 In this episode of Mind Pump the World's Top Fitness, Health, and Entertainment Podcast, we talk all about the eight best exercises that you're probably not doing. Now before I get into what this episode's about, I want to let you know that this episode is brought to you by one of our best sponsors, PRX Performance. Now PRX makes home gym equipment the best home gym equipment. In fact, they make squat racks that fold into the wall. So if you have a space issue, the profile on these things are insane. It's like 12 inches off the wall, so you can put it in your garage, park your car still, bring the car out, fold it out. Now you have a squat rack to do all of your exercises and workouts, but they have great barbells and plates and lots of other equipment. We pick them as the home gym sponsor. So anyhow, because you listen to Mind Pump, you get a discount. Here's what you do. Go to prxperformance.com forward slash mind pump. Use the promo code Mind Pump, get 5% off. And if you buy anything over 500 bucks, we'll send you a free Maps Prime program. All right, let's get into the episode. So we started by talking about some of the best exercises you're not doing. And the exercises that we picked are the ones that build the most muscle and burn the most body fat. You won't want to miss this episode. Listen to the very end, because at the end we kind of talk about how to program these into your current workout and how to use them to get those great results. Also don't forget, we're in June. That means Maps Hit is 50% off. Now Maps Hit is our high intensity interval training program. We designed this program to burn maximum body fat in the shortest period of time. This is the one program I can say is phenomenal for short term fast fat loss. Now the other good thing about this program is you don't need a lot of equipment. So a lot of you guys don't have access to a gym. That's totally fine. You can do these workouts with barbell and dumbbell or just dumbbells. And again, the workouts are intense, so make sure you start at the novice level, although the program does come with three levels all the way up to advanced. And of course, the program comes with everything you need to follow the workout, okay, videos and demos and blueprints and everything. Anyhow, 50% off, okay, that makes it very inexpensive. Here's how you get the program. Go to mapshit.com, that's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T.com and use the code HIT50. That's H-I-I-T-5-0, no space for the discount. You know what I find really interesting about like the fitness space or whatever? That there are trends in exercise. This takes a while to figure out. Like if you work out long enough, like they know something cool you've never seen. But I realize that exercises come in and out of favor. And what really determines this oftentimes is who, like, are the cool people doing these exercises. So I didn't really realize this fully until it took me, it was like, got 10 or 12 years into me working out. And the first time I noticed it was when Dorian Yates was winning all the Mr. Olympians. Now, for the people who don't know, who don't care, I'm going to explain why. Yeah, I'm one of those guys. Dorian Yates was a professional bodybuilder and he was the, he ushered in the era of the mass monsters. So he gets a lot of credit for taking the level of bodybuilders from what they look like in the 80s and early 90s to all of a sudden they were just incredible, incredibly massive. Okay. And one thing he was really known for was his back. Now Dorian Yates did this exercise that a lot of people didn't do. And he got it from Mike Mencer. He learned this movement from Mike Mencer, but it wasn't like a special movement. People had done it before. It just wasn't super popular. It was the supinated grip barbell row. And he would, they would film him doing it or pictures of him in magazines doing it. And because he had such a massive back because he was the, you know, the, the, you know, however many times Mr. Olympia, all of a sudden everybody started doing an exercise that nobody did really. I saw nobody really doing before. You mean to tell me you can turn your hands like this? Yeah. Yeah. So everybody started doing it, right? Yeah. Um, then I saw it again when Ronnie Coleman was Mr. Olympia as many times as he was. And he was, I mean, a lot of people call him the greatest of all time, just almost impossible to beat Ronnie Coleman did an exercise that used to be one that guys considered a girl exercise. They used to think this particular exercise was, oh, that's for, oh, walking lunges. That's for girls. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would, they, they filmed him. He'd walk outside. That's funny. They used to think it was a girl. Yeah. So he was in Texas and he'd, in the Arlington heat or whatever. And at the end of his leg workout, he'd put a one or two 45s on a, on a barbell. And I mean he's legs were like crazy looking, right? He'd wear these spandex pants. You can see the veins through him or whatever. And he'd do walking lung lunges in the parking lot. And after that, everybody started doing walking lunges. Yeah. Yeah. Now what's, what's, so it's very interesting to me, but one of the, the problems with this mentality of like trends, exercises that are trend setters is we tend to, when we, when we find some exercise that are popular, we forget other ones and a lot of times we forget really effective exercises. Yeah. They're just not popular, but they're super effective. Well, I think we tend to over glorify some of those too, you know, because of that, because of who did it or who has made it popular for the rest of the masses to start doing. Right. So the peculiarity of barbell deadlifts and squats, especially deadlifts. Yeah. Nope. I tell you what right now, the first half of my career as a trainer, nobody did barbell squats. I'm not exaggerating. Nobody did barbell squats ever. If you worked out legs, you were doing other stuff. And when I would do squats, I, as a, as a trainer or even as a manager, I would get members that would come up to me and tell me, what are you doing? You're going to