Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 258: 14 Things I *WISH* I Knew When I Started My Fitness Journey (tips, tricks, hacks, habits + more!)

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

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and check out using the special link for Dynamic Dialogue listeners. the show notes and check out using the special link for Dynamic Dialogue listeners. Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, we're going to be discussing 14 things that I wish I had learned earlier in my fitness journey. 14 things that if I had a time machine, I would go back and tell my younger self to save myself from having to learn these very valuable lessons the hard way. They say that typically lessons that you learn the hard way are the ones that stick. And certainly these have stuck over the years as being lessons, axioms, and things that I share with my clients. I think these are very high value and helpful tips and tricks to learn and deploy on your own fitness journey.

And in January, I think it's imperative to share these things because so many people are taking another stab at getting in shape and living a healthier life in the new year, which I think is wonderful and I think is beautiful. But with that comes the opportunity to make mistakes, to fall kind of victim to many of the tropes that are either misinformed or entirely foolish. And I've made many of these mistakes. So in reflecting on what I wish I would have done differently, I came up with these 14 things. And I think that they'll really help you and the people you care about as you look to live a healthier, more productive life in the year ahead, where you're focusing on your well-being,

your metabolic health, your longevity, and living healthier. So without further ado, getting into point number one, one thing that I would for sure tell myself is that you will ultimately find a plan that works for you. And you'll find it by trying what doesn't work for you. And what this means is nobody's going to get their fitness figured out or perfect the first time. I've said this before on the podcast, but I really wish I could go back in time and hire a personal trainer. Now, when I started training, I was too young to afford a coach or a personal trainer because I wasn't really working. And what money I was making was actually selling workout plans to my friends and teaching them how to exercise. So paying an actual personal

trainer for sessions was outside of my, um, it wasn't economically viable in the long run. And additionally, online coaching didn't really exist. That would have been a really good option for me at the time, but, but that space was still very, very new. And I did a lot of really dumb shit that I got from bodybuilding magazines, social media, YouTube, and threw as much shit at the wall until eventually I found some stuff that sticks or stuck, I should say. And I rocked with that plan and that protocol for years, much of which were inefficient years that I would not say were wasted, but they were years where I made less progress than I otherwise could have made, which is disappointing on retrospect. But ultimately through those trials and tribulations and through doing so much stuff that didn't serve me or didn't work or that I couldn't recover from

or that led to pain, injury, and dysfunction, I have learned what works really well for me. So starting off training seven days a week, doing double days, doing bodybuilding workouts, eating a competition prep diet, that didn't work well for me. Definitely not for gaining muscle and feeling good. But over the years of making these mistakes and fine tuning and fine tuning and fine tuning, I settled on a fortified day a week training split where I eat mostly whole foods, engage in social behavior that puts not so healthy and not so clean food in front of me. And I'm able to engage with those foods and interact with them and have a nice relationship with food while still maintaining a relatively lean body composition. And quite frankly,

being pretty happy and feeling balanced. And I couldn't have done that in my younger years. And I think about all the people who are starting in January who will ultimately probably fail or try something that doesn't work. They will internalize that as a reason to quit. But I think when you find something that doesn't work, it's a really good opportunity to learn from it, polish it up, adjust it, and move forward. And I think about my kind of resilience and desire to really change my body and needing fitness to be there for me as an emotional release, being a big reason why I stuck with it. And I don't necessarily know that everybody has as big of a reason to stick with it. So when they encounter friction or failure, they immediately turn and run and they give up. And I just want to make sure that you do not do

that. And that every time you slip and fall, especially as you're getting started or maybe getting started again, you give yourself the grace of learning from that fall, learning why you fell, how to get back up and keep going. So don't give up when you encounter friction. And remember that ultimately you are going to find something that works for you. And the only way to really find it is by either hiring somebody to help you perfect it from the jump, but you'll still have to iterate and learn or from just failing and iterating as you go. The second thing I would tell myself is to get up early and get your training done.

