Finding the Right Exercise Balance

the average person simply doesn't exercise enough but here's another truth people that start working out often make this mistake they work out too much it's totally true look we answer live callers all the time here on the podcast and often times more often than not we have to tell people to scale down their training in order to get better results so in today's episode we're going to talk about how much you actually need to work out what is the right amount of working out to get the best results this this is um a really great topic I'm assuming this came from our customer service team it did okay yeah I meet with them once a week and um what they do is so the the the purpose of the meeting is to get a kind of keep my my finger on the pulse of with the average listener what kind of questions they have what they're looking for and what what often pops up is that a person will either get one of our programs and say you know what I want to trade this in for something with with more because this doesn't have enough and then you know my customer service team will tell me the person's background and I'll say wow that was definitely appropriate for them they're like yeah I got to convince them uh otherwise it just it just comes up so often that people overdo it and so I said you know what uh we should do an episode on this because there's so much misunderstanding around how much exercise you need to do to really optimize your body's progress and how it sometimes more is just more more you know or Worse yeah or yeah or detrimental so yeah that's the thing it's it doesn't seem logical in that regard because of we've talked about this all the time about you know having a hard work ethic and applying that towards uh your job or anything else any kind of pursuit you're doing but the the human body is is is very adaptive and uh there's a right dose for that to to optimize your results yeah such a a much needed conversation or lengthy conversation for a single point or topic um challenging though very curious to see how we navigate this because y the hardest part of describe it yeah the hardest part about this is we obviously understand that we're speaking to a large audience of people and I can think of a scenario where I need somebody to scale back volume in their training um and then and another example of where they need to scale up volume or another example where they need to stay right where they're at and that uh Avatar could look exactly the same right as far as on the outside right the age uh goal body fat percentage um even experience that could all be the same and I can see a scenario where I tell that person stay the course you're perfect right there or we need to cut back on some of your volume or it's time for us to ramp it up a little bit so that's what makes this really really idual I would say let's consider the average person the typical person that would used to hire s's trainers right cuz you know our expertise or should I say most of our experience was in training um everyday people so people who had jobs and families who you know working out wasn't their life and they were not uh you know going to become Fitness professionals so the average person who's got all these responsibilities I think we want to kind of consider that general idea um of an individual and and speak to them but you know before we get into it it is important to explain why your body changes in the first place with exercise like why does exercise if done properly why does it uh build muscle why does it burn body fat why does it improve my health why does it change the way I look or improve my performance and to put it plainly all of those things that I just mentioned are adaptations to stress MH so your body whenever you stress yourself out with a stresser your body uh so long as it's uh within the Realms of its capability aims to adapt to that so that that stressor is no longer a stressor right so if um doing 10 body weight squats is is a stressor for my body my body will adapt and strengthen itself so that if I did 10 body weight squats again it's not going to be a stressor anymore now and this is why then you would add more reps or you would add weight or make the workout more difficult so understanding this now this now you start to kind of see why um more isn't better because if you overwhelm your body's ability to adapt by just damaging or causing too much stress none of those adaptations will occur yeah um you you'll be overwhelmed your body won't be able to progress and so what this looks like is a lot of work with no progress what this looks like is a lot of sweat a lot of soreness a lot of exhausting workouts and progress that doesn't seem to match the effort and and now the problem with this like you said Justin is uh for a lot of other endeavors it just means you work harder but in this one working harder would make things happen even slower or stop or go backwards right so uh it's very important to understand the right dose when it comes uh to exercise and and and a big big big piece of the misunderstanding is the workouts that we tend to see on that you almost always see on social media or media in general are not the workouts that would that that would be appropriate for most people why because they're not fun they tend to be boring they don't look exciting the workouts we tend to see are the ones performed by Advanced athletes or people who dedicate their lives to Fitness um like bodybuilders Fitness competitors uh people who are Fitness professionals who you know literally sculp they literally uh take their entire day in their life and organize it around their ability to to work out and maximize that and they've been doing it for years so when you look at their workouts and you go man I want to look like that person so I need to work out the way they're working out right now couldn't be further from the truth if you did that nothing would happen to you you probably go backwards but but that's the idea that we have of what a good workout is if we saw just everyday average appropriate workouts advertised they would look very different it's hard to to parse out too like sometimes there's that appeal like of the discipline of it uh and I don't want to give up the discipline of it and if you were to Corner this individual and asked them like well don't you want to do what you know is best to get you those results to get to that uh desired outcome uh and sometimes you know surprisingly the answer would be like no I want to keep this discipline and I want to keep this routine and I want to make you know it almost becomes like an optic thing like I want people to see me this I want to be able to talk about doing this all the time and which is an interesting behavioral thing uh but what we're trying to explain is you know for your average person out there it's really astonishing how much less you have to do in terms of moving the needle I've always uh really liked your um tanning analogy even though it it's obviously an oversimplification of what's going on with exercise and that as but as far as the body's ability to adapt to a stress it's a really good example of of how easily you can overdo it uh underdo it and that there isn't there's an optimal sweet time and then there's a very wide range of an individ individual variance uh you know and I think tanning from the Sun and get and sitting out in it has a lot of variables comeing like do you regularly already sit in the Sun or do you never sit in the sun right do you are do are you already dark complected or you pale like Justin like are are you somebody who has been you know never do never in or never outside and then also in the first time you want to do it you want to spend an hour in the sun like and is there a better way I just like that it's a great analogy for a lot of different reasons because number one it does exemplify what you're saying right if if your goal is to get a nice tan uh and you want to get it in a in a quick and efficient way there's a right dose of sunlight any less than that it would happen slower any more than that and you would just cause more damage than your body can uh recover from and tan from and if you push it too far you just get a sunburn and if you get a sunburn you don't get a tan any faster anybody who's ever has sunburn will tell you you don't get a tan and it's the whole process right but but there's more right it's it connects even more because there's more to benefit than there's more benefits from get going in the Sun than getting a t that's right there's also the enjoyment of the sun there's V vitamin D the warmth you know maybe you're enjoying yourself so this is true for exercise as well there's lots of benefits to being active one of them are the physical changes uh that you see in your body one of them is the Aesthetics the fat loss the muscle building the athletic performance enhancement the other one is just moving and it's good for you or meeting up with people and so I don't want to discredit that as well but in today's episode I think it's important that we focus on what's the right dose or for most people that'll just get them the best physiological results and then if they want to do more or they want to enjoy themselves being active there's nothing wrong with that yeah but I think I think if a lot of people understood this they would actually they would look at their current routine and be like okay well I don't actually enjoy beating the crap out of myself and barely moving the needle um I think I want to start doing this well there's also a way to stay Super Active without like uh you know regressing right and so that's kind of something else we're trying to convey is like depending on your goal like you can maintain a really active lifestyle we're just trying to Aid and support that uh with the right adequate amount of dose resistance training you also you have to help me um you know I say it on the podcast all the time and this is a perfect opportunity to really unpack it for the audience which is the you've heard me repeat it probably a hundred times plus now which is the goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change like why is that true why is it true that we want to do as little as possible to elicit the amount of change like why not do a little more than that why why is it not for me to more if I can get possi more out of it and what I would start by saying is that you we can always keep adding more volume and more intensity uh it's in fact and going back to the tanning analogy it's like you getting out and getting uh five minutes of sunlight may not get you the exact dark color that you want but it's going to head you in you're going to go in the right direction you most certainly aren't gonna set you back it's not gonna set you back which I think is the the the challenge that most people have when they pursue their Fitness goal is they decide I have this goal which typically is not a short-term goal it's a long-term I need to lose 15 20 pounds I want to add all this muscle I want to run faster jump higher what it's a goal that takes time and then they right away go into applying yeah uh too much volume or too much intensity and why that's so bad is because now that we've overreached like that now our body's playing catchup and trying to recover and I'm not reaping any of the benefits of all that