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Customer
We're lost. It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm gonna ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.
Local Resident
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree at this here road. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
Customer
How is there signal out here?
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T Mobile and US Cellular are coming together so the network out here is huge. We get the same great signal as the city, saving a boatload with benefits. And there's a five year price guarantee too. Okay, here's the turn.
Customer
Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?
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America's best network just got bigger. Switch to T Mobile today and get built in benefits the other guys leave out. Plus our five year price guarantee. And now T Mobile is available at US Cellular stores in Hermiston. Best mobile network Based on analysis by Ooklo Speed test intelligence data. Second half of 2025 bigger network. The combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee. On Talk TE, exclusions like taxes and fees apply. CT mobile.com for details.
Mind Pump Announcer
If you want to pump your body
T Mobile Announcer
and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer
Sal Destefano
and Justin Andrews, you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode we're going to show you. We're going to teach you diet, exercise strategies, everything you need to know to to make amazing progress in the next 90 days. By the way, this episode, with this episode, we're launching a brand new program, ppl. You asked for it, you got it. By the way, there's two versions of this program. One for men and then one for women. The programming is different. Women have a more higher emphasis on lower body volume, glute training, shoulder volume. Men, it's more traditional now because it's a brand new program. We we're launching it right now and it's 40% off. If you go to maps ppl.com, use the code ppl, you get the price slashed by 40%. Also, if you sign up within the first few days of the launch, you can attend live coaching by one of the Mind Pump coaches. They're going to do three days of coaching, breaking down things like nutrition, exercise, lifestyle really to help you become more consistent and maximize your progress through the program. We also include a supplement schedule guide which will be free with this program again, you can get all of that included. 40% off. Maps, ppl.com, the code is PPL. Now, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Vuorie Clothing. This is the best athleisure wear company in the world. You know who they are. It looks great. It lasts a long time. They have stuff for work, stuff for going out, and of course, clothes for the gym. And by the way, we have the link on the Internet with the biggest discount for Vuori. 20% off. Go to vuoriclothing.com mindpump all right, real quick.
Justin Andrews
If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over@mypumpstore.com I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to my pumpstore.com. that's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.
Sal Destefano
All right, you got 90 days. You got 90 days to make incredible progress. That's three months, 12 weeks. We're going to talk about it right now. We're going to tell you exactly what you need to do to make some dramatic changes to your body in 90 days. Let's go.
Adam Schaefer
Setup is key.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schaefer
Get these first couple weeks going.
Sal Destefano
Oh, yeah. No, good point. Very good point. And 90 days is enough time to make some decent changes.
Adam Schaefer
Hell yes.
Sal Destefano
I hate it when people make a good dent.
Justin Andrews
For sure.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. I hate it when social media fitness influence, like 30 days. Yeah.
Justin Andrews
That's nothing.
Sal Destefano
No. But three months, you can make some pretty decent changes, the way you look and feel. So I think it's a reasonable target. But I like what you said, Adam, because you 100% need to set yourself up properly. I think one of the biggest mistakes someone would make going into a 90 day, let's say challenge or whatever, or targeted focus is not knowing where they're starting. Not knowing. And so for diet, that looks like tracking. If you're trying to make a lot of progress in 90 days, you need to know what you're working with. Otherwise you're going to play, be playing a lot of guesswork and trying to watch the mirror and the scale to see what's going on. And that'll waste a lot of time.
Adam Schaefer
Well, the key to this, too, is when you typically when someone gets started on like a 90 day kick or a goal that they set like this, they want and they decide, okay, I want to do this day one. They want to right away, start like the diet, start the workout, eliminating everything. Yeah.
Justin Andrews
And I crazy.
Adam Schaefer
And I really want the first week When I'm helping somebody through this, the same as it was the previous week, you know, as closely as possible. So, in other words, what a typical week would. And that would include all bad eating or drinking habits.
Sal Destefano
Don't change anything for the first.
Adam Schaefer
Yeah, because there's a. There's a very. The. One of the most powerful things this week is just bringing awareness to what you were normally doing.
Sal Destefano
And as accurate as the more accurate this is, the more effective the next 90 days will be. So if you're like, I want to start today, and we're telling you to track for a week or two, if you make any changes, it's not accurate. It needs to be what you normally do. Because then we can see when you look at your calories, when you look at your proteins, your fats, your carbohydrates, your fiber, when you're looking at those numbers now, you know, okay, this is my starting point. But if you make changes and then track, we have no idea.
