Ep. #244: Steve Magness on the Science of Achieving Peak Performance

Steve Magness: [00:00:00] The reality is if you want to be productive, yeah, you got to go do difficult stuff. Like you got to, if you’re writing a book, you got to go to town writing for a bit, but you can’t do that all the time. Like to optimize the performance, you need these periods where we go really hard, stress ourselves.

Then we step away, recover, rest, let our mind and body coalesce everything. And if we stagger our life like that, we’ll get better performance and longer lasting performance versus this kind of grind mentality that we often have.

Mike Matthews: Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Muscleful Life Podcast. This is Mike, of course. And in this episode, I interview Steve Magnus, who is an elite level runner, a running coach at the University of Houston. He’s the cross country coach there, and he’s also an exercise physiologist and published author.

And Steve’s [00:01:00] latest book, Peak Performance, is one that I really liked, which is why I wanted to get him on the show to talk about it. And the reason why I really liked it is a detailed and very practical overview of the science of optimizing your mental and physical performance. And, In this interview, Steve and I discuss some of the key takeaways from the book, some of the key concepts, including how to use stress and recovery to stimulate progress and growth, how to prime and prepare ourselves for optimal performance, and how to avoid depression.

Overwhelm and burnout. So here’s a little sneak peek of some of the specific things that we talk about. So first we talk about how much deep work can we really do in a day? We talk about a handful of simple recovery strategies that we can use in our day to day lives. Steve explains how self talk affects both our mental and physical states and performance capabilities.

And he also talks about how we can [00:02:00] positively change the way that we view and react to stress and make it something that is constructive rather than destructive, and more. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so I’m Instead, I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my one on one coaching service.

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Hey, Steve, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah. Thanks a lot for having me. Absolutely. So I’m excited to talk to you because I read your book, really liked it. And I have a, it’s, I do it every two or three weeks or so. I recommend, I read a little book review and have a book that I liked that I’ve read recently.

Peak performance was one of them and actually heard back from quite a few people who bought it based on my recommendation and liked it. This topic is popular with a lot of my readers and listeners. And yeah, so I think it’s gonna be a good discussion. 

Steve Magness: That’s [00:04:00] exciting. We really glad to hear that you enjoyed it.

And thanks a lot for recommending it to people. Absolutely. So 

Mike Matthews: let’s just get right into it. So I put together some talking points or some specific things that I really liked from the book that I haven’t. Particularly spoken about previously because I’ve had a couple of people on the show to talk about just performance in general and optimizing performance.

And I’ve written a bit about it. So yeah, I think we should, let’s just jump right into the first, which is the kind of, I guess it’s the over, we can start with the overarching theme of the book, which is using stress and recovery to improve, not just, it’s pretty obvious that. That’s what you need to do to improve your exercise capacity, whether it’s cardiovascular or strength or whatever, but it’s a good system.

It’s a good formula for improving any area of our lives. So I think that’s a good place to start. If you want to break down how that plays out. 

Steve Magness: Yeah, sure. I think it’s interesting because you’re familiar. Most of your almost all your listeners will be familiar with Yeah.

This applied in the exercise [00:05:00] world because we’re used to it, right? We’re used to like going out, lifting some weights, running, working hard, and then stepping away or having an easier day and having a recovery. Although some people don’t actually, 

Mike Matthews: Go look at actually funny enough, I’m writing a book proposal for the next book that I’m going to be writing.

And I’m doing like right now, the chapter by chapter outline. And so I went and looked, it’s funny timing. I went and looked at the hashtag no days off hashtag on Instagram. And right now there’s 4. 9 million posts and I’m writing an outline to a chapter on stop working out every day and do this instead, which is basically stop beating the absolute shit out of yourself and make sure that you have some active recovery, some rest in there as well.

Steve Magness: It’s funny. I think it’s because of the no pain, no gain mantra that exists in our world. And I get it. Like I’ve been there too. Like I’ll train myself into the ground and it. If you’re in that world, it feels good to do so when you’re thinking like, Oh, man, like this is where I’m getting my gains in.

I work hard. I get better, the reality is and what we found both from the research side [00:06:00] and then also talking to. Some elite performers all over the world in different things is like you get better on the recovery time, right? Like your body physically like repairs, all that damage from the workout, your muscle gets stronger, like the proteins bind together and form a stronger muscle is, it doesn’t happen during the the workout time.

It’s that time in between. And what’s interesting enough is that same principle applies to everything else we do essentially. So we looked at, we were talking to this world famous mathematician who developed all these theories that are way too complex for me to understand.

And he was sitting there and he’s saying yeah, like I go and I like work really hard in this problem or go on my blackboard or my whiteboard and go after it. And I can never solve it during that time. It was always when I stepped away, took a nap, went to sleep, or went for a nice walk.

And the answer would come out to me. And I think that kind of showed that this [00:07:00] is an overarching theme is that we romanticize the grind, right? The reality is, if you want to be productive, yeah, you got to go do difficult stuff. You got to, if you’re writing a book, you got to go to town writing for a bit.

But you can’t do that all the time, like to optimize the performance, you need these periods where we go really hard, stress ourselves, then we step away, recover, rest, let our mind and body coalesce everything. And if we stagger our life like that, we’ll get better performance and longer lasting performance versus this kind of grind mentality that.

We often have. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, Cal Newport spoke about that in deep work. I think, based on the research for that book, he found that most top performers are not doing their thing more than maybe four or five hours a day, regardless of what that thing is. 

