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

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind up, mind up with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast in the world approaching over half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. In this episode, we talk about how to combine MAP programs to get the best results. By the way, we have a buy one, get one free right now. You buy one at a normal price. You get another one for free. So go to mapsbogo.com if you are interested. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Viori. So Viori makes at leisureware, super comfortable, it lasts a long time, high quality. You can make evening wear. I've got myself buttoned down shirts from them and slacks, they're comfortable. I can actually work out in the slacks, I don't, but they look amazing. You know Viori. Viori is top of the line. And by the way, we have one of the biggest discounts you'll find of Viori clothing anywhere on the internet because we've been with Viori for so long. So if you like Viori, you want a huge discount. Go to VioriClothing.com/MinePump. That's V-U-O-R-I, sorry V-U-O-R-I, clothing.com/MinePump. Again, that link will get you 20% off. All right, here comes the show. All right, real quick, if you love us, like we love you, why not show 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, here at MindPump, one of the most common questions we get is which program should I follow? Next, is there a better program to follow next for my specific goal? So here's what we did. We broke down the maps programs and put them together by goal. What are the best combos of two programs for each common goal? Muscle game, fat loss, strength. But if you're a beginner, what about athletic performance? We put them together, we're going to talk about them today. These are the best workout combos for you. Let's get to it. This is how we do workout partners. Yes. I feel like this is overdue. This is probably the number one question. One of the number one questions that we get is what program to do next? Or somebody who's never done a program and is like, here's my goal. What should the next program or series of programs should I follow? And so what's cool is this kind of lays the plan out for somebody for the next six months or for the next three months if you already have one of them. That's right. And it does make a difference. Like, you know, kids, people will say, well, what's the difference? What if I just follow one program after another? What if they're both muscle building? What if they're both athletic performance? Is that the best combination for my goal? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It really depends on how the programs stack together and how they address each other's strengths and weaknesses. So, and most maps programs are about three months long. Some of them are shorter, some are shorter, maybe five weeks or six weeks long. But nonetheless, this is how we design our programs is for them to be able to be followed one after another to produce great results with minimal plateaus, of course, minimal risk of injury. But at the end of the day to maximize the goals of persons looking for what avatar do you want to start with first? You know, let's start with muscle game. That's a real common one. Yeah, yeah, so and more popular. Yeah, and we'll say it's advanced muscle game. And I say that because this is somebody if you're listening and you're like, I just want to build muscle for whatever reason either because you want to look a particular way or because let's say trying to boost your metabolic rate. And you have good experience in the gym. You've been working out for a little while. So you're not a total beginner, you're not a beginner. You've been doing it for a little while. Like what are the two programs I could follow to give me phenomenal results? Let's say over a six month period. Yeah. And what are the things that you're taking into consideration when you think of the two programs like one it so it's not a starter type program because they have some sort of experience. So want to get them into what we would consider one of our best, you know, muscle building metabolic programs. And then also considering because we're pairing programs like the progressive overload, the scaling and what that looks like from the course of two programs. And so those are the kind of the considerations, right? Yes. Yes. So to start with would be maps and a ball. So maps and a ball is a great overall muscle and strength building program. It's also a great switch up from whatever you're doing now. So oftentimes we have callers call in who have been working out who have some experience whose goal is to build muscle. I'd say probably eight at a ten times. This is the program. We point them in the direction. Yeah, and I think a lot of times two people are familiar with split type programs. And this introduces them to the total body workouts. And also that first phase is really shocking and very effective for people to experience. So I think that's why you know people really like see the benefit of an oblique right away. I'd say this is why to your point, I'd say well over more than half. I think probably 75 80% of people that are interested in building muscle tend to gravitate towards a split and have never really ran a full body routine or