Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 328: Losing Stubborn Body Fat, Avoiding Plateaus, Occlusion Training For Strength & MORE

Episode Date: July 14, 2016

Kimera-Quah! Sal, Adam & Justin answer Pump Head questions (Posted each Monday on Instagram @mindpumpradio)in this episode of Quah sponsored by Kimera Koffee! Use the coupon code "mindpump" for 10% off your coffee order at www.kimerakoffee.com. In today's episode the boys answer your questions about losing fat in places that just don't seem to get smaller, plateauing even if volume is high, coming back after taking time off, choosing between working out and eating healthy and using occlusion training to build strength. Get MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic and the Butt Builder Blueprint (The RGB Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. SALDA, Steffanau, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Two questions, number one. You like it one. How bad did you guys miss each other and me? Because I will never do this again. It's like not having them nod your talk.

I'm never not going to say anything. It's the opposite. Yeah, it's the opposite. It's as difficult having them nod your talk. I'm never not gonna say something. It's the opposite. Yeah, it's the opposite. It's as difficult as refraining from jerking off for a week. That's how hard it is being away from you guys for that long. Very difficult and it was boring and I got depressed. Does that mean this episode's gonna be short? Now what people don't know.

What? Listen, I know you guys got weird out when I made out with you guys but it's how I say hi when I miss people. So, well, I definitely would have never agreed to it had I put it together that we kind of ran them all back to back. I kind of knew we were overlapping and stuff, but I didn't realize it was going to stretch it out for that. It was like 10 days, right?

It was two, it was 10 days too long. It was, it was, yeah, why so much next? So I think we should all live together now. So that was basically coming up Yeah, let's do it. No, here's the other question. What do you guys think about beer and the keg? Look a little long my beard is getting scraggly now It's long scraggly. We don't like it. No, but I almost on the new fly list. This is what I can I try No, no, I have I have a tip and I really want you to try it. Oh, you better try your tip. No, I don't like where this is going Remember what happened last time just it always tries that one on me and I really want you to try it. You want me to try your tip? No, I don't like where this is going. Oh, my God.

Remember what happened last time, Justin? You always tries that one on me. I want to see you growing up, because I think you have the look to really make this cool, but let's die just the beard. No, what? Yes, no.

I was just complimenting him on his frostiness. Uh huh, oh no, what? It looks fatacu. It's a little frosty on the side. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it looks excellent in your head, but then if it came down to this dark, this dark, dark beard, bro, you look cold bird.

You will look handsome as fuck. No, I don't know. Just please. But let me ask you this, is there a line where you become too handsome? You know what I'm saying? Where it's like, you flirt with this a little bit. I don't know.

I flirt with Alan all the time. You're doing it all the time. Adam's like, I'm an expert on that. I've been too handsome for a little bit. I don't know. I flew with Alan all the time. You know all the time. I'm like I'm an expert on that I've been to handsome for a long time. And really all that happened they call you gay that happens Really? Yeah, if you get to handsome normally they think you're like thanks. I've reached it. Yeah, it's what happens Anyway, yeah, we got to that point somebody called me a homo the other day. I'm like is that supposed to be an insult? I never understood that you know that when it was a lesson you saw an ugly homo time the most gay guys I know we're fucking good looking.

I'm off. I'm pretty sure homo was not a good thing. Probably not a good repeating. Yeah, that makes me, so what did you guys do on your little vacays? Where'd you guys go? I think we should tell the audience about what we really did. I went on a bachelor party. You went on a bachelor party?

That's what it was going on. Hold on a sec, I didn't know this. I was on a bachelor party. It's in was going on. Hold on a sec, I didn't know this. I was on a bachelor party. It's in San Diego, in the gas lamp in PB. Asked me what we were doing within the first four hours we were there. Cocaine. Whoa.

No, no, it's getting wrong. Oh, guess again. Whoa, it's worse. Well, what'd you do? We're in a museum. Gain. What the hell out of here? Then we were in bed by 10 so we could get up at 5 in the next morning to go fishing.

This doesn't sound like a... This sounds horrible. A museum? The Baxter Party is supposed to be your last fun day before you get married. And instead, instead they started the marriage early. I'm just gonna do some boring shit because I'm getting married. And this is the three-toed beaver. We would have golfed if it was up to everybody else.

That's not the kind of beaver you've ever seen. I really fought on that one. What museum, what would you see? We were on the midway on an aircraft carer. Was an aircraft carer. Well, I had no disrespect, that's cool. It is cool. Were there strippers on the,

they don't have strippers on that middle? Not a single stripper? Not a single, we didn't see a single stripper. No birthday cakes, were that one chip comes out? No birthday cakes with a naked chick. No nights past midnight, no belligerent drunk throwing up. What? No drugs, no cocaine, nothing illegal.

That's why I didn't know. We just not talking about that. People started keeping things. We did go to, we went to Petco, we saw a ball game. Funny to that, that was probably the, we drank before we went there. So we thought you wouldn't get like a kitty or something. No, oh,

oh, that's a stadium. Yeah. I don't know. That's a stadium where they play sports. The best, the best party got crazy. We got, we got a couple of cats. We got some turtles.

