Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - 5 Fitness Mistakes That Almost Made Me Quit and Steve Martin's "Secret to Success"

Episode Date: December 29, 2014

In this podcast I talk about the 5 big mistakes I was making in my diet and training that kept me stuck in a rut and a great lesson on achieving goals that we can learn from epic funnyman Steve Martin (31:06). ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: The Truth About Protein Absorption: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-truth-about-protein-absorption-how-often-you-should-eat-protein-to-build-muscle/ Meal Frequency: http://www.muscleforlife.com/does-meal-frequency-affect-weight-loss-metabolic-rate-and-appetite-control/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger, Leaner, Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger if you're a girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

in the gym grinding through workouts that you hate. Now, you can find these books everywhere. You can buy them online, you know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audio books like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audio books and you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer, so as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check out my books if you haven't already. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I think you're going to really like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion. As you may know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted who knows how much money over the

years on worthless junk supplements and have always had trouble finding products that I actually liked and felt were worth buying. And that's why I finally decided to just make my own. Now, a few of the things that make my supplements unique are, one, they're 100% naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting studies on our website,

which means you can dive in and go validate everything that we say. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. Our formulations are 100% transparent. So if that sounds interesting to you, then head over to legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And you can learn a bit more about the supplements that I have as well as my mission for the company, because I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it's long

overdue. And ultimately, if you like what you see and you want to buy something, then you can use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your first order. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleforlife.com. And in this podcast, Muscle for Life of rut, making really little to no gains for many years. And I also want to talk about a pretty cool lesson that I learned from Steve Martin, not personally while I'm one, but actually from reading his book on how to set and achieve goals. I thought he had a very good insight in this. I wrote an article about it actually months and months and months ago, but I thought it'd be good to talk about it on the podcast. All right, So let's start here with these five mistakes that I was

making. These are mistakes that I see every day in the gym. You know, sometimes I try to say something to help people out. Sometimes I don't. Most of the time I don't because I guess most people, they just kind of don't really take nicely to that and then they don't change anyway, regardless of what I try to explain, unless they come and ask for help and then I'm willing, you know, then they're more receptive. But, you I, I started working out when I was about 17, turning 18, something like that. And initially, uh, I just wanted to impress girls, uh, because that it getting into that age where it was no like, you know, as a, as a, as a teenager, 15, 16, if you just have a little bit of abs, you're like, oh, you're so amazing, right?

And then as girls get older, then they like to see guys more muscular. So that's why I started working out and had no idea what I was doing. Read magazines, did a bunch of stupid workouts, just ate a bunch of food. At least I did that semi-correctly. I ate way more protein than I really had to be eating and probably just generally more calories than I needed to be eating. But at least I, you know, wasn't under eating. But the net result was for my first year of working out, I made decent gains. I probably gained about 15 pounds in my first year, which is not that great.

And it's not 15 pounds of muscle because I was eating quite a bit more than really that I needed to be. I gained some fat as well. I probably started around, uh, 12 or 13%. I'm naturally more on the ectomorphic side, body wise, um, somewhere between ecto and meso. Um, and so, you know, I started out in a more kind of athletic, not super lean, but not, not, not overweight at all. And then maybe by the end of the first year I was upwards of, I don't know, maybe 14 and 15% or something like that. And I kind of just stayed there for over the course of the next, whatever, however many years.

And really, um, for my first six or seven years, uh, that's, that was kind of my period of, I would, I was consistent. I would go to the gym every day. I would do all different types of workouts. I tried everything except for what I eventually realized and learned that is the key to making gains as a natural weightlifter, which is emphasizing heavy compound weightlifting. So I tried everything else, every magazine workout you could imagine. Now all different kinds of splits that, you know, uh, we're training everything twice a week, training everything. I even tried three times a week at one point and burned out on that to once a week, blah,

