Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 144: What is Progressive Overload?

Episode Date: September 7, 2015

Progressive overload is a concept that many are familiar with and most abuse. Sal, Adam & Justin discuss how you can control intensity, frequency and duration to maximize the results you are getting in the gym.

And yeah, Adam, did you know we have a ratings and review contest going on in iTunes? No, I had no idea. No, when we do. So don't you listen to our shows? We know he listens, but we announced it. No, I think I announced it and guess what happens when I talk. Nobody listens.

You know, that's, that's my, that's my mom. What does talk nobody? Do you guys see this comment on Facebook? It's pretty crazy to say. Anyway, Doug, what was it? Oh, yeah. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring this up just one more time. We're doing a review contest in iTunes

and it's gonna end Wednesday the ninth. Okay, so you gotta get him in before that date so they can get a judge. That's right. And potentially win a prize. Well, we're gonna look at them on Thursday, the 10th. Okay. We're gonna decide in the top three that we choose

are gonna be announced on our future shows, and they're all gonna get t-shirts. Oh, perfect. All right. T-shirts in a car, is that what we're gonna do? A BMW? This is an open. Now, this is another issue we're having, Adam.

You're promising, car. You're promising everybody, all these things we can't deliver. It's t-shirts or a car. We're gonna give them your watches. It's one of that. Whichever one we have. This is a promise in my shade.

And Adam, I understand you have a few cars at your wedding. He's got a role in it. Yeah, I saw. Well, here's the thing, Adam wore the shirts through a workout. And that way, when you get it, you're gonna have his essence on it. Just to spice it up a little bit,'re gonna be able to bring it and then get it to the smell like ax body spring I do not wear Adam's body spray I hate to smell of

ax body spray I hate to smell of smells like walking douche I hate to smell of cologne I'm mold chain isn't it I've? I wanted to ask her. I should have asked our therapist that was just here about the therapist. It was just psychology professor. I said, I called you professor. I felt like she was my therapist. I should have asked her, what, why that is that I've always had this issue with, I've never worn cologne.

And it's like, you know, it's like the staple gift that people give you. It's like, you know, cologne for you never worn cologne. And it's like, you know, it's like the staple gift that people give you. It's like, you know, Cologne for instance. You never worn Cologne. I do this. Obviously. I hate it. I'm a shower guy. Do you have showers three times a day?

Well, I wear aftershave. I don't wear Cologne. You wear aftershave? How many? I karate. How many winners are we? How many winners are we giving? We're gonna get out three.

Again, not listening. Three winners. Three winners. And so Adam, I'm on board with you on the whole clone thing. I don't like it. Ah, see? But, getting back to the topic at hand, please get those reviews out. It really helps us out.

We really appreciate everyone who's already done it. Yeah, all five stars, of course. Love you. Of course, yeah. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, omite, omite, om with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.

I wanted to bring something up to you guys. And I feel like, I think we all agreed when we first started this radio show, the vision or the mission statement or whatever, we don't have a fucking mission. Why don't we have a mission statement, though? You need to get on that. I don't know, but I think it's a podcast. I think that's the term. You don't, we don't have a mission statement with that.

You don't have a mission statement with a podcast. No, no, he's saying, cause you call it a radio show. Oh, time. It's a podcast. Well, it's a radio show. I feel like radio podcast. Radio, do you know what?

Radio means you're on the radio. No, I think it's high time for us to have a mission. I think it's a radio podcast. Yeah, right. It's under you know, I like I'll go with it. We're at mind pump radio.com. So it should be that. That's true. Well, I think Adam was that was the only domain available. Well, where I was getting at with this is that, you know, the ultimate vision of this was to give out, to debunk a lot of bullshit out there, a little bit of entertainment while educating people and having a good time, right?

I mean, it's definitely awesome for us. And I think one of the things we didn't want to do with our podcast was we didn't want to be like those guys that are just like selling a product, right? And pushing their shit all the time. But then the flip is this, and the reason why I'm bringing this up is I keep getting this. And part of it's frustrating

because we're trying not to be that guy who's like, you know, those guys that are always talking about their books and their programs and their stuff. But then I get people that are like listeners, right? And I had some of this happen to me yesterday and this is what I'm talking about. This is coming up to me and like,

hey, you know Adam, I love Mind Palm. I was wondering if you give me some like, really good nutritional bias. I'm trying to put together a diet this and that. Have you read the nutrition guide yet? Adam, I love MindPump. I was wondering if you could give me some really good nutritional bias. I'm trying to put together a diet. This and that. I'm like, have you read the nutrition guide yet? And they're like, no, what's that?

