Ep. #581: The Best of Muscle for Life: Newbie Gains, Stubborn Belly Fat, and Staying Motivated . . .

Hello, and welcome to muscle for life. I’m Mike Matthews. Thank you for taking time outta your day. To listen to me. Talk about health and fitness things. Now, as of right now, I have produced over 500 episodes of muscle for life and they total over. 700 hours of content probably. And I’ve talked about a huge variety of things related to getting fit and healthy, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise, like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to stuff.

That’s it is more faddish like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein and MCT oil. Two more unfamiliar territories, like body weight set point and fasted training. Now some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few. Key takeaways that just about anyone can benefit from at least that’s what I tell myself.

And as cool as that is it also poses a problem for you. My dear listener, ain’t nobody got time for that. 500 plus episodes, 700 plus hours. I mean, some people do actually make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts, but according to my w bang analytics software, many listeners do tune in on a regular.

Basis, but they definitely do not catch every installment of the show and thus miss out on insights that could help them get a little bit better inside and outside the gym. And people have also been telling me that they would like me to do more shorter multi topic episodes like my Q and a, you know, stuff that is more easily consumed during a.

For example. And so I got an idea why not do a best of series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips and moments from my most popular episodes. So this way people who are new to the show can quickly determine if it is for them or not. Because if they listen to a couple best of episodes and don’t like them, then chances are, they’re just not gonna like the podcast.

And for those out there who do enjoy the podcast who do like what I’m doing, but just don’t have the time or the inclination to listen to all of my stuff. Well, those people will then be able to still benefit from the discussions and find new episodes to go listen to. So in this installment of the best of muscle for life, you will be hearing.

Picked more souls from three of my most popular episodes. One Paul relia on how to keep making progress after your newbie gains have been exhausted. Two why belly fat is so stubborn and how to lose it. And three, this was a motivational one, a Moy Monday as I was calling them how to motivate yourself to keep working out.

And so let’s start with Paul Velia on how to keep making progress as an intermediate or advanced weightlifter. And if you like the little snippets that I’ve chosen for you, and you want to go listen to the full interview, this one was published February 20th, 2017. So you can go find it. If you just search for.

R E V E L I a it’ll pop up. You can search my podcast feed or my YouTube channel and it’ll pop. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports, nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world.

And we’re on top. Because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dies, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe.

But there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don’t. Pills powders and potions to get into great shape. And frankly, most of them are virtually useless. There are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat build muscle and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in leg lesions products to check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and protein bars.

Pre-workout post workout, supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more head. To www.bylegion.combylegion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast, peeps use the coupon code M FFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you wanna see more of it, and if you also.

All natural evidence based supplements that work, please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love. Like producing more podcasts like this. I’d love to hear from your personal experience and also your experience, coaching people, how things change. And so when you go from that you’re coming out of your newbie phase into the intermediate phase and then eventually into the advance.

How does that really look? How does that play out and what things do you really have to start paying attention to and what is gonna determine. Your progress from that, you know, again, so you’ve gained your first 15 to 20 pounds of muscle and you want to gain if you’re a guy, if you’re a girl about half that, and you wanna double that though, you know, what got you to that first 15 is not gonna get you to doubling it.

And how does that really look? Yeah, it’s it’s such a great topic because as a child of weightlifting and nutrition and from the nineties and learning all that I could from the muscle magazines You were often taught things about over training and eating, you know, twice a year, weight in protein per grams, per day, and eating 10 meals a day and so forth.

So I always felt like I was just missing out on progressing because I wasn’t able to do some of those things. I wasn’t resting enough or I wasn’t eating enough protein. And so what I would often find is when I would get through a beginner phase where I would make a lot of great progress and feel great for six, eight months, I would reach that place where you go into the gym, the weights aren’t going up.

Sometimes they’re going backwards. You don’t feel as good. And I would just stop going to the gym for a couple weeks at a time just to get that back. yeah. Just to regain that you. If you’re not getting a positive response from something that you’re doing well, maybe I’ll just go out drinking with my friends instead of, you know, spending all this time in the gym.