blah, blah. You know, a lot of high rep stuff, a lot of drop sets, super sets, the standard, what you would, you know, what you are told do in, in most magazines and on most websites and that kind of thing. And what you'll see a big bodybuilders doing. Um, and I'll show, I'm gonna put up a picture here. on most websites and that kind of thing and what you'll see big bodybuilders doing. And I'll show, I'm going to put up a picture here. I'm going to put a picture of me at year two. Not the best picture because you can't really see my entire body, but you can see that, you know,

that was into year two. So I've made some gains, but not nearly as much as I could have. I played sports growing up, so I wasn't necessarily naturally muscular, but I was naturally kind of athletic looking. So you can see there year two, and then year eight. Put this picture up, and you can see, of course, I've gained some size. My chest responded well, just a genetic strength of mine, really. And I guess because I trained it, that was one thing I diligently trained of course was chest. You know, sometimes it was two chest days a week and, but my chest did respond. It's actually like for how big it looks in that picture, you'd be surprised at how weak I was. Like at that time, I probably couldn't even bench 225 on a flat bench

with proper form. There's no way I could have done more than four reps. No way. I probably would have failed at like two reps. That's how pathetically weak my chest was. It just responded well in terms of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. You know, I don't know. It's just a genetic thing, I guess.

So as you can imagine, I wasn't too thrilled with my progress. Also with how my body looked. At the time, I thought that getting super lean and defined and having some size required drugs, period. So I wasn't even overly cynical about it. I didn't care that other people did that. I just thought that you, it wasn't possible to look how I look now naturally. So I kind of just did my thing. I ate a lot of food. I lifted weights. I was, you know, like I wasn't very strong, but, uh, I just stuck with it. Um, so it's around that period around year, it was year eight, year seven, right? Where that last picture that you saw, uh, that that's when I decided to actually really start taking my fitness. I wouldn't say take it seriously, but I knew that I didn't really know what I was doing. I just never

really, it was something that I guess I would just go to the gym with my friends and we would all hang out and it'd be two hours, you know, doing a million different exercises. But then I started to get a little bit more serious in terms of like, okay, I want to actually get the amount of time that I'm putting into this, I want to get more out of it. I want to have more to show for not, not just even how I look, but also, you know, I want to be stronger. I want to be able to, uh, I mean, I wasn't deadlifting at all at that time, but I started to realize the importance of, of exercise, like a deadlift, like the squat, you know, a proper bench press, exercise like a deadlift, like the squat, you know, a proper bench press, inclined bench press, military press. So I started to gravitate more toward that, uh, style of lifting. And then I wanted to get more informed. So I started to educate myself, um, in, you know, everything

that I've, uh, that I write about and that I teach is self-taught. Um, and I I've always been a good student. So it kind of just, you know, dove into the subject and read as many things as I get my hands on. And I had a fair amount of experience doing a lot of wrong things. So that helped guide me away from certain things. Because if you have only theory, if you have no experience, and all you do is read studies, you'll get very confused very quickly, because you can basically argue for almost anything and have some sort is read studies, you'll get very confused very quickly because you can basically argue for almost anything and have some sort of study to back you up. You know, the studies, it might be poorly designed or poorly executed or might be biased or whatever. But on the surface,

you can make a compelling argument for just about any sort of approach with diet or training. So I did have some experience. And so when I ran into certain things that research would indicate or seem to indicate that a certain type of approach worked and I'd been doing that approach for years and it definitely did not work for me, then I knew I could just scrap that. And Hey, I don't know if it worked for other people, if it worked for other people, but I knew it didn't work for me. Um, so, uh, it was kind of a, there was a gradual learning curve to this, which I'm going to kind of get into as I talk about these mistakes. But here's another picture I'm going to throw up on the screen here, and that's at year 11. So as you can see, my body has dramatically changed. I'm much

leaner. I've gained quite a bit of muscle, especially in my arms, my shoulders, in my chest, my upper chest, particularly my pec major, that's really what kind of filled out quickly. But my clavicular pectorias, the upper chest, it was basically non-existent because I never did incline pressing. So that was about three years, three and a half years or so of doing things correctly. And in terms of statistics, that year eight picture, if I remember correctly, I mean, I wasn't, I didn't have a log I can go back to look at, but I remember that my weight would fluctuate between about 200 and 205 pounds at that time. My weight's always in the low end. Even now I weigh about, I weigh 188, 187. It kind of fluctuates right now. And I'm about six to 7% body fat.

