Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 975: Looking & Performing Like History's Greatest Athletes

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin assess the attributes of some of the greatest athletes in history and what we can take from them to improve our appearance and performance. The season for change and the optimal beard length. (2:31) The guys reminisce on their first kiss. (7:02) History’s greatest ‘Ancient Athletes’ and their attributes. (13:30) Looking & performing to achieve a balanced physique. (22:40) Why are we drawn to a muscular physique? (28:15) Getting someone reconnected to their body and the importance of treating new movements as skills. (32:40) The process of creating MAPS Performance: Train like an athlete. Perform like an athlete. (41:45) People Mentioned: NA Products Mentioned: February Promotion: MAPS Performance is ½ off!! **Code “GREEN50” at checkout** Organifi   **Code “mindpump” for 20% off** 10 Greatest Ancient Athletes - Listverse Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In the super awesome episode of The Mind Pump, in the first 15 minutes, you know, we have a lot of fun conversation. We talked about our first kisses. That was great. I talked a little bit about Adam's Awesome outfit.

He looks real nice today. Shaved off his beard to show off his wonderful cheeks. Handsomeness. Very nice. But then we get into talking about ancient athletes. I brought up this article on some

of the most decorated athletes of Greece and Rome, the sculptures, what they look like, why they looked the way they did, how they trained and women, which is cool. Yes, really awesome. And then that got us into talking about training for full spectrum athletic performance, what that looks like, why it's so fun,

and what kind of physique that produces, like think about this, if you went to the gym and stopped worrying about how you look and all you worried about was Am I stronger? Am I faster? Am I more agile? Do I have better mobility and can I get better stamina? If you're only worried about those things, what do you think the side effect of that would be?

Like what do you think you would end up looking like? Imagine if you trained that way and you got really good at those physical attributes, you probably look awesome and you'd look like somebody who could do all those things. Well, that's why we created math performance. It was designed with performance in mind. The goal is to get you stronger. The goal is to get you more mobile, more agile, better reactive strength, more stamina. The side effect of that is you look like

a balanced individual. You've got good muscle, good development, awesome core strength, and of course, incredible performance. That program is 50% off, but there's only four days left for this promotion. So maps performance right now, right? The second you can get for half-office normal price. If you go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and use the code green50GREN50, you'll get 50% off,

but you have to act quickly because in four days that promotion will be gone and then the price of math performance will be right back. It's a self-destruct. Self-destruct, we'll go right back to its normal price. So make sure you go check that out now. I'm gonna make a little compliment right now. Adam's looking really nice.

Yeah, I've been holding it in. My pajama pants? Well, there's a lot of things you're doing today. Oh, good. It's like, there's a pajama pants, but it's like. Golfing. Okay, golf, I was gonna say like a handbag, you know, like a lady's hair.

They're my champion retro pants here. Yeah, so you got the pants, which they look good. I'm not gonna lie, they look really good. Then you got the shirt and hat, very nice combination. And then you revealed the face a little more. Yeah, you know what's good about that? Shave the beard. Yeah.

Shave the beard. You are a handsome fellow. You look happier, I feel like. Well, I've accepted fat face currently. That's part of my motivation to get an even better shape right now. Bro, your fat face is working for you now, dude. You officially look a lot younger than your age

because of the chance. Younger and jollier. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, and I also wanted to start to cut back slowly on the resistance and the water, you know. Is that what you're doing for swimming? Yeah. So there's grades of it, right?

Yeah, exactly, there's levels. So I started the face, and we're gonna get that. I got the calf going on and stuff like that. We're all taking care of it, and then we'll eventually shape the chest. Put the spoiler on. Yeah, yeah. This is for the down, this is for, you know, to just give me a little bit of, you know,

your resistance down so I stick to the track. Yeah, but I call that pretty soon, they'll be racing stripes. Yeah. Yeah, do all those things. No, it's, I felt it was good for it. It's a nice, nice time for change. I've been rocking the beard for quite some time now. And sometimes it gets to be a pain in the ass.

It gets into things and that's always annoying. It gets into things or things get into it. No, it gets into things. Like if I'm going to eat something, like, you know, it's- It's old tentacles. Sometimes it gets, you know, in the food and that's a pain in the ass.

And then I'm messy. It's like, You know, when they do studies on beards, they do surveys to find if what do women like? Do they like beers, do they like clean shaven, and every survey average shows that women like really short beards for attractiveness. Long beards, they're less attracted to, but they say that the man looks more trustworthy. Like he's more like a father of the Santa Claus.

More like a father, like, oh, he's a trustworthy person because he's got a long beard. I think beards make you a crazier. That's what I would think too. It's not been lotin'. Yeah, that's, it's not very true. I don't trust that sort of a bitch. I would say that too, but no, they say that it does that.

You know what's funny too is when you have kids, if you, whatever your kids are used to, they don't like the opposite anymore. So when I first grew my beard, my daughter hated it. And then now if I shave it, she doesn't like it. She wants me to grow it back now. So I gotta have it. There's definitely an optimal length.

I've noticed, you know, in terms of me getting action. Like that's, like I got a great job of that. Yes, direct correlation with the, if it's a length of the beard. If she feels any like tickling of it in, you know, if I give her a kiss or something and it's like a game off. Like it's, it's, you guys do a lot of making out

before you have sex, is that what happens? I'm kind of I'm a kissing guy. Oh really? Yeah. Oh I like to prime it with that. I would have not guessed that you were a big makeup person You know, I I always like try and sell it she's not so like it I think that's probably why I'm always like if It's something that I have to sell I'm like more interested in it Yeah, you go hard like to like the tongue right away I try really to hold back from that. I've been criticized a bit with Too much of the two coming in there

Too aggressive too much tongue you gotta just get a warm it up Bro, yeah, let's go live for a while. Yeah, working on it. Get a warm it up slow. Yeah, no light touches There's nothing light. Straight to head. There's that in. There's that in the game. No, you can't go all in. There's nothing about just that's light at all.

