Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2145: Forgotten Muscle & Strength Building Secrets

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

The INCREDIBLE/LOST wisdom of the Bronze Era. (2:06) Using martial arts as an example of how fancy equipment has changed the way we train. (6:17) The importance of crediting those who have paved the way. (8:16) The aesthetic make-up/characteristics of Bronze Era athletes. (9:22) The value of novelty in the adaptation process. (16:41) What bodybuilding messed up. (19:50) Rediscovering old wisdom through the creation of this program. (26:05) The ULTIMATE goal of this program: Three Challenges. (34:10) #1 – Strength challenge. (36:55) #2 – Stamina challenge. (38:14) #3 – Grit challenge. (38:59) Breaking down and detailing the most fun MAPS program to date. (41:09) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Launch Promotion: MAPS Old Time Strength for $80 Off (Retail $177, Includes 2 eBooks: Forgotten Muscle & Strength Building Secrets, PLUS Jay Campbell’s Living a Fully Optimized Life.  30 Day money back guarantee // Ends Sunday, August 27th. **Code OLD80 at checkout** Visit Entera Skincare for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MPM at checkout for 10% off their order or 10% off their first month of a subscribe-and-save.** Strength Sensei Bookshelf: Dinosaur Training Mind Pump # 1542: How Bodybuilders Ruined Weight Lifting For Everyone Mind Pump # 2142: Maximum Strength, Stamina & Grit: The 3 Components Of Strength Indian Club Series with Kelly Manzone – Mind Pump Instagram Exclusive Content/Subscribe TODAY! Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Kelly Manzone (@kellsbells88) Instagram Jay Campbell (@jaycampbell333) Instagram

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 most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Oh my god, here we go. Brand new maps program launched right now. In fact, today's episode, we talk all about it.

Old-time strength. Here's what we did. We tapped into the wisdom of the bronze era of strength training. These were men and women who worked out with weights in the late 1800s, early 1900s, they built incredible physics and performed amazing feats of strength diving through their training methods and techniques There was so much we learned so much wisdom that's been lost throughout the years because of fancy gym equipment and crazy exercise techniques We wrote an entire program based off of how they trained and we know you're gonna love it people are gonna get incredible results especially when it comes to muscular development of the mid-back, shoulders, the core, and the glutes. It's gonna be super awesome. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of

our sponsors, Interest Skincare. They have a product for hair loss that is based on peptides. Go check them out. Go to InterestSkinCare.com, forward slash MPM for 10% off your order. By the way, old time is being launched right now. So we have a launch discount, because what we do when we first launch a program, we offer a sale price. If you go to maps oldtime.com and use the code old80, you'll get it for $80 off plus two ebooks for free.

The ebooks are, forgotten muscle and strength building secrets, and then Jay Campbell's ebook, living a fully optimized life, all included, $80 off if you go again, mapsoldtime.com, use the code, old 80. By the way, this sale ends August 27th. All right, here comes a show.

What if I told you over the last hundred years, we've forgotten more than we know when it comes to strength training and muscle building? What if I told you that the bronze era of strength building has some incredible wisdom that we're missing out on today? We're not building as much muscle, we're not as strong or as solid as we could be because of fancy equipment, lots of modern techniques. Today's episode, we're gonna talk about a new program, old time strength.

It's a new program we created based on the wisdom of the bronze era of strength training. Men and women performing incredible feats of strength before supplements, steroids, crating, before fancy equipment, before gyms, even were a thing. These people did incredible things and we know how they trained. We broke it down and we created a program around it. Let's talk. Maybe a better intro than my. Let's talk about it. Hey, so first of all, hey, and looked good, you missed that part because that's it. That's the part that I didn't know. Yeah.

I just didn't see a lot of pictures of the old time strength guys and at least the ones I saw didn't look that impressive until we started talking about it. Now this is one of those things that we had in common and this is something we've talked about since the beginning of Mind Pump was just like our sort of research and historical references of some of these people that really were like the legends that we've all built, where fitness is today off of. And it's like, we just went right past all of this, like wealth of knowledge and wisdom.

