 BING BING BOOM! It's mind pump time! Alright, in today's episode, we talk about three important things to get you super duper fit. By the way, we're gonna do a giveaway with today's program here, because that's what we do on every single episode. We give things away. I know I've said we're giving, but I don't need to say that anymore. I think you've already figured that out for yourself. Today's free giveaway is MAPS Anabolic, so you're gonna get a free MAPS Anabolic program if you do the following. Leave a comment in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Make it a good comment. If we pick your comment, we'll notify you by commenting underneath, and you'll get free access. By the way, that also means you have to subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. You know what's super annoying when we notify someone, but they don't turn on notifications so that they don't see the notification, so they didn't win anything. That's super annoying. Do those things. Subscribe, turn on your notifications. Also, this episode is sponsored by one of our sponsors, LMNT. Go check them out. It's a great company. Normally, I don't mention sponsors that way on our YouTube channel, but it's one of our favorite companies to work with. Head over to drinkelemente.com forward slash mine pump. Get yourself a free sample pack, and I don't think there's a code with that. I think it's just drinkelemente.com forward slash mine pump. One more thing. We are running a sale all month long. Two programs on sale. Very good for building muscle. Mapstrong, Maps Powerlift. Very popular programs, both 50% off. Go check them out, mapsfitnessproducts.com. Just use the code August Special with no space for that discount. All right. Enjoy the show. Off topic, and I know this isn't the conversation we're having today, but I did want to bring up. I actually got a lot of DMs about your comment, which I haven't done yet, about combining the sodium, the LMNT with creatine. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got messages about that, like, oh my God, Sal said this the other day. So I haven't done that yet. Yeah, so it increases the uptake of creatine. So there's a couple of ways you can increase the intake of creatine. Wow. Interesting. So there's a couple of ways you can increase the intake of creatine. Carbohydrates or sugar. Cell volume. As one of them, sodium is the other one. And of course, sodium has no calories. And before your workout, helps with the pump. So sugar I was always aware of because of cell tech. That was their theory was that they pump. But I don't want to drink. 70 grams of sugar. Yeah, I would love to do that. No, no, that makes sense. And that was why they used to tell you to mix it with, like, grape juice or whatever. Yeah, right? That was kind of the. No, sodium. Sodium works excellent. Yeah, wow. So I do it in the LMNT. And you just, do you put it like in a water bottle size amount? Because normally I actually, the LMNT is so strong that I actually put it in my. No, so I'll fill this up right here, right? And it's like a shaker cup. And I'll, this will be filled with water, LMNT. I'll work out with it. Then I'll do another one post-workout and then add the creatine. So I do the creatine post-workout. Speaking of workouts, speaking of workouts, we again, you know, we'll cut up our shows into clips, put it on YouTube and occasionally certain clips get lots of comments, lots of questions, lots of people interested. And one of the more recent ones that had a lot of interest really revolved around information surrounding basics of workout programming. In particular sets, reps, rest periods in particular, like, like, you know, everything about those things, why are they important? What do they do? And, you know, again, sometimes we get stuck in the minutia, especially because we've been doing this for so long that if you think about all the important things to communicate, like those three things, just those three things right there are so important to make such an impact on how well you're going to respond to your workout. Yeah, you see all these different modalities kind of become created as a result of manipulating those factors. And people get really almost religious and they evangelize that this is the best way, the best rep range, the best tempo, the best rest amount of time that you're going to have in your workouts. And so it becomes like this sort of fight amongst people in fitness. It's hilarious. Well, it's really the nuts and bolts of exercise programming. I mean, minus the exercise selection, which would be up there with the most important things when it comes to programming. So other than that, these are the other factors that make all the difference of what constitutes a good or bad program, I would say. Yeah, and to give you an example, I want to illustrate this with an example has nothing to do with working out. So let's say I gave somebody 10 colors that they could use to paint a picture. Depending on how you use the colors, the strokes that you make and the way you combine them, you'll either have something that's recognizable as a painting or you'll just have a bunch of random colors on a piece of canvas. This is what workout programming is. So when you look at workout programming, you have all these different pieces and just throwing them on the canvas doesn't give you an effective workout. There is a way you put them together. There's an order that you can put them together. That'll make it super effective or not effective at all. So programming is extremely important when it comes to and that's what program is what we're referring to is how you put it together, how it all works together in the week and the month and so on. That determines your progress or not. I believe that's the first time you've used that art analogy for for program. Yeah, it is. I'm just picturing like, you know, it's like really shitty art that people think is amazing with that. So I thought you're going to go with the build a cake. Not about analogy though, because there's a lot of times where people think that something is really good and it's really not. It's really trash. Yeah, just a bunch of random stuff thrown together. Yeah, cause you see salt, sugar, you know, eggs and flour and you see how people all put that together like and you can get a really shitty kid. You