Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 845: Train & Look Like an Ancient Athlete

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin give contest updates, discuss caffeine & sex drive, manipulating salt, carb loading, preferred carb sources and then go into detail the benefits of training like an athlete and how that was the genesis of MAPS Performance.(50% Off in August 2018, mindpumpmedia.com code: GREEN50 at checkout) Caloric deficits, caffeine intake and its effect on your libido. (2:00) The proper way to manipulate your salt and water intake for competitors. (11:30) What are the guy’s go-to meals currently? Contest Update as the final week is here. (14:48) Preferred carbohydrates and how the body responds to them. (17:15) The correct way to carb load. (24:19) Taking a trip down memory lane…The guy’s reminisce on the creation of MAPS Performance. (25:17) The benefits of training and looking like an Ancient Athlete. (29:00) The importance of transverse movement (reactive strength) to overall joint health. (35:55) The misconception of power (explosive strength) and how to maximize yours. (39:00) How the mobility sessions MAKE the program so unique. (42:50) The beginning of Adam’s Mobility Journey and the impact this program had on his overall life. (47:09) People Mentioned: Mike Matthews (@muscleforlifefitness)  Instagram Layne Norton, PhD (@biolayne)  Instagram Melissa Wolf WBFF BIKINI PRO (@meliwolff)  Instagram Jordan Peterson (@jordan.b.peterson) Instagram Greg Glassman (@CrossFitCEO)  Twitter Dr. Justin Brink (@premiere_spine_sport)  Instagram Dr. Jordan Shallow D.C (@the_muscle_doc)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned: Bodybuilding & Weight Loss Supplements Online – Legion Caffeine Informer Effects of rutaecarpine on the metabolism and urinary excretion of caffeine in rats MAPS Performance - Mind Pump ** 50% Off in August 2018, code: GREEN50 at checkout** Day 23: Mobility Workout + Exercises - 30 Days of Training (MIND PUMP) Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS Split, an expertly programmed and phased muscle building and sculpting program designed to get your body stage ready. This is an advanced program and is not recommended for beginners. Get it at www.mapssplit.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Also check out Thrive Market www.thrivemarket.com/mindpump! Thrive Market makes purchasing organic, non-GMO affordable. With prices up to 50% off retail, Thrive Market blows away most conventional, non-organic foods. PLUS, they offer a NO RISK way to get started which includes: 1. One FREE month’s membership 2. $20 Off your first three purchases of $49 or more (That’s $60 off total!) 3. Free shipping on orders of $49 or more You insure your car but do you insure YOU? If you don’t, and you are the primary breadwinner, you will likely leave your loved ones facing hardship and struggle if you die (harsh reality). Perhaps you think life insurance is expensive, but if you are fit and healthy, you can qualify for approved rates that are truly inexpensive and affordable. To find out if you qualify for the best rates in the industry, go get a quote at www.HealthIQ.com/mindpump Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com/mindpump Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)

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 Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this reminiscent episode of mine, pump, we went down a little, uh, um, memory lane. Well, we started out by talking about how caffeine affects sex drive, manipulating salt to change how you look, carb loading, preferred sources of carbohydrates, and then we went into the origin of when we created the Maps Performance Program.

Now, a lot of the OGs who've been with us for a long time know this, but for those of you who are newer, Maps Performance is the first program that Adam Justin and myself wrote together and it's really what set the stage for how we create these programs that many of you now enjoy. And it was a great episode. A lot of memories on how the things went together, why we created Maps performance the way we did.

It's a lot of fun. It's a fun episode. Now Maps Performance is 50% off this month, so it's half off, but you do have to use the code green50s, GRE and 50, so there's no space. You get that at mindpumpmedia.com, so make sure you go check that out. But you know, one last word about Maps Performance, it's very different. It's a different kind of program. If you're bored with your traditional muscle building stuff, your bench presses and your overhead presses and your rows and whatever, mass performance is a totally different program.

It'll give your body a completely different stimulus and you know how the body responds when it gets something new. It changes, it builds muscle, it burns body fat. And of course, the program is designed to get you to move better, functional, functional strength, functional speed, agility, all those types of things. Again, 50% off, use the code green50, that's the number 50, mind pump media.com,

and here we go. I feel sorry for you guys. Huh? I'm starting to feel good. Do you feel like, do you feel like not quite? 220 testosterone good? No, no, I don't. Do you feel like, do you feel like? Not quite. 220 testosterone good? No, no, I don't.

I don't. Like, you know what's crazy? My libido's weird right now, dude. My sleep is a little bit tiny off though. So I haven't been having the best night sleep right now. Well, here, you know what? It could be the diet because the calories low. So this is what I think, that's what I think.

Because low calories will kill the little people. That's exactly what I think it is because this week is the first week where I'm staying like at 2,500 calories. And I haven't been consistently staying at 25. That might be it. I've been at 32, 3,400 calories. And I've been like, okay, this is my week of like dropping. And so I've been down.

And I know what I've also been doing too, which probably isn't helping the cause, is I'm way over stimulated on caffeine, because I'm needing it to fucking... Oh, that'll destroy your libido. Stimulants will do that all the time. I remember when I started taking a fedra back in the day. I remember that. I was with this, I had this girlfriend for a short period of time and I took a bunch of rip fuel and then, you know,

You let that stop you, bro? Well, let me finish the story. Ha ha remember, I'm 18 years old at the time. So you could have stabbed me in the penis. Yeah, I remember. But I remember I was on a hella rip fuel and it just wasn't the same. I was all good. We still did it.

But I'm a crazy. It's crazy that you would even. You would put that together back then. I had no clue of any of that back then. It was too, like you said, that age could stab me there and I'd be still fine. Where now I'm so sensitive to things that I can pick up on that.

Like I can, I just more aware of your body. Yeah, right, so super aware of that. And especially when everything else, like I'm eating clean, I'm training good, but I'm like, what is it right now? Where my libido was, because my libido was just rockin' like a week or two ago, and it's like, the only two major differences that I notice right now

is I'm in a caloric deficit, and for me, it's significantly low. I don't run 2500 calories normally, and I've been running it multiple days in a row, and then on top of that, I just haven't had the, you know, the oomph to go lift. And so I've been like slamming the caffeine down. Every day.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, so here's what I've done with. I know I got a back off. Yeah, this is like my, this is my expertise when it comes to managing supplements like that because I've just played with it for so long. So what I do is I go higher caffeine every other day. And then the days in between I go low caffeine. Now what does this mean?

This means that my workouts on the lower caffeine days aren't as hard. So I do it. I make sure to take the higher doses on the days I'm doing my heavy hard workouts. Here you need it. And then on the lighter, easier days, then I just put my headphones on or We'll listen to music and I'm definitely not as aggressive. So I'm focusing on squeezing and focusing on the form. And it helps because on the days I do take the higher caffeine. I feel it. I feel great. If I go every day, takes me a week before I start to feel like shit. One week, Within a week, I start to get no effects from it. And then I start to get shitty workouts actually what starts happening is I start to feel like shit, one week, within a week I start to get no effects from it, and then I start to get shitty workouts, actually.

