Big mistakes that intermediate lifters make and finding the right “work-life balance”

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews with muscle for life. com. And in this podcast, I want to talk about how things change. Once your newbie gains are behind you. This is usually, I’d say after you’re a somewhere between six and eight, maybe 10 months of into your weightlifting, how things change and the problems that people run into and the mistakes they make that ultimately.

Severely hinder their gains. And in many cases just lead to them quitting and also want to talk about a subject I just wrote an article on, which is a, it’s how to. It’s on the subject of work life balance and I want to talk about in the podcast, even though I just wrote an article on it because I told somebody that I would talk about it on the podcast and I decided to write an article as well.

All right. So first let’s start with this subject of what, how things change when you become an intermediate weightlifter. And by that, I mean that your newbie gains are behind you. Newbie gains are actually a real thing. I can check my PubMed. I think [00:04:00] If not just know that they’re real. Meaning that for your first, minimally for your first three to six months, if you’re following a program that is set up, even just know that they’re real.

at all correctly, you’re going to make really good gains. You’re going to make the type of gains that you would see. That, an experienced weightlifter would, we would need steroids to actually make gains. Your first year of weightlifting, if you do it right, you can gain about 20 to 25 pounds of muscle.

Naturally, of course. And I’ll link an article down below that I wrote on this so you can get a bit more information on this and how it goes. But then from there, so that’s year one, 20, 25 pounds of muscle. That’s on the high end. If you gain, I’d say anywhere between 15 and 20 is a very solid first year.

And that’s enough to change how your physique looks. Of course that’s noticeable, but it’s not, you’re to take a normal guy and add 15, 20 pounds of muscle on them. That’s not. normal guy to, Oh, whoa, that, that dude looks amazing. That probably takes closer to 30 or 40 pounds of [00:05:00] muscle and low body fat percentage added to, a normal frame.

But in that first year, you’re looking at, okay, 15 to 20, your second year is about half that your third year is about half that. And from there on out, you’re looking at maybe three to five pounds a year of lean mass. And it, Depending on your genetics, it could be on the lower end of that. Like for me, in the last year, I’ve gained somewhere between 3 and 4 pounds of muscle.

And that’s working hard at it. That’s, weight lifting 5 to 6 times per week. Basically always 100 percent on my diet, meaning that I’m always I’m never just being random with my diet. I’m either, in a slight surplus or I’m in a deficit if I’m going to be losing fat or I’m juggling a surplus and a deficit, which I talk a bit about in my new book, which just came out called beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, which is written for advanced weightlifters.

And there’s really a sequel to bigger, leaner, stronger and goes over. Basically, what’s next bigger, the stronger gives you the foundation gives you all the basic principles that [00:06:00] you need to have to know how to diet and train correctly, but, and this is also relevant to this podcast once you’ve gained your first 20, 25 pounds of muscle, things get harder and there are new training methodologies that you need to know about and new training techniques that you may want to incorporate in your routine, such as periodization, which I talk about in the book.

And then also with your diet dieting doesn’t change that much. In terms of course, you still use a surplus to build muscle and still use a deficit to lose fat, but. There comes a point where you get generally happy with your body composition and staying lean becomes more important to you So how do you then stay lean?

How do you stay, 10 percent body fat or under and still make gains in the gym because normally that means you know to make good gains in the gym Where you feel like you’re progressing that generally requires a calorie surplus which also puts on body fat So those are some of the things to talk about in the book and there’s a lot a lot of other things it’s a real sequel to bigger than you’re stronger.

It’s not Rehashed or it’s [00:07:00] not a second edition of being there stronger, which I’m almost done with actually that’s going to be next that’ll be releasing by the end of the year. So anyways. Getting back on topic here. So mistakes, let’s talk about what I see. I’ve seen it in friends. I’ve seen it just in, people in the gym, a lot of people that I email with and talk with.

So that first year is behind you. Even if let’s say you’re following a good program, like my bigger than your stronger program or maybe starting strengths or strong lists or whatever, something that has you doing a lot of, heavy compound weightlifting, you build a good amount of strength, you build a good amount of muscle in that first year.

And Then the new begins are finally gone and the, this is where it actually gets tricky because in the beginning it all feels so easy. You’re just eating food, you’re lifting weights, you’re enjoying yourself. Every week it seems like your reps or weight is going up. You might start squatting one 35 or less.

