 You're not only going to get the benefits of building muscle and burning calories and burning body fat, but you're going to get better at these movements, getting better at these movements, which again, plays into the whole thing that we talk about all the time, which is, man, it feels so much easier in my forties to stay in shape than it did. Well, yeah. Part of that is because I can go into a workout, know exactly what I need to do and get the most out of that workout because I've practiced so long. And I'm going to help here with that because some people might be listening and say, oh, it's because you can push yourself harder now. No, no, it's not about pushing harder. It's about knowing how to do the technique in the best way possible. Is a quarterback going to throw farther because he knows how to throw harder all of a sudden or because he knows how to throw better. That's right. So same thing with exercise. We tend to relegate strength training to, oh, damage the muscle and build. And we forget that they're techniques. We forget that squatting is a technique. Curling is a technique. Overhead pressing is a technique. No, no, no. They're all techniques. And the better you are at the techniques, the more you're going to get out of them. One of the best ways to get better at exercise is to do it often. If I could work out more and recover faster, I'm going to get better results. Well, this strength training tool allows you to do that. You can work out. People watching right now, literally, whatever you're doing now, you can work out like 30% more with bands. And it'll equal about the same amount of damage you're causing out of your body, but now you're working out more and more often. And you get all that extra practice. All right, today's workout program giveaway. The brand new, just about to be launched, math program. Maps, bands. This is a band-based workout program for eight weeks. It's advanced because it's not a beginner program. It's the only math program that you work out every single day. And yes, you will hit PRs and you will build new muscle. Not joking. Listen to the episode where you break it down and explain why. Anyway, you can get free access to this new program, but you've got to do this. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications if you win. We'll give you the new program, maps bands. Everybody else, this is the launch period, which means it's going to be discounted and you're going to get some free stuff. So check this out. It's going to retail for $97. But right now you can get maps bands for $67 and we're going to throw in two free ebooks, the ultimate body weight training guide and quick meals for health and fitness. It's our first cookbook. So again, 67 bucks. You get maps bands and you get the two free ebooks. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, here comes the show. One of the most effective yet most overlooked tools for building maximum strength, maximum muscle, mobility and enhancing fat loss, believe it or not, are resistance bands. I know a lot of people think resistance bands and they think, oh, it's good for convenience. It's good for beginners. Yeah, that's true. But here's something else that's true for advanced lifters. It can often be the missing piece that will take your body to the next level. By the way, the data and the studies over the last decades, literally five decades proves this. If you've never done a full cycle of band training, you are missing out. You will hit new PRs and all of your core lifts. If you listen to this episode and apply it carefully, bands can be quite advanced with how they get you stronger and build muscle. So I love one of my favorite things to do on the podcast is to take an overlooked method of muscle building or strength building or fat loss and bringing it to people and saying, you know, a lot of people don't use this the way that it can be used, but check this out. And then we present like, oh, this could be a game changer. Bands are that, bands by far of all the non-traditional strength training tools, it possesses those qualities. And the evidence is very clear. This is not me just postulating. This isn't our anecdote like bands played a massive role in revolutionizing strength sports, both Olympic and powerlifting strength sports. Now we're starting to see bodybuilders use them because they're unique in how they, they, they trigger trigger muscle building stuff. If you don't use them, it's like, dude, I love resurfacing a lot of these ideas, especially, I mean, I went down the road of isometrics and I, you know, definitely received the benefits from that and figured out like how impactful they are on performance and how impactful they are on rehabilitation and all that. And actually the rehabilitation side is what led me to bands, but then I started applying these predator bands. So predator bands, they had like multiple bands stringed up to a handle. So it was like a lot more resistance than what I was lifting before in, you know, the rehabilitation setting. And it was like a completely different experience and my muscles were, were benefiting from it like far beyond what I thought I was going to bring up isometrics also. What is it about? Because I would put those two kind of in the same category. They both are these forgotten tools to building muscle that we've been around for a very long time for some weird reason. Both of them have made their way into the rehab beginner category and have remained there. And you do see so, you know, you bring up like muscle like in the body building community