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Here comes the show Let's talk about building the ultimate at-home routine and what that would consist of and what you guys would want to put in there If you were to do that, you know, it's funny about that is I was just on a podcast with max look over here And he brought something up interesting He said with people with the holidays and people traveling to visit family and you know go different places He says he's getting a lot of messages from people who are working out at home And if you think about it, it's probably aside from you know What just happened recently with Jim's getting closed down and stuff where we had a lot of people working out at home That's probably aside from work The time that most people would need a good routine to work out without a gym, right? Because they're traveling to the East Coast or the West Coast or they're going to the mom's house No gyms around right. I want to work out though. I want to keep my fitness up I have any of you guys followed up on the the stat that we talked about I don't know. Maybe the beginning of or relatively early in the pandemic When we talked about how many people were moving away from working out in a gym and actually starting to work out at home I did not I have no I'm curious remember because we remember there was a little bit of a debate that we had on I Believe that we would see the a strong come back to Jim's and you speculated that it was gonna forever change the market And that we're we're gonna see a lot more at home training and I think you know with the the surge of tonal and Peloton and a lot of these at-home workouts and their stock and what we saw happen Early on in the pandemic was pointing in the direction that you were probably right. I'm curious if it's still I think it's turning around I do think there's some statistics show that people are more comfortable now come back to the gym But I don't think it's anywhere close to what it was So there's a lot of people that are still trying to make it work on the confines of their house And a lot of people weren't able to actually get a lot of equipment either because there was like scarcity there So, you know, they're trying to construct ways to work out with minimal equipment So this is the longest ever in my life that I've not used to Jim Never in my life have I gone this long of a period of time and not gone to like a Traditional big-box gym and all of my workouts have either been here or at home and you haven't gone to a commercial gym I went to I think twice and I had to wear a mask and do the whole thing and it was just so not the same I was not a fan. I think what we're probably gonna see Doug actually brought up an article I think you're gonna see a lot of people go back to gyms But there's a but the percentage of people that work out at home. I think is Forever more than it than it was before. I mean, it's hard to tell though, right? Because we're still kind of in this like we were not back to normal yet So the part of why I haven't gone back, you know, the justice I think I have no desire to try and wear a mask while I work out Like I get irritated walking through the grocery store Yeah, wearing a mask that just feels uncomfortable and weird and for that long period of a time of wearing it like I can't imagine exercising with it. So it's I'm so curious to you know, if things were more normal You know, would we see this surge back into the gym? I think one of the challenges to unless you're like a Some kind of a specific strength athlete like if you're a powerlifter or an Olympic lifter You're gonna need access to specific types of equipment, you know barbells or X, you know weights you could throw and draw bumper plates Platforms and things but for the most part most people who are interested in overall fitness and muscle building and fat loss There still is this Kind of this the stigma around working at at home that it's like this Inferior Option somehow right which really isn't true. There's a lot you could do. It's not true at all And that's coming from somebody who was on the other side I mean, I believe I was arguing a lot with you that I Don't like it. I don't think it's anywhere near as good But to be honest, I've I've learned to love it the last couple years dude. It really has been nice There's certain aspects that I think I miss of of the atmosphere around it But I think I had that same feeling too like oh my my physique is gonna suffer Oh my strength training is gonna suffer if I don't have access to all these different tools And the truth is it highlights what we talk about all the time I mean, it's the big lifts and movements that are give you the biggest bang for your buck and I can do all those like yeah Squat deadlift overhead press bench press. Yeah, I haven't worked out at a gym consistently for 15 years at least You know, I had my studio where I had minimal equipment was a just personal training only and that's it and ever since then I've gone to gyms, but not consistently and I've used to be able to say that your physique shows that but now you Have the best I'm gonna show out One band You know these machines well, here's here's that here's some of the biggest challenges I think that people encounter with working at home I think the biggest one is the lack of equipment and the lack of space, right? So you go into a gym you have Machines you have lots of dumbbells lots of barbells cardio equipment lots of variety lots of space to do your workouts And then when you're at home, you're like, okay, I don't have a and a lot of people don't have a room dedicated to working out So they're like, okay, I don't have a lot of equipment. Don't have a lot of space What could I possibly do? There's a lot you can do for example with just body weight training and body weight training sometimes You know kind of people look at it like it's this again inferior way of working out But I tell you what you look at some of the most developed body weight trainer type people gymnast for example or Yeah, you know these guys doing calisthenics all the time like with amazing physiques Incredible. I mean it's in the tension that you create with an