And by the end of your first year, you’re squatting two 80 to 90 for reps. And you’re thinking like this is, this is magic. And then all of a sudden You’re not gaining, you’re not [00:08:00] adding reps anymore. You’re not adding weight anymore. Your body is not visually changing. Your weight is sticking.

Why? So one of the big problems that people run into and the big mistakes they make is they start getting really they start sucking on their diet. And the most common mistakes that people make is see, When you’re new to weightlifting, if you at least understand the basic principles of energy balance and have, some sort of awareness of macronutrient balancing in terms of like high protein, moderate to high carb, moderate to low fat, and you just stick to that, but you’re not exact in your numbers and some days are high and some days are low, the fact that you’re new to weightlifting still just allows you to make gains.

It’s that’s just the way it is. But. As you become an intermediate weightlifter and you in the newbie gains or behind you getting tight on your diet becomes very important. All right, just move the microphone here to put it. I think what’s going to be in a better position because I just remembered a few people had said that the volume was a bit low for them.

So there should be better [00:09:00] anyways. So what you do with your diet becomes very important. Once the newbie gains are behind you and the most common mistake that people make is they bulk incorrectly. by eating way too much food, gaining fat way too quickly. Not allowing themselves to much time to actually build muscle.

Like maybe their bulk last two months or three months max. And they’ve put on so much body fat that now they have to cut. Cause once you start getting over 15, 16 percent body fat, You’re going to find it harder to build muscle just because of insulin sensitivity reasons that one of the main reasons is that your insulin sensitivity just gets worse and worse as you get fatter and that gets in the way of muscle growth.

So really the ideal range that you’re looking to fluctuate in when you’re building your body. is, if you’re a guy is about 10 to 15 percent body fat. If you’re a girl, probably about 20 to 25%. Those are, those numbers can be fudged up or down a couple percent, but that’s the range that you’re looking at.

So the most common mistake is bulk, by eating obscene amounts of food and cheat meals, massive cheat [00:10:00] meals, gain fat way too quickly and then have to cut. And then the next mistake is then cutting for too long by not being aggressive enough with your calorie deficit and cheating too much on your diet.

And, making what should be a two month cut or even a shorter into, double that, turning it into a four month cut or five month cut. I’m gonna link an article below that. I wrote rec recently on why I think rapid weight loss is better. Then slow cutting if you do it correctly, so as to not lose muscle or lose very little muscle and, maintain your strength in the gym.

But so you have too short of a bulk, which when you’re in a calorie surplus, that’s in your body’s prime to build muscle, but you only, keep it in a surplus for a couple months because you’re in a massive surplus gain too much fat. Then now you flip to a calorie deficit, which impairs muscle growth.

And when you’re, you can build muscle and lose fat simultaneously. But you can only really do it if you’re new, if you’re not new to weightlifting or proper weightlifting, then you’re not on [00:11:00] drugs. You’re not going to be building muscle and losing fat if you’re new to weightlifting or if you are new to correct weightlifting and for a natural weightlifter, that means emphasizing heavy compound weightlifting.

If you’ve been doing, let’s say shitty isolation, bodybuilding type routines for a long time, high rep stuff, supersets, drop sets, a lot of isolation machines and whatever. And then you switch to a heavy compound type program that has you heavy squatting, heavy dead lifting, bench press, military press. You can make, I wouldn’t say you’re going to get full newbie gains, but you can experience a bit of the newbie gains and you can experience a bit of the recomp where you can build muscle and lose fat simultaneously.

But if you’re like me, I’ve been weightlifting correctly for about five years now. give or take. And at this point, there’s just no way. There’s no way that I can build muscle and lose fat simultaneously. When I’m losing fat, I’m just looking to maintain my strength and maintain my muscle really. So you have now these short books and these long cuts.

That just, should [00:12:00] be done much faster. And what that really comes out to is like over a six month period, let’s say you were in a surplus for two months during your bulk. And let’s say you gained four pounds of muscle. too much fat, but four pounds of muscle. And then you cut now for four or five months, slow cutting, and gained really no muscle.

Let’s say you didn’t lose any muscle, which many people do lose muscle when they cut, because they do it incorrectly, but let’s say you just did it correctly. You didn’t lose the muscle, but now, over the course of that six, seven months, you’ve only gained four pounds of muscle. Which is just not very good.

