 If you did a study, and they don't really do studies like this, but if you did a study that followed someone, not for 12 weeks or 16 weeks, but for a year or two years, and you compared people who did just 10, you know, eight to 10 reps, right? Versus people that went through different phases of all of these reps. What you would find is the person that trained for four weeks in a rep range and four weeks in another one, whatever, over time got better, more consistent results in both strength and muscle. Now, if you just do head to head short study, yes, some will build a little more muscle, some build a little more stamina, some build a little bit more strength, but over time, they all contribute, and it's in all way, and look, anybody who's ever done this knows this. You stay in one thing for six to eight weeks, you switch over, it's like, boom, my body's responding again. Oh my God, this is amazing. And that's the beauty, that's the thing you wanna take advantage of. All right, everybody, last time I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna give away another super bundle because we still have that crazy sale that I'm gonna really have a meeting with my marketing team and figure out what the hell they were thinking. Anyway, last time I'm gonna give away the super bundle, it's the biggest bundle we have. It includes Maps Antibolic, Maps Performance, Maps Aesthetic, Maps Prime, and Maps Anywhere, okay? Five programs for free, but you gotta leave a comment in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode, subscribe to this channel, and turn on notifications, and if we pick your comment, you'll get free access to all those programs. All right, so what's the crazy sale I'm talking about? 50% off everything. All Maps programs, every individual Maps program, right now, is 50% off. These are the final hours the sale ends June 1st. So if you're watching this, write one, release it. Good job, you're lucky. You can still take advantage of this. Here's what you gotta do if you wanna get that 50% off. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, click on the Maps program that you want, and then use the code MD2022. By the way, that code can be used repeatedly. So if you buy one program for 50% off, you wanna get another one, use it again, you can get them all, it'll work for every single one. All right, here comes the show. All right, so check this out. All rep ranges, build muscle, and burn body fat. Now the key is knowing when to use the rep ranges, how to use the rep ranges, and what they do for your body, but they all work. Coming in with the controversial heat. Yeah. My way is the highway sale. I know, there's always discussion around this. Like what's the best rep range for burning body fat and for building muscle? And we will get into the kind of general breakdown strength training rep ranges. And I wanna say that because of course, at some point, a rep range can get so high that it no longer is really strength training. It's like just straight endurance training. So we're talking about the strength training rep ranges, which are like one rep to like 20 reps, maybe a little more. Well, doesn't this fit into those avatars of like I identify as a power lifter, I identify as a bodybuilder, I identify as like an endurance athlete and like we can almost like completely shuttle them into these rep ranges and that's the only place they stay. It does. It's also a great conversation to follow up. You recently addressing the forum and how people love to attach themselves to a study. And so, and that's how we got to these like rep ranges that like this is what it's for. This rep range to this rep range is for this and for these type of people. But the truth is how you open this is that all of these rep ranges burn body fat and build muscle and whichever one that you've been doing for a significant amount of time, it starts to lose its value for whatever reason that you are doing it. So, and I fell into this trap. I remember as a young kid, like, I mean, I was all about building muscle. I cared about how I looked. That was what I was. So you did the mass building rep ranges, right? Yeah, it was either mass building or hypertrophy is all I would never consider high up because at that time, especially back then, there was so much information on like magazines and stuff that were gearing, you know, if you were 15 to 20 rep ranges, that was, that was for girls. That was for someone they wanted to tone or lean out. And I was a skinny kid. So with a no desire, like I would never think to do the 15 to 20 rep range. That's, that's ridiculous. Like I have to put on all this muscle. And so, and this is what all the studies say. Studies are showing that this rep range builds the most amount of mass or puts on the most amount of muscle. So I would stay in that, not realizing that my body had gotten so adapted to training in that rep range that the returns I was seeing were very minimal. Yeah, all rep ranges build muscle and burn body fat, but they all also become stale at some point. And they all, and there's some crossover by the way, we're going to give some, some kind of ranges, but there's, it's not as specific as we're kind of kind of laid out. But for the, you know, for the sake of this show, we had to be a bit specific, but they all have value. You just kind of know when to use them. And in my opinion, more importantly, understand the mindset going into each rep range and how you approach the rep range when you work out, because they feel different and they do require a different mindset. You have to have a bit of a different, the way you go, India workouts different when you train, for example, for three reps, then we need trained for let's say 15 reps. And that makes a big difference. And of course, knowing when to do one or the other. I think that's such a great point because the first trap we fall into is identifying with a type of group and this is how they train. So therefore I train this way. So I stay in this rep range. And then I come across some information where somebody educates me a little further on it and goes like, you really should move out of that rep range, even if this is your specific goal. And then you do that, but you've done that other rep range and identify with that group of people for so long, whether it be a power lifter, a bodybuilder, an athlete, whatever. And so you train like them still in the new rep range. So there's kind of two things that you have to figure out here. Not only do you have to figure out like, oh, I don't wanna get stuck in this way of training all the time, even if my goal is specifically to look like a bodybuilder or be a power lifter or be an athlete, just because that's what this research says is this is the best area for me to be in. I wanna move out of that. But I also need to know that when I move out of that, to your point that my mindset needs to change because the adaptation is different and the focus is different. Everything from the tempo to the intent that I move the weight should shift. Expectations is how I'm gonna feel. That was hard. So I was trapped first for a really long time in what we were talking