Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1337: Five Reasons Why Your Legs Won’t Grow

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss what can be done to grow stubborn legs. Why your legs aren’t growing. (3:29) Why you WANT your legs to grow. (5:41) The intimidation factor of the equipment. (7:45) #1 – Not all exercises are created equal. (9:44) #2 – Not taking your body through PROPER full range of motion. (17:00) #3 – Not working out frequently enough. (24:22) #4 –You are NOT eating enough! (30:00) #5 –Not giving your body the proper recovery. (37:49) Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS Strong ½ off!! **Promo code “STRONG50” at checkout** Visit Felix Gray for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Leg Muscle Development Free Guide - Mind Pump Media How Do I Build My Legs? – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump TV - YouTube The Most Overlooked Muscle Building Principle – Mind Pump Blog MAPS Total Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator Nutrition Mistakes Skinny Guys Make – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump # 1072: What You Need To Know About Protein For Muscle Building & Fat Loss The Myth of Optimal Protein Intake – Mind Pump Blog MAPS Fitness Anabolic - Mind Pump Media Mind Pump Podcast - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Saldas Defano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pumped the World's Top, Fitness, Health, and Entertainment podcast, we talk about legs, the lower body, and why your legs may not be building and developing. In fact, we give you the five most common reasons why your legs are probably not responding well. We talk about everything from the best exercises. There are exercises that rank among all others when it comes to leg development.

We talk about frequency, how often you should work out. We talk about ranges of motion, and why that's important. We talk about nutrition. We mention recovery. Recovery is a big one. A lot of people don't realize that the recovery process is also part of the adaptation process, right? At least it helps fuel the adaptation process,

which is code word or science word for building, building muscle. Part of recovery is good sleep. Good sleep also gives your body the ability to handle harder workouts. Poor sleep will kill your gains. Now one of the things that we mentioned in there, a little bit is about, you know, of course sleep and we've talked in other episodes about sleep routines.

One thing you can do before you go to bed that can make a pretty big difference according to studies is where blue light blocking glasses, about an hour or two right before you go to bed. This tells the brain that the sun has gone down and that it can prepare for sleep so that when you didn't finally do hit the pillow, you don't have to wait another hour of going into weird, you know, in and out sleep, you don't have to wait another hour of going into weird, you know, in and out sleep, you go right to sleep, and you do it properly and you get good quality sleep.

Now, we are sponsored by Felix Gray who makes the best blue light blocking glasses around. We like them mostly because they look cool, but also because they don't change the color of the room around you. A lot of blue light blocking glasses are orange or red, so if you want to watch TV or work on your phone, now the whole world has changed color. Felix Gray glasses block the intense blue lights that affect your brain and make you have

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STROMG50, no space for the discount. All right guys, let's talk about why somebody's legs might not be growing. Yeah, I feel like that's a tough body part for people to develop quite often. People avoid it. I think you should start, man. First about why though, it's tough.

I think it's, I think one of the, at least why it was tough from me, right? So it was really tough for me because it just, leg workouts killed me. Taxes you. Yeah, I remember doing a leg workout and just rarely ever feeling like I could get through it without feeling nauseous.

You know, almost there. And to me, I didn't, when I first started training, I really didn't think I was, uh, go at that time. I didn't think I was going that hard. I was just, man, legs just expended another level of energy, uh, in comparison to every other body part that I train. And it might have something to do with me being six three and having really long, lanky limbs, but I don't know if you guys could relate to that. That was my big issue. Oh, like, leg workouts are always the hardest, the most, they're big, huge muscles that

you're using when you do exercises. And so when you're doing a, even a compound upper body exercise, like a row or a bench press or an overhead press, which can also be taxing and difficult. You're using much smaller muscles. It's not expanding as much energy. It's not using as much blood. And so it's just more difficult. Well, I just remember too, back doing split routine where I would focus

all my attention on legs. In one session, it was just like, it would take me good four or five days to be able to feel normal again. It was crazy. You know, to that point, that's actually a lot of the reason why I think I stayed with split workouts for as long as I did was because I could never do anything

else with legs. Getting a full leg workout was just in itself. You dreaded it. Yeah, I was like, I can't pair anything else with it. Yeah, but after you're done with your workout and you're walking to the car and your legs are doing it, tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt. Try it.