And it's really awesome that we're bringing it back. It's like, it's weird that it's not like super popular. This, so this was a huge deal for me right around, God, I wanna say 16 years ago, I bought a book that talked about old strength training techniques. It was called dinosaur training. It says, old strength manual, It's like a crappy looking book. It's not even super well written, but there's some good information in there. And I was reading it and I

As I'm reading, I'm like, oh my god. I never tried some of these things and these, you know, people used to train this way This is very interesting. I applied some of these techniques and my strength started going through the roof So I went and I started researching. I started researching people of the bronze era, which would be referred to as the late 1800s to the 1920s or so of strength training. And when I looked up statistics on some of these people, I first thought, oh, this has got to be like myth. You know, people where people tell stories

over and over is this real. Right. But these were well documented. I mean, this wasn't before people could write, you know, down what's going on and people can come from the truth. And I remember reading about like Eugene Sandow. He's one of the most well-known bronze era strength athletes.

He's actually the person that the Mr. Olympia statue is molded after. He did a one arm bent press with 270 pounds. This is 190 pound, I believe, athlete, crazy muscular hard physique, not overblown, no steroids, nothing crazy, but today would still, if you saw him walk around, you'd think was very impressive.

But two hundred and so many pounds of one arm and I said, this is insane. I don't know anybody that could do something like that now pro athlete or not. So I went back and I started researching and reading how they trained and there were things that they did that nobody did anymore. There were techniques and exercises that nobody practiced anymore and then I started to apply them and again it just blew me away. And then I thought about like other, you know, how or why we lost so much of this wisdom. And it's just, this happens with a lot of practices over time when new things are invented, new equipment is invented,

air conditioning, we're attracting a broader audience or broader, you know, consumer base. So broader audience or broader consumer base. So they start to just change things and through that, although a lot of the changes have value, we forget some of the old stuff. And you see this in other things. One of my favorite examples of this is martial arts. I love using martial arts as an example to illustrate what I'm talking about with strain training.

When martial artists, for example, use the focus a lot on hardening their hands, just getting hard, strong, knuckles, and skin, fighters don't do that anymore at all because they added gloves to fighting. They added rounds to fighting. In the past, fighters focused on great and toughness and taking a punch and whatever. And if they got in a clinch, that was it. They're in a clinch until somebody

hit the other guy or figured out how to do something. Rounds and gloves and shoes changed how people threw punches and kicks and how they learned techniques. It's not unlike how we train today versus how they train back then. When all they had was a barbell and dumbbells, and that's it. They didn't even have a rack often in the beginning,

they even have benches. And the abilities incredible for Ziggs with. Yeah, they just used what was accessible and available around them. And it was a totally different lifestyle back then was like really hard labor. And you know, them working these types of jobs that were just very demanding on the body. And so it was like, to be physically strong was like such a something to aspire towards

and show off. You know, it was like very much of a virtue because to that meant that you're going to probably really get it at whatever work you're gonna probably be really good at whatever work you're doing as well. And it's just something like a lot of people admired it because it was so new that like, I don't think a lot of people really knew how to get involved in train to become that strong. Obviously, these individuals did know how to do that and then later conveyed that and

it became kind of a movement. But initially, it was almost like, was almost like a side show thing. Wow, how do these guys and girls do these types of lifts and it was such a mystery back then? I'm just glad we're doing something in this direction because I feel like it's out of respect, right? Nothing that we do, everything from the career path that we chose to, the bodybuilding shows that we watch

and all the great equipment that exists today and supplement and all the things that are part of our industry, none of it happens if it wasn't for this era. None of it happens if it wasn't for these guys and girls that decided to experiment and figure this out. So I think just with any industry or any space, I think it's so important to credit those that paved the way for the rest of us.

And it is unfortunate that I think we've lost a lot of things. It wasn't until later in my career, did I start to do some of these movements like the Ben Presse and the Windmill and these like an old school hack squat? Like a lot of these movements that they were doing way back then and it's unfortunate that they have fallen out of favor. And so highlighting them and bringing them back I think is not only fun but also something that we should do just at a respect for the people that paved the way. Yeah, it's the other part too and this is the part

that surprised you, Adam, because I remember when we first, when I would talk about this kind of stuff, and Justin was kind of into it, and then you saw some pictures of some of these athletes from back then, and you were shocked. Yeah, I bet some of you.