And I did this very early on. I trained at 4.45 AM for the first four years I trained. And then I kept progressively moving that window back in the day as I took more one-on-one clients and kind of built out a more robust morning training schedule. But now that my schedule has changed a bit and I don't train as many one-on-one sessions and so much of my focus is on core coaching methods online side, on the dynamic dialogue podcast, which you're listening to right now, and on my various social media and the different obligations I have for brand and brand partners, I have to be very, very diligent with my schedule. And I'm now back in the habit of getting up at 4 a.m. and I'm at the gym by 4.30 and I'm out the door by 6. And it does take some adjustment and it does take some time to really get the sleep thing dialed.

And we've talked to fantastic guests on this podcast about variances and chronotype. So getting up at 4am might not be reasonable for you, but whatever the chronotype equivalent is of getting up and getting after it first thing and never letting go of that. I think that has been a wonderfully, wonderfully effective tool for me. Having re-engaged with it the way I did when I first started training now, I'm so disappointed that I ever gave up that window. The human being that I am and the version of myself that I bring to my day and bring to my relationships and bring to my partnerships and bring to my clients and bring to my sessions, when I get up and I take care of my physical body first, really helps me out. And I think about all the clients for whom I got up at 4 a.m. and met at

5 a.m. to train them or 6 a.m. to train them, even 7 a.m. that had just woken up and they told me, man, I really love starting my day with this. And I used to do the same thing and I'm doing it again. And it really, really helps, not only with maintaining the habit, because you have nothing better to be doing at four o'clock in the morning, right? And I know many of you have kids, you have busy lifestyles, this is impractical advice, so I'm not saying that you need to do this at four a.m., but I'm saying, if you can find a way to carve out 20, 40, 60 minutes, first in the morning to apply to your fitness, whether it's a home workout, a walk, a light jog, hustling to the gym for a quick workout, or carving out time before your kids wake up so that the first thing you do each and every day is invest in your mind and body by doing something that is going to challenge you. The rest of your day will be easy.

Easier, I'll say. It's remarkable the number of times throughout the day where something difficult lands on my plate. And I remember, dude, you were up at 4.45 in the morning with a barbell on your back. Don't let this stop you. And I know it's easy to sound puritanical or to maybe appear as though i'm standing on a soapbox I don't think you need to do this early in the morning like at four. That's what works for me But before you get going on your day Before you start taking care of other people before you start taking care of business and work Before you start giving into these other obligations that we all have as adults to be able to carve out time for yourself and say

during this time I will be investing in my physical health and well-being other obligations that we all have as adults. To be able to carve out time for yourself and say, during this time, I will be investing in my physical health and well-being. And I will then take that and I will go on with my day knowing that I am the person who takes care of themselves first. It is remarkable how big of a difference that makes. And I would remind myself to never give that up and to try to keep that going as long as possible. The third tip that I would give myself, looking back at some of my old nutrition habits, I think this is a very common mistake that people make, is don't miss the forest for the trees. And I'll use this as an example. Early on in my training career, I was vehement about having a protein shake post-workout, so much so that I would actually chug a protein shake before my final set of every workout because I had it in my mind that if I needed to drink protein right after my workout ended, that it would actually be better to do it during my last set because it would hit my stomach at the same time I literally finished. That was how silly I thought. It was like, if I drink this and then do my set, by the time my set's over, it'll hit

my stomach and there won't be a single second where I didn't have protein in my stomach. I did not know that the protein just doesn't, you know, has to be, you know, absorbed and then, you know, travel through the bloodstream to the working tissues. I was dogmatic about that post-workout window. And the reason I bring this up is because I wasn't even eating enough protein throughout the day. I wasn't eating enough protein throughout the day. I was just hitting that window. I did not even know about 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of body weight to gain muscle, right? I didn't know about that threshold. I didn't know about that benchmark. All I fucking cared about was that post-workout window. And so I find that this happens a lot for new trainees, especially with supplements where they kind of miss the forest for the trees,