exercise. Your body doesn't really know What you're using necessarily now, of course the strength that you gain tends to be specific to the movement But body weight exercises have so much carryover to the real world and you can make for example You can make a push-up very very challenging with tension tempo. Yeah using one arm elevating your feet There's a lot of different ways to make that basic exercise very very effective like a bench press Well, have you ever heard some of these like calisthenic guys make and like make a really good argument on why you should Focus there first and they make a really good point in case. I mean if you can't control your own body and body weight in space Why would you add load to that? And so it you know that makes a lot of sense for someone who's getting into lifting If you haven't done these body weight exercises and perfected them with good form and been able to do them with at least Several reps before you start to pile on a barbell. No, I mean when you look at overall safety and longevity It's a pretty good case, you know It is well it really gets you connected to your body and in the awareness of it And that's why too like a lot of strength coaches promote Especially with kids to to really dive into like things like gymnastics things like You know where They're basically like doing all of these like tumbles and flips and push-ups and you know things where they're they have to figure out their Place in space with their body. Yeah parkour. Yeah, our core. That's what I was looking for And then another one is resistance bands, which you know, it wasn't that long ago I mean when I started in in the fitness space Nobody uses nobody used resistance bands. There was actually At-home machine called us a solo flex. Do you guys remember that? No, both legs too So it's not that's not with the same thing. I always said it was the same. It's the same company different company I think they're different companies. So the solo flex had like these like resistance Kind of band-looking things. Yeah. Yeah, and the bow flex to use like resistance They look like bows that that they would use. Oh, that was yes for the flexes So I remember the solo flex they looked like these like uh, like kind of infinity sign, but it was a rubber Yeah, and you put on different ones. Yeah, yeah, I don't know why I thought I always thought that was bow flex Who did that? So they were different companies. They might be the same company I mean they sound similar in the names. So it makes sense that it would go from solo flex to bow I mean that makes me really curious if like one of them totally piggybacked off the other one Right who was first and then who came up? So you would add those almost like plates. Yes. Yeah, you would and I remember like with resistance bands for a long time As trainers and you know strength coaches we thought of them as like, oh, that's what you do in aerobics classes or That's not nearly as good as free weights and then something changed the Soviet studies from their their weight lifters really started to get researched and American weight lifters started to adopt resistance bands as part of the training and then American power lifters started to use Resistance bands and what's that one power lifting school just in that west side barbell? Yeah, so west side barbell started to really make that a well They were the first ones to really make it popular with like uh, the strength all the unconventional tools with chains and they added a lot of Different ways of progressive load. Yeah, and they were crushing They were crushing records like they were just dominant And so all of a sudden you saw hardcore strength athletes use resistance bands And I think there's no better way to crush a myth that a piece of equipment's ineffective Than having strength athletes break, you know world records using that particular piece of you know, uh tool or whatever So all of a sudden you started seeing resistance bands and then I remember There was one a particular club that I helped grand open And what they would do is they would grand open So how big box gyms typically work is you'll have a location and you'll do what's called a presale And you'll have a binder with pictures of what the gyms will look like you sell your memberships whatever and then typically they'll open it in phases So they'll open up like the cardio area And then that's it right and then they'll open the basketball court in the freeway area And people could start working out right away. So I had trainers That were ready to go clients had bought packages to train with them But the only thing that was open was cardio And they were like, what do we do? We don't have any weights. We have no machines And we went with resistance bands and I remember a lot of trainers were kind of like, oh, this is going to suck And you know, how am I going to do this? I remember having meetings with them like, look, you got to get creative Show your clients value anyway The the trainers were blown away by the results that their clients were getting from using resistance bands to the point Where when we opened up the whole gym They still used it as part of their training protocol The cool thing about resistance bands Is they allow the problem with body weight exercises is you're working with gravity So you have to get real creative and move your body in space resistance bands are like It's like if you have a pair of resistance bands, it's almost like you have access to almost every cable machine Ever invented I can put it It's very similar in a doorway. I could put it low in the middle I mean the ones that we sell right they have that little cool I think that was like one of the most brilliant inventions I've ever seen with bands right there in the crack of the door I didn't see that until until the one we got I didn't know how long that's existed or not But I remember when we first partnered up with rubber bandits and got those That was one of the other than I know the bands are some of the best lifetime warranty and all that good stuff But like I mean bands are bands in my opinion as far as like that But what I thought was fascinating was the the door hinge thing because it's