Best rep ranges for muscle growth, boosting testosterone naturally, and more…

Mike: Unless you have a specific vocation that you want to go study for, if you want to be a doctor, if you want to be a lawyer, if you want to be an engineer, if you want to be anything that requires advanced education, of course, you go to college, but if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to do your own thing, Then it doesn’t make sense to go to college.

Hello, Michael Matthews here from muscle for life and Legion athletics. And today’s podcast is a little change of pace instead of me, deep diving into one specific topic and monologuing for 30 minutes plus straight. This is an interview that I did with Rob. His last name I should have asked D I O N E, Dion, over at OpenSky Fitness.

And I thought you might find it interesting. And so I wanted to share it here on my podcast as well. Rob was kind enough to have me on his show to talk about Various things. We go all over the place in the interview. We talk a bit of fitness like the best rep ranges for building muscle and some of my thoughts on training frequency as well as Key lessons i’ve learned growing multiple businesses while also raising a family some of the behind the scenes ins and outs of the supplement and book Publishing industries, the single most important rule I’ve learned about success and achievement and more.

And again, the reason why I’m sharing this is I get asked a lot of these types of questions, usually via email. And whenever I post stuff like this, I get positive feedback. So I figured, Hey, your wish is my command. Hope you enjoyed the interview. Now, before we dive into this episode, I have to shill for something to pay the bills, right?

No, I’m just kidding. I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and really believe in, so instead I am going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my newest book, the Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, this book was fun to write because it really is my personal and personal favorite.

100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for transformation both inside and outside of the gym and I promise you that it will provide you with new and valuable knowledge and skills that you will use for the rest of your life. In short, I wrote this book to help you fix the things that are most holding you back from doing and achieving the things you care most about.

So if you want to learn how to overcome the mental blocks that are making you unmotivated, unhappy, and unhealthy, then the Little Black Book of Workout Motivation is for you. And you can find it on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, and I should also mention that you can get the audiobook 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 commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth more valuable and productive. So if you want to take audible up on this offer and get my audio book for free, simply go to www. workoutmotivationbook. com slash audio book, and you will be forwarded to audible and then just click the sign up today and save button, create your account and voila.

You get to listen to my little black book for free. 

Rob: All right, guys. I have Mike Matthews on the line right now. He is a best selling fitness author of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body, as well as The Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, The Simple Science of Building an Ultimate Female Body book.

Mike is also so creative. Yeah, you really did crush that. We’re gonna dive into that and the unenriched 

Mike: That was me being sarcastic. I I’ll tell the story, but yeah. I actually do think they’re good titles, But yeah, 

Rob: we’re going to dive into why is my Mike is on original. He is also the creator of muscle for life.

And Legion athletics. I can tell already, this is going to be a fun conversation. His simple and science based approach to building muscle, losing fat and getting healthy has sold over a million books and help thousands of people. Build their best bodies ever. And his work has been featured in many popular outlets, including Esquire, men’s health, L women’s health, muscle and strength, and many more.

Mike, thanks so much for coming on, man. 

Mike: Yeah. Thanks for the intro. Thanks for having me. 

Rob: Of course. Yeah. Happy to give you a great intro. And okay, let’s give a little background here. I’m always curious how people got interested in being healthy, working out. What’s your origin story? 

Mike: It’s boring and cliched.

All right, let’s skip it then. So I grew up playing sports. I played a lot of ice hockey. And when I was 17 or 18, I wasn’t playing hockey anymore. And I was like, ah, I want to continue doing something with my body. I’ve gotten used to using it. And I chose weightlifting because I was like, ah, girls like muscles.

So I like girls. I’ll just do that. And and I bought some bodybuilding magazines and, recruited a few friends and we just got into it. Together and actually found that I enjoyed it. I enjoy the activity of working out. And also enjoyed the changes that I, saw in my body.

And it became just something that I was doing not necessarily just to be more attractive to girls, but also because it, I saw personal benefits for years. I didn’t really educate myself. And I, at least I knew that I was uneducated. I knew I was ignorant because I really had just. Read bodybuilding magazines and picked up little things from things before social media.

Really, this was like my space days. Maybe Facebook is around, but picked up things on forums and whatever. But I hadn’t really applied myself. I hadn’t really tried to learn anything. I would say important about building muscle, losing fat. It was more just working out with something I enjoyed and I did it with my friends and I was happy enough with my physique.

And that was it. And somewhere along the way, I’d say after about seven or eight years of that, I decided that I was going to educate myself and just to make it more interesting, basically sure. I could just. I’m very much that person that I like routine. From a psychological perspective, I’m very high in the trait conscientiousness, right?

So I can just do the same things every single day for forever, basically, as long as I feel like I have a good enough reason to do it. But I figured that I might as well be a bit smarter about it and see if I can get more out of the time I’m putting into it. And so that’s when I actually decided to educate myself and I started I guess you could say with the first principles I wanted to learn, I wanted to understand.

The underlying physiological mechanisms as opposed to listening to other people’s embroiderments upon them so I could understand like, how does the human metabolism work? How does muscle growth work? I know it’s very complicated, practically speaking, how do these things work? I’d say the metabolic side is less complicated really than the muscle growth side if you’re looking at the physiology of it.

But if I can understand these first principles, then I can start weeding out the problems. Okay. the good advice from the bad advice and find people who are actually worth listening to. So I did that and then found my way I think in the beginning to Mark Ripito for training advice barbell training advice, starting strength practical programming, dietary side of things.

I want to say it was Martin Burkhan. I wasn’t really that much into IF, but that was really, and I would say it’s probably Lyle McDonald was the first real science based smart guy that I really latched on to for diet advice. And also as far as dieting goes, you really can read, there are probably five or six papers, scientific papers that you can read that are more narrative.

There are reviews, right? So they’re not. Overly technical and they really just break everything down. That’s really all you need to know on the dietary side of things I also got into the science of it But that’s a slower process because it’s very technical and there’s a lot of jargon and in the beginning you’re spending a lot of time Just clarifying basic concepts clarifying basic terms and putting basic pieces in place so you can actually start It’s like you’re gathering all the puzzle pieces up So you can actually start putting it together and seeing what emerges in terms of a real picture and what you can do.

So I’m curious, 

Rob: what were you doing during this eight years where you, first of all you were not necessarily learning and then you decided after about eight years you’re going to learn. What’s your background here? Because you literally, you immediately gravitated towards the science of and most people don’t.

You love diving into scientific study and that’s one of the things I like about your show and what you talk about is that you’re looking for the science. Was that your background? What’d you go to school for? 

