Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2875: How to Look Your Best This Summer (With 30 Days or Less)

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

In this episode the guys break down exactly how to look your best this summer with 30 days or less. They debate personal strategies — carb and water manipulation, peak week bodybuilding tactics, creatine loading, blood flow restriction training for arms and calves, building your abs instead of just leaning out, training rear delts and upper back for the beach, tibialis training for better looking legs, and why switching to whole foods alone will make you look visibly different in 30 days.   MAPS Summer Sale — https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Code: SUMMER40 — 40% off everything (programs, bundles, mods & guides) — June 1–14 only   SPONSOR   Rho Nutrition (liposomal NAD+ & Glutathione) — https://www.rhonutrition.com/discount/MINDPUMP Code: MINDPUMP — 20% off everything. NAD+ raises your baseline energy without stimulants.     LINKS Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com  Maps Fitness Products: https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia   0:00 - Intro 2:02 - Adam's 30-day strategy — push carbs and volume, then taper and peak the final week 9:12 - Creatine loading for muscle fullness — why the scale going up is actually good 10:05 - Spray tans, haircuts and the real reason bodybuilders tan up 13:19 - Sal's strategy — build your abs instead of just leaning out, rear delts & upper back 20:44 - Blood flow restriction for arms and calves — a quarter inch of size in 30 days 22:10 - Justin's strategy — eliminate the extras, clean up the diet, rows and cleans for the yoke 23:43 - Why switching to whole foods alone makes you look visibly better in 30 days

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. We talk about the hacks that you can use to look your best this summer, which is right now. By the way, all maps workout programs, every fitness program, every bundle, every guide, every

mod, all of our fitness stuff. 40% off right now for the massive summer sale. Go to Maps Fitness Products.com. Use the code summer 40. This episode's also brought to you by Roe Nutrition. So Roe Nutrition makes supplements and utilizes something called liposomal technology. This is a medical grade delivery system. So what it does is they take compounds like NAD.

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hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpump store.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstor. com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Okay, this episode is all about hacks.

Hacks to help you look your best this summer. That's right now. Let's get to it. All right, Adam, I'm going to start with you. You got invited to pool party in three or four weeks. You're going to go in three or four weeks. What do you do to look your best in that short period of time? Let's say it's four weeks.

We have 30 days. What are you doing? I mean, I don't think there's much of a difference between three and four weeks. I think I'm going to load, build as much as I can until the final weeks, recognizing I'm not going to put on 20 pounds of muscle in three weeks. You're also going to lose 20 pounds of body fat. Exactly. I'm not even going to go that angle.

I feel like that's like the last week is to do like a little bit of leaning and pulling water is probably the direction that I'm going to go. It's like, okay, the next three weeks, the diet's going to be clean, but good amount of calories, push weights. carbs are as I'm going to push carbs as high as I can push water as high as I can and then the final week just like I would like a peak week for bodybuilding I'm going to start to taper on carbohydrates carbohydrates so like seven days out from the pool I'm going you know let's say and just say hypothetical numbers I get up to four or five hundred carbs a day

I'm going to go down to 400 300 200 200 100 so every day scales down a little yeah Every day I'm scaling down. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, a little bit. And then, and you could, so by the way, you could do this different. You could go hard for, like, low, like right away and then refeed to get in it. But I'd rather just taper really, really low and just kind of pull it out, deplete. Simultaneously, kind of reducing my water intake that I've pushed over a gallon down to a gallon to a three-quarters to a half a gallon a day.

And so I'm kind of doing that at the same time. And then, like, the literally two days before I'm about to hit the, pool. Now I'm keeping water kind of where it's at right out that half gallon or whatever, and I'm starting to load carbohydrates. So now I'm going to go back the other direction so that I'm hitting, you know,

peak fullness in my muscle bellies. Yeah, because, so what you're talking about, a lot of what you're talking about is getting your muscles to deplete, right? So it kind of pull the water out. Yeah. Pull things out and then fill them back up. Yes. Which makes them appear larger

and fuller type of it. This is a bodybuilding strategy. Bodybuilders do this on show. I also think what matters south of that question is where I currently think I'm at like body fat percentage. Like I said, I would push calories and carbohydrates going into that final week. If I'm somebody who is relatively decent body fat percentage, if I'm in, like, I'm probably mid-teens right now.

And so if I'm mid-teens are lower, making a difference of 1% down in body fat, like cutting more, probably like, Well, it's a great point because I think realistically, I mean, aggressively, you could lose in 30 days, 3%, 4%, but your body fat, that's at the most. But you're going to end up probably losing some muscle with that. I'd say more realistically, you could lose like 2%. Body fat in a 30-day period, which isn't a ton of ton of ton of time. And I just want people to understand that because I think sometimes people are like, oh, 30 days out, I'm going to lose tons of weight. No.

