2572: Only 15 Minutes a Day to Build Muscle & Burn Fat

Summary

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - Episode 2572 Summary Title: Only 15 Minutes a Day to Build Muscle & Burn Fat
Release Date: April 10, 2025
Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews
Producer: Doug Egge

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1. Introduction to the Episode

In Episode 2572 of Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth, hosts Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews delve into the transformative power of short, daily strength training sessions. The episode challenges conventional fitness paradigms by proposing that dedicating just 15 minutes a day to strength training can effectively build muscle, burn fat, and enhance overall health.

2. The Core Thesis: Minimal Time, Maximum Results

Adam Schafer opens the discussion by asserting, “15 minutes a day. Can you build muscle? Burn body fat? Can you reap the benefits of strength training? Yes, you can” (01:07). The hosts aim to dismantle the myth that extensive workout sessions are necessary for significant fitness gains, advocating instead for brief, consistent exercise routines.

3. Scientific Evidence Supporting Minimalist Workouts

Justin Andrews highlights the increasing body of research supporting minimal workout durations: “It feels like we keep seeing more and more studies come out of how little it takes to reap most of the benefits” (02:32). Adam Schafer references specific studies, such as one involving older adults who achieved a 33% increase in leg press strength after six weeks with just one exercise, three sets per week (04:39).

4. Developing Consistency Through Short Workouts

The conversation emphasizes the importance of consistency. Adam explains, “With some of these people, I said, you know, instead of doing an hour workout, an additional hour workout throughout the week, what if we just had you do like a couple exercises every day?” (09:14). This approach aligns with habit-building principles, where frequent, manageable tasks are more likely to become ingrained routines.

5. Strength Training Without Fatigue

A pivotal point discussed is training without inducing significant fatigue. Adam Schafer states, “Strength builds best without fatigue” (18:54). This perspective is supported by observations from Olympic weightlifting training methods, where maintaining high capacity in each session maximizes strength gains without the diminishing returns caused by fatigue.

6. Equipment for Minimalist Workouts

The hosts recommend versatile, space-efficient equipment to facilitate daily workouts:

• Suspension Trainers: Ideal for beginners or those with limited time and space. Adam notes their modifiability and convenience (26:42).
• Free Weights (Barbells and Dumbbells): Suitable for more advanced trainees looking to maximize strength adaptations (28:27).

7. Debunking Myths: Soreness and Sweating

A significant myth addressed is the necessity of soreness and sweating for effective workouts:

• Soreness: Justin asserts, “Soreness doesn't tell you whether or not you had a good workout” (28:35), emphasizing that minimal soreness often correlates with optimal training without overreaching.
• Sweating: Adam clarifies, “Sweating has its own benefits, but with strength training. Strength training is not a fatigue based form of exercise” (28:42). The focus should be on strength gains rather than sweating.

8. Diet Considerations

Diet is acknowledged as a crucial component of fitness success. Adam advises:

1. Avoid Heavily Processed Foods: Prevents overeating and promotes natural calorie regulation.
2. Adequate Protein Intake: “Hit your goal body weight in grams of protein. Eat that first” (31:16).

Justin echoes the sentiment, reinforcing that “you can't out train a bad diet” (31:56), highlighting the synergy between proper nutrition and effective training.

9. Suitability for Advanced Trainees

The episode underscores that even advanced trainees can benefit from minimalist routines. Adam shares anecdotal evidence of experienced individuals achieving personal records by adopting the 15-minute daily approach:

• Example: A listener deadlifted 605 pounds at 43 years old following the program—a notable increase despite age-related challenges (21:14).

10. Conclusion and Resources

The hosts conclude by reiterating the efficacy of short, consistent strength training sessions. They promote their Maps 15 Minutes program, currently available at 50% off for the episode’s listeners. Additionally, they encourage integrating these workouts with a balanced diet and regular daily activity for comprehensive health benefits.

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Notable Quotes

• Adam Schafer (03:04): “To look like you do. Strength.”
• Justin Andrews (08:13): “I think it's because it's counterintuitive.”
• Adam Schafer (13:12): “There's a. It's easier for time. And it's as you guys are. Are making the point. It's a. It's just an easier commitment.”
• Justin Andrews (22:16): “Habit building, we, we've all heard the term like 10, 000 hours to become an expert.”
• Adam Schafer (25:40): “If you train all of these, you're going to develop a well balanced body without injury, good aesthetics.”

