Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2057: Do THIS to Get the Body You Want by Summer

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

If you want to fine-tune your body for summer, Sal, Adam & Justin lay out what you need to do in this episode. The three most common types of people that are trying to get FIT by summer. (1:33) Have a plan. (4:02) 1) Beginners. (8:25) Start slow. Focus on correctional exercises. Build metabolism. 2) Build muscle mass. (19:58) Use intensity properly and get strong. Target-specific mobility. Use advanced techniques to drive size. 3) Get leaner (look good). (33:46) Focus on balance and symmetry. Bring up lagging body parts. Cycle carbs. Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Promotion: 3 Summer Bundles to get you in the BEST shape of your life for this summer! Summer Starter: MAPS Starter, 15 Minutes, Prime, Reverse Diet Guide $99, Summer Strong: Anabolic Advanced, MAPS Strong, Prime Pro, Advanced Training Techniques Guide $199, Summer Shred: MAPS HIIT, Symmetry, Aesthetic, Carb Cycling Guide $149! MASSIVE DISCOUNTS!!! Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! MAPS Prime Pro Webinar MAPS Prime Webinar Mind Pump #1287: Why The Stability Ball Belongs In Your Workout Routine Reverse Dieting: What Is It and Should YOU Try It?? | MIND PUMP Mind Pump #2015: How To Apply Advanced Training Techniques To Build More Muscle The Breakdown Recovery Trap, Why You Aren’t Progressing – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1790: The Secret To An Attractive & Functional Body Mind Pump #1745: How To Pack On Muscle To Your Lagging/Stubborn Body Parts Carb Cycling: A Good Way To Lose Fat? - Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast ever in the history of the world. This is Mind Pump, right? Today's episode is all about how to get you the best body ever by summertime. Yeah, we're talking to you beginners. We're also talking to those of you that want to lean out.

And we're also talking to those of you that want to build maximum muscle. That's what we're talking about in today's episode. By the way, we created three special bundles for this episode. One for the beginner, one for those that want to cut and one for those you that want to build and We discounted the hell out of them. They're super inexpensive and they all include multiple workout programs and ebooks Specific to those goals. You can find all of those at maps april.com Now this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors PRX performance They make home gym equipment that rivals the equipment you see at the gym.

One of their hallmark pieces of equipment is a squat rack that folds into the wall. It literally comes off the wall by six inches, so you could use the garage or whatever to park your car. Then when you're ready to work out, it comes off the wall. It still attached the wall, super secure, and then you could do all your lifts. They have lots of equipment. Go check them out. Go to PRXPerformance.com forward slash mine pump, and that link will get you a 5% discount at checkout. All right, here comes the show.

Summer is approaching fast. That means everybody has a fitness goal. Now here's a deal. We wanted to do an episode about how to get the best shape by summer. Shredded, but there's a lot of people with different goals, different starting positions. And here's the real challenge. The real challenge is the plan.

What is the plan from now till then to get the best possible body? Because without a plan, it's just not going to happen. It can happen, but take a lot longer. You're looking to do this by summer. So in today's episode, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna break it down for you. And we're gonna talk about the three most common types of people who are trying to get fit by summer.

Who are those? That's the beginner, who's for the first time. Or, okay, let's be clear here, though, too. A beginner, I would put in this category. Not only this is your first time really getting this category, not only this is your first time really getting at it, but also this is your first time in a long time. Yeah. So you could be somebody who's been in and out of the gym for 10 years. But you haven't worked out for like a year or two. Yeah, but you haven't worked out for like a year and you're

ready to get back into the swing of things. I would still put you in the beginner, even if you're not considered a beginner in terms of lifting, you're familiar with the lifts, I think that you should still progress as if you're because, and by the way, that's not like a knock or a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. There's this thing that happens to a lot of, quote unquote, advanced lifters or people that have been lifting for most of their life that have taken a year, two years off, and then they wanna go right back into like,

training volume compared to what they were, they were doing when they fell off, and it's like, no, instead, lift like you're a beginner, get all those newbie gains again, because it is like being new all over again, even though you may have had experience in the gym and follow

that kind of a protocol before you progress to the more advanced type of. Yeah, so people kind of just getting started or who haven't been working out for a while or just not familiar with different exercises and how they work. Then the other two most common goals are I want to build lots of muscle or I want to burn lots of body fat. I want to get rid of lots of body fat. That covers pretty much everybody, right? Of course within those are things that are much more specific, but that does cover every, for the most part, everybody. And depending on where you fall, that's what will help dictate the plan because here's why people don't get results

for the most part, why people don't get results as satisfactory as they want or as fast as they want. I don't like to say it's fast because sometimes people's goals are unrealistic like I wanna lose 40 pounds and look shredded by next month like, okay, that's not gonna happen. But even with realistic goals, oftentimes things don't happen fast enough because people