Mike: No. So I actually never even went to college. I graduated high school at a young age because in Florida you can graduate.

It’s a, at least when I graduated, it was credits based, right? So you needed like whatever it was. I don’t remember how many credits to graduate from high school and I never took spring break. I never took summer break. All I did was study. So by the time I was 15 or 16, I had completed everything that I needed to complete.

I was going to a private school in Florida and I completed everything that I needed to complete to graduate. And from there is a question of, okay, what, where am I going to go from here? I can continue, but then it would be getting ready to go to college, which is fine. But in talking with my dad, who’s a successful entrepreneur, he’s built and sold companies and yeah.

So talking with him and associates of his and just friends of his, including people that have gone to Ivy league schools and, Basically, it was like what it came down to and what they were telling me is unless you have a specific vocation that you want to go study for, if you want to be a doctor, if you want to be a lawyer, if you want to be an engineer, you want to be anything that requires advanced education, of course you go to college, but if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to do your own thing, Then it doesn’t make sense to go to college.

And and there’s also if you want to go climb the corporate ladder and do that type of thing, then yes, it makes sense to go to college. And of course, if you want to go party and just have a lot of sex and drink a lot of alcohol, then it makes sense to go to college. So in the way, first of all, 

Rob: you didn’t want to have a lot of sex.

I just want to, I want to, I need to interrupt you. There’s no interest in. 

Mike: I’m I’m a weird person. I’ve, so I started dating my wife when I was 17 and I’d had a few girlfriends up until then, but I wasn’t like a sex crazed dude because I wasn’t, I don’t know the, my previous relationships didn’t really, once I got to know the girls a little bit better.

I just lost interest and I wasn’t devious enough to want to use them for sex. So I just would just end it. So so i’ve actually only had sex with my wife. 

Rob: Oh, wow okay. So so that makes a lot of sense in terms of not wanting to necessarily go away to college But that’s great, man.

Anyways in the end I was like, 

Mike: eh, that 

Rob: doesn’t none of 

Mike: that really makes it doesn’t interest me So yeah So what I’m going to do instead is I’m going to work. And so I went and I also did a bit of traveling. And that was a fun time when my wife’s from Germany. And so what I did is I worked in one of my dad’s companies.

I worked in a company that he had invested in and I worked in several other companies, just used his network of people to get experience working. And also I’ve always been a good student and I’ve always, Enjoyed reading and learning. That was another thing that I was told by the people, my, my mentors, I guess you could say at that one at that age was you can learn everything that you need to learn in business by reading the right books and just doing it.

Going to college is not going to help you unless you go to an Ivy league school and You can walk away with a really strong network of people who are going to go places who have access to a lot of money and things that you just wouldn’t, that’s very hard to gain access to unless you already are successful and can join the right types of associations, I guess you could say.

So anyways, in the end I was like. And I’m just going to work. So that’s what I did. And I also, my wife’s from Germany. And so that was a fun time where she would come and visit me in Florida. And then sometimes I would go over there. We did long distance for two years and I would go over there and, spend, I don’t know, two to four weeks there.

And we would just travel around and have fun. So that was my, later teenage years, early twenties. And then I found my way into writing. Because that was really just on a lark i figured hey i like to read i like to learn i like to study maybe i would enjoy writing i didn’t in high school i did a bit of creative writing and my teacher said i was good at it but i was like whatever it wasn’t something that i felt particularly drawn to that’s how i came into writing my original interest was you fiction.

I wrote a novel and which I’m sure I actually, I should go back and look at it one of these days because I’m sure it’s terrible. But from there I found a way into creating employee training programs for companies, which is a very random thing, but it’s like a niche specialty publishing company basically.

And we really got into working with dentists and physical therapists, healthcare in the healthcare center. And that was cool. It gave me some experience jumping into things that I don’t know anything about and having to quickly come up to speed and then create training materials that can bring other people up to speed.

So it’s very much a sink or swim type of thing where you can’t bullshit your way through it. You can either create good stuff that people understand and they can get results with, or you don’t and you get fired. So I did that for several years. And then I came into. My current life, where I had heard about Amazon’s Kindle KDP publishing platform, because there was a dude named John Locke, who was their first self published author to sell a million books.

And his story was cool and they used it for publicity. And I heard about that and I was like, huh, I should write a book. And so I wrote bigger, leaner, stronger. And I figured I’ll write the book that I just wish somebody would have given me back when I was like 17 or 18. And I’m a very much a believer in this.

It was a minimum viable product type of thing. Where the original book was maybe, I don’t know, 67, maybe 50, 000 words, 60, 000 words, and I did a good job on it. I didn’t just like phone it in. I tried to write a good book, although now I would look back at it and I would hate it because I’m a much better writer now and I know a lot more, but regardless, I gave it a good effort, put it up on Amazon, and I didn’t have any network.

I figured it’s a waste of time to try to get a book deal because no publisher, and I know this very much now, no publisher would have ever cared. They would have been like, you’re nobody. You have no following. You have no background in this. Yeah, we don’t care. Even though sure I could get, I could at that time, I could have gotten licensed as a trainer.

They’d be like, yeah, whatever. It doesn’t mean anything. Because it doesn’t mean anything. And so I just published it myself and sold maybe like 20 copies the first month. And I was like, oh, that’s cool. Somebody bought my book, maybe 40 copies the next month. And I put an email address in there just saying, Hey, if you want to give me any feedback, email me, if you have any questions, just email me.

And so I got some emails from some people, which I thought was neat. And that was 2012. And by the end of 2012, I was selling several thousand copies a month. And I also had put up a few other books as like little trial balloons. And that’s where I saw there’s real opportunity. To make a career shift, I guess you’d say that’s, I guess my origin story.

Rob: Yeah, that’s no, that’s great. And I’ll just, I want to give people a little bit of perspective here. Cause I’ve been doing research on you just bouncing around and you’re quite interesting because you, when you started out, if you look out, like you had, and that was 2012 when you did the original bigger, leaner, stronger, but then you also deviated off course.

And you’ve written under a pen name, Sean Patrick. And now you also have, it’s not a lot of books, right? It’s just four different things on, and some of them are small, right? Short little things, but thousands of reviews for one of them for this thing, you wrote a little on Tesla. 

Mike: I know that, that has been downloaded probably 3 million times since I put it up.

It’s insane. It’s insane. And you have I didn’t even include that. It means a free book. I don’t care about that one. Like the numbers, I don’t even, that’s just like a random I was, yeah, fluke where I was like, wow I guess a lot of people want to read about Tesla. 

