Ep. #469: Kyle Hunt on Bodybuilding for Beginners, Practical Training and Diet Advice, and More

Mike: Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including bigger, leaner, stronger for men. Thinner, leaner, stronger for women, my flexible dieting cookbook, the shredded chef, and my 100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym.

The little black book of workout motivation. Now these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores.

Again, that’s bigger, leaner, stronger for men. Thinner, leaner, stronger for women, the shredded chef and the little black book of workout motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audio books 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting.

Meal prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www. legionathletics. com slash audible. That’s L E G I O N athletics slash a U D I B L E. And sign up for your account.

Welcome, lovely listener, to another episode of Muscle for Life. I’m Mike, of course. And if you are new to working out, or weightlifting in general, the world of bodybuilding can be quite intimidating. It can be confusing. It can be contradictory. Maybe you are getting mixed signals about how much muscle you can gain, or how lean you can get.

Maybe you are struggling with the terminology. Sets, reps, mesocycles, macrocycles, microcycles, cutting, bulking, and so forth. Maybe you’re just unsure of exactly what you should be doing in your workouts. Today’s guest, Kyle Hunt, addresses all of those things and much more in his new book that just recently came out called Bodybuilding for Beginners.

And I invited Kyle onto the show to discuss these things. And I know I’ve talked about many of these topics before, But I thought it would be helpful to some people to review the fundamentals of bodybuilding and to others who have not gone through that beginner’s rite of passage to give them a good overview of bodybuilding.

of the most important aspects of the game of getting jacked. In other words, Kyle shares a bodybuilding 101 crash course that is going to help newbies get up to speed faster and help remind even the more experienced lifters among us of the fundamentals that never change. Levers and buttons that we can pull and push to keep getting bigger and stronger.

And just because you know how I love my tangents, Kyle and I also discuss a few other things like fitness, quackery and credibility, exercise, science degrees, evaluating scientific research and more. All right. I hope I have whetted your appetite for today’s interview. Here it is. Hey Kyle. Welcome to my podcast, my friend.

Kyle: Mike, it’s awesome to have you on here or have me on here. 

Mike: Yeah. Just to give people context. So Kyle had me on his show first and then now I’m reciprocating. So I’m excited. Yeah. We’ve done what? Two episodes on my show. That’s right. It has been two. Actually. I just remembered the last one, but yeah.

And I’m obviously thankful for, it’s strangely hard to get on other people’s podcasts. So at least for me, have you experienced that at all? 

Kyle: I have, but what’s wild is I think if you really want to be on the podcast circuit, and you’ve probably seen this recently within the last year, I’ve been doing my podcast for three years now, but within the last year, it seems like there’s like PR agencies that people hire.

To get themselves on podcasts, I get hit up maybe once a week by these agencies saying, Hey, I’m representing so and so here’s their bio. Would you be interested in having them on the show? And most of the time I’m like, no, I’ve never heard of this person, but it’s giving me the idea that, okay, yeah.

Now I see why everyone’s on the podcast or certain people are. 

Mike: Yeah. I get those emails often and often they’re people I haven’t heard of who don’t have followings. And also see, I don’t really care too much about that. If I see a potential for an interesting conversation or to talk about something that hasn’t been discussed ad nauseum already, oftentimes the people these agencies are representing don’t check any of those boxes, they’re just.

Kind of random people with no followings that don’t seem to really have any deep expertise or anything all that interesting to say. And so it’s usually a no. And the guests that I do get are almost always me reaching out to people, which is fine. People who run other podcasts, particularly resistant to having.

Me on, I don’t know. Is it just me? It could be, I don’t know, but I’ve heard the same thing from other people though. Like even in instances where my podcast is actually much bigger than theirs. And I don’t even bring that up to try to flex or like weird flex, bro, but strange flex. Yeah no.

But trying to say, Hey and if it’s an interview that maybe if we go in some different directions that my listeners haven’t heard over and over, I could publish the audio on mine as well. Mine averages about 500, 000 plays a month when you factor in YouTube as well. So it’d be good exposure for you.

Like this could be a win still. I find it strangely hard to get people to want to have me on their podcast. So whenever someone who has a popular podcast comes along and has me, I’m particularly appreciative. 

Kyle: Yeah, no, I get it. I think maybe, I don’t know, maybe they feel like you’d. Steal their audience.

I know there’s that idea in some people’s head. I’ve never had that. Me personally. I’ve always thought of it as Hey, I just want to have people on who I want to have a conversation with. I don’t really think of it any more than that. 

Mike: Yeah, no, that’s completely silly. This is not a zero sum game.

People listen to podcasts widely. I consider books the same thing, which is I want to talk about that. First with you, because you just released a book, but I’m happy to promote fitness books. I find, unfortunately, a lot of the health and fitness books that at least a lot of new ones that come out, I don’t really like.

And so I don’t promote very many of them, but if there is one that comes out that’s good and somebody who has good information, someone like you, for example, I’m happy to tell people about it because Again, it’s not a zero sum game. People read widely. I don’t even want people to only read my stuff. I want them to read other things.

I just would prefer they read other things that are good and not waste their time with quackery, which there is so much in our space. You can’t go more than three clicks deep into the health and fitness book space on Amazon without running into something completely ridiculous. 

Kyle: That’s just it. There’s so much quackery in this industry that when you find somebody who has the same ideas that you do, that’s why I like to have those type of conversations to put those people on my platform and, help spread the good word because it’s hard to sell the type of, I know we talked about this on my podcast, but it’s hard to sell the type of information that we sell because it’s not as flashy and it’s not filled with bullshit.

It’s a unique angle because we’re selling. The truth where the truth is hard to sell. 

Mike: Yeah. It’s just unpalatable, right? You can only make energy balance and mechanical tension and progressive overload and compound exercises and volume is, you can make it so sexy. It only has so much sizzle before you just start to become the quack.

So that’s very true. And, for me, it’s not even about finding people initially have the same ideas. It’s just, People who know what they’re talking about, they might have a very different idea. And sometimes that actually happens even for me, where I come into a discussion, maybe it’s just an assumption that I know is an assumption that I haven’t really looked into.

Like I had a discussion with Andy Galpin recently, which unfortunately the audio was all garbled. So we’re going to redo it, but it was about muscle fiber types. And I let him know early on, right in the beginning of the interview, I was like, this is something I haven’t looked very much into.

I’ve looked into a little bit of research and a bit too technical for, to have much of an opinion on, and it’s something. Something I know that it’s not very important in the scheme of getting jacked. It’s interesting, but you could not even know that there are different types of muscle fibers and you can get into great shape and, do everything you want to do.

And as I really serve, my crowd really is everyday normal people who want to get into great shape. They don’t have though, a tremendous amount of time or energy to dedicate to, To fitness, whether it’s educating themselves or doing it. And I understand I’m in a similar boat, similar ish, just given that I’m busy.

So I’m in the gym five or six hours a week. And I do study regularly as a part of my job, but I have a lot of other things. I don’t have hours a day to just like peruse random things and just. Take on hobby kind of learning projects at this point, because, my routine that includes recording podcasts, writing articles, writing books, running businesses, it’s maybe on average 50 to 60 hours a week.

