2942: You Cannot Shrink Yourself Into a Better Body

18:34Sal Di Stefano:Well, this describes the person that we talked about that either one ends up not eating enough extra calories in order to build muscle. And so they're constantly teetering on just a little bit of a calorie surplus or a deficit most times. So then they never see muscle being built. Or they think they have tried to bulk in the past before, but they did it incorrectly and they just put body fat on. So they're like, I've tried this before. Never doing that again. I don't want to do this. I know what I look like if I eat extra calories. It's not the look that I want. There's a difference between just eating extra calories and bulking versus actually eating the proper macros that your body needs to build muscle in a calorie surplus.

19:10Sal Di Stefano:Even though a calorie surplus is a bulk, there's a way to do it and there's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it. And the wrong way to do it is when you just eat a bunch of extra calories and they're not the right calories you need to build muscle. Yes.

19:22Adam Schafer:And I also want to share this because we've become so obsessed with the scale that the scale weight can oftentimes intimidate us because it's not what we think we should weigh or, you know, I'm trying to get fit. The scaleness go down. It hasn't gone down, even though body composition has changed. I'm going to tell a story I've told many times on older episodes, but it's one of my favorite examples. I used to have this trainer that worked for me, female trainer. So I had men and women that worked for me. And this female trainer was very fit. Okay, you guys know who she is. You know who she is.

19:53Adam Schafer:I've talked to you about her before, Adam. She's very fit, very sculpted, you know, had a physique that a lot of the female members that came in the gym would point to. And when I would do tours, so I was a general manager. So sometimes I would do tours of the gym, people interested in signing up. And when I tour the gym, if I'm showing a woman around, when I would go to the free weight area, sometimes I'd hear them say, well, I'm not interested in this. I don't want to get bulky. I said, well, what's your goals? Well, I want to get lean and sculpted. I said, well, you want to spend a lot of time in here.

20:20Adam Schafer:This is where you get that kind of physique. And they'd give me a little pushback and I'd try to educate them and we'd walk through the gym. And then when we'd come into my office and I used to love doing this, I did it at least a dozen times. I'd say I tell you what Would you like a free membership here for a month? And they'd say well yeah All you got to do Is guess my trainer's body weight within 10 pounds If you can guess within 10 pounds Of her body weight Then I'll give you a free month And they'd say okay let's do this So I'd bring her in Bring in my trainer And my trainer would come in She was petite She was like 5 '2 Again she looked really fit And I had a scale in my office And I'd say okay how much do you think she weighs Everybody guessed 100 pounds So it was like 100 pounds 110 pounds Something like that I'd have her step on the scale.

21:01She was like 145 pounds or something like that.

21:04Adam Schafer:And it would blow their minds. Because here was this female trainer who was petite, obviously has muscle. She's got the glutes and the hamstrings, tight waist. She's lean. I think her body fat was probably 18 % body fat. It would blow their mind so much that they thought the scale was off. And I'd say, here, step on the scale. And I would test it. I'd say, no, it works. And my point with that was, she has a lot of muscle on her body. carries differently. It looks so different. Look, if somebody were to pause this right now and go online and look up a six-foot tall man, 200 pounds at 20 % body fat, six-foot tall man, 200 pounds at 10 % body fat, look at the pictures next to each other.

21:46Adam Schafer:Radically. They do not look like the same person at all. You could do this with a woman too. 150 pounds at 20 % body fat between 150 pounds and let's say 32 % body fat, same height. Very, very different. And so what happens if you do this right and you're building muscle is the scale oftentimes doesn't move down the way you think it should or it doesn't at all. However, what may start happening, and I used to get clients like this all the time, is people would point things out to them. You look like you lost weight. I haven't lost any weight on the scale. Or my clothes feel looser. Why am I weighing the same?

22:19Adam Schafer:You've lost muscle. You've lost body fat. You've gained muscle. And you look a lot leaner. And your metabolism is a lot faster.

22:25Justin Andrews:It was, you know, this was the challenge with like hyper obsessing over numbers, especially the scale. This is where, you know, if you can convince your client to, you know, set that aside through this process and not really fixate on that, then we can start, you know, figuring out all these other benefits that are happening. And two, the clothes are going to fit a little differently. When you grow muscle, you know, it's going to stretch out your pants, you know, a little bit from the back. You know, you're going to have a little more shoulder. And so these are just different changes to contend with.