What starts happening is I start to get a little shaky, I'll get edgy, do you get in a bad mood when the caffeine wears off? Oh, totally. And I've known, I'm a little irritable just a tiny bit, you know? So, and I mean, you probably felt that just the other day. And so I caught that, like I was like,

oh, that was weird, we had a meeting and I was kind of irritable. It's napkin Katrina a little bit. There's, I'm gonna give, I have to say this, because it actually may actually work. There's a, one of the supplements that Mike Matthews has on his company, what's called Legion, the sleep one.

I can't remember the name of it, but in there is a compound that accelerates the, your liver's ability to remove caffeine. And I can't remember the name. Maybe Doug can look up the sleep formula, I'll remember it, but I was reading his ingredients. Interesting. And one of the ingredients, I didn't recognize,

so I did my research, and that's what it does. And so I've tried it a couple times, and it might actually work. So, I don't, because they gave us a bunch of stuff at one time. Well, we have a ton of this stuff. We might have someone in the back. Well, what I noticed that was, if this has been I want to say like four or five days in a row

of what you're drinking coffee on top of it. Yeah, no, I that's staple right like for a normal morning is I have my cup of coffee on the way over here. So let's see, let's add it up. You have would you say what eight ounces of coffee? No, that's big. It gets a big cup. 12 ounces? Yeah. So 12 ounces of coffee is yeah, it's the 12 ounces coffee's around 300 milligrams caffeine Then you have what is it 300? I don't think it's that much 12 ounces. Yeah, now so that it's more like a hundred Yeah, eight ounces is like 50 milligrams. No, no, no, no, no, regular couple. Oh, yeah, no Yeah, it's so here. I'll look it up for you right here. So oh, maybe you are right. I am right Yeah, look at that 136. Thank you. This is weird now. Hold on a second more. I know it's our three hundred that rock star

We found yeah, so the rock star I drink after this is 240 Yeah, so that's what that's pushing it and you do that Yeah, that's what I have been just those last four days. I know this. What's nitros up there too? Though I looked up at the it was the Starbucks one. They actually had they don't allow them to put it in the venti size. Yeah. I kept trying to get them to it for me. No, no, no, no, I'm right. Hold on a second. How would you say that that's the same size as a Grande drip coffee from Starbucks? No, we just we just did the ounces. You just you committed me to 12 ounces and then telling you what I thought

to know. Okay, so well, no, I'm trying to me to 12 ounces and then telling you what I thought to know. Okay, so I'm trying to figure this out here because I looked on another site. But there's a site called, this is a good little plug for them. Well, give or take, it's 150 milligrams, even if it was, it's not that type of. It's probably closer to 200 something. But anyway, caffeine and former great website,

you can find caffeine content for pretty much anything. I always go there. So that's caffeine addicts. Plus the rock star. And then on top of that, you do one or two scoops of the pre workout. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not doing all those in the same day.

So, but what I'll do, because I've only had the rock star twice. I've had that twice in this last week. And that was just simply because it was accessible to me. I didn't have any, I just pulled over to gas station. I grabbed it real quick. And then I had it before I trained, because I just needed something to get me up.

And so I've done that twice, and then the other days, I've actually wouldn't done our nitro. So I'm probably pushing for 500 milligrams of caffeine, which is a lot for me, I don't normally do that. And I can get up too bad, but- No, no, no, no, it's like- But for you, you're saying it's hard. Yeah, yeah, and consistently, like, right,

for a whole week now, I've done that to kind of, and I'm also low calorie. And so I can feel, I can feel the little bit of irritability. Yeah. I can tell it's, my sleep is messed up a little bit, you know. I always tend to do that. Yeah, and the low calorie, like ramp up the stimulants, like that was something that I was guilty of

and started to feel so. Well, it's tough, right? You have to ask yourself, and I played this game all the time with myself. Like, okay, is it worth it for me to do it? Cause what I will do is, it was great, especially if you haven't had caffeine like you're saying, which I'm good about,

I'm really good about resetting myself. And you have a great work. Oh yeah, you take 240 milligrams and you're not used to taking more than 100, you're saying, which I'm good about, I'm really good about resetting myself. And you have a great work. Oh yeah, you take 240 milligrams and you're not used to taking more than 100, you're fucking flying, you know, and like you could be dead asleep and then also, that wakes me right up for a lift. So that is, that I like to be able to have that

and to make sure I don't allow myself to get adapted. The ingredients called root of carping, I hope I'm pronouncing it right, root of carping, it actually help reduces the levels of caffeine in the body at a faster rate. Oh, interesting. At a faster rate. That's what it's supposed to do.

Now I did read some studies on it and apparently it does work. You know, it's funny, the individual variance with how quickly your body metabolizes caffeine. And some of us just, like you're saying 400 for use high and you would probably wanna be around 300 a day, right? So I'm like that. Yeah, well that's 300 for me is high and you would probably want to be around 300 a day, right? Something like that. Yeah. Well, that's 300 for me is really high a day.

Right. So me, it's a cup to two cups of coffee is a is a nice like just and probably has the most on a regular basis. Probably. Yeah. You do like what three, four cups a day? Yeah. Cause I watch you.

And he's doing a lot. But are you are you are you doing any pre workouts? I don't ever see. No, I don't do pre-workout. I'd and and to be honest, through this whole like competition, it's just been nitro or like a cold brew. And so I've been really trying to stick with that. So I don't get any additional stuff. But occasionally, like I'll do like like you like you've done with like a rock star,

something to find like in a pinch, but I try really hard to just stick with like, you know, so so I don't have any like added like I used to do I used to do milk with it and I used to do like, you know, some kind of a sweetener or something like and I just cut all that out. So yeah, yesterday I was are you doing just straight black coffee in the morning? Yeah. Oh wow. Yesterday I was starting to get hungry because my calories just starting to drop too. And so last night we go grocery shopping, which is terrible. Oh, that's the worst to do when you're hungry. Oh my God, dude. So I'm like, fuck, I wanna eat everything.

But luckily I did, you know what I bought? I ended up buying pickles, which by the way, pickles made right, they're fermented, so you get some of the probiotics. And one pickle is like, so is it one gram of car? It's like nothing. It's a cucumber basically. Great food to eat when you're trying to eat something.

And that's a staple in prep life for me. Is it really? Oh, absolutely. And plus, because I'm sodium loading before I head into. Oh, and the salt helps a lot. Yeah, no, so I, and I also, when I coach people, it's a, I put it in their diet.

It's like, you need to have have I want you to have a pickle It's a great natural way to increase sodium and someone's diet it gives you a snack that's you know somewhat So you're you're raising sodium leading up into what like the last two weeks Yeah, so yeah, and that's it so then when you cut it back down in normal your body gets rid of water Right, and that's and that's just it is I think I think we're a lot of guys in the in girls in the competing world make a mistake Is they just they kind of eat their diet, you know, they're prep diet the same the whole time or whatever and then when they get to the last We do the same with water too Exactly and exactly and I think that's the both sodium by the way those don't work unless you're shredded

Yeah, but be clear here. I think people try to do that shit And they're just not lean. Yeah, yeah manipulate your water all you want I think people try to do that shit. And they're just not lean. Yeah. It's like yeah manipulate your water all you want. You have to try it. You're not gonna see shit. Yeah, but if you have somebody who's,

they're just eating like their normal meal prep, which by the way, okay, so if you take somebody, and this is what I think a lot of prep people, so this is for all my prep people that are listening. If you go from yes, you eat out, you do whatever you wanna do, and then you decide, okay, 16 weeks, I'm gonna go do my bikini show or whatever and you get into the meal prep life.

