Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1577: What to Do When You Are Getting Bored With Your Workouts

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin provide actionable ways to rekindle passion with working out. The challenge most fitness fanatics run into. (2:31) Why unconventional training can be a good thing. (5:01) The novelty is what is so special to the results. (8:13) What to Do When You Are Getting Bored with Your Workouts.  Step 1: Change your mindset. (11:52) Unconventional training techniques to change your mindset.  Work Capacity. (15:01)  Agility. (19:33) Body Weight Training. (22:05) Stability Training. (25:37) Grip Strength. (29:15) Improve Effective Range of Motion. (34:31) Forgotten Muscle-Building Exercises. (37:55) Step 2: Stay the course and properly program these modalities into your routine. (44:01) Step 3: Sign up for an unusual fitness event. (47:08) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Promotion: MAPS Unconventional Bundle  Visit ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Why You Need to Mix Rep Ranges After Periods of Training – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1327: Five Mindset Techniques For Fitness Success How To Improve YOUR Work Capacity (6 MOVEMENTS) | MIND PUMP TV Association of Grip Strength With Risk of All-Cause Mortality, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Cancer in Community-Dwelling Populations: A Meta-analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies Exercises That You Probably Aren’t Doing That You Should Be Doing For Maximum Muscle Gain – Mind Pump Blog Build Your Hamstrings- How to Properly do Good Mornings – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #1330: Unconventional Training For Fat Loss And Muscle Gain Mind Pump #1315: The 8 Best Exercises You Are Not Doing Unconventional Weight Training Exercises that can Help you Pack on Muscle – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Robert Oberst (@robertoberst)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk all about what to do when you're getting bored with your workouts. You know, this is a big problem. One of the main reasons why people stop working out, why they stop being consistent is,

although they enjoy the results and they like being fit, things start to lose their luster. It starts to lose their vigor and their motivation around what they do. So we actually talk specifically to you. If you're finding that your workouts are getting boring, that you're not having the same kind of motivation and excitement that you had when you first started,

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Use the code, mind pump, get 10% off your first order. Also, in this episode, we talk about unconventional exercises, changing up your workouts, trying different types of competitions. In order to help you out, what we've done is we put together an unconventional bundle, which includes programs that we have. They're not the traditional type of workout programs. So this bundle includes maps, OCR, which is obstacle course racing, maps strong, which is strong man inspiredinspired workouts, and maps suspension.

So it's entire workouts designed around suspension trainers. Now, normally, each one of these programs is well over $100. But right now, for a limited time, because of this episode, you can get all three in this bundle for $99.99. That's it. So go check out this unconventional bundle, go to mapsjune.com. Again, that's m-a-p-s-june.com. You know, one of the worst things about being consistent, I would say, about working on it. Actually, it's just true for people even when they first get started,

is they, it starts to get a little bit mundane. Yeah. You start to get a little bored with the same old, same old. And this is just a challenge, I think, you end up running into, especially in my experience, when you're super consistent, when you do it, we can week out at some point, you start to find yourself going, ah, yeah. I'm not as excited as I for, you know, used to be.

And this can be a problem, it's an actually. Well, this is the reason why we see this with trainers, too, where they write programming that's based around creativity and entertainment versus results to try to spice it up. And I remember this, and I have a lot of empathy for the trainers that are trying to figure this out. That's a real need, isn't it? Yeah.

And you're also, you're just getting started, you're building your business, and you've gotta take every client you possibly can, and a good portion of them, yes, they're there for their results, but they also wanna have fun and enjoy the process. And so what you end up finding yourself doing, because you know that you can't really speed up the results. If someone needs to lose a hundred pounds,

use a coach, you know that this is gonna be a long journey. But in the meantime, can I make this fun and enjoyable? And then a lot of your focus ends up kind of going in that direction. I think, I mean, I know I admit that I went down this path of like the writing the workouts, instead of me really thinking about programming.

The razzle battle workouts. I used to juggle that all the time because you know what the tried and true methods are, but a lot of times It's just not that exciting and to take somebody through especially if they have a lot of prerequisites that you have to focus on Incorrective type exercises. It's like You almost feel bad as a trainer because you're like man, I got so much work to do But I also want to have them come back and be entertained and enjoy the process

So you know you'd sprinkle some stuff in there to make sure that it stays a bit exciting. Yes, because an early trainer version of me was doing the razzle dazzle, new thing, all the time, type of workout. And the problem of that, of course, is you just don't progress as consistently as well. The programming isn't as effective

when that's all you do. Now on the flip side, constantly being consistent with the basics, which is very important, but always doing that, especially after a while, you can just find yourself losing a little bit of that spice that you initially had when you started working out. Now later on, I realized that feeling of, God, I want to try something different, or I've been doing the same thing, or realized that feeling of, God, I wanna try something different, or I've been doing the same thing, or the same types of things now for a while, is actually a good opportunity.

And this is something that took me a long time to figure out. It was a good opportunity because it was something that then would propel me to focus on things and to do things that normally, I don't think I would have normally focused on. So, like, I'll give you guys a good example. For a long time, and this is one of my earliest stories of changing things up.

Early in my early days of working out personally, the types of workouts that were promoted everywhere. It didn't matter where you looked, bodybuilding magazines, if you read books on muscle building. And this is before the internet really became a big thing. So we're talking about the 90s, essentially. Every single routine was this body part split type of workout. So it was like day one was chest,

day two was back and so on. And I did that for a long time. And at some point, I started to find myself get a little bit like, oh, I wanna try something different, like what's going on. And it was looking back, it was actually a good thing, because what it did is it motivated me to look into the way that old school strongmen and bodybuilders worked out.

