Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1327: Five Mindset Techniques for Fitness Success

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin cover five ways to develop a mindset that will improve success with anyone's fitness journey.  How your mindset dictates your success. (2:38) The misconceptions surrounding the RIGHT mindset. (6:22) #1 – STOP working out and START practicing. (8:10) #2 – Workout because you LOVE yourself and not because you hate yourself. (16:20) #3 – Motivation vs discipline. (27:46) #4 – Consistency over perfection. (33:32) #5 – Chase health over aesthetics. (37:20) Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS Strong ½ off!! **Promo code “STRONG50” at checkout** Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Stop Working Out And Start Practicing - Mind Pump Media Workout Because You Love Yourself Not Because You Hate Yourself – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  People Mentioned Jordan B. Peterson (@jordan.b.peterson)  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 Pumped the World's Top Fitness Health and Entertainment Podcast, we talk about the most important thing you can work on to accomplish your fitness goals. The most important thing, we talk about your mindset. Now what we do is we actually break it down into five key components. There are literally five ways you can change your mindset for incredible success.

And we give you the counters. We give you the mindset that most people have and the mindset that you need for long-term success. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion. Now Legion makes some of the best performance enhancing supplements you'll find anywhere. They have amazing protein powders, they sell crateing supplements, pre-workout supplements, and much more.

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Easily the most important thing, the most important factor, this took me a little while to figure out too, as a trainer. Is that your wearing pants? No. The most important, the most important factor for success, probably for any success, but we're talking about fitness.

That you wear pants. For fitness, again, no. You can do it without pants. Is mindset. It's all mindset. That's pretty important, too. I mean, you have the, there's the road map that you take, there's the tools and the ways that you train your body

and how you feed yourself and the different techniques and the knowledge that comes along with that. And that's all also important, but it's not even close to as important as mindset. And I've witnessed clients with far less knowledge and even far less instruction do do much better than other clients who had less of that stuff, but just had the right mindset and attitude. And I do think that there's a bit of a misconception out there. And know I believe this when I was younger that mindset is like you just have it You know you're just born with a mindset or whatever. That's a practice. You could totally develop it and and completely

I know practice it. Yeah, I remember clients When you know it's early on that I would get and and I didn't realize to later how important this would become when I would interview or talk to a potential client on evaluating, do they have the right mindset for us to have success? You know, at the beginning, you as a trainer, you take on anybody and everybody. Yeah, anybody and everybody.

Yeah, you can be negative, pause, it doesn't matter. It's like if you're willing to train with me, I need hours to fill and practice. So you take everybody on. Later on in your career, you start to become a little more It doesn't matter. It's like if you're willing to train with me, I need hours to fill and practice. So you take everybody on. Later on in your career, you start to become a little more picky about what clients you choose to work with. And this was one of the things that I would.

I would absolutely pass on somebody if I thought they didn't have the right mindset. Because I knew if you went into this with me already either negative, skeptical, you were gonna challenge everything that I was going to teach you and show you, I knew that the likelihood of us having any sort of success was really low. And you're a direct reflection of my skill set as a coach in a train. Yeah, well, that's the thing.

I think this really kind of highlights where you are as a trainer in terms of how seasoned you are, like how you can recognize how to deal with somebody coming in with a certain type of an attitude, with they already have an expectation they're coming in with, either just completely pouring into that expectation or steering it and guiding them and presenting things one at a time that you know you're not going to overwhelm them, you're just gonna present them exactly what they need to hear and exactly what they need to do for that moment. Well, what's funny is that the best, the most successful trainers, and as measured by,

you know, the long-term success that they provide their clients. So I think a lot of times people think a successful trainer takes the client, gets them to lose weight or whatever, and then that's successful. No, a truly successful trainer's one that, yes, helps them do that, but then that person never gains the way back or never goes back to where they were before. They progress, they've done in a permanent way, and then they can maintain it on their own.

They don't need, necessarily, need a trainer to work with all the time. The big difference is, and this was even with myself, later on in my career, I stopped training so much on technique and form and what you're doing, that's all important, but I placed more of my focus on working and training the mindset of my client. And I became far more successful with my clients. There's a big, I guess, misunderstanding or misconception with the right mindset for fitness success. And the fitness industry does a phenomenal job of perpetuating this

misconception, actually, make you believe that this falsity. And that is that the right mindset is the hyper-motivated, super, you know, type A, like, I'm going to just do everything to get to my goal type of deal. That is actually not the winning mindset. That'll give you some short-term success. Don't give me wrong. But that's not the right mindset. But the fitness industry actually markets to that.