And I'm like, our book. You listen to MindPump and you have the book. That's the downside. And not talk class only talking about. I won't let people know. Yeah. And they get excited. They're like, you have a book on nutrition?

Yeah, check it out. So, you know, I guess this is me not saying, but saying that, you know, hey, we do, we have books on nutrition, we have books on working out. So if you guys don't know this already, we have an inclusion guide, we have a, you know, we have a- We have a full workout system set up there,

Nutrition Survival Guide, we have a fasting guide. The fasting guide is the one that, a lot of times, because fasting is all of a sudden become this thing now. People are starting to talk about it more and more. Of course, we are the one that a lot of times, because fasting is all of a sudden become this thing now. People are starting to talk about it more and more. Of course, we were the ones that really brought it up. I'd like to say first in terms of performance. And now you're starting to see the performance,

you know, facets, people starting to talk about it in terms of performance. So people used to talk about fasting in terms of health, but you never heard athletes really talk about it or fitness trainers and stuff like that. So I feel like we were among the first people to do that. I like to credit myself as being one of the first professional men's physique athletes

to incorporate it into his diet while I was. For sure, yeah, yeah. But that just is like in a total anomaly for most people, like, are you kidding me? You're not gonna eat anything? Like, you're gonna lose all the muscle, you're gonna be so hard for it. So,

well we have, we actually have a member in our form and we won't give out his name yet, but he's been a long time listener. He posted this the other day, he's been a long time listener, he's been in the industry for 15 years. So he's been a personal trainer, been training people 15 years,

listened to the show, was reluctant to switching his routine because he did body parts splits and was reluctant to changing his nutrition. He was eating the one, you know, one to two grams of protein per pound of body weight. It was hard for him to make that switch and I can relate, right? We can all kind of relate like it's hard to make that switch for yourself because oh my god, what if I lose my gains or whatever? Anyway, he finally made the switch and he made the poster the day in the forum. He's like Dude, this is fucking crazy like my body's leaning out. I'm building muscle. I feel great It's like shit and I'm I my comment to him was it's freaking awesome when your paradigm is just shattered

He goes man after 15 years. I can't believe that this would actually happen Yeah, super awesome. Yeah, so that same person was also the person that leads me to I guess this is what we're gonna talk about Posted something about an athlete an athletes workout now the reason why I want to talk about Oh, right. That was the workout the big old so the reason why I want and I don't want to roll a person or the bus because it's not like The athletes problem. It's it's more and this is to our listeners, man. If you guys follow somebody, some men's physique pro or pro athletes or anybody else's workout, right? That they do for themselves. Exactly.

That they do for themselves. There's some major factors that we have to keep in mind. And I'm going to give you some examples of what I went through myself personally from going from fat to fit, and then getting in the competitive level competing and then also understanding Genetics man is you know some people can handle a crazy amount of load like can just hammer the fuck out of their body and they do they just they're built for it And then they build this crazy physique, you know, that just handles moving crazy loads. They're just, they're genetic freaks, you know, and they're a small percentage of people. And you support and you said that genetic freak. Let's look at the top physique competitors, top bodybuilders, top athletes. What are they all? What are they all,

are they all genetic normal? No, they're all genetic. They're all genetic freaks. So following their exact routines is not a good idea for you. Exactly, and that's where I'm getting with it. It's just like any sport too, whether it's basketball, football, it doesn't matter. Those guys too, what makes a pro a pro is he's not just he or she is not somebody who just worked really hard at that.

And I know everybody wants to, that's part of it. Yeah, that is's part of it. Yeah, that is definitely part of it. But that's not what made them pro. I mean, you can get, no matter who you are, you can get in great shape. But it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know,

if you compare you to this other guy or girl who is a genetic freak, and you guys do exactly the same thing, you know, everyone is, everyone's gonna respond differently to that and some are like on a whole Another level and so when you see these workouts with the amount of volume that some of these guys and girls are doing and then and then they post them Or they sell them even they sell ebooks on them of you know, oh train like this, you know blast that blasted Whatever in X amount of weeks or days and you know people purchased these things and get on on board like oh I love it was so intense and hard well here's the thing. Take me three hours to accomplish. Yeah right so and I talk a lot about this when I first started my YouTube channel of when I first

started being all you know the fact got going fit and you know you want to do as minimal as possible to a list of change because, and this is, the topic I want to talk about is progressive overload. And I'd love to get in this with you guys and on your theories and your way of approaching this and, you know, I'll just start by sharing how I am. And that is that you got to, you do not want to do balls to the wall right out the gates because you that's not a progressive overload. You're coming right out the gates running out with a guy who's been training for five years consistently as to build that physique and you're nowhere near that physique, but yet you're

lifting like that physique that doesn't make sense. Well, to be the other thing you have to consider is this is this is the mentality people go into it with. They think, I'm going to train, I know I can get my body to change if I train a certain way, but if I train even harder, it's gonna make it change faster, not that's not true. In fact, in fact, it's the opposite is true.

