Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1897: Why Phasing Your Workouts Is So Important & How to Properly Switch It Up

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover eight reasons why switching up your workouts is critical for continued progress in the gym. 1897: Why Phasing Your Workouts Is So Important & How to Properly Switch It Up There are a few rules in fitness, and here is one of them. Almost all reasonable approaches actually work, but none of them work forever. And none of them work all the time. (2:31) The guys share their own experiences with being dogmatic with their training. (6:54)   Eight Reasons Why Phasing Your Workouts Is So Important & How to Properly Switch It Up.   #1 - Novelty can induce positive change physically. (14:13) #2 - Novelty can induce positive change mentally. (16:30) #3 - Low reps benefits. (23:25) #4 - Higher reps benefits. (29:56) #5 - Short rest period benefits. (33:50) #6 - Long rest period benefits. (39:39) #7 - Different exercise benefits (different planes, strength specific, isolation vs compound). (43:54) #8 - Reduces risk of injury. (50:23) Related Links/Products Mentioned Limited Time Unconventional Bundle (MAPS Strong, MAPS OCR, MAPS Suspension) for $99.99!  Visit ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Mind Pump #1630: Ten Ways To Break Through A Plateau Mind Pump #1790: The Secret To An Attractive & Functional Body Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? This is a very important episode. It's probably the one that's going to get most of you. If you listen to progress, to get your body as to change in a positive way, to get things moving forward again, it's all about phasing your workouts, why it's so important, and how to properly switch things up.

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All right, here comes a show. There are a few rules in fitness. Here's one of them, almost all reasonable approaches actually work, but none of them work forever and none of them work all the time. So this is the reason why I find it really funny when you get people that are, they've attached themselves to a modality of training that has worked out really well for them

or they've gone really deep into, and that could be anything, right? So this includes bodybuilding, crossfitters, strong men competitors, the functional movement guy, and they identify so strongly with that modality, or constantly selling everybody on why it's the best. The irony in that to me is like, everything is the best, and then it's not. You don't stop working. Right. and that to me is like, everything is the best and then it's not. You know what I'm saying?

It's not even necessarily right, because someone will make the argument that it doesn't stop, it never stops working. You're always staying strong, fit or mobile or whatever the case may be, but it's like, at one point, especially when we're talking about what most people are in search of, right? Building muscle, losing body fat, being healthy, being more mobile,

like those are kind of likely encompasses, I'd say, the broad stroke of most people's goals. So when that, when that's your pursuit, right, you're ideally, everything works great. Everything is the best for a moment in time and then something else is better. Yeah, it's because it's transformative. So I get that. It's like you're in pursuit of a particular goal. Maybe it's a performance goal and I want to get stronger at a particular lift or like you said, I'm trying to burn body fat or build muscle and then you do something and it works. And because it's transformative,

you attach yourself to the thing that you're doing, and you lose sight of the, maybe why it worked. And maybe, and here's the real issue. And this is why this is gonna be such a good episode. Because you attach yourself to the, you know, what you did to get this particular result, you then become blind to the detriment of that particular method as you continue doing it,

or you become blind to the fact that it stops working, that you're not responding anymore. I mean, how many times have you gotten stuck in that? I've gotten stuck to it. Well, I've got to any many times. I also think, you know, it's not all the person who's going through the journey's fault. I do take responsibility as a fitness leader in the space on us.

We tend to get very dogmatic about whatever it is that we attach ourselves to as fitness leaders. I think we're just as guilty of this. If you're just this person who's trying to find their way in health and fitness, and you finally find this modality that speaks to you or gives you the greatest return that you've ever seen. It's really easy to go deep down the rabbit hole. And the deeper you go and the more intelligent people

you find in that modality, the more convincing they are that this is the way, it's very religious-like. Oh yeah. I mean, it feels that way to me when I look at all the different. It's transformative, that's why it feels that way. Yeah, and the deeper you go, the more and the more intelligent people

that you speak that are in that space, the more they try and sell you on the idea that this is the best way to train. Oh, you want to be sold. I'll give you an example. I'll create a fictional example, but I think this will resonate with a lot of people. It's like somebody, they're trying to lose weight. Maybe they've died it many times and fell on and off the wagon.

Then they discover powerlifting. They start powerlifting, and because it's focused on strength, takes them away from trying to die it so hard, they finally feed their body properly, their metabolism speeds up, they get leaner, and now they're like powerlifting is the answer. So now they do it for two or three years, their hip starts to bother them.

Maybe their knee starts to hurt, they're not working in different planes of motion, they start to develop in balances, but they ignore it, I'm gonna wear a knee brace, I'm gonna keep moving, maybe I gotta keep doing this is the answer. And they ignore the signs and signals that their body's telling them because they've become dogmatic about this particular approach.

And we get stuck in this. I can't tell you how many times I've done this. My first, the very first time I really became aware that I would do this, it didn't mean that I stopped it, by the way, because I kept repeating it. But the very first time was when I first started working out, my first introduction to strength training

was Arnold Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia Bodybuilding, which I love that. I still have the original one. We have it here, in fact, it's all taped together. And he advocates for this kind of high volume, double split routine, this traditional bodybuilding type workout. And I responded to it.

It was the first thing I ever did with strength training. And then it stopped working for me. I wasn't building any more muscle. I wasn't getting any stronger. I don't know what to do. Then I read about this guy, I mean, Mike Menser, whose approach was completely opposite. He wrote a book called Heavy Duty.