Say that’s, that let’s say that’s your two, you can gain upwards of double that if you’re doing it right. So that’s one of the big mistakes that people run into is they don’t. They get laxer on their diet for some reason, as opposed to getting tighter with it.

And maybe that’s because, for that first year, it is like a wild ride where your body’s changing every week and you just get, you think maybe you can get away with anything kind of thing. Another mistake that people make with diet is to get lazy on [00:13:00] their intake.

Meaning that they don’t, they’re not following, a meal plan or they’re not tracking their intake on a daily basis and they don’t realize that they’re dramatically under eating or overeating or they get very like some days are very low calories. Some days are very high calories. Some days are somewhere in the middle and that can just mess with mess with your progress.

I haven’t seen any real research on this, but I’ve experienced it and seen it in others where. When you’re bulking and you have things going correctly and you’re in a slight surplus and you’re not going crazy with cheat meals. Yes, you get a little bit fatter over time. That is just the way it is, but you get into a groove where every week, you start making, gaining a rep on your big lifts.

And then after a few weeks you’re able to add five pounds and, move up and move up. But to reach that, And again, this is just anecdotal. I don’t really have any specific evidence I’ve seen of this, other than it’s just, I’ve experienced it with myself and a lot of people I’ve worked with, is that you have to be consistent with your diet, and you have to have your diet set up correctly, and you have to hit your numbers [00:14:00] consistently.

This is especially true of people like, that have an ectomorphic type of body, like my brother in law, who, what he used to do is, he’s very ecto he would gain a pound. Or so in a week when he’d be bulking, then on the weekends, his diet would go to shit. He’d eat nothing. He’d eat no protein.

I don’t even know why. He just didn’t eat over the weekends. He would lose about a pound over the weekends and just rinse, repeat, and he was doing that for months. And I was like, what are you doing? Dudes eat food on the weekends. Your body needs it. You need to be eating a lot. So when he finally did, he started then actually gaining size and holding onto it.

So I’ve seen that happen with other people. where yeah, that for him it was the weekends, but for other people, it’s just random days. One day intakes way, way low. Another day intake is high and that just messes with you. Also, like if you’re messing with your carbs too much, if your carbs, are very low for a couple of days and then they spend, they’re moving back up to a normal range that affects your training immediately.

One or two to two days of low carb is enough to drain your glycogen stores enough, especially if you’re exercising and you’re not replenishing that. Okay. [00:15:00] To severely impact your training. You can, you could carve up, you could eat an extra hundred grams of carbs today over your normal amount and probably gain 20 pounds on your lifts tomorrow.

If whatever that first big compound lift is that you’re going to be doing, if you’re squatting, dead lifting, whatever. If you had enough carbs the day before that you can gain easily 10 pounds right away. I’ve had as much as I think. 30 pound gain just overnight just from eating carbs.

That’s the power of glycogen. So yes, that’s the other mistake is just being too random with diet, not tracking intake properly. Moving on to the next mistake is something that Martin Burkhan from, lean gains he talked about called fuck around itis. And basically that is, Where people they get, they start to get fancy when, once the newbie gains are behind them and things start slowing down and they get almost like panicky Oh, it’s not so easy anymore.

I don’t want to work hard for this. So then the solution is start trying weird programs. There are a million weird programs out there that promise everything, just go. Go troll through ClickBank and you could spend a thousand dollars on bizarre programs that are not really going to do much for you.

[00:16:00] And that applies really to diet and exercise where people then will turn to stuff like, like intermittent fasting or carb cycling or carb backloading or whatever. And none of those dietary methods are bad, but they’re not gonna, they’re not the secret to making gains. They’re not like, Oh, that’s what you, that’s what you now have to do to make gains.

You could never get fancy with your training or dieting ever, which I actually never have. Like I’ve done all of the, I’ve done IF and carb backloading and carb cycling just to try them. And yes They’re not bad. You’re not going to ruin your physique. You can still make gains, but I don’t like eating on those types of schedules.

I just don’t like it. And there was no benefit to it. So why bother with it? I like eating every few hours. I like eating different types of foods. I like, eating a heart, a high carbohydrate diet, low carb dieting sucks. I’ll link an article down below where I talk about why. And that’s just the way that I like to eat.

