 Ladies, in today's episode, we're going to talk about how you can become a muscle mommy. Muscle mommy madness. That's right. Strong, muscular, fit, and healthy. That's what we're talking about in today's episode. I just learned that this term even existed the other day. It's making its rounds. I mean, you can just learn it a game from a caller and then, like, what, instantly we heard somebody else ask a question related to it within the same day? Yeah. This is what it's like to be middle-aged. Yeah. Is that? Like, we're a little behind. Terminology, you find out about it later, you know? Well, here's what I think is really neat about this, is that I think this is an example of what the changing of the tide or the shift in the culture of, I think, more and more women are understanding the value of having muscle and lifting weights. Previous decades, it was all about being lean and tone and skinny. Like, that was kind of... And muscle was something that you don't want because it makes you bulky or bigger. Yeah. It makes you look manly. And so I think that that is changing so much that you have terms like muscle mommy that are floating around now that are becoming popular, that you have, you know, women saying, hey, I do want muscle. I want to be muscular. I want to have great, strong arms and built legs and glutes. I think that's becoming more and more popular. It is. I want to say that the beginning of this trend, because, I mean, we trained people for a long time. I started training people over two and a half decades ago, and I've been preaching this. I know you guys did as well. I've been preaching this for a long time, and it was always an uphill battle. Yeah. But once the female clients started to see the results and feel it, then they were sold. Right? So it didn't take me long. It would typically take me 60 to 90 days, and then I'd have a disciple and they were like, okay, I see what you're talking about. Like my metabolism is faster. I look way better. I feel way better. It's just way easier than what I used to do. I don't have football traps like I thought. Yeah. This is way easier than what I used to do when I used to just try to sweat every calorie off and I had these super low calories. Now I'm eating more and I'm leaner and et cetera, et cetera. But I remember, I want to say that this trend started when CrossFit, female CrossFit athletes started to gain some traction on social media. I think so too. Because they were strong and fit. And this is before CrossFit got extreme. And a lot of women looked at those women and said, wait a minute. Like, that looks great. I want to look like that. What are they doing? And then these women are like, well, we're deadlifting. We're squatting. We're benching. We're overhead pressing. We're cleaning. Like we're doing these bodybuilder weightlifting, powerlifting movements. That's how we got these physiques. And a lot of women were like, huh, this is interesting. Yeah. It's empowering. And they're strong and doing explosive movements and are very athletic. And so there's definitely, there was an appeal in that direction besides just the physique, which I know was selling it a lot. Now, if you guys were to go back and recall those, because obviously communicating this today a bit easier because of the popularity of terms like this are coming around. But if you were to go back 15, 20 years ago when we were communicating this to your average female client, is there an order of operation or is there certain things you try and drill home first? Like when you think about communicating this information? Yeah. As a trainer, you guys know this. One of your jobs is to sell and be very effective at selling the ideas that you're trying to get your client to partake in. Because if you can't sell them, you don't have buy-in. They don't do it. And then forget it. So there were two celebrities that I would use because back in those days, when we were talking about the 90s, early 2000s, we didn't have a lot of female representation for strength training. It was bodybuilders. And nobody wants to look like a bodybuilder. These are women that do look like dudes in terms of muscularity. So I'm not going to use them as examples. But there was Sarah Connor from Terminator 2. Oh, yeah. I've used that one, yeah. Yeah, where she was doing the pull-ups. And a lot of women were like, wow, I want to look like that, right? G.I. Jane. G.I. Jane was the other one. Demi Moore. Where Demi Moore. And she looks really fit. Yeah, that happened. So I used those examples and I'd say, well, they lifted weights to look like that. And then I would sell it by saying, by talking about metabolism boosting and fat loss. And I'd say, look, you could try burning the calories off, an hour of cardio is going to burn like 300 calories. I could get your body to burn 300 calories a day on its own extra just by trying to build a little muscle, no problem. So imagine doing cardio every day, but you're not. How much easier is that's going to be? So that's how I would sell it. And then I would say, look, we are trying to build muscle. You're not going to wake up tomorrow with all kinds of muscle all over your body. So if we ever get to the point where you're like, that's enough sell, you tell me, and then we'll change your workout routine. And I knew, and that would sell them to try. And then they get the results and they'd feel it and they'd be