And then lo and behold, when you get back in the gym, you make some progress again, . And so there was actually a lesson there that I was not paying attention to. And that was, you know, the lesson of tapering or deloading , of undulating your intensity. And I think the most important thing when we talk about, when you go from a beginner to, in an intermediate is paying attention to your training volume.

The best way to progress is to increase your training volume. But a lot of us, when we’re a beginner, we just try to increase our training volume over a single session. So if you’re training arms and you’re getting 6,000 pounds of volume for arms, well, let’s try 6,500 pounds. , there is a maximum recoverable volume that you can train in a single session.

And just so everybody listening knows volume are referring to the number of reps basically. And so you have the reps and the weight that you’re moving and there’s the. Yeah. Volume is weight times reps, time sets. Right. So you’re just multiplying 10 pounds, times 10 sets, times 10 reps.

Right? Right. So that’s your, or you just save total reps, mul you know, multiply by, by total weight. But yeah it’s getting to that bottom of how much weight did you lift? In this workout in this week, month, or absolutely. Okay, good per body part. And once you start training, paying attention to that, you can start saying, well, if I’m doing 6,000 pounds of volume per week, what if I split it up and did some different frequency?

So maybe twice a week, you hit the same body part and you hit 12 or 11,000 pounds of volume, but split over two sessions, right? This is where things get really interesting. And this was what I like to call my second newbie phase, because I was so afraid early on, you know, after reading all the magazines over training and you only want to hit a body part once a week that hitting a body part twice a week was going to destroy me.

The opposite was the case. When I found a program when the internet started to become more fashionable, I started looking online and doing research on what was actually the truth. I found that more training volume, more frequency was what I needed to make that next level of progression. And so I find that when you take someone who’s been on a single body part per day, split.

Or just training a body part once a week, even if they’re pairing body parts and then you put them where they’re training body part twice a week, but undulating intensities, right? So you’re not doing the same exact workout twice a week. You’re doing maybe a higher intensity one day, meaning a heavier, harder workout, intensity.

What I’m referring to as percentage of your one rep max. Right? So if you’re training at 80% of your one rep max. Or in the 80 to 90 range one day. Yep. And then 50 to 60 another day. Yep. What we might call, consider a pump day or, you know, high rep volume day. So those are the kind of things that become very exciting because then you’re start to progress linearly again, just like you did.

When you started, you start to see increases in muscle fiber, you start to see increases in performance. Low and behold, the more you train, the faster you recover from your training. So although you’ll initially see some more doms, depending on how, what kind of training you’re doing, you’re gonna start to notice you recover quicker.

And so when you go from beginner to intermediate, that’s probably the most important factor. Are there any like general tips that you can kind of, just key lessons that you’ve learned that has gotten you to now where you can go, okay. I think I’m gonna change this and you know, where you can now program your own workouts to really meet your.

Your psychological, emotional and physical needs. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing for me is that, you know, I’ve gone through different phases where I’ve competed as a physique athlete. I’ve competed as a strength athlete. You know, I have aspirations of doing more competitions of wanting to look good for photo shoots of just wanting to represent what I do, my sport, my lifestyle.

I want to walk around and people to go. That guy is clearly doing something with fitness. Like, you know, like nothing makes me happier than checking out at the grocery store. And the clerk says, are these things good for building muscle? Yeah. , you know, like I’m like, why would they ask I’ve had that too.

People actually at the grocery store ask for advice, you know what I mean? Like, yo, so, so, so what kind of. Wait what kind of program do you need? Whatever, whatever food you have on there, some kind of magic that they don’t know about, like, oh, are those chips good or is that protein bar good?

You know, so, yeah. I mean, think the most important thing is just the internet is just so amazing. I mean, I get to attend seminars and be, you know, because I was associated with lane he’s dragged me around the world to be a part of these. I mean, I know more people with doctor in front of the, in front of their name than I can even name right now.

