Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1790: The Secret to an Attractive & Functional Body

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover the steps to build a balanced and symmetrical body that not only looks good but also performs well. The universal attraction to symmetry. (3:13) Different examples in sports where symmetry is very telling. (6:25) The first moment the guys visibly experienced an imbalance in their bodies. (11:56) What you train, you make stronger. (16:23) The biggest lagging parts in the competitive and general population. (19:05) The Steps to an Attractive & Functional Body.  #1 – Eat to build. (20:41) #2 – Utilize isometrics. (24:00) #3 – Incorporate unilateral training. (32:14) #4 – Go back to bilateral training. (43:33) #5 – Repeat the cycle. (46:25) Introducing MAPS Symmetry! (46:51) Related Links/Products Mentioned NEW PROGRAM LAUNCH SPECIAL PROMOTION: Get MAPS Symmetry + 2 free eBooks for $97!! **Promo code “SYM50” at checkout** Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Mind Pump #1745: How To Pack On Muscle To Your Lagging/Stubborn Body Parts Reverse Dieting: What Is It and Should YOU Try It?? - Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #1387: Turning Your Body Into A Fat-Burning Machine Mind Pump #1027: 3 Steps To Speed Up Your Metabolism Build Your Core Strength with the Hollow Body Tension Movement – Mind Pump TV Improve Your Pull-Up Strength & Muscle Connection with Tension Pull-Ups – Mind Pump TV Tension Push-Up: No Equipment Needed Muscle Activator – Mind Pump TV The Dunphy Squat | At Home Squat Variation – Mind Pump TV The BEST Single Leg Exercise You Are Not Doing! (TWO VARIATIONS) - Mind Pump TV Improve Your Overhead Press & Build Your Shoulders with Unilateral Kettlebell Carries – Mind Pump TV 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 the one factor, the secret that gives you an attractive and functional body, they're both very strongly connected. We talk about symmetry, had a train for symmetry, had a train for balance.

How do I get to my right side to look like my left side and move like both? How do I create balance between my upper and my lower body? How do I bring up lagging body parts? Why are my quads developed, my butt isn't? Why is my chest not responding like my shoulders? And so on. So we talk all about the things you need to do

to develop symmetry and balance. Also, this is a new program release. We haven't released a new Maps program in a very long time. The program is called Maps Symmetry. It's a unique program. It's very effective as designed specifically to bring up weak body parts, develop symmetry, aesthetics in your body, have you move functionally in this program, you get isometrics in the

first phase, lots of unilateral training throughout the program. At the end, it's a five by five program, the barbell workout for maximum strength and development. Because we're launching the program brand new right now, it's on sale. So normally the program would retail at $177.00. Right now it's $97.00. By the way, not only do you get the program, you get two free e-books. The first e-book you get for free is isometrics.

It's all about isometrics. It's history, the studies, had to incorporate them. Why they're the forgotten training tool of the champions of the past. The other ebook is reverse dieting 101. Okay, so this teaches you all about reverse dieting, had a speed up in metabolism, get your body to burn more calories, but also had a fuel your body, such you build strength

and build muscle. Now the ebooks are normally $47 each. Right now you get them both for free, with map symmetry, map symmetry will retail at $177, but right now it's only $97. So here's now you get them both for free with maps symmetry maps symmetry will retail at 177 But right now it's only $97 so here's what you get 97 bucks you get map symmetry you get the isometric ebook and you get the reverse dieting ebook all included for that price This is a promotion that's gonna end in about a week. So the 17th It's done after that everything goes to retail

But if you want to take advantage of this promotion, go to mapssymmetry.com, that's M-A-P-S-S-Y-M-M-E-T-R-Y.com, and then use the code S-Y-M-50. So S-Y-M-5, zero, no space for that discount. And of course, this program, like all our programs, comes with a 30-day money back guarantee. One more thing, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion. Legion makes some of the best performance enhancing supplements you'll find anywhere.

So, way protein with no artificial sweeteners. Pre-workout supplements with only efficacious ingredients. Third party tested, very effective and clean, great company. We love Mike Matthews. He's the founder. You got to go try it out Go to mindpump partners calm click on Legion use the code mind pump for 20% off You know what's interesting is when you look at studies of what people consider IE appealing or attractive first off Typically what we find something that looks good

There's a connection to better health or better physical performance, there's roots to it, right? Evolutionary roots. But here's what's interesting. If you look at standards across the world and they've done studies on this, there's not a lot of commonalities. There definitely is a eye in the, you know,

beauties in the eye of the whole type of thing going on. Yeah. But there are some consistencies and one consistency across the world is symmetry. Have you ever seen houses, especially with faces? Do I've seen those studies? And you see this in ancient sculptures as well.

Like if they stand out when they get it just right, when it's like perfectly symmetrical, it really stands out. There's a mathematical equation for it, for beauty. I've seen it before. And it has to do with the symmetry. How the distance between the eyes, the nose, the lips, the, all of it. Yeah, well, symmetry in particular just means

each side matches perfectly. Well, and that's really what it is. It's like that's the mathematical equation is how even, even everything is separated from each other is that they quote unquote would define, would define. Would define. Yeah, so what they do when they find these commonalities

is they say, okay, how is this connect to health? Like, what does this mean? Why is this universal attraction to this particular trait? Well, one is it demonstrates healthy genes. So lots of asymmetry means there's some genetic, typically means there's some genetic issues going on. So that's on the extreme end, right? But we also find symmetry attractive in muscular development movement.