know, that's that's also a good point to make too. Though is that, you know, there's there's exercising and then there's training, right? And exercise can be anything like just moving. Yeah, just moving and and there's there's benefits to exercise and it's not a bad thing. I think where we get really hyper critical about programming is a lot of programs out there are just a bunch of exercises and they're not, they're not designed like a training program that is designed to take you somewhere, you know, get you faster, get you stronger, reduce body fat, build muscle. A lot of them really are just a bunch of exercises that are thrown together in a creative manner. And there is a significant difference between somebody who wants to exercise and somebody who wants to train. Now, our profession is trainers is we get clients that have goals that have a place they want to get and therefore this stuff really matters. It does and also consider this when you're looking at workout programs, typically workout programs designed for the general population whose goal is just to lose weight. They place almost no energy or emphasis on workout programming because you take the average person who's not active and you just get them to move more and eat less and they will lose weight. Now, of course, they end up failing later on. I think the fail rate is something like 90%. Now contrast that to workout programs that are designed for athletes, especially competitive strength athletes, lots of thought, lots of effort goes into the programming because the result has to be you perform better on stage when you're lifting a weight or you're cleaning something, you know, overhead. So the workout programming for general, for fitness, for leanness, for what typically sucks. And this is one of the reasons why one of the main things that we do is we design programs. We saw that and we said, okay, this is wide open for like really good workout program. Well, to your earlier point, that's the argument that I always, I can't stand that argument. The one that's like, well, they're at least doing something now. Yeah. You know, beforehand, they weren't even getting off the couch and making the effort and so at least they're doing this. But if you kind of play that all the way out and see what that ends up doing in terms of like creating bad habits and creating problems in the future, they could have avoided by just being more intentional in finding their way towards a better program. They would have had a lot better success. All right. So let's start with sets, right? First, let's describe what a set is for people who might not know what that is. So a set is a specified period of time that you're doing the exercise consistently. So let's say you're doing 10 times of an exercise or reps, which we'll get to and then you stop. That was a set and sets refers to repeating that over and over again or doing different sets of different exercises. Now, why is that important? It's important because defining sets helps you define reps, helps you define the length of time that you're doing the exercise. Volume. Volume and sets are very important. Like why not just do one set? Like why do I have to do sets of anything? Well, anecdotally, for decades athletes and body builders and strength athletes notice that they just they just got better results when they did multiple sets versus just one. We now have studies that support this entirely. They'll compare single set to three sets or four sets and typically, generally speaking, multiple sets performs better than just one particular set. Now, there's always, of course, there's a diminishing returns point where you can do too many and then you're not getting great results. But doing multiple sets generally is better than just doing well. Let's talk about that. Do you think when programming, choosing an exercise, we're going to choose bench press. We're going to choose squat, whatever the exercise we're doing, is there a sweet spot of how many sets that you do? Is there a number that's not enough and is there a number that is too much and is there a sweet spot there? Yeah. So studies will show that the range for total sets per body part, and I'm going to explain why there's a range here, generally is about, for most people, the sweet spot is nine to something like 18 sets total per week. So if you did three workouts divided up by those three workouts for that body part. Now, why is there such a range that's like nine to 18, right? That's double within that particular range because some exercises cause more damage to the body than others, right? 18 sets of barbell squats can feel very different than 18 sets of leg extensions. I also think there's that wide of a variance too is because of the genetic potential of the person, the client. The fitness level. Yeah, the fitness level, like some people respond really well to lots of sets, high volume, which would be on the 18, 20, 20 sets in a week type of range. Other people respond really well to a lower amount, which would be the nine sets. And think about that for a second. Nine is not very many for an entire week. That's three sets, three times a week, right? For body part. Right. So that's not all. And finding and I also, I also think for the person that is just getting started, regardless if you do well on more sets, almost everybody should start on the low end and then scale up. Of course. Yeah. There's an upper limit of what you can tolerate and then there's a sweet spot in terms of what's going to give you the best results and they're not the same. Okay. So let's say my, I'll give you an example. Let's say my body, it just responds the best. It's the healthiest. I build the most strength, the most muscle. I get the best consistent results at 12 sets per body part per week, but I can tolerate and get away with doing 20 sets. That doesn't make it better. That just means I can tolerate it. In fact, I'll probably get worse results at 20 than I did at 12. And this is important because what we tend to do, especially as fitness fanatics, is we tend to push to what we can tolerate. Yeah. Not aim for what is ideal. Yeah, but then we just get into that trap of, you know, I can tolerate it, but really am I adapting, you know, versus which adapting is really that, that's the sweet spot. You try and find that like really advantageous dose where your body's