 15 minutes literally that's all you need to build an impressive physique I'm not making this up if you do it right you can train as little as 15 minutes a day build muscle build strength and look impressive in fact we did it ourselves we tested it ourselves now there is a right way to do it and that's what we're gonna talk about in today's episode but yes 15 minutes is enough to build an impressive physique wasn't it Arnold who was famous for saying that he could come in and do one set of an exercise and it'd be more affected than someone spending like an hour in there yeah most people in the gym doing an hour yeah now is that what he used to say yeah now I think with that the problem with that quote is that it kind of makes people think it's all about intensity so it's like oh I'm only gonna do one set so let me just kill myself efficiency yeah do you think that that's all do you think that I don't think that's all he meant by that I don't think so either but I think people yeah that's a good point he knows what he's doing too which is a major factor yeah I think the important thing to understand as we get into this topic is the first off we have to understand the true value of exercise right the true value of workouts people confuse what happens during the workout with the beneficial valuable goals that they get from the workout itself so while you're working out you're burning more calories you're sweating you know all that stuff's happening and we tend to place all the value on that so a short workout is not valuable because what could I possibly how many calories could I burn in 15 minutes not that much which is true but that's actually not the value at all the value is in the adaptation that the workout itself elicits the workout itself stimulates an adaptation so the question really is can you send the right signal for adaptation in just 15 minutes and then when you ask it that way the answer is yes you absolutely can in fact you can ask any fitness coach who's been doing this for a long time and the answer yes so that's the way you should ask the question I think that poses at the right well it's really the difference between training and exercise right exercise is just the idea of going moving is moving and burning calories right and and that concept is pretty pretty basic pretty easy in almost anybody can do it in any order any fashion but to move your body make it change change your body composition build muscle burn body fat sculpt your physique increase performance require some level of understanding of training otherwise you're just going to the gym and you're just exercising and something that is programmed really well can be extremely effective and it's not about the the time that you spend in the gym as it is how effective is the single movement or singled the or the few movements you are doing in that short period of time right it's all about stimulus how can I send the right signal to my body create the right environment so that signal then tells my body to change in the ways that I want it's not about the damage that I create now there is some damage there's some stress that happens from from working out and training and that does send some of the signal but it's not all of it it's not even close to all of it it's really all about the stimulus how can I get my body to hear this and then respond and adapt and change and the way they don't want and here's your evidence by the way if it was only about damage and sweating and burning calories it would be easy actually that it would be super easy all you would have to do is go to the gym and get sore and tired do hard stuff and it wouldn't matter in fact you wouldn't have to go to the gym you could just in your living room and it wouldn't even matter and it's funny a lot of people think that they think that the that if they just did that and they just did it long enough that they would get results but people who've tried that will tell you it doesn't work that way you get something and then your body stops progressing and then you're on the slippery slope of doing more to get less more to get less and nothing happens then you end up going backwards when you do it right the right formula the right application the right stimulus you work with your body you're actually figured out how to get your body to change the way you want and again 15 minutes done the right way can do that it's it's enough time to do that well I mean this is somewhat related but I remember when I was trying to develop this product for isometric training and like realizing that you know the actual effort that people are outputting a lot of times doesn't even get captured like so you can't really see that as much in terms of like you can see that with weight moving and see that with obviously form and somewhat of their intention but like in terms of like turning that into adding more muscular tension recruiting more muscle fibers like you that's that's all unseen that is all completely intrinsic and that's another way to maximize whatever the heck it is that you're doing if you're setting your body up in good postural position I'm isolating a muscle if that's my goal or I'm like really trying to intensify that specific exercise without adding a lot of like excess load and that's gonna like you know damage it further like I'm just like producing more of that force output like that totally transforms the exercise just that alone yeah you're talking about doing it right doing it the right way you know one of my favorite categories of clients to train and I'm sure you guys felt the same way when you would get that client who's been working out for a while his works out all the time can't figure out why they can't lose that 20 pounds can't figure out why the body isn't changing and you get them and then you look at the workout and what they're doing and you know oh wow like they're already showing up all I gotta do is move a few pieces maybe have them do less of this more of that and it's gonna blow the frickin minds and I would do that and Doug is an example that when Doug hired me he reduced his his load I reduced his load and trained him properly I gave him good programming and I explained this concept to him about sending the signal and again luckily I'm convincing because I convinced him to trust me and Doug who'd been working out for years and years and years all who thought he had the worst genetics his body wouldn't respond all of a sudden he achieved this incredible physique and he worked out like two or three days a week with me and it was all because we did it the right way I really