 Summer is approaching fast. That means everybody has a fitness goal. Now, here's the deal. We wanted to do an episode about how to get the best shape by summer shredded but there's a lot of people with different goals, different starting positions. And here's the real challenge. The real challenge is the plan. What is the plan from now till then to get the best possible body because without a plan it's just not going to happen. It can happen, but take a lot longer. You're looking to do this by summer. So in today's episode, that's what we're going to do. We're going to break it down for you and we're going to talk about the three most common types of people who are trying to get fit by summer. Who are those? That's the beginner. Beginner. For the first time. Yeah. Okay, let's be clear here, though, too. A beginner I would put in this category. Not only this is your first time really getting after it, but also this is your first time in a long time. Yeah. So you could be somebody who's been in and out of the gym for 10 years. But you haven't worked out for like a year or two. Yeah, but you haven't worked out for like a year and you're ready to get back into the swing of things. I would still put you in the beginner, even if you're not considered a beginner in terms of, you know, lifting, you know, you're familiar with the lifts. I think that you should still progress as if you're because, and by the way, that's not like a knock or a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. Like there's this thing that happens to a lot of, you know, quote-unquote advanced lifters or people that have been lifting for most of their life that have taken a year, two years off, and then they want to go right back into like training volume compared to what they were doing when they fell off. And it's like, no, instead lift like you're a beginner, get all those newbie gains again. Like because it is like being new all over again, even though you may have had experience in the gym and follow that kind of a protocol before you progress to the more advanced type of thing. Yeah, so people kind of just getting started or who haven't been working out for a while or just not familiar with, you know, different exercises and how they work. Then the other two most common goals are I want to build lots of muscle or I want to burn lots of body fat. I want to get rid of lots of body fat. That covers pretty much everybody, right? Of course, within those are things that are much more specific, but that does cover for the most part everybody. And depending on where you fall, that's what will help dictate the plan because here's why people don't get results for the most part. Why people don't get results as satisfactory as they want or as fast as they want. I don't like to say as fast because sometimes people's goals are unrealistic. Like I want to lose 40 pounds and look shredded by next month. Like, okay, that's not going to happen. But even with realistic goals, oftentimes things don't happen fast enough because people don't really have a plan. And not just the plan like I'm going to go to the gym three days a week and I'm going to try and eat better. Like that's kind of part of the plan. But I mean a real plan like here's how I'm going to work out the next few weeks and then the weeks after that and then the weeks after that. Here's what my diet is going to look like now. Here's how it's going to progress. And here's how it's going to change. Here's what I should expect at this stage, at that stage. Here's when I do these exercises and those exercises. So it's methodical and it's not just like it's super impulsive where it's like, oh no, I got to make up for all this time that I haven't been putting in the gym and I can get it all together in a really short amount of time. Yes. You know what's funny about what you're saying though? In a small snapshot of let's say only four weeks, you're right. It's not the fastest way necessarily per se to maybe for someone to see the results that they're looking for. But over the course of three, six and nine months, it is the fastest way. I think that's why people get so hung up is they get this like, oh, I need to lose this much weight or I want to look a certain way and I want to get it as fast as I possibly can. But the fastest way to get there is technically kind of the slower way at first because the results ramp up on the back end when you do things correctly. When you jump out the gates and you throw the whole kitchen sink at your body, you may get the initial first two to three weeks faster results than the person that's slowly building the correct way. You see that with the weight loss for sure, right? But then they're not accounting for like maintaining that muscle mass. They don't get the definition, they don't get all these other attributes they're going for. You know what's reminding me, have you guys ever go to Universal Studio and this great theme park in California and they're these places where they would film movies and they're fake towns? Yeah. So it's like it looks like you're in a western, you know, like you're in the 17 to 1800s in the West. Boomtown. Yeah, like a boomtown, right? But from a distance, it looks like a saloon, it looks like a bar, looks like a... But then you walk up and you tell it's fake. Like, oh, I could like push this over with my hand and these windows aren't real and nobody's inside. Right. So could you build a fake house that looks like it's moving faster than a real house? I mean, from a distance, I guess you could, but it's not really a house. It'll topple over. So to do this the right way, there's only one way to do that and the right way gets you better results and faster results in terms of getting closer to the ultimate goal because you could