Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 950: The Best Muscle Building & Fat Loss Exercises

Episode Date: January 21, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin break down which lifts are most effective for building muscle and burning body fat. What was the first ‘T.O’ the guys got in sales? + Valuing the art and skill of effective communication. (1:38) Why being HONEST is a lost attribute. (18:30) Understanding the benefits/value of isolation vs. compound movements. The differences, why one person would gain from each & MORE. (19:19) The myths behind muscle activation in certain exercises. (27:08) How the rules don’t always apply. (31:12) Why all exercises are not created equal + the significance of mastering a skill. (33:45) The BEST lifts for building muscle and burning body fat, the CORRECT order of operations when it comes to your workout & MORE. (43:20) People Mentioned: Coach Danny Matranga | CSCS (@danny.matranga)  Instagram Mike Boyle (@bodybyboyle)  Instagram Products Mentioned: January Promotion: MAPS Anabolic ½ off!!   **Code “RED50” at checkout** Effect of pre-exhaustion exercise on lower-extremity muscle activation during a leg press exercise. Mind Pump TV - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, so for most of the episode, we talk about the best exercises, and we break them down into two major categories. Isolation and compound movements. Now, that part of the episode starts about 15 minutes in. For the first 15 minutes of this episode, we just do our little warm up conversation.

We talk about teowing, that's a turnover in sales talk, sales and skillful and pushy sales people. You might want to hear about the time Justin got bullied by someone selling. That's a hammered me. Windows. That's good time. Also, I'd like to hear about the time, Justin got bullied by someone selling. That's kind of hammered me. Windows is good. Also, I'd like to tell everybody before we get started with the episode

that our flagship foundational fitness program, Maps and Obolic, which is great for boosting metabolism, building muscle and strength, is 50% off. So if you go to mapsfitinistproducts.com, use the code red50, RED5050, no space you'll get half off. On that site, we also have our other maps, programs, some of them are designed for people who have athletic goals. Other ones are more designed for the bodybuilder, physique competitor, or bikini competitor type

minded individual. We have correctional exercise programs. We have strong man training programs for people who just want to do that, strong man training in the gym. So with barbells and dumbbells, but you train like a strong man, it's really fun. Like a beast. Lots of programs, all maps fitnessproducts.com. Do you remember the first big Tio you got

that I, from somebody else? Yeah. Somebody Tio, my deal. Yeah, like the first time somebody came in. I know the only time that somebody Tio, the big deal of mine, that I from somebody else. Yeah, somebody T.O. My deal. Yeah, like the first time somebody came I know the only time that somebody T.O. did a big deal of mine I just blew my mind when Larry did it like that was he won he won all of my respect that day because

Up into that point You know, I believed I was the ill-nana. Like, you're not bumping my training deal. Like, it's just not gonna happen. Like, I don't care who you are, how talented you are. Like, and that doesn't mean like, I didn't T.O. deals to like, my buddy a lot of times, and I think the sales guys don't do this enough. I think they get confident in their own skills

and they don't utilize the benefits of a T.O. Like, a T.O. is a very strong tool. That's an incredible tool. Even when you don't necessarily need it, like it's just a great, it's a great sales tactic when closing deals. And so my good friends and I that were in sales, we would use each other even when we didn't necessarily

need each other just for the impact of the Tio. But never ever did I ever turn a deal over to somebody and then walk back to the deal and they got more than what I had set them up or except for the time that I did this with Larry Evans. And I'll never forget it because I remember that I was like I would like we were going after some competition or something and I don't know if it was him and I that were competing or we were trying to break some fucking sales record in the company, but we were on our hustle, no doubt. Both him and I and then our whole staff.

And I had got this butcher and his wife. And she was unemployed, he was a butcher. And you know, what I was really good at was building a relationship with people fairly quickly and to where you just, you felt very comfortable with me. To the point where you now, you've trusted me with your health and fitness and now it's just about what can you afford? What can you do?

Like, you've sold me out of my know that you can help me. I know that I need this. What's it gonna cost me? What do you recommend? I'd be, that was the conversation. And I have a lot of meat and allergies in there. Right, totally. And, you know, I could get people to, I'm a kid you not would open up and share me

what's in their checking account and how much they have on a credit card available and they would, I could get them to do this. How much training can I get for this? Because this is what I have. Right, right, exactly. I only have this much money to spend. and they're checking account and how much they have on a credit card available and I could get them to do that. How much training can I get for this? Because this is what I had. Right, right, exactly. I only have this much money to spend.

And so I had distilled this conversation down after about two hours to like the all the money they had available to spend. And I was doing it like, okay, well, we'll put this much on the credit card, we'll put this much down today. I had this all set up and I'm like, it was a big deal and I turn it over to Larry.

Cause at that point, one of the things, this is how Larry and I would use each other's, Larry's the sales guy, I'm just the health and fitness guy. I'm just here to tell you what you need and help you out. I don't really do the money thing. But I would turn it over to Larry. It's a pressure off.

Right, I would turn it over to Larry and say, hey, you know, this is what's going on. I'd tee it o and I'd walk in the office to Larry and say, hey, you know, this is what's going on to you at all. And I'd walk in the office and I'd say, hey, you know, this, this couple, they, this is their financial situation. This is how much money is on their credit card. This is how much you can spend. This is the membership they can afford.

This is how much personal training that I've recommended for them. Go get it, you know, and I remember doing that and then walking over to my office and sitting in there and like watching the computer, like waiting for him to like, defend it, wrap the deal up. Because he's in there talking to him and talking to him and talking to him and talking to him. And then here it comes like the only SMR, right? So it starts popping up. And the first thing that pops up is the membership

that I didn't want them to get because it was a very expensive. And he messed it up. Yeah, and I'm thinking like, this motherfucker, right? He took some of the money that was going to go on the training side, which is my side of the house, right? Because I'm in, this motherfucker, right? He took some of the money that was gonna go on the training side, which is my side of the house, right? Cause I'm in charge of fitness. And he put more of it on the sales side of the house, which was the membership side.

