Barbell Shrugged - How to Get Bigger, Leaner, and Stronger w/ Mike Mathews, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash- Barbell Shrugged #498

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Mike Matthews is the founder and CEO of Legion as well as a bestselling fitness author of several books, including Bigger Leaner Stronger, Thinner Leaner Stronger, and The Shredded Chef.   His simple and science-based approach to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy has sold over a million books and helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever, and his work has been featured in many popular outlets including Esquire, Men’s Health, Elle, Women’s Health, Muscle & Strength, and more, as well as on FOX and ABC.   Legion Athletics Whey Protein, Creatine, and Pre-Workout - Save 20% using code “SHRUGGED”   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What you need in the first 5 years of training. How to continue getting stronger as you train longer. What veterans of strength know but the newbies don’t Mike’s brand new book Why it is so hard to find good supplements Legion Athletics and building a supplement line. Mike Matthews on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Legion Athletics Whey Protein, Creatine, and Pre-Workout - Save 20% using code “SHRUGGED”   Shadow Creative Studios - Save $200 + Free Consult to start you podcast using code” “Shrugged” at podcast.shadowstud.io   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Truck family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Mike Matthews from Legion Athletics. And I am so proud to announce our brand new partnership with Legion Athletics. I've been a fan and student of Mike Matthews for years. His articles on hypertrophy are rooted in scientific research, personal application, and tested with thousands of clients around the world. His books, articles, and educational content are great resources for anyone that wants to learn more about increasing their strength and hypertrophy. This level of excellence is why we chose to partner with Legion Athletics.

Their supplements are clinically tested with transparent ingredients and proper dosing to ensure you know exactly what is going on in your body. Personally, I like to keep things simple and I am a daily user of their Legion Whey Vanilla. It mixes well, tastes great, naturally sweetened, and with minimal ingredients, I don't get that bloated gut feeling associated with many whey proteins. I also highly recommend the creatine and pre-workout if you're looking for supplements that are clinically tested and have a proven track record for increasing performance in the gym. I'm excited about this partnership and you can save 20% using the code shrugged at http://bylegion.com forward slash shrugged. That's Bilegion.com forward slash shrugged. B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com forward slash shrugged to launch this partnership.

Mike Matthews is on Barbell Shrugged today to kick this thing off. And we're talking hypertrophy, fat loss, a brand new book he is launching, and the science of supplements. So head over to Legion Athletics at Bile legion.com forward slash shrugged save 20 using the code shrugged at checkout that's by legion.com forward slash shrugged friends let's get into the show i can't believe they have like starbucks on high school campuses now do they oh my high school has a starbucks right in the student center wow that's insanity giving kids starbucks at that age yeah wow didn't know that that's yeah super freaky it's like coffee i'd say it's straight up immoral that's just yeah when did totally that's complete commercialism just who gives a shit make more money whatever

yeah shareholders love it who cares if i have kids the kids are bouncing off the wall probably all on adderall too and they're drinking starbucks at weird hours true man um when did coffee get so cool that like high school kids i didn't know i don't know if it was just because i i didn't drink coffee until i was like 26 years old. I didn't start drinking until maybe two years ago. I'm 36. I just didn't like it. I didn't like the taste of it

until I forced myself to start drinking it. Just to fit in. I'm a beer pressure in my 30s. It wasn't even that. What it was is so many people were so into it. I was like, okay, there has to be something to this. There's a reason why people are, you know, it's like with wine and I never got into, but if enough people are this into coffee, there has to be something

to it. It's not just the caffeine. Like I'm not that sensitive to caffeine. So, and especially there's, you know, there's a difference between caffeine anhydrous and the caffeine that occurs naturally, at least in terms of the effects. Like I'll feel caffeine anhydrous and the caffeine that occurs naturally, at least in terms of the effects. I'll feel caffeine anhydrous in a pre-workout. I don't really feel – I could have three, four shots of espresso and not feel that much of anything. I just like now the taste. So I've come to appreciate it more as just a beverage, I guess, aside from the caffeine. I was so anti-coffee. And then I went to Costa Rica where the bean was picked yesterday. And then it went into my cup. And I went from

zero to addict in an afternoon. I'll just deliver a 40 to my breakfast table now because that's all I need. It was so delicious. So do you, do you order, do you use a website? Like I order my stuff from, from trade drink, trade.com. No, they just work. First time I've even heard of it. It's a, I haven't, I'm sure that it's a, it's a pretty big company because they have a really good user experience. And so they work with, with roasters all around the country, maybe the world, I don't know, but around the country for sure. And they've done a lot, they put a lot of work into categorizing coffees by their different characteristics. And if you like this one, you probably would like these other ones. And so when you order, you're ordering freshly roasted beans, they get shipped to you right away.

So it's pretty fun. You should probably check it out. I think you'll like it. No, I have a coffee shop right next door and the guy that uh dude because you're owned i'm this is the part that i can't beat though the owner loves barbell shrugged i walked in and he goes you're anders and i was like this is my fucking coffee shop i'm here every day now i'm gonna give you all my money every morning i thought i was waiting for that i was waiting for like you're getting it for free or something. It's just the, well,

he delivers it to my house on the weekends. So that's a big plus too. Plus blueberry muffin for my daughter. Nice. Can't beat it. Nice people lives right down the road. Well, I have a spreadsheet that I'm keeping of all these different beans that I've

tried where it's incredible. On a scale of one to 10. That's awesome. Make some notes. Cause there are certain, I've concluded that there are certain uh characteristics i i don't like so like the brighter the coffee is the the less i tend to like it i like the darker more chocolatey stuff and you know so it's like a quest to find the ultimate bean i don't really notice hold on is that very fitting for your style of how you kind of go about doing anything?

Like you have many, many different spreadsheets, presumably not just one coffee only spreadsheet. We have like a ton of different spreadsheets kind of in the same vein. I think the internet word, the joke is autism, right? Is maximally autistic about something. And yeah, I would say that I think where it's warranted, I, I don't, I don't take it as far as just irrational OCD about things I would say, but in this case, if I'm going to order beans from all over the place, I might as well keep track of the ones that I liked and didn't like. Again, I haven't really gone through that website too much, but there's probably hundreds of options on the website. Um, But I would say that that speaks to

the, like, if we're talking about work or something that, that matters even to, I would say another level, because I actually just recorded a podcast this morning, a short little kind of motivational piece, just on this point alone, sharing the story of a guy named Dave Scott, the famous endurance athlete who there's a, there's a, there's a little anecdote of him where he's getting ready for the Hawaii triathlon. And at the peak of his training, it's absurd. He's burning, I don't know, five, 6,000 calories per day because he's biking 75 miles and swimming, I don't know, 12 miles and running 17 miles a day. And he's washing his cottage cheese as well because he wants to remove just those few grams

of fat so he can eat a few more grams of carbs because that's how much he believes in the effectiveness of a high carb diet. Now, of course, we know that ritual doesn't actually change anything, but it just makes the point. He's willing to go to literally any lengths. He's washing his low fat cottage cheese before he eats it because he thinks maybe it'll make him a little bit better in his performance. And so the point of the little piece was that, that I think in many, especially competitive arenas like business, for example, the winners generally

are the people who just go to the greatest lengths. They just pay attention to the most detail. They put the most work into crafting every little element of whatever we're talking about, whether it's writing a book or crafting a customer experience or, you know, a product or service and so forth. Writing a book, you do this a lot. You actually wrote an entire book and then revised the entire thing, not just like little pieces of it. What's going on with that? How do you, first off, when you started the book writing process, the first one was bigger, leaner, stronger, right? Right, right. I guess kind of what was going on in the market that saw, the first one was bigger, leaner, stronger, right? Right, right. I guess kind of what was going on in the market that saw, I mean, everybody wants those three things. It's a genius name. But kind of where were you coming from and wanting to put all of

that down? I think that writing a book is one of those things I feel like I've wanted to do it almost yearly. And then I realized, no, I don't. It's too much. It's way too much. You have three of these and you just revise the entire, the first one. So going back to the very first one, you know, where, where were you at and getting that information down? And then I want to just kind of move that into like, why would you want to revise the entire thing? Yeah. Yeah. And I understand. So, so the first time around, it really was a matter of scratching my own itch, which is that's a, that's a, I think a very good concept also for business and for marketing when you're solving a very real problem because you have it. If a bunch of other people have the same problem, then you might have something that can

work. And so when I wrote bigger, leaner, stronger, that was back in 2012, really, it actually was just the book. I wish I had when I was like 17 or 18 getting into lifting weights. It was just the first edition was shorter, quite a bit shorter than the current third edition. And it was, it didn't have much in the way of marketing puffery. It just kind of got to the point. This is how energy balance works. This is how macronutrient balance works. This is why micronutrients matter. Here are a lot of things that don't matter, like meal timing and even meal composition to some degree, high carb, low carb.

