Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 965: How to Fix a Boring Workout

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

If your workouts are no longer fun, they are probably losing their effectiveness. In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin provide tips and tricks to spice up your boring workout. How to spice up and fix a boring workout. (5:50) The importance of changing your goal or adaptation you are chasing. (8:30) The breakdown of the spectrum of ‘Performance’. (19:45) Why you shouldn’t be attacking a goal for longer than 4-6 weeks MAX! (44:00) People Mentioned: NA Products Mentioned: February Promotion: MAPS Performance is ½ off!! **Code “GREEN50” at checkout** Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 172 Live - Sal, Adam & Justin of Mind Pump Podcast 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, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this special edition episode of the Mind Pump, so a lot of people have problems with maintaining, I guess their enthusiasm with their workouts, it gets kind of boring. And that causes them to either A have bad workouts where they're half-assing it, or they stop altogether. Part of the reason why people get bored is they don't get good results, but the other part of the reason is sometimes people get stuck in the same old, same old,

right, doing the same type of movements. And so in this episode, we talk all about how to maintain the fun that comes from the workouts. I mean, if you think about this way, if you really enjoyed every workout and look forward to it, do you think you would stop? Probably not. Much more motivated. And so it's an important and integral piece

of long-term fitness success. So in this episode, we talk about some of our strategies. Adam brings up how changing goals is very important, changing your focus. Then we start touching on the different components of human movement and performance, things that you can focus on. Everything from maximal strength to reactive type of performance,

stamina, explosivability, how you train for those kinds of things. And naturally, we talk a lot about our Maps Performance program because that program does all of those things. It's the most dynamic program that we offer, it trains you through all these different aspects. I mean, the goal with math performance really was to change and sculpt a person's body so that it moved and performed in a full spectrum way. So think about that, right? Full spectrum that strength,

the ability to change directions without injuring yourself, have the confidence to do that, the stamina and endurance to exert yourself maximally over and over again without getting too tired of reducing your performance, the ability to explode. You know, a lot of your movement in everyday life, especially the movements that you don't necessarily plan,

have to be explosive when you're reaching for something real quick or you twist very quick or you have to jump up on a curb, that's explosive performance. So we talk about all those different things and those are all aspects of maps performance and the side effect of training that way is you end up getting this body that looks like you could do that. So if you think about that for a second,

think about a human being that is really good at lifting really heavy things is really good at being able to change directions and maintain stability, is really good at being explosive, they can jump high, they can explode in different directions very quickly, and that same person has the ability to do all those things repeatedly without getting super fatigued, what do you think they can look like? They're gonna look like? They're gonna look pretty damn awesome. They're gonna have a very balanced,

aesthetic looking performance-based physique, and that's exactly what Math Performance is designed to do. And that program, we're all month long, it's 50% off, so we took the price of that program, and we cut it in half, and that's it, once you get it, you have it for life, we are revamping it soon. You'll get updated automatically.

And if we ever updated again, you get updated automatically again for life for free. So here's what you do if you want to get the 50% off maps performance. Go to mapsfitnisproducts.com and use the code green50-gr-en5-0. Enter that into the, when you do the sale, and you'll get the 50% off. Also, on that site, we have other maps, programs for different goals and for different types of people. So go on there, check them out, find the one that works for you. But again, the one that's 50% off

right now with the code green 50 is maps performance. Here we go. Do you know what today is? Justin? Do you know what it is? Huh? You don't know because you don't have your mic on, do you? I don't know.

That's what my sister knows. Yes, today is. This is a special day, bro. Today is when we, we, we, we, we take a single topic and we talk just about that. We've had a lot of people give some great feedback on some of these shorter to the point episode. I enjoy these. Yeah. These are great.

I think, and they're also, they seem to be the ones that people are sharing the most because it's, I think they, the, the real true fans that, that appreciate the, the banter and the locker room talk early on may not also think that their friends will appreciate as much as they do, so I think those are less shareable. I think they're embarrassed to share us. I think so. I think they're ashamed of us.

I think we like that hot, we're like that hot dude with the neck tattoos that you want to have sex with, but then you don't want to bring around your friends. Yeah, I think we have a, yeah, can hang out. We have a tad bit, and I know this is obviously

complimenting ourselves by comparing us to Howard Stern, but we have that Howard Stern thing where we have a lot of people that listen, and then we have half the people admit it, and then the other half I think listen, and then don't admit it. You think so? Yeah, I do.

I do think that, especially early on. I feel cool though. You just said that now, and now you said I kind of feel like, cool, you know me. Yeah, that makes us cool. It's kind of spicy though. You don't want to show on. I feel cool though. You just said that now you said that kind of feel like cool, you know me? Yeah, that makes us cool. It's kind of spicy. You don't want to show us to your friends.

I mean, I mean, it is a, we're not for everybody. But we really are. Yeah, for everybody. So, topic, how you brought up a cool topic. Yeah, I think we should talk about left calf training. Just get real specific with that stuff. Very specific. Just kidding. Well, that's. Just very specific. Just kidding.

