Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1702: The Ultimate At-Home Workout Routine for the Holiday Season

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover the benefits and challenges of working out at home and provide tips for getting the best workout possible. Is the tide turning from at-home workouts to going back to the gym? (2:15) The biggest challenges people face working out at home. (7:17) The benefits of resistance bands. (9:43) Why tension and isometrics will be all the rage. (14:12) The lost art of suspension training. (15:54) You cannot underestimate the power of novelty when it comes to adaptation. (19:43) The importance of focusing on mobility. (26:50) Get stable y’all. (31:31) Build that core! (33:30) Why Mind Pump prefers to workout at home. (38:02) The Ultimate At-Home Workout Routine for the Holiday Season. (43:54) Related Links/Products Mentioned Limited Time At-Home Holiday Bundle Visit Chili Sleep for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Mind Pump #1362: What You Can Learn About Building Muscle From Inmates, Gymnasts And Sprinters Rubberbanditz Resistance Band Set Improve Your Overhead Press & Build Your Shoulders with Unilateral Kettlebell Carries – Mind Pump TV Shrink Your Waist With The PERFECT Sit-UP (SIX PACK ABS!) - Mind Pump TV Build Your Core Strength with the Hollow Body Tension Movement – Mind Pump TV Killer Ab Exercise- The Physio Ball Crunch – Mind Pump TV 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, pop, mind, pop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. You guessed it, this is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talked about the ultimate at-home workout routine for the holiday season. A lot of you are working at home, especially during the holiday season.

There's lots of challenges working at at-home, but you don't have to compromise your results. You can actually build great muscle and strength and burn body fat. You just gotta know how to put the right routine together. And so in today's episode, we go over all the different aspects of your workout that you can manipulate, change, tools you can use

that require little space that can maximize your results. By the way, if you want this all put together for you, right? If you just want workouts that you can follow with workout video demos, here is what we've done. We've put together a bundle of our best at home workout programs. So we've put together maps anywhere, which uses body weight and resistance

bands, maps suspension, which uses a suspension trainer, maps prime, which requires no equipment at all, is great for mobility, and the no BS6 pack formula, which is a program that trains your core. Now normally you put all these programs together, it costs $338, but here's what we've done. This is literally the biggest discount we've ever done on these programs. 70% off, you can actually get all of them for $99.99. All you gotta do is head over to maps, December.com, again, that's maps, December.com.

One more thing this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Chili Sleep. They make devices that warm or cool your bed to improve your sleep quality. In fact, they have products that can make one side cool and one side warm. So if you and your wife are you and your husband or your partner like different temperatures,

no problem with chili sleep technology. And because you listen to Mind Pump, you get a discount. So go check them out, head over to chile sleep.com. That's CHILI sleep.com forward slash mind pump. And go over to that page and you will see a code that will give you a big discount. All right, here comes the show. Let's talk about building the ultimate at home routine

and what that would consist of and what you guys would want to put in there if you were to do that. You know what's funny about that? I was just on a podcast with Max Lugovier and he brought something up interesting. He said with people, with the holidays and people traveling to visit family and go different places, he says he's getting a lot of messages from people who are working at at home.

And if you think about it, it's probably aside from what just happened recently with Jim's getting close down and stuff, where we had a lot of people working at at home. And if you think about it, it's probably, aside from what just happened recently with Jim's getting closed down and stuff, where we had a lot of people working at at home, that's probably, aside from work, the time that most people would need a good routine to work out without a gym, right? Because they're traveling to the East Coast, to the West Coast, to the going to the mom's house,

no gyms around. I want to work out though, I want to keep my fitness up. Have any of you guys followed up on the the stat that we we talked about? I don't know, maybe the beginning of or relatively early in the pandemic. When we talked about how many people were moving away from working out in a gym and actually starting to work out at home. I did not. I have no idea. I'm curious. Remember because we remember, those are a little bit of a debate that we had on. I have no idea. I'm curious. Remember, because we, that was a little bit of a debate that we had on.

I believe that we would see the strong come back to gyms and you speculated that it was going to forever change the market and that we're going to see a lot more at home training. And I think, you know, with the, the surge of tonal and peloton and a lot of these at-home workouts and their stock and what we saw happen early on in the pandemic was pointing in the direction that you were probably right. I'm curious if it's still like that. Well, I think it's turning around.

I do think there's some statistics that show that people are more comfortable now and come back to the gym, but I don't think it's anywhere close to what it was. So there's a lot of people that are still trying to make it work on the confines of their house. And a lot of people weren't able to actually get a lot of equipment either because there was like scarcity there. So, you know, they're trying to construct ways to work out with minimal equipment. So this is the longest ever in my life that I've not used

to gym. Never in my life have I gone this long of a period of time and not gone to like a traditional big box gym and all of my workouts have either been here or at home. And you haven't gone to a commercial gym. I went to, I think twice and I had to wear a mask and do the whole thing and it was just so not the same. I was not a fan. I think what we're probably going to see Doug actually brought up an article. I think you're going to see a lot of people go back to gyms, but there's a, but the percentage

of people that work at home, I think is forever more than it was before. I mean, it's hard to tell though, right? Because we're still kind of in this, like we were not back to normal. Yeah. So the, and part of why I haven't gone back, you know, with Justin, I have no desire to try and wear a mask while I work out. Like I get irritated walking through the grocery store, wearing a mask that just feels uncomfortable and weird and for that long period of a time of wearing it, like I can't imagine exercising with it. So it's, I'm so curious to, you know, if things were more normal, you know, would we see this surge back into the gym?