feel like I could split my all my clients into two buckets you were either the client who fit in the bucket of struggled with consistency and discipline and never you know even strong three months of you know good not even great just good eating habits and consistent training or you were the other side who have tried everything you tried all the supplements you've followed all the magazine plans and every diet and you like working out and you can you know how to push yourself there like literally there was like this clear divide you felt you could have I could put almost every client in one bucket at the other and the ones that were in the I'm frustrated I've tried all these different things most of them were over just overdoing it overdoing it in the sense of everything there they had their sleep was off because they're stressed they go go-getters at work all the time they their training intensity is off their volume in there and training is off like their balance of nutrition to their what was off and so more often than not scaling those people back ended up producing more results now granted having the right balance nutrition I think makes a huge difference but there was this clear divide in my in my clientele that I could fit you in one of those two buckets I remember you ever play a game at like modern arcades have these games now where you win tickets right so when we were kids it was all video games now it's like half it's like you can win tickets or something there's this one where it's this big rotating wheel and you have to crank down on this this crank and it spins the wheel and if you hit the right pressure you get the jackpot if you go too little it's like one ticket if you go just a little too hard it's one ticket literally you have to hit the perfect pressure to like the prices right yes and I've seen that once the boardwalk this is exactly what it's like with training if you hit it the right way jackpot yeah too little nothing sweet spot too much nothing you and so so how do you know what the right spot is while you start to understand exercise programming you had to act just understand how to apply intensity etc etc all right today's giveaway maps 15 that's the program we talk about in today's episode I'll give it away to one you okay so here's what you do leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours we drop it subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications if you win we'll let you know in the comment section everyone else in today's episode we talk about how you can make incredible gains working out just 15 to 20 minutes a day by the way maps 15 minutes comes with two versions it comes with a convenient suspension trainer version but then it has an advanced barbell version where you're doing these compound lifts anyway if you're interested in the program go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code MFP 15 that'll give you 50% off maps 15 for this episode all right back to the show but the starting point is this the starting point is understanding when you go into the gym or you're picking up a dumbbell or barbell or doing an exercise the idea is I'm sending a signal what's gonna send the right signal and am I going to overdo it so that my body can't adapt am I gonna underdo it so my body doesn't get the message what signal my sending is this gonna be effective or am I just here trying to sweat if you're just there trying to sweat well then then it doesn't matter what you do just sweat if you're there to get your body to change and you really want to see consistent change in a way that's maintainable or sustainable then you want to do it the right way well it's funny because if you think about any other like program that's tried to attempt to like condense a workout down to like you know something like 15 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever like what do they do yeah cut the record making the hardest like craziest like burpee loaded yeah weight loaded type of a workout you could possibly have to where it like destroys you like in like a short amount of time meanwhile what's that gonna look like for your next workout that you have lined up you know tomorrow yeah so it's just the intensity is just one of those things that has just been like buried down people's throats that that's the answer if you have to like you know be reasonable and judicious with your time yeah no the reason why that is is because the average consumer can't understand how I can do in a workout that's effective in a quarter of the time so if you beat the crap out of them now it makes sense to them like oh okay I see why this feels like they did something yeah wow I did 10 minutes but oh my god I almost died like that makes sense as to why it doesn't work that way intensity is a is a factor but it's it's part of the formula it's like eggs in a cake like you're like oh eggs are important so let's just put a bunch of eggs in a pan we're not gonna have a cake now just have an omelet so that's intensity frequency volume tempo like all these factors play a role and if you do it right you don't need much no it really does work the right the right amount is the least amount to elicit the most change that's it that's the right amount and the in the the positive part about that this way to tell people that are just getting started that's exciting is guess what because you haven't done shit it's gonna take very little take as much to elicit change because you haven't been doing anything for six months a year two years three years the beautiful thing is we're gonna make a few subtle changes in the right direction nutritionally we're gonna make a few subtle changes in in exercise and training and movement and you're gonna see change and the goal is to just stay ahead of that that plateau curve right like we're gonna add just a little bit watch your body start to change stay there for a little bit of time and then right before you start to plateau add a little bit more change up a little bit and the goal is for me to do just a little bit more and keep you progressing all the way through right so okay so someone might be like okay well are there studies on exercise to show if there's one form of programming superior to another and in there are yes there's lots of studies and they can be pretty illuminating one thing that they've studied that's pretty cool is that when the total volume of your training is equated for now there's there's gonna be some extreme outliers here well this won't work but generally speaking when your total volume is equated for then it doesn't matter if you do