You know, you know, I already mentioned Dr. Mike ZK, but there, you know, there is a whole slew of people that are now doing research beyond what people do in the gym. They’re actually creating studies just for this purpose to look at how we should be progressing. How do you build more muscle is going to failure gonna help you build more muscle?

Or is it total volume? That’s gonna build more muscle, like where is the answer? And the great part. there probably is no answer, but we’re just getting little pieces of what works and what works better for that person and that person. And constantly challenging yourself. I kind of see it as a puzzle.

That’s being built from the inside out. You know what I mean? We don’t know where it really ends, but at least we’re getting, it gives us more of a picture comes in. Oh, okay. That’s interesting. We never really saw it like that. And it’ll probably be like that until we die and it’ll probably never be done.

But Mike Mike Zorros had a great quote. He was, you know, he’s been studying daily undulating periodization. Basically you’re doing three different models, power, strength, and speed . And so he basically did a study with them all in the same order, the power strength in the hypertrophy day.

And then he switched the. And he basically said, so what I found was this program is better than the other program. Does that mean it’s the best program? No, it means it’s only the second worst. Yep. So like, we’re not eliminating. I think the unicorn is going to be what is optimal.

Everyone wants to know what’s optimal. Yep. You hit the nail on the head. What’s optimals what gets you most jacked up to get in the gym and do something. If that’s orange. If that’s power yoga. If that’s CrossFit, if that’s the Frank CEPI fitness disc I don’t care what it is. Whatever gets you jacked up to go do something that’s gonna give you much better results than a program that you look at and go, well, this is the perfect program.

I guess I should do it. You’re just not gonna get the same results. So totally. That’s why I like competing. That’s why I like doing you know, eat competitions or power lifting meets or, you know, whatever it is. If someone challenged me to do a CrossFit competition, Who knows it, that might get me excited to do something new, you know?

So there’s I’m open to all of it. And like you said when clients reach out to me and go, Hey, coach what if I do CrossFit one day a week? Is that bad? Yeah. Yeah. Oh no. Are you excited? Do you go there and have fun and talk to people and push yourself, you know, pass your perceived limitations, then it’s gonna be good for you.

So, yeah, I am all for, you know, blending the evidence based optimization of your training. Yeah. With. The psychology of it, because the psychology of the athlete I’ve said this before is the most important thing to the point of with diet. So it, so just to make it clear for people listening and I, and you tell me if you agree or what you’ve experienced and cuz I’ve experienced it myself with my body and then just working with people and so forth.

Is that again, like. Like you were saying in the beginning, you know, it can be pretty loose with your calories and pretty loose with your macros and you’ll see quickly that as long as you’re in the gym and putting in the work and working on a decent program, everything just continues to go up.

So you’re like, Hey, yeah, I guess it doesn’t really matter. Like I ate, you know, maybe I only ate a half a gram of protein per pound of body weight for the last two days. Yeah. I don’t see any difference and, you know, okay, I’ll bring it back up. But then when you get into that intermediate phase, It seems like fluctuating.

If you’re, if your calories and your macros, especially your protein and carbs in particular is what I’ve seen. If they begin to fluctuate too much it negatively impacts training is yeah, like it gets in the way of, you know, it’s hard to build that momentum, which I. Have you know, anyone that has bolted in, in, in a proper, you know, I say that, but you know what I mean?

Like anybody that has consistently maintained a caloric surplus and kept their macros relatively tight, you get into that Mo like you build momentum and you feel good and you have energy in the gym and you continue to make progress. And I, what I’ve seen is that the people that have the most trouble getting into that groove are people whose nutrition is very volatile.

Is that something that you’ve noticed. . Yeah. So you touched on a very important point and that is what is going to optimize your progress. And that is your performance in the gym. And if your nutrition is not consistent, if you are not eating enough carbs one day, so that you’re not hydrated properly, your muscles are not filled out.

You’re not able to perform and recover in a manner in which it’s going to require you. During that training session, that’s going to negatively impact you. So. That’s where we need to get into good habits, you know? Although I’m not someone that disposes that everyone needs to be on the same meal plan.

