Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1670: When Lifting Light Builds More Muscle

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin cover scenarios where lifting light actually produces better results. The advantages/disadvantages of training men versus women. (2:21) Seven Scenarios When Lifting Light Actually Builds More Muscle. (7:30) #1 – Correctional or Rehab. (8:08) #2 – Training for the Pump. (15:13) #3 – Isolating Specific Muscles. (22:12) #4 – Practicing the Skill. (24:51) #5 – Adding more Frequency. (30:51) #6 – Deload Week. (36:10) #7 – Some Exercises Lend Themselves Better for Light Weight. (40:39) Related Links/Products Mentioned  October Promotion: MAPS Anabolic and NO BS 6-Pack Formula – Get Both for $59.99!    Visit Path Water for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout for the discount** Injury Risk Factors Associated With Weight Training Why Can’t I Feel the Right Muscles Working? - Mind Pump Blog The Pump: Ego Booster or Muscle Builder? - Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1632: The Truth About German Volume Training Bring Up Lagging Rear Delts- Focus Session Rear Delt Fly – Mind Pump TV Grow Your Shoulders With The Rear Delt Cable Fly – Mind Pump TV Stop Working Out And Start Practicing – Mind Pump Media The Rule of 90% Training Strategies to Improve Muscle Power The Most Overlooked Muscle Building Principle – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Alright, in today's episode, we talk about when it's best to lift light. In other words, when you'll get best results by cutting the weight and the load down

that you're using for your exercises, we actually picked seven reasons when it's good to go light. Now this episode is brought to you by Pathwater. Now Pathwater purified water that comes in aluminum reusable water bottle containers. Very, very eco-friendly, great for the environment. The water tastes amazing, stays cold longer than those plastic bottles, of course, better for the environment. I mentioned

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You save over $100. If you're interested in using both of those programs to develop an incredible looking body, head over to mapsoctober.com. Why don't we talk about why I don't see Justin ever using more than 15 pound dumbbells? Hey man, can we talk about that? I'm still getting the gains that you're jealous of. I mean, I think that's why we should talk about this is because you obviously look fantastic and you don't lift anymore 15 pounds. No, you know, all joking aside, that's actually a good topic because there's definitely not just the time and a place for lifting light, but it's superior in some cases to lift with lightweight where a heavy weight would actually impede your progress or your results.

So I do think this is a really good topic to talk about. You know, it's funny. I brought up a statistic on another podcast and I want to bring it up again here. There was this like the study that was done on weightlifting injuries. This is the one I told you guys about and about if men or women who think. Oh, it's hilarious. So this for people who know they followed men and women who worked out for a year with weights and the injury rate difference between men and women was comical. Yeah.? Zero point six percent of women had a weightlifting injury, 4.5% of men, so it's like a four or five%

of men's discrepancy there. Did you guys prefer training men or women? Did you have a preference? I know you were an advanced age guy, you talk about that all the time that you liked older clients, but did you prefer sex? I think there was like advantages to either. Like I enjoyed training women just because they're a little bit more receptive towards the

educational part of it and like slowing down and you know, and then I didn't run into a lot of problems about like, you know, form, technique and you know, the application, the exercise versus with the guy, it was like, all the time, I just was having to check them on. I know you can do more, but we need to perfect this movement. We need to get the technique of it down. I hated training guys. Yeah, I didn't like training guys out.

In fact, there was a while back in Mind Pump, just a couple of years ago. And I was telling Katrina, I was like, you know, I really, we were, I was like in save mode and trying to hustle a couple of other things that I could do to make some extra money on the side. I was like, you know, I really, I was like in save mode and trying to hustle a couple of other, you know, things that I could do to make some extra money on the side. I was like, you know, maybe I'll train a client or two in the morning time before mind pump and we work and stuff.

And we have a guy friend, a mutual friend of Katrina and I who's got money and can afford my hourly rate and would come at the time I would want, like would be flexible and ideal. And Katrina's like, oh, set him up. And I'm like, no, I don't want to train him. She's like, what do you mean, why would you want to train him? You guys are friends, you like him?

I said, no, I hate training guys. I said, it has to be a girl. And right away, she thinks, you know, like, why is it has to be a girl? Why is it, it's like, no, women are just way better to train because to your point, you're making Justin, it's like, men are so fucking stubborn. That half the time they lie,

they don't tell them, well, you tell them to go do this, go do this. They're gonna tell you they're in pain. Yeah, they're gonna tell you they're in pain. They're gonna push heavyweight when they shouldn't push heavyweight. They're gonna say they're doing all these things. They're not like women, just if I tell a female client, do this,

like I swear, they're just better at following things to a tee, which makes my job so much easier to measure and calibrate. Okay, are we heading down the right track? Versus when I get guys, you know, he would come in, and by the way, I have trained him on the side for fun here and there. It come in and be like, hey, so did we do X, Y, and Z? Oh, you know, yeah, but last night, you know, buddies and I, we went out, we can go and fucked up, you know, buddies and I, we went out, we got fucked up, you know,

so crazy nice. It's just like, bro, how do you expect me to calibrate your programming and diet if you interrupt it every fifth day with 12 beers? Like, I can't, you're killing me. Well, I think generally speaking, right? I would see that with men, it was harder for them or harder to get them to do certain things,

like train lighter and watch form and technique. I guess generally speaking with women, sometimes I'd have to convince them to go heavy or to increase their calories. That's generally speaking, but on an individual basis, I mean, it could be very different. I had really good experiences with and bad experiences with both men and women, but yeah, generally speaking, guys, you get that ego, right? Yeah, that's a politically correct way to say that.

