Interview with JC Deen: Building a great body and building a great life

Mike Matthews: [00:00:00] Hey, this is Mike Matthews from Muscle for life.com, and this is The Muscle for Life podcast. Thanks for listening in today I have a great guest JC Dean from jcd fitness.com. Yeah, it’s, I just met him a week or two ago. Really cool dude doing good work with mainly with clients, right? JC you do a lot of coaching. 

JC Deen: Yeah, mostly coaching. I sell some products, but yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, it’s true also. You have a couple of ebook type or information type products. And so yeah, I’m going to start doing more guest appearances on podcasts. Just getting out there and starting to meet some people because I’ve been I’ve been like a hermit for the last whatever year that I’ve been doing this.

Thanks for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, sure thing. Let’s just get right to it. Why don’t you share, just in case the readers aren’t familiar with you, share a little bit of your, what do you [00:01:00] do, what’s your story, what motivated you to get fit? 

JC Deen: Yeah my fitness, personal fitness story kind of goes back all the way through I guess just my entire life.

I grew up as a chubby kid, and going through school I was always really conscious about it. It was something that bothered me a lot. And I got into athletics at a pretty young age. And I started What did you, 

Mike Matthews: what sports did you play? 

JC Deen: Yeah starting out really young, I guess my first sport was like, baseball.

And then I got into basketball. Oh, okay. Going through Basically going through middle school I started to get into football. And then as I went on through junior and high school I just mostly focused on football towards the end. And I loved the strength and conditioning aspect of it.

That was one of my biggest, that was one of the things I loved the most. And, but growing up through school I was always chubby and I hated it and you you look at yourself in a certain way, you’re growing up through school and your appearance is everything and it’s a scar that it can leave you [00:02:00] with.

When I got out of I turned out to actually be a pretty good athlete in high school and then I got done with high school, it was time to go to college and at that point I was, really had nothing to fill my time. I was, I went from being a completely dedicated athlete to having nothing to do after school.

When I got into college I was. I just immediately got interested in bodybuilding, so I started reading all the bag magazines. All the books 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

JC Deen: All the process. And then , all of that, man. And I loved it and I thought it was awesome. And then the first semester towards Christmas I was, I made a friends with a ton of guys, and at the fall, at the end of the fall semester, they always did what’s called like a best body contest, which was basically like a big reason, like a big challenge, like how.

How good a shape can we get in the next two months? What can we do to change our fat asses to, being muscular and ripped? And so what happened was, is I took that really seriously. And since I had an athletic background, I was like, okay, I can put my mind to this.

I can really do this. So I read everything I could, and then I started just continuous training four or [00:03:00] five times a week. I was up at 7 a. m. doing cardio before class. And then in about two and a half months, three months, I was down like 20 pounds, 25 pounds, something like that.

And I was the leanest I’ve ever been. I had full row abs, was pretty muscular, as muscular as a, a 19 year old kid could be. And it changed my life. I was like I, there was 15 guys in the contest. I won second place. I just won second place, I won 300 bucks, so that was huge for me, and I was like, and I was like, wow, this is really cool, this is really fun, and then from then on, I was in my circle, in college, in my fraternity and stuff, I was looked at as being the go to guy for fitness stuff.

And then I, from then on out, it was, it just became more and more interesting, and I kept doing it, and kept studying it, and then about, 2008 I started my blog and then a couple years later I started taking it very seriously and started coaching and got certified and that was basically how I got into it.

It was a former fat boy got into fitness, got in shape and [00:04:00] the rest is history. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s cool. I got into, I mean I played ice hockey as a teenager. I played some baseball when I was younger then I got into ice hockey. And then it was similar, once that was done, I was so used to doing stuff with my body.

So where do I go from here? And I guess it was a transition. Maybe I was 17 or 18 into weightlifting initially because just to impress girls was my initial motivation. But then like you, you get into, you start doing it and then. get not only motivated by the results that you see, but also just by how your body feels.

And there are other, a lot of other benefits to working out regularly. And it became more of a just a personal kind of, I don’t know if I guess you could say a passion, but more just something that became I couldn’t, I can’t think of not exercising. It’s not about Oh, not lifting weights, eating protein.

You know what I mean? It’s more just, It’s not using my body, pushing my body and just all the benefits that come from it. So now it’s, something that, yeah, it’s cool to look good, but there’s a lot more that you get from it, 

JC Deen: yeah. There’s a lot to learn from setting out and doing something and being regimented and having [00:05:00] some type of structure.

And I think for a lot of guys that I’ve coached, having fitness in their life, having a training routine with a training three or four times a week and having that structure And building that confidence it goes way past just the initial aesthetic, experience or the strength that they gain.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally. I constantly preach this, but there are definite correlations between what it takes. just to get in the gym and get strong and, build muscle, get lean build the type of body that you want and also to achieve success and build the life that you want.

In a, not in an abstract kind of philosophical sense, but a very practical sense. You have to show up every day, you have to put in the work. It doesn’t matter how you feel. You put in your time, you do what you need to do. And just like how a workout doesn’t have to feel You know, it could be, you could, you can have low energy and it can be not a great workout, but you still got something done.

And it’s like that with anything, you show up to work, you do what you need to do. Some days are better than [00:06:00] others. Just because you weren’t feeling it one day, who cares? Do the work, you get what you get done. And over time you build that momentum where you have a lot more good days than bad days, 

JC Deen: yeah, absolutely. That’s a great way to put it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I talk about that and whatever, various articles and stuff, just like some extra motivation beyond. Because in my opinion, if you go too far into the, if your motivation is just to look a certain way or just impress a girl or a guy or whatever or just impress girls or guys.

