Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1872: Eight Benefits of Lifting With Light Weight

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin cover eight reasons why lifting light weights can accelerate your progress. One of the BEST things you can do to develop your muscles, and an amazing body, is to LIFT with lightweight! (2:15)   Eight Benefits of Lifting with Light Weight. #1 – Better form. (7:30)   #2 - Easier to connect to target muscles. (10:40) #3 - Lower injury risk. (15:42) #4 - The pump (higher reps). (19:03) #5 - Strength stamina. (22:41) #6 - Explosive training. (26:00) #7 - Slower reps value. (29:35) #8 - Easy on the joints. (32:14) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! August Special: TOP SELLING PROGRAMS COMBINED FOR ONLY $99.99! Serge Nubret Physique Mind Pump #1745: How To Pack On Muscle To Your Lagging/Stubborn Body Parts Occlusion Training Guide | MAPS Fitness Products How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Kris Gethin (@krisgethin)  Instagram Dexter “The Blade” Jackson (@mrolympia08)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop 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, right in today's episode. We're going to talk about light, weight, training, and why this may be for you one of the most effective ways of training to build, shape, your body and even increase your strength.

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but it is. So check this out. We've taken some of our most popular two-program combo. So these are two workout programs, two mass programs that people love to combo and put together. We've put together many of these combos and priced all of them at $99.99, which is less than the price of one program.

So essentially this is a buy one, get one free, type of promotion. So you got to go to mapsogust.com, check out all the maps, workout combos, find the one that works best for you, and sign up. Again, it's only $99.99 and 99 cents for each and every one of these combinations regardless of what is put together. Again, one more time, mapsoggist.com. All right, here comes the show. One of the best things you could do

to develop your muscles, build an amazing body is to lift with light weights, not heavy weights, but actually light weights. You guys remember the first time like this kind of came together for you? Like I think for the first like three to five years of lifting for me. Cause I was the skinny kid who was trying to build muscle

and then like all the information I was reading back then was like you gotta lift heavy weight, low reps. Like if you, if you want to tone muscles and get lean, then you do high reps and like I don't want anything to do with toting or leaning. So everything I did was like six reps and as heavy as could be for probably three years before I ever lifted away more than 10 reps. And I remember meeting a personal trainer and this guy was like, Jack, did I, I would

come up to him and say, Oh, what do you, I think it was awesome. What do you do? What's the best thing for your arms? That cliche thing that everybody asks, you know, all right? And he's just like, well, tell me what, you know, you're doing and I kind of told him how I train. He says, Oh, he says, lift 15 reps. I'm like, what?

Arms get smaller. He's like, no, no, no, it doesn't work that way. I remember doing it. And then like, they exploded over that summer. And I went, like, boom. Yeah. And that was just for jazercise. Yeah.

So you want to do all those reps. You know, like, I figured that was for that. Until I saw this really jacked body builder who was doing light and multiple reps, and I was working out at World's Gym, and I was talking to the guy, and he was telling me all the benefits of being able to make that weight feel heavier and really slowing down the cadence and grinding his way through that and all that. And I was like, really, that's effective.

And he was selling me on it pretty hard. And it was, obviously, it took a guy that was pretty jacked to even get me there. Yeah, for me, it was an article in Flex Magazine. So I would read all the bodybuilding magazines and same thing, like you add, I might just train heavy all the time. Six reps are lower all the time,

no matter what the exercise was. And then there was this bodybuilder in there that goes, oh, I don't ever go lower than 20 reps. And of course, he looked amazing. And I thought, and then he talked about past bodybuilders who trained this way as well. Surgeon Ubre is a famous one. He's the guy that got, you know, I'm pumping iron. He's the French bodybuilder who got like a second place, I think, and then Lou got third or whatever. Incredible physique. So I said, I'm gonna try this out. And of course, because it was novel and different,

my body responded very quickly. And I think I put on five pounds of muscle very, very fast. And that was the first time I learned that there's obviously more than one way to get the kind of physique that you want and that hypertrophy happens in a lot of different rep ranges. And there are advantages to light weights, just like there's advantages to heavy weights.