They market to that. If you have this bout of motivation, then they capture you, and they really don't care about your long-term success. And so we constantly think that people who have success in fitness are people who are just motivated, for example, all the time. Well, it's great when you do get a client like that. It's fun.

It's like, wow, they're really picking up on what I teach them. They're applying all these techniques and they're kind of taking this home with them and doing all the work themselves. You know, that's great. And every now and then, you'll get one of those types of clients and it'll be great. these techniques and they're kind of taking this home with them and doing all the work themselves. That's great. Every now and then, you'll get one of those types of clients and it'll be great. But for me, I had to learn how to kind of pull myself back because there was even for me as a new trainer, I was always trying to then get somebody through these workouts,

get somebody through all these exercises to make sure that they got value for me. My value was in the fact that I could put them through these workouts and I keep progressing them forward. Instead of what I learned later on, it's about explaining everything and really educating the client through the whole process so they can really understand what we're trying to accomplish, and then apply it themselves, which is going to carry them even further. Right. So I'll start with one that I remember when this occurred to me it was like one of those epiphanies that you have you know where you're just like oh this makes perfect sense.

I was hiking up in the hills one day years ago and I would you know I'm hiking these hills and a few runners would run past me or running towards me and passing me in the opposite direction. And I'm a trainer, I understand, biomechanics and movement and so it's, and I'm sure you guys do this as well, when you see people doing something, it's hard for you not to identify movement pattern issues and muscle imbalances, it's just the way that we're trained. So I'm seeing these runners and every single one of them had just horrible mechanics. I was seeing pronating ankles or knees caving in and just, you know, forward shoulder and

just all these different things that I know cause injuries and problems. And I'm also familiar with how running causes injuries, you know, every single year. It's one of the number one causes of movement related issues in America is actually people running. And I'm watching these people run. I'm like, gosh, man, this is terrible. Why are they doing this? And then it dawn on me.

When people think to themselves, I'm gonna go run. The goal is not, I'm gonna go learn how to run well. The goal is, I'm gonna run until I get really tired. When someone says, I'm gonna lose weight, let me go run. They're goal is I'm gonna run until I get really tired. When someone says I'm gonna lose weight, let me go run, they're thinking, I'm gonna run until I get really tired. It has nothing to do with the former technique. Then I took that and applied it to the most effective

form of exercise, especially in modern times, which is resistance training. And I thought, how many people go to the gym and think to themselves, I'm gonna get my quads and my glutes really sore. Rather than thinking, I'm people go to the gym and think to themselves, I'm gonna get my quads and my glutes really sore, rather than thinking, I'm gonna go perfect the technique of these movements that then result in well-developed quads, well-developed glutes.

Well, I think that's how most people head to the gym. I mean, I did for many years, is you associate sweat and soreness and how difficult and failure in the gym as a good workout. So, I think many people look at their workout as, you know, if, I mean, remember, clients, how many clients did you guys have that would tell you, you know, I could have done more, or, you know, I can still, I still have time, can we do more? Yeah. And they always, or they would come in after you told them not to, or you say, like, this

is your routine, you know, three days a week. I can't secure about that. Oh, man The drill hard enough. I know and it would have put you in a weird position as a trainer right because you see your client coming in Extra days after you've told them not to and then you feel like got it Do I literally have to crush this person and their workout just to get them to listen to me and not show up and even though I know that's not what's best. It's such a widely believed myth. It's a totally what... So let me ask you guys, I already know the answer, but I'll ask you guys anyways,

is resistance training, especially the most effective exercises, like squats and deadlifts and overhead presses and rows and all that stuff, do those require a certain level of skill. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, right? So now let's take this and let's just move this focus from resistance training. And let's move it to something else that's physical, that requires skill, absolutely. Absolutely, right? So now let's take this and let's just move this focus from resistance training. And let's move it to something else that's physical,

that requires skill, basketball, okay? Imagine if you went out to play basketball, never played it before, and rather than learning how to dribble, learning how to shoot, learning how to move and run with the ball, you just go as hard as you possibly can. Because you're thinking I'm just gonna get a workout.