And so initially I'm going like, this motherfucker, I'm pissed off. But then boop, pops up, boop, boop, keeps popping up like, and he's walking out and I see this grin on his face and he just keeps going to the printer and he's printing contracts after contracts's like, and I see this grin on his face and he just keeps going to the printer and he's printing contract after contract off. And he bumped my deal.

And I had never had that happen to me. My entire career, it's the only single time that somebody had ever gone in and bumped a deal of mine. And why it was so impressive was because it wasn't me being lazy, you know, there's been deals where I know I've probably been lazy, someone just said, hey, I want to buy and I was just, I went to the easy clothes and I didn't spend my quality time with them

and present a big package. I just said, this is what it is. Well, I spent a lot of time on this. I definitely felt like nobody else would have got this, but me, I definitely built time and value in what I presented. And for him to do that, I was just like, holy shit dude. Yeah, T.O. wing is a time out honored sales technique. But really, again, I love talking about sales

because it tells you a lot about how to communicate to people. It's fascinating because it reminds you that when people communicate to one person, and if they say yes or like, if I'm trying to communicate an idea to somebody, and it's just not working, that doesn't mean they're not open to my idea. That means, or to the idea.

Yeah, it means you're poorly communicating. It means they're not open to me. Yeah, yeah. So the idea still is up in the air, and so I can bring someone else in, who is, may communicate the exact same idea, but just either do it, do it better, or do it differently, or whatever, and get that.

And it's, I mean, this is a valuable thing to understand as a parent, because as a parent, and that's why I brought this up, as a parent, you're always teowing. You're constantly teowing with your spouse, with the other parent. It's like mom is trying to communicate something to the kids, it's not coming through. You know, dad comes in, tries a different way of communicating, it's a different person.

Let's see if we can get this through, or vice versa. And this is just, I still, I learned something from T-Oing when I- And your teacher comes in T-Os, you know, coaches, like I swear, like a lot of times my kids will respond to everything I've told them, but only after they hear it from like their coach. Oh, that happens all the time.

And it's like, what? I've told you that. Yeah, it's just, it's a powerful thing to connect with somebody else. That's just, that's a fact. It's such an, it's such an important skill to learn because especially with what we do, we're trying so hard to get people to understand just how valuable it is to exercise and eat right and all that stuff. And we also know that, you know, you've never done this before.

So the odds of you succeeding by yourself are quite low. The odds of you succeeding when you're working with a professional are much higher. So okay, let's talk about this for a second. Maybe your idea is that you were going to walk into this gym and spend $30 a month and maybe $150 to become a member. And that's kind of your teetering on, but okay fine, I'm decided to do that. Well, here I am, the fitness professional, whether I'm a membership salesperson, a general manager, a trainer, or whatever. And I know the odds of success, super low. Like, okay, great, you're gonna spend 150 bucks here,

you're gonna pay 30 bucks a month, you ain't gonna, it's just not gonna work for you because it doesn't work for most people. I know your best bet is to invest in hiring a professional, which is gonna, by the way, Mrs. Johnson, gonna cost you 10 to 20 times more than what you were already agreed on upon doing. And so it's important to, these skills are so important. 20 times more than what you were already agreed on upon doing.

And so it's important to, these skills are so important. I remember when I first became a trainer, I was very like, I like to talk and I had a great time and I liked what I was talking about. And I was effective, but then it wasn't effective sometimes. And it was because I wasn't a good listener at first. And I remember the first time I got tealed like that, it was one of my mentors. He came in and

Said one tenth of what I said But convinced them and I remember thinking like like they just must not like my face or something You know and he sat me down and he's like, you know, you go you got to listen more you talk to some you got it It's okay to talk right but you got to listen more than you talk. Say more with less. And I remember like being blown away by that. And then of course later on, T-Oing as a manager for me, because in my gyms, I always ran on purpose. And I really always try to get the staff to understand what we're trying to do here. Yes, we're selling memberships, yes, whatever, but we're really trying to do

is help people and drive with that. And so, T.O. was a great way for me to, because it's easy to criticize people. It's hard for people to receive your criticism until you show them what you're talking about. Like, if I told, there were many times I would tell my salespeople, because one thing that people have a bad habit of doing, especially salespeople is they'll judge someone by how they they look and immediately think this guy's not going to want to spend money on hiring a trainer. This person is not going to want to invest in their health. And so they'll do

the real quick breeze tour and blow them out the door. And I want to talk to the next guy, because this is going to waste my time. And I used to tell them, no, don't judge a book by its cover. next guy, because this is gonna waste my time. And I used to tell them, no, don't judge a book by its cover. Spend as much time, spend a lot of time with each person, and listen and ask what their goals are and train, really figure out how you can help them. And so when they would blow people out, I get real mad, it's sit down with them.

Sometimes they'd have a real tough conversation. And there was, you know, Lawrence, he's a good friend of ours. I had this conversation with him. He took someone, blew them out, out the door. I said, what happened to the guest? Oh, they just wanted a, you know, a free month pass. That's what they walked in with.