don't really have a plan. And not just the plan, like, I'm going to go to the gym three days a week and I'm going to try and eat better. Like that's kind of part of the plan. But I mean a real plan, like, here's how I'm going to work out the next few weeks and then the weeks after that and then the weeks after that. And then the weeks after that. Here's what my diet's gonna look like now. Here's how it's gonna progress

and here's how it's going to change. Here's what I should expect at this stage, at that stage. Here's when I do these exercises and those exercises. So it's methodical, it's not just super impulsive where it's like, oh no, I gotta make up for all this time that I haven't been putting in the gym and I can get it all together in a really short amount of time. Yes.

You know what's funny about what you're saying, though? In a small snapshot of, let's say, only four weeks, you're right, it's not the fastest way, necessarily, per se, to maybe someone for someone to see the results that they're looking for. But over the course of three, six, and nine months, it is the fastest way. Sorry.

And I think that's why people get so hung up is they get this like, oh, I need to lose this much weight or I want to look a certain way and I want to get it as fast as I possibly can. But the fastest way to get there is technically kind of the slower way at first because the results ramp up on the back end when you do things correctly.

When you jump out the gates and you throw the whole kitchen sink at your body, you may get the initial first two to three weeks faster results than the person that's slowly building the correct way. I see that with the weight loss for sure. Right. But then they're not accounting for like maintaining that muscle mass. They don't get the definition. They don't get all these other attributes they're going for.

You know what it reminds me of?, you guys ever go to Universal Studio and this is a great theme park in California and there are these places where they would film movies and they're fake towns. So it's like it looks like you're in a western, you know, like you're in the 17 to 1800s in the west. Boom town. Yeah, like a boom town, right? But from a distance, it looks like a saloon, it looks like a bar, looks like a, but then you walk on me tell it's fake. Oh, I could like push this over with my hand and these windows aren't real.

And nobody's inside. So could you build a fake house that looks like it's moving faster than a real house? I mean, from a distance, I guess you could, but it's not really a house, it'll topple over. So to do this the right way, there's only one way to do that. And the right way gets you better results

and faster results in terms of getting closer to the ultimate goal. Because you could lose that initial five pounds really quick by simply moving more and eating less. But if your goal is 15, 20 pounds, like in a pure body fat, it ain't gonna happen without a plan. You need to have a specific plan. And yes, exercise and eating differently are part of it,

but what makes up those things and what's right for you are really what dictate just how effective it is and the biggest mistake people have is they don't think that far ahead, either because they don't think that far ahead either because they don't know because they think that and this is a common thought. A common thought is the value of exercise is just movement. So really doesn't matter what I do to to to to the to a large extent.

It's just am I moving? That's great. So there it is. And oh, with food, it doesn't really matter too much. So long as I eat foods that are somewhat, you know, quote unquote, healthy, whatever that means. And I eat less. And then I'll get there. Um, no, that's a tiny piece of the pie. But really, it's there's there's there's much more that goes into it. How you exercise the exercise you do, the order that you do them, are they appropriate to you when you apply them, and then with food, there's a way to eat

to speed up the metabolism, to burn body fat, to build muscle, and there's a way to do it best for your body, and you combine those things in the right order for yourself, your body's gonna progress, and it's gonna progress in a way that's fast and feels more effortless than hitting your head against the wall without a plan. Okay, so what does that look like specifically for the beginner? I mean, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is, you know, addressing any posture, correctional stuff so that it sets

yourself up for one, not having any potential injury, also to getting the most out of the lifts that you're going to be going into, I think of that. I also think of exercises that are either body weights or little movement, I love the stability ball type stuff where I'm working on not only posture with someone like that, a little bit of instability, some dumbbell work, like what is some of the programming look like for this person?

Yeah, so the two things you want to, well there's a few things that you really want to consider when you're a beginner. One is understand that exercise really is just the stimulus that tells your body to change and adapt and the stimulus how you know it's appropriate is based off of where you're at now. In a beginner, it doesn't need much stimulus to cause the body to move in the right direction. But there's more to that. It's not just that it doesn't need much. More than what it needs actually becomes too much and overcomes your body ability to change

and adapt. So, this is not a case where if some is good more is better, there's, if some is right, more is not right. And it'll actually get you there much slower. So you've got to have the right dose, I would say, one of the strongest things to consider. Yeah, I still think this is a major consideration because there seems to be this thought that you have to be able to accomplish a certain amount of exercises or this kind of more intensified workout for it to be any kind of more intensified workout for it to be any kind of value