And it was literally as far away from high volume, you know, traditional bodybuilding as you could get. It was like one set to failure, that's it. That sends the signal. Any more than that is too much and blah, blah, blah. So I followed it and what happened? My body responded like crazy. And I became dogmatic about that.

And I followed that well beyond the time the wheels fell off where my body stopped responding, but I was so dogmatic about. And I did that with reps schemes. I did that with exercises. I did that with reps schemes. I did that with exercises. I did that with methods until I finally came to a place which took me a long time. And I learned this with my clients way before I learned this with myself, because how many times I have to say this, but it's very true. Trainers tend to be much better with their clients than they are with themselves.

I had to learn this lesson over and over until finally I said, oh, I see what happens here. I got to switch gears before the wheels fall off before I start to hurt. That's how I get my body to feel good and how to maintain my health. And that's when I started to really phase my workouts in a more scheduled way, rather than waiting until the signs were so loud in my body

that I was forced to change. Well, I think inevitably, you know, we don't realize that our body is changing. And with a changed body, it needs to be provided something different. So wherever you are in the beginning, and you feel this great success, and things are moving in the right direction, you're actually transforming your body as you go, which means you actually need to provide it something different. Which is tough because it's like you finally found something that you can hone in on that feels like it's the answer, it's working.

This is the way. I finally found the button, which is actually providing change, but inevitably, your body is so effective at being able to adapt and then make that the new standard, that in order to have any further success, you need to provide a completely different stimulus. My journey in this is really funny because I was really resistant to camps. There was a part of me that kind of figured this out early, but it didn't come full circle till later on.

Like I was this type of person. And this is how I was even like in high schools, a kid well before working out, like don't put me in the box. I don't identify as the skater kid, the gangster kid, the athlete kid. It's like I had wanted to be like whoever I wanted to be. Cream your own box. I did.

I did. That's exactly right. So I ended up sticking myself still in the box thinking I was not being put in a box Right, and so I was this like okay, I'm not good. I'm gonna be it because we are what we're all looting to right now is the power of novelty when it comes to training right and so then I quickly Didn't realize or I mean I quickly became this guy and later on realized that I was so the novelty guy that I, every workout was novel. Every workout was different and unique and because I did get that part right, like I did understand like there's tremendous value in it where I lost it was,

oh, there is some value in these camps for a temporary amount of time. Period of time. Yeah. And then reap the benefits from that and then move out of that and then move into another one. But I was so resistant to those camps that I was like, I'm the everything guy. And then I never actually organized my programs to where I could actually measure the success that they were. Well, there's two parts to phasing your workouts. One part is the novelty, which you've got,

which you're talking about you got. The other part is following a phase. So if you don't, you have to do both to phase properly. Faising is not working out different every single time. It's also not working out the same all the time. It's actually working out the same for a period of time, allowing your body to gain adaptations, allowing your body to change and progress, and then moving to something different. That's what phasing is.

And again, it's how you do it makes all the difference in the world. So it's not, I'm going to the go to the gym and I have a hat full of exercises and repskiings and I just pull something out. So it's different every single time. It's also not, I do the exact same workout. I only bodybuild, I only power lift, I only train this repskiing, I only do these exercises

and I only crossfit. It's also not that. It's actually a combination of the two. It's interesting to think about it too because there's like each method has its own strengths but also has its own weakness. Totally. And it's so it's the further along you go, like it exactly, like it, it, it brings about the weaknesses you can see them more visibly with, with your buy. So say you're doing powerlifting for, you know, an extended amount of time where, you know, in terms of like stress on the joints, that

really starts to come to surface later on if you don't weave into something else that's maybe re-fortifying your joints. I totally visualize. And I remember Justin and I when we were building that app, we totally were creating this. And I still think that there's some value to at least creating this for people to see is like this visual representation of each modality that we're talking about, power lifter body builder, cross fitter, mobility guy. Yeah, whatever, right?

All of them. And then if we next to it, there was this like video game avatar scoring system, mobility endurance stamina flexibility general health You know saying like and and then we and then we could help people look at and go like oh here's here's all the great attributes Of training this way. It doesn't mean you can't get to all of them But you there's definitely going to be to your point to all of them, but there's definitely going to be to your point, attributes that are stronger in certain modalities and weaker than others. And if your pursuit is overall health, longevity, and you want all of it, there's tremendous value in weaving in and out of all of them. So you reap the best benefits of all of that. That's because the timeline is your life. So I think people forget this when

they work out their timeline is three months, Hawaii, getting married, going to Vegas, whatever. But the reality is it's forever. So if you just want to be a you want to power lift for the rest of your life, you better believe you're going to have to go through phases of mobility and some endurance training. You're going to have to do through phases of mobility and some endurance training. You're gonna have to do unilateral work, even though it doesn't seem obvious to you. If this is something you wanna pursue for the rest of your life, yes,

you're gonna have to do those things. So, I think the first thing to understand is that novelty can induce positive changes in a physical way. And the key here is to, and the reason why is that when you change things, you are now highlighting certain imbalances and weakness because your body gets really good

at doing what you do a lot, and it does it really, really well, and it doesn't need to do other things. In other words, it'll get really good at squatting at the expense of unilateral single leg squats because it doesn't need that. It's gonna put all its forces, all its resources to doing the specific thing that you do really super well.

