 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about resistance training, weight training, but in particular for people who are looking to get started with resistance training. So there's a lot of people who, you know, they might have heard of the benefits. It's starting to become more mainstream. And so we wanted to help those people out. So first off, we open up by talking about what resistance training actually is. Is it just exercising with resistance, or is it more specific than that? We also make the case for resistance training. There's lots of different ways to work out. Why use resistance? Why not just go swimming, or walking, or running, or do yoga? Why would anybody need to lift weights? So we talk about all those benefits. Then we talk about how to start. Like how do I get started? Here's the truth. We know this. Resistance training or weight training tends to be more intimidating than other forms of exercise. It seems more complex. It seems like you need more access to equipment. That's not true. We talk about the basics. We talk about the six movements you should focus on. Everybody. So if you listen to this episode, you'll leave with understanding what exercises you should do to get started. We talk about how you should work out. There's a mentality that goes into working out that will greatly influence your success. We talk about how often you should work out hard and how often you should work out easily. And then we talk about the equipment that you can get away with just having. So basic, basic equipment, what do you need? In our opinion, a physical ball and dumbbells will pretty much give you everything you want if you're looking for general fitness from resistance training. Now also, this month, MAPS Starter is on 50% off sale. Now MAPS Starter is our program that is perfect for people just getting started with resistance training. Or for people who haven't resistance training in a long time. Or for people who just want to work out at home with a physical ball and dumbbells. This program is phenomenal for those people. It's also awesome for personal trainers who have everyday average people as clients. Now when I was a trainer, I used to design workouts like this for my clients to be able to do on their own. This is an excellent tool for trainers to give to their clients. So if you have clients that you want them to do some exercises and stuff on their own, MAPS Starter is a phenomenal program. Now it's 50% off and of course remember this program includes everything you need to work out including exercise demos, videos, blueprints, explanations, everything. Here's what you do to get the 50% off. Go to mapsstarter.com, that's M-A-P-S-S-T-A-R-T-E-R dot com and use the code Starter 50, S-T-A-R-T-E-R-5-0, no space for the discount. What are we going to do today? What's this episode going to be titled again, Doug? Let's see here. How to get started with weight training. How to get started with weight training. This is an important topic. It's resistance training, weight training is becoming more and more mainstream in terms of the people's awareness of it. I think we should define that. Why don't you define resistance training first? You know, it's funny. I used to think that was silly as a trainer. People are like, well, what is resistance training? Because I walk. Isn't that resistance? Because it's my body. Yeah, gravity. I use a recumbent bike. Isn't that resistance? Because I'm pushing the pedals. And yes, technically you are using resistance, but that's not what we're referring to. Resistance training is exercises that use external resistance with the expectation of building strength or muscle and muscle and or muscular stamina. So it's using resistance with the expectation that you're going to get stronger and build muscle. Which is different than using, let's say, a recumbent bike or a treadmill. Which, yes, does provide some resistance, but the expectation really isn't that strength training. In other words, you're working on other aspects of physical. Now, the problem with that is I think that definition is what deters some people from actually doing it because you don't hear fat loss in that definition. That's right. And so I think it's definitely important that we cover that when we discuss exactly what resistance training is, what it's for, but then also how that works with burning body fat. Right. So let's define for, how does the body burn body fat? We've covered this many times on the show, but I think it's important that we define how that happens in the body again because now we're talking specifically about resistance training. The way your body loses body fat is through what's called an energy imbalance. Okay. So that means you're either taking in less calories than you're burning or you're burning more calories than you're taking in. So what ends up happening? Because you can't burn, you can't create energy out of nowhere. So if you're burning more calories than you're taking in, your body needs to tap into stored energy, which is body fat. So that's how you lose body fat. So reducing your calories or burning more calories, when you create that energy imbalance, that's when you cause weight loss. Now the reverse is weight gain. If you take in more calories than you burn, then your body needs to store those, because it can't just be destroyed. They don't just disappear. They need to be stored somewhere. So your body will store it as body fat. And then of course, if everything's the same and you have energy balance, you don't lose any weight and you don't gain any weight. You stay exactly the same body weight. So we know that. And that's, by the way, that's a fact. I think it's important that we say that. I've heard people say recently in the fitness space that it's not about energy imbalance that you don't need to be in a calorie deficit to burn body fat. No, that's not how it works. It's actually a law of physics. In fact, if you are somebody who can lose weight without being in a calorie deficit or gain weight without being in a calorie surplus, take yourself down to your local university. You're an alien. Yeah. You have just, we have solved the energy problem of humanity. They need to study you, but it doesn't work that way. It's impossible. So now there's lots of different ways to do this, right? There's lots of different diets and different ways you can reduce your calories, different ways you can burn more calories. But for the purpose of this particular podcast, we're not going to talk specifically about every way, but we do know that that's a fact. You have to have an energy imbalance in order to lose weight or body fat. Well, I think in terms of resistance training, there's a bit of a barrier there because there's a more skill involved getting into weight training or resistance training in general over just moving more with, say, jumping on a treadmill or going out for a walk or doing some kind of recumbent bike like you're mentioning. So that is more of an easy sell for your average person. Now, before you go there, though, I want to finish with where Sal's at right now because I think it's important that people understand this too because everyone's metabolism is different and unique to them. And so what makes up their maintenance? So you're talking about, okay, if you have, if in order to lose body fat, we have to somehow create some sort of a caloric deficit. Well, how do people understand what is a caloric deficit for them and is mine the same as yours because we're similar in age and similar in weight or how's that figure factored in? And I think an area that isn't discussed a lot or people don't fully grasp and understand is that the more muscle that you have on your body, the more muscle that you carry around, the bigger your bank account is going to be, right? The larger your calorie maintenance is going to be just to maintain your body. It's