Ep. #371: Here’s How I Go About Setting and Achieving My Goals

Mike: It’s very easy to state a desire and especially when it’s something that everybody wants, like everybody wants a better body. Everybody wants more money, wants more time or freedom or whatever. The hard part, I think, is taking the stars out of your eyes and really asking yourself how much pain you’re We are willing to endure to get there.

Hello. Hello, Mike Matthews here from muscle for life and Legion athletics. And thank you for checking out another episode of my podcast. So this one is going to be about goals. I’m a big believer in the value of aligning the various parts of our lives toward goals. In fact. I think that is really the only way to effectively resist the forces of entropy that govern the universe that we exist in and to create a life worthy of our ancestors, worthy of admiration from posterity.

And just to say that another way, while spontaneity and short term thinking definitely have their uses, worthy what song should I listen to right now? What TV show should I watch tonight? I do firmly believe that the better we can conceive of positive long term outcomes in our lives and then execute plans to produce those outcomes, the more rewarding, meaningful, and satisfying our lives are going to be.

For example, many of the more significant goals we all share, like building a great body, improving our physical and psychological health and being, becoming financially secure, growing a successful career or business, and raising a healthy, harmonious family, all require goal setting, long term planning, sacrifice of present pleasures, and plenty of perseverance.

Now, that is probably not news to you, but what you may not know is some methods of goal setting in particular are better than others. And that is what this podcast is going to be all about. Specifically, I am going to share with you some practical ideas and tactics for making your dreams a reality. Ones that are not only evidence based, but have also worked for me personally time and time again, and to which I ascribe a personal interest.

Fair amount of my own successes and wins. And no, I am not going to just rehash platitudes about smart goals, affirmations, meditation, or journaling. I am going to go deeper than that. Now as you will see, or hear, I should say, this is an interview that I did on another podcast, the Food for Fitness podcast by Scott D.

And I’m reposting it here on my podcast because I thought you, my dear listener, would enjoy it. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. Instead, I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for men, bigger, leaner, stronger.

Now this book has sold over 350, 000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3, 100 reviews on Amazon with a. Four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that are keeping you from achieving the lean, muscular, strong, and healthy body that you truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male Body, then you want to read bigger, leaner, stronger, which you can find on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google play.

Now, speaking of audible, I should also mention that you can get the audio book, 100 percent free. When you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you’re not currently listening to audiobooks. I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend doing stuff like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth, so much more valuable and productive.

So if you want to take Audible up on this offer, And get my book for free. Then simply go to www.bitlybitly.com/free BBLs, and that will take you to Audible and then you just click the sign up today and Save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to Bigger, leaner, stronger for Free.

Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let’s get to the show. 

Scott: Hey, Mike, welcome back to the podcast, Scott. 

Mike: Thanks for having me back. 

Scott: You are one of, I think, five people who has graced this podcast for a second time and it wasn’t even that long ago. It was episode 124 and this is episode 132.

Yeah, we, like we said offline, we’ve set the bar pretty high, so hopefully we can exceed it again this time. 

Mike: Maybe I should have had some more caffeine this morning. 

Scott: Nah, you’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Or get some bro BCAs down you. All right. Give us a little bit of a background. If people haven’t listened to episode one, two, four, and they don’t know who you are, who are you, Mike?

Mike: Who am I? The existential question. No I am primarily a writer. So it’s like when people ask, Oh, what do you do? I, you, my answer is usually ah, I do health and fitness things, but I would say I’m primarily a writer. I have a number of books that are fairly popular. I’ve sold over a million copies of books in the last six years or so.

And I then so parlayed my. Success as an author into some entrepreneurial things. So I have a supplement company called Legion Athletics. And for anybody listening who’s familiar with the fitness book scene, my most popular books are Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger and The Shredded Chef.

So if you’ve been, poking around on Amazon at all. You’ve probably come across them, at least my ads for them. And then so then, yeah, so I have a supplement business workout supplement sports nutrition business as well. And then a couple of little sideshow things that like I have an app that is for tracking and planning workouts.

And I also have a coaching service, which is pretty cool. Actually, it’s doing very well. And we have a lot of really cool success stories and yeah. That’s me. And I have some popular blogs as well, where I’ve written, I think I’ve published, I should quantify it at some point. It’s probably over a million and a half words now between my blogs at muscleforlife.

com and legionathletics. com together. Those websites get, yeah, it’s probably around 2 million visits a month or so. This is the worst time of the year to be fair, but next month’s the best time. Yeah, actually, February, March tend to be better. January is the spike, and then February, March, it actually continues.