But the way that they used to train, so I started looking up routines for like Eugene Sandow and Steve Reeves and all these old school strongmen and strength athletes and one thing that I noticed was that none of them did body parts split routines they all did these kind of full body focused routines none of them trained to fail you're that was another thing that I always did they all practiced movements kind of essentially is how they approach the workouts and so because I was I had lost some of the fire It motivated me to try something completely different. That was so opposite from what I had been reading, so glad that happened.

Because then I discovered new ways of training and it took my body and my fitness to a whole new lot. I have a similar story to that. I mean, I've been training for a long time with barbells and doing heavy lifts and really trying to maximize my time in the gym to be the best on the field. And that was the best way to do it. But after a while, after years of training like that, I just got basically, I got tired of doing the same thing all the time and wanted to find something new and something that was unconventional. And I had seen people using kettlebells and I had seen people using gymnastics rings and kind of bringing them outside and I started messing around and playing with those and it really opened up a whole new experience for me that my body completely benefited from.

So I actually like abandoned doing a barbell training for entire year and focused more on suspension training and body weight training. And I was really scared. I was going to lose all these results that I had worked so hard to achieve. But really the opposite happened. I actually ended up having more connection, really reinforcing my joints and ligaments. And my overall body started to perform better.

And then I went back to barbell training, and it was like, my results actually climbed up even further. This is a lesson that I had to learn many times over. Oh yeah, same. And it goes all the way back to the first time, I remember learning this lesson was with rep ranges. Something as simple as that, you know, I was told being a young skinny guy that wanted to build muscle that, you know, lift in the low rep range and this is what's going to build the most amount of muscle. And so for years,

I mean, that's how I lifted. Why would I ever list? Lift low, low weight, you know, higher repetition. That's what, you know, girls want to do that or somebody who wants to tone wants to do that. That's not my goal. I want to be big. And so I lifted in that rep range for years and then finally a personal trainer got me to switch out of that. And my body exploded.

I put on all this size out of nowhere but then fell into that trap. So I remember having to learn this lesson multiple times before the light bulb finally went off that oh my god It's the novelty that is so special to the results, right? Like you we get so hung up on how things are advertised to us like oh these exercises are for this type of a lifter or these Exercises are for these goals and so you identify with that and you think oh well. I'm not a obstacle course racer. Why would I ever do that?

Or I'm not a power lifter? Why would I ever do those exercises? Like, you automatically just rebuke that type of training because it's not, you don't identify with that. Yet, after you learn this lesson enough time, you realize, oh my God, whenever I switch my body into a different either training modality, rep range, or goal, I range or goal.

I see huge change regardless of what my goal is. If I want to lean out, Bill Muscle doesn't matter what it is because it's novel. The body is having to respond to it. Totally. I even remember learning this just because I was in a constant bulk all the time. You know, like you Adam, I was skinny, wanted a gain, gain, gain, gain. And the first time I went to cut, it was such a change from my mentality.

But it was funny, once I got into it, I had that old vigor, that old enthusiasm with my training. It was exactly what my body needed, which is why now when I find myself feeling that, oh, you know, that kind of ho-hum, like, you know, same thing, or what. And by the way, I never stopped. I was always, my discipline with training has always been very high.

So I'm like, I quit. But now I find when I'm in that mental state, where I start to feel a little bit of lack luster energy towards my workouts, now I look at it as an opportunity and I go, okay, here's a sign. My body's telling me something. It's time to switch things up. More importantly, it's time to do the things that I'm not doing. This is one of the most important things.

And here's something that took me way longer to figure out. The more different your mindset is or the more different the train that you do is, the better the pal in the return. So like changing rep ranges, that's a change, right? But that's not as big of a change as like going from, you know, bodybuilding to, you said obstacle course racing, for example,

when a huge change that would be, right? But boy, especially if you've been doing the same training for a long time, boy, does your body respond? And then when you go back to your favorite type of training, it's like you see all these exceptional results and all these things at your body. It exposes the holes too, that you can address and strengthen, which then benefits the overall body. And that's something that I totally experienced. There was parts of, you know, movement that my joints just didn't stabilize properly. And it took me to body weight training to really help identify those things and strengthen them to make sure everything else was like at a high performance.

Yeah, I would say the first step in this, if you find yourself in this state where you're like, I'm kind of losing motivation, I'm losing a little bit of steam, is to change your goals, which by the way, it's not just changing your goals. I wanna be very clear, that's part of it, right? My goal now goes from building low rep strength

to building endurance, for example. It's your mindset. The mindset's the important thing. Because if your mindset is still, oh gosh, I hope I don't lose my max squat while going into this more endurance type of training, it's not going to work. Your mindset has to change. You have to let go of the old thing that you're stuck to.

I'm not worried about the max squat. Now I'm worried about, I don't know, work capacity or something like that. Changing that mindset really reinvigorates the little work. Let me tell you, that is the hardest part of this whole conversation because the inevitable is about to happen. You're about to suck. That's just, that's part of this whole conversation because the inevitable is about to happen. You're about to suck. Like that's just, that's part of the start of the year. What a good point.

