Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2442: How Strong Should You Be? The Fastest Way to Get Bigger & Stronger at the Same Time

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

How Strong Should You Be? - Fastest Way to Get Bigger & Stronger at the Same Time Everybody is different. Genetics matter. (2:13) How Strong Should You Be? - Fastest Way to Get Bigger & Stronger at the Same Time. (4:57) Male & Female Squat Standards. (7:10) Male & Female Bench Standards. (11:10) Male & Female Deadlift Standards. (13:22) Male & Female Overhead Press Standards. (15:00) Male & Female Pull-up Standards. (17:14) The four steps to getting as strong as possible. (18:45) Listener Questions: How realistic is it that I can reach advanced levels of strength? (30:33) I just want to build muscle. Is strength still important? (32:22) What are the best strength supplements? (34:06) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Limited Promotion: MAPS Power Bundle for only $79.99!  Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code 25MINDPUMP at checkout for 25% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic** October Promotion: MAPS Muscle Mommy 50% off! ** Code OCTOBER50 at checkout ** Strength Standards: Are You Strong? Building Muscle with Adam Schafer – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump # 1312: Eight Ways to Boost Strength Fast Stop Working Out And Start Practicing – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

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with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is mind pumped today's episode. How strong should you be? And then we talk about the fastest way to get bigger and stronger at the same time. Now, because of this episode, we're doing a limited time offer for a power bundle maps strong and maps power. If these are the best strength training or strength building programs that we have. You can get them both together for 73% off. Together.

You find them at mindpumpmedia.com forward slash power dash bundle. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor. See, this is the world's best probiotic. They literally lead the competitors way ahead of everybody. It's the only probiotic I use on a consistent basis and I've been using them for a very long time. Go check them out. Go to seed.com forward slash mind pump then use the code 25MINDPUMP and get 25% off your first month's order of Seeds Daily Symbiotic. All right here comes the show. How strong should you be? Ever wonder if you're actually strong, or at least compared to people like yourself? Today's episode we're gonna talk about that,

and we're gonna help you determine how strong you should be, and also talk about the steps to getting strong as fast as possible. In fact, we're gonna talk about the fastest way to get bigger and stronger all at the same time. Just keeps Adam up at night. Yes, it does actually. And I know that you wrote a really complex episode here,

but I think Justin's metric has been the one I've been trying to live by for the last five years. As long as I can beat up all the other dads and myself. I'm strong enough. I stand by that. That's my goal. I saw a meme. Size up all the dads in kindergarten class. I'm good still. You're okay. You better have to work out for that. I saw a

meme the other day where it said, I just started a lawnmower with one pole on a rival dad's lawnmower in front of his kid. The ultimate flex, right? Walk over and start someone else's lawnmower with one pole. I like that. Alright, so let's talk about, we're gonna get to strength metrics. We actually went on the internet and you know and we're gonna discuss if we agree or not but we found some numbers or percentages that would put you within a particular ranking like if you're good, optimal, advanced, or an athlete and so we'll talk about that. And then we're gonna talk about what makes you strong, like how you can get strong as fast as possible. But I think it's important to consider all of the variables

that contribute to your strength. Everybody's different, I mean this is really important. Everybody's different, genetics make a big difference here, they definitely matter, some people are just gonna be a lot stronger than you naturally or have a much larger potential for strength and coming from someone who's worked in the fitness space, I have seen the widest range of genetics with this to the point where I've seen people who are so strong, it's comical to other side where it's like you know we if we don't get

stronger this is gonna this is gonna put your life at risk. I also think it's important to note, okay, so I thought you did a really good job of breaking down the categories in a good range, but it's also important to understand that typically the things that will give you an advantage and make you strong in one category may hinder you in another one.

So for example, I'm a tall, lanky guy, so a pull-upup or pull-ups, deadlifts work in my favor. So knowing that... Yeah, so I don't beat myself up over squatting. Like squatting is much more difficult. I have a long way to travel, I have long femurs, long... I mean it's just, it's gonna be, I'm not gonna be as good of a squatter as I am a deadlifter. So there are some of the little bit of a variance there too.ifter, so there are some of the, little bit of a variance there too.