Justin Andrews
Well, that appearance is so much better because it's not so drastically different than what you're already doing. If you can figure out and assess exactly your patterns and then make some micro tweaks, that'll really, you know, be more advantageous for you. You know, you'll be able to ride
Sal Destefano
that out a lot longer.
Adam Schaefer
Now let's talk about some of the most common things that I would find when I had somebody do this.
Sal Destefano
Like, yeah, so let's pretend. Right? So someone just tracked for, you know, seven days. So they recorded. They got an app. What's your favorite app?
Adam Schaefer
I like Fat Secret. Okay, so Fat Secret or My Fitness Pal, Both are good apps.
Sal Destefano
So they're entering in every day. What you do is you would enter everything you eat and drink in this app every single day. And so now at the end of the week, they know on a daily basis. Here's what my calories are averaging. My proteins, my fats, my carbohydrates, and my fibers. This is what I'm averaging. This is my starting point. And so what you were saying.
Adam Schaefer
Yeah, these are. I'll tell you, the most common things that I would see. Almost always we were under consuming protein. Most people, high sugar, not enough fiber. A lot of your fat coming from saturated fat. We'd have lower calorie days followed by huge, like, kind of bench days. Yeah, swings. So it's like, you know, you have a day where you don't eat very much, then all of a sudden, another day where you eat a thousand plus calories. And so these kind of These huge peaks and valleys and inconsistent days, just total calorie wise, those are probably the most common things that I would see. And why this is so important is because if you try and tackle all of it, in my opinion at once, you're less likely to be successful. And so once I kind of get this, I, this picture of, okay, this is where this client is at, I typically would want to focus on just one or two things in their diet that could, could really move the needle. And that almost always was the protein. That's right, because it tended to start to make even the other things that were really bad. Like if I, if I had somebody, let's say, that hit all those things which would happen sometimes. High sugar, high saturated fat, undereating protein, inconsistent calories, getting them to just go after their protein target weight in grams of protein. So in other words, if you wanted to weigh 150 pounds, you'll get 150 grams of protein every day. Just focusing on that every day consistently started to make all those other things better.
Sal Destefano
It's the best first thing to move.
Adam Schaefer
Yeah. Even, even if I didn't tell you I want you to cut back on sugar or increase fiber or cut back on your saturated fat, I just said, okay, what we're gonna do for these first couple weeks is we're just gonna really be consistent with every day hitting that 150 grams or 200, whatever your target body weight is in grams of protein every day. And then we'll reassess a couple weeks later.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. So 100, I'd say probably 90% of everybody who's listening right now, who's never done this before, they're going to find that their daily protein is probably half or less of the, what would be considered optimal. Now why is 1 gram of protein per pound of target body weight optimal? Well, here's what the data shows. The data shows that when all of the things are controlled, okay, so calories are controlled, exercise is controlled, everything else is the same. High protein builds more muscle and results typically in more fat loss. It also has a high satiety effect, meaning it does naturally tend to control appetite on hormones. As far as its effect on hormones, it tends to blunt sugar spikes in the blood. Even if you eat sugar, even if you eat candy, if you eat it after a high protein meal, it blunts the response, so it improves insulin sensitivity, which has far reaching effects. So that first week you track if your protein is below what we said, which it probably will be, unless you're somebody that already always Tracks, So you already know you're hitting that, hit that, aim for it. And I would say do that and aim for it from whole natural foods. By the way, it's far more effective to do it that way than to try and get it from protein shakes. Now, I'm not opposed to protein shakes, but save those for the end of the day. So if Your goal is 150 grams of protein a day and you get to the end of the day and you've ate all the food that you're going to eat and you add it up, you're like, oh, no, I'm at 120 or 100. Throw a shake on it to hit that number. I only do it at the end of the day.
