Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 264: The Art & Science of Designing Workout Programs aka PROGRAMMING

Episode Date: March 31, 2016

The average workout program that is being sold today is no more than a bunch of exercises thrown together to make you FEEL like something is happening without producing any results. Then to add insult to injury, these crap program purveyors pitch you on expensive supplements that they claim make the difference between success and failure in the gym. Here's the fact: Your workout (combined with a healthy diet and sufficient rest) is the KEY factor that determines if you will build any significant muscle or not. Supplements, in spite of all the hype and attention, play a very small role (possibly unmeasurable) in how your body adapts and builds. So why all this focus on supplements? Because they are a huge money maker and play into peoples' frustration and desire for the quick fix. If you want gains you must put your focus on how your workouts are designed and executed, not on supplements. Excellent workout design, also known as workout programming, is not an easy task and requires a very high degree of expertise and experience. Sal, Adam & Justin are often asked what makes an expertly programmed workout and why the MAPS programs work so well. You will soon learn why this is not a simple question to answer. Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Learn more about Mind Pump at www.mindpumpmedia.com

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind up, mind up, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Mine pump is on! My pump! Hey, listen! Hey, listeners, you can find us at Mind Pump Radio on Instagram. You can find me, Salda Stefano, at Mind Pump Sal.

You can find Mr. Adam Schaefer at Mind Pump Adam, and you can find Justin Andrews at Mind Pump Justin. Or just sexy motherfucker. Sexy motherfucker, that's a... I think it is this hashtag. That's his x-rated site. Yes. I show lots of skin.

Glutes of the gods. Mm. Is it? By the way, you did well. What is that? Why? It's like a reputation? I know.

Like you mentioned it twice and now I've said and people want to see my glutes. Everybody wants to see his eyes. What is up with that? Well, it's got a good Dunk of Dunk. You do have a, okay, so here's the, I got a little embarrassed. The perfect words came in my mind. You know what it is? It's not a badunk of Dunk, it's not a great, it's not a round butt, it's a, it's majestic.

Majestic. Majestic. Majestic. What it is, it's not a bedunk or dunk, it's not a grape, it's not a round butt, so I said, it's majestic. It's majestic. It's majestic. Well, I'll get Doug to make me some sweatpants and say that. But majestic. Hey, did I, I was noticing the reviews, I was, you know, I was like, I was having a down day the other day.

So I start reading reviews, always makes me feel better about myself. And I think I came across, I think I came across a three star somewhere in there. Somebody we had a no the four star recent like time out foul language. So so we have like 400 something reviews. And I think there's only like five better not five star. Yeah, there's five that are not five star.

So people don't like to ever crossfit to them. Crossfit people that reviewed this way back when. Well, in their defense, if you train and you do the workout of the day, CrossFit style on a regular basis, you do reduce your brain's capacity to think properly. So you're gonna put a bad review. Traumatic brain injuries.

No, but the one you're talking about, the guys that are out on the hood is a guy girl. Like great show, good information. If you could get through all the foul language, just like that. I really feel like. We don't know who it is, guy girl. Like great show, good information. If you could get through all the foul language, just like that. I really feel like- We don't custom that. Well, you know what though, if you do-

It's conversational cussing, right? No, there's play- Is that a thing? I mean, I believe that there's places for it. Yeah. We might have abuse- We're not screwing around and being like, Oh, like gosh, Darney.

Yeah, I mean, it just doesn't, I can't do that. Please, can you do that for an episode? Colley G. Now, I mean, the worst, worst word we've ever said on the show is Kant. That's the worst word. Well, it's not that. I mean, is it bad? It's a word. It's not for that.

Is it, is it that bad? America is bad. It's about as bad. We use the F word and the C word. It doesn't get worse than that. It doesn't. Well, what does? I guess you're right.

Yeah. Well, mine pumps the best at what it does, whatever we decided to do. You know, we're the best at cussing. We're going to go on it. We're going hardcore in the season. I hadn't seen that one though, so I did come across that.

The rest though a bit. I mean, it's so great. It's so neat to watch, or watch, listen, or read the reviews. I think we had a pretty good flood this last week or so. Yeah, Doug said like 15 or so. 14, 15. Yeah, something like that.

So there's some really good ones. That's good. A lot of people actually still. And people are winning t-shirts for them. Yeah. If you leave a good review, it doesn't have to be funny, by the way. I see a lot of people trying to make them real funny, which is great. But it doesn't have to be funny.

It just has to be, it has to touch us. Yeah. And appropriately. If we feel inappropriately touched in places. No, no, I'm serious. Now there's some very heartfelt ones. You know about my stomach. And those ones we like those a lot too.

Those are really good. And then there's reviews on there that try to sell our programs. And I know they're trying to get a t-shirt. That's it. Like, oh, you got to buy maps. It's the bed. Oh, you slide.

I'm like, there's an extra effort. Yeah. That's smart. That's smart now. It's not. I feel like, oh, you slide. I'm like, there's an extra effort. Yeah. Oh, that's smart. That's smart. That's close. I feel like we should, you know. It is smart. So, I paid attention.

So, dude, I got to share with you guys. This is a gentleman. You guys are going to know I'm talking about it as soon as I tell you. This is the guy that's doing our social media advertising that we tested. That we're testing. Did we tell everybody that? Did we share that with everybody that what's going on? Let's talk about this.

No, bring it. Yeah, so we go ahead. Yeah, okay, so this is how this went down. Um, mind pump, obviously, if you've been with us for a long time, you've probably seen the growth and everything that's happened. And 99.9% of that is purely organic. It's been from you guys that have enjoyed the material. It's worth a mile. Grass fed or yeah.

Yeah. And sharing it with friends, family, whatever, which has been, it's been awesome. And, but at this point now, we're trying to ramp things up. It is, this is a business that we've been building since day one. So obviously, volume's important. And, you know, now that the programs are all there,

the websites all built, like we were waiting for. So everything's kind of come together. Now it's time to kind of venture out into marketing and advertising yourself. But here's the thing about all of us is we've been really hesitant to do it because we're not cheesy like that. We don't want, we talk a lot of shit about a lot of the gimmicks that are out there and fitness. So we've been in this really weird predicament because there really isn't anybody that market themselves without doing that. It's always. Yeah. And so is clickbait. that. It's always, it's always clickbait.

