2917: How Strong Should You Actually Be? The Numbers Finally Explained

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast in history approaching. Half a billion total downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode we talk about how strong you should actually be what the numbers really say. By the way, we have a buy one, get one free going on right now with maps, programs are top 10 most popular maps programs, including maps and a bulk of maps, power lift. Both of those programs are great for strength. If you're interested, go to mapsbogo.com. This episode is brought to you by Crisp Power. So every 1.75 ounce bag has 28 grams of protein. 10 grams of fiber, 6 grams of net carbs, what a net carbs. These are carbohydrates that might affect blood glucose. The rest is fiber. You guys, it's a bag of protein that tastes like pretzels and is absolutely delicious. If you like to snack while you're watching TV or hanging out, you also have protein targets because you like muscle on a burn body fat. And you want that satiety. That's right, satiety. You eat a bag of crisp power and you feel good. You don't need to eat five more bags like you do when you eat potato chips or other or regular pretzels. Not like that with crisp power because the protein, you eat it, you're satisfied, you feel good. And again, you get a lot of protein per bag and a lot of fiber. You guys, if you want to snack, this is the snack you got to get. Go to crisppower.com/mindpump. Use the code MindPump, get 10% off your order. All right, here comes the show. All right, real quick. If you love us, like we love you, why not show it 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, we're going to talk about how strong you should actually be. What the numbers really say. Let's get to it. Did you pull these up? Yeah, I did. We haven't looked at these in a while. It's okay, this is a good topic because strength is definitely one of the best metrics to measure for progress. It's very strongly correlated to muscle size. We know that. But it's also correlated to hormone health, quality of life and longevity. When you look at the data on strength, it's this really great objective metric. What's really cool about it is you can measure it. It's not subjective. There's a lot of subjectivity going on for everything else. This is one of those core things you could always kind of count. Is my strength moving up or is it not moving? That's right. Now, the bad news about this is, and this is literally true, we are in a muscle weakness epidemic. And we have been for a while. I've talked about this data before, but a college-aged male today has the grip strength of a 60-something year old in 1984. This was a study that was done something like 10 years ago. It's gotten worse. Now, grip strength is a proxy for overall body strength. So it's a very easy way to test somebody's strength. And based off of that, you could tell if the person's generally strong or not. But we've seen strength decline pretty consistently now over the last few decades. So that's the bad news. The bad news is we're kind of in this weakness epidemic. Which are weaklings. The good news is that everybody could get significantly stronger. Everybody can. And fix it. With the right kind of training. In fact, there was a recent study I brought up on one of our other episodes where they were strength training elderly individuals. And these were people who were in their mid to late 70s and 80s. And the percentage of strength gains that they saw during the study matched what much younger people would experience, people in their 20s and 30s. Now, of course, the difference is their starting point and the potential. Right. 20-year-old has so much more strength potential. But the percentage of strength gains was equal. That's got to be so encouraging for people. It's incredibly encouraging. I mean, when I train clients personally for over two decades and people in advanced age were my favorite precisely because it was so life changing. They would come in with this idea that, okay, I might feel a little better, but there's only so much. And then they would see their strength double. I mean, double within a few months. I have a client command who could barely do a couple body weight squats. Four weeks later, we're doing 15 body weight squats. And it's more than double the strength. And so the good news is you have incredible ability to influence your body's physical strength. Off air, we were just recently talking about a clip that I just did, talking about pursuing heavy barbell lifting in past your 40s after you've already been kind of like lifting for a long time. And I made a controversial take on like, at one point, when you get really strong, the ROI just isn't there as much anymore. You don't need to keep getting stronger for it. And then I made the others, because I argued it both ways just to kind of highlight the nuance of this conversation. And so then I had another example of a client who come to me at 45 years old, they've never lifted weights before. And you know, barbell back squatting 185 pounds is relatively heavy for that person who's never done that before. And absolutely I would do that because the risk is moderate to low for that person because we're not loading a crazy amount of weight. And yet, and the ROI is incredible when you do that. So just because you're in advanced