Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2090: Five Tips to Work Out Less and Keep Your Gains

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover five different ways to minimize time in the gym without sacrificing muscle. The amount of volume needed to maintain muscle. (1:57) Does consistency and experience lifting play a factor? (3:37) The difference between the optimal and the most you can tolerate training. (8:20) 5 Tips to Workout Less and Keep Your Gains. (14:14) #1 - Change the phase of training that you are in. (14:35) #2 - Increase the intensity of your workouts. (17:43) #3 - Eliminate ‘less’ worthy exercises. (20:58) #4 - Keep your protein intake high. (24:47) #5 - Use BFR training on off days. (28:22) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout for 25% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic** June Promotion: MAPS Cardio or Summer Shredded Bundle or the Bikini Bundle 50% off! **Code JUNE50 at checkout** How Much Training Is Necessary To Maintain Strength And Muscle? Mind Pump #2015: How To Apply Advanced Training Techniques To Build More Muscle Mind Pump #1942: Lose Fat, Perform Better & Live Forever With Jason Phillips How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1925: How To Build A Great Physique In 15 Minutes A Day Occlusion Training Tutorial- How to Increase Muscle Size Using Blood Flow Restriction – Mind Pump TV Blood flow restriction training in clinical musculoskeletal rehabilitation: a systematic review and meta-analysis How To Use BFR Training To GROW Your Arms (CRAZY PUMP!) Occlusion Training Guide | MAPS Fitness Products 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. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we give you five tips to work out less and keep your gains. In fact, some of these tips will actually help you get more gains by working out less. So it's going to be a fun episode.

Now it was brought to you by one of our sponsors, Seed, the world's best probiotic hands down. Go check them out. Go to seed.com forward slash mind pump. User code mind pumping at 25% off your first month of Seed's daily symbiotic. We also have a sale going on this month on some workout programs and workout program bundles. Maps cardio is 50% off. The Shredded Summer workout program bundle is 50% off and the bikini workout program bundle is 50% off.

If you're interested in any of those, go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and use the code June50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes a show. One of the biggest points of stress, Code June 50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes a show. One of the biggest points of stress, especially for fitness, is the following. I've been working out for a while,

but now I need to work out less due to unforeseen circumstances, maybe family life, maybe job, whatever. But the fear is, or the stress is, am I gonna lose my gains? How do I do this, but keep all the gains I got during those years of training? So in today's episode, we're going to talk about the ways you can keep your gains while working out less.

And believe it or not, sometimes you get more gains. Never go longer than two hours without eating. Do you know that's the best? Remember when you said, I thought that was it. Like that was it for me right there. I really believe that if I wasn't eating every two hours, the muscle was falling off my body, I'm sure. That's so terrible.

Yeah, there's two hours to the member. I think it was. There was. It was like that I had like a lard and said everything I said off. It's so crappy. No, that's not true. That's not one of them. But you know, I think it's important to know,

and the data is pretty good on this, actually pretty clear, that there's a certain amount of volume and intensity and frequency that's required to get your body to progress. And of course, that's different from person to person. So the right dose, right? But there's a certain volume. And then to keep that muscle is less. You actually need less work to keep what it took to build. This is a fact across

the board. In fact, some studies show as much as, or as little I should say, as one-ninth the total volume. So if you did nine sets for chest during the week, one set would keep what you built with nine sets. Now, in my experience, I think it's probably more like one-fourth or one fourth or one fifth, but nonetheless still a big difference. It requires a lot less to keep what you got. So, and I hope that brings some people some calm. You just, you don't need to do as much as you did to get where you got. You just, you just got to do something. And you know, we'll talk about that. I've seen up to one seventh. I haven't seen one ninth four. I've seen up to one seventh before, but still, what do before I seen up to one seventh before but still what do you yeah