It's fucking happening. No, we went to, we went to, and you know what else we did? We were, we were, we went to the barbecue place. Okay, that was They got I was

Gerbos. What's what's the barbecue place? Let me finish my Cindy talk. I was start I was finished I was talking you interrupted the barbecue place barbecue place that is in top gun the movie What the for they play the piano and the famous the famous scene where oh restaurant Yeah, the barbecue place the barbecue place that's in the movie of top gun that barber Did we can you think of any other barbecue places? I thought it was like I thought Of course you thought that because you fucking interrupted me before You guys went there was a good

It was horrible the barbecue was the barbecue was horrible horrible it was two stars on Yelp How can you do that? It was on the way walking to the midway rap meet well here's the other thing to this was the best This was the kicker so it was already bad food right? We're joking that we came here We're like oh, it's right, you know, it's the style. It gets the whole Tom Cruise in the You know, Tom guy take my breath Then I found out that like five years ago the real one burnt down and they just they built this one as the replica So use the complete waste of time

Wow Just adjustin. What did you do cheer me up? Adam's trip I was on the bachelor party you guys had kids with the fun. I didn't have a TV did so I don't have a whole lot of like lifting up Does that mean you does that mean you didn't finish game of thrones? No, I mean I did when I did did. Oh, okay, I'm good. I'm caught up. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Kalisi, all day. So you went camping? Yeah, well, no, it was in a cabin. So it was like this cabin that was like, I almost would have rather camped because the problem was that like where we were wasn't on the lake. I had this like misconception in my wife

that we were gonna be like right on the lake. And we were like way back, you know, like, inland, and so you had to like drive, like it was really hard to get to the lake, and it was frustrating, but we had a good time though. It was, I mean, I got on and wake boarded and stuff, and tried some fucking moves, and it was too much of a pussy to do anything.

Do you have to get it used to be able to do? Do you have to get a special reinforced board for your powerful lift off? Yeah. With your, with your mind breaks. With all those. Have you ever like boarded before? Wake boarded?

Yes. No. No. Have you seen one before? Yeah, I know what that is. I've no, I've no, I've no. No. I have them.

I was in Disneyland, but I should preface this before I continue because a lot of people don't know. Actually, our audience doesn't know. You know, I've alluded to the fact that I've been going through some stuff. Come on, shitter, you put this on the air, right? Why not? Are you serious?

You can tell the world. That's not a bit, I mean, look, it is what it is, right? Okay. So for a while now, I've been going through a divorce. And- Oh, that you're gonna tell me your sex changed now? No, no, no, no, no, that's not the reason why. Yeah, I don't have both a penis and a divorce. And that you're gonna tell me your sex changed. No, no, no, no, no, no, that's the reason why.

Yeah, I don't have both a penis and a vagina, I'm my own best friend. No, we, I'm going through that, but and it's been going on for a while now. It's been going on for about six months. Wait, hold on, what month is it? Ah, a little longer than that, about seven months. And, but we were still very dedicated to our kids,

so we took the kids to Disneyland. So I went on a vacation with my ex-wife and my children. And as scary as I thought it would be, it was actually okay, it was cool. Okay, so now that's... I thought I was like, for sure, I'm like, we're gonna kill each other. Would I give you props for that?

That's crazy. No, I mean, we're cool. You know what it is? It's big of you. You know what it is? We're both very, very, first of all, we're cool. Nothing horrible happens. I know I'm joking, but it's not like we hate each other

or anything, but we're both very, very dedicated to our children. And so that trumps everything. So we were able to go on this trip and enjoy our children and do it for the kids. And so it was cool. I'm glad we were able to do it. So I was totally not ready for you to announce this on the radio.

But since you can't do a whole show on it. Well, no, but I feel I have to ask this now. So does this mean that like the X, Y, jokes we can do shit like that yet? Or how long do we have to wait till it's time? No, no, no, it's all time. I must say this right now. How long is the sensitive buffer?

How long until I, you can make fun of me all day long. But she's always going to be the mother of my children. So there's no joking, I would, yeah, no joking about her whatsoever. I appreciate it much, you know, just respect. Okay. But me, you know, you could tell me all day long, what kind of, how big of an asshole I got on.

Yeah, well, that's what I mean. That's the thing. I wasn't really meaning like her. I was thinking more like, you know, how's it feel like to get kicked out of the house or you know, say, oh, that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Like, it would be totally making fun of you. Yeah, yeah, we leave her out of it good good times So yeah, that's pretty that's that's pretty much it

But it's sucked not being around you guys for that long. I mean all joking aside. I Missed getting on the mics. Yeah, son of a bitch. Well, you know, it's that therapeutic side that you definitely have said more than once It's erotic wait what yeah, yeah, it's more therapeutic. Yeah, son of a bitch. Well, you know, it's that therapeutic side that you definitely have said more than once. Is erotic? Wait, what? Yeah, it's more therapeutic. I meant therapeutic. Yeah, therapeutic. Therapy, therapeutic is the word for sure.

I'm off the chain. It's the word. Shit. Oh, it is. Yeah, mwah! It's here. No. No, no.

No, no, no,. That's the rock. We forget to put the cues on. Okay, they're gonna start clawing. Hey, you are off to chain. We're not starting clawing. No, not the claw. You know, you let's so do a claw down. Do we, we don't have anything?

Why do we do it? We did not pull up your thing. Can we talk to her? We talked to her. The best part was nobody fucking even knew that. You know we started the episode in New York. We even know where we're going. Nobody's been attention that we're doing.

We're so excited to see each other. We didn't do the end at all. Like pull it up, Sal. Just pull up, secure it. I'll pull up some Q&A. It's been so long since we've done, we can just pick it. Oh Doug, Doug, why don't you pull them up like you normally do. And just read them to us.

And just start reading them to us. Yeah, fuck them. So here's normally what we do. Doug will pick a few questions, put them up on the board. And then he'll read them off to us and we answer them. This is dangerous. We forgot to do that. So Doug is now going to pick random questions.

I will do that. And I also wanted to mention that our episode is sponsored by Kimerikafi. Oh, yes, that's the first one. The first one. This is our first episode. From now until the foreseeable future, our Q and A's will be sponsored by Kimerikoffee.

