Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2685: Hit PRs Doing Less & Lifting Smarter

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

MEMORIAL DAY SALE: 40% OFF ALL Programs, Bundles & Guides! https://www.mindpumpmedia.com/maps-fitness-individual-programs/?htrafficsource=youtube-organic&hcategory=MPSHOW&el=2865   In this episode the guys break down how most people can hit new strength PRs by training less, cutting volume and shifting to short daily practice.   SPONSORS ZBiotics (pre alcohol probiotic): https://zbiotics.com/mindpump26 Code MINDPUMP26 for 15% off first order   MAPS Memorial Day Sale: https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Code MemorialDay40 for 40% off all MAPS programs   Timestamps:  00:00 Intro 00:17 Hit PRs Doing Less 00:29 Memorial Day Sale 00:45 ZBiotics 01:31 Why Less Works 03:06 Sal Deadlift PR 04:53 Modern Stress Factor 08:47 Strength Is A Skill 10:36 Strength Builds Muscle 16:48 Daily Practice Beats Fatigue 21:17 Sleep Recovery Essentials 22:04 MAPS 15 Powerlift Outline 22:59 Closing And Bundle Promo   

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today we're going to talk about how you can hit PRs from doing less and lifting smarter. 80% of you will probably respond exceptionally well to what we're talking about in today's episode. By the way, all Maps programs right now, all of them, because of Memorial Day are 40% off right now.

Go to Maps Fitness Products.com. Use the code Memorial Day 50. Sorry, Memorial Day 40. So that's Memorial Day 40. That'll get you the 40% off all Maps programs. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Zbiotics. This is a pre-alcohol drink. So you have it before you drink.

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And when that happens, it goes your bloodstream, and it does all kinds of bad things to your body. Well, when I have Zbiotics, before I drink, I feel way better the next day. You got to try it out. It really does work. Go to Zbiotics.com. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S dot com forward slash mind pump 26.

Use the code mind pump-26. That'll get you 15. percent off. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpump store.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. There's almost nothing as exciting as hitting a new PR in the gym. You added weight to your deadlift, your squat, your bench, your overhead press. It means you're moving in the right direction. Today we're going to talk about how you can hit PR is doing less. And by lifting smarter. By the way, this works for almost everybody watching. Let's get to it. Oh, the irony. Yes.

So I'm going to start by reading some feedback from one of our listeners who followed one of our Maps 15 style program. So this is Maps 15 power lift. Oh, is this the one left in the forum? Yes, it was in the forum. Nice. And I'm going to read this just because we've had similar experiences. but this was somebody who had done other programs before, done our traditional power lift program,

and had heard us talk about how these short daily workouts could be really effective. So if people are familiar, the MAPS-15 style workout programs, you're doing essentially, well, Maths 15 Power Lift, you're doing two or one lift a day every day. Yep.

So rather than working out, you know, three days a week or so, you're going every day, but you're doing about one or two lifts. And this is what this person said. They said, that's a wrap. I finished MAPS 15 power lift, and they were right. I hit PRs in each phase. It has probably replaced power lift as my favorite program.

And power lift is our traditional powerlifting program. Which we've gotten great feedback from as well. That's right. Yeah. That's so fascinating to me. And it just goes to show, like sometimes when you reduce volume, it's like it unlocks a whole another potential. It does.

And I had a similar experience about three, I think it was three years ago. Was that when we had the original? MAPS 15 program. It was about three years ago. Longer than that. Maybe four? Yeah, it was inspired by it after having Matt, I had Max. Okay.

Max was going to turn seven in July. Okay. So the very first one was probably five, six years ago. I know I was in my 40. So I want to say I was 42, if I'm not mistaken. And obviously I know what I'm doing, but working out forever. And I had a PR, all-time, lifetime PR in the deadlift of 600 pounds, which I did in my early 30s, I want to say.

