 Oh, man, it's my pop time. All right. We got a great giveaway for you today Here's what you got to do to win free access to maps strong Here's what you got to do subscribe to this channel Turn on your notifications and then leave a comment in the first 24 hours if we pick your comment You'll get free access to maps strong also in today's episode. We talk about strength how to get strong Here's what we're doing for everybody right now We took our two most popular strength focus programs maps strong and maps power lift and we put them 72% off. This is a flash sale. It ends very very soon. Go check them out 72% off You got to get them both go to maps power bundle Dot-com again, go check them out. All right. Enjoy the rest of the podcast Justin I'm gonna need your your full attention. This is gonna be a topic that Sal won't be able to help us out that much. Okay. I got you Well, I mean he's he's gonna have some really good book knowledge that he can share with us But I really want to talk about being the strongest guy in the gym That's not true, you know, if we were if we were building the the a program strong or structuring Some bullet points for you know a young man right now. That's that came to you And I'm sure we all had a client like this and said man. I aspire to be I want to be the strongest young lady From women very very true both sexes But I had a lot of you know, this was a more common with the young young men that I would get that would come in and say to me That I want to be the strongest dude in the gym. We're gonna walk in and just own. Yeah And how would how would you train me? What does that look like? So although Sal won't be able to help out too much You know what the irony the irony what you're saying a little anecdote No, all joking aside the irony is that of the three of us you were the least interested Strength that's very very true. I actually did not ever train for strength until we all met Yeah, so and this is good because we all worked out for a long time And I for me strength was always very important. I love strength. I still do It's one of my favorite things to train for just then of course being the athlete and strength is a physical pursuit Performance yeah, you get stronger Adam was always more of the aesthetic guy I want to look good or whatever competed as a on stage as a physique competitor And so you worked out for a long time without ever focusing on strength Yeah, and then you threw it in and the reason why this is so good is because I you know It's great to hear from you what benefits you got from focusing on like translated then to pursue Yeah, because I focused on it from day one You did it later and you got to see that the the incredible transformation. No totally and truth be told I'm teasing Sal. I'm not the strongest one out of us. I'm like a mediocre at all lifts That's kind of what's happened to me, right? And probably for the reasons you're saying, you know for most of my career. I did not pursue strength I was in fact I used to pride myself on saying that I was all show and no go You know it was like I used to would you say when I take my shirt off the girl's not gonna ask me Yeah, that's why I used to say I mean Justin I know I've said that to Justin at least a handful of times when he worked for me way back when because he was very strength focused It blew my mind. I'm like, what? Yeah, I was like, dude, I mean to tell me I'm like how many girls know how much you bench pressers squad And mind you I mean I'm 20 years old, right? And so that's a lot of my focus is around gaining girls attention So of course my my goals have changed as I've gotten older, but you're right Because it's really cool to see that because I mean I started working out young, but I always love strength So I didn't get to see the discrepancy that you got to see because you trained for a while Without focusing on then you did later and I mean let's talk about what that did for your body Well first let's talk about why I did it and the mistakes in that right, you know even being a trainer, right? So I would consider myself fairly knowledgeable even in my 20s. I had at that time probably five or six national Certifications, I had a few years experience under my belt worked around a lot of knowledgeable people But I fell into that trap of thinking that if I wanted to build an aesthetic physique that Training in singles doubles triples even five by five blocks. I mean that's all comes from the strength community That's and I had no desire to be a powerlifter and an Olympic lifter that didn't even appeal to me whatsoever I just wanted to build it. So I really just avoided that I avoided it because it I didn't identify with the people that spoke to that way of training for so long and That was a massive mistake and I didn't learn that mistake really how much of a mistake that was until we all got together and It was you guys who kept pushing me in the direction of like Yeah, you you don't ever train in singles or triples or you don't ever run a five by five block or one of you ever Like you guys could have asked me my deadlift my squat and my bench press what my max was and I could tell you I don't know I had never at that point. This is true story Maybe when I was like a young teenage boy, we tried to see how much we'd left But once I learned that that wasn't very beneficial for my pursuit. I never maxed out In fact, I would tell clients that it was it was really not a good idea for most people There's high risk and most people get injured. You're not going to see a lot of benefits from doing it but I didn't realize how much it could help with my aesthetic pursuit and You guys would really help me, you know Bring that all together when we and it was kind of almost by accident because my goals are kind of shifting I had already kind of competed and made my way up the level and I was kind of on my way out of that But yet there was some areas I wanted to work on. I'm in particular It was my back, you know, my back was something that in men's physique if you have a really big wide impressive thick back with a little waist which I have naturally a little waist and so if you can build this really Dominant back it really when shows it really does you turn around and and you can tell And I and I know this now I learned that's going through this you can really tell what guys are, you know deadlifting and lifting heavy by just the density of their back and the size of it and That was something that like came on really fast for me when I started training for strength Yeah, strength is I've always loved strength mainly because I come from a family that loves strength My dad was a very strong guy and he would always do these feats of strength. He worked in construction You know, he would tell stories of his dad and his grandfather and so I always valued Being really strong. So right away when I started working out I I lifted and I liked to see how much I could lift and it was something that was important to me I like to look good, but I also really loved in fact I probably like being