Yeah, it's always very, very clickbait cheesy and the opposite of what we preach. And so I thought. 100% of formula, but it's just plug in, in play. So I've got this guy that I know, and I know him through orange theory, because he does all their marketing and stuff, and he's been doing that.

And he does it for, I think he does it for like 30 or 50 facilities, then has been very successful with him. He's been trying to get me to allow him to help us for a very long time. And I said, you know, bro, I've already had two different companies before that I hired with previous companies. I'm not really impressed with these companies that like your no fans, you know, and with the company that you've started because I kind of know how to do that. I did it on my own. I wasn't like some famous guy on TV,

and then I just had all those followers following the social media. I was pretty much nobody, and I started this journey, and I knew some of the things that I needed to do in order to get some grab some attention, and it grew to where it's at. So, but it takes a lot of work and effort towards that, and I get it, I understand it.

The companies that I tried to hire before had all this shit that they tried to, I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know that already. I just haven't been putting their work out. So that's, I'm hiring you just to tell me that I need to do that anyways. Well, fuck, I already know I need to do that. I need someone to do this. So, yeah, short story long, I know here is I tell,

I tell this guy, okay, well, I tell you what, how he does it, right? I'll let you come on board and give you a month with the boys introduce him over here to the boys and say, hey, I've got this guy who's got a successful social media business and he says he can help us out. We'll throw him some money and see what he can do. So we set him off to do this. I'm gonna fuck her made some mistake. And by the way, too, Sal, the goodness of hearts, said, hey, you know what I want to do for him? If he's doing stuff for us, he's working hard. Well, the way I look at it is

this. Sal's a soldier. If someone's gonna come in and work with us, then I want them to get the experience of what we stand for. So I offered to train this guy for free twice a week, personally. Now, my current going rate for personal training, and I don't really have any openings, but if I did, it would be about $200 an hour. So I'm giving him $400 worth of service

every single week for free. This fucking dude man, let me tell you, uh, it shows up either 15 minutes late, doesn't show up, or in jeans. Dude, today check this out. So this fucking dude, so I'm sitting there and I'm like, if he doesn't come in today, then I'm gonna drop kick him next time I see him. Well, he did show up. He showed about 10 minutes late, which is early for him. Walks in in jeans. No, no, no workout bag or anything. Oh, bro, bro. I forgot my, I forgot my pants. But you know what? Can we just work out chest today? Which is like, you might as well fucking say something about my mom. So bro, Nicole. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just gonna. Let's just work chest like no, no, no, no, no.

It doesn't work that way. I don't train people shitty. Okay, even if you want me to train you shitty, I'm not gonna do that. So I take him to the squat rat because we're gonna start squats because that's a great fucking exercise. And he's squatting in jeans, which is funny. And I'm looking at him and I'm listening to his voice.

I'm like, you don't sound so good. Oh yeah, I got a really bad cold. I'm like, how bad? He's like, oh, I'm on antibiotics. Bro, I looked at him and said, get the fuck out of my chin right now. Like, get the fuck out of my chin right now. Like, get the fuck out of my chin. Well, the first red flag, the first red flag that I see right away.

And this is the issue. So if you guys have seen any of this marketing hit Instagram or Facebook, and you've seen it come out in the last 30 days or so, that's what it's from. It's from that. And here's the deal. When he comes in and he does some of that, that just shows me that he probably hasn't listened to any mind. Yeah. How you going to sell my shit or promote us if you don't fucking know us a or b take

seriously that I'm offering to train you because the dude said he wants to get in shape. He wants to work out. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I got clients that like would love those times. People who've been with me for a long time. And I'm saying? Yeah, I got clients that would love those times. People who've been with me for a long time and I'm like, no, I'll give them to him. We're trying to build this thing, you know, here. Motherfucker comes in, sick as hell in his jeans, wants to just hit chest.

No, it's so funny when I feel like I'm confined in a box. Like I instantly get that feeling. So you guys saw that is like me when I was starting to post, like I started posting more inappropriate stuff purposely I put that one out there with the Suppository and the you know and the little meow noise and he was just like what the hell is this Getting all mad like I should take that down. I'm like no, hey man That's a stop here's a deal if you're change, if you're gonna work with my pump,

you have to understand that we're gonna break every rule. Yeah, there's rule. What? We're breaking every single rule. We're doing everything the wrong way. It's just like, it's just like, sorry, I can't, corporate it out. It's just like these sublimit companies that come after us.

Don't come off, don't call us, don't email us, don't do all this stuff and stroke us off about how great we are when you've never even listen the fucking show It's obvious because when you ask when you do shit like that We could see right through because he would know better if he would if he listened to the show Then he would know that that's what it's all about the stuff that Justin Post is right in line with the our personalities What we talk about so why the fuck will we want a market totally different? Why would we want a market to a whole different group of people that are not going to be interested

in the world? Don't be the ones that come on and give us a review. Like, well, it was good information, but oh my god, they swear. Actually, you know what, that's crazy. That's crazy. I wonder if that's where that came from. That would make more sense, right?

One of those people. Yeah, like some random person that got hit by his marketing and stuff. Yeah, we snuck that in on him Well, maybe maybe one day we'll release a podcast with no bad words Yeah, so kids can listen just just to challenge us. Just yeah, oh my god That would be so awesome. It'll be 10 minutes long. Oh, yeah, till then till then Plan to fire the motherfucker. So I'm gonna do that for sure and he doesn't listen to the show Yeah, it's all right guys you guys know how hilarious is that so you guys can all chuckle right now the motherfucker so I'm gonna do that for sure. And he doesn't listen to the show so he's not gonna know. Yeah, it's all right guys, you guys know how hilarious is that.

So you guys can all chuckle right now. This is gonna get aired. He still has a job with us. This is an experiment. This is our experiment. But you guys get to know that his ass is gonna get fired within probably. See, I kind of feel bad.