extra work where I'm way better off doing as little as possible POs to elicit some sort of change and then it's always like okay I could do a little bit more it looks like my body responded well I could do a little bit more well the quote the the quote is do the least amount of work to elicit the most amount of change to put it differently the perfect dose is what you're talking about today's giveaway on YouTube is the RGB bundle to enter to win leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it subscribe to this Channel and also turn on your notifications if you win we'll let you know in the comments section now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor in Terra they use peptide science if you've been hearing about peptides they use peptide science for skin care products and hair products this is advanced stuff you won't find it anywhere else this blows away the stuff you get over the counter if you want to see your skin change within two or three applications or if you want something that literally stops hair loss and gets it to regrow legitimately check out intera they're The Cutting Edge go to inas skincare.com that's ENT R A skincare.com mpm use the code mpm and get 10% off your order also because of this episode because we're talking about how much you should actually work out we have a program called Maps 15 it's 15 minutes a day it's one of our most popular programs it is very effective it's 50% off because of this episode so if you're interested go to Maps 15 minutes.com that's maps1 15 minutes.com uh and then use the code Maps 15 Maps 15 for the 50% off discount all right here comes a show it's the perfect dose so if you were to look at a uh if you were to look at a chart if I were to make it kind of a a graph here tight trting your way there on the on the very left left would be no exercise at all you're doing nothing on the very right would be the absolute most amount of exercise that your body can tolerate before it becomes dangerous okay so that's the graph the somewhere in the middle is the perfect dose going closer to the most you could tolerate doesn't get you there any faster if any if anything it gets you there slower each time you move away from perfect either to the left or to the right each time you move away from what is considered perfect you get results slower if you move towards the right a little bit and you keep moving in that direction you compromise your body's ability to adapt because now your body's just concerned with with healing and and I want to make this point healing and Recovery is not the same as adaptation and people confuse it you they think you got to focus on recovery we got to focus recovery yes this is true but healing would be like me scratching my skin and then my skin healing the damage adaptation would be my body then adding extra layers of skin to develop a callous so healing is getting me back to where I was so I I exercise and I cause a little bit of damage my body recovers and brings me back to where I was adaptation now is taking me to another level and so if I push Beyond what's ideal my body can't it it's not going to care as much about adaptation because healing is the number one priority if you damage your body with stress or you apply stress on your body rule number one is survive the stress rule number two is or priority number two is heal from the damage then priority three is adaptation the reason why it's in those in that order is because if it it can't possibly concern itself with ad adapting if you didn't survive definitely and if you didn't recover how can you adapt how can you get stronger if the damage is still there or how can you get faster or whatever right so that's the important thing to understand because what people tend to do is they tend to skip over this is whenever anytime anybody starts on a workout routine they're excited they're motivated this is part of the problem is that we we enter into it with a motivated state of mind I've never had anybody come in to buy a membership in a gym that I managed uh on you know after the new year right you get all these new year people that want to start working out everybody knows that gyms are at least 50% uh more people coming to work out right around you know in January so I've never had somebody come in in January and say hey you know what I'm getting started it's a New Year's resolution I haven't worked out for five years I'd like to come one or two days a week never it's almost always I'm on it now all right five days a week let's do this I want to go all out it's like okay you went from zero to five you've skipped over ideal and you are going to go towards what you can maybe tolerate or or even beyond that yeah but let me hammer home sticking to that analogy that you're using with that Spectrum what what why this is so important to lean towards the left of that line is like you said there's perfect down the middle right being in the middle and anything to the left or the right equals in uh less results than the most you can get the difference though between being to the right of that line versus the left is the right actually risk you going backwards yes losing possible muscle you not seeing results you plateauing the weight of the the being to the left of that line actually doesn't risk that you're not going to go backwards you may not have progressed as fast as you could have but at least you didn't go backwards cuz you didn't overreach and sacrifice anything so that's why you'll always hear us convey that message it's why we get teased on this podcast oh those guys are for beginners or oh those guys aren't for me it's like no yes we are it's said we this stands for somebody who's been doing this for 10 years or somebody who's been just getting started in this there is an optimal place for you to be and using Styles analogy of this spectrum anything left or of that does result in less less results than the most you can get but the difference between being to the right and the left is being to the right actually could set you backwards being to the left Won't Set You backwards it just means it's a little bit slower it's like getting playing Blackjack and you got you got 19 sitting in front of you and you hit oh now I'm out you know what I mean like you just overshot and you're completely out uh that's what a lot of people do when they go to exercise so another question might be uh well what's the right amount then like what's the right amount for me how do I know what the right amount is and and so on well there's things that cons a few things that you need to consider in order to make this decision and know where to start and then we'll kind of walk you through uh where to go from after you start right but first off start out with how often do you currently exercise this is an important question if the answer is I don't it takes more than nothing to get your body to progress that's right that's it that's right okay so that's that's where we're at if every single day you do zero push push-ups let's you just just you how many push-ups have you done the last you know year zero cool if you did one today that would move you forward it's one more than you normally would do literally now that might not be the perfect amount you might need more than one to get faster results but one is more than zero and one will get you some adaptation moving in the right direction that's literally by the way this isn't I'm not just making this up this I'm not being silly here I mean there's there are studies that show that a that a that a 15 to 30 second isometric contraction not even a rep just a hold right a 15 to 30 second isometric contraction twice a week one twice a week in a four- we or six week period you see strength increases now they took seditary individuals who didn't exercise at all but they saw strength increases because it was an isometric contraction they don't do so that's just to hammer home here the the amount of exercise you need to apply to your body if you're doing zero is just more than you're currently doing there is no such thing as too little but there's definitely such a thing as too much as long as it's more than you're currently doing and again I'm illustrating this so people kind of get the picture like okay this kind of makes sense and I used to surprise people all the time you know when I uh owned a studio years ago and people would hire me I would start them out with very little exercise now back in the day when I did not understand this as a trainer my goal was to get them in as much as possible Right Out the gates with what's the most you can come in what's the most amount of exercise and activity can we fit in to your schedule towards the end when I became good at what I did I was like I'm going to do the least amount and we're going to get results and you're going to feel it and it's going to feel easy and it's going to be easy to develop and then there's a whole there's a whole I mean we can go into all the the psychology about this as well it sucks to go all in get some results in then plateau and then be like I'm already working out as much as my schedule allow I got some results for 3 months and now nothing versus I started once a week I started seeing results I feel good I can I got I can add more if I want to it's a much better approach for longevity in terms of consistency as well but you got to ask your qu yourself that question how often do you currently work out and if it's zero you don't need that much to get to next next is is your sleep how good is your sleep because exercise is a stress on the body your body has to deal with that stress in the context of all the stress that you deal with so all stress on your body lack of sleep you know just a stressful day poor diet we're going to get into all this stuff right um uh you know if you're if you're exposed to environmental toxins if you have hormone issues if you're sick whatever these are all stresses on the body meaning your the amount of stress your body can handle on top of that starts to change dramatically if your sleep is not good um in some cases you're you you shouldn't add any exercise I mean if you're a new parent and you're averaging four or five hours of sleep every single night and you come to me and you say hey I just had a baby how old's your baby three months old how's your sleep we're not sleeping at all but I want to start working out I don't think you should you you can't handle in fact if we started exercising now you probably get sick so sleep if your sleep is great that means you can use more exercise if your sleep isn't so good I would start there and and and start to this is something that it's important that you pay attention to because as you get more experience uh in in in in lifting you have to learn how to eventually modify this almost on a week toe basis because at one point good point you figure out okay I figured out this is about the optimal place for me three days full body workout I go on two one hour long walks out of the week and this is just and I do my mobility and stuff this is like the perfect amount of exercise okay well in that is the perfect mind exercise at this current state or stage of your life then you have a baby and all of a sudden you're not sleeping at all that now changes so understanding that this sleep thing also adds a a a it's a moving moving and you got to be able to