Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1512: The Value of Following a Workout Program

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss five reasons why it makes to follow a (well written) workout program, even if you are advanced. The value of following an organized program for the advanced lifter. (2:07) Mind Pump reminisces on their first workout programs. (4:35) The 4 stages of learning and how it applies to workout programming. (8:38) The 5 Values of Following a (Well-Written) Workout Program. (12:05) #1 – Prevents overtraining. (12:46) #2 – Forces you to work the body parts you are neglecting. (19:13) #3 – Provides structure and a checklist. (24:05) #4 – Trains you to understand progressive overload through tracking. (25:57) #5 – Teaches you how to program for yourself. (31:41) Related Links/Products Mentioned March Specials: Get in Shape for Summer! MAPS HIIT, MAPS Spilt, and the Bikini Bundle all half off! – Promo code “SPRINGBREAK” at checkout St. Patrick’s Day Special: Mind Pump Store Visit ChiliPad for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Mind Pump #1142: Nine Signs You Are Overtraining Heavy Duty – Book by Mike Mentzer MAPS Fitness Anabolic | Muscle Adaptation Programming System Why You Need to Mix Rep Ranges After Periods of Training – Mind Pump Blog The Best Order to Do Exercises – Mind Pump Podcast How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts – Mind Pump Blog Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength and Development Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Ben Pakulski (@bpakfitness)  Instagram Joe DeFranco (@defrancosgym)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pumped. By the way, right now at MindPumpMedia.com, actually MindPumpStstore.com, I should say we're running a huge promotion. St. Patrick's Day sale on our t-shirts, hats, and gym equipment, 20% off. Go check it out, mindpumpstore.com.

Okay, so in today's episode, we talk about the value of following a workout program. Okay, so why should you follow a structured workout program? We give you all the reasons why there's a lot of value in doing this regardless if you're a beginner, intermediate, or even if you are advanced. Now this podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, Chile. Chile makes devices that go on your bed

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One more thing before we start the podcast, we are running a promotion on some of our workout programs. There's two programs that are 50% off and one workout program bundle that's 50% off. The first program that's on sale is Maps Hit. This is high-intensity interval training. The next program that's on sale is Maps Hit. This is high-intensity interval training. The next program that's on sale is Maps Split. This is a body parts split, body building routine. And then the bundle that's on sale is our bikini bundle. You can go check these out and learn more at mapsfitinistproducts.com. And then to get the discount, make sure you use the code, spring, break.

I had a client, old client of mine reach out to me, and she'd been training for a very long time, super advanced, we trained years ago together, she could be a trainer herself to level it, she's at now. But she just got enrolled not that long ago to map Santa Ball and start following it, and she was messaging me, oh my God, the gains that she was getting, and she's like, but she just got enrolled not that long ago to Maps Anna Ball can start following it. And she was like messaging me like,

oh my God, like the gains that she was getting and she's like, this is crazy. And I was explaining to her that, this is where even when somebody is advanced, you know exercise really well, that there's still a lot of value in following something that's organized, instruction for you, especially from somebody else.

And I know that I'm as guilty of this, because as trainers, you know, obviously we've taught hundreds, thousands of exercises, so I have plenty to pull from, but just having something organized for me, that's not, I don't have my bias in it that I decide, I'm gonna do this today, it's somebody else saying, hey, follow this, it's amazing how much that still benefits somebody

who understands exercise. Well, yeah, because we get in our own way a lot of the times. Every time. Based off of what we enjoy the most, what's top of mind is you're even walking through the gym. You can already see what areas you you're gonna end up inevitably because it's just your patterns, your creature of habit. And so to be able to break, you know, your own

habits in general is massively valuable. Yeah, following a program has tremendous value for, and now it's obvious that it's got a lot of value for beginners, right? A beginner doesn't know much, doesn't know much about their body or exercise. And so for them, it's important that they follow a program. But it's valuable for even an intermediate and advanced, for advance, for the reasons you guys are talking about. When you work out for a long time, you have a tendency, and I don't care who you are, okay? If you're self-aware and maybe not realize this during the workout, like me, during the workout, you could ask me this and I'd be like,

no, I don't what I'm doing, when my ego is flared, right? But ask me afterwards. And it's very true that I tend personally to go in a specific direction and I tend to neglect certain things. We tend to do what we like and what we're good at and neglect the things that sometimes we need to be doing. And this poses a problem,

either it can increase your risk of injury or at the very least it reduces your ability to really progress and progress. Do you guys remember the first structured program that you followed? Do you remember what it was? Oh yeah. Or were you got it?

