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If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only 1 place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

Oh man, in this episode, we give you the 5 steps to becoming a muscle mommy. We actually just learned this term the other day and we figured out what it was and we know how to get you there. We know how to get you there. So we know you're gonna love this episode. Now it's brought to you by a sponsor, Sleep Breakthrough.

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All right, here comes the show. Ladies, in today's episode, we're gonna talk about how you can become a muscle mommy. That's right. Strong, muscular, fit, and healthy. That's what we're talking about in today's episode.

I just learned that this term even existed the other day.

It's making its rounds.

I mean, you just learn

it a day, it came from a caller and then like what, instantly we heard somebody else ask a question related to it within the same day.

Yeah, so this is, I guess, this is what it's like to be middle-aged. Yeah. Is that, like- We're a little behind. Terminology, you find out about it later,

you know? Well, here's what I think is really neat about this is that I think this is an example of what the changing of the tide or the shift in the culture of, I think, more and more women are understanding the value of having muscle and lifting weights. I think for the previous decades, it was all about being lean and tone and skinny. Like that was kind of-

And muscle was something that you don't want because it makes you bulky or

bigger manly. And so I think that that is changing so much that you have terms like muscle mommy that are floating around now that are becoming popular that you have, uh, you know, women saying, Hey, I, I do want muscle. I want to, I want to be muscular. I want to have great strong arms and built legs and glutes. I think that's becoming more and more popular.

It is. I wanna say that the beginning of this trend, because I mean, we train people for a long time. I started training people over 2 and a half decades ago. And I've been preaching this, I know you guys did as well, I've been preaching this for a long time. And it was always an uphill battle.

But once the female clients started to see the results and feel it, then they were sold. So it didn't take me long. It would typically take me 60 to 90 days, and then I'd have a disciple, and they were like, okay, I see what you're talking about. My metabolism's faster, I look way better, I feel way better, this is way easier than what

I used to do. I don't have football traps like I thought. Yeah, This is way easier than what I used to do. I don't have football traps like I thought.

Yeah, this is way easier than what I used to do when I used to just try to sweat every calorie off and I had to eat super low calories. Now I'm eating more and I'm leaner and et cetera, et cetera. But I remember, I wanna say that this trend started when crossfit, female crossfit athletes started to gain some traction on social media.

I think so too.

Because they were like strong and fit, and this is before crossfit got extreme, and a lot of women looked at those women and said, wait a minute, like, that looks great. I wanna look like that. What are they doing? And then these women are like, well, we're dead lifting, we're squatting, we're benching, we're overhead pressing, we're cleaning. Like we're doing these bodybuilder weightlifting, powerlifting movements.

That's how we got these physiques. And a lot of women were like, huh, this is interesting.

Yeah, it's empowering. You know, you see that and they're strong and, um, you know, doing, doing explosive movements and, you know, are very athletic. And so there's definitely, there was an appeal in that direction. Um, you know, besides just the physique, which I know was selling it a lot.

Now, if you guys were to go back and recall those, because obviously communicating this today, a bit easier because of the popularity of terms like this that are coming around. But if you were to go back,

15, 20

years ago, when we were communicating this to your average female client, is there an order of operation or is there certain things you try and drill home first like when you think about communicating this information?

Yeah, as a trainer, you guys know this, 1 of your jobs is to sell and be very effective at selling the ideas that you're trying to get your client to partake in. Because if you can't sell them, you don't have buy-in, they don't do it, and then forget it. So there were 2 celebrities that I would use, because Back in those days, you know, we're talking about the 90s, early 2000s, we didn't have a lot of female representation for like strength training. It was bodybuilders and nobody wants to look like a bodybuilder. Like these are women that do look like dudes in terms of muscularity.

So I'm like, I'm not going to use them as examples. But there was Sarah Connor from Terminator

2.

I've used that 1, yeah.

Yeah, where she was doing the pull-ups and a lot of women were like, wow, I wanna look like

that, right? G.I. Jane.

G.I. Jane was the other 1.

Demi Moore.

Where Demi Moore, and she looks really fit, and women were like, wow, I wanna look like that. Michelle Obama's arms. Yes. I've seen that 1 a lot. Yeah, that happened.

So I used those examples and I'd say, well, they lifted weights to look like that. And then I would sell it by saying, by talking about metabolism boosting and fat loss. And I'd say, look, you could try burning the calories off. You know, an hour of cardio is gonna burn like 300 calories. I could get your body to burn 300 calories a day on its own extra.

