 In this episode of Mind Pump, we wanted to list a few ways that you have to incorporate into your program in order to build strength, like factors. These are the most important factors you must do these that will positively influence your strength. Now, why is this important? Because strength is one of the most fundamental things that you should work on. It really impacts most aspects of your health, and it's something you should focus on even if your goal is to burn body fat. If you're getting stronger while you're burning body fat, that's a phenomenal sign. So what we did is we listed the most important factors. Everything from good form, progressive resistance, free weights versus machines, the best, most effective exercises, whether or not you should get complicated or stick to the basics, how you track, whether or not you should train to failure, and whether or not you should phase your workouts. So if you listen to this episode and apply these principles to your routine, the odds that you're going to get stronger effectively and consistently are much higher. Now that brings me to the next point. Maps Anabolic is one of our most effective strength building programs. Actually, one of our most popular. We do all the work for you. If you enroll in Maps Anabolic, you've got your whole workout planned for you. Everything from what exercises to do, to how many reps, to the exercise form and technique where we demonstrate the right way to do these exercises. And what we've also done is made this program 50% off in October, so it's half off. So here's what you do if you want to get our most effective muscle building, strength building, metabolism boosting program. Go to mapsred.com and use the code RED50, that's R-E-D-5-0, no space in there for the discount. You brought something up on the show the other day, Sal. This is my idea. It is. You bring up things. This whole business is your idea. Everything's your idea, right? It's important. No, you did. Actually, you brought something up, and I think it was along the lines of longevity, but I got a lot of DMs in regards to it just about the importance of strength. And I think it's a really good topic personally for myself. It was something that, even as a trainer, years I spent training for hypertrophy because I aspired to be like a bodybuilder type of physique, and I liked that more. It's a muscle growth. Yeah. So I was chasing that all the time. And I really, I didn't think I identified with strength athletes and powerlifting. And so for me, I used to think that, oh, that's not for me, so I don't need to train that. But it wasn't until way later in my career did I realize how important strength training is. Not just for things like being strong or longevity, but just in overall building an aesthetic physique and for all those other reasons, too. It's the most... It's foundational. Strength is the foundational physical pursuit. So what I mean by that is, I've said this before, but if you get stronger, you improve in almost every other physical aspect or expression of physicality. So what that means is, if you get strength properly, you will also improve your functional flexibility. If you get strong properly, you will also improve your stamina and endurance. You will improve your mobility. You will improve your ability to burn body fat, your ability to fight off infection. It gives you general strength. Building physical strength also builds general strength. That's what those studies that you're talking about with longevity, they found that strength was a better measure of, was a better protector against all cause mortality than just muscle mass. And it makes sense, right? Muscle is... I mean, what does muscle do? It moves. So without the actual function of it, then it's not going to provide a lot of actual benefit. But even weight loss, if somebody's trying to burn body fat or lose weight, one of the best possible signs I can think of, one of the most objective, it's objective, I like that because you're either stronger or you're not, but one of the best signs you could ever get is that you actually get stronger while getting leaner. Like if this happens, because here's one of the problems of getting leaner or burning body fat, your metabolism starts to adapt to weight loss by slowing itself down. It's called metabolic adaptation. It's a very... It's a well-documented phenomena that happens in the body. Well, getting stronger, whenever I have somebody that I'm training or working with and they're saying, hey, I'm burning body fat, am I doing the right thing? And one of the first things I say is, are you still getting stronger? If they say yes, I'm like, everything's going great. Because otherwise, if you're going in that direction and you're feeling weaker and you're feeling less energetic, I mean, your body's going to want to shuttle in calories to try and pep you back up again. So it's like you're fighting this other battle at the same time. It's just a great sign and I don't care what your goal is. If you're lifting weights, and now of course, there's extreme expressions of this, Adam brought up powerlifting. Yes, you can go extreme with it and then get what are called diminishing returns. And other than that, I'm talking about for just generally speaking, if you're working out in the gym and using weights, which you should, if you're for what I don't care what you're training for, that should have to play some role in your training. If you're lifting weights, the most important factor that you should pay attention to is how strong you are. Well, this is the part that I wanted to kind of go deep on because sometimes I think we forget because we're constantly talking to our peers and in our little bubble that something as simple as telling people, oh, you should lift weights to build strength that that computes to the average person is, okay, I just go lift weights because lifting weights does help build strength. No matter how you lift the weights, lifting weights period is going to help build strength. So we just assume that every way of training or all the basics of lifting weights may contribute to the best ways to building strength and there's better ways to build strength than other ways and more effective and faster. And I think that we should break down some of the most key and important things to make sure that you build strength the right way and the safest way and the fastest way. No, that's a great point because you can there's some truth to saying that if you just lift weights that you're going to build some strength. Obviously, if you go radically wrong and do it completely wrong, then that's not going to happen. But like anything applied properly and appropriately, it's going to get it's just going to be much better. There's just going to be faster, better and more consistent results done. The further away you move away from the best ways to use weights to build strength, the further away you move from that, the worse your results become, the