Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1925: How to Build a Great Physique in 15 Minutes a Day

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover the surprising effectiveness and advantages of short daily workouts. Short/daily workouts MAY be better for you, in terms of results and consistency, than frequent/longer workouts. (2:37) Consistency is the problem! (11:22) Why fatigue is a technique killer. (20:32) The mental and mood-boosting effects of daily/short workouts. (24:39) The ease of modification to fit your lifestyle. (34:52) How people who workout consistently tend to want to eat healthier. (39:11) Encourages adaptation vs. healing. (45:30) Introducing MAPS 15 Minutes! Solving the consistency issue for the average person. (49:25) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Paleo Valley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP15 at checkout for 15% discount** Special Promotion Launch MAPS 15 Minutes! Build an Amazing Body in Only 15 Minutes a Day (includes BONUS: Advanced workout ~20 minutes/day) + (Includes two eBooks ($74 value) The Power of Sleep & the Occlusion Training Guide) **Promo Code: 15SPECIAL for $20 OFF!** Greater effects by performing a small number of eccentric contractions daily than a larger number of them once a week Mind Pump #1890: How To Get Jacked In 20 Minutes A Day The Resistance Training Revolution – Book by Sal Di Stefano Stop Working Out And Start Practicing – Mind Pump Blog Workout Because You Love Yourself Not Because You Hate Yourself – Mind Pump Blog The influence of 15-week exercise training on dietary patterns among young adults 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, hop, mind, hop 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. Alright, exciting day. We are launching a brand new program. You've heard us talk about short daily workouts

and their value. Now, a couple of times, we've got a lot of messages, a lot of emails, people are wondering, how can I work out a little bit every day and get great results? Well, in today's episode, that's what we talk about. We talk about how working out for 15 minutes a day, you can develop an incredible physique.

We talk about the science. We talk about the behavioral effects, the consistency, and we talk about the behavioral effects, the consistency, and we talk about how to apply this if you're an advanced lifter. By the way, we created a new program to help you out. So if you listen to this and you're like, I want to follow every day workouts that are short, rather than my longer two or three day week workouts, we have a new program called Maps 15 minutes. It's designed around suspension trainers and a pair of dumbbells to make it as convenient as possible, but we've included a bonus advanced version

for those of you that have been working out for a while. You want to build more muscle, more strength. The advanced version uses dumbbells and barbells uses compound lifts. It's a legit program. So again, it's an everyday workout, Maps 15 minutes plus the bonus version that's in there, which will take

you about 20 to 25 minutes every single day. And we're putting it on sale because it's a brand new launch. So $20 off, it's retail price, plus two free ebooks, the power of sleep, and the inclusion training guide are going to be included for free. So if you're interested in this brand new program, 15 minutes a day, plus the advanced version, go to maps15minutes.com and then use the code 15Special for the discount plus the free eBooks. This episode is also brought to you by one of our sponsors, Paleo Valley.

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Go check this company out. Go to paleovali.com forward slash mine pump and then use a code mine pump 15 for 15% off your first order. All right, here comes the show. Short daily workouts may actually be better for you in terms of results and consistency than less frequent longer workouts. This is a big deal.

I've been waiting to talk about this. I know. A lot of into talking. It doesn't happen too often where we're sitting down, we're talking, and we get kind of these breakthrough moments when it comes to fitness. We've been doing this for so long that almost never happens. But it definitely happened. God, how many months ago was it,

well, we were kind of discussing this and talking about consistency. This is the most, this is actually the most important factor when it comes to exercises. How can we keep people consistent? And we all traded notes and talked about how we found with clients that had trouble showing up to the gym

two or three days a week, for the typical hour workouts, that it was easier for them to just do a daily short workout every single day. And then the light bulb kind of went off and we thought, oh, yeah, you know, let's look into this and let's, let's, let's experiment this with this ourselves and see kind of what happens. This question popped up a lot. And I think we were all always trying to address it in the most effective way that we could in terms of like, if you only have so much amount of time,

what is actually effective for me to do? And so we would spitball a lot and think about the best lifts that we could try and accomplish or whatever level you were as a lifter, what we'd probably have you do. And I think that was sort of the spark of realizing that, you know, we used to do this a lot for clients in general in terms of whatever workout that we had.

We had to be flexible and then adjust and then also find out what they would do the most consistently. This one was really interesting for me because like we're talking about with clients, I'd figured this out with my clients a long time ago. And always happens with them first, doesn't it? Yeah, and I guess the the attitude that I had was why would I ever do that? I love to work out one,

so I like I enjoy you know our workout sometimes longer. I'm advanced, you know, I've taken my physique to the peak of physique. So why would I, you know, do this thing that I used to do with my beginner type clients, like this idea that, you know, I'm trying to get them to build momentum and be consistent and all the benefits that I found in these short, daily workouts. But why would I ever do that?

And I'm on month three right now, of applying exactly what we're gonna talk about today. And I'm actually so blown away. I'm really blown away by, because of course, I anticipate it, because if you do the math on the total minutes that I'm training, even though I'm training every single day,

it's such a short period of time. It's probably equivalent to like what, three long workouts a week, right? Yeah, or even a little less for me, right? So it's not quite the same amount of, so I know that I'm reducing a little bit of volume. And so I anticipate, okay, I'm probably not gonna build a lot of muscle.