like, oh, this is great. Let's just keep going. Yeah. Did you guys use similar strategies? Yeah. I think also I think sharing on what it does metabolically to them to add muscle, right? Because I don't care if you're male or female. Everybody likes the idea of being able to have a glass of wine or a little bit of dessert or have the Friday night dates and not feel like the food or alcohol sticks right to you. So I used to love to use that and explain the value of, man, if we really go on this muscle building journey and we actually add five to eight pounds of muscle on your frame, one, it's not going to look like that sounds like five to eight pounds of muscle distributed over your entire body is going to be very, very small amount that you'll even be able to tell a difference as far as like looking muscular. And what that will do for you metabolically and what that will do as far as your freedom with nutrition. I said, man, that in itself is so rewarding because I think a lot of both men and women can identify with that or relate to that feeling of, man, I just that one day I ate that and I woke up and stuck to me. If your calorie burning is tied to you having to move the second you stop all that movement, it's gone. So you go on vacation, you stop doing all that cardio, it's gone. And now you're eating more calories. You're going to gain more body fat if the calorie burning is not stuck to your movement, but rather the amount of metabolically active tissue that you have and, you know, your body's burning it on its own. Well, now you go on vacation. Okay, you're not doing some of your workouts, but the workouts don't burn many calories anyway. You've already got a fast metabolism. It takes a long time for you to lose muscle if you stop working out. So you go on vacation, enjoy yourself, you come back. Oftentimes you feel great because you needed the rest and you're shocked at the fact that you didn't gain any body fat. I also read something years ago, maybe Doug can look up and see what the number is today or not, but I remember being totally surprised by this number. I think it was like the average woman gains weight on like 1,700 calories. It was like a really low number. I remember reading that. I don't remember the exact number. I know it was under 2,000, so it was a low number. And so that's why I like just imagine that. Like you barely eat 1,700 or 2,000 calories you put on body fat. You go out to eat and you're screaming. Well, I mean, that was a commonality with most of my female clients is just they were always running a deficit. It was just like it was never a fed situation. So just to shift that a bit and then also focus more on strength training was such a drastic shift of what they've ever done. So it was like it didn't take long to kind of convince if they stuck with it. Again, you have to like sell it a lot and you got to kind of paint the picture for them to adhere to it. But it's like, man, almost immediately within a few weeks, they would see changes of their body. Yeah. And there's a couple of things to consider. One is muscles very dense. So it takes up roughly a little less than this, but roughly about a quarter of less space as an equal amount of body fat. So 10 pounds of muscle versus 10 pounds of body fat. If you were to lose 10 pounds of body fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle, you'd be smaller. You would lose close to about a quarter of the size. Okay. So you've lost inches, but you weigh the same. Like that's pretty amazing. Today's giveaway maps anabolic. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel and then turn on your notifications. If you do all those things and you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Also, because this program is talking about ways you could become a muscle mommy. Here's what we did. We took some of our best muscle building programs and made them 50% off for this episode only. Check this out. Maps anabolic, maps strong, maps power lift, 50% off. Limited time. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, click on one of those programs, and then use the code MM50. So MM50 for that discount. All right. Here comes the show. You mentioned it was empowering. There's two factors here or two components of what make this so empowering. The first one is women oftentimes because of how they've been conditioned, because of the way that fitness has been communicated in the wrong way, they're constantly trying to eat as little as they can. It's always a thing. It's always a thing. Oh, my God, I ate too much. Oh, my God, I ate less. And, you know, I should feel hungry all the time. It's this thing that they have to go through and they have to deal with, right? Well, how empowering is it that you can eat when you're hungry and not gain body fat because your metabolism is fast? Yep. So there's that. Then there's also this. How many times did you have a female client who never strength-trained, watched their strength go up and then come to you and tell you, I feel independent and empowered. Like this feels good. I had a female client. I'll never forget she was an executive at a tech company, never lifted weights. All she ever did was group X classes in yoga. I convinced her to lift, to do strength training. She came back from a business trip. She used to travel to China all the time. She was tiny. She was like 5'1". And she comes back from her trip and