Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1362: What You Can Learn About Building Muscle from Inmates, Gymnasts and Sprinters

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss what you can learn about building muscle from prison inmates, gymnasts, and sprinters. How there is a lot to learn about building muscle from other modalit...ies. (4:10) The biggest mistake you can make in fitness. (11:15) Evolve or die. (14:05) What you can learn about muscle building from prison inmates. (17:25) Utilize extreme frequency. (19:07) Creativity. (25:36) Forced discipline. (29:25) What you can learn about muscle building from gymnasts. (31:57) The use of high-tension isometrics. (32:07) Don’t workout, practice. (40:49) Address mobility and full range of motion. (45:20) What you can learn about muscle building from sprinters. (49:55) Train explosively. (50:29) Apply long rest periods. (58:40) The benefits and values of MAPS Programs. (59:55) Related Links/Products Mentioned August Promotion: MAPS Performance ½ off!! **Promo code “GREEN50” at checkout** New Program: MAPS Suspension Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Mind Pump #1110: Doug Bopst- From Felony To Fitness To Free Velodrome Supertraining (book) The Most Overlooked Muscle Building Principle – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1295: Four Ways To Get A Stubborn Body Part To Improve Stop Working Out And Start Practicing – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1352: The Muscle Building & Fat Burning Advantages Of Training Like An Athlete Mind Pump Podcast - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Doug Bopst (@dougbopst) Instagram Max Schmarzo (ATC/CSCS/MS) (@strong_by_science) Instagram

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Worlds, number one, fitness health and entertainment podcast, we talk about the things you can learn from other people in fitness. And these are people who don't necessarily work out to look better, but rather they work out either to perform better in a particular sport, or they work out under conditions that are placed upon them.
Starting point is 00:00:35 There are things you can learn from the people we're going to talk about in today's episode that you can apply to your own workouts to get your body to respond like never before. So in this episode, we cover three specific types of individuals and we cover the things that they do that we can all learn from. We start out by talking about inmates, people who are locked up in prison, who develop phenomenal physiques, how do they do it, what can we learn from then and apply to our training. Then we cover gymnasts. Gymnasts have some of the most muscular, balanced bodies you'll find anywhere,
Starting point is 00:01:08 aside from bodybuilders. And they don't even care about bodybuilding. It's a side effect of their sport. Now, when we talk about gymnasts, we do mention some exercises and stuff that they do on rings. If you like training that way, and you want to utilize ring style type training,
Starting point is 00:01:22 we do have a new program, we just released called Maps Suspension. It's a full body workout with just suspension trainers. Go check it out. It's brand new. You can find that at maps suspension.com. So it's two words, but all one maps suspension.com. And in the final group, we talk about our sprinters. Sprinters are extremely muscular. And when you compare them to other runners, you can see a stark difference. Compare a runner, a sprinter,
Starting point is 00:01:49 to a long distance runner, for example. Looks like you're talking about two different species of humans when you compare them side by side. So we talk about what sprinters do that we can all learn from. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, PRX Performance. Now PRX Performance makes some of the best at home gym equipment you'll find anywhere.
Starting point is 00:02:09 If anything has been proven by this current pandemic, it's that we really can't rely on our gyms right now. Unfortunately, many of them are closed because they're ordered to be locked down or a lot of us are afraid to go back to the gym because of potentially exposing ourselves to other people. And that really of potentially exposing ourselves to other people. And that really sucks if you like to be consistent. Well, if you have good at home gym equipment, you don't need to rely on the gyms.
Starting point is 00:02:31 You just go work out on your own. Now one of the drawbacks is the space that they take up. Well, PRX answers this with space saving equipment. For example, they have a squat rack that folds into the wall and believe me, this squat rack is as stable as your powerlifting racks that you'll get at other gyms. They're really that amazing, but they also have barbells and plates and other equipment that you can buy
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Starting point is 00:03:18 with a purchase of $500 or more. Also all months long, our workout program, Maps Performance is 50% off. Now Maps Performance utilizes a lot of the techniques that we're gonna talk about in this episode. In particular, the explosive portion of working out. In fact, Maps Performance is the only Maps Program that actually has a explosive phase.
Starting point is 00:03:40 So at the end of the program, you actually train your body explosively to unlock new gains in your body. This program is phenomenal for those of you who get plateaued and for those of you that like workouts that are a little different because it's very functional. Again, it's 50% off. Here's how you get that half off. Go to mapsgreen.com that's MAPS-GR-E-N-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D- of athletes that really, they're in care so much about building muscle and burning body fat, but because of the way that they train, the side effect is they produce phenomenal physics, because I think sometimes in the fitness space, especially if you're like, oh, I just want to, you know, I want to change my body, I want to look good, I want to build muscle,
Starting point is 00:04:38 I want to burn body fat. We only look at other people who are only interested in doing that, and we forget to look at some of the things we can learn from modalities that produce that as a side effect. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, if you think about it right away, what comes to mind in a gymnast is probably the epitome of the most fit-looking athlete I could potentially
Starting point is 00:05:01 come up with. Yeah, gymnast is one inmates, people in prison. This is another one. I know people. Their sport is to survive. That's because I'm not sure they fall into the sport category, but they definitely do. A lifestyle, right?
Starting point is 00:05:15 Right, right, yeah. It's also a lifestyle. But what I mean by that is they're not a body builder. They're not Olympic lifters. They're not power lifters. You know what I'm saying? It's like, what are they doing? What are they doing there?
Starting point is 00:05:26 What's so different about what they do in there that produces those types of results? Sprinters is another one. These are people that run. I mean, short distances, but they run. And when you look at sprinters, even if you look at like decent high school sprinters, and then of course, college and higher levels levels. The muscularity they present is tremendous. There's a lot we can learn from why they produce the physics that they produce and how they're able to produce the physics that they produce.
Starting point is 00:05:55 I like, I mean, I like that you picked inmate sprinters and gymnasts because they're all really, really different and they all, and by the way, there's, there's exceptions to the role always. And of course, right. So there's not all inmates come out jacked. Right. Not all sprinters look jacked also, not all gymnasts too, but there seems to be a common theme
Starting point is 00:06:17 amongst all three of these categories of people. And there's different reasons why all of them come out or look really fit from their sport that they're doing that. I think it's important to talk about what is it specifically because I think sometimes people just think that like, oh, if I train like a sprinter, then I'll look just like a sprinter. And there's other factors that come into play. There's specific things that they're doing that are giving them those look, and there's things that you can incorporate into your programming that can obtain
Starting point is 00:06:49 similar type of results. Oh, completely. Again, if you look at them, especially in the case of gymnasts and sprinters, their goal is to get muscular, they can care less. Their goal is to produce performance, is to win at their sport. Now as far as the inmates are concerned, their goal is to build muscle and strength.
Starting point is 00:07:11 However, in many prisons today, most prisons, in fact, they don't even have access to weights. They removed the weights. They used to, right? They used to have access to, you know, barbells and dumbbells, but then, you know, it proved to be a little dangerous. I think some of them were being used as weapons and they thought, hey, we don't want these, these, you know, men to get buffed.
Starting point is 00:07:30 So let's take the weights out. Funny thing is, they're still getting buffed. Still happening. Yeah. I can't remember. When we had our friend Doug Bob's on here, did he, did he have weights or did he own, he didn't either, huh?