Well, that's something like my life one. That sucks. Yeah. No, you know, I wanted to talk about boring workouts because... Not a spicema. Well, yeah, because I think you have fitness enthusiasts like us, right?

And I just love lifting weights. I love training. I love lifting weights. It'll training, I love lifting weights. It'll never get boring to me. It's something that is now, it's been a part of my life for a very, very long time. I'll never stop. I just won't stop.

It's like brushing my teeth in the morning. I do it, I love it. Even when I don't like it, I like it. But most people are not fitness enthusiasts. Most people wanna be healthy. You know what I mean? I think that Well, so maybe I'm not a fitness enthusiast then because I

I get bored and I definitely have have Fallen into the my you do fitness enthusiastically, but you're not a fitness enthusiast So I like this topic because I have found myself in this space many times over the last 17 years where I'm highly motivated, I'm consistent, my food is dialed, my training is dialed, and then I have other times where I'm not. And so, and I don't know, maybe that's because... Yeah, but you know what, let's be fair though. Now, I know what you're saying, but let's be fair. What's the longest stint in the last 15 years

that you didn't work out at all? Well, that one I just went through with my torn Achilles by six months. You did nothing at all. You did no question. Well, no, you can't say that. Right, you're right. So I was doing some, some work.

But you go, it's kind of like an up and down where more working out, less working out. Yeah, I mean, there's, I mean, there's an extreme difference in my training volume today compared to just two years. I mean, they're night and day difference. So, but that's what it brings me to is that I have lots of passions. I have other things that I'm passionate about. I think I can relate to most people when it comes to that.

Fitness is not my first and only love. I have many other. In fact, I have more passion for sports and music, basketball, snowboarding, those things. I have more of a passion for than I even do working out. Working out is something that I found that made me better. You emold it and individualize it. Yeah, you know, and so I kind of fell in love with it, but it's not my first love and I absolutely go through these moments of, I'm kind of bored.

And you know, what do I do? I'm over this or I'm over what I'm doing currently right now. And I have found some strategies that have worked really well for me. And the number one strategy has been to actually change my goal. I think sometimes we get so fixated on, I wanna look a certain way

or I need to lose this 30 pounds or I'm too skinny, I wanna add 20 pounds. It's always the same goal. Yeah, it's always the same goal and you're just, you're constantly kind of working at it and every time you get closer, you move the line further. You know, I remember that being the skinny guy trying to build. I used to say, if I could just be 180 pounds and then when that got, took me years to get there, then began 200 pounds and then when I hit two, then it became two, so that shit

never ends. And once you've done that for long enough, you start to piece it together that, okay, I got to find other things in just this one goal that is normally driven through our insecurities to keep me enjoying these workouts. And I find changing the goal or the adaptation that I'm chasing, I think has been a great thing for me to stay focused. And I just went through that after I went on this crazy goal of competing. You know, it was a perfect time for me because we were riding performance around that map's performance around that time. I had been

Mr. Estetic guy, you know, trained to look a certain way, look a certain way for almost four years straight. And I had completely neglected mobility and, you know, just functional training. And here we are writing this program that was geared around it. And that completely, I then I switched my focus. Well, the irony is, again, for the average person who just wants to be fit and healthy, there needs to be an enjoyment factor with what they're doing. I mean, an easy example would be, you know, if I, if the ideal way to do cardio for someone was to wake up in the morning and swim in a lake at 4 a.m., and that was twice as effective as them going for a walk at night with their husband, which they love to do, which one's going to give them better results.

The one that they're going to do and the one that they're going to do is the one that they enjoy and waking up at 4 a.m. to go swimming lake, is not something that that person would wanna do. So, to that respect, doing what you, enjoying what you do with your workouts, makes a big difference, because it makes it much more likely that you're gonna not only do it consistently,

but also do it, like I said earlier, enthusiastically. And the other thing too is, people work out because they want to change how they look and they don't focus on really trying to change how they move and how they perform. And there's a mistake there. Now, I don't mean that it's a mistake to try and change how you look, but there's definitely a mistake to only always ever focus on changing how you look, but there's definitely a mistake to only always ever focus on changing how you look. Because at some point, that'll drive you to do things that are not as fun, not as enjoyable, not as healthy,

and not as effective. Over time, you'll actually lose aesthetics by only focusing on aesthetics, believe it or not. Now, when people focus on how they move, in order to improve your performance, your strength, your endurance, your stamina, your ability, your agility, in order to improve upon those things, you kind of have to have decent health at least.

Now, of course, you can go extreme where your health starts to suffer as well when you're an extreme athlete. But for the average person pushing those things, you know, if you want to get stronger, you want to get faster, you have more endurance, you have a better mobility. Getting leaner helps that, eating healthy helps that.

A lot of things help that. And so the side effect of focusing on fun, move, workouts that are planned properly, by the way, it's not just fun for the sake of being fun, because a lot of times people just throw a bunch of exercises together, haphazardly. And it's just jumping over here, running over there and doing a bunch of crazy stuff. I think CrossFit got so popular.