Rob: And you’re right. You wrote this book, the know your bill of rights.

Yeah. Seems like an odd, the know your bill of rights. But 

Mike: It was just, again, these are like projects I just did for fun years ago. They all popped 

Rob: out and they all popped out in 2013. Which I thought was interesting because it’s like how much shit is he cranking out this guy, but that one still that has a 212 five star reviews, basically, and it’s 12 bucks and the Kindle version is only 327.

But so you’re the thing is, here’s what I 

Mike: hear bill of rights book now, especially now it actually sells quite well. I’d have to look at the numbers that don’t really pay attention, but I would say it’s probably a thousand copies a month. Between Kindle, paperback and audio book. Yeah, that’s a reasonable estimate.

It might be a little bit more. It might be a little bit less. 

Rob: That’s awesome. That’s pretty cool. So the reason I bring this up is because you’re not necessarily, even though you have an expertise in fitness and nutrition because you’ve personally taught yourself how to do it, but your general overall basic life strategy is basically curiosity and creativity because you see things that you want to know about You learn about it and then you write about it, right?

You did it with the, when you’re writing manuals, who wants to write manuals? It’s the most boring shit you have to read ever. And then you have to digest that and then spit it out in a way that people are interested in hearing it. So nobody wants to do that job, but for some reason you ha and that’s exactly, you wrote the book about Alexander, the great, what does it say?

Makotian who conquered the world? Is that how you say it? Macedonian. Thank you. That’s, that sounds much more intelligent. Thank you. But who does that? You do, which is interesting. And then the next thing, you got this other bigger leaner, stronger out that’s crushing. And I know that your other, the other book as well thinner leaner, stronger is also doing really well.

Women’s 

Mike: book, the women’s 

Rob: book. And I’m sure that there’s, the same information in certain amounts of it, and then you catered towards women, but you also wrote a cookbook, you have different challenges that you have out there. How many books do you think you have out there? Cause I’m just scrolling through and there’s more than one page.

Mike: So yeah, some of them have, paid books cause I’ve done some free stuff just for fun and cause it’s, decent top of funnel, but for paid maybe 12 and I have a new one coming out called the little black book of workout motivation. It’s coming out in a few weeks, August 30th.

Rob: Got it. Wow. Okay. So you’re trying it out. Some really good stuff. I think for most people. 

Mike: That’s all I would have done is just write books over the years. If I would have not started the supplement company and not done all these other things that whatever I think I could have 30 books probably.

At this point, do you, now 

Rob: let’s, we’ll definitely talk about that because the name of your company is a legion athletics. It seems like that’s growing out beyond muscle for life. com. You’re putting a lot more attention into that, but it seems like you’re really leaning the business in that direction.

What was the impetus behind that? 

Mike: So to, to your first point, yeah, that, that has been true up until now, but now we’re swinging back and cause most of life has huge potential. It gets a ton of traffic somewhere around a million and a half visits a month and it’s growing and it’s very under monetized.

It should be doing in my opinion, six to seven times the annual revenue that it does right now because we just put up a store like a month ago, up until a month ago, did you even have a store? We have a coaching service that does very well and that provides a fair amount of revenue. And we do meal plans and stuff, but again, give you take that website and you take the traffic and you take the amount of goodwill that I’ve built with my readership and the brand muscle for life.

It should be doing financially way better than it is, but that’s just because it hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as Legion internally, which was. An interesting decision. I don’t know if I’d say it was a mistake. Ideally, it would have, they would have run in parallel. But to do that, I would have the mistake that I made there is I would have needed to put more time and attention to recruiting more people because there’s about 20 of us and everyone has a lot of work to do.

And so if we really were going to make most of the life into more Then it currently is earlier, it would have required really an additional team of probably, I don’t know, three to five people to do that. But so to your second point, your question about legion, it was really just scratch my own itch.

It was making stuff that I wish other people would have made. That was it, the idea came back from most of life. I would recommend supplements, just people go buy them on Amazon and I just would participate in the affiliate program. So not so much, it never makes more than, I don’t know, a few thousand dollars a month or something.

So it wasn’t really so much from that perspective, but it was. Really what are people buying? You know what I mean? And I wasn’t even excited about the supplements I was recommending. I would openly say, yeah, this protein, honestly, I think it tastes pretty bad, but it’s a good value. Like optometrician.

I think their stuff tastes terrible. Sure. It’s a good, it’s a good value. If you just want cheap way concentrate and you’re fine with that, it doesn’t upset your stomach or anything. And you don’t mind the nasty taste. But pre workout that whatever I was using back in the day, I would say, honestly, I don’t.

This isn’t a very good pre workout. It’s just, I don’t like coffee. So I use this and, but people were still buying it, even though I wasn’t they just want to know what am I using? And they maybe appreciated the honesty where I was saying, okay, here’s one thing I like about this. Maybe this ingredient is in a decent dosage.

So that’s cool. This one is not really in a good dosage, but it’s an okay dosage. And I don’t like coffee. So this is my neck. If you’re like me and that. Means if that resonates with you at all, then this might be good for you. Kind of thing. 

Rob: I think that most people don’t want to necessarily do all the research.

They allow you to do the research and you’re saying, look, this doesn’t check all the boxes, but for me it’s enough for me. And if it’s enough for me, they’re thinking if it’s enough for Mike, I’ll buy it. Exactly. 

Mike: So then, so I was like, there was a point where I was thinking why don’t I just, Make my own stuff.

I don’t just make the stuff I really want to make, which is that that’s what turned into legion. So I knew that based on the trajectory of what I was doing at that time and that things were growing quickly and that because of the affiliate sales, I figured there’s no way I can get stuck with product, so I put together it was four products we launched with, it was a creatine product, like a post workout pre workout. A whey protein and what was the fourth? And there was another one, I think that we launched with anyway. So I had three or four products and the first order was maybe a hundred thousand dollars or 80, 000 of stuff and my cost.

And I knew that I wouldn’t get stuck with it. I knew there’s no maybe it doesn’t go well. Maybe people don’t even like the brand. They don’t like the concept and the stuff doesn’t really move. But eventually I’ll sell it and if it doesn’t go well, I’ll just move on with my life and delete the idea out of my mind.

And if it does go well, then I’ll pursue it. It went very well. Legion in its first year did over a million dollars in sales and now it’s doing eight figures in annual sales. And yeah, it was it was one of those things where it was the right, I feel like with Bigger Than You’re Stronger, for example, that was the right book at the right time.