That wasn't really the goal, this is also why I kind of did the time, I was just like, you know, I really feel good. I feel some of the best I've ever felt in my life right now. I don't think I look the best as far as my physique, but I feel some of the best I've ever felt. And so that's kind of where my mind is, that's my goal right now. I'm focused on other aspects of my life. And so what can I do with the little least amount of

effort and be consistent with it that will give me the greatest return? Okay. Let me experiment with these short bouts that I have been teaching clients for years, but have never really applied to myself. Never. Never would I ever just go in and train for 15 to 20 minutes consistently, at least not for a long period of time. I've had like interruptions of like a vacation week because I mean consistently training that way and only that way. And, you know, I was building muscle

and I was building more muscle than from what I was, and it just was like, this doesn't make sense to me. Like my volume can't be higher. Why is my body responding so well? And I just think a couple of things were happening. I think that it was a really sweet spot balance for the amount of calories that I was consuming. I felt that I was never overtaxing my body, and

so it just has been responding. And I feel like joint-wise, muscle mass-wise, like everything, I feel the best I felt in a really long time doing these short workouts. Well, you know, it's funny is that there's studies to back this up. In fact, there was a more recent one, and this was in, this was in 2022. So this year, title of the study is greater effects by performing a small number of eccentric contractions daily than a larger number of them once a week. There's other studies that show that it's not necessarily how much you work out when it comes

to health, but it's rather how frequently you work out. There's old studies that show that two 20 minute bouts of cardio is more effective for fat burning, for example, than one 40 minute bout of cardio. And then you look at like super advanced Olympic athletes. And they figured this out a long time, this long time ago, and the Soviet Union, that their athletes got better results if they did like short frequent workouts. Now these are extreme, these are super high level athletes, okay? So you're not gonna necessarily apply this to yourself,

but in comparison to their Western counterparts, instead of doing like a two hour workout every day, they would do like three 30 minute workouts or three 45 minute workouts or whatever. And their strength gains were I mean they dominated the world of Olympic weightlifting for a long time We don't learn about their training methods until the the collapse of the Soviet Union and some of the coaches came over So there's there's some interesting stuff here especially surrounding strength training now

There's definitely value if you're looking for long Distance endurance for training for long periods of time. You want to get the kind of endurance? That'd be the exception. Yeah, when you want to be able to last for two or three hours, you're going to have to kind of train that way. But when you're talking about muscle building, the fat loss effect, that's the side effect of muscle building, the metabolism boosting,

all the other benefits, the health effects, the behavioral effects, joint health, all that stuff, it seems like it's better doing short, frequent workouts than it is doing longer, in frequent workouts. And it's yes, when volume is controlled, but I'll even make the argument that you could even get away with a little less total volume with frequent workouts and get similar if not.

Well, that's what I was just explaining that I have felt. I felt like I'm almost certain my volume, not I can't be completely certain because I have in tracks, right? So, but just I'm pretty good at being able to gauge my volume. I've been doing it and have been tracking it for a very long time. So, it definitely feels like my volume is reduced. Yet, I'm feeling an increase in muscle.

Yeah, it completely parallels skills, like acquiring skills, skill training in general. Yes. From what my experience just tried to develop very specific athletic skills, it was always best to perform it not too long of a time to where fatigue was something that had to be a consideration. It was just about the perfection and the mechanics of that very specific type of a skill and movement. And I could just be super focused on that. I could come back refreshed.

I could do another bout of it. But it was repeating that sequence daily and something that my body would respond so much greater towards because now I'm building really good habits and really good behaviors around that. Yeah, like what's going to get you to learn how to make a three pointer better, you know, faster doing 20 minutes every day of practicing three pointers or doing 140 minutes on one day. So one day you do 140 minutes over two hours versus 20 minutes every one day. So one day you do 140 minutes over two hours

versus 20 minutes every single day. I think any coach will tell you that the daily frequent exposure will get you to perfect a technique faster. Now, what does this have to do with string training? A huge portion of the results you get, a big, big portion of how effective your workout is, is skill acquisition. We tend to look at exercise, especially strength training,

as well that just makes you sore, that makes you sweat, that makes you tired. We don't consider them to be skills, but they very much are skills. Squatting, pressing, rowing, deadlifting, are all definitely skills. But I definitely wanna back up to the consistency portion, because this is, by by far the most important factor

when it comes to long-term results with any workout program. I've said this before, a subpar workout routine is gonna be more effective than a superior workout routine. If the subpar routine is done consistently and the superior one is done, inconsistently. Consistency is the problem. That's the problem that we need to solve

for the average person. and people are more likely To be consistent if you give them a short workout every day and we found this with clients a long time ago I learned it's a long time ago with clients if I gave them daily short workouts versus too long workouts They're far more likely to be consistent with the workouts because we've all heard this right you get once you get the ball rolling It's easy to keep it going or, you know, once I stop the momentum, it's hard to get back on track, right? We know this. And when it comes to consistency, I got the most success at the clients that had the most

trouble consistency by having them do a little bit every single day. I'm so glad you went this direction because we did that episode not that long ago where we talked about these benefits of these kind of short workouts and it was a really popular episode. We got it, it stirred up a bunch of stuff in our forum and one of the things I read, there was a handful of people that were like, I don't get it. You guys have these you have these full body routines that are hour long and now you're saying that 20-minute workouts are better. And it's like, ooh, hold on, okay. This is the part that matters. Yeah.

So part of why I'm doing it right now is it fits my lifestyle. And it's been, I like this idea of, oh, I can, one, I can do this single 20 minute workout. Sometimes I've even broken up in two short 10 minute workouts where I split the exercise. One, I do an exercise earlier than I do another exercise later on. And I feel like I can interact with my son. It's not like this major 50 minute workout there. I feel like I need to be so

focused and not distracted. So it's working, it works for me to be consistent right now. And I like it, right? It's not, oh, this is this is this new science we found out. Therefore, this is better than a 50 minute workout. If the three day a week full body routine is something that fits great in your in your lifestyle and you enjoy doing it, then stay doing it. And I think that's the point of the consistency point that you're making right now. It's like, but what we found training clients was even that was sometimes a hard commitment was to get somebody to come to the gym three times a week for 50 minutes plus in the gym. And I found convincing someone to do an exercise or two every day, which only takes 15 to 20 minutes.

