Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1745: How to Pack on Muscle to Your Lagging/Stubborn Body Parts

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover six keys to bringing up body parts that just don't seem to be developing as fast as others. Which body part do you have that is the most stubborn? (2:19) The guy's most stubborn body part. (3:41) 6 Keys to Pack on Muscle to Your Lagging/Stubborn Body Parts. (7:13) #1 – Focus on the mind to muscle connection. (13:08) #2 – Prioritize your lagging body part at the beginning of your workout. (19:56) #3 – Train lagging/stubborn body parts with more frequency and volume. (23:23) #4 – Sacrifice volume somewhere in order to add it where you want it to go. (26:37) #5 – Change your programming. (30:34) #6 – Give it time. (36:04) Check out MAPS MODS! (38:33) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Promotion: MAPS MODS 50% off **Promo code “MODS50OFF” at checkout** Visit Paleo Valley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code “Mindpump15” at checkout for 15% discount** How to Improve Weak and Stubborn Body Parts – Mind Pump Blog What To Do About Lagging Body Parts – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1542: How Bodybuilders Ruined Weight Lifting For Everyone Mind Pump #1612: Everything You Need To Know About Sets, Reps & Rest Periods The Benefits of Adding Plyometrics & Functional Training to Your Workout 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. 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 about lagging body parts and how to bring them up. So these are body parts on your body, you train your whole body, but these are body parts that don't seem to respond like the rest of your muscle groups,

like the rest of your body. You're trying to figure out what's going on, it's frustrating, we all have them, but there are ways to bring them up and there are effective ways to do so. Now, in this episode, we talk about the six things you could do to bring up your lagging body parts. We also have body parts specific maps program specifically for this.

So we have like a biceps mod, a shoulder mod, a glute mod, hamstring, quad, calf, chest, whatever, every body part, we've designed a specific modification and what you could do is you could plug it in your routine to bring up a lagging body part. And all of these mods, because of this episode, are 50% off. So if you're interested, you wanna go to mapsmodz.com, that's M-A-P-S-M-O-D-S.com, and then use the code mods50off,

so that's M-O-D-S-5-0-off-O-F, and you'll get half off any one of those mods. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Paleo Valley. Paleo Valley makes some incredible paleo inspired supplements. Two of my favorite products of theirs are the as follows. One is their grass fed, grass finished beef sticks. They're not dry, they taste great, they've got great macro profiles, easy to travel

with, they're high in protein, very healthy. They also have something called their bone broth protein, the most unprocessed protein powder I've ever seen my entire life, literally one ingredient, bone broth protein, no flavors, no colors, no nothing, super easy to digest, that's the big thing. So I, most protein powders in the ball, they're my gut, they're bone broth protein, not at all, very, very easy to digest. That's the big thing. So I, most protein powders into bother my gut. Their bone broth protein, not at all. Very, very easy to digest. So go check them out.

Head over to mindpumppartners.com and use the code mindpump15 for 15% off your first order. We got to talk about a topic that keeps coming up. It's like one of the most annoying things for people. Lacking, weak body parts. Body topic that keeps coming up. It's like one of the most annoying things for people, lagging, weak body parts. Body parts that don't develop, like the rest. That's respond already. Of the body.

Are we gonna define that as like from an aesthetic perspective? Is that where we're going with this? Is that more for somebody who's like, hey, my shoulders are underdeveloped in comparison in my chest? Oh, wait, that's a great point you're making there. Yes, for the episode, but I think this is true for movement as well.

And it's typically like lagging movement patterns or muscles that maybe not doing what they're supposed to. The app for the sake of this particular episode, really more from an aesthetic standpoint. Body parts that don't seem to develop like the rest of the body, which most people have this, right? Most people, if you talk to them, who've been working out for a long time, you can ask them, which body part do you have that is the most stubborn, like which one do you have that doesn't seem to respond like the rest?

And a lot of times, clients that'll come in with that will think immediately it was a genetic gift that was passed on. This is something that they can't really do anything about. This is just how it's always been, it's how I grew up. Like my muscles just don't really respond the way they should because of how I was born. What do you guys have body parts? What do you have lagging body parts that you guys have found?

Oh my calves, dude. We've been talking about that for seven years now. I don't know. Yeah. I think I feel like you might do that. All right, it's just like, you know, be asking you about your chest right now. Oh, come on.