Just by trying to build a little muscle. No problem. So imagine doing cardio every day, but you're not how much easier is that's going to be. So that's how I would sell it. And then I would say, uh, Look, we are trying to build muscle.

You're not going to wake up tomorrow with all kinds of muscle all over your body. So if we ever get to the point where you're like, that's enough, Sal, you tell me, and then we'll change your workout routine. And I knew, and that would sell them to try and then they get the results and they'd feel it and they'd be like, oh, this is great. Let's just keep going. Yeah, did you guys use similar strategies?

Yeah, I think also, I think sharing on what it does metabolically to them to add muscle, right? Because I don't care if you're male or female, everybody likes the idea of being able to have a glass of wine or a little bit of dessert or have the Friday night dates and not feel like the food or alcohol sticks right to you. So I used to love to use that and explain like the value of, man, if we really go on this muscle building journey and we actually add 5 to 8 pounds of muscle on your frame. 1, it's not going to look like that sounds. Like 5 to 8 pounds of muscle distributed over your entire body is going to be very, very small amount that you'll even be able to tell a difference as far as like looking muscular and what that will do for you metabolically.

Yeah. And what that will do as far as your freedom with nutrition. I said, man, that in itself is so rewarding because I think a lot of both men and women can identify with that or relate to that feeling of, man, I just, that 1 day I ate that and I woke up and

felt like

it was stuck to me.

If your calorie burning is tied to you having to move, the second you stop all that movement, It's gone. So you go on vacation, you stop doing all that cardio, it's gone. And now you're eating more calories, you're going to gain more body fat. If the calorie burning is not stuck to your movement, but rather the amount of metabolically active tissue that you have, and you know, your body's burning it on its own. Well, now you go on vacation.

Okay, you're not doing some of your workouts, but the workouts don't burn many calories anyway. You've already got a fast metabolism. It takes a long time for you to lose muscle if you stop working out. So you go on vacation, enjoy yourself. You come back, oftentimes you feel great because you needed the rest, and you're shocked at the fact that you didn't gain any body fat.

I also read something years ago. Maybe Doug can look up and see what the number is today or not, but I remember being totally surprised by this number. Like, I think it was like the average woman gains weight on like 1, 700 calories. It was like a really low number.

I remember reading that.

I don't remember the exact number. I know it was under 2000, so it was a low number. And so that's why I like, just imagine that. Like you barely eat 1700 or 2000 calories you put on body fat.

You go out to eat and you're screwed.

Well, I mean, that was a commonality with most of my female clients, is just they were always running a deficit. It was just like, it was never a fed situation. So just to shift that a bit and then also focus more on strength training was such a drastic shift of what they've ever done. So it was like, it didn't take long to kind of convince, if they stuck with it, again, you have to like sell it a lot and you gotta kind of paint the picture for them to adhere to it. But it's like, man, almost immediately within a few weeks, they would see changes of their body.

Yeah, and there's a couple of things to consider. 1 is muscle's very dense. So it takes up roughly, a little less than this, but roughly about a quarter of less space as an equal amount of body fat. So 10 pounds of muscle versus 10 pounds of body fat. If you were to lose 10 pounds of body fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle, you'd be smaller.

You would lose close to about a quarter of the size. Okay. So you've lost inches, but you weigh the same. Like that's pretty amazing. And then you mentioned something, you mentioned it was empowering.

There's 2 factors here or 2 components of what make this so empowering. The first 1 is women oftentimes because of how they've been conditioned, because of the way that fitness is being communicated the wrong way. They're constantly trying to eat as little as they can. It's always a thing. It's always a thing.

Oh my God, I ate too much. Oh my God, I gotta eat less. And you know, I should feel hungry all the time. It's this thing that they have to go through and they have to deal with, right? Well, how empowering is it that you can eat when you're hungry and not gain body fat because your metabolism is fast?

So there's that. Then there's also this. How many times did you have a female client who never strength trained, watched their strength go up, and then come to you and tell you, I feel independent and empowered. Like this feels good. I had a female client, I'll never forget, she was an executive at a tech company, never lifted weights, all she ever did was group X classes in yoga.

I convinced her to lift, to do strength training. She came back from a business trip. She used to travel to China all the time. She was petite, she was tiny, she was like 5'1". And she comes back from her trip, and she's like, Sal, she goes, this doesn't sound like a big deal to you, but to me, this is a big deal.

She's like, I travel all the time. For the first time in I don't know how long, I put my bag in the overhead compartment of the plane. She goes, I travel alone for business. I always have to ask a guy to help me on the plane, a random person. She's like, I don't have to ask anybody anymore.