Steve Magness: Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s a big misconception, right?

Because again, we romanticize the hard work and we just imagine that, the Olympics are on right now. And we [00:08:00] imagine that these people are Training, 8, 9, 10 hours a day, like doing their life is nothing but skiing, snowboarding, whatever, and that isn’t the case. It’s not humanly possible for a long sustained time.

And regardless of the domain, there’s a cap, once you get 4 or 5 hours of work in the day you can’t do that. Do anymore, which, begs the question on our work days, why they’re scheduled like they are. But it’s another topic, but, it’s a, it’s something that I think needs more awareness so that we can start working smarter and not necessarily just harder.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Have you found that to be true for yourself personally? Because I would say it depends like what kind of work we’re talking about in Newport’s case, he was talking about. Particularly what he calls deep work, right? So work that requires basically all of your focus, all of your attention. And due to the nature of the book, he was speaking against, again, more about like abstract stuff, not necessarily digging ditches, but mental work that requires a fair amount of exertion and controlling your attention, controlling your focus and so forth.[00:09:00] 

And. I guess I could say myself. Yeah. I can see performance baby starting to drop off. Writing is a good example of that. Because if you’re going to do a good job at it, you really have to focus and you’re really trying to pay attention to every word and every sentence and trying to make connections and blah, blah, blah.

And yeah, I think I would generally agree with that. It probably myself. Sure. I have spent more than four hours in a day writing, but I can see performance maybe starting to decline. I think it also, again, I’m curious as to your experiences with this. I think it depends on what I’m working on as well.

If I’m able to write for a few hours on one project and then switch to something else that is different. And I can feel like I can go longer and be really fully there and high energy and high output as opposed to, yesterday I worked six hours on this book proposal. Yeah. And book proposals are Boring by their very nature.

This is something I’m actually just grinding out. And by the, by that sixth hour, I actually was like, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to go write an article or something. I just, I’m done writing on the book proposal, but in terms of just [00:10:00] work, I think that anyone is capable of more than four to five hours of just work per day.

And not only capable of, but can handle it without much stress or blowback. What are your thoughts? 

Steve Magness: Yeah, so there’s a lot of nuance in this stuff. So we have to look at how engaged you are when you’re doing the work. So in Newport’s, terminology, is it deep work? Is it Erickson’s? Is it deliberate practice?

Like how much attention and focus are we assigning to this? You mentioned writing. I mentioned writing. When you’re really deep into writing, like every sentence almost becomes not torture, but to a degree, it does. Like you’re thinking of the words you’re thinking of the sentence.

You’re never quite saying things the way that you want to. Exactly. So you have to be highly engaged, right? Other things I can do, like maybe answering email, which I hate doing, but I can do that. without being completely engaged, right? I can just get in a little zone and get that done.

And it doesn’t take that much mental energy. [00:11:00] So there’s that engagement part. And the same is with exercise, right? If I go out and say, Hey, I’m going to go out and run an easy five mile run and just go slow. That’s not that hard, right? Because I’m taking an easy, it’s, it doesn’t take much energy.

If I take that same time period and I say, Hey, I’m going to go down the track and blister some 400 meter repeats. That’s going to drain me a lot more, even though the time component is. About the same. That engagement is number one. And then I think the other part that you hit on, and that is entirely true is the almost like the motivation and enjoyment of it, right?

If we’re enjoying the activity, we’re going to be able to last longer at it. If I’m in the zone and I’m. Writing something and really having fun with it, then I can press that further than if I didn’t and if it’s a grind, so I think that is another component that we have to consider and those come down to there’s an ability to switch between things [00:12:00] when we’re working throughout a day.

And that’s one of the things that we mentioned a lot in the book. As that similar to how I wouldn’t go work out and I wouldn’t go run, 15 miles every day. If I was trying to train one day, I might run fast. One day I won’t run slow. One day I might lift weights. One day I might cross train like that.

Changing up of the stimulus just enough, even though it’s work can prolong what you can do. I might write for. Blocks of an hour and total three or four hours in the day. But then I might go record a podcast, right? Or I might go work on some presentation I’m going to give because it changes that, that stimulus just enough where it’s yes, it’s work, but it’s a different kind of work.

And if we can periodize our day for lack of a better term, then I think we can get more quality and longer work out of it if that’s the goal. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s what I do. I’m sure you do the same thing is you block your time out and you base it on, probably primarily right on your energy levels, mental [00:13:00] energy and physical energy.

And, if you do your best work, if you seem to be most focused and In tune with whatever you need to be in tune with to write. The ethereal muse, if that’s your, if that’s the morning for you, then you do it in the morning, or if that’s the night for you, you do that at night and you work around your natural rhythms.

Steve Magness: Exactly. I think that’s a brilliant piece of advice there is that You need to work around your natural rhythms and realize that there’s no one set grand secret to Hey, this is how I need my day to be. Which I think sometimes gets lost as people are looking for like the magical, routine to get done.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Like how to have the perfect day and here’s the one size fits all that, based on some, in some cases it’s just anecdotes and in other cases it’s misinterpreted or misrepresented research where it’s trying to, Forced people into a straight jacket, or at least that’s what it feels like for some people.

Steve Magness: Exactly. And you and I can both speak on it all the time, but we probably have different periods of the day where, I can work really well and I can’t. And I just have to acknowledge and [00:14:00] recognize that and build my day around that. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it?

Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you.

You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Let’s talk about recovery now. So obviously in, in the case of exercise, it’s pretty obvious. There’s not exercising. That’s one way to recover or some sort of active recovery.