When we look at movement and consider movement to be beautiful or flowing or attractive versus movement that maybe looks clunky or not so attractive, we typically find our irregularities or asymmetries? Symmetries are very important for athletic performance. So when you're doing an explosive movement or running or twisting, and you have a discrepancy between one side or the other, now there are sports where asymmetries are part of the,

I guess, part of the formula, like if you're a pitcher, right? Or if you always swing in one direction, you start to find asymmetries. But for the most part, if one leg pushes off at 2% more power than the other leg when I'm running, my body has to compensate. And usually what it does is it doesn't reduce all my power by 2%.

There's a larger decrease to buffer against things like injury, right? So there's a big reason why symmetry is so attractive and it's because it's connected to health and connected to performance. And then to bodybuilding, for example, bodybuilding, not necessarily a sport, we would consider it healthy.

But the judging criteria is based off of, you know, what people would label as aesthetics or how good someone looks. And I know it's extreme now, but those are all extreme versions of some root truth. And one of the number one things that bodybuilders and physique competitors and bikini competitors get judged on is symmetry.

You have to have really good symmetry and lots of really huge muscular ripped, shredded looking people will lose to other people who have superior symmetry. Because this isn't good. I mean, that's an, it isn't extreme analogy, but the truth is it's a great way to highlight your point. And I remember firsthand, like seeing this, it would be, you'd see somebody backstage and they'd have like, you know, just this massive, impressive chest or like, the biggest shoulders you've ever seen.

And initially, you think like, oh, because he's got this muscle that is like so pronounced or like, you know, bigger than you've ever seen before, he's probably going to do really good in the show. And many times I would see those guys not even place very well. And you don't notice it until you're sitting kind of out like where the judges are and looking up at stage and you're comparing all the physiques. And a guy that would be much smaller than this guy would play so much better, but it's because it was more appealing to the eye. You're just having it seeing a balanced physique looks better than overly impressive individual muscles. It's just, it looks better.

And it's, I know it's subjective, but it's really, it's a, Well, there's a reason why something looks better. Now, we've distorted it because obviously in modern times, we distort everything that we find to be attractive. But you know, you mentioned balance. And I wanna talk about balance because in body building balance refers to,

like does your upper body match the lower body, does the chest match the back, symmetry would be right to left. But in reality, in the real world, balance and symmetry kind of the same thing, right? Do you, like for example, if you could gain 20 pounds on your upper body, but lose 10 pounds on your legs or, you know, or keep your legs the way they are or vice versa, you know, most people wouldn't want to do something like that because it just

wouldn't make them look good. Maybe they think, yeah, I would, but when you see that in real life, it just doesn't look as good. And then if you guys ever notice like, you ever watch somebody who's maybe standing still looks impressive, but then they start to move. And you know what words we used to describe it, like awkward or clunky. There's not symmetrical movement. Yes, yes. Yeah, well, the point in terms of like from a performance perspective,

if I'm a competitor, I'm looking for the side they favor. I'm looking for the tendencies and looking for the patterns. And it's very visibly obvious, especially for the competitors, not so much the athlete that's actually displaying those skills, because we just fall into our strengths, our patterns, where our go-to that were hardwired, you know, to basically like, you know, lean upon. And so we all have sort of this slight discrepancy

that we were always trying to reconcile, but when it's like very much more extreme or obvious, it definitely takes away from your performance on the field. Were there examples of that that you remember like in basketball, right? So in football for you, but in basketball. So it'd be great. You play in a new team, you've never played them before.

And right away, like one of the things that you communicate to your other teammates when you see it is a guy that favors his left hand over his, yeah, because then you completely shift the way you defend it because you know they favor that side so much, that going the other direction is awkward, uncomfortable, and it's not, so it's a disadvantage. So a lot of times you almost completely open up

and give them their side, you know, they're less dominant and you shut off the other side so that you really funnel them in the direction that you know that they're less dominant. Yeah, you can bring up all kinds of different support examples. I mean, just for football, we look and break down film, especially with the running backs. And say I'm looking at it from a perspective of a linebacker

where I'm looking at how heavy they are on their hand. You know, how heavy they are to one side. There's shoulder shift a bit. You know, what their first step usually consists of, you know, how they rotate their body. Like all these things are tells for me to then plan and strategize like my next move. Yeah, you know, in boxing, there's even boxers

that won't fight South Paws because they just, it throws everything off for them because they're so good at fighting people who are right-handed. In Jiu-Jitsu, I lost a tournament because I, you know, at the level I got to, when you get to a really good level, you develop lots of symmetry.

You're able to pass the guard on both sides, defend both sides very well. But up until that point, you get really good on one side. You're kind of good on the other side, but there's a discrepancy. So what happened to me, I got attacked on a side that I rarely ever get attacked on, and threw me off, and I totally lost. But even beyond that, right, even beyond the strategies, just having, like, you know, here's the thing. Like, when you work out a lot with barbells

and barbells are amazing because they build lots of strength, lots of muscle. But if you're off just a little bit, if your right arm is pushing 2% more than your left arm, you're not gonna notice on the left, you're not gonna see it. Like, if I press up, unless it's obvious, it's gonna be really hard to tell,

even hard, it's even hard for really experienced coaches. Like I can, I'd have to look at someone and really pay attention to notice those small differences. If it's clearing, it's obvious, but sometimes it's really hard to see. And what ends up happening is, okay, if I do that exercise once, not a big deal. But if I train that way for years and years and years,

it starts to, I start to develop bigger and bigger imbalances. You know, injury risk goes up quite a bit. I don't develop my body to its full potential because what happens is my body in order to protect itself doesn't just limit the arm that's stronger so that it matches the other arm. It doesn't teach the other arm to push harder. It limits everything beyond that because it has to create a buffer. And so you're actually never able to reach your full potential because of a one or two percent difference.