No, it's true. It's also true. Yeah, okay. Well, look, one of my best clients of all time was Doug. He's a guy. Yeah. And he was a great client. I mean, I stand by that there's always an exception

to the rule. You know, there's definitely, I've had male clients that I loved and were amazing. One of my first best clients I've ever had, Alfredo, an engineer guy, and he was an engineer. So you guys have trained engineers before. They're more like that. They're detail oriented.

They want to know everything we're doing, why we're doing it. They want to document it themselves. So that does really well. You can convince them to do crazy stuff. What was my favorite part? Yeah, it was the squat curl. But to the weight point,

and that's kind of what made me think about this was I love that I could tell a female client of mine like this is the way that I want you at and she would perform it And even if she knew she could do a little bit more if that's what I was telling her to do She would stick to the program where it was always hard for me with a guy if he thinks he can do more weight He always wants to do more weight and there's There's times when, just because you can do more weight, I don't want you to do more weight. There's points in the training program

where I'm doing that, not because I think you can't lift any more weight, because I have a specific adaptation that I'm trying to get to with you. And if I need you to be in a lighter weight in order to accomplish that, and us stretching beyond that. I'm you to be in a lighter weight in order to accomplish that and us stretching beyond that. We're trying to hone in on the right dose and that's like our job as a trainer is to find that balance where you are going to still progress forward and you, you know, sometimes that means, you know, lightening the load a bit so that way, you know, it allows your body to fully recover and that

way we can adapt further to then build strength and kind of, you know, move in your body to fully recover. And that way we can adapt further to then build strength and kind of, you know, move in a direction going on. Yeah, load is just one of the components of your programming and it's appropriate to go heavy and effective. In some cases, in other cases, it's just, isn't. It's just not, and it just won't, not only will it not get you better results, but it'll actually reduce the effectiveness of what you're training for.

So there are cases, and we're going to go through seven of them when training light isn't just, oh, it's not just, you know, an alternative way of training or a way to change up the signal, but rather, for more often than not, in the seven cases we're going to give, it's the, it's where you should probably go. Most appropriate way to go. I mean, the first one we listed was correctional and rehab. Absolutely. And that's a perfect example what I'm talking about is, you know, here I'm trying to get one of my male clients to back off the way and like really pay attention to the detail of the movement because we're trying to target a very specific area because I'm trying to fix something

versus just prove to me that you could lift more away. This is one of the challenges. Never had a problem with a female client. If I tell one of my female clients, this is what we're trying to accomplish. Stay light, stay controlled. This is what we're trying to do. Where my guys would always come back and be like,

oh yeah, I did that, but I went up to... Well, it's especially important when you're addressing some recruitment pattern that is obviously off. They are recruiting muscles just by the way that they've done it over the years and they've hardwired this movement pattern that is just not ideal. And it's created problems. It's created unnecessary stress and instability and aggravated the joints. And so now to go, you know, deep dive into that and show them,

like there's another operating system we need to apply here. We have to, you know, bring the load back substantially so we could actually even perform it correctly. Yeah, but it's, I think the confusion is people here, you got to go light with correctional or rehab exercises. And they think you have to go light because it hurts to go heavy, or you have to go light because it's not safe to go heavy. Now, there's truth to that, yes,

but there's something that's even deeper, which is when I'm doing correctional exercise, you don't even have to be injured. I just noticed that there's a movement pattern issue. And a movement pattern issue means that your movement pattern that is not optimal is your default movement pattern. That means it's the one that you're best at. So if I increase the load, your movement pattern is going to automatically switch to the one that you're best at.

Now, it might not be the ideal one. It's just the one that you're best at. And so you're going to go there as soon as I go heavy. Like, you know, if you're really, really good at walking in high heels, and that's all you'll do all day long. Oh, and I am. Yeah, you probably can walk faster in high heels and you can flat.

Even though walking with your foot flat is more of an ideal movement pattern, you have to kind of relearn how to do it because as soon as you speed up, you default to this pattern that you've already learned. So if I'm teaching someone, for example, how to row without their shoulder shrugging, and that's how they've always roared, and they've gotten strong that way, the second I go heavy,

the second the load is high, they're going to go to the movement pattern that allows them to move the most weight. So correctional exercise always has to be light with the load, hard with the connection, and in that case, in particular, heavy weight is almost never. Well, and sometimes it's not just the actual correction movement. I'll give you an example. So in a very, very common one. So my teachers that ride on whiteboards, my drivers, truck drivers, taxi drivers, painter, painter, anybody who uses one arm that's forward, hair stylist, you know, and they would have is this on that side, their dominant side that they use, this just slightly rolled forward shoulder, more on that side than, let's say, the left side. And then, not only do I need to go light and do correctional work to help them engage and

retract and depress and get that shoulder in optimal position, but I also am going to lighten the load on things like a bench press, because what I would see is this is I get that client under and we start off with minimal load and they start pressing and then you have first five reps that I've taught on the mechanics, they got great form, but then they get to like six or seven and as soon as it starts to get a little challenging, that right side, they still can get the all the way to 12 reps. You're moving the way. But what ends up happening is those last five reps,

that shoulder rolls out of position again, and then the body cheats the weight up, because that's how it knows. It's the dominant way for it to move. And the worst part is you end up strengthening the bad movement pattern. You end up making it even stronger, making it harder to correct in the first place.