You know what's funny? As mine was actually a bin Pekolsky. Oh no shit. Was it really my 40? Dude, I did not know that. You guys probably even know that. This is because one of my friends really wanted to get into bodybuilder style training. And I was like, I didn't know.

Like back then I was just all sports and had no idea what that looked like. And so yeah, we bought his program and went through it and just did like all the body builder hypertrophy moves you could possibly think of. Now before that though, you followed your coaches programming. Yes, okay. And they would tell you what to do and all that stuff. Right, okay. But then after that, you got, that was when you got,

yeah, so some totally different that I hadn't done before. Yeah, but another question related to that, how was your coaches programming back then? Were they at the level that they are now? Or were we? It depended on the coach. Like, in high school, we had a pretty solid coach who actually structured a lot of like organ states programming

and was responsible for some of that. And so we had some really good, you know, like basic general programming and design for weightlifting. And so I actually learned a lot of the core lifts and like the foundational skill of it. So I did take a lot of value from my very first coaches, but I had some coaches in there that would just throw in, just random ideas in there just to gass us out

and make us exhaust them. It makes a huge difference to follow a well-written program. What about you, Sal? My first one was Arnold Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia Body Building. Well, actually, let me take a step back. My very first program, before even worked out in the backyard where my dad had all the free weights, I had a set of dumbbells at the age of 12. They were the plastic ones that were filled with cement.

They were like eight pounds or whatever. And it came with this pamphlet, and in there were the exercises that you needed to do. And I would just wake up in the morning and do these exercises. The first like real program was, I pulled out of Arnold Schwarzenegger's and Cyclopedia Body Building.

So I pulled that. Did he have actually organized programs? Oh, it did. I couldn't remember. Yeah, so in the back, you would give, like, his beginner routine, his intermediate routine, his advanced routine. I did that for a while. The next organized program that I followed was in heavy duty.

This was Mike Mencer's bodybuilding book. So I followed that one. After that, I started kind of creating my own programs. And then later on, I followed, what's the name? Steve Reeves had to work out John Grimics, one of those old school districts. I just remembered one too, Joe DeFranco's power.

He used to have these DVDs. And when I was in football training specifically, he was one of the only ones out there putting programming for that for the off season. So that was one of them that I took that had, was really actually a good program. How about you Adam? So I actually, I never followed a program

until after I was a trainer. Before that, I would get workouts out of like the muscle magazines. Oh, so I'm gonna do chest, let me follow this chest workout. Yes, yes, yes. So I subscribed to those magazines or I'd bought them at grocery stores

so I always had stacks of them laying around. And whatever body part I was going to work out, I would pull from a magazine and I would just fall down. It wasn't until a body for life that I actually followed. Really? Structure program. Yeah, and I saw great results. That was actually my first like aha moment of, oh, the value of actually following something

that was structured like that. You're not as self-aware as you think you are when you're working out. You know, you think you're working out, even if you're very experienced. Well, as a trainer. Yeah, I was a trainer that was doing either pulling from these workouts in the magazine or thinking I could just put my own.

Yeah, because what ends up happening when you're not following a program that's written out is you go to the gym and let's say normally the program would say you're doing, you know, 20 reps of each set. For someone like me, if it's in the program and I'm following the program, I'll do it. If it's not in the program, I'm gonna go to the gym

and be like, ah, I'll do five. I think I'll go heavy and do five because that's what I like to do. And so, these are some of the problems you run into. And of course, for beginners. Look, there's, and this is with anything, any endeavor that you pick up on and try to get better at, there are four stages of learning that you move through,

no matter what it is, and we're applying this now to training your body. And in this again, it applies to anything you learn, but the first stage, you are unconsciously incompetent. Now, what does that mean? That means that you don't know what you don't know. That you don't know. Yeah, you literally go into working out

and you have no idea the mass amount of information and things that you don't know. You don't know. Yeah, you literally go into working out and you have no idea the mass, you know, amount of information and things that you don't know. You don't even know that there's lots of exercises for legs or chest or hamstrings or biceps. Right. You probably think it's very basic and simple. I go in, I left weights, that's going to help me build muscle. I burn some calories, I eat less, I'm going to burn fat.