going to respond, get stronger, build muscle and it's not just, you know, trying to weather the storm and go through the gauntlet which the irony of it is like, so in the beginning, you know, you can't tolerate as many sets. And so you kind of work your way up in terms of like the dose with that. But two, the goal isn't to be able to do as many sets as possible and like the most crazy volume you can. The goal is the opposite. The opposite. The goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. So even if you are someone like Sal who can handle 20 plus sets on a single, you know, muscle group in a week, if he hasn't been training for let's say a month just because he can tolerate that, going anywhere near that doesn't make sense. Starting someone off who hasn't been training, starting them off in the nine range for the week on the lower end of the spectrum would be a much better place even if you're somebody who handles that high volume because you, again, you want to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. Yeah. So it's like, it's like, imagine you get like a dirty dish and you're washing it in about a minute. It's perfectly clean, right? But you're like, I'm going to wash this for five more minutes, right? You're wasting your time. Yeah. You're totally wasting your time. It ain't going to get any cleaner is the point. Now, that's not even a good example because it would be more like this. If I went for five minutes washing the dish, it's going to start to get dirty again. This is what happens to your body. You go past a certain point. Now you're taking away from your body's ability to adapt. Here's one of the greatest discussions that I like to have around sets. And I learned this relatively young. So when I first started working out, my first experience with, you know, programming was I had Arnold Schwarzenegger's encyclopedia body building fact that we actually have it up here in the studio. It's all covered in tape because I've read that thing probably a million times. Got it when I was, I think for my 14th birthday and Arnold loved to do or like to promote lots of exercises, maybe three sets per exercise, right? So let's say you're doing 15 sets for chest. It was probably comprised of five exercises, three sets each. And so I did that for a little while. Now later on I got my hands on different style of training. And I believe, and I know it's called German volume training. I don't know what it was called back then. I think that might have been what it was called. Yeah, GVT, the 10 sets. Yeah, but they recommended rather than doing 15 sets of, you know, total three sets of five exercises, right? They would say something like two exercises divide 15 sets or do one exercise and just do 15 sets. You're doing lots of sets of one exercise versus fewer sets of lots of exercises. And I tried that, right? I did a whole block. I think it was like a two month period of training where I cut my exercises way down and I just did more sets of fewer exercises and I got phenomenal results. I got incredibly strong and I got great results. Now that doesn't mean that that was better because it was a change. That's what got my body to respond because of course then when I went back to the old way I got a great response again. But it highlights that there's a difference between the two, right? The fewer sets, more exercises was good for the pump, good for different angles, you know, different stimulus. The fewer exercises, more sets. Boy, I practiced these exercises a lot. My CNS got lots of training in a particular movement pattern and I got really, really strong. Both extremely valuable, both things I think you should mess around with. And in fact, if you follow our maps programs, you'll see this. Some of our programs have way more sets with less exercises and other programs will have fewer sets per exercise but more exercise. We get asked a lot about what we think about GVT training, right? And I think that it's excellent. You know, the unfortunate part is a similar knock that we get with somebody who's never seen any of our programming and they buy anabolic for the first time is the simplicity of it. Oh, it seems too simple. Yeah, oh, that's it. You're only doing that many exercises. Like, then people assume it's not as good because it doesn't have a bunch of creative exercise. But the truth is, and we talk about this, especially you, Sal, all the time about the importance of practicing movements, especially the big ones, especially the ones that are more technical, like the squatting, the deadlifting, the overhead pressing, these movements are so technical. I've been doing them for 20 years and I still don't think I've perfected those movements and I'm still making tweaks on improving them. So even with all the experience that we have in there, there's so much room to improve and you get so many benefits from improving in those movements that it makes sense to do something 10 sets like that. And it seems like mundane because you're like, oh, I'm gonna come in and all I'm gonna do is what, two exercises today? And that's all I'm gonna train. But I actually love to do this. And I like to sprinkle it in, I don't know, once a quarter when I haven't trained like this in a while, that's one of the ways I'll break up our programming because we don't have a lot. I don't think we have anything that is 10 or 15 sets of one exercise. Yeah, no, but it's a great way to train. I love training this way and I love teaching clients this because sometimes two to three or four sets is not enough for somebody who you're trying to teach like a squat to. It's like the first one, they're all over the place. The second one, you finally get them the concept to do it. The third one, they're finally, they're on and now it's time to move on. It's like, no, let's stay here for a while. They haven't even gotten the groove yet. Yeah, it's just, you know, one of those things you feel that when everything sort of clicks and your body responds the way it wants to and it stabilizes you properly through all that. So there's lots of little nuances, especially in those compound exercises where I find lots of value with practicing it repeatedly. Oh yeah, I noticed when I do, if I did like 10 sets of let's say deadlifts or squats by set four or five, I actually start to get stronger. It looks, it's almost like I start