Live Q&A: Concurrent Training, Vegetarian Muscle Building, Refeeding, and More…

[00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now I have several books, but the place to start is bigger leaner, stronger if you’re a guy and thinner leaner, stronger if you’re a girl.

Now these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day, doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere you can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes Noble, Kobo, and so forth.

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Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you’re going to like what I’m doing with my supplement company, Legion. Now, as you probably know, I’m not a fan of the supplement industry. I’ve wasted, who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing.

And I’ve always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And basically I had been complaining about this. for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products and not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted.

So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they’re a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored to all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because on our website we explain why we’ve chosen each ingredient. And we also cite all supporting studies.

So you can go dive in and. Check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at [00:02:00] clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don’t take enough, then you’re not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research.

And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you’re buying. All our formulations are 100 percent transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. You can learn more about my supplements at www. LegionAthletics, that’s L E G I O N, athletics. com. And if you like what and you want to buy something, Use the coupon code podcast P O D C A S T and you’ll save 10 percent on your order.

All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let’s get to the show.[00:03:00] 

Okay. So the first question is there an age when newbie gains won’t happen? It’s a good question. And no, you’re going to have though, really what it is that your body is just hyper responsive to weightlifting for the first. I would say anywhere from three to four months would be on the low end.

Probably most people, it lasts about six months and it can be, I’ve seen like where it definitely tapers off is about a year. I’d say probably most people start to see that they’re just not responding. They’re not gaining strength and size nearly as quickly as they were when they started at about probably the eight month mark.

So for the first three months, it’s crazy. If you, if your diet is halfway sensible and if you have a halfway decently programmed workout routine, then you’re gonna, you’re gonna, respond like gang busters for the first three months. And then it slows down a bit for the next three months. And then it’s, you’re entering the twilight of your newbie gains in those last three months.

I’ve worked with [00:04:00] thousands of people at this point, men, women, all ages and circumstances and people, in, I’ve seen people, I’ve actually seen people in their forties and fifties respond better in the beginning than people in their twenties. And you can chalk that up to genetics.

Some people are just genetically hardwired to respond really well to weight lifting and resistance training, whereas other people are low responders. And we know this anecdotally. And if you’ve spent any time in gyms and just if you’ve known people over the years that were into working out, you’ve seen this, but it’s also been there’s, it’s been seen in scientific research as well, and it can be pretty dramatic.

Regardless of your age, you are going to respond very well in the beginning. And if you do everything right, you can expect to be on the fast track for, let’s say six to nine months. And then just to quickly throw this out there, because this is something I was talking with Kareem, who heads up my coaching program.

And just something we were talking about, cause he, he’s working with more and more people now. That when, once your newbie gains are [00:05:00] behind you, it’s very important that you really get your diet on point in the beginning. You can kind of mess around and your protein intake can be up and down and your carbs can be up and down and your calories can be up and down, but your body just keeps responding.

But once you have that. Behind you once your body isn’t hyper responsive to the stimulus anymore of weightlifting, then diet and consistency becomes super important. Making sure that your macros are where they need to be, your calories are where they need to be seven days a week and you’re not doing funky things where you’re going very low calorie three days a week to compensate for the very high calorie three or four days a week.

It just, it. It makes a big difference in your not just your how your body responds in terms of changes in body composition, but also in your training. It keeps it when you keep your diet where it needs to be, you’re able to smoothly continue progressing on your lifts and progressing on. In terms of both weight and reps, but if [00:06:00] you start getting screwy with your diet, it makes it really hard.

And so I’ve just seen that a lot with people where in the beginning they can see they realize they can be a bit loose and they want to push the envelope in terms of I wouldn’t say. It’s just being loose and they go I guess if I, Hey, if I can keep on gaining strength and size without really having to pay attention to what I eat, I, if I just follow loose guidelines that sounds pretty good.

And then eventually they get stuck and they wonder why so long winded answer, but I. Thought just something worth throwing out there for anybody that’s new to weightlifting. Keep that in mind. Okay. Next question. I was wondering how I can improve my posture. I’ve noticed the way I stand makes me look fatter.

It depends. If you’re talking about in this case, is this sticking your stomach out like over arching your back, or it could just be slumping. If you’re just like this and sticking your stomach out and. Again, it depends what’s going on, but most posture related issues that any of us really run into is the hunchy shoulders and, because working on a computer sitting all the time, we tend [00:07:00] to just get slouched forward.

And for that, there are some simple shoulder mobility and exercises and stretches that you can do. If you go on most for life and search for shoulder mobility or just mobility, you’ll find an article I wrote on it. And that is gonna, that’s gonna really help just, if you want to get a feeling for a proper posture is when your arms are at your side, your thumbs should be pointing.

Out in front of you. And so if you get like that, it almost to me, I was digging into my own posture like a year ago. I wasn’t really hunched, my natural, when I would just put my arms down at my sides, my Thumbs would be turned more in, I would say somewhere around 45 degrees or even maybe closer to 30 degrees or so as opposed to a more 90 degree straight out pointing in line with your knees or your feet.

And it’ll feel like you’re puffing your chest out. If you’re used to slunching or slouching and if you’re used to rolling your shoulders in but that’s proper posture is your, your shoulder blades are not. pinched, but everything is pulled back a little bit. [00:08:00] And this is important, not just for how it looks, but it’s also important for preventing injury.

I recorded a podcast today with a sports doctor. He’s a chiropractor and PT and mainly he just deals in physical medicine. that I’ve been seeing because I’ve been running into some on and off bicep tendinitis over the last couple of months and I’ve tried different things myself and it helped a little bit but didn’t really make it go away.

And so we talked a bit about this in the podcast, it’s going to be up next week. So I definitely recommend that everybody listened to it because he covers some very important things that I’m learning now more. It’s something that are some simple preventative things that you can do. And this is a good example.

Correcting posture that will prevent the risk of injury. Even in my case, it’s not really an acute injury is more just a repetitive use. Tissues get stuff, things don’t stop moving the way that they should. It causes tissues to rub on each other as opposed to slide friction over time and eventually it hurts.

I would say do the stretches. And [00:09:00] also I will say, where’s my thing? This as well. This is a cause posture medic usa. com and you put it on like a backpack. And for people just podcast you’re gonna have to visualize. It’s basically it’s see like this, And then it forces you to keep your shoulders back.

So it’s like a, an elastic backpack basically that, that keeps tension on your shoulders and pulls them back. And I’ve been wearing this for several hours a day. And I’ve found that it just helps train in proper posture where it’s may not be so much that you have mobility issues and you couldn’t maintain proper posture.

You’ve just gotten used to improper posture. Posture medic usa. com. This thing helps too. Question, you say that new, you say that newbies can build muscle and lose fat at the same time. How does this work and why can’t seasoned gym warriors do it either? I would, I don’t know. If you go to legionathletics.

com, go to the blog and search for body recomposition. [00:10:00] And I really, I break it all down in that article. Again, what it basically boils down to is people, when you’re new to weightlifting or you don’t even necessarily have to be new to weightlifting, but if you’re new to proper weightlifting, if you’re new to heavy compound weightlifting, like if you take someone that just has dicked around on machines and done a bunch of high rep circuit training type of stuff for a long time, and then you put them on a proper strength training program, they’re going to see a bit of that of the newbie gains as well, even though they’re not necessarily new to weightlifting or new to resistance training.

But basically it’s that the overcompensation of that you experienced in the beginning outweighs the hindrances that are associated in terms of muscle growth that are associated with being in a caloric deficit. But anyways, go to legionathletics. com, go to the blog, search for recomposition and read the article I wrote on body recomposition and I break it all down there and link a bunch of science and I think I do a pretty good job explaining it there.

So next question. So I’m 16 years old, should I be lifting heavy or just focus on getting taller and growing? And then this is to something, there’s another similar question. We’re doing squats with 150 [00:11:00] pounds stunt growth for a 16 year old. So first off it’s a myth that weightlifting is going to stunt growth.

If you go on my YouTube channel and if you search Teenager, I think, or search for bodybuilding. You’ll see an article or sorry, a podcast. I think it was a podcast or it was just a shorter video. No, it was a podcast where I talk about teenage bodybuilding and basically I would say at 16 you’re in a.

perfect place to start lifting heavy and start following a normal strength training type of program. You just are going to want to like anybody else, make sure that you are really paying attention to your form and not getting into ego lifting at it with your buddies and trying to see who can squat the most weight with the worst form and who can pull the most weight with the worst form and stuff like that.

