Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2150: Why You Should Aim For PR’s for Maximum Results

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Why PRs are awesome to aim for, why you should chase them, but how to do it the RIGHT way! (1:33) The dark side of PR culture. (3:21) What a healthy relationship with PRs looks like. (5:31) The benefits of chasing performance-based goals over aesthetic goals. (6:27) Why PRs are great. (9:19) When PRs go bad. (20:54) Best PR types. (31:45) Challenge yourself today with MAPS Old Time Strength. (44:33) Related Links/Products Mentioned Mind Pump Listeners can take advantage of this 50% OFF offer from Equi.Life and get their own at-home glyphosate toxicity test kit here today! 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** August Promotion: MAPS Anabolic Advanced 50% off! **Code AUGUST50 at checkout** Stop Working Out And Start Practicing – Mind Pump Blog Exercise For More Than Just Aesthetics – Mind Pump Blog How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #2142: Maximum Strength, Stamina & Grit: The 3 Components Of Strength Mind Pump #2145: Forgotten Muscle & Strength Building Secrets 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 Pup, right? In today's episode, we talk about PRs, how to set them the right way and why they're amazing tools to help you with your fitness journey. This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors.

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It's Stephen Cabral dot com that's STEP HENCR CABRAL. So, Steven Cabral.com forward slash glyphosate. Again, on that link, it's 50% off. Also, we're running a sale this month on a brand new program. We just launched. These are the final hours for the launch sale. It's maps old time. It's $80 off with the launch special. If you go to maps oldtime.com, use the code old 80. you get 80 hours off plus two free ebooks, forgotten muscle and strength building secrets and living a fully optimized life. Alright, here comes the show. PR's personal records, it's a double-edged sword. On one hand, they can propel your progress, motivate you. They're awesome to aim for. On the other hand, if you do it wrong,

because injury, overtraining, can actually make you hate training. Today's episode, we're going to talk about PRs. Why they're awesome. Why you should chase them, but how to do it the right way. So you developed a balanced injury-free, amazing physique. Yeah. At one point, did it change to the term PR instead of like how much you max cross it cross Cross with it called them PRs popularize it. I like PRs Because when they before they were popularized it was just about maxing But it wasn't like mainstream to challenge yourself in that way right and it is a performance based mainstream to challenge yourself in that way. Right. And it is a performance-based goal. And although not perfect, right, performance-based goals can also not be perfect, I prefer them

over aesthetic-based goals because you can get really unhealthy chasing aesthetics or even improving, quote-unquote, improving your aesthetics. You could starve yourself, you could over- your aesthetics, you could starve yourself, you could over train, you could damage yourself, hitting PRs, you could also do that, but it's a lot harder. And for most average people, you're not going to hit new PRs if you're unhealthy. So it's very objective. Yes. I mean, it's really like, there's no fluff involved. There's no sort of interpretation behind it. It's like, can you lift that way or cannot and you know sometimes you have it sometimes you don't but when you start chasing it obviously to your earlier point like that's where there can be You know some challenges with that in terms of like that could create a whole another problem for you. Well, that's why I think this is a good discussion because I'm on the other side of PR.

So in fact, I came out early, when I first hit Instagram eight plus, the over eight years ago now, one of the things I spoke out on quite a bit was the PR culture because I wasn't a fan of it. I wasn't a fan of people chasing that and focused so much on hitting that number that they were not paying attention to form and technique as much.

They were getting injured. It became a thing that, oh, if I wasn't hitting a PR that I'm not having success in the gym. And so I actually spoke out early on about how I did not like PR culture. And so I do think there's a conversation to be had about, okay, so what does a healthy PR chasing look like? I'm so glad you said that because just so people don't get the wrong idea, the PR culture was about Max,

Max lift, and we'll talk about that. And there's a value to that too, but it can go, it can also go dark. But to just to clarify, Adam chases PRs all the time, but he chases different kinds of PRs. And this is where, this is where it can be amazing. This is how you can avoid the problems with chasing the same type of PR all the time, which I think we'll get into, because if you do that, if it's always the same kind of PR,

like let's say it's always. Ben squat next, you know, yeah. You end up training in an unbalanced way. You start to compromise joint health and integrity, start to sacrifice certain things to chase a particular number, and then the returns you get from it are become diminishing,

and that's the whole PR culture. But if you balance out your PRs and figure out how to set them right, then it can be very powerful. In fact, it's one of the most powerful things you could do to keep yourself consistent with your training and to motivate yourself to show up and to work out and how to create

the best kind of workout. And that's the important thing to do is to figure out what how to create the best kind of workout. And that's the important thing to do is to figure out what a good PR protocol is and then how to mold your training around it. Yeah, I like that because I feel like chasing a PR or just focusing on that and say the main lifts is a lot like building a car with the most amount of horsepower just to win in a quarter mile.