That’s one of the reasons why it has done so well. And Legion, I think was the right. Sports nutrition concept at the right time now it is for as well as it’s doing. I know people in a similar space supplements, not necessarily sports nutrition that are doing many multiples times better than I’m doing.

And so it’s all relative, but it was a good time. It was definitely good timing and it was the right message at the right time. And yeah, it’s been on the whole, a good experience. That type of business is a bit of a pain in the ass. Yeah. Yeah, because you have, there’s always inventory issues and the cost of goods is quite high, which was a bad business decision.

And I knew that going in, I didn’t know actually quite how bad it would be. It was in the eyes of a more of a, just like a finance guy, because part of the thing with Legion was, I don’t want to make shitty products and just lie to sell them. I want to make good products that in some ways sell themselves.

Nothing sells itself, but you know what I’m saying? Yeah. And what that means in the supplement game is you have to spend quite a bit. My multivitamin costs me like 13 a bottle to make. And that margin means it’ll never be on retail shelves unless, if it were to ever be able to be on a retail shelf, it would be, they would have to be taking a lot lower margins than they normally would take.

And I would take a very, my, my margins would be low. Whereas, the standard, and this isn’t just supplements. This is, if you’re going to sell anything that needs to be manufactured, the standard multiple of costs to retail should be a six to 10 times six is bad. If you’re selling something for six times your costs, that’s pretty bad in really Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. What’s it 

Rob: like? Give us, give me an example here. Cause I’m actually on your website. I’m poking around Legion athletics. The supplements, which one are you referring to? That’s 13. What do you sell? What are you selling? Triumph. Triumph. Triumph is 40. Got it. So that’s really bad.

That’s really bad. So you’re like three, you’re like three times. 

Mike: And the reason why people hear that and what do you mean? That’s bad. The reason why is if you want to be in retail, which is that is the standard way to sell a lot of anything, right? Is you need distribution because of the margins that everybody needs.

You need your margins. And then the wholesalers need their margins and the retailers need their margins. And generally it’s doubling with each person that it passes through. That’s. You get to six, six times as bad, a multiple of 10 times is good. If you go buy a polo shirt for 120, it did not cost them more than 10 landed done sitting in the store to offer that shirt to you.

My thinking was at the time. Okay. I don’t care about retail then. I’d rather not even have the company if it meant that I have to make a crappy product, which is the problem. If you’re going to use a six times multiple. So let’s say you want to sell a multivitamin for 40. That’s also a premium multivitamin.

That’s not a cheap, it’s still, yeah, it’s still expensive. And you have 6 to make it 6 to make it and have it sit in your full film, not just make it, but shipped at all. All the little hold. Ways that you get nickel and dimed on cogs, you have 6 for that formulation. You cannot make a good multivitamin for 6, at least by my standards, you simply can’t do it.

So what can you do? You can make a pretty shitty multivitamin and then. What does that mean then? It means you have to then just go lie to sell it. You can’t tell people, Hey, this multivitamin is pretty shitty, but buy it if you like me. That’s not a very if you want to just give me your money, I’ll take it.

Yeah. That’s not a very persuasive sales pitch. I decided, okay, I’m going to spend a lot more on my formulations. And my cogs is going to be a lot higher, which means profitability is going to be lower. And from a business perspective, that’s a bad decision. Like a private equity guy would look at that and be like, yeah, you’re dumb.

Why would you do that? You know what I mean? You’re having your helving having, H A L V I N G. You’re cutting your potential. Let’s say you ever wanted to sell that that alone could cut the multiple on EBITDA. It could cut it by 50 percent depending on who you’re dealing with.

So I was like, eh, whatever though, I want to make good products. And as long as it can be profitable enough and not just be a complete waste of time, then I’m willing to do it. So that’s the Legion story where the upside is for customers. You will get products. We offer stuff that you cannot get somewhere else because nobody else Is willing to spend 13 on a multivitamin, and it only can be done direct to consumer e commerce, obviously, because retail is just out of the question and really the only reason why, in addition, we’re able to do that is because I don’t spend very much money at all to acquire new customers, I acquire a large, maybe even the lion’s share of my new customers through my writing, through my Podcasting through my you tubing and that’s also a downside from a business perspective that adds volatility because what if something happens to me and I can’t do that anymore or what if I just, I lose my mind one day and I like have a midlife crisis and just say, yeah, fuck all this.

I’m just going to buy Lambo’s and like snort cocaine all day. What happened? What happens to the business shuts down? Yeah, it has a lot of momentum. These are all things though, that are, we’re just, are just things to know and things I’ve looked, let 

Rob: me ask you this, Mike does it, do you feel that pressure on yourself?

Do you feel like, no, you don’t? No, I don’t care. Oh, okay. All right. So then that’s, so then that’s good. Like you’re putting this on, I think, look. The fact that you could talk about it like this, the transparency at which you talk about this makes people want to buy that stuff. I think it’s actually smart.

Yes, you’re bringing it in. Yes, you are the only, you are the top of funnel. Everything you do is top of funnel. I can’t even imagine you have affiliate programs. Do you offer affiliate programs? We, that’s, we 

Mike: have a referrer friend. 

Rob: Okay. So the answer to that question 

Mike: is no. I know we have, we have a sponsorship.

We do have something like that, but not as developed as what you’re thinking. 

Rob: Yeah. But that, but I think there’s a certain amount of there’s an integrity in that, like you, you want to be able to turn out a product that is everything that you would ever want. You don’t want anybody to dick you around.

You don’t want anybody to sell you a bunch of like filler. You want exactly what you think you’re supposed to be getting, because I think everybody that buys something off the shelves at GNC thinks they’re getting exactly what that is sold is set on the box. And the truth is it’s not, it’s just a bunch of fillers and it’s a bunch of crap.

And it’s why most of us have gut issues and problems digesting and why we don’t see any kind of return on investment. The good thing is that you’re open about it and you’re not even selling it and you’re not even gouging. So I think it’s great. Yes. Maybe it’s not the best business choice, that going in.

And you’re probably knowing you wouldn’t 

Mike: change it. I wouldn’t change it going back. I wouldn’t change that. 

Rob: And knowing, it seems like knowing you based on like just hearing a little bit about your life, you’re going to change tact at some point. And the next thing is probably going to be even bigger.

I’m curious here. Obviously you even said it before. It’s like you treat your business the way you treat your nutrition. In a sense, like the way that you are structured, you’re built to follow a formula and you don’t necessarily deviate all that much from it. And then you also said earlier that you don’t necessarily have the traditional origin story around health.