I think one of the challenges too, unless you're like a, some kind of a specific strength athlete, like if you're a power lifter or an Olympic lifter, you're going to need access to specific types of equipment, you know, barbells or, you know, weights you could throw and drop bumper plates, you know, and the forms and things. But for the most part, most people who are interested in overall fitness and muscle building and fat loss, there still is this kind of this stigma around working at at home that it's like this inferior option somehow, right?

Which really isn't true. There's a lot you could do. It's not true at all. And that's coming from somebody who was on the other side. I believe I was arguing a lot with you that I don't like it. I don't think it's anywhere near as good. But to be honest, I've learned to love it the last couple of years, dude.

It really has been nice. There's certain aspects that I think I miss of the atmosphere around it, but I think I had that same feeling too, like, oh, my physique is going to suffer or my strain training is going to suffer. If I don't have access to all these different tools, and the truth is, it highlights what we talk about all the time. I mean, it's the big lifts and movements that are, give you the biggest bang for your buck, and I can do all those. I can squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press. Yeah, I haven't worked out at a gym consistently

for 15 years, at least. I had my studio where I had minimal equipment was just personal training only. And that's it. And ever since then, I've gone to gyms, but not consistently. And I've used to be able to say that your physique shows up, but now you have the best physique in your whole life.

So I can't say that anymore. You'll say, that's a good job. That took up best physique. I can't say that anymore. You'll say, that's a crap to heart. Yeah, you did everything. I'm gonna show out. I'm gonna show out. I'm gonna do this with one band. Yeah, you know.

Sure. You already knew the machines. Well, here's some of the biggest challenges I think that people encounter with working at home. I think the biggest one is the lack of equipment and the lack of space, right? So you go into a gym, you have machines, you have lots of dumbbells, lots of barbells, cardio equipment, lots of variety, lots of space to do your workouts. And then when you're at home, you're like, okay, I don't have a, and a lot of people don't have a room dedicated to working out.

So they're like, okay, I don't have a lot of equipment, don't have a lot of space. What could I possibly do? There's a lot you can do. For example, with just body weight training. And body weight training sometimes, you know, people look at it like it's this, again, in a fearier way of working out. But I tell you what, you look at some of the most developed bodyweight trainer type people, gymnasts, for example, or... Yeah, so these guys do in calisthenics all the time, like with amazing physiques. Incredible. I mean, it's in the tension that you create

with an exercise, your body doesn't really know what you're using necessarily. Now, of course, the strength that you gain tends to be specific to the movement, but body weight exercises have so much carry over to the real world, and you can make, for example, you can make a push up very, very challenging with tension, tempo, using one arm, elevating your feet. There's a lot of different ways to make that basic exercise very, very effective like a bench press. Well, have you ever heard some of these like calisthenic guys make, and like make a really

good argument on why you should focus there first. And they make a really good point in case. I mean, if you can't control your own body and body weight in space, why would you add load to that? And so it, you know, that makes a lot of sense for someone who's getting into lifting.

If you haven't done these body weight exercises and perfected them with good form and been able to do them with at least several reps before you start to pile on a barbell number. I mean, when you look at overall safety and longevity, it's a pretty good case, you know? It is. Well, it really gets you connected to your body

and the awareness of it. And that's why too, like a lot of strength coaches promote, especially with kids to really dive into things like gymnastics, things like, you know, where they're basically doing all these like tumbles and flips and pushups and things where they have to figure out their place and space with their body, parkour. Yeah, parkour, that's what I was looking for. And another one is resistance bands, which, you know, it wasn't that long ago, I mean, when I started in the fitness space,

nobody uses, nobody uses resistance bands. There was actually at home a machine called a solo flex. Do you remember that? Solo flex. No, a both flex too, but then there was a solo flex before that. So that's not what the same thing, I always say there was the same. Same company, different company.

I think they're different companies. So the solo flex had like these like resistance kind of band looking thing. Yeah, yeah. And the both flexed used like resistance. They look like bows that they would use. Oh, that was a different flexes. So I remember the solar flex they looked like these like like kind of infinity sign, but it was at rubber. Yeah, and you put on different ones. Yeah, yeah. I don't know why I thought I always thought that was both flex. Who did that? So they were different companies. Yeah, yeah, she's resisting. I don't know why I thought I always thought that was both flex who did that. So they were different companies, huh?

They might be the same company. I mean, they sound similar in the names. So it makes sense that it would go from solo flex to both flex. It makes me really curious if like one of them totally piggybacked off the other one, right? Who was first and then who came up with it? So you would add those almost like plates.

