Ep. #446: The “Mike & Mark (Rippetoe) Show” on Death Threats, Women’s Soccer, Necrophilia (??), and More

Mike: Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one on one coaching service, where we can help you get in the best shape of your life. life. My team and I have helped people of all ages, circumstances, and needs.

So no matter how complicated or maybe even hopeless you might think your situation is, we will figure it out and we will get you results. Every diet is different. And every training program is 100 percent custom. We provide daily workout logs and do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service and discounts on supplements and other products.

And the list of benefits goes on and on. So to learn more. Head over to www. LegionAthletics. com slash coaching. That’s L E G I O N Athletics dot com slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call. I should also mention that there is usually a wait list and new slots do fill up very quickly. Do not wait.

If this sounds even remotely interesting to you, go ahead and schedule your call. Now, again, that URL is legionathletics. com slash coaching. Hello, boys and ghouls. I am Mike Matthews and this is the muscle for life podcast. Welcome. So this episode is a little bit different because last month I flew out to Wichita falls over in Texas to hang out With Mr.

Starting Strength himself, Mark Rippeteau, and to go on his podcast, Starting Strength Radio, which he records live in his little studio. Now, I have been a fan of Mark’s work for a long time. His book, Starting Strength, was the first. First good book on training that I’ve read, and it was the first book to turn me on to proper training techniques.

And I’ve had Mark on my podcast here a number of times, and those episodes are always popular, always some of the most popular actually once they’ve sat in the feed for a bit and racked up plays. And over the years, we’ve also become buddies. In fact, Mark even wrote the forward to the. Newest editions of my books bigger than or stronger and thinner than or stronger, which I think is pretty cool Considering that his book again was the first aha for me The first big training aha came from starting strength.

Now this episode is an interview Of course that we did on his show and we go all over the place ranging from writing new editions of Because he has updated starting strength a number of times over the years and how I lost close to a million dollars in Amazon sales, that was fun. Google’s aggressive algorithm updates, that’s also fun.

The women’s soccer pay scandal and more. So as you can tell, it is not Practical or educational per se. So if that’s really why you are here and why you listen to my show, you might not find this one too interesting, but if you are interested more in just hearing Mark and I chew the fat for a bit, tell some jokes, share some war stories and the like, then I think you will find this episode at least amusing.

So here it is. 

Mark: Welcome back to starting strength radio. We’re here with our friend, Mike Matthews. Michael, thank you so much for flying out here to a long, awkward handshake. So much fun. Your hands are big. My hands are not big. My hands are sweaty too, because there’s 108 today or something like that. Mike’s here is our guest.

We’re going to talk to Mike about all kinds of stuff today, but first I wanted to. Tell everybody about his new book. It’s not really a new book. Yeah, it’s a new edition. It’s a new edition of the book, so let’s have it, 

Mike: Yeah, so I in 2012, and maybe I’ll just tell it as a little bit of a story.

Yeah. So it’s not just it’s interesting. Saying Buy my book, which is on sale for Night 9 cents right now, Kendall, stop. Yeah. No, but, so in 2012, I published a book called Bigger, leaner, stronger, obviously for men. And it was just the book I wish someone would have given me back when I was like 17, right?

The basics of diet, nutrition, exercise, right? How to get abs, stuff like that. Abs are important. They are to some people. Plus narcissists 

Mark: out there, they’re important. Now, Mike, that’s so stupid. You’re the least narcissistic person in the For a guy with abs, you don’t know anything about narcissism. We do. I probably We all know about narcissism, and you ain’t him.

All right. 

Mike: Part of my, come on man. I’m a fitness I’m a fitness guy. And anyways, that book became popular and started selling quite well. And that was actually my entrance into the fitness base was via that book, right? And then along the way, I wrote a second edition based on just feedback I was getting from people, my own list of things.

As I continue to the way it’s done, you learn shit. You put it in another day and be like, that would be good to change, add, remove, blah, blah, blah. And then, so four years ago, the second edition had come out. So it’d been four years since I had updated it. And the list just got long enough to where it made sense to do it again.

And so funny. So what I thought was going to be, I don’t know how this was for you, but what I thought was going to be more an editorial thing where I was going to get into the second edition. And read through it again, change things, go through my little checklist. It wasn’t actually that well, maybe 25 items that I’ve just things I wanted to do, but as I started to read your notes list, we all have that.

Yeah, exactly. But as I started to read through the second edition, I just hated it. I just didn’t like, My voice. I didn’t like how I was explaining things. I didn’t like how the book was organized, even though sure it was popular and I had a lot of good reviews. And it’s not that it was a bad book, but this sounds real familiar.

But that’s a good sign, right? It means that, I would say that it would be concerning professionally if that was not the case. If you could look at something you wrote four years ago and still be like, yeah, that’s really fucking good, man. 

Mark: I hadn’t learned a damn thing. That’s what that means, right?

I haven’t seen anything. Thing new 

Mike: or I haven’t improved at all as a writer or, communicator. So basically as I was getting into it, I just was like, I need to not the information I like the core information, but I need to reorganize this and rewrite it from scratch. And so that’s what I did.

Oh God, 

Mark: I can’t even open the first edition. Can’t read it. Can’t stand it. Don’t want to look at it. Hate that I’ve got it on my shelf. It’s an embarrassing name on it. I feel the same way about the first editions. Oh, you just can’t. They’re just, they’re unreadable at this point. Look, boys and girls, if you aren’t learning things, just go away.

You’re not helping us out here. If you’re not learning anything, if you haven’t changed an opinion over the past 10 years that you once held as an ear refutable, existential. All revolving truth, then you’re not thinking very hard and this is just what happens to you learn, you improve and you’d better if you intend to remain professionally respected, you relevant, you had better say I was wrong and this is right now.

And if you won’t do that, there have been a lot of people in this business. That won’t do this and a lot of people don’t, 

Mike: they just don’t like to do it at all personally. It seems like one of their over their primary objectives is to assert how right they are at all times. Narcissism. 

Mark: There it is.

Isn’t it? It’s a narcissism. It’s just, if you can’t be wrong or just emotion, every bad thing that ever happens is somebody else’s fault. If you are not capable of admitting that you did something wrong, you’re just not going to be useful to many people, people learn everybody 

Mike: fucks things up and people, it’s not like people, I haven’t experienced this from people.

They don’t give me a hard time where sometimes people email and ask about things that have changed. And I’ll say that’s what I thought back then. And I don’t think that my reasoning was like. Wildly off base, but it’s just what you knew at the time. And it’s anything 

Mark: happens to be wrong. I’ve done that dozens and dozens of times and people appreciate that.

I know from interacting with people that they appreciate a guy who will say, yeah, that was not right. I’ve learned better and here’s the new shit and that’s what new additions are for. 

