How to Train for STRENGTH (Learn These 4 Types of Training!) | Mind Pump 1960

Hello everyone, welcome to Mind Pump. Did you know there are four different types of strength and that you will benefit if you train for each of them? In this episode, we talk about what they are and how to train for each of them to take your strength and your physique to the next level. All right, enjoy the show. Strength is the ultimate physical pursuit, but did you know there were different types of strength that you can train for? There's four in particular, maximal strength, explosive strength, strength endurance, and relative strength. Training from each one or for each one will make you better at all of them. In other words, if you want better overall strength, you got to train for all of those. You know, you sent this over to us the other night as a single topic episode and I really, I really like this because one of the most common questions I think that we get and admittedly, sometimes I think we can come off a little bit dismissive and I think it's because how much work or effort it would take to explain is, how do you guys program? Could you break down how you program? It's like this general question and it's like- It's a loaded question. It is a loaded question because there's, for every program, for every phase, there's a lot of different parts that go into creating that, right? But to me, this gives a really good glimpse into how when we put together a phase, the adaptation that we're trying to go after, like the thought process. So even something as general that you would think is strength, there are subcategories to that category and when we're writing exercises or choosing a phase in a program, that thought process goes into the exercises that we select, the rep ranges, the rest periods, and what were the desired outcomes of that type of strength. Totally. Like, you know, a power lifter and a bodybuilder both lift weights and they both are strong, but there's, to anybody who's ever observed each of them train or observed them in competition or whatever, there's obvious differences, right? A shot putter, right? They train for strength as well. A sprinter. A sprinter trains for strength. A gymnast. But there's obvious differences. Strength can be very specific and there's a skill component and the way that muscles contract can be a bit different and you can train for each one. Now, what is this, you know, what are the applications for the average person? Well, unless you're a specific, because someone may be thinking, well, I'm not going to be a specific type of athlete, so I really don't care. Well, you should because training for all of them is going to give you just kind of this overall better strength for the real world and a much more balanced physique and more progress. Because when you understand this, you can get your body to consistently progress. You're going to hit less plateaus. You're going to have less injuries. You're going to be better, just kind of overall and balanced and that translates into a better looking physique. So understanding this, I think, is really important and each one needs to be trained a little differently to give you the best results overall. Well, wouldn't you agree too that each one has carry over into real life too? Differently. Yeah, in different ways. Like obviously, the examples you're giving right now are the extreme examples of each of those categories, but if you're just an average gym goer who wants to be healthy and fit, pursuing each one of these adaptations is going to carry over and benefit you in all different aspects of your life. Yeah, you're going to encounter a lot of those different aspects of movement and stresses and challenges throughout your day. You need to move really fast. You need to grind your way through picking something up that's heavy. You're going to need to endure something for a substantial amount of time and be able to have that access to that. And so to train on all those different levels is very important for you to incorporate. Well, right away, I think of stories, Sal, you talked about scaling up your stairs to save your kid one time. You talk about mixing cement all day for eight to 10 hour days or you deadlifting 600 pounds. Each one of those are different types of strength that I think that you can train specifically for in your daily routine. Yeah, and training for all of them for the average person results in a better looking body and a better performing body over time. Because if you plan on doing this for a long period of time, if you stay in one aspect of training or one aspect of strength for too long, then what ends up happening is the positives start to diminish and the negatives start to amplify. So the risks start to get worse and you get these kind of diminishing returns versus training in each one of these phases, if you will, maximizing the benefits, minimizing the risk, and the result is just like a better looking body. So for the average person who's like, well, I don't care about competing in anything that you guys are talking about, it doesn't matter. It's going to give you a better looking body, a better moving body. So it's important to understand. The first type of strength that I think we should talk about is the one that I would consider the foundational strength, the one that translates the most to all the other types of strength. And it's the one that I think most people think about when we say strong. And that's maximal strength. So what is maximal strength? That's your one rep max. It's like, how much can you squat? How much can you bench press? How much can you deadlift? It's this kind of slow, low gear grinding type of strength