I'm taking this shit. Yeah, it's a problem. Yeah, just stepping off the curb when you come out, when you come out and almost losing it. Oh, yeah, I've seen that. You know, why would you want your legs to grow? Well, besides them being aesthetic in both men and women, now with women, I don't have to make this case as much

because I think women know the aesthetic value of well-developed lower body. A lot of guys don't necessarily understand this. They think, oh, you know, it's about the biceps, about the chest and the back. And I can hide my legs in jeans or in pants or whatever. But consistently, when they do polls and they ask women, what body parts they like and what is unattractive, more often than not, not having legs that match your upper body is one of the top things. Well, I think that's just it. It's less about having massive legs

and it's just more about symmetry. Symmetry and peace. It's pleasing to the eye. Totally, totally. It's all balanced and well-developed legs at match, a nice body, signify health. Obviously, they're very functional. You use your legs more than you use anything else.

Because of standing and walking, your two legs, you'll be able to walk on two legs is one of the things that makes you distinctly human. The very important that you maintain a good level of fitness. Even if you just want to burn body fat, and you're not really interested in growing your muscle or gaining size, I should say,

you know, if you want to burn body fat, you do want to have a faster metabolism. And the legs represent such big muscle groups that getting them stronger and to build a little bit has a very profound, in comparison to other muscle groups, it has the largest impact on your metabolism because you're talking about, again, such big muscle groups. But there are a lot of people that have challenges

with developing their legs. They worked them out, they trained them. And for whatever reason, they're just not getting the response or the development that they may be getting from other parts of their body. And for, you know, for, besides people who just don't train their legs, which is that's obvious while your legs aren't responding.

Besides that, I think there's some pretty common things that I'll see in people's workouts and routines that is preventing them from developing the type of leg muscles that they're looking for. Yeah, I think back when I was in the commercial gym setting, I saw a lot of machine options for legs that people were definitely drawn to because, I mean, you're in a seated position doing leg extension, you're laying down and kind of doing some leg curls and some, you know, even just doing some leg press.

Those are much less demanding and taxing on the body and require a lot less skill. And so it's like almost easier for somebody to just kind of just add that into the routine and then avoid the big compound exercise. It's a bit too pronged. I remember like it's one, it's easier. And when you look at, I remember like going into the gym

and looking at like the squat rack. And it can be very intimidating for a young man or lady that's never really squatted before and been trained on how to squat properly. And you're in an environment like that. So yeah, part of it is the leg press, leg extensions are easier. Then the other part is too is just the intimidating factor of being in this gym and being in a

public area and trying to do an exercise that you've never really performed. And it is complex. You know, squat is not easy for somebody who's never been trained yourself. You need to know what you're doing. Right. So I avoided it for a very, I even avoided it as a trainer because of that, because I hadn't really, really worked on the movement patterns and getting good at squatting. And so, I was known as a personal trainer in my gym.

I didn't want members walking by and seeing this trainer who looks terrible squatting. And so I shied away from it. And if I did squat, it was at later hours or when the gym wasn't as pop. I remember that. I remember being afraid of doing it because it was difficult. So I just gravitated towards the exercises that the hacks squat, the leg press, the leg

extensions, the leg for all the standard machines, and that was my workout. Yeah, easily the number one reason, just generally speaking, the number one reason why someone's legs aren't developing, they're just not doing the best exercises. And here's something that, I feel like I need to say it every once in a while, even though it's obvious. Not all exercises are the same in terms of their effectiveness.

You might have two exercises, both working the legs, but one of them is going to produce tremendous results, and the other one will produce very little results. So there's a hierarchy of movements for your body in terms of what is generally more effective and what is less effective, and this is true for your legs as well. The barbell squat is number one. For most people, nothing will develop the lower body in the legs like a barbell squat. But there's another part to this. It's not just barbell squats. It's barbell squats performed properly. This is the next piece to it because sometimes I see people do the right exercises and they do them wrong or they do it. So you

got to do the best exercises but you got to get good at doing them the right way. So pick the best exercises and then practice them often. And don't let that get you scared either. Like because the process of getting good at it, there's a lot of gains that come with it. That's where a lot of the gains come. Right. So I think that's important because someone hears that like, oh, be good at it. I know I'm not going to be good at it. I haven't done it ever. Nobody's good at anything that I don't know. But that's okay because, and I hate that there important because someone hears that, like, oh, be good at it. I know I'm not gonna be good at it. I haven't done it ever. Nobody's good at anything that I've done.