for you to even step into the gym and for you to even start this embark on this journey at all. For your average person, I feel like that thought is just still out there. When in fact, it's really just, it's such an individualized experience if you can understand how to really like, you know, peer into what your body's telling you

and in, you know, in terms what your body's telling you and in, you know, in terms of like the overall intensity adjusting it accordingly. So you kind of lean a little bit more on less so you're playing on coming back as opposed to, you know, taking it all on once. So what comes in mind for me is I think, you know, hopefully Andrew can have the team shoot up some clips

and videos from like some of our different programs to give an example. So the listener or viewer can get some visuals with that looks like. But for me, it looks like a map starter, maps 15s type of programming with the combination of maps prime as far as the priming and posture stuff like focus on that going in. Yeah, so let's talk again. You mentioned posture to be more specific. It's more like what would be referred to as correctional exercise. Make no mistake, by the way, correctional exercise is still actual muscle. Yeah, you're still working out. Yeah. The difference is correctional exercise is

setting your body up to be able to later do some of the most effective exercises you're able to do. So if you take a beginner, you haven't worked out for a while, just putting them under, like if you've listened to the show before, you know that, you know, we like barbell squats, for example, or barbell deadlift, great exercises, very effective at building muscle and speeding up the metabolism and setting up for fat loss and all that stuff, very functional. But if you haven't done them in a while or never putting you under a bar and have and expecting you to do a barbell squat, you're not going to derive any value. Number one, because you don't have the skill of it. And you don't have, you probably aren't going to have not just not the technique, but the

stability to do so. And you'll probably hurt yourself. So, you're, so there are prerequisite exercises and things you can do to set yourself up so that you can do that exercise. Yeah, just to reinforce everything really, just to make sure everything is operating properly, you're able to get into these positions and hold and sustain those positions, which a lot of times people don't realize, like, I'm even just in a split stance, it's hard for me to maintain balance.

You know, right there, that's an issue. We have to work on that. We have to get you grounded. We have to get you to be able to control your body. At the level now we can add load and you're going to see a lot more substantial results once you're able to control yourself. Yeah, and I do want to say this again because sometimes people skip this, but try to skip this part because they think, oh, this isn't the fat loss part.

This isn't the muscle-building part. No, no, no, you burn body fat and build muscle doing this as well. There's just an order, an order of operation. And you really want to be able to stabilize your body and at least build enough strength in your body to support yourself to do more of the traditional exercises. But there's still exercises and you're still

working out. You mentioned MAP 15, Adam. What I like so much about a program like that, so for people aren't familiar, rather than having someone, like for example, in the past, if I trained a beginner, I would have them meet me two days a week and we would do about a 45 to 55 minute workout, okay? So, and that's usually where I would start most people. More than that would not only not be necessary, but it would probably be too much. Again, we're talking about strength training here.

So, what we did with Maps 15 is we created a program where instead of doing two 45 to 55 minute workouts, you're doing 15 minutes every single day. The reason why that's so great for a lot of people, but especially beginners, is because it's hard to develop one of the challenges with getting started with any kind of workout program is just maintaining this new routine and structure. Like you weren't doing two one hour workouts a week before. Now you're starting to do them and it's a new thing in your life and you got to make time for it,

and then, okay, now I gotta be consistent through all of life's challenges. What we found as trainers, when we trained people for a long time was, it was easier for people to do a little bit every day versus a lot sometimes. So instead of doing two, when our workouts, they just did 15 minutes on a daily basis.

So that is a great approach for new people. When somebody's brand new, like when I talk to a family member, in fact, my aunt is about to start string training. She's like, I've never done it before. What should I do? Should I go two days a week and, you know, do 45 minutes to an hour? So I don't know.

I want you to do 15 minutes every single day. She's like, what? And I say, yeah, just, she's like, well, that's actually easier. I can squeeze it in. I do it every single day, develops habits faster. Sit up so that's, that's the point. So that's a very important thing to consider.

You also, Adam mentioned the stability ball. The stability ball entered into the fitness space and became quite popular and got abused for a while, where everybody was doing everything on a stability ball. And so then we moved away from it. But the real value of stability ball training, that's the big, looks like a big inflatable ball, right? The value of it is when you sit on it

or use it for exercises because it's not a chair or a bench, it requires you to maintain stability with your body and posture. And you want that, you want to learn how to do that as a beginner because there's lots of exercises that require that. If you do overhead exercises or rows or whatever, and you don't haven't learned yet,

how to really stabilize your body, this is where lower back injuries can happen or just, you know, bad technique. So stability ball exercises are excellent, excellent for beginners. One of my favorite uses for? Yeah, I want to add to your point about Math 15, too. I mean, this is how I just started.

