 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about the fundamental foundational form of resistance training or the principles I should say. Bodybuilding, bodybuilding style training. And I'm not talking about competing on stage like a bodybuilder, but rather the principles that bodybuilders have put together through decades of training and why we think these principles benefit most people. So in this episode, we talk about the five reasons why everybody should train, at least for some part of their year, like a bodybuilder. We talk about everything from the mind-muscle connection, the pump, how bodybuilding can sculpt your body, how it addresses weaknesses and imbalances, and why we think bodybuilding principles are some of the best ways to work out for longevity. Now before the episode starts, MAPS aesthetic, our bodybuilding style MAPS program, one of our most popular programs, is 50% off. Now this program includes workout videos, workout blueprints, it's all detailed, planned out for you. It's got phases, so you're focusing on different parts of training and different body parts. It's half off, here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsblack.com and use the code Black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0, no space for the discount. I actually, I wanted Sal to take us on a little bit of a bodybuilding history journey. I think of the three of us, you are the one that- Sal's the professor of bodybuilding. The irony of that is I think I get a lot more of the questions, because I did bodybuilding, so I think a lot of people believe that I'm hardcore into it, which I was not. In fact, I've learned more about bodybuilding hanging out with Sal than I did bodybuilding. As far as the history is concerned- Yeah, not the training and what. Yeah, of course. As far as the history is concerned, where it came from and how it got started, why it got popular, and then I'd like to get into the benefits of it. Well, bodybuilding type, first of all, we have to differentiate the sport of competitive bodybuilding from bodybuilding type training. Good point, good point. We're not talking necessarily about the sport of competing in bodybuilding, right? No, that's a great point, because I think this is part of the problem of why people stray away from certain modalities because there's a stigma around it. Totally. I don't want to bodybuild training because I don't want to be a bodybuilder. I don't want to powerlift training because I don't want to be a powerlifter yet. There's incredible benefits of training like this. Oh, I would argue that bodybuilding principles of training have more value for the average person than almost any other- Modality. Modality of resistance training I can think of. Now, I'm not saying that it's the only modality of training and that's where you should always be and never move out of it, of course not. That's anti the message that Mind Plump tries to promote. But I will say that in head-to-head comparison, the value that it provides, the benefits that bodybuilding principles provide, generally, are the best when you compare to other powerlifting, kettlebell lifting, Olympic lifting, CrossFit, any of the form of resistance training, bodybuilding's got the most value. Now, as far as the history is concerned, bodybuilding, the sport of bodybuilding and bodybuilding itself is the reason why resistance training ever went mainstream to begin with. And really, you could point it to one movie. It was Pumping Iron. Before Pumping Iron came out, bodybuilders were weirdos and freaks and nobody lifted weights, athletes at this time. What about even further back? Like, would you consider Jacqueline a bodybuilder or just like living a healthy lifestyle? Jacqueline definitely lifted weights 100%. In fact, he said that one of the keys to some of his most popular records of, you know, he did 1,000 push-ups and 1,000 pull-ups was that he was lifting heavy weights and that really got him to be able to do those things. He was definitely, he's the godfather of health and fitness for sure. What about even further back? Like, did bodybuilding come on the scene first as far as lifting weights or were we actually, were people using weights to train for sports first? No, no, actually, nobody used them for sports. The people who lifted- Like, yeah, wouldn't that happen? The people that lifted heavy weights first were circus performers and just performers in general, entertainers. And what they would do is they would have- It was like feats of strength. Feats of strength. So, you know, I could lift a horse or I could lift two men above my head. Or a bench with people over my head. Yes, and they were oftentimes chubby and big and kind of overweight, but also strong. And they would lift heavy objects and do kind of odd lifts to get strong this way. Well, then there was this brand of performer that came out, Eugene Sandow being the most popular one. That wasn't chubby. That was lean and muscular. And they started to get bigger crowds because people were not just attracted to the feats of strength. But also how he looked. People wanted to look at them. The physique. Yeah, because they looked incredible. And remember, you know, we, at this point we had been familiar with Greek statues and, you know, comic books. So we knew what muscle could look like, but to see a muscular person with their shirt off who was lean in person back then was extremely rare. It wasn't in lots of magazines. What you considered fit and healthy would today be considered just an average guy. Aside from the Greek statues and maybe comic books, you just didn't see a lot. So if you saw like a buff dude with the shirt off, with abs, it was like it blew people's minds. And so that started gaining more and more attention. And then they started to put on competitions where they would attract these strong men and they would compete with feats of strength. But eventually they found that they would get bigger crowds if they not only had feats of strength, but they included a physique show off component. So what they would do is they'd come out, they'd do some kind of a performance, whether it be gymnastics back flips, you know, one handstands or lifting heavy objects. But then the second half would be walking out and just showing off their bodies. And they found that that was attracting more people than the feats of strength. And then people turned it into just pure body building where it was just about how you looked in aesthetics. And what are we talking about years now? The 50s, 60s, where are we at now? Cause it was pumping iron when it got really popular, 70s. 70s, yeah. Body building as a sport. When's Eugene's sand out? Oh, that's way you're talking at the turn of the, you know, the 20th century is the 1900, you know, I think you just sounded it was 18 something. Oh wow, way back to that far back. Yeah, way back. Then in the 1930s and 40s is when you started to see body building type competitions. And it started to get a little bit more popular in the 50s. In the 60s, you had Dave Draper, who was this blonde, California- Yeah, local guy. He is, he's from San Cruz. And he's the, they call him the blonde bomber. He was in movies, so like in the 60s. Remember the 60s beach movies you ever watched those? Where they dance and sing and they'd be on. And then Dave Draper would show up as like the muscle guy. And so that kind of got a little more popular. Yeah, kicking sand on everybody. Yeah. And then, you know, pumping iron. And pumping iron had Arnold Schwarzenegger, the most charismatic, one of the most charismatic humans ever to walk the earth. And then all of a sudden people were like, hey, maybe I should lift weights. Mostly men at this point, but maybe I should start lifting weights. It was body building that made weight training a part of fitness 100%. In fact, they're the strongest influence on resistance training. The first principles that I learned working out were body building