No, which is crazy. I remember when the first time that I came across that it really opened my eyes on like how how little I do need to do to just maintain that and also Changed the way I kind of looked at stuff. I used to be very all or nothing right if I wasn't Hammering the weights and and dieting. It was just like, oh, what's it all for? Why should I do it at all when I remember reading this and realizing, oh, wow, even if I went to the gym and just did one exercise, you know, this is going to help maintain the work that I've put in in the previous say months or years. Now, to this point, what, how much of a factor do you think, um, how long you've been lifting consistently for plays heroic? I got it, I got to think that if you just started lifting weights and you've trained consistently say for six months to a year and then all of a sudden you reduced down to, you know, a guy, let's say someone who's training six days a week, body parts split type of routine,

built some good muscle, made some good traction, and then you switch to a one day a week full body routine, and that's it. That comparing that person to say somebody like us and training our whole life, 20 something plus years, and same scenario, let's say I did a body parts split most of my life, then also I changed to a one day full body routine. I feel like I would have the advantage

because of all the years of doing that. And I find that at least this has been my experience as I've gotten older, that the one advantage of getting older is that it's more years I've been consistently lifting for. And therefore, I feel like I can do less to maintain as much. I mean, do you know? Yeah, so there's a few factors, I would say, that probably play into that. One, the data is clear, I guess, across the board. So wherever you are, and whatever you're doing

to get where you are, doing less than that, we'll maintain it. Okay, so that's true across the board. However, there's some interesting things that happen when you, especially when you strengthen training for years and years and years. And most, I would say, strength coaches and scientists would say that it probably is due to muscle fiber hyperplasia.

So when your muscles grow, it's called hypertrophy. The muscle fiber itself grows, but then there's a phenomena we reserve this in animals, and we've done studies on human that I would say confirm this that not only do muscle fibers grow, but over time, you actually, those one muscle fiber can become two muscle fiber. It splits, right? Is that what they do?

The theory. Yeah, so you'd get more muscle fibers. Now, why is that any different than hypertrophy? Well, when you lose muscle, it's when muscle fibers shrink. However, when you multiply or build muscle fibers, they don't go away. So you can shrink muscle fibers, but if you add muscle fibers through hyperplasia,

they don't go away. So it's more permanent muscle gain. Which is the same that happens with fat. Right, also. Fat is we disill the cells just shrink. They don't go away. No, which is why it's so important to like. And we've learned too that you could actually add fat cells

in the past. We thought they just grew and they shrink. And we've learned from the extreme yo-yo dieting of crash dieting and then putting on a bunch of weights. It's potential to increase the amount of fat cells. Right. And so there's the positive side of that, which is the hyperplasia side that you're talking about,

where you could potentially add more. So that's what you would attribute that to you. So I probably have over those two plus decades. Added just more, you probably have more muscle fibers in your biceps now than you did, you know, 20 years ago, 20 years ago. I'm sure that's a factor. I'm sure too. Just like the overall understanding of your body and like skill that you've acquired in terms of how to tighten certain screws just just so and you're gonna get your body to respond like if you're an avid lifter and you've been doing it for decades and you understand like how to manipulate you know your physique and be able to move the needle nutritionally you know training wise and it doesn't really like what once you get to certain level, I feel like it doesn't take quite as much

if you can dial it all in together. Yeah, that's a really good point, because it does seem pretty dramatic for me. Like I feel like the reason why I'm keep going back to this is that man, it's a big difference for me. Like I feel like the worst shape that I allow myself to get in in my late 30s, 40s is still better than the best shape I could get into in my early 20s, which is crazy because I know the

work and discipline that I was putting towards way harder back there. Yeah, towards the weights and dieting in my early 20s. Now to your point, there's probably a hyper pleasure that is working in my benefit and then to Justin's point, you're right. Just from decades of training, you know, I've really honed in on the things that really move the needle. Like, no, and we've talked on the show before,

the importance, like for me, protein has been such a huge factor with me being able to maintain muscle really close. Really easily, I can quickly become the guy who eats sugary foods, high carbohydrates, ignore getting enough protein intake and that paired with reducing volume of training or eliminating training. Just muscle falls off.

Yeah, well, yeah, and that's actually one of the points that we get to. But you know what's interesting about this topic is that fitness fanatics oftentimes are training too much to begin with. So there's a difference between optimal amount of exercise or strength training, which optimal means this is the perfect amount for your body at this time, the context of your life, that is going to build the most strength and the most muscle make you feel the best.

