Ep. #1164: How My Coaching Helped Martin Lose 9 lb. and 6% Body Fat

Martin: And I just learn so much stuff. And one of the biggest things that I learned was progressive overload and how you’re supposed to actually increase the weight when you hit the top of your ref set. And I never knew that, but that was like the first game changing, super simple thing. And within the first, I don’t know, probably like the first three to six months or whatever on the program, I dropped a lot of fat and I completely changed my physique and I was like, wow, this is amazing.

Mike: Hey there and thank you for joining me today for a new episode of muscle for life. I am your host, Mike Matthews. And in this episode, I interview Martin, who is a client of my one on one coaching service, which you can find over at legionathletics. com. Legion is my sports nutrition company, but we also have a one on one coaching service.

And as you will hear about in this episode, Martin has done a great job working with this coach to transform his body composition. Perform his performance. his health and set himself up for long term success because martin has not only done a good job doing what he was told to do he also now understands why he is doing what he is doing and How it works.

And that’s a big component of my coaching service, something that you won’t find in many other coaching services. They’ll tell you what to do forever, but not why and not how it works because unfortunately if you learn too much of the why and how you don’t need a coach anymore. Now maybe you want to keep a coach for accountability or just convenience, but you don’t.

Need the coach you’re not dependent on the coach to Continue improving your fitness or to maintain your fitness with my coaching service from the beginning We have given a lot of emphasis to educating our clients So they don’t need us after usually it’s after the first three months and that’s even part of the sales pitch We want you to fire us After the first three months now, of course, that is a little bit stretched.

We don’t want you to fire us per se. We would love to keep working with you, but we want you to be self-sufficient enough after your first three months that you can fire us and continue to achieve your fitness goals. And so anyway, coming back to Martin, he found me via my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, that gave him a lot of insights that he didn’t have.

It gave him a good foundational understanding of eating and training and supplementation. He started to apply what he found in the book and got results, but suspected that he could do even better if he worked one on one with an expert who managed every detail of his diet and his exercise. Anna’s supplementation was able to answer all of his questions was able to make any sort of modifications that might be needed and so on and he was right and you’re going to hear about that in today’s episode as well as some of the key lessons that he has learned some of the specific elements of eating training supplementation that have really made the biggest difference for him.

And, May, for you. Before we get into it, do you want to transform your body, but you just can’t seem to break out of the rut? Have you read books and articles, watched videos, listened to podcasts, but still just aren’t sure exactly how to put all the pieces together for you? Or maybe you know what to do, but you’re still struggling to stay motivated, And on track and do the things that you know you should do.

If you are nodding your head, I understand. Getting into great shape is pretty straightforward when you know what to do. But, it’s not easy. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes grit. And that’s why I created my VIP one on one coaching service. We take people by the hand and we give them everything they need to build their best body ever.

We give them a custom diet plan, training plan, supplementation plan, if They want supplements. You don’t have to take supplements. We coach them on how to do every exercise correctly. We give them emotional encouragement and support Accountability and the rest of it and we are pretty good at it, too. We have worked with thousands of men and women of all ages and abilities and Lifestyles and helped them build a body.

They can be proud of and guess what? We can probably do the same For you. Our service is not for everyone, but if you want to find out if it’s for you, if there’s a fit head over to buy legion. com slash VIP, that’s B U I legion. com slash VIP and book your free consultation call now. Hey, Martin, it’s nice to meet you.

Martin: Yeah, very nice to meet you. I’m excited to chat.

Mike: Yeah, this is going to be a good discussion. I like to start these discussions with giving people just a quick overview of your kind of before and after results. For people listening, Martin went through my coaching program over at Legion. And did very well.

And so we could probably start there. And then let’s rewind after that to before you found me and my work and a little bit of your history with fitness and what you had done in the past. And. What worked for you, what didn’t work for you, what problems were you trying to solve that led you to me?

Martin: All right. Honestly the before it was really funny because I showed my coach some pictures and this was before I’d even gotten your book and just in general, I’ve always been very Tall and skinny. I think I used to weigh around like 140 pounds or something. And sometimes I would be 135 pounds.

Other times, maybe 142 is like the most, and I’m about six foot one. I’m just very thin. And so the after was, I now weigh around 165 or so I used to be, the typical skinny fat. I had no abdominal definition and it was just very thin.

And now I’m. Much lower body fat percentage. I have abs and it’s weird seeing yourself in the mirror because you see these pictures of people online and you’re like, Oh wow, that person is in great shape, but it looks like they are a normal, almost like body size based on what you’re used to being, but they just have a really good shape.

But. When you actually do the workouts, it’s like you suddenly become like way bigger and it almost feels like you’re like too big. Like I look at myself in the mirror sometimes, especially when you go to a different location. Like when I was on vacation recently, seeing myself in other mirrors and you can like really see the difference there.

Mike: Under certain lighting, it really enhances and then other lighting really detracts. Yeah, it’s 

Martin: just so strange. I’m just like significantly larger than I was and it makes sense because you can’t actually put on shape by getting thinner than you are.

I guess you can, but I was already too skinny anyway. And it’s just like strange, and now I’m like filling out like all of my shirts and it’s really cool. And so my coach was like, Holy crap. I didn’t even, I didn’t realize that you were that skinny when you started with the book, because he signed on after I had hit a plateau following the book and yeah, so I’m very excited and not only the physical thing, because that’s cool.

But at this point I just want to keep progressing more so for The other things like, I have a four year old and I can walk around like every night we do what we call our walk around, and I carry him and walk around the house like two or three times. And then I put him down for bed and, he’s getting heavier and heavier.

And my wife, it’s wow, he’s so heavy, but I can carry him. No problem. Now it’s way easier for me. And also I have I used to have like really bad knee pain. Like I could only squat down for maybe like 20 or 30 seconds before I’d have to stand back up if I’m like, just down, like doing something on the floor or whatever.

Now I can like squat and there’s no knee pain at all. And I’m just like generally way more like energetic and stuff. And at this point I’m really like excited. I could do like multiple one armed pushups. I could even like almost get a one armed pull up at this point. So it’s just like really cool.

I feel like I’m in way healthier than I used to be. 

Mike: The knee pay thing is interesting just because it seems counterintuitive in my experience, just dealing with a lot of people that you start with that issue and then you do something like squats, whatever variations you’re doing, or you just, you train your lower body intensely, which again, You might think that you shouldn’t do because you have knee pain, but you do that and then you strengthen all the musculature around the knees and interact with the knees and then all of a sudden you don’t have knee pain, which for people listening is I just wanted to point that out because I know that experience can be counterintuitive.

And if somebody has something that hurts, let’s take injury. Out of the equation, there hasn’t been an acute injury. It’s just, I don’t know. My knee doesn’t need very well. You don’t necessarily think Oh, I should go get strong on a squat. And then my knee is going to need better and it’s not going to hurt.

Martin: Yeah. And back pain too. I used to, just as a weird, funny example, I recently went on a vacation to Norway just a couple of weeks ago. It was awesome. It’s a really long flight going out there. And anytime I would get on a flight that was more than four hours, my back would just be like killing me the next day.

And there’s no pain at all. My wife, she was like, Oh, my back is killing me. I’m like, I love it. Like I have no back pain, lower back pain at all anymore since I’ve been doing deadlifts and all of that stuff. It’s so fun. 

Mike: Which also can sound counterintuitive to many people who are warned off of deadlifts as a quote unquote dangerous exercise.

And it’s not for people listening. Certainly not. If you do it right, and you could say that at some point, the absolute risk goes up if you’re really trying to push your performance and you’re trying, I’m talking about, you’re trying to get into, strength competition basically, and you’re trying to maybe get your deadlift to two and a half to three times your body weight and so forth.

Not that’s unsafe, but that is less safe than what I prescribe in my programs only because there’s a point, again, where the loads get so heavy and the fatigue can be so high and you can be very good at deadlifting, but if your form slips, heavy set. Final rep kind of thing, but again, to repeat, my main point is something like the deadlift is not a dangerous exercise.

It’s certainly not bad for your back. Many people have exactly that experience and it’s because of weakness actually. That is what was causing the back pain. There were muscles that just weren’t strong enough. And then other muscles were compensating. And so by strengthening all of those muscles and you’re going to strengthen muscles with the deadlift that you’re not going to strengthen with a lat pull down, for example, by strengthening the whole system, all of a sudden things can start working the way they’re supposed to, and the pain goes away.