I think that there are one that then you can get into the psychological, it becomes unhealthy psychologically or it can. Where people, they get to the point where you can have, I’ve come across it where maybe you’ll see this a little bit more with people that compete, but where they’ll, a person will look great, but they’re, they hate their body.

They feel they’re fat. They nitpick everything on their physique. And it becomes a thing where it’s never good enough and there just becomes, it’s like an unhealthy amount of just introversion into, building muscle and losing body fat. And I think [00:07:00] that just going after that leads more to a neurosis than 

JC Deen: yeah, totally. 

Mike Matthews: And we’ve all experienced that to some degree. Like I, I can relate to that a little bit where back in, in August I was cutting for photo shoots. You get really lean, get to five or 6 percent and it looks great. Yeah. And it’s not really sustainable. I don’t, I wouldn’t want to stay like that year round.

Then you start, you’re like, okay, that’s done. I’m going to, I’m going to start eating more food. And there is that initial but I don’t want to get fatter. Yeah. So it’s like taking that to the extreme, 

JC Deen: yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a, it’s definitely a balancing act and figuring, making it all work mentally as well as physically.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally. So what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced so far, in achieving your fitness goals? And also, what has helped you overcome them? 

JC Deen: Yeah, so the first one that I dealt with the most was what I call the former fat boy syndrome. And actually, Men’s Health interviewed me about this.

They found an old article of mine and interviewed me about the [00:08:00] whole like conundrum. And I think getting past that was huge. And for me, basically the former fat boy syndrome is, growing up and being chubby or being fat and seeing yourself as this former shell and like who you were You didn’t no matter what you do, no matter how fit you get You always look in the mirror and it’s dysmorphic, you see So it’s like 

Mike Matthews: similar to what I was just talking about 

JC Deen: Exactly.

Yeah, totally It’s that was the biggest thing that I like Was and that’s why I resonated with what you were saying. Like I that was my biggest hurdle, like as on a personal level. So what I actually did, the way that I got over that the most was. You were saying that it’s a constant grind.

You do it regardless of whether you feel good, you do it, because it’s your habit and your routine. So what I actually did is I hired a coach shortly after I had, gotten lean for the first time, because it was still like, even though like I saw pictures where I had full, full row abs, like my delts, like I could see lines in my delts and like all these, sure signs that I was lean [00:09:00] I was still struggling internally with the whole, like I would struggle with oh, am I going to eat this much, am I going to get fat, am I going to go back to the exact person I was 40 pounds ago, whatever.

So I hired a coach and I was like, look, I need expert guidance. When in reality, what I was doing is I was just dumping off all of the thinking onto him. And what was great about that was, All the things that I knew I should have been doing, he told me to do anyway. And because I was paying him and because I put faith in him I did it, instead of sabotaging myself and going back.

It’s it’s like the big thing you were saying if you eat a little bit more, is it going to like completely ruin everything that you’ve done, which we both know is totally crazy. But for some people that have been restricting for a long time, they think that extra hundred calories, that extra cookie or whatever is going to do it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I’ll get, although I guess a lot of the people, if they’ve read any of my books or if they’ve read articles, they’re usually because I talk about this a lot. It is just a numbers game, and when you understand that, it’s not that big of a deal.

But yeah, I still get emailed sometimes where, people are worried [00:10:00] that because they ate too much over the weekend, they feel very guilty or whatever. I understand that, but it’s, the reality is, it’s okay, so what, so you were in a surplus for a couple days, the worst case scenario is you set yourself back a few days, big deal. 

JC Deen: Yeah, even if even that and that’s that’s 

Mike Matthews: if you overdo it, really, like if you really work hard at it over the weekend. 

JC Deen: Yeah, and it’s, that’s one of the things I think is so interesting is that we’re, especially in this I think humans in general are always in a negative frame of mind.

We’re always thinking about the bad, the bad that can happen, how bad something feels, what we’re doing that’s detrimental, instead of, maybe reframing it and looking at it in a positive light. Yeah, it’s just I get the same emails and people will say I actually did a group, fat loss group on the New Year’s to help some of my current customers out with.

It’s getting kinda started again. And I was like, look let’s just do 14 days. Let’s be pretty strict. Let’s be pretty, pretty hard. And then we’ll ease up and go back into a moderate, style deficit. And one of the guys in the group had come off the diet and he was like, Hey I really I really went to town today.

My, my, [00:11:00] it was. The kids party or something like that and he was like I ate a bunch of cookies and cakes and he was like I Really think I need to go to the gym and get on the elliptical and try to undo some of this damage And I said whoa. Whoa, I was like, how well did you do the rest of the two weeks?

He’s like I was spot on last six seven pounds, whatever and I was like This is not that big of a deal if you don’t want to go get in the habit of every time you indulge or any time you go out and you eat something that you think was not in line with what you should have been doing, you don’t want to get in the habit of going and getting on the elliptical or going and doing it, doing an hour long, session of super sets to try to mitigate some of that stuff because then, you’ll find out that because you want that extra food, you’ll mitigate it with exercise six times a week and then it’s like, how sustainable is that and how healthy is that from a.

From a psychological view so yeah, 

Mike Matthews: and also even from a physically not that exercising six days a week is bad But if you’re doing I’ll talk with it. I don’t run into this as much usually with people that [00:12:00] are Competing but you know where they’ll have coaches that’ll have them do two hours of cardio a day and weightlifting You know, it’s just it gets insane and you’ll find that at least I’ve run into that food issue with them where they’re also on a severe calorie deficit.

