Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1282: The #1 Key to Consistently Building Muscle & Strength (Avoid Plateaus!)

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin go over nine different ways to manipulate your workouts to avoid plateaus and keep building muscle and strength. Understanding all the different types of ways that you can progressively overload the body. (2:31) Can I get myself stronger? The importance of manipulating weight. (6:06) The Mind Pump philosophy of employing different rep ranges. (11:32) The Mind Pump formula for tracking your volume for the intermediate to the experienced lifter. (18:11) The value of increasing your range of motion through mobility training. (23:18) Shaping and perfecting your skill and technique. (29:51) Focusing on the mind to muscle connection. (35:21) Paying attention to the tempo of your workout to build muscle. (41:38) Manipulating rest periods for muscle adaptation. (45:07) Just add more intensity. (48:30) Why you can make GREAT progress at-home! (50:30) 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** Should I Do More Reps or More Weight? - Mind Pump Blog BUILDING MUSCLE: Is There REALLY A Best Rep Range? - Mind Pump TV Which Is Better: Low Reps Or High Reps? - Mind Pump Blog How Many Times Per Week Should You Train Each Muscle Group? - Mind Pump Blog Stop Working Out And Start Practicing - Mind Pump Media Mind Pump Webinar How To Improve Your Squat Depth - FREE Squat Like A Pro Guide – Mind Pump TV Impact of range of motion during ecologically valid resistance training protocols on muscle size, subcutaneous fat, and strength. Single Leg Toe Touch- Do These BEFORE You Deadlift to Build Your Glutes & Hamstrings – Mind Pump TV Why Can’t I Feel the Right Muscles Working? - Mind Pump Blog The Best Form of Exercise - Mind Pump Media Why Your Tempo Matters When You Workout! - Mind Pump TV Do short rest periods help or hinder muscle growth? Overtraining Is KILLING Your Gains! (How Much Is Too Much?) | Mind Pump TV Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Ben Pakulski (@bpakfitness)  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. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, we cover the most important key that gets you consistent muscle building and strength progress. And also helps you burn body fat. Now, what we're talking about is progressive overload, but there's many, many ways to do this to your body. Now, you know to add more weight when you get stronger.

That's only one way to do it. There's eight other ways to progressively overload your body to get your body to consistently improve time and time again for long lasting success and results. Now this episode is brought to you by Maps Fitness Products. Now they are the makers and leaders in the fitness industry of the best at home workout programs like Maps Anywhere. They also have phenomenal mobility programs, Maps Prime and Maps Prime Pro and many, many other programs. By the way, two of their most popular programs, maps prime and maps prime pro and many, many other programs.

By the way, two of their most popular programs, maps prime and maps prime pro are both 50% off and there's only one day left for this promotion. These programs are flying off the shelves. We're only giving them away with wild supplies last, so you might want to act very quickly. But let me tell you a little bit about mass priming and mass priming pro. Mass priming is a program that teaches you how to prime your workouts. Now priming is different than a warmup.

Priming gets your body ready to move better, have better ranges of motion, and to recruit more muscle fibers. In other words, if you do a proper individualized for your body, priming session, 10 minutes before your workout, your squats, bench presses, overhead presses, your body, priming session, 10 minutes before your workout, your squats, bench presses, overhead presses, your rows, your lunges, all your exercises will become much more effective. Now, MAPS Prime Pro is all about correctional exercise. This program goes through the

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That's serious. Yeah, this is a come to Jesus for Justin. Oh good. We have to talk about that cheese thing again. You have a little conversation. I thought we already had this conversation. No, no, no, no, on the real. We get a lot of questions. And we had one just recently in a quad. I think that's what sparked the idea to do a complete topic centered around this. And really, it's the number one key to see consistent results. No matter what your goal is,

whether it be building muscle or burning body fat or just overall health, the number one thing that you factor that you can manipulate to see consistent results is progressive overload. Yeah, the whole reason why your body gets leaner or stronger or builds muscle in the first place is really as a side effect of the adaptation process. So that's 100% correct.

It's the number one key for consistent results is to get your body to be able to improve in how it performs and how it moves and you want your body to adapt in order to continue the adaptation process along, progressively overloading it or progressively changing and adding more stresses to it or getting it to want to adapt to more and more stresses as we get it to continue to improve. Yeah, which is interesting because a lot of people throw that term around, and I've heard it quite a bit, but they're usually just referring to adding weight,

and so more load to the exercises that you're doing. And there's a lot of other factors to progressively overloading that I think not a lot of people realize. That's right, that's exactly how this started. Now I remember the person was referring to that we've done all these different episodes, and then he's like, you know, I heard episode whatever, and you guys say, this is the key. And then I heard this one,

then I heard this is the key. And he listed off all these different variables that we've talked about how important they are. And they actually all fit in the category of progressive overload. And he thought they were like competing against each other. Right. And I think that's the, I think that's the topic, right? The topic in itself is understanding all the different types of ways that you can progressively overload the body. It isn't just specifically adding more weight to the bar. Right. So again, we have to remember the process by which you get an embedded shape is an adaptation process of the body. And all exercise is doing is it's sending a signal to get that emotion, to get that adaptation process

in motion, that's all it's doing. Now, once your body has adapted to the point where, whatever you did to get it to adapt in the first place now, is tolerable. It's now no longer longer stimulus that promotes adaptation. You need to change the stimulus and you need to advance this stimulus to continue to get more change.