about in this like putting size on. Then I finally move into the higher rep range, but I'm still thinking, lifting the same way that I would for at rest. I mean, in between, right? That's a really hard concept for people that are in more than the endurance mindset, so to speak. And we'd have to kind of talk our way through that a lot of times as coaches and trainers, the value of that, like each one of these acute variables have their own specific value for each one of these rep ranges and it needs to be applied appropriately. That's such a great point. What you're saying right now so reminds me of my experience training like at Orange Theory, right? And that attracts the short rest periods, high rep ranges, get a sweat on, make the muscle burn, get the heart rate up, burn a lot of calories. And even when I would get through to those people that were working out in there that listen, it's so important that you guys take rest and you guys strength train in the one to six rep range because you're so used to doing this 15 to 20 and super set type workouts who get massive benefits by lifting heavier weight and going lower reps. They would do that, but then they would still do it like a circuit. Hustle through it. Yeah, so they really weren't lifting closer to their max like they could. They were lifting a weight that they could rest for 30 seconds. It was like they dipped their toe in the water. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they at least moved from the weight that was so light, they could move it 15 to 20 times. Now they just picked a little bit heavier weight that they could do five or eight times, but they still were only resting 15 seconds or not at all. And so they weren't actually pushing their bodies the way they needed to to get the real benefits of that lower rep range. Totally. Now, before we get into it, there's two myths that I think we need to address. One is that looking at an athlete and then looking at the training methodology that if you train that way, you'll look like that athlete. Now there's a little bit of truth to this, right? Bodybuilders train a particular way. And part of the reason why they look the way they do is because of the way they train. Same thing with power lifters and Olympic lifters, but there's also something that we don't consider. When you're looking at the top level of athletes, which is typically what we look at, that they were genetically, you know, born to perform well at that sport. So to give an easier example, it would be like me looking at Michael Phelps, who's easily the greatest swimmer of all time. He's the most decorated, most winning a swimmer of all time and saying, you know what? If I swim a lot, I'm gonna get long arms, short legs and a flat rib cage. Because that's what swimming does. No, he was born that way. And then of course he trained to get really good. So looking at like a power lifter and saying, well, if I train like a power lifter, I'm not gonna get that lean. I'm gonna get really wide hips and, you know, wide waist. Well, no, that's not really how it works. Power lifters will kind of built that way naturally. And then of course they built on top of it with their training methodology. The second myth is that there's fat burning rep ranges and rep ranges that aren't fat burning. And this is built on the myth of calorie burn during the workout. So they say, okay, if I do 20 reps, I'm gonna burn more calories than if I do five reps. Well, although that's true, the calorie burn difference is very small. It's not that big of a difference. And really when you're looking at exercise, and I made this argument in many, many other podcasts, especially with strength training, forget about the calories that you burn while you work out. You wanna consider the adaptations. And the reason why strength training is such a great long-term fat loss approach is not because it burns a lot of calories, rather because it helps speed up the metabolism. It teaches your body to burn the most calories on its own. So the best, the rep range that burns the most body fat is the one that builds the most muscle, bottom line. Doesn't matter what that rep range looks like. Not to mention, if you're somebody who does the high rep range for the calorie thing, maybe in that workout, it may burn a few more calories. But if you always train that way and you never train five to six rep range, you're gonna have building the same muscle. And then you go and you train in the lower rep range, I would make the case that, okay, maybe you burn a few more calories by all the extra movement in the higher reps in that workout, but the next 24 to 48 hours, the amount of calories that your body is gonna need in order to recover and repair the damage that you've done in the low rep range would probably counter the amount of calories. And the muscle that you build because of novelty. It was right. Absolutely. All right, so the first rep range is gonna be the low one. This is the one to five rep range. You rarely ever see bodybuilders training this because this is a strength training, you know, strength athlete rep range, right? This is like power lifters. Yeah. Olympic lifters like to train in this rep range. Go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say there's also a level of risk factor between all these rep ranges in terms of like, once weight is something that our focus is on increasing the weight and lowering the reps, you know, now that demand is a bit more intense on the joints, on the body. And so I could see where a little bit of, you know, if you're in a bodybuilder type of mentality where hypertrophy is definitely something you're always seeking, you know, it's not as appealing because now there's like a lot more demand on the joints, the achiness that goes with that when, you know, maybe I could do some of these moves in a different way that's not gonna feel the same. Yeah, this was me. I didn't lift, you guys know, I don't know if I've ever expressed this on the podcast or not, but you know that I never lifted anything less than five reps before all of us got together. Yeah. Never. Even knowing all this stuff, right? That's what's crazy. Like I knew this, but I was like, so I don't identify with a power lifter. I don't care about my max rep. All I care about is how I look. I can manipulate the other rep ranges to continue to build muscle. And so I avoided it. Even knowing what we're talking about, so I had the knowledge now and experience of this, knew it, but even I was sucked into that like, oh, I never have a desire to be a power lifter. I never care about what my max is on any of these things. I have enough rep ranges to manipulate between five all the way up to 20 that I could continually to manipulate those enough to have novelty and stimulate the muscle growth. And I did, and I had a lot of success with that. But I tell you, when I started to play with the one to five rep range that I never did tell us 30, boy, it's so much muscle pack on my body. And it blew my mind. It blew my mind at what I was missing out on by not including that into my repertoire. Yeah, and I'll consider this, if you are an athlete competing