 Boom! It's mind-pop time! Scared you again, didn't I? I love it when I do that. Especially Doug, the producer, puts his headphones on. Freak him out all the time. It's a good time. Anyway, here's what we're gonna give away in today's episode. We're gonna give away the Bikini Bundle. This is multiple programs. We're given away for free. Here's what you get. Maps Aesthetic, Maps Prime, the Intuitive Nutrition Guide, and the NoBS six-pack formula, all free for one lucky winner who does the following. Leaves a comment in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Makes it a good comment. Entertaining, fun, descriptive, encouraging. I don't care. It's gotta be a good comment. We'll pick that comment if we like it among all the other comments, and then they'll get that Bikini Bundle for free. You also have to subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. One more thing. In this episode, we talk about how to get the Bikini body and maintain it year long. We actually refer to all those programs in this episode. All the ones that are available in the Bikini Bundle. Here's what we're gonna do for everybody else. The Bikini Bundle is already discounted. We're gonna take an additional 50% off. I know that's crazy, but that's what we're doing for a very short time, right when we drop this episode. So if you're interested, head over to mapsfitnessproducts.com, find Bikini Bundle, and then use the code Bikini50. That's Bikini50, no space for that discount. All right, enjoy the show. I think it's important to express this before we get into this topic, but obviously, you know, Mind Pump Media is a fitness... There were men? No. Mind Pump Media is a fitness and health company, and we have different aspects and parts of the company. And one part of our company is our marketing team, and they're constantly talking to us about things that they think our audience or the market really wants to hear, and we often give them pushback. And this is one of those things that they constantly tell us, and I think there's definitely value in communicating this, and of course we'll do it the right way, because that's what we do. But they tell... How many times have they said to us, do an episode on how to build and develop and maintain a Bikini body? Like a body... Now, here's the pushback. The truth is this, a Bikini body is a body with a Bikini on it, and that's the truth. If you have a Bikini on your body, you have a Bikini body. But I think what they mean is, or at least what people mean when they ask about this is... Beats ready. Yeah, like how can I get the kind of body that I feel good about displaying, one that's healthy, one that looks attractive and aesthetic. So let's focus on that, right? What are the things that make up a quote unquote Bikini body, or things that make someone look or appear more physically attractive to other people or feel attractive themselves? Well, one of the first points that I think you have to address or say, and you say it on the podcast all the time, that a healthy body looks good. Yes. So even though you might have this lofty aesthetic goal or aspiring to look like maybe a Bikini model or cover of a magazine type of a person, the way to keep it long term is to do it the healthy way. I could get anybody leaned down for a Bikini or a certain size by starving their body and overtraining them for an extended period of time. And they'll achieve this weight or desired size in the waist. But the reality of that is that's not healthy, nor is it sustainable. So not only do we want to achieve this or this is an OK goal for somebody to have, but I think the way you go about it is so important because... That's a huge point. I mean, you're going to get from all these different magazines and different publications, you're going to get the opposite. You're going to get the quick way to get there. And that's what consumers are looking for that too, which is a really hard thing to combat initially. But what we're trying to communicate here today is really like there's a way to achieve a healthy version of that and something that will last. But it does take some preparation. By the way, they lie to you when they say this is the fast way to do it. There is no faster way to do it other than the right way to do it. The faster way to do it actually results in worse results, worse outcomes. Also, it's important to know that health looks amazing in person, always looks attractive in person. So you can try to fake and falsify and force your body through unhealthy methods to accomplish what you think may be attractive. But the healthy version of you probably will look better anyway. So even at the end of the day, if you don't even care, and you just want to look good, you know, because here's the deal, the roots of everything that we try to aim for to look more attractive, the roots of it are all based on on your health. Why do we find certain things in the opposite sex or or even the same sex attractive is because it comes from health that displays virality. So your virile, your healthy, you can produce healthy offspring, you look like someone you want to be around, right? So you're displaying kind of this good posture and health and we'll get into all the details. So health looks really good. Chasing, looking really good. Oftentimes doesn't result in good health within which then makes you not look good as well. So health is the goal, right? And so we're going to talk about, you know, some of those things here. Well, one of the things you you talk about a lot about and you know by I mean, I've heard you say it, but I don't know if you actually know what the ratio is. But one of the ways they've defined that is by attraction and the hip to waist ratio. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. So they did these studies on so what you'll find in different cultures are different size preferences. So we're talking about and specifically females, right? So in some countries, what's considered attractive by both men and women in terms of women tends can be thinner or heavier depending on the different culture. And if we look at what was depicted as attractive historically, for example, if you go back to the 1950s versus what maybe the 90s, for example, so change substantially. Yeah, it's much thinner, right? What was considered in the 1950s was attractive mainstream media was 30 pounds heavier than maybe in the 90s. There's something they shared in common. Right. And so scientists, what they did is they said, okay, obviously, there's social and cultural pressures. But there has to be biological roots to this because, you know, obviously, we're driven by our genes in some way. What's in common and what they found was, regardless of the weight of the model or the people that we consider attractive in the 1950s and the 1990s or today, or in China versus in Russia versus in Africa or in North America is this hip to waist ratio, which is 0.7. So what you do with this is you divide I believe you divide the the hips to the waist and it's 0.7 is the number you're looking for. I think that's the order of finding this ratio. And then they said, okay, why is this 0.7 considered attractive across cultures all over the world? And they found that women who have this particular ratio tend to have better health and have healthier offspring, births and more successful childbirth. So again, this points to this, you know, this this biological health roots that tend to make us so wild to me that that there's like this subconsciously you're driven by that and you don't even realize that isn't that cool. Yeah, very, very interesting. Right. So there's some other stuff. So well, okay, hip to waist ratio. Since we started there, let's talk about that for a second. How do we accomplish or get closer to this ratio of hip to waist? Well, you have a relatively lean physique, essentially is what's going to cause us. And this is also for men, there's a there's a waist to shoulder ratio. I don't know what that number is that women find attractive. And it's easier to get to it when you're relatively lean. So now I say relatively or healthy lean because getting to lean starts to look unhealthy. And although you can airbrush that on pictures to make it look okay. If you've ever seen someone that is unhealthy lean in person, you know, it doesn't look there's something about it that's not attractive. And again, it's because it doesn't display good health for women. The body fat percentage that tends to fall on this range is like 15 to 27%. It's usually around there, right? We usually don't see health decline with body fat percentage of women until they start to kind of go past, you know, 30%. So Doug, what was the what is that shoulder to waist for men that they found 1.6? Yeah, 1.6. So 1.6 very interesting. And then there was a chest that have bicep to forearm ratio and pretty cool what they found in some of these some of these studies. So relatively lean. What's another one? A posterior chain development. That's something that is considered attractive in women. Why? Why would we think that a posterior chain is like hamstrings, glutes, back. My, this is my opinion, when those muscles are well developed, you probably can move and perform well and you probably are devoid of a lot of pain. I think it has a little bit to do that and also another I think factor that plays a role here, which is posture. Yeah. So I think the posterior chain is just I think both men and women it's overlooked. We see everything and we look at everything in front of you look in the mirror and you see all the muscles in front of you. Very few people are looking back and checking on the backside. You can't see it when you work out. It's harder for a lot of people to activate and train. So I think in general focusing on the posterior chain brings anybody male or female their body up. Now as a coach when I was training bikini athletes, this was the number one focus almost every female that I train when we assess their physique and decided to get ready for a show almost always the focus was rear delts, you know, glutes hamstrings. Those are normally the muscles that I needed to bring up to compliment their front side. And I think it's true even with men. So even though we're talking primarily to women right now, I think generally speaking, one of the areas that I used to say it with men, the back like a back won the show. A guy who had a very developed back would always end up beating out the guy that maybe had a little bit better front side. And I think that judges would lean that way because it was more impressive because less people developed that. Yeah, I think it just takes more intention because we do everything in front of us. And so it's just like putting more attention to posterior chain. You know, it definitely sets you apart and it stands out. And I think that that became a desirable feature besides the fact of the hip ratio, which you would naturally see like a wider hip kind of, you know, with larger glutes and that would be something a signal that you would see that would show like a healthy body. Well, and back to my posture point too, if you have got a great chest and shoulders and quads and you're just all these the muscles in the front are developed more than it takes the body and kind of rounds it forward and creates even if and we've seen this in both men and women. You've seen people that are in great shape. They got muscle, they're lean and they're muscular. They don't look right. They don't look good. Yeah. And I've taken clients completely out of shape, right? And stood them upright, right? So I'd stand them in front of the mirror. Oh, I did the same thing. And I would take them and I'd pull their shoulders back and have them draw on their core and stand up tall and tuck their chin and then say, look, look at that. Look how that little pooch is gone, right? Just because they're a nice upright immediately. They look like they lost 15 to 20 pounds and look better without losing anything training or doing anything just simply by getting them to stand upright. So the focus and the emphasis on the posterior chain I think does wonders for helping somebody just stand upright with good posture with when we're talking about building that bikini look or bikini body aesthetically. I think that's important. Yeah. And when you're weak because of an activity, which is very common these days, those are the muscles that tend to atrophy the most because, again, we do everything in front of our bodies. We sit in chairs. We rarely ever squat. We rarely use or activate those muscles. Low back pain and injury is so common because the posterior chain in particular also because of the core tends to be weak. So when they're developed, it demonstrates health, mobility, strength, performance. And here's another one. You know, women like to use the term curves. I want to have nice looking curves. You know, curves come from muscle. They do. Now, and this is, of course, having good healthy body fat percentages as well. If you