So, to use a very simple example, if 10 minutes of sunlight gets your skin to darken a little bit to adapt, very quickly 10 minutes of sunlight will no longer cause that adaptation process. Once my skin is adapted to the point where only 10 minutes of sunlight now is tolerable, then I need to do something else, something more, something different to continue that particular adaptation to keep happening. And so when you're training the body, you know,

this is what you're doing. And there's a lot of factors that you can look at. Now, the easiest one is weight. And that's a great one, by the way. It's not a bad one, it's a phenomenal one. In fact, if you're a beginner to intermediate, this is where you should spend most your time. Most your time should be focused, especially if your goal is to build muscle. Most of your time should be focused on, can I get myself stronger in an appropriate way, right, with proper, proper form and all that stuff?

And I would say this is actually probably one of the most common reasons why somebody doesn't continue to see change. Very, very common with clients that I get. I'd have to have this, this progressive overload conversation with them to get them to understand that would be doing their favorite at home video cassette, they follow. And it's the same one, every single day. Would people have cassettes still? Yeah, no, I have.

I still have clients that like follow video cassettes. No way. Yeah, yeah, wow. No, no, these are like long term clients I've had for a really long time. F-A-S? Yes, yes. They have a favorite video.

There's more people than you would be surprised to do this. They have found it. It works. Be kind rewind. Yeah. They follow it. It works for them. Now, here's a thing though. They're using the same set of dumbbells. They've been using in this workout for forever. And they like it. It makes them feel good. It makes them sweat, but they're not seeing, they're not seeing consistent change in their body. And that's because their body has now become very adapted. Very common too, when I get a client who forget to at home people, someone who just belong to the gym.

They've been going to the gym for 10 years of their life and they've decided that they want to ramp it up or they want a higher personal trainer to learn more and when I assess their workouts, they would take me over. They will add them first. I do... I grab the tens, yes. I grab the tens and I do this exercise.

I do 15 pounds on the legs, tension. Yes, and they have, they actually have a weight number that they do for every exercise and they've been doing that for years. And that is part of the reason why they have plateaued so hard and they can't see their body progress is because their body has become very efficient with that. So weight, even is the most obvious one,

but probably one of the most important ones. Well, yeah, it's one of the best metrics to actually see if your programming is effective, I think. I think it's a great way to, you know, see, all these other factors we're going to mention, like all it all blends into seeing, like, if you are actually progressing forward with the amount of weight that you can actually move. Yeah, your body will only ever be as strong or fit as it needs to be. It'll never be stronger or more fit than it needs to be. It only ever meets the demand. And this is a, this is again,

this is a part of the adaptation process. It's a good one. Our bodies are supposed to be efficient. They evolve to be that way. So there's no reason for my body to carry lots of muscle and to be strong enough to deadlift 600 pounds unless it needed a reason to me, unless I gave it a reason to be that strong

or have that much muscle. So your body will only progress as far as your stimulus makes it progress. And one of the best ways to do that is to add weight. And this one is excellent and this one lasts a long time. But at some point, adding weight isn't necessarily advantageous at some point, whether you plateau, because your body's pretty smart

in the sense that it figures things out in certain types of stimulus stop to work. So at some point, you start to plateau. Or even if you do a kick-ass job, you can't keep adding weight forever, right? I mean, I've been working out for 25 years at this point. I'd be bench pressing 6,000 pounds if that was a case. And that reminds me of the other end of the spectrum of client that I would get, which is somebody who's been training for 10 years, but it has added weight year over year over

year. And then they've been stuck. They've got to a point where they're like, man, Adam, I'm, you know, I've lifted this much on my bench press, my squat, all these things are there and my body doesn't want to go anywhere between, any further than that. And part of their problem is that's the only variable they've manipulated. They've only progressively overloaded through

adding weight to the bar and eventually, they kind of hit their peak of that, and then they think that they can't continue to see progress because they can't add any more weight. They've gotten as good as they could get with the skill of actually the mechanical process of actually going through the exercise. So, like there is a skill component there that you can get a lot better at, but inevitably you're going to hit to that peak of it if you don't apply all these other concepts to build your overall

strength up even further. Yeah, in fact, relying on any one of the factors that we're going to name today will result in a very hard plateau. It doesn't matter which one, if you only rely on one and you don't know how to move through each of the ones we're about to name and manipulate them, you're going to plateau. Now what does it look like when you plateau on adding weight? Injury, joint pain, and stiffness,

that's what ends up looking like. Cause you're pushing weight and you're constantly adding weight, and that's the only metric you know how to push, that's the only variable, you know, how to progress the overload. Eventually that results in either just a hard plateau or an injury or pain. And sometimes a regression.

Sometimes you'll see you go, that nothing more frustrating than that, right? You're adding weight, adding weight, adding weight, and then also you hit a week or two and you're weaker and that can be very frustrating. But I will say that it's definitely the most important one to focus on if you're a beginner to intermediate for sure, and if you're definitely trying to build muscle,

you know, if you're somebody's got a really fast metabolism and you want to pack on muscle, focus on getting stronger. But that's true for most people, for everybody I would say beginner and intermediate. Now the next one is almost as important. It's right up there and it's adding reps. This one I think people are, I see men adding weight and women tend to want to add reps if they ever progressively overload.

Both of them though are very effective. So what does this look like? Well, it's very simple. If I did 10 push-ups this week, and then next time I try doing push-ups, now I'm gonna try to do 11. And the following week, I'm going to try to do 12. Each time I do that extra rep,

my body needs to adapt to that new stimulus by getting stronger so that if I do the same reps, it's needs to adapt to that new stimulus by getting stronger. So that if I do the same reps, it's easy. But then again, of course, I add reps. Well, it's not just simply adding reps, though, too. That's one of the ways with reps. It can be just manipulating reps, right? You alluded to something that I think is very common is, a lot of my men that I trained, they would like to lift really heavy and stay in that low rep range because they want to be strong, they want to build muscle and they've read all the magazines and say, oh, lift heavy, heavy weight and low repetitions that builds the

most muscle mass. And like them, I got stuck in the same mindset too. And I would be only lifting six reps. So going to the 10 to 15 rep range was one of the best things that I'd ever did. The same thing is true on the opposite in the spectrum with my women client that would love to do the 15 to 20 rep range all the time, never lifted five to six reps.