And at the end of the day, and age matters too, but at the end of the day, here's what's important, are you improving? Yes, it's you versus you, as they say. That's it, if you're training and you're exercising, you're consistent, and you're stronger today than you were six months ago, that's positive movement. You're moving in the right direction, and if you have the right attitude towards exercise,

this is something you do for the rest of your life. And if you're continuing to progress, you are kicking butt, period. End of story. So whenever we have somebody in fact call in and ask us questions and inevitably it's like, how much muscle can I build and how am I doing? And it's like, you know, we ask them like, what were you lifting before? What are you lifting now? And there's an improvement, it's an improvement. You're doing the right thing. So don't get too caught up with this kind of stuff,

but I get it, you know? This is stuff that used to interest me as well. So sometimes you wanna know where you stack up against what the standards are, I guess. It's kind of a nice way to have sort of a guideline to just kind of compare. Now we used, now look, you can be really strong in a lot of different exercises in different ways.

So we picked the exercises that probably communicate overall strength the best, and I say probably because if you play a particular sport or you want a specific type of strength and some of what we're about to say might not matter at all but generally speaking these exercises in combination kind of paint a relatively overall picture of strength. Well not only that but I mean we these exercises are the exercises that we encourage all of our listeners to get good at and get strong at because they're the biggest bang for your buck in all Pursuit they tend to be the best whether you're trying to get strong leaner

More definition look better. I mean this is yeah. Yeah these these movements I mean the movements that we're talking about if you did only these movements and just got strong stronger in those You're gonna see a significant improvement in all pursuits. Right, right. So let me tell you the exercises first, right? So we picked the squat. This is a very foundational human movement. Bilateral, it's two legs. You're squatting down, squatting up. It's a really good measure of lower body strength but also of back strength and overall stability. Then you have a horizontal press. This is a bench press. This really highlights how strong you are pushing things away

from your body. Then there's a deadlift. This is lifting something off the ground. This is highlighting strength in your hips, the posterior chain, your back. This also highlights your grip strength. We have a vertical press, an overhead press. This is stability in your entire body, of course your arm and shoulder strength, and then we included a body weight exercise. The reason why I did this is whenever we list the big four, inevitably there's someone that's like,

well I'm smaller, I'm lighter, what about me? It's like, well, body weight exercise will be easier for you. On the flip side, you're a big, heavy person, you may lift a lot of weight with this kind of stuff, but then you find body weight exercises to be easier for you. And on the flip side, you're a big, heavy person. You may lift a lot of weight with this kind of stuff, but then you find body weight exercises to be quite difficult. Kind of an equalizer. And lifting and moving your body weight is very functional.

Like if you're really strong at moving your body through space, that translates to the real world and to sports incredibly, incredibly well. So let's start with the strength standards for the squat. And we've divided them into male and female, okay? So, because they're different from male and female. And the categories are decent, good, optimal, advanced, and then athlete, okay?

So decent, and now, this is what I like about this list, is we didn't just give you like this percentage of your body weight, we also gave you a number. In other words, if you're a big, heavy person, percentage of your body weight starts to get way more difficult. You're a 3-270 pound man, squatting two times your body weight becomes a lot more impossible. So there's a number and or a percentage of your body weight. So decent for a man is a 185 pound squat or one time your bodyweight Good 225 or 1.2 times your bodyweight Optimal is 255 or one and a half times your bodyweight advanced is 315 or

1.75 times your bodyweight and an athlete is over 365 or two times your bodyweight By the way your best lifts you guys all went athlete. I'm assuming, I think I know your best squat. Yeah, but it's not, if I went by 365 or above, technically it wasn't two times my body weight, because at that time I was 225. So that'd be 405? Yeah, I was at 425. Oh, okay.

So close, close to it, but not exactly, so I would fall in the advanced athlete for my squat. Deadlift, yes, though, when we get to that. Justin, and for sure you've pressed that. Yeah, yeah, I got up to 500 at some point at the 230, so. Is that two times your body weight? 500? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I should hope so. Exactly. 0.25. 0.25. All right, all right. Got that. You didn't catch that. I know, I think he's like, he's like, no right. Let's cut that. You didn't catch that. I know, I think he's like,

he's like no such thing as salt and so off. He's like, Let me ask you guys this. So let's go through the female first and then I got a question. And then I got a question for you. And then I got a question for you. You're really mad.

