Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1275: The Best At-home Workout That No One is Sharing

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss two exercise techniques that are ignored or unknown to most people that can take an at-home workout to the next level. At the end of the episode they provide a full workout that incorporates both techniques. Mind Pump practicing what they preach. (5:11) How you can be creative and smart at the same time working out from home. (8:10) The two training techniques that will advance your at-home training. (10:44) Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) or Occlusion training. (12:03) Why did it become so popular with rehab? (14:11) Why is it so valuable and beneficial to you? (16:11) How to do it at-home. (26:22) The lost art of Isometric training. (27:54) Why bodybuilders are so good at connecting to a muscle. (37:55) The amplifier/speaker analogy. (40:42) A full-body workout that incorporates both techniques. (42:35) Legs. (42:57) Isometric Lunge. (2-4 sets, 5 reps each leg) Chest. (44:48) Iso-squeeze. (3 sets, 5 reps each set - hold for 5 seconds each rep) Back. (46:25) Prone Cobra. (3 sets, 5 reps each set – hold for 5 seconds each rep) Shoulders. (46:49) Isometric shoulder retraction. (3 sets, 5 reps each set – hold for 5 seconds each rep) Core. (47:26) Hollow body hold. (3 sets, 5 reps each set – hold for BFR training. (47:53) Biceps. (4-5 sets, 30 reps first set, 15 each set after) Triceps. (4-5 sets, 30 reps first set, 15 each set after) Calves. (5 sets, 30 reps first set, 15 each set after) Related Links/Products Mentioned April Promotion: MAPS Prime/Prime Pro ½ off! **Code “PRIME50” at checkout** Special Promotion: MAPS Anywhere ½ off!! **Code “WHITE50” at checkout** Mind Pump Webinar Mind Pump’s Occlusion Training Guide ½ off! **Code “BFR50” at checkout** Visit ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Occlusion Training Tutorial- How to Increase Muscle Size Using Blood Flow Restriction – Mind Pump TV How Blood Flow Restriction Training Works Blood flow restriction training in clinical musculoskeletal rehabilitation: a systematic review and meta-analysis Blood Flow Restriction Training: The Next Generation of Anabolic Exercise Charles Atlas's Dynamic Tension System Rubberbanditz Resistance Band Set Correcting Upper Cross Syndrome to Improve Posture & Health-- Prone Cobra Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Ben Greenfield Fitness (@bengreenfieldfitness)  Instagram Eugene Teo (@coacheugeneteo)  Instagram Mind Pump (@mindpumpmedia)  Instagram

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. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, we wanted to talk about techniques that you could do at home that are actually extremely effective at building muscle, at building strength. You know, working out at home can be tough because you don't have heavy weights extremely effective at building muscle, at building strength. Working out at home can be tough because you don't have heavy weights

and everybody knows that heavy weights is the best way to build muscle. But there are two genuine techniques of training that have tremendous muscle building effects, regardless, I mean regardless, even if you are advanced. Now one of them is an old technique called isometric training. Isometric training has tons and tons of literature supporting it in terms of muscle building, muscle fiber

recruitment, getting people to get stronger. It's just most people do it wrong. So we talk about how to do it right in this episode. We also talk about something called blood flow restrict and training, restriction training or occlusion training. Occlusion training is a more recent invention, or I should say it's been used more recently, although it's been around for a little while. Tons and tons of science supporting it. It actually builds muscle in similar ways to heavy lifting. Now, the cool thing about isometrics and occlusion training, or BFR training, is they don't require heavy weights at all. Isometrics require no weights.

BFR training you could do with resistance bands or like 10 pound dumbbells. When you combine them both, you get exceptional, exceptional results. Now in this episode, we also talk about how Adam is gonna be doing a free mobility webinar. I wanna make sure I mention that site because we've never taught a class online for people.

This is the first time we've ever done that. You can go to mindpumpwebinar.com, sign up, and watch Adam teach a mobility class. But nonetheless, in this episode, we actually give you a full workout on how you can combine isometrics with occlusion training or BFR training for maximum amazing results. By the way, we have a occlusion training guide that teaches you how to do this properly

because that requires a little bit more instruction. Now that guide is very inexpensive. We normally sell it for $27, but because we're doing this episode and we haven't talked about that guide a long time, we actually wrote that guy about four years ago. We're going to give it to you for $13.50. We're going to take it and make it 50% off. Here's how you get the BFR or Ecclusion Training Guide. Go to mapsbfr.com.

That's MAPS BFR.com. Use the code BFR50 for the discount. Again, that'll give you 50% off that guide. It only makes it $13.50, so it's super inexpensive. Also, this episode is brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors, Zbiotics. Now, Zbiotics blew our minds a while ago. They're the first genetically modified bacteria,

or I should say probiotic supplements. So it's these are probiotics that they modified to produce specific effects or results. So what did they design this bacteria to do? Well, check this out. They designed this bacteria to produce an enzyme that breaks down the negative byproducts of alcohol consumption. So one of the reasons why people may feel crappy the day after they drink alcohol is because of something called acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde builds up in the system and you have enzymes that break it down.