Well, right away, you just cut your sodium like in half because eating one eating out meal is like equivalent to the most amount of salt you could pour on your fucking food in five meals. So a lot of people don't realize that they are already high sodium consumers and then they go into a prep and then they do all these pre prepped meals that are actually pretty low sodium meals, maybe some seasoning and stuff like that, but pretty low.

They're eating whole natural foods for the most part if you have a solid diet. So you automatically reduce your sodium and then they get close to peak week and then they start playing with sodium levels and they reduce it even low. They end up losing their pump, they can't work out well. Yeah, you don't feel good. That's not healthy and you know, and I remember when I remember reading a lot of the stuff that Lane would put out way back when and I thought it was really good that because he doesn't sodium pull or doesn't mess with water at all, which I disagree with that. I think there's some validity to

manipulating sodium and water. I just think that it's not worth the risk of doing it in an unhealthy way. So my theory and what I teach Melissa and every other client that I've ever coached for like a show is, the leading weeks up to peak week were flooding the system with water and sodium. So I'm pushing water levels up high to where,

it's double what you would ever normally drink of water. It's like, this is not my normal amount of water. So I want your body and your system to get used to taking in that much water, doubling up your sodium. And then when we get into peak week, we pull it down to a very healthy, normal place where it's not abnormally low. You get like a rebound effect where then your body loses more water as a result. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It starts to, starts to pull it out, and you're still hydrated and healthy. You're still getting adequate water to help fill the muscle bellies up. Interesting.

And then the day before we do like a little sodium load, right, before the show, and you know, just muscles fill out really good, vascular, it just comes out. And I mean, it's worked very well for me. I feel good about it because the knock that a lot of, health nuts are talked shit about competitors that do that is obviously because not having sodium is not a good thing. I've seen coaches tell clients to pull.

That's an essential thing. Yeah, you'd die with it. And then on top of your sweat and doing cardio and working out, not a good idea. That's a really bad combo. So what's an average meal right now because the contest is almost over. What do you guys, like, for example, of your sweat and doing cardio and working out. Yeah. Not a good idea. That's a really bad combo. So what's an average meal right now because the contest is almost over. What do you guys, for example, would you guys eat yesterday?

So right now I'm at 2,500 calories, but I'll fill back in right before we go and we weigh and measure. So what's an example of your meals yesterday? So staple meals that I'm having right now. Or maybe like a week and a half out. Yeah, I'll give you the types of that I'm having right now. Or maybe like like, you know, like a week and a half out. Yeah, yeah. I'll give you, I'll give you the types of foods that I eat right now. So I, I definitely rotate my meats a lot. So I'm eating things. I get steak in pretty regularly, although I've reduced my steak and taken comparison to what it was before we were competing. I just was

eating, I was eating a lot of red meat, and I was curious if that was doing anything with me hormonally. So I kind of peeled back on the red meat. So I'm having a serving or so of red meat a day, chicken thighs, fish, you get a lot of sushi in the diet. As far as carbohydrates right now, my only sources of carbs other than vegetables and greens, is I'm getting white rice and sweet potato.

So those are my, and then fruit. I get occasionally I'll have fruit post workout. I tend to have, I have it in my smoothie that I've told you guys with organophile where I'm adding the blueberries and a banana. I get a, you know, cup of blueberries and a full banana. So that's kind of my fruit in my diet. And then the carbs are always rice and sweet potato and then chicken thighs, steak.

Oh, I had ground turkey. I had the lean ground turkey, not extra lean, but lean ground turkey. One of my favorite go-to dishes, you know, I think people, they show the tacos the other day in my Insta story. And so I'll make like that night I had tacos and then the next couple of days I used the tacos the other day in my Insta story. And so I'll make like that night I had tacos and then the next couple of days I used the ground turkey

because I cook it in bulk or Katrina cooks it in bulk. And then I make like a taco salad. So I shred lettuce. I have the ground turkey with just the taco seasoning on it. And then I take like two taco shells, which is 120 calories and it's corn. And I crample it up, pull it up and I, and I just, you know, cram, pull it up, cram, cram, cram, crush it up. I knew exactly

you were saying. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So I crushed it up into like a taco salad and that's fucking phenomenal, man. That sounds good. It's amazing. And it's super low-cal. It's all on it. Yeah. You just sprinkle a little sauce over the top of it. And you've got this taco seasoning in the meat. You got the good flavor from that. That sounds amazing. You got lettuce and tacos. It's a it's a it's a low calorie great great treat. Yeah, I like the white rice and the sweet potato for because it's easy to digest. I think that's why competitors use them so often is because they digest so easily they typically low in intolerances for people. Buckweed is another one. I've talked about this before.

I don't know why I need to try and do that. I don't know why more people don't eat. Now, when you say it, so here's why I like white rice. White rice is so easy to digest, and it gets in your system quick. And it's weird. I can totally tell the difference. So I can take, and I would do this

when I was competing and training in my diet when I was super lean, right? All this stuff that we're talking about, I think you touched on it with the sodium and water. It's so hard for the average person to see it, unless you're really, really lean to feel this difference and see it, but it's very, very, me taking in a hundred grams of carbs from sweet potato versus white rice, I can feel the difference in the glycemic index. You can tell if I go and have a cup or two of white rice, you know, 30 minutes to an hour before a workout,

I'm filled out. This is the first time I can totally explain that. Yeah, so I went through like a process, and now I'm back to just eating meat, but where I was like experimenting with that and adding a cup and then ramping up a little bit more of white rice, and then I got a little bit of potato as well. And so I've been experimenting with those too,

but it was insane what I could feel as far as, like you said, it's almost like an immediate kind of response like this this energy that I could pull from that being so restricted leading into that. I had never been that depleted. So it was so responsive. And you notice a huge performance increase. Huge performance increase. So it was that was shocking and it was kind of fun to kind of experiment with that and then obviously getting back to more restrictive with it here towards Ian. Buckley is a very popular food that's consumed in Eastern Europe.

So you eat quite a bit. I wanted to ask you, my point of sharing the rice thing is, and that's why I said that was because I was leading to ask you, is it fast like rice or is it more like sweet potato where it just... No, it it fast like rice, or is it more like sweet potato or just okay? No, it's more like rice. Okay. So, and what I'll buy is I'll buy this hot buckwheat cereal. So, it's slightly processed.

And what I mean by that is, is if you buy buckwheat and bulk, you'll see the little buckwheat balls and everything. This one, they remove the, I don't know what it's called, the husk or whatever. And so, it's kind of like cream a wheat. And so, you pour this, you know, you boil the water, you pour it in there and you mix it and you cook it slowly. It's like grits, you ever cook grits? Yes. Okay, so it's just of like cream a wheat. And so you pour this, you know, you boil the water, you pour it in there, and you mix it and you cook it slowly. It's like grits, you ever cook grits?