And then spring, it starts to plateau, and it dips a little bit, and then summer it picks back up again, and then plateaus, and then just, you fall off a cliff. Come October, November or so is the worst time of the year. October. November to December is the absolute worst. Although December is great for books because they make good gifts.

So there is a little bit of a silver lining for me, but as far as the supplement business goes and just go look on Google trends, for example, general interest in anything related to health and fitness and dieting and whatever, it just bottoms out during the holidays, which is understandable. 

Scott: Yeah.

So that’s why we, this podcast is coming out when People are seeking motivation to try and make this year their best one yet. And to set the scene, this, when we spoke on the first podcast, these questions were actually what we’re going to talk about motivation and getting to the gym, but it just turned into a bit of a rant about the state of the fitness industry.

So this is the episode that was meant to be, and it’s related to most recent book, which is all about workout motivation. So looking at resolutions and change and so on. And again, especially at this time of year in January, why is it that we always wait until new year? Why do you think you see that blip in October, November, and December?

Because if you think every pound that you don’t gain is a pound that you don’t have to lose, but we still seem to think God’s Christmas for you guys, you’ve got Thanksgiving as well. And I, Oh, who cares? Why January? 

Mike: I guess it’s probably at this point, it’s just a. Cultural phenomenon. I think it’s a new year, so it feels like it’s a chance to, make a new start a new beginning.

Also, I do think there’s a psychological aspect and that the holidays are now over and a lot of people have eaten and drank maybe more than they wanted to. And put on, I think on average I was just reviewing some research on this a few days ago, people are gaining between one and two pounds over the holidays, the end of the year period.

And then it takes on average about five months for people to lose that. If they lose it at all, of course, it doesn’t have to take that long, so even if you look at it actually in that perspective, like for me, I’m not a huge foodie, I don’t drink, so I’m not predisposed to gaining a lot of weight per se, but.

I also do like to enjoy myself. We have a handful of family dinners, there’s Thanksgiving and then there’s Christmas stuff and people are in town and I’m eating out more than I normally would. And I do like to enjoy myself. I’m not bringing a food scale to a restaurant, and, but there are little simple things you can do and that I do that are perfectly healthy that just minimize weight gain during the holidays. Like for example, I do a bit of intermittent fasting, not because there’s anything all that great or special about it other than. It just lets me like, for example, if I’m going to go out to dinner, if I have a big dinner, and I don’t want to necessarily worry about my calories, I want to eat until I’m not going to stuff myself until I can’t move.

I’ve done that sometimes just for fun, but it’s actually not that fun afterward. So I’m just going to enjoy myself and eat until I’m comfortably full. But for me That’s probably two to 3000 calories at least if I’m really going to just enjoy myself. And so all I’ll do is I might skip breakfast that day because who cares?

There’s the fast, the fasting part, right? Because I’ll have, let’s say I’ll have stopped eating at seven or 8 p. m. the night before. Okay. Sleep skip breakfast coming into maybe on a 16 hour fast or so is when I’m breaking it. And then I’ll eat just protein leading up to the dinner. So my lunch is going to be.

Something very boring, just like some chicken or something. And then I’ll in the afternoon, I’ll just have a protein shake. And so then the point is when I come into my dinner, I’ve eaten very little carbs, very little fat, very little calories or very few calories and mostly just protein. So then I might be even done with my protein really for the day.

And I might eat a bit less protein than I normally would on that day. Cause who cares? It’s just one day. And then I have a, I still have a large buffer. My average, given my activity level, if you just look at it, what’s my average daily, obviously it fluctuates. But if you just wanted to peg a number for a weekly output, it comes out to about 2700 calories or so a day.

So I might come into that dinner with a 2000 calorie buffer just to hit my break even for the day. And so if I overeat a bit, who cares? The changes, you can’t, it’s so little, you can’t even see in the mirror. In fact, often if you’re in a groove. And if you’re busy and you’re working out a lot, sometimes eating, I’ve found over eating here and there you actually end up looking better probably because of the effects it can have on cortisol, where it just lowers cortisol levels.

You flush out some more water and now you just look even better. So there are little things you can do like that. Also, just maintaining somewhat something of an exercise schedule during the holidays can work wonders for minimizing fat gain just by keeping your metabolism up and keeping your body in a fat burning mode, so to speak.

So the point though, is to go through the holidays, enjoy yourself. And let’s say you do gain a pound of fat over the holidays. If you know what you’re doing, you can lose that in a week. So who cares? Let’s say you gained two pounds. Let’s say you really went overboard and gained three pounds of fat. Okay.

That’s three or four weeks of dieting. And by dieting, when you know what you’re doing, that’s not suffering. It just means eating maybe a bit less than you might like a bit less. And you don’t, you’re not really even hungry. You’re not really dealing with cravings. You might just feel like. My body would appreciate a little bit more food, but I don’t really care.