strong even more than I like the aesthetics, but you know, here's the beauty of strength When you get stronger, you're probably doing most things right you really are I mean if you're if the scale moves five pounds up or down, it could be good. It could be bad. We don't know what's going on Objective it's not subjective. It's very objective at the very base prime level and muscle does a lot more It's very metabolically active and all that stuff, but very simple base level muscle moves things and in getting stronger means your muscles are Either firing better or they're building more. So it's one of those two. So strength is this It's one of the best things you could possibly pursue in order to improve your physique and I loved more than anything I loved getting clients who were average person To focus on strength is specially women mainly because I know you said this earlier Adam How guys are if anyone's gonna be more focused on how much they can lift in the gym It's a guy and if anybody's gonna be afraid of lifting heavy because they're afraid of getting bulky, right? Because they've been told this stupid lie forever. It's gonna be women So I would get these female clients who are like, oh, you know, I want to lose weight. I want better curve I want a nicer butt. I want nicer hamstrings and and I'm talking them into doing Sets of three and four and power lifting movements and we're gonna deadlifting squat and luckily I'm very convincing and they would trust me and then their bodies would just transform immediately blow them away. They've never had any Exposure to that type of training if I used to love that too because you know in my background It was very much I I would look at the person whatever sport I was playing Who's the best and I and I would always be competitive amongst myself to Aspire to be better and to be on that same level and so when we started to get bigger And I got into high school and we started lifting weights It was that same energy I brought into the weight room and I would I would look around and see who's who's the one Doing the most weight for bench press. Who's the one doing the most weight for squat for deadlift for whatever it was I was always trying to push myself to see where my threshold lie my my peak performance lied And that was something that I always tried to challenge myself to to get better at so you alluded to something else that Reminds me of the mistake I made too You know when you when you just care about looking a certain way leaning out Having some muscle mass on you. You can you can actually get away with some sub par programming Mm-hmm, and I think I I fell victim of this of of thinking that I was Programming really well and because I wasn't measuring strength as an indicator of oh I'm doing a good job of that and all I cared about was the way I look which we know a lot of that has to Do a diet and so I didn't realize how much more my programming could improve Until I started to use strength as is a way to measure that and that made a huge difference in also how I wrote Oh, yeah, I mean look, I'll tell you what when we first started Mind pump the one of the areas of the fitness space that was wide open Was workout programming 99% of it out that was complete garbage the 1% of workout programming That's good was strength athlete workout program powerlifting. It was powerlifting Olympic lifting Strongman training anything where they're programming workouts for athletes to compete and they have to objectively be stronger They always have the best Programming bodybuilding programming often terrible a lot of it depends on genetics and if they're taking anabolic steroids and that kind of Stuff and diet diet But if you get stronger, you're probably doing a lot of things right and I'll tell you what right now If you want to build muscle There is nothing that's more guaranteed than getting stronger that'll get you more muscle nothing There's nothing you could possibly do that'll if you consistently now you can definitely get strong without building more muscle But if you consistently get stronger over time, it's the most guaranteed way you have of building muscle There's nothing else that'll ensure that you're gonna put muscle on your body speed up your metabolism Balance out your hormones You know if you have hormone issues if you're a woman and you have hormone and balance issues If you're a man in your testosterone levels or low If you have good workout program and you find yourself getting consistently stronger That's gonna have the best impact on those things. So it's it's one of the most important Things to measure and to watch for all people who work out regardless of your goal. It's again It's extremely important. It's very protective prevents you from getting injured And it just it'll tell you look if you have poor sleep and a poor diet If your workout program is off like you're not gonna get stronger so to get stronger a lot of things have to be done Right, you know when we were structuring this episode with the you know This the six most important points to becoming the strongest guy in the gym, right? I'm really glad that we started with this first one, you know the very first one to me is the most important because If I was a young guy and I got the information that you you guys are presenting right now I'm not sure I would have applied it correctly. I would hear oh get stronger because I do remember. I mean I just go heavy Yeah, I do remember a small point in fact because when I was like before I became a trainer and started really reading anything and must most of my Fitness knowledge came from like magazines, you know, they were saying you know lift heavy six reps And I did a lot of the six rep training form was terrible though It was it was all about can I lift more weight and I was I was Sacrificing my technique just to try and add weight and I realized that it didn't benefit me that much It wasn't until I lighten the load worked on my technique and I saw greater gains This is what kept me from ever going back to that direction was because I saw yes It wasn't there also the factor of like compound lifts like the big five lifts Yes, that really wasn't something that you introduced to later And I know a lot of friends of mine even would go into gyms and be a lot more comfortable with the machines And that's where they would stay and it's just like it seemed like the a back loaded squad or barbell lifts were you know a little bit Too dangerous. They just didn't know the mechanics of it, you know And they didn't know how to perform it properly. So they just decided to avoid it right so strength is pretty specific So meaning if you get really strong at one thing All the strength that you gain definitely goes to that one thing and then you'll get some carry over to other things Some exercises give you more carry over to other things than others So to give you an example if you added a hundred pounds to your leg press you would get less carry over to lunges Squats sprints leg extensions, then you would if you added a hundred pounds