But let’s let’s rewind to what was going on before. You found me. What were you looking for? What again? What were you trying to? What were you trying to solve? What’s your fitness history, so to speak? It’s a 

Martin: Really funny story. I remember when I was a little kid, I don’t know, maybe not super little, but I was like 10 12 or something like that.

And My dad would do some workouts with me and he found, had this book called static contraction, if you’ve heard of it. And you’re like supposed to hold the weights and you don’t actually do reps with it and, all these different things. And, I would start working out and then stop.

And I never knew anything about working out, but I was always. Wanting to get fit, and at one point, this is again, I think it was like 2017 or 2016 or something like that. And, I’m living on my own. I was in this program that was connected with like life coaches as one coach who was in the program was like, Cause I said, Oh, I really want to get into better shape and be healthier and stuff.

I had actually been having some issues. I think maybe it had to do with caffeine and just eating so badly that I was getting like heart palpitations and stuff. So it’s a little bit concerned. And He’s why don’t you go to the gym and really take it seriously? And I’m like, I don’t, I just don’t have the time, man.

I’m like, I run a business, I do photography and all this stuff. And I just, and he’s wait a second. So you’re telling me that all the people who run much bigger businesses and are even busier than you and more successful than you, but do have the time to work out. Are just like way smarter than you and, able to figure it out and you’re not smart enough.

And I’m like, what the hell, man? So then I was like, screw this. So I joined the gym. I went to Equinox or whatever and just started, I talked to a coach. I got some like free sessions with them when I signed up and I was like, look, I really want to gain muscle. So he tells me, he says, all right if you want to gain weight, you just have to eat a lot more.

I’m like. What? Anything he’s just eat a lot more. So I’m like, okay, so I was working out, but I was just like eating a lot. And I went up, I think it was like around 145 pounds or something at the time. And over the course of a couple of months, I went up to 171 or something. The old 

Mike: sledgehammer approach, like you were looking for a scalpel and he got out the chainsaw, basically.

Yeah, 

Martin: I guess I gained weight, but my wife is like that’s not, you’re looking a little jiggle and I was like, what the hell? So at that point I was like, you know what? I just want to get educated because I had read books and done stuff for my business. So I was like, maybe there’s.

Content out there about fitness. And so I liked listening to audio books and I searched and I found yours under like fitness audio books bigger, leaner, stronger. I don’t know what edition it was, probably like the first or second or something. And I listened to it and I was like, Oh, so a calorie is this, and the, all the definition, I just learn so much stuff.

And one of the biggest. Things that I learned was progressive overload and how like you’re supposed to actually increase the weight when you hit the top of your ref set. And I never knew that, but that was like the first game changing, super simple thing. And within the first, I don’t know, probably like first three to six months or whatever on the program, I, I dropped a lot of fat and I completely changed my physique and I was like, wow, this is amazing.

But then I did get stuck for a while and, life happened and stuff. And eventually. I wound up working with your coaches. 

Mike: And let’s talk about that. So you’ve read the book. You understand the fundamentals now of energy balance and macronutrient balance. You understand progressive overload, understand some basic training principles, but you’re stuck and you start working with one of our coaches.

And let’s talk about how you got unstuck. What mistakes were you making that were keeping you stuck? And how did you overcome those mistakes? 

Martin: Yeah. So when I was working out, I was definitely paying most of attention to the macro nutrients, but there were a number of specific things that I changed when I started working with the coach.

So I would say the first. A couple of years and then 2020 hit and everything in my life changed. Obviously, COVID the gym shut down. I also moved from New York to New Jersey. And so I wasn’t at the gym anymore. And I also had a baby. Who’s now four and, like everything. So I stopped working out for a couple of years.

And then I remember I was actually re inspired when I saw a YouTube video of a before and after some guy who was like really skinny. And then over five years, he became like crazy looking. And I was like, Oh, I really want to start working out again. And so I decided to reach out. To you guys, because at that point, like I had seen so many different people and I just didn’t really trust anybody’s stuff, except I knew that your program worked for me the first time and I knew that it would work again.

So when I signed on I believe I was working with Ryan, who is awesome. And he, first off we looked at my diet and that was a major problem because even though I was, I was hitting my macros. Generally, I was not tracking things with food scale, and I was not eating like natural, real, like whole foods, it would be like, Oh, I’m gonna go get this frozen pizza from like Whole Foods or whatever.

And, and I also didn’t realize, as you say in your book, I don’t know if you had even talked about it in your original book, but like restaurant meals are like lots of times like 20 percent less calories and stuff. So I realized that my, my diet was like way off. So that was a really big thing was just being like, okay, it’s not that there’s a secret so much.

As it’s that I’m not actually paying enough attention to the fundamentals as I should be. So getting really specific with my diet, creating a meal plan. I’d never had a meal plan. I was just like entering things into my fitness pal and be like, all right, I guess I have this much left to eat for dinner.

But I actually had a meal plan and it was foods that I love, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m like, Oh, I’m really looking forward to each meal. And it actually worked and I would plan it out and I would make a bunch of these like burgers or whatever and just freeze them and stuff. And so it wasn’t really that much work at all.

Once I figured it out, like maybe the first week or two was a little bit weird getting into it, but then the food scale is just there on the counter. I know okay, I’m going to weigh this thing and microwave or whatever. And it’s very easy to follow the diet plan. So I’d say diet was definitely a big thing.

Honestly, the workouts, they were less maybe of an issue. He did help me figure out how to work through certain pain. Like for instance, deadlifts when I was doing straight bar deadlifts, I actually did have a bad injury. And then I was able to start doing like hex bar deadlifts with him and it feels way better.

And I also lightened the load. I realized I need to do like perfect form and stuff. So he helped me make sure that my form was on point and also rep tempo, with certain exercises taking two to three seconds or whatever on the downward part of the rep, getting really specific with form.

I think was helpful, but another big one that I did not realize, and I think back in 2017, when I started, the research was not as definitive as it is now. I was very concerned about taking creatine because when I had first started working out, I noticed that I lost hair. Like my hair was like really getting thin very quickly and it all coincided with me.

Taking creatine and starting to work out. So I got Oh shoot, I don’t want to lose all my hair. But I think it was because before I found your content, I restricted my calories really badly to undo some of that, like 171 pounds. And I think that led to the hair loss. So eventually when I started working with him, he recommended I start taking creatine again.

And I looked up and the research was way more definitive now in 2023 or whatever, when I started with him. And I just like with the creatine and the proper diet and everything, like I just packed on muscle way faster than I thought I would. And I was like, Oh, wow. Cause I didn’t believe that I could, I thought I was like, Oh, maybe this is it for me.

I’m just a skinny guy. Then I was like, That was my question to the sales guy at the beginning. When I talked to him initially, I was like, what if I really can’t? He’s no, you’ll be able to, but if you can’t, we’ll talk about that. We’ll figure out, and I’m like, all so I signed on and I was just like astounded with how quickly I was able to put on muscle, even after having worked out for six to nine months with seeing results initially.

So it was really good. Those couple of changes I made. 

Mike: And how did you coming back to diet, so what type of foods that were on your meal plan just for people wondering a lot of people they like to know very specifically so how were you eating? How many meals a day were you eating? What types of foods were you eating?

Were you eating some sugar every day? Were there regular indulgences or was that it? Irregular cheat meals. People like to know these things. 

Martin: So I think what was most funny was the initial plan that he put me on was like a cutting plan, but I gained muscle while I was cutting, which clearly shows that I was still like, had a lot of muscle to gain.

So breakfast, it was actually, I started based on one of the meal plans that you guys did. Gave to me and then I started customizing it, just removing things that I didn’t like and adding things that I liked. So generally speaking for breakfast, I’m having like, an egg or two with some additional egg whites added to it.

And I would put maybe some ground turkey or something in there that I would cook in like big batches and some little bit of like cheese and even like mushrooms and spinach or something. And I would make like a good egg thing. Then, protein shake depending on whether, cause again, I’ve been doing this for a while.

So whether I’m cutting or bulking, I may add like peanut butter or something to the protein shake. And then I would have, usually I’ll have a second, like a casein protein shake as well if I’m cutting and I need to get the protein up. And is this all in the morning or when are these when you have in these shakes?

Yeah, it’s around my workout time. I work out early in the morning. So what I would do when I’m cutting is I would have my protein shake first, then work out, then have my breakfast and then like maybe a couple hours later, have the second, like the Kate scene shake. And then around maybe 12 or one, I’ll have lunch, which a lot of times I’ve been doing these like ground Turkey tacos.