Female squat standards, decent 95 pounds or.8 times your body weight. Good is 135 or one time your body weight. Optimal, 185 or 1.3 times your body weight. Advanced, 215 or one and a half time your body weight. Optimal 185 or 1.3 times your body weight. Advanced 215 or one and a half times your body weight. Athlete is 235 or more or 1.75 times your body weight. Okay looking at these numbers you guys and when we train clients, now all of us fitness fanatics, Justin was a college athlete, I was fanatical beyond whatever. Adam was a pro physique competitor.

So I would expect us to be in the kind of advanced athlete level. I've known people, by the way, to crush these numbers. But what about our clients? How do you agree with these numbers? I do. I think you do. They're pretty accurate. They're really accurate.

I'd say most my female clients that train with me for a good period of time, meaning six months or more that have been with me, I could at least get all of their squats up to 185. That was pretty standard. It was definitely unique to get my female clients above 200. So a handful of them. It was special. Yeah. Oh yeah.

If I had a client, if I had a girl that was squatting 200, 205, 225, like she was unique, she was special, that's incredibly impressive. But 185 was pretty, and I would get them below that, like a lot of times they would start off barely being able to squat 100. Or the floor. Yeah, and I could get them all the way up to 185. I could get almost any healthy woman

up to about 115 to 135 pounds, almost any healthy woman. Once they were getting older, then 95 pounds would be kind of where we're at. But you know, looking at these numbers, I would say it's pretty realistic for the average person to either be good or optimal, male or female. I'd say it's pretty realistic for most people. Once you get to the higher levels,

now you're probably throwing in some genetics and fanaticism and the like. And I think, generally speaking, that's a pretty good goal for most people. It's a great goal. It's like, yeah, you should be shooting for that good to optimal range. Yeah. If you're a healthy, you know, 40 year old man and you can squat 255 or you're doing pretty good, or if you're a female, a hundred and five, you're doing great.

Yeah. You're doing really good. Yeah. All right. So next is bench press. Um, Doug, if you could scroll down so we can look at that. good. Yeah. All right. So next is bench press. Doug, if you could scroll down so we could look at that. So with bench press we have for men, decent is 135 or 0.75 times your body weight. Good, 185 or 1 times your body weight. Optimal, 235 or 1.3 times your body weight. Advanced is 275 or 1.5 times your

body weight. Athlete, 315 or 1.75 your body weight. You guys all hit athlete. I'm pretty sure. So did I. Let's go through women and then we'll talk about how realistic these are again. For women, decent is 80 pounds or 0.65 your body weight. Scroll. There we go good is 95 pounds or 0.7 times your body weight Optimal is 115 pounds or 0.85 times your body weight advanced 135 or one time your body weight and an athlete 165 or 1.25 times about it. This is a pretty good pretty good numbers. I would say although More rare for women to hit some of the sure. I was just gonna say that. I was gonna say this one would probably be the most challenging as far as, you know,

like I said, I think I could get most of my female clients the numbers that we have for deadlifting and squatting. Which, okay, this is true though, right? Like, when it comes to muscle development in the lower body, men and women are, as far as their ability to build muscle. I mean, men are stronger, but the difference isn't nearly as high as upper body.

Yeah, there's a huge discrepancy in our upper body. Our lower body, we're relatively the same as far as what we have potential for. Not necessarily like a woman should be able to lift the same. The athlete number for men, 315, I had, in terms of clients, I don't think I ever had a client hit 315.

I had a client hit 275, but that was it. For men? Yes, my strong, strong men were able to do 225 for a single. Women, I had one woman once be able to do 135, and that was it. Most of the women I trained who were strong, like 115 was the number I would hit.

Yeah, 45 on each side. That was a big, huge milestone. That was kind of a goal for most of my clients that wanted to get strong was if if my girls could put the wheels on right there was a big deal like that's a good goal to get there Yeah, so all right deadlifts. Let's talk about the deadlift. So decent for a man 185 pounds or one time to bodyweight good 245 or 1.3 times your bodyweight optimal 300 pounds or 1.65 times your bodyweight advanced 350imal 300 pounds or 1.65 times your body weight. Advanced 350 pounds or two times your body weight. Athlete 405 pounds or 2.25 times their body weight.

I think all of us hit. This is barely made that one. Did you? Yeah. We all hit that one. That was not my best. That for sure is my best lift. My 605.