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Key Takeaways

• Efficiency: Short, daily strength training sessions can yield substantial muscle and fat loss benefits.
• Consistency Over Duration: Frequent, manageable workouts foster better adherence and long-term success.
• Adaptation Without Overreaching: Training without inducing significant fatigue maximizes strength gains and minimizes injury risks.
• Balanced Routine: Incorporating fundamental movement patterns ensures comprehensive muscle development and injury prevention.
• Diet Synergy: Proper nutrition amplifies the benefits of strength training, emphasizing the avoidance of processed foods and adequate protein intake.

Resources Mentioned

• Maps 15 Minutes Program: maps15minutes.com
  Discount Code: 1515halfoff for 50% off during the episode.

• Mind Pump Instagram:

  • Sal: @mindpumpsal
  • Adam: @mindpumpadam
  • Justin: @mindpumpjustin
  • Doug: @mindpumpdoug

• Element Electrolyte Powder: drinklmnt.com/mindpump
  Offer: Free sample pack with any drink mix purchase.

Final Thoughts

This episode of Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth serves as a compelling testament to the power of minimalist training. By focusing on short, effective workouts and maintaining consistency, listeners are encouraged to rethink their approach to fitness, prioritizing sustainable habits over lengthy gym sessions. The integration of scientific research, practical advice, and real-life success stories provides a robust framework for achieving optimal health and physique with just 15 minutes a day.

Transcript

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[Sal Destefano]

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.

[Adam Schafer]

Mind Pump. Mind Pump.

[Sal Destefano]

With your hosts Sal Destefano, Adam Schafer.

[Adam Schafer]

And Justin Andrews, you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind pump. All right, 15 minutes a day. Can you build muscle? Burn body fat? Can you reap the benefits of strength training? Yes, you can. We break it down in today's episode. By the way, because of today's episode is talking about 15 minutes a day. Maps 15 is going to be 50% off for this episode only. So if you're interested in that, go to maps15minutes.com 15 is the number. So maps15minutes.com use the code 1515 half off to get 50% off. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor Element. This is an electrolyte powder that you put in your water that has the right amount of sodium. All the other electrolyte powders have not enough sodium to make a difference. This one has a thousand milligrams per packet. No sugar, no artificial. Sweeteners get better, pumps get more energy. It tastes really good. Go check them out. Go to drinklmnt.com mindpump and on that link you'll get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase. All right, here comes the show. Strength training has tremendous benefits. Builds muscle, sculpts the body, speeds up the metabolism, great for fat loss, helps balance out your hormones. How much do you really need to do to get all those benefits? Believe it or not, 15 minutes. That's the case. We're going to make today 15 minutes and you can build muscle and get incredible results with strength training.

[Justin Andrews]

Let's go. I love this conversation. I don't know if these are new studies when you bring them up or not. You're the study guru here. But it feels like we keep seeing more and more studies come out of how little it takes to reap most of the benefits.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

Let's not get this confused with getting on stage to be a bodybuilder.

[Guest Speaker]

Optimal.

[Justin Andrews]

Right. Or trying to be a pro athlete. But to be healthy, strong, good hormone profile, even aesthetically fit, like, look good.

[Adam Schafer]

To look like you do. String.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Yeah. That. It's, it's so much less than what I even thought as a trainer.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Like.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes. Yeah. So, so here's. I think this needs to be communicated because it's hard for somebody to. Who doesn't understand how strength training triggers adaptations of the body. It's hard for them to comprehend how 15 minutes of working out could possibly do this. Like, well, you know, I know people work out all the time. Or I see this on social media, like, what's the deal? Well, first off, you don't need much to trigger an adaptation response with strength training. And there's tons and tons and tons of data to support this. But the other part that is important to understand is that as you progress through strength training, which is primarily measured through strength gains, your workout naturally progresses. What do I mean by that? Well, let's say you did a 15 minute workout today and you haven't worked out in a while, so you did five pushups. And then the next time around you did another 15 minute workout and you did six pushups. Guess what? You did naturally. You progressed the workout. So the workouts change and progress and the stress is applied appropriately because you get stronger. This is one of the incredible things about strength training. Also, what we see is that you just don't need a lot to trigger adaptations. I brought up a study earlier today on another podcast where they looked at older adults and they had them do one exercise for three sets once a week for six weeks and they shift the leg press.

[Justin Andrews]

30%.

[Adam Schafer]

33% increase in strength.

[Justin Andrews]

That's crazy.

[Adam Schafer]

Over a six week period.

[Justin Andrews]

That's crazy.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, think about that. I mean, 33% means you are fully a third stronger than you were before in six weeks.