Yes. Okay, so it's just like cooking grits except you're using buckwheat. And it's such, and I mean, I could eat 50, 60 grams of carbs from it, and I felt like I ate nothing, which I love with well-digested carbs. I'll eat it, and I won't be like, oh, you know, I ate a bunch of, you know,

starches or whatever, very easy digestion. And it's one of my favorite sources of... Now when you're comparing I won't be like, oh, you know, I ate a bunch of, you know, starches or whatever, very easy digestion. And it's one of my favorite sources. Now, when you're comparing it heads up to like, cause in the competitive world, like, you know, that staple meal is oatmeal. Like that was like a staple thing. It was oatmeal in the morning. And I scooped my protein inside of it.

Oatmeal is great, but oatmeal, even, I, if I push too much oatmeal, I'll notice a little bit of, a little bit of issue. Minor, a little bit of gas, maybe a little bit of bloating. I don't get that with buckwheat or rice. Like rice and buckwheat, I can eat a lot of, and not have those issues. And it's just one of my,

and people don't eat it that much here in the States, but like I said, I know in Eastern Europe that eat it quite a bit, and they'll make dishes, well they'll, they'll make it with, you can make it very hearty, you can make it savory. So I know people who will put bacon in there and stuff like that, or you can make it sweeter if you want.

I eat it plain, just plain buckwheat, super easy to digest, sometimes I'll put a little butter, and that's it. So I used to do that oatmeal was my staple, and what I've also found out. Now did you do the slow oatmeal at instant? No, not instant oatmeal. When you cook. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So you're still cut oats, right? So I would do my oatmeal, way protein, a little bit of blueberries or something, that would be my first meal. And then I get another meal with a couple of rice or a cup and a half depending on where I'm at, body weight wise and stuff before, and then I get a lift in.

And that amount of carbohydrates in me, especially when I'm lean and I've been depleted and I've refeed like that. Man, you go into a workout and I haven't been able to do that in a while. So I've been trying to lean out and I've been eating more like eggs. So my breakfast looks more ketogenic.

Like it's because I can't get enough protein in it. I'm not eating enough meals to have a meal. It's a high carb and low protein meal. And that's the problem for me with having oatmeal or something like that, that's a high carb is I'm not getting enough protein. And so I have to have like a really high protein meal to start my day.

So it puts me on pace to make sure I had otherwise I'm playing ketchup all day and I'm going, oh shit, it's one o'clock and I've had 30 or 40 grams of protein, like I'm gonna have a hard time getting there. You know what's, you talk about eating breakfast, I heard Jordan Peterson talk about, actually wrote about this in his book on how when he was, when he works with people

with a lot of anxiety, one of the things he recommends that they do is, first thing in the morning when they wake up, like as soon as they wake up, eat a high protein, high fat breakfast because it regulates their hormones, their cortisol, their insulin, and it lowers their rates of anxiety. And he said that's a very effective strategy. Well, since then, Jessica, she does a lot of online coaching

and she has a lot of, the type of people that tend to seek her out or people who want to speed up to metabolism or people who have food intolerance issues or You know people with issues like I talked about where they feel anxious or whatever So she started recommending people do this like first thing in the morning wake up and don't have caffeine don't have anything have a fat Protein breakfast and she's saying the results are phenomenal like these women are saying that they're their anxieties lower They feel much better, because when you wake up first thing in the morning, cortisol's high. That's supposed

to happen because cortisol is that energy producing hormone. But for people with anxiety, it can get a little too high or stay up too high. So having that high fat, high protein breakfast, first thing in the morning seems to help a lot of people. It's backed up by, of course, it's funny. It's backed up, I, of course, it's fun. It's funny cause there's things like this that I find myself that I go in and out of because I recognize the health side of it, right?

I recognize how clear I am. It's more balanced, it satiates me. But then I also see the lack of performance. So I noticed a difference when, again, when I'm the oatmeal or high carb type of breakfast followed by another carb and balanced meal, it really, really suits me well for performing well on my workouts.

And so I kind of go in this back and forth of what suits me. And so I try and predict, this is gonna be a big lift day today. So this is the day that I'll allow carbohydrates in for the first meal, or if it's just a normal day for me, where I'm not sure what time I'm gonna lift, if I'm gonna lift it all and it's gonna get a long work day. It's like, now I care more about being clear.

It's interesting, man. If I were to go back and play a sport again and go through that whole process of training and going through camp and then like my nutrition would have been so different. Oh yeah. And especially leading up into like a big game and being more depleted, you know, leading in, you know, before the game and then like, car bloating like properly would have made an insane difference. I just never really scheduled it out

and was disciplined with it like that. I remember the first time I tried to do it, and I did it the wrong way. I had a, I had a, what it was, a judo tournament, and I ate a bunch of pancakes and, you know, syrup and stuff. I'm like, I only think more carbs, right? And I was fucking drag and ass.

It's exactly what I used to do. Waffles. Yeah, I felt like shit. And I was like, but you don't know that when you're young. You don exactly what I said to you. Waffles. It felt like shit. But you don't know that when you're young. You don't know that kind of stuff. The information you could use when you're young. Car bloating needs more spaghetti. Right?

That's what they think. Dude, so we only have a few days that we have left, like five days before this 50% off mass, you know, this maps performance of all the programs that we have, all the the programs that we have, all the maps programs that we have, all the guides, everything that we've created, the one that is most special to me is maps performance because it's the first. It's our first baby.

It's the first program we all created together. It's the first one where we all get a what house was that was that the. That was fish. No, that was a Reno. That was up in Reno. Oh, Reno was- This is our first time in the year. At the end of the week?

Yeah. Oh. Yeah, I remember it vividly. That's so crazy to me. I don't know why I keep thinking it was the house with the coin. So it was the- The Koi was aesthetic. That was aesthetic.

That's when we created a aesthetic, I think. Yeah. And then we did prime in Reno also. We did prime in Reno also. Yeah. So that first, I'm trying to recall that first trip right now. We did prime in Reno also. Yeah. So that first, I'm trying to recall that first trip right now. And I'm blurry from you. Prime, I remember it really well.

Green when we were in there, it was this one of those ones where we just never left the room and we were. Yeah, we never left the room. And we had some idea going into it as far as like what we're trying to accomplish. Yeah, did we have that, do we have in mind what program we were doing? Yeah, but just because as a follow up to anabolic, I was like, you know, be great if we could do a little more functional style training and something that addresses like

athletic performance. And so I thought it was just going to be pure athletic performance. You know, like that was that was going to be the goal. Like we're going to make it like a sports program. And we really stretched it even further to make it more accessible and have more broad appeal. And so that's where you guys really kind of helped it evolved even further. Well, one of my favorite things about are when we go off to create a program. Because this is one of the, okay, it's special to me because it was the first program

we all created together, but it's also special to me because it set the formula and the precedent for how we create programs, which now has become, it's become our ritual. It's something that we now do and it puts us right in that space, because this is the first time we ever experienced that space. What we did was, remember, this is this is the first time we ever experienced that space.

What we did was, remember, this is back in the early days of mind-pump. So all we had was maps at a ballack at the time, and that was a program that Doug and I had put together, and we all liked it and this and that, and then we said, okay, we wanna create into the program. And at that time, we had some debate and discussion in terms of what direction we should go.