I do believe in meal planning, same planning ahead cooking in bulk. I agree. You know, putting things in the refrigerator that are easy to grab and go, yeah, whatever that means for you. If that means you label 40 Tupperwares per week. Fine. I tend to just cook a bunch of chicken, a bunch of potatoes, a bunch of vegetables, put ’em in the fridge, grab ’em, weigh and eat.

Yep. So, whatever that looks like for you, depending on your goals, consistency with nutrition, you’re just gonna feel better. You’re gonna notice more consistent you know, weight and the way you look and the way you feel. If you are consistently hitting your diet, you know, I’m not opposed to any one diet lifestyle, as long as it doesn’t negatively impact your performance or recovery in the.

And that’s it for the highlights of my interview with Paul Velia on how to keep making progress after your newbie gains are long gone. And again, if you wanna listen to the full interview, it was published on February 20th, 2017, and you can find it by searching my feed or my YouTube channel for Paul’s last name.

That’s the easiest way to find it. R E V E L I a. If you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports, nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Okay, let’s move on to the next episode that is featured in this best of episode.

And that is why belly fat is so stubborn and how to lose it. This is just me. This was a monologue that I posted back on December 13th, 2017. So if you like it, you can go find it. And an easy way to find it is just to search stubborn fat search, the feed or the YouTube channel, and it’ll pop. So let’s start at the top.

Why is belly fat so stubborn now, if you are having trouble losing belly fat, I have good news for you. You don’t have to worry that you are genetically cursed and that you’re doing the wrong exercises and you just don’t know which special exercises you should be doing. You don’t have to worry about your hormones.

Your hormones are probably fine. You don’t have to worry about the foods you’re eating. You’re not struggling because you’re eating the wrong foods. Sugar is not the problem. Carbs are not the problem. Grains are not the problem. Gluten is not the problem. I think you get the point and the reality is you could follow every thin belly rule that mainstream gurus prescribe you could do every belly flattening exercise on the internet.

You could get rid of every possible hormone, clogging food. You could eliminate every form of sugar in your diet, and you could even subject yourself to the trials and tribulations of low carb living and still have handfuls of ugly belly fat for the rest of your life. It doesn’t have to be like this though.

No matter what your genetics are, no matter where your hormones are at, you absolutely can have a lean ripped stomach and it can be easier than you ever thought possible. If you know what you’re doing and why. And. All that begins with a physiological understanding of how fat burning actually works. So when we talk about burning fat, what we’re actually talking about is a two part process consisting of Lapsis and oxidation.

So. Lapsis is the process whereby fat cells release the molecules of stored energy, which are called fatty acids into your blood. And then oxidation is the process whereby cells utilize or burn those fatty acids. For energy. Now, the body’s primary method of stimulating the lysis is the production of adrenaline and neuro adrenaline, which are known as catacholamines.

So what happens is these chemicals enter your blood and they travel to fat cells and they attach themselves to those fat cells at points on the cells known. Receptors. And once they attach to the fat cells, these catacholamines trigger the release of the fatty acids stored within the fat cells. And then other cells are able to use those fatty acids as fuel.

So the fatty acids travel around now in your blood and other cells grab them and burn them as fuel. What most people don’t know is that fat cells are not all made alike. Some respond very. It’s a CATA means and some don’t. Now, if you have dieted for any period of time, you have absolutely experienced this.

You have experienced the frustrating reality that certain areas of your body, like your chest, your arms, your face. Tighten up pretty quickly, but then other areas of your body. And the areas that you probably care the most about, like your stomach, your hips, your thighs seem to not change at all. Seem to.

Have no response to the diet and exercise and the primary reason for that boils down to one simple fact, and it’s this fat cells contain two types of receptors for catecholomines and those receptors are diametrically opposed in function. So these receptors have names. So one type is known as the.