You're not only are you gonna be ineffective, you're probably gonna hurt yourself, and there's a limit to the effectiveness of the workout of basketball when you don't understand the technique, you don't understand how to dribble, you don't understand how to move properly. Well, the same thing is true for exercise in the gym

or at your house, look at it as a skill. So rather than going to the gym to hammer a muscle, think to yourself, I'm gonna go practice a skill. Now, both going to the gym to hammer a muscle, think to yourself, I'm going to go practice the skill. Now, both of those train your body. Both of those give you a good workout, but they both result in a difference in terms of results, especially long-term. Going to the gym to just try to work out, much higher risk of injury, you're gauging your success based off of soreness, which is terrible. If you go there to treat the exercise like a skill, you're training properly, your technique is good, risk of injury is much lower,

and you end up getting better and better at the skill of those exercises, which then gives you better results. As a result of that. I've always liked thinking of exercises like that as practicing a skill, and sharpening a skill, especially with that analogy, thinking that you know, game day is something that you're leaning up to even throughout the week if I'm playing a sport, I'm practicing and sharpening my skills to improve and then, you know, display those skills come, you know, the event. I'm not trying to play the event every single time. I'm I'm there practicing so That intensity is something that you know you got to pay attention to it. It really is gonna benefit you

Way more Substantially if you think of it more as I'm sharpening my skill. I'm honing in. I'm I'm frequently Doing these movements at you know, maybe a lower intensity, but your body's going to respond so much better if you have that mentality. You know, one of the things I think that's really challenging and I don't know if you noticed this. So it's that you know, so I'll sent over this this episode idea this morning. Okay, let's do this episode on mindset, you know, and he wrote out some notes on it. And there's a common theme on the five keys to having the right mindset that you wrote out some notes on it. And there's a common theme on the five keys to having the right mindset that you wrote out.

And you'll notice there's a pattern. And we're talking right now about the difference between practicing versus working out. If you go down the list of the five that you listed off that we're gonna go over, they all actually provide results. It's just one of them is short-term results and the other is long-term results. And that's the part that is deceiving for a lot of people having the wrong mindset

going into working out and exercise is, you know, if you do, you know, go balls to the wall into the gym and you weren't training at all, your body will, it's novel, it will change, it will adapt. No, no, nothing. Right. You'll burn calories, you're lifting weights, you weren't lifting before, you might build a little bit of muscle. And so you may actually get this false signal that you are doing the right thing.

And there's a common theme amongst all these other ones that we're about to cover, they're all like that. Every one of them, the wrong mindset leads to short term results, leads to results, you're still gonna get results with it, they're just short term. And then the opposite side, the right mindset leads to short-term results. Leads to results. You're still gonna get results with it. They're just short-term. And then the opposite side, the right mindset, you get not only the short-term results, would you get the long-term results?

And the other part too is that, doing it the wrong way doesn't give you faster short-term results also. So that's the other thing to consider, because you may be thinking, well, I don't, you know, right now I just want fast, I just want fast results. So I'll worry about longterm later on.

You'll still get there faster by having the right mindset. Going to the gym and practicing movements rather than going to the gym with the mentality of just sweat, burn calories and get sore is gonna give you better results all the way around. First off, the way you develop your body is gonna become more balanced.

You're gonna be able to squeeze out the true potential of some of these amazing exercises. And of course, you're not going to hit a hard plateau because a poorly done squat done with high intensity is not going to give you nearly as good a results as a well-performed squat at a low intensity. No joke. You can work out hard, do it wrong.

You're going to not going to get as far as if you do it right, but do it easier, no joke. So this mindset is also something that, believe it or not, when you go to the gym, you're gonna enjoy yourself a little bit more because you don't feel like you're dying every time. Oh yeah, you don't wanna collect at least bad habits along the way.

I mean, what's the point of that? You're gonna find yourself, maybe you get, you know, your physique is gonna change, you know, you get all these false signals that, you know, progress is happening, but now you're going to have to undo all these learned habits that you've just established trying so hard to get there quickly. And so we're just trying to kind of, you know, step back and really assess what kind of plan you have in place that's going to, you know, be something that's sustainable.

Right. So lesson one is practice movement. Practice. Don't go to the gym looking for a good or hard workout. Go to the gym looking to practice movement. Yeah, better at the skill of exercise. Now, the next one, this one was a really big one. I think this is the root of a really good mindset

when it comes to fitness. And that's the difference between training and eating because you care about yourself. So you're trying to take care of yourself in a genuine way versus doing those things because you hate yourself or hate the way that you look. Now both of them can definitely motivate you, but only one of them motivates you forever. And only one of them points you usually in the right direction with what you do in

the gym and how you feed yourself. Now the self hate model is the most common reason why people work out. I know, this is what started me. Working out in the gym. I had to change it eventually, but this is what got me in. You're like driven by shame. Yeah, I don't like the way I look. I hate this. I hate my body, or I hate this body fat, or I hate my arms, or whatever. So now you're gonna go to the gym,

and you're going to essentially punish yourself, and motivating yourself with hate is a terrible long-term approach, mainly because nobody wants to hate themselves for too long. It's exhausted. At some point you get over it, right? The person who is motivated by self hate eventually hits this point.