So if all you ever do is bilateral squatting, you get really good at bilateral squatting, but then there's some imbalances and weaknesses that develop as a result of that. And you don't really see them necessarily, or you're not able to target them until you go unilaterally. I remember the first time I experienced this, right?

So I fell in love with deadlifting and squatting early on. I did that like crazy. It gave me great results in terms of muscle, in terms of strength. I felt real awesome. And then I remember, I went to do a workout with someone and they wanted to do backstep lunges. And I thought to myself, well, you know, I don't remember what it was, but okay, if I could squat 300 pounds, I should be able to back step lunges. And I thought to myself, well, you know, I don't remember what it was, but okay, if I could squat 300 pounds, I should be able to back step lunge

with 100 pounds on my back with good form. I mean, it's 100 pounds. It's less than half of the weight that I could squat, comfortably, for example. I don't remember what the weight was, but it was something along those lines. Well, I go to do a back step lunge, and it is, I am not able to do it stable well at all

I remember feeling like I'm gonna pull something. I got to go away. I was in Paris like oh, I can't I can't do and so what all I did was as I stopped doing it. I just went back to squatting right when a reality I should have done is focused on the back steps lunging which was highlighting an imbalance and a weakness. And so that's a lot of what novelty can do. Novelty can take your body, highlight those weaknesses, strengthen them, and then those weaknesses now lo longer hold you back from your main pursuit. Because you better believe if you're bilateral squatting all the time, the imbalance you have from right to left is one of the things that's preventing you from hitting a new PR. It's one of those things.

And the only way to really address it sometimes is to go and train in a different way, or at least apply some training in a different way. You know, in this kind of transition to the next point, but it's also important with this one, which is, and this is something I've experienced personally and something I've experienced with all my clients, is that the thing that you are resistant to the most typically ends up being the most beneficial. And it's really tough for you. So let's say you're the the strong man powerlifter guy.

Like you make fun of the wierry mobility movement dude. I mean that's like he is the he is the epitome of all your jokes and you guys are like, I would never want to be that or the yoga guy, right? Those, but yet that is probably the most important thing that that person could start to add in their life and vice versa, right? The the guy that's so into movement and his body weight and yoga and mobility and looks at like strong man that are moving in the same plane all the time and really heavy weight is just like, oh my God, that's so, it's like,

but you have no idea how beneficial that would probably, and that just, and so the things that I think we're most resistant to, I think end up providing some of the most value physically, but also I think mentally. Mentally massively because the biggest lesson that I learned through fitness, that I continue to learn is to be open, open-minded. Right.

Humble. Yes. Yeah, that's a big one, man. How many of you humble? Come on, that's the first lesson you learn, but you have to keep learning it. Like, you first learn it, because whatever you do, first you suck. So I was like, oh, I'm not that strong. Oh, I can't squat.

In order to keep doing this, I got to humble myself. Or I'll hurt myself or I'm just gonna quit. You keep learning that. But like, let's talk about, let's be more specific about the mental changes that novelty can bring. Working out with heavy weight for three reps is a completely different mental state

and focus than working out for 15 reps or trying to get mind a muscle connection or trying to do a super set or try to do mobility. Working on mobility has some commonalities, but a lot of differences from doing max PR types of lifts. Can both of those contribute to a mentality that gives you more longevity with fitness and makes you better at each? Yes, absolutely.

That's where I think a lot of the benefit lies and it's funny, you know, taking somebody through a completely different workout and getting them to be like, okay, let me do this for the next four weeks. I know I'm a bodybuilder guy, but let me try this mobility thing for the next four weeks with my training. It's a shift in mentality that benefits them all the way around. Well, it's interesting to me too, because the sports world is similar in this, that it sort of simulates certain aspects of your body's ability. And you can display that in a coordinated fashion versus like in the gym, you're you're segmenting different parts of that.

So let's say, I'm alignment in my first moves, I have to get up as explosively as possible and that's my deficit. I don't have enough power, I don't have enough snap, I don't have that speed. I can train that and I can work specifically on that mentality. I can grind heavy weights and be able to have that kind of force generation to work exclusively on that. Or if my endurance sucks and I'm

dogging it, you know, towards, you know, the third quarter, that's something that I can actually implement that with a higher rep count. I can cut out some rest periods, I can force myself to get better at that very specific skill set. And that's what training is to me. And this is where I get so frustrated when we convolut all of it. And things like a, you know, circuit training, CrossFit, like things like that where it's, it starts to just merge it all together where, for me, the greatest aspects of it was to be able to parse out different elements of that and exclusively get better. Yeah, we think that the only things that are growing and changing are like our muscles when we train, the brain actually adapts before your muscles do, and it continues to adapt.

You learn exercises, you learn movement, you learn how to fire muscles, your brain and your central nervous system learns power output, it learns how to safely output maximal power, how to control certain things. A lot of things are happening mentally, which is why exercise, one of the reasons put maximal power, had to control certain things. A lot of things are happening mentally, which is why exercise, one of the reasons why exercise has been shown to be one of the

most effective ways to prevent cognitive decline. It's not just that it keeps your body healthy, that's a big part, and the brain is a part of the body. It's also, you're training your brain just as much. You may, you do a whole workout with strength training and you have to learn those movements, do a different phase and you have to learn a new way of training or slightly different way. So you're operating system. A new operating system.