Well, you're like me in the flip of this, Justin, where I fall into the athlete category if I go by the weight but I go two and a quarter times in the in the squats I wouldn't have made the squat number but I make the the just the total number and I think that's what you are here too right yeah I've done three times my body weight in a deadlift that was the most every time the body weight and then total pounds 605 but that's the one lift I can do that that's you know that's mine yeah it's your bread and butter for sure. Female deadlift standards 135 or one time body weight is decent, good is 185 or 1.3 times

body weight, optimal 215 or 1.65 times body weight, advanced to 65 or two times body weight, athlete 295 or 2.25 times. Look at the difference there with those standards for deadlift and squat. Yes. It's pretty crazy, but it makes a lot of sense. Interesting too, I actually, I had more success getting female clients up to the deadlift. Yes, yes.

So I had more advanced people, so I had quite a few girls that I could get up over. I've had a few to 225. It took the deadlift real quickly, it seemed. Yeah, for sure. 275 was the biggest deadlift I had a female client, I never had a female client deadlift close quickly it seemed. 275 was the biggest deadlift I had a female client deadlift. I never had a female client deadlift close to 300 pounds. Next is the overhead press. So decent for a man 95 pounds or 0.5 times your body weight. Good is 135 or 0.65 times body weight.

Optimal 165 or 0.85 times body weight advanced, 185 or one times body weight, and then athletes 200 pounds, or 1.25 times your body weight. I think we all hit that one. I don't know what the most I've ever overhead pressed before. That's a good question. I don't know if that's always been one that

I shied away going max weight, like the seat. I don't think I've ever, I did some heavy push presses with Justin before where we were. The push press. Yeah. My numbers are a little skewed on that. Cause like, that's kind of what I think of, but yeah. Yeah. Strict pressed.

Yeah. Strict pressed. Oh, my bad. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, but that's also the only time I felt comfortable with like strict pressing really heavy weight like that singles doubles. It's hard. And I've always been weary of doing that because I don't want to arch my back or end up injuring myself. So I've kind of stayed away from doing that.

I wonder where, I know for sure I'm in the advanced. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to. Stick, stirk, press, advanced. But I think push press. That's why I was all proud. And then you said that and I opened the door. Sorry, yeah. Push press, I got some good numbers.

Yeah, I know I've strictly done 185 though. I definitely have strictly 185. Have you hit 315 overhead? 315, oh yeah. Push press. That's crazy. Alright female overhead press standards, decent is 45 pounds or.35 times their body weight.

Good is 65 or.5 times their body weight. Ultimal, 95 pounds or.75 times their body weight. Advanced is 105 pounds or.8 times their body weight. Advanced is 105 pounds or 0.8 times their body weight. Athlete is 120 pounds or 0.9 times their body weight. I think that's pretty good, pretty accurate. Very rarely. I haven't seen much strength in this lift with my female clients.

That's a very rare one. Yeah, I don't know if I've, I'm trying to think if I've peaked over 100 with a female client. I had one do one, I had a couple do 105, but they were both early 30s and very consistent with their work, and they were strong. They were really, really strong.

Never saw more than that for clients. I had some female trainers that could get 125. I don't think I ever saw a female press over one, I know they do, they can, but I don't think I've ever seen that. Yeah, that's impressive. All right, pull-ups. Now we're talking about body weight, so those of do, they can, but I don't think I've ever seen that. That's impressive. All right, pull ups, now we're talking about body weight,

so those of you that are smaller, you're like, all right, when are we getting to the pull ups? What about us, you guys? For a man, decent is three, good is eight, optimal is 12, advanced is 15, athlete is 20. Is three considered decent even, huh? Decent, decent. Average man can't do one.

Is that true? I bet if you pulled the average dude out for a guy, that's in their 30s and 40s, like 40, they wouldn't be able to do one. Really? Yeah. Like a full. Unless they lift.