Yes, yeah, you would. And I remember like with resistance bands for a long time, as trainers and you know and strength coaches, we thought of them as like, oh, that's what you do in a Robys classes, or that's not nearly as good as free weights. And then something changed. The Soviet studies from their weight lifters really started to get researched. And American weight lifters started to adopt

resistance bands as part of the training. And then American power lifters started to use resistance bands. And what's that one power lifting school just in that? What's that barbell? Yeah, so what's that barbell started to really make that a problem? They were the first ones to really make it popular with like the strength of your own conventional tools,

the chains and they added a lot of different, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they added a lot of different ways of progressive love. Yeah. And they were crushing. They were crushing records. Like they were just dominant. Mm-hmm. And so all of a sudden you saw hardcore strength athletes use resistance bands.

And I think there's no better way to crush a myth that a piece of equipment is ineffective than having strength athletes break, you know, world records using that particular piece of, you ineffective, then having strength athletes break world records using that particular tool or whatever. So all of a sudden you started seeing resistance bands, and then I remember there was one particular club that I helped grand open, and what they would do is they would grand open, so how big box gyms typically work is you'll have a location

and you'll do what's called a presale, and you'll have a binder with pictures of what the gyms would look like. You sell your memberships, whatever. And then typically the open it in phases. So they'll open up like the cardio area and then that's it, right? And then they'll open the basketball court and the freeway area. And people could start working out right away. So I had trainers that were ready to go. Clients had bought packages to train with them. But the only thing that was open was cardio. And they were like, what do we do? We don't have any weights, we have no machines, and we went with resistance bands. And I remember a lot of trainers were kind of like, oh, this is going to

suck and, you know, how am I going to do this? I remember having meetings with them like, look, you got to get creative, show your clients value. Anyway, the trainers were blown away by the results that their clients were getting from using resistance bands to the point where when we opened up the whole gym, they still used it as part of their training protocol. The cool thing about resistance bands is they allow the problem with body weight exercises is you're working with gravity so you have to get real creative and move your body in space. Resistance bands are like, it's like if you have a pair of resistance's almost like you have access to almost every cable machine

ever invented. I can put it in a doorway, I can put it low, in the middle five. I mean, the ones that we sell, right, they have that little cool. I think that was like one of the most brilliant inventions that I received right there in the crack of the door. I didn't see that until the one we got.

I didn't know how long that's existed or not, but I remember when we first partnered up with rubber bandets and got those, that was one of the, other than I know the bands are some of the best, lifetime warranty and all that good stuff, but like, I mean bands are bands in my opinion, as far as like that.

But what I thought was fascinating was the door hinge thing, because it's like, that was the only challenge with the band is like, oh, if I wanted to anchor something down, it's like, if you didn't have something with a hook, it was like, oh, shit, I can't, what do I tie it? Yeah, yeah, but with the door wedge, it's amazing. Oh, yeah, with that, you basically have a free motion machine where you can make any

cable exercise you can imagine you can now do with a band. So if you have body weight and you have resistance bands, you can mimic or do almost any exercise with those things, which takes up like a barely any space. Any, no space. Takes no space. In fact, a resistance bands, I mean, you could carry them in any space. Any, no space. It takes no space. In fact, a resistance bands, I mean, you could carry them in a small double bag, no problem, pull them out, and you have a door in your set.

Then you throw in tension and isometrics, which is still today, and I will make this prediction right now. In the next five or 10 years, it's gonna be all the rage. Because if you read the studies on isometric training, which by the way, there's decades of studies on isometric training and athletic performance muscle building how it augments traditional resistance training Tons and tons of studies is it cuz boring you think like why why do you think it's not a lot of people doesn't know how do you how do you You know portray that in videos. It's just I mean it's just it's just not

It's just not sexy, right? I think that's the reason why is because people look at it and be like, oh, this isn't cool. And it's just like you said, you show a video of it and just someone sitting still. Yeah. It's so effective. Yeah. And I think in the next five or 10 years, people, it's going to become the, this advanced training tool that all these people are going to start using. But isometric builds, tremendous muscle strength, very minimal damage on the body. It allows you to really maximize your muscle contraction. It's this incredible tool.

And the cool thing about isometrics is you can add it to almost any routine with a small amount of additional recovery required. You can't say this about a lot of training modalities. Like if I add, there's minimal damage. Yes. From this type of training modality, and that's what's so awesome about it, is you can go from like a kid to like,

you know, somebody that has like limitations physically, like anybody in elderly population, so it's just so applicable all the way across the board. Well, it's very easy to regress and progress it. Like you could take anybody, like somebody who is an advanced age that has all kinds of conditions can train isometrically without risk.

That's what's great about it. Totally. And then the last thing that I'd say is probably super valuable for home workouts are suspension trainers. Now to be fair, suspension trainers became popular relatively recently, but the rings, which is what they copied, right? If you look at like gymnastics rings,

I've been around for decades and decades and decades. And what really smart marketers did is they adopted that for using group classes and this is what you can do. Justin, was that the root of it? Is that what were the inspiration came from? Greens, ropes and ladders, I would argue. This was something you saw a lot in gymnasiums back in like 20s, 30s.