But if you don't have enough of the enzymes to break this down, like can happen when you start to drink a lot of alcohol, you start to get these really crappy negative effects. You might feel inflamed, you might feel a headache, feel groggy, irritable, just genuinely not good. Well, when you take Z-biotics before you drink these genetically modified bacteria go to your gut and start producing this enzyme that breaks down this

Byproduct of alcohol production so now when you drink and you get this build up of this particular You know compound again called Assetaldehyde gonna say that right acetaldehyde These by these bacteria produce this enzyme breaks it down and you feel really good So if you're like a lot of people and you're drinking a little bit more because you're at home, maybe enjoying a glass of wine or you need to relax a little bit, have Z-biotics so that you can negate some of the negative effects of your alcohol consumption. And because you are a mind-pump listener, you get 10% off any of their products. So go to their website, zbiotics.com, that's the letter z, biotis.com, forward slash, mind pump.

Check out their website, they have all the science, all the literature supporting what I'm talking about. And use the code, mind pump for 10% off. Again, that's zbiotics.com, forward slash, mind pump, get 10% off any of their zbiotics products to help you with alcohol consumption. We've been talking a lot about adding value to clients at home workouts. We talked to a lot of personal trainers, probably a good portion of our listener base, our

personal trainers. I think we all have been listening and reading the DMs. By the way, I think all three of us agree that we try our best to try and answer as many as we possibly can always. Of course. And, you know, there's been a common theme, I think, amongst all of us, of trainers trying to find ways to keep their clientele up and build value and add value to clients. Yeah, like how do I maintain my value to my clients when I can't meet with them in the gym as closed?

And then the other most common one is from people who are not trainers, these are just people who work out and they're like, how do I keep my progress going? Or how do I prevent my body from sliding back because I don't have access to a lot of equipment and at home. I think the mobility webinar that you're doing is brilliant. I think that's going to provide so much value. Well, you know, and it's a- I mean, it's a full-class.

Well, I also think it's an example of practicing what we preach. I mean, even though mind pump is done well and scaled to where it's at, it doesn't mean that it tough times like this. We're not affected, and it's real easy to get this scared and, oh shit, what do we do? But revert back to adding value. Adding value to people's lives. Always.

I have a little more time because I'm at home in quarantine and we're not doing the same stuff we used to. So, you know, Doug and I got together and this has been something that's been asked a lot, like as I've talked about the cloud and mobility classes that I used to teach. And I'm, in fact, we haven't ever given our audience a kind of perspective of what it looks like for us to coach somebody. We've never shown, we've never shown how we actually, we talk about how we train people, we talk about fitness, obviously a lot,

but nobody's ever really seen us in our action. In our element. Yeah, in our element. And so, and this is not like a, I know it's a webinar, the website is Mind Pump webinar, but it's not Adam doing a seminar. He's literally,

it's a virtual class, walking you through every component of each one of those exercises, giving you all the cues and ways to kind of feel it and enhance that experience even more. It's like you're taking his class. It's what made all of us successful. It's what made Adam very well known. He teaches, he cues mobility better than anybody have ever seen. And what I mean by that is he does it in a way to where you watch, you understand, and you can feel what you're supposed to because mobility requires really, really good connection and it requires really, really good form

otherwise it loses its value. So I think what you're doing is really good. And what I wanna do with this episode is bring more value. Bring even more value to people who don't have access to a gym because especially for people who are advanced, if you're not advanced, if you're beginner or intermediate, if you follow a good work out at home, you're not going to see rapid declines in strength and muscle, even if

you don't have access to weights. In fact, many of you might even improve because you're doing new stuff. But when you're advanced, it's really tough. If you're squatting 300 pounds at the gym, and now you're at home, you have no equipment, or you have bands, like, how do I keep my squat from dropping? How do I keep my legs from shrinking?

How do I keep my muscle from atrophing? So there's a bit of a challenge there. And one of the biggest challenges is, you don't have heavy resistance. You just don't have heavy resistance accessible to you, so you have to figure out other ways to get the water. The water jugs aren't really gonna cut it. That's so funny.

I see that a lot of that going on right now. This also reminds me to have kind of the old formula of how we first started the podcast. We would come out, you know, pointing out things that were popular, especially if they were popular people that were sharing just good crap advice. And we wouldn't just point it out. It wasn't like a, you know, calling people out by name. It was more so trying to educate the audience. And then what we would do afterwards is, you know, this is how we would do these things.

And kind of how I think this, this episode will unfold for people is, you know, we've been kind of talking shit about a lot of the at home videos and stuff that we see probably. I mean, everybody's just like, you know, you see this, lifting the couch up, you just referenced, you know, I see people like squatting with five gallon jugs and like, you know, doing all this weird shit. What they're trying to do is they're trying to mimic weights without weights, which is okay, but you're missing out on some extremely effective techniques.

There's incredible ways to be creative and smart at the same time. It's not, and that's, and right now what I see, I see a lot of rookie trainers, just who could come up with the most creative way to do an exercise at home? Whether that be picking your couch up or your coffee doing something weird on your coffee table.

I'm using your couch. Right, I've seen everything. I've seen everything in my whole squats. And there is a more effective way to be creative with your workouts. And so that's kind of what it's inspired this topic today. And I'm really excited to share this

because we organize it in a way that when you're done with the episode, we're also gonna give you a specific workout to go try and do. Oh yeah, at the end of this, you'll get a full workout. We're gonna give you a workout that you can follow. But there's two things that everybody is,