have a decent body fat percentage that's healthy, again, like in that 20% range, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. But you also have developed posterior chain muscles. Now you have curves. Now you've got the butt. You've got the hamstring curve. You've got the good posture. It's the muscle that really develops. What I like to call, I used to tell my clients firm curves. Like, you want firm curves. You don't just want curves, but you want curves that look tight and firm. That comes from muscle. So those muscles from an aesthetic standpoint, but also from a health standpoint, should be a focus in terms of the bikini body. Oh, I used to tell my clients that struggled with building a butt or wanted a better butt that the development of the hamstring will really bring out the development of your glutes. I know, right? The curve of that and the way it tucks underneath the glutes like that makes the glutes look better just by developing the hamstrings. Reminds me a lot when I talked to my guys about developing their arms and they're so focused on bicep and triceps that, listen, you develop your shoulders really well and watch how much better your bicep and your tricep looks. Very, very similar with my female clients when we were talking about bikini competitors, getting their glutes to look better. I would put a lot of emphasis on the hamstrings because it accentuates it just like the shoulders do for the arms. Yeah, and speaking of shoulders, it's true for women too. Oftentimes women will want these kind of sculpted looking arms. Shoulders really make that come out. I mean, you definitely work your biceps and triceps, but you don't need a lot of muscle on your arms when your shoulders are really well developed and strong. It makes the whole arm look, you know, lean and sculpted. It's also what accentuates that hourglass look. So if you build good delts on you, it'll make that shoulder to waist ratio look even more dramatic, which is, you know, when you're trying to build that aesthetic physique, especially on the competitive level, like you want to see that drastic difference, building those shoulders will create an even larger discrepancy between the waist and the shoulders. That's true. Now, the other one, let's talk about core for a second, and I know this is both for men and women, but especially for women, they were discouraged from really training their core to develop the muscles. It was all about doing millions of reps and sculpt it, but you don't want to build your abs. Wearing screams. Yeah, you don't want to build your obliques. Okay, this is one good thing that I noticed from the popularity of CrossFit. There's other good things, too. There's some bad stuff, too, we've talked about before, but one of the good things was they were actually displaying women who had well-developed core muscles. Like, you could see their obliques, you could see their abs, and it was great because women were like, I like that. I like the way that looks. Well-developed core muscles look healthy, therefore they look good. When you see that in public, if someone's wearing a bathing suit and you can see their midsection, and it's not just flat, but rather developed, it makes a tremendous impact. It really, really looks good. Now, I do want to say something though about that, because I do think it's normalized it for some, for more women, that it's, it looks good to have a strong core, and I think CrossFit's a good reason for that. But I also think that there's a lot of women that see that and go like, I don't want to look like that, and I want to make something clear, because a lot of your high-level CrossFit athletes that have these obliques, they had that square kind of frame going into, that's what makes them a good deadlifter and overhead presser. Like, having a good solid wide core is less advantageous for getting on stage and competing as a bikini athlete, because you want that tiny little waist and the wider shoulders. But for a CrossFit competitor to lift a lot of weight over your head or pick it up off the ground, it's more advantageous to have a wider waist. So CrossFit didn't do that to those girls. CrossFit didn't make those girls more boxier or wider. What it did is it just showed what night, what developed core looks like. Now, your structure can deter, like your hip width and all that. Right. But if you have well-developed core muscles, and your waist is the same size, you just develop the muscle, which is what'll end up happens. Like, you make your waist bigger. It's very hard to make your waist bigger with muscle around your waist. But when they're developed and you have your body fat percentage is healthy, so you can kind of see it, it looks really good. Rather than just having a waist that's, you know, with a flat stomach, having some muscle that's visible, it just looks really good. Well, not only that, but it also feeds back into one of the first things that points that we made, which is posture. Yes. It's what's reinforces that. You know, one of my, I used to do this little posture check with clients for their hands by their side. They go in front, out, retract, and then I'd tell them to hold that position. And all it was was like this little test to get clients to hold them, to put them into perfect posture. And one of the things I would do right afterwards is I'd walk over to their belly button. I'd say, you notice how you're drawing, and what it does, when you get into good posture, your core draws in to hold your spine upright. And so it naturally draws in and is activated. And I'd say, you feel that. I said, well, that's your, your core activating right now to hold you upright and good posture. So yeah, the first thing is to address posture, try and get you into that good position, teach you what muscles we should develop to get that way. The next step is to develop a very strong core to keep it and hold in that position. Now, you know, I know this is going to sound like a broken record, but the best form of exercise to shape and sculpt the body like a sculptor. What I mean by that is if you want to develop your body in specific ways, if you want to be able to say, I want to develop this more, I want to shape this more, I want this to look a particular way. The best form of exercise for that is resistance training or strength training because you can target specific areas of your body. Unlike other forms of exercise, which are general and they definitely have value as well, but they generally work the body. If