right? They'll grit, they'll grab the vitamins, they'll grab the creatine, they'll grab the protein, the fish oil, all good things, but they won't do a good job with their nutrition, right? all good things, but they won't do a good job with their nutrition, right? Or, you know, they'll have a program that is very, very myopic in its focus and it might actually be counterproductive and it's because they're overly focused on one or two things. Like they might have way too much glute volume in their training to the point that they can't even recover from it. And so it's overkill. They're missing out on those big principles that really matter. So I want to make sure that you guys always keep the big stuff in focus and don't fall victim to the minutia. Okay. Number four. And man, oh man, how I wished that somebody told me this because I wasted a lot of money for a very long time

making this easily fixed mistake. And that is that you can spend way less money on supplements because the ones that really matter aren't sexy. They've been studied for years and they actually have a lot more to do with your health than your gains. A lot of the supplements marketed as fat loss enhancers or gains enhancing, muscularity enhancing, outside of like creatine, for example, or hogwash. There's not that many over-the-counter fat loss supplements that will help you lose fat. Caffeine can help you lose fat. Creatine can help you train harder in a deficit. Caffeine and creatine can help you build muscle. Vitamin D, help you train harder in a deficit. Caffeine and creatine can help you build muscle. Vitamin D, multivitamins, fish oil, they can all help your general health

and then inadvertently kind of help with your muscle growth and fat loss. And the data there is pretty clear. But a lot of the other crap that people buy and spend money on have little to no data that show their efficacy. And if they do have data that show their efficacy, remarkably, it's in rats or rodents, or it's not in longitudinal studies. And so what I've come to over the years is I take a short list of supplements. I take LMNTs, hydration packs. I take seeds, probiotic. I take legionsions pre-workout creatine and whey protein, multivitamin and fish oil, and occasionally add in zinc, ashwagandha and magnesium on top. That's it. And I know that might sound like a lot, but there was actually a time early on in

my training career where I would buy supplements because they looked cool, display them on a shelf and take them in a wildly experimental fashion that was actually bad for my health. I took a number of stimulant-laden supplements that disrupted my sleep and my peace of mind. I took testosterone-boosting supplements and SARMs, which are substantially safer, I'd say, than just messing around with steroids. are substantially safer, I'd say, than just messing around with steroids. Thankfully, despite having had multiple occasions where I really felt pulled in the direction of experimenting with steroids, I never quite had the stones to actually do it. But I still took over-the-counter natural testosterone boosters and SARMs, which did, if they did anything,

negative things. And a lot of what people are spending their money on are supplements that are marketed to them as being helpful, but the literature and the data is just not there. And we see this a lot with new lifters or new exercise enthusiasts. And they're also oftentimes targeted by some of these MLM misinformation specialists that will sell them very expensive, very ineffective supplementation with absurd label claims under the guise of friendship or, hey, this will help you out, or, hey, you can help me out. And I think that it's very important, especially early in the year, to just remind you to always be skeptical about supplementation, spend less

money on it than you think you ought to. If you found a supplement that's going to work for you, spend more money getting a premium sourced product than spending that money on getting a bunch of miscellaneous supplements. Okay. The fifth thing that I would tell myself is when it comes to your training, check your ego at the door. And I mean this not so much in the sense that you shouldn't have confidence in your workouts and that you shouldn't look to make progress, but more in the sense that you shouldn't let your comparison bias get in the way of you being in there. You shouldn't let your ego around being strong get you hurt. And you shouldn't let your obsession with how you look ruin your relationship with food or your self-dialogue, et cetera. It's very easy when you begin a resistance training routine, or you start doing a certain kind of physical activity, or you re-engage with exercise,

for your ego to kind of pull you in some pretty strange directions. You can start comparing yourself to other people, start worrying about what other people are thinking, looking at how much weight other people have on the bar. You lose focus. Your ego kind of pulls you away from focusing on the work that really matters, which is showing up, working hard, working diligently,

