 Listen in because five by five training can cause injuries and pain. Our first caller is Andrew from New York. Hey, what's up, Andrew? How can we help you? Hey guys, thanks for taking my call today. You got it, man. Yeah. I got my question for you is regarding intensity. Uh, before I ask, I'll give you a little background. So I've been lifting consistently for about 20 years, but also did quite a bit of running over those years. For the past three years, I've stopped running all together to focus on building muscle and since focusing on building muscle, I've been running, you know, a number of different programs. And what I'm finding is I'll start each program with moderate intensity in week one, and then I'll be increasing intensity throughout the program. And by around week four, I feel like I'm making good progress, but start to feel some pain in my joints. And the pain isn't so bad that I couldn't continue with the program. But what I usually do is just hop to the next program to be safe. Uh, but what I'm feeling is I could be, uh, building some more muscle if I continued beyond week four of the program. At the time I submitted the question, I was on week four of a modified five by five type program, making some really good progress. And again, starting to feel some pain in my shoulders and hips. My question for you guys is, is it normal to start feeling a little bit of moderate pain as you progress throughout a program and build intensity, or, uh, if not, I'd be interested in your recommendation on how to fix this problem. Yeah, good question. Yeah. Um, so I would use icy hot and been gay. No, you know, here's the deal. This is, this is actually very common. This wall, this is the one, um, I love five by five routines, right? Uh, and, and obviously that looks very similar to our first phase of maps and a ball, but there's a reason why we phase you out of that after, uh, four weeks. So, um, that's what, that's the, the flaw I think in running a five by five type of routine consistently. Cause some people will make the case. It's a great routine just to continue on. And you build a lot of muscle, a lot of strength. Uh, but this is exactly what I would see happen with clients is if I kept them in this five by five type of a phase, uh, for longer than about four or five weeks, this is the most common feedback that I would get from my clients is they would start to feel, you know, some achiness in their knees and their elbows and sometimes their hips. And, uh, we would phase them into another team. And this is part of why, um, we write the, the, the maps programs like this, where we don't keep you in that phase much longer than three to four weeks. Andrew, Andrew, one of the, one of the reasons why this happens isn't necessarily because a five by five program isn't effective or somehow flawed in terms of, you know, building muscle and strength. It's really effective at building muscle and strength. But here's what happens, right? You do the same movements over and over again. So you're limited on your movements. Now here's the plus side of that. The skill of strength, uh, improves traumatic tremendously. So you're doing a lot of squatting, a lot of deadlift, a lot of press, you know, pressing, you're practicing them often and you're going to get really strong at them. And because you get really strong at them, you build a lot of muscle, but then the, the weak, the weak links start to show themselves a little bit and you need to strengthen and work on the supporting structures in order to support this newfound strength and muscle. And so if your technique is off, let's say your technique is off by such a small degree that even a relatively experienced trainer won't necessarily see any issues with your form, even though it looks okay because it's off just a little bit and you're adding, you know, 10 pounds, 15 pounds of lift and you're doing the same motion repetitively. It starts to add up and you start to feel the pain in the joints and, uh, you know, the areas where the stability may be lacking a little bit. So this is one reason why mobility work is so important. Now I will caution you don't do mobility work and then stop just because you feel better when you're feeling the pain. That's already now you're kind of a little too late. Now you're a little bit behind the eight ball and you have to lay off on the intensity, scale down the volume, deload week, do mobility. Now I feel better. Now I can jump back on. It's got to be a part of your regular routine. Otherwise you're going to keep doing this, you know, two steps forward, two steps back, you know, types of a situation. So you got, and I know mobility, you know, when we do mobility work and correctional work, well, I'm not adding a lot of weight to the bar. I don't seem to be building a lot of muscle. But if you really do, if you really look at it long term, you end up with more strength and more muscle because you don't run into these problems that you're running into. So if you're doing, let's say a four day a week, five by five type of routine, I would do concentrated mobility work at least twice a week. And then on the other days priming before your workouts proper priming. Yeah, that was the direction I was going to go as well. However, I was going to ask you to like if you were to kind of transition to a different program, what that looked like. Cause one thing too that I would consider is just moving in different planes and directions. So that's, that's really what you're trying to accomplish while doing these mobility moves is still reinforcing, you know, that basically being able to keep everything stable around the joints and in those secondary muscles to