Q&A Part 6: Tendons and ligaments and lifting, cutting and strength loss, and shady supplements

[00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike. And this podcast is brought to you by Legion, my line of naturally sweetened and flavored workout supplements. Now, as you probably know, I’m really not a fan of the supplement industry. I’ve wasted thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that Basically do nothing and I’ve always had trouble finding products actually worth buying and especially as I’ve gotten more and more educated as to what actually works and what doesn’t.

And eventually after complaining a lot, I decided to do something about it and start making my own supplements, the exact supplements I myself have always wanted. A few of the things that make my products unique are, one, they’re 100 percent naturally sweetened and flavored, which I think is good because while our official sweeteners may not be as harmful as some people claim, there is research that suggests regular consumption of these chemicals may not be good for our health, particularly our gut health.

So I like to just play it safe and sweeten everything with stevia and erythritol. which are natural sweeteners [00:01:00] that actually have health benefits, not health risks. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself. If you go on our website and you check out any of our product pages, you’re going to see that we explain why we’ve chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting evidence in the footnotes so you can go.

look at the research for yourself and verify that we’re doing the right thing. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in those studies that prove their effectiveness. This is very important because while a molecule might be proven to, let’s say, improve your workout performance, not all dosages are going to improve your workout performance.

If you take too little, you’re not going to see any effects. You have to take the right amounts and the right amounts are the amounts proven to be effective in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means you know exactly what you’re buying when you buy our supplements. All of our formulations are 100 percent transparent in terms of ingredients and dosages.

So if that sounds interesting to you and you want to check it out, [00:02:00] then go to www. legionathletics. com. And if you like what and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T. And you will save 10 percent on your order. Also, if you like what I have to say in my podcast, then I guarantee you’ll like my books.

I make my living primarily as a writer. So as long as I can keep selling books, then I can keep writing articles over at muscle for life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like. This and all that fun stuff. Now I have several books, but the place to start is bigger leaner, stronger if you’re a guy and thinner leaner, stronger if you’re a girl.

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

And if [00:03:00] you’re into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my audiobooks for free with a 30 day Free trial of audible to do that. Go to www. muscleforlife. com forward slash audio books. That’s muscleforlife. com forward slash audio books, and you’ll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast.

I hope you enjoy it and let’s get to the show.

Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscle for life. com. Welcome to another episode of my podcast. In this episode, I’m going to be another doing another Q and a this is in case you’re not familiar with it. I have a Google moderator page set up, which I’ll link down below in the description of the video.

And if you’re listening to this, you can find it at muscle for life. com forward slash ask hyphen, Mike hyphen, anything. And what it [00:04:00] allows you to do is submit questions and then vote on other people’s questions that you like or dislike. And then Google, the algorithm of the program, basically just the questions that have a lot of likes and not a lot of dislikes rise to the top so I can pick them and then answer them.

And it’s just a good way for, you to submit your questions and then let other people vote on them. And so I can answer the questions that are, on the top of most people’s minds, essentially. So in this episode, I’m going to be I chose. four questions that I’ve also been emailed about quite a bit.

So I know there’s just a lot of people out there that would like to know about these things. And that is the recovery ability of tendons and ligaments versus muscles and how to avoid getting hurt basically. And how big of a calorie deficit can you go into depending on how overweight you are?

Creatine and caffeine, do they counteract each other and amino spiking which is a supplement scam thing basically. So let’s get to it. Okay. So the first question here comes from Katie from Indiana. He says, Mike, we hear about muscle groups, recovering and growing any [00:05:00] literature on how well the body can repair and strengthen things like joints, tendons, et cetera, fear of injuring.

These is what stops me from pushing myself harder at times. And that’s a good question. I haven’t seen too much in the way of. Scientific research on it. I’m sure it’s out there. I’ve seen a fair amount of research on basically showing that weightlifting is when performed properly with proper form and with weights that you can actually handle, properly that it’s safe for the tendons and ligaments and joints, which I’ll link an article down below that I wrote on this.

And there’s some pretty extreme examples out there. Some studies that were done with the power lifters on steroids as well. So lifting, pretty absurd amounts of weights and still the compressive forces and the shearing forces in the case of the squat and deadlift were well within tolerable ranges on, on, ligaments in the knees.

And and then also like in the lumbar portion of the lower back. So there the kind of just general opinion that weightlifting is bad for your joints and tendons, ligaments is definitely false if it’s done [00:06:00] correctly. And where now, if we if we merge that with the anecdotal, we do see a lot of people probably know a lot of people.

If you’re in the gym, if you’ve been in the gym for years and if you just, know people that are into working out, you’re going to, you’re going to see people that hurt their shoulders and usually joints, shoulders, knees, elbows or that have problems with them.

And in my experience, and also now just working with a lot of people, this is, there are a few factors in play. One is poor form especially on certain things, certain exercises your pressing, bench pressing, military pressing, your dead lifting, your squatting even your leg pressing, you really have to.

Be, I wouldn’t say careful, but you have to be strict on form. And people see YouTube videos of powerlifters, going for PRS and sometimes their form does fall out a little bit and they, though they’re doing that knowing that it increases the risk of injury. They don’t train that way.

They train, powerlifters that know what they’re doing. They train with very strict form, when they’re in a meet and they’re trying to hit a personal best, They don’t really [00:07:00] care if their back, is going to be slightly rounded on that deadlift. They just want to get the weight up.

And they know that and same thing when they’re in the gym, trying to hit PRs, preparing for meets and stuff. And that’s just a risk they’re willing to take. I don’t think that is a good way to go about things if you are like me where, I go in the gym to, to stay in shape. I like being strong.