adjust with that and so back to my point of you know that optimal line you talk about being left or right of that why I also like to just to to flirt with being on the left side more than flirting with with the the right side is because of this variable right here because maybe you think oh yeah I know right the most optimal amount for me and then you just didn't get quite as good sleep well recover enough now it moved more to the left is where optimal is and so again if you're always flirting with over the line to the right and then you also add in oh and this just happened to be a bad night of sleep before I go do it now you really pushed beyond that limit so it's why I'm always communicating to the client that like hey man if we if we're doing more than what we did last week or the month before we're doing great I know you think you can do more or you can tolerate more but you're moving along we're progressing and we're doing more than we were last month there's no reason to rush that I think it's hard for people a lot of times to quantify stress especially if it's like psychological if it's relationship stress if it's uh you know work stress uh stuff that's not physical because I think everybody has this idea that it's it's more physical stress that we're trying to recover from in order to be optimal and progress forward all of that matters and and that this is just something that um you know that and this is why we we tend to lean a little bit more towards let's let's figure out like if if all these environmental factors have changed if you changed work if you're in a new school if you have a new relationship or you know something else is happening at the home uh let's bring let's bring the intensity down just a bit and then let's see where that that puts us because uh that dose now the right optimal amount has probably changed and we need to adjust to your point such a great Point Justin um you I talk on the podcast about like my favorite client or the clients that I tend to to gravitate towards were the you know type A high- performing CEO executive type of of people and one of the most challenging things for me to solve was they were executing the diet they were executing the exercise portion everything perfect and yet we were at these hard plateaus took me years of experience before I started to piece together like oh [ __ ] their level of mental stress from their work is so high and heavy for them that even my three-day a week workout and little diet that I have them on is just too much for where they're currently at and because I'm going they're in an office all day they're not physically doing something laborous I'm not overstressing the taxing the body physically I was totally underestimating the power of the mental stress on the body and its body and the body's ability to adapt to the physical stress and so that point is so important and I think you're right I think that we we always think of the physical stresses when you're talking about exercise adaptation and people discount how much marital issues issues with your kids issues at work play a factor in that total bucket of stress and how much it could push you over it's so I mean it's you I mean it's crazy to even think about but you know I could beat the crap out of somebody with a 4-Hour workout and I would not cause the same amount of stress as if they got a phone call that their kid died in a car accident or something like that sure it ravages it can has the ability to ravage your body anyway the point that we're trying to make is it's all stress it's all stress think of it all under this one category and exercise is in there as well and if you're already at your limit and you know this about yourself you have very little capacity to add uh extra stress to your life and your body will not progress as a result now if your stress is good and managed and you feel good legitimately now you have a higher capacity you can crank it up a bit for work volume same thing with diet diet's another one right diet um if you have a poor diet especially if you lack nutrients uh especially if you lack essential nutrients like micronutrients vitamins and minerals or uh macronutrients like proteins or fats which are both essential you're good luck trying to recover from even the easiest workout um if your body's lacking things that it absolutely needs to function it's not even going to think about adapting it's not going to think about going above and beyond because it could barely it's barely holding itself together and believe me this is more common than you think I would have people come in I have this was more common with women they would come in and they'd hire me we'd look at their diet and we figure out that their hair was falling out and that they had all these because their fat intake wasn't high enough or their protein like you're barely you're barely hitting essential protein we'd bump that up and then all like magic all of a sudden they can handle workouts whereas before the workout would just absolutely Crush you have to also understand okay we just went on kind of a tangent about stress and the different the physical the mental type of stress being in a calorie deficit for an extended period of time is also a stress to the body it is and so one of the biggest mistakes this to me I think this was one of my biggest advantages of uh competing at the professional level in men's physique was even at that level of experience with these competitors it was probably the biggest mistakes I saw across the board which was these guys would go on these diets for extended periods of time 8 12 sometimes 16 weeks in these cuts and they are ramping up cardio and ramping up intensity as they get to the show because they are looking at is like I've got 10 more weeks I got eight more weeks and they're wanting to push the intensity to get to this physique that they want to stage and it used to baffle me because I knew I know how the body adapts I understand how stress works for the body I understand that I already put all this hard work into building the muscle now here I am getting ready for the show I'm in a calorie deficit so I'm definitely stressing the body out I don't want to I got to be very careful with that line in the middle that optimal line we're talking about because if I push too much and I'm going to be keep flirting with over that I'm going to keep sacrificing muscle on the way and I'm going to I'm going to end up losing all the hard work that I put in the months before building that and that's a extreme example of competitors but this happens every day to the average person who doesn't even realize they're doing it too you bring me to an important Point Adam that I'm going to make right now an overstressed body is it wants to be underused and overfat so a body that has a lot of stress it wants an insurance policy against potential famine remember stress historically meant no resources so when you're under a lot of stress your body actually organizes its hormones and it organizes its metabolism in a way to where it wants to store body fat it also organizes those same things to pair muscle down because muscle in comparison to body fat is expensive requires resources so in your high stress situation strength and muscle go down and body fat wants to go up especially as a percentage of your body weight so then the reason why I'm saying this is to sell even harder to somebody you push Beyond what's ideal you'll make it harder to build muscle and burn body fat and if you go too far look I I'll tell you a story I've told this story before I had a woman that I trained one time it's the first time I experienced this where she did a lot of things right but we couldn't figure out what was going on uh and this is early days so early days as a trainer I thought the more the better the more than marrier and she was running I don't remember how many days a week four days a week she was training with me three days a week she was a high-powered executive and you know she was so perfect with everything with her diet that she got a certain level of Fitness that was pretty good but there was like this I I don't remember what it was like like like 12 or 13 pounds of body fat that just was stuck and she dropped her calories it wouldn't go anywhere and every time she Dro her calories she just lose muscle not the body fat couldn't figure out what the hell was going on and I I had a a cooworker that I worked with who was more on the functional medicine side at the time functional medicine wasn't really a thing this was the late 90s but this individual was ahead of the curve and I remember them saying she's too stressed she's too and they they sold it to me they literally explained the way I just explained it and said body wants to store body fat and they want to lose muscle so I convinced this woman to cut out most of her running and replace it with a form of yoga called Yen Yoga for anybody who's ever done Yen Yoga you burn zero calories when you do Yen Yoga it's not Power Yoga it's not flow it's it's literally you get into a yoga pose and you hold it for three minutes on the floor and you focus on your breath it's like it's like parasympathetic super relaxing you you burn more calories you know on a on a a really mild stroll okay so it's not a calorie burner and we did this and I convinced my my client I said let's give it a shot let's see what happens cutting out running burning less calories here's what ended up happening first of all she started feeling better she started feeling better she's like wow I feel better I'm going to continue doing this then I noticed her strength going up in the gym wow I'm getting stronger what's going on then I tested her body fat I don't remember how much long and it started going down she started losing the body fat that was so difficult for her to get rid of by working out less why because her body is she's not working with her body not against it so uh the point of this is is again doing more than is necessary won't get you there any faster for sure and if you push it hard enough it'll not only get you there slower it'll probably take things away from you so let's talk a little bit about what would now again there's there's a massive individual variance here okay so forgive us because we're not talking to an IND individual but we're going to generalize here what a good General exercise routine looks like for the average person that would give them what most people are looking for they want good muscle shape and strength they want to have decent mobility and good health not trying to get shredded not trying to look like a bodybuilder but rather I want to look like I work out and I want to be fit and healthy and I want it to fit my lifestyle and this is something I'm going to do long term and so here's what it's going to look like first let's start with just general activity this was something that I think all of us in here scoffed at in the early days as as personal trainers huge mistake we totally directed people the wrong way now looking back I'm like man this was a huge mistake and that is one of the best things you could do every single day just for activity is to walk more yeah there is absolutely nothing walks there is nothing better for your health uh in terms of just daily activity than trying to walk and there's a few reasons it's a low skill activity your risk your