But that's okay because, and I hate that there's even debate around this right now. There's, you still see people posting on social media and telling me, oh, you don't ever need a squat. This exercise is great. And I hate that because for me, admittedly telling you that I was never somebody who regularly squatted when I was a young kid lifting,

and even in my early 20s, one of the biggest game changers for me in my lifting career was practicing squatting and getting good at it. And it still amazes me the effort I have to put to maintain the size of my legs today compared to what it was in my mid 20s. I mean, I just had to crush legs every week

just to keep them where they were at and by by by no means were impressive. It wasn't until I started to squat and use all the squat and deadlift variations that I did I get good size on my legs. And then it became really easy actually to maintain as long as I squat, literally like right now, if I squat once a week, a good squat session,

it's enough to maintain good mass on my legs. And I've never found another exercise like that that maintains the size, not the HACS squat, not the leg press, not to say that none of those exercises don't have their value or don't have a place. It's just they just don't even come close to comparing the benefits of the squat. When speaking back to your other point about, you point about feeling judged and going into the gym, I think that's a really big part of it, especially for men specifically, because you don't want to put on weight that you feel like everybody else in there is going to mock or make fun of you for.

To be able to go in and suck right away takes a lot of putting your ego aside and courage. And that's really what it takes, but that specific exercise will give you the biggest return. And so it's definitely worth it. And to be able to kind of put your ego aside and suck for a while is going to be to your benefit. Yeah. Here are the exercises that you should be doing if you wanna maximize your leg development.

We just said back squat, that's for sure. But there's a lot of squat variations. The front squat in particular, I think, is should be up there. You have exercises like the deadlift. Now the deadlift does work the back, but it's also mainly, in fact, a hip exercise. So it's phenomenal for the legs.

Bulgarian split stance squats, lunges, good mornings, hip thrust, those exercises that I just listed are the best by far. You know, I went through a period, I think it was a sophomore junior in high school where I put on something like 13 pounds of lean, pretty mostly lean body mass. It was the biggest, the fastest gain in lean body mass

I've ever done in my entire life. I gained more weight later on as an adult, but it wasn't lean body mass. And it all came from two exercises, back and front squats. Now, up into that point, I did work out my legs. I did leg press, leg extension, leg curl, and hack squat. Those are the movements that I did. And they gave me some, you know, effects. I did notice some strength, some muscle gain.

Luckily for me, my upper legs respond pretty quickly. So I got something out of them, but it wasn't until I got good at back squats and front squats that I didn't see. That's when I saw that the results really come to fruition. And it was like, it was huge. It was like nothing else. Those movements belong in your workout routine.

And if your legs are not responding well and you're not doing those movements, the first thing I would do is put them in in regular rotation, get really, really good at those exercises. Back squat, the front squat, dead lifts, split stance movements like your lunges and your Bulgarian squats, good mornings, hip thrust. Those are the best ones, by the way.

I had a very similar experience to that, but it was back squat and it was a power clean, which is basically a front loaded squat, but with power added to it. And for me, I was the guy that was always doing bench press and I was doing overhead press and then I would just kind of do some machines for legs because it was so taxing and it wore me out, you know, going back to

doing athletic pursuits and all these types of things. But that single instance where I was starting to learn the back squat and power cleans it like my entire body changed, my upper body changed. I was able to gain a lot more mass like overall. It was crazy. So I went through the exact same thing. and then I went through this phase where it started to come together but didn't come all the way together for me because what I did, okay, I see I need a squat and so then it was intermittently in my training.

This was my mid to late 20s was like, okay, I see the value in it, I just gotta make sure I do it every once in a while. And then it got to the point where I was like, okay, what if I put a lot of energy and focus on just getting good at dead lifting and squatting? And that was when I saw the greatest gains for my legs. And again, the least effort.

I felt like I wasn't having to crush the leg, or crush the leg workouts every single time I went to the gym. As long as I had some good dead lifting, good squat sessions every single week, my legs were responding and growing, and it was blowing my mind on the amount of effort that I was having to put. And then if you start to build some volume into that, right?

Like I like to get to a place where all those exercises that you're listening, they almost all make it into a week, every week. If you're hitting all those movements every single week, I guarantee you got great legs. Absolutely. And so at first you'll go through or not guaranteed, but if you go through the same phase, I went to where you start to realize, oh, wow, these are good. Okay, I need to get them in there.

And you start intermittently doing it, but still the bulk of your workouts are these leg extensions, haxquats and all these machine exercises. That'll help a little bit, but once you kind of fully commit to the movements like we just listed and build everything around those and those become the foundation, that's when you see your legs just take off. Totally.

Now I had mentioned earlier about not just doing those movements but doing them well. That's also very, very important. Here's the biggest part where people tend to screw up, even when they're doing the right exercises. They don't use a full range of motion. I would say this is the second most common reason why people's legs aren't really developing

the way that they'd like. And you, you know, I talk to people, and they'll tell me, listen, my legs just don't seem to respond. I'll look at their workout and be like, well, okay, I see some back squats and front squats. And it looks like you're deadlift in here. So you're doing the right exercises.