Come on, Jeff. Come on, Jeff. Come on, Adam. We're gonna throw shots over the bell right now. Let's go, dude. I wasn't gonna say that. No, but I mean, do you have my biceps? Yeah. You know what, though, my, I mean, let's go, dude. I wasn't gonna say that. No, but I mean, you have. Like my biceps, maybe? Well, you know what, though, my,

I mean, calves have always been something, but it's, it wasn't something that, when I first started to kind of piece this together and where this episode is going, my shoulders were the first thing that, and I've shared the story on the podcast before. I was 21 years old, managing my first gym. Yeah, shoulder implant.

I had a, I had a, shoulder implant. I had a female trainer. She was like in her 40s at that time and she was a female competitor, great physique, been in the industry for quite some time already. And because she was in bodybuilding, I wanted her assessment, her honest assessment of my physique. And I was like, you know, I want you to be brutally honest.

Tell me the areas that if you were coaching me where you work on, and she says, I don't know, you have weak shoulders. No, she was Russian. Yeah, she was. She told me I had weak shoulders. You know, you don't have to be that brutal, my God. What really actually got to me was that,

like, I guess I never thought I really did, but then she broke it down. She says, you know, you really don't have much rear-delt development. You've got kind of like these sloping, I mean, she just continued to go on and like fucking broke my heart, right? I was like, okay, it's enough, I get the point

where we're going from, but it was great because then it sent me down this path of like really programming around, okay, well, how do I address this? That was kind of what, I mean, what has led us today to building programs like Mapsesthetic, the ability for me to be able to shape and sculpt my body to get on stage,

like that began then. That's up up into that point, I'm not thinking that way. That's sitting me on that path. And I would actually say now, I would say my shoulders are one of my stronger points. That would maybe not my best, but it's one of my stronger attributes as far as my, at least that's what the judges would give me as my feedback when I'd get on stage. And so, it's pretty cool to know that, you know, you can have a, you know, a genetically lagging body part

or a lagging body part based off of maybe poor connection there or all the other reasons that will address. But it doesn't mean you got to be stuck with it forever and it doesn't mean that you can't change that. Yeah, so I had no shoulders at all. And so same thing for me. Now shoulders now are one of my stronger body parts. Chas, that's always a struggle for me. Legs. I had, my knees were bigger than my quads. I literally had skinny legs at point where... Yeah, I was like just this knees. And then they responded very well through the type of training I did.

And today it's still chest and calves still. Lacking doesn't necessarily mean not developed either. I think sometimes, well lagging means for some people is it just doesn't, it's not symmetrical or balanced with the rest of the body, right? Because you put someone's body part that they feel like it's lagging on someone else and it seems to match. So it's really, but just not necessarily responding as well as the rest of the body.

And I know Justin, you don't have any, right? Everything's for me. I do. It just changes all the time because I'm just constantly looking at it from a movement, like what I'm weakened and what I haven't like addressed. And so it inevitably, like it could be my back, you know, it could be my biceps.

Like some of my arms aren't really defined. I'd like them. It just kind of like moves around. Yeah. So, you know, here's some of the main reasons. And I think, you know, it'll be important when we get into strategies to improve lagging body parts. But the number one reason why people have lagging body parts, and I hate to say this, because a lot of people listen to them, like, that's not true, but if you're

honest with yourself, I think you'll see some truth here, is that they just don't put as much focus on that body part, like they do other body parts. So you'll hear it, like for me, one of the reasons why my calves lagged for so long is, I just, early days, I never trained them. So the first 10 years of my workout career, my calves were kind of an afterthought, right? It's not a beach muscle. So now I have 10 years of everything else being developed and that not being necessarily trained.

And you see that with a lot of people to say, oh, this is a weaker body part and say, well, what have you done for it? Are you consistent with it like other areas? And oftentimes that's not the case. There are some genetic issues, right? There's your insertion and origin. So longer muscle bellies, that's the actual meat of the muscle.

Makes a muscle easier to develop than a shorter muscle belly, muscle fiber density. That's just easier too. It'll look different. Yeah, that's what I mean. I mean, I would explain this to somebody too that would, it was really common, it was like 15 years ago or so.

When was JLo blowing up, right? When JLo first started to blow up, like I literally, One, 15 years ago. Yeah, I mean 15, 20 years ago, right? Somewhere around there. But it was like literally every other female client that came to work with me at that time would be like,

can I build a JLo butt? Like that was like a super common question Yeah, but I was asked and I was always having to explain that you know Yes, we can develop your glutes absolutely to to be bigger than they are currently right now But also keep in mind half of what kind of gives the the illusion or the look of of someone's butt or any muscle to your point is The origin insertion if somebody has a very short origin and insertion, they're gonna get kind of this bubbly look. If you have somebody that has a very long origin and insertion,

they're gonna have this kind of flatter kind of natural look to that. So even when it grows, it's not gonna have this short, little bubble look, it's gonna get bigger, but it's not gonna look exactly the same. Yeah, you know, it's funny with other body parts that's your opposite. Like you want long insertions with biceps the same. Yeah, you know, it's funny with other body parts that's your opposite. Like you want long, long, you know, insertions

with biceps or calves. But maybe you know, I think that's one of the most noticeable ones is biceps and calves because you go, somebody flexes, right? And you'll see like a little ball on top versus like, you know, one that's a little bit more, you know, all the way down to the elbow. Yep.