Okay, so that's optimal. But then there's the most you can tolerate. Then there's beyond that which is overtraining. The most you can tolerate is more than what is optimal. Now what do you sacrifice with that? You actually sacrifice some gains. There's a perfect amount and then there's more than that that I can handle. I can handle more and I'm working out more, but I'm actually getting less results because

it's putting too much more of a demand or more of a demand on my body in terms of recovery, and it makes the adaptation process harder. So there's optimal and then what you can tolerate. And if you've been working out a long time, what tends to happen through months and years of exercise is you start to slowly trend and move towards what you can tolerate. It's just natural. You'll work out, you've been doing it for a while, Olimi add more, this is fun, while Olimi add more, oh I think I can handle this, let me do more, and you move away from optimal,

and you move much closer to just the most you could tolerate. So you actually sacrifice some gains. So what ends up happening a lot of times with fitness fanatics is they scale their training back because they're forced to, and then they get better gains. This happens to me all the time. The first time this happened to me, I went on vacation and there was supposed to be a gym available where I didn't have a gym and so I couldn't work out and it was like two

weeks. So two weeks no exercise. Then I went back, started working out stronger. And I remember thinking like this is weird. Why am I- Why am I stronger and I realized I must have been over training before. And then there's other times when I've done six days a week and had to go down to three days a week

and oh, I hit a new PR. So a lot of people listening right now, you may not just keep your gains. You may actually see yourself progressing more by reducing the volume and the frequency. Yeah, the end game isn't to just keep piling on more and more volume and the frequency. Yeah, the end game isn't just keep piling on more and more volume and exercises, which is not really something that's promoted often and people don't understand that it just

seems like adding more of everything was always going to be beneficial. And so, to understand that there's times where if you can step away from it and you feel that and you understand that like, well, my body is stronger from doing less or not doing as much this week, you gotta adjust your training to appropriately find that dose. Yeah, does that ever happen to you guys? When you guys are still there's day.

I mean, I think that's why we talk about this so much is that when you love training and as we all do, I mean, there's a reason why we're in the space, you tend to get in the rhythm and motivated and you do start chasing the, you start looking at your workouts as you're trying to do more and get better and lift more and you keep pushing those limits. And you tend to flirt with overdoing it, then underdoing it. Now that conversation is different for my client who admittedly hates coming to the gym and doesn't want it like.

So it's like, I'm always very careful like how I communicate this message because you know, there's the other, the other portions and I know there's people are listening to it like, that's a terrible message because most people are lazy and yeah Okay, most people put out the effort right but most people also that are those people don't listen to a fitness podcast People who listen to a fitness podcast tend to be people that are into working out and they want to improve how they work out And they're trying to dial this in and figure out all the hacks and figure out how to do it better. Well, so when we communicate this message, I think it's important to this audience that they understand that when you like to work out,

when you get momentum, we tend to overreach. And I learned this lesson at least once a year every year. At least once a year, I'm in some sort of a zone and getting after it and feeling great. And speed like your point, a vacation comes up, or maybe I even had such a wish, where I get sick. I get sick for four or five days,

and I'm knocked out of the gym, and then you weren't feeling terrible, you're barely feeling better, you're back in the, and then I'm stronger. Like that doesn't make you look better. That's where you like, it really opened your eyes, it's just like, wait a second,

I know my body should not be feeling amazing right now, because I just got sick for four or five days and I'm back in the gym, I missed my routine and then I come back stronger. That's always very glaring to me that, oh wow, I had been overreaching. Yeah, and even to take it to a more extreme level for advanced lifters, taking time completely off,

oftentimes is a way to get your body to progress. You know, they've done studies on D-Load Weeks and a D-Load Week is really a week that you go to the gym and you barely work out or don't even work out at all. You can even consider an all week off a D-Load Week and studies show that people progress faster by including those. In fact, whenever our latest program is maps on a advanced, we programmed in a D-load weeks and people are saying that they're getting great results just from doing that. So, and it's easy, it's hard to build muscle, losing it takes a little while. It's not like losing stamina. Like if you run four days a week and then this week, you know, last week

