 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about the four most important ways you can change your workouts for maximum results. Now, you may be thinking, oh, you mean like change my rep range or change my sets or whatever? Yes, but no. What we're talking about is changing your goals. Why you should routinely change your goals and then work backwards from there. In other words, if your goal is correctional exercise, which should be one of your goals throughout the year, how do I accomplish that? So we go over four of them. I said correctional. That's one of them. Then we talk about strength, why you should focus on just building strength, what that looks like. Then we talk about athletic performance, why you should focus on building and working on your overall athletic functional performance and the benefits of that and what that looks like. Then we talked about bodybuilding or body sculpting type training, what that looks like and why everybody should spend at least some time focused on just that goal. Now, as we're releasing this episode, it is Black Friday sales. They start right now. And if you like this episode, by the way, we have multiple maps programs that will actually help you accomplish all of these goals. Progress takes planning cell. Now we have bundles that take bunch of maps programs, put them together. You don't have to do anything. You just follow the programs themselves. The goals change and the workouts change. Bundles are already discounted on their own. Many of them already over 35% off retail, but we're going to take an additional 25% off with Black Friday. Just use the code BFBundles. Now all individual maps programs, guides, mods, everything except for maps power lift. Everything else is 50% off. Use the code Black Friday. That's B-L-A-C-K Friday, 5-0, no space. And you can get all of them at mapsfitnessproducts.com. One more time. The codes are for 50% off all maps programs except for maps power lift, guides and mods. The code is Black Friday 50. That's the number 50 without a space. And for 25% off all of our bundles where we take multiple maps programs, put them together. It's BFBundles. I get questions like this all the time about the importance of changing your routine up and like how important is that to get results or reach your goal. And I thought if we did an episode along those lines, I think it would be a valuable episode. I don't think we've ever done anything that is specific to that topic. I think if there's there's several things that prevent people from getting to the goals. Now there's the obvious which is inconsistency. Like I'm not working out. So besides that, the next most common reason why people don't progress is that they follow a program. It starts, it works, then it stops working and they don't know what to do from there. They just don't know what to do from there. And I used to see this in gyms all the time. You know, when you manage gyms for a long time, you have your people that come in and out that buy memberships, use it for a few months or whatever, and then you don't see them again. But then you have the people that are the regulars that show up all the time. And you could divide those people into two categories. The ones that seem to get great results all the time and the ones that seem to just plateau, this constant state of plateau, just serious creatures of habit. Yes. And you watch the routine. You guys, you ever do this? You'd see their routine. It would be the same thing. Oh, there's John. He's gonna go. Always on the stair master. And then as you go over here and then you can pretty much predict exactly where it'd be. Well, yes. And I think there's a, that's, that's one end of the spectrum, right? The extreme, you know, John, who's been coming for 20 years and he does the exact same five exercises and he's done for 20 years, or like, you know, clients of mine that's been following the same John, Jane Fonda video for 30 years of her life or whatever. Those are the extreme. But I think a lot of people fall somewhere on that spectrum, including myself. Like when I think back to even, even in my early days of as a personal trainer, I would gravitate towards my favorite exercises and, you know, and, you know, drop into my favorite rep ranges. And the tempo that I trained at was fairly similar and the goals that I was trying to chase were very similar all the time. So I actually think that more people than you think fall into this, this trap of not understanding the importance of transitioning out. And what I wanted to do was to, to simplify it for the audience is to, you know, think of like four major ways for people to change their workout for, for maximum. Right. Now this message has been getting out, right? People are kind of understanding that they need to change things up. But the problem is they're the way that they approach it. So they think, and there's some value to this, right? They think if I just change the exercises, I've changed my workout and now I'm going to continue to progress. Well, if you really want long term success and you want maximal success, you want to really get the most return for your effort, you want to work backwards. So rather than looking and saying, I'm just going to change the exercise, look at it this way. I'm going to change my goal. If I change my goal, now I work backwards from there. So then you plan your workout based on your goal. Now you're making real changes. Now your bodies really gets the, the signals that are going to get it to consistently progress and change. So rather than going to the gym and just saying, instead of squats today, I'm doing leg press, rather than doing that, I'm saying instead of my goal being, you know, strength, my goal is going to be athletic performance, or instead of, you know, it being about, you know, bodybuilding, my goal is going to be about correcting my, my movement patterns. Then you work backwards from there. That's the way, and by the way, that's the way good trainers write up workouts. They don't write up workouts just to change things. You know, if I'm training clients and I've trained some of them for four months and their bodies started to plateau, I don't just change things up. I say, okay, we've been focused on this goal for four months. Now we're going to switch to this goal and then I work from there and design the workout. That's the real value personal trainers provide because they're the ones responsible for taking you on a completely different path. And a lot of times people will be very resistant towards that on their own because it is so comfortable. It's, you might try something new, but you want to immediately fall back into a routine that, you know, feels good. And I'll give you an example. I, you know, Adam for years was just focused on, on bodybuilding. Any changed exercises and changed routines, but really when you really saw the most change in how your body operated and moved and all that stuff was when you went from bodybuilding to mobility or from mobility to strength, it's changing the goal. That's the big thing. So the one thing that I, I hope people take from this episode is that right there. And I think we should break that down. Yeah. And the most important thing too is that when you change your goal, it doesn't necessarily mean you're still not pursuing your main goal. I think that's important. All right. Right. Cause like, for example, somebody who like myself who was training to look a certain way on stage and I cared about the way my body looks. So that's my main goal. That doesn't mean that when I switched to mobility or athletic performance or I switched to strength training, that now I don't get to go towards my overall original big goal. And I think that's the mistake that people make. We see this and why I think we get these camps and training like, oh, I'm a powerlifter. Oh, I'm an athlete. So I train this way. Oh, I'm a, you know, I'm a body builder. So I train this way. But the reality of it is, you know, for anybody, no matter what your