a bigger engine. It's like a car. The bigger the engine, the more gas it typically will burn, the more muscle you carry and the more conditioned your muscle is, the more calories you're going to burn. And this is an important thing to understand because like I said earlier, when you're talking about energy imbalance, people look at, everything gets very simplified. Okay, if that's the case, what form of exercise burns the most calories, right? Because they're thinking, I need to burn more calories and I take it. And so what form of exercise burns the most calories? Cardio. Cardio. I mean, go run, yeah, go run real hard for 30 minutes and you'll burn more calories in 30 minutes than doing weight training for 30 minutes. So using your engine analogy, I think of it like this, like if we have a car that we are trying to build to be super fast and I have two options sitting back there as the engineer going, okay, we've got this car, it's running a, you know, a 10 second quarter mile, we need to make it faster. We have two options right now. We can either build a bigger engine in it to make it go faster or we could shed some weight off of it to go faster. Both of them are going to do that. Which would be the better strategy long term for this, for the car to go faster? Right. Well, when it comes to cardio, because your body is trying to get better at the cardio and have become more efficient with calories, and you don't need a lot of strength to do lots of cardiovascular activity. What ends up happening is as you do lots and lots of cardio, your body starts to pair muscle down and studies will show this. Studies have demonstrated that weight loss through cardiovascular activity results typically in half of the weight being muscle loss, sometimes more. Because your body is adapting and becoming more efficient at the demands you're placing upon it. And again, it doesn't require a lot of strength. Now resistance training, although it doesn't burn as many calories per time being spent, the demands that it places on the body requires more muscle and more strength. So over time, it speeds up your metabolism. And it's important to look at the context of things, right? So you don't just want to be lean. You want to be lean, but also live in the normal modern world. Well, the modern world consists of very low activity, but we're also very busy. So it's not like we have nothing to do all day long. We're busy, but we're not moving very much. We're sitting down most of the time. So low calorie burn, not lots of time available. Food is available everywhere. And it's also really damn tasty. I can right now walk outside the door and pretty much choose to eat pretty much any culture of food that I want within 30 minutes. You know, I've got Chinese food over here, Mexican food over there. We have Italian food. I mean, all down the street. I can buy processed foods. I could buy chips. I could go vegan and eat processed foods that taste really good. I could have any flavor, fruits, vegetables, whatever I want. So super accessible, tastes really good. I'm not moving much, not burning much calories and I don't have a lot of time. Okay. So all those things point to what the context is that we're working with and resistance training is superior in that context because I don't need to lift weights super often because I'm speeding up my metabolism with it, which means I'll burn more calories all the time, which will give me more, a greater ability to burn more calories. So resistance training is just a superior form of exercise. In fact, we know these following things for a fact. Okay. Resistance training strengthens your body better than anything else. So will you get stronger if you do other forms of exercise? Let's say you do yoga or you do cardio, you swim or you run. Will you get stronger versus doing nothing at all? Yes, you will. But there's a very small potential because those forms of activity don't require lots of strength. You'll only get so strong. It's not really going to build a very, very strong body. Resistance training does that. That's exactly what resistance training is. Strengthens your bones, your ligaments, your joints, and your muscles. What about mobility? A lot of people point to things like yoga and say that's the best for mobility. Although yoga is great for mobility, resistance training done properly is superior. Useable mobility. Well, resistance training is extremely individual, and you're getting stronger in the ranges of motion that you're training, which is what mobility is. You can't just have flexibility. You have to have strength within that mobility. What about, here's a common modern problem, especially for men, low testosterone. A lot of people don't know this, but for the last five or six decades, we've been noticing this decline in testosterone levels of men, which accompanies lots of health issues. Lower quality of life, lower libido, lower sperm count, increased risk of heart disease, prostate cancer, lots of these things. Only one form of exercise has been proven to consistently raise testosterone in men with low testosterone. That's resistance training. Now, why? Why does it do that? Because you're asking your body to build muscle, and the hormone, especially in men that's very responsible for building muscle, is testosterone. You give your body a good reason to have more testosterone when you lift weights. So it sounds like you're making the case that even if my goal is to be more mobile and flexible, strength training is superior. If you had to pick one form, yes. Even if my goal is to lose body fat, I don't care about building a bunch of muscle. I just want to lose body fat. The case is still resistance training over cardio. Totally. If I'm limited to time, I've only got three hours in the week. That's all I have to dedicate to any sort of form of exercise. And I just want to be in better shape. I don't care about being super muscular or that. Still, you make the case that... Even longevity, right? And avoiding things like osteopenia and strengthening your bones. Resistance training is superior in terms of other forms of training. Yeah. In modern societies, the aches and pains and problems that people tend to suffer from as they get older are typically not the result of overwork. So if you go back a hundred years and you find a seven-year-old with a bad back, it's typically because hard labor all their life. They're just overworked. Today, people with a bad back or knee or hip, it's inactivity. It's their bodies literally falling apart because they're not moving well because they're weak. De-prioritizing things. Right. Or injuries. Look at older people who fall down and break a bone with a small fall. Now they're really screwed because everything's so weak. We are becoming weak and resistance training is the antidote because resistance training makes you strong. Then there's the argument about the heart. A lot of people are like, what about your heart? What about benefiting the heart? New studies are coming out right now showing that in compared head-to-head, resistance training is even superior for heart health. I was just going to ask you that. Didn't you read a study not too long ago that confirmed your theory on that we are going to start to see doctors start recommending resistance training as their format? Because as of right now, it's still 30 minutes of vigorous cardio activity is what a doctor would recommend. If you go into the doctor, he sees that you're obese. Right now, they would tell you 30 minutes of vigorous activity daily is what would be the recommendation. We believe that that will no longer be the recommendation in the future and what you will hear from doctors in the future is 30 minutes to 60 minutes of resistance training is what you should be doing. It's totally going to change. It's already starting to change. They're finding that if you wouldn't compare single