I'm like, yeah, but what are they gonna do in a month? Like, what about this, that and the other? He's like, they don't wanna buy anything. So we had this big old argument. So later on that day, we're having the sales meeting. He's in the office and the front desk person rings me and says, hey, we're having the sales meeting, he's in the office, and the front desk person rings me and says, hey, we have a guest at the front who'd like a tour. So I look through my window, I look back, this is a hillsdale, so I can see the

front desk, and I look, and it's a homeless guy. It looks like a homeless guy, like legit. The dude's, you know, looks like he's living on the street. So I looked at Lawrence, this is right after we had that conversation. and I said, you're gonna spend 45 minutes on this guy. You're gonna ask him all his goals, you're gonna do everything. I want you to treat him like you treat anybody else on this tour, and it was like serendipitous. He goes out there, does the whole thing.

The guy ended up hiring a trainer and getting a three year member. He needed a place to shower, paid cash for everything, and after that Lawrence was like forever. He was forever changed, you know? There were other times when I would- Perfect timing. Yeah, there were other times

when I have people, guys come back to my office and be like, they're not interested in joining, they just wanna look around this, that and the other, and so then I'd walk out and I'd talk to them in five minutes later, of course, many times they were members. It was a great way to show people, like, you're not saying

what you're trying to communicate the right way. They're just not hearing you the right way. And more importantly, you're probably not hearing them. So it's a pretty funny thing that, but I think there's a T.O. and gets a bad rap too, cause it's still car sales. Yeah. Let me get my manager.

Yeah, and it could be sleazy. Yeah, it's all like, yeah, sort of this formulaic process. Yeah, and they almost do like good cop bad cop kind of thing to or kind of all, you know, my manager, but I really, here's what I'm going to do for you. Honestly, if you're, if you're really good at it, it's the further saying from a sleazy. If you're a really, really good salesman, you're a really effective communicator. And there's a very distinct difference between the consumer when you have somebody who sold them very well versus somebody who pushed them into us. And I used to say this all the time with my staff. I used to ask, what do you think is the difference between a good closer and a great closer?

I said, you know, a good closer can push almost anybody into a cell, overcome objections and keep asking and keep pushing and pushing and eventually get them to buy, right? And you just corner them. But a great salesman can pull somebody into a cell. And I think that's, that is, and when you do that, when that person leaves, they don't have buyers remorse.

They don't go like, oh my god, they, I got clothes today. And they feel like those, when you get, when you get clothes, you feel it. And it doesn't feel good. But you walk away. You're excited like you oh, man That's a good job. I made a great investment. I can't wait to start my fitness thing tomorrow Like you did a good job of presenting the information and there's definitely a big difference I remember when I bought a bought one of my my first cars the guy Came in the office. We did the whole back-and-forth type of thing and then he did this whole

came in the office, we did the whole back and forth type of thing. And then he did this whole, which I, which I clearly saw about 30 seconds after he did it. He's, we're going back and forth and I don't remember what I wanted. I think I wanted to buy the, it was a truck and I think I wanted it for like 12 grand out the door. I remember what it was and they were trying to sell it to me for, you know, 14 or something. So this is okay. What if I can do this and you got a piece trying to sell it to me for, you know, 14 or something. So this is okay. What if I can do this?

And he got a piece of paper and he wrote like 12, 5. He says, if I can get this, is this going to work for you? I said, I think so. He goes, let me go and ask my manager. My manager goes, but before I do, initial here that this is what you want. So he got me to initial on just a blank piece of paper, basically sign underneath it that I would do it for that price. Now he knew what he was doing.

He could get it. As soon as I did that, I said, this motherfucker doesn't come back and that I would do it for that price. Now, he knew what he was doing, he could get it. As soon as I did that, I said, this motherfucker doesn't come back and say I can do that. But now I feel like I'm committed because I sign. So as soon as you laugh, I laughed at the guy and I'm like, you didn't ask your manager and I'm like, whatever, we'll get the car anyway. But it was such a stupid GC side this.

Let me go ask my manager, I need your signature for a floor. Dude, do you ever get like that? I just seriously cornered and trapped, though, like, from a salesman, like who just like was so insanely aggressive? Well, you know who does. Who does happen to me? Those vacation ones. Yeah, oh yeah.

Yeah, for time shares. Watch the fuck out. No, we, we were shopping for Windows for my house and we had gone through a few companies that were local and just went to the displays and we found one that was okay and we just wanted to kind of shop around and we were telling all these sales reps ahead of time, like, look, we want to see your product, we want you to explain the product in great detail,

but I have other windows I'm looking into and we made the mistake of having this guy actually come out. So the first thing was he wanted to come out to the house and then do the measurements and then see what was the best fit. And that was all the information he gave me. And he's going through and he's showing me these miniature sized windows. And he was trying to sell me so hard on the fact

that because it had this extra layer of clad sort of metal covering that it would provide all this insulation. It's gonna do all this. I'm like, yeah, it's fucking ugly. Nice. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he was like this, this is an Arab guy who was just very pushy.

And he just kept hammering. He's like, no, this is the best. This is the very pushy and he just kept hammering. He's like, no, this is the best, the best product you'll ever have forever. She would love it. And he's going off. He's commission on me. He's the, oh my God, he's measuring already in my house and I'm like, in court, he's like,

is he still like, and like, look, I was like, I'm about getting ready for dinner soon. Like, I appreciate you coming out this, and then, no, here's what I'm gonna do. He calls, he's on the phone, he's trying to call, I'm gonna make this worth your while. What's your number? What's your number?

I write it down, right? What's your number? Like he was gonna make any number, I'm gonna make it work, you know? That's when you give him a ridiculous number. I did. That's what I always do. And then still, yeah.

Five dollars. Five, you told me my number. Yeah. I'm like, I don't even care, five, you told me my number. That's what I was talking about. I'm like, I don't even care. Like, I don't like your product. And I was like, you need to get out of here. I literally had to tell him, I don't like it.

