How to Look Your Best This Summer (With 30 Days or Less) | Mind Pump 2895

Okay. This episode is all about hacks, hacks to help you look your best this summer. That's right now. Let's get to it. All right, Adam, I'm going to start with you. You, you got invited to a pool party in three or four weeks. You're gonna go in three or four weeks. What do you do? What do you do to look your best in that short period of time? Let's say it's four weeks. We have 30 days. What are you doing? I mean, I don't think there's much of a difference between three and four weeks. I think I'm going to load build as much as I can till the final weeks, recognizing I'm not going to, I'm not going to put on 20 pounds of muscle in three weeks. You're also going to lose 20 pounds of body fat. Exactly. So I'm not even going to go that angle. I feel like that's like the last week is to do like a little bit of leaning and pulling water is probably the direction that I'm going to go. It's like, okay, the next three weeks, the diet's going to be clean, but good amount of calories, push weights, uh, it carbs. I'm going to push carbs as high as I can push water as high as I can. And then the final week, just like I would like a peak week for bodybuilding, I'm going to start to taper on carbohydrates, carbohydrates. So like seven days out from the pool, I'm going, you know, let's say, and it's just a hypothetical numbers. I'd get up to four or 500 carbs a day. I'm going to go down to 400, 300, 200, 100. So every day scales down. Yeah. Every day I'm scaling down. That's interesting. Yeah. A little bit. And then, and you could, so by the way, you could do this differently. You could go hard. For like low, like right away and then refeed again, but I'd rather just taper really, really low and just kind of pull, pull it out, deplete, uh, simultaneously kind of reducing my water intake that I've pushed over a gallon down to a gallon to a three quarters to a half a gallon a day. And so I'm kind of doing that at the same time. And then like the literally two days before I'm about to hit the pool. Now I'm low. I'm keeping water kind of where it's at right at that half gallon or whatever. And I'm starting to load carbohydrates. So now I'm going to go back the other direction so that I'm, I'm hitting, you know, peak fullness in, in my muscle bellies. Yeah. Cause, uh, so you're, what you're talking about, a lot of what you're talking about is getting your muscles to, uh, deplete, right. So it kind of pull the water out, pull things out and then fill them back up, which makes them appear larger and fuller. This is a bodybuilding strategy. Bodybuilders do this on show. I also think what matters south of that question is where I currently think I'm at, like body fat percentage. Like I said, I would, I would push calories and carbohydrates going into that final week if I'm somebody who is relatively decent body fat percentage. If I'm in like, I'm probably mid teens right now. And so if I'm mid teens or lower, um, making a difference of 1% down in body fat, like cutting more, probably like, well, it's a good, it's a great point because I think realistically, I mean, aggressively, uh, you could lose in 30 days, 3%, 4%, but what your body fat that's at the most. Uh, but you're going to end up probably losing some muscle with that. I'd say more realistically, you can lose like 2% body fat in a 30 day period, which isn't a ton. And I just want people to understand that. Cause I think sometimes people are like, oh, 30 days out, I'm going to lose tons of weight. What ends up happening? They lose a lot of water muscle along with it. So they ended up hitting the beach or the pool looking kind of smaller and not leaner. What you're saying is so important because you could absolutely lose a bunch of weight on the scale and 30 days, 30 days, that won't necessarily mean you look, you won't look better. That will be the mistake. We'll be cutting calories, running. Like the mistake that most people make is I got 30 days to look my best. And because they think they need to go in the body fat direction, they will low cow, lots of activity looking at the scale every day. Is there their barometer of I'm doing good or not? And it's like, yes, I got down 15 pounds in those 30 days, but it's like half of it was muscle. And so you look worse or at best the same as you did when you started this whole journey where it's like, I'd much not rather do that approach. The only way I'm even thinking about doing cut for those first three weeks is if I'm at higher percent body fat, then, you know, if I'm at 20% body fat, bringing myself down to 18% body fat, so I might stay in a cut till the final week, but the final week still looks about the same. So no matter what, I'm going to probably get a, I'm going to pull down carbohydrates, pull down water and then push back up. So the, the, the one time I can think of that I actually, um, approach something like this where I said, okay, I have 30 days was one year. Uh, I was going to go visit my family in Italy. Um, and obviously we're going to be at the beach quite a bit. And so I did something totally different. Um, I, my diet was relatively clean at that point. I was already relatively lean. Again, you're not gonna make dramatic changes in 30 days, but what I did is I start, I changed my training more than anything. And what I did is I slowly increased my volume and shortened my rest periods. And the only reason why I shortened the rest periods in my, in my workouts wasn't because I was trying to get a cardio workout. It says are trying to fit more volume in the same, in the