It could be, light cardio walking, biking, or it could be like, I like yoga for active recovery for its other benefits as well. What are some good [00:15:00] recovery strategies that we can use or in our day to day life? And I’d say again, because, and this is something I want to get to mental fatigue.

Is real, obviously, and it can even affect physical performance. What are, even if it’s just your personal recovery strategies, or if it’s things that, you came across in your research and also just your work with elite athletes, what helps them best refresh, not just their bodies, but, their minds.

Steve Magness: Yeah, I think that mental recovery is probably one of the most neglected things that we have, 

Mike Matthews: especially now with, the 24 seven world that we live in, and the constant fear of what am I missing out on? 

Steve Magness: And you also think maybe 1015 years ago, when you recovered, when you stepped away from work, etc, like you were actually stepped away.

Right now, like our minds are always active, our phones are always on we’re always checking that we’re always available. Like, when we step away, we’re not really truly stepping away and recovering. And I think from a mental standpoint, that really affects things. What I found in research and also working [00:16:00] with some world class athletes is that the best thing is actually what I’d call social recovery, where you step away from what you’re doing, but engage with other individuals, other people who you enjoy talking with.

There’s some really interesting and cool research that shows that, after a hard workout, for example, if I spend the next, you 15, 20 minutes, like shooting the ship with my friends who were, I was working out with my recovery profile will switch, right? I’ll go from super stressed with high cortisol levels and stress hormones to like, that will drop immediately and recovery hormones, like testosterone will go up just based on if I’m interacting socially after I’m done.

Right? There’s a really cool study that took a bunch of elite rugby players and had them either go on the bus after the game and sit there and be on their phones individually. Or have dinner in the locker room where they’re interacting with each other without phones. And the research showed [00:17:00] quite clearly that there was a hormonal change, but more importantly, that the players who had that social interaction played better in the next game, like three days later, it was significant.

So you look at things like that, and you’re just like, wow, this is a. Blown away. And, it also fits with anecdotes. Greg Popovich of the Spurs is famous for having his athletes go have dinner together and making scheduled dinners after important games. And, they’ll feast on good food and wine and all this stuff, which you might think okay, wine, alcohol is that best for recovery?

He doesn’t really care because he knows if he can get that like social component going like they’re going to be recovered way better the next day. So I think, that’s number 1 for me. And then the other thing that I think that really you can take advantage of is there’s a lot of research on like nature, which is just going for walks outside, maybe a 10 minute walk outside as your break instead of sitting in your cubicle.

Like that [00:18:00] impacts mental recovery and entirely and gives you better creativity and performance throughout the day. So just like building that into your day, if you have somewhere you can walk around afterwards is great. And surprisingly or not, the research actually shows that even just looking at nature can bring that on and improve recovery.

So if you’re stuck in a drab, dreary place, get some good posters of some nice scenery and that. Actually can help. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. You, in the book, you discussed some research, right? That showed that just on a computer, like a background, like nature pictures in the background has positive benefits physiologically.

Steve Magness: Yeah, exactly. Which is mind blowing when you think of it, you’re just like, Oh, Like, why? I guess it 

Mike Matthews: You feel good. I could see that if you look at it and you feel good and you go, and that’s all that. Maybe that’s your only experience with it. Even with the social interactions and that stuff.

Yeah. If you go spend time with people you like and you have interesting conversations, you leave feeling good. That’s just how you’d probably, you wouldn’t [00:19:00] really analyze it more than that, but then you go, okay, so why do you feel good physiologically? What’s going on? Oh, it makes the what are, what chemicals most, you Influence our feelings out hormones out.

So we’re, and we see positive changes in hormone profiles to these things. Oh, that makes sense. 

Steve Magness: Exactly. A hundred percent. I was talking to a good friend and researching this book who worked with a couple of Olympic teams, field hockey teams who medaled at the Olympics.

And he did all this measuring of all these hormones trying to figure out like how to get his athletes to like prime for performance and then also recover off of it. And he was doing all these blood and saliva tests. And I asked him like, okay, like what do you find? He said, very simply, he was like.

Whatever your athletes say makes them feel good is going to help. So if they are convinced that, doing this crazy ritual makes them feel good, let them do it. Because it’s directly tied to performance. So I think that’s a Very simple rule of thumb is that Hey, if that gives you some experience of are feeling good, then it’s probably benefiting you.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, of course, [00:20:00] that can be eased that can easily go in the wrong direction. But, yeah, but, I think the essence of it is absolutely correct. If it’s something that hopefully isn’t just outright destructive, that it also makes you feel good. Then it’s going to be essentially good for the Recovering whether it’s physical or mental, let’s let’s move to stress now, because most people obviously feel if you just look at I think it’s every year, it’s, is it the APA, either the American psychological or psychiatric association does a, a survey kind of a census and stress levels are basically at a highest.

At highest point now, since they started doing this, and most people probably just instinctively associate the word stress with just negative feelings and, something that’s bad, something that’s destructive that though can be changed. And you talk about that in the book and that sure. Some types of things are stressful and bad and there’s no question, but how you respond to them and how you view them matters.

Steve Magness: Exactly. Yeah. I think it’s interesting because [00:21:00] we have this this almost built in negative view of what stress is. And if you look at stress, it’s actually just like a stimulus, right? Lifting weights is a stress but it only becomes a negative stress if we do it too much and break down and all that good stuff.

