Ep. #632: How Brannen Used Bigger Leaner Stronger to Lose 15 Pounds and Beat Depression

Mike: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Muscle For Life. I’m Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to hear Brennan’s story. Now, Brannan used my bigger, leaner, stronger book and workout and diet program. To go from a not very fit, 186 pounds to a very fit 171 pounds. And just as importantly, if not more Brandon also beat depression, anxiety, and an alcohol habit along the way as well.

Now, before Brandon found me in my work, he was having a rough time. He was going through marital problems. He had moved across the country and he was emotionally exhausted and he didn’t have a support network in the way of family or friends to help him through it. That’s where alcohol came into the picture.

As a coping mechanism, which of course only accelerated his mental and his physical decline. And when he hit rock bottom, Brandon felt like he really did not have much going for him. But he found my book Bigger Than Stronger and he decided to take control of one thing he knew he could do something about, and that was his health and fitness.

So he started to implement my advice. He started to plan his meals according to the principals taught in the book. He started to do the workouts and he was surprised with how quickly he was getting results and how motivated this was making him feel, and how that in turn was motivating him to do better in other areas of his life.

Like his work, for instance, and his personal development, he started reading more books on how to be a healthier. Happier and more effective human. And today, Brandon feels like a whole new person. He has transformed his body and his mind and his life, and in this episode, you are going to hear his story as well as some of the important lessons that he has learned along the way, including getting back into the gym after a long break that included his health spiraling down.

Brandon also talks about what it was like to put order back into his life and how to overcome negative thoughts and grief and avoid a victim mindset and more so if you are looking for a little jolt of inspiration and maybe a little bit of motivation as. And if you like hearing stories of how other people have used the fundamentals of good evidence-based fitness to transform their physique and transform their life.

This episode’s for you. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we’re on. Because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research.

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Please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. Hey Brennan, welcome to my podcast man. Thanks for taking the time to do this. Hello, Mike. How you doing today? Good, thanks. Staying busy back in the gym officially, I’ve now I’ve had something interesting.

To post on my Instagram for as far as workouts. Cause previously I’ve just been doing these home workouts. I have some dumbbells and I have some bands and I’ve done quite well with them, for six months or so. That’s what I was doing. But it didn’t make for very interesting social media posts like, Hey look, I’m doing the same three exercises again for the fourth month in a row.

So now I’m finally back into a gym. The gyms are open here in Virginia, and so that’s, It’s actually, I’m really looking forward to working out again, just because I was forced to go so long without a barbell, oh, 

Brannen: yeah. Totally. I was in that situation for about two months, right after I returned from the desert.

I, I had a decent little setup in my garage, ordered what I could order. I got a pretty much everything set for being able to acquire a bar and some weights. Yep. But I have recently, over the past three weeks, been able to get back into a work gym. They opened that up, so it’s been a huge relief and got me right back on track.

Mike: Nice. How has it been in terms of your performance? Are you noticing a big decline in strength or how has your body responding now that you’re able to do your normal workouts? Once I got 

Brannen: back in there, my body responded quite well, cuz during those two months I was out, I did a lot of I went back into a hybrid.

Lifting as much as I could with the stuff I had and then tying in some functional and making sure that, I was still flexible and and getting some cardio in. Yes. And staying healthy and lean. I had to cut back on my calories a little bit just cause I couldn’t push the heavy weights. And I ended up getting down to about 165, which is a little light for me, but it was good cause when I got back in, I’ve already put on six pounds in the past three weeks.

Yeah, that’s 

Mike: great. Building that back up. That’s what I am getting at for people listening. If you are not back in the gym yet, regardless of how consistent or inconsistent you’ve been with your home workouts, if you don’t have a full home gym set up again, I don’t. I just have dumbbells and bands and so I hadn’t deadlifted for six months.

I’ve deadlifted now for the second time yesterday in six months. And it looks like my one RM is down maybe 10 or 15 pounds. That’s it. And that just. Shows the effectiveness of with a pretty basic setup, so long as you get in enough volume and so long as it’s heavy enough. It doesn’t have to be the normal heavy stuff if you are used to that style of training.

And that’s more the style of training I’m used to, even though my training has been periodized before Covid, I was following essentially what is. New second edition of Beyond Bigger Lean, Stronger, that program. So I was doing that about eight months and the weights on the compounds range from 10 reps is the highest.

So probably 75. I’d have to looking at the spreadsheet. 70, 75% of one rep max, so that’s the highest rep or the lightest weight that you’re gonna be pushing on the compounds. But then it gets real heavy. You are doing some AM wraps with 95%, for example. You don’t do much of that. That’s pretty heavy.

And so to switch from that to mostly eight to 10, in some cases, even 10 to 12, just because of the limitation of the dumbbells, I was able to preserve all my muscle for sure. And like you, I added in extra cardio cuz I had the time to do it. I wasn’t driving to the gym every day into work, for example. So I was like, shit, I’ll just hop on the bike.

And I didn’t change my diet so I lost nine pounds of, I mean it’s not all fat, obviously there’s some water and glycogen that comes out, but lost quite a bit of fat and lost no muscle. And now I’m back in the gym and it’s encouraging to see that, I think within four to six weeks of being back under and over the bar, I will, I think I’ll be able to just carry on really from where I left off at a slightly lower body weight.

And I need to take that into account as well with my strength. But for anybody listening, so if you’ve been able to do. Something similar to that, even if it was just body weight and band workouts, and you might look a little bit smaller because you have lost some of the fluid size, like maybe you haven’t actually lost any muscle tissue to speak of, but you just don’t have as much of a residual pump because you can’t train the way you normally train, and so you just look a little bit smaller.

Just know that whatever you have lost in the way of just sarcoplasmic the fluid you’re gonna get that back immediately once you’re in the gym. And even if you have lost some muscle, some actual lean muscle tissue because of muscle memory, it’s a very real phenomenon, and this is Brandon, you’re experiencing that you’re gonna gain back whatever muscle you might have lost very quickly.

It’s gonna be like newbie gains plus for probably the first four to six weeks, which is just fun. Basically, when you get back into your normal routine, you’ll just be adding weight to the bar every week. Like it was a good old days, yeah, 

Brannen: exactly. And that’s actually exactly what’s happening right now.