So even though they're reducing the amount of reps, it's a new stimulus because they haven't strength trained like that. Well, this is also addressing a lot of the myths out there that women are marketed to that they're gonna get bulky if they go in the low rep range. And this is something they don't want to get that boxy, that sort of like football player look when in fact, you know, this, this change in stimulus, this change in rep range could really promote their, their body to change in a significant way. Same thing on the other end of it with

your guy that's always doing like the one to five rep range and has never ventured into the 15 rep range and the higher rep range volume where that could be like the spark to change his physique completely. Yeah, it's funny. If the average woman,

when she first starts working out, gained five pounds of muscle, she would be extremely pleased. So long as she didn't weigh her safe on the scale, because that'll freak people out, but she would be very pleased. She would feel herself feel more tight. Muscles would feel more quote unquote toned. She'd notice that she could eat more food

and she burns more calories. Her indirectly would start to burn more body fat. She would just feel positive and look a lot better. And so building muscle almost always, unless you're talking about the extreme athlete, almost always improve someone's appearance, even from a general standpoint. And so I'd say always aim for that when you're working with resistance. I also think it's important that we kind of talk a little bit about our

philosophy when it comes to manipulating rep ranges because it's a little different than what maybe some people do. And that's, so they did a study, and it was quite a long time ago, when they compared the different rep ranges. And if somebody followed a routine in a certain rep range for an extended period time, meaning beyond six weeks, then they did somebody who changed it every like three weeks, and then they did somebody who changed it every single day. And which person saw the most results? And the person who saw the least amount of results

was someone who stayed in the same rep range for an extended period time beyond six weeks. The body would sort of slow down its progress. So we know that's the least beneficial. And then the other two were really close. So somebody who changes the rep ranges up almost every single workout or somebody who changes it every two to three weeks, they change it.

Now, because those are so close, we like to advise people to stick to a phase for two to three weeks, and that just comes from our experience. Knowing that it's easier for people to manage and actually be able to measure their results, they're getting from doing that versus just constantly throwing in different rep ranges

all the time and no rhyme or reason behind them. Even though that may show good benefits, it's hard for a client to really understand like, what was it that I'm seeing this change in these results? I would say if you're advanced, if you've been training for three years or more consistently,

you can mix up rep ranges weekly, and that's probably okay, but most people, a different rep ranges require a different mental state. They require a different type of lifting. So if I'm doing a heavy set of squats for only three reps, it's very different than if I'm doing a set of 20. It's different in my technique, my form, my breathing, and the mental state. And so for the average person, you're better off training in a rep range for two or three weeks, you can get into that zone of that rep range,

how it feels, what it's like, get good at that rep range before moving to another one. But if you're advanced, then you know your body mixing it up, I guess, is okay. Right. Because you're kind of taking out the element of getting better at a skill, which we've talked about a little bit about. A lot of people don't really recognize exercises as their own individual skill. You think of a sport as doing certain movements as I want to get better at throwing a ball. I want to get better at sprinting off the line.

I want to get better. All these very specific things, but exercises is no different. If I wanna do an exercise really well, I have to be in the right mindset. I have to have the right mechanics. I have to be very focused. I have to have all these factors play together

and to do that, I wanna make sure I at least give myself enough time to reap the benefits of that. That's why I actually think it's different. I don't think it's exercise. What I say is there's exercise and then there's training. If you're just exercising, anything can be considered exercise. Going out for a ride on a bike or moving around doing jumping jacks, having no rhyme or reason for what you're doing, just moving can be considered exercise.

But training is more methodical. There's a reason behind it. I am training to lose 15 pounds of body fat. I am training to build muscle. Yeah, exactly. So there's where the skill of it that I think is so important. And there's where the advice of, hey, focus on a rep range for a block of time,

somewhere between two and four weeks is probably ideal. And during that time, you are practicing that skill, that skill set and you're not so much exercising. You are training. Right. But at the end of the day, very basic. If you did 10 reps with 100 pounds this week, and next week you did 11 reps with 100 pounds,

you have progressively overloaded your body. You did an extra rep. And so that's one more very important simple way you can use progressive overload to get your body to progress. The next one is also very important. I think it's somewhere I go after I do the first two with typically with clients. That's simply to add more volume. That literally just means more work, more sets, more exercises.

So let's say you did squats for 10 reps this week with a hundred pounds and next week you could either add more weight so now I could do 110 pounds or I can add a rep or I'll just do an extra set. So I do the same weight, same reps but now I did two sets of that exercise rather than one and now I've progressively overloaded my body just through volume. Now, this is my favorite to teach in experience lifter. I agree with you that I think that weight in reps are like the first place that you teach for sure. Very basic fundamental thing, idea of like how you continue to progress, progress the body.