Do you understand how great that feels, how empowered I feel? Well, that's what it feels like when you get strong. And that's what strength training provides. You're just more able. So let's define this term, muscle mommy.

We went on social media, we looked it up. Okay, what are people saying? What does this mean? Basically, it's a woman that's not afraid of building muscle and strength. Someone who loves the bench press, deadlift, squat, and overhead press.

Those lifts, by the way, were specifically listed when I looked this up. Like women who like to bench, squat, deadlift. Yeah, this is awesome.

I definitely have seen it a lot in women's powerlifting movement as well.

Yes. These are women that are strong, fit, and here's my favorite part, healthy. So what does that mean? They're definitely lean, but they're not like emaciated or so lean that they lost their period or the hormones are off or they look terrible. These women are fit, strong, healthy, and lean.

And this is what they're talking about when they say muscle mommy. So that's pretty awesome. This is an awesome movement. Now, I hope it doesn't get distorted and crazy like many fitness movements do. But as of right now, we're totally support of this.

So the first go-to move for me was, and still is to this day, is to introduce lifting heavy.

That's

it. For a year, for decades, women have been marketed to that, you know, lightweight, lots of reps, circuit training, curves, bullshit, heart rate, body pump classes, turbo kickboxing. I mean, this has been the cornerstone of how to attract women into the health and fitness space. And it's a bunch of bullshit, first of all. And 1 of the best things that you can do to start to shape and sculpt their body and or speed metabolism up, burn body fat, all the things, is to get them to start lifting heavy.

And what I love that is that it almost always is so novel to that client that their body, before I even manipulate anything else, automatically just starts responding just from lifting heavy.

Yeah, now this has its origins. The lightweight, the pink and purple dumbbells of circuit training, the equipment that's marketed to women that tones but doesn't build type of deal. That has its roots in the marketing of the gym industry. So the gym industry, when it first started, they were gymnasiums. So these were people that, like a lot of them were gymnasts.

Then it evolved and became kind of these bodybuilder type havens. And at the time, the only known bodybuilders was people like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was like a bunch of guys. Women didn't go to gyms when they were first kind of emerging. They just didn't go.

Why am I going to go there? I don't want to look like Arnold. I don't want to look like these big sweaty dudes. Um, you know, that's not for me. So gyms, in order to become successful businesses, realize we need to attract the other sex.

We have to attract the largest consumer base. Most products, by the way, the consumer base that's the largest are women. Women are known as the consumers. If you want to build a successful business, you want to be able to attract them. So gyms are like, okay, how are we going to do this?

We've been talking about how lifting weights makes you look big, veiny, and scary. I know. You can still lift weights. You just do it this way. Don't lift anything heavier than 2 pounds.

Do 5, 000 reps, make it burn. Don't rest in between sets, that's what makes you big and bulky. You wanna sweat, burn. Oh, you feel the burn in your muscle? That's because you're burning body fat.

That's not why Muscles burn, by the way.

It's almost so effective in not building big bulk muscle that you build no muscle. Yes, yes. That's how effective that is.

You build 0. I've talked about this before. The very first gym I worked in was an old 24-hour nautilus. And then they had switched to 24-hour fitness. But it was an old club.

I think it first opened, I want to say 1983. They had a women's only area. Back in those days, that was 1 way that gyms attracted women.

They still got this, you know that?

I know.

I just signed up with the new Golds over...

And they have it? Really?

Oh yeah, the new Golds over in Gilroy has a woman's only room. I was so surprised, out of a gold gym, I was so surprised to see that.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's some market demand. Back in those days, it was a huge market demand. No way a woman would work out next to a bunch of dudes.

There was none. All the chicks were out in there where everybody else was.

I wonder if it's an old Gold's.

I mean, no, because it's brand new. It's like completely weird. I mean, they might've converted like a different like grocery store or something, and then they just left it like that. And maybe someone thought- Or

maybe they bought an old gym and then just-

Yeah, maybe someone thought that was a good idea, but I was blown away to see that. And it's a trip, if you guys get a chance to go there, because it's a nice, it's actually a nice Gold's gym. But that room, I've only seen a couple times, 1 or 2 people in there. It's like a total waste of space. And then all the chicks are over in the then they actually have a dedicated which is really cool a dedicated leg room Which is by the way twice the size is the woman's little fitness room is this huge?