So in our lives, it’s almost the same, like anything that feels like stress becomes instantly a negative. But what researchers have found is that how we view that, if we view stress as a threat then we’re going to have a negative reaction to it. So our body will have a bad hormonal reaction to it.

Like we’ll have bad consequences if we have enough of it, like our health will decline. But interesting enough, if we view it as a positive or as something, a challenge or as a stimulus to adapt to or something that we can grow from, then the hormonal profile switches. And then also the Consequences of the stress can change as well, which is again, pretty fascinating, [00:22:00] but the reason is pretty simple in the sense that our body partially determines like our reactions to stress based on like our expectations of it.

If we’re always walking around saying oh, man I’m super stressed today or. I’m late and this is stressing me out, then the body’s going to follow suit and say, okay, he’s having a negative reaction. So this is a bad thing. So let’s prepare for that. Yeah. Fight or flight, right?

Exactly. That’s what’s going on. What are we getting ready for? Exactly. And if, and in a modern world where everything, your body almost goes into this hyperactive Fight or flight, right? But if instead you see it as like a challenge, your body switches from a fight or flight response to a more positive one.

Whether that’s like preparing a preparation phase, or also what they call a tend and befriend phase. Of stress and recovery, it just changes things. So I think, the kind of takeaway message is that stress can be thought of as a negative is like you start, [00:23:00] you have to start seeing and in a light of okay, this can be a positive.

This can be a challenge. This can be something that I adapt and grow from. 

Mike Matthews: Can you tell us more about the preparatory attend befriend? What are those things? What are those strategies? 

Steve Magness: Yeah. So what happens is like that traditional fight or flight response is your body just gets just flooded with cortisol and stress hormones.

And like the other phases, like a preparatory or attendant befriend, what happens is your body doesn’t get as hot as much cortisol. And instead it gets releases of these other hormones like oxytocin. And to a degree, a little bit of dopamine. And what happens is you’re in a position to essentially grow and adapt to things.

So you stop seeing everything as a threat. So it’s not Oh, I need to overcome this or this is going to set me back. Instead. It’s just another part of life that happens and you can grow and adapt from if that makes sense. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And what are some ways that like, do you have some examples, some stories, personal stories or just stories again, working with.

[00:24:00] With athletes or whoever, like on a day to day, because I could maybe see some people listening, thinking that, that might make sense in a highly structured type of physical activity. Let’s say you said running, 400 meter sprints or however, if maybe you keep maybe that’s not a sprint, or maybe it would be, I don’t know.

I don’t know. Endurance exercise at all but okay. So you’re like doing your, you’re working your 400 meter time. I could see them going, okay, I could see that, this is going to suck. This is going to be really hard. My muscles are going to hurt. And burn, but I’m doing this for a purpose. So I’m gonna, I know that if I can just push myself, I’m going to grow, but I think it’s a little bit harder to take that perspective.

If it’s just random fuckery in life, like you’re running late for the day because of who knows what in the morning. And you maybe had a presentation that you’re, you’re supposed to be giving in the morning and maybe you’re not going to be late for it, but now you don’t have time to prepare, it’s just stuff that. The everyday kind of, it just, it seems like it’s just the entropy of life, random chaotic things that get in our way that stress people out. 

Steve Magness: [00:25:00] Yeah, I hear you. And I think the answer to that is, is twofold, is one is that we have an overreaction to stress, right? Especially in modern world.

 You’re running two minutes late to, a meeting or whatever, What happens is during that, during those 15 minutes leading up to that, like you’re freaked out. You’re like super stressed and panicked and like you’re starting to sweat. You’re like, oh my gosh, I’m super late, etc.

And that’s normally an overreaction, right? I mean if you show up to a meeting a minute or two late, yeah, it’s not good. It’s not great, but normally it’s not life or death, but your body almost prepares for it like it’s life or death. So you’ve had this overreaction to something that is fairly minimal.

And if you look at most of the stress in our life, in the big picture it’s fairly minimal, right? It’s just, as you said, the overall fuckery of life does it really matter in the big picture? Probably not that much. And I think that’s where a little bit of perspective should come [00:26:00] in is that Yes, it’s okay to be stressed and anxious over these things and maybe like slightly missing a deadline or having something or not responding to email when you’re supposed to, or whatever it is that is stressing you out, but you probably have an overreaction to it.

So like having the awareness to step back and be like, okay is this life or death? Is this gonna like really, truly end my day? Probably not. And then why am I freaking out? And the other part of it is like looking at it in a positive standpoint is maybe not for running late and things like that, but looking at other stressors, like if you’re a student and you do bad on a paper or you’re stressed out because you’re afraid of failing this.

Or doing poorly at this presentation. Like instead of seeing those as like fear of failure, if you see those as Hey, like this is a challenge to figure out where my strengths and weaknesses are, you’re going to have a better reaction to it. And you’re going to [00:27:00] grow from it. And we can see this.

Can I use like using athletic examples, but we can see this in athletics in terms of people who watch like who play a game and then watch their posts and game tape, right? And football or basketball or whatever, if you go in there and you say, Oh shit look how many times I screwed up. Then that game just became a waste.

But if you go in and you say, yeah, I screwed up here and here, but. These are opportunities to grow. Then it becomes something that you’re better prepared for it next time. So in a lot of ways, like all of this stuff, even with stress and recovery is about how you’re framing it. And that actually affects like the body and what your reaction and adaptation 

Mike Matthews: is.