right now, it's super popular and it has been popular since I was competing to use bands on machines and stuff. It was kind of like how I would tease competitors because it's like, Oh, they're, they're finally getting to the, the research that's around the benefits of this. And then this is their way of integrating it. It's like, why is it that those two things, both isometrics and bands have remained popular in the rehab and beginner world, but are less popular in the body building world as valuable as they are. Why is that? Okay, because the one of the most science based segments of the strength training, I don't know, market or field. So if you look at strength training as a, it's this huge market, everything from rehab to advanced strength training, bodybuilding, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, athletics, okay? If you look at that as like a, as a graph, if you look at the benefits of things like bands and isometrics, ballistic demands, if you look at the benefits, one of the top benefits is they're very safe. Yes. So you have physical therapists, which are very science based. So physical therapies constantly evolving. It's a well funded space, physical therapists are some of the best people in the in the world at rehabbing injury. And so they need to use strength training because strength training is phenomenal at rehab rehabbing. In fact, that's the primary form of exercise they used to rehab, but free weights and even machines can pose certain challenges for people. Bands are very safe. And so they said, Oh, here's strength training, and it's safe. Let's use this. And then what happens is it takes a long time for everybody else to adopt it. Yeah. But what's interesting is this, when you look at like, government funded strength training, you look at the, you know, the 20th century with the Soviet Union. During that time, the Olympics, it's always been like this with the Olympics, it's always been ways for countries to display their, their, their power or how advanced they are. So like Germany during the time of, you know, Nazis, they want to show how great they were. Of course, the famous story of Jesse Owens going on and just mop on the floor with everybody, right? The American, the Soviets funded the Olympic sports because it was their way of showing the world how awesome communism was. So they funded strength training and they had top scientists studying strength training and they studied things like herbs and supplements and hormones. They were some of the first athletes to use steroids and strength training techniques and programming. They used bands well before everybody else and their athletes were kicking the crap out of everybody. They dominated Olympic lifting for a long time. It wasn't till the iron curtain came down that our coaches went there and some of their coaches came here and they came back and they brought back some of their techniques. West Side Barbell was one of the first strength training circles in the US to use bands and that's one of the reasons why they became so dominant in powerlifting. Nobody was using bands in their training in America before that and they learned it from the Soviets. So yeah, but I mean, that's where you find most of the most effective methods and techniques. It's either going to come from like astronaut training or from like a rehabilitation protocol as being too like they have to have like the most impactful, the most effective way to build muscle possible in those like crazy extreme environments, but also in the rehab setting it's like you have all this money from insurance. You have all these eyes and you know the scientific study and the you know the clinical setting is very like meticulous about you know like researching this whole thing from stem to stern whether or not they're getting success with each patient and so I think that like you said it takes a while for this to now trickle into sports which is then the next sort of venue and then after sports kind of makes its way into the general. So then it is your your your guys both your theory then that what we're seeing right now which is the the popularity of bands being used on hammer strength machines and so that in the body is just kind of is like the beginning of it getting more popular like do you guys foresee more more programming more more emphasis put on bands being utilized for even like your your strength your strength for sure they had bad PR before so typically the way it starts is it starts in rehab then it moves to strength sports especially the ones that have you know strong organizations why because strength sports are objective you either lift more or you don't so it's like this works this doesn't work bodybuilding is usually last because it's so subjective diet can play a big role did you peak you know genetics and how you look it's like I said it's very subjective but they usually follow right they'll see what the strength guys and girls are doing then they'll say oh let's apply some of these techniques and then it gets into you know sports and all that stuff and in high level athletics they'll they'll look at the stuff from a rehab perspective but they're typically apprehensive at applying brand new things because if it's it ain't broke then don't fix it and you don't want to mess up your top athletes right but once one team applies it and does well then it starts to kind of spread like wildfire but there was bad PR with bands because bands hit the market and the way the advertised bands and I get this there's a bigger market if you're looking at targeting