[Justin Andrews]

And doing an exercise that we wouldn't even put at the top of the.

[Guest Speaker]

Top 10 list, pretty low on the priority.

[Justin Andrews]

So yeah, you did something easy. Entry level exercise. Anybody can get in almost any condition and actually perform with relatively no experience whatsoever and still reap those benefits. We're not even talking. Heaven forbid you squatted.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

That amount of time.

[Adam Schafer]

Right.

[Justin Andrews]

Like the barbell back squat, like learning that or deadlifting with. I mean it'd be amazing to see what that would do, you know.

[Adam Schafer]

Right. But 33 gain and you're talking about one, not one workout a week, one exercise once a week and three sets. Right, that's it. There's other studies that show the amount of strength training that you need to prevent muscle loss as you age. So there's lots of studies that show that after I believe 30, you see a percentage of, there's a set percentage on average of strength and muscle loss you see every decade. I remember what the number was like 5%, something like that. So every decade after 30, you just lose strength and lose muscle. And there's studies that explore, well, how much strength training do you need to just stop that from happening. Like you're not trying to get stronger, you're just trying to stop the muscle loss. It's like one workout once every two weeks or so. So strength training is quite unique in comparison to other forms of exercise in that you don't need much to trigger adaptations. Now I think we need to stop there for a second because when I say adaptations, people often confuse that with recovery. They think that they're one and the same, but they're not. Recovery is healing. Adaptation is your body changing to become more resilient to stress in the future. In other words, if I do an exercise today and it's hard, my body tries to adapt so that next time that same exercise performs the same way, same reps, everything recalibrates. It's not as hard. What we tend to do with workouts is we tend to flirt with what we can tolerate with our recovery ability, but we miss the boat when it comes to adaptation. And there is definitely a crossover. But what you can tolerate is above and beyond what is required for adaptation. And when it comes to most people, like a 15 minute, well programmed strength training workout done daily, you can go very far. And yes, you'll look like you strength trainer.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, knowing that, it's actually kind of funny and ironic that we try to pursue that sweet spot by doing more. Yeah, like going as much as we can, as much intensity as possible to see where that threshold lies. Instead of taking complete opposite approach of like where, where am I getting results? And then like maybe do I increase but then do I stop there? I found that sweet spot. Like it just, it makes so much more logical sense. But it's, it, it's just not been, you know, pounded in our heads.

[Justin Andrews]

I. I think it's because it's counterintuitive. I. And I've made this case more is better. Yeah, I've made this case in the podcast many times because I. And I still can't think of another good example like training, where there's this, you know, sweet spot of doing as little as possible to elicit the most change. In fact, everything else, it serves me to do more, like doing more, working harder, pushing harder, more hours, more time, more days, tends to make you a better athlete, make you smarter, make you better skilled. You know what I'm saying?

[Adam Schafer]

You.

[Justin Andrews]

You better. More fluent. I mean, whatever. The thing is, the more effort and the more time you put into it, the greater the return. And so I think we've just been conditioned to think that way. And that's not. To your point about that's not adaptation. Right. That's not the. If this, this, that. That still applies to getting good at a sport. But when you are in the game of longevity esthetics, getting the body to adapt, it isn't work that way. So it's counterintuitive.

[Adam Schafer]

No. And don't, by the way, don't confuse this with the benefits of being active. So we're not saying it's ideal to just be active for 15 minutes a day. No, we're talking specifically about strength training.

[Justin Andrews]

We're also not talking to the person who's listening, because, of course, there's already somebody who's scoffed and is just like, oh, my, that ridiculous. I've consistently trained for five days a week, an hour a day, and I'm in. Great. Like, if you have no problem training five hours a week, every week, and you've done that for years, this conversation isn't for you.

[Guest Speaker]

You're adapted already.

[Justin Andrews]