Starting point is 00:07:41 No, they don't. It's been California for sure. And in many, many prisons, they don't have weights. But it's, this is a cool thing. This is something that really took my game to the next level as a personal trainer, is I started to look outside of the traditional spaces for fitness, basically for fitness knowledge
Starting point is 00:08:01 and for hacks or for techniques. You know, it started with bodybuilders with me Then that was an easy transition to power lifters And then it kind of stayed there for a while and then I like oh wait Olympic lifters What can I learn from them? What can I learn from kettlebell people who train with kettlebells? Mm-hmm And then I started to really spread it out and say okay, what can I learn from people that don't necessarily use weights? But seem to produce incredible physiques?
Starting point is 00:08:27 What are they doing that sometimes we maybe forget or don't utilize in our traditional training? How can I incorporate that in my training? How can I incorporate that in my clients training to amplify the results that they do? Yeah, I know a lot of people have watched the Olympics and they have watched certain events. What's the one with the cyclist that's sprint?
Starting point is 00:08:49 Oh, with the circle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you seen their legs? Yeah, so you see, they're specimens. Their quads are bigger than what we called quadsilla. The guy that was in, lived in the gym and was just always doing leg extensions know, doing leg extensions and like, was had pride in his cause.
Starting point is 00:09:07 They totally dwarfed, you know, those legs that I saw. Yeah, a great fact. If you want, you can literally Google a cyclist sprinters leg. A velodrome. Velodrome, is that it's called? Oh, okay. And you'll see like, it's cartoonish.
Starting point is 00:09:21 They literally look like a pro bodybuilder leg. It may be bigger. And they do some weights, you know, I know kind of somewhat how they train. But mainly what they do is sprint on a bike. And they produce these tremendous muscular legs. I know a lot of it has to do genetics, but you could have those genetics.
Starting point is 00:09:38 And I'll tell you what, if they swam, they would not produce that kind of muscle in their legs. And I'm sorry. Justin, are you the one that always touts the super training book? Yeah, right? So I don't know, do you guys see the posts that our friend, Max Marzo posted today, strong by science?
Starting point is 00:09:52 No, not today. So he shared a graph from there that I think is relates to this conversation. I actually reposted it and shared it in my story because I thought it was so good. And you may be listening right now going like, well, I have no desire to, well, one, I have no desire to go to prison. So I'm going to be an inmate to a terrible reason
Starting point is 00:10:08 to be a prisoner. I don't want to be a jack. Right. I don't want to be a gymnast either. And I'd have no desire to be a sprinter. But that's not the point of this conversation. It's the takeaway, some of the things that are important and how do you apply those tools in your training? And basically the graph that he shared was kind of the adaptation curve that we see over the course of two to four weeks, four to six weeks, six to 12 weeks in your training. And you know what I think everybody has learned, even if you aren't familiar with a lot of the sciences, you know, man, after a few months of training, the results really slow down tremendously. And that's where progressive overload, understanding the importance of different modalities,
Starting point is 00:10:47 different types of training. This is where this knowledge is extremely valuable, even to the average person who's just listening and wants to lose 30 pounds of fat, or just wants to build 15 pounds of muscle, or just cares about the way they look, the things that we will talk about with these three different types of training
Starting point is 00:11:06 is the philosophies that are within them are very important to grasp so you can then take from them and apply it into your training. One of the biggest mistakes you can make in fitness and nutrition as well as becoming dogmatic and religious about your style of training. This happened, here's a good example of why this is a bad thing. For a long time, this is what the martial arts world was like. For a long time, the martial arts world was, you either trained like a boxer or you did Taekwondo
Starting point is 00:11:42 or Kung Fu or Kempo or Judo or whatever, and that's all you did Taekwondo, or Kung Fu, or Kempo, or Judo, or whatever. And that's all you did. And what happened in the martial art world was lots of comparisons and who would win against who, and which martial art is superior. And there were very few people, there were people, but there were very few people who were saying, why don't we take the best of each
Starting point is 00:12:02 since we wanna become the most effective at fighting or defending ourselves? Why don't we learn the best of each since we want to become the most effective at fighting or defending ourselves? Why don't we learn from each one of them? What they each do exceptionally well and see how to combine them. Bruce Lee is a famous example of someone who talked a lot about this. In fact, if you read his book, The Tow of Jit Kendo,
Starting point is 00:12:18 you'll see that he talks about the footwork and boxing and some of the moves and some of the grappling arts like judo and wrestling. In fact, he was shunned by the... He pissed everybody off by the community. He did. He was. And then what caused this all to change was we had this competition called the ultimate fighting championship. And early on it was martial art versus martial art, no rules.
Starting point is 00:12:41 And that totally formed and shifted people. And now, mixed martial arts is a martial art. And I can make a very strong argument that the best fighter, if we were to compare a fighter against the fighter, would be a mixed martial artist against any pure style, because the mixed martial artist is well-rounded. And so when it comes to training your body,
Starting point is 00:13:03 or eating in a particular way, you make a huge mistake if you stick in one and constantly compare your modality to the others and close your mind to the fact that there may be some things you can learn from these element modalities. Now it's easy to do that with all the barbell and dumbbell and resistance training modalities, although that was hard too.
Starting point is 00:13:22 I remember we first started the podcast. It was trying to convince bodybuilders why they should try powerlifting and why Olympic lifters should try bodybuilding and vice versa. Why should you functional exercises? That was like a big argument. I think now it's becoming more accepted that there's value in all of them,
Starting point is 00:13:37 even if you just wanna build a amazing looking physique. But now we're gonna take it a step further and say, okay, here's a few areas that we've identified that we can learn from. Everybody listening right now, you can learn a thing or two about how to build your body from inmates, gymnasts, and sprinters. There are things that they do that we don't necessarily do
Starting point is 00:13:58 with our training traditionally, that if we did implement some of that stuff, you would see changes to your body. I love that analogy, Sal, too, because there's also, too, the importance of how you train that way. So I think we, from that statement, we can agree that the best fighter would be an MMA far. Somebody who has multiple modalities, but how does that person go about training for
Starting point is 00:14:20 all those? They wouldn't just throw in everything at one time. There's actually a methodical approach on how you get great at each one of those, and this is very similar to training the body. So if you're, you know, and it's not just you want to get good at being a gymnast or really good at being a sprinter, it's the results that you get from these adaptations. Well, I like to think of, you guys know, George St. Pierre as one of the greatest of all
Starting point is 00:14:45 time, and why he was so great was because he kept evolving. He kept evolving his skill set, and he would master certain things, and he'd bring in a boxing element. He'd bring in, he'd just work in gymnastics. He'd, to work on his balance and his coordination and control, and, you know, and then he'd, he'd try and master like certain elements, and then he'd try and master certain elements and then incorporate that into the next fight. So they just didn't know what they were gonna come up against.
Starting point is 00:15:10 And I think he's just a great example because he's so humble in his approach to learning these concepts and being able to extract that actually apply them appropriately in his fight. Super open. And now here's the thing with training. If you, there's a small percentage of those of you listening right now that are ultra specialized, like there's a small percentage of
Starting point is 00:15:30 you that just want to be powerlifter, is it a powerlifting or just want to be bodybuilders because you want to compete in bodybuilding or just want to do, you know, Olympic lifting. There's a small percentage of you, but even to you guys, I'll say this, you can learn a thing or two from the other modalities to amplify your specialization. For example, let's say you're just a power lifter. All you care about is competing well on the bench, deadlift and squat. You don't wanna get on stage and pose like a bodybuilder.