and then this week you ran none, you'll lose stamina pretty quick. Strength sticks around for a little while. It does. Of all the adaptations, strength sticks around, I would say the longest. So that's working for you. Now the reason why I'm saying all this is to kind of calm people down

because the biggest enemy in regards to this particular topic is the fear. Is the fear over correcting and stuff, right? Yeah, like, oh no, I'm not gonna work out. I'm gonna lose everything type of deal. It's like, no, the data's going to work out. I'm going to lose everything type of deals. Like no, the data is very clear on this. Even if you did nothing for a couple weeks, you're not going to lose anything at all

and oftentimes it'll come back and feel much better. But let's talk about people working out for a while. They'll work out a lot. Some things happening in their life, maybe they're about to have a kid or change of jobs or something and they're like, okay, I know I'm not going to be able to work out as much as I always have. How can I really keep progressing or maintain, you know, what I've built?

So we've got some tips here that'll help you do that. The first one is to change the phase of training that you're in, okay? So a phase would be like a rep range or a rest period or even like a goal, like a mobility phase or a strength phase or like a pumping phase type of deal. Changing the phase stands a new stimulus to the body, it's novel and that usually gets the body to progress. Well, if you reduce volume, but then change the stimulus,

even if before you were doing the right amount of volume, that change the stimulus is often enough to offset the reduced volume. So changing phases is something I always had people do when they would have to cut back on their volume in a substantial way. And again, this often would contribute to better results. Yeah, and a lot of times people think that this has to be like a real intense thing. I'll give you an example of how I recently have changed to phase up and part of this,

I was forced into this because of injury. And that was, I would have been getting great momentum, heavy deadlifting, heavy squatting. Now I'm kind of recovering and I'm easing my way back in and I'm like, I don't wanna, same mind-prought thought is like, I don't wanna lose all these gains and we're so hard to get so strong. But yet then I also know better, I don't wanna go say mind-prote thought is like, I don't want to lose all these gains, and we're so hard to get so strong. But yet, then I also know better,

I don't want to go right back to squatting three plus plates and potentially injure myself again. So, the thing that came for me was like, well, when it was the last time, I did a lot of unilateral legwork and stability stuff. And so here I am doing light, single leg, deadlift type of movements, walking lunges with a balanced component in it, caustic squats, which I never would do with some stability involved in

it. So, my legs are so sore as if I squatted three, four hundred pounds because it was so novel to my body. And so that is a way of progressively overloading. People always think that in order to either get gains or continue to grow and build muscle, we have to keep adding more load. And there's other ways to change up the way you're stimulating that muscle to continue to build muscle. And so I know based off of how I feel afterwards, like, oh, I definitely sent a signal to my body to build muscle because I'm sore from that and it was and I didn't have to load.

Yeah, I always look at it like kind of like this pie chart. And I know NCI has kind of created something with like the longevity and the static and the performance focus. But for me, it's like what I have it touched in a while. And so if I'm doing a big strength phase for a long time and I'm just working on low reps, you know, I need to move more into the higher reps, you know, if I'm trying to go more hard, perchrophy. If I want to, if I haven't done anything with endurance and stamina, you know, and it's been a long time, like, okay, like to shake it up and get my body responding completely,

definitely let's go into that and let's do that for like three to four weeks, you know, mobility. So there's different, there's different pursuits that if you just like change the rep ranges of tempo, like a lot of these sort of cute variables, it's gonna get the body to get sort of that stimulus. It's like, oh wow, it's almost like we need first started your training program in the beginning. Yeah, now the next one, this one is one everybody tends to do so I'm going to caution people

because you can over do this as well. But if you do a ride it's actually quite effective. And that's to increase the intensity of your workout. So if you were doing 15 sets in a workout, now you're doing five. Well, if you did those five harder, theoretically you should be able to get the same kind of results. This is true to an extent. You can overdo the intensity, though, to the point where the lower volume now doesn't matter. You're still over training, so I've seen people do this. But if you're smart, increasing the intensity and doing less can actually be quite phenomenal.