This is one of the more challenging things that we have with our audience or people that go through our programs is trying to figure that out. I mean, how many times have we done the live callers and we have somebody who, we just had this just a day where somebody's going through phase one of performance, they get into phase two of performance and there's like, oh my God, it's too much.

It's all this credit. It's like part of the reason why they're challenged after we dig deeper and find out what's going on. We ask a bunch of questions and we go, it sounds like you're applying the mentality that you had in phase one, which is get strong, the kind of five by five, lift heavy type of mentality.

And now we've moved over into these multi-planar movements with stability components and utilateral components. Totally different. Totally different. Yeah, you got to change your mind. And extremely challenging. And forces to suppress the ego and go like,

oh, I, I know I can, you know, do a lunge with so much weight. And therefore, now I'm doing this exercise that is like a lunge where I have like a, you know, the reverse lunge to press landmine exercise in there. And you have to dramatically reduce the weight. And then you're hung up on this like, oh, it's so light away. It's like's not the point you you haven't shifted your mentality. It's no longer about how much weight Can I lift in this exercise and it's more and what we try to explain to people I think in layman's terms is you're trying to make the movement Look beautiful now in this face this phase is all about the movement and thinking about Perfecting that and if that means you got to take all the weight off the bar, then so be it, because that is the adaptation

that we're chasing here, is we are trying to get so good at that movement. And if you're still hung up on how much weight is on the bar, you're not going to reap the most benefits out of that face. That's right, yeah. Faising changes the body and it changes the mind, but let's get a little bit more specifics about kind of some of the more common ways

that we phase workouts. Like rep ranges, I think is a very simple, easy way, right? So if you're doing the same workout, same exercises, not saying this is how you should always do it, but one way to change things up and to phase your workouts is to go from one rep range to a different rep range and what you'll find is they all have different values. Okay, so like the low rep range, for example, is a different value than the higher rep range.

The low rep range, what you find is less mind-of-muscle connection, but more full-body power and strength intention. Okay, so when I'm doing a deadlift for two or three reps, I'm not thinking lats, I'm not thinking traps, I'm not thinking glutes, I'm thinking, how can I organize my entire body and generate efficient force to lift maximal load? How can I take everything?

You think of efficiency? I don't want any power leakage. I don't want my strength to move in any other direction. What I'm trying to do with this particular bar, and what that does is it creates this unit in my body. Now, physically, the way it feels is solid, hard, and strong. It's a very different feel from higher reps.

It's quite distinct. In fact, old school bodybuilders used to say, and there's no studies by the way on this. This is all anecdotal, but there's so much anecdotal, there's definitely something there, and either they're explaining it wrong or how they're explaining exactly what happened. But what they would say is,

heavy weights, low reps, makes dense, granite, hard looking muscle, right? That's the look that you get from it. Now, I don't know if it necessarily changes you aesthetically in that way, but that's how it feels for sure. When I train in the heavier rep range, I think through the process of grinding

and the way you're moving and how you apply yourself to low reps, it does seem to create this feeling. And I'm not talking about in the work, I'm talking about after the workouts, this time you feel all day long, solid, hard, strong, like a statue. So I can kind of understand. It's such a different way of lifting. And I remember, I vividly remember going through that learning curve because when I would train, even though I didn't consider myself in a box of like a bodybuilder or that, but the way I moved the weight was way more similar. Regardless of the phase or rep count I was in, the way I held the bar, the way I moved the weight looked more like a body builder than it did like a power lifter

because I didn't identify with a power lift and I never trained that way before. So there was this really interesting learning curve for me like for and I'll give you some examples like when you lift kind of like a like a common way to lift like with a body builder is your your wrist and feet are very relaxed. Well in fact there's a lot of movements that you'll do, like shoulder pressing and bench pressing, where you have a broken wrist and an open palm. You know, I'm not trying to grip the bar and connect to the bar and then I need... You want to feel less of other muscles more.

I do, exactly. I want to, I actually am almost thinking about relaxing the rest of the body and completely focusing around this one muscle that I'm trying to move. And I got really good at that, really, really good at that. But then when I had to go over to like, okay, I'm going to deadlift as much weight off this floor.

And I'm going to start doing singles and doubles and triples and learning to grip the bar and then feel my feet trying grip the floor. Like that was completely foreign to me. And it is such a different shift. And so, and vice versa. So if you're somebody who is all powerlifting, it's normally a pretty hard transition to go over to the feel just the muscle

and forget about all, you know, getting so much into grinding power. And so, but you can get why they explain it and say, oh, this makes your muscles feel like granite or look like granite. This one gives you the round. Well, I remember seeing it. And again, it's anecdotal, right?

I mean, I remember my own experience of never lifting like a powerlifter. And I've shared this on the podcast many times. And again, for some people that are that need the studies will be like, it doesn't matter to me, it's his own story. I remember always chasing kind of the hypertrophy pump look all the time. And one of the things that always discouraged me was I would leave the gym and it would feel like all the air came out of me. And I'd have this flat and I'd look like a normal guy. I wouldn't look like somebody who really lifted a lot of weight or has lifted as long

as I did. And I remember I'd always mess with my head until I started really strength training and lifting heavy. And then what I noticed was not only did I have this kind of like, you know, granite hard look, but I looked muscular even when I wasn't aired up. I didn't have to be completely aired up to look defined and muscular. And it like it built a different type of muscle on my body. I know that again, there's going to be people that I roll over that, but I remember seeing it on people.