And that’s the way that the majority of people I speak with to eat as well. Some people do [00:17:00] prefer IF where, you’re fasting for, let’s say, 18 hours out of 24 hours, or sorry, 16 hours out of 24 hours is fasting and 8 hours eating. Some people like that. I’m not that big of a fan of it. I don’t mind it on the weekends.

Where, in the mornings, like Saturday or Sunday morning, I’m usually doing something physical. I’m usually golfing or I’m out like playing with my son or walking or something like that. So a lot of times I’ll wake up and just have some leucine and maybe some caffeine and then fast through the morning, do some exercise type stuff and start eating, at lunch.

I don’t mind that, but I wouldn’t like to do it every day. So that’s on the dietary side of kind of get fuck around at us where people just get way too fancy with diet and they ignore the simple. Fundamentals of energy balance, macronutrient balance. That’s really all it comes down to calories.

How many calories are you eating versus how many calories are you burning? How are you manipulating your calories up or down, depending on what you want to do with your body. And how are you breaking those into macronutrients? You should always be on a high protein diet about, depending on how [00:18:00] many calories you’re eating.

The percentage is going to go anywhere from, it could be anywhere from 30 to 50 percent depending on how many calories you’re eating. But generally speaking, like if you’re bulking, you’re going to want to be around 0. 8 to one a gram of protein per pound of body weight. And if you’re cutting, I recommend a bit higher, one to 1.

2 grams a per pound. And then high carb dieting. I am a big proponent of it. Again, you’ll find an article down below where I explain why protein is important. But it is just better period. There’s just no arguing unless there’s something severely wrong with your body where it can’t deal with carbohydrates.

If you’re exercising regularly and especially if you’re weightlifting regularly, you’re going to do better on a high carb diet. I guarantee it. And your body does not need nearly as much fat as some people think. Say it does to to do everything it needs to do and to keep hormones in a healthy range.

So on the training side, fuck rhinitis is program hopping, trying. There are a million different programs out there, but jumping from program to program, looking for that quick fix, looking for that newbie gain again, and it’ll never [00:19:00] come. It doesn’t matter unless you get on steroids, which I don’t recommend you do.

You will never have newbie gains again. Just know that your second year. If you can gain 15 pounds of muscle in your second year, you’ve done really well. If you could gain 10, if you gain 10 pounds, that’s decent. Based on the people that I work with and it’s probably 12 to 15 pounds is probably a good year too.

That seems to be a good range of people that don’t mess around with their training. They stick to the plan. They stick to their diet. They do everything that they’re supposed to do. So 12 to 15 pounds of muscle in the second year is, Probably the average. And that’s with any program. The best design program, that’s the best you’re gonna do.

So any program that can deliver That is as good as any other, in my opinion, and that’s where I think a lot of the, a better way to look at programs is more just on the results that they get with people. And if you see a program that’s putting 15 to 20 pounds of muscle on guys, and I’m speaking for guys, girls, these numbers are cutting, cut them in half and those are the numbers for girls.

If you [00:20:00] see that a program that’s the guys are consistently gaining, let’s say 15 to 20 pounds of muscle year one and somewhere between, I don’t know, I guess it depends on who you listen to, but somewhere between 10 and 20 pounds in year two, that program is a very good program. It’s, You can’t get more out of it unless you’re going to get on drugs.

You can’t get more out of your training. So program hopping is bad because a lot of programs are bad. So you’re going to have wasted time. Let’s say you two months, some stupid program, that’s a bunch of high rep stuff and not enough, it’s just not programmed well. And frequency is not programmed correctly.

Intensity, volume, blah, blah, blah. And you gain, a pound of muscle or less than that in those two months. Then you go to the, okay, that was not optimal. Then you go to the next program, go to the next program. So there’s that. And then there’s also that it’s hard to really know if you’re progressing because the key to it all is progressive overload.

The key to everything when you’re a natural weightlifter is that. That over time, you’re increasing the weight on the bar. You are putting your [00:21:00] muscles under heavier and heavier loads over time. That’s the key to building a big, strong physique. When it comes to maintaining it, you can get a bit fancier.

But building it is the hard work and you just can’t get around it. So if you are jumping from program to program, you don’t necessarily know, let’s say in the programs are programmed very differently where you’re squatting one way on one program, one rep range, and you’re doing it a different way on another program, different rep range.