What ends up happening is they lose a lot of water or muscle along with it. So they end up hitting the beach or the pool looking kind of smaller and not leaner. What you're saying is so important because you could absolutely lose a bunch of weight on the scale on 30 days. Yes. 30 days. That won't necessarily mean you look better. You won't look better. That will be the mistake.

We'll be cutting calories, running likely. The mistake that most people make is I got 30 days to look my best. And because they think they need to go in the body fat direction, they will go low cow, lots of activity. looking at the scale every day is their barometer of I'm doing good or not. And it's like, yes, I got down 15 pounds in those 30 days. But it's like half of it was muscle. And so you look worse or at best the same as you did when you started this whole journey where it's like, I'd much not rather do that approach.

The only way I'm even thinking about doing cut for those first three weeks is if I'm a higher percent body fat, then, you know, if I'm at 20 percent body fat, bringing myself down to 18 percent body fat, so I might stay in a cut until the final week. week, but the final week still looks about the same. So no matter what, I'm going to probably, I'm going to pull down carbohydrates, pull down water, and then push back up. So the one time I can think of that I actually approach something like this, where I said, okay, I have 30 days, was one year I was going to go visit my family in Italy. And obviously, we're going to be at the beach quite a bit.

And so I did something totally different. My diet was relatively clean at that point. I was already relatively lean. Again, you're not going to make dramatic changes in 30 days. But what I did is I changed my training more than anything. And what I did is they slowly increased my volume and shortened my rest periods. And the only reason why I shortened the rest periods in my workouts wasn't because I was trying to get a cardio workout. It's because I were trying to fit more volume in the same hour.

I would do the same. And so what I basically did is over four weeks is I, increased my volume over time, did a little bit more supersets to cram in more volume. My food intake stayed roughly the same, although I did, and now I was there for a whole month,

so what I'm talking about would last a couple days. But I did cut my carbs to make myself look like I was a little bit leaner. And then, you know, when I got there eating with my family, obviously you're eating everything there. And I looked great for like a couple days doing that.

But what I did is I just increased the activity through the stress. strength training while maintaining. I would do the same thing. So that's part of why. But that doesn't work long term, right? No, no, no. This is,

when I think about, uh, this advice, it's when I get somebody who talks to me about, I've got a wedding day. I'm going to be, I'm going to be a Vegas pool. I'm going to the,

on Miami Beach for these, these three days. Like, like, you have a, you have a small period of time. And this is very, I mean,

uh, like people that have been, get like shoots, like for models, things like that. they understand most of them, especially they've hired a trainer to help them with this. Like there is a way to optimize the way you look for a day. And it can look dramatically different.

And the more in shape you are, the more dramatic, I think you can actually make yourself look. The leaner you are, the more dramatic. Yeah. And so, and that's why I bring up that point of like, it does depend on where you're at. Like, I know that I'm, I'm not lean right now, but I'm lean enough that I can manipulate the way I look just by playing with carbohydrates and literally pushing, volume up. And I wouldn't be pushing volume up while 70s tasting cutting calories. That's why I made the point of like, I would actually be pushing

calories, pushing carbohydrates, and also increasing volume in my training. I wouldn't be doing that while cutting calories. Like cutting calories and pushing volume and training is counterproductive. No, no, no, no. I was, I was not, my, my caloric output was aren't naturally going up because my volume was going up. But my food intake stayed roughly the same.

It wasn't really changing much of it except for the carbohydrate manipulation. Also, another thing is cretine is great. If you're 30 days out and you're not taking creatine, this will fill up your muscle bellies. Now, what scares people with this is their weight goes up on the scale. So, and typically women are more afraid of this than guys, but they'll take cratine to be like, am I going to gain weight on the scale?

Yeah, you might gain two or three pounds. But it's your muscles being more hydrated. And so what happens is in a bikini or a bathing suit, you kind of look like you have a little bit of a pump in comparison to how you looked before. Yeah. You're not bloated. You just have more, your muscles are just more full.

And so if you don't take creatine, like 30 days is enough time to take creatine to get some of those effects of a little bit of that musclefulness. Yeah. You can get from it. Justin just wears the t-shirt with the guy with the abs. I was going to say, you guys won't hear my. Let me hear what you would do. Hair cut. Hey, actually, that's just, that's fair.