chance of injury either repetitive injury or acute injury is very low most people can walk so I'm not telling people to run who don't run or cycle who don't cycle it's also super convenient I'm not telling people to go power walk I'm literally saying walk throughout the day and then I tend to attach this to uh breakfast lunch and dinner and make it like a 10 or 15 minute walk after breakfast lunch and dinner and the health benefits of this are profound and it's easy to stay consistent because it's a few short walks consistent repeated movement creates momentum it's it's a it's a recipe for Success improves digestion it also is something that is not only burning calories okay but it's also something that's recuperative yes so something that you can do that's recuperative for the body and also helps you with your total calorie expenditure for the day improves digestion there's so many and walking tends to reduce stress so this is I'm glad you went this way too because one of the ways that I would I would guide clients that were wanting to do more and I didn't think they need to do any more but I also would wanted to encourage for more activity I almost always would default to just adding walk like so I had a client I'm training him two days a week I think as a trainer this is probably optimal where we need to be stress wise for them they're just getting really started we're seeing results I haven't seen any plateaus but they're like Adam I want to do more I want to do more I would normally encourage W this is like my favorite way to like because that is it has so many positive benefits for that person being like moving in the direction they want to move without risking us potentially tipping over the other side of that line so to me this is which is why I think it's funny to look back and think of your how were yeah how wrong I used to scoff at somebody that would say that when now it becomes not only the first thing that I normally recommended but also my default go-to when somebody is thinking I want to do more and I think we're in that sweet spot as far as the you know sending a signal to build muscle I will normally add days of you know 20 minute hourong walks before I decide let's train another another day of or let's let add another set orcise to the day that we're already training that's and we're not talking about a hardcore power walk it's a stroll you go on a walk and it's also antistress so walking in movement in this fashion doesn't really stress the body unless you're super super super seditary and you actually don't get up off the couch this could be like a hard workout on it own on its own but for the average person this is antistress in fact when I I would recommend this sometimes to clients as ways to dstress from work they had very high stress jobs I used to tell people break up your day by doing a few 10-minute walks and they be like my God it takes it makes such a big difference uh because just the way it activates the brain and some of the anti outside of your brain and into your body I think a lot of times people just don't uh give themselves that opportunity to really feel their way through this movement and use their body okay now let's get to the actual structured workouts this is where we get to strength training now the reason why we talk about strength training as the structured workout is because in comparison to all other forms of exercise strength training requires the least amount of time investment to give you the most results by far there's no form of exercise that will produce aesthetic Visible Changes in your body like strength training and a Time fortime basis it just doesn't there's nothing comes close to the effectiveness of strength training to sculpt and shape the body because of its muscle building effect muscle muscle is protective uh building muscle uh doesn't require a lot of volume in fact that data on it is actually remarkable every time I read studies on how little strength training you need it it still continues to blow me away in fact I saw one that talked about how much strength training you need to not lose muscle so every decade as you get older you lose I forgot what a certain percentage of muscle mass and strength and the study said something like once every two weeks or something like that like one strength training workout very basic every two or three weeks would prevent that so you need very little but ideally for most people the number that I'm going to give that gives people a lot of room in other words they could start as beginners with this and progress quite a bit without having to add more workouts is and I'm going to give my traditional answer and then I'm going to give my new answer which is which is more recent but my traditional answer was about two days a week two strength training workouts a week full body about 45 minutes each you could go really far with that with strength muscle muscle and fitness in fact I remember when Doug Doug is our producer he hired me years ago Fitness he had a background in Fitness hired me I convinced him to only train twice a week with me and we got him to a 405 pound deadlift and shredded and shredded shredded yeah at in in his late it was late 40s I believe uh at the time um just from two workouts a week with me and on his own he was doing things like walk I like when you share that story about Doug too because Doug is an example of somebody who uh had been working out for a very long time read all the magazines tried all the supplements tried all the different splits done all those things like that and I know that sometimes this conversation for some reason gets lost with people that have been Lifting for 5 or 10 years they think they're beyond this conversation and they figured this piece out and it's like no I can't stress enough to you how many people have shared the same Journey as Doug where they have been spinning their tires for 10 15 20 years in their lifting career and it's because they have never truly figured out that optimal dose for them and then when they do and they unlock that the potential is crazy and I mean if you've been listening to us for a long time you've seen those pictures of what Doug Doug looked like at his his late 40s and what he was doing performance- wise Not only was he performing in the gym and super strong but he also was shredded too so the average person may not believe this but I guarantee you two days a week of a full body routine or a 5day 15minute type of a routin that's the second part and that's something new for for me that I that that that I recommend now because you could do 2 45 minute workouts a week or you could do five 15 to 20 minute workouts a week where you're doing like one or two strength training exercises now the reason why I we advocate for that now is because it tends to promote a more consistent Behavior it's actually easier to get somebody to do one to two strength training exercises most days than it is to get them to do 45 minutes twice a week so from a consistency perspective that 15minute workout where you do a couple strength training exercise and you're done you're 15 minutes a day okay that equals the same general volume as the two workouts a week but people tend to be more consistent with it and if they miss a workout they miss 15 minutes not 45 minutes and it tends to produce better results from a strength training perspective now here's just some more personal anecdote we created a program called Maps 15 based off of this Model Adam was experimenting with training this way and he kept coming in every day you guys this is blowing me away can't believe how great I feel this is blowing me away blowing I applied a similar uh style of training cut my volume way down and I hit a PR and deadlifts um that I had hit ear originally in my early 30s I hit it at 40 years in my 40s um it works and it feels easier even though the total volume is the same as the two longer workouts because it's just a couple it's just a couple exercises a day for the average person if the average person you know 5 days a week did just two appropriate strength tring exercises they could go very far with how their body progresses and how and the type of results that they get I believe it's called the Dunning Krueger effect where it's the more you know uh how you realize like the less you know the less you know and it's it's really like that's why this isn't just for beginners what we're talking about this is something that um a lot of advanced lifters they'll get through the grind of realizing that they've been way overdoing it and they're going to regress and find out how optimal uh that is for them specifically and it's just it's always a humbling effect but it's something to consider yeah it's amazing in fact uh you know how long has it been since we launched Mass 15 it's been a little while now yeah it was right after Max was born oh yeah so it's like uh four years so right does that sound right d four years that sounds long one of our most time does fly one of our most popular programs and one of the most talked about programs by people who have experience it is not we were getting we get messages from people with that program who've been working out for years and years and years and thought Oh I you know I just did this cuz I just wanted a break or I just whatever and they're like uh I'm progressing faster than I have ever or in a long time I didn't know this could happen that's uh the power of appropriate application of strength training now again we're not saying don't be active every day at Daily activity is important but when it comes to structured strength training very little is needed to progress and then remember this if you're spending 15 to 20 minutes a day doing strength training and you're like I want to do more if you're stronger you are doing more this is where people need to understand adding more workouts or more volume that doesn't have to happen till much later you could simply add weight to the bar and guess what you've just done progressed your workout and added more by the way with Maps 15 minutes because of this episode uh we're going to give you half off just for this episode so if you want to get a program like that laid out for you where you do a couple exercis a day to kind of experience what we're talking about you go to Maps 15 minutes.com and then use the code Maps 15 that gives you 50% off also you can find us on Instagram Justin is at mind pump Justin I'm at mind pump to Stephano and Adam is at mind pump Adam [Music]