That’s how dieting should be when you know, that’s how it is when you know what you’re doing. So that also, that’s how I approach the holidays. I don’t worry too much about it. I just do a few simple things to minimize the quote unquote damage. And then when I come out the other end of it, If I look in the mirror and I’m like, eh, I would like to lose a pound or two of fat that I gained if I if that even is the case.

And that has been the case before. Like last year I was in Europe and for three weeks, which was way too long. And I was eating a bunch of food. I kept my workouts in, I would just do what I could. Sometimes I could get into a gym. Sometimes I’d just be like running stairs and stuff. Just keep active and came back.

I don’t know, maybe one or two pounds, maybe I’d gained one or two pounds of fat. Yeah. And cool. So I dieted for a couple of weeks and it was as if it never happened. I would much rather do that and still have the enjoyment of eating the much better food over in Europe. And then just diet a couple of weeks, then getting into just, Feeling like I’m restricting myself and not having as good of a time because I’m too worried about gaining any fat.

So anyways, that’s a tangent, but for people, I think it might be helpful, although this is going to be published after after the holidays have passed, if nothing else might be helpful for people who have gained some weight to go, Oh, okay, then it’s not a big deal. I can just, I can lose a pound of fat a week if I know what I’m doing.

Okay. And then also just think of that going into any other. And that doesn’t apply to holidays. It’s also just vacations. For example, I do the same thing when I’m on vacation. I generally skip breakfast. I let myself to one big meal a day with some smaller meals around it. And I just try to stay active and otherwise don’t worry about it.

And just when I go to a restaurant, I order what sounds good. You know what I mean? 

Scott: I got you, especially at this time of year. I think he. Having the realistic expectations that your food environment does change regardless of how you try to modify. You are just surrounded by way more calorific foods and there’s opportunities presenting themselves to you where you may overindulge like works nights out, dinners with friends, Christmas itself and so on.

And you add 

Mike: alcohol into the mix. Oh yeah. That accelerates not just. Fat game, but also eating. So I guess the point to it is you have a lot of people then that they’re coming out of that holiday period, it might punch up the pain point for them of getting into shape. And so we. You might also see that January, February, March surge as just a natural consequence of people going, shit, I gained three pounds this month.

I have to do something. You know what I mean? 

Scott: Yeah. When people do start thinking about resolutions and goals and so on at this time of year, how do you help them identify a goal to pursue? Because I always talk about having a goal rather than an aim, like an aim is, Oh, I want to lose fat or get in shape.

But then a goal is. Time bound and you’ve got certain habits that you’re going to actually follow in order to get you that end result. How do you go about helping people just make realistic goals? 

Mike: Yeah, that’s a whole section in the little black book of workout motivation that I recently, Published on setting goals.

And the book was interesting for me because it was, I did a fair amount of research and tied in quite a bit of scientific literature and anecdotes, but also it was heavily influenced by what I do and what has worked well for me as well. And as far as goals versus aims, obviously in the dictionary, those things are synonymous.

So I guess it depends how you are defining them. But one of the first things I like to do with goals is a lot of people, when they start with a goal, they just go, what do I want? And that’s a fine place to begin. But I think that if you don’t answer that question in a very specific way, the chances of actually achieving anything worthwhile plummet.

And what I’m talking about is really, I think one of the first questions that you need to really reflect on before you get into the tactics of goal setting and how do you break goals down into actual plans that you can implement and execute? And how do you get feedback? How do you track your progress?

That’s important to know that you are progressing or not. And blah, blah, blah, is really thinking about what kind of pain. Yeah. You want, because it’s very easy to state a desire and especially when it’s something that everybody wants. Everybody wants a better body. Everybody wants more money, wants more time or freedom or whatever.

The hard part I think is taking the stars out of your eyes and really asking yourself or asking, this applies to me too, asking ourselves how much pain. We are willing to endure to get there. And I’m talking about sacrifice, tedium, doubt, disappointment, despair. All of these are all painful, psychologically painful experiences.

And. Really, what I’m talking about is assessing costs first and seeing if we’re willing to pay it and that has been very helpful for me in a number of ways where there’s first getting to the nuts and bolts of it. Because in the book, I talk about Tom Brady and his story. A lot of people don’t know that when he was in high school, he wasn’t even good enough.

He was a baseball player and he had a good arm and he wanted to play football. People are saying don’t because you suck. You’re you have no, you’re slow. You have no athleticism like you can throw a baseball. Dude, you just need to do that. And he didn’t listen to him. So he starts on his high school.

