Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2247: Can You Look Like a Bodybuilder Without Taking Steroids?

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

Bodybuilders are genetic anomalies. (1:15) The best examples of achievable ‘bodybuilder’ physiques. (2:49) The evolutionary theory behind the attractiveness of a ‘bodybuilding’ physique. (4:07) Can You Look Like a Bodybuilder Without Taking Steroids? (10:56) Five Things to Focus On: #1 – CONSISTENCY. (11:11) #2 - Progressive overload (when appropriate). (16:12) #3 – Strength. (22:22) #4 - The pump. (25:11) #5 - Balanced training. (28:55) The ultimate pathway to build the perfect physique. (31:43) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Special Promotion: MAPS Aesthetic or MAPS P.E.D. 50% off! ** Promo code BODYBUILDER at checkout ** Steve Reeves - Greatest Physiques Clarence Ross - Greatest Physiques How Larry Scott, the First Mr. Olympia, Changed Bodybuilding Forever Remembering The Bodybuilding Life of Sean Connery Mind Pump #1522: How To Stay Consistent With Your Diet & Workout Mind Pump #1282: The #1 Key To Consistently Building Muscle & Strength (Avoid Plateaus!) Mind Pump #1057: How To Get Stronger For Fat Loss & Muscle Building The Most Overlooked Muscle Building Principle-Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1790: The Secret To An Attractive & Functional Body Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is about looking like a bodybuilder. Can you do this without steroids? That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode.

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PED, are both 50% off. If you're interested in that discount, if you want to follow those bodybuilder style workout programs, go to mapsfitinistproducts.com, click on one of them or both of them and use the code BodyBuilder for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes a show. All right, in today's episode, we're going to talk about can you look like a bodybuilder without steroids? I don't know what he gets. I think the There was a time when bodybuilders didn't even have access to

steroids. We need to define this because to be very clear we'll just say this early out right now. You cannot look like a bodybuilder today without taking steroids. But the good news is I don't think most people want to look like pro bodybuilders today. I think that's pretty rare, right? Yeah, but I also think it's important to note to that, even more so than steroids, those are genetic anomalies. Like that time, yeah, I'm glad you said that.

I mean, so people need to understand that I'll, like, and I referred to Ronnie Coleman and the Flex Wheelers and some of these crazy physiques. A lot of people didn't realize, or didn't see what they looked like before they took steroids. And they were crazy fizziques. And so, yes, anabolic enhanced that, it made it even crazier,

and has raised the bar in the bodybuilding world to now where a majority, if not all, are on anabolic, especially in the actual bodybuilding category. I still think there's some men's physique athletes that compete at the highest level that are natural. We have friends that did, at least up into about two years ago, were 100% natural on the Olympia stage in men's physique. So it's very much so possible to have a physique that looks like that level of a bodybuilder

competitor and be natural. It's not a steroids. I think they looks like that, at that level of a bodybuilder competitor and being natural, it's not a steroids. I think they look like that. I want to define this a little better though because it's true though that the average person has no desire to look. I mean, the average person looks at a pro bodybuilder today, you know, five, nine, 280 pounds, veins all over. The average person looks like I don't want to look like that.

But if you took bodybuilders from the silver era of bodybuilding, this is like between the 1940s and 1960s, and yes, I know bodybuilding historians will say, well, there were steroids back then too. Most of them, many of them didn't use them, and if they did, the doses were so, so, so low, they would actually be, they wouldn't even be considered testosterone replacement therapy.

That's how low the antibiotics were back then. But those physics are very achievable naturally. And if the average person looked at pictures of those people, I think they'd say, wow, that looks pretty amazing. Like Steve Reeves is a great example, right? V-taper, great development, wide shoulders, strong luster, Larry Scott, the first Mr. Olympia, Sean Connery. I don't know if you guys knew this.