Correctional exercise should almost always be light because the new form, the new technique, the new recruitment pattern that you're training is one that's new to you. And you can't train in the new pattern with hard, heavy load. Like this is why so many people injure themselves running. It's not because humans aren't, you know, we didn't evolve to run.

We actually run exceptionally well. It's just that we don't have the skill of it anymore. We stop running when we're 10. So people go outside to run and they don't practice running. They go run until they're tired. Well, you know, if I'm trying to practice perfect running and I don't have the skill, the second I get tired, my form is out the window. A lot of people lift weights this way, too.

A lot of people lift weights for the sweat and the burn, thinking that translates into a good workout when this is what's happening. The minute that your body starts to fatigue, it goes to its default pattern, and since most of us have these poor default patterns, then you just keep reinforcing that by adding loads. So here's an area where lightweight is necessary and superior than heavy weight. Maybe not from a calorie burn or total amount of muscle being built, but for total optimal performance and longevity and gaining muscle over a long period of time.

For the purpose of correction. Yeah. We're trying to correct the movement pattern. So to put it differently, right? If you have a chain and there's one link that's weak on it, the most that that chain can support is what the weak link can support. That's the limitation.

So if I have a movement pattern issue, I am training heavy according to that movement pattern issue. It's as heavy as that movement pattern can allow, not as hard or as heavy as my old movement pattern can allow. That's what we mean by light. So it's still challenging, challenging with perfect form. You go heavy, now it's out the window. Yes, you can move the weight, but now you're moving in.

And so what does that look like? Take it back to the example I was giving with the chest press. So this same person who was talking about at rep seven, they start to roll forward. They could technically add 10 more pounds. And still keep, and still keep getting the reps out. But that's how I decide how much weight they can do is how much weight can you do and keep the shoulder in that position for all 10 reps the entire time. The minute I load the bar, heavy enough that the form slightly starts to deviate

at all, we gotta go back the other direction. And it's not, where do I, the muscle fatigue and I no longer can push the weight anymore, it's where does my form break down? And that's how you gauge how heavy I should be. You know, you see something like this is a good example. You might see this was someone who's like a really, really good deadlifter. Maybe didn't have good ankle mobility and they're squatting heavy and then they start to do the hips come up first and then the back extension up at the top because as they

start to get heavy, we're really good at that hip extension aspect, not so much at the squatting aspect, and so their body defaults to that one. And then if you keep going that way again, what you don't wanna do is strengthen a bad movement pattern because you're just adding cement to it. You're adding concrete to it and you're just making it much worse. So correctional exercise should almost always be light

because the limiting factor is your movement pattern and that movement pattern gets challenged very easily with lightweight and heavy weight it just overcomes it and then you go back to your old movement pattern. The next one is when you're training for the pump. Now this isn't to say that heavy training doesn't give you a pump because a heavy training can definitely give you a pump.

But if you're training specifically for what's known as circle plasmmic hypertrophy, sarcoplasm is the all of the non muscle fiber structures and muscle, which actually incidentally makes up most of the size of your muscle also contributes to energy production, of course size and hydration and blood flow. So it's very important. It's not, it's also important just like muscle fibers are. If you're training for that, you want to be able to focus on the muscle, maintain tension on the muscles,

and really squeeze it and keep that tension there, and that is easier when you're going light. It's harder when you have your positioning and your posture with that too, because I know even the little slight nuances of angles and all these things are a consideration when you're training with this type of a style and to be able to maintain the mechanics of it and stay in that stabilized position, this is where Lighter Weight does play a bit of an advantage with this style

of training. This is where you see those exercises that I think we kind of harp on is like the glute kickbacks or something like that. This is where I see tremendous value, right? I have a client, she says to me, Adam, I squat, I deadlift, I do all these movements, I cannot feel it in my butt at all. So that she has a poor mind muscle connection that glutes because she's doing the exercises that are supposed to be for glutes,

but she doesn't feel it. Okay, so what I'm gonna go do is do something like a floor bridge or hip thrust, or I'm gonna do like the dog peas or kickbacks, all these little movements. But I'm gonna go extremely light and have her think about the glutes, why she does that, and get a nice pump in them so that she then goes over to do the squats and her butt is already pumped, and she's already worked on that connection so she gets more out of the squat for her glutes than she would have she not done that. Well this is where bodybuilders really shine.

You know I've heard bodybuilders say rather than adding weight to the bar, make the weight feel heavier with your technique, your form and focus on the squeeze in the pump. And you can definitely do this. I mean, I can make 200 pounds feel like 300 pounds on a squat by squeezing and maintaining tension and slowing my forendown and squeezing at the top and pausing at the bottom. I can do all that with lighter weight. It doesn't have to just be certain exercises.