you want to specifically develop and work the body, like again, like a sculptor, like you're a piece of marble and you're saying develop this, work here, shape there. Resistance training is phenomenal because I can choose more exercises to work this area and I can avoid other exercises because maybe I don't want to develop this area. So that's going to be the primary form of exercise that you use to develop a bikini body. Also second speeds up the metabolism, which makes it much easier to be lean and stay lean. Now, this is a definitive difference in programming too. So there are ways. So yes, it's great if you're just focused on strength training or you mentioned CrossFit or something in that regard where they're throwing the whole kitchen sink at you. You can be very intentional about bringing very specific muscle groups up and to be able to hyper-focus on those muscle groups, to develop them and sculpt and shape them to really be more pronounced. That's the beauty of resistance training is that it's very moldable towards your goals, but if that's your goal, there's a very specific intentional way to address that. Yes. Okay. So let's start with the, let's give people steps, right? So step number one, we've talked about posture. That's got to be number one. There's a reason why It's a foundation. Yeah. There's a reason why for trainers and coaches, posture tends to be one of the initial assessments. So when you, you get a client, there's different assessments that you tend to do and they can differ from place to place. But there's often a, some kind of a posture assessment because the way that you naturally hold your posture, this is very different than the way you try to hold your posture. So it's not like, all right, hold posture and you're trying to make it perfect. Just how you stand naturally. That can lead us to realize, oh, some muscles are not as strong as they need to be. Other muscles are a little bit tight. If we adjust some of these discrepancies and help move your posture into a better category, we tend to balance the body out a little bit. So that's got to be one of the first things is look at your posture and address that and figure out what you need to do to get better posture. Well, it's also important because if you don't address it first, it's going to only going to be that much harder later. So you can get a lean muscular body without addressing posture. I mean, you could lose body fat, build muscle on a frame, and not address posture. That's absolutely possible. But what ends up happening is now you've got this person who's lean and ripped and they have shitty posture. And then if you decide, oh, now I want to go fix that or work on that, you've already reinforced all those bad patterns so bad that to go back and counter that, it's 10 times harder. So laying a solid foundation by addressing the imbalances by working on posture first is setting you up for long-term success. Yeah. In fact, just to go further on that, you end up adding armor to your bad posture is what you do. So if you have bad posture and you don't address it and you strengthen your body, you strengthen the bad posture. Actually making it harder to correct, increasing risk of injury and reducing your aesthetic potential. So that's what we're talking about here. If you address your posture first, you've increased your aesthetic potential. In other words, you increase the potential at which you can look good as you start to develop the body. And a lot of times I'll see that the posture is being affected because they're wanting to portray certain curves that maybe they haven't developed enough yet muscularly. Like Lordosis? Right, Lordosis where you see the Instagram sort of pose where in order to make accentuate their glutes more, they have to get into this sort of bad posture position which then take that into a resistance training situation what that does to the lower back and then adding more stress in that direction. So to be able to build off of good posture is essential going into this. You also make it very difficult to develop the muscles that you want to develop because of these bad patterns. They're not active anymore. And what's a very common one that you see all the time is the sleepy butt syndrome. You've got a client who squats, deadlifts, does all these movements that are important for the glutes but then their quads just keep developing. So they just keep getting bigger and bigger muscles but then the muscle that they're really trying to develop isn't growing at all. And that's because of the poor posture, poor recruitment pattern that they didn't address earlier on. Yeah, so that's what you want to do. You want to be able to wake oftentimes the muscles and areas of your body that are hard to develop is because you're just for lack of a better term. Okay, so all you science nerds watching this. Yes, you are connected to your muscle. You know, all the muscles are connected. It's not like you're paralyzed but we do use this term in training where you just lack connection to some of these muscles. What that essentially means is like if I'm like Adam's example of the squat when I'm doing a squat there's a lot of muscles that are involved and they have to work in unison and there's a specific pattern in which they use and to just give you general numbers let's say your quads are doing 60% of the work your hamstrings are doing 20% of the work and your glutes are doing 20% of the work which one of those muscles is going to develop the most from squats, right? The quads. Well, what if you want the glutes to develop more? Well, we have to find a way to transfer that load to the glutes by waking them up and teaching them to fire better when we do squats and priming is how you do this. Priming is a way of warming up or essentially starting your workout by activating those target muscles so that when you go do these other exercises you can really feel them work. So waking up sleepy muscles should be part of the initial how you get started with your workouts otherwise it makes it much much more difficult. By the way, Maps Prime does this very well so the program that we have where you go in and you help target and work on these areas but we do have videos on our YouTube channel showing some primers for some of these areas. I use Prime all the time with my bikini competitors all the time because when you're trying to sculpt the body like you're trying to target specific areas that can be very challenging for the average person. Absolutely. We take