We have no PR person yet. Why do you feel bad? Because, because, bro, he tried to have to be the yin to your yang. Oh, because I'm the dick. You're massive, you're a massive cock and I have to, he had to be the end your yang because I'm the dick you're massive you're a massive clock and I have to I have to be the balls you know what I'm saying you have softened that I got a soft to I got to be the sensitive part to erect right now I keep trying to tell you guys when I it's gonna be when I fire somebody it I'm not you have to have the mentality when you're gonna fire somebody like in your mind you're a dick but then you deliver it differently

you know I'm saying? It's like, what is that? What I say, Doug's the shit sandwich. No, the iron fist with the velvet glove. You know what I'm saying? So he's gonna get the iron fist. Yeah, he's gonna get the iron fist with the velvet glove. In my head, I'm punching right in the fucking face,

but I'm gonna deliver it really soft. But then you're gonna comfort him with the velvet glove. It's kind of like a brain-engineable. It gets brain damage, but it's like, oh, yeah, he doesn't know. No, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna help him out. It's gonna be educational for him.

So he'll hopefully learn from this situation. You are very generous with your education. Yeah, that's nice. Very nice of you. Speaking of educational, we should probably talk about fitness. I got an idea. I got a great idea.

Education. Education. I want to talk about a subject, we're getting a lot of questions about programming and what that means and what do you guys mean when you talk about programming and what goes into programming. And I thought that would make an excellent episode because of all the things of all the things that you get from an expert trainer, of all the knowledge or whatever, the most valuable thing you'll ever get from an expert trainer is what's called programming. And programming is like it is in the computer world. This is somebody that can plug in exercises and the way to do the exercises and when to do them in the order and all those different things. All the different variables. All the different variables.

All those variables and plug them in into a program that is designed to help you according to your goal, your body, whatever. That's probably all the experience that I have, I can speak for myself as a personal trainer. That's where most of it goes because the other stuff once you learn, you kind of know, but programming takes a long time to learn. I mean, I think now I'm much more of an expert programmer than I was even five years ago. You know, I've been in this business for 18 years.

So. Well, and God, how am I gonna say this, without pissing Doug off here? Oh, well, there we go. Yeah, Doug doesn't like when I give up like, you see they're gonna talk about heroin? No, no, no, no, no. Doug doesn't like when I give up like you see they're gonna talk about heroin. No, no, no, no. He doesn't like when I give up information about what we have coming on.

He likes to surprise everybody with all our stuff, but without giving away too much information. Let's put it just bleep it out. Yeah, right. He is the producer. Hey, what happened to that 10-minute statement when I was going into detail with the business? So he puts a quad noise. Wow. in the middle of the same age when I was going into detail with a business. So he puts a qua noise. Programming is so, so fucking crazy. And there is so much to it.

And it is by far the most challenging piece to delivering that through what we are doing right now. And I want, at least this is me. And I, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong or you guys disagree. I 100% believe that not only does it take all of what we try and deliver on this podcast, it takes the forum that we utilize and it takes all of our maps programs. Not one of them I would consider is a full program design if that makes sense. It is a piece of the entire pie and you guys it's not finished.

There's in in fact, the final liver without giving away. That's why we have maps and a ball like maps for formats. And then the next ones that are going to be. Yeah. And so the final piece to all of this, and that's why I know Justin was kind of not wanting to get into this yet because it is there's a lot to this. The final piece is going to be basically teaching you how to utilize maps. You have all these maps, and then the program designing piece will become the very last piece, which is now how do you utilize all these tools that we've taught you? How do you use for yourself, but you know, for other people. If you were a trainer and you're

trying to, exactly, if you're a trainer and you're trying to train a client that has all kinds of different situations, all types of different goals, maybe deviations going on with their body, there is a lot that goes into program design that you can't just simply say like, oh, you know, the three of us we got together and we started just like, okay, this is going to be a perfect program for this. Like, no, we not only, we not only do we rip out what we think is a great fucking program, but we also see all the evolution to it that is necessary for it to be a complete program. There's a few components really far into the future. Yes.

And there's a few components in proper programming like, you know, when you enroll in one of our programs, for example, there's a sample workout with exercises, tempos, reps and stuff you should aim for, but that's not all the programming. That's a sample of how to utilize the programming. The programming is in the concepts, the phases, how you apply those exercises, the speed at which you do them, in order to achieve a particular goal for that particular phase, whether it be strength or agility or power or whatever. All while taking in consideration the person that's going through this and how they're feeling, how exhausted they might be in this portion of it, backing it down, ramping it back up,

adding other new components that we want them to stimulate other things and address like imbalances. So anyway. Good programming is 100% missing in routines that are sold either online or on TV. 100% missing. There is no programming. No, yeah. This is the goal.

This is what they do with workouts. When you buy a workout plan, the goal is make them sweat, make them soar, make them burn calories. That's it. I can program a workout that does all those three things. If you, if you, they would be fun. I know it would be fun.

You could do that stone with my eyes. You could give me a lot of me and I could do that. You could just like throw out the most crazy like stupid workout. We could just like wrap it off right now and be like, everybody try this. Easily, easily. You know what, maybe we'll do it for free as a fun.

That's what I was thinking. It's like a freaking everywhere. It'd be funny. It'd be fun to just do that. Okay, it's funny that we're going this direction. I had no idea we're going to talk about this. I was just going to do this post, which now I'm inspired to do it to get this out there before this releases was to do a post because I was sitting down, I was walking on the treadmill when I start off.

So I walk on the treadmill for 10 to 30 minutes, whatever my day is, whatever day it is, right? And I'm walking. And you better believe if you're in my gym or the gym that I happen to be in and you're a trainer, I watch you. I watch everything you do. I love to people watch already. I really like to watch trainers.

Because that's all I watch. Well, yeah, because for my, you know, 10 years of my career, I trained and developed trainers. So I'm always, I've got that ingrained in me to watch somebody and critique him. And when I say critique, I'm not like picking them apart. Like, oh, that's snow. No, no, let's be honest.