Exactly. It's exactly one of the reasons why I got popular. It's just, I mean, inevitably, we created and constructed this gym that we tried to eliminate a lot of risk factors. We tried to incorporate women and make it more visible and inviting and less creepy and a weird environment. And it got to a point where we reverted right back

to the meat and potatoes of what worked, but had to make it super extreme for people to pay attention to it. And so that became sort of the new norm was like, how crazy and hard can we make this experience? And it was like a badge of honor instead of like, I'm in the, I'm going in there to improve on my looks aesthetics. And this and that now became all 100% of like, how much can I do it once?

And I've just, I've always seen this split of a mentality in this industry where it's frustrating because there's elements of both that are so important on many levels just for self-evaluation. Well, you know, when you're going into a workout and you're going in there to improve upon an aspect of your performance and movement, the way you feel from that is quite unique. Like when you're training in that type of a phase where you're like, okay, I'm going to the gym and today I'm focusing on, rather than saying I'm focusing on delts and biceps, you know, or whatever. I'm going into focus on rotation, anterior stabilization, and lateral strength.

Those are all movement patterns, those are all planes of motion, or whatever. So I'm going into focus on these things. The way you feel from that is amazing. Now the side effect of that is a body that looks incredible as well. If you ever pay attention to somebody who trains in that way and you look at them, they are relatively lean and balanced looking.

So they don't have overdeveloped body parts where you got guys that go to the gym and just bench press and you curls all day long. They have big packs, big biceps and they have this kind of out of balance looking look. It's nothing like that. They look very balanced, very put together, relatively lean, healthy, but then you watch them move

and they move very, it's a very fluid gracefulness to it. And it feels very good. And I think if you go into your workouts, if you're looking for something, and I've told this to clients so many different times, like, look, instead of going to the gym to try and sculpt your body, why don't you go to the gym and focus on movement

and have fun with those movements? And let's focus on some complex exercises that are different from what you normally do. And of course, again, this doesn't mean you, you just throw a bunch of shit at the wall, see what sticks, you don't wanna do a bunch of haphazard exercises, there's still a structure to it, but I would do this with clients that have then come in and let's say we went through an aesthetic phase. We went through traditional, you know, dead lifts and barbell rows and presses

and curls and all the traditional exercises. And I've been training them for a long time and I'll say, okay, now what we're going to do is I'm going to do some landmine rotational movements with you. And we're going to focus on improving your unilateral strengths. We're gonna do one-legged movements. We're gonna do one-armed movements. We're gonna do lots of rotation. We're gonna incorporate some stabilization. If we get to the point where I think it's appropriate,

I'm gonna start working on agility with you. We're gonna work on maybe some forms of plyometric, which was rare because you need to be have a relatively good fitness level for that. But I would have clients that I would do that kind of stuff. And they would fucking show up to their workouts. So excited because it was different. It was totally new. And of course, when something's new, the body changes. And they didn't get really, really good results. And then the cool thing is I would see their, then break their strength plateaus all of a sudden.

I think part of that is of course the different movements, but I also think the other part of it is the enthusiasm that goes into doing those kinds of workouts. Yeah, and I think to, I'm not, and I definitely advocate unconventional equipment a lot more than you guys in terms of usage, but I know that there's that a meat and potatoes,

there's a hierarchy of movements, even with something like that, where I know that there's benefit for me. Doing something with a mace bell, mainly just focused on the rotation of it with my shoulders or moving with it in a different plane that I'm not going to be able to easily and fluidly create with a dumbbell, with a barbell. A lot of times I feel the perfect tool for the perfect job.

I'm always seeking that. And I think like, and it seems like it's a novel pursuit. Like I'm trying to seek novelty and like add that in constantly. But really my whole process in training people and training myself was to find those gems, those perfect fits, like it's those keys that you know, okay, if I'm looking to improve a certain aspect of movement

or certain strength pursuit, this will really benefit that process. And I'm always looking for those things, and what produces a muscle size and hypertrophy, and those meat and potatoes, those big rocks we talk about all the time when I'm muscular, focused, I'm building and developing muscles.

But now, how do I support those muscles? How do I make sure that I don't have chronic aches and pains and I can actually now utilize the size and strength that I've built. So to be able to do that, you have to think, how can I incorporate rotational movements? How can I get myself to apply this strength in different directions?

Dude, there was a guy that used to work out at one of the gyms that I managed who older guys in the 70s looked phenomenal. I think I brought him up on the show before and he did a lot of traditional resistance training exercises, but he also, every other day, he'd come in and I used to watch the sky because he was so impressive and I was young. I was probably 20, 19, 20 when the sky would come to my. And he just looked really, again, he looked amazing.

So it was like a, he was like a god walking through the gym. It's the cool thing about gyms is that the old fit people in the gym always get a lot of respect every time, which I always found was really cool. But anyway, every other day he would do these traditional resistance training workouts. And then every other day he would come in and do these very non-traditional exercises.

Some of them look like yoga positions, others look like these kind of complex dumbbell movements. He would do things like windmills. This is before I even knew what they were. You know, you do like windmill movements, do these multi-planar type exercises. And of course, at the time I had no idea, you know, what he was doing.