like that was the only challenge with the band Is like oh if I wanted to anchor something down It's like if you didn't have something with a hook it was like, oh, shit. I would want to tie it Yeah, yeah, but with a door wedge, it's amazing. Oh, yeah with that You basically have a free motion machine where you can make any any cable exercise you can imagine you can now now do with a band So if you have body weight and you have resistance bands You can mimic or do almost any exercise with those things which takes up like barely any space Any no space takes no space in fact a resistance bands I mean you could you could carry them in a small double bag No problem pull them out and you have a door And you're set then you throw in tension And isometrics which is still today and I will make this prediction right now in the next five or ten years It's going to be all the rage because if you read the studies on isometric training, which by the way Decades there's decades of studies on isometric training and athletic performance muscle building how it augments traditional resistance training Tons and tons of studies is it's because it's boring you think like why why do you think it's not I think a lot of people don't know how do you how do you uh, you know portray that in videos? It's just that's what I mean. It's just it's just not It's just it's just not sexy right I think that's the reason why it's because people look at it and be like oh, this isn't this isn't cool And it's just as like you said you show a video of it. It's just someone sitting still Yeah, it's so effective. Yeah, and I think in the next five or ten years people It's going to become the this advanced training tool that all these people are going to start using But isometrics builds tremendous muscle strength very minimal damage on the body It allows you to really maximize your muscle contraction It's this incredible tool and the cool thing about isometrics is you can add it to almost any routine With a with a small amount of additional recovery required You can't say this about a lot of training modalities like if I add there's minimal damage From this type of training modality And that's what's so awesome about it is you can go from like a kid to like You know somebody that has like limitations physically like anybody an elderly Population, um, so it's just so applicable all the way across the board very easy to regress and progress it Like you could take anybody like somebody who is an advanced age that has all kinds of conditions Can train isometrically. Yes and without risk. That's what's great about it Totally and then the last thing that I'd say is probably super valuable for home Workouts are suspension trainers now to be fair Suspension trainers became popular relatively recently But the but rings which is what they copied right if you look at like like gymnastics rings have been around for decades and decades and decades And what you know really smart marketers did is they adopted that for Use in group classes and you know, this is what you can just and was that the was that the root of it? Is that what where the inspiration came from ropes and uh ladders? I would I would argue that this was something you saw a lot in gymnasiums back in like 20s Yes, you know 30s and this was very common for even in physical education like that that was the focus was climbing and um, it was it was something that you know, it was like a lost art Uh that we found but they actually started to kind of use a lot of those Uh types of angles and techniques and and placing your body against gravity And so they found that you know with these straps It's like you could emulate a lot of those things a lot easier You know, it's one of those things that I remember being a trainer being so when it came out in the scene when like trx Right exploded. I was so mad like aren't you like so mad that you it's such a simple concept. Totally Yeah, but and so valuable that it's like such it's like a dull moment for me when that went the reason why it became popular at first was because it was backed by Um, the very powerful marketing machines of the group Classes like they have the or the names of them like lemmills and less mills Yes, and they and they they did such a good job marketing it and then the reason why it continued to be popular is the truth is Suspension trainers can be a very effective tool for traditional strength training It's one of the most effective tools you can use for traditional strength training if you know how to use it properly And there's some exercises on Um on suspension trainers that I actually prefer over other pieces of equipment. Oh, yeah, you know Joint stability and you know, I use I use my suspension trainer every workout one way or another Whether it's the main focus of a workout or if it's to prime something or it's just a warm up real quick Like or it's a trigger type of a session like it has so many uses for it that I find myself using it daily Yeah, and then like open chain and closed chain movements, right? Like so I always get these like mixed in terms of like which one is which but like So, you know, this this is one of the best ways to enhance that and intensify that process with these to really like So it is closed is closed chain closed chain is moving your body away from the the the anchor point or whatever And then open would be so like a moving towards it Yeah, so like a bench press would be open chain because I'm moving the bar away from me closed chain would be a push-up I'm moving my body away from my hands and both of them require a little bit of a different skill different stimulus So, you know, here's the other issue that people and we kind of you know talked about this a little bit But one of the challenges people have with that home workouts is the lack of variety. I tell you what Body weight resistance bands suspension trainers tension or isometrics and the combination of all of them This is the beauty is that you can I can do Isometric tension type training with bands body weight and suspension trainers I could do traditional resistance training with all of those things I could do combinations of all of them and I can manipulate the tempo