lose that initial five pounds really quick by simply moving more and eating less. But if your goal is 15, 20 pounds, like in pure body fat, it ain't gonna happen without a plan. You need to have a specific plan and yes, exercise and eating differently are part of it, but what makes up those things and what's right for you are really what dictate just how effective it is and the biggest mistake people have is they don't think that far ahead either because they don't know because they think that, and this is a common thought. A common thought is the value of exercise is just movement. So really, does it matter what I do to a large extent? It's just am I moving? That's great. So there it is. And oh, with food, it doesn't really matter too much. So long as I eat foods that are somewhat you know, quote-unquote healthy, whatever that means and I eat less and then I'll get there. No, that's a tiny piece of the pie but really there's much more that goes into it. How you exercise, the exercise you do, the order that you do them, are they appropriate to you when you apply them and then with food, there's a way to eat to speed up the metabolism, to burn body fat, to build muscle and there's a big way to do it best for your body and you combine those things in the right order for yourself your body's going to progress and it's going to progress in a way that's fast and feels more effortless than hitting your head against the wall without a plan. Okay, so what does that look like specifically for the beginner? I mean, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is you know, addressing any posture, correctional stuff so that sets yourself up for one not having any potential injury also to getting the most out of the lifts that you're going to be going into I think of that. I also think of exercises that are either body weight or little movement like I love the stability ball type stuff where I'm working on not only posture with someone like that a little bit of instability some dumbbell work what does some of the programming look like for this person? Yeah, so the two things you wanted to talk about well, there's a few things that you really want to consider when you're a beginner one is understand that exercise really is just the stimulus that tells your body to change and adapt and the stimulus how you know it's appropriate is based off of where you're at now and a beginner doesn't need much stimulus to cause the body to move in the right direction but there's more to that it's not just that it doesn't need much more than what it needs actually becomes too much and overcomes your body ability to change and adapt so this is not a case where if some is good more is better there's if some is right more is not right and it actually gets you there much slower so you gotta have the right dose I would say is one of the strongest things you can say Yeah, I still think this is a major consideration because there seems to be this thought that you have to be able to accomplish a certain amount of exercises or this kind of more intensified workout for it to be any kind of value for you to even step into the gym and for you to even start this embark on this journey at all for your average person I feel like that thought is just still out there when in fact it's really just it's such an individualized experience if you can understand how to really like you know peer into what your body is telling you and you know in terms of like the overall intensity adjusting it accordingly so you kind of lean a little bit more on less so you're planning on coming back as opposed to you know taking it all on once what's up everybody special episode this is to help you get ready for the summer let me tell you what's going on first and I'll tell you what the giveaway is because I am going to give away something pretty awesome here's what we got going on we created specially for this episode three workout program bundles each one has programs that are combined and ebooks combined for specific goals here's what they are we have the summer starter bundle this is for beginners we have the summer shred bundle this is for those of you that want to get cut lean and then we have the summer strong bundle those are for those of you that want to build muscle and strength all of them discounted heavily okay heavily so if you're interested in checking them out go to mapsaprol.com alright so here's the giveaway if you leave a comment in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications choose you as the winner we'll let you know in the comment section and you can pick one of those bundles for free so whichever one of those bundles you want if you win you let us know in the comment section if you are the winner and we'll give it to you alright here comes the show so what comes to mind for me is I think hopefully Andrew can have the team shoot up some clips and videos from some of our different programs to give an example so the listener or viewer can get some visuals but for me it looks like a maps starter maps 15s type of programming with the combination of maps prime as far as the priming and posture stuff like focus on that going in yeah so let's talk again you mentioned posture to be more specific it's more like what would be referred to as correctional exercise make no mistake by the way correctional exercise is still muscle yeah you're still working out the difference is correctional exercise is setting your body up to be able to later do some of the most effective exercises you're able to so if you take a beginner you haven't worked out for a while just putting them under like if you've listened to the show before you know that you know we like barbell squats for example or barbell deadlifts great exercises very effective at building