off at a certain strength. I'll get stronger halfway through all those sets and then I start to get a little fatigued. It's a very interesting feeling. Now on the flip side, less sets per exercise, but more exercises. This is like you'll get when you do your bodybuilding style workout. A really good pump and a good squeeze and you're hitting different angles of the body part. So, you know, there's, there's value to that as well. Now there's more, there's, there are also advanced types of set configurations, one of them being a superset. A superset really is two exercises put together without any rest. So it counts as one big set. There's a lot of different ways to do this. You could do the same body part. So, you know, squats to lunges, for example, or you could do opposing body parts. So bicep to tricep. You can also do different body parts that aren't too close to each other. This, I don't necessarily count as a superset. I don't see tons of value in this. There's some value, but not a ton. I like to focus on either the same body part or opposing body parts within, you know, this kind of superset. So it's two exercises back to back. You could do a compound to isolation or vice versa, mess around with this. Really, really good for the pump. It's good for stamina and endurance. I like to use this personally when I'm cutting my calories and I know my strength is going down anyway. So it just gets me out of that mindset of, oh, my gosh, I'm getting weaker. I have to go lighter anyway. And this also sort of blends into another one of the acute variables with rest. So you're going to cut that rest in between, you know, jumping from this exercise to the next one. And it gives you that a completely different kind of a feel and a stimulus. It stimulates the muscles completely differently. Now, I feel like one of the important takeaways from this is that one, you, there is a sweet spot. So that nine to 20 sets in a week for a body part, right? It's kind of where you want to be. I think that's, I think we should give people an idea of what the dos and don'ts here, right? So I want to fall somewhere in there. There's, there's your sweet spot. Whatever, whatever I decide if I'm going to do and incorporate drop sets or supersets or these different types of training modalities or ways of training, I want to do that for three to four weeks, stay consistent with that. So I can then see the response that my body is getting from it and then move or change from that to a different style. Right. I like that. By the way, drop set is when you'll do a set with a particular weight without rest, take some weight off and then do another set right away. And you can do this three or four times, very advanced drop sets, pyramids. There's a, there's a lot of different styles this way. And I think, I think for someone who's learning how to program them, the, there's, you know, the first way to do that is to stick with that. Yeah, stick with the basics. Yeah, stick with that for a while. And then you can start to play with all these different techniques in there. And the one thing that the one pitfall that I think I see that's most common is just falling in love with one. And then that then adopting that as like the way you train always. So that's the thing you got to caution everybody that's listening is like, okay, so I've never tried that before the guys talked about GVT training. I'm going to go do a bench press for 10 sets on my next workout and squats, 10 sets. And that's all I'm going to do. And they say great results. Oh my God, the body responds like your experience. Yeah, and now you're stuck. Now you're doing that for the next six months to a year because you got such great results in that first month. And the same rules apply that we always talk about, you know, one of the best things you could ever do for yourself is what it, whatever it is you're not doing right now. So then you move out of that and you, and you adopt other ways to, to stack your sets. Totally. Now let's talk about reps, right? So a wrap is literally one full completion of an exercise. In other words, if I'm doing a squat, going down, coming all the way up. That's one rep, doing a curl, curling the weight up, bringing it back down. That's a repetition. Now, of course, reps are important because that's what gets the muscle to move with resistance. And that's what sends the muscle building stimulus. Now one of the bigger debates in fitness for a long time, this is actually one of the debates that have been around for a long time, probably since the beginning, not so much today because we have lots of studies around it, but definitely I remember when I was a kid, this was a big debate was, what's the best rep range, right? How many reps builds the most muscle? How many reps burns the most body fat, right? If I'm a strength athlete, what do I train in? If I'm a bodybuilder, what do I train in? And it was always this debate back and forth in terms of what's the best rep range. And I think it's safe to say that, especially if you look at the studies, anywhere between maybe one rep to 30 reps, I would say, in the context of resistance training. In other words, lifting weights or using resistance in a way to build muscle, you're fine. One to 30, there's value in all those. Once you go over 30, it starts to become more cardio-like and obviously you can't go below one rep. So they all have some value. Now, which one builds the most muscle, right? Here's where the studies get confusing. If you read studies, and studies are typically done nine weeks or 12 weeks long at the most, when they compare groups of people, what they tend to find in these studies, they tend to, because some are conflicting, they tend to find that eight to 12 reps builds the most muscle in people. Now, here's the problem with that, is they're short studies and they're not showing that a person adapts to a particular rep range and then what do you do from there, right? Eight to 12 definitely will in a head-to-head, but if you keep going down that path long enough and you never get out of eight to 12 reps, your body will stop responding. And what'll get your body to continue responding is to go to a different rep range, three to five or 15 to 20. Here's the truth about the rep ranges. Like I said, one to 30, they all build muscle. This is what's cool about them. They all build