2915: The Best Workout Programs Combos For Any Goal: Muscle, Strength, Fat Loss, and More

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1:22Adam Schafer:Wayfair, every style, every home. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in the world, approaching over half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about how to combine MAPS programs to get the best results. By the way, we have a buy one, get one free right now, okay? You buy one at a normal price, you get another one for free. So go to mapsbogo.com if you are interested.

2:04Adam Schafer:Now, this episode was brought to you by one of our sponsors, Viori. So Viori makes athleisure wear, super comfortable, it lasts a long time, high quality, but they also make evening wear. I've gotten myself buttoned down shirts from them and slacks. They're comfortable. I can actually work out in the slacks. I don't, but they look amazing. You know, Viori, Viori is top of the line. And by the way, we have one of the biggest discounts. You'll find a Viori clothing anywhere on the internet because we've been with Viori for so long. So if you like Viori, you want a huge discount, go to Viori clothing.com slash mind pump.

2:39Adam Schafer:That's V U R I, sorry, V U O R I clothing.com slash mind pump. Again, that link will get you 20 % off. All right. Here comes the show. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to MindPumpStore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, here at Mind Pump, one of the most common questions we get is, which program should I follow next? Is there a better program to follow next for my specific goal? So here's what we did. We broke down the MAPS programs and put them together by goal.

3:23Adam Schafer:What are the best combos of two programs for each common goal? Muscle gain, fat loss, strength. What if you're a beginner? What about athletic performance? We put them together. We're going to talk about them today. These are the best workout combos for you. Let's get to it. This is how we do workout partners.

3:38Sal Di Stefano:Yes. I feel like this is overdue. This is probably one of the number one questions that we get is what program to do next, or somebody who's never done a program and is like, here's my goal. What should, what next program or series of programs should I follow? And so what's cool is this kind of lays the plan out for somebody for the next six months or for the next three months, if you already have one of these.

4:01Adam Schafer:That's right. And it does make a difference. Like, you know, cause people will say, well, what's, what's the difference? What if I just follow one program after another? What if they're both muscle building? What if they're both athletic performance? Is that the best combination for my goal? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It really depends on how the programs stack together and how they address each other's strengths and weaknesses. So, and most MAPS programs are about three months long. Some of them are shorter, some of them are shorter, maybe five weeks or six weeks long. But nonetheless, this is how we design our programs is for them to be able to be followed one after another to produce great results with minimal plateaus, of course, minimal risk of injury.

4:43Adam Schafer:But at the end of the day, to maximize the goals a person is looking for.

4:47Sal Di Stefano:What avatar do you want to start with first?

4:50Adam Schafer:You know, let's start with muscle gain. That's a real common one. Yeah. Very popular. Yeah. And we'll say it's advanced muscle gain. And I say that because this is somebody, if you're listening and you're like, I just want to build muscle for whatever reason, either because you want to look a particular way or because let's say you're trying to boost your metabolic rate and you have good experience in the gym. You've been working out for a little while. So you're not a total beginner. You're not a beginner. You've been doing it for a little while. Like what are, what, what, what are the two programs I could follow, uh, to give me phenomenal results?

5:20Adam Schafer:Um, let's say over a six month period. Yeah.

5:23Sal Di Stefano:And what are the things that you're taking into consideration when you think of the two programs? Like one it's, so it's not a starter type program because they have some sort of experience. So we want to get them into what we would consider one of our best, you know, muscle building, metabolic programs. And then also considering, because we're pairing programs, like the progressive overload, the scaling of that, and what that looks like over the course of two programs. And so those are the kind of the considerations, right?

5:51Adam Schafer:Yes. Yes. So to start with, it would be MAPS Anabolic. So MAPS Anabolic is a great overall muscle and strength building program. It's also a great switch up from whatever you're doing now. So oftentimes we have callers call in who have been working out, who have some experience, whose goal is to build muscle. I'd say probably eight out of 10 times this is the program we point them in the direction. Yeah, and I think a lot of times too people are familiar with split type programs and this introduces them to total body workouts. And also that first phase is really shocking and very effective for people to experience.

6:28So I think that's why, you know, people really like see the benefit of anabolic right away.

6:32Sal Di Stefano:I'd say this is why, to your point, I'd say well over more than half, I think probably 75, 80 % of people that are interested in building muscle tend to gravitate towards a split and have never really ran a full body routine or don't normally do that. And so they get hit with a couple of things. One, if they're doing some sort of an upper-lower split or a traditional bodybuilder split where it's one body part a day, they're training four to six days in the week and they're splitting up the body part. Transitioning that person to a three-day week full body type routine is such a curveball. The hardest thing is convincing that person that's what they need.