Do you feel like you have a hard time connecting? with the people who are coming to you because most people are struggling. It doesn’t seem like you struggle. 

Mike: That’s a good question. In some ways I would say yes, and that sounds pretentious, but not at all honest and not 

Rob: at all from what I gather from you.

That’s the reason I’m asking the question. It would seem like you follow things based on structure and thought, not necessarily based on emotion. 

Mike: Yeah. And again, if that’s reflected in just my personality even from a, again, from a, I guess you could say psychometric perspective, right? So I’m very much that person, the super disagreeable, super conscientious, super low compassion type of person.

Now that sounds bad. It makes you sound like a sociopath, but I’m speaking in if you go if you Jordan Peterson, he has a good test and what is it? I forget the. Know yourself or something. If anybody’s curious what I’m talking about, it’s the big five, right? You have the big five traits and then they break down into sub traits.

I would say that has I like helping people. That’s probably where I, what saves me from just being a, I don’t know, wall street finance person that doesn’t care. And just I don’t, we don’t really produce anything. You just get money for being. And maybe that’s a, that’s an unfair mischaracterization of all of them, but you know what I’m saying?

And I’m open about this with people that will email. I have over a hundred thousand emails sent and received in my inbox and I spend time on it every single day. Yeah. I quote unquote, don’t have to, but one, I like it because it’s a nice reminder of why I’m doing this. It’s easy to just get. For me to go in full hermit mode and just grind away on projects without even realizing if they’re even having effects.

So it’s nice to connect to people and they share their stories and it makes me feel good. It’s I guess selfish in that way, but it is motivating and i’ll be open sometimes where people will ask me You know, they’re going through certain issues And I’ll say, honestly, I don’t have personal experience with that, but I’ve worked with a lot of people that, have run into that problem and I’ve studied a fair amount about it and I’ve taken come up with little strategies that work.

And so I can still be helpful, but as a person, and this isn’t just in my work, this is something my wife has had to get used to is that. Yeah, I’m not the greatest person. I’m not that shoulder necessarily to cry and where I have a lot of sympathy in the sense of I guess just in the, whether it’s in the sense of pity or where I can say that I deeply understand where you’re coming from.

I think empathy 

Rob: is the word. That you’re looking 

Mike: for. Empathy though. I can, I would say I, I’m not a, I can create empathy, right? But it doesn’t necessarily come from in, in a lot of the things that like what you’re referring to where, okay, take diet. People’s struggles with diet, right?

I totally understand. I’ve worked with literally thousands of people. So I’ve seen it all. And I’ve helped people through it all have I myself ever personally struggled with dieting? No, have I ever struggled on a cut fall off the rails or go off on a binge? No, i’ve never done that, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be helpful So to your question of do I struggle?

Yeah. Sure. I have always their life Is problems you never gonna get away from that i think the best we can hope for is having the problems that we at least want to have in problems that are productive it’s just my i don’t necessarily struggle with the same things that maybe your average person struggles with but you know in the end the experience of struggling is what it is right it’s just my i think my experience is a little bit different and that’s fine and again i don’t even like saying that kind of stuff because it makes me seem.

Like I’m sitting up on some high horse or something and kind of moralizing down to the lesser people and that’s not my perspective at all. I’m just Being as honest as I can, as self aware as I can, 

Rob: no, and I don’t think that you’re not coming off, trust me, as someone who’s like setting yourself up on a pedestal here.

I know people like you, right? I have friends like you who are very successful. So here’s the difference that I see, like the average person Has a little bit of an emotional attachment to a lot of things like to, whether it be their food, their workouts, their self image their, just their relationships, all of that.

There’s an emotional attachment there. And when there’s, when certain information comes their way the way they interpret it as emotionally, like they might not be able to logically digest it, but it hits them emotionally. It might manifest into depression. It might manifest into into eating binge eating or just, or maybe even excessive exercise.

It could go the other direction. 

Mike: Very true. Or orthorexia type stuff, 

Rob: right? Some obsessive, something obsessive, but for you, like I said, like I have friends like you and I’m fascinated with people like you because I’m not that I can relate very well to a lot of my clients. We’re on one.

It’s probably one of the reasons why. I work very closely with people because, and you seem to, and maybe, yeah, you seem to be at a distance at certain, quite a bit. When you’re a writer, there’s a book between you. You even had a pen name. There’s not even a book, but a fake name between you.

And when you’re interacting with people online, there’s still the screen between you now with me, I’m usually face to face and I can understand a lot of the struggles that people have because yes, because I’ve had a lot of them and I understand I’ve worked through them, but I’m what I mean by fascinated is like There’s a part of you that I wish I had a little more of.

And I think a lot of people like me do that where it’s it’s calculated. You understand the good and the bad, or you understand like where, like you’re calculating exactly whether or not this is going to be like, you even said like Legion, probably not a smart investment but It was almost out of your personality to do this because you’re making a decision that was not as business smart as emotionally, 

Mike: It was a bad decision in that sense.

The emotion that would be associated with that would be a negative one, right? Like I’m putting myself. way behind the eight ball right, right at right to start, but it was for me again, it was a point of, it sounded interesting. And it was a point of integrity where I was like if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it my way.

And in the end, I’m not afraid of work. That’s the worst case scenario is I put a bunch of work into something that doesn’t quite pay off maybe in the way that some people think that it should. And I’m okay with that. That’s a risk I’m willing to take. I don’t care. 

Rob: And here’s the difference between you and the average person that would mean there were a failure and you would look at it as a learning experience.

Mike: You know what I’m saying? That’s definitely a good point. That’s something that’s whenever, and I’ve had failures, I put 250, 000 into an app that I really did not need. That was that was just a bad move. That was dumb. Yeah. That was dumb. 

Rob: And obviously it probably affected you, but it, did it slow you down?

Did it send you into a world of depression? No, 

Mike: I didn’t never even cared that much. It came to what I just told you. I was like that was dumb. That was totally unnecessary. Let’s just say at the time where I think it’s decisions that are truly dumb or where you’re sitting there and you’re like, every part of me says I shouldn’t do this, but for some unknown, who knows maybe emotional reason, I’m going to do it anyway.

That to me is something where I’d be like, Okay. That’s a disappointment, but that wasn’t the case. I just went in with the wrong assumptions and I didn’t do enough due diligence. I thought it was going to be easier than it was going to be to just get to a product. Like I was like this isn’t that complicated.

