Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2915: The Best Workout Programs Combos For Any Goal: Muscle, Strength, Fat Loss, and More

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

Buy one get one free, pick your combo: ⁠https://mapsbogo.com⁠   One of the most common questions the guys is also one of the simplest: what program should I run next? It matters more than most people think. Stack the wrong two programs back to back and you leave gains on the table. Stack the right two and you buy yourself six months of near zero plateaus, real strength PRs, and a body that keeps changing every week. In this episode, Sal, Adam, and Justin stop making you guess and lay out the definitive MAPS program pairings for every major goal.   They cover advanced muscle gain, pure strength, fat loss for both women and men (and why the programming is different), total beginners and postpartum lifters, athletic performance, and the people who barely have time to breathe, let alone train five days a week. For every goal you get the exact two program combo, why that order works, what each program sets up for the next, and the most common mistake people make by skipping steps. If you have ever jumped straight into a high volume program and wondered why you burned out, this is the explanation you needed.   There is a real buy one get one free deal running right now at mapsbogo.com, and you pick the combo. $157 gets you two full programs. The guys walk through every recommendation, so by the end of the episode you will know exactly which two to grab.   In this episode: MAPS Anabolic anchors almost every combo: it builds the strength and training frequency foundation that makes every follow up program far more effective, whether the goal is muscle, strength, or fat loss. The single biggest mistake the guys see from customers: jumping straight into MAPS Aesthetic without running Anabolic first. Aesthetic's volume is genuinely high, and the body is not ready to absorb it without that base. Fat loss for women is MAPS PowerLift, then MAPS Muscle Mommy. PowerLift builds the metabolic base and preserves muscle in a deficit, while Muscle Mommy targets the glutes, delts, and lower body that women most want to keep while getting lean. MAPS 40+ trades traditional back squats for box squats and straight bar deadlifts for trap bar deadlifts, cutting joint stress while hitting the identical movement patterns, and adds specific lifestyle recommendations for the higher stress loads that come with being over 40. For beginners and postpartum women alike, the prescription is MAPS Starter, then MAPS Anywhere. Treat yourself as a total beginner no matter your training history, because the body control and positional strength you build here pay enormous dividends on every loaded program that follows. The athletic performance combo is MAPS Symmetry first, then MAPS Performance. Symmetry's isometric and unilateral work corrects left to right imbalances and builds the ability to contract and control the body that sports demand, before performance specific training gets layered on. In a fat loss phase, the real success metric is maintaining strength on the key lifts, not the mirror. Holding strength in a deficit proves muscle is being preserved even when the scale or the reflection does not show obvious change. MAPS 15 paired with MAPS Anywhere is not just for the time crunched: the guys explicitly recommend it for anyone who is overworked, stressed, or grinding five to six day splits with diminishing returns, because scaling back volume often produces better results.   Chapters: 0:29 MAPS BOGO Deal Intro 0:44 Sponsor: Vuori 1:28 Episode Overview: Best Program Combos 3:11 Advanced Muscle Gain Combo 5:49 Why MAPS Aesthetic Follows Anabolic 7:43 Strength Goal Combo 9:10 Fat Loss Combos: Women and Men 9:37 Fat Loss for Women: PowerLift + Muscle Mommy 12:05 Fat Loss for Men: 40+ and Anabolic 15:59 Beginners and Postpartum: Starter + Anywhere 19:42 Athletic Performance Combo 21:03 Time-Restricted Combo: MAPS 15 + Anywhere   Sponsors: Vuori: ⁠https://vuoriclothing.com/mindpump

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 in the world approaching over half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about how to combine maps programs to get the best results.