Yeah, you're about to suck. I mean, go, if you've never done a Turkish get up and decide you're gonna learn how to do it or a windmill, go watch what that process is like for you. Now, the beauty in that, and that's where the mindset switch is that the more difficult it is, the more you suck at it, the more opportunity there is for your body to change from it.

And so that's where you have to, and you learn to hack into this and you seek it all the time. Like, oh wow, I haven't learned how to do this. I'm gonna go after this, even though I know that I'm gonna switch away from the movements. I love the routine that I like, the stuff that I'm really good at, over to this new way of training, and the inevitable is about to happen is I'm gonna suck at it,

but the beauty of that is that the results come on a lot faster. You're right, so we all have, everybody who's been working out for longer than a year knows what those new beings feel like, right? It's like you first start bench pressing, or you first start squatting, and it's almost like you add five pounds, or 10 pounds

to the bar every single week. Now eventually that slows down and stops and then you have to figure out ways to get your body to progress. But initially you get those new beings. Part of the reason why you get those new beings is because you first start at working out. But another part of the reason why you get those new beings

is because it's a new method, it's a new movement, it's a new thing that you've done for your body. So sometimes simply switching to something that's radically different, like Adam said, like, you know, let's say you squat 400 pounds, you're really strong. You've got a 500 pound deadlift, you've got a 200 pound overhead press, you're really experiencing the gym, never done a Turkish get up. You go try it with a 30 pound kettlebell and it's hard. You don't have the stability, you don't have the mobility,

it's a new movement, but overall you're strong. Here's what ends up happening. It's a new movement, you suck at it, you'll end up adding five or ten pounds to that kettlebell every single week, just like you had those new beings before. Now what follows along with those new beings, strength, muscle, flexibility, mobility, very similar to what you experienced

when you first started working out. This is one of the beauties of changing things up, and again, one of the reasons why lack of motivation, especially if you're a consistent discipline, can be a really, really good sign. So I would like to talk about kind of some unconventional goals or mindsets that maybe the average person who's working out

doesn't tend to focus on, right? Because what are the more common ones, right? Fat loss, muscle gain, overall strength, that's super common. But what are some other things that the average person who trains in the gym, maybe who's been consistent for a little while, doesn't really think about focusing on

that would probably give them huge returns. I would say, I'll name one that I experienced a few years ago. So, it was after we worked out and trained with Robert Obersd. He's a world strongest man competitor. And one thing that he talked about, strong man competitions are quite unique. They're not like powerlifting.

You know, powerlifting is like max strength for like three specific movements. And then you rest quite a bit. And then you, yeah, you're just looking for one rap max strength, right? Strong man has some of that in it, but it also has some agility. It has unconventional type exercises.

It has all these different things. And when we asked Robert to describe like one of the characteristics of a successful strong man competitor, he used something that I hadn't really thought about, which I think is super accurate, which is work capacity. Like your ability to tolerate a lot of strength type volume.

Like are you able to do heavy lifts and do them, you know, for an hour and maintain that level of strength? Because when you see a strong man competitor, what are they doing? They're doing like a heavy exercise. They're lifting heavy weights and they're also moving with it. Yes. Which is different. It's a different way to train. And that's why and it mimics a lot of real life situations where you have a really heavy bag of concrete and you have to take it up this hill or you have groceries that you're trying to load, walk a bunch of stairs.

There's moments where you need strength but you also need to keep that strength the entire time that you're moving and enduring through that. So work capacity is definitely something. A lot of people don't really consider as a very valid training goal. I think of clients that were like this, right?

Like your contractors. Like they naturally get this built in because they're doing like a laborious job all day long. And so that's the attribute that, and that's why too, if you're somebody who's the opposite of that, this way of training is so good. So if I had somebody who came to me and it was a contractor, like I'm not going to steer him in this direction for his getting that all the time. Right. He's getting that.

So I might steer him in a different goal because I want to get them the greatest adaptation. Versus, I have an engineer, right? So now I'm training like this engineer client since at a desk all day. What a great place to take him. Take him somewhere where he's not used to training this way. He's going to see the greatest benefits from training though. Yeah, and work capacity for me when I focused on this, really for the first time in a specific way, what it did is it increased my body's ability to handle lots of volume. Now, why is that a good thing? My recovery for my normal workouts went through the roof. When I did this for like a three month period, because it was like a three month period where I trained

specifically to improve my work capacity. When I went back to my old workouts, it was like my recovery was, it was like I was a different person. I just didn't get sore. I was able to recover very quickly, which you know when you can recover fast, I was able to recover very quickly, which when you can recover fast, this allows you to increase your volume, do different exercises, and your body doesn't overshrain. Of course, what does that mean? But you get stronger, you build more muscle, you improve much quicker. Now, what does this mean to improve work capacity? What would this look like in a workout? Well, you're typically training with a little bit less intensity, but you're increasing the total amount of volume, And in my experience, the best ways to do this are with these kind of functional full body type exercises in your workouts.

And it's just like we're saying, it makes you more, I don't know, rugged. It gives you a bigger gas tank for strength. So we're not talking specifically about endurance, although that's something that we'll probably get to, but rather just your ability to handle lots of strength on it. You can get shit done. Yeah. And that's one of those things that people don't realize.