You probably should go high carb. This is why. If you want to go low carb, do it though, whatever. It doesn't matter that much. Okay, on the lifting side of things, here are the exercises that are going to do the most for you. Here's why progressive overload matters more than fancy training techniques like drop sets and super sets and giant sets. And here's why volume matters as well. And so again, it was just, I was figuring that if I would have had this book when I started, it would have just saved me a bunch of time and frustration. Would you believe yourself?

The nice thing is, and I did point this out even in the first edition, that it doesn't require much of a leap of faith. Just do it and you'll see results quickly. Literally, it's that simple. Anybody who experienced, when you experienced the power of a calorie deficit for the first time, you know what I'm talking about. When you finally realize, you're like, oh, wait a minute, that it actually is all this is. Are you kidding me? That's all I have to do to like get shredded is just mildly starve myself for eat a bunch of protein. And that's

pretty much it actually. I mean, if we want to optimize further, we can, but that's, that's pretty much it. And maybe just don't exercise yourself into the ground. Oh, wow. Okay. Um, and then on the, on the training side of things, again, I can remember when I when I first realized that the simple principles of strength training really should just be the fundamental of my training, even though I wasn't trying to become a strength athlete, per se, I would say that what I was interested in is a little bit more along along the lines of like recreational bodybuilding, I guess you could say, where Yeah, sure, I would like to be strong, but I also want to look a certain way.

And so again, when I, when, when, when I went from what I was doing previously to actually following a decently designed program that was built around that as a foundation, I quickly saw results where I was getting stronger again, quite quickly in the beginning. And of course that translates into rapid muscle growth, even if it's not a lot of muscle, because I already had gained a fair amount of muscle by the time I learned this stuff. But when I had remained anybody who has been stuck in a rut for a while, when you get used to that, and then finally the needle starts moving again, again, it's pretty striking and it's motivating and it makes you want to keep going. So the first edition did go over, it did contain a fair amount of scientific citations and there was a fair amount of

research that went into the assertions. But again, at the end of the day, it wasn't so much of an appeal to science as just like, just do this and you'll see results and that's why you should do it. Right. When did you start training? When I was like 17. Nice. Yeah. So. We were all teenagers. It's the only way you're going to make it into your 30s doing this. How old are you now?

Yeah. 36. Yeah. Yeah. 37. The only way to do it, you had to start when you're in like 15, 16, 17 years old. Yeah. And I mean, I actually, in my work, having now heard firsthand and worked virtually, I guess you could say firsthand with so many people over the years, there are a lot of people out there, guys and gals, who have gotten into this in their 30s, 40s, even 50ies and done quite well, but they started out knowing all of the things that I didn't know. You probably didn't know that we didn't know when, when we started. So they had a huge advantage in that regard in that when you start out, if you're 30 or 40 or 50, but you start out doing the most

important things, mostly, right. It's a very different experience. And again, you see rapid results, even though you might know that you're not going to get, if you're a guy, you're not going to get, if you're starting lifting at 40 years old, you're not going to get as jacked ultimately as you maybe could have gotten if you had started at like 15 and 16. But for, I would say most 50 year old guy or 40 year old guys, they can certainly get to a point where they're really happy with how their body looks, how their body performs. And so it's kind of irrelevant that they missed out maybe on 10 pounds of muscle gain or something when it's all said and done. Yeah. I'm really interested in what the new look is. I mean, we have the manuscript, but I have not gotten through all of it or compared it to the old one. What are a lot of the, you know, some of the big takeaways in the new

revised version of the book? Because everything you said, I think I'm in a way going, you know, backwards, not backwards, but the more I progress or the more that I do this, the more I realize those principles that you just laid out are just these, there's the difference between those being step one and then step two is like a million miles the other way when it comes to leaning out a little bit. Progressive overload, finding new ways to just add five pounds to the bar or more mind muscle connection. You know, what was some of the catalyst to taking a new approach to the original, which sounds like it has the basics really dialed in. Totally. And that, and that, so that original,

that was the purpose and to put like clear numbers on it. So the, the first book for men, right. Bigger, leaner, stronger. I would say it's for the guy who has yet to gain his first 25 pounds of muscle or so. Maybe you could say 30, but I think 25 is going to be the sweet spot for when that program becomes more of a maintenance program. It becomes more than you need to do to just maintain that muscle, but not enough to gain, let's say what is available. Looking at the, at the research that we have available on this, I'd say the average guy probably can gain somewhere around 40 pounds of muscle beginning to end. Like that's it. You know, we do, we all have genetic ceilings as to how big we can, we can possibly, how strong we can possibly get based

on our, uh, I mean, a big part of it is our anatomy, for example. Some people, they just, and we all know that freak kid who was squatting 405 by the end of his first year. That was not me. It would have never been me. Some people have anatomical advantages, for example, just even how their muscles insert and how their limbs are constructed in terms of length, right? However, I'd say most guys can gain probably about 40 pounds. So bigger, leaner, stronger, we'll get them at least halfway there, if not a bit more than halfway there. So that book I've actually revised several times and I'm going to do another round, mostly just editorial cleanup. I'm happy with the information. I just am a bit of a better writer and I have another editor

I've worked with. I just can clean it up a little bit more. However, the book that I'm releasing this month, all the material is going to go live, but like the official release, which I'll do a giveaway, give away some cool stuff. You make it fun. That's probably going to be next month is called Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And so that's the sequel. And that's meant for intermediate to advanced weightlifters, experienced weightlifters, or another way of looking at it, is guys who their newbie gains are behind them. And they have gained a fair amount of total muscle and strength that they already can gain. And they want to squeeze out the last, let's just call it 10-ish pounds that are available to them and the primary difference between the approach of bigger leaner stronger

and beyond bigger leaner stronger is mostly just uh there's there's volume so you just have to work harder in the gym now for less yeah that's that's totally for a lot less you should totally just start smashing your head into the wall right now yeah just get used to it it might equate to become two more pounds because that's what that's what the game is right it's a lot more work for a lot less return yeah talk about that in the book and i joke about how if i were a charlatan i would be explaining this very differently but i'm gonna level with you here and tell you like this is is the primary takeaway that you have to accept now is that you are never going to gain muscle and strength like you, you, like you once could, right. When you were never going to happen again, and you're

going to have to work a lot harder and even to put, to put numbers to it. So for example, bigger, leaner, stronger has you doing, let's say 10 to 12 hard sets per major muscle group per week in that range, right? If you're, if you're looking at direct and indirect volume, and that is all somebody new needs to gain more or less as much muscle and strength as they can for the first while you could do more volume, but you're not going to get much more out of it. If you like working out and you just want to burn more calories. Okay, fine. Uh, but if we're talking about just efficiency in terms of time and effort, right, that's, that's about, that's all you need as a, as an intermediate though. So at the point where that is no longer enough, it goes up by quite a bit.

So I'd say on average, you're looking now at 15 to 16 hard sets per major muscle group per week. And so those workouts on average are, yeah, they're about, you know, 50% longer and harder. And, and that's, that's irrespective of how you periodize your programming. So in bigger, leaner, stronger, it's, it's just double progression. It's very simple. That works well when you're new and it has very few moving parts. You don't need spreadsheets to calculate percentages and people understand it and they can do it. However, beyond bigger, leaner, stronger is periodized differently. So it's, it's periodized in a linear fashion, but it's over the course of 16 week macro cycles,

essentially where the long story short is you're, you're, you're starting with lighter weights and higher reps on both your primary exercises, like the big compounds and the accessory exercises. And you are progressing over the course of the macro cycle to heavier weights and fewer reps. So your volume in the sense of total reps in terms of hard sets, it's not changing. But in terms of reps, it's going down as the intensity goes up. And you also, I use weekly undulating periodization as opposed to daily. And I explain why in the book, I prefer that for especially how this is programmed with the exercise selection alone. Cause you're like, you're not squatting three times per week or just doing a few exercises

a few times a week, which is where DUP tends to do best. So there isn't much else in terms of like fancy programming. And I explained that. There are a few other tools that we can use than I talk about in the book and in the bonus material. There are some neat things like antagonist paired sets can save you some time. That's cool. Blood flow restriction can help you get in a little extra volume with less recovery demands. And that's kind of cool. So there are