muscle, they all burn body fat. All of them and they all burn body fat. Forget the calories burned while doing your workout. This is such a dumb thing that people look at. How many calories did I burn while I did my workout? It's such a nominal number that means almost nothing when you consider the context of your metabolism. What rep range is going to affect my metabolism in a way that makes my metabolism burn the most calories? Well, that's the rep range that's gonna build the most muscle. So the question is, which rep range builds the most muscle? Muscle, the one that you're probably not used to. Getting the rep range you're not used to and that's where you're gonna see some of the best results. This is probably one of the hardest hurdles to get people to understand because of all the camps that we have in fitness. You alluded to it already. We have the body building camp. We have the strong man camp, power lifter camp, endurance, Spartan. I mean, you have all these camps and then there's studies and research around what rep range or sets, whatever we're talking about is most ideal for that client and then it's, well, whatever I identify with. So that's how I train all the time. I mean, I fell into this trap. I fell into this trap as a young kid thinking that if I wanted to build muscle, I gotta stay in the six rep range and I never moved out of it forever. Then I got stuck in the body building mentality. Oh, I wanna sculpt and build the body. They say hypertrophy, eight to 12 reps is the best range to stay in and so then I stayed in that range forever. But the truth is, just like I was talking about with the sets, whatever rep range you decide you wanna be in for whatever goals, stay in that for three to six weeks and then move out of it, regardless of what the goal is and the idea is to move through all those different rep ranges so the body is constantly having to adapt and change. Yeah, and one of the main things, one of the things I saw a lot too with like female clients coming in was just the exposure towards the lower rep range was something that, I know based off of a lot of marketing out there and a lot of programs that people have subscribed to in the past or let's say like a lot of the videos that were like being pushed out there were very high in the rep range because you wanted to keep those lean tone muscles and so this was something that was very much marketed to forever which then taking a female client and then putting them through like anywhere from like one to five reps was like a totally different experience and their body just responded right away because it was just something they had never even considered doing. Oh, this was one of the greatest selling points for me personally for this all happening. I mean, almost eight years ago now Sal sent me over Maps Anabolic and the what him and Doug had created and at that point in my career this was something that I had figured out by now that man, one of my favorite things to do to a female client was make them train in a strength phase. Once I got past the mental hurdle that this is not going to make you bulky and huge that this is the best thing for your body their bodies responded so well for that exact reason that you're saying so the idea of coming out with a program where you started everybody in a strength phase I just thought was brilliant. You figure 65 to 80% of most trainers clients are females. That's one of the biggest hurdles that you have to come over is convincing them to strength train. So I know that okay, one of the easiest ways I can start to show my client great results immediately is by probably putting them in a phase they've never trained in and that was one of the brilliant things that I saw in Maps Anabolic I said, oh my God, this is so such the right way to start 90% of your clients. Yeah, I had a lot of I mean countless female clients so I can't seem to tone my legs or I can't seem to tone my arms and then I would put them in low reps and why are we doing low reps? So watch what happens. They come to me afterwards and oh my gosh I've never been this toned. What's happening like you're building? That's what's happening means build muscle. Yeah, and you and you've never lifted you know heavy before the opposite is true too like so my guys who never want my guys that want to get big and strong never wanted to do higher definitely would never do 20 exactly and what that's why I love you know stan efforting is known for this and at least on social media he's he's one of those guys that touts 20 rep squats because he never did him before. Yeah, nobody does that you know what I'm saying but he's he's strong as an ox and I tell you right now if you've never trained 20 set 20 sets of fricking 20 reps excuse me 20 reps of squats watch how your legs respond they will blow up from that but there's this idea that oh well that's for leaning out or that's for girls to lift that many repetitions so this idea of a rep range fits this demographic of people is so silly and the truth is most people never train in that rep range and there's still tremendous benefits in that high rep range for building strength and muscle and if you've never done it watch what happens. One of the most important things I think to understand about rep ranges isn't necessarily what the rep ranges do for your body and you know and high reps versus low reps and that's that's valuable but here's the most valuable thing is the mindset that you go into when you're training higher reps versus lower reps it's very different right so if I'm going in to do a set of squats for five repetitions it's a different mindset than when I'm going to do a set of squats for 20 reps right when I'm doing five reps obviously the weight is going to be much much much heavier I'm bracing I'm holding my breath at the bottom of the squat it's all about driving with my CNS and hyping myself up and staying tight and very very different feeling when I go to do 20 reps I'm controlling my breathing I'm trying to get a good pump I'm squeezing at the top the burn is totally different it's a totally different feeling and so it requires a different mindset. Well this is where I think tempo plays such a huge factor with reps is when you're doing something you're like you said lifting really heavy it tends to be a faster more explosive type of tempo because you've got