for granted that we've been doing this for over 20 years and so asking you to flex your shoulder or your quad or your glute or your hamstring like you can do it like that. Most people are not like that and if you want to develop a specific area or a specific muscle on your body you've got to be able to do that. You got to be able to connect right to it and fire it and it's just difficult for a lot of people especially if that was an area that it's been underdeveloped for a long time because that's probably the reason why it's underdeveloped. So priming it and teaching them neurologically how to connect and fire better before they go into these workouts is huge to to building an aesthetic. And it encourages perfect form. You know exercises are only as good as you can perform them. So you could take the best exercises in the world the ones that provide the biggest bang for your buck that give you the most value that give you the best results or that you've read give you the best results but that's the potential of the exercise. If your form isn't perfect if you're not connecting well during that exercise you're not going to gain any of that potential. To give you an example of what we're talking about this is a very simple one. Let's say this is a common one right let's say you have forward shoulder so your shoulders tend to round forward I'm exaggerating most people don't look like this but forward shoulder I think you've seen it before maybe you have it yourself very common the shoulders tend to round forward okay so let's say the reason why your shoulders round forward the most common reason is those muscles of the mid-back that retract the shoulder blades retract the scapula and kind of depress them and pull them down or weak or at least they're too weak to support that good posture. So now you're going to go into your workout and you're going to do barbell rows or lat pull downs or something but you haven't addressed that forward shoulder what I'm going to end up doing with my rows or my pull downs is I'm going to make that forward shoulder even worse how would I prime that to get better activation so I can do those exercises and get better perfect more perfect form an easy way to do this would be like a prone cobra right so a prone cobra that the whole goal of a prone cobra is exactly what I said scapula retraction so bringing the shoulder blades back and then depressing them and there's usually no resistance that's done with this you're using no weight so if I do this at the beginning of the workout and really focus on feeling those mid-back muscles that promote that good posture and I can connect to them and then I go do my rows or my pull downs now my form is different now I'm achieving perfect form and I'm strengthening better posture which of course leads to getting 10 times more value out of that exercise now absolutely the other thing is to correct imbalances and this is a this is a really big one if your right leg and your left leg are not exactly the same strength or you can't balance as good on either one of them if your right arm and your left arm have a big discrepancy in strength if when you do an exercise you notice you shift yeah some asymmetry going on like one side comes up versus the others kind of lagging behind you know all of these things we see all the time when people are doing squats or our specific exercises yeah symmetry is very important in aesthetics they show this in facial aesthetics and in body aesthetics right does the right match the left does the top look proportional to the bottom it's hard to accomplish symmetry when you have lots of imbalances right so proper priming and correctional exercise helps you train with better balance and symmetry so when you do start to develop your body you're really getting a nice looking physique from doing them and I would say this is something anywhere between five to 15 minutes probably on the high end that you spend doing this before you get into your training exactly this becomes once you figure out what areas we need to address that's obviously what prime is all about right when you go through it is assessing you figure now and by the way if you have no clue what we're talking about this is the first time you've ever tuned into mind pump Justin did a free webinar on maps prime to take people through he literally takes you through the exercise three tests yeah very very simple straightforward test but yeah you're you're able to kind of pinpoint you know what part of your body isn't probably functioning like it should that's right mapsprimewebinar.com yeah mapsprimewebinar.com it's completely free so if this is all foreign to you what we're talking about I highly recommend going through that yeah very very good all right the next thing that you really want to focus on is to build muscle now I know some women are listening to this thing I don't want to get too big don't worry you won't get too big I promise you building muscle is a hard slow process but here I'll make a statement right now right so if you're watching this this show or listening to the podcast and you're a female and if I could magically add five pounds of muscle to your body especially to the areas you want to focus on if I can make you gain five pounds of muscle I guarantee if you looked in the mirror took your clothes off looked in the mirror you would look better that's what muscle does to your body it sculpts you it you know this is a term I hate using because it doesn't really mean anything but I think people have their own meaning to it they tones your body it's it makes you look better and it speeds up your metabolism building muscle has this tremendous effect on your metabolism to where you burn more calories in fact if you're getting leaner and building muscle or at least maintaining muscle through this process of trying to build at the end of your fat loss journey you could end up in a position and I've done this many times where you're eating more food to maintain a leaner body versus what tends to happen with a lot of people as they lose weight get leaner and then they have to eat a lot less to maintain their new body which one of those is more sustainable eating more or eating less right obviously the answer is is quite obvious so you want to focus on building muscle how do you do that you get stronger right get stronger especially at those compound lifts your barbell squats your barbell deadlifts your presses your rows your overhead presses get really strong at those lifts those