It's like to that level. Right. The next stage, very quickly, you move from one to two, very quickly to go from unconscious incompetence, you don't know what you don't know, to consciously becoming incompetent. In other words, you move it, you go to the gym, you start working out, and then very quickly you're like, oh, I don't know a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff that I don't know. The third stage takes some time, but when you get there, just where a lot of people get

stuck, this is conscious competence. Conscious competence means that you have to really think about what you're doing. You have to really think about the exercises, the techniques, the wraps, the sets. You have to really pay attention to what you're doing. The fourth stage, this is where everybody wants to end up, and this takes some time to get to,

and this is where you're unconsciously competent. This is the zone, right? Where, you know, if you look at like a professional basketball player, they don't think about the moves that they're doing on the court. They're not thinking about how they're shooting or where they're, it's just instinctual in essence to what they're doing.

It's made us way into your subconscious. That's right. And so, when you follow a program, and it helps move you through these stages in a very effective and efficient way with far less difficulty challenges and problems. Now here's a deal, let's say you've been working out for a long time, let's say you're like me, right?

I've been doing this forever professionally for over 20 years, but I mean, just for myself, I've been doing this for almost 30 years, just working out, so I could confidently say, I'm in that fourth stage, most of the time, which is unconscious competence. But here's a deal. Oftentimes, my own ego, my own experience,

my own whatever, my own preferences gets in the way. And what I need to do is follow a program to move me back to stage three. I have to focus and be conscious about being competence. I have to, okay, I gotta work on this mobility. Okay, I need to work and be conscious about being competent, after okay, I gotta work on this mobility, okay, I need to work on these exercises that I neglect, whatever that is, I need to be conscious about this. I have to go back to step three to move back to step four

and this is a process that you'll end up going through for a less year of life. I feel like this is the exact same thing that happens with eating and nutrition. Yes, you may understand what a protein, carbon fat is, you may understand exactly how many calories you need to build muscle or burn body fat. But at one point, what ends up happening,

and this still happens to me today, is life changes a little bit, you get older, you have less muscle, you have more muscle, you have a new job, like you're not training as intensely, whatever things change. And even though I'm very, very familiar with what my body needs, I always underestimate or overestimate what I'm currently consuming. And then when I go back and track, it makes me aware again of like, oh wow, this is actually hard.

You go back to step three or stage three to move back to stage four. Just like working out. You're actually application of it. Yes. Now, here's a funny thing, right? So again, it's obvious that beginners gain tons of value from following a well-written workout program. But believe it or not, the people that tend to be the most consistent with following programs are advanced.

This is true. Go talk to a competitive power lifter or a body builder or somebody at a very high level of training. And will you find our people that are following written structured workout programs that are given to them by other coaches. So the value, my point with all of this is the value of following a program applies to everyone. Now I think we should break down more specifically what some of those values are. What some of the values are of following something that's written out for you. Well, I think the first thing that's most important

if it's a well-written program is, it will keep you from either under-training or overtrain. Yes. The right amount, the right amount of volume and scaling that correctly. You know, it's funny about what you're saying. So for me, following a program prevents me from under-training my legs,

because my legs respond so easily, that I have a tendency to under-do that, and it prevents me from over-training certain parts of my upper body, that I have a tendency to wanna keep working out, because if it's in writing and you know, I'm doing 10 sets, when you're done with the 10 set, if you're somebody that has a proclivity to over-traine,

you're done with your 10 sets, if you're not following a program, you'd be like, I'm going to do more. I'm going to go harder. It's so revealing in the beginning, you know, to go through that and like go through somebody's protocol and realize, too, like where the right dose intensity wise really is for you, like versus what I thought I could, you know, my output was or what my volume really is, like, to go through and, like, follow exact structure of something, like, a lot of times it brings to the forefront,

what you might not even know about yourself. Yeah, you know, Adam, I want to ask you, you talked about your client friend who's been working out for a long time, and you said she followed, uh, maps and a ball, like, and it's working real well for her. Yeah. Do you think it's helping her prevent herself from overtraining or under-training? I think because I know her and I know what she tends to do,

I think overtraining, which is similar to me too. So it's rare that I'm not doing enough volume for a muscle group. It's almost always I'm overtraining, either too much volume or too much intensity. And I think that just goes back to my athletic background. As an athlete, it's always about push the next level, but you're trying to adapt for the sport, you want to be always stretching yourself. And it's tough to take that athletic mindset out of

programming for training. And so I always have a tendency. I mean, we just, we talked recently on the podcast because we've been consistently now. I think we're on month three or so of all of us training together in the morning and no matter how many times I've done this and know that I continually do this, I still did it again, which is I start, I feel good. I feel good, I want to ramp up, I see you guys putting more weight on the bar and so I start throwing more weight on the bar

and I start adding more days in my routine and picking up the intensity and then before you know it, also and I start feeling stuff, I start feeling stuff in my knees and in my hips, like, and so I, the following, and of course, I'm not following a program to a tee right now, I'm going off how I feel, and I feel good. So I'm going to keep adding to it, right, until my body tells me otherwise. And I think people that are very self-motivated and like to train or have an athletic background, I think it's most common, they go that way.