And maybe if you're listening, you've done this yourself, you might get to the point where you're like, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to enjoy life. Have you ever heard that before? Yeah. Now how is it that bettering yourself and feeling better and proving your health is not

Enjoying life because the mentality behind it was self-hate You were hating yourself the entire time. You know a good example of this would be somebody who goes to the gym Maybe let's say the night before they get good sleep a good example and all of us Yeah, you're saying like yeah, this is this this is one of the hardest ones, I think. And, you know, I know you threw it in second. It probably belongs either one or last, right? To make the point across that, you know, most people listening right now are motivated to get to the gym

because there's something they don't like about themselves. They just look at the mirror and like, oh, I hate that thing. And hate the strong word because I, you know, I don't think I ever hated myself. And so there's probably people listening right now in the way, oh, that's not me, I don't hate myself. But if you look deeper into your motivation

and why you're going to the gym, most of the time it's because you wanna change something about yourself. You're unhappy with the extra 20 pounds you're carrying, you're unhappy with the way your clothes are fitting, you're unhappy with the way your face looks, you're unhappy with the way your butt looks, you're unhappy with all these things. And again, like I mentioned before, that may be enough to get you motivated in moving

and short-term results. But if this is going to be a lifestyle, a change for the rest of your life, you have to have a different relationship with exercise. It has to be coming from a place of self-care and self-love and the beauty is when you when you piece that all together, it does make exercise a lot more enjoyable. Yeah, it feels a lot less like work. And I think that's one of the biggest deterrents from progress for people where you sort of hit a wall and then people just lose that momentum. I think before that, like when you're hating yourself, you're really wanting to change

and change and you get to a certain place where you do get exhausted, you get exhausted by trying to feed into that energy where when you reframe it and it's just something that is benefiting you, you notice your energy spikes. You notice your strength increases, your better sleep. You start looking into all these other things that are happening and really focus on, you know, the positive aspects to it. It becomes way more enjoyable and it's something that, you know, you want to incorporate that in your lifestyle. Not, it's not just work that you got to put in.

Yeah, you know, it's funny. There's a site, I don't know what the name of it is, but there's this psychological phenomenon where people who love Doing something once it becomes their job. They stop enjoying what they're doing You know, you can read about cases about this like people are like oh, I love you know playing baseball and they become a professional baseball player They stop losing the the passion of love for the sport becomes because it kind of becomes like a job It's like a chore. Yeah. So, you know, think to yourself, what is exercise to someone who hates their body?

Punishment. What is food to somebody that hates their body? Restriction and punishment. Now, what is exercise to somebody who cares about themselves is doing this because they want to take care of themselves. It's self-care. Same thing with food nutrients. It's self-care. Think about this food nutrients. It's self-care.

Think about it this way, and it's just funny too. We treat our dogs so much better than we treat ourselves. Imagine if you had a dog that gained a little bit of weight. Would you think yourself, I hate that dog. I hate the way it looks. I'm gonna run this to, oh, you'd be like, oh man, I gotta take care of this dog a little bit better. Let me do the right things for this dog

to make sure that they, now this is extremely important because it motivates your decisions. Somebody who hates themselves or hates the way they look because they're 20 pounds or 30 pounds overweight, their workouts are going to be inappropriately intense when they finally go to the gym. Oftentimes, they're gonna push themselves harder than they need to because they can't stand

the way that they look. Now, somebody who wants to take care of themselves, it's gonna train themselves much more appropriately, much, much more appropriately. Which is hard to get out of, you know, because you're going into the gym, like it's almost therapy because it feels like, ugh, you're exercising this out of your body, you know, like this negativity, like I'm just getting rid of it, and it's something that like you want to keep feeding into, so it's, I mean, I've been there before, where I just wanted to like beat myself up

and feel better about myself. Yeah, let me give you another example, right? You're at your friend's house and you just had dinner and you're in the moment, you're in a diet, right? You hate your body, you're like, oh, I'm disgusted, I need to lose weight. So now you're a friend's house, you're eating dinner, you did a good job with your portion control,

then they bring out dessert. It's an apple pie or something. And they, hey, would you like a slice of apple pie? This is what the person who hates themselves, this is their response. Now I can't have, I can't have any right now. The person who takes, who cares about themselves will respond like this.

I don't want any. I don't want any right now. Now let's break that down real quick. Let's break that down for a second, right? The person who hates their body and is motivated by that and they say, I can't, who is telling them that they can't? Who is the person that is forcing them to not eat the pie? They are.