I had more success. And here's the irony. The irony is I bet you your total time working out now is probably longer because you probably miss less workouts. Yeah. Right? You miss less workouts. Right. And there's days when you feel great, you do a little extra of abs and some other things to add in there.

Sure. So yeah. It's not a big ask. Yeah. Here's another thing too. We talk about this with nutritional time, but it's the same with exercise. If you want to be able to develop this kind of long term relationship with exercise where you're consistent, what you need to work on are your behaviors.

You need to work on the kind of behaviors that lead to consistency. Will behaviors are more effectively solidified with small frequent exposures. This is true for any behavior. You know, imagine if you only brushed your teeth once a week for an hour versus every single day for 20 minutes or whatever, or whatever the time is. You're more likely to be consistent because of the short frequent exposures. So from a consistency standpoint,

and even if we go back and you miss one, I miss one workout this week, that's 15 minutes, right? If you do two workouts a week, which a lot of people will do, and I've talked about, I wrote my book over this, that the average person, the most we can expect from them, is like two 45 minute or two 60 minute workouts. Okay, we're just not gonna get people working out, hours every single day.

And there's definitely people listening right now who's super into working out. They work out for an average every single day. Fine, that's wonderful, that's great. But the average person, we're not gonna get that from. So for the average person, if they miss one workout, that's half of their work, that's like half the time that they work out all week, if they just missed one, 15 minute or 20 minute workout because they

do them every single day. So for that alone, this is a phenomenal approach to exercise, but there are some benefits when it comes to strength and muscle as well that the advanced lifter can learn from, for sure. Yeah, I think, I mean, this is such a helpful tool. I wish I would have thought about this for new Lifters coming in in terms of like how daunting everything is.

You just, you feel like where do I start? How do I tackle all this? In front of me, you get to my goal when in fact, if you just take it down to the real important movements, the real important things to really focus on and master and then be able to just take a shorter amount of time that's not going to completely dictate your entire day and have to revolve around it. Then the next day, it's achievable. And then you just start to build these manual efforts end up building an automatic kind of response. It's almost like you put in the work

to where you get closer to where it gets into the subconscious where things just get easier. And this is where like the real skill acquisition kind of plays a factor where your body just starts to respond and everything becomes easier. Well, totally. Give this look, you ask a very busy person, hey, give me two hours a week.

Can you look in your schedule and find two one hour sessions a week? And most people can do that, but it's a lot more challenging. Now ask them, can you give me 15 minutes a day? Do you think you'll find 15 minutes every single day? And I guarantee you it's a lot easier for them to do so. It's as far less daunting, a lot easier. Well, and in terms of like the advanced, so it's, you know, massively beneficial for them too. The think about how many times that, you know, your patterns have been interrupted. You've gone

on a trip, you know, your environments change, your work schedules change. Like all these, these things have interrupted that like consistent, dialed in, you know workouts where to build that back up, you know, that's quite a lot of barriers in front of you whereas this is so much more achievable to build your way back towards a release. I'm so glad you said that because you both said something that bothered me and it's not like so much what you said as much as it's like, what bothers me is what's happened sometimes with this podcast is that, for some reason, we've been pigeonholed

into like this podcast that really helps newbie lifters out. And I find that insulting because I don't think that I'm a newbie lifter, right? I consider myself a hard is those, is people that aren't making it. I know, but we, and I think we make this day even sometimes. I'd rather say it like this, like at what season of your life that you're currently

in, because, and to the point that you were starting to make right there, because I'm an advanced lifter, and I'm getting tremendous benefit from lifting this way right now. And I think it's silly for someone to think like the same way that I thought for a very long time. It's, it is, oh, I'm an advanced guy, so that's not for me. Oh, mine pump, it tells you to do this and that, because they're talking to beginners. No, we're talking about people that,

at a certain phase are a point in their life, or a season in their life, and that could be, you could be a beginner in that season, and you could be an advanced person in that season, that's fair enough, but an advanced person could also be at a point in their life where training this way is extremely beneficial. It's not like this is for new people only, this is for advanced people only, and I don't like that. I don't like that.

It's the, you know, what's, listen, here's a deal. What's true for the beginner is also true for the advanced person. You just scale it. It's the same, it's the same truth. So, you know, working out 30 minutes a day, maybe superior than your typical three, maybe one hour workouts in the week, in terms of consistency. It may be. Right. Advanced or beginner? Right. So, what we're saying is true. Now, we're using 15 minutes, you know, 20 minutes because we're talking to the average person, but you could scale that up, and it's also going to be true for you. And the advanced lifter also has to find ways to be able to stay consistent.

Now, the advanced lifter, they've already solved a lot of that, but the advanced lifter plans on working out for the rest of life. They're gonna have kids, they're gonna change jobs, they're gonna move, everybody encounters the challenge with consistency at some point in their life. They get tired, they get whatever. And it just seems to work a lot better. And by the way, speaking to the advanced lift, I'll tell you something right now, I got, I've never been as strong as I've ever

been in my life when any lift is when I practiced that particular lift very frequently, just the fact. So that's a, that's a fact that a lot of people know. So like, you want to get really strong at the bench press, well rather than benching and doing a big old chest day on Monday, just do this instead of doing chest on Monday, just practice bench press most days of the week. Very intensities, very techniques and tempos and weights, and watch how fast you get stronger. This is well known by the way. This is well established on how you get strong really fast.

So there's stuff that we're talking about here that if you're advanced or consistent already that you can pick up on and apply to yourself and then see what happens to the results that you get. So here's another point here which is and you mentioned this earlier Justin which is about fatigue. Fatigue is a technique killer. It's a strength killer. Fatigue is a big problem when you're trying to do good form, good reps, when you're trying to maximize strength gains. Well short frequent workouts make fatigue less of a problem than less frequent longer workouts. If you do a whole hour workout, even if you're training different body parts, fatigue does still play a role towards the end of the workout.