I know, everything you do is full. Right now we're sitting here. We're, we're, we're, you know, I give you guys waters and you're putting your, you know, neutropic powder, the pure in there. Yeah. And, and just look, look down at the table. Can you tell which packet, which packet was Justin? Dude, I even had you like coaching me.

You're just, I fucked it up. Bro, you have, you have two gears. Yeah. I did. Sleep and then juggernaut. Ruh! Ruh! And fifth gear.

Yeah. Do you guys remember your first kisses and what, what those were like when you were, like the first real real kiss? Yeah, with, you know, with tongue and everything. Yeah, I you guys remember your first kisses and what what those were like? We know like the first real real kiss. Yeah, you know with tongue and everything. Yeah, I remember I remember it Took like a like an hour to work up to it, right? Like I knew I was gonna do it I knew I was going over to my girlfriend's house. I was in Seventh grade seventh grade going into eighth grade. It was that summer. Did your friends hype you up for it? Because mine I had like a

All before so the the first like just little tech kiss. Yes I remember that one too. I remember the pressure from my friends. There was pressure at school about it and your buddies telling you about, but when I went and did it, there was nobody around. I was just, I was going over to her house.

And this was your, you had not made out with her yet. Not at all, nothing. You knew you were going to. But I knew I was going to. Like it was the plan to go to her house, which that part of it, like I think that the friends on her side, you know plan to go to her house, which that part of it, like I think that

the friends on her side, you know, had talked to her about it. My friends have talked to me about it. The plan is I'm going over to do, I think, homework or some shit at your house. And we're going to make yeah, exactly. Yeah. And did you, so did you make the move? She make the move? It was understood. You know, it was kind of like, it was like a note, like what happened was we went over to her house and then we went for a walk, you know,

as the sun was going down, right? So it was getting darker and we're out walking where we knew we'd be alone. And so I remember walking with her, which probably felt like an eternity for me, you know, because I'm like mustering up the balls to make a move, right? And then I think I don't, what I don't remember is if I said anything, because I don't remember, I don't remember that part, but I do remember like stopping.

But once we stopped and like looked at each other, it was like, it was on, right? It was, I think I'm sure she had the same feeling as I did. Like we knew what we were here for. We knew what we're going to do. You're like 12 12th or 13 I don't remember ages of what yeah, I think that's what 7th going to 8th grade. I think it's like 12th 13 Yeah, is it really that young? Yeah, wow, I felt so much more mature 11 to 12 to get into seventh and then 12th 13 to That's the age of painful boners. That's when you It's too much you have to hide it in the belt. Yeah, I remember that

But at that point though, you're getting those, but I'm still at that point very scared to let her see that or touch that. You know what I'm saying? Like we just now mustered up enough balls to actually kiss her with my tongue. All the energy is just... Which at the first time you kiss with your tongue is hilarious

because it's like licking each other's faces. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, you just afterward you're like wiping it off. Yeah, but I think back, I'm faces. Yeah, that's awesome. Oh, yeah. I mean, you just afterward, you're like wiping it off. Yeah, but I think back, I'm like, oh, that's weird and gross. Like, there was a lot of times where we were trying to figure it out and it was just like so sloppy. Yeah, I was just like,

isn't it wrestling with your tongue? Isn't it funny how we are as humans? Like, that's not something, at least most parents that don't think teach their kids. Like, it's not something you're gonna have come. Do you know what the theory is? Some like TV shows. Yeah, what is the. Like, it's not something you're gonna have come. Do you know what the theory is? Some like TV shows. What is the theory?

The theory around that is you're actually tasting each other's to see if you're compatible. Yes, that sounds worse. It's not, first off, you get close enough to smell each other and smell is extremely important. Pharamone still play a role in human sexuality. And then taste, you're literally tasting to see if you're suitable mates, if you should,

and you're swapping bacteria, maybe even DNA. You have some Doritos in there. Oh god. There's even, there's even, there's even a hormones presence. Sorry, this guy's first kids' fist. I just wanna see. Just wanna see if we're not show fucking cheese Doritos.

Can I just eat it all? Like under the face. Dude, you fucking did that, bro. I know, yeah, but I still got, oh my god, I still got, you know, first face. Cheese Dorito I was the kid it was like I'd had the banana was out Oh, yeah, I had the banana and the pocket I brushed my teeth before I went over there like I'm you're all prepared Yeah, Justin just fucking slam the back of Doritos. I just went for it Yeah, the chili cheese flavored freedom chips Hey, baby. Maybe she liked it.

Maybe a salty kiss. Before he kisses her, he's like, hey, listen, you want some of these free does and she's like, yeah, and you're like, I ran out. However, you can still taste it. So my first kiss was eighth grade and it was this, I hadn't kissed anybody yet or I made out with anybody and there was this girl who I won't say her name because this meme,

but everybody knew that. She sure. No. I don't just guess it. Everybody knew that she just would make out with people. Like she was the girl. She was the girl that she was the slut in junior high. Yeah, I don't want to say that.

Let's be honest, you're not having sex, did so girls. This is true though. Yeah. Okay, you're not saying her name. You can say. The village by school of kissing. When you're that young, they're still the stigma being a slut still going on. Yeah, even though, even though you're true.