But I love to teach volume to an experienced lifter. And I think maybe that's because it took a long time for me to really piece the importance of this and actually get to the point where I was tracking this. So first of all, you have to understand how to calculate what volume is. So that's, it's set. If you do sets, reps, and weight, you multiply them. So I multiply my sets by how many reps I do, times the weight I do, that equates to the volume. And if you figure out, and I love to take somebody, so if you're listening right now,

and you're more of an intermediate to advanced lifter, just for shits and giggles, follow this formula, track out your total volume in the workout and or for specific muscle groups, and see where that adds up. What the total amount of poundage is at the end of the week, that will equate, okay, I did this many, you know, thousands of pounds for legs, I did this many thousands of pounds for arms, and figure that what that is, and then just slightly

increase that over the course of the next couple weeks, and you can do it through the other two variables that we talked about, either adding more repetitions or adding more sets or weight to the bar. This will all equate to more volume, but just doing a little bit, you don't need to do a lot more. In fact, you don't want to do a lot more. You just want to add a tiny bit of volume. If you can do that, this is how I progressed my body when competing. I was very diligent about measuring where I was when

I first was getting ready for my very first amateur show. And then I made a point that from show to show to show, if I was going to continue to present a physique that was progressed, that was better than the last one, one of the key factors for me to make sure I did that was to just slowly last one, one of the key factors for me to make sure I did that was to just slowly increase volume over time. Well, in this sort of reiterates the importance of having a plan and being able to even track that, right? Like, even knowing how many sets you did, how many reps you did, like, this is the plan

I'm bringing in, so that way you can make these small adjustments and manipulate just enough for the end of the week. So your sum total is gonna go up just enough. So that way your body keeps progressing for. Yeah, tracking all these things is really important because here's what ends up happening. And this is like, it's like this with diet. So let's say we'll use diet for example.

Let's say you're trying to be at a, you know, a thousand calorie deficit every single day Monday through Friday, you do great Saturday and Sunday come around and you screw up a little bit and you eat a little bit over what you're supposed to. Now that adds up to the average, the total average. And what you find when people do that is they end up breaking even. So if you've increased your volume too much, sometimes a little end up happening is someone

feels too sore or gets sick. They don't work out an extra day. They take a day off. Now the total volume for the week is about the same as it was before. So you're not progressing. So tracking your volume makes a big difference. And you know, Adam mentioned moving it up just a little bit. Here's a thing with resistance training. There's a right dose for your body. Anything more than that and anything under than that means you get results slower. Means your body progresses less, and the further away you move from that right dose, the worse the results are.

In fact, the further above that right dose you go, the closer you get to injury and illness. So anytime you're progressively overloading your body, it's smart to progressively overload it just a little bit. In fact, I learned this lesson years ago when I was chasing a 600 pound deadlift, which for me was a big, big lifetime goal. And the way I used to do it was I would lift. And then if I felt like I could add 15 pounds, that's how much weight

I added. I always added the most amount of weight that I thought I could add. Well, later on, what I figured was that this resulted in erratic strength gains. I would gain strength and then I plateaued for a while. So what I used to do then is if I got stronger, and let's say I knew I could add 15 pounds, I only added five. I only added five. I went less than what I knew I could do,

but I still went over what I did before. It gave me much more consistent progress because the dose was more appropriate. So this is how you want to apply volume, is if you do figure out your total volume, don't add as much as you think you can do don't think to yourself like man last week I went through that workout this week. I bet I could do twice as much Don't do that just add a little bit and watch what happens and you're you're much more likely to have consistent results

now the next one less popular but Very important this one's a good one and and this is very simple, increase a range of motion. This one can make tremendous, you wouldn't think that initially, right? I don't think a lot of people will even consider this as a factor. Right, so to give you an example, it's like if I did a squat down to parallel with a hundred pounds,

then next week I do a squat, an inch lower than parallel with the same amount of weight. Now what I'm doing is I'm just working on getting a greater range of motion with the same amount of weight. Now what I'm doing is I'm just working on getting a greater range of motion with the same resistance. The greater range of motion is progress has added more overload to my body because it's more difficult. Now I love talking about this especially during this time right now, because it's really tough. If you're a hardcore power lifter, body builder, been training for a really long time, I know this is a rough time for a lot

of the guys and girls out there that are going through this because they're like, oh my God, I don't have access to my gym. And this is part of what motivated us to do the webinar is to help teach people to work on this. This is a great time to focus on something like this. Like, hey, it's your mobility?

Yes. And work on getting increased range of motion. And you know, there's some people that put out some videos and I thought we're pretty good to try and talk to people about, hey, when we're, we don't have access to all these barbells and dumbbells and the ability to put a bunch of weight on, the likelihood you're gonna see lots of progression

is just not realistic. And so instead of being hung up on it, you know, let it go for right now. And then when you get back in, you can do that. And there's some truth to that, right? It's really, if you've been lifting for a long time and you're used to lifting really heavy weight and then to take all that heavy weight away from somebody

and expect that they're also gonna progress and see major gains during this time, is less likely. But it doesn't mean that they can improve on something like this and Sal alluded to this when we were talking about mobility the other day that maybe you don't see major muscle that you put on by working on all this, but what ends up happening when you get back to the gym

and you start training all those exercises and those heavy lifts with a new found range of motion, you'll see a huge difference in gains, start to pile on then. Those unfamiliar positions that your body is in, like those ranges of motion where it's a little bit deeper than you would have liked the bar to go, but now you have to dig your way out.

Well, that's important. That's a whole nother category that you have to focus on adding strength to. And mobility helps you kind of provides, provides the answer to that. It helps you stay in that particular position and to really emphasize how can I recruit, more effectively, the amount of muscles that I need to be able to produce the force

to get me strong in this. And so it's not necessarily, I'm trying to stretch to a range of motion that's, you know, gets me way further, like way more flexible and way more able. It's more of like, how strong can I get even further within this range? Very clear example is I had a client not that long ago that I helped out with like their squat depth. Like we put up, they just, they had a really tough time getting anywhere beyond 90. There's really, really tight hips,

lacked a lot of ankle mobility. Very close to home for me, it was my issue. And so I spent a lot of time helping him out with that. And one of the things that he realized was, you know, now he got this new range of motion. He was able to get deeper. He wasn't quite as strong as what he was when he was stopping at 90 degrees.