And I total, I think when I went back in, I had lost about 15, likewise about 15 pounds off of most of my one rms. And my rep weights my squat took the biggest hit. Yep. 

Mike: Same. I actually, I noticed, I was like, Okay, deadlift feels pretty good, actually. I was a little bit surprised. Yeah. Bench press.

I was like, shit, this also feels really good. I’ve been doing a lot of dumbbell print. Pressing that’s it. And get under a barbell and be like, shit, I’m almost right where I left off squat though, not so much. Squat was hard. Yeah, I’d have to look. What did I did? I’ve only squatted barbell squatted once now I did my first squat session last week.

I wanna say it was probably low 200 s for sets of eight to 10, and I wasn’t trying to push myself too close. Instead of leaving maybe one or two reps in the tank like I normally would, a higher intensity set, I was backing off a little bit, three or four, only because. I have been doing probably about 15, no, call it 12.

12, let’s say 12 to 15 hard sets per week for my lower body while under lockdown. But I was limited to basically dumbbell front squats. Like these are the only exercises that were difficult enough to warrant doing. Basically. I had dumbbell front squats. Those were actually pretty hard, and I had lunges.

Lunges are hard. You don’t need to use that much weight to make ’em hard. And I had like Nordic hamstring curls if my wife or my brother-in-law was here for a bit, if I had somebody like hold my legs, I could do that. But I was pretty limited to just a lot of dumbbell front squats and a lot of lunges split squats as well.

I could do some of that. And so there was only a handful of options. So now that I’m back, like getting under the bar and getting in the leg press, I was like, Eh, for the first few weeks, I’m not gonna go. All out like I was, before covid. And the same thing with dead lifting. I’m gonna ease back into it with the goal of being back to my pre covid numbers within four to six weeks, 

Brannen: right?

Yeah. You don’t wanna, I did the same thing. I didn’t wanna jump in and like completely shock my body after, two months of not being able to get 80%, typically 90% above. For anybody listening to it was entirely encouraging. Like my first day back out of the gym, my first day in the gym and when I got done with my workout, I was literally just able to say to myself, Oh, thank God my work over the past two months.

Saved a lot. I only lost 15 pounds off my bench, if I just sat around 

Mike: and that’s the small enough decrease that it really could just be chalked up to you’ve lost some weight, so you’re at a lower body weight, you’d expect to lose a little bit of strength just with that alone, right?

And not too much if you also maintained muscle, but just having lower glycogen levels, for example, can impact your performance. So as your body weight goes down, you can expect your whole body strength to go down at least a little bit. And then there’s the skill component. There is a little bit of skill.

Obviously the bench press is, it’s not a golf swing or it’s not hitting a fast ball, but there is a skill component and that skill will decay if we’re not in dumbbell pressing is similar, but it is different enough that just doing a bunch of dumbbell pressing is not going to preserve. Form, especially if we’re looking at more of the smaller points that make more of a difference as you get more experienced and as the weights get heavier.

And so that alone can take a couple of reps. If you just let your skilled degrade on the squat deadlift bench press overhead, press that alone can take several reps off of your working weights right there. 

Brannen: And that’s another reason you don’t wanna try to jump right back into your last heavy weight from months ago.

Exactly. So take it easy on your, the muscles that are used to it, 

Mike: for a little while. Totally. Something I’ve noticed also, this is interesting because it had been so long since I took any tie, any real time off of squatting and deadlift in particular. So the night of my first squat session in six months, I slept okay, but I woke.

Sweaty and it definitely took a little bit of a toll in my body. And again, these were not extremely difficult sets, really not. The weight was not heavy. I just was doing higher reps, mostly just to get a feel for the movement again and get under at least a little bit of weight, put my body weight on the bar a little bit more and just get a feel for the movement again.

But that plus some leg pressing. And then I did some leg extensions, like what would’ve been a totally normal workout. I would’ve done it normally with quite a bit more weight and I would’ve noticed no after effects in terms of recovery. That night I was like, Damn, I feel this. Like again, I woke up just sweaty and I felt like my.

Had worked a lot harder than it was used to. And the same thing with deadlifting. I deadlifted yesterday and I woke up last night just congested. I had to blow my nose. That never happens. I’m not sick. It was just interesting. I could feel that my body was like, What the fuck was that? 

Brannen: Yeah.

And I think towards the end of this week, this would be the no week four back of the gym for. Now I’m like starting to like, okay, am I over training now? Cause I’m like got through those newbie games again. Like I said, I’m stacking late every week. It’s coming back fast. But yeah, I’ve started to notice my mood slip a little bit.

My temper going up, getting agitated and hungry all the time. So I like so I. Bring in some balance here too. 

Mike: Yeah. Maybe it’s time to take a deload. That’s what I’m gonna do for people listening, if you’re wondering. So I made a post on Instagram about this. Basically, I’m just gonna work over the next four to six weeks.

I’m gonna work my weights on the deadlift, squat, bench, press, and overhead press back to, this is my goal. At least. We’ll see if I can do it, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that I’ll be able to work those back to my pre covid. Numbers and then I’m going to deload and then I’m gonna start back up on a very similar training program to what I was doing previously, which again, really is just BBLs 2.0.

And I’m gonna change it slightly because I’m not going to the gym five days a week like I was previously. I’m doing three days for the big compound, so I’m gonna do my benching, my squatting, and my dead lifting at the gym. And then I’m gonna do a couple of workouts at home, which are gonna be more body part related.

Like I’ll do a little bit of extra pressing at home with my dumbbells as well as some arms. And I’m gonna do some shoulders. I’ll probably still, I like doing these standing push presses and I’ll do some side raises and some rear raises and probably. A little bit of extra pulling probably. I’ll probably do some pullups.

But anyway, that’s for people wondering. That’s what I’m doing. And if you wanna learn more about how to get back into the gym effectively, just head over to legion athletics.com and head over to the blog and you’ll find an article that is pinned somewhere toward the top. I think the top is an AMA, isn’t Ask me anything where you can ask me questions and the comments and you can, I will answer them.

