2835: How To Get Stronger Than You've Ever Been

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1:12Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast literally in the history of the world. Okay, we're approaching over half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, how you can be the strongest you've ever been. Pick a couple lifts. Follow our advice in 90 days. Many of you are going to hit a new record in those lifts. By the way, we just launched a brand new program, MAPS PPL, push-pull legs. You asked for it, you got it. By the way, there's two versions of this program, one for men and then one for women. The programming is different. Women have a more higher emphasis on lower body volume, glute training, shoulder volume.

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3:28That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.

3:30Adam Schafer:All right, this is going to be a fun one. We're going to teach you today how you can get stronger than you've ever been in your entire life. We're going to give you specifics. Follow these and break your old records. Let's go. I'm excited. I want to be strong. Yeah. So first off, I think we should say, if you want to really measure this, right, if you really want to be stronger than you've ever been, and I know people, like, you can think of general strength, but to measure it you should pick a couple lifts that you're going to focus on um that way you can objectively see oh yeah like these i see myself getting much stronger and pick two uh big mistake people make when trying to gain strength and you can generally get stronger but if you want to see your biggest gains and strength you're better off picking a couple to focus on for a certain period of time the biggest movers the gross motor movements the compound lifts those ones where you really have to generate the most force, I think is probably the most.

4:25Sal Di Stefano:Yes. You know, we've said that before, and I was trying to think if there was ever a time where I saw multiple of my big lifts all go up at the exact same time. That's not very common. It isn't. Maybe one or two at the same time. You can.

4:38Adam Schafer:I mean, you definitely can, but let's say.

4:40Sal Di Stefano:Especially someone who's relatively new.

4:43Adam Schafer:Yeah, but if I want to make like big gains in strength, if I focus on one lift, I'll make bigger gains in that one lift than if I focused on a lot of lifts, is essentially what I'm trying to say. Yeah. And I think just for the purpose of this episode, you could do what we're about to say for a good 90 days. And that should get you, a lot of people watching this, PRs in the lifts that they chose.

5:06Sal Di Stefano:Although I will say that if you are, which a lot of people are, coming off a layoff, been inconsistent, and then you follow the things that we're about to talk about. Oh, it's good general advice. Absolutely. I mean, you're going to probably see a lot of your lifts go up, if not all of their lifts go up.

5:21Adam Schafer:Now here, okay, so here's one thing that's important. And we'll focus on workout programming before we get to the other stuff. But because programming makes a big difference. First of all, programming always makes a big difference. It makes a big difference for building muscle, burning body fat, improving fitness, all that stuff. But it makes the biggest difference when it comes to objective strength gains. If you look at strength training programming, the more focused it is on a strength sport like powerlifting, Olympic lifting, the more scientific it gets. Yeah. Because it makes a huge difference in comparison to all the other things I said.

5:59Adam Schafer:Again, programming is always important. But when it comes to adding strength to especially to a specific lift or set of lifts. Well, it's more objective. Yes. It's pretty clear. By metrics, you can see movement in the right direction versus like, well, you can't really pin it to one thing. That's right. So the first point is you want to do less variety of exercises and lifts. And this is where you'll see a big difference between competitive strength sports and let's say like overall bodybuilding or overall developing your body. Like bodybuilding tends to have a lot of variety of exercises. When you look at strength sports or programming for like powerlifting or Olympic lifting or a deadlift or a squat or whatever, it's far less varied.

6:44Adam Schafer:And the reason for that is a lot of people don't realize this, but definitely bigger muscles contract harder. That's true. But the skill involved in the lift is the biggest contributor to the amount of weight you can lift. your skill or that that you develop around a specific lift the better you get at performing that lift the more weight you can lift and this is really evident when you see someone who should not be lifting as much weight as they are and you'll see them in the gym sometimes like i can't believe that guy just deadlifted 600 pounds he only weighs you know 170 pounds how's that possible he's really skilled at that particular lift your reference to bodybuilding is a bit misleading

7:21Sal Di Stefano:And I say that because I fell for the same exact trap of this idea that bodybuilding is a variety of all these different exercises and angles. And to an extent, it is from the outside looking in. When you look at Mr. Olympia and you see in a magazine his workouts and you see all these different exercises he did. But he didn't get that physique, not getting strong at squatting, deadlifting, rowing. And so I fell for that trap. You went too far. Oh, man. And I think a lot of people do. I think a lot of people that don't identify as a strength athlete or care about PRs or aren't interested in powerlifting or Olympic lifting, but they're very much so into building the best body that they could possibly build, right?

8:14Sal Di Stefano:Building the best version of themselves. and you jump right into what are all these pro bodybuilders doing and assume that that's the greatest pathway to build the best physique for you. And it's just not true. And every time we talk about this, it always frustrates me because I made that mistake for a very long time. For a very long time, I was chasing all these novel exercises or unique angles or doing all this stuff that, Sure, I built some muscle along the way, and I had a decent physique, but nothing built a stronger, better-looking, bigger physique than getting good at a couple of these major lifts.