And then there's also like muscle fiber types. Certain muscle fibers build more than other muscle fiber types and genetics will play a role. Now, it's argued that your muscle fiber type, I guess, ratio is consistent throughout the whole body, but there's some theories that say that might not be the case through the whole body, and in some cases, you may have more endurance muscle fiber

types and some muscle groups versus others others which makes them harder to develop. And then one of the main reasons is I'm using this word or this phrase carefully, loosely, which is lack of connection. Now I know lack of connection literally means you can't connect the muscle at all, it's dead. I don't mean that. What I mean is, when you're doing an exercise or a lift, especially a compound exercise,

there's lots of muscles involved in a particular movement. And that means that they can perform the lift with different ratios of tension and strength from the movers and your secondary cast. Totally. So you do a bench press, I'm gonna make up some numbers, but let's say you do a bench press

and 60% of the load is carried by the packs and 20% by the triceps and 20% by the shoulders. So there's your ratio, well, what if for you, because of the way you do the lift and the way you learned it and just the way that you practiced it, it's more like 40% goes to the packs, and 30% goes to the chest and triceps, right?

So now when you work out, you get different development than someone who has different, maybe, you know, again, loosely muscle recruitment patterns. This is a big issue, I think, because like a barbell squat can be very glute focused, but it can also be very quad-focused. A row can be very bicep focused or very back focused. A pull-up can be lath or bicep, right?

Shoulder press, we could do that more tricep and we could do it more shoulder and you can go on and on with compound lifts. And this issue right here, I think, is especially with the consistent, people who work out consistently and constantly work on their lagging body parts, this tends to be a big issue.

I remember when I first figured this out, I had a guy hire me and actually it was an incredible shape and he had an incredibly strong bench, but he was hiring me to help him develop his chest. It was a lagging body part, so I just haven't been able to figure it out and he would tell me, I bench all the time, I got this and he had the most massive looking triceps that I've

ever seen. And at first it didn't make sense to me. I'm like, this is what I figured it out. But at first glance, I was like, this guy's benching this much weight and he just chest all the time. It doesn't make sense until I saw him perform the movement. And you could see, you could see the way he benched. You could see the tricep was carrying way more.

So you're point about it being 20%. There's an example of, and again, I'm gonna use hypothetical numbers, right? He was probably using 40% of his chest, and then he was using more like, you know, 35 or 40% of his triceps, and then the other bit of his shoulders. Like, you know, and that's a perfect example

of somebody who can still have, could be very strong in a lift, still consistently lifted all the time, but then the muscle not develop like you would think it would develop from that. And we see that a lot in muscles like that, from things like benching. You also see that a lot with probably squatting, right?

A lot of people know that squat glutes are supposed to develop with squats, but how many clients of you guys trained were, you know, they say they squat three times a week and they have a flat butt and it's all squats. Yeah, yeah, no, no. So this takes us to the first point, the first thing you should focus on with a lagging body part, which is the mind to muscle connection. Can you actually focus on and feel the target muscle with the exercises and make that target muscle, your lagging body part, do most of the work.

Now there's some important things to note with this, which is you're probably in a lift significantly less weight when you do it this way. If you're used to squatting and you squat, let's say 200 pounds and you don't know why your butt's not developing and it's all your quads. And you go to change the Connection to your glutes change your form of technique and feel it more in your glutes

You're not gonna use 200 pounds You're gonna have to back way down to 100 pounds because you're essentially what you're doing is you're learning a brand new movement Same thing you talked about bench press, right? If it's like a shoulder and tricep exercise for someone They're typically more tucked in and tight with their bench and that's giving them the big numbers. Well, you're gonna have to put your ego aside, flare elbows out a little bit, focus on what the pecs are doing and lift a lot less weight to get that mind and muscle connection. So that's really an important key of this particular.