in these sports, most of the time that you train will be in these rep ranges. That doesn't mean you don't train the other ones because the other ones still have value, but most of the time you'll spend if you're a power lifter is gonna be in this one to five. But I will say this, most people listening to this are not in that category. Most people listening to this podcast want to build muscle, burn body fat, look good, feel good, and they want good consistent results all the time, not necessarily to compete in one specific sport. So that's kind of who we're talking to. But mindset is everything. And you mentioned the kind of joint pain and you got to be careful with heavy weight. A big part of that is mindset. Now, of course, once you get to extreme levels you get so strong, then it kind of, you know, you got to be careful. But for most people, the injuries that happen in the one to five rep ranges is they have the wrong mindset going into the exercise because it's different than when you're doing like a set of 15 reps, for example. So the mindset going into, and I just did this today, I haven't lifted heavy in a long time, I'm going into a heavy lifting phase and I've been training in the body builder kind of mentality for so long that it was a wonderful switch of mindset. Like I'm going into the workout and I'm focusing on activating my CNS. I'm focusing on like angry intensity or really focused intensity with my lift. It's low reps, it's heavy weight. So I have to summon strength differently. It's heavy on that initial first part of the movement. So it's that concentric focused lift where all of your force that you generate initially is what the goal is to really, you know, get in tune with that central nervous system, get put all that demand there and then find a way to, you know, not spend so much time on the negative. Yeah, most importantly, I would say it's this, when you're training the low rep ranges, you're not focusing on mind to muscle connection. You're focusing on the movement. If I'm bench pressing for four reps or deadlifting for three reps or overhead pressing for four reps, I'm not thinking chest, shoulders, lats. I'm thinking perfect my biomechanics, stay tight and move my body in a way to maximize force generation. I don't care about the muscles that I'm trying to feel because it's kind of a waste of time to go as low rep range anyway when the goal is to lift as much weight as possible with the safest form possible. Which is different than like having these warmup sets where like you're feeling the muscle. Totally. So this is really one of those things where set up and focus is at the higher priority going into the lift. So even taking that extra bit of time to get rid of any loose, you know, part of the body and really start, you know, to be able to tighten everything and get everything in perfect alignment beforehand. Yeah, I'm priming at the same time trying to conserve energy. Because you want max amount of energy to go. So like to your point with warmup sets, like when you're kind of like in a bodybuilder mindset, you can do like you do a couple of warmup sets with like moderately, you know. Feel a little bit of a pump. Yeah, a little bit of pump feeling it because you're not trying to max out. You're not going for one to three reps and you're not worried about it. So you can fatigue a little bit, right? When you're getting ready to move a max load, you want to conserve as much energy and keep in mind to your tempo changes, right? So when you're moving like a bodybuilder and you're thinking about mind muscle connection, you've got that four second negative. And that's where a lot of that mental focus is happening is that I'm lowering the bar on a bench press. I'm really thinking about my chest resisting the weight as it comes down. When I'm bench pressing in a like a power phase like this, I'm just, I'm trying to explode. Even if, you know, it's funny, even if you go down slow because you'll see power lifters do this too, they'll lower slowly, but they're not thinking chest resists the weight. They're thinking stay in the groove and stay tight. Yeah, yeah. Stay tight, keep it on track and then get rid of it. Yeah. And then explode out of it as hard as you possibly can. And that's the feel, the feel that you're looking for with this. It's strong, tight and stable. You want to think of your body as a unit when you're training in this rep range, not individual muscle groups trying to feel, you know, what's going on. Like if I'm doing a squat in this rep range, I am not thinking feel my quads, feel my glutes, feel my hamstrings. I'm thinking I want to feel as tight and stable as possible. I want to maximize my biomechanics, make this as safe and explosive and as strong as possible. And then the muscles that I feel is a consequence. It's not the primary, you know, goal. This is why one of the more challenging still to this day for me is actually activating my entire body when bench pressing. I trained like a bodybuilder for so many years of my life that it didn't, I didn't need driving force from the ground. It was, I wanted my chest to take all of it. I don't want my legs to help me with the bench press. I wanted my chest to do all the work because that's where I'm gonna, that's what I'm trying to build. So when I had to switch over to this, still to this day, I really have to focus on getting myself really tight and driving my legs in the ground. It's not natural for me. You can always tell which way somebody trains all the time based off of things like that. You'll see, you'll see they'll have a really hard time connecting their legs in an exercise like a bench press. Now you think to someone may be watching me like, what does the legs have to do with the bench press? It doesn't lift the weight, okay? So you're not pushing with your legs to lift your back and create some weird, terrible form. What you're doing is you're activating your central nervous system. You are staying tight to the ground. I like to squeeze the bench with my knees. I tuck my feet back. Everything stays real tight. And that adds force because it makes your CNS fire harder. You're anchoring your body down. So now you don't have any leak in performance as well. So anytime, if you notice a loose part of your body, it's gonna shift based off of, you know, the demand of where the bar path is going. Yeah, it's literally, it's literally stable. It's just super stable, tight rock salt. Yeah, if I'm benching heavy like this, nothing's gonna move me off that bench. Now, if I'm trying to feel the chest, I mean, you could push me to the side and I might fall off. But when I'm doing it like that, I am tight. I'm glued to the bench and the floor and the barbell. And it's, and again, I don't care what muscles I feel. In fact, I'd rather feel all the muscles when I'm doing this particularly. Now, I mean, and to address Olympic lifting is in this category as well. It's a little bit different because it's super, super. It's all about the acceleration of the weight. And I think there's a misconception because we watch the Olympics and we see a lot of these lifters, like with a lot of weight, you'd