And then on the other hand, you have the people who tend to under train, right? They're not super fitness fanatics, they're working out because it's good for the health. They finally have made the mental shift to say, okay, I wanna take care of myself, this is important. So they go to the gym and then they do, you know, a couple things here and they're like,

ah, I think I'm done. Versus if they had a routine that said, no, you have another exercise, you have to work on these angles of your body to train yourself in this particular way. Well, you see this a lot too in the biohacking kind of community where like everything's about like work efficiency, but then how can I also try and add, you know, the least amount of exercising to be able to keep me in good shape? And so there's this like tendency towards like how, you know, how little can I potentially do to have an effect on myself? And so you might

find yourself in, you know, training not enough. Well, there's a difference, right? There's a difference between exercise and then training. Right. Like training, you have a goal in mind, you're trying to progress your headings somewhere where exercise can be a lot of different things. It can be Zumba and you could just exercise, if you're just moving to move and to burn calories, then it's not that important.

Then you can just go in and do these kind of whatever and go how you feel and hey, you know what, that's pretty good, that's better than most people. That's not a bad place to be. But most people are going in and they're exercising, but then they have goals in mind. They want to look different. They want to lose body fat.

They want to build muscle, but they're exercising and they're not training in like what their goal is. Right. Training is your training for a specific adaptation. Strength, endurance, stamina, mobility, exercising, exactly like you said Adam, I'm just in here moving. You can't exercise and have a specific goal. If I'm in the gym just moving,

but my goal is to maximize my deadlift strength, I'm not gonna get very far. There's nothing structure, there's nothing pointing me in that direction. I'm just moving. A lot of specificity. That's right, I'm just moving. So that structure provides you the ability

to specifically target a particular adaptation. A big part of that is training with the right dose because here's a deal. This is how exercise works, right? If you, there's a perfect dose that will give you the best results. Anything less than that will give you less results. Anything more than that will give you less results. Anything more than that will give you less results.

There is no such thing as the more is better when it comes to exercise. It's the right dose. And one of the best ways to hit the right dose, especially if you have a tough time being self-aware, if you have a tendency to underdo it or like I do, overdo it, it's good to follow something that's already written. It's almost like it's in stone.

All right, this is what I'm doing. Okay, now I'm supposed to be done. I know I want to do more. Program sense this. I'm going to trust the programming and it prevents me from over training. Well, yeah, and it helps to organize your efforts in a more specific fashion.

So, to that point, a lot of people come in and they just want to lose weight, but they also want to gain muscle. And they want to have a lot of conflicting goals. I want to have more endurance on my runs, but I also want to build muscle and to really hone it down to what's the most important thing to attack first and how do I do that

in the most effectively possible. A lot of times it's following a program is going to help you get there. Well, you remember when we first launched Maps in a Ballack. What was the number one conversation we all had to tell? I can do more. Yes, always. It's almost all week, especially that program

because in it you have the pre-phase where you're only doing two days a week. You had a lot of people that originally found us before we started to reach kind of the masses. We were, we had a small group of people that were already fitness people. So they're already into kind of working out. They find Mind Pump, they see this program we write,

and they're like, oh, I can do way more than this Like we're like trust the program. Yeah, just follow the program You know, this is what you need to do and of course people are blown away Yeah, another thing that it does is it really helps prevent you from neglecting the things That you don't like to do so here's a great example, right? The guy that doesn't want to work out his legs, you know. It's funny, when I back early when I was a trainer, I used to train people a lot on body parts splits. Of course later on I did full body workouts

because they were more effective. But in the early days I had body parts split clients. And it was always funny, whenever my male clients would cancel, it always fell on a leg day. It was never chest or arm day. It was always like crazy cold today. Yeah, and I would always get this, like, hey, I'll see you tomorrow, John.

Okay, what are we working tomorrow? Oh, we're hitting legs. Oh, okay. And then of course I get to call that night. Hey, listen, I can't make it or whatever. But I'll be there Thursday for shoulders. You know what I mean? It got to the point where I used to move the day.