So, and I wasn't completely off either. It was just I wasn't very consistent. I was sporadically working out one day, then maybe another week I'd have two days, and I have a week off, and then like so, my training was really inconsistent just, you inconsistent just three, four months ago. And the way I started back really being consistent was actually math. But for that exact reason was just to help build that consistency.

I'm only doing two exercises a day. And it's getting enough of a stimulus because it's still more total volume in a week than what I was currently doing before that. And that initial starting to build muscle and change my physique was literally just from doing mass 15 before I started to scale it up. Totally. Now as far as diet is concerned, for most beginners, this may sound counter, right?

This might sound a little contrary to common knowledge. But most people think, okay, I should just cut my calories, right? Because most people are looking to lose weight. Not necessarily. We like to, and we found this to be more successful, to add things to someone's diet and do what's called a reverse diet. Because we're trying to fuel muscle building and muscle growth. Now you're going to gain tons of muscle, muscles hard to build. But what that does, just by moving in that direction, especially if you do it the right way by adding quality protein, is you actually start to speed up your metabolism. That makes fat loss way easier.

Think of it this way right now. If your metabolism was 50% hotter, how much easier would it be to get lean, right? That means you don't have to move as much. Your body's burning those calories on its own. So a reverse diet type of an approach where you slowly add calories, especially through high quality protein in conjunction with proper strength training will start to speed that metabolism up so that we get what's called like a snowball effect

is what I used to refer to it as. Like it starts off slow, but that snowball as it goes down the hill gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Well, this goes back to the original point that I was trying to make about, you know, if you hit, let's, most of these beginners that would choose this beginner pathway are probably trying to reduce body fat or lose weight, right?

And if you just start moving way more than what you were before, say following one of these programs, right? And reducing calorie significantly. In the first couple of weeks, you would see more weight loss on the scale than say the person who I tell you on the reverse diet. But fast forward this two months, three months down the road. And the person who did it the right way by reverse dieting first and speeding their metabolism up is going to see fat loss come off significantly faster and then stay off and then also being

a place to maintain where they want to be forever versus the person who just cuts cuts cuts cuts throughout the gate. And then they're a month away or a month out and their body's plateauing, they're halfway to their goal and they're eating hardly anything and they're like, F this is not sustainable. Which by the way, it's going to be lower. Happens to most people when they get in this place. So 100% I'm on board like this is this person I'm reverse dieting right now. And even though their goal may be I want to lose 20 pounds or 30 pounds. It looked great. That bikini for summer. It's like, okay, that is the plan. But we're first going to reverse diet and put you in a better position, metabolically, before we start to cut

out. Yeah, by the way, if this is like, if you want to lose like 10 pounds, like you're thinking, I just want to lose 10 pounds of body fat, if you do this well, oftentimes the scale doesn't move much at all, but you did lose quite a bit of body fat and just gained muscle. And that means you're smaller, by the way.

I want to be very clear, muscle takes up less space per pound than body fat. It's just more dense. So if you lost, let's just say 10 pounds of body fat, but gained 10 pounds of muscle, people would think you lost 20 pounds on the scale. Like you're just smaller, and that muscle doesn't take up much space, but you look tighter and more sculpted.

In fact, that would get clients, that would happen with clients all the time. They'd come. In fact, I would get clients, that would happen with clients all the time. They'd come to me like, sell it. I know we've only been working out for a couple months. The scale hasn't moved. People keep asking me how much weight I've lost. And say, well, you did lose body fat. You just gain muscle. Now your metabolism's faster and you're smaller because body fat takes up more space. All right. The next person, the, that, you know, type of person that is trying to get in shape for some person, trying to build muscle, trying to gain some mass.

Usually this is a guy, typically, especially a young man or whatever, but I've had female clients. Yeah, I would put, I would put even like booty gains right here. That's muscle building. Right, right. So I put booty gains for the bikini in this position. I put hard gainer in this position. I put just somebody in general

who has a harder time building muscle and wants to build a muscular physique, heading this way. That's how I put all those people in this category. Yeah, now a big thing to consider here, and this is somebody that's already been, you know, kind of working out. Obviously we covered the beginner,

so you're already working out and you're like, I just want to build, I want to get into the summer and I want to have more muscle and more shape. Well, for this kind of person, usually we see big changes in their performance in terms of the results, by simply manipulating and utilizing intensity properly. Okay.

Intensity is one of the most important factors when it comes to your workouts. It also simultaneously happens to be the one that's the most abused. Yes. So, you have like frequency, like how often you work out, how many days a week are you working out?

