Change Your Relationship With Exercise | Sal Di Stefano

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:09I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

0:49The muscle building process is an adaptation process. To use another example, it would be like going out in the sun and then your skin darkening to adapt to the UV rays. So it's very similar to what's happening when your body builds muscle. You go to the gym, you create a stress on the body, maybe a little bit of damage, right? The body heals the damage. And then what it does is it tries to adapt so that the same insult no longer creates damage. So this is how you get stronger incrementally over time. This is why you can work out harder over time because your body slowly adapts. So the question is, what does it take to get my body to adapt?

1:24A little more than you're doing now. So if you're doing nothing right now, literally 10 body weight squats, five push-ups, and maybe a couple band rows is enough to get the body to start the adaptation process. And again, you want to do the right dose, meaning doing more than is appropriate will only get your body to prioritize healing over to adaptation. Your body can't adapt because it's only trying to heal this damage that you cause. So the appropriate amount is literally a little more than you're doing now. So for the average person watching this, if they did 30 minutes of strength training once a week, they would get strength gains.

1:59And then when that felt easy, they could do an hour strength training once a week. And then when that got easy, they could do a little harder. They could add a little more load. And then eventually, they could add an extra day. And there's a lot you could do with two days a week with strength training. There's a lot of room to go when it comes to load, exercises, intensity. There's so much room to go with two days a week that the average person, I can get them to what they want realistically, which is two days a week. Now, more than that, then we're talking about, well, I want my biceps to bulge, or I want my glutes to sit real high, or I want more definition in my delts to really pop out.

2:32Now we're looking at more days a week. But two to three days a week, I mean, you can get really, really far. I mean, the old-time strength athletes in the 1930s and 40s, they worked out full body three days a week. You know, people like Steve Reeves had phenomenal physiques. So you can go real far, and you don't want to look at the extreme fitness fanatics as, well, that's what I need to do. That's not what you need to do. Right. That's not what you need to do. The best exercises to choose, you want to choose the ones with the most bang for your buck, right? So if I'm only going to spend 45 minutes exercising, I want to do the exercises that have the most carryover and have the biggest impact.

3:05Essentially, you want to do compound lifts or big gross motor movements. So rather than doing like a curl, which is a very simple, you know, single joint exercise, I would do a row, which also involves the biceps. But now I'm working the back and the whole upper body. Pull up, right? Oh, yeah. That's a great one. dips and squats and deadlifts those exercises do the work of like five exercises combined so you want to do those big gross motor movements because they give you the most bang for your buck and for the average person go to the gym and pick you know three or four gross motor movements and just practice them so today i'm going to go squat press and row i'll do three sets of each i'll rest for a minute and a half in between and then i'll leave that's it that's it three sets of each what 80 percent yeah you want to train again more than you're used to not beyond that you want to feel good at the end of your workout it's okay to feel a little sore the day after but if you're sore to the touch or you're sore for two days you went too hard really so you shouldn't feel too sore it's actually a good indicator that you did too much it's not an indicator of wow i had a great workout really yeah high level you know strength athletes they rarely get sore they'll get sore maybe if they change something up you want a little bit of soreness is okay so when you approach it this way, you're going to see more consistent results.

4:19Otherwise, what ends up happening is you end up getting stuck on this hamster wheel of breakdown and recovery. So I hammer my body, break it down, my body heals. Oh, I'm back to my workout. Break it down, my body heal. And you just end up in the same place all the time. Breakdown, recovery, breakdown, recovery. What you want is a little breakdown, recovery, adaptation. Breakdown, little bit of recovery, adaptation. So you want to end up better than you were before. And you will see consistent strength gains and consistent progress, especially within the first year or two of exercise, if you approach it this way.

4:53After a couple of years of exercise, it gets a little more challenging. But those first couple of years, you should see some pretty consistent gains.

5:10Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:03Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.