some things that you can work in, but the majority of the results that you, my reader, are going to experience are going to come from just working harder. And if we could just slam heavy weights for that amount of volume without having to change intensity, we probably wouldn't even have to periodize the training. But one of the way, one of the benefits of periodization is, uh, the, the, the amount of volume that you're doing is going to affect your fatigue that you feel. Even if I know, I understand that like systemic fatigue is, is kind of a myth, but even at a muscular level and your joints, they just get beat up. If you're doing too much, too many, if you're trying to do like 15 hard sets of fives per week for your lower body,

that's, that's hard. That, that is your, your knees eventually start. They have trouble. They have trouble mean, and your hips don't feel so good either. So I'd say that's an overview of the approach between the two different books. When you start to look at actually a few minutes ago before we move on, you mentioned direct versus indirect volume. I feel like a lot of CrossFitters right now, they're kind of moving away from like pure CrossFit and they want to do more bodybuilding or functional bodybuilding,

or at least incorporate some assistance movements into their training biceps, bicep curls included. So if you're doing something like already 15 hard sets of pull-ups a week, are you typically count that as that's 15 hard sets for lats and that's 15 hard sets for, for biceps or just elbow flexors? Or do you, or do you think you need to add actual bicep curls on top of the pull-ups to get a better effect? That's a good question. I would count chin-ups probably as direct volume for the biceps for sure. And for the lats too, yeah, actually. But take something like a barbell row, I would count that as indirect volume for biceps.

And in Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, I don't get this granular because it's not necessary. I just kind of lay everything out for people anyway. I give them a year's worth of workouts to follow that are in line with everything they've learned in the book. But I would probably weight the barbell row as maybe like one set of barbell row would be one would be one set of volume for the upper back, maybe a half of a set for biceps. Same thing for on the bench press, I would say, of course, that's one direct set of volume for the pecs and maybe a half of a set of volume for the triceps. And if you speak to different people in the evidence-based bodybuilding space,

this is subjective. There are different opinions on how to how to do it. That's how, how I would go about it. Uh, but that only, I would say that only really comes in play really that that'd be for advanced weightlifters who are really at the end of their genetic rope for muscle and strength gain and, and really are just into trying to squeeze every last ounce of, I think what they've got out of their body, which, and I understand that's the, there's, that definitely does, does describe a lot of people and possibly a lot of people, you know, listening today. So I, I do understand why people would ask about that. However, to anybody who's newer or maybe just, maybe they're, they've just moved out of the novice phase to the intermediate phase. They probably don't have to get that into the weeds on it because they can

just continue focusing on making progress on the big compound lifts, throw in some accessory stuff, like sure, do some biceps curls. I mean, well, why not? Or, or, or if you want to do some chin ups, but you're going to be doing it in addition to your deadlifting, in addition to your heavy rowing. And, um, so I think that approach, you know, works well for, for most people. But if you go talk to somebody like Eric Helms, like, yes, he can show you his spreadsheets where he gets very meticulous about managing his volume because that's part of the game at his level. You know, when you talk about like the, the 40 pounds that you're of muscle mass that you're most men are able to gain over a lifetime of lifting, getting through that first 25 is relatively easy. How long have you, I mean, if you've been tracking it, it would be awesome or just kind of observational data of like, what does that look like in training age? Is that the first five years and then the last 15 pounds of that, when does that stop? Because I

feel like I might be there. I might've hit that. I might've hit that biological tipping point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's something I'm holding on right now. My daughter's bringing me food. Thanks Romy. Hold on. I need that. Yeah. Uncured black forest. Ah, there it is. There it is. So well-trained. Yeah. I talk about this in beyond bigger, the stronger there's there are two chapters one on how much muscle can you

gain naturally and really break it down and explain how it come to a statement like that as well as, as well as strength. And so to answer your question directly, it's probably about 50%. I think it's fair to say that about 50% of your potential muscle gain is going to come in your first year to a year and a half. And that's for men and women. For women listening, take the numbers I've said and cut them in half, essentially, is what it comes down to. And so that tells you then you show in, in, you nailed it with five years seems to be the consensus among, again, I would say that the people have looked into this the most in the evidence-based fitness space and

the research that we have available five to six years of proper training and proper nutrition. And by that, I mean, that means like not missing any extended periods. Like there are no six months off or probably even necessarily three months off, maybe a month at the most here and there. It means that over the course of that six years, you have consistently at least paid attention to your calories and macros. Maybe you were not weighing and measuring everything you were eating for the entire six years, but you were, you were really being conscientious, right. For the, for the whole, for the whole period. And, um, so that, that's, that's just to qualify it. And so, yes, I mean, you're looking at about half of what is available to you genetically is going to come in your first year, year and a half. And then the remaining four to five years is going to be

working for that other half or so of what's there. And in terms of progress, a good rule of thumb to just to keep in mind is your potential. Let's just look at muscle because that's simpler. Your potential muscle gain halves essentially year after year. So for a guy, 20-ish pounds of muscle in the first year, again, it depends on compliance. It depends on genetics, how well they even respond to training, right? But let's just say it's 20-ish pounds of muscle. For women, it's about half that. Year two is about half that, maybe a little bit more. It can be a little bit more. Year three, half that. And so what you really is like, you see fairly quickly, you get to this point where your, your potential progress is like vanishingly small and you are busting your ass for just two or three pounds of muscle. And that's,

that's, as you approach, again, you approach that genetic ceiling, that is the experience. So you have to learn to appreciate training. You have to, you have to be in a different mindset than when you go into it when you're like, dude, I just add weight to the bar every week and I just get bigger. This is so easy. It's so nice back in the day. That's the point where someone who wants to be as athletic as possible, they potentially want to still be competing in a variety of sports.

Maybe it's MMA or whatever it is post-college. And they get to a point where they're just not getting bigger and stronger. And then they go, wow, fuck that now, now that's when they start considering steroids. Whereas before they may have been like, ah, I don't really want to go down that route. I don't really want to do that. And then they, then they dedicated their life to this thing and not getting, they're not getting any better anymore. And they decide, well, maybe now's the time. Totally. And I understand that I've, I've spoken about that. I've written about that. I've written about that. And I've never used steroids. And at this point, I have no interest, but I even couldn't. Like anybody looks at my Instagram, I've maintained more or less the same physique for, I don't know,

four or five years now. And if I were to, if I were just to get on a good dose of test, not alone, not alone, I would quickly gain, I would guess 10 pounds of muscle, maybe as much as 15. It wouldn't be like pure lean tissue, obviously, but I would blow up quickly. And then what, what do I say? Like, Oh, it's awesome. It's this new supplement. I really, I truly feel like you just inspired me to do steroids because then I could be like 20 years from now and pull up my Instagram and be like, Oh, this was the Royd year. Check it out. Scroll through this one for a little bit. I didn't die. You'll be fine. Just do it for a year. I have people asking me, they're like, come on, Mike, just do, just do one

cycle. Like be open. Just do a cycle. We want to hear what it's like. I'm like, yeah, you fucking or just I'm terrified to do that. Cause I will gain 20 pounds or whatever it is. And then I'll stop doing it. And then I'll never get close ever again. And I will know that forever I am on like the downhill slide and just, I hit my peak. I pop my cherry on, I'm out. I know. That's true.

I mean, it would be so demotivating. Steroid users who are honest about it. That's something that they will often say is, I mean, I remember the last conversation I had with a guy who does all kinds of steroids, who knows what else. And he was just saying that what he actually regrets is the psychological addiction. And that when he's on these drugs, he just feels like not just in the gym, but just he has so much energy, he doesn't need as much sleep. And he quickly gains 20, 30 pounds, he just feels like he's a you know a superhuman and then when he's off he's like a you know withered uh shadow of his of his former self

and that's how that's how he feels and this is how we do it i get that we set it up there we go a year baseball players this is the downside of zoom uh i heard some major league baseball players um talking about how they, of course, some Major League players do do steroids, and I've known some of these guys. And they say it's not just that they hit the ball harder or they swing the bat faster. It's that when they get to the plate, their confidence is so fucking high where it's like, I'm just going to fucking rip the cover off this ball. And so it's just a different story.

Guys like that, when they're mma fighters same deal or football yeah you're like where it's just it's just it takes raw brute force to yeah and and speaking to athletes that's that's when i talk about this like i understand that if you are in a situation where many of your competitors and your peers are on drugs and these drugs give them a huge edge in the sport where now you can't just get by on your talent. You no longer are just the most talented and technically proficient person, which is the experience for a lot of professional athletes. Obviously it's like from a young age, they just started dominating everybody and they never stopped. And that was it. Every time they went to the next level, they just destroyed everybody. That's the common story you hear.