That I need just to get that stuff done. So in that way, I can relate to the people I attracting the most. And for those people, something like muscle fiber types, I don’t know. It’s just something I never really looked much into. And so I had a couple of things where I was like, this is what I’ve heard.

And I wouldn’t say I even assume it’s true, but I don’t know. This is what I’ve heard. heard, or this is what the research I looked into seemed to suggest. And he was like, Oh no, that’s not correct at all. You’re completely wrong. Let me explain to you how this works actually. And I was like cool, actually I get to learn something.

So that’s neat. But yeah, so I’m cool with that. If people have different ideas, but then there are certain things, which I know this is what you’re referring to. For example, you take the fundamentals. Somebody says they want to come on the show and argue with me. That energy balance is an antiquated model and it doesn’t actually work.

We need to move beyond that and really look at the quality of calories and hormones and blah, blah, blah. That I’m not interested. I’m not like, no, you’re wrong. Actually, you’re just wrong. And I’m not gonna waste my time. I’m sorry. 

Kyle: Yeah. And I’m all for having people on and trying to learn from everybody, even if they have Crazy ideas.

Cause I think once you have a really good understanding of the fundamentals, the basics and the science behind it, and you have a really strong understanding, you can take in information. You have that built in bullshit detector. So you can take information that might not be that good, run it through your filter.

And then maybe you only pick out one little detail. Okay. That’s something I’ll use. 90 percent of it was bullshit. 10 percent I’ll use. But see most. People don’t have that built in bullshit detector. So when they get 90 percent of that’s bullshit, they want to jump ship from what they’re currently doing.

Like you see that a lot. 

Mike: Yeah. And I understand it can be hard to discern validity and the importance of information, especially when you’re new to something. It’s not easy. It’s, I think a skill unto itself. It’s part of the skill set of learning just in general. It’s something that. I feel like if I look back on just my experience in schooling and educating myself in various fields, I feel like I’ve always been pretty good at it and I don’t have any particular thing I can attribute that to, but.

I do understand how it can be hard, especially if, for example, many people, just humans in general, right? We are wired to defer to authority, right? And some of that might be biological. Some of it is certainly social programming, but so that alone can mix people up where just because someone’s an MD or they have some other fancy acronyms after their name, they’re automatically not just the benefit of the doubt, but They’re automatically just given a pass.

It’s just the assumption is this person knows what they’re talking about and would not lie to me, would not want to teach me things that aren’t true. And that is a dangerous way to live life. And that extends beyond just health again if someone’s modus operandi is just look to authority and do and take authority, take authoritative information at face value and follow it precisely, they’re probably not going to have very fruitful life.

Things are not going to go well for them, especially in this day and age. 

Kyle: Fake news and abundance of information. I get this question. I’m sure you get it a lot, but they’re like, Kyle, how can I know who to trust? You probably get that question a lot too. And what are your thoughts on that?

Mike: Cause like credentials are good. Of course it’s not that I completely. Neglect credentials myself when I’m trying to decide as somebody credible, but you have to go deeper than that. 

Kyle: Yeah. Speaking on the muscle fiber typing so I went the traditional route of getting an exercise science degree and we spend so much time on stuff.

That’s just not practical. At all. So even somebody with an exercise science degree, from a business sense they have a degree in this, they must know what they’re talking about. Still, that doesn’t really mean that they know how to train you. They don’t know the best methods of building muscle, losing fat, et cetera.

So it’s tough because you really can’t just, 

Mike: That’s a key point that you can have that degree and not actually be able to produce practical results. There’s a disconnect there that should not be there. And that I’m not saying you personally, obviously, again, you know how to get results.

And the fact that you know how to get results though, is not dependent on the degree that you have. And the fact that you can have people who get the degree. That mostly comes down to then if we’re talking about, if it’s not something that I think of, actually, I’m not sure. I think of like computer science, for example, can you get a computer science degree without creating a program that works at least?

Probably not. I don’t know if you can, then that also seems stupid. But so then what it comes down to is can somebody memorize enough stuff to get a degree that shows that I guess they have some dedication and they have some discipline and they’re probably maybe they’re at least average IQ or slightly above average.

But you can’t really infer much more than that. If the degree is of that nature, 

Kyle: yeah. In four years of an exercise science degree, I think. We talked about programming in one course in four years, and it was the most elementary programming ever, which is fine, and this is what it is, but one course in four years.

Mike: That’s wild. Now, it makes me think of doctors who spend, what, six hours on nutrition or something. 

Kyle: It because they have the MD behind their name. It’s, there’s some type of authority. 

Mike: Yeah. Or if you have oftentimes online, you have quote unquote doctors who are chiropractors. They don’t come out right and say that they might even have pictures of themselves in the with the stethoscope and trying to look like an MD and they want you to think they’re an MD, but they’re not.

Kyle: Yeah. Nothing against chiropractors as a whole, but it seems like if there’s one area of the medical field that would. I don’t just get behind bullshit. It’s chiropractors. 

Mike: It’s strange, right? There is quite a bit of that. And I don’t know, is it people who are drawn to chiropractic probably tend to be alternative minded?

I would assume that they’re generally looking for alternative solutions to things, which I think is totally fine. But going back to, we were talking about having a, an attuned bullshit detector. If you’re going to do that, you better be very good at, Teasing out bullshit because that’s where you really get into quack land and just take supplementation.

For example, from the many chiropractors that I’ve seen, both online and offline supplementation is usually pretty popular among them. And in many cases, the supplements being promoted. Are not going to work in the way that they’re being, and I think oftentimes the chiropractors themselves don’t even know that they maybe have gotten trained, they’ve gone to trainings from the company who sells the supplements and it sounds scientific and they’re referencing research.

And if you don’t look into it, you could go, Oh, this seems legitimate, but the problem is if you do look into it, then. It all starts to fall apart. 

Kyle: Yeah. It’s interesting that you’ll go to a chiropractor and then you’ll see them selling supplements that have very little scientific data to support them.

And then you start thinking, okay even chiropractic as a whole, how much Scientific support. Does that have? I think it’s questionable. 

Mike: Yeah, I haven’t looked into it much. I had a chiropractor named Jordan shallow, who’s also a power lifter, super strong, super big dude, smart guy. Yeah. He has great information.

Yeah. So I had him on my podcast. We talked about this and his take made sense to me where he, Basically there is validity to chiropractic methods that just need to be used correctly. They’re not necessarily the end all be all or the fix all, but if used correctly, it’s a useful tool for tuning up the body and improving performance and improving health.

And he talked about some of the specifics of adjustments. Cause I just had basic questions. I go to a chiropractor every few months, just because I figure why not? I don’t know. It feels good after, right? There’s usually. Nothing particularly wrong or out structurally, and that’s, a testament to just taking good care of my body, exercising regularly, training smartly, not doing stupid shit in the gym, blah, blah, blah.

And anyway, but I hadn’t really looked into it very much. I thought it was an interesting discussion. Anybody listening who wants to learn more about chiropractic from somebody who I think is credible and who has not just the knowledge and skill set, but has experience and a lot of experience in weightlifting and results.