to move that weight when you're going for something that's more of a pump it's the slower more controlled type of tempo where you're trying to feel the exercise and slow it down and the slower the more time and attention the more blood you're going to pump into the muscle and so it lends itself well so this is where you start to see all the different 4-2-2, the 1-1-1 and like what are all these Explain that what do those numbers mean what does 4-2-2 mean right So 4 would be the negative or eccentric portion of the exercise 2 would be the isometric contraction which is the part where you hold it either at the bottom of a bench press the bottom of a squat and then the 1-2 seconds would then be on the positive So 4 would be 4 seconds down 2 seconds at the bottom 2 seconds up So whenever you see any kind of workout program I mean first you'll understand in every rep there are 3 portions of that exercise concentric, eccentric and isometric so basically the positive is what everybody would know know it, the negative and then the hold of the portion of the exercise and all 3 of those they hold tremendous value and all 3 of those I would say you put more specific emphasis on the portion of that based off of what you're trying to accomplish Oh you can manipulate all 3 like one of my favorite things to do for example I like to do this with squats is I'll manipulate the hold so I'll get into a squat and I'll do a 4-second negative and then I'll hold the bottom for 4 seconds or 5 seconds and then I'll come up for example and that's if I want to work on the bottom portion of my squat, increase the stability there you can manipulate all 3 of those by the way in a particular rep and make the exercise feel completely different and that's why with beginners I like to make sure like the tempo is like a 4-2-2 or something that's nice and slow and you're really emphasizing each one of those contractions because you know it's all about control stability it's about like organizing your body to get through the mechanics of it and so you know the intention of it is everything going into the exercise in order to learn it properly and get your body to respond properly but then you can start having fun with it and you know like it cut out like part of the timing for concentric and so now I've said I'm more explosive in that rep and you know and the opposite of that where I'm just like you know really grinding through the negative which really breaks down the muscle in a different way and so you know you can have a lot of fun by just manipulating each one of those this was one of my favorite things to teach it still is because I would of all the things we're talking about today I would say it's the one that's least manipulated or played with oh yeah everybody's the same tempo I mean even Doug was bringing I mean when we were talking about this episode and we were putting together he goes you know I really want you guys to get into tempo he goes I even as much knowledge as he has and being around us and all experience he's got it's that's still something that hasn't fully registered for him how he plays with it and there's a reason for this because one it's not talked about very often and there are these tempos that are attached to these avatars or types of training modalities right so I'm a powerlifter it's explosive it's you know quick and fast like Olympic lifting powerlifting is that way I'm a bodybuilder it's slow and controlled and feel the squeeze and so you have that muscle tension yes you have these these these avatars or characters that we identify with and we see that's the way they train and so we just fall right into that whatever feel and then once you do that for a long enough period of time your body gets good at that tempo and so you want to be good at all your exercises I want to be good at my squat I want to be good at my bench press so you don't manipulate that you know this is the and a lot of times people aren't even doing the most ideal one for what they're trying to accomplish like there's research around what the hypertrophy ideal tempo is for and it's that 4-2-2 I always tell people that's why it was one of my favorite things to manipulate because a lot of people want to build muscle and burn body fat and train for hypertrophy and I go in and I go like okay let's see if you actually do a 4-2-2 and very few people nobody does a 4-2-2 no you never see it and if you'd never train that way one it's going to be a lot harder so you're going to have to reduce the weight which is tough for a lot of the people with the ego that want to lift the weight they were lifting but talk about a quick easy way to get your body to change because you've gotten so used to training in this one specific tempo and now there's some basic you know rules to the different types of tempos for what you're trying to accomplish but again it's just like the other thing we were talking about with sets and reps or at sets is that whatever it is that you're consistently doing one of the best things you can do is get something different so if you're the power lifter explosive guy who's doing a 1-1-1 all the time type of tempo one of the best things that guy can do is go do a bodybuilding and the same the reverse is true for the guy who does the bodybuilding right now he's more connected to his muscles you know there's just so much carryover and benefit for both like even if you're a bodybuilder like that avoids a lot of that like heavy you know loading in 1-5 rep range well you're missing out on stretching the capacity even further for recruiting more muscle fibers so you know there's just a lot of carryover between each one of these types of ways of manipulating the tempo by the way that middle number where there's that pause typically refers to the bottom of a repetition although you can do an isometric portion of a rep at any portion of a repetition the top halfway through there's lots of different ways to manipulate a rep to work different you know different areas of the rep and then that of course will train different and I love to manipulate that part when I have a client who has a really hard time connecting to a muscle right so you alluded to the squat and holding on there love that for somebody who can't feel it in their glutes every time they squat all I feel in my quad is well I'll get them down in that isometric