same hour. Um, and so what I basically did is over the, over four weeks is I increased my volume over time, did a little bit more supersets to cram in more volume. So road nutrition makes supplements and utilizes something called liposomal technology. This is a medical grade delivery system. So what it does is they take compounds like NAD. I'm sure you've heard of NAD boost cellular energy, makes you feel much better, encapsulates it in liposomes, and this helps protect it through the digestive tract. So you absorb more of it. They also have liposomal creatine. If you've tried creatine, but you get a little gastro distress, many people report zero gastro distress from liposomal creatine that road nutrition provide. They have many products, by the way, not just NAD and creatine, but they also have TMJ DMG, excuse me, and much more. Again, it's all using liposomal technology. So you get more of what you're taking and it just works more effectively. Go check them out. Go to row nutrition.com. That's R H O nutrition.com forward slash discount forward slash. Mind pump, use the code mind pump and get yourself a discount off of everything. By the way, all maps, workout programs, every fitness program, every bundle, every guide, every mod, all of our fitness stuff. 40% off right now for the massive summer sale. Go to maps, fitness products.com. Use the code summer 40. All right, real quick. If you love us, like we love you. Why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at my pump store.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to my pump store.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. My food intake stayed roughly the same, although I did, uh, and now I was going to, I was there for a whole month. So what I'm talking about would last a couple of days, but I did cut my carbs to make myself look like I was a little bit leaner. And then, uh, you know, when I got there eating with my family, obviously you're eating everything there. And I look great for like a couple of days doing that. But what I did is I just increased, uh, the activity through the strength training, uh, while maintaining, uh, I would do the same thing. So that's part of why, but that doesn't work longterm, right? No, no, no. When I think about, uh, this advice, it's when I get somebody who talks to me about, I've got a wedding day. I'm going to be, I'm going to be at a Vegas pool. I'm going to the Miami beach for these, these three days. Like, like you have a, you have a small period of time and this is very do, I mean, uh, like people that get Mike shoots, like for models, things like that, they understand most of them, especially if they've hired a trainer to help them with this. Like there is a way to optimize the way you look for a day and it can look dramatically different. And the more in shape you are, the more dramatic, I think you can actually make yourself look the leaner you are, the more dramatic. Yeah. And so, and that's why I bring up that point of like, it does depend on where you're at. Like, I know that I'm at, I'm, I'm not lean right now, but I'm lean enough that I can manipulate the way I look just by playing with carbohydrates and, and literally pushing volume up and I wouldn't be pushing volume up while simultaneously cutting calories. That's why I made the point of like, I would actually be pushing calories, pushing carbohydrates and also increasing volume in my training. I wouldn't be doing that while cutting calories, like cutting calories and pushing volume and training is counterproductive. No, no, no. I was, I was, I was not my, my caloric output was aren't naturally going up because my volume was going up. But my food intake stayed, uh, roughly the same. It wasn't really changing much of it except for the carbohydrate manipulation. Um, also another thing is, uh, creatine is great. Uh, if you're 30 days out and you're not taking creatine, this will fill up your muscle bellies. Now what scares people with this is their weight goes up on the scale. So, um, and typically women are more afraid of this than, than guys, but they'll take crates of like, am I going to gain weight on the scale? Yeah, you might gain two or three pounds, but it's your muscles being more hydrated. And so what happens is in a bikini or a bathing suit, you kind of look like you have a little bit of a pump in comparison to how you looked before. You're not bloated. You just have more, your muscles are just more full. Um, and so if you don't take creatine, like 30 days is enough time to take creatine, to get some of those effects of a little bit of that muscle fullness. Yeah. You can get from it. Justin just wears the t-shirt with the guy with the abs. I was going to say, you guys want to hear my, let me hear what you would do. Haircut. Hey, actually, that's fair. Spray tan. Spanx. No. Hey, do you know that what's the, for, for, for every shade, I forget how, for every shade darker you are, it's supposed to make you look a certain percentage leaner. No, it's science. Come on. There is science to this. Yeah. So there's a reason why we, we all get tanned up as layers on before you go. Yeah. It's going to, do you really do a spray tan? No, I have one time. Like, so I'm like trying to think of why these guys are talking. If I've done this, like crash, you know, to look better. Tell me the story where you spray tan, please tell the story where you spray tan, because I don't know about this. It was for like, um, when I was doing a website shoot for myself, cause it's like, you know, like somebody had convinced me that I was too white, you know, for camera