And this was very common for even in physical education. That was the focus, was climbing. And it was something that, it was like a lost art that we found, but they actually started to kind of use a lot of those types of angles and techniques and placing your body against gravity. And so they found that with these straps,

it's like you could emulate a lot of those things a lot easier. You know, it's one of those things that I would remember being a trainer being so when it came out in the scene when like TRX, right, you exploded. I was so mad, like aren't you, like so mad that you, it's such a simple concept. Totally. And so valuable, it's like, it's like a duh moment

when you're in that way. The reason why it became popular, at first was because it was backed by the very powerful marketing machines of the group classes. Like they have the, what were the names of them? Like Lemils and other... Less Mill, yes. And they did such a good job marketing it.

And then the reason why it continued to be popular is the truth is, suspension trainers can be a very effective tool for traditional strength training. It's one of the most effective tools you can use for traditional strength training if you know how to use it properly. And there's some exercises on suspension trainers that I actually prefer over other pieces of equipment. Oh yeah. It joints stability. I use my suspension trainer every workout one way or another,

whether it's the main focus of a workout or if it's to prime something or it's just to warm up real quick or it's a trigger type of a session. It has so many uses for it that I find myself using it daily. And then open chain and closed chain movements, right? So I always get these mixed in terms of which one is which, but so this one the best ways to enhance that and intensify that process with these, so it is closed chain.

Close chain is moving your body away from the anchor point or whatever. The anchor point. Open would be moving towards it. Yeah, so a bench press would be open chain because I'm moving the bar away from the anchor point or whatever. And then open, so like moving towards it. Yeah, so like a bench press would be open chain because I'm moving the bar away from me. Close chain would be a push up. I'm moving my body away from my hands. And both of them require a little bit of a different skill, different stimulus.

So, you know, here's the other issue that people, and we kind of talked about this a little bit, but one of the challenges people have with that home workouts is the lack of variety. I tell you what, body weight, resistance bands, suspension trainers, tension or isometrics, and the combination of all of them. This is the beauty is that you can,

I can do isometric tension type training with bands, body weight, and suspension trainers. I can do traditional resistance training with all of those things. I can do combinations of all of them, and I can manipulate the tempo. I could do unilateral training with them. I could change the angles.

Now what you see is this tremendous amount of variety with minimal equipment. And again, the challenges most people who have some experience working out in gyms have no idea about all the exercises in variety that you could do with those things. Well, it's a tool. Yeah, to that point, that's why you can't really blame them for thinking it's not that

effective to do this, because it does require that knowledge of how to utilize your angles properly, how to apply some of these methods of manipulating tempo, of adding isometrics. So it does require a bit of that knowledge. Okay, so I'm an average listener. I want to build some muscle. I wanna lose some body fat. I do have access to a GM if I want to. Sell me on why I would do this.

Well, here's the number one, and this is what's cool about what you're talking about, Adam. So when the lockdown, I'll tell a story, right? So when the lockdowns first happened, I was getting a lot of DMs from people that were like, what do I do? I know push-ups, squats, lunges, and pull- from people that were like, what do I do? I know push-up, squats, lunges, and pull-ups. But what else do I do? Again, it's because people just don't,

a lot of people will work out, have no idea on how to construct a routine with suspension, trainers, bands, body weight, isometrics and that kind of stuff. And so a lot of these people, they signed up for maps anywhere, or maps suspension, or I would just tell them through DMs, some ideas that they could come up with. These were some people who had a little bit more experience. And then I would explain this, I'd say, look, let me ask you a question, how long have you been working out? Okay, you know, three years, four years, five years.

How many times have you done a training cycle, utilizing these techniques? Yeah. Never. Meaning you, a cycle, meaning you've done this for weeks consistently, not just one workout or one exercise. Right, and so then I say, okay, what happens to your body when you find a new exercise

that's effective that you've never really done before and then you get good at it? And all of them are like, oh my God, I get incredible gains. We cannot understate the power of novelty when it comes to getting the body to adapt. In fact, this is something I've always played with. If I find a new exercise for a body part that I suck at, I get good at that exercise, I still get better gains with that exercise than I will with the ones that I've been doing

for so long that I'm now kind of adapted to. This is what drew me into unconventional methods. I mean, it is that novelty. It's that new stimulus that your body needs to learn how to do it properly. And so it has to respond. And so it just sort of like, you know, it clicks something new that your body has to fight.

And you get a whole new sort of response from that. Yeah, and I think it's not just the novelty, but how novel it is. So like, there's novelty in doing a barbell bench press, flat bench press, and then going to a dumbbell, flat bench. There's novelty in that. That's different. It's a little bit of a different stimulation.

You've got the independence with the dumbbells. Body's going to be shocked a little bit. It's going to respond. It's going to adapt. You're going to see a great response from that. But then there's something to be said about something as novel as like this suspension trainer where there's all this instability and you're doing this elevated and you're right.

It's like so different and unique that there's a lot of things on your body that are having to adapt and learn and figure this out. And I just, you get so much more return the more novel something is, like learning something that is already kind of similar to something else, you get a little bit of benefit still because it's changing, it's different, but switching it from something completely different. That's like, I mean, the way I recommend programs

to people, as I always ask them, like, okay, what are you currently doing right now? And the first recommendation I give them is always a program that we have that I think is the most different than that, right? Like if someone's telling me they're training a specific way, I know I could give them almost any maps program and they'll see some good results, but I know that if I can give them something that is way different, they're that's way opposite or unique compared to what they're currently

doing, they're going to see the most change. Well, yeah, and it also unlocks and uncovers weaknesses that you didn't realize. And that's what I love about the suspension trainer too, is just because that adabit of instability, it really highlights where your body's not properly stabilizing and responding. And so, to go through that, it really helps then to carry you back into your regular training routine.

