 Our first caller is MJ from California. Hey MJ, how can we help you? That's my son's initial. Hi guys. I have a question regarding my new fitness goals. I started training maybe two years ago, doing mostly high intense interval training. And about a year ago, my husband started joining me, which was great because he had high cholesterol and his physician wanted to put him under Lipitor. But just through diet and exercise, his cholesterol level went down and he's doing great right now. But I also start incorporating strength training into my schedule. And basically long story short, I've gone through 120 pounds to now 135 pounds. And I still want to get more goals in terms of muscle mass. I am eating around 2,500 calories a day right now. And I went from 1350 to 2,500. And basically I just, I'm a little disoriented on how I can incorporate my training with my husband with my strength goals. I used to train four times a day, upper body, lower body split right after I trained with him. And that kind of burned me out. So I stopped doing that for the month of August and I've been just doing dumbbell training with him, but I miss the barbell. Okay, so your goal is to build more strength, MJ? Can I say that again? I'm sorry, your goal is to build more strength in muscle? Yes, actually yes. But before I wanted to build more muscle because I like the physique of stronger legs. My physique is long. I don't have much shape. But I know I just miss the lifting heavy, like deadlifts and, you know, squats and things like that. Okay, so to summarize, your question is you want to gain more strength, maybe a little bit more muscle and want some advice on your workout routine. Is that correct? Right, and I've been doing this for a while. It's not that I get super tired. I can do strength training after with my husband. And I know you guys say basically what you can, does it mean you should do it? Just working out makes me really happy. It's therapeutic for me. I meditate. I think of ideas. I'm a researcher. I work out. I think of experiments to do. And it aligns very well with my lifestyle. Well, before we give a recommendation, I think the first thing is to commend what you've already accomplished. The fact that you went from 1,300 to 2,500 calories and you're maintaining it sounds like a pretty good weight in physique is phenomenal. So you're doing a hell of a job. My question is, are you doing hit training three to four days a week? And also, how many days are you actually lifting per week? Well, right now, let me think, just with dumbbells. Like all together, everything you're doing. How many days a week are you weight training and exercising? What's that look like? Five. Five days a week. And of the five days, are all of them with weights or is that some cardio days? Are you doing five days of weight training? Yes. So I do one a hit day, which is just 30 minutes. Okay. And then the rest is mixed. And your hit training is 30 minutes long? Yeah. So that's a little long for hit training. Typically, you want to do maybe 15 minutes of hit training that kind of maximizes its effects. After that, it starts to become more like steady state cardio, even though you may have the form and the programming that looks like hit training. Just as you stretch it out, it starts to become more endurance focus. Here's the other thing. You said it's therapeutic for you to exercise. You'll love the way it feels. But you also maybe want to do less to build more muscle. This reminds me of the statement, I want my cake and I want to also eat it, right? What that means is you want to have your cake in front of you, but you want to eat it when you eat it, it's gone. So how can I have both? You can't necessarily have both. And that's okay. Pick the one that works better for you. One thing you can try is you could try to reduce the time that you do hit training. So maybe don't cut it out, but cut it down to about 15 minutes and then observe how your body responds. My guess would be that just cutting the hit down to 15 minutes will do a couple of things. One, the hit training will probably automatically become a little more intense because it's shorter. And two, you'll probably notice more strength gains from doing so because now the body is going to prioritize strength a little bit over endurance because you've reduced that time. I'll be even more specific. I mean, I would love to see you run maps anabolic three days. So if you like the five days a week that's therapeutic, I don't want to change that, right? So I don't want to tell you stop going to the gym or stop working out five days a week. So let's continue. Yeah, I work at a home. Okay. So let's continue working out five days a week. But the way I would prefer it to look is three days a week of maps anabolic, one day of your 15 to 20 minute hit training because you like it. And then maybe a mobility day. That would be a perfect, because I love where your calories are at. I think your calories, your macro, I mean, you eat in 2,500 plus calories. I see your breakdown on carbs, fat and protein. That looks really good. So you're doing a hell of a job right now. I think if you just want to build and sculpt and shape the body more, I would reduce the intensity as far as the hit training in there. I put more emphasis on full body strength training, get back to those deadlift squats and more of a maps anabolic routine. And that would be your core. So that would be your three days a week foundational training. And then I'd let you do a day of like mobility type of training flow session. And then on the other day, you can do your hit training. Now I'm confused. And you brought up your husband in terms of being like the accountability. Yeah. Okay. So have you guys actually ran a program together? Is this something you've just been trying to kind of help him with? No. I'm basically done my own research and changed my composition and then he saw that and he wanted to, you know, tag along with me. So we just do whatever I come up with. But obviously I don't have the experience as you guys do. I'm, this is just out of, you know, hobby. And I feel like we reached like a plateau and then we want to have further and further strength. And also if I don't wake up in the morning and wake him up and, you know, get a workout down before the kids wake up, I know he's not going to do it. So I want him to keep on doing it. Well, I think it's, it, this is a clear way to help in terms of like having a plan of action that he can also kind of look through himself. I know that was something that really helped me and my wife was to finally at least like both look at a program that we could, you know, both do together. And that was something that like it, it takes a lot of pressure off of you in terms of having to drum that up every single time. And so yeah, like to, to Adam's like suggestion, like maps in a blog, I think would be a great one for you both to kind of look at. You know, MJ, I, I really appreciate as a trainer, I really appreciated training clients that were, you know, research minded or research focused. I have trained researchers in the past. And I like it because obviously you've been trained to be more objective than I guess the average person, which is excellent when it comes to fitness because it's so hard sometimes to be objective when you mix in your own personal aesthetic goals and insecurities. And you know, we all have body image issues to one extent or another. And so it can be very hard to be objective with just yourself, but because your research minded, you know, you're more trained to look at the data. Here is this is a great example. And one of the best ways you can learn in fitness kind of through that lens is to follow a template that is tried and true. Okay. And here's what you'll get from it. I'm not asking you to follow maps and a bullet blindly, although that would be perfectly fine from my perspective. I know it'll do great for you. Follow the program and then pay attention. Pay attention to how you feel. Pay attention to the different phases, the organization of the exercises, why you're doing particular number of sets and reps, how your body's feeling, how your husband is reacting and responding. And what'll happen through this process is it'll accelerate your knowledge of how to program for yourself much faster than if you didn't necessarily follow a tried and true template. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And actually what I like is that I feel like I'm my own experiment. So sometimes I switch my macros and then I see my body reacting differently. And that was also my other question. Should I keep my macros the same or should I go higher or lower? She's got a good breakdown. Yeah, your breakdown looks excellent. I mean, maybe add a little bit. Go up 150 calories or something just because you're going to be now trying to focus a little more on strength. That'll help you. But we're going to send you maps and a ball like and I also want to send you maps prime to help you with mobility and priming sessions. I think also just from talking to you, I think you're going to get a lot of value. Maps prime is extremely valuable to people who really want to understand how the body moves, how muscles connect, you know, proper mobility, which is extremely valuable. You learn that and everything else is a lot easier when you learn that part of it. I would actually let your body tell you what to do with the cow. I think you're in a very healthy, good place, calorie and macro place. But if you switch over to maps and a ball, what we might see because one of the most common things that we hear from feedback from maps and a ball is, oh my God, my appetite increase. Yeah. So you might actually feel that if you do feed. So if you feel if you feel satisfied and you feel good where your calories are, I like where you're at. So there's nothing wrong with that. So I would start there. But if you notice as you start going to a ball like your appetite starts ramping up, feed the body. Just make good choices. Eat how you're eating. Just add a few hundred more calories to that with the same balance that you have going on right now. So let your body tell you what it needs to do from there. There's a good chance when you start running maps and a ball like that, your appetite might increase a little bit and don't be afraid to go ahead and feed it a little bit more. Yeah. That's a very good sign. So we'll send those two programs over to you, MJ. Thank you so much. No problem. That's a common question. Took a minute to unpack that one. It did. It's a common question. I'm doing this, but I also want to get this and I'm doing that. There's no, I mean, unless you're training inappropriately, there isn't necessarily a wrong answer. And a lot of people are in this kind of conundrum. How many times have we gotten the question, I want to get faster at running, but I also want to get a higher max deadlift. I also want to get bigger. Yeah. So it's like, okay, you can get a little of both, but you can't get a lot of either. And that's totally fine. In fact, you know what I used to tell clients who did this, who were really into this like dichotomy, like goals, is I would say, all right, for three months, let's focus on one. And then the next three months, focus on the other. And it's a lot of fun doing that. That's actually one of my favorite ways to train myself and to train. Well, the only reason why I would even suggest switching or changing something up is that she's said that she's had a plateau and she still wants to change her body. Yeah. I mean, the other part, I mean, she's having great results with her husband. She's having great results with herself. She went from 1,300 to 2,500 calories. Are you kidding me? Yeah, that's right. That's phenomenal. And she's happy. Like, if that was just it, I would say, hey, stay the course. Things are going great for you. Maybe switch up your routine a little bit or whatever to try to break through the plateau. But because she's trying to change her physique, right? She's trying to sculpt a little bit different. Like, I mean, that's the only reason why I think there's a purpose to, like, really switch her from the way she's training to, like, more of a MAPS anabolic type of phase. Otherwise, it sounds like she's doing phenomenal.