muscle and speeding up the metabolism and setting it up for fat loss and all that stuff very functional but if you haven't done them in a while or never putting you under a bar and expecting you to do a barbell squat you're not going to derive any value number one because you don't have the skill of it and you don't have you probably aren't going to have not just not the technique but the stability to do so and you'll probably hurt yourself so there are prerequisite exercises and things you can do to set yourself up so that you can do that exercise yeah just to reinforce everything really just to make sure everything's operating properly you're able to get into these positions and hold and sustain those positions which a lot of times people don't realize like I'm even just in a split stance it's hard for me to like maintain balance you know right there that's an issue like we have to work on that we have to get you grounded we have to get you to be able to control your body at the level now we can add load and you're going to see a lot more substantial results once you're able to control yourself yeah and I do want to say this again because sometimes people skip this but try to skip this part because they think oh this isn't the fat loss part or this isn't the muscle building part no no you burn body fat and build muscle doing this as well there's just an order an order of operation and you really want to be able to stabilize your body and at least build enough strength in your body to support yourself to do more of the traditional exercises but there's still exercises and you're still working out you mentioned maps 15 Adam what I like so much about a program like that so for people aren't familiar rather than having someone like for example in the past if I trained a beginner I would have them meet me two days a week and we would do about a 45 to 55 minute workout okay so and that's usually where I would start most people more than that would not only not be necessary but would probably be too much again we're talking about strength training here so what we did with maps 15 is we created a program where instead of doing two 45 to 55 minute workouts you're doing 15 minutes every single day the reason why that's so great for a lot of people but especially beginners is because it's hard to develop one of the challenges with getting started with any kind of workout program is just maintaining this new routine and structure like you weren't doing two one hour workouts a week before now you're starting to do them and it's a new thing in your life and you gotta make time for it and then okay now I gotta be consistent through all of life's challenges what we found as trainers when we trained people for a long time was it was easier for people to do a little bit every day versus a lot sometimes so instead of doing two one hour workouts they just did 15 minutes on a daily basis so that is a great approach for new people when somebody's brand new like when I talk to a family member in fact my aunt is about to start strength training she's like never done it before what should I do should I go two days a week and you know do 45 minutes to an hour no no I want you to do 15 minutes every single day she's like what she's like well that's actually easier I can squeeze it in I do it every single day develops habits faster I said absolutely that's the point so that's a very important thing to consider you also Adam mentioned the stability ball the stability ball entered into the fitness space and became quite popular and got abused for a while where everybody was doing a stability ball and so then we moved away from it but the real value of stability ball training that's the big you know looks like a big inflatable ball right the value of it is when you sit on it or use it for exercises because it's not a chair or a bench it requires you to maintain stability with your body and posture and you want that you want to learn how to do that as a beginner because there's lots of exercises that require that if you do overhead exercises or rows or whatever and you don't haven't learned yet how to really stabilize your body this is where lower back injuries can happen or just you know bad technique so stability ball exercises are excellent excellent for beginners one of my favorite uses for yeah I want to add to your point about math 15 to I mean this is how I just started so and I was completely off either it was just I wasn't very consistent I was sporadically working out one day then maybe another week I have two days and I have a week off and then like so my training was really inconsistent just you know three four months ago and the way I started back really being consistent was actually math it for that exact reason was just to help build that consistency I'm only doing two exercises a day and it's getting enough of stimulus because it's still more total volume in a week than what I was currently doing before that and that initial need to build muscle and change my physique was literally just from doing math 15 before I started to scale it up totally now as far as diet is concerned for most beginners this may sound counter right this might sound a little contrary to common knowledge but most people think okay I should just cut my calories right because most people are looking to lose weight not necessarily we like to and we found this to be more successful to add things to someone's diet and do what's called a reverse diet because we're trying to fuel muscle building and muscle growth they're going to gain tons of muscle muscles hard to build but what that does just by by moving in that direction especially if you do it the right way by adding quality protein is you actually start to speed up your metabolism that makes fat loss