I want you to leave, you have to go. That's how hard he was pushing me. I was like, oh my God, this guy. It's funny now, I mean, as I got into the skill of communicating, I used to appreciate seeing people who would do shit like that, because I would just laugh, you know, and I would actually say it to their face. Right. Well, I'm a sucker, man. If you're good, if you're good at what you do, I'm a sucker. Like I, I won't fight you. Yeah, I, there's a part of me,

even if I don't want it, you see the skill. Yeah, like I just say, Hey, good job, man. You know, here you go. Here's my card, I'm never gonna use this shit. I'm hired to come out, you're not deterred at all. I've hired people like that, they'll do that to me, and after I'm done, I'll be like, you did a really good job. I don't wanna buy your product, but you did a good job, but here's my card, I want your work for me. And they would end up coming work for me, but.

No, I'm a sucker. I think it's important to talk about this because I think the fitness industry does such a shitty job of communicating appropriately, the right message, that part of the reason why this success rate is so low, like a good example is selling so hard on one aspect of results, which is weight loss, like 30 pounds in 60 days and you just sell that so fucking hard,

people buy or whatever, don't lose the weight or they follow your program, don't lose the weight because it's way more complex than that. And then they never want to do it again. Right, that's a good point. Rather than communicating, like, here's all the other things that are going to happen besides the weight loss. And being honest, that was something I learned as a personal trainer.

Like, be honest. When someone comes in and says, what can I expect? Be honest with what they can expect. Yeah. Yeah, it's not gonna make people not higher you I never had anybody say oh You know, I can't lose 30 you know, I'm not gonna lose 30 pounds right away. Well forget I'm not gonna hire you No, I'm just being honest with you, you know speaking of realistic expectations I think it a cool topic we've been getting a lot of really good feedback And I don't know if it's just because it's January and everybody's on the kick, but these kind of shorter one topic type of episodes that we've been doing. They've been getting shared a lot. I don't know about you guys, but I've been getting a ton

of DMs and responses. So I thought a really cool thing to talk about today will be comparing compound lifts to isolation exercises and the the benefits and, you know, is one better than the other? And, you know, are there ways to use where one may apply versus the other? Right. And, you know, in my space, like as far as the men's physique and bikini and the sculpting world,

isolation exercises seem to dominate it. And it was one of the things that I saw right away as an opportunity for me. I was like, oh, wow. A lot of these guys just are fucking living on the cable and hammer strength machines all day long. I'm going to build a physique and blow by these dudes. You give me enough time. And it's kind of what I saw happen. I mean, there's a good group of us that worked out at the same gym. And I came from really decondition. I mean, it was 19% of those that have seen my original pictures when I first started all this stuff.

I definitely did not have a solid base by any means and started building and sculpting a physique. And I had a group of guys that were men's physique guys and women bikini athletes, and we were all working out of the same gym. And of course, I'm paying attention to what everybody's doing. I'm curious to how they're programming and what they're doing diet wise.

And I just saw a lot of flaws. And one of the biggest and most common flaws that I saw in that space. And what's interesting is we're talking about elite physiques. So maybe to the average eye, somebody wouldn't think they're doing anything wrong. And I think that's part of the problem. As you see this person who shredded and you see what they're doing and then you just assume like they must know what the fuck they're doing.

And it's not that they're doing something wrong. I just saw a much better approach. And what that was was these athletes, you know, doing the cable machines and the hammer strength and the reasoning behind that was because they're not a strength athlete. I'm not a power lifter, you know? Why would I be deadlifting and barbell squatting at them

and I'm not sure I'm gonna get all boxing. And why would I do a overhead press, you know? Like these movement, like I'm trying to sculpt and shape the body. And I was like, well, shit, the way I look at it from that perspective is, if you've ever seen like a sculptor's tool set, it's not just one hammer and chisel, they've got a bunch of different chisels

based off of where they're at, unsculpting this piece of wood or block of ice or marble or whatever they're doing. And when you first go to work on that slab of marble, you are not using the same chisel to do the detail in a mustache as you are to get down to the first shape of what this thing is going to look like. And I think of sculpting the body is very similar.

Like, your isolation exercises are like the very fine chisels for a sculptor. And your other bigger tools are what knocks away the big chunks of rock and wood to kind of dwindle this thing down. And it doesn't mean that you couldn't use that little chisel to chisel away and get there too. It's just a much longer road that way. And so, you know, I was doing a lot of these compound lifts and just building mass and building and building and building.

And I was also incorporating isolation exercises, but the bulk of my training and the bulk of my exercises came from the big compound lift. I would even take it a step further because it's even more complex than that, right? Because as a trainer, I understood the value of isolation exercises aside from just sculpting the body. And I understood the value of compound movements aside from just making big changes.

Before I get into them, it's important to, if you don't know what they are, isolation exercises typically focus mainly on one muscle and they typically only involve one joint that's moving. So, isolation to be clear, you're never really pure to be possible. It's impossible. It's impossible to isolate a muscle. Yeah, like if I do a curl, I'm only, it's an isolation movement.

I'm only bending out the elbow. You're affecting a bunch of muscles. Yeah, but the main one that's doing the movement is the bicep. Compound movements involve more than one joint, typically two, three or more, and those exercises work just a greater degree of muscle mass. So like if I did a seated leg extension, that's an isolation movement for my quads. I'm only bending at the knees if I do a squat.