So you know they’re just miserable and sometimes they just give in. It’s like they’re, they need more food really, either if their coaches are not doing a good job at all, but then what they actually should be eating more and exercising less. So sometimes they’ll start to do that and then they’ll feel really guilty about it or cause they’re working toward this goal and they’re, they’ve put their faith in, in, a bad coach basically, but 

JC Deen: yeah, and it’s just, it’s a lot of bad ideas. Like we, we also as some people that are like really driven, we tend to get really one track minded. So we tend to think that if something doesn’t revolve around a certain method or a certain idea or a paradigm that everything else is like irrelevant or wrong.

So we’ll make decisions based on whether or not it doesn’t fit in line with [00:13:00] either what we learned or what our coach told us. And I’m not saying to your coach or whatever, but at the end of the day, like there’s a million ways to get to this one goal that we all want of a better body.

It’s just a matter of, doing things more properly than others, I guess is the best way to say it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And like even a lot of the, my, I preach a lot of heavy compound weightlifting not overdoing it with cardio, sticking mainly to high intensity cardio so you can just do less of it and get more out of it.

Flexible dieting make it in a numbers game, not a whole like, the whole eat clean kind of thing is I agree that eating nutritious foods is important. Your body needs micronutrients, but unfortunately some people, they get, if they don’t understand really the.

the physiology of food and what your body does with it. It becomes then this weird rule, this like dogma, eat, clean, eat, clean, got to eat, clean, just got to eat clean and then I’ll get lean. I’ll get in. It’s just, you can eat a ton of clean food every day and not be in shape at all or not look like you’re in [00:14:00] shape at all.

JC Deen: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: And yeah, it’s like a lot of this stuff that I’m talking about. I, is it the ultimate best way to eat? End all way to, to build a great body. No, I don’t think that, I’m not saying I have everything figured out and neither are you or anybody else, but what the, what is encouraging for people is that the methods work and that you make gains quickly enough where you’re motivated.

You get to see your body change every week and then ultimately, and also it’s very easy to fit these kinds of things around, your lifestyle. So then it’s what else do you want? Great. So now you can, you only have to spend. Whatever, three to six hours a week exercising, you get to eat foods you like, you get to go out to restaurants here and there you know how to play with your diet and so a lot of people, they don’t, they won’t necessarily fall into I don’t, if it’s not in this little paradigm, I won’t do it, but it’s even for me personally, it’s like when you put all these things together, it works very easily.

So why even do anything else? And it gets me exactly where I want to be. You know what I mean? [00:15:00] 

JC Deen: Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: absolutely. And I think people need to find that. And that’s not always the same for everybody. 

JC Deen: Yeah, it’s not. And it’s a, it’s one of those things where you’ve got to keep working and you’ve got to keep trying out different methods and read different resources and try out different things long enough to figure out what works for you.

Cause yeah, it’s like we said, we can get someone lean and feeling good on three hours of training a week and sometimes it might take six, but it might only take six because that’s what they really want to do as opposed to just going to the gym three times a week. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. So figure out exactly what makes sense to you and how it can fit into your life and then make that your slave and don’t become a slave to your exercise, your nutrition program.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. What drives you to keep on putting in the work week after week, talking about what we were saying before, where you just, you make it a schedule and you just do it. What’s, what drives you? 

JC Deen: Yeah, I just really, I don’t know. I’ve been doing this for, I’ve been really like really training with the barbell for 14 years now and I just really the routine.

[00:16:00] Honestly, I really just love the, I just, I love that it’s my time and I get to go in and do it. Of course, I love that. I love the results. I love looking good and I love feeling good. I love being mobile. And but honestly it’s I’m at this point in my life I would just feel lost if I didn’t have that locus of control.

And yeah. That’s what, that’s honestly what keeps me. And it’s such a, it’s such a habit that I just, if I go a couple of days, unless it’s a planned break, but if I go three or four days without hitting the gym, I’m just like, what am I doing with my life? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I know.

I hate, if you get sick or something and you’re just forced to sit around and you just, you can’t for, 

JC Deen: Yeah, and that’s the worst too. You, usually it happens when you’re in a really good groove or you’re like starting, you’re starting something new and it’s like you’re excited.

And then, I know that will happen to me. It’s happened to me a couple of times and I’ll start something new or I’ll plan out a new routine. And then the next thing I know I’m like getting a chest cold or I’m getting a flu or, when I was in Thailand, I got I got food poisoning a couple of times and it’s something just put you down and you get food poisoning is the [00:17:00] worst 

Mike Matthews: because you can’t even eat.

You just sit and waste away for, until you finally get over it, depending on how bad it is. 

JC Deen: But man, all the water you lose makes your abs look really good. 

Mike Matthews: Let’s hear one stomach flu away from your ideal body. 

JC Deen: Yeah, it’s like me and my roommate, we always joke about it. He’s either one of us will get a stomach bug or something.

I’ll be like, man, my life is miserable, I can’t leave the house. My stomach hurts and I’m like at least your abs are going to look really great. Like we can go do a photo shoot right now and you’ll have those pictures forever. 

Mike Matthews: Just get a pump first. 

JC Deen: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: So what do you think are like some of the biggest benefits of being fit other than, looking a certain way?

JC Deen: I think what it does for I think the benefits of being fit obviously What it does for your mobility, what it does for your ability to just be agile and move and do other things in your life. I know like with clients that I’ve worked with, especially people that have worked behind the desk for a long time.