And I use a small percentage. It's usually more like five to 10%. Do you guys remember when you first experienced this as a lift to yourself? Like I think this, I think everybody has this, you know, in some more extreme than others. But I remember first getting into lifting and when I would bench my left side.

So my shoulder on my left side, I could know it would roll forward a little bit. So I would roll this forward and put, and I'm exaggerating for people can see on the camera or whatever. But I would roll this shoulder forward and so it would cause the bar to lift faster on the left side, and it would be dipped and lagging on the right side.

And I was aware of it, and I would try and just mentally try and fix it, but the problem was the way I was unable to keep my shoulder and I retracted position on that left side. At this time, I'm so young, this is me at 17, 18, 19 years old, and so I'm not, I don't have a good understanding of anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, any of that stuff yet, I'm still learning all this stuff.

Did your friend push on this? Yeah, so I had a friend hold it down, but I was aware of it, but I pretty much didn't do anything to correct it and fix it, so I trained for years that way. Well, when I got to be in my early 20s, I was very insecure about my chest because it was totally visible. I had developed the right side way more because my form was strict on the right side

because I stayed retracted. The side that I was rolling forward and pushing up faster, I was getting more development in my shoulder and my chest was really weak. So you could literally see a difference. Now, it took years of me just kind of like thinking I was working at it or ignoring it and before I really noticed a physical difference.

Two things I want to comment on that one is when you have a visible difference in symmetry or balance like my quads way overpower my glutes or my biceps don't balance out with my triceps or my chest and my back or right to left, like you said Adam, by the time you have a visual difference, the functional difference has already been there

for a long time. It doesn't show up visually until the functional difference has been trained for a long time. And the second thing, and this is why I said your friend pushed your shoulder down. So I've heard you tell that story before. Oftentimes we try to fix imbalances through force.

What actually happened when one shoulder rolled forward and your friends pushed down on it, is you actually added resistance to the shitty form. You actually made the imbalance worse. I remember doing this with clients as an early trainer, not knowing any better. Like I had a client who was squatting, and her knees would cave in.

So what I did, they put a medicine ball between her knees so they wouldn't cave in. But all that does is it provides something for her to push her knees against. Right, squeeze in more. And actually, so it corrected the form, the way it looked while she was doing it, because the ball was there,

but in reality, I was actually making that imbalance worse. What I should have done is put bands around and forcing it, however pushing the opposite direction, right? So I noticed it for myself, Adam, when I did dumbbell training. So when I started working out and I started really lifting, you know, I got some good advice for some power lifters and I stuck to mostly barbells, mostly barbells all the time. Didn't do lots of dumbbells also because I would work at a

home law and my gym set at home was the dumbbells with the adjustable ones, which kind of painted the ass or whatever. So I do laddles and stuff like that in curls, but I didn't do a lot of chest presses and overhead presses, it was always with barbells. Remember doing lifts in the gym, and I'd get the dumbbells up,

and I'd be able to get one up, but I couldn't get the other one up, with the first rep. Or if I started to fail, the form was way off, and you couldn't tell with the barbell, but with the dumbbell,, or if I started to fail, the form was way off, and you couldn't tell with the barbell, but with the dumbbell, you totally could tell. That was when I first got that, oh crap,

like there's a difference. Well mine wasn't very visibly obvious until I actually got injured, and this was later my career for football and my tour of my MCL, and I just didn't have that kind of stability and control anymore surrounding the knee, which then on that side. On my right side, yeah, so everything compensated,

hyper compensated as a result of that, which then affected the way that I was explosive off my first step. I couldn't jump as well, my right leg. You know, I just, these little subtle compensations over time really added up to where it went all the way up into my hips and then you'd see My hips shift when I would squat and then it would create back problems And so it was really one of those things that just was sort of I didn't address it in the correct way

And then it was something I was always battling until I finally figured out later I'm glad you brought that up because this is probably what was more common as a trainer to see, like with clients. And I remember too, like after I'd seen this enough times and I got really good at pointing it out, it was, you know, you would always impress clients by doing like an assessment with them. And a common deviation you see is like an asymmetral shift,

like you're kind of referring to. So somebody who will, when they squat down, their hips shift over to one side more than the other. More often than not, when you have somebody, especially with a very dramatic one like that, at some point in their life, they had an injury on their knee, hip, ankle, something on that left side of their lower body that when they

rehab and came back to training, they didn't realize, but subconsciously, the brain was like timid to put all the weight and force on the side that had been injured. So naturally, the body kind of shifts away and says like, I'm not sure we're ready for that. And what happens is it's so subtle when you first do it. This is why too, I'm like, I'm very critical of physical therapists that don't help clients see this from the very beginning,

because you start to build these bad patterns. And then now this person, when they squat kind of for the rest of their lives. You end up strengthening it. Yeah, they end up strengthening that other side, and then it just becomes natural for them to shift. And it's all subconscious and they don't even realize it until they have somebody Assess them like a trainer. So rehab is like getting the full range of motion back getting some stability and stuff

But full rehab really is getting it back to it's where it was before and to mirror The other side because a small difference turns into one that you end up strengthening over time what you train You make stronger. So if you're training with a slight difference, you end up strengthening that difference over time. And this is why past injuries 10 years ago, now that they're healed, everything's fine. But now I have this one muscle or this area that doesn't seem to seem to match.