I've heard that for a long time, and then I remember finally applying it to myself and feeling that going like, oh, wow, I see it now. It's such a different mentality. It was a definite struggle for me in a transition to that of thinking like you said There's like parts of your body you need to remain loose and be able to Sort of pump blood specifically into like the focused muscle group and so it was like Okay, it was it was a total mind shift of trying to hyperconnect into that one muscle a total mind shift of trying to hyperconnect into that one muscle versus what I would always do, which was get my body as rigid

as possible because you don't want any movement. You want no movement, you want to stay as tight as possible. So you don't have any leak in performance. And so it was all about the movement of it and being able to organize your body so everything works in unison. Well, you said it perfectly.

You didn't want any leaking performance. Me as a body builder, I didn't want to exhaust any other muscles that I didn't need to. Yeah. That was the thought process. So different. And why would I grip with my feet and my calves when I'm busting my chest? Because I don't want, I don't want to waste any energy anywhere else. I just want to concentrate on that one.

And what's funny is the debate between those two camps, there's value. Yes, yes. And there's also, and there's also, and there's, yes. That's it. You know, like higher rep, let's talk about higher rep. Yeah. Higher reps and what's funny is when you train a low reps all time

and you go to higher reps and vice versa, it feels unbearable. Okay. Oh, yeah. You take someone to always train strength and the time and you go to higher reps and vice versa, it feels unbearable, okay? Oh yeah. You take someone who always trains strength and low reps, you move to higher reps. So you're gonna explode. And they're like this sucks.

You go for higher reps, you teach them to do doubles and singles and they're like this sucks. It's so funny, but the higher reps, you get the pump, you feel the burn, you get that sweat that a lot of people tend to worship. And you can really target particular muscle groups with the higher reps.

Like if I'm trying to get someone to feel their glutes, it's hard to do with three reps. It really is. It's hard to get them to really feel like right now, do you really feel your glutes squeezing? You know, with the three-wrap exercise, it's like, well, I feel everything. Like I'm trying to move this heavy weight.

When I go like 15 reps, and I change the technique technique and I get them to do my muscle, that's when people are like, oh, I can really feel my butt. I feel it getting a pump. Oh my God, this is so crazy. Higher reps feels totally different. It also builds something called, you know, and this is within reason, of course, builds something called strength endurance. So there's like strength.

And then there's strength endurance. Strength is how much weight can I lift right now like all at once? Strength endurance is how much weight can I lift for the next 25 to 30 seconds, right? Totally different feel higher rep ranges tend to work on that. So it's totally different. Well, and different types of training and different mindsets lend themselves different types of training and different mindsets lend themselves better for different rep ranges, right? So like if you are the grinding strength power lifter guy and you have to lift 50 or and you apply, you try doing that for 20 or more.

Yeah, you apply that 50, that's why most of them bail on it. It's just like, I don't wanna do this. It's like zawful. Yeah, it's awful. You want me to squeeze the bar hard while I bet for 20 reps Yeah, so it and I guess the the the mature, you know more advanced version of me today has really learned To to move out of my characters when I'm in phase one of a lot of our programs I'm thinking more like a strongman power lifter

I'm thinking more like a strongman power lifter, connecting to the ground and just trying to be powerful. When I start moving into our phase three of a lot of our programs and it's a lot of these higher reps, supersets, muscle endurance, stamina, like you're alluding to, I think more like the bodybuilder side of me. And so learning, I don't mean it took me, maybe others have found this easy, but it took me a long time to be able to follow one program

and then try and move in and out of these characters as far as mine sets when you go into work. Yeah, and the higher reps, for me, provides, the pumps start to get more pronounced. I get around kind of full. This by the way is when I'm doing it right. Okay, because I think, I gotta be clear here. You know, I said granite hard with the low reps.

Now I'm saying round full, kind of muscle bubbly look with the high reps. By the way, all of that will go away if you're staying for too long. So it's not like, oh, I just want the granite look. So I'm only gonna do low reps. What I'm talking about, you experience when you're in a proper phase, when the body's

adapting to it. Once it's fully adapted and you stay do it long enough, you start to lose some of that benefit. But the higher reps, when you switch to that, it's like, oh my gosh, this pump is insane. It's unbearable. You look in the mirror, things look round and full. And you start to kind of develop this kind of look to your body, which is different than the low rep feel and look to your body, both of which contribute ultimately

to this kind of aesthetic sculpted look, but it is a totally different feel. And every time I switch into a phase, I first don't like it because I was used to the other one, so it feels kind of like, ah, but then about two, three weeks into it, I love it because I see the changes in my body like this is great Well, this kind of goes into the next one, which is where I Was probably the most problematic for the way I used to train because the rest periods themselves like I would lend You know a minute to three minutes the five minutes sometimes sometimes based off of how much that lift taxed me. And to be able to now shave that down, knowing that I only have 20, 30 seconds,

sometimes I don't have any rest in between what a shift that was for me to, especially ego-wise in abandoning the heavyweight sort of protocol and working out with that type of a method. Well, this used to be one of my favorite hacks to help somebody who's been lifting for a really long time. I'd give them a stopwatch or tell them to get a stopwatch. Hey, just do me a favor this next week when you train.