she's like, Sal, she goes, this doesn't sound like a big deal to you, but to me this is a big deal. She's like, I travel all the time. For the first time, and I don't know how long, I put my bag in the overhead compartment of the plane. She goes, I travel alone for business. I always have to ask a guy to help me on the plane, a random person. She's like, I don't have to ask anybody anymore. Do you understand how great that feels? How empowered I feel? Well, that's what it feels like when you get strong. Yeah. And that's the strength training provides. You're just more able. So let's define this term muscle mommy. We went on social media. We looked it up. What do people say? What does this mean? Basically, it's a woman that's not afraid of building muscle and strength. Someone who loves the bench press, deadlift, squat and overhead press. Those lifts by the way were specifically listed when I looked this up. Women who like to bench squat, deadlift. Oh, wow. Yeah, this is awesome. I definitely have seen it a lot in women's powerlifting movement as well. Yes. These are women that are strong, fit. And here's my favorite part, healthy. So what does that mean? They're definitely lean, but they're not like emaciated or so lean that they lost their period or the hormones are off or they look terrible. These women are fit, strong, healthy and lean. And this is what they're talking about when they say muscle mommy. So that's pretty awesome. This is an awesome movement. Now, I hope it doesn't get distorted and crazy like many fitness movements do. But as of right now, we're totally support of this. So the first go-to move for me was and still is to this day is to introduce lifting heavy. That's it. For a year, for decades, women have been marketed to that, you know, lightweight, lots of reps, circuit training, curves, bullshit, heart rate, body pump classes, turbo kickboxing. I mean, this has been the cornerstone of how to attract women into the health and fitness space. And it's a bunch of bullshit, first of all. And one of the best things that you can do to start to shape and sculpt their body and or speed metabolism up, burn body fat, all the things is to get them to start lifting heavy. And what I love that is that it almost always is so novel to that client that their body, before I even manipulate anything else, automatically just starts responding just from lifting heavy. Yeah, now this has its origins. The lightweight, the pink, purple dumbbells, the circuit training, the equipment that's marketed to women that tones but doesn't build type of deal. That has its roots in the marketing of the gym industry. So the gym industry, when it first started, there were gymnasiums. So these were people that like a lot of them were gymnasts. Then it evolved and became kind of these bodybuilder type havens. And at the time, the only known bodybuilders was people like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was like a bunch of guys. Women didn't go to gyms when they were first kind of emerging. They just didn't go. Why am I going to go there? I don't want to look like Arnold. I don't want to look like these big sweaty dudes. You know, that's not for me. So gyms, in order to become successful businesses, realized we got to like, we need to attract the other sex. We have to attract the largest consumer base. Most products, by the way, the consumer base that's the largest are women. Women are known as the consumers. If you want to build a successful business, you want to be able to attract them. So gyms are like, OK, how are we going to do this? We've been talking about how lifting weights makes you look big, veiny and scary. I know you can still lift weights. You just do it this way. Don't lift anything heavier than two pounds. Do 5,000 reps. Make it burn. Don't rest in between sets. That's what makes you big and bulky. You want to sweat. Burn. Oh, you feel the burn in your muscle? That's because you're burning body fat. That's not why muscles burn, by the way. It's almost so effective in not building big bulk muscles that you build no muscle. That's how effective that is. You build zero. I've talked about this before. The very first gym I worked in was an old 24 hour Nautilus. This is both, and then, you know, they had switched to 24 hour fitness, but it was an old club. I think it first opened, I want to say in 1983. They had a women's only area. Back in those days, that was one way that gyms attracted women. When I got this, you know that? I know. I just signed up with the new golds over. And they have it? Really. Oh, yeah. The new golds over in Gilroy has a women's only room. Wow. I was so surprised. Out of a gold gym, I was so surprised to see that. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's some market demand. Back in those days, it was a huge market demand. No way a woman would work out next to a bunch of gyms. There was none. All the chicks were out where everybody else was. I wonder if it's an old golds. I mean, no, because it's brand new. It's like completely weird. I mean, they might have converted like a different, like grocery store or something. And then they just left it like that. Maybe someone, maybe they bought an old gym and then just, yeah, maybe someone thought that was a good idea, but it was blown away to see that. And it's a trip. You guys get a chance to go there because it's a nice, it's actually a nice golds gym. But that room, I've only seen a couple of times, one or two people in there. And it's like a total waste of space. And then all the chicks are over in the, then they actually have a dedicated, which is really cool. Like a dedicated leg room, which is by the way, twice the size is the woman's little fitness room. Is this huge leg room that has got all the leg press squads, hamstring stuff that has four squat racks and platforms. Awesome. And all the girls are in there. Yeah. Cause they know now. Yeah. That's what's the thing. Boy, that has changed a lot. Oh, it has. That's why it's interesting to see. Cause I, so I used to work out at this 24 hour Nautilus as a kid in the mid nineties. And then when I got a job there as a personal trainer, I finally worked there. And back in those days, 24 hour Nautilus or fitness was open 24 hours, 24 hours, except for Friday, Saturdays and Sundays. It would close. So it was like midnight on Friday, 10 on Saturday and eight on Sunday, I believe. And so I was there closing the gym one day and I was like, Oh, I wonder what the women's, cause I never walked in the women's only workout area. I wonder what that looks like. And I walked in and I remember as a trainer, I was like, okay, there's dumbbells in here. The differences, these are coated in whatever that polyurethane, you know, vinyl purple materials, purple and pink. The machines were identical to the machines that were on the general area. The difference was the upholstery was pink or purple. So they were like, here's your female equipment. We changed the color for you. How condescending, right? And now you can work on this. And I remember being like, this is ridiculous. Now, of course they, you know, since remodeled and got rid of that, but that's, you know, how they marketed. And so for a long time, the myth was promoted that. And then of course you have female body builders who are genetic freaks. They make, they're like, they're 0.001% of women can even build muscle like that. And then they're on top, on top of that, they're on male hormones. So women look at that and that's evidence. Oh, that's what'll happen to me if I, so women were scared. The truth is this, you want to get the benefits of strength training, the sculpt, the firmness, the fast metabolism, the hormone benefits, the shape. You got to lift heavy weights. You got to work out like the bodybuilders do. You got to work out like the power lifters do. You got to lift heavy, lifting heavy. Your body tries to adapt to the stress. The reason why your body changes with exercise is what it's doing is it's trying to get better at what you're asking it to do. And the way that your body gets better at lifting heavy weights is by building more muscle. So if you want to see visible change, you have to embrace heavy lifting. Now I do want to say this, heavy is relative. I think sometimes people think heavy like, I'm going to hurt myself. No, no, no. That means you're lifting too heavy for yourself. Heavy is relative. Heavy basically means work out with a weight that is difficult for you to perform between five to let's say 15 reps. More than that, now it's not really heavy anymore. So five to 15 within that range and it's challenging with good technique and good form, that's heavy weight. That's what you want to focus on. Now how do you guys approach that? Because if you get somebody that has just done nothing but let's say like 15, 20 reps and they're always doing the high rep, like low amount of weight, it's a bit of a learning curve there to be able to now pick a weight and pick something that's going to, let's say you keep them around five reps and we go for low reps and it's very much like, it's going to take a while for them to understand that's a completely different intention going into that type of lifting because a lot of times they'll pick like similar, maybe a five pound heavier type of load and really it's a lot of coaching needs to happen. Yeah, great, great point and you just took me back to these moments of doing this and I'll tell you what I used to do. So, and because you're right, Justin, what you tell... They do seven pounds, you go, let's lift heavy, okay, I'll go to 10 or 12. Yeah, 10 or 12, they barely go up a little bit. So I actually, I'm telling them to add weight until they can't do five. I want you to keep putting weight on until you struggle to get four. So I want you to feel... Yeah, no, of course. And that's what we've defined failure before. So if you listen to the show long enough, failure is not you falling or collapsing or dropping the bar. It's the inability for you to complete the rep with perfect form. That's it. So as soon as there's any sort of breakdown in form and technique, you probably could squeeze out one or two or three more reps. But you don't. With battle, you don't. You stop there. But I'm encouraging my female client to keep adding weight until she finds a weight that she's struggling to get to five. Yes. And now you know what it feels like to really try and push a heavy load. That's exactly what I said. Otherwise, you're right. If you have them choose a weight that, okay, they were always working out the 15 to 20 reps. So they kind of know like, oh, this is what my shoulder press is. Oh, this is what my whatever is. Okay. Now my coach or trainer is telling me to do five reps. He goes, oh, they add like five pounds to it or whatever. When in