Starting point is 00:15:59 You don't care about, you know, doing an Olympic lift. You don't care about that stuff. You just wanna be good at powerlifting. Could you become a better powerlifter by incorporating a little bit of body building, a little bit of mobility and functional movement, or maybe a little bit about what we're gonna talk about in today's podcast, you can.
Starting point is 00:16:13 Now, the vast majority of you listening are not super hyper specialized in your approach. Most of you listening just want the most fit body you can produce. You want to have the best looking, balanced body. Most people listening are after that, in which case, this is even more important. Look at all of these things that we're going to talk about today and other things that you can find on your own and what you'll end up developing is a very balanced aesthetic physique.
Starting point is 00:16:42 Now, I know bodybuilding is oftentimes tied to aesthetics, but the truth is in real life, aesthetics isn't bodybuilding. Most bodybuilders look awkward, and most people would not consider them to be aesthetic, except for the extreme people out there. Aesthetics typically is something that includes a lot of balance, good movement.
Starting point is 00:17:01 It's something that the average person would look at and be like, man, that looks phenomenal. It looks really fit, really healthy. I think that's what I want to look like. And so understanding all the different benefits you can get from lots of different modalities, whether it be sports or a lifestyle, is key and crucial to that. And that's why I think this is an important, you know, episode to do for people listening right now.
Starting point is 00:17:24 Now, let's start with the first one, the first category that we mentioned, not really a sport, but more of a condition or a lifestyle. Not a lifestyle that's necessarily chosen. Not ideal. But one that seems to produce some very interesting results in terms of physique, but also under very interesting circumstance. In fact, the circumstances,
Starting point is 00:17:49 the extreme circumstances. The circumstances in this category are what have produced some of these things that I think we can learn from. In other words, they forced certain situations to happen. And because of the fact that these people don't have a lot of control over what's happening to them
Starting point is 00:18:04 because of a crime they committed or whatever, that they figured out ways around it and then there's things to learn from that. Yeah, you got to think of their schedule, like it's regiment. Every single day has things ahead of them where they know they have to be in a certain place so they have these short windows. And so how do they maximize those short windows if they're trying to build up their body for protection to feel like they're strong and they can carry themselves that way throughout the day. And so they've maximized, learned how to maximize those short windows as much as possible.
Starting point is 00:18:38 And so that's one thing for sure. Do you think that, I mean, I think it's one of those things that just kind of happen by accident, right? Like, I mean, I think it started. I don't think like the guy who went to prison goes like, oh, I understand the science behind frequency and the importance of it. I think it's more like I'm bored to rival. I'm bored to death in this in the cell all day long, you know, May's well get Jack, what I'm doing it. And then as a side effect, I think you end up seeing these these phenomenal results from it.
Starting point is 00:19:05 And I think the first point you're making is frequency. 100% when I've talked to people who have been to prison for long periods of time and train their bodies, they say that exactly what you're saying, Adam, that the circumstances force them to figure out ways to structure their day, add a little bit of purpose and meaning to their day, how do you pass the time? You know, otherwise you're just there and it's every day is what you're doing time. Right, and so here's one thing that they do
Starting point is 00:19:33 that I think we can all learn from. In fact, this is one of the things that inspired trigger sessions that we put in Maps and Abolic, is that they don't just use frequency, they use extreme frequency. So here's what I mean by that. Typically, frequency works really great. If you worked out twice a day,
Starting point is 00:19:51 let's say you did an hour workout once a day, or a third to 30 minute workouts in a day, the two 30 minute workouts will probably produce better results for a lot of people. We've seen this with cardio, we've seen this with resistance training. Inmates take this to a whole another level. They'll do things like do 10 push-ups every 30 minutes, you know. So at
Starting point is 00:20:11 the end of the day, they've done 240 or 300 push-ups throughout the whole day. And it's literally, oh, it's 10 o'clock, 10 push-ups, and they get up and then, oh, it's 10 30, no matter what they're doing. They're volumes, goes through the roof. They'll stop and do 10 push-ups, or they'll stop and do 10 body rows, or something like that. They utilize extreme frequency, extreme practice throughout the entire day. And that, I think, is one of the main reasons
Starting point is 00:20:38 why they build the physics that they end up building. That example you're using right now, too. It can be that basic, right? I think sometimes people hear that and they go like, well, I don't have time to go to the gym four times or five times a day to do a training session. It can be as simple as jumping up, and we talk about this with pull ups all the time.
Starting point is 00:20:54 So it's like one of those things where people always ask us, how do I get better at pull ups? One of the best ways to do it is, do one to three of them, 10 times a day. Every time you walk by the pull-up part, do it. Or every time get to, every hour, get down and do 20 push-ups or whatever, there's ways to get these incredible results without having to drive your ass to the gym
Starting point is 00:21:13 and spend 30 minutes to an hour of a workout. Well, that's the biggest monster, right? Is the time commitment. And I think that, I mean, that's the biggest pushback when we get clients initially is, how do I fit this in? I only have maybe the short window of an hour, and that's all I can devote to this. Well, think about now splitting into those chunks of like 10 minute intervals
Starting point is 00:21:32 where I could just do something as simple as like body weight squats or pushups or lunges or something where it's just constantly sending that signal to the body that I'm gonna get stronger. And some people think that's silly. Oh, 10 squats. You know, what's that good? Or I can do 60 pushups. The hell's 10 pushups gonna do?
Starting point is 00:21:48 It does something, no joke. Again, I witnessed this in blue collar workers in my family. I must have told a story, at least a hundred, or maybe even 300 times on the podcast. But, you know, I had family members that were mechanics and plumbers. None of them are working their forearms and hands to failure.
Starting point is 00:22:06 They've been doing it for decades, you know? Maybe the first that impede with their work. Yeah, maybe the first few months, the hands got sore, but after that it was the same stuff over and over again. They're not working out, but these guys had ridiculous hands and forearms, like just muscular, like they would, they belong to amateur bodybuilders, and they didn't work out.
Starting point is 00:22:24 They didn't know exercise. Their diets were terrible. They were usually overweight, but they had these crazy forms. Look at, the next time you see your, your, your male carrier, the next time you see your male carrier in your neighborhood, look at their whole body and then look at their calves. I guarantee you, they will have calves that don't match the rest of the body. I guarantee you, they'll have muscular calves.
Starting point is 00:22:42 Why? They're walking 50,000 steps a day or more, just as part of their job. Now, you think their calves are getting a hard workout every time they do that? Of course not. They've been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years. At that point, you know, for them, it's like breathing.
Starting point is 00:22:58 And yet, why are their calves developing so much? It's that frequent signal that they're sending throughout the day. And you can do it as simple as this. I've tested this on myself. I've gotten hand grippers, and I'll have a, I actually have one in the studio. Usually it's with me.