They've literally constructed a dictator, a separate part of themselves. They get the little angel and devil on their shoulder. They're like, it's like they're a bad kid and they have this parent that's like, no, you can't. So they respond and say, no, I can't, I can't have that. That doesn't feel good. In fact, if you do that long enough,

you end up reacting because remember, you're playing the role of both the dictator and the rebellious kid. Eventually the kid doesn't want to be tyrannized and what happens? They rebel. And what does rebellion look like? Doesn't look like one piece of pie.

Looks like a whole pie. You go way off. Now the person who's doing this because they care about themselves, when they get off with that pie, they say, no, I don't want it. Now this person identifies that the pie will taste good, that they're gonna enjoy it. So it's not that they think to themselves,

like that's not gonna taste good. They know it's gonna taste good. They just wanna take care of themselves. So the real answer is, I don't want it. Now, maybe in the future, they do have a piece of pie, but it's not this binge rebellion because they've been tyrannized for so long. It also becomes a part of self-care.

Maybe weeks from now when they've been doing really well, they get offered that piece of pie and they think to themselves, wow, I've been really taking care of myself. You know, right now I want to enjoy a piece of pie. Not a big deal. Yeah, I want a piece of pie and they have it. So this mindset, this part of mindset

with fitness and nutrition is crucial. You have to come at it from a point of self-care. Well, Justin alluded to that. I think the most important part and that's like starting to make the connection on what exercise does for you aside from the way you look with the scale. So and this is why all of us talk about how we're not big does for you aside from the way you look or the scale.

This is why all of us talk about how we're not big fans of clients coming in and using the scale or body fat percentage or the way they look as their main driver towards their goal because we know that again, that's a short term answer to their solution and the clients that end up long term seeing the results or changing their lifestyle forever are the ones that start to make the connection. And I'll give you an example, like a recent example for me,

that I still continue to make these connections. So even though I feel I have a very good relationship with the exercise, and I'm not doing it just to look a certain way, I'm always reminding myself of why I love the exercise and how it just makes everything in life better. I've made that connection. You know, Katrina and I, with having a one year old right now, anybody who has a child can relate to this.

Real quickly, your life can become raising your kid and all about that and you lose sight of each other and taking care of each other because it's all now about this child. And, you know, we try our best to make sure that we're always thinking about that. That we have to be really strong and taking care of each other and not losing side of that. And that's what will make us great parents.

And, you know, Katrina works hard. She works hard all day long and she's, she carries the main load of taking care of max out of the two of us for sure. And so, you know, there's areas where I know that I can support and help her. And there's times when I know I'm really good at it. And there's times when I'm not very good at it. And there's just a recent connection I've made. Every single time that I get a good training session,

and my lift is normally some time between noon and three. Every time I get a good lift in, when I come home, I'm a different person. Like, I'm happier. I, because I just got a lift, my adrenaline's still going and I have energy and I come into the house and I straighten up where I go grab Max and I take her away from him or I go do the dishes behind her

like and I just I naturally do that. And if I come home and it's a day where maybe I missed a workout or even I missed a few days, I'm tired, I'm lethargic and I actually go straight for the couch and all my computer and I sit down and I'm not motivated. That's a connection that I've recently made and that's just another thing that reminds me

of why training and exercise is so important to me because it makes me a better husband. It makes me a better partner. Movement creates movement or movement spawns movement. It's totally something that. Yeah, what does that say? Movement creates movement or movement spawns movement. It's totally something that I've noticed myself. If I don't have a regular routine of getting that in and feeling that, that, that de-stressing effect that it has and it also charges you in terms of like energy, just, you know,

you're going to come in flat. And that's, that is the most crucial part of the day is when he come home. And that's one of those things. You don't realize that until you have a family or you have a significant other and you're coming in. As you're walking in, that's just the tone

for the whole rest of the day. It reminds me of the Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan conversation. We spend so much time planning these awesome vacations, but if you add it up every morning, you spent with your spouse and kids, that would, you know, there's way more time. Oh yeah, just the first 10 minutes, that he's actually talking about the first 10 minutes

that you come home from work, right? You know, and the way you greet your kids. Makes such a difference. Yeah, and huge. Yeah, we put, no, we put very little energy into thinking about how important that is, yet we'll do, you know, hours and hours more that than we ever will spending on vacation. That's right. That's right So so you know, you wouldn't notice all those amazing benefits if it was always from a point of self hate because the only things

You notice when you hate yourself is am I getting leaner? Am I getting in my building more muscle? Do I look different? You're not noticing all those amazing other benefits when you're coming from a point of self care The next one this one's a big one. This one probably took me the longest to realize, or at least to coach to clients, which is the difference between motivation and discipline. Motivation, everybody's always looking to get motivated. They're looking for that spark of motivation. I understand this.