22:54Justin Andrews:And it doesn't mean we're getting bulky. We're actually starting to get that shape and everything's starting to kind of transform along the process. So, yeah, to really, you know, kind of sit back from really obsessing over those numbers on the scale is huge.

23:07Sal Di Stefano:Well, how many times do we have live callers call in the podcast? They're somewhere in the, you know, low to mid 20s and 20 something percent body fat. And they break down their entire weight, how long they've been training, what mass program they're following. And they're like, I want to get leaner. and they want us to put together a diet for them to cut down into this. And how many times do we end up advising you should build into the body you want? It just is, when you're sitting at like a percent that you think is too high of a body fat percentage, the idea that you need to gain is such a hard concept.

23:43Sal Di Stefano:But yet every time we assess these diets and we see where they're at and it's like, you understand if you just put five pounds of muscle on your frame, you would get this look that you're looking for. This idea that you need to cut down to obtain this look that you want is not realistic, not sustainable, and you're actually not even going to be that happy with it.

24:03Adam Schafer:And also, let's say you do have a lot of body fat that you want to lose. Building first makes that easier. So when you build muscle, what typically happens is you get a faster or hotter metabolic rate. So now you're burning more calories at rest because you've gained a little bit of muscle, because you've gone through the process of eating an appropriate calorie surplus. You're hitting your protein, your strength train. You've gotten a lot stronger. So now you've built some muscle. Now that your metabolism is faster, it is easier to lose body fat. Now you can eat more than you would have and lose more body fat.

24:40Adam Schafer:In other words, if your body's burning 2 ,000 calories a day, you need to eat less than 2 ,000 calories to lose any weight. if your body's burning 3 ,000 calories a day, well, now you can eat anything less than 3 ,000 calories and lose weight. And so building first sets that up. And so there's some studies I'd like to quote around this and why it's a good idea to try to build first. There was one study that was from, it was at a Journal of Nutrition and it shows that a moderate calorie deficit, so a small calorie deficit, dropped muscle building by about 20%. In other words, trying to build while being in a calorie deficit is almost a complete waste of time.

25:15Adam Schafer:Oh yeah. You need to be in a surplus. The perfect routine is going to be completely hampered without at least a modest calorie surplus. They also show in the New England Journal of Medicine, there was a study that showed that after losing 10 % of body weight, people burned hundreds fewer calories a day than they expected. So in other words, if you cut first, you're going to slow your metabolism down. It's so much better to start with a faster metabolism when you do that. By the way, you can't, it's really, there's almost nothing you can do to prevent some metabolic slowdown when you lose weight.

25:52Adam Schafer:That's just how the body adapts. But one of the best things you could do besides strength train while in a deficit, because that'll help you keep the muscle, is go into it with a faster metabolism. So at least when you go in higher and it comes down, you're in a better place than had you gone in low and then it comes down.

26:07Sal Di Stefano:By the way, to make this clear, because I know we've talked about this on the podcast so many times before, because we say this and then I always get these messages in my DMs afterwards. where it's like, yeah, but I need to lose 30 pounds or I also need to lose 50 pounds. I can't be that person you're talking about, right? You guys are talking about somebody who's kind of in that, like, no, this is everybody. Towards the end of my career training people, I realized that I don't care how overweight or deconditioned a client of mine was, we were always better off starting in a calorie surplus and a bulk and building muscle first, even if they needed to lose 100 pounds.

26:41Sal Di Stefano:So I just want to make that clear because there's always somebody who's listening who thinks that we're not talking about them, that we're talking about, oh, this must be already skinny or really lean people that you're talking about that need to bowl for us. No, even if you have a lot of weight that you think you need to, or you do need to lose, it's still more advantageous to build muscle, build the metabolism, then cut down and reveal.

27:01Adam Schafer:Yep, yep, 100%. And so, and by the way, when you go in the cut with that faster metabolism, you continue to strength train properly, keep your protein intake high, and that helps you keep the muscle. Okay, without the strength training, without the high protein, just going to a calorie deficit is a pretty quick road to muscle loss. So here's the formula, essentially, the order. You build first. First, try to build. Eat enough to do so. Lift heavy. Get strong. Build the muscle. Then do the cut, and this is when you start to reveal what you've built. By the way, the cut should not be super aggressive, okay?