less consistent they become and the higher the risk of things like injury become. So that's a very, very good point. And so I think we should list like the most important factors when it comes to resistance training in order to build strength. Like what are some of the things that are non-negotiable? It's like this is imperative when it comes to building strength. The first one that comes to mind that I think a lot of people neglect and I think we should touch on first is good form and really working towards having good mechanics and good behavior in the gym when it comes to training. And this takes a bit of education. It does. I mean, in terms of like understanding what good posture is to begin with and like spinal alignment and then also, you know, the actual intent and purpose of the exercise, that's going to take a lot of education to get to the point where you understand that fully. Right, because you could do an exercise and then change your form so that you're not having a full range of motion or you're using momentum or you're going off form and then lift more weight. And you could say to yourself, I'm stronger, not really. There's an optimal way to do exercises and that optimal way is measured by risk prevention, maximum benefit. OK, so there's a great, there's a one way to do an exercise perfectly. There's a trillion ways to do it wrong or to do it less than perfect. So good form is really about doing an exercise in the best way possible. And if you get stronger doing it in the best way possible, then you know you're actually increasing your strength. You're not just lifting more weight. Does that make sense? Like if I go to if I go to a squat and I do a full range of motion squat and then I add weight to it and now I don't go down all the way in my squat, I've lifted more weight. Have I really gotten stronger? No, I haven't, not at all. So form has got to be imperative and that's important because I think sometimes when we communicate, getting stronger, especially to guys. I was one of these guys, especially as a teenager. You're just purely measuring the weight. I'm just looking at the weight. So now I'm like, you know, back comes off the bench or don't go down as deep in my squats or swing a little bit with my. You want to establish good habits that are going to last you a lifetime and to be able to do that correctly from the beginning is imperative. So that way, you know, as you build upon this foundation, the strength foundation, you know, you have a lot more options, you know, going forward to where it's not going to head into a situation where it may be detrimental, maybe injury prone. Yeah, you're good. It's also like sports. Like if you look at, you know, a golfer, a baseball player, an NBA shooter, like your your technique will really expand how how great you can become at whatever this this potential sire. Yeah, the potential. Thank you. The potential is much higher when you lay a very solid foundation and you practice really good form first. So anybody can come in the most green person at lifting could come in, do squats, terrible form, lift and do squats every single week for six weeks, and they will get stronger. They will build some strength, 100 percent. But somebody who goes in there and maybe spends those six weeks, not really worrying about adding load and getting and getting, you know, adding weight to the bar as much as getting really good at the form and technique. That person will eventually surpass the other person in building strength long term. I have a great way to illustrate that. I've used this example before. It's like when you first learn to type on a keyboard, you use your two index fingers and do the hunt and peck, you know, style of typing. And if you did that for a few years, a few months or a few years, you'll get faster and faster with your hunt and peck technique, not knowing that the real, the best technique to type is the one where you use all your fingers. And when you first start doing that, you might actually be slower because you're really good at the next finger. Right. But once you get, but the potential for speed is much higher with the proper form. The same thing goes true with exercise. Here's an example. Okay. Or here's, here's another way to illustrate that. So the strength that you gain within an exercise is relatively, it's, it's, it's quite specific. Now there's some general strength that you get from it, but it's quite specific. In other words, if I strengthen my squat going down 16 inches, most of the strength gain I'm going to get from that squat is going to be to that 16 inches. Once I move out of that, that range of motion, I lose a lot of my strength. And the further I move out of it, the more I lose strength. So for, for those of you listening, if you don't believe me, go try doing your max squat, but go down two inches lower. You're going to hurt, you're actually don't do that. Don't challenge that. They, they will do it. You'll hurt yourself. So good form, what encompasses good form is often or almost always a very good controlled full range of motion. So what happens when you get strong in a full range of motion, which is what good form is, what's part of good form is you're going to get a greater range of strength. You're just going to build a greater range of strength. So form is absolutely imperative. The other part of why the other thing, why good form is so imperative is good form has been established for you as a, the best way to reduce the risk of injury, getting stronger. There's always that risk of injury as you lift more weight. You know, if I, if I move wrong with a hundred pounds on my back, there's a certain risk of injury. If I move wrong with 400 pounds on my back, the risk of injury is far higher. So good form is extremely important, especially as you get stronger. Well, and I don't think it's just good form when we talk like good form as far as range of motion. It's also like control in that range of motion and, and understanding what muscles we're trying to train when we do this. The preferable muscles, which ones you want. Yeah. Which are ideal for this movement? Because again, you could come in, you could squat, you could, you could squat down and get up and have terrible form and still build strength. But what ends up happening is you start to build in areas that are, that art should not be taking the, the most of this load and moving this weight most optimally. And then that just exaggerates what you were saying about as you start to load the bar. You get really good at bad form. Yes. Which that, that it just makes the risk go up that much higher, not to mention the results go much lower to the potential of the results. And because the risk goes up higher, like you said, now your, your, your potential was a 10 and now there's no way you're going to get above a seven because your form is off. So that's real important. So the, just to the final way to close the loop on this point is, you know, I always tell