It's true. And it was given to her by, I mean, girls would say that. But anyway, so I was friends with her and we were cool. And so I told her, hey, I literally talked to her about it. I'm like, do you wanna, I need practice. We should make out. And she's like, okay. And so we went into, where were we? It was break and we snuck into one of the classrooms

and it was a band room and in the band room, there was the closet to go into the equipment was So we went in there and just made out and then it stopped because My I grabbed a boob so I moved a little too quickly. Oh she halted up the gun Yeah, I grabbed the boob a little bit and then she kind of moved my hand away and then I was like oops And then we start we say your first kiss you went first kiss tongue and then and you went boop the same time Tell it Justin he's aggressive You're like you're like barely you've never even hit it was automatic It was you are you're the you're the guy who hits a single everybody in the park knows as a single

You try and stretch it to a run it And the coaches like no he's like hold stay hold it like no I, and you're like, no, I can turn this into a double. No. I don't think I got a slight hit first. And they got the ball. They're just waiting for you to get to the second. No, I kind of moved my hand up. And then she left it there for like a good four seconds.

And I was like, oh. And then she kind of gently put her hand on mine and kind of moved it down a little bit. And then I got the, I got the hand like, oh shit. She's like that. And then I, yeah. And then I was like, let's leave. This is awkward. Yeah, oops. I messed up. But dude, we went, oh shit, she's in like that. And then I, yeah, and then I was like, oh, let's leave. This is awkward.

Yeah, oops. I messed up. But dude, we went, I mean, again, at that age, you make out and it's hard. It's like a hard make out. You're, it's like you think that's what you're supposed to do. Yeah, and you don't learn like way too long. Yeah, that's all you do.

Yeah, it's like, it's like dry. Oh, yeah. Oh my God, it's all your freedom. Yeah, yeah, I'm hungry again. Let's go find some food. Oh my God. It's all your freedom. Yeah. I'm hungry again. Let's go find some food. That is disgusting. Anyway, I'm going to change the subject. Thank you.

So I sent this link to Doug so he could post it up on the TV. What a great article that I saw was a risk for us from Magra. What is that? Okay. So I was up late last night and I wanted to look up ancient athletes, like famous ancient athletes, because the Romans and the Greeks kept record of some of the athletic exploits

that some of their gladiators did or their athletes and the Greeks in particular celebrated athletic prowess. How far back are we talking right now? Bro, these are thousands of years ago. Like here, I'll read one of them, right? There's records of them. Yes, and there's records of them on pottery, or on walls, sculptures, writings.

So the first one on the list is, or Sipis of Megara, was an ancient Greek athlete who won the stadium race of the 15th ancient Olympic Games. This is the 15th one ever. So this is a 720 BC. And he was a pioneer, you want to know why? He was the first athlete to run naked. What? Yeah, so it was like a thing that he, so he, this, now this was written in the, there was a guy, a famous guy who would report on the ancient Olympics. And so this is what he said, he says, my own opinion is that at Olympia, he, referring to or Sipis, intentionally let the girdle slip off him, realizing

that a naked man can run more easily than one, than one with wearing one of these things. So then all the athletes afterwards started to wear. But what I like about this is you look at the sculptures. Just freedom in that. And you can see the way that these athletes are built. So the one that Doug has up right now, these are all runners, right? And sprinters, like what do you notice about these? I think that's a big ass place.

Look at those small ways. Yeah, look at their hamstrings and their glutes. Yeah. You know, for the power. Then there was another one, Verazdot, who was an athlete from Armenia, who won the Olympic boxing tournament during the 291st Olympic Games. And you can see that the drink actually had like a wrist tape or something wrapped around their hands.

Well, they would hit each other and they would cover their hands in leather. That was the gloves that they would wear. And it was obviously to protect their hands. Well, they would hit each other and they would cover their hands in leather. That was the gloves that they would wear. And it was to obviously protect their hands. If anybody's ever, you know, you ever hit a face with your bare fist, you typically hurt yourself. It hurts yourself. And but again, look at the, look at the bodies on these sculptures. And you can see like what the boxers, that's why I was liking it. I was looking at the different athletes and what they look like. Right, right. Look at the core muscles. Like even back then and their carving and stone

and doing shit like you can still see the detail of what they're trying to convey in the nice colors. Well, so back then, and we're talking, again, thousands of years ago, in ancient Armenian royal and these aristocratic families, physical education of youngsters was a big deal. It was disciplined. It was something that was a part of their Your character building these kids were taught swimming boxing wrestling weightlifting and military

Exercises and he was one of these aristocrats who then competed as a boxer and would win then they have on this list they have Sinuska of Sparta who rode the chariot. You guys know that the chariot racers were like, that was like some of the most dangerous sport you could do. Now was it back then? Was it similar? Like we look at like, what do they call it? What are jockey, a jockey, right?

The little, the, like, it's so light and small. Like, was it, you think it was advantageous? No, so it would be little or? No, the mentality back then was that the ideal, and this lasted by the way for a long time, this lasted up until the early 19th, excuse me, the early 20th century, right? Where we thought the ideal athlete for any sport was a balanced athlete. And I think that's because of the tradition of these Olympic sports where these were soldiers,

these were, you know, these were all, they weren't professional athletes, although they did have professional athletes, but that really it was about being this balanced individual who could do all these different things. Of course later on we figured out that, you know, there's advantages based off of body types, all these types. Yeah, if you're tall, basketball, if you're short, being a off of body types all these types of things.

Yeah, if you're tall, basketball, if you're short, being a jockey, but the cherry, it was crazy. So what was crazy about this particular athlete, Siniska was that it was a woman. And, wow. Yeah, so men were the only ones allowed to compete for a long time, but then it changed, and then women started competing,

and she was the first person to win the games, and she did so with a four horse chariot and she had a male team that helped her with this but chariot racing was extremely dangerous they would fucking die all the time so as they go so fast they fall off yeah half of it was her just having to control all four of those at once

and then those sharp pin turns like so what was the most dangerous part was that the wheels would fall off and they'd smash all of it because it's like think about it as race like a race car driving like high high speed race car driving how dangerous that is like a lot of people don't realize That that's one of the more dangerous sports is when you're you know doing you know formula one or what's it called it here in the US the NASCAR NASCAR it can be quite dangerous. We have a lot of safeties and stuff, but you're pushing the limits. And these chariots were pushing the limits of speed at the time and handling.