If you do everything necessary to get your body to adapt, anything over that will actually take away from your body. It'll take away from your body's ability to adapt because your body is now dealing with more stress. It's now dealing with more to recover, more to repair, more to heal. So anything over what you need to change, not only is it just wasted time,

it's also counterproductive. It's counterproductive. And if you look at all the factors that influence a person's ability to handle load and respond to certain loads, you have genetics, which is number one by far. You know, everybody has genetics in terms of how much sun exposure they can have, and that's an obvious one. I use that one a lot because it's so visible. You could be dark skinned or you could be super white skin. You're, they were both born with different tolerances for the sun, okay?

And it's just a very visible one. But we saw that in my Instagram picture. That was in the pool. Yeah, there's an example where you were reflecting the sun. I got a tan standing next to you because it came right off your chest. So there's so there's genetics and then comes how long and how how long that person's trained for because you have your particular genes but then you can you can really increase the ability of your body to adapt or to handle load just through training. So a construction worker who's been mixing cement by hand for 25 years, they've built

up a tremendous tolerance to be able to mix cement where you get the average guy who goes in there one day and they're going to be fried. So there's also how long you've been training. Then you have nutrition. Nutrition makes a big big impact also. And the last thing is anabolic steroid use. That'll also make an impact. But it's actually all in that order. Like anabolic steroid use will not give you better recovery ability than eating right. And eating right will not give you better ability to recover and adapt and length of time under exercise,

and none of those will trump genetics. None of them will cover genetics. No, it's purple. All of those together creates that 1%. That's what it does. Absolutely. And here's the thing, if you're smart and you work with your body and figure it out,

then it's not going to really matter that much because there's also, I'm speaking in terms of now, let's just speak in terms of like, physique competitors or people who present themselves on stage. Some competitors need, you know, can handle a crazy load and they don't look any better than the other guy who can handle less of a load

because there's so many factors that factor into that. So if it was just a contest of who can handle the most workouts, then that would be the ultimate goal. But I think the ultimate goal is how well do I perform and how do I look, right? Yeah. Well, here's the gray area for all this, which is the topic. I think Justin will like to dive into in his field of sports performance. Now, it's a little bit different there, right?

Because let's say you want to be good at your mile time. And the progressive concept is a little bit different, right? You're going to come out and you're going to run the mile as fast as you can every single time you come do it to where you continue to increase, right? You might let off on some days, but for the most part, you're pushing to increase that. And you can, whether it be vertical jump, whether it be speed, whether it be, you're pushing your limits always,

where when you're talking about a burning fat or building muscle, it's a different world. You know, it's a different mentality. And the progress of overload thing becomes a lot more important. Right. Well, it's definitely accelerated on some degree. like you're mentioning, you know, as far as the intensity goes and trying to overcome your limitations.

I think what you're describing there more than from a physicality aspect is the mental aspect with athletes. I feel like the example being the mile runtime that we had talked about on a previous episode where somebody had set the standard for that mile time. And it wasn't until somebody actually broke that time that by a significant amount that all of a sudden now almost everybody had something similar

to that time or better. And it was this mental, I mean, obviously there was certain ways that they've been training and all these other contributions that led towards that, but for the most part, it was this mental block. It was the fact that nobody's ever done it before. And now somebody comes along and just kills it. Yeah, that's a true story. You could look at it. Roger Bannister, it's a four minute mile. You could look it up. You could see, you know, that scientists came

outside. It's not possible. No one could ever do it. And he broke that. And then the next year, like four people broke. Well, I'm thinking more like this. And so let's use vertical jump and aesthetic legs. So both of them we're gonna use similar exercises, right? We're gonna, can we agree on that? Yeah. If you're gonna be working on someone's vertical and you wanna work on. There's a lot of cross over in the exercises, right?

There's a lot of cross over. There's a lot of squats and some ground forces that are essential, right? Yeah, so I wanna, yeah, I get a lot of load that and so- Ground forces are essential, right? Yeah, so I want to get a lot of load that's going to be pressing to the ground. If I'm training aesthetically, the importance of me progressively overloading is extremely important that so I can see

that consistent growth and change in my quads. I don't really care that much if I'm jumping six or seven more inches that week than I was the previous week. But now with trying, if your primary goal is to increase vertical, then you don't care so much if the quads are looking bigger or better if they're performing at a better level.