And just put like hot sauce and stuff and maybe some like beans or whatever with it. It’s like plain. I’m not like great with making like fancy flavorful recipes. But again, I get it good enough that I’m happy 

Mike: with it. That’s all you have to do. Everybody’s Good enough is subjective.

You just want to get to you, whatever you’re good enough is just put enough work into your meal plan. So you actually feel like it’s good enough. And some people are pickier and they’re good enough is my wife is pickier than I am. And her good enough is just a bit tastier than mine. She likes her food to be a little bit tastier.

I just care a little bit less. 

Martin: You can definitely flavor up stuff as however you need, but I would like to have an apple or something. My wife looks at it and she’s what are you eating? It looks like dog food or whatever she’ll say sometimes. But whatever, it tastes fine. And I know that it’s meeting the macros.

Mike: It’s the egg slop followed by the salad slop. It’s literally how I eat. I have a salad slop and my dinner, I joke is my vegetable slop. Cause it’s just a slop, but it’s good. It’s different vegetables. It has some meat. It does what I want it to do and it tastes good enough and it looks like dog food, but I don’t care.

By the way, a little tip on tacos also for people listening. There’s a brand, I just pulled it up, Grillo’s. They do pickles G R I L O. And they have a product called Pickles. Pickle the guy. Oh, I guess I don’t think the American would say gallo, but I think it’s supposed to be with the accent, like Pico de gallo, but it’s pickled the guy.

So it’s obviously pickle with what else is in here, onion, bell pepper, garlic. So it’s a low calorie little tasty garnish that is particularly good in like little fajitas or burritos or tacos, just as a random. Suggestion. Nice. 

Martin: Yeah. I’m definitely always looking for things that whole foods and trying different things and just throwing it on, because when it’s garnish or a sauce or whatever, as long as it’s not like a sauce, that’s got like oil or fat in it, it’s like the calories are so low.

Mike: Yeah, and if it changes the meal just enough to get you back to good enough, because I’m sure you’ve experienced this by this point that even if you don’t care that much about food, you eat the same stuff every meal every day at some point, you just lose your taste for it. It’s no longer good enough.

And you don’t necessarily have to completely change the meal to get it. Back to good enough. You just have to change something about it. Change the flavor profile enough to make it new enough to get to good enough. Now, some people, again, they prefer to just scrap it all together and come up with something completely different.

But in my experience, not just doing it myself for many years, but speaking with many people who have been doing this type of stuff for many years. Seems to be pretty common. This is a common denominator among people who get and stay fit is exactly this point. They tend to eat the same things until something is no longer good enough.

And then they introduce a different hot sauce or they introduce some little pickle medley thing or some other. Simple ish variation. Like I take my vegetable slop for a while. It was an Asian slop, basically just your standard Asian kind of recipe, Asian sauces, teriyaki, whatever.

And then eventually I just didn’t want to eat it anymore. It was no longer good enough. So I switched it to now it’s a, it’s like a Thanksgiving slop and that’s the, the base of it is carrots, onion, garlic, celery. Parsley, oregano, rosemary, obviously salt and pepper. So it has almost a, it reminds me a little bit of stuffing Thanksgiving stuffing, which I really like.

I like that flavor. And then there’s some meat of some kind and I add broccoli and some other vegetables, but changing. So I still. Stuck with the vegetable slop, but I went from Asian slop to something that tastes totally different, even though actually the ingredients didn’t much change. It’s just the sauces and the spices.

Martin: That’s awesome. I definitely the Thanksgiving one sounds pretty good. 

Mike: I love it. I still it’s I think I’ve been eating that variation. Regularly, that’s my regular dinner. Sometimes I’ll eat something else, depending on circumstances. Usually it’s just, if I’m going to be eating out with my family or something, but if I’m here, I’m probably making that vegetable slop and it’s been at least two years, I’m still going.

I and I like it. I still like it every day. So again, it’s but my good enough that, that bar is very low. So for people listening who think that, Oh, you could never do that. And therefore maybe that means that it’s going to be some sort of hindrance to your health or fitness.

No, I’m not normal in that regard. I’m not even saying that as like a humble brag. I really don’t care about food. So I genuinely enjoy it. But I think that’s, again, because it’s so unimportant to me, variation. And I’m not, Giving time to, although I like cooking, I have a cookbook and I enjoyed that work.

I just don’t give it the time that it requires right now to actually enjoy. So I’d rather just do something that’s simple, fast, and that has a variety of vegetables so I can hit my five to six servings per day. I don’t put it all in that. I do a salad for lunch. So that gives you my leafy greens. So for people listening, my approach may or may not work for you, but that does work for me.

And again, many people like you, Martin, who I’ve spoken to over the years, many of them do some version of that. Maybe it’s not so robotic, but it’s similar. 

Martin: Yeah. So I guess to, to finish for dinner, I usually have some sort of a burger thing. I have a mix of ground beef that’s lean and turkey.

And then. Maybe like pistachios and some sort of vegetable, and I usually drink non alcoholic beer at night, which is really good. And then I usually have some sort of late night snack, like one of those Chobani flip yogurts that kind of tastes like a dessert, but it’s got a good amount of protein in it.

And usually I leave around two to 300 calories so that. At night, I usually like to snack on things like while I’m watching TV or whatever. And I also like to have dark chocolate. I know that you like dark chocolate. I always like 80 to 90 percent dark chocolate. It’s like 

Mike: really good. I find it strangely satisfying for the calories too.

Just 100 to 200 calories of that is very satisfying to me more so than One is 200 calories of like ice cream, for example, which is three or four spoons. 

Martin: Yeah, it is. So I don’t know, I would say like in general, it’s been very easy. And I think that what happens like I, so I do this meal plan actually during the weekdays and then on weekends I get a little bit, I make sure to eat around the same amount of calories and I’m fairly close with my macros, but.

We like go out to eat for dinner, maybe like Friday night or Saturday or something. So I don’t usually track as closely on weekends. I still, I’m not going crazy, but I’ve found that during the week, I really enjoy the food. foods that I have, like when I wake up, I’m hungry to have my eggs and, at each meal I’m starting to crave what is coming next.

And then on weekends, especially when I’m cutting, and you feel a little bit hungry, it’s just nice to go out to a restaurant or something and go a little bit off here and there. And I don’t feel at all like I’m lacking in something. My life feels like it’s lacking. And the other thing about the meal plan is that as someone who’s like generally very busy running my own business, I also am like, Oh this saves me time because I know what I’m eating.

I don’t have to figure it out or go somewhere to pick something up or whatever. So that’s cool. 

Mike: It saves you, you cognitive overhead too, because if you’re not doing that, let’s say you’re just tracking with my fitness pal, which can work. You can do that. There’s always that moment where Okay, it’s getting to be about lunchtime.

What am I going to eat? And then you’re going through ideas of should I eat this? Should I eat this? And even if you’re pretty decisive and you’re, and even if it’s just, all right, what am I going to eat? Think of some things. All right, I’ll eat that. But doing that three, four, five, six times per day is especially if you’re busy.

And if you’re running a business, that means you’re making decisions all day. That’s probably a lot of Where your cognitive bandwidth is going, I think it’s nice to not have to make food decisions. And if somebody’s indecisive about it, then it becomes even more obnoxious. It becomes like the scenario where you’re looking for the new thing to watch, and there’s so much to choose from that you sit there for 20 minutes.

Maybe should I watch this? Should I watch that? 

Martin: I think you talked about that in your book, right? If I remember, I was listening to the fourth edition of bigger, leaner, stronger at one point, or maybe it was beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, where you talk about the whole idea of you have, you don’t want to be the perfectionist and be like analyzing all these restaurants.

And then you’re more dissatisfied than if you just chose one and just move forward. 

Mike: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Anyway, so getting back to so that’s how you handled your treat meals is sounds like on the weekends, maybe on average once a week, you would go just enjoy yourself. Would you quote unquote save up calories for those meals?

Would you intentionally eat a bit less throughout the day? Just so you had a nice buffer to work with? 

Martin: Yeah. Even when I’m bulking, I would still skip breakfast most of the time and then eat a lighter lunch if it’s my off day from working out, I just find that like stacking on the protein and doing like a protein shake or something for breakfast or skipping breakfast entirely and then doing some sort of light lunch, then I can, I just go into dinner being like, whatever I order, I’m not going to worry about it.

And, I’m not going there getting like desserts and stuff too. I’m just ordering what I want on the meal. And then being like, all right, this is delicious. Maybe I’ll get a cappuccino or something. I love coffee and stuff. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s also for its worth, that’s generally what I’m doing on the weekend as well.