Program one has you squatting once a week, program two has you squatting three times a week and so forth. It’s hard to really know where your squat is at, unless you’re just going to do one rep, one RM calculations. But still it’s much. More, it’s much more helpful to be able to see over the last.

Four months, let’s say four months ago, you were squatting once a week or twice a week or whatever. And, you were doing 250 for sets of four to five reps. Now, you’re doing sets of 275 for four to five reps on the same protocol. That, now you know. You can look at that and go, cool, I’m making progress.

That’s good. [00:22:00] When you program hop, you just don’t know. Because a lot of cases the programs, the big thing in this space as you’ve probably seen is to make things very fancy sounding and make things, it’s the latest science and it beats everything and this is how all the Hollywood actors do it and all the bodybuilders.

No, the Hollywood actors and bodybuilders, Just blast themselves full of drugs and pound weights. Yes, that you’re just, if you add all the drugs, then okay, fine. But if you don’t have all the drugs, it’s very different. Another big mistake I see is just not pushing hard in the gym. It probably does come down to realizing like this is going to be hard.

This, once the newbie gains are behind you if you really want to have the type of physique that impresses people where you look like a fitness model, you’re looking at from day one, Probably three to four years of hard work and by hard work, I mean that every day, you don’t have to be in the gym long, long periods of time.

You could spend, I only work out [00:23:00] five hours. I lift weights about five hours a week and I do two to three cardio sessions at about 20 minutes long a week. That’s it. And if I needed to cut that down to three, weightlifting three times a week, I could, and I still look the same. I just, I like lifting, so I, and I’m still trying to, improve my physique in small little ways.

So I go five days a week. But it takes, that type of hard work where you’re five days a week, you’re, in there consistently to make a, small gains. It’s a lot of effort that you have to expend for what feels like relatively small gains and small changes. It really is. You can bust your ass, let’s say it’s year three and you busted your ass for six months and heavy weightlifting is tough.

It takes a lot of effort. And let’s say you’ve gained, I don’t know, three or four pounds or so in six months. You don’t see that very much on your body. You will see it, but it’s not like a dramatic three or four, you had three or four pounds, maybe five pounds of muscle in that time period.

It’s not Oh my God, look at that. How much did you have to work for that? And then on the dietary side, how again, [00:24:00] If you’re familiar with my work, you know that I’m all about flexible dieting, eating foods you like, and, sticking to nutritious foods, but don’t get don’t fall too much into the traps of thinking that certain carbs are going to make you fat, or, that carbs in general are bad, or that you should never have any sugar, or anything like that.

Hit your numbers, eat nutritious foods, and work in some stuff that you like, and you’ll be fine. But, you still have to know what you’re eating. It’s not the normal, the normal person out there just goes I’m hungry. What am I going to eat? What do I feel like? Good. Let’s do that. That’s how, you can’t do that.

Really, I guess you can play with it a little bit if you know foods inherently. If you like, I have a pretty good sense of food. So if I go to a restaurant, it’s hard unless the restaurant has some very simple, like if I go to a steakhouse, I can order a steak. That’s pretty simple. I, I can even look that up on my phone.

There’s not going to be that much variants there or fish or the proteins, as long as they don’t have sauces and things like that. But if I’m going to go like appetizer side, [00:25:00] blah, blah, blah, eat some bread and stuff. It’s just, there’s a point where it’s like, who knows? I ate a lot of calories. That’s what I did.

So all in all, it just takes a lot of consistency and takes quite a bit of discipline to as you continue. And you have to know that the gains, the progress slows down. So you may even feel like you’re working harder and harder because you’re lifting heavier and heavier weights. And as you become a more advanced weightlifter, your workouts become even a little bit more intense than when they, when you were a newbie, like in my, in the bigger beyond bigger, leaner, stronger program in my latest book, it’s a periodized version of the bigger, leaner, stronger program.

The workouts are only one set more. But you’re doing some really heavy weightlifting in it and they’re hard. They’re just hard workouts. They’re effective and they work very well, but it’s tougher. Like the BBLS workouts are tougher than the BLS workouts. There’s no question. You work harder, you get less.

That’s it’s, it has a, almost like it’s an unfair, it’s like a paradoxical in other areas of your [00:26:00] life. If you work harder, you’re generally going to get more. That’s not how working out is. You work harder, you get less, but you still get something. And that’s the key. Alright, that’s all I wanted to talk about, that’s really all I wanted to say on, on, these points of the big mistakes that intermediate weightlifters make.