clients at the beginning, as much as it's important for us to add weight to the bar and to load and get stronger, it's more important that you practice this as a skill. And we talk about this on the, on the show a lot like, man, sometimes it's great just to go to the gym and for the entire hour, practice the skill of squatting. And when you're practicing a skill of squatting, you're not loading the bar really, really heavy. You're paying attention to all the detail of your ankles, your feet where your knees are at your head, your chest, attention. Yeah. The tension that you're keeping throughout the movement, the control of it, the tempo of it, and just get good at it. Get good at moving through that range of motion like you were pointing out so and practice that even though you may not think that you're getting stronger or that's good, you're laying a really good foundation for getting really strong in the future. Now here's another one. I think this one almost goes without saying, but progressive resistance in order to get stronger, you have to continuously challenge the body, your body. And so progressive resistance means as you get stronger, you add weight and continue to challenge your body. And there's a couple of thoughts I have on this. One, it doesn't happen perfectly in a linear way. So you're not going to add weight always to the bar. It's more of a step ladder approach. You're going to have some weeks where you're going to add weight, and then you're going to have some weeks where you need to drop down, focus on perfecting your form, allow your body to recover, and then start to move back up in that pattern. You can't weigh your results purely on whether or not like you're increasing constantly because there are those moments and there's lots of other factors involved in terms of, you know, whether you got a good night's sleep, like how much stress you're under. Like there's lots of factors going into the actual workout where, yeah, it may limit performance that day specifically, but it is a good way to measure progress in the overall scheme. When I first became a trainer, I remember it shocked me to see this, but then as I continued training clients, I would actually see this, not a ton, but I'd see it enough to where I was like, oh, this is a pattern. And this was much more common with female clients, but they'd come to me, they'd want to hire me, you know, we talk about working out and they'd say, I'd say, oh, do you work out? Do you lift weights? Oh, yeah, I lift weights three days a week. I'm like, okay, let's, you know, let me see what your workout looks like. And I'd go through and then they'd grab their 10 pound dumbbells or whatever, their 15 pound. They say, well, how long have you been using this way? The whole time. What do you mean the whole time? This is just what I do. 10 pound chest press. Well, how many reps do you do? 10, 10, every week, every single week for 10 years. Okay. Your body will not continue to progress if you do not give it a reason to progress. And that is, and one of the ways to do that, and one of the more important factors is to add resistance progressively. As you get stronger, you add weight or repetitions that keeps sending a signal to the body to continue to get stronger. Otherwise what'll end up happening is whatever weight you start with, and initial strength gains come and now it's easy, but you keep doing it. You're at best going to stay where you're at. I'm so, I'm so glad you're bringing this up because that is probably one of the most common things that I used to get, especially with my, my female clientele was they found a weight that they could do with good form or that they like to do for an exercise. And that was, they just stuck to that forever. When I do chest flies, I do these dumbbells when I do bicep curls, I do these dumbbells. When I do this, I do this machine and I do it on this pen like ever. And it's like, I've been doing that for months on years, a lot of the time. And it's like, well, yeah, that's going to maintain kind of where you're at right now, but if you're in search of progressing and progressing your physique and building more strength, I mean, you've got to slowly add weight to the bar. Totally. Now on the flip side of this, uh, here's something that I would see that was more common in my male clients. They were adding resistance when it wasn't time way too fast to add resistance. It's like, Oh yeah, you added five pounds to the bar, but your form went to crap. Um, that's not appropriate either. It's usually, uh, let's see what I can do. That's really like the mentality coming in instead of having a real methodical approach that's going to like, uh, give you the right dose. That's going to help you to actually progress as opposed to, well, now I have to heal. Yeah. You already get those clients where the guys, you know, they do a set and you're watching their formula. It's a little iffy. They pushed it and then add more. Yeah. I think I could do the 45s. Actually, you can't. You can't do the 45s. So let's stay away from that. Isn't that funny how we are at the opposite to the sex? Like if you can blend the two of them, you make like the perfect client. Oh, totally. Right. Actually, I'll be honest with you. Women are easier to train typically than the other guys. Oh yeah. Well, because I've, I would always rather have somebody who has been training, uh, with more caution and control. Yes. And it created at least good, because the female client that you addressed, that client actually a lot of times has decent to good form. That's what they focus on. She's been practicing with those 15 pound dumbbells for years doing the same exercises. She's got pretty good mechanics. You know what I'm saying? Where the guy, he may be doing five times the weight as she's doing, but he's all over the fucking map. And it's tough because you got to take him and it's so challenging having a male client that you have to strip them down. Oh boy, way to hit to the ego. Right. And you got to tell them, and they're telling you, I can do more. Well, yeah, I know you can do more. I normally do two plates. Right. You should be doing a half, half a plate. Right. So stripping them down. Yeah. So add weight, but stick to the first principle we talked about, which was good form. If your form is still good, then you can and you add weight. Excellent. You've progressed and that's going to send more of a signal to continue to build strength. Those are very, very fundamental. What about this one? In my experience, the best exercises to build general overall real world effective strength are free weight exercises. Yes. If I had to pick not I don't know. Here's the deal. I'm not saying only do free weights. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying that. No, but there is a hierarchy. There is. We have to acknowledge it and free weights just do a better job of building overall general strength and studies show this. You get really good at a barbell squat. Your sprint speed and your vertical gets better than if you do a machine squat, for example. They just translate much better. Part of it may be the balance factor. I think a lot of it has to do with just the difficulty of them. I mean, I have been consistently squatting and deadlifting now more so than I ever have in my life in the last probably six or so years. And I mean very consistent. I'll easily miss bicep curls and lateral raises for weeks on in but I won't miss squatting or deadlifting longer than I think I'm on one of my long streaks right now. I think on day six I haven't squatted or deadlift like that's I've been extremely consistent with the point of me sharing that is I am still trying to perfect the form. I'm still working to get better at it. There's so there's so many nuances with the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press. These movements are so complex that there's somewhat of novelty still to them even to this day. Even to the all those times and reps I put into it where when you sit in a machine that takes out a lot of these other things like it doesn't take long for the body to adapt to this restricted movement and then get good at it. And then my only tool to progress it is to just overload it by adding weight where the deadlift or the squat or the overhead press there's like I said so many nuances to the movement that I can be practicing all these little details and improving it and that gives me more room I think to progress. I think that's a lot of the reason why. And free weights are you know we're talking about all the benefits of strength free weights are also more like a real life. In real life when you're lifting something it's not on a track you know it's not on a cam or whatever. It's clean and clear cut and yeah there's a lot more variables that you have to be like flexible and on the fly with like how do I how do I count for this asymmetrical load like something that's like shifting weight even as I'm picking it up like I have to be able to resist that and that's a whole different skill. That's right and earlier in the episode we talked about form and I'll tell you what when you use a machine oftentimes you have to adjust your body to fit the machine because the machine is built within a certain parameter. In fact the last time I read about this I think most machines are designed for a average I think 30 year old male who's five between five eight to five ten or something like that. So and that's when they have adjustable seats and arms on stuff but still you're limited. Free weights adjust to your body. You put the free weight on your body or you move the free weight in space that's why it's called free. So I don't care how tall or short or wide you are or how long your femurs are or how long your arms are the free weights match your body. I mean you got a guy like Adam who's got long limbs wide shoulders. You put him in a machine and he has to like figure out a way to get the machine to work his body properly. You don't got to do that with free weights. You just have good form and it works. You know when I would train clients that were a little short I would put them in a machine and sometimes I do the machine like it's not going to work for you. We'd move the seat all the way up. It's not now that the person wouldn't know this because they're not a trainer so they would go and use the machine and end up not being able to maximize their progress. Free weights are not like that. Free weights I can train anybody with free weights. I can modify the hell out of free weights. You can't do this with machines and I think because of this fact that it fits your body better you're going to get better general strength gains as a result. So if we're talking about again strength and you want that you know that specific but also general strength free weights just crush they absolutely crush machines and athletes have known this for a long time. You don't see too many athletic coaches primarily train their clients or their athletes on machines but you get almost all of them primarily training their athletes with free weights. They're just much better and the strength you build with a I'll tell you something right now adding 50 pounds on a leg press is not the same as adding 50 pounds on a barbell squat. No it's just not. You add 50 pounds on a leg press. Yeah you got stronger that's cool. You add 50 pounds on a barbell squat. You can feel it. It feels like it's like adding 150 pounds on a leg press or something like that. Far far more carry over overall to the type of strength that you build. Well that leads me to the next point which is the importance of incorporating the big four and sticking to the big four. Oh the best exercises. Yes in a routine. I remember when we first launched MAPS anabolic and if there was anything that we ever got pushed back on it would be people going like I already know these exercises. Right you remember that? Yeah. You remember people being like that and it's this is like there's a secret exercise or something. And it really it frustrates me and it frustrates me because it's a reflection of myself right. I know that I was part of the problem as a trainer early on in my career. I train clients and with the wow factor of let me show you an exercise you've never seen before and you know dazzling them with these crazy balancing type movements and sitting weird and standing weird and using machines differently and all this stuff to try and get their attention that let me show you something new that you know I'm done. All while not knowing that I was really doing more harm than good because my clients were missing out on the the movements that are going to give them the greatest bang for their buck and not avoid not only not avoiding them is or avoiding them is ridiculous but not keeping them in your routine as a regular movement that should stay in there probably forever. Yeah. Now the big four that Adam is referring to are your barbell squat your barbell deadlift your barbell bench press and your barbell overhead press those are the big. Now the reason why they're called the big four is because of this you I could take those four exercises and I'll compete better. I'll win over any combination of 20 other exercises you could think of no joke. You pick at 20 other exercises and in no cheating no using exercises that are almost identical you can't be like okay I'm not going to bench press with a barbell but I'll use dumbbells. I'm going to do a Bulgarian squat. No, no, no. I'm talking about like exercises are way different. Those exercises those four will destroy in terms of just overall strength muscle building fat loss and progress over all those other exercises. You get really good at a barbell squat that's better than doing leg extensions leg curls abduction adduction and any other combination of leg exercises you can think of for most people. Now I'm not saying you you know if you don't squat your some people can't do some of these