reality, many times they can do like double the weight that they were doing for 15. Dude, you just brought me back. I had a family member like that. And I wasn't trainer. So I had to kind of coach her like just verbally. And I said, no, no, lift heavy. You got to lift heavy. And she comes back. I'm like, how was the workout? She's like, I was good. You know, I definitely went heavy. I'm like, so what did, what did you do? She goes, well, normally I do the five pound dumbbells for curls. I grabbed the seven pound dumbbells. I say, yeah, no. That's not, you just went from doing 30 reps to 28 reps. Like let's, we need to go a little heavier. So I tell, I'll advise people, if you're not used to this, do a set, add weight, do a set, add weight, do a set, add weight. You can do it incrementally. You could add five pounds at a time. But until you get to the point where like Adam says, it's like a struggle to get like five reps. And then I would also remind them that these numbers that we use this five, 10, 15 rep or their arbitrary numbers, like there's nothing wrong. If you chose a weight that you could only get three up. That's okay. Like, and so if I've got somebody who I'm trying to teach to lift heavy, ideally we're trying to find a weight that you struggle to get right to five. That's like a perfect guess. But the reality is, and this is both men and women, still to this day, I have this challenge. There's many times where I'm going into a set. I know it's a heavy lifting day. My goal is to get five out, but I only get three. It doesn't mean it's a worthless set. That's a great set, especially when the focus and the goal is to go heavy. So just because we say five by five or that we had the goal is to hit five reps, you, if you did, if you picked away and you're like on rep two and you realize, oh shit, this was a little more than I thought. I'm not gonna be able to get five. That's okay. Stop at three or four. There's nothing wrong with that. But now your mindset is in the area or the arena that I want it to be in, which is really struggling to get those five reps out. And that's what lifting heavy feels like. Well, here's another sort of a silly thing that I remember going through that whole process, picking weight and we're doing the same thing that you guys are kind of bringing up. But there was a moment where it was like, my client, she stopped and she was like, I feel like I'm making all these grimaces. Things are coming out like grunts. I'm like, yes, that is part of it. And that's why it's, honestly, it's kind of a deterrent. But then once you understand that to be able to brace and to keep your body tight, to be able to breathe through that, that all has to kind of work out where sometimes you might make a noise and that's totally okay. You're gonna make faces. Yeah, you're gonna make other faces. If you're not, you're also probably not going hard enough. Exactly. Yeah. By the way, this doesn't count if you don't rest in between sets. I gotta make sure I say that. So if you're lifting heavy, that means you do a set and you rest for like two minutes and then you do another set. If you do a bunch of exercises in a row, even if they're heavy with no rest, you've now turned your strength training into cardio. So it's a set, rest for two minutes or three minutes and then repeat it. That's how you build muscle. That's how you get what we're talking about. All right. The next point is the most challenging one for a lot of women who have never done this. You have to eat in a calorie surplus. You have to go in a bulk. I know I say the word bulk and it was like bulk. I don't want to look bulky. Now look, here's the deal. We could send the signal to build muscle all day long with heavy lifting. You could do it perfectly. If there's nothing to build the muscle with, it ain't gonna happen. Okay. So you could send the plans to build the house and they can be perfect and then you can have the workers ready to go and you can give them no bricks, no wood, no nails, no tools and you're gonna have no house. So in order to build muscle, in order to make this work, you have to eat a little bit more than is required to keep your body where it's at now. So that means you have to eat a little bit more and part of this is you have to eat a high protein diet. If you don't do those two things, building muscle is gonna be almost impossible. It's not impossible. This is the biggest challenge of all the tips around this episode and is almost always the reason why a client is following this protocol of lifting heavy because okay, I'm gonna trust this process or I believe the guys that told me or I believe the client or the coach that told me to do this and so they lift the heavy weight but then they don't see the results that we're talking about from it. It's almost always because of this. Yes. Because they're not getting enough protein or they're not eating any calories or plus but most often both. They're not eating enough calories for what they're burning and what they're doing. In addition to that, they're also not hitting enough protein intake on a consistent basis day in and day out and it is, it's difficult to overcome that hurdle because there is a little bit of this awkward phase of when you first start this which is the initial increase of calories and protein with the lifting heavy does cause this, oh, my pants are fitting a little bit tighter and then