I do some sort of exercise every day. So I’m lifting weights 3 days a week right now. I’m doing cardio on the off day. So I don’t have a day where I don’t do exercise, but something that I like to do if I’m saving up calories is skip breakfast, like you said. Maybe around 12. I like to take a high protein yogurt.

I prefer skier, the Icelandic yogurt, more than Greek, but take whatever you like. And I prefer the full fat. I think the taste, if you look at the calories of 2 percent versus 5%, and then you compare the taste I’d rather. Take the extra 100 calories or whatever and make it like 100 percent better, but take probably 40 to 50 grams of protein of the yogurt.

So a fair amount of yogurt and then mix a scoop of protein powder. So obviously I use my own protein powder. I think the way tastes the best mixed. I’ve tried way casing. I’ve tried our plant. They all can be good, but I just prefer way. And whatever kind of my flavor of the moment is mix a scoop of that and then put some fruit in there, like blueberries or strawberries or banana.

Banana can be really good. And then just make a nice, 70 to 80 ish gram grams of protein. Low ish carb, low ish fat meal, just something substantial. That’s mostly protein that then keeps me full for a bit. And then a bit more protein, maybe in the afternoon, maybe I’ll do a salad with some chicken, just another kind of low ish calorie.

And so then our protein is. Over a hundred grams at that point. So when I’m coming into dinner, I have a good amount of calories. I can easily eat, a thousand, fifteen hundred calories and just be within a reasonable range and I only need maybe another 30 to 40 grams of protein if I want to for the day to even You know, hit somewhere around maybe 0.

8 grams for the day, or maybe a little bit less. And if I don’t want to eat protein at dinner, I don’t because if I eat only a hundred grams of protein one day a week, it doesn’t matter because every other day of the week I’m getting enough. I can even do that 2 or 3 days a week, probably, but I don’t particularly have a reason to.

So just want to also share that. With the listeners that template can work really well for when you’re going to go out, you want to enjoy yourself. Maybe you don’t want to have to order a steak, for example, like you’re going to go to an Italian place. You want to eat bread and pasta. That’s what you want to eat.

You can save up calories and just have your protein in a reasonable place for the day and then go to the restaurant and enjoy. Do you sometimes lack the energy and the motivation to get into the gym? Do you sometimes want to hit the snooze button instead of the squat rack? And are you sometimes just not able to give 100 percent in your workouts?

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com slash pulse, order now, use the coupon code muscle, save 20 percent try pulse risk free and see what you think. Let’s talk about training now. So what did your training program look like during your coaching experience? How many days a week were you lifting? What kind of split were you following? What exercises and so forth?

Martin: Yeah, so generally speaking it’s been five days a week because originally when I first signed up, I was thinking doing three, but then I’m like, Oh, why not go all in? And I have my gym now and in my basement is actually really funny because my basement was like, Completely like a mess down there is like the furnace room or whatever.

And I had my stuff and I, in order to follow the workout, I really one of the things that he recommended me doing was pull ups and my basement only has seven foot ceilings. And the pull up bar that’s connected is like too high. I cut a hole into the ceiling just so I could do pull ups. And then.

I don’t know, like after a while, I was really enjoying the workouts and, really just wanted a nicer gym. And my sister’s boyfriend knows how to do some construction work. So we like redid the entire gym and added new lighting and put like mirrors and stuff and redid the floors. The whole thing looks like really cool now.

So now it’s like a really, a space that I love going in and I set up really nice speakers. But anyway, so five days a week was what I. Went into it with, and I guess Monday chest for the most part, Tuesday back Wednesday shoulders, Thursday legs, Friday, just like upper body. Most of the workouts in the four to six rep range and then six to eight rep range for the like accessory stuff.

And for the most part, all progressive overload I’m working with. Free weights have a whole dumbbell set, the power blocks that go up to 90 pounds. And then I had also bought some like dumbbells on Amazon that you could put like weights onto but like Olympic style weights. So those, if I ever need it to go higher than 90 pounds, I can.

And occasionally I do that for like when I’m doing like dumbbell press and stuff. And then I have a hex bar. So it’s. For the most part, I don’t have any room for machines. My wife, she has a Peloton bike, but I don’t really, I don’t like cycling for whatever reason for cardio. I would do I got one of those Oculus headset things.

And so I would do like different games on that. There’s this really fun game called. Pistol whip where it’s like crazy music and you have to shoot and dodge bullets and stuff and just get so tired and like sweaty from it. I don’t know the do you have like specific questions about the workouts or anything?

Mike: No, those are good details. A couple of things stand out one, making the upgrading the gym space, I think is a smart move and something that many people maybe wouldn’t do because they’d figure, man, I don’t really want to spend the time or the money it’s good enough. But. To take it from something that was just a place that you just went, you did your workout in, and then you left to a place that you just like being in, it can make a significant difference in compliance over time, even if maybe to put that differently, maybe bottom line results would have not been affected because you would have been compliant.

Regardless, however, making your workouts more enjoyable is going to generally increase compliance, increase the chances that you’re going to get down there and you’re actually going to do your workout. And even if you’re the kind of person, you’re disciplined enough to do it regardless of how you feel, you are.

Going to almost certainly get better results over the longer term if you are enjoying your workouts more. And that’s true of even the most disciplined people because now we’re talking, we have to get very granular. We’re talking about disciplined to the point of pushing every set as hard as you should.

And of course, never skipping exercises, never skipping sets, but in that sense, never skipping reps, quote unquote, either. And even if we. We’re to grant you that and say, okay, you’re that person who most of the time no one’s perfect, but basically at least 80 percent of the time you have the discipline to push yourself close to failure to never just phone it in and go through the motions.

There’s even a performance component of your mindset. And if you are enjoying your workout and you’re liking the space that you’re in and you’re really focused on it, you are just going to perform better than. If you’re not really enjoying it and you are bored and. You feel emotionally like you’re going through the motions, even though physically you’re pushing for all of those reasons, spending that time and spending that money on making your gym, a space that you just like to be in.

And some people, of course they take it personally. Much further and they decorate their gym with whatever is inspiring to them and they turn it almost like into a man cave or a woman cave, so to speak. And again, though, I think that I think that’s actually worth the effort if it’s going to add even more enjoyment to your training.

I did 

Martin: a couple of, really specific things just because obviously everybody’s different and some things that really get me excited are really good quality sound when I’m playing music. And you could always wear headphones, but. I don’t know, for whatever reason, a lot of times, either I’m like sweating if I have this kind of headphone or like the other ones fall out of my ears when I’m like laying back and stuff.

I put like good quality speakers with a good subwoofer. I added lighting in there that is those like led ones that you can change. So like sometimes if I’m feeling like my regular lighting is boring, I’ll make it. So it’s like all different, like colors changing and stuff, and then I also installed a TV.

So if I’m not wanting to listen to music, I can watch some like show or whatever. So I did like different little things like that just make it. So every day is not the same experience. I like some variety, I might work out for an entire week with just the regular lights and music, but then the following week I might be like, Oh, I want to watch something today.

Or I want to Crazy light, and it’s it keeps it new and exciting, even if I’m doing the same exercises, yeah. 

Mike: Yeah. Again it these little things can matter, especially when you look at long term results. You had mentioned earlier that you hurt yourself deadlifting and then you switched to the hex bar.

Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, that was so when I was 

Martin: still working out in the city at Equinox, I think I was dead lifting like 285 pounds or something like that. And it was a straight bar. And I think in general, because I’m really tall and thin, maybe I don’t have as good leverage in certain angles.

And, What happened was I think for some reason I had needed to switch the order of my workouts that week and I didn’t realize that if I did leg day before back day that it would lead to horrible like leg soreness. And so because my legs were sore, I didn’t do the proper form for the deadlift. I remember like standing up in some like little tiny thing, felt like a pop in my back instead of Oh, and I dropped the weight and I laid down and suddenly like all these people would come right over.

It was like ridiculous. And they had to walk me into the PT room and I was just like laying there. And then about 45 minutes later, my wife came and she’s like, why does that happen to you? And I was like laying in our. Bed, I couldn’t really move for three days. Finally, I was able to like, start like doing things and stuff.

And, over time I figured out a few stretches that really significantly helped me. I think it’s called like child’s pose where lay down and really stretch that lower back and I would do that and over the course of time it healed but I did wind up switching to the hex bar and I just feel generally safer with it and also again.