When we feel motivated, we do everything. There's nothing we can't do. It does help. It is. That little spark. It is. And motivation is a wonderful feeling. It's a wonderful feeling.

Like happiness. I wish I could be happy all the time too. You can't do it. That's the problem. But it's a feeling. And eventually it goes away. And if the cornerstone of what gets me going in the gym is how motivated I am, I'm screwed. And if I need to be, if the cornerstone of what gets me going in the gym is how motivated I am, I'm screwed.

And, you know, if I need to be motivated to always eat right, I'm screwed. Because once that feeling goes away, then I'm in a bad position. Instead, we should focus on discipline. Now, here's the good news about discipline. Discipline is a skill. Unlike a feeling that I have to like try to make happen, but other feelings come skills. You can practice build upon and get really good at them. And discipline is one of them discipline says you'll work out, even if you don't feel

motivated discipline says you eat right, even if you don't have that great spark of motivation. Discipline is what gets you to go to work every day. It's what gets you to brush your teeth. You can apply that to exercise, but you do need to develop it as a skill. One of the best ways to do this that I found is to start with, first off, you have to take yourself out of the motivated mind when you do this.

Set yourself a goal. Set yourself something that you can do realistically. But also make sure that you're not in that super motivated state of mind when you're doing it or ask yourself Is this realistic when I'm not motivated because you know, I've worked with clients and they're in that motivated state of mind and you say Hey, what's realistic for you? Like four days a week five days a week, you know, and I'm like are you sure? Like yeah, totally it's because they're in that motivated state of mind. So ask yourself What can I do to get me towards my fitness and health goals? What's a step that I can take that is challenging,

but also totally realistic for my normal state of mind, something that I know I can maintain forever. This is kind of funny, but my coach used to call it putting hay in the barn. And really, it's every time you're putting hay in the barn, this is something that you're going to reap later. But you just got to keep putting hay in the barn. This is something that you're gonna reap, you know later But you just gotta keep putting hay in the barn even when it's grueling even when it's you know shitty outside You're you're stacking hay in the barn. You're gonna benefit from it later

This is something that you know, I've tried to apply to where Really, I just look at things as these are all patterns. I want to set all these good patterns This this creates this discipline to where it almost like it goes into my subconscious to where I don't have to necessarily think so much about it anymore because it's just something I do. It's not something that I need to feel a certain feeling anymore. I don't have to reach for that feeling. It's just something that I do. Well, discipline is what creates habits when motivation doesn't exist. So it's necessary. If you're going to create a habit or change your lifestyle or make a lifestyle change or behavioral change for the rest of your life, discipline is necessary. Motivation, we

can ride that wave, and again, going back to the theme that I said, I noticed when you sent these over, sales, they're all, I mean, motivation is enough to get you hype maybe for a few weeks, maybe even a few months, maybe get a wedding coming up in three or six months and you've never been so motivated before than other than your wedding pictures

or maybe your first Vegas trip for a birthday or something and so you're more motivated than you've ever been to get ready for this, but eventually that trip is over, eventually that wedding date happens and then what do you have left and you no longer have that motivation. And you know, this is also one of those things that leads to really bad habits. Like, and I know you guys have trained people like this. I mean, I have trained clients that they have to be registered for a marathon or registered

for an OCR race or registered for some sort of a or challenging somebody at work. Like they rely on some sort of competitive event in order just to motivate them to go to the gym. And then what ends up happening is you end up the rest of your life always having to sign yourself up for these events. And you play the yo-yo thing all the time. You're, when you're on it, when you're getting ready for an event, you're good, you're disciplined.

And then when you hit the event, then it's over again. Yeah, motivation is, you know, here's the thing. I've never had to, I've never had a client struggle with the workouts and nutrition when they were motivated. Right? That's easy. That's a piece of cake. It's all the other states of mind that we get into.

It's all the other moods and feelings that we get into that are challenging. And so you start with a small goal, something that is realistic, but still a little bit challenging. These will be a little challenging. Other ways is worthless. It's not going to have any meaning. And then you do that. And that's it. That's it. Just do that. Once that becomes second nature, once it starts to become a part of your routine and you're like, this is easy. It's no longer challenging. Then you add something else. Now, here's the key. You have to be brutally honest with yourself because sometimes people are not honest with themselves. What is realistic to you? Can sometimes don't judge it because sometimes people will say, gosh, if I'm really honest,

realistic to me is eating one serving of vegetables a day. That's the only thing I could do if I'm being realistic. But that's not enough, I gotta do more. No, no, no, no, start with what is realistic. I've had clients who literally started 30 minutes of exercise a week, that was it. That was challenging for them,

but it was also realistic, simultaneous. We started with that, you know what happened in those people two years later, they were working out three, four days a week consistently. They build on that. Totally. Well, this feeds perfectly into the fourth one that you listed, which is consistency over perfection. Oh, yeah.