and being better than you were yesterday, not better than anybody else is today. I made a number of mistakes, letting my ego run unchecked, trying to lift way too heavy, and I got myself into a number of predicaments with pain and injury. Hey guys, taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing sports nutrition partner, Legion. Legion makes the best evidence-based formulas for sports performance, sports nutrition partner, Legion. Legion makes the best evidence-based formulas for sports performance, sports nutrition, recovery, and fat loss. I don't recommend many supplements. In fact, I think you can get the majority of the nutrition you need from a whole foods diet. But let's be

honest, many of us are either on the go and need assistance, or quite frankly, we're not going to settle for average and we want to get the absolute most we can out of our training. So Legion is the company I go to for all of my supplement staples, whether it's creatine, which I get from their product Recharge, my protein that I get from either Whey Plus or Plant Plus, two of the best tasting proteins on the market. They come in a variety of flavors and they don't have a ton of fillers and gum, just whey made from grass-fed cows from Ireland in a plant protein blend with a fully comprehensive dose of amino acids. I like to take a pre-workout. Sometimes I like it with caffeine. Sometimes I like to enjoy coffee in the morning and have my pre-workout later without caffeine. Legion makes

both. Both the pre-workout with caffeine and without come with a full dosage of clinically effective ingredients like beta-alanine, betaine anhydrous, and L-citrulline to help you perform Both the pre-workout with caffeine and without come with a full dosage of clinically effective ingredients like beta alanine, betaine anhydrous, and l-citrulline to help you perform your best. They also make a phenomenal greens powder loaded with one of my favorite things, reishi mushroom, and a men's and women's multivitamin that contain a few different things that men and women might need for their unique physiology. So when you think of your vitamins, your fish oil, your pre-workout, your protein, all of the things that many of you take every single day, I'd encourage you to check

out Legion. They have an amazing line, wonderful products, wonderful flavors, naturally sweetened, no dyes and colors. You can't go wrong. You can shop using the show notes below or by going to legionathletics.com and checking out using the promo code Danny. That will save you 20% and it will actually help you get two times points towards future orders, which you can use the same as cash. Pretty cool, guys. So head over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny to save on all your sports supplement needs. Back to the show. What's going on, guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-one

fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need with custom training designed for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your

limitations and your goals, nothing cookie cutter here, as well as easy to follow macro nutrition programs that are non-restrictive. You'll get customized support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals, as well as provides you with accountability and the expertise you need to succeed, as well as biofeedback monitoring, baked-in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option. And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're

a good candidate. And if we don't, we'll put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. Hey, everybody, I have a favor to ask you. If you're a regular listener or somebody who gets value out of this podcast, somebody who's learning from me on your health and fitness journey, whether you're a trainer, a high-level athlete, or you're just getting started, other people need this kind of advice. And the best way for you to help me grow the podcast is to take a little bit of time, literally one to two minutes max, to leave a rating and review on the app that you listen to your podcasts on. The majority of you probably listen on an iPhone and you probably listen on

Apple Podcasts, but many of you listen on Spotify. Both platforms allow you to leave a quick, easy review. And if you could leave me a five-star review plus a short one to two sentence blurb about what you like, not only will it help more people reach the podcast, it will help me to continue to refine what it is I bring you each and every week. Thanks so much for doing this. It means the world to me. It helps me achieve my dream of helping more people live a healthier life. Enjoy the episode. I also still to this day struggle with body dysmorphia that I think was cultivated from spending way too much time looking at bodybuilding magazines and social media. And that can create a negative effect in terms of it kind of reduces how you look at yourself, which is a form, I think, of the ego kind of running rampant in the wrong direction.