I don't wanna say everybody, but most people are not even looking at. There are two training techniques. They're cold. One is ancient, one is relatively new. Both of them, okay, and this is, I'm not making this up. Both of the ones I'm about to tell you have tremendous strength and muscle building effects,

even when you compare them to traditional resistance training. So these are not poor substitutes. In fact, these two things that we're gonna talk about today are techniques that advanced people benefit from. And we've experienced them firsthand, and they are backed by lots and lots of literature and science. One of them is blood flow restrictive training. So we'll talk about that. The other one is is isometric training, which has actually been around for a long time, fell out of favor when

equipment got invented, lots of machines and all that stuff. But if you look at the literature supporting both of these, in fact, you're going to ask yourself why you aren't doing these even when you're going to the gym because they are because they are not poor substitutes. These will build muscle and strength even if you're somebody who's in advanced lift or even if you're somebody who's been working out for five or ten years on your own consistently. So let's talk about these individually. Let's start with BFR, otherwise known as blood flow restrictive training, otherwise known as the scientific term is called occlusion training. Now this BFR, you know, started a long time ago, was actually discovered decades ago by somebody who was experimenting

with different ways of getting, working on rehab. And that's actually where it became popular. Later on, athletes started seeing the effects of BFR because they'd go to their physical therapist and they'd get used BFR and see the rehab effects and then started applying it to their training. And then bodybuilders got their hands on it and noticed that it would add like a quarter inch to their arms, people who already are advanced.

Now, I was introduced to BFR late in my career. I didn't know about this until, gosh, until when we started the podcast, which was about five years ago or something like that. And I remember, I think it was Adam and I that were talking about it. And at that time, him and I, we love to, we were trying to compete for calf gains because that's right. Yeah. Both him and I are, you know, calves, and it's not our genetic strength.

It's just, that's just put it that way, that way. It's a body part. We didn't neglect the careers. Calf is haired. And then we also don't have the greatest calf building genetics. So both of us used BFR to see what would happen. I applied BFR to my calves, and no joke,

my calves are stubborn. They do, if I add applied BFR to my calves and no joke, my calves are stubborn. They do, if I add a quarter inch to my calves, it's like a miracle. I did something crazy, right? With BFR, I added almost an inch to my calves and then I applied BFR training to my arms and my quads. My arms grew a quarter inch, which is crazy considering again that I've been working out forever.

And then when I applied it to my legs, now my legs, my upper thighs respond fast anyway. That's my genetic gift where my quads just blow up. My legs got silly to the point where I actually stopped doing BFR for my legs because it was crazy. The experience I had with them personally, because when I first heard about it, I thought it was, I was like, this is not way, this is gonna work, this is stupid, it's a new, you know, fake technique or whatever.

You have to talk about why though, it became so popular first in rehab. You know, one of the things when you are rehabbing a client, one of the greatest challenges is, especially when you're dealing with athletes, right? An athlete, especially a professional athlete that's getting paid big money to be on the field or on the court, every day that they're off with an injury is losing money, right? So getting that athlete

recovered and back to their sport as fast as they possibly can, the safest way they can is the most important. So this is why there's so much money and research around this, right? So that's why we found this and we got to this place later on with science. And what they found was, you know, when you did the blood occlusion training, so if I had somebody, let's use a knee, a knee tear, very common MCL, ACL type of tear in the knee, especially in sports, it's very common. A lot of people have dealt with knee injuries after that uh... it's extremely uh... tender you're very weak uh... it's still kind of healing so it's it would be very dangerous to take somebody who just came out of knee surgery and do a barbell squat with them right away

not super stable no it's not stable yet they've atrophy they've lost muscle around the knee and to do a complex movement that's loaded heavy Very dangerous and could result in them being injured again And that's the last thing you want to do when we're trying to recover, but then at the same time Speed is important and getting them back to where they were before So that's is where BFR came in yeah and incorrect me itself if I'm going to explain this wrong or not, but the way I understand it is it's a great way to mimic hypertrophy in terms of being able to deplete this oxygen and create that environment for muscles to grow.

This is a way you can do that without having to have like this heavy load or multiple wraps to get you to deplete this oxygen. It's a way to kind of mimic that, probably. Yeah, so here's why BFR is so valuable, especially right now, you need very light weight to make this effective. This is why they liked it with rehab. Quick explanation on kind of how it works. Let's say I'm going to work my arms and I'm going to use BFR.

What I would do is I would take a knee wrap, which a knee wrap actually works really well because it's wide and it's elastic. And then I'm going to tie it around my upper arm near my shoulder or near my armpit. And I tie it around to what I start to feel pressure. Now you don't want to tie it off so tightly that you literally cut off circulation. But you want to tie it off tight enough to where it prevents muscle venous outflow. It prevents blood flowing out my muscle, but it doesn't prevent blood flowing in. So now I'm getting this imbalance. More blood is flooding into the muscle, especially as I'm exercising it, but less blood is flowing

out. I'm giving myself an enhanced pump, but also while I'm doing that, I am reducing oxygen to the muscle tremendously. Now, why is this important? Okay. Your fast twitch muscle fibers are the ones that are responsible for strength and power. Your slow twitch muscle fibers, the ones that are responsible for endurance. Endurance requires a lot of oxygen. Strength does not. Strength requires, you know, you're moving anaerobically. You're using ATP and other sources of energy. So this is why if you are exerting tons of power, you don't last long. If you want to last long, you've got to go slower and exert less power and then you can last over a period of time.

So when you tie off the arms, you're reducing oxygen to the muscle. And what this does is it forces the fast twitch muscle fibers to do all the work. Even though you're lifting a very, very light weight. So using myself as an example, I mean, if I'm strong and I'm going heavy, I mean, I could do decent curls with 45, 50 pound dumbbells. I could do 10 decent reps doing that. I'd get a great workout doing that. If I tie off my arms, 10 pound dumbbells. I could do 10 decent reps doing that. I'd get a great workout doing that. If I tie off my arms, 10 to 15 pounds, and I am, that's it.