position and then try and get them to think about driving through their glutes and focusing on that so I extend that period of time and that's great for getting them to feel that and then there's also benefits to it because they never train that way they're probably going to build more muscle because of that totally you also look at your rep form and the compare perfect reps to loose reps now typically you're going to get more value out of really good perfect reps however there is some value in loose reps there is now I'll save that for advanced lifters like you seen advanced lifter doing something like a push press or a cheek curl is there value in that some there is some value for most people you want your repetitions to look very very clean very perfect just generally speaking you'll get better results that way there's also things like forced reps this is where you have a partner help you squeeze out more reps after you can't do any more repetitions there's partial reps where you can't do the same amount of weight for five more reps because it's too heavy now so you do five half reps that's part partial reps those are all advanced techniques and I'm going to be quite honest there's a little bit of value that you can find in advanced lifters occasionally but for most people if you avoid those you're fine not only you find you're probably better off I think for most people incorporating things like forced reps and partial reps and going to failure will probably get you to your goals slower well the thing you got to be careful is the same thing that I brought up before is let's say someone's listening right now and they're like oh I've never tried loose reps or partial reps and then they start or going to failure and then they start to add that to their routine and whoa the body responds well yeah responds because you weren't trained you never trained this way and now you've had it the thing you got to be careful then is falling in love with that now oh I always do these types of partial reps or forced reps or going to failure because my body responded that one time when I did it and that's you got to just be careful of any of these techniques that you're using any of these rep ranges any of these sets that you're sticking to you want to stick to it for an extended period of time where you can actually track and see how the body is responding we tend to say somewhere between that three to six week range and then move away from it so whatever you're messing with in the rep range the same thing holds true here if I'm going to follow this 12 rep range tempo looks like this I'm going to do that for a good three to four weeks after that then I'm going to move out of that to keep my body progressing now I will say though partial reps forced reps going to failure for most people you're probably better off avoiding those those are advanced techniques yeah and just not because you know and it's not because they're advanced and you just not good enough to do them it's just too much it'll get your body you will not progress faster if anything you might slow your progress down the last one is rest periods and what's funny is for the average person this is the most controversial and it's the most controversial because this is what you tend to hear from people whenever you tell them to rest in between sets I used to get this with clients all the time well why do I need to not do anything can I do something while I'm sitting here as if the rest period is a waste of time or as if I have to rest here's another one clients would tell me I can keep going I don't need to rest no no no you're not resting because you have to yeah you're resting because the rest is as important as the active part of the workout which is the reps and the sets now why is that so important well here's why when you're doing resistance training you should be your goal should be to try to build muscle speed up the metabolism of course the side effect of that is to become leaner essentially make your body more bulletproof and make it easier for you to stay lean and of course when you build muscle you look better better hormones that whole deal well why do we have to rest if we don't rest we start to move into an energy system in other words your body starts to use energy that actually does not encourage muscle building but rather encourages endurance stamina which is fine if that's what you're looking for but if you always train for endurance you'll actually teach your body to lose muscle because it becomes advantageous for your body to burn less calories become more efficient and you don't need strength to have lots of endurance the evidence is in endurance athletes look at endurance athletes they're very small little body fat little muscle as well in fact very very little muscle on most endurance athletes resting means when you rest that you're burning a type of energy and there's a type of energy system primarily driven by something called ATP we don't need to get all complicated with it but it's a very quick burning explosive form of energy but it also burns out very quickly so if you do a set of let's say 12 repetitions that's the energy that you're using then you rest allow it to replenish and then use it again utilizing that form of energy encourages muscle building if I don't rest and I just do set after set after set after set I'll burn that energy out and then I'll type tap into something called glycogen now I'm just training for endurance that's fine if you want to do that but if you're doing set after set after set with little to no rest you're essentially doing cardio with weights well like like the sets and reps there there is a spectrum here but there is still a range right and moving out of that range on either end of the spectrum is not ideal and it's going to fall somewhere between 30 seconds on the low end up to three minutes on on the high yes and everything in between there has value to all pursuits right building muscle building strength building stamina and there all those things are all these all those rest periods contribute to those goals and the same if you haven't picked up on this theme yet it's the same rules apply as the other ones whichever way you've been training all the time the one that you never do or rarely do is probably one of the most ideal for whatever your pursuit is whether it is to lean out