But you know, many people guess me that I'm 205 or even 210. My guess is I have small bones. Like I have at my wrist circumference, I believe was six inches when, when we measured it and, you know, if we're doing an ideal measurements kind of thing. So my guess is that's why I don't weigh that much. But in that picture, the year eight picture, I was about 200, 205 pounds, probably, you know, 16, 17% body fat. And the picture of the year 11 picture, I was, that was actually, I think it was, I'd have to look, I think I was about actually, because that was actually taken last year. And I was about 186, I believe, and around 7%, maybe 7.5% in that picture. Might have been 185. But so you can see in terms of body composition that there's quite a change there. So let's get into these mistakes. What did I learn that helped me kind of transform myself from

what I was to what you see in that year 11 picture, and then what I am now, which actually I think I look even a little bit better right now. I'm a little bit leaner than that right now. And otherwise, my body does look more or less the same. I think I'm pretty much at my genetic potential. And I don't really want to just gain more size. I don't want to look like a big hulking bodybuilder. I'm pretty happy with how things are at the moment.

So the first big mistake that I was making that I see a lot of people making is I was focusing on higher up burnout workouts. I mentioned that earlier, my workouts would, you know, I would do like I'd get on one, I'd for whatever reason, avoid the free bench, you know, where I would go to the Smith machine instead. And Smith machine is just less effective. It's been proven to be less effective. It doesn't stimulate the pecs and the shoulders like the free bench does because it removes stabilizing muscles from the lift, where when it's on a fixed track, all you have to do is push it. You can be pushing it really this way or this way.

You can do things on a Smith machine that you wouldn't be able to do, uh, on a free bench because you would just end up throwing the weight this way or that way or whatever. So I would only, I would jump on the, on this, on the Smith machine. Now I'd usually like my, you know, I'd do pyramid training was my standard style of training. So I would work my way from like warmup sets into heavier and heavier, more reps, more reps, more reps, and then, you know, peak at the heaviest possible weight that I could do after doing nine different sets. And, you know, maybe I would get five reps or something like that. Um, and then I'd move on to the next exercise and do, you know, I don't know, anywhere from three to six sets there. And then I would do, uh, the next exercise and maybe do drop sets of flies or something like

that. So, you know, it looked like I was working very hard and I guess I was, I mean, obviously I was exerting myself, but I thought that getting a huge pump and really like feeling the burn, I thought that those are really the keys to building muscle and strength. And they're not. Um, what I learned is that the real key to building muscle and strength is progressive overload, meaning you have to be lifting more weight over time. And it also, that kind of ties into the exercises you're doing, which is the next mistake that we're going to talk about. And that is doing too many isolation exercises and too few compound exercises. So, you know,

the Smith machine press, I guess it is a compound exercise. It's not as effective as a compound exercise as just a free weight, you know, barbell press. Um, but most of my workouts, most of the work I was doing were, uh, what was with, uh, isolation exercises, meaning that a compound exercise and exercise that involves multiple muscles in the body and usually multiple large muscle groups in the body. So in the case of the bench press, you know, the big muscle groups that are really being trained are your shoulders and your chest. In the case of the squat, it's obviously the muscles in your leg.