And if you avoid light weight training, you miss out on a lot of the advantages that you can get. Yeah, it's interesting because I've been going through, you know, sports specific training and like strength training. It was just about loading weights and like you're in these groups and you're always trying to figure out how I can press my max further so I can get more weight when I started to learn all these other variables

in terms of being able to load your body by holding and sustaining a pose or position for longer or slowing it down, like how much harder it was in a lot of different directions. Not to take a left on the conversation, but since you brought him up, why did he never win? Surge? I think his physique was better.

I'm gonna say something that's blasphemy, I feel like. Don't say it. Yes, his physique was better than Arnold. You know what it is? Why? In a picture alone, Surge and Bray looks incredible. You have them stand next to Arnold. Is that what it is?

Is Arnold like, significantly taller? Not just taller, just a lot bigger. Is he? Yeah, he just got dwarfed when you would see them together. And Surgeon's legs weren't that exceptional. Like, what do you think, like, was he as tall as Arnold? He was tall, but he wasn't as tall. But if you had them standing next to each other,

he just got dwarfed. And that's what, but he beat Lou in the 1974 Olympia or 1975, I think it was. Did he ever Lou in the 1974 Olympia or 75 I think. Did he ever win? Cause I didn't think he never won. No, but he would win other competitions and stuff. And you know, he looked incredible. What do you think, Doug?

You're really good at judging male physics. What do you say? What do you say? The real, yeah, I don't know. I definitely go for his personally. Yeah. It seems to see your time. Arnold's just a little too big for me.

That will. Yeah, that's what it does. He was up there with like Frank Zane. You know, Frank Zane had a physique like that, right? Real aesthetic. Yeah, but I mean, Frank was like small and lean, right? And Frank was one of my favorite physics for sure, because I think I identified as like the skinny guy

and like that looked more realistic to me. Yeah, no, look up 1974 or 75 Olympia and look at the lineup. And then you can kind of see when he stands next to Arnold, he gets, you know, he gets. See, I've seen all this and that's what makes me say this because I don't think he does. I think Serge looks put together.

But anyway, he did high volume, high rep training. He would sometimes get the reps size 30, 40, 50 repetitions. And, you know, he developed an incredible physique. Now, even Arnold, okay, even Arnold, who went through periods of heavy training and powerlifting also would incorporate higher repetitions in his training as well, because he identified that his body would respond

great when you would switch it up. But besides the novelty aspect, because anytime you change your workout, it's so long as it's appropriate, you're gonna see your body respond again. Besides that, there are distinct advantages to lightweight training that heavyweight training simply doesn't have.

The first one, and this one's an obvious one, and this also highlights what a lot of trainers experience, which is we're usually way better with our clients and we are with ourselves. I was a way better trainer with my clients and I was with myself for a long time. And I would always go lighter to make sure that they had perfect form.

Whereas when I train myself, I would sacrifice form and the pursuit of going heavier. And there's tremendous benefit to having perfect form, tremendous benefit. Well, we're always battling our own ego. And I think that, yeah, we're always better training our clients in that direction. And it was, you know, so much better to manage the quality of each rep, you know, with a

lighter weight and being able to really be focused and conscious of how your body was like maybe wavering or like you're able to make those micro adjustments a lot more effectively without overloading your body. Well, it's really difficult to correct form on somebody when they're doing four to six reps and like towards, you know, you're working at 80, you're working at 80% of their max load and they're moving away in their beginner,

like they're all over the place and they're probably the weight just dropped down right away. So to be able to critique form, I mean, it was almost impossible. So I actually started all my clients on a lightweight protocol first, so I could get the form down. Yeah, because there's a few things that lift the weight when you're training with weight or resistance. Obviously muscle, muscle is one of them,

and controls muscles are central nervous system, so that's all connected. But you can also use leverage. So you can adjust and change your leverage so that the weight becomes lighter or feels lighter. You can also use momentum, meaning, like a curl is a good example. I could swing the weight up, which will allow me