probably see power lifters do. But like for your average person, you're gonna have to lighten the load quite substantially to be able to get that kind of velocity and explosive movement. Oh my God. The last thing you wanna do as a, when you're doing this rep range, if you're, especially if you're a competitive power lifter, Olympic lifter is feel the muscles, the individual muscles working. If you do an, especially an Olympic lift, you do a clean or a snatch and you think, I gotta feel my biceps or my back. You are not gonna lift the weight very effectively. No, it's more similar to like someone throwing a baseball. Yes. Like someone throwing a baseball and trying to think of like, I wanna, my shoulder and my back. Squeeze, you know, the shoulder. It'd be the worst or the worst. I'll go like five feet, extension. No, you, it's strong, stable, fire, everything's this tight. I wanna stay, I wanna focus and perfect them. I am not thinking about the muscles. I'm thinking about the movement. Okay, so what are some of the pros of training this way? Well, this is all speculative, but your body, when you train in a phase for three to five weeks of this, you feel really strong and solid. It's a very different feel from other rep ranges. I literally feel like my body is made out of granite when I start to train this way. And bodybuilders will even talk about this because you see some bodybuilders, obviously they don't care how much they lift, they care how they look, but you'll even hear, see your bodybuilders say, train this rep range gives them a granite look to their muscle versus the big bubbly, you know, kind of pumped look that a lot of people love. Now from like an athletic perspective, it just trains the muscle and that fast twitch response type of way. So your reactivity is much improved by being able to train with that type of explosive initial movement. Yep. Yeah, this is something that I've talked about on the podcast before. So if you're a kid who, you know, identifies with like similar to like how I felt as a kid where I was skinny, I just wanted to build muscle, I trained like a bodybuilder and trained hypertrophy all the time. One of the things that I struggled with that used to drive me crazy and I can't, I don't think I'm alone on this is I get all aired up in the gym. The pump. Yeah, the pump. And I liked the way I looked and then I would leave and then within an hour it would all deflate. And then I'd feel like I looked like a kid who didn't lift weights, you know, but in the gym I looked great, I felt great, walked out and then I would lose that look. That was like for years and years. It wasn't until I started to train like this where I started to build this physique that it didn't get aired up as much in the gym because I'm not doing 15, 20 rep ranges. I'm not resting for, you know, short rest periods. I'm getting these long rest periods. I'm lifting really, really heavy. So the pumps weren't as massive, but as I started to put on muscle, my body looked different. It was solid. Yeah. Now what I, and what I feel like I look today is like, oh, you can tell I work out even though I didn't just get aired up in the gym. I cannot work out for a week and I still look like I trained and I lift weights where I didn't feel like that in my 20s. In my 20s I felt like a kid that had to have just gone to the gym like a couple of hours ago for me to have looked like I lifted. It wasn't until I started training this way. And I, it's so hard to... Yeah, there's really no studies that explain this. There's nothing that I can point to to prove my point. Yeah, a lot of anecdote, right? You hear this from a lot of people, right? And that's one of the, that's one of the, that's why we say mindset is so important. If your mindset is about getting the pump, you're gonna be sorely disappointed with the one to five rep range. I mean, you do five sets of a bench press for three reps and you might get a little bit of a pump, but it's not gonna compare to the pump you get when you do more of a bodybuilding workout, but that doesn't mean you're not building muscle. And that's why the mindset's so important. So some of the cons of training this way are just the lack of pump and the lack of burn. That's another one. A lot of, especially my female clients fall in love with the feeling of the burn. And mainly because they were told that the burn is what gives them the fat loss. Yeah. And so we would do, you know, a heavy set of five reps or four reps. They'd be like, I don't feel a burn. It's hard. I'm straining, but I don't feel the muscle burn. Is it really working? Yes. So, but that's one of the cons, right? Is that if you fall in love with those feelings, you're not gonna get this crazy pump or this crazy burn. You just, your reps are too, are too low. And you may not be sweating because it's anaerobic. So it's, there's another factor. It's like a lot of the... Yeah. Am I wasting my time? Yeah, exactly. A lot of the preconceived ideas of what a workout should consist of, right? That this doesn't really fit in that category. Combine the lack of sweating and the lack of burn with the fact that top level power lifters tend to not be super lean. Yeah. And you can now see where that the myth... I don't wanna look like that. Yes. So then they avoid this whole way of doing it. So then the myth is, oh, if I train this way, I'm gonna get bulky. Or the people, or people will do it for a little while and then they'll bail on it really quick because they're not feeling the same way that they felt from the other workouts. Right. But it's a big myth, right? Oh, if I train this way, I'm gonna get boxy. I'm gonna get bulky. You even see this in power lifting, I'm excuse me, in bodybuilding circles. Oh, you train this way. Your waist is gonna get real big and square. No, it just so happens to be that people with big waist tend to squat the most weight. So that's why you see that. Which is physics, by the way. That's why that happens. I mean, I know we rail on CrossFit a lot, but we, you know, in their defense, like that's something that I, a critique I've heard. Oh, I don't wanna do CrossFit because all the girls have these boxy hips. It's like, no, those girls had boxy hips and that's why they're good at CrossFit. That's one of the reasons why I made them really good. Yeah, it's physics. It gives them better leverage for when they're squatting and deadlifting and doing these moves. Just having no obliques helps to stabilize your spine. Yeah, let's not, like, drink those muscles. If you have narrow hips and you build some obliques, you're not gonna get a bigger waist. What are you gonna get, like a, not even a quarter inch around your waist bigger? You'll have develop the obliques and you'll just look way better. So I wouldn't, don't worry about the omni make me bulky or boxy. Not true. This was my favorite rep range to train female clients and because they were the ones that were most likely to neglect this. My male clients, I'd say 25% of them had messed with this rep range. My female clients never trained this rep range because they never thought this was a good fat burning one. It made them bulky. It was