That's the only coffee I know of that is infused with neutropics. You go to Kimerikoffee.com and enter Mind Pump, the promo code Mind Pump for Trapezi. Kimerikoffee is spelled with two K's. With what? Kimerikoffee. Kimerikzi. The Kimerikoffee is spelled with two Ks. With Kimerikoffee. What do you say this is the Kimerikwa. Yeah.

Kimerikwa. This is the Kimerikwa. Kimerikwa. The official one. You forgot to say your thing. It's the motherfucking Kwa. Oh, good. And I bet Kimerikwa is really excited that their first

sponsorship is going to be one of us being totally disorganized. Yeah. And by the way, how we roll. By the way, you go to chimericoffee.com and you get 10% off if you put mine pump in as a promo code. That's right. I said that.

Oh, you are dead. I'm sure. You threw this in trust. You threw this in trust. You threw this in trust. I'm trying to go through these questions here. I love how disorganized we are right now that we were so excited to get together. That we did. We started an episode that was our Q&A with no questions.

The best part was when I queued the fucking bird to come and I looked at with the. And there's nothing to a style on your body language right now. You stopped it together. Oh, I totally did because I was like, Oh, shit, I just summoned summoned the bird and I'm looking over on a white board with no fucking questions to answer So Doug what about the third the third question down how's that one sound just do it? Yeah, I go for it Just do it. When do we ever just even if it's bad? Let's just answer them. All right. Let's go It's just answer until we're tired of answering all right, and you know what we don't like it. We'll say pass Perfect perfect answer. Yeah, here we go. Is this Kier C?

Is this the one you're talking about? Yeah, pass. I don't even like that one. No, the way, I literally just saw this question, but I like this question because it's common. There's a lot. I can't tell you how many times I'll train a client and they'll ask me how they can burn body fat from a particular area or they have a trouble area. And how do I get leaner in that area? The science, the consensus of the science behind spot reduction is pretty solid that your body burns body fat in a pattern that you're genetically predisposed to burn it from. In other words, it's up to your genes where you lose body fat from first and where you

lose body fat from last. But it's a good rule of thumb to understand that the first place you put it on. So when you gain body fat, the very first place it goes is usually the last place it goes. So if you're prone to storing body fat on your midsection, and that's the first place you get it, that's probably the last place that's going to get ripped as you get lean. What's your thoughts on to my issue? What's your thoughts on to every time that you regain the body fat back on the fat cells actually growing and it becoming harder for you to lose the next time. So there's the science behind that says that there may be some metabolic damage that may

happen, but it really doesn't happen unless you lose a lot, gain a lot, lose a lot, gain a lot. Like you lose 10, 15, 10, 15. Which why I wanted to address that, because I think that's actually really common. I think a lot of people yo, yo diet, and don't realize that every time they do that, they don't understand how many.

Yes, it's compounding, and it's making it more and more challenge them to get those stubborn areas. It's tough to say because A, you could cause metabolic damage, right? Because the body adapts its metabolism downward if you lose weight improperly. In other words, if you're exercising a shit ton, just trying to burn a shit ton of calories and you're consuming almost no calories or too low a calories, you're starving everything.

Yeah, your metabolism will slow down to compensate. And then when you gain the weight back, now you're at the weight you were before, except you have a slower metabolism now. And so now it's gonna be more difficult to lose that weight. So I think it's metabolic damage. There's probably a psychological component too. I mean, imagine losing 30 pounds and gaining it back

and losing it and gaining it back. By the third time, you may be kind of done losing, you know, trying to lose that weight again. You know what I mean? There's that psychological component as well. But I do want to add this to what's interesting. Have you guys ever had clients who've had liposuction?

Yeah. You ever notice what happens when they gain weight? Oh, looks awful. Yeah, it's a little nasty. It's weird, right? It's just like the same thing goes for people that have the tummy tucks. Like your body was, it was, it was,

it just like Sal said, it genetically, it loses weight the way it was intended to, right? So it's gonna come off, you know, from your face to your face. In a particular pattern. Exactly, in a very natural, normal looking pattern. Right, right, right. And when, you know, I would always rather have,

you know, looking at the female body, I would way rather have a girl who is 30 pounds overweight and just overweight than someone who's 20 pounds overweight who had already done like a chunky cottage cheese. Yes, it did like a tummy tuck, did like a tummy tuck or did liposomware because then when it comes back, it doesn't come back evenly

because you sucked out a specific area like a whole bunch in one area. Yeah, your body doesn't lose its ability to store body fat when you have lipo. You've just removed fat cells from her particular area. So when you gain it back, it goes into different areas and then it doesn't look as natural. I had a client once who she came in.

I went to test her body fat and she was relatively overweight and her biceps, the front of her arms were fatter than the back of her arms, which is weird because we store more body fat in the back of the arm, especially women. Now imagine looking at a woman who is a little heavy, but the bicep is fatter than the tricep instead of the other way around. It looks weird. It looked weird, right?

So she came in, I looked at her arm like this doesn't look right. I go to test her body fat with calipers and they're sure enough the back was a lower measurement. And so right then in their ass, I said, have you, did you have liposuction in the back of your arms? And she's like, yes, how did you know? Like, well, it's the pattern of the way you store body fat I can tell because it's not natural.