to your barbell squat, right? So the five big lifts when we mentioned the five big lifts Well, we're talking about are the exercises that are the best ones to get stronger at because They give you the most carry over to everything else and as a side effect build the most muscle and burn the most body fat So, you know, you got your obviously your big three power lifting movements where you're deadlift your bench press your you know Your squat, but then you have your overhead press, which is another phenomenal exercise And then you can throw in like a row. That's probably a barbell row that you might want to throw in there Now you do those exercises and you get stronger at those You'll see a lot more carry over than if you focused on getting stronger on any other five Okay, and I have to again go back to my point. I was trying to make was that The key to that is practicing those lifts often. Yes, and by practice. It doesn't mean I'm always trying to add weight to the the barbell Mastering the technique because as a young a young man that I'm hearing this I would be like, you know, okay So those are the five list. Yeah, just push weight push weight And I wouldn't and which is is strange because I have an athletic background And I know better in sports that like you don't go after it like that If you hit a ball with the if you're if you're swinging the bat and you have shitty form That's right. Your coach isn't gonna tell you to swing harder. That's right. You're gonna fix your technique That's right. Yeah, we do lamps before you do dunks. That's right And yet we apply training sometimes not like this You know, we just start adding load where if you treat it the same way of getting good at another skill like the ones You just alluded to You'll see huge benefit and carry over so that is the foundation is okay Here's my core five lifts and the goal is to get good at the movement Not yet Your goal isn't yet to get really strong or add a ton of weight to it get good at the movement Get really really good and efficient at it and then you start to load the key is this is the word practice Don't work out Practice the lifts often, right? So go into the gym and do squats Often and treat it like Adam said like a skill. You're practicing the skill. You're practicing this in fact If you look at old Soviet era Training and they had some of the best studies back in those days for strength You would see these athletes they would go in and they would train with I don't know 50% of their max And they would practice them all the time and they would do the same reps all the time And then at the end of like 30 days they would add weight even though they could have added weight earlier They didn't add weight for 30 days But the jumps and strength were Significant because what you're trying to do is you're trying to learn the skill because a lot of strength is a skill And when you have the skill when the skill is good The strength things you get are phenomenal and they're safe and they build the most muscle when your skill is bad You limit the strength you limit the muscle building and you increase the risk of injury Well, and this speaks to the second point which is learning how to manipulate intensity Yes, when you are practicing you are not going at a hundred percent. You're not running. That's you if you do that That's where injury occurs. That's where the fallout is. That's where your technique goes That's right. And so you got to learn how to Manipulate the intensity level and there is a time and place Okay, there's a time and place to challenge that right to take an exercise or something to failure But it's way less than the average kid thinks it's what I mean I that was a big mistake that I made was I can't remember this It was probably some article I read in a magazine or somewhere or being told from somebody who I thought was, you know Very knowledgeable and weightlifting that you know going to failure would stimulates all this extra growth So then what happened, you know kid like me hears that information failure all the time now every workout the train of failure all the time Yes, yeah, you know, you know, it's funny about that the studies now confirm exactly what you're saying that failure is not Effective at building more muscle and strength intensity is important You should definitely get close to failure for some of your lifts, but don't go to to failure It's actually detrimental for most people and then manipulate your intensity in the sense that because I used to think if it wasn't super hard Then it was wasting my time like if I went to the gym And if I'm not going hard then it's then why am I doing this is not doing any benefit. That's actually not true You also are sending a strength and muscle building signal with a much lower intensity In fact, you know, here's the biggest difference by the way with strength athlete programming Which we already said was superior to Bodybuilding type of programming There's something to learn from both but the programming itself is often superior with strength athletes because again, they have the objective measure of strength Here's the big difference But they manipulate the strength athlete training manipulates intensity and they're very good at in fact You'll often see for example Yes, if you follow for example are one of our strength programs maps power lift You'll see in there percentages and those percentages are help you modify intensity other programs will use like RPE or whatever Right in bodybuilding training that doesn't exist It's like go to failure go to failure go to failure and this just isn't as effective for most especially for most Natural lifters or the average person, which is 99.9 percent of everybody listening So manipulating intensity is very important when you're practicing your lifts often. I'll give you a simple example Let's say you want to get really good at a squat You can actually squat four or five days a week and you'll get strong really fast However, you cannot squat hard four or five days a week and that happened you squat hard four or five days a week Not only will you not get strong you'll get weaker and you'll actually start to over train very well This is also the value of actually, you know following a structured program from a coach or somebody who really knows what they're doing because As a young man, that's that's learning all this information and ambitious and incoming in the gym And I'm a motivated or I'm hyped up because of whatever I just watched before I came in there I just took my pre-workout and so I'm all amped sometimes you don't do a very good job of Objectively looking at this yourself right like you right you get caught up in the moment the energy or maybe you're working out with your Buddy right how many times have you done this training with your buddy? You know what you're supposed to be doing that This is why I don't like training partners I know a lot of people talk about the benefits of training partners This is one of the reasons why I don't like training partners is because Nobody knows better