Spray tan. Oh, do you do spray tan? Spanx. No, you do. Hey, do you know there? What's the... No, but I do a haircut. For every shade, I forget, for every shade darker you are,

it's supposed to make you look a certain percentage leaner. No, it's science. Come on, there is science to this. Yeah. There's a reason why we all get tanned up as like, put layers on before you go. Yeah, it's going to hit. No, do you really do spray down? I have one time.

Like, so I'm like trying to think of why Zerians are talking, if I've done this, like, crash, you know, hustle. I want to know what it's... To look better. Tell me the story where you spray tan. Please tell the story where you spray tan. Because I don't know about this. It was for like when I was doing a website shoot for myself because it's like, you know,

like somebody had convinced me that I was too white, you know, for camera. And I'm like, so? And they're like, well, here. Yeah, I got some spray tan where they just like stand you up and spray. With the airbrushing. Like slightly orange. And then they just were able to. you know, manipulate it with like Photoshop.

But yeah, I did that. I basically did that. And then I reduced my calories, obviously. And I did like every wrong thing you could do, like where I'm like doing cardio and I'm like, you know, totally like depriving myself. But yeah, if I was to do it all over again, it would be totally, I would come to you guys for advice. Can you, can you think of a time?

Oh, this is for all of you or both of you. Like what, like when you looked your absolute best trying to do that? Like, you probably yours was your photo shoot that you did for your... Oh, for MAPS andabolic? Yeah, was that the... When you think back at times, like, this was the best physique I ever presented. I think it looked... I looked the most dramatic for that.

But I don't think I looked the best. I was really lean. I mean, I was 4% body fat, and I was like, really lean. Yeah. What was your favorite version? And you remember what? More like 7% because I was healthier. Oh, interesting.

If you saw me in person, I looked probably better. Yeah, yeah. I had gone to, um, what's the... What's that place where people take houseboats? Is it the Delta? Yeah. Oh, yeah, Delta. We had gone to the Delta.

By the way, you guys are over to the Delta? Yes. Yeah. That place is interesting. Yeah, yeah. It's a little bit of, it's like that bar scene in Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Where am I, dude?

Anyway, I went with... Lots of insults. Lots of people out there out there. Listen. Sometimes you get good ones. Listen, it was wild, dude. There's a nickname for it. I cannot think of it right now.

But you're... God, what's it called? Is it ski beach? I think ski beach is out there. Yeah, I think I went to them. It's been a long time since I've been out there. Yeah, because we got on the houseboats and we drove it to a place and we'd anchor down. Yeah, and then people start pulling up next to you and there's a lot of characters out there.

Yeah. But I was like 7% and I just felt healthy. And I think I looked the best. Yeah. 4% was just, it was like okay for pictures to look dramatic. Yeah. But I don't want to look. I don't think that looked at.

Yeah. So none of my stage photos or me on stage do I think is mine. mine either. It was always, no, not always, but many times it was two or three days afterwards was my favorite look. Now that, again, to your point, when you're on stage, the more shredded you look, the better it is. But then when you see yourself in person, you're, oh yeah, or even when I'm in the mirror, I'm looking at myself in the mirror, I don't like that look. But I know that on stage, with the lights, with the five coats of tanning all over you, you know, it just, looks different. It looks different than what walk around does. Switching in my programming,

though, like in more hypertrophy for a month did do a dramatic. Oh, I bet that was, because you don't train that way. It really did make a difference. Especially my arms and my chest was like, you know, what's more defined? Yeah. One interesting. Two things I did that I noticed because these are like, these are like aesthetic things. Okay. So you're not going to build, uh, this is not a general, well, maybe it is for a core. So here's what I do with my, my core is I, I, I train them to build them. This made a big difference. To build my abs and oblique, not just train them, not do like a thousand reps and do a lot of twisting exercises and just to,

like I'm actively going to try to make my abs bigger. Because I know when they're bigger, you're going to see them at higher body fat percentages. Huge difference in the way they all. So you bring that up. Add that to my strategy that I said that I would do if I had four weeks because I don't think a lot of people train abs like that. No, no.

And I'm telling you that I would be pushing. carbs and calories and volume, like you're saying. And another place to push the volume would be ab training. Great idea. Yeah. Great idea to do that because you could be at 13 to 15% body fat and see visible abs if you build your abs. That's right.

Otherwise, most people have to get to single digit or under, you know, 10% body fat. I used to be, before this, before I figured that out, I would have to get down, I would get down like 9%, 10%, which is that's like what they would call six pack territory, right? Yeah. But if I wasn't flexing, you could tell I was lean. but you couldn't really see my abs. And I would see sometimes guys at the beach or even at the gym that really built.