And then, I think the next one is, it might be home workouts or it might be this getting back in the gym. But anyway, I’m hijacking the interview. This is something that I’ve had to resist the urge to do. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. So I’m gonna pass the mic back to you and let’s rewind to where you were in your journey.

Actually, let’s do this. Let’s first give a snapshot of where you’re at right now in terms of your, let’s just look at your fitness and your body composition and what your transformation has looked like strictly in terms of body composition, before you found me and after. And then let’s go back to the beginning and get into the details and learn how you got here and what some of the unique challenges were that you had to overcome.

Okay. Yeah, 

Brannen: absolutely. Yeah, So when I started this out, I was 186 pounds, which actually was not the heaviest I had been before, and I’ve worked out on and off throughout my life. But at this point I was pretty outta shape and 186 pounds, 35 inch waist just wrecked from the inside out. From a lot of things that were going on in my personal life leading up to that, yeah, 35 inch waist, 186 pounds, just not in good shape.

I could feel it in everything. So right now I’m got a 31 inch waist. I’m hovering between like 12 and 14% body fat. I was down to 10 briefly during the covid thing. Let’s see, 171 pounds as of this morning, 13 and a half inch biceps. 42 inch 

Mike: chest. Nice. That’s great. Yeah, so it’s quite a big difference.

So you went from no abs to abs as well as I’m sure more muscle everywhere else on your body as well. I’m sure you’re a lot stronger now than you were before. Tenfold. 

Brannen: This is the first time I’ve really done the high weight, low rep form. My previous eras of working out in my life had been, your typical, three sets of 10 until it got easy and then I would move up.

Yep. Or, tie that in with a lot of cardio and functional and which that has a place too. But I never really saw the gains in that. I’d always find. Easy to get stuck in a cycle and not really progress. So that was one of the reasons I really enjoyed this program is because it laid it out for me, and especially the time and mindset I was in when I started this.

I needed something that was laid out for me. Like I literally did not even have the head space to design a program for myself again. So it was like boom. You do this. And then I read BLS and saw them, the numbers behind it, the research and everything. I’m like this is it. I know I can do this.

My brother actually turned me onto this right before I deployed. He called me and was like, Hey, Cause he just started as well. Have you heard of Mike Matthews? I was like, No, I haven’t. And he was like check it out. Here’s the bls. And so I did, I brought it with me and onto that deployment, and it took me a couple weeks to get started and then I cracked into it and haven’t looked back.

Mike: Yeah, I love it. I love it. I remember that experience. For me when I first started lifting, the way that I talk about in bigger, Leaner, Stronger and beyond, bigger Lean Stronger as well, which is gonna feel very familiar to people who, like you, have been doing bigger, lean, stronger for a bit. It’s just gonna be a bit more difficult.

But I remember after a month or so of training that way, and then also combining that with effective dieting and nutrition for the first time, like actually understanding energy balance and macronutrient balance. , it was like a revelation. It was the realization like, Oh wow, this is really it. It really is this simple.

This is all I need to probably get to where I wanna be. And it turned out that I was right. I of course did take it a bit further with Beyond, Bigger, Stronger, But I talk about this in the book and I’m gonna be talking. When I release the book that bigger, lean, stronger for many people is really all that they are going to need.

If a guy just wants to gain, let’s say 25, maybe 30 pounds of muscle, and that’s it, that’s the type of physique that he wants, and he wants to be probably around 10% body fat, he probably doesn’t need anything. Other than bigger, leaner, stronger, he may like beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, just because it’s nice to learn more and to try some different things in the gym and some different things in the kitchen simply for the sake of novelty and variety.

But for people who don’t really care about that and they’re like, Eh, if I could just do bigger, leaner stronger, and just rinse and repeat that for a couple of years and be done, and then look at how I wanna maintain my physique, which you could do in many different ways, then that’s an option. And so that’s cool.

I just remember that moment where it really clicked for me, and it was now one of those things that I just didn’t have to think about anymore. There was no more having to try to solve this puzzle, 

Brannen: yeah. And I was happy to find your work because it was difficult over the years to find anybody who could lay out a program and tell you exactly how and why it works and why it’s not, a bunch of BS that’s been spun up.

Over a hype or trendy moves or this or that. So it really cut down right to the chase and kept it simple but very well fleshed out. That’s really what I liked about it as well. 

Mike: Yeah. No, I understand. So why don’t you tell me and tell everybody listening a bit about what was going on when you first found my work, cuz you’ve obviously alluded to some problems.

What, what was going on? 

Brannen: So I guess I can back this up to probably towards the end of 2018 and I’ll go through this part quickly. I had just gotten back from another deployment then as well. Me and a wife at the time had a PCs orders out to California from Florida. I got back from a deployment, we PCs out to California.

I’m here at Travis Air Force Base now. So that was, it took us two moves to do that and certainly after we got here, There was some things that, in our marriage that had been, I guess not well worked on the things started to fall apart really quick. And so from around the beginning of 2019, for about seven months up to my deployment this last time around, it was just emotionally absolutely terrifyingly exhausting.

I, and I’m past blame. I don’t blame anybody for anything they did. It ended up being a very toxic mess for both of us. And, there’s obviously a lot of lessons I’ve learned throughout the whole thing, but the shape I was in at the time is really no less than hell. Know, and I had alcohol in the mix too.

We’re working night shifts, wasn’t sleeping, We didn’t have any support structure out here. No friends. I didn’t know anybody, no close friends out here, family. So it was just very difficult. And all these demons came out, and on both our sides. And it ended you, We had two more moves once we got here too.

We, so we moved from the off base housing to on base housing and then right in the middle of our marital breakdown. And it was just, I was in this place to where I literally, like my reality was completely changed. I feel like I, I lost a sense of real I know I lost a sense of reality. Anxiety started coming up, depression, working night shift, like I said, and then sleep deprivation and marital breakdown, and oh, I just kept stacking up.

And then, so I ended up, through the seven months, we tried, were on and off, and it just, it became evident that it was not going to work. So I ended up filing for divorce. She moved back to Florida and I was here by myself to clear that house out and moved up stuff into the storage to go on a deployment.