And so, yeah, if they crashed or you fell out, I mean, you're going 40, 50 miles an hour, not a seat belt helmet. No, that's shit. I just say, the horses are going to stop you. We've evolved quite a bit on the safety side of things with road cages, ambulance radio. They probably didn't have a lot of that shit side of things with road cages, ambulance radio. They probably didn't have a lot of that shit back there. Yeah, highly doubt that.

It's pretty crazy. There's a lot of stuff that's in there that's like myth, like certain athletes, like, oh, this person also killed a lion. They don't know if that was true or not. I like personally looking at the boxers and the wrestlers. And then there was another sport called pink, I think it was called Pink Race, or Pink Race, where it was a no holds barred, anything goes, fighting sport.

Yeah, so you could do anything, I believe, except for bite or eye gouge. And when I was in, let's see, where did I go where I saw this sculpture? Oh, it was in France. I went to the Louvre Museum. You guys ever been to Louvre? Louvre Museum? Yeah. Spectacular. Anyway, it was in France. I went to the Louvre Museum. You guys ever been to Louvre? Louvre Museum? Yeah. Oh, spectacular. Anyway, there was a whole section

with these sculptures. And I remember there was this one tablet with a sculpture of an athlete who was in, you know, one of the champions of that sport. And he was doing this like wrestling move that I had learned like a month prior in Jiu-Jitsu. It was really cool to see that. Oh, this is thousands of years ago, they were doing the same kind of shit that we're doing now. But again, when you scroll through and you look at the pictures of these athletes, like these sculptures and these paintings, their bodies are, I mean, incredible, right? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting to see too, like how, you know, certain, certain ones like the boxing you see, definitely the core was very pronounced in their back. And, but yeah, you see that because they had to, I mean, they had to perform. They had to be able to like produce power. And so they have these like big legs and big core and big glutes, you know, to really help propel them and help with their performance.

Yeah. Milo is one of the more famous ones. You guys have heard of Milo before, right? That name is thrown around a lot for strength sports. And this was in, now this is what they had in, right? And if you look, see, look at that sculpture of them. I mean, remember, this is before protein powder, this is before protein. You know what I'm saying? Just a little bit, just a little bit before. Yeah, yeah. Just before, before traditional weight training.

I mean, look at the guys build. You know, in these sculptures, he looks fucking, and so what they wrote about them, they said that he was super intimidating. Very strong guy. He was one of the winningest wrestlers and fighters of his time. He was said to eat more than eight kilos of meat every day. So this is what's, so that's like 17, 18 pounds of meat.

I don't know how true that is, but apparently he was a massive muscular guy that was just undefeated. That's a lot of meat. That is a lot of meat. They also said that, and this is all legends, so we don't know if this is true or not, but he carried a bowl on his shoulders. Oh, that's the Milo story where he carried, he carried a young cap up the hill every day until it became a bowl, which is the, this is the first, remember that legend.

Yeah, do you want to try to do that yet? Oh, I feel like somebody's had to try to do that. Oh, I know, you carry a bowl. It's probably got you to start right now documenting it. Like literally, if you were to do that, right? Like for every single day, carry them like that. You know what's fascinating about that, writing. You would adapt for a while.

Well, you don't want to feed them corn, because it's gonna get big. The reason why it's fascinating is because that's the first recorded evidence of the concept of resistance training in terms of adding resistance as you get stronger. Because that's really what that was about, was about whether it was true or not,

it was a story of a boy carrying a calf overload. Exactly, it's the first recorded evidence of that. That's why so Milo, the name is used for springboard. That's where that name is. I was like, I know I've heard that somewhere too. It's from that story. But yeah, in those times, and for a long time, in athlete in any given sport,

what they would consider the ideal was just kind of this balanced individual who was well developed, who could do lots of different physical pursuits. Well, like you said, I think soldiers were the superstars of the day. You know, like they were the ones that were most revered, and so they had to have all these different attributes

because their life was threatened otherwise. They had to be able to throw and to be able to move at the turn of a hat. They had to be able to have all these abilities. It was life or death. For people to see how they train for that or how they go out to battle, I think was very interesting to people. Well, I think it makes me think about is, when I think about the times of my life when I truly felt my best, like just physically felt my absolute best,

it was when I was doing training in different physical pursuits when I had the ability to, so it wasn't extreme in any one of them. You know what I'm saying? Like, I've been extremely muscular Like I've been extremely muscular for my shape and size in genetics. I've also had lots of endurance at certain points, but when I felt my best, it was when I had the ability to perform relatively well and kind of all of them. I just feel the healthiest I felt like because my body could express itself in all these physical pursuits.

You know, when I was doing jujitsu, I felt like I was like that. I had the stamina from jujitsu. There were, you know, at least a couple days a week where I would do track work and I would do things like sprints and stuff like that. I started incorporating plyo a little later on. I always lifted weights and never stopped lifting weights. My flexibility training at the time,

I would use things like yoga and then the jujitsu was good for flexibility. And I just felt physically good. Now, the way I looked, I wasn't this huge muscular dude, I wasn't this, you know, small skinny, you know, endurance type of person. I just had this very balanced kind of physique. Well, you're building muscles, you know,

first to use it, you know, at that point. And I think that's where my mindset has always been. And I know that, you know, it can kind of veer more, like you start really noticing the change in your body. And so that can be a luring for a lot of people. Like, wow, look at what it's doing. And then you go more heavily at how I can, how I can enhance the effects of that.

