Unknown

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, UP with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump in today's episode. We're going to talk about six mistakes women often make when they start lifting. Now we have a brand new Maps workout program called Maps Upper Lower. It's a four day workout split and it also has a women's version. The programming specific to the things that women like to train, like lower body glutes and shoulders. It's in this program and because that's a brand new program, it's 40% off. Go to Maps Upper Lower.com, use the code launch, get it for the 40% off. This episode is brought to you by Legion. So Legion makes high quality muscle building, fat burning, and longevity supplements. They have lots of great protein powders. None of them are artificially flavored. So they have way protein. My favorite egg protein, they even have a plant protein. They also sell very clean creatine. They also have creatine gummies. So if you like to take your creatine in gummy form, Legion is one of the best. It's very, very well sourced. They also have pure, pure creatine powder if you don't want to have it in gummy form. They'll carry things like multivitamins and more. So Legion third party tested what the bottle says is in the bottle. It has in the bottle and they only use compounds that are backed by studies and data. Nothing else. Go check them out. Get yourself hooked up. Go to bi-leagen.com/minepump. Right now you can buy two, get one free. If you use the code mpb2g1. By the way, Legion is now available in GNC. All right, back to the show. And real quick, if you love us, we love you. Why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs or training gear over at mypumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mypumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. We trained people for over two decades and our average client was a woman. That was most people that hired us to train them. And there's something that we noticed. There's common mistakes that women often make when they start lifting. Today we talked about the six most common ones. If you're falling for these, if you're doing these mistakes, you're not going to get great results. In fact, oftentimes you get no results. And these are the reasons why. Let's get to it. You know, we're pulling from our experience of training clients, which honestly we haven't done it in a long time. Do you think that these still are the top six? I do because we have trainers now here at mypump, that train clients. And these are still common mistakes and conversations. And then the questions that we get often. Now we do have a little bit of a self-selection bias because people who listen to the show will ask us questions. But even those that listen to the show end up performing some of these mistakes. So there's still super common. Yeah, that's why too I like to talk to my family and friends and see you get a pulse too about what their general thoughts are on training. But yeah, a lot of these always show up. Yeah, I mean, because I look at them and I think that they are still common. That's why I asked the question, I'm not sure if there's something that we're missing that maybe that's new or different. But I do think they've gotten significantly better. There's more awareness. More education is out there. I would say there's more awareness around strength training. So we're not selling strength training here. I think we don't need to do that as much. It used to be the case where, I mean, gosh, 20 years ago or more. When I started training, it was even longer than that. I had to sell strength training. Like, no, no, you need to live weights. We don't need to do that as much. So a lot of people start strength training, especially women now. But then they make mistakes on that path and end up getting little to no results from the strength training they're performing. So I think that we need to start with this. What is the goal of strength training? When you look at forms of exercise, there are specific adaptations that each form of exercise or that different forms of exercise are really good at inducing. The adaptation that strength training is the best at inducing. Because it does a lot of things. It changes your body. It does a lot of things. But the main adaptation is to get you stronger. And through that helps you build muscle. So if you're strength training, the goal is to build muscle. Even if your goal is to lose weight, if you're strength training, it's to preserve or build muscle, which only helps the fat loss process. In fact, when they compare strength training to other forms of exercise, when it comes to weight loss, and then they dig into the data, it's better for pure fat loss because losing weight oftentimes means you lose muscle as well as the body tries to slow it down. It's metabolism. But strength training prevents that from happening. So your goal is strength training. If you're doing it. And if this isn't your goal, then don't do it. But the goal is build muscle, build strength, and all of the things that that contributes to, like a faster metabolism, a more shapely sculpted body, more tone, leaner, or definition, and all that. I think it's important to say that because I think a lot of people, they don't come in and they say, I want to build muscle. They define a look that they're trying to use. And this is how you go about it. So somebody who says, I want to look tone, I want to look lean, I want to have shape, I want to have curves, all those, all those