Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2835: How To Get Stronger Than You've Ever Been

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

MAPS PPL: https://mapsppl.com?htrafficsource=spotify-organic&hcategory=MPSHOW&el=2835 Joovv: https://joovv.com/mindpump   You want to hit PRs you've never hit before? This episode is your 90-day blueprint to becoming the strongest version of yourself... and we're breaking down EXACTLY how to do it. Pick a couple lifts, follow our advice, and many of you are gonna set new personal records. Here's what most people get wrong... they think variety is the answer. They think training five or six days a week is the key. They think bodybuilding-style workouts will get them strong. WRONG. The truth? Less variety, more skill practice, strategic heavy AND light days, and cutting your training down to three days a week is what actually moves the needle. We've seen it over and over, callers training five days a week, stuck on their lifts, and all we do is cut their volume in half... and they come back STRONGER. But programming is only part of the equation. You need the nutrition dialed in too, and that means adding 500 calories to what you're eating now, hitting a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, and prioritizing SLEEP like your gains depend on it... because they do. Poor sleep is one of the greatest predictors of injury. Lock in these fundamentals for 90 days and watch what happens. Key Topics Pick 1-2 compound lifts to focus on for 90 days Skill in the lift is the BIGGEST contributor to how much weight you can lift Train each focus lift twice per week: one HEAVY day (low reps, high weight) and one LIGHT day (speed-focused) Use resistance bands on light days to accelerate speed and power Limit training to 3 days per week Third training day should focus on support exercises that reinforce your main lifts (stability, isometrics, antagonist work) Add 500 calories daily to fuel recovery and strength gains Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day Aim for 8.5 hours of sleep to account for time falling asleep Timestamps 0:00 Intro & MAPS PPL launch announcement 2:36 Pick 1-2 lifts to focus on for 90 days 4:24 Why skill matters MORE than muscle size 6:54 The bodybuilding variety trap 9:07 Practice lifts 2x per week 12:36 Using bands for explosive speed training 13:16 Train only 3 days per week 16:03 Support exercises 18:59 Nutrition 21:31 The #1 predictor of injury and performance

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, literally in the history of the world. Okay, we're approaching over half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, how you can be the strongest you've ever been.

Pick a couple lifts. Follow our advice in 90 days. many of you are going to hit a new record in those lifts. By the way, we just launched a brand new program. Maps, PPL, push-pill legs. You ask for it. You got it. By the way, there's two versions of this program, one for men, and then one for women.

The programming is different. Women have a more higher emphasis on lower body volume, glute training, shoulder volume, men, it's more traditional. Now, because it's a brand new program, we're launching it right now, and it's 40% off. If you go to Maps ppl.com, use the code PPL. You get the price slashed by 40%. Also, if you sign up within the first few days of the launch,

you can attend live coaching by one of the mind pump coaches. They're going to do three days of coaching, breaking down things like nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, really to help you become more consistent and maximize your progress through the program. We also include a supplement schedule guide, which will be free with this program. Again, you can get all of that included 40% off.

Maps ppl.com. The code is PPL. Now, we also are brought to you by a sponsor, Juve. So this is red light therapy. So when you read the studies on red light therapy, that it makes your skin healthier, reduce wrinkles, grows back hair, improves recovery. It does all those things.

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you'll get $50 off your purchase. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up 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 mindpump store.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, this is going to be a fun one. We're going to teach you today how you can get stronger than you've ever been in your entire life.

We're going to give you specifics. Follow these and break your old records. Let's go. I'm excited. I want to be strong. Yeah. So first off, I think we should say if you want to really measure this, right, if you really want to be stronger than you've ever been. I know people like, you can think of general strength.

But to measure it, you should pick a couple lifts that you're. you're going to focus on. That way you can objectively see, oh, yeah, like these, I see myself getting much stronger. And pick two. A big mistake people make when trying to gain strength. And you can generally get stronger. But if you want to see your biggest gains and strength, you're better off picking a couple to focus on for a certain period of time.