age does not mean that you can get incredible benefits still. No technique makes a big difference and the total load makes a big difference. But the way to I think understand is the risk of weakness way outweighs the risk of the exercises that you're doing. You get really strong, somebody who's you know, you got a 200 pound guy squatting 300 to 400 pounds, which is doable with years of training. But once you get to that kind of strength, now the risk of weakness is low, you're strong. You have no, we don't have a lot of risk of weakness. You don't have risk of issues with mobility. Yeah, if you're a, but the risk of the lift is much higher. That's right. If you're squatting 300 pounds in your 40s, you are not a risk of frailty. No, no, but if you're not doing any strengths, and you have a desk job. Massively. And the risk of weakness is incredibly high. And this is really the, the enemy that we're dealing with here is our lifestyle is not designed to require any level of physical strength. Yeah. Okay. So we only have our bodies only ever as strong as it thinks it needs to be. Now, of course, there's a variance from person to person. Some individuals are stronger than others naturally without exercise, all that stuff. But when it comes to just every individual themselves, your body will only do, will only use resources to keep your strength if it thinks it needs that strength. Otherwise, it saves resources. Okay. And so if your daily activity is sitting in a car, sitting in a desk, sitting at home, the occasional walk, you might lift the bag of groceries here or there. There's really no reason for your body to have strength. And so over time you lose strength, over time you lose muscle, you lose bone density, and you become frail. And this has a negative result on longevity, a significant result, a negative result. In fact, when you look at single metrics that can predict all cause mortality, there's almost no metric that is better than a grip strength test. This is crazy. I remember when they first figured this out, they've since tested it many times over, but they were like, how can it be that strength predicts all cause mortality better than other individual metrics? You know, we have all these blood tests, all these other metrics that we could test that can predict mortality. Yeah. Why is your strength? How is it that strength can predict that? And it's because the compounding effects. That's right. That's right. When you're weak, insulin sensitivity is probably low. Diabetes is probably there or on its way there. You have weaker bones, hormone health is lower. Your mitochondrial health is resilient. You're not as resilient. You got forbid you fall. Now you're really in a bad place. So strength is this. It's this thing that you need. Now what you're saying out of this, you don't need extreme strength. And we're going to go over strength metrics. And we're going to go over like what's decent good, you know, best and advanced. But for most people listening, especially if you're new to strength training, relatively new or you're not strength training, you know, let's say you've been doing it for less than four years, I would say definitely less than two years getting stronger. That's everything. That's number one goal. That's right. When you say the number one enemy in this situation is atrophy. Atrophy. Yeah. And what happens is if we don't use it and you will lose it and your body will prune it. And that's really it's less about an age thing. It's that it's been 15 years. You haven't done the thing. And because you haven't done the thing, the body is decided. I don't need to have you seen. You guys have seen this. I'm sure. But just for listeners, they've done MRIs of 70 year old athletes. These are people who strength train who are fit. They'll do an MRI of their muscle quality, indistinguishable from a 30 year old athlete. Now a seven year old athlete is not going to be able to perform like he like he or she could when they were 20 or 30. Yeah. But the difference between a seven year old that strength range, let's say any seven year old. That's the typical seven year old. You're looking at like almost like an entirely different species in terms of mobility, strength, bone density, all of those things. Another issue at them is that the workouts that are advertised the mainstream workouts, the ones that people tend to gravitate towards the ones with all the the advertising, they're terrible for building strength. They're really designed to push two metrics that people have associated with calorie burn, sweat, and soreness. So the average person doesn't know this, okay? So I'll help you. The average person doesn't know that how sweaty you get during a workout and how sore you get after a workout is means nothing in terms of the workouts actual effectiveness. It literally means nothing, especially in the pursuit of strength, which is what we're talking about. That's right. In fact, it can be counterproductive. That's right. You pushing so hard, the burn, the calorie burn, and pushing so hard, the soreness will impede a lot of your strength. You might get some stamina. You're not going to get strong. You get some muscle endurance from training all that and doing that, but as far as getting stronger, which is the real metric that we want to see move when we're talking about longevity and bone density and overall