You're also looking to potentially learn something. Absolutely. I've learned from many trainers. And that's where it came from originally, because I would teach trainers to watch other trainers and pick up this. Now, that being said, the number one issue I have with literally like 90% of the trainers that I see in facilities

is they all have the very similar mission, which is and they all and it's funny when you go to a facility, they're all in it like, you know, there's there's a competition amongst all of them on who can fucking break their client off. It's like all this circuit training bullshit and I all I look at it and I go like, dude, are you guys stupid or what? I mean curves didn't last that long. Didn't you know why? I mean, that's the same concept that you're doing right now. Right. And to be clear, there's nothing wrong with circuit training. There's a place for it. That's right. It's a code. You know, think of your exercises and your workouts and how you do them and the way you use them and the order you put them in. All the variables at the same level.

Right. It's a code. And circuit training is a code, and you plug in that code into a program to achieve a desired result. But they're just using the same code for everything because they're just trying to get people sore, beat them up, make them sweat, and that's it. Because in the short term, here's what happens in the short term.

A client and same thing with programs online or on TV. A person does it one time, oh my God, that kick my ass, great workout. So they're only, they're looking for the short term. One of the reasons why we started the forum, the private forum was because we understood that we would need to educate people because they would start this program and be like,

this is way different from anything I've ever done. And we knew it would take- I know if I'm doing this right. Right, right. And we knew it would take a few weeks before they start going, oh shit, this is awesome. You see what I'm saying? But. Right, right. And we knew it would take a few weeks before they start going, oh shit, this is awesome. Yeah. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah. But when it comes to programming, you have to know how to use those codes and to plug them in. And the variables are ridiculous. Look, here's one simple variable. Let's just talk about what you just started to talk about. Maps and a ball. Right.

And the whole reason why you went away from a body parts split to a full body. Right. That's, there's like brilliant program design right there. Now does it mean that you can't do a, a, a bros split and see results? No. And why, why would Sal go in that direction? Because in our experience of all the years that we've been training and what we do know is that we've had thousands of clients and we started to realize like, holy shit, like

most our clients aren't like some bodybuilding pro guy who's in the gym two to three hours a day, seven days a week and can split up all his body parts and do that. No, your audience. Exactly. And we, what we realize was most people get to the gym at best three to five, maybe six times per week. That's the average person.

So how do we, how do we give that person maximum results, but also do it in a manner that their body doesn't adapt to it and they don't see progression anymore. We want it to adapt and then send them on to the next phase and then adapt and then send them on the next phase, which is well, and beyond that, even beside that, if you are that bodybuilder, if you are that person that's super advanced, you could use the same code, modify it to your experience level. And boom, you're still going to destroy your body part split because with the body part split, you're missing one key component of programming or you at least are not utilizing it, which is frequency.

You're really missing frequency, which is if we were to look at all the codes that go into programming, your big major, like big block ones are intensity, right, how hard you work out, duration, how long your workout is, that one workout, or the last one, which is frequency, how often you hit a body part. And when you look at most muscle building, quote unquote, muscle building or fat, lost hip workouts now, they are, they do real hard workouts, they work them out, you unquote, muscle building, fat, lost hip workouts now, they do real hard workouts, they work them out for an hour,

and the frequency is like they fucking forgot about it. Now that's not to mention the lack of program that goes into each workout, you know what I'm saying? Think about the, and here's a deal. The truth is programming a body part split workout is a lot easier. Today's biceps, well, that's easy. I can do these exercises, I'm gonna start with my barbell ones and I'm gonna end off with my cable ones. a body part split workout is a lot easier. Today's biceps, well, that's easy.

I can do these exercises, I'm gonna start with my barbell ones and I'm gonna end off with my cable ones. There's your program for bicep day. Now, I'm gonna do a full body workout. Well now there's a lot of things to take into consideration. For example, secondary muscles that are having to kick in. And how I'm gonna work, and then you have to consider the next workout because again, you're working out

so frequently, so like today, I'll give you an example. Today, if I do a front squats for my legs, I might do back squats the next workout. That means today, if I do good mornings, I'm going to go light. I'm going to go light on my good mornings and I'm going to focus on a good stretch because I know back squats are typically heavy and it's a very heavy posterior chain load. And then I know after that workout where I'm doing heavy squats, I'm okay now. My lower back is probably not as hammered after the good mornings and stretches. I got my heavy squats.

I think I could deadlift now the following workout. And that's just giving you an example of how you would look at programming and putting things in order because there's a lot of variables that go into it. There's a huge amount of variables. Oh, yeah. And then also, you know, from the performance side, like I have I want to address also like specifically like not necessarily putting you in a corrective phase, but address things that could potentially be disruptors in the way you move. And so I'm going to implement that in order to open everything up and get maximal range of motion that's going to be optimal for performance.

Meanwhile, I'm also considering things like, I'm going to do this exercise because I want to be able to stabilize my shoulder joint better. So I'm going to load my shoulder here and I'm going to do some farmer walks. I'm going to do some marching kettlebell walks. And I'm going to do things where I'm preloading the joint. So I'm adapting to that. I'm getting used to that. So then now I get more secure when I go to do shoulder presses.

There's all these things in consideration. Same thing with the hips, the knees. I'm glad you bring up the performance aspect of it because that's something that right now I'm going through obviously I'm finished up on performance while I was going through that I was talking about green maps. Yeah, green maps. So while I was going through green maps, I decided, okay, well, this will be cool. I'm going through it. So, you know, I'll give mods for it.

My own modifications. I'll also give out tips on my Instagram of like shoulder mobility and hip mobility. So here's the deal. If you, let's, here's another thing that would program design, like along the lines of what Justin is saying, you know, with some programs, if you, if we were to look at it and right away, just like Justin, for sure, would dissect and be like, all this fucking shit is in the sagittal plane. Like this person may get great body fat results or build some elsewhere here, but he ain't going to be moving very

functional. Yeah, he's not going to be very functional in about two years, which is I'm a perfect example of that because I trained like a body builder for literally three years on the competing world and a aesthetic guy aesthetic guy that I neglected all my mobility work and functional training. I was so focused on aesthetics and I paid for it and I felt that going through greens, it was like what a whole new adventure for me was to go into green like that after I've been training this aesthetic way for so long. And it was so opening for me to go like, oh my God, how many people are putting themselves

in this predicament and they don't know it. They don't know why, at least I know why. I knew what I was doing. Well, and to be honest, when we were all coming up with it, it's like, we considered our audience. So the audience being people like you that have maybe gone through like the typical gym setting, you know, so, you know, even for me to recommend Kettlebell's was a stretch,

and I knew that. And this is a different, because we could have got super exotic. I could have got, I mean, I could get crazy. Like, if you're an athlete and I'm expecting that you're already at a high performance like we can get crazy you know my programming is completely different with that. But I know like we're just trying to focus in on this general public general audience that you know has gone through maps and a ball can so when people ask like this is why we we understand that like what what's going on with the programming beforehand.