And he’s also a strength coach at Stanford. He has to produce results. You don’t get a job like that and you don’t keep a job like that unless you can. Keep those athletes firing on all cylinders. So if anybody listening wants to check that out, just hit my podcast feed and search for shallow. It’ll be a bit back, so you might have to expand it out, but Jordan shallow is his name.

Kyle: Yeah. I was just going to say that, I’m sure it’s like any other industry. You have people at the top level, very high level and are super effective with it. And then of course, you’re going to have people who. Are on the opposite end of the spectrum too. 

Mike: Yeah, I have something else I haven’t looked much into, but looked at some of the research on homeopathy and it seems like there’s a similar argument to be made for that, where you have individual practitioners who are very knowledgeable and who can tailor homeopathic remedies to the patient.

People and the exact issues they’re having, there is some evidence to support that, but the random homeopathic junk that you would buy in Whole Foods is just that junk. And there’s no evidence to support any of it. Yeah, I haven’t looked into that much. Another controversial health thing. Back to the point of credibility.

So how does that work for you? For example, for me, and I realized. That this discussion originally, just for you listening, I was thinking we would talk about power building, power lifting and body building. And we could still get into that, but I think this is an interesting discussion, so we may want to save that for another episode actually, and just keep on following this one.

But so this point of credibility, one thing for me is if I see someone who is promoting something that is just blatant bullshit, let’s say I see someone promoting collagen protein. I immediately. Would discount everything they have to say, and even if that’s quote unquote unfair or a little bit extreme, but the fact is, so let’s say someone saying it’s going to make your skin and your hair and your nails prettier.

No, it won’t. No, it will not. Collagen protein is actually trash tier protein as far Proteins go at least for our purposes of why we eat protein every day, which is primarily to get essential amino acids, right? For me, that’s automatically a turn off. And I automatically assume that this person either is ignorant, like they just they don’t know what they’re talking about, which means they don’t look into things enough and they’re willing to endorse things because you don’t have to dig very deep in college and protein to realize that it’s shit.

You just have to do a basic little bit of research. Muscle fiber type is something that it actually does require a lot of time. That’s why I never really went into it to answer a question. For example, of can you really turn type one muscle fibers into type two with enough training? That’s a technical question that if you’re going to.

Really answer that in an evidence based way and be able to explain the mechanisms and point to the evidence. It’s going to take quite a bit of time and quite a bit of knowledge and collagen protein. No, you really just have to do some basic reading on what this protein is comprised of. It’s amino acid profile, how it is digested.

And that’s about it. Actually, at that point you realize you’re like, Oh, so this is essentially just like any other pro the body processes it like any other protein. You do not have intact collagen molecules making their way into your blood and then your joints and your skin and your hair and your nails.

No, it just gets digested like any other protein. And okay. So that means it gets broken down into these constituent amino acids. What are those amino acids? What does that profile look like? Oh, it’s really low in leucine and a couple other essential amino acids. It’s high in a couple of amino acids that we.

Don’t really care that much about, and that there’s, you’re not going to have any problem getting in your diet. Okay, it’s not really a good source of protein. That’s the level of analysis that you have to reach. And so if somebody hasn’t done that and they’re promoting collagen protein, what does that say?

It’s either again, either they did do it and they’re like, yeah, I don’t care. I just want to make some filthy lucre for my Lamborghini fund or they Didn’t know that. And they don’t really look into things then, or they did look into it and they completely misunderstood it in which in each of those cases, then why do I want to be listening to?

Why do I care what this person has to say? 

Kyle: No, I feel the same way. It’s tough because I know of people who actually have good information, but like you said, Either they’re not looking into things deep enough, or they’re just looking to make a quick buck. And either of those, that’s a way for me to discredit them, but you’ll see it because let’s say someone’s an online coach and they’re, maybe they’re even a pretty good online coach, but you see them constantly promoting stuff that has very little scientific Benefit or really just bullshit stuff to their followers.

And you’re like man, okay. You’re trying to make a little bit of money off from affiliate codes, but you’re promoting stuff that is not effective has been shown to be not effective. So from my standpoint, which I’m sure a lot of other people who are semi educated in fitness and training would assume, okay if you’re willing to promote that to make a little bit of money then obviously You don’t feel very strongly about your information because if you have a very high standard for your information, you’re not willing to risk it off from making a couple of bucks off of an affiliate code that is promoting something that if you knew a lot about whatever it was, you’d know was.

Mike: Yeah. And you also can find something else to promote if you, and I understand making money, I’m all for making money. I’m all for selling things. I’m all for monetizing your following and earning the permission to make money from your following, which you do through building goodwill, through producing good content or entertaining content, whatever it is that you do, that people are following you for.

I have no objections to the economic. Factors, but you don’t have to shill bullshit. There are good things out there that you can promote, take supplements. Of course, I’m going to be biased and I’m gonna say you could promote my stuff, which is sure. I’m going to say it’s good, but if anybody goes and looks into just look at any of the sales pages for any of our products and look at how much education is there, I’m actually going through an update.

So I’m going to be updating them, which I’m excited about because I’m able to clean up a lot of things and I think do an even better job selling the products and helping people understand what’s in these products, why and referencing research. And my point is it’s easy for someone to stand behind my stuff because they can point to real research, good research that says, Hey, here’s why.

His joint supplement contains this type 2 collagen, this undenatured type 2 collagen, which is different than collagen protein. And those things usually get conflated, collagen protein. And oftentimes what I’ve seen is people will share research on type 2 collagen and say that it applies to collagen protein.

not true. Those are very different things. Like type two collagen does make it through digestion. It doesn’t get broken down into amino acids. It’s a different thing, take supplements or there are other companies out there that do a good job as well. So you don’t have to promote the shady company that sells testosterone boosters.

Completely overblown and overhyped fat burners, BCAAs, and collagen protein. You can find companies that have more integrity or at least are willing to do the work to create stuff that is actually evidence based and is likely to work for most people. And of course, supplements being natural, some people don’t respond.

Some people don’t respond to creatine. But, we’re trying to create things that most people are going to get benefits from and create things that we can point to a large body of evidence for support that would apply to whatever it is that you want to promote. 

Kyle: And that’s just it to the large evidence of support here, because another thing I get asked about a lot is Oh you can find a research study to support anything.

So how do you really know? When someone says that I always am like, okay, yeah, you can find a research study One individual research study that supports a wide range of outcomes, but the strength of evidence, something like creatine. Yeah. Not everybody is going to respond to creatine, but there’s an overwhelming strength of evidence that it is effective.

And that’s something I always look for as well. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I have a book that is going to be next year is when I’ll be rolling it out. Ironically, the manuscript is almost done, but I’m, I want to finish this project in the middle of first, before I. Really get it fully done. And it’s on understanding. It’s just scientific research in general, but obviously it’s mostly through the lens of exercise and nutrition research.

And I worked on it with James Krieger and I’m excited to get it out. I don’t expect it to be a tremendous bestseller, but it does a very good job explaining The fundamentals to anyone who’s interested in being able to look into research themselves and at least be able to, like the book is where we give a checklist that helps.