Now, just to sell this a little harder for people watching right now who really don't care too much about function and performance although you should, visually speaking, it just means you don't look as good as you could because some muscles develop well, others don't. And you have this kind of imbalance and you're trying to pick up these weak areas and why doesn't this muscle develop

like these other muscles and what's going on? I'm training it, but it's just not developing. I know we've done episodes on it before, but I think we're gonna get a little deeper into this one and how you can really balance things out, how you can really improve that symmetry and balance for the most aesthetic version of yourself, but also the best performing version of yourself

because it gets in the way, big time. What would you say in your time competing at them would be some of those muscle groups that people were struggled with having a lagging body part. Well, calves are always... Caves are very normal because they have poor connections to calves. Chest is actually very common.

In fact, and that's both in the competitive world and then just general population. Learning to fire the chest properly, like the biomechanics and the chest, is not a very natural thing to do. Like we just, when you tell someone, if you were to stand up and just tell someone to shove you, they don't think to retract, depress shoulders,

and then shove and really engage the chest, which they should because they'll get more power that way. And by the way, somebody who is really good at that, like you're and football players at trained bench pressing with that, that's where a lot of that power is. They have ability to set themselves in that position and do that. The average person, they don't.

They just, they naturally roll and push forward. So you would still see that even on the competitive world. So some people have really underdeveloped chest, overdeveloped shoulders, or and would also contribute to the imbalance in the arms. Then they have these like massive triceps. So massive triceps and delts, but then like a like a flatter chest. I mean, I've seen everything. I've seen every muscle group and every individual is different because if you've had injuries or you've had,

if you've had, you know, and I hate saying bad posture, but you know, poor or less favorable posture for developing muscles evenly, then everyone could be different where that is, everything from top to bottom. Totally. So let's talk about the, I guess the steps to addressing this and to really developing better symmetry and balance in your body. Now we have to start with something that has nothing to do with training and has everything to do with diet, which is you need to be able to eat to build.

Now why are we starting here? Because how you train the signal that you say doesn't matter if your body doesn't have the building blocks to do so. Because developing symmetry is essentially developing muscle and strength in a symmetrical way or in a way that improves your symmetry. But at the core of its building and without those building blocks, if your metabolism is hammered, if you've dieted your body over and over again over time, so the point where you're, you know, you gain weight on eating very little calories, it's can be really hard to do this because your body is just, your metabolism becomes so efficient and it's scared to make itself burn more calories. So the first step is to eat to build or at or if you have one of those metabolism's where you've just hammered it, reverse diet so that you can get your body

in the position to build. Because if you don't do this, all the training and all the exercise and all the activation of muscles and strengthings, it isn't going to work. It's not going to do anything without that happening. Well, when you're saying, when we're building symmetry, you're building muscle. In order to build muscle, you need to be in a calorie surplus. It's just that simple. And so if you're catabolic,

meaning that we're breaking down, and the goal is to build muscles. So we have more symmetry, more balance. They're just conflicting signals. So I think getting yourself, and getting your metabolism in a healthy place, or IE being in a caloric surplus is just ideal if this is the desired outcome. Yeah, now reverse dieting, there's a lot that goes to it

too much for this episode. We've actually done individual episodes on this particular topic, so I'll make sure that we try to link it in the show notes. If you want a little bit more depth, we also have an e-book on reverse dieting that kind of breaks down what to do where you can learn how to reverse diet.

But to give you kind of the gist of it, essentially what you would do is you would find out what your maintenance calories are. So however many calories you eat to maintain your body, and then what you do is you slowly increase those calories over time. So it could be as little as adding 50 calories to your maintenance, or as high as eating three or 400 calories, or maybe even 500 calories to your maintenance. And you do this over a weekly basis, so not like daily, not like you add 500 today and then another 500 tomorrow, but you would add,

let's say, a hundred calories to your maintenance this week, and then you're doing your training and you're seeing favorable results in your building strength. And if you don't gain any weight or you don't gain lots of weight, then the next week you add another hundred calories. It's a slow increase of calories over time, which fuels and feeds the body. It builds the building blocks. Builds muscle, speeds up your metabolism,

it speeds your metabolism up. A successful reverse diet will result in some muscle gain without any fat loss or little, excuse me, without any fat gain or very, very little fat gain. Okay, and this depends on the individual and how bad, or I should say slow the metabolism in is, but that's in a nutshell what reverse dieting would do. So anytime you're trying to build anything, performance, strength,

or muscle, or if you're trying to speed the metabolism up, this has to be the foundation, because without this, then the body doesn't have the fuel that it needs. So, I mean, that's the foundation for nutrition. Obviously, I think that's important that you at least address that or cover that, but the thing I'm most excited to talk about is the foundation of what training should look like for somebody like this. That's a fun stuff to you. And this was something that I didn't have this tool

till later on. Like I didn't understand how to use isometrics for somebody like this. And God, I know I would have been able to help so many more people had I had I utilized this more because there were so many political places for me to use it for clients and I just didn't know how to apply it. And to me, when you're talking about getting a muscle to fire, working on symmetry and balance, also preventing risk or other potential injuries, I don't think there is a better way

than to start with laying a foundation with isometric. Yeah, it's unfortunate. It's like I could go back in time and like it work with some of these clients that really struggled with a lot of poor connection issues or discrepancies from right to left. It's, you know, in terms of like slowing down and all that, like I was great at that.

