really enhance that exercise? And this is what you're right. Bodybuilders are really good at because they practice and they try and work on their flexing so much that when they go into the gym and they start to do resistance training, they've got that technique down so well. I think that improves your gains. Now, think of this too as also like if you're lifting heavy weights and you're on like a you know one to five kind of rep range. If I'm really squeezing and radiating that kind of attention where, you know, I'm, I'm basically emulating a really heavy lift by, by tensing my entire body up like this.

So you need to apply appropriate rest in between. You're gonna get light-edded. And it's been really taxing. So just like FYI out there, people don't realize like how effective and crazy like intensity can be. Oh yeah, you know who was a big proponent of whole body tension and who practiced it all the time? Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee. Yep. Bruce Lee talked a lot about creating this just tension throughout the whole body.

He says it was one of the reasons why he could strike with so much force because he would be very loose. And then when he would strike, he was able to activate everything all at once. This is also a great skill to apply when you go back to the gym and you're trying for a max rep to be able to get into position, get good form and activate everything all at once. So this is a phenomenal technique you can apply to any exercise and you don't need a single pound of resistance.

You can do this with just your body. This can be its own phase, which we actually, yeah, we structured together to make it even easier to understand. But yeah, you can do this make it even easier to understand. But yeah, you can do this for your back, you can do this for your chassis, you can do this for your legs, you can do this for your core. So, you know, it's definitely a good option for you. Totally. All right, let's get to the core. Which I think is easy. I think most people when they train their core, they don't use machines and weights anyway. So this is kind of an easy one.

But, you know, someone might, by the way, for those of you listening right now who neglect working your core, now's your chance. You know, now you can, you know, go back to the gym with the strongest core you've ever had before. And of course, having a strong core, it really does speak to some of the big major lifts, like overhead presses, squats, and dead lifts because it's such an integral part of maintaining overall stability. One of my favorite exercises for the core is the active plank. By the way, a lot of these movements that we're talking about, you can find on our YouTube channel, not all of them, but a lot of them. And we do have, we do list a lot of exercises and mobility movements on

our YouTube channel. So if you want some video demonstrations, make sure you go check that out. But active planks is definitely on there. It's one of my favorite exercises for the core. And essentially it's, you're starting at a bottom plank position when you're on your elbows and on your toes, but your hips are on the floor. Then when you pull your hips up, tuck your tailbone as you pull up, like you're doing a crunch, squeeze, and then slowly lower back down to the floor and then repeat.

It is by far one of my favorite exercises. And if you do a right, you shouldn't be able to do tons of reps with it anyway. Well, along those lines of really difficult and low reps, I think, and great for building strength in the core and abs is the perfect setup, which I know we also have a video on that. Oh yeah, perfect setup. We have a whole video on that as well.

That is one of the most basic core exercises you could do. Super difficult if you do it right. I'm my core at its strongest. I don't think I could do more than eight of of those. Really slow, so it's really, really tough. And basically, you lay on the floor flat, legs straight out in front of you, you're totally flat, and then ever so slowly roll your body up into a... One for a period of time, basically. Very, very slow exercise, very slow exercise.

Hollow body rockers. Well, that's a killer. That's one I learned from gymnastics, actually. And that was like a super effective exercises to get connected all the way from your fingertips to your toes. So you're basically creating this sort of banana shape with your legs kind of slightly raised up,

but like extended, completely even your toes extended, and then your arms behind your head, but basically your biceps glued to your ears. And so you create this sort of boat position and you're extended from both, but now being able to connect to that and draw your core in and maintain that position by itself is really taxing. So the progression to that would be to then start to kind of rock and be able to stabilize it.