But I mean, the actual original, like, pursuit of building muscle to, you know, do these types of sports or work activities, like all around the world, you see people that need to build muscle because they have really grueling work laborious jobs that they have to do. And so that they became sports because of like these types of like workloads that they had. Well, the truth is they all carry, or they all feed into each other and they all take away from each other. And the more energy you put into one training modality,

or specialty, the more it's gonna take away from the other things, right? And so learning to somehow diversify your training and focus is, I think, so ideal. And I think it's a very common thing that we see amongst just average gym goers that we gravitate towards one that we specifically love and like.

And it's normally the ones that we perform well. So that feeds into that even more. So it's like, oh wow, I found this way of training, whether it be CrossFit or whether it be strength training like for a power lifter or whether it be like a Bodybuilder, whatever it is for you or like an athlete where you're doing piled stuff, there's something that we all tend to kind of gravitate towards because we are naturally good at it or we enjoy it or it gave us the most results at that time.

And then we end up marrying that and we spend so much time in that modality that as we get better and better at that, it starts to take away more and more from the other modalities and other ways that your body can express itself. And one of the best things that we could always do, and I think I say this on the show all the time, is whatever you're not currently doing right now,

it's like, we all tend to do this, and I'm still guilty of this, and this is the type of shit that I'll have these weird moments where I'm like, I'm gonna swim. Why? Because I don't. And I have it in fucking forever. And I've never put a bunch of energy towards that

to see what kind of carryovers, inleads and everything else. Like, I always love to do that. And I'm very aware that I've fallen to that. Which, and I know a lot of people just ignore it or they're a, you know, or, oh, I'm like a bodybuilder. And so I only train this way. It's like, well, that's so ridiculous that you're not taking advantage of these, all these other ways to train the

body. It's only going to benefit you, not just how it expresses itself, but also how it looks to. There's so many carriers you get by the way, the way, the way, first off, celebrating someone's muscular appearance, there were definitely, you know, hints of it throughout a history, but it really didn't become a thing until the mid 20th century. Up until that point, it was about what you can do. You can do a handout, right? Yeah. He was the one that really kind of popularized that because he had the bronze cast made of his bike

because he was a specimen. Right, right. And until, I mean, for a long time, even bodybuilding shows involve some kind of physical you know, representate, like you'd have to go out and do handstands or do a lift or something like that. And then later they, and then another round they would look at you.

And it was weeder and those guys that kind of, you know, took all that stuff out and it became all about just the appearance. But you have to ask yourself, why do we find a muscular physique nice to look at? We're like, what is the purpose of that? And the reason we like it, period, why are we joined or drawn to it, both male and female? Right. Like, why do we like it? And it's because it represents health and it represents function. And what we've done is we've identified the aspects

of the physical human physique that we like and then we try to exaggerate them. So a lean, healthy, strong, functional man tends to have a nice shoulder to waist ratio. And of course, we try to make that extreme by shrinking the waist as much as possible, building the shoulders out as much as possible. But when you look at an athlete that's lean,

that's strong, let's say a wrestler or a boxer, they have well developed obliques. In fact, you look at all these sculptures, of these Greek sculptures. And these sculptors were, they were mirroring what they saw in these competitors and these athletes and gladiators. And if you look at their bodies, you'll see the muscles they put emphasis on.

They had incredible looking core muscles, especially the obliques. They had definitely strong legs and hips, but they weren't these huge bulging quads. They were just these nice, strong legs. They had great looking shoulders. They had defined chest, but not these huge boob pecs that you see on a lot of bodybuilder, you know, lifters. They had very muscular and strong backs. That was a very big one, especially the mid. They also know strong looking hands and forearms too.

Yes, strong hands and forearms. And when you look at athletes and people that can really fucking move, male and female, you notice these, I can always tell if somebody really has the kind of real world strength that you kind of like oh shit That's that's something you don't look out for by looking at their hips. They're back in their hands Those are like the three areas you could tell right away You can see like if somebody's muscular, but they've got weak looking hips. No, no glutes. They're back at shallow

Yeah, their obliques are small or whatever like okay They lift weights in the gym, but they probably aren't really super functional or super strong. And so training your body for function, here's the thing. If you train your body for aesthetics, you might get some aesthetics depending on how you do it. And you'll get some improvements in function. But sometimes just training for aesthetics can drive you in the wrong direction.

And you get neither. Training for function can drive you in the wrong direction, and you get neither. Training for function, when you do it right, like when you're measuring your performance, am I stronger, can't I move faster? Am I able to move in different directions? That always results in improvement in aesthetics. I also feel it extends the longevity of a little bit more of that extreme look,

like in terms of like being able to add on top of, like just focusing on the aesthetics of it. And there are tricks and there's ways to, you sort of get you there a little bit quicker in terms of like shrinking your waist and puffing your chest up and getting bigger arms. But as a side effect to that, sometimes this could accelerate joint pain.

This could add more pressure and weak points of your body that now you've sculpted and brought to a point where, physique wise, it looks like it mimics what this ultimate strong able-bod, it looks like it mimics what this ultimate strong, able-bodied fesequise looks like, but really, the infrastructure isn't there, the foundation isn't there underneath it, and where if we add the function to it, and then we also still want the look of it, and the ultimate fesequise look of it, we need to still build on that base.

When I first became a trainer, my early days of training were focused on changing how they looked, and that's how I would communicate my training. Later on, but the client's goal's never changed. It was always, everybody comes and sees me because they want to change how they look. That's just the most common goal.

But later on, I would change the way I communicate to helping them move better. So I'd say things like, we need to practice your squats, we need to get better at your squats. I wanna see better control here. I wanna see, okay, look at your strength. Wow, you're able to go deeper here. Now we can do behind the neck exercises

whereas before you couldn't. And they actually had better results. They would always have better results. And I think part of it is they would come to the gym and rather than thinking, today I need to hammer my legs because I was communicating in a particular way, they'd come in and be like, okay, I wanna get better at my squats.