So we use example of like stopping your sets short of failure, let's say two or three sets, versus going to failure. In my experience and some studies, we'll show some of this. It's about one third of the volume when you go to failure to get the same kind of results. Okay, so if you were doing nine sets, you could do three sets,

or maybe even two sets, but instead of stopping two reps short of failure, you go to failure, and those two or three sets will give you, you know, similar type of results. So, increasing the intensity is one way. That's one variable you can tweak. So, you bring the other ones down,

increase the intensity volume, or intensity meter, and that can offset quite a bit the reduced volume. Well, there's also people again, this is perfect follow up to the original one because it's right in line with the advice I gave for the change in the face. This also was a way of increasing intensity without necessarily adding more reps and more load.

You know, I was sweating. It was an intense workout because it was so unfamiliar. I hadn't done that in a long time. So, and trust me, it was frustrating. There was a part of me that actually wanted to not do it because I was so bad at it, because it'd been so long since I had done single-aid deadlifts. And I was, I kept, I'd do a rep or two and then I'd have to put my foot down again,

and I was getting, I always know when I'm like, shaky. Yes, you know, it's a way. I was, I was shaking, my glutes were firing like crazy. I'm sweating by rep, or by set two, and I'm going like, and I'm frustrated, because I wasn't even doing a very heavy weight. Easily, you know, I want a default bail

and go do something that I'm frustrated because I wasn't even doing a very heavy weight. Easily, you know, I want a default bail and go do something that I'm good at. But this is a way to increase, not only change the face, but the different type of a phase to type training that I'm doing. It's also increasing the intensity without adding a bunch of reps or load all time. So there's other ways to make a workout more intense without always, and by the way, my goal is to have big legs so that it's not like I'm going away from my goal. That goal is still to maintain as much muscle on my legs as possible. Yeah, you can even just do this. Like, let's say the main reason why

you need to reduce your volume is because you need to work out less in terms of time. So that's usually what it is, right? It's a time issue. Well, if you were resting three minutes in between sets, you know, 45 second rest, now you've increased the intensity and you've also cut the time of your workout. You don't even have to cut the amount of exercises, you will have to lower the weight, but because you're resting less between sets, you've increased the intensity as a result.

Short punchy workouts, I'm wondering when that hit study came out, then this was like, everybody just jumped on it and that's all they did and promoted forever. But yeah, there's lots of different ways to do that. So yeah, you cut the rest, you can just like hold more isometric poses with weights without weights and just really work on, you know, intensifying and tensing up your muscles. Totally. Now, this next one is my favorite one.

This is the one that I tend to go to whenever I need to do this. And that is to eliminate, quote, less worthy exercises. Okay. So what are the less worthy exercises? Well, these are exercises that are not deadlift, squats, presses, both overhead and horizontal presses, rows, pull-ups, dips, like those big, you know, lunges, those big kind of gross motor movements. Those are the worthy exercises. All the other stuff is less worthy. Now there's value in all of them, but they're not as valuable as the ones

that I just mentioned. So to give an example what this would look like, let's say today was a chest day, and I was gonna do bench press and cable fly and incline fly, let's say for example, let's say I was gonna do three sets each, so that's nine sets. Well I would cut off the fly exercises and then I'd add a set to my bench press.

And I'm doing four sets of bench press, but I'm still not doing nine sets. That one extra set of bench press oftentimes makes up for all those other sets of the fly exercises. And oftentimes what happens, they get stronger at this really fundamental lift, right? A squat, you can use your squats or or dead lifts, or overhead presses as well. Yeah, I think with those compound lifts, it's funny. I immediately think of like Wayne and Garth, when they're like, we're not weird.

You know, these exercises, but they age yourself. I did, I did, and hopefully they put a clip of that. But yeah, it's those exercises too, that just start like single joint typically, and you know, and I'm trying to kind of like get a good muscle pump for a very specific muscle to incorporate those exercises that will bring a louder signal to the body. Let's just focus on that for a while.