The biggest movers, the gross motor movements, the compound lifts. Those ones where you really have to generate the most force, I think is probably the use. You know, we've said that before. and I was trying to think if there was ever a time where I saw multiple of my big lifts all go up at the exact same time. It's not very common. Maybe one or two at the same time.

You can. Of course. You definitely can, but let's say... Especially someone who's relatively new. Yeah, but if I want to make like big gains and strength, if I focus on one lift, I'll make bigger gains in that one lift than if I focused on a lot of lifts,

is essentially what I'm trying to say. Yeah. And I think just for the purpose of this episode, you know, you could do what we're about to say. for a good 90 days. And that should get you a lot of people watching this PRs in the lifts that they chose. Although I will say that if you are, which a lot of people are, coming off a layoff, been inconsistent, and then you follow the things that we're about to talk about. Oh, it's a good general advice.

Absolutely. I mean, you're going to probably see a lot of your lifts go up, if not all of their lifts go up. Now here, okay, so here's one thing that's important. And we'll focus on workout programming before we get to the other stuff. but because programming makes a big difference. First of all, programming always makes a big difference. It makes a big difference for building muscle, burning body fat, improving, you know, fitness, all that stuff. But it makes the biggest difference when it comes to objective strength gains.

If you look at strength training programming, the more focused it is on a strength sport, like power lifting, Olympic lifting, the more scientific it gets. Yeah. Because it makes a huge. difference in comparison to all the other things I said. Again, programming is always important, but when it comes to adding strength to, especially to a specific lift or set of lifts. Well, then it's more objective. Yes.

It's pretty clear. By metrics, you can see movement in the right direction versus like, well, you can't really pin it to one thing. That's right. So the first point is you want to do less variety of exercises and lifts. And this is where you'll see a big difference between competitive strength sports and let's say like overall bodybuildings. or overall developing your body.

Like, bodybuilding tends to have a lot of variety of exercises. When you look at strength sports or programming for, like, power lifting or Olympic lifting or a deadlift or a squad or whatever, it's far less varied. And the reason for that is a lot of people don't realize this, but definitely bigger muscles contract harder. That's true. But the skill involved in the lift is the biggest contributor to the amount of weight you can lift. your skill that you develop around a specific lift,

the better you get at performing that lift, the more weight you can lift. And this is really evident when you see someone who should not be lifting as much weight as they are, and you'll see them in the gym sometimes. Like, I can't believe that guy just deadlifted at 600 pounds. He only weighs 170 pounds.

How's that possible? He's really skilled at that particular lift. Your reference to body building is a bit misleading. And I'd say that because I fell for the same exact trap. of this idea that bodybuilding is a variety of all these different exercises and angles. And to an extent it is from the outside looking in. When you look at Mr. Olympia and you see in a magazine his workouts and you see all these different exercises he did.

But he didn't get that physique, not getting strong at squatting, deadlifting, rowing. And so I fell for that trap. You went too far. Oh, man. And I think a lot of people do. I think a lot of people that don't identify as a strength athlete or care about PRs or aren't interested in powerlifting or Olympic lifting. But they're very much so into building the best body that they could possibly build, right? Building the best version of themselves.

And you jump right into what are all these pro bodybuilders doing and assume that that's the greatest pathway to build the best physique for you. And it's just not true. And every time we talk about this, it always frustrates me because I made that mistake for a very long time. For a very long time, I was chasing all these novel exercises or unique angles or doing all this stuff that, sure, I built some muscle along the way. And I had a decent physique, but nothing built a stronger, better looking bigger physique than getting good at a couple of these good lit, like these major lists.

Yeah, I will say, generally speaking, right, bodybuilding has more variety than, let's say, powerlifting. Powerlifting programming on its face looks very boring and simple in comparison. But that being said, for the majority of people listening right now, if you're listening to this episode, you're like, yeah, I'd like to get really strong. But I also want to develop my legs or my delts or my back. pick a lift that corresponds to that body part, get stronger at it, and you'll develop that body part.

