October “Red Ranger” Live Q&A (in My Halloween Costume!)

[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.

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com forward slash audiobooks. That’s www. [00:01:00] muscleforlife. com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. 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 100 percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, 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.

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All right, thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let’s get to the show.

All so it is the whole, I said I’d wear my Halloween costume. So as you can see, Red Ranger in the house. It’s the tightest thing ever Put [00:03:00] my desk going down might be too bright anyways, it’s the tightest costume ever which is gonna be hilarious and Yeah, this is my Halloween costume My son loves Power Rangers, of course So I did it for him My wife is being the pink Ranger and then he decided he wants to be a stormtrooper because he’s obsessed with stormtroopers Alright, so let’s get started.

You can put your questions in chat and Jeremy will start going through them and he’ll send them my way and, we’ll just do the normal thing. And of course you can ask any questions you want. If you have, training questions diet questions, supplementation, marketing business, I don’t care.

Personal stuff really ask anything and Jeremy will just grab all kinds of things. And if you have funny questions and throw them in there too, because he likes that shit. Here we go. First question. When finishing a bulk, should any slowing down be done before cutting or is it best to jump right in? It depends on what you want to do.

If you’re done [00:04:00] bulking and you’re ready to cut, which you normally are because if you’ve done it you are just basically disgusted with yourself. Not literally, but I know that like I haven’t bulked in a while just because it’s not really what I want to do anymore with my body.

I have more or less the size that I want, at the end of my books, I just was had to eat so much food. That, and I just felt like, God, I’m ready to just eat less food. So yes, you can just go right into a cut. I don’t recommend slow cutting from a bulk because you just, you’re just going to make it take longer.

You’re not really actually going to benefit from it. You’re not going to lose muscle by jumping into a deficit. I’ve written articles of, I’ve spoken about this in quite a few different articles. I’ve spoken out on the podcast and all over the place in my books and blah, blah, blah. If you go on muscle for life and you search for the word rapid and you look at.

The article I wrote on rapid weight loss, I cite a study there that showed that it was about a 25, but there’s about a 25 percent deficit and it was done with athletes, with weightlifters. You’re not going to lose muscle if you’re eating enough protein and you’re not doing too much exercise, especially not doing too much cardio.

You can be in an aggressive [00:05:00] deficit where you can lose fat quickly and not lose any muscle, which is really what you want as an experienced weightlifter, you’re not going to build muscle, any muscle to speak of when you’re in a calorie deficit. You just want to maintain it. And you maintain that by eating enough protein, not going too low on your calories, keeping your carbs up and, continuing hitting heavy weights in the gym.

I recommend when you’re done bulking, if you’re ready to go into a cut, just go. And you also have that benefit of that when you’re done bulking, you’re at, you’re eating as much food as you possibly can essentially. And you’re still only gaining a little bit of weight. In the course of your bulk, if you went from 3000 calories a day to 4, 000 calories a day, which is more or less what happens when I bulk.

That means you get to start your cut back down at like 3000 calories a day, which is pretty cool. And then, work them on down. So next question, how long did it take you to start noticing viewers to your website? I’m working on my own health blog. That’s an unfair question because we started muscle for life, Jeremy and I in March of 2013, but we are, we already had a.

A base, like we had a site before that we [00:06:00] didn’t care about, to be fair. I don’t even remember the traffic numbers on it. It was, I didn’t do anything with it. It’s called build healthy muscle. com. And then when we decided, all right, we really want to go for this whole thing. Then we started building muscle for life and blah, blah, blah.

So the growth in muscle for life was very rapid. Jeremy, do you remember what the first month was? Yeah, I think you’re right. So we had about 30, 000 visits in the first month alone, and that’s because I already had a bit of a platform because I had sold already sold a lot of books and You know obviously there were people out there.

There was some buzz or whatever so That’s not really a fair that that’s not a benchmark that I put out there. I think a better benchmark is if you look what Neil Patel is doing with his health blog. If you want to follow that, go to neilpatel. com, N E I L Patel, P A T E L. Oh, does he blog on quick sprout?

Okay it’s either quick sprout, which is just how it sounds, quick sprout, or neilpatel. com. He started a health blog from scratch, and how long ago, Jeremy, was that? Was that like six months ago? [00:07:00] I want to say four to six months ago and I think he’s at a hundred thousand visits a month now and he’s pumping out content and he knows what he’s doing obviously.

But that’s a much more realistic and that’s being aggressive. If you can hit a hundred thousand visits a month within your first six months, That’s impressive. That means you really know what you’re doing. So as a resource for that, I highly recommend Neil’s stuff in general. Jeremy and I also know him personally.

We’re not like super close, but he’s helped us. He’s a very nice guy, very helpful guy. And he really knows what he’s doing in, in, with really all things, internet marketing. He has areas where he’s very, that’s his personal expertise, but he knows a bit of everything. And he knows people that have a lot of their.

It’s like the things that he’s not super strong in, let’s say copywriting. He knows the best copywriters out there. Anyway quick sprout. com, neilpatel. com, go check it out. And and put his, just put his strategies into use. They work. It’s really, that’s, we kind of base everything we’re doing is I wouldn’t say it all comes from Neil but muscle for life right now gets about 1.

3 million visits a [00:08:00] month. A large very large percentages from Google. And we’re are in terms of SEO. We basically just do what Neil says. It’s not even Ooh, we have this secret, connection or that we’re doing stuff that he doesn’t talk about on his website. We’re just doing exactly what he says on his website.

Yes, I think that’s it. That’s it for that question. All right. Next question. What role does Jeremy play within the company? Oh, Jeremy picking a, picking one for me to talk him up besides looking pretty that’s what he put in there. Yes. Besides looking pretty. Jeremy has his hands in a lot of stuff.

I’d say his, like the real, what’s that? It mostly, he’s mostly has his hands in my pants, that’s, we’re not going to go into that right now. No. So he’s, he his real focus is the marketing side of what we do. Although again, he does have his hands in a bit of everything, like the coaching service that, we were rolling out, which is going very well.

We have 10 people, which we wanted to limit it to 10 people before we really rolled out. To make sure that everything is the way that we want it. And we’re, we’re able to deliver the service that we envision. He helps, he helped put all that together. And, [00:09:00] but I would say like where his specialty really is, or where he’s niched into is just everything that we’re doing, both on muscle for life and Legion to, to market and sell, I do the copywriting.

He does all the design, like we’re rolling out a new website. Actually new websites, plural for both one for Legion and one for MFL. By the end of the year, they’ll both be up. Legion first has really been, those have been like his babies for the last several months. Cause it’s, it’s a big undertaking to really do it right.

And as you’ll see, the websites we have now are fine, but these new websites are so much better. It’s just on another level. So it’s hard to say Oh, Jeremy just does this because he has his hands in a lot of things, but a lot it all centers, the majority of his work centers around how do we sell more stuff basically?

And in that’s from a strategic side, like what are some new bright ideas? Cause marketing is a very creative type of activity. A lot of it is just taking a look at what you have and going, all right, how can I get more out of this? And, we also are a little bit, it’s [00:10:00] great to sell things, but we also have a personal integrity that we want to uphold to in terms of quality of products and tactics that we’re not willing to do, even though, things that we could make a lot of money doing that, but we just wouldn’t feel it would be a good idea.

It wouldn’t be how we would want to be sold to. We those are some constraints as well, but anyways, that’s a vague answer, but honestly, like it’s a pretty small group, there’s seven of us and to handle all of Legion and all of muscle for life and all other random app things that we’re involved in and all kinds of shit.

People have like their primary areas of work, but then there are, there’s some overlap depending on what needs to get done. Like this the shredded chef update, Jeremy has been helping a lot with that overseeing he’s going to be, I’m putting the book as the, wasn’t Jeremy the art director.

Yeah, the art director, because he is you, if you’ve been following any social media, so you see we’re doing photo shoots and for food and stuff. So he’s been basically overseeing that and, he’s super into cooking. And so it’s been his vision on the, how we want it all to look and the [00:11:00] style of things.

And yeah, we basically every everything that I’m involved in Jeremy’s involved in some way. All right, next question. So I’m 22 years old and had my testosterone tested at 30, 332 NGDL, which I think is pretty low. I’m following your BLS program and trying to cut to 10 percent body fat. I think it could be low dietary fat intake, but around 20 percent of my calorie intake comes from fat.

What do you think I should do? There’s, there are some things different. Things to take into account here, this is good timing cause actually one, I would go read the article that I just wrote on legion, the legion blog, how to increase your testosterone. It’s like how to actually increase your testosterone, how not to, so you can see that it’s probably not your dietary fat intake.