Adam Schaefer
I want to add to that piece of advice because I agree with it. I'll tell you what, more often than not, I had to do with a client because under eating protein was so dramatically different or difficult or new for this client. For most people, I typically would allow, like the protein shakes in there at the beginning just to hit, just to hit our target. And then the next goal or layer is, okay, now we've got to do it. Yeah, now let's see if we can do this from Whole Foods, because a lot of times it's quite a bit of a leap for somebody who tracks for their first week and then realizes for the first time ever that what they thought was high protein was only about 70 grams of protein a day. And oh my God, they're way undereating that. And then I go, I want you to eat, you know, all that through Whole Foods. And that becomes daunting to them because it's like double the amount of protein they were used to eating. So it's like, okay, well, we can include a shake, but understand that the ultimate goal is to get where you're going. And honestly, why I like that is because it gives them little steps and, and, and they'll see somebody who under eats protein grossly like most people do. I find in this situation, just by adding a shake every day at the end of the day or whatever time, they all sudden start seeing progress from their strength training that, that they have they're not used to because their body's getting more of what it needs. And then eventually we start to progress to where we try and eliminate that and make it all through Whole Foods.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, so, so the next from, you know, between three, you know, to maybe eight weeks, what you're trying to do now is just hit protein. Now this will work well for you if your protein was under which most of you will be. When you first track whether or not your goal is to build muscle or lose body fat or both, it works for everybody. Okay. So increasing the protein will help you if you're trying to lose body fat. It'll also help you if you're trying to build muscle. And so that would be a great place to start. From weeks, let's say three to eight. After that we're going to make another adjustment once you get towards the end of this, probably starting at week eight or nine, now we're going to adjust again. And here's where you make a calorie adjustment based on your goal. I want to lose more body fat or I want to gain more muscle. Now you increase or decrease your calories based on your goal and that would be the next place I'd say.
Adam Schaefer
Yeah, I would. The one thing I would add to the three to eight weeks, I think the weeks one and two, it's a lot of like tracking, calibrating, like, okay, figuring out how I'm gonna eat that many grams of proteins. They're probably having to do a shake all time. Weeks three through eight are in my opinion the goal that you, you are giving them of. Like I know that in the when I'm starting with somebody on a journey like this three to eight, a lot of that is, is working towards these perfect days of all whole food all through protein. And I also know that tends to if they can search stretching days in a row of all whole foods hitting their protein, take their calories, kind of take care of themselves and land where they're supposed to be. And then the next thing I'm communicating record regarding diet during these three to eight weeks is actually feed the body because we're strength training, right? And we'll get to the strength training part. But yeah, if you're hungry, eat. Like I actually want that. Regardless of where these calories are, regardless of the goal is I want that body fed. And I want you to start listening to. We're trying. Your body is now trying to build muscle. We're finally giving it protein like it's supposed to. Your bout, your meals are starting to look more balanced. If you tell me you're hungry, go eat. Just eat how we're eating, which is these protein centric meals and they're whole foods. That's kind of the conversation. And I find that if you do that for those first three to eight weeks, when we get to that final nine to 12 weeks, we're set up to really do whatever you want to do. Which is if someone is aggressively trying to build, it's like, okay, let's pump out of 3.
Sal Destefano
500.
Adam Schaefer
Yeah. Add 300 calories. If someone's like, okay, I really want to lean out now. We cut calories from wherever that was. And if we did a good job in weeks three through eight on the person who started this journey with like a say, like eventually like some sort of a fat loss or leaning or like a body recomp or whatever, they should have gotten themselves up to a good calorie place that we can adjust just by listening. Yeah.
Justin Andrews
Because the prep and consistency is going to be really challenging. And so it's a. To be able to keep hitting that for the three to eight week marks is going to be huge.
Adam Schaefer
That's right. And that's the hardest part about this, is just being consistent with it, is can you consistently prepare your meals and eat whole foods and, and try and have every day your protein intake come from that? And it doesn't mean if you have a day or two that you had to use a shake or not like, oh, the whole program's out the window or you fail. It's just that optimally, that's what we're shooting for. We're shooting for as many a hundred percent days in a row that we can. And the better job you do with that, the more success you'll have with this blueprint that we're laying out.
Sal Destefano
Totally. Now let's talk about the workout. Okay, so what's the workout look like? We're going to focus on the strength training because strength training is easily the most important form of exercise when it comes to changing the way your body looks. Both just shape but also body composition, it's a very effective form of exercise. Most of you are going to want to do about three days a week of strength training. Okay. Most of you, three days a week, you'll be working out in the gym. And the way you're going to probably want to break this up is into three blocks or phases. And the phases don't have to have different exercises. They can. But for most of you, you're going to do better off by looking at the weight and the rep ranges and you're going to be messing with the rep ranges. So in the beginning, it's a good idea to start with a higher rep range. I'm trying to hit 12 to 15 reps. I'm going to pick a weight that is challenging. So if you hit 14 reps or 13 reps on your exercise it's something that you might have been able to do 14 or 15 reps. In other words, intensity is very important. Okay, so you're not going to train to absolute failure, meaning you can't do another rep, but you're going to get close to failure with each of your sets. And we're going to start here at about 12, around 12 to 15 reps. And we're going to start here because we want good technique, good form, and we're trying to build a little bit of strength, stamina as we move into the later phase.