Well, to that point, I think that highlights another intraminous value from it is just the mobility focus. My sister, when we had map suspension, how long have we had map suspension for a couple of years now, right? We've had it for a few years. And when the lockdowns happen, my sister asked me,

she's like, hey, I kinda wanna do some different, which one of the programs should I follow? I said, have you done map suspension yet? She's like, no, I haven't done that one. So she got that one. I was getting, I got more messages from her on that program. I remember. She was constantly telling me, oh my God, I feel, yeah,

she's like, I've never been able to get down that low on like a bench press and she goes the way my shoulders and my chest and stuff is feeling right now. It's so crazy. Well, back to Justin's point, your body gets so good at compensating that you can't even notice half the time. Like, this happened to me years ago. Like, I love deadlifting, right?

Everybody knows that. One of my favorite exercises. I always deadlifted with both legs, all right? Conventional. I would do some sumo here and there, but usually conventional. And then I remember doing a one-legged deadlift with dumbbells.

And it was, I mean, it was embarrassing to me, a whole little weight I could use and how unstable I felt, and also the discrepancy between right and left. Now, if you watched me deadlift with the barbell, even if you were trained I, you probably wouldn't notice. I didn't notice that I had a right to left imbalance. But I definitely noticed when I did this one-legged deadlift. So then I decided, let me get strong on this one-legged deadlift. And then I'll go back to my traditional deadlift. So then I decided let me get strong on this one leg of deadlift and then I'll go back to my traditional deadlift and see what happened. So what happened was it forced me to work on the the weak areas, right? I wasn't I wasn't able to compensate like I could before because it's a new exercise something that I'm not used to. When I went back to my traditional deadlift, I was stronger. I felt more stable, I was stronger, and then it became very glaringly obvious

that there were compensations that were happening that I wasn't aware of. You know what's funny is that as an experienced lifter, you get that now, and that you're probably attracted to things like that. When you're early on in your career, even some trainers, when you're early on in your lifting career, that normally discourages you.

Of course. And you move away from it, because you're like, oh, I suck at this. Or this is hard. You're like, F that, I'm gonna go back to doing, and the irony in that is that if you're seeking more results, change, body composition, like you wanna improve, there's nothing better than doing something

you really suck at, or than you do the weakness. Yes. Yeah, well look, here's a deal. Again, we've all experienced those new beginnings. You start an exercise and you see your strength go up 10 pounds every single week, right? But now you've been doing it for a long time. Like let's say you're barbell squat. You've been squatting for four years and you're at 300 pounds, right?

Adding five or 10 pounds to it, that's going to be really hard. And that's going to be quite an accomplishment at that point. But then let's say you go and you try a pistol squat, just a one-legged balance squat. And you're like, oh my God, this is so hard. You might not even be able to do one because you lack the mobility. But even if you can do one, you find yourself doing like six. And you're like, that's it, I can't do more than six.

My form totally breaks down. The wonderful thing about this is you start to tap into those newbie gains again. Because that first time you did six, try it again five days later or four days later. Now you could do 10. You added four reps to an exercise, and you're advanced, you've been working out for years,

and that'll keep happening for like a few months until you start to plateau again. Then you take those new strength gains that you've gotten a one-legged exercise, move back to your, you know, barbell squat, and then watch how you feel. All of a sudden, you're more stable, you feel stronger. And, you know, this even goes to the mobility conversation

we're having. There was a, I can remember specifically, there was a power lifter, female power lifter who was so distraught over the fact that she didn't have access to a gym when all the lockdowns happened. And I told her, we'd go back and forth and she's been following us for a long time. And I said, focus on mobility. She's like, but I'm going to lose strength in my deadlift and my

bench. And I said, you will because strength is quite specific. You can't practice those lifts. I said, but practice mobility. And here's what I predict will happen. You'll, when you get back to the barbell, you'll be a little weaker than you were before, but then not only will you get back up to where you were before very quickly, you'll surpass. Watch that ramp up, bro. And it did. Within a month and a half, she broke all her previous records because she did that special emphasis on mobility.

And the beauty of working out at home with mobility is for most people, myself included, if anything is neglected. It's like people who don't like work out their calves very often, right? The number one most neglected part of working out, especially for younger lifters who want to build muscle and burn body fat, mobility.

They just don't place a special emphasis on mobility. And as they hurt. Well, I was gonna say, it's hard when you're young, you don't get a lot of the obvious signs. I mean, I'm guilty of this. It's really easy for me to remember to focus on my mobility because I mean, I just shared on the podcast what maybe less than a week ago, I went and did an overhead press and I hadn't done a barbell overhead press in maybe a month or two or whatever. I

go to do the movement and realize, oh my God, how much I let my back, my lats or tie it, my shoulders on fire, like I feel myself arty, I can feel that just from, I mean, as you get older, you feel that stuff and that breakdown easier, where there's a little more resilience when you're really young and hard to see that stuff. Well, I just find it so ironic that we're so focused on getting stronger all the time,

but we're not reinforcing that. And, you know, mobility, it's the perfect partner. And if you just keep those together the whole time, you can keep perpetually moving forward. It's just like inevitably you get stronger, you're putting way more stress and the ability for you to like do damage like increases. Bro, it's not sexy.