It was just a number that I had hit once and had chased it a little bit after that, but would slow down because I'd either feel like I'd start to hurt myself or it's just a big number to chase. Well, we had come out with Maps 15 and Adam had shared his experience with like just a few lifts every day or a couple lifts every day rather than the longer workouts. So I started experimenting with it without the intention of hitting a PR. I just wanted to see. And if you go back on some of our podcasts...

You just didn't want to lose by going on it. Because I know that was your concern was like, you've built your training volume up so high. That's right. That it was like, man, am I going to lose gains or lose strength by going in favor? I had no intentions of trying to hit a PR. It was literally, let's see how little I could do and maintain.

Maintain my strength, maintain my muscle. To my surprise, even though we promote this to listeners all time, I was getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And within, I think it was like 70 days. even three months. It was like less than three months. I pulled six hundred and five pounds at 42 years old and I was sold. This style of training can not just be good enough, but can actually be superior. Do you think this has more to do with the bias of the podcast

and the type of listener that listens? And what I'm speaking to is like, because we've had tremendous response from all the 15 programs, just how many people are telling stories just like that. It's completely surprised that they got stronger doing less. Do you attribute that more to the bias of the listener that we probably have a lot of people that are fitness fanatics and are probably teetering in the overtraining place? Or do you think it has more to do with just kind of the era that we're in now with the constant level of... Yes, of stress and poor sleep and the iPhone and just politics bullshit. It's got a factor in. Yeah, which one do you think is more of the factor?

here. I think it's the second one because I was thinking a lot about this in preparation for this episode. And I know when I can find lots of data on strength training for strength in particular. Actually good studies on this. The Olympic lifters have been, this has been studied for a long time with Olympic lifters, power lifters have been around long enough now where we have pretty good ideas of what really work.

We've got decades of training and decades of data around this. but the problem is when you look at that, you're dealing with a population of people where that's just all they do. That's all they do. They don't have normal lives. These are people who are highly trained. All scheduled around that.

Everything's scheduled around that. They don't have, you know, a lot of them do have jobs, but this is like this is their life focus. Because we're looking at it, like I said, a subset of people. Whereas the average person, like you said, Adam, you know, they have jobs, they have kids. They're not getting perfect sleep every single night. They're not eating perfect all the time, but they like to work out.

And I think when they apply those strategies, they quickly burn out. Or they just, they see results, but they don't realize that it's more than what is necessary, which means it's not the best for them. So that's what I think would happen. I think a lot of our listeners are everyday people. And when they buy in, because we have to really push them, this is something we have to sell really hard. It's really hard to believe.

People follow it. And they come back and they're like, not only didn't work. Not only did I, was it great, but actually got stronger than I'd been before, following such little. Yeah, it really just kind of points back to the principle of specificity. It's like, I think we overlooked that a lot when we're pursuing specific goals and trying to get strength PRs. And we're just trying to kind of balance that with overall fitness and overall, you know, muscle gain and leanness. And the more we can narrow it down to getting better at that very, intentional movement. Like this is that movement. I want to improve. I want to

get better at this skill. It takes a lot of practice. And when it takes a lot of practice, we have to make room for that. And we have to create space. And so I think reducing it down to just like two exercises and then really hyper focusing on that. It allows the body to really shine in that. I feel like you just recently got another lesson of that when you were chasing the overhead press PR. Oh yeah. It totally like makes me think of that because I wanted to make sure my whole body was strong. And at first, so it would probably be like the first month and a month and a half.

I feel like I was a bit off target and really just trying to kind of reinforce my joints and make sure that like my whole body was at like a better output when I would come in and lift. And then when I started to really just like chop it down to what mattered, you know, I was left with about 15 minutes. And then all of it was like warm up leading into that 15 minutes of extra. work. And it was like, duh. Like, I just focused on this one left and then, you know, something to compliment it. My body started to get the recovery and I just started to put up better numbers.

And your strength went through the roof. Through the roof. Yeah. So people need to realize that this is just people don't understand this. That getting strong or hitting a PR and a lift or a lift is a skill. There are muscles involved, of course, but a lot of it is a skill. So I'll use a different example because I think people can understand this. Okay. throwing a baseball as far as you can, you got to have strong muscles. You've got to have fast muscles. You've got to, you know,

stronger muscles are better when throwing a baseball far. But if you have bad skill, you're not going to throw very far. I'm a pretty strong guy. I've been working out for a long time. Got a little muscle mass. I cannot throw a third of the distance

that a high school baseball player could throw who's skinny, who outweigh by, you know, 80 pounds. Because he's got the skill of throwing the ball. Lifting is a lot of, that is a skill. Now, yes, muscles are involved and bigger muscles contract harder, but the way your muscles work together, the way that they contract together and stabilize, and how the central

nervous system organizes everything is what gives you that strength. And practicing fewer exercises and movements allows you to really hone in and develop that skill of the lift. And doing short daily workouts gets rid of all the fluff. When you're looking at it and you're going, okay, what can I cut off? What can I cut away? You're left with the ones that are really important. Then when you just practice those, and there's more that goes to do this, by the way, suddenly you get really good at those lifts that you're trying to practice.

And you're recovered to where you could, your next workout, you're actually, you know, putting out really good performance again. Your force outputs really high because you're fully recovered and replenished. And I think that to the consistency, I mean, you can kind of list out. there's a lot more benefits when you're really trying to maximize that skill. You have to speak to, though, how this fits into building muscle and looking better, right? Because I understood this logically, even as a young trainer, but still fell in the trap of not pursuing and chasing strength and PRs because I was like, all I care about is how I look. And I missed out on a lot of gains and I missed out on building a lot more muscle because I didn't pursue this.

I was so focused on hypertrophy. in the pump and training that way because I don't care if I bench press 315. I just care if my chest looks good. And so you have to and again, there's even everything you guys are talking about, I understood logically as a

young trainer, but still didn't pursue that because that didn't speak to me. Like, oh, I don't care if I hit PRs. And I understand that. I understand squatting and bench pressing is a skill, but I don't ever care to be the best at that. All I care about so, but because of that, I missed out on it. You have to explain

how it plays into hypertrophy and how you look. So strength is strongly correlated to muscle size. In other words, the stronger you get tends to point to building more muscle. Now, the bigger you get, the less this becomes a correlate. But especially for the first, let's say, three years of your strength training, the best way to build muscle is to get stronger. Nothing comes close to getting, you know, adding 30 pounds to your squat or, you know, 20 pounds to your overhead press.

Like you add weight to the bar, especially for the first three years, you're building more muscle. Now, later on when you're more advanced, it's less of a correlate. However, I will say this, if you've been training for years and you've gotten to a place where you stopped seeing how strong you can get, and it's been a long time, it's been five years. Five years of me actually training to see how strong I can get. Go train to try to get stronger. Watch what happens to your gains. You're going to unlock some serious muscle growth because it's been so long since you've even tried this.

Yeah, I mean, this was me. That was exactly what happened to me. There's another way to explain, too, is just your, your, the skill part also part of what makes you lift more and get stronger at the skill part is your ability to recruit muscle more muscle. Your ability to recruit more muscle fiber efficiently also then translates into building more muscle too. And so that was the part that I think I was missing. I was missing that, you know, hey, yeah, you may not care at him that you're ever going to have. a 400 plus pounds squat. But if you get good enough to where you can do that,

you can recruit more muscle fibers. Recruiting more muscle fibers. Increase your recruitment potential. Well, yes. Capacity increases. Exactly. Well, then result in you being able to build more muscle. And so I missed that understanding because I still looked at it like,

oh, I don't care about PR. There's also this that there's this you shaped curve when it comes to the dose of strength training that you apply your body. when it comes to strength and or building muscle. So what I mean by that is, you know, no stimulation, no muscle, some stimulation, some muscle, the perfect stimulation, the most muscle and strength. Then if you add more of that, then you go down the slope again and you start to lose potential gains in both strength and muscle.

I think a lot of times people confuse strength training with activity or exercise. So it is important to exercise or to be active every day. So sometimes people look at this and they go, well, okay, I want to do one or two lifts a day. Yeah, like that's all you're moving. That's all I'm going to do. I need more for health. Well, you do need more for health. That's a good point.

Walk, move, do stuff daily for health. Strength training is a specific tool to do what? Build strength and build muscle. If you want more activity for health and longevity, do other things. But throwing more strength training at your body for activity and exercise. Now you're getting more activity and exercise, but now you're losing the bang. benefit of the strength training. Or at the very least diminishing it, right?

You may not lose all of it, but you're diminishing. No, in the right, it's a very steep U-shaped curve, you guys. It's not like this like wide. It's like you get really good gains, gains, gains, gain, gain, peak gains. Everything starts to decline very quickly after that. I mean, you add a little bit more volume after that and you're getting less gains.

And you start to get a little confused with it because, or buy it, because you feel like you're doing so much more work. And you just don't realize how many gains you're leaving on the table. Because here's what it looks like. If you're on the wrong side of that U-shaped curve, let's say you're on the too much end of it, you're still getting stronger. I added five pounds to my lift.

I added 10 pounds. But we don't realize you could have added 15 or 20 pounds to your lift. You just don't realize it because you're on the other side of that. So the right dose is best. So when you look at your strength training, don't think of it as exercise and activity. Think of it as this is specific to build muscle and strength, which, by the way, have their own health and longevity benefits for people. Getting stronger, building more muscle. Of course, until you get to the extremes.

has all kinds of longevity and health benefits. Then when you're thinking more activity, more exercise, there's lots of things you could do for more exercise and activity. The strength training, the best way to utilize it is for what it's good for, which is strength and muscle. There's also a relationship with nutrition. People have to understand that applies to the right dose too. I was just having a conversation with my niece,

and she's been running Mass 15 for a while, and she wants to do more. And she's already stepping 10,000 steps to day. So she's actively moving and stuff like that. but she feels like she needs to do more weight training. So you're at 1,800 calories right now. And I'm like, you don't, we don't, we need to be able to increase your caloric intake and to support you doing more strength training.

So there's also that factor too. There's the, there's the right dose just basically off of what you should probably do for your body with stress and sleep and all the other factors. But nutrition plays a role too. There's been a lot of times where somebody may feel physically capable to do more volume and do more exercises, but then they're not feeding their body properly enough to get enough adequate recovery for all of those exercises. They're barely feeding enough to recover from those one or two exercises, must less seven

or eight that they're trying to do. And so they're doing so much more work, and they're not feeding their body properly, so the right dose also applies to their nutrition balance also. It does. There's also this, that daily practice is better for developing skills than less frequent type practice. So, in other words, practicing some every day. will get you better at the skill of strength than doing, let's say, a lot a few days a week.

Okay. So they're both good, but the daily version of practice has been shown in the data and experience to build more strength. And which brings us the next point, which is when it comes to building strength, fatigue is the enemy. Okay. So if strength is a skill, then what that means is you need to practice the skill well. Do you know what destroys your skill? or your technique is fatigue. So again, think of the guy throwing the baseball.

And I like to use that because I think people understand how much of a skill that is. If you get really tired, you just throw balls until you're really tired, your skills out the window. Yes, you're weaker. You're not generating as much force, but your skills also. We can see this.