One of our biggest criticisms at the time was the type of workouts that CrossFit was promoting. People were just beating themselves up. You had a lot of boxes that were training people. That's what really sparked it, I feel like, because we came out with the episode that says why MindPump doesn't CrossFit, we ruffled a bunch of feathers, and then people gave us an answer. What's your answer? Yeah, how would you do it?

How would you train for this kind of performance? And so on the way, and it created this ritual, but this is our first time ever experiencing, that's why it was so beautiful, is on the way up there, and this is what we do every time we create a program, as we're driving to the destination,

because we always drive to our destination, we never fly anywhere, it's always somewhere we could drive. That, you know, one to four hour drive, because it's typically how long it takes, that's when we start to figure out the direction we're gonna go, it's like the mind mapping of everything. Yeah, and so we're in the car and, you know,

Justin had an idea of doing a purely athletic program. You know, I'm thinking like, how can we, you know, create something that will get someone fit, like overall functional, that kind of stuff, you know, Adam and thinking like how can we, you know, create something that will get someone fit like overall functional that kind of stuff, you know, Adam and I were going back and forth. We're talking, you know, with Justin and something came to us in the car and that was like, okay, because here's the thing with athletic training. Athletic training is extremely specific. This was the problem. Very specialized. Yeah, how are we gonna train? How are we gonna create a program? It's gonna work for a football player. It's gonna work for a football player. It's going to work for a tennis player that's going to work for a crossfit athlete. That's going to work for the average person just wants to

get shredded and muscular, but also wants to be able to move. Yeah, what does that baseline look like? What's all those attributes that we need to extract and kind of put together? Do you guys remember this? We were in the car. We were driving and we're all going back and forth and this was the first time I had fully, all of us I think I'd experienced that spark of imagination and creativity that we now know how to tap into whenever we want, this was the first time we really felt it and we're driving and I think I said something like,

you know the original Olympic athletes of ancient Greece and for a long time after, the ideal athlete was someone that could do everything. It wasn't as democratized as it is now. Like today, if you look at a shot put athlete and you look at a, you know, javillion thrower and then a sprinter. They look so different, right?

Because you have tons of genetics that play a role. Like a shot putter was born to be a shot putter and then there's lots of training that goes into it. But, you know, I was thinking, you know, when you look at the ancient sculptures of athletes of Greece that they were trying to model after these athletes that did very well in all these events, like what did they look like?

They looked balanced, they were muscular, they were lean, they had the muscles that were functional were the ones that were developed. So they're amazing looking cores and upper backs and shoulders and great looking you know arms that look like they could function really well and And then we came up with the idea of this this broad spectrum Athletic performance of an ancient athlete and that's what directed us to creating math performance was what is an ancient athlete? What was the ideal of those times which in those times?

It wasn't the best guy that could run and then the best guy that could throw a discus and the best guy that could wrestle, it was the best guy that could do all of that. And so it was this ideal, and then when we did is we deconstructed that. What are the attributes that make someone a bad ass at everything? Then we were able to start putting the program together because before we designed the program, we had to understand the direction. Which a lot of, I think, I think were the intentions

of probably Glassman when he thought of CrossFit. Absolutely. I mean, I really think that was the intentions when they created the programming behind that and that, you know, this adding gymnast type of moves and strong man type of lives and athletic type of throws and all these things combine. I just think that they didn't do a great job of program.

I think we all agree though. It was just like, you know, the idea, because they made all of it competitive for time, you took lifts, you know, that just have no business being done in this, you know, low, and no business for the average person. Does that mean like the supreme athlete, there is definitely a 1% of the population

that CrossFit is beautiful. Like they have got their mechanically sound, their super balanced, they can push those limits of doing super high risky movements at high intensity with no rest and going to fatigue. As dangerous as it is, they still can perform it and do it. And what you're saying, Adam, is, you know, for very small percentage of people,

when they get super exhausted, their form doesn't really break down. Right, so I mean, that's the biggest, that's the biggest knock. And I think that they're pairing of exercises. Like, that's where I saw the biggest discrepancy of like, you know, exhausting the athletes and then having them do really high skilled lifts. Like Olympic lifts.

Yeah, Olympic lifts that were, sure, these are amazing, amazing exercises, but they need that, the amount of detail and the amount of, what you need to incorporate to be able to pull this lift off, needs so much attention on its own, that let's program it, ensure, but let's give it its own focus. Yeah, Olympic lifts are highly, you have to have a tremendous amount of skill to do them.

And if your skill breaks down, the form becomes, or the exercise becomes dangerous. And so that was one of our creates. And we had a bunch of these different types of critiques. But what we tried to do is create something that would work on all the most important foundational aspects and attributes of somebody who could perform at a high level in any sport, or do well at anything. And what we did is we broke it down, because this is how you want to program. When you're writing a workout for people for someone if you're a trainer Well, remember you have to break it down this way Well, remember to that we're we we knew and this is and this is where the experience comes in right like and I think I see this in the

In the fitness space a lot is a lot of trainers They write programs or they create things that they would do or they would like to do. And when we realize, I've trained thousands of people so of you guys. And most people, they want to look like the CrossFit guy and girl. They want to look like them. And maybe they think they want to train like them or get to that point. But the bottom line is that they're years and years and years potentially away from ever

moving like that. If they ever can, you know, you get somebody who's 30 something years old who doesn't, that has all these imbalances and then you throw them in a CrossFit class, like thinking that they, and then you just teach in these movements. And the irony is that the top athletes don't train that way, the top athletes.

It is, yeah, it is the Irish. They train with their Olympic lifts, you know, coach, they train with that kind of, we knew that too, because we knew athletes that competed at very, very high levels. And we have friends that own boxes who are actually quite successful and do a good job.

Yeah, but we broke down, what are these attributes? Like, what do you need to be this type of an athlete? And then how do you train those attributes? And then how do you order the way you train those attributes? And so we broke it down that way. The first thing that we understood was, you know, the one physical attribute that contributes to all of them, the base foundational physical attribute, the most important from a foundational level.

Not that it's the most important, that's the only one you focus on, but in the sense that if you don't have this one, the other ones don't matter, is strength. Strength, you always have to have that. Yeah, strength is the ultimate cornerstone foundational physical pursuit. Because without good strength, you don't have agility, your endurance matters for shit. You don't have decent mobility without strength.

There is no mobility without strength. Well, it's the one adaptation that carries over to all of them. That's right, right. I mean, you can be graded all these other adaptations, but a lot of those don't necessarily bleed into all of the other ones where strength is the one that truly carries into all of them.

If you get stronger, you'll be faster. If you get stronger, you'll have better mobility. You know what I'm saying? The express power and generate more force, as long as you gotta get strong and you gotta be able to generate more force. So this is something that, yeah, that is the start. That is the start.

Now let's move into, okay, well, how are we going to express the strength? So we express it by moving in a lot of different directions. That's life. Life is not straight ahead of us and behind us. That's not it. That's not the complexity of what we're dealing with. We're rotating constantly. We're going side to side.