Starting point is 00:23:12 And while we're podcasting and working, every so often, I don't even track it. I just pick it up and I squeeze it 10 times. I'm not working out and I squeeze it no time. And I notice when I do that, and I do it consistently throughout the day, I don't get sore, I don't get crazy, but I do notice when I go deadlift,
Starting point is 00:23:27 or go do a pull up, or go workout, my hands are like, you know, it's like 30% stronger. It's that big of a difference. I love this conversation around inmates right now, because it feels on par with probably how a lot of people feel. Yeah, so maybe you're not in actual prison right now, but a lot of people probably feel that way without having access to their gym and their normal routine and being kind of stuck at home, I feel like I've applied these principles more in the last
Starting point is 00:23:55 three months than I probably ever have. And I'm really enjoying that. I'm enjoying when we're up in Tahoe and we have our little gym set up inside the garage. I'll just go in and I'll do three sets of deadlifts that I'm done for now. Then I go back later on and go do three sets of pull-ups. Then I come back later on and do some strap work with the suspension trainer. It breaks up the day. At the end of the day, when I calculate all the sets and total volume, I've done more
Starting point is 00:24:22 than what I've done sometimes in a really hard one hour workout that I've dripped all day long and it just breaks the day up. Nice. Totally. Now one of the side effects of doing this, and you don't have to do it every hour or whatever, you could do it four or five times.
Starting point is 00:24:36 The trigger sessions, I recommend people do three a day, or you can have fun with it and do a little something every hour. Here's some of the side effects of that. You get, you have incredible alertness and focus throughout the day. You don't get those energy dips. No joke, you start to feel tired,
Starting point is 00:24:50 go do 10 body weight squats, a couple pushups, stand up and it feels like you had a small cup of coffee each time. It improves my productivity. When I do stuff like this on a regular basis, I'm more productive with work, movement promotes movement. It does. Now how can you utilize this yourself?
Starting point is 00:25:07 Here's an easy way to do it. Pick a weak body part. This is a great way to bring up a weak body part. If your shoulders are lagging, or your calves are lagging, hamstrings, whatever, maybe do something like this. Every hour, every other hour, you do a few reps for that body part.
Starting point is 00:25:24 The key here is not to beat the crap out of that body part. You're not doing a workout each time. You're just doing some reps, you know, super frequently throughout the day. Now there's another part to this that we can learn a lot from inmates. And that's their creativity. They are extremely creative with how-
Starting point is 00:25:44 What they can do with toothbrushes. This is amazing. Oh, you know what? That's I make shakes out of them. I don't know where your mind's going. No, that's actually true. When I was in high school, we had a police officer come to do a presentation and he had this class case and he showed us all the stuff that all the different shivs that they make. Oh, all the shanks they make out of cardboard and toothpaste and toothbrushes and tattoo, they make tattoo machines and like cassette players and all this stuff. They're explaining me creative.
Starting point is 00:26:17 Obviously you're locked in a cage and you have nothing to do but think all day long, but in terms of exercises. Yeah, they apply the same creativity in that direction. Very, very creative. Now this I think is applicable to today. Like you said, Adam, a lot of people still aren't going to the gym or their gyms are still closed. They're limited by their equipment.
Starting point is 00:26:37 You can get really creative with very minimal or no equipment. You can utilize things around your house in different places. You can hang your body. You can do things around your house in different places, you can hang your body, you can do a curl, a million and one different ways, whether you're changing the tempo or the squeeze or the hand position or how you rotate your elbows or where your elbows are positioned. I'm just talking about curls,
Starting point is 00:26:58 which is a super basic exercise. Creativity is another reason why I think they do build their physics the way I think. Yeah, and really thinking about angles and different ways to promote intensity in these exercises. So using walls and using ways to progress, like say a push up to start walking now up the wall. So now you have even more intense gravitational forces coming down to where you can end up, you know, bringing your legs over your head and do enhanced end pushups.
Starting point is 00:27:25 And there's a whole way to progress a lot of very simple moves that if you're confined to a certain amount of space and equipment, it does require you to really come up with creative solutions for that. Well, inmates are an example of how much we over complicate resistance training. All resistance training. Totally. All resistance training is flexion of the muscles with some sort of resistance.
Starting point is 00:27:49 Yeah. So, if you understand how to flex your bicep, flex your tricep, flex your shoulders, flex your quads. If you know how to flex all those muscles, all you're trying to do is create some sort of resistance with that. It can be isometric. You can use your body weight. You can do all kinds of different things.
Starting point is 00:28:04 And it doesn't have to look like what we see inside of a gym when we walk in, we look at all these machines and barbells and dumbbells, all you are needing to do is create some sort of resistance and flexing the muscle, that's it, and you've got resistance training. And because it's creative and different, it's a new stimulus, it's novel,
Starting point is 00:28:23 you're gonna see some great change. There's a couple of things that seem to be common. When I, like I said, I've interviewed and talked to a few people who have been locked up for longer periods of time. Couple of ways they, and this was a big question for me. How do you get creative if you don't have weights to produce more resistance?
Starting point is 00:28:39 One way they do it is they break, rep ranges of motion up. So what I mean by that is, you know what a full pushup looks like, right? So what they may do is they may go down to the bottom of a pushup and do a bunch of reps just for the first four inches. Then they'll do another more, you know,
Starting point is 00:28:54 bunch of reps at the next four inches and so on. So they're breaking up the range of motion into small ranges of motion to increase the tension. The other way they do it is by slowing reps down or by speeding them up, doing an explosive push-up for example, or doing a very, very slow, high tension push-ups. Just lots of creativity around basic simple exercises
Starting point is 00:29:17 will give you the variety that you get in a big gym almost with lots of equipment, but you're doing the same exercise. Here's another thing that they do, that's kind of forced upon them, but this cannot be overstated. They go to bed and they wake up at the same time, every single day.
Starting point is 00:29:33 They don't have a choice. That's, they go to bed at the same time, they wake up at the same time, they all get. You know, you can resist it all you want, but after months and years, you're getting eight hours or nine hours of sleep every single night. Every single night, you're doing eight hours or nine hours of sleep every single night. That's it.
Starting point is 00:29:46 Every single night, you're doing that. This is probably the Achilles heel for most clients. Totally. Is the rest, right? A lot of people have the discipline or the motivation to want to change their physique or do something different or work out, but then they have this crazy lifestyle or inconsistent lifestyle where, and I'm just as guilty of this.
Starting point is 00:30:07 Last night I was up till two in the morning thinking and riding and doing shit, and that's not normal. And then I'll have another night where I'm in bed by 930 or 10. And so I know that inconsistency is not ideal for maximizing my sleep and recovery. And like you said, Sally,
Starting point is 00:30:23 these guys are forced into a routine. And one of the side effects of that is they probably end up getting incredible consistent sleep, which is only going to aid in their recovery. Well, you know, a while ago, we were speculating on why body, pro bodybuilders who've been training forever on tons of, you know, steroids and all that stuff, hit a plateau and then go to the Middle East. What country was that that they went to? Dubai, right?
Starting point is 00:30:47 Dubai and gain like 20 pounds of muscle. Do you know how hard it is to gain five pounds of muscle when you're already extremely advanced? They'd go there and gain 20 pounds of muscle and we couldn't figure out what was going on. We thought maybe there was some new drug or whatever. Then we talked to bodybuilders in the know and they said, no, they just go there. They have nothing to do. They eat, they train, and they sleep.