tests to try to predict all-cause mortality, there's one single test that beats all the other individual tests. Of course, the ultimately is a culmination of many tests, but if you would compare one-on-one, a strength test will give you a better predictor of all-cause mortality than pretty much any other single tests you could do. Blood pressure, cholesterol, any other triglycerides. When they go in and they do a grip test with their hand, they're finding that will predict all-cause mortality almost better than anything else. The other one is just getting up off the floor, which is strength, right? If you can get up off the floor without holding on to things, your all-cause mortality risk is really, really low. It just tells people a lot or doctors a lot. It shows how frail you are. It is. Totally. And resistance training now is starting to become much more recommended. It's far more mainstream than ever has been before. I mean, when I got into fitness, resistance training wasn't mainstream at all. No, I remember seeing the statistics with 24-hour fitness. I used to put it up on the big projector when we first started. So this is what, 15, 16 years ago. And I think they said that resistance training was penetrating like 4% of the population. That's crazy low. It's still low, but it's grown a lot. It's got to at least have tripled, doubled or tripled since then. I know that when I would manage gyms in the late 90s, you didn't see a lot of women, for example, in the weight area. Now, and it depends on the gym, but now when I go to a gym, I would say it's about 50, 50 men and women in the weight room. It was never like that. It was more like 90, 10, you know, back in the, you know, 20 years ago or whatever. That's why curves was such a revolution. You know, it's like, oh, here's something where we can get women to be more, you know, involved with resistance training. Well, that, you know, to that point too, and I think there's, this is another point to bring up about resistance training that is unique to it in comparison to any other form of exercise. Yoga, cardio, these other ones, mobility stuff is resistance training also gives you the ability to shape the body, which I think that's such a huge benefit. Because when you look at a majority of people that start exercise or want to get in shape, most people are motivated by the way they look. Whether that be they're motivated because they don't like the way they look currently or they want to improve that. At the end of the day, most people that come in the gym are looking at either their stomach or their thighs or their back or whatever that they don't like. And one of the benefits of learning how to train properly resistance training is you have this ability to actually shape and sculpt the body. You cannot spot reduce, but you can spot build. And that's exactly what Adam's talking about. So if you're, if you want to burn body fat off your body, we know that you can't spot reduce. You can't pick specific parts of your body to burn body fat. Your body doesn't burn body fat. That way it mobilizes it kind of systemically. And your genetics largely, now of course there are some changes in hormones and stuff that'll change this, but largely it's just your genetics. Your body will burn body fat from wherever it wants. The first place you pack on fat, when you gain body fat, it's typically the last place it'll all come off of. You can't get around that, but you can spot build. I can look at my body and say, I want more butt muscle here, or I want my shoulders to look like this by building this part of my, that's what body building is. It's literally spot building, which actually brings me to another point. When people think of resistance training, they think of the most extreme expressions of resistance training. And that turns people off. You know, when I say, when I tell the average person, oh, you need to start becoming more active and you're not doing the exercise, go lift weights. They immediately think bodybuilder, powerlifter. I'm going to get huge. I don't want to be huge. Yeah, or my friend heard his back squatting 500 pounds. Those are the extreme expressions of resistance training. Just like you drive your car and you have no intentions on, you know, racing NASCAR or, you know, Formula One. You can work out with weights and have zero intention to squat two or three times your body weight or to look like a professional bodybuilder. Those are extreme expressions of resistance training and like anything, there's an extreme expression. But regular traditional resistance training done properly is the most appropriate form of exercise, period, hands down for everybody. I will challenge anybody out there listening right now. There is no form of exercise that is more appropriate for everybody than resistance training. I can use resistance training on anybody that can move any part of their body. I could train someone in a wheelchair with resistance training. I've worked with people who have, you know, cerebral palsy. I've worked with people who've had severe, and that limits them from doing all other forms of exercise. Resistance training can be individualized and molded around short people, tall people, weak people, strong people, people with poor mobility. It's the most versatile. The most versatile and the most appropriate, which is why if you are ready to pick a form of activity for yourself, if you're thinking, and that's what this particular episode is revolved around. It's like, okay, there's a certain segment of our listeners that are going to pop in who either haven't worked out in a long time and are thinking they want to start doing something in terms of fitness, or they never have really done anything structurally. You're a listener and you're consistent, but you have a family member or a friend that needs to hear this message. Which brings me to the next point that I think can seem really daunting for the average person. The person who's never resistance training before, but also wants to be in better shape. They've now heard enough times of whether it be from somebody who listens to Mind Pump or the information is finally getting out there that resistance training is superior to them going to their local yoga class or cardio. And so they're interested, but then they're also scared to death of what do I do? What movements do I do? What exercises am I supposed to do? And what would you tell somebody that very, I mean, general, like as far as what types of movements should they be trying to strive for? Now this speaks to Justin's earlier point, right? Is that it seems more complicated and complex than other forms of exercise. Like if you tell somebody, hey, I'm just, by the way, that's a little deceiving. I'll give you an example before I get to Adam's point. People think, oh, running, it's so basic and simple. I just go outside and run. Kinda, but not really. Yeah, that's probably the problem. Yeah, that's part of the problem. The problem is that it's deceiving. Movements like running and swimming and biking seem simple, but they're actually not. Running is a very complex movement. If you never run or you haven't run consistently your whole life, which is most people, and then you go out and just go start running. You can do more damage than good. You will. If you run it with the wrong mechanics. Yeah, you will do more damage because your body doesn't, you don't know how to run. You haven't trained and practiced running. You should take a long time doing that. So now resistance training looks complex, looks complicated, and that tends to turn people off. But it doesn't have to be. Again, let's stop looking at the extreme expressions of resistance training. And let's just focus on what the average person should do to reap the benefits of resistance training. Maximize the few hours a week that they think they can dedicate to exercise. Let's