I just thought he was doing a bunch of weird stuff, but I respected him. Of course, as I got older, I realized this guy really knew no idea what he was doing. I just thought he was doing a bunch of weird stuff, but I respected him. Of course, as I got older, I realized, this guy really knew what the hell he was doing. And the reason why he looked so good and was able to move so good is he placed an emphasis on movement, not just on the aesthetic. You know, you were saying earlier, Adam, about changing the pursuit. I think it might be a good idea for us to break down,

just generally break down the, what the spectrum of performance looks like. Like if we were to look at a well-rounded athlete, if you were, or a human performance, like what are the aspects, what are the different buckets that we can focus on within them that if you got bored in one you could kind of move the other one I mean we talk about maximal strength all the time right, right? So that's one right being able to

To generate maximum grinding Strength type four. So this is the kind of strength that quickly stabilize and control So let's go let's get into that too. So so stabilize and control like what let's get into that too. So, so stabilize and control. Like, what do we mean by that? We know what we mean when we talk about. Most people know what we mean when we say grinding strength, like just being able to lift something heavy. That's easy. But what do you mean by change, by what you just said, stabilization control? Like, what does that look like? So basically being able to, whatever if it's external forces, if it's self-imposed forces that propel my body

in a certain direction, how do I now slow down that momentum and then change directions? And how do I shift and apply pressure, and enable to react. And so a lot of this is like kind of lumped in with, well, give it an exercise and give it an example. That's easier for you to explain an exercise and what's happening in the exercise

and just use all these fancy words that nobody understands. Okay, cool. Yeah, so I would probably use like a nice skater as an example. So if I'm just, I'm trying to like move left to right. That's basic as it's gonna get. Now I wanna do that explosively. So I'm gonna jump and go to the left. Now what I have to do and I have to think about

is how my foot is gonna land, how my ankle's gonna be able to support me when I land. Decel, so my body going to squat into that just enough to propel me back and now I have to use that momentum to launch myself to the other side and repeat that same exact process at a really high speed. People don't realize you need to train that. When we film our programs, I'm going to share this with the audience, we look for models to do our programs and we'll have these models demonstrate the exercises because in the

original renditions of our maps programs, it was either me, Justin, or Adam doing the demos and we took ourselves out and we wanted models to, you know, that looked better than us to be in the programs. And so we go through this process of vetting people and it's funny, we'll get these like super ripped looking they look great. Bodybuilder types. They can't move.

They can't fucking do the movement. It's painful. Like a basic, you know, jump rotational exercise or something like that. And we watch them and we're like, whoa, they're strong, they're muscular, but they have none of that reactive strength. Now, you may be listening, you may have experienced this. You may be a big, strong person who lifts weights,

then you go to the beach and you throw a frisbee, three, four, five times. They're like, oh man, my elbow is sore, my shoulder hurts. I just threw a frisbee three or four times. Or maybe you were hanging out with your kids when your kids trips, you quickly twist the pick them up and, ah, you pull a rib or something like that. Even though you're fit and you go to the gym all the time,

that's a skill that you can focus on training. So, and that's a fun skill to train. If you go to, if you're, if you focus on strength all the time, and then, and you got like anything else, you want to start and progress yourself. And then you, you say to yourself, like let's say you get bored,

like what Adam was saying, like, you know, I'm kind of bored with my workouts. I know, I'm going to focus on this reactive type strength, this ability to react to different things and move in different directions. That's a whole phase of training. Not only that, you're, again, what I was saying about your goal has to change.

Like, it no longer becomes, I'm trying to be really strong at doing this, or I wanna do the most amount of reps. Like, you to perform the Movement as as perfect as possible and so that takes a lot of mental discipline To change that focus when you when we're taught to look at our weight going up strength wise And oh, I'm doing a good job or the scale moving a direction or my body fat changing all those things could actually stay the same or potentially decrease or go up or down direction or my body fat changing, all those things could actually stay the same or potentially

decrease or go up or down and not affect that. And vice versa, if you know what I mean. I'm going to guess right now, Adam, that the most impactful thing that you've experienced in your fitness in the last, I don't know, 10 years, and you tell me if I'm wrong and I know you would, I know you will say it if I am wrong, but I'll say that the most impactful thing you've probably experienced was going from how your squats used to feel to how they feel now. Am I close?

Yeah, no, it would be a close call. Two of the most paradigm-shattering things in the last decade for me has been one getting into competing and becoming hyper-focused on specifically chasing aesthetics and aesthetics only because before that member I was the mix it up guy do whatever and I used to do all kinds of shit in my workout. So that was very paradigm shattering for me to see how much I could build and sculpt and

change my physique when I was focused and tracking and meticulous about everything I did. And then the next paradigm shattering moment for me was really applying mobility and really addressing that and then to see the evolution of like movements like my school. It forever changed your workout. Yeah, and it not only did it change my workouts, but I've suffered from chronic low back pain

for a very long time, partially because I have that anterior pelvic tilt already and I don't address it enough like I should. And then I've also had a major accident off my ATV years back. And so I'm just sensitive in my low back. It doesn't take much if I stand too long, like where I mark Bell's podcast, my low back starts to flare up.