By the way, we have a buy one, get one free. right now, okay? You buy one at a normal price. You get another one for free. So go to Mapsbogo.com if you are interested. Now, this episode is brought to by one of our sponsors, Viori. So Viori makes athleisure wear super comfortable. It lasts a long time, high quality, but they also make evening wear. I've got myself buttoned down shirts from them and slacks. They're comfortable. I can actually work out in the slacks. I don't, but they look amazing. You know Viori. Viori is top of the line. And by the way, we have one of the biggest discounts you'll find of Viori clothing anywhere on the internet because we've been with Viori for

so long. So if you like Vori, you want a huge discount. Go to voriclothing.com slash mind pump. That's V-U-R-I, sorry, V-U-R-I-Clothing.com slash mind pump. Again, that link will get you 20% off. All right, here comes the show. 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 mindpustor.com. That's it.

Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, here at Mind Pump, one of the most common questions we get is which program should I follow next? Is there a better program to follow next for my specific goal? So here's what we did. We broke down the maps programs

and put them together by goal. best combos of two programs for each common goal. Muscle gain, fat loss, strength. What if you're a beginner? What about athletic performance? We put them together. We're going to talk about them today. These are the best workout combos for you.

Let's get to it. This is how we do workout partners. Yes. I feel like this is overdue. This is probably one. One of the number one questions that we get is what program to do next or somebody who's never done a program and is like, here's my goal. What should next program or series of programs should.

I follow. And so what's cool is this kind of lays the plan out for somebody for the next six months or for the next three months if you already have one of these. That's right. And it does make a difference. Like, you know, because people will say, well, what's the difference? What if I just follow one program after another? What if they're both muscle building? What if they're both athletic performance? Is that the best combination for my goal? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It really depends on how the programs stack together and how they address each other's strengths and weaknesses. So most MAPS programs are about three months long. Some of them are shorter.

Some of them are shorter, maybe five weeks or six weeks long. But nonetheless, this is how we design our programs, is for them to be able to be followed one after another to produce great results with minimal plateaus, of course, minimal risk of injury. But at the end of the day, to maximize the goals a person is looking for. What avatar do you want to start with first? You know, let's start with muscle game. that's a real common one.

Yeah. Very popular. Yeah, and we'll say it's advanced muscle game. And I say that because this is somebody, if you're listening, and you're like, I just want to build muscle for whatever reason, either because you want to look a particular way or because let's say you're trying to boost your metabolic rate. And you have good experience in the gym.

You've been working out for a little while. So you're not a total beginner. You're not a beginner. You've been doing it for a little while. Like what are the two programs I could follow to give me phenomenal results, let's say over a six-month period. Yeah. And what do you think of the things that you're taking into consideration

when you think of the two programs? Like one, it's so it's not a starter-type program because they have some sort of experience. So we want to get them into what we would consider one of our best, you know, muscle-building, metabolic programs. And then also considering because we're pairing programs, like the progressive overload, the scaling of that, and what that looks like over the course of two programs.

And so those are the kind of the consideration. right? Yes, yes. So to start with, it would be MAPS enabolic. So MAPS enabolic is a great overall muscle and strength building program. It's also a great switch up from whatever you're doing now. So oftentimes we have callers call in who have been working out, who have some experience, whose goal is to build muscle.

I'd say probably eight out of ten times. This is the program. We point them in the direction of it. Yeah, and I think a lot of times two people are familiar with split-type programs. Yes. This introduces them to total body workouts. And also that first phase is really shocking and very effective for people to experience. So I think that's why, you know, people really like see the benefit of anabolic right away.

I'd say this is why, to your point, I'd say well over more than half. I think probably 75, 80% of people that are interested in building muscle tend to gravitate towards a split and have never really ran a full body routine or don't normally do that. And so they get hit with a couple things. One, if they're doing some sort of an upper lower split or a traditional bodybuilder split where it's one body part a day, you know, they're training four to six days in the week and they're splitting at the body part. Transition that person to a three-day week full body type routine is such a curveball. The hardest thing is convincing that person that's what they need.