Football team. He was just a band. He’s on the bench. They didn’t even, they didn’t even start him. They wouldn’t let him play. They finished. Oh, for eight, they didn’t win a single game and didn’t score a single touchdown right in the season that he joins them. Yet he wasn’t even good enough. The coach wasn’t even confident enough to put them in to play a single player, right?

Despite that. Brady, and this is one of those kind of cool things where he was telling his family who are very supportive and he also had very athletic and she had sisters who were accomplished athletes. And he was the little, little Tommy and he was telling his parents, one day even wrote this in a paper, I’m going to be a household name.

And his family were good hearted about it, but laughing okay, dude, sure. And in Facebook, okay. In, I think it was this year they released, it was a multiple part, like a six part documentary called Tom versus time and in the beginning he is just talking to the camera and he’s talking about what are you willing to do?

What are you willing to give up to be the absolute best that you can be because we only have so much energy. The clock is always ticking and I really liked. I think this is just really captures the essence of him is he was saying that to anyone out there, if you’re going to compete against me, you’d better be willing to give up everything.

You better be willing to give up your entire. fucking life because that’s what I’m doing. I’ve given up my life to get to where I am. So good luck. You know what I mean? 

Scott: Yeah. 

Mike: And so that inspired him to do things that teenagers, no normal teenager did what he did. Like he didn’t just go to get off school, go home, play video games.

No, he would go home and he came up with these like jump rope workouts to improve his footwork. And he would then do strength training workouts and he would obsessively practice this kind of. Tedious hopscotch like exercise called the five dot drill that everyone hated yet. He would do it every day without fail even on vacations and in time he made up for his deficits and compounded his strengths which were his mind for the game and his arm you’ll find that if you just study the biographies of a lot of successful people is they’re willing to sacrifice.

Basically everything to get to where they are. So I think that’s very important in the context of goal setting is starting with. What is this actually going to cost me? What is it going to cost me in time? Was it going to cost me an energy? What is it going to cost me in money? And honestly assessing asking yourself, am I willing to pay that?

Really? Am I willing to pay that? And for me, this is I’m just speaking personally. If I can’t answer that question with absolute conviction, saying yes, like basically it has to be if I don’t feel that I’m either going to achieve this or I’m going to die, I am very wary of pursuing that goal. And in some cases I have.

chosen not to pursue goals simply because I didn’t feel it. And I’ve had enough experience now to when I don’t feel that level of conviction, if I’m wavering and I’m like, ah, that sounds really hard. I don’t know if that’s going to work. I don’t know if I want to do that. I would never start in on something.

With that type of outlook and in his book principles, which I highly recommend Ray Dalio said something that kind of resonated with me said it was along the lines of if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything that you might want, but you can’t have You have to be able to reject good things or options to pursue even better ones.

For me, that is not trying to push myself in too many different directions. Because we only have so much time, we only have so much energy, we could talk about this if you’re interested, but I’m a very, I’m very much into routine and ritual and scheduling and planning and being very deliberate with my time, being very deliberate with my energy, because that also gives me a realistic framework or lens through which I can analyze other opportunities or ideas or potential goals and go, Okay.

So here’s what I’ve committed myself to already. This is what my life looks like. This is what my time looks like. What’s the cost? For example, I’m interested in learning piano. I really like classical music, especially piano. I like listening to it and I think it would be cool to be able to play the piano.

I think it’s also just be a worthwhile hobby because it’s a good extra. It’s good exercise for the mind. And I think the creative side of it. side of it might also benefit my work, particularly my writing. One of those anecdotes that everyone’s heard about Einstein that when he was really, not that I don’t consider myself on his level at all, but when he would get stuck on developing his theory of relativity, he would go and play Mozart on the violin or something like that.

And he felt it, it just helped him refresh himself and it helped him come. back to his work. It just helped him make more breakthroughs basically. So I look at it and so instead of just jumping into it and just going, yeah, okay, I sure I’ll just start learning to play. I spoke to a friend of mine who’s a very good pianist and got some information.

What I wanted to get at is I’m not concerned about the technical aspect of it. I can learn that, but how much time is it going to take just to start there? And I concluded that if I’m not putting at least three, if I weren’t going to put at least three to five hours a week into it, It’s really just a waste of time.

Like I’m not going to really get anywhere or it’s going to be so slow that it’s not going to be enjoyable. And it really just turns into a grind. And I look at my life and go, okay, where would I realistically do that? Given what I’m already doing nowhere. Okay. Am I willing to drop anything that I’m currently doing?

Like I’m learning German. That takes a bit of time. Also, I’m at a point now where it takes more time. And do I want to drop that for piano? Not really. It’s not really a matter of sunk costs, but I like where I’m going. You know what I mean? So that’s how I go about goal planning in the beginning, as opposed to just chasing after things willy nilly.