that we would all think of if we saw someone lift something really heavy, we'd say, wow, that person is really strong. Now, in your opinion, does this carry over the most to all the other pursuits? It does, because you build maximal strength. You get a lot of the other stuff. Now, all of the types of strength that we're going to talk about carry over to each other one. But when you're talking about like, if I'm training like a young athlete, and this is more true for young athletes, when you have to kind of train generally before you get more specific, maximal strength, this low grinding strength tends to help with all the other ones. Well, and I think too, focusing on this really stretches your capacity to generate force, which then you have access to. Now, in other directions, in other pursuits for endurance, for explosive movements, like otherwise, not focusing on that, you're not going to be able to generate that loud of a signal. You're not going to be able to produce that substantial amount of force to apply towards strength. So to that point, is your guys' thought or theory that what's going on here in these four different ways of training for strength is actually less about your muscles and more about your central nervous system? Oh, totally. Totally. 100%. The muscles themselves really just build, right? Your muscle fibers grow. Grow or shrink, right? Grow or shrink. Now, you can get down to the details and the weeds, and oh, there's type 1A, type 1B, muscle fibers type 2A, type 2B, and some contract harder, some have more stamina, more endurance, and yes, muscles can kind of mold themselves to what you're doing, but it's largely due to the central nervous system and how it fires muscles, how it controls muscles, the way it uses the muscles in unison to work together. This is all CNS, so that's why we say strength is a skill, because that's the skill aspect, right? The CNS is like the master programmer writing the program, and the muscles are kind of following the directions. Yeah, and can you get all these muscles to be organized efficiently and quickly to produce more strength in that direction? And that's all part of that process is how effective we are at being able to have access to all these muscles at once. Yeah. Now, maximal strength, that would be in the real world like lifting something heavy. You got to lift a heavy couch, you got to move a motorcycle, or just anytime you have to lift something really, really heavy, a heavy suitcase above your head, that's maximal strength. It's slow, it's grinding, it's the kind of strength that looks like you're grinding through and having to really exert yourself in kind of a slow fashion. Yeah, and because it's also that isometric component of being able to stabilize joints, spine, and being able to maintain that muscle tension while also doing work with your major muscles. And so, it's really like it's considering all of that at once. Yeah, and this is low rep training, it's heavy training, it's controlled form, and what you're doing is you're practicing these kind of gross motor movements often. So, it's like instead of doing a leg workout where I'm doing 10 different exercises, I'm doing 10 sets of squats, and I'm doing two or three reps of the squat. I'm not maxing out, but it's at a high intensity, maybe 90%. And long rest periods. Long rest periods. I'm trying to build this low gear of strength. The best example of athletes in this category would be a powerlifter. Powerlifters are all about maximal strength. I mean, you watch them train, and it's like they have this first gear that's got crazy amount, you know, just like a- All torque. It's all torque, right? It's like if it was a car, it'd be a tractor. Like a tractor doesn't go very fast. It's not going to take turns and corners very quickly. It's going to move the most weight, though. But you're going to attach that tractor to, you know, 10,000 pounds, and it's going to just keep trucking along and be able to pull, you know, crazy amounts of weight. But it's that low rep, heavy, this is like the phase one that you'll find in a lot of our programs. MAPS anabolic phase one really does focus a lot on maximal strength to give an example of, you know, for people who follow our programs, kind of what this looks like. This, by the way, is my favorite kind of training, just because I think as a kid, I always connected strength with this, like how much weight can I lift? So, this is one that I think I enjoy the most. Well, you just shed a little bit of light on why that's typically what a phase one looks like in our program, too, is that you just said that it's- Build that base. Yeah, this is probably the best way to build foundational strength that has the most carryover into all other pursuits, because we get asked that a lot, you know, why this rep range? In fact, it's popular, a lot of people like to start in a higher rep range, and we don't do that. And so, this is part of the reasoning behind why. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have some programs where we disrupt that, but when you talk about our foundational program, and the first phase of most of those programs starts in a maximal strength type of phase. Now, someone may be wondering what kind of look does this produce in the body? This is going to be speculative, so there's no data to support what I'm about to say, but there's lots of anecdote. And in my experience, training for maximal strength produces a really solid, hard-looking body. Bodybuilders would say, you know, it produces a granite look to your physique. I have found this to be true. When I train like this, often, I just feel hard and solid in comparison to other types of training that might make my muscles look more round and full or, you know, might make me move differently. Now, I tend to move more stiffly when I train this way because I think my body's kind of turned on to lift something heavy. So, I probably move more robotically when I'm in this phase for too long, but it does produce this really hard granite look. Well, I think too, if you're comparing it to a more hypertrophy style, like you just know that there's more blood, more fluid to be considered with that type of a training, which then, you know, produces that type of a look where there's that kind of layer, you know, over that. So, it does sort of, like, physically, you can see the difference of it, I guess. What's up, everybody? Here's the giveaway for today's episode, the at-home holiday bundle, which is what's on sale this month. Check out what you get for free if you win the contest. You get MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Suspension, MAPS Prime, and the No BS six-pack formula. Here's how you enter to win. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications, do all those things. If you win, we'll notify you in the comment section. Now, everybody else, that exact bundle is only $99.99, okay? One payment gets you all those programs for the at-home holiday bundle. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below to get set up. All right, here comes the show. Now, the next one is explosive strength, and this one is probably the most responsible for athletic performance. I don't know if you guys would agree, that explosive, the ability to generate- Well, again, though, to your point, though, still, even when training an athlete, the foundation is still building the maximal strength first, to Justin's point earlier about the central nervous system and teaching the muscles to fire. That way, when you go do explosive training, you're getting the most out of that explosive training. Yes. This is how fast and how hard your muscles can contract. We talked about maximal strength earlier. That would be lifting a heavy weight, like my max, and it would typically be slow moving. I go pull 600 pounds off the ground. I'm not moving it very quickly. Explosive strength would be like me taking 100 pounds and deadlifting it so fast, I throw it in the air 50 feet. Like, wow, how did you generate such crazy power in such a short period of time? This is like a sprinter or an Olympic lifter. The amount of force that they could generate in a short period of time is insane. This makes you agile. This is like you see someone jump super high. This is their muscles' ability to contract so hard so quickly that it launches them into the air. Yeah, and inevitably, a lot of it, you're going to see triple extension because of the fact that you're so explosively moving through it that your whole body just gets involved from head to toe just because of the momentum of it. Really, it's about its efficiency. You're going to produce a ton of force, but it's going to be at the right moments. Then your body's got to move into it and catch. Talking specifically to Olympic lifts or sprinting, there's a lot of technique with it once you get to that level, but really, it's about being very intentional and direct. At what point do you throttle down the hardest? Would you guys also categorize this as reactive strength, so explosive or reactive strength? Yeah, that's what they would call in the certifications too. Right, the ability for your body to respond, right? You call upon it to go left or right, and it can respond quickly or jump as high as you can and respond. I just remember this. I'll never forget. I have never really worked out a lot with Olympic lifters, and they're just not common to find in gyms, but I remember one time there was an Olympic lifter that came to work out at one of gyms that I managed. Then I watched him play basketball, and he was not a basketball player. It was recreational, just having fun. This dude could jump like I'd never seen before. I remember one of my trainers told me, he says, Olympic lifters usually have crazy ability to jump high and move quickly because that's how they train. They're so explosive. I'm like, oh, that's so true. It's the same thing. I'll never forget that. It was this small, muscular dude, and I saw him jump, and I was like, oh my God, he's like a flea. Yeah, the weight's slowing him down. I wish I understood all of this when I was a kid in high school playing basketball because I didn't get any of this. I've told you before that when I was older, heavier, and was not playing as much basketball was when I was able to dunk the basketball. After I started to build- Just more power. Yeah, I never trained heavy squats before until I got into my 20s when I started to do things like that. Not even playing basketball that much anymore, I was able to go grab the basketball and two-hand throw the ball down. It was like, oh my God. I had been doing all these calf raises and exercises inside the gym all through high school playing basketball. It wasn't until way later when I wasn't even playing ball anymore that I got the most explosive. That wasn't even me doing it in this order where we're talking about building maximal strength first, and then going over and doing explosive or reactive type training to express that new strength that I had. I just simply built some more strength, to you guys' point earlier about- Carryover. How that carries over into sports so much, and all of a sudden now I can throw the ball down. It was a dramatic difference just from learning how to heavy squat. It's like when you guys told me the story about the 49er players who you guys played basketball