So two weeks after I had filed for divorce, I went on another deployment. So by the time I got there, it was I was literally in a place where I never thought I would be almost 40 years old, divorcing no kids. Didn’t feel like I really had much. The state of depression and anxiety, and once that can really truly get a hold of you after you’ve ented to a certain point, is absolutely the most scariest thing on the planet.

And on top of it I got over that place and I was in a leadership aid leadership position. There’s a bunch of people I barely knew cause I had just gotten to this space, Not really used to the aircraft I was working on either. So while at the same time I was glad to go on this deployment, I was, words can hardly describe you, just, I’m sure some people might know where I’m coming from, but you get to a point where you just feel like you’re not coming back.

And that really absolutely scared the living hell outta. Like I said, my brother had introduced me to BLS already. Just through phone conversations, right before I deployed, I was over there. It was just get up, get to work, do what I had to do, meet people, get to know my troops. Every day was extremely just, I had to push and push and push every day, but at the end of the it was just, I had to go home and then start to process what the hell had just happened in my life.

So that’s when I started looking at, okay, I have got to do something. I gotta find some way to start sifting my way out of this mess. And that’s where I looked at, okay, there are some things I know that actions I know that I can take that will help me. And I knew at this point that I was in the proverbial.

Transition crawling out of hell battle that I was going to have to do something with in my life, or I wasn’t gonna come back. Not all the way. So yeah, I was like first thing is the workout. I dove into bls, read that, started the workouts as I was reading that I knew that I needed to eat well. I know I needed to make sleeping priority.

No staying up. It was to the point where if I got less than six hours of. There was even more confusion 

Mike: and Of course, yeah. Yeah. Even if you’re doing well, I didn’t sleep so well last night. I chuck it up to the deadlift again. Woke up a couple of times just felt like my, Yeah, like my nervous system was just a bit more agitated than usual maybe, but I don’t know.

I maybe slept six and a half hours last night, and there was a time when I was younger. Spoken about this years ago where it was like clockwork. I would be working at night almost every night, and I would work probably up until 1130 and then be in bed by 1145, fall asleep in five minutes, black out unconscious sleep for six and a half hours, wake up before my alarm every day.

And I did that for years and years as I’ve gotten a little bit older and I’ve had kids, I’m a lighter sleeper now, and I was having some sleep issues for a little bit, but now I was having trouble just staying asleep. But now that’s not the case. However, I am a lighter sleeper now, and so six hours of sleep, six and a half.

Five, six years ago felt great. I had no symptoms of being under rested, great workouts, whatever. Right now I feel it a little bit, and that’s just one night. It’s so obnoxious. Sleep is so obnoxious like that where you can have perfect sleep hygiene. You could have a string of 45 days of perfect sleep, and then one night of six hours of sleep is enough to make a difference.

The fact that it makes any difference at all is again, it’s just annoying, right? Because with your diet, of course, that’s not the case. If you had one. Day a week where your diet is wacky. Let’s look at the nutrition, right? So if you are eating a lot of nutritious foods five, six days a week and then one or two days a week, your diet is, you don’t throw that completely out the window but you’re just not eating as many calories.

Cause it’s a weekend, let’s say, and you are having a barbecue. And so it doesn’t mean you’re gonna eat bad, but you’re not going to eat your normal six servings or four servings of vegetables and fruit and your whole grains. It’s gonna be a bit more random. You could do that forever and be perfectly healthy.

Have exactly the body composition you want. Never notice a difference. Of course. Same thing with training. You just have to be good enough sleep though, just punishes you one bad night of sleep, you immediately get punished regardless of how good you’ve been. And that’s when you’re doing well. So like you said, when you are not doing so well, sleep is only gonna, or lack of sleep is really just going to turn the volume up, right on these other issues.

Oh yeah. 

Brannen: And it was driving it home even further, everything was going on. I had to maintain this balance and it was this perfect balance if I couldn’t do too much, cuz I was absolutely emotionally, mentally, and spiritually just burnt out, so I couldn’t do too much. Literally I couldn’t, And then but I couldn’t do too less or I’d be set back in.

So I had to maintain this perfect balance. I’m like, it was a good thing I was on the deployment because that makes me work 13 hours a day. And I could have that kind of routine there, but I knew I had to get that sleep, like you’re saying. And then I was like, Okay, I gotta relax my mind and I have to challenge it at the same time.

So I just started reading books, just working out reading books, obviously when I wasn’t work, working out reading books, and I’m like, ok. And then before I know I had gotten this little basket. Basic disciplines that I could use. I knew that if nothing else, if my mind and my emotions were completely just out of whack and completely fucked all day long.

I knew that as long as I had did those couple of things. For a long enough time, I was going to be crawling, slowly, crawling my way out of this, yep. And that was working out, eating well. That’s 

Mike: a pretty simple therapy protocol, honestly. Work a lot. Yeah. Eat well, work out and read 

Brannen: books and it was so awesome when you start, when I’d start seeing the cracks of light come through, where like all of a sudden after a month or so, like I would get that, it took about a month or so to even get like my first endorphin hit, or dopamine hit.

And it came out the gym one day. I was like, he was like, bam. I was like, Oh my God, I feel awesome. And then went in, I started like excitedly running through my books, and that was, I remember that being one of my first big breaks out, out of the darkness. then, so I was like, what I’m doing is working, and I knew I had a long way to go, but then, this kind of got me thinking too. I was like, you know what? I’m disciplining myself. Right now, like this is the most basic form of discipline you can possibly get down to is nobody’s gonna, even on deployment, nobody’s gonna make me eat.

Nobody’s gonna make me go to the gym. Nobody’s gonna make me go to bed on time. Nobody, I’m a grown ass man. But I was like the basic, most basic form of discipline and I was doing it and I was like, Okay, this is always going to be my baseline. I don’t care how good I get, five years, I might be awesome in one year.

I might be awesome again, I will keep doing this because this works. If everything else falls apart one day, or in a day, I can, I know I can always come back to, okay, read a book, work out, so on so forth that as they have to mention stuff. What I learned along that route too is that discipline started equaling the ability to relinquish control.

What do you mean by that? Okay. So there’s things we can and can’t control, right? And as a discipline is actually more about controlling the things that we can and should control, right? So then by doing so, by walking up to that edge, The line between what we can and cannot control becomes more visible.

So then what we can’t control becomes more obvious and we can just let it go and leave that to grace. But we are controlling, so it kinda puts things into categories and you can see them easier for disciplining yourself, a chef control over more and what you don’t. And for me that was big.

Cause I think when you’re not doing any discipline for yourself, then you get those two things confused very easily. And we tend, as humans go into this I gotta change my entire situation, cause I don’t feel good. 

Mike: Or maybe think that nothing is under control. Maybe you just lose that sense of agency altogether.

Brannen: Yeah. And yeah, either you end up controlling nothing or 

Mike: controlling, trying to control way too much, right? Yeah. 

Brannen: Trying to control all these factors. You can’t because you think you know that it is your circumstance that’s killing you. So I found that just by laying out you enough. Again, for anybody listening and you find the discipline that works for you, you just keep doing that and you can start to let go.

It’s like a tenfold letting go process. You can let go of the things you are controlling because now you’re disciplining. Right now. You don’t have to worry about all those things that you should be doing. 

Mike: Cause eventually you just put ’em on autopilot. It becomes, We’re talking about your new normal.

Yeah, we’re talking about habits. It becomes now you’re more likely to continue doing the things that you want to be doing than you. It would take more effort to not do them because it becomes so ingrained, 

Brannen: right? Yeah. So we can let those go because we know we’re doing them. Then we can also kinda let go of the things we found along the way that we realize we have no control over.

So we can just kinda let those go and know that. And then that’s where like things like, having some faith in the process and letting a little bit of grace back us up with those areas that we can’t control. That’s where that kind of comes in. But as long as you got your ship together, then things start to tend to eventually work out for you.

Mike: Yeah, I think that there’s definitely something to be said for when you start putting order into your immediate vicinity, right? And that starts with the stuff we’re talking about, putting order into how you eat and how you take care of your body. And that would be exercise, that would be sleep hygiene that you naturally then start.

Maybe it’s just a matter of confidence or there’s, you just build up momentum and you start putting order into more of your environment and that if you keep that process up over time, you can have quite a bit under control and you can still have quite a bit not under control. And I would say that if we look at it from the perspective of a game, you need stuff to be not under control.

How boring would it be if everything in our lives. We’re under our control, truly if we didn’t have to, and especially if we didn’t even have to really work that hard for it. That might sound appealing at first glance, and it might come with some relief. But think about that. Think about that. Really think of that condition for a year and how boring it actually would be.

Like we need random stuff to happen. We need obstacles, we need stuff to not be under our control to even have a life worth living. And that’s a personal perspective of mine. So when I have random things pop up that are in the way of what I want to do, I don’t necessarily look at that as a bad sign or that it’s like the universe or God or depending on how religious or not, they are telling me, Oh, you’re not supposed to do that.

I would say if there. Random, extremely negative things that are happening and that rarely happens, then I would stop and I would reflect, but my reflection would be more on, Alright, what am I doing to bring this upon myself? Why is this happening? But if it is, I’m playing this game and now I have new big obstacles that are in the way because I’m trying to achieve this big goal.

I look at that as part of playing the game. 

Brannen: Exactly. And the things that you can’t control that keep life interesting and not boring happens more often when you’re doing shit. If nothing is coming your way to knock you off your feet, you’re probably not doing much. And I was there times in my life where I had everything under control, but guess what?

There was nothing going on in my life. But yeah, that just happened to me recently act a couple days ago actually. I’m working on a. A project outside of everything else. And the domain I was looking for ended up being taken and I had this whole concept behind this name and all that, And it was flattening at first, but then I was like, Okay, okay, this is like the fifth or sixth thing, like you were saying, fifth or sixth thing, it’s already popped up to get in the way of this.

And what am I doing to bring it on? Or what’s going on here? And somebody, you ask yourself these things, you can find answers. I think for me it was, I probably didn’t do enough research and. Maybe. Maybe there’s a little bit of impatience, so let me re-attack this, from a different angle and bring in some more patience or whatnot, and that’s just adjusting as we go is really what 

Mike: it is. Totally. And there’s a difference between that and, okay, you’re trying to work on this project and then you drive to the grocery store and get hit by a car. Now you’re in the hospital. I understand. Those are completely different things. And in the latter case, if it were me, again, that’s where I actually would reflect on a personal level.

Like what am I doing to deserve such a, an unproductive, destructive occurrence? That’s my personal, and I’d have to probably record a whole separate podcast on why I think that even in the case of something like that appears to be totally random, there is an element of personal responsibility and that I, if it were me, I probably could find something that I would say, the things that I was doing over here, even if it was just a matter of doing things that I know are wrong. For example, we all have our own ideas of what is right and wrong, and if we break our integrity and continually do things that are really what it comes down to is more destructive than constructive.

And that could be to ourselves or to people around us or people who are counting on us. We feel guilty about it and I’ve noticed this, that the more that I am. Carrying around some sense of guilt like that. And sometimes we can hide it and sometimes we don’t really notice it. But the more that is the case, the more likely I have been to receive random, unwanted, not disasters, but let’s just say occurrences or effects.

And on the flip side, maybe it just comes down to honesty, but the cleaner, quote, unquote, I am and again, this is very much a personal thing, like there are things that I would consider immoral that some other people would not like pirating music. I wouldn’t do it. I’ll buy it because I just don’t believe in.

Pirating stuff that people put a lot of time and money into, I believe paying for it, that’s just an example, right? But for me, the more I live in line with my principles of what I think is right and wrong, I’ve just noticed that the smoother my life is in terms of the random things that occur are not just completely counterproductive or destructive or out of left field.

Like they’re more directly a consequence of the games I’m playing and are more manifesting as obstacles that can be overcome. And once I have overcome those obstacles, I’m now a little bit closer to my goal as opposed to, Oh, take divorce, for example, and marital problems I would consider like that’s an arena that nobody wants.

Enter, like that’s never going to be an obstacle that you’re like, Ooh, if I just overcome this, I’ll be a little bit closer to an awesome goal. And obviously I don’t say that as a criticism. We’ve all, anyone who has been in a relationship for a long time has had to work through problems. And it can be very distracting and very upsetting, and it can tie up a lot of time and energy.