Yeah, they built, and you know why? Because the way it was promoted was like the circus, like you alluded to. Like the kind of chubby looking stuff. Yeah, like with the, you know, the Tarzan looking thing on. They always had like a belly and the crazy mustache. And it just, so when I pictured old timey strong men,

I did not picture like some of the best fizziques back then, which is not true at all. The, the, some of these athletes actually looked really, really, especially considering when you know that it was pre-supplements, pre-machines, pre-steroids. So here's what's interesting about this. So the average person, if the average person sees a body that looks very fit, there's something about a body

that is actually functionally fit and strong that seems to be more attractive in the real world. Now, those of us in the space, I could pick it out if I look at a body. I can almost, you know, we can almost always tell, right, if there's, they just work on a gym for, you know, aesthetics or if they work out, but then there's something, there's also some stuff behind it. Here's what's interesting to me. If you look at Greek statues, like Hercules or David or all these ancient Greek sculptures and people refer to Greek being a Greek statue if you're really fit, because this is kind of like when people were mortalizing aesthetics.

If you look at them, you'll notice a few interesting things. One is they all had very strong looking core muscles. Yeah, especially the obliques. They had thick, strong obliques and core muscles. Yeah. They had strong, proportional legs. They had well-developed arms, but it wasn't all bicep and tricep. They well developed forearms and hands. They had really strong looking shoulders. Well, they had defined chest muscles, not these huge bulbous boobs,

but defined strong chest muscles, very thick mid back area. Now, the Greeks based these sculptures off of athletes and warriors and soldiers, same thing with the Roman sculptures. They literally based them off of the best athletes at the time. So what they were displaying was what functional muscularity and strength looks like. When you look at pictures of these old-time athletes, that's what they look like. Even if you take a bodybuilder today at the same body weight as these athletes,

they're both impressive looking, but there's something different about these bronze-era athletes. They look harder. They look strong. If you were to meet them both in person, I guarantee one of them would feel more muscular, imposing, or impressive. And you just know this instinctually. It's not even something you're going to know. One of them would crush your hand into smithereens,

while the other one, you know, would feel quite a bit different. But yeah, it's definitely a different physical look. And that was something too. I kind of did have that same thought of backing that, because you think of a lot of these types of strength lifts and competitions and especially even power lifters today. A lot of times get this sort of stigma where

they don't really care as much about the nutrition. And so you get the big, you know, if you're big, it's just about packing mass and like how much weight you can move and lift. And so my thoughts of back then was like, it's probably the similar thing where it's like, as much calories as you can eat to be able to kind of just perform the lift and lift as heavy as you can, but really they looked like, like, top pinnacle physical specimens. Yeah, the other things that stood out that stand out is the hardness of the physique.

It looks hard, so it's not like bulbous round, like kind of, you know, bubbly type muscle. It's, they look hard. So it's not like bulbous round, like kind of, you know, bubbly type muscle. It's, they look hard. They just, there's just a look that you get when you train a particular way. We've talked about this on the podcast. Heavy lifting tends to promote this and you could feel it when you do it yourself.

There's no studies to support this. I don't think any studies have ever done on something like so subjective, but people who've been working out for a long time will tell you that. Here's another thing. this is a very distinct characteristic of lifters of this era. They were all way stronger than their size would tell you.

They were all, like, you would expect a person who could one arm bent press 270 pounds to weigh 250 pounds, okay? You would not expect them to weigh 185 or 190 pounds all of them were so much stronger Then you would imagine and that was because This was an era or a time when you know what you look like was a side effect people were not impressed With how you looked unless you could do something with it in fact it would be embarrassing to look a particular way and not actually be able to back it up with lots of strength. And what they did in order to earn a living, many of them had jobs, but many of them also on the side would perform these shows where they would demonstrate their skills and strength. And so they were just, that's like a huge defining characteristic

is extremely strong for their size. So, and that's really, really beneficial for people to develop because it makes you so functional and makes you feel so good, makes moving your body feel really easy, reduces your risk of injury. And it's just, it's better to live in the world being a lot stronger than you look the world being a lot stronger than

you look than looking a lot stronger than you are. They're overhead pressing movements were really impressive to me. It seems like that's something that that was a big test of strength. We stopped doing a lot of, right? I mean, I think of all the clients that I train and probably one of the most common things that I dealt with with advanced age clients was just the inability to even raise your arm above your head. You know, that becomes like this. And we just, have we lose that?

We don't do that. We don't teach it. We didn't highlight it as much where I felt like everything they did seemed to be like overhead. Like a lot of the movements because they didn't have all the gym equipment, they'd have to clean it, right? Clean it and put it up over their head. You didn't have a squat rack.