If you can just consistently be be consistent with your diet stick to your numbers, don’t get too crazy with things eat the way that you like to eat. And if you can stick to a program that’s good and you can make gains on it, if you can, focus on your compound weightlifting and see that your strength goes up there.

And if you push yourself hard in your workouts and really try to, just try to get one more rep than last week, that’s a successful workout. If you do that and stay patient, you will make good progress and you will make good gains and you will be able to reach your goal. I’m at this point pretty happy with where my body’s at.

I feel like I’ve reached my, this is genetically speaking, probably my peak really anyway. I don’t know how much more muscle I can really add. Maybe I could put on another five pounds over the next few years, but I don’t even care because I’m [00:27:00] pretty happy with how I look and I just want to stay like this.

It just took a while to get here. In my case, I think, It took way longer than it should have because for my first seven, almost seven years of weightlifting, I just didn’t really even know what I was doing and I made terrible gains. But looking back, if I would have started knowing what I know now, I probably would have been able to go from beginning to now in five or six years, probably no, no less than four.

So let’s say somewhere between four and six years, I would look more or less the way that I look now and then would just do what I’m doing now, which is I maintain, I get to eat, plenty of food. I get to train a heavy. the way I like to and maintain the type of body that I like. So you can get there.

You just, it takes quite a bit more work than a lot of people think. All right. So now I just want to move on to this other subject, which is the work life balance thing. Cause I amassed that fairly often just with kind of all the things that I have going muscle for life and with Legion and, other Various work, things that I’m involved in that I don’t really even talk about because they’re [00:28:00] not really related to those things.

Like, how do I keep all the plates spinning? And the answer, it’s pretty simple. One is I have a great team of friends. We all work hard. They do a lot to keep the show going. So it’s not just me, but also, I work a lot of hours. There’s just no way around it. My average weeks are probably.

65 to 75 hours and sometimes it can be, 80 hours plus depending on what’s going on. And I, I follow some blogs that I guess they’re just intellectual blogs, highbrow book reviews and quotes from famous people and Things like that. And I’ve seen over the course of last year or so, it’s been trendy to basically just poo what would be considered like workaholism.

And that, this idea that as a culture, we’re too work obsessed and that work doesn’t really matter. It’s not that meaningful, et cetera, et cetera. And while those ideas inherently, they don’t really resonate with me. Are you, I’ll take, I’ll entertain them and think try to look at myself and go why do I work so much [00:29:00] is am I just addicted to this idea of being busy? Because it just gives me something to do. Is it, that I have some, big problem in my life that I am avoiding by just working a lot? Does it make me feel important?

And for me, self awareness can be tough. Obviously how we perceive ourselves in many ways is not. the objective reality and definitely how others perceive us. But I don’t really think it’s any of those things, at least like in an extreme sense with me. I don’t like being busy just to feel like I’m busy.

I don’t, I’m never one to seek, real praise or importance or whatever. I don’t care. I rarely ever even talk about my work unless people really ask about it. And I can enjoy time away from work, doing other things for a certain period of time. Vacations for me get pretty old at about 7 to 10 days or so is when I’m really just it would have to be the most thrilling experience of my life to, to keep my attention at that point where I just want to get back to doing [00:30:00] something work related.

But so what it comes down for me and the best way I can express it is I just like to, I just like to make stuff. I like to make stuff happen and I like to create things. I like to come up with ideas and see them working in my mind in a certain way, putting them into reality and having that work.

Not because it confirms my, value as a person. Or because it’s somehow tied into my ego or something like that. It’s just fun to me. That is a fun experience. Some people have fun playing video games. Some people have fun watching TV shows. I have fun doing that. I have fun coming up with ideas and then working on them until they are, come to fruition and seeing them work.

It’s just fun. It could be, for me, that could be writing. Shit, it could be inventing. I could see how that could be fun being an inventor. You know what I mean? Just that concept is cool to me. That’s also why I really like marketing because marketing is a creative, it’s a very creative field where it’s, you have to come up with ideas.

And there’s a lot [00:31:00] of thought that goes into these ideas and you have to really think things through and really put yourself in someone else’s shoes and then execute those ideas and then get them out there and see what happens. That whole process is fun to me. And for me that’s really what work is.