You could go at a higher on a higher fat diet and probably see a small increase in testosterone. Maybe you could get up to 400 or something like that, but it’s not going to be like, Oh, from 330 to 800 because you are eating more fat. In terms of what your body needs for its health reasons in terms of dietary fat, which [00:12:00] would include hormone production is probably about 0.

3 grams per pound of fat free mass, which is everything that’s not fat in your body. So as you can see, that’s just not that much. And when you’re in a calorie deficit as well, this is a limited. Time where you’re restricting your fat, you’re not even restricting it. You’re keeping it right at about that level, which is where I put it in the formulas in the books and so forth.

But again, it’s only for a certain period of time and then, you introduce some more fat into your diet. There are several things. One being a calorie deficit depresses testosterone levels, period. It does. Your cortisol levels are going to be higher that alone, testosterone cortisol have an inverse relationship.

So the higher your cortisol levels are in general, the lower your testosterone levels are going to be. Okay. Also testosterone tests higher. It’s what is it? It’s in the morning, Jeremy, if you’re, because your cortisol levels are higher tests is going to test lower. It’s highest in the morning.

What’s that? Oh, okay. Okay. So you’re, it depends on when you’re getting tested in the morning. It’s it’s going to be higher. I [00:13:00] didn’t remember on, on, I’ve read so many things sometimes like little random details or what was it that, or was it that so anyways, so you’re, when you got tested matters and other things.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean that definitely how high is your cortisol is going to be a big thing. If you’re, if your cortisol is high, then that alone can cause a very low a T. So test. And also, given, honestly that’s the low end of normal and depends on where your free testosterone levels are, which is going to depend on your sex hormone binding.

Let’s say your SPH BG and your albumin levels. So you could have, someone could have high. Testosterone, like you could have, let’s say 900 NGDL, but because your SHBG levels are high, your free testosterone could actually be quite low, whereas somebody else could be, let’s say, more mid range on testosterone but they have low normal levels of SHBG, especially SHBG.

Albumin is less of an issue because the testosterone can disassociate from it. But [00:14:00] shbg, once it’s locked into that protein, it’s done, it’s not bioavailable anymore. So someone could be middle of the range, but actually have higher free testosterone, which is really what we’re looking at. But free testosterone is probably generally about two or 3 percent of your total testosterone.

So given your test, I would say that it’s the lower end of normal. It’s I, given your age, actually it is, it would be a little bit considered low. I think the low end of normal for your age. is about 400 NDL NGDL. When you start getting below that number is when you start seeing symptoms of low testosterone at your age, a middle aged person could be at three hundreds and actually be okay.

So go check out the article that I wrote for Legion and and I talk about there with some natural things you can do to raise your testosterone levels. And I highly recommend that you don’t just turn to drugs. Right now, TRT is very. Popular getting on TRT is, it’s a lot of doctors. You could just go to them and say, Hey, I think I have low testosterone and they would prescribe you right away.

And I just recommend you don’t do that, especially at your age. I guarantee you there are things you can do with your lifestyle. That [00:15:00] can dramatically improve it. And it might even be just coming out of a calorie deficit and raising your dietary fat a little bit. And also like your exercise schedule matters a lot.

Are you over training? How much exercise are you doing? Because if you’re doing way too much exercise, that’s going to chronically elevate your cortisol levels, which. Is going to depress your testosterone levels even more. So you have the calorie deficit and the overtraining. So that’s my recommendation.

Go check out the article and really dig into it and don’t just go jump on drugs. Cause what will happen is you’re going to find it very hard to come off basically is that’s what’s most likely going to occur. Where it’s going to become easy to just stay on and you’re going to, have psychological you’re running the psychological addiction and that’s I’ve spoken with a lot of guys.

that have done not just TRT but done, heavier steroids. And the guys that are like most honest about it, that’s the most common thing they say that they, why they regret getting on steroids is when they’re off steroids now things like when they’re on steroids, they just feel invincible and when they’re off now, they hate the feeling of being natty.

Basically. Hopefully that helps you [00:16:00] on with that. All right. Next question. How long does it take to get a new body fat set point? I’ve only been under, I’ve only been once under 10 percent body fat and my body was craving like crazy until I got above 10 percent again. Is there a way to stay under 10 percent and not be hungry all the time?

That’s a good question. And I think that’s something that I, myself, I don’t. Run into but I know it’s out there. Jeremy, you run into that same thing, right? Yeah, Jeremy runs into the same thing where there’s a point where he starts getting under 10 percent and he just, his body is almost like he just doesn’t want, it’s no, eat more food.

I want to be fatter. Stop it. And It’s hard. I don’t, there’s no like off the top of my head, any relevant type of, Oh here’s this body of research that shows us this is how it really works. I’ve written an article on body fat set point where it’s, there’s a lot of factors involved.

And the long story short is the longer you stay at a body fat percentage range, the more likely it is that your body is going to adapt that as the new normal. [00:17:00] But for sure, some of the I can say that the people that I can think of that have done it successfully have. I wouldn’t say one for one, but there are some things you can do that increase the likelihood that you’re going to be able to comfortably maintain that sub 10.

And that’s going to be one, your diet. As you probably know I’m not like a huge detractor of clean eating. And I’m not like one of those, if it fits your macros, people that’s eating Oreo ice cream every day. And, Showing off on Instagram about how I can eat this shit and still stay lean.

The vast majority of my calories actually come from nutritious foods. A lot of fruit, a lot of vegetables, a lot of just nutritious foods, high quality proteins. Yes, I have some sugar every day. I’m really into chocolate, so I’ll usually do chocolate, but sometimes I’ll change that up and I’ll, make some desserts or things at home or whatever.

But my point with that is. And this is really anecdotal. This is not, I’m not, again, there, there isn’t like some, at least I don’t know of any research that’s just simple oh yeah, there’s just one there. Here’s five studies that break it all down. But one making sure that you’re [00:18:00] not deficient in any micronutrients, making sure your body’s getting all the micronutrients that it needs seems to be a part of it maintaining high insulin sensitivity levels, it seems to be a part of it.

That probably is a big part for me personally, where I am naturally a very insulin I’ve low carbohydrate sensitivity. I have naturally just have very high insulin sensitivity levels. I’ve also been, I grew up playing sports, I’ve been weightlifting for long, 10, 11. Oh shit. 12 years now, actually. And I’ve been, I’ve had a good diet for a long time now. So a lot of those things do work to my advantage. But you can’t so there’s that maintaining good insulin sensitivity and you do that by really, staying lean alone and training your muscles are probably like, and doing some cardio are the major things that you can do to improve your insulin sensitivity.

There of course are certain supplements stuff like Berberine. It’s very good for that fish oil is good for that. But I believe in spirulina is good for that as well. And which I take all those things. I actually don’t take berberine, but I do take fish oil and spirulina. And then other, there’s some stuff in triumph as well [00:19:00] that can improve in sense are multivitamin triumph that improves sense insulin sensitivity.

And high protein diet is important, but I’m sure, that if you’re not eating enough protein, you’re going to run into hunger issues. High carb is going to be better for you, especially if you’re training regularly. You’re going to, if you’re like most people, you’re going to be less hungry on a high carb diet.

And that means by high carb. Me personally, I’ve always kept, I just keep my fat around that 0. 3 to 0. 4 grams per pound of fat free mass, or about 0. 3 grams per pound 0. 35. And I eat about a gram of protein per pound per day. And I get all the rest of my calories and carbs because it’s very satiating.

It helps. It helps maintain muscle. It helps keep cortisol levels down. So again, this is, there are a lot of factors involved in this question. It really is circumstantial. This is where, if we were emailing, I would ask you some specific questions regarding what are you actually doing.

I can say the people that have been most miserable that I’ve spoken with that try to stay lean or low carb people people that try to, you have the extreme like keto or you just have the [00:20:00] more like. Paleo type low carb one for one. I can, I have spoken to a lot of people.

It’s very rare that I come across a low carb person that’s able to stay lean and feel good and not be hungry all the time and and have good workouts and so forth. And I’ve spoken to a lot of low carb people that have tried it. And then with, taking my advice, stop that. Let’s get you some carbs and then all of a sudden they feel way better.

And a lot of cases they actually end up probably due to cortisol levels coming down. They find they end up looking leaner with more carbs because they’re, my guess is just holding less water because the higher cortisol levels are, the more water you hold. And then one last thing for moving on to the next question is don’t discount the psychological aspect too.