You had to pick it up from the ground to even put it on your back. Right, so I feel like because that ends up being a prerequisite for almost every other exercise, they had this incredible overhead pressing strength that I really feel like this generation has lost. Like it's just so common to see somebody without the ability to even press over the head because of all kinds of issues.

Incredible strength, also incredible muscular stamina and then stability, because they wouldn't just lift the weight overhead. If you're doing a show, you had to hold it up there to be impressive. To be impressive. Yeah, you couldn't just lift it and drop it, that's not impressive to an audience. It was like, lift it and then,

ah, hold it up there and the whole body looks like it's chiseled out of granite because everything is so tense and hard. It's like, I mean, really you'll develop, basically training this way develops a very compact, hard, strong, muscular body. What's also interesting about training in the way that they train is because

some of the exercises are so unique because there's an emphasis on things that I was almost never emphasized these days with workouts, you as an experienced lifter are going to feel like a beginner doing a lot of the stuff. That's a good thing. This is a hack for anybody who's experienced with exercise. A hack is to find a way or an exercise that makes you start at that beginner kind of new beginning. To make a novel. We know novelty is so important in the adaptation process. And the longer you've been lifting, the more experienced you are, the less likely it is to find really novel stimulus because so many of the movements, you

can only do so many different bicep curls in the gym before it's pretty much the same thing as the other 100 things you've done before. So to find a stimulus that is novel is such a great strategy to see progression in your body. I'm going to give you an example of that. Sorry to cut your off just before I forget. We have people test out programs whenever we create them. One of our editors, Kyle, okay, muscular kid, strong guy, very strong guy. He followed this program and halfway through, he decided to test his deadlift,

his regular deadlift, crushed his PR because of the lateral stability you develop in your core. And then the thing he said was his hands. He couldn't believe how strong his hands got. Strong hands, like the stability, the risk. Yeah. Yeah. What I was going to say was like, even, okay, so you're talking from a feeling

like a beginner. And this is something that experienced lifters were always trying to kind of seek that novelty or find it in some direction. If you could think of like any modality that's out there right now. So let's even think of like athletic pursuits. Let's think of like CrossFit. Let's think of powerlifting, bodybuilding, endurance. Like you name it, even martial arts you mentioned. Maybe martial arts is probably a little bit closer towards this, but like these lifts, like, who's ever out there sitting, how much do you sought press, bro?

Oh yeah, right. What's that? Yeah. Who's bent pressing? Who's doing a lot of these things, you know, seasawing, there's just so many unique things that expose areas of your body that don't have stability, they don't have strength, they don't have the support system

intact, which something like this fits in such a unique way, which I think it's gonna blow people's minds that they're not strong doing these types of movements, which then contributes towards whatever other pursuit you're going towards. So I'm excited about it just because it's going to be a very, very humbling experience for people. It'll be humbling. It's going to also be real popular.

I think people are going to be blown away at what what their bodies do when they follow just old wisdom. Yeah. I mean, you know, training has changed a lot. And unfortunately, unfortunately, right? Fitness is interesting. Fitness is especially modern fitness. It's so fad driven that like to just to give an example, I remember, so I started working in the gyms in the late 90s. In the late 90s, pro body builders didn't do barbell squats. It was all about leg press. They did behind the neck shoulder presses.

They did supinated grip barbell rows. Why this Doreen Yates was the Mr. Olympia, this is the lifts that he did. So he did those types of exercises. So what did you see in the gyms? A lot of that. In fact, I saw more people in the mid to late 90s behind the neck pressing than I saw regular military press.

Regular military press got popular later when Jay Culler talked about overhead press. That's overhead press is a classic exercise, but it follows fads, right? Barbell squatting. If you're listening to this right now, and you've been working out for a while, and you remember when you didn't barbell squat,

and then when you did, and you saw the development, like that's because you tapped it to some old wisdom, where deadlifting, right? Nobody deadlifted, and then they started deadlifting. So it follows trends. Bodybuilding has had a huge influence on strength training, both good and bad. Part of what's bad about bodybuilding is because it comes from the fact that it glorifies completely the side effect of strength training, which is the look. That's all the focuses on bodybuilding is the look. In fact,

bodybuilders talk about this all the time. Like nobody cares what you can do when you get on stage. In fact, I mean, the irony of bodybuilding is the weakest and most out of shape a bodybuilder will ever be is when they're on stage. Because they're so depleted, so diated, they feel like complete garbage. And that's when they're getting judged.