Yeah. They have very limited mobility after [00:18:00] 10 or 15 years of just sitting in that standard position. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. You’ve probably seen this, there’s research that just Associates the amount of time that you just spend sitting with just overall mortality, like all kinds of disease and as you get older, just sitting there doing nothing all day is just terrible for the body.

JC Deen: Yeah, just being sedentary in general is way worse, I think, than we even begin to, we can even begin to understand, I think. Yeah, there’s 

Mike Matthews: research on it. That’s why I even have a little routine. Where like every 20 or 30 minutes or so I stand up because I’m sitting I’m in the gym in the morning and then I Just sit in my workday.

My average workday is I don’t know 12 hours 11 hours, and I’m sitting for all of it. So A few days a week. I’ll do some cardio at night, whatever Otherwise, I’m just sitting so I’ll do every 30 minutes or so I’ll stand up and stretch and you know stretch my lower body stretch my upper body Just after reading there was like, I don’t know three or four studies on this of specifically sitting but it’s just Sitting there motionless is [00:19:00] just bad for the body.

I, yeah, my body is not, I guess it’s always felt fine because of my routine, but I think it’s a good idea to just not sit in the same position for four hours at a time. You know what I mean? 

JC Deen: Yeah. And it’s, that’s really good. Cause it’s, once you get used to doing that, once you get used to sitting for so long, it’s actually hard to start to train your brain, to get out of that, to get out of the habit.

I know that I’m. I’ve been in that loop many times, and something that I do, something similar now I’ll be working or whatever, and I’ll make sure to get up I used to I used to set a timer for every 40 minutes, 45 minutes, I would get up or I would just go outside and walk and get some fresh air or something.

So I think, yeah, I think that’s really important, mobility aspect above anything else Is just, is huge, especially for people that have had limited mobility due to sitting. I think that’s a huge benefit. Another benefit that I love too is the it’s interesting. A lot of times our people, we have we all want to control something, right?

And controlling something makes us feel better. The fact that we can feel like we’re in control [00:20:00] oftentimes gives us a sense of confidence or it gives us a sense of hope. And in reality regardless of whether that sense of hope or confidence is not really built on, built upon much, if you believe it is, it can make the, it can make the biggest difference in the world.

And I think training, for some people, putting them in that, putting them in that routine and giving them, something to do on a very consistent basis that they’re controlling the outcome of and that they are in charge of. Yeah. And just reap massive benefits in terms of how they view their space and how they view the world and How they carry themselves and how their relationships are.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with that. I think it reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s book outliers. I don’t know if you read it, but I thought it was a decent book. I didn’t like that. It seemed like he was leaning on this message of that success just boils down to luck or that great success just boils down to luck.

And confluence of the right circumstances. I don’t totally agree with that. But I think it just makes what you’re saying makes me think of [00:21:00] that because, yeah, there are, we look at life and what we’re doing and going about things and it can be on our in our personal lives, things, personal goals you want to achieve work related or even, hobby related or body related or relationships or whatever.

I think that, yeah, there are things, there are a lot of things out in the world that aren’t under our control. Things can happen. Things do happen that, we didn’t anticipate or want. We have to know, we have to deal with them. But I think like you were saying, if you can have them in, if you have the mentality, you have the attitude.

That there are things that you can always do, you can, there are always things you can be in control and you can affect circumstances in your life and you can affect positively anything that kind of you come in contact with by your actions and you can take actions to overcome, whatever kind of bad luck or whatever type of things come your way that you weren’t planning for or hoping for that just is, it’s a huge shift In terms of how you’re going to approach life instead of just [00:22:00] being a complete victim where you feel like, victimized by life or you feel that everything is just random and that there’s nothing or there’s little you can actually do to determine your course in life, determine how things come out.

You know what I mean? 

And training is a, it’s a little microcosmic kind of version of that where, you can go in the gym every week and if you do the right things, your body improves. You get stronger, you look better, you feel better. And that’s something that you know it just is a little miniature demonstration that there always are.

If you have, if you know what to do and you’re willing to put in the work you can make progress. Is it necessarily going to be as much as the other guy? Maybe not, but in terms of training, there, there can be various different reasons for that. It could be, genetics, it could be drugs, it could be whatever, but in terms of life, I think that it’s the same way.

Certain people, we tend to compare ourselves with a lot of other people and that can be unhealthy, but that in my experience [00:23:00] where if you have people that are very insecure and they’re always looking to others and to see what they don’t have or. What they wish they had or whatever, if when a person is able to start making progress in their own lives, that tends to, the volume gets turned down a bit.

You know what I mean? Yep. They become more secure in themselves. They become happy with where things are going. And I definitely think that working out regularly just helps instill that, that it’s a worldview, I think. You know what I mean? 

JC Deen: Yeah it’s totally. It makes you. It makes you, it just totally makes you see things in a different way.

And one thing, have you read the book called the power of habit by Charles Duhigg? Yeah. So one thing I like about what he says in there is whenever you’re trying to change a habit, like you can basically you change the behavior, you have the cue and you have the reward and the behavior is always what you do.

That’s the habit. One thing I thought was really cool about what he said though, was you can get people to change the routine, but under a lot of stress. We tend to go back. So it’s it’s why an alcoholic that will be [00:24:00] in AA and for 20 years, be sober for 20 years, have something drastic happen.

And then he finds himself at the bar that night drinking his sorrows away after 20 years of being sober. And he says the biggest factor that tends to hold people together with long term change is some type of belief. And hope in the fact that they can actually change and that they can actually get better or, make their circumstance different, whatever it is that they’re focusing on.