They’re, I, Again, that’s an area where me personally, I don’t have great tips for that because I don’t have those issues with food. I don’t feel compelled to eat things or not eat things. I just stick to my numbers every day and if I am going to go over, it’s just a conscious thing like I’m going to go out to this restaurant and I’m going to be in a surplus today and [00:21:00] that’s just the way it is.

But, though that can be hard to differentiate from the physical I believe, oh, what was it? I read somewhere. I think it was in a book. Random books, this kind of comes to mind, that the difference between physical hunger, which is the hunger pangs, and psychological hunger, which is just the desire to eat.

I think that’s what it is, right Jeremy? The physical, I don’t remember which book that was, the physical and psychological aspects of hunger. So the physical hunger is like in your stomach, like the actual hunger pangs, and then psychological hunger is like the desire to eat. I don’t remember exactly, I don’t remember exactly sorry I, I can Oh no, I don’t, yeah, no, I just mean that the principle, I think that’s what it was.

It’s just that, The difference between physically being hungry and mentally being hungry, basically, where you just have a desire to eat even though you’re not physically like you don’t have physical hunger symptoms, you just want to eat. People can run into that when you start getting lean.

Also, even psychologically, you start to get more lenient with yourself I’m lean, I can eat more food, and then it increases the [00:22:00] desire for food. And that can become a dwindling spiral and then it’s just I just want to eat everything. And then once you already ate a little bit already fucked it up anyway, and then it turns into a binge and so forth.

So go if you haven’t read the article yet, go on most for life and search for set point two words, and you can read my article on it to get a bit more information on it. It’s just it’s not an exact there, from every, all this reading that I’ve done on it, there just isn’t like a neat.

Tidy little science based answer for that because it seems to vary so much from person to person. Alright, next question, when bulking, should I continue to eat a surplus of calories during the week I am deloading, not lifting? I would say yeah just because, your body is still going to be recovering at least from part of what you did the week before.

There’s no reason not to. It’s not like you’re going to be gaining a bunch more fat. Because you’re in a slight surplus on a week that you’re not lifting, you can also can do a bit of cardio on that week as well. There’s no necessary, if you’re, if you are doing cardio, there’s no reason to just drop that out.

But there’s also nothing wrong with if you’re sick of eating, which if you’ve been bulking for a bit, you probably are being a bit tired of eating so much food every day. [00:23:00] It can feel nice to just drop down to TDE. You know what I mean? Which if you’re not lifting is going to be at least a couple.

Two, 300 calories lower every day and just almost get a little break from having to eat all that food. I’ve done it both ways when I’ve bulked in the past and I really just played it by ear how I felt. If I was enjoying my diet and everything was going fine, I would just continue as normal.

But if if I was, tort, if it’s already been months and I just, I’m really sick of eating then drop down to TDE. All right. So next question, when bulking, I know you recommend a deload week about every eight weeks. I’ve reached the 10 week mark since my last week off and I’m really in a groove right now.

I’ve been making lots of progress and strength. In the last few weeks, would you still recommend a dealer or should I keep going? Definitely keep going. You’re going to find it in a bulk. Like I’ve worked out with guys, especially people that are new to weightlifting that went six, seven, eight months without deloading.

And like you, they’re just like, after they started asking and working out with me and they’re like, it’s been, I haven’t even taken a D load and I’m just like, If you feel good, keep going. There’s no reason. The point of the deload really is when you start, you’re just [00:24:00] grinding and your workouts feel very heavy.

Your energy levels are low. Your sleep is not as good. Your motivation is waning. That’s when it’s time to deload. But when you’re, I see that when it was bulking in particular, people are able to go quite a bit longer. And so when cutting, you’ll probably find you, you eight, eight or 10 weeks, it’ll be time to take a break.

And you may even want to increase your food intake a little bit on that week as well. A lot of people like to do that. It’s not necessary, but again, it just gives the body a full break, give it a couple of hundred more calories every day and no lift, no lifting just gives the whole, your whole system a break.

All right. Next question. Hey, Mike. The second you release your app, the sales for all your supplements will go through the roof. You will sell the book much quicker and the app will become your first step in earning a ton of money. What are you planning to do with all the money? And speaking of the stacked app, when’s it going to be on the app store?

I’m going to answer this in reverse order. The app I can’t say for sure when it’s going to be on the app, when it’s going to be available for [00:25:00] sale. The developers have said they’re shooting for December, January to be fully done. Beta testing done everything, which I’m happy with. Again as you probably know, if you’ve been following the project at all, it’s taking longer than it should, which actually reminds you, I’m going to send an email out to everybody on the list just to keep you up to date.

The beta is coming. It’s close. I just want them. I want the workout section to be Pretty, pretty like rock solid with me. Like where I’m very, I’m happy with it and I can’t break it and everything works the way I want it to work before I start rolling it out. Cause that’s really the most important part of the app.

But anyway the developer they had working on it it was just going slow and he was getting a bit sloppy in his work. Now, fortunately I had the code audited by a third party. Firm of a company. It’s well established. They checked all the code. They said, this is good code. So now they have another developer the developer the company I’m working with.

They have another developer now that is he’s kicking ass. He’s doing great. This is one of those things I’m just as annoyed as anybody else waiting for it, but I’ve just learned through doing everything that we’ve done. Everything takes too long, [00:26:00] cost too much money. There are always stupid problems and stupid people that do stupid things.

And so you just keep on going and you just don’t give up. Basically, you just go, okay what’s the, what do we do now? All right, here’s what we do. All right, let’s go do that. And then something else. Okay. What do we do now? Let’s go do that. Again, we’re shooting for a December, January release.

That’s, I think that’s realistic given where it’s at right now, because once the workout section is done, the rest of the app, they only, it’s just not that much like the whole journal section. It’s going to be great, but it’s technically not that complicated. Workouts is what is complicated because it also workouts ties into every other aspect of the app.

So it’s just, there’s a lot of moving parts in it. So that’s that. Yeah, I, I know the app’s going to sell well it’s, but more money. I don’t know. I have to buy a house, so there I’ll buy a house and that’s what I’ll do with the money. I don’t know. I’m not one to, if anybody follows me on social media or anything like.

I never post about anything trying to show off money. I never will. It’s just not, I think it’s actually really fucking lame, especially when [00:27:00] it’s just, I don’t understand the point of it. I don’t understand the point of trying to make people. Is it to make other people jealous? If that’s, some people are into that.

I’m not into that. If it’s just to get it, just to show, like to say what look at me, I’m better. I don’t feel any need to do that. I don’t know, or just to get admiration from people for stuff like I’m much more interested in, I think it’s for me a compliment on the work that we’re all doing here, whether it be the books or the supplements or the app or the websites or all that.

That’s more gratifying to me than somebody saying, Oh, what a cool car you have or whatever. I just don’t really care about that. I’ll find something to do with money. There’s always something to do with it. All right, let’s go to the next question what do you think about knee sleeves? Are they good to prevent knee injury?

That’s a good question I actually like knee sleeves. Not so much for the point of preventing injury per se but they keep your joints warm and i’ve actually i’ve written about it And I use reband action. I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s how you pronounce it. R E H B A N D, I believe. And they’re blue.[00:28:00] 

They’re probably, they feel like neoprene or something. And I just like them because they keep my joints warm in between sets, which I find is just comfortable actually. They’re not like knee wraps, which you can wrap your knees and squat more weight for instance, but it’s known like that’s been it.

scientifically proven that it’s not good for your joints to do that. Knee sleeves, on the other hand, are not good for your joints, but they’re not as effective in terms of improving your squat performance as straight wrapping your knees. But I don’t do knee wraps because why would I, it doesn’t really make sense for me with what I’m doing.

I’m not, trying, I’m not powerlifting, I’m not in competitions or something like that. So I use sleeves and I don’t use elbow sleeves. I never really found, I just like the knee sleeves for squatting and for dead lifting. For that reason, it just keeps My joints feeling like nice and cozy, and maybe it provides a little bit of structural support.

It does feel like everything is just locked in and warm and tight. So I do recommend you get some, I think you’ll like them just like weightlifting shoes, for instance, of course, it’s not necessary to have any weightlifting shoes, but I think that you [00:29:00] will really like them for heavy squatting.

I didn’t use any special weightlifting shoes for a long time for years and years. I only started using them maybe about a year ago. And I would just squat and, plain old flat shoes or some Nike fly knits is what I’ve been using for a while before that I’ve used innovates. I’ve used new balance, like just simple, flat sole.