The big muscles are the quadriceps and the hamstrings. And also the calves get trained as well. But the squat also trains your back, you know, the upper and lower portions. Deadlift is pretty much trains everything in your body except for your pecs really. And so this is obviously a very common mistake. We see people doing it all the time where, I mean, how many people in your gym do you see deadlifting or squatting or, I mean, bench pressing, you'll see it or military pressing properly heavyweight. I mean, in my gym, I rarely ever see it. I go early in the morning, so I'm not going to probably see it. Maybe if I were to go later, I might see

it some, but even times I have gone later, sure, the gym is packed full of people, but they're not, the people that are squatting generally are half squatting, they're half repping, and they're not using very much weight, or they are, which is even more dangerous. And, you know, on the deadlift, either they're just deadlifting, you know, very little weight doing a bunch of reps, or they're using way too much weight, and, you know, rounding their back like a cat. And so that was another big mistake that I was making is emphasizing isolation work way too much. Isolation work does have a place in natural weightlifting programs, but it should never be the emphasis. Really never. I just don't know why you

would. What really should be emphasized is the compound stuff, meaning that you want to be starting your workouts. Give when you're freshest, you have all your energy. You start with your heavy compound weightlifting. You start like, you know, your chest day should always be starting with heavy pressing. It could be dumbbell or barbell. I like to start, um, most of my chest workouts start with incline pressing as well to really emphasize that upper portion of the chest, which is stubborn and takes time to really come in. Um, your back days or your pull days should always be starting with heavy deadlifting. Uh, I, I, there's just no advantage to being doing deadlifts after another exercise, unless you're doing something like, I don't know, warming up your

lower back with hyperextensions, I guess if you needed to do that. But why would you want to start with something like dumbbell rows to fatigue your back and just burn up some energy to then go over deadlift, which you really need, you know, maximum force production for maximum energy. Obviously your, your legs days should be starting with some form of squat, back squat, front squat, and so forth. So that was another major mistake that I was making. Um, a third, the third mistake was I was just kind of following silly diets instead of regulating my calorie intake and breaking down my macronutrients properly. You know, I would read things in magazines and I wouldn't say I really even believed what I read. I just didn't know what was right. So I just was like trying different things. And, you know,

so like, oh, of course, at one point I was like, hmm, maybe carbs do make you fat. Maybe I should be cutting my carbs lower. So I tried the low carb thing or, you know, that, that losing fat really, maybe it is just eating clean. So let's try that. Uh, you know, I thought at one point I thought I had to eat like ridiculous amounts of protein to actually build muscle. I was eating probably like 400 grams of protein a day. It was ridiculous. Um, which is the only reason you'd ever want to be eating 400 grams of protein a day is if you're on drugs and your body can actually synthesize, they actually use that amount, that much protein to, to, to build muscle. Otherwise there's, there's nearly no reason to ever go above one to maybe 1.2 grams per pound.

And on that higher end of the spectrum would be when you're cutting to help preserve lean mass. Um, so, you know, I used to think that I had to eat protein every few hours or I would lose muscle. I would get super raged if I like had to go for more than, you know, if it, by, by the third hour I was, I was like, I have to eat. I was not, it wasn't just hunger. It was like anger. I was like hangry. You know what I mean? Um, and, and then at five hours, I was convinced that I was going, I was just wasting away if I hadn't eaten protein in five hours, um, which is completely nonsense. You could eat protein. Uh, I mean, you probably could get all, I don't know if you could get it all in one meal, but two meals. Absolutely. If you need to

hit 200 grams of protein a day and you did 100 grams in one meal and 100 grams in another meal uh that you'd be totally fine i'll actually i'll link a uh well you'd be fine if you're a guy you know more or less my weight if you're a girl and you weigh 110 pounds or something like that that might be an issue you might want to split it up into three meals but the body can absorb a lot more protein than you might think um i'm going to just make a note here. I'm going to link an article down below. One-handed typing, protein absorption. All right, cool. So you can check out, you know, if you want to, I wrote an article on it, go over the science of it. So yeah, I used to think that I had to eat just food every few hours to keep my metabolism running. That's also not true. Meal frequency has nothing to do with metabolism or metabolic speed. I'll link an article on that as well.