That's right. I don't know, you moved legs. We're still on legs. No matter what's going on. But a lot of people have this issue. We also, I would have female clients who neglect body parts like shoulders or back or arms because they're like,

I don't wanna get big arms or I don't wanna, so they would get these lower bodies that were developed but then they'd get bad posture and issues with their upper body because they weren't training their upper body. Well, you said this just the day when we were training, I actually heard you say this, whether you were talking to me

or just talking to yourself out loud, but you were training legs and you had organized what you wanted to do before you came in to work out. And because you did that, you were committed to falling. As many times, especially if you're advanced and you know what you're doing or you're a trainer in your case, I know what my body needs. I could sit down and be very, very, you know, I can look at my past training for the last two months and go, okay, I'm missing a little bit

of this, I'm neglecting that. So tomorrow's workout, I'm doing this, this, this, this, and this, like I need to do those things. If I commit to that before I go into the gym, I'm gonna do it because I committed to that. Just like if I had a program that said I needed to do these things versus, oh, tomorrow's, you know, leg day or for whatever day, and getting into the workout

going like, okay, that's good enough. No, that's what I did. So I know exactly where you're talking about. And I was talking to myself, I had my headphones on, and I was talking to myself because I know what my tendency is. And what I did was the day before, because I'm not in the workout, I'm not feeling the pain, I'm not feeling whatever.

For me, for legs, I have a tendency to, to, I can under do it. Why? Because my legs respond so quickly, so I get away with it, right? Now, they may develop really well easily, but then I don't have the stamina or the performance of my legs.

And so I've been telling myself the past few months, look, I want my legs to have really good performance, strength endurance and strength, which means I'm gonna have to train them really, really hard, even as much as I hate doing it. So what I did the day before, as I said, okay, these are the exercises I'm gonna have to train them really, really hard, even as much as I hate doing it. So what I did the day before, as I said, okay, these are the exercises I'm gonna do, these are the rep ranges I'm gonna do.

Now when I go into the workout, and I'm doing the workout, and I'm feeling the pain, and I'm like, and I wanna stop, no, I gotta do it, I said I was gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. And it's very effective at keeping me on track. And this happens to a lot of people. This doesn't just happen with body parts. This also happens with rep ranges.

Maybe you're that guy who doesn't like doing anything over five reps. And you don't want to do a 15 rep set of squats. Or maybe you're that girl who loves doing 20 reps of squats but doesn't want to do a heavy set of three. You know, when you rep ranges are in your program telling you, no, no, no, the next three weeks, you're training the low rep ranges

or the next three weeks you're doing high rep ranges with supersets. Now you're gonna follow it and you're not gonna neglect all these things that are very valuable to your body. Or specific exercises that you need to do that may seem mundane or I'm like, oh, I don't wanna do that, that's boring

or it's lame or it's no fun. Like, it doesn't look cool. I can't load it very much. So you avoid it, but you know, damn well, you should do it, or it's programmed in there. Yeah, like, Cav's for me was another big one, like, if it was in a program, I would've-

For me, yeah. I have to, like, intentionally do it. And I hate it the whole time, you know, but I just make sure that I do it, you know, like, I have to like, put it out there, that, okay, today it's happening, and then I do it. You know, like I have to like put it out there that, okay, today it's happening and then I do it. Otherwise, it's one of those things I'll just conveniently avoid.

Yeah, totally. And you know, again, running gyms for as long as I did, it's funny because most people, a lot of people don't follow programs. And what would you call Mondays in the gym? International what? Chestay. Chestay, right?

All the benches were taken because every guy was my favorite day. Everybody's doing the bench press and of course the squat rack back in those days had, you know, it does all over it and nobody was using it. So it makes a big difference to follow a program just to prevent you, just simply to prevent you from neglecting certain aspects of your training, which by the way, okay, one of the number one reasons why you're not progressing as fast as you could be, or one of the reasons why you're not progressing at all, is because there's something you're neglecting

that you don't like to do, whether it be mobility or a rep range you don't like to do, or an exercise, or a type of exercise, or body parts that you don't like to train, that's probably one of the reasons why your body's not progressing as fast as it could. Now, the next thing that Programs provide it's this one's obvious, but it provides Structure and a checklist you know, this is a big one especially for I would say for beginners and intermediate because they go to the gym

And then it becomes like okay, I'm supposed to work my shoulders I'll think I'll do some of this. I think I'll do some of that. Now here's a deal. If you took an effective workout with, let's say, you know, five really effective exercises, does the order of the exercises make a difference? It does. It actually makes it can make a very big difference. One way or the other, right? So when you follow a well-written program, you have it laid out for you in the right direction, right? I'm starting with this exercise, not with this one. This is the one I end with. And I'm going to do, for example,

I'll give a simple example. Not that most people would do this, but just to illustrate what I'm talking about. Let's say I was going to do legs in core today in my workout. And in my workout, I have scheduled heavy sets of squats for 12 reps, right? Should I go hammer my core and then go do sets of 12 for my, you know, squat? No, that's terrible idea. Listen, people might not know that, but it's a terrible idea.