That's also a quadricep exercise, but I'm also bending at the hips and at the ankles. And I'm working a lot more than just my quads. And so that's really the big. And you can take all exercises, machine, free weight, kettlebell, whatever body weight. And you can very easily place them into one of those two categories. Now I love your analogy of the chisel. And I've used the analogy of a tool set just to illustrate the complexity of it in the sense

that when you have a tool set, to illustrate the complexity of it in the sense that when you have a tool set, the tools are designed and they're excellent at specific tasks. And it doesn't make sense to use a screwdriver to hammer a nail and it doesn't make sense to use a hammer to screw in a screw. Now I could hammer the shit out of a screw into the wall and I'll get it in there,

but a screwdriver's gonna do a much better job. And so that's the way I like to look at those two different classes of exercises. So isolation movements, how are they great for the average person? They're gonna help you connect to a muscle better than compound movements.

They're just compound movements is too complex to connect to a muscle. If I want someone to feel a particular muscle and feel it squeeze and burn and move and help them connect to it so that they can activate it at will, at will, isolation exercises are gonna help me do that. So besides sculpting, isolation exercises for correctional exercise are phenomenal.

Oh, that's where I've always seen the most value out of isolation exercises to highlight that neuromuscular connection to get muscles to respond that aren't contributing. And so from sort of the opposite end of the spectrum is what Adam was describing. The focus of overall movement is always been something that I've paid attention to, to see the entire kinetic chain work in symphony. And that's something that I've always tried to implement amongst my clients, amongst my athletes. How can we iron out this process, how can we oil this machine to function at its highest capacity in isolation exercises. If you take away the focus of these compound lifts where you can sort of segment different parts of the lift,

You can sort of segment different parts of the lift. I can then zero in at a dysfunction. I might see when I watch the whole movement take place. So if I see something where there's a little bit of a discrepancy, we can now zero in, we can focus on that muscular connection. And we can establish more strength that's gonna contribute to a better fluid overall movement. It's funny. I just got tagged yesterday on a post. They did a study relatively recently where they tested muscle activation.

Have you seen these studies where they test the muscle activation for different exercises? Yeah, yeah. This exercise activates. This muscle more than other. And there's flaws in this because I only know this through experience. I'm so glad that you're gonna go here because I know there is a percentage of people listening right now that come from the camp of the isolation camp, and this is part of the debate that I was having

with Danny, poor guy, I've been beaten up over the conversation quite a few times. But it's just, it's only beat up the ones we love. And I do it not because to beat him up, because it's a really good example. That he's a very intelligent kid, and this is the miss right here. This is that people see a study like,

oh, when you do this exercise, there's all this muscle activation. Way more activation. Yeah, exactly. It's firing, right? It's firing more, and so then we assume that that means more muscle and that's not necessarily true.

No, so the study showed that pre-exhausting muscle, in a pre-exhaust superset, this is where you do an isolation exercise first and then moved directly to a compound movement. So here would be an example. Like extension to a squat. To a squat or a fly to a bench press. So like, let's say I do a bench press

and I wanna really work on my chest and I do flies first, isolates the pecs and then go straight to bench press and I want to really work on my chest and I do flies first, isolates the pecs and then go straight to bench press. Now the study shows no more activation of the pecs if you pre-exhaust them then before because the argument always was, well, it helps you activate the muscle more. But that's not quite true. Yes, you can see through the study that it didn't get activated more. However, what they're doing is they're eliminating

the perception that the client is getting, which is extremely important, okay? If I have a client that doesn't feel her glutes when she's doing a squat, and I do a pre-exhaust of an isolation movement first, and then she does a squat, the study may show that it's not activated more, but she feels it more.

Now, why is that important? Because now that she feels the glutes more, that is going to help her activate the more later on as she continues to squat. It's going to help her feel the squat differently and feel it where she's supposed to feel it. And this is an important thing to understand. And this is a applied knowledge. Absolutely. This is the wisdom part. And this is why those studies always get on my nerves a little bit because, like, they'll show a study that shows, you know know a donkey kickback will activate the glutes more than a barbell squat. Sure.

But is it going to build more muscle and shape in the glutes than squat? Nope. That's not what the load can you apply. That's right. And that's another one. Isolation exercises fantastic at activating muscles, which we said is very important, but they don't build as much muscle as compound movements. They just don't.

They're not gonna give you the strength, the muscle, the metabolism boosting effects, all the wonderful effects you get from resistance training, at nearly the same rate as compound movements. They just aren't. And it's not even a, you can't even equal it out. For example, if I did five isolation exercises for my delts, is that going to give me the same kind of muscle building effect that maybe an overhead press might give me?

No, it doesn't necessarily add up that way because I've heard people say that. Well, I might not squat, but I do way more exercises and I do all these other isolation movements. Like you could do leg extensions and abduction and adduction and, you know, donkey kickbacks and hamstring curls and sissy squats and all these isolation exercises for your legs, but are they gonna build the same amount of strength

and muscle as good old barbell squats done properly? They're not. So when you look at your overall routine, your routine should be centered, and say all of it, but should be centered around compound movements and should be centered around mastering those compound movements. And the isolation exercises should be used as ways to feel muscles, to activate them more, to connect to them more. And it may be target them a little bit differently than you may be targeting with your regular movement

in the compound exercise. Now, that being said, you can always flip things on their head. One of the things I love about resistance training is the rules don't always apply. So, I would nine out of 10 times have someone do barbell squats before leg extensions, but one at a 10 times, it's better to do leg extensions first before you do the squats.

And part of that has to do with how your body adapts in changes, you know, according to the types of things that you're doing. And I do that all the time with my routine. I'll throw in the isolation exercises first, then do my compound. And I don't mean all the time as in super frequently, but I mean frequently enough to where it becomes a part of my.