to lift more weight than if I were just very, very stable and stationary lifting the weight. So those two things can do that. And leverage, typically how you adjust your positioning to give you better leverage is you compromise your form, right? So like another example would be a bench press. You know, you can't get the weight up and a real common way people will instinctively adjust

the leverage is by pushing their butt up off the bench, right? You see someone's butt come off the bench and they can lift more. Another way, and it's another way, real common way that people will adjust their technique to get better leverage, is to shorten the repetition. So like a full squat or a squat where you're going below

parallel, you're just not gonna be as strong as one where you're going either to parallel or above. And you'll see this where someone will add weight to the bar and all of a sudden their rep becomes an inch or two shorter. So yeah, they're lifting heavy weight, heavy year weight, but the rep now is shorter, is that a, was that a good trade?

No, in fact, we say this all the time on the podcast, that form and technique is paramount. That's the most important thing that you can pay attention to because an exercise done properly, forget safety and we'll get there, that's part of it. An exercise performed properly, forget safety and we'll get there. That's part of it. Exercise performed properly. Just give you better results. You just get more value from muscle building, fat burning, sculpting your body with a better rep than you do with a worse rep, regardless of how much heavier the weight is. Well, you can see an issue too in the

strength world where I was kind of like coming through where you'd get that momentum. You wanted to build that elastic potential energy. So you'd, so for instance, for like a bench press, you'd get the bouncing of the chest to get, you know, just to get that momentum to now, you know, where I get halfway up, just from that momentum, I can extend, you know, using my muscles at that point, but you know, and technique wise, you know, to slow down and really like get through like each phase of that contraction was important to establish first. Well, good luck trying to teach a client how to connect to a muscle with really heavy weight. I mean, there's so much going on when they're trying to struggle through five or six reps that, and you're over here trying to teach, contract your patch, contract, and then their shoulders are firing, their triceps are firing, they're just trying to move that and grind through

that weight. So, I think one of the huge benefits of going to light is, which is so important to teach, especially when you're talking about building hypertrophy, like building muscle, is the ability to connect to the proper muscle that we're trying to work in that exercise. Yes. And so, going, slowing it down so I can communicate that while they're lifting is almost impossible with really heavy weight. Well, think about this way, right?

So, I'll use the bench press as an example. I'm going to come up with these are arbitrary numbers. We know that the prime muscle is involved in a bench press is the chest, the shoulders, and the triceps. Now, it's much more than that, obviously, but those are the prime movers. Let's just say for argument's sake that the chest is 70% of the lift. Then you have, let's say, 15% that goes to the shoulders, and then the remainder goes to the triceps. Let's say you have a weaker chest, but stronger shoulders.

Your number may look more like 65, 25, for example, but you want to develop your chest. You really want to work on your chest. That your shoulders are so strong that they're lifting more than what would be considered ideal. Well, what happens when you add more weight is you're going to stay at that ratio. Your body is going to use its strengths

in the most efficient, effective way possible lifts away. But what if I want this to be a real chest press? What if my goal of doing the bench press is not to lift the most weight, but rather I wanna develop my chest, I wanna get my chest from doing 65% of lift to doing 75% of lift or 85% of lift. How can I do that?

Well, I can't go heavier and do that. In fact, if I go heavier, the opposite's gonna happen. I have to go lighter, concentrate and focus on making these weaker muscles, in the case of this example, will be the chest, do more of the work, that can only happen if I go loud lighter and connect to the target muscle. So this is why you see people with lagging body parts, do a compound lift that's supposedly good for that body part, like, oh, squat's good for the glutes, but my glutes keep lagging,

why the hell my quad's growing all the time, you got to go's good for the glutes, but my glutes keep lagging, why the hell my quad's growing all the time? You gotta go lighter and make the glutes do more work and that only can happen if you go lighter and connect. I think, yeah, it's a problem. If you don't really spend that time connecting and being able to understand the muscle recruitment process, it's a big part of it being able to have access to muscles. So like, and you see this too,