So if you're listening to this and you're a woman, you're like, I want to get my glutes to grow. Apply we're about to say to the hip thrust or the barbell squat and your butt will grow as you get stronger. So it's definitely an important point. No, I mean, this is the argument I'm trying to make is that if you're a young man and you're in your 20s and you're like, I want to build the best physique possible

and you're following all these, you know, bodybuilder type of routines, you would be far better served following what we're about to talk about. For the most part, for the most part, if you want to build that the ultimate stage physique or the most ripped, jacked version of you, and don't fall for the doing all these other creative exercises right now, because right now,

as you're in your early 20s and you are laying the foundation for this incredible physique you want to build, this is the pathway, is to focus on a couple of the major lifts and practice them and get really good and get really strong at them because it will carry over the most. And what you're saying is,

yeah, we can fall into. It's such an easy track. I remember when Justin did his video series trying to hit a push press or split stance press with 315 overhead. And I remember when you first, I remember as you followed the process,

and obviously Justin knows what he's talking about. He's probably the best workout programmer in this room. He, as he followed this process, his programming became far more simple. Yeah. as you want me. Talk about that a little bit with like how the variety changed or reduced and how much stronger you got as a result. Oh, yeah. Like I realized quickly that, well, initially I was trying to reinforce and make sure that like I was accounting for the supporting cast of muscle groups and to make sure I had the longevity to keep adding on this crazy amount of load.

And really just to to peel back and take more. rest and actually like take more emphasis on the recovery, but also the actual skill itself, like put the emphasis all on the skill. So just like trade out all that volume, just put it right into just the specific lift itself. Like my numbers started to really shoot up almost immediately. Totally. So here's the next part of this is take this lift or these two lifts that you're going to focus on for the next 90 days. And you're going to practice them. By the way, I'm using that word intentionally, practice. You don't want to think in terms of body parts when you're trying to get stronger.

You want to think in terms of the movement. But practice these lifts about twice a week. This is what the general consensus says about getting strong at a particular lift is about two days a week is when you're kind of focusing on this particular lift. Now the workouts are not the same with those two times. So let's say your goal is to get your squat. You want your squat. Or let's say it's your bench press.

I want to get that to its highest level. So I'm going to bench twice a week. You're not doing the same kind of bench pressing twice a week. Typically what the coaches will expouse. And what you see in the data is one day should be heavy and one day should be light. And the light day, you're focusing on speed of the lift. And the heavy day, you're just focused on lifting heavy. And when you do it this way, you get really good and get really strong,

very, very quickly. The heavy day sounds quite obvious. You got to lift heavy, right? So if I'm trying to get strong of the bench press, I'm going to have a day where I'm getting underneath a bar that I can maybe do five reps with

and I'm practicing two or three reps and I'm doing maybe six sets of this. Remember, less variety of exercises. So I'm still doing a lot of sets, but it's like very few exercises. But then one day a week, I'm going to take a weight that I could probably lift 10 times

and I'm doing one or two, but my goal is to see if I can, throw it off my chest. If I can really move this bar quickly. And that lightweight with speed has a great carryover to overall. Great translate. Well, again, it's another one of those things that if you think that you're focused on the aesthetics that, oh, this is like training like an athlete.

Why would I do this? So most people are going to get great aesthetic benefits. I mean, I'm going to keep hammering that home because I know that it's not just because I identify as that. I know that a lot of my clients did. Like it was rare that I had a client come to me and say that they wanted to get good at explosive movements or they wanted to be they wanted a PR or something. Yeah, they wanted to hit a PR. They wanted to get strong.

That's rare. Most people come because they want to look. And because of that, we, we, we make the mistake of limiting ourselves in our training program to this very generic kind of, you know, doing all these random exercises versus doing some of the major lifts really well. And part of doing the major lives really well is one of the things you said is practicing them, but practice them in different ways. Slow grinding controlled and then light and fast. Like that doing those movements in both those ways within a training cycle, such a strong tool for you to get really good at the movement. Fast twitch contraction is such a different stimulus. Like it's something that different skill.