He competed in bodybuilding. Sean Connery competed in body't know if you guys knew this. He competed in bodybuilding. Sean Connery competed in bodybuilding in the silver era and there's a picture of imposing or whatever. Oh, I got to check that out. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's pretty wild. I got guys in my hero for sure. Clancy Ross is another one. You can look all these people up for yourself to kind of see what they look like. Now, that is very achievable through, you know, really consistent good training and diet and exercise. And we'll talk about that. Before though we get to that, we should define kind of the history of bodybuilding and what

that's based off of like, why do we consider those kind of physics to look good? Why does it look good or why are we attracted to or why it is alluring to have a physique like that? I think that's an important discussion. Was Eugene Sandow? Was he one of the first examples of like where we started to really pay attention to the overall physique of the strength athlete, not just, you know, their feats that they're presenting?

Yeah, well, you point to the evolutionary theory around that it's really just an exaggerated version of that, right? If a small ways broad shoulders, low body fat percentage is a representation of a healthy person who can reproduce then when we look at bodybuilding, it's just the exaggerated version of that. Now we know that it's exaggerated so much that it's moved into the unhealthy range, but to the eye, that's what is appealing. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, because shoulder to waist ratio can predict testosterone levels, fertility, functionality, performance, and men. It's an example. It looks healthy. You can get lean and look healthy. You can get too lean and not look healthy, right? You can get muscular and look healthy. You get so muscular, you don't no longer look healthy.

Do you think that they're, you know, pointing to your evolutionary theory too? Do you think that there is even like a protective component too? Like there is there to attract the opposite sex? Oh, you look like you could protect this family, this your baby, and so seeing this strong muscular male also isn't just about reproductions, also about, you know, safety too. Of course, it's function. Like if you take the same person, less muscular, higher body fat percentage, more muscular, lower body fat percentage, all within healthy range, and everything else being equal, the more muscular, stronger version is going to be

better, better at protecting, better at hunting, providing. And they even show this in the in this in the modern world, right? Modern world, you don't need to throw a spear to catch lunch anymore. If you live in a modern society, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably don't need to defend your life on a consistent regular basis,

probably live in a pretty self-safed society. But data shows that when people are more fit, they also earn more money. The more successful, they're less likely to be sick. So across the board, there's very good reasons to be attracted to this look and kind of seek it out. And I think that's again, you mentioned them, right? White shoulders, small waist, balance development. This is important. I would say balance development is probably the most bodybuilding feature of bodybuilding.

Right. Like all of the strength sports, the way the body is developed is an afterthought. Bodybuilding, you could have the most incredible physique and be the leanest, but if you're at a balance, if your legs don't match your upper body, or if one side doesn't match the other, or your biceps are out proportion from your triceps or your chest, you lose competition. Which is funny because that's one of the things I think that gym culture and bodybuilding specifically, when your legs didn't match your upper body, it stood out so much. It's like a skipping leg day.

It's just one of those things, noticeably something that's off. So to promote strength function and actually put those muscles into action, having a balance, physique, having muscles that reflect actual power movement is important. You know, this was something that that bodybuilding taught me that I didn't see coming was to your point around symmetry. And I've shared this before on the podcast and this all came from my journey to compete was when I got leaner and for the first time in my life, getting the compliments of looking bigger.

And I remember my, I, for as a young kid who was insecure about his physique, I was, a lot of that was attached to my arm size, right? And that was all I trained when I was like a teenager, just trying to, I wanted big arms. So one of the first things that I saw shrink down when I got fit and I got lean was my arms. And so the insecure side of me was like, Oh my God, I'm getting smaller and smaller. And yet I got these crazy compliments about how much bigger I looked.

And I think a lot of that had to do with the proportions of my body started to, to, they became more symmetrical as I started to compete. And I realized that, oh wow, like I was allowing my insecurity to drive the even the way I program and train myself because that's what I thought needed to look better. But in reality, when I was being judged on stage, they wanna see balance more than they wanna see the biggest arms on stage,

or the biggest chest, or the biggest leg. It's like that's where you'll get, because almost everybody gets on stage, it's got a great physique, everybody has muscles, everybody is at, you know, three to four percent body fat range. So that's all the same, but where the defines the first place guy and the last place guy is the symmetry, the balance and how well you can lose balance and how,

and that's appealing to the average eye, whether they realize it or not. You just said it, right? A balanced developed physique will look more impressive to the average person than a physique that is not balanced with an extreme body part or two. And this is kind of the final part. I wish I knew that though.