Like nobody has very rare to see a fatter bicep than a trooper. Exactly, those two measurements are almost always the same within a couple of millimeters. Yeah, and women will store, if they gain weight, women will always, almost always store more in the back of the arm in the front of the arm. So I think, you know, more of the story is,

if you're not happy with the pattern that your body is burning body fat, there's not much you can do, but just continue to get leaner. You know, just keep trying to get leaner. And eventually, yeah, exactly. And eventually, you're going to burn body fat. You know, I want to elaborate a little bit on that because this is something I've had to coach people through that have this challenge. And I think the competing side helped me with, you know, the help people with answering this. There becomes a point where, you know,

I'll be helping somebody lean down and they get to a point where they're like, this is as lean as I want to, I don't want to be any leaner, I don't want to feel skinny, I feel skinny already, but I have these areas, like in my tummy or in my back that they're holding this fat, you know, what do I do? And I think this might be what she's kind of thinking.

Of course. And what Salah is saying is correct. So there has to come this point where you're probably going to get leaner than the body weight you want to carry yourself out forever. So in other words, I would push that client to let's get even leaner. Okay, we're going to go leaner. Even though you're already, you feel skinny and it's not, you don't want to be, but you still have body fat in areas on your body.

You're not happy with we want to keep getting lean. And that, and you at first, you may not like where you are when you get all the way down lean, but then once that all comes off, now here's the key. We lean all the way out, you're skinnier than where you'd want to be, but you've dropped the body fat and all the areas that you wanted to drop body fat, you feel super, super lean, almost too lean. So then when we sort of increase your calories and come the other direction, here's the beauty is, as long as you're training, you've got, you know, you're falling on a mass program, you're training correctly and lifting correctly while you're

adding good calories, those calories are going to get partitioned into building good, good mass, good lean mass on your body. That's just going to make you metabolism. And this is really the part of, you know, competing and the aesthetic side that I really enjoy. Like, I love this part of getting super shredded to a point where I don't like how lean I am. When I get ready for a show, I do not like the way I look.

Super lean. Yeah, I look unhealthy, it's a weight that I couldn't manage year-round, I look all sucked up, I don't fill my clothes out. But the knee part is it, I mean, I get rid of all the body fat, practically almost every bit of body fat I have in my body, but about 2% of it is gone. And then I can look at and I can assess my physique and say, okay, what are the areas I really want to develop? And then I start to increase those calories.

Now, I can enjoy eating again and now I can start, you know, okay, building these areas up to work on the aesthetic. And I really, really love doing that and enjoying that, but you kind of have to push that body to a probably leaner than you ever been. And it will. It'll come. Trust me. If you keep pushing to get leaner and leaner, that body fat will go. Well, the way we store body fat to the pattern is, there's an evolutionary purpose.

I mean, have you guys ever seen a guy that stores body fat like a girl where it's all in his lower body. Yeah, like hips and thighs. It looks funny. It's rare, but you see it every once in a while. It's very strange. Or there's women you'll see who will store, they'll just have very, very skinny legs and arms

and have a really big midsection. And it looks odd because it's not common because an evolutionary advantage was for women to store it differently. And this is the theory. The theory is that women store body fat in the lower half of their body because it gives them a lower center of gravity so that when they carry, when they're pregnant,

they don't become super top heavy, okay? Men store it around the midsection because we needed our limbs to be free to move so we can continue to run and hunt and do that kind of shit. So there's definitely a reason why we store body fat the way we do. So I just want to add that last part. You can rest the beer on it. White fit has a question about progressive overload.

He's talking about increasing volume over time, but what happens when the volume gets so high that you're no longer seen any gains? Well, that's the deloting phase or what people talk about. This is a very, very good question. So this is one of the reasons why, if you enroll in one of our maps programs, what you'll see, there's a common theme. There's a few common themes in there because there are some general truths when it comes to how the body responds to exercise.

And one of the things you'll notice is that each maps program, although they're different in terms of their goal, like one might be aesthetic, you know, based, one might be the foundational program, one might be performance based and so on, you'll see that they're phased. And what that means is, rather than a constant linear progression,

where I'm constantly adding volume, constantly adding exercises, I'm phasing and changing the types of adaptation that I'm going after. So there is a, there's always gonna be that limiting factor, right? You can't keep adding volume to your workouts. Eventually, you and I time more, yeah.

More isn't always better. And this is like holds true with the human body. Like it just doesn't respond to just always like getting into an increase, an intensity, an increase in volume, increase in exercises, repetitions. You really have to scale it back and then introduce something that is different in order to keyword gain a different type of adaptation. That was a keyword there. You said, because you said scale it back. And so I think a lot of times people get confused and they think, oh, that just means less, right?

Less. No, what Justin said, the keyword was different. New adaptation. New. So let's say you've been training and building up your volume and you've been training the eight to 12 rep range and you've been doing three sets, you know, maybe one or two exercises for body part or whatever,

rather than, and you've, and you, rather than you start to ramp that up, and now you're seeing your body's not responding, and you don't wanna add more volume, because more volume your body won't be able to recover from, or just don't have the time, then you can easily switch to a strength phase where you go and you start to train in the one to four rep range, and instead of doing three sets per exercises,

you're doing five or six sets of pre-exercise, but you're doing less exercises. So you can mix these things up and change the forms of adaptation that you're chasing. And what you end up getting is perpetual progress. Or you see yourself progress in different ways, but ultimately they all converge together and improve your overall goal, which is more

strength, more muscularity, all those other things. So it's all about phasing really. What allows for proper recovery while you're improving in other facets of human performance. And it's really important for you to really look at the body as a holistic entity. And for you to just focus on even lifting more weights constantly is the wrong mentality.