that's where the mind fuck comes and that's where the bail out comes to it's just like, okay, I was trusting the process with the coach all the way up into that point as soon as my pants got tight to fit or my shirt didn't feel right you freak out and go the other direction and you've got to trust the process you've got to understand that you've increased calories a lot of times both carbs came with that sodium came with that water probably up a little bit so you're gonna be retaining a little bit of water which by the way comes right out of you within 72 hours so it's not a big deal we can go the other direction really easy and right now this is part of that process of starting to build that muscle and build that metabolism you've got to be okay with getting through that mental hurdle also, you know, 70% of a muscle if you look at a muscle 70% of it is fluid it is 70% of it is non muscle fiber fluid and structures in the muscle if you increase your calories so that you're eating a little bit more calories and you're burning so now you have enough, you have something left to build with and you're trying to build muscle your muscles are like sponges and they will absorb and hold a little bit more fluid this is not the same as bloat I want to be clear bloat is water outside the muscle it's water that makes you look smooth and puffy water inside a muscle makes the muscle look more full more defined more round more defined more toned right more firm that's what happens so you might put your pants on and this is another thing working against women this clothing is not designed for women with muscle at all so now you put your jeans on and your thighs feel tighter because why your quads built a little bit and they lifted your jeans feel tighter up near the butt area why your butt just lifted and got a little bit rounder so it's not the waist by the way pay attention to the waist you'll notice that hasn't changed right your shirt all of a sudden might feel tighter in the shoulders why your posture just got better muscles are a little fuller don't worry you're not just big broad shoulder person so that's a very very good point yeah and this is what I mean and the next point we get into that we tend to tell clients that we are doing this with is to throw away the scale and this is where I too I tell them to be objective take a picture of yourself and your bikini front side back check it right now the end of the month check it again the end of the next month check it again and be honest with yourself the way you look don't go off of a scale thing don't freak out if you've noticed your pants or your shirt you're sculpting you're changing your body so you're not going to fit in those same skinny jeans when you had muscle on your body anymore so don't use that as a unit of measure of success in your progress be honest with yourself and take a look or use somebody else who is not going to be judging you the same way ask a boyfriend a husband a girlfriend and be like hey do you think I'm making improvements here I guarantee they're going to tell you yes you look better real quick with the bulk high protein is about a gram of protein per pound of body weight so when I say high protein that's what I'm talking about that you added an egg to breakfast or you put cheese on your sandwich now it's a decent amount of protein it's pretty hard to hit but the scale tip is huge because the scale just tells you total mass it doesn't tell you it's not the whole story what it's made up of you could cut your leg off and then you've lost weight is that good are you happy that you lost 15 pounds no you lost your leg right muscle looks very different than body fat a 30 pound 30% body fat female who let's say is 5'4 looks very different than a 5'4, 130 pound female at 19% body fat they would weigh the same exact on the scale but if you looked at them they did not they don't look the same at all in fact most people who have no idea about fitness and muscle would look at the lean woman and guess that she weighs probably 100 pounds I used to do this to sell gym memberships I've told the story at least 100 times the podcast going to tell it again just in case someone hasn't heard it but I used to have a female trainer that used to work for me and I used to use her to sell memberships you know who she is, Homera and she was this really fit sculpted strong trainer and she was tiny she was I think like 5'2 but she weighed a lot more than she looked because she had muscle and I would have these women that would come and tour the gym and I'd show them the weights and I'd talk do the spiel and they'd be like no no no I don't want to lift weights, I don't want to get big and then I'd do this challenge to them it was kind of a sneaky way of getting them to buy a membership and I'd say look I'll tell you what I'm going to bring in one of my female trainers if you could guess within 7 pounds I think it was or 10 pounds of her body weight I'll give you a free membership for a month but if you can't then I want you to take what I'm saying I want you to consider what I'm saying seriously and she would walk 5'2 lean as hell 90 pounds 100 pounds like stand on the scale 130 pounds and they would blow them away they'd be like what's wrong with the scale I'd say go ahead and stand on the scale test it out and they'd be like and I'd say muscle is dense doesn't take up a lot of space it looks