But like knowing that isometrics is the most effective way to build strength, the quickest way possible, and to get that hyper connection to the muscles and really hone in on that recruitment process. There's really no better method, so to apply that, in the very beginning, to be able to establish that strong connection again, it the very beginning to be able to establish that strong connection again, it's so much better to build off. Yeah, so I'm going to back up a little bit, right? So just kind of explain, if you don't know what isometrics are, isometric is a muscle

contraction where you're not moving forward or back. You're not contracting and you're not relaxing. In other words, if I just flex my bicep, that's it isometric contraction. If I curl my bicep, that's a concentric contraction. If I contraction or movement. Yeah, if I lower away with control, that's the eccentric contraction. So isometrics would be like me pushing against the wall.

It's not moving. My body's not moving. Nothing's moving, but I'm pushing as hard as I can versus a bench press, which the weight would move. Now, Justin said something and he said it quickly, and I'm pushing as hard as I can versus a bench press, which would the way it would move. Now, Justin said something, and he said it quickly, and I want to emphasize this. He said, it's the fastest way to gain strength. Okay, this is true. Look up the studies on strength gain.

Isometric training, the strength gains you get with isometric training happen faster, faster. It's furiously fast in comparison to concentric or eccentric training. Okay, so the question is why doesn't everybody just do isometrics? Well, there's a caveat here. The gains happen very quickly, but then they plateau very quickly. But there's something there that we can use. In other words, we can use isometrics to connect to muscles, fire more muscle fibers, and

kickstart weaker muscle groups or muscle. It's the killing to the fire. It is. And so here's some interesting, there's some very sad stories in the world of fitness. I'm gonna start with one that has nothing to do with this, just to illustrate my point. Barbell squats, dead lifts were a staple

of strength training for a long time. Body builders and strength athletes were like, these are the best exercises, they built so much strength. Then they fell out of favor. They fell out of, they fell out of favor so bad that when I was a trainer in the late 90s, in a gym, in a big gym, I'm talking about 30,000, 40,000 square foot or even 50,000 square foot gyms, some of these I grand opened myself, I would have one squat rack. And the squat rack would have dust on it. Nobody would use it. Now it's come full circle because that old wisdom has been relearned and people have said, oh my god, these are exceptionally effective exercises.

Why the hell do we throw these out? Okay, there's another sad story and it has to do with isometrics. In the early days of strength training, isometrics was a staple. Strong man, strength athletes, isometrics was a foundational fundamental part of their training. If you look at Soviet era champion weightlifters, now this is during the period where the Soviet Union was not just winning gold medals in weightlifting.

They were crushing the world. And we couldn't figure it out. By the way, when Soviet Union fell apart, a lot of the coaches came over here and went to other parts of the world and everybody learned their secrets. And part of it was utilizing isometrics. Now, there were other things as well, but isometrics was a big part of it. It's exceptionally effective. And for some reason,

fell out of favor. Why? You can't build machines around isometrics too much. It maybe doesn't look as sexy, maybe requires more coaching. It's totally not sexy. You need very little. Yeah. You need a wall, a floor. You don't need a fancy equipment. A bar of fixed. You really don't need anything. I really think that's the reason why it fell out of it. It was just when you start getting the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and this is where marketing started to happen.

And there's nothing sexy and sellable about it. So it's like, I really believe that's why it fell out. Because anybody who's been training for a really long time understands some of these principles, it's just not popular. And they don't have to show it. And they don't have to show it. Where do I put this in my workout?

That's because nobody's done it. So find me in isometrics programmed workout. Good luck. You're not going to find one, right? Now, here's another thing about isometrics. Isometric contractions, intense ones, activate more muscle fibers than the other contractions do in a big way. Now, you think, why? Why is that? Why is that happen? Because when you're pushing against an immovable object, your body will recruit muscle fibers and then nothing happens.

Uh-oh, we're not moving the object. Recruit more. Uh-oh, nothing's happening. Brad should do it up. Recruit more. You recruit more muscle fibers with isometric contractions far more than you do with concentric and eccentric, even at very high intensities. So knowing the strength gains happen quick, they require very little equipment. There's no movement, okay, required an isometric interaction and it activates the most muscle fibers. Talk about the best way to activate muscles that may be weaker than others, or activate muscles that may be weak links for you. There is no better method.

If you wanna activate your glutes because they don't develop when you do squats, isometrics, you wanna activate your chest because it's not developing like your shoulders and triceps, isometrics. It's a phenomenal training method that nobody uses ever, ever. And so this is something that's very, this is what, this is one of the answers to this problem. And in terms of programming, start your workouts off with them or do entire cycles.

I suggest people try a two or three week cycle of isometric training, and then go back to your training and see what happens. Well, and if you think about just exercises in general, you need a specific amount of force to be able to get that initial lift off. And then the rest, you don't really need to use quite as much muscle recruitment and force behind it. So with isometrics, you're just stuck in that first part recruiting. And

then you got it. And it's pretty much endless with how much effort and force you can produce within that. Well, you get that's why you get strong so quickly. Yeah. Because you see an as learns out of ramp up. I want to defend that some people because I do there, there are some people that use isometrics. They just don't know that how they're using them or really why they're using them. I saw it was common in bodybuilding.

Oh, posing. Yeah, practicing. There's actually a lot of bodybuilding routines that encourage the bodybuilders to flex and pose between sets and things. And so they don't, and it ends up turning into more of a visual thing of looking at yourself and getting better at presenting your muscles,

but there's actually real benefit there when it comes to getting better connectivity to those muscles, because you're doing an isometric contraction when you do that. I tell you what, if you have a weak body part, a stubborn body part, it's probably a body part. You also have tough time flexing really hard, just to give you an example of illustration I'm talking about. Now, there's much more. Obviously, we could go into we could have

Entire episode talking about had incorporate isometrics isometric exercise all that stuff We've done some videos on some isometric stuff on mind pump TV channel. That's on YouTube So maybe we'll link a couple we also have an ebook on isometrics that kind of breaks down the history and had to incorporate it What not but nonetheless just know that when it comes to building symmetry, turning on muscles that don't fire as well. It's a foundation. You utilize isometrics, especially in the beginning of your training. It makes a huge difference.