pursuit is, to get the maximum benefits from your weight training routine, you want to shift your goals around. There's a way to blend all those attributes towards that goal. And, you know, there's definitely a percentage where, you know, whatever you're going towards is going to make up the majority. But these other pursuits have a magical way of, you know, progressing you beyond what you could have done just doing the same thing. Think of it this way, right? So your, let's say your goal is maximal hypertrophy. All you care about is bodybuilding. Well, you're, at some point, you're going to hit your rev limiter. You're going to be max out how much you can squeeze out of your muscle building routine. Now, let's say you switch to a powerlifting strength type routine or an athletic performance type routine. You're not going to push the rev, you know, you're not going to move the revs up like you were with the bodybuilding. But what you are going to do, because you've changed your goal, is you're going to change the limit, the rev limiter. I'm expanding the ability for me now to rev even higher. Then when I go back to bodybuilding, now I have a higher, I have a better capacity. So if somebody, for another example, if you're just bodybuilding, just bodybuilding, just bodybuilding, you're going to get a great deal of results for bodybuilding. But at some point, you're going to start to hit a limit. Now if you switch to, let's say, mobility training, are you going to, at that moment, build more muscle? No, but you've expanded your capacity now for when you go back to bodybuilding to build more muscle. So they all do contribute to each other. And if you're looking for continual perpetual progress, that's what you want to do, is you want to change your goals and you want to do it in a systematic way. So I want to start with the one that I think is probably neglected the most, which is ironic to me, because all of our years of personal training, I know for sure, because you guys were great trainers, that your first training session was centered around this point that I think too many people neglect. And I think that the point that I'm going to make is something that either one, you should live in this goal for a while if needed. But at the bare minimum, everybody should visit this goal so they understand how they should get their body ready before they go into any other training program. And that is addressing correctional stuff. Totally. Yes. And because I don't care how athletic you are, how strong, how buff, how great you look, everybody has imbalances and everybody has work to be done in this area. Now, some clients, and especially my clients in advanced age, and that neglected training or had multiple surgeries or chronic back pain, a lot of these clients would live in this type of phase or this would be their goal is to address all of these issues and stay in this type of. Well, because they had decades of bad movement patterns. I mean, that just didn't happen overnight. And so I think a lot of times, you know, people don't want to admit like, you know, what they're dealing with really, they should really just focus in on, you know, correcting this. This is something that they can, you know, make a lot of progress with if they're willing to go through that journey and really focus in on that specific part of the training. The correctional exercise, when you make correctional exercise, you're a goal, what you're really trying to do is you're trying to build a solid, more capable structure so that when you move into strength or bodybuilding or athletic performance or any other goal, that structure is solid enough for you to squeeze out the most out of these, those other phases, the most out of if you want to build maximal strength. So again, if I'm, if I want to build maximal strength in my squat and my body's mobility, my body's movement patterns allow me to squeeze out, let's say 100, being a target 100, let's say 100 points, correctional exercise may move that capability up to 150. Then when I go to strength to build maximal strength, I don't stop at 100 because your body will prevent you from progressing if it believes you're going to hurt yourself. In fact, the best athletes in the world, the best strength athletes in the world, are able to, to max out what their body's full capability actually is. The untrained individual, your body doesn't let you really reach in and get, and get all of your strength. It's trying to protect itself. So correctional exercise is setting up that structure. And for some people, it may not be as fun, I'm not in the gym, I'm not bodybuilding, I'm not pushing heavy weight, but when you do get to the point when you start to push heavy weight and you start to bodybuild or whatever, because your capability is so much higher, because your structure and your movement patterns are so much better, oh you're going to blow the doors off of what your potential was before. So correctional exercise really is about expanding upon your potential. That's really what it's all about. So before I go in and squat heavy, I want to make sure that I have the best movement pattern for my squat. Because the best movement pattern for my squat is going to give you the most potential for building muscle and building strength. This is true for all exercises and all physical pursuits. Correctional exercise, and this is why I said we got to work backwards, it's not just about doing correctional exercise movements, although that's a big part of it. There are exercises that are specifically most appropriate, I would say for correctional exercise purposes. But that's not the only way that you approach correctional exercise. Really it's an attitude. When I go into train to correct movement patterns, that's what I'm focused on. I'm not necessarily focused on the weight that I'm moving, the pump, you know, sculpting and shaping my body. I am trying to solidify the best movement patterns. So my attitude when I go to the gym is totally different. The weight is arbitrary that I'm using. It really doesn't matter. I'm using a weight that's allowing me to challenge myself, but allowing me to get perfect form. Anything over that is too much, anything under that, not really challenging myself. I'm also, the intention is extremely important. There's some correctional exercise movements where if you're looking at me doing them, you can't even tell what I'm doing. You can tell I'm struggling, but you don't really know what are you activating? What are you pushing? I can see that you're straining. It's all about the intention. I'm trying to solidify and create this movement pattern to connect to these muscles in different ways so that when I do go through other goals, I just have much better results. And going through this process is so important because you really get to understand your body on a higher level. And you specifically, your individual needs, how you tend to want to compensate, how your body tends to react to certain intensities and forces. That's important because even as you progress, you still need to come back and revisit these things because there's the potential where we add more load, we add more stress to the body. Inevitably, your body's going to react. So now, coming back to some of these rituals that you learn how to establish as beneficial movement patterns for yourself is so important. Well, the beauty of it is, it may seem daunting or boring at first when you have a goal like this. Like, oh, my trainer told me I've got forward head and rounded shoulders and my heels rise when I squat. I have terrible ankle mobility. The next five weeks, that's what I've got to focus on. Yeah, right. So for the next five weeks, I'm focusing on all these exercises to address that. Now, that's why I think a lot of people don't do it because it's not sexy. It can seem laborious, but the beauty of it is when you actually focus on it like a goal and you take it seriously, you'll see progression relatively quick when you put the work in and you'll feel