Like I remember one time I seen this dude who had, he had like a tight, it was kind of like a spandex vest on and his abs were sticking out of his shirt. I was like, damn, you can see his, he's not even flexing. Like you can see his abs. Yeah, I knew a guy like that.

That's when it dawned on me. I was like, his abs are developed. Mine are just lean, but they're not developed. Yeah. So I started doing decline sit-ups with weight. So I started doing real slow. I'm like, okay, I'm going to build them.

So I'm going to do. I'm actually getting strong abs. Instead of doing a million reps. So I would hold a weight and I'd unroll and come up and I'd try to keep the reps low. So whatever weight would allow me to do eight reps or 10 reps with lots of resistance.

And I rest three minutes in between for ab work, which before I was like, there's no rest. You just keep going. I started doing dragon flags, the exercise that Rocky does in Rocky Four. Oh, yeah. I started doing ab rollouts and I do the,

off my knees, but real slow and crunch up. And I would do heavy twists, heavy chops. And dude, in a very short period of time, my abs went from being just lean and flat to like sticking out. And it made a huge difference. And then I had the six pack without even flexing. You know, like you telling that, because I think that's such great advice, Justin bringing up that makes me go like, you know, it's funny is we're all probably in very different

places, both body fat percentage, training volume, where our physiques are right now. Strategically, I bet if we each had four weeks, strategies would look different. I totally think that your point. Yeah, you need tan. Obviously. So your hypertrophy training would be a brilliant strategy. It's a novel stimulus. You don't train aesthetics like that very often.

Your body's going to respond really well to it. Yeah, and I'd want to, yeah, more emphasis, like, I guess, on my arms and back and, like, you know, more width. And I think that would help, you know, balance it out. And you're already really lean. I'm relatively lean. I don't know what I'm at right now, 10-11. Oh, you think you're 10-11? You think you're over?

I thought you're single still. Maybe. I don't know. I recently beefed up a little bit. I don't know. I got to test it. I don't know. But you know,

the other thing I did too, Adam, was I, my shoulder training changed. Typically, shoulder training would start with overhead presses, which is you want to do that. Yeah.

But I started, and again, this is not a long-term strategy. This is not the best way to build your delts. But if you want to create an aesthetic look in a short period of time,

I started all my workouts of rear-delt flies, leading up to it. It was all rear-dept flies. Then laterals, So now I'm doing laterals. And then I went to my shoulder presses. Because I was trying to do is create this.

And you created more like cap. I was trying to create this really round look to my show. I have a picture of myself too from that trip where I have a sleeveless shirt. And I'm with my grandfather, my dad, and my son when my son was a little guy. And I can see, you know. But that was the strategy. The strategy was it's focused on these areas that look. You know, I like that.

I love that tip. Yeah. I think I've, for a long time on this podcast talked that, one, I think that rear delts are just generally overlooked by most people. Yep. And all the competitors that I train, myself included, getting people to bring their rear delts up, I can't tell you how many, like, how much better their physique, just from that. It's a small muscle. So you don't think it's going to make that big of a difference. Like, you know, like people think right away, you know, chest and legs and glutes and you think of all these big muscles.

And those are the big movers and will make your overall physique look more impressive. But in a short period of time, developing a muscle that's probably overlooked. a lot of people and putting emphasis on a rear, which is why I love your ab point two. Abs and rear delts are probably two areas that people neglect. It creates the V-Taper. Yes.

And so you want to talk about like I got small, sure, which is also a great point to this conversation is, you know, the coach in me would give different advice on who I'm talking to. Like if I got a hold of each one of you and I got that time, I'm probably manipulating different things based off of that. and same if it was a client, right?

You know, it's funny about what you said about, like, these small muscles that you don't even think about. Another thing I had noticed, I haven't done this in a long time, but I actually did it before one summer because I, you know, my upper legs developed really well when I was a kid. They just got, they built really quickly. My calves took a little bit longer to respond.

I don't have tiny calves, but they didn't match my upper legs. So I would work on them. And then I had a friend of mine. He used to wear shorts all the time. And I noticed him something about him. He did have, he had good calves. But I noticed when he looked at his legs from the front, his,

he had his overall shin and calf from the back look muscular. And I noticed it was his tibialis. When's the last time you train your tibialis? Oh, I used to. I do a lot more now, like, especially with athletes. I never do it. But when I was competing, that was a hack. So tibialis to give them.

I never thought of that, yeah, though, when I was younger. So tibialis training, typically when I was a trainer. Nobody does it. Well, I would do it with clients when they'd have shin splints. Yeah. This is like people who try to run, they get shin splints. It's preventative. Easy fix.