And the only way you're gonna know that is by testing at a high level, right? So, I mean, that's where the concept of, yeah, so if it has to be more intensified in order to to gauge that and And that's why too that the the training and the adaptation periods leading into the actual like competing has to be smaller, right? There's a smaller window for that because Or even like that let a career in general,

it's not as long per se somebody that is just trying to maintain a certain physique. They can maintain that for a longer period of time and remain healthy on some level. In comparison to always pounding and trying to gain that level of performance from their body, because the only way they're going to find that out is if they test it, and then my angle is really just to find that balance where I can get as much recovery after these bouts and keep them at a certain percentage that's going to allow for them to then adapt to the next level, and then we test again periodically.

Well, the mistake, the, the, here's the thing that I think a lot of people, this is where people make mistakes that they don't realize that all of the variables when it comes to exercise are related and influence each other. So let me explain. Here's an easy one. Intensity and So let me explain. Here's an easy one. Intensity and duration are inversely related. In other words, the harder I train, the less long I could train, the easier I train, the more long I could train. So it's like running.

Long distance running, low intensity, long duration, sprinting, high intensity, low duration. Well, there's a lot more than just those two factors. There's frequency of training. And within that, if we go in and break it down, there's also the stresses that each exercise provides. For example, if you're doing a bunch of isolation exercises in a workout, that's not going to, and even if you do them with high intensity, that's not going to stress your body as much as a bunch of big compound movements are going to. So you have to measure and look at all these different factors in your workouts, you know,

that how long I'm working out, how hard I'm working out, how frequent I'm working out, and the exercises within the workout, because I know for myself, look, I could do resistance band exercises five times a day every single day. There's no way I'm gonna be able to do, you know, Olympic lifting five times a day every single day. There's no way I'm gonna be able to do, you know, Olympic lifting five times a day every day. No.

You know, my body would fry. And if you can get a cross foot athlete, then you just keep going until you explode. You just do that. And the other thing that, you know, people don't, that they need to understand with this is that the body does improve its ability over time to be able to handle the load. And here's what you want to understand.

Here's the thing. If you think of like a meter on your body, if your body like a little gauge, and there's a line in the middle of that gauge, and to the right of that gauge is too much, okay. If you go past the line, you've done too much. Now you're compromising your body's ability to adapt. On the left of that gauge is not enough, or you could do more. If you're on the left of that needle all the time, you could still be creating change in your body, but you're not maximizing the change in your body.

If you're to the right of that line, you might still be creating change in your body, but you're impeding your body's ability to adapt by doing too much. And so really the secret, the secret's always to be in the line. Oh yeah. That's literally always almost overdoing it. But you're not overdoing it.

Listen to you explain this is really funny because it's very similar to the analogy I use when explaining the progressive overload concept is, think of it like a drag race or a sports performance car and the line or the needle is the red line. I mean, you're trying to keep the RPMs up. You're trying to run the ART pressure. Exactly. Exactly.

And you want to be, you don't want to be shifting the car way under the red line. You don't want to be shifting the car beyond the red line because you beyond it, now you could compromise the engine and it could explode and stuff starts falling apart. And over time, you build this engine. So you add parts to it, a better fuel rail, a better exhaust system to it, a turbo to it. You start slowly building pieces to it,

which is going to actually increase the amount of RPMs that your car can rev up to, and give you that ability to push more volume and harder. But you got Nitro. But you want to slowly progress at that rate as you slowly build that, and you are, you're always trying to stay right on that line. So then you're gonna flirt with that line,

you don't ever wanna be drastically below or drastically over. Well, so then here's the question. Here, this is the million dollar question that I guarantee, is in the heads of all the listeners right now. How do I know? How do I know when I'm doing the right amount and I'm not going over and I'm not going under?

It's like biofeedback, right? Well, you're listening to your body. Which is extremely subjective. Yes, very subjective. Well, before you answer that, let's ask this, you know, what would you guys say is more common? Is it more common that people aren't doing enough, they're not flirting with the red line

or that they're overdoing it most of the time? What do you find more? Depends on what kind of person you're talking about. Yeah. If we're talking about the average American, it's obviously under doing it. You know what I mean? It fits the average. If you're talking about the average American, it's obviously underdoing it. You know what I mean? If it's the average,

you're talking about somebody that goes do a gym, I would say they do too much. Yeah, they do too much. Yeah, and then I'm talking about the 300-pound person who comes to you, because I've never been inside of a gym before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't even know what a red line looks like.