Yeah, you might be strong. You might be able to lift something from A to B, but can you stay strong and stay strong longer and be able to take on more strength exercises and build that volume up. And so that's something that is very valuable just for your average person, but also athletes as well. Well, the next one that I think of as far as an attribute or a mindset to switch over to that hits home for me because it was something that recently I shared on the podcast

what less than a year ago maybe was when I jumped out of the truck and I thought my knees were gonna explode. And so it just reminded me how much I've neglected like athletic training or like agility training. Like that's an a piece that I just thought I always would have. Nye even me going like, okay, sooner or later, I'm not gonna be playing sports like I've played my entire life and that's gonna catch up. And that was the first time I ever felt like, oh wow, here's an area where I need to go

back and revisit because I've lost the skill because I'm not doing this anymore. But also a great mindset. Somebody who has always focused on building muscle or being strong at lifts, may neglect this way of training. Great example of somebody, I go, okay, let's change that mindset, let's focus you on more like agility type training and get them to go in that direction. Yeah, it's like, you know, like it's being nimble, it's being able to move on your feet and change directions. How does this contribute to your other goals that you might have to kind of move away from?

Well, geez, if your agility improves, you don't think you're able to handle those heavy squats and dead lifts better in the gym. You're just more stable in your body. By the way, this feels really good in real life. I've been big and strong and very non-adjol. I know what that feels like. And it's like, you feel good in one plane of movement or you feel good when you're doing the exercise you used to. But then you go outside and... Then there's a lot more variables that hit you all the sudden. Yeah, and you're like, whoa, I feel almost out of shape or like I'm gonna hurt myself. So focusing on agility is something that people oftentimes completely ignore.

This is easy to overlook because you're getting great gains in the gym, you feel strong, you feel powerful, but all it takes is that one little movement that one little shift left the right or that one little twist and You realize right away that your body doesn't respond the way you want it to or it over responds A lot of times you get really strong where we over respond But we don't have the brakes and so now your your body's in a predicament where we might you know be susceptible to an injury That's exactly how it happened to me I mean I at the time the time, was fit.

I was in there, building strength. I was squatting good weight. I was dead lifting good weight. That's exactly what happens is you get so focused on one specific goal. And because I'm, quote unquote, in shape, I don't think that that's gonna be a problem until I go to call upon it and do it.

And I just think that it's even more reason why we need to constantly be switching our mindset. Which brings us to another one. This one one I remember picking up on years ago when I managed gyms. I had this trainer that worked for me and he was one of the most aesthetic, muscular trainers that ever worked for me. He just had this incredible physique, great muscle separation definition, very well developed. And when I saw him work out, I rarely ever saw him lifting weights. Now, when I did, he was really strong.

But he lived on the chin up bar. This guy did everything on the chin up, chin ups and dips and muscle ups and all these different kind of dips and all these body weight movements. And I asked him, you know, gosh, you look so incredible. I never, I see you doing weights sometimes.

He's like, well, I was a gymnast in my youth. I was a very competitive gymnast. And this kind of training just builds really good muscle and I feel really good in my body. And I remember seeing that and saying, let me give this a shot. And I remember feeling like a total out of shape person. I was super strong.

Then I go do these body weight movements and I was like a fish out of water. And I started practicing them, started practicing dips, started practicing more chin ups and other types of bodyweight type movements, even more non-unconventional ones. And I started to see muscle develop that I hadn't developed before. This is something that is heavily neglected in people who use a lot of resistance training and are consistent in the gym. They just avoid, you know, like with rings, for example.

They just avoid that kind of stuff. Well, what it does is it really exposes how you're able to organize your entire body. Because you can kind of get away a lot of times with the weight sort of coming towards your body or you're pushing the weight away from your body. There's a little bit less involvement in terms of like, what my legs are doing, what my toes are gripping to the ground,

like all these types of things that you tend to find out when you're using gravity or going against gravity. Now, all those little nuances and the way that I'm able to tighten my legs and tighten my core and have that all responded the same time in order to just tighten my legs and tighten my core and have that all respond at the same time in order to just do a pushup without my arms going way away from me and like keeping them in and tight,

just to perform one basic movement, which is a pushup, is a lot more challenging and difficult and it's also exposing a lot of things that you can strengthen. I think the greatest misconception with bodyweight training is just what you could do. I mean, as far as the way you could, what kind of body you could build from it?

I think that that was what kept me from doing it for so long was I thought, there's a bodyweight training, like I can go so heavy or it's only so hard, like I'm never gonna build the most amount of muscle on my body, since that was my goal all time. It was something that I avoided forever. But again, this is another one of those lessons who talked about switching up the modality of training.

You've never trained that way. Watch how the body responds to it. And you look at, we have examples of gymnasts like you alluded to, Sal, or you've seen the guy who went to prison who didn't have access to any weights. And he comes out and he's jacked. And so, they call them barmen. Yeah, you'd be amazed what you could,

what kind of muscle you can pack on or how you, what kind of physique you can build with just body weight training. And I think there's a tremendous amount of value in training this way, at least for a stint of time. Yeah, and the popularity of suspension trainers now has allowed us the opportunity to utilize body weight training really well. Before you'd have to get like a gymnast rings, but now a suspension trainer,

you could hook up to something that's secure. And now you have access to essentially all the same and a wrap around tree. Time of types of exercises, right? The next one is often overlooked because it's not sexy. People think it doesn't develop your body. It's almost like we think of it as a prerequisite.