But it’s not going to stunt your growth. That’s myth. In extremity, the thing is, it’s not that it wouldn’t be the heavy weightlifting that would cause the issue where you see stunted growth is if it’s excessive exercise, excessive [00:12:00] training, like with gymnastics, for instance, where these kids there, their exercise routines and their workout routines and the frequency and the volume is insane.

Yeah, that’s not good. But if you’re talking about a your normal moderate volume, plenty of rest and recovery type of program. There are no problems there. And, in, in fact, heavy weightlifting may even help with growth because of the hormonal responses like with growth hormone, for example.

Yeah, this is 16 is a perfect age. I would say if you were 13, I would probably say you could get into weightlifting I would probably recommend that you start with some lighter weights just because we as you’re getting used to your body, there’s a point where like these are athletic movements, a squat, a deadlift, an overhead press, and you want to make sure that you can do them properly and before you really start loading weight.

And if you were even younger, if you were, this wouldn’t be a teenager, but if you were 10, 11, 12. maybe 13. I would say you could also start with [00:13:00] body weight stuff and build some basic strength there and then transition into the weightlifting which, that, that’s also, that also works well.

All right. Next question. When doing a shoulder press, should I keep my elbows? pointing toward the front, or is it okay to open them up? So you basically want to be keeping your elbows pointing forward. You don’t want to, especially when you’re down in this position, and this is similar on a bench press.

Really, we all, if you’ve been following my stuff, or if you read any body that really knows anything with in terms of form, you’ve heard that in the bench press, you should keep your elbows tucked in. And that’s true. And that’s particularly important when you’re, when you are, when, once you break that 90 degree with your arms, that’s when it becomes particularly important because your rotator cuff is in a compromised position there.

So if you’re getting down deep and then you start flaring your elbows, that’s when you can run into impingements and other problems. So similarly, when you’re doing your overhead pressing, it’s important at the [00:14:00] bottom that you don’t flare your elbows out right away and try to press up like this because then you’re going to get into where you can impinge.

You have an AC joint right here and you can get into impingements there and it also puts undue stress on the rotator cuff muscles and that those, these are the muscles that keep your shoulder stable, keep everything working, keep the joint function the way that it’s supposed to function. So at the bottom, your elbows.

are pointing forward as you’re pressing up there forward. And then at the top, obviously, you can’t keep them for the entire time because that, what are you supposed to do? And that gets really awkward, but you’re they’re pointing forward until you get to, I would say until your elbows are about at your chin, they’re pointing forward and then it’s starting to rotate.

And this is really, if this is how it, this is the natural movement. And if you’re, if you you have to unnaturally force your shoulders out this way. That’s not if you want it. If you want to press up and make sure and keep your body stable, it almost forces you to do what I’m saying.

[00:15:00] But that’s basically the form I have to do. Faster answers. We have a lot of questions. So here we go. When you’re releasing, is that this? Yes. So when you’re releasing your app, a good question. So basically where I have a build a test. If this is with the log functionality fully implemented, I’m going to say there’s, I know there are some things they’re going to fix.

They’re gonna need another week for that. They’re gonna need another week to fix some body section stuff, another week to, to put together the freemium model. So basically. I want to put it, I want everyone to be able to use it for free for about a month before having to pay anything. And there are going to be no recurring fees, it’s just going to be a one time fee.

But I want it to be a free app that you can use in its entirety for about a month and then you can decide, is this worth 5 or not? So let’s say. A minimum of four weeks left in terms of development and testing, because the beta testing has started and it’s going well we’re just it’s focusing on the whole training section of the app because that’s really the heart and soul of it.

So let’s say [00:16:00] four weeks it would be on the low end and probably eight weeks would be on the high end. So in the middle, six weeks ish that I would be happy if it were live rolling in six weeks. Question, how do you get so much work done? , it’s just a, it’s just a function of time, putting in the time, and being consistent and I have I like to work on a fixed schedule in terms of time, so I wake up at the same time every day.

I get to the office at the same time every day within a 15 minute window. And I work more or less on the same schedule. I don’t really take a long lunch. I go to the gym more or less at the same time. I try to get home at about the same time, make my, I make the same dinner every day. So I get back on the computer about the same time.

So there’s that there’s just being consistent in my schedule. And then there’s good habits when I’m working. Like for example I’m not. Big on the Pomodoro technique where you work for 20 minutes to take a five minute break because a lot of my work tends to be deeper work where I have to really get in the zone.

Like it may take me 15, 20 minutes if I’m writing an article to really [00:17:00] feel like I’ve got my stride and I’m. fully focused on, on, and I’m I have I’m good at focusing on things, but like where I’m really I just get into a zone basically and it can take 15 minutes just to get into a zone.

So it would actually be disruptive for me to every 15, 20 minutes, take a five minute break. It would be not, it would be counterproductive. But I don’t have any, I don’t have my email open. I don’t have social media open. I don’t pay attention to my phone. So I eliminate all distractions.

Just focus on what I’m doing for, in some cases, rather long periods of time. And then, maybe after an hour and a half of writing or something like that, I’ll come up for a break, I’ll get some water, if I have to go pee, so I have little breaks in there. And that’s, I that’s really the, it’s just the basics.

It’s like with weightlifting or diet, there’s no secret to losing weight. You eat fewer calories than you burn and you make sure that your macros are set up properly. And if you want to gain muscle and strength, you go and you lift heavy shit and you make sure that you’re not overtraining or undertraining.

And you’re patient and there you go. Very similar with work. You show up [00:18:00] at the right time. Sit at the desk and you put in the time and you focus on what you’re doing when you’re doing it. And voila, the work gets done. So next question, how can I manage like a mil, like a million goals?

I guess I was saying I want to train for strength as well as hypertrophy while it’s also throwing in the occasional run and cycle, not enough days in the week. Stu, big fan from the UK, PTA, teaches you’re preaching. Thanks for the support, Stu. And yeah, I understand. If I were you, I probably would look at periodizing my training, just periodizing my, my exercise as a whole, where, maybe for two months, you’re going to be focusing on your strength where in keeping your You’re running and cycling on a maintenance.

So in that example, I don’t know what your preferred strength program is. Maybe it’s my program, which is a hybrid strength body than program. Or maybe it’s a more pure strength, like a, starting strength or a five by five or whatever. And so for that time you’re doing that, and maybe you’re only running or cycling once or twice a week, maybe just doing some [00:19:00] high intensity stuff once or twice a week just to maintain your endurance.

So you don’t come back, a couple of months later way behind the eight ball. And then you’re, if you’re going to focus more on, let’s say in the gym, you want to focus more on, on hypertrophy. If, when I say that, I would say that’s just increasing your volume really. So if you want to then go two months and lighten the load a bit and go higher rep and really.

pump out volume. And then from there, you might want to, if you want to be doing more cardio, then you’re going to have to scale back your lifting. So maybe you go to a, just an upper lower work. Maybe it’s just two lifting workouts a week, maybe three, you could do upper, lower your push, pull legs where it’s moderate volume.

It’s not as much squatting and deadlifting as you would find in a strength program because that’s going to mess with your cycling and running. And then you can easily fit in maybe three or four cardio sessions a week. And and then there’s also the dietary factors involved too, where if you’re going to be doing a lot of exercise, like if you were to, let’s say you wanted to cut.

[00:20:00] In, in that scheme of things, I would say cut while you’re doing the strength training. Because that’s going to be higher rep, higher volume training is just going to be harder on your body. And if you’re doing a bunch of cardio, being in a caloric deficit is generally not a good idea.

It’s going to be harder to preserve your muscle that way. But if you don’t care about that, then I would say if you could just stay around maintenance. The whole time or maybe you’re bulking during the strength and hypertrophy phases of your exercise and then you’re just maintaining during the cardio that would work as well.

So that’s probably how I would look at it. Because otherwise, yeah, you just gonna end up overtraining basically and you maybe won’t notice it for quite some time and until it really hits you and then you’re going to have to take a bit of time off and, recover. So being a 16 year old girl, how much cardio weight training do you recommend per week?

I would say three to five hours of weightlifting and no more than an hour to maybe an hour and a half of cardio per week is all you need on the cardio. I would stick more with high intensities interval stuff because you can just get more [00:21:00] bang for your buck in terms of time and fat loss. So if you want to learn more.

I would say head over to I think I have an article over at legion, legionathletics. com, go to the blog and search for women. And I believe I have an article there on just the, here’s a here, the overall, a fitness plan for women. And if it’s not there, go to muscle for life because it’s definitely there.

So if you search for women, you’ll find it. Next question. Hey Mike, I’ve read BLS and I’m going through the first round of the workout, but my gym has no free barbell, just a Smith machine. That sucks. Can you expand on why you don’t recommend it for squatting? And if I should make any adjustments, same question for deadlifting.