game changer. I'd throw them in this rep range and it was like life changing for them. Oh my God, I'm finally building. Oh my God, I'm getting so lean. Wow, look at my butt. Everything's filming. I mean, it's part of why mine pump happened. I mean, when you sent over the first program, absentee ball it, and I remember reading it, that's exactly what I was thinking when I read it. That's why I put that first. I was like, okay, I know that 70% of my clientele is female. I know that 90% of them rarely ever strength train or never have strength trained before. Like I learned that in my career that that became like the go-to move whenever I get a female client. It was like, I would always put them on a strength face because nine times out of 10, they've never trained that way. And of course it's, I wanna show them the most results I can possibly to build value in myself. It's the best way to train them too. It was novel for them. Right, so that's what would happen. And so I remember when I opened that up, I was just like, oh, this is perfect. This is, yeah. All right, let's talk about the popular, what people would consider hypertrophy, muscle building rep range. Now, again, there's some carry over here. So we could have broken this up into five different rep ranges, but it'd be silly. So this rep range is six to 12. This is like the body building rep range. More commonly you'll hear people refer to as eight to 12, fine, same thing or whatever. The mindset of this is totally different. Okay, the mindset that I was doing when I was doing three reps is not the same as the mindset is when I'm doing eight reps or 12 reps. With this, I'm looking for smooth intensity. If I get that same rage, focus, tighten everything intensity that I do three reps and I do 12 reps with that, I'm gonna pass out on the floor. It's not gonna be as effective. With this, I want smooth intensity. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to connect to the muscle. I'm trying to feel my lats. I'm trying to feel my glutes. I'm trying to feel my delts and my pecs when I'm doing a specific exercise. Totally different. Like if you bench press for three reps, you bench press for 12 reps. One, it's the movement. The other one is let me feel this muscle working. And let me feel this connection. Yeah, this is the time and attention phase, right? This is where you were thinking about the entire set. If you're whether you're moving at six reps or 12 reps, but the entire time, I just want to feel it in that muscle group. All the way from the bottom to the top of the movement all the way through it. So time and attention, moving slower, tempo wise, really resisting the negative and thinking about where you feel it, stuff like that, squeezing at the top. Like this is where all those techniques, I think have a lot. That's another thing that we haven't touched really on too is there's a lot of like techniques that I think apply to certain rep ranges. Yes, yes. Just like we said with the low rep range of like tightening up your legs and your core when you're benching with something like this, you're like, you're focusing on the squeeze. You're focusing on the stretch. You're focusing on different parts of the rep that make you feel the muscle more. You're trying to direct that contraction and really connect to where you're feeling that muscle's involvement. And if it's not involved, how can I highlight that a bit more and intensify that? In fact, it often means you have to go lighter. So with the other rep range, if you can adjust your technique and your form so you could lift more weight and increase your, improve your biomechanics and your leverage in a safe way, that's the move, that's the direction that you go. In this particular rep range, it's better to feel the muscle. And if it's, if I'm lifting in a way that where I can't feel the muscle, lighten the weight up, change my technique a little bit. Now I can feel the muscle. I'm so glad you said that because that's another thing that we talked about tempo and the mistake that people stay in a rep range when they move out of it, they make. That's the other thing that they make, a mistake. It's not changing that. You have to change that when you go into the other phase. Oh yeah. I mean, if I'm benching to, you know, three reps, I'm not trying to feel my chest. I'm trying to maximize the leverage. When I'm training for 10 reps, if I don't feel the chest, I'll lighten the load and change my technique a little bit so I can feel the chest. But the tendency that a power lifter guy has who now finally you convince him to move into a body roll phase, he wants to still lift the most weight that he can. Yes. Six to 12 rep range and that's no longer the desired outcome anymore. I would rather see you reduce the weight by 20, 30% and slow down the tempo even more and focus more on the squeeze and all the things that we're talking about. But it's the mindset that's hard to get out of that. It's an ego issue. I mean, right away, like you have to really kind of let that go and realize the intent is a completely different focus. Well, I, so again, I was the bodybuilder guy going powerlifting. So I even had that hard time too. I was so focused on muscle guy and tempo and feeling everything that I had a hard time actually letting go of that. I mean, like I want to just move as much weight as I can right now in this phase. You ever watch a bodybuilder go to deadlifting? And it becomes like a weird flexed elbow. And they're trying to really pull and really, no. It's like they're doing, it's like a row deadlift and you could tell it. Oh, that's not. You need to anchor this and get your whole body stiff. Totally. And move quickly. Or see a powerlifter go to bodybuilding. It's like, no, no, no. I know you're doing a rear fly, but that looks more like a row. Like elbows out, feel this muscle work, limit this particular range of motion, increase this range of motion. Total different mindset. That's why it's so important. Now, what does this feel like? Bodybuilding or body sculpting? What do I mean by that? When I'm training this way, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to think of my body, rather than with the lower rep range where I'm trying to think of my body as one unit that's generating strength, here I'm trying to think of the different components of that unit. How can I sculpt and shape my body like a sculptor? So when I go in there and I think I want more upper chest, I want more rear delt, I want this part of my quad or this part of my glue. As silly as some of this sounds, and I know some of it's almost in futility, doesn't matter, makes a big difference. I'm going and I'm sculpting and shaping my body. In fact, I like to use the pump as a way to do this. How can I make my body look the way I want with the way that I target my pump in the gym? It really, you really do feel like you're sculpting your body. No, you absolutely, I mean, you could take a movement, okay, that the average person would look at. Like let's say like a seated cable row. And because a seated cable row is so unique, the back muscle is so big and there's so many different muscles in your back, I