And you'll know, once you do this, you'll do the reps and it feels light as the oxygen starts to deplete, which happens very quickly, you get this insane burn in the muscle. And the muscle. That's what I'm talking about. Oh, right.

So this is one of those ways. You'll get there a lot faster than you would even lift and weights and having to go through all those wraps just to get to that point where you feel that burn really start to sit in. And now that's just why it's great for rehab. You have an injury. I can't have somebody do a leg or arm exercise

or whatever with a normal load that would stimulate muscle growth because they're injured. But I can use 20% of a normal load that would stimulate muscle growth because they're injured. But I can use 20% of a normal load with blood flow restriction, with occlusion so that the muscle now responds as if the person is using heavy load. So this is perfect for right now. You're stuck at home and you have bands. And maybe your bands, you know, you could sit there and do a hundred curls with the bands. Try doing it occluded, try doing it with your arms, next thing you know, you do 30 reps of first set,

then do 15 and 10, the following sets, and it feels like you're curling up, you know, 200 pounds. Like you can barely, and the burn is intense, and the muscles almost don't know the difference. That's the thing, they almost don't know the difference. That's the thing, they almost don't know the difference. The fast twitch muscle fibers get worked like when you lift heavy weight. And again, the results are exceptional. Again, this was first observed back in the mid-1960s. There was a Japanese researcher who experimented with this.

And he actually, one thing that he noticed was when he sat in a kneeling position for long periods of times, his calves would get really pumped. So that kneeling position for him naturally included his calves. And he noticed his calves would get really pumped, and then they'd actually kind of build a little bit. And he thought, this is really strange. So then he started doing experiments with various techniques.

And he found that when he did this to people that they built muscle like when they were working out. Here's some of the other benefits of this kind of training. It creates less damage to your body. So you can actually apply it more frequently to your body. So I could do a heavy hard bicep workout, maybe two days a week, where I'm really, really pushing it. That's about as far as I'd want to go. Be a far, I could apply three, four days a week to my biceps.

And I'm telling this is true now, you're going to get similar results to when you're doing your heavy exercises. That's how effective BFR is. Here's the other wonderful thing about BFR. We're in a situation where we may want to maintain a very strong, healthy immune system. Well, training really, really hard, although if you're fit and you do it right, over time it builds a healthy immune system. Well, training really, really hard,

although if you're fit and you do it right, over time it builds a strong immune system. In the short term, you'd notice a dip in immune system. This is why if you're fighting off an illness, and then you train real hard, you're probably gonna get the illness. It's gonna hit you full blast. Because BFR is, it simulates intensity.

It simulates heavy weight, and you get the similar results in terms of muscle growth. You don't hammer the body in the same way. It's far less damaging to the body. It also causes some really interesting things to happen in terms of hormones. I mean, when they do studies on, and you can find these studies,

I'm gonna actually look them up right now. These studies are, I'm not the only one that's, you know, these are, oh, this is some of the stuff that I saw Ben Greenfield touting recently. So I saw him talking about this on a video, maybe a week or two ago, he was sharing this about, you know, I actually, it was, it was probably him who really sparked this for me recently because I wasn't even thinking that way with BFR that hey, this is, and we've kind of talked about this, right, we've told our audience already that,

hey, you know, this is a time where your overall health is most important. Getting building a bunch of muscle right now, even if that's what the questions are around, shouldn't be your number one in priority, it should be taking care of yourself and staying healthy, and that's what he was making the case that, hey, you know, this is not the time

to hammer and stress your body, if you're stressed about work, you're stressed about being at home all day with your kids, you got all this other stress, and then you go hammer yourself in the garage and kill yourself in there, and that's where you get sick. And so he was making this case for, you know, this is a great time to really start to include me. And I agree 100%. It's a hack. It's just like a hack right now. Like, okay, I don't want to stress my immune

system, but I want to maintain my gains. I still want to build muscle. I still want to, you know, feel the way I feel when I go to the gym. Well, enter this advanced kind of training technique. Again, it's only relatively recently become popular among strength athletes, but it's been used for rehab for a very long time. And we've all used it in experienced significant results. Growth hormone release you see after training. So in any time you work out, we notice, if the workout is effective, we tend to notice a spike

in growth hormone, we'll check this out. BFR training, studies show will release 170% higher levels of growth hormone than traditional resistance training. So you actually get a greater spike in growth hormone from BFR training than you do from traditional resistance training. Now growth hormone isn't necessarily like testosterone. It's not this huge driver of muscle growth, but it's excellent in its protective abilities. So it helps with your muscle collagen, your tendons.

It's very good for recovery and rehab and in combination with hormones like testosterone, it can be an effective muscle builder. Again, BFR raises that more than traditional resistance training. Here's something else that's interesting. They can actually look at how genes are being expressed through different methods of training. BFR has positive effects on insulin-like growth factor, M-TOR, and myostatin. These are all things that when we measure and we see the positive impact on these things, that these signal the body to build muscle.