But now you got to a point where that's how everybody was. And so now you take that plus drugs and you simply can't compete without the drugs. And what are you going to do? This is what you spent your entire life working toward. You're here now and millions of dollars are on the line and what like you're just gonna you're gonna you're gonna say no i the the official policy is that you're not supposed to use drugs everybody is using drugs though however i just have a moral qualm and so i'm gonna leave this all behind and i don't i have literally no other

skills and i have no idea what i'm gonna do but i behind and i don't i have literally no other skills and i have no idea what i'm gonna do but i'll figure it out no you're gonna take the fucking drugs of course yeah and i understand that same thing with hollywood people right if somebody if i were an actor and i weren't in great shape and uh steven spielberg comes to me and says hey i'm doing and he doesn't do the superhero movies whatever he's steven spielberg's gonna do the superhero movies. Whatever. Steven Spielberg is going to do a superhero movie. You're going to be the first one. And he's like, you'll be the first one. But I need you to gain.

You need to be like jacked in three months. So yes or no? Of course. You're like, yeah, I'll do whatever I need to do. And I understand that. We're doubling up. Just to kick off this Legion Athletics Partnership, make sure you get over to buylegion.com forward slash shrug.

That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com forward slash shrug. Use the code shrugged at checkout to save 20%. Also, I want to thank our friends over at Shadow Creative Studios taking your podcast from idea to live in two weeks. Setup includes branding logos,

cover art, and more. It's an easy process. All you do is record and upload the audio. Everything else is done for you and the perfectly produced episodes show up on all podcast channels simple payment structure and you could get a free consultation today at podcast.shadowstude.io p-o-d-c-a-s-t.shadowstude.io use the code shrug for a free consultation I also want to thank our friend over at Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrug. The green, the red, and the gold. We are actually parked out in the mountains.

We're having our very first get-together. The Shrugged Nation is hanging out in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. And your boy packed one thing for sure. Before I even left, I took a green drink. Needed to. Needed to have it. The vitamins and minerals in the car, keeping my body moving because nutrition on the road, especially when you got like a six-hour drive and a two-year-old in the back, not ideal. I'm not eating salads on the road. McDonald's doesn't have them. Wendy's doesn't have them. Sometimes Chipotle's findable, but it's tough. Vitamins, minerals, hard to find in the real world, especially when you don't have as much control.

So the Organifi Green is a guaranteed coming with me because it keeps me healthy, keeps me feeling good, keeps all the systems in check. And I need the vitamins and minerals to make sure I'm performing optimally because there's a hill outside my house right now. I'm going to have to kick Doug Larson's ass on the way up. And the only way I'm going to do it, making sure I'm getting my greens. You could go save 20% at Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. And I want to thank our friends over at Bioptimizers, the magnesium. You got to talk about it.

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is deficient in magnesium. It increases GABA, which encourages relaxation on a cellular level, which is critical for sleep. It also plays a key role in regulating your body's stress response system. Those with magnesium deficiency usually have higher anxiety and stress levels, which negatively impacts sleep as well. Now, before you go out and buy a magnesium supplement all by yourself, it's important to understand that most magnesium problems out there are either synthetic or they only have one to two forms of magnesium. When in reality, your body needs all seven forms of this essential sleep mineral. That's why I recommend my friends over by optimizers created called magnesium breakthrough. Taking this magnesium before bed helps you relax and wake up refreshed and energized. The deep sleep benefits are really

noticeable. I also love by optimizers for free shipping. Gotta get it. And they offer a 365-day money-back guarantee on all their products. So go check out BuyOptimizers. B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code shrugged to save 10%. BuyOptimizers.com forward slash shrugged. Save 10% on your order, friends. We're going to get back to talking to mike matthews right now why do you think steroids are talked about so much in sports but not in the hollywood scene nearly as much

people mention it but it doesn't seem to be so taboo in that in that world yeah i guess i guess because in sports right they consider it people who are against it um and i wouldn't i'm not one of them but people who are against it i guess they think't i'm not one of them but people who are against it i guess they think it's cheating right there's no rule book in hollywood yeah and hollywood i just i guess it doesn't have that competitive element to it so people are gambling on it either true true no one's gambling on someone being spider-man whether the rock is going to successfully uh beat up the other guy in car goes fast number 55 or whatever yeah um and and that's ben diesel i think right uh ben diesel and it would be the billion dollar franchise yeah i mean they would be yeah who's gonna who's gonna

body slam the other one um what actually keeps you super motivated to keep training? Because we talk about like gaining this allotted amount of muscle and then we kind of get there and it's super fun. I feel like part of the issue when you revise the entire book again for the fourth time is a lot of just that continued learning process for me and just experimenting with new stuff. How do we keep picking up the same weights over and over again, but keeping it fun and interesting? Do you get into any of that of, you know, okay, here's how you put on the last 15 pounds, but there's so much more that goes into being able to do this for the rest

of your life. Building muscle is just an aspect of how you can live a strong, happy life. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And that's something that I do talk a bit about in the book. I wrote a little, I think it was like an Instagram piece, but it also is an email on this point where I was like giving a physique update and kind of explaining, yeah, it's the same as always, essentially. I can get a little bit leaner, a little bit fatter. I don't know.

I can have a pump, not have a pump. This is pretty much it. And so you have to find other reasons to train. And I can just speak personally that there are the health aspects. Speaking to what you were just alluding to is life. Every aspect of life is better when you are strong. It's always better.

And I mean physically strong, but that also would apply to any. I think anybody would agree that's something that is not controversial or politically incorrect to say it is better to be strong than weak. I think so. And so that can start with physical strength, but just because of the process of what it takes to build physical strength, we've all had that experience where it also helps develop some grit and it helps you develop, I think some, maybe you could say psychological or emotional strength. And then there are the health components of, of there's lifting weights. And if you really want to maximize the health benefits of exercise or training, if you want to use that word, you would do some cardio as well. And I would say that again, like as far as long-term health and, and, and

vitality and longevity go, you have doing that, right? So I'd say doing plenty of resistance training, doing a fair amount of cardio, not too much if you, unless you want to, but if you don't really like cardio, sure, you don't have to do that much. And getting enough high quality sleep regularly, making sleep a priority, and then eating a lot of nutritious foods, right? And those are the three major things. And exercise is a huge, huge component of that. And having that habit in place can definitely overrides the dietary side of things. A lot of focus is put on diet in terms of maintaining a certain body composition or health. And yes, it's important, but I would say training is even more so. And sleep is definitely up there. It's something that a lot of people neglect. I'd say

with many people, it's like an afterthought or maybe underrated. So for me, that's part of it. Also setting a good example for my kids. I think that is something that means it's important to me personally. My wife is into exercising. I'm into exercising. I know that's very healthy for them. So they're growing up, just seeing that as a normal thing to take care of your body and also, also eating well. And like you said, also there's, there's once you have more or less gained all the muscle and strength that you're going to gain, you actually have now in a way licensed to try other stuff now in your training. Whereas before you might not want to try other things because you're like, I just want to get to my peak muscularity as quickly as possible.

That's what's motivating. That's what's fun. And even if that means, for example, that my workouts are not as stimulating or exciting or fun as they, as they could be, because I'm kind of just like grinding away on, uh, the same types of exercises. And really, as you were saying, just fighting to add that next five pounds or once you get to that point where you're like, okay, I could keep doing this, but there's not much more I'm going to get out of it in terms of bottom line, like physique results. Yeah. I've always wanted to try this other style of training because I just think it's fun. Uh, even take splits, like, you know, um, you can make any split work, but there are, I'd say, depending on where you're at,

some splits are going to work better than others, but maybe you really like, let's say you, you really like full body workouts, even though I know most full body splits are not literally your entire body. They're more like just multiple major muscle group splits. And that can work very well, depending on circumstances. But let's say to get to where you want to be, that wasn't the optimal solution, uh, given it could be for various reasons. And now you're like, cool. I'm basically, I'm at the top now. I'm going to try those kind of workouts or I'm going to try higher rep stuff or I'm going to try workouts that have more sophisticated, quote unquote, training techniques that again,

don't really have much of a place in a pure strength and muscle building program. And there's also, I would say one other thing is, and we've all experienced this is the very immediate benefit of you always feel better after a workout. You always feel better. Like I know I always do like maybe not every workout is great, but you're always glad that you trained. Right. And so I think it's, there's really something to be said for if, if you make that a daily thing, maybe it's not weightlifting every day. Cause of course you have to take a few days or a couple of days off a week. I'm going to say at least one, if not two, to give your body a little bit of a break. But, uh, the, the same thing applies at least for me,