Starting point is 00:31:06 Yeah, and emphasis on the sleep. That was the big one. Like, you get lots of consistent sleep. Go to bed at the same time. Wake up at the same time. And their bodies just built lots of muscle. I've done this with clients where we change nothing. We change nothing about their workout, change nothing about their diet. All we did was emphasize sleep. And low and behold, like magic, fat comes off their body, they start to sculpt and shape or build or strength goes up just from doing that one thing right there. And in fact, when I did talk to the people that I know who've been in prison about what
Starting point is 00:31:38 they did over there, aside from the extreme frequency, that was the big one. They said, you know what, our diets aren't that great. We don't get a lot of protein, but we train really frequently, and we get good sleep every single night. We got nothing better to do, we go to bed, we have to go to bed a certain time. Two major factors.
Starting point is 00:31:54 Exactly, two major factors. Let's talk about gymnasts now, right? Gymnists have some incredibly impressive physics on their body, and the way they train is relatively unique. One thing that I noticed with gymnast that they utilize more than almost any other athlete or person who trains their body that I can think of is that use a lot of high tension isometrics. A lot of their competitive moves and positions require that. Like if you get up on the rings,
Starting point is 00:32:25 you can't be wobbling and moving all over the place. Of course, we all know that the famous pose that they do, they're real difficult iron cross, right? Is that what they call it? That is a tension pose. When they get on the palmle horse, they have to learn how to hold themselves up for long periods of time before they do anything else.
Starting point is 00:32:41 When they're holding onto the rings, they have to be able to grip and tighten intense their body. And everything's about tension. If you look at a gymnast, the way they get scored is it's not just the movements, it's how nice their body looks. It's how graceful it is. It's how pointed the toes are,
Starting point is 00:32:57 how straight the legs are, how straight the elbows are, how well they're able to hold their position while they're swinging or moving their body. That's all isometrics, that's all tension and most training programs, the vast majority, don't even mention isometrics, not even in there. There's such the best example of pure control over one's body and mastery over technique for movements
Starting point is 00:33:24 and it's such a high skill sport that it's hard to really break down every little thing that they do in their training, but a lot of it, like you said, is that that high control of in range of motion strength. And this is something that you don't find in a lot of other training modalities. And that's one specific differentiating factor
Starting point is 00:33:46 is they've really put in the time to then expand upon the types of movements their body can produce. And so teaching the body to just get comfortable with it, but then really progressively overloading to where they can do things that your average person just can't. So we mentioned gymnasts the other day on a podcast and actually had somebody ask me, like, you know, I heard you guys talking about the benefits of isometrics and I just don't understand how something like that can build so much muscle.
Starting point is 00:34:17 And the way I explained it, and you guys can add to this what you guys think, but the way I explained it to this kid that was asking me this was like, and I use the analoged at Sal uses all the time that I love, which is the amplifier is your CNS, and then your speakers are your muscles. And we always talk about how we develop muscles and build muscles, but we don't spend a lot of time talking about the central nervous system. And I can't think of a better way to train the central nervous system. And I can't think of a better way to train the central
Starting point is 00:34:46 nervous system than high tension, isometrics because when you are tensing up your entire body like that, that you're developing the communication to all of your muscles, all in your body, all simultaneously, and as tense as you possibly can. That is one of the best ways that you could potentially build your CNS, build your amplifier that then can output into the muscle. So I would attribute that to being one of the main reasons why they can develop so much muscle is the communication that they're developing
Starting point is 00:35:21 through their scene. It's the ability to summon all the soldiers to do the work for you. Right. You know, and that's such a component people just don't understand that you don't have to add like an extreme amount of load to be able to get a mastery over that. And they're an example of that where they're really using
Starting point is 00:35:39 bodyweight techniques, but this is all coming from within. This is that intrinsic, which is kind of esoteric on some level, we're trying to explain this, but you can really squeeze and connect and recruit even more muscle fibers to get involved in every lift. It's the central nervous system that fires muscle fibers. It's the central nervous system that tells your body how many muscle fibers it should activate. And the amount of muscle fibers. It's the central nervous system that tells your body how many muscle fibers it should activate. The amount of muscle fibers that you can summon is largely determined by how effective your central nervous system is at talking to your muscles. I'll give you
Starting point is 00:36:15 a couple examples. Think back. If you've been lifting weights for a while, think back to when you first started working out, or think back to when the last time you took a long break was, and you got under the barbell, and you were gonna do a bench press. Remember how shaky it felt? It felt like, almost like your muscles were laughing. That's how I remember, that's my best way of explaining it. Like, you don't have a good connection,
Starting point is 00:36:34 so you try to do a rep and it's like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, absolutely. That's your central nervous system, not being very well connected. Your muscle fibers aren't gonna activate very well. Your muscles aren't gonna grow very well. Remember, muscles are dumb. They don't do anything on the realm. They have to be turned on. Think about it. Here's another way. If you've ever met anybody who has a, who's had
Starting point is 00:36:53 nerve damage to a particular muscle or part of their body, how does that muscle look? Completely atrophied. It's disconnected. The body, because the central nervous system is not attached or connected to that area or that body, that part of the body, the the central nervous system is not attached or connected to that area, or that part of the body, the body then atrophies the muscle. We have no use for it. Muscles are what adapt and grow, and part of the way they grow is by what kind of signal they're receiving from the central nervous system, and high tension isometrics turns things on like you would not believe.
Starting point is 00:37:23 Here's one of the other benefits of it. And it sucks because for some reason, isometrics, people don't include that as a muscle building technique, which is silly. It'd be like me saying right now, only do the positive portion of a lift, and never do the negative, or only do the negative, never do the positive.
Starting point is 00:37:38 You're missing out on a huge component. It's a tough sell because it's really hard, and it's not like super fun and exciting. It builds muscle just like the other types of muscle contractions and the better you get at them, the better you're going to build muscle. Here's my favorite part about it. Isometrics don't damage muscle as much. Yes, it's very safe.
Starting point is 00:37:57 So it's a great way to, you can literally take your routine, throw some isometrics in, you don't necessarily have to worry about over training, you're just going to get extra results. So I always like finding ways that I can teach a client or show them something so they can feel what I'm trying to explain right now. Because what we just talked about can be very nuanced for the average lifter who doesn't care that much about the science, they just want the damn results. And so I'm always as a trainer thinking of like, how can I like get them to feel what I'm trying to explain to them? So a common area that is really unstable in people and we you have lots of issues as a trainer is shoulders.
Starting point is 00:38:34 Shoulders can be very unstable and you know, clicking, feeling and little chronic pain they have there or just feel weak when they first get into their shoulder workouts. And so it takes three or four sets before they really feel like they're getting in the groove. Something that I would do with a client to explain this, the benefits of like a high tension, isometric exercises, I would find a weight that is really hard for them to press, you know, two or three times above their head. So it's a heavy load and get them to press it and lock out above their head. And just hold and hold.
Starting point is 00:39:04 And just hold that. a heavy load and get them to press it and lock out above their head and hold. And just hold that. And when you're holding it, you are literally thinking about everything from your feet, all the way up to your fingertips, the entire body being engaged, the glutes being engaged, to keep your hips underneath you and the shoulders nice and stacked, the chin's tucked, and you're just holding the isometric hold for as long as you can and start your shoulder workout with something like that, and then go into your shoulder press, your raises,
Starting point is 00:39:29 and stuff like that, and pay attention to how your shoulders feel. Oh, you'll feel strong. You'll feel stable, and you'll feel right in the groove to go lift, and I used to love to show this, to show the value of what we're talking about right now. Yeah, great ways to implement isometrics are carries, all kinds of carries, overhead carries, suitcase carries, farmer walks.