And so this is something that is a hard concept, but it's very important that people understand this concept because it is what maps is all of them. And I think a lot of people are afraid to do that because they think they're gonna lose their gains. This is the problem. Yes. Everybody's afraid that, oh, if I change my adaptation,

if I change the goal, I'm gonna lose gains. Now, we right here in this room, we have a fantastic example of what really happens when you change gears. And that's Adam. Adam trained very hypertrophy-based for a very, very long time, went, did some strength training as well,

but didn't, for years, right? You didn't do mobility or specifically for mobility or function. And then you did when you went through mass performance, what happened? That's what I was going to say that I think is why I speak out on this so much because I know I know that a ton of people can relate to me. I know I have a ton of peers that are like this, that they love the program they're on. And this is what happens to people, right? They're training a certain way,

they get introduced to a program. And it doesn't matter whether it be some famous Instagram person who gave it to him or whatever, but it's a new adaptation for them. They don't know that. They just know it's a new program from somebody else. But yet we know that it's a total different new adaptation that they're,

and then they see the best results they've ever seen. They're doing great response. It's the best most phenomenal thing ever. Ever, right? And you couldn't you couldn't debate that to them. There's no way I'm going to tell that person, you know, so and so's program is okay or weak because for them, they saw the best results off of that. Well, the real reason why you saw the best results was because it was a new adaptation, right? And your body, like Justin was saying earlier, you know, you gave it a new focus and so you saw these things. Now the problem is it's so hard to pull people out of that because of that and I know it's hard for other people because I know it's hard for me and I fucking know the science. I know the science. I understand it. I know better.

But it's still hard. But it's still hard for me to break away from that. It's comfortable. You are. You're comfortable. You saw great results that way you love training that way You'll love the pump whatever it is or you know that's it we're comparing me But it could go for somebody who's into hardcore training ideal with this a lot of heart You know the super intense, you know circuit right or circuit type training and you telling that person to get out of that and train slower You know I'm gonna get fat. I can do that. Yeah, it's just the body. It's you are only going to, if you continue, you're working out, right?

If you don't take like a months off of working out and you literally are continually to train the body and you're just changing the adaptations, you're going to do nothing but continue to get better and better and better. And there's a little, here's the thing, like, I'm gonna use you as an example Adam, if you don't mind. Adam's been training for a long time. He's also not a young chicken anymore, right? He's in his mid 30s now.

You supposedly, someone has somewhat passed his prime, but nonetheless, here he is. He's worked out for a long time. He's squatting X amount, I think, with 405 with his max. He goes through focuses is adaptation on mobility, does math performance, which is very non-body builder, right? It's very athlete focused.

It's very much focused on functionality and mobility. And now the dude squats more than that. And he does it lower. Super low. And like, I just remember all these constant nagging like aches and tendinitis. Yes. The issues that you were experienced before

and I was always like, ah man, you know, come over here but you know, like just like it's for me to go over and do like hypertrophy and get it back into that mentality again was really tough. So it is very much varies on what your comfort is right now and are you willing to step out of that and then work on another facet of this? Right, it breaks my heart that we don't have more.

It green is the least sole program with all of our programs. Oh, a mass performance, yeah. Yeah, all the rest of the program, I mean, and it sold a lot, but it has not sold. Well, what's funny is it gets the most, it gets a lot of comments for people once they get it. That's why, you know, we, and we see it increasing it, but to me, if I, because I know how much it, it helped me,

I know that it out of all the programs we have, it's probably the, someone would see the most difference for that in compared to the else if you've been like a normal gym go, if you're normal gym go, and you're falling your, your basic routines that have a magazine. Some 90% of our audience, you know, I'm just gonna guess, but I can kind of get that vibe that like a lot of people are just going to the gym and they're doing their workout and you know what that looks like is definitely not, you know, what a performance is really showing you.

And it takes a lot, it took me a lot of mental discipline. Now, like, you know, I know Sal's complimented me on this before because I am somebody who likes to try different things and I love to challenge my body and challenge myself with things that I'm uncomfortable with doing. So, you know, I was very uncomfortable doing it. I have terrible mobility and my form sucked on a lot of movements.

And let me tell you, that's a a that's a stinger for a trainer I'm a trainer. I pride pride myself on you know having excellent form you look at I hope that when someone walks in She's me working out. They're like oh man that guy's got some phenomenal for what that's what I do for a living So I and I expect to be like kind of a biomechanic specialist and so when I go and do exercise I don't like doing exercises that I suck at man I I sucked at a majority of those movements, but the improvement that I made over the, over the entire process, so over the nine weeks, what is it? Nine weeks, right? Oh, it's very noticeable. Oh, I mean, I, I could not squat much deeper than 90 degrees.

And even when I did squat 90 degrees, I had to have a really wide stance to feel comfortable. I couldn't, and then after I would squat, any more than about eight reps, my low back would still be on fire. My knees would ache and bother me a little bit. My hips would bother me the next day. My IT was always on fire. So I was always battling issues like that. Man, I was squatting yesterday with a stance,

with a narrow stance that would have been not even a foot apart. It was just, I mean, and damn. Explain to people as you're going through this though. Like, I mean, you were getting to a point just strength training where like Sal mentioned, like 405 squat. Like, you're getting up there, ramping up, but you're experiencing all these aches and pains. And now you're going through green, you know, there's a few things that stick out. Like, between like what you're doing and how different it is, like what happened to some of those staple lifts that you noticed in the very beginning. Oh, right, right at the beginning, when I first

had this one, well, first back up when I had to go from, you know, lift and red or black and then heading over to green, you know, there was this, I had to drop my weight, you know, I had to lower the weight if I was going to work on mobility and range of motion. Right., there was this, I had to drop my weight. I had to lower the weight if I was gonna work on mobility and range of motion. So there was this ego check at first. And then I battled that fear of, oh shit, am I gonna lose my gains? Am I not gonna be able to hit 405 again?