Okay, so now we're going to move to the more obvious stuff. Yeah. If my right and my left aren't balanced out, or if I want to train them in a way where I can start to see if there's imbalances, because sometimes it's hard to see, one of the best ways you can do is with unilateral training. train them in a way where I can start to see if there's imbalances, because sometimes it's hard to see. One of the best ways you could do is with unilateral training. Unilateral training is exceptional at doing this.

Okay, so unilateral training means instead of doing both arms or both legs, I'm doing one arm or one leg at a time. Back to bodybuilders, Adam. Bodybuilders are so concerned with training developing a balanced symmetrical physique, because they get judged so heavily on it. They do an exceptional amount of unilateral exercises, more than any strength athlete. In fact, most strength athletes do very little

unless they're doing rehab or their coaches are really smart and they see imbalances, but bodybuilders love doing, they'll even do curls one arm at a time, right? Because they know that they can connect more and get a better pump and that kind of stuff. I don't think this is actually as obvious as you just alluded to. I think that when I, at least not in the general population, like when I'd have a client that had an imbalance like that,

and maybe I picked them up after they had already attempted to do themself, kind of the common theme, or the most common thing I would see is people would just do more work on that weaker side. Yeah, that's true. So that's the wrong approach. Yeah, it's their approach to it is not like,

oh, I'm gonna do unilateral training now going forward. I'm gonna start with the weaker side until it catches up. There's this idea like, oh, my left side's really weak. So I'm just gonna do more work with my left side. And then while they end up doing is getting over trained on that side, and they never really balance their body out. So I actually don't think it's as obvious as you think it is.

I think most people need to be kind of told like, okay, what exactly is unilateral training? Why would we use it for this? And then also, how do we do it? Because there's also a wrong and a right way to do unilateral training when you have lagging body parts. Yeah, you're right. So just doing more work for lagging body part,

that could be part of the formula, but if there's a poor connection, poor recruitment pattern, it's not gonna make that big of a difference, right? So you gotta get those things first. So with unilateral training, essentially, and there's a lot of different ways to do it. So like, if I did a dumbbell chest press,

if I push both dumbbells at the same time, there's a unilateral component, but it's not really considered unilateral training until I'm just doing one arm at a time. And there's a couple of different ways to do this. One way would be to support one dumbbell with an isometric contraction at the bottom. So I'm not resting it on my body. I'm actually supporting it while the other one presses, and then I alternate, or holding it at the top with an isometric contraction while one presses.

And then another level would be no dumbbell on one side, stabilizing my body and doing one dumbbell and pressing. So those are all different types of unilateral training. And the key here, it's very important, is to allow the weak or lagging side to dictate the weight and the reps. So that means your stronger side is going to be doing an easier workout. Now, why would we do an easier workout on the stronger side?

Because if we allow the stronger side to dictate, which is what everybody does, think about it. The few unilateral exercises that people do, like a dumbbell row, that's a common one, everybody does a dumbbell row, which side do you always start with? They almost are strong. Almost always the strong side.

And that ends up dictating how many reps you do with the other side. So what ends up happening is I do 10 reps with my right stronger arm, my left arm, I get to nine, the 10th one, the form is a little off because I gotta do 10 reps because my strong side did 10 reps. And reality what it should have been,

I start on my left side, only can do nine reps with perfect form. Now I just stop at nine reps with the other arm. And what it does is, because what happens if you train with the high intensity with the stronger side, they both might get stronger, but you maintain the gap of asymmetry, right?

The right goes up and the left goes up, but they maintain the gap. Well, we're trying to slow down the development of the stronger side and speed up the development of the weaker side to get them to match, so you develop symmetry. Well, and back to the original kind of conversation at the beginning where we're talking about

barbell trains, very, very difficult to see the discrepancies from right to left. If you're not unilateral training, and there is a bit of thought out there that you can correct form, and then it's sort of going to take care of itself eventually, if you just get better at the technique and without actually addressing your right to left side discrepancy. So this is one of those things where I differ in that train of thought. I really feel strongly that focusing on exposing any kind of imbalance or strength discrepancy from right to left should be addressed and it's going to benefit you even longer term than the other approach.

The key, the next key is you kind of alluded to it, Sal. And I think it's so important is that you control and like this is when you're training like this, this is if it was ever really, it's always important. But if it was ever extremely important, right? Like to not like push the weight and try and max lift or train to failure. Like this is where I want my clients to really back off the weight. And you know, when you're doing that weaker side, right? When we're training in a lateral, I'm watching the form.

And the minute form starts to break down, we are cutting it off. So you said you do nine. Well, it's nine perfect, right? Like if you could have squeezed out 10 or 11, we're not doing 10 or 11 on that weaker side. Well, two shitty reps are gonna make things worse. That's right, we're gonna do nine perfect. And the minute I can feel that that perfect pattern or form

is coming, it's breaking down, I shut down. And then the other side, the dominant side matches that. So the control and form is everything. That's how you kill bad habits. Yeah, here's a tip that I was gonna say is you wanna create, not just perfect form, mirror form. What does that mean? That means if you saw me with my right arm,

it should be a mirror of my left arm or vice versa when I'm doing the lift. So another tip is you could record yourself doing certain exercises because you may feel, and I've done this to myself, and it was actually quite illuminating. I felt like my right and left were equal and they felt pretty similar in strength and form,

recorded myself, and I noticed that my left shoulder, literally, I mean, it was up by maybe a quarter inch higher than my right, and I literally I watched it, I drew a line in the middle,, I mean, it was up by maybe a quarter inch higher than my right. And I literally watched it, I drew a line in the middle, and I looked, and I'm like, holy cow, it's off by just a tiny bit. So what you want is you want to create mirror form, and you have to do exceptionally controlled form in order to do that. Momentum is the enemy of symmetry, okay?