health that you're talking about, it's strength that we want to see improve. And if you're always chasing that soreness, like we're going to lean on overtraining, which that's not going to help you to adapt, overcome, and build, which is counterproductive. And the irony of this is that the more appropriate way is far and better way for results is far more sustainable and realistic for the average person. I'm going to say it. Adam, I'm going to say it. It feels easier. It's reasonable. When you do it right, this is what's crazy. And this is why I think so many people struggle with this initially because this is it. Listen, this is a conversation I had with every client for the first maybe 30 to 60 days I trained them after that. I didn't have to talk to him anymore because the proof is in the pudding. But this was a very common conversation. It was this. I feel like it could do more. Yeah. I'm not getting sore enough. Don't you think I should be going harder? And I would keep a log of the weights that we're doing. I'd be like, Hey, just to point something out. Last week, you were pressing 60 pounds. This week, you pressed 80 pounds. You realize you want to have 20 pounds and a week and they go, I did hit. I have it written down right here. But it feels like I'm not put. You're fine. As long as we keep getting stronger. After about 60 days, everybody was sold. Everybody was like, Okay, this is in fact, I'm training somebody right now, my friend Justin, who's an ER doctor, who is very used to beating himself up. He did marathon cycles, cycling. He did lots of that style of exercise. And when he would lift weights, he would get after it. Of course, he got that mentality, right? He's an ER doctor. So he's like pressure, stress, well, right? So when we first met, we became friends and I'm training him. And I'm explaining these things to him. And he's got a science background. Obviously he's a doctor. So it's making sense. So he's like, Okay, I'm bought. Let's, you know, you sold me. Let's do this. And the first, I remember the first work I said, Is that it? I said, we're fine, Justin. Just watch. Watch what happens with your strength. And he was cool. And the first few workouts he was cool. By the fourth week, he was coming to me. He's like, So I feel like I should be doing more. And I'd be like, Let me show you something. Do you see how much you bench pressed? Yeah. This is what you bench press day one. And I showed him because I wrote down. He's like, I went up 40 pounds. Yeah. Yeah. Because are you sure? I said, bro, I wrote it for you. Feel too easy. And he's like, this is crazy. By week seven, people are commenting on how good he looks. And he goes, this is so wild. I never realized that proper strength training would feel like this. I always felt like I had to beat the crap out of myself. Yeah. Yeah. This is what that's really the good news. The difference between not getting stronger and stronger, all boils down to what's known as good workout programming. Yeah. And so for people who don't understand this workout program, it's like a computer program. Think of it that way. The right computer program produces the right result. The right workout program produces the right result. And you can't judge a workout program by how sweaty it makes you and how sort makes you. There's actually a science that goes to it. And it includes things like sets and reps and tempo and how the workouts design. Now, how do you know if it's working, you get stronger period and the story. You get stronger on a very consistent basis. And that's what good programming. I feel like we've not we, but people have oversimplified this so much to and I think the thing that I think you communicate so well, that's so important in this topic is that we like literally when we look at these workouts and it's like what we can tolerate is what we think is appropriate for us. So like I feel like when we talk about this on the podcast, there's always someone who's listening is like, oh, they're talking about like really beginners or people that don't don't know like and like I can because I can handle it. This is for me. They must be talking about people that are doing things they can't handle. They can't and I just I think that's the the the mis here is that so many people that are listening right now don't think it's them who we are communicating to and it is them. I was real quick. It's you. Yeah, it's you. It is you're the one. It is not what it's not what you can tolerate. There there is an optimal amount of volume and intensity in relation to your stretch, your sleep, your nutrition that each individual should be taking into consideration to get stronger. And the best metric is am I getting stronger and we tend to ignore that. It was just how sore was I and did I do the thing? How many calories did I burn and like and that's what we tend to focus on. And it's like, man, if you're looking back and it's been three months of you training and you're doing these lifts and you're doing the same weights as you were doing three months ago, you're not you're probably not following a good program or the appropriate balance for yourself. And there's something missing there and it's normally those things. It's a this balance of stress, the nutrition and or the programming volume intensity. Well, we're so passionate about this because this was never explained