7:10Sal Di Stefano:But once they do that, the increased frequency on the big lifts, the strength gains that they see from that, a lot of times too, less days in the gym because this person is trying to gain. and build muscle or build a metabolism, huge benefits from this. And one of my favorite things to introduce somebody to.

7:27Adam Schafer:Yeah, so MAPS anabolic would be the start. The follow-up would be MAPS aesthetic. Now, aesthetic is also a full-body strength training routine, but the volume is higher. You are now progressively overloading your body. So three months of MAPS anabolic, if you're feeding yourself right, getting good sleep, and you're ready to take it to the next level, then you follow that up with MAPS aesthetic, which is also a full-body routine. but maps aesthetic you can spend more time in the gym because of the focus sessions yep where you could target a body part that is lagging and add extra work on those body parts on those days off and between i think that's what it makes sense to now when you're building muscle to also emphasize parts of your body you know where you really want to you know show off that definition i think you know this is a great follow-up to that after you build that huge base of strength and muscle and Now we can kind of sculpt it a bit.

8:16Sal Di Stefano:The biggest mistake that I've seen with our customers that have followed Maps Aesthetic was not following anabolic first. And it's so good. You jump right into it. Yeah. It's so good that we're doing this like in pairs and explaining why I'll do this is because the amount of volume in Aesthetic is really high. And I would never want to take a client, this is your first program is going to Aesthetic right away. I'd much rather build them up from anabolic. I think they'll see far more benefits from that. And so this really truly is the ideal progression. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast for 10 years, then you've heard us talk about the original three was anabolic performance and aesthetic.

8:57Sal Di Stefano:And so we would talk about how you're supposed to progress your way up to that much volume. But we haven't talked a lot about those three programs in a row in a long time. And that was like for general health and strength, right? When you think of like the ideal pathway for if I was training somebody for a bodybuilding show, So I would follow anabolic first and then progress them into aesthetic to reap the most benefits from building the muscle. Totally.

9:23Adam Schafer:Next, we'll say strength. So this is for somebody who, they like building muscle, but they really want to get strong. They want to be able to lift as much weight as possible. The starting program is also going to be MAPS Anabolic for this because anabolic is this great both strength building and muscle building program. And then you're going to progress to our power lift program, MAPS Power Lift. This one-two combo, this is PR city. This is PR city. You're going to hit PRs in your bench press, your squat, and your deadlift. First off, you're probably going to hit PRs in anabolic. Then you move to power lift, and the PRs are really going to get crazy.

9:56Adam Schafer:And it's just this perfect follow-up from anabolic. What I love is the simplicity of it and the hyper focus of just pure strength output. And so, yeah, you're going to get that good base from anabolic in the beginning. But yeah, you're really simplifying and focusing all that on these big compound lifts that are going to get you real strong.

10:15Sal Di Stefano:Well, this is the pathway I would prepare someone to who's even wanting to maybe even dabble in the powerlifting world and start. That's right. You're going to compete in a strength. Yeah, you're interested in competing in that. Even if you're not, this is the pathway. But like even somebody who's wanting to get to the next level and actually go compete, I still would want to lay the foundation with anabolic first, then progress them into powerlift. And it's such a great segue from that program. Anabolic does such a good job of laying that foundation. And then the skill practice and performance of just the main lifts in power lift, like the combo of them together is like a great six months.

10:49Sal Di Stefano:Totally.

10:49Adam Schafer:Then we have fat loss. And we broke this up into women and men. And mainly because programming-wise, women tend to want to develop different areas of the body from men. So that's really the main difference here. And with fat loss, the goal is to keep muscle. Yeah. Okay. The number one goal with your strength training program is to not lose muscle when you're in a calorie deficit. And so we'll start with women. Now, with women, I started them out with power lift. Why? Women don't train this way. They often don't train like power lifters. They're trying to lose body fat. And MAPS power lift is going to keep them strong and do a damn good job of maintaining muscle.

11:29Sal Di Stefano:Well, one of the best ways to build them metabolically would be to get really good at these big compound lifts. That's the metric that I love. And this is why this is so great. I love this combo too of setting them up for the next program where we can get more and more refined and sculpting and like that. It's like, let's build an incredible metabolism and a strong base. And then where we go from there opens the door for so many different things.

11:53Adam Schafer:Which takes us to Muscle Mommy, which is a very popular MAPS program for women. MAPS Muscle Mommy, traditional muscle building program, but there's more of an emphasis on building the glutes, building the delts, lower body, just kind of that focus that women are looking for. in areas that they don't want to lose muscle when they get leaner. Like if you ask a woman, hey, when you get leaner, what areas do you really want to keep the muscle on the most? A lot of them would say, well, I'll sacrifice muscle here and there to get leaner, but I want my butt and my legs to keep that muscle. And Muscle Mommy's volume is geared towards that.