Like, oh, you do this before you get into the real stuff. Totally false. And that's stability training. Your ability to stabilize your body when doing other exercises and movements. And let me tell you, I'll give you a simple silly. This is silly example, because there's much better ones,

but this is the first one that comes to mind. You take your deadlift, for example. Let's say you can pull 300 pounds off the ground and you're pretty strong. I bet you can't do a single leg deadlift with half that weight. I bet you can't take 150 pounds and do a single leg deadlift. That's not because you're not strong enough necessarily to lift the weight, but rather you lack the stability, which makes you not strong enough to lift that weight. You should essentially be able to get close to, I bet you couldn't even

do a 100 pound amount of weight with one leg, right? But here's what happens. Let's say you deadlift through your pounds and you're stuck at that weight and you're trying to figure out how to get it up more and you can't add more weight to it and your plateaued. Go do single leg deadlift for a while. Get your single leg deadlift up to not even half, get it up to 120 pounds, then go back to your double leg deadlift, watch what happens to the way. Oh, magically 15 pounds more on the bar. That's a simple example, but just highlights how important stability is. Yeah, this has been a difficult subject to kind of emphasize the importance of it because like you said, it is very much of a, well, I'm regressing or this is something that, well,

I have to spend a lot of time in this specific category of training I feel like I'm not really advancing where the stability part is gonna take you so much further if you really emphasize that, then almost any other method of training because you learn how to anchor your body down. You learn how to control and master your body while you're trying to perform these different movements

that you have to find where stable is. That's the first thing that your body's looking for is where how can we get stable in order to just perform this specific exercise? And so it starts there and then you can start loading the body heavier. You can produce more force, which then makes you stronger, but it all starts there. Well, you guys are looting to the benefits of stability train

with performance and strength. But when I think of stability, I think it's just one of those things for longevity that we should all continue to revisit. And I think on a recent podcast I talked about, if there was one exercise or movement that I could have a client do forever, it would be this step up to a balance to a single leg toe touch, which is such a basic movement. But what I understand is the ability for them to hip hinge properly, their ability to step up properly, their ability to stabilize properly, and then to do all that in one movement is such a beneficial movement forever, like for longevity for them to have good, strong,

stable hips for them to eliminate low back pain as they get older. Like that movement to me is such a valuable movement. And you know, sometimes we get so focused on losing the body fat or building a muscle that we neglect some of these very basic movements that should always find their way back in your routine. And the beauty, again, if you neglected a lot and you never trained this way

and then you switch over to train this way, watch the benefits, watch the muscle that you build, watch the body fat that you burn because you never train this way. Not only should you do it for longevity, but if you don't do it that often, switching over into this mindset or focusing this way, you'll see tremendous benefits. Yeah. Now, here's one that's near and dear to my heart.

I've talked about this many time, the podcast. I've done YouTube videos talking about this. It doesn't get a lot of attention. And mainly because I think people don't realize the carryover benefit of it. And that's grip strength. We tend to focus on every other part of the body in the gym.

In fact, you'll rarely find any routine that makes any special emphasis on strengthening the grip. But here's what's funny. When they do tests to test people's strength to predict all cause mortality, they test grip. When they're doing tests to see if we're stronger or weaker than previous generations, they test grip. Now, why do they test grip?

Well, number one, it's easy to test, but number two, it's actually wildly predictive of overall body strength. Mainly because as humans, the part of our body that has some of the best connection, the best intricacy the best control One of the things that makes us human is our ability to control our hands In fact, it's also what connects us to the world anytime you lift a weight anytime you move something Anytime you do anything with your body that requires strength in the real world

Typically, it's your hands always start right here. It starts right there. And if your hands are weak, the rest of your body is weak because you can't do the movement. I remember when this really kicked in for me. When I obviously first started working out, my goal was build muscle. I followed all the bodybuilding routines. I used wrist straps quite a bit

because I saw the bodybuilders used them and they said, oh, you gotta use wrist straps because your grip gets in the way of your back strength and all that stuff. So I started out with do that. And then at one point I got bored and I was reading old workout routines and people's advice and Bruce Lee was somebody that I was a big fan of.

And I remember Bruce Lee, and he's a martial artist. So this was kind of surprising to me. He talked about the benefits of having a strong grip and strong wrists for punching power. And I thought this was weird, like that's not involved with punching. And he said, well, in a way that it was communicated was like, imagine if you hit someone with a stick, but the stick was lax and weak, how much pain would you inflict on the other person versus having very stiff wrist.

And then I would read his routines. And it was very grip and wrist strength focused. Also as a kid, I did judo, and later on as a young adult, I did Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and I remember not being able to use my strength in training because my grip would give out, like my forearms would get weak, and then that was it. And now it didn't matter how strong I was, I was weak because my grip couldn't do anything. So I went through a whole year process,

taking off the wrist straps, letting my grip kind of adjust to my back strength and adjust the rest of my body. And here's what I noticed. I was able to connect better to my back, but here's the stuff that surprised me. I could press better. I could actually overhead press and bench press better

because I had a stronger, more stable grip. All my exercises benefited. And then I saw improvements in all my lifts. And this is now something I never neglect. So grip strength, if it's not something that you make a conscious focus on, watch what happens and you do it. You might be surprised that you can bench press more because you're strength. It's a major limiting factor that people don't really associate with a lot of different lifts, like even a back loaded squat. And this is something I was trying to teach some kids. This is the way that you approach the bar,

the way that you set the bar, the way that you grip the bar, all of that plays into a countenance factor with like how well you're gonna perform this movement. And so to train your hands and your wrists and your grip especially to get stronger is gonna have massive carryover, way beyond just pulling things

or just holding onto objects for a long period of time, it's control and strength where you need it, where like you know, like you said, you're connecting, this is your connection to the world. So you can also test this. Yeah, I remember the first time that I remember reading about this and being like, is it really that big of a difference? And doing like heavy farmer carries or overhead carries, like as a priming movement before

you go into like a heavy bench press or something or a heavy overhead press, you'll be blown away on how much more stable you feel doing that movement and how much stronger you feel. You're just gonna think about it. I mean, your forearm muscles are what stabilize the wrist from going back and forth in any sort of movements. So if you have a press at all

and there's any sort of instability or weakness in the form, of course there's gonna be breakdown. Of course you're gonna find the weakest link. That's right, and part of the reason why people feel stronger with rips raps is it locks that all in. It's an artificial tool to do that. I mean, it wraps around the bar and locks the wrist in that position, like so it makes you connect to the bar.