Like I wish someone told me that when I was 17, eight, and I was, you know, again, doing bicep curls five days a week. And collecting everything else. Yeah, and collecting all that. I would have been far better off, evenly distributed. And I know some people say that, but I don't think they really explain to like that insecure kid that you will actually look better.

Like that would have got to me if you would have said that, right? Like if you would have said like, no, your arms bleed or not will look better if you did more of your legs. Your chest will look better if you did more of your back. Like if they would have communicated that to me that my overall physique would look more appealing and better if I actually evenly balanced their body. You know what's interesting too about this is that symmetry and balance is closely connected

to health. So, symmetry is very important for beauty. So when they say someone attractive, they can do like a test and they can find the symmetry of the face and the more symmetrical the face is, the more beautiful it looks, but they've also connected it to health, the health of someone's DNA, their propensity for chronic disease. In fact, it's so important for overall health that if you injure one side of your body,

if your arm is in a cast and you exercise the other arm, you'll lose less muscle than if you never are, in the arm that's in the cast and if you never did anything at all with the other arm. That's how the body communicates with itself to maintain balance because if your strong imbalances reduce function tremendously. Regardless of how strong your quads are, if the difference between your quads and hamstrings is so great, you can have the most powerful quads in the world.

You'll just tear your hamstrings and hurt yourself when you try to exert force. So balance is very important. And without knowing it, bodybuilding scored balance very highly. And again, it's because it reflects overall health. But the average person through the things that we're going to talk about can definitely achieve a more bodybuilder look to the body with wide shoulders, smaller waist, developed muscles, function, balance, leanness. Like you can definitely do this, but the first thing, and we'll start with the first one.

This is the most important. I put this one as number one because developing a physique takes a long time and it takes extreme ridiculous consistency. Above all else, it takes extreme consistency. Building muscle takes a long time. Well, I would say this is probably the sport of bodybuilding in general, right? Is like, how disciplined can you be? And that's outside of the actual practice in the gym. Like, yes, that's an important part. The training involved, too, but it's everything included, it's the diet,

it's nutrition, it's the sleep, it's everything that's fostering the best version of, you know, the way to grow and build and develop muscle and have it look a specific way. I know all of my athlete friends hate to hear bodybuilding compared to a sport, but the truth is I had the opportunity to do both, right, I had the opportunity to play sports and I had the opportunity to compete on bodybuilding compared to a sport. But the truth is, I had the opportunity to do both. I had the opportunity to play sports and I had the opportunity to compete on bodybuilding.

And I will tell you that bodybuilding, one of the hardest things I ever did by far, and the reason why it was was not because I had to square up against another guy in my size and go ahead first at each other. And, you know, it took, like, I had to work through all this pain in a game. And like, it wasn't that. It to work through all this pain while in a game and like it wasn't that it was you don't turn it off. You don't have a day off. You don't have a meal off and there's not a sport I've ever played where I couldn't let loose and have you know eat like crazy and sleep in the next day and not train for a day or two and not come back and compete in my sport at the highest level. where with bodybuilding, not only

are you unbelievably consistent with your training regimen, but you don't get a meal off. I mean, you have to be dialed, like literally every single day for every meal for a long period of time, not for a season, not for three months. Like, I had to put years, I had to string years to get to build a competitive physique. Maybe you can get ready for one show and just get you know get up on stage and say you did it In three months of dieting and training But if you're gonna win at that level you're gonna be good at it Which is what I wanted to do it took years of

Competitive consistency around diet and training and that part of it made it feel like a sport. Well, look, if you take the average man, who's, let's say, not exercising, worshiped to office job or maybe goes to school, doesn't do any strength training and says, hey, I want to look like a bodybuilder. Okay. They're probably going to have to add maybe 20 to 25 pounds of lean body mass to their bodies. Okay. That takes years. That doesn't happen. It doesn't even happen in one consistent year. to 25 pounds of lean body mass to their bodies, okay?