You also have to look at exercises too, not just, okay? So we gave that analogy of like the video game, where this means I get two points towards this attribute. This means I get one point towards this attribute. This means I get three points at attribute. And so if you were to say burn calories, build muscle, central nervous system adaptation, muscle activation, like maybe are like four functions,

three, four, okay, those are like all these attributes. And then you start to separate movements and then you you could say like Okay, well maybe a leg extension gives you three points on muscle activation for the quads You know, which is more than the squat because the squat only gives you two But then the squat gives you three on central nervous system adaptation and gives you four on strength But and so which eventually has carry over into building and developing that muscle. And so there's so much further to look into it

than these isolated studies that we read and we debate over all the time. Well, there's a localized adaptation muscle building effect that you get from an exercise. And then there's a systemic one. Now, and they've proven this with these bilateral training studies, well, they'll take somebody and they'll have them train just one arm, and they'll notice a huge strength increase in the one arm that they're training, but they also notice a bit of a strength increase

in the opposite arm that wasn't even doing the exercise. So when I'm doing an exercise, it's such a big movement, a big gross motor movement, like a deadlift or a squat. I'm going to, I might not activate the quads like I will with a hard leg extension, but I'm going to build more muscle overall and probably more of my quads because of that systemic effect. And that's really my best attempt at explaining what happens because I'll tell you that right now, this is the hands down, bar none, all exercises are not created equal. Yeah. Some are far superior to that. And you mentioned function too, is one of those attributes that, you know, you're trying to seek. So if I'm always constantly isolating

and working joint by joint, we're not communicating with the entire system on a regular basis where there's gonna inevitably, if that's my go-to, all the time, there's gonna be interruptions in that communication chain. And so in terms of like actual movement and fluidity of the movement, in terms of that versus like a compound lift where all of that

gets expressed, all of that has to work simultaneously together. There is going to be somewhat of a, you know, it's going to be affected for the overall, if all I do is isolation exercises. The deceiving part is the feeling, right? Like that's the part that's where I think it's hard to convince people. I really feel that. Yeah, I mean, the reason why we see donkey kickbacks, you know, all day long, and less of those same people

squatting and sumo dead lifting and doing all these other great movements that they really wanted to build their butt, is because when you get on, you know, you attach a cable to your ankle and you do a donkey kickback, like you fill it in your butt. It's almost hard not to, I mean, because it is an isolation exercise.

So trying to convince the average gym goer that, I know you feel that more in your butt, or I know you feel that more in your shoulder, but when I'm telling you, you're gonna get way more results from this exercise and this exercise where you actually have a hard time feeling it. That's hard to communicate that. Well, I mean, geez, I mean deadlifts build very strong muscular, impressive backs.

Do you feel deadlifts specifically in areas of your back? Like you do with a pullover or a lap pulldown or a cable row, you feel it in your entire backside. All the way down. You really don't, right? You really don't feel it. I can feel my shoulders way more with a lateral. You know it's a good thing. And I can't with an overhead front.

You know, it's a cool using that analogy, something I like to do to show people, to showcase the real impacts of like a deadlift for the back is go over and deadlift, get your warm-up set or what that so your mechanics are down. And then within two or three sets, get close to your one rep max. So get up there, strengthen wise, but don't do it so many sets that you fatigue. And then go over and go do a lap pull down, or go do a seated row afterwards.

You'll be blown away by your strength going over to that, versus if I go right into a lap pull down or a seated row and I start there first, my strength will be at whatever my number is, like if it's like 150 that I lap pull down technically, if I just go over there. If I go deadlift, you know, that's first, like two sets, two or three sets, have real heavy.

Same thing works too, like if you go do like a really heavy pull-up and then you go do a movement like that. And that, to me, is that, that's where the, the C&S stuff that it's hard to explain and, and show people what's going on there. Like you're really waking up that muscle and you get used to have all of a sudden pulling 400 pounds off. Then you go over and ask yourself to lap pull down 150, 200 pounds.

It feels like nothing in comparison. God, if people, if people, when they went to the gym, just avoided the machines, not saying that they're bad, but I'm just saying, these are people who just want to start working out. One, I'll start lifting with, avoid the machines and just practice, went to the gym and practiced, had a squat, practiced how to deadlift, had a row, had a bench press, had an overhead press, maybe a rotational exercise in there, like a chop, a cable chop.

That's all. You just went in and practiced those movements, or variations of those movements. You get so much better results than if you went into the gym and did 15 machines each time you worked out. I mean, it would literally, there would be no comparison. And there's also, I mean, there's risk versus reward

for a lot of times. People have to weigh this out and I know that a lot of gyms started to be structured more into the isolating machine driven type of a gym because of the safety element that they provide. So it's in a fixed plane, you're basically able to control a lot of what force is being applied. And you don't have to consider more factor.

So there is that element that, and I know like a lot of coaches and trainers and this is where like a lot of them lean on machines and isolating exercises because of the fact that it's easier to control. It's easier, it's easier movement. Yeah, that people like easy for sure. Well, you go into the gym, you look at the picture, tells you what to do, here's your elbows, your hands go here, curl this, push that.

I'm done. Walk up to a barbell. What you're looking at is a canvas. You know what I mean? There's no numbers, there's no paint by numbers, it's just a canvas and a paintbrush. Okay, because I could do five million things with a barbell, five million things with a dumbbell.