If you got rid of that and you don't use wraps and you have a week forearms or a week grip, you're gonna see a difference in all your lifts. Yeah, you ever try to wrestle like your uncle who does construction work and swings a hammer and just like, Good luck. I can bench press twice as much as this guy,

but why the heck is he man-handling me? When we're wrestling, hits his hands. He's got really, really strong hands. To this day, my dad is like that. You go shake his hand, you guys saw him over the weekend. You shake his hand, it's like you're grabbing a brick. It's because he uses his hands so much in his work. Another one, this was a big one that we've talked about

actually quite a bit, we've communicated this quite a bit, which is improving your effective range of motion. So doing this actually makes exercises new exercises again. If you always ever squat down to parallel, and then you do a three month focus on having better control and mobility, so you can properly squat down six more inches,

watch what happens to your results. It's like you're doing a new exercise in terms of muscle development. So just focusing on a range of motion oftentimes, changes things up, and of course you have to go lighter, of course you have to focus on mobility, and I can be able to lift as much weight. But again, you start to get those new beginnings

once that mobility starts to pick up. This one's really near and dear to me because since the podcast has started, this was something that I went on this venture for a good, solid two years where I decided, okay, I'm gonna just, I'm gonna become, try and become hyper mobile, right? I wanna get to the place where I can do this,

ask to grasp squat and be comfortable in that position. And there's two big, huge benefits that I noticed that I wasn't ready for. One of those was, it actually eliminated my hip and low back pain completely, which there was benefits that I wasn't even going out. So counterintuitive, right? Yeah, I didn't think that getting to a place

where I could do a loaded, deep squat would actually eliminate my low back pain, and it abs, and in what it was, it's not the squat that does it. It's the increasing the range of motion and the mobility in my hips. So that was one of the other things. Now, the other thing that was really surprising to me

was now that I had this new range of motion, and it was a lot. I went from barely being able to break 90 degrees to like ask to grasp what. So I gained a significant amount of range of motion in like a squat. I now have to do like half the work on my legs to have the same development that I had for twice as much work before which that just blows blew my mind. So yes, there's benefits that we talk about for joints stability and for aches and pains and things like that that's related to mobility.

But there's also for those people that are highly focused on building more muscle and building the physique, there's huge carryover from that that you just wouldn't think that you would get. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, I have an example, just something like we're talking about ring training and this is something that I spend a lot of time doing and there's really advanced moves that you can teach or learn that you can challenge yourself with and one of them that you had mentioned before was a muscle up and so that was somehow I was like, oh, I always wanted to do that. Like to, I've seen gymnast do it. It looks really cool. It looks really hard. And I wanted to try to do this without a lot of momentum,

because if you know anything about it, it's basically coming up from a pull-up and then transitioning into a dip as basic as that. But that transfer in that exchange requires a lot of mobility to be able to dig your way out of the lowest position of a dip. And so I just focused completely on getting lower, getting as low as I possibly could in a dip, staying down in there and being able to generate enough strength to push my way out. And so it's usable mobility.

So yes, I could get down in there because my shoulders finally allowed me to get that low, but really now I wanted to get strong and own that range of motion to be able to get my way all the way through. Yeah, excellent. One of my favorite ways to get myself out of that rut of lack of motivation, and this one I figured out a long time ago.

In fact, years ago when Doug and I were making some of the first YouTube channels that we made, even before Mind Pump, we actually devoted a series of videos around this. And it was to do new and unconventional exercises. And what I did was in order to find new and unconventional exercises for myself, and remember, consider I was an experienced trainer.

I'd seen every exercise in the gym. I'd understood every single machine. I actually went back and looked at exercises that had fallen out of popularity movement. And I called them forgotten muscle building exercises. This was the series that I did. And what I found were incredibly valuable muscle building exercises that now have become almost a permanent part

of my routine. One of the best things you could do is find some of these old exercises that will get you funny looks in the gym. I used to actually thrive on this. I'd go to the gym and do one of these weird movements and people would look at me. I'll give you an example. And this is people are going to be like, well, that's not new and unconventional, but it was when I did it. Good mornings, right? Good mornings. Today, you see them all over the place. I swore to God 10 years ago, if you did a good morning in the gym, you would, people would come up to you and put them in the gym. I still think you don't bring your back.

You still don't see them that often. No, I, yeah, you still don't, unless you're in a, like a powerlifting gym, you don't see good mornings in a commercial, at least I haven't seen one. But 10 years ago, it was, oh, people were like, what the heck? Is that, you're squatting wrong or something like that?