Yeah. But once they do that, the increased frequency on like the big lifts, the strength gains that they see from that, a lot of times too less days in the gym because this person is trying to gain and build muscle or build a metabolism uh huge benefits from this and one of my favorite things to introduce somebody to yeah so maps end of bulk would be to start the follow up would be maps aesthetic uh now aesthetic is also a full body strength training routine uh but the volume is higher you are now progressively overloading your body so three months of maps anabolic if you're feeding yourself right getting good sleep and you're ready to take in the next level then you follow that up

with MAPS aesthetic, which is also a full body routine. But MAPS aesthetic, you can spend more time in the gym because of the focus sessions. Yep. Where you could target a body part that is lagging and add extra work on those body parts on those days off in between. Well, I think that's what it makes sense to now when you're building muscle to also emphasize parts of your body, you know, where you really want to, you know, show off that definition. I think, you know, this is a great follow up to that.

After you build that huge base of strength and muscle, and now we can kind of sculpt it a bit. The biggest mistake that I've seen with our customers that have followed MAPS aesthetic was not following Anabolic first. And it's so good to jump right into it. Yeah. It's so good that we're doing this like in pairs and explaining why I'll do this is because the amount of volume in aesthetic is really high. And I would never want to take a client, this is your first program, is going to

ecstatic right away. I'd much rather build them up from Anabolic. I think they'll see far more. benefits from that. And so this really truly is the ideal progression. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast for 10 years, then you've heard us talk about the original three was anabolic performance and aesthetic. And so we would talk about how you're supposed to progress your way up to that much volume. But we haven't talked a lot about those three programs in a row in a long time. And that was like for general health and strength, right? When you think of like the ideal pathway for

if I was training somebody for a bodybuilding show, even my, I would follow. anabolic first and then progress them into aesthetic to reap the most benefits from all, you know, building the muscle. Totally. Next, we'll say strength. So this is for somebody who, they like building muscle, but they really want to get strong. They want to be able to lift as much weight as possible. The starting program is also going to be MAPS Anabolic for this because Anabolic is this

great, both strength building and muscle building program. And then you're going to progress to our power lift program, MAPS power lift. this one-two combo this is PR city you're going to hit PRs and your bench press your squat and your deadlift first off you're probably going to hit PRs in anabolic

then you move to power lift and the PRs are really going to get crazy and it's just this perfect follow-up from anabolic well I love this is the simplicity of it and the hyper focus of just pure strength output and so yeah you're going to get that

you know good base like from anabolic in the beginning but yeah you're really simplifying and focusing all that on these big compound lifts that are going to get you real strong. Well, this is the pathway I would prepare someone, too, who's even wanting to maybe even dabble in the powerlifting world and start. That's right. You're going to compete in the strength.

Yeah, you're interested in competing in that. Even if you're not, this is the pathway. But like, even somebody who's wanting to take it to the next level and actually go compete, I still would want to lay the foundation with Anabolic first, then progress them into PowerLift. And it's such a great segue from that program. Anabolic does such a good job of laying that foundation. And then the skill practice and performance of just the main lifts in power lift, like the combo of them together is like a great six months. Totally.

Then we have fat loss. And we broke this up into women and men. And mainly because programming-wise, women tend to want to develop different areas of the body from men. So that's really the main difference here. And with fat loss, the goal is to keep muscle. Yeah. Okay. The number one goal with your strength training program is to not.

lose muscle when you're in a calorie deficit. And so we'll start with women. Now, with women, I started them out with power lift. Why? Women don't train this way. They often don't train like power lifters. They're trying to lose body fat. And MAP's power lift is going to keep them strong and do a damn good job of maintaining muscle.

Well, and one of the best ways to build them metabolically would be to get really good at these big compound. That's the metric that they live. And this is why this is so great. I love this combo too of setting them up for the next. program where we can get more refined and sculpting and like that. It's like, let's build an incredible metabolism and a strong base. And then where we go from there, opens the door for so many different things. Which takes us to MuscleMami, which is a very popular MAPS program for women. A MAPS muscle

mommy, traditional muscle building program, but there's more of an emphasis on building the glutes, building the delts, lower body, just kind of that focus that women are looking for in areas that they don't want to lose muscle when they get leaner. Like if you ask a woman, hey, when you get leaner, what areas you really want to keep the muscle on the most? A lot of them would say, well, I'll sacrifice muscle here and there to get leaner. But I want my butt and my legs to keep that muscle. And muscle mommy's volume is geared towards that. So, for sure.