I like, being muscular. But I’m not competing. I’m not doing it necessarily as a competitive sport. I’m doing it as a more of a hobby type of sport, I guess you could say, which doesn’t mean that I don’t take it seriously, but I don’t see any reason to, yeah, it would be, it’d be, cool to pull maybe 500 pounds or something.

But if I were to eat a bit of food, if I were to be a little bit fatter, I probably could get that without having to. break my form, but you know what I’m saying? If I, it would be cool to hit some super high number, but I don’t think the risk of injury in terms of what it would take training wise is worth it.

So with that said if you are, actually before I go on there, there is [00:08:00] another factor of genetics, which I’m on the next podcast, I’m going to be interviewing somebody from DNA fit because I got a DNA test with them and found it pretty interesting and thought you guys and gals would like to see how their testing works, but also how it plays out.

in terms of like genetic blueprint versus actual real world experience. Some people are more genetically prone to getting injured than others. Ironically, I have a genetic predisposition to injury, even though I’ve never really had any major injuries, which is probably just more a testament to my lifestyle.

I’ve, for many years now I’ve always eaten well, in terms of getting the majority of my foods from, nutrient dense foods. I’ve never been a huge junk food person, so you know, I’ll have some here and there, but I get the vast majority of my calories are from nutritious foods drink I’ve always kept my body hydrated, been good with my sleep hygiene using different supplements that improve health like, like vitamin D and multivitamin and so forth.

So I’ve been doing a lot of good things for a [00:09:00] long time and kind built up a strong injury resistant body, but genetically speaking I’m more prone to injury than the average person actually in my tendons, in my leg ligaments in particular. There’s, there is that where some people like, I know one guy, I just know of him.

I know his brother a bit more, but one, this guy’s freak strong. He doesn’t even really lift. And he came in the gym and pulled 405 for, how was it? Wanner. He was at least one, if not a couple reps and he doesn’t even lift really. And yeah, his form was terrible, but still, I mean that, that’s ridiculous.

I have never seen anybody that, that doesn’t even work out, be able to even budge 405 and this guy just got off the ground with terrible form. And so you’ll have people like that and he’s done it now. He’s, I think he’s gotten into lifting, but he’s, his form is terrible.

Doesn’t get hurt. I know another guy, similar thing. Just terrible form. I don’t know how on his deadlift. He hasn’t blown his back out yet. Just his lumbar is just rounded the entire [00:10:00] time. So there are people that can go on like that for years and they’re just not genetically prone to getting injured and it’s very hard for those people to get injured and it’s not like these guys have great diets or anything.

One of them is on drugs and you would the freak strong guy, not on drugs, but this other guy I know is on drugs in terrible form and that increases the likelihood of injury because when you’re on steroids, your muscles they outgrow and outpace your tendons and ligaments because the steroids cause the muscles to grow, but the tendons and ligaments do not grow at the same rate.

They don’t keep up. What will happen is, you’re in the gym and light the weight feels light. You feel like, you’re pulling, let’s say four 50 and it feels like nothing. It’s okay for 64 70. But what you don’t feel is that your tendons and ligaments they haven’t been able to, there’s a natural process when you’re not on drugs, that as your muscles grow your body is not going to allow the muscles to grow way faster than tendons and ligaments can handle.

What that when, then that kind of comes to the question that that Katie was [00:11:00] asking, which is, do you have to worry about that as you’re getting stronger or are you just all of a sudden going to, blow your knees out or cause some, bicep tendon tear or something.

And the answer is generally speaking, no, unless you were very genetically predisposed to injury. And even then you probably have to, you’d have to have poor form and you’d have to have a poor diet, where your body’s malnourished and probably poorly hydrated and you put enough factors in play enough negative factors in play.

Sure. Then. You can get hurt doing everything, quote unquote, you know what I mean? But for that, for the average listener of this podcast and just follower and reader of muscle for life, you’re not going to have that issue because you’re going to be doing a lot of things, right?

You’re going to be lifting with proper form. You’re going to be giving your body adequate recovery in your muscle groups, adequate recovery in between workouts. Which if you don’t, that can increase the risk for injury too, which is just obvious if your body hasn’t finished repairing. the area and then you’re going and trying to blast it again with another workout.

There’s a one, a greater chance that your form is going to fail [00:12:00] and to this greater chance of injury. So if you are, keeping your body properly hydrated, if you’re doing all these things correctly, Then you don’t have to worry about injury. You can push hard and heavy in the gym and you use your form to, to moderate what you can and can’t do.

When I am doing, there are certain exercises you can like if your last rep or two is a little bit sloppy, not a big deal, your bicep curl, like your arms exercises, your shoulder exercises, not that you should get sloppy necessarily, but you can get away with if you’re doing side raises and you’re coming down to your last rep and your last rep, it’s probably going to be, a little bit of a sloppy looking rep.

It’s, that, that’s okay. It’s not, if you get the weight up and it’s decent, that’s fine. But I don’t approach the big lifts with that mentality. I don’t approach my squats or deadlifts or pressing with that mentality. Wouldn’t say that I need to have picture perfect form on every single rep, but I want to be, there are certain things that need to be in on my deadlift.

I need my, my, my spine has to stay neutral. My hips and shoulders have to rise at the same pace. There’s certain things. And if [00:13:00] that starts to go out, then I’m just going to drop the weight and stop the rep. And with my pressing. I want to see my elbows tucked in. I want to see the weight in that groove.

I don’t want it going all over the place. And on, on the squat, I want my knees to be in line with my toes. Depth, obviously depth is not really related so much to injury. It’s more just the validity of the rep, but, and I want to make sure that my hips and shoulders are rising and lowering and, rising at the same pace.

So I’m not. You’ll see a common squat error that guys make is they’ll squat down and then they’ll shoot their hips up with their shoulders remaining at the same elevation. So they get like this and then good morning, the weight up, which is a lower back exercise like this, right?