exercises I get that but most people can and those that can't should figure out a way to be able to do those exercises and correct imbalances and figure out why the hell they can't do some of these fundamental movements but these exercises just have by far the biggest bang for their buck. Yeah and they're all they're all high skill I mean and that's to your point of always learning and always like revisiting these very specific exercises there's just so many nuances and so many things to pay attention to and and feedback that you're going to get provided while doing these exercises that you know little things can can then lead you down to accessory lifts like I need to improve this part of my body because of what's happening in one of these gross motor movements that I'm working on like it reveals itself as you're going through the exercise for most people listening and of course there's always individual variants but I can make this statement a lot of confidence most people listening right now if you're lifting weights I don't care what your goal is if you're lifting weights you should have those four exercises in your routine weekly yes or almost weekly at the least right but probably weekly they should definitely be in there you modify and change everything else you could throw in exercises take others out you could change the rep ranges and do a bunch of the things but those exercises belong in most people's routines pretty regularly that's how important these exercises are not all exercises are created equal some exercises are far more effective than others I mean if you're going to spend 20 minutes in the gym you don't want to spend that 20 minutes doing stuff that's not effective heck if you want to spend an hour in the gym you want to you want to spend it getting the most out of that hour those four exercises well they have to the most they have the most carryover to all other exercises very true there's a lot of things that you can do you can get amazing at lying leg curls and progress your strength this night and then go grab a barbell deadlift to be terrible at it right but the reverse but the reverse and I've shared this example on this show I'll never forget how much it blew my mind I completely eliminated lying leg curls for a year and did nothing but deadlift came back to lying leg curls and it was PRing the first time I did it I'd done it two times the weight that I was doing before it was just blew my mind and the same thing went for exercises like a seated row seated row was something I used to do at first back exercise if I wasn't doing pull-ups I was doing seated row to warm up every single back every single back day completely eliminated that for almost a year deadlifted like crazy came back to seated row stronger and seated row had ever been in my life I could have seated row my whole life then go to deadlifting does nothing for me so those four those four movements carry over and this goes for everything too like bicep curls and tricep extensions and all these other movements when you do a heavy overhead shoulder press or a bench press the shoulders and the triceps are getting work when you're doing a pull on it on a deadlift especially when you're pulling two three four hundred pounds away the biceps are getting worked they're going to get stronger so then when you go to those other movements you're going to see carry over to them you'll get stronger in all those secondary muscles but if all you train is all these isolation exercises and you target specific muscle groups and you eliminate those four and then you go try and do one of those four big movements you won't see shit from them oh no I mean for as long as people have been lifting weights certain exercises have risen to the top and now we've had people lifting weights consistently now for six seven decades a lot of strength athletes and athletes you know and other sports and bodybuilders not stuff and this is a pretty wide accepted consensus that those are the four those four exercises that's why they're called the big four right they're they're some of the most effective exercise so this is based off of the experience of decades of athletes training and people noticing like wow when I get really strong at a squat my progress is amazing that my body looks incredible I build more muscle way more than when I get strong at other leg exercises and that's true for all of them which brings us to the next thing stick to the basics strength is built by getting good at the most at the basics and getting good at the most effective exercises if you're if you're constantly throwing crazy variety of exercises at your body if you're balancing on I remember for for a while there it got really popular to stand on a balancing ball or do everything one-legged or do weird you know versions of different exercises you're not going to get you you're not going to be good enough at those to get to build lots of general strength like you would with some of those other basics keep it basic there's some basic principles that apply to building strength stick to those when you get super creative the body actually doesn't doesn't progress very well as it starts to stall you're throwing too many variables at your body and we were teasing our friend the other day Mike Matthews yeah and it's funny because we were like we were teasing him about how boring his workouts are but after a few minutes of teasing we also you know chuckled and said the truth is you're doing the most effective stuff yeah the stuff that he's putting out there and he's posting on his instagram stories is better than 90 percent of the shit that you see trainers out there posting you know the thing that you see especially in social media world you see these trainers always showing and teaching the new creative exercise try this out you know use this check this out look at this new move look at this fancy thing it's like you know the reason why I don't like that stuff it's not that having some creative new way to work your triceps or do some cool shoulder you know super set isn't neat what I know is that I've trained the general population for a really long time and most people don't even need that those tips and that advice most people need to be reminded how important they are that they stick to the basic movements and get good at the basic movements and that's not that easy you know you could you could practice a lunge a squat a deadlift an overhead press a chest press you could you could barbell press you could do that for the next 10 years and still never get perfect at it so stick to those basic movements and continue to try to progress and get better and get better and that will give you way more carryover than this whole muscle confusion idea of throwing random stuff specificity right and I mean this is this is something that's been sort of an abused statement too but if you look at what you know you're teaching the body I'm refining that and I'm getting better and better at