Mike: And so long as you get the most important. Things mostly right. Most of the time, then you’re going to be doing well by people.

Obviously, there are certain things that you would not want to get wrong, right? They, they could be in the case of exercising, dangerous, exactly. But a lot of the things though, that when you’re getting into the more extraneous stuff, the fringe stuff that is shifting. There’s been in the last four years, quite a bit of, I think of with the exercise side of things, a bit of research that now, Cause there was a time a few years ago when frequency was like the thing, right?

And people were saying that if you’re not training every major muscle group at least three times a week, then you’re an idiot and you’re probably not going to make any gains. And that was once a strong opinion. I never had that opinion, but just a few years ago, there are people that have credentials, they have acronyms after their name and stuff and, but they were saying those things.

And there’s no question now that’s wrong, for example. 

Mark: One of the things I think we’ve accomplished is that we’ve demonstrated conclusively that a lot of that depends on how long you’ve been training and how you’ve been training previously, because I squat once a week. But I wouldn’t put a novice on, I’m post advanced, I’m staving off death.

Training is what I’m doing. And 63 year old guy like me, that’s just on the downhill slide. That’s about ready to be set out for the polar bears. They eat his ass. I’m going to Texas. Yeah they’ll probably move me to Canada. Move me to Saskatchewan, a concentration camp, a polar bear camp.

Yes, but I’m not going to train the way it not just does. All that frequency, all that stuff has always been dependent on how long you’ve been training and what your previous training history has done to your physiology. And I think also what you’re trying to get out of your training too.

Yes. If you’re. Staving off death. I’m not a competitor anymore. I don’t care how much I squat. I’ve got a squat, but I don’t care about PR squats because I’m not a competitor anymore. But somebody that’s young, new, trying to get strong, you got to squat more than I do. And this is a duh thing, isn’t it?

For example, starting strength is a gallon of milk a day. Every time for everybody, for you, for me, for re gallon of milk a day. I wouldn’t do it. I would be a heretic. I wouldn’t do it either. I’m blessed. The hilarious thing about this is that people are so quick to stop thinking.

They hear it on the internet and they believe it. That’s one of the things the internet has done for us. It has made us gullible. It has made us susceptible to just reading the headline of the article and not tweet, reading the tweet, reading the 123 words or whatever the fuck it is. And believing that what this person said about Mike Matthews is what Mike Matthews believes, but there’s a, I saw it on the internet.

And it’s, people aren’t any more circumspect than that anymore, especially in our industry. There are a whole bunch of people in this business that really need to be selling cars, yeah. Or just hawking stuff, other things on the internet, 

Mike: just internet marketers. 

Mark: Leave us alone. Leave the fitness industry alone because you guys are not entitled to an opinion.

And, but unfortunately the market has changed over the years with the internet and the internet is shortened. A lot of good, of course, not just not access to information, unparalleled developments and society, all that other stuff. 

Mike: Even in ours, even in the fitness space, you’re absolutely done a lot of good, but it’s come with a price.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s made it hard. You have to be good at sifting through information and finding reliable sources and actual authorities. And that can be tricky. If 

Mark: the more information is available, the better you have to be at sifting through it because the good 

Mike: stuff is not always the shiniest or the most attractive.

That’s absolutely true. And this is where the marketers come in. So our space is dominated by marketers first and foremost, and it’s not going to change. That’s been the case. I don’t think it’s changing time soon. No, it’s just because it’s been the case forever. It’s been the case since advertising, since Claude Hopkins back in the early 1900s.

And when advertising really started to become a science and they really started to figure out how to persuade people and how to sell people. That’s the way it’s been in, in probably, we probably be complaining about the same things and regardless of the industry we were in it’s probably very similar, right?

If it’s a direct consumer, 

Mark: you’re absolutely right. The marketing aspect of any commercial endeavor probably is the source for most of the problems associated with that endeavor. The need to find customers and it’s just 

Mike: lie to do it. 

Mark: That’s what it boils down to. And I like some professions are worse about that than others.

If I want somebody to lie to me, I’ll go buy a car or some supplements or beauty products. That’s the most amazing, but they’ll say anything. There are margins. 80 bottle of cologne or something like that. Costs about what? 83 cents probably something like that, like landed or done sitting on the shelf.

83, 000 percent markup. 

Mike: So anyway how’s business? Business is good. The focus mostly for me personally, it’s the books. And just because, it’s work that I enjoy out of random shit I have to do. It’s probably the work I enjoy the most, actually, but really from as far as business goes it’s supplements.

And, but I’m not like everybody else, actually. That’s why I’m sitting here. I know 

Mark: I don’t think you are, Mike. That’s why you’re here today. I could have asked all kinds of people to come on the podcast with us, but I’ve known you for quite a while. I know you to be a. Guy your approach is similar to ours.

There are some basic things that work, right? Like your emphasis in terms of your programs has always been aesthetics. Ours has been strength, but we both based programs on basic barbell exercise. Complicated full body movements loaded incrementally. You just take a different spin on it than I do. But what we do is basically the same thing.

We’re not in disagreement on basic body 

Mike: building stuff. Yeah. And 

Mark: I, and I fucked with Mike about him having his shirt on today for some odd reason and stuff with him about going up a weight class. And we, I’ve fucked with him a lot about stuff, but you’ve heard it on our audio interviews, but.

We’re basically doing the same thing here. He’s just doing it at 12 percent body fat and we’re doing it at 30, 35 percent fat, 12 percent heart, 12 percent is he’s taking offense. I would have, I was taking offense at 12 percent

bulimia. He’s going to go down. Take some more fat burners. He thought I was 12%. What does that mean? Who am 

Mike: I? You failed. Who am I? What am 

Mark: I doing? 

Mike: But yeah, no, things are moving along. So Legion is the subcommittee. That’s the primary business. And so we got kicked in the nuts. What’s that? You’re LEG IO and legionathletics.

com legionathletics. com. If you want to check us out, but we got kicked in the dick by Amazon. The hardest. So what’d they do to you? They’re difficult to deal with. Yeah. So if you, just to preface this, if you don’t have at least one catastrophe per year with Amazon, you’re either not doing any sales on Amazon.

Or you’re like. Jeff Bezos, his cousin or something, nobody’s going to mess with you. You’ve been pitted on the head. Yeah. Yeah. You’re a made person be gender inclusive there. So my number one best selling product on Amazon was my pre workout called pulse. And it was the number one pre workout on Amazon.

And so it’s moving along, doing very well. And then it just goes down, gets turned off. And this shit happens. So because I turned the page off, it just can’t buy it anymore. It’s just, it just gone. Absolutely. It was, I don’t know the exact numbers, but I would say it was probably cruising along at about 10, 000 a week in revenue and sales, and then it just to zero and it took three to four weeks to even find out like, why, what was going on what they do.