Am I gonna be back in now? 300 or something working my way back over there again? And so I really freaked out about that, but I checked my ego at the door and said, you know what, I'm gonna go all the way through this and so I really freaked out about that. But I checked when you go to the door and said, you know what, I'm going to go all the way through this. And I'm not going to worry about that. That's not my adaptation. I'm focusing on right now. It isn't PRs and gains right now. I'm looking for mobility. I'm treating it a lot more like a skill.

Yes. Something that you want to improve. Yes. And that and that was exactly how I treated the squad. The deadlift. I started attacking it like that, not giving us two shits about how much weight I was moving, but how I was moving the weight. Right. Really, to take it back to the question, Adam's talking about checking his ego, when it comes to trying to get your body to continue to progress, it's not always about harder, longer, or more, it's about smarter.

That requires that you check your ego. It requires that you're okay with doing less or doing things that are different. And that's how you get your body to continuously progress. And don't forget this, either. Volume, intensity, frequency, you know, of training. All valid. They're all valid and they're all, many times, inversely related. You know, I can take my workout and increase the frequency of my body part training, but I have to decrease

the intensity a little bit. And the volume is a factor as well. So these are all things you can play with in your training. These are things that we take into account when we program the programs that we sell. But these are all things you can manipulate to change your routine, to get your body to continue progressing. And it's not adding more. That girl Ashley K.

Oh, that girl. Yeah, that one. That girl Ashley Kay. Oh, that girl. Yeah, that one. I know that one. What do you suggest about restarting a program? In her case, she was doing Maps Black, had to take a couple of weeks off, and she's wondering if she should pick up where she left off or start from the beginning,

and we get this question a lot actually in the form, I think. So this is a good question. And it disapplies that anybody who's listening who is doing either our maps program or not, or you're doing your own program. There is a preferred sequence and order that you should go in when you're doing your program. And to give you just an easy example,

if I've trained for a year straight consistently and I get to a certain level and I'm doing really good and I take three weeks off, I'm going to lose some of my performance. Now, if I jump right into where I left off, that's what my body was able to handle and do and what it required to know reason to do that. No, if I jump right into it,

and if it's a week off or two weeks off, I might just notice that I get really sore. Like I've done that before, I take a week off and go back and I just get really fucking sore. But if it's like a month or two months, you can injure yourself and here's the thing, like you could be doing too much.

And what I mean by too much is not just that you're wasting time in the gym, but that you won't progress. You can actually trip, you know, you can actually step over the line from doing the right things to doing. You'll plateau sooner. And plateau sooner. So if you're following our programs and you stop for a couple of weeks, start at the

beginning, start at the very beginning again. And if you're following your own program, I would say do the same thing. She said on there, she was doing black, is that what you said? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's But if you've been off for a month, two months or longer, I'd say go all the way back to red. Go all the way back to phase one of red and then progress all the way through because there is a, you know, black has quite a bit more volume than either one of either one of red or green. So if you've been off for a month or more, your body is, you've definitely at your feet

a bit and you've lost your performance and your gain. So some of your gains, not all of them, of course. Then I would say for sure, Starbeck. And the main reason is because you don't want, you don't, you want to work your way up to black. That's the idea. This is, is to progress up to that volume. And you want to get as much bang for your buck before you get to that. You know, so by you jumping right back into black, yeah, you might get sore for a little bit. Yeah, your body will figure it out. You'll jump back into being able to get through it But then you also are gonna force the body to adapt to that amount of volume faster And you'll see less results had you if you would have started from red

Progress through green then back over to black and worked your way away I think of it this way like when you're You know when you look at music music is made up of notes and Music only happens if the notes are played in a particular sequence. When you're doing a program for your body, it sounds like Adam. That you try to sing. You can't even do it as bad as he does. It's horrible. When you, when you're doing an exercise program, there is a particular sequence and following that sequence is going to give you far better results. And this sequence has everything to do. It's from just your, you know, what you're doing in your workouts, to how many sets you're doing,

to the type of frequency and intensity. But it's even, this even applies to the sequence of exercises within a workout. I mean, not to go too off topic, but if I'm doing a workout and I'm starting with biceps and triceps and then I'm moving to shoulders and then I'm moving to squats and then to deadlifts, like that sequence sucks, that sequence, although I'm doing the same exercises, but because I'm doing them out of order, I'm not going to get nearly the same effect

and the same holds true for your workouts. So when you take or for the, you know, what you do during the week, so if you stop for, know a couple weeks two or three weeks, go ahead and start back over at the beginning of your workout where you started when you first started, where you kind of went into it when easy, you're not going to slow your progress down. You're going to actually speed your progress up. Okay, so that's what you got to consider. It's not hurting you to start over. It's actually going to help you to start over. Good point. So I kind of like this with Doug just firing random away.

I have no idea what he's about to say. I like that. I like that. Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's kind of tricky actually. Doug does not like this. I don't like it. Because I'm reading through the question,

I go, oh, is this a good one or not? East Coast Kinney, would you rather eat healthy and never work out or work out and never eat healthy? Wow. Wow. Wow. No Justin's answer. So,

fuck you man. What are you? You're right. I'll be eating cake and doing the best. I swear to God, I knew you guys are in case. Okay, what I'd prefer to do if it was just like something that, oh, I'm just gonna pick one. I'd rather work out because eating bad is delicious.

A lot of times. But if I were looking at my health, if I were looking at my health and longevity, and either one of these weren't extreme. So what I mean by that is like, if I work out but eat horrible versus not working, you know, eating perfectly and having no activity, those are hard to compare because they both suck.