principles. I don't learn, nobody taught, could teach me power lifting or Olympic lifting or any other type of lifting principles. It was all about body sculpting, body building. And it makes sense, you know, people work out because they wanna change how they look and body building or training with body building principles really is kind of based on, you know, the aesthetics of the body and how you look. So it makes a lot of sense. But I think a lot of people then, you know, especially more recently, they think body building principles are useless because it's based off of how you look, but they're so wrong. Well, it's funny too that you referred when you first started as it probably being one of the still best modalities for almost all people to train in, yet we've added all these other new modalities since the 70s, right? There's so many, I mean, the average person coming in could get lost with all the different options as far as what training modality should they go to. And yet one of the oldest and one of the first to really bring it and make it popular was training like a body builder would train. And yet I think I agree with you too, even with all the other new modalities out there and like all the benefits. And we do on the show talk about, we just did an episode recently on why you should be constantly changing your programming and why that's so important. But the principles behind body building, there's a lot of reasons why it is superior. Oh, and for everybody, for the average person, I'm not just talking about the guy or girl who wants to build maximum muscle or maximize their aesthetics just for the average person. Before we get into some of those reasons and believe me, by the end of the episode, I think you'll totally understand. I think it's important that we explain what aesthetics are and why they're considered aesthetic to begin with. Like why is it that body building emphasizes like in men, a smaller waist and muscular shoulders and in women, nice shoulders and legs and glutes. The reason why we find certain things aesthetic is because it's visually telling us something. And yes, we can go extreme with it for 100%. We talk about this all the time on the show. But there is some truth in there in that we find healthy, most aesthetic. Now that can totally get distorted and become extreme. But the reason why a man with a tight waist and muscular shoulders, why we consider that aesthetic is because that's a visual representation of health. He's probably lean, he's probably healthy and strong and functional. Same thing for women. So although I don't think, and we make the case all the time, and you're saying that from like reproductive. Totally, you're more fertile. More fertile, you're healthier, more able to move, typically more functional. You can't read a book by its cover, but you can oftentimes tell, give you a general idea of what's inside the book by looking at the cover. And oftentimes if you look at someone, and again, I'm staying away from the extremes here, people who force their bodies to look a certain way with anabolic steroids, drugs or dysmorphia. But if you look at someone, oftentimes get a general idea of, okay, that person seems to be healthier. The way that we feel that is through their attractiveness, and that's through fertility. So I wanted to make that point before we got into- Well, there's also a, and you're talking about for reproductive purposes, but I mean, I've seen formulas for even how they break up like beauty, and beauty is defined by mathematical symmetry in the face. And so the body is similar to that. And one of the cool things about bodybuilding is the ability to do this. There's not anything else that we can do to change the actual mathematical symmetry of your face or your body, like sculpting, like lifting weights. You can actually morph that and change that, and you have a lot of control of that, which is pretty cool. You can build a more attractive body. There's definitely appeal for that for a lot of people. Totally. Now bodybuilding, because it's a visual sport where athletes used weights to look a particular way, there are certain things that over the years they've really honed in on that helped them do that. Now, forget about the bodybuilding sport for a second. Those things that they learn to focus on have wide-reaching benefits for the average person. Now the biggest thing, the most important one that I think that you'll get from training like a bodybuilder or training with bodybuilding type principles and intentions is the mind-to-muscle connection. There is no strength athlete or resistance training athlete in the world that can feel and contract a target muscle like a bodybuilder. Nobody can. You get someone who just does Olympic lifting and never trains with any bodybuilding principles, and you ask them to isolate their lats or isolate your rhomboids or isolate your medial glutes. And they're gonna look at you like you're crazy. They're not gonna be connected to them. They've got phenomenal movement. Yeah, one of the best ways to connect to your muscles with isometrics, and I honestly don't know another modality that emphasizes isometrics better than bodybuilding in terms of being able to flex and hold positions, and even the sport of it itself actually displays a lot of that ability to connect with the muscle and be able to present it in a certain way. Well, this also reminds me of one of the most viral videos that we've done on YouTube, and that was the Bicep Curl YouTube video that I did. And part of the reason why it goes viral is because there's controversy behind it. And one of the controversial things that I say in there that I'm talking about is teaching people to retract their shoulders, keep their elbows pinned by their side, and only come up to about their chest. And although you could take that dumbbell and rock it all the way up, and we know that the bicep is partially responsible for that movement, I know that when I'm trying to teach a client good mind muscle connection, that I want to eliminate using other muscles to kick in and help them out. And by doing that and eliminating that last portion of the exercise, I almost ensure that they won't get their shoulders involved, which I knew was a common mistake when teaching somebody an exercise. That principle comes from bodybuilding principles. It's teaching the client, my main goal as a coach right now is not to argue the function of the bicep or where the origin of the insertion is, it is to get my client to be able to flex the bicep and feel that connection really well. Where can you place more emphasis? You have to be able to connect on that level where you can and you understand your body that holding it in this position, this angle is gonna enhance the feel of that muscle more. Right, most resistance training type modalities are based off of movement and performance. Bodybuilding style training is based off of feel. The weight is arbitrary. When you're, whatever you're lifting really doesn't make a big difference now. Of course, lifting more weight, getting stronger, all that stuff is important and that actually contributes to better muscle development. But really it's all about feel. And so bodybuilding principles, they put you inside your body. You might be listening and thinking, what the hell does that mean? I'll give you an example. This is, by the way, one example of many. But I would take a client and it would be our first session and we'd go over to the cable machine and I'd have them do a tricep press down. This is where you're standing upright, elbows locked at your sides and you press the bar down. And this used to happen almost every single time I'd train a client for the first week or so. That as they're doing the exercise and they're fatiguing they'd ask me, where am I supposed to feel this? Oh, what am I working right now? Where am I supposed? And I remember when I first became a trainer it kind of tripped me out because