Yeah. So you can squat on a Smith machine. It’s just not as effective as a free weight squat. And if all you did was squat on a Smith machine and then you went to a free weight you’d have to, you’d have to drop the weight a lot and it would be really awkward. And it’s the same thing goes for overhead pressing and bench pressing for years ago.

All I used to only work on the Smith machine and I, the most I’d ever gotten up to on bench was like two 45 for a few reps. And when I finally stopped using the [00:22:00] Smith machine and went to the free weight bench, I was struggling with one 85. And you’ll find that with squatting and overhead pressing, and you can’t really deadlift on a Smith machine safely and properly because it’s not the, it’s just not a natural range of motion.

You could maybe Romanian deadlift or straight leg deadlift, but the, you really need a free barbell. Now if you’re. Jim, you could start, I would say don’t deadlift on it at all. If you, if this is, if you have to start on this gym and you have to be there for now, then that’s fine. But if not, I would say find another gym, find one with a proper setup.

Okay. Next question. Due to various reasons, I’m going vegetarian gaining muscles and gaining muscle size and burning fat while on a vegetarian diet while on a vegetarian diet. Is it a myth? Is it really possible with protein supplements? Of course. Absolutely. You can do great in a vegetarian diet.

You can do great on a vegan diet. Go, if you get a muscle for life and you search for vegan, you’ll see an article I wrote on it, the on vegan bodybuilding. I would say that. You, there are of course disadvantages, but you can compensate for them. And vegetarian are, the main disadvantages of the vegan diet don’t really even apply to the vegetarian diet.

So [00:23:00] yeah, you can do fantastic. Just, if you go to most wife and you read the article on vegan bodybuilding, you’ll see how it applies to you as well. Yeah you’ll be fine. So next question, you mentioned inside a few sources that facet cardio actually increases the blood flow to stubborn fat areas.

What do you say to people who believe facet cardio is a myth? I lay it all out. I have an article both on Muscle for Life and Legion. Both those articles are pretty long and I reference a lot of research and I would say that if you just take fasted cardio just by itself and you don’t add in supplements, the benefits are probably negligible over, over fed cardio.

I would say that when you are lean, wanting to get really lean, any help you can get getting, getting rid of stubborn fat is welcome. So even if there were no supplements involved, I probably would recommend that someone try it. Because After working with a lot of people and I’ve seen this in myself, just cause something works well for me doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone else is going to respond as well.

But in working with a lot of people though a lot of people that especially people that have are [00:24:00] experienced weightlifters and have dieted down very lean before and now we’re doing it again and they added fasted cardio in they’ll, a lot of, I’ve heard from a lot of people that have noticed it.

the effects that especially, with for us guys it’s the abs and love handled that whole region is, can be very stubborn for girls. It’s hips and thighs and butt. And now if you add in supplementation, which specifically I would say caffeine, him being. And sinephrine, and ideally a couple other molecules that makes an effort and more effective, which are in our fat burner Phoenix.

If you want to go read about it, it’s on the website here. And I break it down when you add in pro like some good supplementation with fasted cardio, the effects are. Pretty dramatic for most people. And again, I’ve done it myself. I’ve gotten, I’ve cut down to the six or 7 percent body fat range, both with and without fasted training and supplementation.

And I can say that it is noticeably faster to go from, let’s say eight or 9 percent to six or 7 [00:25:00] percent with with the supplements and fast training. And I’ve seen the same working with a lot of people. So I think when you factor in supplements, which in the case of your him being, for example, it doesn’t work unless you’re fasted or unless your insulin levels are right around fasted.

If you eat a couple of grapes, yeah, you’d be fine. But if you had a big meal, it has no the fat loss benefits are negated because of the large spike in insulin. So yeah, when you take that into account and the fact that caffeine. And when you add caffeine and synephrine and a couple other things in the mix where they all kind of work together synergistically.

I think you can look at the science and it makes sense on paper and then you can look at the results practically and look at the anecdotal evidence and see that it works very well for a lot of people. And I know that’s my answer. And Yeah. Okay. Next question. I’m down to 8 percent body fat, very vascular ripped everywhere, but only a four pack.

I have very underdeveloped abs. Should I start bulking again and focus on ab training? You might be dealing with an issue of muscle insertions, which is just genetic. Like for instance, I have a gimpy [00:26:00] four pack, five pack thing. Because that’s just the way that my abs are formed.

Unfortunately I, there’s nothing I can ever do to get a perfectly symmetrical six pack or eight pack, like how some guys get. So if you’re running into where it’s just, the muscles are just formed the way that they are. Then it doesn’t matter how much you train abs. That’s just the way that it is.

But if your abs are small and underdeveloped where they’re not like, cause you can make your abs bigger, blockier and better developed, but you can’t change how they look. And you can’t add, if you’re missing, if you don’t see the final ab at the bottom, if it’s not protruding, you can’t add it.

There’s not, it doesn’t matter how many leg raises you do. That’s maybe not the answer you were hoping to hear, but I feel your pain. I’m in the same boat. All right. Next question. So there’s some people out there that states that dips are really dangerous. What do you think about this?

I would say that if you are doing dips and you’re trying to go very deep, you’re trying to go very much past 90 degrees. That’s probably a bad idea because again, you’re putting your shoulder in that compromised [00:27:00] position, especially when you’re loading it. And that it’s again you’re really wanting to protect your rotator cuff muscles.

And if you go to muscle for life and you search for rotator cuff, you’ll see an article I wrote on this that kind of explains what these muscles are, how they work and some exercises you can do to keep them strong. Some people never run into this issue because they have very strong shoulders and very strong rotator cuff muscles.

And some people are more prone to injury injury due to weakness and muscle weaknesses. Movement dysfunction, like dysfunctional movement that even if they don’t necessarily realize it. So no, I’d say dips are not a dangerous movement. But if you do them incorrectly and you have something pre existing that makes you more inclined to injury, then yes, that can be dangerous.

Question. Do you drink any alcohol? If so, what kind and how often? Yeah I’m just a fucking drunk. No, I don’t drink at all. I just never got into it. I literally don’t drink at all. I’ve never even been drunk in my life, which is strange. And I’m saving My alcohol hymen for something special.

I don’t know. We’ll [00:28:00] see. I’ve told my guys, the, all the guys that work with me, they want to see me drunk. They’re curious what I’m going to be like drunk. So maybe at some point I just never got into it. And then it was like. I got past the point where I was young and trying to be cool and I hadn’t done it yet.

So now that I’m older and I don’t care about being cool, I found I guess there’s no point to, that’s not a habit to pick up. It’s not something where I won’t wake up. I don’t think it’s a good idea to wake up and be like, I think I’m gonna start drinking and just see where that goes. Yeah, I’m boring.

Question. Why don’t you want to, why don’t you want to get bigger? That’s a good question. I know I’ve been saying that and sometimes I actually do think about it and I’m like, I’d be, it might be cool if I were like 15 pounds bigger. I don’t even know if I could get 15 pounds bigger, but no, basically because all in all I’m happy with my size.

And When I was like, I don’t know, the biggest I’ve ever been is like 205 pounds, I think. And that was when I was younger and I was fatter. I was probably like 16, 17 percent and whatever. I just didn’t like how it felt. I didn’t like how my clothes fit. And it would be different now [00:29:00] because I would be, if I were ever, I don’t, I couldn’t, I don’t think I could get back to.

205 lean. Maybe it would take a lot of work if it’s possible. I’m like 195 right now and I’m pretty lean. I’m maybe about 8 percent no higher than 9%. So I don’t know if I could gain a good eight to 10 pounds of muscles. I don’t know if that’s left in me. Maybe, but basically because I’m happy with my physique, the way that it is.

I would like certain things get bigger which is why I prioritize them in my training. I like a bit more shoulders, bit more calves and a bit more lats, but otherwise I’m pretty happy with where my physique is at. And that’s it. Next question. How do we know your products ain’t crap?

Like you say, others are it’s a good question. One, if you, there are, in some cases you’ll know it because you’ll know it, take a serving of pulse and I guarantee you it’s going to be different than any other pre workout that you’ve tried. And it’s not because you’re going to feel like your heart is exploding out of your chest.

to the contrary, you are not going to feel like that. You’re actually going to feel good and you’re going [00:30:00] to have a smooth rush of energy and you’re going to definitely get beta alanine tingles. So you know that not just, there’s not just beta alanine in it, but there’s good beta alanine in it because I could buy crap beta alanine.