I didn't realize we've gotten that weak. Yeah, I mean 20 year old dude probably. That's embarrassing. You know, but, yeah, no. Yeah, I didn't know that that would even be considered decent like that. That's interesting, you know, although I can't It's not average right? So they're trying to say it's and but you're right three sounds like it's kind of I mean though to your

earlier point like some some of my friends that lifted real heavy like couldn't do a pull-up cuz they're just huge guys This was an exercise that I sucked at, and then I just practiced, practiced, and I got really, really good, where I could rep out 25 reps. At one point, I remember like 10 was just a crazy challenge for me. Female pull-up standards, one is decent, three is good, optimal's five,

advanced is eight, athlete is 12. That's impressive. A girl that can get over 10 pull-ups is really, really impressive. Might also rare. That's badass. When I first started dating Jessica, this was right out of Cirque du Soleil, when she used to do the silks. Oh, I'm sure. She used to do, oh yeah, she'd do 10 pull-ups is really, really impressive. And also rare. That's badass. When I first started dating Jessica, this was right out of Cirque du Soleil when she used to do the silks.

She used to do, oh yeah, she'd do 10 pull-ups with her legs out in front of her, holding onto the silks, not even a bar, back in those days, which was insane. That's crazy, crazy. I couldn't do that. All right, so let's talk about, okay, so you're listening to this and you're like,

all right, I wanna see if I can get stronger as fast as possible. What are the steps to doing so? I think it's important for people to understand that although muscle size, how hard the muscles contract play a role in strength for sure, bigger muscles, you know, on the same person will lift more than the smaller muscles will, or if that muscle is smaller. But a lot of people don't realize that strength is a skill as well.

or if that muscle's smaller. But a lot of people don't realize that strength is a skill as well. And one of the fastest ways to get stronger is to practice whatever that lift is or that exercise is you wanna get good at frequently. Yes. Practice it often, often, often. Like in other words, if you wanna get better

at the bench press and normally when you work out, you hit chest on Mondays and Thursdays, you do a bunch of exercises, if you stop doing that, part of your workout, if you stop doing chest on Mondays and Thursdays and all you did was five days a week you bench pressed, you did three sets of bench press, varying degrees of intensity. It's just load management, yeah, and intensity management. If you get that down perfect and you keep practicing it where you're not overwhelming yourself, you're recovering fully, you're noting yourself. Man, you get strong.

Fast. I mean, this applies to all exercises, but this becomes a paramount to compound lifts. And meaning when you have multiple joints involved in a movement, multiple joints also take multiple muscles to move that one joint. So you have a symphony of muscles that all need to work together in order to perform a movement. That's why this becomes such a big deal to practice this. It's not as simple as like, oh, just flex your elbow and you get your, I can curl and work my bicep.

Complexity. Yeah, there's a lot of complexity to all of these movements and so much of the skill of getting better and stronger at them is the practicing part. There was a period there where there was this popular, and it was back in the, I think it was when bodybuilding.com was really popular on the internet and had all these forums, and there was this popular workout on these forums, and it was the squat everyday program.

Remember that? And back then, the most prevalent theory around exercise was kind of this bodybuilding approach, hit your legs once a week or whatever. And this approach came out, squat every day. Now what they did is they did a good job of managing the load. Some days were hard, some days were easy, some days were light but faster. And so you're managing the intensity. You can't go hard every single day. But you're practicing squat. And people were like, I added 50 pounds to my squat, I added 70 pounds to my squat, I added 30 pounds to my squat,

and people were so blown away. Now what happened was a lot of people took that too far, and they did everything all the time, and then burnt themselves out. So this works really well when it's one lift. If you do all the lifts like this all the time, probably gonna be too hard. I just did a little clip on the series

that I'm shooting right now, and I know you guys have experienced this too. Deadlifting for me is the place I see it the most, and I don't know if that has something to do with that's one of my stronger lifts or not, but I'll do a set of eight reps, and between each rep, I'm thinking about my technique of it. And there is a significant difference in when my

technique is flawless versus just off of perfect. I mean, it makes the weight feel half the way. It's like that crazy of a difference of just loading the hips, engaging them correctly, everything stiff like it's supposed to, and then it fires just the right clicks. And then all sudden that bar moves up, like there's no weight on it. And then just me slightly being off, just so slightly that nobody else would even be able to tell. The average person looking at me, be like, oh, that was perfect too.

They have no idea. But you can feel it. But I can feel it. And all of a sudden the weight feels twice. I mean, that's how much of a difference the practicing the technique. That's part of it, right? Cause if you were to take like a long stick

and I were to hold one end of it and you put 10 pounds in the middle of it, it would feel very different than if you moved 10 pounds six inches out to the end. Feel much heavier. This is what happens with your technique. If you're off a little bit, the efficiency of the muscle contraction- It's physics. Yeah, you lose 5% of your strength.