That's when they're actually competing. Body buildings focus on looks, distorted what real strength kind of looks like to a bit. So for example, a tight waste is a display of health, especially in the mail, right? Tight waste, wide shoulders. Now bodybuilding, because they're being judged by the looks, they just exaggerated that to the point where

people stopped training their obliques properly and their core properly for fear of developing to- Properly, or at all. Or at all. In fact, to the extremes, they'll wear devices like squeams, which they wear like a corset, to atrophy. Actually, we can make muscle smaller in the core to overemphasize this weird, small waist.

You know, in the real world, a lean waist is a good thing. A tiny, tiny waist is a bad thing. If you're genetically have tiny, little waist and super wide shoulders, you actually have less stability than somebody who's got a more, like appropriately proportional waist, your destined for back pain.

Yeah, it's like there's just just think about it, right? It's just less. There was a over development of the LATs versus the mid back. Bodybuilding made the LAT spread very popular. How wide your back was. You know, the mid back, I mean, it's all important, but a really functionally strong, if you look at athletes and people who pick things up, look at power lifters and strong man and football players, you'll notice mid back is very thick, very strong,

very tight because you need that to support your spine and to do functional things. Well, bodybuilding did is it reduce the emphasis of that and made it focused mostly on the lats. You also had an overemphasis on the upper arms versus the forearms. Now, your upper arms are supposed to be bigger than your lower arms, but not to the,

to the, to the, not, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the able to wear a t-shirt where the sleeves come down below your elbows, you want people to be able to tell you can work out by looking at your forearms. But if it looks like you have these skinny little forearms and then you've got to pull up your sleeves to show your biceps, well, there's something not functional about that, right? So, so this is kind of, and then of course it was the muscle focus versus the focus on the skill, which is what they did back in those days. So, really, the way that they looked was a side effect of how they trained.

And because what they could do was so important, they focused heavily on what worked in terms of strength, heavily, heavily, heavily on what worked. And there's a lot of wisdom that was really missed out, like practicing lifts multiple times, high skill lifts, lifts that involve lateral stability and twisting, holding things above your head, the stability, the whole body's stability that's required from something like that. Offset loading. Offset loading is not popular whatsoever in traditional strength training. Almost all traditional strength training is balanced loading for safety.

Okay, in the real world, you ever balanced loading? Is there ever a load on you? That's perfectly balanced, like a barbell would be. You get so lucky if it is. Never. It's always offset. So you're losing that ability and that strength.

And if you've never trained that way, what'll happen is when you start to train in these kind of new ways is you're going to tap into these newbie gains that you experience when you first started working out, except you've been working out for a while now. That's exactly what I experienced doing these lifts. It's like, oh wow, I'm responding like I,

when I first started working out, like when I first started deadlifting, because this is new. it's just new. It's so interesting. I mean, all the load that we experience in just a daily basis, like most of it will move on you even. You know, like it's gonna shift. It's like dog food or it's some ant or it's what.

And so your body just has to naturally know how to respond and be able to stabilize and control. And it's like we try to make sure that we're doing that well in the real world, but then we're not emulating that all in our training practices and accounting for that. And so it's definitely like, this is something that does highlight that and it shows not necessarily like the movement as much as just being able to really secure this offset, this unbalanced type weight. So how was this one for you guys?

This was for sure top three. Fun? Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. I'm still so excited about this. Yeah. This was really cool.

It was very unique. I think it challenged our skills as far as like writing a program for this. So and it's so different. Completely different than anything else that we created before. So it kind of reminded me a little bit of that vibe we got when we wrote the first maps prime. When we all together like that, and it was, we had to really think outside the box,

then just slapping together a basic body, composition type of program like this was. I had a lot of fun with this one because leading up to When we went to go create it and actually put it on paper We bought six books that were published yeah in the late 1800s or early 1900s by many of these bronze era kind of strength experts and You read it's so it was so cool. I know I wrote down some quotes, I gotta find them.

It was so cool to read some of the advice that they wrote and had a train and, how to do a lift and like, okay, so here's a quote from Eugene Sandow. Remember, this is like, I don't know when this book was early 1900s, it was like a hundred years ago, okay, so here's a quote from Eugene Sandow. Remember, this is like, I don't know when this book was, it was early 1900s, it was like a hundred years ago, okay? The great thing to bear in mind is to proceed very gradually, while exercising, put all you know into the work,

but don't attempt to do too much, exercise until the muscles ache, but never go onto the point of feeling thoroughly exhausted. This is wisdom. That was when a hundred years ago, yeah. It was when 100 years ago, it was 100 years ago that he wrote that in his book. And I was, all these books looking through them. It's very smart. It was remarkable to see some of the stuff that they wrote

in the exercises and how to do them and how you should feel. You know, he talked about using, you know, taking cold showers. Remember, at the time you're looking at the industry revolution, really starting to take steam. So life went from, you know, living in farms to starting to live in the cities. The quality of life started to improve quite rapidly.