Yeah, so it gets better because. There were some misunderstandings in the warehouse and what exactly they should be doing. And so they accidentally destroyed 350, 000. My cost of stuff and then your product. Yes. And then said, Oh we’re not going to reimburse you for that. So it’s fine. I’m working with, we’ll get money back.

Mark: We will, but you just have to go through a process, right? I’ve never talked to us around like that. That sounds amazing. I want to see. I’m not even really happened. Did you figure out what you 

Mike: don’t ever really know what happened? And one I’ve dealt with this kind of thing, this is one of the worst, I’ve had some other bad, similar things where products just go down and it takes anywhere from four to six weeks to get them back.

And, it’s annoying, but I’ve gone through it before. So I’m like blase about it, but. Just for example, here’s something, here’s a problem that Amazon has. So there’s a lot of money to be made on Amazon as a lot of people know. And so that means that it’s really a battleground as far as the sellers go.

So what you’ll have is you’ll have people out there that don’t give a shit, like that. We were talking about that use hair to bump up the protein content of their dog food, right? It’s kind of people, right? And so what they’ll do is they’ll get friends to buy your product. And then they’ll wait a week, two weeks, whatever, leave a review.

So it’s a verified purchase. And they’ll leave a really alarming review like that. I had to go to the hospital. I was puking blood. I have no idea what was going on. And then they report those reviews to Amazon and that can get your product taken down just like that. Wow. And Amazon, unfortunately, because it’s very much a bureaucracy at this point, it’s, 400, 000 employees or whatever.

They just shoot first and ask questions later. That’s there. Yeah. And so that’s probably what happened here. It was related probably to some review of somebody, it can even be beta alanine tingles. We’ve had pulse that product taken down simply because people complained about beta alanine tingles, that’s just part of the game, but that aside, things have still actually that hit us.

We’re probably like 800 K behind our pacing because of that, because you lose that. That is amazing. Cause you lose momentum. You have to build back. You know what I mean? But it’s just like that. You can just get smacked, right? But despite that, the business side is still doing well, still have a very good year, but that’s fun.

And then there are these Google updates. I don’t know if you guys have felt the effects of them at all. I don’t know. It’s just. They’ve rolled out a few updates started about a year ago and they particularly went after the health and fitness space. And I made this clear, they openly said this and they’re really big on now pushing credibility, authority, and trust, right?

Is really. And there are websites that we’re getting hundreds of thousands of visits a month that literally got deleted off the internet, basically. Like losing 95 percent of their traffic of their search engine traffic, just gone. Just gone. For example, who, I know, I don’t want to say, I know of one.

He’s a friend of mine. I’m not, I don’t know if he’d want me to say, what was he doing? I say too much. It’ll be in the fitness space, but very high quality information on a lot of it. Probably over 40, 000 studies referenced on the website and not just referenced, but like this was real work. This dude built this from nothing.

What do you think happened? Why did they do weird? Like I’ve seen a big hit in traffic, not that big. And it hasn’t made that big of a difference because it was mostly a hit to my blog traffic, which didn’t make me that much money anyway. And ironically, when the blog, so legions blog had peaked at about.

Maybe 1. 8 million visits a month before the first update rolled out. Ironically, a lot of that traffic was AMP and AMP. If people are not familiar, it’s a Google thing where you have a very stripped down website has very little functionality, but it loads like instantaneously, right? It’s meant for news websites, really.

And so somebody who worked with me previously doesn’t work for me anymore. Wanted to do that. I thought that’d be a good idea because Google gives preferential treatment to AMP content. If you load instantly, they go, we’ll give you a bump in the search engine rankings. But the. Dude, didn’t make sure that we have a good working AMP website.

So that traffic was literally worthless. Like the bounce rate was like 95%, nobody bought anything. So we’re getting all this blog traffic. It looks cool, but then it turns out like 70 percent of it is AMP. Oh, okay. Turn it off. That naturally is going to, traffic’s going to decline. Google rolls out updates.

And so now legions blog is cruising at 900 K a month, that it’s not a straight how having, but it was a big hit. So I 

Mark: didn’t gut you. It wasn’t me. 

Mike: Oh yeah, absolutely. And we don’t know what comes next. They’ve done three updates now. And so it’s caused a lot of problems in the health space in particular.

There are some big websites out there that, went from getting like millions and millions, 10 plus million visits a month till, like three, which is, I know three is a lot, but it’s, and I have a friend in the digital marketing space who has probably one of the most informative websites you could imagine.

The dude probably has four. Close to 4, 000 long form articles on his website. He has a brand, even he’s getting hit. I don’t know what Google’s doing. The only known winners that my team, as we’ve looked into it, that we found in our space is health line who bought authority nutrition. If people remember that website and very well fit.

Those two guys are doing great. The Google is giving them everything. Would you think that Google’s got an ownership? No, I don’t think it’s that anything that obvious. I don’t know. I don’t think, no, I don’t actually don’t think it’s that. I think it’s I don’t know exactly. I get. If the idea is to force, cause you have a lot of bad information.

We were just talking about this in our space. So if you’re a Google and you’re like, what can we do about this? How can we help weed the weed out the bad? How can we separate the good and the bad? How can we assist in this? It seems like the idea is. Okay. Let’s really start diving into these websites.

Who’s writing the content? What are their credentials? Do they have anybody reviewing and fact checking how believable is this information? And of course, it’s not a bad idea, but the implementation is a bad idea though, 

Mark: because who, Gets to determine that’s the problem, the veracity, that’s the problem of the applicability sounds nice.

It’s one of those things. It’s like the idea that the enlightenment ideals of we’re all equal. It all sounds nice, but it doesn’t fucking work. And so no, it doesn’t fucking work. For example, in our business, exercise physiologists, PhD exercise physiologists would seem to be. The authority.

Google would see that and be like, Oh, that’s the guy. Yeah. He’s look, there’s a terminal degree. Yeah. Credible. Yes. Immediate credibility and nothing could be further from the truth. I know. It’s unfortunate, it is unfortunate that they don’t understand anything beyond that. This is how is an algorithm credential worship 

Mike: scientism, this sort of thing, 

And how is an algorithm supposed to overcome that?

It can’t exactly. All it can do is create problems. No way that needs. That’s up to the market. That’s up to the people. You know what I mean? It’s up to 

Mark: the 

Mike: functioning of just the 

Mark: people. Absorbing the information, making decisions, propagating the good, where to spend their money, which means it’s not bullshit and what to 

Mike: talk 

Mark: about, right?