You could do this one compound lifts. I've done this with dead lifts. Dead lifts, which a lot of people like this doesn't isolate anything, it's super compound or whatever, I get some of that. But I've done it with deadlifts where I squeeze my lats and I go light and I'm coming up to the top and I'm squeezing hard and I maintain intention

all the way down and I'll get a lap pump from doing a deadlift that way. If I want to get a lap pump from a deadlift, I don't go heavy, I go light and focus on the squeeze and that's where going light really shines. Yeah, and I think too, I don't go heavy, I go light and focus on the squeeze. And that's where, you know, going light really shines. Yeah, and I think too, I mean, obviously we're focusing a little bit more on like single joints, so we're trying to isolate certain muscles involved. But the thing about it is, man, I totally forgot I was going to say it's a little long time.

But no, as you can see, it was like, so the contraction parts, so you have the concentric, you have the isometric, you have the eccentric. So a lot of these compound lifts, in terms of strength training, you're focused primarily on that concentric portion. And so it's really ripping the weight and then coming down pretty quickly. And so with this style of training, we're also focusing on those other muscle contractions, which now builds up that overall muscle tension, which makes it a lot more challenging, difficult.

You can make it really challenging by those three components with lightweight. No, that's a great example. Like, you want to get a massive pump is, you know, choose a way that's really light and you can move really slow and do a four to six second eccentric portion of the exercise and watch how much blood gets pumped into there and watch how easy it is for you to direct where you're trying to focus on because it's so light, it's very easy for you to focus

on a specific area. You're not just worried about moving the way. Yeah, and because it's so light, you can slow it down for four or five, maybe even six seconds on the eccentric portion of the exercise, where if it's at all mildly heavy or heavy at all, you're not gonna be able to slow the rep down like that. And so there's tremendous benefit to the pump and being able to focus on the eccentric portion.

That was one of my favorite things. And I actually wasn't trying to highlight so much the pump when I do that. This would be me just trying to get someone to go four seconds on a negative. I've talked about this on the show all the time. It's for muscle building. Yeah, it's incredible for muscle building.

It's one of the most important portions of the exercise for muscle building, yet very few people follow the ideal protocol for hypertrophy, which is a four second negative and you go in the gym and you don't see anybody doing that. And that's because everybody's always pushing the limits on weight. You're always trying to,

never even wants to look, yeah, they care about looking strong more than they care about getting the most out of their workout because what they're have to do on that bench press if they wanna get a four second negative like you're talking about, you might have to drop 50 pounds on the bar and it doesn't look cool if you're a dude

and you wanna be saying you're doing 225, you're gonna drop down to one plate. By the way, going light for the pump, it's not like just coming down five or 10 pounds. Like literally take your weight in half and then see if you can make it feel as heavy as the weight was before by slowing down your reps and maybe doing some higher reps and squeezing at the top.

Literally cut it in half, watch what happens to the pump. So I just did this, right? So we did an episode what maybe a month or go, what do we do the German volume training one? What do you do with a month, right? But a month, yeah. So anytime we have an episode where we talk about something

like I haven't done a long time, it always inspires me to go, oh, it's been a while since I've done like this. And so I did 10 by 10 with chest. I had to drop down to 35, so he sighed. And it was just, you know, because that just blew my mind, because I could wrap 220.

I can get 225 for 10 reps. But with the rest periods and for 10 sets, and if I was really focused, and then what I wanted to do was like, you know what, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna go lie, I'm gonna really focus on the negative portion, slow it down, get a nice pump.

I don't need to train really heavy right now. And I think it was like the four set. I realized really quick that by the 10th, I'm not gonna be able to finish this with good form, especially if I'm going slow. So I had to drop down to 35 plates on each side. What was your pump? Incredible.

And it was an incredible workout. I was more than enough soar from it afterwards. Felt amazing. But I also know too, this is, you know, 40 year old, older, wiser, atom, that boy, if I was the 20 year old me and the gym, working out as a trainer and my buddies, it would take a lot.

My ego would get in the way of what's best for my body at the time and I would want to pile on the way when I know better. In higher reps too, they tend to give you a better pump and of course you gotta go light when you're going higher reps. So it's very appropriate when you're training specifically for the pump. Now, the next one we kind of talked about a little bit,

which is when you wanna isolate. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean single joint exercises, although those are the ones that are best known for isolating. You can isolate specific muscles with compound lifts if you go light and focus on what you're supposed to feel. Like I can definitely do a heavy overhead press and I can also do a light overhead press but really feel it in my delts and it feels like a different exercise.

And the weight difference is tremendous. Literally, if I'm going light on an overhead press, and I'm really just trying to focus on the delts and get a pump in the delts and isolate the delts, I'm like a hundred pounds on the bar. If I'm going heavy, it's closer to 170 pounds on the bar. So it's a big difference. So it's not just isolation exercises. You can do this with compound lifts as well,

by going light and focusing on the action of the muscle you're looking for. For example, if I'm doing a squat and I want my glutes to really squeeze, I'm focusing on my hips, the extension that's happening with my hips. If I wanna focus on my quads, I'm focusing on knee extension and squeezing my quads at the top. So two different focuses mentally, two different fields. If I'm going heavy, I can't do that

because when I'm going heavy, it's not do that. Because when I'm going heavy, it's not about, gotta feel my clothes, gotta feel my glutes, it's like move the weight. Much harder to maintain that mind muscle connection. Yeah, you can do that. You can highlight certain muscles and squeeze and have control like that. You can do, produce that intrinsically.