That would be frequency. Volume would be the total amount of workout exercises and sets and reps that you do. So if you worked out, for an hour, that'd be more volume than if you worked out for 20 minutes. So it's volume than if you worked out for, you know, 20 minutes. So it's volume. And then there's intensity, which is simply how hard the workout is. Well, you know, if you've been working out for a little while, you're trying to build muscle, you probably realized early on that,

oh, the harder I work out, the more muscle I build. But eventually, the stops real fast. And then you think, oh, I must need to work out harder, which you, you know, you work out even harder and then still no results. Oh, I need to just ramp it up even more. And then not only you're not getting results, now you're going backwards. So intensity needs to be utilized properly and manipulated in a way to where we are working with your body's ability to heal, recover, and adapt. We're not just beating the crap out of yourself.

If you do this the right way, then we can trigger and amplify muscle growth. If we do this the wrong way, then nothing happens at all. Or worse, you actually start to go backwards. So, some piece of advice for people. And this actually is now present in one of our most, in our more recent maps program, maps in a ballock, which we actually created after already having the podcast for eight years and interviewing experts and experimenting with more people.

As we realize that, you can utilize very high intensity training and it will build muscle very quickly so long as you alternate it with less intense higher volume style workouts and throw in some what are called de-load weeks. And if you do that magic combination right there, oh boy, the results have a little problem. Which really, I mean, it's highlighting the importance

of recovering and adapting versus just healing and getting into that kind of recovery trap where we're working out so intensively because it's showing us results out of the gates because this intensity is really providing your body that signal and that stimulus. But if we keep on that path of just over intensity, like over and over and over, it just gets to the point where now we're just healing now and

we're not really moving the needle forward anymore. So this is just always something that I think most people are going on their fitness journey. Don't really consider how vital and important the recovery processes with sleep, with nutrition, or with also just like, unrelating your intensity of your workouts. I also think that this person, because we are playing with things like intensity and like failure training and stuff like that, the thing that compliments this is like a prime pro type of layout where I have all these exercises that are designed to make sure I keep all my joints moving optimally and healthy.

Because when you are flirting with things like intensity, you are more likely to see the joint pain or the issues like that. And so being staying ahead of it, knowing like, oh, you know, I kind of have this rolled shoulder forward. And then also I know that I'm going to be pushing like overhead presses and hitting like it days where I might be taking it to failure. And so knowing that I need to put the work in to make sure that I'm in an advantage, an advantageous position to make sure that I don't hurt myself and I get the max benefits for it. So I think having something like that to complement

that type of training, I think is necessary for this advanced person or ideal for this person. Yeah, if you've been working out for a while and you're trying to build muscle mass, you've probably, hopefully, already figured out that some exercises just build more muscle than others. You know, like the bench press, the barbell, usually the more difficult ones.

Yeah, the barbell squat, the deadlift, the overhead press, right? Those exercises just, they just build a lot of strength and a lot of muscle in comparison to other exercises that purport to, you know, work the same areas. But then you wrench this problem if this is you and you're trying to build muscle and you're getting stronger and you're pushing intensity by lifting the failure.

Something starts to hurt. My elbow starts to bother me. I can't deadlift anymore because my wrist bothers me or I can't overhead press. My shoulder bothers me or my lower back is starting to get tweaked. Now I can't squat. So now you can't do these incredible muscle building exercises because something hurts, something's bothering you, you got to switch it out for an inferior exercise. And maybe you'll still build some muscle, but it ain't happening nearly as fast for this person, you know, but, you know, just to compliment what you guys are saying, it's really important to do targeted mobility work, targeted for the areas that you know,

you know, are getting stressed quite a bit. So like if you're bench pressing a lot, and you're seeing your numbers go up, and you start to notice like, oh, my left shoulder starts to feel a little bit funny, and I'm starting to lift big weights, but God, I love the bench press, it builds my chest and my shoulders

and my triceps really well, targeted mobility work on that shoulder or targeted mobility work for your particular body type to help with the bench press will keep those numbers moving forward. If you don't do that, your body will literally stop you from getting stronger either because your central nervous system will say, we're not letting you lift more, we don't feel stable or worse, you push past that, you overcome your central nervous system's kind of, you know, stopping mechanism and you're yourself. Now, you're really screwed.

Now, you can't work out at all. So targeted mobility is so important for people, really trying to build muscle mass because usually that comes along with heavy weights and lots of, you know, intense strength training. That will stop you in the tracks if you don't address it. Back to the intensity thing, for somebody watching right now, when I said alternate, literally you could do one week for, let's say, your back, 15 sets where you stop three reps short of failure, you get a good pump. The next week, now you're doing just four sets but all to failure.

You drop the volume, it ramped up the intensity, alternating like that. Oh boy, that keeps things moving in the right direction. Do the failure every single week, like a lot of people do, and after about three or four weeks, that's it, you're stuck in the mud. Well, I'm gonna add back to your priming and mobility point that you're making.