a difference, especially somebody that has chronic pain, you have knee pain, you have back pain, you have neck pain, shoulder pain, and you start to address these correctional exercises or these movements, you'll start to see that get better. Now, what's beautiful about that is now you've kind of figured out like, okay, this is because we're all so different, right? Whether you sit at a computer desk or you're a teacher and you're riding on a whiteboard all day long or you're on your phone or computer, like all these things are going to shape the body based off of you individually. To Justin's point, that's what's so important about setting this as a goal is so you can figure out, okay, what is it that my body needs? Now, once you would figure that out, once you've set a goal out, you've worked towards it for, you know, say five weeks like Sal saying, then I know what I just kind of need to implement. And so, and I'll use myself as example with those that have been listening or following my journey for the last five to six years, you know, I was able to get up on stage at 3% body fat, present my physique, and it looked really good to the, you know, to the average person or judges. But the reality of it was, I had chronic back pain, I had bursitis in my hips, and I was very limited on my squat depth because I wasn't addressing these things. Now, I had to regress, let go of, you know, I was squatting four hundred something pounds, and oh, you know, it feels good to stack all that weight on there. That didn't matter, like what Sal was saying earlier. Now, it was about, I need to improve these movements, and I need to do things like the combat stretch and work on my 90-90, and I, but I, I, I knew that I needed to set that as a goal in order for me to really take it seriously and put the work in. Now, what's beautiful is, I don't have to spend that same time anymore. As long as I get down in my, you know, the, the squat and scroll position that people always see me, what that's, what's great about that is that, that position promotes good hip mobility, promotes good ankle mobility, which it took me, you know, months to getting there by doing all these, these correctional type exercises together. But now that I'm there, all I have to do is promote a movement like that, and it keeps me mobile. And so think, well think about this way. It's like, you know, you want to be a fast swimmer. Well, you got to focus on your technique before you get in the pool and just swim as hard as you can. You're going to spend a lot of time on getting the best perfect swim technique before you get in there and flail your arms and legs as hard and as fast as you can. Now, similarly to what Adam's talking about, when you're a beginner, if you're getting started, you're going to have to spend, you should spend some, some time dedicated specifically to this. Specifically to correctional exercise, like six weeks or nine weeks or 12 weeks, depending on how bad, how much of a beginner you are and how bad your, your movement patterns are. Specifically designed, you know, right targeting correctional exercise and movements. Now, when you're advanced, you know, do advanced swimmers need to focus on their swim technique? Yeah. Now they don't need to spend weeks just on swim technique like they would with the beginner, but every once in a while they revisit their technique and perfect it. This is true for any athlete, boxers, baseball players, whatever. Before you get up to the plate and swing as hard as you can, you got to learn the technique of swinging the bat. Correctional exercise is that. And so most people listening, if, especially if you're a beginner, you should spend an entire phase, an entire, that should be your goal for at least a couple months before you move into anything else. Now if you're intermediate or advanced, this is something you can inject while you're focusing on other goals. This is something that you touch up on while you're doing other things. Now the characteristics of correctional exercise, this correctional exercise movements, which tend to be different than your traditional muscle building, strength building type movements. Things like the 90 90 or the combat stretch or lizard with rotation, these aren't traditionally muscle building, strength building movements, but they are good for correctional exercise purposes. So there's one characteristic. Another characteristic is the intention. I can turn most, many, many exercises into correctional exercise movement. So a squat can be a very effective strength or muscle building exercise, or I can go really, really light and just perfect and practice the movement and focus on correct movement and pushing my knees into certain positions and working on my ankle mobility or sitting at the bottom of the squat with the bar without any weight. So the intention is another part of it. Here's another characteristic, frequency. The, of all the goals that you can, you can focus on with with your workouts, correctional exercise benefits the most from frequency, more than the others. So what I mean by that is like if I'm training for, you know, maximal strength, I may strength train for a few days a week on a particular exercise or body part or whatever. When it comes to correctional exercise, two or three times a day is best. Now this means, this doesn't mean you're doing two or three you know, hours a day. Correctional exercise is also characterized by shorter periods of time being spent. Now why? They're also less intense. This is why I, I tell people that to set this as a goal to go through it, because what you'll find out when you, when you go through like a program that's like correctional based, is you're going to see that, and this is where it's so unique to everybody, is you're going to see that there's certain moves that really make a difference for you. Somebody else may do something like, you know, the the lizard with rotation or the 90-90 and they've got incredible hip mobility and so they don't, they don't see major, but boy their, their ankle mobility is extremely limited. So when they do the combat stretch, boy that's really tough for them. So you start to find the, these movements that you really need to incorporate and then those, you'll pick a handful of those at most, right? I normally only recommend, yeah, two to four of these movements that, to focus on at a time and, and I, and I encourage the frequency all day long. That, that means five minutes. Yeah, five to ten minutes. Five minutes. Get down, do the combat stretch. You know, go about your day. You know, hours later. Get down, do the combat stretch. Spend five minutes. Get out of it. You know what I'm saying? It does not need to be this workout session and like to what you were saying, Sal, it's so true. The, the frequency is, is so much more important when we're talking about correctional because you're probably doing things in your day that are countering that signal. So you need to put that extra frequency. It's, it's, it's about changing recruitment patterns. So frequency is super important. So daily or several times a day, short periods of time and the intensity needs to be moderate. Now why would, why would the, the duration need to be short and the intensity be moderate? Well, I'll, I'll explain. If you push the intensity too hard or you go too long, you are going to move the old way. You're gonna, your body's going to move the way that it moves best, the way that it always moves. So you're no longer going to be working on a new movement pattern. You'll just be strengthening the old one. So you can't go in the gym and hammer correctional exercise like you can when you're building muscle or working on speed or building strength. The goal is to practice the movement. You want to have enough intensity to challenge the body so that it creates these new movement patterns, but not so much that you can't do it properly anymore. So again, like if you're practicing technique in the pool, if you don't know how to swim, you're going