 Okay, so your workout isn't working for you. Well, in today's episode, we're going to give you the seven most common reasons while your workout is not giving you results. Ooh, this is a shot at Justin. This is all seven. No, it's, you know, literally, I mean, the seven that we listed, I think we'll probably cover 99% of the reasons why somebody's workout just isn't giving them what they want, whether it's fat loss or muscle gain or strength. And these aren't ordered in any, any order, right? Cause I think that I, like when I went through the list, I'm like, I definitely had plenty of clients in each of these categories. Yes, yes, yes, yes. What's up, everybody? Today's giveaway maps aesthetic. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop this video. Also subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. One more thing. We have a sale this month. Maps performance is 50% off. Maps aesthetic is 50% off. And maps hit is 50% off. All of them half off. If you want to learn more sign up, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, here comes the show. So let's start with the first one. Um, and the first one is you're working out just too much. This one's a hard one for people, especially fitness fanatics, I would say. And beginners, which you would think, how can this be common for both people? Um, cause they're on both ends of the spectrum. Well, it's common for fitness fanatics because they love exercise so much that they'll readily ignore the signs that their body's telling them that they're just, they're just doing too much. Um, in fact, what they tend to do is they tend to do more and more and more when the workout isn't producing what they want. And they keep going down that particular path. Now beginners, beginners do this because they falsely believe that doing more will get them there faster or, and or doing too much when you're not, when you haven't done anything doesn't take much. So if you're a total beginner, you know, a 30 minute workout can be too much for your body or, you know, you don't have to go to failure. You could just have a little bit of intensity and overdo it with your workout. Well, too, I think that they're comparing themselves to what they see as like a fit, healthy person and like what their workouts consist of. And so immediately they jump to that type of volume and load, um, you know, for their own constructed workout. Well, there's also this terrible message that is in our space that says there's no such thing as overtraining just under eating. And there's this belief that yeah, it's super popular, especially in the bodybuilding community that, you know, nobody's overtraining. It takes so much to over train. Like you're just under eating. And if you were to eat more, you'd be fine or a prioritized recovery. You'd be fine. And that's not true at all. There's definitely a sweet spot. And by the way, the sweet spot is individualized. It is not the same for everybody. And so it's not going to even be the same for you throughout your career. That's right. The different points of your career. It will be, uh, there'll be different, uh, amounts of volume that you can handle also not just on experience. Because I know that's the first thing people think, of course, as you get more experience, you can handle more. No, also what the circumstances in your life are currently. If you are under all kinds of stress, lack of sleep, you've got a lot of things going on at work with family, uh, that might be a time when you just can't handle the same kind of volume. Maybe you could handle just three or four years ago. And then there's this interesting paradox where, uh, sometimes when you're relatively new, like intermediate, you can actually do more and get away with more than if you're super advanced because when you're super advanced, you've developed the ability to train with a higher intensity and with more, with heavier weight. So like, you know, let's say you've been working out for a year and you can do 10 reps with 200 pounds. And then two years later, you can do 10 reps with 300 pounds. That 300 pounds will still produce a little bit more stress on your body, even if it's something you can handle because the total load is still the total load. So this is something you kind of have to judge, um, as you go along. And Pete, someone may be asking, what are the signs? Well, first off, let's, let's consider this. Like doing too much basically means you're doing more than is allowing your body to recover and adapt to. So whenever you exercise, it's a stress on the body. The body identifies the stress heals the damage that the stress caused because if there's no damage, that means there was no stress. So it heals the body and then it tries to adapt and overcompensate. So the same insult does not cause, uh, the same damage as before. This is why you get stronger. So I get more fit. This way you have to add weight and change your workouts. Um, now your body can tolerate a lot more than what is the ideal amount for progress. In other words, if 10 sets of an exercise is the perfect amount for the best results, you may be able to tolerate 15 sets, but you're not going to get, uh, the results any faster. In fact, all you're doing at that point now is compromising your ability to recover. So actually slowing down your progress. So the things to pay attention to besides not getting results are things like excess fatigue, joint pain, soreness and stiffness. That doesn't seem to want to go away. Um, hot, cold and tolerance. This is, this is what happens to me when I over-train. I noticed that I get cold easier or I get hot easier. Um, and sleep disturbances. Sleep disturbances is a big one for, for overdoing it. Well, where is the, um, where's the sweet spot? What does the research say as far as the optimal amount of total sets in a workout? What, what do we know as far as how, cause that would be another way to judge this is if you're trying to figure out, you know, am I doing too much? Are you on the upper end of that? Or beyond what they would recommend as optimal for most people. So the studies that made analysis show anywhere, this