way easier like think of it this way right now if your metabolism was 50 percent hotter how much easier would it be to get lean right that means you don't have to move as much your body's burning those calories on its own so a reverse diet type of an approach where you slowly add calories especially through high quality protein in conjunction with proper strength training will start to speed that metabolism up so that we get what's called like a snowball effect is what I used to refer to it as like it starts off slow but that snowball as it goes down the hill gets bigger and bigger and bigger well this goes back to the original point that I was trying to make about if you get let's most of these beginners that would choose this beginner pathway are probably trying to reduce body fat or lose weight right and if you just start moving way more than what you were before say following one of these programs right and reducing calories significantly in the first couple weeks you would see more weight loss on the scale than say the person who I tell you on the reverse diet but fast forward this two months three months down the road and the person who did it the right way by reverse dieting first and speeding the metabolism up is going to see fat loss come off significantly faster and then stay off and then also be in a place to maintain where they want to be forever versus the person who just cuts cuts cuts cuts around the gate and then they're a month away or month out and their body's plateauing they're halfway to their goal and they're eating hardly anything and they're like f this this is not sustainable which by the way go any lower happens to most people when they get in this place so 100% I'm on board like this is this person I'm reverse dieting right now and even though their goal may be I want to lose 20 pounds or 30 pounds look great in the beginning for summer it's like okay that is the plan but we're first going to reverse diet and put you in a better position metabolically before we start to cut out by the way if this is like if you want to lose like 10 pounds like you're thinking I just want to lose 10 pounds of body fat just well often times the scale doesn't move much at all but you did lose quite a bit of body fat and just gained muscle and that means you're smaller by the way I want to be very clear muscle takes up less space per pound than body fat it's just more dense so if you lost let's just say 10 pounds of body fat be gained 10 pounds of muscle people would think you lost 20 pounds of on the scale like you're just smaller and that muscle doesn't take up much space but you look tighter and more sculpted in fact I would get clients that would happen with clients all the time they'd come to me like salad I know we've been working out for a couple months the scale hasn't moved people keep asking me how much weight I've lost and say well you did lose body fat you just gain muscle now your metabolism is faster and you're smaller because body fat takes up more space all right the next person the that you know type of person that is trying to get in shape for summers muscle we're trying to gain some mass usually this is a guy typically especially a young man or whatever but I've had female clients yeah I put like even like booty gains right here that's muscle building right right so I put booty gains for the bikini in this position I put hard gainer in this position I put just somebody in general who has a harder time building muscle and wants to build a muscular physique that's I put all those people in this category yeah now a big a big thing to consider here and this is somebody that's already been you know kind of working out obviously we covered the beginner so you're already working out and you're like I just want to build I want to get into the summer and I want to have more muscle and more shape well the for this kind of person usually we see big changes in their performance in terms of the results by simply manipulating and utilizing intensity properly okay intensity is one of the most important factors when it comes to your workouts it also simultaneously happens to be the one that's the most abused yes so you know you have like frequency like how often you work out you know how many days a week are you working out that would be frequency volume would be the total amount of workout exercises and sets and reps that you do so if you worked out you know for an hour that'd be more volume than if you worked out for 20 minutes so it's volume and then there's intensity which is simply how hard the workout is well you know if you've been working out for a little while you're trying to build muscle you probably realized early on that oh the harder I work out the more muscle I build but eventually this stops real fast and then you think oh I must need to work out harder which you know and you work out even harder and then still no results I need to just ramp it up even more and then not only you're not getting results now you're going backwards so intensity needs to be utilized properly and manipulated in a way to where we are working with your body's ability to heal recover and adapt we're not just beating the crap out of yourself if you do this the right way then we can trigger and amplify muscle growth if we do this wrong way then nothing happens at all or worse you actually start to go backwards so some piece of advice for people and this actually is now present in one of our most and our more recent maps program maps anabolic which you know we actually created after already having the podcast for eight years and interviewing experts and experimenting with more people is we realize that you can utilize very high intensity training and it will build muscle very quickly so long as you alternate