build muscle build strength stamina whatever your goal is the thing you're not doing most often is probably the thing that's going to benefit your goal the most I think this particular one really highlights the intention of how you structure your workout more than the rest it's really one of those things that as a a trainer trying to like articulate this to clients because that was such a a common theme was I need to be doing something because you know I'm here I'm working out you know what else what else what else or even I've seen some trainers apply you know rubber bands in between exercises which you know active rest is what they call that which is total garbage but you know you need to allow your body to go through that specific energy exchange and to to make sure that the the strength part of it is the focus of it that we're we're literally telling in program our our body to respond you know according to what that what that demand looks like and how we're manipulating the the central nervous system specifically and focusing on that so yes it's important it's important to rest and then you know refocus and then apply that very specific energy we I would also get this comments like well when I burn more calories if I do stuff while I'm supposed to be resting again very small is a very very short-sighted way of viewing exercise technically would you burn more calories if you didn't do any rest within that workout you would does it make a difference in terms of fat loss yeah it does in the negative because again you're not encouraging your metabolism to speed up the same you're actually encouraging your metabolism to start to become more efficient this happens very quickly within a month this will start to happen if your goal is fat loss and it's long-term fat loss and it's easier fat loss you want a faster metabolism forget the calories you burn during your workout it's a complete waste of time to do that that's not important unless you're doing it for like four weeks like within a four week period yeah it might make sense after that you start to adapt and then it starts to kind of become negative now you brought up active rest right so people like well I don't want to just sit here on the bench and rest I want to do something okay I have to do something you can stretch in between sets now this may be beneficial for muscle building I don't recommend this if you're a performance athlete static stretching may actually reduce activation it may actually increase risk of injury but if you're more into a bodybuilding workout long stretches in between sets might actually help with muscle building at the very least it won't hurt so if you're one of those people like I got to do something fine you're working out your chest hold the stretch in between sets so I want to give a hack right now for the people that are consistently lifting a guaranteed way to break through your training plateau that you potentially might have right now so and it's literally and it's one of my favorite things to help somebody who's already been lifting advanced lifter who comes to me and hires me to help them out do not change any of your exercise program like whatever routine you're following stick exactly to that literally manipulate your reps and your rest period that's it and pick so go to your reps first choose the the rep rate we gave you a rep range where to fall in between South said up to as high as 30 I think 20 is fine but very few people go even above that most people don't even go to 20 so somewhere in that five to 20 range I always like them to go to the the most extreme opposite of where you're at so unless you fall right in the middle of the 12 to 15 rep range then either direction is fine but if you're somebody who tends to lift low reps all time go to the opposite of the spectrum go to the the high rep range like the 20 rep range if you're somebody who tends to go more 20 rep range go to the low rep range so choose that so choose a rep range that is is vastly different than what you normally do and then the same thing goes for rest periods if you're somebody who tends to sit and get on your phone and give yourself long you know power lifter type of rest periods where they're three minutes and sometimes beyond cut it down to 30 seconds till one minute if you're the busy body never sits still super sec circuit type training person who rarely ever rest longer than 30 seconds to a minute go the other extreme and go three minutes do those two things don't change your exercises don't change anything about your watch what happens watch how your body rest and stick to that for three to four weeks I guarantee you breakthrough now here's one more thing too is that traditionally long rest periods are combined with low reps and heavy weight and traditionally short rest periods are combined with high reps and lighter weight and I know why right this makes sense right so if you're going low reps heavy weight the goals lift as much as possible so it makes sense to have long rest periods and if you're going light with higher reps maybe your goals to get a good pump and so the goal so it makes sense to have short rest periods because that also contributes to the pump but is this a rule written in stone now you could do high reps and have long rest periods you could do low reps and have short rest periods I do this all the time I done this before with heavy squats were and by the way I can't go as heavy because I'm not resting as long but I'm still training in the five rep range in between sets or I'll do high reps and do like a four minute rest in between sets it's a wonderful combination so it's not a written in stone rule that because you do see that in workouts you typically see the heavy weight low reps with the long you can mix them up and it's it's totally fine you get great results you know doing that so there you have it your sets reps and what was the last rest periods there you go those three things very important manipulate them everything you need to know about those by the way if you like our information and you want more information on exercise nutrition even information for personal trainers head over to mindpumpfree.com we got lots of free stuff for you you can also find all of us on Instagram so you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin me at Mind Pump Salon Adam at Mind Pump Adam