But the reality is most people don't. A vast majority of people don't even string 30 good days of consistency. And that is the whole mission of what we've been trying to do, is to get people that aren't strength training or that can't stay consistent with, like, listen, it doesn't take that much, and you can reap a ton of benefits.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. But, you know, even just to push back on that a little, Adam, I mean, we use our program as. We have a program that's designed around this. And how many of the people who have gotten the program, who were those five day a week, one hour a day? People who write in and say, oh, my God, my body's responding like it hasn't in a. I was plateaued for a year. I didn't realize I was doing more than necessary. I'm getting stronger and they're all advanced individuals, so. But again, don't confuse this with, with ideal activity levels. Like, the data is clear, you should be active throughout the day. Okay, so we're not talking about just being active. We're talking specifically about a form of exercise called strength training, whose sole intention is to build strength and build muscle and then reap the benefits of what follows along with that, which is a faster metabolism, a sculpted body, insulin sensitivity, better hormone balance, etc. Etc. Now, 15 minutes a day, by the way, if you did that for six days a week, would add up to about 90 minutes of strength training a week. So to put it differently, that'd be like two 45 minute workouts a week. So why are we talking about 15 minutes a day? Why 15 minutes a day? Why not one 90 minute workout a week? Or why not two 45 minute workouts, behaviorally speaking? Oh, yeah. I mean, let's start with just which one's easier to manage. I. This was something that I figured out with some of my clients, but I didn't get the whole. I really didn't understand it completely or understand how important this was. But there were clients that I had where it was so hard for them to make time for a full workout. It was just very difficult. Like they train with me once a week and then having them do anything else on their own that looked like a structured workout was just so hit or miss. And these people were genuinely busy. They were often parents, they had high pressure jobs. And it was so inconsistent for them to, you know, go to the gym, devote 45 minutes to an hour, you know, drive there changing the workout clothes, whatever. And so with some of these people, I said, you know, instead of doing an hour workout, an additional hour workout throughout the week, what if we just had you do like a couple exercises every day? And what I found was they were incredibly consistent because it was easier for them to find 15 minutes a day than it was for them to find an hour or 45 minutes once a week, because that required a block on their schedule versus like, oh yeah, I got 15 minutes, I could totally do a 15 workout and do it, do it daily. And so it just for time management for most people, they tend to be far more consistent with small daily doses than they would with fewer larger doses.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm not sure if it's the time management as much as it is the psychology around it. I think there's something to be said about. And I guarantee you guys have experienced this before where you're just, you know, you need to start your routine or today you were supposed to lift and you're just like, man, I just. I ain't got an hour in me. Yeah, you have the time. But just like, I've had a long day. It's stressful.

[Guest Speaker]

Excuses start to come.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, I mean, I'm guilty of this. I'm guilty of that. That and this was my problem. My early, you know, 10 years of lifting, I was an all or nothing. Either I gotta crush it and smash for an hour, hour and a half, or I'm not doing it and instead giving myself that permission of like, I can just go do one or two exercises. And that's just not Says daunting. Even though I'm tired, even though I don't feel like doing it. Yeah, get in there real quick and do two exercises. 15, 20 minutes. I could do that. That, to me, I think that's even. And it's not to say that there's not people that like an hour is a big commitment in their day. I think that's true. There's examples of that.

[Adam Schafer]

But.

[Justin Andrews]

But I really think it's more the psychology of just like. Because everybody's going to have days where they just don't feel like it. And when you don't.

[Guest Speaker]

Dude, there's something for sure to that. Even if you just look at like how we price things, right? Like a hundred dollars versus 97. And it's not even that much, but it's just like psychologically you could justify. Yeah, and I think you do that sort of mental math already going into like, oh, I need to do all these things and like, and this is going to take away from this errand and this and you just start doing that math. But, you know, 15 minutes is pretty solid block that you can justify.

[Adam Schafer]

It's a. It's easier for time. And it's as you guys are. Are making the point. It's a. It's just an easier commitment. Or just across the board, it's an easier commitment for energy, for time, for. You know, maybe I don't like working out a lot, but I could do two exercises and I'm at it here. Versus committing to this hour workout. Just in general, what we found through our years of training people that if they did small daily doses, it was just across the board, people would be far more consistent because it's much easier to manage both psychologically and objectively from A time perspective. There's also this piece right here which I think is very powerful, which is there is less damage done to their overall fitness regimen or overall health and fitness when they miss a workout. Like if you have two 45 minute workouts scheduled a week and you miss one of them, half your workouts are gone. You miss one or two 15 minute workouts, it's a tenth.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, I get it.

[Adam Schafer]

It's not that big of a deal.

[Guest Speaker]

Sometimes you make it up at the end of the day too. It's crazy.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

I also think it. I mean, because this falls kind of the same, same category. It kind of helps you manage the intensity and volume thing organically. Meaning a big problem we already alluded to is that people overreach over train do more than they need to. And if I'm going in for only 15 minutes, it keeps me from overdoing that. Where in the past training for an hour, I almost always am overreaching somewhere where it's like if I'm only doing these little 15, 20 minutes, it also kind of manages that. And to your point, if I miss one workout, not a big deal. So I still got five or four other ones that I'm going to end up doing. And also it also kind of manages the volume and intensity organically, which keeps me from overreaching. It just. It's funny how. Well, I mean, I guess I didn't realize it until, I mean, I knew it for myself and my clients, the back half my career. It wasn't until we released the program and saw the feedback that we got from so many people, how much, how much of this was how much progress.