There's at least I don't think you guys do. I know for sure me, if I am lifting heavy bench, overhead press, squat or deadlift, it's mandatory that I do certain mobility drills before I go into that, or it's almost guaranteed that I will hurt or stress something when I do it. For sure, it won't get the max out of the lift. I know that.

If I try to go cold into one of those things or just do like a warm-up set, like some coaches just advocate for and then go into it, there's no way I'm getting the most out of that lift or I'm not potentially getting hurt out of that lift. And I know it's equal in terms of like beginner to advanced in terms of like that, but I can't help but think like the further along I've gotten in my career, like lifting weights, like how essential that is now that I've understood that, like because you do pay attention to that, you peer into those little inconsistencies even more when you're lifting heavy weights and it pressures it more. So you, I very much have had to, you know, be humble myself and realize like I have to do

this in order to maintain the optimal function of my joints in order to then get any progress going forward. Because it's harder, it gets harder and harder to get progress the longer you're in. Yes, the bigger and stronger you get, the higher the risk becomes when your form is off just a little bit, okay?

So to paint it plainly, if you're deadlifting with a hundred pounds and your form is off a little bit. Okay, so to paint it plainly, if you're deadlifting with 100 pounds and your form is off a little bit versus you're deadlifting with 500 pounds and your form is off just a little bit, obviously the risk is going to be much higher with the heavier weight because it's heavier and it's going to stress the joints a little bit differently. Now, if you have perfect form, good stability, good control, you're fine, but when you're off, you're off. So targeted mobility work becomes, it's important for the beginner.

It's crucial for the person who's been working out for a long time. Which is by the way, where the whole heavy lifting thing has got a bad rap. Like it has something to do with the heavy weights. Don't lift heavy because you get hurt or it's bad for your joints. It's like, no, it's that you... The heavier you lift, the more perfect you can lift. You can consider that. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, I don't know how you guys treat it, but to me, like let's say it's a day where it's been a while since I've tried to train to failure or push it like singles, doubles, or triples. I, for me, I make this like rule where I have to earn that. And part of earning that is doing the pre-work going into that. And if I'm not willing to do all my work, then I won't do it. That's right. It's just that simple. If I, oh, I mean, oh, I'm in a hurry, I can do this. Like,

K, well, then I'm not training to failure. I'm not pushing the risk. It's not. And so the only way that I earn the right to lift like that is that I've done all the prerequisites before I go into that. And I've just learned that over years I've done all the prerequisites before I go into that and I've just learned that over years and years of making the mistake of not doing that. Right, another thing for people trying to build lots of muscle who have experience is at this point you're probably somewhat well versed in some of those pretty awesome exercises,

which is great because they're great exercises, but here's the downside is that, you probably think back to when you were learning how to do a squat and then there was that beautiful period where you just seem to get stronger every week and muscle started to build. And then at some point you got real good at it, you've done it for a while now,

adding 15 pounds of the bar is really hard. You can actually somewhat tap into that by doing certain unconventional strength building lifts. There's some that are out there that for some reason became unpopular that are amazing muscle building exercises. I would look into some of these lifts that you probably haven't done before and really tap into some of those with you know, what they call, you know, new Begains and they're out there like for me, for example, we created a program called map strong

You know years ago and I was familiar with a zurcher squat or a zurcher deadlift Never really programmed it in my workouts, but it was part of our program We were selling it, we were creating, so I started doing them in my routine. And it was great, it was like the first time I started to learn how to deadlift. Like it first took me a while, it was uncomfortable. And then I started getting better with them.

And then I was gaining muscle like I just started working out. This is my body, never done that. Exercise really for a long period of time. So there's exercises out there that I like. Oh, there's two other exercises in that program that you didn't even name. I got that from Snatch Crypt Deadlifts and Circus Press. Those two movements were like, like, forgotten movements in my programming forever. Like I didn't do it till post 10 years into my career, adding that into my routine.

Oh my God, the response from that such great movements. That's why that's one of my favorite programs is because of all the unconventional lifts in there that I think most people don't think to program and they're just super beneficial. Right. Another thing of value with people in this category, and I'm going to be careful when I say this because I know the tendency is to abuse what I'm about to talk about. But if you do it right, they can be pretty awesome. There are advanced training techniques that are out there that bodybuilders and power lifters and Olympic lifters and strength athletes have used that can really amplify

results and progress. Now, the key is to use them judiciously, be very intelligent with how you use them. So an example would be like four straps, or negatives, or partial reps, or using bands for progressive resistance, for example. Like these are all examples of advanced trained techniques. If you use them, let's say you pick one and you use it once a week on a specific lift Or twice a week and you know, maybe on another lift and you do it right you will see faster muscle building results If you mess up and you do it too often you'll go backwards So just word of note there are advanced train techniques out there

But you got to use them right if you use them wrong and you might as well, you're better off not doing them at all. Now the last person, which is probably 80% of people going into the summers, they wanna lose weight. They wanna get lean, they wanna get cut, shredded, whatever, they wanna burn. And they have experience right now, and they're consistent, right?