hurt yourself. And nobody did them. All of a sudden, squats are like the best exercise ever for building your butt. Women do them. Everybody does them. And they are a phenomenal exercise, but I do find it interesting. So one thing that I did when I realized this, when I started to piece this together much later in my career, is I would buy old muscle building books and magazines from like the 40s and 50s and 60s. And even before I have some books actually from the early 1900s, actually posted a picture of them on my Instagram the other day. The goal was to look up exercises that they loved, that we don't even do anymore, and I would find some, start doing them and get blown away. I did the same thing. I mean, I think it's because when I started training, I trained with like whatever team I was on. And we had like a real regimented schedule of, you know, what we would all try to do is all barbell based. And so for me, it was like, I wanted to look at the past and see what was effective and what people were using to gain even more strength. That was maybe unconventional. Maybe, you know, you don't see it anymore in the gyms. I just got fascinated with that. So I went down the same kind of a rabbit hole, but mainly more for specific things that would help to enhance movement and performance as well. Yes. Now a lot of exercises lose favor because what got popular with exercise became body part specific exercises. So a lot of very effective exercises that don't necessarily work a specific body part fell out of favor. You know what I mean? Like people are like, well, I just want to exercise for my shoulders or my chest or my back or my legs. This movement, what is it, where is it isolating? It looks like it's doing a lot of different things. Where do I throw that in my workout? If you have a body part split routine, where do you throw some of these exercises? That's one of the other reasons why some of these movements. That's a really good point. I mean, I love the idea like, right? You sent a message over to us this morning. So let's do a list that we can put together of the best exercises that you're not doing. And so everybody started to collaborate and throw out what they think are great moves or exercises that people aren't doing. And I think that's probably one of the most common things that when I look at the list that we put together, what I see is that I see that very few of them are a specific exercise for one small muscle. That's all we're trying to focus on. And I think that's it. It got so popular to bodybuild and do isolation type movements and exercises that some of these great big lifts just fell out of favor. Well, and I think there's another kind of interesting counterpoint to this where a lot of strength coaches and lots of like modalities kind of popped up adjacent to what was going on with like, you know, your regular gyms. And it was real exclusive clubs. And it became, they almost became elitists in their methodology. And you had to pay a lot of money to learn these techniques, like in terms of kettlebell type of, you know, movements and, you know, the whole philosophy and modality behind that and like all these other directions. Like they, they didn't want you to know this information or perform it. They would like vehemently talk shit about you doing these movements if you weren't already training had the cert behind you. The other thing too that I see and I'm guilty of this is, you know, there are the hard ones, you know, totally. And I remember being this kid, you know what I'm saying? Like I didn't like doing the really, really hard exercises and at silly because when you think about it, most the really difficult or high skill leveled exercises have the biggest bang, have the greatest benefit. So I think that was, that's part of the reason too, is we tend to avoid the things that are difficult machines that just go like this. Well, you want the pump, but you don't want the pain. You know what I mean? You want to feel the muscle, but yeah, but you don't want to be exhausted or you don't want to feel like you have to really challenge yourself. And unfortunately, the connection between difficulty and results is quite strong. The more difficult movements tend to be, the more upswing that there tends to be. It's not always true, but it's usually true. So that's kind of a rule of thumb, thumb to consider. And in fact, if you look at all of our maps programs, what you find are typically very few, easy, easy-ish exercises. And typically these tend to be machine movements and much more of an emphasis on the more difficult skill ones. And here's the bottom line, you know, we all train people for decades. And I clearly saw a benefit on regular, every day. I'm not even talking about hardcore athletes or bodybuilders, talking about everyday people. I clearly saw a benefit with my clients when I'd have them do the more practice, the more challenging stuff versus doing, even doing more volume of the easy stuff didn't seem to equate the same results. So the first one that I picked that I felt I wanted to talk about is one that there's a lot of controversy around, especially in the strength community. In fact, I have good buddies that are very, very intelligent, great lifters, very, very strong and tend to mock this exercise. But I think for me personally, not just for helping myself progress, but also clients and what I saw as far as the overall carryover. And that was the Turkish get-up. And the Turkish get-up, I feel like doesn't get enough love. And I think it gets made fun of. If you're in the strength community and you're a big squat, deadlift guy, and you care about those numbers and getting that up all the time, you look at a Turkish get-up and you're like, okay, I'm going to spend all this time on this Turkish get-up. Is it going to make my squat? Yeah, it's not really about just lifting heavyweight, you know, which is what power lifters tend to love the most. But I mean, it's a bit of a dance move, let's be honest. It's multifaceted. There's lots of components to it. But that's what I love about it. I love the fact that it takes you through all the