It's very strange. Like, when you have someone use BFR training with 20% load and you compare that to heavy training and you take them into a laboratory and don't tell the scientists who did what and you had to measure all the signals. They're gonna look at both of them and be like, oh, it's kind of hard to decipher. It looks like both of them sent this really loud,

you know, muscle building signal. So it's exceptionally effective and it's something that again, you could do at home with bands or really light dumbbells or jugs. This is now jugs of water now become valuable. How much is a jug of water? Where are 10 pounds, 15 pounds? What am I going to do? 100,000 curls? Do you be a far with that? Now you've got yourself in a good way. Well, another reason I really love this conversation right now is I bet a big portion of our audience doesn't even know that we rode a BFR guide

like four years ago. And the reason why we don't push it really hard on the show is because we would never, our integrity, we're not gonna sell it like it's this magical thing that's gonna be better than traditional weight training. But this is a great example though because what we do know about the science behind it to support how valuable it can be. Especially now. That's my point. This is a great and this is what I met by you know, cracking on, you know, the masses that are just kind of throwing all these creative weird

extra side. The reason why I crack up about it is just because I know this, okay. I know damn well. I've trained enough clients, I've trained enough clients that I need them to do homework and stuff like that. Ain't none of my fucking clients, you know, picking the couch up all weird or going to get a five gallon jug of water and hugging it and squatting, ain't doing none of that stuff.

They're not doing it. And if they do do it, they're gonna do it one time and that's it. They're not gonna follow, it's like a novelty thing. It is. And it's more silly than it is realistic that they're gonna follow it.

And not to mention, like you said, how many times am I gonna have to curl, you know, milk jugs in order to get a good pump or actually train my biceps well, when there's stuff that you can do like isometrics and BFR that are incredible, that it's supported by research to show how great is, and here is a good place for this. This is where I would take a client and write a workout very similar

to the one that we wrote for today's episode. Totally. So I want to tell you, you know, kind of how to do it. And of course, Adam's right, we do have a guide. It's called the occlusion training guide that kind of breaks down how to do it But I'll explain a little bit here on the podcast If you have knee wraps if you have any kind of elastic Wrap supportive type wrap you can even use long if you have a really really long sturdy pieces of gauze Wrap those if you want to you work your biceps and triceps or your forearms.

You wrap them around your arm right under your shoulder, tight enough to where you could feel the pressure, but not so tight where you're just like, oh, I can't barely move. Then you do your exercises. And the way it's broken down, and remember at the end of the episode, we'll lay this all out for you.

But the way you typically wanna do this is you wanna do your first set about 30 reps. Then you rest for about 30 reps. Then you rest for about 30 seconds or so, and then you go 15 reps, and you repeat this about five times. So it goes 30 reps, rest, 15 reps, rest, 15 reps, rest. Now I'm not joking here. Grab a weight that is light.

You will be blown away at how fast you get fatigued and how little you can do. It's going to really burn. It's fire how little you could do. It's gonna really burn. It's fire. Give it a chance. It's very painful. You could do this for your legs as well. And the way you would tie them off is up near the groin around the leg.

You could do it for the calves below the knee, but you can actually just tie up up the leg. So it is a little bit limiting in terms of like, isolating arms, isolating your legs. Yeah, limbs only. It limbs only. It limbs only. It's not gonna be good for chest back and these gross motor movements in terms of that.

So that's why we also wanted to bring up another technique that's sort of a lost art that is massively effective and it has multiple studies to prove just how much you gain strength and you don't even realize you're gaining all this strength without any weight apply. This is just the simple technique of isometric training. Oh isometric, you know, if you look at the history, this is something that I really, really enjoyed reading about

when you look at the history of muscle building and strength building. And one thing that I realized, I probably 10 to 12 years into my career was that, you know, a lot of the information that I would get on advanced muscle building and fat burning training was coming from these body builders and athletes that were, you know, they were on anabolic steroids or they were paid by publications to kind of, you know, push people in a certain direction.

So there was good information, but some of it was like, ah, I didn't really apply as well. When I read the old stuff, when I looked way back in the, you know, the way that they trained in the 1910s, 20s, 30s, and even the 40s, before Annabelle steroids, before protein powder, before creatine, you know, these guys and girls were, they were, they were just doing what works and they would write books about what works. This is when I learned full body training and frequency. And I also, by the way, these guys blew me away with their feats of strength.

Like Eugene Sando is a good example. This guy could do a one arm bent press with 300 pounds. I don't know any body builders that could do that. Now, you're talking about 190 pound shredded man who was able to lift this tremendous amount away. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, Wow. And it's crazy. So there's other things that involve with the speed of muscles. Muscles can only move so fast. And so this is the force velocity curve. So this is a principle where basically you can't move your muscles fast under a lot of load.

And now isometrics provides, there's no load. And so basically I can squeeze and recruit as much maximal force as possible. And this is what really allows for you to really develop like an even higher amplitude strength. You recruit the most muscle fibers you'll recruit is when your muscles are pushing a load that they can't lift and they can't move it. So if I'm doing a curl and it's heavy and I'm lifting it, my body will never recruit

the maximal number of muscle fibers because it found the right amount to lift the weight. Now the only time your muscle fibers where you get the max recruitment is when you're pushing against an object that's not moving. Your body is literally turning them all on. Studies show that isometrics actually do that. And what happens when you practice isometrics is you learn, your body actually learns how to recruit more muscle fibers easier.

And where I was going with the old strong men and strength athletes back in the day, all of them use isometrics heavily. It was actually an extremely popular form of training. It only fell out of favor when gyms and equipment became a thing because with isometric you don't need equipment. So why would we push something that requires no equipment? Your best strength coaches will advocate for. Still to this day, 100%. There's not a good

strength coach out there that will tell you, oh isometric or waste of time or a joke, all of them implemented into their routines already. You know, I had to shout out one of our buddies, coach Eugene Tau, he has been posting, I think I've seen at least three or four different great isometric exercises where he's just using a towel. And that's an example to me. That's how I, even before I got to meet Eugene,

I knew he was a good coach because I can see how his brain operates. He knows everyone's locked inside the house right now. They don't have access to a gym. So what are some things that he can really add value to the people's lives that are following him and paying attention to him? And he knows like we do,

the research that supports isometric training. So what is he showing? He's not the guy who's in there showing, doing skull crushers with a couch or doing weird exercises and movements just to be creative with your home shit that you have right now. He's effective.