It's like, let's do some tibialis raises. Like super simple. And it works like 80% of time. So I would do it with them. Never did I train my tibialis except for prior to this one, there was this one year where I did it. And it made my overall calf look better because that developed. Only one gym had that little tibialis machine that I've ever. And I love that thing.

I used to love. But it makes your lower leg. So to that point, okay, so I'll give one on, this is a great time for blood occlusion. So if you, if you're, if you're, If you don't have great calves and you only get a couple weeks and you got pool time ready, like blood occlusion on your calves for that short period of time will give you like a decent quarter inch to a half inch on your calves. I was just going to say, if you guys were both on that kick, I remember that. Oh, yeah.

You did grow a bit. No, 100% they did. That's why I was so impressed. I mean, I have to try blood occlusion training. Yes. For his calves? But not for my calves. Please go.

I did. Make it fatter. I did make a fatter. He's a lot of me. You get a lot of you. I did. So that's funny, dude. If someone did occlusion training for their upper arms,

because those are the areas, you could do it really. Really, it's arms and legs. You can't do anything for chest or bad. But if you did it for your arms and your calves, you would get close to a quarter inch of muscle size, of size, probably within 30 days. Yeah.

Yeah. You probably would. That's where that would become a really cool. When else can you get a quarter inch of stuff? It's not a long-term hacker solution. It doesn't replace traditional straight training. It just works. works really quick.

But if you, again, this all goes back to like, if I had, if, if I was coaching somebody, I'd spend a good hour asking a lot of questions. Like, what does your training look like before? How do you eat you before? Where's their body fat percentage? Looking at their,

like, okay, how can I manipulate this? Because the truth is, in a short period of time, we're not making huge swings body fat percentage. We're not packing on 10, 15 pounds muscle. Even nutritionally, I probably would just like, you know, say I'm drinking a lot like coffees. I have like sugar in my coffee. I have like, you know,

I'm just eliminating any of the calories. The extra stuff that I normally, it's like just basic, you know, like just stick with the dialed in stuff. For back training, I would change it as well because it's interesting. There's like what looks good when you flex a muscle versus what looks good when you're just walking around. And when you look at a person's back, first of all, the, you know, people neglect to understand just how much your back plays a role and how good you look overall. Bodybuilders know that. Yeah, it's what wins. shows.

When's he loses shows. Bodybuilding physique, even Ronnie Coleman, the reason why he was so dominant for so long. But a fit back, a muscular back for both men and women really gives

this appearance of fitness. It just really does. Makes you look leaner, more fit. For man, it gives the look of power and strength. And in bodybuilding, a lot of emphasis put on the lats.

And I get that. There's a lot of poses in bodybuilding that emphasize the lads. But when you're just walking around at the beach, it's your traps and your upper back. Yeah.

You can have tiny lats and have this really crazy yoke. you know, on your upper back, and it just looks very different. And so what I would do... If you get traps, you look strong. Oh, yeah. And what I would do at times

is this is when I would do like lots of cleans and rows. Like, I wouldn't do as many pull-ups or pull-downs. Lots of cleans and rows and just feel my upper back start to get kind of... I mean, you add that with your advice

with the rear delts and like you're... The way your shirt will sit on your back little crazy. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

But as far as a diet is concerned, even for the average person listening, if you just did this, in 30 days, you would look different. If you eat a typical diet, which is like 70% processed foods. Yeah. If you went to just whole foods.

Yeah, just whole foods. Just clean it up. Whole foods. That's all you did. Same calories, all that. Just clean it up. That's it. That's it.

For 30 days. The food that you make at home, chicken, beef, rice, potato, vegetables, that's it. It would suck the water out from under your skin. You would develop better muscle. You would naturally be in a calorie deficit

because you're going to eat less because it doesn't, it satisfies you much faster. And you would look better in 30 days, visibly better. Yeah. I mean, I think your skin will look better because of that. Yes, less.

You're less likely inflamed because you're eating something that's... Sodium is different. Sodium, yeah. Digest and food better. Yeah. And that's what I meant by too. Like I, because obviously those,

I'm not as strict on my diet right now where I would just, I would get strict, hit calories, push them for three weeks. And then I would manipulate water and carbs the final week to like, that's presenting myself a day. knowing that I'm not moving major body fat, but I know that I can manipulate the way I look for a day by messing with that type of stuff.

Well, here's what we got going on right now for everybody is all of our workout programs, all of our Maps programs, all of our bundles, which are multiple programs put together, mods, guides, everything that we have. All of our fitness products are 40% off right now for the summer. It's the summer sale. So if you're interested, you want to follow a program that works.

Go to Maps FitnessProducts.com. Use the code summer 40 and you can get anything 40% off. You can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. 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,

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