common goals that people come in with the way going about that is to build muscle. That's right. Is to build muscle, reduce body fat. And that's what leads to sculpting the physique. And that's one of the things that's so awesome too about strength training and lifting weights is that it's so unique to the person and unique to the goal that it's like, depending on what you want more of or the look that you want to obtain, you really can program in a way that gets that desire blockup. That's right. So here's the number one mistake. And this is still a super common mistake, which is, I'm going to start strength training. And I'm also simultaneously going to add a lot of cardio style training to my routine. Now cardio is a form of exercise. So this would be like running, swimming, getting on a piece of cardio equipment, you know, going for 30 minutes, 40 minutes to an hour, bike. It's a good form of exercise. There's nothing wrong with it, but the adaptation that is induced by cardiovascular training is endurance. Okay. So if I'm riding a bike and I'm telling what I'm telling my body is, I want to get better at being able to do this. And so what it does is it gives me more endurance strength training. What I'm telling my body is I need to lift heavy things so I need to get stronger and build muscle. Here's the problem. They tend to compete with each other. Okay. Telling your body to build muscle while telling your body to build lots of endurance means you'll get less of both. You'll get some of both, but you'll get less of both. So if you're strength training because I'm like, look, I want to build my metabolism. I want to shape and sculpt my body. I want to build my butt. You're better off not putting too much cardio into your team because, again, your body can only adapt in so many different ways. It doesn't mean you don't move, you don't walk, you don't do other forms of activity. But when you're strength training, that's the form of exercise that you're doing. It is not, I'm going to spend as much time doing cardio. That'll mess things up. So I think this is a common mistake still today, but for different reasons than what it was before. So I believe when we were trainers, when we started, that the look that a lot of people aspire to look like was this real skinny, lean, almost runner look. That was the appeal of why cardio was utilized so much. Of course, it was also being prescribed by our doctors as your way to lose weight. If you went into a doctor and you were overweight, you prescribed go running and cardiovascular training. So I think those are the two main reasons. I think more women today are far more aware of the benefits of lifting weights and why they need to lift weights to build the body they want to build. But rarely ever did I get somebody who would come in and be like, "Oh, I just need to build. They tend to go, I'd like to lose a little bit of body fat." They think it's going to help the fat loss. And so that's the main reason why I think what happens. And I think more often than not, and this is both men and women, the extra body fat that they're carrying bothers them more than I want to build my butt or I want to shape my arms or my shoulders. So the logic behind their approach is, I'm going to go burn it off first. And then I'm going to go to the body fat and I think this is still a mistake made but for different reasons. Does that make sense? So it's like a bit counterproductive or like you said, like it's just a longer drawn out approach. It takes much longer. So that's the way we should view exercise. Not saying it's not good for you, but when you do it all at the same time, your body only adapts so much in one direction. In fact, this will just prove it. There's a relatively recent study where people weren't interested in both endurance and strength. And what they did, and they had different groups of people, what one group of people did is they did strength training one week and then the following week they adjusted cardio. They didn't even combine them in the same workout or even in the same week. They went one week one another week, the other one. And guess what happened? more strength than endurance in the other groups. Because the body adapts in very specific ways, you don't wanna throw a million or one different types of adaptation at yourself. So the point with this is this, if you're strength training to boost your metabolism, build muscle, shape and sculpt your body, even if you're doing it to get leaner, you're better off building, and then later focusing on maybe building endurance and stuff like that. But doing it all at the same time, will take away from your attempts at strength training. And the mistake I often see is that women do do the strength training, but then throw so much cardio on top of it, nothing happens. They're just burning their bodies out. And they're not doing anything. And oftentimes with those women, many times I've done this, where I look at the routine, and I say really, the only thing we need to do is take out the cardio. When they all look at me like I'm crazy. Like I don't wanna change anything. Just take the cardio and watch what happens. And of course, when they do that, they start to build the muscle, they actually start to get leaner because the metabolic boost, they feel better, and everything just works much better. The next mistake is lifting to light, not really using enough weight to have the right kind of intensity with weights. It's funny 'cause guys tend to go the other direction, where they lift