 Our next caller is Teresa from Iowa. Hey, Teresa. How you doing? I'm well, Sal. Hello. Hi. What's your question? How can we help you? I'm just starting six months into weightlifting. And I have bicep tendon tear on a bench press. Really, really don't want to stop. So I'm kind of discouraged. What can I do? I can still do my squat and my deadlift. What can I do for my biceps and my chest and stuff as I wait to recover? Right. That's a great question. First, I need to know how you tore it. What did you do? Well, I'm new to this game, so I'm just going to say I was doing a primer exercise. And I can't remember the name, but I was laying down and I was putting my hands up, squeezing shoulders, and then putting my thumbs to the ceiling. It was hurting a little bit, and then I went right into a bench press, and I racked myself up. Pro and Cobra? Is that what you do? Or handcuff with rotation? Yeah, one of those two, it sounds like. Now, has it been, has a doctor told you've torn your bicep or is this you've diagnosed yourself? Okay, good. That's a good, and I'm asking that question because sometimes it's just inflammation. Right, a bad strain. Yeah, or a strain. Where do you feel the pain? Right in the front of my bicep, up towards my shoulder. Oh, wow. Interesting. You know, I just talked to somebody. I know we just got off the phone off of something similar. Yeah, very similar pain. Does the pain get better when you stretch the bicep or does it get worse? It is getting better. It's been four weeks now, and I've been just primers, and maybe some curled, but it definitely gets better as I stretch, and I'm thinking the answer is patience, but you know, I'm just new on this, and I'm really wanting to be done. How? Yeah, no, no. I feel you getting injured is probably, it's got to be the most frustrating, especially if you're motivated and you're really getting into it. There's nothing like an injury to frustrate the hell out of you. Yeah. So here's some good news. Training other parts of your body does have a systemic effect on the whole body. So to give you an example, there's these very interesting studies where they'll have people work out just one arm, and what they'll find is there's some strength gains even in the other arm that's not being exercised. So in your case, if you're doing exercises that don't bother this area, like you said, squats and other exercises, you're still far better off than doing nothing at all. Not to mention your leg work is where you're getting the biggest bang for the buck anyways. When you talk about calorie burn and staying fit and building your metabolism, luckily the bicep is going to be something that's very small as far as contributing to that. Totally. Now here's the second piece of advice I'll give you is do deep tissue massage on the affected bicep and do light static stretches. When you do your primers, don't be so intense with them right now. Go through them easy. Don't be so intense. Static stretching and massaging of the bicep might help. And then here's the other thing. When you get back into pressing, make sure your chest is out and your shoulders are pinned down and back. When the shoulders roll forward, it places a lot of stress on the bicep tendon for a lot of people. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Thank you all. Yeah, no problem. So what are your goals by the way? You started six months ago. What are your overall goals? I to lose all of my weight and actually to be strong and pushing 60, I got 30 years left of me. I know it and I'm not going to be able to do that if I continue down the path I was, I became sick. So I want to get strong. I love that you're starting right now. What was it six months ago that got you going and how long have you been listening to Mind Pump? I've been listening to Mind Pump probably right before I started. I became very sick and I said I had a toxic work environment so I retired early and said it's my time. Good for you. Good job. Very, very good. Okay, go ahead. Continue. Sorry. And so I needed to start eating healthy and I needed to start exercising and I did, a friend turned me on to Legion, but then through Legion, I found you guys and you guys are awesome. I just appreciate everything. Awesome. The way you intrinsically take this approach, it's not about just gaining muscle. It's about whole body health and that's really what I want. Beautiful. But when clients would come to me and talk the way you're talking, I would just get so excited because you've taken the hardest steps. It's hard. It's actually difficult to get people to get them where you're at right now. So that's excellent. Are you drinking enough water? Are you staying hydrated and avoiding inflammatory foods? Yeah. Are you eating enough fish and are you getting good Omega 3 fatty acids in your diet? Yes. Yeah, I've started. I wasn't before. I'm taking some joint supplements from Legion because of knees and I am drinking water. I always have been a big water drinker. So the diet is going very well. I'm down 40 pounds. Wow. Wow. Congrats. Oh, yeah. I feel good, but I want to get better. Okay. I want to be