get strengthened up to be able to contribute and maintain the joints positioning as you're increasing the amount of force production. Because as you're going through five by five, as you realize, you get a lot stronger and you get a lot stronger in that direction. But now any little, you know, micro angle that pulls you out, whether it's a rotationally or whether it's side to side, you know, your body's going to compensate and overcompensate. And then, you know, this is where a lot of injuries result. You guys got to remember that we have this rapidly growing audience, especially on the YouTube channel of flux of new people that are listening every single day. And this is a perfect opportunity to talk about why we wrote the programs the way we did. And in the order that we did, like a common question is, you know, why not maps anabolic forever? Or why not why not maps aesthetic right after maps anabolic? Like, we wrote them in this order for a reason for this exact reason right here. So you have somebody who is running a five by five type routine, which is very similar to like a maps anabolic type of philosophy, right? The big lifts, you're mostly in the sagittal plane. Incredible foundational program to build muscle and strength and your metabolism. That's why anabolic is the first one. But when we talked about what the second program would be, this is the reason why is because, yes, that program is incredible for doing all those things. But then the limiting factor is exactly what we're addressing right now, which that is why maps performance is what we thought was the most ideal follow up program to maps. And I was going to just keep hitting walls. Yeah. And one more thing, Andrew, is that muscles get stronger, faster than ligaments and tendons in connective tissue do. Okay. So if you add 30 pounds to a lift, the connective tissue and the ligaments and all the supporting structures don't get as don't gain that same strength at the same speed or time. It takes a little bit longer to build that type of strength. So if you're seeing these rapid strength gains and you're not focusing on, you know, good technique, form, mobility, lateral movement, stability and allowing these connective tissues kind of catch up a little bit, you'll start to run into a lot of these problems. I love strength with my workouts. I absolutely love it. I run to the exact same problem you're talking about every single I would run into this often where, okay, here we go. Squats, I'm getting near my all time best. Now I'm starting to feel my hip or wow, my dead left doing real quick. Oh, there goes my SI joint and starting to feel it again. And so unless you want to keep doing this back and forth type of thing, you got to make mobility and, you know, a priority and you got to train in other planes. So I would recommend Andrew and I don't know what you're doing now, but if you don't have maps performance, that would be the program I would do 100 percent. And you're not going to lose gains, by the way, you're going to get more gains because now you're reinforcing a lot of those weak areas to give the man the program. Does that make sense? Andrew, do you have maps performance? I do. I picked up the RGB bundle and I did run performance earlier this year. I loved it. Is that something I should come back to? Yes, I would do it after every two or three months, like heavy strength muscle building cycle and then come right back to your yeah, your strength cycle. Well, I mean, if he's got the RGB, then what's beautiful is I would I would run it in that order. So it was designed to go red, green, black. So just over and over again. Yeah, keep running over and if you still and if you if you're getting tremendous value from performance in the mobility days, this is where we all this is also why we have the show and why we have the forum is to help people modify. So if this is like a consistent problem with you, there is nothing that says you can't when you get into anabolic or aesthetic, take take things from the mobility days and build those into the program. Swap out the trigger sessions or the focus session for mobility days. Right. Nothing wrong with that. And that that a lot of times that's what clients will find is they got so much value from performance in the mobility days that they're like, Adam, is there anything wrong with me putting that in my trigger days or my focus days on those other programs and say, absolutely not. That's why we teach it this way so people can modify it for their lifestyle. So I would recommend that you you build those mobility days into the other programs, even though we didn't do it for you. Now, Andrew, you said your number one goal is to build right now. Are you at all interested in cutting at any point? I've actually never gone on a cut. I consider myself a hard gainer. So I'm always trying to be in a surplus. You know, I would like to continue to build at this point. Okay. And here's why I asked that. Okay. I was guessing that that's what you were going to say. So there's a psychological piece here that we need to talk about, right? So I'm like you, you know, I'm hard gainer my whole life. And I if I could, I would probably want to be in a bulk ish most of the time, just psychologically speaking. But I think that there's real value in going in a very, very mild cut when you're training in a program that is more like maps performance or something mobility focused, not necessarily because the mild cut or maybe even maintenance is great for those goals, but rather when I know that my calories are slightly low, I'm less concerned about the fact that I'm not lifting as much on the bar. Does that make sense? That definitely makes