I used to think that eating at night just caused fat storage for some reason. Like if I eat a big dinner, I'm going to get fat or fatter. That's also not true. Whether, you know, gaining weight or losing weight just boils down to energy balance, uh, over, you know, you can look at it over a 24 hour period, or you can look at it over really any time period that you want. 24 hour period is easiest for calculating diets and such where you go, okay, every day, you know, let's say you sleep eight hours, you're awake 16 hours. So you look at that during your wake, your, your awake hours, you need to hit certain

numbers. You need to hit a certain calorie intake. And that breaks down into certain macronutrient numbers like so many grams of protein, carbs, and fats. That's it. That's what matters. When you eat doesn't really matter. So, I mean, I could go on, but you get the idea. I would hear all these things and try different things and nothing would really change. different things and nothing would really change. When things did change though, is when I started to educate myself on the actual physiology of the metabolism. How does the body really work? What

does the body really do with the food you eat? What is a calorie anyway? Like, can you even do, not you, but, but I couldn't, I couldn't define the word when I first started to really educate myself. You know, somebody asked me, what is a calorie? I don't know, it's something in food. But so to really start understanding the subject, I realized then that dieting is much simpler than all that. It is just hitting numbers and doing it every day and adjusting things based on how your body responds. And of course there are, I mean,

it's not the whole subject of dieting properly to get lean and especially a really lean doesn't boil down to just hit your numbers every day. That's the non-negotiable aspect of it. But there are, of course, along the way, sometimes things, exceptions, well, I wouldn't say exceptions. There are just circumstances that can arise that require you to do something, to change something, to address something. For instance, if you are reducing your calorie intake gradually as you're getting leaner, which you have to do, there is a point where you don't

want to be reducing it anymore. When your intake gets down to about your BMR, you don't want to be dropping below that because your metabolism is just slowing down and it can become how harmful it really is is kind of debatable but it definitely can be harmful in terms of retaining lean mass when your intake starts dropping below your BMR and also you're just going to have a longer road of having to fix your metabolism if you do that. So that's an example of you're following the rules of energy balance, but there's a point where you need to stop cutting your calories and start increasing your calories to bring your metabolism back up. And then you can repeat the process. So a lot of little things like that, that I've learned along

the way, but it all started with the, with just realizing that proper dieting is math. That's it. What you eat is not nearly as important as how much you eat. And by that, I mean the types of food, whether they're clean or not, doesn't matter. Nutritional content of food does matter. You want to be getting the majority of your calories from food with nutritional value. But whether you need to hit that carbohydrate goal, whether you're eating a whole grain bread or vegetables, it doesn't really matter if it's 50 carbs, it's 50 carbs and 50 carbs. You know, a lot of people, I get asked fairly often about vegetables because people

get told like coaches and stuff. Oh, you can eat as many vegetables as you want. And then, so people sometimes will email me like, why am I not losing weight? And when I dig in and I find out like, oh, they've been told to eat as many vegetables as they want. What does that mean? How many vegetables are you eating? And when they actually break it down, in a lot of cases, they realize they're eating anywhere from 50 to 100. Probably I'd say 50 to 100 grams of carbs a day from vegetables alone. That's not hard to do depending on what vegetables you like. Like peas.

I love peas. Go look at the calorie content of peas. They're actually very calorie dense for a vegetable. Whereas something leafy and green like kale, okay, that's not very calorie dense. I eat a lot of green beans. Those are kind of in the middle. You have to count those things. So anyways, that was the big mistake was just not following the fundamentals of, I wouldn't say dieting, but it's more nutrition. How does the body really work? What does it do with food? Um, how do calorie deficits, how does eating less energy than the body needs affect it? How does eating more energy, the body needs affected and so forth. Instead, I would just follow random tips or random fad diets.