But let's just say I did average amount of activity and a perfect or very well, or I exercised and I ate like the average American. You're gonna do better off with the diet. Diet will affect you. If you're just a normal amount of activity, diet is where you're going to get the most in terms of your health. 100%. I'm kidding. You can't, I mean, you eat shitty and work out. You're not going to get a lot out of your, you're working out in an anime. No, no, no,

health wise, definitely. No, no, yeah, I'm sure it's more fun. Well, it will, especially when you're talking about all the insights, the the insights that's going on right, like aesthetically, I think you can manage it okay, but what's going on? If you were just all over the, even like the average American diet, like you said, you know, that person, the person that's working out is probably slowing the process down a little bit than the person who's not working out and doing all that, but it's still inevitable for that person too. You know, we see them all plan it fitness. Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah.

Stinger. Well, if you look at populations that live the longest, it's not that they work out. It's that they're just active. They're just active on a regular basis in terms of walking and maybe they go up the hill to fetch pot water to, you know, maybe they go up the hill to fetch pot water, or maybe they go fishing, but it's just regular activity. But what they have, what they have in common is they eat very healthy. Lots of whole natural organic foods, they don't overeat.

Foods that are high in nutrient dense, low in calorie. That's what you find with these populations that live a long time. Really, when it comes to working out, especially when it comes to performance, you're working out because you want to perform better. I work out, I like the longevity aspect of it, but could I get lots of longevity if I didn't lift this heavy? Definitely. Why do I lift heavy? It's a phone.

Well, it reminds me of the comparison of, would you rather just do cardio or you know weight train and it's like one is superior yeah but like both combined like in the right way is obviously the best. Yeah I mean I'd say you got a pick eating you have to but God that would suck to not work out and I would be bored out of my course especially because when I was a kid I ate shitty and worked out. And I loved it. I didn't gain an ounce of body fat. Yeah.

And no matter fact, I think I ate crappy, I ate crappy on purpose, but you set a sub up for the tummy issues. Yeah, and I set myself up for acid reflux. I guarantee you, I know Adam, you probably do the same thing where you worked out and ate crappy to train gain weight. Oh yeah. Yeah, oh yeah, messed me up.

Yeah, not pretty much fucked up for that. Moving along now. What else, Douglas? Last question. Why is it last one? I don't know. Fuck you, I'm gonna tell you the last one. It is.

Yeah, once you go home. I was feeling it. It's Dave Re. It's Dave Re. Is it a collision tracing? It's Dave Re. It's a devavera. Oh, it's a

May We all just the can we all just take a second here to stop it take a breather We flustered the shit at a dog. Yeah, I'm so bad this entire episode. I'm really excited for this episode because I thought it was hilarious That we fuck can we just talk about that for a minute that we actually we actually for as long as we've been doing Q&A's Oh, we started a Q&A. I've never messed one up with no questions on the point. What in the hell? Definitely definitely definitely I only did only this show could you pull that off still fuck it. We go fine. Is that like we're that much more prepared? Like we're gonna scrap this yeah. Yeah, no, we've never scrapped an episode. All right, Doug. We apologize again. It's tavory. That's tavory.

It's tavory. Is occlusion training used strictly for hypertrophy training or are there benefits on using it for potential strength gains? Great question. It is good. So for those of you that are unfamiliar with occlusion training, here's the gist of it. You occlude or you partially occude what's called venous outflow of a muscle, fluid and waste byproducts build up in it when you in that muscle because it doesn't

come out as quickly when you're exercising and that has been shown in many, many studies to stimulate more muscle growth. In layman's terms, you for lack of a better way of saying this, you tie off a muscle group. So like if I'm working out my arms, I use knee wraps and I tie off the top of my arms. Stricting the blood flow. And I'm restricting the blood flow, but I'm not restricting the blood flow

and into my muscle. Yeah, it's blood going out. So I'm not like tying off my arm where it's like purple. You're still allowing it. And then I do exercises, I do sets of stuff. And the lactic acid, the burn that you get when you work out, all those different things that you feel, it just fucking builds up.

It intensifies. It intensifies, it builds up. The pump that you get is you can multiply it times 10. I've never had a pump. Matter of fact, occlusion training ruined pumps for me. And I'll tell you why. When I get a regular pump now, it feels great. It doesn't compare.

But it's not. Occlusion pump is like, it's borderline distorted. Like my arms look silly. If you look at my ins, you can do in this to my, you look at the pictures on my Instagram, every single one of them was done post-occlusion. You're pretty much, but, but, but, but statistically, this is how you look so much bigger.

Somebody asked about the angles and lighting and all that. It's now, you know, one more secret. That's it. I see. I don't use Photoshop, but I use filters, lighting and pump. But when you do the occlusion, studies show that it builds more muscle. Now, does that contribute to strength? Yes, of course it does.

Hyper-traffic will make you stronger a larger muscle fiber contracts harder than a smaller muscle fiber. And studies show this as well. Studies shows that people build more muscle and more strength when they include occlusion. I will say this when caveat here, if you do occlusion wrong,

it actually can be, theoretically can be dangerous. So make sure you learn how to do it right. We actually offer a very inexpensive but very descriptive and simple occlusion guide at minepumpmedia.com, where we break it down. Actually, Adam is the model in the picture and I'm talking about.

You know what I actually was gonna do a post on this. So it's kinda random work that on occlusion. And the reason why I was a post it, I was including my legs this week. Quads? Yeah. God, that sucks. And I never really do that.

People don't know how painful that shit is. No, it's crazy bad. And here's why, and I got asked recently, how do you use occlusion? And whenever anybody asks me how we use a tool or a modality of fitness that we use, it's really hard for me to answer because I'm sure you guys are the same way too. I don't think any of us have this formulaic way of like we always do it this way. You know, it's real system. You know, I, it's you throw it in. Yes. And for different reasons. So this week I had a really good reason why I felt that to share with people how I would

have used inclusion. So I rarely, I normally just do a clue. I only include my calves is primarily what I use inclusion for just because my calves suck. And so it's also a way, it's a way for me to train them. So let's say I just did calves either day, really heavy and hard and they're pretty sore. Occlusion training allows me to give them that sarcoplasmic pump without putting all the stress of the weight on my body.