And so now we're taking you through this elaborate process in order to then not run into those problems, like Adam was mentioning about getting stiff and tight and immobile, and we're thinking long term. So you can actually go through, you know, these different phases of adaptations and benefit, you know, in the long haul. Well, to be clear, you also got to be very clear here.

We explain every step of the way, because we're trying to get people to understand how to program, how to modify and program for themselves. Now, you're not going to be coming in. You're not going to be an expert trainer, but once you get it and you start to get the concepts, then you can start to modify, because we do have some very advanced athletes that do performance, and they understand the method behind the madness. And so then they can plug in and start modifying.

But you know, I want to say something today because this is something that actually kind of frustrates me that we get and we've had this. And I know I think we jab this person already once, but it's not the only time someone has made kind of a comment like this of, you know, like, well, you know, what is this program in tell because I want to know if it's for me or what are like that?

And I'm like, no, everybody should start with red. That's how we design this. We design, I don't give a shit if you're somebody who's been lifting for 10 years or not, you should still start with red. The competitive powerlifter, you should start with it. Exactly. You should start with red because it is the foundation of the programs. Now, where we decided to direct and go from there.

And yeah, I get it. Everybody, and this is where we're trying to get people to stop thinking this way, stop putting yourself in a box. Yeah. Stop allowing that to happen, stop allowing society to place you in a box because I'm a power lifter, so I must always lift like this or I'm a cross fitter,

so I must always lift like this, or I'm a body builder, so I must lift like this. No, you're a fucking idiot if you think that way. The body needs so much more than that, so many different ways. And that is what we're trying to teach. Like Sal said, like Justin said, what these, the programming that goes into this is so much further than you guys, you can even imagine right now, we're not even close to there all the way.

Right now, we're trying to teach everybody that how to learn how to program for yourself. And I promise you, when you go through this whole process and you, those that are going through it all the way with us, we're going to blow your fucking mind when it's done and you're going to be so happy you did it because you're going to know how to do it. Well, you got to be clear too again. I want to, I want to, you know, just be clear on this one point. If you are a power lifter or a bodybuilder and that's all you want to do, it's not going to take away your performance in your sport or going on stage is not going to be any detriment to it because you went off and did a few different things.

If you're a bodybuilder and all you want to do is bodybuild because you want to win competitions, you're going to do be a better bodybuilder if you incorporate some stuff that has to do with mobility or if you incorporate some powerlifting or if you incorporate some agility work. Now of course, your main focus is bodybuilding, so you program it in in the proper way. You don't go train specifically to power lift, but you incorporate some of that stuff into your programming, and you develop a physique or a body that when you go on stage, you destroy your competition,

same thing for power lifting, same thing for any sport. But when you think about it, this is what pops in my head when I think about programming. You know when you play video games, and they let you design your character, and they'll give you, let's say, 100 points, But you have to split those points between speed stay you know strength durability When you're programming when we're talking about and I want to give some information to the listeners because right now They're still have no idea in terms of how to figure out programs

So I want to give them some information if you just look at those three Major categories where you need to figure out your programming, the intensity of your workout, the duration and the frequency. Well, it's the fit principle, frequency intensity time type, and it should be in that fucking world. Well, type is a type of last one, but let's just focus on these three for now, because type, then when we get into type, it gets real, it can get real complex. I'm assuming that these people are lifting weights. When you look at those first three that I mentioned, if you increase one of them,

it takes away from the others. And what I mean by that is, you have to take into account, if I'm gonna go super hard today, then the duration is not gonna be able to be as long, and the frequency's gonna have to be reduced. If I go super frequent, super frequent, then I'm gonna have to reduce intensity,

and the workouts might not be as long. If I go super long, and that's just, that's just how this year's. You want to be dash long or do you want to be Blanca? Yeah, that's, that's why. So this is very common. If you've obviously, if you've been through red, you know this already and we'll chuckle. If you've never, if you haven't, then listen up because this is very common for us. People get read and they're right away after they do their very advanced.

If you're somebody who's done it, but worked out and you've been working out for consistent, they didn't. Right away, you go, we get this like, oh, I think I need more. Or I, you know, I, every time. Yeah, right away, right away we get that. And what's awesome is the forum is so large now.

There's so many people that go on to the program. It's awesome when someone says it on the forum because instantly, you know, 100 people get him right away. It's like, Oh, just wait, just wait. You'll see, just trust the process. But that is just it is that that all the things that Sad was talking about was taking into consideration of that. Yeah, no shit. We're going to expect you to do legs three days in a week. So no shit. The very first time you trained them like that, they weren't crippled sore. That would be easy. Right. And you get. He's taking any consideration. He's going to run you back the next the next two day or the next two workouts.

And those legs are going to get touched again. So what do we do? We have to pull back the intensity. So those are things that that that that's a that's a part that was a great point that you made like that because that's something that we see a lot of. And you have to look at the what's the ultimate goal of this program that you're putting together? The ultimate, if your ultimate goal is to sweat and be in the gym a long time, you don't need any programming for that at all. Just go there and fucking pick your cheque over.

If your goal is to change your body, change your strength, change your body fat levels, feel better, feel stronger, perform better, then your workout needs to reflect that goal. And if the best program entails five minutes with one dumbbell in the gym, guess which program that we're going to recommend that. Now that's I'm making that up, but my point is the goal is what determines the program. Not the, I need to be sore, I need to sweat. Like that's not a goal.