And then Having to abandon them because that’s, I think it’s not only bad in that it doesn’t produce any results in the end. I think it’s also very psychologically harmful because your actions influence your attitudes and your behaviors a lot more than your attitudes and behaviors influence your actions.

If you want to changing your behavior is definitely, and there’s, I talk about this in my book is the most scientifically validated method of changing behavior. How you feel and how you see the world, just change how you behave. If you want to feel or a certain way, or if you want to cultivate certain attitudes, simply ask.

How do people like that behave and start doing those things and eventually you will feel the way you want to feel you will become that kind of person. And so if you are someone who is, if you look at it with the just the harsh kind of objective view of reality, if you’re someone who has. Tried and failed many times at many things or maybe many times at just a few things It’s going to be very hard if not impossible to not feel like a failure because you are behaving like a failure And then it doesn’t matter how many mental gyrations and gymnastics you try to perform and how many how much meditation you do or how much journaling you do or how many affirmations you say to yourself every day, that’s all is unnecessary.

I think for the most part, I think it can, there are some parts of it can be beneficial for anybody, but a lot of it’s unnecessary. If you’re. By your actions, you generally are succeeding, and a big part of that, I think, is setting yourself up to succeed in the beginning. That’s how I like to start the goal setting process.

Scott: Yeah, I like the idea of realizing that you must sacrifice something because if you’re looking at this from a weight loss perspective, something must change if you’re unhappy with your physique and your weight at the moment that you cannot lose weight. Without making the change, whether it be or both with regards to the exercise you’re doing or what you’re eating.

So I think realizing that you must make some kind of sacrifice is essential because I think people are always trying to find. It’s just human nature, we always want to try and find the easiest option, but I think being realistic is the key, otherwise it will just fall apart like every other fad or diet that they’ve tried in the past.

Mike: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. 

Scott: How can you limit this tendency to want to change everything at once?

Because again, at this time of year, I’m thinking resolutions being like, I want to lose weight. I want to get fitter. Or I wouldn’t mind putting on a little bit of muscle in my pecs at all. I quite like to do an idea of a 10 K I think people get. overwhelmed or they just get too keen with trying to set so many fitness goals And then again, they’ve set the barrier to entry far too high And it falls away.

So how do we limit this tendency to want to change everything at once? 

Mike: My initial thought on that is I think you have to have a realistic sense of your appetite for difficulty and chaos and you have to know how big of a bite you can really take. Obviously, that’s going to be different from person to person.

I don’t think there’s I understand you have some motivational People out there who say, just start with doing one push up a day and that’s okay. I understand many habits. I get it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I’ve even had the guy who wrote the book, many habits on my podcast and I’ve advocated that.

That isn’t necessary for everybody. There are other people out there who they have no problem starting with working out three days a week, for example, they don’t need to start with one push up a day. It’s not a big deal. They can just go. Yeah, working out to them. Working out three days a week is just as there’s just it’s just as easy.

It generates just as little friction mentally as maybe doing one push up a day to somebody else. So I think it first depends on the person and how well they know themselves. And I see this in working with a lot of people over the years where people will reach out and With some people, I get a sense of just by where they’re at in their lives and what they’re up to where I would say, you know what, in your case, I really do think we can just jump into this, let’s say it does mean working out three days a week.

Let’s just start there. Let’s get that grooved in a couple of weeks. We’ll then we’ll jump into the meal plan and you’re off to the races. Other people, they just go all in right from the beginning and do totally fine. They make their meal plan. They start training five days a week. They see results and they’re like, this is awesome.

And. Yeah. happily ever after. And other people, it’s let’s just start with walking. I just had somebody just recently I was emailing with where I was recommending, let’s just start with walking an hour a day, five to six days a week, or seven possible. I think it was because of schedule, whatever it was going to be about five days a week.

And Once you feel good about that, then let’s start looking at the diet. So I think it depends on the person and you don’t need a coach to really work that out for you. I think you can just know yourself if you just objectively look back and go, okay, so what’s my record here? How just in the area of follow through.

And if it’s not a matter of judging yourself there’s no moral quality to this. It’s just being objective. And if somebody goes, I’m really intimidated by starting with three workouts a week in the gym. Okay. So what’s something I wouldn’t be intimidated by? Could it be, I’ll go to the gym one day a week.

I’ll do a whole body workout on the other days. I’ll go for a walk. I’ll ride a bike. Yeah, that sounds good. And then looking at the diet side of things, can I just start with maybe cutting out the sugars, cutting out the soda? Yeah, that, that feels good. Okay, good. Let’s start there. I don’t think there’s any reason why people have to stretch themselves tremendously in the beginning.