So check your ego at the door. Remember, it's always going to be you versus you. And you're always looking to improve upon the previous version of yourself, you're not looking to compete with anybody else. Number six, beware the know-it-alls. And I say this as somebody who's been accused of being a know-it-all in the past. And I've certainly changed the way I deliver content. And I've certainly looked to be more tasteful and speak with a lot more nuance. But one thing that I've learned, the more that I create content and the more that I watch how my content performs is the more I speak with absolutes, the more that I speak definitively and aggressively about certain things, right? The more hot takey the things I say, interestingly enough,

the better they perform. The more nuance I bring into the equation, the more I speak in the absence of absolutes and use phrases like, it depends, the poorer that content performs. And when I very first started working out, I gravitated heavily towards hyper-confident people who spoke in absolutes and who were incredibly, incredibly persuasive using those two messaging tactics. Confidence and absolutism are very seductive when you're new to something. So if you're following accounts on the internet who communicate that they know the absolute best way, or they have the absolute best program, or they have the absolute best product, you need to

know to be dubious and skeptical, or you need to learn to be skeptical because these people are dubious, I should say. And there's a lot of them out there. And I'm not going to name names because I don't think that's helpful. I'm sure you know who I'm talking about. But some of the biggest brands and some of the biggest names in the fitness space are extremely, extremely militant in their absolutism. And it's easy to become a victim of that because nuance is inherently less sexy than being an absolutist.

And so I would have reminded myself or told myself going back to try to focus on creators and learn from individuals who speak with more nuance, even if it requires me to think thoroughly about how that information will help me than to just take blanket advice from people who think they know everything. Tip number seven, and this is a quote that I wrote, the best source of nutrition information is textbooks and the best source of training information is probably the gym. But with nutrition, you need to know the theoretical to understand what's practical. And with training, you need to understand what's practical and do what's practical before you even start diving into the theoretical. And so what I mean here is

you need to really understand the foundations of nutrition and nutritional science before you start following weird diets and trying strange trends. Okay. So it's very easy to work backwards. And I've seen this so much with people where the first engagement they really ever have with nutritional science is learning about ketones and ketosis because they started the keto diet. They never learned about foundational nutritional science, chemistry, etc. to the science instead of from the science to maybe better reconciling or understanding the fad diet. And with training, I find a lot of people also get caught up in the theoretical. They spend so much time scrolling on social media, looking at exercises, trying to come up with the perfect plan. They actually never show up and train. And that's the best way to learn about training in the same way that the best way to learn about nutrition is to learn the fundamental basics of calories,

macronutrients, micronutrients, hydrations, energy balance. I said hydrations, but I meant hydration. Energy balance. And then you can see, hey, all of these dietary approaches are spinoffs off of this kind of greater framework of nutritional science. And if you understand nutritional science, you're a lot less likely to make mistakes and dive head first into some crazy diet because you'll say, well, my understanding of nutritional science has led me to believe that this might not be a great dietary approach and that will save you a lot of time. I've met people who could tell you a lot more about diets than they could about nutritional science and that's a problem. And I've also met a lot of people who could tell you a million different things about programming, but they lift like a total little pansy. So there's something to be said for throwing yourself to the fire in training instead of diving too deep into theoretical and

throwing yourself into the theoretical instead of trial by fire with nutrition. So there are kind of opposites in this way, but you got to train to learn and you got to learn about nutrition to, I think, be able to implement that at a high level. Tip number eight, stop skipping sleep to train. This trade-off is not going to work for you and it's not going to work for most people. Now, if you're getting six, seven, eight hours of sleep, can you go five? Can you go nine? Yeah, you could spread that out. So let's say you're getting between five to nine hours of sleep. I think that's pretty close to average. I think most people be five, six, seven. I don't think missing out on a half an

hour of sleep to get a workout in is going to be harmful for you at all. But if you are consistently sacrificing sleep to engage with training, especially on a super high frequency basis, four, five, six, seven sessions a week, you will start to see diminishing marginal returns. You'll probably get sick more. You'll probably recover poorly. You'll probably lose out on gains. And so one of the things that I would recommend for you is to prioritize getting that sleep and to look at sleep, nutrition, and training as kind of equal sides of a triangle. And I remember early on in my training career, I would sacrifice sleep all the time simply to just get up early to train. And my training sessions would be shit. And I never

understood why, because I didn't understand how important sleep was. And then the same thing is true of nutrition. When you sleep like shit, it's very hard to be mindful and follow through with your nutrition. So get your sleep, stop sacrificing it just to get one more workout in. You probably are better off looking at sleep, training, and nutrition as three legs of a triangle, all of which carry approximately equal weight. The ninth thing I would tell myself is a little bit more positive in reflection. And it's to remember that your mind will develop strength and resilience from the habit of regular exercise, not just your body. I did not know about the level of discipline, mental toughness, and grit that one can cultivate from regular exercise that is self-imposed.