We get contacted from Chinese manufacturers all the time. We could pay very little for our beta alanine that still technically if the FDA were to look into. Look into it, they would say, yep, that’s beta alanine, but it’s very low quality beta alanine. It doesn’t really have effects in the body or the, or anywhere near the effects that good quality beta alanine, which is the patented carnasine, and that’s what we use in Pulse.

So there’s a difference there. And then there’s also we are, obviously. There’s, whenever you’re buying anything in this space, there’s you’re taking a leap of faith as a consumer. And if you look at our sales pages, we’re very open, we’re very transparent in, in what is in our products, why we’ve included these, include these things in our products.

But also we’ve had quite a bit of third party testing done on our products, which again, in the case of pulse, if you go to lab door. com, you’ll see that it’s their number one ranked pre workout because and they do all their. [00:31:00] They do third party testing. I’m not affiliated with lab door.

I like them. I like what they’re doing. And it’s cool that they, it’s cool that they’re testing my products and validating what I’m doing. So there’s that. And then I’ve also gotten quite a bit of third party testing done myself, which if you email us, we can, we’ll send it to you.

We use the lab Euro fins is who we’ve used. And if you look that up, there are a massive probably the, one of the biggest, if not the biggest and most well respected. Third party labs. They do a lot of pharmaceutical work, but they also do stuff in the supplement space. And then finally, we’re gonna be putting up on our website.

We’re gonna be putting up our certificate of analysis, which is whenever You get something manufactured, you get a certificate of analysis from your manufacturer that states, here’s what you put in it here here’s what you ordered, here’s what we put in it. And then here are the testing results to prove or to certify that.

This is what is in it. So we’re going to start putting those up on the website, which is something I think also some companies [00:32:00] should do, and I’m not sure exactly when they’re going to go up. Like we have them, which again, if you just email us, we’ll send those to you as well. Which is probably like Eurofins.

We do Intermittently because it takes time, but we like to just have that third party testing in place and do it once every quarter or once every six months just to make sure everything is good. And then the COAs we get with every batch that we order. So email us, we can send you COAs and we are going to be putting them up on the website just for everyone to see.

So you can see this is really what is in this product. So I requested Jeremy going deep. Mike, what’s your life philosophy? And those are, these are hard questions to answer because there’s so many ways this could go. Jeremy said he’s testing me for, okay. I guess my philosophy is be What’s that, Jerry?

Yeah. Yeah, swing hard in case you hit it. No, that’s a buddy of mine. That’s one of his jokes. [00:33:00] Anyways so I would say that, it’s such a broad question. It’s hard for me to answer. I would say the way that I, if we’re talking about a philosophy in terms of an attitude or a way to look at life or a way to approach life, my focuses are very much.

Obviously, I’m very work oriented. And I think that the pursuit of happiness is that’s not a big thing for me. I’m not trying to quote unquote be happy. There’s a quote from Joseph Campbell, who is a comparative mythologist. And I’m a fan of his work where basically He, I’m going to paraphrase it, but basically he says that he doesn’t think that people are so much looking for the meaning to life or a meaning for being alive as the experience of being alive.

And so for me, that just resonates with me. And that I am very much like I try to do things and I try to orient myself toward things that make me, that engage me, that make me feel alive. Like I don’t [00:34:00] like doing things that, that, that deaden me or that make me feel like I am or that disengage me from life.

So I don’t watch a lot of TV. I don’t play video games. I don’t just spend my time idly doing worthless things because I know that those things would have bad effects on me and make me less effective in my life. I would say that there’s that. And then Work and productivity are big for me and being a giver and not a taker.

I think that this is so relevant to the political climate and the social climate, socioeconomic climate. I think they’re in right now where we have, you can go through life. playing the victim and trying to see what you can take from other people and what you can get given to you. Or you can go through life with a sense of personal responsibility.

And with the idea that you have things to offer, what can you give To, your fellow people, your society, what can you make? [00:35:00] What can you create that adds value to not just your life but the lives of others and to society in general. And I don’t know, this is one I could just ramble on.

I could for who knows, 45 minutes, but if you have a more specific question, maybe I can answer it better. Next question tips for sticking with diet. Do you cook once a week? Make meals for numerous days? I cook every day. I make the same meal. It’s a vegetable medley with chicken and stuff just because these days I just don’t, I’m not really going to take the time to get fancy with my cooking right now with my work and when I get home and stuff, it’ll just take too much time.

But if you’re running into the problem of you are not sure if it’s like You end up just hitting restaurants or you don’t, you’re not able to track your numbers with your meals. Then yeah, if you do go on most for life and search for meal prep or meal prepping and you’ll see a whole article I wrote on this and that’s what I recommend you do.

Let’s keep it simple. Next question. Hey, what are your thoughts about Logan? Franklin. And could it be possible to physique [00:36:00] like his not mirror image, but similar. And you guys think he’s natural Logan Franklin. Let me see who this is. It looks, this picture looks a lot like Jeff side. I don’t know. Is this the right?

Yeah no, he’s an I. Oh, this guy’s an I. F. B. Pro. No, you’re not gonna look like an I. F. B. Pro naturally ever. Just forget about it. So that’s that. You could look like a smaller, fatter version. Yes, naturally. So if you look at the pictures where he looks natty and bad, like there you could look like that.

And then if you look at his pictures where he looks huge and shredded, no, you can’t look like that, basically. But, in general, I don’t like to get into the who’s natty and who’s not just because I think it’s, I think it’s childish and who cares? But I, I don’t know if he’s saying he’s natty.

I don’t know why IFBB pros would even say that. But anyways, so next question, would you recommend high volume following a cut high volume training following cut? As a standard [00:37:00] rule of thumb, no, I don’t quite understand the question. If maybe you can elaborate, what’s the next legion product?

Ah, good question. So we’re working on two products right now, actually working on a vegan protein, which is going to be a pea and rice blend. And we just got a sample that we actually all really liked that we can finally approve, which reminds me, I have to email them, Jeremy, don’t let me forget, I have to email them that we liked it.

Yeah, I forgot to email Shannon. Anyways so that took a bit of work. It took I don’t know, seven iterations finally to get it tasting right, but I was very surprised. I thought the, I thought Shannon is the, our manufacturer, he’s the flavor wizard. I thought he was like messing with me with this sample.

This is really good. This tastes a lot better. This is almost like, is this, did he just put Nesquik in a bag and then he’s going to tell me like, oh yeah, okay no, it still tastes like shit. Sorry. But no, it actually tastes really good. So we’re going to have chocolate. It’s going to be a chocolate vegan protein.

which also is going to have some select nutrients in it that it’s not just going to be protein. It’s going to, it’s going to be something in between like just a protein powder. I [00:38:00] wouldn’t say a meal replacement, but a protein powder slash nutritional supplement is the idea. So there’s that.

And then we’re also working on what you could say is a weight gainer meal, but I would say mural placements probably a more accurate term, although we might have to end up calling it a weight gainer because. In most people’s minds, those products, Mural Placement and Weight Gainer are very different. And this is more fitting the meal, the weight gainer need than it is the Mural Placement need.

And so that one is, theoretically it’s close. We had it. The way that we liked it actually was tasting good. Everything was good. But then we had to tweak the formulation a little bit and then that messed with the taste and now we’re back to the drawing board trying to get back to what we had previously.

So I would say the vegan protein, which now that we have a sample that we can actually approve and we can roll forward with we’ll be emailing out like now Jeremy and I have to put our heads together and come up with some name ideas and do that whole process. So you’ll be hearing from us on that.

And then the weight gainer. [00:39:00] Once once we can get to a sample that we like then we’ll be rolling on that. Both of those should be out this year. Vegan protein for sure. Whey gainer really shouldn’t be an issue. We should be close. And then we also have an unflavored protein whey protein coming for everybody that likes to I think it’s mainly people that like to make smoothies so it doesn’t add any, there’s no chocolate or vanilla.

It’s just a clean, simple protein. And we also have reach a watermelon flavored recharge coming, which people have been asking for and a tropical punch flavored pulse coming, which is actually going at, it’s going to be a bit different in that we’re. Changing from a one to one citrulline malate to a two to one citrulline malate, which is actually probably better for performance I’d say it’s definitely not worse.

I mean you’ll find one to one in most studies because that’s just the most commonly Used but then you also they’re also performance studies with two to one which has a bit more Obviously a bit more citrulline than malic acid and the reason we’re switching is because the malic acid is what is very tart and we’ve been Really trying to bring down the tartness of pulse [00:40:00] and that’s the only that is that’s the solution Because you start getting into when you Put things that block the tartness.