is per week. Anywhere between something like eight sets per body part for the week and to as high as 18 or 20 sets. So it's like a huge range, you know, eight to 20. It is, but it's not that crazy because there's easily, I've seen this where people are doing 50 sets in a week on a muscle group that they're, they're doing 12 to 16 sets for chest, you know, two to three times a week. And so I know eight to 20 does sound like a pretty wide range. And it is a pretty wide range. And there's a major individual variance within that. But if, and here's the thing too, if you're around, uh, if you think, Oh, maybe this is me, but you're only doing two sets or three sets on a muscle group per week. You're probably not. If you're falling somewhere in that sweep spot, you might not be, but if you're towards the upper end of that, you may be somebody who is overreaching and you don't even realize it. It's interesting how even like three day a week, like in having like the days of rest in between is still like one of the most optimal, uh, strength driven, like, you know, schedule in terms of like, uh, your workouts are concerned. That still has shown itself in strength athletes and, uh, your everyday average person to follow. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So next is kind of the opposite, which is you're just not doing enough. So this is, I would say this is somewhat less common, but still kind of common, your workout should provide some sort of struggle. Now, I don't mean you need to be like, you know, gasping for air or, oh my God, I can't move or this feels like war. But if there's zero stress on the body, the body has no need to adapt and get stronger and become more fit. Remember changes in the body, those kinds of positive changes require energy and resources. And they also require energy and resources to maintain. And your body is always trying to be as efficient as possible. It's not going to want to be any more fit or stronger or faster or burn any more calories than it has to. That's an adaptation. I mean, that's an evolutionary adaptation response. It just doesn't make any sense. So to give you an example, an extreme example, if you sat in a chair for five years and never got up for whatever reason, let's say you were part of an experiment and you did that, your leg muscles would atrophy completely. And the neural connection to those muscles with atrophy to the point where you'd have to relearn how to walk. In fact, this happens to people when they're in accidents and they're in a hospital bed for weeks and they come out. It's like your body will prune away what it doesn't need and give you more than it needs. It just doesn't happen. So you have to do the right amount and not doing enough means nothing happens. Your body has no need. Well, and you could again kind of compare this to like your beginner or somebody that's been doing it forever. So your beginner is kind of obvious. It's like, you know, they're not really, you know, trying to push themselves down. They haven't really realized how to kind of get into that discipline yet. Whereas, you know, if you go on the more experienced lifter side, it's like, you know, if you can get, you can get to a position where God, I had this thought and then I totally lost it. Yeah. Well, I think when you're, when you're an experienced lifter, you can do the same workout and never challenge your body in new ways. And you see this with, oh, I got maybe not fitness fanatics, but I would see this with members where they would come in the gym and they would do the same machine, same weight, same everything all the time. Yes. That's, that's exactly right. And it's too, I see this with like not pushing yourself in terms of the weight and getting into like the routine that you've established. And you're just kind of continuously doing this routine, the same type of weights and never really progressively overloading it from there. Yeah. I mean, what you guys are mentioning now, you're kind of bleeding into the third point, which is the workout, getting stale or what I would say is like the common thing that happens with these clients that I would, I would hire, I would, or they would hire me, they come in and I would assess what they're doing. And they, they're always these clients. They know they have a weight for their exercise. Yes. Like, oh, I do bicep curls with fives. And then I do chest flies with the 15s. And then I do the, I do the seated row over there with 70 pounds. And then I do this on number five. Like they have their routine down so well that they can name me the exercise and the weight that they use for all the exercises. And then I'm like, well, how long you've been doing that for? And like, oh, I've been, I've been consistently doing that for years. I mean, that's, that's my routine. And I feel great when I do it. It's like, yeah, but you have, your body has adapted to that so much that it doesn't, doesn't perceive that as a stress anymore. It's like, this is part of your routine. Therefore, we are not challenging the body enough for it to overcome, recover, adapt, and grow. And so that's where I see someone like this, you know, in bouncing back since we kind of jumped between these two and the second and third point. I would say the people that under train is probably one of the least common things that have everything that I see on here. I actually think that under training is the only real example that I recall seeing it a lot is in this example of the of my, my client who has been following the workout tape, you know, this is the same exact. Yeah, this was more common. Like when I first started, I know the like late 90s, early 2000s, when still workout cassettes and stuff like that were still popular. And they've been following that routine for 10 years. That's more common. It's when you get somebody who's brand new, it's actually more common that they do more than they need to because they're motivated and they're they're they're want to change so bad or their doctor told them, you've got to do the stuff. And so they go in with this attitude of more is going to give me more results. And