lean it looks sculpted and then I would love that my favorite part would I ask the trainer what should we eat in a regular you know on a daily basis and it would blow the personal way by the amount of food that this little girl would eat and I'd be like she's got a fast metabolism that's what can happen so the scale lies now it tells you something but it doesn't tell you everything if you're triggered by weight you're triggered by gaining weight you're always on a diet you're always trying to lose weight you're scared to lift weights you don't want to get bigger take the scale throw it away or put it in the closet promise yourself I will not weigh myself for an entire 30 days and I'm going to trust the process and then you know watch what happens yeah I mean ideally you focus just purely on strength and like improving in the gym however you know some people are still going to want to have some tangible metrics around that and so this is where like if you want to be simplistic with this and I actually like Doug does this a lot where he does a circumference measurement just around the waist or something very simple like that where you don't want to gain any size right you don't want to see an increase there the waist is a good place but everywhere else too I mean if you want to see trends and see how your training is affecting your muscle growth you know like you want to see like how your body is sort of changing and morphing I do like circumference measurements for that circumference measures body fat test I actually think if I I mean if I was to be training clients today still and were to start like my business all over again I don't think I'd probably use the scale at all when I think about I stopped using it in the back half of my career it's such a terrible way I know this episode is geared towards women in general but even for men it's just not a good measure of progress because it can be very deceiving on if you're moving in the right direction just because you want to lose fat on your body seeing the scale going down is not necessarily a good thing you know and seeing it go up is not necessarily a bad thing you know so it has a lot to do with your body composition and what is changing to illustrate that point Adam I'm going to make a point that's going to trip people out but it's 100% true if you are listening to this right now and you lost no body fat but you gained 10 pounds of muscle so literally all you did was gain 10 pounds of lean body mass no body fat loss whatsoever you have now become leaner as a percentage of body fat your body fat percentage which is what matters went down why because it is now a smaller percentage of your total body weight and it will look that way too so what do I mean by that a 200 pound man with 20 pounds of body fat same amount of body fat is 20% body fat so it's a smaller person same number of body fat bigger person same number of body fat smaller percentage so if you just gain muscle you get leaner and this is why you know you guys had this too female clients would come to you after you put them on a calorie surplus having them lift weights 60 days later they come to you and they go my coworkers are asking me how much weight I've lost people think I lost 10 pounds I tell them I gained 2 pounds or I lost no weight on the scale why does everybody think I lost weight you look leaner because you are leaner you're just not lighter alright the next one is you're probably looking okay you're listening to us talk alright what's a good workout here's a good rule of thumb avoid workouts that are marketed or geared towards women or girls workouts geared for women workouts that are like burn this and sculpt that and power button whatever garbage they're almost all garbage not all of them but almost all of them are garbage almost all of them take strength training and water it down to such a point when they become completely useless so if you buy a workout and it's wrapped in pink or whatever and it says it's for girls or for women it's usually crap it's usually a crappy workout I mean this is I think unpacking that so people understand this this is marketing in general yeah it doesn't even we don't need to be talking about workouts for women we can be talking about anything is you know marketing is geared towards our insecurities to poke at the things that we're uneducated uninformed about that we're insecure about and to to provide a quick fast easy cheap solution right that's what we're all attracted to so you have to be aware of that's what if it hits you in your Instagram feed or your Facebook feed or gets email marketed to you or whatever jumps out in some 15 second promo video that this is what's going to do that whatever workouts designed for women is the corset and sweat butter is exactly they are they are totally marketing to our insecurities you have to understand that and and almost anything worth working for fighting for is hard it takes time it takes effort it's not easy it's not going to happen overnight or in 30 days and this is the best approach to do that which is strength training slowly building muscle that's all that stuff takes time I used to tell so I had this one woman I trained whose daughter was in college and wanted to work out saw her mom's results which came to visit and she said my daughter is looking for good workouts like online whatever like do you have any recommendations I said