That's just the side effect sometimes of when you apply proper programming. So you have to look at those three, but then you also have to look at the exercises. Look at the exercises that you're putting in. We know the best exercises, the ones that give you the most pain for your butt. We filtered it all out.

But we know like, barbell squats, barbell deadlifts, overhead press, bench press, rows, pullups. We know those exercises that are great, but that doesn't mean you just pick those exercises and throw them in. You're better off on the average person if you do that, but then there's also the order you place them in, and then the order that you place them in, the week,

and then the intensity of each compliment with them. Would you compliment with them? What are the repetitions, how many reps? Oh, and besides that, how do the reps look? What is the tempo? What is your rest in between? How do we accelerate recovery after X workout or B workout? How do we now that we've left some of the tank, we can do some more. Would it make sense to do this adaptation stacked with this adaptation or should we wait for that one till the last phase? Check this out. There's a reason why in MapsRed, we start off

with central nervous system adaptation and move into hypertrophy adaptation and then move into what's called circle plasma hypertrophy. Circle plasma hypertrophy, just layman's terms, the pump, right? There's a reason why they're in that order because it wouldn't work in the other way.

It would not work, it would not work to start with circle plasma hypertrophy and then go into hypertrophy and then go into... You could do it, but it wouldn't be very good program. It would not work to start with circle plasmic hypertrophy and then go into hypertrophy and then go into it. You could do it, but it wouldn't be very good. It wouldn't work as well. There's a reason why you start a certain way and then move through and progress it because that's going to maximize the effects of each type of program. And if you ask the average person, take the most advanced trainer you know and ask them

what their workout looks like. I'll guarantee you it's not phased. I'll guarantee you they programmed it and per week and that's what it looks like. Are they constantly telling you after like a three, four week period? Okay, so we're going to do now. Right. You know, never, never. No. I, you know what I love. I always love to go back to my favorite analogy you gave of the central nervous system with the amp and the speakers. And this, the what you're explaining why it wouldn't work in that order, you can use that analogy again, which is, you know, if you're putting together like the baddest speaker system ever,

like you would wanna go out and spend a shit ton of money first on what? What comes in the amplifier? An amplifier. Because you could have the biggest. Which is a central nervous system. You could have the biggest subwoofers in the world and pay all kinds of money for them.

But if you have some pussy ass amp that's put you on those speakers, you won't hear it whatsoever. So your investment, your best investment is to go out, spend your best bang for your buck is gonna be build that central nervous system, build up a awesome amp that's going to push these speakers to the next level. Which is,

Sure those signals are going to the right places. Exactly. So hopefully that makes, I'm hoping that it can be more that makes it a little more sense. I'll tell you what, when I look at workout routines that are offered, there are a few programs out there

that I see with decent programming. And most of them have to do with some kind of a performance base goal. If I get Westside barbells, powerlifting, whatever, or the small of programming, you can see that there was some expertise applied to the programming for an end result. When it comes to most routines that are out there,

aside from some of those performance-based ones, there's none. It's literally, here's the program that goes into a pro-bodybuilder's routine. Day one is chest, day two is back, day three is legs, they go in their body parts split, and then I'm gonna pick my favorite exercises, and then that's it. A lot of them call it instinctive training.

I think there's definitely an instinctive aspect to working out. You got to listen to your body, but there's also a programming aspect just walking in and fucking doing what you feel like without a particular goal or whatever. Isn't going to work unless you're super advanced and super in tune with your body. And so these are some of the issues that I see with some of the programming, and why it's so important to understand how to put your workout together.

Not enough emphasis is placed anymore on truly effective workouts. Like I feel like when people are working on the gym, especially trying to build muscle, and they're not building muscle, they never question their workout. They always question their supplements. Or some leading now. It's all like, well, you're just not doing it hard

enough. Like, that's the mentality. It's just like, and it's just because of the backlash, you know, from bodybuilding where everything is like seeded and it's in this, you know, machine and everything's all nice and comforting versus like a crossfit. We're now we're just throwing weights, like whatever the fuck, you know, they wanna do with it that way. And if you're not working out to where you're gonna puke, then you're just not working out hard enough.

I'll give you a great example. Here's a great example of what I mean by how the complexity of programming, it's basic, but it's a great example. You should pretty much almost, well, for the most part, you should not fatigue your quadriceps before going to a barbell squat. Why?

Because you get fatigue quads, then you start squatting. Now there's a limiting factor. You typically don't want to do a single joint movement before a compound movement. Unless your goal is to maximize sarcoplasmic hypertrophy or the pump in the quads. In which case, it's a great idea to do an isolation movement and go right into squats. But it all depends on the goal.

If my goal is size and strength or hypertrophy and central nervous system adaptation, it would be stupid to do just the quad exercise first and then go into squats. I'm so glad you brought it. I'm kind of glad we did this episode now. I feel like, okay, so here's a, let me give you guys one. So when what Sal just said, and this is very common, I see this bullshit all the time

with the girls and the rubber band stuff and doing, so people do that and they superset something or they fatigue a muscle and they go in. And guess what? What they do that and then our trainer does that to a client that person goes home and they're like, holy shit, my blood's never been this sore before or they feel this because they did something

that they had never done before. And in their head, it translates to, oh, this is the best way to do it. This is the best way to do it. Or this trainer really knows what they're doing. Like, no, they just fucking through your body, a curve ball. Doesn't mean it was smart programming.

Here, and this is for Nate Strickler right here. I got a gym for you, bro. So here's a, here's, yeah, and he's one of our really smart guys, and he's definitely someone who's talked about this, and he likes challenging us. So here's a small thing that we haven't even got to this, that we did when we thought about also, you know, putting in programming, like let's say frequency

we're talking about. And we know that you're gonna let women just say legs. So your legs are gonna get hit three times a week right now. Well, knowing that it's a big muscle, okay? And so most trainers, they think when they go to program design, they think, okay, I wanna break you off, I want you to be sore.