You may be doing biceps at the end, but earlier you did deadlifts and squats and pressing all that stuff, it's still going to play somewhat of a role. If I'm doing much more frequent but shorter workouts, 20, 25 minutes, let's say, like in my case, I do 25, 30 minute workouts every day right now, fatigue's not a problem at all. My technique is great because the workouts are so short. Yeah, you're only choosing a couple exercises. That's it. Yeah. And now what does that mean?

It means my technique and my form is always it's better. It's usually better. My force output. A lot more focus. My force output is usually better, right? I feel stronger. I feel better. So there's something to learn from this when it comes to the advanced lifter as well.

And that's a big one. It's that fatigue. You move that out of the way. And we're talking specifically about strain training. Now, if you're looking for maximum endurance and stamina, well, then you wanna play with fatigue because your goal is to overcome fatigue and become a more stamina endurance.

But when it's about strength and muscle, fatigue is an issue. In fact, studies will show that long rest periods. Now, we've made the case for short rest periods as well, and there's definitely some benefits to that. But generally speaking, head-to-head, the long rest periods are superior. Now why is that?

You get rid of fatigue. You're training purely strength when you rest for three minutes or four minutes. Strength athletes know this. So fatigue doesn't get the way when you do these really short, frequent workouts as much as they would with less frequent longer workouts. Well, and that rolls into your next point is because of that, you tend to choose the more effective exercises. Totally.

For sure, when I'm lifting for an hour, there's always a couple exercises in there that are just, they're like fillers almost. You know what I'm saying? I'm already just slowly degraded. I did the two or three big compounds already. I'm pretty tax, I'm already sweating, I'm already fatiguing, I'm already starting to set it

a little bit, let me get some cable flies in, let me get some preacher curl exercise in. Let me get some of these less bang for your buck type of exercises. Whereas when you're only working out for 15 to 30 minutes in this short window, you're only picking two to maybe three exercises. So all of them are super effective exercises and you're not as fatiguing into them so the technique on them are even better. Yeah, by the way, I'm gonna go a little extreme here,

just to make my point with the advanced lifter. Let's say you're an advanced lifter and you work out for an hour every single day. So seven days a week, seven hours a week, do you think you would get better or worse results if I took all those seven hours and put them in two workouts during the week? So you did two, three and a half hour workouts.

Why wouldn't you do it that way? Fatigue would just crush you and it would stop being, it would cease being a strength training. That's a great building, that's an awesome building. That's an amazing example of what you're doing with the 7-1 hour workout.

That's right. It's the same exact thing. It's what I'm trying to say is, what we're talking about, you just scale it and it applies to advanced intermediate lifters just like it does to beginners. But when we're talking to beginners, we're telling truth there, there's truth for everybody.

But if that's it right there, and what is it? It's that fatigue, fatigue is a killer. No way in hell somebody who worked out every day for an hour would do two, three and a half hour workouts and get the same results. They get crappier results. Because by the time they get past that hour and a half window of the workout, they feel like garbage, and the rest of the workout would turn into just kind of... Why is that any different than you're trying to

shoot free throws under fatigue where you're you're you're not so much concerned about your technique As much as you're just trying to get the amount of shots out like for instance So that being the goal of it being under fatigue like if I'm trying to build my endurance is one pursuit But if I'm really trying to pay attention to everything going on to be able to sharpen it and to refine it and make it better every single time Fatigue is the enemy of that process completely. Here's one of my favorite parts of this and this you learn as You do as you work out, you know, over the years, as you start

to really value, understand the benefit of just how it affects your mood and your mental state. I've talked about this so many times on the podcast, but if you ask somebody who's been working out for 10 years or more consistently, what's your favorite part about working out? It's, it's not the physical. They appreciate that, but it's the mental and the mood boosting effects. And the study's back this up, by the way. Like, exercise done consistently, outperforms antidepressants, engeolidics. It outperforms the best drugs that we have

for boosting mood and people's attitudes. And the results tend to get better and better over time. And what's interesting is, when you exercise, there's this long-term effect, that fitness and health that, you know, improve fitness has on mood boosting chemicals and neurotransmitters, but there's also this short acute effect that you get right away. When you work out, you get these boosts

of these neurotransmitters and these chemicals that make you feel good, norup and effron, epinephrine, dopamine, you get the serotonin that comes afterwards, maybe a little oxytocin as well that comes from it. And that's that acute effect. Well, here's what I love about daily short workouts. You get these daily mood boosting chemicals every single day.

You get these little boosts every, and I noticed this with trigger sessions from maps and a ballic. It just put me in a good mood all day long when I do these really light band workouts. Well, when you're doing workouts every single day, you're doing that. By the way, if a workout goes too long, you start to lose some of that. This is why when you go too long with a workout, you feel like you're at the end, right?

When you do these short workouts, you get these boosts in these feel good chemicals. Now, why is that important? Well, first off, it feels awesome, but here's the most important thing. What it does is it encourages a good relationship with exercise. It encourages, it speeds up the process where you develop these behaviors in this relationship with exercise where you crave it. This is the challenge now with the average person when it comes to consistency is they don't love working out yet and it takes time.