Oh yeah. And then, you know, we haven't even mentioned heavy carries, which are, I mean, I love throwing those in my workouts. If you have anything heavy that you can literally hold or carry, whether it's a suitcase, so suitcase carries we can do with a dumbbell, but why not use a suitcase? If you have a suitcase at home, put something in it that weighs 30, 40 pounds, hold it with one hand, brace your core, and then walk for 20 yards and watch how much that activates the opposite side of your core. and watch how much that activates the opposite side of your core. So all kinds of carries. You can carry things overhead, carry things in both hands.

You can use jugs of water and just keep yourself very tense as you walk with good form and good posture. That, some of my favorite exercises are carries now. And by the way, I learned those from you Justin. You're the one that got me to do those. Yeah. They're awesome. Yeah, they're super awesome. All right, arms, arms, uh, triceps are pretty easy, I think. Um, um, bit dips off of a, a band short chair,

um, close grip pushups. And if you're really strong, you can use an elevated surface like a countertop and do a Skull crusher or somewhat of a skull crusher. This is where your feet are away from the surface from whatever your hands are on Keeping your body rigid like you're gonna do a push-up But then all you've been the elbows rather than going down on a push-up. You've been the elbows lower your body and then straighten your body back up Those are hard though. Yeah, that's real difficult. I like doing like a tricep, we extension like that from a plank position too. So if you're like in a plank position, your elbows are tucked underneath your shoulders

and you just extend into a full plank position and then back down, that's a great way. It's kind of, I would say it's probably difficult to you wise, probably somewhere between what you're describing. And then like a dip, I think it's a little more challenging than that, but a great way to progress that. You know what I'm talking about, right? Like in the same position you'd be in upper body mountain climbers. Definitely. Yeah, I would definitely start like on a bench or a chair or something like that and just get good position so you could get your shoulders fully retracted

and then keep your butt as close to the chair and the bench as possible and slowly get down to the depth that you feel like you can control And and while you're doing that to half your legs so to bend your knees and bring your feet underneath your knees Is going to be easiest and then start slowly extending your legs out. So you're on your heels It will give you more resistance to that and then you know, you can kind of find your way towards something that you can actually dip with your entire body off the ground, would be a great way to intensify that. Totally. And then for biceps, if you don't have any bands,

pull ups, if you do a lot of pull ups, you're gonna hit your body rows. You're gonna be hitting your biceps by cranberry. Yeah, just throw your hands in a supinated position, right? So palms up. So do your pull-ups palms up or do your body rows palms up and really get more bicep activation? Totally.

Now, if you have bands, of course, now you can do pretty much any curl that you did with dumbbells. Now you can do with bands, whether it's regular curls, hammer curls, supinated. I love doing supinating curls with bands because, by curls, supernat, I love doing supernating curls with bands because by the way, so what I do is I'll grab a band with a hammer grip. So I grab the band with my palm facing neutral

so that the band is coming down, out of the bottom of my hand and the top of my hand is where I have the band. Then when I curl, I twist, but because the band, the way that I'm holding the band, I actually get resistance on the twist more than I would with a dumbbell. That makes sense.

Yeah, basically you're leading your pinky up as you're rolling your wrists up and open. So yeah, you get a lot more activation there in the bicep. I love those. Well, remember, I think you just did a YouTube video. I'm not sure if it's live yet, Sal or not of elbow positioning for bicep and tricep.

If you have bands, that's a great technique. So think about the position of your elbows when you're doing this, right? So I would try and do something from a bicep curl from the floor where I'm standing upright. I do one where my elbows are positioned in front of me and I'm pulling the band towards me or the one where the it's fastened maybe up above in a door and then I'm bringing it down to me.

A great way to vary both the bicep and tricep exercises. Yes. And then of course, don't forget about mobility. Mobility, I think, you know, when you do good mobility movements, you don't have equipment anyway. So what a great opportunity to really focus on and work on mobility. And you know, some of my favorite mobility movements

that seem to be beneficial for most people. You have your 90, 90, and all those variations. You could find that for sure on our YouTube channel Hank Cups with rotation love that lizard with rotation windmills, you know pigeon Turkish get-ups these are all found on our YouTube channel. They're all bodyweight mobility movements They're exceptional and then the way I would structure your workout guys is you know We talked about and we've talked about this this on previous episodes over the last couple of weeks, rather than doing a full hour or hour and a half workout, breaking your workout up into smaller chunks throughout the day.