Would you mind if I watched you do your leg workout? Oh yeah, absolutely. And like clockwork, the range of motion was terrible. They wouldn't do a full squat, either because they couldn't, or because they were afraid to do a full squat because they didn't want to lighten the load. so they wanted to keep the two plates on the bar and going down all the way meant they'd have to take a plate off, so forget that I'd rather

do this, you know, not full squat or whatever. So those are the two main reasons, I would see that, but range of motion is very important when it comes to muscle development. This is for all exercises, by the way. Studies are pretty conclusive with this, and by the way, if they weren't conclusive, the way you would see everybody build or ever work out would be very short, short ranges of motion because you would be able to use more weight

and it'd be a lot easier. But it's the full range of motion that really gets, first off, it recruits the most muscle fibers. You have your muscles are made up of muscle fibers and you recruit the most of them when you do a full-range emotion But it's not just that the strength gains that you get with the full-range emotion are more broad than the strength gains You get with a short-range emotion if I squatted down four inches

Most of the strength I'm gonna gain in that particular range of motion is gonna be to that range of motion I'm gonna get really strong at that four inch squat, and as I go lower and outside of that, I dramatically lose the strength that I have in that four inches that I practice with. But if I do a full squat, and I get stronger in the full squat, the strengthings go to that full range of motion. It develops your legs much better.

So here's the thing, if you can't do a full squat because it throws off your form or it doesn't feel comfortable, work towards getting to that point. Not to mention you don't go full range of motion, you're going to limit the potential for you to go through a lot of these other movements. So you're going to create a lot of imbalances that you're going to have to work through, say, you're pairing that and then with the posterior chain. So these muscles that are supporting this, from your backside, doing a squat. So you got to consider to how the body is a whole,

like we talk about symmetry and balance, to be able to go through this full range of motion, is optimal for you to then get through the proper technique of the exercise. Well, part of this game, too, of building great legs is longevity, too. And the ability for you to continue to build and build and build year over year, because nothing happens overnight, especially when you're trying to build and sculpt a physique. And the thing that I was missing on all this when it came to full range of motion was how much training in a shortened range of motion would end up limiting me later on and not limiting me in the capacity of building muscle But because I wasn't able to I started to see things like my low back Starting head I talked about

Bersides in my hips and a lot of that was because I kept training and loading and loading and going heavier and heavier in the short and range of motions, but then ended up causing issues in my hips and in my low back, which then caused me to squat less because then when I would do it occasionally, my back would be on fire and it bothered me. So I started to avoid it and I was afraid to be doing it all the time because I always would suffer the next two or three days. So it's not just about, oh yeah, we're going to recruit more muscle and that's a better way of training, yada, yada, yada. It's also about longevity and consistency and taking your body through its full range

of motion is the healthiest way to keep your body healthy long term. And that was one of the things that I was missing and was an absolute game changer for me when I got to a full squad. If you don't consider like a stabilized joint, how to stabilize it, we gotta really express this full range of motion and find the weaknesses there. And that's a great way to address that. Well, if you don't train a range of motion,

you eventually lose it. This is just the fact of the human body. If you don't walk all the time, eventually it'll start to lose the ability to walk. And that's a fundamental human movement. Forget full squatting, lunging, and deadlifting. You don't practice full range of motion. You start to lose the ability to do it.

But here's the thing too. A lot of times people will say, well, you know, I do full squats, but I don't get well developed hamstrings and glutes from it. Well, it could also be your recruitment pattern. It can also be the fact that you maybe are going all the way down, but you're not doing it the right way. You don't have the mobility to activate the right muscles.

So, it's not just range of motion. It's also proper range of motion because a good, for example, sticking with the barbell squat, a good, proper full range of motion barbell squat works the legs top to bottom. Hamstrings, glutes, quads, believe it or not, you even get some calves with a good full range of motion, barbell squat, works the legs top to bottom, hamstrings, glutes, quads, believe it or not, you even get some calves with a good full range of motion squat. It's, I would be hard pressed to, you know, I would challenge anybody that said that too. If you go astagrass on a squat, the, for you to not use your hamstrings and glutes is virtually impossible.