I played a lot of sports growing up, had a lot of coaches. That's not self-imposed. You have to be there. Your coach needs you to be there. Your teammates need you to be there. Yeah, you can quit. But at the end of the day, you're the one that needs to be there. Your teammates need you to be there. Yeah, you can quit. But at the end of the day, you're the one that needs to be there. Something very different about a fitness routine, about a commitment to your health. It's a 24-7 game to say, I'm going to train more than I don't. I'm going to eat mostly healthy. I'm going to be mindful of my sleep. I'm going to be disciplined in social settings. And I think people do that because they want a physical outcome. That's reasonable. But what nobody talks about, or people are talking about more, they didn't talk about this so much when I got started, was what it would do for your mind and helping with the

development and cultivation of really important meta life skills like discipline and grit. I had severely intense impulsivity and ADHD growing up in school, and every teacher I ever had gave me the typical spiel about not having the ability to apply myself and communicated concern for how that would ultimately affect me as an adult. And I'm not jaded about it. I'm just lucky I found something like resistance training that helped me cultivate those meta skills and bring that to center. And I don't think everybody has ADHD. I don't think everybody's an impulsive young child that needs discipline. But I think everybody would benefit from knowing that you're the kind of person

who can do hard shit. And nothing will teach you that like working out on a regular basis. Because it's not the difficulty of the workout. It's the difficulty of keeping the habit going, especially on the days it'd be easier to say no. And I'm 11 years in, guys, and those days still happen all the time. keeping the habit going, especially on the days, it'd be easier to say no. And I'm 11 years in guys. And those days still happen all the time, all the time, but I'm way less likely to quit because I've got 11 years going and all I have to do is make it

one more day. And so if you had told me that I gained 40 to 50 pounds of muscle. I'd love my physique. I'd be able to attract women into my life because of the way my body looks. That's all I would have cared about when I was 17. But if you'd have told me it will help you focus, make you better in business, make you more present in relationships, make you a better person, help you develop grit and cultivate resilience, I'd have been cool with that too. And I think so fondly now of those gains, quote unquote, that I feel like I need to share it with you guys. Tip number 10 or the 10th thing that I'd tell myself if I could go back in time is that training for strength and eating for health is the fastest way to change your aesthetics. It's low maintenance and it works great. Don't become overly focused

and overly, overly obsessive with perfection. If you're just looking to start and you just want to change how your body looks, focus on eating nourishing foods that are high in fiber, protein, and micronutrients and train to get strong. You can really fall down the rabbit hole when it comes to training for hypertrophy and optimizing macronutrients and micronutrients and train to get strong. You can really fall down the rabbit hole when it comes

to training for hypertrophy and optimizing micronutrients and micronutrients. And all of that is highly valuable and beneficial. And we do that kind of stuff all the time with our clients. But when you're just getting started, remember, you can change your entire body and life by just training to get strong and eating in a way that nourishes you. Tip number 11, if you're having a health problem, don't try to supplement your way out of it. I've told this story on the podcast before, but I took a lot of pre-workout that was heavily stimulated with now banned substances when I first started training.

That level of stimulant can have a kind of dysregulating effect on a variety of different systems in the body. And I remember being 17 and unable to get an erection because I was taking so much Jack 3D, which contained 1,3-dimethylamylalamine, which is essentially an amphetamine. And the amount of stimulant was dysregulating my ability to perform sexually as a young adult man who'd never had this problem before. And I remember taking tribulus terrestris, horny goat weed, diaspartic acid, everything I could from a supplement standpoint to try to fix the problem. So a problem that was created by a supplement, I tried to fix with more supplements. And so the tip is, if you have a health problem, try to fix it with a lifestyle