One thing you could do is you could also break up the focus. So, you know, you could do a mobility workout in the morning, then you could do a strength workout in the afternoon, and then you can finish with some could do a mobility workout in the morning, then you could do a strength workout in the afternoon, and then you can finish with some type of a conditioning workout letter in the day. Or you could take the whole workout that you're gonna do and just break it up into three, so you do a little bit of each in each of those workouts.

I found that more frequent workouts with body weight exercises seems to be more effective than the less frequent harder workouts. And if you've been working out in gyms this whole time, you probably have never experienced what it feels like to have lots of small workouts rather than your traditional one, you know, larger workout. That change alone will get your body to respond to that. That change alone gets your muscles to really take shape. And you may actually realize that it's something that you always want to incorporate into your routine, you know, one or two days a week because of just how

damn effective it, that's how I came up with trigger sessions is just that frequent. I like applying the mobility, the same way that we're applying the body weight and Bayon type of training. So like I like breaking up the three workouts in a day of let's say my strength training. And then the next day, I break up mobility workouts all day

and give myself a break of strength training. Then the next day I'm back to strength training, then the next day I'm into mobility workouts all day and give myself a break of strain training than the next day I'm back to strain training than the next day. I'm in a mobility again and Why I like this is what I've experienced since we've been out here since I've been breaking up these Small 20-minute workouts is I'm getting pretty damn sore Yeah, and so the next day instead of like hammering my body again since I'm still kind of recovering and sore from the workout the day before is a great day to do all mobility stuff, especially since I'm tight and sore, get the blood flowing that'll help speed up recovery and then promote good mobility because I'm doing it three times in the day and then I go back to my strength training the next day. So I like alternating back and forth. I love the idea of breaking up the workout in three, 20 minute workouts in the day,

and then the next day being a mobility type focus day. Yeah, I love the emphasis of breaking up because you're right. I mean, when are we gonna get an opportunity like this? Again, where we're confined to the house, we're not distracted by driving here to there, to everywhere else. We can actually accomplish multiple workouts in a day.

Let's take advantage of that and see how your body responds to that. I don't know when an opportunity like this will arise again. Obviously, this is not the most ideal opportunity, but making the most of it by getting the benefits of that. You're going to get a lot of benefits from just the constant stimulus that you can provide your body by working out and breaking it up a few times a day. Totally.

I really implore the listeners, we have been working tirelessly for the last four or five years at being able to provide as much free resources and information as possible. Stuff that doesn't cost a dime. Our YouTube channel is MindPumpTV. You'll find hundreds of exercises and discussions around fitness on that channel. Lots of demonstrations. There are exercises there that are in the gym,

but there's a lot of exercises and mobility movements that don't require any equipment whatsoever. We also's a lot of exercises and mobility movements that don't require any equipment whatsoever. We also have 30 days of coaching for free. If you want something that's structured that gives you an actual idea of what to follow and focus on each day, we have that provided as well as an option. So there's a lot of free resources out there that we provide. That's a mind plump free.com has all of our books and guides.

They don't cost anything. So if you, if you need ideas, you need some more help on how to keep maintaining your fitness right now. Make sure you go check that out. Now, if you want something that's put together organized for you, narrated, you know, like you don't have, there's no guesswork. It tells you what to do today, what to do tomorrow, reps, sets, exercises that has videos in there

with demonstrations and coaching and whatnot. Of course, we have our program, maps anywhere, which we have placed on 50% off during this time where people are, you know, confined to their houses and gyms are closed. And of course, you can find that at mapswhite.com and use the code white50 for the discount. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy

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