just focus on that for a second. So when you say that, I'm thinking primal movement patterns. Yeah, the most functional things. It doesn't matter if you're, you want to look a certain way or build X amount of muscle. There's certain movements that you are going to use that we all are going to use as humans in our daily practices, no matter what they are, that you want to either want to improve on or stay good at as you age, right? And not only that, but these exercises or movements that we're about to talk about, the exercises that work on these type of movements also, which is kind of cool, give you the most bang for your buck, which is really cool. So not only are these the following basic human movements and exercises that you need to work on, the ones that you need to work on if you only have a certain amount of time, they're also the ones that give you the best results, which is cool. You get that double whammy. I'm doing the stuff that's going to benefit me most in the real world, but it's also going to give me the best, fastest results, which is cool because what we're going to do right now is we're basically going to cut out all the nonsense. I'm going to make it, we're going to make it super simple for you and cut out all the fluff. You're not going to have to worry about 99% or maybe even 100% of the machines in your gym. You're not going to have to worry about them. You're not even going to have to worry about necessarily barbells because you could do all these movements with dumbbells. Very, very basic. And if you stuck to this, you would build a very healthy physique. You're not going to look like a physique competitor. You're not going to have big bulging muscles. That's a different podcast. We could talk about that later. But this will get you all the wonderful benefits of resistance training that we talked about earlier. Lay out the foundation to build off of. That's it. So the first thing is very basic human movement, picking things up off the floor. You start with this one and I can't help but think of the posts that I saw. We were tagged in the other day of somebody that was trying to make the case that deadlifting was a worthless exercise. I've seen this pop up all over the place and it's hilarious to me because when do you not pick something off the ground? That happens to everybody. So you're trying to tell me that's not a basic foundational movement that I'm going to experience almost on a daily basis. And let's say most people don't do it. And they don't do it with correct form? Yeah, they don't do it properly. No, we've all been taught how to lift properly or you at least have seen like how to lift things up off the floor properly. Well, a deadlift trains that. That's all it does. It trains you how to lift things up off the ground properly. And in doing so, you strengthen your almost your entire body. Now, I know why they made that post. It's because of the extreme expressions of deadlifts and people get injuries. Right. Yeah. Okay. Again, you're not going to be in the gym deadlifting 500 pounds. Don't worry about that. People can take it too far. I mean, that's that's obvious. Like you see that. And again, back to your like huge muscle bound bodybuilder kind of standard. Like that's that's something that's totally extreme. And so we're just talking about doing this for basic human fundamentals. Well, we talk about this a lot on the show. And I think you guys would agree with me that I'm most of the clients that I had that had some sort of a crazy injury happened to him. It was all and it was never lifting 500 pounds. It was always doing the most basic fundamental type of movements, reaching over to pick up a shampoo bottle in their shower, you know, picking a weed out of their garden, you know, reaching back to give their kid food in the back seat or something. It's always like this really basic movement that isn't a lot of weight, but it's just that they have lost that movement pattern and or the connection to that movement pattern. And it's all it takes is being weak and moving out of their. They slip. They react wrong. They can't balance properly. Boom. Injury. That's right. So picking things up. Deadlift. Deadlifts are phenomenal. You could do these with barbells. You could also do versions with dumbbells. Dumbbells. It looks almost like a squat holding dumbbells at your sides. But the idea is you're mimicking picking something off the floor. You're doing it with a brace core. There's lots of videos. I had to do this right. We have quite a few on our YouTube channel. You can watch those. It's definitely an exercise you should incorporate in your workout routine should be some form of a deadlift. It's a fundamental movement. And here's a cool thing about it. It really develops a nice looking body that works the whole posterior chain, which is a fancy term that means the back of your body. Right. So your back muscles, your butt muscles, your hamstrings, which I would argue is the most difficult to teach clients like how to properly activate because we're just so conscious of what's in front of us all the time. That to take that time to really be conscious to connect to the back of your body is that's a whole skill in itself. Well, again, this is why that movement is so important because it's the other half of you that is extremely. Don't ignore it. Yeah. That's extremely responsible for a majority of the movements or the strengths that you need to pick up a couch or to pick something up off the floor. Are we kids? Yeah. And we just don't use it. People round their back over and bend at the knee and they just grab and pick up versus hinging at the hips and keeping a good stable spine and supporting themselves through that movement. And that's just it. And you don't need to do it with, like Sal said, 300, 500 pounds. Just getting the pattern and the movement down so you know how to engage the proper muscles is going to do wonders for somebody. So you don't have to be lifting crazy loads. It's something really, really light and basic to learn the movement first and learn how to use those supporting muscles for when you do basic. Yes. And I'm going to preface everything by saying this is all appropriately applied. Everything we're going to talk about right now is applied appropriately. If you apply any exercise or movement inappropriately to your body, then your chance or risk of injury goes through the roof. When you're doing something appropriately, no risk of injury. You're doing it appropriately. That's the point. It's funny. We're talking about deadlifts. Back in the day, Doug, our producer, was my client, actually hired me. Do you know why he hired me? Because he had a bad back. He actually hired me because he kept hurting his back and his chiropractor sent him to me. You know, it was part of his routine on an almost consistent basis. Deadlifts. Deadlifts. Doug got to the point where he could deadlift over 400 pounds at a body weight. It was like 160 pounds or something like that. His back is comparatively now bulletproof compared to what it was before where it would just hurt. He would just wake up and his back would hurt. So for people who are saying, oh no, that's bad for your back, that is totally incorrect. Doing a proper deadlift or versions of deadlifts in your routine is a great way to produce a bulletproof back. And back injuries are the most common types of injuries. And the fact that it is a challenging movement, it leaves us lots of room to have to practice at it to get good at it, which is a good thing for somebody who also would like to burn body fat. Because it's a more complex movement, more joints are involved. It's going to take a lot of practice at the skill before you perfect it. Matter of fact, you may spend years and years of lifting it before you get perfect at it. That's a good thing for somebody who's trying to see progression and change in their