I wanna get better at my squats. And it just resulted in better results. And I think it's because the attitude was different. You know what I'm saying? Like they wouldn't come in. Well, we've talked about this all the time that exercise is a skill. And that's how you would treat any other sport.

You would wanna practice that skill before you really get after anything I think that's the I think all of us trainers figured that out at one point when you've been training long enough that man If I just starved these people of calories and run them on a treadmill or do these things sure I could get this weight loss But to fundamentally change these people forever long term and what I what I started to realize too, is that most of the people that actually could have four personal training that were training with me were 35 and above successful, you know, had kids, aches and pains and the belly. It's like, I have this body, my body fat's higher than it's ever been. I'm not happy with that.

I don't like the way I look. I want to change that. My back hurts, my knees hurt, my shoulders hurt. All these things are bothering them. And when I get them to focus on the moving better and eliminating all the joint pain and that the body would come as a byproduct of working on those things and got them to focus more on that.

Like how's the shoulder feeling today? Oh, how the hips feeling today? Because those things are really easy to move the needle fast. Like if you have somebody who has a lot of dysfunction in their body, they sit at a desk all day long, they're really gotten out of shape for the last one to three to five plus years,

and you get them as a trainer and they come working out. Like sure, I could cut a bunch of calories, run them on a treadmill, and they can lose some weight over the course of weeks. But if I get them down and I actually start to get them reconnected to their body that they've been disconnected from for so long, and that's what's causing a lot of these,

the joint pain, the brositis, and all these aches that this nagging shit that they didn't have 10, 15 years ago, I can start to make that right away, change and feel different, and then you help them explain that to them, like, listen, I know you wanted to lose 30 pounds, and that was the main reason why you hired me right now,

but if we put our energy and focus on moving better and feeling better, it'll come off. And it was awesome because it kind of distracted them from that. That's exactly what I mean. It was a change, it's funny as you're talking, I remember, it wasn't that long ago that we, if someone had bad knees or a bad back

or a bad shoulder that we would say, okay, we can't do these exercises. They would literally come in and they'd hire you and be like, okay, do you have any, you know, it's part of your assessment, right? Do you have any injuries, aches of pain? Oh yeah, my right knee, I have arthritis in it, it hurts when I bend it beyond 90 degrees

and I have lower back issues. And then as a trainer, you'd be like, okay, we're not squatting, we're not lunging, we're not doing any deadlifts and we're not doing any bent over rows. Later on, I realized, no, no, no, if I wanted them to get better, the best possible thing I could do is get them to the point towards it to be able to do those things. And then when we would do them, it's so crazy. I had a lady that was responsible for a good 20% of my referrals. I was having this conversation with Jessica last night. You know, when you become a trainer, if you do it long enough and you do a good job, at some point, you know, I don't care how many clients you've had 100 clients, there's

like six clients that end up sending you all your clients. Like there's, you get those champions for you to end up sending you all, and I had one like that. And she was a, she was a surgeon, brilliant woman. And when she came to hire me, she said to me, just very bluntly, she's like, I can't, I can't do lunges and I can't do squats. I have bad knees. So those are the things I can't do. And I remember thinking like, okay, I got to, I'm going to have to convince this woman

that those things are going to be good for her and that we're gonna move her towards that. And so I did, I had these conversations with her and she's an intelligent person. And so she would, you know, kind of trust me and little by little, we had to point where we were doing lunges and squats and all these different exercises and her knees didn't bother anymore. And she ended up referring so many different people to me,

but it's all because we focus on the function. Of course, you know, through that process, I ended up losing weight and changing how she looked. The other thing too about working out in a way that is really focused on movement, most people don't realize it's more fun. Yeah, it's true. It's therapeutic.

It's more fun. The average client, this is why people like to do the stupid, you know, crazy workouts and classes where they're jumping around and they're doing, you know, where there's no structure. People like it because the stupid, you know, crazy workouts in classes where they're jumping around and they're doing, you know, where there's no structure. People like it because it's fun. When you go to the gym, just to change how you look, okay, today I got to do a little bit of biceps, a little bit of triceps, a little shoulder.

The average person tends to get bored. The average person has a lot of fun though when it's like movements, like okay, we're going to work on lateral movements. Today we're going to do, I'm going to teach you how to explode. Today we're going to focus on just strength. People tend to have a lot of fun with that. And so those kinds of workouts are just enjoyable. They're just more enjoyable. Well, just shift. It shifts the focus. I'm going through this right now. I don't know. You might have left Sal by this time, but yesterday I had Justin working with me

on working on my snatch. I want to get... working with me on working on my snatch. I want to get. Yeah, sorry. I'm not the snatched up. He sent me up for that. I did. So I'm your head pitch. That's great.

But I, you know, I've just now got to a point where I can do an overhead squat. Like that's never been in my exercises ever. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it before. I couldn't even get a squat, assagress, much less holding a barbell over my- Are you getting sore and different?

They were like, what do you feel? Oh yeah, where are you feeling? Oh my whole upper back feels crazy right now. So- And the side effect is probably gonna be more muscle in your upper back. Yeah, it's crazy to watch, cause again, watching you go through that whole progression

of just getting like depth in your squat and then solidifying that new range of motion and then working that up the kinetic chain up to the shoulders. Now the shoulder mobility is there and then you start working on the overhead squats. Now this is going to be the pinnacle of all of that work, it's cool to see. And it's now it's about like really being able to control not just the strength element of instability of it. Now we have to move quickly, stabilize and be loose. We need to be loose and be tight. We need to be tight. So it's a whole new thing.