No, you know what I'm saying? They know it as Snicker Barrel, so. Yeah, that's so, I'm talking about the person who hires you. And it's tasty. The person that hires you, who's been working out already for five, 10 years of their life already,

and they're coming to you because they're at a... Well, take it a step further. The three of us who are extremely aware of our bodies were very knowledgeable about exercise. We're very sexy, has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Just wanna throw that in there. But, massive. But. That's normally my line,. But the three of us who are snooze you lose.

Who know all this shit, right? Where do you think we constantly find ourselves? Oh, over. And we are extremely aware. Yeah. That's why the whole thing. But we catch ourselves. That's the difference.

Well, dude, I'm going to tell you a personal story about myself. So this was more recently. I will constantly keep pushing it until I find myself way over the fucking line Yeah, so I this is what I was doing. I was doing my workouts were taken up to two hours long I was doing all these sets of different exercises. I wasn't regressing, but I wasn't progressing too much and I had to I had to be very objective. I had to take a step back and, this is how I tend to approach it, as I look at it and I say,

what would I tell someone else? Not what I would tell me, because in my mind I can do it all, right? What would I tell someone else? So I had to take the, I had to check my ego for a second. I step back, I cut the volume way down, and boom, my body started progressing again,

and then it was very obvious that I was over that line. But there are some objective measures you could take. Stronger. Now, this is not, by the way, if you're advanced, you can't always use, are you getting stronger? No, because it's not linear, bro. It's sometimes you take steps back. And there's a limit.

Look, if I got stronger, this whole time I've been working out since I was 14, I should have a 5,000 pound deadlift. Oh, I did. There'd be no curve to your strength. There'd be no curve. There's a limit, right? It's like, now if I add 10 pounds to a lift over the course of six months, it's a huge victory.

When I first started, I was adding 10 pounds every week. Yeah. But strength is, if your relative newcomer, strength is a great one. Are you getting stronger, the gym, then you're doing good. Okay. The other one is endurance, although when it comes to resistance training, you don't always want to push that because that's easy to take a overboard. It's, it's got to be how you feel. You know what I hate saying that, but can we touch on something you just said about? Yeah. And this is going back to the, you know, why the progressive overload thing. this is going back to the, you know,

why the progressive overload thing. So you made a comment about, you know, you, you know, when you first started, you could, you could go up 10 pounds every single week, which I know that you're just speaking hypothetically, you know. But I think that's where the mistake is, is people make a decision off of their intensity or that what they think the feedback is

because they can do it. Because just because you can do it, make a decision off of their intensity or that what they think the feedback is because they can do it. Because just because you can do it doesn't mean it's the best thing for you. So you in my opinion, you are far better off doing a lot less if it can elicit change in your body. So here's a little my feedback on what I'm feeling on my body. I don't ever want to be too sore. If I'm fucking like deadly sore,

like I know I was like, I didn't need to do that much. I'm like, that was beyond what I needed to do. I wanna feel it. I wanna know why I worked out. Even though, and let me make this clear, as I'm saying this right now, because some people are like, oh, this is me. That's so, okay, just because your sore,

not sore does not dictate whether you have it. If you said that, I was saving that. Oh, yeah, I know you were. I know, because sore, does not dictate whether you have... You've already said that, so I was saving that. Yeah, I know you were. I know, because we agree on this, does it not necessarily mean that, but this is kind of what I've found with my own body, is I kind of have this feel, what it feels, I can by feeling, it's hard to tell while you're doing it,

it's easier to tell the next day for me on how my body, if I feel worn down and fucking hell a sore, that was way too much for me. I totally went over that red line. You know, for me, if I feel it, I know I had a good workout, but my energy level still feels good, and I feel good the next day, that's a good workout to me, and I feel like,

and if I could, if I can feel it the next day, and felt like when I went to that workout, it didn't kill me. I have to try to get down with the workout. I felt great energy level. So something interesting just popped in my head. I think a lot of people judge the effectiveness of their workout by the actual workout.