I'm probably going to hurt myself or at least increase my risk of injury. Now, that's an obvious one, but it happens with lots of different routines. The order of the exercises and how you follow them and the reps, all that stuff, having the structure makes a big difference. Well, it can also provide the accurate progression, too, right? So one of the most common things that I do when I'm not is when I'm like, is this the third week that I've done this in a row or is this the fourth week? You start forgetting like how many times you've been running at this rep range or how many

weeks you've actually done this exercise consecutively versus when I know that I'm following a program, I know what day, what week I'm on because I'm following something that was already laid out for me versus trying to recall back in my head going, oh, I think I'm due now for low rep range. I'm not sure. What story that I like that you tell is when you were at your highest level, when you're competing, up until a certain point, you always guessed that you were increasing the volume of your training until you started a track and program and didn't realize what was that experience?

Well, what I found was, and this is why I do share this on the show, because I know I can't be alone here, is this thing that we all do when we go by feel, you know, we think that we're scaling it up, like, oh, I'm pushing this workout, but what it ends up happening over the course of like a month or two months is yeah Maybe you have week one you have you know X amount of volume so that means that sets reps weight which you multiply out right So you work out this much and then next week you you do a little bit more than the week after that

You do a little bit more or maybe you go a little more intense and then week four hits and like something happens You miss the day in the gym or you have to cut out early or you're tired, you didn't get good sleep. And so naturally you back off a little bit of volume, whether you meant to do it or not or whether you feel it or not. A lot of times I would think I was scaling and I was because I felt like it was difficult, but maybe it was difficult because I didn't sleep very well last night, not because I technically increased the volume.

And when you're trying to guess like that, it's just like counting calories. Many times you think you know what you're doing, but you have no idea until you actually track. And what I would find is when I looked at it over the course of months, I kind of hovered around this same amount of volume with these ups and downs where it's like, oh yeah, I had a few weeks in a row of scaling and progressing really nice. And then I had a week or two where I come down and then back up and then maybe a few days in a row that's good.

And then one day that's bad. And so unless I was tracking, I didn't really have a really good idea. And one of the things that I felt really progressed my my physique show or show and that's where I had to do this, right? When when I was just a trainer or a kid that wanted to look better, there wasn't this urgency of getting there. Wasn't like, you know, if I built my shoulders

over the course of the next few years, hopefully I do, I'm gonna work towards it, whatever. But when you get on stage and I'm being judged and I'm competing against my peers and every show that these judges are gonna see me again, I need to show them like, okay, you saw me last time and you said, I look great, but my shoulders need a little more, my back needs a little more.

I gotta make sure that the next time they see me, that I can show that I've improved that. Well, the only way that I could guarantee that was that I was tracking the volume and making sure that I'm slowly progressing that. Yeah, the more focus and organized you have all that laid out. I remember for me just trying to increase my bench, that was like everything I wanted to focus on at the time and really paying attention and writing down what weight I ended

up at and how many reps and everything, just tracking the actual load and then progressively adding even fractional weights on there. And then, you know, taking my time each week to, you know, just keep adding just little bits, it took me to a place I've never been before or haven't since just because I really like honed in and focused on that as being an objective goal. Yeah. So it's same here.

So, you know, years ago I hit up a max deadlift. I hit 600 pounds, so most I ever did. But the way I got there was because in the past, I would just go to the gym, I'd work out, and then I feel, oh, I feel strong, I'm gonna go heavier, or I feel strong, I'm gonna go heavier. What I did to get to 600 then is actually wrote it out, and actually wrote in weeks where I would de-load.