can literally, and if you had like this, if you had a machine like hooked up to all my muscles in the posterior chain, I could do five different reps and I could light up different areas way more. Upper back, mid back, lats, rear delts, totally. So and that is the difference when you're training like this is when I'm doing this exercise, I'm now thinking about the muscles that I'm trying to develop. This is also where the tempo and the squeeze, this is why they have so much value, right, of slowing down. Because it's not, it's easy for us to sit here and just say, oh, do a seated row, but now do it thinking about your rear delts. Like the average person here is like, what the fuck does that mean? How do I do that? We'll slow down the tempo. You know, it's real, it's lighting the load up, real light. Now what I want you to do is let the shoulders kind of roll forward so you feel the stretch on your rear delts. Okay, now you feel that? Now try and engage that and then squeeze at the end and think about that. Maybe I'm touching the rear delts so they can feel it. That's where all these techniques really come into play when you're training this way to try and learn how to activate all those different muscles. Totally, now some of the pros of this are it's fun. There's a lot of variety. When you train this way, you're looking for angles, different angles of hitting different muscle groups, right? Rather than just doing a press for overhead, an overhead press for delts. I'm doing a press, but then I'm like, do I do it behind the neck? Do I do it in front of my body? Here's the part of the shoulder I want to work. Let me try some laterals. What about with cables versus the dumbbells? Maybe do some rear flies. So I can hit this part of my rear delt. It's a fun type of workout. There's a lot of variety and the pump is amazing with this. It really is. You can really target a specific muscle training this way and maximize the pump you get in that workout. There's a lot of value in that, especially if you have a lagging body part. If you have a body part that just doesn't seem to respond like other body parts, this is where you can target it and then start to feel it for the first time. I'm gonna tell you something right now. There's definitely muscle building effects for the pump, but I like the psychological benefits. When I take a client who's like, I never, my shoulders just don't respond and I can show them a pump in their shoulders. The psychological effect of feeling that muscle grow temporarily, seeing it in the mirror, that pays off big time and the person's motivation, consistency and just how they train that body part. Now, some of the cons, your strength gains are not gonna be as prominent. So if you're like strength focused, you love lifting more weight. You gotta get that out of your head when you're training this way. Now, I could get stuck in that. I like both bodybuilding and strength training, but if I had to pick one, I'd pick the strength. And if I get stuck in a strength phase for too long, which I'd have a tendency to do, and I get into this type of training, I have to really work on the mental aspect of, okay, the weight doesn't matter anymore. Even though I know if I do it in my power of the style. For years just doing strength training. It was like, I did not wanna do any kind of hypertrophy training, anything over like, you know, five to six reps. And man, but really the value of it was so substantial because to be able to connect to other muscles and have those to contribute back when I get into a strength phase again was tremendous. And so it's a completely different shift in mentality, an ego check because the weight goes down substantially. But in terms of like the overall feel of my body and also, you know, just muscles to help in again with stabilizing and contributing around the joints as well. You can address a lot of issues that you don't even, you don't even see a lot of times when you're in a bi-loaded position where it's like everything is all about movement. And I'm not highlighting the individual muscles and not realizing they're not really contributing like they should. The other con about this rep range is this is where most of the studies are done to prove, you know, this is the best for building muscle and hypertrophy. This is where people get stuck. Yeah, so a lot of people get stuck in this range. A lot of people that want to build muscle have seen enough of these studies being touted that this is the best place to train for building muscle and they're missing the rest of the story. They're missing the rest of the elephant. You know what I'm saying? All they're reading right now is the trunk or the feet right now and don't realize there's way more to this puzzle than just that and they get stuck in this phase for a very long time and they don't get the benefits of the other ones and don't realize how much it contributes to their main goal of building muscle. Yeah, if you did a study and they don't really do studies like this, but if you did a study that followed someone, not for 12 weeks or 16 weeks, but for a year or two years. And you compared people who did just 10, you know, eight to 10 reps, right? Versus people that went through different phases of all of these reps, what you would find is the person that trained for four weeks in a rep range and four weeks in another one or whatever, over time got better, more consistent results in both strength and in muscle. Now, if you just do head-to-head short study, yes, some will build a little more muscle, some build a little more stamina, some build a little bit more strength, but over time they all contribute and it's, and you always, and look, anybody who's ever done this knows this. You stay on one thing for six to eight weeks, you switch over, it's like, boom, my body's responding again. Oh my God, this is amazing. And that's the beauty, that's the thing you want to take advantage of. Now, there's a myth with this rep range and that is that, and you touched on this, it's the only rep range that builds muscle. That's completely false, 100% false. Thankfully, we have studies now that totally prove this. Studies will show they all build muscle, so it's not the only one that builds muscle. The other ones don't burn more body fat or build, you know, whole-key-working body stuff. All right, next, let's get to the high rep ranges, 15 to 20. Now, I do want to say that you can have the low rep range mindset into the bodybuilding one or into this one right here and vice versa. You can do that, and I mean, is there value to it? I don't know, maybe. We're trying to explain the best way to utilize these rep ranges. And this 15 to 20, and yes, there's value in going higher than 20 reps, but we stopped at 20 because at some point, it just starts to become endurance training. It's cardio. It's no longer strength training. And some people can get up to 30 reps and keep it strength training. So, you know, again, this isn't an exact science here, but 15 to 20 is a good range here for what we're talking about. This is an endurance stamina type of mindset. Like your goal, when you're doing 20 reps of squats versus