We've already talked shit about that, how that's weak. What we think is what's gonna, well, you know what's good is showing our clients lots of results, building lots of muscle, burning lots of fat, changing their body and progressing it in a manner that's continuous and they keep seeing that. So we know this is not a workout by workout feel. Yes. So we know exactly. And we know that if we do these, if we make them frequently train the legs and they're doing these big gross movements, they are going to see more volume on those

legs for sure. Without even them having to mathematically compute it or check it or watch it, we know that when we treat teach people how to do this, they're naturally going to do that. So if you want to take Nate, because I know you're a smart guy and you want more from this episode, I already know. So what you're going to want, like, okay, what more comes from this or you know, you want to know deeper beyond anyone else. Well, check this out. So next time you do you go through your math he's on maps red right now if you are he's getting ready he's getting ready to finish green so I don't know if you go back to red or what but when you go back through your red

and you're doing that doing that three week track your volume mathematically track your volume and then once you mathematically track your volume then all you need to do is between 10 and 20 percent increase your volume over the course of the week going forward and Watch how much you fucking grow and you guys people that are listening right now They're going through maps red as smart trainers We fucking see that already and we know that you're naturally doing that We don't and we don't have to calculate it for you because we know that if you're somebody like the typical person who's come off a split We are naturally going to create so much more volume in that right there that you guys are going to see

a nice growth. And then if those that want to keep, like I said, like Nate want to keep advancing it, track it, see where it's at, and then now we dive into progressive overload. And you can slowly just start and guess how easy it is to increase 10% volume when you're hitting legs three times a week. That's literally all you have to do is add a set of something, or you add five to 10 pounds to a squat or some of that, and watch how you continue to grow and grow and grow and grow. Get more dialed.

Yeah, it's, when you, here's what you do. If you're listening right now and you're like, okay, I wanna, I wanna start to, I wanna look at my workout. First of all, consider what we're talking about, consider what programming is. Take your workout, I want you to write it out. Write out a workout for the next, I don't know, month.

It's in front of you. It's on paper. You're looking at it. Now, I want you to write down what your goals are, what your big goal is, and then what your small goals are to achieve that big goal. And then take your workout and design it to achieve those smaller goals.

Take the mentality of, I'm gonna, oh my God, if I put these exercises together, oh, that's gonna kick my ass and this workout's gonna really what my, forget that shit. Look at it and visit. That's small peanuts. That's stupid. That's so easy, it's so easy to hammer yourself.

I wish people would understand this. Like, if it was as easy as beating yourself up, everybody would be fit. It's not hard. I could take any idiot, make him go outside, do a thousand burpees. He's gonna be destroyed, but that's not gonna give him a lot of money.

Well, would you guys say this? If he's gonna come in and he's gonna wear jeans? Exactly. He's just gonna want to wear jeans. What would you guys say this is probably our biggest bee for the hardest time that we have? Because we have a lot of buddies in the fitness industry and that are smart dudes that are really cool

to do, very smart dudes actually. They just don't quite have the experience that the three of us have in this room with fitness and training and they don't have the same understanding of program to design. And so that is one of the things that we have a really hard time with is we see their stuff and then their mind they think that we're judging them or we think that their workouts are weak or this, it's not that I think your workouts are weak, I think they're poorly designed. And that's just because you don't know how to design them, no offense, it's not like

at all like a jab, it's just you're not there at that point where you really, all you know how to do is write a hard workout, which guess what? That's what most of the trainers that worked for me that I got that for the long period did until I taught otherwise. I mean, that for the long period did until I taught otherwise. I mean, that was the most common way all trainers did. So it's not a knock on you. A lot of trainers trained that way, because they just don't understand the importance

of program design and have learned to really put that. And that just takes time. It takes time, it takes knowledge, takes time, it takes practice, it takes prioritizing, like, salvage is saying, I just went through green. And people were asking me like, oh, you know, have you noticed a decrease in the size in this or you have you lost your strength and squad?

I'm like, I really don't fucking care. It's not my priority. When the way green was written, the priority is for mobility functionality. So my mind's there. I mean, I hope to keep my strength and I pretty much did. I saw maybe a little regression, which I'm already right back up to all my PRs where they were. So, exactly. And I know that. And like, and I'm already right back up to all my PRs where they were. So. And now you're going to surpass them. Exactly. And I know that. And I'm doing it through better depth and range of motion and I feel better along the way.

It was like I was changing my priorities. Now my priorities are changing again. You don't want to get stuck with the same priority all the time. Yes, they had a curve bottom line. Yeah, absolutely. It's really hard to see. Yeah, I think like I said, I mean, if you look at it that way, if you look at it like you're this master programmer,

and you're breaking things down and putting them in order in order to achieve those particular goals, you're gonna do better off. And here's the, here's some good news, okay, because we're like, look, it's super complicated. And it is, it's very complicated to program for other people, extremely complicated, far simpler, still complicated. Okay, don't get me wrong, it ain't easy,

but it's a lot easier to program for yourself. And so if you're listening right now, and you're like, okay, I've only been working out for three years or four years, and I wanna learn how to program my own routine, this is what you do. You get a routine that's been programmed already, that's masterfully programmed, you do it,

and then you learn and understand the concepts within it and apply them to yourself. Because at the end of the day, nobody knows your body better than you, or at least nobody knows your body as well as you will know your body. Because most people have no idea about their bodies. They're so out of touch with their bodies. They're so much misunderstanding with how they respond,

how their body even responds to exercise. I can't tell you how many times I've had people come up to me and say, well, I did this and this is why my legs got stronger. And then I shake my, you know, I have this question mark on my face and I ask, well, what else did you do? And they tell me all the other stuff they do. And they didn't realize that it wasn't the thing that they thought that did that to their legs.

It was the other stuff that they did. It was something else that they did. Because they didn't understand what was giving them that result. It reminds me of people who take a shit ton of supplements that, ooh, I gained two pounds, which supplement did that for you? Dude, another hot one you just hit right now. Another hot one.

I don't know how many times I see somebody who tells me just like that, that, oh, I was in the best shape of my life when I was doing this. I was in the bed and they relate that to some of trainer's program or they rate that to some generic. When they can actually recover super awesomely

and in their 20s. And they tell me that and I go like, God, that sucks because now for the rest of their life, this person is gonna think that they need to train that way. If they ever want to even come close to that body and in their head, they probably think they could never super-seed that because they'll probably continue to fall

short. That's the biggest bone I have to pick with all these trainers that train super intense like that all the time just to whoop their clients is what you're doing to that person. Even if you get them in shape because absolutely, I've had people come over that get our program and they love our program. They also say like, yeah, no, I used to get good results with so and so stuff too. I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, of course you did. But what did you have to do to get those results?