let's say two one hour workouts a week or 15 minutes every day I don't know what 15 times seven is but I think it comes out to roughly two hours a week or something like that right so 105 something like that right so essentially maybe not make it essentially if you did the same total time same total volume set weight you know reps everything equal except here you did it all in one or two days or and here you did a little bit every day what they show is that the the it doesn't matter that the total volume really is what matters now where it starts to change a little bit is if you're doing too much in one day fatigue sets in stuff like that but old but basically it's like this like okay so if I hit my chest three days a week or if I hit my chest once a week which one gives me better results if everything's equal doesn't matter really the studies show that it kind of doesn't matter it's all about the total amount of volume so could you get good results doing 15 to 20 minutes a day well add it up add it up what's what's the mass to the minute what's that what's that up to 20 minutes a day 70s 140 minutes a week that's over two hours a week of exercise could you get good results with just two hours of good strength training you could so it's it's the same thing now there's a bit of a flaw in that study because like every study what's taken over the course of six to 16 weeks probably in a small frame there and the one the thing that it's not accounting for where the 15 minute workout is superior is that person who practiced chest once for the week gets practiced the bench press one time that week the person does 15 minutes and they do the same amount of sets but now it's spread out over Monday Wednesday Friday now gets to practice bench press three times and the compounding effect of practicing practicing that movement more times in a week over the course of months over the course of years makes you better at that movement making you better at a move more reps means you get more out of the exercise getting more out of the exercise equals more results yeah so let's back up for a second so I said I mentioned fatigue so one of the the biggest enemy towards building strength and muscle all things being equal as fatigue this is why you do sets with strength training and muscle building this is why this isn't why you you grab dumbbells and barbells and don't rest if I just go from exercise exercise exercise and just do rep reps reps reps with no rest I'm not gonna build muscle or strength I'm just doing cardio what makes strength training strength training is you train within a particular framework of fatigue and then you rest and then you repeat you do sets that's clearly the biggest difference between strength training and not strength training even if you use the same equipment so fatigue is the enemy of strength building and muscle building okay if we go back to the example of doing all of your chest workout and one workout versus spreading it out here's what ends up happening by the time you get through halfway of your chest workout fatigue is there yeah fatigue set in so it's not just that you're practicing more by dividing it and spreading out through the whole week Adam it's that you're practicing better right there's practice what's that what's that saying in sports like practice makes perfect perfect practice makes perfect something more something like that like practice the way you practice how you play right if you could take fatigue out of the formula then your practice is better the way you perform the exercise is better so it technically is better to do instead of doing nine sets of bench press on one day to do three sets three days a week there's as you're teaching your body that movement and it's it's intended function and it's highest like level so it's it's your you want to always like address it like this is what now I'm setting the standard for in terms of like you know how my body is going to respond and react so yeah to be able to like take the fatigue element out that's that's really where form and in terms of like force production and being able to like generate the kind of strength like you start losing that ability then you know you're you're still teaching your body those with those reps so if you eliminate that part you just keep the good reps it just compiles in a good you know direction I also think that the the volume doesn't normally stay the same either and though I speculated with you guys the other day when we discussed this topic great point is that you know volume is sets times weight times reps right or you need any way in that order right it's basically multiplying all that together so if you take somebody who bench presses say a total of 15 sets in a week of bench press and they now divide it over you know three days what in what ends up happening is you have the ability just to put more weight on the bar because you're fresh each time you go to bench press versus all one day yeah all one day by time I get to sets 10 11 12 on chest your volume went down way down I'm way weaker everybody knows that right so if you actually take that's that same person and you now divide it up over three now all the studies they want to they wanted to measure volume being equated the same so they had to adjust for that and what we've learned from the studies is that there's no one better than the other but when you add in the element that do you really think you're as strong and you think that you would not put naturally just oh how many times are you going to bitch press like oh I feel good today so you add another five or ten pounds that's happening when you spread that out how it works in the real world yes when you know very few people are actually diligently tracking their volume I can only do this many reps that's right that's what you do as many reps as you can do with good form and if you're if you're doing this exercise broken up over the week versus all one you're gonna do more volume for sure because you're fresh 100 so I think that people are also you know not considering that that the volume probably isn't going to be quite and I know that's the they intentionally do that for the studies just to prove the point of you know three times a week once a week or twice a week it's you know splitting hairs which one's better but the truth is you're getting more practice which was the point I was trying to make and I know you have on your notes to make and then on top of that you probably actually add more volume so which is why we're seeing so many people that have been lifting for a long time that have gone