body or that wants to lose body fat. If you do something like a standing bicep curl, the very first couple of times you do it. Sure, you burn some good calories. Yeah, you're going to stimulate, build a little bit of muscle. But the body will adapt and figure that out pretty quick. And so the results that you start to see of it tend to fall off very fast. When we look at a movement like a deadlift, you will continue to see progress in that movement for very long periods of time because it's such a skill-based movement. You'll reap benefits from all these movements we're about to go over in fact forever. I do all these basic movements and I've been working out for decades, right? All right, so the next one, next fundamental kind of foundational movement would be just squatting. It's got to be a squat. Yeah, just squatting. Squatting down and coming back up. And there's lots of variations to it too. Exactly, I was just going to say that. There's squatting just like deadlifting is another one of those movements that people tend to get freaked out about right away. Or I have a bad back. I can't do it. Or oh, it's really challenging. My knees, all these reasons. There's lots of modifications that you can do to get somebody ready for that. Yes, I've had many clients that hired me and we could not go do a barbell-loaded squat right out the gate. I think most clients. Right. Most clients didn't start that way. Now, my goal always is to get them to that point. But we may spend months, even years sometimes, doing modifications of the squat to get there. So just because you may not be able to perform a back-loaded squat right now or it seems really intimidating or daunting to start at, doesn't mean that we don't start in the direction to get there. Because again, it is extremely fundamental movement that everybody should be able to do. And your body weight oftentimes provides plenty of resistance when you first get started. So if I took somebody who is brand new, hasn't worked out for a long time, brand new to the gym or whatever, and I'm watching them and I'm having them try and do a squat and I notice even a body weight squat is difficult. They can't do a full squat. Their heels come up off the floor or knees are moving in ways that they shouldn't. And I say, okay, we can't even do a body weight squat properly. I'm going to modify that. And I'll take them to a, I'll bring them over to a bench or a chair. You can do this at home and just practice slowly sitting down and standing up. Congratulations. You are doing squats with the resistance. And you're going to reap the benefits of that. Now you will progress past that pretty quickly, most people. And then you can start changing it to without having to sit down. Now you're just squatting in air. That's more difficult. You can guide it better by using the stability ball with the wall so you get your angles correct. There's a whole progression to this. That's the beautiful, the beautiful part about a squat is like, you can just continually improve this based off of like, you know, where you're at. Like I could, I could take that. Now I could add one little tool. I could add some dumbbells and now I'm adding resistance to that same squat. It's a totally different exercise. Oh, and you can regress it all the way to something very, very basic, like just getting up out of a chair or using a stability ball against the wall. And there is, there's lots of progressions to that. Now the muscle that you'll activate with a squat, most of it's in the lower body, but it is one of the best lower body exercises you could do. It works on the hamstrings, the quads, the glutes, and even to a smaller degree, the calves. So it's a full lower body exercise that is really good at getting your body to get stronger and build more muscle, which is great, right? Because we want to fashion metabolism. Squats are always there and they tend to always be there. Again, I squat still to this day and I still reap benefits from it. And I also, I can't help but think of, you know, one of the common things that you hear when people start to get to advanced age is that they fall and they break their hip. Oh, yeah. You know, and, you know, I right away, right away when I hear that, I know for a fact that person was not squatting as they aged. If you would have been squatting, that person would have been protected from something like that. So you think of the things that are extremely important long term. Maybe right now in your 40s or 50s, you don't think about it quite yet. But as you start getting up 60, 70, 80 years old and you have eliminated squatting out of your daily routine for decades. It's gone. And here's the thing. You're going to get a lot of information like across the internet from even doctors where once you start getting to the places where you're in pain, they're going to tell you to avoid that movement. Right. Instead of strengthening, you know, ways to be able to protect your joints and your back and your hips. And you should be thinking proactively, how can I prevent, you know, this pain? How can I get stronger because I feel like I'm not getting that connection. I'm feeling pain. Oh, years ago, a surgeon hired me at my studio. I still in a personal training studio and it used to be next to a hospital. And a surgeon, this woman who ended up becoming a very, very good friend of mine hired me to train her. And when I did my intake with her, she told me all of her and I asked her, you know, like, what do you have areas of pain on your body? What do you need to avoid? And she's a doctor. She's a, she's a, she was a very successful surgeon. And she says, oh, I can't squat or lunge or anything like that because it just, it's not good for my knees. My knees hurt. And so I need to avoid those things. And so I said, okay, and I knew, you know, I'm not going to, I don't want to argue with her and debate with her. She's very intelligent and it just wouldn't come across right. So I gave it some time, but little by little, I got her, I convinced her to start doing some of these exercises. Again, we did them appropriately and properly. So I applied them properly. Within six months, this woman was doing full body weight squats, full lunges and her knee pain was gone. It wasn't there anymore. She no longer had knee pain anymore and she was blown away. And she understood at that point that, well, the chronic pain that we get oftentimes comes from inactivity, not from, you know, I hurt myself. There's a difference now. Now if you hurt yourself and you twisted your knee or you tore a ligament, you probably shouldn't squat. But if your knees bother you just because of inactivity, you want to find out why you can't squat and fix that. Or regress your squat to the point where you can squat so that your knees don't hurt. And then what you'll find is as you get stronger, more and more squat variations will open up. You brought up the physio ball squat. I think it was you, Justin, where you put a physio ball. And a physio ball is for those of you listening who don't know what that is. It's the big, it looks like the big beach ball. It's the big balls that people sit on and squat on and they're in gyms. They got real popular about 10, 15 years ago. You put one up against the wall. You put your lower back against the ball, step away from the wall. Now you're kind of leaning against it. And then you squat down. So you're rolling the ball against the floor with your hips pointing straight down. It takes a lot of the mobility and movement out of the squat makes it easier for a lot of people. And you may find that if normal squats bother you, those don't. Practice that version of squats until you get really good at those. Maybe add a little resistance to them at some point. Then move to the other versions of squats like your free standing squat and maybe free standing squat with resistance and see what