So you like you have this heavyweight squat down, you’re in the squat position, shoot your hips up and then bring your shoulders up. That’s bad. That puts a lot of shearing force in the lower back. And. Depending on how strong your lower back is, again, you may never get hurt, but it just increases the risk.

I I pay pretty close attention to my form, at least I try to. Sometimes when it’s real heavy and, I know that when you’re in [00:14:00] that last rep it can be hard to maintain form. But I’d rather miss a rep and have to sit, that’s why I squat in a squat rack, because I’ve had to do that before.

I’ve had to sit the weight down. Just, heavy weight, go for that last rep, and as I’m pushing, as I’m, pushing up. I feel that if the only way to get this thing up is to start getting wobbly and start with my knees or start bringing, shooting my hip up higher. And then I’d rather just sit the weight down and yeah, it’s a pain in the ass.

You have to strip it and put it back. But I’d rather do that than do a sloppy rep because like I spoke about in the last podcast, getting injured sucks. You have, you miss time and it’s painful, it’s annoying. It’s just. I’m much, I want to avoid injury at all costs, and if that means that maybe I miss, what I could have gotten that one more rep, maybe.

Okay, fine, so I’m gonna, continue working on my strength so I can get those reps solid. So yeah, so I think that’s about all I have to say on that one. Alright, so let’s move on to the next question here, from Nick F., from High Springs, Florida. I don’t know where that is, but I’m in Tampa Bay area.

All right. So Nick, he [00:15:00] says, I’ve been in a calorie deficit since November, 2013, 190 pounds, 1900 calories. My body fat has gone from 25 to about 14. That’s a long, that’s, I doubt he’s been in a, I doubt he’s been strict on his diet if it’s been a year. And that’s great that he, that he has gotten down 10%, but a year of just put a perspective.

I’ve. I’ve worked with quite a few people that were very strict and on point with their diet and in a year, went from, I’ve had women go from 200 pounds to 120 ish. I’ve had guys lose upwards of 100 pounds in a year. But anyways, so Nick says his goal is 10%. Unfortunately his strength has suffered and some exercises were to suggest I proceed from here calorie wise.

So the, okay, when you are in a calorie deficit, when you’re cutting you can expect some strength loss and it depends though where you’re at. It depends on your conditioning. If you’re new to weightlifting, you’re going to get stronger. If you’re new to weightlifting, [00:16:00] you start doing things right and you go, calorie deficit, you’re going to get stronger.

You’re going to build muscle is what’s going to happen. I’m going to link an article down below where, talk about this. And, or if you are in a detrained state, meaning that you were once in, let’s say you were once muscular, once in shape, like if I were just to stop lifting period for a year and get fat and then decide to get back into it.

And go into calorie deficit and start weightlifting again. I’m going to build muscle because I have muscle memory on my side and muscle memory is a real thing. I’m going to link an article down below. Essentially I won’t get into the science of it, which I get more into in the article, but basically once you’ve built muscle you’ve permanently changed the structure of those of the muscle tissue and it building it the first time takes much longer than rebuilding it.

If you are. If you have muscle memory on your side then you can be in a calorie deficit and you’re going to gain muscle and strength. But if you are fairly experienced you’ve been in the gym for a bit and you’ve built that foundation, your newbie gains are behind you and you go into calorie deficit, you’re probably going to lose some strength.

Some people don’t. The only thing I can really think of on this is there’s probably just [00:17:00] a genetic factor here because. I tend to, I’ll lose a little bit of strength when I’m in a deficit, but my body seems to be resilient in that way where I won’t notice it and for like really nothing will change.

I can continue gaining strength in my first three weeks or so when I’m in a deficit and then my strength starts to plateau. I just, I’m just stuck like every, my, my weekly workouts are essentially just mirrored like same weight, same reps. Which is wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say disappointing because I’m expecting it, but it’s fun to at least that’s really what you get in there for.

You want to, you want to beat your numbers. So you just cruise in that sense. And then after about six weeks in a deficit, And I start to notice the strength, a bit of a strength decrease. I’ll lose. I usually don’t lose much weight in terms of weight on the bar. I’ll just lose reps. And in working with a lot of people, this seems to be the general case is no strength loss in the beginning.

Strength gain seems a little bit rarer, but no strength loss in the beginning. And then after about six weeks or so, a slight loss in strength, which kind of just. And depending on how long you’re in a [00:18:00] deficit, where, which me personally I don’t like to be in a deficit more than eight to 10 weeks. And I keep my body in a place where I’m never eight to 10 weeks away from looking a certain way.

If I need to get ready for some sort of photo shoot, if I need to get really lean, then, I’m eight weeks away from that essentially, which is like right now, I’m probably around 8 percent body fat. I weigh about 190 pounds. And I’m six two, by the way, a lot of people, I get asked that a lot, just, Because people want to probably know just for my body how I look and what does that translate to in terms of height and weight.

Which my weight has always been strangely low I’ll get guessed wrong, at if I go to Universal Studios or something like that or theme parks, they’ll guess me 10 15 pounds higher than I actually am. So that’s just strange, but that’s, in terms of the deficit, I don’t, because after eight, after about ten weeks is when it starts to just grind on me where my workouts, I’m having less energy, and I’m just starting to really feel it.

For the first, 68, six weeks or so in a deficit. I don’t feel it doesn’t really feel that different. I don’t get hungry or anything, whatever. But if you are losing a little bit of strength, [00:19:00] that’s fine. It’s, there’s, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing anything wrong as long as you’re, calories and your macros are set correctly.

And as long as you’re not over exercising and particularly not overdoing the cardio, which I’ll link an article down below on how much cardio you should do and why. But as long as you’re, you have everything right, then you should just know that what is, what you’re experiencing is how your body works basically is what it boils down to.