You know, and this is something that, this is something that actually is probably one of the ones that took me longer of the five we're talking about to really piece together. I used to be like in all or nothing person for sure. I used to be if I wasn't dialed nutritionally, if I wasn't consistent, I knew I was gonna be able to hit my workouts five, seven days a week then I was like, you know, F at all. I'm gonna do it.

Yeah, I'm not gonna do any of that. Not worth it. Yeah, it's not worth it because I'm not gonna see hardly any results, so why not why do anything? And that's completely changed. I'm so the to see hardly any results so why not why do anything. And that's completely changed. And I'm so the opposite in this spectrum. In fact, there are many times when I go to work out and I just do some squats, you know,

or I just do some mobility work. Like I just do something to be consistent. I do something to consistently do something that's loving myself, that's taking care of myself. And that's where that mindset shifted, that was necessary first to really start to piece this together that that was more important than I just stayed consistent with always doing something

that is serving or taking care of myself. And sometimes that isn't going to the gym and having the perfect workout or having a super hard workout. Sometimes that's meditation or going for a really long walker hike with my partner. So I think that is something that took me a long time

of working out before I started to piece that together. And it does, again, it changes the whole mindset. A workout that's subpar, but that's done consistently. It's always gonna outperform a amazing workout that's done inconsistently. That's just the bottom line. You will do better and go further if you're consistent, even if the workouts aren't perfect, even if they're not hard, even if you're not going after it.

You'll do far better if you're just consistent versus it has to be absolutely perfect. Cause here's the bottom line, nothing is ever always perfect. And if you rely on the perfect model, no, I'm only gonna go to the gym if I can really get after or I'm only gonna do it if I can be serious about everything. You're never gonna be, you'll be on and off. You'll be on and off your entire life.

And that results, and of course, worse results, that provides worse results than just being consistent. There were many, there were periods of my life where I'd go work out and, you know, I'm talking like months, maybe there's challenging things happening in my life, maybe years even where I'm going to the gym and none of the workouts are even close to perfect. Most of them are kind of, you know, crappy or, you know, mediocre at best, but I kept going and I kept going and I kept going. Was I better off doing that?

Then if I had said screw it, I'm going to wait till things get better and go perfect. Absolutely. Consistency is key. Don't judge the perfection of the things that you're doing. Just try to be consistent and show up. It also builds momentum. Oh, and maintains it. Right. Which is so key to long-term success too, is just having that momentum. And sometimes when you get down and out, it's really easy for the momentum to go the other direction and putting a lot of pressure on yourself to having to go to the gym and have this perfect workout or following this routine that you were supposed to do.

That pressure, a lot of times when you're not feeling into it, you end up saying, I'm not gonna do it at all, versus, just, hey, I'm gonna be consistent about always going to the gym on these days, even if I'm not filling up to it, doesn't mean this has to be a 90% hardcore workout, maybe this is a day where I take it easy and get in there. That momentum wave isn't just gonna magically come back, right? Yeah, I found opportunities of me just being in there and starting to slowly do exercises

and just be in the gym or wherever it is that I'm working out, really starts to kind of build that up again slowly, slowly, and then it comes back. And it's just one of those things that you just kind of like relieve a lot of that pressure that initially, like most people have for these types of workouts. Totally.

Now the last one to me, this one's somewhat related to the self-care versus self-hate switch and mindset, but it's a little bit different. And that's the mindset of, I'm chasing health, I'm chasing good health with my workouts on my diet versus I'm chasing looks or aesthetics, where everything I'm doing is to improve the way I look versus improve the way I feel or my health.

Now here's why chasing health is superior. If you are optimally healthy, you're going to look pretty good. If you chase looks and your health starts to suffer, guess what else goes away? Your looks. Believe it or not, chasing looks actually gives you less of them. Maybe not in the short term. Well, not only that, but it definitely doesn't long to. You could also look really good and not necessarily

be really healthy. That's what I mean, but eventually health catches up with you. So, that's the deceiving part, right? Then what we see right now in social media, we see all these bodies and physiques that, this was one of the things that blew me away when I got into competing. I mean, I was just so appalled by how many people that I was talking to behind the stage

that just really had no real understanding of nutrition, diet, and exercise. What they did do really well was they were disciplined and they could stick to whatever our coach told them. If it was starve your body for 10 to 12 weeks, so eat low, low calorie, do tons of cardio, be willing to take XYZ drugs, they were good at that. They were good at those things, but what I realized was, man, these aren't healthy bodies that are doing this. Yet, the masses look up to these.