it with less intense higher volume style workouts and throw in some what are called load weeks and if you do that magic combination right there oh boy the results happen real fast which really I mean it's highlighting the importance of recovering and adapting versus just you know healing and getting into that kind of recovery trap where we're working out so intensively because it's showing us results out of the gates because this intensity is really providing your body that signal that stimulus but if we keep on that path of just over intensity like over and over and over it just gets to the point where now we're just healing now and we're not really moving the needle forward anymore so this is just always something that I think most people are going on their fitness journey don't really consider how vital and important the recovery processes with sleep with nutrition with also just like undulating your intensity of your workouts I also think that this person because we are playing with things like intensity and like failure training and stuff like that the thing that complements this is like a prime pro type of layout where I have all these exercises that are designed to make sure I keep all my joints moving optimally and healthy because when you are flirting with things like intensity you are more likely to see the joint pain or the issues like that and so staying ahead of it knowing like I kind of have this rolled shoulder forward and then also I know that I'm going to be pushing overhead presses and hitting like days where I might be taking it to failure and so knowing that I need to put the work in to make sure that I'm in an advantageous position to make sure that I don't hurt myself and I get the max benefits for it so I think having something like that to complement that type of training I think is necessary for this advanced person or ideal for this person. Yeah, if you've been working out for a while and you're trying to build muscle mass you've probably hopefully already figured out that some exercises just build more muscle than others like the bench press the barbell row the barbell squat, the dead lift the overhead press those exercises just they just build a lot of strength in comparison to other exercises that purport to work the same areas but then you wrench this problem if this is you and you're trying to build muscle and you're getting stronger and you're pushing intensity by lifting to failure something starts to hurt my elbow starts to bother me I can't dead lift anymore because my wrist bothers me or I can't overhead press my shoulder bothers me or my lower back is starting to get tweaked now I can't squat I can't build muscle building exercises because something hurts, something's bothering you gotta switch it out for an inferior exercise and maybe you'll still build some muscle but it ain't happening nearly as fast for this person just to compliment what you guys are saying it's really important to do targeted mobility work targeted for the areas that you know are getting stressed quite a bit so like if you're bench pressing a lot your numbers go up and you start to notice like my left shoulder starts to feel a little bit funny and I'm starting to lift big weights but God I love the bench press it builds my chest and my shoulders and my triceps really well targeted mobility work on that shoulder or targeted mobility work for your particular body type to help with the bench press will keep those numbers moving forward if you don't do that your body will literally stop you from getting stronger because your central nervous system will say we're not letting you lift more, we don't feel stable or worse you push past that you overcome your central nervous system stopping mechanism and you're yourself now you're really screwed, now you can't work out at all so targeted mobility is so important for people really trying to build muscle mass because usually that comes along with heavy weights and lots of intense strength training that will stop you into tracks if you don't address it you know back to the intensity thing for somebody watching right now when I said alternate like literally you could do one week for let's say your back 15 sets where you stop 3 reps short of failure, you get a good pump then next week now you're doing just 4 sets but all to failure you drop the volume, ramp up the intensity alternating like that oh boy that keeps things moving in the right direction do the failure every single week like a lot of people do and after about 3 or 4 weeks that's it you're stuck in the mud well and to add back to your priming and mobility point that you're making at least I don't think you guys do I know for sure me if I am lifting heavy, bench, overhead press squat or deadlift it's mandatory that I do certain mobility drills before I go or it's almost guaranteed that I will hurt or stress something when I do it for sure it won't get the max out of the lift like if I try to go cold into one of those things or just do like a warm up set like some coaches just advocate for and then go into it there's no way I'm getting the most out of that lift or I'm not potentially getting hurt out of that lift and I know it's equal in terms of like beginner to advanced in terms of like that but I can't help but think like the further along I've gone in my career of like lifting weights like how essential that is now that I've understood that like because you do pay attention to that you peer into those little inconsistencies even more when you're lifting heavy weights and it pressures it more and so you I very much have had to you know be humble myself and realize like I have to do this in order to maintain the optimal function of my joints in order to then get any progress going forward because