And it's like, that's great. But in real life, you actually have to take turns. And there's a- I drive farther than a quarter- Yeah, and so, and that's how I feel about chasing just the Bench Squad deadlift type of PR versus other PRs in your life. Like, you know, a PR can be, man, my knee can now travel

over my toe four more inches than it did say two years ago. That's a personal record for me. Like, I've never worked at my mobility so much that I've gained that range of motion. And so I think a healthy relationship with PRs looks like a pursuit of that in different directions and things that benefit you more than just the core of my erase, also other aspects of your life.

Now I remember when I, because when I first became a trainer, a lot of what I would teach my clients to focus on were aesthetic goals. It was like body fat tests, circumference measurements weight, because that's what people ask for, right, when they would sign up with you. Shortly after becoming a trainer within a few years, I realized that teaching my clients to aim for performance type goals was superior. Because oftentimes in the pursuit of losing weight or circumference or even just fat percentage, people would do things that I'd have to kind of coach them through. They would compromise their health or they would starve themselves or they would over-train. And if the scale went down then that was good and they would ignore all these other

things. I noticed with chasing performance, they couldn't get away with doing as many bad things, especially when you first get started. And the first time this really hit me was I trained a young lady who had just essentially come out of an eating disorder. I remember her parents hired me to train her because I trained her parents and they told me, you know, she was had anorexia, she's kind of,

she's out of it now. Her therapist suggests exercise, but the therapist also wants to talk to you. And I got on the therapist on the phone before I trained this young lady. And I said, okay, normally what I do, and I'm assuming this is a bad idea, is I test body fat and weight and that kind of stuff.

I said, I'm sure that's gonna be super triggering for her. And she said, oh yeah, don't weigh her, don't do any of that stuff. Don't even talk about how she looks. And I said, well, what should I focus on? And she goes, just get her strong. And I remember, it was like a light bulb went off for me. Like, of course,

if she gets stronger, she has to eat enough. She has to nourish her body. And then I saw tremendous progress. And then I remember I applied that to other clients. And I said, what? This is such a better strategy for people if you do it in the right way. And then here's the key for longevity with your training because we're not interested in getting people in shape and then they get out of shape. We're not interested in getting people in shape and then they get out of shape. We're not interested in teaching you how to, you know, build a nice physique, get healthy fit, and then you're out of it.

We're interested in really getting people to do this for the rest of your life. Well, the key to that is number one, finding purpose behind your training, otherwise, it's gonna be hard to show up. So why am I here? What's the purpose? And there's a lot of ways to do that.

And then number two is to do it in a way to where it's, you have longevity. Because if the purpose is always to get a max squat, in the first three years, everything's gonna go great. After that, every five pounds ad in my squat comes with exponentially higher rates of risk of injury and all that kind of stuff. And if I push it too hard, I'll get to the point where I can never squat again, you know,

type of deal. So that's kind of what we're going to talk about is how to use this in a way to where you can benefit across the board and get phenomenal results. But let's first talk about why PRs are great. And then we can get to the kind of the dark stuff. I think the very first, most obvious reason why a PR setting a PR is good is because it is a motivating factor. It is very motivating to set a goal and then to see yourself moving towards that goal. I can't think of anything that isn't more encouraging on its face than something like that.

Yeah, it's a really set out on a specific target and to see incremental progress with that. I mean, we obviously, there's part of that too. You have to pay attention to those small wins along the way that you're getting towards that goal and to not basically, to listen to your body and the signals that your body is providing as well. I think part of that too is that we didn't really bring up, but there's ways of masking

other parts that might not be contributing like they should. So now we start to get to the point where we're going to get the, you know, the wrist wraps, we're going to get the certain kind of aids to kind of help with the stability component to get you towards further towards that goal. But for me, the ideal situation is to be able to account for all these things, work on all these things and have all of that together simultaneously working towards that objective of, I wanna just get stronger at this particular lift that requires so much. Well yeah, it's an objective way to measure your success in your training.

Yeah, whereas in the mirror, super subjective. Super subjective. And you could also see change in the mirror on the scale in the right direction, but going about it in a very unhealthy way. Whereas, if I'm focused on a lift that I want to be get stronger in or a newfound range of motion, in order for me to have success or hit PRs,

in those categories, it's not 100%, but it's more likely that I'm doing that in a healthy way in order to achieve that. Yeah, and here's the other thing that I discovered as a trainer. I'd love your guys' input on this. It's definitely motivating for clients to see the scale change, to see their close fit better. But I actually recognized and noticed that performance, when I would point them out,

when I would help direct the client and point them out. Performance improvements were actually more exciting for my clients. It almost was empowering for them. I think it's because they're more universal, right? So it doesn't matter if you just wanna look good in a bikini or you just wanna lose 50 pounds of fat or you just wanna add 10 pounds of muscle,

universally all those people would like to be stronger and they don't want to be weaker. So it's a common thread found in, or even somebody who's anti-approaching it towards health, anti-aging, they're in advanced age. Yeah, lack of mobility. All those people would agree,

I want to be stronger. You've never, you unlock the new ability. Yeah. A lot of times too. That's the case. Like, somebody could never do a pull-up before. I also think you do a pull-up.