And what I mean by it, what I mean by that is, while I'm working out, oh, I was able to get through that ruling session with a great workout versus how they felt after the workout. Yes, that's where I'm getting out of the difference. Because I've told lots of clients, you should feel good after workout. You should not feel dead or like you after the work. Yes, that's where I'm getting out of the difference. Because I've told lots of clients, after you should feel good after a workout,

you should not feel dead or like you beat the shit or I think there's an element there too that I was sort of trying to touch on when I was talking about the mental state of an athlete because what is drilled into our heads from our coaches forever is that you have to overcome, you have to endure. Like, there's gonna be moments where you don't think

that you can tap into that and you have it. And it's the mental discipline aspect that carries you through these hard situations. And it's why that Navy SEAL sort of mentality so glorified is because they're so mentally disciplined, like so much more than you will ever be that it just seems that

People like to focus on to that and so I think a lot of that mentality carries into workouts as well and people think that Because this person is so badass and so mentally disciplined that that means it's the best for their body To do that when in fact, it's that's body to do that. When in fact, that's something totally different. That's something for survival, or it's something, maybe it's Olympic athlete almost does need to focus on that because of the high pressure situation they're forcing themselves into. Right. So it's more of the fact that they're going to be in such a high intense situation that they need to prepare their body for that. Well, this is why I wanted to get him going on this because I feel like when you're talking about health, you know, overall well-being, you're talking about aesthetics.

I feel like you can carve that off on one side and then you've got sports performance on the other side where that's what I meant by the gray area. You can flirt with it a little bit more and it's less important because your ultimate goal is that stage, is killing it, is out beating that guy or girl crossfit mentality or what about that? You're performing a sport, you're doing something ridiculous, you've got to break through the mental barrier, or the physical barrier, but let's be honest, is that the best thing for your metabolism,

is that the best thing for your body, overall health and aesthetics? Absolutely. There's some balance there that I think that athletes need to know in order to really gain more performance from. It's obvious once I started to break that mentality, because I was in that, I was 100% that guy that was always coached to run into the wall. You feel like you want to puke and, you know, you have to do it. Otherwise that person next to you on the other line is going to dominate you, you know.

And so you're always conscious of that. Like I have to, I have to overcome this really hard situation I'm in, you know, running hundred guard sprints or you know, carrying somebody on my back and all this to show that I'm going to be resilient to this. The other thing too is, you know, if you're looking on your Instagram or Facebook, whatever, and you see Mr. or Mrs. Superbuffed, you know, is the famous person, okay?

And they post their workout. And it's 30 sets for their back or whatever. It's this ridiculous workout. You know, something to consider also, just because they look super buffed, doesn't mean that they're maximizing their own potential. Oh, not at all. That's exactly why I brought this up.

I have seen many times. I have personally seen many times the super impressive buff person who you think is just maxing everything out, do shit wrong, back off, and then boom, they go to another level. So just because they're doing that and they look crazy, doesn't mean that they're doing the right thing either. Because like I said, the three of us on this podcast right now

are advanced in both our knowledge and our application, and I constantly find myself over that line. I know you guys do the same thing where I have to check myself all the time. So I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these people are doing the same thing. Or it looks like they're, you know, at their highest state, but really they're about to break.

Right, right. So maybe they push so hard that they got some semblance of it, but it won't last. No. In comparison to, you know, there's another way to do that. Is it too far to say this? What do you think? Is it too far to say that if you, or when you're talking about Instagram and people like that,

if you don't look anything close to like that person, you probably shouldn't be lifting anything like that person. What do you think? Probably, but I mean, yes, and, you know, everybody's a little bit different with how their body responds to exercise. You know, here's the thing bit different with how their body responds to exercise. You know, here's the thing, if you're the kind of person that's gonna respond great to two hour workouts,

just weights, every single day, you probably know. Like you probably already know, you probably went to the gym, worked out, and no matter what the fuck you did, your body just grew, you know what I'm saying? But if you're that guy or girl who's already doing the body part split, and they're getting no results,

and you're thinking, I should just fucking go nuts, more even if that person and this is the part where I have an issue with it even if that person Is that person right genetically they can go and then your body just grew just just cuz your body is growing doesn't necessarily mean too That it's the most efficient way to do it right so cuz here's the problem I have in this You should always be asking yourself, is this the most efficient? This, and this is why I talk shit so much about CrossFit is that, you know, so, and I've had many, many people, even ex-trainer's be like, you know,

well, you can bash CrossFit all you want, but I'm in the best shape of my life doing CrossFit. I'm like, cool, I hope you plan on doing that till you're 75, just continue to look like that, cause that's what your body's now fucking adapted to. Cause, and here, and you know what, and I, and it, what it was, see, here's the thing,

what they, how do they define shape? Why? Because they have more endurance now? Well, yeah, because before, you didn't train for that. So, because now they're gonna be like, well, now I can run. Great point. Yeah, now I can run a mile in this time and now I can climb over walls,

where I can, I mean, you're a better shape. No, they, no, they mean, they're, they're, they're meaning overall,, better aesthetic shape, better physical shape, cardio shape, every shape, strength wise. I don't want to challenge that all day well. I mean, they claim that that and but I mean, it doesn't matter.