They had no idea what you were doing. This is, this has actually been one of my favorite things about being friends with Justin for as long as we have. We go back 15 years now and whenever he worked out with me, I of course was taking him through like the bodybuilder type of routine, whatever I, which would kill me. Whenever worked out with him, we were doing all this weird shit, you know, like he was made. I mean, I for sure learned to Turkish get up from him, for sure learned to win meal from him,

for sure push my first sled with him, like we never did anything conventional. There was never these, you know, basic lists, but I loved it because one of the things I always noticed was I always noticed that the change in my body and the results from it, because I never trained that way. So I do think that, and at first again,

I have the right minds that I feel for someone like this because I actually like things that I suck at. If I find something that I suck at, I'm like, oh, this is something I could work at. And you get better at. That's what you have. If you're not somebody who already thrives in that environment, you have to learn to be okay with that because that's the challenge part. The first time he taught me a Turkish get up or a windmill, like it sucks when, sure, when we're doing a bodybuilding routine, him and I are neck and neck, or maybe I even get him on a lot of stresses, then he takes me into his world and I get crushed.

And a lot of people get discouraged by that, like, oh, this sucks. I'm not, I don't want to do this because I suck at it. But for me, when I see something like that, I get excited, like, okay, there's huge opportunity for me to get better. So if you don't already have that mindset, you have to learn to have that mindset of, okay, I know I'm not going to be good at these movements. That's okay, that gives me, I have a lot of room to improve, and if there's a lot of room to improve, that means a lot of results.

Yeah, let's talk about some of these exercises, right? I named good mornings, but I don't think that counts anymore because people are familiar with it. Here's one that I know I never see people, and anybody do. Now we do have it, and I believe one or two of our programs because of the familiar with it. Here's one that I know I never see people, and anybody do. Now we do have it in, I believe, one or two of our programs because of the value, it's a zircher deadlift. Now there's also a zircher squat, which is great,

but a zircher deadlift is a little different. People say, what's the difference between a zircher deadlift and a traditional deadlift? Obviously the lever is much shorter. I'm holding it in the crux of my arm versus at the arm's extension. And that changes the biomechanics of the movement. It strengthens kind of this rounded upper back,

type of lifting, which people think, what do you mean by rounded upper back? I don't mean my spine is rounded, but rather my scapula, my shoulder blades are rounded forward while I'm lifting something, which by the way, in real world, if you're grabbing something heavy and lifting it, like this was good for like wrestling or grappling most of the time You're doing that you're hugging something that's heavy load in front of you. Yes

totally different like if you're used to this kind of retracted Deadlift style type of lift and then you go and grab something heavy to lift All the sudden you're fine. You're not nearly as strong. Zercher deadlift strengthens this and I got the sudden you're fine, you're not nearly as strong. Zercher Deadlift strengthens this, and I got great mid-back development from doing Zercher Deadlift consistently. It's one of my favorite weird exercises. Oh yeah, I mean, you've got circus press,

you've got the windmills, you've got the sandbag carries. Like there's so many great lifts that if you've never done them before by just focusing simply on training that way for a while, you'll see huge. How about the SnatchGrip Deadlift? I know that we did those for the first time and that became like a hard decision.

It was so challenging. Yeah, I know, what I loved about the SnatchGrip Deadlift was the lat engagement that I'd get for it. And being a body builder at that time when I was lifting that way, hitting my lats like in a conventional lift or a unconventional in this case, type of a lift, I was so blown away on the development

that I got from that movement. So it became a staple exercise that I would continue to do. Yeah, you know what movement just blew me away in terms of its bodybuilding potential, which I didn't even anticipate. Heavy farmer walks and variations of farmer walks. Because it's such a full body movement, you don't think I'm developing this or I'm developing that

But when I started doing them in my routine my traps my rhomboids my biceps my biceps Actually grew from doing them because it was so much tension in this extended position and trying to stabilize while walking Yeah, it's now a you know once a week or once every other week Exercise that is in my routine because I saw so much about it. Yeah, and you mentioned the sled. I just love these types of exercises where you're just driving your way through this. And you're taking a lot of load.

So it's a bit different than cardiovascular training because you're grinding your way through this. But it mimics a lot more of real world type load where even when you take like say say, a sandbag training, so it's just something else that would be considered unconventional training, the weight itself kind of shifts on you and you have to adjust with that.

So just to be able to kind of pull that into your workout routine has all kinds of values. Now, here's something that's very important with all of this, by the way, because we're talking about all these different things you do and change your mindset and do unconventional exercises. Here's a mistake that very important with all of this, by the way, because we're talking about all these different things you do and change your mindset and do on conventional exercises. Here's a mistake that a lot of people make when doing these types of things is they do

them once or twice and then they go back to their old shit again. Stay the course, do them and do them consistently for two or three or four months and get good at them and then go back to your older team and watch what happens. Don't just throw them in here and there because you're like, I'm bored today. I'm going to, and by the way, there's some value in that too, but if you really want to get the value out of what we're talking about, do them for a routine, for a block, you know, stay the course, program them into your work out and program them properly. Like make sure that the workout has actually programmed and you're not just throwing it

because unconventional exercises are programmed typically differently than body part type exercises. There's a different consideration. Like when we create programs around these types of movements, it's different than when we create like a body building style routine. But stay the course two or three months, get good at them and then watch what happens. You want it to be measurable. Yes. So you want to stay in there long enough so you actually can see,

you could pinpoint the benefits that you're getting from these very specific exercises. Otherwise, it's kind of like you're throwing it in the mix and you don't really know where this is all coming from. Well, you're explaining my learning curve of training, for sure. I mean, I went from the guy who never switched up his routine because I identified with a certain way of training for sure. I mean, I went from the guy who never switched up as routine because I identified with a certain way of training, finally piecing together that, oh, novelty was king, then I became the guy who switched up every routine. Like, in fact,