different planes of movement. And it has to be performed precisely for you to get the benefit of it. A Turkish get-up is one of those rare exercises. And I say rare and I mean it, because not many exercises do what a Turkish get-up does. It's one of those rare exercises that makes all your other exercises more effective. Okay, so a Turkish get-up doesn't work a specific body part. It's not a shoulder exercise, not a leg exercise specifically. It's not a core movement, you know, specifically or arm or chest. It works a lot of different things. So it's not going to, you're not going to do a bunch of Turkish get-ups and get a crazy bicep pump or chest pump or build your legs like crazy like you would with a barbell squat. But what it will do, if you do them right and if you put them in your program correctly, which I think we'll get to, is you'll feel more connected to all the other very effective exercises. Getting good at Turkish get-ups makes you better at overhead presses, squats, deadlifts, press at rows. It makes you better at all those other movements, which is why it's such a valuable movement. And here's, now here's why I would like to do these. Where would you put a Turkish get-up? In my opinion, there's a lot of value either at the beginning or end of your workout. I think that's the best. Or the days in between. Or the days in between. It's a great movement to do when you're not doing your normal traditional workout and you're like, I want to do some mobility movement. I want to keep this muscle building signal loud. I want my body to stay connected. I want to facilitate better recovery. That's when you do it in between. Yeah, I can't think of a better exercise that helps to promote mastery and control over your body. And the mechanics that you need to be able to summon perfectly to be able to pull this off. We talk about anti-rotation. We talk about a few things like that about stabilizing your body in pivotal moments of lifts. And so these are the components get highlighted more so in this exercise specifically than any other. And that's really what you're working on. You're not necessarily working on getting to an end of the rep. It's about how organized you can get and how controlled you can be in this movement. Well, Justin, you recently just did the prime webinar and in our Maps Prime program, we break the body up in three zones. And as coaches, we agree, like these are the most common areas where we see breakdown and movement. And what I love about the Turkish Getup is I can't think of a single movement that exposes all three of those areas that well. Oh yeah. Like you, if you have breakdown in zone one, if you have breakdown in zone two, you have breakdown in zone three, the Turkish Getup will expose that more than almost any other move. And to that point, if you get good at it, you're gonna see some of the greatest improvement in all three of those zones that we had to talk about. Right, so you do it at the beginning of a workout, it primes and wakes up and connects the whole body, okay? You do it at the end of a workout and it works the entire body in unison after you've probably broken it up into segments. You do it on the days in between phenomenal full body mobility, full body muscle activation, you're gonna send a good recovery and muscle building signal or at least maintain the one that you sent the day before with your heavy and hard traditional workout. So Turkish Getups definitely belong on this list. By the way, they were highly prized by Turkish wrestlers who dominated the scene for a long time back in the day. And one thing you need to look at with exercises is look at the history of them, look at why they're prized and who prized them. Cause oftentimes people, especially in those days, they did what worked. So they're like, this is making me better. I'm gonna keep doing it. And that's how it got popular. It was prized in the strength community too. They used to have, in order to get in an apprenticeship underneath like a famous or a popular strongman back then, they used to have like a test. And it was you have to be able to do a Turkish Getup with a 100 pound dumbbell kettlebell above your head. That was like, that was your way of even getting in to apprenticeship with a advanced lifter. So that was like- I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, that was like one of the tests that you had to get to before I would even take, if I was a bad ass strongman or lifter back then, before I would even take you underneath my wing, you first have to get to a point where you can do a 100 pound Turkish Getup before I would even mess with you. Wow, I don't know that, that's interesting. All right, the next movement was one that I discovered relatively recently. It's the windmill. Now the windmill involves rotation with resistance. And you also need some good shoulder and upper back thoracic stability. Now the windmill, like the Turkish Getup, doesn't train a specific body part. I mean, you could put this in the category of core if I had to absolutely pick. You know, you're getting a lot of quadratus lumborum, you're getting a lot of the lower back and the hips involved. Which I think is probably the highest value because I think, tell me another exercise that really highlights the QL. Right. Yeah, so there's just so much value in that, meaning like this is something that you'd need as an active stabilizer in deadlifts, in all these like major other lifts that really supports your back and your spine. Now the windmill got me more stable and stronger with my deadlift. It's one of those rare exercises just like the Turkish Getup, where it made me better at other movements which then have a lot of potential benefit. So the windmill for sure, and the first time I tried a windmill, I couldn't even get in the position. This is after years of working out, years of doing it. It was very common. I just couldn't get in the position. I didn't have the ability to move that way. And I remember the first time I tried it, I was like, this feels impossible. Why am I not able to do this? So I practiced and practiced, eventually getting able to get in that