Not going so crazy with the weight being like, I would rather do perfect form and increase the weight slowly because I don’t know, if I’m being honest, like the back, I want it to be very strong and secure, but aesthetically, I care more about like arms and pecs and all of that stuff, so I’m like, I’m going to be very safe and just make sure to slowly increase my weight here and not like rush things or go like crazy with it, 

Mike: which is what I would actually just recommend for everyone, no matter what they’re, Goal is because as the weights get heavier, the penalties for cheating get bigger when you’re just starting out and you’re dead lifting maybe one 35 or something.

And yeah, you can, not that you should be sloppy, but you can get away with. Some sloppy deadlifting and be okay. Once you get upward of 300 pounds and beyond, I don’t care who you are, you have to respect that so to speak. And again, that doesn’t mean to be afraid of it, but it means that you want to know at that point that your form is correct.

It’s, it doesn’t matter. Be a good idea to get your form audited by a coach, for example, just to ensure, get some videos from a few different angles and particularly pay attention to as you get deeper into a set when it’s getting harder, it’s easy to have perfect technique on the, let’s say you’re doing a set of six or eight or even 10 reps.

It’s easy to have great form for the first. Half of the set, it’s harder to have great form for the second half, especially as you’re getting closer to failure, just to speak quickly to the hex bar, I think it’s a great option. There’s nothing wrong with it. I know that there’s been a controversy about it for some time.

Is it as effective as the barbell deadlift? Is it a viable alternative and for our purposes, meaning everyone listening, the answer’s yes. Now, if you are a competitive strength athlete and you are pulling a straight bar in competition, then no, you can’t not pull a straight bar in your training and only pull hex.

Yes, that’s true. But for all the rest of us who are just looking to get strong. And to benefit from the whole body training that’s provided by the deadlift and it does train just about every muscle, not every muscle, but it does train many muscles, great exercise. If you feel more comfortable with the hex bar, that’s a valid reason to use it.

And if you’ve had any sort of injury and you just. Want to stay away from the straight bar. You’re not doing anything wrong. And if you’re doing the, if you’re doing your hex bar deadlifting regularly, then good job, like your hip hinging, you’re checking that box. 

Martin: Nice. Yeah, it was a, an interesting thing, even though I always had a little bit of like back weirdness and stuff with a straight bar, I did have that feeling like, Oh, I shouldn’t be using a hex bar because it’s not as legit.

But, at this point I’m like, I don’t care. And, I think you saying man makes me feel even better. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. It’s perfectly legit. And even in my training, I would alternate every so often just to, cause also the hex bar, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit easier on your joints just because of the position.

Now, if you flip it over and you get into the low bar position you lose a little bit of the quote unquote D load that it provides your hips and your back cause you’re getting very deep, but even that it feels still a bit different than the straight bar. And so yeah for some time I’ve straight bar deadlifted for a while.

And then with that plus squatting, plus doing whatever, if there’s a point where I just feel like, it’d be nice to give my lower back and my hips a little bit of a break and to just feel a different hip hinge. Switch over to the hex bar. I will say, though, for people listening, it is important to have the right kind of hex bar and there are different designs out there and some of them are actually pretty funky.

So the gym that I train in, it’s actually, it just occurred to me that I’ve never looked up, there’s probably a term for what this design is, but the hex bar that I would recommend the design is the type that you step in the middle of and it has handles on the side. With the pins that you put the weights on if so in my gym, they have this kind of odd design where it’s a half design.

And so the back half of the bar, I haven’t used it in a while. So I’m thinking, yeah, the back, so the bar is in the front of you, but there’s no back to the front of the bar. To it, so you don’t, you step in front of it, but it’s not a full is it, I guess it’s probably a hexagon. How it depends on who makes it.

Actually, some of these might just be diamonds, but regardless, many hex bars. Again, the one I would recommend the design is it’s a full geometric shape that you are stepping in the middle of, and then you are picking up. And there are designs that are. Think of that if you cut it in half and just remove the back half, and then there, there’s usually some funky stuff going on with the arms and what I don’t like about, I’ve used a few of those types of designs in the past is when the weights get heavy and you get deeper into a set, you feel less stable.

And in my gym in particular, the handles, the whole. Implement the whole tool tends to tip forward for people watching. So you can’t keep your wrists just in a comfortable, neutral position. What happens is they start to if people listen, if you think of, okay, you’re holding onto the handles, think of your thumbs now rotating toward the floor.

And that just screws up your performance. Similar to when, if you start to lose grip, like on a straight bar deadlift, how it Kills your performance, that tipping of the weight isn’t as bad. It doesn’t just shut you down like the grip does, but it. Makes it uncomfortable and it impairs performance. So like for what it’s worth, there are many options out there, but I ended up buying a rogue hex bar, not that I’m not sponsored by rogue, but they make good stuff.

And I just brought it to the gym and I put it in a back office. I asked if I could just keep it there, not because I wouldn’t want other people to use it, but. I want to use it when I’m going to train and I also don’t want it to just disappear because sometimes things do just get stolen and I think it was like three or 400 or something.

So it’s possible. Somebody would just walk out with it. And so that was my solution. And so I have my little hex bar when I want it. And on the training, yeah. No. Was the process pretty straightforward? Were there any obstacles you had to overcome? You had your five days a week and you’re rolling along or was it really just sticking to the plan and doing the work?

Martin: There’s obviously like things that, some of the exercises that Ryan helped me when we’re Putting together the plan, certain ones were either uncomfortable or created pain or whatever, just based on my body shape and what I could do, or even like certain equipment that maybe I didn’t have access to or just didn’t work properly.

So that occasionally comes up. For the most part, though, the plan is really good. And as I would go through it, as the weights increase, you start to notice what X, or for instance one of the things Arnold’s press, and for shoulders, when you’re doing the Arnold press, it could be easy to get like an impingement or something if you’re doing either improper form or the weight is too heavy for what you can comfortably do.

The nice thing is that he. Let me know that he’s like, all right, listen this exercise, you do want to be careful with it. If you’re feeling any pain, just tell me in our next call and we’ll swap it out. All these, there’s a lot of exercises that we did that I really loved and I also dealt with sickness at one point, I just, I had this.

Sinus infection that turned into a bacterial thing and I had to take antibiotics. And I was like, I had to put my whole training plan on hold for two months. It was just like really bad and wasn’t going away. He was very flexible with that. And. It was slightly annoying because there were some exercises in there that I was like, Ooh, I’m really starting to enjoy this.

And we had just started a new thing. And then I had to put it on hold for a bit. And then by the time I was getting back in it, I had to drop my weights. And, it was by the time I was like really going with it, then it was time to change up to the next cycle, which it like changes every three months.

Some weirdness here and there with that. That’s and then obviously there’s D load periods, but what was nice was we coordinated those with vacations that I had planned and stuff. In general the plan worked really well for my lifestyle, for the time of day that I could do things everything has been super smooth working with the coach and just the general process of all the exercises and stuff.

I’ve been enjoying it a lot. Do you have any favorite exercises? I really do enjoy, I’ll just think of it like day by day. I, I love dumbbell bench press. Those are really fun. I got a thing on Amazon for like cable exercises and it’s like it attaches to my thing. And so I could do tricep push down and different things like that.

So some of the cable exercises, I really enjoy doing the the shoulder, like lateral raises and stuff with the cable that felt cool. I also wound up buying fractional weight plates, especially for shoulders and some other. Exercises, because then you could just increase very small amounts and you don’t feel like suddenly you’re like five pounds heavier and you’re like, arm is like ripping off.

Mike: Yep. The side raises is the quintessential example of that problem. Cause just jumping up five pounds can, you mean you can lose four reps or five reps. Yeah, it’s crazy. 

Martin: I actually, so on Fridays, some of my favorite exercise, I love doing curls. My arms like grew way faster than I was expecting.

So that was pretty cool, but I really love doing chin ups. I’m able to like it. It was funny because Ryan’s could you send me a form video of your chin ups? Because I’m like hanging 

Mike: Yeah. Cause he’s looking at your numbers and he’s, 

Martin: yeah, I have 55 pounds or something hanging off of me and I’m like still able to get eight reps with, and he looked and he’s damn, that’s like perfect form.

And I was just like, love that exercise. And then I also switched. So this is going to sound really crazy, in order to do dips I have this dip bar thing that when we had set up the new gym, my sister’s boyfriend helped me install the new dip bar. And it’s one that you can switch and you flip it the other way, and then you can do pull ups and stuff on it.