Like, that's life-changing for some people. That's exactly what I discovered was the pursuit of learning a new skill or the pursuit of being able to do something you couldn't do before. There's nothing more empowering and motivating than that because I always talk about when I would train young teenagers and they do so many pushups in the next week to do two more pushups. And I would point out to them, you did two more pushups

to say, really? And I said, yeah, that means you're not the same person you were last week. That's like transformative in a very objective way. Whereas, you know, maybe you lose weight, you know, you're 45 years old, you go in, you lose weight, but you know, I'll never look like I did when I was 20. Or I'll never, but I just did something I could never do.

I've never done a pull up. I've never deadlifted this much weight. I've never been able to move in this way like for my entire life, or I've never been able to run a mile in this speed or whatever. I just found it to be the most empowering motivating thing that I could ever present to my clients. That's the number one benefit. The second thing is PRs create purpose behind your training.

Why are you showing up to the gym? Everybody needs a purpose behind their training. There's a lot of up to the gym? Like everybody needs a purpose behind their training. And there's a lot of ways to do this. And I don't think this is the only way. But this is an easy way. It's a very simple way to create some purpose behind your training. But why are you showing up three days a week to the gym? I'm trying to deadlift more weight. I'm trying to add more reps to this or I'm trying to improve my squat mobility. It gets you to show up because I mean, who wants to throw darts at nothing? Like you need a target and when you have a target,

now you have something to aim for and that purpose it goes above motivation because some days you're not going to be motivated but you've got that goal that purpose of what you want to show. Yeah, I mean not to be cliche but if you've failed to plan you plan to show. Yeah, I mean, not to be cliche, but if you've failed to plan, you plan to fail. Right. And so it forces you to have a plan. You know, you're not going to go get stronger at a movement, gain a new range of motion,

or do something like that without some sort of a plan of action. And it's the difference, too. We've talked about this before of training versus exercising, right? Right. Like, anybody can go exercise, running's exercise, jumping up and down is exercise, jump roping is exercise. Training though is having a plan, having a goal in mind, and then building a routine to hit that objective, right?

So I think that's important. Yeah, and, too, and I think it's unclear, a lot of times if you don't have that, something that you're trying to strive for to see whether or not your training's been real effective or not, and to be able to really measure that way, that out, my steps leading up to this produced this result. And to be able to kind of look at that objectively,

obviously, but in comparison to just showing up to the gym and just training your body overall and just kind of going through the motions, you start to realize how much more effective your training gets, which then you can apply that then going forward. Totally. And then we've already said this, but it's hard to have poor health and hit PR. Now, this isn't perfect. If you're always chasing the same PR, then you will sacrifice your health.

Like if you're always aiming for max strength or always aiming for more endurance, then at some point you'll start to sacrifice health. But if you do it right, it's hard to have poor health and continue to improve performance. The body generally, and I'm speaking in a balanced way, generally speaking, does not improve its performance if your health is poor, generally speaking.

So when we're talking about beginners, strength is a great one to aim for for beginners, because there's so much upside and so little downside, as you get more advanced, it becomes a little more challenging. But in the beginning, for the first couple of years, try to get stronger and misnutrients in your diet, or try to get stronger and have poor sleep, or try to get stronger and misnutrients in your diet or try to get stronger and have poor sleep or try to get stronger and Have too much stress. It's hard. It's really really hard. So or poor digestion, right? So when you're seeing these objective Your self-progress objectively towards a specific type of PR

It's a better metric of health than the mirror is for sure and definitely the scale. And then the last one you touched on this just now, Justin, is that having a PR encourages proper programming. If I'm training specifically for a goal, and that goal, I'm not moving towards that goal, I can modify my training and figure out what's working and what I'm doing essentially is I'm feeling out proper programming rather than showing up and sweating and getting sore. Now I can look at my workout and be like, my squat didn't improve this time, where my mobility didn't improve.

What is it that I did wrong? How can I change my training? It encourages proper training. It discourages overtraining. It encourages balance if you do in the right way. And so for people listening who are not expert workout programmers, one way to kind of navigate your way through programming

is to have a goal and then see how close you start to get to that goal and modify as you go along. Otherwise you're walking in the dark and you don't know where you're going. This is my favorite part of training these high school kids and taking them through the whole process of, off-season training to be able to then test that at the end and see how effective they were in applying these concepts

and, too, whether or not the programming that led up to that was as effective as possible. And so it gave me a lot of good feedback and data to work with. Yeah. And you probably only have, I don't know, maybe the first year, maybe two, that you can get away with newbie gains and have subpar programming or be doing things correctly,

let's say, and still see potential gains. Because there is that early window, right, where somebody, if you've never lifted weights before and you show up and you have terrible programming, but you show up and you start lifting weights, you're going to see initial strength. Let me add to that though. Sure. Definitely true. However, you can definitely do a lot of things wrong and not make that happen in the beginning.