happens. Oftentimes, most times, it's the remedy to a lot of people's problems. I think a lot of people don't understand why chronic pain is caused by the inability to do movements like the squat. And I share on the show a lot my own personal experience with working towards a really deep squat. Now I avoided squats for a really long time. I always had chronic low back pain. I had bursitis in my hips. And, you know, it was even being a trainer. It's the excuse I gave myself in my head to avoid squatting until finally I just got on this kick where I was going, okay, I'm going to address this. I'm going to really work on my mobility. I'm really going to work on getting into a really deep squat. And it was, it was a lot of work to get there. But what the craziest part about it was once I got to the point where I could squat with good depth, I completely eliminated the bursitis in my hips and the low back pain. And how I explain it in layman's term for somebody is that you have a joint, the hip, and it's responsible for all this movement. And what ends up happening is because you shorten up its range of motion, you don't use it to its fullest capacity, a lot of the muscles that help it move in that full range of motion, they go dormant. And then when you try and get up and down from a chair, then these other muscles start to take over that movement. And this is where the chronic pain happens is my low back muscles are starting to leverage and help me taking movements that my leg muscles and my glutes should be doing. But because I've lost a good connection in those muscles, now other muscles start to overcompensate. And that's where a lot of our chronic pain, and that works for all parts of the body is when you don't use it, you lose it. And then if you still try and ask the body to do it after you've lost it, then other parts of the body overcompensate and take over. And that's where a lot of this chronic pain comes from. Joints have a way of moving that's optimal. And then every other way that is not optimal is suboptimal. So I'll give you an example. I have a sliding glass door at my house. So most people have a sliding glass door. Well, I was noticing that the sliding glass door started to get more and more difficult to open and close. And I looked down at the track that the door was rolling on and I noticed that it was just getting chewed up. It was getting chewed up and messed up. And that was what was causing, over time, causing the sliding glass door to move slowly and grind. So what I had to do is I had to balance it out and figure out and fix how it tracked on the track at the bottom. How to line up the sliding glass door with the track so that it could move properly. I replaced the track, fixed it, balanced it. Now I'm going to be able to move that thing for 15, 20 years and it's not going to chew up the track because it's lined up properly. That's your joints. So if you're weak and you're not moving properly, it's like that sliding glass door. The track is grinding up and you are causing problems because of your immobility. And it's not the movement that's causing the problem directly. It's the fact that you can't move properly. I love that analogy because it's always a tracking issue. Half the time that I'm trying to explain, especially with shoulders or hips, and to be able to understand that it's most optimal in this particular spot. This frees up all those potential ranges of motion. If I could keep it balanced and I could keep the muscles in a place where it's just bracing around it, it's supporting it. Instead of overdoing it to where it's pulling it to one side or the other, that's usually the cause of this nerve impingement or pain. This is why I cringe when I hear somebody tell me that they don't do a movement because they have chronic pain because that's your signal that you need to work and figure something out. That doesn't mean that you should just push through the pain and keep doing the movement because you hurt, but it's your body's sign that something's not tracking properly. Let's get to the bottom of this. Let's fix the track. Let's get to a point where we can and it will get back to sliding down. First is, oh, I can't do that anymore because it bothers me at first. This is my new standard. Totally. That's why we're giving you the listener basic movements and we're naming exercises around these movements, but there's a lot of varieties and versions of exercises that mimic picking something up off the ground. You could do it without any weight. You could just practice. You could do it with dumbbells. You could do it with dumbbells at your sides. Squatting. It could be using the physio ball or sitting down standing up. These are all versions of squatting and there are more advanced versions. The more advanced version of a squat would be a back squat with a barbell on your back. The most advanced version of picking up something off the ground would be like a barbell deadlift or a trap bar deadlift, for example. Let's move to another basic human movement, pressing. Pushing things away or pushing things up above your head. That's a very basic human movement that I don't, especially pushing straight up over your head, people don't tend to practice very often. Oh, yeah. It's pretty hilarious. We've brought up this example many times where I've actually seen beginning clients where if I need to take this object and put it on a higher shelf, just watch somebody do that that doesn't train and see what happens with their mechanics. A lot of times they're going to bring their heels up. They're going to lift everything up to be able to get up there because their body doesn't know any different other than we just need to get this thing up there. So I'm going to get up on my tippy toes to get there. Yeah. Pressing strengthens the pushing muscles of your upper body. Your shoulders, your triceps, your chest, if you're pushing in front of you. If you're pushing overhead, there's back muscles that are very involved to stabilize your shoulder blades because when you're pressing up over your head, the shoulder blades are very involved in stabilizing the shoulder and in the movement. So there's muscles there that strengthen. I don't realize that, by the way, as an early trainer, just how much the mid-back is involved in being able to push things overhead. I always thought my clients, when they had trouble, like if you push something straight up over your head and you have issue with fully extending your arms straight up without having to lean back and look up at your hand, you can push it up your arm is next to your ear. If you can't do that, oftentimes it's a weakness in your mid-back. I don't realize that and took me a long time for that. I'm not going to get as high because you have to get that close to your head in order to extend fully. So yeah, that's a good point. I mean, and to be able to stabilize at that position is like, that's do or die. Like at that point, like you're going to have a back problem if you don't have that properly figured out. Yeah, now good exercises for pressing push-ups. A lot of variety, inversions of push-ups. You could do traditional off-your-feet push-ups. You can go on your knees. You could elevate your body to make it easier to do push-up on a countertop. You can even do push-ups on the wall. I used to do this with my beginner clients who were a little more in advanced age where they had to start with something real easy and then have them step away from the wall, put their hands on the wall. My one and only favorite use of the Smith machine. Push-up on top of the bar. And honestly, most people should start in a regressed position like that even if they can do a normal push-up because since this whole episode is about how you started and how to start, form always trumps weight. And reps. Yes, and reps when you first start. I would always, I'd have a client and I'd show them