Because again, I really advocate. Lifestyle change. This is something that ideally people will be doing for the rest of their lives will be staying active, eating well, staying fit. So what’s the rush? Who cares if it takes a month or two to really get onboarded and really get in the groove. So I think it depends on the person for myself.

I’ve gone through this with myself for sure, where for me, I know that I have for, I have a pretty good appetite for difficulty and chaos. However, I have to stay very organized. And if I don’t, then it becomes a bit too stressful, a bit too annoying. If I am trying to run a few businesses and write a new book and manage blah, blah, blah.

If I don’t really stay on top of my systems to keep everything organized, not just in the office, but also just in my life, then. I just get that, that existential angst type of, right? Always feel like there’s something wrong, right? That’s also something to consider. Now, if we apply that to just the fitness stuff being organized is simply just going, okay, I’m going to be working out on these days.

This is exactly what I’m going to do in these workouts. I’ve, I know the form I’ve watched videos. I’ve practiced these exercises. That’s done on the diet side of things. I have my meal plan. I know what I’m eating. I’ve already prepared my food. I’m good to go. That’s it. That’s all it really takes. And you can start with a simple system like that, and you can make it more complex over time.

Fortunately, in the case of exercise and fitness in general, you don’t really have to get all that complex, but. That’s a good lesson that you can apply in other areas of your life, especially take something that can get infinitely more complex, like building a business. For example, it’s still the same process, starting off with a simple system that you can work that produces results and adding complexity over time.

So the results get better and better. So yeah, that’s the general approach that I take 

Scott: when someone then has made this commitment and they have started going to the gym again, looking at. This time of year when the gyms are just mobbed, they’re just so busy. What are some actual practical things people can do to make it easier to get their workout in?

So they don’t go and say, Oh, I had planned on doing leg press, but that machine’s busy. I know that, I can’t get on a platform or there’s no weights. Just little hacks you can do to make your workout more efficient when you are training in a packed gym. 

Mike: I’ll answer that first. I want to say one other thing is something else to consider when you’re starting out is look for things that Allow you to attack To get at your goal in multiple ways.

So take just losing fat, right? For example, a lot of people want to lose weight If you go I can go do a bunch of cardio and sure you can lose weight You can lose fat or I can do a bunch of resistance training a lot of people don’t know that Resistance training is more or less as effective for losing fat as cardio, depending on what you’re doing, it can be a bit more effective.

However, with resistance training, you are also going to be gaining muscle, you’re going to be improving your body composition, you’re going to be improving your metabolism, you’re going to get a lot more out of the resistance training. So there’s also a point of when you’re looking at where to start out, look for the things that have the highest resistance.

Possible return. So on the training side of things, I think it’s resistance training all the way for a number of reasons. So much so that I recommend that 80 percent of people or sorry, people spend 80 80 percent of their time that they have to exercise and the average person has three to five hours a week.

I’ve at least by my experience working with a lot of people spend 80 percent of that time on doing some sort of resistance training and 20 percent of that time doing cardio. So that’s also something I just wanted to throw out there for people. If you’re like, where should I start? If it’s an exercise, start with the resistance training and if it’s with a diet, start with energy balance.

And if you don’t know what that is, head over to muscleforlife. com and search for energy balance. That’s where you start just there. Just understanding calories in calories out, understanding how to make that work for you. Don’t worry in the beginning so much about the macronutrients, the protein, carbs, and fat.

Don’t worry about the fad diets, keto, or that’s the. I just want to throw that out there, but to answer your question, what I do personally is. I just want to throw that out there, but to answer your question, what I do personally is. I just want to throw that out there, but to answer your question, what I do personally I just modify my workout.

I, sometimes it’s modifying the order. So for example, on a, on my press day, these days have been starting with barbell pressing. And sometimes the gym that I work out in, they have two flat benches, a decline, which nobody uses and an incline. And sometimes all the benches are in use and they’re not going to be free anytime soon.

So then I’ll just go and do my second exercise, which is usually an incline dumbbell press. So that’s what it is right now. At least I’ll go do that first. And I’ll come back to the barbell. It really just doesn’t matter who cares, right? Next week, my intention will be to start with the barbell as usual.

So there’s that. There’s also, I would say it depends on what it is that you’re trying to achieve with. So in some cases, Doing some sort of exercise class is probably a better place to start and especially classes that do involve a little bit of resistance training. It’s not just straight cardio. There are people who have been going to the gym and really not enjoying those types of workouts.