It's not sexy. It's just like your isometrics. It's like it's not sexy. It's why nobody's bragging about how much you're not PRing movements. How mobile they are and you are doing that when it comes with strength gain. So we tend to, especially when you're a young lifter and you're not getting the nagging pains

that are reminding you that you should probably do it. But yeah, I wish I had the knowledge and the experience obviously that I have today when I first started a trainer because I think that if you understand this and you just learn to incorporate it, it doesn't need to be this massive focus. You can just go through a cycle where you decide, okay, for the next three to four months, I'm going to train this way and then you can return to your other stuff or you can take

bits and pieces of what we're talking about and build it into your normal routine and it won't, or you can wait till you're in your 40s and you're fucking broken. You can't get it, lift your shoulder or your arms above You're behind your ears and you can't squat all the way down past 90 degrees And then now it's like this daunting task. Well, that's because there's a misconception that mobility is Primarily to avoid pain and injury Which is true, but there's another side to it which is and this we're talking about proper mobility right connecting to ranges of motion owning large ranges of motion, mobility, preventing injury and helping

you alleviate pain, that's a great value. Let's put that aside. Mobility makes you stronger and speeds up the gains that you can get. A lot of people don't realize this. It reminds me of this, I read this article a long time ago about Bruce Lee and it. Bruce Lee was one of my favorite movie stars and martial artists. And he talked about the benefit of having a strong and stable wrist for punching power. And the author, the person who was interviewing and said, yeah, but the wrist really doesn't generate power. Like the power is coming from your hips

and how you're throwing your shoulder and your arm. And he goes, yeah, imagine hitting someone with a broomstick, but half of the broomstick is made out of like this flexible rubber. Yeah. Like I hit you with that. And it just cracked a little bit. Yeah, it's not generating tons of power.

He goes a strong stable wrist allows that power transfer. Good mobility allows your body to reach its full potential, allows you to generate more force to activate more muscle fibers, essentially build more muscle. So forget about the pain and stuff. And by the way, when you wait till you hurt to work on mobility, it's like, it's too late.

Yeah, it's like waiting until you're severely dehydrated to drink water. Like, okay, yeah, you should drink water, but we shouldn't have got here in the first place. Mobility does that. It speeds up that progress and working at a home because now we don't have all this equipment to distract us. It's a great opportunity to make this a focus

like for a whole workout. It's also a great time to do a lot of like balance stuff. Stuff that is going to challenge your stability because you don't have a ton of weight. So like instead of me looking at my gym at home and going like, oh, I only have 50 pound dumbbells. Well, okay, I could do a one-legged deadlift with 50 pound dumbbells and roast the shit out of myself.

The same way I would feel pulling four, five hundred pounds. So this is a great opportunity when you go through a cycle like this to start to focus on a lot of stability stuff and it doesn't take that much weight. Yeah, I really felt this firsthand. When we first started the show about seven years ago, Justin was rave about like overhead Carries which is really a combination of balance and tension and you talk about walking with kettlebells overhead or a barbell

Or one arm dumbbell holds and in walking which requires some balance and stability and I remember he would rave about it and Of course, you know, I'm like everybody else, the proof is in the person and Justin's got this great overhead press and so let me give this a shot and see what happens and I was blown away by the carryover in my in the strength that I had with my overhead press just from working on that balance and stability in the top portion, right? Just improving my muscle's ability to fire, stabilize, so it's not just moving, but it's holding steady and strong.

Now, what does that allow, right? Think about this. When you're pressing a weight, there's a lot of energy that goes into moving the weight in the direction you want. But the more your muscles have to prevent the barbell from moving all over the place, or the dumbbells from moving all over the place, or your dumbbells from moving all over the place, or your body,

from moving all over the place. There's tons of leak of performance. It's no different than a car with a lot of horsepower that just can't connect to the ground. You hit the gas and the tire spin in the dirt. It doesn't matter if you have 600 horsepower, your car is sitting still. It's can it stick and can you transfer that power? Balance allows that. You can't talk about balance and stability too though without talking about core strength and training or abdominal because how often do you see that as the breakdown? I remember I teach a client like to balance on

one leg and they're focused on their foot on their grip. Their shins would be on fire and do that. But they're so unstable in the core area that it's making this really basic movement or exercise so challenging because they're thinking of the foot and the ground and trying to stabilize there. But really, it's not, it's because they're not rigid in their core. And they have no stability here. And why that is so challenging when they do that. Okay, this is why if you are a seasoned lifter

and you're trying to lift a heavy squat or even an overhead press or especially a deadlift, and let's say your max is on your overhead press 200 pounds. Like man, I'm stuck at 200 pounds. Then you put on a weight belt. All of a sudden you can lift 15 pounds more weight, right? Did you just make your shoulders stronger? No.