two reps of squats, like if I do two reps of squats, I'm like maximizing tension, staying tight, holding my breath, you know, focused and drive. When I'm doing 20 reps of squats, I'm like, I need to endure. Like I need to make it through the set. I'm gonna stay focused on keeping my breathing going. Keep your composure. Yeah. If I do all of the first 10 reps, like a power lifter, I'm screwed, right? I'm not gonna make it through this whole thing. So it's a kind of a consistent, smooth, enduring type of mindset when you're doing reps. Yeah, you wanna conserve energy a bit or be efficient with your energy management. Yes. And to be able to maintain good posture and good mechanics is paramount in this phase, which is something that is not promoted enough. It's really about how many you can do and how quickly you can get it done and what you can literally endure, but they'd still need to be, there still needs to be a high focus on quality. Well, this is one of the rep, you have to go really light, especially at first. Like if you don't train this way and you're used to being a strength- Dude, you're going to 20 reps, the first 10 reps are easy and people, I can add weight. Yeah. No, dude. Every time I move into this phase, because this is probably a phase I stay in the least because it's the least favorite of mine, especially when you start pushing 20 reps. Like I frequently am training 15 reps, but rarely do I push 20. But when I do, I always know that whatever weight I think I can move, I always gotta go lower than that because when you rarely train in that to the stamina point, like you end up gassing before you, and it's not, a lot of times it's your cardiovascular endurance, you know? It's like a lot of times it's just my heart. My heart's pounding so fast from doing 16, 17, 18 reps that I'm having a hard time recovering there in order to even be able to lift the weight. But that's also what makes this such a great contributor to the other phases. Like you get really good. You do, you can get 20 rep squats down and go through a phase of 20 rep squats. And then you go back to like 10. Like, oh my God, 10 feels like nothing. And you can generate your force with it. Yes. You feel good. Yeah, fatigue in those other settings is the killer of your progress. And so to address that in this phase makes you stronger going back into where that's not as much of a factor. So funny, I used to train this couple, right? Husband and wife and they both worked out and the husband loved, you know, six to eight reps and the wife loved 15 to 20, 25 reps, right? This is how they trained before. They met me and they used to work out separately. Well, then I worked out with them together. You flipped them. When we would do low rep workouts, the wife was terrified. Oh, I don't like lifting this heavy. I feel like I'm gonna hurt myself. When we go to high reps, the husband was terrified. I hate this. Makes me feel like I wanna throw up. I wanna die. It's so hard, whatever. So it's really funny. It's so stereotypical of a true man. It was so funny. So many of my clients were like this. Yeah, this rep range terrifies me because it just, if I do a set of 20 reps in the squat, if my intensity is too high with this or if my weight is too high with this, one set and I'm done. Like the workout's over. I'm not gonna be able to move or do anything else anymore. So you have to be very smart with this type of rep range. You have to have the right mindset and know that the second and third set are gonna be way harder than the first. So if you did the first set, you're like, wow, that was hard. You know, I'm kind of breathing hard, way to the second and third set because that muscle stamina, that strength stamina is a whole different monster. Now, what does this feel like? It feels like conditioning. Feels like the burn. Feels like you sweat. This is like cardio. Yes, yes, yes. This is why I love to make the case though for the people that give us a hard time because we rail on so many people that love to just run, run, run, run and then they try and attach that to the benefits of cardio. I'm like, if you ain't never done 20 rep squats before and if you don't think that gives you great cardio endurance you're tripping because 20 rep squats for multiple sets is all day long. You do that. That's a marathon itself. Yeah, and you never run. I bet you can get on there and run a mile really, really well. I'm serious. The amount of time it takes to run a mile, you're talking about anywhere from six to 10 minutes for most people, like your set of squats is gonna take you that long to get through 20 rep squats for three or four sets. And if you can do that with something on your back, like then go run a mile. I bet you could run a mile, no problem. Oh yeah. That's how powerful that is. Yeah, this is the like the stereotypical, you know, what people think a workout is supposed to feel like. When you can take the average person and you say what is a good workout is supposed to feel like burn and you sweat and you breathe hard. This is the rep range that you feel. This is what has been sold forever in every DVD series and infomercial. And then again, to the earlier point where you're talking about what a game changer it was for female clients to go in the low rep range. I mean, this is just what was promoted for so long that like let's not get you big and bulky with the big weights and let's stick with this rep range in small ways. I'll tell you guys a personal story. So, you know, I can get, I can, and we all have our tendency I can get stuck in the low rep ranges and I love the strength feel and all that stuff. And I love lower, especially lower body, low rep stuff mainly because I like the feeling of lifting something heavy off my back and also because I hate the feeling of high rep, lower body stuff. It just, like I said, it's just, I dread it, right? So I was doing, you know, sets of five reps with, you know, this was recent. This was like over the last year. I'm doing like 375, you know, I even did it at some point I got up to 405 for five, which was a lot for me, right? And I'm doing this and I'm like, you know what? I'm starting to feel my joints a little bit. I've been staying in this for a little too long. I'm starting to need to, you know, put knee wraps on. I got better following my own advice. Let me go and try some 20 rep squats. I went down to 225 and I did one set. The next set I went down to 185 and that was it. And you know what happened? My legs grew. My legs grew, they got bigger. They got, and I stuck to that for, I think it was like three or four weeks. And then for fun, I went, let me go see what I, what the 405 feels like on my back. I felt stronger and more stable. I did, I think another rep or two with that weight. So even, and I remember when we had Stan Efferty on the show years ago, he talked about how he trained in this rep range when he went from powerlifting to bodybuilding and he built all this extra muscle. Do you think if you're a strength athlete, you could benefit from all the extra muscle? Absolutely. So not saying a powerlifter should always train in this rep range, but if you neglect