And yeah, you had mentioned something about basically self talk and something we talk about in the book. And I think that a lot of people don’t appreciate how much that matters. You’re saying like, Oh, if you’re, telling yourself I’m so stressed out because I spilled some coffee on my Car seed or I’m two minutes late or whatever.

What can you tell us [00:28:00] about that in terms of like negative versus positive self talk and how that can influence our, not just our mood and our psychology, but also our ability to perform physically. 

Steve Magness: Yeah, sure. So self talk is incredibly important, I think. And I think, a good coach in the world of track and field, Dan Paff, who’s world famous once said that most people, when they’re looking at.

Good self talk. They create an outline. And when they’re looking at bad self talk, they create a novel. And I think that’s genuinely true, right? We began to rationalize our way out of the good and tend towards the bad stuff. And I think we need to like work on how to flip that equation. If we balance ourselves out with more positive self talk and negative, then like our mindset, our worldview, et cetera, will all be shifted into this view.

And we’ll start appraising things in a better light. So we, we might start appraising that presentation, that meeting where you’re about to go to, and instead of in a negative anxiety state, and [00:29:00] instead of something as okay, yes, this is going to be difficult, this is going to suck, but I need to do it.

I’m going to be better at it. And I think if you look at the world of athletics, you see this very clearly in terms of a pregame anxiety, right? And those, or if you’re watching the Olympics, like the pregame anxiety, if you have a lot of negative self talk, then you’re almost setting yourself, you’re priming your body for like disaster and failure.

Whereas if you can rationalize and Create that positive self talk, then you’re setting yourself up to let your body do what it knows to do. 

Mike Matthews: And how does that play out specifically? We could all come up with negative scripts. We’ve all experienced it. We haven’t been to the Olympics, but we’ve all experienced the pre performance anxiety of one kind or another.

What’s, what would be like an effective positive script? How might that sound? 

Steve Magness: Yeah, I think what we found is that it comes down to like your reason for why you’re doing things and like the work you’ve put in. Yeah. So for example, I’ll give you an example from my own writing is not my [00:30:00] natural forte.

It’s not like I grew up in high school and college and thought Oh, I’m going to become a writer. So I have a lot of negative self talk on Oh, especially when I’m struggling through things of oh this. Really sucks. I don’t know how to do this very well. The same goes with like public speaking.

Like I grew up as like an introvert. So like giving talks and such is somewhat of a negative. So it’s easy to let that come out. And what I try and do for myself is do two things. Is first, I try to remind myself of all the work I’ve done to get to this point. So I’m almost like counterbalancing the negative by saying, okay, yeah, writing might not be my thing, but I’ve now written, a book or I’ve had all these articles published in this, or I’ve written, hundreds of blog posts.

So and I’ve studied this okay, I’m reinforcing the positive there to remind myself of. Of the work I’ve done and I do the same in athletics, right? [00:31:00] I remind myself. In a race of all the work I’ve put in and then the other side of it is like the purpose section point of it, which is like the why I’m doing this, right?

So I’m writing why, because I feel this information is pertinent and valuable and it needs to get out there, or I’m giving this talk to this group. Why is it important? I’m doing that because it will help, a, b and c people. And when you’re looking at. Like you’re why it really helps and research clearly shows to make it something that isn’t just like for personal gain, right?

So your positive self talk i’m like, oh i’m doing this to make money that doesn’t work very well It doesn’t because it just isn’t a very good motivator I mean for a very short term sure it seems like one but when push comes to shove It doesn’t work very well under high stress situations.

You tend to cave So if you look at it in terms of all You I’m doing this to support others to get to fight for a cause that I feel strongly for, or [00:32:00] even from an informational standpoint people need to hear about, like, why they’re feeling burnt out, overstressed, and maybe I can save someone from going through this whole process that I’ve been through.

Really thinking beyond yourself. And giving yourself like that positive reaffirmation in that sense of why you’re doing it can really help. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That’s a great tip. And, you also had something on the point of you’ve put in the work and you’re reminding yourself. So you’re almost having a dialogue with yourself, or some part of yourself, resistance as Steven Pressfield would call it, it’s an important point to make that if you haven’t. Let’s say you hadn’t put in a lot of work, though. And let’s say you’re new and just starting out with something. I don’t think it’s necessarily productive to try to delude yourself into trying to pretend like you are further than you are better than you are.

And the reason I bring that up is, I guess I feel like I just see a fair amount of that in the, I guess you could say that the self help or self development space, especially as it is, as it relates to affirmations, where [00:33:00] I think if you take that too far to where you have a hard time believing what you’re even saying, probably not going to be very helpful.

Steve Magness: Yeah, exactly. A hundred percent. I think that’s a. It hits the nail on the head is that you can’t, if your positive self talk, your affirmations depend on stuff that isn’t true, like your mind is, it’s smarter than like your, your faking self talk is it’s going to be like no, that’s bullshit.

Like that, that, no, that’s not going to work. And it doesn’t. If you look at contests of like extreme endurance, if you. Sit there and say, Oh, I’m prepared. I’m prepared. I’ve done this and you really haven’t like your performance suffers because like your mind can sort through the bullshit.

And it’s the same regardless of anything. So I always encourage people like, Hey you’re not faking your way through it. You’re not like, Giving some, pseudo feel good. Oh, I’m prepared and I’m ready. Or like I’m the best, I’m the best runner in the world. Yeah, but you’re not like that [00:34:00] stuff only works if you actually like truly deep down, believe it.