are the ones that are going to give you the most results more so than almost any other exercise I always think of it like I'm usually tell clients that it was like when we're building muscle we're like a sculptor who's because everyone has this look they want right everyone comes to you and they're like I want to look like this or I mean I mean clients bring you a picture of I want to look like her I want to look like this and you know as I would tell them that we're going to go through this building phase of just focusing on building muscle I know that you see this lean little bikini and that's what you want to look like right now but I'm telling you if we want to sculpt down to look like this what you what you can't see is the amount of muscle that this girl probably put on her body before she got down to this physique totally and so what I want to do is I want to I want to stack all that clay on you so that when we chisel down that we can sculpt and build this physique that you want to versus where you're currently at right now where you haven't gone through a proper muscle building program where you've tried to build add strength and muscle to your body and then you think that we're just going to sculpt a physique like that it doesn't work that way that person to get that body that has that symmetry that has that balance that even you're attracted to because you look at it and you're like oh my god that's beautiful it's all the things that Sal was talking about earlier about the hip to waist ratio you see that subconsciously and you're attracted to that but that person probably most people yes there are genetic there are genetic freaks but most people worked for that most people built this this muscular physique and then chiseled down to have this more aesthetically pleasing not to mention again I have to say this again it speeds up your metabolism which makes it way way way easier to maintain and you know here's the problem when you don't focus on building you might get smaller but you you'll likely end up a smaller same flabbiness slower metabolism version of yourself so yes you're smaller your body fat percentage is the same which means you're the same flabbiness right so nothing's changed except you're smaller but now you also have a slower metabolism terrible position to be in and impossible to sustain yeah and this kind of bleeds into like the next point a bit but like it provides flexibility so you know when you do find yourself on the weekends or at somebody's house or you're celebrating you know some event or birthday or anything where it's like I want to you know have a bit and you know indulge a bit and have some cake or I want to have you know something that is off of you know my my pretty restrictive diet you can do that and you can live your life and your your body's not going to be affected too much because your metabolism is super healthy and raging well this is also where you get to manipulate what you were given as far as your genetics yes so in order to like so if you if you are what makes somebody have a bubbly butt versus a flat butt has everything to do with the origin insertion of the muscle right those those are things you cannot change but that doesn't mean you can't take somebody who genetically has a flat butt because of the long origin insertion and create the illusion of a bubblier rounder butt by developing the hamstrings developing the glutes sure to to do that and this is the sculpting building building part right here this is going back to my analogy of your stacking on the clay this is what I loved about the way we designed maps aesthetic emulated what I would do when I was getting ready for a show is I would look at okay this is what the judges said I don't have enough shoulders my butt's not big enough whatever whatever muscles that I needed to develop that's where I stacked the clay on so I go back to a building routine apply the frequency and then I would focus on specific muscle groups that's where I'd stack more of the clay on before I'd carve back down to start to manipulate and change the way that my physique right so that's here's the great thing is that you can manipulate your workouts and actually this is again this is a feature of maps aesthetic you can manipulate your workouts so that you do more for the areas that you want to develop more and less for the areas you're not as concerned about this is the individualization aspect that is so powerful of good resistance training you know if I have naturally narrow shoulders as a man and I want to have wide-looking shoulders I can focus on developing my delts and that's going to go a long way making me look wider in my shoulders right if I have a butt that isn't round I can develop that more if my quads are overpowering to my hamstrings what can I do I can take away quadricep work and add hamstring work so this is an important aspect of individualizing your workout to make your body look more aesthetic now we're let's get to the nutrition aspect because that's very very important and Justin mentioned having that flexibility because you have a faster metabolism that is key by the way that'll make any nutrition any diet any attempt at eating in a way that gets you leaner way easier okay it's way easier to get lean and maintain a lean body when you're burning 3,000 calories a day and when I say burning I don't mean manually burning like I have to go move it's automatic but rather my metabolism is burning it because I've got good muscle and I'm healthy it's easier to do it at 3,000 calories than it is to do it at 2,000 calories duh super easy by the way I've done this all of us have done this with clients time and time again where I've actually got them leaner and got their metabolism to speed up so that's number one but here's number two this is very very important you want to whatever you do with your nutrition has to be sustainable and the only way to do that is to develop a good healthy relationship with food it is not sustainable if you view eating healthy as restrictive or as a punishment or as temporary in other words I'm going to do this diet for the next three months and then when I get my goal I'm going to go off it's not going to work it just won't work that way and oftentimes you end up in a worse position afterwards whatever you do with nutrition you have to maintain and continue to do and the key is to have a healthy balanced relationship with nutrition so that for the most part I eat in ways that facilitate a healthy physical body