That takes years. That doesn't happen. It doesn't even happen in one consistent year. It takes years. Like the first consistent year, you may gain about 12 pounds of lean body mass. Then it falls off a cliff, and then you're lucky to gain three or four pounds a year of lean body mass. So you're talking three, four years, two at the absolute least of absolute

doggo consistency for a female to want to develop a balanced muscular lean physique with round glutes and hamstrings. The whole deal, she's probably going to have to gain something like 13 to 17 pounds of lean body mass for a woman that will take and I'm talking lean muscle, not water and body fat and all that. So like real contractual tissue takes years and years and years and it's consistency. That is the one thing with bodybuilders, that is different than, Adam, you said it perfectly.

The thing that is the most different about bodybuilders of any other athlete or sport or strength sport or anything else is the ridiculous insane 24-hour day consistency. That's why I put it. And you got to have a lot of faith in and belief in what you've decided is going to be your program and diet because in that time there's going to be a lot of times where you feel like you're not seeing progress. And that's psychologically, that's really difficult to stay the course when, and when the plan is to, you know, shape or sculpt this physique into a winning physique on stage. And you feel like you have strings of time that, you know,

maybe last week, sometimes of looking like you're going backwards or not, you know, not progressing, and then to still stay the course and be consistent. That is really, really tough to do. And I think that's where most people fall short. I think most people fall short even in their normal pursuit. Forget competing at the highest level and getting on stage. I think it's the same thing that trips up a lot of people and their weight loss goal

is they're, they got a plan, they're being consistent. Maybe they saw a little bit of change beginning, they're excited. And then the excitement wears off, and then they hit a plateau, or they don't see change for a week or two, yet they're putting in all the work still, and that's where most people say, effort, and they give up and think about the other way. You need the longer, look, because it takes a long time, you have to be more precise and planned, right? Because if you're off the target by a little bit, I mean, you stretch that out over a year or two, you? Because if you're off the target by a little bit, I mean, you stretch that out over a year or two, you're gonna be way off.

So a plan is very important when it comes to what we're talking about. The next point is you have to understand, and you'll hear this a lot in the strength training world, right, or the fitness world, progressive overload, right? Now, most people think progressive overload just means adding weight to the bar, getting stronger. That is progressive overload. But progressive overload is not just adding weight to the bar.

It's adding reps, it's adding sets. It's being able to add intensity. Some exercises with the same sets and same intensity is just gonna be more of an overload than other exercises. It's also knowing when to apply more and when to pull back a little bit. The important thing to look at progressive when it comes to progressive overload is the big picture though, right?

Because this is how I screwed up a lot in the early days of my personal training is I thought progressive overload men every single time I worked out or every single week I worked out. That's a fast track towards overtraining and injury. And it was always linear. No, it was just like clear path of just like I just keep scaling up up up up up up up up. No, no, no. It's literally like I can add a little bit now, see how that works. Do I feel good? No, I don't back off a little bit, do it again. And over time, it looks like a step ladder of progress. But what you should do is over the course of your two or three year journey of this, is

you can see clearly, okay, I did progressively overload over that period of time. Yeah, I think one of the most important parts of understanding this is learning to, is to be able to track your volume and understand your behaviors around it. So when I got into competing, it was the first time I ever tracked volume. I never tracked volume. I never cared too. I never was that competitive enough to wear. This makes sense. Obviously, if I'm in the sport of improving my physique month over month, show over show, okay, this makes sense that I'm going to really get into this. And the thing that was most glaring to me was just like when I do nutrition, I don't

go right into, like, here's the plan of how I'm gonna progress the overall. I'm like, let's just track, let's see what my normal habits are and what I do. And what I found is that, and what I've found this in my clients afterwards is that we all kind of have this natural ebb and flow with our life of progressive overload or volume. Is you're feeling good, you're sleeping good,