I mean, it has to, you have you have to move your knees way forward. It looks like a sissy squat, right? Yeah, you know, it just wouldn't be possible. It wouldn't be mechanically possible. If you can get down, where are you here, somebody saying that I can't develop my hamstrings and my glutes from squatting, it's almost always somebody

who has shortened range of motion and is forward on their squat. They squat down to 90 degrees, their chest falls forward, the quads are carrying all of the load. If you have the ability to get the hips below 90 degrees and you're all the way down, that means your ass is back behind you, your below 90 degrees, those hips have to come forward

in order for those hips to come forward, the hamstrings and the glutes have to activate. So even if you're not predominantly filling it in the glutes and the hamstrings, I mean, that was one of the biggest thing. And the reason why I would challenge that is that was one of the things that I actually was really surprised that I was like a secondary effect.

You mentioned calves too. I noticed that too. When I started deep squatting, I started to notice my calves growing just from deep squatting. I also noticed my hamstrings were getting sore. That never happened to me in early years of squatting. When I would squat, it was all quads,

maybe a little bit of glutes, but I never felt my hamstrings really early years of squatting. When I would squat, it was all quads, maybe a little bit of glutes, but I never felt my hamstrings really get sore from squatting. When I started deep squatting, man, sometimes I actually even feel it in my hamstrings more than I feel my quads. So I'd be hard pressed to find somebody who actually says they can get all the way down, you know,

astagrass and doesn't see development in their hands. Here's a deal with range of motion. Lighter weight with a good full range of motion is far more effective at developing your body than heavier weight with a shorter range of, that's how important range of motion is. Full range of motion is more important than the weight that you're actually lifting.

No joke. As long as intensity is controlled, the range of motion is more important than the weight. So if you need to go way down on the weight that you're actually lifting. No joke. As long as intensity is controlled, the range of motion is more important than the weight. So if you need to go way down on the weight, if you need to cut the weight in half in order to perform a good full range of motion, front squat or squat or Bulgarian split stance squat or whatever, then do it because that's very important.

The third most common reason why someone's legs aren't developing the way they'd like is they just don't work out their legs frequently enough. This is more common with leg training than with anything else. You know, you buy steps, people like to work those out all the time. Core. Yeah, core. Yeah, core. You know, there's some people like to work out their core quite a bit. But for whatever reason, sometimes people think legs should be done once a week. The legs have a tremendous capacity for workload, tremendous, and when they're well trained, they probably have the highest amount for ability for work capacity, maybe

up there with your forearms and calves even. So in my experience, most people respond best to working their legs in every between two to four days a week. I've had clients who adjusted their intensity and were able to work their legs five or six days a week. But on some of those days they were low intensity. But when they did that, they got phenomenal results. Frequency is very important for muscle development. And the legs love frequency. Well, you highlighted an important point about adjusting your intensity. And I think that that's one of those things you really have to figure out. And once you unlock

that that key and are able to understand it that you can add legs in throughout the week, it just doesn't have to be such a hammering experience every single time and sprinkle it in, what that does to your body in contrast to working the shit out of them one or two times a week, it's amazing. Well, I don't remember when the study was done, but you remember the study that compared the one time, two time, three time a week when volume was all equated the same and that it was the people that trained

the frequency of two or three was as good or better than somebody who was doing it in one workout. I remember the first time that I read that. I remember when the study was first done, but I do remember the first time that I read that and started to apply that with my legs. And that was it.

That was a game changer for me. It was no longer doing 20 sets of legs in one workout one day a week. Now if I spread that out over three workouts or even four sometimes like cells alluding to, man, it was so much easier. I get a leg workout and I remember the challenge here, right? If we're speaking to a brand new person, not so challenging,

speaking to somebody who's an advanced lifter or someone who's been lifting for some time now, the hard part is the mental switch because I was trained for so long that I needed to crush every workout and I had to get after it like that to just stop after five sets. I almost felt guilty at first. Oh, this isn't enough. Yeah, it's not burning yet. Or I don't feel like I'm not doing enough. Yeah, it's not burning yet. Or I don't feel like I'm gonna throw up yet. Or I don't feel like I'm gonna be super sore the next day. This isn't enough.

And so I'd still keep stretching that. Even though I knew, I read the study, I knew if I spread it out over three days, all I really needed to do was five to seven sets of workout. And I have plenty of work for my legs. I still struggled with that mentally, and I'd be at five or seven. I'd be like, oh, I can do,

you know, I'm used to doing 20. I could do 10 then. And then I'd still, you know, go back and forth because then I do that and I'll be a little sore then when's they come around and that would hinder my workout. So I think the mental hurdle that people have to go through,

that takes a little bit of time to figure out exactly how to apply the right intensity so that you can increase the frequency. Yeah, you're better on, instead of doing 15 sets in a workout, you're totally better off doing five sets over three workouts. The body just responds better. But here's another reason why that's a good thing. All those exercises that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, right?