I could do unilateral training with them. I could change the angles now What you see is this tremendous amount of variety With minimal equipment and again the challenge is most people who have some experience working out in gyms have no idea About the all the exercises and variety that you could do with those, you know, those tools Yeah, to that point That's why you can't really blame them for thinking it's not that effective to do this because it does Require that that knowledge of how to utilize your angles properly how to like apply some of these methods of manipulating tempo of adding isometrics So, you know, it does require a bit of that knowledge. Okay, so I'm an average listener I want to build some muscle. I want to lose some body fat I do have access to a gym if I want to sell me on why I would do this Well, here's the number one and this is what's what's what's cool about what you're about What you're talking about adam So when the lockdown I'll tell a story, right? So when the when the lockdowns first happened I was getting a lot of dms from people that were like, what do I do? Like I I know push-ups squats lunges and pull-ups But like what what else do I do? And again, it's because people just don't they a lot of people who work out have no idea On how to construct a routine with suspension trainers bands body weight, you know isometrics and that kind of stuff And so a lot of these people They they signed up for like maps anywhere or map suspension Or I would just tell them through dms some ideas that they could come up with these were some people who had a little bit more Experience and then I would explain this I'd say look Let me ask you a question. How long you've been working out? Okay, you know three years four years five years How many times have you done a training cycle utilizing these techniques? Never meaning you a cycle meaning you've done this for weeks consistently not just one workout or one exercise Right. And so then I said, okay, do you what happens to your body when you find a new exercise? That's effective that you've never really done before and then you get good at it and all of them are like, oh my god I get incredible gains We cannot understate the power of novelty when it comes to getting the body to adapt In fact, this is something I've always played with if I find a new exercise for a body part that I suck at I get good at that exercise I still get better gains with that exercise and I will with the ones that I've been doing for so long that I'm now Kind of adapted to this is what drew me to unconventional methods I mean, it's it is that novelty. It's that new stimulus that your body It needs to learn how to do it properly. And so it has to respond. And so it just sort of like You know It clicks something new that your body has to fight and you get a whole new sort of Response from that. Yeah. And I think it's not just the novelty, but how novel it is. So like there's there's novelty in doing a Barbell bench press right flat bench press and then going to a dumbbell flat bench press There's there's novelty in that that's different There's it's a little bit of a different stimulation Like you've got the independence with the dumbbells like body is going to be shocked a little bit It's going to respond. It's going to adapt you're going to see a great response from that But then there's something to be said about something as novel is like this suspension trainer where there's all this instability And you're doing this elevated and right It's like so different and unique that there's a lot of things On your body that are having to adapt and learn and figure this out And I just you get so much more return the more novel something is like learning something that Is already kind of similar to something else You get a little bit of benefit still because it's changed and it's different But switching it from something completely different. That's like, I mean the way I recommend programs To people is I always ask them like, okay, what are you currently doing right now? And the first recommendation I give them is always a program that we have that I think is the most different than that Right, like if someone's telling me they're training a specific way I I know I could give them almost any maps program and they'll see some good results But I know that if I can give them something that is way different There that's way opposite or unique compared to what they're currently doing They're going to see the most change Well, yeah, and it also unlocks and uncovers weaknesses that you didn't realize And that's what I love about the suspension trainer too is just because that Add a bit of instability. It really highlights Where your body is not properly stabilizing and responding and so you know to to go through that It really helps then to carry you back into your regular training routine. Well to that point I think that highlights another Tremendous value from is just the mobility focus my sister when You know, we had map suspension. How long we've had map suspension for a couple years now, right? We've had it for a few years And when the lockdown lockdowns happen, my sister asked me she's like, hey, I kind of want to do something different Like, you know, which one of the programs should I follow? I said, have you done map suspension yet? She's like, no, I haven't done that one. So she got that one I was getting I got more messages from her on that. Remember she was constantly telling me. Oh my god I feel Yeah, like she's like, I've never been able to get down that low on like a bench press And she goes the way my shoulders and my chest and stuff is feeling right now. It's so crazy Well back to Justin's point your body gets so good at compensating Uh that you you can't even notice half the time like this happened to me years ago Like I love deadlifting, right? Everybody knows that my favorite one of my favorite exercises I always dead lifted with both legs. All right conventional I would do some sumo here and there but usually conventional And then I remember doing a one-legged deadlift with dumbbells And it was I mean it was embarrassing to me how little weight I could use and how Unstable I felt and