Receptor and another type is the beta receptor. And while the physiology in play, the mechanisms are pretty complex. What it comes down to is alpha receptors, hinder Lapsis and beta receptors trigger it. Therefore fat cells with a high amount of beta receptors are relatively easy to mobilize. Whereas those with a high amount of alpha receptors aren’t, and this is why when you start a fat loss regimen, you see immediate results in certain areas of your body that contain large amounts of fat with large amounts of beta receptors.

The areas like. Our chest, our arms are face, but then you’ll see like no results in other areas like your stomach, hips and thighs, because the fat cells in those areas of our body tend to have a lot of alpha receptors, which means they are just very hard to mobilize. So that’s why belly fat tends to hang on for your dear life when you’re cutting.

And before we look at strategies for breaking down these fat cells, defenses. Let’s look at some of the biggest myths that are out there, because if you Google around for belly fat lost tips, you’re gonna wind up reading a lot of bullshit. And I want to give you a quick antidote. So the first thing you need to know is that unfortunately you can’t.

Preferentially target belly fat for elimination, at least in any way that makes a significant difference. So no amount of crunches or planks or anything else are going to directly burn your belly fat away. You should also know that there are no individual foods that are going to help or harm the process.

The belly bulge that you wanna get rid of isn’t caused by high glycemic carbs or processed foods or dairy or whatever else that you know, the health Gus say, and no amount of healthy fats or fancy stuff like MCT oil or exogenous keytones or anything else is going to just get rid of it for. Meal frequency also, isn’t the problem.

Many people say that you need to eat many small meals per day to stoke the metabolic fire, to really ramp up your metabolism and burn away that stubborn fat, and that if you eat fewer larger meals, you’re gonna send your body into some form of starvation mode, which is going to tell to hold onto belly fat and stubborn, fat, not true eating at night.

Also. Isn’t a problem. That’s another big myth. Another common. Culprit that is thrown around is that if you eat the majority, or if you eat a large amount of calories late at night, you are going to either have trouble losing fat or even gain fat faster. And that is not true. Studies show that you can eat the majority of your daily calories early, late, whenever it has no effect on weight loss parameters or body composition.

Stress also isn’t the culprit while it certainly can promote behaviors that lead to weight gain, like overeating, for example, it can’t directly cause weight gain through hormonal imbalances or any other mechanisms. And of course, supplements are not the key to fat loss you can do just fine without. Any supplements, but if you combine the right ones with a proper diet and exercise routine, you can dramatically speed up the process.

So here’s my personal fat loss stack, so to speak. And you know, this is what I use. This is what I recommend. So the first supplement is caffeine and. I guess you can get caffeine without supplementing, but I do get my caffeine from a supplement from a pre-workout supplement. And the reason why it helps is caffeine increases the amount of energy that your body burns throughout the day.

It increases your basal metabolic rate. And it’s also nice because if you take enough of it, it improves strength. It promotes muscle endurance. It enhances anaerobic performance. So it makes for better workouts. And. It’s also worth noting that studies have shown that caffeine is best delivered in a pill or powder format.

But you do need to watch out for building up a tolerance, especially when we’re talking about weight loss, because over time, the more. You have caffeine, the less effective it becomes and it’s in its fat burning effects. So therefore the best plan when you’re cutting is probably to have caffeine three, maybe four days a week, I would say max five and then have no caffeine on the other days.

So you can preserve its effectiveness as much as possible. Okay. The next supplement is one that I mentioned earlier, but didn’t really get into. And that is yohimbe, which is a natural chemical that’s extracted from a species of African plant, the yohimbe plant and studies show that Yohimbine can accelerate fat loss by blocking the activity of alpha receptors in fat cells.

And it’s also a mild stimulant. What really makes it special is that it blocks the activity of alpha receptors. So remember, alpha receptors are the ones that hinder fat burning. So when catecholamine binding to alpha receptors, nothing happens if they bind two beta receptors. The fatty acids are released and then ready for burning.

So what Yohi being does is it enables your body to reduce its fat stores faster. And it also is particularly useful as you get leaner and you are dealing with more and more stubborn fat it’s those stubborn fat holdouts. Again, that as you get leaner, you’ll notice. You know, you might have visibly lost quite a bit of fat in your face, basically, you know, most of your upper body, but then certain areas of your body.