position, then add resistance and again, so much carryover to my deadlift in particular. I also had a little bit of carryover into my overhead press because the QL is so involved in stabilizing and then the arm, maintain that top position throughout that whole movement helps a lot. This was something that I had actually never done until I was lifting with Justin. So Justin introduced the windmill in my routine. So it was never an exercise that I even messed with until he taught me. And I'll never forget, similar to you, Sal, it just felt so awkward and weird the very first time. And I thought, oh my God, I can barely do this with any weight. You know, I wanna see if I can get up there to where I'm lifting some pretty good weight while I do it. And of all the exercises that we're gonna talk about today, this is up there with one of the ones that I love the way I feel right after I do it. So you talk about where to place it. This is another one of those ones I love at the beginning of a workout because it just sets up the rest of my workout really well. And I don't think there's a lot of emphasis that's put on rotational strength like that and shoulder stability together. And those are both common areas where people have breakdown. They have breakdown and having good rotational control and strength. They have a lot of breakdown and shoulder stability and strength. And so it really highlights that with combining it with hip hinging, which is so important and so many movements that we always address. Yeah, well, consider this. You have three very experienced and successful trainers. Adam, Justin and myself, we've been training people for a very, very long time. We started doing the windmill later on in our careers Justin probably much earlier than Adam and I, but Adam and I much later, it impressed us so much that we actually made it an assessment in one of our most popular programs. That's how valuable this exercise is. So don't take it for granted, try it out, put it in your routine and see what happens. It's really that exercise you didn't know you needed. And that was my experience too. I just, I felt like a complete difference when I went back to do my other lifts, how much more stable I was and how much better performance I had, any pressing or pulling move from there on out, like rotation is such a vital component. Now the next one is one that I have fallen totally in love with and I've gotten some pretty unexpected results from, this is the farmer walk. Now our farmer walk is literally you're holding heavyweight in each hand. You can do this with dumbbells or you could do this with a trap bar, which is my preferred way of doing it and you deadlift the weight up and then you walk really straight, tall and stable. You're not running, we're not racing, it's not a strongman competition. You're just walking as stable and straight as you possibly can. Now you would, at first glance you look at the exercise like what's going on? Like you're just holding something heavy and walking. What are you working? You're working everything. And I tell you what, do this movement and try and find a part of your body that you don't notice has just been worked from doing this heavy exercise. Well what I love about it too is if you ever taught in your clients the anatomical position, like there's a way to kind of stack your spine and get everything in good alignment. And that's where you first start. And this is an exercise that you can now load and reinforce that position that your body thrives in. And so to be able to kind of isometrically contract and maintain this position while you're moving now, you got local motion. I'm moving with this weight but now I have to stabilize this weight simultaneously and the weights are gonna pull you left, they're gonna pull you right. It's gonna get your core to really like set off on fire. There's a lot of things working to be able to maintain this position going forward. Well when I think of this movement, I think about what Sal's said on this podcast so many times when he's give the analogy of your central nervous system being like an amplifier to your speakers or your muscles. So we've made the case in the point of the role that the CNS plays and why that's so important and it's so overlooked. And when I think of farmer walks, I can't think of a better movement that primes the CNS. I mean, you are from your fingertips hanging on to the dumbbells or the trap bar all the way to your feet being grounded and holding up that 100, 200, 300 pounds, whatever it is that you're walking with. I mean, it just, it lights the entire body up like a Christmas tree. So if you do that first before you go anything else, I feel like it's one of those few movements that kind of gets me ready for everything. So it doesn't matter what I'm gonna go do after that, I don't care if I'm gonna go do shoulder workout, that a chest workout, a leg workout. If I do some heavy farmer carries for a couple sets before I go do that, my whole body just feels connected in primes. Yeah, there's multiple variations of carries. We're talking about farmer carries which is your balanced load. You can unbalance it and you can have just one side and we do a suitcase carry just as effective, but now we're a little bit more focused on our core stabilization, on our obliques getting a little bit more involved to be able to keep everything straight in the line. There's also overhead carries where I'm holding a weight over my head, but now I'm keeping my shoulder in position where I'm reinforcing the fact that I'm stable with something over my head. That's so important. Getting back into just an overhead press, like think about how much more power and effort you'll be able to control when you have a stable joint. Holding a weight and then having to do the most fundamental human, I can't think of a more fundamental human movement than walking. I mean, you're going to train, functionally you're gonna train your body in ways that are extremely effective. One of the side effects that I did not expect from Farmer Walk was my arms got bigger. It's not, I mean, I'm not curling, I'm not doing a press