And again, any of us who have been with someone for a long time, we’ve experienced that to some degree. And so in the case of, your project and okay, you wanted to use this domain shit, the domain has taken, okay that’s an obstacle that, again, if it’s me, I don’t look at that as. Am I getting in my own way?

Am I through how I’m conducting myself? Am I causing myself unnecessary problems? To me, I would just look at that as, ah, this is part of the game. And like you said, I think that’s a good point of maybe I should have done a bit more research before I put a lot of time into a domain that isn’t available.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve looked into this, but many domains are for sale, even if they’re not listed for sale. So you can pull up the, who is information, you can get a contact, you could reach out and see if you could buy it as well. 

Brannen: Yeah. I’ve seen that through through my work since then.

I think to back up what you’re saying too, I think when we’re lighter and we’re going through life with, in accordance with our values, those obstacles, maybe they pop up either way, whether. It’s just how we perceive them at the time. And if we’re living accordance to our values and we’re feeling positive, we know those things do present themselves more easily as obstacles rather than the other side of the coin where we might end up initially taking them personally, which makes them, a lot more difficult to circumnavigate until you, are aware of it.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

If you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. So you’re on deployment and now you’re building up some momentum in the gym and you’re starting to notice effects elsewhere.

What happens next? At this 

Brannen: point I’ve got my, like I said, I’ve got my low hanging fruit just on autopilot, right? This is what I’m doing every day. And so then that gave me just a baseline of a healthy enough vessel to start processing everything that was going on. And that’s when, the emotions started really going through what they call the grief process.

And that was a very difficult thing to navigate and to be aware of when you’re going through it. And there was times where I just, it can feel so overwhelming, remember Sitting outside my room one evening I just felt like the worst person on the planet, I was like, I might as well be a bum.

I had, and like my mind started going This, all this, you don’t have this and you don’t have that, and there’s nothing, You don’t have anything and blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden, and I just kinda let it do that, by your mind’s going to go places where you don’t want it to go and you’re not gonna be able to stop it.

You can sometimes when you have to, but most of the time you need to kinda let it do a thing, but maintain awareness instead of a kind of, instead of believing everything, 

Mike: surf the wave of emotion as psychologists will talk about. Yep. Don’t fight it, just acknowledge it. And even if it’s uncomfortable, okay, then just be uncomfortable.

Brannen: Yep. And in this case, on this particular day too, it was . It was just like I, I was like, Oh my God. I’m like, I’m just gonna be a bomb on the street, forever. And all but the funny thing is, once you let those thoughts pass, then all of a sudden something will come behind it that kind of brings balance to it, right?

And that’s what exactly happened on this. Like all of a sudden I was like, I remembered a story about, I can’t remember his name, some millionaire who at 45 years old had two pennies to rub together and actually was homeless and now he’s a millionaire. I’m like, for some reason that thought just popped into my head.

I’m like, Okay, I do have some things. Let’s get to work. And by this point, the emotional part of it had passed. And I was like, Okay, if I have two sticks. If all I have left in my life is literally two sticks, let’s just take this analogy, right? And it’s what am I gonna do with it?

Let’s start rubbing ’em together and make a fire out of it. And that was like the metaphor I came up with in my head. And that really helped, changed my entire perspective because it’s a natural thing during, in grief to go through periods where you think, where you tend to focus on all the things you don’t have because the loss is real.

You do lose things, but that helped me bring back this perspective of what do I have? What can I make of it? I can’t be trying to wish things were different and wish I had this or had that or had this. Cause I don’t have these things right now, but I do have this stuff over here and I can start making stuff with it.

And, and that for me, I sat there and made a list, was like okay. I’ve got a functioning healthy body. Healthy in the fact that I’m not I don’t have chronic disease and my, my all my limbs work and all that, right? I have knowledge of health and fitness already, from my years of doing this on and off my own research.

And then of course with what I learned through bls. So I have knowledge of it. I was like, I have a good support structure, therefore I had relationships that could be improved on and nurtured. I had an organization that could benefit from my presence. And being me as a master sergeant, I had airman that could benefit from me mentoring them through their deployments.

I had social and leadership skills I could pull from, I had knowledge I could pass on. I had two eyes and a brain that could read. So these are the things that. Wrote down, and I think above all I had this, I knew I had a burning desire to just make something of myself, and I wasn’t gonna just sit where I was.

, And it couldn’t wait until later to start this process. So I just started doing my best every day, even if my best was only 30% on that day. I did it anyways and I capitalizing my good days and the bad days, you just take ’em in stride, yeah. 

Mike: And that’s a huge key to to really, to any undertaking that requires any amount of work is you’re not gonna be a hundred percent all of the time.

Even the best athletes in the world are not a hundred percent all of the time, and they know that being consistent is much more important than being perfect because Perfect is fleeting. It is elusive. Again, even for the best people and in athletes are an easy way to think about this, but even for the best athletes in the world, how often do you think Michael Jordan would.

Said that he played perfectly by his standards. Maybe never even a single game. Maybe there are a couple of games there. Tiger Woods, how many Perfect. Forget rounds, Tiger. How many perfect shots have you hit in your career? I would be surprised if he said more than like 10, which just goes to show again that the point is showing up in doing the work every day and just keeping the habit in place.

So you give yourself the chance to do as well as you can. And perfect, especially in the game of health and fitness. We don’t have to be perfect at anything. Yeah, maybe if you want to reach the highest levels of body building, competitive body building, you might need to have a little bit of perfect in there.

But for those of us who just want to be fit and healthy, or even say super fit and super healthy, we don’t need to be perfect. We just need to be good enough most of the time. And like you said, even if it’s a bad day, just show up and do a bad workout then. Great that you did a bad workout. Let’s go do a workout tomorrow and see how that goes.

But you did the 

Brannen: workout. And that’s a big thing, I think that’s where our biggest wins are not the days we feel perfect. That’s an easy win. We didn’t have to fight anything that day to go have an awesome workout. Cause we felt great because all the stars were aligning and life is, freaking awesome.