We're counting for a lot of things that are unpredictable. So if I'm stepping somewhere that's uneven, how do I respond to that? So all these types of things really matter, especially when we're trying to move better. Right, so the idea is this, like build, you wanna start when you're trying to mold and shape someone to make them a badass,

full spectrum like athlete, I can move and do all these different things and look phenomenal too, because we know that the market likes that as well. Okay, let's build this really good, strong foundation of strength. Now that you've. Okay, let's build this really good, strong foundation of strength. Now that you've got it, so once you do that,

now we're, oh shit, you're getting strong. Now, like what Justin's saying is, okay, can you use that strength in different directions? Because that's a big problem. As an athlete, you got to be able to move in different directions. Well, not even just as an athlete, and again, this is how we designed something that was speaking

to the general population that would want to pursue that is most people lose that movement in that transverse plane. You know, we just we move forward and backwards and unless you're playing a sport as an adult, you know, we how often do you rotate? You know, you just don't we don't we stop these rotational movements that are so important to our overall joint health. Yeah, it's like building a car with a shit ton of horsepower, but your handling is absolutely terrible. It's like, no, it's a great analogy.

It's exactly what it's like. Yeah, it's like drag racing, you know, versus like being able to like have an indie car that has, like can just turn and do everything on a dime. And control that strangle. Yes, because lots of strength, remember, your body's very, your body, the way your body adapts is quite specific to how you train.

And so if you don't train your body's ability to express strength in different directions, your rate of injury actually is might even actually increase. You might even, you might increase your strength by 30% in one direction. You try to apply strength to laterally in a sport or just running or whatever. And you might actually increase your risk of injury because you're so much stronger

But you don't know how to express it and so then we designed an entire phase around what we call, you know, reactive strength or the ability to Move in different directions and express this type of strength by the way the other thing that we we tried to do I don't know if you guys remember this as we looked looked at it and we said, okay, at the end of the program, this person should be able to have all these attributes. And so there's this order of operation. So at the end of it, hypothetically, if you are an athlete, you could train this system

up to the day of your competition. And then for the average person. I love that we figured that into the equation because as an athlete, I wanted to have a program that I knew I could time out. I could time it out and lead it into the season. Exactly. And so that's sort of the next progression for that.

So this is actually a program. We did four phases. Is it the only one that has four? I think it is. I mean, MAP Santa Ballac has pre-phase, but that really doesn't count unless you're just starting off. It's four phases long. It's a long program.

Right. You know, it's got a decent amount of time within the program. So now, after we sort of express our strength and we're moving in different directions and we're able to stabilize our joints properly and move more effectively. Let's add a little more force and expressiveness and let's get after it a little bit. And this is one of those things too that I think is another misconception that people think of power, they think of loading,

you know, loading and jumping at the same time and loading weights with that. Whereas, you know, what we're trying to do is to be able to generate this intrinsically and be able to explode on a dime without, we don't really necessarily need a lot of weights in this phase. No, explosive strength or explosivity

is the ability to generate your max force in the shortest period of time. That's all it is. So you could have somebody who is able to generate, you know, 300 pounds of force, but it takes them, you know, three seconds to do it. And you could have someone else that can generate 250 pounds of force, but it takes them

a half a second to do it. You know, the who's gonna be more explosive? Who's gonna get there first? The person who can express it fast. Now, what are the benefits of this for the average person? Well, besides the fact that training this ability actually encourages or allows your body to call upon more muscle fibers, which is a good thing aesthetically.

If you can call more muscle fibers to turn on faster, then your regular workouts are gonna produce better results. You're gonna build more muscle, you're gonna look better. But besides all that, well, why is that important? Well, life happens, shit happens, you're gonna build more muscle, you're gonna look better. But besides all that, well, why is that important? Well, life happens, shit happens, you're not expecting. Having this explosive ability reduces your risk of injury when something falls off the counter

and you got to move real quick to grab it, your kids in the swing, they're gonna fly out the swing or whatever. What's the most likely scenario? Yeah, it's moving super fast. Like, and it's outside of the norm for you. And that's how people hurt themselves. That's that's that's very common thing that happens. And that benefits everybody because your ability to do that. Think about it this way. If you're

30 or older, you probably lost a lot of that ability. You know, remember when you were 17 years old and you could just jump off the couch and jump on, you could retrain that. The reason why part of the reason why you lost it, I mean, of course as you get older, you'll naturally lose some of that. But the larger reason why you lost it, you just stop training it. You stop doing that kind of stuff,

and you can retrain your body to do that. Now, imagine how you felt when you were 17 years old, and you had that ability. That's how you're gonna feel once you train that as an adult, and that's what that whole phase is all about. So you go from the foundational grinding strength to the reactive strength, be able to express it in different directions to the explosive strength. And then at the end, as we're sitting there, we're putting this program together, we're

like, well, now we got to give people a bigger gas tank. That's it. Because it's great to have all these attributes, but it's not that great if it lasts 10 seconds. If your competitor's still gone and you're just dogging it. Yeah, which is how you would lead up to a competition or lead into a season two? It's like, what do you do?

What does every sport do? What does a coach do? The first week he gets, you get to camp. Just blasts you. All you do is run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, no skill, tyranny whatsoever. It's just endurance, endurance, endurance, to build your gas tank up.

And so it just made sense that that would be the last phase that you would do. And now you've got all this strength. You have all this functionality. And now you've learned how to express it. Now let's see how long you can express all that. That's it. So that last phase is the one that's,

you know, where you're going to be sweatin' your tired, you're burning a lot of calories, you're building that strength endurance. But the thing about Maps performance, the, that's, I believe to be incredibly underrated, but I also believe it to be the most important part, the most beautiful part of the program, and the part that actually had the most fun

doing with you guys was coming up with the mobility sessions. The mobility sessions, yeah. The mobility sessions were, they're very different. Well, this is what makes this program so sweet and unique and different. Completely. I don't know anybody else that's incorporated that and built it within the program. It is.

You have to go through these mobility days where, and two, what's so great about it is, we obviously understood there's a formula to map Santa Bolic. We understood what worked really well with that and why and like the recovery of trigger sessions, but also sending that signal and being very specific, you know, to the muscle, you know, building a signal with that. And so like how can we sort of duplicate that? The the priority with this is movement, right? And it's better quality movement and it's reinforcing the joints. And while we're expressing, you know, ourselves in all these different directions. So, let's really, you know, hone that in on the recovery day and make it all about, you know, the mobility.

Yes. And now, my favorite thing about my other favorite thing about this program is when we put it out We knew it would be very different like if you if you enrolled in like maps in a ballac and you have Some gym experience You're gonna know every exercise in there. You're gonna recognize pretty much everything that's in there There's nothing crazy or different or you know traditional exercise It's program well and it gives people great results, but it's not going to be way outside of your comfort zone. No, it's what it is. It's all the staple movements that everybody should be doing that everyone is probably heard of at one point in their life. And even MAPs aesthetic, body builder focus, but it's also got a lot of movements. You've

seen MAPs performance is very different. And so, I loved it because, you know, we had people enroll in the program who've worked out traditionally in gyms for years. And then the messages I would get, you know, back, I still get these, but especially back then, when we first came out with it, you know, I've never seen some of these movements. I've never seen these mobility moves,

I've never done anything like this before. I just, you know, want to build muscle and get fit. Is this gonna give me what I want or whatever? And I'm like, try it. Yeah. Try it out and watch what happens. What do we know about the body? You do something very different.