Yeah. And that’s what I like about what you said there is, may have certain circumstances, but having that particular locus of control in your life gives you a certain view, gives you a certain way of seeing things. And that’s almost like the belief you’re creating, and it’s a belief that you need.

Regardless of whether it makes sense to anyone else, if it makes sense to you and it works for you, then by all means, do it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. So let’s talk a little bit about the training stuff. So what is your exercise [00:25:00] routine look like right now? Like in terms of weightlifting, cardio what are you doing?

JC Deen: So yeah I’m basically, I love bodybuilding stuff and you I was in Thailand for two months. So I really trained very haphazardly. I wasn’t able to stay very structured. So yeah, I spent a lot of time just like I would go into the gym and we would focus on five movements, chin ups, rows, dips, Romanian deadlifts, stuff like that just to stay in shape.

But yeah, now that I’m back, I’m my preferred method is Basically right now I’m doing an upper lower split, quite a bit of volume over four days a week, and then once I start to really adjust to that, I’ll probably move to a five day a week split or like a three day on one day off, like a push pull legs type thing.

I really like volume, I really like doing bodybuilding stuff I don’t really do cardio at all the only, only cardio I guess what I would do are complexes towards the end of my training sessions, or cardio. Ab type of splits or ab type of [00:26:00] supersets. Yeah, like circuits. Leg raises, circuits, that type of stuff.

So that’s my preferred method of training. 

Mike Matthews: Cool, and you probably focus on just, the bigger compound lifts. 

JC Deen: Yeah, it’s mostly, I pick something, to gauge progress and to get better at. Might be a deadlift, might be a squat, might be a hack squat or a leg press or a bench press or whatever it is I’m focusing on.

And the rest of it is all built around just trying to make that mind muscle connection and try to get that pump and try to get as much of a Of stimulus as I can within that session and then look at my logbook next time and try to just get a little better. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. That’s another that I talk about, especially because, if you’re new to weightlifting, you can pretty much do anything and you’re going to be making good gains for your first six months.

If you just show up in the gym, whatever, five days a week and, you can do goofy exercises and do a bunch of reps and whatever. And you’re going to make gains. But once those newbie gains are done, which, in my experience, I don’t know, I guess it seems to last maybe [00:27:00] six to eight months on the long side is how it seems.

Then it’s much harder to, you’re not going to be adding weight to the bar every week. And then it becomes a game of just beating the bar. Your last week’s workout by, for me, it’s if I let’s say I’m training legs or whatever. If I’m going to do 10 sets in that workout, if my first, let’s say two or three sets, if I’m able to do one rep more with the same weight as the previous week, I’m happy.

If I can just maintain for, maintain the same reps and whatever that I did the week before, I’m happy there and that’s just beating your previous workout even by a rep is a little bit of progress and that’s just the way it is. As you get more and more conditioned, you’re not going to be you’re not going to be, squatting whatever for four reps and then the next week at 20 and squat the same squat that for four reps.

It’s just not how it goes. 

JC Deen: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: You mean? You got to work up, you’re going to work up to six or seven reps and then you can add maybe that 10 pounds and then you’re back to four and it’s just cause I’ve had, it’s [00:28:00] funny, I’ll have people usually newer, like they’ll go through that first six months where they’re adding weight every week and they’re like, this is amazing.

And and I’ll get emailed sometimes I’m not making progress anymore. And I always have to be like what do you mean exactly? You’re not making progress. And then it’ll be like I’m not adding weight anymore every week. Yeah. Yeah, but, are you moving up in reps? Yeah, but, I was adding 5 pounds to the bar every week for the first month.

That’s the joys of being new to it. But it becomes a game of inches. Just moving forward bit by bit over time, 

JC Deen: yeah, and helping people understand that just because you’re not adding weight to the bar every week or every training session.

Doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing anything wrong, or doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna get there. That’s like the biggest thing for people like us who have been doing this for a long time. Like I’m not near as strong as I used to be because I just don’t care to be, but when I was pretty strong, I mean it was to the point to where I would have to start gauging actual strength gains.

By the month and I would [00:29:00] have to like, yeah, try to plan it in a manner that I could try to add You know five pounds to a lift at the end of the month instead of saying, oh I’m just gonna You know aim for every week or whatever and that kind of it wears that you go after a while because you just think I’m Not really making progress, but that’s when you start to really dig into okay what are the other ways that I can make progress?

Can I shorten my rest periods? Can I add another step? Can I? You Add another rep. What? Sure. Then you have to get really creative and yeah. It also 

Mike Matthews: depends on what you wanna do with your body. Once, once you build that foundation and you have the size that you want. You have to make a decision where you want to go.

Do you want to focus on getting stronger? Do you want to just maintain where you’re at? Do you want to work more on the muscle endurance side and be able to do, a bunch of body weight type movements or just do a bunch of be able to do a lot of reps. And I think that for a lot of guys, I guess it comes down to, they still want to build that ideal physique.

With the right proportions and [00:30:00] that kind of dictates how you’re going to be training. But then again, there are, I’ve talked to quite a few guys that have put in, a good seven, eight, nine, 10 years of proper heavy weightlifting, they’ve built great physiques. And now, some of them like to do some CrossFit stuff here and there.

Some of them like to do just do different types of routines just to challenge themselves. Because, they’re not so concerned now with having to build up their back a little bit more, build up this or that a little bit more. Now they’re able to have fun maintaining their physiques and, doing something different.

JC Deen: Yeah, and that’s a good, that’s a good thing too. Fun is a great word to throw in there because it’s always fun when you’re beginning and you’re making constant progress and everything is new to you. Yeah. And then when you graduate routines and you’re finally on an intermediate style routine and you can still make progress in various ways.

Then when it starts to slow down is when it becomes not so fun anymore. Yeah. Because you start to view it as ah, I’m going to go into the gym, and it’s like a, it’s like a big guessing game. It’s just am I going to get better today? Am I going to regress? Yeah. And that’s like the, that’s I think one [00:31:00] of the biggest issues is we think that everything has to revolve around that whole idea that we have based upon progression.

And then what I always tell people too after a while is, depending on where you’re at in your journey and your training age, strength is not something that is even really that reliable. Strength can be affected in so many ways. From your sleep, from your mood, from your emotions how you dealt with your weekend, what you did at work, what you spent your willpower on.

It can be many things and you can go into the gym expecting. to do a heavy triple, but when you’re, you’re warming up and your warmup weight feels heavy. And then learning how to deal with that is another issue in itself. And realizing that because you’re not strong as you thought you were today, doesn’t necessarily mean that your training is not working or hasn’t worked.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. It’s just one of those bad 

Mike Matthews: workouts. It has happened to all of us. Some. We’ve all experienced that for sure and [00:32:00] you know for me what I just chalk it I just don’t let it bother me I just like you say like I know what I’m doing and I know how my body works and you know I want to see Like I’m looking more as you were saying earlier.

I’m looking more yeah I would like to see a small improvement each week Ideally, I would get at least another rep something like that Sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn’t but more important to me is over the course of play one to three months I want to see I Like my focus on my training is right now I’m doing a periodized program that I start with some very heavy lifting, like some power lifting type movements.

And then the middle portion of my workout, the bigger, six sets or so is in the four to six, it’s still heavy, 80, 85 percent of my one rep max, and I’m finishing with some higher rep movements. But so I’m focusing in the majority of my workout is still myofibular.

Like I’m wanting, I want to see myself getting stronger, yeah, if I come in and have a bad workout and I just am not able to hit my lifts. Okay. I don’t freak out at it. And wonder what’s wrong. As you said, there are a lot of different things. Who knows? Maybe maybe I was, a little bit like I’ll have it [00:33:00] sometimes where my shoulder workout is.

I’m still feeling my shoulders a little bit from my chest. Whatever. That’s just the way it is. Try to work through it. And And try to do better next week. And I think having a longer term view of what you’re looking to achieve helps with that, as opposed to I gotta get better this week.

I have, more just like I know what I’m here. Yes, I’m here to get better this week. I’m here to try to beat last week. But if I don’t, no big deal. I’m 29 years old. I have a lot of years ahead of me to beat last week’s workout. You know what I mean? 

JC Deen: Yeah, totally. 

Mike Matthews: This is a lifestyle. It’s not like I’m not trying to I’m not following some weird crash quick fix.

I got to hit this by this point so I can, 

JC Deen: yeah. And it’s just having that long term view and long term approaches is ultimately what’s going to make you succeed or not. And that’s regardless of, you’ve been doing this for 10 years or six months. It’s understanding that it’s all about Hey, you’re not just, you’re not just lifting for a while to get a look and then you just give it up because it’s not realistic.

Mike Matthews: [00:34:00] Yeah, 

JC Deen: totally. 

Mike Matthews: And what about the nutrition side? Do you follow any particular type of dietary protocol or are you in intermittent fasting or a traditional type of dieting or? 

JC Deen: Yeah, so I’m like hardcore paleo as you can get if I can’t hunt it down and kill it, I’m not eating it. Oh, okay.

No I’m just really not, I’m just joking. I don’t really care about fads or paleo intermittent fasting or anything like that. Oh, okay. No, I was totally kidding. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: I don’t think when we were talking about it, I don’t know if we ever really talked about it, so I was like, oh, shit, I didn’t know that.

JC Deen: Yeah I totally, totally flip switch over a week. No basically I’m a very middle of the road type of guy. I think that whole foods should comprise, 90 95 percent of your diet. I’m not opposed to having, some junk in your diet. I’m not opposed to eating what you want.

I think that all those things are really important. But I think at the end of the day, the most important thing is to follow something that, that fits. What is good for you and I, of course, I have a general baseline, I think getting enough protein, which is about a gram per pound of body weight and, not [00:35:00] doing low carb, not doing low fat, trying to find a balance there.

I prefer a more higher carb diet 

Mike Matthews: just 

JC Deen: because I feel better. I look better. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

JC Deen: I’m your 

Mike Matthews: training is way better. 

JC Deen: My training is better. I’m in a better mood. If I’m. Depending on how sedentary I am just with sitting most of the day, if I don’t have at least 150 grams to 200 grams of carbs as a baseline I’m just not, going to perform my best when it does come time to train and on the training days, depending on how much I’m going to have more carbs than that.

But even for clients, like I try to steer them away from the idea that you got to go really low carb in order to lose fat. That’s. Sure, you can lose fat by going low carb or low fat, but it’s all more a matter of just like you said, playing a numbers game and keeping everything in check and making sure you maintain a deficit or have a time frame that you’re focusing on.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And using exercise to drive that as well as opposed to, you’ve probably seen research that just shows that even [00:36:00] the metabolic adaptation that occurs when you diet is less when you’re you are using a smaller deficit, but really using exercise to drive that calorie burn. There’s a difference in the body between if you don’t say you’re just in a 500 calorie deficit with no exercise that just straight restricting calories that is not that it’s unhealthy, but it is not as optimal as let’s say you were in a I don’t know, a 250 calorie deficit from your diet and then a 250 calorie deficit on top of that, burning through exercise.

There’s just a difference in the body. When I diet, I actually usually set myself at about, it come for me. It’s about 20 percent deficit just from diet alone and then the exercise on top of that. But I think that, using exercise to drive fat loss is also a big part of it and not trying to like, I would much rather prefer when I’m, especially if I’m needing to get really lean.

Moving more as opposed to cutting my calories more, 

JC Deen: yeah, totally. 

Mike Matthews: And of course you can only do that so much, you can’t get to that point where you’re doing two hours of cardio a day, but I try to get up to lifting five days a week and [00:37:00] doing, probably about 30 minutes of HIIT cardio four to five times a week would be the most I would do.

But I prefer to push toward that as opposed to just dropping my calories more and more, 

JC Deen: totally agree with that. I think, another thing I think is important to mention too is training in itself is, I think it’s much more important than people who especially are like really big on nutrition will, I think, will downplay it a lot.

They’ll say nutrition is, 80 percent or 90 percent of your results, which I agree to an extent that it’s really important, but I don’t think we should place a number on it like that. I think that having your training, Set up in a manner to make set up in a manner to create what you want as an outcome.

So somebody that I read all the time, his name is Amir Siddiqui, and he’s got a lot of great ideas. And some of my really good friends have worked with him and something he says, and I really ascribe to this belief is your training is what dictates where your food goes and your training program creates a pathway for your macronutrients and what your body [00:38:00] does with them.

If you are constantly if you’re not doing any exercise at all and you’re dieting what is telling, what is telling your body to keep the lean body mass and burn off the body fat, or, you know what I’m saying or what’s telling your body to store this and not that.

But when you train really hard, you’re creating a demand, a metabolic demand, your muscles need the micronutrients, they also, they need the amino acids. Your body is burning the carbohydrates. So 

Mike Matthews: it’s also storing them in the muscles and you can, you can have glycogen super compensation where all of 

JC Deen: those things 

Mike Matthews: it’ll, story and more, which then that’s less carbs to go to fat storage.

And yeah. Nutrient partitioning, would be like the general kind of bodybuilding term for it. Yeah, 

JC Deen: that’s the word. And it’s just, that’s one thing I think is really important. And so I tend to not. Skimp on the calories as much, especially in the beginning. Because if you can get away with exercising a little more and eating more and it’s in line with your schedule and it’s not a burden to you, then it’s I would rather do [00:39:00] that.

And then that gives you something later to maintain with as opposed to saying, okay, we’ve got 10 weeks to get really lean. Let’s drop you down to 1600 calories and see where you end up. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Because then I just saw a video. I couldn’t actually make it through the whole thing, but. It was a Q& A video with Jeff Seid and he was saying that for cutting, he recommends a thousand calories below BMR.

JC Deen: Oh my 

Mike Matthews: god. And I don’t think he’s not the brightest dude, so he probably meant below TDE, like total daily energy expenditure, but even that, that’s one too much and you can’t just do a one size fits all. What does that mean for the girl? that who’s TDEE or TDEE is 1, 800 calories a day. What does that mean for her?

She’s supposed to eat 800 calories a day. And then if she took his advice, literally, she goes, okay standard catch McCardle. My, 300 calories a day, 1, 400 calories a small girl, right? So I should be eating three or four calories a day. All [00:40:00] right, let’s do this. Jeff’s side says so.

Yeah. The, there’s a lot of bad diet advice out there and 

JC Deen: that also comes at the expense of trying to lump everyone into one category and saying, this is what everyone should do. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

JC Deen: That’s a 

Mike Matthews: big part of it is I talk about this in an article on my website on speeding up the metabolism to make a weight loss easier.

And just that point of, you want your ideally when you come into. It’s time to lose fat. You want your metabolism to be as high as you want it to be. And really, actually, it’s like metabolic inefficiency. We want our metabolisms to be because an efficient metabolism would be a metabolism that can keep us alive on very little energy.

So in a sense, we want our metabolisms to be very inefficient. We want it, to be able to feed our bodies a bunch of energy and we want our bodies to use up that energy to keep us alive. That’s the metabolism is without storing fat. So if you, if the faster your metabolism is, the more food you can eat, the better position you’re in for fat loss.

And it’s actually 100 [00:41:00] percent necessary. If you want to get really lean, like if you’re a guy and you want to get, down to the 6 to 8 percent or 6 to 7 percent range. Or if you’re a girl, you want to be, down in the 14, 15 percent range, you have to make sure that you’re, you can’t be starting that process with a metabolism that’s running at 60 percent capacity.

JC Deen: Sure, 

Mike Matthews: you’re gonna burn it out and you’re gonna, you’re gonna end up, with metabolic damage where you’re only able to eat. Some piddly amount of food every day and you maintain, you won’t even reach your goal You’ll just end up being stuck at a too high of a body fat percentage eating nothing You know, 

JC Deen: exactly and you know There are some people that actually believe that a really robust metabolism like you were saying or being inefficient to say it the way you did is actually They think the key to remaining young and remaining healthy because 

Mike Matthews: yeah, the longevity, like permanently restricting calories, that whole thing.

JC Deen: No. So I’m thinking of the opposite in the spectrum. So you have the camp that believes that calorie restriction and fasting is like the holy grail [00:42:00] to living longer, which it might make you live a little bit longer, but what is it doing to your overall wellbeing, your overall health?

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. 

JC Deen: But then some people are believe that we should try. In a way to keep our metabolisms really healthy and burning at a really high rate to mimic other life forms or younger people that have really high metabolisms and that are full of energy and vitality and try to maintain that for a long time.

I can actually, I can send you some stuff on it later, but it’s a neat, it’s a neat concept because if you think about, if you think about it like kids, for instance, right? Yeah. They are, of course, it’s their age, but they’re, they haven’t been exposed to a lot of stress. They haven’t been exposed to a lot of the food that we’ve eaten for so long.

So their metabolisms are naturally robust and naturally naturally high. Their body temperatures are naturally high and they move the best. They feel the best. They have the most energy. And then over time, muscle 

Mike Matthews: mass comes [00:43:00] into that as well. Exactly. Research has shown you start losing muscle in your early twenties, actually, if you don’t do anything.

And then you just. Waste away over the years and that, that lowers, BMR as well. So when the body, when you’re younger and your body’s building that muscle, that’s, there’s a, like you say, there’s a vitality that comes with that. 

JC Deen: Yeah. And there’s some people that really believe that maintaining a youth like metabolism is essentially the key to longterm health and vitality.

So I can see that for sure. I read about this stuff quite a bit, so I’m interested. Because 

Mike Matthews: that would require exercise as well. You couldn’t just do that eating a bunch of food, really. It wouldn’t work that well. No, it 

JC Deen: totally does. And that kind of points back to the research that you and I were talking about earlier, that movement in most any form is good for you.

Yeah. If we’re showing that being sedentary is taking years off of our lifespan, then Obviously, movement is good. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: what’s the obvious corollary? Is that the body, it’s just, it’s meant to be moved around and that of course just makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. This is not really, we weren’t [00:44:00] really meant to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen all day.

JC Deen: That’s right. Unless it’s really cold outside and we have hot chocolate, then it’s 

Mike Matthews: okay. Then it’s okay. Genetically, we’re building that in. 

JC Deen: Yes. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, cool. So before we before we wrap up here, I try to, keep them somewhere around an hour and I could go on forever. I’m sure you could do, but why don’t you, why don’t you just tell me quickly and just tell the, the readers and the listeners quickly, like what are you working on these days?

Kind of what do you have planned for this this year? And also, where can people find you if they want to learn more about what you do? 

JC Deen: Sure. So the best place to find me is just jcdfitness. com. That’s my homepage, that’s where my blog and all my articles are. You can find pretty much anything about me there that you need to.

I’m currently working on a series, and the time of release is unknown, but I’m working on a series of habit based fitness products. So I’ve actually got a, I’ve got a product out right now called LGN365. And that’s like a, an all encompassing product. 

Mike Matthews: That’s like your flagship product.

JC Deen: That’s like a [00:45:00] resource. If you need to know about fat loss or muscle gain and you need an education and you’re lost by that, but I’m also working on some things that are very habit based I’ve become really interested in habit based literature and the psychology and how we actually create things and do things.

And trying to create some things that’ll help people in the long term with that. Yeah. And then, what 

Mike Matthews: are, do anything you want to share on that? I’m just curious. 

JC Deen: Yeah so specifically one thing that I’ve paid attention to just within my clients like working with clients we’re all really good at following like a plan that someone gives us, right?

Like we’re all really good at that. And I think we all need that to an extent. I think we need an outside factor, whether it be a book, whether it be a forum link where we got a program from or something. 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. It’s like that learning anything. It’s great to have someone that’s already done it.

Absolutely. And that, that can just get you going in the right direction, say, you don’t have to pay attention to all this other stuff, just do this for this period of time, and you’re going to get results, and it’s always nice to have. 

JC Deen: Yeah, exactly. I think that’s a huge [00:46:00] component, and I won’t ever overlook that.

But something that I’m really interested in is helping people that have already gotten past that initial phase of seeing the results and getting, Getting to a point to where they want to be. Also helping them realize that to get any further, it’s really in their own hands because they need to start making things work for themselves and figuring out the best things that they need to do.

And what does that boil down to? It boils down to figuring out the steps and the habits that you need to build and that you need to take, because I can coach you for so long, but you know your life better than I do. And the things deep down that you need to work on and that you need to change.

And I’m basically trying to, come up with some practical ways and come up with some ideas that I can you know, and that I’ve been instilling within my clients and I’ve been helping my clients with them, trying to come up with a way to help people see it from a kind of top down perspective and say, okay, I’ve gotten this far and now I need to take it up another level.

Here are the three main things in my life that I need to do on a consistent basis to make this work. Then they [00:47:00] can recruit any outside factors that they need, whether they need a coach to oversee their diet, or whether they need somebody to, check in with or whatever. But at the core, they don’t really need to, read every latest fitness book or, pop a DVD if they need to get in shape.

It’s more of hey, I’ve got the tools, I’ve got the resources, now I just need to do it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally. That’s awesome. 

Yeah, cool. I’ll keep you posted on that. Cool. Once you have them released. 

JC Deen: For sure. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. Awesome. Is there anything else you’d like to share? 

JC Deen: No that’s pretty good.

Thanks for having me on. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, sure thing. It was great. Awesome. Again, this is Mike Matthews most of life. com with JC from JC Dean fitness. And thanks for listening. You can subscribe if you’re on iTunes or if you’re watching this on YouTube, subscribe to channel more stuff coming.

So thanks for taking the time to be here with us. See you next time.