Mike: As every business, the number one goal is to generate word of mouth, right? And you can obviously stimulate growth through spending money in advertising, but the business is really going to make a lot of money on that. Service 

Mark: product you’re trying to sell. For example, I don’t think the gym business has ever really made any money off of advertising.

I don’t mean to bring in people. Yes. What about something like planet fitness? I don’t think planet fitness derives much of that traffic from. Anything except word of mouth, their friends joined planet business. It was 10 bucks. So they went and joined one day. They hadn’t been back in three years, but they’re still paying 10 bucks.

Cause you know, they might want to, and it’s only 10 bucks, but that’s also, I don’t think you’re losing something. You feel like you have something with your cheap deal, and Planet Fitness in that respect is a, what a brilliant idea. They, I was skeptical when I 

Mike: first heard about it. I was like, I don’t know the whole day.

And it almost seems like it’s pandering when 

Mark: people feel almost 

Mike: offended, but I guess not 

Mark: appeals to the demographic. That will pay you $10 a month, put it on their credit card, let you auto draft it. Yeah. And never go in the building. Yeah. That’s design. If they, yeah, if they knew that’s those guys, 

Mike: they knew that those people are brilliant, then these 

Mark: people are brilliant.

They knew that. They knew 

Mike: like there are a bunch of these people knew that are gonna do, that’s a bunch of 

Mark: people that will buy a membership and keep paying for it if it’s cheap enough and never bother. Imagine bothers. 

Mike: We want people who don’t work out, but we’ll just pay us. We don’t 

Mark: want them using the facility.

I know that’s what happened. I know for a fact, that’s what happened. A friend of mine back in 89, like everyone that shows up is that you’re like, Oh, he was running a promotion and he proved that this will work in clubs all over the country. He would go in to the market and he’d hang around for a couple of weeks and assess the way the city moved and stuff.

And then he would put out a report. A lead box. You know what a lead box is that where you sign up for a free vacation, put your name and it won’t work now, obviously, but this is, but what he was doing was he was putting a lead box in a restaurant or a donut shop or a, a place where people went nightclubs and wherever they’d let him.

And so he would have a little list of you’d fill out the name because you’re going to win a free vacation. Free vacation for two to the Bahamas. Just let us have your name and telephone number. So he would go around, he’d put these lead boxes out. He’d check him every week, pull the leads out.

And he would place these boxes in locations where he knew that the people that went there to shop were not in the fitness demographic, but they’re in the free shit demographic. So he would bring them home. And after the first week, Monday morning. He’d start calling all these numbers and he’d say, you didn’t win the vacation, but you want a free two week membership to Wichita Falls athletic club.

And all you got to do to claim your free membership, I’m not going to charge your car is no, there’s no cards involved in it. All you have to do to claim your free membership is to come in and bring the enrollment fee in of 92. And these people would show up and they’d pay 92 for their free membership.

They’d work out once and leave, and you’d run that promotion for two months and it would generate the club 75, 000. This is. 30 years ago. Imagine that’s how you made your money though. Yeah, he made a lot of money doing this. He split it with the club. He’d split it with the club and he made a hell of a bunch of money doing it.

Planet fitness is exactly the same thing. They have figured out a way on 

Mike: par in my mind. It’s just like usury. That’s how you make your money. And I just loan, I give needy people money and I charge them 30 percent 30% 

Mark: They’re only going to have the loan for three weeks anyway, they can afford it.

That kind of shit. But this is exactly what they did. And it’s brilliant. It’s absolutely brilliant. Yeah. The people that are buying the little shitty 10 a month membership, get out of it exactly what they want. The ability to say, I’m a member of a gym. And to 

Mike: feel like that first step has been taken, I 

Mark: can go back if I want to, and they keep paying them and it’s just, God, it’s brilliant.

It’s chicken shit, but it’s brilliant. Yeah. You have to admit there’s a certain amount of, yeah, that’s more above board than 

Mike: what the other guy was doing. Oh, slightly. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Mike: 92 for your free. 

Mark: That’s where the disconnect, 

Mike: but 

Mark: it was free. And I had, honest to God, we had eight or 10 of those members that use the club for two years that actually came in and use the club.

And that when the thing was over, signed up at the gym, but that wasn’t the purpose of the deal. The purpose of the deal was to harvest membership money from people who will not go. And really, if you think about it at any corporate fitness facility in the country, that’s, Transcribed A large part of their members.

Oh, of course. Absolutely. If they all went to the gym, it’d be a problem. I don’t know if they couldn’t fit them in the gym and the parking lot. Then how much would they have to charge? If they 

Mike: had 

Mark: high 

Mike: attendance rate, they’d have to charge so much money just to keep, it’d be a problem.

It would show up and it’d be so full. They canceled. They just go somewhere else. There was a 

Mark: time when the industry wide. The actual usage rate of a gym membership, a health club membership was something on the order of 15 percent of the membership. 15 percent would use it on a regular basis.

And by regular basis, twice a week. Yeah. A 

Mike: couple of times 

Mark: a 

Mike: week. 

Mark: Yeah. Very low percentage. And that’s the industry standard. And it may be a little higher than that now, but it’s still the case. Yeah. If you’re a member of goals, you probably don’t go that much. But you’re still paying them, but you go occasionally and to you, it’s worth it.

And that’s fine. That’s the market. Fine. Sure. Planet Fitness does a fine job of that. It’s just, they’re not in the same business. We are right there in the sales business. We’re in the fitness business. You’re getting into the supplement business. We may be, we may very well be rolling out a couple of products here pretty soon.

We’re going to talk to Mike a little bit more about that because he knows more about it than we do. He’s graciously agreed to help us with that.

Mike: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, Please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me. So I can say, thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life, fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. 

Mark: What else you want to talk about? You want to give everybody a break now on your.

Approach to the problem of what to do in the gym. Like you 

Mike: said, it’s pretty similar, right? So 

Mark: it 

Mike: really is. I have a book for men, bigger, leaner, stronger of a book for women, thinner, leaner, stronger. And that came about because a lot of women were reading the men’s book and saying Hey, this seems pretty applicable to me.

But I don’t really want to be bigger, 

Mark: the bigger thing, not 

Mike: really what I want. And also there’s a fair amount of upper body training and, I’m more concerned with my lower body. So eventually it made sense to take the men’s book and just customize it for women as much as possible. Is there’s a small subset of the women’s market that wants to get bigger.

Mark: Yeah, there is. 

Mike: And some women intentionally now still read that book cause they want to, get his Jack skinny. Even those that 

Mark: don’t want to be Jack that are rail thin. That’s true. And I actually, 

Mike: the title, I was 

Mark: better 

Mike: with a little bit more muscle mass. Absolutely. The title I was thinking like fitter, leaner, stronger might be a better.