down, and yet when I do Farmer Walks, my arms grow better than- You're holding heavy weight, man. It's crazy, it's really crazy. And that tends to be one of the limiting factors for people in getting a stronger deadlift, getting a stronger bench press, curling more weight, pulling your body weight up. So if you get to a place where you can hang on to some really good weight and Farmer carries, you tend to notice all those other big lifts start to go up because many people, the limiting factor is their grip strength. It's fatigue, yeah. You're extending your ability to hold on to something longer. Absolutely. The next exercise has an interesting history. If you go back to the Soviet Union existed, you had the Soviet Union and you had America, and they would compete in many, many different ways, obviously, but especially in the Olympics. When the Olympics came around, it was like, who's gonna win? It was a great way to compete without shooting each other or whatever. And one area that the Soviets just crushed was weightlifting. They were incredibly good at weightlifting and the Bulgarians in particular were dominating the weightlifting scene. And there was, we called it the Iron Curtain at the time because they would hide a lot of their methods and training. Nothing was shared. Obviously, it was a massive communist country that didn't wanna share their success. They wanted to keep it for themselves. And so nobody knew what was going on, what kind of drugs they were taking, what was their training like, what happened. Well, when the Soviet Union fell, when the Iron Curtain came down, a lot of those coaches came to America and taught us some of their training techniques and taught us why some of their athletes were so dominant. And we learned so much about weightlifting after that happened. Well, one exercise that the Bulgarians did that a lot of weightlifters in the round the world didn't even know about was the Bulgarian split stance squat. Now, if you look at weightlifting lifts, oftentimes when they're bringing a weight up to arm's length, they get into a split position to press themselves up. And they did a Bulgarian split stance squat on its own to make that stronger. Well, the weightlifters in America started doing it and they also started to notice tremendous success. So that exercise has a interesting history. Now today, not a lot of people do it. It looks kind of like a lunge, but it's not a lunge. It requires more balance and it's probably the best lower body split stance type exercise I can think about. I consider it even better than lunges. Develops legs muscles like absolute crazy. Single best movement I ever did like for building my lower half. Like it was, and being completely honest for well over a decade of lifting for me, I avoided it and I avoided it because it was fucking hard. It's real hard. I remember being embarrassed of like, it would be hard for me to hold on to a pair of 20 pound dumbbells and do them. Like it was hard. It was just my, I was my, I lacked the ankle mobility. I lacked the hip mobility. So that definitely was a part of the reason why this was so challenging. And I was just weak like that. And 20 pound dumbbells would just destroy me. It was so hard, I'd be breathing heavy. My legs would be on fire. Meanwhile, I'm not even moving very much weight. And so for many years, I completely avoided it. And it didn't become something really popular for me. And so I remember hanging out with our good friend, Jordan Shallow. And I remember him really kind of beating it into my head, like how important of a movement it was. And if I would just stick with it, what would end up happening? And so I went on a kick for a while where I just like stopped squatting. And all I was doing was Bulgarian split squats. And I remember, I'll never forget, like not squatting for a long period of time, coming back to squatting, feeling so strong and so stable in the squat because of all the Bulgarian split squats. Such a great move. It's, it's one of those exercises I always come back to as a checkup. Like, especially if I have any kind of a hitch in my squat, like if there's something where like, I feel like I'm getting a little bit of a knee issue. I'm, you know, maybe I'm feeling my hips are like super tight all the time. And like, they're over responsive, whatever it is. Like, I'm gonna now take that time and put it into a unilateral type training. And this is one of the first exercises I go to because it's so exposing. It gives you so much feedback and it provides that much needed stability and support that you're probably not getting. Totally. And it's an easy one to program. You literally put it in your leg workout. It's a leg exercise. It's also one of the best butt building exercises you could do. It works the entire leg, quad, hamstring and butt. But if you, when you do these, if you've never done them before, you're gonna feel these in your glute like crazy. If your goal is to build your butt, I'd say definitely do this. If your goal is to get a really good squat, I'd say definitely do these. I've also used this like, like a primer too. So with just body weight. So I love it as a standalone exercise because it can be an incredible strength building, muscle building exercise by itself. So it is easy to program. Like if you're just wondering, like you said, Sal, it could replace squats, you know? It could replace lunges, especially leg press, leg extension. It replaces a movement like that because it's so good standalone by itself. But let's say I'm keeping squats in my routine right now and I just wanna be better at squatting. Sometimes I'll go do Bulgarian split squat, just body weight and I'll do like five reps on each side for two or three rounds to really just prime, open up my hips and get me ready for a good squat too. So it can be utilized like that. In fact, that's how Jordan was originally introduced it to me is as like a primer to get better at my squat. And I saw so much in the one time that I primed before my squat from doing that. I thought, shit, I'm gonna get a lot of value of this thing if I just actually started to get better at this. I