through like math 15 and they're going like what the hell I'm seeing PRs or I'm seeing better results I've been training for a long time an advanced lifter but I think these are some of the factors that people aren't thinking about I hit a PR when we created the program you were following it you were getting great results I did like the 20 25 minute version so more advanced like barbell stuff and I hit a PR in a deadlift that I hadn't hit numbers even close to that until like maybe 10 years prior and it worked out less from doing something like that so it definitely works you know I was thinking in terms of like a parallel there when somebody switches over from always doing higher reps with like crazy fatigue to then doing like low reps where they have to rest you know I noticed the dramatic you know shift and where they're like wow I you know I can keep loading more weight and it's like this phenomenon for them because like literally you're just taking out what normally you'd work through fatigue and you're just like hyper focused on like performing that specific exercise at its it's like peak level yeah and there's also like the practice element there's another part of practice with exercise which we forget that exercises are skills so the more often you squat the better you get at the squat the better you get at the squat the more results you can derive from the squat so the better you are at exercises in terms of control and stability and range of motion and connection the more you'll get out of them well you know again if you did 15 sets of squats in one day how are you going to be practicing that skill by the time you get to set 10 now you're just fatigued it's all about just hammering your quads and your glutes and you're trying to get it through it right but what if you did I don't know two sets a day you know one day you did three sets every day you practice it every day every set you would look good every set because you're fresh you practice you would develop a skill of squatting much faster and much better thus deriving more benefit from this amazing exercise well and this is really what I what I took away from that statement from yeah Arnold was that that he has practiced the these exercises so so many times so many different ways that he can go in and make it more effective and maybe intensity is part of that formula too that he knows how to to drive more intensity from the lift but more importantly I think he understands how to do the lift better and that's what we were all the results set up his body and adjust things like right on the fly like immediately and just like get into it versus somebody that's gonna it's gonna take a while for them to kind of get their body ready and adjusted to be able to kind of like produce that type of a optimal lift right the other thing is that and this is not a this is nowhere near controversial some exercises are just more effective than others just bottom line like a good you know three sets of a barbell squat okay is going to be more effective for muscle and strength and performance then 15 isolation exercises combined working the same muscles quads hamstrings glutes abductors abductors all these isolation movements for example all of them 15 sets versus three of just barbell squats the barbell squats will get you there faster and better because it's so much more effective well there's exercises especially in the bodybuilding world that are known as finishers quote unquote finishers these are movements that are saved for the end of the workout mainly because they they're so fatigued at the end of the workout yeah they're easy stuff yeah it's like table flies and yeah it's all these exercises that like oh i'm so fatigued but this i can squeeze out um you know two more sets or three more sets of these other movements well when you work out a little every day versus a lot sometimes you're it's easier to do the better exercises the more effective ones i can squat three sets every day right i could not do 14 sets of squats in one day i could try but halfway through they're gonna suck so what would i do for my legs if i did all those sets in one day it was probably gonna look more like five sets of squats and then leg extensions and leg curls and all these other movements because i'm so fatigued well um you're able to do more of the effective exercises by doing short frequent workouts than you are versus doing longer less frequent workouts again back to the fatigue well and there's there's a behavior angle here too right that the studies aren't going to show this right they're gonna they're going to try and compare the exercises and things like that and we already know that the squats superior than that but the behavioral part that people don't realize is that because you're only going in to do two or three movements you naturally are going to pick the bigger bang for your banger of course the reason why you pick the cable fly peck deck or the side chest press hammer strength is because you already did incline bench you already did flat dumbbell you already you already did all the bangers and so now you're like i'm fatigued i did all these things now what else can i do to finish my 15 sets of chests that i'm doing today and so you go to these you know lesser exercises that aren't giving the same results now if you go to the gym and you're like hey i'm only doing three sets of chest you're gonna go sideways hammer strength machine like if you are your idiot yeah but you'd be silly to do that you're gonna go do one of the bangers and you're gonna be fresh and you're gonna get more out of it so there's a there's a behavioral component that you're getting here too by doing that is that listen i only got to pick two exercises well what am i going to pick i know i've heard a million times the the top five movements i'm going to pick one of those that's right and that's going to be part of my workout well that there's a great benefit to that because you choose those better exercise every time you get better results that's right the other part too is where people will make the argument like well yeah but you're not burning many calories okay listen the worst possible gauge of success of your workouts is how many calories you burn while you workout first of all it's not substantial anyway go beat yourself up for an hour yeah all those calories is nothing compared to how easy to eat them anyway number two the calories you burn while moving your body very quickly figures out how to burn less calories to make up for very quickly and there's lots of studies on this just studies that show