And also it’s just relevant for Nick that if he started at 25 percent and it was in a deficit. for a year. Or he was saying a deficit and he got down to 14%. That’s not actually being in a deficit for a year. If you are in a consistent calorie deficit for a year, you’re going to lose a lot of weight.

You’re going to lose I mean that, like I said, I’ll have people start at 300 pounds and then be at 200 pounds by the end of the year being in a deficit for a year. So my guess is Maybe his day to day intake was 1, 900. My guess is he probably wasn’t being too strict [00:20:00] on weighing and tracking his intake.

So some days it jumps up to 2, 100. Some days it’s 1, 800. Some days it’s 2, 000. Which, at the end of the week when you’re looking at your total weekly deficit. That obviously can skew it up or down in terms of what you think is happening. And then my guess is his cheat cheating was a bit out of control which, just know you can be a hundred percent, you could weigh and track every gram of food you put in your body during the week.

And let’s say, by the end of Monday through Friday, you’ve lost 300 grams of fat. You’ve lost, whatever, three quarters of a pound. And then the weekends come and you drink and you eat whatever you want. Cause you think it’s like your cheat days or whatever. And you can gain that all back in two days.

Easy, no problem. And a lot of people do that. And then they get into, it’s just a never ending treading water type of situation. I’ll link an article down below on cheat meals so you can see how to do it better. Basically where you can still enjoy yourself and eat, More or less whatever you want during during these really it comes down to one meal a [00:21:00] week, but you can prepare for you can do some things so you can enjoy yourself and not get in the way of the fat loss process at all.

But. The last part of his question here is what he should do now. And like I said, my guess is I’d have to get more information from him, but my guess is he hasn’t been that strict on his diet or has it, has been making some mistakes. So it sounds like somebody like this, if he’s still eating 1900 calories and he’s down to 14%, that means his metabolism, he hasn’t really slowed it down much is what it sounds like.

So he probably would just, if he wanted to get leaner, my guess is he could either do a reverse diet up to his goal. energy expenditure, which I’ll link an article down below on how to do that. But it may not be necessary depending on his body weight. If he weighs 180 pounds now, he probably could just, let’s say he weighs 180 pounds and he’s exercising three or four days a week or three or four hours a week.

Let’s say he could probably drop his calories to 1700 a day. Keep his protein high, carbs, moderate, high fats, moderate, low, and and up his exercise a bit to maybe six hours a week and can, [00:22:00] and then just continue losing fat without any issues. But if he is, it depends, like if you’re feeling, a bit run down and his strength is just declining week after week, then I would say just reverse diet up and enjoy the food.

Your body’s going to feel good. You’re going to sleep better. You’re going to, your training’s going to go better. And then once you have your intake up to, where it should be to maintain, then you could go back into a deficit and, going from 14 percent to 10%. It’s very easy.

That’s 200 pound guy needs to lose, let’s say eight pounds of fat or whatever. That’s two months if you do it, that’s what I would say. Okay, so the next question here is from Braden and he’s in Okinawa, Japan. I want to go to Japan one day. I heard Tokyo is a cool place.

So he says creatine and caffeine, does one inhibit the other or is this a myth? Studies have claimed caffeine renders creatine ineffective. Are these studies outdated, misleading, or do we have to choose between these two helpful supplements? Good question. I’m going to link an article down below where I talk a bit about it.

Basically long story short is there are two or three studies. I think I’ve seen there’s definitely one for sure. I [00:23:00] think I’ve seen two or three though No more than three. I just don’t remember. It’s in the article. I wrote it months and months ago So I just don’t remember off the top of my head, but basically like the mechanism Whereby create it’s caffeine can inhibit the the effects of the forced production benefits of creatine and not vice versa.

Creatine doesn’t have any effect on caffeine. It’s caffeine would be the antagonist in a sense. The mechanism is plausible, but it’s not, there’s not enough research on it. to know just yet. Are we just looking at confounding factors of the research that’s available and are things skewed?

We just don’t know just yet. It’s possible though, if there’s some more research that’s going to be done on it, then it very well may come out that, pretty well established, don’t, you don’t want to have caffeine and creatine together. And personally just to be quote unquote safe.

I don’t take like my pre workout. That I use, which is my pre workout from my supplement company, legion that, this is why I left creatine out. You’ll see creatine in a lot of pre workouts. And I think the [00:24:00] reason why companies include creatine is because monohydrate is not very expensive and it works.

And if somebody is not on, if they’re not taking creatine and they start taking creatine, they’re going to notice the difference. Give it a week or two to accumulate in your system and you’re gonna, you’re gonna lift more weight in the gym. And but that. That’s not really what you want from a pre workout.

You want increased energy. You want more short term, like you want more energy, you want more focus, you want to be able to, you’re pushed your body’s performance limits in, in, in a, over the course of the next hour, you can buy creatine and just take, it’s so cheap. You can buy a creatine post workout type supplement like what I sell, or you could just buy monohydrate powder by itself and just take five grams a day.

So I also didn’t really like the logic of including. creatine in a pre workout. I’d rather use that space in terms of grams per serving and that money to put in something that is going to be immediately beneficial in terms of performance. So I recommend if you’re taking, if you’re using caffeine and you’re taking creatine to just take them separately.

So [00:25:00] in terms of Cause caffeine, it remains in your system, depending on how your body metabolizes it, it can remain your system up to six hours, six, seven, even eight hours of, you drink a cup of coffee. Again, I wouldn’t take them at the same time. Let’s say if you’re, don’t take your creatine pre workout with your caffeine.

There is one study I’ve seen that indicates that. Creating post workout with your post workout meal may be the best way to take it. Again, I say may because it’s not exactly definitive proof, but at least it’s one, it’s some data to think with basically and cause I guess in, in the study which I’ll link, I mean I’ll just link the study down below actually, the data did show that post workout supplementation versus pre workout supplementation with creatine that post workout they, there were more, it was more beneficial in a post workout state.