and I'm like, so, and they're like, well, here, yeah, I got some spray tan where they just like stand you up and spray, like slightly and then they just were able to, you know, manipulate it with like Photoshop. But yeah, I, I did that. I basically did that. And then I reduced my calories, obviously. And I did like every wrong thing you could do, like where I'm like doing cardio and I'm like, you know, totally like depriving myself. Um, but yeah, if I was to do it all over again, it would be totally, I would come to you guys for advice. Can you think of a time? Oh, this is for all of you or both of you. Like what, uh, like when you. Looked your absolute best trying to do that. Like I, you probably, yours was your photo shoot that you did for your maps and Ebola. Yeah. Was that the, when you think back at times, like this was the best, uh, physique I ever presented. I think it looked, I looked the most dramatic for that, but I don't think I looked the best. I was really lean. I mean, I was 4% body fat and I was like really lean. Yeah. What was your favorite version? And you remember more like 7% because I was healthier. Oh, interesting. Uh, if you saw me in person, uh, I'd looked probably better. I had gone to, um, what's the, uh, what's that place where people take a houseboat? Is it the Delta? Yeah. We had gone to the Delta, by the way, you guys are really Delta. Yes. Yeah. That place is interesting. It's a little bit of, it's like that bar scene in a star Wars. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where am I? Anyway, I went with lots of creatures. Listen, sometimes you get good ones. It was wild. There's a nickname for it. I cannot think of it right now, but you're, uh, God, what's it called? Is it ski beach? I don't know. I think ski beach is out there. Yeah. I think I went to a long time. Yeah. Cause we got on the houseboats and we like, we drove it to a place and we'd anchor down and then people start pulling up next to you. And it's like a lot of characters out there. Yeah. But, um, I was like 7%. Um, and I just felt healthy and I think I looked the best. Yeah. 4% was just, there was, it was like, okay for pictures to look dramatic. Yeah. But I don't want to look, I don't think that looked good. Yeah. None of my, so none of my stage photos or me on stage do I think is my mine either. It was always, no, not always, but many times it was two or three days afterwards was the, my favorite look. Now that again, to your point, when you're on stage, the more shredded you look, the better it is. But then when you see yourself in person, you're like, Oh yeah. Or even, even when I'm in the mirror, I'm looking at myself in the mirror, I don't like that look, but I know that on stage with the lights, with the five coats of tanning all over you, you know, it just looks different. It looks, it looks different than what walking around does. Switching my programming though, like in more hypertrophy for a month did do a dramatic. So I bet that was because you don't train that way. It really did make a difference, especially my arms and my chest was like, you know, much more defined. Yeah. One, two things I did that I noticed because these are like, these are like aesthetic things. Okay. So you're not going to build a, this is not a general, well, maybe it is for the core. So here's what I do with my, my core is I, I, I train them to build them. This made a big difference. Yeah. Like to build my abs and obliques, not just train them, not do like a thousand reps and do a lot of twisting exercises. And just to like, I'm like, I'm, I'm actively going to try to make my abs bigger because I know when they're bigger, you're going to see them at higher body fat percentages, huge difference in the way they look. So you bring that up. What a great, add that to my strategy that I said that I would do if I had four weeks, because I don't think a lot of people train abs like that. And I'm telling you that I would be pushing carbs and calories and volume, like you're saying. And another place to push the volume would be ab training. Great idea. Yeah. Cause great idea to do that because you could be at 13 to 15% body fat and see visible abs. If you build your abs, that's right. Otherwise most people have to get to single digit or under, you know, 10% body fat. I used to be before this, uh, before I figured that out, I would have to get down, I would get down like 9%, 10%, which is, that's like what they would call six pack territory. Right. Yeah. But if I wasn't flexing, you could tell I was lean, but you couldn't really see my abs. And I would see sometimes guys at the beach or, you know, uh, even at the gym that really built, like, I remember one time I seen this dude, uh, who had, he had like a tight, it was kind of like a spandex like vest on and his abs were sticking out of his shirt. I was like, damn, you can see his, he's not even flexing. Like you can see his abs. Yeah. And that's when it dawned on me. I was like, his abs are developed. Mine are just lean, but they're not developed. Yeah. So I started doing decline sit-ups with weight. So I started doing real slow. Like, I'm like, okay, I'm going to build them. So I'm gonna do, I'm actually getting strong abs instead of doing a million reps. So I would hold a weight and I'd unroll and come up and I'd try to keep the reps low. So whatever weight would allow me to do eight reps or 10 reps with lots of resistance. And I rest three minutes in between for ab work, which before I was like, there's no rest. You just keep going. Uh, I started doing dragon flags, the exercise that, you know, Rocky