 Question is from Tara Rickner. What's the point of chasing a pump? Does it promote more strength or muscle growth long term? You know, what's funny is I love that some bodybuilding wisdom is bullshit, but a lot of it has got some truth. Now, the way they explain it, maybe not, maybe the way they explain it isn't accurate, but the gist of it comes out to be true. And for a long time, bodybuilders, before any science supported what they said, for a long time, bodybuilders talked about how the pump was an important part of building muscle. Arnold talked about it famously in pumping iron. He says barely coming. He compared it to coming. And I remember the first time I saw that, I was like 13 years old. I was like, whoa, what does he mean? What the fuck's going on here? What is that? I've never had that kind of a workout. But anyway, but bodybuilders, a long time I've talked about the pump. Now there's two mech, and here's the thing, science is supporting this. Okay? There's two reasons why the pump contributes to muscle growth and strength. One is the conditions that produce the best pump also produce more muscle and more strength. So what I mean by that is if you're well rested, well hydrated, and you have good programming and a good diet, you're going to get better pumps in the gym. This is a fact, you know, hydration alone. Like if you make sure you drink a lot of water throughout the day before your workout. I would argue that's one of the biggest things. Makes a huge difference. Yeah. Makes a huge diet is another one. If your carbohydrates are nil, or your diet is just too low in calories, your pump suffers. I used to teach this all the time to people that were taking all these NO2 and all the pump like supplements out there. And I'm like, try loading up more carbs. So if you first get to know where you're at, right? So everybody needs to find a baseline first of where your, you know, typical carb day looks like, like how many grams of carbs you're eating in a day, and about how many you have normally consumed before your workout, and then the same thing goes for water. Double that one day before you go work out and watch what happens. Double your water, double your carbs, go get your workout. You'll have the most massive pump you've ever had in your life. Yeah, it'll shit on any supplement you've ever done. The pump boosting supplements are such almost all waste of money. It's like the Argonine, you know, remember when people take tablets of Argonine throughout the day, they call it NO booster or whatever. Well, 70% of your, your muscle belly is made up of water. It's made up of non muscle fiber structures. There's, there's, there's all kinds of things in the muscle that make up the size of your muscle. Um, they refer to that as the, is the sarcoplasm within muscle. And, uh, there's a debate about this, but I think the science supports the fact that the sarcoplasm in a muscle can actually increase through training the pump. So the more you can give your body a pump, the more sarcoplasm you have within a muscle, the larger the volume of it is. See, I feel my theory is that the, the more you train the pump like that, the more the body adapts to get a, get a bigger pump. Because more sarcoplasm. Right. I don't know if that's the reason why it is or not, but for sure, I think there's value to, but there's also some detriments to training this way all the time. Like anything. And this is what I, we talked a little bit with Brett Contreras, uh, the other day about this, I was saying that, man, I remember I used to train always chasing the pump and I never strength trained. And one of the things I noticed is I definitely got to a point where I trained my body to be able to get these great pumps. I mean, I would feel like I could air up in the gym and look like a total different human being. Now, mind you, I'm six, three, 200 or something pounds. So I'm a lot longer, taller, uh, and over, overall surface mass that I have in comparison to probably somebody who's five, six or five, eight. So air me all the way up. And of course I'm going to look a lot bigger, but I would deflate all the way down. And I feel like, oh my God, I would look like somebody who didn't even really work out. And then I get in the gym and look like a monster. Then I started strength training. And when I, and when it by strengthening, I'm talking lifting three to five reps. I never did that before or even singles or doubles that just didn't exist to the first decade of training for me. And I started to build a different looking type of muscle in my body. And it's so hard for me to put words to it. But the best way that I can explain it is when I'm not in the gym and I'm not lifting, I look more muscular now because I strength trained and I may not have as massive of the pumps as I was having before because I have a nice even balance. But before I get these great pumps, I look amazing in the gym, but then I would get really flat looking and I wouldn't look very muscular where when I started to incorporate strength training, now I had this denser kind of look to me. Yeah, there's the pump contributes to muscle growth just like training for strength, which doesn't produce a good pump contributes to muscle growth. If you focus only on one, you're missing out on one of the factors. And I think that's what you're kind of communicating. Like if all you ever do is chase the pump, you're missing out on the type of training that doesn't typically produce a great pump, which is the, you know, one to five reps, long rest period, powerlifting style training. I would argue there's a lot of individual variants to here. Like there's probably there's probably yeah, there's probably people that, and I think this is also part of the problem is somebody does one or the other. They respond really well and then they kind of neglect the other one. Yeah. You know, you have somebody who's heavy into strength training and that's built lots of muscle for them and they look great. And so they're like, Oh, this is the answer for me. I always train this way or you have, you know, the bodybuilder type who follow the bodybuilder routine gets the pumps, feels amazing, built muscle doing that. And so they neglect the other and the truth is both of them have to be me. I used to hate, I used to hate when my muscles would get like too big and tight and feel like I was like incapable of doing all these athletic moves. Like it was like inhibiting my performance. And so I like avoided a lot of those rep ranges and super setting and things like that because it was just like, ah, like it felt like it was like deterring me from success. You're 100% right. I trained, I've trained rock climbers and motorcycle, what are they called? Motocross racers. Oh yeah. And both of them, when they would hire me, I've trained several of them, both categories, when they come and hire me, one of the things that they would say is I want to get stronger, but I want to reduce the, how easily I get a pump. Because if you're rock climbing and your forearms get a pump, you're fucked. Yeah, you're done. If you're motocross racing and your forearms get a pump, you're fucked. So you're absolutely right. And so training for a pump all the time may not be great for certain. I noticed this in Jiu Jitsu and Judo. My hands start, if I'm, because you're gripping a lot, my forearms get pumped. It's like, that's it, they were, but in the gym, I freaking loved it. Oh yeah, you're looking at the mirror like, whoa, it's crazy looking. But there's other reasons why the pump builds muscle. I mentioned the earlier one, that it's the signal that the, because the environment is right for a great pump, that environment is the same environment that you build better muscle. But there's also a second reason that the pump builds muscle as the muscle becomes pumped and swells, it actually sends a signal to the body to build more muscle. It actually spikes protein synthesis within the muscle. So the pump is a, is definitely a great thing to look for and to pay attention to. I know when I'm getting a great pump, among other things, there's a lot of factors, but I know when I get a great pump, that means that the workout was probably good. It means my sleep was probably good. That means that things are probably working well. I know when my pump isn't good. Actually, in fact, having a tough time getting a pump is a better signal or more accurate signal than getting a pump. Like, if I'm lifting weights and I'm not getting a great pump and I think everything's on point, I know like, okay, something's off, something's not right, it's not working for me. Well, all of our programs too are phased this way, right? So you have a phase in every program, like the first phase is focused on strength. You're not really chasing the pump. It's, you know, you're you're lifting low reps, heavy load, and that you're in that phase for three or four weeks. Well, eventually you make it to phase three, which is 100% in like all the programs, you're chasing a pump at that point. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of super sets in there. There's a lot of high reps, and this is all going to cause that. So absolutely value to it. It's something that you, I think we would encourage somebody to do, but there's, but don't live there. Yeah, don't live there. Phase phase in and out of it. Just like we recommend a phase in and out of any sort of training modality.