But on dips, you’re far away from the wall. And when you’re hanging like I had 30 pounds or something hanging off of me. And I was concerned because I’m hearing like the wall like creaking and stuff. Because being that far away from the wall with all that weight, I’m like, that’s a lot of like torque that’s going in.

So I was like, maybe I’ll set something else up. And so I wound up. Connecting like to the ceiling these like ropes that hang down and I put like handles on them kind of like gym rings and oh man that like you just go up the first time and your arms are like shaking this and eventually though after A month or two of being on that now I’m able to do it with 20 pound weights, and I’m like fully in control and stuff.

And I feel like that’s a really fun exercise. It’s very challenging, but all little stabilizer muscles and stuff. Ever since I started doing that, I used to get like shoulder impingements fairly, like frequently from like bench and other things. And now it’s like my shoulders are way stronger. I don’t have any pain at all.

I love it. 

Mike: That’s a great tip. And it’s also nice that you, your hands aren’t fixed like they are on a dip, which depending on how the dip station is set up, it may or may not feel good for your anatomy. Whereas with the rings, You have more flexibility, just similar to how straight bar bench can feel bad sometimes and for depending on what’s going on, whereas, so if something’s going on with your shoulder or even your biceps and it can feel bad on the straight bar bench, and then you go over to dumbbells and just because you can rotate your hands a little bit and you can modify the range of motion a little bit, maybe not even consciously, but it’s just with your, whatever’s going on and then, There’s the range of motion and there’s the hand rotation that just feels good.

You’re just going by what feels good. You can dumbbell press with absolutely no issues. So the ring dips is it’s a good tip. It’s a good tip for exactly what you just stated. And there’s, there is that rehab slash kind of prehab component of. Strengthening your shoulders in a slightly different way compared to a fixed straight bar dip station that can resolve shoulder issues and that can prevent shoulder issues similar to you think of what you’re doing.

It’s like a Turkish get up, which is a pretty commonly prescribed rehab prehab exercise where you’re starting on the ground and it’s overhead. If you’ve ever seen this, but the instability that component of it. Yeah. And then working through that and developing all the supporting muscles that allow you to then do the exercise correctly, there’s value, especially with the shoulders in actually including something like that again, it could be a Turkish get up.

It could be a ring dip. It could, there are a few options, but just as there’s value, I think, and including also a single limb. Work particularly for the lower body, but it also, you can actually apply that to the upper body. If you’ve never done single arm dumbbell pressing, it’s, I think it’s worth doing for a training block now and then where you just think of a dumbbell press, but you’re doing one arm at a time.

And you’ll see if you’ve never done it before. It feels pretty awkward at first because your body is having to stabilize in a way that it’s not used to, but if you work through that and you do it for a couple of months consistently, and you get you build up your strength with that less stable type of exercise, it can translate nicely to your training.

Normally stabilized type of training, both in performance and in just comfort and not having aches and pains and not having things feel weird. Yeah, definitely. It’s pretty crazy. 

Martin: The the rings and all of those stabilizer things you feel like you’re so strong when you do like regular stuff.

And then when you switch over to one of those things that are not like connected or whatever, it’s wow, I’m not actually as strong as I thought. 

Mike: Yeah. Again it’s with single leg. Think of, if you’ve known, have you done a Bulgarian split squat? 

Martin: I actually had to start doing that after I I’d always had slight back pain when I did regular squats.

And so one of the trainers at Equinox prescribed that. And yeah, definitely the first time I ever did it, it was like really challenging, but that’s one of my favorite exercises. Now, I can hold like 60 pound dumbbells on each side and you’re going down on one leg and the balancing act, but it’s crazy too, because if you add it up, it’s 60 plus 60 is 120.

So it’s like I’m squatting 240 pounds, which makes you feel good. 

Mike: Yeah. And it’s also nice. You can get a, you can get a good training stimulus without large amounts of weight, not that large amounts of weight. It’s not bad, but depending on, again, your personal circumstances, maybe it’s better if we take out some of the spinal loading with even heavier loads and let’s change the exercise and modify it.

So again, you can still get that high level of training stimulus. But with less stress on your spine, less stress on your hips or knees or whatever. And final question, supplements. Did you use any supplements throughout? Like 

Martin: I said, one of the big things was starting to take the creatine. As you say in your book, some people may be non responders.

Some people are like regular responders. And then there’s other people who are like high responders. I think for whatever reason, I may be a high responder because two major differences in terms of amount of weight that I could lift and speed of muscle being put on one was when I started taking creatine and that was when I first started the program and I was just doing it on weekdays on workout days.

Then he said to me at one point, he’s do you take any supplements on the weekends? And I was like, no, I usually take off. He’s you may want to just take the creatine on weekends as well. So then I started doing that. And Monday being chest day. Oh man, like within the first couple of weeks of changing that, my chest grew pretty significantly and my, the weights that I was able to lift, I guess just supplementing with that creatine and keeping that in me over the weekend made a pretty big difference on chest day.

I definitely would say, try creatine, especially since, I’m not fearful anymore about the hair loss thing. Like I said earlier. 

Mike: Yeah. For people who are just listening, he has a full head of hair. Just so you know, you’re, it’s not, you’re not gonna, you’re not going to lose your hair that you can find more information.

If you want anybody listening over at legionathletics. com search for creatine and you’ll find some articles that address this point and even. Starting with where did this rumor come from? It did start with research, but the research was flawed and it should not have been represented the way that it was.

And anyway, so if there’s anybody listening who’s concerned about that, more information over at legionathletics. com. 

Martin: Obviously I also do protein shakes but I would say it’s funny because for a long time I used to be like, Oh, what’s the most frugal way that I can do this? And so I looked at some of the recipes, like how you have like your pro your supplements online and it’s Oh, there’s this and this.

And so I tried to buy the individual supplements and try to make. It was like, so a inconvenient B it didn’t actually save me any money. So I’m like, I don’t even know how you profit off of your business because like the prices for what you give is like crazy. 

Mike: So Legion has reached a, enough of a scale where I’m going to get better prices obviously than a retail consumer.

And then there’s also margins though, gross margin for Legion is in the low forties on average, which now that’s gross. That’s not net margin for people to make it clear for anybody listening. He doesn’t just not familiar with business finances. That’s that doesn’t mean a 40. X percent profit margin for me, the owner.

No. That’s when you take out my costs of goods. Like how much did it cost me to make this thing and get it to a customer? And then what’s left after that, that then you have to run the business with pay everybody, blah, blah, blah. And then eventually after everything’s paid, what’s left over the net margin is what, at least a percentage would be available to me as the owner.

And so 40 something percent for, again, people who are just not familiar with business economics. Is considered acceptable but not certainly not great. And maybe you would say it’s good enough ish. And like there are competitors, for example, that have 60 X percent gross margins, now that’s quite good.

And the problem though, in supplements is you can’t have. Let’s just say very good to great margins and have very good to great products. You can’t, you can pick one. And so I chose to have very good to great products and good enough ish margins that allow for the business to be healthy. It’s not a, It’s not an extremely profitable business, but it is a healthy business and I’m fine with that.

And that’s a decision that I had to make. And there, there is no other decision. You have to make that decision if you’re going to get into sports nutrition. And I guess You could go, those are sliders you can toggle. I guess you could say what if you just made good enough, or maybe you made like good products.

Could you get to very good margins? And it depends what your definition of good is, I’ll say that you could make good products and then get to good to very good margins. Fine. But I didn’t want to make good products. I wanted to make a really good to great products. And to your point, that means the number of ingredients.

That means the doses of the ingredients. And so that is 1 of the things 1 of the 1 of the big things that set Legion apart from a lot of our competitors is just how much we spend on our products. And. Anybody can verify that by just looking at one of our products, especially looking at pill products, because in sports nutrition, typically your powders are lower margin and they’re priced more competitively because they acquire you a lot of customers, your protein powders, your pre workout, your post workout.

Those are typically your customer acquisition engines and then your pill. Products are higher margin because you don’t have to flavor them. And so they’re inherently just easier and cheaper to make. And they’re typically not great for acquiring customers, but. They’re engineered to produce large amounts of profit.

So your gross margin on a powder, yeah, it might only be 40%. Let’s say if you are, again, one of the many competitors that don’t really care about. Great products. They just want to have a quote unquote great business, which really just means great economics. So you’re willing to accept good ish margins on your powders 40%.

Let’s say, but you are going to push those margins up to 6070. Maybe even 80%, if you’re selling like electrolytes, which I don’t sell. I wish I could make a good evidence. I wish there were a good evidence based argument for electrolytes, because we get asked about it all the time. It’s a big market.