don't normally do that. And so they get hit with a couple things. One, if they're doing some sort of an upper lower split or a traditional bodybuilder split or it's one body part of the day, you know, they're training four to six days in the week and they're splitting up the body part. Transition that person to a three day week full body type routine is such a curve ball. The hardest thing is convincing that person that's what they need. But once they do that, the increased frequency on like the big lifts, the strength gains that they see from that. A lot of times two less days in the gym because this person is trying to gain and build muscle or build a metabolism. Huge benefits from this. And one of my favorite things to introduce somebody to. Yeah. So Maps and Abolic will be the start the follow up to be Maps aesthetic. Okay. Now aesthetic is also a full body strength training routine. But the volume is higher. You are now progressively overloading your body. So three months of Maps and Abolic. If you're feeding yourself right, getting good sleep and you're ready to take the next level, then you follow it up with Maps aesthetic, which is also a full body routine. But Maps aesthetic, you can spend more time in the gym because of the focus sessions where you could target a body part that is lagging and add extra work on those body parts on those days often. I think that's what it makes sense to now when you're building muscle to also emphasize parts of your body, you know, where you really want to show off that definition. I think, you know, this is a great follow up to that after you build that huge base of strength and muscle. And now we can kind of sculpt it a bit. The biggest mistake that I've seen with our customers that have followed Maps aesthetic was not following Annabalic first. And it's so good. Good jump right into it. Yeah, it's so good that we're doing this like in pairs and explaining while do this is because the amount of volume in aesthetic is really high. And I would never want to take a client. This is your first program is going to aesthetic right away. I'd much rather build them up from Annabalic. I think they'll see far more benefits from that. And so this really truly is the ideal progression. Now, if you've been listening to podcasts for 10 years, then you've heard us talk about the original three was Annabalic performance and aesthetic. And so we would talk about how you're supposed to progress your way up to that much volume. But we haven't talked a lot about those three programs in a row in a long time. And that was like for general health and strength, right? When you think of like the ideal pathway for if I was training somebody for a bodybuilding show, even my I would follow Annabalic first and then progress into aesthetic to reap the most benefits from all building the muscle. Totally. Next we'll say strength. So this is for somebody who like building muscle, but they really want to get strong. They want to be able to lift as much weight as possible. The starting program is also going to be Maps and Abalic for this because Annabalic is this great both strength building and muscle building program. And then you're going to progress to our power lift program, Maps Power Lift. This one to combo. This is PR City. This is PR City. You're going to hit PRs and your bench press, your squat and your deadlift. First off, you're probably going to hit PRs in Annabalic. Yeah. Then you moved to Power Lift and the PRs are really going to get crazy. And it's just this perfect follow up from Annabalic. Well, I love this is the simplicity of it in the the hyper focus of just pure strength output. And so yeah, you're going to get that, you know, good base like from Annabalic in the beginning. But yeah, you're really simplifying and focusing all that on these big compound lifts that are going to get you real strong. Well, this is the pathway. I would prepare someone to who's even wanting to maybe even dabble in the powerlifting world and start. That's right. You're making a competing strength. Yeah, you're interested in competing in that. And even if you're not, this is the pathway. But like even somebody who's wanting to take it to the next level and actually go compete, I still would want to lay the foundation with Annabalic first then progress them into Power Lift. And it's such a great segue from that program. Annabalic is such a good job of laying that foundation. And then the skill, practice and performance of just the main lifts in Power Lift, like the combo them together is like great six months. Totally. Then we have fat loss and I mean, we broke this up into women and men. And mainly because programming wise women tend to want to develop different areas of the body. And then we have a lot of women from men. So that's really the main difference here. And with fat loss, the goal is to keep muscle. Yeah. Okay. The number one goal with your strength training program is to not lose muscle when you're in a calorie deficit. And so we'll start with women. Now with women, I started them out with Power Lift. Why? Women don't train this way. They often don't train like Power Lifters. They're trying to lose body fat. And Maps Power Lift is gonna keep them strong and do a damn good job of maintaining muscle. Well, one of the best ways to build them metabolically would be to get