Oh, and you can also still have done way better, right? That's why it's a little, it's a little, it could be deceiving at the very beginning, I guess is what I'm saying is that you, you know, because it's not always a perfectly clear indicator that oh I'm following good programming because if I just started working out just moving more is gonna have right like somebody who's hasn't trained in decades and then they they follow a beach body program They're gonna see strength gains. Yeah because they haven't done anything and any sort of movement in that direction It's gonna have some positive return, but it doesn't mean that had they done it a different way or a better way, they wouldn't see significantly more gains, not to mention, also set them up for more in the future.

So let's walk that through it, right? Because here's what I mean by the programming part. Let's say you're a beginner and you're right. I mean, if you almost do anything besides hurting yourself or really messing up, you're going to see some progress because you went from the couch to doing something. So long as it's not crazy bad, you'll start to see some progress. But here's what'll for sure happen. It'll stop very quickly if the programming is bad. You'll plateau real hard. This is where proper programming gets encouraged. So let's say your goal is, I want to be able to, I'll make up a goal.

I want to squat twice my body weight in the next by the end of the year. And I just get started. Well, at first, I could have not their great programming and I'm gonna add weight to the bar every week. Eventually, I'm gonna plateau though and what's gonna happen is I'm gonna have to analyze my workout. I'm gonna have to look at what I'm doing. And if I listen to my body

and I'm really chasing this particular goal, over time, by myself through trial and error, I'm going to move more towards better programming and away from bad programming. So even with the person just getting started with the newbie gains, if they're consistent enough and they're honest and they listen to their body, they'll still be able to be like,

okay, and for the first three months, I got stronger. I have stopped. Like, I got to analyze my workout. What's going on? Now, people tend to make a lot of mistakes still. So they'll say, well, I got to do more usually the first thing that they do. But then eventually the structure realized that it's not about doing more. It's about doing things better. Of course, you can get around this trial and error period by following good programming right out the gates, but the point is having a PR encourages if you're smart about it better programming and discourages worst programming

Now let's talk about when PRs can go bad The most obvious one for me is when it's just super myopic. Yeah, like I it's just one PR that's what I worship that's what I obsess over, and that's what I aim for all the time, all the time, all the time. If you do that, you'll start to train in very unbalanced ways, and you'll start, and you can, and you will, start to get a dramatic increase in risk of injury,

and then the returns are not that great. Like, when you first, like to use the example of the squat, when you first get started, the returns you get from adding 50 pounds of your squat are incredible. Like you take a beginner who's never worked out, you get them to learn how to squat properly and then they add 50 pounds. The results and the feeling and everything they get is like better mobility, faster metabolism, more muscle, they're leaner, they move better, they're faster. It's incredible. You take that same person four years later, let's say it's 175 pound male and he can max

out, let's say, 350. He's really strong. Adding 50 pounds to a squat is not going to give him all the returns he got initially. He's going to get a little bit from another 50 pounds of squat. But what he's going to get a lot of is dramatic increase in risk of injury and sacrificing things like mobility and pain and stamina and another thing. So if it's always the same PR, it'll be okay at first, but then it'll start to get rid of it. I want to make sure that we have clarity around that. By myopic, you mean very specific strength goal, too, right? Because, you can have, you can pursue consistently strength goals and strength PRs and

be totally okay. But it's the very specific, I want to get stronger at dud, dud lift or at the squat because it's just two exercise or just the big three. Yeah, right. And that's what I mean by specific. If it's specifically the same exercises, you're always pursuing PRs, that's what I get about. There's nothing wrong with right now I'm chasing a squat PR and then next month I'm going

to do a Turkish get up PR. And then the next but like picking movements that are going to consistently benefit you by moving out of that same plane or that same focus, I think that's okay. I think that's where you get in trouble is when it's the exact same. Now to make it even more perfect though, I would make this argument that at some point, it wouldn't just be max strength regardless. It could be, yeah.

I mean, in a perfect world. But what I wanna make clear is that you could be pursuing basically, you could pursue strength for a long time if you balance it. And be healthy and okay. If you're smart enough to understand that one of the greatest challenges or problems that occur from chasing justice,

what's up here is that it's the same movements, the same playing, it's the same, like, so it's- And the hinges start to get to the point. And the repetitive stress, I mean, adds up. And two, it's just, you fall into patterns and so like your body gets more efficient at these specific patterns, which is great

for producing the amount of force to increase your strength. And so you can get addictive in that direction, but if we're neglecting certain other types of movements that your body is fully capable of doing, and you're just prioritizing this continuous direction of focus and your body's gonna start, you know dampening that signal a bit and all those other directions to where It's gonna start affecting now your overall body's performance and it's gonna start to actually work against you Yeah, I give you an example if I took a beginner and then I took an advanced power lifter and I my goal was to make them both a lot stronger.

And I did this for six months. The beginner would have all positives. All positives across the board. The experienced power lifter, I guarantee you would it suffer from joint pain, mobility issues. And if I did succeed in getting them a lot stronger, they wouldn't have the dramatic improvement in the quality of life that the beginner did because they're so already extreme in that direction.