Now normally, I wouldn't do the de-load because I'd feel strong. I'm going to go in there. I'm going to push it anyway and that would always cause me to plateau really hard. So instead, I would, let's say I did three reps with 500 pounds, which was hard this week, then I wrote in there. For the next four weeks, no matter how strong you feel, you're only going to do three reps with 500 pounds. That wouldn't happen if it wasn't written down, because for me, I'd be like, oh, I think I could do four or I think I could do five. But instead, I stuck to three, stuck to three, stuck to three, they went ahead to the fifth week

and I added more weight, and then boom, let's see what happens. So, well, the other thing that happens too that I would find is, you know, when going off a field, like maybe I, like, unless you use like your deadlift example, I go into a deadlift, this is me not tracking. Oh, I feel really strong, And then I would slap on 25 50 more pounds. And then I get so sore that it hinders the next two workouts where I'm doing that again.

Or so where is if I just progress just enough just adding a couple reps or just adding a few pounds just incrementally like that. I would never get that feeling of like, oh my god, this is going to affect not sitting yourself back. Exactly. No, no, no, no, oh my God, this is going to affect that. You're not setting yourself back. Exactly. And that's what I feel like most people do and they don't realize they do that is they're going off of feel, oh, I feel good today. So then they reach, they overreach.

And then they overreach, you're sure that workout looked really good. So it got you extended or exceeded the volume and that workout and the intensity was great. But then the next time you come back around to deadlifting again, you've got to regress back because you overreached. Yeah. No, it helps you avoid plateaus. Typically, when you progress with your workouts, it looks kind of like this. It doesn't look like this consistent linear progression.

That's what it looks like when you're a beginner. But over time, it tends to look like this. It's like a step, right? You go up a little bit and you're flatten out and you go down a little bit only to come back up even higher. Good programming, well-written programming, typically written by someone other than yourself. Or if you really experienced, you wrote it yourself when you were not in the gym, when you were more self-aware maybe at home, you calculate this out.

This is all figured out in advance. Okay, you can see here for the next three weeks, I'm writing out this program, I'm going to be going heavier and heavier. You know what that means for the next two weeks after that, I'm going to go much lighter and a little bit higher reps or whatever, but that's that will help your body progress. Usually the way it's supposed to progress. If you always try to progress like this with this constant linear, you're going to hit a plateau, you're going to hit a brick wall and not going to move anywhere. Now, now the next thing is that I like to talk about too, that this is all this is looting to,

is the teaching process. Like really, the idea always when I was training a client wasn't that I, I mean, maybe early in my early days, it was, let's see how long I keep this client forever because I keep my business going. But when I became a better trainer, the goal was actually always how long does this person have to train with me before I can get them

to be able to go do this on their own for the rest of their life. And so following a good program, and you're not just blindly following it, you're trying to figure out why am I doing all these things. You're listening to a podcast like this where we talk a lot about this stuff. It's the education process. It's that is so invaluable. Sure, following a program is's gonna get you more results. You're gonna be more consistent.

You're not gonna hit plateaus the same. Blah, blah, blah, all the stuff that we're talking about. But actually, the most important piece is just the learning process. Oh yeah. Why am I resting this long? Why am I phasing out of this? Rep range, I've been doing for the last three to four weeks.

I don't understand. I was just getting good at it. All these things, you're kind of working through and you're paying attention to why this is all laid out that way, this is stuff that you're gonna learn that has massive effect on you later on. Yeah, and how do I feel throughout each segment of this well-written workout, for example?

I'll give you guys an example, just myself. With the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cyclopeedio bodybuilding routine, I learned about angles, volume, and the pump. With the workouts I did from Mike Menser, the heavy do-sof, I learned about intensity and failure. I learned about how long I took my body to recover from failure. When I trained with the old-school strength athlete routines like Steve Reeves or John Grimich, I learned about full body workouts and their value.

When I read dinosaur training, I remember that book. I learned about frequency, I remember that book, when I got that, I learned about frequency, just practicing exercises. When I followed Soviet era routine, at least I would go and find books on Soviet Olympic lifting. I didn't do Olympic lifting, I would apply it towards traditional resistance training exercise. I learned about moderate intensity, practicing exercises with lots of frequency. When you follow a routine, one of the best things you get

from that, one of the biggest values you get is you learn how to program for yourself because you're following something and you're getting something from it. Once you follow enough programs are well written, you get to the point where you start to figure these things out more and more for yourself. And then you can individualize.

