 How do you train in the gym to improve athleticism? Watch this. Our next caller is Holly from Canada. Holly, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, guys. Hey. OK, so if you read my question, like I said, I feel like I'm super fit. I feel really strong and good when I go into the gym. I work out with good form. I have been running pretty much solely maps programs for the last four years. I've done aesthetics probably two or three times, split twice, power lift, strong, anabolic. But I just don't feel very like athletic. If I, for example, I recently started skiing again and I just feel like so uncoordinated and if I ever play sports with friends or something, I just don't feel like I can run fast or move in a really athletic way. And I just don't know how to make myself be more of an athlete. If only we wrote a program that was specific to performance athletes. I wonder what you should follow. Where is that one? Come on, Holly. Now, you know what? Holly, let me tell you. Sorry, I can't hear you guys at all. Can you hear us now? I can hear Sal a little bit. But when Adam talked, I couldn't hear anything. He doesn't say anything important. Yeah, don't listen to him anyway. Let me think your best advice of your life. What could be the issue here? I am trying to determine. Well, just let Sal yell it out. Doug, why don't you answer this one? Let's roll with it. Yeah, Doug. We don't do that. Doug's got this. And so, yeah, you just, yeah, I'll do it. Yeah, here's the deal. I can't give you a long answer, but I can give you a very short and succinct answer. You mentioned a lot of different programs you've done. Have you done MAPS performance? Okay, so I have MAPS performance and I've run it halfway through once and then I started it again at the beginning of last month before the gyms in Ontario closed again. And no hate on you guys' programs because obviously I love them, but I just personally find performance kind of boring for me and I'm not really able to stick to it very well. Well, okay, so. We're going to challenge your ego here. Yeah, I was going to say, well, you can't, you want to have your cake and eat it too, right? I don't like to train like an athlete either. I think that's boring. I like to train like a bodybuilder and look like a bodybuilder, but every once in a while I want to play basketball. And so it requires me doing the boring, multi-planar type of movements that I don't like doing, but it's going to translate on the court better than anything else. So it's kind of like, okay, well, you kind of know what you're supposed to be doing. You don't like doing it very much, but then you want the results from that to translate on to the field or whatever sport you're playing. So that is the program and it's like specifically designed for someone just like you to perform better in their sport. If I might ask, you said you ran it kind of almost halfway through, like what part was boring for you? I mean, obviously the mobility session. The mobility session, the one that's going to provide you with the most impact for being athlete. Okay. Yeah, you know what, Holly? Let me jump in here real quick. A lot of times people confuse fitness with athletic ability. Now, fitness plays a role in athletic ability, but a big part of athletic ability is skill and coordination, which comes with practice. So I'll give you an alternative answer. I think Baph's performance is the perfect program for you, but I do think if you want to get better at certain sports, you should just practice those sports more often. Play more basketball, play more baseball, do more skiing, and you'll get better at those things. No amount of fitness in the gym is going to give you the type of coordination specific to the sport you're trying to get better at than practicing that sport itself. Now that being said, if you want to do something in the gym that's going to translate the most into sports. Mass performance. Mass performance. That program is written, and every part of it is written to specifically address all the things that an athlete needs, all the attributes that a general athlete, just like yourself, soccer, what do we say? Soccer, skiing, what's the other one that we have? Baseball. That's why that program is so perfect. It's not just for basketball players, it's for somebody who wants general strength in all different directions, good mobility, flexibility, endurance, stamina, all the things that you want to be good in sports. Yeah, and here's the other side of it too. Athleticism can be quite specific. So just because somebody's really good with strength exercises and not good in a traditional sport doesn't mean they're not athletic. It just means they're not athletic for a particular sport. So maybe you just don't like it. You want something but you don't like it. Who cares, you know? Be good in the gym, keep healthy, and you're totally fine. But if you still want that athletic ability, I mean the advice is the same. Maps performance in the gym and I would practice those sports more often. And if you really don't want to do athletic training in the gym, you like traditional resistance training in the gym, still practice playing sports outside of the gym because that's going to give you more of that athleticism. You can't expect to get more athleticism without doing that. This hits home for me right now a lot, okay? So I've been telling Katrina off air, just her and I talking. I say, I really want to get back into playing basketball. I miss playing the ball. It's one of my favorite pastimes to do that. Now I know I'm in no condition to play basketball. Does that mean I'm strong? I can lift a lot of weight right now. I'm not in bad shape. I'm just not in basketball shape. And I know the exercises that I need to do to prepare myself to go play basketball. And even like with Sal, he's nothing's going to get me better playing basketball than playing basketball. But I do know there are specific exercises that I should do to prepare myself to get ready for that. And because I also don't like training that way. Mass performance is one of my