And I think it's best obviously to do that with lighter weight because then you can focus still. And it's not, you're not defaulting back to your old patterns where I just need to move the weight out. One of my favorite examples of that, you guys know, rear delts are like one of my favorite things to train, and of course, when I was focused

on that during competing days, I was always looking for creative ways to target or hit it different and seated row. Seated row, if you were to ask somebody, what is that primarily for? We're gonna tell you, your rhomboy's, your traps, your lats, those are all your main muscles. I would use it for rear delts.

By simply lightening the load, flaring my elbows a tiny bit out, letting myself roll and protract the shoulders forward and keep them in that forward position. Pretty easy for you to do. Now I have a unbelievable, mostly rear-dale exercise, very little lat traps and wrong-boy movement. And to the average untrained eye,

they would walk by and be like, oh, he's doing a back exercise. It's like, no, I was doing that for my shoulders. And you can do that when you understand mechanics and you lighten the load and you focus on a specific area, you can take a movement that is primarily used for something completely different and change it to target an area that you really want to focus on. Right. Now, the next point, I think, is a very important one. And I communicate this one

personally a lot to general population. When I'm talking to the average person, not a fitness fanatic, somebody who's starting resistance training training who wants to reap some of the benefits, but really has no interest in going super crazy with it. Maybe it wants to do two or three days a week. I love to tell them to practice lifts rather than treat lifts as a workout. So rather than going to the gym to hammer your chest or your quads or your shoulders, you're going to go to the gym, you're going to practice squatting until you get really good at it. And you're going to practice pressing, you're going to go to the gym, you're going to practice squatting until you get really good at it. And you're going to practice pressing, you're going to practice rowing. When you're practicing a lift, you're treating it like a skill, right?

So I'm in here, I'm squatting. And what I'm trying to do is just get better at the skill of squatting. My positioning, my upper back, my core stability, where my knees, how are my ankles, and my feet active, how are my hips, where's my hand position? And I'm practicing the technique. If I go heavy, the first thing to go out the window is the form. The first thing to go out the window is my technique,

and then I'm training the wrong skill. So if you're trying to practice lifts, you gotta go light. And this is like what we said with the correctional exercise. You gotta go light because your default pattern is wrong. It's just funny that I haven't, I didn't put this together right away. Like it was something that was very obvious to me in terms of how I trained for sports and how I made sure that I maintained certain skills and movements that would apply

when I'm in a game situation versus like when I'm in the gym and I'm going through these lifts, you know, it used to just be about how much you could put up. Yeah. And like how hard I could go in that short amount of time versus treating it just like I would at getting good at something. Yeah.

And just to get good at something, you have to repeatedly do it. Not just every now and then, you have to do it repeatedly. And so to be able to maintain and pull that off, I mean, you see the best strength athletes in the world do this. And like we should learn something from that. Obviously they figured it out. It's just drilling this and practicing constantly

with low to moderate intensity, really just forms and fashions this skill set that you can then get really good at. Dude, I'm so glad you said that because strength is a skill. I'm so glad you said the best strength athletes because I went the beginner route, I went the general population route.

But this is also very applicable to the person who just wants to really take it to the next level. Olympic lifters, right? That more science is applied to Olympic weightlifting resistance training than any other form of resistance training. It's been the most funded, it's been around for the longest, it's an Olympic sport, countries around the world, spend time and energy and money on maximizing performance, and how do Olympic lifters lift? Sub-maximal

loads, most of the time. They're most of the time they're going light and just practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing. When do they go heavy? When it's time to compete. And then their form and skill is so good, the weights that they lift based off their body weight, you won't find a sport that has a greater discrepancy between body weight and weight lifted. It's insane, and it comes from the fact that they have such perfect skill and technique and strength definitely is a skill. Definitely. Well, I think I don't remember what study it was. I don't know if you remember or so that you shared on here that I think just highlights that so well. It was talking about

the amount that a Olympic lifter, the capacity that they could get out of the lift. I think it was like in the 90% tile or something like that. The amount that like you all have a max capacity, but your CNS only allows you to generate so much because fear of injury, but when you practice over and over again, you're able to train your body to maximize its output. Right. Everybody's had this example, right? Where you did something like we've told stories about being dads and hearing the kids

screaming and you leap up the stairs. The thing that's crazy about that is that I bet you, if it was a normal day and I stood you by stairs and I asked you to move up the stairs at the same speed and rate, you couldn't do it. But because you hijacked that, because of the fear and then you were able to do that. So the point of me sharing that is your body

has this amazing capacity and a capability to move a lot more weight than what you do. And the average person who weight trains is probably only working at like 50% of what they're capable of. The only example that we really have of people that move at their highest capacity are Olympic lifters. And what do they do? They spend 90% of their time moving lightweight,

lots of times really good form controlled and practicing the skill of lifting so that when they do decide to get after it and go heavy, they get the most out of that low. A little while ago, there was a squat everyday program that got kind of viral online and people were like, oh my god, my squat went up 50 pounds and that, but what people didn't realize is if you looked at it, it was heavy lifting once a week maybe,

the rest of it was essentially what we're talking about. You know when I really realized that strength was a skill, going to work with my dad as a kid, with all of these blue collar workers who, I'm 16 years old, I've been lifting weights for two years, I'm full of testosterone and energy, and if you took my muscles off my body and looked at them under a microscope and a lab and tested them and compared them to the 1560 year old man who were nailing wood and hauling two by fours and all that stuff. My muscles would have looked stronger, healthier, superior.