Different skill. It produces a different physique as well. Like it'll actually build muscle, you know, a little bit. Like if you're not getting that type of stimulus, you'll notice a visible difference. Yeah, absolutely. So one way to do this, by the way, for people who have the ability to do this is on the light day, on the fast light day, you load the bar and then use a resistance band and anchor the resistance band. It works so well with the fast rep style, lighter weight, you know, style training. I discovered this years ago

trying to at the time trying to hit a 600 pound deadlift at a body weight of 190 pounds and I got stuck at like 570 for a while and then I was reading you know

Westside Marbels training and they did a lot of they did this right and so I started using bands and what I did was I'd go 315 so at the time if my one rep max was 570 315 was relatively light right

but I'd use bands, heavy bands on it, and I would just do one rep, and I'd get, you know, and of course, if you're moving fast, by the way, make sure you got good technique, because then the risk of injury goes up. But I really focus on exploding up off the ground with the bands in 315, and that's how I got to 600 pounds, was practicing that. Next is you're going to lift about three days a week. Lots of strength training all the time. It doesn't work well for most people's goals, but definitely not for strength. Stuck in the recovery track. Yeah. In fact, if you took someone who was doing good programming

five days a week who had a nice physique bodybuilder style physique and they look good or whatever they're like, I want to get really strong you cut them down to three days a week and those get stronger. It's just across the board

it tends to work better that way. So you're doing three days a week of lifting and no more than that. Now you're probably wondering well what's that extra day, right? Because you said one heavy day, one light day,

what am I doing on that third day? That's when you're doing and that's the next point, exercises that are support. How do I support this movement. So if I'm getting good at the deadlift, I may do exercises

for my lats. I may do exercises that work on hip stability, that work on rotation because I know, or maybe QL strength, because I know that can be a weakness in the deadlift that can cause injury.

If I don't have good rotation or good, you know, QL, that's one of the muscles that stabilizes the sides of your body with the deadlift. For the bench press, you know, I'm going to do isometrics. I'm just going to ask you if you would incorporate isometrics.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm going to do stuff for shoulder stability. I'm going to do stuff, you know, if it's a bench press. I'm going to do rowing movements on that day to give me that nice anchor at the midback for the bench press. And so that's what the other day is going to look like. So a lot of this workout is going to look like a lot of sets of this lift or two lifts that you're trying to build. And then you're using these other exercises as like the support.

Like how does it going to support this particular lift? the big mistake people will make following our advice here is they do a lot of everything. So like, yeah, I want to get strong to the bench press, but I'm going to make sure I hammer everything. You're not going to get...

Even not just hammering, Sal, just doing a lot of everything. I mean, it's tough to get... I mean, obviously it depends on who we're talking to, right? If you're talking to someone who never goes to the gym, it's one thing. But a lot of people that listen to the podcast are avid lifters.

And so you take somebody who consistently already trains five days a week and you give and the advice you're giving right now, it sounds like it's not enough. I don't know how many times we have to talk to either a live call or a person messaging in that needs help and we're giving advice and they want to see a deadlift go up.

They want to see movement. And then you assess their programming. And it's just like they're doing like a maps aesthetic type of volume. And then on top of that, they're doing all this extra deadlifting and squatting or whatever movement is they're trying to get good at. And it's just way too much volume. It's way too much.

And if they would scale dramatically back and just focused on those one or two lifts, they'd see a huge impact. And there's this fear that they all seem to have, which is they've been training that way for so long that if I all of a sudden scale way back on all that, I'm going to lose all those gains that I had on those other muscles. And even though I really want to see my deadlift

or I really want to see my hip thrust go up, but I also don't want to lose my delts that I built and my chest that I built over the last five years. And it's like it doesn't, it won't work like that. You don't have to stimulate that much. 90% of those people actually get progress. It's funny. It's oftentimes we'll get, like you said, callers who we're doing this crazy five-day-a-week workout.

