 All right, our first caller is Anna from Wisconsin. Hey Anna, how can we help you? Hi guys, it's nice talking to you. I've listened to your podcast for a couple of years here and I've loved everything you've been able to provide to everybody. But my question is, I'm 22. I've been working out consistently for about seven to eight years. I work out five to seven days a week and I have been doing that since I began working out. And as of right now, I've been having a plateau. I've been feeling unstable with my squats and my deadlifts. I do work out more for overall health. But I was just wondering if you guys could provide me with some assistance on maybe a program to buy of one of your guys' or anything that I could do to help assist my squats, my deadlift and my overall strength. Okay, thank you very much for a little bit of that background because I was going to ask you those questions. I do have some more questions though. Let's talk about your diet for a second. Do you know like grams of protein, how many calories you're eating and are you eating in a deficit, a surplus? So I do supplement in protein just because I don't believe I get enough of it through Whole Foods. I do have to do more vegan-based protein when it comes to protein powders just because I can't handle dairy. I would say I'm taking in about 80 to 90 grams. I'm not currently tracking right now, but I eat a very regular diet. It's very consistent. So I'm about 80 to 90 grams of protein a day. I'm usually on average around 1500 calories. Sometimes I do go up to 18. Overall, I do watch what I eat because I do have celiac disease and heart disease does run in my family. So I am being watched under a dietitian for that. And then how about programming? What is your training look like right now? Do you have a program you're currently following or how do you typically train? So I did see a personal trainer for a couple years. So a lot of my programming is based off of what he had prescribed to me. I do like to put together my own programs. I do legs about two to three times a week. If it is three times, it's more like an overall body workout. And then I go on to like upper body the other days of the week. And then I do cardio on the day, on like usually the seventh day of the week, just to kind of give my body some rest. How tall are you and how much do you weigh if you don't mind me asking? I'm 5'3 and I weigh about 127 pounds. Okay, so you're probably pretty lean, working out that much, that body weight, that height. I'm going to recommend, when's the last time you went on like a bulk? And what I mean by that is not a crazy bulk, but rather you ate and trained in a way to gain as much strength as possible. I guess I haven't necessarily ever gone on a major bulk or like you guys the so-called bulk. I do try to increase my calories every like eight weeks, I would say, where I do do a couple of weeks where I'm eating a little bit more. I try to train a little bit heavier and then do a little less cardio. That's kind of what I'm doing right now. I did increase my carbs and increasing my protein currently just to see if that was going to help my plateau. Awesome. Okay, so here's what I'm going to recommend to you. You mentioned that your calories are about 15 to 1800 and you're working out five to seven days a week. So I'm going to recommend that you increase your calories again closer to 2000. And the program I think you should follow would be MAPS PowerLift. Now here's why. MAPS PowerLift is strength focused, purely strength focused. And it's going to be a good idea to take your focus away from how you look and focus on pure strength with the bump in calories. Now here's what you'll probably notice by doing that, especially with your history. Of exercise, your body weight may go up a little bit but it's going to be muscle or it'll stay the same and you'll see a nice transfer of weight or changing composition, I should say, where you get a little bit leaner and you build a little bit more muscle and your strength goes up. I think that'll do you really good for a few months. Well, I also like that recommendation because you had mentioned you had a little bit of instability as you were gradually adding load to those main lifts. And obviously that program itself really emphasizes those lifts and teaches you the skill of those lifts. And I think that would be a really helpful addition. Just out of curiosity, Anna, where is your squat and deadlift? How much are you squatting and deadlifting currently? So I actually had a little bit of back injury and I did have a significant pelvic tilt. So as of right now, I'm cutting back on heavy weight just because I'm trying to get my form back to how it's supposed to be. I was overcompensating on my left side compared to my right. So as of right now, I'm only squatting about 100 just because I do have instability and I'm trying to get my body back to what it's supposed to be doing. So it's not as high as it has been, but I am solely progressing and kind of working my way up with doing more resistance bands and getting back to that those staple lifts than doing more isolation. That was a great question, Adam. I would say then in that case, MAPS PowerLift plus MAPS Prime Pro for the correctional component. But I really do think if you did like a three-month focus on just strength, you bumped your calories, you worked on the correctional stuff from MAPS Prime Pro, which you can do every single day, and then you followed MAPS PowerLift in really in an appropriate intelligent way, which I have quite a bit of confidence you'll do that just from listening to you talk for the last couple of minutes. I think you'll be pretty smart with the weight that you use, but you get your strength up and focus just on that, of course, appropriately. I think you'll be very, very satisfied with how your body responds. So what we're going to do, by the way, is we're going to give you those. I know you said you want to buy a program, but because you called in, we're going to hook you up with both of those programs, but I do want you to follow up. Let us know how it's working out for you. You say you notice like a shift in your hips when you're squatting. Is that what you said? Yeah, I was a competitive figure skater for about 14 years. So I did have an ACL and MCL tear and also a hip injury that I've kind of struggled with doing my squats and deadlifts for a while. So ever since then, I do catch myself overcompensating on one side than the other because of that. Are you familiar with McGill Plains? I don't believe so. So Google that when we get off here on YouTube and watch that. I would recommend before you get into your squatting that you prime and warm up with that before you get in. That'll help with the stability and your shifting from side to side when you squat. Perfect. All right. Thank you for calling in. Yeah. Thank you guys. Have a great day. You too. Yeah, you know, it's funny. So many, especially young girls her age, would benefit so much for the bulk from just focusing on getting stronger for a few months. That's not marketed at all. Yeah. No, not at all. It's in fact, they're marketed the opposite, but every time I've ever tried to client young female like that, it's always a new novel stimulus because they never train that way. And then when they introduce it, they're like blown away. Oh my gosh, I can't believe. It's like, wow, I'm so strong. I'm strong. My body's shaping the way I've always wanted it to. My metabolism is boosting. My libido is going up. My hormones seem to be balancing because they never really focus on, you know, building muscle and strength in a real serious way. Talk about being ahead of the game though. I mean, she's very aware of everything going on with her body. Yeah, she's very sharp. Yeah. I mean, at that age to already know that you have like an issue with an imbalance when you're squatting to know that you have this slight anterior pelvic tilt to be focused on strength. Like the skill of competitive figure skating. I mean, she's got like great body awareness. You have to at that point. Yeah. And she's used to working with coaches one-on-one. You don't get to that level unless you do. So I think that's why I felt so confident giving her advice to focus on strength because it sounds like she's going to be smart about it. Yeah.