The point is that the reason why they even feel that way is the amount of volume that they're doing and banging they're doing on their body and their body is now becoming adapted to do all that crazy fucking shit. And guess what, if everything stays the same, the way they eat, their job, all the other activities and so that stay the same in their day. And they get to be 50, 60 years old and they still want to keep a healthy, good looking physique like they feel they have.

They need to be able to maintain that. They need to be able to maintain that type of intensity. Otherwise what's going to happen? Atrophy is going to set in. They're going to see themselves regress because they're not going to be able to. And more than likely, what you're going to see, just like you see with any other, any extreme in life, is a hard crash. You rarely see someone go to a crazy extreme and anything,

and then like kind of let up. You know, it's like you're extreme and you fucking hit a wall and then you crash. And then your force to start. You're much better off, even if your body genetically can handle those retarded workouts is doing this nice, slow, gradual increase and still getting change and still seeing the body respond to that. Well, that's, that's actually permeating, permeating a lot of the athletic industry.

You're seeing more and more professional athletes training smarter, not just harder, because it was a period there where it was just all about harder, harder, harder. But then they had some educated trainers come in and say, okay, everybody's getting injured, everybody's getting sick, people are having to miss games. We gotta fix this problem. This problem, but I did wanna touch on the whole

getting shape thing. I wanted to go back to that because, when I was training really heavy in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I was doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu four days a week for two and a half hours, and I was lifting weights three days a week on top of that, and then every once in a while, I go do sprints and stuff. Now, was I in better shape back then?

I was for Jiu-Jitsu, like I could grapple longer, but it depends on how you define shape. Was I healthier back then? Probably not. I was always constantly on the verge of breakdown. I was always kind of injured. I was always kind of hurt, kind of tired. So when people come up to you and be like, you know, I'm doing this new workout

where I'm fucking going nuts. I'm in the best shape of my life. What they think and their mind, what they mean is is I can do more shit now. How many times do you mean in the back shape? Right. You know, in comparison to my, what they mean is, is I can do more shit now. But that's even in the back of the shake. Right. In comparison to previously. I remember talking about this with Doug,

because we were like, dude, I haven't been sick in all really long time. And it really, it was that shift. I could probably pinpoint it to when I started to stop going focused completely on intensity. And then I started, well, obviously I started to stop going like focused completely on intensity. And then I started, well, obviously I started eating better. I mean, that was a given. But really, like my body's performing so much better

because I'm working with it. Actually, I remember the last time you got sick when you were doing the challenge. And you started pushing yourself too hard. And so you're right now in the last three years, I've probably been sick probably three times in the last three years. How many shows have you done?

And all that it's been on shows. Anytime I've been exactly. That's why I remember that because every time you're leading up to like that last week which just goes to show that even when even guys like ourselves when I'm pushing myself to the extreme there, I am flirting with the red line going over the red line you know because I want these quick results. But that's the thing that I think is important that we talk about how we kind of flirt with that line and we catch ourselves But the key those we catch ourselves. I never mean it never goes very long You know saying that that's always if I get sick boom huge red flag or you know

Obviously, I know what I'm going into competition. I know I'm already putting myself in danger It's not we're gonna bully our way through this and like, wow, whatever, I'm better than this. Yeah, I'm an athlete. You know, it's not me and a dumbass and listen to your body and work with your body and, you know, do things that, you know, practice what you preach. That's always another thing that's tough to do all the time.

Well, here's a tip that I do for myself. So let's say I'm working out and there's's times when I, just my body's progressed. Everything's kind of, I'm hitting on all cylinders. Everything's perfect, and I'm progressing. And then boom, I hit a new PR in a lift. I immediately, even if I feel great the next week, because my mind, if I hit a new PR, and I push again, I'm gonna push again.

And my mind the next week, I'm gonna break that again. But, and I've done this countless times where I've done that and hurt myself. So now what I do is if I hit a PR, is I for, I don't give a shit, how awesome I feel next workout, I purposely drop everything down 15% or more, or just go light, and I do that for like a week or two.

It's like I hit a PR. Yeah, I hit a PR the next two weeks are easy workouts, because I already hit that. No matter what. You want to adapt to an even, you know, higher level. Right. No matter what. Build back.

Exactly. Because I know, and my mind, I know that I'm a little twisted with my, you know, my, my perception of what I think or how I feel. And I know it's not an accurate perception. I know it's, it's based upon the fact that I want to do better than the last time. And, you know, it charges you too. And you you get you get energized from the fact that you feel stronger and you accomplished, you know, more weight. I just did it recently. Shit. I was it not that long ago. So maybe a month ago, I pulled three time body weight in a deadlift with

for the first time in my life, I was able to do that. And so what did I do? I'm like, well, fuck, I'm only, you know only 15 pounds away from this huge number. Throw it on there. And pull that pull the muscle. And it's like, even now I fall for this shit. And I hate the fact that I do that. I'm so much of a better trainer for other people. I swear to God, yeah.