You can even lose more than that. Performance leaks. By being off those performance leaks. Then also, you mentioned the symphony of the muscles working together. I like to think of, just the example I like to think of is the game of tug of war. Remember that when people would get on both sides and you pull? And what you realize is the team that typically wins is the team that knows how to pull at the same time. Like they'll hold, pull together, hold, pull together.

Versus the other side where just everybody's trying to pull as hard as they can and some are pulling hard, some are resting or whatever it's that it's that working together yes and then lastly the central nervous system the more you practice a movement the harder it fires the better if the more efficient it becomes so the central nervous system which communicates to the muscles which tells them how hard to contract and by way, your central nervous system is never telling your muscles to contract to the full capacity. It's very rare. And the reason is the risk of injuries. There's like 10%, 15, some people 30%. Well, that's the limit. That's always the

limiter. And that's why you practice it more often. You're teaching your central nervous system that you have all the checks and balances in place. You're able to properly stabilize and protect around the joints and so it recognizes that now it delivers more force. Yes, in fact this is where you heal the story of the person you know the mom will save their kid by lifting the car something that was imperceptible. It's because under extreme duress the central nervous system shuts off the safeguards and says go for it if you hurt yourself or whatever. This is obviously a stressful situation. So in other words, practice often,

your CNS learns how to fire harder and you just get stronger. Now I love that you ordered these like this because obviously it starts with sending the signal, practicing as often as possible. That in itself will make a difference for people regardless, right? If you don't practice it and you do start to practice it, you'll see improvement no matter what else you do.

But the very next, the most important thing, in my opinion, that you want to do if you are going to get stronger, build as much muscle as possible, is you've got to hit those protein targets. You're sending a loud signal by practicing these incredible lifts, but if you do not give

it the building blocks to go to work and build, you're just not going to. Yes, yes. High protein in terms of strength and muscle hypertrophy is so strongly connected to muscle growth. It's one of the most consistent things that you see in diet. So diet studies are often challenging because it's hard to control them. There tends to be conflicting messages. What's healthy? What's not healthy? This works for some people.

But high protein in every study that's done on strength up to a certain point. Right? So you can just eat, eat, eat, eat, and then it's past a certain point and not going to get any benefit, but it gets pretty high. Like eating a gram of protein per pound of body weight is right around the limit. you can just eat, eat, eat, and then it's past a certain point and not gonna get any benefit, but it gets pretty high. Eating a gram of protein per pound of body weight is right around the limit. That's a lot of protein.

Most people listening, watching this, do not eat their body weight in grams of protein day in and day out. They may do it here and there, but they almost inevitably don't do it on a consistent basis. But if you did, the data's clear. You will do nothing else, you just do that,

you'll get stronger, it makes that big of a difference. And it's in the consistency behind it too, because I think the other part is people will do it here and there, and then they'll have, so they'll do it four days out of the week and then three days out of the week, they're in a deficit or they're missing their protein intake. So it can't be one of those things where like,

oh yeah, I'm pretty good about hitting my protein. It's gotta be something that you are, if we're trying to build as much muscle as possible, it's gotta be one of those staple things that like I cannot miss that protein. And you said consistent, the body doesn't have really a good storage mechanism for amino acids.

In other words, fat, your body has a great way of storing energy and body fat. Your body can store a decent amount of carbohydrates in the form of glycogen, but muscle is where you have your protein in your body and your body doesn't want to eat away itself. So, so you can go, you know, going without hitting those protein targets for a couple of days makes a difference. That's why it's so important to be consistent.

All right. Next is to eat in a calorie surplus, meaning you want to eat more than the more calories in your burning. And now this is the reason for this is first off, a higher calorie diet tends to contribute to a stronger central nervous system. One of the ways the body adapts to a lower calorie diet is by weakening most of its signaling. Okay.

One of those essential nervous system. This is why, one of the reasons why you'll be low energy when you're low calorie. So even if you're even just bumping your calories alone tends to make you a little bit stronger with nothing else changing, but this is imperative because you need to feed the strength gains and the muscle gains. You have to have extra calories to do so. Otherwise you'll kind of stay the same.