it's hard it gets harder and harder to get progress the longer you're in Yes, the bigger and stronger you get the higher the risk becomes when your form is off just a little bit okay so to paint it plainly if you're deadlifting with a hundred pounds and your form is off a little bit versus you're deadlifting with five hundred pounds and your form is off just a little bit obviously the risk is going to be much higher with the heavier weight because it's heavier and it's going to stress the joints a little bit differently now if you have perfect form good stability good control you're fine but when you're off you're off so targeted mobility work becomes it's important for the beginner it's crucial for the person who's been working out for a long time which is by the way where the whole heavy lifting thing has got a bad rap like it has something to do with heavy weights don't lift heavy because you get hurt or it's bad for your joints the heavier you lift the more perfect why don't you consider that I don't know how you guys treat it but to me let's say it's a day where it's been a while since I've tried to train to failure like singles doubles or triples for me I make this rule where I have to earn that and part of earning that is doing the pre-work going into that and if I'm not willing to do all my work then I won't do it it's just that simple if I'm in a hurry I can do this then I'm not training to failure I'm not pushing the risk it's not and so the only way that I earn the right to lift like that is that I've done all the prerequisites before I go into that and I've just learned that over years and years of making the mistake of not doing that another thing for people trying to build lots of muscle who have experience is at this point you're probably somewhat well versed in some of those pretty awesome exercises which is great because they're great exercises but here's the downside you probably think back to when you were learning how to do a squat and then there was that beautiful period where you just seem to get stronger every week and muscle started to build and then at some point you got real good at it you've done it for a while now adding 15 pounds to the bar is really hard you can actually somewhat tap into that by doing certain unconventional strength building lifts and there's some that are out there that for some reason became unpopular that are amazing muscle building exercises so if you look into some of these lifts that you probably haven't done before and really tap into some of those what they call newbie gains and they're out there like for me for example we created a program called map strong years ago and I was familiar with a Zercher squat or a Zercher deadlift never really programmed it in my workouts but it was part of our program we were selling it we were creating it in my routine and it was great it was like the first time I started to learn how to deadlift at first it took me a while I was uncomfortable and then I started getting better with them and then I was gaining muscle like I just started working out this is my body never done that exercise really for a long period of time so there's exercises out there that I like there's two other exercises in that program that you didn't even name that I got that from snatch grip deadlifts and circus press movements were like forgotten movements in my programming forever like I didn't even do it till post 10 years into my career adding that into my routine oh my god the response from that such great movements that's why it's one of my favorite programs is because of all the unconventional lifts in there that I think most people don't think to program and they're just super beneficial another thing of value with people in this category and I'm going to be careful when I say this because I know the tendency is to abuse what I'm about to talk about but if you do it right they can be pretty awesome there are advanced training techniques that are out there that bodybuilders and power lifters and Olympic lifters and strength athletes have used that can really amplify results and progress now the key is to use them judiciously be very intelligent with how you use them so an example would be like forced reps or negatives or partial reps or using bands for progressive resistance for example like these are all examples of advanced training techniques if you use them let's say you pick one and use it once a week on a specific lift or twice a week and you know maybe on another lift and you do it right you will see faster muscle building results if you mess up and you do it too often you'll go backwards so just word of note there are advanced training techniques out there but you've got to use them right if you use them wrong and you might as well you're better off not doing them at all now the last person which is probably 80% of people going into the summers they want to lose weight they want to get lean they want to get cut shredded whatever they want to burn and they have experience right now and they're consistent right yeah these are people with some experience yeah I'd say this probably this fits 80% maybe the listeners in the podcast probably are lifting in the gym pretty regularly or have been doing it for a while so you have some experience and maybe you have already kind of built a little bit of lean tissue and metabolism is getting up there already and now it's like okay go for the reveal yeah exactly it's the reveal time I've got a perfect amount of time getting ready to head for say 4th of July or whatever like that now I want to get shredded like that's the person I think about when we talk about this yeah because this is you know really falls into that like aesthetic category or looks category I'm going to talk a little bit about