like a push-up, for example, and I would know right away when I get them down to do the first couple and I would know, okay, I'm going to regress them down with their knees. Not because they couldn't do 10 push-ups. They could do 10 push-ups, but the 10 push-ups they were doing, their mechanics were terrible. And so I would, hey, let's bring it to your knees so I can really slow you down and concentrate on how I want you to do this push-up before we progress you to go do real. Now, I know you can do them, you can just muscle them out, but when you're first starting all of these movements that we're talking about, I'm always going to start clients way lighter than they could technically do. I mean, and that's, I think, a common mistake that we should address when people first get started for some reason and for sure, especially my guys, you know, we want to just get to the place where we're lifting the most weight that our body can. The problem with that is the body's always going to choose the easiest path. And sometimes that means all these other muscles jumping in and helping, and you don't work on the proper mechanics, where I would much rather, when I start a client off, start them off with 50% of the load that they could technically squat or deadlift or push and really stress the mechanics of it and slowing down and making sure you're forming techniques. Oh, I used to start clients off with a broomstick to push overhead. So they're literally using a broomstick and pressing that up straight up above their head, but we're focusing on full extension, right? Arms totally straight, nice, tall posture, not overarching the lower back. So they're not feeling like there's too much, you know, tension in the lower back. They're bracing the core. They're looking straight ahead. Then they come back down, and they do reps with that, and that works. That builds strength and muscle. So I'm glad you made that point. What about pulling? Pulling things. That's a very basic human movement. And maybe one of the most important. Oh, today especially. When I use, in fact, a lot of times I would hold off on some of the pushing movements because it's something that we do most of the time, and I would put more focus and emphasis on the pulling type of movements back to the point that we were making with the posterior chain. The muscles in the back are just neglected, and they're as equally important as the ones in the front. And to keep everything in track and balanced, you have to really consider that and really incorporate the posterior chain and these other parts, even the rear delts and such to be able to maintain that proper tracking position in your joint. That's right. Now pulling movements are any kind of rowing movement or pulling down movement. You could do this with bands. You could do this with dumbbells. You could use a physio ball to help you with your dumbbell rows, for example. Focus on pulling the weight up, sticking your chest out, pulling the shoulder blade back across your back. It's like you're trying to strengthen good posture when you're doing these pulling movements. What are the muscles you're working? You're working the muscles of the hands, the biceps, and the back. And let me tell you something. A nice, well-developed back really has a massive impact on your overall aesthetic in terms of how healthy and fit you look. You can have people with terrible back development and great everything else development, and they just don't look right. You can tell something doesn't look right with the way they're moving. Having someone with a real strong back and good posture, it makes everything else look better. So if you're trying to work out to look better, which is everybody, work on the pulling movement to make a big difference. Well, we're just, we're naturally, we're all as humans closing in. Right? I mean, that's just... It's shaving forward. Yeah, because everything we do, okay, your day-to-day stuff from driving, riding, listening... You slowly turn into a shrimp. Well, we are. I mean, you really, when you... I used to do this when I'd sell personal training as I would, you know, I would stand up all right in like the anatomical position with good posture, and then I would show somebody like, you know, this is what we look like when we're, you know, young in our teens and vibrant in playing sports and doing things. And I'm like, then we get to 20, and then 30, and then 40, and then 50, and I just keep like showing myself rounding over until I was, you know, impersonating a, you know, 70 or 80-year-old in a walker. And I'm like, that's just the natural progression if you don't do anything to counter that. And one of the best things that you can do to counter yourself from moving into that close position to the rounded back on a walker is the posterior chain is like a rowing type of exercise. This is also why I think there is a a big surge in population with like orange theory. I think one of the things, I don't even know if they knew that this is part of the formula I think that hit it out of the park for them is by incorporating rowing. And rowing is taking off right now. I mean, we've, it's been around forever, but part of why I think it's becoming so popular right now is because of the the side benefits that people are getting and they may not even realize that why they're feeling so good but because it's such a neglected thing for the average person. Now you've got these droves of people coming through these classes doing all this rowing. They're like, man, I feel great. I feel better. And a lot of it probably is because they're waking up that posterior chain and getting into a rowing movement that most people just completely neglect. Totally true. Another basic movement, rotating your body's ability to twist and rotate. Maybe one of the most overload. It's a big one. It's an important movement that you should work on and strengthen just so it doesn't go away. What you don't want is you don't want to have well-developed body and muscles and strength that can't rotate because that's like a huge injury waiting to happen. And rotational exercises are easy. They could be as easy as, you know, lizard with rotation, which is a mobility movement or you could do and you can find all these on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. You could do a twisting crunch. You could use a band, hold it out in front of you and twist and rotate your body. Some of the pulling movements and pressing movements that you do, if you do them one-handed, can strengthen a little bit that rotation. So like if I do a dumbbell row with one hand, I can incorporate a little rotation at the top. All right. Our overhead press, you just want to add a little bit more rotation with the wrist and the elbow as you're pressing it up. There's ways you can incorporate it within what you're already and enhance it even more. Totally. And then a lunge. I'll finish it off by saying a lunge. That is a, and that's just when your legs, one leg is in front, one leg isn't back and you're squatting. So it's similar to a squat, but the difference is one leg is stabilizing behind you, one leg is stabilizing in front of you. And arguably, the most functional thing that we can do as humans. Totally. You walk. Right. That's what makes this human. It emulates everyday life. Right. So probably one of the most important things that we could do when you think of overall. Right. You're putting things up, squatting, pressing, pulling, rotating and lunging. That's six movements. Six basic human movements. Guess what? Guess what you got to do? Pick an exercise for each of those. That's it. You're done. There's your resistance training workout right there. No joke. Now you're not going to be bodybuilding. You're not going to be a powerlifter doing that, but you are going to get reap all of the general benefits of resistance training. And it's a