But the thing that blew him away was like, and he couldn't figure out. He's like, I don't understand how I'm squawting 100 pounds less than what I was squawting before, but my legs are as developed or more developed what they were before. And that's an example of how you can see those type of benefits because you are now using a greater range of motion,

which is now recruiting more muscle fibers so you can potentially- So you can strengthen your just expanded. Exactly. And so you could potentially develop more muscle even with less weight. Yeah, and studies are pretty clear on this. Whenever you're, unless you're talking about sports-specific strength adaptations, full ranges of motion are superior in terms of total strength gain and in terms of muscle

development, when compared to the same exact exercise with a reduced range of motion, a full bench press done properly will build more muscle and more overall strength than a half bench press. This is true for every single exercise. I remember when I was a kid and I learned this firsthand. I remember working out in the gym

and wanting to curl certain amount of weight under preacher curl and I did, I always went real heavy, so I stopped just short of fully extending my arms and I had an older gentleman tell me, hey, trying doing that full range of motion with light weight and see what happens. And I saw my arms change in a very, very short period of time, because as Adam was saying, you do recruit more muscle fibers and you get better results.

And so one way to progressively overload your body is when you're doing an exercise with a certain amount of weight and you're doing a certain amount of reps, and now you feel stronger in it and you feel easier and you think, okay, I can add weight or I can add reps or I can do more sets. One thing you can do is say, you know, I'm not gonna do any of those. All I'm gonna do is a deeper, full-arrange emotion.

And then that full-arrange emotion now feels more challenging to you. So you've overloaded your body without doing anything other than extending upon your range of motion. No, I think it's also important to note that we're not recommending somebody who is never squatted past 90 and has got really tight hips. It's a way past that. Right, it has to be appropriate and proper.

Right, and probably the best way to do that is not necessarily with any weight on the bar, it's to work on the mobility issues. If a lot of people that can't break 90 degrees, it's normally some sort of a limiting factor in their hips or ankles. That's the most common. So if that's what's the where the issue is, you don't need any weight to start working on ankle

and hip mobility to improve that. And then you can go back to squatting deeper and deeper versus, oh, the guys on my pump said, this is a great way to improve that. And then you can go back to squatting deeper and deeper versus, oh, the guys on my pump said, this is a great way to progressively overload. I'm gonna start working on a deeper range of motion in my squat and you haven't done the prerequisites to be able to do that. First, you must gain stability.

Right. And you have to be able to be comfortable in that lower position. If you're not even comfortable in that yet, you got a lot of work to do. And once you gain that comfort, you gain that stability, then we can start gradually loading that. So it is like in itself an entirely new exercise.

And that's how you kind of have to approach it. Well, like any of these, it's a very small incremental process. So if your squat is to 90 and you going any, and once you go lower, it gets much harder. Even if you go down, you know, four centimeters lower than 90, you've added a greater range of motion, which is going to progressively overload your body.

The next one is also extremely important. In fact, this one's one of my favorites. This one has, the one I'm about to mention right now has the best longevity. And it's something that you can practice forever. It, as you get better at it, it reduces the risk of injury. It sets you up to do any other way of progressive overloading even better.

That's just perfecting your skill and your technique. Perfecting it. What I mean by that is, we talked about exercises as skills. They are skills. You're squatting, you're pressing, you're pulling, you're doing a pull-up. That is a skill. There is a way to do it that's better than other ways of doing it. And so sometimes when you do five reps on a pull-up and you think, wow, I could do seven reps now, instead of doing seven reps, do five reps, but do them better than the way you

did them before. Do them more perfect with better control and better form. It's with this particular way of overloading the body, it's all about getting better and better and better technique as you get stronger. You know, you definitely refer to bodybuilders a lot when talking about this stuff. I think they're some of the best at doing this, right?

They pick an exercise and they focus so much on form and technique. And to me, that highlights them. And as we're going through these, I can't help but think of like an avatar of a type of a lifter that does really good with one or two of these variables. Like if you look at the list that we made, like you can't help but kind of look at and go like,

oh, the power lifters do a really good job of doing volume and... I would have to say that the power lifters are probably... Power lifters and Olympic lifters too, yeah. They're probably the best with technique. Powerlifter and Olympic lifters too. Yeah. There'll probably be the best with technique because powerlifters and Olympic lifters are, they don't care about necessarily

developing about the level. I would say Olympic lifters over powerlifters for technique as well. But both of them, they're practicing it so like a powerlifter is practicing it to maximize leverage constantly. You watch them get in position for the lift. That's true. Well, and they've reduced down the amount of exercises

to a few that they're just trying to master. Yes. Yeah, so that's, I mean, that's true. That's true. Well, and they've reduced down the amount of exercises to a few that they're just trying to master. Yes. Yeah, so that's, I mean, that's a factor. And I know what you're trying to say in terms of like being able to fuel their way through exercises, bodybuilders do a great job of being able to really feel and highlight certain muscles that they need to highlight in that exercise. Yeah, yeah.

Well, the technique part you're right with Olympic lifts, and what's neat too, if you've ever trained like an Olympic lifter or with one or seen one train you'll notice a lot of times very very light weight. Oh yeah. It's the the emphasis is not put it sometimes you get we get so focused on the first one that we talked about is just adding weight to the bar but there's a great way to overload the body by just perfecting the technique. If you watch like a great boxer or martial artist, they will practice a jab or a straight or a kick over and over and over. They'll practice it without an opponent.

They'll practice it in the air, over and over and over again. Then they'll hit a bag, then they'll practice it on a live opponent. What they're doing is they're perfecting their technique. This is what you can do with your exercise. Literally, if you don't want to add weight or reps or volume or range of motion, all you got to do is make the exercise look better. Be more, have the perfect technique each time and trust me, there's a lot of room here. I've been working out for decades and I can make my deadlift, which is my strongest exercise.