your behaviors are modified without you realizing it so you end up moving less there's studies that show your body just becomes more efficient with calorie storing your body will pair muscle down to make you lose uh to to slow down your metabolism literally the calories you burn while you move are inconsequential now i'm not saying moving isn't healthy it's always good to move moving is better than not moving if it's appropriate but in terms of like fat loss and i got to burn this that is a complete waste of time stop focusing on that instead look at how you can speed up your metabolism and that's a much more effective way at looking at calorie burn how many calories can my body burn on its own and how can i make that happen uh in a hotter way uh more often how can i make my body one of more calories by itself well that we've talked about that at nauseam on the podcast it's building muscle build muscle that's the way to do it but here's the part when it comes to getting lean it's almost always about your diet speed up your metabolism and then look at your diet you're not going to lose weight by trying to burn the calories off through exercise period end of story that's a terrible stride i mean and this is a good opportunity to talk about because probably one of our most popular questions is you know is this program for fat loss is this program for you know like people your diet determines yeah what when when should i reduce my calories or what am i supposed to be in a calorie surplus or a deficit in this program well it depends on your goal every every program that we write is ideal for building muscle and ideal for burning body fat and how you eat accordingly will dictate that that's it so if your main focus is i want to get shredded and i want to lean and then i'm only gonna be training 15 20 minutes okay that's fine then eat in a caloric deficit while you train a 15 to 20 minute workout and you're gonna get lean and shredded by doing that if your main goal is to build muscle and you only got 15 20 minutes workout then okay then eat in a caloric surplus and that's gonna do it if you're looking for overall this health and balance and you feel pretty good body fat percentage wise then undulate your calories sometimes be in a surplus sometimes be in a deficit now here's the last thing i'll say this isn't necessary this is a point i think that should be made is that the biggest enemy for most people like i say the biggest stumbling block for most people when it comes to getting sustainable results is consistency it's just really hard for people to be consistent yeah on a regular basis it's much easier to be consistent if you do a little every day than it is to do a lot sometimes it's just a fact it's harder to take an hour out of your day two or three days a week than it is to take 15 to 25 minutes out of your day every single day it's easy it becomes a routine easier or faster you build the skill of discipline easier you don't have to take aside as much time and schedule it's like oh 20 minutes that happens on accident sometimes let's make it happen in our experiences coaches and trainers that was the go-to strategy for someone with consistency issues people think oh they have issues being consistent make them work out less often no no make them work out way more often just make the workouts really short that improves consistency uh hands on there's a an interesting opponent to that too and you stop before like you get like super fatigued and like overwhelmed in terms of like the training session like what that does in terms of like there's all of that like energy that now fuels you going into the next day it's almost like it's a catalyst for now i get this like energy momentum that that that swing that kind of goes into you know the following day and then this is something that you can just slowly kind of build upon versus something that's just debilitating right i'm like i'm trying to take it all on at once and i'm just hammering my body because i'm like so far behind and whatever you know you tell yourself but now it's like i can barely move you know i'm i'm sore i'm hurting like there's just like a psychological component to that that's powerful so this might be a bit controversial for trainers because it doesn't fit well or serve their scheduling and doesn't serve them growing their business per se initially at least and that is if i could go back and do it all over again and i wasn't paid by the hourly session to train people this is how i would train almost every one of my clients at the beginning yeah it would be these 20 minute yep type of show up every day yeah show up every day just do one or two things that's it and then you know let's be consistent with that imagine how many people would have not quit i know and that's here that's building a ritual with that's the controversial and they would have loved it they would have felt good yes that's the controversial part here right because i think this is what best serves the client now that i understand this and i've been doing this long enough but i also recognize that that is really difficult to do from a business perspective for client for trainers who are getting billed by the hour to do this like 20 minute session for a client but the reality is this is what would serve the client the best is to get them started especially at the beginning okay even though we can talk all day about how there's plenty of advanced people i think that would serve them well to reduce their volume and actually train like this that for sure how everybody would start would be like this it would be literally one or two movements every single day until that becomes a habit like tying their shoe or brushing their teeth and then i would start to build on top of that until they get to a point where they look back and like holy shit i'm training the gym every day for 45-50 minutes and i absolutely love it and i've been crushing it so we have a program called maps 15 minutes that's all about this there's two versions in the program one of them uses a suspension trainer this is ideal for people who convenience is everything then there's a barbell version for advanced lifters that workout takes about 20 minutes here's what we're going to do with this episode that program we're going to make 50 off because of this episode so if you want to try this like workout a little every day versus what you may be doing now see how your body responds maps 15 minutes is half off here's how you can get it you go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the coupon code mfp15 for the 50% off discount