Justin Andrews
Well, it's good too, because then you'll be able to see when the breakdown occurs, which is good feedback for when you really start to kind of build up that load. So now when you get the lower rep ranges, it's like, okay, I know that my form, I start getting fatigued around here, but adding that in that extra bit of stress, it's like, okay, I have a better gauge of, like, what that looks like.
Adam Schaefer
I really like this, this first phase, being focused on the high rep for the reason that we, we, we tend to give a lot of the people that call in, which is, you know, approach your workouts as like, practice instead of this, you know, oh, I heard that if I do this to failure. And what about these drop sets and all these, all these gimmicks to gain, you know, a little bit more results from your workout versus go into the gym? You know, your handful of movements you're supposed to do for the day, do enough reps, 10 to 15 rep range, where you're doing it enough times that you can get good at it, you could practice it. And that's kind of what you're thinking about as you get to is like, this first phase is. It's all novel to me. I wasn't consistent before this. I'm just now starting to dial my diet in. I'm now doing all these movements consistently three days a week. I'm just gonna practice these movements right now. I'm just gonna get good at them. And just feeding the body properly, paired with a good signal of strength training is going to start to recalibrate that body, start to build muscle, start to move in the right direction. And so approach those workouts with that mentality with this. I'm getting good at these moves.
Justin Andrews
You build momentum, really?
Sal Destefano
That's right. Then you get into weeks five to nine, and now you're going to go heavier. You're going to add weight to the bar to the dumbbells. And now your rep ranges are Going to be lower. Now we're looking between 8 to 10 reps, moderate reps. So instead of 13 reps or 14 reps, I'm going for 8 or 9 reps, and I've got heavier weight on the bar. You don't need to change the exercises. In fact, most people would be better off keeping the exercises pretty much the same throughout this entire program. I'm just going heavier now, and the feel is different. The intensity feels very different. It doesn't feel as exhausting, but it just feels heavier and harder as I'm going through the lifts. And then the last phase, which is after week nine, now I'm going heavy and I'm adding more weight and I'm sticking to about six reps. And this is where I can have fun. And by this point, your protein intake is high. Your, your, your, your. Everything's feeling good. Everything's coming. Yeah. And if you're in a cut, this will help preserve muscle. If you're in a bulk, this is going to help build muscle. And now I'm trying to see how strong I can get in these low rep ranges. Now it's important to focus on mostly compound lifts. Okay? So most of the exercises you're gonna do are gonna be the ones that involve more than one joint. These are your deadlifts and your squats and your bench presses and your rows and your overhead presses. And you can sprinkle in some isolation exercises. But the bulk and the majority of your workout should be compound lifts. They're just more effective, more bang for your buck. They're gonna give you way better results for the same time spent. Now, if you want to spend two or three times as much time in the gym, you could try some of those other exercises. I don't know why you would. You're not going to be as effective, and you're going to spend twice as much time in the gym. Get those, focus on those compound lifts, get good and get strong at them. If you get really strong at squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, overhead presses, by the end of this program, you're going to look very different.
Adam Schaefer
I would argue if you have the time to spend in the gym more than, than the, the typical person, then what would serve you more than doing these other exercises is actually giving yourself longer rest periods between sets. I think one of the biggest mistakes that I see people do when they, they get into a strength training routine is this getting through the exercises too fast. Try almost chasing a sweat or fatigue so they feel like it's really challenging.
Sal Destefano
Longer rest periods make strength training more effective. Yes, It's a.
Justin Andrews
People think it's stronger.
Sal Destefano
People believe rest periods are necessary. So I can rest because I need the rest. And once I feel like I can go again, I should go again. No, no, that's not the case. Longer rest periods. Okay, so three minute rest periods, four minute rest periods, you're stronger on the next set. It's more effective for building muscle. That's what we want. We want to send a muscle building signal. We're trying to speed through the workout. What Adam is saying is not to make the workout easier for you, it's to allow you to lift heavier.
Adam Schaefer
Exactly.