And what I mean, I've shared some pictures, but man, I've been going for a couple of months now. And I haven't gone any heavier than what you've seen because when I go in to do this every time, I'm not looking at, I'm not measuring my success off of how I'd look or where my weight is. It's like the perfection of the movement. And so it's actually very therapeutic for me going to the gym right now, not concerned about those things. It's like, yeah, it's like, this is all I'm looking at. Like, I want to stick to landing.

I want to be comfortable in that position. I want to feel the ground evenly distributed on my feet. Like, I'm thinking about that. And what's been great is, I was so far away just a year or two ago from even being able to perform it, to just be able to perform it now, and there's plenty of little things that I know isn't perfect. And so every time I'm going into it,

it's more about that. I really feel like if we would all work on our movements like squatting, dead lifting, overhead pressing, some of these major lifts that have the biggest bang for your buck, if we treated it like that more often, I think that a lot of people would see some serious benefit versus letting our egos get in the way and thinking about what the guy next to me is doing

or what my buddy is pressing, because he's been pressing 315 and I'm barely doing 185. It's like, that's why I don't like partners because it fucks with your head like that. Even me, I don't wanna go practice my movement when I'm working on a workout partner. He wants to lift as heavy as he can and push as hard as we can. And I'm going to feed off that energy.

It's like, but that's not necessarily what's probably best for my body. What's best for my body right now is I have a goal right now to get to this point where I have incredible ankle mobility, incredible hip mobility, incredible shoulder and thoracic mobility. And I've busted my ass to get to this point. And now I'm

working. I'm trying to learn a move that expresses all of it at once so I can keep that in my routine. Yeah and I love that you brought this up because like this is why I have so many reserves and people start talking about power moves or Olympic lifting in general because they don't treat it like a skill. It's like a sacred thing to me. Like it's something where you, you're telling me that you've spent all those years of work on your body. You're so in tune with your body, strength wise and stability wise, and your mobility is in a place where your range of motion

is further than your average person to where I can express this movement in a fluid fashion. It looks pretty. There's a lot of nuances once you get up to that pinnacle of where power is the expression of all of those things harmoniously. It's a symphony versus just watching some garage band. For me, that all has to, it all leads into that ultimate apex. This reminds me of when all of us got together, early mind pump, and we all went off

to create the first program that we would all create together. Maps and a ball, I had written before, then we all got together and we want to write a program together I was excited because I had respected I Respect the hell out of you guys and your guys a skill and also the fact that your guys is skill level is different than mine in many different ways So I knew that I was gonna learn a few things and plus the fun aspect of sitting down and writing something and what we came up with was we wanted to come up with a program for based on performance. And I remember us sitting there thinking like because performance is a word that's used all the time, right?

And so we're like, okay, what do we mean by performance? Like there's so many different types of performance, so many different types of athletes, a basketball player is different than a football player, different than a swimmer or a runner. And so we were all sitting there, and I don't know if you guys remember, but I don't know who it was. I think it might have been me who was like, you know what, let's base this program

off of what the Greeks considered the ultimate athlete, the ancient athlete, what the person who could do all these different things, someone who could do this full spectrum of athletic performance, and that was a lot of fun. We sat down and then I remember we had to list out, this is just the process that we go through. We're like, okay, let's list the different attributes that we need to train for. And we came up with, it was max strength, that was the first one, right? Then it was

Max strength. That was the first one, right? Yeah. Then it was, what was it? It was reactivity, which was reactive strength. Yeah, which is basically proprioception, which was basically moving in multiple planes, multiple directions. Yeah, multiple strengths. Yes, yes. And then there was power, being able to explode, and then there was stamina.

There's stamina. And if you think about it, if you're, if you're, if you're thinking about a person who could do, if you're picturing like, okay, a person who can run, jump, lift, twist, bend, have lots of, like all these different attributes, those are the four. Right, with control, and then how to express that with power. Those are the four.

Like if you could create an athlete that would have all four of those things and had them all mastered. You'd have a badass on your hands. You'd have someone that you could put in any sport or do anything. And then we of course we talked about like what that person would end up looking like. And it was fun creating that program because then you know when we wrote each of those phases like okay now we're going to and then we had to order them like which one do we train

first, which one do we end with. Ultimately we decided that this would be a program that people could use off-season and then lead into a season. So we thought, okay, stamina would probably be the last thing then. And we'd want to build the base first, would be the strength and then move from there. It was fun creating those because creating maximal strength for a specific sport is different than trying to create general maximal strength. So then we had to do that and put that all together in the agility aspect. It was a blast.

It was awesome. You see how we dealt with load and how max strength, applying max strength, we want to really challenge that with load and then how we lighten the load because now we're expressing new movements that we need to get strengthened and support. And then even lighter on that for the full expression of power, we want to see the kinetic chain fully get involved and we want to see how quickly and how explosively you can get into these movements.

So when I was a kid, I was a huge comic book fan and I really liked a few characters. It was the incredible Hulk was one for, and then they went with Spider-Man. And I remember when we were creating this, we were thinking of like trying to think of an avatar, and the one that kept popping up in my mind was Spider-Man. Because when you read the comic books, Spider-Man's strong, he's got stamina,

but then you see him like jump and twist and get into these weird, flexible, mobile positions where he's like, you ever seen this picture of Spider-Man where he's shooting web between his legs or his upside down or whatever. And that's when we started coming up with the mobility sessions. Like, how are we going to get people to be able to have all these attributes, but then expand upon them so they can move in all these different ways? Because however awesome your strength is,

if you move outside of where you're at, yeah, yeah, it's 100% limited by what your joints can support and stabilize. So keeping that in mind, like it really doesn't do you a whole lot of good to be able to have this like, like this battery, this supercharged battery that I could access and deliver the most, you know, crazy amount of power to, but where

are you delivering it if there's cracks, you know, in the link? Well, this happens all the time to people who, who, who think that they're really fit, people who work out of the time and you'll hear these stories where, oh, you know, I, I work out a little time. It was really weird, but, you know, I reached back and behind the car, my daughter called out for me or whatever, I twisted, boom, my back went out or I went to the beach and I was throwing a frisbee

with my son and now my shoulder's fucked and these are very fit people. And what really would end up happening is they were just moving and trying to express speed and power and strength outside of where they had control. So think about this, if you're listening right now and you're thinking like you have a pretty good squat, and let's say your squat max is, I don't know,

300 pounds, let's say you're a man and you're like, oh, I could squat 300 pounds and I've got, I'm pretty strong. Just go two inches lower and see how strong you are. So you're, actually don't test that because you'll hurt yourself. Yeah, that's probably not good at that. You go two inches lower and you're fucked.

