 Our next caller is Aria from Mexico. Hey Aria, how can we help you? Hi, so I am a gardener. I live in a community where we do a lot of work outside, gardening, landscaping, farming. And I started lifting weights in January after a seven-year pause from training. I used to cycle a lot before that. And mid-February, I started Maps Anabolic, and I felt great because I wasn't doing anything outside. I was just working out. And now that gardening season started, I am spending like over five hours outside, waiting, like bending over in the ground and shoveling stuff and lifting heavy things. So my lower back feels sore, and I have had a hard time squatting and like seeing gains in that side. Now I'm on the third phase of Anabolic, and my upper body feels great. I feel stronger. I feel better. My metabolism is better, but just my, like my squat. And my deadlift is all right, but my squat is sick. I had to lower my weight a lot, the amount of weight that I lift. So I was able to do the other stuff that I do. So I still have this goal of getting stronger, move better. And I was going to start Maps Anabolic again. So I wonder if you guys can help me give me advice on how to face my workouts better or organize them better, or if maybe there's a program that I can do instead of Anabolic to support my lifestyle. Performance. Yeah. Mass performance would be good, but, you know, I'm going to go a little, and we'll get back to that, but I'm going to go a little bit deeper with this. So, you know, and I've heard this for many people in different ways. I've heard people say things like, I just had a baby. I don't have a lot of sleep. So my recovery is off. How do I change my workouts? I've heard people say, I just got a new construction job, or, you know, there's some kind of life challenge that is now adding to the stress that's on their body. And so their current workout now is too much. And in every single case, my answer is the same. Modify the intensity in the volume of your workout. Okay. So if you're finding that what you're doing now in your workouts might be too much, if your low back is too tired, too sore, reduce the intensity, go lighter. And the third option would be to change the exercises. So squats tend to require a lot of low back stability and strength. You can try moving to a split stance exercises like lunges or split stance squats or Bulgarian split stance squats that tend to put less pressure on the low back. But at the end of the day, you modify your workout to meet your lifestyle because obviously this is something you can't change. This is your livelihood. So this work takes a bit of a priority, but then change your workout. It might even mean that you do less workouts. Now, are you going to get less results? Not necessarily. Your work is a lot of activity. If anything, it might be a great combination and you might actually see better results. I'm going to push you in the direction of performance and the reason why is because I've actually had clients in this exact type of a situation and what tends to happen all the time. Okay. So especially maps in a block. Maps in a block is incredible at speeding your metabolism up, building good strength. But a lot of that strength is in the sagittal plane. You're facing the same direction all the time and you get really strong in that one direction. When you're gardening, you tend to be hinging over, rotating to the left, rotating to the right, kind of sideways sometimes. And there's not a lot of that focused in maps in a block where maps performance, most of that is focused. Sal pointed out unilateral work. Well, that's inside maps performance. Rotational strength, that's in maps performance. And also mobility, right? So another thing that causes the low back to tighten up, somebody has to bend over to be down gardening when they can't really get all the way down and squat because they don't have the hip or ankle mobility to squat and do the work down there. The stuff that's in maps performance around mobility is also going to help you there. And then where I totally agree with Sal is that you for now should back off the intensity. If the work inside the garden is fatiguing the back and then you go into maps anabolic and you lifting heavy is really getting you, I would definitely agree with him. But I definitely would put some energy and focus on mobility and rotational strength. I wanted to totally echo both in terms of what your focus could be now because it is a lot of volume that you're noticing with demand for stability in your lower back. And so first thing is we can kind of pull back from that a little bit but also reinforce a lot of the stabilizing muscles to support yourself in those positions. And so like maps performance is a great job of that of addressing a lot of mobility and bringing it down to like the joint function and the strength and support around the joints which I think will be massively beneficial and felt. So to reduce the load and the demand like stressing out your lower back on some level but strengthening and supporting it and building up your core strength is going to be a big component. Aria, we're going to send you maps performance so you can follow that program but also pay attention because it still may be too much intensity and volume. There are three foundational workouts and maps performance. There's nothing wrong with only taking two of those workouts and not doing the third one and you can pick which one you want to do to reduce the intensity. So if you follow the program and you still find you're having issues with recovery just reduce the volume to the point where it starts to complement your lifestyle. Awesome, thank you so much you guys. Yeah, I have been doing only two days a week of maps anabolic because I couldn't otherwise I felt the symptoms of overtraining. I couldn't sleep or I was just completely exhausted so that's what I've been doing and also changed the trigger sessions for mobility work. Oh good, very smart. Do you take Cray team by any chance? I don't. Give it a shot, see what happens. That should help you with some of your strength and even recovery. Cray team is a very safe and effective supplement for most people. They'll get some great returns from taking that. And I recommend this to you because it sounds like you're following good programming and you got a good head on your shoulders. Of course supplements can't. They're not going to be more important than nutrition and training but Cray team should help you out in this case. That's a great point. I didn't even think about asking you nutrition stuff is I would also pay attention to your protein intake. Do you track at all how much protein you intake daily? I don't track but I used to be vegan and that stuff so now I'm just focused on eating meat at least four times a week and having a supplement with protein powder. Yeah I would actually... I feel like I'm low. Yeah I would track for a week or so because that could have something to do with your recovery also. So if you are not getting adequate protein in for your weight and your size and your activity level that could also be what's hindering your recovery. So take a look at that maybe spend a week and just eat normal and track it and see what you're coming in at and if it's significantly lower than what your body needs then that could have a lot to do with your recovery too. Yeah good point. Awesome. Alright thank you. Thank you guys. No problem. That was great that you went the creatine thing because I actually... it didn't even don on me to ask her which I know better because you know almost every female client that I trained almost always under eight protein and if you're coming off being a vegan never eating meat and she just... Four times a week. Yeah four times a week. Four times a day you should probably be eating protein. I tell you what though you know it's funny when you talk about having a demanding job and then you're training on top of it and at first it's really hard. I'll tell you what I've trained a lot of blue-collar workers. The body has a tremendous ability and it takes time but has a tremendous ability to adapt to workload and over time you know look I tell you what what I would go and work with my dad in the summers because it was in the summer and during the rest of the year I wasn't helping him I was sore and it sucked for like a month and then as soon as my body started to adapt I had to go back to school. I mean these guys doing it all the time like you know it doesn't... I mean yeah they get tired but it doesn't break them down like it does when you don't do it often so you know slowly over time even five hours of gardening your body starts to get to the point where it doesn't really cause much problem. Well especially when you're doing it correctly and you're supported. Yes. So that's why I like the whole performance and the angle that Justin was talking about is like supporting the joints because that's where I would get like chronic pain from clients is if you're like you know they're fatigued and tired and so they're like rounded over doing things versus like in a good deep squat it's supported position while you're gardening. They're resting position and I think too like again like I don't know how long she can hold a squatter if it feels like you know it's a position she's comfortable and can rest and that versus you know reaching over the whole time that would be something to definitely address.