The fourth mistake was, um, I didn't, I would, and this kind of ties back into the first, I wasn't progressively overloading my muscles. And what that means is I wasn't ensuring that I was adding weight to the bar over time. Instead, well, one, I would change up my routine so much. It was hard to really know where I was even at on a given lift because I would only be performing it for one, maybe two weeks before I'd move off to something else. And I wouldn't return to it for another four or five, six weeks, whatever. So it made it, made it hard to even know if I was progressing, but my tendency would be to add reps, not weight. So I was always pushing for more reps and I was more concerned with, I had to get more reps, I had to get more reps as opposed to, I have to get more weight,

I have to get more weight. And that kind of just goes with the high rep training because on a spectrum of low rep, very, very heavy weight to high rep, very, very lightweight, or very high rep, very lightweight, you're looking at mainly on the low end, like powerlifting, if you were just really mainly working on your one rep maxes and two or three rep stuff, and any other higher rep was really just to kind of build up to that,

then you would see dramatic increases in strength. And you would get bigger, but you wouldn't see as much size, an increase in size as you would expect necessarily from your strength increase. Somewhere in the middle is like what I recommend with Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which is more of a quote- power bodybuilding approach where you're lifting heavy weight, but you're, you're working with about 80 to 85% of your one rep max. And then, uh, on the higher end of the, the, the rep spectrum with, with lower weights, you're looking at mainly muscle endurance, metabolic changes in the cells. So because I was training with a lot of higher up and doing a lot of drop sets, it just, I guess, I mean, it was fitting that I would then try to just get more reps.

And also, I didn't really keep even a proper training journal, so I didn't know what I was exactly doing. My workouts were more go in and get a good workout, get a big pump, you know what I mean, be in there for two hours and sweat a lot and stuff like that, as opposed to quantifying what am I actually doing? Uh, what, what this exercise I did last week, I did X number of sets. I did this many reps and blah, blah, blah. I have to beat that. That's not how I was approaching it. Um, now that's, uh, that's what I, that's my goal. My goal, like a good workout. I don't care. I don't care if I feel like my muscles are exhausted. I don't care if I sweat a lot or didn't sweat a lot. What I care about is beating my last week's numbers. And that's all I've cared about for the last four years or so when I really started learning what I was doing.

And that kind of accounts for the dramatic changes in my physique that you see or that you saw in the pictures earlier. That's progressive overload. That is, well, that's one part of it. So basically what I'm, what I'm trying to do every week is I'm trying to take the weight that I did last week and get one more rep. I mean, at that, my strength across the board is at an advanced, um, I don't think I'm really at elite yet in terms of strength standards, but I'm in well into advanced level strength across the board. So I'm not going to be, unless I'm, unless I'm like pounding a bunch of carbs. Yeah, sure. Then I can go add 30 grams or 30 pounds to my, to my squat. You know, the next day, if I eat 500 carbs

today and go squat tomorrow, I will squat 30 pounds more, but with my diet, more or less stable, really what I'm looking to do is get one to two reps more with a given weight than I did last week. And then what that allows me to do is once I, once I reached the top of whatever rep range I'm working in. So, um, what I actually am doing is a periodized version of the bigger, leaner, stronger program, which is, um, you know, I guess I can call it a beyond bigger, leaner, stronger program. Cause that's the name of the book that it's going to be in that's coming out. Uh, it should be good to go for next week. Everything is wrapped up. We're just doing a final, you know, punch list kind of check of everything to make sure we haven't made any gross oversight or blunder.

So what it is, is it has, it starts with very, very heavy powerlifting type two to three rep stuff, and then it moves into the four to six rep range, and then it ends in the eight, 10 rep range. So if I got, uh, you know, let's say I squatted three 50 for two last week. Uh, well then I want to do three 50 for three or four this week. And then I will add weight for that. I'll rest at weight for the next set, go up to three 60 and see what I can do there. Um, so that's, that's the key is, you know, if you're trying to build muscle and strength, you really shouldn't be training higher than eight to 10 reps. I would recommend that you emphasize the lower rep ranges. You emphasize four to six or even two to three, um, over the high rep stuff. Uh, and I talk about in the book, I talk about really who I, why I think periodized training

like this is best suited to advanced weightlifters. Um, and why, if you're new, you'll probably do better with, uh, the bigger, leaner, stronger approach, which is really just working in the four to six rep range, 80, 85% one rep max. Um, so that was a mistake that I was making in the past, which was, I wasn't consistently and systematically increasing the weight I was lifting over time. I was just kind of random with it. And, you know, I would tend to go for more reps than more weight. And the final big mistake I was making, which I mentioned, is I wasn't tracking my progress.