[Guest Speaker]

They got from it.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

You just thought, oh, maybe this is like a maintenance. No, they got like crazy progress from doing it.

[Adam Schafer]

No, I think it's a. It's our most popular program for a reason. I think you're saying, Adam, about managing the intensity. Think of it this way. Like you're. You're average person. You're getting into working out, trying to be consistent, and you got two workouts a week. You're going into that workout and you're like, I need to make this workout count.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Versus I'm doing something every day. I'm the intensity going to be more appropriate? I'm a little tired today. That's all right. I'll go a little easier. I got to work out every day for 15 minutes. Versus this is the one workout I get until Thursday. I need to make the. And, and what if, by the way, that one workout falls On a day where you had a crappy night of sleep the night before or you're just not feeling it right, it's far more challenging to be consistent. And then again, the damage that's caused to, that's caused from inconsistency is greatly mitigated from small frequent workouts because missing look, you can miss two workouts a week and you still have four that you're doing. In other words, you miss 30 minutes, you miss one workout a week. You miss 50% of all your workouts if it's only twice a week or even, especially if it's one day a week, even, you missed all of them. So it's just so much more effective from that standpoint. It's also, and here's a. This one's pretty awesome. And this one's for the people who are the fitness fanatic. Strength when it comes to strength, building strength through adaptation, strength builds best without fatigue. Fact. Okay. Strength athletes and strength coaches have known this for a long time. Some of the best data on developing strength and power comes from Olympic weightlifting. Because this was national strength, this was international strength progression studies. It's the one form of strength training that we've competed against other countries for decades. Right? We don't have powerlifting in the Olympics, although powerlifting is also large. We don't have powerlifting Olympics. We definitely have bodybuilding in the Olympics. We have other sports like shot put and stuff like that, but there's a lot of skill involved. It's very different. Olympic weightlifting is strength training and it's been done for decades in all these different countries. And some of these countries have put a lot of money and energy and time into studying what are the best techniques on building strength. And what they find in all these studies, and this is now consistent with these strength coaches, is that strength builds best, especially power builds best without fatigue. Now why is this important? If I did one 90 minute workout with all the same exercises that I would do If I did 15 minutes six days a week, by the time I get to minute 30, fatigue is setting in. Now I'm still doing strength training. I'm resting between sets, but fatigue setting in and I'm not building as much strength and power. If I divide it way up and I do 15 minutes and 15 minutes and 15 minutes, I am training strength and power and fatigue is playing no role. So for advanced trainees, and this is one of the reasons why I think people who are advanced who then go and follow a program like this, one of the reasons why they see so Many gains, aside from the fact that they might have been overdoing it before, was that fatigue is no longer a factor and they're just seeing crazy strength gains.

[Justin Andrews]

I remember the first time that I saw an Olympic lifting program, and up until that point, I had no idea that they trained so different compared to how the bodybuilder community and stuff trained. Like their, their approach with this, like the intensity. 50, 60% intensity.

[Guest Speaker]

Speed, power.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And technique. Lightweight. I, you just assume like, oh, these guys are moving the most weight than anybody else in the world. They must train the hardest and lift the most weight. But if you watch most of these guys when they're training for their Olympic lifts, like, it's really lightweight, really lightweight, so they're not doing nearly as much damage. That was really fascinating to, to me when I first learned that, like, how different it was from how I was training as a bodybuilder. Yet these guys have to go compete and lift the most weight. And I know that lifting more weight and getting stronger is going to directly result with me building more muscle. Yet we weren't doing that. There was this total disconnect and miss.

[Adam Schafer]

They also. And again, we're talking about elite Olympic weightlifters, but they'll work out throughout the day because they're trying to minimize fatigue. So they'll do a set and they'll wait and wait and do another one away and wait.

[Guest Speaker]

Oh, their respirators are excessive.