you're hitting things and you're sleeping good, you're hitting things and you're like slowly, you know, adding weight to the bar, adding sets of reps in all these different ways of progressive overloading. And then the inevitable happens where you kind of fall off or you get busy or you miss a workout here there. And when you pull back, what I would, what I found out was like, oh wow, I'm pretty much doing the same amount as what I was three months ago. I just, it just, but it felt like in my head,

because I had just counting those hard, that's right, I'm counting those sprints. I had those moments where like, oh no, I know I ran that intensity up, or I knew I had a PR, but then when I pulled back and looked at it, I was like, oh wow, your body has this really interesting thing, how it just kind of naturally gravitates to homeostasis

or what's normal for you, and you really have to be mindful if you want to methodically do this month over month or a year over year or whatever and have that approach. And so the rule that I kind of had when I was doing this was that just don't go back at them. Like let's track volume. Let's base off how you feel like you were saying. So as I would come into a new week

I knew what I did volume wise the previous week and then this week it was just like don't go backwards And if you can let's inch forward a little bit and I just kind of had that mindset every single week And then when I would pull back over a month or two months There would be this natural progressive overload that time. Yeah, the two mistakes I made with progressive overload were as follows. The first one was not realizing that higher rep sets, even though the weight was lighter, we typically add up to far more volume. So, for example, if I did 20 reps with 200 pounds on the bar, that's going to be more volume than three reps with 350 pounds on the bar.

Even though I'm lifting way more weight, the volume is so much higher. So the way you calculate volume, and for the most part within reason, this works. Because if you go extremely, yeah, it doesn't work. Someone could say, well, if I did, what if I did five pounds for 10,000 reps or something? Like, okay, we're talking within reason within what would be considered the rep ranges for bodybuilding, which is between, let's say, one to 25, right? You go sets times reps times weight, and that's your total volume. And when I didn't do that, what I would do is count sets.

I didn't look at anything else. I looked at the weight on the bars, if I was getting strong, but it was about sets. So I said, well, I'm doing the same volume as I did last week. I'm still doing 12 sets for shoulders. Last week I did 12 sets for shoulders. Why do I feel so fried? Well, it's because now I went lighter but did so many more reps that the volume went through the roof. I didn't count it because the weight was lighter. That's not how volume works. It's sets times reps, times weight.

The second mistake I would make is when I would progressively overload, and this is a huge mistake, nobody, a lot of people understand this, is I would increase the volume on everything. At the same time, I'm gonna do two more sets for every body part. Rather than adding a little bit of volume in one area and leaving it alone, all of it taxes the body.

So you can't go into your workout and progressively over, that's like way too much, all at once. In fact, oftentimes when bringing up a weak body part, if your body's not ready to add more volume, then all you do is take volume away from another body part and add it to the body part, you're looking to build up. That's those are the biggest mistakes I made with. That's why I felt like the, what I had pieced together from this tracking and going through

this process was like, just don't go backwards at them. Make sure you accomplish what you did the previous week, and then if you felt good, let's strike, let's take a little bit a step forward in an air And I typically would pick areas that I was trying to develop, right? I'd be running something like maps aesthetic. I'd be trying to develop one or two different body parts. And so that's where I would add a little bit of that volume. I'd just focus on that area. And I would only do it when I felt good when I felt like, okay, my body can handle more. Okay. And then and then not make the mistake of overreaching, right? Because that's the other thing that we do is just like,

oh, I feel good. So then you train everything to failure that day at the workout, or you add like five more sets, it's like dude, you just need to go up a little bit, a little bit more and wait, a little bit more in volume. And that can be wait, it can be reps, it can be set.

Not all of them. Yeah, just, yeah. So that would do the same thing. Yeah, add a set or two, plus add weight, weight too much, all it wants. Yeah. So the next one too, I mean, this one for me, I never really cared too much about like

I'm presenting my physique and getting to the point where I'm like pumped up and juiced up off walking outside the gym, but I was always trying to get stronger and always focused on what's gonna move the needle the most in terms of like, what are the big lifts in here that can accomplish that and it can really take me to a new level. Now, I was already doing them.