He's ways to do that. 100 and I'll tell you what, if you've never done an isometric workout. Not the right way. You have no idea what you're in for. Oh, yeah. You have no idea if that's, you know, here's one of the, the critiques of isometrics has always been, well, the strength gains that you get in isometrics

are only specific to the exact position that you're in. So in other words, if I'm pushing with a good isometric position in a half squat, I'm only going to get good at that half squat. Well, that's actually not true. Studies show that the strength actually goes 10 degrees outside of the range of motion, both up and down. And then you get strength gains even further than that.

It just becomes diminishing the further you move out. In other words, if I do an isometric squat at 90 degrees, I'm going to get the same strengthings at 80 degrees and at 100 degrees. And then it's going to be diminishing as I move away, but I'm still getting all those strengthings. So how do you apply isometrics? You move into through different positions and apply the tension in different positions. And you'll find, again, tremendous strengthings. One of the most popular at home workout programs of all time was Charles Atlas's dynamic tension. He used to sell this through comic books,

and it was all based around this. And I remember there were before and afters of people, then this is back in the 40s and 50s, but people will get tremendous results and they never used weights at all. Yeah, it was 100% isometric. This is a technique that's been long lost. There's a martial art, maybe Doug can look at that.

Look at martial art, most famous for isometrics. I wanna say it's like Quachukimbo or something like that. I don't know. There's a famous... I wanna say Tai Chi. There's a famous martial art that is known for its isometrics and that's what they present is its muscle building effect while you're also doing these...

It's probably come from... There's a lot of shallow in monk. Yeah, that that that utilized the you know that and then Bruce Lee obviously made it famous too as he would use it in between sets and would you know you these isometric poses to really enhance the story. Bruce Lee was a huge advocate of isometric training which he learned from the old time strength athletes and you know you know, Bruce Lee, of course, was a small, smaller man, but he was the first muscular action, movie action figure. Before Bruce Lee, there was no shredded muscular,

you know, action person in movies. The way that they used to look back then, was just kind of a sturdy looking dude, you know, tough guy right there. Then comes Bruce Lee, Latsbred. He would do that famous Latsbred is kind of a sturdy looking dude, you know, tough guy right there. Then comes Bruce Lee, lats bread. He would do that famous lats bread where you'd hear the bones cracking,

you know, when you do the thing. Yeah. And he wasn't a big guy, but he was shredded and muscular, especially for a guy of his genetics, and of course the guy was totally natural. People don't realize Bruce Lee actually inspired a lot of bodybuilders.

Flex Wheeler became a bodybuilder because of Bruce Lee. So Bruce Lee was this really shredded muscular, look at some of his old pictures in these old Kung Fu movies. All natural, doesn't have great super muscle building genetics. He's obviously a slight Kung Fu fighter or whatever, or GKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK through a combination of training techniques and isometrics was huge for him. And he found it made him extremely powerful in his martial arts. Yeah, to kind of reiterate some of the points

that we've mentioned for BFR training in terms of like it being safe. So, you know, the thing about like always loading the body and loading the joints inevitably, I mean, you have to go back in and really reinforce the joints like on the off time with mobility drills and all these things to try and keep the upkeep. So everything is reinforced properly.

So that way, you can sustain that amount of load. Whereas with something like isometric train, you can utilize maximal force and then let off. And there's a lot less ramifications to that. And the overall damage is way less in the turnover so you could actually like, you know, come back and then do a workout just as intense, you know, the following day with less damage.

I think that isometric suggests it's a hard thing to sell to the average person because it just, it doesn't seem to make logical sense. I mean most people- They seem fancy. Yeah, that's what it is, right? And I think I even had a hard time as a trainer,

I think explaining it in my early career. Like I knew it's been around forever in the value of it, but honestly, I didn't use it like I started using it later on in my career. And I think a lot of that just had to be, I couldn't articulate to my clients like using it later on in my career. And I think a lot of that just had to be, I couldn't articulate to my clients like why this is so valuable. And so I really started to grasp the role

and the importance of like the central nervous system and what's going on on a neurological level when we exercise. And I get into this a tiny bit in the mobility webinar that I did because that's very similar. Like when you're working on mobility and we're trying to find a new range of motion, there's a neurological thing that's happening, right?

What happens is we lose this good communication from our brain to our muscles. Like we just, we forget that before they move or do anything, there's something that happens in the brain first. The brain tells the muscles to move and do that. And so when you train isometrics, you're training that portion of the exercise also,

not just the stimulation that the muscles are getting, but also the ability for you to connect from the brain to the muscles. Neural transmitters. Right, and for it to be solidify a really strong pathway and why that's so important when you then go back and do traditional weight training, is you now have the ability to connect

to the muscles that you want to develop better than you. This is why, and you've mentioned this cell many times before in the show, why bodybuilders are so good at being able to connect to a muscle because they do ice, probably more than anybody else, when you look at the average gym population, bodybuilders use isometric training more than anyone else.

Whether they know it or not. They call opposing. Right. They don't have to isolate, they don't have to flex their lats, they don't have to isolate their chest, that to make the upper chest look more divided. They feel their muscles more. Yes, and look, you're talking about the connection.