[Adam Schafer]

And then come back later and do it again, like fatigue. If you're trying to build endurance and stamina, then you want, you have to work with fatigue. You just do, like that's, that's an important factor to work with. And there's nothing wrong with endurance and stamina. But here we're talking about strength training. Okay? When it comes to strength training, fatigue is your enemy. Especially when you're talking about power, especially we're talking about fast strength. Fatigue is the enemy. And so 15 minute workouts, you're not getting fatigued, you're only focusing on building strength. And again, I think this is the, probably the number one reason, in my opinion, why our 15 minute day. You know, strength training program gets so many reviews from people who are very advanced, who are like, I'm hitting pr. This happened to me. This happened to me. I think it was, what now? How long has it been now? Three years. I think this was three years ago. At 43 years old, I followed a protocol like this. It switched way less volume than I'm used to. Way less. Whatever it was about 20 minutes a day. And I deadlifted 605 pounds at 43. My previous record was 600 pounds at the age of 33. So I'm 10 years older, less time, way worse sleep. I got little kids at home and I pulled 605 after training, I think for 60 days in this way, and it blew me away. But that's because strength builds best without fatigue.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, especially when you're focused on like the main movers, the big compound lifts, when you can perform them every time at your highest capacity because fatigue isn't a factor. And so it's like you just get one way better at the skill that exercise and then that carries over into, you know, next time you actually start loading the bar, it's like, wow, now I have this excess amount to, to.

[Justin Andrews]

Recruit from this strategy too, I think is best for just building overall good habits, being consistent with your workouts, committing to this, these 15 minutes a day, when we know that at the end of the day, I mean, Sal used to say on the podcast all the time, like an inferior program done consistently is better than a superior program done consistently. Right. So it's like if you can just get somebody to be consistent, you've already won half the battle. And so having a client commit to these like 15 minute, almost micro workouts where you're only doing two exercises on a daily routine, is a lot easier for consistency. And when you unlock consistency with any of your clients, you unlock almost everything.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. So habit building, we, we've all heard the term like 10, 10, 10, 000 hours to become an expert. Or you got, you know, three months.

[Guest Speaker]

Before you become comic habits.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. I don't know how true any of that is, but there is truth in what they're saying in the sense that there's a period of time of practice that is required to turn something into a habit. And one of the features of that or factors I should say that contributes to that is frequency. So practicing a little every day turns into a habit faster than practicing a lot infrequently. Okay. This is true for anything, Right. You do a little bit of something every day versus a lot of something once a week. Which one's going to turn into a habit? Well, the one you're going to do most, most frequently. This is true for almost any skill that you develop. So for people who are trying to develop a habit or a relationship with strength training, where It's a habit, 15 minutes a day versus twice a week or once a week is far, far more effective at building that habit. And we see this, by the way, in almost everything we do. It reminds me doing, doing something every day makes a big difference. It reminds me of the old school birth control pills where they would come in that it was like that circular packet and you'd poke out one of them and then there were like, there was like a period of time they used to tell women to go off birth control, to give themselves a period and they'd start back up. But what they didn't tell women was don't take anything for seven days. No, no, they take a pill every day. There's just seven. Some sugar pills in there, seven placebos every day. Why would they do that? It kept women consistent. And they didn't forget to take their medication because it was done every single day. That's true for something like this. So if you're trying to build a consistent habit, daily doses are far more effective than the infrequent doses.

[Justin Andrews]

So when you are building a minimalist routine like this, what are the things that you're taking into consideration? Like, okay, you're, you're, you're doing it only an exercise or two a day, which means you're only covering so many exercises. Like, how does your trainer mind work? Like when, like when we were building like maps 15. What are the main things that we take into consideration?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, well, there are, if we're going to speak generally. Right. You want to cover what are known as fundamental human movement. Okay. Or, or major movement patterns in the body. All right, so that sounds confusing. What does that mean? What that means is I'm going to name some movement patterns and there are lots of different exercises that fall in each of these movement patterns. And so what you don't want to do is pick all the exercise in one movement pattern and not the others. In other words, you don't want to avoid, or you don't want to go through your whole routine for the week and miss one of these. If you train all of these, you're going to develop a well balanced body without injury, good aesthetics, et cetera, et cetera. Here's what they are. You have squat movement patterns, and that's exactly as it sounds. Everybody knows what a squat looks like. You have something called a hinge. This is where you're standing. You bend over, but you bend at the hips. So not your low back bending, but rather your hips. It's called a hinge type movement. So a deadlift would fall under this category. You have your presses. So a bench press, overhead press. So think horizontal and vertical pressing. That's a fundamental human movement. You think rowing, pulling to your body. You can think of a pull up as a type of a row as well. So vertical and horizontal rowing, something that uses rotation and then exercises where your slant, your stance is split one foot in front of the other, like a lunge that covers pretty much everything.