Starting point is 00:39:51 But you want to work with isometrics through different ranges of motion. So Adam just talked about end range of motion, right? My arms are straight up above my head. You can also bring dumbbells down like you're beginning a shoulder press and hold there. Right. Because yes, because isometrics, there is a carryover to range the motion outside of what you're doing, but most of the benefit is in that range of motion you're doing.
Starting point is 00:40:10 Here's an application for the person who just wants to get strong right a particular lift. Identify the weak point of that range of motion. Let's say it's bench press and you find that once you come two inches off your chest, it's hard to move the weight. Once you go back, once you go over another four inches, now it's hard to move the weight. Once you go over another four inches, now it's easier to lift. So there's this like four inch window
Starting point is 00:40:28 where you're just not that strong. That's where you do your isometrics. Get underneath a bar, put the safeties up, put the barbell under the safeties, so that the bar is where you're weak, push up against the safeties, create tension there, do it for 10, 15 seconds, and then rest and treat it like a workout.
Starting point is 00:40:45 And then watch what happens to your progress. Here's the other thing about gymnasts that I really like a lot, is that they don't work out, they practice. This is a very interesting distinction when it comes to training. And this is one that took me a long time to understand. Every time I went to the gym and I thought to myself,
Starting point is 00:41:04 today I'm working my chest or my back or my legs, me a long time to understand. Every time I went to the gym and I thought to myself, today I'm working my chest or my back or my legs, the focus was feeling that body part and hammering that body part. The focus wasn't practicing lifts that train that body part. It's very, very different. Practice means I'm going to get good at that exercise. Training means I'm just getting the body part to feel fatigued and sore and pumped. Now, gymnasts don't go to practice in their gymnasium and they don't go to think to themselves, I'm just getting the body part to feel fatigued and sore and pumped. Now gymnasts don't go to practice in their gymnasium and they don't go to think to themselves, I'm gonna work out my chest shoulders and triceps.
Starting point is 00:41:31 They think I need to perfect my position at the top of the rings, or I need to perfect the iron cross, I need to perfect how I pummel on the pummel horse or whatever. How can I get up higher in that position? More explosively quickly, but then be able to now stabilize it as smooth as possible. So all those little nuances, they're paying attention to where, you know, the joints compensate or something happens where, you know,
Starting point is 00:41:56 the movement overall just doesn't look as seamless as it could be. And so all those things are taken into account when they're going up and they're performing these. Right, and now practice looks like this. I'm practicing perfect technique and I'm getting technique better. You can't do that when you're super fatigued, can you? Right, so as gymnasts is not going in there and saying, I'm gonna do this over and over until I can't move anymore
Starting point is 00:42:22 because then all your practicing is crappy. Bad form. Crapie form. So they practice, practice, all you're practicing is crappy. Bad form. Crapie form. So they practice, practice, practice. My form is starting to get sloppy. They jump off, then they wait. They rest. That's the thing.
Starting point is 00:42:33 There's a lot more rest involved in this style of training than people realize. It has to be perfect every time, and if it's not, they're aspiring for their next movement to be perfect. So, the amount of rest is really to then recoup all of that so they don't have any elements of a team. Well, one of the greatest expressions that we see of this besides gymnast is your Olympic lifters.
Starting point is 00:42:55 And if you've ever trained with another... They've never lived to film. They never do. It's very, very rare that they're ever even touching their max load or closer max load. Most of their training is just practice. And when you go to practice, it is a mindset thing. Like you're a loody to sell.
Starting point is 00:43:10 It's not, I'm going to train legs today and I'm thinking about getting my legs sore. It's, I'm gonna squat today. And today, I want my squat to look better than it would look the last time I squat. So the way you move is so important. And you're more focused on the movement of the exercise than you are actually the load of the exercise. That's how 80, 90% of your
Starting point is 00:43:31 training should look is focused on the training of these movements before always thinking about the load. Right. Now fatiguing a muscle, getting it pumped and doing a lot of stuff. Yes, that's important. But here's how important practicing lifts is and I'll make this argument all day long If you were to just be able to split yourself into two twins everything identical One of you went to the gym and just hammered muscles the other one went to the gym and practice lifts Let's just let's say it's legs one of you goes to the gym and hammeres your legs when they do leg your leg work out The other one goes to gym and just tries to get really good at squats or really good at front squats or other leg exercises. Over the course of a year or two years or
Starting point is 00:44:08 three years, do you know who's going to have better develop legs? The person who practices. No joke. I'll make that argument all day long. It's the person that practices. I remember first witnessing this myself. I remember there was a trainer that worked for me and him and I were similar in build, but the guy just bench pressed like a tremendous amount of weight. I remember what he lifted, but it was, he was just so strong. And I remember thinking like, oh, how does he lift things so much weight? And then I realized in between clients, because he would train clients all day long. In between clients, he'd load up three plates or two plates on the bar.
Starting point is 00:44:40 He'd get underneath and he'd practice really good technique, rack it up, take the weights off and then go train exactly. So all day he's practicing this lift never really training to fatigue not getting himself sore But holy cow his body got extremely developed and he was really really strong at that particular lift So trade and this is true for most people. I'll say this if all of you ever if all you guys ever do is Go to the gym to practice the most important exercises, you're like 95% of the way there. No joke, it is, yeah, sure, you wanna feel muscle squeeze, you wanna do that stuff, there's definitely value in that. But the practice element, boy, can we learn from gym-ness
Starting point is 00:45:16 in this particular regard? It's gonna benefit your tremendous. The other thing they do really well is they address mobility, full range of motion. Totally. Probably, I'd say, gymnasts above almost, them and Olympic lifters, when you look at the way that they take the body through its fullest range of motion.
Starting point is 00:45:31 And, you know, this is kind of counter for the bodybuilding community. The bodybuilding community has been, you know, pushing the shorter wraps and the whole time under tension is what we're trying to accomplish the entire time, missing out on the benefits of learning to take the muscle through its fullest range of motion. And the best part about that is not only do they get all these great muscle building
Starting point is 00:45:53 effects, but when you talk about like joint health and joint stability and protecting yourself from injury, man, these are some of the most resilient bodies that you'll see out there. Oh yeah. And remember mobility isn't just range of motion. Mobility means you control a large range of motion. You're strong throughout the range of motion. So like the difference between a gymnast and let's say somebody that's really flexible
Starting point is 00:46:19 is that a gymnast is also flexible, but they're training under tension throughout that range of motion. So they're strong through their flexibility. Somebody just really flexible, sure they could do the splits and they could do all kinds of, you know, ranges of motion, but they're weak in it. That causes problems. Gymnists are strong through ranges of motion.
Starting point is 00:46:36 Now, what does this mean for you? Well, the larger range of motion you have control over, the less risk of injury, but also the more muscle fibers you activate and the more muscle you build. Studies are pretty conclusive on this. A full range of motion done well squat builds more muscle than a half range of motion done well squat.