the average person who doesn't have space doesn't have equipment and doesn't have much time well here convenience convenience use bands the smaller market is the hardcore like build muscle and you know improve your performance market so it got be bad PR and that's what it got relegated to which is okay it's true extremely convenient you could travel with bands anywhere they're very low risk of injury we'll get to that you know you can attach them a different point so it's you know it's easy to use or whatever but a lot of people because of that thought this is not advanced train tool if I just train with bands I'm gonna lose muscle it's not gonna this is nothing to be further from the truth in fact if you've never done a full just pure band training block and we'll get into why and we'll get into all the the the nuts and bolts but if you've never done a full six or eight week or 10 week training block of just bands you have no idea literally no idea what you're missing it's one of the most effective ways that you can break through plateaus and hit new PRs is by simply focusing on this unique form of resistance which you know what we're gonna kind of get into well and in terms of piggyback on sort of the bad PR so initially like when it hit the general public they were just offering like these two bands right and so like if you get somebody that's like reasonably strong they're gonna end up inevitably the the band's gonna fray and it's they're just gonna snap in half they're gonna have a bad experience and then this is the association that sort of like leads from there when in fact you know they've innovated quite substantially on bands to where they layer it now so it's like super thick you can get ones that are like two three hundred pounds of resistance like there's they offer a lot more robust type bands now that you can get on the market so I think it's not just bad PR I also think it's poor application like and it reminds me again I'm going to keep going back to my experience with the introduction of like isometrics like you know isometrics were the the plank and the the wall set you know and every every trainer did it as a as a as a time killer for clients like the application of iso I mean and look at all the reviews that we've got back from symmetry people the reviews that we've had for symmetry is one of our best-selling programs it's done wonders for all of our clients in there we have a whole phase of isometrics that we've built in there I feel the same thing when I think of bands when I see bands I see people using it as kind of a warm-up tool every now and then or you see them strapping it to machines it's not really programmed in they're not really comparing it to something else to where they can actually measure the progress so I really think a lot of is not only bad PR it's also poor application on the programming of of it and utilizing it correctly to where we can really measure like oh shit like you are 100 correct if you look at all of the resistance training tools and methods all of them have strengths and weaknesses all of them have unique qualities you have to program your workout to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses or take advantage even of the weaknesses that's how you maximize the power of them so free weights versus machines versus body weight versus bands if I trained a pure free weight workout or a pure machine workout or a pure body weight workout or a pure band workout the programming is going to change because each one of those has their own values and each one has its own kind of weaknesses so you have to change the programming everything from reps and frequency and volume changes because each one works the body a little bit differently if you don't do it that way you're just throwing an exercise and sprinkling it all in and it doesn't you don't really get the the the value one of the most valuable thing about bands and this is what power lifters and olympic lifters and that you know like I said west side barbell understood about bands is they have a unique strength curve there's no form of resistance that matches the strength curve of or resistance curve of a band a band is easy when you first start pulling it it gets harder the longer you pull it so how is this applied to first off it's different it's novel right so it's different but what what's so unique about that what's so special about that a lot of lifts a lot of your lifts you are weaker at the bottom stronger at the top a lot of your lifts are like this it's not most of them I would say which ones are not that mean that's what I think is most unique about the strength the strength curve is that it follows the body's natural strength in fact I can't think of does that yeah I can't think of one that wouldn't be like that right I'm sure there is one out there but you can reverse the band but my point is you have a something that gives you less or more resistance depending on how much you stretch it out so what does this mean well that means like if I'm doing a barbell squat and the max I could do let's say is 300 pounds that's the most weight I could lift at the weakest part of the rep which is the bottom not the strongest part of the rep like if you told me how much could you squat going down four inches it's way more than 300 pounds yeah I'm limited 300 pounds because at the bottom where I'm weakest that's the most I could lift once I get past that bottom part the weight moves well with the band theoretically I could get a band that's 300 pounds at the bottom but as I squat up and get stronger the