The back squats, and front squats, and dead lifts, and Bulgarian split stand squats, and lunges, and good good mornings and hip thrust. All of those have two things in common. One of them is they're super effective. The other one is they're super technical. They're very technical. The best way to get good at those exercises is to practice often. You're better off practicing, for example, let's just pick one movement.

Let's just say it's a front squat. Let's say you want to get really good at a front squat. You're better off practicing a front squat for five sets, three days a week than you are for 15 sets and one workout from a skill perspective. Forget the muscle gain, the strength gain, forget everything else.

Three days a week at five sets, you'll get better at it faster than if you just did one a week, 15 sets of that exercise. And that's not just muscle, that's almost anything. We've given examples of learning a language or anything else. Frequency key. Yeah, that's just it.

Would you rather cram one day of learning another language all in one day or break it up over three or four days in a week, you're gonna learn much quicker doing it the other way. That's just how the body responds to the thing. Not just muscle, it's just learning that process. Familiarizes it. Right, a big part of building muscle is also developing the central nervous system the body responds to the thing, not just muscle, it's just learning that process. Familiarizes it. Right.

A big part of building muscle is also developing the central nervous system through the process, because it's not just the muscles that are developing, it's also the connections to the muscles, it's how they fire, it's how the brain perceives the stress from the exercise and how the brain fires those muscles and how it teaches those muscles to react and respond. And the central nervous system adapts very well

to frequency, much better than it does to intensity. That's for sure. So even if all other things were equal, even if working your legs out for 15 sets and one workout was equivalent to five sets, three days a week in terms of how it's stimulating the muscle and that stuff. When you add in the fact that the frequency is going to make you better at the exercises

faster, that alone makes frequency a superior, makes more frequency superior to less frequency. Now the next one, this one, I see this in people who tend to be afraid of getting fat. This isn't people who want to, you know, maybe we're heavy before or they're just afraid of the scale moving at all. They want to build their legs, they want shape in their legs, they want them to look good, but no, God forbid the scale go up. The next reason why people's legs don't develop is they just don't eat enough to give their body the fuel that it needs. They're not supplying it with the building blocks to create muscle.

That's right. When you burn up all the calories and nutrients that you eat in the day, and there's nothing left over to build with, nothing's gonna happen. You can have a great workout. You could have, send all the right signals, do everything right, but if your body

doesn't have the raw materials to build with, it's no different than me hiring a bunch of workers to build a house, giving them all the plans, giving them the green light, and they're left there with no wood, no concrete, no bricks, no shovels, no nothing, they're just them, build the house at a thin air. It absolutely isn't going to happen. You have to have excess calories and nutrients in order to make this happen.

And don't be afraid of this. Now, you don't need to do a whole lot more. Typically about a few hundred calories above maintenance will do this for you. By the way, if you need to figure out what your maintenance is, there's a couple of ways to do it. The accurate way, the most accurate way to do it, is to track your food over the course of two weeks with the food app. Look at those calories, and if you're not gaining your losing weight over that two weeks, well, that's probably your maintenance. But if you want to start with a good general estimation, you can find online, they're called TDE calculators.

These things figure out your total daily energy expenditure, which includes your metabolic rate and your activity. I know we have one on our site. I think it's maps macro.com. And you can go on that page, you'll find a link for the TDE calculator. Go on there, figure out generally how many calories your body's burning, and then add a couple hundred above that to give your body

what it needs to build muscle. Well, the beautiful part about this too is we talk about the benefits of like, you know, strength training and speeding your metabolism up. And I think like you saw, probably the most challenging people that I had with this were like my petite female clients or a client that had lost a lot of weight and now they're lean and then they're like, hey, I want to develop my butt or I want my legs to look like this. And then I say, okay, well, then what we should do is we should really focus on strength training and we're going to increase your calories.

And they freak out because they're like, no, I don't want to put any weight on. I just want to shape my legs. And it's like, that's what shaping your legs is. I think that's, there's a misunderstanding on how this works. When you train your legs, it doesn't just naturally shape your leg. You have to give it the calories, the nutrients, to build muscle, which then gives you the shapely legs

or shapes the legs like you want. And so getting them to understand that and be okay with adding calories, but the beauty is though, and I wish we had more research around like, man, how much, when you train legs, how much of the calories that you consume is getting partitioned.