And so this is what happened with that. Well, that's how it was invented. It was invented for rehab, for people who have injuries and they can't lift heavy. They don't want their muscles to shrink and they found that including them while doing these light exercises built muscle like they went heavy.

He's that. So right now I typically squat three times a week and different types of squatting, front squatting, box squats, back squats, low bar high bar. I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have, reverse cowgirl. I'm gonna manipulate all of themvar, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a,

I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm's funny, I go and I do a dynamic war but I stretch before I lift weights, but then I go on a beach and then I fucking sprint and run routes with no stretching. So if you can imagine, I totally strained like every muscle in my lower half and my hips felt awful, my hip flexors felt terrible. Like I was my hamstring.

So I'll want to massage you that. I felt terrible, right? So, so much to the point where it's completely hindered my workout for the next five days. And I was really frustrated with that because I was in a nice rhythm of lifting right now. And so instead of completely just taking it off and not lifting it all, I included my quads.

So that allowed me still to do a squat. No, I leg pressed. Leg pressed. Yeah, I leg pressed on one day and then I used a hack squat another day. I actually don't. Dude, I had pretty crazy. So I don't I really recommend I really ever occlude my upper legs because they just grow really easily on their own. But there was that one. Do you remember you got I did it like six months ago where I cluded every week. Yeah. And then I posted it before and after. Fucking dramatic. Now I mean my

legs respond anyway. So any kind of extra works and I make fucking dramatic. Now, I mean, my legs respond anyway, so any kind of extra works and I make them grow, but I'd never done anything like that. I've never seen anything like that happen in my upper legs and then explode. I do, I occludes, see, I use it differently than you Adam. I actually occlud on a relatively regular basis. The way I use occlusion is after maybe two or three

of my workouts of the week, I do a set of occlusion for my arms, and then every calf workout I do, at the end of my calf workout, I do occlusion. And that's because my calves don't fucking grow, and occlusion's been the only thing that I've noticed, some growth from them. So I actually use it more regularly,

but I will say this, you can overdo it. I don't know if you have you experimented with this brain with it? This is why I don't now, because before I was so excited about how they responded, that I started doing it so much that it started to take the place of like my strength, my strength training. So when it started to do that, that's when I started

to see the adverse effects of it, because it was starting to, and it doesn't trump that. It doesn't trump lifting heavy weight. He's not a trigger session. Exactly. You know, including your quads and doing leg press is never going to take the place of a heavy, you know, barbell squat. Never.

You know, and, but it's a great, it's a great tool to, to, in your arsenal for times, there was no way that I was gonna go heavy barbell squatting the way I felt. I was like afraid of how, if I were to squat down that I could pull something, I felt that iffy about it. But I felt totally comfortable with including my legs and putting 135 pounds on a leg press. Interesting for me to hear you guys talk about it,

because it's very similar to how I use isometric training, you know, the way that I experimented as a tool, the very same way where I'm constantly like going through periods of using it to intensify my response and feel that my performance lifts especially. And it's almost, it acts on this very similar fashion to getting hypertrophy gains with BFR training. Well, what happens? Here's some of the theories in terms of occlusion. So when you're occluding a muscle, waist builds up in the muscle faster. It doesn't escape. It causes lots of pain.

The muscle fibers may be a little bit restricted of oxygen. And so you create damage to the muscles like you would with heavy weight. Now, some people may ask, why not just do more sets with heavy weight? Here's why. Heavy weight and intensity with heavy weight stresses the central nervous system a lot more than occlusion training does.

Occlusion training will train the muscle and spare the central nervous system. This is a valuable piece of knowledge and tool because when you're doing a heavy workout and a hard workout, at the end of it, your central nervous system many times is a limiting factor. Like, I can't just keep maxing out, even though my muscles may be able to handle it because my CNS, you know, won't be able to handle it. So adding occlusion at the end spares the central nervous system, but gives me a little bit extra of that muscle damage. It can also be overdone.

I've done that where I've done it every single day and overdid it. But when I do it about once or twice a week on like I said, arms and on calves, I do it about, you know, three days a week, the results have been spectacular. And I can still have my heavy workouts, you know beforehand. So like many tools, if you use it properly, it's only going to amplify your current workout. But I'll say, for me, in terms of a new technique that has shown me results that's very different, it's been a long time since I've run into anything that actually did a big difference

in terms of muscle size and occlusion is that. Like, I've added, you know, I've done all kinds of different techniques to training and you might notice a little bit here there. It was, with occlusion, it was pretty visible within the first, I'd say within the first week or two, like I could tell that I got bigger from using it. So it's a pretty effective tool.

Just you gotta do it right. I see people try it. I've seen people try it in the gym. They're not doing it right. They're either going too hard, tying it off too hard, or they're not leaving it all long enough, or whatever. So you gotta do it right. If you do it right, very effective.

I highly suggest you check out our guide at Mind Pump Media because we break it down so that you don't do it wrong and hurt yourself or, you know, at least get it on the wrong place. Exactly. So with that said, please leave us a five-star rating review on iTunes. If you leave a good one, you may win a free t-shirt.

Also check out our testimonials and our programs at mindpumpmedia.com. And you can also check us out on Instagram at Mind Pump Radio I'm at Mind Pump Sal. Adam is at Mind Pump Adam and Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. Motherfuckin' Justin! 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 MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps on a ballad, 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 in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having sound, animate, and just as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump.

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