And the same with doing stuff for others, like you can’t say Oh, I’m doing this for children of cancer or something. If you don’t really feel a connection to it 

Mike Matthews: or even to change the world, unless you had to get to really believe that. 

Steve Magness: Exactly. 

Mike Matthews: Only where I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going small on that kind of stuff either.

What might feel small? Yeah, not everybody has to try to change the world. Maybe if you just want to change if you can just change a few people’s lives and if that, then if you can get more behind that emotionally and actually really see it and be like, no, I really do think take your book, your P your book has definitely changed people’s lives.

Has it changed the world? No. Has any of my work changed the world? No, but we’ve changed some people’s lives and that. Is I think it’s more satisfying to think about it as it is than as maybe we wish it were 

Steve Magness: exactly. And I think, one of the suggestions I always have is when you’re looking at this think of it in terms of Hey, am I helping like one of my friends that I know is this work [00:35:00] that I’m doing?

Is that going to help that person? And a lot of times it can. And if it’s, if it helps, if our book, changes like a couple friends, view on things and maybe makes them where they can handle their life and stress and work balance a lot better, then great. Like it was worth it versus saying Oh man, this is gonna revolutionize the world and I’m going to change everything.

That won’t get me very far, but knowing that I impacted that person who I know or can visualize or conceptualize that will. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve personally found it satisfying to stay in touch with a lot of readers. Like I still, I get a lot of emails still every day and social media messages.

It’s cool still to hear from people that share their stories. In my case I’m just teaching the, Fundamentals of diet and exercise and how to build muscle, lose fat, get healthy and so forth. And it’s always nice though, to see firsthand and to hear firsthand in the day to day grind.

I’m sitting in my office I’m like a hermit in my office. Most of the time, just researching things, writing things or recording things. [00:36:00] And it’s easy to lose touch with what am I really doing this for? You know what I mean? Like you said, money. Yeah, money’s fine up to a certain point.

And then it’s utility value just kind of plummets and the diminishing returns kicks in and it just doesn’t really matter anymore. So that’s not a very motivated, motivating thing. Even the idea of making a lot of money with something isn’t that motivating. It’s just, it’s sure. Fine. I’d rather have the lot of money than not have it, but that doesn’t really fire me up.

Actually being able to see the impact that you’re having, even if it’s. Again, even if it’s just five people that week, you heard from five people that week who shared their stories. I think that’s pretty cool. 

Steve Magness: Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s a good good tip because we’re all going to go through struggles, right?

We’re all going to go through things where it’s like, Oh, this really sucks to, write this or, talk to this person or, grind away at whatever we’re grinding away at. And the more you can set yourself up with reminders, like the. better you are. I save a lot of the best feedback that comes in from like [00:37:00] writing from others who say Hey, you really changed my life or impacted my life.

And this was great. I have an email folder like saved with those. And like, when I really don’t want to do something, sometimes I’ll go click on that email folder and be like oh, yeah this is part of the reason why I do it. Like I’m actually helping people. And if that’s only a handful of people it still makes a difference.

So I think it’s important to have those reminders in there just in case like things go bad or when things are a struggle. 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. And so we’re talking about pushing through pain, pushing through discomfort. So you have the, why are there any other strategies that we can use to get through?

Cause you know, I’ve, I actually do the same thing. I have not just emails, but I have that are stored in my Gmail. That are the ones that it’s same concept. And then I’ll, I have a lot of, I have a whole. Google photos folder from, I guess it’s mainly, I don’t use social media that much, but it’s Instagram.

So people will DM me all the time, their stories, and they’ll send me pictures before and afters and stuff. And so I have those saved as well. I use it in the same [00:38:00] way. What else can we do though, to. Help us just get through and again, it could be a, it could be physical pain. If you’re trying to hit a PR on your bike or whatever it is you’re doing or I guess more, maybe some psychological or emotional pain, or at least where it feels it’s drudgery.

No matter what you’re doing, there’s always drudgery. What are some things that we can do to it. Make it through the judgery better. 

Steve Magness: Yeah, that’s a good question. I wish I had all the answers on that. But I think that the first step is acknowledging that you’re going to go through it and that it isn’t unusual, right?

I think sometimes people have this expectation that like the best people in their fields, like never go through these things, whether that’s the best writer, artist. Athlete, whatever it will they do and like acknowledging that is number one and then I think all those reminders that you talked about like finding something that like triggers you to remember why you do it.

What is the purpose of it is incredibly important. I had a team once who all wore the same [00:39:00] color wristbands. They were a bunch of runners and all wear the same color wristbands to remind themselves, like when it hurt to look down at your wrist and be like, Oh yeah, I’ve got, seven other guys who are counting on me to run fast and finish this race.

And it’s just, it sounds, retrospectively, it sounds Oh, it’s like just a wristband. But in that moment, when it’s like push comes to shove, it was a way for them to recenter their mind. I’m like, okay, it’s not just me out here. If I slow down, no one cares except for me. But like other people are relying on me and other people are dependent.

So whether that’s a wristband, whether that’s photos, whether that’s one of my good friends who worked in the drudgery of healthcare. And had to do all these reports, wrote a sticky note and reminded himself, he’s what you are doing is saving lives. Now, all he was doing was filling out reports on health of patients and different treatments.

And it was just a long Excel spreadsheet that kind of sucked to do. But he had to [00:40:00] remind himself Hey, the end goal of this is going to change health care, like treatments and policy, which will impact people. So while it seems like a mindless spreadsheet that I’m creating, like it’s end goal is going to have a big effect.