27:38Adam Schafer:So I'm not trying to put you in this crazy low-calorie diet because no matter how much, I don't care how much strength training you do. Calories are low enough, you'll lose muscle. So you want to be in a conservative caloric deficit, maintain the strength training. And because you've built that muscle before, now it's easier and you start to reveal it and it looks great. Let's talk about the exercise a little bit. In the episode, I opened talking about kind of building your butt and your abs. Let's talk about the butt for a second. There are some exercises that are really effective at building the butt.

28:09Adam Schafer:And there's other exercises that are not so effective at building the butt. Now we coach people and train people for years and years and years. So we saw firsthand which exercises were the best. Now we have studies supporting what we already knew, which is always funny to me when they come out with a study. We just discovered that hip thrust and squats are the best for glutes. I'm like, well, yeah, I've been doing that for 20 years with my clients, but the data supports this. And so does our experience deep barbell squats and barbell hip thrusts are king and king of the butt building exercises.

28:39Adam Schafer:Get strong with both of those and you will build your butt. So long as your technique is good, obviously don't hurt yourself, but good form and get stronger. Strength is a wonderful metric that predicts muscle building. So if you continue to get stronger over time, it's pretty much guaranteed that you're going to be building muscle.

28:58Justin Andrews:And the only reserve is it takes a bit of technique and a bit of a learning curve to get through that. But once you get through that, it's going to, you know, produce, it's going to maximize your potential to a degree like you wouldn't get just doing machines alone

29:12Sal Di Stefano:i can't stress the strength portion of what you just said like progressive overload is the key and getting stronger trumps feeling my butt burn that used to be like the the strategy or the thought process when training for building your butt or and building your abs was this i want this burning sensation and you think that that's working more or that's better it is not what But those lifts you're talking about, deep squats, hip thrusts, I don't care if it doesn't burn at all in there as long as you get stronger there. Yes. If you get stronger in those lifts, in those movements, you will build an ass.

29:47Sal Di Stefano:That is the key.

29:48Adam Schafer:And the same is true for core exercises. Somehow, years ago, people believed that to train your abs and to get really nice sculpted-looking abs, you needed to do 5 ,000 reps and no rest periods. No, you build the abs just like you build any body part. It's heavy. it's with good tension, controlled full range of motion. If you get stronger with ab exercises, your abs will also develop and they'll be more visible at higher body fat percentage. So good full range of motion and get strong at them. And when we say strong, we're talking about reps anywhere between, you know, five to let's say 15 or 20.

30:25Adam Schafer:More than that, it starts to become more endurance style training. We created a program kind of around this, and I'm just going to give people kind of an idea of what this looks like. Like for if someone's healthy, they want to get into this. They want to build their butt and their abs with this probably would look like for most people would be a four day a week routine. The glutes and the abs will be the focus of the routine. So that doesn't mean you're not training the whole body. Okay. We are trainers at the end of the days. And I would never train somebody to just work out one body.

30:54Justin Andrews:You need to get your whole body strong.

30:55Adam Schafer:You do, but 90 % of the volume in the training program, meaning the sets and the reps and the exercises, are focused on the glutes and on the core. The other 10 % allows us to train the rest of the body minimally because we're trying to place most of the volume on those two areas, if this is the focus. But those areas are also getting strengthened, so they're not left far behind. And that would be a four-day reach routine, and you're probably going to do one workout that's heavier and one workout that's more moderate with the intensity. Two really hard, heavy workouts a week, especially with those big lifts is typically too much for most people and just causes burnout.

31:33Adam Schafer:So you're looking at heavy and kind of a moderate day.

31:35Sal Di Stefano:I can't stress enough how important the way that is programmed is because so many people, when they have like an area they want to focus on, like the glutes and abs, just pile more of that on a already complete program. And so, you know, when you're communicating that, you know, 90 % of the focus is around the glutes and abs, and then we still do the rest of the body, it's so minimal. Someone else might be

31:59Adam Schafer:thinking, well, why don't I just do like a full everything, everything and every workout all the

32:04Sal Di Stefano:time then. And it's not ideal like that. Like you got to understand that working out is still a stress. It's a good stress because it causes an adaptation for you to want to build muscle. But if it's too much stress and it's not applied appropriately, you won't recover, you won't build. And so we have to take volume somewhere. So we're taking it away in some of the other body parts and applying more of that focus on the glutes and the abs. But you have to do that for the programming to work. If you just pile on more of the exercises that build the butt and abs on top of an already complete program, it's too much.