I wasn't keeping a correct journal. So therefore, how do I know? Even if I wanted to, you know, systematically progressively overload my muscles, how could I if I didn't know what I did the week prior? So now I've tried many different apps. I'm actually building my own workout app. I have my trusty sketchbook here sketching out every page. I'm sketching out how I want it to flow and stuff

because even though I have a good team of guys to work with, if you haven't, they've never, they're not into working out. They've never used these apps before, so they don't know all the little quirks and things that are annoying when you're actually in the gym trying to do your workout, fiddling with an app. So I'm just being very specific with how I want it to work. So I use some app right now that's whatever.

Really all I care about, and I can use my notepad on my phone at this point because the rest of the functionality in the app is pretty crappy, And that's kind of just like the way most apps are, at least for lifting. But the point is you need to know what you did last week. And then if you want to be looking, that's when you get in the gym. You need to know your bench pressing. Good. What did you bench press last week? You did 250 for four. All right, good. You want to do 250 for five this week. There's your goal or 250 for six. And then that's what you're focused on. You wouldn't know that otherwise, unless you, you know, knew what you did the week before. So a lot of people make that mistake. They just come in. Um, even, even, uh, a buddy of mine that comes and works out with me, I keep on

telling him he needs to track his progress. Um, he's, he's new to weightlifting. So he's, you know, making great, great gains, newbie gains every week he's up. But you know, there's a point where you don't make gains so quickly and you do have to fight for those reps. You can't just go, yeah, I think I, I think I did 185 last week. Let's just throw 205 on it and then see what happens. And then he does it. You know what I mean? That, that doesn't work forever. Um, so yes, it's very important that you, even if you just, if you, uh, you can use your notepad, you know, in your phone, you you just each workout just note down what you did the week before or you can just bring a notepad into the gym so maybe that just write down what you did and then shoot to beat that the next week so those are the five big mistakes that i was making and what i did to change them and those are the big

big things that really account for the for the changes in my physique um you know there are other mistakes that I was making. I was, you know, wasting my time with a bunch of relative, let's just say, ineffective exercises. There are a lot of different exercises you could do, but a lot of those, there's really just no reason to do them because there's something that's better, basically. My training frequency was not laid out correctly.

I tried very, you you know I tried high frequency programs low frequency programs but I didn't really understand that intensity and workout intensity and workout volume are more important than frequency in terms of making gains I was doing too much cardio I would in a lot of cases I would lift and then I'd go like run on the treadmill for 45 minutes or something every day. It's just unnecessary, especially after lifting. It can get in the way of strength and muscle gains. My macronutrients were all messed up.

I was eating way too much protein. And then my carbs and fats would fluctuate a lot, which is not really ideal for training purposes. You basically want to keep your carbohydrates as high, steadily high as you can. And your fats in a moderate to low range. enough to just support basic health, basic functions. Um, but without having to sacrifice a bunch of carbs. So what would happen is because I would just eat whatever I really felt like, like I would make sure I got a lot of protein in my meals, but otherwise it was just like, what am I eating? I don't know. I mean this now, I mean that now I mean this now. So maybe one day my carbs were at like one gram per pound. The next day my carbs were at two grams per pound. The next day it was under one. It just, you know,

it was very random. So yeah, I mean, there are many more mistakes that I was making. Many other things that I learned. And these are the things that I talk about in my books, such as bigger, leaner, stronger, thinner, leaner, stronger muscle medicine and so forth. If you haven't checked them out, um, you know, I think you'll like them. If you like what I say in my videos, you're going to like my books and you're going to like my books, and you're going to like the articles on my website, Muscle for Life. I guarantee it. So yeah, that's about it on the mistakes. If you're making any of these mistakes, try doing it differently.