In terms of really the better statement of the benefits, because there are many women out there who don’t want to be thinner, like they want to be fitters, maybe how they might think about it. But I didn’t like how that sounded in there. 

Mark: I think that it doesn’t comport well with the previous title.

Yes, 

Mike: exactly. Thinner, leaner, stronger, just sounds better than fitter. No, for that market. I absolutely, it would certainly appeal to most of. And I was also thinking with many of the women I’d heard from over the years were mostly, they wanted to start with losing some weight. And so that’s 

Mark: almost a universal aspect of the 

Mike: women’s fitness industry and not because they were had body dysmorphia or something, but for women’s at 30 percent body fat, she might look at 20 percent body fat and be like, Oh, that’d be nice.

And it’s nothing unhealthy about that. So that’s the women’s book and the fundamentals in terms of the diet side of things are very similar. I don’t need to explain energy balance to a man differently than a woman, calories in calories out. Why is that physiology?

It is what it is, right? But, there were quite a few things that, where I was able to really separate it out, if we were talking about common myths and mistakes. Those are quite different actually. Like a lot of women are concerned, at least that come my way, are concerned initially with getting bulky 

Mark: bulky, big, bulky, bunch up, what do they call it?

Bunchy. Bulky. That’s just the word. Like bulk. I don’t want to keep hearing words like bulk. I hear bunchy muscles, which doesn’t mean much as to, you never heard that. I haven’t heard bunchy. I’ve long. I want to go like about a 

Mike: ballerina. That’s the key. Long lean muscles. Yeah. 

Mark: Sculpt. Yeah. Sculpt. Sculpt.

Long lean muscles. Tone muscle owned. It’s not muscles. It’s muscle, lean muscle, long, lean 

Mike: muscle. Fuck the fat muscle. Long lean muscle. So anyway, it goes over on the dietary side of things. Again, the practical approach is very similar, of course, it’s just what it boils down to is that women generally are going to be eating less.

They’re eating fewer calories than men because they just burn fewer calories, smaller bodies and how those calories break down in terms of protein and carbohydrate. And fat doesn’t really have to change. It the standard approach that I recommend for people. Yeah. It’s like you could start with that, 40, 40, 20 type approach where about 40 percent of your calories are coming from protein, 40 percent from carbohydrate, 20 percent from fat, or you could express it in different terms.

Protein somewhere between, I don’t know, 0. 8 to one gram per pound per day. And somewhere around 0. 3 grams of fat per day. You can go higher if you want, but that’s probably enough for health and then fill in the rest of your calories with carbs, right? And of course you are taking your energy out and you are.

Calibrating your energy. And accordingly, if you want to get skinnier, you want to get leaner. If you want to lose fat, you’re going to have an energy deficit there. So you’re going to have to eat fewer calories than you burn over time. And these are boring things to you and maybe to people listening.

But if you remember, I remember when you first learned about this, it was like your mind was blown. I just remember because you hear all these weird things, you keto diet or this food makes you fat. No, it’s this food makes you fat and this food makes you lean. And you have to do a bunch of cardio.

You hear all these things. Things. And so when somebody comes along and says not really, just hear your calories, set them up like this. I want you to break these calories down into protein, carbs, and fats. I do want you to eat nutritious foods because I do want you to take care of your body. It doesn’t matter for your body composition.

Let’s make that clear. But. Let’s think a little bit further than just body composition. So how about this? Get like the majority of your calories, 80 percent of your calories from nutritious foods. And if you want to take the remaining and eat whatever you want, then do that. And that gives you some flexibility.

And this is precisely 

Mark: equivalent to our approach for strength training, right? You squat, you bench. You press, you deadlift, you do some power cleans, power snatches, chin ups, right? That’s all you need to do. But the key is amazingly enough, you just add a little bit of weight every time you train and a little bit of weight every time you train.

If you do it three days a week, then you’re going to get stronger and it’s astonishingly simple. Yep. It’s astonishingly simple and it works every single day. Time it’s tried, but it’s unimpressive. It’s not sexy people. It doesn’t have the marketing like 

Mike: complexity. Yes, that’s true. And that’s a marketing tactic is, complexity sells.

If you are a good salesperson, you know how to use it like muscle confusion, these kinds of things. Things, right? These things they sell. Maybe not that. So at this point, I think most people know that’s bullshit, but there was a time when, and then you take that and it gets spun into the next turbulence training or, whatever.

Mark: And that’s only when there’s turbulence. That’s the key. A smooth airplane ride. Yeah. It’s no fun. Yeah. That, that, what happens during 

Mike: turbulence is your testosterone levels rock about like 10, 000%. Yeah. Don’t look into it, but. That’s what happens. Yes. It’s the anabolic window is that turbulence period. So yeah, funny.

So a buddy of mine, he was in the gym with me and actually met him in the gym. And so he was a bit overweight and he had tried a bunch of weird diets to lose weight. And he was asking me, Hey, he’s you’re the fittest guy. I know what should I do? Just tell me what I should do.

It’s should I do a low carb diet? Should I do keto? What should I do? Paleo. And his name’s Josh. I was like, Josh. I want you to eat 2000 calories a day and I want you to get 150 grams of protein. I don’t care what you eat. Yeah, it would be good for you to eat like a vegetable or two, but for now, just do that.

Go on a calorie counting website and I want you to just 2000 calories. That’s it. That’s what you get. I do not. I don’t care how often 

Mark: you eat. It’s immediately induced. Yes. Calories. 

Mike: Deficit. Exactly. And so he was a little bit puzzled. He’s a smart guy. So he’s still a little bit puzzled. He was like what about carbs?

And I don’t care 

Mark: what you want. I don’t care. And this is not the long term end all be all, but let’s start. We’re not going to do this. I just want to. 

Mike: Yes. I just want to show you how simple this really is. And he’s so sugar. I’m like, I don’t care, but I don’t recommend eating 150 grams of sugar a day.

Cause you’re probably going to feel too good, but so maybe eat a semi sensibly, like how you’d want your kid to eat or something. And 2000 calories. That’s it. Yeah. Okay. And so he does it and, within five weeks, he’s down 15 pounds. And he’s he’s telling, he’s this is ironic because he was quoting Carl Jung and he was saying, yeah, he’s a neat guy.

He can’t help himself. So he went to school and he studied, he had a master’s in history, studied history and philosophy just for fun. Fun. Cause that’s what he’s into. And now he’s a financial advisor. He knew he wasn’t going to use it for anything. He just did it for fun. But he was like, this is actually a funny concept.

He was like, there’s a thing that young said that basically like the truth, the, what you need the most, what you want the most is in the place where you least want to look. And he’s this is that version, this, I never wanted yeah, I told myself I would never count calories. I would never pay attention to that.