I'd be like, what do you, obviously your tricep's working. You don't feel your tricep, or they would say something else like, oh, I could really feel this in my abs. Yeah, it feels in my abs, yeah. Like, wait a minute. My toes. Now the reason why this is happening is not because their tricep's not working. Obviously it's working, they're extending their elbow. That's the only way the elbow would work. But the reason is because people, most people are not inside their body. They're literally not connected to their body in ways where they can feel what the muscles are doing. That's what body building training is all about. You also have to understand that until you train that mind muscle connection, the body always defaults to the easiest path. Oh yeah, you have to focus on it. Which, and that's why when someone doing a tricep pushdown who's never done that in their life before might feel it in their shoulders, their abs, and everywhere of their chest in other places and they can't understand why they don't feel a tricep. That's because they don't know better. Because the body, what they saw was, they saw a trainer or coach get in there, put him, show the client first, this is what you do. So, monkey see, monkey do, they see it, they get in, they just perform the movement. They don't actually know how yet to connect to the right muscle to do most of the work. Their body just says, do what I just saw. Move this object from here to here in any way that we know you've done in the past. And so whatever you have done and built your way up to that, that's the kind of operating system you're dealing with. Now, why is this important? Well, this is important because, or why do bodybuilders, why is this even a principle I should say? Well, because bodybuilders are always trying to develop the perfect looking physique. So, rather than going to the gym to try and get better at lifting more weight or performing better with exercise, which still has value. That also has value, but rather than doing that, they're going to the gym and saying, I need to develop more of this part of this muscle. Now, the only way to do that is to really focus on feeling that part of the muscle when you're doing the exercise. And subtly, very, very subtly, altering the technique and form or sometimes just the intention. I can do a bench press. I can bench press. I could do reps on a bench press and I could do one where I really feel my chest and I could do another one where I really feel my triceps and the average person would not be able to tell the difference by watching my form. It's all based on my intent and that is what I learned through bodybuilding training and that right there, that's a foundation for all, I'll make an argument for all resistance training. All resistance training, the foundation is, are you inside your body? Can you connect to your muscles? And then from there, we can move into the other forms of resistance training if we wanted to try something. Well, even coming from somebody like from more of a mechanical performance perspective. So like even just learning the skill of squatting or the way you should hold your body and do these types of movements, that's very important. But for me to then get into bodybuilding style training and learning how to actually feel my muscles and be able to connect to every individual muscle that was part of the overall, it's helped me even then to come back to these gross motor movements and then be able to alter on the fly based off of what was happening. Oh my God, now I could feel this muscle that's getting involved. Now I need to shift my attention elsewhere and I could do that to correct things which has massively helped. Oh yeah, and think about what this encourages, right? This is why I think it's the foundation. It encourages good form. It encourages appropriate levels or amounts of weight. It also, one of the first, whenever I had a client who had a body part that was whatever you want to call it lagging or didn't want to develop, I knew the first step to developing that body part was for them to be able to feel it during the workout, for them to be able to get a pump in that muscle during the workout. So let's say a guy comes to me and he's like, hey, I work out, but I just, my chest just doesn't wanna seem to respond. And a few weeks into me training him and he'd say something like, oh my gosh, I feel my chest doing presses. I never felt it before because we're working on feel. Oh my God, I'm getting a pump. I know now that body part is going to respond. And this is a very important aspect of bodybuilding style training. Well, I used to have this spiel that I used to give clients as soon as I walk in the weight room. And I would tell them that when we're lifting or when we're exercising in the gym and lifting weights, all we are doing is flexion of your muscles with resistance. So my goal is to teach you whenever we're working out a specific muscle is you wanna be able to learn to flex that muscle. And you wanna be able to learn to flex that muscle with no resistance first if before you start to add resistance. Totally. So that happens and you'll have very easy and that's why I think the universal show me your muscle is the bicep flex because almost everybody can do that. It's really basic and easy to do that. But as the average person on the street flex your chest for me or even more difficult, flex your lats for me. Try to squeeze your glutes for me, flex your quad for me, flex your tricep. You'd be surprised how many average people that don't lift weights that you ask them to flex a muscle and they can't do it. They actually cannot actually do that. And so the principles behind getting this mind muscle connection and body building type training are phenomenal for teaching the average person on how to activate and how to use specific muscles which then contributes to what Justin's point is it makes coaching as a trainer much easier when I'm going through a movement than I can say, squeeze your glutes right there. Activate your quads right there. What do you mean by that? Right, right, right or pull your shoulder blades back. I can cue certain things because I've now taught you how to connect to all these muscles on your body. That's why this is so important. It is and this is the main reason why body building style training is of all the resistance training forms the best way to sculpt and shape the body because with other resistance training type modalities which again they all have their value but with the other ones it's about movement. It's about do a better clean and press, do a better squat, do a better kettlebell swing but with body building principles I can look in the mirror and I can say, okay, you know, I think I'd like to have more shoulders and not just shoulders but I'd like to have more shoulder on the side of my shoulders or you know what, I'd like to have my legs be a little bit more developed but not just my legs, I'd like to have my hamstrings especially the part that curves underneath or I'd like to have more developed glutes but not just my glutes, I think I need more upper glutes. No form of exercise or resistance training exercises can allow you to do that like body building. Like I can go to the gym with body building principles and literally treat my body like it's a sculpture and focus and train on it in that way and for the average person who's motivated to work out because they wanna change how they look what a valuable tool. It's the most valuable tool that you can use when it comes to lifting weights, just those principles right there. Well, those principles are also, you know, these are the principles that we followed when we structured and built Maps Aesthetic and we did it, it's one of the, out of all, I mean, we're obviously we're proud of all the programs and everybody probably here has a program they're more proud of. That one to me is my baby as far as I feel I'm most proud of how we did that because