I was already deadlift and I was already squatting, I was already bench pressing and it was really as simple as that. And I think we overcomplicate this part so much and don't realize that those lifts specifically build the most muscle, gives you the most to work with to then fine tune down the room.

Period and a story. Like at the end of the day, it's strength. If you get stronger, you'll build muscle. Especially the first three years of your training, like this should be the most important thing. If you get stronger, you will build more muscle. Strength is extremely important to developing a physique that looks like a bodybuild.

And then you name some exercises, Justin. There's a lot of bodybuilding exercises that are out there. And because bodybuilding at the high levels is all about fine-tuning the physique, you have a million one different exercises for every body part. But the big movers, the compound lifts for, you know, if you're doing this and you're getting going and you want to develop that physique, a barbell squat is going to do more than the next four exercises combined.

So you want to focus on those big gross motor movements and you want to get stronger at them. This is the foundation and it always has been of bodybuilding. There's a lot of parts of bodybuilding, but strength is the foundation. This is why if you look back at the journey of getting into competing,

there was a year that I spent of training before I even entered into my first show. In that year's time, I was cycling through maps and a baller. And the goal was purely, I'm gonna get strong at these major lifts, just get strong and lay that foundation. It wasn't until I got into competing,

did I do maps aesthetic in like a PD type of layout like we have those But that didn't come till later. It was first you follow an anabolic type of protocol like that build the most amount of strength I can and these big list and that was actually unique there in my in the bodybuilding space That's most people jump right to the pump and sculpting part and they don't lay that foundation They don't squat. they don't deadlift, they don't do these big gross motor move compound lifts. They're doing all these isolation exercises and pumping exercises and supersets and I'm less like,

man, that is not what's gonna move the- It's gonna limit your potential. Yeah, just gonna move the needle the most. The thing that's gonna move the needle the most is building that strength in those lifts and so that should be the foundation. If anybody, even if you're not gonna get on stage, if you're looking to build a better physique so that should be the foundation. If anybody, even if you're not going to get on stage, if you're looking to build a better physique, that should be the foundation. And then we get to the sculpting type stuff later.

Yeah. So which brings us to the next one, which is the pump. Now, it's interesting. Now, this is also, I would say, so the first, most unique thing about bodybuilding is this kind of, you know, presentation, right, this balance, looking physique. But the other unique thing about bodybuilding is only strength sport that values the side effect of strength training during the workout, which is the pump. No other strength sport looks at the pump and says, that was great.

They avoided it for the most part. In fact, it's a 100%. The detriment, power lifters could care less about the pump. Olympic lifters definitely don't care about the pump. Shot putters, like, you know. Rock climber. Rocks like any strength sport, like the pump is like the side effect.

Well, in bodybuilding it becomes one of the main effects. Now what's cool about this is that there's two reasons why the pump is valuable. One, clearly does signal muscle growth. Two, the environment that creates the best pump is probably the environment that builds the most muscle. In other words, not only does the pump signal your body to build muscle because of the pump itself, right?

More blood and nutrients getting into the muscle that can come out. There's a little bit of a waste buildup. That signals muscle growth. There's some cells swelling that happens. That's also important. But it also is telling you that, oh, I got a good pump. I'm probably well hydrated. I'm probably well fed.

I'm not over trained. So it's also telling me that I'm in a good pump. I'm probably well hydrated. I'm probably well fed. I'm not over trained. So it's also telling me that I'm in a good environment to build muscle. And then there's a third aspect that bodybuilders really took advantage of with the pump, which is you can see what your body looks like when you pump a muscle and make it look more developed temporarily.

Bodybuilders took advantage of this, right? So if they had a weak body part, or they want to see what they would look like, if they got their rear delts a little bit more developed or their upper chest a little bit more developed, they would go get a pump, look in the mirror, and now you can look and see like, okay, I can see my potential.