Since I start, and then I used to squat, and after a set, you would see me laying on the ground because my low back would just be on fire. It was just taking too much of the load when I was squatting and my mechanics were terrible. That year or so of addressing mobility, not only was I able to take my squat from barely getting to 90 degrees to ask to grass, but to be there comfortably and then to no longer have this low back pain was incredible. And I had to focus on a new goal because I wasn't hitting PRs.

You know, I'm not the weight I'm squatting right now and I'm very happy with where I'm at now. I'm hitting over three plates, ask to grass and pause at the bottom coming up. I'm not hitting over 405 there, you know, because I can squat over 400. But to go that deep, that controlled, and pain free, I mean, yeah, no, that's a testament to me focusing on the mobility.

But that being said too, I think it's important because right now I feel like we're hammering how important it is to do all the functional training, the mobility, to address different planes, but there's definitely a group of people that are listening right now that always train this way. And to those people, they probably need a strength cycle or strength block. Totally. And they need to focus on that. I mean, in my opinion, it's almost always the opposite of whatever it is you're doing, because we all tend to gravitate towards what we like, what we're good at, what we enjoy doing.

And so most anybody who's listening right now, it's the opposite of whatever you're doing. Because more than likely, you've probably been doing it more than just a few weeks You've probably been doing it for months, but potentially years and so whatever that's most like so if you're the guy or girl Who loves ice skaters and jumping on you know in different directions and stabilization and you do a lot of that Club cool balancing shit and one arm and one leg stuff and that's you. You probably need some strength in your life. You probably need some fucking bilateral movements, heavy ass load, low repetitions, long rest periods, and that's where you should be probably moving your focus. They're both integral parts of human performance, I think is the point. And if you want to maximize your body's potential for movement and for performance,

both of those are important. If you don't do one, you're not going to reach your potential. And it doesn't matter which one you're not doing. You have to do them all. But then there's more, right? Like, you also want to have some explosive ability. I mean, the ability to explode and to generate force quickly is a very important human function. And I would even say in athletics more important than even the grinding strength,

although the grinding strength contributes to that ability to explode. But the ability to explode has got to be one of the more important things. Wouldn't you guys agree? Oh, yeah. I mean, you visibly see how that translates to most movements in sports, because sports in general are very explosive by nature because of how quick in the reaction and the speed of your joint actions, like you have to get your body to that level where it can react and move on a dime.

And so to be able to do that, you need a lot of explosive type of strength and so that has to be trained and it just happens. So, not only that, but I mean, it's obvious, I think, with sports, but even if you're not an athlete, and you, and you actually are a strength person, you like to live, Tevi, like, man, learning to generate

that force, you know, that fast and that explosively will carry over into your strength cycles. Definitely. You know, learning to harness all that power and right at the bottom of a rep, You know, learning, learning to harness all that power and right at the bottom of a rep, you know, to explode and express that, that skill, boy, will that carry over into how heavy you can lift a single double or triple and a bench press or a squat. So even if we're not talking about expressing it on a field or a basketball court, just over the

average person. Yeah, that, I mean, the average person, and like, I was gonna try to get to that, too, it's important for them to incorporate because most injuries usually are related to an explosive movement like throwing something, or like reaching for something really quickly, or falling and trying to brace yourself and not really understanding how to control, your body as you're moving and accelerating at a higher speed than you're normally doing. So, to be able to incorporate aspects of that, even if I'm just generally trying to build muscle

or look better, is an important thing to consider. This is the one aspect of fitness, general gym fitness or whatever that trainers and people get wrong the most. I mean, training for explosiveness is so, I rarely ever see anybody doing it right. I really do. What they end up doing is they end up taking these awesome explosive movements and they treat them like,

well, remember, this is something that I think NASM did a really good job. Like this is level seven of the seven steps of how you should train somebody, which is typically a year tip of the pyramid. Yeah, you should not be trying to express power if you've got no stabilization, no control. Poor strength.

Yeah, poor strength. And what you catch people doing, and I think it's a good time to address the point that you made the other day, so that we didn't really answer the pistol squat and the jump squat question very well, because, and this is why, because right away, I couldn't help but envision the person

who was probably asking the question, is probably somebody middle aged, a little decondition, taking some kind of pump their brakes. Right, right, and so I feel bad that we probably didn't address that well because if someone's like Google searching or searching the podcast for how to do pistol squat and they get another thing, they gonna be a fuck mind pump.

They didn't answer this question at all. You know, all they did was tell me not to do it, which is terrible. But the truth of the matter is, somebody who's struggling to do a box squat, like they have no business, trying to express that power yet because they haven't done the prerequisites to get there.