doesn't rock you for, um, I started doing, uh, ab rollouts, uh, and I do them off my knees, but real slow and crunch up. Um, and I would do heavy twists, heavy chops and dude, in a very short period of time, my abs went from being just lean and flat to like sticking out. And it made a huge difference. Uh, where, and then I had the six pack without even, you know, I'm like you telling that because I think that's such great advice. Justin bringing up that makes me go like, you know, what's funny is we're all probably in very different places, both body fat percentage, training volume, where our physiques are now. Strategically, I bet if we each had four weeks, strategies would look different. Like I totally think that your art, your point tan, obviously, so what your hypertrophy training would be a brilliant strategy. It's a novel stimulus. You don't train aesthetics like that very often. And your body's going to respond really well to it. Yeah. And I'd want to, yeah. More emphasis, like I guess on my arms and back and ---- like, you know, more width. And I think that would help, you know, balance it out. And you're already really lean. I'm relatively lean. I probably, I don't know what I'm at right now. 10, 11. Oh, you think you're 10? I thought you were single. Maybe. I don't know. I recently beefed up a little bit. I don't know. I got to test it. I don't know. But you know, the other thing I did to Adam, uh, was I, my shoulder training changed. Typically shoulder training would start with overhead presses, which is you want to do that. Yeah. But I started, and again, this is not a long-term strategy. This is not the best way to belt, to build your delts. But if you want to create an aesthetic look in a short period of time, I started all my workouts with rear delt flies, uh, leading up to it. It was all rear delt flies, then laterals. So now I'm doing laterals. And then I went to my shoulder presses because I was trying to do is create this thing, create more of that cap. I was trying to create this really round look to my show. I have a picture of myself too, from that trip where I have a sleeveless shirt and I'm with my grandfather, my dad, and my son, when my son was a little guy and I could see, you know, but that was the strategy. The strategy was it's focused on these areas that look, you know, I like that. I love that tip. Yeah. I think I've, I've for a long time on this podcast talk that one, I think that rear delts are just generally overlooked by most people. And, uh, all the competitors that I train myself included, uh, getting people to bring their rear delts up. I can't tell you how many, like how much better their physique just from that. It's a small muscle. So you don't think it's going to make that big of a difference. Like you don't let people think right away, you know, chest and legs and glutes and you think of all these big muscles and those are the big movers and will make your overall physique look more impressive. But in a short period of time, developing a muscle that's probably overlooked on a lot of people and putting emphasis on a rear, which is why I love your ab point to abs and rear delts are probably two areas that people neglect the V taper illusion. And so you want to talk about like, I got small, which is also a great point to this conversation is, you know, the coach in me would give different advice on who I'm talking to. Like if I got ahold of each one of you and I, and I got that time, I'm probably manipulating different things based off of, off of that. Um, and same if it was a client, right? You know, it's funny about what you said about like these small muscles that you don't even think about. Another thing I had noticed, I haven't done this in a long time, but I actually did it, uh, before one summer because I, I, you know, my upper legs developed really well when I was a kid. They just got, they built really quickly. My calves took a little bit longer to respond. I don't have tiny calves, but they didn't match my upper legs. So I would work on them. And then I had a friend of mine, he used to wear shorts all the time. And I noticed him something about him. He did have, he had good calves, but I noticed when he looked at his legs from the front, his, he had his, his overall shin and calf from the back look muscular. And I noticed it was his tibialis. Oh, when's the last time you trained your tibialis? Oh, I used to. So I do a lot more now, like especially with athletes. I never do it. But when I was competing, that was a hack. So that was a hack to give. I never thought of that. Yeah. Though, when I was younger, so tibialis training, typically when I was a trainer, nobody does it. Well, I would do it with clients when they'd have shin splints. Yeah. This is like people who try to run the shin splints, preventative, easy fix. It's like, let's do some tibialis raises, like super simple. And it works like 80% of the time. So I would do it with them. Never did I train my tibialis except for prior to this one, this, there was this one year where I did it and it made my overall calf look better because I had a developer. Only one, only one gym had that, that little tibialis machine that I've ever, and I love that thing. I used to love it. It makes your lower leg. So to that point case, I'll give one on, this is a great time for blood occlusion. So if you, if you're, if you don't have great calves and you only got a couple of weeks and you got full time ready, like blood occlusion on your, on your calves for that short period of time, we'll give you like a decent quarter inch to a half inch. I was just