And is that something that you can maintain? This is sustainable. This is sustainable for the rest of your life. Well, that's a thing if you if you train properly if you know how to apply proper programming You will continue to progress for a long time. Of course, you're not going to progress like you did when the first you know five months of training But I'm 30. That's why I experienced anything.

I'm 37 years old and I'm still hitting PRs. I've been lifting weights consistently since I was 14. You would think I would have peaked at some point in my early 20s or my mid 20s. And yet here I am performing and looking better than I did back then. And it's not because I'm aging with this, you know, I have this like remarkable aging process. 37 year olds always gonna be at a disadvantage to a 27 year old, just testosterone levels, and that, you know, how many miles on the freaking,

you know, the vehicle that's been, I've been around for 37 years, but my programming superior to what it was before. And so I'm applying things at a much better rate, and I know 10 years from now, I'm gonna be even that much smarter, because there's still pieces, I'm starting to identify pieces in my in my programming that are missing that I didn't know were missing a year ago you know I'm saying and this is the beauty of

of proper exercise your fit your workout plays such a massive role in how your body progresses fitness wise it's it plays the major role of course diet plays a large role in terms of fat loss and health, but when it comes to like building muscle, getting stronger, improving performance, your workout is a huge, as long as you're not eating complete garbage, your workout and how you put it together, is so important. I feel like I feel especially in the body building muscle building. It's the most overlooked. It's so overlooked.

Nobody does it. Nobody looks at a bodybuilder that just won a competition or someone improved. Nobody sets them, oh, what did you do different with your workout? It's all about what did you eat different, what kind of new steroids did you take? Yeah. Or what new supplement are you on? In reality, it was probably some change that they did in the workout that they didn't even realize.

That they didn't even realize was making that big of a difference. 100% dude. I would say just to leave people with some good information for themselves, take your workout, write it all out, figure out what your goals are, what your big goal is, and then what are the smaller goals that I'll go within it.

Now, it takes some time, it'll be some trial and error, be a lot of trial and error. The second thing you could do is you can enroll in a program like I was just say, if you don't say that, I'm going to punch in your face because here's the thing. That is what the whole what I want and I'm, you know, this is back to Nate because I know that I just look question and get the forum. Here's, yeah, here's the thing. I'm mentioning that.

This is, this is why we a lot of us are adjusting didn't want to and he mentioned and I kind of felt that I was back and forth on this subject because this subject has been brought up a few times. Well, I just feel like, let me just be clear about that is because like asking about, you know, the formula for how you conjure up like the, it's a, it's a, it's a very long conversation. Oh, I didn't even do it, Justin. Yeah, yeah, because, you know, like, like, to be honest, we've all put in 15 plus years of time on a day to day basis with each one of our clients, figuring out every single variable that we could identify from the very beginning and then adjusting and then making, like, this is something we've

been refining. Well, wouldn't you say too long these lines just to last year, too, having the three of us together and being so so much more powerful now. Oh, I mean, just having our minds, even the way we, I think that's what's so okay. And that's, I guess it's kind of neat to tell us. This is why we talk about when we go off on the trip and Doug makes a big deal about how, how magical this is like it's it's the why we say that it's fucking crazy for us. Like we look at ourselves afterwards, like, holy shit. I could have never done this without you guys.

Like I could ride. I will ride every anybody I have ever met as a trainer under the table for programs. And then there's, I don't know, there's no way I could have wrote that by myself. There's no way. It's just that that's what was so unique is you take another two brilliant minds

when it comes to that with a, with so beautiful, they have different, they have different things that they are attached to because that's their expertise or what they're love and their passion and all three of us are different in that aspect. But yet we all three understand that each one of us has got an absolute argument on why their priority is a priority and it's like holy shit,

we have to understand that we're speaking to a general of people. We're like, or fighting for parts of your body. Yes, right? Yeah, I want them to still be able to move well, you know, Elbows exactly. That's what goes down. Oh, but it's got to get this look. I'm going for it. And you know, that's what okay. So what goes down when we're riding one of these programs, you know, We're on a phase two and we're getting ready to drop an exercise for legs and right away

I say this I come out and I say I want us to do you know, Alternating lunge with dumbbells and then boom, Justin's gonna speak up right away, I say this, I come out and I say, I want us to do alternating lunge with dumbbells. And then boom, Justin's gonna speak up like, no, no, no, bro, just last phase, we did this. And now we're not, we're not, we're totally neglecting the frontal plane. We have to do something in this because I care about, you know what I'm saying? And then Sal comes in like, listen,

we could do something way stronger for that person. We want to build strength of them getting, we're gonna regress if we don't make sure we progress in this way. So everybody has like a, I keep that compound one in the next time. It's like this little debate that we're having and we are debating every fucking exercise,

every rest period, every evolution. Every variable. Yes, every variable is getting debated. I could sit down right now and write up a general routine for anybody and I'll take me 15 minutes. But to put together what we did, it required us to go away, some, you know, whether it was in Reno or wherever,

get lock ourselves in a room for 48 hours or 72 hours. Straight. And we're not. Non-stop. It's not like four hours and then we're done. Like, oh cool, guys, let's go hang out for the next. No, it's literally, we get there and we don't stop until we leave and sometimes it continues

in the car on the way home. I mean, it's kind of get there and we don't stop until we leave and sometimes it continues in the car on the way home. I mean, it's kind of like CrossFitLove1. Right? Get it, get it, end off on that one there. Leave us a five star rating and review on iTunes. You might win a free t-shirt if you do so. You can find us on Instagram at Mind Pump Radio. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal.

You can find Adam at Mind Pump Atom and Justin at Mind Pump Justin. And then we're on Facebook, Mind Pump Show. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. For more information about this show and to get valuable free resources from Sal, Adam and Justin, visit us at www.mindpumpradio.com. Until next time, this is Mind Pump. Next time, this is MindPump.