It then also blunts the flavor. So then you just, you get into this like chicken and egg problem where you want more flavor, which means you have to take down the bitter blocker, but then that makes it that it needs to go back and forth. I’ll be curious what everybody thinks when our tropical punts, tropical punch pulse comes out, because that’s going to be basically our new flavor profile, our new base that we’re going to be rolling out with all the flavors.

Next question. Thank you. Remember you, I think you say, I remember you saying something about coach a coach’s course. Is that still a possible thing? A pipeline? Yes, absolutely. If you go to most of life dot most of life. com forward slash coaching, you’ll see the sales page for our one on one coaching service, which I’m actually going to be emailing out on soon because we’ve run, I would say, 30 or 40 people, maybe as much as 45 people through it.

And we’ve gotten some great success stories. And these are three month transformation coaching programs basically. And what we want to do in the [00:41:00] immediate is we want to build it up to probably about a hundred active people would be great. And then once it’s, at this point now we’ve worked out the kinks, we’re ready to really roll it out.

So we’re bringing on more coaches and making sure that we’re just. Very picky, obviously with the people that we’re working with and we want to make sure that we really can maintain this, the high level of, cause it’s a real like high touch personal service and that’s what people really like about it.

So I don’t want to lose that. But then going forward once we’ve really established that, I think it would make sense to put together a certification program for PTs to not only, they’re going to learn things as well. Like I would want to, I’d want to make it very, I’d want to make it better than what you the normal type of P.

1. Certification training that you would get just to get your P. T. License. But then also that would allow people to be basically certified M. F. L. Coaches and then participate not in not only in our online coaching, but I get asked All the time for people about offline coaches, like people saying, Hey, I live in, Los Angeles.

Do [00:42:00] you have any trainers that you could recommend that I work with? And unfortunately I don’t really have that. I haven’t built a Rolodex of trainers that I. No, and I trust they’re going to do a good enough job or I would just send them people. That’s also one of the reasons why we put together this online service as a a stop gap type measure until we can really build it out.

We are going to do that. Yes. That’s the answer. And I can’t say when yet, I just, we have to see how everything goes, but if it if we could have it up next year, that’d be cool. Next question. Is there an application process to get on the Legion team? If you mean to work with us, no.

If you’re interested in working with us, just send us an email. And we’re, we actually do need to hire a few people right now. But we have. Several prospects lined up for what we need to hire for, but there, I’ll just throw it out here right now. Jeremy and I was talking about it today.

We were working out today, like looking forward over the next year to year and a half. What what do we need to be doing? What are our potential obstacles and roadblocks [00:43:00] there and get that are going to get in our way and what can we start doing? Or what do we need to start doing about the, that now or in the near future to prevent them?

And one of the things is Jeremy’s going to need an assistant, essentially a marketing assistant to help with, and by assistant, I don’t mean to get them coffee and rub his back and shit. But yeah. But to help him with his work because he as things are growing, his more and more of his time is being consumed with analytical type work and maintenance type work that has to be done.

It has to be done right. You need to be smart. You understand what you’re doing and it makes a lot of money. And there’s no even if it’s not necessarily the most thrilling type of thing to, spend two hours tweaking your ads it’s worth it because it makes a considerable amount of money.

So he’s going to need help with essentially offloading a lot of that. And also there are just other various tasks that can be taken off his plate. So then he can focus more of his time on finding new opportunities for [00:44:00] Legion and MFL. And, we’ll be getting into stack soon to make money.

And that’s really the, what we want is we want and not just with Jeremy, but really as each person. On the team is over their own thing, like their own, they have their area, they’re going to have their people and it’s going to be on them to really grow that area of the business where they need to have enough bandwidth available to be able to step back and go, okay, good.

I have all this in place. What’s the next thing. What can we do? How can I make this bigger? So send us an email. And there, there may be something worth talking about. And if you’re talking about sponsored athletes we’re not really doing that right now. Jeremy’s working with some people that some girls that have massive followings and we’re like, we want to see, we want to see how that goes because From a branding perspective, it could go well.

It may not go well. We’re throwing some money at it and seeing what happens. But before we really focus more on the Instagram model, the sponsored athlete, we want to do that. [00:45:00] Next question. What’s Mike’s current stance on a weekly refeed for hormone levels? Any change in the current research? It’s a good idea.

I don’t think there’s anything level ever change on that. Because if you go to most of life and you just search for refeed and you just read it was actually a guest post from somebody else that I edited and doctored up and performed surgery on really. And, but made it basically my article, but it is, it’s just a great way to mainly to boost leptin levels.

And then that. as a consequence has other positive effects in the body. If you are very lean and you’re cutting and you’ve been cutting for a period of time I would say if you’re, four or five, six plus weeks into a cut and you, some people don’t need to refeed at all.

They don’t care. They don’t notice difference. They feel great. It’s no problem. And other people like I, I definitely do notice a difference when I’m cutting, especially as I am getting, if I were to start, if I were to cut now, go from eight, 9 percent to let’s say I wanted to get to 6%, I would definitely be doing refeeds.

Because they just make a difference. They And I explained why in the article. So next question, every once in a while when [00:46:00] training fasted, I get dizzy, nauseous and weak. What can I do to avoid this? It sounds like a blood pressure issue. Some people just don’t respond well to fasted training.

They just don’t. And if you can’t get used to it I would say don’t do it. And I know that’s lame, but I’ve run into that before where there’s in the end, there was nothing we could really do. It didn’t work well for them. And if you are taking any supplements I would cut those out first and see because some people, for example don’t do well with yo him being, they just don’t, it just hits them hard.

So yeah, next question. Any chance you might provide mobility and core training specifically for golf players? That’s funny that you, yeah. A couple things. One I definitely, I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I have started working on a series of digital courses for MFL, which MFL is getting a full revamp.

That’s Jeremy’s been working on that and that’s going to become more and more of his thing over the next couple of months. So we’re going to be. It’s going to have a whole new look and it’s going to be better in many ways and it’s going to have a store and blah, blah, blah. [00:47:00] And then what I’m going to be working on over the next year or so, a lot is is digital courses.

So I’m wrapping up one that’s a deep dive into diet and nutrition that is almost done actually. I would say I’ll probably, I’m on my second edit through it. So I’ve written it. I’ve done my first edit now on my second edit. I hope that this is, I think I, at the, once I’m done with this edit, I can send it to an editor, get it back, do one final run through, and then I think it’ll be ready to go.

And in that, interim, I can set up this, get the sales page written and Jeremy can do his thing on it and we can get it going. And then we’re going to do I don’t know if it’s going to be next, but I’m definitely going to do a digital course on mobility and prehab. And my vision for it is basically take what, Starrett has done with becoming a supple leopard, but make it a bit more accessible and make it a bit more prescriptive.

So if any, I’m sure any of you, if you have checked out becoming a supple leopard it’s a great book. It’s high quality. The, there’s no [00:48:00] question that, myofascial release, it works. If you work with a foam roller, if you work with the bands, if you work with the lacrosse ball you can really extend, you can keep your tissues, you can prevent.

Soft tissue injuries really is what it boils down to. And again, you’ll hear more about this in this podcast that I recorded today. That’ll be going up next week. So I will have a digital course on this subject specifically that breaks down. This is the why this is the what, this is the why, and this is the how just do this.

So here are 15 minutes a week. Three time, 15 minutes a day, three times a week. Here are your exercises. If you’re following a strength training program, you’re doing heavy benching, heavy overhead pressing, heavy squatting, and heavy deadlifting, great. Here’s your routine. Do this alongside and you will prevent, you will go, it’ll go far in preventing injury and also improving performance because when movement is impaired, if you may not realize it, but then compensations occur, which can even can cause plateaus [00:49:00] because if a big muscle, for example, is not contracting or not moving the way that it should, then You know, it shifts that to smaller muscles that are normally be more of an a stabilizing role.

And then you’re just, you can get stuck. So that’s that aspect of it. And in terms of golf, I’m actually very interested in creating sports specific sports specific courses. So I’m talking with Mark Ripito about that actually. And I would like to work with him and he’s very interested in putting together a series of courses for golf is a place that I would start because I myself play golf and I like golf, but it’s also a good, it’s a good market because golfers are obsessive about getting better at golf.

And it may be the case in many other sports, but I just know from playing a lot of golf that a lot of these people, it’s almost like a religion to these, to, to these guys and girls. And. And it’s usually it’s generally an older crowd that has money to spend. So from a marketing perspective, it’s a good, it’s a good place to be in whatever.