than you if that's probably either following a program or should be following some sort of a routine where you're manipulating Intensity what your lift should look like that day. This is why we don't work out together Yeah, we with all the knowledge in this room and an expertise and how much we enjoy Being in the gym together when we train we train separately because you guys don't know what I need to do Intensity wise and we're going and I know myself Well enough that if I hop in with Sal and I know out okay last squat session I went really hard overreach today I need to be more focused on mobility type training back off and he's feeling it because he just had a great rest day Before his legs are fully recovered and he wants to push it. It's real hard for me to go Yeah, oh, I'm gonna go ahead and take two of those plates also speaking to you know The type of person that would be attracted to this type of conversation, right? I want to be the biggest. I want to be the you know the strongest guy in the gym strongest girl Whatever like the hardest thing to do is to apply that kind of discipline when you're getting into your list not to Overdo it and to find that that right and correct dose and and honestly That's that's one of those things as a coach that of more times than not I'm I'm pulling somebody back from you know that energy that they're just trying to It's always that okay. Here's the thing There's there's really like I mean we could kind of defy this in two types of Categories of people that go to the gym. There's a people that openly admit I hate coming here I don't like exercise everything feels like it hurts. They want to be out of there as soon as possible It's a different conversation right that person that I'm trying to motivate them to stretch themselves and to get comfortable Being in these intense type of situations and and trying to stretch their capacity Then there's the other group of people they like to work out. They love it They feel good when they train and somebody who says I want to be the strongest person Yeah, is that and those people those are the ones I always have to pull back No, think of it this way. Okay, think of it this way forget the gym for a second I know right now we're talking about you want to be the strongest person in the gym If you're listening forget that for a second imagine if the goal was to be the best Soccer player on the field or the best baseball player on the field the best basketball player on the court You would not go and practice your your techniques with full intensity all the time That wouldn't make you the best you would practice the technique the technique the technique and then Occasionally you'd go hard to play a game or swim you would go perform You would not just go as hard as you possibly could all the time if you did you it would be the wrong strategy There's no coach in the world that would coach anybody to be good Doing it that way the goal is the same here You want to be the strongest person in the gym you practice the lifts often and then you manipulate your intensity So what does this look like? Okay? Well, what this looks like is Sometimes you're training really really hard most the time it's moderate and sometimes it's easy And that's how it looks through your workout now if this is confusing Of course you could follow pre-written workouts that do all this for you, but that's the idea That'll get you there so much faster. I didn't hit any of my strength goals till much later And I love strength. I said in the beginning episode. I was super focused on strength as a kid But I was always stuck at certain numbers until I figured this out as an adult and then manipulated my intensity and practiced My lifts often and then everything went through the room well part of what feeds into this though is this this myth right Of you have to be sore in order for your body to be sending the signal to build muscle Right because that means you worked right and that what this was again another mistake that I made is in fact I didn't think I had a good workout unless I felt really sore the next day And I think a lot of people go down that path and so when they're training and they're going like oh I can tell that this is a pretty easy I'm not going to be sore from this and that's they start flirting with pushing beyond where they should probably go for that workout Because they think they're not going to be sore enough from it And then they're not going to get the max benefits from it and it's completely the opposite No, what's funny is uh later on in my personal training career when I was actually good What I was doing, uh, I my goal was my clients to never get sore I never wanted my clients to get sore in fact when they would come in and I'd say Hey, how did you feel at the last workout like oh man? I was really sore I knew I overdid the intensity for their training session. We overdid the volume We need to scale back now early on in my career when I was far less successful with clients getting good results I soreness was the goal. Did you get sore last work? No, I didn't all right We're gonna make it sore this time You know that's exactly where that saying comes from is because someone a client would come in and say that And then they hear me go. Oh damn too much and then they go. No. No, it feels good. It feels good I feel good. It was a good workout and be like no, that's not our goal My goal is actually do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. Yes Okay, so you have to understand this with the body the body when you're doing the training session Whatever your goal is the goal is to obviously improve your body and that's an adaptation process, right? So getting stronger is your body's a way to adapt So that what you're doing is not causing stress on your body So if you bench press 100 pounds and that's really hard and stressful for your body And then your body gets stronger so you can bench press 200 pounds 100 pounds no longer causes Any problems of course then you add weight and then you continue the cycle Now the problem is when you do your training Because you're stressing the body you do cause a little bit of damage Now if the damage is too much your body only is going to heal It's not going to adapt adapting getting stronger burning body fat, you know building muscle adapting is separate from Healing healing is just getting you back to where you were before adapting is on top of that Well, if you're hammering yourself all the time beating yourself up and you're always sore Your body needs to heal it can't even think about adapting and so look by the way if this is you This is what it looks like for you. This is you and this might ring a bell, right? You'll work out really hard You get really sore the soreness goes away you go back to the gym and you do it again And you never get stronger Nothing ever changes what you're literally doing is damaging and healing Damaging and healing and you're never improving you're stuck on progress. You're stuck on a hamster wheel There's another thing that feeds right