So personally what I do is I have. Caffeine before I work out and then I have creatine with my post workout meal, which there’s definitely a problem there. My, my [00:26:00] body is a very high metabolizer of caffeine and I learned why in this DNA fit test, basically. I have there are two Two or maybe three and we’ll get into it when I do that one.

There’s two or three genes that are responsible for for clearing out what was it? It was like, I would say toxins, but I hate the whole toxins trendy thing right now. Anyways for just clearing out, I guess it would be a detox type pathways really actually. And I have, I think it was two and I have one is like a slow.

Metabolizer of toxins and the other is a fast metabolizer. I don’t have the slow, I have two of the fast. This also then would relate to alcohol, because alcohol is a poison basically. But what it means is my body clears toxins very quickly. The effects come very quickly and they clear very quickly.

So with caffeine, that’s why caffeine hits me very fast. I can have caffeine and within 10 minutes, I’m like, it’s fully, I’m ready to go. My, my tolerance is also high. I don’t like a few hundred milligrams of caffeine. I feel it, but it doesn’t make my heart race. I feel, it makes [00:27:00] me feel good actually, but that’s gone in an hour.

I could go to sleep. I not that I’m tired, but it’s just out of my system completely in an hour. So for me, when I’m having my, my the caffeine. There may be still a little bit in my system, but it’s probably a lot of it’s already cleared out. For you, I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t necessarily worry about that.

I would just don’t take the caffeine creatine together. And if you really want to be safe to the point of quote unquote paranoid or whatever, then have it later in the day. So if you have with the meal, with carbs which can help when you have creatine, you do want to take it with carbohydrate cause it helps with absorption into the muscles.

Which kind of sounds like bro science, but there’s I it’s an article that I’m going to be linking on creatine. You can go check out the research on it. It’s pretty simple though. The mechanism is makes sense. Anyway, so if you have your, caffeine before you work out. If you really want to be quote unquote safe, have your have your creatine later in the day when you have carbs, it could be at dinner even.

And you would avoid any potential interference that might occur. Okay, so let’s move on to the next one. This is from Jay Helman, 84 from [00:28:00] Calgary, Canada says, Hey Mike, with regards to protein spiking adding in forms of BCAs to whey protein to make it test higher. How does Legion way stack up with the added leucine?

BCA calories per serving it’s been argued that labels are incorrect. Your take. So if you’re not familiar what he’s talking about, he’s talking about my whey protein product that I have with my supplement company, Legion athletics, or the URL is legionsupplements. com, but I want to expand the company beyond just supplements.

Like I want to do, we’re going to do a lot more cool stuff with apparel. And maybe even some workout gear in the future and stuff. So that’s why it’s I want it to be more of an athletics thing. But right now we just have supplements. We do have some apparel and amino spiking is if you’re not familiar with it it is basically, it’s pretty simple.

So a supplement company. They buy some cheap shitty way from China, which we get contacted by these people every week where I could be paying half my cost on my way if I didn’t care about quality and I just said, yeah, sure, ship me whatever you got. So you get this shitty way from China, you get it tested and it’s crap.

Let’s [00:29:00] say it’s 30 grams for a scoop would be like 15 grams of protein, carbs and fat. And you want to raise that but you don’t want to pay for good quality way because you want to pay 3 a pound or whatever you’re paying. So what you do is you add a cheap amino acid like lysine, for instance, not leucine but lysine.

Leucine is actually expensive. You add a cheap amino acid and you then. Technically you can count those grams of amino acids toward the protein count of the product. So now if I added additional 10 grams of lysine per 30 gram scooper, it’s now quote unquote a 25 gram protein per scoop.

And you look on the nutrition when you’re the consumer are looking at that, you go, Ooh, 30, 33 gram serving and 25 grams protein. That’s a high quality protein. It would be. if it weren’t immuno spiked. There are quite a few companies that have been caught doing this.

I don’t think I’m going to name any names because I’m these controversies pop up fairly often. But if you just Google, spiking you you’ll see some big name companies that basically [00:30:00] people like I think something popped up on Reddit recently where you have people, they work in labs that, these third party labs and these people, they take it upon themselves to go buy, 12 different brands of protein and just run it through their lab analyses and see what comes up and then put it on the internet kind of thing.

And I think more recently though, there was a. It was, it might’ve been a university that did it. It was a bit more formal than that. And a couple of big companies were amino spiking. They were saying that 23 grams of protein per scoop and no, there were, maybe 16 grams plus amino acids to spike it up.

And also different companies, depending on how shady your manufacturer is and how much they care about GMP good manufacturing practices, they’ll just invent numbers. They’ll just, nutrition facts panel, who cares? Oh, it’s 15 grams. The macro breakdown per 30 grams would be like, 15 protein I don’t know, 8 carb and 7 fat.

Then, if in terms of like that’s what those grams of powder breaks down into, then they just change it and they’ll be like, no, it’s now 22, three [00:31:00] two or something like that. So that’s with supplements. I learned this. It’s the hard way as a consumer and then learned it really as a having a supplement company myself now, how shady this industry is.

And there was a, I think it was just recently, yeah, I saw it was a New York times picked it up. It might’ve been the New York state attorney is going after supplement companies that are big supplement companies in Walmart that are just straight lying. Like you think you’re buying Garcinia Camboja pills and you’re buying nothing.

You’re buying. Rice flour or whatever. I’ll link that down below. So this industry is, it sucks. Simple. It’s the supplement industry sucks. The people that are like the big industry, there are some companies that I do respect like optimum nutrition for instance. That’s a company that I’ve seen with, spiking tests that have been done.