If you’re a guy it’s probably your stomach and your, especially your lower stomach and your lower abs, if you’re a girl, it’s your hips and thighs they haven’t changed as much as you had hoped. That’s definitely the case. And so as you get leaner, what you’re dealing with, what’s left to lose.

Becomes basically more and more stubborn fat. So, Yohi being is great in that regard because it just helps you get through that final, slow period faster. Now there is a catch with Yohi being though because elevated insulin levels. Negate its weight loss effects. This is what we have seen in research.

So if you wanna reap its fat loss benefits, then you need to be in a fasted state. Which again, now that is why I’ve said multiple times that if you’re gonna train in a fasted state, when you’re cutting, I highly recommend you combine it with a couple supplements because you’re gonna get a lot more fat burning out of it.

And. Yohi being also can improve exercise performance and studies show that it seems to be particularly effective at fighting off physical fatigue and increasing time to exhaustion. So that’s more relevant to endurance exercise or maybe CrossFit type workouts. But because it is a stimulant, you probably will notice that you have a bit more energy in your workouts and can push yourself a bit hard.

And as far as buying Yohi being, you can buy it by itself. But as I mentioned, it is in my pre-workout fat burner forge along with HMB and CDP colon, which I won’t go into here because it’s not particularly relevant to our current discussion, but if you wanna read more about it or learn about forge, just go to Legion, athletics.com/forge, and you can check.

Okay. That’s it for that episode. And again, that was published on December 13th, 2017. And if you wanna listen to the full monologue, just search my feed or my YouTube channel for stubborn fat, and it will pop up. Let’s move on. I’ve been saying pop up too many times. I think I’m gonna use a different phrase next time.

let’s get to the final one, which is a motivation Monday, how to motivate. To keep working out. This one was published on March 4th, 2019. If you want to listen to the entire. Today’s discussion is just gonna be about workout motivation in general, because it’s a tough nut to crack. I take a shirtless picture.

I post it on Instagram. I get immediate feedback. I get some likes. I get some lulls. I get some digital high fives, maybe a troll or two, but it’s dopamine on demand. I poke the button and I get. Testicular tickle, building a great body. However, is nothing like that. Building a great body is spitting into a bucket every day.

And nobody really cares until it’s almost full, including you. You’re just there, like, trust me, this spit bucket is going to shine one day and then you Hawk or the lougie into it. You just. My point is it is completely self driven. You wanna know what it feels like. It feels like this. You bust your ass through a workout.

You look in the mirror and you whisper to yourself. Was that any good then you reply also uttering. I have no fucking idea. Oh, okay. Well, should I keep doing it? I really don’t know. Please stop talking to me. Okay. Okay. Then you try to use your. Quick drying anti stink, strategically vented workout shirt to soak up your tears, but it is water resistant.

So it is not even good for that. So, how do you do it? How do you motivate yourself every day to drag your draggy body? Up to the barbell and muscle? Fuck it. Until a physique is born day after day one month, one year, one decade. If that’s what it takes here, then are some practical thoughts of mine on finding the motivation to build your best body ever.

One sweat brick at a time train first. Seriously do. Now stop layering at me and go train. You see here’s something that I have learned over the years. It doesn’t play nicely with everyone’s schedule, but getting up early to pound out a workout helps keep it high on the list of things not to fuck up. You see, we only get so many drops of energy every day.

Life always finds a way to siphon them out of our skull in unexpected ways like tailgaters, noisy eaters and group text messages, lavish, these drops early on your training, however, and you never have to worry about losing the motivation to do it later. Next tip is to find your way. Sometimes to get things done, you have to stick square pegs into circle holes, which is also the opening of my sexual tell-all.

But whatever point is trying to eat an exercise, the exact same way that somebody else eats an exercises can itself. Demotivating, but eating and exercising the way that you eat and exercise feels like a well-oiled machine. Also well-oiled machine is the name of said salacious story. Trust me. It is going to be money.