I can sit there and make the technique better and better and better, and that'd have to add any weight on the bar, but feel it become more and more intense because of the technique improvement. Something I've always kind of thought to, and there's been an argument on which is better, certain machines versus these compound lifts and why. I tend to lean more on the high skill type exercises because of that fact is there's so many moving parts and to be able to master a certain skill of being able to, you know, backload squat, for instance, it requires so many moving parts and so many things to work

harmoniously. And so it really is a challenge. It's more of a challenge that your body is then going to reap the benefits from it. Well, this reminds me too of some of the DMs that I've been getting right now with everyone being trapped at home, and we've got some of these advanced lifters that are following like our maps, anywhere a program. And they're telling me, you know, Adam, I'm really advanced

and do you think this program's too easy for me? I said, man, I just did a workout another day and roasted my ass. I can take a single leg toe touch, which is a very basic movement that I had with my 65 year old clients that I would do. And I can make that shit roast me. If you focus, if you get barefoot and focus the way your feet are gripping on the bar, the way your knee is tracking when you do it, the way you hinge back with your hips, the way you keep your spine,

the position you keep your neck and your head and when you do it, I mean, there is so many little nuances to a simple movement like that that, yeah, you can just breeze through really fast and do 10 reps or you can take and say, you know what, I'm going to make this so beautiful and move so perfectly through the whole thing and focus on every aspect from my toes all the way up to my head and the way I position everything. You can take an exercise like that and make it extremely good. And the best way to work on this one is to work with a weight that is not your maximal weight. It is to work at an intensity,

that's not your maximal intensity. If you want to work on perfecting technique, it needs to be practiced over and over again. So don't pick a weight that's the hardest. Don't do reps that are bringing you close to failure. Don't do so much volume that you're super fatigued, just practice the exercise and continue to practice it better, perfect practice makes perfect, right?

And then you'll get better at this perfecting technique. And each time you do better with your form, you are overloading the body and the body is learning to adapt through that process. Now the next one is the one that I think the bodybuilders are the best at, which is the mind and muscle connection. I have yet to meet a strength athlete that can feel a specific muscle with almost any exercise like a bodybuilder. I could watch a bodybuilder change a bench press to be peck-focused, to be tricep-focused,

or to be dealt-focused all within the same exercise. The only other one I could even possibly think of would be like a gymnast. And that's mainly just because they have to, they're so body aware in their movements. But in terms of like being able to squeeze and flex a muscle on command like a bodybuilder masters. Well, you remember this was a good, good debate that we

had with Ben Pekolsky back and forth. I mean, he would argue this is the most important. Yeah. I mean, he would argue this is the most important. Yeah. I mean, he would argue this over even progressive overloading weight. He comes from the camp that, you know, if you do a really, really good job of focusing on a movement, you can recruit more muscle fibers through that than anything else.

Yeah. So there's definitely a case to be made that this could go. And I like this one a lot for safety reasons. Yeah. So, you know, it's great for longevity. That's the knock that I have on progressively overloading weight and going there.

It's the easiest one. It's the simplest for people to measure and explain to somebody like, hey, last week you were lifting 10 pounds. Now this week, let's lift 15 pounds. But the truth is, if you are a relatively new lifter, just adding weight a lot of times, as soon as you start to lift a little bit,

have your weight than what you're used to, form goes out the window, or it starts to suffer at one point, where maybe focusing on progressively overloading the focus, the mind muscle connection and technique type of direction, maybe a lot more beneficial, and a lot of times maybe where I focus with my advanced age type clients. Yeah, I like mind and muscle

because it does give you better awareness also. Like I can make an exercise far more difficult for my target muscle simply by concentrating and isolating and working that muscle through my mind. I mean, I could do a chin up, a supinated grip, that's a palms back, a-up, and I can make it just work my lats. I can make it work my lats really, really well.

I can also make it work my biceps really, really well. I can even make that exercise, hit my rhomboid to my mid-back really, really well, by changing where I'm focusing the effort and the squeeze. And each one of those variations is a slight change in technique. And the average person watching me do each one of those reps, wouldn't notice a huge difference. They'd be like, oh, each one he's doing is a pull up.

Now, someone who's advanced will be able to watch him be like, oh, wow, he's making his biceps do more of the work. He's making his muscles do more of the work. Yeah, there's an interesting carry over there too. When you come back to just movement and performance training, being able to be that aware of how the feel of how everything is going in the movement, you can adjust on the fly so much more effectively because you can feel your body react and feel which muscles are working more.

And you're able to adjust a lot more, which then helps you to then carry over into the overall movement. Yeah, one thing that I love most about, one of the top things I love about resistance training so much is it, more than any of the form of exercise, it gives you the ability to be able to shape and sculpt your body in very specific ways, almost like a sculptor. I know of no other form of exercise where you can literally

look at your body and say, I want more muscle here, I want more shape here, I want more curve there. Typically, with other exercise modalities, you do the workout and your body takes the form and shape of whatever it is that gets you good at that particular skill. But with resistance training and in particular, with what we're talking about right now,

which is the mind and muscle connection, I can specifically shape and sculpt my body. So my bodybuilders again are so good at this. The sport of bodybuilding is literally what it's all about is having the most symmetrical, well-developed, balanced physique. And if you're like, if you're, you know, bodybuilders are humans and all humans have muscles that develop faster than others or some that look more dominant. So when you're looking in the mirror and saying, Hey, I want more muscle here, I want more shape here.