into that which is the next point is is knowing how to phase your training Because part of what can cause this kind of recovery trap is you go and you you have a routine that you love to do You love training this way and you love beating yourself because you feel the intensity when you work out and you know It gets you sore all time. No doubt it worked the first time That's right So you just keep you get stuck in this phase or this this way of training for long periods This is my my biggest bone that I have to pick with a lot of like these, you know You know niche like gyms that are like these uh, you know group training where they have like a template That they follow like all the time they're kind of rotating through it's like Initially when you go do that stuff, of course the body responds you've it's it's novel to the body So the body goes oh wow, this is new. We burned some body fat We built some muscle like a little stronger But then it doesn't take very long for the body to get completely adapted to that And then the progress to start to slow to a complete stop right? So to give you an example and this might be the sound at first a little contrary, but you know Okay, so we just talked we've been talking now in the episode low reps. That's what gets you stronger I love low repetitions and I'll never forget when I really figured out how to phase Was uh, I did low reps all the time and I was stuck I don't remember what weight I was stuck at with my deadlift squat and all that But I was stuck and I plateaued I switched to going to much higher reps. I started doing sets of 15. You know what happened I got stronger with my low reps because I phased into a different style of training Which got my body to respond and here's the beauty Of getting stronger within a particular range right anywhere between one rep today I'd say 30 reps all those rep ranges Actually contribute to each of those rep ranges in other words If you get stronger at doing 20 reps of your squat You're going to get some strength at your one rep of squat If you get stronger at your one rep of squat, you're going to get stronger with your 20 reps of squat So they communicate with each other so phasing into different training styles and rep ranges and rest periods within Reason is going to progress you much faster even with your maximal strength. So you have to train In fact, if you train specifically one way all the time That's almost a guaranteed way of hitting a hard plateau and your body not progressing at all Well, and I think the key of phasing it like really well is kind of knowing to when to transition and doing it Soon enough that you don't before you plateau Yeah before you stall out before you plateau before the joints start talking to you Before you start to even see sometimes regression in your guys. Well, this is a very tough one And this is why it's very valuable to follow the program specifically to tell you him because a lot of times Your body does finally respond and get very good at what you're doing And so then, you know, that brings all this new energy Which then you want to then test yourself even more and keep, you know That energy going into maxing out and pring and you know, you may be in that phase a bit too long to where now You're gonna have like a downward effect the best way to bust out of plat I see all these workout programs and people, you know, posting on social media It's like how to break out of a plateau how to get your body to respond again The best way to break out of a plateau is to never hit the plateau in the first place Avoid it before you get to it because once you hit a plateau You got to back out of it before you can progress and that takes more time It's better to move into a new phase before the plateau hits That way you can get your body to progress continuously progress at least at a much more consistent You say that so easily but I tell you what that is one of the most difficult things still to this day Okay, I I'll admit I'm sure the two of you are the same way too Because it's hard because the a lot of times so we know like most of our programs are phased in anywhere between like a Three and a five week range, right? So that's kind of every three to five weeks. You move into a new phase That's right. So that's and that's most all the research points in that range is that's where that's where it's I don't know Obviously, there's always an individual variance, but for most people they'll get the most benefit by transitioning into another phase Now what happens a lot of times is I'm on my we're on like maps and a block I'm on phase, you know, I'm on the last week of phase one And I know I'm getting ready to transition into the next phase and I just hit a pr Right, you know, I don't want to not do that again next week I want to see how strong I am again because maybe I'll go even further and maybe you will But that's the discipline of knowing that. Okay, great. I'm getting great gains right now I can't fall in love with this way of training. It's time to transition myself out and move to another phase And that's how you avoid the plus those plus it's tough to jump into a phase That's maybe not your favorite or it's something like you feel like you're you're starting over again Of course, you know, that's exactly what it feels like. Yeah, so I mean in anything, right? Nobody likes to continuously be a beginner And so like that's one of those things that it does require a lot of discipline But it helps a lot to have that structured out for you. So you don't have to be completely like that's the only way to do it For me, I the only way that I uh effectively phase my workouts is if I follow a written program If I listen to my body, I get trapped in what Adam said. Well, you just you just trick yourself You just said something that's really important Like you you said you feel like you're a beginner We've talked about on the show before if you've been listening for a long time That there's this thing called newbie games. Oh the beginner games Yeah, and they come on fast and strong when you've never done any of this stuff and you start training It's like one of the my favorite clients to teach because the gains come on like crazy They get stronger very fast. That's right now after you've been lifting for a really long time You're in pursuit of that even though it's really hard to find because you've been lifting and you've done a lot of things You want you're mining for it So exactly you were trying to look for that and one of the ways to do that is to phase into a place where you're Uncomfortable to train a way that you don't like to train. You're a bodybuilder guy all the time Go train like a strongman or a powerlifter. Okay, if you're a functional person all the time Go try doing like a bodybuilding type of if you're always bodybuilding go try to train functional Those things you will feel like a beginner again, and that's where those newbie gains start to come on Yeah, now the next thing is diet related and diet does play a big role and getting stronger and the people that