Think of it, what would you guys say? We're gonna totally speculate right here, and I'm sure I'll get crucified for a bit on care. If you were to say, I'm going in, and I'm gonna do either I'm doing all cable machine stuff, right? I'm gonna do hammer strength, I'm gonna do cable push down, shit,

I'm gonna do a bunch of shit like that. Or I'm gonna squat five sets. How many cable machine exercises do you think you have to do to be equivalent to the benefits that you get from five sets of squats? Oh, I'm serious. Like, how many, think about it? How many sets equivalent? Yeah, to be equivalent. I don't think you, I don't think it's, I don't think you can compare. I really don't, I don't think there's a whole, it would be a lot of time and you get diminishing returns. Yeah, because even if you're building up, you're based on that off of volume. Because I mean, the load itself is going to be totally different. Right different right and so like to be able to match that's like almost impossible

That's what I'm saying like hypothetically. I mean we're just speculating right now I would think that I because I could go over and I can go do some leg press some leg extension Oh, you're gonna count leg press too. So that's a compound movement It's not like a squat sure right like and some leg curls and some other machine stuff Maybe some donkey kickback. So I might throw there? Cause whatever you have to throw a lot in there. Right. I really feel like you'd have to do like a good 15 to 20 sets. A lot. Yeah. 15 to 20 sets of other exercises that are on machines and cables to just be able to argue that it was and that's just to argue. It's not to say that it is more. I'm not

even because I think you're right. there's certain things that you just, you can't get from a machine that you're getting from the benefits of squatting, but if you were to, from a volume perspective or from a building muscle perspective, what would I say? I would say it would take like 15 to 20, it's like five times, right?

It's like four to five times more the benefit to, and that again, going back to something I said quite a bit lately on this podcast is, I wish more people would pick just one of those movements, squatting, deadlifting, overhead pressing, maybe bench press, last set of those, but one of those big movements and spend the whole hour just getting good at it. Yeah, do us and take three, four minutes in between, five minutes in between sets and do some mobility work and pay attention to your feet and think about the movement and get better at it and then get back underneath it.

And just, I used to love, I would get these clients sometimes who were pretty advanced. They've been working out a lot and been working out for years and they would come hire me. And I used to love it sometimes because they'd say, okay, show me your workouts, show me what you do and I'd look at their workouts and if I saw that squats or deadlifts was not in the routine, I was like, I'm gonna blow my hair here.

Yeah, like this is gonna be easy. I'm gonna, I'm gonna show, and these are advanced people and I was so confident because I knew just those two exercises alone was gonna show them results that they'd never seen before and they think I was a god. Right, yeah. And sure enough, every time they would come in, advances they were, oh I do leg press and hack squat

and leg curls and this and that, and I do cable rows and I'd get them good at squatting and deadlifting and sure enough, they'd just see crazy gains. I had one guy that hired me, he was an older gentleman, 60 years old, but very fit, worked out for a long time and he actually worked out with another trainer, so he wasn't even on his own, so he came from a personal trainer.

And he came into my studio because his personal trainer had moved out of the state. So he's looking for a new trainer and was thinking about maybe changing, and so he walked into my facility. And we sat down and I was very impressed with the way he looked, he was lean and fit. And we started talking about training, and I was very impressed with the way he looked. He was lean and fit. And we started talking about training.

And I convinced him to hire me as a personal trainer. So he walks in and he brings me his workout and I take a look at it and I said, okay, we're gonna try squatting and he goes, oh, my trainer always told me never to squat. That's how come? It was well, I squatted a couple of times and I felt my back wasn't good.

As well, it just means we're probably gonna have to take our time, but we're gonna, I'll get you good at squatting and then we'll see what happens. That mean this 60 year old guy, I mean in a three month period, we put a good seven pounds of lean body mass on his body, which for somebody who'd been training for that law,

the guy was blown away. He was absolutely blown away. It's like, I can't believe that my body can put muscle on and all your, you're just having me do different movements. The ones I told, I was told I couldn't do before. The funny thing is back became so much stronger as a result of doing them properly. The other thing too, maybe it's a good thing that maybe we go through and list some of our best favorite exercises. And we've talked about barbell squats and dead lifts and overhead presses. But one class of exercises that I think doesn't get enough attention that

I believe to be up there, almost as important as I would say a squat are the split stance exercises, your lunge movements. And many times I would start a client off in a lunge who couldn't squat because I could get them to hold on to something with balance and get them to learn how to do. And really a lunge is nothing more than a, I'd say like squat. It's a split stance squat. Those movements are phenomenal

for balancing out the body and getting them strong. And there's even some argument that I've heard to say that those are even more functional than squats, although I'm a little technically we were on one leg always, right? So that's why that's why the argument. Is it boil who's in that camp? Yeah, it's Mike Boyle who's in that camp. And I don't think he's wrong.

I don't think it's wrong. And he makes a good point. Yeah. And you can load some Bulgarian squats, man. You can. That was the most the point is you can't add a substantial amount of load. And the other thing is the compressive forces, you know, on the spine, which, you know, for, for, you know, somebody who's, who's an advanced lifter who's going to really add

a significant amount of load on there, like there is a lot more, the, the risk goes way up, right? Right, right. And so there is that as a factor, however, we weigh all these things out based off of what has the most impact, what has the most effect and you wanna be efficient as you're in the gym and build. If building muscles, my goal, it's undeniable

the barbell squat. Now, you just reminded me of something that I wanna touch on because I got a message on YouTube. It's we have a thing, I don't know, it's been a while since we've mentioned this, but we did, I believe, just red and green. I don't know if we did red, green and black, or did we do all three?

I know we did red and we did green. No, we didn't do black. Okay, so we did red and green. We first 30 days. First five days. Oh, five days, excuse me. Yeah, we did the first black. Okay, so we did red and green. We first 30 days. First five days. Oh, five days, excuse me. Yeah, we did the first five days of the program for people to test drive.

And somebody on the YouTube channel was like, you know, I don't understand the programming. You guys talk so highly about compound lifts and there's, you know, bicep curls twice in here. And why isn't there more compound lifts than this? And so, and we're again, going on like this rant of the importance of compound compound, but there is something important also

about isolation exercises that you have to take into consideration too, is it does a really good job of activating or working a muscle without doing a lot of systemic damage or stress to the CNS. Oh, that's true. And you take a set of squats to failure versus a set of curls. One of those is gonna fuck you up. You'll be fine. And so, and I know that there might be some people that have seen me working out in the gym and have been like, I see Adam on machines and cables and shit like that all the time, especially when I was competing.