12:24Yeah, what I love about these recommendations is like somebody that probably hasn't listened to us enough would assume immediately we'd be like MAPS HIIT or MAPS cardio when in fact the muscle preserving element to this is so important in building up that metabolism. So these are great.

12:41Sal Di Stefano:Well, and I would say muscle bombing was the first program that we really started to reorganize and change the order of the exercises to fit a specific female demographic. That's right. Like we took into consideration the feedback from all the people that have gone through MAPS programs. and a vast majority of women that talked about, you know, building and sculpting their body, focus points were like the backside was the hamstrings, the glutes, the shoulders. And so, you know, even though, you know, exercises affect men and women the same way as far as building muscle on their body, the sexes tend to have different goals.

13:21Sal Di Stefano:Men tend to want chest and quads and that way. Women cared more about glutes and shoulders. and so we redesign the way the programming is laid out and so laying a solid foundation with power lift then transitioning them into this more sculpting like program um such a great combo right

13:40Adam Schafer:now for men now for fat loss for men the beginning program could be one of two uh but i'm going to take into consideration that you're a guy interested in fat loss um and let's say you're over the age of 40 okay we have a program that's perfect which is called maps 40 plus and that would be the starting program for fat loss for men in that age demographic. If you're younger, you could start with MAPS anabolic. Now, what's the difference between 40 plus and MAPS anabolic? Not much, not much. The difference really is exercise selection. When we took certain exercises and made, for lack of a better term, safer or less risky.

14:15Lowered the risk a little bit.

14:16Adam Schafer:Yeah. So instead of a traditional squat, it's a box squat. Very similar, same movement pattern, same thing. The difference is with the box squat, you're breaking up the negative portion of the rep from the positive, breaking up that momentum, easier on the joints. We're trading out straight bar deadlift for things like a trap bar deadlift, still a hip hinging movement, just less risk for the low back. So again, if you're a dude that's, you know, over the age of 40, the program you start with for fat loss, MAPS 40 plus. If you're a younger guy, you're okay with the other lifts, start with MAPS anabolic.

14:45Sal Di Stefano:The other consideration that I think we did in 40 that's a little unique in comparison to anabolic was the lifestyle recommendation too. That's right. That's right. And the reason why I think your advice is great is because when you're young, you tend to get away with a lot. Not the greatest night of sleep. You can recover a lot. Yeah, stress doesn't seem to affect you the same way as it affects. Or you just have less stress. Yeah, or you just have less of it, right? That's a better way to say it. You probably have less or less high levels of it in comparison to probably the 40-year-old who's got the family, maybe the career or business and kids and all the things, right?

15:17Sal Di Stefano:And so in 40 plus, we put a lot of effort and emphasis around lifestyle to help balance that out and mitigate that. And so I think that makes that such a, which I can't tell you how many times I trained somebody 40 plus that the first thing that, and let's take an example of a guy trying to lose weight that understood working out, lifting weights and had a pretty good idea of diet, but really struggled with losing weight. many times it was the lifestyle changes that we had to address first before their body would shift. And so that part, I think, is when it comes to fat loss for men, I think the nice part about the 40 plus that's unique to being 40 plus versus anabolic.

16:01Sal Di Stefano:I think if I had a 20 to 30 year old person that wanted to do fat loss, I think anabolic is probably where I'd start them. 40 plus with other considerations.

16:10Adam Schafer:It's just geared towards that demographic much better. Yes, yes. And then the follow up program, Mass Power Lift. very similar to the fat loss for women. Power lift is so focused on strength. Strength is a great metric to focus on and pay attention to when you're in a cut, okay? The mirror isn't so great because the mirror can lie to you, but if you can maintain strength or even get stronger in certain key lifts while you're in a calorie deficit, you are preserving muscle. And that's why it's such a good metric. And that's why I like power lift for fat loss, both for men and women. So that would be the program that you would end up.

16:44Sal Di Stefano:I love this here. The one thing that is common sometimes, though, is to not see gains because you're cutting for a fat loss. And so I think the one thing that I would communicate to somebody is that, listen, if you could maintain lifts through a cut and doing power lifts. You're killing it. You're killing it. And that's really the goal there. Now, you occasionally see somebody, and this typically is in the more novice lifter who hasn't maybe gotten proficient.

17:10Adam Schafer:Or maybe they're new at the exercises themselves. Right, right.