band gets harder so it's 300 pounds 305 pounds 310 pounds all the way up to let's say 350 pounds where now I'm still hitting a PR or maxing out throughout the entire rep that trains your body in a way that weights simply can't this is why the power lifters figured this out and were breaking records by the way might might I don't know if you guys have a personal story with this but at one point I wanted to hit this was years ago I want to hit a 600 pound dead lift and I wanted to hit a 430 pound squat and I was I don't remember where I was plateaued I was plateaued for a while and then I started going and researching powerlifting and going through and seeing what their training methods and what they did and what stood out to me was the use of resistance bands that resistance bands got me to add something significant like 30 or 40 pounds to each lift simply by programming bands in them attaching them to the bar even and adding that kind of resistance curve and I couldn't believe it I couldn't believe that this this tool was able to increase my strength so much and of course the muscle followed this is a very unique thing about bands that allows it to develop your strength and muscle in ways that other forms of resistance can't now again this is not superior to other forms it's different that's again what makes it so special yeah so I keep kind of thinking about these parallels between isometrics and bands and even with the strength curve like so one thing like isometrics you you want to focus on each part of that range of motion where you're weakest and also your strongest but you want to be able to hold those specific angles and generate this intrinsic force so I'm I'm kind of tensing my muscles and trying to generate as much strength internally just from my body let's say you know in the beginning portion of the rap but also in the middle also at the end and so you're you're trying to produce that intrinsically whereas the band now you have that extrinsic kind of resistance to capture that and take you through you know that challenging like it challenges the end ranges a lot more so than say your your conventional dumbbells and totally totally one of my another point that I love about bands is it encourages because sometimes people on these free weights they don't do a good job of maintaining constant tension free weights have a tendency to swing that's right or drop a weight you can't do that with bands if you do you're gonna you're gonna snap back down real quick if you do a lateral with the band because it's pulling so hard at the top you are encouraged to do a slow negative whenever I used to train clients with just bands I would always marvel at all of a sudden look at my client who I've been trying to get to do a four negative forever and they have the hardest time doing it naturally is doing it with bands because you try doing a fast rep with a band and it's you know all the way down real hard it's yeah it comes back so then you just naturally like you get up to the rep and then you kind of control it on the way down every exercise encourages this constant tension and there's plenty of studies to show that the the the type of tension that you maintain makes a significant impact on how much muscle you build it's actually one of my favorite ways to teach exactly that that's so I I've talked on the show many times you know that's like one of the things I always say is challenging people to actually do a four second negative because we just don't have a tendency to do it so I had clients that no matter how much I communicated I couldn't get them to do it until I started to utilize bands you asked about personal stories you know I actually don't have a good personal story for myself because like many things that I did as a coach I was a much better coach at coaching other people than myself and it wasn't until I was traveling around to to clients houses when I was doing private training and I was forced with a client who had nothing but bands you know and I remember being like oh my god like I wanted her to get like a set of dumbbells or get something going and you know she basically challenged me can you can you design a program for me to you know get me to her she wanted to lose some weight tone or you know her words tone up that was the goal and I remember being like of course I'm going to take on the challenge yeah yeah I can but I remember being blown away you know of course I understood what I needed to do programming wise but never at that point had I really truly applied nothing but bands and seen like in the back of my head I have to admit that there was a bit of me that was like in doubt like oh you know there's totally probably not going to see the same kind of results as if I actually had all this and I was already kind of making the excuses on what I'd have to overcome when she doesn't see the change but she actually had phenomenal results enough that I was like oh shit like I don't need nothing but set up the constant tension and the encouragement of the controlled negative when I when I watch people's form when they're working with bands their tendencies to have better form it literally it's like it almost forces better technique in better form which is one of the reasons why I think it's so valuable because you do a movement with a band your form is going to be a little bit better just because the band itself makes you get better form it encourages it as you're using it now I've told this story before but when I grand opened the the 24 Fitness on Santa Teresa we opened the cardio area before