too heavy, and their form is gone. With women, what I found, and I find this time and time again, I'll take a client or a friend, I'll watch them do something. They're really focused on the technique and having good form. And I'll look at the weight that they're doing for how many reps, and I'll say, "You know, you could add like 30 pounds." - Yeah. - And they look at me like I'm crazy. - Really struggling with those last two. - We add 30 pounds, and the form is just as good. It's just much more intense, and of course you get better results. - Especially with the lower body. I can't tell you how often my female clients underestimated how much they could lift. - Almost always. - Yeah. And I don't know why that is, maybe because they feel like some of their upper body movements, they can't move nearly as much weight, and but I've had female clients squatting, leg pressing, deadlifting, as much weight as like my men. Like women can get really strong in their lower body in comparison to their upper body. And so almost always when I was training a female client, I would be able to look at their squatter, and I'd go, "Oh, you easily got 25, 50 more pounds." And they're like, "No, no way." And I'm like, "Oh yeah, you could totally tell by the way you're moving that ball." - You need to challenge yourself with the weight that you're lifting. - Yeah. I can think of right now, if the top of my head, over the last even few months of just friends working out. I have a garage gym, I will have friends come over, work out. And I'll go out there and I'll watch them, and I'll add 10, 15, 20 pounds to their lift. That's not a little bit. They were way off. They were way off on the amount of weight that they should be using. They were far too low. I mean, I get, you know, miscalculating and being off by five pounds, but if you could add 20 pounds to the bar, and still have good technique, you're working out too light, and that's not gonna change your body. - Yeah, I think singles, doubles, and triples are incredible. - Yes, for this. - It lets you really push them. - Yes, there's nothing magical about singles, doubles, and triples, meaning one rep, two rep, or three rep. - Three sets of three reps, right? As far as what it does for muscle building, but what it really does is it highlights how much more weight than what it could pull. - Traditionally, when you follow a program, even one of our programs, the lowest rep range you ever really see is five reps. And most programs are like this. Most programs are like, you're gonna fall between the five and 20 rep range, because of all the research and studies when it comes to hypertrophy and belly muscle. But the benefits of getting someone to lift a bar or a weight for one rep as much as they can, it really helps them get a better gauge of what they're capable of doing with five reps. Because a lot of times, they're working out with a weight, they're doing five reps, and it's like, oh my god, this person could do that eight, nine times, no problem. If I show them what they can do in a single double, they'll build the confidence to do that. Not to mention these numbers, when we give, like even in our programs, say five reps, always tell clients this too. It's okay if you accidentally put a little extra weight on there for that five by five you're doing, and you only get to four reps. - I'd rather you do that than get to eight. - That's exactly how I'd have to coach, I'd say, listen, put on a weight that you think you might barely get five, and if you get to three and you don't think you have another one of the 10th and stop at three, that's fine. - This doesn't matter. - This is one of the reasons why women tend to get such great results with powerlifting style training. - Is because they're finally-- - You're focusing on it. - They're focusing on the way. - I think they get, well, most of the clients I've had is like a weight that they have done before. - That's right. - They're stuck. This is like my comfort zone. I gravitate as far as I have to do at home, but I also blame some of these circuit training classes because the options are limited, and you're kind of hustling through, and there's no rest. How do you wanna go ahead? - There's no rest. It's an association with the weights, with some of those movements. So yeah, true, strength training completely different mentality. - Totally. The next one, I think this is the biggest mistake. I think this is the most common mistake, which is they're just not eating enough calories. They're not feeding their bodies enough. Do you know how many call for, if you're listening, if this is one of your first times listening to our podcast, I tell you what, probably 60% of the time, and you guys correct me if you think I'm wrong, it might even be higher. 