Just stopwatch yourself on your rest periods, come back, report to me what they are, and then I manipulate it. And it would be like, because we, very few people watch the clock and actually manage their rest periods. And you end up falling into a pattern. Yes, right. If you start to time it, you're like, oh, I rest the same similar time.

And which is why too, I don't just right away announce, like, oh, you should rest this, it's because I've learned over time that depending on who you identify with, what type of way of training you fall into, you might be the short rest period guy, or you might be the power usually guest, by the way. Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right.

I could normally look at someone you could pretty guest, but I want to know, like, some facts, right? So I'll have them do that. And then I just put them in the total opposite. And so if you lean more towards the power lift or three to five minute guy also give you 45 second minute rest, holy shit, it's like a whole like you've never experienced before and vice versa. If you're the circuit training mom who loves to just never stop and she goes from exercise, exercise, exercise,

exercise and it's like a body pump class and And they go, hey, we are gonna keep loading weight on this bar. And I want you to sit down for three, five minutes between sets. It's just like what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. faster, you build strength endurance. Annic, totally, you're probably building more capillaries, you're building more sarcoplasm, or your capacity for sarcoplasm. These are all the non-muscle fiber structures that are in muscle, which actually make up

most of your muscle size. When you look at a muscle, something like 70% of it is non-muscle fiber. So if you like, you drained it of% of it is non-muscle fiber. So if you like, you drained it of all its fluid in sarcoplasm and blood, it would lose, I don't know, 70% of its size, and you'd be left with this jerky, like beef jerky, you'd dry a piece of steak

and it shrinks down, right? So that's sarcoplasm that makes up the size and shape. And it totally, you're probably building more of that with shorter rest periods, especially when you combine it with higher reps. However, I do want to add this and I don't, we don't need to go too long on this because this is, this could be an episode itself. You can also combine short rest periods with heavy weights, and it's a completely different adaptation. You could do singles. Now, of course, you have to adjust the reps, excuse me, the weight on this, but I could

do a single of dead lifts and rest 45 seconds and do 45 second rest. Now, of course you have to adjust the reps, excuse me, the weight on this, but I could do a single of dead lifts and rest 45 seconds and do 45 second rest. Now, of course I can go as heavy as when I rest a long period of time, but it also is different. And the reason why I'm saying this, and again, we don't need to get stuck on this, but the reason why I'm saying this

is all of these variables, they don't have to go in, they don't have to be in unison. It's not like short rest periods always goes with that. No, there are certain things that lend themselves well for teaching. And then once you've taught it, then there's combinations that you can... They seem like they're opposites.

That speaks to the novelty point that you made. Yes. You know, you've got some hybrids in between a bit. I mean, I think of this like, like in Justin appreciate the sports analogy. Like, you're teaching somebody all these combinations of moves in like a sport like basketball, like, you know, you first want to teach the fundamentals and then you teach like A move and you

get you let your body, you get really good at you adapted and then you can start playing with them together and then different sequences and combinations to create this orchestra of great movements and skill, like same thing goes inside the gym. It's like when we speak most of the time, we're speaking about the fundamentals and the importance of getting really good at all these different adaptations and focuses and what tended lend themselves well

for people that are trying to get really good at understanding all this. But once you've done this for a long time, like, man, then it becomes, you know, for the first rule is break all the rules. It's fun. You know what I'm saying? It's to now interchange becomes, you know, the first rule is break all the rules. It's fun. You know what I'm saying?

It's to now interchange and, you know, break the stigma around, oh, you should only rest this long when you train this way, train the opposite and see what happens. No, you know, you just reminded me of a conversation I had that I totally forgot about that I found was so fascinating back in the day. So I had a member who used to play college football and we were talking about training and working out. And he goes, yeah, he goes, you know, a lot of football training with string training is you, you want to get really strong, you want to rest, and then you want to repeat that strength because in football, you do, you know, you have your

play, then, you know, somebody gets hit, you go out of bounds, you got to reset, you're getting your huddle, whatever, and then you do the play again. So it kind of mimics that. He goes, however, he goes, sometimes it's good to train explosively and hard with short rest periods. And I said, huh? And he goes, yeah, sometimes in football,

you want to play, play, play, play, you're playing against the clock. Yes. And what you want to do is you want to play, play, play, play, you're either you're playing against a clock. You're talking twice sometimes. Yes, and what you want to do is you want to have repeatable maximal effort with 30 seconds of rest in between. And I was like, oh, that's so fascinating. So that's what I mean by that combination of things that sometimes don't seem like they should go together. The next one is long rest periods.