Leg room that it's got all the the leg press squats hamstring stuff that has 4 squat racks and platforms

awesome

and all the girls are in there. Yeah. Because they know now.

That's what's the fact.

Boy, that has changed a lot.

Oh, it has. That's why it's interesting to see.

So I used to work out at this 24 hour Nautilus as a kid in the mid 90s. And then when I got a job there as a personal trainer, I finally worked there. And back in those days, 24 hour Nautilus or fitness was open 24 hours, except for Friday, Saturdays and Sundays, it would close. So it was like midnight on Friday, 10 on Saturday and 8 on Sunday, I believe. And so I was there closing the gym 1 day and I was like, oh, I wonder what the women's, because I never walked in the women's only workout area, I'm like, I wonder what that looks like.

And I walked in and I remember as a trainer, I was like, okay, there's dumbbells in here, the differences, these are coated in whatever that polyurethane, you know, vinyl, purple materials, purple and pink. The machines were identical to the machines that were on the general area. The difference was the upholstery was pink or purple. So they were like, here's your female equipment, we changed the color for you, how condescending, right? And now you can work out on this.

And I remember being like, this is ridiculous. Now, of course, since remodeled and got rid of that, but that's how they marketed. And so for a long time, the myth was promoted that, and then of course you have female bodybuilders who are genetic freaks. They make, they're like, they 0.001% of women can even build muscle like that. And then they're on top of that, they're on male hormones.

So women look at that and that's evidence, oh, that's what'll happen to me if I... So women were scared. The truth is this, you wanna get the benefits of strength training, the sculpt, the firmness, the fast metabolism, the hormone benefits, the shape. You got to lift heavy weights. You got to work out like the bodybuilders do.

You got to work out like the powerlifters do. You got to lift heavy. Lifting heavy, your body tries to adapt to the stress. The reason why your body changes with exercise is what it's doing is it's trying to get better at what you're asking it to do. And the way that your body gets better at lifting heavy weights is by building more muscle.

So if you want to see visible change, you have to embrace heavy lifting. Now, I do want to say this, heavy is relative. I think sometimes people think heavy, like I'm going to hurt myself. No, no, no. That means you're lifting too heavy for yourself.

Heavy is relative. Heavy basically means workout with a weight that is difficult for you to perform between 5 to let's say 15 reps. More than that, now it's not really heavy anymore. So 5 to

15

within that range, and it's challenging with good technique and good form, that's heavy weights.

That's what

you wanna focus on. Now how'd you guys approach that? Because if you get somebody that has just done nothing but let's say like 15, 20 reps and they're always doing the high rep, like low amount of weight. It's a bit of a learning curve there to be able to now pick a weight and pick something that's gonna, let's say you keep them around 5 reps and we go for low reps. And it's very much like, it's gonna take a while for them to understand like that's a completely different intention going into that type of lifting.

Cause you know, a lot of times we'll pick like similar, maybe a 5 pound heavier type of load. And really it's a lot of coaching needs to happen.

Great, great point. And you just took me back to these moments of doing this. And I'll tell you what I used to do. So, and cause you're right, Justin, what You tell-

They do 7 pounds, you go, let's lift heavy. Okay, I'll go to 9.

Yeah, 10 or 12, they barely go up a little bit. So I actually, I'm telling them to add weight until they can't do 5. I want you to keep putting weight on- Because

you gotta feel it.

Until you struggle to get 4. So I want you to feel for yeah, yeah, no, of course. And that's what we've defined failure before. So if you listen to the show long enough, failure is not you falling or collapsing or dropping the bar. It's you and the inability for you to complete the rep with perfect form.

So as soon as there's any sort of breakdown in form and technique, you probably could squeeze out 1 or 2 or 3 more reps. You know, with battle, you don't, you stop there. But I'm encouraging my female client to keep adding weight until she finds a weight that she's struggling to get to 5.

Yes.

And now you know what it feels like to really try and push a heavy load. That's

exactly what I used

to do. Otherwise, you're right. If you have them choose a weight that, Okay, they were always working out the 15 to 20 reps. They kind of know like, oh, this is what my shoulder press is. Oh, this is what my whatever is.

Okay, now my coach or trainer is telling me to do 5 reps. He go, oh, they add like 5 pounds to it or whatever. When in reality, many times they can do like double the weight that they were doing for

15

reps. You just brought me back. I had a family member like that, and I wasn't training her, so I had to kind of coach her just verbally. And I said, no, no, lift heavy, you gotta lift heavy. And she comes back, I'm like, how was the workout?