if you're just trying to flex a random muscle and you don't have, and you can't do that, that's something that you can't do. Like that's, you know, something later on, like you're going to find in these compound lifts where you need to make these adjustments. If I don't have access to that, that's going to be a problem that's going to follow you later. Well, I remember, and I don't know if you guys recall or remember this, was being able to identify somebody who struggled with this by the way their body was developed. Well, I remember, and I don't know if you guys recall or remember this, was being able to identify somebody who struggled with this by the way their body was developed. Right? So I'd see like a guy who could like bench press like more weight than I would be the

bench in 315 plus working out. And he'd have these massive delts and try some and he'd have like no chest. And I'd be like, that's so weird. Like this dude benches 315. Why doesn't he have like this massive chest? But then when I understood biomechanics and started to watch the way the guy would actually- Watch how he bench is. Yeah, he would be benching with the shoulders. He'd touch, yeah.

He's rolled forward slightly, right, or a flat back as he's benching and he's pushing everything up with his shoulders and his triceps. And you know he's lifting these benching because you know you wanna build his chest, but to your point of the ratio and percentage is like, you know, when it should be a 60% chest exercise

and maybe split between the shoulders and arms in there, he's very loaded on the shoulders and triceps and getting very little activation in the chest. And so they're developing that way. And this is not just true with compound lifts, this is or complex lift. This is also true with isolation exercises. Like for example, a lateral, right? Is it common shoulder exercise? You ever see somebody who has weak shoulders? Yeah,

they have lagging shoulders, do laterals. It look, there's a lot of trapezius involved. There's a shortened range of motion with the shoulders. How do you fix that? You got to go way lighter, cut the weight down, get into the proper position, deactivate, right? You're not really deactivating, but your goal is to deactivate the muscles that take over and focus on the target muscles. You can't do that when the weight is heavy. You just can't, because when you're lifting a heavier weight,

your body is just doing what it can to move the weight up, which means it's gonna move the weight always does, which is why you have a lot of fun. The treatment, not the muscle at that point. That's right. The other point that you brought, or you bring up is the injuries, right? So the lower injury risks with lower weight,

you know, we had an opportunity, we were just hanging out with Chris Gathlin, right? Who's almost 50 years old, lifetime natural body builder and lift her, Guy Looks phenomenal. And when we were talking to him, did you hear him referencing his routine? Like, oh yeah, he goes real high rep now. Yeah, like, it was like 50, 40, 30.

Yes, he's lifting in the 50 rep range and stuff like that. And the guy looks great. Now, obviously he's built that physique over years and years of probably straight training and lifting and cycling through and so on. But he predominantly now lives in this super high rep range. And I believe that was Dexter Jackson, who is the same way like this, right?

Like super high reps. And one of the things I noticed, I mean, I noticed this when we all got together because before we all started hanging out, I was in that kind of dexter Jackson bodybuilding type of mentality where it was high reps, super sets, I was always chasing the pump, and then I started hanging out with you guys

and I started pursuing more strength. And now I built a ton of muscle and I got bigger, bigger that way, but I have to be honest, I had more joint issues than I ever had. Now mind you, I'm also older now than what I was probably in my 20s. Probably would have been, it probably would have behoved me to actually

done lifting like that when I was in my early 20s and I didn't start doing it until my 30s start lifting that way. But one of the things I noticed is that my joints start talking to me when I'm consistently lifting really heavy and they just feel so much better when I'm at high risk. Well, besides risk-roared ratio, right? And it's like, yeah, if we evaluate that based off of like, so, yeah, when I was younger

and I was really trying to like build that foundational strength, like I would lean a little bit higher on the risk factors in terms of like what types exercise include, the amount of reps, the loading. But yeah, as you scale that, it's like you have to readjust. Look, we'll get to the chronic pain part because that's a different point. But this is just pure injury. If I have 400 pounds on my back on a bench press and my form deviates by 5%. My risk of injury is way higher than if I have 225 on the bar and my DV8 just 5%.