Well, you, your body is in one or two things always. It is either anabolic or it is catabolic, always. It's never somewhere in the middle. It is always one or the other. And in order for it to be anabolic, we have to be in a surplus. We've got to be in a caloric surplus. Otherwise, it's catabolic, which means it's breaking down.

And the last thing we wanted to do is break down, pare down, lose muscle. If your goal is to build muscle, get stronger, we want to be sending that anabolic signal as much as possible. A calorie surplus is the way we do that. That's it. And lastly, get eight hours of sleep every single night.

There's a few reasons why this is important. One, is it optimizes your hormones. If you sleep, great. your hormones tend to organize them themselves in a way that is pro muscle anti-fat. It's, it's, it's improving your performance and your strength. It's not so worried about storing calories. Poor sleep does the opposite. Poor sleep contributes to muscle loss, contributes to fat storage, but you

also have the recovery aspect of it. The majority of the muscle repair and adaptation that happens, happens when you sleep. Some of it happens during the day too, don't get me wrong, but when you sleep it's turbocharged. This is when things are really starting to build. And then lastly, your central nervous system. This is how powerful in effect sleep has

on your central nervous system. Tonight, you want to test this out, have crappy sleep tonight, go work out, see how strong you are. One night. You didn't lose muscle in one night. Here's what happened. Your central nervous system is weak. It's fried. It's fried from one night of bad sleep. You find out how crucial it is once you get to the gym, that's for sure. This has to be a consistent one as well. By the way, you want to add to this, that means you need to go to bed eight and a half hours before you want to wake up.

So you give yourself some leeway to go to sleep, and then go to bed and wake up at the same time every day because if you get eight hours every night, but you go to bed late Friday, wake up late Saturday, so by the time you get to Monday, you have jet lag, and that also contributes to the, you know, that- Everything is just gonna be fighting against you. Like your energy, your hormones imbalanced,

and just your overall, like, what we can draw from in your performance is gonna be really low. Well, I think that's why this is so important. Like, okay, sleep is always important. You're always gonna hear that in the list of things that you should do. But when you are pushing the boundaries,

you are trying to gain muscle, gain strength. It's different than like, oh, trying to maintain being healthy or maintain like it's you are you're pushing intensity levels, you're stretching your body's abilities and capacity. The importance of recovery and sleep at that point becomes paramount. It's always important, but it becomes paramount when you are trying to stretch your capacity, grow and build. If you're not sleeping, you could have the best workout

program in the world, you could even hit your protein intake like you're supposed to, but if you're fried and you're not getting rest and recovery, the body will not recover and it will not build and it will not adapt. If that intensity goes up, you gotta match that with your recovery. That's right, all right, so we have some questions, Doug, from listeners.

Yeah, we do. The first one is, how realistic is it that I can reach advanced levels of strength? I'm going to create an avatar of a person that would have the potential to hit those advanced or athlete levels of strength. I would say you're probably under the age of 45, so between the ages of let's say 25 and 45, no major injuries and you've been working out consistently for like three to five years at least and you have a good diet. Then I'd say a decent chunk of people can probably hit those advanced to athlete levels.

Otherwise, it can be more difficult. Once you start to get to 50s, 60s, or if you have had major injuries, or like I've been working out for six months, then it becomes unrealistic. Oh, I would make the argument, advanced, I would make the argument everybody. Athlete is, you're talking about what you're saying.

You need to be healthy, you gotta be in a certain range, level, you've been lifting for a while. But I don't know, I feel like, I mean, when we went through those categories, I feel like there was no category in there that I haven't been able to train a client, which I feel like I've trained all different types of people. It was like a peak level of client

in terms of where you could get them, from what I saw in terms of those trainers. I had a lot of clients that were over 55. Yes, that's true, you trained more, you were definitely more advanced-age, and so maybe that's over 55. Yes, that's true. You trained more. You were definitely more advanced age. And so maybe that's a little unrealistic for somebody that's pretty old, deconditioned. Like 25 to 45, I think.

Oh, yeah. Most people, the advanced is a good goal, no matter what. Like, I think it's a good goal to have. And it's realistic expecting somebody in advanced age, chronic issues, stuff going on like okay, getting the advanced athlete, you're probably targeting more optimal, which will still be phenomenal. The next question is, I just want to build muscle.