even with cardio workouts. And I don't push myself that hard. I'm just doing 30, 45 minutes of like low slash maybe moderate intensity cardio, very simple. Maybe I'll do some sprint stuff here and there, but even that, even just hopping on my upright bike for 30, 45 minutes, I feel immediately better. So those are, I'd say for me, the major factors that motivate me to keep doing it. When you mentioned your kids, Doug's got three, I've got a two-year-old she's she's kind of badass trying to train her to be super badass um how do you feel uh or I guess how do you approach the fitness conversation like in your house to your kids this is a hot topic in

our lives right now because we're trying to figure this thing out along with all the other parents in the world. But how do you, how do you kind of instill the, the fitness lifestyle in, in, in them? So far it's been with my son who's seven turning eight has been sports. So just enroll in sports and let him find like, you know, he likes playing soccer. And so there you go. Like put them in a soccer league, let them around kick the ball push other kids around have fun um and take them out yeah exactly my dad's just stronger than you it's not my fault blame blame nature yeah you're still in your 10 pounds of muscle i'm on 40 i feel like if they're enrolled in sports where losing hurts and being bigger and stronger matters like football and wrestling, I feel like that goes a long way also.

Like when I played football and wrestled and played baseball and I was so much more motivated to get bigger and stronger for wrestling specifically just because losing sucks and winning feels really good. But with, with my boys, I'm definitely putting them in something combative as early as I can. Yeah. Yeah.

Something competitive where, and also it's funny with, with Lennox's soccer, um, just because of the age and the league or whatever there are, like, Oh, we don't keep score.

And, and everyone gets it. Everyone's keeping score. What's funny is all the kids keep score. And the coaches, they, they, they gave up trying to like remind them we don't keep score.

It's just, they're, it's, it's, they're not losers to remind them we don't keep score. It's just – They're not losers, guys. They're just not winning either. You can't fight biology. I'm sorry. No. That's a whole other discussion. But there are many ideologies that are just at fundamental odds with reality,

and that's one of them. But, yeah, so sports, getting them into sports. And also, I mean, I don't – It's not like I grab my kids and go, okay, it's time to do a workout, kids. Like, on the floor, try to fuck up push-ups now. Burpees! They see me.

I do my workouts at home, right? And they see me. They'll join me, and they'll grab their little, you know, five-pound or two-pound dumbbells in the case of my daughter who just turned three. And she'll try to do the things that I do so yeah I just kind of keep it you know light and fun and I think that's appropriate for their age and as they get older again I I would guess that sports would be the

driving Doug like you said the driving factor if they're really going to get into working out and if they're not I don't I'm okay with that. You know, I would, as they get older, I definitely, when they could understand these things better, would want them to understand why they should do, they should be moving their body and training their body in some way. It doesn't have to be, they don't have to be in the gym trying to get as big and strong as possible, but you got to do something. You can't just be sedentary and get overweight and then, and then just, well, everything just goes to shit from there. Yeah. Has it actually been easier to get your kids into the fitness culture during COVID? Cause I'm, I'm, I'm assuming you're training at

home more than, than you have in the past. I certainly am. I used to train at a variety of gyms around town, you know, most days of the week, but my kids never saw me working out. Yeah. And I didn't really talk about training with them that much but now they see me doing something in the garage basically every single day yeah and so like it they they have a much better handle on what lifting weights looks like etc that uh because we're actually stuck at home with each other all day every day yeah and they see their dad doing it so you know they just yeah immediately merge yeah same same here i was in before covid i uh, I would train first thing in the morning, but the, the gym I would go to was in the same office complex as my office. So, you know,

I would just basically park in the garage and then walk to the gym, walk to the office. And that was it now, now it's all home workouts. So they, so they get to see that. And I enjoyed it for a while. Although now I kind of miss the gym, the home workouts were totally fine. Like as far as maintenance goes, I haven't lost any muscle to speak of. I've certainly lost some strength, but that's probably mostly just skill degradation because I haven't barbell squatted in six months. I've done a lot of dumbbell front squats with decently heavy weights actually. So that's something, but I haven't barbell deadlifted. So I, you know, I expect when I get back in the gym, it's going to be, uh, maybe a little bit of a rude awakening in terms of what I see in the mirror where I don't see any change in my physique, but my, uh, my training weights are definitely going to be going down. There they are.

They're working out right now. I actually – Wait one second here. Yeah, sure. This is totally the – Oh, we need to make a – What minute is this? It actually doesn't tell me on here.

I think we're like 40 minutes and 35 or five. Sorry guys. No, hold on. Doing stuff from home. Sometimes podcasts involve new guests now. Yeah. This used to be,

hold on. Edit 35 to 40 minutes. Um, yeah, I just remember that. Remember the video where the kids crept in and the guy was like giving to 40 minutes in. Yeah, I just remember the video where the kids crept in and the guy was giving his. And now that's just normal. We'll have kids pop in all the time. Yeah, when I think about it, and this goes back to what you were talking about a lot earlier,

just working hard in the gym. Because even when I was, I had one-on-one clients or you're doing group classes or whatever it is, and people ask you about results and there's like a part of you that wants to look at them and go, well, one of the biggest things that you're missing is just the intensity and how hard you need to work to get strong. And I'm not saying that I really, really want my daughter to be just like grinding out sets as a two-year-old, but I definitely want her to know what it looks like to train very hard. I think that that's

something that I think about a lot more than, is she going to work out? I don't really care. I just hope that whatever she, I guess, so chooses to do, it's with the intensity that dad lifts weights at. Those are like the- And you're thinking with just a life lesson, because what does it take for her to flourish as a person? Totally. And how many times did you just kind of wish you could talk to your clients when you had them or the ones that you do have? And you go, you know, the real thing is you just lack a lot of discipline in all of it. It's not that you have a bad lifting program or a bad diet. It's that you're kind of one foot out the door and you're not really totally checked in.

And the intensity that you just carry yourself through life is just kind of soft. And because of that, we just don't see a lot of results. You got to go all in and you got to work really hard when you do it. And I think that those are a lot of the areas that people just miss that those upper limits of finding their potential in everything is really just how hard do you work and how hard are you going to attack the specific goal that you want to get at? Because in a way, if you want to be kind of lean, kind of strong, kind of healthy, it's not that challenging. You just kind of show up and go through the motions and you're going to put on a little bit of muscle. It's really the

people that, you know, your clients say they want one thing and you want to give them the program and say okay go work your ass off and do this yeah almost like give it to them with what's the cost going to be are you willing to pay the price that's yeah question it doesn't what you want is nice everybody wants things and usually yeah it's a lot more than they're willing to pay the price for. Right. And I totally agree. I mean, that's something I have a shorter book that was kind of a, just a for fun project, but it's done fairly well called the little black book of workout motivation. It's a collection of essays on thoughts like these. Right. And I have a chapter on, on this point in particular, and I

share a bit of Tom Brady's story in terms of of of paying the price and i start with um there was there was like i think it was an exclusive facebook thing that they did like a behind the scenes with with tom oh yeah i remember that right remember when he was saying that basically if you're gonna compete with him you better be willing to give everything you better be willing to to this is like you're because that's he's given up everything he's given every ounce of his energy and his life to football and if you're going to compete with him you better be willing to give it all up as well basically and yeah you have that mentality there's a book i forget the author relentless and the author of it though he talks about uh people like tiger woods Woods and Tom Brady would be one of these people.

I don't remember if he's mentioned, but Kobe Bryant. And they had this kind of dark side. Michael Jordan certainly had it. It's the trainer for Jordan. He's in the documentary. Is he? Okay. I didn't even know that.

Hold on. I got to find his name now. It's a black cover with red writing. It's Tim Grover. He's in the Jordan documentary. In The Last Dance. I just started watching that. I got through the first episode, so I haven't met him yet.

He got in a little bit of trouble in that book because he calls LeBron a follower. Oh, interesting. It's tough. Tough day. I'm not a LeBron fan. He trained – I don't even care about sports, but I'm not a fan of LeBron as an individual. There you go.