Okay. You have a study and you have the full paper, not just the abstract. You want to be able to go through it and have a pretty good understanding of what was done. And what the results were, if it was a well designed and well executed study or not. You don’t need to know that much like that. You can get enough information in one book to be able to do that.

Are you going to be able to understand the nuances of the statistical methods used? No. Like for that, you have to go these days you probably don’t have to go to school. You can just do a lot of the stuff free online, but you’re going to have to take high level courses to understand really the world of statistics as they’re applied to research because it gets very complex.

But you can learn enough to be able to quickly understand, should this study, and even aside from the weight of the evidence, how much weight should I put on this individual study? Even something as simple as, of course, many people don’t know this, but just as something as simple as sample size, right?

If a study had six people in it, that is not as robust as 60. And it goes over a lot of these things. So I’m looking forward to get that book out there just because I get a lot of questions along those lines too. And it’ll be the perfect. Hey, just read this and you will be in a really good place for, as far as a layman goes, you’re going to know more about understanding research than probably anybody else that you know.

Kyle: Yeah, a hundred percent. And what’s cool about the fitness industry right now is if you want to. Get access to information like quality information. We have more availability to research right now than we’ve ever had before. More research is constantly being put out. So it’s there if you want to learn it.

But the problem is, a book like this, what that sounds like will be very valuable to people in the fitness industry. Because I think most people, they don’t really understand. Research, 

Mike: you 

Kyle: know? 

Mike: Yeah. And I understand it’s a technical subject. It’s not, you can’t just pick up. You could pick up, there are reviews and meta analyses out there that, that actually read pretty conversationally and you don’t need to have much technical know how and, there’s not too much in the way of jargon and what is there you can Google and you can muddle your way through it and come to a decent understanding of the, what the authors wanted to communicate.

But when you get into clinical trials and you get into more technical things, I understand it’s very daunting and it might take, if you were to apply the same approach, going into it, not knowing anything and thinking I’ll just Google the things I don’t understand and I’ll work my way through it.

Getting through one paper might take 30 hours of, cause you’re going to spend so much time online trying to at least get to enough of a conceptual understanding of something like, P value, not that’s complicated, but okay. That’s something, yeah, you got to go Google and you might, it might take, depending on how statistically and mathematically literate somebody is, that might then lead them to other things.

They have to now clarify, Oh, yeah what is this the standard deviation, what does that mean? Okay. And it might now hours might’ve gone by. And they go, okay, I finally understand P value. Let me get back to the one sentence that I in this section, it was in the first sentence and now let’s go to the next, let’s go to the next sentence.

Oh, what is this? And so I understand it’s not easy to just grab a study and read through it and go, oh yeah, that makes sense to me. And at that point they’ll probably just say, I’ll just read the abstract. Yeah, exactly. Which you’d think. Would be okay, but oftentimes, as but people listening don’t know that oftentimes the abstract doesn’t accurately represent the conclusions or the findings oftentimes because it is just a summary, it’s missing key points that might be relevant for what you’re looking for example, if something isn’t statistically significant, but maybe it was close and the effect size was actually fairly significant, you would file that differently in your brain than something that is very statistically insignificant.

And the effect size is insignificant as well. In the former case, you might go, yeah, I know this is iffy. I’m not sure if this really matters, but I feel like my understanding of these things makes me think it actually may matter if we did more research on this. And if the studies were designed a little bit differently, I feel like it might.

Come out a bit differently and the effect size is fairly significant. So I’m going to do it anyway, knowing that say something doesn’t cost me much money or time, or say some training technique or some supplement or whatever, but being able to research like that requires a bit of. Training. It requires a bit of education on it.

Kyle: Yeah. Cause there’s a 

Mike: lot of 

Kyle: details that just quite frankly, they don’t fit in the abstract.

Mike: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing Advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth, so if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. Let’s talk about your book that you just published. Yeah. Start with what it is and what’s in it, who it’s for.

I’d like to hear a bit about the experience too. 

Kyle: Yeah. Yeah. So the book is bodybuilding for beginners. And actually I wrote this book, I think the way I came about this book was pretty similar to how you wrote your first book was I wanted a book that I wish I had when I first started. And I recognize it’s 2019.

There’s a lot of books like that, but in this day and age, I feel like they want two things. One, they want the information pretty much handed to them on a silver platter. Not everybody, but a lot of people. And Two, they want to be able to take what’s in a book and be able to directly use it. So I wanted to make a book that is very practical.

Like I spent a ton of time on each exercise. Take like the squat, for example. You can read the three, four pages that are on the squat, and most likely you’ll probably still have questions, but you’ll be able to go into the gym and know how to squat, so I spent a lot more time on things that I felt.

Most beginner style books don’t spend as much time on. 

Mike: Yep. Yeah. I did the same thing in my beginner books, with diagrams, as opposed to you look in other books, other bodybuilding or weightlifting books. Sometimes you’ll see a couple of paragraphs given to the squat with three images, maybe even two images.

That’s fine. If we’re talking about maybe just a barbell on your back, but you start to load that and you’re going to want to know more. 

Kyle: Yeah. You’re going to run into problems too. Okay here’s a problem. How do you address it? My hips are coming up early. What do I do? Things like that.

Just, I felt like we’re in the gym and you’re just beginning. Obviously the most important thing is being able to actually effectively do the workouts. I also provided a sample workout program to 12 week plan, but. I actually broke it down from exercise by exercise because if you can’t actually effectively do the exercises, what you’re going to get out of the program is going to be drastically less.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Do you go over nutrition stuff as well? 

Kyle: Yeah, I pretty much did a very basic run through of nutrition. I would have actually liked to make it longer, but actually one of the things that I found going through a publisher is I tend to write a lot more than I need to. So working with a publisher was nice to be like, Hey, I think we should take some away from here, maybe add some there.

But for the most part, it was like, Hey, I think we could get this done in less words. So that really pushed me to make it as streamlined as possible, which is, I think, ideally what we wanted to do. for a beginner book. I didn’t want to make it extra wordy. You didn’t want to make it any longer than it had to be.

But nutritionally, I pretty much just covered the basics, energy balance, protein, carbs, fats, and some practical advice on how to be more consistent with your nutrition. 

Mike: What are some of those practical tips? 

Kyle: Yeah. From a consistency standpoint, I’m like, look, pretty much anybody you talk to with nutrition is going to have a different idea of what quote unquote proper nutrition is.

But the other day, energy balance is what’s most important. Very close. Second is protein intake. So how do we be very consistent with that? Yeah, we can take a flexible approach, but I think for people who, and this book has beginner in the title, if people have never done anything with their nutrition before and you tell them, okay, here, start tracking your macros, do this and that.

That’s not very flexible. It’s flexible dieting to people who’ve been dieting, but it’s not flexible for someone who’s never been dieting. 

Mike: It can also just be unwieldy. It can be, and I understand, I remember in the beginning, it can be awkward where when you’re going from never even thinking about the calories that you’re eating, let alone the macros to you just, now you feel like you have to go from No idea how to juggle to just, they just give you three balls like, okay, go juggle these now to somebody who is an experienced quote unquote flexible dieter.