Mind muscle allows you to use resistance training in this way to where you can really shape and sculpt your body to the point where no joke. If you know how to do this well, you can make a bench press develop your lower pecs more or your upper pecs more. Same exercise. Simply by concentrating and squeezing on the exercise.

You can also make an exercise far more challenging just through the mind and muscle connection. So if you're stuck at home and you're doing pushups and you're like, man, I'm good at pushups, for me to get tired, I gotta do like 70 of them. I tell you what, slow them down, squeeze and focus on the muscles you're trying to target, and you'll do half. I can't help but think of clients.

How many times did you guys have a client that was doing like a tricep push down and they fill it in their biceps too? Like, oh yeah. So even for somebody who's not like really, really advanced or trying to be a bodybuilder, the importance of this is just getting the most that have ever even basic exercise, you know, learning to be able to push down for the tricep push down and know that you're trying

to utilize the tricep and not allow the shoulders to roll forward and other muscles. I love training a client that really grasp this concept and does have very good control of all their muscles because then you can give coaching cues like, you know, less shoulders more tricep here. Oh, retract this squeeze here. Resist with your back when you let out. You can start giving them cool cues because they understand how to control all these different muscles and then you can get the most out of every movement.

It's funny because you're pretty much fighting your body's natural instinct to make things more efficient. Exactly. That's just going to be a constant value your whole life. If you want to just sit and lean forward, your body's going to make that the thing and nothing else. It's going to take all these other factors out and just focus on making you effective of that.

So you're fighting that innate ability your body has to make things really effective for you, but you're training your body to do things a certain way to produce what you want out of it. Yeah, at the end of the day, by the way, all of these are aiming to make things harder for your muscles. That's really all what it really breaks down to. So when we're talking about mind and muscle, you want out of it. Yeah, at the end of the day, by the way, all of these are aiming to make things harder for your muscles. That's really all what it really breaks down to.

So when we're talking about mind and muscle, what you're doing is you're trying to make the exercise feel harder by working the target muscle more than you would if you're trying to make the exercise easier. Now, the next one is my favorite to point out when I go into any gym. And I've said this on the podcast before. It's been a while since I've brought this up,

but the next time you're in the gym, pay attention to the tempo at that everybody works at. And I love this one because we've done enough studies and research to be able to say what, you know, oh, training in the hypertrophy range is the best place for building muscle. Well, part of the hypertrophy quadrant or range also includes the tempo. And that tempo is a 4 2 2, meaning I go four seconds on the negative. I pause for two seconds in the isolation part of the exercise or isometric portion of the exercise. And then I go two seconds on the way up, right? So if we're like comparing to a bench press.

But the next time you're in the gym, pay attention if you see anybody do a negative for four seconds or longer. You never see this. So it is such an easy way to progressively overload the body for somebody that's been lifting for a really long time and say, hey, you know what today? I'm not gonna change your routine at all.

You're gonna do everything you normally do. But all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna count your negative and I want you to slow it down to four seconds and watch what that workout looks like. In each one of these variables, it's something to consider isometrics or just the concentric portion. So if I want to just do something explosively and not slow the momentum on the way down, that's a completely different stimulus that your muscle is going to react to, but isometrically like, I wanna hold, hold, hold that position as long as I can, is training the muscle

to react in a completely different way. Yes, so slowing reps down makes exercises a lot harder. So does speeding reps up. Now a lot of times people think, well, what do you mean if I go faster, it feels easier? No, no, no, you're missing the point. The point is not to do fast reps

and then do as many as you can. The point is to do fast reps and then stop when you can't move the bar that fast anymore. That's how you utilize fast reps. So if I'm doing explosive squat, I'm going to go down on the rep, come up as fast and hard as I can, and I'm going to do that until I can't move that fast anymore. Now I'm done with the set and believe me, the effort that you put into a lift when you're trying to move it quickly, is actually quite high. So rep tempo is a phenomenal way of overloading your muscles. You can literally get stronger and an exercise,

not add weight, not add reps, not add volume, not add anything. Just change the rep speed and watch your body start to progress again. And if you're listening right now, the best thing that you can do personally is the opposite of which one you tend to lean more towards. So if you heard me say that about slow reps and you're like, no, I go pretty slow. I'm always very slow in control.

If you're always very slow in control, the next time you go to a workout, making an explosive workout, everything is explosively 1-1-1. It's power. It's fast. You're doing a lift like that. It will shock the body because you're so used to the opposite. And if you're somebody who, you know, relates more to powerlifting and you love, or my athletes tend to do this, right?

Justin's notorious for this. This is how he likes lifts. If you watch, if you got him and I in the gym and we both did bench press, he would look more like a powerlifter lifting the bench press. I would look more like a bodybuilder lifting the bench press. And the truth is, what each of us will benefit most is doing the opposite because I gravitate more towards the slower control tempo.

Me going in and saying, you know what, today I'm gonna lift for power, I'm gonna stack some more weight on there, I'm gonna do it explosively a couple times, that's it, and then the same is true for Justin, opposite that would benefit him the most is going in, and say, I'm gonna drink more like a body builder, slow my tempo down. Now years ago, I learned about this next one,

and I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember when I first started working out, my number one goal is to build as much muscle as possible. And when you would read the muscle magazines in those days, they all said that you needed to rest two to three minutes in between sets, because that's how you got the strongest, that's how you built the most muscle. And so that's what I did. In between sets, because that's how you got the strongest, that's how you built the most muscle. And so that's what I did.

In between sets, I literally would not do another set unless two minutes passed. And I would always do this. Then I read this article by a body builder. I can't remember his name, but he talked about doing lots of supersets and cutting is rest periods short. And he said that just by cutting his rest periods short, he built muscle.