also the discrepancy between right and left. Now if you watch me deadlift with the barbell Even if you're a trained eye, you probably wouldn't notice I didn't notice that I had a right to left In balance, but I definitely noticed when I did this one-legged Deadlift for sure. So then I decided let me get strong on this one-legged deadlift And then I'll go back to my traditional deadlift and see what happened. So what happened was it forced me to Work on the the weak areas, right? I wasn't I wasn't able to compensate like I could before because it's a new exercise Something that I'm not used to when I went back to my traditional deadlift. I was stronger I felt more stable. I was stronger and then it became very Glaringly obvious that there were compensations that were happening that I wasn't aware of, you know It's funny is it as an experienced lifter You get that now and that you're probably attracted to things like that when you're early on in your career Even some trainers when you're when you're early on in your lifting career That normally discourages you of course and you move away from it because you're like, oh, I suck at this or this is hard You're like f that I'm gonna go back to doing and the irony in that is that if you're if you're seeking more results Change body composition like you want to improve There's nothing better than doing something you really suck at or the weakness. Yes. Yeah. Well, look here's a deal Again, we've all experienced those newbie gains You start an exercise and you see your your your strength go up 10 pounds Every single week, right? But now you've been doing it for a long time like let's say your barbell squat You've been squatting for four years and you're at 300 pounds, right? Adding five or 10 pounds to it. That's gonna be really hard and that's gonna be a quite an accomplishment at that point But then let's say you go and you try a pistol squat Just a one-legged balanced squat and you're like, oh my god This is so hard you might not even be able to do one because you lack the mobility But even if you can do one you find yourself doing like Six and you're like, that's it. I can't do more than six. My form totally breaks down The the wonderful thing about this is you start to tap into those newbie gains again Because that first time you did six try it again Five days later or four days later now you could do 10 you added four reps to an exercise and you're advanced You've been working out for years and that'll keep happening for like a few months until you start to plateau again Then you take those new strength gains that you've gotten a one-legged exercise move back to your You know barbell squat and then watch how you feel all of a sudden you're more stable You feel stronger and you know, this even goes to the mobility conversation. We're having I remember there was a I can remember specifically there was a power lifter female power lifter Who is so distraught over the fact that she didn't have access to a gym when all the lockdowns happen And I told her and we'd go back and forth and she's been following us for a long time And I said focus on mobility. She's like, but I'm going to lose Strength in my deadlift and my bench temporarily and I said I said you will because the strength is quite specific You can't practice those lifts I said but practice mobility and here's what I predict will happen You'll when you get back to the barbell You'll be a little weaker than you were before But then not only will you get back up to where you were before very quickly You'll surpass watch that ramp up and it did within a month and a half She broke all her previous records because she did that special emphasis on mobility And the beauty of working out at home with mobility is For most people myself included if anything is neglected It's like people who don't like work out their calves very often, right? the number one most neglected part of of working out especially for Younger lifters who want to build muscle and burn body fat mobility They just don't place a special emphasis on mobility as they hurt Well, I was gonna say it's hard when you're when you're young you don't get a lot of the obvious signs I mean, I'm guilty of this like it's really easy for me to remember to focus on my mobility because I mean I just shared on the podcast what maybe less than a week ago I went and did an overhead press and I hadn't done a barbell overhead press and maybe a month or two or whatever I go to do the movement and realize. Oh my god How much I let my back and my lats or tie it my shoulders on fire like I feel myself arching I can feel that discrepancy. I mean as you get older You feel that stuff and that breakdown easier where there's a little more resilience when you're when you're really young and hard to see I just find it so ironic that uh, we're so focused on getting stronger all the time But we're not reinforcing that and you know mobility It's it's the perfect partner and if you just keep those together the whole time you can keep Perpetually moving forward. It's just like inevitably you get stronger. You're putting way more stress And and the ability for you to like do damage like increases It's your it's not sexy. It's just like your isometrics. It's like it's not sexy. That's why Nobody's like nobody's bragging about their how much you know, you're PRing mobility Yeah, how mobile they are and and you are doing that when it comes with strength gain So we tend to especially when you're a young lifter and you're not getting the nagging pains that are Reminding you that you should probably do it. But yeah, I wish I wish I had the knowledge and the experience Obviously that I have today when I first start as a trainer because I think that if you understand this and you just learn to Incorporate it. It doesn't need to be this massive focus. You can just go through a cycle where you decide Okay for the next three to four months I'm going to train this way and then you can return to your other stuff Or you can take bits and pieces of what we're talking about and build it into your normal routine And it won't or you can wait till you're in your forties and you're fucking broken You can't get lift your