I would always try to find some other way. And then you tell me 2000 calories a day, and now I’ve lost 15 pounds. And then eventually that turned into 30 pounds and that was the end of his weight problem. 

Mark: And now he knows what to do. Yep. 

He knows what 

Mike: to 

Mark: do. Reset his habits. 

Mike: And if he wants to, whatever, if he’s on vacation, if he wants to gain a bit of weight or he doesn’t matter now, he doesn’t fret about it because he knows that cool.

He’ll just get back onto his exercise routine and he’ll eat 2000 calories a day. And it’ll go away. It’ll go away. It’ll go away. Yeah. There’s a training equivalent of that too. And that’s very much the approach in my books. Again, it’s very similar to what you teach. In fact, your book starting strength was the first real sensible training program that I ever did before that I was doing bodybuilding stuff out of magazines, two and a half hour workouts.

And I couldn’t, I hadn’t deadlifted, I hadn’t done in seven years. I had never done a single set of a deadlifts, not one. I maybe had done a free squat. I had squatted on a smith machine, of course, because that was safer. We all started off this stupid, I 

Mark: had some pecs though. And a little bit of biceps too.

It’s interesting that we’re talking about these misconceptions that we’ve all had to deal with. The. Most pervasive problem in terms of body composition that I see throughout, this is not particularly a problem within the industry, because I think we all know better than this, but popular culture. Clings to the idea that you can exercise off the fat and there’s just not any way to break in to this idea.

I don’t even 

Mike: framing it that way at all. I talk about that in the books, sure. You can support your fat loss with exercise. You burn energy, but you go in the gym. To build muscle 

Mark: and the big muscles burn the fat, but you don’t, the exercise itself doesn’t burn enough calories to affect your body composition.

There is no body fat loss without a calorie deficit. There isn’t one, but most people, if you ask them. Down deep in their little heart, the 

Mike: one thing that you need to run off the weight, 

Mark: you’ve got to run 

Mike: off the way people still, you can look at it this way. So you can lose fat or weight.

How do you want to look at it without exercising just by manipulating your calories, but you can’t gain muscle and strength without exercising, right? 

Mark: And how many fat guys do you know that run at the YMCA at noon every day? Yeah. And, that’s okay. There’s a work or not. There’s health benefits to it.

I’d rather have them doing that than sitting on the couch. You want to run, go ahead and run. Let’s not labor under the delusion that you get abs from running in the absence of a calorie deficit. You’re going to have a belly. Which is hard to do if you’re not really paying attention to what you’re eating.

And it’s also hard to do if you don’t care.

I’m 63 and I just don’t care. All the YouTube guys are writing up.

Look at him sitting there. He looks like a homeless guy with a dress. Like he works at Walmart. Yeah. I can’t tell. Everybody see this? Starting strength t shirt. He stole that from a homeless guy. Free starting strength t shirt. In front of Walmart. The first one that tells me what this is.

Oooh. Alright, y’all keep track of that, okay? What else are we gonna talk about? We can’t talk about politics here because that’s too dangerous. Mike and I are in agreement about Virtually everything. You won’t like it . So we’re gonna leave. I have kids that day. We’re gonna leave it alone. That need death.

I have an death threats. I 

Mike: have an expensive wife. I, 

Mark: I can’t afford, don’t need death threats. I can’t afford, I’ve always wanted a death. I’ve mentioned this in one of the earlier podcasts. You haven’t gotten a death. No. God dammit. I’ve been asking for a death threat one right away. One more asking for a death threat.

Please threaten my life. 

Mike: That’s when you know, you’ve made it said, he’s going to poison me with meat or something. You better delete this video. If you know what’s good for you, that’s Oh, really? 

Mark: Nobody told me that. How come you kept that from we better delete the vision video if we knew what was good for us and it’s still up.

And we’re still here building still in place 

Mike: all life isn’t sacred to this. 

Mark: No, but we’ll remember there are all 

Mike: virus. So 

Mark: humans are a virus on the face of the planet. And visions are all estradiol poisoned. Estrogen 

Mike: laced creatures with no hair and clashed with vegans. Vegans, tomato, Because I wrote one article on just vegan bodybuilding, but it wasn’t trying to make anybody wrong for anything.

I was just talking about okay, if you, for whatever reason, if you want to eat like this, here’s a way to make it work. And you have some issues. It’s, it can be difficult to get enough protein. And you got, you probably want to take a couple of supplements as well to make sure that you don’t develop B12.

Yeah.

Calcium can be a bit difficult as well. And irons in a few things, zinc, it was well received just because I was being objective and just laying out, there are some downsides. I’m not talking about from a moral. I’m just saying physiologically, come on, let’s just look at it.

Of 

Mark: course. And you were not intentionally being a horse’s ass. Like I was right. And am right because it amuses me. Zenith sanguine. That means like the highest, I don’t know, but he’s trying to say like the highest blood, like he is nobility. Okay. Okay. Oh, good. My video is a joke 

Mike: for your own sake. 

Mark: Ooh, for my own sake is a threat.

Zenith. 3118 Buchanan, 

Mike: I 

Mark: think it’d be 76308. You know where I am, boy, he’s going to show up at 

Mike: night. He’s 

Mark: going to show up and that’d be the wrong time to show up here. I’m telling you that’s the wrong time to show up here and I’ll show you why here when we get through. Okay, good. So anything else interesting we can talk about every time we talk, we have long, interesting naturals 

Mike: are always amusing.

Maybe that’s more in my world though. So many of these people that anybody who has lifetime natural in their IgE bio is full of shit is on enough drugs to kill a Rhino starting typically. 

Mark: Yeah, especially if they claim to be a virgin, 

Mike: they claim to be a 

Mark: virgin and they’re huge. And yeah, you have 19, 

Mike: 6, 1, 2, 36 percent year round K and you’re a virgin or not.

And you’re clean. I wrote about this recently, a long autistic article breakdown of FFMI and its correlation with steroid use. And And it didn’t actually a couple of people tried to nitpick a couple of things, we’re basically what the data shows. And there are a lot of other people out there, smart people who would agree with me building up my authority here.

We have consensus. No, but it’s around 25, like there’s an FFM normalized FFMI around 25. Is maybe achievable naturally. Very small number of people have the genetics to do that. I’ve seen guys that do, but they’re, that’s not normal for a deaf or a human normal. Now remember, it also can be difficult though, to determine a true normalized FFMI if the body fat level is too high.

So like in guys, when it gets above 20%, it gets bumped up because of the additional. Non lean mass tissue that will accumulate that will register as it’s not fat mass per se, but it’s additional connective tissue that also shrinks as you get leaner. Yeah. And so 

Mark: skin thickness, that is a big deal.