Of course, it has to be done right, but you do something very different. Nothing gets your body to change faster ever at all. And so the, the, the messages I was getting was like, holy shit, I'm four weeks into it. I'm building more muscle like this is. I thought this was a, holy shit, I'm four weeks into it, I'm building more muscle. Like this is, I thought this was a, you know, functional athletic program, like well, it's also very different from what you're doing.

Right. So you're gonna see what's good, you know, what's happening. Oh my God, I'm getting leaner. Wow, I'm, you know, and then at the end of the program, a lot of people would go back to a more traditional routine and then the messages were my favorite. This was, because remember the program is nine, you know, what is it, nine, 12 weeks long. So you know, three, four, five months later after we launched it for the first time, then

I started getting messages like, you know, my squat went up 20 pounds and my hips don't hurt anymore. And I'm able to overhead press 15 more pounds. I was stuck at that PR for years, and now I'm able to lift more. Yeah, what was interesting about it too, because you also got the other side of that coin where it's acquiring new skills. So going into this program, there's a lot of movements and a lot of things that initially,

people felt like, well, I'm not as good at this, right? And I'm not good, I can't lift as much weight doing it this way, you know, because it's a little bit different. And so it's challenging. And, you know, and that's frustrating sometimes for people to kind of go through that process. Oh, it's a very humbling program. Yeah. So, but, but like Sal said, when, when you get through

it and you start to respond and you're like, oh, and your body starts to adapt in those directions, now go into those staple lifts that you've done and watch how fortified your joints are. Watch how stable everything. And we know that when your joints are stable, your body will just naturally allow you to have more force production, which in turn, you'll feel stronger and more free to lift more weight. I remember watching in particular, and one thing I really respect the most about the team that we have is everybody's so open-minded and ready to try different things and experience

different things. And I really appreciated watching Adam go through this. This was the beginning of Adam's mobility journey. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I want you to talk about this, Adam, because I think this is, I wish people could have like a video of like your squat a long time ago and then your squat now.

It's drastic. You know, squats were not something you did very well. They hurt your back, they hurt your knees. You weren't able to go down all the way. You had issues with other movements. You had been bodybuilding for a long time. So that was the focus. We come out with mass performance.

Adam's like, I'm gonna do the program. I'm gonna do only mass performance. I'm gonna do the mobility stuff. The difference in how he moved after mass performance was like night and day. Yeah. It was incredible. What was that journey like going through?

Because I remember you come to work and you'd be like, yeah, dude, I got humble today after. Well, I mean, it was the joke used to be that I was, and I used to say this even to my staff because I've always been the guy who was driven aesthetically. I openly would admit that, listen, I'm, I'm all show no go. I don't care about my performance. I just, I wanna look good. I wanna take my shirt off of it.

And, you know, a lot of people might have razzed me for that, but then a lot of people respected me for that to be straight up and be like, that's what I care about. You know, bottom line. Like, I was an athlete as a kid. I cared about that when I was younger, but nowadays, I just cared to look good, you know? And the most exaggerated version of that would be bodybuilding. You know, it's like,

now I was already that kid who liked just to want to sculpt his body, then I get into the sport of bodybuilding, then all the performance stuff goes out the window. It's 100% how I look. I don't give a shit what I can do. Like, I'm not tracking weights and PRs. I'm not looking. I'm sculpting and looking at my body. And with that came the most aesthetic physique I've ever built in my life. And I was extremely happy with that. Now, the drawback of that is, you know, my joint health, my ability to rotate, my ability to squat really, really well and deep with good form. I had a lot of, I had a lot of issues that I didn't really realize until I started to

look into green and start falling that. And I was like, wow, man, I'm really fucked up. Like I can't get all the way down in a squat. Like I felt it in my knees. Like you're saying I felt it in my low back. And then I was just on this mission to to fix that. And I really truly not only did I follow the program to a T, but I probably went an extra mile of like, you know, I started to do mobility stuff throughout the day because I started to see that, oh wow, when I started doing these things consistently,

I was seeing the way someone sees gains like muscle gains, like when you start being really consistent with lifting and you start seeing the muscle go on, like the same thing I started seeing with the mobility, like the more consistent I was with it, the better I felt, like the more relief that I had, the better I felt in my squats and I was like, okay. And with that, it is such a frequency thing

and it's really hard with mobility work to over train or overstimulate the CNS. You're not hammering weights really heavy. It's pretty easier on the ground. You're doing 90, 90s, you're working on combat stretches. You're not hammering weights. Really heavy. It's pretty easy on the ground. You're doing 90 90s You're working on combat stretches. You're doing these movements that aren't gonna tax you so I could increase the frequency And so I would start doing our mobility stuff From maps performance and then I was like I would pick one or two movements that were that were I was noticing the most change and for me

I picked like squatting first like I couldn't I was like I most change. And for me, I picked squatting first. I got to be able to squat better. That's the most functional move that we could possibly do. And I wanted to address that. And the first place that I went, and that was when we got into the 1990, which that was such a game changer for me, was to start doing that.

And we have froggers in there. That was a big game. I started doing these little mobility moves and I was just like, holy shit, I have no connection here. Like I can't do some of this stuff. I remember the first time Brink put me in the 1990s, he asked me to lift my back leg up and I just looked at him like,

it don't move bro. Like, I can't internally rotate my hip like that. And then he grabs my foot and he moves and I'm like, oh shit, I should be able to do that. Like, that's fucking crazy to me. And so then I became, I shifted my focus and drive towards sculpting my body to, I'm going to become like super mobile. Like I'm going to go from, and I love that.

I love being an underdog. I love a challenge. If it's easy, it's no fun for me. And so I knew this was going to be hard and it took a long time, man. It was a, it's been a long journey and I'll look I probably have some old videos of me I know I've got some I know I don't have any from the probably the very beginning because I know how shitty my squat was But I have some videos where where I thought I was getting better at squatting Of that aren't good nowhere near what I can squat. I mean I could sit now in a very very deep

good nowhere near what I can squat. I mean, I could sit now in a very, very deep, comfortable squat with, you know, 300 pounds on my back and come out of it. No butt wink. Yeah, no wink, complete, complete control. But it's been, it's been a constant progress for me. And it's something that I now it's, it is, it's come to this too, like saying, this was a hard transition for me. I mean, think about this way too. How much easier is it now for you to build aesthetic muscular legs now that you have that mobility? Yeah, of course. And that's the irony, because I think a lot of people

think that's a trade-off. Like, oh, you either this or you're that. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. They contribute to each other, which is why, like a program like this, you do something like this, go back and then go through another routine, watch how your body builds muscle and how your body moves.

The results you get are just superior because you can move and perform better. And that's... It takes a mind shift though. Like if you're somebody who's like me and you can relate to caring about how you look and driven that way, to ask yourself to completely let that go

and become this performance or mobility person. That's, I felt like I was the right person to do that, especially out of all of us. Because I think that everybody tends to get in a box. Whether you say you are or you're not and you don't want to be, it's really easy to gravitate towards the things that you perform well at or that you like to train

and you like to do. And it's rare that I meet somebody who weaves in and out of all different modalities. And I really pride myself on being able to be that guy. Like even though I openly admit that I was always aesthetically driven, I also pride myself on being someone who puts himself through challenges like this and it was the best thing I ever did.