You really have to set yourself up posturally and get aligned perfectly so that way, too, you can actually perform the correct function of where it's supposed to really activate and recruit that specific muscle. You can really try to hone in and isolate. It's a little bit different than priming, too, that we're talking about, mind muscle connection because I'm trying actually to get that squeeze and really intrinsically squeeze hard. The harder I can squeeze and connect and get tension out of my muscles,

the more likely I'm gonna be able to start training it to recruit at a higher volume. Well, this is another great example of where there's tremendous value around isometrics. 100%. I think we did an episode recently, right, where we got into a lot of the benefits from isometrics.

Here's an incredible one. If you have somebody who has a really hard time connecting to a muscle, they're trying to develop because it's a lagging body part. Squeeze the shit out of it and isometrics first. Yes. And so what that looks like for me as a trainer who's helping somebody do that,

like for example, the guy that I was helping back then, it's taking them in a movement and having them hold in an isometric contractive position and getting them to think. When you're, when I got them holding down at the 90 degree, at the very bottom, right, or then I got them holding at the very top, is using a light enough weight

that I can have him pause in those positions and then teaching him, and I'm over there as a trainer, like connect, connect, squeeze, and try and intensify right here and getting them to do that. Instead of just going through the motion of getting the weight up and seeing how much more weight they can lift,

hey, let's reduce the weight significantly and let's do a real good squeeze at the bottom and the top of the rep so you can really work on that connection. Yeah, you know what helped me a lot with this was when I first became certified as a trainer and I learned muscle action. Once I started to learn what the action of a muscle, and you don't need to get all crazy with this,

you don't need to go learn tons of physiology and anatomy. Angles and leverage. Yeah, you just start to figure out what the muscles do in your lifts. Okay, so I'll give you an example. Okay, so if I'm doing a chin up, right? So supinated grip that's palms back, chin up.

My biceps are doing this, right? My biceps are flexing my elbow. So the chin up aspect where I'm doing the chin up, the part that my biceps doing is this part. The part that my lats are doing is it's pulling my elbow down. So this is lat, this is bicep. So if I wanna make it more bicep focused

when I do my chin up, I'm focusing on the curl. If I wanna focus more, and make it more lap focused, I'm focusing on the elbows pulling down. If we're doing a bench press, for example, if I want it more peck focused, my elbows are going to come out a little bit more because the peck brings the upper arm, the humerus, across the body. This is what the pectoralis does. What is a tricep to?

It extends the elbow. So I can focus on what the muscle action is, right? When you do a squat, for example, what does a glute do? The glute is taking your leg and kicking it back. The quad is extending the knee. So now knowing that, if I want to make it quad-focused and I do my squat, I'm focusing on the knee extension part. If I want to make it more glute-focused, I'm focusing more on the hip extension part. And I want to make it more glute focused, I'm focusing more on the hip extension part. And this takes practice. This is the part of my muscle connection that takes practice. But if you think about the muscle action while you're doing the lift and you know, okay, this is what that

muscle is doing. Let me focus on that part of this particular exercise while you're doing it. You'll slowly start to feel more of a connection. Well, I used to coach, I used to say to this my client, so all we would be standing in the gym and be showing them all these exercises and be, oh, I'm so confused by all this stuff. I said, listen, all this stuff, okay, all these weights and dumbbells. And all it is is flexion of the muscles with some sort of resistance.

Whether that be a band, a machine, a dumbbell, so actually my goal as your trainer is to first get you to know how to flex all these muscles really good. And now using some sort of resistance, some feedback, it's easier to teach somebody sometimes. But the goal really is that can I get you to learn how to flex every on command? Can I tell you that flex me your last, you know, flex me your shoulder flex me your

bite. And then there's easy ones right? Everybody does that flex their bicep, but you should be able to get to it. And that should be a good goal. Like can I get to a place where I can think about a muscle and I know how to flex it. And that to your point is like understanding the action, the movement that it does helps you get there. So you can figure that out.

And that's really when we're in the gym, we're practicing it flexing that muscle really well. If you know how to do that, you can then get in any machine or any exercise and perform it. If you know the desired outcome is to flex a certain muscle and you already know how to intrinsically do that without any sort of weights, you just apply that to that machine. A hundred percent. And this is why some exercises fit into different categories like parallel bar dips. It's a chest exercise. No, it's not. It's a tricep exercise. Actually, it's

both or it could be more of one or more of the other. Emphasize one or the other. Yes, and the key is this, when you're doing mind and muscle connection, especially for a lagging body part, you are not trying to maximize the weight that you're lifting. That's not the goal. The goal is to feel the muscle, the target muscle more.