So yeah, actually that the answer is a long answer, but the [00:50:00] answer is it’s something we’re definitely going to be looking at and I can say for sure the mobility course is going to be coming the golf one I would like to do. And there’s a good chance that it will come as well. Next question. Once a person has been obese and then lost the fat, is it easier for that person to put fat back on?

I’d lost about a hundred pounds and can’t seem to get a decent, get to a decent caloric level to bulk without putting on tons of fat again. Just curious about the propensity for putting. back on body fat after a person has lost a great deal. To me, it’s almost like the fat has a built in pathway to return to the belly.

Thanks. Yeah, there’s no question. Some people are just more genetically predisposed to gaining fat than others. There are various reasons for this. Hormones definitely play a role. Body composition plays a role. The good news is though, you, regardless of how predisposed you are, how inclined you are toward fat gain, you can definitely bulk successfully.

Now, the thing is though I would say go to muscle for life and search for [00:51:00] bulking and check out that article and make sure that you are doing it right basically is what I’m saying. Cause. If you are eating too much food, if you’re in too much of a caloric surplus, that’s a problem if you are good five days a week, but then the weekends come and then, there’s like little mini binges.

That’s a problem. And ultimately you are just going to have to find, that my guess is you’re gonna have to be very tight on your calories and very tight on your diet. And if you are predisposed to fat gain especially If you are wanting to bulk, then my guess is you are fairly lean.

And if you’re not, then you want to first get to be fairly lean, which is also covered in that article. If you’re 16, 17 percent body fat, you shouldn’t be bulking. You should be cutting because the fatter you are, the easier it is to continue gaining fat. And I break it down in that article. I know it’s a half answer, but I would say go check out that article.

And See if you’re doing all that and it’s still an issue then shoot me an email we can go from there [00:52:00] Hey Mike every week when I do a four to six rep range on the standing calf raise on the machine in the gym I almost Easily lift the max weight that the machine can handle 800 pounds Jeez, do you have any advice for when I need to go higher and wait to stay in the four to six range?

No, I mean that’s a lot of weight in your calves. All right, I would first is your, how’s your form? Are you full range of motion? Not just the little two inch Bob that a lot of people do. Cause you know, the bat at the bottom you want your calves fully stretched.

Think of it as like a like a one arm row, like fully stretched at the bottom and then fully contracted at the top. So if you’re full range of motion with max weight then I would say, there’s no real way to go heavier, right? Unless you can load up on a leg press and do, I like doing calf presses on the leg press.

But if that’s not an option, then I would say just work in a higher rep range. I mean with calves, similar to abs, you just beat the shit out of them and force them to grow and they recover very well. I would say it’s fine. Let’s say all you could [00:53:00] do, let’s say you had to train in the eight to 10 rep range simply because your calves are so strong.

There’s nothing wrong with that. And honestly, your calves are probably pretty juicy if if you could do eight to 10 reps with that much weight. So next question if I want to do a general checkup to see my hormones, bones, and everything is all right, what test do you recommend? You could do like a metabolic panel like a blood, it’d be blood work.

And in terms of. Bones. I don’t know exactly what it is that you’d want to know. If you can, what kind of test you, if it’s like bone density, I would think I, Dexa, yeah, Dexa should be able to tell you your bone density. I’ve never even gotten Dexa scanned actually, because it’s not nearly as accurate as many people think it is.

And I. Ultimately what matters is the mirror more than anything else. Yeah, for hormones, it’s just a standard blood test. If you go to what’s a good company, Jeremy, for that? Do you know, just if you want to get blood testing done that, is there like a good national one?

Do you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just see, you could see an endo if you had something, if you wanted to really dive into it, [00:54:00] but if you just want to generally know where things are at, you could just see an MD and you work through them. Next question. Hey Mike, sick really act joint question.

Remember in a previous video, you talk about. breathing to help with your SI joint issues. I’m having issues which have been occurring off and on for a while. Any stretches you recommend to look up? It really depends on what the issue is and it’s hard. It’s hard to like what I ran into basically was, and what he’s referring to is it was, I was dead lifting and I, at the top let.

out my breath and let out my tension in my core, which is a bad idea. Don’t do that. And it caused my SI joint to lock up and it’s fine. I have a chiropractor that I was seeing at the time that just helped adjust it. And then it just was not a problem anymore. But that’s what I ran into.

And if you’re again, you’re not really, the point isn’t so much to stretch a joint, obviously it depends on what muscular issues are you running into. But if it’s hip related [00:55:00] if you search for, go on muscle for life, search for mobility and there’s a, there’s an article on like a mobility for squatting and there are some good hip stretches in there, particularly for the psoas.

I know that that for instance, the psoas muscle wraps around to the back. So if you’re having issues. in the hip flexor area. And you are feeling it referring to the back. So as stretches are good, there’s also I believe in that article, there’s a simple, yeah, I’m almost positive it’s in there.

There’s a simple stretch, Kelly Staurette. It’s a video from Staurette where he’s demonstrating it that is just very good for opening up the hip. And if you have access to some bands or some good stuff you can do as well. If you, I don’t think I, it’s not in that article because I didn’t want to tell people they have to buy bands.

I wanted to give people some simple stuff you could do at home. But if you search for, if you go look at mobility, wad, go look at star at stuff and look at some of his banded work for opening up the hips and that works really well. I was personally surprised when I started doing banded stuff, mainly for my upper body how [00:56:00] big of a difference it makes over just trying to, grab onto something and hold a stretch.

Next question. Hey Mike, who is there with you? Do you have many partners that help you behind the scenes? I know I often get emails from Jeremy when you start out in this endeavor, were you totally alone? Did you have help then as well? There are. Eight of us eight of us here, huh, Jeremy? And then there are a couple people that work with us remotely.

And in terms of though there are in terms of like partners in the strict sense of the word, Jeremy is my business partner and that we own everything together. But everybody else are, that everybody works hard and is very committed to what we do. And they’re so I would say that they work with me.

In many ways are partners in that sense of like they work hard. They really care. They really, put their heart into their work. And, So when I started when it all, when it started really in the beginning, I wrote, it was really just, I wrote the book bigger, leaner, stronger, published it.

And then that started to gain some traction. And then from there I wrote another book. I might’ve been [00:57:00] muscle myths. And then from there was the shredded chef, which actually Jeremy helped on the first one back in the day. I don’t know if you remember that Jeremy, but, and and then, jeremy was involved early on in that way and then from the beginning of like when this was like, okay, this is going to be my full time thing.

Jeremy was there from the beginning is that as well, because originally we were going to do a publishing company. We weren’t even going to get into all the fitness stuff. We were going to take what I had learned in and just experienced with my. And we were just going to do that for other people.

And then in looking at it, we decided to pivot and we said, you know what, like with the books, with the fitness stuff taking off the way that it was, we just said, this is a better opportunity. And it’s something that, I personally am passionate about books and I like to read, but I’m also passionate about fitness and writing and I can do that as well.

And Jeremy wanted to learn marketing. So for him, it was like. He could learn to market on, in terms of publishing and how to sell more books, or he could, [00:58:00] learn in terms of everything that we didn’t quite know what we were going to get into in the beginning.

Like it wasn’t necessarily the plan from beginning to do a supplement company. We knew that was going to be an option, but we had to get to a point where it was going to make sense. So it was more just let’s build a website and let’s learn content marketing and see if we can build enough of a following to build a real business.

That’s how it went for six reps or six to eight reps. Any difference? Practically speaking, not it depends. Like here’s the thing. As you get into higher and higher rep ranges, you’re moving more into the muscle endurance side of things. And then also you’re going to find it harder because you don’t necessarily need to go to absolute muscle failure every set.

And it’s probably a bad idea. It’d be a bad idea to try to do that, especially with. like the squat and deadlift. But you need to come close to muscle failure where ideally you’re a rep or two short of where you would not be able to get the rep. Like you would just stall out. And when you increase the rep range, that gets harder to really even know where that point is, [00:59:00] because you start getting all that lactic acid buildup and it gets, it just gets fucking painful.

And you just, you don’t know are you wanting to stop the set because you are running out of gas or is it just because it hurts so much you don’t want to do it anymore? Given no context, I would say that there’s not that big of a difference 6 reps and 6 to 8 reps. But I would say that I would not recommend you do no 4 to 6 rep work.

If you’re, certain exercises, if you prefer to do 6 to 8, that’s fine. But, I would say there definitely is a difference. It’s between four to six and eight to 10. All right. Next question. Hey Mike. I’m about 10 percent body fat and and I still feel like I have a bit of belly when I sit down and lean forward.