really good. That's right. That's the metric that we're looking at. And this is why this is so great. I love this combo too of setting them up for the next program where we can get more and more refined and sculpting and like that. It's like, let's build an incredible metabolism and a strong base. And then where we go from there opens the door for so many different things. Which takes us to muscle mommy, which is a very popular map program for women. Maps muscle mommy traditional muscle building program, but there's more of an emphasis on building the glutes, building the delts, lower body, just kind of that focus that women are looking for. And areas that they don't want to lose muscle when they get leaner. Like if you ask a woman, hey, when you get leaner, what areas do you really want to keep the muscle on the most? A lot of them would say, a lot of sacrifice muscle here and there to get leaner. But I want my butt and my legs to keep that muscle. And muscle mommy's volume is geared towards that. Yeah, well, I love about these recommendations. Is like somebody that probably hasn't listened to us enough would assume immediately we'd be like maps hit or cardio. When in fact, the muscle preserving element to this is so important and building up that metabolism. So these are great. And I would say muscle mommy was the first program that we really started to reorganize and change the order of the exercises to fit a specific female demographic. We took it to consideration the feedback from all the people that have gone through maps programs. And a vast majority of women that talked about building and sculpting their body focus points were like the backside was the hamstrings, the glutes, the shoulders. And so, you know, even though, you know, exercises affect men and women the same way as far as building muscle on their body. The sexes tend to have different goals. Men tend to want chest and quads and that way our women cared more about glutes and shoulders. And so we redesigned the way that the programming is laid out. And so laying a solid foundation with power lift, then transitioning them into this more sculpting like program. Such a great combo right now for men now for fat loss for man the beginning program can be one of two. But I'm going to take into consideration that your guy interested in fat loss. And let's say you're over the age of 40. Okay, we have a program that's perfect, which is called maps 40 plus. And that would be the starting program for fat loss for men in that age demographic. If you're younger, you could start with maps and a ball. Now what's the difference between 40 plus and maps and a ball not much. The difference really is exercise selection. When we took certain exercises and made for lack of a better term safer or less risk a little bit. Yeah, so instead of a traditional squat, it's a box squat. Very similar. Same movement pattern, same thing. The difference is with the box squat, you're breaking up the negative portion of the rep from the positive breaking up that momentum. Easier on the joints. We're trading out straight bar deadlift for things like a trap bar deadlift. Still a hip-hinging movement, just less risk for the low back. So again, if you're a dude that's over the age of 40, the program you start with for fat loss, maps 40 plus. If you're a younger guy, you're okay with the other lifts, start with maps and a ball. The other consideration that I think we did in 40, that's a little unique to in comparison to anabolk, was the lifestyle recommendation. That's right. That's right. And the reason why I think your advice is great is because when you're young, you tend to get away with a lot. Not the greatest night of sleep. Stress doesn't seem to affect you the same way as it is. Or you just have less stress. Yeah, or you just have less of it, right? That's a better way to say it. You probably have less high levels of it in comparison to probably the 40-year-old who's got the family, the career or business and kids and all the things. And so in 40 plus, we put a lot of effort and emphasis around lifestyle to help balance that out and mitigate that. And so I think that makes that such a. which I can't tell you how many times I trained somebody 40 plus that the first thing that. And let's take an example of a guy trying to lose weight that understood working out lifting weights and had a pretty good idea of diet, but really struggled with losing weight. Many times it was the lifestyle changes that we had to address first before their body would shift. And so that part I think is when it comes to fat loss from men, I think the nice part about the 40 plus that's unique to being 40 plus versus anabolic. I think if I had a 20 to 30-year-old person that wanted to do fat loss, I think anabolic is probably where I start them. 40 plus with other considerations. It's just geared towards that demographic much better. And then the follow-up program, Mass Power Lift, very similar to the fat loss for women, Power Lift is so focused on strength. Strength is a great metric to focus on and pay attention to when you're in a cut. The mirror isn't so great because the mirror can lie to you, but if you can maintain strength or even get stronger in certain key lifts while you're in a calorie deficit, you are preserving muscle. And that's why it's such a good metric. And that's why I