Again, I'll go back to what I just said, moving an unmovable load or tensing and creating lots of tension through isometrics is one of the easiest ways to recruit the most amount of muscle fibers. That's when your body and your neurological system is firing all those muscle fibers. You don't lose that, by the way, that's a skill that you actually get better at. So what happens then when you go back to the gym and you're lifting weights, here's what happens, you feel way more solid. I don't know how else better to explain it. You're more connected. Somebody messaged me the other day about old man's strength. Remember we talked about that before? Yeah. Yeah. Where, you know, this is a, you feel that like

in a handshake right away? Yeah, that's the funny term, right? That, that guys will use to describe why they're, whether they're 50 year old uncle can, you know, just can kick their ass in wrestling, even though they go to the gym and they can outlift them or whatever. I remember this as an 18 year old kid, you know, if I would go work out, you know, in the gym with my uncle,

you know, I'd lift more weight to them, but then we would, you know, arm wrestle or shake hands or wrestle on the ground. Like, this dude is way stronger than me. What the hell's going on? They have, they've been in their body longer. They have better connections to their muscle. They're more solid.

Okay. Isometric training trains that forward. So then when you go do your bench press or your squat or your overhead press, what ends up happening is you just feel like you're active. You feel like the muscles are controlled. You feel like you're stable, you're strong. There's also speculation. When you talk, when you read you're stable, you're strong, there's also speculation,

when you read these old articles of bodybuilders, what they would all say about isometric training, because remember, bodybuilding, posing on stage has been around since the 1930s or so, right? 1930s started to get a little bit popular. And what they would say is that the isometric training made their muscles look denser, that actually make their muscles look harder.

And I think that's because they learn how to recruit more muscle fibers. I mean, your body has natural governing systems in it to protect your joints, to protect your ligaments, to protect your muscles from getting torn. And so like when you're going to lift weights, you already have like a sort of operating system there that allows only so much for you to produce

just enough force to be able to move this object. Isometrics help you to stretch that limitation even further. So now I have an excess of muscle fibers now that I can add into this movement. This is why I love cellular, the first person I ever heard say this. I've probably repeated it more times and you've even repeated it more times and you've even said it now,

because I think even though it's an oversimplification of a very complex thing we're talking about, I think that's what you need to do for the average person to really grasp what value you're getting from what we're talking about. And that's your amplifier speaker analogy that you used to give all the time that I love to share because the way I look at it when we're talking about this,

everybody thinks about lifting weights all the time and sets, reps, exercises and all that, and all that kind of falls into this category of like talking about the speaker, you know, and how great the speakers are. That's the muscles. Yeah, that's the muscles, right? The muscles are the speakers.

The amplifier is the CNS. And by training isometrics, you're investing in a better amplifier. You're investing in a more powerful amplifier. You're training to have a better amplifier. And that combined with good speakers builds an incredible stereo system. Well, this is why,

by the way, we put a lot of isometric training in our maps anywhere program because we know it's value. But this is why isometric training combines so well to BFR. Isometric training really does a phenomenal job of training the amplifier, of training the central nervous system. BFR does a phenomenal job of training the speakers and training the muscle. You combine those two. You're covered.

You actually have a very effective. If you do this right, you have a very effective muscle building workout combination that requires very little or no resistance. If you have bands, if you have a broomstick, and then you just have your body, you've got everything you need to combine isometrics with BFR, oh, besides the thing to tie off

your arms and legs, that's it, that's all you need, you need nothing else, try this out and watch what happens. So I think, what do you guys think, give them the work out? I'm not going to die effect. All right, so here's a deal, we'll start with legs. This is a full body workout, okay? So you can follow this whole, this entire workout

or you can do what we've been recommending, which is you can take this whole workout and divide it up into two workouts throughout the day So you do 30 minutes in the morning 30 minutes at night. It doesn't matter which one But I've found since when I'm stuck at home. I like to divide things up a little bit So let's start with legs, okay? isometric lunge. This is gonna be your isometric exercise now with the isometric lunge What you're gonna do is you're gonna get into a lunge position. You're gonna go slowly down into the lunge.

Now go down to where your knee is hovering above the floor and then hold intense your entire body, but especially your quads, hamstrings and glutes. Your goal is to tense as hard as you possibly can with your legs without moving your body. You wanna stay stationary and you want to fire the shit out of those muscles. Squeezing your entire body down there at the bottom

to really maximize that recruitment process. That's it. And then do that. Hold that for about two to five seconds. Then come up, give yourself a few seconds, and then repeat this. You want to do this five times. So that's one set, five times.

Now, at the end of this five reps of this isometric squeeze, if you feel like you didn't really do much, you weren't squeezing harder. I'm sure, fault. That's what's great about isometrics is you control the intensity of this. And this is something I tried to get across in my webinar when we're going through the mobility drills is, I mean, I was sweating

my ass off. It's mobility exercises. It's not even, what I'm talking about, it's heart isometric training like this, but you control that, and the more intense you do it, the more you recruit. So you've got to think about that while you're doing it. That's right. So try doing between two to four sets for this exercise and it's five reps each leg. Again, you're gonna go down, hold that bottom position. But don't just hold when you're at the bottom, squeeze as hard as you can. All the muscles you're trying to target. Hold that for two to five seconds.

Come up, give yourself, let yourself catch your breath and then repeat five reps again. You want to do about two to four sets. I think three is probably perfect for most people. Next is chest. Chest is the ISO squeeze. This is a great exercise. This is what you do. Grab a broomstick that you can hold at arm's length in front of your body with your hands outside of your shoulders.