I would work with Who oftentimes were more challenged by this than others were women It was very difficult to get women to eat more to get stronger because most of my female clients goals Were to get leaner. So like no, I don't want to eat more Uh, I want I'm trying to get leaner even though I like getting stronger and I can see what it's doing to my body Uh, I don't want to eat more and I tell them listen if we eat more and we fuel the strength even more You're going to get leaner uh on accident in a very effective way because the muscles Build more if you want to get stronger you have to eat Also to get stronger it's very difficult to consistently get stronger by eating in a calorie deficit Or by eating in a diet that is restrictive of any of the macros. So I'm talking to people who Like to reduce or eliminate carbohydrates to be very hard to get as strong as you can Without eating those carbohydrates now I do want to say there is a individual variance If your diet is the one that you need to eat because it makes you the healthiest for example Let's say you have a very reactive body to let let's say you eat a carnivore diet It's a very extremely restrictive diet. You just eat me The reason why you just eat me is if you eat anything else You get autoimmune flare-ups. Well for you carnivore diets can be the diet that's going to make you the strongest Otherwise if you're if you're otherwise okay with most foods A diet that contains proteins high protein fat and carbohydrates in a surplus So your calories are above what you're burning. That's the best diet for strength You got to fuel the strength just like you have to fuel muscle I think of it like a high performance car and you know the all the the micro and macro nutrients are just like all your levels You know whether it be your your oil your gas your air pressure your timing belt like You you want all of those at optimal levels And if they're all if they're if you're running and you have low tire pressure You have low fuel. You have low oil. Does it mean that car won't go? No, you could get it to go But is it going to perform at its highest level? There's no way it's going to perform at its highest level without having all those at Optimal levels nutrition is the same thing when your pursuit is to get stronger and build more muscle You want those filled up. It requires energy. So don't you know deprive it of that And I think that's you know something a lot of people don't really consider that like if if you really think of it As like fuel going into your workouts and like what you're trying to do and accomplish and build you need the materials to build Now that being said don't eat like an asshole. No Okay, because here's no you can get carried away This is it. Well, here's another another mistake again as a as a young kid that wanted to be strong Wanted to be buff right that I you know and I hear get it. I'll never forget this statement I walked into a gold's gym when I was I think 17 I bet I could predict I heard the same thing I walk in and it was me and my buddy. We're getting a gym membership and I you know, they ask you What are your goals? You know, and I literally think I said something like this I want to be the buffest strongest guy in the gym or whatever So what does he do? He over the loudspeaker calls that guy, you know, he works for them, you know, and this dude was Troy Yeah, he was he was something like that. I'm gonna do the chocker Yeah, it was chocker Troy or some shit like that, right? And he's got the butch cut everything He comes and he's got the fanny pack and he walked and this dude is just he's just jacked And he sits down in front of me and he says if you want to look like a bull, you got to eat like a bull And that's a bunch of grass Hey, literally as a kid and then he went on to explain, you know, the all the crazy shakes and drinks and food And piling calories on and that's exactly what I went and did I mean what I took from that was I just got to eat everything until you're sick Yes, right eat everything inside and that is just as counterproductive as like the person who's overtraining like crazy It's the same thing. You'll see some results. You'll see the scale go up and gains But it'll be minimal if you're just pile on a bunch I heard this I heard I don't know if you guys ever heard this but I heard this bullshit statement There's no such thing as overtraining just under eating. Oh, okay, so I guess I just got to eat more food That's still very that's still very prevalent in this space terrible stupid advice No, no, you definitely need to eat in a surplus and here's a deal Um, there are definitely exceptions to the rule, but you're not going to be your strongest if you're shredded You're just not you're you're not going to be it's very difficult to be shredded And what I say shredded I don't mean lean you could be lean and be very strong I mean shredded like you're a guy single digit body fat of a female You know the mid to low teens body fat to be very hard to be really strong and be that lean Typically your body fat percentage needs to be You know somewhere in the middle so for a guy anywhere between 10 to 16 percent Which by the way, that's a good body fat range 10 percent you still could see your abs 15 16 percent you might not have a six pack But you got a flat, you know midsection roughly You're going to be pretty strong in that range. That's a good healthy range for a woman You're looking at the high teens low 20s still lean In fact, most women are very happy at that body fat percentage about nice curves They're tight and not flabby or whatever But if you're a woman and you're you know trying to get down to 12 percent body fat and be very very strong It's very very hard eating in a surplus does fuel strength You could definitely get carried away and there are diminishing returns So this is why you see sometimes, you know really really overweight power lifters and strength athletes And that's because for them they don't care about the diminishing returns If they need to gain 50 pounds to add 10 pounds to the bar They're not in a weight class or they're in the super heavy weight class where they can get as heavy as they want It doesn't matter, but for most of us, you know, you know gaining 50 pounds of body fat to add five or 10 pounds of the bar Is not worth it. Um, but yes eating in a surplus Not avoiding Macronutrients you got to have your carbohydrates your fats and you're indefinitely your proteins That's the way to fuel strength if you don't eat enough it's going to be very very hard to get Strong consistently and simple advice where to start. Um, is the target the protein I find in my experience The most common is that Especially as a young kid who's trying to eat like crazy what I when I started to actually really track my food I was eating a lot of calories, but I was not getting a lot of like quality protein I was eating a lot of carbohydrates french fries and milkshakes and candy and anything ice cream anything I get my hands on and sure the calories were up there, but I wasn't even