stronger. You're doing great, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. That's phenomenal already. Yeah. You're kicking ass. So I'm going to give you one more piece of advice. I want you to take this to heart. Okay, Teresa? Okay. Okay. Take your time. Don't rush anything. Take your time. Allow your body. Give your body a chance to adapt and to improve. If you take this approach, you'll get there faster than if you allow this feeling that you have, which is contagious. I can hear it over the phone right now. When I'm talking to you, I want to go work out right now just hearing you talk. That feeling that you have, if that takes over, you're going to push yourself a little harder and do a little more than is necessary. Take your time. Be gentle with yourself. You'll get there. You will get there. If you go a little too fast, a little too hard, you increase the risk of hitting those roadblocks like you just did. So be gentle with yourself. You'll get there. You have the right attitude. Yeah. Especially slow those reps down. Yeah. Take your time with that and find your thresholds. And also, you know, that strength is going to come back. You just got to trust the process. And when things like this happen, because this is common even for us, as long as we've been training, I still get nagging pain and injuries that come out of nowhere because I've pushed myself too hard or I overreach. You know, this is where I shift my focus. Okay. You know what? I need to be doing more mobility or yoga stretching or more walking. So when these things do happen, because sometimes they're inevitable, they'll occur during your journey. Don't let it discourage you and get frustrated and set back or don't let it try and push through it. You know, shift your focus a little bit and say, Hey, you know what, I'm going to stay dialed in on the nutrition, get some more walking in, maybe work some mobility, let my body recover a little bit. And then always remember, I would say this in the podcast all the time, we are always trying to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. And when we're motivated, it's really easy to want to keep overreaching and stretching and pushing ourselves. But really the goal is just to do a tiny bit more than what you were doing the month before. So trust the process. That's right. You're doing great right now. You're doing very good, Teresa. I appreciate you listening to the podcast and thank you very much for your question and congratulations on the 40 pounds weight loss. That's phenomenal. That's right. Keep kicking ass. Well, you know, we didn't ask you if you have any of the programs. Are you following any of the maps programs right now? I got maps prime after the injury. The reason I got to be honest, I went to maps of anabolic and I got overwhelmed by some of the exercises that I don't really know the correct form because I'm all about form instead of gaining more knowledge on different lifts. Teresa, I think you should start with map starter. I think that's going to be the better. Doug, set her up, huh? We're going to give you map starter. Start there. Follow map starter. Thank you. When you're finished with map starter, once you complete map starter, go back to maps on a balik and then do pre-phase. Do pre-phase for about five to six weeks, then move into phase one. Okay. Okay. Okay. That sounds great. Beautiful. All right. Perfect. Thanks again, Teresa. Hey, Merry Christmas, guys. Hey, Merry Christmas. Back-to-back bicep issues. Yes, but so here's the beauty of this. Right. Same question? Different. Totally different. Totally different prescription. Yeah. So she's got the right attitude. That's so hard to teach people. I can tell the right away. I mean, she's only been going six weeks, right? Six weeks, 40 pounds already. She's definitely the type that is pushing, right? She's not, she's ambitious right now. She obviously had something in her life. I think she said six months, if I'm not mistaken. Six months. Even six months. 40 pounds in six months is great. That's a lot. Yeah. You can hear like she made that, and I've had a few clients like this, right? They get that switch. That switch turns, and it's like, it's real. It's not fake, but the challenge with it is overdoing it. It's laser focused. I love training someone like this because they, like you, and you did a good job sell of complimenting her that she did the hardest part. Like she's gotten started. She's motivated. She wants to make a change. She has the right attitude of a holistic approach. She's just over ambitious. And so all you got to do is kind of corral someone like that back a little bit and say, listen, I know you want to do more and you want to do this and you want to do that. You're doing great. And just reminding them, you're doing phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. And to listen to your body a little bit. And that's exactly. Yeah. More isn't always the answer. Right. And that's hard to take when everything's kind of working. I would much rather pull the client back than have to push them. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. No. 100%.