as a kid growing up who was trying to always, I was kind of building, trying to build my physique, I was insecure about the way my body looked. There were specific areas I wanna develop. You know, I never growing up as a kid fully understood how do you go about programming that and that's how that was designed was to take somebody who then could come into the program and say, okay, I wanna build my butt and my chest. Those are my two areas I wanna focus on and then we teach them how to build that into a program so that when you're done following it you should see a significant difference in those specific areas you want to catch up or build. Well, it's important to understand this and maybe you are listening and this is you. There are some exercises out there that are better than others. For example, if I say name the best chest building exercises, you may say a bench press or an incline press and that's true. Generally for most people that's the best exercise but what if you're one of these people? What if you do the bench and incline and your chest just isn't responding? How is that possible? Well, I'll tell you how. There's way more than just your chest that's evolved with pressing the bar off your body. There's your shoulders and your triceps are involved among other muscles that act as stabilizers and even as prime movers. And so you may be doing a bench press. You may be even, in fact, you might be even benching a lot of weight but because you don't have a great connection to the chest muscles themselves, you're not making your chest muscles do most of the work when you're benching. You're developing the other muscles of your body. Well, maybe you go to the gym and you're like, okay, I wanna get bigger glutes but I know deadlifts and squats are supposed to be some of the best exercises for my glutes and you go to the gym and you do deadlifts and squats and you end up with big quads and hamstrings and you find that your butt just isn't responding. Why isn't my butt growing? I'm doing these exercises that are supposed to be the best exercises for the glutes. Why aren't they responding? Because of that lack of connection and connecting to those muscles with bodybuilding principles allows you to sculpt your body how you see fit. That's the big difference here. When it bodybuilding principles, you're going to the gym and you're trying to sculpt your body how you see fit and the weight that you use is arbitrary. That's just a big difference between resistance training, bodybuilding principles and other forms of resistance training. It's also where this is like, I think I gave the example the other day of talking about how Justin and I, if you were to watch how we each bench press, you can see who has more of the bodybuilding foundation, who has more of the powerlifting or athletic performance foundation because of just watching the way we would rep out the bench press. And one of the things when you're bodybuilding, there's a major emphasis on the eccentric or the negative portion of the exercise. And this is a great way for somebody who's listening to this episode and is going to the gym and then they're like, I've been following more like a powerlifter, I'm more athletic performance, I'm more explosive guy, what are some things that I can do right away to start to learn to feel the muscle more, get better mind muscle connection. One of the best ways is really slowing down the negative. It's rarely ever do I go in the gym and scan the entire gym and everybody working out and can see anybody even truly doing what the formula for the eccentric portion, the negative portion of the exercise for hypertrophy, for building muscle. If that is supposed to be a four second negative, that's what all the research and studies have shown that it's like a four, two, two is the tempo. If you were the ultimate tempo for building muscle, yet when you walk around the gym, pay attention the next time you see somebody squatting, bench pressing, shoulder pressing, anything and do yourself a favor and just count on their way down, one, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand, four, one thousand and see if you even notice anybody doing that. It's rare and so one of the first tips that I give to somebody that's wanting to work on that mind muscle connection is slow down your repetitions, really slow down the negative and start to work on it and to Sal's point about the weight being arbitrary, who gives a fuck about the weight? You gotta let that go that you can bench press 275, but then when I ask you to do a four second negative, you gotta drop all the way down to 185. And to your point, like, you know, and I've heard, I know lots of people have heard this term time under tension, but that's something that you'll see kind of pop up a little bit more with the bodybuilder intent, that style of training where, you know, you're finding that opportunity then to enhance the eccentric portion. So you're adding that tension, your muscles under the stress, you know, the entire time where, you know, a technique like I might, you know, use with power lift or a more athletic mind, I'm gonna do less tension and then apply it at its most maximal position to be able to get, you know, the actual weight up as efficiently as possible. No, that makes, that's one of the things that makes bodybuilding principles or training, style training so unique among other forms of resistance training. It's the only form of resistance training that places a heavy emphasis on all parts of the rep, on all types of muscle contraction. When you train with bodybuilding principles, you're focused on the positive portion of a rep, you're gonna focus on the negative portion of a rep, you're gonna focus on the stretch of an exercise, you're gonna focus on the squeeze and the hold of an exercise. No other form of resistance training places any value on all of those equally like bodybuilding principles. They're the only type of training that you're gonna go into the gym and you're gonna focus on all these things, which is a really, really good thing. It's like that, like again, I hark back to the saying it was the foundation. What a wonderful way to build your foundation with resistance training than to learn how to emphasize all portions of a repetition. Then when you move on to other forms of resistance training, you can learn those, which is great, but you've built out foundation on all those other things. Another thing I'd like to say about this type of training is that bodybuilding style training, and I know in the past we may have said that these exercises are not valuable, but they do have some value, isolation exercises. This is very unique to bodybuilding style training because they're so focused on the feel and connecting. They emphasize isolation exercises and they use them many times quite appropriately. Other forms of resistance training tend to completely negate them and consider them totally worthless. Now I do agree that compound lifts have more value, but that's not to say that those isolation movements don't have any value. And especially when it comes to sculpting and when it comes to connecting muscle, mind-muscle connection, isolation exercises really shine. Well, to that point, I would make the case that it has a ton of value when you're talking about addressing weaknesses and imbalances. Oh, totally. When I think about the majority of clients that I train, much of their programming at the beginning was more centered around addressing that. And the ways that I would do that is through isolation exercises targeting specific weak muscles that are causing imbalances in their body. Day one is a complete assessment, very similar to what we do in prime. I assess their movement. I see where there's dysfunction in balances. I can see what muscles are weak in causing potential problems. A lot of times it's very obvious, especially when they have chronic pain that's in a joint. So I look at the surrounding