I can see where I'm going because, because I got this muscle to temporarily look bigger. It's also a clear indication if you can't get a certain muscle group of good pump, like there's a loss of, yeah, pump. There's a loss of your connection. There's a loss of a mind muscle connection there. So, you know, in terms of like developing and building this aesthetic physique that's balanced, you know, that's also like a consideration.

As you're doing the pump style train hypertrophy to be able to see whether or not, you know, you're getting that clear signal back that we got that. Bro, that's so important. You said that if you do pull-ups and you feel no pump in your back and you get a great pump in your biceps, we got to change the way you're doing pull-ups. That is signaling to you that you're connecting maybe more to your arms than you should be. Now, if you just want to do a lot of pull-ups, maybe it doesn't make a big difference, but if you want to develop your back from doing pull-ups, then it's actually important for you to

pay attention to. The other thing too, and I noticed with clients that when I was training clients and we to develop your back from doing pull ups, then it's actually important for you to pay attention to. The other thing too, and I noticed with clients, that when I was training clients, and we were working on specific areas and body parts, especially when they first got started, as soon as they would tell me, oh, my muscles feel really tight,

or I feel my glutes get really pumped, or I can feel my lats, I never felt that before. I knew muscle growth was on the other end. It was always like, once we got the pump, the rest started to kind of accelerate. Yeah, and I think that has a lot to do with what you just said, is that they're now learning how to truly activate that muscle. It's funny that we're talking about this

in the bodybuilding world, but I mean, I use this with the general population all the time. Because one of the hardest things to get clients to do, and you use back as an example, as a great example, how many clients did you have that actually could get a back pump? A lot of clients couldn't do it. And you use the back as an example. It's a great example. Like, how many clients did you have that actually could get a back pump? A lot of clients couldn't do it. A lot of that is because they're pooling

with their arms all the time to do any of the exercises, whether it's a row, whether it's a pull-up, it didn't matter. They would do it all with their shoulders rolled forward and with all with their biceps. And they would never, and then those are smaller muscles. So they would fatigue first before the back even got fatigued and they never got sore, never got a pump there. And so teaching the general pop how to just get a pump in those areas is a great way to help work on that mind muscle

connection, which supports no matter what your goal is. Totally. Lastly, we've talked about this earlier in the episode, but that's to make your training balanced. So that's a key with bodybuilding. And this is to really get an aesthetic looking physique, you want a lot of balance. Again, if you have a very, very developed muscular upper body, but your lower body is totally at a proportion like, you know, if you stand there in some shorts or whatever, you go to the beach, like, you're not going to look as good as someone who doesn't have nearly as developed an upper body who looks a lot more balanced.

Balance training is key to bodybuilding. Now, what does this look like? Well, you could, and I don't think I need to say this because I think people kind of get this, but you look at your body, you see how it's developed, and you know where you need to place your focus. And what you do with this is you either increase the volume, or, you know, the reps or the sets on that particular area, or what most people need to do is take away volume from areas that they already develop very quickly

and lend it to these other body parts. A lot of people have an issue with that. Like you tell somebody who's got really well developed triceps, but their biceps are very undeveloped and you say, they'll say, oh yeah, I could work more bicep, but if you say no, no, take some volume from your tricep and move it to your bicep, oh no, no, no, no, I don't wanna do that. So well, you're not gonna be able to develop balance if you say no, no, take some volume from your tricep and move it to your buy set, I don't want to do that.

So well, you're not going to be able to develop balance if you keep that ratio up. You know, we tend to communicate most of our stuff to general pop, because I think that's who listens to the show, but we do have a small portion of people in here that are competitive bodybuilders, mince, physique, bikini athletes. And this, maps aesthetic is something that I'm like extremely proud that we did it. And we don't talk a lot about that. We talk a lot about prime and prime pro,

which of course those are correctional things. That's general population that helps out the most. It helps everybody out, but that's who that's for more than anybody. But maps aesthetic to me is, it takes what you're explaining right now on how do I go about making a symmetrical physique and actually lays that out and tells you how to do it.