And I’ve found that they enjoy exercise classes a lot more and the exercise classes are going to get them to where they want to be as well. And that point of enjoyment is very important. Enjoying your Training program, enjoying your diet, those things are in some ways even more important than the technical details of how they work.

So long as you follow a few basic principles on both the training and the dietary side in both of those areas, you have a lot of wiggle room. There are only a few things that are not negotiable, energy balance being one of them, progressive overload or mechanical tension being one of them on the training side of things.

But so long as you understand, just like these are the core principles, these are the fundamental pillars. Beyond that, you have a lot of room to do something that you enjoy. And I say this, I’ve said this many times that somebody could have the most scientifically optimal based on our current understanding of everything, training program or diet.

But if they don’t enjoy it, I would not recommend it for them. I would recommend something that is clearly scientifically suboptimal, let’s say, but that they really enjoy because compliance is everything. Long term compliance is everything. So there’s no reason to just force yourself to continue doing some sort of workout.

Routine or follow some sort of diet that you don’t enjoy when you don’t have to understand all that much. It’s fairly easy to get yourself up to speed so you can then create something or find something that you do enjoy. 

Scott: I actually mentioned this point of sustainability in an email I did recently about it.

I mean it wouldn’t matter if a leading researcher like Dr. Brad Schoenfeld himself wrote you a training program. If you didn’t actually like week training it’s useless. Or if you just didn’t like the workout, 

Mike: if it starts with five sets of 15 reps squats, with one to two, one to two reps left in the tank and you dread it every time.

And you’re supposed to do it three times a week, let’s say. And you hate it. You absolutely hate it. I would say, good, we should change that. If I were writing, you don’t have to score. 

Scott: Yeah, you don’t need that’s another thing. People realize you don’t have to score. You don’t have to deadlift. You don’t have to barbell press regardless of again.

We all talk about it and you’ll see a lot of programs feature them as the key lifts. If you hate them, that’s fine. You can find an alternative. 

Mike: Yeah. And I would challenge anybody who can do them to try them. Give them the They’re acquired tastes. It’s like when you first started drinking coffee or, smoking cigarettes, I’ve never smoked cigarettes, but you speak to any smokers and they’re like, Oh yeah, they were absolutely disgusting in the beginning.

But then I came to like them drinking coffee. I thought it was gross. I hated the taste of coffee. I just forced myself to drink it for a month or two. And then I started liking it. So similarly, Most people don’t particularly enjoy, especially guys don’t particularly enjoy squats or deadlifts to start out with.

But in many cases, people who did not like them in the beginning came to like them. I’m one of those people. I didn’t like squatting and deadlifting in the beginning, particularly because I have long, femurs. I have long legs, which my range of motion on the squat, it’s a mile. It’s hard. It also on the deadlift, I have long arms.

So it counterbalances that a little bit, but squatting for me is a lot harder than someone who’s five, eight with short femurs. I had to learn to like squatting, but now I do actually, I genuinely look forward to my squat workouts. I like them. 

Scott: Yeah. And there’s obviously variations as well. Like I don’t particularly enjoy the conventional barbell squat, but I enjoy a front squat with the barbell or dumbbell or whatever.

I quite enjoy overhead squats and so on. Another point I have to mention before I forget is If someone is, this is going all the way back to the whole the gyms busy, if they are following a program that they’ve printed off the internet or got in men’s fitness or they have an app or so on, the exercise order is really significant.

Yeah, there’s rarely 

Mike: any thought that even goes into it. Yeah. So don’t just sit around waiting, but in a lot of just programs floating around in magazines on the internet, there’s no thought that went into it anyway. So 

Scott: yeah, so just don’t rather than sitting around waiting for that machine or piece of equipment to come free, just jump on the next one.

And like Mike said, go back to the original once it’s free, 

Mike: right? And let’s just interject the significance of exercise order is actually pretty simple. It’s that you are freshest and have the most energy and you’re going to be the most explosive and strongest on your, in your first exercises. So my general advice is do your hardest stuff first.

That’s all. And you could even then apply that to more of a macro scale, do your stuff earlier in the week rather than later. That’s it. You could get into the weeds on that and get more technical, but I think that’s just good general advice for people to think with. If you’re doing it, if you’re, if it’s a lower body workout and you want to do some squatting of any form and you want to do some lunging and some hamstring curls, and let’s say that’s it do the hardest stuff first.

So do your squatting first and then do the second hardest stuff, the lunges second, and then do your easiest, the isolation, the curls last. 

Scott: Yeah, exactly. Same again. If it’s upper body, get your pull ups and so on out of the way and then save it for the fun stuff at the end, like your biceps curls and push downs or whatever you’re doing.