Check it out. If your clients are Jordan, Kobe, and Dwayne Wade, you're allowed to talk a little bit of smack to LeBron for not hiring you. Imagine you just have three personal training clients, and they just happen to be those three. And then you look at LeBronon you're like totally missing out lebron you're you're just not getting it done you're leaving money on the table bud he can afford it though right it doesn't matter at this point uh so so anyway in the book the grover talks about this kind of dark side that these people have where they just have this switch where they're willing, they can turn it on and they're willing

to go to any length and do whatever it takes to win. And so, so to that point is if, if, if we mortals can tap into even a fraction of what they have, yeah, we can accomplish a lot. Are we going to accomplish as much as they have in any field? Probably not, but that's okay. We don't have to be the best in the world in business or literally anything to live a great life. We just have to be maybe a lot better than average or better than average, depending on people's personal standards. And I think that's also something that kind of a discussion that people need to have, an honest discussion need to have with themselves is you have that point of, okay, you say you want these great results. Here's what it costs

realistically. Let's, let's not be generous and let's not be pie in the sky. Like conservatively speaking, here's what it costs, right? Are you willing to pay that? And I think that point of willingness is key. And I think it's okay if people say, no, actually I'm not willing to pay that. Uh, what do I get for this though? And you're like, well, here's what you get. You're not going to get, we're talking about physique. Okay. You're not as a guy, you're not gonna, you're not going to gain that 45 pounds of muscle and maintain 8% body fat year round. Here's what we can do. We can get you to probably 30 and you can stay at maybe 15 ish and you're going to look good and you're going to feel good. And I think it's totally fine. If, if somebody makes that decision, I don't think that, that

there's anything to be ashamed of. They shouldn't feel guilty that they could be pushing harder, especially in something like we're talking now, just vanity. Right. Yeah. And okay. So maybe I'm more vain than they are. I'm willing to pay the cost, but does that mean I'm like a better person? No, it just means that in this case, I'm just more vain. I could say it's also part of my job, but half of that is vanity, right? But it still applies to any area of life, right? I mean, if you say you want to become a millionaire,

that's the equivalent of, I mean, look at the percentage of people, let's just say entrepreneurs, because that's the most straightforward route to becoming a millionaire, right? What percentage of entrepreneurs become millionaires? Very, very few. So you're talking about really reaching kind of the top of, of the business game that doesn't come accidentally or easily willing to pay the price.

And that often comes down to, again, like you've said, a lot of work. It's the same thing in the gym, a lot of work consistently for a long time and setbacks and so forth. So, uh, when you think about the nutrition and how that plays into it, has there been much, uh, really any changes that you've seen and how, how you approach that? I mean, you mentioned the higher carb, lower fat a little bit earlier, and then kind of how, how you approach that? I mean, you mentioned the higher carb, lower fat a little bit earlier, and then kind of how, you know, how fitness and strength training fits into that. Has that conversation changed much to you? Because in a way it's there, there's, it's such a basic thing at the highest level with energy balance. Totally. Not too much has changed in that regard since Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, even the first edition. And the reason is, I would say that the state of

the evidence at that point was it was already fairly advanced, right? On the training side of things, I think we've seen more advancement, relatively speaking, and the meta, so to speak, of training has changed quite a bit over the course of the last 10, nine years or so. Whereas nutrition energy balance is what it is. It's never going away. It's never, we're never going to figure out how to get around it. Right. Macronutrient balance was, was taped by, by the time again, 2012 rolls around, like we know why it's important to eat a lot of protein. We know why carbs help you be stronger and have better workouts and how that can indirectly lead to more muscle and strength gain. Not that you have to eat carbs. You can, you can make progress

on a low carb diet. And we know that. And I would say, um, that's where we've seen more and more research because of the popularity of low carb in different forms, right? I mean, the first, since I've been in the fitness space, the first very popular low carb diet was probably the paleo. And it depends on who, like, it depends on which version of paleo you are following. Some people advocated for a lower carb version of it than others. And so I'd say that if anything, I've become just maybe even a little less dogmatic and more flexible in terms of, I mean, protein is what it is. You want to eat, let's say something around 0.8 to a gram per pound of body weight per day, or if you're overweight, losing weight, maybe 40% of your calories that I think is pretty well established. Carbs,

you probably are going to do better with more carbs, not less for several reasons. But if that's not you, sure, flip it around if that's what you prefer. And eat plenty of nutritious foods. That's one of the reasons I don't like very low carb diets, like a keto true where you're like 30 grams of carbs or less per day. I mean, you can't even get in enough vegetables diets, like a keto true, where you're like 30 grams of carbs or less per day. I mean, you can't even get in enough vegetables really like with 30 grams of carbs, let alone, there's no fruit, there's no whole grains, there's no legumes. And I understand if maybe it's a short-term solution, because if somebody really has trouble maybe maintaining with compliance, if they can eat certain foods. And so like, I'd rather

just cut it all out, get rid of all the carbs. And then I just find it easier to stick to my calories and my macros. Okay. Otherwise I wouldn't recommend it. Uh, but as far as what's in the, the, uh, beyond book, it's really, I just explained that now we have to take those fundamentals and we have to double down on them where, see, when you were, when we were new and we probably, we all remember this, even when we understand what I just explained, we also knew that, I mean, we didn't, at least I didn't, I wasn't too strict with measuring and weighing my foods. My calories were in a range. And, you know, if I was intending to maintain a slight calorie surplus, really maybe some days it was a slight deficit. Other days it was a larger surplus.

I was loosey-goosey with it. And protein intake as well. Sometimes on the weekends, maybe I would only have eaten like 50 or 60 grams of protein on Saturday. And you didn't really have to care because in the beginning, our body is just so hyper responsive. But once we get to the point where that's no longer the case, and we just don't get the same stimulus out of training anymore, it just protein synthesis does not do what it once did for us with training. And we have to pay more attention to our calories, for example, like if we are going to lean bulk, we need to make sure that we are in that slight calorie surplus consistently, that we're not all over the place.

And really by the end of it, half of the days are in a deficit. Half of the days are in a surplus or even worse. What I see is people they'll, they'll like binge or eat way too much on the weekend and then, and then spend the week in a deficit trying to make that up and then rinse and repeat. And that's fine if you want to maintain, but if you're an intermediate or advanced weightlifter and you're trying to gain muscle and strength, that's not going to work. And you have to watch your protein. And I do make an argument in the book for why I think it is more important even to pay attention to the nutritional quality

of your diet as well. And so again, it's similar to the training side, right? We're talking about the fundamentals that worked, not much changes. We just have to be, to use the word again, more autistic about them. And that's it. That's how we get there. Yeah. Do you feel like there's any benefit, whether gaining muscle or losing body fat to going beyond one gram of protein per pound of body weight? If I, if you look at the, there is a bit of research in muscle building in, in muscle building. Um, and it looks like it's not right. Even as high as like two grams per pound per day. If you're in a calorie surplus, it would be cool if, if that were the case, my understanding though, of like the current weight of the evidence is that probably is not the case. What is kind of neat though,

is you maybe can mitigate fat gain. If, uh, uh, a large percentage of your calorie surplus comes from protein. Like you may get, be getting the, the additional, you could say anabolic boost that comes from being in a calorie surplus with less of the fat gain doing it that way. Um, the, the effect is probably not major, but if you don't mind eating a lot more protein, then it's something worth trying and just seeing how, how it goes. And now, as far as being in a deficit, what we do know is, especially in intermediate or advanced weightlifters, people who are trying to preserve as much muscle as possible, that there is a good argument to be made for maybe as high as 1.2 grams per pound per day, possibly even higher. And I talk about that in bigger,

stronger in particular. However, again, the effect size is likely small. And I would say that I'm speaking mostly to like amateur bodybuilders. As far as everyday gym goers, they're probably not going to notice a difference cutting between one gram per pound per day and 1.2, although they may notice a difference at like 0.7 or 0.8 grams versus 1.2 you know when do you suggest people start playing with supplements um legion's supplements are super well known immediately of course oh i mean you got yeah yesterday um but you know it is kind of like the tip of the iceberg and in the grand scheme of being able to eat your calories, train really well. Um, in, is it a, is it a first book? Is it a second book?

Like how do you kind of suggest people start to figure out where, where they need to be and just taking their first protein powder to creatine, um, and kind of working your way through what the general basics of, of what people need. How do you start that conversation with them? Totally. So that's addressed in the first book in Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And I explain it's also, you can find it all over our website and make it clear that you don't need any supplements, period. If you don't want to take supplements or if you don't have the budget, don't worry about it. You can do just fine without them. And that's really, that's it, full stop. However, if you have the budget and if you have the inclination, there are some natural substances

that can help you gain muscle and strength faster, like creatine, for example. Most people respond to it. Some people don't, but most people do. And they are going to gain muscle and strength faster. I mean, it's the most researched molecule in all sports nutrition, right? We know it works consistently in most people. It's totally safe. It's inexpensive. Why would you not basically? And beta alanine also may help increase muscle gain in a way that is separate from improving performance in the gym, citrulline malate as well. So there are some things that I think are worth considering. There are also some things for fat loss, not too many, but like sinephrine is a simple stimulant.