There’s so much skin and if 

Mike: it’s thick, it’s heavy and it takes up a lot of space. And so anyway, it’s just though, it’s just funny when you have these guys, you have guys on Instagram with FFMIs of. Ridiculous. 28 to put it in perspective. I just look small because of the shirt I’m wearing, but that’s the only reason I’m actually huge.

No. I’m six, one, one 95. That’s just where I’m at. I have small bones though. Like my wrist, I was never meant to be a big guy. Did 

Mark: you do ballet at one time? I 

Mike: could have when I got the first time, people were like, I remember one person who was like, you have a nice swimmers body.

And that’s why I knew I had to get bigger. 

Mark: I was like, Oh God, that

wasn’t a left handed, that was, they actually were trying to give me a compliment. You know what I 

Mike: mean? Try their best. Yeah. But anyways, go to my Instagram and see me with some muscle mass. And my normalized FMI is like 23 in the low 23. So put in perspective, imagine my height for a day. Fucking 28 muscles bulging out of my clothing.

Oh my God. Oh, natural though. Natural. Oh Natty, 220, 220 shredded year round, lifetime drug free. 

Mark: So just for me and Nick and everybody else that doesn’t know what FFMI is. I do, but I just don’t worry. 

Mike: No I should have thought of this. And so just for anybody listening, it doesn’t know that it’s, so it’s fat free mass index.

So it’s just a relationship between your height and muscularity. and your weight, but it takes into account though, your body fat level as well. So you are looking at that relationship between how tall you are and how big you are, basically. And there’s been quite a bit of research on this over the years, over the decades now, and essentially.

What seems to be true is 25 or so is about what you can expect. That’s top tier genetics though. Muscle that’s really like elite. Maybe not. Okay. Not top tier, but that is elite muscle building genetics. If you can get into the 25s and be like relatively lean as well. You are jacked. And if people are curious what theirs is, they can just Google FFMI calculator.

I have one on my website, but pull up an FFMI calculator, put in your numbers and you’ll see what I mean. So like my normalized FFMI is in the 23s low 23s. And I’m about as big as I genetically speaking, according to different models, maybe I could gain another eight pounds of muscle or so five to eight.

And it would take years, probably three years to do it at the body fat level. You are, yes, there are a few different models, but those models usually are assuming stage weight. So they’re usually assuming okay, how big can you be at like 6 percent body fat? Okay.

And then extrapolating from there. There’s also, Kate, I know you’ve probably come across Casey butts, his work on how big can you get based on your bone size, how much bone you have in your head? 

Mark: I don’t know that it might be interesting. I just don’t know that anybody derives any benefit from looking at that because there just aren’t any big bodybuilders that aren’t on a bunch of drugs.

Oh yeah. And that’s just all there. I’m sorry. It’s just the way it is. 

Mike: That’s why I like though. I think that again, there are, I wrote about this. There are like, four different models that are generally used buts is one of them. Alan Aragon put out a model, Mark and Bert, Martin Burkhand, Lyle McDonald plan model.

And if you look at those though, I’ve found that. Those actually, I think give people better expectations. And I talk about this in an article that I wrote on how much muscle can you build naturally. And it goes into this. Actually I think those give better expectations than just cruising around on Instagram where you don’t know.

There are too many guys on too many drugs and some of them are obvious. Some of them are so big, like when a dude’s 

Mark: shoulder is bigger than his head, he’s on all of the drugs, and we don’t talk about drugs on this podcast. Podcast very much, but, and one of the reasons we don’t talk about drugs on this podcast very much is because I just don’t really care about it.

Yeah, I don’t care about it. It’s just a fact of life. I, I don’t advocate it, but it’s none of my business and nothing I’m going to say is going to change a goddamn thing about what anybody’s going to do. People are going to take drugs, get over it and quit worrying about it. I agree. Try anything, all of other people in that decision.

It’s their decision. Just shut up, sit down, don’t care about it. 

Mike: The only thing I don’t like though, is, and I hear from these people firsthand, I have for some time is when people don’t understand how to spot drug use and they don’t understand how big of a difference drug use makes. And 

Mark: so then, that’s why they’re illegal in all sports federations.

That’s why they’re illegal. And that’s Also, one of the bizarre things that’s come out of this women, this trans women thing and women’s sports recently is, do you think this is going to really continue? Do you think, 

Mike: because then 

Mark: I guess, it can’t much longer men are just going to dominate every female sport.

It’s going to be actually a joke. It is. It’s already a joke. I know, but it’s going to be just 

Mike: when do we quit clown world? When yes, female sports are now just dudes who either now identify as women or went through some surgery or hormones or whatever. But then what does that say to little girls?

Like why even bother when you’re never going to be going 

Mark: to win? Never, ever, never, ever going to win. But part of the fallout from this is that some idiots are actually running around saying that testosterone does not enhance this is with respect to women taking testosterone, that it doesn’t enhance athletic ability.

Okay. And yeah, that’s fine. Okay. You guys. Go ahead and pretend now I will say some aspects of the athletic ability are not affected by testosterone in adult women. It does not affect vertical jump. It doesn’t affect explosiveness, doesn’t affect athleticism, agility, that sort of thing, but it does. You’re not going to have a better golf swing or something, but it does affect strength in that you will have a better golf swing because you’re stronger, but I’m saying you’re better.

Technic, there aren’t any technique steroids. There are no techniques, steroids, and there are no explosion steroids. Anytime you hear the word steroid, just set up to do strength for it. Cause that’s exactly what’s being referred to muscle gain. Of course, muscle mass strength. That’s all it’s about. But to say that testosterone does not contribute to muscle mass and strength is the same exact thing as saying that the sun this morning, just this morning.

Came up in the West. It did. I saw it. Because I say it did. And I’ve seen this in print. I’ve actually seen this in print. It’s so distressing that people are willing to be so silly in order to jump on this man wagon. It’s just very weird. I wish they weren’t that way, but they are. And people are getting tired of it.

The parents of female athletes are getting tired of it. The husbands and wives and boyfriends. Imagine it’s your daughter 

Mike: and she’s 

Mark: devastated. Stated, she placed third in the state track meet and doesn’t get her scholarship now and she never will do better because no, because now she’s going to be older and she’s peaked out and this was her opportunity to go to college free.

So what do you think about the equal pay scandal, soccer scandal? This is so stupid. It’s just, why do you think what to begin with? Men’s and women’s soccer are compensated back for it. I’ll be the SJW. I, one thing I saw a little meme yesterday, all soccer really is women’s soccer. I saw me.

They’re compensated. Your compensation structures are set up completely differently as a percentage of revenue women are already making. What is it twice as much as men are in terms of but no, these people want to pretend like there are as many people interested in watching women’s soccer as there are men’s soccer.