training for balance and symmetry in the body which can have profound visual effects okay training the body to be balanced you might not see a huge change on the scale but visually when someone looks at you they'll notice you'll look a lot different a lot better and balance can be upper to lower body that's an obvious one but it can also be more commonly right to left right is your right arm way stronger than your left arm is your right leg way stronger than your left leg are they as fit as each other unilateral training this is where you train one side at a time bodybuilders have done this for a long time to improve how they look training one side at a time and doing it properly can really change how you look even though the scale might not move much in fact we had somebody in our forum we posted this a long time ago where she did a dexa scan and she followed one of our programs that's designed for this called map symmetry I forgot about this and there was a like so much lean body mass on one side versus the other so a little bit more on her dominant side than the other and then she followed the program and it did exactly what it was designed to do is it is it brought up the lagging side and visually substantially you it you know and it's something that you pick up on subconsciously you could pick up on symmetry so just something to focus on if you're getting lean and your goals to really improve your aesthetics like try to balance out both sides rather than just drive your body forward I wish I understood this when I was in my 20s I didn't get this I totally didn't get this I think I was like an in teenager teenage did 20 early 20s you know like you get with many clients who are obsessed with the body part I just want to have big arms I just want that big chest or I just want big legs or a butt like we get obsessed with these body parts that we tend to be insecure about or that we in fact were infatuated with and we want that and if we only like were to focus more symmetrically on the body like you'd be so much happier I think back to like for me it was like arms as a kid like that was like this big deal I just wanted arms and so that's all I ever did and the reality is that even when I laid off doing arms at the volume that I was doing in my teens and early 20s and started to build a more symmetrical I got more compliments about my arms than I ever did but yet circumference wise they were technically an inch plus smaller than what they were when I was training them like crazy but it's crazy what a difference having sculpted shoulders does for the bicep and the tricep and the same thing goes for a good balance quad to hamstring to calf ratio like when you train the body symmetrically like that like it will even if you think that you only want one body part is all you think you care about that one body part will look better when it's balanced with everything else. It's so funny how much of a head turner it is for people that are like super symmetrically balanced and like athletic for sure fit looking versus like I remember seeing somebody I've seen on Instagram in real life and was just like whoa it's just you know because there's angles and there's things that can highlight those featured body parts and what people want and versus like in real life and then you see and it's just like it's so it takes you a second to kind of put it together it's like it doesn't really fit. It's rare I mean posture and symmetry if I see someone I say I always compliment them because it's always going to look good. Yeah it looks when someone stands upright with good posture and they're symmetrically balanced it's I think the most amazing expression of their body or our bodies when done so. Yes it's the difference between oh like muscular versus oh that's a beautiful body. Bodybuilders have understood this for a long time I mean they know they've learned for a long time that they don't just get judged on overdeveloped body parts but rather how it all flows and looks together and training for that makes a very big difference and again if you're trying to get cut you're probably interested and you want to look a particular way. Don't ignore this this makes a very big difference in your appearance. The other thing is to bring up balance is to bring up body parts that may be just specifically lagging for yourself. Now I want everybody has this by the way everybody has a body part that they're not happy with I don't care who you talk to if they've been working out for a while and you say you know how's your workouts going what do you like what do you don't like everybody's like oh I have it's my butt or it's my the back of my shoulders or it's my back or whatever right they have that one body part here's a mistake people make they add volume to that body part more exercises more sets and more reps and they do nothing else with the rest of the body or they train it with more volume with the same intensity and so they just end up beating the crap out of this body part overtraining it and actually cause it to not just not progress but to actually regress or also developing the ones that are already overdeveloped in comparison to that and so even though you keep the ratio the ratio stays the same so you bring up that one body part but then the rest of them came up too. There's a smart way to bring up a lagging body part and usually you reduce volume from other areas or you add volume to that weak body part but you do so in a lower intensity with different exercises so you're not just overcoming your body's ability to adapt and recover you're actually bringing that body part back up. Now another part and here's where I want to get real careful is you know the calorie burn of your workout we've talked about this many times on the show