 Next question is from JungleJerry. Does getting a pump do anything for hypertrophy or just make you feel bigger for a short period of time? Yeah, there's two things that consider with the pump. One is think of the conditions that need to be present for you to get a really good pump, right? You're well hydrated. You're probably well fed, right? If you're in a really bad calorie deficit, your pumps tend to be gone, right? So you're well fed, well hydrated. You're not overtrained and you can connect to a muscle. It's hard to get a pump on a muscle that you have a terrible connection to. So when you get a good pump, it's also a good sign that, wow, I've got all those things. And that means that at least some of the context is in the right place for muscle growth to happen. Now, does the pump also add to muscle growth with that other stuff being said? Yeah, studies actually show that it's got some hypertrophy benefits through cell swelling, which tends to signal muscle growth. Bodybuilders have known this forever. They've known this for years. Now, isn't that basically what's happening there? Is it your body is learning or adapting to being able to fill the muscle with more fluid than it would before, right? That's really the process of the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Well, sarcoplasm is all of the fluid. Non-muscle fiber structures in fluid within muscle and train the pump theoretically improves or increases that because you improve capillary density. I think of it like this, like imagine like a water balloon and you always fill it up to exactly one cup, one cup, one cup and it kind of expands and then you pour it out, you spend it. Whereas if now you force in two cups in there and it volume wise, the next time that you put that water in, it gets to that two cups a lot easier because you've taught it to stretch out. Yeah, there could be, there's a little bit of muscle fascia stretching that'll happen with that also. And also just you build more capillary so you get more blood flow in the muscle. There's also it's signals. There's some studies that show that actually signals more muscle growth. Don't the cells actually volumize too? Yeah, so the cells actually grow and get bigger, which if they get bigger, they technically can hold more fluid, right? So that's kind of what's happening is you've trained it to expand more than you ever have before. And if you can expand the cells more, they can hold more. Well, it's not just that. You're also increasing the amount of fluid that can go in there because more capillaries start to develop. You start to get more blood flow, more oxygen, more fluid through just your body, improving its ability to do it also. And then you get the stretching effect and the cells swelling effect. That also signals more muscle growth also. They show it increases muscle protein synthesis. So it is, now if you live and die by the pump, you'll make a mistake. Because that's, now I was gonna add to that. Like so I was a chase the pump guy only forever. And one of the things that drove me crazy is, man, I could get to a place where I could really air up and look amazing in the gym. But two hours later, I feel like I would deflate. Almost like that water balloon got completely emptied. And I didn't feel like there was, the permanent effects that you might get from hypertrophy training, didn't seem to be as sustainable or visual when I wasn't pumped as when I was strength training. And we've talked about this before. Oh, with heavy weight, yeah. Yeah, that was one of the big differences when I started training like five by fives and like really heavy, really pushing the weight, was I didn't quite get as much of a pump, but the muscle I did add or build seemed to still be there even when I wasn't pumped up. But when I was always chasing the pump and hypertrophy, I looked amazing in the gym, but then when I would air out, I would deflate back down to what I thought was like the normal size of me. And it didn't feel like as much of the gains stayed, if that makes sense. You know, early strength athletes didn't even, the pump was almost a nuisance. I was just gonna say, I mean, that's always been my experience. Yeah, especially with a forearm, you know, in terms of grip and getting a crazy forearm pump, it was like a very detrimental effect that would happen in terms of like if I would need it to... Kill your grip, huh? Yeah, to do anything. It was one of those things that I always considered a bad thing. And then, you know, getting into the bodybuilding side of training started to figure out, oh wow, that's actually, you know, what they're seeking out because it does give you that effect that, man, it fills up your shirts, your muscles look like they almost doubled in size. But I didn't really see the value of it until the combination of the two, consistently with the hypertrophy and then the strength training together, is like you get that size focus, but also now the strength kind of helps to sustain. When I train clients, it was a great way for me to teach clients how to connect to muscles. And it was also a great sign that they were building a muscle they had poor connection to. Like if I had a female client whose butt it was really hard for her to build her butt and she couldn't feel it when she squatted or whatever and we would do priming and we'd do all the muscles, all the exercises for the glutes and I would make her technique good and after a couple of months, all of a sudden she'd say, I feel a pump in my butt. And then I knew it's gonna build, we're connecting to it and it's working well. But I'll tell you, along the lines of what you said, Justin, I had a client once who hired me, he was a motocross racer. And he hired me because his forearms would get pumped while racing and he would lose his grip. And he literally said, I need to train and I need a way to reduce the pump in my forearm. And I remember being so like, I don't know what to do because usually I'm trying to get that. I mean, imagine you would just train his work capacity, right? You're probably just having him hold. So that was my, so actually my experience was, and this is kind of hilarious, but it was playing guitar. So I would get on stage and I would like get so tense. And I don't know if like, the adrenaline and whatnot kind of added to that, but like I would start playing and my forearm would just get so tight and pumped. And like I couldn't even keep playing to a certain point. And I would get so frustrated because it was like limited to the length of like how I could keep a really good continuous like rhythm. So I started doing a lot more farmer carries and I started doing all that kind of stuff to elongate that ability. Yeah, lots of endurance work. That's exactly what I did. Lots of endurance work and then he got better with managing. I got in jiu-jitsu when I first started training, I'd grip the gi and just get so pumped that I'd lose my grip. But then eventually your body gets better and adapts. But it's a great way to sign and signal what's going on. There are specific phases of maps programs where you're training for this, like phase three of maps enabolic or maps aesthetic is focused on the pump. But phase one of both is strength. And you might get a pump, you might not, but we don't care. It's about getting stronger and building muscles through that. If you combine the two and train in phases, then you can really reap the benefits. But if you get stuck in one and you never utilize the other side, then you're definitely slowing down. That's the key takeaway from this I think because that's what people get trapped in one or the other. I was trapped in the, and the hypertrophy one is really easy, especially for the person who's going to the gym to be more muscular, because when you're aired up, you look way different. And you want that. Yeah, and you want that. And it's like- It's a good feeling, yeah. It is, it's a great feeling. You can see it immediately right away. So, you know, you end up chasing that all the time, thinking that that's, you know, going to help get you bigger. And then, you know, if you've been doing that for six months consistently all the time, your body's so adapted that you're getting very little benefit to actually building any muscle. And the best thing that person could do if they want to look bigger or be bigger is to switch out of the pump training and go into strength training. Yep. You liked the information in this clip. You guys are going to love the information in this full episode. 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