And even how, I’ve been taking up golf recently and how I approach that is a very, like a lot of people come up to me on the driving range and I’m videoing my swing and working on things. And. The, they’ll question how am I out there? I don’t have that much time to do it.

So these guys are there probably all the time. So whatever, and they see me coming out on the weekends and I’m doing the same thing every weekend, working on these drills, improving things or whatever, and to them, that’s a grind. Like, how do you sit out here and just grind like that? And I’m like, that doesn’t feel like a grind.

Like I’m having fun. I am, I know exactly what I’m working toward and I know this is going to get me there. And that’s fun. I have an idea in my mind of how I want my swing to be so I can be a good player and I’m just doing what it takes to get there. And every week I get a little bit closer, a little bit [00:32:00] closer.

So how is that not fun? What are you talking about? How, what, how is it fun for you to sit out here and just hit balls over and over for hours? I see these guys every week with terrible swings. They’re never, ever going to be good. That’s not fun. So that’s why I like to work a lot.

But what about this point of work life balance, people ask, like, how do I fit in time for social things? How do I, hang out with friends and watch TV shows and, my playtime and whatever. And the answer is obvious, like I work a lot more than I do any of that stuff. And again, it comes back to, because for me work is a lot more enjoyable than watching a TV show.

A TV show has to be really good for me to want to watch it. The TV shows that I review and recommend on my cool stuff is I’ll watch them during my cardio. That’s if I’m doing cardio, I’m usually watching a TV show or I’m reading a book or listening to an audio book. And sometimes if I’m watching a show is particularly good, maybe I’ll sneak in an episode here, an extra episode here or there, maybe on the weekend or something [00:33:00] like that.

But for the most part, TV shows are boring to me. And a lot of things. is the experience is not as exciting as, working on something else working on this workout app that I’m, working on. That’s fun to me, doing all the sketching and putting it all together that, that’s just a fun activity.

Some people might have fun, someone else might think that walking their dog is fun, like I don’t mind walking my dog, but I wouldn’t say that’s particularly fun. I don’t my work life balance is just very different than other people’s. I work a lot more than I play and I don’t need very much play time to recharge my batteries.

A lot of people I talk about then I get asked, how do I not burn out if I’m, averaging, maybe 12 hours a day. On the weekdays, sometimes a little more. And then I work on Sundays as well. I take Saturdays off. How am I not burned out by now? Cause I’ve been doing that for years.

And I’ve never come, I don’t even know. I’ve never come close to burnout. I don’t even know what that would be like. And honestly the people that I’ve known personally that [00:34:00] would talk about balance and avoiding burnout and all that, we’re just lazy. That’s really, it was just an excuse to to be lazy, really.

I think about and I’ve even said this to some of these people could you imagine, what would you do if we went back a couple hundred years and you had the, work with your hands 10 hours a day on the farm just to have food to feed yourself. And I really think some of these people would probably just starve to death.

They would just go, this is too much work, it’s not worth it. Or they would just become beggars or something and probably starve to death. And yeah, that might seem a bit harsh, but some people, I don’t know, I have a hard time taking their seeing the world through their eyes because in my opinion, whatever you say is too much, whatever you think is too much is going to be too much if you think that, working any more than 40 hours a week.

Which is more than the American average American works about, I think it was like 34 hours a week or something like that. So if you think doing more than that or more than 40 hours a week is just too much, then it’s going to be too [00:35:00] much. If you want an excuse to underachieve, then just decide that you’re exhausted every day by blah, you’re exhausted.

And I understand there can be some physical aspect to that. If you don’t take care of your body, you probably will be exhausted. A bit more frequently. I’m rarely ever do I feel exhausted. Maybe if I somehow, if my son keeps me up and I don’t sleep more than three hours a night for four days in a row, he’ll be exhausted.

Otherwise I’m never exhausted. But if you have body issues, I understand, but the average person doesn’t have severe enough body issues to cause exhaustion. This is just, it’s mental really. We’re talking about what there’s a, we’re talking about what Napoleon, there’s a quote from Napoleon where he said that sometimes death only comes from lack of energy.

Really if some of these people, they have no challenge in their life. So of course they’re not energetic about anything. There’s no, they, of course they sleep 10 hours a night because they have no reason to wake up. Why? What’s their, what’s the point? Might as well sleep as much as possible, right?