Try doing what I did, and I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised with how your body responds. All right, so now I'm going to change gears. I want to talk about this Steve Martin kind of method of achieving goals. He talked about this in his book, Born Standing Up, which I've always just kind of been a fan of Steve Martin's work. He always just interested me. So read the book and this is one of the things that I took away from it. And so he's talking about that he gets asked, you know, people, what's the secret to success and things like that? And his answer is very simple.

It's be so good that they can't ignore you. Now, that might sound kind of cliched, but I think it's actually very profound. And I think it really captures the essence of what it takes to achieve goals, you know, whether big or small, really in any area of your life. And it's something that I feel is lacking a lot of the people that I know that are struggling to achieve. And it doesn't necessarily mean financial related things, but just achieve achieve goals in really any area of their lives, whether it be wanting to get good at a certain sport or skill or hobby or whatever, or making money or what have you. And it's that they haven't really put in the time,

both in the study and the application and the practice, to get really, really, really good at something. I've spoken about this before, I think, in other podcasts and other articles, and I kind of like to come back to it because I really do think it is the simplest way to take control of your destiny in a sense. Um, I mean, it might seem a bit daunting, you know, like what does it take to get so good at something that people can't ignore you anymore that even if they don't like you, they see what you're doing and they're just like, that's good. Like, I don't even like that guy, but he's good. Uh, what does it take to get there? I mean, it takes a lot of work. There's just, there's no way around it. Um, so that might seem a bit daunting, but I find it a bit invigorating because I think it kind of simplifies what it takes to succeed at something. And it's something that's within our control. There are so many

things in the world that we can't control and we can drive ourselves crazy trying to control or worrying about or wishing or praying that we could control, you know, external factors, the things that can come into our lives and throw wrenches in our plans and whatever, that instead of focusing on those things, which just can generate a bunch of anxiety, focusing on what we can control and the easiest thing we can control is what we do with our time and what we put it into and how we can cultivate our skills and cultivate our talents. So what Martin's saying is that there aren't any back doors or any gimmicks or tricks to success. There's nothing mystical about it it's get really really good at something you know become extraordinary at it you want to be better than everybody that you know and so good

that you actually impress people with your skill i mean if you do this unless you've chosen something so obscure that there are so few people that actually care about it if you at least chose something that is that makes any sort of sense i, you almost can't help but succeed. People are going to be just naturally drawn to you. And there's one other thing that, that, uh, really resonated with me that Martin talked about. And that's, um, that he, he attributes a lot of his success to his diligence in just one field at a time. Uh, so if stand-up comedy, it was stand-up comedy. If it was acting, it was acting. If it was music, it was music.

And he would obsess on that subject until he had mastered it and not take on too many different things, which, you know, then you become the Jack Faltrade's Master of None kind of thing. And, you know, today there are so many, there are an endless number of distractions, a number of things we can do to fill our time. So I think that that message from Martin is even more important now than it would have been 50 years ago or 100 years ago or whatever. In that when you can hone your ambition to that razor's edge, when you can say,

this is the one thing that I am going to master and really align your life to that. There's a lot of power in that, you know, and one last thing that I kind of liked about this, this, uh, just worldview is, um, you know, you're on a path, you're trying to accomplish things. Um, whether you have direct, whether you have people directly in your way trying to stop, or you just have competition out there, uh, you, instead of kind of just comparing yourself to others and wondering, you know, you know, are you good enough or how did they get there or spending too much time chasing shortcuts? You can kind of just come back to this question of, you know, am I so good that I can't be ignored? And if, if you can't really say yes, then that's what you need to be focusing

on. Just get better at whatever that skill is. Get so good that people know you as that person that's good at blah. And the more you can do that, the more successful you're going to be. All right. Well, that's it for this podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Leave me comments over on my website or on social media or whatever. Let me know what you think. If there's any way you think I can improve it or if there are subjects you'd like to hear me talk about, just let me know. I'm all ears. Thanks again and I'll see you next time. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness.

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