love it too. Like you think about how tight your hip flexor is all the time too. And so like in this movement provides that nice needed stretch a lot of times in the hip flexor simultaneously working the glutes and stability. So there's just a lot of pieces to that that are really valuable. Now the next movement I judged wrongly for a long time. I thought it looked silly. I saw zero. This is an experienced trainer. I'd see it every once in a while in the old school muscle building books. And to me it looked like it was because they didn't have a bench to sit on. It looks like, oh, they didn't have a chair. So they just sat on the floor. Poor body. Yeah, they're just sitting on the floor. I saw zero value until I tried this movement. And this is the Z-Press. Now the Z-Press looks silly. Why are you sitting on the floor with your legs out? Sit on the bench, sit on a chair. Now you could do your overhead press. Isn't that so much better? It's not. And here's why. One of the weaknesses, the common weaknesses in overhead press is full extension. And it's really easy to cheat your way out of it whether you're standing and especially when you're seated. Now you sit down on the floor with your legs out in front of you. You have no choice but to work on that full extension. And let me tell you, that little bit of extra extension at the top of the lift really works the deltoids in incredible ways. The Z-Press was a game changer. It was one of those, it's now a movement that has made its regular rotation in my shoulder workouts. It's one of those exercises now that I can't work out without. It's an exercise that I wish I found earlier. Not only selfishly for my own routine, but also for clients. So I saw such huge improvement in my overhead press by incorporating Z-Press that I started to teach other people how to do it. And what I loved about it to Sal's point, when you do a standing or a seated overhead press, there's a lot of ways that you can cheat to get it up. And a lot of people arch in their lower, I did that. Like that was part of why I didn't like overhead pressing for so long is I tend, I have this arch in my low back that's a little excessive. I would press over my head and my low back, as soon as I were to get even decent weight on the bar, my low back would always catch on fire. So I wouldn't do it, I would avoid it. I'd go to a seated bench instead with a shortened range of motion and poor mechanics and I didn't address it. It wasn't until I started to get into the Z-Press that I really started to improve my mechanics on my overhead press because you can't cheat it. That's what's so beautiful about them. And that's why I like exercises, especially from a coach's perspective for teaching purposes. You get somebody really good at a Z-Press. Sure, you're never gonna Z-Press what a bodybuilder can do in a seated overhead press. He's gonna do more weight, right? And that's why we tend to do stuff like that because we think it looks cooler to be able to lift more weight. But you get that same guy or girl really good at Z-Pressing first and then bring them back and watch how much strength they have built. If I were to go back in time, that would be one of my standards for even, you have to be able to prove that you can do a Z-Press and under control and have everything stabilizing properly before I even allow you to do a standing over a press. So that's one of those things. Smart coaches out there definitely look into it and get vested into that because I think that would be a valuable tool for you. Now, this one's easy to plug into. It's a shoulder exercise. So some of your workouts just replace your overhead presses, whatever one you're doing with a Z-Press. Watch what happens. You literally cannot cheat because if you cheat, you fall over. So the weight you use is I'm gonna warn you right now. I mean, I can overhead press standing 135 pounds. I rarely go over 100 pounds with a Z-Press and that's me going heavy on the Z-Press. Now, the next movement I did not do because it hurts, it hurts a lot. Yeah, this one's a struggle for me. It hurts and again, it looks weird. You look at it and you're like, why would you lift anything that way that I don't lift anything ever that way? I use my hands, I don't use the crook of my elbow. What's the purpose of this? This is the Zercher squat. Now, Zercher squats were valued in old-time strongman and strength athlete routines. They did them all the time. And again, judging it, looking at it and thinking I'm experienced, they think, well, that's silly. They did that for no reason. Then when I went back and said, okay, hold on a second. There's a reason why this was present in all of the routines. Let me give this a shot. And when I did it, I'm not gonna lie. It took me weeks to get used to. At first, you're just getting used to how it feels. Doesn't feel comfortable in the crook of your elbow. You're not quite sure how to do it. But then I started incorporating and what I noticed is because when you're doing a deadlift or you're holding something in front of you, typically the lever is your whole arm. Well, what if we shortened the lever a little bit but didn't put it on your shoulders like a front squat or didn't put it on your back like a barbell squat? What if we just put it in your elbow? How is that gonna change the feel? Totally different, totally different exercise. And it puts the weight where you would be carrying things anyway. And maybe not in the crook of your elbow, but if you hug something and lift it like a wrestler or anything else that you're gonna hold in front of you, the Zercher squat is more like that than anything else. I came across this. I mean, if you know anything about personal training, it's like detective work, right? There's things that people come in with that there's limitations. There's things in the way that you don't wanna cause more harm than good. And so this is one of those I had athletes I was working with that had wrist issues that had shoulder mobility issues and things like that. And the front squat is very valuable for athletes. This is just one of those staples that I wanna make sure and