Squeeze this stick with your hands and then drive your hands together like you're trying to get your hands to touch each other. Now don't slide on the stick, okay? The goal is not to slide on the stick, but you want to elevate your shoulders up, right? You want to maintain good posture with this, or track your shoulders, depress your shoulders down, really squeeze, you know, as much as you can

to really fill your way into your chest from your shoulders. And when we're just so those that are listening are not going, oh shit, this is a lot, I'm trying to scrum with these notes. Justin and Doug are going to shoot these videos. So you're going to have these videos. We'll post it on Instagram when this episode is live, so you'll be able to go back to our answer. Demonstrate all these for you after that.

Right. So as Sal's walking through and giving you your cues, don't freak out or just be scrambling that you don't understand. If anything sounds complicated, we're going to shoot a video of each of these exercises and Justin will go through all the great cues. And we'll give Jackie this so she can put the actual workout in the show notes. I think that works out right, Doug. That's mindpumppodcast.com. You click on the episode, go to the bottom, you'll see show notes.

So this is all written down. So do that with your chest. Hold that squeeze for as hard as you can for five seconds. Do three sets of that. By the way, you wanna rest about 30 seconds to a minute in between each one of these sets. So do that five second squeeze, release, do it again, do that for five times, that's one set.

So five second hard squeezes, do that five times, that's one set, do that for three sets for the chest. Now when you go to the back, prone, co prone cobra, we have lots of videos on YouTube. I think we've shown that exercise several times on our YouTube channel with prone cobra, same exact thing, get into that position, squeeze your back and your body as hard as you can, hold that squeeze for five seconds, come out of the position, go back and do it and do it again, do that five reps for three sets. For shoulders, there's something called

isometric shoulder retraction. By the way, all these exercises for those of you that have maps anywhere, they're all in the maps, anywhere program. So for the isometric shoulder retraction, just like you did with the chest, where you have the broomstick in front of you, but this time instead of squeezing your hands together,

what I want you to do is pull your shoulder blades back together, so like you're squeezing your shoulder blades back together, and then pull your hands apart as hard as you can in that isometric position. Again, the tension you create yourself, that's what's gonna make this effective. Hold that for five seconds as hard as you can, give yourself a second or two, repeat it,

five reps, three sets for this exercise. For core, there's something called a hollow body hold. This is, again, we'll have this filmed. This is where you're laying on the floor with your body, arms extended out, your legs extended out. Now what you wanna do is you wanna create a U with your body, so crunch up.

You look like a banana. You look like a curve ball. But the canoe, right. Hold that squeeze in your abs as hard as you can. Tense up your entire body. Again, five second hold. Do that for five reps. Do three sets.

Okay. Now we're going to go to the BFR. So you're done with all the isometric stuff. Now we're going BFR. Here's what you're going to do. Tie off both arms. Grab yourself a lightweight or a band. Do 30 reps first. get the biceps to

really burn, really pump, give yourself about, you know, I don't know, 15, 20 second rest, then do 15 reps, 15 to 20 second rest, 15 reps, 15, 20 second rest, 15 reps. So the total is four to five sets. So you're going 30 reps, then you're aiming for 15 each time, resting between them for about 20 to 30 seconds. Then go to triceps, do the same thing with a band press down. Just like a tricep press down, put your band over a door,

or if you have a door attachment, you could do that. Squeeze the triceps at the bottom, same thing. 30 reps, 15 reps, 15 reps, 15 reps, 30 second rest in between. You are to feel an insane burn, totally normal. Just try to deal with it. When you take the bands off or the things around your arms off, you're probably going to have the craziest pump you've ever had in your entire life with your arms. Now we're going to move to calves.

You can do the same thing with your calves. You want to tie off right above your calf below your knee so that you feel some pressure in your calves. Now you want to do body weight calf raises off of a stair or a step or stand on something so your ankles, your heels can go down a little bit. Again, 30 reps, rest, 15 reps, rest, 15 reps, rest, 15 reps, rest.

You want to do a total of about five sets of this. You're going to feel an insane burn again. Take the bands off your legs and let them chill out and see what happens. Also on our our show notes at the MindPuntPodcast.com, Jack, you also link over. We did a YouTube video, Sal, you know, I did a YouTube video on how to do BFR also. Oh, how to put the bands on the program. Yep. So I had to put on the bands. So if you're kind of wondering what's that look like or how tight we kind of cover all that in the YouTube. So I had to put on the bands. So if you're kind of wondering what's that look like or how tight we kind of cover all that in the YouTube.

So you have access to all this. Justin's in a shoot video. So if you don't own the anywhere program and you don't have BFR because obviously if you have the BFR guide and you have anywhere you already have great demos already in there and you just got to put the programming together. Otherwise, Justin will shoot these videos

so everybody has them, and then we also have YouTube video demos of this. Now here's a deal if you want to learn. So of all of this, the more difficult thing to kind of, like Adam was saying, is kind of figure out really how to do BFR or occlusion training properly. So we have an occlusion training guide that really, really breaks it down.

Now normally we sell it for $27, it's a very inexpensive guide, but you're going to get half off, 50% off. We're going to do a 50% off code for people who listen to this episode. So it's $13.50. You can find that at mapsbfr.com. That's m-a-p-s-bfr.com. And then the code for the 50% off is bfr 5.0 no space for the discount also you can find the three of us on Instagram

You can find Justin at mine pump Justin you can find me at mine pump sal and Adam at mine pump Adam Thank you for listening to mine pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers,

but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money 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 on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump. And until next time, this is Mindbomb.