It's the enemy of symmetry training because sometimes it's so subconscious you don't even notice the slightest bit of momentum Think about it this way most people don't have there's definitely people watching who have glaring asymmetry issues, right? They're like, oh, yeah, there's a huge difference between my right and leg and oh, yeah My hips really move to the right and when I bench press I notice the bar really twisting most people are not like that though most people have a 3% or 4% asymmetry. You're not gonna be able to tell very easily with that. It's not super easy to see that, but is it, does it have an impact on your symmetry?

In terms of how you look, it will, especially over the years, does it have an impact on your performance? It definitely will. So you wanna watch, make sure it's mirror form, and have everything controlled and perfect, so that you can make up the difference. And you can see that with the unilateral training.

You tend to be able to see that with unilateral training, and especially in how it feels. And there's one more thing I wanna comment on, which is really interesting. Look at the amount of weight you can lift with both arms. Look at the amount of weight you can lift with one arm. First off, it's never half that amount, and that's understandable. Like, if you could deadlift

400 pounds or let's say you could press 200 pounds, you're not going to be able to press 100 with one hand usually. Usually, there's, it's less than that. But it shouldn't be a weightless. Like, you shouldn't be able to overhead press 200 pounds, but only overhead press 30 pound dumbbells for the same amount of reps. that's a very big difference. And so what happens when you train unilaterally and you bring that up, what do you think happens to your bilateral lifting? Oh my God, it goes to the roof.

This is one of the best ways to get through sticking points is to get stronger in the unilateral stuff and then go back to your bilateral, meaning both arms are both legs and it's like a whole nother level of stability and strength. Well, it's a psychological discipline going in because you gotta have the right intent going in. I think a lot of people get deterred by this style of training

because they think they're regressing. Like, now I'm coming back, I'm using less weight, and it's a frustration element in there that you really have to overcome. When in fact, it's gonna benefit you the most to really, but you have to make sure you check yourself coming in with the right intent and to really do the appropriate amount of weight and start with the weaker side and be very intentional about your form. To add to that, slow the tempo.

Yeah. I talk about this on the show all the time that rarely ever do we see anybody doing a true four second negative or eccentric portion of the exercise, at least that, you know. I mean, it's like this, right? So if I did a press, right, it'd be one, two, three, one, two, three, four.

Like that looks ridiculously slow because nobody does that. Yeah. But that's what we because nobody does that. Yeah. But that's what we're talking about. And it can even be slower. I mean, that's when I'm talking to a client that I'm training this way that we're trying to balance things out, I am not concerned at all about it being week two or three or four and we haven't moved up five or 10 pounds on the dumbbell, right?

Like it's, I care more about how perfect is that left side looking to the right side. And that, in the way I do that is by cutting the weight way down, slowing the tempo down, and putting so much emphasis on that. Like you said, the mirror mirroring the other side, that is way more of a win than if we just added five or two more. Yeah, look, okay, here's another, here's another, just a hammer at home, okay? Your body does an exceptional job at learning how to be most efficient with the tools that it's given, okay? So, if I have a torn solius muscle, which is one of my calf muscles, my body's going

to run in a way that makes me the fastest considering I have a torn solius, and that becomes my new pattern, okay? To use another example that people might understand, if you type with your two index fingers, right, you never learn how to type, and you got pretty fast with it. And then you're like, you know what? I know that if I learn how to type properly,

I'll eventually be way faster than I am now with my two index fingers. And then you got trained on it, but instead of training you on slowing down and learning how to type, they still gave you a limit. No, you gotta be as fast as you were before. You'll never learn. You'll always revert back to your old pattern

because that's your fast pattern. So what happens when you don't go slow is you go back to your old pattern and you don't realize it. Your body recruits the way it always does. It moves in the most efficient way possible. So you have to slow way down, you have to go lighter in order to change the recruitment pattern because a second you go outside of that and go too fast.

You have to be conscious, not subconscious. Super, super conscious. It's really, really hard. Now once you do that and then you strengthen that, guess what? That becomes your new pattern because that is a more efficient because your body will choose to move symmetrically so long it has a strength to do so, but first you have to build that strength. And then now is the time where we go to bilateral training. And now we try and see how it's expressing itself. That's when you then you go back to your bilateral and then you're blown away. Like you've

done a cycle where you did like single leg, deadlift for a while, and then back to your normal deadlift. Incredible. And that's, and by the way, when you do this, you know, go back to bilateral training, I'm not trying to think of, oh, what was the greatest PR ever did?

It's like, I wanna think about how I feel going into the movement. And one of the things that you will notice when you've trained unilateral for an extended period of time, right, for a full-like cycle, and then you come back to bilateral training is how stable you feel. You just feel so untruth. Your leg exercise, you feel so grounded for your upper body exercise, you feel in such control and you can generate more power, especially when you've done it right and you've included

isometrics in there. I mean, it's so good. And I feel like so few people actually run through like a full cycle of this where they're incorporating isometrics, unilateral training, stick to it consistently, avoid the bilateral stuff for a while. And then after you've ran a few months of training this way,

okay, now let's go see if I go to do my bilateral movements if I can actually feel my body expressing that movement. Spread and distribute the load towards that other side, a bit more, think about how much more strength that's gonna apply to your overall amount. Yeah, I did that for, I mean, if you listen to the podcast for the last year, you know this, I stopped barbell squatting because I was developing,

it became an obvious discrepancy that wasn't so obvious until it got too bad. And I had to stop barbell squatting. And all I did were all unilateral stuff. So I did different versions of lunges, bulgaming splits that squats, single leg dead lifts. I did single leg squats. And I did them for, how long was it that I did that?