incorporate in their programming. And so I just doing research and seeing this is one of those old methods that has lots of value and keeps it in the anterior portion. And I could still have them squat and I could still have them stabilize and get all the benefits of it. But now it's a little bit more centric. It's a little bit more, you know, in the middle of their body and they're able to kind of perform it without putting all that stress on their wrists. This is one of those moves that I thought was silly and ridiculous the first time that I really came across and I just dismissed it. I just dismissed it like why do that? I just front squat and set or back squat. And I wish I remember who I was talking to or what really where the epiphany came from. But I remember, and this is, you know, we were talking about, you know, functional training and things that are most functional. And when I think of things that are most functional, it's the things that carry over into your most obvious daily activities. And when I think about, when I pick up a bag of dog food or I pick up a cement bag of concrete or whatever like that, or I do something that's, you know, heavy, 100 pounds or more for me, how do I grab that and how do I pick it up? And when you think about that, I go, well, I never take anything and I load it on my back and do a back squat with it. I don't front, front rack it like a front squat. You're elbows up, you're like this all the time. Yeah, I've never carried anything in my life like that. But when I think about, when I've carried a heavy bucket of something or like I said, dog food, I hold it like a zurcher squat. You kind of bear hug it. You have this kind of rounded back, you know, and you're bear hugging it and then you're having to bend over or rotate or do stuff with it. And I think that's when the light bulb went off for me of like, wow, the value of this movement is far greater than what most people are talking about because when you think about it, you don't. You don't back squat anything in your normal day. You would grab it, you'd bear hug it and hold it and you'd pick it up. So that was when I think it finally went off for me and I started to include it and like you saw, very uncomfortable, hard at first, but once you get good at it, you do start to see the carry over and everything else. Totally. Now the next movement, I didn't do it all until we created maps strong. When we created maps strong, we wrote that program with a top level, strong man competitor, our good friend, Robert Oberst. And he wanted these in there. And I thought, you know, snatch grip deadlifts were for weight lifters. Like that's really only the value is for a weight lifter. But, you know, anytime we create a program, I always test out some of the stuff that I'm not used to just to see what the value is because it helps me communicate it on the podcast. So I started doing snatch grip deadlifts. Now I love deadlifting. I love traditional conventional deadlifts. I even love sumo deadlifts. Never had I ever done a snatch grip deadlift and I didn't know what to expect. I really didn't. I looked at it and I thought, where am I gonna feel this? And that's kind of a weird position. Here's what I felt. I felt my lats. I felt my back light up like I was doing almost like a different exercise. It really blew me away at a lot of its value. It also helped me with my traditional deadlift because a snatch grip deadlift shortened, it makes it so that you have to go lower in the deadlift. I have to squat down more in my deadlift. So I get some of the benefits from snatch grip deadlifts that I would get with what's called a deficit deadlift where maybe using smaller plates or you're standing on a step. I had a great carryover to my traditional deadlift from the snatch grip. So I remember when this went off for me. It was actually when I was competing. So, and this has a lot to do with when we first kind of met Sal and one of the first critiques that you said to me when you were looking at my back, you said, you know, how much do you deadlift? And I said, ah, not very often. I rarely deadlift, you know, incorporate here and there. And you're like, you should really put a lot of focus on deadlift and see what it does. And I remember, I'll never forget the picture I had of, you know, my back before I really was deadlifting a lot. And then when deadlifting became a regular thing, it just, nothing had blown my back up more than deadlifting at that moment. And at that moment, I hadn't really realized what a great back exercise it was, which is also why I get annoyed by the people on social media that try and, oh, it's not a back exercise, bullshit. If you don't deadlift, because you think it's not a back exercise, add deadlifting, period. But that's what sent me down the rabbit hole of deadlifting. So then I started looking up all these different variations of the deadlift and trying, you know, now I've been conventionally deadlifting for quite some time. It had already been a couple of years at this point. And that's when I started playing around with the snatch grip deadlift. And boy, you know, it was already, deadlifting was already an excellent exercise for my back. Now when I went into this really wide grip, I really felt my back. I felt like it took a little bit out of my hips and the power coming from there. And it really took a lot to hold that really wide grip and stabilize with both my upper back, my traps and my lats. I mean, I just felt that whole thing light up. And I saw a huge difference. I saw my lats blow up from that. So if this is a movement that you don't do and you want to have an impressive back, both obviously conventional deadlifting in there, but also snatch grip deadlifts. It's all encompassing. I totally felt the same thing. It was like a different exercise completely, which is weird because you're still doing like a very similar type of a movement with it, but with your arms like nice and wide out. But like Sal said, you get really low and so it basically provides that deficit. Now you're also like incorporating more components of the back. It's just, it's a completely