muscles. The surrounding muscles are normally have got something that's overactive and underactive. So I've got weak muscles that I need to address. And when I'm looking to address very specific small muscles that are weak in the body that are causing stress in the joints, I'm using body building principles. I now program in there specific small movement exercises that would not be found in a power lifting or a compound movements. I'm more focused on addressing the weakness in their body to help balance them out. I remember this clicking a lot too, not just through bodybuilding, but even going through FRC certification where they're going over joint by joint function first. And then we start working in the harmony of all these things together. Once you put it in place, it's very logical. If you take it back to like, okay, if I'm gonna add stress now, I wanna also add stress to places where I need to build up and develop more strength around that joint so that it contributes with the overall picture. So we're really just like segmenting the body. We're building up and reinforcing problematic areas around joints. And that way, when we get to the big gross motor movements, we're a lot more solid and stable in those big movements. Right, now although it's not complete what I'm about to say isn't the whole picture, it is part of the picture. And there is a lot of value when I'm about to say to the average person. But there is some value to being able to address weaknesses and imbalances simply based off of the symmetry and aesthetics of your body. There really is. If you're somebody who, you can look at someone, and again, it's not a complete picture, but I could look at someone and say, okay, that person's chest is way too big for their back. Or that person's upper body does not match their lower body. Or their lower body doesn't match their upper body. Or their biceps don't seem aesthetically matched to their triceps. There's a lot that's telling you. Now again, it's not complete, but for the average person, when we're talking to the average person who may not understand function and form and technique which is kind of harder to explain like. It takes more education. Yeah, watch a squat and pick out the parts where the person's not moving or whatever, right? And the ankle mobility and hip mobility and all that stuff. That's a little bit more difficult. But the average person can look in the mirror and be like, my back doesn't match my chest. Or my legs don't seem to match my upper body. Like that's a very easy way to communicate imbalances in the body, especially when you're talking about symmetry. Right to left symmetry or talk about symmetry. Especially when you're talking about that. Because this is an area where sometimes these problems get exaggerated when someone goes straight into barbell lifting and doing all the compound lifts. Because if there's major asymmetry where you have your left pec is way more developed and you're right, this was me, right? So as a kid, my left pec was way more developed than my right pec. And if all I did was just compound lifts, bench press, bench press, bench press, barbell, bench press. What ends up happening, especially when you don't understand biomechanics very well, is that the dominant side just takes over the load. Which if you've ever bench pressed and you're listening to this show right now and you notice when you press the bar up, it's uneven. This is common. How many clients have you trained like this? You get under the bar and their right or their left is an inch or two ahead of the other side. Or when the elbow goes in or the shrug's a little bit. And there's an example of being able to spot that as a trainer and go like, oh wow, this person has some major asymmetry going on. How can I use bodybuilding principles to address the weaknesses and try and balance out the body more so then I can then go back and apply it to compound lifts. Well, take the average person out. So for trainers listening, I know there's some hardcore trainers right now listening, like oh, you know, the way you look isn't gonna tell you about your imbalances or weaknesses. Okay. Take the average person off the street right now that doesn't work out, okay? And most of them are right handed. Measure their right arm, measure their left arm when they're flexing. I guarantee you a majority of them who are right handed are gonna have more muscle in their right arm. There you go. And visually, you might even need to measure it. You could see it flex your arm. There's an asymmetry there. Your left arm doesn't look as developed as your right arm. Now we would do further testing to see if there was a weakness, but it's a pretty damn good clue. It's a really damn good clue that kind of points you in a direction. Now what's the value of that? Well, the value is to the average person. The average person who doesn't necessarily understand movement aside from the extremes, they understand aesthetics and symmetry. So when they go to the gym and they apply bodybuilding principles and it's based off of I wanna make this part look different and this looks imbalanced. I wanna develop this muscle more. Inadvertently, what they're doing is they're actually working on, oftentimes, their weaknesses and imbalances. And what they're doing is they're making themselves more balanced. Bodybuilding principles are the original correctional exercise. And I'm gonna make that statement. I know it sounds a little controversial, but it's absolutely true. Before correctional exercise ever became a thing, and of course correctional exercise is far better suited to correct movement patterns and to work on pain. That's what it's perfect for. But before that existed, it was bodybuilding training. And it does a far better job than people realize, simply based off of the way your body's developed, what parts your body's underdeveloped versus other parts of your body. It's also a great way for you to address things like posture. Like how many times did you get a client, you assess them and we talk all the time on the show about upper cross syndrome, rounded shoulders, forward head. It's so common in everybody because we're doing everything in front of us. I can take those principles too and go, okay, now this client, sure I could take them through a bench press and do all those movements. But what I know is that addressing all those upper back muscles, they're gonna help pull the body back into good posture. Those become a priority in my training, in my regimen. Okay, I know that I can do that. That's, those principles are incredible to helping somebody like that who's got really bad posture issues. And when we would program as trainers, this is one of the ways, or these are some of the principles that we would use to address those things versus just throwing that person right underneath the barbell bench press with those issues. Well, yeah, and too, that way, it's a lot safer to then look at posture and be able to kind of like emphasize angles, like the proper angles to hold your joints into and bodybuilding style training like allows for you to like, really to get into that function, like how am I most effectively gonna feel this in my muscle by holding it at this specific angle? So it's like, there are ways of enhancing, certain muscles involvement. And then that helps you to learn then too, what those beneficial angles are and which ones help the muscles, build and develop more. Yeah, I love what you just said because it reminded me of one thing about bodybuilding principles that is different from other forms of resistance training. Bodybuilding style training principles encompasses a wider range of resistance training exercises than any other form of resistance training, okay? Bodybuilders will utilize any exercise that's going to cause their muscles to shape and build. And oftentimes they use more exercises than other types of resistance training. Power lifters tend to be a little bit