shoulder or your arms above your behind your ears And you can't squat all the way down past 90 degrees and then now it's like this daunting task Well, that's because there's a misconception that mobility is primarily to avoid pain and injury Which is true But there's another side to it, which is and this we're talking about proper mobility right connecting to ranges of motion owning Large ranges of motion Mobility, you know preventing injury and helping you, you know alleviate pain. That's a great value. Let's put that aside mobility makes you stronger And speeds up the gains that you can get a lot of people don't realize this You know it reminds me of this I read this article a long time ago about with bruce lee in it bruce lee was one of my favorite uh movie stars and martial artists and He talked about the uh the benefit of having a strong and stable wrist For punching power and the author the person who was interviewing said yeah But the wrist really doesn't generate power like the power is coming from your hips And how you're throwing your shoulder and your arm and he goes Yeah, imagine hitting someone with a broomstick, but half of the broomstick is made out of like this flexible rubber Yeah, like I hit you with that and it's just cracked a little bit. You can't tell it's not generating tons of power He goes a strong stable wrist allows that power transfer Good mobility allows your body to To reach its full potential allows you to generate more force To activate more muscle fibers essentially build more muscle So forget about the pain and stuff and by the way when you wait till you hurt to work on mobility It's like it's too late. Yeah, it's like waiting until you're severely dehydrated dehydrated to drink water like okay Yeah, you should drink water, but we we shouldn't have got here in the first place Mobility does that it speeds up that progress and working at at home Because now we don't have all this equipment to distract us It's a great opportunity to make this a focus like for a whole workout It's it's also a great time to do a lot of like uh balance stuff stuff that is going to challenge your stability Because you don't have a ton of weight So like instead of me looking at my gym at home and going like oh, I only have 50 pound dumbbells Well, okay, I could do a you know one-legged You know deadlift with 50 pound dumbbells and roast the shit out of myself the same way I would feel pulling four 500 pounds So this is a great opportunity when you go through a cycle like this to start to focus on a lot of Stability stuff and it doesn't take that much weight. Yeah I uh, I really felt this firsthand when we first started the show about seven years ago Justin was rave about Like overhead carries which is really a combination of balance And tension and you talk about walking with kettlebells overhead or barbell Or one-armed dumbbell holds and walking which requires some balance and stability And I remember he would rave about it and of course, you know I'm like everybody else the proof is in the person and Justin's got this great overhead press and So let me give this a shot and see what happens And I was blown away by the carryover In my in the strength that I had with my overhead press just from working on that balance and stability In the top portion right just improving my muscles ability to to fire Stabe and stabilize so it's not just moving but it's holding steady and strong now What does that allow right think about this when you're pressing a weight? There's a lot of energy that goes into moving the weight in the direction you want But the more your muscles have to prevent the barbell for moving all over the place So the dumbbells for moving all over the place or your body for moving all over the place There's tons of leak of performance It's no it's no different than a car with a lot of horsepower that just can't connect to the ground You hit the gas in the in the tire spin in the dirt doesn't matter if you have 600 horsepower Your car is sitting still. It's can it stick and can you transfer that power? Balance allows that you can't talk about balance and stability too though without talking about core strength and training your abdominal because How often do you see that as the breakdown? I remember I teach a client like to balance on one leg and They're focused on their foot on their ground matter their shins would be on fire and things like that But they're while they're torso. That's right They're so unstable in the core area that it's making this really basic movement or exercise so challenging Because they're thinking of the the foot and the ground and trying to stabilize there But really it's not it's because they're not rigid in their core and they have no stability here Of why that is so challenging when they do that Okay, this is why if you are a seasoned lifter And you're trying to lift a heavy squat or even an overhead press or especially a dead lift And let's say your max is on your overhead press 200 pounds Like man i'm stuck at 200 pounds then you put on a weight belt all of a sudden you can lift 15 pounds more weight, right? Did you just make your shoulders stronger? No What you did is you created artificial core stability How the hell are you able to lift more weight all of a sudden well now your body can generate more force To moving the weight and because it's not worried about your core stability being compromised It all transfers through the core and core stability is Oftentimes the weak link in people's training programs and core exercises some of the best core exercise required zero In fact nothing almost nothing I mean the only piece of equipment I would ever really use for core training would be a resistance band or a cable for like chops Other than that like are you guys from with any ab or core machine? That's even close as close to as good as body weight stuff Especially when done properly because doing a crunch The right way where you are like rolling your spine up. Oh, yeah It's extremely difficult. Most people are doing it wrong Most people are firing their hip flexors using momentum and they're not even really training the core and the abdominal region that well So if you learn to