Yeah. It sounds about right. A 10 percent 10 or 11 percent you still will. Fat folds seem to reappear out of nowhere to those super shredded fitness models still have some belly sticking out when they sit down. Please give me some hope. They don’t always look that good in all positions. That’s funny. I can totally relate.

This is one of those weird like OCD neurotic. Things that everybody experiences [01:00:00] once you start getting lean, where you just, if anything jiggles, you’re just like, I just want to get rid of that. And it’s true, right? And then yeah, like Matt and then you’re just on a never ending cut basically.

And so I actually do, I do understand. And so the answer is so like at the leanest that I’ve been, which is probably about 6 percent realistically where, I couldn’t pinch, I really, it was just skin. It wasn’t like the super paper thin, like you see with guys are about to go on stage, but it was pretty, pretty thin and sitting down, I would say it wasn’t so much like fat, but the skin folds and you just yeah, you don’t look super shredded in all positions at all times, no matter how lean you are.

But it sounds that where you’re at is at about 10%. It sounds about right. And I would say if you got down to. even though it’s just 2 percent every bit of fat that you lose from here is going to make a disproportionately large difference in your [01:01:00] physique because it’s going to be coming from the last kind of stubborn fat holdout.

that we all tend to focus on. Like we’re looking at our abs, we’re looking especially at our lower abs, we’re looking at our obliques and those are the last areas to lean out. So if you were to drop 2%, you would might be surprised at how much tighter things look. And you can also maintain that fairly easily.

I would say. say, maintaining eight or 9 percent is not hard at all. It’s not unhealthy. If you want to actually learn about that, there’s an article up at muscle for life which is if you search for healthy body fat percentage, it’ll come up and you can read a bit about that. Trying to maintain the super shredded, five, 6 percent where your skin is grainy.

Ab veins everywhere and veins coming out of your armpits and stuff. It, you just can’t, you can’t maintain that healthily. Eventually it’s going to catch up with you. And the guys that do that maintain that for long periods of time are generally on drugs and so they can compensate for their.

What would normally be [01:02:00] a pretty awful hormone profile with exogenous by just injecting hormones. So next question, can you recommend any good books on starting your own business? And then the next question, do you plan to write a book on how you start your own business? Yeah, I really want to, it’s funny, I’m getting more and more requests.

Quests for book recommendations these days, and I really want to do them justice. I was doing for a short period, like a Books of the Month thing where I would just basically say, here are the books I read last month, and here are my takeaways from them. And they’re, I’m still reading books, but the reason why I stopped doing those posts is because they just like, as I’ve got I’ve had more and more things on my plate with, I have a.

Book launch coming up for this updated cookbook, which has been an ongoing pain in my ass. I’ve had stacked, which has been ongoing pain in my ass eating up time. I’ve had a lot of things that have been eating up time where unfortunately some of the like things I want to just do for fun, write about books.

I can’t justify when I need to get this digital course done. I need to give [01:03:00] Jeremy needs stuff from me for Legion. I have to get, I have to ramp up the content on Legion MFL. I want to get it up to three to five articles per week per site. That’s more important than, me talking about books, but I’m going to get back to it.

I am getting it. My life is coming back. There’s some semblance of, there’s light at the end of this tunnel. So I am going to start putting that in. So to get to the question Good books on starting your own business. I’ve read a lot of books on just business in general. I can’t honestly say nothing comes to mind for specifically for starting a business.

Like for instance, I have not read the lean startup. It’s on my list. It’s something I maybe I should have read by now. Maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t apply to where I’m at this point But there’s also Chris Gillibud. What is it? The 100 startup? That’s supposed to be really good I have a lot of these books on my list that the type of books that business books that I’m reading are I guess more pertain to where I’m at, which is we have a Going concern we have a viable business and really Jeremy and I we’re looking at is [01:04:00] how do we get lesion to a hundred million dollars a year?

Like that’s what we want to do. So the stuff that I’m reading, like for example, Good to Great is a very good business book, obviously a classic, but that it wouldn’t hurt to read that whether you’re new in business or whether you have something already. I really liked Peak by Chip Conley.

I really liked Tony Shea’s book. Just I like his philosophy. I like his approach to business, and we really try to embody that ourselves. And really, we are going to be rolling out more and more cool stuff for customer service. Get take a rain check on that and I’m going to with the new MFL in the recommendation section, I’m going to, it’s going to get revamped and I’m going to start adding books there, even if it’s individually, maybe I can’t, maybe I won’t necessarily get the full books of the month and get something on every one, but I’m going to start, I’m going to start populating that.

And, yeah. If you want, you can also shoot me an email and I’ll look through my reading list. I keep a spreadsheet of all the books that I read and all my links to all my takeaways. I’m OCD about it. And, but it’s a useful OCD. And I might also have [01:05:00] some, I have to look over my list and I might, and if you give me a little bit more of where you’re at, then I might have some good recommendations to, and then do I plan to write a book on how you started your own business?

No, probably not how I, how I started that would almost it sounds like a memoirs and that’s to me, and I’ve had people ask me about that. It seems very pretentious and self indulgent, so that really wouldn’t be my thing. But I do the, I don’t like to call it self help because there’s so much nonsense in self help, but maybe self development.

I like to read it. I like to think about it. So maybe something, I did write a book called awakening your inner genius, which is a cheesy title. Maybe I would market it differently if I were to do it again now, but I do like that. If you check that book out, I wrote under a pen name because I wanted to just keep that separate from my fitness stuff.

And if you check that out, I do that kind of. And then I have stuff where it’s historical anecdotes and what can we learn from this and, with an eye to practicality or pragmatism. I could see maybe writing some of that stuff in the future.

I’d probably start with [01:06:00] blog posts. Again, this is, right now I have to have some higher priority things I have to do. But once those are in place, I would like to get back to, because I was writing some stuff like that every week. And I enjoy it. I enjoy again. It also it’s nice for me because I read a lot of this stuff, writing about it helps me internalize what I read because, it’s that point of you’ve probably heard that, if you want to really retain something that you’ve learned, teach it to somebody else.

I will have more coming on these lines. It just will probably later in the year. So yeah so the question is somebody is like he’s having trouble bringing his legs up and he wants to squat a couple times a week, but he’s having trouble doing that with the deadlifting. And yeah, cause if you look I mean I would tell him to just look at a strength program.

Go to legion athletics and go to the blog and search for strength and you’ll see a pretty in depth article I wrote on strength training and I just give synopses of various popular strength training programs because a lot of strength training programs, You’re squatting three times a week and dead lifting once, maybe twice.

And it’s one set of five. They’re very [01:07:00] squat centric and the reason being is because you don’t want to, the deadlift is very taxing and you don’t want to be putting too much stress on your spine over time. You could go pretty ham on deadlifts and squats for a couple of weeks and be fine.

But if you tried to do it for a couple of months, you might hurt yourself. So I would say just go look at a, go look at, something even starting strength or go look at it. If you’re a bit more advanced and also just comfortable with programming check out the Texas method is great.

But yeah, go to Legion athletic total blog, look for it, look at strength and pick one of those programs. And you might really like it. Question. Do you get tired of people’s compliments of your physique? Honestly, I don’t get very many compliments. Legitimately, I, I don’t care.

I don’t look, I don’t, it’s just not something that really matters to me. I think I, I can say that I objectively have a good physique. There are much better physiques out there. Even just doesn’t matter how hard I’m willing to work. There are people with better genetics, better muscle [01:08:00] insertions.

That, you look over Instagram and then you add in drugs and there are people I could never hold a candle to. So I’m not even trying to necessarily win that side of the game. I’m just trying to show that, you can be strong, you can be muscular, lean, you can really achieve your genetic potential and look the best that you can look and feel great.

And without having to sacrifice your life to, to, to working out or without having to follow crazy diets and stuff. So I don’t give very many compliments, but yeah. All right. So we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do one last question and then also Jeremy’s going to pick some people and he’s gonna be giving away some gift cards, which is a thank you for spending time with us.

And, as we appreciate it. And we have some ideas to, we’ll hopefully again, it’s just been crazy, but by the next life, by the next Q and a, which you want to get back to monthly Jeremy, I do have some ideas on how we can just make this better and make it more fun and stuff.

It’s just again, it’s been, Tough with this move and shit, but at least that’s done now. And now our lives are back [01:09:00] to at least some sense, there’s some sense of normality. But this is one of the things we wanna do is start giving away. Just do fun giveaways throughout it and just, make it more engaging.

Next question. Alright, here it is. Here’s the last one. How long did it take you to write BLS? Oh, that’s a good question. I wanna say four months, five months maybe because I was working on it at night. So I’d work on it about, cause I had a job at a full time job at the time. So I’d work on it on average, maybe an hour and a half or two hours a night after I get home and eat and do all that stuff.