these movements have the most carryover that's why we're we're sticking with those in the mix and then every now and then it's good to throw an interrupter in and and that's going to create a new stimulus but you're always drawing it back to these these core exercise because they have you know the most effect on your overall strength it's it's you know this is one of the best compliments ever got on maps enabolic was strength coach told me the beauty was in its simplicity maps enabolic and don't let that fool you the the way that program is written a lot of thought and energy went into creating this program to be as effective as possible but if you don't understand training you look at it you think wow this is a lot of basics and it's true it's because they work yeah the idea wasn't to create a program to to razzle and dazzle people the idea was to create a program that worked and be the basics work if you apply them properly there's definitely complexity in how you apply the basics so you know when I say the basics that doesn't mean you know it's easy but there's so there's definitely complexity there but when you stick to the basics and you do it right you'll get way better results than when you throw a million or one different variables to your body I mean here's a good example you look at a boxer how many punches does a boxer have in his arsenal yeah four yeah yeah five yeah four or five punches right you got a you know some guy who's you know a black belt and some martial art that's got 50 million different moves and kicks and then he goes and gets in the ring with the boxer who's been practicing those four punches for the last five years the boxer is going to beat the crap out of him Bruce Lee said it he says I don't fear the man who knows who's practiced a thousand kicks one time I practice I fear the man who's practiced one kick a thousand times right very very true when it comes to resistance training now there's there's another one that I found that was extremely important to me like I I remember again training for a really long time you know always just building a bot trying to build my body I cared about the way I looked I was never a strength athlete so I never followed like a powerlifting protocol to progressively add strength week over week and even though I understood progressive overload I never really tracked I never really tracked everything to see like am I actually putting it in and and slowly increasing my volume or slowly increasing my weight week over week or a month over a month and I didn't do this complete transparency to to the level that I did I did kind of when I was younger but not to the level that I did here as I did when I started competing because now I had to right here I am I do a show I work real hard training and dieting I get out there I present my physique and you know my first show I got fourth place so next show I want to win I want to do better well if I want to do better I can't go back and do the exact same routine or follow the same formula that I I was doing to get to that physique I needed to be able to overload it and the only way I would know for sure that I was overloading it would be if I was to be tracking it and paying attention to it and one of the things that I noticed when I first started tracking was what wouldn't what kind of naturally happens and this is my theory on why a lot of people get stuck in plateaus this is I and this is why this one's so important to me is I think just with not just natural habit this is what we do you know because a lot of people don't track you have a week and it's a good week you hit your four days or however many days you plan to whatever is a good week for you of training you know three five days in the gym and you ate well you slept well you train great you know you hit that extra set when you were going to go home or you push a little extra harder you add five more pounds because you're feeling good and that and you do that for a week then you do it for a second week and oh man maybe you hit a PR and you're feeling great and then the next week after that like it's just you're busy you're busy or you didn't sleep as well and so then you go in and you train and you kind of you you don't even realize it but you do one less set that that workout and then the next one you can't quite load at the bar as much so you pull back about 10 pounds and then the next week after that you know another crazy week or whatever you don't feel as motivated you don't have your workout partner and so then the volume dips you know and then the next week of that you go back up again and then we all we kind of hover in this comfortable zone and we kind of stay there and we don't progressively overload over time and I noticed that I was doing this and so when I was tracking it caught it caused me to be very diligent about how much I load it and knowing that I don't need to do a lot more and and that there's a sweet spot because you don't and that's the other thing people go because you look at the big picture right you could look at a month or weeks rather than just the last workout exactly and so I think everybody else treats it like they're on or are they're hot or cold is either I'm not training very hard or well and then I'm training really hard really well and it's kind of the same thing you're off or you're on and off looks like x amount of weight and volume and on looks like another another one versus methodically adding a little bit of weight every single week over week over month over month or creatures of habit I mean we're the path of least resistance is this human behavior so there's you know there's times where I'm in the gym and I know like this is my my favorite lift this is what I'm good at lift right versus the one that's going to be the struggle always and I'm like yeah like we'll just naturally avoid if I'm not consistently like writing it down or looking at like what the plan is for the day I will avoid things like like unconsciously yeah at first glance when you say track as an important you know factor to building strength at first glance I'm like is it really and then I think about it I think about all the clients that I train now I tracked oftentimes when I would train clients when I train myself maybe not as much but when I train clients I would track and here's what would end up happening I'd have a client do an exercise maybe like phenomenal you did two more reps they'd be like I did yeah that's I thought that's how much I was it or do an exercise like oh my god use the 15 pound dumbbells that's the ones I always use like no it's not you use the 12s before I mean it's an important way to self reflect and I think you're right Adam to look at the big picture because you're not going to progress your resistance every single week so it is important to look at the big picture because this week over last week I may go lighter because I'm not feeling as good but when I look at the big picture I see while my dips aren't as