That’s not a battle. Even though it feels great and we need those days. Yeah, it, I think absolutely. The showing up when it sucks and this isn’t anything new, but we know that just showing up and a lot of that is confidence too. Like confidence is also like you show up with all of your garbage, all of your hangups, insecurities, but you show up anyways time and time again.

You just keep showing up, that really does go a long way to, to start separating yourself from all these negative mindsets or emotions that try to stop you. But it starts after a while, it starts to see that you’re doing it anyways and that kinda let off, 

Mike: and how did you stay away from the victim mindset?

Because considering, I’m sure you experienced a bit of that in the beginning again, considering how deep in the hole you were to start out with, how did that process go? How did you get past that and then just defeat it all together? Okay, so 

Brannen: that’s a big one, and I’m glad you asked because so many people do fall under this.

And it is a trap that can keep you stuck forever. And I think first off, I came at, early on I realized I knew what that victim mentality was and what it could do to, So I already had a little bit of awareness of that. I didn’t wanna be that the surprisingly difficult battle was. Not, it was a lot of it, but it wasn’t necessarily just a divorce or just a deployment, just a lack of energy and getting over the alcohol and all that stuff too.

It was when you go through these periods of grief, and I think everybody eventually faces these dragons at some point in their life. The surprising part was it started throwing a lot of my childhood stuff back at me, psychologically. And I started having to deal with a lot of childhood hurts and wounds that were not my fault.

Like I did not deserve that when I was a child. And so then that made that victim mentality like want to be really strong and be like, Yeah, fuck that person, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know what? And funny awareness really is the cornerstone to all this, because I was even then aware enough, okay, I’m going to have to play the victim for a month or so just so I don’t take.

It balances out this self blame thing too. So I just kinda let that be part of the process knowing that I would have to, knowing what that would do. Was it, I guess it wasn’t a, it couldn’t totally be a victim mindset if I knew it was gonna, what it was gonna do, what it was going to do for me was be able to start to recognize where things came from, and how I ended up with some attitudes that I had in areas that I needed to prove on and some hurts and some complexes that I might have. But it’s that point how you truly stay away from the victim mentality. To answer your question, even when you go through child stuff, is that at the point that you are aware of it and you know that it existed, from that point forward is your responsibility to take responsibility for it and do change it.

And that is the defining line. That is where, Okay, now I know. If I keep blaming X, Y, or Z person then I’m the victim. But if now I know and know that, this was outta my control. I didn’t deserve that, and there are some things I could have done better too, now I can take responsibility for it.

That’s the defining line, and I think that’s how I did not fall into that. I think it’s. Just as much a part of the process as all of it. It’s a huge, enormous process. 

Mike: Yeah. No, I agree. It’s not something that I’ve had to deal much with for whatever reason, I guess my hard wiring was a little bit different.

I haven’t had a tough life, especially compared to many other people’s lives in the world, forget about the west. Start learning about what some people have to go through in other parts of the world, and anybody listening, if you think you have a tough , it can be put into perspective. So I definitely did not have a tough life, but for whatever reason I’ve just never been one to blame others for.

Unwanted circumstances. I’ve always just had the inclination to again, look at myself and see is there anything that I was doing to contribute to this? Even if it’s indirectly, and even if it is almost, it would be almost on the level of, on a spiritual level, like there is no clear cause and effect.

And even if I can’t come up with any answer for that, then I would just be quick to go, Okay, what am I gonna do about it? And when I have experienced a bit, I would say a bit too much melodrama personally over situations, there is a point where, like you were saying, All right, I’ll let it run its course.

But then for me, there’s a point where I’m just like, And that’s the end of that. There’s a clear decision. We’re like, We’re done with that now that was fun and now we’re gonna do something about it. You know what. 

Brannen: Yeah. Through these processes, your awareness goes through this whole like maze in the back of your head, and like it goes to different areas showing you different parts of this whole big picture. When you’re trying to get things together, and this is, I guess you call the healing process or whatnot, but that’s where all these grief emotions come from, the anger and then the denial and the blame, and the depression, and the many others.

It’s because you’re being shown how your awareness is going in different parts of the picture, and you’re being shown different. Aspects of it, because you can’t handle it all at that moment. So you’re still only seeing one little snippet boom. But then after a while, as it eases, you’re starting to put those pieces together, right?

And you have to let that happen. That’s why like for anybody listening that has to go through it maybe is going through a grief process or has gone through it before. We could understand essential, and I really wanna stress, it’s essential you’re not crazy and there’s nothing wrong with you because it can make you feel that way.

But what it’s doing is it’s showing you all these areas one at a time, that, and it creates all these emotions and you have to let it run it towards, you have to feel it. They say that you have to go through the process or you can’t go around it. You can’t. Circumvent. You have to go through it. And really, that’s how we gain our sight and our wisdom and 

Mike: strength through it.

And I think another key point is you have to do something. There’s a point where you have to get into action, right? And that’s something that you did early on and you picked some very simple actions, but some very fundamental ones, which was just, Okay, I’m gonna take care of my body, I’m gonna eat well, I’m gonna sleep well, I’m gonna exercise because I know that will give me more physical strength, more psychological strength, more emotional strength.

But I think that is key, that there is a point where it’s time to grab the bootstraps and start pulling right. Exactly. 

Brannen: And you do that by every time you have enough strengths to do something, you do it. Cause you’re not gonna have that strength every day going through these things. But that’s what I did on that deployment.

No matter what I did, my baselines, there was other things I could do. And it’s just towing these lines and really getting to know yourself and your capabilities at any given moment. And yeah, like I said, you just gotta take action. And that’s been one of the huge parts of the equation for me that has helped me throughout the throughout this entire almost a year now, is that action piece.

And, action can be, anything, it could be even the smallest action can matter. God, I remember one day I was sitting on the truck, so what I did in the desert was I drove, they call an expeditor truck where I expedite basically line supervise flight line maintenance on these aircraft.