to have to practice the technique in the pool real slow. If someone's gonna go, tells you to go as fast as you can, techniques out the window and you'll just be practicing shitty technique and then you'll get good as shitty technique. So characteristic or correctional exercise, short, frequent workouts focused on correctional exercise, for beginners it should be weeks long that you're focused on just this. While you stay active during your regular day, you can do walks and cardio and that kind of stuff, you're still going to build a little bit of muscle, you're going to be burning a little bit of calories, so it's not like you're going to get out of shape or anything like that, but boy you're going to set yourself up beautifully for the other goal. And I think too, like going through that process, like you do need to be exposed to a lot of different correctional like mobility exercises to help to refine it down to the biggest movers for you individually. Which ones are benefiting the most dysfunction that you have and how can I come back to these and keep revisiting these. So to Adam's point, like two to three exercises that I've identified as these are the ones that I'm going to keep in my back pocket continuously. Just like I'm brushing my teeth, this is something that I'm going to kind of incorporate as a ritual from here on out. Yeah and that's good. See the thing about correctional exercise, once you do it and you do a good job of it and you start to become more intermediate advanced, then you just inject it into the other goals, whatever goal you may be doing, and you probably don't need to, unless you encounter a problem, you don't need to devote weeks to just correctional exercise. That's typically something for beginners. That's why I wanted to start here because you don't need to be here forever. You need to understand the value and the importance of it for everybody and to spend some time in here to get to get those takeaways and then now you can move into something like your strength training, which we would consider the foundation of all pursuit. That's the definite, that's that one I made. I tried to make a heavy case for early on when I first created the first maps program, which was maps and a baller. Now I made it a big deal because I noticed something in the gyms. People were signing up to the gyms that I was managing and everybody wanted to change the way they looked. Everybody wanted to lose fat, everybody wanted to build muscle and when they did lift weights, which was not always and oftentimes men were more likely to do this than women, but when they did lift weights it was more focused around sculpting and bodybuilding and nobody, nobody was focused on the low rep strength training type of workouts that you'll see that are more characteristic of say powerlifting or strength athletes and this is too bad because maximal strength is the foundation physical pursuit. That is the one that contributes to all the others. I was guilty of this. I was guilty of this. This is something because I never identified as a powerlifter and even being a trainer as somebody who should know better for many years I was so focused on aesthetics that everything kind of matched. I was aesthetics and performance guys so my workouts would either be kind of performance like or they would be all based around bodybuilding looking. Never would I drop below six to eight reps. Why? I'm not going to be a powerlifter so why would I ever do this? No value for me. Yeah exactly. So I know if I know better and I was a trainer and I was guilty of this, I know there's a ton of people listening right now that do the same thing that because they don't identify with the modality they neglect it completely and it's why I always say on the show that the thing that's probably best for you is probably the thing that you're not doing and that was that for me. Oh boy everybody every year I don't care what your goal is okay. Everybody every year should schedule in a pure strength training phase and it should last minimum five weeks probably better off if you do it for about nine to 12 weeks that's just focused purely on strength just focused on strength and some of you can get away with even just a few weeks even just three weeks of pure strength training as your goal you'll get exceptional results. I used to love getting clients and this especially female clients who who had experience working out so they'd hire me and be like look I've been lifting weights for a long time I just want to take my workout to the next level. I'd like to buy you know 10 sessions from you which 10 sessions would have lasted us about three weeks maybe five weeks max if I trained him twice a week and I would look at the routine and inevitably every single time they would have this kind of classic you know body building type routine but cool you know we're going to focus on for the next four weeks I'm going to make you really strong and squatting deadlifting overhead pressing and benching and we're going to train like a power lifter and they would be like ah why I don't know I'm not going to be as lean what's going to happen is it no no let's see let's watch what happens. There's this crazy fear on them. Oh the results used to blow them away their strength of course their strength would go through the roof then their bodies would start to change and then here's the big one there's two big benefits to this one is when you're focused solely on strength you take your focus off of your body image you take your focus off of how you look and that's a good thing to do every once while it really is this is why I think everybody should do it at least at least a few weeks out of the year where you're just focused on how strong you are and not how you look and what this does is it gives you permission to eat a little bit more food it lets you relax a little bit on your body image you can focus more on your strength it's very empowering and then the the in terms of the results metabolism boosting oh boy if this is something you never spend time in do a few weeks in this watch what happens to your appetite that's your sign by the way you start focus you start training like this balances out your hormones oh boy the the messages I would get you know like I'm starving what the hell is going on that's a sign the metabolism is really kicking into high gear now the characteristics of strength based training now strength is a skill as much as it is your muscles contracting so you're going to do fewer exercises so you're not going to be doing a whole variety of different angles and exercises you want to pick the biggest bang for your buck movements and get good at it really really really good at them so that's one characteristic and you're picking the best exercises so the typically compound movement so I'm not in the gym trying to build maximal strength doing side laterals or cable curls it's going to be more like barbell squats barbell rows bench presses overhead presses lunges you know heavy pull-ups or pulldowns deadlifts you know that kind of stuff the reps are low like I said you're going to be training the one to five rep range the sets tend to be high because you're doing less exercises you're doing more sets per exercise so rather than you know doing you know nine sets of four different leg exercises I'm probably going to do two exercises or one I may only do nine sets of just squats the entire time and then the rest periods are much longer I'm trying to train for strength so I don't want any fatigue taking away from my maximal strength so I'm going to sit and rest as long as I need until I feel really really fresh like I can hit really heavy is two to three minutes for the average two to three minutes and I'm glad you said that because this is an area that you know how many clients and especially my female clients that gravitated towards the circuit type training how hard is this pattern to break for them you know how many times have you had a client saying like okay i'm ready yeah i'm ready