Optinutrition has always come out clean. I’ve never seen like there, there are claims on their nutrition facts panels from everyone that I’ve seen were spot on. Like maybe they tested a half a gram difference. That’s just the difference of, that’s not [00:32:00] because on is doing anything wrong.

So there are companies out there that, and that’s not surprising. On’s a billion dollar plus a year company. It’s not in their interest to scam. And it’s owned by, A huge pharmaceutical company that owns a ton of farms that actually produce the whey. So they, they own that whole vertical supply chain of whey protein.

So why would they, why would they risk their reputation to, to squeeze an extra 5 a profit when they already get that? The cheapest whey protein on the market. You can’t get cheaper than Glandia because they own the farms. But that said, there are quite a few decent size or even large brands out there that are just run by scum knew these guys.

They just don’t care. All they care about is. Making money and you’ll see that and make, you go check out their Instagrams and all they do is brag about their shit that they have. And, show their like the rich kids would be like, I love the shots of It’s the steering wheel of the Ferrari with the Rolex, so you see the Rolex there off there, and then it’s a sunset, and it’s [00:33:00] oh, it’s a beautiful sunset, and then trying to be inspirational, or trying to pretend, like I love also in some of these guys they’ll try to like, they’ll try to say look at what we did look at this awesome Lamborghini that I got, that we did it team what are you, no, there’s no we in that shit, what are you, who You’re anybody that falls for that kind of shit like what hello look at this person, dude This is a lot of these guys are just narcissistic Sociopaths and yeah, that might sound me just going off and whatever but trust me There’s I’ve been a little bit surprised with some of the behind the scenes stuff that I’ve seen in the industry and how Little shits are given about not only producing a good product, but that’s the base of any company, right?

Produce a good product, give people what you say you’re giving them and satisfy their just product needs. And then of course, companies can go beyond that and building community and building recognition with people. And even then you can go higher into where you are helping people self actualize and become the type of [00:34:00] person they want to be and stuff, which is where I aspire.

Yeah. Yeah. To take things with Legion and take things with Musterful Life, not just sell. Pills and powders, not just sell things, but really help people find other people that are like minded and help people really achieve their goals and in, in terms of, fitness it’s not just about building muscle.

It’s not just about looking good. When you are, when your body’s in is healthy and strong and vibrant, that changes your entire life. It changes everything. It changes your your self confidence, which changes how you approach your work. It changes how you approach your relationships your, both like romantic relationships, friendships and whatever.

So anyways, that’s that’s the amino spiking story. And now back to my protein is a hundred percent way isolate. Which is very high, that means it’s 90 plus percent protein by, by weight. And I went with that for not just that reason, but there’s that meaning that.

See when you, it’s not that whey concentrates are bad at all, it’s just that you don’t, that’s where, with a whey concentrate, [00:35:00] Unless you really trust the brand, just know that’s where the shady shit really starts to be, starts, is you gotta have a whey concentrate that’s 50 percent protein by weight and the rest, carb and fat and then amino spiked and maybe fudged even a little bit on the nutrition facts.

And now all of a sudden you have something that looks like a way isolate. You know what companies will often do. To, but if something’s 100 percent isolate and it truly is, it’s going to be, it’s going to be a high protein by weight because that is the nature of why we isolate it. They isolate the protein and the carbs and fats are very low because there’s like basically no lactose.

So we have a company, if they do a blend, let’s say of a way concentrate isolate blend and the first ingredient is concentrate. That means there’s more concentrate than isolate and it means that there could be 99 percent concentrate. And in 1 percent isolate, it could be, there could be the isolate could be on that on the.

just so they can say it’s a blend. And just because as a consumer you associate way isolate with a high quality protein. So concentrates, [00:36:00] it’s not that they’re bad. It’s not that isolates are going to give you better gains necessarily. It’s just if you see a concentrate and if it’s a brand like optinutrition, I trust them.

They’re way concentrates. Like I said, I’ve, they, they’ve checked out every time that every tests that I’ve seen, they’ve always checked out. So you can trust that. Isolates do also offer though the benefit of no lactose, which, lactose, many people are lactose intolerant to some degree.

I’m not. Even on my genetic test with DNAfit I don’t, I’m not lactose intolerant. Which makes sense. I do fine with dairy and I always have, but even that there is a point where too much lactose in a day, even though I’m not lactose intolerant, upsets my stomach. Like in terms of whey protein and whey concentrate, if I do more than 50, 60 max 70 grams a day, which I really shouldn’t be anyway, but that’s only two, if I do more than two or three scoops of whey in a day, my stomach will be upset.

And even at three scoops, it starts to not feel so good. So there, there also is that, that benefit of of way isolate. And in my pro in the case of my [00:37:00] product, it’s a hundred percent way isolate. And we added leucine four grams of leucine to every serving because there’s research indicates that basically the more leucine, the higher leucine content in the meal and especially in a post workout meal.

The more resulting protein synthesis occurs. And that’s what we want to do is spike protein synthesis after working out. So we added leucine to to, to every serving, but those leucine grams are not counted toward the protein. And it’s actually funny when I first was, explaining this is the formulation to my manufacturer.

This is my first manufacturer who were, they were great, but they just couldn’t, they weren’t, I switched to an even bigger company. The first was they have all the certifications and they’re a legit company based in New Jersey, big, nice facility, but they’re not nearly as big as the company I switched to in the company I switched to.

They just buy so much in terms of raws. You just can’t. basically. Unless you’re, I have like weird little rinky dink companies that contact me that, they look like it’s an office like mine with some flick. If I just stuck a hundred thousand dollars in machines in it and then said, [00:38:00] Oh, I can make your supplements.

And they’ll offer me absurdly low prices where I just don’t even trust. Like I don’t trust their, Raws, because where you source raws is hugely important. As I was saying, you can get cheap shit protein from China. You can get cheap shit anything from all around the world. You need a manufacturer that, one, you need to care where your raws come from and that they’re high quality raws.