It allows you to plug it in. Yeah, whenever programs do that, I've never seen anything else out there like that. Like, no, I'd never seen it. And yet, that's exactly how I had to program as I was getting ready for each show because you go to a show and whether I could see it or not, a judge would tell me and say,

hey, your shoulders are underdeveloped compared to your chest or your back is overdeveloped compared to your hamstring. They'll tell you where you're strong and where you're weak. So I would take that information instead of being insecure about it or poor me. I would go back and go, okay, my back is plenty developed. So I'm going to pull back on the volume a little bit there. He says my shoulders are underdeveloped. So I'm going to wrap up the volume there. Okay, and then I'd have to program it in. And so, when we did Maths Estetic, that was the idea was, okay, how do we do this? But then we also customize it.

So the individual can choose their areas that they want to develop and plug it into the program and then follow it. And at the end of it, they should see this, their body more balanced than what it was. And that's exactly how you want to train when you train and bring up balance. We do also have some really hardcore listeners, like people who really dedicate a lot of times or training, and who already train at a high volume. And the question I get from those people is, okay, how do I increase it? My workouts already an hour and a half long.

I guess I can do another 20 minutes. What does that look like? Well, bodybuilders figured this out a long time ago with what's called a double split routine. This is where you train twice a day. So instead of doing your one hour, 45 minute workout, once a day, because what happens at the end of, after the first hour, hour and 20 minutes, fatigue sets in, and what you train at the end doesn't get the same attention

or the same stimulus as the stuff you train in the beginning. So bodybuilders in the past, and this was, this was pioneered in the 60s, but really in the 70s became popular with the bodybuilders like Arnold and those during the golden era, what they call, what they would go and they would train twice a day because they'd come back fresh

and do what's called a double split. And this allowed the body to somewhat recover in between workouts. It also allowed the body to handle more volume. So I'm gonna give this example right now because there's a lot of studies that show that volume versus volume, it's all the same. But at some point, that's not true. If you took a tremendous amount,

let me, I'm gonna make it extreme, right? You look at, let's say somebody does 50 sets of exercises in a week. You take one person and they do 50 sets on Monday. The other person does 50 sets, it spreads it out Monday through Sunday. The person that spreads it out, it's gonna get better results.

Okay. And the more volume you do, the more of a discrepancy there is with that. So if you're training at high volume and you wanna progressively overload and add even more volume, you need to split your workouts up because at some point it becomes detrimental

to put them all in one workout. And we have a program called Maths PD that's that exactly. It's a very high volume, very high frequency, like progressively overloaded to the extreme. This is our most advanced program. Most advanced. And that's exactly what we did is we made a double split routine so that we don't run into that problem. I mean, I feel like this is the nitrous of like training programs for me.

So if I was laying out like a year of my training for a show, it would look like MAPS and a BALLIC, MAPS aesthetic, and then PD. And if anything, I would interrupt one of those three with something like symmetry or performance. But like if I were to map out a year of what getting ready for a show or the ultimate pathway to build the best physique, it would obviously be the strength foundation like we talked about earlier,

why that's the first, like you gotta pursue that first, whether you're doing it already or you're about to, anabolic first, then you would move into aesthetic and then you would move into that. And what's beautiful about that is each one of those,

it's programmed to progressively overload for you. You just follow it to a tee and then we've built in the overload there and then the only other option that I would add in there is, and this would be based off the client on how their joints are feeling, how their progress is going. So long everything is going good,

then we fall that pathway. If I find there's any sort of imbalance, if I find that they're complaining of achy joints, things like that, then I would throw in something like a cemetery or a performance to interrupt those three. Totally, that's the idea. Totally. So here's what we're gonna do,

maps aesthetic, maps PED, those are our bodybuilding programs. They're both 50% off for this episode. You can find them at mapsfitinistproducts.com, but you have to use the code BodyBuilder to get that discount. You can also find all of us on Instagram, Justin is at MindPump Justin. I'm at also find all of us on Instagram, Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump De Stefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Ado.

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 Obolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Esthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, The RGB Superbundle is like having Sal and I'm in Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price.

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