Starting point is 00:46:54 And again, to point out, it is a sport. And so that when they get into certain end ranges of motion and they're putting an extreme amount of intensity and tension, like there's potential for injury because they're so far out of the normal spectrum of range of motion for your average person. This is the ultimate expression of that being a sport, but we could take elements of that and create a little less extreme version of what they've created in terms of the range of motion. If I could get my shoulder to now get a little bit further back under control, be able to
Starting point is 00:47:33 hold weight comfortably in that and be able to control that. That's going to benefit everything I do in terms of a regular barbell lift. I'm going to have a lot more control and stability, which then is gonna allow my body to produce more force to provide strength. This is one of my favorite parts about the newest program that we just released, the suspension trainer. In fact, my sister was just texting me last night and she's gone through her first week and she's like, oh my God, like my body has never felt so good. And it's those straps allow you to take your body and with different angles so you can regress it for whatever level you're at because obviously doing an iron cross and some
Starting point is 00:48:17 of these, I'm sure there's people listening right now that are going. Yeah, well that's, yeah, this is great guys, but I'm 50 years old. I'm never going to do the iron cross on rings or do full pull ups on there or dips off the rings and the things that's probably going through their head right now. But there's ways to take what we're talking about and regress that. The suspension trainer is a great example of that. You have these straps would create an unstable environment very similar to like what rings or pulmahorse or some of these things that you're talking about would do.
Starting point is 00:48:50 And then yet you can regress it so somebody who's 70, 80 years old can do a push up with these straps and it's relatively easy enough for them to control their body weight, but then take it through its fullest deepest range of motion and force you because it's unstable to have control of it to South's point and you take it through and the benefits of that. I mean, I love it. I love hearing my sister who goes through everything that we ever release and I always inched to her. She resembles the average client that I would have.
Starting point is 00:49:19 And so I love hearing feedback like that and she's like totally blown away by the suspension trainer because of that. She's like, I didn't the suspension trainer because of that. She's like, I didn't think that this would be a side effect of this is that my body, my joints, my back, my shoulders feeling better than it's ever felt before just from the first week of training. Oh, totally. You know, so what's the real takeaway here?
Starting point is 00:49:37 The takeaway is go lighter so that you can get a better range of motion. That's basically what it boils down, is rather than trying to go heavier with your range of motion. See if you can go lighter and challenge your range of motion so you can expand upon it, activate more muscle fibers and get better results. That, lastly, let's talk about sprinters. Now sprinters, in my opinion,
Starting point is 00:50:01 have some of the most impressive physics at the highest level. If you look at a Olympic level sprinters, they look almost like if they wanted to become bodybuilders, they could with like six months of training, just from their build and their physique, even the long leaner looking ones, like Usain Bolt, you look at his legs, you look at his shoulders and his arms, and he's built a lot of muscle and accident,
Starting point is 00:50:24 just from training the way he does to become a better sprinter. One of the main takeaways that you'll get from sprinters is that they train explosively, fast twitch muscle fibers. There's almost no way to activate fast twitch muscle fibers better than with explosive movements. Even movements that look slow in grinding, applied explosively, activate more fast switch muscle fiber. So what I mean by that is, and of course this is all, you know, considering you have good technique and good control, okay. Let's say you're doing a heavy barbell squat, let's say you're, you know, 200 pounds of
Starting point is 00:50:58 the bar and that's heavy for you, but you got good control on everything. So you go down to the bottom and you come up in a, in a control fashion or you go down to the bottom and then you try to explode up. Now because it's heavy, when you look at the squat, you're not moving very fast, but the intention is explosive. Studies show that explosive intentions build more muscle fiber, bigger muscles by activating more fast switch muscle fibers. That's the component. That's right. And I think that that gets, you know, missed, well, I think people don't understand like how,
Starting point is 00:51:29 moving a barbell with speed is a completely different experience than, you know, just loading it heavily and trying to grind your way up, you know, with a lot of weight. Moving it with speed, it provides a completely different stimulus to the muscles to respond to now. The thing though is that this is like sort of the top.
Starting point is 00:51:49 This is the peak of your training experience. This is one of those things. We always bring this up sort of at the end of all these things where we're talking about stabilization, we're talking about supporting the joint, making sure all the movement is nice and fluid and controlled. And your control has to be at mastery level to then get you to this point where now I can open it up. I'm opening up the throttle for as fast as I can possibly move,
Starting point is 00:52:16 which then gets your muscles to really grow, but you just gotta really make sure that you have everything supported. I'm so glad you brought that point up because that was what I was going to say. I'm glad too. I don't know if we even made a point to organize this where this was last, but it should be in the order of things that we're talking about. Because I'd hate for someone to hear this.
Starting point is 00:52:38 We talk about all the benefits that the spreaders get for explosiveness. And you have a beginner lifter that decides, oh, I'm going to do explosive squats when you have terrible squats to start with. That's right. You know, work on all the other things we've talked about, like isometric slowing the tempo down and the, you know, tension type movements, perfecting, practicing, all those things should come first. And then explosiveness is the greatest expression of all that together.
Starting point is 00:53:04 Like that's when you get that, and that's how you progress it. This is when we go back to the inmates. Like how do the inmates keep getting creative and keep progressing? Well, the pinnacle of that would be this part, the explosiveness, the explosive pushups, the explosive squats, those metrics.
Starting point is 00:53:19 Yeah, the plyometric type of stuff that we see abuse so often, there is value to it, but we talk about it being abused because people highlight the benefits of it like we are right now. And then all of a sudden, you have your average person who goes the gym inconsistently wants to jump all the way to that because they hear all these great benefits from it. But there's an order of operation. You want to spend the time, you know, building these stable joints, building the strength, building this control, practicing these movements. And then when you get really good at that, this is a great way to progress.
Starting point is 00:53:48 That's why this is the last phase of maps performance. When you follow maps performance, you go through different phases. And the last one is utilizing explosive movements to build explosivity and to build muscle fiber. You know, here's a thing about explosive movements. Studies show that it literally unlocks muscle growth that you could not tap into with traditional lifting. This is on advanced lifters. They'll show with advanced lifters
Starting point is 00:54:17 who've been lifting a long time that by applying explosive movements properly, they unlock a new potential for muscle growth. And there's lots of studies on this. There's post-activation potentiation studies. There's studies on athletes who don't necessarily need explosive power, but they utilize it to get their muscles to respond again.
Starting point is 00:54:38 There's also a specific way to apply it, by the way. In order to get good, or to utilize the benefits, or get the benefits of explosive movements, they have to be done explosively. I know that sounds funny, you're probably thinking, well, no duh, obviously. No, no, no, think, okay, this is the deal here. You can't do explosive movements when you're tired, fatigued, sore. It doesn't work that way. So in other words, when you do a traditional, for example, set of squats or bench press, you go to a certain level of fatigue.