so I actually find that side more common than somebody actually under is less detrimental to have that mentality coming in and do less versus do more, right, in terms of like how you're going to respond and how you can kind of build from there. Like it's it's it's definitely one of those you're setting yourself up a little better if you do a little less, which is like contrary to what's been marketed. This is why I wanted Sal to bring up the what the research says as far as optimal amount of sets. And so my advice to somebody is to count how many total sets that you're doing in the week for that muscle group, right? So oh, if I look in, you know, so if I do three full body workouts at the end of the at the end of the week, I'm doing somewhere I'm doing 12 sets for chest. I'm always going to end and Sal mentioned already eight to 20 is kind of the range. I'm always going to push my people to actually lean on the on the lesser end, right? So the goal you hear me say it all the time in the show is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. So I have room to add those sets later on. If you start right out the gates and you're doing 20 sets for a muscle group in a week, you're already at the the peak of what they would consider optimal with all the research. And so I don't have a lot of room to scale you up. I'd much rather put you at eight sets for the week. And then we go for a while to the body adapts and then you're not seeing results around. Okay, let's bump it up to 10 sets now. And then let's bump it up to 12. I have a lot of room. In my experience that don't do enough crowd. It's the not enough intensity is usually what it is. There's just not pushing. This is the one who, who is curling or doing an exercise and go, oh, it burns. And then they drop, they drop the weight or nothing. They're just doing it and you can, they're talking to their friend or they're looking next door and they're just, it's literally like a, like a social. I did it though. Which I guess is better than nothing, but. Or classes. You see that in classes. Like, you know, they do it. They do a class, but it's not going to work anymore. That's the point. The third one, which we kind of touched on is that your workout is just stale. I mean, if you do the same thing every time you work out over and over, eventually it stops working. All workouts within reason will produce some kind of result. All workouts eventually stop working. It's just the fact of exercise. Novelty is a factor. It is a factor when it comes to getting the body to respond and improve, whether it's physical performance or strength or stamina and, you know, as a side effect fat loss. So if you're doing the same thing over and over again and pushing yourself hard and doing it, but it's always exactly the same and you're not progressing, sometimes as little as changing the rep range. Like this happened to me as a kid. Like I remember distinctly doing this where my body just wasn't responding. And I just changed rep ranges. And then boom, I just saw phenomenal results. Or I changed an exercise or rest periods. I would go from long rest periods to short rest periods. Just your body gets used to stuff. And so it's, and now I'm not saying change everything all the time, but if you're not getting any results and you look at your work and you're like, oh yeah, I guess I've been in the same workout for, and I work out hard and all that stuff, but it's been the same for like a year. It doesn't even need to look that drastically different. Like because there's so many variables you can slightly tweak based on what you're kind of bringing up in terms of like the tempo, the position, like you're holding squats at the bottom position and you're pausing with it now. And there's just like different types of angles you can play around with. And if you haven't done front squats versus back squats in a long time. And so if you just shift like some of these items within your workout list and provide a brand new stimulus to kind of bring in your body's going to respond in a different way. Well, if this speaks to you and you're listening right now to this episode and you're like, oh, this could be me. We did an episode about a year ago. I believe it was titled Nine Ways to Progressively Overload Your Body. And the typical way is to add weight. I think that's the default that everybody goes to. Like, oh, I need to add more weight to the bar. And that is one of the nine strategies, but there's far more strategies to the point that you both are making right now that you can manipulate within the same type of a workout. So we could be doing the same exercises but manipulate all these other things that will actually result in new results to the body. So if you haven't listened to that episode, you're somebody who is trying to break a plateau and you feel like your routine is really similar. You don't know where to go on how to change that routine up. Listen to that episode. I think that's a great episode for that. Next up, this one has got to be one of the most consistent for the average person, which is they're just not consistent enough. They miss enough workouts, enough weeks, they're consistent for three months and they're not consistent for three months. And they expect when they finally get back on it for three weeks or four weeks, like why isn't this working? It's like stick to it. This is for sure the number one out of all of them. Because we think that we put all this weight on or we lose all this muscle because we don't train for extended period of time. And then we expect like you do one hard month of consistency that like it all is fixed. Like it's a very... Like why isn't this working? It's such a, you know, building muscle is such a slow process and then losing body fat and still holding onto muscle, right? So simultaneously changing your body composition is a very, very slow process and requires consistency for extended periods of time to see visual change. Now, granted, within weeks, you know, or even a week, there are changes that are happening, but to see it visually, especially on yourself, who is looking at yourself and