Takes a long time to get them to really love it because they start to connect this. When you do it like this, it happens a lot faster because what you do is you raise the feel good part of it and you kind of get rid of the feel bad part of it because they're not working out long enough to really crush themselves, but they're working out just long enough to feel good. And so within a short period of time

they start to look forward to their daily workout which encourages this behavior and this relationship, that's long term. Not only that, but it has tremendous carryover into all the other aspects of your life, which we always talk about, that's, you know, that's what's so beautiful about training and making this a lifestyle is,

it becomes less and less about the aesthetic changes that you get, you know, the body composition that you get from training all the time, and it becomes more about how it enhances every other aspect of your life. And this is such a hack, Sal, that I've even started to break my 20-minute workouts into two, 10-minute workouts sometimes. So one of the things that I have learned to love now, which when we, this podcast first started, I was kind of the anti-home gym guy. I was the go to a big box gym.

This was all before COVID happened and everything. That completely changed that for me. I now have a home gym. I haven't been to a public gym in years. And one of the things that I've learned to love about having it in my garage is that I have this flexibility to go out there and go do three to four sets of squats and then go right back into my house, do my normal thing, come back out four hours later and do three to four sets of overhead press. And I get those mood boosting benefits each time. So it's like this cool. And I notice how I am as a husband, I know how I am as a father, I notice I'm more likely

to help around the house and do other chores and other things, I'm more likely to get work done that I've carried home from going to work. That's more likely to do this short workout. You're right, it's a huge hack. It's a huge hack. And this is for the listener who's trying to become consistent, we talk about this with nutrition all the time.

This is the same thing. Key to this becoming a lifestyle forever is learning how to attach those benefits. It's so easy to look in the mirror and to get on the scale and to check the body fat and go, oh, when I do X, Y, and Z, it makes me look this way or I weigh this much. And they tend to ignore the other stuff. Right. But you don't realize the more powerful stuff, the stuff that will become more addicting

for you to continue to do it, is learning how that translates into all the other aspects of your life. That I think most people would agree are so important. If you ask most people, what's more important that you're 3% lower body fat or that you're a better husband and a father? I'm pretty sure they would say that. Which more important you help out around the house and you knock these things out or you're better productive at work or that you're 2% body. If you can help people understand that

and learn to start to connect to that, you have this new relationship with exercise and it becomes less about this punishment and more about this like, oh my God, I'm gonna go do this real quick and I know what I'm gonna get from it. Well, what's interesting is one of the challenges with developing a long-term relationship with exercise

where somebody wants to do it for the rest of their life. One of the challenges is getting a person to develop, to change the relationship to the feeling of pain that they get while they exercise, to change the relationship to what the fatigue feels like, and to change their relationship with the occasional soreness. So, initially, when someone first starts working out, the pain is almost, they can't tolerate it. This hurts. I've actually had clients drop dumbbells because I thought something was wrong.

I know you guys have seen that before too. We're the liquid of the rope. What's going on, right? Or the fatigue. Oh my God, I hate the way that this feels, right? Now, it takes a long time, but eventually, like I feel the same pain in a workout that a beginner would,

but I've developed a relationship with that kind of pain to where now I enjoy it. But if that be the pain that I enjoy, it's that I've connected it to all these other wonderful results and stuff like that. Okay, so what if we look at this chart of good benefits of exercise that are easy to connect and to create good behaviors around,

and the bad kind of the bad feelings around exercise that take a lot longer, what if I get lower the bad feelings and raise the good feelings? What does that? Short workouts. Short workouts feel good, mood boosting. I do just enough where I'm like, oh, I'm invigorated. Don't get a sore. I don't get a spatee. I don't feel as much pain. I'm going to accelerate the process of developing this relationship with exercise where I start to crave it. So like what you talked about Adam, where you noticed, if I do a few sets during the day and then I do know a few sets later on, I feel good.

I bet you when you start to feel kind of tired or sluggish, you're like, I'm gonna go in the garage. Yeah. And do a few sets of something. It's something coffee. Or I'm like, it's just like, you know, one of those just boosts you can get and you know what you're gonna receive

just by getting like a 10 minute focused exercise in. You know, that's gonna promote more of me moving around, which is another big factor to your point of like the lifestyle, I think is such a big point to come home and not just plop myself on the couch. I mean, think about how much resistance you have once you're in that frame of mind and when your body's in that position,

you're fighting a lot to then get back up and then go help out and contribute. Just in that's how this started. This is how this started because I was getting so frustrated that I would drive, I have an hour drive and sometimes it's turned into an hour and a half since COVID's ended and I get home and I'm so like lethargic and exhausted from driving. Just from sitting still like that, that it's really tough to motivate myself to go crush

an hour workout. And so it actually just all started from this calm, this was before we did their first 20 minute thing, like I had started doing this because I was like, okay, I don't need to go an hour, but let's at least, let's go do an exercise. I'd have that conversation with myself. And then I had enough, I had enough to get up and at least let's go do an exercise. I'd have that conversation with myself. And then I had enough to get up and at least do that. And then I was like, oh, I could do another one or two exercises. And so then it started to turn into this like, okay,

I can't, it's really tough for me. And that's why I think this is so powerful because you're acknowledging that it is tough. You have a, you spend a year, you have a job that is stressful and you have maybe get up really early or you a very physical, laborious job, and then you come home and it's like, oh man, last thing you want to do is go get after it for an hour

in the gym, and you're going to be getting after it all day. But a little bit easier to convince yourself, like I got 15 minutes. I got 15 minutes to go do that, especially if I know that the point you made, Sal, is that I'm maximizing the positive benefits that I'm going to get from the energy, the mood, and I'm reducing the negative aspects

that you feel sometimes from workout, the burning, the sweating, the hard, the achy, the soreness the next day. Stuff you get psyched for. Yeah, the stuff that you really gotta get amped up for to overcome. It's like, oh, I'm not gonna, I know that if I go do three to four sets of an exercise,

it's not gonna crush me, you know? And so, that's how this all started was this, I was having this challenge with actually motivating myself to get back up after I've been sitting for an hour and a half in the car to get this work out. I was like, I can do an exercise too. And then it turned into this routine that I've absolutely fallen in love with.