more limited. Olympic lifters also more limited. Any other resistance training sport you can think of, they're more limited in terms of the tools that they're using. Bodybuilders are very much about different exercises, different angles, machines, cables, barbells, dumbbells, body weight, utilizing a wide variety of exercises to develop their body. Now, what kind of value does this have for the average person? Tremendous value. They're not stuck in one way. Yes, there's definitely exercises that are better than others, but bodybuilders are very open-minded when it comes to trying different exercises much more so than other lifters. In fact, bodybuilders typically do the exercises that you find in other forms of resistance training, not all of them, but many of them. Oftentimes you don't see them doing the same exercise, the other ones do the same exercise as the bodybuilders. I also can recall ways of using it to address things like chronic pain. I don't know how many times I've had somebody, they come in, super decontition, middle age, 30 pounds plus overweight, excessive forward shoulder and forward head, low chronic back pain. And I know as a trainer, like one, addressing their upper back and building and developing those muscles to help pull them back in good posture, strengthening their core and abs, which then supports the low back, could have eliminated so much chronic pain in so many of my clients. That is, and that you'll never find that in a athletic performance program. You'll never find that in a powerlifting program and an Olympic lifting program to your point where you actually would take, okay, look at somebody specifically and go, okay, we're gonna focus on. Develop this. Yeah, develop this area, develop this area to eliminate this chronic pain that we have going there, unless it was so purely a correctional type of program. Totally, totally. Now, probably the thing that bodybuilding style principles are most known for is for building muscle. Now, in head-to-head competition, in head-to-head comparisons, bodybuilding style principles when applied appropriately will build the most muscle on your body. Now, that's not to say other forms of resistance training don't build muscle. For sure, powerlifting is gonna pack some muscle on your body, so is Olympic lifting. Did you see our post from our good buddy, Ben Pollock right now, just yesterday? Oh, he's, did you see what he was talking about? He's liking how much strength he's getting from that. From his experience in bodybuilding. He came out after he did bodybuilding, said he was never gonna do it again, and fucking didn't, hated it and everything. Now that he's revisited back into powerlifting, the amount of muscle that he's packing on and strength gains that he's seeing in powerlifting from his bodybuilding experience has got him rethinking whether he's gonna now go back to bodybuilding again. At the end of the day, and I just read another study on this, at the end of the day, mass, muscle mass and size is going to, if you train it properly, will improve your strength and performance. It's like having the raw building block that's there. You can squeeze more out of a muscle or less out of a muscle, but the potential for the strength and power, a lot of it lies in the actual size of the muscle. It's directly related to its ability to contract. So more muscle is the hallmark of bodybuilding. And although, in our opinion, and I'll defend this till the day I die, training through different modalities is the best way to build muscle long-term overall. If you were to compare just head to head, I only do powerlifting training. I only do Olympic training. I only do CrossFit. I only do bodybuilding training. The one that builds the most muscle is bodybuilding. That's what they do best, is they build muscle. They do a very, very good job of adding muscle mass or muscle size to your body. Now, why is this good? Well, obviously, for the obvious reasons, it looks good. You can shape and sculpt your body like we talked about before. But what if you wanna burn body fat? What if you don't care? Speed them a tad, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. More muscle means you burn more calories. It means you have a greater capacity to burn more calories. It means you utilize glucose better. It means that you're building muscle also sends anabolic signals to the body to say, hey, raise testosterone in men, balance out estrogen and progesterone in women. More muscle makes all the other goals easier to accomplish. You know, it's pointless. Yeah, it's funny saying that. Like I think back to like all the female clients that I trained that were overweight that came to me and said that their main goal was to lose body fat and they didn't wanna get bulky muscle and they entrust me to write this program and design it. In reality, I'm writing a bodybuilding program. You're writing a muscle building program. Yeah, although I would never communicate that to them knowing their relationship with exercise and where it's currently at. I just do my job knowing what's gonna benefit the most but that's what's gonna benefit them most is a bodybuilding type of program even though they have no desire to do anything like that. Their main goal coming in is to, hey, Adam, I wanna lose 30 pounds of fat. I know that the thing that's going to benefit the most is one, it's gonna allow me to dress any sort of imbalances which addresses all the aches and pains we talked about. It's also gonna allow me to pack on the most amount of muscle which will then in turn speed up her metabolism which will then in turn help her with her ultimate goal which is losing body fat, which is funny. Isn't that hilarious? Yeah. And now if it wasn't for bodybuilding I can say this with confidence. We would never have understood the value of the pump. We would never have understood or even valued it to begin with. Now the pump is when you're following bodybuilding style principles in your lifting weights or even when you're doing other modalities it may happen by accident. Your muscle gets swollen with blood. It feels pumped. More blood is being pumped in that can pump out. And most other resistance training sports or athletes actually don't like the pump. They don't want the pump. Because there's a movement. Yeah, when you get a big pump and you're trying to run or move it reduces performance. Now the pump is temporary but it's not something that they're seeking out is my point. Bodybuilders have seeked out the pump. They actually look for it. Now what does the pump tell us? If you can get a good pump you're probably the environment to build muscle is probably there. It's more likely there than not because you're well hydrated. You're pretty well recovered. If you're too over trained you're not gonna get a pump if you're a good pump. If you're dehydrated you're not gonna get a good pump. Your nutrients are probably good. Try and get a good pump eating too little calories. Not gonna happen. It's also a great example that you're connected to it. Right. You're connected to it. If you're not connected to it if you're getting a pump you are for sure connected to that muscle. Right. If you're not there's a good chance that you're not. Right. So if you're doing all these squats to build your butt and your quads are getting pumped like crazy and you don't feel a pump in your glutes probably not connecting very well to your glutes. So the pump is a signal that tells you oh it's more likely that the environment that my body's in right now is conducive to building muscle but that's not all. The pump itself also sends a signal to build muscle. We have studies now that show this. The cell swelling effect that happens tells your body to build muscle. The nutrients that it delivers to the body. There's maybe a localized hormonal effect that the pump creates that is causing your body to build muscle. Isn't it the theory that it's volumizing the cells which then allow more