She's like, it was good, I definitely went heavy. I'm like, so What did you do? She goes, well, normally I do the 5 pound dumbbells for curls. I grabbed the 7 pound dumbbells. I say, yeah, no,

that's not.

You just went from doing 30 reps to 28 reps. We need to go a little heavier. So I tell, I'll advise people if you're not used to this, do a set, add weight, do a set, add weight, do a set, add weight, do a set, add weight. You can do it incrementally. You could add 5 pounds at a time.

But until you get to the point where, like Adam says, it's like a struggle to get like 5 reps.

Well, and then I would also remind them that these numbers that we use, this 5, 10, 15 rep, they're arbitrary numbers. Like, there's nothing wrong if you chose a way that you could only get 3 up. That's okay. Like, and so if I've got somebody who I'm trying to teach to lift heavy, ideally, we're trying to find a weight that you struggle to get right to 5. That's like a perfect guess.

But the reality is, and this is both men and women, still to this day, I have this challenge. There's many times where I'm going into a set, I know it's a heavy lifting day, my goal is to get 5 out, but I only get 3.

It doesn't

mean it's a worthless set.

No, it's a good set. It's a

great set, especially when the focus and the goal is to go heavy. So just because we say 5 by 5 or that the goal is to hit 5 reps, if you picked a way and you're like on rep 2 and you realize, oh shit, this was a little more than I thought, I'm not going to be able to get 5. That's okay, stop at 3 or 4. Nothing wrong with that. But now your mindset is in the area or the arena that I want it to be in, which is really struggling to get those 5 reps out and that's what lifting heavy feels like.

Well, here's another sort of a silly thing that I remember going through that whole process, picking weight. And we're doing the same thing that you guys are kind of bringing up. Um, but there was a moment where it was like, uh, my client, she stopped and she was like, I just feel like I'm making all these grimaces and you know, like, I'm, I'm, things are coming out like grunts. I'm like, I'm like, yes, that like, that is part of it. And that's why you know, it's Honestly, it's it's it's kind of a deterrent But then what you understand that that to be able to brace and to keep your body tight, like to be able to breathe through that, like that all has to kind of work out where, you know, sometimes you might make a noise and this tool, you're okay.

You're gonna make faces. Yeah, you're

gonna make ugly faces, but that's all right.

By the way. If you're

not, you're also probably not going hard enough.

You Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. By the way, this doesn't count if you don't rest in between sets. I gotta make sure I say that. So if you're lifting heavy, that means you do a set and you rest for like 2 minutes and then you do another set. If you do a bunch of exercises in a row, even if they're heavy, with no rest, you've defeated, you've now turned your strength training into cardio.

So it's a set, rest for 2 minutes or 3 minutes, and then repeat it. That's how you build muscle. That's how you get what we're talking about. All right. The next point is the most challenging 1 for a lot of women who have never done this.

You have to eat in a calorie surplus. You have to go in a bulk. I know I say the word bulk and everybody's like, bulk? I don't want to look bulky. Now look, here's the deal.

We can send a signal to build muscle all day long with heavy lifting. You can do it perfectly. If there's nothing to build the muscle with, it ain't gonna happen, okay? So you can send the plans to build the house and they can be perfect, and then you can have the workers ready to go and you can give them no bricks, no wood, no nails, no tools, and you're gonna have no house. So in order to build muscle, in order to make this work, you have to eat a little bit more than is required to keep your body where it's at now.

So that means you have to eat a little bit more and part of this is you have to eat a high protein diet. If you don't do those 2 things, building muscle is gonna be almost impossible, if not impossible.

This is the biggest challenge of all the tips around this episode and is almost always the reason why a client is following this protocol of lifting heavy, because okay, I'm gonna trust this process, or I believe the guys that told me, or I believe the coach that told me to do this. And so they lift the heavy weight, but then they don't see the results that we're talking about from it. It's almost always because of this. Because they're not getting enough protein or they're not eating any calorie surplus, but most often both.

They're

not eating enough calories for what they're burning and what they're doing. In addition to that, they're also not hitting enough protein intake on a consistent basis day in and day out. And it is, it's difficult to overcome that hurdle because there is a little bit of this awkward phase of when you first start this, which is the initial increase of calories and protein with the lifting heavy does cause this, oh, my my pants are fitting a little bit tighter. And and then that's where the mind fuck comes. And that's where the bailout comes to.