with. They weren't even basketball players, but they're just so explosive. The way they moved was just carried. Now, this has got to be the most... I would love you guys' opinion on this. I think this is probably the most misunderstood way of training. When people think they're for explosive strength- Many times it creeps into endurance. It's always endurance. I almost never see anybody train explosive strength the right way. How you train is how your body is going to express itself. What do I mean by that is, let's say you want to train explosively for jumping. Jumping up and down as many times you can until you're super tired is not going to do it. Jumping a few times as hard and as fast as you can is training the explosivity. When you see people do plyos in the gym, 99% of the time, it's just a way to get tired. Nobody's really training for power. Well, you're either training good habits or bad habits. Especially in that direction, explosive training is not good to incorporate any kind of fatigue. That's completely going to defeat the effectiveness of what you're trying to do with that. Your job is to really just focus on how effectively I can pull this off when my body is fully recovered. Mechanics. Yeah. I'm only going to be able to generate that maximal amount of force if there's no fatigue getting in the way. I blame us for this. I really think that trainers are the one that fucks this up. Totally. We just want to make things hard. Yeah. We found a way to make things hard for clients, make them sweat, challenge them. Oh, let's throw plyometrics- Sounds like part of a circuit. Yeah. Let's throw plyometrics in there and this is going to really get them sweating and burning and struggling. If we are the thought leaders, the ones that are coaching and teaching others how to exercise, I really blame us for the ones that did this. It's still prevalent today. If you go in a gym, it's rare I actually see somebody training explosive strength correctly. It's rare. When you do, I always think it's like a really high-level athlete. I can tell by the way they're like, okay, they've either been taught or they have the training to know how to train this way because normally when I see someone doing it, they're doing it in a circuit style. The other mistake people make is they use too heavy of a weight. You have to be able to move the weight fast in order for it to be explosive in this sense. Now, that doesn't mean when you're training for maximal strength, you don't try to explode. In order to train for explosive strength, if my max is 300 pounds in the bench press and I want to train explosive in that range of motion, then I'll put 150 pounds on the bar or 100 pounds and the goal is to take the bar and throw it off my chest. That's explosive. Yeah. I think people get confused because they'll watch Olympic lifters and they have a substantial amount of weight that they're moving, but the way that they got to get there was like barely any weight possible and they're able to move really quickly and get into that position at the most effective technique possible, but then it was a gradual process of now adding load, adding load, and still being able to have that kind of speed. I think that was one of the most fascinating things that I ever learned as a trainer because I wasn't around a lot of Olympic lifters and so I didn't get introduced into that world until much later and I remember being so fascinated by, wow, these dudes rarely ever lift heavy weight, yet when they get on stage and they go compete, they're lifting the most weight that we ever see people lift, but leading up to that, they're rarely ever flirting with that maximal strength level. They're always moving at a much lower percentage of what they can lift. Even when you see them do heavy squats, because Olympic lifters will sometimes do just straight up back squats really heavy. You ever seen them do heavy squats? They go down and up. They don't look like a power lifter where that's grinding through a heavy weight and it's because they're training that strength speed, that explosive power. It's like a sprinter, right? Like a sprinter is not going to be able to squat as much as his counterpart that weighs the same that competes in power lifting, but he's going to run way faster. Well, such great example. We have two good friends that I think of right away. It's like, go look at Jordan's shallow squat and then go look at Sonny Webster's squat. Oh yeah, there you go. You have an Olympic lifter there, then you have a power lifter right there and they're like dramatically different when you see them squat. By the way, both are right. Both are training for a specific type of strength. Yes. So this would be like, if it was a car, it'd be like a drag car. It's at the line, light turns green and it's go and a quarter mile and boom, you hit, you know, seven seconds or something crazy like that. It's be able to just generate so much force in such a short period of time. Another example would be like a heavy deadlift versus taking a 20 pound medicine ball, putting it in a deadlift position and then throwing it as far as you can. Like that's the way that you train for explosivity. So you gave the kind of lifting protocol for maximal strength. What is kind of lifting protocol as far as sets, reps and rest periods? Lightweight for a few reps explosively, not to fatigue. In other words, take a weight that, you know, take 50% of your max or less, probably less, lift it as fast as you can and do that and then rest for 30 seconds and then do it again, rest for 30 seconds, do it again, rest for, and then rest for like three minutes, four minutes and then repeat. The goal is to lift as quickly as