to us. Right. In our process going through and trying to get stronger and you know, there's just so much to dissect and reprogram out there in terms of how people view and perceive how to get strong and in such a more effective way. And the irony is the less is more approach actually gets you further along. It's I'll put it this way. Almost never does this happen when somebody starts strength training. If they do it properly with good workout programming, almost never. In fact, I'm thinking if I ever experienced this ever happening and I can't even think of it, I'm sure it has because it's never 100%. But I can't even recall one time every single person when they start strength training and do it right gets relatively consistent strength gains for a while for a while for like the first year. Like when I would get a new client, I would expect relatively consistent. It's first off in the beginning, it's very consistent. It's like every time we work out, we're stronger. Then it starts to become a little bit more difficult. But for the first year, we're getting stronger. That's it. It's just what's happening. And these are everyday regular people. The first time I really learned that this was a science was when I studied how the Soviets kicked the crap out of the rest of the world when it came to weightlifting. That was really when when the science of strength training programming became apparent. Yes. For some of the government really put all the money into the science of it. Well, at the time you had the US who our athletes were training based off how they felt and they would approach their workouts with always trying to beat their previous workouts. So it was always intense and always pushing. And we had some incredible athletes. Don't get me wrong. But the Soviet Union used scientific programming and they programmed in things like delodes and stress reduction. And we're going to, you know, even though you can do more, we're going to the same way. And they just crushed everybody because there is a formula to what actually works. And when you know when you see a program that'll make you stronger because it has a few things that are apparent. Like one of them, for example, is strength programs that build strength have less exercises than them. They just do. Now you practice the exercises that are in there more often, but they don't have 10 different exercises for back and 10 different leg exercises. It's like a few. You're not worried about a bunch of angles. No, you're training a few exercises quite often. Why? Because a lot of strength is a skill. Your ability to generate force in a particular way is also a skill. And so if you want to get really strong at squatting, practicing squatting more often is better than squatting, lunging, leg extension, leg curls, you know, doing a bunch of different exercises. It's better to do one exercise or maybe another one more often. If you were to go back and have a conversation with, you know, 15, 16 year old style who's getting ready to get into weightlifting. And you're in what you're talking about, like sticking to these four or five lifts. How many years or how many months or how long would you say, like, don't waste any time doing any bullshit lateral raises or doing any side weight chest presses or doing any, you know, this, how long would you say, just practice these four or five. I did have that experience. So you just, I was 15 going to 16. I started lifting weights up 14, did everything crazy, did every exercise I could think of. Right before I turned 16, this is when I met those power lifters in the gym that I tell you guys about. And they taught me at a deadlift squat. They taught me at a bench press. They taught me to practice those exercises. Don't do a lot of extra lifts. That summer, that summer from 15 to 16, when I went, I think I went into my sophomore junior year, I gained over that summer almost 17 pounds. And most of it was lean, but it's a crazy amount of muscle to gain. And I got strong, like I was squatting. I don't remember what I started with. It was probably, it was less than 135. And I got to almost 300 pounds over that summer from doing that. Now the problem was I was so influenced by that back then it was muscle building magazines. Right. And so I went wrong. So I mean, I know this, I know this part of your story. And so you did, I just wish I just, right, right. So like that's this. My point is like, you know, we're talking to someone who's like, you're just getting into it. And so whether they're 17, 15 or they're 35 and they're just getting into it, I know the answer for me. Like if I could go back and tell me, because I didn't even get to experience of getting that I like I was following the single body part body builder split and then creative exercise guy for years right I Go back and shake young me it'd be like these five lives Don't do anything else for five years. Oh, three to five years like so much more at least three years right three years Maybe you start introducing other stuff, but like first three years just get good at these lifts and I Mean I can't imagine if I trained like that which would be hard for young me to listen to because I like you I didn't look at bodybuilding because I was interested in the sport of the bodies that I wanted to build a body like that right And so and what were they all doing they were all doing these