 Next question is from Eli Hall double zero. Can you make gains on a three day a week workout schedule? Oh 80% of you listening right now at least 80% of you listening right now will make the best gains on a three day a week workout schedule a full-body three day a week routine for most people and compare it to all the other body parts split and five day and six day a week routines 80% percent or more of you will do better on the full-body three day a week routine and I remember when this became glaringly obvious to me it was again later in my career and I figured this out for my clients well before I figured it out for myself I for some reason and I think a lot of trainers you know fall prey to this you think that you're different well it doesn't really apply to me you know it's not like my clients or whatever but I would get these advanced clients that would hire me especially as it became more experienced and I had good referrals and people who were experienced who had good you know exercise knowledge would come hire me and they'd been working out already and oftentimes I would start them on a three day a week routine and one of the reasons why I would do that was my schedule was kind of full and it was it was better for me to train more people three days a week than it was to train less people at five days a week and the other part it was I I had this philosophy where let me try this and see how this works if doesn't work then we'll try something else and every single time the three day a week full body routine produced the best gains that they'd ever seen and when I finally applied it to myself was when I looked at old bodybuilding and muscle building publications I mean old way back with the you know the turn of the century that you know in you know the early 1900s and 1920s 1930s back when strong men and strength athletes you know didn't take steroids or supplements or anything they all worked out this way you know Steve Reeves worked out this way John Grimmick worked out this way look them up you'll see for yourself what they look like these guys were natural for most of their career so I remember I applied it to myself and I'm glad I applied it to myself later in my career because at some point after after you train for about six seven years consistently you know right away when something works and I remember the first time I did it I got stronger right away and I was like holy cow this is the way most people work yeah it's just funny because you I fell into that trap of more is better more is better and that that was just something that was always reiterated to me from my coaches and you know like whatever work you put in you're gonna you're gonna get back tenfold and so you know to fall back I would always kind of fall back into this three day a week regimen because what I did in between we have to differentiate between like the workouts of this three days versus what you do in between and I'm still working out technically you know the days in between but it's it's all to foster recovery and so it's a very different mentality and it's it's very different exercises and movements but in terms of the overall intensity of you know a demanding workout you know keeping that three days with space in between tend to provide the best results for me and my clients anytime I'd add four or five it was in excess well I think there's a there's several reasons for that I first of all I wish I would have figured this out earlier oh me too I mean I spent the first decade of lifting weights you know following every you know exercise program that was in muscle and fitness magazine or you know like Justin's approach which was more is better and just getting you know training intensely and more days and double days and thinking that the more I train the more muscle I should build right and the truth is one of the best things I ever did was start scaling back and go in the other direction and a couple things happens and why why I think that one when you run like a five or six or seven day weeks type of split and you split up your muscle groups in order to hit each muscle two to three times a week you have to be very consistent you miss one of those days and it throws that off completely so when you run a full-body routine and it's only three days a week one it's much easier to do three days a week as far as making it to the gym or your or whatever then it is five or six so and if you were to technically miss one day you still got two full-body workouts which hits every muscle group at least twice in that week so and even if you only got one day that week at least you would tell you touched every single muscle group which for me and and when I looked back at like my you know training consistency it was just inevitable this happens I go for two or three weeks and then I'd have a you know inconsistent week and then some one muscle group would suffer you know and you know and normally what suffers is a thing that I didn't like doing the most right that's what we always going to do then you when I get back in the rhythm again I go back to the things I like doing and then that that muscle group that I'm lagging in continues to suffer so I think that's one of the reasons there's another reason when you have to train a muscle group three times in a week because you're doing full-body it also forces you whether you like it or not eventually to kind of scale back on the intensity you learn your lesson pretty quickly of overdoing it when you know you got to come back two days later and touch that muscle group again so I think it naturally forces people to reduce the intensity which is another thing that I think is over applied and definitely for myself and I think anybody in this room could attest to you know trant chasing that intensity and kind of crush the muscle group in the gym you just can't do that and get away with that when you're training full-body three times a week so I think there's a lot more than just oh what it does for for volume and what it does for frequency I think it naturally you know benefits a lot of people for those reasons too and so I think that's a lot of the success from there's one more thing I'd like to add and this is just my own theory but you know when you when you work out you get a localized muscle building effect that's that's directly related to the muscle that you're working so if I work out my right bicep I'm gonna get a loud muscle building signal that's applied to my right bicep however there's another interesting phenomena that happens you also get this systemic milder muscle building effect that kind of happens throughout the whole body okay they've proven this is studies they've actually done studies where they have people work out one arm and most of the muscle gains and strength things happen in that arm but the other arm mysteriously gains a little bit of muscle a little bit of strength kind of weird for people who are advanced who are listening right now who've been working out for a long time you know you've probably experienced this where you you you do barbell squats if you've never done them before you start introducing them in your legs start to get stronger and bigger you start to notice gains in your upper body too in your arms what does that have to do yeah what does this have to do with my arms and my shoulders I'm just put a back you know bar on my back and I did squats now full body workout sends a very loud first off you're all this there's a lot of direct muscle building signals happening all the muscle groups that you're working but because you're doing the whole body in a workout you also enhance this very loud total body muscle building signal and I think that complements the muscle building signals that are more direct I think when you combine the two you maximize the muscle building signal then you take the next day off allow things to happen to build a little bit of recovery then you go back and you do it again and to this day till this day now there's lots of variations of this so if you follow any of our maps programs all the muscle building ones you'll find that almost all of them follow this kind of structure there's three main workouts two to three main workouts with other stuff in between whether it be trigger sessions focus sessions or mobility work but generally the meat potatoes the program is typically two or three days of full body workouts and the reason why we did that is it just works it works for most people so and by the way right now this is how I'm training right now this is how I almost always train if I have extra time I do mobility work on the other days I do hikes and walks and that kind of stuff but my routine the exercises may change the reps may change the tempo may change maybe the goal may change but my basic structure that I've followed now for well over half of my lifting career is a three-day a week full body routine by the way when Doug hired me when I first met Doug years ago in his 40s he had experience working out he had lots of experience lifting weights on his own he followed lots of other types of programming when he hired me here was a guy not a beginner got some experience already relatively fit hard gainer fit the classic profile of a hard gainer I trained him two days a week full body two days a week and in his late 40s made the best gains of his entire life fact we have a before and after picture that if you if you scour his Instagram mine pump Doug or yeah mine pump Doug you'll be able to find it made the best gains of his life two days a week not even three