It's just like, OK, I was trusting the process with the coach all the way up to that point. As soon as my my pants got tight to fit or my shirt filled, didn't feel right. Yeah, freak out and go the other direction, and you've got to trust the process. You've gotta understand that you've increased calories. A lot of times both carbs came with that, sodium came with that, water probably up a little bit.

So you're gonna be retaining a little bit of water, which by the way, comes right out of you within 72 hours. So it's not a big deal. We can go the other direction really easy. And right now, this is part of that process of starting to build that muscle and build that metabolism. You've got to be okay with getting through that mental hurdle.

Also, 70% of a muscle, if you look at a muscle, 70% of it is fluid. It is 70% of it is non-muscle fiber, fluid and structures in the muscle. If you increase your calories so that you're eating a little bit more calories in your burning so now you have something left to build with, and you're trying to build muscle, your muscles are like sponges, and they will absorb and hold a little bit more fluid. This is not the same as bloat. I wanna be clear.

Bloat is water outside the muscle. It's water that makes you look smooth and puffy. Water inside a muscle makes the muscle look more full, more round, more defined, more toned, right? More firm. That's what happens.

So you might put your pants on, and this is another thing working against women. Women's clothing is not designed for women with muscle at all. So now you put your jeans on and your thighs feel tighter because why? Your quads built a little bit and they lifted. Your jeans feel tighter up near the butt area while your butt just lifted and got a little bit rounder.

So it's not the waist by the way, pay attention to the waist you'll notice that that hasn't changed. Right, Your shirt all of a sudden might feel tighter in the shoulders. Wow, your posture just got better. Muscles are a little fuller. Don't worry, you're not just a big, broad-shouldered person.

So that's a very, very good point.

Yeah, and this is why, and the next point we get into that we tend to tell clients that we are doing this with is to throw away the scale. And this is where I too, I tell them to be objective. So take a picture of yourself in your bikini, front, side, back, check it right now. The end of the month, check it again. The end of the next month, check it again.

And be honest with yourself, the way you look. Don't go off of a scale thing. Don't freak out if you've noticed your pants or your shirt fit. You're sculpting. You're changing your body.

So you're not going to fit in those same skinny jeans when you had no muscle on your body anymore. So don't Use that as a unit of measure of success in your progress. Be honest with yourself and take a look. Or use somebody else who is not going to be judging you the same way and ask a boyfriend, a husband, a girlfriend, and be like, hey, do you think that I'm making improvements here? And I guarantee they're gonna tell you, yes, you look better.

Yeah, real quick with the bulk, high protein is about a gram of protein per pound of body weight. So when I say high protein, that's what I'm talking about. Not that you added an egg to breakfast or you put cheese on your sandwich now. So It's a decent amount of protein, it's pretty hard to hit. But the scale tip is huge because the scale just tells you total mass.

Yeah. It doesn't tell you... It's not the whole story. ...What it's made up of. I mean, you could cut your leg off and then you've lost weight.

Is that good? Are you happy that you lost 15 pounds? No, you lost your leg, right? Muscle looks very different than body fat. A 130 pound,

30%

body fat female who let's say is 5'4", looks very different than a 5'4", 130 pound female at 19% body fat. They would weigh the same exact on the scale, but if you looked at them, they don't look the same at all. In fact, most people who have no idea about fitness and muscle would look at the lean woman and guess that she weighs probably 100 pounds. I used to do this to sell gym memberships. I've told the story at least 100 times in the podcast, gonna tell it again just in case someone hasn't heard it, but I used to have a female trainer that used to work for me, and I used to use her to sell memberships.

You know who she is, Homera. And she was this really fit, sculpted, strong trainer. And she was tiny. She was I think like

5'2",

but she weighed a lot more than she looked because she had muscle. And I would have these women that would come and get a tour of the gym, and I'd show them the weights, and I'd do the spiel, and they'd be like, no, no, no, I don't wanna lift weights, I don't wanna get big, I don't wanna whatever. And then I'd do this challenge to them, and it was kind of a sneaky way of getting them to buy a membership. And I'd say, look, I tell you what, I'm going to bring in 1 of my female trainers. If you could guess within 7 pounds, I think it was, or 10 pounds of her body weight, I'll give you a free membership for a month.

But if you can't, then I want you to take what I'm saying. I want you to consider what I'm saying. Seriously. And she would walk 5 foot 2 lean as hell. And they'd be like, uh, 90 pounds, a hundred pounds, like stand on the scale, 130 pounds.