When you're really strong in a particular movement, you're really strong by doing that movement in a particular way. Once a DV8 stabilizer has to kick in, you've got to get other muscles to kick in to stop the weight from moving in a direction you don't like. My knee moves a little left or right or my elbow moves one direction or not. When there's more weight on the bar, it's way harder to stop that momentum. You ever have a deadlift,

that's real heavy and have the weight shift a little bit, and feel your QL wanna rip out of your back, right? So this is just what happens. Well, to that is just higher. Yeah, to that point, I mean, I don't think I can recall a single time in my entire lifting career, where I actually got injured lifting 15 plus reps.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever been injured that way, but I've been injured enough times for sure. You know, hitting PRs or doing singles, doubles or triples, or five by five or teens where I'm really pushing the way. So yeah, to that point, you're right. Like it's so much easier to control the weight when it's like that. Yeah, and if you're less likely to get hurt.

And if you mess up on your form with light weight, you can jump back into good form. Yeah, it's not as bad. You mess up with your form with heavy weight. Now the risk injury goes to the... Teaks really only thing like stopping you at that point and instead of like pain or like other signals or just physical injuries.

Or you just can't do it. Or you can't do it. All right, so this next one is very true with high rep, and this is why most people enjoy higher rep training, which is the pump. So the pump is what you feel when you work out, and the muscle fills with blood faster than it gets rid of the blood.

The technical term is transient, sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. It feels really good. A lot of people like it because of the way they look for the next 20 minutes or so. But there's a real muscle building benefit that comes from it. So just the swelling effect that happens in the muscle sends a signal that tells the body we should probably build some muscle. There's also sarcoplasmic hypertrophy that happens in the sense, more permanent, not transient

in the sense that your body's ability to store more glycogen, which is muscle energy, fluid, blood vessels, all the structures that are in muscle that are not muscle fibers actually increase in size as well. So when you look at a muscle and you look at the size of a muscle, most of the size of that muscle is not muscle fiber, most of it is fluid and non-muscle fiber structures. This is one of the reasons why body builders look bigger than power lifters, even though power lifters are so much stronger, is because of this effect that you get from the pump. And it's way easier and more effective to get a pump with higher reps than it is with lower reps.

Now, the one thing that I think I want to caution or warn because this is something I got trapped here for so long because of this reason. I remember again the time where I started lifting high reps, I saw the huge gains, it was a new adaptation, and then I also started to like the way I looked because I was all pumped up all the time. And so I found myself chasing the pump all the time and I think I neglected how much strength training that I should have been doing over a good, I don't know, probably 10 years there where I was lifting, where I was constantly chasing this because it does have tremendous benefit. But like any other adaptation, like sooner or later, the body will adapt to it. You'll kind of maximize the results you're getting from that. And it's

important that you kind of move out. There's benefits to heavy training as well that you don't get from light training. But this, you know But this, what we're talking about here is just the benefits of light training. And if you think that you're not gonna get the same muscle building effects, right? From light training, you go with heavy training, it's not true. You'll get great muscle building effects.

Now of course, we've said this many, many times on the show, you wanna be able to utilize and train through different phases and utilize and take the advantage of all these different phases. But one of them is like training and one of them is the pump. It is way harder to get a crazy skin splitting pump with five reps than it is with 20 reps. You do one set of 20 reps on squats and your legs are pumped.

The science to support what you're talking about is also the same science that supports what we've learned about blood occlusion. It's the same concept, which is something I know you didn't list on here, but that's a term, that's super lightweight. And you are basically hijacking that idea of sending as much fluid into the muscle as possible. And we wrote a guide, I know we haven't talked about that guide in a really long time, but we wrote a guide on blood occlusion, but the same science that supports what you're talking about right now of sending all the fluid into the muscle

and the benefits of that for building muscle are the same benefits that you're getting when you do blood occlusion and that same concept. And why that's so powerful and useful is, I don't know if this is on your points your points either is, but for rehab purposes, you know, is like when you are at a place where you have just recently injured, going really heavy at that time is a really bad idea because you could risk getting hurt again versus staying lightweight and then pumping blood in there instead.