for the next set it's like what do we do now right can I do something in between right yeah yeah the idea when you're focused on strength is to train strong you you want to be picking a weight that is is heavy for you that you want those two to three minutes rest well yeah I like this one right after because it still brings in that intent so the the intent that you have to bring in towards uh you know the corrective exercise is all about how you do everything and and you know then this is the the next follow-up because you know if we can get into a point where we get so focused on the feel and we're just trying to get through the workout and and you know the squeeze and all these types of things of the bodybuilding side of of training where you know this still really had like it's a skill at the end of the day this is a skill that we're developing uh to then build upon where we can then transition into more of the strength heavy strength training does a phenomenal as does an exceptional job of strengthening the the tendons and ligaments that connect to your muscles so you want your tendons and ligaments to be really really strong straight this is why strength training of course done properly and appropriately in the low rep range when it's done right is so beneficial to even people in advanced age I would have older clients that once I got them to this point of course it was always appropriate I would do this kind of training with them and they would just feel so solid in their own bodies it's also exceptional for strengthening bone because of the the sheer force the the tension that's on the bone with heavy weight you're going to strengthen your bones uh much more effectively than when you're doing higher rep type lifting which by the way also has value not we're all we're not making cases that what we're talking about these different goals have more value than other goals I think the case that we're making is that all these goals have value and almost regardless of what your ultimate goal is you're going to get value from going into the gym and doing a few weeks to a couple months of pure strength training well this one this one's extra special to me because this is uh you know we off air we talk a lot about how much this business has been serendipitous and one of the things uh I don't know if this would have ever happened had Sal not sent me over uh the the hype video and the maps anabolic programming uh and the conversation we had on Facebook way back when six years ago or more and it was at that point I'm gonna like it at what 11 years into my personal train 11 12 years into my personal training career and it literally took that long for me to have put this all together where I realized like wow almost all of my clients I needed to start in this phase because most of them came in with body image issues most of them were so attached to the scale and the way they looked most of them gravitated towards high intensity training circum-based training low rest periods hit type of training and like I'm talking about 90% of plus of my clients benefited from this type of training more than anything else and so I was at that point in my career where I was already realizing this like oh my god this is why isn't anybody why isn't not enough people talking about this and that was when you sent that over to me I remember going like oh my god this is the message that is not getting out to enough people to the to the general population the strength community I obviously understand right if you're in that and if you're a power lifter listening right now you're like what are you talking about I don't I've known that forever well yeah I'm not fucking talking to you you're like the one percent I'm talking about all the normal people that I had to train on a regular basis that strength training had got a bad rap or was just not popular and sexy and so people avoided this but what I knew was oh my god it was so valuable to clients and you know you you kind of went over real quick the point that I think is so important um because over 65 to 70 percent of my clientele or females most all of those uh clients were coming to me to lose uh weight and one of the hardest things the hurdles that I had to overcome to them overcome with them was getting them to focus on strength training letting them eat more calories giving them the freedom to go ahead and increase your calories and even though you're coming to me because you want to lose 30 pounds of fat I'm telling you don't worry if the scale goes up three or five pounds not a big deal and that is really really hard and I know that's really hard for a lot of people listening right now but I'm telling you right now that there's a majority of people that are listening that will greatly benefit with for that from that mental switch of saying hey I need to stop worrying about how I look I need to build some strength because even if the scale goes in the opposite direction then you want it to go oh you're setting yourself up oh yeah if you if you're your bench press and your squat and your deadlift and your overhead press you're lifting five more pounds 10 more pounds 15 more pounds than what you were previous weeks you're actually heading in the right direction of your goal oh there's massive mental hurdles to overcome you know in this in this type of training right away like you're telling me I can eat more calories gain a little bit of weight and also I should be resting in between sets you know a little bit long when I should be just jumping and running and burning all the shit off right like that's what I need to be doing in order to look a certain way and to be able to to get into that person's mind and and have them believe that they're building right now they're building something that is going to be way better for them you know long term than this short-term hustle of just burn yeah old school old school body builders knew this they would do powerlifting or strength training pure strength training phases because they knew when they hit the stage and they got lean their body just look different this type of training produces a very solid tight looking body it just really does it gives you this kind of hard granite look to your body so when you do get lean what you're going to reveal is is a different look because you've implemented some strength pure strength training into your year-long routine now like I said I think a majority that people are going to greatly benefit from this message right now there is a small percentage of you that are listening that are like oh I I'm already there I got it but here's the thing I'm going to say to you these people are going to greatly benefit from the next goal and focus because most people that I know that are focused heavily on strength and powerlifting neglect the athletic performance right the endurance the mobility and training this is for you PR chasers right so if you're somebody who gets the strength side really well I'm willing to bet that you're somebody who probably neglects this totally now everybody should spend some time during the year in well and all these these phases or all the goals that we're talking about today and this one being training for athletic performance now training for athletic performance uh this type of training makes you very functional so what does that mean well it means when you're out walking on the street and you step off a curb on accident and you got to catch yourself functional strength functional performance or you're walking with you I was you know a couple weekends ago I was watching my nephew he's two and a half years old and he has more energy than any kid I think I've ever met and I was going I was walking around with him downtown San Mateo and I'm holding his hand and he slips out of my hand and he's gone like his favorite thing to do is to take off and I got to chase him down so I and this is street is right over there so I had to like sprint to catch him that's functional ability that's just kind of strength that