And he wrote about becoming too comfortable and how taking cold showers every day strengthened the nervous system. And then he was right, like, we had no, they had no science to support what they were saying. It was all based off of what it was. Funny when you think about the trend of the cold plunge right now, you don't say,

like this is like, we were onto this 100 years ago. Oh, OCR and just sort of that innate drive to do difficult things and to challenge yourself and get outside of air conditioning and all the comforts and padded chairs. To me, I think this right now, it seems so ancient and archaic, but it's so relevant. In terms of how we've just really moved past all of this and we've really just focused

on how can we make things more convenient to for me to want to then keep doing this and you know training my body which is you know there's a bit of reason there that we have to account for in terms of doing it all the time but to do something to challenge yourself to really focus on being tough again, being gritty, being able to handle something like this versus two. And until your earlier point of when we were creating this, like for me, this really felt like the first time we've really addressed something that was very competitive with something like a CrossFit, that type of mentality. Oh, we're gonna get there. Where we created something unique in this program that I was just like, oh my God, okay, this is the answer.

This is the answer. This is gonna get the conversion of that type of mentality in person to come in and try. Oh, no, no, we're gonna get there, because that's exciting. I was saving that for a little later because I think that's my favorite part of this whole thing. But going back to the books,

you read their dietary advice, lots of meat, eggs, fruit, avoid too much porridge, they would say, too much bread, a little bit of spirits is okay, too much is not good. Make sure to go to bed when the sun goes down and rise when the sun comes up. This was the advice. And by the way, they started a revolution

back then called, it was a physicochron. Sounds amazing. It was called physicochron. People use that now as a marketing term. But they actually would open up gyms a little later, what it's called gymnasiums, and they'd have young men come in there. Many of them sick or with asthma.

Back then, if you had asthma, you were screwed. It was hard for you to work. You couldn't work in dusty conditions. It's like, what do I do? I can't support myself. These sickly young men were brought to these gymnasiums to be trained by these bronze era strength specialists. And then they would write, no, they would write letters to their parents. And you can read them in the books. And they would write letters to back to these, these strength coaches. My vitality is improved. I can work now.

My asthma is almost completely gone. My parents didn't recognize me. I'm not so strong now, whatever. So cool to read this kind of stuff. And it was literally like it was this new thing that we figured out and let's apply it because it's transforming our lives The all the advice in there is just like I said I there was nothing I read in there. It is what I expected I expected to read in these old books

Stuff that I'd be like oh, that's what they thought and we figured that out nothing. I didn't get anything like that Everything I read I was shocked at how much they knew. Like the cold, how the cold invigorates the nervous system. But if you're too stressed or tired, then warm up the water a little bit. I'm like, are you kidding me right now? Like this is all backed by, well, it's subjective.

Science now, yeah. Because the pursuit is literally being able to get stronger. And I think when that's the focus, you can't really have a lot of bullshit in the way of that. Like it all has to be, it all has to make sense, it has to be balanced, then your body has to be in a good state

that it's able to really generate the amount of force needed to do these things. And it only happens when you're healthy and vibrant. It's exciting and kind of sad at the same time. Because here we have all this, like, we're so sophisticated and we have all these studies and all this research that we've done. And like, it's like, Matt, have we really evolved

that much further than what we were 100 years ago as far as our knowledge around, like how to get fit and healthy and strong? It's like, man, we pretty much had it nailed back then. And if anything, we've over complicated that today's time, right? I think we've made it more difficult than it needs to be. There's some very basic principles that we've known for a very long time that works really well.

And so it is a bit sad when you think about, you know, here we are a hundred years later and when you think of it. Or rediscovery. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And co-pludging is like a trend now. Yeah.

No, I mean, you know, all this stuff, like he co-plent like the diet, like I said, they wrote in the books about, in order to gain, you know, in order to gain, God, what was the term that they used? Heft or something like that, right? It's like an old term, right?