Well, too, and I think that some people like me that would be more focused on strength training exclusively would be worried that this would affect their PRs. They basically have to start over again, and this would affect their strength going forward. When in fact, I had the opposite effect where I felt more stamina, more muscle endurance in terms of my lifts going back, and the carryover that I experienced after going through I have a perchophy block that really contributed towards You know newfound strength and stamina together. I broke through so many PRs by getting too stuck in a low rep phase And then doing higher reps and then going back to low reps and then I'm stronger that happened many times

Yeah, well, you're talking about two strength stamina I remember when I first saw this, I had two trainers that worked for me. One was a power lifter, one was a body builder, and they were very classic like stereotype, right? The power lifter, a lot thicker, you know, kind of heavier looking, very strong body builder, aesthetic physique, the whole deal.

And we would have these discussions and they tease each other in the gym. It was really fun. Well, anyway, they worked out together one time. And it was so interesting to watch how the workout progressed. So the workout started and now here is the mistake the powerlifter made. He followed the bodybuilder's workout.

And I say mistake because it was a competitive, you can tell the workout got competitive. The workout started with the powerlifter lifting way more weight than the bodybuilder, but about 45 minutes into the workout, the bodybuilder started lifting more weight than the body builder. But about 45 minutes into the workout, the body builder started lifting more weight than powerlifter because the powerlifter strength stamina just wasn't there. Set after set after set, volume training. That was just an idea. As you say, out of the three super sets, I mean, destroying. This is how Justin I used to live when we were in our 20s when we first met and we were

working in the same gym and we'd lift together and he was way stronger than I was, definitely, and he definitely identifies more as the strength power athlete and I was so the bodybuilder guy. So we'd lift in the first 10, 15 minutes of our training session, he was stronger and most of the list. But by the back half, I was moving more away. That was because a short nose rest period, through in all kinds of reps, throw some supersets on him,

but gas does that sound. And strength stamina is not, it's through in all kinds of wraps, throw some supersets on them, but gas does that sound. And strength stamina is not, it's a type of endurance, but it's really your ability to continue to express strength repeatedly over and over, and to recover fast enough to express that strength. Now, what are all the mechanisms that work there, right? So there's obviously benefits cardiovascular there, right?

Cause your heart rate's increasing, and then, Oh, hypertrophy. Oh, big time. I mean, you build muscle. This is why bodybuilders train that way. No, but I mean, like the ability to increase the gas tank like that.

Like obviously it's coming from your strength and your heart because your short... ATP is replenishing faster. You're replenishing glycogen faster. You don't get that lactic acid buildup. You're training your body to be able to do that faster. You are. And it's really interesting that you can, and it's funny, you know, we know that muscle fibers

are broken up into two main categories, right? Fast, twitch, and slow, twitch, but it's way more complex than that. There are fast, twitch fibers that act more like a hybrid between slow, twitch, and fast, and they've proven you can moral them too. Yes, yeah, I noticed that. It pushed out that lactic acid response in terms of that burn,

whereas it just would limit you after a while. If you worked specifically exclusively more on hypertrophy when I go back in, I wouldn't have that after so many sets, it was like, I could keep going. Yes, now this next one is, the next point is explosive speed training. So I remember seeing this firsthand as a kid, I actually went to a powerhouse gym as a teenager

because I had heard about this gym, it's powerhouse and I was big into working out. And I'd never seen an Olympic lifting area. They actually had a room with a platform which was rare for a gym in those days. I mean, you see platforms a little place now, but back in those days, it was rare to see a squat rack a little alone, you know, area with chalk and bumper plates.

And I saw, and nobody was in there, and I remember I was doing my normal workout, and then I heard weights dropping. And I looked in there, there was this very muscular, obviously, Olympic lifter, and they had, not a lot of weight on the bar. It was like 135 or 185, right? Which, you know, I would have thought this guy was lifting

so much more, but he was lifting it so fast and so explosively, like doing snatches and cleans. And he wasn't doing tons of reps, he was just doing it super fast. And so I asked this guy, why don't you lift heavier? I thought, you know, strength training, whatever, and he goes, no, no, no, I'm training. I want to move this weight as fast as possible. That's what makes me explosive. Why don't you lift heavier? I thought strength training, whatever, and he goes, no, no, I'm just training.