I went on a kick for the longest time that pride in myself on no extra, no routine did I have ever done the same. I never repeat. Oh, pendulum swing, isn't it? Yeah, it really was. Went from one side to the other, and the truth is that, okay, there was some value to me doing that. I mean, I learned that the importance of novelty and switching up the routine,

the hard part was the measuring part. Like, okay, well, what is benefiting the most right now? And I would get so much more at it being focused for a longer period of time than just a workout, right? So three to four weeks focused on a type of training before I moved out of it. So that was really like the curve of my training. Yeah, like you introduced searcher deadlifts

or overhead carries or former walks, rather than doing them once or twice, which you still suck at doing it, first a couple times you suck, do it until you get good at it, get good at it, get those gains, then here's my favorite part. When you go back to your old tried and true routine, your old boring routine that you were finding kind of like unmotivating, now is new again.

It gets a facelift. Yeah, you go back to it and you're like, oh man, everything feels good. Look at these pumps. Oh my gosh, I feel invigorated again. Then you can spend a lot of time doing your old stuff. Well, even more reason why you want to be methodical about this, right? Instructure, because then you could actually see, like let's say you're, you know,

someone listening right now is like, well, I don't know if I want to do this. I'm really focused on strong man. I'm really focused on bodybuilding. Like, listen, you go play with these different modalities. You come back and you see which one benefited your way of training the most, but making sure that you cycle out of that, so you don't get stuck in that rut

of doing the same thing over. Totally. Now, here's something that I think you have to be, there's a lot of value in this, but it depends on the person, because I would get a lot of people who would rely too much on this, and it was a detriment. But in some cases, this can be a wonderful spark

for a lot of people. So, let me talk about the first example. I would get clients who, the only way that they could ever motivate themselves wonderful spark for a lot of people. So let me talk about the first example, right? I would get clients who, the only way that they could ever motivate themselves was to sign up for events every other month. So like every month I do a marathon, every other month I would do some kind of event.

And it wasn't this good relationship with exercise necessarily. Because if they didn't have an event, they lost all their motivation, they couldn't work out. So I'm not talking to those people, okay? If you're addicted to doing that, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the person who's consistent in the gym, who's finding themselves needing a new goal,

wants to change their mindset, wants to get that old spark back. Here's something you can do, sign up for an unusual competition, something that you're not used to. Like a good example would be like an OCR event. Like if you do body part split routines and body build type routines and you're like,

ah God, I've been doing this for so long. My body's plateaued, I'm a little bit bored. Go sign up for an OCR event, give yourself three months to train for it and go for it. Go for it and watch what happens. The best part is when you're done, for some of the feeling of accomplishment, you did different trainings,

so your body had a new stimulus. But then go back to your bodybuilding routine after you did that. You will blow your mind. This goes back to your being the beginner, right? Like just finding those opportunities, like that's something that just, if it's so extremely different than how you're training,

like there's so much benefit and opportunity on the other side of that. And so it's gonna be tough. You know, that's a tough mental space for a lot of people to find. But if you can find that and really challenge yourself to get outside of your comfort zone, on the other side, that's so much growth. And so some of these events like OCR training, or Spartan races and things like that, really challenge the entire body and the way that you organize your movement and use your muscles

much more than then then other things that you could probably think of You know conventionally. Well, that's really the secret sauce of this conversation is mindset because I if I could pick out like what I what I see is one of the biggest problems in in all gyms is that people tend to gravitate towards what they like doing or what they're good at the most. And everybody in this room is guilty of that. Each one of us had to build a training avatar of the other two guys. I guarantee that we would have a very descriptive, like what a sales type of training,, what a Justin's are doing. So we're all guilty of this.

And so that's why I know it's such an important conversation and the mindset is the secret sauce to actually hacking into this. You have to want to seek novelty, you have to want to suck at something and want to pursue getting better at that. If you lack that, you're gonna have a really hard time with this. Now, if you learn to thrive in that environment, you're going to see tons of great results from this.

Yeah, and the cool thing about this now is it's quite easy to find these types of competitions locally. Obviously, if you've never done anything like this before, you start small and do it for the enjoyment, do it for the motivation aspect, train for it, give yourself some time, and again, it's fun, it's a lot of fun, and it'll reinvigorate that old feeling you had with training. Look, if you like this episode, there's something that we did here, specifically for this particular episode.

And a lot of you are listening and saying, I wanna do all the stuff, I wanna find more motivation. Well, here's what we did. We actually put together an unconventional bundle. So if you're having questions about how to program all these different exercises or how to find different goals or what does this look like? I want to do this.

Our unconventional bundle is a great place to start. It includes maps OCR. So this is a workout program just for obstacle course racing. It includes map strong, so it's strong man style training. It also includes maps suspension, so an entire workout around suspension training. Now all three of these programs, each of them are well over by themselves, $100,

but what we've done today, because of this episode, is we've put together them in a bundle, $99.99 for all three of those programs. You can go find them at mapsjune.com. That's M-A-P-S-June.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Salon, Adam at Mind Pump Adam.

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs.

With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal and I'm in Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. This is Mindbomb.