This is a bunch of spreadsheets that are, that work visually really is. What this is right and I didn’t find the right company to develop it and they did a bad job and then I had to find another and along the way I could have easily just cut my losses, which was now, though, ironically, I’m on the other end of it and I have a decent app and I’m actually doing an update to it.

I’m spending a bit more money. I’ll be I might be able to turn into a win because this. Transcribed by https: otter. ai I’m spending a bit more money to do an overhaul on the UI UX, and it’s going to look really nice and I’m going to make it, I’m adding some features and I’m going to make it completely free.

I’m like, I don’t care at this point. Like it doesn’t, it’ll never make an amount of money that matters. If I’m charging up front for it right now, it’s free with, if you like it, you can upgrade kind of thing. I’m just going to make it a hundred percent free. Cause who cares? And so making another top of funnel and if it, if people really like it and it has gotten a lot of good feedback and it has gotten a lot of downloads, but if it.

Even picks up and does even better. Then I’ll continue actually to develop it. Cause why not? Cause that’s cool. Have a, if I had a free workout app specifically geared toward resistance training and weightlifting, that is better than anything you could pay for. That’s great. 

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. And people are going to respect you for that.

And 

Mike: The story is like yeah, I already got so deep into it and I was like, eh, whatever, who cares? I’ll just make it free. Yeah. 

Rob: Yeah. And that makes it a great story. Okay. So let’s change gears here just a little bit because I love your candidness and I really appreciate you being honest about how your psyche kind of works.

The good thing is that the way that you think allows you to approach things in a more of a scientific way. You don’t get wrapped up. In the emotional way of eating in the emotional, the emotions of working out. You’ve learned a lot, right? You’ve learned a lot about working out. You wrote a book about it.

So in terms of working out, let’s start there. Let’s start with working out. What should people do when it comes to, and I know you talked about this on a recent episode of your show. Let’s compare lifting, doing more aerobic exercise that lightweights higher reps compared to lifting heavy. What are the benefits?

Mike: I would say, the lighter stuff is perfectly valid exercise and you get in there, you’re moving your body and you’re obviously burning some calories and you’re going to benefit your muscles to some degree. You’re not going to get very far in terms of improving your body composition, but. If it’s something that you enjoy and it gets you exercise, it keeps you exercising, gets you in the gym.

It’s perfectly valid. I recommend more of a I’d say a training approach, which is more goal oriented. It’s more methodical. It’s more systematic. And. That’s where the heavier weightlifting comes in. It doesn’t have to be now when I say heavy It’s heavy by most female standards because most women from what i’ve seen over the years are following still following the mainstream advice given to women which is do a bunch of cardio starve the shit out of yourself and if you’re going to touch weights make sure they’re not heavier you’re going to turn into a hulking monster and that is a very countered Productive and miserable way to go about fitness.

So when I say heavy, what I’m saying just to quantify it, I would say working with weights that are in the range of, let’s say 75 to 85 percent of your one rep max. So the rep range at the high end, you’re talking about 10 to 12 reps. And that’s at the point where you’re pretty much can’t do another rep that it’s very difficult.

And at the low, we’re talking about maybe about four reps. And if you do that. And if you combine that with a simple method of progression, my personal favorite, especially for people that are new is called double progression, which is where you are working in a given rep range up until you can hit the top of that rep range for a certain number of sets.

And then you’re adding weight, right? And then you work with that new weight, which bumps you down in your reps until you can do the exercise for with that new higher weight for the, the target, which takes something like starting strength, right? So it’s three sets of five. That’s what you’re working toward.

Once you can. Hit that you’re adding weight, although you may be adding weight on a fixed schedule, depending on how it’s programmed. But that’s an example where you say, okay, once you can get three sets of five reps on that squat, I want you to add five pounds to the bar. Let’s say that gets you down to three or four reps.

You’re going to work with that until three sets of five and so forth. And that’s called double progression. Cause you progress in your reps and then you. Turn that into progressing on your weight. And it’s a great simple system that allows you to achieve progressive overload, which is the primary driving mechanical factor in terms of muscle building.

And what that is it’s progressively increasing the amount of. tension that’s produced in your muscles over time. And the most effective way to do that is to get stronger, add weight to the bar over time. So really what I like to see is I like to see people getting strong. I like to see people doing strength training, which is familiar to guys, less familiar to women.

At least many women that. Find their way to me are usually at the beginning of their fitness life cycle. So to speak, maybe they’ve tried a few things that haven’t worked, but I have more beginners than advanced weightlifters, which is intentional. Like I cater to the gen fit crowd to the beginners because, I just I like it more.

I think it’s, I can help a lot. There’s a lot more of those people out there. I’m more interested in taking an everyday person. Let’s say, take a mom who has kids in a job in a busy life and she wants to be in good shape and look and feel better. I’m more interested in working with her than I don’t know, top tier physique athlete who’s trying to add three pounds of muscle to, a few places on her body.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the ladder. It’s just not my personal interest. Even myself. 

Rob: Yeah. And I think the reward on that as well, it’s so impactful because the, from reading starting strength as well. And then also your book, I know that you pulled a lot of information from there and that was definitely a good guiding post for you in terms of the strength training protocols.

And it’s interesting because they talk about beginner athletes and I look at. I don’t like, I’m the same with you. I don’t like training higher level because the improvements are smaller. It becomes a lot more tedious. It’s not as much fun, but when you like, when you run through a protocol with a, with somebody who’s fairly new and I just, it’s interesting cause I’m starting to train way more women than I Then I thought I’d ever train because they’ve never touched the weight.

The amount of increased strength is so fast, so significant. They feel so powerful and the results come so quickly that you’re just like, it’s so gratifying to do something like that. So I’m glad that you, I’m glad that you said that. 

Mike: Yeah. So on the exercise side of things, that’s really what I emphasize.

Strength training, getting stronger. Using exercise to build and maintain muscle, using diet to reduce body fat and maintain desirable body fat levels. And as far as cardio versus weights go, it depends on ultimately like it, that really depends on the person, their goals, what I like to do. But if you say your average run of the mill person that just wants to be in good shape, I would like to see them spend 80 percent of their time.

Their fitness, their workout time on the strength training and 20 percent on the cardio doing cardio is smart. I do cardio two days a week myself, sometimes three days a week. And that’s why I walk my dog, but I don’t count that. Like I actually do some biking and because I enjoy it and because there are some unique health benefits to cardio that you don’t necessarily get from weightlifting, but the key to having not just the, There’s the type of body people want to have in terms of they usually are thinking about that visually.