It's the natural, you have the ECA stack that a lot of bodybuilders will talk about. Well, you can get a similar effect naturally. It's not as, not as powerful as ephedrine obviously, but with sinephrine, and then you can, there's something called salicin that is actually what aspirin was, was, um, that was the inspiration in nature for, for aspirin was that molecule. And then there's a lot of stuff for health. Like, and I talk about this in the book that, so if you're, if you're new to all of this, if you are going to take supplements, here's what I recommend you consider taking. Protein powder, because it's convenient, first and foremost. You don't need it, but if you're going to be eating a lot of protein every day, it is pretty convenient to be able to just drink down 40 grams of protein and not have to eat a chicken breast, especially if you are working or busy and just on the go, right? I talk about creatine for the reasons just given, and I'd say there's no reason not to take it. I talk about a multivitamin because it can help plug nutritional

holes in your diet, which can develop to some degree, even if you're conscientious about how you eat. And even maybe if you very much micromanage the foods that you eat, there are some molecules that are just hard to get enough of vitamin K, K1, K2. It's just hard to get enough unless you like love kale or a couple other weird foods. Like if you're a seaweed fanatic, then okay, that doesn't apply to you, right? Vitamin D, vitamin D is tough to get. Yeah, it's added in some fortified foods, but chances are you're not eating many of those fortified, usually more processed foods. Like some highly processed breakfast cereals

are fortified with vitamin D, but you're probably not eating them, right? And you're probably also not spending enough time in the sun with enough of your skin exposed every day. So it just makes sense. It's safe, It's simple, cheap supplement with it. And I talk about a couple of others in the book, but it's really, I believe if I remember, it's only six, like here are the six things. You don't have to take them all. And I'm going to rank them in order of importance. I'm just going to explain why.

And if you want to take them all, you can, and you, the benefits are either additive or separate. Like there are none out of these six that you don't have to take if you're taking one and that's pretty much it. And then in the beyond book, I talk about, I don't, I wouldn't call it quote unquote advanced supplementation, but really it's okay. So if you are taking the basics and you want to take a few more, what should you take and why? And I give a few categories like I think it makes sense to take something to support your joints. If you're going to be training now with more volume and especially if you have ever sustained any joint injuries and anybody who has had any joint problems knows how quickly it just puts a stop to your progress. Like if it's your back, it just fucks everything up in your life.

You don't even know how often you use every single joint in your body until there's a tiny little thing and a weird rib in the back. Lifting the milk hurts. I never know I have ribs until one's bruised. Then I know I have all of them and each one of them is so painful. Or your SI joint until it's not feeling good anymore. Yeah. Walking upstairs, you never take it for granted after you've had one little knee injury.

Yep. You like cripple yourself walking up. Yeah. That's an example. Yeah. Sleep support. And I talk about some different options. Like it's not necessarily just melatonin for everybody. If you sleep fine, you probably shouldn't actually, but there are a few things that can improve sleep quality. Again, natural, safe,

and stress support, you know, something like ashwagandha. I'm a fan of ashwagandha and I explain why. And still though, the, the, the list that I give in the beyond book is just optional and it's not necessary. But if again, you have the money that you're willing to spend on it and you don't, and you have a company that you trust, and that's another discussion because unfortunately just looking on a bottle and, you know, even if you're informed as a consumer and you know what you're looking for, you don't actually know what you're getting. You just don't. I've been on the receiving end of this. So years ago, I was trying to get a backup manufacturer set up for my multivitamin because you always want to have a backup. You have your primary, but something can always go wrong,

even if it's just like a production snafu on their end. And so you always want to have a backup. So I reach out to this company, they have all the certifications and I place an order with them. And I tell them, I'm going to send this to a third to, for my multivitamin, I'm going to send this, which has like 20, 20 something vitamins and minerals and like 14 or 15 additional ingredients on top of like ashwagandha, for example. And I tell them, I'm going to send it to a lab and get it tested just so you know, because I want them to know, like, if you're just going to fuck me, don't even waste your time because I'm going to send it to a lab and then I will not pay you if it does not have what it's supposed to have. Oh yeah, no problem. Cool. Does a run minimum, whatever the MOQ is, I don't know, 2000 bottles or whatever. And I send it off

to the lab and it comes back and it's basically just vitamin C. That's it. There's basically nothing else in it but vitamin C. And I send the report to them and they say that's wrong. Their internal testing says otherwise. I'm like, yeah, I don't care. This was in the terms of our agreement. You can keep it. I don't actually destroy it. I don't remember what we did with it, but just like, yeah, thank you. Goodbye. And so what sucks about that though is even me as someone who's trying to sell good stuff, I, if I wouldn't have sent it to a lab, Hey, look, it says right there on the supplement facts, what's in it. If I would have just taken that at face value, I would have been selling vitamin C

pills, uh, that, you know, somebody else may have sent to a lab and then it would have made me look really bad. So, you know, you have to watch out even as a, even as a supplement producer. And so it's doubly true with, with consumers, because there are many people in the supplement space who are completely mercenary. They are, they are, uh, yeah. All they care about in the end is, is, is profits and Lambos and trinkets and shit. Uh, there's Lambos. I want one. You sell enough pills, powder. Now I'm ready. You, you can have a Lambo and then, and then your, your life is actually complete at that point. Sounds like happiness.

There's nowhere to go after that you can't go from a lambo to a camry you'll know you're downgrading that's not good you don't need to go all the way to the camry what happened to you you get like the used yeah like someone didn't buy my online program that i yeah yeah so i can imagine being the guy in the neighborhood that has the used model maserati and everybody looks down on you like what's that what's that the ghibli or something it's like they're inexpensive or like why why are you bothering with nobody cares that you have a quote-unquote maserati oh my god at the the maserati dealership in La Jolla near the comedy

store, they used to have that car out in the front to like, oh, it's only 70 grand. Yeah. And I would like walk by and be like, maybe I'll just get one. And then I realized it's like the most ridiculous payment driving. And that is just so funny because they they use that as like a bait to get you in like oh it's not that bad like yeah it's only like twenty thousand dollars more than a regular car and the problem with that is it it it harms the brand i mean that's just a bad marketing decision i would think right because i mean mercedes has run into a little bit they've probably lost a little bit of their prestige because they've produced a lot of less expensive cars and of course you just see more of them around.

Yeah. It makes it seem less exclusive, but, but yeah, it was supplements anyway. So with, what was the first supplement you guys put out? So we, we started with a whey protein, which is exact same product as we still have today. Although we had leucine added to it because there was, there was research at the time that by increasing the leucine content in what would essentially be a meal of the, of the, of the protein powder by a couple of grams, we may get a little bit more muscle protein synthesis out of it. And I thought that was cool. Why not? Unfortunately, leucine is disgusting. It tastes so bad. Everybody who has had just straight Lucy knows exactly what I'm

talking about. It is impressively gross. And so as we use all natural flavor systems, we just couldn't make it taste right. If we were using artificial stuff, we could have easily masked it, but with natural, it's just not the same. So anyways, we had a whey protein isolate and we had a pre-workout, which is pulse. We launched So anyways, we had a whey protein isolate and we had a pre workout, which is pulse. We launched with that and we had a post workout, which was called at the time. No, no, it was called creatine plus, and then it became recharge. And that formulation has changed a little bit as well. And pulse has changed. We've, we've upgraded, we've pretty much upgraded everything across the board as the company has grown and as we've reaped the benefits of economies of scale and managing our supply chain more

granularly so like sourcing individual ingredients that we buy a lot of so then we don't have to pay the little add-on the manufacturer would would ask for um and so yeah that's where we started and now we have quite a few i'm actually really interested because the the supplement thing to me i and i've been to olympia i've been to the crossfit games i've been to all of the the big exhibitions where you walk around and every single person has a whey protein. Every single person's got the greatest. How do you actually decide kind of where, you know, what you're, what are you actually taking and how do we decide and make a quality decision that this protein is worth the investment? Totally. Yeah. And that speaks to the point that I was just bringing up is,