This is what's real important. You start to individualize your routines. But I like to always cycle back. This is important because, again, I've been doing this for a long time, but at least once a year, if not twice a year, I will go back, follow a well, one of our routines. I think the last time I followed one of our programs, I followed Map Split, and I did it specifically because I hadn't followed a program routine in a long time, and what it did is it brought me back to, like I said earlier, that conscious competence,

I had to open my phone, look at the workout, okay, I'm doing alternating incline dumbbell press, I'm doing alternating dumbbell rows for my back, and I have to follow the routine, I said, oh, wait a minute, that's right, I feel great when I alternate with dumbbells, I feel really, really good when I do unilateral exercises, things that I typically don't do on my own. It's just like nutrition. And if you consider yourself very advanced and very knowledgeable, I still think

at the minimum every year, at least once on both those things, you should track, weigh, measure, and pay attention to your food, at least for one stent of the year, every single year, just to check back where you're currently at. The same thing goes for programming. If you're advanced enough that you can write your own programs, you know exercise, design really well, you understand biomechanics, you get all that stuff really well, awesome. You still should follow something once a year at the minimum, I think, to always kind of

re-calibrate. I agree. And you get to learn how to train in new ways. If you are really experienced and knowledgeable about exercise, you probably are pretty knowledgeable in one area of exercise. Like maybe you're really good with bodybuilder style training. But when it comes to powerlifting,

you know, I know squats, dead lifts, and bench, but I don't really understand how powerlifters trained to maximize those lifts. Follow a powerlifting routine, see what happens. Or maybe you always train like an athlete, you're all about functional training. So functional training is your thing. Maybe follow a bodybuilding routine for a few months,

see how you feel, see if the added hypertrophy, the added muscle growth, benefits your functional training, which it probably will, because it all kind of ties together. Same thing with kettlebell training. You can do this with a lot of different programs, and you learn about your body each time you follow one of these programs.

There's no reason why you shouldn't stand on the shoulders of giants, right? There's a lot of well-written routines and programs that are created by people who are really good at what they do. And really, the best way to learn from them is through experience and to follow them. I tell you what, this is why experience is such an important teacher when you're a personal trainer because doing teaches you differently than just learning,

just watching or reading. You're actually following along and doing it yourself, you really, really learn how to program for yourself by doing it this way. Yeah, it always comes back to the right individual dose. And so, you could place anything in there whether it's intensity, volume, whatever metric you're paying attention to, but the only way to find that out, you're not gonna find it in a book, you're not gonna find that by percentage formula

that spits out some arbitrary number for you. You have to go do the work and you have to pay attention to your body and the signs and the signals and follow the routine and adjust the routine according to your needs. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. So a couple of caveats, right? You should still listen to your body. You want to follow a program, follow the structure, but if your shoulders hurt or you're really run down, it's okay to veer off the routine a little bit. Here's another thing, don't just follow any program.

And I know we have our own programs that we create, but I tell you, when you go in the fitness, if I had one of the reasons why we wrote and created programs, when we looked in the fitness space, we saw that we're terrible. There was a need. Now we're out there, so don't just follow any program. Some of the best workout programs

are written by experienced coaches and experienced trainers because they've trained so many different people that they know how to write routines that will benefit most people. Even people who really know how to train themselves, but have never trained lots of it, I'll give you guys an example, years ago we interviewed somebody on our show who's big, big dude, big muscular guy and his workouts were just absolutely crazy. It was like 40 sets per body part and he had these programs that he would sell to people. And I remember all of us, you know, talking amongst ourselves, I'm like, well, I could tell that this works for him, but I could tell he's never trained to be else.

Because if he throws this routine at anybody, it's not going to work. So coaches and trainers that have trained lots of people tend to have some of the best routines that you'll find anywhere because they have experienced training lots of people and they can consider these factors when they write and create these routines. Programs are not just exercises thrown together to make you sweat. Programs have a structure and they have a direction. If you follow a good powerlifting routine, it's designed to make you stronger at those three lifts that you do in competition. If it's a strong man routine, it's designed to make you stronger at those three lifts that you do in competition. If it's a strongman routine, it's designed to train you to make you strong in the way

that a strongman would need to be in competition. Same thing with the bodybuilding routine or a bikini competition routine or whatever, the routine that you follow, make sure again it's written by really, really good coaches and it has a direction, it's not just make you sweat, make you tired and be super intense, which unfortunately, I guess most programs are sold that way. Check this out. Go to mindpumpfree.com and check out some of our free information and free guides. We've got a lot of great information on everything from how to develop your biceps to your shoulders, your back, your legs, your core, all kinds of stuff.

Again, it's mindPumpFree.com. You can also find all of us on social media, Instagram, so you can find Justin at MindPump Justin, me at MindPumpSalon, Adam at MindPumpAdmin. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance,

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but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump.

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