And those are fine. But what I like about now I use Addy powers for squatting is there’s definitely, they feel more. Oh the bottom, like the heel, it’s a wide heel and it’s rock solid. So it feels very stable. Your foot doesn’t squish down, it doesn’t rock at all. It’s just really nice. Also a little bit of heel elevation helps with squat depth.

Obviously you don’t want your heels very raised, but you’re, they’re up a little bit. And I find that with those shoes, I’m really able to. I almost torque my feet against the outside of the the shoe and really keep my help, keep my knees in position where they need to be. So I’m a fan, I’m a fan of weightlifting shoes similar to the knee bands or knee wraps, not [00:30:00] necessary, but it makes for a better squatting experience.

That’s that. Yeah, it should. Will stack be available in the UK store? I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. I know that I, I only my familiarity with with apple is iBooks selling books through iBooks. And it’s very simple. Actually, we even, I just realized I, we have a bigger, leaner, stronger as a book.

It’s an app just for people that don’t, yeah. For that one at that way, basically. So if the bigger, leaner, stronger book app is available on the UK store, then yes, I don’t think there’s any reason why it won’t be if it’s, if the BLS and I have TLS as an, as a book app as well. If those aren’t available in the UK store, then I’ll figure out how to do it because I want it obviously everywhere.

All right. Next question. When will you establish your national distribution? Do you ship to freight forwarders? Yeah, we can definitely ship to freight forwarders. Jeremy. We can do that as long as it’s specified how Yeah, I’m sure we can if you email us. I’m sure if we can figure it out. We will I think we’ve done it before I think it’s very simple.

I [00:31:00] think you just send them a bunch of stuff and there’s a a little bit of Yeah, I’ve done it before that’s right to some people in Miami and then it went to Brazil So we can definitely look into that if you just shoot us an email We’ll help you out with that and then in terms of international distribution, it will be next year In terms of priority, it’s going to be Canada and the UK.

First, we should be able to handle Europe and the UK at the same time. The only reason why we’re not pursuing it right now is because we have our hands very full with what we’re doing. We have this new website coming, which is going to have also stacks. And because we have new products, we have. Two new products coming.

We have a sleep product coming. We have we actually have multiple and it’s not just two. We have to sleep product. We have greens product. We have new protein. We have all together, right? We’re doing the way plus a little bit differently. And then we’re doing five pound protein jugs.

We have an uncharged, unflavored recharge coming, so you can just mix it with. Your post workout shake or whatever you want. So it doesn’t have any flavor. So we have all these things coming new website, coming a subscription service on the website, coming where it’s going to be 20 percent off your order.

And you’ll be able to do a monthly subscribe and save [00:32:00] thing like like Amazon. And anyway, so we just have so many things that we’re still like actually just keeping up with demand as it is right now. But next year we’re definitely looking at international distribution. I know that there are some different ways to do it and just going to have to really take the time to dive into it and do my research and my due diligence and find out what’s really the best way to do it.

So it’s not going to, so it’s going to be affordable for everybody and not just going to be a big pain in the ass basically. But for now we did just put something up where Jeremy ran numbers and basically if you on all orders over 250 or. 250 and over, Jeremy. Yeah. Two 15 up. If you’re in Canada or the UK, which is where the majority of our international customers are, where they’re from we, the shipping is 50 percent off.

So we’re eating half the shipping cost basically for on orders to 15 up, which means, that you can stock up and then, or get friends together. And then when you look at the shipping in terms of a per unit basis, it’s actually becomes pretty affordable. So that was like our, In the interim, that’s our [00:33:00] solution.

But we are definitely going to be pursuing international distribution. Seriously. The countries, the obvious countries are Canada, UK, all of Europe, at least Western Europe Australia possibly even Brazil. Cause I sell a lot of books in Brazil as well. So it’s just one thing at a time, one thing at a time.

Mike, how did you use your eyes? So blue is there a special supplement stack that you’re taking for that? Yeah, there’s this company legion and if you buy all their supplements then it should do the trick If you take two servings of everything a day trust me and your dick will get really big.

No That’s a funny question. I don’t know genetics. Thanks. Dad. My dad has super blue eyes all right next question so Can you address waist size after cutting and then reverse dieting? I had my pants tailored, assuming I’d get big again, but it’s been nine weeks since starting the reverse diet and the inches haven’t come back on.

Will they ever? Not that I want them to. It’s a good question actually. So just a. catch everybody up quickly. So reverse dieting is just when you’re done cutting, instead of just [00:34:00] going back to, how you’re eating before you’re cutting, you slowly increase your calories up to, your TD where, what you’re burning.

And there are a couple of reasons to do that. One, when you’re at the end of it, when you’re at the end of a cut, you’ve been a deficit for a while, your body is really primed to store fat as efficiently as possible, basically. So the worst thing to do is end a cut and be like, fuck yeah, diet’s done.

And then just start pounding food. You will gain. that very quickly. So the reverse diet is a simple protocol to prevent that from happening basically where you’re raising your caloric intake by your daily intake by about 150, 100, 150 calories. And then you eat that amount for about a week and then you do it again.

You eat that for a week and so forth until you’re up to a normal calorie intake, no longer in a deficit. And then you can even continue and keep on pushing it if you want. But the great thing about it also is that the person asking this question has experienced is you don’t gain any fat. You just don’t.

You, a lot of people actually when they, especially when they’re like a few weeks into their reverse diet, they find that they even look leaner now that they’re eating, let’s say three, four hundred [00:35:00] more calories per day. And again, that’s not yes, they’re probably still in a slight deficit. So they’re still losing a little bit of fat.

And that is going to contribute to that leanness, but also as you are eating more food, your cortisol levels come down, you hold less water. And especially that’s very noticeable if you’re lean, if you’re a guy and you’re under 10 percent body fat, if you’re a girl under 20 percent body fat and you are have, if your cortisol levels were to, let’s say spike for a day or two, let’s say you don’t sleep enough, right?

Which can do it. For a couple of days, you will notice this, you will see it, the little bit of extra water. It’s just like a little film of. of blurriness that’ll be over you. And then on the flip side of that, if you’re dealing with that and it goes away, you’ll see that too. You will notice it right away when you get very lean.

The answer to the question is no your waist should should stay the same. Waist measurement at the navel is a very reliable indicator of body fat levels So if your waist is expanding over time, you are gaining fat. If it is shrinking over time, you’re losing fat. That’s a good thing just to keep in mind.

If you are new to weightlifting, you need to lose weight. You’re [00:36:00] going to build muscle while you lose fat. And just paying attention to the scale is not enough because you’ll, you’re going to, you’re going to You’re going to be four weeks into what you’re doing and you’re going to be down a pound, which would suck normally, but you’re like, but I’ve lost, X millimeters or whatever am I wear centimeters on my waist and my pants are, everything is loose.

What’s going on? I look leaner in the mirror. It’s that you are losing fat. But then you’re replacing some of that weight with muscle. It’s not going to be a one to one. Obviously, you can lose fat faster than you can build muscle, even when you’re new to weightlifting. But keeping a waist measurement is an, and also like a caliper measurement.

If you go to muscle for life and you search for body composition, you can see an article I put together that shows how to determine your body composite, your body fat percentage and stuff like that. So keeping caliper readings and waist measurements. In addition to weight or that’s, those are just like, it gives you a bigger more complete picture of what’s going on with your body.

So no, your waist shouldn’t change now, where of course it would change is there’s a point where you keep increasing your caloric intake to where you’re now in a surplus and you start storing fat, then you will see your [00:37:00] waist expanding. But until then no, you can just keep on increasing your food intake.

And I do recommend you do that. Keep going and see how high, Ideally, that’s the ideal situation is where you’re eating as much food as you can without gaining fat, unless you want to gain fat, unless you’re bulking. But if you’re trying to go into a maintain, then you really want to be able to eat as much food as you can without gaining fat.

It’s just better that way because then in the future, if you do want to start bulking, your metabolism is basically running as fast as it can in a sense. And then, you put some more food, put some more food, and then when it comes time to cut, you’re not starting from a half.

Gimp, caloric intake where you really should be eating a couple hundred calories more per day and your body could deal with that but you never really got there. So now you have to cut your calories, especially low and you cut, you just don’t want to get into that. You don’t want to get into this.

I’ve seen this, it becomes a, I wouldn’t say. It’s it’s not really a vicious type of cycle, but people will get stuck in these low caloric intake ranges by not properly reverse dining out of a cut because they’re afraid to eat [00:38:00] more food. So they’re, they do their cut perfectly. They reduce their caloric intake as necessary.