hitting like my protein intake So my advice when I get somebody who wants to get strong wants to build muscle It's like the first place to start is make sure you hit those protein intake So figure out what your body needs and we have a macro calculator that's on on our website. That's free What's a what Doug max macro is that what is maps macro dot com? So go to maps macro dot com get an idea of where your kind of macro nutrients should be I always suggest targeting going after the protein first and then you can kind of pile on the other calories afterwards Now here's another one the next point and this one you start to see pop up more with people as they become more experience So they they start out the working out the following good Maybe some some halfway decent programming. They're training consistently. They're they're manipulating intensity properly eating good They're getting stronger stronger stronger Then they start to hit plateaus and it's hard to figure out why why am I stuck at This weight with bench press or why can't I overhead press? Any more weight and oftentimes it's because they have neglected the muscles that stabilize the body So your body has it's very interesting Has safety mechanisms in place to to help prevent itself from getting injured And one of those is if your body senses That the weight that you can move is too much weight for you to stabilize or puts you at too high of a risk of injury It's not going to allow your central nervous system to output the juice Needed to lift that weight So for example, if your overhead press is stuck at 150 pounds But the reality is your shoulders and triceps can press 180 pounds But your body realizes that your rotator cuff and your shoulder stabilizer your mobility and your core stabilization Isn't allowing you to press any more than 150 You might be stuck at 150 pounds and by the way for those of you right now who are listening We're like, ah, that doesn't make any sense Just try this go do go test your overhead press And then put on a weight belt and test on your test your overhead press The weight belt has nothing to do with your shoulders in your arms All it's doing is stabilizing your core and you'll find that because you have increased stabilization You can actually lift well fun. Yeah, totally If I used to do this to my clients a lot of times where I'd have them do a one arm overhead press One time with just you know a regular kind of a loose position Well, obviously in good posture and everything But then the second rep I wanted them to make a fist with their other hand And then squeeze and and really contract their abs and everything else in their body at the same time and then press And and just see how much more strength that you can output just without one move One another story that highlights this really well. Sal you have to share it You've shared it shared on the store a story on the show multiple times before And that's the bench press plateau that you were on for many years before you purchased the shoulder horn Yeah, no, I was I don't remember what the weight was but I was stuck on my bench press for a long time and I couldn't figure it out couldn't figure it out and A trainer actually told me that they got their bench press to go up by Using this device and it was back then it was in the back of the bodybuilding magazines and now when he When he directed you that sorry to interrupt when you were directed that Did you were you aware it was a stability issue at this time when he's telling you or you just thought Oh, do this thing and then it'll no idea it wasn't till later until he said it and then I thought to myself, huh Maybe it's because I can't stabilize the weight I was at least Open enough to consider that and of course when you're a kid and you got the strong guy telling you to do something You don't even have to you know necessarily understand you're just gonna do what they you know You're gonna do what they tell you right and so I saw the device and I saw what the movement was They didn't buy the device actually just mimicked it at the gym And my strength went up immediately because I was able to strengthen Some of the muscles that stabilized my upper arm in particularly the infraspinatus and super spinates I saw my strength. I added five or ten pounds Literally that week from doing such a silly exercise with like a five pound dumbbell because of stabilization I've had this with clients where their squat is stuck and then we do some isometrics where we strengthen their You know their their legs ability to abduct and next thing, you know, we add five or ten pounds Your limiting factors are the weak links in the chain and oftentimes it's these your ability to stabilize and support the way Well, and it's important that the body has that mechanism I mean that saves you from a lot of injury and pain down the road It's just you have to acknowledge what your body's actually what that signal is is telling you and you have to be able to Find your way into those types of moves where Okay, those specific stabilizing muscles I haven't been utilizing and I haven't been focusing on you know, when I do it's really going to contribute to the overall Well, I saw this with a single leg deadlifts and the way it contributed to my my my bilateral deadlifts, right? Yeah, I got I got really into this, you know dumbbell single leg deadlifts because it was hard It was really difficult. I remember the first time I did it was already hard just to balance It's hard to balance on that one leg to hinge at the hips Much less holding any heavy weight in my hands and I remember I made it a goal Like can I get up to where I was doing holding on to 100 pound dumbbells plus with one leg and doing this with good form And I did and I remember watching that progression. First of all go back to our last point It was hard. It was uncomfortable. It was difficult first But the I was I think it started with 20 pound dumbbells But it was awesome because every week it went from 20 to 30. It was novel Yes, it was new my body hadn't and I was getting better and better and better next thing You know, I'm able to do this with 100 pound dumbbells Then I go back to doing regular deadlifts and oh my god I felt so connected so much stronger and stable from doing that So it has tons tons of carry over to the big lifts. Yeah, I mean, okay Here's another silly example, but imagine your your max squat now imagine you're doing this But you're standing on really really squishy fat pillows While you're trying to squat this way You're not going to be able to do it because the lack of stabilization The pillows is going to make you not be able to lift well That's what happens to your body when you're stabilizing muscles Can't support what you're doing which takes us to the next point Which is to prime your body consistently and properly Before your workouts priming partially takes care of the stabilization issue because proper priming Highlights stabilization issues, but proper priming also does much more It also turns on the central nervous system in a way