You know what else it does? It does add some really good structure to a person's day. So we've all, I'm sure, most listeners have heard people talk about the value of like a morning routine or adding structure to your day for consistency and discipline throughout the day. Well, studies have shown this that behaviorally speaking, when people start their day with a workout,

they're more likely to do better behaviors throughout the day. So it's like, I woke up this morning, I did my short workout, I'm ready to tackle the day, I feel good, I started with something good, right? Exercise tends to have that effect on people. So it's just another way of enhancing or creating those behaviors that lead to long-term success. It also can help break up your day.

So I think this is a great way to break up the day when middle of the day is when you're tired. God, two o'clock, I wanna go to sleep. Well, can you take a 20 minute break and do a 20 minute workout? Yeah, I can. And then what ends up happening afterwards? I feel really good.

Now, I've added structure to my day, broken it up and made it feel better. What about the end of the day? Can it be a way to end the day on a good note? Yes, it can. So my point with this is it's very flexible and it's an incredible way to add structure to your day, which can lead to better behaviors down the road. Here's another one that I like about it, which is it's easier to modify because

you're doing it every single day, you're less likely to ignore the way your body feels and how you feel because you know, this is the only workout I get during the week or this is only one of three workouts I get during the week. Well, when I do it every single day, if I wake up this morning kind of tired, I'm going to go easy. It's not a big deal. Like, if today's Wednesday and I only work out Wednesday and Saturday, like, I'm tired, but, you know, it's my only workout. I got to get out or I'm not going to do it at all. So it really opens the door for you to develop these skills of using exercise as this multi-pronged tool

to enhance the quality of your life. Cause that's the, really, if you do this long term, you do this right, you can use exercises. It's this incredible tool where, if I'm feeling tired, if I'm feeling stressed, if I'm feeling energized, if I'm feeling like I need more creativity, if I'm feeling tired, if I'm feeling stressed, if I'm feeling energized, if I'm feeling like I need more creativity, if I'm feeling almost anything, I can use exercise

so long as I'm modified appropriately to improve the quality of my life. Well, when you do a little bit every single day, there's more opportunities for that and you're less likely to ignore your body's signals because I'll do another one tomorrow. So today I'll go a little easier, whatever. Yeah, and to Adam's point about kind of splitting up, you know, some days I'll have days where I'm like, I have maybe two to three exercises lined up for one of those sessions. And I know that my energy is in there. And whatever it is that's the factor in terms of me being stressed or, I didn't get a good sleep or whatever it is that's the factor in terms of me being stressed or I didn't get a good sleep or whatever it is,

I could take something I know within that, three exercise selection, I could at least do the one I know I can do, and then I could split up, I'll come back later in the day and I'll find out, oh guess what, I do have energy now, and I'll perform that one and I'll do my heavy squats a little bit later in the day as my body wakes up because me personally a lot of times the mornings are really tough. Time for me to generate that kind of ability of energy and oomph to get going. So for me to be able to have the flexibility to split it out

and then attempt it later on the day is huge. Yeah, the modification part has been one of my favorite things because I have, like, you know, I'd be lying if I said that it's been this, you know, six day week, 15 and 20 morning workout, same time, same day, every single day, it's actually not like that at all. It's like, sometimes I'm splitting up that, that in two, 10 minute workouts, sometimes I've had days

when I didn't get to it and then I've paired up two days, which is the way I have structured it. It's like I'm doing basically a major compound lift for the lower body one day and then the next day is a upper body compound lift. And so I'm kind of alternating back and forth. So if I didn't end and there's two main exercises, sometimes there's a superset in there, but mostly two main lifts that I'm focused on in that in that session. And so if I didn't get to it that day, it's not hard for me to pair up four exercises the next day.

And I'm still under flexibility. Yeah, I'm still under an hour workout and I could either split that up in two short 20 minute workouts the next day or I can make it one 40 minute workout afterwards. And so the flexibility of it has been incredible. And I love the way I feel and I love that ability to do that.

And I would never have guessed that I would have seen the results and I'm seeing from training that way. And you can, in typically too, when you do something like this, you tend to do more of the more effective exercises and less of the less effective exercises because you don't have,

I'm not in the gym for an hour right now. I'm only here for 20 minutes. So let me do the ones that are the most important. And so what ends up happening over time is you end up practicing the most effective lifts more often and you end up doing less of the less effective lifts, you end up doing them less often. So generally speaking, your entire workout program,

he starts to look a lot better because you're in the gym for a short period of time or you're working out for a short period of time. Even though it's more frequent, you're gonna pick better exercises typically. Well, because, I mean, they're more demanding on the body, they're more taxing and it's like when you stack them all together for like your hour-long workouts,

you really gotta kinda psych yourself up for some of those workouts some days. Otherwise, and so to be able to just have, you know, one to two of those really just hyper focus on that, man, it relieves you of a lot of that stress going in. Now here's an interesting one. At this point right here, really blew my mind when I thought about it, and I found data to support

this and back it up. What I mean by when I thought about it is when I thought about all the clients I trained, I knew this to be very true. In fact, I'll ask you Adam, how has your diet changed since you started working out short workouts daily versus your longer workouts? So here's the thing that I've known this always about just training in general is that I'm always better eating on a day that I train because what ends up happening is that it's like

a psychological thing. It's like, by the way, this is proven in study. Yeah, and people, I think a lot of people actually think it would be the opposite. A lot of people think like people go, oh, and I guess they're going to excuse the yeah, as an excuse to go eat like an asshole, but to me, it's like not that at all. Like for me, when I train, I get this feeling like, oh, I don't want to mess. I've already, I'm already heading in the right direction right now. Now, I want to optimize that.