like Power Lift for fat loss both for men and women. So that would be the program that you would add. I love this here. The one thing that is common sometimes though is to not see gains because you're cutting for fat loss. And so I think the one thing that I would communicate to somebody is that, listen, if you could maintain lifts through a cut and doing power, you're killing it. And that's really the goal there. Now you occasionally see somebody and this typically is in the more novice lifter who hasn't maybe gotten proficient. Or maybe they're new at the exercises themselves. Right. Right. And so, yeah, so it might be still novel to them. And so you see them sometimes gain even in the deficit, which that is just literally them getting better at the movement, which is awesome. And amazing. But I always like to set the expectations of listening. And our goals is just keep as much of your strength that you've built in, you know, maps and a bulk or 40 plus through Power Lift. If we've done that, we've done a hell of a job. And if we've seen any increases, we're absolutely killing it. Totally. Next we have beginner. So you're a total beginner or it's been a long time since you've done any exercise. We have a we have the perfect combo for you. And we actually have the perfect starter program called map starter for beginners. That program is designed specifically for someone who's being introduced to strength training. It is easily the most commonly advised program I have for friends and family who are getting into strength training. Hey, I want to start strength training. I've heard of the benefits. What should I do? I've never done it before. Starder starter starter every single time. It's dumbbells, a fizzial ball, a train's stability. It's traditional strength training. You're going to get stronger. You're going to build muscle. It's the perfect program to start with. You just understand how to hold these positions with your body. You really anchor yourself down. That's why, you know, stability ball is really great to be able to add in there to train that. And to have that kind of control. So you can you can build upon that so much easier and more effectively when you have really good body control and strength in position. Which then we'll set you up for loading a lot more weight down down the line. I remember when we wrote this program. You know, if we would have wrote it in probably the correct order of like how we use it as coaches and trainers. This would have been the first program that we wrote. Of course. Yeah. We retroactively we did. Yeah, I mean, obviously we know it's not the sexiest for selling and stuff like that. But the reality is when we look back at like the clients that we train most most all my clients started like map started. When I think about the things that we built in that. I rarely got somebody who was already, you know, I've been looking for the last three years consistently. Yeah, let me hire you. I normally got somebody who was very decondition either have never strained trained or they haven't in years and they're getting back at it. And and so really the first few months of training looked like identical to what map started. The other thing that I would add to this category, even though we didn't do this as a specific person. But I think this is I think we'd all agree we would recommend this first two is post pregnancy. So we know we're talking about beginners right now. I would say I'm so glad you said that postpartum you train yourself like a program for that. You don't care how much working out you did beforehand. Because of the time off because of the changing body, you treat yourself like a total beginner when you get back in a string training. That's going to give you the best results hands down. Yeah, this is just top of mind for me. I feel like we've been we've got a lot of callers in in the last month or two that are, you know, no, they're pregnant or coming out of pregnancy. Or they've been at a pregnancy for like six months wondering when they're going to be back to their normal self. And I feel like we keep having the same conversation of like give it at least a year or two to even expect to be like that. And it makes me remember when Katrina had max how I continually had a talker out of like you're not ready for maps black. This is not the right program for you. We could totally get away with doing starter and we could totally get away with doing these programs that seem easy to you, but you are still not back to your normal self. And so I can't stress that enough even though we're talking about beginners right now that even the most advanced lifter female lifter that's post pregnancy. This is the pathway to your beginner. At that point. And then the program to follow it up with is maps anywhere. And maps anywhere teaches of all of our programs. It's one of the best for body awareness. So you are utilizing some weights here and there and some bands. But some of it is tension based and a lot of it is body weight based and body weight based movements have a lot of value for somebody who's getting into strength training. It's much better to start that way than move them to the more traditional strength training programs. And it's a perfect program to progress to from map starter for somebody who's a beginner. Then we have athletic performance. This is fun. I love this. Now we have a program that is specifically designed. for athletic performance. But I do think starting with map symmetry would be perfect before we move to maps performance. - I agree. Again, to your point of like the order of when we wrote these, I probably would have started with symmetry and then into the performance. - Oh, totally. - Because it addresses a lot of, this discrepancies left to right. And it's a cool thing to add in where everybody has sort of mobility and like range of motion issues that like we can attack that with just going through the program and going through these unilateral movements. - Totally. When you talk about sports, I mean all sports are done like unilateral stuff. And so it makes sense that, and also the isometric component, don't sleep on that either. For laying the foundation for an athlete too. So the athlete to be able to contract the entire body like that and do isometric. So the fact that we started that program with isometrics. - So we knew what I did with high-school athletes immediately, was the same thing. - Right. - And then we moved into unilateral, then we see how we express that towards the end of it. It just, for the athlete, it makes a lot of sense that that would be the first thing that you did and then you move into a more specific performance. - And then mass performance is the follow-up. And mass performance is very athletic minded. It is designed for the athlete. So it would look like this symmetry, then performance and you're ready to go. And then finally, we have the people who are restricted with time and typically also restricted just with space or gym access. And so we have the perfect program for this, which is mass 15. Mass 15, there's two ways you could do it, by the way. You could do it either A with your traditional strength training equipment, or you could do it with very minimal strength training equipment. The program is actually designed to be able to follow either way. To follow up to that, maps anywhere. This is a great follow-up. One, two, for somebody who's like, I don't got too much time. I'm really busy. Or this is new to me, I'm getting into it and I don't wanna make a bunch of time. I wanna get into it. This is a great combo. - You know, I know we geared this towards time, but I'm a little bit more restricted, 'cause of course it applies to that, and is ideal for obviously someone like that. That's why we wrote it. But I do want to highlight the, I mean, this program has done so well, and we've gotten so much for results. - For results, yes. - It's been incredible. - And I think there's a reason that, there's a couple reasons, but one of the main reasons is we obviously have a bit of a bias because of who you listen to podcasts. So we attract more people that are into health and fitness. If you're into listening to a fitness podcast, you're more than the average. For the most part, I mean, some people stumble upon us or get recommended to us, but most people like, if you're listening for hours, - Your knowledge base is probably pretty good. - Yeah, and you're interested, and you wanna learn more, and so we tend to skew towards people that like to work out or enjoy working out more than average. And I think what I we've found in our audience is a less is more for a lot of people. And a lot of people have a lot of other things on their plate other than just working out, and they have fallen in the same trap that I think all of us have expressed even ourselves at one point in our lives where, you know, you literally scaling back sometimes ends up giving you better results. And I think a lot of people test that. So even though this is geared towards time restricted, I'd even encourage the person. - Can you call this the stress? - Yeah, combo. This is for people who have a lot of. - Three times most people are overworked and stressed out. - Yeah, a lot of life stress. - If you get a lot of kids, you run a business, you work long hours. - You have, you have. - This is the combo. - You have any of those boxes? - Yeah, you have a job that doesn't get, it's off time schedule all the time. Like, I mean, there's a lot of things that fall in this category. And you typically like to go to the gym, four to six anyway, I challenge you to try and do the maps of this protocol right here. - So good for you. - Because we've gotten so much great feedback. - Totally. And then you follow up with anywhere, which where it's very minimal equipment, also saves time as a perfect follow up. And so what we did is, here's what we did. So these are recommendations that we have, but here's what we did for you. If you go to mapsbogo.com, you can buy any one of those programs and get any other one for free. So you can actually make whatever combo you want. These are the recommendations we have, but if you have different goals, you have whatever, you can buy one, get one free. It's 157. 157, which would normally get you one program, will get you two. So your choice, anyone that we mentioned, plus any other one, it's mapsbogo.com, it's buy one, get one free, go there right now. It's 157's the price, you buy one, you get the other one totally for free. Go check it out, you can also find us on Instagram. It's my pump media. - 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. 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