that allows you to access The cns for maximal strength and this is a big difference and again for people who are like How big of a difference does this make? Here's a simple example You could test people without caffeine and then give them caffeine and you'll see a 5% increase in strength Just from giving them some caffeine. What did the caffeine do? Did it make their muscles grow? No, the caffeine turned on the cns a little bit more allowed them to fire a little bit more effectively It's why you're weaker when you're tired proper priming, which you spend about 10 minutes before your workouts doing this This that's what proper priming does. Well, and this can be a very nuanced long conversation So, um, Mattel Andrew to reference this episode where we just recently did on why working or why Warmups are a waste of time right? We just talked about this and we went really in deep about What priming is how to do it how not to do it what it looks like? We we have uh, two webinars that are free Where uh, justin takes you through the the maps prime uh webinar I take you through the prime pro webinar and I highly recommend that you take it's free. It's absolutely free Yeah, so one is maps prime webinar.com and then the other one's prime pro webinar.com right and they're absolutely free Extremely valuable because here's the thing too. We talked about it on that episode I I didn't tell you guys this Afterwards we had I had a bunch of people DM me that they and I don't know if you saw some of the tags of people that were going through Yeah, the webinar. Yeah, and I got a flood of DMs People going I'm so glad you pointed me that because I they owned prime and prime pro already But because the I take you through and you take people through you see the intent and drive the wrist up Drive your wrist up squeeze the back drive it up drive it up intensify it squeeze as hard as you can Squeeze squeeze squeeze drive up now start to slowly open up But keep your shoulder blades pinched keep them pinched palms are up once you get to the t start to rotate the wrist Once we rotate the wrist. Yeah of how you need to do this It's not you don't just go through the motions There has to be an intent involved with every single movement that you when you do this In order to get the maximum benefits so that when you go to do your workout and when you do it right We talked about this on another episode. That's what's beautiful about this I love teaching people how to prime properly because The workout the very next workout that you go into where you did a good job of priming crickly You will feel and see a difference immediately. You will proper priming. In fact, I've people typically are stronger Right away from proper priming because they're just their muscles are firing more Efficiently and effectively. Well, I like to look at it too as ways of teaching the body how to anchor itself in certain unstable situations in an environment so You know, if I have load That i'm dropping in a part of my body where the rest of my body needs to really ground itself I need to be able to keep everything from going off the bench or You know, I might be in a single loaded position where the the other part of my body I really need to figure out how to squeeze and ground and anchor myself You know priming is like that but finding that stable position It's it's about finding that stable position and whatever you're doing. Yeah to give you a simple example If let's say you want to increase your bench press and in your particular case The problem is The anchoring at the bottom of the bench where your shoulders are pinned back and you've got this real tight Upper back and and your lats are activated and if you ever talk to power lifters, they'll tell you To activate your lats when you bench press And let's say you have an issue with that. Well, believe it or not performing Proper rows Before you bench press will actually help you bench press more weight more effectively. This one simple example I know in our program maps power lift. We actually put Priming before a lot of the lifts to help people out Well, and you have to explain to the people why why that's a problem, right? So you picked a perfect one because I think that's like 99 of everybody like we almost everybody has some Somewhat of forward shoulders, right? Because we do everything in front of us So it's very very common. It's just a matter of how bad it is for you And I remember and I remember this as a trainer for a long time Bench press is one of the hardest things to teach somebody If you don't understand biomechanics, it's not a simple exercise. No, it's not at all and it's and and you're working against Most people's deviation, right? So most people have this forward shoulder and in order to maximize the bench press to get the most out of it To load it to work the chest the best you need to be in a retracted and depressed position with the shoulders And what happens with everybody is everybody's naturally hearing forward So if you just get under under a bar and start benching You're already one the shoulders very unstable and it's rolled forward So the triceps the arms the shoulders take over the movement and you feel very little Especially if you're telling them to push and it's hard and they're trying to move the weight forward And then you see them do this with their shoulders, right? And it sets you up for injury Right. So priming that person properly before the lift Turns those other stabilizing muscles on and is more likely to keep them in proper positions for a couple different reasons One it actually turns the muscles on And two it also allows them to feel with that proper position. That's right feels like Now I know we're all going to get a lot of messages on you know What workout plans that people can follow that you know are going to help and The programs that we have that are best suited for strength are map strong and maps power lift But what we're going to do is we're going to offer a limited time Kind of a flash sale because of this episode because we don't like to give people Tons of advice and then leave people hanging who actually want to follow something structured So we're putting both of them massive sales so you can actually get maps strong And maps power lift. It's called the power bundle. Here's the total for both Okay, one payment 79 dollars and 99 cents. So it's a huge discount. You can find it at maps power bundle Dot com and this promotion ends april 19th Look, if you like the podcast, you like our information Go check out all of our free stuff at map. Uh, excuse me mine pump free dot com You can also find all of us on instagram. You can find justin at mine pump Justin Me at mine pump salad adam at mine pump adam So where does the injury come from? Okay injury comes from Weakness injuries come from weakness now, whether it be stability or an arrange a motion that it Can't get in the chain someone right and that's where the injury happened So what a warm-up should do Is improve your strength and your function? That's what reduces the risk of it