I can turn on whenever I want you're helping your friends move or you got to lift your couch to vacuum underneath it or you're moving a box or you're twisting in your car that's what that's what we mean by functional performance athletic type training increases the capacity of that so let's say you have all this strength because you've trained in a strength phase now athletic training train helps translate that into not just gym performance which is fine real world movement real world you know athletic type performance now athletic training also tends to work a lot on mobility now mobility is a component of correction or exercise but the difference with mobility is there's a little bit of an athletic component to it okay there's a little bit of an athletic component to athletic type mobility training versus correctional although they are quite similar so mobility workouts are you know I'm moving through a mobility circuit I have good movement patterns and I'm moving through and keeping things fluid and I'm getting my whole body to communicate I'm getting my arms the way that they're moving to communicate with my lower body to communicate with my torso as I'm rotating and twisting so that's improving that whole functional kind of athletic have you guys noticed when you're when you're training somebody and you show them a movement and then they try to mimic that movement and they don't even realize that parts of their body are doing something completely different no body awareness no body awareness yes athletic type training or workouts in the gym improve that so you know what you're doing is you're doing exercises that are you know as personal trainers we use the term multi-planar but really multi-directional Adam said that earlier and I thought that was a great way to say because most people understand that multi-directional so I'm not just moving in you know front to back type exercises I'm rotating I'm moving lateral laterally so I'm moving side to side with certain exercises some exercises combine you know different planes or different directions so that my body can move and express itself fluidly through all these different positions well but back to your point you're making with your nephew I mean you are probably sitting in one plane in the sagittal plane and then quickly had to move laterally so that's real world shit that happens you know when we're in the gym we focus normally most people are definitely all machines okay all machines are designed in one plane you're just everything's in front of you and that's it right and you're working a muscle but in real life you've got to use multiple muscles together in different planes in different directions and so that so training yourself in the in the gym with exercises that promote that or having promote good movement in all directions is something that everybody should do and this is and I stress this to people that don't identify with that oh I'm not an athlete you know I'm not a basketball player I'm not a football player I don't care if I can run fast or not I just I just want to look good that was me for sure I was a lot of me I was oh I just want to I used to say that to Justin all time when he was a trainer with me that I'll show no good that's right I'll show no go I just got to look fast that's what I used to say that's right you know just put a spoiler on the car about how much you bet yeah don't worry about that's right so and the the truth of the matter is no I mean everybody everybody needs that and especially as we age I mean so I have training today and I'm training in our maps power lift program but I I still have like off days and I start to and people are asking this to the day because they saw me doing a movement they're like hey that's not a maps power lift I said oh well there's certain things for me specifically that I'll always kind of incorporate and something that I'm doing tomorrow because yesterday this happened is I can't remember the last time that I worked on decelerating from a jump box and that was a routine that would be in there when I was especially when I was playing basketball of course and the and I jumped out of my truck I have an eight inch lifted truck and I jumped out of it and I was fine but it was a little scary on the landing you know and what I what I realized right away is like wow like you know losing that skill as soft as it used to be yes it used to be way soft and comfortable it was a little hard when I landed and I felt it and I went oh wow I just I haven't trained this as a skill in itself it is and so you know and that's a stupid example I know but you never know when those things are going to happen I just I just did it out of out of routine I've jumped out of a back of my truck a million times before you want to train outside of you want to train above and beyond what you're probably going to need to encounter in regular everyday life so that what you encounter in everyday regular life doesn't cause problems so you want to be better than being able to jump out of your truck and land softly so that when you do jump out of your truck you land very easily right and it's a piece of cake you don't have to go on with your day yes now here's some other components endurance and stamina endurance and stamina is an important part of just your body moving in your health and athletic training does train endurance and stamina strength training definitely doesn't do that bodybuilding to some extent but still not the same and correctional exercise doesn't train that but to have endurance and stamina and durability so that you can keep moving and keep going because what good is your muscle and strength if you can just last 15 seconds right you know in the real world you want to have at least enough stamina and a gas tank that you can perform for at least a decent period of time it's like you know I remember doing this I used to bulk up really really heavy in the winter kind of doing that right now but not like I used to where I'd be you know to get up to 230 pounds I'd be all big and strong and I didn't do any training outside of you know building muscle and building strength and then we'd have like a family function we're at like a park and it's like we're playing like soft ball with the family so like we have like paper plates for you know for for the you know first base to second base at there and I mean we're not running farm running from first base to second exhausted you know and I'm like what's turning into a mouth breather yeah I'm like I work out in the gym all the time and I don't have the stamina and endurance to just do regular fun stuff so this is an important thing now can stamina endurance lack of those get in the way of other goals you better believe it you ever try to squat you know and 12 rep 15 rep squats are phenomenal for building muscle it's actually one of the best lower body muscle building a lot of powerlifter guys don't have the cardio no stamina they can't so they can't they can't get into the rep ranges that'll build a lot of muscle with them you say simply don't have the stamina or you want to do an hour long resistance training workout and by 45 minutes you're gassed so the last 15 minutes your body might as well go home because you're kind of wasting your time athletic training focuses on all of the physical pursuits which include endurance and stamina which will contribute to all the other goals not to mention your health not to mention it's a it's a part of your health just like all these goals focusing on all of these will improve your health so will training for specifically athletic performance everybody should spend at least a few weeks if not a month or two in just improving their athletic performance okay so let's move into probably the most popular one the one that we probably don't need to make the biggest case that everybody gets excited about the one everybody comes in initially for yeah which is body building or body sculpting body shaping you can kind of kind of put those all together you guys