Like, think about training your biceps really hard and how many extra calories and nutrients that needs to help build a little bit of muscle there versus training your legs and the amount of calories and nutrients that it probably needs. That's a lot more. Right. And we don't, I wish I had the studies

to be precise about that, but you can definitely guarantee that when you lift and train legs just from the amount of calories you expend and the fact that they're bigger muscles that you're gonna need more nutrients, more calories to build that area. But that's the beauty of it is you add five pounds of muscle distributed amongst all of your entire lower body. It's not going to look like you gained five pounds of weight. It's going to be evenly distributed throughout your entire body. You have better shape. Yes. You have better shape and a faster metabolism. Better contours.

The wonderful thing about the lower body is its muscle. So when we talk about curves, people refer to the lower body and the upper body. Unfortunately, you can't build your breasts with muscle, but you can build your lower body with muscle. And that's what happens when you add muscle to the lower body. Is it shapes? You get more glute and hamstring curve and quad and calf and that's the result that a lot of people

who are afraid of gaining are looking for and they don't realize that they just have to gain muscle to accomplish that. There's another category of people that have tough time with this and those are the people that don't realize they're not eating enough, they think they are, but they're not. And the reason why they think they are, they tend to be the people that eat a lot, you

know, four or five days a week, people with really fast metabolism, those hard gainers, right, the ectomorphs, and they'll say, but Sal, you know, I eat a lot every single day, and then I'll have them track and then we'd look at it and I'll say, well, Monday through Friday, you definitely hit your calorie targets. Saturday and Sunday, you slept in, you played video games, you hung out, or whatever, and your calories were way lower. That Saturday and Sunday screwed you up for the whole week. I'll give you a little e-sum easy math, okay? Let's say you need to consume 2,000 calories

every single day to build muscle. Let's say that puts you at a surplus. It's unlikely, that's a low number, but let's just for arguments say, it's easy to manage those numbers. So 2 calories a day over the over a whole week, seven days in a week, that's 14,000 calories. So your goal would be to hit 14,000 calories. Well, let's say Monday through Friday, you hit those 2000 calories and you did a great job. Well, there's 10,000 calories right there. You got 4,000 more to hit over Saturday and Sunday. But let's say Saturday and Sunday,

you know, you fall off a little bit. You eat 700 calories less or a thousand calories less on both days, which is easy to do. That's skipping a meal, sleeping in, forgetting, you know, the stuff that we all tend to do. So Saturday and Sunday, you only 2,000 calories, total for both days. You're at 12,000 calories for the week.

You've missed your target by a full 2,000 calories. You're not gonna build any muscles. So for those, you are listening to one of those fast metabolism types, which I can identify with. That's me, the hardgainers. You gotta eat more and it's gotta be every single day. It has to be consistent.

And we didn't touch a lot on this, but protein is so important. And what I see more common on what the example you just gave Sal is less of like, oh, I hit 2000 every day because that's a female's number, right? More likely. That number is, what ends up happening is they actually eat

2000 or 2500 calories on Saturday and Sunday, but it's made up of, you know, Sunday, Sunday drinks, it's, you know, they ate pizza on Saturday night or whatever. They're not good building calories. Exactly. And then they grossly miss their protein targets, right? They miss the essential macronutrient that they need to help assist them building muscle.

They over-consume on things like carbohydrates, alcohol, sugars, things like that. And so they may see the scales stay about the same because they've hit the calorie intake they need to, but they are missing the nutrients that they need in order to build and continue to build muscle. And so they get stuck in this predicament of, I don't understand why I'm not building any more muscle, but you're still not, just because you're giving the calories to the body ought to, if you're not giving it the right building blocks

to do that, you'll also be stacked. Yeah, so for most of you listening right now, you want to aim for close to one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Right around there, a little bit less than that, perfectly fine. If you are obese, if you're over 25 pounds overweight, I would use your lean body mass as your target for protein.

Now, the next one, the last reason, most common reason why people's legs won't grow, is a difficult one because for, you know, this one deals with people who work hard and do everything right, but they overdo it a little bit. And it's hard to talk to these people because they're not lazy. It's not like you're dealing with someone who's lazy or you're dealing with someone that's not hurting or working.

It's hard work always pays off. Yeah, it's like you're dealing with somebody that I'm doing everything. I'm doing everything. I'm doing everything real hard. These are the people that don't take recovery or applying intensity appropriately, properly. They're not recovering. They're not giving their muscles the time that they need to build into adapt because if they're constantly under assault, through too many workouts or too hard

to work out, or if they're constantly trying to heal, because remember your body adapts, but it adapts and it heals separately. Oftentimes it happens simultaneously, but healing, it's like this. Like if I cut my hand, the healing process would be the heal the skin. The adapting process would be my skin then forming a callus over where I just got cut. So that next time, it's gonna be harder to cut my skin. Building muscles and adapting process,

recovering is a healing process, okay? You don't wanna get stuck in the recovery trap where all you ever do is get sore and recover and never give your body enough time to adapt. So adapting is very important. The way you do this is by manipulating your intensity. So we talked about frequency. We said, you know, work your legs three days a week or four days a week. Does that mean you beat the crap out of your legs three or four days a week?