we opened the machine and free weight area but we were allowing members to come in and I remember asking them like well you know what are we going to do about the personal trainers like well you guys use bands same thing I thought oh crap yeah okay like bands like this can be really tough um we sold more personal training and got more people re-enrolling during that period of time then uh then I had done in other gyms with other equipment and the number one piece of feedback I got from clients was they love the band work in fact when we opened up the rest of the gym a significant portion of them say can I just stick to the bands and then so many of my trainers became these evangelists for bands where a lot of them are like oh man we got to figure this out all right I guess I'll try and work with a lot of them came to me were like Sal I prefer training clients this way like they're getting great results um I didn't think that these these tools were that effective so same thing we saw this first hand with everybody the next point in this I think is one of the most overlooked benefits and values of bands this is why I use bands in the first maps program maps and a ball for trigger sessions right it's a whole trigger session concept this right here uh is something that a good coach or a good trainer so a good coach or trainer will look at a form of exercise we'll look at its strengths and weaknesses and know how to maximize both one of the quote-unquote weaknesses it's not a weakness of bands is it doesn't cause as much damage as uh free weights do to your body like you do a set of curls with bands even heavy ones you do a set of curl with dumbbells dumbbells you get sore the bands you don't get a sore right and everybody knows this anybody who's ever trained hard with bands even power lifters know this they know that you know a max effort lifts with bands just way more forgiving on the body than if you were to use let's say chains or free weights um and nobody can figure out why even I can't figure out why you know I try to think about what's happening in the body but uh there's a lot of mystery there but it's true it causes less damage a lot of people say well that's that's a bad thing you can't send as loud of a muscle building signal no this is advantage this is an advantage when you change the programming so less muscle damage means I can work out way more yep I can work out on the volume I can work out more frequently I could do more sets I can hit body parts more often and now I get this benefit of this frequent stimulation of muscles I get this benefit of frequent practicing of techniques of exercises there's you cannot work out as much with free weights as you can with bands even when the intensity is high you have a high intensity band work at high intensity free weight workout you could do like one third more frequency and volume with the bands then you can with the free weights and then there's all the benefits that more calorie burn better for your body practicing the technique oh people who love working out use bands you can work out like crazy with bands and it's not going to beat you up you know listen to you say that right now it makes me realize that that's the other piece of why this didn't get popular we we are talking about the the poor application of it and uh whatever the other reason that we we said that people didn't didn't for some reason adopt it that has to be the other major reason you know bad PR is the other one you said bad bad PR and then I said poor application the third is because it doesn't get you hella sore right like other workouts to and how long how how much was the gauge of course I mean even as coaches and trainers which we're all guilty of of measuring the effectiveness of a workout with a client based on how sore they got I mean that's still a stigma today that we're trying to and which if you do a band workout like this and you expect oh I'm going to be crushed like I just did a high volume squat workout and you don't feel that way you go oh it doesn't work as well so I bet you especially do body part split 100% that's the other reason why it's not as popular is that there still is that idea that how sore you are is how good of a workout this is how again this is how trigger sessions were created but I experimented initially with trigger sessions with high intensity and what I would do is I do let's say I only hit chest twice a week I figured out that if I did uh four days a week but two of those days were with just bands it was I got great results and I didn't over train if it was free weights way too much so let's say you're in the gym and you're following a program and you're doing let's say flies and you stop two reps short of failure because that's the programming well you use bands go to failure now you can go to failure and you're not going to create as much damage or let's say you did three sets now you do six sets you to triple the volume or double the volume are you gonna get the same results no no no you actually get better results especially if this is new for you because there's something about frequency that is special there really is something about practicing exercises over and over again that is outside of the simple muscle building signal you know repair model that is something special so if you've never done anything like this you know you could go literally if you're if you been working out for a while and you're pretty consistent you could do a seven-day-a-week intense band workout that normally would fry you with free weights and machines and all