8:59Adam Schafer:Yeah, I will say, generally speaking, bodybuilding has more variety than, let's say, powerlifting. Powerlifting programming on its face looks very boring and simple in comparison. but that being said for the majority of people listening right now if you're listening to this episode you're like yeah i'd like to get really strong but i also want to develop my legs or my delts or my back pick a lift that corresponds to that body part get stronger at it and you'll develop that body part so if you're listening to this and you're a woman you're like i want to get my glutes to grow apply we're about to say to the hip thrust or the barbell squat and your butt will grow as you get stronger so it's definitely an important no i mean this is the argument i'm

9:42Sal Di Stefano:trying to make is uh if you're a young man and you're in your 20s and you're like i want to build the best physique possible and you're following all these you know bodybuilder type of routines you would be far better served following what we're about to talk about for the most part for the most part if you want to build that the ultimate stage physique or the the most ripped jacked version of you and don't fall for the doing all these other creative exercises right now, because right now as you're in your early twenties and you are laying the foundation for this incredible physique you want to build, this is the pathway is to focus on a couple of the major lifts and practice them and get really good and get really strong at them because it will, it will carry over the most.

10:26Adam Schafer:And you're, and what you're saying is, uh, yeah, we can fall into, it's a, it's such an easy trail. I remember when Justin did his video series trying to hit a push press or split stance press with 315 overhead. And I remember when you first, I remember as you followed the process, and obviously Justin knows what he's talking about. He's probably the best workout programmer in this room. He, as he followed this process, his programming became far more simple. Yeah. I mean, talk about that a little bit with like how the variety changed or reduced and how much stronger you got as a result. Oh, yeah.

10:57Like I, I realized quickly that, um, well, initially I was trying to reinforce and make sure that like I was accounting for the supporting cast of, of muscle groups and, um, to make sure I had the longevity to keep adding on this crazy amount of load and really just to, to peel back and, uh, take more rest and actually like, uh, take more emphasis on the recovery, but also the actual skill itself, like put the emphasis on the skill. So just like trade out all that volume, just put it right into just the specific lift itself. Like my numbers start to really shoot up almost immediately. Totally.

11:39Adam Schafer:So here's the next part of this is take this lift or these two lifts, uh, that you're going to focus on for the next 90 days. And you're going to practice them. By the way, I'm using that word intentionally practice. Uh, you don't want to think in terms of body parts when you're trying to get stronger. You want to think in terms of the movement, but practice these lifts about twice a week. This is what the general consensus says about, uh, getting strong at a particular lift is about two days a week is when you're kind of focusing on this, this particular lift. Now, now the workouts are not the same with those two times.

12:15Adam Schafer:So if you, let's say your goal is to get your squat, you want your squat, or let's say it's your bench press. I want to get that to its highest level. So I'm going to bench twice a week, you're not doing the same kind of bench pressing twice a week. Typically what the coaches will espouse and what you see in the data is one day should be heavy and one day should be light. And the light day, you're focusing on speed of the lift and the heavy day, you're just focused on lifting heavy. And when you do it this way, you get really good and get really strong very, very quickly. The heavy day sounds quite obvious.

12:52Adam Schafer:Uh, you gotta lift heavy, right? So if I'm trying to get strong on the bench press, I'm going to have a day where I'm getting underneath a bar that I can maybe do five reps with and I'm practicing two or three reps and I'm doing, you know, maybe six sets of this. Remember less variety of exercises. So I'm still doing a lot of sets, but it's like very few exercises. But then one day a week, I'm going to take a weight that I could probably lift 10 times and I'm doing one or two. But my goal is to see if I can throw it off my chest if i can really move this bar quickly um and that lightweight with speed uh has a great

13:27Sal Di Stefano:carryover oh to over translate yeah well again it's another one of those things that if you think that you're focused on the aesthetics uh that oh this is like training like an athlete why why would i do this so most people are gonna get great aesthetic benefits no i mean i'm gonna keep hammering that home because i know that uh it's not just because i identify as that i know that a lot of my clients did like it was rare that i had a client come to me and say that they wanted to get good uh at explosive movements or they wanted to be they wanted to get yeah they wanted to hit a pr they want to get that's rare most people come because they want to look and because of that we we make the mistake of limiting ourselves in our training program to this very generic kind of you know doing all these random exercises versus doing some of the major lifts really well and part of doing the major lifts really well is one of the things you said is practicing them but then practice them in different ways slow grinding controlled and then light and fast like that doing those movements in both those ways within a training cycle such a strong tool for you to get really good at the movement fast twitch contraction is such a different stimulus like it's something that different skill different skill it produces a different uh physique as well Like it'll actually build muscle, you know, a little bit.

14:50Like if you're not getting that type of stimulus, you'll notice a visible difference.

14:54Adam Schafer:Yeah, absolutely. So one way to do this, by the way, for people who have the ability to do this is on the light day, on the fast light day, you load the bar and then use a resistance band and anchor the resistance band. It works so well with the fast rep style, lighter weight, you know, style training. this i discovered this years ago trying to at the time uh trying to hit a 600 pound deadlift at a body weight of 190 pounds and i got stuck at like 570 for a while and then i was reading uh you know um you know west side marbell's training and they did a lot of they did this right and so i started using bands and what i did was i'd go 315 so at the time if my run what one rep max was 570.