And I know that how important it is to hit protein and take and have a balanced diet and how much that compounds your results. So my thought process always, when I lift, it's always my best day of eating. It's the days that I don't lift that's challenging for me to make good food choices. So what's great about these short and frequent workouts,

it's like every day I'm doing a little bit of something. So it has that psychological gain that it ends up playing with me. It's just like, oh, I lifted today. I wanna make sure I build muscle. I don't wanna miss my protein intake. I wanna make sure I have a good day of eating and I eat better that way.

They've done studies on this and they found that people tend to improve their diet even when they're told not to, even when they don't think they want to, just when they start exercising. It's one of those things. I'm already in the mode, so now I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna feed myself

a little bit better. And so why is this important around what we're talking about? Well, if you work out a little every day, you're more likely to eat better every day versus when you work out less frequently and longer. By also, by the way, what you said earlier, Adam, about people, you know, the people thinking, well, maybe people will make excuses

with the heart, with workouts. You know when that happens? When a workout is over, when it's over training or produces too much fatigue. So when someone goes into a workout and they crawl out of the gym, because they just did an hour and a half of whatever, cross fit or whatever, that's when they go, oh my god, I'm dead. I'm going to go eat that pizza. That's when it happens. It's not from the appropriate application. That's why I don't go eat that pizza. That's when it happens. It's not from the appropriate application, that's why you're doing it right now. Correct. And why?

Because you beat the shit at yourself and your body's looking for a little boost. Is that a ton of it? I just say, is that a similar hormonal effect that happens when we get lack of sleep too? So it's like stress on the body because you didn't get good sleep. So yeah.

So it's a hormonal response and then you have these cravings that happen. Yes, similar effects happen when it's an overtrain the body. They do, right? So, and again, studies show this that when people start working out and they do it appropriately, they naturally start to improve their diet.

So what I found, and when I was thinking about this, I'm like, oh my God, this is so true. When I would have clients that would struggle to even show up to train with me twice a week. So I would train people, you know, twice a week, 60 minutes, sometimes three days a week. That was the average client. The average client I had, trained with me two or three days a week, okay minutes, sometimes three days a week. That was the average client. The average client I had,

training me two or three days a week, okay? For 60 minutes each time. The client that struggled to make it two days a week where it was like, we were just missing workouts left and right, and sometimes it worked out once a week. Sometimes they wouldn't. This is what I would prescribe.

I'd say, okay, here's your 15 minute workout, do it every single day, and they would be much more consistent. They'd end up working out much more often. And then I used to notice the side effect of them eating better. And it asked me, I know you're tracking, I'm having you write things down, however, you're starting to eat a lot of healthy. I'm like, well, when I work out a little bit, it makes me want to eat healthier.

Like, oh, this is really cool. Yeah, I mean, it's the whole process of self-improvement. I mean, when you realize you're doing good things for your body, it's feedback for your body. And so it's like, it's a natural thing to want to then also kind of look at other areas that you can improve. And I think that nutrition is just like, it goes hand in hand with that. So it just seems like a natural fit.

That's right. I mean, I really, I don't know if this is the trainer in me because Katrina and I used to talk with us a lot. Like I remember when we first started dating, you know, we'd have our ebb and flow of like when we were being consistent with the diet and training and other times when we were less consistent with our training and diet.

And she would always be like, dude, it's so frustrating to watch you. Like all of a sudden change, she's like, I swear to God, it's three workouts. You flip a switch. Yeah, and all of a sudden your body changed. I said, well, it's because I don't, I change a lot all at one time and I know exactly what I need to change

to where I'm not over correcting and I'm feeding my body what it needs based off of what I'm training. I said, this is an area where I think a lot of people make mistakes is they go from bad to good and what bad to good looks like is like over-consuming junk food, not exercise, it's all sudden cutting calories and lifting weights really, really hard.

It's like, I know exactly what I need to do. I need to feed my body properly. As I know, I'm notorious for under-consuming protein when I'm not tracking and I'm not dialed in. And I know if I'm not, and I know what I have to do is little is possible to listen, so I just need to stimulate the body, to tell the body to build muscle,

and then feed it properly. And so it's the, and I know that combination works so effectively that when I decide, okay, I'm lifting, I'm working out, I know right away, I gotta feed my body that way, if I want the maximum results from it. Otherwise, you're just not gonna see as much results. I mean, you just training and not making any diet changes.

We'll show some positive benefits. We know that. But if you do that with eating correctly and feeding the body properly, the benefits are accelerating. Right. But here's the important point. You're more likely to be able to be consistent with better eating. I say better because it depends on who you are and how you're eating now. So just generally better. It's easier to do that to move in the better

direction with diet when you're exercising consistently. It's harder when you're not exercising consistently. That's just the fact. So because short workouts, short frequent workouts tend to encourage consistency, just from a behavioral standpoint, it bears the reason that you're going to also notice better results with nutrition. For two reasons, one, you're working out more often. So you're not working out as long per workout. Remember, controlling for the volume, right?

So instead of doing two one-hour workouts, okay, do 20-minute workouts every single day. But you're working out every single day now. And what else do you do every single day? You eat. So you're more likely to have better behaviors around food as well. Now speaking of, you know, doing things every single day,

that really encourages adaptation when it comes to the body. Overhealing, overhealing. So remember, when you work out, your muscles get some damage that have to heal, but they also have to adapt. That's what, or you want them to adapt. That's the muscle-building process. So long as the intensity is applied correctly. That's right. And healing and adapting are different. Healing is like, you know, I scratch

my skin, I've got a cut, healing is getting the skin to heal over. Adapting would be to create a callus over the skin. So that next time, I don't cut it as easily. Well, adaptation tends to be encouraged with frequent exposure, frequent stimulation. Okay, this is why, again, if you've ever heard our podcast and somebody say something like, how do I get better at pushups or how do I get better at pullups or how do I get better at this exercise? What do we always say?