Yeah, what I love about these recommendations is like, somebody that probably hasn't listened to us enough, would assume immediately we'd be like maps hit or not cardio. When, in fact, the muscle preserving element to this is so important in building up that metabolism. So these are great. Well, and I would say muscle only was the first program that we really started to reorganize and change the order of the exercises to fit a specific, you know, female demographic. That's right. Like we took into consideration, the feedback from all the people that have gone through maps programs. And a vast majority of women that talked about, you know, building and sculpting their body, focus points were like the backside was the hamstrings, the glutes, the shoulders.

and so even though, you know, exercises affect men and women the same way as far as building muscle on their body the sexes tend to have different goals. Men tend to want chest and quads and that way our women cared more about glutes and shoulders. And so we redesigned the way the programming is laid out. And so laying a solid foundation with power lift,

then transitioning them into this more sculpting-like program. Such a great combo right here. for men, now for fat loss for man, the beginning program could be one of two. But I'm going to take into consideration that you're a guy interested in fat loss. And let's say you're over the age of 40. Okay, we have a program that's perfect, which is called Maps 40 plus. And that would be the starting program for fat loss for men in that age demographic. If you're younger, you could start with MAPS Antabolic.

Now, what's the difference between 40 plus and MAPS Antibolic? Not much. Not much. The difference really is exercise selection. Yep. where we took certain exercises and made, for lack of a better term, safer or less risky version. Lower the risk a little bit.

Yeah. So instead of a traditional squat, it's a box squat. Very similar. Same movement pattern. Same thing. The difference is with the box squat, you're breaking up the negative portion of the rep from the positive, breaking up that momentum,

easier on the joints. We're trading out straight bar deadlift for things like a trap bar deadlift. Still a hip-hinging movement, just less risk for the low back. So again, if you're a dude that's, you know, over the age of 40, program you start with for fat loss, MAPS 40 plus. If you're younger guy,

you're okay with the other lifts, start with MAPS Anabolar. The other consideration that I think we did in 40, that's a little unique in comparison to anabolic was the lifestyle recommendations too. That's right. And the reason why I think your advice is great is because when you're young, you tend to get away with a lot,

not the greatest night of sleep. You can recover a lot. Yeah, stress doesn't seem to affect you the same way as it affects. Or you just have less stress. Yeah, or you just have less of it, right? That's a better way to say it. You probably have less, you know, or less high levels of it in comparison to probably the 40-year-old who's got the family, the maybe the career or business and kids and all the things, right? And so in 40-plus, we put a lot of effort and emphasis around lifestyle to help balance that out

and mitigate that. And so I think that makes that such a, which I can't tell you how many times I trained somebody 40-plus that the first thing that, and let's take an example of a guy trying to lose weight that understood working out, lifting weights and had a pretty good idea of diet, but really struggled with losing weight. Many times it was the lifestyle changes that we had to address first before their body would shift. And so that part, I think, is when it comes to fat loss for men, I think the nice part about the 40 plus that's unique to being 40 plus versus Anabolic. I think if I had a 20 to 30 year old person that wanted to do fat loss, I think Anabolic is probably where I start them.

40 plus with other other considerations. It's just geared towards that demographic much better. Yes, yes. And then the follow-up program, mass power lift. Very similar to the fat loss for women. Power lift is so focused on strength. Strength is a great metric to focus on and pay attention to when you're in a cut. Okay.