But we're out there mixing cement, carrying buckets, doing that they practice all the time. And I'm exhausted. My hands are fatigued. Everything's cramping up. And these guys are whistling while they're doing this kind of work. You're good. Because inefficient with your energy. Yes, they practice so much that they became very good at it. that my hands are fatigued, everything's cramping up, and these guys are whistling while they're doing this kind of work. Because inefficient with your energy. Yes, they practice so much that they became very good at it.

So there's tremendous benefit in practicing with your skill of working out or lifting, but the only way to do this really, because practice, what's the key of practice, is to do it often, right? You can't do it often if you go heavy. You have to do it light in order to practice often and reap those benefits and that's when going light is really appropriate with that. The next one is kind of similar and this is when you just want to add more frequency

to your training. This was the key to the trigger sessions that I put in Maps and Obolic. Triggers because with Maps and Obolic, if you go with the more advanced version of it, because there's two versions when you buy the program, one gives you two heavy, what are called foundational workouts a week, the other option gives you three heavy foundational workouts a week, and you're working the full body all three of those days. So the whole body is getting hit three days a week, but I threw in trigger sessions so that you could hit the whole body five, six, seven days a week, right? But how is that possible? The only way it's possible is if the weight is really light and the intensity is really

low, does lightweight and low intensity send a muscle building signal? It does. A small one, but it still does. And the best part is it doesn't impede your recovery. In fact, this is the best part. Speeds it up. Light weight, speeds up your recovery. If you don't believe me, next time you get really sore

in a body part, I don't care what body part it is, go to the gym and do like four sets of super lightweight of an exercise that targets that body part. Just stretch and squeeze, keep the intensity to the ol' go light and tell me how you feel afterwards. This was a hard lesson for me to learn. I think that I bet that more than half the audience struggles with this, whether they admit it or not.

And that's, you know, we, if you've listened to Mind Pub long enough, you've heard us refer to the studies that talk about frequency and the benefits of training on muscle two to three times a week. And that seems to be superior to most all programming, right, is to be able to hit up muscle two to three times a week. That's what most of the research says. Now the problem with that and the way that I think I read that as a young 20 year old trainer was,

oh, more, more of, I was training it once a week, now I do it two or three times a week. The same way though. With the same intensity, you know, and trying to push and go to failure and train as hard as I could because thinking that more is better. And the study and the research says, do it more often

and it's better. And so I'm gonna apply the same way I trained on Monday on Wednesday and Friday now and WAM, I should get more, right? Well, no, it doesn't work that way. And I think that's the hard part about teaching somebody about frequency is that, yes, hitting a muscle group two to three times a week is superior than detraining it. One, if and only if you know how to adjust for intensity

and one of the ways of obviously adjusting the easiest way to adjust for intensity would be to back off the load. But it's a mind-fuck because if I was bench pressing on Monday and I was working with 225 and now it's Wednesday and I'm bench pressing again and I'm only working 135. I feel like, oh, I'm not really doing much. Yeah, why am I wasting my time?

Yeah, why am I wasting my time? I did so much more on that and you have this desire to want to push to those weights again, but your body will not respond the same way. And so this is another example of where lighter weight is going to be superior. Yeah, where I was challenged most with this was I thought that, why waste my time going light, all I'm going to do is impede my recovery. All I'm going to do is slow my recovery down. What I didn't realize was that movement makes recovery

happen faster. Literally. The blood flow, it moves oxygen. It helps to give the type of building blocks and nutrients and things of the cells for them to fully recover and then regenerate. And it's a vital process of between that and sleep. I mean, those two things are like some

of the biggest components for recovery. And recovery is really what moves you forward. It's great to have the insult in terms of going in and lifting weights and getting that kind of stimulus, but now we want to reap the reward of it and the reward comes from the recovery. Yes, and recovery typically happens simultaneously with adaptation. So adaptation would be the building, right? Recovery is the healing, but just because you're recovering doesn't mean you're actually building it just might mean that you're healing. No adaptations can occur. So to give an

example, you could hit a muscle really hard on Monday. Like let's say you work at your legs really hard on Monday. And then you're bed ridden from from then until the next Monday. So I hammer my legs on Monday. Now I'm a lay in bed. I'm not gonna move people are gonna be me, water them food, and I'm just gonna lay in bed till next Monday. And now I'm fully recovered. I'm gonna be weaker.