you possible as possible with that lift. Now, I do want to say with explosive strength training, if you can't do something slow perfectly, then don't even try to do it fast. This is where injury comes in. Like if your squat isn't perfect and then you're going to try and do a squat jump, like you're going to hurt yourself. Any imperfection is exaggerated. Totally exaggerate. So explosive strength is something that you train with perfect technique and form because you're trying to exert yourself. In fact, what I tell people is do your first couple sets at 50% maximal speed, 70% maximal speed. You still feel good and comfortable, then go ahead and train. Well, technically, if we were actually, if we didn't order this, otherwise this would have been the last one. Yes. So technically, if we were, if we ordered this episode in the order of how we would train someone, the first one was correct. We would have done maximal strength, but we would not have done explosive or reactive strength second. It would be the pentacon. Yeah. It's after you've gone through the other type. Yes. All right. So this next one is strength endurance. So what is that? That is, can your body, now we're not talking about endurance, endurance, right? Regular endurance is like, like running like over and over and over again. Right? That's not what we're talking about. Strength endurance is, can I exert strength? And then can I do it again? And then can I do it again? Right? It would be like a sprinter who's running a fast sprint and then he rests for four minutes and then he does it again. And he does this 20 times in a row and each time minimal, uh, loss in performance, right? This is like a football player. If you ever watch football players, football players have a tremendous amount of maximal strength, explosive strength, but they actually have damn good strength endurance because it's play after play after play. Each play is explosive. Each play requires a ridiculous amount of strength. And then the play is over. Then they go back, get to their line or their huddle or whatever, get back and then do it again. And they have to be able to do this throughout the whole game. How long can you continuously exert yourself at that level? And there's a way to train for that. And so, you know, and that, I guess you could also kind of relate it to, to work capacity. So it's, it's the ability to, um, you know, produce that kind of work, uh, for, for an elongated period of time. So, uh, I mean, there's, there's ways I'll do this, um, you know, in terms of like just farmer carries and, and, you know, moving with weight. So I'm still, uh, really, um, working through the strength aspect of holding the weights, pressing the weights, but I'm also moving with it and I'm trying to stabilize it, sustain it. Uh, and so there's just, all of that's incorporated with how can I produce this kind of, of work demand as long as I possibly can. So this one seems a little more nuanced to me as far as the programming. So give me an example. Like we just talked about the last one of what you just said with the, you know, 30 second rest, go again for three reps. Like, what would the, uh, the, the lifting protocol be, or give me an exercise and give me what the protocol is. Honestly, this is the easiest way, uh, cause there's lots of different ways to this, but honestly, this would be traditional high volume bodybuilding. Traditional high volume bodybuilding is a lot of strength endurance. You take a power lifter, super set, super sets, high reps, 45 second rest, right? In between sets, like you take a bodybuilder and you have them train with a power lifter. And in the beginning of the workout, the power lifter will outlift the bodybuilder towards the end of the workout. The bodybuilder is lifting more than the power lifter because they can go set after set after set 20 sets for legs, 20 sets for back. So then would you, would you actually categorize this as almost like a sub category of hypertrophy? So there's hypertrophy. It would be like, would it be a general type of training? And then within that you have strength endurance in that. And then standard you're a great, that's a, that's a great question because all the ones that we're talking about contribute to hypertrophy, right? Explosive training contributes to hypertrophy. Maximal strength contributes to hypertrophy. So does strength endurance. In fact, all the ones we're going to talk about build muscle. That's why it's important to, to train all of them. But this is good, like real world, uh, like workload or work capacity. Like, can I, can I go, uh, dig ditches, uh, or build a fence or do some roofing or go do yard work? And I could still swing the hammer as hard, uh, you know, four hours later as I did when I first started. This looks like in one of our programs would be like phase three of maps aesthetic. Yes. Or maps anabolic. Right. Absolutely. Or the work sessions in store work sessions. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so it's high volume, it's supersets, it's, it's lighter weight. A good example of this for athletes would be like a running back, a bodybuilder CrossFit athlete. You're looking at, you know, lots of strength endurance, just the ability to continue to generate strength over and over again. I guess as a car, this would be like a rally car, right? You know how they, they have to have speed, but also continue to travel through the hole. I would also consider this of the three we've talked about so far, one of the more safer ones to train, which is by the way, why sometimes you might see somebody program this on the front because of the safety reasons you may not let's say less load a demand because you know, of all the sets and the amount of work to do, even though I know I'm going to get more bang for my buck by going maximal strength for the average person. Let's say I've got a 70 year old lady who's never lifted weights before. I may lean towards training like this initially just for form and technique and safety, safety, even though I know that getting her to do a five by five routine or something like that would give me the most bang for my buck or carrier. But because now I'm starting to consider, oh, safety, oh, maybe I might go this route. Yeah. By the way, this is all relative, right? So how you would train the seven-year-old for strength endurance is not going to be like how you would train. Like it's all relative to your current fitness level. It's just like maximal strength. Just like explosive strength, by the way, with explosive strength, I forgot to mention in the real world, it's valuable to have some explosive strength because if you step off of a curb or need to catch something that's falling or your kid is going to go down the stairs, like this is, this is, this is your ability to move quickly with strength. So, but yeah, with what you're saying here, Adam, it is a very safe because it's set after set after set, perfect form, good technique and stability. And to your point about, you know, beginners, and this might be something that to consider too, it's like in order to sustain certain positions and, you know, have good technique in those and not have fatigue be a factor that sneaks in and interrupts that, this would definitely directly address that. So you would, you would be working on the ability to have the stamina to have good form for a longer amount of time. This kind of training gives you a really good pump. You know, this is the traditional high volume, high rep, uh, supersets. Like you get crazy, crazy pumps. Bodybuilders would say it gives you that kind of round, full look to your muscles. Yeah. Adam, you probably trained like this most consistently out of all of us because you did compete. Absolutely. And when you train, I love the story when you talk about when you first worked out with Justin, cause he was such an athlete, didn't train like a bodybuilder, what those workouts look like in the beginning versus the end. Yeah. No, he would always, he would always be kicking my ass at the front half of the workout. And then I'd catch up and get him towards the back half because he did bury me in the back. Yeah. He definitely would have not how I would say it, but yes, you're right. It just came out really easy. Yeah. Freudian slip there. So, uh, yeah, no, it's a, it was, it's, it was a great example of, you have two, two types of, uh, you know, training modalities that each of us are attracted to Justin very much. So he was maximal explosive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was more of the hypertrophy and endurance, right? So that's definitely the direction that I train. And then you would see that expressed when we get into the gym and workout and both had tremendous carryover for us to train that way. Cause I needed more of what he had. He probably needed a little bit more of what I had. And so that's what I love about this is that if you stick with one for a long time and then you move into a new one, boom gains, boom, your body responds and you get, you know, a better results. All right. The last one is relative strength. And really this is just about how strong are you for your size, right? Like, uh, how strong you are relative to your body weight. I've trained, I'll, I'll never forget the first time this was became super apparent to me. I trained, I'll never forget. And I trained for a very short period of time, but it was phenomenal. She was this young female gymnast. So she, she probably weighed, she must, she had to be under 90 pounds. She was tiny. She was like 14 years old when I was 18. Her, I trained her dad. Her dad said, Hey, I'd like you to train my daughter. And this little kid, she was this petite little, she was like kind of built, look like a little gymnast. And she did pull-ups. I said, Hey, can you do pull-ups? You know, stupidly I'm asking a gymnast if she could do pull-ups. She's like, yeah, I can do pull-up. I said, Oh, can, let me watch your form. And she grabbed the bar, put her legs out straight in front of her. And she does, this is like the speed of pull-ups that she was doing while she had a straight face. Oh my God. Like I'm definitely stronger than her maximally, but relative to body weight, she'd kick my ass all over the place because her relative strength was incredible. And this really is what allows you to move your body through space. Like if you're, if you have the strength of a 200 pound power lifter, but you weigh a hundred pounds, how do you think you're going to move in the real world? Like how are you going to, how are you going to manipulate your body over objects or climb things? It's going to feel like nothing. I think of Mike Salemi right away when I think of like our friends that are good representations of the avatar who represents this, like he just very unassuming. You would never guess that guy is as strong as he is. He is an incredible relative. Gymnasts are my favorite example. So are wrestlers because wrestlers often have to wrestle in a weight class. Yeah. So they're just really good at maximizing their strength for their body weight. Cause they don't want to go up to another weight class. I mean, I kind of would put in rock climbing just because I've seen some insane strength to weight ratio and all the way directed to their fingertips, you know? So it's just also like directional strength, I think, and, and