And then I would write. So yeah, it was maybe three months or so, three and a half. I don’t quite remember working on it that way. And that’s a, and now, I’ve written just on the blogs alone. I’ve written probably like over a million words at this point, and that’s excluding books.

So obviously I, my output is higher now than it was then. But something just to to say on that is I feel like my, writing pace is maybe a bit higher than usual. I don’t really run into [01:10:00] writer’s block and I usually can just get in the zone and it just flows. And that comes with practice.

That’s not just because I have some great talent or I’m super special or something like that. After doing it for awhile, I’ve just grooved myself into that. But what I want to say is if you are working on writing a book there’s a little story that comes to mind and the person who wrote the book House of Sand and Fog, I think is the name of it.

It was made into a movie. I didn’t see the movie or read the book. But I don’t know, people liked it, but that book was written, the guy wrote it on at 20 minutes a day. So I think it was, he would, he was dry, he would drive, it was like on his way home from work cause he had a family and he would park his car at a cemetery or something if I remember.

And he would write on a notepad longhand. 20, 25 minutes a day. That’s it. And then he would go home and he, I’d be a father and a husband do all that stuff. And that was it. And he, and then he, and he eventually finished the book and it, went on to a achieve at least a relative measure of success.

Don’t think that, just [01:11:00] don’t there was a, I think I heard on a podcast or it was in a book or something where I just like the concept of don’t, a lot of people they overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and they underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years.

And I really liked that concept. And it’s a, almost like a consoling thought. Cause I’ve experienced that myself, Jeremy and I have experienced that where we thought like we thought right now. A year ago, we thought that the new muscle for life was going to be a hundred percent done. Like all of the cool things that we wanted to do with it was going to be a hundred percent done by now.

And we’re just starting on it and it’s not because, we just got lazy along the way and, felt like doing other things. It’s mainly because one project for legion that we thought was gonna take a month ended up taking five months. You know what? And so we run into that many times and I went to myself where in estimating even if you’re willing to like you’re not trying to shy away from the effort and the amount of work that something’s going to take You’re not trying to think that you’re gonna write [01:12:00] 150 000 Word book in a month, and it’s gonna be you only doesn’t won’t even need an edit or anything like that.

We just tend to have us humans. We tend to have that tendency to think in best case scenarios, and our best case scenarios are like are So in many cases, almost fantastical. So that can lead us to poor short term planning, and then setting ourselves up for disappointment, and setting us up for becoming disillusioned with our goals, because, when we went into this, we thought oh, in a year I’m going to be able to do this, and then a year goes by and you haven’t even done, maybe you’ve done 10 percent of it.

So I like to just remind, just something to keep in mind myself, and I think it’s worth sharing, that And again, if you stretch that out to go, okay if I just plot along, if I just, every day I keep showing up and I keep on putting the work in, even if it’s 30 minutes a day in four years, I’m going to have this project done.

Is there there’s power and personal power and being able to do that. And, I [01:13:00] can relate a little bit to that because I have a fiction project that I’ve been working on. This project I’ve been working on maybe close to a year and it has gone through many iterations and a lot of work has gone into getting it to where it’s at right now, but it’s probably.

Given that I have maybe five hours a week to give it and I would say six or seven hours at the high end, it’s probably going to be another year before it’s done. So you know, that’s also, that’s just something that if I, the fact that I’m just accepting that now. Sets me up for success as opposed to, maybe trying to tell myself that somehow this thing, I’m going to get it done in three months.

And then three months from now, I’m like, not even close. And then I get disappointed. I hope that helps daily schedule, including meals. Yeah, I have honestly there’s a video on YouTube that I talked about this and not much has changed since then. I tend to just get into a routine on that stuff, mainly because I don’t want to spend time thinking about what I’m going to eat.

Like I have too many things on my mind these days to [01:14:00] want to also expend any mental energy. On, with meal prepping on the fly or meal planning on the fly. Same thing with clothing. I don’t really want to think about what clothes I’m gonna wear today. That’s why this is all I wear these days.

I wear gym clothes because I just grab it and go. But it’s pretty simple. I would say. The exact foods I eat are, it’s not exactly relevant and we’re talking about stuff like I have a, I have 60 grams of protein a day, in powder these days I’ve been trying different vegan proteins because we’re developing our vegan protein.

So I wanted to see okay, what is Vegas sports stuff? What is sun warrior stuff? What are these other ones out there? So I’ve been having some of that. I’ve been having a bit of way before my workouts. I have some chicken at lunch with vegetables. It’s like a, it’s a. Vegetable medley with chicken.

I would say probably a good cup and a half of vegetables there. I have one or two pieces of fruit here in the office. It’s usually an apple or a banana or both. And then I have more vegetables another two cups or so [01:15:00] at dinner with some more chicken. And in terms of carbs, it’s normally for a while.

I was doing a bunch of oatmeal because it’s just a good source of soluble fiber and then I was doing some rice. And I might go back to the oatmeal. I don’t know. We’ll see. I like it because it’s simple and it’s healthy and it tastes good and nutritious and whatever. I’d say the general guidelines are for in terms of, how you should set up your meals are it’s probably a good idea to have protein every few hours.

I’ve written about this. If you go to muscle for life and search for protein timing, you’ll see an article I wrote. If we’re talking about trying to gain every little edge we can for building muscle, having protein every few hours probably is a good idea. Having enough carbs every day. Very good idea.

And having some protein after you train. probably a good idea and making sure that you get some saturated fat in your diet. It’s a good idea that you don’t have too much get some unsaturated fat, especially mono unsaturated fat. A good source of that is nuts. Like for a while I was putting [01:16:00] walnuts.

I was putting walnuts in my oatmeal just to get some one on one unsaturated fat and make sure that you’re having two to three servings of both fruit and vegetables per day, a serving size being more or less your fist. Or a cup or so. And yeah, beyond that, those are your basics.

If you have all that in, and I also, I like to optimize my fruit and vegetable and take a little bit, I would say by having a variety of fruit and vegetables. So like for instance, I’ll also sometimes all for fruit. I’ll do blueberries and strawberries. So colorful fruits that have higher amounts of certain molecules that you wouldn’t find in other fruits.

I like bananas also because it’s a good source of potassium, a medium bananas, like eight or 900 milligrams of potassium. And then in terms of vegetables I like to do something that’s green and then also include onions. garlic and mushrooms because onions and garlic are rich in, in certain molecules that again, you don’t really find in many other [01:17:00] vegetables.

I also like Brussels sprouts a lot. Cruciferous veggies are great. Brussels sprouts, cauliflower is big. I’m okay on broccoli, but I tried to I try not to just eat nothing but asparagus, for example. That’s better than nothing. If you’re not, if you’re not, if, or if you’re only vegetables, asparagus, that’s good, but it’s better to have a variety of vegetables.

Mushrooms are also a good source of potassium. So those are my basic, those are my basic guidelines for diet. And once you get all that in, then you have calories left over. eat something that you like. I don’t know. I like chocolate. I like ice cream. I like chocolate ice cream. So I just make sure that I have my foundation in place and I’m getting all my nutrients.

I’m getting my macro and micronutrients and then eat something good. I’m not really big on sugar. I don’t have to have it, it’s nice to have a couple hundred calories of chocolate is very satisfying to me. Okay. We’re wrapping it up. Again, I want to say thanks a lot for taking the time.

I hope you found this helpful and sorry you had to wait. I know it’s been a bit since we did the previous one. And again, it was it was, it’s our fault, whatever. It’s just crazy with the move, but [01:18:00] now that we’re everything like we’re finally. Actually, at this point now, everyone is finally caught up here in the office.

It’s been, it’s also Jeremy’s sister got married. So then there was time. It was just like every week. So we move here and then we fall behind and then it was like every week there was something else that then, we would start to catch up and then put us behind, start to catch up and put us behind.

So now we’re finally caught up. So we’ll be bringing this back into this regular schedule and of course we’ll be emailing out. And before and giving everybody a heads up, and we’re going to also come up with some ideas on how we can make it more fun. Okay, so Thanks again for taking the time. And thanks again for all the support as usual and Feel free to email me or email contact at legion if you have any questions matt and artie help people all day long and it’s not just like Our customer service isn’t just for, customers even per se.

It’s really, if anybody needs help with anything, email us and we will help you, we’ll point you in the right direction. I will. See you later. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you like the podcast. [01:19:00] 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 dot muscle for life. com where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscle for life.

com. All right, thanks again. Bye.