32:36Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

32:36Adam Schafer:You end up building nothing. That's one of the big, I'm glad you said that, Adam. That's one of the biggest mistakes. You're focusing on a specific body part. Then you take volume away from other body parts and place it towards that. Otherwise, you get nowhere. It's just overwhelming for the body. The body can't adapt. So what this kind of looks like if you're following this is, let's say you're listening. You're like, cool, I'm going to follow that routine. Maybe I'll get your program, maps, abs, and butt. So it's four days a week. I'm going to go into calorie surplus. So I'm going to eat, let's say, 300 calories above what I believe to be maintenance.

33:04Adam Schafer:I'm eating high protein. Like, what can I expect? Well, here's what you can expect. First off, give it eight to 10 weeks. Okay, so don't freak out at week two or three and stop. Eight to 10 weeks is what we need to see and get at least some significant muscle and strength gain. Because muscle, even if you do everything right, is a slow process. Muscle doesn't come on super quickly. Even if everything's perfect, it takes a little bit of time. So give it eight to 10 weeks. What it typically will look like is this. The scale will either stay the same or go up a little bit. Don't freak out because you're probably going to get compliments from people like your butt looks rounder.

33:39Adam Schafer:You look tighter. Expect it to go up a little bit if you're getting muscle. Also know if you're getting stronger while this is happening, my metabolism is getting faster. And also know that you're setting yourself up for a cut later on. So don't freak out over the scale. You are in a bulk. It's going to probably go up a little bit. If you're getting stronger, like a lot stronger, and that's happening, you're doing everything right, we're perfect. That's a good sign. And we're going to set ourselves up for a nice cut later on.

34:02Sal Di Stefano:Now, questions that we always get are like, how long do I run this bulk for? Do I run it through half the program, all the program? like what would you recommend that somebody who is trying to build their butt and abs how would

34:12Adam Schafer:they run ideally if you did maps abs and butt you would follow it first in a bulk and then you follow it again in a cut so you do the whole program in a bulk then do the whole program again in a cut and you've got yourself like this really nice cycle of metabolism boosting and building and then the reveal process which is uh super fun and a lot of and really really awesome so run it in a bulk first because it's a new program launch we're giving away muscle mommy 15 or muscle mommy so you actually get another maps program so the other thing you could do is you could do maps abs and butt in a bulk and then run muscle mommy and a cut and muscle mommy is also glute focused but not quite as glute focused it's it's a full body it's really a full body routine so you can go from focusing on building the areas you want to focus on be smart and then cut by focusing on the whole body in the cut.

35:02Adam Schafer:That's actually even better, I think, for most people.

35:05Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, no, I'm excited for this. This has probably been one of the most asked questions that we get about building your butt, building your abs. And so creating a program that is specifically focused on that. We've done a lot of things like Muscle Mommy, where we put some emphasis on it, but actually writing a program that is designed specifically to focus on that.

35:23Adam Schafer:The goal was this, like if somebody comes to us and says, I want to see big changes in these two areas, my abs and my butt, like really big changes. What would that programming look like? That's MAPS abs and butt. So here's what we're doing with this new launch. So you get the program at a massive discount. So it's 40 % off. So it's 40 % off what it's going to be later on at retail. We're going to throw in Muscle Mommy 15 or Muscle Mommy, your choice. We also have a build your butt diet guide. So that's going to help you with the calorie surplus, the bulk, the reverse diet, whatever you want to label it.

35:59Adam Schafer:It's going to help you with that part. And then we have a supplement guide that's coming with this as well. Now, supplements don't make a huge difference. I know people in the fitness space love to sell you supplements, tell you that they do all these awesome things. They do a little bit. Nonetheless, we also include a supplement guide. So you get the program, MAPS, ABS, and BUTT for 40 % off, Muscle Mommy 15 or Muscle Mommy included. You get the Build Your Butt Diet Guide that's going to help you with the bulk part. And then you get a supplement guide included for free. So all of You can find it at mapsabsandbutt.com.

36:28Adam Schafer:All right, so look, I have a challenge for you. If you want to double your odds of success, the data shows this clearly. Invite a friend. Accountability doubles someone's odds of success for weight loss, fat loss, muscle gain. Doesn't matter the fitness goal. So here's what you do. Here's the challenge. Share this episode with someone. Do it together. Two times the success rate. Let's go.

36:50Justin Andrews:Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family.

37:51Justin Andrews:We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is Mind Pump.