They’re very cheap to make very high margin. People are willing to spend a lot more than they should be spending on basically like sodium packets anyway. So typically though, the pills drive a lot of profit. And so Again, if you’re comparing Legion’s products to our, some of our competitors and you just go and look at what are you getting for your money, total amount of actives and then of course, also looking out for proprietary blends and looking at doses and things.

But if you just start it with the number of ingredients and you start with the number of active ingredients, like total weight, or the amount of active ingredients, and you compare that. Then it’s very obvious in almost all cases that you’re getting like, Oh, that’s 25 percent more actives by weight.

Oh, that’s 50 percent more active, 100 percent more actives. And again, specifically with. Pill products, like if you compare a multivitamin to any of our competitors, ours blows them away because multivitamins are usually meant to drive profit. Like a little funny anecdote a manufacturer of mine CC’d me just accidentally on an email chain of a competitor.

And it was about a multivitamin that they wanted to formulate, or they wanted to change their formulation or whatever. It was about their multivitamin. And obviously they were trying to send it to Mike at whatever, but it just accidentally came to me. And so I saw the email thread on this multivitamin formulation.

And if I remember correctly, their cap was, it was like 5 and 50 cents a bottle, or maybe 6. That’s the most they wanted to spend on this product. And it was selling for 40 ish. That when you’re looking at, a seven times markup from many, manufacturing cost, at least there’s a little bit more in, you have to put it in a bottle, which actually now that this was a couple of years ago, it may even been bottled, actually, the cost probably was actually, so that’s a big margin.

Whereas, my multivitamin costs me right now, we’re probably at. 12 to 14 a bottle. That’s what it costs me to make it. And then it costs me a little bit more to then get it to somebody because we offer free shipping on the website. And so that’s just a perfect example that can it can a 5 or 6 multivitamin compete with.

12 to 14 multivitamin. That’s also well formulated. No, it just can’t there. There’s just, there is just no way to compete on a product quality level. So anyway random tangential rant over. 

Martin: Oh to just finish the supplements that I have been using, I use the protein powder by Legion.

I love all the different flavors that you guys offer. I’m always trying new ones. They’re delicious. I actually do. And sometimes the plant plus, and then a lot of the way, plus I like the plant plus almost as a snack late at night. Sometimes it’s something about the consistency is it tastes like thicker or something.

I know, 

Mike: dude, I like to mix it with a bit less water rather than more. So it has almost like a pudding type of consistency. I just think it’s good. And it’s filling too. It sits in your stomach. Yes, 

Martin: definitely. And then before my workouts, I take the pulse stim free, without the caffeine, cause I like to drink coffee in the morning and that tastes really good and it definitely gives me like an extra, like pump.

I actually tried the pump surge one, which is new. I don’t think I’ve used it enough yet to really know what the difference is. But I just tried it a few times. The recharge, I definitely. Always take that after workouts. I just do regular creatine, like I think by some bulk supplements brand or something on weekends, just I throw it into my protein shake.

And then I do the multivitamin, the triumph, I guess it’s called, and the Triton, the fish oil, definitely, I also got. I’ve taken a lot of different supplements that you offer. The FORGE and PHOENIX ones I’ve tried for fat burning, but I think my body type, I just don’t really need any supplements for fat burning.

I burn fat really quickly. Then I have I actually bought The immune one that you have when I was really sick for that two month period over this past winter. And once I actually started taking that, I started getting better very quickly. So that is definitely effective and was really helpful for me.

For a while, when I had first started working out, I was doing the joint supplements. I think it’s called Fortify. And that was definitely helping with my knee pain. Remember I was saying my knee pain was really bad. And I only really needed to take it for I don’t know, like a couple month or two or something.

And then I think like the fish oil and some of the other stuff and just eating healthier and stuff, somehow, like my knees and like really healed themselves. And now like everything is really good. I’m trying to think if there’s any other supplements I can’t remember off the top of my head, but yeah, all the ones that I’ve taken so far have been very effective.

So thank you. 

Mike: Yeah, I’m glad to hear it. I’m glad to hear we’re always working on the next thing too. We have a lot of new stuff. Yeah, I do. I do also have 

Martin: the vitamin D plus K, I think it is. And I sometimes do that on weekends if I’m not taking like the full multivitamin or whatever. Yeah, I’ve actually for the multivitam there’s a lot of them, and I think you have to take eight pills.

So I had asked your team, I was like, does it like taste terrible? Or could I just dump like three or four of them into like my protein shake or something? They’re like, you could do that. And I don’t want to take them all at once, spread it out over the day, but I’ll do three or four of them in the protein shake.

And it doesn’t really change the flavor too much. And then I’ll take two at lunch and then two at dinner, and so this way it doesn’t feel like I’m taking as many pills. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a common solution that we hear. And then you also, some people, they just don’t want to take that many. So they go I’ll do four a day.

And I understand that I’m not getting the full clinically effect dose of everything. Although ironically, triumph is. The dosing is quite good. So in some cases you are getting enough of the various things at four a day that I would argue it’s better than nothing. Now, ideally it would be a bit more and, for us to really stand by the marketing claims, we are assuming that it’s eight a day.

And I’ve thought about. How we might be able to reduce it. I don’t think going down to six really changes much. This was my logic going down to six doesn’t change that much. It’s two extra pills, right? To really make a change in the experience. I think it needs to go down to four or, of course, fewer. But four to me is if that’s the bare minimum amount of reduction from eight to four, six is not worth it.

And then I looked, though, at what would have to, Happened to the product if I brought it down before and I that’s when I just get less excited about it because I have to gut the formulation at that point it becomes then very much like the type of multivitamin that my competitors sell just yeah, they might be good on the vitamins and minerals, but there aren’t many extras.

There’s maybe one or two max three extras that are low dose and that’s it. And that’s not very exciting. See, 

Martin: for me, I would wonder if you turned it in rather than pills, if you turned it into a scoop thing where you do one scoop and then one scoop later and make them flavored or something, is that possible?

Mike: I’m going to make a mental note of that. It’s certainly possible. There’s going to be a question about taste because certain things taste amazingly bad, strangely bad, actually. So it’s worth looking into. It is worth looking into. It could be interesting. Yeah, 

Martin: The Genesis thing is another supplement that I was taking for a while and I actually still do that on occasion, it’s got like a interesting flavor or whatever.

Funny enough, I actually take that sometimes when I’m cutting at night in hot water and turn it into like almost like a coffee. And it’s really good. Like I just sip on it and it’s like slightly sweet and stuff. And it like satisfies when I’m cutting and I’m pretty hungry or whatever at night, I drink this and it’s like a thick, like dessert almost type drink, 

Mike: which is good.

You may like then although the serving sizes is not as large as Genesis our newest supplement or one of our newest elevate, which is a mushroom supplement but the serving, because with Genesis, you get it, you get enough powder with elevate, you may not get enough powder just because the total serving sizes, 

Martin: I don’t actually use the whole thing when I do it at night, I usually do half a scoop or like a third of a scoop, otherwise it’s like too thick.

Mike: Yeah maybe the mushroom supplement. I think it tastes pretty good, especially for a mushroom supplement because we’ve tried a lot of them and they generally taste really bad. Some of these products that are trying to pitch coffee drinkers to stop drinking don’t drink your espresso drink are nasty mud water for, funky fun.

It’s literally mud about funky mushroom dirt drink. No it’s not even remotely close to coffee. I don’t, I just don’t understand that marketing angle. I have 

Martin: one quick question for you, which is just in terms of the fish oil supplement, you probably heard recently about some stuff in the news.

My, my mother in law was like, Oh, I know you take fish oil. And now they’re saying that. It can cause heart problems or something. What’s your take on that? Cause I was looking through your podcast to see if you had one on that and I didn’t see anything, but this was like a couple, like a month or two ago.

So I don’t know if you’ve done something since then. 

Mike: Yeah. So unfortunately it’s best to just ignore. News headlines related to anything that is quote unquote scientific or that quote unquote, studies are showing because almost always the research is misinterpreted or it is misrepresented. And this is another example of observational research.

So it’s not like this isn’t a randomized clinical trial. This is taking a bunch of people and collecting a bunch of data and looking for patterns in the data. And that’s not to say that such research is useless. It’s not, but it can’t establish. Causation because to establish causation, you need a very controlled you that randomized controlled trial where you are specifically designing it to try to isolate the one thing that you’re looking at, or that the intervention you’re going to use and then also specify the outcomes that you are going to be monitoring which is also important because if you don’t specify outcomes and you get a bunch of data You can accidentally or intentionally just using math using statistics, quote unquote, find results that were actually just noise that wasn’t a true signal.