It’s all so simple. They just jump into Excel and you just throw some stuff together or you take some previous meal plan that you made and you just tweak a little bit and off you go. Or maybe you track on the fly even. And again, because you’re so familiar, you even know the calories and macros of the foods that you’re eating anyway.

So tracking is almost, Just superfluous, unless you’re cutting and you need to be very strict with it. So oftentimes those people don’t remember what it was like to be a true beginner, to learn about energy balance the first time and even maybe even be skeptical of it too, because these days it’s trendy to say that again, energy balance.

Oh yeah, that’s old hat. We’ve now moved beyond that. You need to take a much more comprehensive look at the foods that you’re eating, blah, blah, blah. 

Kyle: Yeah, because you don’t know where they’re coming from, what other information they’ve already consumed. So it was tough too, especially when you want to streamline a book and not, throw in as, as much detail as probably would be required to convince somebody.

You almost have to just streamline your argument towards okay, look, here’s what’s most important. Give them a couple of reasons why, and then show some practical ways to actually put it into practice. So like for nutrition, for example, say, okay, I’m going to teach you how to set your calories, but Hey, we don’t need to track.

We don’t need to get crazy with it. Just have an idea where your calories are at, have an idea of what. Protein in every meal be very consistent with that. And then how can we be practical about it? For one, we got to go shopping. We have to make the food, got to have the food available to us. So just those little details like that, I think are important because again, I wanted people to be able to take the book and then actually put it into practice very quickly.

Mike: And are there other just tips for compliance in particular? Being able to stick to a diet, because that’s obviously an issue that many people run into, particularly when they’re cutting, but also oftentimes when they’re lean bulking, if they’re in a surplus where it goes in the other direction, it gets a bit out of control and they end up gaining fat too quickly.

Do you go into that or do you not go into that much detail? 

Kyle: Not too much detail in that really. I talked a lot about consistency and then consistency with meals too. It’s okay, if we have a basic structure of what our meal should look like, and I’ll provide a bunch of examples there in the book, just try to make every meal look similar to this.

Mike: Yeah, that’s a good way of looking at it. There’s also just eating similar times every day. It makes it easier to stick to your diet because you just get into a habit, get into a routine. And also I seem to remember some research I read some time ago that also influences hunger as well.

Your body just gets used to being fed at certain times. And so it’s going to be harder if you find hunger annoying and it increases the likelihood of overeating, which is almost everybody then eating at different times. It just makes it harder to stick. To your calories than eating at more or less the same times every day.

And particularly if you are eating your, let’s say half of the week, you eat at certain times and then half of the week you eat at other times. So then again, the your body’s natural appetite regulating mechanisms, they can’t get fully behind you if you standardize your eating times. You can get these things to work for you.

I don’t remember if there was research that indicated that eating at random times may lowered adherence, but anecdotally speaking, just having worked with many people over the years, I can say that has definitely been An obstacle for people and a solution has often been to standardize eating times and just even the meal compositions to like some people like eating breakfast.

Great. So you’re going to be eating around this time and it’s going to be around this in terms of calories and macros. What are your thoughts on that? 

Kyle: Yo, yeah, in practice, I found that to be true. It’s, I think that’s probably one reason why people initially thought there was a correlation between meal timing and metabolic function, because if you start eating small meals more frequently, so you’re eating six times a day, seven times a day or something like that, you start to get hungry.

Six or seven times a day, but there’s not a correlation between hunger and your metabolic function. But it’s easy to see where that idea would come in your head. If you’re getting hungry more frequently, if you go from eating three standard meals a day, and you’re only hungry three times a day, and then you start eating six meals a day and you’re like, holy cow, now I’m hungry all the time.

Mike: Yeah, it’s a reasonable hypothesis and that’s could be where that came from. And then of course it was looked into further. That’s not the case, but if you like eating, like I actually personally like eating every few hours and I know there’s also, not that I’m too concerned about this anymore because I’m really at the end of my genetic rope, so to speak, there’s not much left for me to gain in, at least in terms of muscle, I could probably get a bit stronger.

I was a bit strong years ago. I could probably get back to that, but not much more muscle for me to gain. However. If there were, then I would care a little bit more about protein timing because there I think is enough evidence to support the recommendation of eating protein three to five servings a day.

It’s going to be better than one or two servings a day for the purposes of muscle building. Like mechanistically, that makes sense. And then there’s some research to indicate that, but that aside, I like eating smaller meals every couple hours, three hours or so, three or four hours. Because if I eat too large of a meal, I’ll get a little bit lethargic, which is just natural.

Even if it’s not a high carb meal, it’s just, if I’m very full, I find that I’m not as mentally sharp as if I’m eating a lighter meal. And as I’m working. All day and a lot of my work requires thinking, whether it’s recording a podcast or writing an article or working on a book or even just the other random things that I need to do, there’s business things.

I just prefer how I feel with less food in me and therefore in that way, my compliance is enhanced by eating more meals throughout the day. It probably wouldn’t matter in terms of hunger if I were to switch. So let’s say it’s three large meals, but I know that. I wouldn’t like the diet as much, which would reduce my likelihood of sticking to it.

Kyle: Yeah. And I’m the same way as you is I like to eat probably about five meals a day. I find that is best for my adherence to, when it comes to meal timing, that’s pretty much the only question we need to ask. What works best for you? What can you stick to? Because there are people that’ll say, I think that’s maybe one selling point for intermittent fasting for some people.

They’ll be like, Oh, I just feel You know, mentally focused in the morning. If I skip breakfast and don’t eat until lunch, I’m like, Hey, if that works for your schedule and it allows you to adhere to your diet better, so be it. Do it, roll with that. It’s not for me, but the argument of equally distributing protein throughout the day, yeah, there is evidence for that.

But if. You don’t enjoy eating six times a day, five times a day, whatever. I would say, all right let’s not even worry about that. How can we get at the end of the day, the numbers we’d hit and be very consistent with that. And if that’s intermittent fasting, that’s six meals a day, really within that range, it’s probably okay.

Mike: Yeah, totally agree. That protein timing point would be most relevant probably to a bodybuilder and a natural bodybuilder at that, who is trying to squeeze out every last ounce of muscle and strength gain, which comes. So slowly as you get toward the end and you really are trying to just gain every little edge that you can, but for your just average everyday person who’s, let’s say, currently out of shape and just wants to get into really good shape, they can absolutely do that with an I F approach where they’re eating protein.

Maybe it’s just like you were saying a lunch and a dinner. That’s it. They don’t even have a snack. They just have, it’s a dude and he has 80 grams of protein for lunch and 80 grams for dinner and however he gets the rest of his calories, whatever. But yeah, finding a meal timing that works for you is definitely the key in the book, which by the way, let’s tell everybody the title just in case they’re like, what, how do I find this book?

Kyle: Yeah, it’s called bodybuilding for beginners. I can’t remember. Did I say that in the beginning? I don’t know. When I started talking about it or not? I can’t remember. 

Mike: Yeah, I can’t remember, but I just want to make sure people know. So we have to wait until the very end. What’s the training programming like?

You said, you’d mentioned that it’s pretty simple, but what’s it like? 