And all we do is cut their volume in half. I don't even change their programming. Just cut your volume in half, report back to me in 60 days. And they all come back. I'm way stronger. Like, this is crazy. So a lot is not a good idea. You want the right amount.

And for most people listening, it's about three days a week for what we're talking about. And you're using those other exercises to support the ones that you're focused on for the next 90 days. Now on those off, so three days a week, you take somebody who is used to lifting five, six, walking, mobility. I mean, keep movement up. That's going to help facilitate recovery. So I think that's also important. Yeah, don't just sit around a day long. Yeah, make sure you keep your steps up for sure.

Lots of cardio would be counterproductive for this. Right, right. But movement is okay, right? Like movement, low intensity, walking, you know, low intensity, lipical stuff, stuff that's going to keep the body active, doing mobility stuff, doing corrective movements to help. better movement patterns and things like that are only going to support and facilitate recovery. Okay. Now we're going to get to the diet part.

And it's very simple, basic. I'm just going to make it as simple as possible. Whatever you're eating now add 500 calories. All right. So good. Now, you can just change your programming and get stronger, especially if your programming is not good. That's true. But you add an extra 500 calories a day to that and you've just turbocharged all your strength gains.

If you're in a calorie deficit, it ain't going to happen. If you're like, yeah, I love this. I'd like to hit PRs and get shredded. Pick one because you're not going to do both. So you've got to pick which one you're after and then go after that one. You need the energy. That's right. The extra calories alone, here's how powerful it is.

Sometimes people just bump their calories to get stronger. They don't even change their workout programming. They just needed extra calories. So to make it simple for someone right now, look at your diet and then give yourself a 500 calorie meal that you throw on top of it on a daily basis. And that should cover. So I fight you. So you tend to give that advice.

I like to go the direction because my advice will feed into your next point you're going to make, which I like just adding fat of your meats and two ounces to your meals. Yeah, it's easy way to do it. Easy way to do it. So it's like because most people can afford to have higher protein. Yeah, you're right. Right. Then what they're already currently at, I need their calories up.

So it's like, okay, instead of us having those chicken breasts, we're having, you know, chicken thighs. Instead of us having, you know, extra lean ground beef, you're having the, higher fat ground beef or you're getting rib eye or a, you know, tri-tip or something in there. And instead of you always eating six to seven ounces, I'm having you eat at least eight to nine ounces in all those smells. And so you don't really have to change a lot of what you're currently doing or find a place to fit in the mill. And it's like... Just eat bigger portion. Yeah, just eat a little bit larger portion of that meat when you, when you do eat it and also enjoy a higher fat cut than you normally would. And that'll typically take care of those 500,000.

And that takes us the next point, which is eat. high protein. What is high protein? A gram of protein per pound of body weight. We've said there's so many times in the podcast. Now I know the data shows it's probably a little less than this or whatever, but here's what I know. I know that A, eating a little over that doesn't hurt. And B, you're going to miss some days. It's difficult to do consistently. That's right. And it's also a round number. Sometimes people are funny about this. Like, okay, 0.7 or 0.8 grams per pound of body weight comes out to whatever. Just whatever you weigh. A lot more of a math problem. Yeah, whatever you weigh, you know, hit your body weight. Unless you're really, really overweight in which, case you don't eat that much protein. You'd want to go more towards target body weight. But if you're not super overweight, just whatever your body weight is, that's the grams of protein.