That is resistance training. That is strength training. That is for both men and women. For men, it’s a bit more obvious, but for women, it’s not as obvious because they, a lot of women have been they’ve been indoctrinated over the years to think that gaining muscle, like gaining anything is bad.

So if that scale ever goes up, that’s bad and you live and die by the scale. And what I am teaching women through my writing and. It’s anything that I, whenever I’m talking to women, I’m saying that forget about weight. Think about body composition. Think about how that weight breaks down into primarily.

There’s more to your body composition of this muscle and fat, of course, but that’s what we can really change. That’s when that’s what we want to change and think about how your ideal body looks and who cares what that weight is. You probably won’t even know what that weight is, but I can tell you having worked with thousands and thousands of women, if you’re starting, And whether you are underweight or overweight, if you’ve never done anything to really train your muscles, ultimately what it’s going to require if you want to look like most women, the body that most women want, which is that kind of lean tone defined athletic look is you’re going to have to gain probably 10 to 15 pounds of muscle and you’re going to have your body fat Percentage around 20%.

Some women prefer to be a little bit leaner and that’s fine. And there’s a point where it gets unhealthy, if you get down to, let’s say it’s 17 or 18%, that’s perfectly healthy. You can maintain that year round rather easily. And that’s a very athletic look. And so that’s yeah that’s really the goal.

And now how do you get there? 80 percent of that is going to be your resistance training. You don’t necessarily have to do cardio at all if you don’t want to, but when you’re losing fat, you’re going to lose fat faster if you include some cardio and it does have some unique health benefits. So I think if you do have time for it, it’s smart to work some of it in.

That’s really the, and the philosophy is similar for men. It’s just more, obviously there’s more muscle that needs to be. gain for the average guy, how the average guy wants to look, he needs to gain, let’s say, 25 to probably 35 pounds of muscle and be around 10 percent body fat. That’s like the Hollywood look, I guess you could say.

Rob: Yeah. I think that’s what most people, most guys are like aiming for. In terms of lifting let’s give them an idea of how consistent, how often. 

Mike: So for both men and women, I would say that you can progress on as little as probably one or two workouts per week, at least in the beginning, the more you do the better.

But if you have Yeah. All the time in the world that you can give to it, I would say ideally you’d be doing about four to six hours of weightlifting per week and maybe an hour or two of cardio per week. And you can break that down into, I, myself, I lift five days per week. Rarely do I do a sixth day.

Usually I’m doing cardio and I take one day off at least one day off. Per week of weightlifting. So it depends on how I’m programming. It depends on how I’m sleeping. I have two kids. It depends on thing. Like I wouldn’t even mind working out a bit more. But I can only get away with so much. So three, ideally it’s a, let’s say three to five days per week and you’d have.

The programming that I have in my books and that I really like for newer people is a simple push, pull legs set up where one of your days you’re doing heavy pushing so that’s, stuff like bench press and overhead press. And I personally like to separate my, if possible, this is more relevant to guys like to separate my chest pressing with my shoulder pressing.

But then you’re going to have a heavy pulling day. So that’s going to involve deadlifting and other barbell rows and stuff like that. And then you’re gonna have a heavy legs day, a squat day. We’re going to be doing squatting and some, and leg press. And there are a number of exercises that I think are at least they’re the 20 percent of all the exercises you could possibly do for those muscle groups to get 80 percent of the potential gains.

And again, focusing on, So barbells and dumbbells focusing on heavier weights and focusing on progressing. Progression is the key. Rep ranges are, there are a lot of arguments that can be made for and against various rep ranges. And I’m actually doing an update. To both bigger, leaner, stronger and thinner, leaner, stronger.

I’m going to be releasing third editions this year. I do this, do it semi regularly. It’s been a little bit, it’s been, I think, two years since I did the last one, but it’s time because I get a lot of good questions and suggestions from people and I have my own list of things that I want to address.

And so this is a little, something I want to add as an argument as to why. I really like for guys working in the lower or sorry, the the lower end of that rep range. I really like the four to six, five to seven, maybe six to eight, but I’d say closer to four to six, five to seven for guys. And for girls a bit lighter, I’d say eight to 10.

And the reason being is this is a myth that’s out there. A lot of women, a lot of people, but women in particular guys as well, think that women just can’t build muscle. Very effectively. They can’t build nearly as effectively as men. And I’ve written about this. There’s an article on muscle for life.

If you search for female muscle growth, you can read it. But basically that’s just wrong. Women can gain muscle and strength very effectively. But their big disadvantage, it is not their hormones like, yes, they have much lower testosterone levels, but they also have higher estrogen levels and that actually makes up for a bit of it.

Higher growth hormone levels that makes up for a bit of it. And research clearly shows that women can gain plenty of muscle and strength, but they start with so much less estrogen. Then guys that they’ll never, you start a guy and you start a girl on the same program. The guy is going to outpace the girl not only because he’s starting with a ton more muscle, but it’s like the accumulated advantage that you get in, let’s say kids that play sports, right?

Where if you are good enough in the beginning to get more attention from the coaches, you’re going to get now better coaching and you’re going to get even better than, and you’re gonna get better faster than the other kids. And then that’s going to turn into it. playing on better teams, which means you get better.

And eventually you just leave everyone in the dust. It’s similar in a training side of things where where women, because they start with very little muscle, they have to start with much lighter weights and it’s harder for them to get in the groove. And the, even the technical, the the skill acquisition side of it is harder when you are weaker.

And so guys are able to. Progress faster and ultimately gain a lot more muscle in the long run. But for women, the reason why I like them starting with a little bit lighter weights is for that reason. It’s intimidating. If you take just an average woman and you tell her to get under a squat and do three sets of five at an RPE of seven or eight.

So meaning that you’re ending your sets, like one or two reps shy of failure. Those are difficult sets. And I know that working one on one with women where I realized A guy can do that. A guy, you can tell him, he, he takes one or two weeks to acclimate. He gets up to speed on the basic form and you put them under, maybe it’s only 135 pounds.

It doesn’t matter, but he gets his sets of five, no problem. And he just gained strength like crazy women. It’s I’ve just seen them struggle enough, especially with upper body stuff, like a bench press, a five rep bench press in the beginning for a woman. So that’s why I like. That women start with a little bit lighter weights.

They’re still heavy. They’re just not as heavy as the men’s weights. 

Rob: Yeah. And it’s, and I think also going a little higher rep into the hypertrophy zone. And also it’s a little bit of an endurance zone that, there’s also a psychological benefit to it because if you’re aiming for five reps and they’re terrible you’re not going to want to continue to do it.