Fuck it's so hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll roll myself under the bus today. I think a lot of heavyweight. All of us, we all know too though, that's why. It's because we feel confident that we we've honed in that line. And so we're always really flirting with it, you know, it's we're so onto that line that it's like, you know, maybe I can get one more good lift out. And then I then I need to go

back, you know, I'm saying like, and so we always, I mean, I think that's it because it's not like you'd be an idiot the next time you go after it, you would do that right away. That was a red flag. Well, that's what I get, you know, I'm saying shame on me. I should have just, I should have dropped back down. You know, absolutely. I would say for the average, you know, person who's been working out, you know, for a year or two, you'll, most people will do great with a full body workout three days a week. If you're a beginner, a full body workout twice a week is, we'll get you far.

Oh, yeah. It will get you very far. I don't mean it's going to get you far because you're a beginner and you body workout twice a week is we'll get you far. Oh, yeah, it will get you very far I don't mean it's gonna get you far because you're a beginner and you can only handle twice a week I mean twice a week will make your body progress very consistently very well You'll feel good and you'll be able to do it for a while before you need to bump it to a third day Doug when I when he hired me to train him we did what twice a week for years and it it wasn't up until recently, he moved up to three days a week full body, and he looked phenomenal. So it's not necessary to try to emulate or push your body to that limit with your freak. If your body's progressing, I would say air on the side of,

I'm doing the right thing. If you're not progressing and you're working out a lot, I don't know, back off, see what happens. See what happens and you back off. So there's two ways that we can, that progressive overload happens, right? I mean, overall, it's essentially equates to volume. That's either gonna be weight or, you know, sets. Weight or how long you're working out, more sets,

more how frequent. Reps, reps or, you know, you could, yeah, I mean, more frequent still would just add up to be more reps, right? So more reps, more, reps or, you know, you could, yeah, you mean more frequent still would just add up to be more reps, right? So more reps, more, more weight is going to equate to more volume. And you don't want to, you don't want to go from, let's just say, hypothetically, your volume. So volume, we've talked about this before, is weight times sets times reps equals total volume. So that's, that's how you get that number down.

So let's just say your focus right now is chest. Maybe you wanna bring your chest bench press up or your chest bigger, whatever it is. And in a week's time, the amount of total volume on your chest, let's just say is getting 10,000, 10,000 pounds of volume. So it's not a good idea the next week to be up to 20,000 pounds of volume. You could probably, you easily could probably double that and your body could handle it and you probably could see some change, but you don't need to.

You don't want to. You're talking like 5 to 10% increase in volume and you you'd like to see a nice little steady gain like that. And then just like Sal said, you continue, you're giving that little 5% increase, until you hit a nice PR, you hit that PR, then what do you do? You regress for a week or two, and then boom, go back out again,

building again, slowly incrementally going up. And then this time when you're starting points, you should be a little bit higher. And points, it should be a little bit higher. And each time it should be a tiny bit higher where you're starting, but small incremental increases, whether it be incrementally adding two and a half to five pounds to your bench press, or simply adding an extra set or two

to each chest exercise that you do in the week. Those are different ways to do it. But going from one week all of a sudden doing a total of 20 sets in a week or say, 16, 12 to 16 is probably standard. So let's say 12 sets the first week of chest exercises. And then the next week all of a sudden

you're up to doing 20 sets. That's just crazy. It's way too much. You don't need to. It is. It is. I mean is, it is. I mean, you add one, you know, one set, you know, even though you feel like you could do five more.

Yeah. No, you did more. I did more than I did last week. Leave it at that and watch what happens. Some of my best strength gains were when I would limit myself as to how much weight I would add to the bar. Even though I could knew I could do so much more. As I said, okay, I'm just adding five pounds to the bar.

Even though I feel like I added 10 to my lift, I'm just gonna add five, and I add another five the next week, and then before I know it, I've gone up, you know, 20-something pounds, whereas if I pushed it too hard, I would have stopped at 10 pounds, you know, it was strength gain. So, you know, you gotta be smart about how you're training,

you gotta be smart about your load, the volume, you know, how often you work out. And if you are, your body will progress regularly. If you overdo it, which is the tendency, I think, amongst most people who work out, you're gonna do yourself a detriment. Definitely. Definitely. So, and don't forget to rate us, review us, and subscribe to us on iTunes.