actually roll the spine up slow and controlled you can make just your body weight extremely difficult Yeah, and just to the balance and and control and stability kind of side of things I used to do a test with a lot of my clients Just to see if they even had the ability to communicate with their entire body from fingertips to toes And uh, if you guys are familiar with the hollow body position I use that a lot in gymnastics and really you're just lifting your legs You may be a foot off the ground You're pointing your toes out and you're getting as rigid as possible all the way Basically making a boat out of your body and your arms over your head And they're just up over your head like this and locked out So it's just the ability to be able to contract like all of your muscles at the same time You have that ability you have to train that ability though. So that way if you get in a situation where I'm thrown off I'm left to right. I'm twisting. I can bring myself back To complete balance and control. You know where I saw some of uh, I saw a huge carryover from learning to do those To my deadlift. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting because it's not like something that it looks like you don't think so Yeah, like you don't you don't look at and go like oh, I'm trying to get better my deadlift I'm going to do these hollow body You know add isometric exercise and you're like that doesn't make sense. Why is that working that way? But when you do a deadlift It's so important that you've got everything connected from your fingertips all the way down to your toe and everything in the middle Right and being able to communicate that all at one time and keep it very stiff and rigid Oh man makes a huge difference. You know the pool more way There were three exercises I used to like to mess with my trainers on So these were the trainers like they're like fit and they're ripped and you know They talk about how strong they are or whatever and I'd have them try a hollow body I'd have them try a long lever physical ball crunch, which most people most people do those Most people do not do physical ball crunches, right? I don't care how strong your core is if you do a proper full extension full contraction hips up Long lever you're not doing very many repetitions And most people most people can't even do a few properly and the other one was an active plank Plank exercises became so popular in the gyms. I used to annoy the hell out of me because trainers would Have there it was a great way for them to waste time. All right, everybody It was it became a trendy thing in my gym for like trainers are in their last 10 minutes of their workouts with their Alright, let's see how long you can hold it. I remember watching it. I'm like man. That is a hip flexor Exercise it's like back is arched and the hip flexors are contracted So then I'd say let's try an active plank or let's try this kind of posterior pelvic tilt plank And my trainers like shake in and like, oh my god. I can't believe I can't even do this But then you do it and the carry over to other exercises Usually it was the overhead press Squat and deadlift that people would see yeah a lot of carry over and then here's something else I want to kind of communicate about the advantage and this is why I prefer To work out not in gyms. These are the reasons right here, right? Number one, I get to listen to whatever music I want to yeah, I can play it loud I can play even if it's yawning. It doesn't it doesn't matter Now I know you go to a gym and you put your headphones on and all that stuff and you can still do that kind But there's still people around you and what when you blast it in the air and you listen to whatever you want It's freaking awesome. The other thing is I can train whenever I want whenever I want And I don't have to count the time it takes to get to the gym Change work out get back into the car go home, especially when you have kids and all that stuff Nobody's trying to work in right? Yes I'm just like I'm here working on my thing only exclusively. I don't need somebody competing for my spot It's your equipment. Well, it avoids the most annoying part about being a trainer Or at least what I thought was one of the most annoying things about being a trainer is training a client during prime time And I don't think I ever I don't think I ever wrote a routine and was able to run that exact routine I mean, it's it's I tell you it made me a good trainer Right, you have to be able to know what the desired outcome of that that routine is that you wrote down and then Know multiple pivots for each one if there's people on all the equipment or using the stuff that you need to use So but it's also annoying, you know, that's and the one of the things I love obviously about training myself Yeah, I could do a different exercise. I know I'm capable of thinking of something else But hey when I write a routine for myself like I want to do the things that I write down And so you avoid that it's so funny It's probably there's a good and bad to it as a trainer It's a it's a great way to make you better at thinking on the fly And coming up with you know different varieties of exercises and substituting exercise because you're in prime time in a gym Especially a big box gym And you're going to have your client do an exercise or machine Nine out of ten times it's two or three times during the workout You're going to go to use that piece of equipment someone else is on it It's not it's being occupied that space that I was going to use Mattel's on that one, bro Yeah, so you'd have to use you'd have to be creative But like you said Adam, this is when it would really irritate the shit out of me for my clients And again, I'm a better trainer for my clients than I have for myself when it was my turn to work out And I've been thinking all day about doing my Incline press and my dumbbell flies over here I'm going to do the pec deck and then I'm going to do these cable rows And then I go to do my workout and there's some numb nuts on the freaking machine Sweating all over it or even worse. I go to jump in and the person using it has no idea of gym etiquette Oh, I have you know, don't worry. I have