say that right away but I do want to make the case that yes this is a majority of clients do come in and they care about the way they look there is a population of people that are opposed that and a part of the things that we talk a lot about on this to show is these these silos and these camps of I'm the mobility guy or I'm the athletic performance guy or I'm the powerlifting guy and that those guys or girls need this too really bad you know you you need to put some time and effort over there's a ton of benefit that you get by doing that now my if you're somebody who all you've cared about is sculpting the body and weight gain weight loss and building muscle and shaping your physique then yeah this this this point is less important and this is probably an area you need to move out of and into the other three that we've talked about no much like you know you admitted uh as we're going to you know sort of the powerlifting side like that this was me I was more drawn to the powerlifting to the athletic training type of uh you know that that was my intent that's what I wanted that's what I liked that was my comfort zone uh I did not care about presenting myself and having definition and you know all these things that you know your average person probably does so I might have been in the minority but this is a struggle for me is a struggle for me to to actually you know put time and effort into building developing my muscles because it will benefit you know coming back and taking myself out of my comfort zone you know going through a different rep range you know a different you know focus and intent it totally like transform my body yeah so training bodybuilding what you're trying to do is you're trying to train to maximize what's called muscle hypertrophy this is just the term fancy term that means your muscle fibers are growing you're trying to build and shape your muscles now it's funny I just read a study where they took um high performance strength athletes and they were trying to see what the relationship was between muscle size and strength so they took they took them all it did the dexa scan or whatever you know what they found that not only was muscle size strongly connected to or correlated to strength but it was almost one to one meaning the guys with the biggest muscles were the ones that lifted the most weight and this was for strength sports so they made a case for and power lifters have known this for a little while now that they they go into phases of just training for size getting mass just getting mass because bigger muscles contract harder that's a lot more that goes to strength than just that right the bigger muscles do contract harder now here's the other characteristic of bodybuilding type training this is the one type of training where you approach training your body completely visually like a sculptor like I go to the gym and I say I want more but I need more shoulders I want to develop my back more but not my lats because my lats are good I want more mid-back and you know what my triceps overpower my biceps so I'm gonna train my triceps a little less but I'm gonna develop my biceps more so I have a more balanced body you are literally sculpting your body like a sculptor would now of course those limitations there's genetics and all that other stuff but bodybuilding training is very different from other kinds of training in that that's the goal that's how you approach your training you go to the gym and rather than saying I'm going to move the most amount of weight or perform best you're going to the gym and saying how do I want my body to look that's how I'm going to focus my workout I also think that bodybuilding training complements correctional training the most oh you know what this is controversial but a hundred percent true I know where you're going with this yeah I just because uh and use your your example of like picking small muscle groups areas like you know when you understand that somebody who has like a rounded shoulder since most people have this kind of forward shoulder and forward head uh I know that putting emphasis on you know stretching my chest and my anterior delts are a paramount to helping that and then I also know that building my rear delts my mid traps are going to help benefit that so I can do specific bodybuilding type exercises that target just that area so when you understand to if you've done a good job on the correctional side and you understand your imbalances like and the way we get imbalances is you would uh do you have overactive or underactive muscles well if it's underactive you need to work it in you need to train it more it's overactive you probably need to stretch it and possibly do soft tissue type work so if I understand that I have specific underactive muscles that need more attention for correctional purposes I should be working on that and by underactive you actually can feel that like a certain muscle isn't contributing as much right of time right and this is where bodybuilding this is where bodybuilding style training shines above all other types of goals and training body builders or people who train uh and do an effective job of training and bodybuilding can connect to and feel individual muscles working better than anybody else like a strength athlete will do a squat but you tell them to isolate their hamstrings their quads and their glutes and they might have a tough time you take an athlete who could throw a football or a punch or jump real high and you tell them to isolate a specific muscle and you're speaking a different language when you're doing bodybuilding you take a bodybuilder and you tell him hey you watch somebody who you take a bodybuilder somebody's been training bodybuilding for a while and you tell them hey without moving your body flex your lats without moving your body activate your hamstrings hey can you activate your rhomboids and they can just like you got you know you ever see the guys on on tv when they do their little peck dance or whatever they can turn on muscle groups because bodybuilding training teaches you to connect to muscles and this is great for body awareness and it's especially great for correctional exercise it's really obvious when you see two people that and we'll use justin and i because you know i admitted i think about the time we all worked out pakulsky's jam with uh with uh it's like a fish out of water well i mean justin admits that he neglected the bodybuilding thing for so many years i admit that i neglected like the you know power lifting or sports performance type uh during my training and you can still see that in like when we bench so like when we go down for a bench like justin has way better bench press mechanics to get the most weight up he his leg drive his his technique to move the bar with the most amount of weight he has perfected that for so many years he's far better at it than i am but if you watch how i lift it i i'll tell you right now i feel it in my chest i guarantee more than he does and i get the chest out there at all and i get the chest development uh like chris and if you looked at probably justin i completely leaned out i might look like i have a bigger chest yet he can move more weight and that's a difference of somebody who is trained the same exercise but with a different intent and both benefit you know learning and and i like that's part of why i'm really loving and enjoying uh this power lifting program that we're going this is the first time in my life i've ever been purely dedicated now i remember when you went through phase one of maps anabolic because maps anabolic i would consider a really good traditional just strength uh type program i remember when you went through phase one especially when you and i were competing with deadlifts um and it was amazing to see your strength exploded yeah a lot of it had to do with the fact that you never trained that way before yeah but you went from you know four plate deadlift being very heavy for you to being able to jump your deadlift by over