fantastic place to start. And you will see phenomenal results by just focusing on those six things. And you don't even have to focus on all six of them every time you work out. If you're in the gym two or three days a week, you can pick three of them and do those things. And Adam, you touched on something earlier about the intensity and the way we work out. I think we need to focus on that for a second. Don't go in there to beat yourself up and work out. No. There's the right dose. Yeah. Go in there to practice those movements. Just get good at them. If that's all you did, you'd be working, you'd be golden. Absolutely golden. The goal is to do the least amount as possible to elicit the most amount of change. I know I've said it a million times on this show but I can't stress that enough because I know even with all of my experience and knowledge, it's still a mistake that I make. It's just in us. It's in us to want to get in there. We're motivated. You know why? Because I think the hardest thing was to motivate us to get in the gym. And then once we're there we feel like, okay, I'm here. Now I've got to get it. I have to do all of it. There is heart. No. In fact, yesterday my workout literally consisted of eight sets of lunges and five sets of overhead pressing and 20 minutes in the sauna. And that was a successful, great workout. You do not always have to go. In fact, you don't want to go ball to the wall. You are just trying to do enough that is just enough challenging that the body has to adapt and change and show you results from it. And then you have room to build upon that. Do not throw the whole tomorrow. Right after you do that workout you have to do a workout again. You have to keep that in your mind. I don't think a lot of people approach the gym with that mindset. And that's something that will definitely carry you a lot further and you won't get those setbacks which then it's like you have to build all over again. It's funny because for some reason we do this resistance training but we don't do it with anything else. Nobody who has ever decided to run 100 miles goes out and runs 100 miles off and hurt yourself. Right. You practice. Go to the gym. Practice the exercises that cover those basic human movements. That's it. Just go in there and practice. And you know what's going to happen? You're going to feel it. You're going to feel it just because you've never done that. Naturally it's just going to get easier and guess what? You're going to do more as it gets easier. That's all it is. That's all it is. Now here's what I recommend. If you can go to the gym a few days basic. A couple days a week go in there and just practice a little bit more with a little bit more intent. Push yourself a little bit more than you do on the other days. And then a couple days a week just go in there and practice some movements and take it easy a little bit. You have just successfully periodized your workout. You've now just successfully applied the right amount of intensity. Now what does that mean for each individual? They naturally do the right intensity. It's so funny. When I tell people to work out I got to have several conversations about how hard or how easy it is. Your level of soreness and the amount you sweat is not directly correlated with your success inside the gym. No. For some damn reason we think that equates to a good workout. Oh I was really sore yesterday must have been a great workout. Oh my God I sweat in my really that much for you to see progression and to see results. You could have done 50% less and seen just as much results. So especially if you start talking about what Justin said it starts to impede tomorrow's work out or the next workout you're actually taking steps back and you're not taking steps forward. In fact if you're sore if you're really sore if you have a tiny bit of soreness where you actually have to kind of move a little bit to feel we're like oh yeah I think I'm sore finish your workout and the next couple of days, you're having trouble walking and every time you sit up, sit down and stand up, like, oh, that hurts or whatever, every time you reach for something hurts, overreached. Yeah, you went too hard. Now, too hard does not mean you'll get there faster. Too hard means you'll get there slower, okay? You'll actually progress slower if you go too hard. So forget the bravado and the machismo and the whole like, oh, like the pride in the struggle type of deal. You'll actually get there slower. You'll progress slower if you go too hard. So if you get really, really sore, scale it back, go easier, and again, just practice. Now another, one of the main reasons that I hear a lot of people not wanting to do resistance training besides the complexity and all that stuff, which hopefully we simplified for you, is that they don't have access to lots of equipment because I think there's this, you know, there's this belief that resistance training requires a lot of different types of equipment. It actually doesn't. It requires very little equipment. In fact, you could do quite a bit with no equipment or if you really wanna get equipment that you'll, and that's all you're gonna need and you'll be like, you'll be good with this for a long time, get yourself a pair of dumbbells and a physio ball, you're done. Pair of dumbbells that you can adjust. They're very inexpensive. You can buy them on Amazon or wherever. Dumbbells that you can make as light as five pounds or as heavy as 40 pounds or 30 pounds or whatever. And a physio ball that you'll blow up. You could buy one at Target for $15 and you're finished. And for people who are like, oh, I don't wanna buy equipment. Same thing you gotta do when you run. When you go running, you go buy an expensive $120 pair of shoes because you gotta go run. Okay, so now you're gonna spend that money on a pair of dumbbells and a physio ball and you could do everything with that. Now again, you're not gonna be a power lifter or a body builder. Yeah, but you can build a hell of a physique just from those things. You totally can. If you practice the skill of the six movements that we just talked about and got really good at those six skills. And added resistance over time. You could build a pretty damn good physique. You'd speed up your metabolism. So now you're burning hundreds of more calories every single day just sitting there. That means that you could eat the same and get leaner or eat more and stay the same. You can sculpt your body. Remember, you can't spot reduce, but you can spot build. So now you can look at parts of your body and you can like a sculptor look in the mirror and shape the body that you want. You're not gonna be spending a ton of time working out. We're talking about maybe three days a week of exercise focusing on those movements that we talked about. And it's relatively inexpensive. It's relatively, it doesn't take up much space. Dumbbells and a physio ball can be stored in almost any apartment or definitely a house. And you're set and you're done. Now if you want more specified instruction, if you want personal training, if you want demos and you wanna broken down, how many reps, how many sets, everything broken down for me, we have a program called MAPS Starter that does all of that. So MAPS Starter is literally a program for people who wanna get started with resistance training and they have never done it or who haven't done it for a very, very long time or for people who just wanna work out at home with that kind of equipment and maximize all those exercises. That's what MAPS Starter is. It's all broken down. It takes you step by step. There's exercise demos, workout blueprints, the whole nine yards. It's all there, so there's no guesswork. So if you want that, I believe it's also 50% off this month. So it's half off. You go to MAPS Starter.com and use the code Starter 50. That's S-T-A-R-T-E-R-5-0, no space for that discount.