water, more nutrients to get into it which then in turn it involves building more muscle? It also speeds up protein synthesis. We've connected the pump to that as well. We would have never even value. I think without bodybuilding style, training or principles the pump would have been relegated as a side effect. Like oh yeah every once in a while you have a pump. Bodybuilder is the only form of resistance training where oftentimes you seek it out. You go to the gym and you're working your chest and maybe you're strong and all that stuff but if you didn't get a really really good pump you're like oh man I don't know if my workout was really good I gotta re-examine what I've been doing. Now if you're a strength athlete if you're strong you don't care if you got a pump or not a pump is a side effect. Well and what's great about chasing the pump is that you can do it with extremely light weight that you can control very well. It's all about feel. Yes, which is what makes it really great for teaching clients. Again, if I got a client who I can't get them to feel like let's take a really hard muscle, rear delts. Rear delts are extremely difficult to get somebody to feel but man I could take some two and a half pound dumbbells really really light and put them in the position and literally move their arms for them this is how I want you to feel and then touch where I want them to feel and just we're gonna do 30 reps. 30 reps until you can feel it connect there that's what's awesome about using a tool like the pump to get them to enhance that mind muscle connection. Well isn't BFR training like an exaggerated enhancement of the pump or artificial pump? Absolutely, the science that supports the pump is the same science that supports BFR. Very very similar and that's exactly what's happening is you're giving your body an extreme painful pump and then that sends a signal to the muscle without barely any load. Which has by the way BFR its application is and if you don't know what this is blood flow restricted training or the scientific term would be occlusion training. This is where you tie off like let's say I use a knee wrap tie off my arm not so tight that I get numb but enough to where I can feel that it's a little tied off then I do exercise with that arm and it really emphasizes the blood rushing in but that can't rush out feeling. The applications of that with the most value is for rehab. That's where the best applications of that are because you'll take somebody who's got knee surgery and they can't use sufficient resistance to build their muscle or prevent atrophy, prevent muscle loss because they just had knee surgery. They could barely do just like five pounds with their leg. Well, they're not gonna get a pump with just five pounds unless you do BFR. Then they get that crazy pump and they found that that is far more effective and that's about rehab. That's actually one of the ways you know you have a good therapist these days because that's kind of cutting edge still. I mean, we're still in the first decade of that becoming very popular. And if you just tore your ACL or MCL and you're rehabbing your knee, a therapist and they weren't doing this for me way back when I did mine. This was the science was just barely coming out on this but now a therapist on the new new or knows what's up and up as far as the science they would tie off your quad and you would be because I remember sitting on the edge of the bench rehabbing mine and they just put an ankle weight five pound ankle weight on there and I'm just doing knee extension as I lay there but I would have been far more beneficial tying that leg off while I'm doing that knee extension because then I would start to develop the quads a lot faster than what the five pounds by themselves would be doing. So you know you've got a good therapist when they're doing stuff like that and you're rehabbing it. Totally and again, no resistance training form besides bodybuilding goes to the gym and seeks out the pump. That is a hundred percent characteristic of bodybuilding style training. Probably the one thing about bodybuilding style training that I personally find the most important is that maybe this will be controversial but I can argue this again, I can argue it very well. Of all the forms of resistance training that are out there, it's the safest. It's the best for longevity. I'll tell you something right now when you find me in the gym at 75 years old and I can guarantee you I'm gonna be doing bodybuilding style training and I don't know if I'll be able to do any powerlifting style or other types of training at that age but I can for sure use the principles of bodybuilding. Oh, who's a great example, Dexter Jackson. Dexter Jackson, how old is he now? And he's competing, he's almost 15. I don't know, look at up there. I think he's in his 50s. Yeah and now look at another great bodybuilder, Ronnie Coleman. Look at almost everybody who competed with Dexter Jackson in his first few years. Almost all of them. Yeah, the guys that lifted with a heavy emphasis on strength and how much weight they can move or whatever, many of them are- They might have beat him in shows 20 years ago or 15 years ago. Except for the consequence. How old is he? How old? Yeah, let's see how agey. I think he might be right. He's in his 50s. I believe he is. But he's, now Dexter Jackson is one of those bodybuilders that always trained, he's 50. He's 50 years old. He's always trained with this mentality. He never was about moving maximal weight. He was never about showing any big numbers. But he was always about feeling the muscle, getting a good pump, getting a good squeeze. Here he is, 50 years old, competing, still competing, all of his peers have major injuries. Ronnie Coleman, who arguably one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, huge fan of the guy. But I mean, he fucked himself up from lifting, you know, in other ways that really checked. Cause the risk is much higher. Like if I go to the gym and again, I think training for maximal strength has a lot of value. I think it has a ton of value, but I'm not gonna lie and say that it doesn't have more risk. And for sure does, you're pushing more weight. There's far less risk with going to the gym, lifting weights and feeling the movement rather than trying to move as much weight as possible. Now, Adam, you've made this comment before. You said that your body felt the best it's ever felt or less pain when you were a bodybuilder. 100%. Still to this day, I stand by that. I mean, that was something that I didn't start feeling joint pain until I started powerlifting and lifting really heavy. And, you know, a lot of that isn't because powerlifting made me hurt. It's because of the dysfunction that I had. My mechanics were perfect. And when you load, load, load, load on that, eventually that catches up to you. And that's the risk versus reward thing that you're talking about. I mean, to now the other side of that, I never packed on so much muscle as I did when I switched over to powerlifting because I'd never trained that way for so long. Putting a lot of emphasis on that, boy, that slapped on more muscle on my body in a shorter period of time than ever else in my entire lifting career. So I got the benefits of that. But the drawback of it was now I felt my hips, now I felt my knees, now I felt where when I was training for bodybuilding and it was all about isolation movements, I never maxed out. So if you were just back up eight years ago and said, yo, Adam, what's your max bench or what's your max squat or deadlift? I would look back at you and go, I have no idea. I can't remember the last time I squatted, deadlifted or bench press for less than six to eight reps. So I could tell you this is how many reps or this is how much weight I can do six reps or eight reps with, but I couldn't tell you what I could do a single, a double or a triple with because I never lifted that way. And I felt the best in