tell her that the most hardcore for men better are going to give her the best results so I said tell her find power lifting workouts or tell her find strength workouts for like for male bodybuilders like what she's going to look like a guy I said no no it's just those are well written the ones that are written for women is all about marketing and they do a lot of what we talked about the you know 70 reps light weight exercises that aren't effective you know that aren't effective that kind of stuff alright last this is a extremely important factor with your workouts which is prioritize strength if you're getting stronger you're moving in the right direction hands down bottom line if you're lifting more weight for the same reps or you're doing more reps with the same weight you're moving in the right direction prioritize strength in fact if you want to look like a muscle mommy stop trying to look like a muscle mommy and just try to get stronger and you'll look like a muscle mommy so this is to me the best metric to use right like and I like the one around the waist not a bad one even though even then because that can fluctuate up and down with water retention their period things like that I don't know even a huge fan of even that I would rather go let's measure and make sure we're getting stronger let's check that picture every month and that's it and just trust the process and are you being are you able to eat more there's another one they tend to notice right if you put a lot of appetites up eating more yes you if you put a lot of effort and getting stronger and you are getting stronger you'll start to see like your appetite increase and your ability to eat more calories than what you were before so focusing on getting a stronger to me is the single best metric that we can focus on when we're trying to do now people always ask for what is considered strong what is a good typical metric in terms of strength now it's very individual so I'm going to give a general answer this does not apply to everybody okay so if you can't hit this doesn't mean you're not doing great if you're getting stronger you're getting stronger it's awesome and you might surpass a lot of women will surpass these numbers that I'm gonna say but here's some general metrics that the average woman I would say who's in relatively decent health no major injuries who's working out consistently and following a good workout can aim for half of your body weight in bench press on a bench press so whatever you weigh if you weigh 140 pounds 70 pounds on the bench press okay so half your body weight the bench press you want to be able to squat your body weight so whatever you weigh can you do a full one rep squat of that and then can you do about one and a quarter times your weight in the deadlift so if you weigh 100 pounds 125 pound deadlift those are good general metrics that I would say most women in good health you know all things being equal could probably aim for and attain and if you hit those numbers you're doing damn good you're doing pretty damn good now I can think of off the top of my head three programs that I find myself recommending to a female client that wants to do this what I would like us to do is and that would be anabolic power lift and strong or would be my go-to three now depending on who I'm talking to would dictate that and this is my opinion I like to hear what you guys think so if I have someone that's you know relatively new to lifting and this is like the first like real structured program to them and building them a thousand building strength I'm going to go the anabolic route that's like that's kind of the go-to first thing if you're somebody who's been consistently lifting been lifting for a relatively good amount of time you've just never focused purely on strength I would love to do something like power lift if you're somebody who has been lifting a lot for a very long time and you're relatively strong and you have and maybe even already kind of been squatting deadlift do some of those movements but have never done a straight just a strength based program I like strong because of all the unconventional things that are in there it's going to be challenge throw a curve ball at the advanced lifter that's kind of how I 100% agree now I will say this if you're relatively healthy no joint issues and you can do basic strength training exercises with decent technique with lightweight or whatever you're not going to go wrong with any of these programs really not maps anabolic map strong or maps power lift you can't go wrong but what Adam said is much more specific and I agree 100% so what we're going to do is this because we're talking about building muscle we're doing the muscle mommy thing you mentioned those three programs all of them right now for this episode 50% off half off the normal price so if you're interested in doing any of those and they come with everything exercises sets reps exercise demos just follow them as they're laid out if you're interested you go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code on any of those programs for half off mm50 so mm50 we'll give you half off maps anabolic or maps strong or mass power lift or you can go back and get all three 50% off with that code it's muscle mommy madness look you can find all of us on Instagram Justin is at mind pump Justin I'm at mind pump to Stefano and Adam is at mind pump Adam