This is body building stuff. This is not power lifting or strength training. Don't worry about the weight, worry about the feel, which means you're gonna have to lighten the load quite a bit to feel the exercise where you wanna feel. To me, this is the real value of bodybuilding. And I'm coming from a place of all pure performance of leticism, that's the only focus

is just movement, quality and all that. But to be able to really connect to, like you said, like be able to flex in a muscle-on command, very helpful for, you know, you be able to kind of bring that into those exercises and especially address certain issues that you're wanting to address. Totally.

Here's the next one. Prioritize your lagging body part at the beginning of your workout. Even if that means you're going to do your isolation movements or smaller body part muscle groups at the beginning of the workout, which typically you don't want to do, right? Typically, like workout programming, you know, commandment number four or whatever is do your big gross modem movements first work on your big muscle groups first and work down the list to the smaller ones. Well, that can be broken when you have a lagging body part

that you really need to focus on. For example, if hamstrings, let's say your hamstrings are a weak body part and your workout calls for you to start with your barbell squats. That's okay to not start with squats. It's totally fine to start with leg curls and stiff legadet lifts first.

Then go to leg your barbell squat. This is true for any body parts. And studies show this by the way, that the body parts or the extra, and this is why workout programming starts with the big gross motor movements first, because you're gonna get the most bang for your buck, is studies show that the first things you do,

you get the most adaptation towards, and as you go down the list, it becomes less and less. And for the most part, you want to do the big exercises first. But if there's a lagging body part, do that first. Even if it's biceps or triceps, it's okay. If your triceps are lagging, it's fine to work your triceps before you work your chest. So I want to add to that because I think, yes, at the beginning of your words, and at the beginning of your week, right? So if you're doing a body part split, at the beginning of your words, and at the beginning of your week, right?

So if you're doing a body part split, which a lot of people do upper body or muscle group splits like that, is prioritizing the weak part. And traditionally, what everybody does is either legs, chest, or back because of the big muscle groups that everybody cares about. That's normally the front load of your body part split

that you do, and then you kind of get to the, all the secondary ones, calves, shoulders, arms, other things like that. Well, if those secondary muscles are one of your lagging body parts, then not only should you prioritize the exercises within the routine at the front, you should also prioritize that at the beginning of the week. Why does that matter?

Well, what matter, why that matter so much is because life happens, I don't think I've ever met anybody who year in, year out consistently, never misses workouts. If you're like me or you, most of us that are in this room right now, you have these sporadic times where, yeah, you got a week off, or maybe you missed four days this week and only got in the gym two or three times.

And what typically happens is somebody hits their, their muscle groups, they love training. They're lagging ones were later in the week. They missed those days of training. Then when they start back, they start back at their favorite muscle group again. And as if they're starting the week over because they had a bad week or maybe they took two weeks off, instead of always starting back on the way. This was actually one of the single most impactful things I did for my shoulders. I had never done that. I had never said, okay, it's a lagging body parts week air. I

don't like training it as much. What if it became my number one priority and no matter how many breaks I take in this year, every time I come back to the gym after missing a couple days or weeks, I'm always starting with my shoulders, just that alone started to develop more than what I had done in previous years. Yeah, that's such a very, very good point because people don't like to change their mix-up or their layout, even if they have lagging body parts. But that one small thing right there typically means

15, 20, 30% more consistency throughout the rest of the year. So that's a big one. All right, so here's the next one. This one sounds kind of obvious, but there's more to it than what you're about to hear. And that is that you should, if you have a lagging body part, that particular body part should be trained

with more frequency. It should show up quite a bit in your program. Yeah, more frequency, more volume, and more exercises. It only makes sense. And I struggled with this for a long time because I wanted everything to look balanced. In my workout, I looked at my programming. Well, I can't do eight sets for my shoulders

when I'm only doing eight, you know, six sets for everything else. No, the lagging body parts should be trained more frequently with more volume, meaning more exercises and sets than the other body parts. Now, I want to point out that this is our third point and not our first point. Right.

And the reason why this is our third point and not our first point and they should go in order is that first point that we made, if you don't learn how to connect to that muscle really well and all you do more work on this, right? And if all you do is increase frequency and volume, which this is a mistake, sometimes I see, especially guys, I see this with young guys

that are trying to develop a body part, is I need to work my chest, this is a mistake sometimes I see, especially guys, I see this with young guys that are trying to develop a body part is, I need to work my chest, this is this guy, I need to work my chest more, Adam, I'm already doing it five days a week and I'm getting stronger a little bit on my chest but the chest isn't developing anymore. Well that's because all you're doing is you're just working the triceps and the shoulders

a lot more than what you were working with. So the order of this is important, it's first important that you have a good connection. You know how to flex and work that muscle really well and perform that well. Then the next natural progression to that, I think, is beginning it, beginning of workouts, beginning of the week. And then the next thing after that is, okay, now let's start to increase the frequency and the volume of it. And then it follows the exact pattern I did with my shoulders. It was first, okay, all I'm going to do is just prioritize it. I'm not going to overthink it.