the average person simply doesn&#39;t exercise enough but here&#39;s another truth people that start working out often make this mistake they work out too much it&#39;s totally true look we answer live callers all the time here on the podcast and often times more often than not we have to tell people to scale down their training in order to get better results so in today&#39;s episode we&#39;re going to talk about how much you actually need to work out what is the right amount of working out to get the best results this this is um a really great topic I&#39;m assuming this came from our customer service team it did okay yeah I meet with them once a week and um what they do is so the the the purpose of the meeting is to get a kind of keep my my finger on the pulse of with the average listener what kind of questions they have what they&#39;re looking for and what what often pops up is that a person will either get one of our programs and say you know what I want to trade this in for something with with more because this doesn&#39;t have enough and then you know my customer service team will tell me the person&#39;s background and I&#39;ll say wow that was definitely appropriate for them they&#39;re like yeah I got to convince them uh otherwise it just it just comes up so often that people overdo it and so I said you know what uh we should do an episode on this because there&#39;s so much misunderstanding around how much exercise you need to do to really optimize your body&#39;s progress and how it sometimes more is just more more you know or Worse yeah or yeah or detrimental so yeah that&#39;s the thing it&#39;s it doesn&#39;t seem logical in that regard because of we&#39;ve talked about this all the time about you know having a hard work ethic and applying that towards uh your job or anything else any kind of pursuit you&#39;re doing but the the human body is is is very adaptive and uh there&#39;s a right dose for that to to optimize your results yeah such a a much needed conversation or lengthy conversation for a single point or topic um challenging though very curious to see how we navigate this because y the hardest part of describe it yeah the hardest part about this is we obviously understand that we&#39;re speaking to a large audience of people and I can think of a scenario where I need somebody to scale back volume in their training um and then and another example of where they need to scale up volume or another example where they need to stay right where they&#39;re at and that uh Avatar could look exactly the same right as far as on the outside right the age uh goal body fat percentage um even experience that could all be the same and I can see a scenario where I tell that person stay the course you&#39;re perfect right there or we need to cut back on some of your volume or it&#39;s time for us to ramp it up a little bit so that&#39;s what makes this really really idual I would say let&#39;s consider the average person the typical person that would used to hire s&#39;s trainers right cuz you know our expertise or should I say most of our experience was in training um everyday people so people who had jobs and families who you know working out wasn&#39;t their life and they were not uh you know going to become Fitness professionals so the average person who&#39;s got all these responsibilities I think we want to kind of consider that general idea um of an individual and and speak to them but you know before we get into it it is important to explain why your body changes in the first place with exercise like why does exercise if done properly why does it uh build muscle why does it burn body fat why does it improve my health why does it change the way I look or improve my performance and to put it plainly all of those things that I just mentioned are adaptations to stress MH so your body whenever you stress yourself out with a stresser your body uh so long as it&#39;s uh within the Realms of its capability aims to adapt to that so that that stressor is no longer a stressor right so if um doing 10 body weight squats is is a stressor for my body my body will adapt and strengthen itself so that if I did 10 body weight squats again it&#39;s not going to be a stressor anymore now and this is why then you would add more reps or you would add weight or make the workout more difficult so understanding this now this now you start to kind of see why um more isn&#39;t better because if you overwhelm your body&#39;s ability to adapt by just damaging or causing too much stress none of those adaptations will occur yeah um you you&#39;ll be overwhelmed your body won&#39;t be able to progress and so what this looks like is a lot of work with no progress what this looks like is a lot of sweat a lot of soreness a lot of exhausting workouts and progress that doesn&#39;t seem to match the effort and and now the problem with this like you said Justin is uh for a lot of other endeavors it just means you work harder but in this one working harder would make things happen even slower or stop or go backwards right so uh it&#39;s very important to understand the right dose when it comes uh to exercise and and and a big big big piece of the misunderstanding is the workouts that we tend to see on that you almost always see on social media or media in general are not the workouts that would that that would be appropriate for most people why because they&#39;re not fun they tend to be boring they don&#39;t look exciting the workouts we tend to see are the ones performed by Advanced athletes or people who dedicate their lives to Fitness um like bodybuilders Fitness competitors uh people who are Fitness professionals who you know literally sculp they literally uh take their entire day in their life and organize it around their ability to to work out and maximize that and they&#39;ve been doing it for years so when you look at their workouts and you go man I want to look like that person so I need to work out the way they&#39;re working out right now couldn&#39;t be further from the truth if you did that nothing would happen to you you probably go backwards but but that&#39;s the idea that we have of what a good workout is if we saw just everyday average appropriate workouts advertised they would look very different it&#39;s hard to to parse out too like sometimes there&#39;s that appeal like of the discipline of it uh and I don&#39;t want to give up the discipline of it and if you were to Corner this individual and asked them like well don&#39;t you want to do what you know is best to get you those results to get to that uh desired outcome uh and sometimes you know surprisingly the answer would be like no I want to keep this discipline and I want to keep this routine and I want to make you know it almost becomes like an optic thing like I want people to see me this I want to be able to talk about doing this all the time and which is an interesting behavioral thing uh but what we&#39;re trying to explain is you know for your average person out there it&#39;s really astonishing how much less you have to do in terms of moving the needle I&#39;ve always uh really liked your um tanning analogy even though it it&#39;s obviously an oversimplification of what&#39;s going on with exercise and that as but as far as the body&#39;s ability to adapt to a stress it&#39;s a really good example of of how easily you can overdo it uh underdo it and that there isn&#39;t there&#39;s an optimal sweet time and then there&#39;s a very wide range of an individ individual variance uh you know and I think tanning from the Sun and get and sitting out in it has a lot of variables comeing like do you regularly already sit in the Sun or do you never sit in the sun right do you are do are you already dark complected or you pale like Justin like are are you somebody who has been you know never do never in or never outside and then also in the first time you want to do it you want to spend an hour in the sun like and is there a better way I just like that it&#39;s a great analogy for a lot of different reasons because number one it does exemplify what you&#39;re saying right if if your goal is to get a nice tan uh and you want to get it in a in a quick and efficient way there&#39;s a right dose of sunlight any less than that it would happen slower any more than that and you would just cause more damage than your body can uh recover from and tan from and if you push it too far you just get a sunburn and if you get a sunburn you don&#39;t get a tan any faster anybody who&#39;s ever has sunburn will tell you you don&#39;t get a tan and it&#39;s the whole process right but but there&#39;s more right it&#39;s it connects even more because there&#39;s more to benefit than there&#39;s more benefits from get going in the Sun than getting a t that&#39;s right there&#39;s also the enjoyment of the sun there&#39;s V vitamin D the warmth you know maybe you&#39;re enjoying yourself so this is true for exercise as well there&#39;s lots of benefits to being active one of them are the physical changes uh that you see in your body one of them is the Aesthetics the fat loss the muscle building the athletic performance enhancement the other one is just moving and it&#39;s good for you or meeting up with people and so I don&#39;t want to discredit that as well but in today&#39;s episode I think it&#39;s important that we focus on what&#39;s the right dose or for most people that&#39;ll just get them the best physiological results and then if they want to do more or they want to enjoy themselves being active there&#39;s nothing wrong with that yeah but I think I think if a lot of people understood this they would actually they would look at their current routine and be like okay well I don&#39;t actually enjoy beating the crap out of myself and barely moving the needle um I think I want to start doing this well there&#39;s also a way to stay Super Active without like uh you know regressing right and so that&#39;s kind of something else we&#39;re trying to convey is like depending on your goal like you can maintain a really active lifestyle we&#39;re just trying to Aid and support that uh with the right adequate amount of dose resistance training you also you have to help me um you know I say it on the podcast all the time and this is a perfect opportunity to really unpack it for the audience which is the you&#39;ve heard me repeat it probably a hundred times plus now which is the goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change like why is that true why is it true that we want to do as little as possible to elicit the amount of change like why not do a little more than that why why is it not for me to more if I can get possi more out of it and what I would start by saying is that you we can always keep adding more volume and more intensity uh it&#39;s in fact and going back to the tanning analogy it&#39;s like you getting out and getting uh five minutes of sunlight may not get you the exact dark color that you want but it&#39;s going to head you in you&#39;re going to go in the right direction you most certainly aren&#39;t gonna set you back it&#39;s not gonna set you back which I think is the the the challenge that most people have when they pursue their Fitness goal is they decide I have this goal which typically is not a short-term goal it&#39;s a long-term I need to lose 15 20 pounds I want to add all this muscle I want to run faster jump higher what it&#39;s a goal that takes time and then they right away go into applying yeah uh too much volume or too much intensity and why that&#39;s so bad is because now that we&#39;ve overreached like that now our body&#39;s playing catchup and trying to recover and I&#39;m not reaping any of the benefits of all that extra work where I&#39;m way better off doing as little as possible POs to elicit some sort of change and then it&#39;s always like okay I could do a little bit more it looks like my body responded well I could do a little bit more well the quote the the quote is do the least amount of work to elicit the most amount of change to put it differently the perfect dose is what you&#39;re talking about today&#39;s giveaway on YouTube is the RGB bundle to enter to win leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it