of a sudden you're recovering better than you did before you know I don't I actually don't think that that's something uniquely special I think that's just something that's overlooked when we talk about lifting weights for some reason if you talk about playing the guitar or being good at your craft or being a good artist or being a good basketball player the thought of the more you practice the more you're gonna get out of it the better you're gonna be at your thing so this idea that that same thing would not apply to resistance training is funny to me so I don't think it's special at all I think is I think you know and Arnold used to say this right Arnold used to say he could go in the gym and get more out of one exercise than somebody who spent an hour doing 20 different exercises he's an expert and that's the truth because he's so good at connecting the right muscles creating as much intensity and intrinsic force as he possibly can so he does that one set and he gets tremendous value then there's no difference in that and then the average person if you practice these movements and you do them frequently you not only are going to get the benefits of building muscle and burning calories and burning body fat but you're going to get better at these movements getting better at these movements which again plays into the whole thing that we talk about all the time which is man it feels so much easier in my 40s to stay in shape than it did well yeah part of that is because I can go into a workout know exactly what I need to do and get the most out of that workout because I've practiced and it's not so long and I'm going to help here with that because some people might be listening to say oh it's because you can push yourself harder now no it's not about pushing harder it's about knowing how to do the technique in the best way possible that's all it is again using the analogy of athletics like is a quarterback going to throw farther because he knows how to throw harder all of a sudden or because he knows how to throw better that's right so same thing with exercise we tend to relegate strength training to oh damage the muscle and build and we forget that they're techniques we forget that squatting is a technique curling is a technique overhead pressing is technique no no no they're all techniques and the better you are at the techniques the more you're going to get out of them one of the best ways to get better at exercise is to do it often I'll use this example right here if we took two people who did the exact same muscle building signal to the body but one of them trained once a week the other one trained four days a week you're going to get better with the four days a week simply because they're moving more burning more calories and practicing more you're gonna get more out of the exercise or get results faster and better because they're able to practice more often one of the biggest for this is for again for advanced lifters one of the biggest limiting factors for people watching right now who really love working out I guarantee you is you just can't work out as much as you want you know that you're limited by your recovery I mean there's a lot of fitness fanatics like gosh if I could get better results by working out twice as much I would but then I just over train in fact right now I'm teetering on overtraining that's always a limiting factor in fact I mean look one of the number one ways to sell supplements is to say that they do what they help recovery they increase recovery why do fitness fanatics love things that help boost recovery they can work out more they know intuitively if I could work out more and recover faster I'm going to get better results well this strength training tool allows you to do that you can work out people watch right now literally whatever you're doing now you can work out like 30 percent more with bands and it'll equal about the same amount of damage you're causing out of your body but now you're working out more and more often and you get all that extra practice then the next point that I love that it also encourages is it also encourages the isometric portion of the exercise squeeze because the the squeeze at the end so when you get to that in range with the bands you kind of pot it just it's actually yeah it's just like how you talked to pot it is just like you guys talked about the the natural like resisting the way back you also have this natural when you get to the end of the band you squeeze the muscle on it and there's so much value in squeezing and contracting in an isometric portion of the exercise and just another area that people neglect to incorporate it in their training and so the bands kind of forces that technique yeah I think of it like if I'm just have an example of an isometric contraction where I'm telling somebody to make a fist and they're just squeezing as hard as they can this is a hard concept a lot of times for people to really understand like I'm trying to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible and like you know shuttle them all to this you know one action that I'm trying to produce which is just to squeeze as hard as I can making a fist now if I have a rubber band pulling me away from this position that gives me feedback that I'm I'm fighting against it's way more relatable it's way less esoteric it's not something that like I have to conjure up in my mind like this is a real force it's pulling me oh I have to ground myself so in terms of teaching it but also get the same benefits it actually enhances that muscle recruitment process even