it, you're missing out on some of those incredible benefits that you can get from it because of the novelty. Well, if you're listening to this, right? And you either follow your own program or just follow your own, do your own thing, right? And everybody has a tendency, even us in this room, right? So we have all this information and knowledge and we sit here, but each one of us has a tendency to gravitate to a rep range, right? If you were to, if we had to ask everybody honestly, okay, in the last two years, what rep range did you grab? We'd all have a rep range. We wouldn't say, oh, I have evenly split it between these, it's just the truth, right? So you have to ask yourself, who are you? You know, which one of these? And then the people that I think sees huge benefits are the ones that migrate to the top or the bottom of this list, because then you can go the opposite and it'll just blow your mind. If you're someone who always is like one to five, because you wanna be a powerlifter so bad or an Olympic lifter and you identify with that group so much, and maybe every once in a while you flirt with six to 10, but you never do no 20 rep anything, like go do 20 rep exercises and see what happens. Now I like to recommend people do a step ladder of it, not because it's not better, because what you said I think is amazing, but because it's shocking and they don't fully grasp the change in weight, they just don't, you're always doing four reps, you go to 20 reps, you will miscalculate how much weight needs to be on the bar and it will mess with your head. You're used to squatting four plates, you go down to one and a half plates on there, you know, you're looking around, anybody watching me in the gym? Nobody's in here, cool, I'm gonna lift this weight because I normally lift so much more. So I typically have people do a step ladder for the psychological effects, myself included. Some of the pros of this, you build incredible stamina and work capacity. Like you do five or six weeks of 15 to 20 reps, you find yourself having this incredible stamina in your workout. After about the third or fourth week, you feel like you have this engine that just runs forever and you go through the workout and you just feel unstoppable and you don't need to rest long and everything feels great. You get an incredible pump from this, just like you do from the bodybuilding phase. Although I will say the bodybuilding phase, I actually get a better pump that lasts longer. With this, as the stamina builds, the pump starts to fade a little bit but the stamina continues to grow up. And nonetheless, this is still, I would consider a great pump. That's actually interesting and a very good point. That's such a good point that you just made right there. Because... You noticed that too? Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, it becomes closer and closer to more a stamina building thing than it is like a muscle pumping or building thing. So that's a really good point. The first time you do it, you'll get a massive pump. If you've never done 20 rep squats, your legs will be pumped more than you've ever felt them before. Keep doing it though, it just becomes a stamina. Yeah, yeah, because eventually you condition yourself, the stamina builds, and then now you're moving a weight that's relatively light for those muscles and so they just don't pump as much. That's why I would say this is not the best pump one, but at first it is. At first it's like the pump is ridiculous. Yeah. Some of the cons, you're not going to lift as much weight. Now, some people don't care about that. Some people do. It's definitely an ego check. It is for me, even now, after I've been training so many years, putting a light weight on the bar for me, doing all these reps. There's always, I always got to check my ego and be like, all right, we're going to do 20 reps now, so 10 pounds on the bar or whatever, it's all good. Now, you list that as a con and I would also make the case for it as a pro because this is a case and I've had these clients. I trained obviously less male than I did female, but the males that I train, they love to move the weight all the time. Like one of the best things for their body would be to just dramatically reduce the weight and work on technique. Yeah, you're right. And so there's a lot of pros to lifting a lot lighter weight, especially for my men out there that are listening that ego lift a lot. They love to push the weight as much as possible and love to do all the reps and the wrist stuff and everything like that because they've got achy joints, achy neck, achy shoulders, achy knees, and it's because they want to move weight all the time. It's like one of the best things that client can do is move into this really high rep range and start moving much lighter weight. Yeah, another con, and maybe someone likes this, I don't. It's exhausting. This is the kind of workout where I'm just like, as I'm going through it, I'm like, man, I need to, I'm pushing myself through this workout. This is not like, I'm feeling the pump and then resting in between sets and this is great. It's like this is more endurance than I tend to like. It's a lot more mentally taxing, I would say. It's just because you have to endure, you have to stay in that same mindset for a pretty long period of time versus being able to get in that one to five rep range where you're just super focused and then it's over. So it's a totally different mindset. Now, myth around this, it burns the most body fat. It doesn't burn the most body fat. Yes, it does burn more calories, but again, that's inconsequential. It's not a huge difference in calorie burn. And remember, we've talked about this many times, the fat burning benefits of strength training has nothing to do with the calories you burn while you were, I don't wanna say nothing, it has very little to do with the calories you burn while you work out. It has much more, much more to do with the muscle building effects and then what that does for your body. So if this rep range builds the most muscle for you, then it will be the best fat burning rep range. If one to five builds the most muscle for you, that's the best fat burning rep range. If six to 12 builds the most muscle for you, that's the best rep range for you. So consider that with all of these. Don't worry about the calories burned during the workout. That really only lasts for a very short period of time. It's okay, which rep range for me is gonna build the most muscle, that's the best fat burning rep range. And for most people, unless you're a specific type of athlete, you wanna look your best, you wanna have continual consistent progress. The idea is to spend between three to six weeks in each of these rep ranges and then move to the next one. And if you do that all year long, you'll get more consistent results, less injuries, you'll feel better, you'll be more well-rounded with your fitness than you would be had you stuck in just one rep range. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. You can find Adam on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam, and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal.