 Our next caller is Lisa from Michigan. Hey, Lisa, how can we help you? Hey, everyone, how's it going? Good, great. Just okay. Yeah, I guess it's okay for that one. Just, we're great. Great. All right, so first of all, I know everyone says this, but I just gotta say it too. Love your show. Listened up pretty much everyone about a year now. So my question has to do with leg training, lower body workouts. I was introduced to heavy weight lifting, probably about five or six years ago. I was a runner, long distances, and someone suggested that I work on building my posterior chain in order to get faster, actually, and showed me some exercises, did them, they worked, and I got faster, and I was hooked. So I ended up following various bodybuilding type programs over the years, and something that I have noticed is that my legs grow so fast and so easily. And as a female, I mean, it's not like I'm looking for a thigh gap or anything, but I struggle to lose body fat in my thighs, and then they grow really easily. So I'm looking for some guidance as far as, I mean, how do I change my lower body training? I did purchase a few of your programs because they were on sale, and I wanted to get a closer look at them, so I purchased multiple of them. Right now, the way I train is I do a lower body, an upper body, and then more of a full body mat con. So lower upper are very heavy, traditional weight lifting. And it looks like in your programming, there's multiple days of heavy legs, well, the various programs that I looked at. And it seems like whenever I've tried to do multiple days of heavy legs over the years, my legs grow. Now, I do own a calipers and a flexible tape measure, so I know for a fact that my body fat has stayed the same, but my muscle has gotten bigger, like that's where the girth is coming from. I don't really feel like doing a ton of cardio is the answer in leaving out all heavy weight lifting, but just kind of wondering if you could, I don't know, tell me some modifications that I could make to your programs, or if you have other ideas. Okay. I got a lot of ideas. That was a short-winded question. Yeah, so here's a deal, Lisa. We got it, though. I feel like we got everything. No, yeah, this is actually quite common. You still have me there. It's very common. I think what'll happen if you follow a MAPS program, you'll wake up the next day with just way too much muscle. It's really powerful. Yeah, I'm sure. That's not gonna happen. Okay, so a couple of things, number one, I question for you, are you still doing any running? Yes. I, not the longer distances anymore. I do one day of like sprints, basically. That's it. 30 seconds off, 20 minutes done. Okay, okay. And then I like to be able to keep myself in good enough running shape where I can go out and run three to five miles. So I do that maybe once a week. Okay, so okay. So that's not too much, especially compared to what you were probably doing before. Right, I was training for 25K before. Got it. Okay, so what you're saying is quite common. First off, as a female, you're going to store more body fat in your lower body. Not much, and actually, believe it or not, that's a good thing. They show that when women store body fat mostly in their lower body, they tend to be healthier. They tend to have higher omega-3 fatty acids in their body. They have healthier children. So that's not a bad thing. It's a very normal, natural, good thing. But I know, I can hear your frustration, right? You want more balance in your body. You want the upper and lower body to match a little bit. In that case, I would say this. Look, when you do your full body routines, train your upper body first and leave your legs for the end of the workout. That should make a difference. And then number two, reduce the volume of your lower body workouts. You know, a lot of people have one part of their body that tends to respond faster than other parts of their body. That's where the individualization comes from when you change your routine, right? So if you're a guy and you're working out and your chest just grows real fast but your arms don't seem to match, then you would put more focus on your arms, less on your chest. You can do this with your lower body as well. And you're not gonna gain more body fat in your legs as a result. There's no such, the spot reduction is a myth. Your body burns body fat from wherever it wants. So I would do less volume. Go ahead. I didn't say anything. Okay. I would do more upper body work, less lower body work, save the lower body work for the end of your workout and then use your calipers and your tape measure as a guide that points you in the right direction. And then I'll add to that. So I agree. And I think there's nothing wrong too with adding a little bit more endurance running. In this case, like you do that, you definitely will lose more body fat. So you could run a little bit more. You could also do, like if there's one of our programs where it calls for you to squat twice in the week, you could exchange one of those out for like hip thrust instead or do something like lunges or step ups to a balance. Maybe incorporate some stability training in their unilateral type of work instead of all the bilateral strength training. That'll help. This was something I dated a girl that was a competitor. She had a very, her quads were so overdeveloped that we literally would, when we were getting ready for showtime, all she would do was lunges. That's all we did. We wouldn't allow her to do any squats or really, really heavy lifting. So you can definitely modify the workout like that. There's nothing that says you have to bilateral heavy squat all the time. So if you see an extra, and if you do something like hip thrust instead of doing this on squat day, so follow our program, you see that it calls for back-loaded barbell squats. Instead you go do hip thrust instead. And then your butt will just get bigger. Right, you build the butt, you build the butt, but then you don't develop the thighs and the quads as much, right? Well, this is the conundrum we've always been in with even writing a program because there's general attributes that we're trying to put out there and hope that most people will respond to. But like in this case, there are opportunities to add these modifications, adjust things, reduce some volume where you see where your growth is really rapid. And that's something too, I experienced this with a couple clients who their traps grew a little too pronounced. And so it's like, there's certain things individually that you can modify and adjust and tweak. And so it's good to have communication. And that's why we also have a forum where a lot of this discussion happens. Also keep in mind too that we don't, or I wouldn't recommend completely eliminating like leg stuff just because for leaning out purposes, that's a huge advantage for you, right? So you burn the most calories doing leg exercises. Most of our muscle is in our legs. So that's going to speed your metabolism by having muscular legs. So if you were to completely eliminate leg stuff, you would also have a harder time leaning out because of that. So it does work. Exactly, that's where I was feeling kind of stuck. Like I'm in a light calorie deficit right now and to lose a little body fat. And sure enough, my upper body's leaning out, my lower body's not, but yet I'm totally on board with like heavy compound lifting. I realized, you know, that's probably the solution, but yet, you know, so should I more sort of discontinue or avoid the concept of progressive overload then? And then just not necessarily, not necessarily, I don't know if you've listened to the episode, but you should go listen to the episode that we did on a progressive overload. There's nine, I think we listed nine different ways to progressively overload. Progressive overload doesn't necessarily always mean adding more weight to the bar. Yeah, and you can just cut the volume down. You know, here's, okay, with someone like you, if you're very gifted in the leg department with muscle and then you think to yourself, all right, I'm not going to go heavy anymore. I'm just going to do more reps. And then here's what'll happen. You'll build more muscle as a result of doing that. So just cut the volume. That's it. Just cut the volume and don't prioritize your legs when you do a full body workout. Like we almost always, if we're writing a full body workout, the first exercises are lower body. They're the biggest movements, most bank for your body. I would save them for the end. When you're done with, when you're done with all your upper body stuff, then you go do your legs. Okay. Yeah. All right. Thanks for calling in. Yeah. Thanks a lot guys. No problem. Have a great day. Yeah, that's the longest question yet. Absolutely. It's the award. You know, I tell you, this is where bodybuilding has got a lot of, one area in bodybuilding that's got a lot of value is that bodybuilders are excellent at understanding how to slow down development in some areas and speed up development in others. I love this client. Like so, I know I'm razzling her a little bit about the long-winded question, but this is actually really common. You know, a lot of people that come in the gym and they want to, you know, change their body composition, there's normally areas they're either very happy with or they develop really well or areas they don't. And this is where I like our job and it's not as cookie cutter as, oh, go follow Maps Aesthetic. You know, or, oh, go follow this program. I have to be able to modify and adjust, which is how we wrote these always. We've always never, or we've never said, this is the perfect program for everybody. It's, you know, here's some general rules, but here's a great example of nothing. And what I love doing with a client like this since almost everybody is underdeveloped on the posterior chain, like I would get rid of a lot of the quad stuff and I'd focus more hamstring. I would do, you know, stiff-legged deadlifts and more deadlift stuff. I would do more good morning type of stuff. I would do movements that- Yeah, because I've almost never, I don't think I've ever had a female client say that their posterior chain was overdeveloped. Right, right. It was always quads. And that's why I went to the hip thruster because normally, it's normally their thighs, right? They don't like that their thighs keep growing and getting bigger, but most girls are completely okay with adding an inch to their butt, you know? Or their hamstring. Because here's the thing too, you develop those hamstrings, even if they grow in size, it gives this great look on the backside. And it's just, it's the number one overlooked muscle on both men and women. This is just the perfect example that, you know, like once we get so divided in these camps, like, oh, well, I'm just gonna power lift. I'm just gonna crossfit. Like there's so many individual differences to account for bodybuilding is a great option to really sculpt the body. So it's, you know, it's a valid method, you know, and all of these can work and we can interweave them together.