low as they used to be now when I drop weight I'm still stronger than it was when I was at my strongest two months ago so that tracking just gives you that bird's eye view that I think long-term that is necessary for long-term success well it's the same thing that the same way that I would approach a client with their nutrition you know a client's used to always oh I'm eating good I'm eating so good I'm eating perfect I'm following the plan this and that I'd be like okay well show me do you write it down or did you track it in your app or whatever and oh no no no I'm eating what you tell me like okay how do you know how do you know let's let's track and then what would happen they would track and then I could see all the holes oh well here on this day we we weigh under eight on your protein that we're supposed to oh this day we didn't get enough fiber like we're supposed to this day you over consumed by 250 calories you didn't realize you did like all that shit fucking matters and there all of that could be and what's the human nature to Justin's point we do we just we're creatures of habit and we just kind of fall into these natural behaviors and those natural behaviors a lot of times result in these plateaus because you think you're doing one thing but you kind of naturally gravitating to your normal behaviors and one of the easiest ways for me to point that out with someone's programming or training is to have them track and then I can look at it I'm like well look over the four weeks that you were consistently tracking you actually averaged the same volume every single week so in the grand scheme of things we're really not progressively overloading right we're staying about the same sure you had a great week right here but then you had a shitty week right here it averages out to be this now don't fall into this trap when you track that you have to beat your numbers from last week right right don't fall into that trap look at the big picture that's how you use tracking properly the way you're tracking improperly is last week I did 10 reps I have to do more this week at some point that'll cause problems for you right here's one that blew my mind the first time actually learn and apply this in fact if I think of all this singular mind-blowing things that I learned in resistance training this next one I'm about to mention is in the top three definitely top five but probably top three might even be the number one thing that blew my mind and that was to not train or lift to failure god I love I love this one because the state that we're in in the fitness space the B smooth the all out everybody's chasing PRs the crossfit mentality of exercise and lifting weights we're always chasing this muscle failure and and going after that so and this was I'm right with you on this Sal this was an area that I abused this for most of my training career and it was a very tough thing for me to to learn this to in the tank theory oh dude it was this it was a the reason why I blew my mind is because this was a it was a staple it was a commandment that in order to get your muscles to grow or you for you to get stronger you had to lift a weight until you could no longer as much as possible yeah you can no longer lift it again with good form so if I'm bench pressing the 10th rep is got to be the absolute last rep I could possibly do because the theory went then you know that your muscles that you surpass the point where you send the signal to build muscle you know that you're going to send that signal it creates the most damage and therefore every always train and lift to failure and so I just assumed this was a law and so I train like this for the first 10 years of my training career at least 10 years that's how I train my body and then I started to read the studies and papers on Olympic lifters now here's why reading this was so important Olympic lifting has got the most science supporting it in terms of training methodologies a lot of this is because Olympic lifting is an Olympic sport so there's a lot of countries that fund studies a lot of this comes from Russia a lot of it came from the Soviet Union right they invested a lot of money on trying to make the best strongest athletes in in Olympic lifting and the way Olympic lifters trained rarely is to failure in fact only only times they ever lift a failure is on the day of competition no power lifters also power lifters rarely lift to failure so when you look at these strength athletes I remember reading this going huh yeah that's kind of weird and so here's what I started to do like all right let me test this out rather than lifting to failure I'm going to stop about two reps before I fail no joke instantly got stronger instantly the next workout I got stronger on lifts that I had been stuck at yeah this totally blew my mind too I and again looking back at at the training and I used to know a couple Olympic lifters and they're kind of breaking down how they trained and it was like seven days a week it was every single day they're training and so to think that they were trying to max out every single workout would work like idiotic yeah and it's worth and they just were trying to tell me like how much they had to work at this skill and they had to treat it like they're practicing this skill constantly constantly and then they would challenge it and they would they would stress their body by by upping the load on a day but then making sure they're still going through those movements again with light load so it was really just about that management that management of stress was key and having the right dose was everything well we didn't put this up here as a point but I feel like this falls in the same category and that's the frequency is king sure and that that was you know I used to be in that category of guys that trained where they hammered a single muscle group for a you know one time that week I'm doing 15 to 20 sets in it and I'm going to failure and then I don't touch it again for another week where when I started to pull pull back from the failure training it allowed me to hit that muscle group two times and then three times and I remember it was like a it took me a while to really really learn it because I kind of scale back like I didn't go to crazy failure and then I went to like almost kind of failure but still was training quite a bit of volume and it was like okay that's reduced my soreness I can actually hit the muscle again a second time the week but god Jesus if I'm going to do three times a week I've got to really pull this back and it was a mental struggle to go in the gym and do only five to eight sets of chest and then call it a day like it was just a failure yeah especially when for 10 years of your your training career you've trained a way to where you know you do that last at least the last set if not every set to absolute failure and then to go like oh I'm only going to train five to eight sets and not only am I going to train five to eight sets but