a hundred pounds like a hundred and fifty pounds yeah you add in your deadlift in a very short period of time and that's i mean that's phenomenal now here's something else that's unique to the bodybuilding type of training that no other type of training really aims for because bodybuilding training so characterized by feel um they also love the pump the pump you know you're training for strength or performance or correctional exercise the pump is like if it happens it's fine if it doesn't happen nobody gives a shit when you're training for body sculpting the pump is an important part of your training and bodybuilders are really really good at getting it now the pump itself by itself contributes to muscle growth through there's a couple different ways it may do this but we do know uh studies now are pretty clear they show that the pump itself signals muscle growth but there's more to that the ability to get a pump in the first place gives you a it's a pretty good signal that tells you that you're hydrated and that you're connecting well to the muscle when you talk to somebody who has a tough time developing a part of their body you ask them this following question and the answer is always almost going to be the same you know hey i can't develop my glutes that well do you ever get a glute pump no hey i can't develop my chest very well does your chest ever get a really good pump almost never i can't develop my lats well do you get a pump in your lats no not really the pump can really signal and that you're connecting to a muscle and i loved when i would train clients with weak body parts it would take me a few weeks to get to this point but then we hit that work out and they'd be like whoa you know i could feel a pump in my lats i can never feel that before and then i knew all right we are going to we're building your lats now we're connecting to your lats so the pump is very important for people who don't know what the pump is just to break it down very simply it's more blood rushing into the muscle than rushing out so literally a muscle engorges with blood and it feels just like the word it feels it feels like the word which is a pump now there's some characteristics of body building training it's about feeling connection i want to feel the target muscle connect and i want to get the pump which is to the point i made with justin and i yes right absolutely you're you're doing bench press to feel the chest right and get a pump in the chestins bench pressing to move the weight right the most weight and that's the thing about a lot of these goals is the intention of the goal that is what change that's the big chance why i said work backwards at the beginning of this episode because if i go into the gym with the goal of body building versus the goal of strength i'm going to do a lot of the same exercises by the way when your body building it doesn't mean you're not doing you're not body you're not bench pressing squatting and deadlift yeah it's just the difference is more you know muscle versus mechanical yes and so that like i'm thinking uh mechanically always well for the most part of like how i can improve each one of those little intricate processes of my leverage or where my body set up or whatever whereas you know if i'm thinking more along the intent of a bodybuilder i'm trying to squeeze and feel you know my way to get to to activate the most output of that right and this i'm glad you moved to the intent part because uh this is so important uh and i'm going through this right now so it's not easy if you've trained a certain way for a very long time it's hard to shift your mentality yeah just like i was saying it was hard it's hard for that lady who's been doing circuit training and hit training all time for me to get her to slow down and rest for two to three minutes it's just as hard for the the body builder guy who chases the pump and feeling the muscle to now when you power lift to be thinking about the movement and getting the weight up so and there's lots of benefits of training both ways learning how to do that and so because i'm so i was so aesthetically driven for so long it's a lot it's i really have to set these rituals now when i get into the bench press boy is it fun though oh it is let me tell you it's for a guy who's been lifting for almost 20 years of his life it's very fun because it's new again it's so funny it's like we it's so hard for us like we want to get stuck in our own thing even though our results of plateaued even though our body hurts even though we're not getting results anymore we're so hard headed about moving out of something moving into a new goal it takes a mental shift like adam saying but once you do it and you get good at it you have lifelong success and it's fun it's really fun look i tell you what i love training for strength i love training for strength but leaving it and focusing on athletic performance or bodybuilding starts to get fun as well and then i go back to strength and then it's even more fun because i go back to what my favorite thing and my body's fresh and i can old friend it have expanded my my capacity with bodybuilding training you know back to bodybuilding training i also want to add this lots of exercises and angles that makes body building training more quite unique whereas if you're training just for strength it's fewer exercises maybe more sets per exercise bodybuilding training i want to do lots of different angles i want to work my biceps from a shortened position from a length in position i want to focus on the squeeze and the stretch full range of motion extremely important with bodybuilding training getting the stretch and getting the squeeze depending on the exercise that you're doing is extremely important but if you're looking for perpetual progress long term results long term success you should look at your entire year of working out and say to yourself this month i'm focusing on strength you know this month i'm doing correctional exercise this month it's athletic performance for two three months body building because that's my favorite one and then i'm a cycle back to the other ones and that's how you can kind of break down if you if you know the all the goals that we talked about from correctional strength athletic performance bodybuilding if one of those is your favorite no problem spend most of your time there's not an issue take your whole year spend three four months there but throw weeks or a month of the other goals in throughout the year and then watch what happens to your progress watch what happens to your results this is if if if i could ever sell anything on this podcast it's that right there to the people who are consistent with the workouts is don't just change your workouts change your goals and then watch what happens they'll blow your mind that's it also by the way why we'll drop in this episode black friday sales are going on right now there's fifty percent off all maps programs are half off individual programs half off including guides and mods mods are the programs for a specific body part so we like a bicep mod or you know like a glute mod or whatever um and our bundles our bundles by the way these are where we take multiple maps programs and we put them together in fact our rgb bundle or our super bundle will take you the whole year and will actually take you through all the different goals that we talk about with different maps programs now bundles are already discounted on average thirty to thirty five percent well on black friday you get an additional twenty five percent off so here's the codes for the guides the individual programs and the mods use black friday fifty that's the number fifty without a space for the bundles if you want to get additional twenty five percent off the already discounted bundles use the code bf bundles and there you go also make sure you go to mine pump free dot com check out our free resources and find us all on instagram you find justin at mine pump justin me at mine pump style and adam at mine pump adam