I'm not going to track volume. I'm not going to track anything. That itself will do exactly what you said gave me 10 to 15% more, you know, training. Yeah, consistency around it for the year. Then the next thing was, okay, now let's start to scale this. I've become now consistent. I never missed a shoulder workout. Now let's start to build some more volume and frequency here and started doing it multiple times a week. And then that's when to scale this. I've become now consistent. I never missed a shoulder workout. Now let's start to build some more volume and frequency here

and start at doing it multiple times a week. And then that's when they really start making. What you do most is what you're going to improve at the most. By the way, this is true for anything. So you want to get better at squatting. You should probably be squatting more than doing other exercises. You want to get better at bench press or overhead press.

Same thing. If you want a body part to accelerate its development, you should probably be training that particular body part more with more volume than the rest of your body. Well, to the point of your client who is wanting to, you know, train his chest quite a bit more, I have had clients and friends as well that are like, man, you know, my chest isn't responding and so they would go super intense. So if you do an a split routine, but then they would end up doing

the entire workout is like chest. And that day, and they would just blow it out. And so then now the rest of the week, they don't go quite as frequently. It's so sore, they can, so this frequency meaning that we're gonna repeatedly incorporate it, but not like over intensify it. Yeah, I'm glad you said that.

That's a good word of caution. There can be too much, right? You can do too much, so more doesn't necessarily mean as much as you possibly can and fry yourself because that'll actually set you back. Now, this takes us to the next one. And here's the biggest mistake that I see experienced lifters make when bringing up

a lagging body part. They have their whole workout laid out in front of them for the week. And they're doing, let's say, 12 sets on average per body part or 15 sets per body part per week with different multiple exercises or whatever. And so let's say total for the whole week for the whole body, it's, I don't know, let's, I'm going to make up a number of 60 sets and everything's going great. And they're like, you know what, I want to develop my shoulders more. So I'm gonna add five more sets to my shoulders. What they didn't do is compensate by reducing volume in other places. You can't just throw more volume at your body and expect it to

respond, especially if you're already training really hard. You need to cut back on other stuff. And this is the tough part, because people are like, but I want my shoulders to come up, but I don't want to not work out my biceps as much as I do. It's like, well, you have to sacrifice volume somewhere in order to add it where you want it to go. So we complimented and gave credit to bodybuilding for some of the things they did.

Great. I'm gonna blame bodybuilding for fucking this up for a lot of other people. And that's because there's a lot of people that are taking a lot of steroids and can get away with skipping this step. They just keep piling on the volume and their body continues to respond. Because they have an artificial signal.

They're, I mean, with a natural person, you have this kind of ebb and flow of your testosterone levels, your ability to recover. When you're taking exogenous testosterone and all the other possible PEDs, your body recovers at a much faster rate, you can handle punishment, you can handle that because it's constantly staying up here. It's not dipping every time you overreach. And so I think that these were the people that were promoting just the, you know, you

gotta hit it more and just keep it more and keep doing more, not knowing that you should probably adjust the rest of your programming based off of that. It took me a long time to kind of piece that together because I made this mistake for a long time of just keep piling on, piling on, piling on, and sometimes less is more and learning that

if I'm gonna add more volume to an already high volume routine, then something's gotta give and it's better for my body to pull back on something else. And you know, it's also hard to let go because what you should let go is normally the thing that you're really good at and you like doing.

Yeah, so I was just gonna say, the area that you wanna cut volume from is the fast responding body part. I'm honest, it's only been maybe five years now for me where I've let go of my bicep and tricep training. Like, I love training my arms so much, and it's been a strength of mine since I was a kid because of how much I've trained them.

And because of that, I could literally not touch them for a while, and I will not lose hardly any size on them. But I still love the train them because I good at it, and I like it, and it feels good, and it looks good. And so, it was hard for me to kind of let that go. I was like, listen, I don't need to be training these things two, three times a week at all. I could hit them once every other week and be fine to maintain the size on them. So, what am I doing?

Why am I overtaxing my body? It's just my ego getting in the way of wanting to do that. And so it's taking me a long time to let go of certain things that I don't need to be training as much as the things I need to work on. Yeah, my favorite example of an analogy of that is when you're playing a video game and you're building your character and they give you like a hundred points and you can dedicate some points to like speed, power, damage control, whatever. But if you give a hundred points to one, you've got none left for the rest.