They reach their goal and they’re afraid to eat more. So they just hang out in this low area where, and the body continues to adapt, continues to drive energy expenditure down to where it reaches this. Homostasis are close enough to it where you’re not really losing much fat anymore, but you’re not eating as much food as you should.

Your body is still fighting to reduce energy output energy expenditure. Instead, you want to come out of a cut, reverse diet properly, get your food, get your caloric intake back up to where it needs to be. You are not going to gain fat if you do it right. And then you’re in the clear and then you get to decide what do you want to do from there?

Do you want to maintain? Cool. There are different ways you can do that. Do you want to bulk? That’s very simple. No reason to go back into cutting, obviously, but I think that’s a good thorough answer to that question. Hopefully that helps. All right. Next question. Pre workout nutrition for bulking.

If I work out very early in the morning. A good question. When I was bulking, I would do I would usually do, I would do, let’s see a cup of rice milk and [00:39:00] I’d mix protein powder in it because delicious rice milk is a magical mystery. When you mix it with protein, it is so good by itself. You drink it, be like, shit sucks.

What is, why is rice milk mix it with protein and it’s, there’s, it’s one of those, like The sum is greater than the parts by far protein powder in water can be like, eh, that doesn’t really taste very good. Rice milk by itself is who would want to drink that together. You’re like, holy shit, that’s good.

So I would do like a cup of rice milk and a scoop of protein and I would do a banana as well. So that’s about 50 carb. And sometimes like before my dead lifting and squatting, I would also do I would do either another cup of rice milk. Which was Julie, just for the carbs. I do another 25 grams of carbs basically.

So I get 75 grams of carbs before I train 30 minutes before I work out. So I would wake up first thing. That’s what I do. I’d eat my food, go to the bathroom, get ready to go. And I’d be at the gym about 30 minutes later. And that will give you the full ergogenic benefits basically of carbs. And you will lift more weights with [00:40:00] carbs.

I don’t recommend fasted training. If you’re bulking, it’s you’re going to be stronger with. Pre workout carbs. And that’s what we’re trying to do here when we’re bulking is getting as strong as possible. We’re trying to, progress as much as we can. The only reason to bulk or sorry to train fasted when you bulk abuse, if you just really like it.

Keep that in mind and choose your carbs, whatever you want. It doesn’t, I don’t care if it’s the morning, eat a baked potato. I don’t give a shit, but just go for anywhere from like it. 50 to 75 grams of carbs for you train. And for girls, I would probably, it depends on how much, how many carbs you’re eating in a day.

You might want to do something more like 25 to 50 grams. So you don’t leave yourself with no carbs the rest of the day, basically. But I would say 30 grams is probably a good, if you’re going to just middle recommend middle down the middle recommendation for everybody have some protein as well, of course.

And yeah. Also, a little tip, have your pre workout as well if you’re doing that, because you’re going to find that if you have food in you, it’s going to take a little bit more to tell you, feel it. So give yourself a good 20 or 30 minutes with the caffeine to make sure that you know where you, cause you want to where it’s, [00:41:00] the caffeine is peaking for when you start lifting.

All right. Next question. Hey Mike, I’m six feet tall, 168 pounds, former gymnast. I’m repping three 55 on deadlifts. Nice. And 90 pounds on weighted pulls. Weighted weighted pull, like weighted pullups. But I only benched 2 0 5. That’s really not that bad. Is that imbalance something to worry about?

Should I modify my training to. Yeah, it is a little bit low to emphasize chest or just be patient. Now, to be fair, like you’re going to find upper body progresses slower than lower body period. It just does. Our legs are our biggest muscle group in the body. They can generate a lot of power, a lot of force.

They respond very well to heavy overload. Whereas, the pecs are a much smaller muscle group. Oh, look at the press. The shoulders are small muscle group. The lats are involved, very small muscle group. It just takes time. But what you can do here is, yeah, I would say it depends on I don’t know what kind of training you’re doing.

If you’re doing my program, then you’d be doing your upper body essentially twice a week where I don’t recommend more than that. It’s really just. [00:42:00] Not, you can’t, you only can train so much even when you’re doing everything right. And the only thing you could, there are other styles of training out there.

There’s stuff like the Bulgarian method, for instance, where you’re doing a bench press or you’re doing, if you’re doing it for squat, you’d be squatting every day or bench pressing every day. There are things like that out there, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just wouldn’t, I’d say that the majority of the progress you’re going to make is just sticking to the principles, which is going to be, you’re emphasizing your heavy weightlifting.

You can do some higher reps stuff, but your core of your program is heavy weightlifting. You’re not over training. You’re not overdoing it and your diet is on point and you’re just staying consistent. You’re not missing workouts. You’re pushing hard in your workouts. You’re really going for those those extra reps.

You’re really trying to hit the top of your rep ranges so you can add that weight. And progress. So I would say that, yeah, your bench is a little bit low. Those are pretty solid numbers on the deadlift given your size. I would also though question what your diet’s given your weight, six feet, 168 pounds.

I’m six to 190 pounds. So just [00:43:00] thinking with that. If you’re not in a calorie surplus, you’re going to find that it’s going to be very hard to progress. I found personally with my body that especially with the smaller muscle groups, it was very hard to progress unless I was in a surplus. I made the most progress on my bench press on all of my shoulder work with my arms was always in a surplus.

If I, in a deficit. That would be the first areas. Those would be the first areas that I would lose strength, not much, but I’d lose a rep or two and it would just stick there. And even in, even when I’m in this maintain mode that I’m in right now, it is different to be in a surplus. It just is.

So I understand my bench has never, I’ve never benched more than two 95. Now, to be fair, I haven’t pushed myself to try to go beyond that because I’ve, that was my last bulk was two 95 for two or three or something like that. And I haven’t booked since then. Probably don’t really plan on bulking again, to be honest.

But I have very long arms, which work against me. So there is that there’s some biomechanics involved as well, but I would say that make sure you’re in a calorie [00:44:00] surplus, train your chest twice a week. You can do, if you’re doing my program, then you’re doing your nine heavy sets on one day and doing three, three lighter sets.

Several days later, there’s not much more you can do on that. And if one other tip actually I can throw out there that has helped with my chest development has been emphasizing dumbbell and barbell training alternatively. So like I went for six months, for instance, I, where I only did a heavy dumbbell pressing because my dumbbells were just behind.

So I just dumbbell press and I got strong on my dumbbell pressing. And I went back to, to, to barbell pressing. After not doing a single barbell press for six months and I don’t even know if I lost any strength I was maybe like two reps down where I was before and then I quickly Progressed beyond that because of all the dumbbell pressing I had done.

So it’s a bit of an extreme I wouldn’t say you have to do that. But since then what I’ve like I’ve done myself and I’ve seen work well is where your workouts are predominantly dumbbell for four, six, even eight weeks where maybe it’s six sets of dumbbell, three sets of barbell or something like [00:45:00] that.

And then you flip it around and they’re predominantly barbell and then the dumbbell work almost becomes supplementary or accessory. So that’s also a tip that might be able to help. Okay. All right. So Jeremy says we have during questions or speed round. All right. So fast answers. Yeah. Red ranger go mega.

What’s their big thing that they make the mecca Zord? I don’t know. Yeah, we’re doing that shit. It’s coming. All right. So I’m pretty carb sensitive. I get tired when I eat 70 grams of carbs at a time, 70 plus grams. How should I adjust my carbon take on days? I don’t lift. What about Perry? So around Perry, around workout, carb intake.

Also I work out first thing in the morning. If that affects what I shoot with my carbs. This is a good, this is a good question because Carb intake is, that’s something you’re going to have to get a good sense of your body. I guarantee you the longer you stay lean and the more weightlifting you do and cardio can helps improve insulin sensitivity just in your entire body.

It’s in a dose dependent nature where like the more cardio you do, the better you’re going to get in terms of insulin sensitivity. [00:46:00] But of course you don’t want to do. way too much cardio that becomes counterproductive. Anyways, you’re going to learn like you see that if you eat 70 grams or so, it seems to be a threshold for you then, I would say that on the days that you don’t lift again, ideally you would keep your carbon take as high as you can.

But if it’s uncomfortable then lower it. You know what I mean? If you’re finding your groggy. And that, that’s no fun. You just lower your carbs. There isn’t like a simple, oh, it’s, this is exactly, rule of thumb for everybody kind of thing. Cause it’s very different. For instance my carb sensitivity is very low.

So I can eat actually could eat probably four or 500 grams of carbs in one go. And. Just be fine. And maybe I’d get a little bit like, Ooh, I ate a lot of food, but that’s about it. Every night I have 300 grams, give or take of oatmeal and fruit. Mainly oatmeal and fruit actually. It’s just a ton of oatmeal.