being able to, you know, access certain parts of their body. I think a lot of people don't really have strength. Yeah. You ever seen those calisthenic, like what do they call them? Barmen where there's certain prisons in California that eliminated weights, but they allowed like pull up bars. They'll just keep pull up bars. So these inmates just learned how to do crazy stuff on pull up bars and they'd call them barmen and they would manipulate their bodies with these on these bars in ways that were just insane doing pull-ups, almost like a straight arm pull-up with their whole body. It's just crazy. Isn't there, isn't there a popular group in New York? Calisthenic Kings, I think is one. I don't know. I think it's bar something. I think, look it up, Doug. I'm pretty sure there's like a really popular group in New York that, and I don't know if it, it originated in prison or not. I do know that it's popular there also, but I know these guys made it really popular and they have, there's, there's a name to them. I used to, I went down the rabbit hole. Yeah. You can Google calisthenic barmen, Doug. We'll do like the flags. They do crazy, crazy, crazy stuff where they explosively pull up and spin in the air, catch them. I mean, you got, and the dudes are jacked and that's all they do is just all bars. So now the way you train for something like this is you do, because a lot of this is skill also, for example. Yeah. You know, I weigh about 210 pounds. I could overhead press 225, but I probably couldn't do a handstand pushup because I don't have the balance or the skill. So a lot of this has to do with also your ability to move your body. So the way you train for this is using your body. So instead of doing, you know, bench press, you do pushups and variations of pushups. Instead of doing shoulder presses, you do handstand pushups. Instead of doing pull-downs, you do pull-ups, for example. It's the skill acquisition, lots of balance and stability exercises. And then there's one other component, which is keeping your body weight low. The goal, if you want really good relative strength, it makes sense to not let yourself get too heavy. So what, so break down this protocol for me. So what does the protocol look like? Give me an exercise and then the reps and rest periods. What does it look like in the technique? You are doing, you're picking body weight exercises. You're not trained to failure. You're doing a lot of sets and you're practicing your form and technique. So it's like doing pull-ups to get my lats pumped versus doing pull-ups for 30 minutes to feel like I get really good at pull-ups. You know, it's like practicing lifts or training exercises. So would you say like, like German volume training would be an example of that, but with body weight. So like if I were to do like, you know, 10 sets of 10 on pull-ups. Yeah. Yeah. But you could do like, let's say 15 or 20 reps. Yeah. But you're just doing over and over and over again, your practice and then rest periods relatively short, or would I still give myself rest periods of like three minutes long, long, long. Cause you're, yeah, you're still trying to build strength, right? You're still trying to build lots of strength. This would be kind of like a formula one car would be my example of, you know, what kind of car this would be like, where it's just light and very, very maneuverable in my, I mean, look, I think all of these are impressive, but the one that tends to blow my mind the most is this one right here. Maybe because it's the one that you see the least of in the real world, but you ever see someone who's small who could just do crazy. It looks like circus strength. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's yeah. It looks unbelievable because, um, yeah. Cause they could just do these sort of anti-gravitational moves that you're just like baffled by, but it's really just manipulating their body weight. In fact, Justin, you probably have the most experience with this because you did a whole year of just body weight ring training. Yeah. So I was going to kind of add to that and you can progressively overload, but you just want to do that through angles and gravitational forces and manipulate that with like, uh, like suspension trainers and progress your way up to like Olympic rings, things that will challenge the, um, the stability and, um, you know, intensify, uh, the, the angles a lot more. Um, and, and you, you kind of find yourself into these new moves. So like an example of that is like taking your, your, um, your body weight dips and then, um, being able to then kind of turn that into a muscle up. Uh, and so the whole process of getting there, it takes a lot of emphasis on the, the very low part of, of the dip and really getting strong, uh, you know, at that lowest position. Now, is this where you guys would apply isometrics? Oh yeah. I think so because you have to stabilize your body with a lot of these body weight type movements. I mean, if you're doing a handstand pushup, it's not just the pushing the way, and I know that's true with the barbell to an extent, but stabilizing your body is a whole nother ballgame becoming as rigid as possible. Do you know what I did a day before yesterday at my back is so lit up sore. This is the only thing I did for my back. I did literally four sets of pull-ups for three reps, but I did a isometric hold the top and then slowly resisted the way down. I hadn't done something like that in so long. Three pull-ups. That's all I could do. Do you pull ups like that? Yeah. Oh, do you guys remember those? I don't know if they were brothers. They used to perform at like bodybuilding events, but they were also a Cirque du Soleil