going to say, you guys are both on that kick. I remember that. Oh yeah. You did grow a bit. No, a hundred percent. They did. That's why I was so impressed. I mean, I haven't tried blood occlusion training. Yes. First calves, but not for my calves. I did. I did. So that's funny, dude. If someone did occlusion training for their upper arms, because those are the areas you could do it really, really. It's arms and legs. You can't do anything for, but if you did it for your arms and your calves, you would get close to a quarter inch of muscle size of size, probably within 30 days from doing that. You probably would. That's where that would become a really, when else can you get a quarter inch? It's not a longterm hack or solution. It doesn't replace traditional strength. It just works really quick. But if you, again, this all goes back to like, if I had, if, if I was coaching somebody, I'd spend a good hour asking a lot of questions. Like what does your training look like before? How do you eat before? Where's your body fat percentage? Looking at their assessing their body. Like, okay, how can I manipulate this? Because the truth is in a short period of time, we're not making huge swings, body fat percentage. We're not packing on 10, 15 pounds. I probably would just like, you know, say I'm drinking a lot like coffees. I have like sugar in my coffee. I have like, you know, I'm just eliminating any of the calories. Yeah. The extra stuff that I normally was. It's like just basic, you know, like just stick with the dialed in stuff for back training. I would change it as well because there's, it's interesting. There's like what looks good when you flex a muscle versus what looks good when you're just walking around. And when you look at a person's back, first of all, the people neglect to understand just how much your back plays a role and how good you look overall. Bodybuilders know that. Yeah. It's what, when shows when he loses shows bodybuilding physique, even Ronnie Coleman, the reason why he was so dominant for so long, but a fit back a muscular back for both men and women really gives us appearance of fitness. It just really does. It makes you look leaner, more fit for men. It gives the, this look of power and strength. And in bodybuilding, a lot of emphasis put on the lats. And I get that. There's a, there's a lot of poses in bodybuilding that emphasize lats, but when you're just walking around at the beach, it's your traps and your upper back. Yeah. That really, you can have tiny lats and have this really crazy yoke, you know, on your upper back and it just looks very different. And so what I would do, if you get traps, you look strong. Oh yeah. And what I would do at times, this is when I would do like lots of cleans and rows. Like I wouldn't do as many pull-ups or pull-downs, lots of cleans and rows and just feel my upper back start to get kind of, I mean, you add that with your advice, with the rear upper, your rear delts. And like you, you're the way your shirt will sit on your back. Totally. Yeah. No, that's a good one. It's a lot of fun. But as far as the diet is concerned, even for the average person listening, if you just did this in 30 days, you would look different. If you're, if you eat a typical diet, which is like 70% processed foods. Yeah. If you went to just whole foods, just whole foods, just clean it up. Whole foods. That's all you did. Just same calories, all that. Just clean it up. That's it. All you're eating is food that you make. That's it for 30 days. The food that you make at home, chicken, beef, rice, potato, vegetables, that's it. It would suck the water out from under your skin. You, you, you would develop better muscle. You'd naturally be in a calorie deficit because you're going to eat less because it doesn't, it satisfies you much faster and you would look better in 30 days. Visibly better. Yeah. I mean, I think your skin will look better because of that. Less likely inflamed because you're eating something. Sodium is different. Sodium. Yeah. Food better. Yeah. And that's what I meant by too. Like I, because obviously those, I'm not as strict on my diet right now where I would just, I would get strict, hit calories, push them for three weeks. And then I would, then I would manipulate water and carbs the final week to like, that's presenting myself a day. Not knowing that I'm not moving major body fat, but I know that I can manipulate the way I look for a day by messing with that type of stuff. Well here's what we got going on right now for everybody is all of our workout programs, all of our maps programs, all of our bundles, which are multiple programs put together, mods, guides, everything that we have. All of our fitness products are 40% off right now for the summer. It's the summer sale. So if you're interested, you want to follow a program that works, go to maps, fitness products.com. Use the code summer 40 and you can get anything 40% off. You can also find us on Instagram. It's mind pump media. All right. I know you liked that episode. If you did check this one out, how strong should you be? Do you ever wonder if you're actually strong or at least compared to people like yourself? Today's episode, we're going to talk about that and we're going to help you determine how strong you should be and also talk about the steps to getting strong as fast as possible. In fact, we're talking about the fastest way to get bigger and stronger all at the same time. I know you say Adam up at night. Yes, it does actually. And I know that you wrote a really complex episode here, but I think Justin's metric has been the one.