So you have to kind of like pull from that, 100 points. You get allocated correctly. You have to allocate it correctly. So if you're doing 60 sets for the week, and you're like, well, I wanna do five more sets for my lagging body part, you gotta pull it from somewhere else. And the smart thing to do is to pull it from the area

that you really respond well to. Because that's the area that's least likely to suffer from doing less volume. In fact, you may actually find that you're not gonna suffer anything at all, because it's one of those areas that you're not responds so well. So, all right, here's the next one, and this one is where things get a little more complicated.

And that is that you might need to change your programming. That means the exercises that you do, the reps, the tempo, how you squeeze the repetitions. Are they at the top? Is it at the bottom? How do I do the stretch? Sometimes what you really need to do is look at your routine and I need a different bicep routine. I need a different shoulder routine. I need new workout programming. Yeah. And so we sort of talked about initially in the beginning of this, about how to kind of slow it down and squeeze and have isometric contraction. Well, also fast twitch plays a role, right? And

this is where a lot of people don't perform exercises that are driven by acceleration and powerful type of movements. But it actually stimulates the muscles in a whole different way that a lot of times we'll unlock that connectivity and that response that that muscle has never received before and sometimes we'll blow you up. I know Adam has experienced that with the shoulders, right?

Not only that, so I experienced it there. You actually saying that, I'm glad you put that up because you just brought me back to a memory I had. You know, we've all, like, we've been doing this so long and we've probably forgotten a lot of stuff, right? One of the things I had forgotten about until you just started sharing that story right now is I worked really hard on developing my chest

and kind of got it to this place where, yeah, seeing, I saw very incremental change. During the time that I was getting ready for competition and I was looking for different variables to manipulate because I already felt like I'd thrown everything at it. One of the things I'd never done for my chest was explosive plyometric type training for the chest. How often does anyone do that?

No, barely ever. It was something that I incorporated and I was blown away. I saw another big leap in my development of my chest that I hadn't seen from years of constantly training in my chest because it was a variable that I hadn't really played with. And I hadn't thought, you think about that with legs a lot, right?

Play of metrics for legs and explosive training for legs is kind of a natural. Yeah, it's more a natural progression. Yeah, you don't have to think too much about it. There's a lot of extra tries for that. But if you told someone, ply a mattress for their chest, a lot of people would probably scratch their head

and go like, oh, what does that look like? Or what exercises could you do like, plyo with your chest? Well, I tell you what, one of my favorite things was to do these explosive pushups off the either the Bosu ball or off of medicine balls where I come off the ground and explode up. And I just, I got this great,

a great gains from doing something like that. So this is such a good, a great point. I also think, I know, Sal, you said this is work and get complicated, but this also could be the low hanging fruit. Like let's say all the rest of them, you're pretty good about, but you're still having a hard time.

Sometimes, you know, and this is common with people that even know what they're doing, they're just stuck in doing the same cycle of things. And they just haven't broken out. Like when was the last time that you thought outside the box and did some explosive shoulder work or explosive chest work? And when was the last time you programmed that in your programming? And if you never have, I mean, it could be just as simple as that

of starting to maybe trade out something very traditional that you've been doing forever for an explosive movement towards that muscle and watch it respond. No, I'm glad you said that because programming doesn't just mean changing the exercises. It can mean changing the speed, it can mean changing the reps. Have you never trained in the...

Yeah, have you ever never trained at the four rep range? Well, that could be changing the programming for you. Just then you said rest periods, right? If you always rest a minute between sets, what happens if you go three minutes or 30 seconds, right? Explosiveness was such a good one. I didn't even think of that, but I experienced that with push presses.

That's an explosive shoulder press. I experienced that recently, I think like three years ago, with the snatches that we did in strong. My traps. I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been doing shrugs forever, real slow and controlled, like three years ago with the snatches that we did in Strong. My traps, I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been doing shrugs forever, real slow and controlled, and all of a sudden my traps blew up from this kind of wide grip explosive type of,

high pull movement, and it really made a big difference. So changing the programming, one of the main values of it, is it is novel. It's so different, it's new. I hate to use this word because it's so bastardized but it shocks the body, right? So it's a new thing. Your body has to adapt, you're used to moving slow.