I’m not going to ask you the question, Mike, that everybody gets of what do you know now that you wish you knew when you started out because we’ve done that. So we’ll just jump into Where are you most active at the moment that you want to send people to follow you? Are you doing a lot of Instagram? Are you doing a lot of blogs?

Are you tweeting? Where should we put the listener? 

Mike: No, I just, I’m watching a lot of Netflix, I’d say muscle for life. com is a good hub and what I’m most focused on. Currently is so I was very focused on rewriting bigger, leaner, stronger and thinner, leaner, stronger. So I have new third editions of those books coming out.

By the time this goes live, actually, the digitals may already be live. There’s going to be a lag on the hard copies because of the, I think they’re rushing it, but it’s going to be four to six weeks until the printer is done printing the first run. But I’m pretty excited because that was what I was originally.

I wrote the second editions four years ago. Good books, solid books. I stand by everything in there, but I’m a better writer. Now I have interacted with a lot more people and I had a lot of good ideas about how I can make those books better. So I go in and initially I was thinking I’ll edit them. It’ll be a legitimate third edition.

It’s not just going to be like, Oh, new forward. No. But then as I got into it, I was just like, No, I just need to redo this from scratch. And so I’m very happy with how they came out though. I think they’re better organized. I’ve taken some stuff out that is not entirely necessary and replaced it with information that much more directly addresses things that people actually ask about and want to know about.

I’ve made things even clearer, more practical. Upgrading all of the bonus material to make it even easier to start the program and know exactly what you’re supposed to do and blah, blah, blah. So pretty excited about that. That was a lot of work. I recorded the audio books myself, which was a pain in the ass.

Literally, I think it was 80 hours sitting in a chair when it was all said and done to get those, the books aren’t that long, but that’s how long it took. Because inevitably, what also happened is reading the audio book, reading for the audio book also turned into another draft of the manuscript.

Because for anyone into writing, that’s a great tip is read before you publish something, read it out loud. And you might be surprised, you might do several drafts in writing. And be like, okay, this is it. I can always make this better, but it’s time to, it’s time to ship this. You know what I mean?

And then you read it out loud and you might be surprised how many more very obvious improvements there are. So it took extra time, but it made it even better. So that was a bit of an undertaking. And now that’s behind me though. And I’m back into the flow of writing for both. Muscle for life and legion, and then I’m working on a second edition of the sequel to my book for men, which is called beyond bigger, leaner, stronger.

So that’s going to come out. It’s, I’ll say this year because of where this is going to be published in 2019 and I’m actually going to be a lot more active on social media. I have not been previously because I’ve just focused on other things and it’s honestly something I’m not very personally.

I don’t use it at all personally, and I think the world would be better place if all social media was just banned, but it is obviously a great way to reach people and engage with people, and I like my plan. It’s going to revolve around just taking a lot of the educational stuff. That’s really my focus is I, I have my podcast and I have my articles and I do some YouTube stuff and I just focus on education.

I can do that on social media as well. And that’s interesting to me. What’s not interesting to me is like just taking selfies and showing off my abs and the standard. Narcissistic kind of, reasons for getting into social media. But if I can do it in a way that is in keeping with, I’d say my brand and my integrity, then I’m interested.

So I am going to be more active on social media. I’m going to be hiring somebody to, Help with that, though, because to do it right, all the planning and all the execution is really a full time job. And so I can’t do that. I can’t dedicate myself to it. I can’t be spending 56. I think again, it’s really a full time job, but I can’t even justify a part time job.

I need to really be efficient with my time. But anyways, that’s that’s where I’m at. And then, of course, there are Things in the supplement company and executing all the plans there. We have some cool plans for new products and new things next year, working on a complete overhaul of my app, which is called stacked and it’s a whole new UI UX.

And currently it’s free and it’s a 5 upgrade fee. If you like it, basically, I’m just going to mix that. I’m just going to make it free period and just use it as a thing that saying, Hey, This is pretty cool. I’ve put a lot of money and time into this. If you like it, you’ll probably like whatever else I have.

Yeah. So those are my primary focuses right now. 

Scott: Nice one. I’ll link to all them in the show notes for this episode, which you will find on the website, food for fitness. co. uk click on podcast, and then you’ll see Mike’s one as being the most recent. So Mike, thank you so much for coming on for a second time round.

Like I said, not many people have been invited back, but it was so good speaking to the first time and you certainly delivered again. So thank you again. It’s really been great. 

Mike: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate 

Scott: it. 

Mike: Hey there. It is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick comment Review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever, too.

And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new videos. Goodies. Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better.

I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. Soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me, seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in.

So instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for men, bigger, leaner, stronger. Now, this book has sold over 350, 000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3, 100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average.

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