body parts splits and creative exercises and all the accessory work Not realizing that even that look that I wanted and that I think that support that people may not understand that I didn't understand either Was that just taking to those four or five lifts for at least the first three years of your lifting Results will give you that look you even want you know lays faster lays the lack of the foundation to do the sculpting and all this stuff The sculpting and stuff makes sense like we said earlier in the episode like you know When you're just getting started get strong at some point you do get strong Then you the wrist versus reward is not so great now you can back off and try different things But for the first few years you want to get strong the other one is is trained to failure I thought you had to train to failure all the time. I thought that's how you got stronger to build muscle Yeah, you know never train almost never trains the failure strength athletes. Yeah, almost never yeah powerlifter Strong the strong the strong the leader set them back They don't because failure training It produces worse results. It only fries your body really what it does is it it results in More difficulty with adaptation because the recovery strength athletes are very consistent with not trained a failure They train to failure when they compete. That's when they're maxing themselves out and so good strength training program Won't tell you to lift a failure. It doesn't it tells you training with intensity But not to failure so and then of course, you know We mentioned some of the exercises, but you want to do the right exercises Getting really strong at some exercises doesn't give you nearly as much bang for your buck As getting strong at at other exercises. So good example is I Could quadruple my strength in a leg extension and a leg curl. That's great. I'm a lot stronger That's great. There's nothing wrong with that But if I cut quadruple my strength in a barbell squat I have just blown away with the leg extension leg curl did from hamstrings and my my quad Detention on the leg extensions very slim comparison. It's I'm gonna build more muscle I'm gonna have way more carry over strength way more positive effects on my hormones You know, it's just way better This is true for things like the deadlift and the bench press and the overhead press and rows If you get really strong do it with the lifts that give you the most bang for your buck. Yeah, makes it makes a huge difference Yeah, and then here's another one Schedule delodes so delodes are weeks where you're training at a lower intensity Now you have to schedule them because you won't allow yourself to do it when you need to you'll get too hyped because you'll be Hitting new new numbers and then trying to run it back and you know if you can discipline yourself to do that and allow your body that time to recover You're gonna set yourself up for not hitting that plant. This is one of the hardest things to do even later on in my career because it's so hard It's so hard after you just hit like a new PR in a lift It's exciting, you know, and there's a party that goes and so funny too because it's because you're doing all the right things right You're eating properly. You're sleeping. You're doing all the thing got good programming the PR comes on and then you can't help yourself I go I wonder what next week would look like What are what next? That's what you do just fine That's what that's what I do low. We think to get hit is like you just hit it You just saw a new number, but it's so damn tempting and it takes so much discipline To back off, you know, that's this is where like Having a coach or having a program that tells you what to do and you trust the process Comes in because I know the science I know what I'm supposed to do and I still have a hard time with it It helps to have something that says okay. This is what I'm supposed to do the studies on D loads are from our fascinating I'll take groups of athletes and they'll train them and one they'll inject D loads every six weeks or whatever The other group keeps training the D load week athletes are stronger. Yep by the end of it Well, I mean at that study that we talked about that's relatively new was one of the most fascinating studies We've ever shared which was the one where they compared the the three groups or whatever the group that nobody took no days Or no days off no weeks off than the group that took every fourth week completely off Which means like in three months time you took almost a month. I took three weeks off three weeks off Which is crazy. Oh, that's a lot of time off and that's not a short study Yeah, so and they were they were equal at the end and they took a whole week off Yeah, do a D load a D load is like I go in the gym I practice the lifts Yes, yes, they literally did nothing for a week and they came out the same that blew me away that study was fascinating And like such a reminder of like you don't we don't have to do this crazy amount as we think we have to do and still get in fact You arguably get better results. That's right. All right. Let's talk about some of these metrics what we're a metrics what's considered decent good great in advanced, okay, and for people listening right now if you get between if you get between decent and good You're doing great. You're doing really good when it comes