more look anybody who's advanced with strength training who understands how to do the right how to use a squeeze right at the end of a rep will say this when you get to the top of your curls squeeze hard now why do they say that because you're strongest at the end if I'm curling a dumbbell it's hard but at the top it's I can hold more weight at the top than I can't than I can at this kind of bottom range of motion so I have to add more force to make the isometric effective well guess where bands are the hardest at that part yeah it naturally encourages a harder isometric squeeze and why does it encourage it one the tension is highest at the top so you're going to get all those muscle fibers to if you don't hold at the top here's what happens with the bands yeah but you're going to get this really fast jerky motion so you're encouraged to lateral up pause for a second control the negative or fly control the negative or a lunge or overhead press you're encouraged to get that isometric squeeze at the strongest part of the rep which then studies have shown and bodybuilders have known this for a long time they've just done it with free weights on their own this recruits more muscle fibers the more muscle fibers you can recruit with an exercise the more muscle fibers that grow which by the way this is the main I would say only value that the so when you see somebody when you and it's always the the bodybuilder dude or chick that's wrapping the bands around the hammer strength machine this is the value that's the value it's when they do that row and they're at the end when it's really easy and you just want to fly back because the bands are wrapped around the the weights they got it all stuck to the machine they're having to squeeze and then resisted the way back that's literally the point of doing that I don't know if they know that why they're putting it on there but that's what the value that they're getting from that is they're learning how to get the isometric squeeze at the end of the rep because they're getting tension with the band and then it and so they don't just let it go flying back because the bands when I whip it back they're having to resist on the way back that is the value of that that's right all right so next is what I think is going to apply to most people listening and watching this right now which is and we all know this right we all know that novelty stimulates muscle growth okay so long as it's in the context of strength training if it's new and your body needs to learn it or it's different for your body then you're going to see some accelerated gains so this could be a new rep range this could be a different tempo or rest period or different exercises but for a lot of people watching this I'd say over 90 something percent I guarantee you most people have not done an entire training block of just bands this is strength training this is pure strength training there's nothing more novel than what you're about to do if you do this if you do the next eight weeks of pure band strength training it's going to be so novel to your body you're going to see some newbie gains as you go through this type of training that's how different it is and how different is on the body and that novelty effect is very important this is why we phase our programs this is why people are encouraged to try different exercises different movements because that novelty effect definitely kicks in we've all experienced that we'll do a new exercise we suck at it but because we suck at it it's novel and then we see gains accelerate very quickly well this is the main reason why I think that this belongs in kind of everybody's exercise regimen or library is this type of a routine so you have this novelty I think all of us are due for some sort of an interruption to what you tend to always go to I don't care who you are how long you've been lifting we all have exercises ways of training modalities that we tend to gravitate and one of the easiest ways to stimulate growth or more results or decrease in body fat is training yourself in a novel way if you've never built an entire eight week routine around just utilizing bands and you know and I'm all for like pairing that when oh wow this is perfect I'm getting ready to go on vacation for two weeks what a great time to transition into a program like this instead of being all worried about oh my god am I going to lose gains over this this two week vacation with that oh you know what I'm going to do I'm just going to bring my bands with me I'm going to switch over to a band routine because I haven't done that anyways where I did nothing but bands for six to eight weeks now I'm going to do that or you fell off for a bit right like it's something like oh yeah great way to come back in you've been training for a while and all of a sudden you hit a couple months where you just like haven't been in the gym like you're trying to you know build back some momentum and again back to the fact that it's less damage and it's something that you can continuously do and repeat and build back the skill of lifting you know like applying this and then you know segueing that right back into the gym would be a great idea I love that also you can see it being a great bridge between two programs let's say you ran like oh amazing power lift really hard one or two rounds of that so that's you've been going heavy and hard and pushing PRs with free weights great way to bridge between two programs like that and not lose gains to go in like that I can see and to continue progressing because the novelty and all the