Kyle: Yeah. So that was another thing I wanted to spend quite a bit of time on where I think a lot of books pretty much just throw out Like a kind of more like a list of exercises than anything, just Hey, here’s a sample week.

Here’s what you do on day one, day two for beginners. It works. We don’t need really intricate programming from a beginner standpoint, but one of the things I wanted to do is just show how you can progress a training program. So there’s three phases, phase one, phase two and phase three. And I actually threw in, ironically enough, we’re going to talk about power building here, which we didn’t get into.

I would probably classify it as more of a power building program, just because I wanted it to have a strength element to it. Just because. People, when they’re first starting, you tend to see strength improvements before muscle improvements. So it’s almost like a, you’re going to get an easy win by getting stronger.

So I incorporated that as well. 

Mike: Yeah, that makes sense. So what does that look like specifically? What kind of split do you give people options or you just say here, do this? 

Kyle: Yeah. So actually I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I’m like, man, should I do a three day full body? Should I do a three day push, pull legs, something like that.

Ended up settling on a four day routine of just. Simple upper, lower, and I threw in some ways to make it more variable. Okay, it can’t go four days a week. Here’s what you do. If you can only go two days a week. And then I also threw in some ideas for people who, cause I always get this question and specifically me, when I first started, I was one of those people that like, okay the program says four days.

Shit, I’m just going to do it six days or, so I threw in some stuff to say, okay, look, it’s a four day routine. I know you might want to do more for certain people. Here’s what you can do on the off days to not ruin your progress by just doing too much. That’s worthless. 

Mike: And for that, is it just more accessory stuff?

Like you can train your arms a bit more. You could do some, maybe some more side raises, but I don’t want you doing more squats and deadlifts until the next week. 

Kyle: Yeah, for the most part, just Hey, look, on, on off days, you can even do some stuff outside of the gym. That’s what I pushed people to okay, look, try to just do something.

If you want 

Mike: to be active, do something outside of the gym. Yeah. Something I often recommend is walking. I think walking is highly underrated, especially if you walk semi vigorously, you don’t have to rush around like you’re about to shit yourself, but if you. Are walking like with a purpose, like you want to get somewhere, obviously it’s low intensity cardio, but it is cardio.

It gets you outside. If you combine that with some nature, then that also can just increase your feeling of wellbeing and you burn some calories on average, probably three or 400 calories an hour, which is not nothing. And that way you get to eat a bit more food. It doesn’t have to be anything super intense.

Kyle: No, I a hundred percent agree. I actually talked about that in the book too, where I didn’t put any formal. Cardio into the program. But one of the things I talked about is I want everyone to, and I think this is a good idea just for anybody listening to is start tracking your daily steps. We all have our phones on us all the time.

So if you have an iPhone, look at the health app, it tracks your daily steps. And I know for myself, if I’m not. Actively trying to be more active and doing some walks throughout the day. I work in my office. So I sit down from writing, recording podcasts, working with clients. Like I’m at my desk most of the day.

I’ll only get 3000 steps unless I’m actively trying to get more. And 3000 steps is, it’s sedentary, it’s extremely sedentary. So one of the things I talked about in the book is look, if you start tracking your steps and making an effort. To get 8, 000, 10, 000, which isn’t crazy for pe I know people listening are probably like, oh, I do that by lunch if I work an active job.

Yes, you may, but people who work an office job definitely don’t unless they’re actively trying to walk more. Just getting 10, 000 steps a day for someone who’s sedentary, it’s crazy. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. These days, I guess I’m not walking that much. I do little things like I take the stairs instead of the elevator and I do go outside around lunchtime to get some sun.

So I’m not tracking steps, but when I was in Florida and I had. Dogs at the time. Now they both died, but I would walk them every day. And that was just my daily guaranteed cardio was, I didn’t track steps, but it was like a 20 minute walk. And then I would walk to work as well. Cause my condo in Florida was a few blocks from my office.

So I’d walk there, walk home, walk my dogs. I enjoyed it. And also found that it definitely helped with staying. Lean, like I noticed a little bit of a difference because again, calories do start to add up and if it is three or 400 calories a day, that’s pretty significant, actually, and I was doing some additional cardio at the time as well.

I was doing some biking, but I found walking to be a nice low impact in an obvious sense on the joints, but also on the body. Like I didn’t feel like it cut into my recovery at all. If I was cutting, I didn’t feel like it added anything in the way of stress. Even though it did help with calorie expenditure.

So yeah, it’s an easy thing to add to the routine. If you just sit down and carve out a slice of time of saying, okay, even if it’s I’m going to go on a couple 15 minute walks or max 20 minute walks. It might be first thing in the morning. It might be figuring out are there. Are there spots in my daily routine where I could walk instead of driving?

For example, like maybe lunch. If it’s only a few blocks instead of driving, can I walk? One of the guys I was talking to when in the gym, I work out with. He doesn’t have a car. He takes the Metro in and then walks like 12 minutes to the gym. He works upstairs in the same building and then walks back to the Metro.

It works for him. It’s not that he can afford a car. He just, he’s a young dude and he likes that. It helps him just get an extra walking. Or if nothing else, it’s just. Taking 15 minutes at lunch to go out for a walk and then maybe taking 15 minutes when you’re home to go out for a walk.

Kyle: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Actually prefer people break it up into small chunks rather than saying, Oh, I need to, wait until the end of it. Almost the same thing is when you’re tracking macros. If you’re tracking your steps, but you don’t do anything all day long, and then you look at eight o’clock at night and you’re like, Oh, shit, I’ve only done 2000 steps.

My goal is 8000. Now you got to go on an hour walk or something like that doesn’t make sense. It’s not good for. Adherence long term. So I actually think Hey, just look at little breaks in your schedule when you can get 10 minutes of walking in 15 minutes of walking in, you can do that two, three times a day.

Like shit, there’d be a big difference. And I’ve actually noticed with clients, people who are in a specifically a fat loss phase, being sedentary just makes it so much harder than it has to be. 

Mike: It’s very true because you can only cut your calories so far. Until you just start to feel like shit and I know there are theories on this that like G flux, which doesn’t really make sense to me, but there is something to be said for generally speaking, when you’re cutting, if you can eat more calories, you can have the same deficit, but if you can just eat more calories, it’s going to be easier.

And you get there, of course, by burning more calories. So to the point you just made, if you are in the gym, lifting weights for 45 or 60 minutes, and that’s it really for your, of course you’re going to be moving around a little bit more, but other. Otherwise you’re sedentary. That cut is going to be more difficult than if you do that and add in some form of cardio and it could be something as simple as walking.

It could be some steady state. It could even be some hit there. I think there’s a place for that as well, but by being more active, which then allows you to eat more food, I’m not saying, Oh, okay, so now you’re just going to double your calorie deficit because you can no. Just maintain that. Let’s just say it’s anywhere from.

Somewhere around 300, 400, maybe 500 calorie deficit daily, whatever that is for considering a person’s body weight and where they’re at, how lean they are, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s maintaining the same calorie deficit, but it is much easier if you are more active. 

Kyle: Yeah. And then you also have more calories to play with specifically women who have to, have less lean body mass.