That's the point here. So if I took that power lifter and I'm looking for longevity, I would set a different kind of PR for them, maybe strength in a lateral movement with rotation or maybe some stamina or ranges of motion for certain lifts or maybe something else, right? That would be, that would give them much more isometric contraction. Yes. Something in that direction. Totally, totally. The second thing is when your PRs go bad is when you start to sacrifice your health to

chase a PR. So do you strengthen as an example, just eating way more food can get you stronger. But then you get into the, you know, those dudes like us in the gym, right? The permabulk, right? The guy who's 38% body fat still chasing five more pounds on his bench press. Yeah You probably shouldn't I don't think that extra five pounds is worth what you're doing to your body, right? Or endurance. I mean, I've trained some very extreme endurance athletes and you know, shaving 30 seconds off their triathlon time or whatever.

And I see the sacrifice that it places on their health in order to do so. So when you start to notice like, yeah, I'm better at this PR, but I don't feel better, I actually feel worse than it's probably time to switch PR. Yeah, imagine that's got to be pretty challenging for people to see as that starts to tip over, right? Because I think you become so focused on that, whether it be stamina, whether it be strength, or whatever that you're focusing on. And, you know, do they have the self-awareness to go, am I getting better or worse sleep? And are my joints hurting more today than they were six months ago?

Or usually they wait till their body's screaming out. That's how I feel. I feel it's like a, so I feel like even before it gets to the point of sacrificing health, just a good healthy, balanced relationship is to recognize like, oh, I've been really focused on this. Yeah. Unless you're like, and always,

you always have to remember that when we communicate things like this, we're trying to communicate to the masses and the general population who just want to be overall healthy and stronger. It's a complete exception to the rule when I'm speaking to a powerlifting athlete, right? So the things that we're, that's a sport, right? And we highly competitive athletes a different focus. That's not health. You're sacrificing health. So you have to understand that this, like, because someone who's like a competitor is like, oh, that's terrible advice.

I'm never gonna get that strong. Well, of course, because you're a competitor. Like if you're listening and you just wanna be strong, you just wanna be healthy, you're looking for longevity, that's where this conversation, you have to understand that's where we're coming from. And then speaking of those people,

it's a, I think it's just a good exercise to move in and out of these PRs all the time. In fact, as soon as you hit a PR in whatever it was you're chasing, move on. I think that's an easy life. 100% easy. You get a new stamina goal. It's plainly simple. You can't reach it.

Instead of staying there, it's like, good, awesome. You hit a PR. Now let's go for something else. You can come back there later on and revisit and see if you can continue to get another PR. But what happens is they hit a PR and they're like, oh, let's see what I do. And by the way, it's coming from experience. I've got very guilty of this too, right? Hit a big squat PR. I'm all excited. I go for again. Yeah. See what I do next week. You know, saying that I get real close. I'm going to try again. So, So let's see what I do next week, you know, say, and then I get real close. I'm going to try again.

So I think a good practice, a general rule is when you're chasing a PR in any category that when you hit it to then move into something else versus continuing in that same direction. Yeah, you know, the funny thing is if you asked any high level athlete, uh, hey, are you like optimal, like, is your health optimal right now? They'd also know. They would tell you that, uh, is your body feel right now? They don't say no. They would tell you that. Does your body feel? Yeah, no, no, no.

It's all about performance. They're not pictures of health. Now, one other thing is they can go bad when this is all you ever trained for. You always need a PR. You always need a goal or you always need a competition. Then this can, you can run into a problem. And what it looks like when it becomes a problem is this, and I used to

clients like this all the time, that if they didn't sign up for something, if they didn't have an event to train for, they couldn't work out. And it became, especially as you get older, you could start to run into problems because as you get older, you may not be able to hit performance PRs at all anymore, especially if you've been working hit performance PRs at all anymore, especially if you've been working out for years and years and years, then it can become quite a challenge. So at some point, there's nothing wrong with what we're doing. We're talking about it.

Actually, this is really good. But also at some point, you also want to learn how to work out for the sake of doing so, for the enjoyment of doing so. This is more black belt level training longevity type of deal, but it's something to keep a mind if you're playing on doing this for best enjoyment of doing so. This is more black belt level, you know, training longevity type of deal, but it's something to keep in mind if you're playing on doing this for best of your life. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem.

I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem.