So I got all these workers They get into the trucks and I divvy out jobs and take em to their jobs and monitor them and monitor the jobs and bring them back and coordinate the whole thing, right? So I’m dealing with these guys day in and day out. And, going back to the action piece, because of this process, there was times where I’d be sitting up in the driver’s seat and I’m just sinking into this hole and I’m just like, Oh my God.

my God, I don’t wanna be here, blah, blah, blah, blah. And action can be even just the littlest thing. And when I was like, All right, enough of that, I’m gonna only start talking to somebody, and I turned around and I cracked a. And just started conversation with one of my workers and then all the, that turned into this and then that.

And so then at these points you can just start to build relationships, talk, and all those are examples of you taking action as well. I think instead of just letting yourself stay helpless over your emotional state at the time. Yeah. Or give 

Mike: into those destructive impulses cuz you could have, but instead you decided to use them to drive you to do constructive things, even if it was, that’s just a little example you could have given into whatever was going on there and not engage with the people around you.

Maybe even withdraw further from the people around you. Or maybe even tell them just outright say how you don’t want to be here. And so that, that could have been, that was one direction you could have went in, but you didn’t, you went in the other direction. 

Brannen: And you have to make that decision because I’ve been around, I’ve been in the Air Force for, 19 years now.

I’ve been around, assholes and shitty leaders and there are the ones out there that they just take that anger and whatever else and turn it on everybody. And, I wasn’t gonna do that. That’s not in me to project my anger into a, and make it into a bad workplace. , these guys need us there and.

They needed leaders and I need them. And at a point, there’s a synergistic effect, I needed them too. Just the interaction and building new relationships, like you said, and you just gotta be there. These guys out there, they needed somebody that could not only coordinate their work efforts, but keep them disciplined in line.

Happy to the point we could be happy. And which there was, there’s a lot of jokes over there, but, if I chose to sit there and wallow and try to escape, then yeah, no, it wouldn’t. It worked out what as well as it did. And I wouldn’t have been able to get from them what I got from them. See, that’s just part of the two way street there is, because I wasn’t an asshole of them, and I wasn’t projecting all of my crap onto them.

They would interact with me and that sometimes when I really needed. They wouldn’t know it, but I really, needed an interaction. They would, You know what I’m saying? The whole point here is just really trying to get out of your head when you’re in tough situations and literally as if you’re jumping off a cliff and just talk to somebody.

Yep. Yep. You never know what’s gonna come from it. 

Mike: Where do you plan on going from here? Like in your fitness, for example? What’s the new baseline? What does that look like? 

Brannen: All right, So my new baseline is to get, I want, I’m going right after the two months of not having a gym. I’m starting back on phase one, BLS phase one, and I’m gonna take this one out through all the phases.

And my goal is by March of next year, it’d be 185 pounds and 10% body 

Mike: fat. Nice. I like it. That’s my goal. I think that’s reasonable. Sorry, where are you at again right now? So I’m a hundred, one 70. I’m 171. Yeah. 1 71. Yeah. Sure. . So you need to gain 10 to maybe 12, 13 pounds of muscle over the next year or so.

Yeah, 

Brannen: and I think that’s totally achievable. I’ve got a ticker in December that I want to be at 180. Okay. By then. Okay. So I think that’s manageable as well. If I can hit that one, then I can ensure and hit the 180 5 and then cut up to about 10% body fat by. March, 

Mike: and then you’ll probably be ready for beyond bigger, leaner, stronger.

You could read the book in the meantime. You’ll, again you’ll like it, you’ll learn some things there. There are probably some things you’ll want to implement right away, especially some of the nutrition strategies and tactics in the book. The training program, I would say stick with BLS until it becomes a maintenance routine.

And I explain this in the book as well and beyond, bigger, stronger, it’s in the FAQ section. When should I switch from BLS to bls? The simple answer is stick with BLS until it just becomes a maintenance program. And I explain why that happens in the book, but basically, so long as you’re still making good progress on it.

Why change it? Why make things more complicated? Unless you just want to spend a bit more time in the gym and hey, I actually understand that if you wanna do workouts that are a little bit more difficult, spend a little bit more time in the gym and maybe make a little bit faster progress. Let’s say you still have some juice that you can squeeze out of bls, but if you switched, you might get a little bit more out of bls.

I suppose that’s an argument as well, but I think if you can just do exactly what you want to do on bls, which it sounds like you can, that’ll be a great time for you to then transition to the new program. And the idea there will be make a run at the last muscle and strength that’s available to you genetically, basically, cuz BLS is gonna give you most of what you are gonna be able to achieve in terms of size and strength.

Not all, but it’s gonna give you a fair amount of it. A lot of it to get to. I don’t know if any of us are gonna really get to 100% maybe, but to get to, let’s say 90 to 100%, though it’s gonna take a little bit more than what you’ll find in bls. Mostly because you actually just have to do more work. Like your workouts just have to be a bit harder.

Instead of doing nine to 12 hard sets per major, Most group per week, it’s more like 15, and that’s actually the biggest change. There are some other changes in the program, but I like the plan and beyond. We’ll be waiting for you. I think you’ll have fun with. Yeah, absolutely. This was a great interview, Brandon.

I really appreciate you taking the time. Great job on everything you’ve done so far. Love the story, and definitely keep me posted on your progress. You can shoot me an email anytime, as and yeah, I’d love to put you up on the website if we haven’t already or when you’re ready, because I like featuring success stories on the website as well.

We have hundreds and people often will, they’ll go looking for people like them, so if there’s a 40 year old guy and he might come across yours and it might resonate with him, especially considering all the other just elements of your story. If there’s a 40 year old guy who’s having a rough time, for example, he might come across your success story on the website or come across this podcast, and that might be the trigger that gets him to go, what if Brandon.

I can do it, or at least I can try. . 

Brannen: Yeah, absolutely. And I would love to be part of that and I could write out whatever you might need for it. But yeah, it’s, it’s already been an honor coming onto this podcast with you and I absolutely appreciative of you inviting me over here.

Mike: Absolutely, man. My pleasure. Thank you again. All right. That’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don’t mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or. Wherever you’re listening to me from, in whichever app you’re listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility.

And thus, it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn’t like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike muscle for life.com.

Just muscle r life.com and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself, and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. Even if it is criticism, I’m open. And of course you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email.

That is the best way to get ahold of me, Mike, at most for life.com. And that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.