subscribe to this Channel and also turn on your notifications if you win we&#39;ll let you know in the comments section now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor in Terra they use peptide science if you&#39;ve been hearing about peptides they use peptide science for skin care products and hair products this is advanced stuff you won&#39;t find it anywhere else this blows away the stuff you get over the counter if you want to see your skin change within two or three applications or if you want something that literally stops hair loss and gets it to regrow legitimately check out intera they&#39;re The Cutting Edge go to inas skincare.com that&#39;s ENT R A skincare.com mpm use the code mpm and get 10% off your order also because of this episode because we&#39;re talking about how much you should actually work out we have a program called Maps 15 it&#39;s 15 minutes a day it&#39;s one of our most popular programs it is very effective it&#39;s 50% off because of this episode so if you&#39;re interested go to Maps 15 minutes.com that&#39;s maps1 15 minutes.com uh and then use the code Maps 15 Maps 15 for the 50% off discount all right here comes a show it&#39;s the perfect dose so if you were to look at a uh if you were to look at a chart if I were to make it kind of a a graph here tight trting your way there on the on the very left left would be no exercise at all you&#39;re doing nothing on the very right would be the absolute most amount of exercise that your body can tolerate before it becomes dangerous okay so that&#39;s the graph the somewhere in the middle is the perfect dose going closer to the most you could tolerate doesn&#39;t get you there any faster if any if anything it gets you there slower each time you move away from perfect either to the left or to the right each time you move away from what is considered perfect you get results slower if you move towards the right a little bit and you keep moving in that direction you compromise your body&#39;s ability to adapt because now your body&#39;s just concerned with with healing and and I want to make this point healing and Recovery is not the same as adaptation and people confuse it you they think you got to focus on recovery we got to focus recovery yes this is true but healing would be like me scratching my skin and then my skin healing the damage adaptation would be my body then adding extra layers of skin to develop a callous so healing is getting me back to where I was so I I exercise and I cause a little bit of damage my body recovers and brings me back to where I was adaptation now is taking me to another level and so if I push Beyond what&#39;s ideal my body can&#39;t it it&#39;s not going to care as much about adaptation because healing is the number one priority if you damage your body with stress or you apply stress on your body rule number one is survive the stress rule number two is or priority number two is heal from the damage then priority three is adaptation the reason why it&#39;s in those in that order is because if it it can&#39;t possibly concern itself with ad adapting if you didn&#39;t survive definitely and if you didn&#39;t recover how can you adapt how can you get stronger if the damage is still there or how can you get faster or whatever right so that&#39;s the important thing to understand because what people tend to do is they tend to skip over this is whenever anytime anybody starts on a workout routine they&#39;re excited they&#39;re motivated this is part of the problem is that we we enter into it with a motivated state of mind I&#39;ve never had anybody come in to buy a membership in a gym that I managed uh on you know after the new year right you get all these new year people that want to start working out everybody knows that gyms are at least 50% uh more people coming to work out right around you know in January so I&#39;ve never had somebody come in in January and say hey you know what I&#39;m getting started it&#39;s a New Year&#39;s resolution I haven&#39;t worked out for five years I&#39;d like to come one or two days a week never it&#39;s almost always I&#39;m on it now all right five days a week let&#39;s do this I want to go all out it&#39;s like okay you went from zero to five you&#39;ve skipped over ideal and you are going to go towards what you can maybe tolerate or or even beyond that yeah but let me hammer home sticking to that analogy that you&#39;re using with that Spectrum what what why this is so important to lean towards the left of that line is like you said there&#39;s perfect down the middle right being in the middle and anything to the left or the right equals in uh less results than the most you can get the difference though between being to the right of that line versus the left is the right actually risk you going backwards yes losing possible muscle you not seeing results you plateauing the weight of the the being to the left of that line actually doesn&#39;t risk that you&#39;re not going to go backwards you may not have progressed as fast as you could have but at least you didn&#39;t go backwards cuz you didn&#39;t overreach and sacrifice anything so that&#39;s why you&#39;ll always hear us convey that message it&#39;s why we get teased on this podcast oh those guys are for beginners or oh those guys aren&#39;t for me it&#39;s like no yes we are it&#39;s said we this stands for somebody who&#39;s been doing this for 10 years or somebody who&#39;s been just getting started in this there is an optimal place for you to be and using Styles analogy of this spectrum anything left or of that does result in less less results than the most you can get but the difference between being to the right and the left is being to the right actually could set you backwards being to the left Won&#39;t Set You backwards it just means it&#39;s a little bit slower it&#39;s like getting playing Blackjack and you got you got 19 sitting in front of you and you hit oh now I&#39;m out you know what I mean like you just overshot and you&#39;re completely out uh that&#39;s what a lot of people do when they go to exercise so another question might be uh well what&#39;s the right amount then like what&#39;s the right amount for me how do I know what the right amount is and and so on well there&#39;s things that cons a few things that you need to consider in order to make this decision and know where to start and then we&#39;ll kind of walk you through uh where to go from after you start right but first off start out with how often do you currently exercise this is an important question if the answer is I don&#39;t it takes more than nothing to get your body to progress that&#39;s right that&#39;s it that&#39;s right okay so that&#39;s that&#39;s where we&#39;re at if every single day you do zero push push-ups let&#39;s you just just you how many push-ups have you done the last you know year zero cool if you did one today that would move you forward it&#39;s one more than you normally would do literally now that might not be the perfect amount you might need more than one to get faster results but one is more than zero and one will get you some adaptation moving in the right direction that&#39;s literally by the way this isn&#39;t I&#39;m not just making this up this I&#39;m not being silly here I mean there&#39;s there are studies that show that a that a that a 15 to 30 second isometric contraction not even a rep just a hold right a 15 to 30 second isometric contraction twice a week one twice a week in a four- we or six week period you see strength increases now they took seditary individuals who didn&#39;t exercise at all but they saw strength increases because it was an isometric contraction they don&#39;t do so that&#39;s just to hammer home here the the amount of exercise you need to apply to your body if you&#39;re doing zero is just more than you&#39;re currently doing there is no such thing as too little but there&#39;s definitely such a thing as too much as long as it&#39;s more than you&#39;re currently doing and again I&#39;m illustrating this so people kind of get the picture like okay this kind of makes sense and I used to surprise people all the time you know when I uh owned a studio years ago and people would hire me I would start them out with very little exercise now back in the day when I did not understand this as a trainer my goal was to get them in as much as possible Right Out the gates with what&#39;s the most you can come in what&#39;s the most amount of exercise and activity can we fit in to your schedule towards the end when I became good at what I did I was like I&#39;m going to do the least amount and we&#39;re going to get results and you&#39;re going to feel it and it&#39;s going to feel easy and it&#39;s going to be easy to develop and then there&#39;s a whole there&#39;s a whole I mean we can go into all the the psychology about this as well it sucks to go all in get some results in then plateau and then be like I&#39;m already working out as much as my schedule allow I got some results for 3 months and now nothing versus I started once a week I started seeing results I feel good I can I got I can add more if I want to it&#39;s a much better approach for longevity in terms of consistency as well but you got to ask your qu yourself that question how often do you currently work out and if it&#39;s zero you don&#39;t need that much to get to next next is is your sleep how good is your sleep because exercise is a stress on the body your body has to deal with that stress in the context of all the stress that you deal with so all stress on your body lack of sleep you know just a stressful day poor diet we&#39;re going to get into all this stuff right um uh you know if you&#39;re if you&#39;re exposed to environmental toxins if you have hormone issues if you&#39;re sick whatever these are all stresses on the body meaning your the amount of stress your body can handle on top of that starts to change dramatically if your sleep is not good um in some cases you&#39;re you you shouldn&#39;t add any exercise I mean if you&#39;re a new parent and you&#39;re averaging four or five hours of sleep every single night and you come to me and you say hey I just had a baby how old&#39;s your baby three months old how&#39;s your sleep we&#39;re not sleeping at all but I want to start working out I don&#39;t think you should you you can&#39;t handle in fact if we started exercising now you probably get sick so sleep if your sleep is great that means you can use more exercise if your sleep isn&#39;t so good I would start there and and and start to this is something that it&#39;s important that you pay attention to because as you get more experience uh in in in in lifting you have to learn how to eventually modify this almost on a week toe basis because at one point good point you figure out okay I figured out this is about the optimal place for me three days full body workout I go on two one hour long walks out of the week and this is just and I do my mobility and stuff this is like the perfect amount of exercise okay well in that is the perfect mind exercise at this current state or stage of your life then you have a baby and all of a sudden you&#39;re not sleeping at all that now changes so understanding that this sleep thing also adds a a a it&#39;s a moving moving and you got to be able to adjust with that and so back to my point