Sal Destefano
Okay. And it makes the light more intensity. It works. It's far more effective. Now, a lot of people might be bored by this because they're so used to doing circuits and group classes and stuff like that. It's not what we're doing here. You want your body to look different. You want to see radical change. Build some muscle, build some shape, build some skull.
Adam Schaefer
Watch what happens. If you're listening to this and you've never tried this before, I challenge you to pay attention to a lift that you're very familiar with, that you've done before, ideally, like a compound lift that you've done and, and, and see what your rest period's at. Typically, a lot of people are resting like 90 seconds to under three minutes. It's normally in that range. And if you fall in that range that I'm saying right now, and you've never rested for four minutes before between sets, I urge you to just, and to just do it and know and see how much more weight you can potentially put on the bar reps you can do. And so it's wild. It is wild. And, and this is why you'll see. You always know when a power lifter is working out. You can, because the power lifter will take these long breaks.
Sal Destefano
Five, eight minutes.
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
Bring a lawn chair.
Adam Schaefer
Oh, yeah. They'll. You'll see them sit down. They're messing around with their knee wraps. They're doing all chalking up. They're messing with their shoes and all. I mean, they're just, they'll be waiting way between sets before they go do these sets and allowing themselves to fully recover and go after that. And that's part of how they get really strong. And so many people have been taught to do this, like, high intensity, low rest period, keep it moving, do more exercises, more stuff. You would be far better served to do less exercises, longer rest periods, and load the bar with more weight than you would be to get more exercises.
Sal Destefano
You're just going to get better results. Now as far as cardio is concerned, a little bit of cardio is perfectly fine. But most of you will be well suited. Just trying to track your steps. Easy step counter on your phone or a pedometer, Very inexpensive and just, you know, 10,000 steps a day, 8 to 10,000 a day. If you hit that, you're doing great. In combination with the strength training, in combination with the diet advice, start this now, in 90 days you're going to look and feel radically different.
Adam Schaefer
Another way to do steps that I like to do because you broke this up in like these, you know, these three, these three phases or whatever over the course that time is every one of those is doing an increase of about 2,000 steps. So depending on wherever anybody is at
Sal Destefano
6 to 8 to 10.
Adam Schaefer
Yeah. So just where most the average American only moves about 4,000 steps. And so it's like as you move through each of the phases that we just talked about, like the phases of 1 to weeks 1 to 2 weeks 3 to 8 and weeks 9 to 12, it's like I'm bumping you 2000 walking steps a day every time all the way through that. And you can, depending on if you're someone who's really low, maybe you can afford to go two to 3,000 steps. If you're already somebody who's at the 8,9000, maybe it's just 2,000 steps. But the goal is to just create more movement and activity through your day. Doing that in conjunction with the diet and the training. Look out.
Sal Destefano
That's right. And by the way, we have a brand new Maps workout program called Maps ppl. Push Pull legs. It's a three day a week strength training program. Day one is push muscles, then you got pull muscles, then legs. This is also the first time we, we've taken a program and made a men and women's version. So the programming is slightly different for women. More lower body focus and glute focus than the men's version. So if you want to get this program again, it's 40% off. What you do is you go to maps ppl.com the code is PPL. That gets you 40% off. Plus you get the bonus supplement schedule guide, plus you get the three days of coaching with the mind Pump coach. It's all included. Again it's maps ppl.com, the code ppl 40% off and all that other stuff is included. Also you can find us on Instagram. It's mindpumpmedia. We'll see you there.
Mind Pump Announcer
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@mindpumpmedia.com the RGB Super Bundle includes Maps, Anabolic Maps, 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 resources@mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.
Customer
We're lost. It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm gonna ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.
Local Resident
Well, you're going to take a left at the old oak tree at this here road. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
Customer
How is there signal out here?
Local Resident
T Mobile and US Cellular are coming together so the network out here is huge. We get the same great signal as the city, saving a boatload with benefits. And there's a five year price guarantee too. Okay, here's the turn.
Customer
Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?
T Mobile Announcer
America's best network just got bigger. Switch to T Mobile today and get built in benefits the other guys leave out plus our five year price guarantee. And now T Mobile is available at US Cellular stores in hermiston. Best Mobile Network Based on analysis by OOKLA of Speed test intelligence data. Second half of 2025 bigger network the combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com for details.
Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge
Date: April 9, 2026
This episode delivers a clear, step-by-step 90-day transformation plan for listeners wanting to dramatically improve their body composition. The hosts break down the blueprint into diet, training, and cardio protocols, emphasizing the value of properly setting up your starting point, fostering consistency, and leveraging evidence-based strategies. They highlight common pitfalls, offer practical solutions, and connect each phase of the journey to real, sustainable progress. Their advice is delivered in an honest, sometimes blunt tone, staying true to the show’s "Raw Fitness Truth" ethos.
The Importance of a Proper Start:
Action Steps:
“One of the biggest mistakes someone would make going into a 90 day…is not knowing where they're starting. Not knowing.” – Sal Di Stefano (03:26)
Typical Issues Identified in Diet:
First Macro to Fix: Protein
“Just focusing on [your protein target] every day consistently started to make all those other things better.” – Adam Schafer (07:33)
“Why is 1 gram of protein per pound of target body weight optimal?...High protein builds more muscle and results typically in more fat loss. It also has a high satiety effect, meaning it does naturally tend to control appetite on hormones.” – Sal Di Stefano (08:30)
Weeks 1–2:
Weeks 3–8:
“If you tell me you're hungry, go eat. Just eat how we're eating, which is these protein centric meals and they're whole foods.” – Adam Schafer (13:14)
“The hardest part about this, is just being consistent with it, is can you consistently prepare your meals and eat whole foods...” – Adam Schafer (14:26)
Training Frequency:
Progression Through Phases:
“Most of you are going to want to do about three days a week of strength training ... break this up ... into three blocks or phases.” – Sal Di Stefano (14:57)
“Approach your workouts as like, practice instead of this…oh, I heard that if I do this to failure...do enough reps, 10 to 15 rep range, where you’re doing it enough times that you can get good at it…” – Adam Schafer (16:44)
“Longer rest periods make strength training more effective. ... It's far more effective for building muscle. That's what we want.” – Sal Di Stefano (20:13)
“You would be far better served to do less exercises, longer rest periods, and load the bar with more weight than you would be to get more exercises.” – Adam Schafer (22:12)
“A little bit of cardio is perfectly fine. But most of you will be well suited. Just trying to track your steps…10,000 steps a day, 8 to 10,000 a day. If you hit that, you’re doing great.” – Sal Di Stefano (22:26)
“As you move through each of the phases that we just talked about...I’m bumping you 2,000 walking steps a day every time all the way through that.” – Adam Schafer (23:07)
Sal Di Stefano (06:31):
“Almost always we were under consuming protein. Most people, high sugar, not enough fiber...huge peaks and valleys and inconsistent days.”
Adam Schafer (07:33):
“Just focusing on [your protein target] every day consistently started to make all those other things better.”
Sal Di Stefano (08:30):
“High protein builds more muscle and results typically in more fat loss. It also has a high satiety effect…”
Adam Schafer (13:14):
“If you tell me you’re hungry, go eat. Just eat how we’re eating, which is these protein centric meals and they’re whole foods.”
Sal Di Stefano (14:57):
“Most of you are going to want to do about three days a week of strength training…break this up…into three blocks or phases.”
Justin Andrews (16:22):
“It’s good too, because then you’ll be able to see when the breakdown occurs, which is good feedback for when you really start to…build up that load.”
Adam Schafer (21:05):
“If you fall in that [short rest] range… and you’ve never rested for four minutes before between sets, I urge you to just do it and see how much more weight you can potentially put on the bar…”
Sal Di Stefano (22:26):
“Longer rest periods make strength training more effective. Yes, It's a… People believe rest periods are necessary so I can rest because I need the rest. And once I feel like I can go again, I should go again. No, no, that’s not the case.”
| Phase (Weeks) | Diet Focus | Training Focus | Steps/Cardio | |-----------------|---------------------------------------|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------| | 1–2 | Track everything, make no changes | Start base exercises, high reps | Track current steps | | 3–8 | Hit protein target from whole foods | Add load, moderate reps | Increase steps by 2,000 | | 9–12 | Adjust calories to goal (cut/bulk) | Low reps, focus on heavy compound | Increase to 8,000–10,000 |
The Mind Pump hosts provide a grounded, science-driven, and actionable 90-day plan to change your body. The episode stresses the importance of:
If you follow these steps with discipline and patience, the result is a stronger, leaner, more energized body in 90 days—no fad diets or gimmicks required.
“If you get really strong at squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, overhead presses, by the end of this program, you're going to look very different.” – Sal Di Stefano (19:41)