Yep. And that’s not true. That’s not true. That’s a lie. It’s reflected in revenue. It’s reflected in revenue. 

Mike: So when the men’s world cup generates 4 billion in revenue in the women’s over a four year cycle does was 170 million give or take. Something to that effect. What else is 

Mark: there 

Mike: to say? I 

Mark: don’t know what else there is to say.

And I don’t know how you it mean if someone can’t understand that though? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. You just don’t understand arithmetic. Or just, yeah, this is, yeah, this is like a balance sheet. You know what I mean? You have some money that comes in and then you got to pay your bills.

Then you have some money left over. 

Mike: The men make 9 percent of revenue. The women make 13. Okay. 

Mark: Yeah, they get paid more they just don’t draw enough attention because nobody wants to watch him play soccer now Why is that because of the patriarchy, that’s why yeah, it’s the patriarchy, you know 

Mike: Speaking of the patriarchy that was at the country club golfing the other weekend.

Isn’t that a luxurious? With Jeeves there assist me with your club and so the dudes next to me were talking about this, right? So older guys just don’t give a shit. And they’re talking about this. They’re like, I’ll never fuck. And they’re like, I’ll watch that shit if they’re naked.

So that’s part of 

Mark: the problem is people. This is an issue to about 80 people, the girls on the team and their girlfriends is, that’s who this is an issue. Nobody else is puzzled by this. Yeah. All right. What are the girls in the WNBA get paid relative to the NBA and why do you really need us to explain this to you?

I’m not going to insult your intelligence by doing so you ought to be smart enough to know what the deal is. And I, is this, look, if you really want to pursue this line of questioning, then we got to stop playing sports. 

Mike: Now that would be the fair. Don’t wait. That would be fair. Nobody can win.

Mark: Yes. Okay. Because when somebody wins, somebody has to lose. And in any sport, that’s not fair. Yes. It’s just not fair that somebody loses. Yes. You people enlighten me, your analysis doesn’t go anywhere that you want it to be, you’ve got to back this off and grow 

Mike: the fuck up.

And you got to look at it. Okay. You want female soccer players get paid more than you got to make it a better business. So how are you going to make it a better business? That’s the real, it’s not just trying to demand more money 

Mark: from what can’t be paid. Yes. There isn’t any more money because nobody watches your sport.

Now, how do you make them want to watch your sport? I don’t think you’re going to like the answer to that. I really don’t think you’ll like the answer to that. Women’s beach volleyball figured it out, but you guys don’t want to do that. Do you, you’re not going to. Be able to force people to spend money, to watch you do something that they don’t want to watch you do.

I’m sorry, 

Mike: you don’t get to tell me that’s not why it’s not misogyny. It’s the nature of sports competition. Exactly. It’s you want to see super freaks doing super things. You want to see athleticism, women aren’t skilled, not at all, but take the women’s soccer team. They got beat by a bunch of 15 year old boys.

So that tells you, 

Mark: we talked about that in an earlier podcast. There are several instances of that all over the world and what’s not a knock against women. It just is what it is. What’s interesting is their coaches knew that it’d be good for them to play the boys. Because they knew they’d get beat and learn something from it.

Some perspective. In other words, you already know this, but it’s 2019 and it’s so fucking satisfying to be mad. I think it’s just so goddamn satisfying to be offended by other people. Maybe it’s just as satisfying just to feel something maybe in today’s just as any kind of emotion is good and something other anger will do fine.

Mike: Yeah. Anything just get you off of your telephone. Yeah. And then our get you away from Netflix or social media or porn for. I guess you go to social media to do this. So it’s to get you off Netflix and off the porn for long enough to get mad about something. And 

Mark: this is feel relevant.

This is good enough. And it makes you feel better 

Mike: and to signal to everyone in your immediate vicinity that you two are virtuous and Jesus. So that’s a little insight into 

Mark: my, I can. Rips politics 

Mike: here. So was that enough to get death threats? No, 

Mark: but we’ll see. Maybe we’ll see death threats are cool.

They’re all going to be, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you and then I’m going to beat off YouTube. Doesn’t care the video. I’m going to kill you first and then beat off to the video. That’s the YouTube comments on it or some copy. We’ll see what they say that you guys, 

Mike: let’s see the comments.

What’s that? Wouldn’t be necrophilia. Cause is 

Mark: it necro? If it’s just, if you’re just jerking off to come lands on me when I bid, but is that if it’s not, if there’s no penetration, I think that’s 

Mike: necrophilia. 

Mark: I’m real sure it is. I’m pulling up a dictionary. I’m real sure it is. It probably is sexual satisfaction.

Look, if necrophilia requires penetration, I don’t know that’s a pretty weak thing. You’re 

Mike: not a necrophiliac. Sexual. No. Sexual intercourse. Oh, it stipulates penetration. Or attraction toward. Or attraction toward. See, I knew it was broader than that. Dictionaries are racist anyway. I don’t care.

I don’t believe in dictionaries. You 

Mark: got to kill me first though. Or you don’t get to be a necrophiliac. Oh, fuck. We’re going to get in trouble. Mike, we better wrap this up, man. Thanks for visiting. What’s your website? It’s post 

Mike: this on the legion. Legion athletics is the hub. So everything goes through there.

Yeah. I had another website muscle for life. That was a glorified blog. It was popular, but it didn’t serve much of a strategic purpose. So I merged it into legion, 

Mark: legionathletics. com is where you’ll find Mike get his books. And by supplements, you will be better for it. I promise you Mike’s a good guy and he knows what he’s talking about.

If that’s the end of this deal, you’re attracted to then go there and patronize him when we get into the supplement business, we’ll murder him. We’ll get him. We’ll get him just be prepared to be gutted. Come 

Mike: at me, 

Mark: bro. Come at me, bro. 

Mike: That’s a death threat. That’s a microaggression. Microaggression. 

Mark: Thank you people for joining us on the podcast this time.

We’ll see you next time. Thanks Mike. 

Mike: Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one on one coaching service, where we can help you get in the best shape of your life.

My team and I have helped people of all ages, circumstances, and needs. So no matter how complicated or maybe even. hopeless you might think your situation is, we will figure it out and we will get you results. Every diet and every training program is 100 percent custom. We provide daily workout logs and do weekly accountability calls.

Our Clients get priority email service and discounts on supplements and other products. And the list of benefits goes on and on. So to learn more head over to www. legionathletics. com slash coaching. That’s l e g i o n athletics dot com slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call. I should also mention that there is usually a wait list and new slots do fill up very quickly so do not wait if this sounds even remotely interesting to you.

Go ahead and schedule your call now. Again, that URL is legionathletics. com slash coaching.