of you know that optimal line you talk about being left or right of that why I also like to just to to flirt with being on the left side more than flirting with with the the right side is because of this variable right here because maybe you think oh yeah I know right the most optimal amount for me and then you just didn&#39;t get quite as good sleep well recover enough now it moved more to the left is where optimal is and so again if you&#39;re always flirting with over the line to the right and then you also add in oh and this just happened to be a bad night of sleep before I go do it now you really pushed beyond that limit so it&#39;s why I&#39;m always communicating to the client that like hey man if we if we&#39;re doing more than what we did last week or the month before we&#39;re doing great I know you think you can do more or you can tolerate more but you&#39;re moving along we&#39;re progressing and we&#39;re doing more than we were last month there&#39;s no reason to rush that I think it&#39;s hard for people a lot of times to quantify stress especially if it&#39;s like psychological if it&#39;s relationship stress if it&#39;s uh you know work stress uh stuff that&#39;s not physical because I think everybody has this idea that it&#39;s it&#39;s more physical stress that we&#39;re trying to recover from in order to be optimal and progress forward all of that matters and and that this is just something that um you know that and this is why we we tend to lean a little bit more towards let&#39;s let&#39;s figure out like if if all these environmental factors have changed if you changed work if you&#39;re in a new school if you have a new relationship or you know something else is happening at the home uh let&#39;s bring let&#39;s bring the intensity down just a bit and then let&#39;s see where that that puts us because uh that dose now the right optimal amount has probably changed and we need to adjust to your point such a great Point Justin um you I talk on the podcast about like my favorite client or the clients that I tend to to gravitate towards were the you know type A high- performing CEO executive type of of people and one of the most challenging things for me to solve was they were executing the diet they were executing the exercise portion everything perfect and yet we were at these hard plateaus took me years of experience before I started to piece together like oh [ __ ] their level of mental stress from their work is so high and heavy for them that even my three-day a week workout and little diet that I have them on is just too much for where they&#39;re currently at and because I&#39;m going they&#39;re in an office all day they&#39;re not physically doing something laborous I&#39;m not overstressing the taxing the body physically I was totally underestimating the power of the mental stress on the body and its body and the body&#39;s ability to adapt to the physical stress and so that point is so important and I think you&#39;re right I think that we we always think of the physical stresses when you&#39;re talking about exercise adaptation and people discount how much marital issues issues with your kids issues at work play a factor in that total bucket of stress and how much it could push you over it&#39;s so I mean it&#39;s you I mean it&#39;s crazy to even think about but you know I could beat the crap out of somebody with a 4-Hour workout and I would not cause the same amount of stress as if they got a phone call that their kid died in a car accident or something like that sure it ravages it can has the ability to ravage your body anyway the point that we&#39;re trying to make is it&#39;s all stress it&#39;s all stress think of it all under this one category and exercise is in there as well and if you&#39;re already at your limit and you know this about yourself you have very little capacity to add uh extra stress to your life and your body will not progress as a result now if your stress is good and managed and you feel good legitimately now you have a higher capacity you can crank it up a bit for work volume same thing with diet diet&#39;s another one right diet um if you have a poor diet especially if you lack nutrients uh especially if you lack essential nutrients like micronutrients vitamins and minerals or uh macronutrients like proteins or fats which are both essential you&#39;re good luck trying to recover from even the easiest workout um if your body&#39;s lacking things that it absolutely needs to function it&#39;s not even going to think about adapting it&#39;s not going to think about going above and beyond because it could barely it&#39;s barely holding itself together and believe me this is more common than you think I would have people come in I have this was more common with women they would come in and they&#39;d hire me we&#39;d look at their diet and we figure out that their hair was falling out and that they had all these because their fat intake wasn&#39;t high enough or their protein like you&#39;re barely you&#39;re barely hitting essential protein we&#39;d bump that up and then all like magic all of a sudden they can handle workouts whereas before the workout would just absolutely Crush you have to also understand okay we just went on kind of a tangent about stress and the different the physical the mental type of stress being in a calorie deficit for an extended period of time is also a stress to the body it is and so one of the biggest mistakes this to me I think this was one of my biggest advantages of uh competing at the professional level in men&#39;s physique was even at that level of experience with these competitors it was probably the biggest mistakes I saw across the board which was these guys would go on these diets for extended periods of time 8 12 sometimes 16 weeks in these cuts and they are ramping up cardio and ramping up intensity as they get to the show because they are looking at is like I&#39;ve got 10 more weeks I got eight more weeks and they&#39;re wanting to push the intensity to get to this physique that they want to stage and it used to baffle me because I knew I know how the body adapts I understand how stress works for the body I understand that I already put all this hard work into building the muscle now here I am getting ready for the show I&#39;m in a calorie deficit so I&#39;m definitely stressing the body out I don&#39;t want to I got to be very careful with that line in the middle that optimal line we&#39;re talking about because if I push too much and I&#39;m going to be keep flirting with over that I&#39;m going to keep sacrificing muscle on the way and I&#39;m going to I&#39;m going to end up losing all the hard work that I put in the months before building that and that&#39;s a extreme example of competitors but this happens every day to the average person who doesn&#39;t even realize they&#39;re doing it too you bring me to an important Point Adam that I&#39;m going to make right now an overstressed body is it wants to be underused and overfat so a body that has a lot of stress it wants an insurance policy against potential famine remember stress historically meant no resources so when you&#39;re under a lot of stress your body actually organizes its hormones and it organizes its metabolism in a way to where it wants to store body fat it also organizes those same things to pair muscle down because muscle in comparison to body fat is expensive requires resources so in your high stress situation strength and muscle go down and body fat wants to go up especially as a percentage of your body weight so then the reason why I&#39;m saying this is to sell even harder to somebody you push Beyond what&#39;s ideal you&#39;ll make it harder to build muscle and burn body fat and if you go too far look I I&#39;ll tell you a story I&#39;ve told this story before I had a woman that I trained one time it&#39;s the first time I experienced this where she did a lot of things right but we couldn&#39;t figure out what was going on uh and this is early days so early days as a trainer I thought the more the better the more than marrier and she was running I don&#39;t remember how many days a week four days a week she was training with me three days a week she was a high-powered executive and you know she was so perfect with everything with her diet that she got a certain level of Fitness that was pretty good but there was like this I I don&#39;t remember what it was like like like 12 or 13 pounds of body fat that just was stuck and she dropped her calories it wouldn&#39;t go anywhere and every time she Dro her calories she just lose muscle not the body fat couldn&#39;t figure out what the hell was going on and I I had a a cooworker that I worked with who was more on the functional medicine side at the time functional medicine wasn&#39;t really a thing this was the late 90s but this individual was ahead of the curve and I remember them saying she&#39;s too stressed she&#39;s too and they they sold it to me they literally explained the way I just explained it and said body wants to store body fat and they want to lose muscle so I convinced this woman to cut out most of her running and replace it with a form of yoga called Yen Yoga for anybody who&#39;s ever done Yen Yoga you burn zero calories when you do Yen Yoga it&#39;s not Power Yoga it&#39;s not flow it&#39;s it&#39;s literally you get into a yoga pose and you hold it for three minutes on the floor and you focus on your breath it&#39;s like it&#39;s like parasympathetic super relaxing you you burn more calories you know on a on a a really mild stroll okay so it&#39;s not a calorie burner and we did this and I convinced my my client I said let&#39;s give it a shot let&#39;s see what happens cutting out running burning less calories here&#39;s what ended up happening first of all she started feeling better she started feeling better she&#39;s like wow I feel better I&#39;m going to continue doing this then I noticed her strength going up in the gym wow I&#39;m getting stronger what&#39;s going on then I tested her body fat I don&#39;t remember how much long and it started going down she started losing the body fat that was so difficult for her to get rid of by working out less why because her body is she&#39;s not working with her body not against it so uh the point of this is is again doing more than is necessary won&#39;t get you there any faster for sure and if you push it hard enough it&#39;ll not only get you there slower it&#39;ll probably take things away from you so let&#39;s talk a little bit about what would now again there&#39;s there&#39;s a massive individual variance here okay so forgive us because we&#39;re not talking to an IND individual but we&#39;re going to generalize here what a good General exercise routine looks like for the average person that would give them what most people are looking for they want good muscle shape and strength they want to have decent mobility and good health not trying to get shredded not trying to look like a bodybuilder but rather I want to look like I work out and I want to be fit and healthy and I want it to fit my lifestyle and this is something I&#39;m going to do long term and so here&#39;s what it&#39;s going to look like first let&#39;s start with just general activity this was something that I think all of us in here scoffed at in the early days as as personal trainers huge