The mirror isn't so great because the mirror can lie to you. But if you can maintain strength or even get stronger in certain key lifts while you're in a calorie deficit, you are preserving muscle. And that's why it's such a good metric. And that's why I like power lift for fat loss, both for men and women. So that would be the program that you would end. I love this here. The one thing that is common sometimes, though, is to not see gains because you're cutting

for fat loss. And so I think the one thing that I would communicate to somebody is that, listen, if you could maintain lifts through a cut and doing power lift, you're killing it. You're killing it. And that's really the goal there. Now, you occasionally see somebody, and this typically is in the more novice lifter who hasn't maybe gotten proficient. Or maybe they're new at the exercises themselves. Right, right.

And so, yes, it might be still novel to them. And so you see them sometimes gain even in the deficit, which that is just literally them getting better at the movement, which is awesome and amazing. But I always like to set the expectations of listen. Our goal is just keep as much of your strength that you've built in, you know, maps, anabolic or 40 plus. through PowerLift. If we've done that, we've done a hell of a job. And if we've seen any increases,

we're absolutely killing it. Totally. Next, we have beginners. So you're a total beginner, or it's been a long time since you've done any exercise. We have the perfect combo for you. And we actually have the perfect starter program

called Map Starter for beginners. That program is designed specifically for someone who's being introduced to strength training. It is easily the most commonly advised program I have for friends and family who are getting into strength training. hey, I want to start strength training. I've heard of the benefits. What should I do?

I've never done it before. Starter, starter, starter every single time. It's dumbbells, a physial ball. It trains stability. It's traditional strength training. You're going to get stronger. You're going to build muscle. It's the perfect program to start with.

You just understand how to hold these positions with your body. Really anchor yourself down. That's why the stability ball is really great to be able to add in there, to train that, and to have that kind of control. So you can build upon that so much easier and more effectively when you have really good body control and strength in position, which then will set you up for loading a lot more weight down the line. I remember when we wrote this program,

you know, if we would have wrote it in probably the correct order of like how we used it as coaches and trainers, this would have been the first program that we wrote. Of course. Yeah, yeah. Retroactively we did it. Yeah, I mean, obviously we know it's not the same. sexiest for selling and stuff like that. But the reality is when we look back at like the clients

that we train, most, most all my clients started like Map started. When I think about the things that we built in that, I rarely got somebody who was already, you know, I've been living for the last three years consistently. Yeah, let me hire you. I normally got somebody who was very deconditioned. Either have never strained, or they haven't in years and they're getting back at it. And so really the first few months of training looked like identical to what MAPS started looks like. The other thing that I would add to this category, even though we didn't do this as a specific person, but I think this is, I think we'd all agree we would recommend this dress too, is post-pregnancy. Even though we're talking about beginners right now, I would say advanced.

I'm so glad you said that postpartum, you train yourself like a beginner for that. I don't care how much working out you did beforehand because of the time off, because of the changing body, you treat yourself like a total beginner when you get back in a strength training. That's going to give you the best results, hands down. Yeah, this is just top of mind for me. I feel like we've got a lot of callers in the last month or two that are, you know, know they're pregnant or coming out of pregnancy or they've been out of pregnancy for like six months, wondering when they're going to be back to their normal self.

And I feel like we keep having the same conversation of like give it at least a year or two to even expect to be like that. And it makes me remember when Katrina had Max, how I continually had to talk her out of like, you're not ready for Maps black. You know what I'm saying? This is not the right program for you. We could totally get away with doing starter. and we can totally get away with doing these programs that seem easy to you,

but you are still not back to your normal self. And so I can't stress that enough, even though we're talking about beginners right now, that even the most advanced lifter, female lifter, that's post-pregnancy, this is the pathway too. You're a beginner at that point. And then the program to follow it up with is Maps Anywhere. And Maps Anywhere teaches, of all of our programs,

it's one of the best for body awareness. So you are utilizing some weights here and there and some bands. But some of it is tension-based, and a lot of it is body weight-based. And body-weight-based movements have a lot of value for somebody who's getting into strength training. It's much better to start that way, then move them to the more traditional strength training programs. And it's a perfect program to progress to from Map Starter, for somebody who's a beginner. Then we have athletic performance. This is fun.