I'm gonna have less muscle on Monday. I might have healed, but I didn't adapt. In fact, my body adapted in the opposite direction. This is why, this is one of the kind of reasons why active recovery is so incredible. It encourages adaptation and it helps with recovery. This I can't stress this enough. Literally, if you have a sore muscle that you over train,

one of the best things you could do is stretch it and work it very lightly. And I mean very lightly, like low intensity just move it through full range of motion. You will speed up the recovery process and induce even better adaptations as you're on top of that in terms of what you sort of found out with the rubber bands being one of the sort of tools you can use it that applies the least amount of damage in terms of getting

you that kind of contraction out of the muscle and blood flow, but it's less damaging in that the recovery of it doesn't quite entail as much. contraction out of the muscle and blood flow, but it's less damaging in that, the recovery of it doesn't quite entail as much. Yes. Now, the next one is for when you're doing a D-load. Now, D-loads, I'm happy to say now, are it's become a relatively known concept now in the fitness space, it wasn't before,

but now people are understanding that it's a good idea to throw in a week or two after a training block where I'm going light and I'm going easy and The challenge with it in the past was well, I'm doing a D-Lo that means I'm not progressing Right, I'm not gonna progress over this next week or two. You know, it's funny It's how many times that you D-Lo then come back and actually get strong? The studies actually support it now. Studies will actually show now that some of the best strength gains and muscle gains come during that de-load period. Now, it's not because you're doing

nothing, you're still doing something similar to what we just talked about. You're still moving, but you're actually allowing the body to adapt and build. This is a very important part of training. I remember experiencing this as a kid, so fanatical about training, couldn't miss a workout, everything was super intense.

I thought that was the best thing to do. Then I'd go on a camping trip with my family for five days, right? And I got nothing, I'm out in the woods. And so what am I gonna do? I'm doing these light exercises, I don't have weights, so I'm doing pushups and maybe a couple pullups, not much because I don't have equipment. And I'm dread, oh man, I'm going to go back

to the backyard and lift weights and I'm going to be so weak, this is going to suck. And then I go back and be like, oh my God, I just hit a PR, like what's going on. And I never put that together. That it was the D-Load aspect that really. You know, it's always, I know that I think I brought this up when we were making the notes for this. And I'm always very careful how I talk about D-Load weeks because it really depends on my audience That's someone who's always in a deal. Yeah to be honest like I use D-Lo weeks very rarely for my average clientele And that's because the one of the biggest hurdles over reaching well Yeah, the one of the biggest hurdles for the average you know general

population person that would hire a personal trainer is consistency is just can I keep this person actually training uh three times a week for three months I mean and believe it or not a very small percentage actually most people most people most people most people most people naturally you know miss and de-load without scheduling it. But occasionally, you get that client. And most certainly in the fitness space, you see this, and probably more mind-pump listeners than average, because most of these people are seeking to learn more about fitness, most of the people listening to show are probably

working out. That person who knows how to stretch, how to push, how to be consistent, this is where there's tremendous value. So, if you've just been hammering it for the last three months consistently and you haven't missed a workout, that's an amazing accomplishment. But a lot of times, if you're experiencing a plateau, you may be in that place where you just need a deload week,

you need to back off and go, and again, it doesn't mean you need to don't go to the gym and not work out. It just means, hey, I'm gonna work at 50% of the load on all of my exercises next week and really back off and many times what you'll see. And this is how you always know, this is a great test for everybody to try this,

is everyone should just do that for a week, right? So if you even think that you might be this person who needs to do anything. Yeah, just do it for a week. And when you know that that was what your body needed, was you come back stronger. If you don't come back stronger, maybe you come back weaker,

you don't notice a big difference. Ah, maybe it wasn't a big deal for you. But certainly, if you take a week of deloting and dropping your weight by 50%, and then you go, or doing like all suspension or all body weight type of exercises, and then go back to your routine and you come back stronger. That is your sign that that is exactly what your body.

You know, my sign was was my nagging aches and pains disappeared. I had like, I had like this kind of hip like issue. It wasn't major. It was just kind of there in this elbow pain. Remember, I'd complain about it. I don't know what the hell is wrong. I was like, weird. I'm getting older and I'm bleeding. But everything but you know, correct training. Remember, I'd complain about, I don't know what the hell's wrong. I was like, weird, I'm getting older and I'm bleeding out on everything, but you know, correct training. And I'm like, oh man, I don't know what the hell's going on. And then I'm like, you know what,

I'm gonna do you an allateral training for a few weeks and I'm gonna go light. And my goal with you in allateral training wasn't necessarily the aches and pains it was for symmetry and balance in my body. And I did it and then I remember coming in, you're going, hey you guys will never believe this. Aches and pains are gone. Of course, that's obvious, but you know when you're a trainer you're obviously,

things are so much more obvious for other people than for yourself. But yeah, deloting one of the hallmarks of an effective delode is to literally go light. Now the last point is this, is that some exercises are just meant to go light. They just lend themselves well to go light. And when you go heavy on them, and you can go heavy on them, you can go heavy on any exercise you want. But there definitely are some exercises where if you go heavy, they tend to suck.

They tend to lose their value. I'll give you one example, and we can go through some that we all think of. But here's one example, laterals. I'm working on my shoulders, I'm trying to do laterals. Can you go heavy with laterals? Hell yeah, I can go out there right now

and do some sloppy ass, partially clean looking laterals with 50 to 60 pound dumbbells and I can make it look crazy and get a good sweat and whatever and everybody's gonna be like, wow, that's awesome. It'd be cool for videos. How much weight do I typically use on laterals? I almost never go above 20, 25 pounds, never.

Because that exercise is so much more effective when I slow it down and really work the side dealt of the shoulder. When I go heavy, it becomes a trap upper back exercise. I get this external rotation in the show. I've seen so many people do like laterals like this. Momentum starts to play a factor. Hip-hinging makes it swing in.

There's just a lot of things in the kinetic chain. You may not be aware of unless you're really focused. And to pull the focus out of some of these types of exercises, you know, sort of defeats the purpose. You know what, analogy, I think, of right away. And this will suck for people that don't play sports. So, or like golf or anything. Is that your best?