three more sets. I'm the manager of the gyms Yeah, I want to say something like that, right, but I don't super annoying you work out at home Do it. It's yours. No, nobody's gonna jump in. It's your piece of equipment Yeah, you do your thing now when you guys are when you guys are coaching Clients and and let's say they've been doing something more traditional They've run a maps and a ball of performance aesthetic and you recognize some things to some instability some mobile mobility issues Maybe they're complaining about joint pain a little bit and they haven't focused in this direction How long do you typically like to have them focus in this area? Would you would you be extended period of time where they're doing this for like a year or you're doing this for a few Months or you just interrupt it for a week. Like what does it look like when you when you describe it? I would say minimum. Yeah, minimum depends on the severity, right? Yeah, we would have to go through that and see like what kind of level they are in terms of like You know, what are the imbalances that we're really dealing with what kind of pain as a result of this dysfunction? Are we gonna have to work through and uh, yeah, I would I would structure it along that but yeah Less than less than a month. I think is is probably oh, I think at least three to four months So do I and I said I said a minimum of a month because what it looks like is the first week They're learning the exercises the second week They're starting to get used to the balance and stability the third week They're starting to really be able to add intensity. Yeah by the fourth week. We're doing the workouts So at that point like you said adam, I like at least another month or two to really push and progress Yeah, so they can see the real benefits. Yes, but but less than a month is in my opinion is like dumb Yeah, we're just throwing novelty at someone and they have no they're not really adapting to it and getting Well, especially if they never really experienced that because that first month is literally then their body's just getting acclimated and adapting to the New stimulus and so it's you're not even really getting to reap the major benefits from it So I like to do like the typically most of programs I wrote we're in these like three month type of blocks Very similar to how we write mass programs. And so this would be like a block focus for me I would literally go okay for three months. These these are our objectives. We're going to strengthen your core We're going to work on balance stability mobility just body weight type movements And so I'm going to do that over the course of the next three months These are the things I want you to be paying attention to you know, we're not thinking about how high can our bench press get I'm not talking about you shredding 15 more pounds the focus here on all these these attributes that we're trying to achieve To improve your body and what future lifting is going to look like the to your point Sal's that Don't worry about if my bench press goes down a little bit right now temporarily because you're going to reap the benefits of that When we get back Yeah, totally It's uh, it's definitely a process and I would usually have to to convince clients for the first two or three weeks But then once they started to feel and see what it was like that was it And it was always once right I have to convince my client once after that they do whatever I said because I've proven to them. Hey this totally works, but I mean this is why I'd say The average maps program is at least three months long We don't really create these super short programs because It is a process and you don't really reap the benefits until you get past that Your body's learning the balance stability. Oh now I can start to push. So I think about the first time you did You know a bench press the first time you did bench press I mean you're not even really pushing with your max strength because you're balancing the bar and you're shaking Takes about a month before you could really push to give your body a chance to adapt. Absolutely So anyway, here's what we're going to do because we're talking a lot about at-home workouts We've gotten a lot of great tips and I think if you follow all this and you have a good idea of What exercise you want to incorporate and you modify your cable movements with bands You throw on body weight stuff you do tension You get a pair of suspension trainers, which are very inexpensive and do exercises and construct a great workout program You'll get great results, but a lot of people like things written out for them They don't want to go through the process of programming. So what we did is we put together a at-home Workout routine bundle. We're calling it the ultimate at-home workout holiday bundle essentially Which includes maps anywhere maps prime where you're going to get some of the mobility stuff map suspension for the suspension trainer workouts and the no BS six pack formula, which is basically a Very very effective core training intensive core training. That's right now What we're doing with all this is we put this together and because it's the holidays We've this is problem. I think if I'm not mistaken, maybe ducking correct me This is probably the biggest discount we've ever done on a bundle like this one substantial Right, so you get all of them for all of the programs. We just said for 99 dollars and 99 cents. So it's a 70 percent Savings and so it's all mapped out for you no pun intended So if you're interested in getting this program head over to Maps december.com and is the discount automatically applied dug or do they need a coupon code cool? So maps december.com. There you go sign up. It's all planned out for you Look, if you like our information if you like the stuff we talk about head over to mind pump free.com and check out our free guides We have guides on everything from fat loss to muscle building how to teach you how to squat better overhead press better We even have guides for personal trainers again. It's mind pump free.com You can also find all of us on instagram. So justin is at mind pump justin. I'm at mind pump salad adam is at mind pump adam