judging yourself at least once or twice or three times a day, it's very, very difficult to see visual change without an extended period of time where you're consistent. And so I would say this is the number one mistake that people make right here is, you know, thinking that, oh man, but I've been really consistent. Like have you really, you know? It's easily the most common. I mean, if you looked at the average person's workout history, it usually looks like I worked out consistently for three months here and then I did it for six months and then, oh, that was that year that I was consistent and then I stopped for two years. You're better off working out less but just doing it more consistently than you are doing it for two months and then stopping for, you know, six months. Well, this is why I love that we advocate for the full body routine because in my experience, a very, a very small percentage of my clientele ever adopted a routine and then was consistent for months or years on after that. Then what I would happen is most of them would have a streak, you know, for a few weeks or a few months and then something happens and they get back on and then that happens again. And so if you're gonna kind of have this off and on when life happens, which is realistic and understandable because we all have other priorities besides going to the gym and lifting weights, then doing a routine that requires you actually only one time in the gym to actually get your entire body addressed, I think is a superior way to work out for most people aside from what all the other studies say as far as the benefits of it. I think that in itself is the reason why I work out. That makes it, that's 100% my review. In fact, I would say that that's the biggest most beneficial reason for full body workouts. I'd say this, like if consistency is your issue, start with something you know you can maintain, work your full body and then start there. And don't add anything until what you're doing has become a habit, until what you're doing has become second nature. Then add, don't add just cause you feel motivated. Otherwise yourself up for failure and then you end up in this kind of inconsistent model of exercise. All right, next up would be your diet. Your diet just isn't productive. Like if you have a great workout but your diet's terrible, it's gonna be really hard to get good results. Now you'll improve your fitness somewhat just cause you're working out. You may build a little bit of muscle just cause you're working out. But if you're not feeding yourself enough protein, enough calories or too little calories or you have a nutrient deficiency, like your body's not gonna try to adapt and improve its performance and strength and it's just not gonna want to. It's gonna be very, very difficult, especially with fat loss. When it comes to fat loss, if your workout could be amazing, if your diet's terrible, you ain't losing any body fat. Good luck. You're not gonna work it off through work. It's just not gonna happen. It's too easy to eat calories and it's a lot of work to try to burn them. So look at your diet as well. Now, you don't have to have a perfect diet but again, if it's nothing's working, here's the places I would look to first. One, are you eating adequate protein? What does that look like? Close to about a gram of protein per pound of body weight. Number two, look at your diet. Am I eating more than I should? If you are, you're not gonna get leaner. How do I figure that out? Track your diet for a couple of weeks, look at your average and then if you wanna lose body fat, cut your calories from there. If you wanna gain weight, then add calories from there. But without a productive diet, your workout's not gonna do much for you at all. All the things that we're talking about today, this one is the most challenging and the reason why I find this one, the most challenging is, most people go to the gym because they wanna lose body fat. That's the number one goal for people that start working out. Okay, we've now convinced them that lifting weights is one of the best ways for them to get in shape. It's what's gonna speed your metabolism up. It's what's gonna give you this firm tone, whatever look you say you want. That's how you're gonna shape and sculpt the body. Okay, so I'm convinced I'm supposed to lift weights. That's one of the best ways to do it. But then you also want to lose body fat so you know you need to eat it in a caloric deficit. So winds up happening to a lot of people that are stalling with progress, is they're eating in a caloric deficit but then they're not hitting their protein intake. And so what's happening is the body is adapting and it's losing weight on the scale but at the same ratio it's losing fat, it's also losing muscle so then they're not seeing the body composition change or the body fat percentage change that they would like to see. So they keep testing their body fat and their body fat is staying stagnant or sometimes even going up and they're scratching their head going like, this makes no sense. I'm eating so clean, I'm eating low calorie, I'm training three to four days a week and yet my body fat percentage is staying the same or even going up. And a lot of times that's because they're not eating adequate protein to the point you were making so while also being in a caloric deficit and then strength training. You know, your strength training, you're sending a signal to the body that it needs to build muscle so that it can overcome the next time you do that stress again but then you're under eating on calories and protein, it's a competing signal and so you see people stall out here a lot. That's right. Yeah, well, I mean, it's so hard wired. Like this is something that you have to eat every single day. It is something that you carry with you your entire life and to make those adjustments, a lot of times we can easily fool ourselves that we're doing good or we're making these adjustments but it's not as clearly visible as it is when I go to the gym and I do this work and this is something new I'm taking on but changing something that's really hardwired in you