mistake we totally directed people the wrong way now looking back I&#39;m like man this was a huge mistake and that is one of the best things you could do every single day just for activity is to walk more yeah there is absolutely nothing walks there is nothing better for your health uh in terms of just daily activity than trying to walk and there&#39;s a few reasons it&#39;s a low skill activity your risk your chance of injury either repetitive injury or acute injury is very low most people can walk so I&#39;m not telling people to run who don&#39;t run or cycle who don&#39;t cycle it&#39;s also super convenient I&#39;m not telling people to go power walk I&#39;m literally saying walk throughout the day and then I tend to attach this to uh breakfast lunch and dinner and make it like a 10 or 15 minute walk after breakfast lunch and dinner and the health benefits of this are profound and it&#39;s easy to stay consistent because it&#39;s a few short walks consistent repeated movement creates momentum it&#39;s it&#39;s a it&#39;s a recipe for Success improves digestion it also is something that is not only burning calories okay but it&#39;s also something that&#39;s recuperative yes so something that you can do that&#39;s recuperative for the body and also helps you with your total calorie expenditure for the day improves digestion there&#39;s so many and walking tends to reduce stress so this is I&#39;m glad you went this way too because one of the ways that I would I would guide clients that were wanting to do more and I didn&#39;t think they need to do any more but I also would wanted to encourage for more activity I almost always would default to just adding walk like so I had a client I&#39;m training him two days a week I think as a trainer this is probably optimal where we need to be stress wise for them they&#39;re just getting really started we&#39;re seeing results I haven&#39;t seen any plateaus but they&#39;re like Adam I want to do more I want to do more I would normally encourage W this is like my favorite way to like because that is it has so many positive benefits for that person being like moving in the direction they want to move without risking us potentially tipping over the other side of that line so to me this is which is why I think it&#39;s funny to look back and think of your how were yeah how wrong I used to scoff at somebody that would say that when now it becomes not only the first thing that I normally recommended but also my default go-to when somebody is thinking I want to do more and I think we&#39;re in that sweet spot as far as the you know sending a signal to build muscle I will normally add days of you know 20 minute hourong walks before I decide let&#39;s train another another day of or let&#39;s let add another set orcise to the day that we&#39;re already training that&#39;s and we&#39;re not talking about a hardcore power walk it&#39;s a stroll you go on a walk and it&#39;s also antistress so walking in movement in this fashion doesn&#39;t really stress the body unless you&#39;re super super super seditary and you actually don&#39;t get up off the couch this could be like a hard workout on it own on its own but for the average person this is antistress in fact when I I would recommend this sometimes to clients as ways to dstress from work they had very high stress jobs I used to tell people break up your day by doing a few 10-minute walks and they be like my God it takes it makes such a big difference uh because just the way it activates the brain and some of the anti outside of your brain and into your body I think a lot of times people just don&#39;t uh give themselves that opportunity to really feel their way through this movement and use their body okay now let&#39;s get to the actual structured workouts this is where we get to strength training now the reason why we talk about strength training as the structured workout is because in comparison to all other forms of exercise strength training requires the least amount of time investment to give you the most results by far there&#39;s no form of exercise that will produce aesthetic Visible Changes in your body like strength training and a Time fortime basis it just doesn&#39;t there&#39;s nothing comes close to the effectiveness of strength training to sculpt and shape the body because of its muscle building effect muscle muscle is protective uh building muscle uh doesn&#39;t require a lot of volume in fact that data on it is actually remarkable every time I read studies on how little strength training you need it it still continues to blow me away in fact I saw one that talked about how much strength training you need to not lose muscle so every decade as you get older you lose I forgot what a certain percentage of muscle mass and strength and the study said something like once every two weeks or something like that like one strength training workout very basic every two or three weeks would prevent that so you need very little but ideally for most people the number that I&#39;m going to give that gives people a lot of room in other words they could start as beginners with this and progress quite a bit without having to add more workouts is and I&#39;m going to give my traditional answer and then I&#39;m going to give my new answer which is which is more recent but my traditional answer was about two days a week two strength training workouts a week full body about 45 minutes each you could go really far with that with strength muscle muscle and fitness in fact I remember when Doug Doug is our producer he hired me years ago Fitness he had a background in Fitness hired me I convinced him to only train twice a week with me and we got him to a 405 pound deadlift and shredded and shredded shredded yeah at in in his late it was late 40s I believe uh at the time um just from two workouts a week with me and on his own he was doing things like walk I like when you share that story about Doug too because Doug is an example of somebody who uh had been working out for a very long time read all the magazines tried all the supplements tried all the different splits done all those things like that and I know that sometimes this conversation for some reason gets lost with people that have been Lifting for 5 or 10 years they think they&#39;re beyond this conversation and they figured this piece out and it&#39;s like no I can&#39;t stress enough to you how many people have shared the same Journey as Doug where they have been spinning their tires for 10 15 20 years in their lifting career and it&#39;s because they have never truly figured out that optimal dose for them and then when they do and they unlock that the potential is crazy and I mean if you&#39;ve been listening to us for a long time you&#39;ve seen those pictures of what Doug Doug looked like at his his late 40s and what he was doing performance- wise Not only was he performing in the gym and super strong but he also was shredded too so the average person may not believe this but I guarantee you two days a week of a full body routine or a 5day 15minute type of a routin that&#39;s the second part and that&#39;s something new for for me that I that that that I recommend now because you could do 2 45 minute workouts a week or you could do five 15 to 20 minute workouts a week where you&#39;re doing like one or two strength training exercises now the reason why I we advocate for that now is because it tends to promote a more consistent Behavior it&#39;s actually easier to get somebody to do one to two strength training exercises most days than it is to get them to do 45 minutes twice a week so from a consistency perspective that 15minute workout where you do a couple strength training exercise and you&#39;re done you&#39;re 15 minutes a day okay that equals the same general volume as the two workouts a week but people tend to be more consistent with it and if they miss a workout they miss 15 minutes not 45 minutes and it tends to produce better results from a strength training perspective now here&#39;s just some more personal anecdote we created a program called Maps 15 based off of this Model Adam was experimenting with training this way and he kept coming in every day you guys this is blowing me away can&#39;t believe how great I feel this is blowing me away blowing I applied a similar uh style of training cut my volume way down and I hit a PR and deadlifts um that I had hit ear originally in my early 30s I hit it at 40 years in my 40s um it works and it feels easier even though the total volume is the same as the two longer workouts because it&#39;s just a couple it&#39;s just a couple exercises a day for the average person if the average person you know 5 days a week did just two appropriate strength tring exercises they could go very far with how their body progresses and how and the type of results that they get I believe it&#39;s called the Dunning Krueger effect where it&#39;s the more you know uh how you realize like the less you know the less you know and it&#39;s it&#39;s really like that&#39;s why this isn&#39;t just for beginners what we&#39;re talking about this is something that um a lot of advanced lifters they&#39;ll get through the grind of realizing that they&#39;ve been way overdoing it and they&#39;re going to regress and find out how optimal uh that is for them specifically and it&#39;s just it&#39;s always a humbling effect but it&#39;s something to consider yeah it&#39;s amazing in fact uh you know how long has it been since we launched Mass 15 it&#39;s been a little while now yeah it was right after Max was born oh yeah so it&#39;s like uh four years so right does that sound right d four years that sounds long one of our most time does fly one of our most popular programs and one of the most talked about programs by people who have experience it is not we were getting we get messages from people with that program who&#39;ve been working out for years and years and years and thought Oh I you know I just did this cuz I just wanted a break or I just whatever and they&#39;re like uh I&#39;m progressing faster than I have ever or in a long time I didn&#39;t know this could happen that&#39;s uh the power of appropriate application of strength training now again we&#39;re not saying don&#39;t be active every day at Daily activity is important but when it comes to structured strength training very little is needed to progress and then remember this if you&#39;re spending 15 to 20 minutes a day doing strength training and you&#39;re like I want to do more if you&#39;re stronger you are doing more this is where people need to understand adding more workouts or more volume that doesn&#39;t have to happen till much later you could simply add weight to the bar and guess what you&#39;ve just done progressed your workout and added more by the way with Maps 15 minutes because of this episode uh we&#39;re going to give you half off just for this episode so if you want to get a program like that laid out for you where you do a couple exercis a day to kind of experience what we&#39;re talking about you go to Maps 15 minutes.com and then use the code Maps 15 that gives you 50% off also you can find us on Instagram Justin is at mind pump Justin I&#39;m at mind pump to Stephano and Adam is at mind pump Adam [Music]

Transcript for:Finding the Right Exercise Balance

Transcript for:
Finding the Right Exercise Balance