They have to diet on less calories. Anytime you can. Make the same amount of progress while eating a few extra hundred calories. Those are just a few extra hundred calories that you have to play with. When you get to a point when you have to reduce calories later on in a diet. 

Mike: Yeah, that’s true too.

But for people who haven’t experienced that though, it seems a bit random. Hey, the calorie deficit is the calorie deficit, and we’re not talking about, oh, you get more hedonistic pleasure out of being able to eat more food. Yes, it is more pleasurable to eat more food when you’re dieting for sure, but no, there’s a physiological difference.

Like you are much more likely to struggle less with hunger and cravings. For example, if you do what we’re talking about, if you burn quite a few calories every day from being active and maintain and. A sizable, you could say aggressive, but not reckless calorie deficit. That approach is whether you’re a woman or not.

And even if for women, yeah, if you don’t do that means you’re probably gonna have to start your cut at BMR or maybe even below BMR. And there just is something to be said for keeping your calories above BMR for as long as possible, I think. I can 

Kyle: almost assume people 

Mike: Okay so what they’re talking about is cardio is like taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

Cardio. Not really. It’s just being more. Yeah. Is walking a few blocks to get lunch instead of driving. You wouldn’t exactly think of that as quote unquote cardio, but we’re talking about just being active. 

Kyle: Exactly. And I really wanted to emphasize that because I don’t want to necessarily add another workout.

If we can do it without it, and this is probably something I’ve changed my mind on over the last few years, because before I don’t know, I just didn’t really think of this is how effective it actually is. Just making a concerted effort to be more active can pretty much replace a solid chunk of cardio.

I’m not saying you’ll never have to do cardio, but it can replace a solid chunk of cardio. 

Mike: A hundred percent. I think, just to give a specific. Prescription, for example, somebody wants to maximize fat loss. They could do probably no more than 40 to 60 minutes of HIIT per week. And then otherwise do the things we’re talking about.

Just be active, get in a lot of steps every day. We’re only talking about the equivalence of a couple of miles or whatever, but that plus some hit cardio if you really want to maximize fat loss. And if you don’t, and if you find it, it maybe gets in the way of recovery too much, or you just really don’t like it, then fine.

It could be a couple of steady state sessions of cardio per week. That plus of course, let’s say it’s three to five weightlifting sessions per week is all you need to get as lean as you want to get. And speaking from personal experience to having done it myself a number of times, and then having worked with a lot of people who have gotten very lean.

As a guy into the range of. Six to 7 percent body fat, a true six to 7 percent body fat. Where you have ab veins, when you have ab veins, you’re done. Like how much leaner do you really need to be? And for women, it’s probably a 13, 14%, maybe 15 percent is where that’s the kind of the female equivalent of that.

So you can do that just doing exactly what we’re talking about. Now, I wouldn’t recommend trying to stay there because your life is going to get pretty miserable. But if you want to do it for fun one time, just to see what it’s like to be super lean, really, this is all you need, this plus patience and compliance.

But then just be aware that if you do that, that anything fatter than that is just going to be fat in your mind. So you’ve been warned the curse of having been shredded. 

Kyle: Getting lean. I’m sure you’ve talked about this a lot on the show, but when you get lean that period right afterwards, is so critical, not only from a technical standpoint of okay, how do you handle that from a nutritional and training standpoint, but mentally, because like you just said once you get really lean, you can’t maintain that.

So you’re going to have to increase your body fat from that point. But then as soon as you do, you gain a little bit of weight. Like you said, Oh, I’m fat now. 

Mike: Yeah, it is a mindfuck and it’s something that I’ve experienced in each time I’ve dieted down to that level a few times for photo shoots, mostly fortunately, I don’t care that much about my body, not an overly narcissistic person.

I’m into working out, so there’s some vanity. I can’t deny that, but my identity is not entirely wrapped up with how much vascularity I have in my arms. So that still being said, so I’m not, I’m a person who I think is maybe naturally resistant. To that type of mental space, but of course, I’ve experienced it where it’s really just the, I wish I were that lean.

I wish I could stay that lean. I wish I didn’t lose my ab veins. I like how that looks. And maybe even there’s a certain level of getting more attention from other people. Again, I’m, I definitely don’t go out of my way to get attention, but. It’s hard to not notice it. If you are, you get a lot more attention in the gym, even just randomly walking around in a mall, for example.

And I’m not like I’m wearing super tight clothing or trying to show anything off. But when somebody is very lean and pretty jack, it immediately just stands out. And so all those things. Yeah, it makes it more desirable. It was a good lesson for me to learn that. It really is not sustainable. And I would say from my experience, getting there was probably quite a bit easier than a lot of the people that I’ve worked with and just spoken with over the years, for whatever reason, when I cut, I don’t run into much in the way of hunger or cravings.

It’s pretty straightforward. And so physiologically I have some sort of, I don’t know, something going for me in that regard. And so similarly maintaining it wasn’t I feel like my experience was probably not as difficult as many other people that I’ve spoken with, and it still was annoying. I still felt like I wasn’t necessarily hungry, but I wasn’t getting enough food.

That was the feeling. The feeling was my body just wanted more food. My workouts weren’t as good. My sleep wasn’t as good. My sex drive, wasn’t as good. I noticed these things. And again, I was just like, is this really worth it? We need to the point of where it’s actually just weird now where it’s okay, I could have abs and it’s part of my job to, of course, to look fit.

And so I can look perfectly fit, look great by anybody’s standards and not have all these other issues, or I can be a weird. Neurotic narcissist and say no, I need to have ab veins or bust. And so that’s where I was like, all right, it’s time to let go of this. 

Kyle: Yeah. I always put it like this.

I want to be as lean as I can easily maintain. And still maintain performance or even increase performance. So that’s my governance. Okay, I want to be lean. I think from an aesthetic standpoint, I just, again, it’s part of my job, want to be semi lean, but I don’t want to have to go through all those problems that you just said.

So it’s okay, how can I maintain a certain level of conditioning, but still eat enough so it’s easy for me to maintain, I can find that set point. Relatively easy. I don’t need to diet. Don’t need to restrict calories can eat at maintenance with no issues. Performance is good. What is that for you?

About 165 pounds and an approximate 

Mike: body fat percentage. Probably like between 10 and 12. Yeah, same thing for me. You have abs and you look good, but. Yeah, you don’t have ab veins. That’s the point where, and that’s something to keep in mind. People listening when you see guys or even girls on Instagram, for example, who are straight shredded and who seem to not run into these problems.

Many people listening, they already know that. That’s drugs. That’s how you do that. It’s unfortunate. And it’s funny. It’s a joke, just a running joke in the office. When we run across people on Instagram, usually fake now, and usually they’re saying they’re on drugs. Sometimes they just don’t talk about it, but it’s just drugs are such bullshit.

It’s just incredible what they let you do. It would require nothing different. You would change nothing in terms of your, it doesn’t require more dedication or more discipline or more knowledge. You would be doing exactly what you’re doing. But with drugs, you would be like 6 percent year round and you would be 30 percent bigger to have twice the energy levels.

Now your endocrine system would eventually pack up for good, until then you get to get a lot of likes on Instagram. 