Is strength still important? Super. It's just the most important, that's all. Yeah, they just kind of go together. Strength is very strongly connected and correlated to muscle. It doesn't guarantee muscle gain but if it keeps getting stronger it guarantees muscle gain. Like you add 50 pounds to lifts you've got more muscle. It's just the way it works. I do think okay this is kind of a bit of a good or nuanced question because there is a part like okay so for a very

long period of time I didn't care about strength. I really didn't care how much weight I was lifting in the bar. Really was not a focus of mine. In fact I didn't try PR stuff until I was damn near 30 years old and I built a pretty good physique so it's not like you can't build a but I was getting stronger right? So I guess you can have a goal of, you don't, you don't, you're not, uh, obsessed with getting a higher bench or higher. It's not max, max strength.

Yeah. You're just like, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm challenging myself through the program, but I'm not, I'm not focused just on the weight on the bar. Like there's a lot of ways for you to progressively overload besides just adding. I would say this becomes most important in the fruit first three years of training. in the first three years of training.

The first three years of training, strength is the most important thing to chase because it's going to give you everything. After that, then once you get to it, you get really strong and whatnot, then you could change ways of progressive overloading with technique and feel and focus and ranges of motion and stuff like that because obviously you can't get strong forever. Yeah, you're thinking more longevity and also risk reward at that point too. If you can establish that strength focus in the beginning,

like you can build so much more off of that versus the other way around. Totally. Next question is, what are the best strength supplements? So barring protein powders to help you hit those protein targets and let's say a nutrient that you may be deficient in, so besides those because they'll make a big difference. You're not hitting a protein targets, you throw a protein shake in that makes you hit those targets. Big deal, that's not a

supplement. Besides that, the one supplement that will raise your strength immediately is caffeine. Now this is study after study after study. If you perform a lift and you've had an appropriate amount of caffeine for your body, some people are too sensitive to do this, but most people, you'll see a strength gain immediately. It just works. Second, it takes a little longer for it to work, but it's also quite consistent, it's creatine. Creatine will add, in my experience, for pretty much every client ever trained,

after about one or two weeks, they all added about five pounds or two reps to pretty much every lift. Was that like the number? Two reps was pretty standard. I just want to reiterate what you started with, because in my experience, people just skipped the essential thing and it goes right to like, oh, what are the performance ones, the creatine or the caffeine?

You're not hitting your protein, who cares? And not only that, but I don't think I've ever trained a client that wasn't deficient in iron, vitamin D, magnesium, some of these other essential things, essential micronutrients that your body needs. And I just don't think we highlight this enough in strength and bodybuilding community that supplementing for what your body needs first, which by the way is way cheaper. So finding out, taking, getting your blood work done, finding out where you potentially are lacking and then supplementing for what your body needs. The it's amazing how much more optimally your body will build muscle,

burn body fat and build strength. When you get what your body needs first, then we can talk about, Oh, creatine is awesome. Oh, caffeine could be awesome. Oh, like those other supplements, but I can't stress enough the importance of doing that first, uh, before you even consider doing other supplements because that's a must. 100%, all right, so here's what we did, right? So we have two workout programs

that are ideal for building strength. Like if you wanna get stronger, the two programs that we have that are the best for that are MAPS Power Lift, which focuses on the power lifts, bench, deadliftlift and squat and then Maps strong which gets you stronger at the kinds of lifts that strongman competitors train in. So those two programs right there if you were to get them together without what I'm about to say without the discount would be almost

$300 but right now if you go to mindpumpmedia.com forward slash power dash bundle, you can get both of those together. For total $79.99. So instead of 300 bucks, it's right around $80. So $79.99, that's 73% off. Again it's mindpumpmedia.com forward slash power dash bundle that gets you map strong and mass power lift. Also if you want to find us on Instagram come look for us Justin is that mind pump Justin I'm at mind pump to Stefano and Adam is

that mind pump Adam. Thank you for listening to mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, 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 Super Bundle is like having

Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump. Okay, it's official. We are very much in the final sprint to election day. And face it, between debates, polling releases, even court appearances, it can feel exhausting, even impossible to keep up with. I'm Brad Milky. I'm the host of Start Here, the daily podcast

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