So creating things like that for your work is incredibly important. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I know that reminds me of a study that I read. It was about job satisfaction in hospitals, actually. And what they found is that you had people. Who were basically their job was janitorial, but they were like cleaning bed pans.

And, when people would throw up and stuff, and some of those people reported very high levels of job satisfaction, they found their jobs very satisfying. And so researchers were curious as to like how the, on the surface that doesn’t, it seems to be a bit counterintuitive, obviously. And that’s how they looked at it.

They looked at it. That, They played an integral role in the overall functioning of this organism of, the hospital, which was saving lives and changing lives for the better. And this was something that needed to be done and somebody needs to do it. [00:41:00] And so why not them? They’re not, they aren’t in a position where they could be a doctor or there’s only a certain number of things that they can do based on their qualifications and whatever.

So when they viewed it that way that they were able to find joy in that job. And that was the key differentiating factor between other people who did the same type of work, who basically hated their jobs. 

Steve Magness: Exactly. And there’s a good line of research there, including people like a trash man, and sanitation workers where if they, they changed their framing of it, of we’re not picking up trash, but like we’re helping keeping the city clean and functioning and roll. And without us, The city literally, and if they change their framing of it, and even if they change, like what they called themselves, like there’s job satisfaction and enjoyment, went up and they’re literally picking up trash, but they.

Provide a vital job to society. So sometimes I think like just that reframing of things right and seeing [00:42:00] yourself in the bigger picture and like what your role is it might seem like drudgery to you right now. It probably has a much more important role that. And there’s a reason you’re doing.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Again, coming back to my own gripe on my, on this book proposal, it’s like a 70 page book proposal so far. Yeah. It’s a complete drudgery, but I know why I’m doing it. Hey, whatever. I’m actually emotionally ambivalent to it. And, so I’m going through that right now. 

Steve Magness: Exactly.

I, and I think that’s the. Great example, because the book is going to do great and do great things for people in their lives. But to get to that point, sometimes you got to go through some menial drudgery, right? And that’s part of life. 

Mike Matthews: And I think that’s a, that’s also, I guess it’s maybe a stoic.

Kind of meditations type of concept, but I think that’s a great skill to cultivate. That’s also how I choose to look at really, I try to take that viewpoint whenever I’m going through a situation that I, that just doesn’t make me feel good for whatever reason, right? And it could be something more like that, where [00:43:00] it’s not stimulating to me, writing the book will be more stimulating.

Then the proposal is boring to write straight up. That’s my emotion and I have to force myself to get into interest on it, to make sure that it’s not coming across boring, but whatever situation I’m going through, I choose to look at it in a few different ways. One, I choose to see it as a potential learning situation so I can take away a lesson from.

Whatever it is that I’m going through. And also if nothing else, if I learn nothing from it, and it just seems again, like random kind of just lightning striking for no reason, then I can improve my ability to just do shit that sucks and just Maybe suffer through something and keep going and not give in.

And I think that’s a skill that applies. It’s like one of those meta skills that allows you to be better at everything. 

Steve Magness: Exactly. And I think what you’re displaying right there is that regardless of the situation, there’s something to take away from it. And even if it seems like it’s pointless right now, maybe.

Like it does [00:44:00] improve your skill set, right? If I can handle menial mind numbing stuff, then that’s going to improve my life because I’m going to go through a lot of mind numbing stuff, right? And that applies to other things, although you’re like, as a runner, if I’m running, 15 miles, A bunch of it is menial mind numbing, like there’s only so many thoughts you can have in your head or so much music you can listen to.

Or scenery that is not really changing. Exactly. But if I’ve gone through enough of oh yeah, like I’ve been through this like grind before this like torturous thing before, then that helps, right? And it can apply to different parts of life. So I think again, it all comes down to how we see things and how we frame things.

And a lot of times we’re like taught to see things in a negative light or not see like the benefits that come out of them. And we almost have to rewire rethink about our life similar to a bunch of the stoic philosophy, which you referenced. And seeing it in a way [00:45:00] that like helps us grow 

Mike Matthews: and learn how to not necessarily shrink away from things that seem scary or seem like they are going to be tough or difficult or painful.

Jordan Peterson, the psychology professor from Toronto who’s blowing up in one of his biblical lectures. He was talking about the, he thinks one of our you. Basically fundamental imperatives as people is to bear as much burden as we can to take on as much responsibility as we can. And that means of course even coming back to connecting to other people and making a difference in other people’s lives and doing things for other people.

And that’s one of his things. If you want to have a better life, find more responsibility and take it on. Find more commit, make more commitments, have more people relying on you. And I agree with that. I really agree with that. Of course you can take anything too far and you can end up crushing yourself, but again, coming back to him, I’m a fan of his work.

Obviously, as he says, we don’t know how much we’re individually capable of we don’t know how much we’re capable of collectively either. [00:46:00] We’re capable of a lot more than we’re, than we are doing right now. That’s for sure. 

Steve Magness: Yeah, I’d agree. And I think it comes down to the myth that people think Oh, the perfect life is like sitting on a beach and having nothing to do and just enjoying life.

But the reality is we’re not built for that, right? We’re not developed for that. We’re built to go to work and have some meaning and actually put effort in. And there’s actually some really cool research in addition to Peterson’s that shows that Effort is a key part of life, right?

And we were built to go through and find challenges and be stressed and find some way to, to grow and adapt. And if we’re not, then we don’t feel satisfied. There’s underlying hormones like dopamine, which are designed to essentially push us to want to do more, right? Because we get that.