And now it's to a point where, and this was never like this, I was the guy trained seven days a week, lifting weights because I love lifting weights. And all I would do is modify my intensity based off of my soreness and what I could hit, but I was always lifting to lift. Like, where now, I'm always watching my mobility

more than I even watch what I look like in the mirror. So if I notice that I just got up from a chair and I'm like, oh, all right, go to sit down and I feel really tight and stiff. That to me, like the next day, it might have been, it might be shoulder and chest day and I'm going in to go lift, but I go, you know what, like today I'm just gonna, I'm gonna throw some easy listening music on and for an hour, I'm gonna go to work on mobility stuff and I'll spend that time in that world that I would have never done that in the past And I see now how much it served me like I just I don't have low back pain anymore I had chronic low back pain lived with it. Yeah, I live with it forever

And I know why and I know the issues. I just wasn't addressing them You know, I was able to get by and be fine. And when I was training and my core was being, it was strong, it alleviated that enough to where I didn't really need to address the dysfunction that I had going on. But I've always had this excessive arch in my low back. And it runs in my family.

You see it in my uncle, I saw it in my grandmother, I see it in my sister, like we all kind of have this. Instagram. Yeah, yeah, it's like, I got it in my grandmother, I see it in my sister, like we all kind of have this. The Instagram post. Yeah, yeah, it's like, I got it naturally, and I've always had that, and it's caused low back pain, and especially if I'm overweight at all,

especially if I'm not training and my core is not tight. And so for the first time ever, I really started to address it and try and counter, and it's, man, I couldn't try and counter and it's man I couldn't be happier for what it's done for me and I'm older now 37 years old and my body feels better From like as far as my joints my knees my low back things like that Then it ever has in my entire life and that feels really good I might not be the strongest person I've ever been or the fastest person I've ever been, but I definitely feel the best I've ever felt

as far as my mobility and my range of motion. And then a big one for me was, and this is too why I stress this to a lot of my, especially my tall guys and girls, and or have you have lower or lower or longer limbs, is the combat stretch. The combat stretch has been a must. And it's probably one of the stupidest,

little tedious things to do that I think very few people have the disappoints. That's why it's underrated. It is. Just people, oh that's silly. Yeah, you think it works. Yeah. To give yourself the ability to,

so if everybody were to get on the ground right now and just do a combat stress just to see, like let's see where my knee travel is, like how far can my knee travel over my toes before my heel lifts off the ground or it locks it, it locks up, right? So pay attention to that. And then if you could give yourself one more inch

of range of motion there, what a difference that made in my squat mechanics. I remember I remember when you introduced me to squat shoes. I'd never use squat shoes and you're like, you know, when we were trying to get to the bottom, this was way back when when mine pump first started, when we were just hanging out together. And you're like, dude, you gotta try these squat shoes.

Like, it'll help your squat. And you were right, I got it in, I was like, whoa, like I already felt more depth, I felt. But what does that tell you? Right, you know what that told me was that I didn't have that ankle mobility. And the more I started to address that, man, it started to make a huge difference

in my ability to get down in that squat really deep and comfortably sit there. And it is, it's an annoying little fucking stretch that when you're doing it, you don't even think it's making a big difference until you do it enough, and then you go back to the squatting, and then you do it more, and then you go back to the squatting, and you do it more, and then I'll send you start to go,

oh, fuck, did I get it? There it is. Yeah, there it is. And now, that's a must. There's certain moves that I know that I do on a regular basis that like those are like, those are non-negotiable. I have to do those because they improved my squat

and deadlift so much that it's become a staple. And if it wasn't for that program and putting myself all the way through that, knowing damn well, it's completely opposite of what I love to do, you know, I fucking hated all those movements in there. I'm not gonna lie. Like I'm doing, I'm going like,

fuck, this is Chad. You like him now? Yeah, yeah, no, I like what, and exactly. And it taught me something. And this is why too, a lot of people know this, well, if you're an OG, you know this, but if you're a listener who's dropped in

in the last six months or a year, you may not know this, but the programs were designed to go in order. Part of the magic is, I mean, everybody in this room agrees that even though some individual may benefit by going to green first or going to black first or what about that, but they really were designed to consecutively go through them in a perfect world.

That's how we wrote them. Yeah, you train maps, and you go through anabolic, and you build that real good foundational strength, although it addresses other adaptations in there, that you train maps red and you go through anabolic and you build that real good foundational strength. Although it just has other adaptations in there, it's really a strength-based program. And then from there, nothing would be better than to challenge all that strength

in all these unique movements in a performance-type program. I would have to say that for our average listener, if the average listener who works out, mass performance would be the program they should be doing, you know what I'm saying? Like the average one who worked out, mass performance would be the program they should be doing, you know what I'm saying? Like the average one who worked out and's worked out for a long time,

that's the program, if I were to look at their everything and say, okay, well, you're gonna benefit most from doing this because- Well, it's different. Because the average gym goer gravitates to one of the other, like you're either like a Jordan shallow type of fan where you just fuckin' lift the most weight and power lift.

Yeah, and you love strength and so, Maps Antibolic is probably something you gravitate towards. Or you're somebody who I want to sculpt and look a certain way. So you gravitate towards Maps aesthetic. But in reality, performance is probably going to be the most overall beneficial

for a majority of the listeners out there. And then, in my opinion, in the perfect world, you go red, green, and black. And there's, we, and black. And we wrote to any of these, we have our other programs that we have out and stuff that I think are phenomenal to incorporate and use. And I think all of them benefit you to go through. But at the bare minimum, everybody should go through red, green, and black at least one fucking time. Like that, to me, I think an awesome goal to give yourself for just one year

of your life is like, I'm going to follow to give yourself for just one year of your life is like, I'm gonna follow fucking awesome programming for what my body should do, and it takes you almost a year, right? So you literally go red, then green, then black. And then after that, do whatever the fuck you want. Balance around the programs, manipulate them however you want. To win again, whatever, whatever, whatever.

But do yourself a favor and take the time to go through them consecutively, like they went the way they were designed, and then take away the knowledge that you get about your body from that. That's the key right there. And then apply it to all of our other programming or manipulating the programs how they are.

That's the key right there. And this month, it's half off. And this is the first time we've never done that. I don't think we've ever done a huge maps performance sale. If I can't, if I remember the time we've had a sale for maps performance. Yeah, and it's got the most programming of our foundational programs.

In other words, it's the one that we really had to sit down and really figure out because it's complex, but it's super effective, it's really good. And it's half off this month, but you have to use the code green 50. That's GRE and the number 50. And you just go to mindpumpmedia.com, you click on Maps, Performance, Enter the Code, boom. It's under $80 I think, or it's around $70, 50% off.

So go check it out. Also, you can find us on Instagram. I'm mine pump sal. We have Adam, is that mine pump Adam, and Justin, is that mine pump 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 Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on a volic, 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 nutrients and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbumble is like having Sal and an adjustment as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a 430-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 Mind Pump to your friends and family.

We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.