that takes a whole lot of extra effort. Totally. All right, next up is your sleep. You're not getting good sleep or you're not getting quality sleep. Look, with poor sleep, you can forget about your body adapting in any positive way. When you're getting poor sleep, your body does not want muscle because muscle costs resources and for most of human history, lack of sleep meant it's because you didn't have enough resources, you didn't have enough food and it wants to store body fat. It literally will change and shift its hormones in a way to promote fat gain. Why? Because fat on your body is a wonderful insurance policy against stress and famine and the fact that you can't find resources. So lack of sleep will crush any progress. It'll crush strength. It'll crush muscle. It'll increase cravings. It'll make fat gain much, much easier. So this is a big one and this is one that a lot of people tend to ignore especially young people. Yeah, I don't know what it was about this one that caused me not to focus on it because I knew that when we sleep, this is when our body recovers. I knew that the recovery process was the most important process in building muscle yet I guess maybe because I felt okay and so because I was still going to work, still doing the things that I needed to do and I was still able to work out, I was still able to play sports and have fun and do the things that and I didn't feel like I was dragging ass because I didn't get a really good night's sleep. I think I ignored this one for a really long time and then until you actually put focus on it I feel like this is a tough one to communicate to get people to really grasp and older people seem to get this. So if you're like north of 40, I feel like you're kind of forced to learn this one but convincing somebody in their 20s and 30s that this is such a major part of your success and if you're at a hard plateau and you're only getting six hours of sleep every night this could be a massive reason why. It's because you can get away with it but getting away with it means you're not optimized. So I bet you if somebody took you and gave you optimal sleep in your 20s and then you saw five pounds of muscle come on your body you'd be like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. The difference is when you get older you just can't get away with it as much and you start to notice. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's the effects of not having a sleep way more. Yes, that's all it is. Like right now if you're watching this and you're in your 20s and you're working out and you're not getting good sleep like just get better sleep, watch what happens. That's it. Just do that and you'll gain muscle and burn body fat without changing anything else just because of that right there. That's how big of a deal it is. In fact, lack of sleep will die. You literally will die. In fact, I read a study being sleep deprived for I think four days gave like it was like a 50% chance of mental illness developing from it. It's how important it is. It's a big deal and your body won't build muscle or progress without it. So prioritize it if you want to get your body to progress. All right, lastly, and this is last because if you're doing everything right and things still seem like they're not working, you could have some hormone issues. You could have some hormone imbalances. Low testosterone is becoming relatively common in men. Estrogen, progesterone imbalances and testosterone deficiency in women. If you're doing all the stuff and you're like this, I just don't feel like myself or whatever. The only way to know is get your hormones tested in which case an expert will look. Then you can make adjustments to your lifestyle and if that doesn't work, well then this is where Western medicine can become quite valuable and hormone replacement therapy can make a big difference. So two thoughts around this one. One, when you are beyond the age of 35, this I would say is one of the most common. So when we, all the things we listed, I talked about some of the things that are most common. Nutrition, as you get over 35, I would say this is super common that this is one of the reasons why we're stalling out. Second, if you're not beyond 35 and you're, I say you're in your 20s, something that I recommend now that I didn't recommend when I was early is to go get your blood work done so you know what good feels like. So let's say you're 25 right now and you're like, oh, I feel good. Hormones are good, libido is good. Get a baseline. Yes, there's so much value in finding out, okay, you feel great right now. Let's go get your hormone profile. So you know what, cause there's such a wide range when you start to understand how these, like these, these panels work. It's not like there's like a straight up score. It's like you get this range and in that range is considered healthy. And if you get tested in your 20s and you're on the higher end of a lot of these ranges and then you're 35 one day and you go get tested again and you actually still fall in the healthy range but you're on the bottom of that range. That can make you feel dramatically different. And so understanding that, that's why you don't feel good is that even though a general practitioner would do your blood work in your panels and go, oh, you're, yeah, you're fine. You're okay. And you're like, God damn, I don't, but I don't feel right. And if you don't have that blood work from when you were 25 and you know how good felt to compare to that, then you might not even know that you're just not at your optimal levels. And there's things that you can start to do in your life to improve that. Yep, that's right. Good place to go would be mphormones.com where you can kind of get that checked out. Look, if you like the show, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump. Justin, Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. And you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal. Today we're gonna teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the work part. Yeah, it was for me. It was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.