different animal. You have to stabilize everything. Now the next movement I loved for my clients never did it for myself. And this is common, by the way, for trainers. I know if you're a trainer and you're listening, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There's movements you're like, oh, I love this. Help so many of my clients. Never do it, you actually do it yourself. But later on, I started doing these and I saw tremendous benefits. And these are single leg deadlifts. Single leg deadlifts are phenomenal. In fact, when I was teaching clients how to do traditional deadlift, I'd get them good at these single leg deadlift type movements, whether it be a body weight one only or as they got better by holding weight. Now you would be surprised at how strong you are with a traditional deadlift and how weak you are with a single leg deadlift if you've never done them. I mean, I could pull 500 pounds off the floor at the point when the first time I tried these, but I could not pull 100 pounds one-legged. I just couldn't do it off the floor. And that was an eye-opener for me. Well, it was an eye-opener for me, is that you realize, as people perform these, how much rotation happens in the hips. And so this is another great asset and tool in your toolbox as a coach to pull these out and you can really see where the compensations happen and how you can get them to understand how to stabilize and correct that, which then places an all-new emphasis into a regular, like, loaded situation where I'm doing a deadlift, how much more stabilization and how much more force output I can provide. Well, this is what Bulgarian split squat is to squatting. This is what single leg deadlifting is to deadlift. Yes. And I had the same exact experience. It was like Sal, I taught clients forever to do this. But to be honest, my attitude about it was kind of a girly exercise because I was doing it with my older clients that I knew that needed that hip stability and control. I wasn't doing it really heavy or loading. It was normally more about stability with them and protecting their hips and their low back area by getting strong and single deadlifting. So I was never really using it like a strength exercise until I decided to see, like, okay, what can I do on a single leg deadlift? If I can deadlift X amount of pounds, what happens when I go unilateral and I can balance and see where I'm at? And I was extremely weak. And so then I went on this kick of, okay, let's see how high I can, and if you go far enough back in my Instagram, you can see that I was on a kick for a while there where I was sharing myself, getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And I remember when I first started it, I think it was like 30 or 40 pound dumbbells about all I could handle in the single leg deadlift. And I started to work my way up to where I was holding onto 100 pound dumbbells doing that. But boy, after I got really strong doing that, going back to deadlifts, it felt, the bar came up so different. I felt so stable and in control and strong from doing the single leg deadlift. So if you're somebody listening and you're like, I want to get better at my squat or I want to get better at my deadlift, those two movements I think are exercises that complement that more than anything else. You focus on the split stand squat, you focus on the single leg deadlift for a while in your routine, watch what happens to those big lifts. Totally, now single leg deadlift, the way I would typically program it is a little bit differently than a traditional deadlift. So like a traditional deadlift, I would put it in my back portion of my workout. Single leg deadlift, I believe belongs, if you were to categorize it, would put it in the leg category where you're working glute and hamstring. So if you're wondering where to plug that in, I would plug that into the leg portion of your workout. But there it is, eight exercises that belong in the top movements that will give you the best results that will build good muscle and then simultaneously help you burn body fat. Try plugging them into your routine, try adding them. Here's the key though, don't do them just once. Just like other exercises, you don't get much benefit until you start to get good at them. So plug them in and practice them for at least five to six weeks and then report back, let us know what happened. The irony of this too is I feel like is every one of these, not that I'm looking at these, we didn't even do this on purpose, but is every one of those in performance? In mass performance? Yeah, I think so. Probably if not all of them. Except snatch grip deadlift, but yeah. Yeah, that's an aesthetic, right? We put that in aesthetic and in strong. Yeah, well you're gonna find all these exercises in at least one or multiple programs because we found them to be so valuable. A lot of people don't do them. And I don't know, listen, I don't know about you guys, but I used to love doing exercises like this in the gym just to see the looks I would get. People try and figure out what the hell I'm doing. And then I do them and get good at them. And then- Well, this is what made mass performance one of the more underrated programs that we have. It tends to be the one that people in less state, because it says performance, so people just automatically connected, oh, if I'm not an athlete, it's not for me. But many of these movements are in there. And so we always get people that do it because it's like, oh, I've done every other program. Let me try this performance one now. And they end up getting the best benefits because there's so many of these unconventional lifts inside that program. Perfect. Now look, if you like listening to the podcast, but you'd also like to watch it, we film the podcast. You can actually go to YouTube, Mind Pump Podcast, and check us out, Listen and Watch. Also, if you wanna find us on social media, you can find us on Instagram. Now you can find Doug at Mind Pump Doug. He's a producer, so you see a lot of the behind the scene stuff on his page. Justin is at Mind Pump, Justin. Adam is at Mind Pump, Adam. And you can find me at Mind Pump Sal.