Yeah, you're cutting out the fat. I mean, this is maps 15 to me and this is the beauty of that program. And one of the things that I was really fascinated with even running it myself was realizing like, wow, like how I actually made gains, you know, switching from kind of a traditional routine over to Math 15, and I think that's why, I think what ended up happening, what, and, because there's a lot of single joint exercise

that I enjoy and I like, and I was starting to put too much energy and prioritizing those too much, that it was starting to take away from the ones that were the bigger bang for your buck. A limiting those completely, conserved all that extra energy and resources that I was allocating towards those single joint movements, put it all into one or two really important

big bang for your buck movements, and I got more out of it. And so I can't stress this one enough. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes like young men and women make going to the gym is they get caught up in all the whatever the you know most viral TikTok or Instagram person showing creative you know they're using machines all weird and you saw a kid yesterday in the gym doing the sideways you know know, peckdeck thing. And it's just like, do any's on there doing like five sets of that.

And just like, man, one more incline bench press. That would have been a better set. Don't better than that. Well, we're is going to build your chat. And I know the, the, the kid is thinking because he got it from some probably some, you know, Joey Swole YouTube TikTok kid who's telling him, oh, this is how you work that interchest, you know, and so they're wanting to develop their interchest when it's like, man, you will develop your chest

including your interchest and the rest of your chest more adding another set to your incline bench press. Then you will for that. I wish somebody would have spit that game to me when I was that young because I was the same kid who did that type of stuff, saw these unique exercises and was always chasing something different or novel versus more effective. And I think that this point speaks to that of like,

man, just cut the fat out, get to the things that really move the needle. And even just doing one or two of those movements a day, you'd be surprised how killer of a physique you can build just from that. Absolutely. Now, the next point you actually mentioned earlier, Adam, which is to keep your protein intake high. You know it's interesting about this one.

So here we're talking about healthy fit people who are working out and then they cut their volume and they wanna keep their gains, maybe even progress a little bit. So keep protein high. You know what's interesting is that there's data on protein intake and people healing from traumatic injury, from getting burned, people who are healing from surgery, people

who come back from injury. All of them show that a high protein diet accelerates all those. So if you're healing from something like a cut or bruising or burn or injury, keeping protein intake high helps that as well. Now why? Protein is the building block of your tissues, all of your tissues. Your body uses protein to build things up. And now there's a limit to that.

It's about, you know, it's close to a gram of protein per pound of body weight for most average weight individuals. So beyond that, it doesn't make a difference. But if you keep it up at that point, and you reduce your volume, even if you went from perfect volume to less perfect volume,

that high protein is more likely to preserve your muscle mass than lower protein. So one mistake that a lot of people make, and this is what Adam was talking about, is they'll cut the volume of their training, and they'll simultaneously cut their protein intake, because people tend to connect protein with strength training. So, well, I'm not working out as much, so I'm not thinking about eating protein as much.

Don't do that's a big mistake. You reduce your volume, keep the protein where it was, you're more likely to maintain the gains that you made working out the first place. I know there's some people that this doesn't really affect. I definitely think there is, obviously obviously it's unique to each individual. If you just just have a greater propensity to avoid high protein foods and gravitate more towards it. So if you know that, I'm definitely a starchy, carb, sugary type of eater. That's how I was my entire life. It took a long time for me to discipline myself, to look at a meal and always attack like

high protein first. So if they're that person, I think this advice is even more important. It's important for everybody, for the points that you're making, but I really think it's important if you know that about yourself. If you have the behaviors of snacking on crackers and chips and carbohydrates is what you gravitate towards more than likely. When you do that, you fill up on those calories, you don't get enough protein. If you're not getting enough protein to even sustain the muscle on your body and you're

in an addition reducing volume and cutting back training, oh, you're going to lose muscle. So one of the best ways that you can keep that from happening or at least slow that process down and there's plenty of research and studies to show this is by keeping that protein intake high. This has been probably one of the biggest differences that I've made as I've gotten older is knowing that even when I'm being inconsistent is to make sure that I'm still targeting that protein so that there's not this huge falloff when I'm being inconsistent with my training. And again, a lot of people have to reiterate this. A lot of people connect their protein and

take to the strength training. So let's say you work out and you always have a protein shake after you work out, 50 grams of protein. But now you're working out less. You're now taking 50 grams of protein less a day because you're not working out. So why would I have this protein shake? You got to eat the same amount of protein you're eating before in order to help you keep those gains. Don't drop your protein because you dropped your training and pay attention. You got to pay attention because this is a sneaky one. Like I said, people tend to,

especially fitness conscious people, tend to eat more protein when they're working out and less protein when they're not working out. So pay attention to that. Lastly, you can use an advanced technique known as Bloodflow Restrictive Training, or BFR Training, on your off days. What's cool about this is on those days you're not at the gym,

you know you're training with less volume, you can literally do three sets of a bodyweight exercise on your limbs, arms and legs, with bloodflow restrictive type techniques. And it's super lightweight too. Very, or body weight, right? Yeah, body weight or super lightweight. It simulates lifting heavy weight.