60% of the time we get a female caller, and the fix is to eat more. - Yeah. - They'll call in, I'm not seeing results. I'm struggling, my body feels this. I'm not getting leaner, I'm not building muscle. Like what's wrong? We look at their programming, oftentimes they're doing too much, but often oftentimes, they're just not eating enough. - Yeah, not feeding them. - We have them bump their calories. We have people call in, we'll have them bump their calories, 600, 700 calories, and thankfully they trust us. We'll have them come back, oh, we've had many of them where we have them come back on in 60 days and eight days, and they all say the same thing. It was crazy. How good I felt and how much muscle I built, I got leaner through it. Your body won't build if it doesn't have enough calories. It's just a tear. - Which is no small feat because psychologically, they really need assurance, and they really need to be able to see the progression of that and to be able to get there, it takes a lot of courage outside of their fear of gaining weight because that's the biggest negative for them. - I don't care how good your training program is, how intense you go and how hard the workout was. If you don't give it the nutrients and the building blocks to go build the muscles, you won't build them. You might see yourself get a little stronger because you get better at the lifts and you're practicing because it's the anesthetic adaptation process. But if you want to build a body, you want to build your physique and you don't give it the materials, the nutrients. - It's impossible. - It's impossible. It's won't. You'll get good, maybe you might get good at lifting, you might get it good at working out, but you will not reap the max benefits of all that work. I've had young ladies do great strength training, do everything right, get a dexis scan and come back with osteopenia because their calories are too low for too long. So you have to feed and fuel your body. If you're trying to build anything, you have to feed and fuel your body. All right, the next mistake, and this is a common one too, is not really following a good established structured program. It looks a lot like winging it, doing my favorite exercises. I'm gonna go train this again and train that again and here's the machines that do that. Here's the thing, and strength training has this kind of reputation, which is interesting. Although I think this is true for all forms of exercise, but strength training, the programming is so important, you guys, it's so important. The sets, the reps, the exercises, how many you perform, the order you perform them, what the week looks like, what the month looks like. These are all things that we talk about as strength coaches when it comes to programming, and programming makes a big difference. You get two or three pieces that are missing or off. It will significantly, it can significantly impact your progress. In fact, when you look at some of the best strength coaches in the world, ones that produce champion after champion, the difference between them and the other coaches is oftentimes the programming is just better. So follow an established strength training program. Typically, it's not one that a fitness influencer puts out. Typically, it's one that you'll see from strength schools that have a pedigree or good coaches to understand this kind of stuff. Good program makes a huge difference in your program. Well, especially I feel like when you've checked all the other boxes, right? When you're doing a good job with the sleep, you're not doing the cardio, you're pushing the way, you're eating adequate calories, then this is the next step in layer to that, is by putting the appropriate programming together, makes a huge difference. Huge difference. Next up is just not getting stronger and not even thinking that this is an issue. In the first probably three to five years of your strength training, of consistent strength training, the best correlate that will predict whether or not your building muscle and getting all the benefits of that, like the sped up metabolism is strength. If you get stronger consistently over the course of a year, you're gonna build muscle, fact, 100%. So, and the reason why I like strength so much, besides the fact that it correlates so well to the results that we're looking for, is that it's objective. So, you know, I can look in the mirror from one made of the next and I can think maybe I'm not as lean or maybe I don't look as good, maybe it's the lighting, maybe I'm bloated, maybe it's just my, how I'm perceiving myself or whatever, I'm not feeling so good about myself. But if you add 10 pounds of the bar, that's stronger. There is no argument. I know how much I lifted. Last week, I know what I'm lifting this week. I'm moving in the right direction. Things are going great. So, my favorite tip when it comes to getting stronger and the lifting light point, I did this with Karen when we first started working together. And it's kind of a just at this point. How much circuit training and classes is kind of bastardized, rest periods. And even some of the smartest trainers and advanced lifters I know have never really, unless you have, unless you're a female with a powerlifting background, very few male or female Thanks for watching. or certainly my female clients have ever taken advantage of a three to five minute rest period. Like literally go put a weight on that you think you can only get a couple times, two or three times and go rest for five minutes. If you're listening to this and you've never had a workout where you've gone to the gym, dedicate plenty of time for yourself so you're not in a hurry and you're like, I'm just gonna squat or hip thrust or deadlift and I'm gonna allow it to take 30, 40 minutes to get through the four or five sets because I'm gonna rest five minutes in between each set and each time I'm gonna challenge myself to put on enough weight to where it's hard for me to get two or three out of you and watch what that will do. - I'm just gonna tell people right now, if you've never done that before, here's the challenge. This is what people will say. I don't feel like I'm working out. - Yeah. - I don't even feel like I had to work out. So when I would train clients like this and they would do