and it doesn't feel restrictive it doesn't feel like a punishment it's actually something that I enjoy and I want to do and then occasionally when I want to value food for its taste for its enjoyment or for connection or I want to have a beer with my buddies or I want to have a slice of birthday cake because it's my friend's you know daughter's birthday or whatever I can do it and I have a healthy relationship so it doesn't lead to this off the wagon mentality where I binge where instead of having one slice of cake I have five well this is the difference of having a bikini getting a bikini body and keeping a bikini body right I mean you can follow a very rigid diet in fact you could probably google and find one online that's calorie restrictive that will lean you out and get you down to a certain place but the idea of this episode was to teach people and give people the tools to not only get themself in that kind of shape but maintain it for the rest of their life and the secret to that is in the relationship with the food totally and that starts immediately you start building that now and a lot of clients sometimes would go oh just get me there then I'll figure it out that's a recipe for disaster fail the same way you build your body you also got to start building the relationship with nutrition right away too if this is something that you want to maintain for the rest of your life and it isn't just simply a goal for vegas in three to six months it's that I want to get in some really good shape and I want to be able to keep it that way for the rest of my life you know what used to trip me out about this is it's like you go to the beach and you what is the beach typically associated with right you're there with your friends you're there with your family you're not there to just walk around and display yourself you're really there to have fun oftentimes you bring beers potato chips some you know I like to bring watermelon sandwiches hot dogs burger and we're playing music we're having a lot of fun my god if you're if your relationship to food is orthorexic right what is orthorexic everything has to be perfect my diet has to be perfectly healthy I have to eat the right amount of grams of proteins fats and carbs and if I go off of it it stresses me out yeah fine you did that and you accomplish this great bikini body now you're at the beach with your friends and everybody's enjoying themselves you can't have any fun with it and you're you're miserable nobody likes you secretly nobody likes you they might envy your body and look at you with it nobody likes you you're like friends like this yeah you're exactly you're sitting there and you're like oh everybody's looking at me what am I doing oh I can't enjoy myself it's like it's so defeats the entire purpose okay so what are the roots of a healthy relationship with food versus one that aren't they're behavior based not mechanically based in other words it's not necessarily the steps and what I need to eat specifically but rather how do I work with my behaviors so that they lead to better relationship to food so I'll give you one easy example okay we all have those foods that tend to push us over the edge a little bit some people call them trigger foods mine is potato chips if there's potato chips in my house I'm probably gonna eat a lot of them and oftentimes I'll eat all of them all at once I just love them they're hyper palatable it's very hard for me to control myself I tend to lose myself into the enjoyment of eating the bag of potato chips now does that mean I don't ever eat potato chips no I just don't have them in the house do I tell myself I can't have potato chips no I also I also don't do that this is what I tell myself if I really want potato chips I'll drive to the store and buy myself a single serving of potato chips now what have I done there all I've done is I've injected a barrier between me and the potato chips something that gives me time to pause okay so I don't say I can't have them I say to myself if I want them I'll drive to the store and buy myself a single serving so like a little bag of potato chips what does this lead to well when I get that craving and I really want them and they go oh okay I gotta drive and by the way the grocery store for me is literally half a mile away so it's like a long drive but now I'm gonna get in the car I'm gonna drive over there I'm gonna pick them out I'm gonna pay for all it does is it gives me space it gives me space and then I ask myself do I really want them that bad you can't just mindlessly indulge right away yes yeah and that's again and I know that each person has sort of that food group that beckons them it calls them and for me it's cookies or whatever it is you know like that's something that I know if it is in the house and I'm in that sort of mood I want to get it in quick and I don't really want people see me doing it either and that's another thing it's like this sort of this hidden you know like habit thing that you have but yeah so to create sort of some space with that so you can you can kind of breathe and figure out you know is it really worth it is this really what I want right now if it is go get it if it's not you know let's just relax yes here's another one and studies show this that people when they're distracted will consume 15 to 25 percent more calories so what does that mean to be distracted eating in front of the tv eating looking at my phone going on social media eating while while working or being on being on my computer that alone leads to eating more so here's a secret don't tell yourself eat less don't tell yourself you can't eat this just do this when I eat here's a rule no phone no tv no distractions I just sit here and I eat my meal by itself that will lead to you reducing your calories behavior based that's a behavior based model versus the other one I think that this was the real motivation behind when we wrote the intuitive guide was we recognize that this was something that you know we could say all these things real easily but get people to actually practices there's some steps to get there yes many people are still in the very beginning phase of like understanding what a protein carb if that is their calorie intake what maintenance level looks like there is I want to point out there is a lot of importance to figuring that part out but that's a phase just like our training phases that's a phase of your relationship with food you eventually want to move out of that into this intuitive way of