And they would blow them away. They'd be like, what's wrong with the scale? I'd say, go ahead and stand on the scale, test it out. And they'd test it out and be like, and I'd say, muscle is dense, doesn't take up a lot of space, it looks lean, it looks sculpted. And then I would love that my favorite part would I'd ask the trainer what she would eat on a daily basis and it would blow the person away by the amount of food that this little girl would eat and I'd be like, she's got a fast metabolism.

That's what can happen. So the scale lies. Now it tells you something, but it doesn't tell you everything. And so if you're triggered by weight, you're triggered by gaining weight, you're always on a diet, you're always trying to lose weight, you're scared to lift weights, you don't want to get bigger, Take the scale, throw it away or put it in the closet, promise yourself I will not weigh myself for an entire 30 days, and I'm gonna trust the process, and then watch what happens.

Yeah, I mean, ideally, you focus just purely on strength and improving in the gym. However, some people are still gonna wanna have some tangible metrics around that. And so this is where like, if you wanna be simplistic with this, and I actually like, Doug does this a lot, where he does a circumference measurement just around the waist, or something very simple like that, Where you don't want to gain any size, right? You don't want to see an increase there

The waste is a good

place, but everywhere else, too I mean if you want to see trends and see how your training is affecting your muscle growth and or You know like you want to see like how your body is sort of changing and morphing I do like circumference measurements for that.

Circumference measurements, body fat tests, probably.

I actually think if I was to be training clients today still and were to start my business all over again, I don't think I'd probably use the scale at all anymore. When I think about

like- I stopped using it

in the

back half of my career completely.

It's such a terrible way to... And I know this episode is geared towards women in general, but even for men, it's just not a good measure of progress because it can be very deceiving on if you're moving in the right direction or not. You just, because you want to lose fat on your body, seeing the scale going down is not necessarily a good thing, you know, and seeing it go up is not necessarily a bad thing, you know? So it has a lot to do with what your body composition and what is changing.

To illustrate that point, Adam, I'm gonna make a point that's gonna trip people out, but it's 100% true. If you are listening to this right now and you lost no body fat, but you gained 10 pounds of muscle, so literally all you did was gain 10 pounds of lean body mass, no body fat loss whatsoever, you will have now become leaner as a percentage of body fat. Your body fat percentage, which is what matters, went down. Why? Because it is now a smaller percentage of your total body weight.

And it'll look that way too. So what do I mean by that? Okay. A 200 pound man with 20 pounds of body fat is 10% body fat. A 100 pound man with 20 pounds of body fat, same amount of body fat is 20% body fat.

So it's a smaller person, same number of body fat, bigger person, same number of body fat, smaller percentage. So if you just gain muscle you get leaner. And this is why, I know you guys had this too, female clients would come to you after you put them on a calorie surplus, having them lift weights, 60 days later they come to you and they go, My co-workers are asking me how much weight I've lost. People think I lost 10 pounds. I tell them I gained 2 pounds or I lost no weight on the scale.

Why does everybody think I lost weight? It's this right here. You look leaner because you are leaner. You're just not lighter. All right.

The next 1 is, you know, you're probably looking, okay, you're listening to us talk. All right, what's a good workout? Here's a good rule of thumb. Avoid workouts that are marketed or geared towards women or girls. Workouts geared for women, workouts that are like burn this and sculpt that and power button, whatever garbage.

They're almost all garbage, not all of them, but almost all of them are garbage. Almost all of them take strength training and water it down to such a point when they become Completely useless. So if you buy a workout and it's wrapped in pink or whatever and it says it's for girls or for women It's usually crap. It's usually a crappy work I

mean, this is I think unpacking that so people understand this this is marketing in general

Yeah,

it doesn't even we don't have to be talking about workouts for women, we can be talking about anything. It's, you know, marketing is geared towards our insecurities, to poke at the things that we're uneducated, uninformed about, that we're insecure about, and to provide a quick, fast, easy, cheap solution. That's what we're all attracted to. So you have to be aware of that's what, if it hits you in your Instagram feed, or your Facebook feed, or gets email marketed to you, or whatever, or jumps out in some 15-second promo video, that this is what's going to do that Whatever magic

workouts designed for women is

the corset and sweat butter

is exactly they are they're totally Marketing to our insecurities So you have to understand that and almost anything worth working for fighting for is hard. It takes time. It takes effort. It's not easy. It's not gonna happen overnight or in 30 days.

And this is the best approach to do that, which is strength training, slowly building muscle. All that stuff takes time.