Starting point is 00:55:06 If you're training explosively, you stop way before that. The minute the set stops becoming explosive, the set is done. Because every other rep after that is no longer training the explosive movement portion. It's no longer making you more explosive. So it literally is, so when you look at a sprinter sprint,
Starting point is 00:55:23 they're doing it not to fatigue, they're exploding, then they're walking back carefully, they're doing a little bit of dynamic stretching, they're getting their heart rate to come back, down, they wait a second, and then when they feel like they can be explosive again, they sprint again. It's not like sprint, sprint, sprint,
Starting point is 00:55:39 because then it just turns into long distance running. Not only that, you'll actually see, so if you ever watched, you know, by and by no means am I a coach for sprinters, but I've watched high level coaches coach sprinters and they will actually break up the explosive movement. So if you'll see them who practice the takeoff, yeah, you know, you know, 50 different times with it, right off the block, with a minute rest plus between each one, long respiratory, and it'll be, you know, they're coming off the block with a minute rest plus between each one, long rest period of, and it'll be, you know, you're coming off the block
Starting point is 00:56:06 and they are critiquing the head position where the hand pulls through, and then it's just, they take off and then they stop. Because everywhere, where's the leak of power? Right. Yeah, the whole thing needs to be explosive. And you take off to the end. And we can take, we can take from that
Starting point is 00:56:20 and apply that in our resistance training. You don't, the whole movement sometimes can be broken down in segments and perfected. Similar to what you were talking about with attention stuff with the bench press and things like that, is look at the movement, again, practicing movements, look at it and the parts of it and become hypercritical of a part of it. Now think about extracting some of the components from the gymnast. How they do this extreme isometric tension. So if I'm on the block and I'm trying to get the maximizing
Starting point is 00:56:50 the most power in that moment, I'm going to get my body organized in such a way that I'm anchoring everything into the ground. I'm driving all of that tension that I'm creating internally and I'm forcing it down to my feet. Now once I get it there, I'm thinking about my technique of getting everything organized to then get triple extension and throw everything out there as quick as possible. And then now you're in a position where my performance has just increased tenfold because
Starting point is 00:57:19 I've applied these previous principles to this power movement. I can always tell when I see, and it's very, very rare to see this, when someone has been coached like this, and they're doing like a box jump or something, and you'll watch them, like they'll do one box jump, and they'll literally be like two, three minutes in between,
Starting point is 00:57:39 and you'll see them positioning their feet, bending at the knee just the exact angle they want trying to replicate what they did before. And it's like there's literally, there's more time put into preparing the body to take off for that one jump than there is the amount of times they're jumping in the workout.
Starting point is 00:57:58 And so that's something that you can learn from these high level sprinters that get this incredible results is don't have hazardly go after some of the things they're doing and just think that you all I'm just going to go explosively in a workout one day break it down to that level and be that critical of every piece of the movement and that's where you get that real great benefit and that's also how you're safe and you protect yourself when you're doing these.
Starting point is 00:58:24 My favorite tool for explosive training is resistance bands. Love resistance bands for this, like getting into a chest press with a heavy resistance band and boom, exploding, holding that position, bringing them back down, letting go of the bands, resting for a second, and then repeating,
Starting point is 00:58:38 which brings me to another point, long rest periods. Sprinters don't go and sprint again, unless they're ready to explode again. And this is definitely something you can learn from. Now, there is benefit to training with shorter-rest periods. You get a better pump and all that stuff. But that also doesn't mean that you don't get benefit from doing long-rest periods to where each set, you're fresh and ready to apply yourself. In fact, absolutely. In fact, one way you can apply this is rather than doing this crazy amount of volume sets and reps in your workout, you're going in, you're picking two exercises and you're resting
Starting point is 00:59:12 three minutes in between sets, but those sets are very, you're applying yourself. You're really driving through, you're really feeling the muscles contract, you're making them really, really count. And studies do show that this approach does build a lot of strength and a lot of muscle. I do think it's something we can learn. And this is a workout. It can be a workout. I think we get so caught up in that our workouts have to be like this, you know, long old thing where we do seven, ten different exercises. Like, sometimes a great workout can be exactly that. I'm going to pick one, maybe two movements,
Starting point is 00:59:42 tops, and the whole hour, I'm gonna break down that entire movement and focus on all these little new ones that master. Oh, huge. Absolutely. Now, here's the thing. You find all of these principles in the maps programs, and I think this is what makes them so damn effective, is that through our experience training,
Starting point is 01:00:02 lots and lots of people, years and years and years, especially if you have a passion for training. If you're a trainer listening, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you have a passion for really getting people, the results that they want, really getting them to do them for themselves, to do this long term, to do it with the least amount of work,
Starting point is 01:00:20 because that's important. When you're training average people, it's important to give them maximum benefit and minimal amount of time because time is a difficult one for a lot of people when they have a job and kids and all that of the stuff. Is you really start to figure out what really works. So one of the things you'll find in mass programming
Starting point is 01:00:37 is frequency is a huge factor that we always consider. Most maps programs are full body workouts. Most maps programs also have frequency builders within them, whether it's a mobility session like you find in maps performance or trigger sessions and maps in a ball like a focus sessions in maps aesthetic or flow sessions and hit or whatever. Frequency is super, super important. What do you find in common with the inmates, gymnasts and sprinters? They train very frequently. The sprinter doesn't go sprint real hard once a week
Starting point is 01:01:06 and then leave, they're doing it throughout the whole week. The gymnast isn't practicing to failure once a week. They're doing it every single day. Same thing with the inmate. The next one is intensity is judiciously applied. In fitness, I think you just intensity has been like, it's like the one that we just keep hammering. Oh, if something's not working, just go harder.
Starting point is 01:01:27 Oh, if it's just apply more intensity, just go harder. No, intensity is a factor. It's something to be played with, just like frequency, just like sets, just like reps or exercises. You can't just squeeze that one all the time. You run out of juice. So intensity is important, but it must be applied judiciously.
Starting point is 01:01:45 So if you're doing tons and tons of frequency, does that mean you go balls of the wall every single time? Of course not, doesn't work that way. In fact, the frequency loses its value. The other thing is our focus on the most effective exercises. Just look at gymnast sprinters and inmates do very little isolation movements.
Starting point is 01:02:02 The inmates, because they don't have access to anything that gives them isolation movements, gymnast could care less about isolation movements. The inmates, because they don't have access to anything that gives them isolation movements, gymnasts could care less about isolation movements, and so could sprinters. Almost everything they do is full body, almost everything they do is a compound movement, and those those exercises just produce the best results. One compound exercise is as good as the next five isolation movements combined in terms of producing results. Now you touched on all the different programs where we've taken these phases. If I had to pick, I would say both maps performance and the suspension training program probably incorporate more than any other program, the stuff that we're talking about today. I would agree, maps performance in particular, what's its emphasis on the explosive component at the end of the program, to the way we utilize compound lifts, to the way we throw in lots of frequency, both with the
Starting point is 01:02:52 foundational workouts and the mobility sessions that are done. I mean, with maps, performance, you're doing three longer traditional workouts in the sense of the time, but then you're throwing in another two to three other mobility sessions, which are really shorter and working the muscles differently to throw in that frequency. So that's what you get with all of those programs. And for yourself, do not be close-minded. Be open-minded. Look at different modalities. Learn what you can pick up from each one, apply it to yourself, and this is really the key to longevity in terms of both progress results, but also just in making things fun,
Starting point is 01:03:30 because it is fun to try different things. And with that look, mine pump is recorded on video as well as audio. Come check us out on YouTube. Also you can find us on Instagram. Even Doug, in fact Doug does a lot of behind the scenes stuff. So if you want to learn about podcasting, the equipment and what goes into producing a good podcast, go follow Doug at in fact Doug does a lot of behind the scenes stuff. So if you want to learn about podcasting, the equipment and what goes into producing a
Starting point is 01:03:46 good podcast, go follow Doug at Mind Pump Doug. If you want fitness stuff or funny stuff, come follow me and my co-host on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Salon at him 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 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.
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