And This has happened a number of times over the years where a research team with fish oil will get together, they’ll gather up a bunch of data, they’ll run different statistical tests on it, and they’ll say, hey, it looks like there is an association between this and that. But again, that can serve as a sign that More robust research should be done, and that’s really the right way to interpret research like that.

And you could say that if you have over a long period of time, a large body of our observational research that has accumulated and the majority of the best of that research has consistently found an association, although again, a true scientist would not be a scientist. infer causation just from that, but at least then you, it would be reasonable to say, Hey, there really may be something here because look, we’re seeing this signal again and again.

But when you have observational research that is all over the place, when you look at the body of observational evidence, then you can’t make any sort of determination like that. It really actually does take now a much deeper dive. Into that literature and even into the proposed mechanisms and looking specifically at the highest quality evidence, what type of RCTs exist and so on, because there are so many different factors that can confound research, meaning that can mislead the researchers even into thinking that they’ve found something, but what they’ve actually found is something else.

It’s not what they thought. And this one of many little kerfuffle over fish oil is more of that. So I would say that if you look at the body of the best evidence, there is no evidence that it that is it’s going to cause any sort of harm to your cardiovascular system. It may not be as.

Beneficial as some people would claim in that. That’s the case with many supplements. And that’s even fine if you want to, as a consumer, if you want to just take any sort of cardiovascular claims out of your consideration, again, knowing that it’s not going to hurt your heart and your.

Your vascular system but it may or may not help it as much as whoever you’re going to buy from is claiming. And you look at some of the other claims that are less controversial that have a clear body of evidence. That’s fine. So that’s my long winded. Reply to that. It’s a similar type of situation with saturated fat and it’s relationship with cardiovascular disease, which is supported by a very large amount of evidence, both observational and R.

1. T. But you can also find a lot of research that, at least on the face of it appears to contradict that body of evidence. And so Understandably, many people are confused, and then right now it’s trendy to promote eating saturated fat, just eating a bunch of meat and eating a bunch of lard and eating a bunch of butter.

And so you have the marketing machine that’s pushing that, especially on social media. And sometimes you have credentialed people who. Seem to know what they’re talking about, who are referring to research. And of course, it’s also telling many people what they want to hear, which is that they can just eat as many ribeye steaks and sticks of butter as they want.

And so it’s confirming their biases in a sense. So that makes it extra effective marketing. But if you look at the. The weight of the evidence, and especially you look at the weight of the best evidence, and it is very clear that more saturated fat in your diet is worse for cardiovascular health.

And that’s not to say you should have none. No, you actually do need to have some, but it should be. Be probably no more there. There’s that longstanding recommendation, no more than about 10 percent of total daily calories per day coming from saturated fat. I think that’s perfectly reasonable.

That’s going to give your body enough to do what it needs to do with saturated fat, but it can’t do with unsaturated fat and you’re going to avoid. Problems that they develop over a long period of time that’s one of the insidious things about cardiovascular disease is everything can seem fine until it’s not fine.

And then 1 day when it’s not fine because of the accumulation of plaque and inflammation and other things that built up really over the course of years or decades, then you can be in a position where. Fixing the problem is very difficult and maybe not impossible, but there, there also might be permanent damage, essentially, that it’s very, or at least it’s very hard to undo.

So that’s a separate rant, but one that I do like to speak about more speak about on social media fairly regularly. And I share some of this high quality research that I’m referring to. And I try to. To keep putting that message out there just to counter so much of the shenanigans on saturated fat anyway, so we’ve covered everything.

This was a great discussion. We ran a bit over. So I’m appreciate you taking the extra time. Is there anything else you want to say anything else? We didn’t cover that. I should have asked about before we wrap up. I don’t think so. 

Martin: Honestly yeah we’ve covered it. I learned a lot of stuff working with you guys and definitely again, at the end of the day, I think it’s funny because for a lot of people pursuing fitness is it starts as an aesthetic thing, but then it starts to kind of transition.

And you’re like, the aesthetics are cool, but I don’t even care about that. I just like all the other benefits that come along with it are so awesome. And you don’t understand them until you actually live them and experience them. So to anybody who’s considering this, I would say like the journey and the effort you put in is well worth it because not only are you going to get all of the, again, the aesthetic and even the physical benefits, but you’re also going to get mental benefits.

I became much more focused in my life and following. Following through and pursuing goals long term and also patience. You develop patience and you’re like, you know what, it’s okay. If this thing that I want doesn’t happen this year, like nobody else is really paying attention to it. And if I’m doing it let’s say the aesthetics thing to look good, what’s one more year.

If suddenly like next year or the year after I look awesome or whatever, no one’s paying attention. So I’m going to put it in the work behind the scenes for a while and then one day, so it’s it’s. Taught me a lot of things. And it’s definitely worth pursuing for anybody who’s, if you’re feeling stuck I think the biggest thing, if you’re feeling stuck, my advice would be look at the things that you’re doing, go back to the drawing board in terms of whether it’s your book, Mike, or the articles that you’ve been reading and ask yourself, have you really been looking and tracking things closely enough, or are you just haphazardly doing it because lots of times that tends to be the reason that you’re getting stuck. And 

Mike: then, of course, hiring a coach is a shortcut to that works really well. But I understand DIY, I DIY for a long time and I think it’s good to go through that experience.

You’re going to learn a lot, but you can definitely accelerate not just results, but learning with a good coach and a little plug for our approach to coaching. And this is something that I built into the DNA in the beginning is I wanted to make sure that our clients are learning why we’re doing things, how things are working as they are getting the results, which is not typically.

It’s not a good business practice, so to speak, like coming back to business economics. Obviously, if you’re just looking at people as economic instruments to be exploited, then you wouldn’t want to do that because you want to keep them Dependent on you and for as long as possible. So they stay in the program for as long as possible.

So you want to tell them what to do, but you don’t really want to tell them why. You don’t wanna educate them on the principles behind what you’re doing. You want to almost be a black box and they have to go to the black box and they have to request the information and they just get told, okay, here it’s do this.

And that’s unfortunately. Many trainers probably don’t intentionally do that but unfortunately, that is the experience for many people who get fitness coaching. So we try to go about it differently, and we try to educate our clients and really get them to a point of self sufficiency. And that’s really just in the interest of our clients.

I think that if I were a client, that’s what I would want. I would. I wouldn’t want to have to remain a coaching client forever, even if I wanted to, because I like the accountability and I like that. I have somebody who takes care of my meal plans and my training plans and exercise variations. Any questions that I have.

Maybe I do want to stay on forever, but if I were a client. I would like to get to a point where I felt confident enough in my understanding of what we’re doing and why it works that if I want to take a break, for example, let’s say I’m going to start a lean bulk, and it’s going to be like 6 or 8 months, and I have everything set up the way that I like it.

I know what I’m doing. And. And I don’t feel like I need a coach for the next six to eight months. And I can do that. And then maybe, we have people who do that. And then if then three or four months in, they come back and they say, that’s me 

Martin: literally. I worked with Ryan, I originally did six months and then I did another six months and I still have another six months, but I put it on pause, I’m like, look, I’m going to just do this for a while.

And then once I get stuck again and I’m ready to go into the next phase. I’ll be back, and I already paid for it. It’s awesome. I can’t recommend the coaching enough. I’ve already referred I think two people over to you guys who, they’ve been very happy as well.

It’s like learning so much stuff and having the accountability. And I would say just, the fact that you can ask any question when you’re stuck and someone who’s there to just like. Be like, all right, this is exactly how to get 

Mike: past this. It’s really nice. Exactly. Thanks again, Martin, for taking the time to do this.

This was a pleasure. Yeah, absolutely. 

Martin: It was really fun. I’m excited to have done this with you and shared my story. It’s totally worth it to anybody who’s thinking. Thank you. Thank you. 

Mike: How many calories should you eat to reach your fitness goals faster? What about your macros? What types of food should you eat?

And how many meals should you eat every day? I created a free 60 second diet quiz that’ll answer those questions for you and others, including how much alcohol you should drink, whether you should eat more fatty fish to get enough omega 3 fatty acids. What supplements are worth taking and why and more.

To take the quiz and get your free personalized diet plan, go to muscleforlife. show slash diet quiz. Muscleforlife. show slash diet quiz. Now, answer the questions and learn what you need to do in the kitchen to lose fat, build muscle, and gain weight. Get healthy. I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful.

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