What you did is you created artificial core stability. How the hell are you able to lift more weight? All of a sudden, well now your body can generate more force to moving the way and because it's not worried about your core stability being compromised. It all transfers through the core and core stability is oftentimes the weak link in people's training programs.

And core exercises, some of the best core exercises required zero equipment. In fact, almost nothing. I mean, the only piece of equipment I would ever really use for core training would be a resistance band or a cable for like chops. Other than that, like, are you guys from with any ab or core machine that's even close to as good as body weight stuff? No, it's all that stuff. Especially when done properly, because doing a crunch,

the right way where you are like rolling your spine up is extremely difficult. Most people are doing it wrong. Most people are firing their hip flexors, using momentum, and they're not even really training the core in the abdominal region that well. So if you learn to actually roll the spine up, flexors using momentum and they're not even really training the core and abdominal region that well. So if you learn to actually roll the spine up, slow and controlled, you can make just

your body weight extremely difficult. Yeah. And just to the balance and control and stability kind of side of things, I used to do a test with a lot of my clients just to see if they even had the ability to communicate with their entire body from fingertips to toes. And if you guys are familiar with the hollow body position, you can use that a lot in gymnastics. And really you're just lifting your legs,

maybe a foot off the ground, you're pointing your toes out, and you're getting as rigid as possible all the way, basically making a boat out of your body. And your arms over your head, and they're just up over your head like this, and locked out. So it's just the ability to be able to contract

like all of your muscles at the same time. You have that ability. You have to train that ability though. So that way if you get in a situation where I'm thrown off, I'm left right, I'm twisting, I can bring myself back to complete balancing control. You know where I saw a huge carryover from learning to do those to my deadlift.

Yeah. I thought it was really interesting, because it's not like something that it looks like. You don't think so, right? Yeah, you don't look at and go like, oh, I'm trying to get better at my deadlift. I'm gonna do these hollow body, ab isometric exercising.

Like, that doesn't make sense. Why is that working that way? But when you do a deadlift, it's so important that you've got everything connected from your fingertips all the way down your toe and everything in the middle, right? And being able to communicate that all at one time and keep it very stiff and rigid,

oh man, it makes a huge difference. I mean, the pull more way. There were three exercises I used to like to mess with my trainers on. So these were the trainers like they're like fit and they're ripped and you know, they talk about how strong they are or whatever. And I'd have them try a hollow body.

I'd have them try a long lever, Physioball crunch, which most people, most people do those right. Most people do not do fisiobal crunch, right? I don't care how strong your core is, if you do a proper, well, full extension, full contraction, hips up, long lever, you're not doing very many repetitions.

And most people, most people can't even do a few properly. And then the other one was an active plank. Plank exercises became so popular in the gyms. They annoyed the hell out of me because trainers would have their, it was a great way for them to waste time. All right, everybody became a trendy thing in my gym for like trainers in their last 10 minutes of workouts with the class. All right, let's see how long you can hold it.

I remember watching it. I'm like, man, that is a hip flexor exercise. It's like back is arched and the hip flexors is contracted. So then I'd say let's try an active plank or let's try this kind of posterior pelvic tilt plank and my trainer's like shake in and like, oh my god, I can't believe I can't even do this. But then you do it in the carryover to other exercises. Usually it was the overhead press squat and deadlift that people would see. A lot of carryover. And then here's something else I want to kind of communicate about the advantage and this is why I prefer To work out not in gyms. These are the reasons right here, right? Number one, I get to listen to whatever music I want to yeah, I can play it loud

I can play Unifit's yawning. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't matter Now I know you go to a gym and you put your headphones on and all that stuff and you can still do that But there's still people around you and what when you blast it in the air and you listen to whatever you want, it's freaking awesome. The other thing is I can train whenever I want, whenever I want and I don't have to count the time it takes to get to the gym, change, work out, get back into the car,

go home, especially when you have kids and all that stuff. Nobody's trying to work in, right? Yes. I'm just like, I'm here working on my thing only exclusively. I don't need somebody competing for my spot. It's your equipment. Well, it avoids the most annoying part about being a trainer, or at least what I thought was one of the most annoying things

about being a trainer is training a client during prime time. And I don't think I ever rode a routine and was able to run that exact routine. Not a private one. And I mean, it's, I tell you, it made me a good trainer, right? You have to be able to know what the desired outcome of that, that routine is that you wrote down and then know multiple pivots for each one if there's people on all the equipment

or using the stuff that you need to use. So, but it's also annoying, you know, that's, and the one of the things I love obviously about training myself, yeah, I could do a different exercise. I know I'm capable of thinking of something else, but hey, when I write a routine for myself, like I want to do the things that I write down, and so you avoid that. It's so funny.