I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. I don't know if you're gonna have a problem. whole sphere. So like a PR could be for me, like, I spent this much time quality time with my son. I spent this much time reading this week. Like, I think a really healthy way to approach this to where it's not just focused on my body, my strength. I mean, that is, that's

a major aspect of health and obviously what we communicate a lot. But the, the sphere encompasses so much more than just that one. And we talk about overall health and some of that can be meditation related. Some of that can be recuperative type of therapies like hot and cold therapies. Some of that can be reading for personal growth. Some of that can be spending time with family and loved ones. So there's nothing wrong with set. And to me, that's what I've learned to do is to move it out of just

What's going on with the weights and the gym because when you've done as much as a lot of us have done in that area It's hard for me to see a better physique of stronger body than what I've exponentially more different Yeah, and I don't want to be depressed all the time that I can't have a PR there or I can't chase those things It's like so there's other aspects of my life that I want to be able to say that I can hit PRs in too. And I think that's a very healthy way to keep that mindset of setting a goal and a plan, but then also understanding that it moves beyond just the weight room. Totally. I had an experience with that relatively recently when I hit a new PR with the deadlift. And afterwards, I was like, what did I benefit

from hitting this new number? And I said, my ego, there was nothing else. There was nothing on my physique. I didn't feel any better. If anything, I felt less mobile. I didn't get better sleep. I wasn't a better dad or a better podcast or anything like that. And I'm like, okay, well, I got an ego boost.

Is that really worth it? It was that worth the risk. And, you know, maybe I, maybe I shouldn't train specifically for that. And so my PR goal changed. In fact, for me, my new PR goal is to work out less. And that sounds funny. But for someone like myself, that's a damn good goal. And probably going to be good for me. But just an example of the different types of PR In fact, we should go through Some so obviously you can make a PR anything, okay, but let's go through some of the best ones that we have identified To be the best ones for most people to kind of cycle through if you will now the first one

Obvious is max strength. How much you can lift. Yeah, the three straight forward. For the first three years of training is gonna pay you back incredible dividends. At least the first two years, but probably the first three years or so, if you do this right and you don't go crazy and all that stuff and you train to get stronger and stronger, stronger, for a good two to three years, you're gonna get a ton of return

for chasing strength. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't interrupt it with other things, but overall, if that's your ultimate goal, it's the best possible thing you could train for, for most beginners from beginner to about year three. And I think the best PR that compliments that is to be chasing things like mobility and range of motion.

So if I'm somebody who's heavily focused on the PR in the MAC strength thing, then one of the best ways to complement that would be also to interrupting that or including a range of motion and mobility type of PR or goal I think. Yes, and that in fact is the next one, which is specifically just that, is can I improve

my control and depth of a squat or my overhead press or can I rotate better or I could not perform a lateral lunge before, can I get to the point where I can perform it, then can I add weight to it. Range of motion and mobility also can have negatives. You push that too far, then you can get joint issues. But for most people who work out with weights, this one almost always pays back good evidence. I don't know too many people who lift weights that overdue proper range of motion.

Well, I don't know. I don't know. Well, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Other potential areas you can get stronger in, which then contributes back to the whole. I think the mobility part really highlights that in terms of where there may be some deficiencies. You didn't even realize I don't have that kind of ability to produce force when I'm in

this position. That's why within this lift, I'm seeing that as a deficit. And, you know, and another thing that's a deficit, which goes right along to the next one, for me is like staving off fatigue. And so something that happens like within, you know, this pushing that max weight, and I'm getting to that point, I'm going through the reps, but maybe my reps aren't very high, and I'm just really focused on generating as much force as possible, but I'm getting really tired,

and that's something that I need to address, and this is what I'm actually working on currently. Yeah, no, and you made a great point too, which is that all of, first off, all of these will contribute to a better, healthier, better looking physique and body. Okay? All of these. They work together. The other part of this is, if your goal is to simply be the best at a specific lift or

whatever, then don't worry about what I'm about to say. We already talked about that. But if your goal is to be amazing and also be injury free, feel good and have longevity will follow these. All of these contribute to each other. So, you talked about stamina, we talked about mobility, strength. Like if you cycle through those, you'll get stronger over time with less pain, less injury, and feel better.

You'll get more stamina over time with less fatigue, less wear and tear. You'll get better ranges of motion and mobility over time with better control and strength with all of it. So they all contribute to each other and they all, all of these will make you look better. So that's it. And I say that because I know that's a selling point. And everybody listening right now is like, I want to look better. Well, if you go through these different PRs over time, you'll hit way less. But by product. Yeah. Stamina was a good one because this one was one

that I could see for myself that I was, because I love Mac strength, or I've always loved Mac strength. Yeah. But when I got to the point where I could squat 400 pounds for one rep, but I couldn't do 225 for 10 without feeling like I'm gonna throw up, then I knew like, all right, I gotta work on my stamina.

Like there's something missing here. So stamina is your ability to do more reps. It's your ability to, you know, there's interrences in stamina. It's your ability to do more sets and more exercises. Like, if you're that guy or girl who could show up hell of strong, but by the end of the workout, everything's cut down by half.

You might need to work on your stamina, little bit. Well, it also helps to maintain with quality control in terms of how you're performing the reps. Because if that does sneak in, sometimes it's a little bit more elusive and you don't realize, I'm actually fatiguing my way through this, trying to maintain a good form and go through that properly like I want to

with the best performance I can possibly produce, but like if I have any inclination of fatigue, it's gonna degrade. I would say that that is the number one cause of like form breakdown and technique is normally from fatigue. It's rarely somebody who is doing singles or max lifting and there's a bit of an air in the movement or mechanics. It's normally somebody super setting or deep into the workout or number 15.

Yeah, not great rest the day before and so they get sloppy and tired and they get fatigued and then all of a sudden they're not contracting their core, they're not keeping their posture right and they get a they slouch or get a little lazy because they get fatigued and then of contracting their core, they're not keeping their posture right, and they get a slouch or get a little lazy because they get fatigued, and then the breakdown happens, and then the injury happens. The direct enemy of technique and form is fatigue.

Nothing, I don't care how great your form is. If you get fatigued enough, it's gonna be crap. What do they say in boxing that, they talk about heart, right? Boxer has heart, and coach will tell you it's stamina. If you got stamina, you're gonna have heart. If you get tired, your heart goes out the window to have a deal.

So that's true with your workout. The next one is stability. How stable are you? How tense can you be? Can you hold a weight above your head, tight and strong? Think of performers on stage holding each other up and you notice how strong and tight and stable they are.

Can you carry a weight for distance? Can you do it offset, maybe more weight in one hand than the other? And you can do that and hold yourself tight. Anybody who's ever lifted weights knows that being strong doesn't necessarily mean you have tremendous stability. I talk about this all the time. It's like, new parents know this. You work out the gym all the time.

You're really strong. You hold your baby at the grocery store and you're like, well, I had my bicep tired. I curl 45 pound dumbbells and this 10 pound baby is make a marvelous stability. It's that ability to just maintain that isometric contraction. Speaking of which, isometrics and that kind of training is sorely lacking in modern programming

and it's unfortunate because it's one of the most effective least damaging ways to exercise. In fact, I would say most people listening right now, if you did a, and you trained for a PR instability, you would get tremendous payback because you probably never trained that way. I'd say there's probably the one thing that most people don't even know how to train for. Yeah, ironically, I would say that this is where most of us started all of our programming.

Like when you got a client, a new client rarely ever, did I run away, jump to max PRs and strength? Like if I can't get you to balance on one leg, I'm certainly not going to load you, max load you bilaterally. I'm gonna first get you to be able to stabilize on each leg individually by itself before I even think about loading like that. And so I think most of us, when we train clients,

that was the foundation was stability first. Well, it's an immediate leak of performance, right away if you are at all unstable, and then it's more prone to injury. And the focus of this really is the longevity of your joints and the joint health. And so in terms of all of the above, to be able to extend your ability to keep

pursuing these PRs is all banking off of how stable you can create around your joints for longevity. Well, this is also the unfortunate part about how the fitness space bastardized the stability training because there was some value to taking somebody who couldn't even balance on one leg to now maybe they could hop and then balance on a Bosu ball and stabilize

and hopefully without having to touch the ground like their ability to progress from the inability to do that on one leg to be able to hop and then stabilize, to celebrate and all that in one movement like that's, there is some value to that. I think that we took it to the extreme and then we began, everything became about that like we do with anything else, but there is some value to taking somebody who is very unstable like that, building that stability, and having stability PRs first before chasing

some of these big max PRs. Totally. Now, my favorite PR, and this is different, you can modify this and change it, my favorite is a consistency PR. You want to work out two days a week or three days a week. How long can you keep that string or that record? And the last time was three months.

Let me see if I can beat that. Let me see if I can do four months. Here's another one. For those of you that are hyper consistent with your training, you think that's just stupid. Pick a segment of your training or something with your fitness that you negate. Maybe you're very consistent with your weights,

but you're super inconsistent with your cardio or super inconsistent with mobility or super inconsistent with meditation. Well, now you can set a consistency PR goal with something like that. And all you gotta do is do better than you do the last time. So, last time I did a week consistently, now I'm gonna aim for two weeks consistently.

It's one of my favorites because it trains the most important thing with longevity, with exercise, which is just your ability to stay disciplined and consistent. Arguably the most simple concept, but the hardest one out of all of them, I've found with clients coming in to achieve. So this is a very much of a mental discipline that if we can master this one, all the rest, you're going to have a lot easier time with.

I mean, I attribute this to all the success I had in bodybuilding. And the way it looked is exactly what you alluded to, which is, and I applied it both to nutrition to even when I, when I did introduce cardio to weight training, and it was like, okay, I haven't had seven days of perfect eating. And in, and like, so the goal was eight days. It's gonna get to eight days. Now, I'd say past eight days, maybe I went all the way to 13 days

and then I fell off again. And now 14 days is the new goal, right? And I just kept doing that until I was able to string months of consistency around diet and training and exercise. And it's what made me keep progressing like that. And it's what I love about that is that you can meet anybody anywhere where they're at.