I want to move this weight as fast as possible. That's what makes me explosive. And that's when I learned that explosive training, you can lift heavy weight and try to move it explosively. But if you want to move explosively and fast, you got to use lightweight. Yeah, expressing that fast twitch response. It's a totally different, completely different feel.

If you haven't done that and you haven't gone through, I mean, plyometrics on some level too, we're talking about speed power. You don't want to use any weights, but like in terms of like using, you know, doing Olympic lifts and a lot of the value there is really the acceleration and how quickly you can get through the movement. Now, would you, would you guys attribute that to, because obviously if you're moving away that's extremely light for that exercise for you, the amount of muscle damage that you're probably gonna do

in comparison to a slow grinding heavy rep is gonna be probably less. Is that, so do you think the benefits are coming from most of the CNS training? Oh yeah. And as you are doing, as you're basically training your operating system to be able to fire explosively when you're used to doing like this kind of slower grinding time.

Now the better and increases, so you do get really sore, but you do a little less damage. But the better you get at it, the more muscle damage you get. When I mean by that is you have to learn, you have to teach your body how to contract forcefully with maximal effort in a short period of time, which is not, this doesn't come naturally if you don't train this way. Like, you ever take a body builder and have them do like a kettlebell swing explosively and watch them turn it into a front shoulder raise.

Because they just don't know how to do that, right? So when you first do it, whatever force you generate is not what is gonna cause damage on your body because you're not really a general force. But as you get better, you get better at within a second generating tons of force. And then it does become a damage. You're in that amplitude quite a bit.

Yes. And then it really affects the muscle. This, by the way, is the most, it's not the only, but it's probably the most valuable type of strength that you get in sports. You could get, look, I don't care how much you could squat and deadlift for a PR. If the guy or girl next to you can move and express

their strength twice as fast as you, you ain't gonna catch them and they'll hit harder than you and they'll do everything stronger than you because of the speed that's involved. So although grinding slow strength contributes to speed power, the only way to train for speed power is lightweight. You can't, so if you could deadlift 500 pounds

and you wanna do fast deadlifts, you gotta go down to like 200 pounds to be able to move the bar quickly and with that kind of explosive power or whatever. This next one's the opposite and that's the value of slow reps, very slow reps. So 10 second, 15 second negatives and positives, you wanna talk about breaking down your rep

into small pieces and perfecting every single quarter inch of that rep and connecting to the muscle through every single quarter inch of that rep, put some lightweight on, give yourself 10 to 15 seconds negative, 10 to 15 seconds positive, it feels like nothing else. It's very good. Yeah, one of my friends puts the video of squat

with that they did for like a one minute eccentric. Oh God. So you just look at this just very incremental, like, you know, quarter of an inch by quarter of an inch down to get down 60 seconds and then whole. And it's just a completely different feel to the exercise, like completely. Well, this is, I love this.

In fact, I did it real that I know it's kind of going viral on our mind put media page right now where I was talking about the eccentric portion of the exercise and nobody ever does like four seconds. And I used to take it to like 10 seconds with clients when, because what I found that was really nice, I go really, really light with the weight and then have them do it.

And we'll just use like a bicep croak as it's so basic to explain to people. Everybody sees what it knows what a standing bicep croak looks like. And I'd have them do like a 10 second rep. But then what I'd be doing is walking around and I'd be moving their shoulders, pulling their elbows back, telling them to stick their chest up,

correcting their cervical spine is and like I'd be all detailed. And you can't do that if you're moving the weight at like a normal cadence that most people do. So slowing the repetition down and then basically segmenting that movement into like 10 parts and really getting them to understand

the way they should be holding their body while they're doing that movement. Great for teaching. Yeah, so it's two ways I do this. One is for the hypertrophy benefits of a target muscle. So I can really slow down and target, like, oh, I want to feel this right in my hamstrings or I want to feel this right in my lats. So I'll go real slow, real light,