eating and I do think there's steps and there's things there's hacks like you were mentioning right now to be better at it but it is something that you eventually want to move into and yes it's normal to start in the counting calories and weighing and measuring food initially but the ultimate goal if you want to sustain this long-term is to move out of that into a more intuitive way of eating yeah one more takeaway I'll just one more takeaway just so people have something if they don't have the intuitive guide something they could take with themselves to help them out here's another one if you are motivated to change your diet because you're focused on how much you hate the way you look in essence you don't like your body and that's your motivation you will eventually fall off and you'll fall off in a big way because when it's motivated by that self-hate or it's motivated by the I don't like my body it's gross or whatever words or internal words that you use now your nutrition is a punishment I am eating this way because I'm not attractive I'm eating this way because I hate the way I look and nobody wants to punish themselves forever at some point you'll rebel from yourself and that's where that binging comes from that's where people are like man I was good with my diet and then I went and you know I got a pizza and I was just gonna have one slice and ended up eating seven slices and I got so stuffed I got sick and you think to yourself well why would you eat so much one slice should have done it why you rebelled because the way you were eating before was a form of self-hate so this is a very easy one remind yourself that you're taking care of yourself when you're eating healthy not because you hate yourself and you hate your body but rather my I deserve to be healthy my body deserves to be taken care of it's a totally different mindset and it does lead to better behaviors all right I want to touch again on core training because I think this is an important point and I still have to make it time and time again because people still get confused on how to train their core properly to develop nice looking core muscles it's the same strategy that you use to develop a nice looking butt or nice looking hamstrings or a great back or great shoulders you build it yep you got to build the muscles of the core what are the staples of building muscle you want to use sufficient resistance in other words it has to be good tension so if I'm doing 70 reps of fast-paced ab exercises or bicycle kicks or whatever not enough resistance and tension to really develop the muscles in any effective way I want to be in that you know eight to 20 rep range with enough resistance to where it feels like strength training that's what's going to get the muscles of the abs the obliques to develop by the way one more muscle you want to focus on that shrinks the the core is a or vacuums called vacuums it strengthens the TVA muscles that pull in this the core muscles and you want to also use tension with that really drive it in and you there's a I'm sure we can link a video to where we demonstrated that but that'll help shrink and tighten the core but develop don't be afraid of training your abs and your obliques like you're trying to build them that's what's going to make them develop and look the best the fastest and you'll see them even at higher body fat percentages yeah and when you really hone in on that technique to to hyper connect to you to your abdominals and your core and midsection it's a completely different experience than just kind of banging out a ton of reps and trying to fatigue you know that that muscle group it's it's you can really start to feel the difference when you start adding even gravitational forces not even to load yet which you know eventually you can work your way to actually loading some of these exercises so you can build and develop those muscles just like any other muscle group but definitely being able to get in the proper form and technique will get you results even quicker than you know just banging out a bunch of reps well I want to connect us back to core and posture again too because like we talked earlier our core and priming right or priming excuse me in posture sorry connect the core to that so when you are when you are set up with good posture you also get your core and those muscles to develop better where this is very common like we'd see lower cross syndrome where somebody goes into doing core exercises or ab exercises and they just fill it in their hip flexors and they can't seem to fill it in their abs because they're not working their abs so this is why the beginning of this conversation started in the priming and posture place because that's also important if you want to develop a strong core now I know you address that in no BS six pack abs you get into like the hip flexor deactivator and making sure that you're firing your core properly but that's probably one of the most common things that I would have with clients that struggle with developing the core is actually not being able to fire it properly yeah the people confuse bending the the body in half with working the abs you can do that at the hips which is often what people do and that's all hip flexors the abs really bend you at the lumbar spine right so imagine the abs attached at the rib cage the bottom of the rib cage in the pelvis and when they contract they bring the rib cage closer to the pelvis what they don't do is bend your hips forward that's hip flexors now when I said tension and resistance for most people this means no weight this just means slow full range of motion exercises like a physio ball crunch doing a physio ball crunch properly for most people is enough resistance to build the abs in fact even for me all I have to do is lengthen the lever I just stick my arms out over my head and keep them like that that's enough resistance for me to do maybe 20 reps max and really get my abs to fire so develop and build those muscles and then you'll have that kind of core that creates that illusion of that hip to waist ratio and really gives you those aesthetics and also of course protects the spine and contributes to good posture look if you like our information you'll love mindpumpfree.com we have tons of free guides that'll help you develop your body burn body fat we even have guides for personal trainers again it's mindpumpfree.com you can also find the three of us on Instagram you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam see you at the beach