Eat that daily. Now, the difference between that amount of protein and let's say low protein, like what the RDA recommends, huge difference in strength gains. You take 150 pound female who's used to eating 60 grams or 70 grams of protein a day and have her eat 150 grams of protein a day. Wow. What a difference when it comes to strength. muscle. And then finally, you want sleep. You got to have sleep. Poor sleep, it will kill

all your progress, dramatically increases your risk of injury. It's actually funny, it's funny, because the data shows that one of the greatest predictors of injuries is a poor night of sleep. It's even more of a predictor than not warming up. So get really good sleep. And I like to tell people, aim for eight and a half hours every night. So I know that everybody's like seven to eight, seven to eight. But here's what happens, especially if you're more towards a seven. You go, you're like, Okay, cool. If I go to bed at 10, then I need to wake up at this time for seven hours. But it takes you have 20 minutes to fall asleep. And the reality is you're getting less than the amount.

Yeah. If you aim for eight and a half, like I go to bed at this time and eight and a half hours later, I'm waking up. That's my block. Then that point five hours is you going to sleep. And maybe if you have to wake up in the middle night to go pee or whatever, and you'll hit the ideal amount of sleep. Do you think part of why we see so much success in the people that reduce their volume of training to down to like three days a week versus their five or six? is partly because of this also because I think it's really

tough and for me it is I notice this because I'm tracking so diligently right now for such a long period of time. It's probably the longest I've ever tracked sleep and been like really consistently trying to improve. It's tough.

So the new goal that I have for myself and I keep setting these like new milestone goals of like improve a little bit better, a little bit better, a little better. I still have yet to do back to back 90s. I hadn't seen a 90s. I hadn't seen a 90. Oh, score ever for a long time.

Then I started seeing my first 90s and I'd get one a week maybe. But I haven't been able to put back to back 90, like rest like that. I'm lucky if I get a 90 and then an 80 or something like that. A lot of times it's 90 and so, you know, it's the consistency of getting. And it's so because I'm, again, paying attention so closely, you know, when I land in the 70s or 80s, if I wasn't really paying attention, I can easily misjudge what that was if someone asked me. I'm getting closer now to where it's like,

oh, I can feel a huge difference between a 90 sleep night and like, say, like a low 70 sleep night. Like that discrepancy is a huge difference. I just, I feel so much better, so much so much more energy. And it's like, man, I can only imagine if I could just string three, four or five of those in a row. And so I think a lot of people probably can relate to this, not getting perfect sleep all the time. And so when you throw that in with someone who's also training with high volume and intensity, you're just setting yourself up for having your body struggling to recover and perform. I know for me, good versus not great sleep is like predictable 5% increase in weight.

Yeah, you could literally, you could predict whatever performance metric to add to that. Consistent. And if I go back and think about my best performances, either like sports related, you know, even when I had like a musical recital. It was just like completely dependent on sleep. Totally. And one of the biggest, like there's a lot of, you hear a lot of tips around sleep.

Here's the one that has the biggest impact. And I like to focus on the ones that have the biggest impact. Because if I give people 10 ways to improve your sleep, then it's just too much. Here's the biggest, biggest impact. Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day. That seems to translate into the best sleep scores and reports that we get from people

is if they just do that right, there. So just start there. Now, there's lots of, you know, okay, no electronics and black, you know, black out your room, no caffeine. Of course, that's a sleep killer, past a certain point. But if you just go to bed and wake up at the same time every day for the next 90 days, that one change right there will improve your sleep significantly.

By the way, we just launched a brand new Maps program. Maps PPL. So it's Maps, push, pull legs. And for the first time ever, we made a man and women's version. So the programming is a little different. A little bit lower body focus and glute focus for the women, then for the men. But it's the same split, same exercise, just the programming, the sets, and the reps a little bit different.

Now, because it's a brand new program, we're launching it right now, and it's 40% off. If you go to Maps, ppl.com, use the code PPL. You get the price slashed by 40%. Also, if you sign up within the first few days of the launch, you can attend live coaching by one of the mind pump coaches. They're going to do three days of coaching. breaking down things like nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, really to help you become more consistent and maximize your progress through the program.

We also include a supplement schedule guide, which will be free with this program. Again, you can get all of that included 40% off. Maps ppl.com. The code is PPL. 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. 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.

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