Practice it every single day. Rather than doing one workout where you're hammering your body, take that exercise, that pullups, and workout where you're hammering your body, take that exercise that pull ups and put a pull up bar in your house and every time you pass it, do like two or three pull ups. And then watch how fast you get stronger. It really does encourage adaptation over anything else. And again, for the advanced lifters,

we've known this for a long time. Like even back in the day, when Arnold and those guys just to work out and do this crazy high volume workouts, they would do something called a double split routine. A double split routine is instead of doing two hours in the morning, they do an hour and a morning and hour night, they work out seven days a week.

Why? They found that by breaking up the workouts, increasing the exposure, it reduced the fatigue, reduced the damage, accelerated adaptation. It accelerated the muscle building process. That's an extreme example. We're talking about super advanced genetically gifted steroid enhanced lifters. But for the average person, you can apply this as well. So again, a 30 minute workout every single day or a 20 or 25

minute workout every single day, probably going to be more effective for all the reasons that we just talked about than your typical two hour two one workout, or three-one-hour workouts, just because of all the stuff that we talked about. Yeah, I think the key is knowing to not overdo it. That's right. I think the key... Well, you get a program at right. Yeah, I mean, that's the,

I think that's the mistake that the younger version of me would have made. I would hear a lot of the stuff you guys are saying right now and go like, okay, I'm going to train every day then. But then I'm thinking like, so that means I'm hitting chest, you know, three, four times three. Yeah, with the same intensity that I was doing it one day a week before. And that's where there's this, and because you still have this idea of like, oh, more

is better. Or if I was doing it one day, now I'm going to do it six to six. It's like, no, it's like you have to learn to scale back on the intensity. I mean, honestly, when these workouts are done correctly, it's actually a really interesting feeling when you leave. And it takes a bit for the... It takes a little discipline. It's psychologically challenging.

It is, because you're not really drenched in sweat. You might have a little bit of a pump, you know, depending on what exercises you paired for that. Did I do enough? Yeah, and you do. You feel energized, and a lot of times I feel like, I could do a few more things. And more often than not, I find myself having

the conversation of, that's enough to myself than going like, oh, I can do more. Let's do more. I have to go like, okay, I'm good. I know what I did yesterday. I know what I did today. I know what I planted you tomorrow. I know I want to do more,

because I'm all starting to get aired up and getting a rhythm and feel good, but I'm good, I'm done. By the way, for people who are like, what about all your other maps programs, you know, encourage three full body workouts, whatever, if you look at all of our maps programs, they actually encourage daily frequency.

Yeah. Every single work. Every single frequency builder is built in there. Every single part, maps and a ball, if you do the trigger sessions, you're doing a little bit of something every single day with maybe two longer workouts. MAPS aesthetic, you're doing focus sessions on your off days,

which means you're kind of working out almost every day. MAPS performance, you have mobility sessions. Every single program, we knew the frequency, how important frequency of exposure was in every single program. Now, here's what we did, because this next program that we're about to release, we did because we said, okay, let's solve the consistency issue for the average person. Let's do our best job at solving it, but also providing phenomenal results. So we designed a program we're calling Maps 15 minutes, and it's 15 minutes a day.

Now, the person that we wrote this program for is the person that struggles with consistency. So the workouts are designed around a suspension trainer and a pair of dumbbells or some resistance bands. That way you have it in your home, you go do your 15 minute workout and you're done. Now that being said, we also wanted to include an advanced version because there's a lot of people listening right now that like, I want to apply these principles to my advanced workouts. And this is how I work out right now. This is how Adam's working out right now.

I know Doug is experimenting with this as well. And I know Justin, you've been doing this for a long time. Yep. So we put an advanced version in Maps 15 minutes that'll take you about 20, 25 minutes. If you really waste your time doing this workout, about 30 minutes, and you do that every single day. So about 20, 25 minutes. If you really waste your time doing this workout, about 30 minutes, and you do that every single day. So about 20, 25 minutes every single day,

which revolves around barbells and dumbbells. So with the advanced version, you will want to have access to barbells and dumbbells. You are doing big compound lifts like, like dead lifts and squats and overhead presses, and stuff like that, more body building focused. But mass 15 minutes, the original, is gonna be more for the person who's like, I just, it's hard for me to be 15 minutes, the original is going to be more

for the person who's like, I just, I just, it's hard for me to be consistent and I can't go to the gym. So what can I do? That one is written with the suspension trainers and with a pair of dumbbells so you can do anywhere. So with this program comes that version plus the advanced version for those of you that want to test this out on yourself and say, okay, if I do big lifts, big barbell lifts every single day for 20 to 25 minutes,

what's gonna happen to my gains, what's gonna happen to my strength, test it out, try it yourself. Now, because it's a brand new program where we're just launching it, what we're doing, like whenever we launch a new program, is we put it on sale. So it's gonna be $20 off, it's retail price.

So it's gonna retail for $97, but you can get maps 15 minutes for $20 off. So you get $20 off right now plus two ebooks that we're going to include for free. One of them is on sleep, how to maximize the benefits of sleep. It's called a power of sleep. And the second one is our occlusion training guide. Occlusion training is a really novel technique. It's stimulating muscle growth and getting crazy pumps. So $20 off, you get maps 15 minutes plus the bonus advanced version, which is in there

already, plus two free e-books, the Power of Sleep, and the Occlusion Training Guide. You can get all of them at maps15minutes.com, but you have to use the code 15Special for the discount plus the free e-books. And of course, it comes like all of our programs with a 30-day money back guarantee So you can test it out for 30 minutes See what happens if you don't like it return it and we'll just give you your money back Thank you for listening to Mind Pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance

Check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for formants and maps aesthetic, 9 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 sour, animal, and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes

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