And I think that's the thing you could, that's the, what would I say? Box squat. Box jump. Thank you. So that's the thing you go, that's the, what would I say? Box squat. Box jump. Thank you. So that's the thing that you gotta be careful about. And what I see in gyms that drive me fucking crazy is trainers will take a box jump or take a ice skater

or take a burpee or take some sort of this explosive movement and they superset it into bench press and bent over rows or a deadlift and I'm like, I'm cringing while watching because you see this person who's already fatigued from the deadlift, the overhead press or whatever movement they're doing. And then they go to this very, very technical movement, like an explosive movement. And I see that knees caving in, the feet rolling, just tired. Oh, they're, yeah, because they're exhausted.

It's already technical and hard And then you're fatiguing them on an exercise before that and then you're doing that and it's all in the pursuit of Burning more calories, which is just a it's a stupid way to do it It would be it would be much better off if you just had that person jog in place for 10 seconds because then you're at least not Creating bad patterns and you're not risking injury by doing just having them jog your place. If you want to improve your explosive ability, which is awesome and you're already fit and you've got all those prerequisites, you want to practice explosive movement. An explosive movement is not aerobic, it's anaerobic, meaning you're not trying to do

it under tons of fatigue because you're not trying to do it under tons of fatigue, because you're not able to, think about it this way. Think about trying to jump as hard as you can. Now think about being super exhausted and trying to jump as hard as you can. It's not the same power output, so you're not training. What's the quality of each one of those jumps if they're all in succession? See how quickly that goes down. Yeah, you're not training power. At that point, you're training stamina,

which is fine if that's what you want to train, but there's better ways of training stamina. But if you want to train power, then you practice power. So in the example of a box jump, you have the box in front of you. You're already fit, you've got good form already. You stand in front of it, you squat down,

and you jump up with good form as hard as you can, as explosively as you can, land on the box, you step down and you jump up with good form as hard as you can, as explosively as you can, land on the box, you step down and you wait. You'll wait until your heart rate comes down, till everything feels good, till you're able to generate maximum force again when you're ready and this could take as little as 30 seconds, it could take someone as long as a minute or two minutes, you do it again. You go down, explode up as hard as you can, jump, so you're practicing power, you do it again. You go down, explode as far as you can, jump. So you're practicing power, you're practicing exploding explosive power. The only program that we have that we

actually trained people on power is Math Performance. And if you go in Math Performance, if you already have the program, you'll see when you go and watch the videos and look at our demos and here we explain it, how we explain the program exercises That's exactly what we're teaching you because what we're trying to do is improve your power We're not just trying to make you Sweat and make you tired in which case there's much like Adam said far better exercises But power when trained in when it's appropriate It yields an amazing feeling. The ability to explode really makes you feel like

you can do almost anything. I mean, if you're good with your stabilization and you've got decent strength and you can explode, man, you're walking down the street and you wanna take off real quick because you gotta catch a bus or something, boom, you do it. If you wanna reach, you gotta grab your kid, like I said earlier and you're explosive, you do it.

Part of the scale that comes with explosive power is your body's ability to generate maximum force and not get hurt. That's really what it's all about. One of the limiting factors to power, because your body kind of has these limiting governors, kind of like a speed governor on your car. Like, have you ever tried to take your car To a certain speed and then all of a sudden the engine or kind of shuts off a little bit because it's got that governor on it Well, your body kind of has those as well and it will naturally prevent you from generating

Maximum force because it doesn't feel comfortable Generating any more force it feels that it's gonna the risk of injuries to your caps 75 miles an hour where now You really start working on that opening up those governors and now of sudden 100 120 miles an hour is available Well, isn't that what really under control? Isn't that what really separates us from most athletes It's just that ability to stretch that governor is not really like most of them have this ability to to reach its It's well, they do max max capacity right they do studies on Olympic athletes and they find that the average person can generate at will 70 60 to 70% of their strength right that's right whereas an Olympic lifter is closer to 90 95% so they have a

lot of muscle and they are strong but they also can maximize and generate all that force which is why when you look at them, they sometimes they don't look that impressive. Like you look at this guy who's doing this overhead squat with like 300, 400 pounds and you're like, dude, this guy doesn't. They're muscular, he's like 180 pounds. Yeah, he doesn't look massively strong. I mean, that's crazy. No, they're able to really tap into that.

And it's because their body feels safe, it feels stable and it feels safe and they've trained themselves. Yeah, years of training. feels safe, it feels stable and it feels safe and they've trained themselves. This is a year's treatment, there's a skill of it. Yeah, so many reps that the body, like it feels comfortable over and over, more and more comfortable where it allows that threshold to really go up. This is what happens when you read stories of, you know, moms lifting cars off their kids or people doing crazy shit and feats of strength under extreme states of duress. Cause one way you can overcome this governor

is if it's extreme stress. Like it's a, you know, you're fighting off a lion. Your body is probably gonna be like, well, you're gonna hurt yourself. You're gonna overwrite. Yeah, you're gonna hurt yourself but I told you guys a story about my dad when he was a kid. He was like 17 or 18 years old,

and his sister got stuck and pinned under a car, and he thought she got run over. He lifted the car off of her and rolled it on its side, and ended up hurting himself. He couldn't go to work for a week, because your body will shut off its governor's. It's kind of cool. But your body has those governors for a reason.