least favorite programs too because I like split and aesthetic and strong and more bodybuilder type focused programs. I won't let myself play basketball because I'm not doing the work I should do to prepare my body to go out there and perform. And I do that because I'm getting older and I know I'll hurt myself because my mind will say I can still play like I'm 20 but I know I can't. And so my sacrifices, well, I don't deserve to go play that sport right now because I'm not doing the work in the gym to prepare my body for that. And so it really comes down to asking yourself, Holly, what do you really wanna do? Yeah, you know, I got a little bit of a compromise for you, Holly. What if you did one foundational workout a week from performance and then two foundational workouts a week from another maps program that's maybe something along the lines that you enjoy more maybe like a maps anabolic or a maps aesthetic. So you're getting some of the athletic training but then most of the week you get to do the fun stuff. Run maps aesthetic and then do the mobility sessions in between instead of focus sessions. Yeah, you can mix it up that way. Okay, yeah. Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask is like if there's a way to sort of incorporate performance into another program without having to fully do performance since I've found like it hard to adhere to it in the past. Yeah, you could totally do that. You could totally go one foundational workout a week from performance, two from aesthetic or all from aesthetic and then do only mobility sessions. And you can kind of mix it that way and the mix will determine what you get more of, you know, the aesthetic version, the types of results or the more of the athletic types of results. But I will say this Holly, training for athleticism doesn't reduce your aesthetics. I think you might be, especially for someone who if you've never trained that way I think you might be surprised that you may actually get you might actually look better because now you're doing things you normally don't do. Yeah, all right. All right. Well, thanks for calling in. Okay. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks guys. No problem. Thank you. Yeah. That was great. It's like a math performance. But I appreciate that she was honest because here I literally, this is close to home for me right now. I'm not kidding that I've been wrestling with this idea of going back to playing basketball so much in the last year. Like I really miss it. But I've had a couple of times where I go out there to go try and play and oh boy, my body is not ready. I can go deadlift or bench press right now. No problem. But I to go laterally move left or right really fast and explosive. Most people in the gym, yeah, they're not doing what's gonna promote the really good explosive movement. Right. That takes the actual work that's very specific. So it may be challenging mentally to do things that are outside your comfort, but if you're really serious about becoming a better athlete or having more athleticism or just moving better in general, that has to be a focus. So this is the accountability piece that I'm having with myself. Like I won't go play ball unless I'm willing to put in the steps that I know are gonna protect me from getting hurt. I know I'm not putting that work. And for some reason I'm having this hard time because I used to love that way of training as a kid. I just don't care. I don't like doing that one. And I know part of it is it's hard. And I'm gonna suck at it for a while. I don't feel like, and so she's in the same exact dilemma right here where obviously the program she listed off, she's definitely more focused on strength and look. She probably feels good because she's looking good. But yeah, it's just her movement probably is a mistake. Yeah, and then I bet when she did the lunge matrix and did some of the single leg movements we have, she probably had to go way lighter. Yeah, which is a total attack on ego from what you've been doing. If you're gonna, especially if, I don't know, we didn't ask her age, but especially you start getting above 30 and stuff like that. If you wanna be athletic and play sports like that, I mean performance is the program for you. I mean, that's the thing. You really try to kind of cover all aspects of all sports to give general strength and stability to those people. Well, we took the elements, right, of what creates an athlete, the fundamental principles. You need to be able to generate force. You need to be able to control that. You need to be able to keep your joints healthy and stable and be able to, in order to move explosively, you need to be able to figure out how to move explosively and also be able to control that. And so completely different pursuits than just generating strength. Yeah, and you gotta be honest with yourself too. I want this thing, but I don't wanna do anything that gets me to this thing. That's why I call their atoms. You want your cake and eat it too. Yeah, well then you don't want it. If you do, then you'll do it. Now, it's different when I'm doing the things that I think are supposed to help and nothing's happening, in which case we can look and view and see, okay, well, what's going on. But when the answer's there, they know the answer, they don't wanna do it, the question is, do you really want it? And I think the problem is a lot of people want to want something, and so they say it, but your actions speak a lot of the words, and so it's okay. Look, there's nothing wrong with being a gym-fit person and not being able to go play baseball or football with other people. There's nothing wrong with that, but you have to accept that because being good at certain things requires you do specific things. And if you don't wanna do those things, then accept it. You don't accept that a long time ago. That's right. Look, I'm just sexy. That's it, there's nothing else. Sports balls for the bird. That's it, yeah. All right. Hey, if you enjoyed that clip, you can find the full episode here, or you can find other clips over here, and be sure to subscribe.