unfortunately, you have to trust the person you're buying from. I mean, as a consumer, unless maybe you work at a lab where you can, and I've seen reports like on Reddit, where people who work at labs have just taken upon themselves for fun to do testing. I've seen protein powders in particular. But otherwise, I mean, it's kind of expensive if you wanted to just send a product off to get tested. Like my multivitamin, that test, but otherwise, I mean, it's kind of expensive if you wanted to just send a product off to get tested, like my multivitamin, that test, that story that I shared with you, I think it costs about $2,000 because of the number of ingredients in the product. Right. So that's who's going to do that. Um, so in the end you're trusting that the person

that you're buying from is not only, uh, not a scammer or not just outright lying to you, but also that they are taking, they're just taking the necessary actions to ensure they're getting what they're paying for too. Like I get contacted by Chinese suppliers of everything all the time, but protein powder in particular, and mine's expensive. So my whey isolate costs me when it's all said and done, it costs me probably 18 to $19 to ship a bottle, to create the bottle and ship it to the person to like get it to the person. That's what it costs me. And it sells for 40 or 45 or so, which in the scheme of business for anybody understanding business, that's not a good margin. Like it's okay. If it's just a direct

to consumer, which is what we're talking about right now. The brand is 100% e-commerce, but normal, normal business standards is five times from manufacturing cost to consumer cost is okay. That's okay in terms of margins, but really what you want is eight to 10 times because of the middlemen that are usually involved, wholesalers, retailers want big margins. And so from the beginning, my, my plan was, okay, I'm going to make it 100% e-commerce, 100% direct to consumer. I'm going to cut out the middleman. I'm not going to work with wholesalers or retailers, and I'm going to spend more money on the products. And the cynical people out there would say, ah, that's nice, but product quality has very little to do with

the success of many businesses. Most businesses has very little to do with successful branding, with successful marketing. And to that, I say, yes, that's true. And we see a lot of shitty products out there that do very well and they are objectively shitty products, but I just don't agree with selling shit to people. I just don't agree with it. It's not that I disagree with profits or even high margins. If I were selling shirts and I could make shirts for $10 that people are willing to pay a hundred dollars for, Hey, go me, go me, whatever. Right. But it's a shirt. I'm not selling it as anything that's going to, it's a, do you want it? Yes or no? Like that's the pitch, right? Hey, I took some pictures and I wrote some words.

Do you want to buy my shirt? Yes or no? Hey, people are willing to pay. I mean, you have my wife's into fashion. And so you have some of these brands out there. It blows my mind the money they get for some of this stuff. There's one brand and she hasn't gone this far, but they sell shirts in the range of,

these are just t-shirts. They're just fucking t-shirts in the range of $ hundred dollars to a thousand it's a very soft shirt people they're not even soft shirt does it have an athletic cut i'll wear it it's just a shirt it says whatever the brand like you're paying a thousand dollars to just be a walking billboard for some silly company but people buy it and it's all about stunting on social media and flexing on the peasants. You know what I mean? It is a hundred percent.

It'd be like the shirt with, you know, the nine armbands. What are the, no Cartier, Cartier and Hermes armbands. Just kind of coily in the shot. Oh, oops. Did I get my seven Cartier bands in the shot. Oh, oops. Did I get my seven cardio bands in the shot? I'm okay with that because I wouldn't consider that dishonest. It's giving people what they want,

but in supplements, it's dishonest. It's dishonest to make a supplement, a pre-workout supplement for $5 a bottle that cannot be good. It just can't be good at that price point and then To do it in a way where like you use good ingredients But you just pixie dust it and then sell the product on the benefits of the ingredients Oh, I just forgot to mention the dosing matters like that shit is just dishonest and yeah beginning It was just a decision for me that I didn't want to do that Even if it quote-unquote would make more business sense or make more money. I was just a point of personal integrity.

Like, I don't believe in just straight up ripping people off and taking advantage of people because I think it's bad juju. I think that that kind of stuff comes back to haunt us in ways that are not obvious. And so maybe there's even a little bit of self-interest there that I feel like I'm looking out for myself by looking out for others in some, at least to some degree. Yeah. You know how I do it. Internal reputation. Yeah. You will know if you cut those corners and you will know if you're screwing people and

you can put on a smile and say, no, this is just, I'm just, I'm just running my company the best way I can, but you'll know in your own head what's going on. Totally. You know how I do it when I, when we're walking around Olympia, I look at the models that are selling and I go, ah, that's scary. I don't want to look like that. Look at someone that looks like a normal person, but lean and athletic. And I go, those people look trusting. That's not a bad heuristic right because you're like steroid monster beast face tattoos i'm out i don't want to even come close to that one good yes very good point and and green hair mohawk and shit like too much too much you're gonna you're gonna you want to put into your body, whatever he's putting into too intense, even if it's just protein, I don't want it scary. Who knows what it is? Yeah. Protein

though. You could, I could cut my protein costs in half, for example, with these Chinese suppliers, but I wouldn't know what I'm getting. Yeah. So, um, man, this is awesome. I wanted to catch up with you for a while. um this has been this has been fantastic man where uh where can people find you uh legionathletics.com is the best place that's kind of the hub for not just supplements but for my things so i have over at the over at the blog we probably have at least a thousand articles now you do a lot of stuff and we continue to work on that and that's something i enjoy doing i I have a podcast myself called Muscle for Life. That's there and elsewhere, obviously.

I do some stuff on YouTube, not really. I'm kind of just posting. Right now, I'm just posting podcasts. I may take YouTube more seriously, but I have other projects that are just a higher priority. So yeah, I'd say legionathletics.com is really the best. I really enjoy your website. I actually find that anytime I am just in general

doing research and I type in the thing, you're somewhere in the top five on many, many really good subjects. I enjoy it. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and that's what's kind of cool about the SEO of it is it's very organic. Like there, maybe it's not so much, although our bigger competitors have done a lot of link building, for example. We haven't just because it's actually very expensive to do if you're going to do it right. And so it's nice to see in the last, the Google medic update hurt everyone in the space. I don't know if you guys saw any dip. It depends on where you get a lot of your traffic from, but the last google update has helped us and i feel like that's appropriate because i mean we're doing like everything we can

possibly do to give google what they want all the articles are well researched they're well sourced they're long form and we have a scientific review board that's comprised of doctors and PhDs and, and experts who go through them and check everything. And so a lot of work goes into that. So it's nice to see that it's getting what I feel is, I don't know, you could say an appropriate amount of attention from, from Google considering the competition and previously some really wacky stuff that would outrank like how, does that mean google like we have a

3 000 word article that references 32 studies and blah blah blah and we're getting outranked by like a 500 word high school essay what does that even mean yeah you know what i mean sergey sergey chill out dude give me some respect um no i really really do. I really have noticed just in, I do a lot of writing as well. And when you do a lot of writing, there's a lot of going back and researching just because you write something, you go, I know that's right, but I'd really like to make sure that's right. And then that leads you down the rabbit hole. And I end up on Legion's site way more than many others,

just one because of you and two, you guys do a great job. So I appreciate it personally. Doug Larson, tell the people. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas C. Larson. And I'll throw you a bone real quick too. A couple of years ago, you sent me a box of supplements and I tried them all out just to, I didn't know you back then.

So I was just wanting to see what was available and put some hands on it and whatnot. Uh, the whey protein that you sent me is one of my favorite supplements, my favorite whey proteins I've ever had. I'm going to take a whey protein for 20 years or whatever. Um, so what, well done. It, uh, you know, mixes really well, tastes really good. And, and, uh, you know, I have a lot of trust in you that the ingredients are also very high quality.

So, uh, anyone listening needs a good whey protein. I highly recommend it. Thank you. I was impressed because when we were developing that product, we were trying, there was like three or four of, okay, what are the top whey isolates out there? The most expensive, well, actually the stuff from New Zealand, that comes from Ireland, but the stuff from New Zealand was a bit more expensive just because of the travel that was required. But it was, there were three or four that were considered the best in terms of not just quality, because like you said, it mixes and I feel like it has a creaminess to it that you don't get from isolates usually

because they don't have the fat that the concentrates have. But this stuff is just super good. And I was happy that we were able to make something that is naturally sweetened and naturally flavored that I think competes with artificially sweetened and flavored stuff in terms of just the satisfaction of drinking it. I mean, there's a bit of subjectivity there, but I think many of our customers agree at least. Yeah. Well, I'm going to do some deadlifts. As soon as we shut this thing down and then I just got my shipment at the front door right now so I can go try it out.

Perfect. I'ms varner at andrews varner we're barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrug get over to barbell shrug.com forward slash store that's where all the programs ebooks nutrition and mobility to make strong people stronger we'll see you guys next week that's a wrap friends life is so good um make sure you get over to by legion.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code shrugged to save 20%. Get your whey protein over there. Stuff's delicious.

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