No. For most of you, you may have two really hard workouts on one lighter one. You probably shouldn't go to failure most of the time when you lift weights. You want to manage all this and give your body the ability to recover and adapt and build. This is a super difficult one because initially a lot of these people will see results and they'll see drastic results and they're pushing their body to new levels that they weren't before. However, they're trying to maintain

this crazy amount of volume and intensity, and either they end up hitting a burnout or they hit a wall in the plateau or they start having negative gains as a result. And so, yeah, more is not always better and hard work. Yes, it does pay off, but it's also like finding that perfect dose, that sweet spot where you do allow your body to then build itself up to then overcome these stresses.

So the work is just the way to get what you want. Okay, the work itself isn't necessarily what you want. Okay, does that make sense? I'll give you an example. I used to give to my clients when I would have this conversation, because it's hard to understand. You think, well, what do you mean? If I just work harder, shouldn't I get better results? Not always. If you had two people, both of which had to dig a five-foot hole, and if I gave one a shovel and another guy a spoon, and I said, go for it, but the goal is to dig the hole. The guy with the spoon is gonna be working a lot harder. They're doing way harder work,

but are they accomplishing the objective? Nearly as fast as the person with the shovel? Of course not. If your goal is to just work hard, then who cares? Go and work hard, but if your goal is to just work hard, then who cares? Go and work hard. But if your goal is to build your legs and build muscle, then the work is part of what gets you there and overdoing it oftentimes,

or overdoing it always gets you there slower and not taking recovery and adaptation into consideration. Well, when we talk about this too, we have to discuss food and sleep too, because that goes hand in hand with the recovery. And I think that the people we're talking about that are most guilty of the overtraining are also the guilty of this. They're the same people that it's all about work and harder and harder and harder that

fail to analyze their sleep the prior day and their nutrition the prior day. You know, they have a bad day of eating, they didn't get enough, they didn't get a lot of calories, they were busy because they're type A, they're go-to-go, they had a long stressful day at work, and then they didn't have the best night of rest, but hey, tomorrow's leg day, and you go in and you crush it, and you crush your workout, not listening to your body.

So they go hand in hand, this all plays a role in recovery. If you're not sleeping well, you're not getting adequate calories. And then on top of that, you're also over applying intensity. This is the recipe for a hard plateau. And I find that those people that were talking about that fall in this category, as this is one of their hurdles, these are, this is all the other areas that they need to address. So addressing stress in your life, addressing sleep for the person who also loves to apply intensity, I find that's the same person. Yeah, well sleep, good sleep just maximizes your body's capacity to recover and to adapt. Poor sleep lowers that tremendously.

So if let's say you're fully healthy and you get good sleep, then you can maximize and take advantage of, let's say, five sets of legs three days a week. But if you get poor sleep, maybe that drops down to one set three days a week, you know? Now only one set your body can tolerate. Now you're only gonna reap the benefits of one set. See how that works.

So maximizing the other parts of your life that allow you to recover and adapt better, make a huge difference in all development, not just in leg development. We're talking about legs here, but this has to do with the whole entire body. By the way, one great way to help speed up recovery if you feel like your workout was a little too hard is movement, by the way, and a lot of times people think recovery means just laying there and sleeping. That is part of it too, but let's say you already get adequate sleep and your legs are still sore.

What should you do? Should I just not move, let the muscles repair? What should I do? The best thing you do is move. Stretch, mobility work, hiking or walking, or even very, very light, full range of motion, squats or lunges, body weight style. Just body weight style.

And when I mean easy, I mean easy. You're not going, you're not trying to get a workout, you're just going through the motions, stretching and squeezing the muscle. And that actually speeds up, not only to the speed of recovery, but it enhances the muscle building adaptation process. In fact, in the MAP Santa Ballet program, the trigger sessions that I put in there, that's really one of the big things that it does, is it facilitates recovery and enhances adaptation.

Look, if you like listening to the podcast, you're also gonna love watching it. We are also on video, and for those of you joining us on YouTube, what's happening? Check us out on YouTube, Mind Pump Podcast. You can also find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin.

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