And two, you need to know that your manufacturer cares. And know that they’re not screwing you. Because they can do that. I could say, I want this awesome product. And they could go, yeah, sure, no problem. 10 a bottle yeah. And I go, wow, that’s a good price, okay. And then what I don’t know is, the amino acids or the things that they’re sourcing are just very low quality source from wherever, where they don’t, yeah, they don’t care.

Basically is what it boiled down to. So you have to watch out for that stuff. But the first manufacturer I was going with who are, they’re just, they’re a good company, but they’re used to working with, they work with a lot of sports nutrition companies, big ones. They’ve done stuff for big companies.

So they’re used to certain practices. And one of the things they’re used to is amino spiking. And because it’s legal, you can do that. [00:39:00] When I first was talking about my protein formulation, they were assuming that I was adding leucine to try to spike the protein content. And and then later I had to explain to them when I found out.

No. No, I’m adding it because it’s a good here’s why I’m adding it and I don’t want it counted toward the protein. It’s not there for that purpose. And then that made sense to them also because they were thinking like leucine is an expensive amino acid for spiking. Like you would use something much cheaper.

Anyway, so in the course, in the case of my protein, it’s not amino spiked and I’m going to be reaching out to reach out to some big labs. Actually, I’m going to start getting my stuff just third party tested. Also for now that I’m established and running, it’s gonna, I want it for my own I trust my manufacturer there, but they’re good.

They’re a massive company. They do a ton of work for very big pharmaceutical companies. They have very tight quality control, every certification you can imagine. So I’m not worried about it, but I want to know for myself probably do it quarterly. Just get everything tested, bottles, just take them right off.

What is going to [00:40:00] you, what’s going to go to my fulfillment house. I’m just going to take and send to labs. And then also I’m going to show these things in my marketing as well show the analyses. Okay. Thanks. Which is it counts for something, at least it can be frauded.

There are companies that fraud that in, they find shady. Labs that are going to, they’re getting paid to basically publish whatever, to publish results or whatever you want. Or the trickier scam is what companies will do is they’ll do a short run of a high quality product. So they’ll still launch a product with exactly what is on the ingredient label.

They’ll get that tested and then show that and be like, see, Hey, here it is from this big, it was big lab, good reputation. And then from there then all future runs. are like, amino spiked or just missing certain ingredients or lower quality raws or whatever. But they’re still showing that, that initial.

So anyway, that there’s another like little scam. It’s just, unfortunately you have to be very skeptical with supplements and your trust in the brand and the people [00:41:00] behind the brand is everything. Marketing means nothing before and afters mean nothing like really. Pretty much everything Amazon reviews don’t even give me I have I do well on Amazon but there are some companies that destroy Amazon and the Now that I’m like in that world and I’m seeing how it works.

There’s I mean I don’t want to, I’m not going to call any companies out, but it’s a battleground on Amazon. And there are these companies, there are some companies that have gotten into wars. They go hard on each other. They, there’s some interesting things that I was reading about and now I’ve heard about from other sellers and like who are involved in this stuff or we’re on the sidelines watching it of companies.

Running day, I guess Craigslist, it was like the vehicle where they do these things and they were not only just buying negative reviews for each other’s products, like that’s just, that was just standard practice where they would, all you, let’s say you’d say you’re selling something on Amazon, you wake up tomorrow and there are 51 star reviews on your product [00:42:00] all of a sudden.

And your sales rank has tanked to half. It’s normal where it sustains, so they were doing that, but then it even got trickier where they were One company I guess was they were, there was a time when Amazon, the, you could order up to 999 units of a product. And so what this company was doing is they were placing max orders for their competitor.

And, but they were, I don’t know, I didn’t get all the details of the scam, but basically those products, they were not actually buying. They were doing it either with stolen credit cards that then they would. They would dispute those charges or the charges would get disputed. So in the end, the company that was getting screwed, it was getting the orders.

They didn’t actually get the money. But they had to pay all the shipping, right? Or they were shipping it to some using some shipping scam, or then they would deny it and send it back. Long story short, what would happen is Your company gets an order of a thousand bottles. They were doing it at a time.

So you might get 5, 000 bottles. Let’s say your entire stock where you have sitting there for the next month. Let’s say, cause it, or some of these [00:43:00] companies sell so much. They would, I don’t even know if 5, 000 bottles will last a month, but massive orders on Amazon that you have to pay that shipping, right?

That you’re paying Amazon to ship that stuff out for you. In that case that’s thousands and thousands of dollars, but then it all is going to have to come back. And then you’re out of stock now for, let’s say, three to four weeks while this gets sorted out and everything gets put back into stock and re inventory, which I don’t, I’m not sure on those returns, if the company would have to pay it, but with the volume of these companies we’re doing, I’m talking about losing 20, 000 a day in income and so these companies go back and forth with things like this, buying fake reviews, out of stocking each other, just doing all kinds of shady stuff.

So yeah, the Amazon game is very interesting. Buying fake reviews, by the way, you can, it’s so common in the Amazon that if you’re not doing it, like I don’t do that. I don’t pay for any reviews. Even Amazon technically would ban you if they find you, but they don’t ban a lot of these companies that so [00:44:00] obviously abuse it.

So I don’t know what to say about that. But you’ll see products with thousands of reviews, five star average or four and a half star average or four star average, thousands and thousands of reviews. As a consumer, if you don’t know, you’re seeing like. This multivitamin has thousands of reviews. It must be good.

Come on. But what you don’t know is they’re basically all pot bought for, or they’re all bought. Or, 80 percent of them were paid for. And so that’s, even as a consumer, you have to be skeptical with that. Don’t necessarily just see a big number of reviews of something on Amazon or anywhere and think that don’t let that be the closing factor.