I'm also going to leave two in the tank and I'm going to leave training my chest for the day feeling like it's not destroyed like this doesn't feel right no but to your point Sal holy shit to the strength start to pile on when that when that light bulb went off and I I pulled back on the intensity I increase the frequency and I focused on on this this was and focused on not training a failure just blew my mind study support this by the way there's there's a few studies now that show that train to failure is too much intensity most of the time and that when people train to failure they actually progress slower than if they stop about two to three reps short of failure failure it's a good rule of thumb now I'm not saying you should never train to failure every once in a while lifting a weight until you can't lift it anymore with good form might be beneficial part of the reason main reason why I think it's beneficial is not necessarily because it makes you stronger faster but because it lets you it really it helps you re gauge uh where it's good right yeah like where two reps before that is a tool it's a tool like everything else we talk about it should be used intermittently in your training routine I think for the most part most people shouldn't no in fact you don't ever have to no no no you could train your whole training career and never train to failure and build a ton of muscle burn a ton of body fat and build a ton of strength this is not an exaggeration so again this is roughly 10 years 10 to maybe 12 years of my training career so I'm like 27 or 26 you know maybe even more right because I started lifting weights at 14 so I'm like 26 27 I remember kind of late 20s and now consider this it's very difficult to gain lots of muscle and strength after you've been training consistently for 10 years at that point it's really hard to get the body to continue progress right very incremental that very very slow like you gain a couple pounds of muscle a year after 10 years of training like you're kicking butt right especially because I did a lot of my training through the the teen in early 20 years where you've got the most testosterone I went from lifting to failure all the time to stopping to rep short I gained seven pounds seven pounds of muscle came on my body like I was like when I first started lifting weights and my strength went through the roof I remember telling my cousin who had also been he was been he'd been lifting weights at this point probably for five years consistently he didn't believe me luckily I'm a good salesman and I closed them on it he did the same thing he gained six pounds of muscle the following month I remember because we would go back and forth and he would tell me I gained three pounds I gained five pounds my strength is going through from like I told you going to failure is it with the most terrible lessons that I think we that people were taught in the lifting weights community and it's it's actually not only is it not necessary it's actually detrimental for most people okay here's another one phasing phasing your training here's a rule of thumb when it comes to all forms of exercise but especially especially true for resistance training most things work nothing works forever yeah right nothing works if you just keep doing the same thing over and over again um all rep ranges most rep ranges between one to about 25 reps can build strength and build muscle okay so all those rep ranges have validity all of them have value if you stick to one rep range all the time your body will stop progressing in a hurry not only do they have value but i want to add that whatever rep range you haven't been doing the longest will probably add the most value so if you're somebody who loved the the burn and the pump and you're constantly in that 12 the 20 rep range and super setting the single best thing that you could probably do to build strength is dropping down to that one to five range it will blow your mind and the same thing is true for someone who only lifts in the one to five rep range or below six reps and that's how they always train bring him up to 12 bring him up to 15 to 20 blow their mind blow their mind absolutely remember stan efforting was on the show stan efforting is uh is known right he swears by the 20s the squat squatting to 20 super strong guy power lifter whatever hired flex wheeler to get him to to so he could win his first bodybuilding competition all flex did was be like we're going to do the 12 to 20 reps we're going to move away from the low reps and what ended up happening he actually got stronger and built more muscle was able to win his i think you won his pro card um and his body progressed yeah this speaks again to to the tracking point i think you know previously uh paying attention to uh what you've been doing like over the last you know week to months to like it's it's really imperative that you know you're paying attention to all these different trends and and where you are in terms of progressing within that type of a phase and when to phase out so i think one of the hardest things to do is to phase out before you hit that plateau totally true totally true and now this phasing is a integral component of all maps programs but it's it was definitely was part of the first one maps anabolic when that one was created i made sure to put in there that people would train for a few weeks within a particular rep range and move out of it into the next rep range this is one of the best insurances you have to continual progress if you want to get your body to progress consistently one of the most important things you do is phase your training one of the one of the worst things you can do if you want your body to plateau here's what you do same rep range yeah forever stay in the separate same rep range uh at at some point it'll stop working and it stops working fast like that's it no more progress my body's not progressing anymore and then you got to figure out my diet or i'm going to take more supplements or whatever no man just switch out of your phase move into another one now here's how i like to phase workouts here's how it's written in maps anabolic there's a really low rep range that i think there's a lot of value in this is like the one to six rep range um you know that you're going to get benefit from all of that kind of that low rep range then there's the eight to 12 rep range this is the traditional kind of body building rep range and then there's a 15 to 20 rep range so those are those are three now those aren't the only ways to phase your your reps but those are the three general applies to most people categories of how you should phase your training in terms of rep ranges to get your body to continuously progress absolutely and with that go to mind pump free dot com and download our guides they're all absolutely free um and uh you can find us on instagram you can find justin at mine pump justin you can find me at mine pump sal and adam he's at mine pump adam