But if you can aim for eight to 12 and you’re, and you can fire them off, you’re going to feel like you’re doing something. 

Mike: I would argue though, because what is very clear at this point obviously. There’s still probably more questions than answers in terms of the science of muscle growth, because it is very complex and muscle building.

But if you look at some of the more recent stuff by guys like Eric Helms Greg Knuckles, Brad Schoenfeld, Mike Zortos, it’s very clear that Rep ranges in terms of muscle building low can work just as well as high and vice up to a point you get too high and now you’re really just talking about muscle endurance But if you’re talking about four to six versus ten to twelve You probably can build muscle just as effectively over the long term in both of those rep ranges I’d say personally I might argue that four to six would be Might be more beneficial over the longterm.

If you had to just pick one, ideally you’d work in both as you get more proficient. But the point is you have to take your sets close to failure. That’s the key. And I would argue, especially for guys. And again, this is one of the reasons why I like, especially newer guys who are newer to weightlifting to lift heavier weights is doing five reps sets at an RPA of seven to eight.

I think might Is much more enjoyable than 10 to 12 reps. That’s because 10 to 12 rep true hard sets suck. Dude to 10 12 rep real sets of squats. It sucks deadlifts. That sucks. And I don’t even know if I’d recommend that because I would say it might even be dangerous. That’s me being a little bit hyperbolic, but I would never recommend somebody doing 15 to 20 rep sets of deadlifts am wraps or something, unless they were very experienced weightlifters and they knew that they’re not going to fuck their shit up.

But yeah, sure. Do a 10 to 12 rep set of bicep curls to failure. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. But. 

Rob: If you’re doing a squat, if you’re doing a fatigue, there’s, if you’re doing 10 to 12 reps of squats or deadlifts, there’s fatigue that sets in. And when you’re, and 

Mike: there’s lactic acid and everything’s on fire, it sucks.

It really actually sucks. Yeah. It’s painful to be said for that, where you’re. If you’re going into the gym and you look at your workout for the day and you know it’s going to suck. You’re like, Oh, I have to do five sets of 10 on the squat and then I have to do another five sets of 10 on the leg press and then finish with something else.

Yeah, that’s good. You can, you force yourself through it, but are you going to be able to force yourself through that? For how long? How long until you’re just like, nah and you don’t necessarily even have a backup. So you’re in, and I’ve seen it firsthand where people, and I’ll say this, I’ll say, Look, you could take the most perfect diet or training program.

Perfect from a scientific perspective, it couldn’t get better based on our current understanding of the literature and of the physiology. But if you don’t like them, they’re not for you. And if you don’t actually enjoy following that diet, don’t do it. Because There are non negotiable things like energy balance, macronutrient balance, only a few.

There’s only a few flexible principles that are very accommodating that you have to follow. Everything else is negotiable. Is it optimal the way that you want to do it? Maybe not, but. If you can stick to it, that’s what matters because long term compliance is the key. And the same thing goes for training.

If you are given the absolute best possible program for where you’re at and where you want to be, but you hate doing it, then you shouldn’t do it. You should find something that is less than optimal in an abstract sense, but actually more optimal because you’re going to be able to stick to it and enjoy it.

Rob: That’s a good point. People ask the question, what’s the best exercise? What’s the best cardio? What’s the best of this? And the answer is always whatever you enjoy doing. Doesn’t matter. Do obviously there’s ones that are better than the other, but if you’re not going to come back, it 

Mike: really depends, right?

That’s the answer, but it 

Rob: depends. Yeah. It’s yeah, exactly. It’s if it’s walking your dog that, that’s the thing you enjoy most, you’re not going to really get any benefits. But if you’re talking about the difference. between, 

Mike: should I Blake or should I row or should I dog?

Yeah. Which one do you like? Yeah. 

Rob: Yeah. Listen Mike there’s a whole nother section that we, I want to talk about and I’m going to have to bring you back on the show for it. But I want to talk about nutrition because in a different episode, You have very, and it go, it’s so interesting after talking to you and getting to know you, everything that you do makes so much sense to me.

Because it’s so and it’s, but it’s great because it’s so specific. You are a very specific guy. You approach things in a very specific way. And it’s just, it’s who you are. And, but it’s the great thing is that, nobody has to wonder what you think because it’s right there in front of you.

And it’s true. I’d love to dive into nutrition next time. I wanna bring you back on if people who are listening, it’s a great cliffhanger for them too, to go check out what you’re doing because you’ve got your podcast, you have your YouTube videos, you have your websites and your supplements and everything like that.

Tell everybody where they can find you and, and basically the places you like to hang out. 

Mike: Yeah. Muscle for life. com is the hub. I think that’s the best place to go. So it’s muscle for life. com. And there you’ll find a ton of articles that I’ve written. And I have a couple of people that write with me, which is nice.

And everything that is published under my name, I write sometimes I’ll get first drafts, but then I go through and I rip them apart and turn them into something that I like. And but there’s also a couple other guys that do a good job and together we tackle all kinds of content. Yeah. All kinds of things that in some cases are things that are just interesting to us and we hope other people will find interesting should you do cardio or weights first?

That was, I think, the last article that I published on Muscle for Life because I get asked that and I was like, Oh, that’d be fun to research and write about. In other cases, it’s more just pillar staple content that people, how do you lose weight fast, right? So I wrote a very long piece on that.

So muscleforlife. com, you can find the podcast articles. And if you want to check out the supplements, they’re in the store on Muscle for Life, even though there’s, Obviously, Legion has its own website, legionathletics. com. Muscle for Life is a good place to check everything out. 

Rob: Awesome. Mike, thanks so much for coming on.

This was great. I’m glad I got to chat with you. 

Mike: Yes, sir. Thank you for having me. 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.

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 podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at musclefullife. 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.

Oh, and before you leave, let me quickly tell you about one other product of mine that I think you might like. Specifically, my newest book, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now this book was fun to write because it really is my personal and 100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for transformation both inside and outside of the gym.

And I promise you that it will provide you with new and valuable knowledge and skills that you will use for the rest of your life. In short, I wrote this book to help you fix the things that are most holding you back from doing and achieving the things you care most about. If you want to learn how to overcome the mental blocks that are making you unmotivated, unhappy, and unhealthy, then the Little Black Book of Workout Motivation is for you.

And you can find it on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, and I should also mention that you can get the audiobook 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 commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth.

More valuable and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my audio book for free, simply go to www.workoutmotivationbook.com/audiobook and you will be forwarded to Audible. And then just click the signup today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to my little Black book for free.