And I do a chocolate milk as well. So there’s some sugar and shit and it’s delicious. And I eat it at 10 PM or so. And then I just go back to work and it’s I didn’t even eat anything. It doesn’t even matter. That’s me learning my [00:47:00] body in your case. I would also ask what kind of carbs you’re eating.

You’re going to find that if you have lower glycemic carbs, like in terms of either glycemic index or glycemic load, I know they’re different, but low GI if you want to just stick simple with the index carbs. You’re probably going to find that you get less of that reaction. And, that’s, it’s something that glycemic index matters all that much, but what you’ll find is if you’re eating nutritious carbs, they’re generally going to be low GI.

They just are. Cause the, all right, we’re done. All right. So anyways, yeah. You’re going to have to check it out for yourself. That’s the, you want to eat as many carbs as you can, but you don’t want to be falling asleep. If you get lean, if you’re not lean, get lean and keep on training.

And in time, you’re going to find that your body does better and better with carbs. Next question. Monitor went off. Come on now. All right. Sure. Far away to see if your metabolism is damaged. Your metabolism is not damaged. You can’t damage your metabolism. You can. Burn, you can cause your body to burn less energy, but go let’s see go check out [00:48:00] my article on reverse dieting on muscle for life.

You’ll see there was, if you look at the Minnesota starvation experiment, you had these guys that for, I believe it was for six months, they were eating about 1500 calories a day, burning 3000 plus calories a day, straight starvation status. It was a mock prisoner of war camp. So these guys were, they looked like skeletons, some of them by the end of it.

And the worst metabolic, the worst reduction they saw an actual basal metabolic rate was like 14%. So your metabolism is not damaged. You probably just need to get a better handle on how much you’re eating. And you might need to do some reverse dieting. And yeah, so go check out the article on reverse dieting.

All right. Next one. I don’t notice the difference between fasted lifting and eating a bunch of carbs. Is this weird? No. I’ve heard that before. I do notice the difference personally. I just have a bit more energy. I find it. I notice it actually in my, I’m able to get more reps. It’s not that my weight goes up necessarily with my carbs.

It can, depending on the circumstances, but I’ll notice like it can be. As a result of getting more reps, we’re like, maybe I’ll get four reps with something fasted and then I’ll get six or even seven [00:49:00] reps with carbs. That’s for me personally. But I do know some people, they say that they don’t notice any difference, no performance enhancing benefits of carbohydrate intake.

And that just is what it is. It doesn’t mean anything’s wrong. Penn lay rows versus bent over rows. I like Penn lay rows because they are Biggest range of motion. And I find that they get make my back do the most work basically. Yeah, that’s, and Ben over rows are fine, but they also just encourage cheating because you start loading up weight and then the range of motion becomes nothing.

And I’m a fan of Penley Rose question. It’s Christopher Walker walk in, whoever that.

Whoever that censored my cat on his podcast, right when he says the hops and beer in particular raise estrogen, lower testosterone. I don’t, I honestly don’t remember that. Drinking too much alcohol can I think I’m, yeah, no, I don’t know. That’s. No, I do not. I would the hops and beer in particular.

I don’t know of any. I just wrote an article [00:50:00] on testosterone, how to increase testosterone and did quite a bit of research for. I didn’t come across anything like that. So I wouldn’t worry about that. All right. Next question. So what types of exercises do you recommend for a 14 year old teenage boy who is playing hockey four to five times a week?

Oh, that was me when I was 14, I was playing hockey obsessively. My son is really lean and wants to bulk up. So that’s actually, at that age he could start weightlifting the it’s not going to stunt growth. That’s a myth. But what’s that Jerry? Because of growth hormone. I could see that.

Yeah. Jeremy was saying it actually helps with growth because of the growth hormone effects, which makes sense. But the thing with that you want to make sure is that you he learns proper form and that, he’s a young kid and that he doesn’t try to get into ego lifting and showing off to his friends and stuff and getting hurt.

That’s really actually the thing. A simple place to start might be something like starting strength, a really simple three times a week, a very simple strength training program where he learns proper squatting. Yeah. Dead lifting pressing would be a great place to start if he’s a little bit young for weight lifting and that’s not, or if you’re not comfortable with that, [00:51:00] then bodyweight exercises is a great way to start a good bodyweight type of program where, he’s doing a lot of I mean you can progress into harder things like pistol squats and so forth and doing a lot of pull ups and pushups and things like that.

But 14 you can definitely start weightlifting again, I would start with a good basic strength program like strong lifts or starting strength. And be a stickler on form. Make sure he really learns the importance of form. He doesn’t have to be afraid of weightlifting at all. Of course, you don’t want to go too far in that direction, but just that he knows that it’s much more about lifting the weight properly than.

Just trying to stack plates to show off to his friends or on YouTube or something. All right, next question. Once you have reached a muscle size you want, how do you keep on gaining strength without increasing muscle size? I’m glad you picked this one. Any routine suggestions or programs that are out there?

This is a good question. Ironically, something I’m running into myself. So I’m pretty lean right now because I cut, I had to do a little cut for this photo shoot for the cover of this cookbook and I was a bit leaner two years ago. For a photo shoot that I did where I needed to be leaner, cause it was more of a bodybuilding type of thing.

Whereas the cookbook is more, yes, it’s [00:52:00] bodybuilding, but I don’t want like crazy ab vascularity. I don’t want to be too lean. It doesn’t fit the look of what we’re trying to do with this book. So I’m just like probably a good solid 7 percent or so. And I weighed one 90 for that shoot and I weighed one 82 two years ago.

Yes, I was leaner two years ago, but not eight pounds leaner, not eight pounds of fat. fat. Realistically, I probably, if I were to lose three pounds of fat right now, I’d be at where I was two years ago. So even that, five pounds of muscle gained in two years makes sense. That’s really what you’re looking when you’re looking at a natural weightlifter, you’re looking at about two to three pounds a year.

But ironically, that has not been my focus. Like I’ve actually, I’m trying not to have that continue. I don’t want. In three years to be six pounds heavier in terms of muscle, because it’s not the look that I want. I’ll take more calves. I’ll take more shoulders, but I really don’t want more in my upper legs.

I already have trouble wearing jeans. I take some more separation. I think that looks cool, but my upper body, my chest and my arms already, if I don’t stay lean, my [00:53:00] arms just look retarded big. This is a good question and it’s something I’m starting to deal with myself. What I’m doing is.

My diet is around my, I’m just on a maintained type of diet where I’m eating about my TDE every day. Obviously there’s fluctuations and you can’t determine your TDE with 100 percent accuracy. But what it’s looking is if you keep on hitting heavy weightlifting, which is just what I like doing, you’ll continue gaining muscle at some rate.

So I may have to do I may have to dial back my volume a little bit, my weekly volume. I might have to go more for a pure strength type of approach, not that you don’t build muscle on strength training, but the lower volume, the lower weekly volume is going to reduce, it’s going to, result in less muscle growth over time.

That’s something that, I’m the guinea pig here. I don’t know. We’ll see as we’ll see as it goes, but it’s something I’m I’m acutely aware of. I understand where you’re coming from. So that’s my thinking just based on what I know is going to be reducing weekly volume, but I can still keep the heavy lifting.

So a strength approach might be the best thing. It’s also fun that type of training. All right, next I, [00:54:00] Mike, a couple of quick ones. What do you think about fitness trackers like Fitbit or Jawbone? Have you tested one? Yeah, I’ve tested quite a few. I think they’re like cool or whatever. I don’t put any stock in the calories burned.

There’s no way that shit is accurate. In fact, I’ve actually seen a study. I don’t remember what they studied, what they used in the study, but it was definitely not accurate. It was like 40 percent off or something. So if you just want to know if what’s the whole thing right now, Jeremy quantified self.

If you’re like into that thing where you just like to know how exactly what your sleep was and how many steps you took and whatever. Go for it. But I wouldn’t use that. I wouldn’t use that for meal planning. Definitely not. I wouldn’t just go. Oh, my little thing says that I, burned 3000 calories walking today.

So let’s fucking go pound food. That’s not that simple. So if you like it as a gimmick, go for it, but don’t use it to plan or determine your food intake. All right, next question. Have you seen the new research on meat causes cancer? Lane Norton made a video about it saying correlation does not equal causation.

Yeah. Go check out the [00:55:00] examine. com. Go check out their blog. They, they wrote about it on the. First time this went around and now on the second time around again, basically what Lane says is, and I even wrote about not this newest research, but the previous research. If you search muscle for life for meat, you’ll see what I had to say about it.