I mean, here, I like how you set the table with this, which is it's not, I'm not saying you can't go heavy on these exercises, or that they don't have value to go heavy, it's just some exercises that lend themselves to not going heavy. Well, this is how golf swing is. If you've ever ever tried, I know this because, although I beat you guys it,

yeah, we have a recorded list. I know, I know, the harder I, though, if I went hard, an anomaly, shit went out the it. Yeah, we have a recorded listen. I know, I know the harder ice though, if I went hard, and anomaly shit went out the window. Yeah, right. You would barely hit it or go off to the left or you'd miss it or what that is. You're using a driver for like, you know, 50 hour.

Yeah, you take a little, you take a little half swing. I still want to. You take a little half swing and you focus on this, this short range, perfect control, and just barely, barely swing in the ball ball sails where you want it to go. And then you get in there and you try and muscle it. And yeah, you might hit it, but it don't go anywhere you want to.

I think the same way when you're training a spississerie, when I'm trying to target the rear delt. And it's really easy for my traps and rhomboids and other parts of my body to help me. Well, yeah, I could get something and just rip it up there, but then what ends up happening? All those other bigger muscles take over the movement, and now the area that I'm trying to focus on doesn't even get worked that much.

I didn't develop another part, and I don't get the same benefit. And a rear delt flies is a great exercise. I don't think I've ever seen anyone go heavy on a rear delt fly and look effective. Now, I got to a place, I'm glad you said that, because I actually did get to a place where I could rear delt fly pretty good way. I I got to a place, I'm glad you said that because I actually did get to a place where I could rear delt fly pretty good way.

I just got up to 45, 50 pounds dumbbells. As a profusy component. Yeah, how much would you row at that way? Yeah, and by the way, I wouldn't do that now. I was doing rear flies of the day with 15. So there's a major difference where I'm at today and where I was out there. But that's also Tiger Woods also gets into the golf ball.

Right, right, right. He's practiced that movement so much that he can just think about how he wants that and his body is going to respond to it. And I think that's when you're ready to do some of these types of movements, I think that lend themself better for lightweight. It's not to say like you said, there's not value

in doing some exercises heavy, but man, you better have the ability to just be able to isolate that by thinking about it really well before you think about loading it on some of these movements. Curls is another one. I remember a while ago, we, I don't remember where we went, we went to go do a speaking engagement. This is of course before, you know, everything got shut down or whatever.

And there was a picture of me working out and I got my pump going on or whatever and I'm curling. And one person comments, oh, he's only curls 30 pound dumbbells or whatever, obviously it's some dude trying to mess with me or whatever. Yeah, but here's a deal. I've been working out for a very long time. I mean, I can curl. If I want, I can go curl 60 pound dumbbells, and I can kind of look like I'm okay.

I don't get the same results curling 60 pound dumbbells that I would get with 35s. I just don't. With 35s, I can really get full extension. I can focus on the bicep. And it's just a better way of doing that exercise. I can go heavy, but it doesn't work as well when I go heavy.

It's a better exercise when it's done light. Just like some exercises tend to be better when they're heavy versus when they're light. Like deadlifts, can you do deadlifts light? You can if you're perfecting your form and doing a lot of stuff and you're trying to focus on a particular muscle. But generally speaking, deadlifts are a lower rep

heavier type of exercise. Kind of silly. Yeah, it is, it is, right? It's not nearly as effective. Another one will be tricep press downs. How many times have you guys seen a dude put the whole stack for tricep press downs and it looks like a dip. Like he's not doing a tricep. Yeah, he's doing more shoulders and touching and hunching it forward. Yeah, it looks like he's doing like a like a decline chest press, right? And

he's so proud that he's using the whole stack, but you can get so much more benefit from doing it with latter way. I mean, I think this is pretty true. I'm trying to think right now, an example of a single joint exercises that this doesn't apply to. I would say that most single joint movements lend themselves better with with ladder weight. Again, there's always exceptions to the rule.

If you've been training for a very long time, can you get just like your curl analogy? I agree. Does that mean that you can't get some good value from going really heavy on curls? Sure, you can. If you have really good mechanics, if you know that when you go really heavy, you're not going to allow the shoulder to roll forward and the anterior dealt to take over 30% of the load and then, because that's the part that you do, it's going to understand. Like, okay, you might be doing 30% more of the weight, but if now 30% of the load is being carried by the muscle that you weren't trying to work out.

Oh, you're doing increase the risk of the exercise. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And you're now you're developing an area that you weren't focusing on. So that's the reason why I think there's certain exercises that lend themselves well for lighter weight. Yeah, I think overall understanding

when it's appropriate to go heavy, when it's appropriate to go light is one of the most important things you can learn about how to train your body. When you can really understand this, then you can maximize your exercises and your workout and minimize your risk injury and just get the best results. And just like we said in this particular episode, those are the seven reasons when going light is definitely the best option. Look, if you like our information, you'll love our guide. So we have a bunch of free guides that we wrote and created for you guys and girls out there to want to learn more about your bodies, you want to build more

muscle, a burn more body fat, or improve your mobility. You can find them all at mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin can be found at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump Sal and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs.

With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having sour, animal, and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump.