Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2795: The 8 Greatest Exercises for Fat Loss and Muscle Gain

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

 MAPS Great 8 Launch The origins of MAPS Great 8. (2:02) Simplicity wins! (4:32) Who is this program for and why is it unique? (5:49) The 'Great 8' System: How and why we chose these exercises. (8:35) Beginners to advanced lifters: You will understand how to get better results training less than you ever have. (19:33) Built for long-term success: 5 days of free coaching with a Mind Pump certified personal trainer! (21:14) The Great 8 Nutrition Guide: Effective includes simple. (24:14) Related Links/Products Mentioned New Program Launch (Feb. 15-28th): MAPS Great 8 (Retail $127, Code: LAUNCH for 50% off!) ** Launch bonuses include: MAPS GREAT 8 Nutrition Guide + 5 Days of Free Coaching with Top Trainer Cole (Only available to those who sign up by the 22nd. Coaching starts on the 23rd.) 30% OFF your subscription order PLUS receive a free gift with your second shipment—fun surprises like a free 6-pack, Ketone-IQ merch, and more! Or find Ketone-IQ at Target stores nationwide. Visit: https://ketone.com/MINDPUMP Mind Pump Store Mind Pump #2684: Do ONLY These 8 Lifts to Achieve an Amazing Body Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Cole Steininger (@mindpumpcole) Instagram  

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's episode, brand new Maps program, the great eight. Only eight exercises.

One lift a day. It's an eight-day split. It's super strong. Great results. One lift a day. Go to Maps. great eight.com. So that's Maps Great Number 8.com. The program, it retails for 127, but if you use the code launch during the launch period, it's 50% off. By the way,

it includes a free guide, the Great Eight Nutrition Guide, Eight Steps to getting you fit, healthy, lean, strong, and muscular. And if you sign up until up until the 22nd, you get five days of coaching with our coach Cole, with our Mind Pump certified coach, Cole. Now, this episode is brought. to you by our sponsor, ketone IQ. So ketone IQ gives you exogenous ketones. What are those? This is a source of energy that is preferred by the brain.

Normally you'd have to go on a ketogenic diet to accomplish this. That means you have to eat like no carbs, literally zero carbs to get that mental clarity people talk about. Well, that doesn't work for a lot of people. Some of us like carbs. And I like, many of us like the carbs for the performance value and the muscle building value. We'll check this out. If you drink a ketone IQ, you get the ketones, even if you're eating carbs.

So now you get that source of energy and that fuel. Go check them out. Try it for yourself. Go to ketone.com forward slash mind pump. On that link, you get 30% off your subscription order, plus a free gift with your second shipment. 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 mindpump store.com. I'm talking right now. hit pause, head on over to Mind Pumpstore.com.

That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, we got a brand new MAPS program, The Great Eight. This program focuses on eight exercises for complete fitness, muscle gain, metabolism boost, getting you leaner. It's actually one of our most unique programs. We're going to get into it and break it down and explain it to you. You asked for it. You know, this is from an episode.

This is the first time we literally, we literally. did a program because people just demanded it. Like on the spot. So what we did a while ago is we did an episode of our podcast where the opening of the episode, I talked about like if you only had to pick eight exercises, which ones would you, like for the rest of your life, what eight lifts would you do? And so we had this great discussion on what they would look like. And could we create, like, would it be complete enough?

Right? Because there's a lot of strength training exercises. there's thousands. But if you had to narrow it down, could you and would it make a complete routine? And we thought so. We thought it would. We came up with the best eight lifts

and people loved it so much. They were like, can you give us a program? Before you get into the lifts, I think you have to break down a little bit for the listener that didn't maybe listen to that episode and is only listening to this. Like how we came about that,

the things that we were trying to consider, right? Like what? Because I think a lot of people would go like, oh, I can name the eight best, best exercises. And like the eight best exercises to build muscle aren't necessarily the eight best exercises you should do for the rest of your life. Right. Right. And so there, there's a, the thought process was, you know, build muscle, be strong, be mobile, like, like address the entire body. And how could you do that in just only eight movements? Well, here's a deal. If you

don't do what Adam just said, you're only going to go so far, even if your goal is to just build muscle. at some point something's going to prevent you from continuing, typically injury or dysfunction, and then you can't keep going. Now, here's what a lot of people would do if you had to name the eight best exercises. They would just pick their favorite exercise per body part. Yeah.

That's not what we did. Although every area and body part is covered, you also have to consider, now this is without getting into the nitty-gritty of workout programming. Like, this is what strength coaches do. This is what good personal trainers do, okay? But part of the things that you have to, consider is, okay, what are, how do we target the whole body, but then how do we pick the

right exercise that complement each other to prevent what's going to happen four months from now, six months from now, a year from now? Now, why would you even want some people, someone might ask, why would you even want a workout program that only focuses on eight exercises? Why not include 30 exercises? Well, here's why. Simplicity actually helps with progress quite a bit. It wins. Quite a bit. One of the reasons. One of the reasons. One of the reasons. is obviously if you're trying to work out learning new exercises all the time can can get in the way so that's obvious but second is um there is a a progress curve you get from an exercise and a lot of that progress comes from getting good at that exercise yeah the practice you get really really good the more you practice and uh especially if it's figured out and programmed well so it keeps you progressing within those uh confines that's right 100 percent i'm excited about this one oh yeah i have This is kind of cool because I've talked a lot about on the podcast about like giving myself permission to just go do one lift and one exercise. Like I've never been intentional of like, you know, what if I just did that and like, and I had to put it together in a way where it's just like what's the exercise I'm going to choose for the single day?

And I like thought of it like a program. And so this was a fun episode when we did it. And this was a fun program to piece together. And I do actually think that a lot of people, a lot of people really benefit. You know, who's this not for? If you're the, I go to the gym five, six days a week consistently and you have it for years. Yeah, yeah.

This is not, this is not the program for you. This is, it just isn't. This is for the people I think that are on and off the wagon a lot that are inconsistent. Or maybe you've been off for a while now and you're trying to get back on the swing of things. Or maybe your life has changed dramatically and you don't have the same kind of time as you had before. I'll say this too. It's also for experienced lifters who's, who's stopped progressing. And they want to focus on just what works and get strong.

Because that's what you see when you look at the program. Like you're going to get really strong at these eight lifts. It's an everyday program, everybody. You're going to lift weights every day, but you're not going to lift weights for long every day. You're doing one lift a day every single day. And it's an eight-day rotation, which is very different. Typically, it's a rotation that's seven days or a repeating three days or something like that. This is an eight-day rotation.

Every single day, you're doing a different lift. You're just focusing on that one lift in that day. So it can take you between 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how long you want to rest and how heavy you're going. And you leave. And the next day, you do the same thing. This lends itself really well to people with a home gym. Yeah.

rather than a lot, three days a week. Yeah, you weren't reliant with always, always making it to the gym. You know, you have like minimal equipment, everything is right there. And then the simplicity of just focusing on that one exercise, I think it's pretty powerful. Totally. My favorite part is that it's on an eight-day rotation. Yes. It's kind of disrupting that.

Yes. Because there's this, I mean, it would be, we would get less, huh, if we would have just made seven exercises. But when we were trying to address everything that we thought, was important that somebody... You had to include another exercise. That's just what it came down to. I mean, if it cleanly fit in a week, we would have done that. But it's like, no, if I...

And let's be honest, like this idea that everything has to fit in a seven-day week is ridiculous. It's like, if someone were to just keep cycling through these eight days, at the end of the month, they're going to end up doing most of all these things four different times, and that's going to be plenty for this person. And so we always look at everything from this, like, perspective of, oh, how does it work out? So rigidly.

Yeah, in a week, it's... It's like, well, that's not how your lifestyle works. You know what I'm saying? And so I like the idea that we've disrupted this kind of traditional way of writing a program for so long that everybody's always made it fit in this work week. And it's like, no, it doesn't have to work like that at all. So every day you're doing one lift. Now, these are not in the order that you would follow in the program necessarily, but these are the eight lifts that you'll be focusing on with the Great Eight Maps program. This is a three-month program.

Okay, so it's a 90-day program. And I'm going to go through some of the exercises and we'll explain why they're in there. Okay, because we can only pick eight. And when I look at them all together, it's a great combination. Barbell squats will start with, obviously. The king. Obviously. This is a, it is a super functional strength, muscle builder, power builder.

It's a foundational human movement. Barbell squats build strong bodies. You'll be hard pressed to find any experience. strength coach or personal trainer, that would disagree. Like you want to develop nice legs, glutes, you want mobility, strength, you want transfer and carry over to the real world. Barbo squat does it better than almost any other, actually than any other lower body exercise. No debate there, right?

No, no. We didn't debate that one. Next is the deadlift, another staple exercise, posterior chain movement. So this means it's working the entire backside of the body all the way from the floor. all the way up. Great back developer. Great developer for the glutes and the hamstrings. Another foundational human movement, hip hinging, picking something up like that. Like, that's so much carryover.

Yeah. And you practice dead lifts, you get good at them. You build a back that's hard to injure. The better you get at both of those lifts you mentioned, like the potential for growth and strength is so vast. I think that was kind of the thought process too. When building this, it is the thought of what we constantly talk. about on the podcast of approaching workouts like practice.

Yes. And so these lifts remain through the entire thing. And so you've got three months of practicing each one of these lists. You'll see lots of PRs at the end. Exactly. And then also the way, I know you'll get to it, but the way we scaled the the reps, like there's a reason why we started the way we did with the rep range and went the direction that we did with that in mind of like getting good at the lifts, practicing them, practicing the movements.

and then seeing how strong you can get down the road. Yes. Next up, standing overhead press. Obviously, what people notice is a shoulder exercise, but it's actually a full body exercise from support, stability, tension. This is like the king of upper body strength exercises. I mean, it really is.

Back in the day, strength athletes, this is how they would compete. This is how they would show off how strong. They would lift something overhead. You watch old cartoons. It's always, can you lift something heavy? Overhead. I was watching cartoons of my kids.

the other day, old ones, and it's always can I lift something over my head? But it's a standing overhead press. Builds stability in the core, builds incredible arms and shoulders. And you get good at this, you're really strong. It's just a really strong person. It's the squad of the upper body. It literally is.

Next up, incline press. It's not a bench press. Incline press. There's a reason why we picked incline over flat bench. There's a couple reasons. One, aesthetically speaking, it's going to build a nicer looking upper body than a flat bench. Flat bench is great. Don't get me wrong.

I love flat bench. It's always, it's one of the exercises that's commonly in our programs. It's a staple. But focusing more on the upper chest in terms of chest development, it's going to give you a nicer looking chest. Whereas if you only did bench presses ever, you'll run the risk of developing a chest that doesn't look quite as good.

Too much lower chest development. I think we also consider, too, what movement, pattern I think is more advantageous for the average person too. I think that when you think of a client whenever I would train somebody, I always preferred putting them on an inclined bench just because it put them in better posture than on the flat bench. I had more issues. And so if it's already a movement that I like more than I like the flat bench, just for, and then you add that to it, it becomes a kind of a no-brainer why that is one of the staple movements. It's also from a functional perspective, it's more functional.

Rarely do you push something away while leaning back. You're almost always leaning forward. And so for, you know, for sports or just for that kind of movement, that incline position is far more It's a more preferable angle. It's a much more

preferable angle and it's more functional for the upper body. And then we have rows. For back exercises, just for targeting the back. I mean, of course it hits the lats, but rhomboids. mid-trapezeous. Why rows?

Why not? Pull-ups or pull-downs. All great exercises. But you also really want to emphasize the mid-back if you only had to pick one back exercise. And you're still getting the lats. You're still going to develop amazing laughs. But you're working on what a lot of people have problems with, which is posture. That's it.

And you can get... The antidote to that seated posture. That's right. And you don't want to... Pull-ups are great. It's a great exercise. But it's not going to target posture like a row will. In fact, for some people, it runs the risk of encouraging or continuing on with forward shoulder.

So great exercise, but the rows are superior. I mean, I think that this is a good example of just our experience coming in here because you could very well make the case for some other exercises that would go here really well, right? Like a pull-up. But just because one of the things that we all agreed on is like, I don't think there was ever a client that the row was not a part. of their routine. Always. And it's just because of how important that is for overall health and posture. And it is a great muscle building movement.

It is great for the entire, almost the entire back, the lats. It's just such a good exercise. Even if you think there's a better exercise for the lats or other movements that are out there, it's a staple movement that if I am like, hey, I can only do eight movements, this is, this is going to be in my repertoire. Makes the list. Now we're attacking lateral stability. So, you know, we went over some great lower body exercise.

exercises, upper body exercises. But if you only did those, eventually you would develop an imbalance between front to back and side to side. If you don't have good lateral stability, but you're really strong front to back, that causes problems. And you see this with lifters often

because they rarely focus on lateral strength. Laterals moving sideways. You need that, everybody. You get really strong in one direction. You try and move the other action. This is injury city. Also, deadlifts and squat. and everything in the sageal plane with no lateral stability. Here's what you end up developing eventually. Hip problems.

Yep. Hip pain is very common with really strong lifters. And it comes from this lack of ability to stabilize laterally to support these heavy lifts like dead lifts and squats. So we put a lateral drag, which is wonderful. And if you don't have access to a sled, it's a lateral lunge. Yeah. And people don't add this into their routine enough. Great lower body developer.

Barely ever. But the main thing is it's developing that lateral strength, that lateral strength. You want to bulletproof those hips and you want to get everything working for you long term. We have to consider programming these in in order to stay strong and be able to resist a lot of these other forces that are pulling you. When I think of this movement and, you know, this is again, this is more later down my career, did I realize how important this was, whether that, probably because of my own age. I had brisitis in my hips. If you listen long enough, I talked about suffering. from that for this exact reason.

And it's probably why I also neglected it as a young trainer, like not, not realizing how important that lateral stability would be for so many clients. Once you unlock this, also, I think this is also what I know I always see like a really good trainer. I can tell by the way their client is priming. They're doing Miguel planes. They're doing tube walks. They're doing these movements laterally to really warm up, strengthen the hips.

And you know that trainer has probably been training for a long time because they've got their client priming and doing that. One of the best ways is to include strength training exercises that do that. It's the best because priming is great. Priming is wonderful. But lateral sled drags or lateral lunges actually builds lots of strength. Yeah. In that lateral position.

That's right. So it's the fix. Yeah. And it prevents those things from needing attention later. Next step, you have windmills. Here's your rotation. Here's where you address things like your QL, your thoracic mobility. and rotation, hip hingeing while rotating.

This is really important. In fact, I'll say this, and this is even personal for me, one of the most common injuries that you'll see with really strong deadlifters, like really strong deadlifters, where it's like, man, you can deadlift 500 pounds, is back injury that comes from a pulled QL. This feels like my low back got hurt on the side, you know, kind of where my SI join is. And it's just that they lack.

that QL stability and rotation. And so you're pulling something really heavy off the ground, and there's just a little bit of movement. Just a little shift. Just a little shift. Just a little boom. And you get hurt. You need that rotate. In fact, there's many strong lifters that can't even do a windmill without weight

because they never train rotation while hinging. So this is a great movement, and this is one way to bulletproof your back. This is such a good movement from top to bottom. Yeah. I mean, you get shoulder stability, thoracic spine rotation. Cervical spine in there, the ability to hinge at the hips.

Like you're communicating the entire kinetic chain through a movement that is just, I think it's, again, another exercise that would not have made it in my grade eight when I was in my mid-20s. Older, trained enough people see the benefits and the value of it. It's like you build it,

you put a couple of these exercises like that we're talking about and this is how you stay in the game forever. Like, you can get really strong doing the first five or six movements and build a decent looking physique. But eventually, you start filling it at the hinges, right? You start to feel that in the joints because you don't address the rotational stuff, you don't address the lateral stuff.

This is also, again, why we had to make eight. It was like, there's no way that we distill this down to six or seven exercises and not address the things that will become an issue for these. I got my rotation in there. Yeah. That's right. My lateral and my rotation.

Again, don't forget. The challenge was eight exercises forever. Not just for three months, not just like if you just only had to do eight. Yeah. And windmills for sure in there. And then lastly, one of the best overall core exercises is a perfect sit-up. Yeah. Abs, obliques, stability in the core, which, by the way, you get some of that with the windmill as well.

So when you put this all together and you organize them and program them well, what you have is a one lift a day, eight-day split. program that is phenomenal. And my very strong prediction is you're going to get people who learn how to lift following this program and you're going to get a lot of advanced lifters who are going to hit PRs in some of these big lifts. People who've been stuck at some of these big lifts and are like, look, I'm ready to break this plateau.

I'm going to see if I could get a bigger deadlift or incline press or overhead press. Do this. Do this. I also think we're going to have a little bit of what we felt when we, I remember when we released the very first Mass 15 program and people were just blown away. by how little and simple it was, yet the results that they got from it. I think the results that someone's going to get from this,

not just how they look, but how they feel and move and how strong they are from something as simple as this, I think it's going to surprise a lot of people. So really excited to release this one. Totally. Now it comes in three phases. Each phase changes the rep targets.

And you start at moderate reps, you move up to higher reps, and then at the end is when you push the strength. The last part, now that you've mastered the lifts, you've built the stability, now you're chasing, how heavy can I go for five reps? And this is different than how we write most of our programs, right? Most of the programs, we tend to start in a,

right out the gates and in like a strength type of phase. But because this is the idea is that you're practicing these lifts, and then at the end you're really starting to test the strength in these lists. Totally. I think that reverse order for most of the lifts, most people is going to really benefit this program. And so also really excited about this because we're doing something that we've never done before. Yes. One of the challenges, and this is just straight up, you guys, we did some analytics. And we looked at the typical person that gets one of

our fitness programs. And although the numbers came back better than the industry average, it still was dismal. There were a lot of people who would get programs and either wouldn't finish them. And this is a constant challenge in fitness is getting people to open them up and get going. Yeah, once they enroll and then get started and then stick through and go through the whole program. And so we're like, okay,

how can we fix this? Like, how can we fix this? And again, we have far better than industry average. The average customer who buys one mass program gets eight program, which is crazy. Nobody does that. But again, it's like, we want to get people results and we want to follow them.

We want to get them all the way through so they can come get all those, the results that they want, through fruition. And so here's what we did. We've never done this before. If you sign up for the Great Eight, now until the 22nd.

Okay, so if you're listening to this, when it drops, it's the 15th. So anybody who signs up between now to the 22nd gets five days of coaching from our personal trainer Cole. Yep. Five days of coaching. And these are the things that he'll be covering with all the people who signed up in that period of times.

It'll start on that Monday, the 23rd, right? So the 23rd is the first day of the coaching. You get on there. Again, you have a mind pump approved, a mind pump certified personal trainer, Cole, one of our top guys. And he's going to get on there and he's going to talk about how to get you the most success through this program. Day one is the MAP's success code.

This is kind of how to kind of overview, how we get the lifestyle to work for you, how you get through those roadblocks. Then he gets more specific. Day two, diet. Diet is very difficult. Nutrition is very difficult. when it comes to fitness. And having a coach on a live call with the group,

answering questions and covering things that we just don't do in our programs because it requires a little bit of nuance. You're going to have one of our coaches doing that. Day three, he's going to talk about training and individualization. There's always going to be people like, can I substitute this for this? What about this lift? What about that? And now you'll have this coaching that normally we charge for,

where, again, Cole's going to go through and talk about these things. Day four, lifestyle. The areas of your, remember, Cole is an experienced trainer, his experienced coach. And there are things that tend to get in the way, lifestyle issues, and you'll cover all of those. The common ones that he finds. And then day five is the 12-week transformation blueprint. And this is where he's really condensing things into actionable things you can do for the next 12 weeks. So the program is three months long.

So we're including that for free. Typically, you work with a coach like this. That's an additional fee. It's not. You sign up now before the 22nd. And you get that. Then we also included another thing that you're going to get if you sign up during the launch, which the full launch goes to the 28th is the great eight nutrition guide.

So here's what we did. This was the challenge that we brought to our education director, which was, can you give eight steps? Yeah. Eight diet steps. Simple. Eight simple diet steps. that don't involve tracking everything and counting everything.

Can you just give eight steps that are going to give people the most impact? The most impact. Make it simple. We want simple because what we found through the years of coaching people and training people and doing this podcast is effective includes simple. Simple is part of the formula when you're looking at real effect. So if you sign up during the launch, which goes to the 28th, you also get the great eight nutrition guide. But again, if you sign up until the 22nd, you also get the five days of coaching with Cole included for free.

Now, the program, the whole program that includes the coaching and the guide, $127 is the retail. But if you sign up during the launch, it's 50% off. So it's half off. So what you do is you go to Maps Great 8. So Maps Great, the number 8.com. Use the code to launch. 50% off. You get the guide.

if you sign up up until the 22nd, you also get five days of coaching. And that's it. And you're off and running. That's it, everybody. And again, this is one of those programs that it's going to be one of our most popular programs by far. The simplicity, the effect of miss for sure.

So one more time, Maps, great8.com. The 50% off code is launch. And that includes five days of coaching for free. If you sign up before or on the 22nd, if you go all the way to the 28th, all of it includes the free Great 8. nutrition guide. Go check it out.

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. The RGB Superbundle 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 Superbundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com.

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