Like four months, five months of just pure for lower body unilateral training. The only thing I did that, well, it's not even bilateral, I did sled work, which is can be considered unilateral to some extent, right? So I did that. When back to squatting, here's the crazy thing.

Lost no strength and then broke past my old plateaus. So what I was stuck at squat squatting with 335 to 350, but then it would hurt. I got up to 405 within two months after doing just unilateral training. Why? Because I solved all those problems. I felt so much stable and so much stronger.

So yeah, after you're done with a cycle of unilateral training, go back to your heavy barbell, five by five type program, your barbell type, based routines, go back to something like that. Watch what happens, because not only did you not lose strength, you'll feel more stable, but then the strengthings come on real fast

because you don't have the things that are holding you back that you had before, you've kind of solved those things. And then the last step is this, repeat the cycle. This is a wonderful cycle of, cause then you could stick to the bilateral training, eventually you'll start to develop maybe some imbalances, then you go back and you repeat the cycle again.

You get this kind of nice perpetual motion of progress and balance. And then what you develop is this really beautiful, aesthetic balanced physique without weak body parts without that moves well that moves and feels really well now here's a thing right unilateral training. I we have yet to find a very well programmed workout program that incorporates unilateral training. Okay. It's usually thrown in to programs as single exercises or maybe three or four exercises, but not like as the focus, right? Now does the focus of balancing the body out. So, and it can be a bit complex. We've talked on the show about programming and all the things that go into programming and exercise order and reps and how to place

the right things where. So that can be quite complex. I mean, it was one of the number one things that we've needed to address for a while. When we started doing the live Q&As, we're constantly trying to recommend unilateral training, but we didn't have anybody to... I don't know how many times we'd have to say that to somebody, well, what you should do is regress back down, switch to unilateral training for a while. You're like, how do I program? Yeah, so I think this has been a need for quite some time.

Yeah, so what we did, if you wanted all put together for you and we haven't launched a new Maps program in a long time, definitely not one that caters to our core fitness, fanatic audience. What we've done is we created a brand new Maps program called Maps Symmetry, which incorporates these Unilateral training cycles. It's got isometric phase in it because that's obviously very important.

It also takes embargoes some of the value that you get from maps in a ball. It's got trigger sessions and some of the phases. It's got mobility sessions that you find in math performance and some of the phases. It has focus sessions for maps aesthetic in some of the phases. Four-phase programs's a long program because this is the type of results you get with a unilateral based symmetry based program. They last for a long time, you can keep pushing it

and keep getting success and results. By the way, the last phase of this program is a five by five programed bilateral barbell based workout. So at the very end, that's what you end up feeling. Now, there's more, okay? So we talked about, because this was a big deal, we talked about this and said, we wanna set people up really well.

That's when the conversation came up about feeding the body properly. That's been an issue in the past. We've had people comment and say, hey, I'm following your program. I don't know what's happening. Most more often than not, it's women. And then we'll ask them questions about their diet.

We're like, okay, you're not feeding yourself properly. So we have a, I said earlier, a reverse dieting ebook that is gonna be included in the launch of Maps Symmetry. We also have a isometrics ebook that we're selling separately, but we're including it with the launch of Map Symmetry. This is the official launch. Map Symmetry is going to retail for $177, but we're launching it right now at $97, which means you get full access to Map Symmetry, plus you get the

free reverse dieting 101 ebook and the free isometric. Sure legit books, by the way. They're not just like a list of items. This is a very comprehensive chapter launch, we'll sell it. Yeah, so just so you know, map symmetry will be retailing 177. The reverse dieting 101 ebook will be $47. And the isometric ebook will be $47. But right now you get the map symmetry,

isometric ebook, reverse dieting 101. All of that is gonna be $97, which is gonna be the launch. And the launch, when does the end? 17th, okay, so. So it's gonna be essentially, I think, this week, a week, right? Yeah, yeah.

So on the 17th, this particular launch will end and then everything goes back up to retail. Now, if you don't wanna buy a program, we do have show notes with other episodes and videos that can definitely help you. It's just going to take you a little time to put things together and kind of program it for yourself. But if you want to follow a comprehensive workout where it's all in there, so we have the video

demos, the exercises. There's coaching, so I give you some coaching to tell you how to replace certain exercises if you only have a home gym, talk about tempo and how to make muscles, fire, better than that stuff. That's all included in this. The website for all of this is mapssymmetry.com. There's two S's, MAPS, and then S again for symmetry. So mapssymmetry.com. The code for all of this, the free e-books in the discount is SYM50.

SYM50 and you get that all hooked up. And then of course, all of our programs come with a 30-day money back guarantee. So if you do this, you sign up, you're, that's not for me, just return it and you get all of your money back 100% with no questions asked. So there you have it. Look, if you want to learn more about the information that we give out for free, you can go to mindpumpfreed.com and if you want to find us on social media, you can find Justin on Instagram at MindPump Justin. Adam is on Instagram at MindPump Adam

and you can find me on Twitter at MindPumpSelf. Thank you for listening to MindPump. 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 an adjustment 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. Bump!