Hit of dopamine and doing like the craft that we’re doing not necessarily in terms of winning the reward [00:47:00] It’s in the effort of doing the task. So I think there’s a lot to be said and learned from like Putting yourself in positions where you’re doing difficult things and, you’re putting a burden on yourself.

And if you’re not, then you’re not going to feel like you’re living 

Mike Matthews: the, that aspect of exerting effort. That’s something again, that I guess that’s the ultimate, is if you can learn to love exerting effort just for the sake of exerting effort, who knows what you can do, who knows what you can’t do, because it’s just a theme, if you’re, if you’re into reading biographies of Great people are successful people or whatever, not to say not just successful in business, but people who live extraordinary lives. You just see that over and over where these people were just capable of an extraordinary amount of effort long term, consistent.

Effort. And because of that, they were willing to take on things that other people thought were impossible strictly because the amount of effort involved seemed so overwhelming. How could anybody do that? 

Steve Magness: Yeah, exactly. Like they’re game changers, [00:48:00] right? They challenge the norms and don’t stay in this, Like comfort zone where it’s like, Oh, this is what we’re capable of.

This is what has been done before. I think that effort piece is it’s a fundamental skill. And I think that’s why you see people who have accomplished great things aren’t always just good at one thing. And it’s not that they have talent at all these other things, but they’ve mastered the almost secret that is like hard.

Discipline work, but more importantly is like enjoying the effort of things, which is a if I can put the work in on this topic or this subject or this job, then I can just as well put in the effort on this other, maybe somewhat related or tangential job and effort. So it’s a skill that can be developed.

If you love it, 

Mike Matthews: and that’s one of the reasons why I like exercise, I’m sure you do as well as I think it’s just a meditative in that sense where you’re focusing on exerting effort over and over and over time. If you’re programming correctly, you’re [00:49:00] focused on increasing the amount of effort that you can exert before.

Failing, 

Steve Magness: right? No, that’s why I love exercise because it’s brilliant. And it’s simple, like regardless. It’s complex, but in the reality is it’s very simple. It’s it’s getting used to ever increasing levels of effort if you do it right. And you get adaptations and gains and like noticeable changes based on that.

So you can tie it back directly to the work that you did. And I think part of what hampers us in the rest of life is a lot of times we can’t see that direct correlation, right? And we don’t know what effort is I know what effort is if I go in the gym, right? But sometimes we don’t know what effort is if I’m sitting in a, in my office cubicle and Doing some sort of work.

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Steve Magness: That’s 

Mike Matthews: a good point. And I think that the more effort you’re willing to exert though, the less you have to worry about, are you exerting the right effort? Like you can muddle your way through a lot of things. If you’re willing to [00:50:00] work really fucking hard. I, I’ve known quite a few people in just growing up and in some cases, very successful people who were not particularly bright, not educated, But they could, nobody can outwork these people.

And that alone was able to make up for a lot of their deficiencies more that like they could have gotten to where they got to faster if they would have been maybe smarter with their effort, but it just didn’t matter because they were capable of so much output. You have a tsunami of output that eventually it, it wins, 

Steve Magness: it hits yeah.

It’s a, it’s an interesting phenomenon. And also I think. You see incredibly intelligent, bright, gifted, talented people who, maybe don’t accomplish as much, maybe because they have that fear of failure or that like feeling of, Oh, I don’t know as much. So I’m not gonna go all in and put all this effort because I’m not ready or I’m not there yet.

Yeah. Or maybe 

Mike Matthews: even a more, 

Steve Magness: Apathetic [00:51:00] why, what’s the point. I think those are interesting cases because sometimes like we can talk again, going back to self talk, like we can talk ourselves out of it, anything almost. And probably the smarter we are, the better we are at that. Yes, exactly.

Like the hundred percent. If you’re the smarter you are, the more you can talk and rationalize yourself out of anything. And sometimes that’s why people who, might not be quite as gifted or talented or intellectual They’ll get shit done because they don’t spend the time contemplating about it.

They know Hey, here’s this end goal that I need to get to, or that here’s what I want to accomplish. And I’m going to put in work and like I’m going to miss on a lot of that work. But if I put in enough work, like something’s going to stick 

Mike Matthews: totally. All right. This has been a great discussion.

I actually had a few more questions, but that’s fine. I think we pretty much touched on everything. And again, the book is Peak performance. Again, I’ve already recommended it on on the podcast. You’re actually a little episode on it, but if you didn’t hear that, if you haven’t read the book, I definitely recommend you check it out.

A lot of great information. And I’ve read [00:52:00] quite a few of these types of books. And this was one of my favorites that I’ve read in a while. I thought it was a really good summary of research and stories and it was well organized and it was practical. So again you did a great job, Steve, and obviously you did it with Brad.

So you guys did a great job. And I highly recommend it. And so what are you working on now? Where’s your hub? Are you a social media person? Do you have a website? 

Steve Magness: Yeah. Social media is probably best. So you can hit me up on Twitter or Instagram at Steve Magnus. Our book website is peak performance book.

net. You can check things out and yeah, I appreciate you having me on and glad you enjoyed the book. And this was a fantastic discussion and keep doing what you’re doing because you’re sending a great message.

Mike Matthews: Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a [00:53:00] quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my one on [00:54:00] one coaching service. So the long story short here is this is the personal coaching service that I wish I had when I started in the gym many years ago.

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