On the other hand, if I think really, just about [00:36:00] anybody, if they decided that working 80 hours a week on projects that they actually wanted to work on, I can understand if you’re in a job that you really don’t like and you hate your work and whatever, you don’t like doing it. That’s one thing, but freely chosen things, any sort of activities that have some sort of purpose.

You’re going for something. If you decided that you could work 80 hours a week on that and be excited to do it, I think you could do it. It’s just, there are people get ideas from a lot of different places and then they decide that’s how it is for them. And many people are concerned with what other people think and concerned about what other people say.

And I have always been. Almost to a fault, very I wouldn’t say stubborn, but skeptical of other people’s advice and skeptical of just other people, how they live their lives and really looking at, if a person’s going to give me any advice on anything, do I really, would [00:37:00] I really listen to this person?

Are they really living the type of life that I want to live? If not, and they’re trying to advise me on something that is related to that, Then I’m just going to ignore them and, I’ve probably missed out on some good advice operating that way, but I’ve also missed out on a lot of bad advice or I’ve skipped over a lot of bad advice that would have definitely gotten in my way.

So I think in the end, the real thing about work life balance is you have to find what works for you. You have to balance your ambitions with your actions. If you’re like me and you just really like making stuff happen and doing cool things and you don’t do enough of it, then your life is going to feel out of balance.

Yeah, I think their idleness does have a value, but it’s definitely that it’s a matter of diminishing returns, at least for me personally, a little bit of idleness is nice every week to just recharge and relax and not really have to think about anything, whatever. I understand that, but I think it’s also like a medicine too much of it just makes you more sick than when you started.

But on the other hand, if you’re not really concerned with that, and your ambition is just [00:38:00] relax and luxuriate then, I think you should do that. I don’t think that you should feel compelled to be busy every moment or to tell everyone that you’re always busy or have to pretend like you’re busy.

I don’t think you have to feel guilty for not working all the time. I think everyone should provide for themselves and provide for their families. But if beyond that, if you’d rather spend your time with loved ones or, just playing, doing whatever, then, do that.

I’d say be resolute in your idolists. Do it do it well. But I do think that it’s just a last little note, just random thought on the matter is that with some of these blogs that I follow, it’s almost Like I said, it’s trying to almost to criticize people that work a lot or look down on them, which I mean, that in some cases is probably just a matter of jealousy.

People disparage what they don’t understand or what they don’t have. So if somebody and this has of course been. Statistically speaking, the highest wage earners are also the hardest workers. They also work the most. And regardless of what anyone says in terms of, how quote unquote wealthy they [00:39:00] are with friends and, family and stuff like that.

Life with money is way better than life without money. I’ve had, a lot of debt in the past and not had any money to spend and I’ve had now no debt. With, enough income to live the way I want to live and I will take money over no money any day. So people see that not with me, but just people see, some people they look to people that have made money and see, maybe it’s a jealousy thing or whatever, and they get mad about it and then criticize them.

Oh that person is just a workaholic or their marriage is going to fall apart or whatever. So I would say, don’t become one of those people. Don’t get overly cynical about it. But also if I don’t think you have to feel bad if you’re not, One of those kind of, workaholic type people.

If you’re not like, if you don’t view things the way that I do I don’t think anybody, I don’t think I’m even universally right in it. That’s just the way that I like to live my life. And that’s just my life, my work life balance. But I think you have to find the same. That’s all for this podcast.

I know it ran on a little bit longer. Sorry about that. I’ll try to [00:40:00] keep them, to the 30, 30, 40 minute range max. Hope you enjoyed it. And if you haven’t checked out my new book yet if you head over to muscle for life. com, you’ll see ads for it. All over the place. Not obnoxiously, but you’ll see it like in the hello bar at the top and on the side and stuff.

I think that you will really like it if you are an intermediate weightlifter or an advanced weightlifter, or even if you’re a new weightlifter, the program, you might not be ready for the program yet. And I explain who the program is for really in there and in different benchmarks that you should meet.

But I think that you will get a lot out of it, especially all the diet stuff. And there’s a lot of other stuff in there, mobility stuff and other things. All right. Thanks again. See you next time. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked 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 a [00:41:00] 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. All right. Thanks again. Bye.