Now you gotta move fast or vice versa or you're used to resting long. Now you gotta rest short or vice versa and it gets things moving again. I'm so glad that Justin went that way because the person that will be attracted to this episode lagging But will probably be more of a body builder mindset or cares more about aesthetics And you just as someone who has that kind of thought process you don't think of

Plowmatchers and explosive training as a way to build more muscle. No, you know funny It activates so many fast twitch muscle and it's incredible Especially if you never do it. It's different if it's incorporated on a regular basis. You're probably not going to see massive gains if you always do that. But if it's something you never do because you always train like a body builder with a slow and trolled 422 type of tempo and everything is controlled. Man, doing something explosive and training that way,

it's gonna send a new signal to the body. It will respond, part of it responding is building more muscle. So it's a great, great tool. And vice versa, going really slow. I've done this with explosive athletes who are used to just doing everything so quickly. I'm like four seconds up and four seconds down. Yeah, and that is just a totally different thing

and they see huge gains. Here's the last part, okay. The last part is you gotta give it time. So just because you're doing all this stuff, like building muscle is a slow process. The body, you know, more muscle requires more energy. It's more, it's expensive tissue. The body's a really build muscle unless it thinks it needs to

and it only gives you as much as it thinks it needs and that's it. So it's a very slow, methodical process. Here's what it feels like, by the way. Okay, here's what it feels like. And this is like very true for most people. You start training a lagging party part and at first you'll feel like,

oh my God, I feel more of a connection and it'll be like that for a few weeks and then you'll be like, I got a crazy pump. I normally don't get a pump in this body part. Now I'm getting a really good pump. Wow, that's great. And then you wait a few weeks and it's like, oh my god, now the muscle's getting sore,

like differently than it ever did before. And then it's this long process of going through that. And then, oh, now I see some muscle growth. It takes time to develop a lagging body part. I mean, I would say when I started really focusing on my shoulders, it was like a year and a half before they really made a big difference. My legs, same thing about a year and a half before they really made a big difference.

My legs, same thing about a year and a half before I saw a big difference. I'm glad we're wrapping up with this too, because this also highlights part of the why we design our programs the way we design them. Something that when I was in my mid to late 20s, and I had figured a lot of this programming out, understood the importance of changing the reps and tempo, I went through a lot of this programming out and understood the importance of changing

the reps and tempo. I went through a phase of becoming this trainer who, in fact, I used to pride myself on this. No workout has ever been the same. Every workout, I'm always seeking that novel workout, changing tempos, changing reps. But the problem with that was really hard to measure the exact success. So it's important that you manipulate a couple of these things. And then you stick to it and stay and be patient. Don't expect it to happen in two days or three weeks.

Like be consistent with it for a couple of months and then manipulate another variable. And that's how we wrote the maps programs is you stick in phases for an extended period of time. The research supports that you could take all the maps, workouts, and programs, and you could do every other day, and at the end of the program, if you were to measure the results of someone, it would probably get the equal amount of results

as the way we've organized them. But the fact that we've organized them, makes it easier for people to piece together. What's working for them? What's working for them and what's not? Yeah, and that's important because at some point, you're gonna wanna individualize your routine and that's the best workout you could possibly do.

Now one thing that we have, because we notice, we know this, all of our programs are full body, all of them focus on movements for the whole body or all the body parts. The goal is always to develop a very balanced physique, either aesthetically or performance wise depending on the maps program that you follow.

But we do know that in the real world people have areas of the body that like we said in this episode, don't respond like others. And so we've done as we've created what are called maps mods. These are body part workout programs, specific body parts. So like there's a bicep mod, a chest mod, there's one for glutes or quads or whatever. We have a mod for every single major muscle group. What you can do is you can follow one of,

because we have it all laid out for you. The reps, the tempo, the sets, the exercises, specifically, and we wrote them specifically for that body part being a lagging body part, which is a little bit of different programming than if we're just training the whole body, right? And what you do with these mods is you pick the one for the body part that's lagging for you and you take your normal routine, take out that body part out of your routine and replace

it with the mod. So let's say for example, you're following your workout routine, everything's working great, but your biceps are lagging. You get the maps, bicep mod, take out your normal bicep routine, replace it, no matter what you're doing, replace it with the maps, bicep mod, follow that, and those, these mods are designed specifically to bring up lagging body parts. And we're going to have to focus on them.

That's right. They're way less expensive than full maps programs because they're single body parts. And also what we're doing right now because of this episode is all of these mods are 50% off. So you can pick any body part you want to focus on, get that mod. It's already a discounted price, but it's going to be additional 50% off. And you can find that at maps mod.

So MAPS, M-O-D-S mapsmods.com, and then the code for 50% off is mods 50 off. So mods 5-0 off, and then you'll get half off, whichever one you pick. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any fitness and health goal. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump Sal and Adam is 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 Mind Pump Media dot 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 trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back 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 Mindbump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mindbump.