It doesn't want you to hurt yourself. And so what explosive training allows you to do, part of what it allows you to do is to learn how to explode and express that power safely, then your body feels able to do it, and you can express it all. So you're really reaching this, you're able to tap into this potential that your body actually has, which is fucking cool. Like imagine that right now, imagine right now if you're listening, that your maximum power output's 100, your body actually has, which is fucking cool. Like imagine that right now, imagine right now if you're listening that your maximum power up puts 100, your body only lets you tap into 60, and then all of a sudden you teach your body

to be able to get to 90. Now when you move and do things, like you're super human compared to how you were before. Whole new landscape. Now what do you think is the number one reason why people don't? I mean, let's be honest, it's not, I don't even think it's the top three programs that we sell.

Oh, mass performance? Yeah, mass performance. Challenging, like it's, do you think that's what it is? You really think it's unfamiliar? What I, what I think it is, is I think that, and I still hear this, right? So if we, and I get people that tell me that, oh, I try to get my friend to follow your program

or this or that, and they, you know, and they don't want to, because they're like, oh, that's not for me, I'm doing this, this is for me. Like, we still separate ourselves as like, oh, I'm a bodybuilder guy, and so I follow all the bodybuilder type of routines. Oh, I am a, you know, sports performance guy, so I follow all the sports performance stuff. How. Oh, I'm a sports performance guy, so I follow all the sports performance stuff.

How an identity. I'm identity and something. Yeah, I'm a mobility or flexibility guy, so all I do is do kind of the yoga type stuff. And so they, we identify with these camps, and then we're afraid to break out of it because we think that it's a different from my goals. This isn't what I, I'm looking to achieve.

When in reality, they all carry over into each other and they all benefit each other. I think it's this we have this I don't know if it's that we want to identify with a group or or fear of not being good at it. Yeah, I think I think it's different enough to where people are afraid. I think some people think, oh, I wanna just look amazing and this is more of a movement based, performance based program. So I'm gonna get this other one over here. That's for changing how I look.

Ironically, not realizing that, especially if you've been working out for a while. Yes. That if you do a program like mass performance, you'll look better than you did before because it's so different. It's so different, right? Or something you haven't done before.

And then as far as, I mean, I know we're talking about boring workouts. Like the number one comment I see from people who do Math Performance is the workouts are fun as hell because they're different. You're doing, using kettlebells and you're doing multi-planar movements.

You're doing the explosive movement. Land minds, you're not gonna see pliotype exercises or explosive movements in our other programs, but you will find that in mass performance because we're thinking of athletics. There's also a lot of people who like that, you know, that hit style durability type training where they're training high intensity

and they're going from exercise to exercise. That's also a mass performance, it's actually the last phase. That's that, we put that in there because our idea was to get an athlete to peak at the end of the program. Well, endurance is another tool or another attribute that you want to have as an athlete. And because we don't think it's a high priority for a lot of the other programs where we're building strength, or we're laying the foundation, but absolutely it's important if you're training for performance,

like, or you want to be an athlete, or even train like one, somewhere it needs to be in there. And that's where we felt it's best. Yeah, you want to maintain abilities and performance while you're performing. I mean, like endurance, it Yeah, you want to maintain abilities and performance while you're performing. I mean, like endurance, it just teaches you how to, you're teaching your body to, with, you know, be composed while all this stress is going on

and being able to keep yourself going through that process. I don't even like the word endurance because endurance for me paints the picture of, like a long distance runner. Yes, it's more stamina. Yeah. And stamina paints a better picture because the type of the physical pursuit that is aimed at with that last phase that we call, what do we call

strength durability? Uh-huh. People call strength durability. Is more along the lines of what you would see a wrestler having or More like an athlete like you're not just running in one place right sure it's Longer amounts of stress that you're that you're trying to just get through I think a bigger gas tank You know, I mean like building gas. Yeah, like you want to be able to Exert yourself maximally take a short break and do it again And you want to be able to do that over and over and over again with very minimal reduction in performance. And that's also a skill. I mean, if you really think about it,

ironically speaking, and of course, considering people are healthy because, you know, if people need correctional exercise and a lot of stuff, it's not the case. But if people are healthy, a program like mass performance because it's focused so much on movement, it's one of much on movement. It's one of those ones I think you finish with and you feel the best. You know what I mean? Because you can move, you've got mobility,

you've got stamina, strength. Oh, I think so. All those physical attributes. And it's cool because. And then jump back into a program where you're lifting barbells and you're doing things that are equally balanced again. And man, it's great,

because you feel that sort of control and that stability in the joints too that it provides. I do think it's very important though, if you are working out for a long time to change your goals, you have to, you can't possibly improve, continue to prove it the same. Well, I mean, even if you're not following in our maps programs, I don't think you should ever

have the same specific goal as far as, or no, better yet, you shouldn't be attacking a specific goal the same way for longer than about four to six weeks max. I mean, even if you're, even if you're, you have a goal of like a big goal, like losing a hundred pounds. And so you're like, ah, you know, guys, it sounds all great.

I don't really care to be like an athlete right now. I just wanna lose these hundred pounds because I think this is important to explain this, right? Cause if you're someone like this and you're listening and you're hearing us express the importance of training and performance and this guy or girl that needs to lose 100 pounds is listening like, listen,

I don't, that sounds all grand to train like an athlete and to do all these performance things and increase my gas tank. And I just wanna get these 100 pounds off and then I'll go visit what you guys are talking about. I think it's important to address that person that okay, that's great. You can have the same ultimate goal of losing this way, but to pursue it the same way

for an entire year would be a huge mistake. And a mistake that I see made a lot in the gym is you have this goal, whether that be losing 100 pounds, being a bodybuilder, you know, being the yoga master, whatever it is. And your approach to it is so myopically focused that you live in this same modality of training, weekend, week out, weekend, week out, because you have been told or you've read or you've heard that this is the best approach to do whatever your goal is. It's like, I did that for a long time.

I thought you had the same exact experience at them, where there was a rep range that built muscle. Yeah. That's the rep range I always did. Okay, I'll do that. All the fucking time. And guess what happened when I moved outside that rep range?

I built more muscle because I was so stuck in one, and that's one factor. I'm talking about a rep range. Right. I'm not even talking about changing exercises and focuses and goals and working on mobility versus working on strength versus working on power and speed and all that stuff. I'm not just a rep range. I went from always being five reps to going up to 12 to 15 reps and boom, muscle came on my body all of a sudden.

Well, I know a lot of times we talk about muscle and looking good and all these stuff, things, but like to your point of somebody that's trying to lose weight and trying to live a better life, like a program like this, or just like, when we started to talk about functional strength, like what does that even mean? Well, having abilities, like being able to do things and move certain joints of your body, pick things up,

you know, rotate your arm, be able to get in certain spaces, play with your kids and not feel like you don't have the ability to even play with your kids, hold them over your head. All these things you need to express what your joints are supposed to do. And something like this will help, if you add resistance to that after building up, the prerequisite to that, and then building the foundation of strength, we really need to keep that pattern of moving your body

in a certain way, where your joints are getting that stimulus in order for you to be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle and not be prone to overuse patterns where it ends up in injury. Well, that, that, geez, that functional training that really got messed up there for a little while, didn't it? Where all of a sudden it meant, you know, standing. Just meant juggling is shit and jumping crazy. Yeah.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Real functional training just maximizes your body's potential for movement, that's it. If you can maximize your body's potential for movement in a way that you can actually feel and express then you've improved your functionality. And that's what exercise should do. And at some point, if you just do the same thing

over and over again, you hit a wall. Even if you get stronger, even if you build more muscle, you start to hit a wall. And if you don't believe me, if you ever go watch a pro bodybuilder move around, you gotta have got a lot of muscle on his body, and he's lost a lot of function as a result of that extreme type of training.

I think you have to really, you have to really change your mindset to going into it. I mean, at least personally, I have. All these times that I have really switched up how I'm going to be training. I had to let go of a lot of things that I was attached to. I think that's where we struggle the most with. I went on a kick-to with the deadlifting thing for you. I had never applied myself to really build my strength and deadlifting.

It's been, intermittently thrown into my routine forever, just like squatting has been intermittently thrown in there. But never have I ran like a strength-based program to improve those specific lives. And I had to let go of all the body building sculpting type things that I love to do and the cable exercises and chasing the pumps and stuff that I was doing for four years consistently that built the systhetic physique.

And so I think when you change the focus, you have to also have this mental discipline of it's okay. Those things will come back so much faster. You know, it's not like it's okay that you don't see. You're now that you're doing this, you know, landmine lunge with a press over your head and you were just lunging maybe before with 135 or 200 pounds on your back.

And now you can barely do this landmine lunge to a press over your head with more than 25 or 30 pounds. You can't let that fuck you up. You can't allow that to go, well, this sucks because I suck at this. Instead, you have to flip that on a head like, whoa, I'm so weak. I'm learning something. I'm so weak here.

This is so challenging. Now the ability for me to progress here is so great. And that's when the results and all the benefits will really start to kick in, is not the, oh, attempting it every once in a while or doing what I was doing, which is intermittently throwing these movements in, but actually following a program or following something that you're consistently working towards that and allowing yourself some time to adapt and get better and then

get stronger and then see those results that you were driving towards so hard the other way. What's cool is that, you know, we have the Maps Performance promotion going on right now, right? So that's the program that kind of does all the things that we're talking about, but it's 50% off. So we made Maps Performance 50% off and we redid the whole program where with new models,

new demos, the Blueprints are easy to use, easy to read. If you already have Maps Performance, you get updated automatically. In fact, that's what we do with all our programs. Any program that you enroll in, if we ever redo it to make it look better or easier to use, you automatically get updated. We never charge anybody a second time for that. It's always you get it once and you keep it for life. But right now, it's half off, it's 50% off.

You got to go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and use the code green50, g-r-e-e-n-5-0. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having

sound 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. you