this and luckily I can sell myself pretty well, they would make the same, they'd say that. I don't even feel like I'll work, we'd be done with the session. I don't even feel like I worked out. Don't worry, we'll see what happens the next time we train. And week over week, we're getting stronger. I don't even feel like I'm working out. How am I adding 30 pounds to my squat? That's what strength training is. Strength training is intensity in the set and that's it. Outside of it, you rest, you wait until you can apply yourself again with a maximal strength and effort. You don't apply yourself again when you're halfway recovered. You wanna be able to apply yourself in a way that's like, I think I can match the set that I just did or maybe even do better in the set that I just did. That's the attitude you have with strength training. That's what builds most. Literally one of the greatest hacks. I mean, if I know I've been sharing a little bit of Karen's journey of me helping her through this process and you're talking about someone who is a seasoned vet who's been doing these lists for a long time and she's been PRing like crazy. Now, one of those reasons is we're fueling our body and we're eating in a calorie surplus. That's obviously a huge one. The other one is that. That was the big unlock when we worked out and I kinda saw her tempo and I went. When was the, and I remember the first time I worked out with her and I was just making her rest three minutes and you could see like, I was like, can you remember the last time she's like, I'd never rest this long. This feels so long. I'd be like, you're only at two minutes right now. - Yeah, a whole other minute. - Yeah, and I'm saying five minutes. Go three to five minutes minimum. Just dedicate a day like that if you've never done this and when you're doing whether it's, and I recommend hip thrust, dead lung balance. - Yeah, one of the big compound lists that you're doing for your lower body and allow yourself to just focus on that and to try and do sets of two or three reps and choose a weight that you can, and if you keep getting three reps, no problem, keep adding weight each set as you do with those five minute rest and watch watch with that session of totally. And then lastly, and this is just a big mistake because the scale is not a great way to measure progress. And the mistake is that people chase the scale instead of looking at things like body composition. The scale doesn't tell you anything except for total body mass. So if you lost two percent body fat, but you gained seven pounds of muscle, you're gonna be heavier on the scale. And to you, you may think this is a fail. Oh my God, I'm gaining weight. When in fact, you're leaner, more sculpted, faster metabolism, and you look better. The scale oftentimes goes up when you strength train, especially even if you're trying to lose body fat. And I'll people are like, I don't wanna gain weight, would you tell them? I'm gonna say, I'm gonna lose weight. Initially, this is what it looks like when you do it right. Build muscle gain a little bit, metabolism boost fat comes off the body. So in those initial stages, you may actually get a little heavier and that could be scary for somebody. Look at body composition. This is what I would recommend people. Dexter scan body fat tests. It's a better measurement of what's going on. So the scale might have gone up, but I'm leaner. Boom, that's the success. Or the scale went down and my body fat percentage went up. What about that one? That's a crazy one. And even body cop, I would challenge you to do at least two tests in a row that you see to get real trends versus just one body cop. Because a lot of times what happens is you will see strength first and then the muscle follows later. So sometimes people get excited. We had the same mistake over told, I told this one when Karen and I first started and we were seeing all these PRs. And I was like, man, I was getting so excited. I wanted to see. And I knew we were pushing calories like crazy. I'm like, oh, I know we've built muscle. And what came back was a body fat percentage that we didn't like. And that really can spin somebody out. And so scale and body cop and body cop is better than scale. But again, strength is the best indicator and just keep following that. And understand that it does take time sometimes for the muscle to come on. So you might see scale go up a little bit, strength and PRs are coming. And then if you go run right to a body cop and you see that and it doesn't come back what you want to see, it doesn't necessarily even do the wrong thing. It's just muscle will follow that. That's right. Look, we have a brand new workout program called Maps Upper Lower. It's a four day workout split. And here's what's special about this. In the program, we have a women's version. So the programming is specific to what women want to train and develop. Notably lower body, glute focused, and with the upper body, dealt focused over something like chess. So this is programming done for you. Follow the program as it's laid out, change your body. And because the program is brand new, it's 40% off. Go to mapsuporlower.com, use the code launch, get it for 40% off. You can also find us on Instagram. It's MindPump Media. Thank you for listening to MindPump. 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 MindPumpMedia.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 and 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 MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump.