“If It Fits Your Macros” dieting and why I like being a “grinder”

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleforlife. com and in this podcast, I want to talk about if it fits your macros, the style of dieting what it is, how it works, what I like about it, what I don’t like about it. And I want to talk about what it means to be a grinder and the benefits of this.

And I’ll explain why I am, what are we talking about and why I thought about this when I get there. All right. So let’s get going. Let’s talk about if it’s your macros. If you haven’t heard of this is a pretty popular style of meth pretty proper style of dieting these days. And it’s called if it fits your macros because macro is short for macronutrient.

The macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fat, at least the ones that we’re talking about with with when we’re talking about if it fits your macros, it also, the technical definition includes macro minerals as well. But. When you are following if it’s your macros, you’re not really tracking your macro mineral intake.

You’re just tracking protein, carbs and fat and this style of dieting. It actually goes back a couple decades [00:04:00] now, but it was always known as flexible dieting, so it’s not really there you Brand new in terms of the approach to dieting but if it’s your macros name for it, it’s caught on and it’s a big internet thing and whatever.

And what, how it works is it’s very simple. So let’s say you want to lose fat. Losing fat requires that you put your body in calorie deficit, which means that you need to burn more energy than you’re feeding your body. You need to maintain what’s called a negative energy balance over time. You do that by you can measure the amount of energy your body’s burning in calories and you do that by eating a bit less than that anywhere from I usually use about a 20 to 25 percent calorie deficit when I am meaning I’m eating 20 to 25 percent less energy than that body’s burning every day.

And that 20 25%, that difference is my net fat loss over time. If it fits your macros, basically what you’re doing is, you’re taking your baseline intake of calories, and if you were just to hit those calorie numbers every day, you will lose weight. You [00:05:00] could eat anything, it doesn’t matter.

You could eat Twinkies and Doritos and, donuts, I don’t care what. If you hit those calorie numbers, you will lose weight. So in that sense, a calorie is a calorie when we were just talking strictly weight loss, seeing pounds come off, looking at a scale, calories, calorie, but when we’re talking body composition, meaning retaining or even building lean mass and losing just fat.

Then the calorie is not a calorie, then macronutrient balance comes into play, meaning, for instance, first thing is a high protein diet is essential if you want to maintain lean mass or even build muscle when you’re in a calorie deficit which you can do. I’ll actually link an article down below. And you can read more about that if you’re new to weightlifting or new to properly lifting, you can, but if you’re an experienced weightlifter, I don’t need to tell you, you know that you can’t build muscle and lose fat simultaneously.

And there are some physiological reasons for that, which you talk about in the article below. So when you want to optimize body composition now, [00:06:00] macronutrients matter. So where you get those calories from matters if you want to, if you want to build muscle or maintain muscle while losing fat. You can’t just eat a bunch of for instance, if you were to do what I was saying earlier, eat a bunch of Doritos and.

Donuts and junk food and whatever. Basically, what you’re gonna end up doing is your carbohydrate intake. Let’s say you did that and you hit your calories, you’re losing weight, but the majority of your calories are gonna be from carbohydrates and fat and you’re gonna be, you’re not gonna get much from protein and that is not a good way of going about it.

And there are also some other downsides to eating too much junk food, which I’m gonna talk about soon. And they’re not related so much to fat loss. So that’s the basic premise of if it fits your macros is you find out how many calories you are, you’re going to be eating every day to put yourself into a mild calorie deficit and you turn that into, let’s say 40 percent of those calories going to come from protein.

40 percent of those calories come from carbs and 20 percent from fat. It’s very standard breakdown. It works well. That’s what I follow personally or even a little bit less carbs. High fat dieting is very overrated. I’ll actually link an article down [00:07:00] below on that as well if you want to read more about that and read my thoughts about that.

So you have these macronutrient numbers, right? I just recently finished a cut and my final macros were, I want to say about 200 protein, 250 carb and 60 fat, give or take. So I have those numbers. Now what you do next is you take those numbers and you turn those into a meal plan or you turn those into, that’s what I like to do.

And I’ll talk a little bit more about that, but basically how you get to those numbers isn’t so important. The types of foods you eat to get there isn’t important as long as you hit those numbers. So that means what kind of protein do you like? I like meats. I like meats. dairy. I like eggs. I don’t mind getting protein from plant sources like beans and rice and stuff like that.

Although I’m not a huge fan, I guess I like peas. Peas are pretty protein dense for a vegetable at least. But the point is you get your protein how you want carbs or a million different options. Obviously of carbs. I personally [00:08:00] prefer to eat nutritious carbs fibrous carbs because they help keep me full.

And if you start developing micronutrient deficiencies, you’re not only going to notice it in the gym, but you’re going to have a harder time dieting. And I will talk more about that in a minute. The point is though, you can eat, for your carbs for instance, you can eat the types of carbs that you like.

And hopefully you like some sort of nutritious carbohydrate, but you have a lot of options there, like you have, potatoes, sweet potatoes, all different types of grains, seeds legumes fruit is great, basically all fruits. Even you know, you can get some carbs from dairy, like from lactose as, as long as it doesn’t bother your stomach.

So you have plenty of options. Again the point is, it’s not about restricting certain types of carbs, not eating this or having to eat only vegetables at certain times or whatever, all that doesn’t matter. It’s just hitting your numbers. Fat, same thing I prefer to get my fats from meat. I prefer almond butter is very good.

I like almond butter. I like to cook with some oil sometimes or cook with some butter. My, [00:09:00] my diet is relatively low fat. It’s not so low that it’s going to impair my health. But I’m not a fan of the high fat, 30 to 40 percent of daily calories from fat. And again, you’ll see an article down below where I really explain why.

So that’s if it fits your macros and that’s why macros matter and you can now, you see why this is popular because people are used to in, in the world of dieting, we’re told so many ridiculous things about with food restrictions and can’t eat this food and you can’t, you only can eat these kind of carbs, starchy carbs are good, starchy carbs are bad.

Carbs period are good. Carbs are bad. So it’s it does simplify things a lot. It’s very easy to plan or track macros. If you’re, if you know that your numbers are 150 protein let’s say that depends on depending on your weight, if you’re a guy or girl or let’s just say it’s 150 protein, 150 fat.

If those are your numbers that’d be for a girl. And I’m not of all weights, obviously, but I don’t think a guy would ever be small enough to eat that little food. So then, you have these simple numbers and you can either track on the fly, which some people like to do with an app like MyFitnessPal or [00:10:00] something, where you can go on their website and set custom macros.

Don’t follow their preset macros because they suck. So you set custom goals. And then you just log food as you eat it. That’s fine. You can do that, but you need to be familiar with the content of food. Because if you just go and eat something and you don’t really know what is in it, and then you go look it up and you’re like, Oh, great.

There’s 40 grams of fat. There’s like my entire day’s worth of fat in one meal. Shit. What do I do now? You need to be familiar with foods. So if you’re already familiar with foods, then it’s useful. If you have no idea, then it’s useless. It’s, you’re going to probably have some issues if you try to just wing it on the fly.

You’re going to find, you’re just going to put yourself in positions where, it might be 6 p. m. and you have nothing, you have no calories left for the day. So you have to either just cut it off and deal with it or, go over. But once you get used to foods, then, I, I do that on the weekends.

Even when I was cutting my weekend calories a little bit lower, it was my off days and I’m familiar enough with foods now and all the different foods that I like to eat that I just know. I also like to weigh for [00:11:00] potatoes, okay, it’s 2 carbs per gram, so I’m weighing my potatoes.

But I’m not necessarily weighing every little thing or even looking at, I just know now a potato that big, okay, that’s about 200 grams or whatever. And vegetables, okay, that’s about a cup and a half, whatever. So my calories, I’m probably within a hundred calories, but you can do that if you really know your calories or if you really know your, the macros of food.

But initially I recommend that you create a meal plan, which I’ll link an article to down below and how I like to do this and just follow the meal plan, eat the same foods every single day. Yeah. Does that sound boring? Yeah, it does sound boring, but it actually is not so bad because you’re eating foods that you like.

That’s the big thing. And you can change it whenever you want. You can also get fancy if you want. What I do is I still use meal planning. I don’t wing it every day, just one or two days a week where my calories are already like I’m reducing them a bit when I was cutting. I’m already in a decent deficit.

So if my deficit is a 50 calorie, even 100 calorie deficit, if it has a swing on one or two days a week, it just doesn’t affect the overall [00:12:00] results, but I don’t recommend trying to wing it every day. I recommend that, still create a plan. And what you can do is you can like.

Let’s say you have a certain allotment of calories and have macros of protein, carbs and fat for your post workout meal. Let’s say it’s a 50 for me. It’s about 50 protein somewhere between 75 and a hundred carb and a little bit of fat. I don’t post workout fat does nothing. So it doesn’t really matter.

So with those numbers now, I have a smoothie every day just cause it’s delicious. I just never get sick of it. It’s a simple, it’s a frozen banana, a couple of cups of rice milk couple of scoops of protein, cinnamon. And that’s it these days, actually. It’s so good. It’s just delicious. So that’s my post workout every day, and I look forward to it every day.

So one day, if I get sick of it, I’ll do something else. But, if I wanted to, I could turn that into pancakes, for instance. It doesn’t matter. As long as I measured everything out and knew what was going into it, I could just turn that into a pancake meal every day and eat pancakes every day. If I wanted to.

I don’t know, depending on my body does pretty well with whole [00:13:00] grain with more refined shitty type wheat products, it can upset my stomach. I find with whole grain products it doesn’t really bother me, but maybe at some point it would not have to die out of the back like with dairy.

If I do too much dairy a couple days in a row, my stomach just gets upset. It’s just the way it is. But I can do a lot of dairy maybe once a week and be okay. I guess I wouldn’t necessarily say a lot, but like these days, my cheat meal. It’s not even so much what you milk, it’s save up a lot of calories for it.

But I eat like a pint of Talenti Gelato, which is so good. I go on and off this, like I beat Talenti to death and then I just move on to something else. But I’m only cheating, like I only really cheat once a week. So beating it to death takes me like four months basically. So I can eat a pint of ice cream and, like a blueberry muffin with it or something and be okay.

But if I were to do a pint of ice cream every day, there’s a point where my body would just get mad. Anyways, so you have your macros for meals. You work out you can work out a few different options if you wanted. You could have, let’s say it’s your dinner. You could have dinner one. [00:14:00] And it’s chicken and this and that and whatever.

And dinner two is beef and this and that. And dinner three is these days I like, for instance, I’ll do usually some sort of dish with meat and vegetables. And for my carbs I’ll switch things up. Sometimes it’s potato based, sometimes it’s sweet potato based, sometimes it’s grain, sometimes it’s seed.

It just depends what I feel like. And then also sometimes I’ll do a frittata, which I bake in the oven. And in do it with put cottage cheese and Parmesan cheese and salsa and wrap it up in a big breakfast burrito. It’s delicious. So again, it’s just, I have my numbers worked out and it depends what I come home and I decide what do I feel like eating and then I make it.

So you can do that as well. You don’t have to eat literally exact same foods every day. Although I’ll do that for, 7, 10 days at a time just because I’m busy. It’s simple. I just need to throw something in the oven and, usually get back to work and then I don’t really want to have, I like one pot cooking a lot, which is actually my next cookbook is gonna be one pot just because it’s so convenient.

So that’s one nice thing about if it fits your macros is it does simplify the whole process. [00:15:00] And another nice thing is, of course, that it does work. I think I’ve already made this clear. It is just taking the underlying the physiology of weight loss and weight gain. So on the flip side, if you want to build muscle, as you probably know, you need to be in a slight calorie surplus over time that’s how you maximize muscle growth.

And again, that’s just the same game. It’s just, get to eat more food. So for me, yeah. If I were to bulk right now, clean bulk I’d probably eat about 3, 300 calories on my training days. And in terms of macros, that would be about my, I would probably do about 200 carb and about 50 to 60 fat and all the rest from carbs.

sorry, 200 protein 50 to 60 grams, 200 grams, protein, 56 grams of fat and all the rest from carbs. And that would be great. I would feel awesome. My training would kick ass, but right now I’m just staying lean. I’m doing some photo shoots and stuff. So my calories are just hovering.

I’m just keeping them around 2, 600 and one cheat meal a week and it’s fine for now. So anyways, It fits your [00:16:00] macros absolutely works when though you have the right calculations. One of the problems that people run into it if it fits your macros is the calculators that are being used are wrong.

They’re just too high. Like it’s just a known thing. I even read a paper on it recently that the Harris Benedict is a bit high in calculating BMR and that activity multipliers, especially those like that. I recommend that you work out your BMR using the catch McCardle because it takes into account body fat percentage.

Yeah. Which does matter quite a bit. It can be the difference of 200 calories one way or another in your BMR. Which is your basal metabolic rate, how much energy your body burns every day just at rest. And then you have activity multipliers though. So if you exercise a certain number of hours per week, then you’re multiplying your BMR by a certain amount to reach your total daily expenditure.

The problem with like the catch McArdle’s daily it’s activity multipliers, for instance, is they’re just too high. You’re not going to be able, if you followed those multipliers the way that they’re laid out, you’re Unless you, it’s not going to work for you unless you have a very fast metabolism.

There are people I run into that are able to, run on [00:17:00] like a 1. 5 multiplier for TDE and, but they’re just rare. Most people have to dial it back and that’s just a known thing in the bodybuilding world. And again, I actually read some research on it recently. So it is a known thing in the scientific world as well.

If you check out my meal planning article that I linked down below, I give Some better multipliers that actually work and work with the majority of people. And I’m really speaking now from experience and working with thousands of people. And it’s also, like I said, it’s a known thing in the bodybuilding world as well, that they have to use a bit lower multipliers.

So yes, as long as you have your numbers right, then it works. Then you can eat all kinds of good foods, meet your numbers and achieve your goals with your body, whether it be gaining weight, building muscle, or, losing fat. Of course, another good thing about it is you get to eat foods you like.

That also includes, if you want to eat a little dessert every day, do it. I do. Every day, I eat something that has, oh, has the dreaded sugar in it. Which I might as well link an article to down below because sugar is not nearly as big of a problem as it’s made out [00:18:00] to be if you are relatively lean and if you exercise right, if you exercise regularly.

For me, it’s, it could be some chocolate, although I cut back on the chocolate. It’s just too much fat. Unfortunately, as much as I like it, it’s so fatty and I don’t really want to, I have to steal too much from carbs to eat chocolate. I’d rather get, I don’t want to get half of my daily fat from chocolate.

It might be have these little ice cream sandwiches that are good or, whatever, mainly a carb type dessert. So you get to eat foods you like though, and that’s a big thing, meaning that there really are no restrictions unless all you like, if all you like is junk food and fast food, then change your mind, like start eating nutritious foods and make your body like them basically.

And another big benefit of If It Fits Your Macro is there’s this flexible dieting approach is that it eliminates It’s the anxieties that people have about, can they eat this? Can they not eat this? Did they just screw up their diet because they ate the starchy carb after 4 p.

1. or, because they took three extra bites of pasta or because blah, blah, blah. It [00:19:00] shows you that dieting is much, much simpler than many mainstream gurus and experts and whatever make it seem. And it really is just a numbers game. When we’re talking about losing fat or building muscle now talking about some of the things that I don’t like about it is that and this kind of is a segue from this last point and I’ve mentioned this earlier is that a lot of people use it as an excuse to just pound junk food.

A guy who works for me. He might’ve spoken to him if you ever called in the Legion, Kareem answers the phone and that’s great. So he’s been cutting and he’s been losing weight. He’s been, he’ll do well. And then sometimes on the weekends he just crushes himself and gains like three pounds over the weekend and then has to undo it.

But overall I think he’s down 25 pounds or so. And so he’s doing well in that regard, but he loves just bad food. Like I think A third of his daily calories are from candy bars and sometimes other candy as well. And, he doesn’t eat vegetables. He has like a joke. He hates micros, right? Like any micronutrient.

He doesn’t want it in his body. Like all he [00:20:00] wants is things that taste delicious to him. And he’s 21 so he can get away with it. But that kind of approach catches up with you. My partner in Legion, Jeremy for on, on, as another example, he has done the same thing in the past where he would get a bit too, if it fits your macros, you junk it shredded.

And so he would, be working in half pints of gelato. We plenty is our thing. I just don’t eat very much of it. He was eating a lot, but he tried to eat it every day. And then he’d be trying to, you just try to get to, to aesthetics with his diet and what he ran into and what Kareem has also run into is one, they get much hungrier and they always wondered like, how is cutting so easy for me?

I never get hungry. I always have high energy levels. My body always feels good. My training is always good. A big part of that is because I get the vast majority of my calories from nutrient dense sources. I get plenty of fiber in my diet. I take plenty of supplements that are proven not just workout [00:21:00] supplements, but health related things like spirulina, fish oil, vitamin D.

I take a good multivitamin. And these things matter especially. It’s a cumulative over time. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been eating like this for a long time. I’ve been training, properly for a long time. And it’s, I’m at a point where my body is just very resilient and calorie deficit, it isn’t that big of a problem.

And if I want to go and eat, 000 calories of just sugar or whatever I can do that and it doesn’t have that big of a negative effect on my body. But cream and Jeremy went because they were just eating too much junk regularly. I guarantee you they were developing, cream for sure micronutrient deficiencies and they started to feel it.

Their bodies just didn’t feel so good. They would get very hungry when they would eat, when your lunch consists of some rice and chicken and two Twix bars or something like that or even I don’t even know if he’s doing rice and whatever. It’s not going to be nearly as filling [00:22:00] as if you would have taken all those calories and broke it up into nutrient dense things that actually fill you that have fiber that have, that have nutritional value.

And then performance in the gym really suffers as well. Cream has been complaining about that, about how strength is going down so much. I’m like, your diet sucks, dude. Yeah, you’re hitting your macros, your diet sucks. And you’ll also find that with people that compete, you’ll often find that of course they know about flexible dieting and they follow flexible dieting, but they get the majority of their foods from nutritious sources.

And Or they get the majority of their macros from nutritious sources, nutritious foods. And yeah, a lot of competitors are, they just listen to their coach. They really actually don’t know anything. A lot of coaches don’t know. They just have all kinds of weird bro science ideas. but there are a lot of competitors that are very informed and yeah, they know that they could eat they could eat more drunk food if they wanted to, but they really, especially guys that they’re getting into, competition shape, they’re getting to four or 5 percent body fat.

They need to be holding no water. Like [00:23:00] the drugs aside, the diet really starts to matter a lot. So those guys notice it. One of the thing I don’t like about it fits your macros is that people And I’m speaking from experience here. I email with a lot of people, I talk with a lot of people. They tend to get I wouldn’t say they tend to.

Some people just get carried away and they don’t really plan or track their macros precisely enough. They’ll be eating at, A few meals. Even I think there’s somebody recently they’re eating at Chipotle like two or three times a day, which I don’t even know why you’d want to do that.

But yeah, like Chipotle has macros for you on their website. But how precise is that really when they’re just like, what do you want? All right, slap this slap and yeah, it’s going to be in a ballpark. But if you’re off by 100 calories per meal, that’s 300 calories extra per day. That, that’s quite a bit actually.

That, that could be half of your deficit gone right there. And then also not just that but just eyeballing, oh I think that’s about four ounces of meat when it’s actually seven ounces or it’s actually six ounces or, I think that’s 300 grams of sweet potato when or rice or, whatever when it’s actually 400 and [00:24:00] things like that all those things add up.

So if you’re going to do it, you need to make sure that you’re precise. Once again, that’s why I recommend that you. Create a proper meal plan, weigh your food every day and just do it that way. So then you take the variables out relating to just simple dietary compliance. Because that’s the number one thing that people run into at least in my experience of why they’re not reaching their goals in terms of losing weight or gaining weight is just dietary compliance.

The vast majority of people that don’t lose weight as quickly as they want to, or as quickly as they should. Or are stalled, simply overeat. They either overeat on a regular basis, like they just overeat every day by a little bit or they just, go nuts on the weekend. And it’s funny because people will email me and it just opens with I’m plateaued.

I don’t know what’s going on. What do I do? And my standard first reply is, what’s your diet like? What are your macros like on a daily basis? How often are you cheating and what are you doing? And it almost always Oh, and like 50 percent of the time, at least maybe 60 percent of the time, it’s the weekends alone.

Oh during the [00:25:00] week, I’m good. I stick to my diet. And then the weekends come and I eat 82 cheeseburgers and drink beer all day. Then that, you know what the problem is. Of course, that’s you could undo an entire week’s worth of weight loss in one weekend. Easy. No question. Cause you don’t need it when you’re doing it right.

You’re only losing one pound, maybe, two pounds max fat a week. You can gain a pound of fat or even two pounds in two days. For sure. A pound is easy. You just go eat 8, 000 calories Saturday, 8, 000 calories Sunday, and make it really high fat. Eat like pizza and cheese, lots of cheesy type things and just as much fat as you can get in you, dietary fat, and you will gain noticeably, you will gain one to two pounds of fat over the weekend easy.

I don’t know like what the maximum was funny. I was talking with one of my friends about this. I wonder how much fat can your body actually synthesize? He has to create it. So it has to take, everything that you’re putting in and change it molecularly to store it. But there’s got to be just like how your body can only build so much muscle.

[00:26:00] In a period of time, it’s building, a pound of muscle. Think of that as a pound of steak that your body’s building. Same thing with fat. I don’t know what that is, but you can gain a pound of fat or even two pounds in two days for sure. The process is very efficient. So yeah, that’s where I think the, those are like the two, Problems or if it’s your macros, it’s not really problems inherent in it.

It’s just a problems with how people promote it and how people use it. How I use it flexible dieting. Like I said, as I, I like to make a meal plan, I eat foods that I like. And I work out various meals that, that, that fit my numbers and I stick to it. And once you get used to it, it just becomes an everyday part of your life.

It’s not even, I don’t feel restricted at all. I think of it more as like a budget, like with money, right? So you only have so much money to spend. How are you going to spend it? You don’t complain like, yeah, you could wish you had more money to spend, but you only have that much money to spend with food.

It’s a little bit different because you can eat, you can go eat 8, 000 calories a day, but if you look at it more like a budget, you have a [00:27:00] certain amount of calories to spend macros, the, broken down into macros. How do you want to spend them once they’re spent? They’re gone. If you look at it that way, if you’re good with your money, then you can be good with your diet if you just look at it that way.

way. So yeah, that’s about everything with if it fits your macros. Again, you’ll see some articles down below that you might like to go learn more about how to actually put it into use. Okay. So now let’s move to this other thing I want to talk about, which is grinding, right? And the reason why I thought of this is I’ve been getting into golf recently.

I played a bit when I was younger and never really got good. I never broke 80. I was an eighties golfer and I didn’t play that much. I played for six months, and I want to get back into it now just because I wanted, I don’t know, some, something other than just lifting weights to do with my body, and I’ve always liked golf. And so I’ve been working for the last couple of months just on swing mechanics and I don’t have that much time to give it but I work it in, I have a little setup here at the office and just do what I can do and get to get out there on the weekends a little bit.

And I’ve been working a lot on my swing mechanics and people that over at the country club or whatever, they, just some of these guys are like, I wish I could grind like [00:28:00] that. I don’t have the motivation to just go out there and grind. And it just got me thinking in that, how big of a, an advantage you can have by just being able to be a good grinder and how really everyone that I know who got really good at anything. And not just got okay, but got to a point where like they’re making, that’s their profession, that’s her career and they’re making a lot of money doing it like people, they’re good, whether it be a business or it could be, I don’t even know, like I think it’s salespeople or marketing people or athletes or whatever is that these people were just really good at grinding and that concept of grinding, right?

It has a good connotation because it had, there’s a negative connotation. aspect to it, but also a positive in terms of toughness because that is really what it is. Like when I’m out there working on my swing, I’m on video, I’m hitting one ball, going back, looking at my, looking at what I did.

And it’s a matter of Working toward the positions, what I need to see and [00:29:00] getting a feel for it. I’m not just out there banging balls and it is, it’s, it, there is a grind to it. It’s not that’s particularly thrilling. I’m ambivalent about it when I’m doing it. I’m not, I wouldn’t say I’m exhilarated and I’m not angry or I’m just level headed.

I’m almost, maybe I’m a little bit above, I don’t know, I’m somewhere around boredom kind of thing. And maybe I’m somewhere between boredom and, being just contented, and, but I just do what I do. And and it does have that grind feel, when you’re learning something, anything in the beginning, you suck at it and you wish you could just go do the, the big picture and be good at it.

But you have to just take one little piece and you have to just grind it. You have to just grind and grind until you get that piece. All right, good. Then you add another piece. Grind at another piece, grind and then grind them all. And you’re just just you’re building up this thing.

And I really that’s a, it’s an analogy. I think it applies to really anything. You have to be able to push through the struggles in the beginning. You have to push through all the mistakes. Take golf. All the Tiger Woods was he probably still is. I don’t [00:30:00] know. I don’t really actually follow golf that much, but I know that he was renowned, especially back when he was crushing everybody.

He was renowned for his grind. He just would be 12 hours a day. That was his schedule. Even when he was winning everything and every day that he was out there, four hours on the range, four hours playing this, that, whatever. And he could, it’s just a known, like he could outgrind everybody and ironically, a friend of mine that was super good at video games.

Like actually we played a couple of games professionally and whatever. Same thing. He was just a grinder and he’s got an aptitude for it, but there’s a similarity there. People that are are, I know that are very successful in business, they acquired skills that They’re just good at grinding. And by that they’re able, in you take somebody that has achieved me and made a lot of money or something like that and out in public or the how the public sees them is in this very type of there must have a mystique about them, right?

That in a lot of cases, people think that. [00:31:00] that success came a lot easier for that person than it actually did. And in, I’ve, like I said, I’ve known a lot of people that have made a lot of money doing a lot of different things. And I know a lot of people that make a lot of money doing a lot of different things.

And one for one, in their private lives, these people are grinders. They go through all the same struggles as everybody else. Some people do have knacks for things that make it a little bit easier, but for the most part, they’re able to just sit down every day. And not don’t be discouraged because they suck and just grind and grind until finally they’re able to just make breakthroughs.

And if you’ve played sports, you’ve probably experienced that. I played ice hockey growing up and I remember, it’s funny that I remember this. It’s just etched in my memory where for the first year I was terrible. I played a lot of roller hockey, but then I went on the ice and I didn’t know how to skate.

I didn’t, It’s, it was completely different shooting a ball versus shooting a puck. There was very, a lot less in common than I was expecting. So it took a year and I played in the season and I played camps. That’s all. I [00:32:00] played as much ice hockey as I could living in Florida.

So I, it’s not like I can just go out and skate on the lake or something like that, but it took a year of grinding camps. You go to these camps, that’s what you do. You grind, you’re practicing one little skill. You’re practicing your crossovers for an hour straight. You’re practicing one type of shot for an hour straight grinding.

And it took about a year or a year. Yeah, probably about a year, a little bit more than a year before I was even good enough to like make a difference in a game to even do anything right. And I remember the play where I actually, I did something good and, got around some people almost scored. And then I was like, Finally, the grinding has paid off.

I can do something now. And then I got, that was like a first breakthrough and I got progressively better. And it went like that where I’m, where then I would be at that skill level and I would grind. And then all of a sudden it would be like, I can all of a sudden just do this new thing that, Made me even better.

And in taking up golf again, it’s the same thing. In the beginning, everything felt terrible and janky and my swing sucked and I couldn’t hit the ball [00:33:00] consistently and I couldn’t get my hips moving correctly. And I couldn’t, it was just all these things. And I’ve been grinding and now it’s not perfect, of course, but it’s much, much better.

And it feels so natural and easy now. I’m like, how, why wasn’t, why was this so hard, just a month ago? Why was I, why couldn’t I just do this with my hips? It’s so simple. No, I don’t know. But that’s how it goes with anything, whether you’re learning, writing or learning something related to work or whatever in the beginning, you suck.

That’s just the way it is. And you grind until finally it just comes that’s it. And it seems to come in these big, you make these little improvements, then all of a sudden something clicks, and then you make little improvements, something clicks. And I don’t know.

There seems to be something to that working out, building a good physique is a kind of a good exercise in grinding because you have to show up every day. You have to put in the work. You have to only improve your biggest improvement that you’re going to see in a day to day like today.

You can beat your reps from last week. That’s it. That’s it. What did you bench [00:34:00] press 225 for five last week and you did 225 for seven this week. Great. That’s an improvement. That’s a successful grind session in a sense. But you get no immediate rewards. It’s not like now you get to run to the mirror and see that new muscle growing out of your chest or something.

You look the exact same, nothing has changed apparently, something has changed over time. You accumulate. these small little gains until you’ve really done something oppressive. And that’s really how I think just things go in many areas of life where you just, you slowly accumulate positive slowly are just moving forward.

Really with like your head down your nose is in the grindstone and then after time you look back and Oh wow, look at how much, look at how far I’ve progressed. And and that’s really it. And it goes back to the 10, 000 hour rule, which you’ve probably heard about, I think Malcolm Gladwell really popularized it.

It’s been around for longer than when Gladwell talked about it in his book, Outliers. But I think that was like [00:35:00] the first real mainstream spreading of it. And in case you haven’t heard of it, it’s just as simple. There was some research done that basically concluded in looking at people of various skill levels in all different types of fields and endeavors that At a master level or a top professional level, you’re looking at about 10, 000 hours or more of deliberate practice.

That’s what goes into that. Your average teacher, maybe 3000 hours. Your average student at a student level where he’s still learning, 1000 hours or less. And deliberate practice is Basically where you are practicing, we’re too similar to working out actually, like working out what you’re actually doing to the body.

When progressive overload is you’re, it’s overreaching you’re forcing your body to do a little bit more than it, it wants to, or that it could do, just the week before it adapts a little bit, you push it a little bit further. It adapts a little bit. And the same idea with practicing, coming back to a sport you can go out and practice let’s say, you can take golf again you can go to the driving range and just hit golf balls over and over.

[00:36:00] That’s mindless practice. And it doesn’t really achieve much, or you could go out and you could, let’s say, play a game where one popular practice game that good players use is they actually play a course in their head. Let’s say the course that you normally play, you go out on the range and you visualize that first golf course.

T, what would you normally hit? A driver. Okay, good. Where would you put it? Okay, good. It needs to be in between those two things, whether it could be two trees or whatever. Okay, how did you hit it? All right. It’s over there. What was your drive about? Which you would know you have, you have to the back of the range, right?

And then you get, now you get our next club and you’d hit your approach shot. How did that go? And there are different ways to play games like that where you keep score. Actually, there are other games where putting games and things where. You’re trying to you, you gain points for doing certain things and you lose points for doing other things.

And by, by practicing like that it’s a challenge. So let, you’re trying to actually beat your scores as opposed to just mindlessly going out there and just swinging a club for two hours straight, which a lot of people [00:37:00] do. And it’s that, it’s very inefficient. In the two months that I’ve been taking this up, I’ve met some of the people over the country club or whatever.

And they’re out there and their swings look just as bad as they did two months ago. And they’re hitting the ball just as poorly as they were two months ago. And the, they’re now coming and talking to me cause they see how much I’ve improved in just two months. And it’s the matter of smart, deliberate practice.

All so yeah, that’s about it. That’s all I want to say on grinding is just a, it’s a skill that if you can. And get into that mindset and just be patient and be a good grinder. I really think that it can serve you well in every area of your life. Alright, thanks again. I hope you enjoyed the podcast and I will catch you next time.

Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you like the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www. muscleforlife. com where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find [00:38:00] a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day actually. I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife. com. Alright, thanks again. Bye.