[Guest Speaker]

Yep.

[Adam Schafer]

If you go through your week and you have exercises that squat, hinge, press both vertically and overhead row, both vertical and horizontal rotate, and some split stance movements, you've got everything covered. You've got all your bases covered. And you have a well balanced strength training routine.

[Justin Andrews]

Pretty bulletproof right there. Definitely you hit all those and get, I would say most my clients, because I the the early years again, some of the things I didn't do well was neglect things like rotate or maybe hinge. In some people, like I before I realized how important it was that I got everybody to be able to hinge properly or make sure I included some sort of rotation in their. In their training program. There would be holes always. That would be the client that have chronic pain or get some sort of an injury. And so if you're addressing all those things, for the most part, unless you have some freak accident, this should keep somebody pretty strong, fit healthy, looking good, moving good, and prevent any major injuries and be able to do damn near every major daily activity you'll ever have to do.

[Adam Schafer]

And this covers all the muscles of the body. It covers everything from head to toe, develops the entire body. You get really well developed, everything from down the legs up to the core, upper body, chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, the whole deal. It develops everything. The other thing now that we should probably cover is what kind of equipment somebody would use for something like this. Now, I what we've seen in our experience with our podcast and with our program, and we guessed this, but it turned out to be right, was there's two kinds of people that would follow a routine like this. One is the person who's really limited on time period, end of story. They're like, look, this, I need something that I can do. I have no time. And driving to the gym, even and driving home also takes away precious time. In those cases with those individuals, a suspension trainer is convenient, inexpensive, takes up little space, and is the best piece of equipment you can get when convenience is what you're looking for. Why it's modifiable for somebody if they're strapped to a tree, really weak, you can strap it to your doorway. I can use a suspension trainer, get a good workout, somebody who's a Beginner can modify it, get a, you know, appropriate workout. It takes up so little space. I love suspension trainers for that, for that reason right there. So there's that individual. Then we have the other individual who's more advanced, who's like, I want to take advantage of maximizing the adaptations I can get from strength training. You've sold me on the fact that I might be overdoing it. I'd like to experiment with these short, frequent workouts and I want to see if I hit a pr. I want to see if my body progresses. But I'm experienced and I do have access to a gym or I have a home gym. Then you can use free weights, barbells and dumbbells, and those will be your best.

[Guest Speaker]

Then if you ever travel, you got both, right?

[Adam Schafer]

That's right.

[Guest Speaker]

Bring your suspension trainer because you never know what the hotel gym is going to offer for sure.

[Adam Schafer]

That's right.

[Sal Destefano]

All right, got some questions here. The first one is, don't I need to sweat and get sore for the best results?

[Adam Schafer]

No.

[Justin Andrews]

No.

[Adam Schafer]

So sweating has its own benefits, but with strength training. Strength training is not a fatigue based form of exercise. Now other forms of exercise. Now can you sweat while you strength train? Yes. But other forms of exercise will make you sweat more. Like running or cycling. Right. Or hot yoga or something like that. Right. But no, when it comes to strength training, it doesn't make a difference. Getting sore. This is one of the biggest myths in fitness. Soreness doesn't tell you whether or not you had a good workout. Any idiot can get anybody sore. I could take anybody and figure out a way to make them sore. It doesn't mean anything. But what it can mean sometimes is you overdid it. So the kind of soreness that doesn't leave after a day or you sore to the touch, you probably overdid it. But don't use soreness as a gauge. The best, best results I ever got with clients was almost always when they felt minimal soreness.

[Justin Andrews]

I would make the argument that almost always soreness is an indicator of over training. You're, you're far better off. I mean, I'm always looking for that, not only for personally but for clients is like, I want my client to be able to tell me the next day that they, they feel, they feel that they worked out yesterday. Like, oh, I could tell. I, I worked my legs out. But they're walking normal. They can still squat and hinge. They can do normal movements. Yeah. They're not hindered by that. They're not like they're not groaning when they get up out of a chair because their legs are sore. That is overreaching and that is not getting any, not getting you to your results any faster. If anything, it's slowing down your progress. And so the goal for this client is to, to feel the workout, but not to be so sore. And I, I don't know where at what point this became this metric that trainers would push towards, but it's, it's the opposite is true. It's more likely you are over training and not seeing good results. If you're really sore, we're better off being not, not sore at all or like barely feeling that we worked out.

[Sal Destefano]

Is 15 minutes a day all I really need for activity?