other points and yeah this last one is actually one of my favorite points about band training which is this you never ever find this simultaneously being true I'm going to train and try to maximize my gains and simultaneously make my joints feel better and reduce my risk of injury doesn't work that way yeah if you're max if you're pushing your gains you're almost almost almost always increasing your risk of injury if you want to rehab you're almost always not chasing maximum gains well here's where it gets really weird you can push intensity frequency volume with bands you can crank up that dial simultaneously make your joints feel better and lower your risk of injury how is this possible okay first of all everybody knows this it's harder to hurt yourself with bands than it was with free weights here's one of the reasons why you almost never use a band you can't handle because you can use a free weight you can't handle and hurt yourself but try using a band you can't handle you put it down real quick because it's immediately it's going to like like once a snap out of your hand or whatever you put it down you end up using appropriate resistance with the band and because the resistance curve matches your own resistance curve you tend to pick the band that works best for your body as you do the entire rep it's easier on the joints as well because the resistance is in one direction meaning if I'm doing a squat and I tip to the side a little bit oh that's going to hurt bands tend to keep you grounded at the point and kind of keep you in position so bands this is the only strength training tool I can think of where I could take somebody and say we're going to simultaneously get you to push your gains and at the end of this your joints are going to feel better than they did before that almost never happens super unique do you think there's some like magic there too with the way it creates instability at the end range which is like encourages that squeeze yeah because it's different than again free weights and so that word it's really easy at the end like get loose yeah totally and so you can get away with kind of being loose on that where you have to really be stable you have that isometric contraction you have that squeeze at the end ranges of exercises which is not typical you won't be comparable to like if say I'm doing an overhead carry yeah I'm isometrically contracting it doesn't let me relax at all yeah as I'm doing and to for most people that have actually applied that in their training and then went back to like overhead pressing it made them so much stronger yes yes it's again back to the other points right encourages excellent form constant tension controlled negative like all those things contribute to healthier joints lower risk of injury but again I'm going to go back to what I said earlier there's almost no strength training tool that allows you to push your body and simultaneously make your joints feel better so one of the benefits of doing a block of band training is you'll get stronger you'll build more muscle and then when you go back to free weights you're like wow I feel better I feel looser my joints feel better very very unique very special trait that bands possess now look this is what we did right so this is a conversation we had months ago we were talking about how band training has been relegated to beginners and convenience and how a lot of advanced people were missing out on benefits so Justin's like I'm going to write a band workout for people who really want to go after it this by the way is the it's an all bands maps workout it's also the only maps program that's every single day you are working out hard every single day because you can with bands like we explained earlier now this is the launch of this new program so anytime we do a launch we include some stuff so here's some of the stuff that we included first off the price is going to be discounted so it's going to retail for $97 but because it's launching now you get it for $67 we also created two ebooks unique that we're going to give away for free with this program that we're going to sell later on one of them is the ultimate body weight training guide so this is an entire ebook on some of the best body weight exercises you could do so you want to include some body weight exercises there you go the second book this one people are really excited about is a cookbook this is quick meals a beautiful cookbook yeah quick meals for health and fitness so these are meals you can cook relatively quickly that are healthy there's gluten free options in there there's some vegan options in there as well and so it's the first cookbook that we put together here at Mind Pump so if you enroll during this launch period you get $30 off the retail price so for $67 you get Maps Bands this is a two-phased eight-week program it's a two month block of only band training again it's an advanced workout and then what's thrown in are those two ebooks ultimate body weight training and quick meals if you want to sign up you got to go to mapsbands.com and then the code is Bands 30 Bands 30 gives you the discount plus the free ebooks and of course it comes with the 30 day money back guarantee like all of our programs also you can find us all on Instagram so Justin is at Mind Pump Justin I'm at Mind Pump to Stefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong well-developed chest when I think of weak points and in areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time chest was up there with the 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