And long rest periods are phenomenal at building maximal strength, power, and long-rest periods are phenomenal at building maximal strength, power, and really get, you know, summoning those muscle fiber contractions, like really being able to do that. I love long-rest periods for the typical average personal training client, because the typical average personal training client, I'm going the picture and this is just like I'd say if they took all the people at hired trainers When I was a trainer at least 65% of them were middle-aged women I'd say already alluded to her Yeah, the circuit training middle-aged mom who bounced wants to lose weight

Yeah, and you know exercise exercise Yeah, and so I would just be like cool We're gonna rest three minutes in between we're gonna do sets of five and you're, exercise exercise. Yeah, and so I would just be like, cool, we're gonna rest three minutes in between, we're gonna do sets of five, and you're gonna rest a long time, and they'd be like, oh, they'd fight and him and ho about it, and then they'd get the results and be like, whoa, this is so crazy. That was my favorite person to apply this to,

but long respirators are phenomenal if you've never done them before for building strength and muscle and speeding up the metabolism. Yeah, I won't even go into like the energy part of that, but like with the main thing that I love about these long rest periods is just being able to get to that mental state where you're like super focused because what you need for the most part is it's almost like you got to batten all the hatches. You got to make sure that each joint

is as stable as possible when you go back to doing the lift. So the lift is all about the mechanics of it, but now you have to be able to get in a mental place where you can literally sum in and recruit as many muscle fibers as possible. Fatigue gets in the way, right? Fatigue will totally interrupt that process. Well, you can get a little bit into the energy so people understand why the three to five minute rest period in between because that's about what it takes the average person to replenish fully recovered. Right.

So you break down all these energy ATP, ADP molecules and then your body utilizes so many. I used to give this analogy for people that even though it's completely off mathematically, I'd say you've got a, you know, a hundred of these molecules in your body, you go into a deadlift for five reps and the body uses 75. Then you sit down and you rest and in 30 seconds it gets to 80. In a minute it gets to 85. In two minutes it gets to 90. And then like three to five minutes it gets to peaks back to 95. Never returns all the way to the full 100 because you're working out and utilizing that. But then you get replenished to that and then you go do it again.

And so, what you're doing by arresting is you're allowing the body to fully recover, get its energy back, so then you can put the most maximal effort into the lift. Well, you're training energy systems as much as you're training muscle. And again, here's an analogy super oversimplified. It's way more complex than this, but it's like, if you have a car and the car has two engines,

there's one engine that's got jet fuel, and if you wanna go quarter mile in seven seconds, as fast as possible, and your car knows this by how hard you push the gas pedal, okay, you floor it, it turns that one on, and you explode for a quarter mile. The only detriment is that the jet fuel burns up after the quarter mile and it's gone.

And then after that, if you keep going, you're not gonna burn jet fuel, you're not gonna have this crazy powerful engine, but you'll have this backup engine that now is running on another type of engine, maybe diesel or something like that. And it's just, can you keep you going and keep you consistent in kind of giving

that slow drip of energy? And that's what happens. So what you need to do is you need to stop, allow the jet fuel to replenish so you could train that jet engine, that jet fuel, big engine again, right? That's what the rest periods do. Both engines are in your muscle. Okay, so now that I made the analogy,

it sounds super simplified. Hopefully people understand that, but both engines train your muscle and you need to be able to train each engine specifically in order to build and develop each one If you only trained one all the time if I only do quarter mile turn it off and wait I never turn on the other backup engine and if I if I never floor it I never turn on the jet fuel engine So you're training energy systems just as much and the long rest periods allows for this power strength engine

To to really be focused on and that energy. Short rest periods focus is a little bit more on the other one, both of which make up muscle, make up your shape, make up your fitness and that kind of stuff. The next one, which is also another way to really break up your workouts and phase, which is a little more complex as it requires more understanding of exercise, is just different exercises. You know, when you do different exercises, your first off your body gets very good at

what you do very often. And there's carryover to other things that are similar and the further away you move from that specific movement pattern, the less carryover that you have. For example, if I do squats all the time and I get really good at barbell squats, I'll get a decent amount of carryover to a front squat because it's kind of similar. It's not the same, but it's kind of similar. And then there'll be some carryover to a lunge, which is still similar, but not as similar as a front squat. Now, if I move all the way over to an overhead press, I'm not going to get as much carryover

at all. This is what happens with exercises. That's why it's so important to change exercises for the same body parts. Get really good at back squats, then get really good at front squats, then get really good at back step lunges, then get good at lateral lunges, then get good at, when I was talking about the whole body, rotating, pressing, pulling, training the entire body, learning how to train a muscle and isolation, learning how to train it in compound ways.

Oftentimes, simply change the exercise, gets your body to respond right away. And then you'll see people who are like, oh no, Barbell curls, best exercise, verbites, and they'll be like, no, no, try a spider curl. Fine. And then they do, like, oh my god, my biceps grew. That's the best exercise. Like, no, no, no, try a spider curl. Fine. And then they'd be like, oh my god, my biceps grew. That's the best exercise.

Like, no, no, no, you don't understand. You got to do everything. You got to change it up. Now, my philosophy for this has changed quite a bit during my training career. Early on, it was muscle confusion, changing the exercises all the time, always being novel in training. And I think I was, I was a good exorciser because of that. You know, I'm saying I was good. I could do all

exercises pretty good. I'm saying champion exercise champion exorciser. That's what's back in right. But I wasn't really good at any single lifts. And there are certain lifts that you reap tremendous benefit and have a long learning curve that you can continue to reap benefits from. And so my philosophy has changed it so that I do believe there are certain exercises that should stay in your routine for the most part that are that should stay in there. And then certain ones that are quickly interchanged, meaning I can run them for a phase, a couple weeks, and then I'm done with them onto another exercise

for that muscle group that's totally different, and then I can move on, and what looks like that, or for me, what that looks like is, movements like the barbell back squat, the deadlift, a barbell press, the big compound lifts, they're so challenging, they're so taxing, they're such a massive learning curve. I still don't think I'm great at deadlifting.