[Adam Schafer]

No, no, 15 minutes a day for strength training. But if you want to be healthy, you should move throughout the day. And the studies and data shows that a lot of the benefits that you want from activity will be had with about 8 to 10,000 steps a day. That's how they would track it is how many steps you take a day. So the fact of the matter is most people are just, just not active. If all you ever did was 15 minutes of strength training a day, you'd get the benefits of strength training, but you'd be missing out on all the health and longevity benefits of being active. So don't confuse what we're saying with don't do anything else like you should be active all day long.

[Sal Destefano]

Does diet matter as well?

[Adam Schafer]

Yes, diet always, always, always matters. I think in, you know, in the context of this particular topic, if, if you just did a couple things with your diet, you would get really far. One would be to avoid heavily processed foods. They almost, they always make you overeat. Just avoiding them and sticking to whole natural foods. You will naturally eat an amount of, of calories that's more appropriate. So if you're overweight, you'll lose weight doing that. Just that. And then number two, hit your, your goal body weight in grams of protein. Eat that first. Just those two things right there. And I mean, everybody would get great results just from doing that.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, what's the saying? Go, you can't out train a bad diet.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And so, you know, even though this is all you need to build muscle, to build strength, to build decent physique, if you pair it with a horrible workout, you're still going to get benefits. I mean the research points to, and you've talked about this a lot too, just you're better off even if you have high body fat, but also having good Muscle because you strength train.

[Adam Schafer]

So you are protective.

[Justin Andrews]

You are better off than the person who just doesn't train at all and also doesn't eat well. But you would reap far more benefits if you paired that with a good balanced diet. And then the 15 minutes of strength training, then you're, you're really winning.

[Sal Destefano]

Would this work for advanced trainees?

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, that's the thing that's crazy about this.

[Justin Andrews]

That's the biggest feedback we're getting on.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. We have a program called Maps, 15 minutes. And it quickly became one of our most popular programs and it has remained to be one of our most popular programs. And what's funny is that the, the popularity, the biggest. There, there's a couple categories of people who love this program. There's like new moms and dads love it for obvious reasons.

[Guest Speaker]

Obvious.

[Adam Schafer]

And then all these fitness f. In fact, if you listen to our podcast, we have callers call in every week. We have about, I want to say, was it eight or 12 callers who call in every week on different episodes and the fitness fanatics who are overdoing it and it starts to become obvious to us when we're talking to them. The program we recommend the most is mass 15.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

And. And they all come and we always tell them, follow back, follow back up. They always follow up and go, yeah, I'm hitting PRs. I didn't think that would happen.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

So. And I had this experience. I hit a PR working out like this, and I almost always overdo it because I have that relate that kind of relationship with exercise. So, yes, it definitely will. Here's the difference. You're just going to lift more weight. You're advanced, you're going to be stronger. So you'll be lifting more weight for these, you know, these short.

[Guest Speaker]

That's the category I really think is going to spark and start really catching fire because people, once they've really, you know, concede to the fact that you don't have to just live in the gym all day long to get like, rad results, even better results, even during 15 minutes, it's, you know, it's going to take off.

[Justin Andrews]

I think if we were to survey our, our audience and our people that have bought all of our programs, I would think that the more advanced people are buying this program now. I think more people have heard both our. Because I, I shared this story too. I shared my journey with this on the podcast a long time ago when I first switched over to these, like, short little workouts and I was blown, blown away. By how strong I was, how good I felt, my ability to still keep aesthetics like this. I think this has become really popular. I think we've communicated this message enough, long enough that people are starting to question, like I think I might be one of those people who overtrain. They run this you. And that's kind of what I've told anybody that experiment. I'm like, just trust the process. What, what do you have to lose? What I'll tell you right now is you won't go backwards.

[Adam Schafer]

Definitely not.

[Justin Andrews]

That's. I mean, if you've been training hard and consistent six days a week hour, like you're that person where you train, you're not going to go backwards. I'll promise you that. And what will most likely happen is, is you'll progress with significantly less work. And that's what all the audience is.

[Adam Schafer]

Feeling now because of this episode. We're going to put maps 15 minutes on 50% off. So it's half off for this episode only. It's maps 15 minutes 15 the number. So maps15minutes.com use the code 15 half off. So 15 half off. No space will get you 50% off. You can also find us on Instagram. Justin is @mindpumpjustin. I'm mindpump distefano. Adam is @mindpump.

[Sal Destefano]

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 [e-mail] the RGB Super Bundle includes Maps, Anabolic 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 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 [e-mail] if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.

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