to like life quality Mobility not being frail like you're there great advanced That's when you're like pushing it and you're really a fanatic, okay, but for everybody listening you Between decent and good you don't have to worry about frailty if you've got the strength you're good Everything's going great. So these are nice targets. They're realistic for most people so long as you don't have any injuries or anything like that So let's talk about those for a second so for for man. We're gonna use bench press squat and deadlift those are the three Power lifts and they do kind of cover the whole body and it's not perfect There's not much laterally going on. We're not jumping or running But what we're looking at is posterior chain. We're looking at squatting. We're looking at you know pressing So you get the anterior chain so you're getting kind of the whole body with all three lifts So for man decent with the bench press is between 0.75 and one And one times your body weight so if you could bench press your body weight You're doing pretty good. Yeah, or you're doing decent good now. You're about 1.25 times your body weight great one and a half times your body weight Advanced now you're two times your body weight so you can bench press twice your body weight. You're really strong. Okay That's advanced. That's like really really advanced. I don't I don't think I've ever done that I think Justin's only one. Yeah, I might have done that one. I've never done that. I'm sure he's a lot. Yeah I just now it's You better spin it when I was two 40 out of the crazy now He's a bench six or a pound squat 1.25 times your body weight is decent good is 1.5 times your body weight great about two times your body weight advanced 2.5 times your body weight deadlift one and a half times your body weight is decent Two times your body weight is good great to and a half times your body weight advanced three times your body weight again Advanced is like your competitive if everybody so when you hear that just know that's like competitive levels your tops here for women Bench press decent is about half your body weight good is about 0.75 times body weight great one times your body weight advanced 1.25 or one and a half times body weight squat about 0.75 to one percent one times your body weight good 1.25 times your body weight great one and a half times your body weight advanced 1.75 to two times your body weight Deadlift very similar one time to 1.25 times your body weight Good is 1.5 great 1.75 to two times your body weight advanced about 2.25 to two and a half times your body weight So now you have the numbers and like I said if you're listening right now aim for decent to good I just say that's you're good good is a good goal. You're great. I mean those most achievable for them good almost that stuff Those are like I mean that's years of lifting just to be a good that's a good target My point is if you get to good You probably don't need to worry so much about chasing strength anymore unless you want to get really like advanced or you want to That's my that was my point of that video that I made is that like I've reached good in those lifts and so at that point you like reaching Advanced at the post 40 years old in those lifts. No now you're talking about high risk of injury Yeah, I'm reaping them the real major benefits that all the studies point to when it comes to bone density and muscle muscle loss and muscle preservation and longevity like you're checking that box totally you're if you're maintaining or near the good and you're Post 40 like yeah, you're kicking that's a good goal. I would say for clients is to train towards that and now we have We have a lot of strength training programs But the two two of the best ones we have for strength are Maps and a ballic in mass power left. Yeah, maps and a ballic is where you would start You would start there and then after completing that you go to mass power lift mass power lift is much more specific with the programming But both of those you're gonna get strong the whole time. We're looking at six months of Strankings six months of hitting PRs especially in things like the bench press The squat and the deadlift these two complements each other so well and when we have people that run these back to back like this It's like the PR said numbers. We see here crazy It's awesome and what we're doing right now is you buy one get one free So if you bought maps and a ballic you get mass power lift for free or vice versa We have other maps programs in this promotion by the way So if you're listening you want to look at some other ones if you go to maps bow go calm On that you have all the we have our top 10 most popular mass program by any one of those get any other one for free But if you're looking for maximal strength gains in a six month period time the combo and the order is map of all to mass power left. And again, the place you get that is mapsbogo.com. You can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see that. - 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 Superbundle at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for 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 in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at Mind Pump Media.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. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is Mind Pump.