And I thought that's interesting. I never ever done that before. Let me give it a shot. So I had a stopwatch and I allowed myself to rest 30 to 45 seconds. That was it. Now, I had to dramatically reduce the weight. Couldn't lift as much as I did before, but holy cow, did I get a ridiculous pump when I did it that way?

And then by staying that way for the next few weeks, my body built muscle again. I actually got my body to progress again, simply by cutting rest periods a little bit shorter. Now the reverse is also true. If you're somebody that rests 20 to 30 seconds in between sets, rest one and a half minutes in between sets, and you'll see the same thing happen.

This is another one that I think is really easy to point out or easy to recognize in yourself because I do feel like there's a really clear divide of like what camp you kinda are close to. You're either like the power lifter where you have like, you lift, then you go forever rest. Yeah, you rest for three to five minutes. You talk to each other, you wrap your knees up,

you a chalk up, you get your favorite song on. That person right there, if you lift like that cadence, boy, you take that person and you shut them down to one minute or shorter rest periods or lots of supersets, they're gonna see a huge response in their body. The same thing is true for the person who loves to do supersets, like, so I love to take the body builders

and the people that love to do supersets, compound lifts, triceps, you know, short 30 second to one minute rest. All of a sudden, hey, today we're going to go real slow. We're going to rest three to five minutes between every set that you do, but we're going to load it. We're going to go for strength and power in this lift. So whichever one you know, you gravitate to the most, switch it up by doing the opposite. Yeah, and I think it sort of feeds into, like for instance, so if I'm, if I'm lifting really heavy,

now we're really wanna focus on the mechanics and the skill and all this stuff, like usually resting a bit longer really like helps aid into that. That process versus like, you know, cutting it short and doing super sets, it's really hard to focus in and really, you know, get my mechanics and the perfection of the form of it. But on the other end of that, really feeling the muscle and working your way through those

sets with less rest, I mean, man, you really feel those muscles get pumped up with blood. Yeah, no. Now, there is a range, right? There is a range. You want to probably, unless you're doing a super set, you want to rest at least 25 to 30 seconds, that would be in the short range, and you can rest as long as five minutes if you're doing really, really heavy sets. But that's a wide range to play with. Now, the reason why I said that is because when we say manipulate the rest

period, I know there might be some people like, cool, I'm not having any rest periods, and I'm just doing 15 exercise in a row, in which case, you're not really doing resistance training anymore, you're doing more like cardio with weights. Now, the last one, this one is one that I think people are very familiar with, but it's also one that can sometimes be abused. The most abused, that was. But when it's used properly, can be really good,

which is intensity. Just add more intensity. Push your body harder. Now, you, push your body harder. Now you can push your body harder with a lot of the stuff that we just talked about. Every single one that we just talked about is one way to do this, but there are other intensity techniques.

These are advanced, right? But you could do something like partial reps. So partial reps are, if I did bench press and I'm doing six full reps and I know I can't perform a seventh rep, then I'm gonna perform three half reps. And then when I'm done with those three half reps, I'm gonna do another two quarter reps

and then I'm done. It's like squeezing out more work within that given set. And training to failure falls into this category too. Now we advocate for people training with two shorts or two reps in the tank, right? It's what we normally say. But it doesn't mean that none of us ever trained a failure. It's just that very few people need to hear that

because I think it's abused. I think it's overly used in our space because it just seems to be, oh, I'll take it to failure each time and I get sore the next workout. And that's where this gets abused, where we're constantly chasing the soreness as a way to measure how well the workout was.

This is just one more variable, just one more way that I can progressively overload the body to keep adding weight or getting stronger or keep losing body fat is by increasing your intensity. But again, there's a ceiling to this. Every time you can't come to every single workout and increase intensity. So you can get real quick, you can run into a wall by always chasing that type of... And it's addictive too. I mean, you see this in the Widenwrepp Max Chase, the PR, you know, chasers out there that are...

That they see this crazy boost and strength. And now, you know, this is becomes a repeated workout where they're trying to keep chasing that best PR, trying to best with a maxed out on completely, and you know, there's a very much of a cap to that, and you have to be careful, you know, what that leads to. I also love having this discussion about these. So we've listed nine of these that are ways to progressively overload, right?

To consistently see results in the body no matter what your goal is. And honestly, eight of these nine, every single person can manipulate without adding weight. So eight of the now, without, if you don't have more barbell weight, if you don't have more dumbbell weight at your house, you can't physically add more weight to the bar.

That is the only variable of all the variables that we just lose. And this is why you still can make great progress at home. If you understand these, if you understand all the different ways to overload the body, and you're stuck with just the same pair of dumbbells or one barbell or very minimal amount of weight at your house house because we're

all stuck at home right now. It doesn't mean you can't manipulate these other eight variables to continue to see progress. In fact, when we created maps anywhere, which we designed for people to work out without weights, that's exactly what we did because you're not working out with weights. It's hard to add resistance. So what we did is we manipulated the other, all these other factors that you hear, which is why everyone for beginner to intermediate

will follow a program like that and feel and see results because all those are within your control. So at the end of the day, here's the thing. You can overdo all of these, or you can focus only on one of these and watch your body plateau. But if you mess with all of these and you do them in a systematic way where sometimes I add weight, sometimes I do a little bit more reps.

This time I'm gonna add a little bit more volume. Oh, let me increase my range of motion. Let me feel the muscle more. Let me perfect my technique. Let me speed up my reps. Let me slow down my reps. Let me look at my rest periods. But you do it in a very methodical, slight, very small incremental way,

you will see in your body consistent long term results until you start to reach your genetic muscular potential. And let me tell you, every single person listening right now has not reached that potential. So there's still a long way to go by using these types of factors and techniques. And with that, go to minepumpfreed.com and download all of our guides, resources, and books.

You can also find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic.

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