act. There was just two brothers that could lift each other. Like they'd lift each other. The ones that were on Oprah. I think they were. The one where the guy was like, his head was on the other guy's head and they walked upstairs. I think they did all kinds of crazy stuff. I just saw Joe Rogan post that. I don't know. I think it's different than what you're talking about. The pair you're talking about are two brothers. I can picture them in like all white gymnastics and they came on Oprah before. Yes. They used to do, they did a performance at one of the Arnold classics that I attended. They came out in the beginning and I couldn't believe what they could do with their bodies. It was insane. Now, okay. Even though there's going to be obviously exceptions to every rule and it doesn't mean that this is the way you always would have to do this, but generally speaking, how would we order this and programs and how long would we stick in each phase? Would we stay the same amount of time, four to six weeks in each phase? And how would we order these in the ideal world? Generally speaking. That's a good question. Yeah. It has to be general because yeah, there's if you consider me, I have a favorite. So, and I want to consider that as well. So I'm going to train more in maximal strength than I will in the others just because that's my favorite, right? If you're a bodybuilder, you're probably going to train in the high volume superset phase than the other ones. But for the average person, it's probably a good idea to spend like a few weeks in each one, you know, to kind of be just general few weeks here, a few weeks there, a few weeks here, a few weeks there, and then cycle back through. And what's cool about this is if you, and I did this with some clients, is I would have them track what they did so that when they came back around, they could see if they didn't made any improvements because they went through the other phases. So I say three to five weeks in each one of these phases. The first one, Doug, I know you're watching videos. The first one, maximal strength. Yes. Right. Then what would you go? And we already know that we would for sure do explosive or reactive last. So then how you order the other two in the middle, do you have a preference? Yeah, I think you're probably going to go maximal strength. I think relative strength can actually be also be first or second because that's, I mean, anything that's bodyweight, it could be very basic, right? Or advanced. So you could actually plug that in anywhere, but maximal strength, strength, endurance, and then you could put relative strength in there anywhere. And I think the end is explosive just because that's the most risky I would say. Yeah. I feel like the ends are solid for sure. Maximal strength I feel like would be generally speaking. Again, there's exceptions to the rule. I think that's almost always going to be the first and then the last would be explosive. And then how you order the other two, you could probably flip flop. I agree. And I think everybody's going to have a preference going through and they're going to know what training style like fits them best. And it's nothing wrong with repeating one of them like the majority of the time, but trying your best to incorporate those other styles of strength training is going to fill a lot of holes. Yeah. So what mine looked like in bodybuilding was I, for like six weeks, I would move in like the strength endurance or slash like super set hypertrophy type of world. And then I would use all these other ones to interrupt that for three to four weeks. Yeah. Right. And then jump back in. Then I'd jump back in. Then I'd interrupt it again with another one for three to four weeks. So obviously there is going to be exceptions rule for every type of person that has very specific goals like I would have as a bodybuilder. But generally speaking for the average listener who just wants to be fit, wants to be strong, wants to look good, wants to be healthy, like rotating through all of these, I think is, is the most ideal. And then ordering them kind of how we do. Now, last thing I'll add is someone may wonder, well, why don't I do all of them in a workout or why don't I do all of them in a week? Okay. Technically signals. Yeah. Technically you could, but the reason why it's typically not a good idea is because the mindset that you go into each of these is very different. It's like learning four sports, basketball, football, tennis, hockey. And would you go do three hockey shots and then throw a ball? It's like, no, you'd spend a whole block and session of getting good at that sport. And then you move on to the next sport. And yes, they all have carry over a little bit to each other and when in the pursuit of being athletic, but they're so different that you would want to stay hyper-focused at least for a period of time to allow yourself to progress. Right? A hundred percent. Look, if you like MindPump, you'll love mindpumpfree.com. That's where we have all of our free content. So head over there and download some free guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at MindPump Justin, Adam is on Instagram at MindPump Adam, and you can find me on Twitter at MindPump Sal. This one's really important. And that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps. If you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps, but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of let's say 15 to 20 reps. And then they'll throw on some supersets. At the end of that year, you're going to see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out and less injury. That's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.