Right, right, right. So people with some experience. Yeah, I'd say this probably, this fits 80% maybe the listeners, right? Most of you that with some experience. Yeah, I'd say this probably, this fits 80% maybe the listeners, right? Most of you that are listening to the podcast probably are lifting in the gym pretty regularly or have been doing it for a while. So you have some experience and, you know, maybe you have already kind of built a little bit of lean, lean tissue and metabolism is getting up there already and now it's like, okay,

let's go through the reveals. Yeah, exactly. It's a reveal time. I've got perfect amount of time getting ready to head for like, say, fourth of July or whatever like that. Now I want to get shredded. Like, that's the person I think about when we talk about the first. Yeah, now because this is, you know, really falls into that like aesthetic category

or looks category, I'm gonna talk a little bit about training for balance and symmetry in the body, which can have profound visual effects. Training the body to be balanced, you might not see a huge change on the scale, but visually when someone looks at you, they'll notice you'll look a lot different, a lot better. Balance can be upper to lower body, that's an obvious one, but it can also be more commonly right to left, right? Is your right arm way stronger than your left arm? Is your right leg way stronger than your left leg?

Are they as fit as each other? Unilateral training, this is where you train one side at a time, bodybuilders have done this for a long time to improve how they look. Training one side at a time and doing it properly can really change how you look. Even though the scale might not move much, in fact, we had somebody in our forum, we posted this a long time ago where she did a Dexas scan and she followed one of our programs that's designed for this called Map Symmetry. I forgot about this. And there was like so much lean body mass on one side versus the other, so a little bit more on her dominant side than the other.

And then she followed the program and it did exactly what it was designed to do, is it brought up the lagging side. And visually, you could see it, you know, and it's something that you pick up on subconsciously. You could pick up on symmetry. So just something to focus on. If you're getting lean and your goal is to really improve your aesthetics, like try to balance out both sides

rather than just drive your body forward. I wish I understood this when I was in my 20s. I didn't get this. I totally didn't get this. I think I was like in teenage. Your teenage to early 20s, like you get with many clients who are obsessed with the body part.

Oh, I just want to have big arms. Or always want that big chest or always want big legs or a butt. Like, we get obsessed with these body parts that we tend to be insecure about or that we're infatuated with. And we want that. And if we only like were to focus more symmetrically on the body, like you'd be so much happier. Like I think back to like, for me, it was like arms as a kid,

like that was like this big deal, like it's one of arms, and so that's all I ever did. And the reality is that even when I laid off doing arms at the volume that I was doing in my teens in early 20s, and started to build a more symmetrical, see I got more compliments about my arms than I ever did,

but yet circumference wise, they were technically an inch plus smaller than what they were when I was training them like crazy, but it's crazy what a difference having sculpt the shoulders does for the bicep and the tricep and the same thing goes for a good balanced quad to hamstring to calf ratio, like when you train the body symmetrically like that, like, it will, even if you think that you only want one body part as all you think you care about, that one body part will look better when it's balanced with everything else.

So funny how much of a head turner it is for people that are super symmetrically balanced and athletic for sure fit. Looking versus like, I remember seeing somebody I've seen on Instagram in real life and was just like, whoa, it's just, you know, cause there's angles and there's things that can highlight those featured body parts

and what people want. And versus like in real life and then you see it. It's just like, it's so, it takes you a second to kind of put it together. It's like it doesn't really fit. It's rare. It's rare to, I mean, posture and symmetry. Yeah.

If I see someone, I say I always compliment them because I think it's always gonna look good. Yeah, it looks when someone stands up right with good posture in their symmetrically balanced, it's I think the most amazing expression of their body or our bodies when done so and so. Yeah, it's the I think, the most amazing expression of their body or our bodies when, when, when done so. It's the difference between, oh, like muscular versus, oh, that's a beautiful body.

Right. Bodybuilders have understood this for a long time. I mean, they, they've learned for a long time that they don't just get judged on overdeveloped body parts, but rather how it all flows and looks together. And training for that makes a very big difference. And again, if you're trying to get cut, you're probably interested in, you wanna look a particular way, don't ignore this.