I love this. Now, we have a program that is specifically designed for athletic performance. But I do think starting with map symmetry would be perfect before we move to Maps performance. I agree. Again, to your point of like the order of when we wrote these, I probably would have started with symmetry and then into performance. Oh, totally. Because it addresses a lot of, you know, those discrepancies left to right. And, you know, it's a cool thing to add in where, you know, everybody has sort of like mobility and like range of motion issues that like we can attack that with just going through the program. and go through these unilateral movements.

Totally. When you talk about sports, I mean, all sports are done like unilateral stuff, right? And so it makes sense that. And also the isometric component, don't sleep on that either for laying the foundation for an athlete, too. So the athlete to be able to contract the entire body like that and do isometrics,

so the fact that we started that program with isometrics. So literally what I did with the high school athletes immediately was the same thing. Right, isometrics. Then we move into unilateral. Then we see how we express that towards the end of it. It just for the athlete, it makes a lot of sense that that would be the first thing that you did. And then you move into a more specific performance. And then mass performance is the follow-up.

And mass performance is very athletic-minded. It is designed for the athlete. So it would look like this. Symmetry, then performance, and you're ready to go. And then finally, we have the people who are restricted with time and typically also restricted just with space or gym access. And so we have the perfect program for this, which is Maps 15. Maths 15. There's two ways you could do it, by the way.

You could do it either A with your traditional strength training equipment or you could do it with very minimal strength training equipment. The program is actually designed to be able to follow either way. The follow up to that maps anywhere. This is a great follow-up. One, two, for somebody who's like, I don't got too much time. I'm really busy. Or this is new to me.

I'm getting into it and I don't want to make a bunch of time. I want to get into it. This is a great combo. You know, I know we geared this towards time restricted because, of course, it applies to that and is ideal. for obviously someone like that. That's why we wrote it. But I do want to highlight the,

I mean, this program has done so well. And we've gotten so, it's gotten so much. For results? Yeah. Yes. It's been like incredible. And I think there's a reason that, there's a couple reasons.

But one of the main reasons is we, we obviously have a bit of a bias because of who you listen to the podcast. So we attract more people that are into health and fitness. If you're into listening to a fitness podcast, you're more than the average for the most part. I mean, some people stumble upon us

or get recommended to us, but most people are like, if you're listening for hours to a project. Your knowledge base is probably pretty good. Yeah, and you're interested. You want to learn more. And so we tend to skew towards people

that like to work out or enjoy working out more than average. And I think what we've found in our audience is that less is more for a lot of people. Yep, yeah. And a lot of people have a lot of other things on their plate other than just working out. And they have fallen in the same trap

that I think all of us have expressed even ourselves at one point in our lives where, you know, you literally scaling back sometimes ends up giving you better results. And I think a lot of people test that. So even though this is geared towards time restricted, I'd even encourage the person... You can call this the stressed combo.

This is for people have a lot of... Turns out most people are overworked and stressed out. Yeah, a lot of life stress. If you get a lot of kids, you run a business, you work long hours, you like... This is the combo. You checks any of those boxes? Yeah, you have...

You have a job that doesn't get, it's off time schedule all the time. Like, I mean, there's a lot of things that fall in this category. And you typically like to go to the gym, four to six days awake. I challenge you to try and do the maps 15, this protocol right here. So good for you. Because we've gotten so much great feedback. Totally. And then you follow up with anywhere, which wears very minimal equipment.

Also saves time. It's a perfect follow-up. And so what we did is, here's what we did. So these are recommendations that we have. But here's what we did for you. If you go to mapsbogo.com, you can buy. any one of those programs and get any other one for free. So you can actually make whatever combo you want.

These are the recommendations we have, but if you have different goals, you have whatever, you can buy one, get one free. It's 157. 157, which would normally get you one program, will get you two. So your choice, anyone that we mentioned,

plus any other one, it's Mapsbogo.com. It's buy one, get one free. Go there right now. It's 157 is the price. You buy one. You get the other one totally for free. Go check it out.

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