We can see it in the ball and how fast it gets there and then how off course it gets. Right, right. So instead of doing 15 sets of bench press on Monday, well, you know, halfway through your, practice is crap. You're practicing terrible skill because you're fatigued. What if instead you're doing 15 sets on Monday, you did two or three sets every day? Now there's no more fatigue,

and what you're practicing is perfect skill. And this builds the skill of strength. Well, I always think of the whole hardwiring sort of mentality. It's like what I'm teaching myself with this practice towards the skill is what I'm going to retain. And that's what I'm in a hard wire in my system, my operating systems. When I go out to compete and I do face fatigue, what's my go-to? What am I going to lean on? And I would rather have, you know, my fresh, you know, dialed in performance that was not diminished by fatigue. So that's all I know. It's so funny how we really are clearly understand this with all other adaptations or skills that we try and learn. Yet we fail to understand it when it comes to exercise. Like name another

skill or adaptation that we pursue, that people don't understand that. That it's a skill? Yeah, we know that we know that small, frequent doses is the better approach than these long, hard bouts at it. Like, name another thing, will it be tanning your skin in the sun, learning a language, playing basketball, like, name a thing that we, yeah, name a thing that we don't already know that with, but yet we seem to fail to apply it correctly to exercise. Isn't that interesting?

It is. It's because it's a means to an end, I think. We do this to other forms of exercise. Running is my favorite example. The reason why... Just work to people, really. The reason why running is the highest rate of injury of all forms of exercise, even though humans evolved or were made, depending on what you believe, to run.

We're actually made to run really, really well. The reason why there's so many injuries is nobody respects running as a skill. Everybody goes and runs until they're tired. And this is what happened with strength training. We look at strength training, and we don't look at it as skill. we look at it as body parts, chest, back, shoulders, arms, that's what I'm working right now. Now, yes, those body parts are being worked and they'll grow when they're corresponded to the exercise that you're training.

But if you want to really get the gains, if you want to build strength and get the muscle growth that comes from it, look at them as movements. And when you're practicing good movement, daily practice, short practice, the right dose without fatigue is what's going to produce the best gains. And this is why, again, this is why people are reporting, oh, my God, I can't believe how strong I'm getting doing what feels like so little. So I think this all stems from the law of thermodynamics. I think the messaging around calories in versus calories out is what sent everybody down this.

Just burn calories. From the way we approach weightlifting to the way we approach running, it's like we, we know that the average American just way over consumes calories. And so by all means, fine modes and modalities to just burn as much calories as possible. and so we're in this rat race of trying to outburn our diet all the time. And so we approach something like exercise. Which along those lines, your best bet is to build your calorie burning machinery, which is muscle. Because that's your best bet. How would you like to burn more calories all the time rather than just when you're moving or exercising?

This is why building muscle is such a great strategy for fat loss. It's because it moves you in that direction. The last thing, and you mentioned this already, Adam, was you want to get stronger. you need to eat sufficiently and you need to get good sleep. So poor sleep is a strength killer. Okay. I said if I mentioned fatigue, how this is, you know, you don't want to train with lots of fatigue. You're trying to build strength.

Well, you can fatigue your central nervous system with poor sleep. One night of poor sleep, your risk of injury goes through the roof and your technique is terrible. And you're going to go and you're going to practice that way, not to mention your recovery's bad. Hormones are tend to be thrown off. So you've got to get good sleep and you need to feed what you're trying to build. You need to feed yourself. You can't starve yourself into getting stronger.

Yeah. I mean, without the sleep and recovery, like exercise is just an insult at the end of the day. You know, and that's all you're doing. It's basically just insulting your body. Totally, 100%. So our MAPS 15 power lift program does this. And so essentially what it looks like is one or two lifts a day. So one or two lifts a day.

You're out there. You're doing three to five sets. You're practicing the lifts. and most people notice with that program strength gains week over week is the report that we're getting. Some people, it's, you know, every few weeks. But week over week, it's what I experienced. I think it's what Adam experienced. Here's what we're doing, by the way, because this episode is dropping on or around Memorial Day is Maps 15 power lift and every other Maps workout program.

So all Maps programs are 40% off right now. So if you want to get Mass 15 Power Lift or any of the 15 program or you want to just get any maps program, MAPS program 40% off, go to MAPS Fitnessproducts.com. Use the code Memorial Day 40. No spaces. So Memorial Day 40, and you'll get 40% off whatever you want to sign up for. You can also find us on Instagram.

It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com.

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