But I was in the gym seven days a week. And there's no way I'm in the gym seven days a week in deadlifting and squatting and overhead pressing every single day, which is too taxing on the body. So there is this sweet spot of compound movements, our king are the better exercises for building muscle, burning fat, sculpting the body for the most part and should be the foundation of and the bulk of most programs.

But with that being said, you also still have to take into consideration too, that if you're training a lot of these exercises, how taxing it can be on the body. And if it's beginning to hinder the next workout, there's an order of operations. Right. And that's, I mean, that's definitely a good point to bring up. What order do I place these compound movements within my workout? And so I'm most effective for performing the exercise, getting the maximum benefit out of the exercise, and then at the end to really highlight and emphasize other muscle groups through isolation exercises. That's a great, it's very good point. The lower amount of volume that you do in your workout, the more your exercises should

mostly be compound movements. The higher the volume, the more isolation movements you can add. So if I were to say, you're going to go to the gym and spend, you know, 30 minutes in the gym to work out, pretty much all your exercises are compounded. You're gonna go in the gym and spend an hour and a half. Then maybe, you know, 30% of them can be isolation. So it's like the higher the volume, the more that you start to throw in isolation,

because there definitely is that, you know, that effect from compound, difficult gross motor movement exercises where, they just fatigue the shit out of your body. They really do. I mean, if I did an hour and a half of all compound movements, I would have been able to work out for this. You may as well be CrossFit then.

Yeah, I was saying that's part of the problem that we saw in the programming of CrossFit is that they completely issue isolation. Like, we're not, those are waste of CrossFit is that they completely is chew isolation. Like, we're not, those are waste of time. Yeah, they're anti-isolation and then they're so much compound lifts and compound lifts to fatigue that it's like that's poor programming. It's funny because more and more strength athletes, you know, people who compete and just lifting maximum loads are starting to utilize isolation exercises as part of their training.

I'm starting to notice because exercises as part of the training. I'm starting to notice because they're finding that they can add more volume without taxing the body as much and it's also helping them prevent injury. Right. But on the flip side, look, people generally though, need to do more compound movements. Just the everyday average people need to do more

compound movements. And unfortunately, a lot of the programs that are out there, especially the programs that are advertised to women. Those ones are isolation heavy and largely wasting a lot of your time. It's just the bottom line. I buy these programs all the time and I look over them and it's all the ones advertised for women.

And I look at the exercises and they're either not using enough load the right lightweight An insane amount of reps in all isolation and lots of isolation movements You'll feel the burn you feel this and that you're just not gonna get really really good results from doing those Versus doing the compound you see a lot of plyometric work too with I see a lot of it tiring. Yeah, you know It's the whole like I like to sweat and I like to, you know, breathe hard and then that supposedly equates to an effective workout when that's not necessarily. If I were to break up my workout in a day and then break up my programming in a week, I would make a general, there's a general statement too and there's always exceptions to rule. But I would say for the most part, I like to have three good days of, you know, three,

three good days of lots of compounds lifts in there. Okay. So I'm not gonna ever, you're never gonna really find me squatting more than three times a week. You're never gonna find me deadlifting more than about three times a week. You're never gonna find me bench pressing more than three times a week. It tends to be about the threshold for compound, compound is for me as far as speaking to a week. As far as speaking to a workout, I'm not spending more than about a half hour or 45 minutes on compound lifts if I'm staying in the gym for an hour or longer,

the rest of it's gonna be isolation exercises. So that's kind of the threshold that I have found, and I've done. And I've done it where I've gone beyond that. And what I start to see a regression from how hard I'm hitting it. That's when the the achy joint start to happen or I start to see myself not able to lift as much as I did the previous week. I start to notice that when I go beyond that. Well, think about it this way. If you went to the gym to work out today and you were supposed to work out your legs

and you could only do one exercise, I could pretty much guarantee that one exercise is gonna be a compound exercise. Well, today what's gonna happen as soon as we hang these mics up, that's exactly what I'm doing today. I'm only gonna lift, probably I only got a little bit of time for I'm gonna head back home.

And so I'm just gonna squat. I'll probably get five sets of squats. Now let's say, let's say now you could do two exercises. Then the odds at the second exercise are compound, still pretty high. Once we get to three, four, or five, now the odds are higher that it's gonna be isolation. Like if I know I'm gonna hit my chest today

and I'm only doing one exercise, compound. I'm only doing two exercises, probably still both compound. I'm doing three exercises. That third exercise will probably be an isolation. It's the more volume you do, the more that the isolation becomes, makes sense. And again, because we're just beating the shit out of analogies, I'll just use another one. It's like making, you know, if I'm making a stew, your compound movements are your meat and potatoes. All the isolation stuff is the onions and the garlic and the salt and the pepper and all that stuff.

And it all comes together as an ice recipe. That's good. If I make a terrible stew, a just big old thing of onion and fucking, this is pretty, it's peppered in meat. You know what I'm saying, I mean, where are the main ingredients? Meat soup.

It's just, it's an onion soup, you know? Excellent. So look, if you go to MindPumpFree.com, you can download any one of our free guides. We have about nine on there. They're all fitness and health and nutrition guides. Again, MindPumpFree.com, you can also find us all on Instagram on our own personal Instagram pages.

My page is MindPumpSal. Justin can be found at MindPump. Justin and Adam is at MindPump. Adam. 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 and a ballad, Maps Performance and Maps Esthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal and Amin Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and

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