Oh, whatever, it must be good. Because no, that, you can, you need, there is no review system that can’t be gamed. And Amazon is gamed so hard it’s not even funny. And if all I cared about was money, I would just do the same thing. I wouldn’t attack other companies. What’s the point of that? It’s a waste of time and effort.

Let them do their thing and, Supplements are not a zero sum game. People try different things. If I didn’t, if all I care about is money, I would, all of a sudden you would see, like my pre workout pulse has about 500 reviews on Amazon, [00:45:00] and it’s been on the site for a year, and I’ve sold tens of thousands of bottles of it, and I have, a very engaged following, engaged customers, and we do a lot to help, people and they like that and they leave reviews.

But I’ve never paid or incentivized a review. And but if I didn’t care, I would just do yeah, Craigslist set up, bam. You, there’s a simple little way that they do it. So it looks as a verified purchase and there you go. And I could have, I could add. A hundred reviews a week to all my products instantly and that would just make me a lot of money, but it’s shady It’s a bad mojo bad karma.

I don’t believe in that kind of stuff So all that babble basically my point is There are a lot of supplement scams out there and a lot of them are tricky and you just wouldn’t know Unless you really know what to look for. And even then you don’t totally know, but you could at least get an idea like, yeah, this is probably bullshit.

Even in terms of I’ve seen there’s some new company. I’m not going to say that I saw randomly who are 100 percent trying to copy me to the point of they tried to copy my website. They tried to the layout. They [00:46:00] tried to copy my formulations of my products. They tried to copy my copy my, my angle.

It’s I’m, it’s pretty close. I’m talking to my lawyer. Cause I’m all for competition, live and let live, but you can’t just straight like you got to do at least your own thing, put your own twist on it. You can’t just go, Oh, that guy’s doing some cool stuff. I’m just gonna do exactly that. You know what I mean?

That’s grounds for a lawsuit. So anyway, so this company pops up and they’ve taken a very similar formulations to mine and added quite a few ingredients that I know are expensive for so you take a product or I know how much my product is costing me to manufacture and I’m spending a lot more than most companies and my margins are much lower than most companies and they’re selling their product for more or less the same price, but they have an additional, what would cost about probably about 15 of a 10 to 15, no less than 10, let’s say 10 minimum of an additional raws.

And then you have to add more flavoring. Flavoring is pretty expensive. Flavoring, sweetening, if you’re not going to use cheap stuff, like [00:47:00] I use natural stuff that can be a few dollars a bottle just alone. So the more stuff you have, the more flavor you need, the more sweetener you need. We’re looking at an additional 13, 14 in raw costs, and they’re selling the product for the same price.

So there’s even things like that now that I’m a more informed consumer because of my work in the industry where I can look at certain products and be like, there’s no way that there’s no way that has what it says it has or that it’s good quality. So you know, yeah, it could have all that if it was just crap sourced, like the cheapest possible.

You don’t even care where these Ross come from. You just need them to tell you, Oh yeah, sure. It’s glutamine. Yeah. And then, but what is it really and what quality? In the end it boils down to, do you trust the brand? Who are the people behind the brand? Do you trust them? Look at the executives, the CEO, what is he like?

If all he talks about is how much money he has and shows is that type of person. And then I’ll have part of youth and then, Vegas, this, that cars, girls watches. If the CEO is wants to be Dan Bilzerian or trying to be Dan [00:48:00] Bilzerian, just know he’s probably screwing you. That’s just that type of person.

I’ve known those people in person. I have a great example of one guy that was the ultimate, just didn’t give a shit. He would ask, he would behave, he would, he was a likable guy, charming, and he would talk the talk, but in the end, he didn’t care about helping people. He didn’t give a shit. He wanted money and that’s it.

And he’s one of those guys like he’d always have flashy watches and he’d be showing off his car and that’s all he cared about was how much money he was making and partying. As a consumer, I would say, it’s not, yeah, I could say this is a pitch for my stuff, but do the same for me. Check me out.

And if you trust me, then that’s a reason to buy my stuff. And also you can look at the products and like I said, I’m going to be. I’m going to be getting some third party testing that I’m like, I’m doing everything I can to try to be to make it as easy to trust me as possible. And in, show that my products are what they, what I say they are and show that the formulations are based on good science.

And I’m very transparent about everything. But in the end, you do have to go with your gut, your intuition on the whole [00:49:00] brand and the people behind it. And what their message is. For instance, like I’m going to be starting my affiliate program soon. And gonna be sponsoring some people, doing that whole thing.

And one thing that I’m not interested in doing is I’m not interested in sponsoring super drugged out dudes or girls. Because yeah, I might look impressive and, but that’s not really, that doesn’t resonate with me and it doesn’t resonate with my message of Natural weightlifting, getting fit, staying healthy.

I’m all for looking good and being in great shape. But that is, it’s just a little bit dishonest when companies are taking these guys that are steroided out to the gills and these guys are like, oh yeah, taking my post workout drink to make sure I make gains. Yeah, okay. Your post workout drink with, and then what, and then the insulin and the five grams of steroids.

Oh, okay, cool. So anyways, I guess that’s just my message to you as a consumer is be careful, really look into the companies you’re buying from. Don’t assume that you’re getting. What you’re paying for. All right. So that’s [00:50:00] all for this episode. I know it ran on a bit long. I’m sorry about that.

So next, next week I’m going to have this DNA fit interview, interesting stuff. I think you’re going to like it cause it’ll just give you some insight into your body as well. And you’ll probably, some things will probably click for you where you’ll go, Oh, that makes sense. That’s why I always this or that or whatever.

Even if you don’t, get the test done. Yeah, that’s next week and see you then. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness.

Also head over to my website at www. muscleforlife. com where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written. I release a new one almost every day actually. I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at musclefullife.

com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.