15:40Adam Schafer:315 was relatively light, right? But I'd use bands, heavy bands on it, and I would just do one rep, and I'd get, and of course, if you're moving fast, by the way, make sure you've got good technique, because then the risk of injury goes up. But I really focused on exploding up off the ground with the bands and 315, and that's how I got to 600 pounds, was practicing that. Next is, you're going to lift about three days a week. Lots of strength training all the time. It doesn't work well for most people's goals, but definitely not for strength stuck in the recovery trap yeah in fact if you took someone who was doing good programming five days a week who had a nice physique bodybuilder style physique and they look good or whatever they're like i want to get really strong you cut them down to three days a week and let's get stronger it's just across the board it tends to work better that way so you're doing three days a week of lifting and no more than that um now you're you're probably wondering well what's that extra day right because you said one heavy day one light day what am i doing on that third day, that's when you're doing, and that's the next point, exercises that are support.

16:41Adam Schafer:How do I support this movement? So if I'm getting good at the deadlift, I may do exercises for my lats. I may do exercises that work on hip stability, that work on rotation because I know, or maybe QL strength, because I know that can be a weakness in the deadlift that can cause injury If I don't have good rotation or good, you know, QL, that's one of the muscles that stabilizes the sides of your body with the deadlift. For the bench press, you know, I'm going to do isometrics.

17:11Sal Di Stefano:I was just going to ask you if you would incorporate isometrics. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm going to do stuff for shoulder stability.

17:17Adam Schafer:I'm going to do stuff, you know, if it's a bench press, I'm going to do rowing movements on that day to give me that nice anchor at the mid-back for the bench press. And so that's what the other day is going to look like. So a lot of this workout is going to look like a lot of sets of this lift or two lifts that you're trying to build. And then you're using these other exercises as like the support. Like how is it going to support this particular lift? The big mistake people will make following our advice here is they do a lot of everything. So like, yeah, I want to get strong at the bench press.

17:46Adam Schafer:I'm going to make sure I hammer everything. You're not going to get.

17:49Sal Di Stefano:Even not just hammering, Sal, just doing a lot of everything. I mean, it's tough to get. I mean, obviously it depends on who we're talking to, right? if you're talking to someone who never goes to the gym, it's one thing. But a lot of people that listen to the podcast are avid lifters. And so you take somebody who consistently already trains five days a week and you give them the advice you're giving right now, it sounds like it's not enough. I don't know how many times we have to talk to either a live caller or a person messaging in that needs help, and we're giving advice and they want to see a deadlift go up.

18:22Sal Di Stefano:They want to see movement. And then you assess their programming, And it's just like they're doing like a like a maps aesthetic type of volume. And then on top of that, they're doing all this extra dead lifting and squatting or whatever movement is they're trying to get good at. And it's just way too much volume. It's way too much. And if they would scale dramatically back and just focus on those one or two lifts, they'd see a huge impact. And there's this fear that they all seem to have, which is they've been training that way for so long that if I also scale way back on all that, I'm going to lose all those gains that I had on those other muscles.

18:54Sal Di Stefano:And even though I really want to see my deadlift or I really want to see my squat or my, I really want to see my hip thrust go up, but I also don't want to lose my delts that I built in my chest that I built over the last five years. And it's like, it doesn't, it won't work like that. You don't have to stimulate that much.

19:07Adam Schafer:90 % of those people actually get progress. It's funny. It's oftentimes we'll get, like you said, callers who were doing this crazy five day a week workout. And all we do is cut their volume in half. I don't even change their programming. Just cut your volume in half, report back to me in 60 days, and they all come back. I'm way stronger. Like, this is crazy. So a lot is not a good idea. You want the right amount. And for most people listening, it's about three days a week for what we're talking about. And you're using those other exercises to support the ones that you're focused on for the next 90 days.

19:38Sal Di Stefano:Now, on those off, so three days a week, you take somebody who is used to lifting five, six, walking, mobility, I mean, keep movement up. That's going to help facilitate recovery.

19:48Adam Schafer:so i think that's also important yeah don't just sit around right long yeah make sure you keep your steps up yeah for sure lots of cardio would be counterproductive for this right right but

19:56Sal Di Stefano:movement is okay right like movement low intensity uh walking you know low intensity elliptical stuff stuff that's going to keep the body active doing mobility stuff doing corrective movements to help better movement patterns and things like that are are only going to support and facilitate recovery

20:13Adam Schafer:Okay, now we're going to get to the diet part. And it's very simple, basic. I'm just going to make it as simple as possible. Whatever you're eating now, add 500 calories. All right? So good. Now, you can just change your programming and get stronger, especially if your programming is not good. That's true. But you add an extra 500 calories a day to that, and you've just turbocharged all your strength gains. If you're in a calorie deficit, it ain't going to happen. If you're like, yeah, I love this. I'd like to hit PRs and get shredded, pick one. Because you're not going to do both. so you got to pick which one you're after and then go after that one.