And it’s more of the same basically don’t eat a bunch of crap. Meats. If you don’t if the majority, if if you’re eating a ton of nitrate infested garbage and you’re eating a ton of hot dogs and really processed overcooked meat and gas station, beef jerky and shit, you might be increasing your risk of cancer.

But if you’re like the rest of us normal humans that don’t do that and you eat high quality foods and you have meat in your diet and you’re exercising and you’re taking care of your body. Again, like Lane says, it’s, it isn’t, this is not, this is epidemiological. This is saying there could be an association here, but there are a lot of potential cofounders.

So go over to examine. com, check out the latest blog article. They do a great job breaking this stuff down. [00:56:00] They really know what they’re talking about. Their team knows a lot more about all of this than I do for sure. They’re smart. So check them out. All right. So next question, I’m under the constraints of a low budget and my current gym is limited to Smith machines for my compound exercises.

I know this isn’t ideal, but can I follow your BLS program under these constraints until a suitable gym is found? Yeah, you can. You can’t really deadlift on a Smith machine unless they have, what are those, what are they called? Jeremy, where it’s three, three, the bar moves laterally as well.

Power Rack? No, not Power Rack. No, there’s a name for it. Power Cage? Maybe. Anyways, so you have the Smith Machine where it’s locked, it just moves vertically, but then you have these new Smith Machines which also move laterally. They move, forward and away, so you can deadlift on those.

But if it’s locked vertically, it doesn’t really work for deadlifting, but you can front squat on it. Fine. Back squatting is a bit funky. It’s, you’re gonna have to put your knees in a weird position. So I would just front squat. You can front squat all day on a Smith machine and be okay. It’s not ideal, but it’s still, it’s fine.

And You can bench press, of course you can military press a [00:57:00] seated military press. Fine. Oh, no there’s a generic term for it. That sounds like a brand power act. It was a power. Anyways. I don’t know. Maybe. Power. Obviously a power arc is different as well, but so that’s yes, you can for the deadlifting, you’re shit out of luck, to be honest.

You can try like single. Now I wouldn’t even try it. Dumbbells. It’s just not gonna be enough weight for you if you’re a guy. So no deadlifting for now, but once you get into a proper gym, then you can start deadlifting. But in the meantime, you can definitely get rolling. Instead of deadlifting, you can do another exercise that’s on the program like barbell rows or dumbbell rows or t bar rows or so forth.

But once you can get into a proper gym, I would recommend that. All right, next question. So have you ever supplemented with breast milk? If not, would you? No, I didn’t even think of that when my wife was pregnant. Maybe I was missing out on all kinds of crazy gains. No, I don’t know. Breast milk. Why? Obviously there’s what is it?

A lot of collagen and stuff. That’s good for babies. And I, sure do it. It’s not, I don’t, it’s not going to hurt [00:58:00] you. I don’t think there’s going to be any like great benefit to it. But YOLO, all right. Next question. What can I do about lower back pain during deadlifts? I came back from my rest week, did my deadlifts and my lower back was super sore.

Now you have to differentiate between soreness and pain. Soreness can happen. I’ve had that many times where, especially as I was moving up in weight and getting just heavier and heavier where sometimes my lower back would be very sore, but it wasn’t pain. That’s different. Pain is like, Where you make a move and you’re like, and then it shoots up or something like that, soreness is just damn, my back is tight.

It’s sore. So soreness is to be expected. And you can do things to help that obviously even just some simple stretching, foam rolling, making sure that you’re working the soft tissues is going to help making sure that you’re doing, your diet is right. That you’re eating enough protein.

That’s going to help. Creatine can reduce soreness. Carnitine can reduce soreness, especially L carnitine L tartrate in particular can. So pain is different though. And I’ve had that as well. I’ve had where just for no good reason, really the after deadlifting, there’s just like some [00:59:00] pain.

It’s not like I injured myself. Nothing really happened. It’s just tightness, muscle tightness, then put some pressure on a nerve and whatever. But the key with pain is that you don’t try to push through it. I in the last Q and a, I had mentioned that I was deadlifting and at the top I let all my air out where I which just let all the tension out of my core.

And I felt like my back just shifted. Like it just lost tension and it felt weird. Wasn’t painful, but I was like that’s not good. Put the weight down. And my back was a little bit stiff for a few days. And I and then I didn’t deadlift for three weeks just to make sure, just cause I was coming in the next week.

It felt fine. I still felt it a little bit and I was like, nah, I’m not going to push it. Then the next week just gave it again and not just to make sure that everything is fine. And then now I’m back and my weight’s back and everything’s fine. So if you have any sort of pain, Just, back off.

Don’t try to push through it. You’re the barbell still going to be there in a couple of weeks. Because it’s not worth risking injury. We’re trying to do this for a long term. We’re not like, on the clock because we have this meat in X number of weeks. [01:00:00] And, we’re trying to set a PR or something like that.

We’re trying to stay healthy. And we do not want joint injuries over anything else. We don’t want to hurt our backs. We don’t want to hurt her shoulders. We don’t want her elbows. We don’t want to hurt our knees. We want healthy joints. Thanks. That will allow us to, be active for the rest of our lives.

Next question. How fast can you put on muscle while eating at maintenance? Good question. That really depends on you, how you’re training and your genetics. What I was talking about just a little bit earlier is relevant. I, over the last couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of this time, more or less in maintenance.

And I still gained a couple of pounds of muscle in that period. If you’re in maintenance, it’s because you’ve been lifting weights for a long time. If you’re not at the only reason to maintain for a long period of time is you either have the body you want and now it’s time to just maintain it or you have a reason to make like you cut for summer and now you want to be lean for summer.

Okay, fine. If most people, if you’re looking at maintaining for years, like I’m, that’s where I’m at now, it’s because you are done putting on size [01:01:00] just overall. It’s really, It depends on your body. You could expect as a, as an, as a weightlifter with five plus years under your belt, you really, the most you can hope for is a couple pounds of muscle a year or two or three.

And you probably would need to be in a surplus for a, to really max that out. And to be fair, over the last couple of years, I did do a bit of bulking. But not having the last year I’ve really just been meant been maintaining for a year. And I’ve noticed that in the last year, my weight’s really just been fluctuating in the same range.

Which is good. So that means that if I did put on muscle in the last year, it’s very little, it’s maybe a half a pound, maybe a pound max. It’s not definitely not two pounds or three pounds. Again, that’s what I’m, that’s really what I’m shooting for though, is I I like to train hard. I want to have good workouts, but I don’t want to, I don’t want to be four years from now like where I feel like I’m just too big, like my clothes don’t fit me anymore.

And I’m like now having to lose how to figure out how to lose muscle without, wanting to just quit. All right. So next [01:02:00] question, what would be qualifications for individuals who’d be interested in working for you? Interesting that, so it really depends what we need. I get a lot of inquiries along these lines, which I’m flattered.

I think it’s great. The only thing that I know that we’re going to need next year, probably first quarter is going to be someone to manage social media and by managed social media, really. Really get in there, dig in there and let’s build it. Like we just have, we’re in a holding pattern.

If you probably noticed on, on my social media and my personal, I’m not really a social media person, as I was talking about earlier. I don’t, I’m not into showing off my shit. Am I into showing off my lifestyle? I don’t want to, I don’t care to make people. Jealous or for whatever. So I’m not great at social media inherently, to be fair.

And like on YouTube, we joke in the office how pathetic our YouTube game is. Yet somehow we have 30, 000 subscribers, but all we do is post these. We’re doing basically everything wrong. Like you want to see how not to do YouTube. Just look at my YouTube channel and you’re going to see Don’t do a YouTube channel like this because this is [01:03:00] the shittiest way to do it.

Long videos, don’t care about production value, no cutting, just me sitting here babbling, the worst way to do YouTube. We definitely though next year are going to be focusing on the content creation side of things is going to Go very heavily into YouTube because it’s a big untapped resource for us.

So that’s really what we’re going to be needing is is going to be someone for social media. So in terms of like how I’ve hired people so far, brought people on has been very specific in the beginning. It was just me and Jeremy and we just did everything, the two of us. And then each time we’ve added somebody, it was for something specific.

It was, we need somebody that. It for this and that person either needs to have that skill set or somebody that we know can learn that and do a good job on that. And so you know, I don’t care about college degrees. I don’t care. I mean I care about previous work experience, but I care about skill sets and hustle and be able to get shit done and figure shit out and not be stupid.