I used to tell, so I had this 1 woman I trained whose daughter was in college and wanted to work out, saw her mom's results when she came to visit. And she said, my daughter is looking for good workouts like online or whatever. Like, do you have any recommendations? I said, tell her that the most hardcore for men workouts are better, are gonna give her the best results. So I said, tell her to find powerlifting workouts or tell her to find Strength workouts for like for male bodybuilders like what she's gonna look like a guy when I said no No, it's just those are well-written The ones that are written for women is all about marketing and they do a lot of what we talked about the you know 70 reps lightweight exercises that aren't effective, you know that aren't effective that kind of stuff.

All right last This is a extremely important factor with your workouts, which is prioritize strength. If you're getting stronger, you're moving in the right direction. Hands down, bottom line. If you're lifting more weight for the same reps, or you're doing more reps with the same weight, you're moving in the right direction. Prioritize strength.

In fact, if you wanna look like a muscle mommy, stop trying to look like a muscle mommy and just try to get stronger and you'll look like a muscle mommy.

So this is, to me, the best metric to use, right? Like the 1 around the waist, not a bad 1, even though even then, because that can fluctuate up and down with water retention, their period, things like that. I'm not even a huge fan of even that. I would rather go, let's measure and make sure we're getting stronger. Let's check that picture every month, and that's it.

And just trust the process. And are you able to eat more? Because another 1 they tend to notice, right? If you put a lot of effort.

If your appetite's up, eating more.

Yes, if you put a lot of effort in getting stronger and you are getting stronger, You'll start to see like your appetite increase and your ability to eat more calories than what you were before so focusing on getting a stronger to me is the single best metric that we can focus on when we're trying to do

now, People always ask for what is considered strong. What is a good typical? Metric in terms of strength now, it's very individual. So I'm gonna give a general answer. This does not apply to everybody, okay?

So if you can't hit this, doesn't mean you're not doing great. If you're getting stronger, you're getting stronger. It's awesome. And you might surpass, a lot of women will surpass these numbers that I'm going to say. But here's some general metrics that the average woman, I would say, who's in relatively decent health, no major injuries, who's working out consistently and following a good workout can aim for.

Half of your body weight on a bench press. So whatever you weigh, if you weigh 140 pounds,

70

pounds on the bench press. Okay. So half your body weight in the bench press, you want to be able to squat your body weight. So Whatever you weigh, can you do a full 1 rep squat of that? And then can you do about 1 and a quarter times your weight in the deadlift?

So if you weigh 100 pounds, 125 pound deadlift. Those are good general metrics that I would say most women in good health, you know, all things being equal, could probably aim for and attain. And if you hit those numbers, you're doing damn good. You're doing pretty damn good.

Now, I can think of, off the top of my head, 3 programs that I find myself recommending to a female client that wants to do this. What I would like us to do is, and that would be anabolic, power lift, and strong would be my go-to 3. Now, depending on who I'm talking to would dictate that. And this is my opinion, I'd like to hear what you guys think. So if I have someone that's relatively new to lifting and this is like the first real structured program to them, building their metabolism, building strength, I'm going to go the anabolic route.

That's kind of the go-to first thing. If you're somebody who's been consistently lifting, you've been lifting for a relatively good amount of time, you've just never focused purely on strength, I would love to do something like power lift. If you're somebody who has been lifting a lot for a very long time and you're relatively strong and maybe even already kind of bench, squat, and deadlift, do some of those movements, but have never done just a strength-based program, I like strong because of all the unconventional things that

are in

there, it's going to be challenging in all

new ways. It's going to throw a curveball

at the advanced lifter. That's kind of how

I would- I 100% agree. Now, I will say this, if you're relatively healthy, no joint issues, and you can do basic strength training exercises with decent technique with lightweight or whatever. You're not going to go wrong with any of these programs. Right. Really not.

MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Strong, or MAPS Powerlift, you can't go wrong. But what Adam said is much more specific and I agree 100%. So What we're going to do is this, because we're talking about building muscle, we're doing the muscle mommy thing, you mentioned those 3 programs, all of them right now for this episode 50% off, half off the normal price. So if you're interested in doing any of those, and they come with everything, exercises, sets, reps, exercise demos, just follow them as they're laid out. If you're interested, you go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code on any of those programs for half off MM50.

So MM50 will give you half off, MAPS Anabolic or MAPS Strong or MAPS Powerlift, or you could go back and get all 3 50% off with that code.

It's muscle mommy madness.

You go. Look, you can find all of us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump DeStefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.

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 Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic, 9 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 Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources, at mindpumpmedia.com.

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