You're two inches, that's it. Two inches is nothing. So however strong you think you are, move outside of where you have control and you become a hazard to yourself. You actually lose strength and if you try to... Basically a new movement. It becomes a new movement. And so mobility work, what mobility work does

and why it's so valuable is it's trying to increase the capability of that strength that you have, that function that it's actually making you more functional in that sense. So it's great that you have all that strength, but how long can you express it? What ranges of motion can you express it in when you expand upon that reduces your risk of injury tremendously, but even better, you perform. I mean, you can fucking move in the real world,

and I think that's what, and I know the word functional has been perverted in our space, it's been abused for so long, but that's in my opinion what functional really means. It's like, how strong are you, and how strong are you in all these different ranges of motion, how fast are you in all these ranges of of motion? How fast are you in all these ranges of motion? How much control do you have?

No, this is one of the, I mean, this first of all, it's our baby, right? Because when you think about it, you created maps and a ball before anything. But this is the first thing that we all created together. And I know we took a lot, I mean, we took a lot of pride in everything that we do, but we hashed out a lot in this. And this is probably one of the more extensive programs because of the creativity of including the mobility work days within it and trying to complement everything that we were working on within the program.

So it has the most phases, it's got some of the most workouts, it's the most exercise. Does it have the most exercises in there? I think it does, right? Yeah. It's got a lot of movements that are not traditional in it. Right. It was definitely a lot of critical thinking went into building that. And I tell you what, man, I love it.

You followed it. Yeah, no, it was definitely one of the things. It was perfect timing for me. I've tried to incorporate everything that we've done, or that we've written into my own personal journey. And that one was easy for me to incorporate because it was a current focus of mine. After competing, I was heading in this direction of becoming more mobile and it just made sense

to train like that and use the program that we created. And it was a game changer for me. And I tell anybody that asked me about it and my process through, it's like, listen, this is one of those programs that I guarantee you if you just follow it. But you gotta stick to it, you have to put the work in, you gotta do the mobility days.

You can't just do it like trying to do the extra. You can't just do the workouts. Yeah, which is fine, it's great, it's still good workout, but the really the game changer is, in my opinion, is the mobility days that we created to complement the training that you were doing. If you actually do follow this entire thing for that 12-week process, by the time you finish this thing, holy shit, you will feel amazing. I look at it too with Annabalik in terms of

How we challenged what most people like that go to the gym, you know, and that their current program that they're in That that program really helped to challenge the capacity for them to generate You know power and utilize their CNS and really like stretch the capacity in that fashion. Whereas, you know, with performance, it's really stretching the capacity for movement potential. And so I'm now going to take this new attribute into, you know, if I've wanted to now express building upon that and building upon my body and my physique. That's where we, this is why we kind of put them in order of now, you know, aesthetic would be a great follow up for that. If now I want to, you know, really enhance the look of what I built. Oh, you build a base office.

And what's cool about it, because it was entirely focused on, like full spectrum human performance, the type of the muscles in the areas of the body that end up getting a lot of focus are the hips, the legs, the back. You get a lot of shoulder and upper back work in this program because those are the areas that really carry the brunt of human performance and movement. That's what you end up finding.

You end up finding at the end of this program like this, I've had a few power lifters do maps performance and a few competitors who I've actually worked with them through the whole program. And they're just like, the power lifters are like, man, my squats feel way more solid. My core is in power lifters sometimes neglect really working their core. The like, my stability when I deadlift and squat is through the roof. And then the competitors are just like, I didn't realize I build legs and delts

and upper back off of a program like this. Well, yeah, those are the areas that, those are the areas of the body that if you're fucking moving and you're expressing power and speed and all those, those are the areas that get used to. You're still for, yeah, see that. That's where you see it all. So anyway, program I'm very proud of,

of creating with you guys, it's probably one of the more fun ones. And you know, this article of these ancient athletes really just reminded me of it because as I'm looking, I've always been fascinated by these old sculptures and what these sculptures considered to be the ideal human physique

and how much that has, well how much of that has changed and how much of it hasn't changed. You know what I'm saying? Like what's changed now is if we've just gotten more extreme with the plastic and all that stuff, but what hasn't changed is if you take one of these sculptures of these ancient athletes and you turn them into it

a real person today and they were walking around, they'd be just as freaking impressive as they were. No fake butts back then. Yes, they were real. I mean, Milo and Hercules, those sculptures, you ever see the ass fake butts back. Yes, they were real. I mean Me lo and hercules those sculptures you ever see the ass on those glutes They could drive with those bad boys. Yeah, anyway, with that go to mindpumpfree.com and check out our free guides We got a lot of guides on there. They're absolutely for free

Some of you to build your arms your legs your core There's even one for personal trainers. You want to be a successful trainer? There's a guide on that too. Again, it's MindPumpFree.com and you can also check out our individual social media pages on Instagram. Justin can be found at MindPump Justin. My page is MindPump Sal and you can find Adam at MindPump Adam. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designedming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love

by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. and family. We thank you for your support and until next time this is Mindbump.