Or yeah, basically, in order to gain muscle, you make sure you eat well, but don't eat until you're stuffed. Like wisdom, you know what I mean? Like you wanna eat, but also maintain good health. So don't eat until you can't breathe anymore. All of them avoided sweets as that they would say And breads and stuff like that and their meals were very

Obviously all whole foods back then processed foods barely existed except for canned goods So I mean really really cool stuff to read and research leading up to the development of this program and then we applied what we understand about training science, application, workout programming. And here's where it gets real fun. I'm gonna go back, now I'm gonna go to what you were talking about Justin. Oh, finally.

This is the first program we've ever created where the goal of this program, you're gonna get fit, you're gonna look amazing, you're gonna get sculpted, you know, you're to get great results, all the stuff that people want. But the goal of this program is to accomplish three challenges and to do them and see how well you do and you can compare yourself to other people. And it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, we actually corrected, we put formulas in there for both men and women. And it doesn't matter your body weight. There's three challenges in this program that you're training and leading up to being able to perform. Then you perform

them, you record your numbers and that number is your number and you can compare this to anybody else to see where you are on this. And we picked three challenges that really exemplify the kind of the full picture of strength. And the funny thing about this is, as I read them off, you're probably gonna think, oh, I can do that one for one of them, the other two probably not.

And so it's very interesting, because you'll find out real quick what you're good at and what you're not good at. Well, what I like about it too is if anybody's watched or tried out doing a powerlifting meet, there's always one of those lifts that you're a little bit weaker in early. You don't have the same leverage advantage. So this is sort of a little bit more robust in terms of like we have a few exercises

within each category, but it's gonna test you in completely different ways and you're gonna probably excel in one and probably need a lot more attention towards the other. And so it'll be fun to see to test yourself to see kind of where you end up. Now, I don't remember, did we say in the program, I mean, I think it's important you test it first so you can see kind of where you are

with no training towards that and then run through the program and then retest and see where you are. I don't know if we actually wrote that in the program. You could definitely do that. Although I would imagine a lot of people are gonna be able to do some of the lifts. Well, that's part of your experience lifter, yeah. That's part of the deal.

Yeah, yeah, if you go to a performance, I can't even do it. I mean, that's what I mean. It's like you should definitely look at what the tests are so you can see what it's like to just go through that and how difficult it is for you. And then as you go through it, if we've done our job really well,

we could take somebody who may not even be able to perform some of those movements and then not only be able to perform them, but perform them well by the end of the program. All three would represent a very well-rounded, strength person. So somebody who's got really well-rounded strength. So here's the first challenge. And so then this will give you an idea of kind of what we're working up to. The first one is called a strength challenge.

So this is a maximal strength challenge. And it's based off of what a, let's say, a bronze era athlete would do for an audience. Okay. The first one is a barbell single hand deadlift. So imagine doing a deadlift except you're using just one hand, okay? Then the other one is a bent press. This is a specific type of overhead press. It definitely uses a lot of lateral stability, way more shoulder mobility. It's one of the most full range of motion shoulder movements you could do, but the leverage allows you,

if you perform this right, to practice, lift tremendous amounts away. And then a definitive technique to it that you need to learn, and obviously this will expose. Yes. And then a definitive technique to it that you need to learn. And obviously this will expose. Yes. And then the last one is a barbell hax squat. So what you do with the strength challenge

is check out what your max is for all three of those. You combine the weight and then it becomes a percentage of your body weight. And then that's your number. So if you're combined weight for all three of them was 200 pounds, you weigh 100 pounds, you just did 200% of your body weight. So this takes into account your body weight,

so you can compare yourself with other people. The next one is the stamina challenge. And essentially what you're doing is you're trying to do as many reps as you can of the following. There's a Hindu push ups, otherwise known as dive bomber push ups. There's Hindu pushups, otherwise known as dive bomber pushups. There's a front squat, and then something called a seesaw press. This is like a shoulder press,

but the arms are alternating and pumping constantly. And you're looking at total reps for all three of them. And then the weight that you pick, we tell you how to pick the weights. Half your body weight for the front squat, 10% of your body weight for the seesaw, if you're a female or 15% of your body weight for dumbbells, if you're a male.