sense. Not only that, but also if you're getting these signals from your body that are telling you that you're achy like this, one of the one of the quick ways that actually a lot of times will help clients is just putting them in a calorie deficit for a week or two because inflammation got inflammation will go down right away, right? If you're in a surplus all the time and you're lifting heavy all the time, that's very, very common and just simply actually aside from programming, let's say we stayed in the same program, a lot of times I'll take a client who's maybe loving the program and the results from it and say, hey, let's actually just do a little mini cut for a week or two. Let's drop your calories below maintenance and follow, keep following the program. Who cares if the weight goes down strength wise a little bit. I'm not worried about that, but talk to me about how your aches and pains feel and sometimes that alone will actually start to eliminate the pain. Yeah, and when you go back to your bulk, you'll be really responsive. In fact, here's I'm going to be more specific. When you do mass performance, I want you to eat at maintenance or slightly below maintenance or slightly above maintenance, kind of hover around there, get out of the bulk and go maintenance slightly below and then every once in a while go slightly above. That way you're out of your head. You're not worrying about the weight too much. Inflammation is going to come down when you're done with mass performance, everything feels good. The lateral movement feels good. Rotational movement feels good. Mobility, you know, feels good. Then you go into like maps aesthetic, throw the bulk on, watch how great your body responds. That sounds like a good plan. Do you mind if I have one follow up question? Yeah, sure. So I actually did decide to continue on with a five by five after I submitted the question and strained my pec pretty bad. So I'll be rehabbing for the next few weeks. Once I get back into lifting, would you have any recommendations for how I might modify performance with, you know, to strengthen my chest again? I'm sure I'll have some weakness there. Yeah, I would just listen to your body. So follow the program and go much lighter with the exercises that you need to and just focus on range of motion and just listen to your body. That's that that would be the best advice that I could give. You said it's a strain, right? Not not like a tear. Yeah, not torn from the tendon, just a strain. Yeah. And I tell you, look, what we're saying is obviously true, right? If you don't really incorporate, you know, different planes of movement and mobility, you're going to make gains and you're going to lose gains because of what just happened. You're going to keep doing this back and forth. And that sucks. It's a pain in the ass. Like it's much better. It's almost like the, you know, the tortoise versus the hair fable, right? The tortoise wins the race because they're consistent and the the hair loses because they go real fast and they stop and kind of lose their perspective. I might pull some of the barbell stuff out and replace it with dumbbells. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, pull the bar, pull the barbell, pressing stuff out and and just replace it with dumbbells. That'll be that'll help you out. Hey, thanks guys. I really appreciate the advice there. No problem, man. Thanks for calling in. Yep. Thank you guys. Thanks. Yeah, that's a boy. That's a real comment. This I mean, that's me. Well, this is why I wanted I wanted you guys to address like you got to remember that, right? There's right now there's probably 10,000 people that have never heard us talk about our programs or whatever about that. And we have no interest in getting somebody great results in a short period of time and then forgetting about them. Right. Our interest is great results all the time. We want lifelong. Keep thinking ahead. Yes, like I don't like it's OK, great. You got great results in two months and then you hurt yourself like that's not what I'm looking for. I want people to feel good and move through different planes and continue to progress forever. And really with minimal plateaus or injuries or none would be ideal. Well, you have to know, too, like performance is one of our programs that is grossly underrated because if you're somebody who's focused on mainly strength and the way you look, you tend to go like, ah, I like anabolic or aesthetic or these other. And you and you skip that program. But there is a there's a very specific reason why we made it the second program is because exactly this is because there is there's a large portion of our clientele that would be pursuing these goals and they would neglect that type of programming. And we know that's what's what should be inserted right there for a majority of it highlights, you know, then what's neglected in your current program. And most people that are in the gym, like just won't, you know, come up with a lot of these type of movements in their routine because it really goes outside of that perspective. Yeah, and I'll tell you, I'll be honest with you, if I had to pick and this is not true, this is, you know, general, right? But if I had to pick one maps program, you got to run over and over that would that would benefit the majority of the people watching and listening, regardless of their goal, cutting, bulking, looking good. And I'm talking long term, it'd be maps performing. Yeah. And if you had to stay in one forever, that's it. If you had to stay in one of our programs forever, you were probably the safest running that one the longest with the most consistent long term. Yes. Yes, totally.