I still don't think I'm great at squatting to this day. Yeah, but take a step further, right? It's not so much the barbell back squat, although that's a big part of it, it's the squat movement, right? It's not so much the press, it's the pressing type movement. So one way you could do this is you could go barbell back squat

and you do that for a while and your change can be to a front squat or you could use a safety bar squat or you could squat with a different tempo, low bar, high bar, right? It was elevated, not elevated. Yeah, there's a lot of... Narrow stance, wide stance, same thing with deadlift.

And then, of course, the more obvious thing is you add completely different exercises, or place a little focus on different exercises. And that's what this mean. And again, phasing doesn't mean doing everything different all the time. Phasing means focusing on things for a period of time and then switching and you're absolutely right Adam. There are movement patterns that should almost always be present in your workout.

Well, on the beauty of different exercises, and if you wanna talk about moving in different planes and why that's something that we kind of stress every now and then which which, you know, isn't stressed enough, I believe, in our gyms and our, in the thoughts going in our workouts, because what we need by that is to be able to react properly to any kind of real world situation, any kind of functional type movement, which I hate using that word because it's just like, everybody just hears functional in there like they assume,

it's some wacky exercise. But really what we're trying to do is to be able to get your body to have the strength and familiarity when you place it in certain positions and to be able to get yourself out of those positions. And so that way you do that to where you build that support system around the joints, you build that support system to be able to summon the kind of strength that's usable. So compound lists, obviously, that's where we're going to stay for the majority to build muscle, build overall strength, be able to maximize our general output of force.

But how do we reinforce it? How do we keep the body intact and intract for the long hole? Yeah. I mean, what use is being able to squat 400 pounds if when you're outside, taking out the garbage, you mistep a little bit off the curb and you're outside taking out the garbage, you mistep a little bit off the curb and you throw your back out. That happens to people, strong people. Like, oh man, I turned the wrong way and then,

oh my gosh, I hurt myself. How is this possible? I can lift so much in the gym. That's functional. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about functional and different exercises. Trains your body in different ways and just gives you more well-rounded strength.

Now, what does this look like aesthetically? A balanced physique. It gives you a balanced physique. We all know the example of the guy or girl that is muscular, but it doesn't look right. They move wrong. They don't move like they're put together right. Muscle bound, right?

That's the term that they used to use back in the day because of the way people look like they moved because they worked out a particular way all the time. Well, different exercises, forget about the function, forget about the fact that it makes you move better, and a lot of people are aesthetically driven. It'll give you a balanced, beautiful physique because performance, you know,

detriment tend to show up over time aesthetically as well, which brings us to the last one, which is phasing your workouts reduces your risk of injury, okay? It just does because you train your body in a more balanced way. If I train in a strength, one of the signs that I have personally,

because I can get stuck, right? Like anybody, I get stuck in my favorite phases of working out. And I tend to get stuck in a strength phase. It's one of my favorites. I just love it. I totally enjoy it. And the signs that I used to ignore

that I'm a little better now at listening to are joint pain. If I stay in that phase too long, there's telltale areas of my body that'll start to hurt. Like if I bench press and I'm trying to get stronger at the bench press and I focus on it and my strength goes up, my strength goes up and then I start to feel peck insertion pain a little bit,

like I used to ignore that but now I'm like, oh I got a phase into something a little different. Same thing with the squat, like if I push it, push it, push it, oh little S-I joint on the right side, you know type of pain, that means I need to switch it. Well, when I switch things properly and face things probably I don't feel that. And if I push that long enough and don't listen to it,

it usually turns into an actual injury that I need to take a break from exercise. And nothing's worse for progress than not working out, right? I feel like this is of all the points. This is the one where when you're under 30 years old, you're less interested in this conversation. Of course. As you get older, it becomes the most important part of this.

You're unbreakable when you're young. You just have an experience to get. Of course, as you get older, it becomes probably the most important part of this. You're unbreakable when you're young. You just haven't experienced it yet. But the truth be told, this is the number one indicator for me to change things or move faces or introduce new exercises is, you know, all these years of lifting and training, I'd like to think I'm pretty in tune with my body and it's normally discomfort, pain, soreness, tightness, lack of movement.

Those are all these indicators that I need to move out of what I'm doing and change up what I'm doing and you get really good at paying attention to that. And catching it before, I think when we're young, we tend to ignore or think that we're invincible until it finally catches up, but you know, father time is undefeated. So eventually, this becomes a high priority. It does. And at the end of the day, look, here's the bottom line. At the end of the day, if you're, pursue really is to move, perform, and look your best. And that just for now, but, man, I want to look amazing, and I want to keep looking amazing. I want to move amazing. I want

to keep moving amazing. Being open-minded and phasing your workouts and trying different things, things that may be unconventional to you, is one of the best ways to do this. And over time, what you'll develop is this very balanced, well moving muscular, the kind of body that you want, that you're seeking by staying in one particular type of training that you don't realize you actually get by moving in and out of different types of training. Look, if you like our information,

head over to mindpumpfreed.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 my pump Justin Adam is on Instagram at my pump Adam and you can find me on Twitter at mine pump south Thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance Check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com.

The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a 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 and I'm in 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

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