my life during that time. Oh yeah, I mean, if you're going to the gym and you're lifting weights for longevity and I think it's important that you move into different types of training. We talk about this all the time on the show, but it's also, you know, I'm not, this is true as well. Training for feel and connection to the muscle and the pump is the safest form of lifting weights. It just is the risk is lowest because when I'm focused just on feel, the odds that I'm going to lift too much weight is far lower because I don't care about the weight. In fact, what bodybuilding principles encourage is for you and I love this by the way, this is one of the best ways for, I think men oftentimes will benefit from this the most. It encourages you to lighten the load. Many times when I go to work out and lift weights, now I'm a very strength oriented person. I make no qualms about that. I love lifting heavy weights. My favorite thing about working out is being able to lift a lot of weight. But when I go in there and I check my ego and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try just bodybuilding style training. My tendencies go lighter every time. Oh, I still don't really feel that in my quads or I still don't feel that in my chest. Go a little lighter, slow down, change the intention, squeeze the pack, get a better pump in the chest. And it's just a safer way to work out, especially, you know, speaking. It's completely different mentality. Yeah, it's definitely way better for a long term in terms of like the wear and tear, you know, of the joints. And I mean, you could get into that because it's inevitable you're gonna start lifting more weights. You're gonna get that ego lift. Like every time I go in the gym and I'm grabbing the barbell again, it just escalates. So, you know, help, it's very healthy practice to then, you know, go back into something that you're not, you know, as good at or you're lightening the load, but it's adding a completely new stimulus. Yes, and now one thing that, one dig that people take at resistance training, oftentimes is that, oh, you don't build a lot of endurance. And I can see that, right? I can see that if you only all ever train in strength in your low reps and long rest periods, which are fine in and of themselves. It maps phase three aesthetic. I got a client that's in it right now that messaged me literally this morning. This is like, holy shit. Yeah, because bodybuilding principles encourage the pump and feel, oftentimes they'll do higher reps. So if you see someone in the gym doing, you know, 20 reps of a squat, or you see someone supersetting two exercises or trisetting, that's three exercises together, or doing a strip set where they go from, you know, one set to the next set to the next set with, you know, lighter and lighter weight, that's bodybuilding principles. You don't typically find that in other forms of resistance training. So there's endurance. There's more endurance that you're building on. And think about that in terms of all the reps. That helps you get better. It just helps you get better at those exercises, which then you can, you know, bring back into like a more of a heavier loaded, you know, lower rep situation where we're focused is completely different. More blood flow, hearts getting worked more. It's more exercise for the heart that way too. I, that was one of the things too. When I was, I remember my buddies and I, we raced, there was four of us, right? And two of us were like big time into lifting and the other two guys were like into, you know, running obstacle course racing when that was getting popular there into that. And the two of us that were in lifting, we were talking shit, we were hanging out one weekend and we decided to sign up for a muddy buddy race, which is like half bike, half run. And I remember getting ready for it and I didn't do any cardio. And all I did was just increase the intensity in my bodybuilding routine that I was doing. More super sets and reps. And at the end, my buddy, the two of us that were the ones that were trained. Now mind you, I'm sure my buddies that I'm talking about right now weren't like hardcore, obstacle course racing, hardcore training, but I knew the competitiveness in myself and my partner. And I knew that I could increase the intensity in the way I was training inside the gym to give me some good cardio endurance. And they probably thought, oh, big bodybuilder Adam, he's gonna be a guy. Totally, exactly. And that they, so I knew that that, them knowing that I wasn't doing any cardio gave them the kind of, they let off the throttle of their own training because they're like, oh, he's always doing his lifting weights when they smoke them. And there's a big misunderstanding because people look at the extremes, right? So they look at like the big 260 pound bodybuilders. Okay, that's obviously, that's the extremes. But let's say you take the average person who's natural and uses bodybuilding principles, they're going to build a decent amount of endurance through higher reps and super sets and that type of training. Of course, when we look at the extremes, it all goes out the window. But then again, we look at the extremes at any category and pretty much everything goes out the window. But really the approach to form and exercise is so different. This is a big one for me. A bodybuilding principles, you're trying to make the form as perfect as possible to feel it the best way possible. Other forms of resistance training are trying to perfect their form to lift the most weight. So like a power lifter is like, how do I maximize? This is why if you've ever gone on Instagram and seen the extreme arches that some bench pressures will have or the arch is so insane and their grip is so wide on the bar and they're only moving four inches, well, they're trying to maximize their biomechanics to lift the most weight. They're trying to perfect their form to lift more weight. A bodybuilder is trying to perfect their form to feel it as much as possible, which has a lot, it's not valuable and nothing else is valuable, but it's valuable. It is valuable to say. To that point too, I'm glad you brought that up because I've been asked to have been tagged on things like this before. It doesn't make one right or one wrong. It's just, there's different goals. You have somebody who is trying to maximize the amount of load and get up the most amount of weight possible, then you have somebody who gives no shits about that and wants to connect to a muscle and develop a muscle more. So when I get tagged and asked that like, oh, is this wrong or should I be doing this way? Well, it depends on your goal. Is your goal to become the best bench presser and bench the most weight? Well, then using leverage and making you get a lot of body English on things, that stuff makes a difference in moving the most load. When your goal is I wanna develop my chest, well, you don't really care about the amount of load you get up, you care more about connecting to the chest through that movement. Right, so if your goal is to build muscle, either because you wanna build muscle or you wanna speed up your metabolism or if your goal is to sculpt and shape your body as you see fit, in other words, target specific parts of your body. If you wanna be able to feel muscles working when you do big gross motor movement so you can connect to them and develop them and if you wanna learn principles that will give you longevity with resistance training where you're focusing on feel and the pump, we highly suggest that you do some bodybuilding, style training and I firmly believe, regardless of what your goals are, that some components of that will benefit you, it'll benefit most people. And with that, Maps Aesthetic, this is our bodybuilding maps program, is 50% off. You can get that at mapsblack.com and the code for the discount is black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0, no space for the discount.