Point is create a system that works for you. Get into the groove of eating foods you like and doing workouts. You actually look forward to develop good habits, develop momentum, which then baguette more good habits. And. Momentum next tip is to not be impatient, quick fixes and magic bullets are a myth.

There are no weird tricks for melting belly fat. There are no pills or powders for packing on muscle, and there are no biohacks for supercharging. Your shock rows with higher vibrations of the green tea Infiniti. There’s. The work produces forward motion. The forward motion becomes more forward motion to reiterate momentum creates momentum, fuck inertia.

That is the motto. The sooner you accept this, the more you will come to appreciate progress, which is itself. Motivating the next tip is to take breaks. Don’t chase unicorn farts, but also don’t keep running full speed off a cliff. Take diet breaks, take exercise breaks, get some extra sleep now, and then enjoy your holidays and vacations.

Stay outta the gym when you’re sick, pushing the envelope too far too often is like speeding too much. It feels good. It feels like you are getting to your destinations much faster. You’re not really. And the risks far outweigh the benefits. The next tip is to drink some liquid motivation because look, some days getting out of bed and into the gym is just way harder than it should be.

It’s like Earth’s mass suddenly doubled overnight, and now gravity is trying to stop your bones into dust. Sure. You can trudge to and through your workout, but there is no shame endowing, a hit of jitter juice to lighten the load. And especially when it is Legion pulse, of course, the next tip is to get excited about your next workout.

Seriously, sit there. For a minute and contemplate your next workout. Feel the weights, moving your muscles, contracting your heart. Pumping. Hear the music in your headphones. Picture yourself hitting your rep targets, or maybe even a PR or two bask in the post workout, bliss, whatever it is, find something in your next workout that excites you.

The next tip is to call on a cheerleader. Because we all need cheerleaders in our lives. We all need people who love and believe in us. In spite of ourselves, you are not dreaming about working out. You are chasing that dream down in a pickup truck full of chainsaw. Wielding Juggalos. What you’re doing is real and you need someone who’s willing to declare how real it really is.

You need someone who will always shake their POM poms for you, not point laugh and fart in your general direction. And the next and final tip is. Maybe you can just stop looking for motivation because listen, working out is fucking hard. Sometimes working out is trying to draw blood from a turnip. It’s trying to read a Dickens novel.

It is wrestling a porcupine in heat. And when you get right down to it, there is a point where you either appreciate working out and it motivates you. Or not, you either have the spark or you don’t, you can only fan flames, not dirt. And at the end of the day, if you’re only looking for little tricks and tips, then you need to think harder about this thing that you say you want to do because working out is a stormy love affair.

It’s an amusement park. It’s a flickering neon. Sign, you are just drawn to it, even when it sucks like a pigeon to breadcrumbs. And that I think is what ultimately separates the aspiring, not really fit people from the really fit people. The latter train, even when it is hard, even when the motivation carcass is being picked by crows, they hook up the defibrillator, they crank up the dials and they.

The damn corpse dance. Again, it looks dead, but it isn’t every day then is a revival. It is a resurgence of ability and action working out leads to more working out just like crack leads to more crack. The best motivation to workout then is a workout. So workout when it’s hard workout, when it’s easy workout, when life doesn’t want you to.

Work out when you don’t want to work out. When people say not to work out and then work out again and then work out some more, build a fire that feeds itself, you might love the process. You might hate it. You might love some workouts and you probably are gonna hate some others. You might thrill at how your body responds or you might curse it.

Keep going. Though, and I can promise you this as difficult as it is, you are going to learn to love. Having worked out there is no other feeling like it. So go my friend and work out and let that be your motivation. And that’s it for how to motivate yourself, to keep working out again, published March 4th, 2019.

You can just search for, motivate yourself, search for that in the feeder YouTube channel, and you’ll find it. And that is it for this episode of the best of muscle for life. I. Hope you liked it. And if you wanna share any feedback whatsoever, shoot me an email Mike muscle for life.com. All right. Well, that’s it for today’s episode.

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