So it's cool because you can see, you know, you and your husband or your wife and your buddies, different body weight, whatever you can compare and see, you know, where you're at. And then the grit test, this is like, this is all about your stability, your isometric strength. There's a dumbbell overhead hold. So you're holding a dumbbell up over your head with one arm. It's,

you pick a weight for females, 30% your body weight for males, 50%. There's a barbell suitcase hold, 50% of a body weight for a female or 70% for male. And then there's the chin over bar hold. Literally, you're holding there's the chin over bar hold. Literally you're holding yourself over a chin up bar. For women, they start at the top. Men, you have to do a full pull up. And so with this, you're doing total time. What is the total time I was able to do,

30 seconds here, 60 seconds here, a minute here, a minute half here. It's gonna grind your way through it. You gotta grind your way through. And so, you guys know the athletes way better than I do. Because this was something you guys were into even before we wrote this program. But these all three of these these challenges, we really base them off of people that were known for that type of strength right back then. So like we saw it out like specific Old-timey strength athletes and like oh, they were known for like strength stamina

Oh, they were known for maximal strength right George Hackensmith for the strength challenge Eugene Sandow for for stamina and then the mighty Adam Was for the grit challenge and they were known for doing feats of strength that kind of shows up So Eugene stand out he liked to train with super, super high reps and build muscular stamina. Hack and Schmidt is widely regarded as the strongest piece. Yeah, just, I mean, if you look, I can't even believe that guy existed back then. He would, he would be crazy impressive today. You would, yeah. Like, what is this guy on? Well, it was so cool about this. This is also why I had so much fun riding it with you guys

is, you know, this is the first time we did this too, where it's like, we took three avatars that have specific attributes about them and then programmed in there if you were to address those attributes, right? So if you're going through this or and you look up these athletes, you're like, oh man, that would be cool.

I would like to be like that. Like that was the programs written for you to obtain those attributes for each one of those athletes, which is a lot of fun. So the program is actually six phases. It's six two week long phases. Now you could take longer in each phase and we explain when you should take longer. But essentially what you're doing is you're working through each phase, getting to the point where you could perform these challenges, all three of them with maximal performance.

So at the end of the program, you're going to maximize maximal strength, strength, stamina and that isometric kind of stability type of strength at the end of it. And so think of it that way, this is the only program we've ever created specifically to get you to do a performance or be able to do a performance At the end. Yeah, and I wanted to give a little bit of a shout out I had to I had I really had to like do my research in terms of like anybody out there that could even perform these lifts This is a very small crowd. Okay, it turns out So is that Kirchner Kelly Manzone, they've been Sony. I actually just did

a series of Indian clubs on our subscription channel just to kind of provide that because she's very proficient in teaching that. And it's something that's going to complement a lot of these moves as well within this program. So, you know, you might want to check that out as well. But it was definitely a needed program to get other professionals, not just models that look at pretty to do these movements. And so I had to give them a bit of a shout out because it was a big task for them to be able to do all this stuff. The other thing too, I didn't intend, I don't think any of us intend it.

We never write programs with this intent, but sometimes it just turns out to be this way. It looks like one of the funnest programs that you do. Now, why do we not intend to create a fun program? Because we're looking about getting people results and getting them fit. That's fun enough. If you feel good, you're getting fit and getting stronger.

You're gonna enjoy the program. A lot of people in the fitness industry, their entire goal was to make a workout fun and exciting, which is silly. But sometimes we create a program where, obviously of course the goal is to get someone the best results, but then we look at it. We're like, oh my God, this looks like

one of the most fun programs you could do. Part of that is because it's so different. I mean, if you've been working out for a while, you'll be doing exercises you've never done before, in lifts you've never done before, in ways you've never done before, and it's super, super fun as a result. And again, the results are gonna speak for themselves

with something like this. Now, because we're launching this now, we have a launch specials. What we always do when we create a new program, when we first put it out, we take and we discounted it. So here's what you're going to get with this. You go to mapsoldtime.com and that's where you'll find the program, use the code old 80, and you'll get $80 off the program. Plus two ebooks for free. These are brand new ebooks that we've never offered before. The first one is forgotten muscle and strength

building secrets. The second one is provided by our friend, J Campbell, living a fully optimized life. We've had a couple episodes with them. He's a peptide expert. He's an expert on optimizing hormones and health. You'll get those two e-books for free, along with $80 off the price of the program for the launch.

And this sale ends the 27th. So you're gonna have a little bit of time, not too long to take advantage of that. Again, you can find it at mapsoldtime.com. 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 dot 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 Superbumble is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com.

If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is Mind Pump.