As bad as that sounds. That’s again been our biggest hurdles so far has just been dealing with [01:04:00] lazy people and stupid people. Just people that just have no work ethic. And, or just do things like really stupidly what were you actually thinking? Now, fortunately that really hasn’t been internally.

Like everyone that we’ve brought on internally has done very well and stuck with us, but more external people we’ve had to work with. So next question what is the max amount of fat that can be gained in one sitting? Yeah, good question. Jeremy always picks the best questions. I can eat mass.

Is it infinite? No, it’s not infinite. This is actually, I’ve actually reached out to people that are more, more educated than I am that know more about this than I do from a scientific perspective and ask this question where I’ve not really been able to find a good answer on how much fat.

If you’re eating pure dietary fat, like if I just drank olive oil, straight, how much fat can the body synthesize in from one sitting? And when does it finally run out? Now, here’s a like random little things. One, I know there’s a point where if you’ve ever had your poop float that’s because there are [01:05:00] undigested nutrients that have made it through, like you’ve eaten so much that your body can’t process at all, or you have a health issue.

If it’s just that I believe that if somebody has that regularly, they’re like supposed to go to the doctor. That means you’re not absorbing nutrients and that can be a big problem. But I’ve had that. Like every year at Thanksgiving, I eat as much as I physically can. And I can eat a shitload of food.

It’s absurd how much food I can eat. So my dinner, like last year was like seven plates, legitly seven full plates of food. I ate until I was in pain. I had to lay down on the couch and just pass out and I would. Breathing actually hurt. So I went full coma mode after all that food the next day. Yeah, my shit was just floating.

Cause there’s only so much as just so much. It’s I don’t even know how many thousands it’s at least I ate at least 6, 000 calories, probably seven to 8, 000 calories because there was some dessert in there as well in one sitting. And and ironically, I swear to God, I didn’t get fatter from that.

Like I was lean last year too. I was not, yeah. Like at 15 [01:06:00] percent you don’t really know what’s going on anyway. I was sub 10%. I was probably eight very similar to where I am now. And I noticed nothing. I was, I myself was actually confused, like from an energy balance standpoint, how is that even possible?

Now, of course I probably did gain some fat, but I swear I did not see it. Like I was expecting, all right, this is the test. Like how much. Can I gain enough fat in one meal to notice less ab definition? Or I have some ab vascularity, some veins, you get to know yourself when you are in this world, you just stare at yourself.

And and I noticed nothing so very surprised there. But you know how much you can, I don’t know. I really don’t know. I think in just we’ve talked about this at the office, the stupid shit we talk about, like at lunch. And it’s probably depending on your genetics and where your body’s at and a bunch of factors, a pound of fat a day is probably possible.

If you really went at it, if you really ate, if you ate 10, 000 calories a day and drank a bunch of alcohol, which it makes sure that you store every th Possible gram of fat that you can probably [01:07:00] could gain a pound of fat a day. I probably could, I don’t, I would be shocked if your body could send it.

Cause remember your body has to make it. It’s, this isn’t just Oh, it magically appears. There’s a process. And There’s only so much that it can do before finally just goes, I give up, like I’m getting as fat as I can settle down here, just go shit this stuff out. We don’t need it. Like I don’t know what to do with it.

Try it out. We have holidays coming, do what I do, eat until you actually can’t move and see and then see what happens. But no, it’s not infinite. It’s definitely not infinite. Next question. Would you recommend incorporating Olympic lifts such as hang cleans into BLS? If so, what would be the best way?

Thanks. No, unless you know what you’re doing and you have a good reason to win, which would be that you want to, some people really enjoy Olympic lifting, but it’s inherently more dangerous. You’re throwing around heavy weights. I don’t do any Olympic lifting myself, not because I think it’s so dangerous or whatever.

It just doesn’t really fit. I don’t have a reason to do it. I don’t, I personally don’t find it particularly fun but that’s just me. So if you really wanted to, it really depends what you want [01:08:00] to do. I have spoken with quite a few people that have done it and what they do is they take a three day BLS type of approach and then they do two days of Olympic lifting, but they just have to work.

And this is knowing your body and knowing what you can do. You have to work it around your. Dead lifting and squatting as because if your legs are blasted, you’re not going to be doing anything great in terms of Olympic lifting. You need to have fresh legs. So sometimes they also do a bit less on their leg training days for BLS.

So instead of nine heavy sets, it’s maybe five heavy sets or six heavy sets to and this is trial and error. If you’re doing five day BLS. Plus Olympic lifting is going to be rough to be honest. The only way I would do that is I’d probably take legs day and reduce the leg, the amount of squatting and so forth that you’re doing.

And maybe add a little bit there because that’s given your, you’re just giving your body a few days, your back to recover from your dead lifting and so forth. But the people that I know that have incorporated it successfully and come to something that works well for them have taken a three day BLS type of approach.

So it’s basically a three day strength [01:09:00] type of approach. With the Olympic lifting built around it. So I don’t have a good pat answer for that, but next question. Hey Mike, when you have no choice, like a work dinner or family dinner, and I need to eat something like a pancake or French fries or a sandwich and I get home in the evening, is it important to eat extra protein before sleep or not getting over my calories?

More important. Sorry for the bad English greetings from Belgium. I want to go to Belgium one day. So a good question. I would say no, it’s totally fine if you don’t have your protein before you go to bed one day. As a general thing, it is a good idea that I’ve seen two studies now that show that it does improve muscle recovery, which of course makes sense because it just gives your body amino acids to work with all night.

So your body can continue the repair process. Doesn’t have to wait for the morning or until the next time you eat. But if it’s one night, who cares? And if you’re cutting Personally, I would just do what you’re saying. I would just skip the protein. I would just keep my calories where they need to be and, get back on whatever, get back to normal the next day.

No reason to overthink that really. Yeah. I’ll do a couple more. I’ll do a couple more. So next one, will [01:10:00] Mike have a training regimen for pre competition bodybuilding? Yeah, good question for prep. Honestly, I’ve worked with quite a few people. I’ve actually worked with more girls than guys in this for prep, but have worked with and heard from quite a few guys that have just used my stuff to prep.

And the bottom line is. When a lot of prep, like this the technicalities of prep comes into the drugging, and of course there’s a ton of drugs in bodybuilding. It’s just, is the way it is. That’s the nature of the sport and how you build cycles and how you. Do that whole world. I don’t know really anything about it.

I know superficially I could talk, I’ve talked with a lot of people that have, that are on steroids or have done them. And I know my way around to have an intelligent conversation about it, but I don’t know anything about like how you do it. And that’s where a lot of prep coaches, not the same prep coaches are drug pushers, but in, leagues where everyone’s on drugs that’s a big part.

You better know how to run your drugs, or you’re just going to be left behind. So when you’re natural. Prepping is actually a lot simpler. You, there’s no real need [01:11:00] to be manipulating your sodium and doing all that stuff. Lane Norton, speaking of lane has spoken about this and he certainly knows what he’s talking about.

And in terms of prep and just echo, I echo what he says and that’s been my experiences. You want to prep? Get really fucking lean, make sure that you keep all your muscle. Don’t burn away your muscle. Don’t kill yourself with hours and hours of cardio and don’t starve yourself.

Give yourself enough time to preserve your muscle and preserve your sanity and get really lean. Don’t worry about manipulating your sodium potassium. Keep those balanced. Don’t worry about manipulating your water. Just keep it balanced. And if you search for Norton on muscle for life, you’ll, you can find a podcast where I interviewed him and he talked about this, so I’d recommend going and checking that out.

So to answer your question, I don’t know of anything. If I were to produce a product like that I would have to feel that I really would have something to offer other than just this. Like, all right, you ready for the secret? Get really lean. Don’t burn away your muscle. There you go. Thank you.

Give me your money. Thank you. Yes. That would be, that’s what actually would [01:12:00] be yeah. Oh yeah. And don’t mess with sodium. Don’t mess with potassium. Yeah. Maybe eat some carbs the day before. Yeah. Eat some carbs a day of give me your money. You owe me. Thank you. No. So if I were, I would have to dive into it more.

And if I felt like there was really something I could offer, but it’s right now I that’s just like a, I don’t think there’s that much to really be said on it. Hopefully that helps you. How do we get Mike to yell? It’s morphing time and do, I already did it and do karate. And what are this?

And then flex. Oh, this is the tightest costume ever. All right. I did it. I yelled it. I did karate. So thank you for taking the time for the Halloween edition of of our live Q and a, we’ll be back next month, about a month from now. And you know how we do it last week of every month and hope everybody has a great Halloween.

And yeah, thanks for taking the time. And I will see you next [01:13:00] time.