It's probably there's a good and bad to it. As a trainer, it's a great way to make you better at thinking on the fly and coming up with, you know, different varieties of exercises and substituting exercise because you're in prime time in a gym, especially a big box gym. And you're gonna have your client do an exercise or machine. Nine to 10 times, it's two or three times during the workout, you're gonna go to use

that piece of equipment, someone else is on it. It's not, it's being occupied, that space that I was gonna use. Motels on that one, bro. Yeah, so you'd have to use, you'd have to be creative, but like you said Adam, this is when it would really irritate the shit out of me. For my clients, and again, I'm a better trainer for my clients than I am for myself

when it was my turn to work out. And I've been thinking all day about doing my incline press and my dumbbell flies over here. I'm gonna do the peck deck and then I'm gonna do these cable rows. And then I go to do my workout and there's some numb nuts on the freaking machine, sweating all over it, or even worse,

I go to jump in and the person using it has no idea of gym etiquette. Oh, I have, you know, don't worry, I have three more sets. I'm the manager of the gym. This is my, yeah, I wanna say something like that, right? But I don't, super annoying. You work out at home, do what it's yours. Nobody's gonna jump in.

It's your piece of equipment. Yeah, you do your thing. Now, when you guys are coaching clients and let's say they've been doing something more traditional, they've run a map, Santa Balla performance aesthetic and you recognize some things, there's some instabilities, some mobility issues, maybe they're complaining about a joint pain a little bit

and they haven't focused in this direction. How long do you typically like to have them focus in this area? Would you be extended period time when they're doing this for like a year, or you're doing this for a few months, or you just interrupt it for a week, like what does it look like when you... Minimum month. I would say minimum. Yeah, minimum depends.

Depends on the severity, right? Yeah, we would have to go through that and see like what kind of level they are in terms of like, you know, what are the imbalances that we're really dealing with what kind of pain as a result of this dysfunction? Are we gonna have to work through and? Yeah, I would I would structure it along that but yeah less than less than a month I think is is probably I think at least three to four months So do I and I said I said a minimum of a month because what it looks like is the first week They're learning the exercises, the second week, they're starting to get used to the balance and stability.

The third week, they're starting to really be able to add intensity. By the fourth week, we're doing the workouts. So at that point, like you said, Adam, I like at least another month or two to really push and progress. Yeah, so they can see the real benefits. Yes, but less than a month is, in my opinion, it's like done.'t like the service. Yeah, we're just throwing novelty at someone and they have no, they're not really adapting to it and getting. Well, especially if they never really experienced that because that first month is literally them, their body's just getting acclimated and adapting to the

new stimulus. And so it's you're not even really getting to reap the major benefits from it. So I like to do like the typically most of programs I wrote were in these like three month type of blocks. So it's very similar to how we write mass programs. And so this would be like a block focus for me. I would literally go, okay, for three months, these are objectives. We're going to strengthen your core. We're going to work on balance, stability, mobility, just body weight type movements.

And so I'm going to do that over the course of the next three months. These are the things I want you to be paying attention to. You know, we're not thinking about how high can our bench press get. I'm not talking about you shredding 15 more pounds. The focus here on all these these attributes that we're trying to achieve to improve your body and what future lifting is going to look like the to your point. So is that don't worry about if my bench press goes down a little bit right now temporarily because you're going to reap the benefits of that when we get back. Yeah, totally. It's definitely a process and I would usually have to to convince clients

for the first two or three weeks, but then once they started to feel and see what it was like, that was it. It was always once, right? I have to convince my client once after that they do whatever I said because I've proven to them, hey, this totally works. But I mean, this is why I'd say the average maps program is at least three months long. We don't really create these super short programs because it is a process and you don't really reap the benefits until you get past that,

your body's learning the balance, the ability, oh, now I can start to push. So I think about the first time you did a bench press, the first time you did a bench press, I mean, you're not even really pushing with your max strength because you're balancing the bar and you're shaking. Takes about a month before you can really push the bar. You gotta give your body a chance to adapt.

Absolutely. So anyway, here's what we're gonna do because we're talking a lot about at-home workouts. We've gotten a lot of great tips. And I think if you follow all this and you have a good idea of what exercise you wanna incorporate and you modify your cable movements with bands, you throw on body weight stuff, you do tension, you get a pair of suspension trainers which are very

inexpensive and do exercises and construct a great workout program. You'll get great results, but a lot of people like things written out for them, they don't want to go through the process of programming. So what we did is we put together a at home workout routine bundle with quality ultimate at home workout holiday bundle essentially, which includes maps anywhere, maps prime, where you're going to get some of the mobility stuff, maps suspension for the suspension trainer workouts, and the no BS six pack formula, which is basically a very, very effective core training.

Tense core training. That's right. Now, what we're doing with all of this, we put this together, and because it's the holidays, we've, this is probably, I think if I'm not mistaken, maybe ducking correctly, it's probably the biggest discount we've ever done, right? So you get all of them for all of the programs we just said

for $99.99. So it's a 70% savings, and so it's all mapped out for you. No pun intended. So if you're interested in getting this program, head over to mapsdiscember.com. And is the discount automatically applied dog or does it need a coupon code? Cool.

So mapsdiscember.com, there you go, sign up. It's all planned out for you. Look, if you like our information, if you like this stuff we talk about, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our free guides. We have guides on everything from fat loss, muscle building, had a teach, had a squat better, overhead press better. We even have guides for personal trainers.

Again, it's mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin is at Mindpump Justin. I'm at Mindpump Salon. Adam is at Mindpump Adam. 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, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a

ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump.

We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mindbump.