This makes a very big difference in your appearance. The other thing is to bring up balance is to bring up body parts that may be just specifically lagging for yourself. Now, everybody has this, by the way, everybody has a body part that they're not happy with. I don't care who you talked to if they've been working out for a while, and you say, you know,

how's your workouts going? What do you like? What do you don't like? Everybody's like, oh, I have, it's my butt, or it's my, the back of my shoulders, or it's my back, or whatever, right? They have that one body part. Here's a mistake people make.

They add volume to that body part, more exercises, more sets, and more reps, and they do nothing else with the rest of the body. Or they train it with more volume with the same intensity. And so they just end up beating the crap out of this body part over training and actually cause it to not just not progress, but to actually regress. Or also developing the ones that are already

overdeveloped in comparison to that. And so even though you bring it up. The ratio of the same. The ratio stays the same. So you bring up that one body part but then the rest of them came up too. Yeah, there's a smart way to bring up a lagging body part. And usually you reduce volume from other areas

or you add volume to that weak body part but you do so in a lower intensity with different exercises. So you're not just overcoming your body's ability to adapt and recover. You're actually bringing that body part up. Now another part, and here's where I want to get real careful, is, you know, the calorie burn of your workout, we've talked about this many times on the show, it's not the most important thing. What's more important is that you speed up your

metabolism. It's more important that you eat a particular way. We'll get to diet, of course, because these are people who want to lose weight. But in a short period of time, let's say in eight week period of time, you can make some pretty profound changes by burning more calories in your workout. But you got to do it the right way, because if you do this the wrong way, what'll happen is your body will actually reduce muscle to keep you from burning too many calories. Remember, your body's always trying to keep itself in balance. So what's real popular for this is usually

high intensity interval training, right? Hit training because studies show it burns so many calories, oh my God, 30 minutes of hit. It's like doing two hours of other exercise. That's true, but it's not just a mishmash of exercises. If you really want this to be effective, it needs to be strength training, hit workouts. Strength training, hit workouts that are well-programmed,

will burn a tenta calories, will get you lean faster in a short period of time, but you won't lose muscle. So if I were to structure this, the way it would look for me personally, is a more symmetry you know, symmetry slash aesthetic type of programming and then and and carb cycling while I'm heading into summertime. And then the last fish it up with it.

Yeah. And then the last two to four weeks is hit. And I would start to reduce calories as I slowly go down. And the way I would reduce it is through carb cycling. So I would carb cycle, let the lower carb days be the natural, lower calorie days, let the maintenance, the surplus days be the little bit higher calorie days. And then as I start to get closer and closer to the end of the, you know, or whenever the time I'm trying to peak or look my best, if I have vacation or fourth of July or whatever is when I'm going to ramp up and introduce

the the hit for those last couple of hours. Carbcycling is, I was popularized by bodybuilders, but now lots of people are catching on. When you cut your calories, calories are gonna come from proteins, fats, or carbohydrates. Those are the three places you'll get calories from. Proteins and fats are essential. So you have to eat a certain amount of them. You have to, absolutely have to. Your body cannot create essential fatty acids.

It cannot create essential fatty acids. It cannot create essential amino acids, but your body actually technically doesn't need carbohydrates. Now, I'm not advocating you never eat carbs again. I don't think that's a very well balanced approach that also has its own negatives, but you could survive without carbs. So when cutting calories and also simultaneously try to give yourself enough energy for your workouts and simultaneously try to not lose any muscle, it makes sense. And this is again, why bodybuilders did this. It makes sense to cycle your carbs. Cut your carbs when you cut your calories. Raise them a little bit when you need the energy for particular types of workouts. And the data shows that this actually

has some merit. People have better workouts and psychologically the diet doesn't feel as difficult. They feel more satisfied and they get better results. And look, I've done it all and personally, this for me is the best way to get lean. It's just it's the easiest it feels the best and I still have decent workouts. I think there's more to that too. And You kind of alluded to it with the essential, your fats and protein is essential. In my experience, almost any time I set, when you assess the diet, when you're not telling people what to do, and like, what do they do?

Almost everybody was under-consuming, healthy fats or definitely under-consuming protein. The idea that when you would go into this restrictive part of a diet to lean out, to potentially cut the two things that you already are probably low on is not a good strategy. So I've always loved utilizing carb cycling or some form of that with clients when it comes to reducing body fat. Unless they have some sort of special condition or autoimmune issue where I'd put them on a different type of a diet. But for most people, I think it's one of the best strategies to lean somebody out for that exact reason that most people don't hit their protein and healthy fats on a regular basis.

And so why would I put you on a calorie sugar diet where I pull that out when it's something you're not consistently doing? I just got you consistently eating that. Now I'm gonna pull that away. No, I'd rather pull something like carbohydrates that aren't necessary. So we're gonna get those fats and proteins. Yeah.

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