intervention, not a supplement intervention. So many people overestimate the power of a supplement-based intervention and wildly underestimate the power of a lifestyle intervention. The 12th thing I tell myself, if I could go back, is to control your tempo and to lift like somebody is watching. And I don't mean this in the sense that you should constantly be concerned about your form or everything has to be perfect. More in the sense that when you lift like somebody is watching, you tighten things up, you control your form, you control your tempos. And I think over a very long time horizon, if you live with better technique, better control, better tempo, you'll have better results. And I really, really just felt like I just needed to get the reps done. And I wasted a couple years

of training doing that. And I don't want you guys to make that same mistake. So when I say lift like someone's watching, I mean lift with good form, technique, and control. The 13th thing I tell myself, this becomes increasingly more important as I get older, especially with the prevalence of cardiovascular disease amongst men, especially stressed men who are entrepreneurs, is cardio is not going to make you small and it's damn good for you. And if you want to feel good and energized throughout the day, perform well in work and sexually, do your fucking cardio. I got punished a lot with cardio as an athlete, forced to run, hellacious conditioning workouts to the point where I stayed as far away from cardio

as I could for a good five to six years after I stopped playing sports in high school. Couldn't fucking pay me to get on a treadmill. Couldn't pay me to go for a run. Couldn't pay me to do conditioning. What a foolish decision that was. Cardio is good for your heart, your lungs, your blood vessels, and it helps your mitochondria function optimally and even make more proliferate your cells with these small organelles that are responsible for creating the energy you use each and every day. Cardio does that. Weight training can do it too, but cardio does that like crazy. Even if you love weights, don't run from cardio. And if you're looking to gain muscle, which I know many of you probably are, maybe you're smaller, maybe you started off like me. You might think cardio is the enemy.

It's not. I promise you that. The last thing I would tell myself, and I say this with a good amount of humility, and I mean humility in the sense that I have reverence for other people. I think one of my favorite quotes from Alex Hormozy is humility isn't having a lower regard for yourself. It's having greater regard or reverence for others. And tip number 14 is to ask more questions and remember that you don't know shit because I thought I knew so fucking much when I first started. And I am so, so embarrassed of what I thought, what I thought was right. Looking back at when I first started, it's wild. And if I ask more questions, if I got past my ego, here comes that term again. And I looked to learn from people

who were where I wanted to be or who'd already accomplished something. And I learned stuff from my clients every day too, just from talking to them and seeing where they're struggling. I'd have been in a much better position much more quickly. And so I encourage you to ask questions and learn as you go through your fitness journey in the year 2023. I want to encourage you to never quit, to never give up, to always put your health and fitness first. never give up, to always put your health and fitness first. And I know how easy it is to want to give up and to want to go do something that's more pleasurable. We live in a world right now where you have so many decisions. We live in a world where you have so many ways that you can spend your time that are pleasurable, engaging, addictive, and quite frankly, more fun than

working out. You could go scroll on social media. You could watch another episode. You could do something with your friends that's social and involves alcohol. There's so many things you could do that in the moment will be more rewarding than working out. But there's almost nothing you could do in the long term that will be more rewarding than working out. And I want to encourage you guys to stick with this habit in the new year because one of the biggest things people struggle with in life that makes life a lot harder is the inability to delay gratification. And a regular exercise routine is one of the best ways to cultivate real capability in delaying gratification. It'll also make you look better,

feel better, and have more energy. So look at your resistance training, cardio program, whatever the hell your exercise regime is, routine is, as an opportunity to improve your ability to delay gratification. I guess that's a 15th tip that I would have given to my younger self. So guys, without further ado, if you liked this episode of the podcast, it would mean the world to me if you subscribed or shared it with somebody who's just starting their fitness journey and podcasts grow best two ways, word of mouth and by people finding them on their servicer, whether that be Apple or Spotify or any of the other ones. And the way that those servicers help people find them is through written reviews. So if you can leave me a written review or share this with somebody and heaven forbid, if you could do both, I'd love you forever. It would make a huge difference. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on

the next one.