These are the people that are in cover of magazines or have millions of followers on Instagram. And so we're all seeking them for advice, but in reality, they still haven't pieced this together yet, that if you really chase the health thing and if you get really, really good at becoming a healthy person, as a side effect, you end up looking really good. Well, we forget why we think things look good to begin with. So, you know, when you look at a man or a woman and there are attractive physical features about them, you know, if you break down why we consider them attractive, evolutionarily speaking, there's signals that signify health.

That's what you're looking for. So a man with a tight waist, and maybe you can see his abs and wider shoulders, that signified high testosterone, and somebody who could probably run and hunt and provide and protect, right? When you look at a female with nice fat distribution, good mobility, that looks like someone that you can

have children with, somebody that's free of disease. So, but we've taken this to the extreme. Now we go after the signals, but not the root. So if you're healthy, and think about this for a second, you actually close your eyes and imagine this, just imagine a truly healthy person, both on the inside and out. What is that person gonna look like?

They're gonna look pretty damn good. And so this is the thing that you need to focus on and understand. And the reason why I sell it this way, by the way, is because selling health to someone who only cares about looks is impossible. But if I can tell them that you're gonna look better as a result of it, then I can get through to a lot of them. Well, by the way, that's true. I'm not making that up. I also think that it provides, third, psychologically healthy.

It's a healthier way to carry yourself, not being so obsessed about how you look all the time. It turns into a neurotic type of a situation where you'll see the different types of eating disorders that result of it You'll see the punishing yourself kind of aspects kind of creep in and it's just too much focus on your identity of your physical self Versus you know the whole body as a whole like you you know like getting yourself outside of that and then just focusing on these other metrics and things of strength, of mobility, of able bodied, type of features, it's still relieving psychologically. I also think this gets a little bit easier as you age.

I think this is really challenging to piece this together when you're in your teens and your 20s. You don't learn it when you age, you're gonna be forced to learn. And that's what I think, right? And I'll give you an example. Like know last night I left the grocery store and I told the guy say I'm gonna go I'm gonna go pick up a dessert. We trained hard yesterday. We moved like crazy I mean I must have took 20,000 plus steps. We ate good. I'm like yeah I'm gonna go give myself a

dessert. So I said anyway I want anything you know I'm most half the room I think passed on it. And so I got an ice cream. I love ice cream, haven't had any in a long time. And when I go to serve it to myself, old me could sit down and like crush like a whole tub of that. And every bit, if I was basing it off of calories in versus calories out, I could actually afford, maybe not have the whole tub,

but I could have had quite a bit. But that actually had nothing to do with the decision of like how small of a portion I had. How small of a portion I had had everything to do with how I was going to feel after the fact. And it took me a long time to make that connection. It took me a very long time to make the connection of when I ate these certain foods that are not, you know, quote unquote, good or healthy for me that are less healthy, right?

How do I feel afterwards? Does it give me a headache? Does it make me shit myself? Do I get poor sleep from it? Do I feel below to the next day? All those things, it took me years to start to connect all those dots. So now when I make these healthier choices,

it's not, I didn't like decide on how much ice cream I was gonna eat last night because I was like, oh, I'm gonna fat. Well, why not see my abs? Like, you little fat tomorrow or a pudgy? Like, no, that's not what made me decide. I'm gonna have like a little mug of ice cream It was because I knew I could probably eat a little mug of it satisfy that craving that I was having But then also not just tear my gut up and feel miserable and so I was too busy having schmores

Well, you know think about this way if the millions of Americans that fail at diets and exercise every year, if they all said to themselves, you know what, I'm not gonna go on a diet, but I really need to get healthy. I'm just gonna get healthy. How much better do you think their success would be? Right. It would be, you would see far higher success rates.

So, all the things that we covered today, if you change these things, I'm not exaggerating. I know we sell fitness programs and workout programs and we can struct them and try and make them as effective as possible, but here's the truth. If you just do what we said right now, you're there. No joke, you're totally fine. Doesn't matter what you do for that one.

It'll unfold in front of you. It totally will all unfold for you. Mindset is by far the most important thing. Look, we record the podcast on video as well as audio. So if you wanna watch us and listen to us, go to YouTube, Mind Pump Podcast. Also, check out all of our free guides. We have guides on everything from fat loss

to developing parts of your body. That's all at mindpumpfree.com. And finally, you can find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me and 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 Mind Pump Media dot com.

The RGB Superbundle 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-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review

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