Like let's say you've never ate good for three days in a row. Like there's your first PR. Like hit four days. And then you hit four days and then extend it. And then just, and if you fall off, that's okay, you fell off on day seven. You know what your old PR was? Yeah, now you're stretching yourself again,

and it's just a great way to build those small wins, to eventually building that consistent lifestyle that where it then turns into a habit. This was my favorite type of PR to teach my clients to aim for early on, because I could apply it to everything, not just exercise, like you said Adam, like okay, your goal right now is,

can you drink a half a gallon of water a day and I want you to track it and I say, oh you did great, seven days in a row, like let's try and beat that next time. And like you said Justin, this one leads to all the others. So it's a great, and it's also a great way to take a break, by the way.

Like if you've been pushing your body in all these different directions, I mean, you could say, okay, you know, like for me, for example, my goal right now is to not do traditional strength training four days a week. I'm only gonna do traditional strength training three days a week. So far, I've gotten three weeks under my belt.

My goal is to be able to do this for the next, you know, maybe another nine weeks or so. And so it's kind of like, it sounds like a reverse goal, but for someone like me, I've gotten three weeks under my belt. My goal is to be able to do this for the next, you know, maybe another nine weeks or so And so it's kind of like it sounds like a reverse goal, but for someone like me. I identified this could be really valuable. All right, so Here's what we did to help some of you out because obviously the ones we gave were somewhat vague Not necessarily specific and so what we did is we created this month. we launched a new program called Maps Old Time Strength. What was cool about this program were the, a lot of the exercises and movements and techniques in there were things that we know people don't train anymore. We just know it's lost wisdom. They're just not exercises that people can even identify anymore, but they're super valuable.

And so what we did is we said we should come up with some challenges that people could try to accomplish that we think most people would benefit from. So we picked movements that a lot of people don't do. We also picked different types of PRs so that it's not just strength. We also picked one that was stamina and one that was the stability or the you know what we call grit in this particular test So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell you what they are you could you could train for these yourself Practice them and the thing that we did with them is we put guidelines on there so You can compete with other people if you want which can kind of make it fun

So and it doesn't matter how much you waver, this is how much they waver. It's all based off of your body weight and stuff like that. And so, here's what they are. Now, Doug, if you could put the formulas on there, that'd be great too, so I can give people percentage of body weight. But the first one is a strength challenge,

and this is just typical how much max you can lift. And here's the lifts, and they're all different. You've probably never trained these before. One is a barbell single arm deadlift. The other one is a bent press. So this is an old school lift. The other one is a barbell haxquat. And you do it as a percentage of your body weight.

That's what you're aiming for. Can I do more? Now this is cool because if you get leaner and your weight doesn't go up, you actually got stronger as a percentage of your body weight, which is kind of cool. Allow smaller people to compete against bigger people, so it's pretty cool. The next one is a stamina challenge, which is, and I need numbers for that to Doug, where

you're going to see how many reps you can do of a Hindu push up or dive bomber push up, how many reps you could do with a front squat, Doug, get me those percentages so I can give them to them. And then how many reps you could do with what's called a seesaw press. A seesaw press is literally a shoulder press where each arm is pumping. With the front squat, it's half your body weight.

How many reps do you do? And with the seesaw press, if you're female, 10% of your body weight in each arm, and if you're male, 15% of your body weight in each arm, and you're just looking at getting more reps, this total stamina. And then the stability one, which is this one's kind of cool, it's my favorite one, is you're going to look and see how long you can hold these lifts for. The first one is a dumbbell, single arm overhead hold, and the weight that you're picking is if your female 30% of your body weight, if you're female 30% your body weight, if

you're male 50% your body weight. The second one is a barbell suitcase hold. If you're female, it's 50% your body weight and male 70% your body weight. And then the last one is how long you can hold your chin over the bar for men. You have to pull yourself up and for women, you can start at the top position. And for this, it's just total time. Add up the total time with all of them. There you go. And if you train for each of these and cycle through them,

you've got yourself some pretty damn good balance. I think most people would benefit from this. Yeah, each one of those challenges addresses the everything that we talked about from the stability to the max strength, the mobility range of motion. Like all the movements that are included in there, you get, if you hit PRs and those movements, you're gonna see gains in all those other aspects. That's, yeah, that's amazing., you get, if you hit PRs in those movements, you're going to see gains in all those other aspects.

That's, yeah, it's amazing. By the way, if you want specific training for those lifts, the new program is called Maps. Old time, it does train you specifically to be able to perform those because it's a brand new program. It's a launch special. These are actually the final hours of this episode, airs. So you can get it $80 off plus two ebooks for free, forgotten muscle and strength building secrets and living a fully optimized life that was written by Jay Campbell. So you have to go to maps oldtime.com,

use the code old80, and you'll get all of those hookups. Also, if you want free information, okay? Go to mapminepumpfree.com, we have fitness guides there that are all free. You can also find all of us on social media, justin' as on Instagram at myumpumpfreed.com. We have fitness guides there that are all free. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is on Instagram, my I'm Pump Justin. I'm on Instagram, my I'm Pump De Stefano, and Adam is on Instagram, my I'm Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to MindPump.

If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPump media.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 and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal and an adjustment as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price.

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