That's what's so cool about this. So studies on this are exceptional, phenomenal. It's great for rehab, but also great to help you keep muscle. So, okay, I'm only working out twice a week right now. Well, on the off days, I could do five minutes of BFR on my arms and legs, and there's also this kind of radiant effect on other muscle groups as well. ButFR on my arms and legs, and there's also this kind of radiant effect on other muscle groups as well, but at least the arms and legs,

and you're gonna keep your more likely to keep your muscle by doing that. Well, this is the reason why this is great for recovery. So we've known this in the professional sport world for quite some time now. I believe that's, I think it was a hockey players where this became where the first ones, where the first ones to really apply this

and become popular. Now, across the board, there's not a professional athlete that rehabs and does not utilize BFR for this reason. And so it's a great way to be able to stimulate the muscle without loading. I mean, I'm using this right now. There's last two weeks. Oh, because you have your injury right?

Yeah, because of the injury. Again, I can't load. So talking about stability stuff that I'm doing, a lot of multi-plane of the injury again, I can't load. So, you know, talking about stability stuff that I'm doing, a lot of multi-plane and your type things challenging myself that way. And then also BFR, I've been the things that I've been doing because I can, that's why this topic is really cool right now

is because like my number one thought process right now is that I can train the whole rest of my body normal right now except for my legs because of this injury. And what I don't want to happen is I don't want to lose all the gains that I've had on my legs And so I'm utilizing everything we're talking about right now So everything we're talking about right now. I'm having to apply just to my legs because I can't train them the same way That I'm training the rest of my body and I want to create this complete lopsided thing where my upper body is Super jacked and fit and then my legs dwindle away because of this injury

So I'm utilizing these techniques BFR. I've used it twice in the last week for this exact reason Yeah, you know and but for people don't know so BFR blood flow restricted training You you essentially if I were gonna do it on my arms. I would use a knee wrap It's probably the best thing to use and I would tie it around my upper arm Just tight enough to where I could feel like it's building some pressure in my arm. You don't want to so tight that you cut off circulation. No, you have YouTube videos. But you want, we have videos on what will link them here, but it creates some pressure. And then what I do is I do some curls, let's say, let's say normally I do curls with 30 pound dumbbells. I'll grab a 10 pound dumbbell,

do some curls. And what it does is it is it prevents or restricts the, the, the venous outflow. So blood will go in, it's not going to come out like you used to. Waste builds up in the muscle, the burn gets crazy very quickly. And it simulates lifting heavy weights. If fatigue and burns out, you're fast switch muscle fibers as if you were lifting heavy, except you're not. You're lifting very light and you're using almost no equipment. So that's what makes it so awesome. That's why people love it for rehab because you hurt your knee.

I can't squat through your pounds, but I can squat my body weight here, BFR, your quads and hams don't know the difference. And you've seen lots of products up there, like the electric stim and that always comes back into favor, like people putting them on their abs, trying to think that just by chastively getting shocked, it's gonna maintain or keep their gains muscle-wise. This is way better technique in terms of actually stimulating that muscle response. And we have YouTube videos of us showing you how to do it, and then we also have a BFR guide where we teach people how to do it. And then we also have a BFR guide where we teach people

how to implement it into their routine also. Excellent. So there you have it. If you were going to take some time off or work out less or you were a friend, that's going to do so. Share this video. Also, if you want some more free information from us, go to mindpumpfree.com.

That's where we have all of our free fitness guides. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at MindPump.Justin. I'm on Instagram at MindPump.de. social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. I'm on Instagram at Mind Pump De Stefano and Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac,

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