Kyle: Yeah. And I think that has created just the struggle that people have with expectations. 

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Because let’s face it, natural weightlifters, natural bodybuilders don’t look anywhere near as impressive as people on drugs.

It’s not even close side by side. You put somebody on. I think of someone like Eric Helms, who, I know him personally, virtually, and I don’t know him offline. I haven’t known him for a very long time, but I do believe that he’s natural. I do believe that he hasn’t used I do believe that he hasn’t used At least there’s no evidence that I’d see that he’s used a bunch of steroids in the past.

And if you look at his recent prep pictures, which are very impressive, and there was one picture in particular where it was like a Frank Zane style picture. If you look at it on Instagram, it’s obviously a smaller picture and the smaller picture gets the more shredded, the more jacked you look, right?

So he looks very jacked. They’re very dry and very lean, obviously, and hard. There was an email that he sent out, which it just was a bigger version of that picture. And he still looked fantastic, but you lose a bit of the, that dry, hard, full, just muscle separations everywhere. And again, I’m not saying that to knock.

Eric at all. He looks fantastic. I’ve never been in that good of shape. So that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that you look at it and you go, Oh, he looks great, but he looks natural. And when people with guys on drugs, no, you’re like, Oh, he looks great. And that looks like a lot of drugs. It’s impressive.

In some cases it goes too far. And then I find it, it’s a look for sure. But there are plenty of people who are on enough drugs, just enough and the right, and they balance everything. We were like, I got to say, it looks fucking impressive. 

Kyle: No, a hundred percent. What I was going to say was there was the famous study where they had three groups of people, group A trained and took steroids, made the best progress.

People who just took steroids made the second best progress, and then people who just trained, they made progress still, but made the least amount of progress in the three group setting, which obviously suggests you can just take steroids and still make progress without even training. So I think sometimes people don’t even recognize that 

Mike: I think it was the guys on test gained like six or seven pounds of muscle over the course of the study, which was like 11 or 12 weeks or something.

Kyle: Just on test alone. Like they did not train and it wasn’t even a super dose 

Mike: either. Yeah. I agree on that point of expectations that it’s just important to keep that in mind. And it’s something that I’m sure even I keep it in mind myself when I’m looking, I don’t spend much time on Instagram, but I just keep that in mind that I look at everything that I’m doing and how disciplined I am with my diet and with my training.

I think very good by anybody’s standards, but I’ll say Absolutely. I look like shit compared to some of the guys I could go pull up on Instagram right now. And maybe that’s me being harsh on myself, but that’s just me being honest. And I’m okay with that though, because I’m not willing to do what it takes to look like that.

That is just drugs. There’s no amount of training. There’s no amount. I couldn’t be more as far as my diet goes. I couldn’t be more disciplined with my diet. It’s micromanaged down to even the individual foods that I eat, because I want to get the extra goodies that things like blueberries and garlic can provide not just garlic, but raw garlic.

And in my training, again, very disciplined, I put in the work, I could push myself. Probably a bit harder, which I’m actually going to be doing. I’m looking forward to, because I’ve been working on a, an updated second edition of beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, which is meant for intermediates. And so I’m changing the programming and I’m going to be doing it myself for, I’ve done this kind of style of training in the past, but I’m doing it again.

And it’ll be, whereas previously I was doing bigger, leaner, stronger. And that for me is a maintenance program. It’s just not enough volume. I can make progress in a range where it goes up and it goes down a little bit and goes up a little, it goes down a little bit, but it’s just, it’s simply not enough volume for me to progress.

And also I find that auto regulating can work well in the beginning up, there’s up to a point where I actually prefer just straight, percentage of one rep max calculations, at least on the big lifts. I think auto regulating on the isolation is totally fine, but where there are just weeks where now it’s like I’m forced to put weight on the bar and make it happen.

I find that easier to accomplish than. Knowing that, I could end this set a rep or two early I might tell myself that was a rep or two shy of technical failure, but if I really would have pushed for it, I would have realized it was more like three or four reps shy of technical failure.

You know what I mean? I could do that, but sure, that little bit of extra effort is not going to no changes. I could make diet supplementation training could get me anywhere near to what some of these guys are able to do. with drugs. 

Kyle: Yeah. And going back to when I first started, why I wanted to make a book geared towards someone in my situation when I first started the book, I wish I had, because when I first started, a lot of the information I got was from drugged bodybuilders.

And, I was a hundred pound teenager reading content, magazines and books, whatever from, People who are on a lot of drugs and have been training for 20 years. 

Mike: Yeah. And who even look at like splits for example, where for those guys just doing straight body parts splits where you’re blasting your arms with 20 hard sets per week actually makes sense.

And that’s a whole nother discussion. I’m not against body parts splits at all, but. Is that the best way for someone who’s just stepping in the gym to start training? No, of course not. 

Kyle: Exactly. Yeah. There’s something to be said for body part splits and how you distribute the volume.

It’s really, that’s what we’re talking about, but when you first walk into the gym, it’s probably not the best idea. 

Mike: Yeah, of course. Hey, I think this has been a great conversation. So I had, again, the reason why I’m like discombobulated from listening, cause I had, we were going to talk about, I had a little outline of like power building, power lifting and body building.

And then we just went off on other tangents, which I thought was just as interesting, but I would like to Kyle, get you back on again. to do that episode on powerlifting and bodybuilding because again, I haven’t put anything out on it, but it is something that I get asked about and there’s just interest about it.

So I thought it would still make for a good discussion. 

Kyle: Oh, for sure. That’s right in my wheelhouse. But like we said, sometimes it’s really fun just to talk about random stuff and see what happens. I do that on my podcast a lot. 

Mike: I tend not to actually, I tend to go into okay, this is what we’re going to talk about.

I don’t know if that’s maybe just a reflection of my personality or something. I’m not a very spontaneous person in general, I’ll admit, but it can be fun. And this has been a fun episode. So for maybe I pushed into it outside of my comfort zone. That’s the thing these days, right? You’re supposed to stretch.

You’re supposed to live your fantasy and dream your vision. No. So where can people find you, your work? Again, you might want to tell them title of the book, even though it’s quite simple and memorable, but, so let’s do the final tell people about your stuff part. 

Kyle: Yeah. So you can pretty much find me anywhere.

The website’s Kyle hunt, fitness. com, Instagram, YouTube, all that. It’s just hunt fitness. And then the book is bodybuilding for beginners, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, pretty much anywhere you can buy a book. It’s available. Name is the big one, but bodybuilding for beginners. 

Mike: Cool, man. Thanks again, taking the time and I look forward to getting you back on to do the power building episode.

Kyle: Definitely, man. Thanks for having me. 

Mike: Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best selling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men.

Thinner, leaner, stronger for women. My flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped.

Thousands of people build their best bodies ever and you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes Noble stores. Again, that’s bigger leaner stronger for men, thinner leaner stronger for women. The Shredded Chef. And the little black book of workout motivation.

Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audio books 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting. Meal prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining and productive. So if you want to take audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.

legionathletics. com slash audible. That’s L E G I O N athletics slash a U D I B L E and sign up for your account.