and I can do that. The other reason is if I do a complex lift or a compound lift, and I have a little bit of twinger pain and I can't quite figure out what part of the rep is causing it, then I'll do a super slow rep. And what I do is I adjust my rep as I'm moving the bar to where it doesn't hurt anymore. Okay, that's where my shoulder feels good. And then I'll do a super slow rep and what I do is I adjust my rep as I'm moving the bar to where it doesn't hurt anymore. Okay, that's where my shoulder feels good. And then I'll do some reps in that position, which will train it. So when I go faster, it's the same thing. Yeah, and I would do that with some of my clients, especially when we're doing a barbell

squat and you realize where you lose a lot of the support and stability. So sometimes like, because of momentum being a factor and some of the times when they do squats, when you really slow it down and go through each one of those angles, like you can see where there's a disconnect and then you can address it. Totally. Now this last point was kind of what you were talking about, Adam, which is it's a lot easier on the joints.

Now why is it easier on the joints? Well, if your technique is off by one or two degrees, which isn't that bad, in fact, it would be hard to even see by watching someone do a rap. It would be hard for me as a trained professional to look and say, oh, that's one degree off or two degrees off, right? But let's say you work out that way day in and day out

for a year, two years, three years, what is being stressed most with that slight deviation in your joints. The knee isn't traveling the way it should perfectly. So the kneecap is kind of pushing to the left a little bit on that groove on the femur, right? Or the shoulder blade isn't depressing quite the way it should.

And over time, you develop nagging joint issues. And you're like, well, I work out well. I take care of myself. Like, why is it that my left elbow tends to bother me a little bit? Why is it my knee gets a little bit sore, right? If you go light, those slight deviations, don't make that big of a difference, and it's in back to the original point,

the first one, which is you perfect your form, and you can obviously see correct that issue. That's the key is the form, right? And you go heavy, that you have that risk a little bit more of just slightly being off and how much you're wearing on the joints. I think of like, imagine a door swinging, right?

And the hinges are your joints. And imagine like, some Justin's big ass hanging on the door. Why you close it? Like now, now honestly, even Justin's big ass hanging on that door, swinging, it'll be fine.

It'll be fine. But you have no idea that amount of pressure and stress that's going to those hinges, and after years and years of Justin swinging on there, eventually those hinges are coming loose, or they're gonna start to separate or pull from the wood or what are they? This is if you put Doug on it.

You got at least five or six more years. You got at least five more years of Doug Hayden on the operation there. But I mean, that's what I visualize that. And to the untrained eye, you see the way that door is swinging, both with Justin an on it or off of it. And it doesn't look that different to you, but it just slightly being off enough

could be putting that pressure on that hinge on those joints, and that's why the form is so important. But if you do have really, really good form and technique, the muscles are what's supposed to be taking all the stress and movement like that, that's right. Yeah, and the body just, it's always trying to assess how much force output to give you, how much power, how put to give you based off of how stable your joint is. And so to be able to slow down and understand where you're losing that support. So you're losing that muscle tension and that ability to sort of, you know, get that

force to go through and ground through your body. You know, that's really what you want to be concerned with is being able to slow it down and hyper focus on that. Yeah, I'll be quite honest. And again, I'm a much better trainer with other people than myself. This is that last, this last point is what always makes me go to lighter training. And it's, I wait too long, right? I wait too long and heavy training,

because I like it so much. And I start to feel my joints. So then I go through a cycle of lighter weight. And every single time I do it, I always go, man, I gotta do this more often. Oh, I'm building more muscle. Oh, I feel so good. But I get stuck in the other one.

By the way, this is why every maps program is phased and why every maps program will include a phase that has higher rep training. There's every single program we have. To force you to do that. Even our power lifter program, even the one that's for power lifters includes some elements and phases

where you're training the higher rep range because there's value, even if your goal is maximal strength and not muscle hypertrophy. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media.

So Justin is on Instagram at MindPumpJest, and you can find Adam on Instagram at MindPumpAddom, and you can find me on Twitter at MindPumpSale. 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 MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, 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 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.

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