it's not the most important thing what's more important is that you speed up your metabolism it's more important that you eat a particular way we'll get to diet of course because these are people who want to lose weight but in a short period of time let's say an eight week period of time you can make some pretty profound changes by burning more calories in your workout but you got to do it the right way because if you do this the wrong way what will happen is your body will actually reduce muscle to keep you from burning too many calories remember your body's always trying to keep itself in balance so what's real popular for this is usually high intensity interval training right hit training because studies show it burns so many calories oh my god 30 minutes a hit it's like doing two hours of other exercise that's true but it's not just a mishmash of exercise if you really want this to be effective it needs to be strength training hit workouts strength training hit workouts that are well programmed will burn a ton of calories will get you lean faster in a short period of time but you won't lose muscle so if I were to structure this the way it would look for me personally is a more you know symmetry slash aesthetic type of programming and then and and carb cycling while I'm heading into summertime oh for the diet and then the last finish it up with it the last two to four weeks is hit and I would start to reduce calories as I slowly go down and the way I would reduce it is through carb cycling so I would carb cycle let the lower carb days be the natural lower calorie days let the you know maintenance the surplus days be the little bit higher calorie days and then as I start to get closer and closer to the end of the you know or whenever the time I'm trying to peak or look my best if I have vacation or fourth of July or whatever is when I'm gonna ramp up and introduce the hit for those last carb cycling is that was popularized by bodybuilders but now lots of people are catching on when you cut your calories calories are gonna come from proteins fats or carbohydrates those are the three places you'll get calories from proteins and fats are essential so you have to eat a certain amount of them you have to absolutely have to your body cannot create essential fatty acids it cannot create essential amino acids but your body actually technically doesn't need carbohydrates now I'm not advocating you never eat carbs again I don't think that's very well balanced approach that also has its own negatives but you could survive without carbs so when cutting calories and also simultaneously try to give yourself enough energy for your workouts and simultaneously trying to not lose any muscle it makes sense and this is again why bodybuilders did this make sense to cycle your carbs cut your carbs when you cut your calories raise them a little bit when you need the energy for particular types of workouts and the data shows that this actually has some merit people have better workouts and psychologically the diet doesn't feel as difficult they feel more satisfied and they get better results and look I've done it all and personally this for me is the best way to get lean it's the easiest it feels the best and I still have decent workouts I think there's more to that too and you kind of alluded to it with the the essential you know your fats and protein is essential and in my experience almost anytime I set like when you assess the diet when you're not telling people what to do and like what are they doing almost everybody was under consuming healthy fats or definitely under consuming protein so the idea that when you would go into this restrictive part of a diet to lean out to potentially cut the two things that you already are probably low on is not a good strategy so I've always loved utilizing carb cycling or some form of that with clients when it comes to reducing body fat unless they have some sort of special condition or autoimmune issue where I put them on a different type of a diet but for most people I think it's one of the best strategies to lean somebody out for that exact reason that most people don't hit their protein and healthy fats on a regular basis and so why would I put you on a calorie sugar diet where I pull that out when it's just got you consistently eating that now I'm going to pull that away, no I'd rather pull something like carbohydrates that aren't necessary so you can get those fats and proteins, 100% alright so here's what we did for those of you that want it to be very specific, written out you know exactly what to do each day, each week and you have help along the way we took and we put together three bundles for the three types of people we talked about the beginner the person who wants to build muscle and the person who wants to get leaner what we did is we took the programs that are best suited for all of those we put them in bundles and then we discounted them tremendously so you have the summer starter bundle which is for beginners, the summer shred bundle which is for those people who want to burn body fat for summer and the summer strong bundle for people trying to build muscle and build strength for the summer all of them again combination of programs with ebooks to help with every single thing that we talked about and be specific tell you exactly what to do reps, sets, form everything and the discounts are massive, like you're going to save more than half off the regular price so if you're interested in any of those and you want that help, go to mapsapral.com today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong well developed chest when I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there it was for me for sure I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique