Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Best Rep Ranges for Muscle Growth, Boosting Testosterone Naturally, and More...

Episode Date: December 18, 2014

In this podcast I talk about rep ranges and how they correlate to muscle growth and strength, why testosterone levels aren't as important as some point think and how to boost them naturally, lessons from success from the Kardashians (har har har), and more... ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: The Definitive Guide to Muscle Hypertrophy (Muscle Growth): http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-muscle-hypertrophy-muscle-growth/ 6 Ways to Naturally Boost Your Testosterone Production: http://www.muscleforlife.com/9-ways-to-naturally-boost-your-testosterone-production/ The Kardashian School of Getting Rich: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-get-rich-like-kardashians/ Cardio and Muscle Growth: Friends or Foes? http://www.muscleforlife.com/cardio-and-muscle-growth-friends-or-foes/ The Definitive Guide to Post-Workout Nutrition: http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-post-workout-nutrition/ The Definitive Guide to Vitamins and Minerals: http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-vitamins-and-minerals/ 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/

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That's muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks, and you'll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from MuscleForLife.com, just recording another MuscleForLife podcast. And in this podcast, I'm going to be talking about rep ranges ideal rep ranges a lot of a lot of opinions out there a lot of theories out there i want to share some some research and also some of my own experiences with my own body and with working with now hundreds of people and it's a little bit different than the the common kind of bodybuilding advice that's out there i'm also going to be talking about a few different ways that you can naturally boost your

testosterone levels and be talking a little bit about testosterone in general. Um, you know, it's a hot subject. A lot of people wonder about it. How important is it really? Is there anything you can do naturally and so forth? And then at the end of the podcast, I'm going to be talking, um, just about, uh, it's actually an article that I wrote with kind of a spin on referencing the Kardashians and some lessons of success that we can learn from them regardless of how ridiculous they are. They make a lot of money and they do certain things right, or at least someone planning their life does something right. So yeah, let's just jump into it. Let's start here with rep ranges. So the goal when we're lifting weights, right, let's just start with that, is to get stronger and get bigger.

I don't think anybody would want to just get bigger and bigger muscles with having no strength. And, you know, you see that a fair amount of, you actually see that sometimes with like some of the big bodybuilders. I remember seeing a video of Jay Cutler struggling to rep 405 on deads. I think he got maybe eight reps, but was struggling. That's ridiculous, though, for a guy his size. I can get eight reps with 405, or I could probably get six to eight if I'm all warmed up and whatever. And I weigh 190 pounds. Give me a break. like all warmed up and whatever. And I weigh 190 pounds, like give me a break. Um, so the question then is what is the best way to train rep wise to build muscle and get stronger? And are those

things, uh, where does the, there seems to be a spectrum there. Like on one end you have pure strength training, which doesn't necessarily make you bigger. And on the other end, is there a type of training that, you know, this kind of hypertrophy 10 to 12 rep standard type recommendation that's supposed to get you bigger or be most effective for getting you bigger, but not necessarily for getting you stronger. So how does that actually play out? I'm going to be linking an article as usual. It's going to be kind of a normal thing for, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, there's also, these are all, I shoot these as videos and put them on my YouTube channel. So that's what I'm talking about when I say I'm going to be linking articles, but I'm going to link an article that

I wrote on this in the description below. So if you do want to go dive into this and review the research that I'm basing, you know, what I'm about to say on, feel free to do that, but I'm not going to bog this down with referring to different studies and, you know, researchers and whatever. I'm just going to kind of talk about it and explain how it works. And then you can go review the science behind what I'm talking about by checking out the article. So the first thing to understand about muscles that there are different types of muscle fibers. There are three main divisions. There's type one muscle muscle fibers there are what are called type 2a muscle fibers and type 2x muscle fibers um type 1 or what what are known as slow twitch you've probably heard of that um they have the lowest potential for growth uh they don't produce a lot

of force uh but they are um they're they're more for muscle endurance. They're dense in mitochondria. I mean, they can generate a lot of energy. And this is the type of muscle that if you were to do a bunch of endurance type training, go run a bunch or whatever, type 1 muscle fibers, they can contract over and over and over and over. Type 2 fibers are known as fast twitch. Both type 2a and type x are fast twitch fibers, and they have a much higher potential force. They can produce a lot more strength and power, but they fatigue very quickly. you know, we are training for type two muscle fibers and research has shown that the body can adapt the type of muscle fibers that it has based on the type of training that you're doing.

This is why I ran across a study. I saved it in my PubMed. I'd have to pull it up to link it. But it's just another study showing that the amount of cardio, the amount of endurance training that you do, just the total amount, not even necessarily combining it within workouts or whatever, directly affects your ability to build strength and build muscle in a negative way. So the more endurance training you're doing, the less gains you're going to make in terms of strength and muscle. Now, it doesn't mean cardio is the enemy. I will link a article below. I'm making a note here. It doesn't mean that cardio is the enemy if you're trying to build muscle. It's not. There are actually some major benefits relating to insulin sensitivity and other things that I talk about in an article that I'll

link. But there is a point where it becomes too much, where it's counterproductive if your goal is to mainly get stronger and get bigger, not necessarily be able to go run, you know, six, seven, eight miles at a time or whatever. So the type two muscle fibers, your body, if you lift a bunch of weights, you can be very, you can have a lot of type two muscle fiber and not a lot of type one. Whereas somebody that maybe it's like a marathon or something that runs a lot would have a lot of type one muscle fiber and not a lot of type two. So we all have kind of varying amounts of these types of muscle fibers in our body. And what you need to understand about how this kind of correlates to rep ranges is that when you are training in, let's say, the 4 to 6 rep range, which is what I recommend,

is what my Bigger Than Your Stronger program, what it focuses on, that's about 80 to 85% of your one rep max, that you are mainly hitting your type 2 muscle fibers, in particular your kind of type 2X muscle fibers, which is what they're called. And as you start raising that rep range, starting the 10 to 12, you're now starting to focus on the type 2A. And as you get into the 30, 40 plus, where you do these drop sets and giant sets, set up, set up, set up, then you are really working with just metabolic stress. And that's type 1 muscle fibers. That's what they specialize in.

So with that kind of basic physiology under our belts the question then becomes how do we stimulate muscle growth we want bigger muscles you know we want strong muscles we want dense muscle how do we get there so there are three primary factors involved in muscle growth three driving forces one is progressive tension overload. Another is muscle damage and another is cellular fatigue. These are three factors. Progressive overload is, I mean, once again, the, I link quite a, quite a few studies in, in, in this article that I wrote on this, but the research is still a little bit nebulous because muscle growth is actually quite a complicated subject. So with that said, progressive overload is, in my opinion, and also in the opinion of some very smart people like Lyle McDonald, Alan Aragon, and others,

that not only have a very good scientific understanding of the body, but work with top-tier athletes, top-tier bodybuilders. I mean, these guys know what they're doing. athletes, top tier bodybuilders. I mean, these guys know what they're doing. That progressive tension or overload is the most important factor of the three in terms of building muscle, especially over time. Don't think with newbie gains because newbie gains, if you're brand new to weightlifting, you can almost do anything for the first six months and you're going to make gains. You won't necessarily make incredible gains. You know, if you're doing everything right in your first six months of weightlifting, you should be able to gain 10 pounds of muscle solid muscle for sure I would say anyone can do that if they know what they're doing so you

won't necessarily gain that 10 pounds of muscle by just doing anything but you will gain something not only will you gain some muscle but when you start lifting your muscles start storing more water storing more glycogen which they get from carbs. So they start to look bigger. You get that pump that, you know, that residual kind of pump that lasts for a couple days. So you're going to look bigger regardless, and you're going to get somewhere doing anything. It could be the worst program ever, and you will get somewhere if you're new.

But that is kind of just like, you know, you take it and it's free. But when training, once those newbie gains end, six to eight months into your training, it won't last longer than that. That's when, if you're not doing things right, if you're not eating right, if you're not training right, you will stick in a rut and you can make, I mean, I experienced it myself. In my first year, I maybe gained 20 pounds or so,

not all muscle, but I gained about 20 pounds. And then from that point on, from there to the end of year seven, I think I gained another 20 pounds. I mean, and that not all muscle either, maybe 25, maybe 25, no more than 30, but not, not muscle. I mean, I was about 205 pounds just three or four years ago. I was about 205 pounds, pounds just three or four years ago. I was about 205 pounds, maybe 16% body fat, pretty weak. My bench was weak. My squats sucked. I didn't even deadlift. You know, I, I was weak really. And my, my, my, my dumbbell bench press was, was relatively strong, I guess. Um, and that was following this typical type of bodybuilder routine where, yeah, I should have been deadlifting and squatting more, but you know,

the typical type of thing where I'm doing like 10 to 12 reps and I'm doing a lot of supersets and drop sets and changing my routine and doing all that stuff. Um, and now I'm about 191 pounds or so right now, about 8% body fat, maybe a little bit lower. It kind of fluctuates, but probably around eight is a safe assumption. And, um, you, I mean, my strength is, it's not even comparable anymore. I've, I've almost doubled my strength, uh, nearly across the board, at least a 50% increase, no less. And really also changed the look of my body. Um, so we have progression, tension, overload. That's the key. And what does that mean? That means lifting heavier weights over time. This is the soup. This is the biggest mistake, probably one of the biggest training mistakes that I made. Uh,

focusing just on 10 to 12 reps is a mistake, but even more so is the fact that I got stuck into doing the same amount of reps, the same weight week after week after week, or only slowly increasing these over time, like very slowly. That will stick your muscle growth faster than anything because the bottom line is if you're going to get bigger, you've got to get stronger. And yes, it's true that neurological adaptations can occur in muscles that cause them to get stronger without getting bigger. That's been proven. But that only takes you so far because you have the muscle fibers that you have and you can increase their ability to contract for your body to recruit as many fibers as it has and to contract them very forcefully.

So that's increasing strength. It doesn't necessarily increase size, but that will only go so far. There is a point where your body can't optimize the fibers that it has anymore and it has to add to them and that's big that's muscle growth so i mean i can guarantee you no matter what program you're doing if you start a program you know and then a year later you're not significantly stronger you're not going to make good gains like that is a very accurate or a very reliable way to judge how effective a program is are you getting stronger? And by getting stronger, I mean can you lift heavier and heavier weights for those given rep ranges over time?

So you start a program benching, you know, 225 for five. If you're not benching, you know, it's hard to put an exact number to it. But if you're, you know, after a year you're benching 245 for five, that's, that's not good. I mean, you, you should, uh, be able to go, if you start a program, you know, 225 for five and you're, and you're working on it well, you should probably be able to hit, I would say the 275 for, for four to five or so, you know, in a year of good work, maybe even higher, it depends on your body. Um, body. My flat bench, for instance, has always been a weak point, probably because I have long arms and I don't know why. It's weird. My incline actually fit relatively strong. My flat, it's not weak, but it's not as strong as it should be.

Like I should be able to probably for where my body's at, I would expect that I could at least get three or four with 315, but I could maybe get one with 315. So maybe, maybe not even, I haven't one rep my, my flat bench in a while. Maybe I'd be around 300. Um, anyway, so that's progression or that's progressive, uh, progressive tension overload. Very, very important, very key. The next thing is muscle damage. And that refers to just that this is damage caused to the muscle fibers. Um, you know, there was just a paper I was reading recently where they were, they actually cut open a muscle after somebody had worked out and they saw it was bleeding. There's actually like, it's inflamed, it's bleeding in there. So there's damage and the

body has to repair it. You know, this repair leads to growth. So that is obvious why that's an important factor. And then we come to this cellular fatigue factor and that means pushing the muscle fibers to their metabolic limits by doing a bunch of reps right so this is a factor on muscle growth but the problem is uh a lot a lot of programs that people are following they emphasize cellular fatigue when that's one of the that's one of the it's of the lower importance. What you want to be emphasizing is progressive tension overload. That really needs to be the emphasis.

And then muscle damage would come after that. And you don't cause very much muscle damage by working a 10 to 12 rep range when you can't lift very much weight and that's like a huge problem that I see these guys in the gyms these in the gym especially newer guys when they're trying to train in that 10 to 12 rep range but they're so weak they can't really push any real weight for that amount of reps it just doesn't cause much damage and also anyone who's trained like that for a while you know how hard it is to get stronger over that rep range because by the time you hit the seven or eight rep you're burning at, you get that lactic acid buildup.

It's much easier to increase strength when you're training in a lower rep range. And I'll get to that in a minute. But those are the three. You can think of them as pathways for muscle growth. And you can target each of those, right? So you can, certain type of training is going to, you know, emphasize this progressive tension overload and certain that where you can emphasize on the muscle damage or emphasize cellular fatigue. So what you want to be focusing on is the not pump training. Don't think of going in the gym to get a pump and that's going to be,

that's doing a bunch of reps and you feel great and you look, you can maybe carry a little bit of that pump for a day or so, and then it deflates. If you've ever experienced that, you know how annoying that is. I used to hate that where, like, you know, you work out a body part and then it would, you know, for a few days you're like, all right, I look pretty good, like, you have a little bit of size, okay. And then, but by come, you know, come sunday come or come the end of your end of your week where you're about to start again and you're like where do i even lift

like what even happened to me right and that's that focusing on just getting a pump getting a pump getting a pump it just doesn't build enough muscle over time and although i haven't seen any science on this and if anybody has please share it with me because I would love to see a study on this. There seems to be something about focusing on heavier weightlifting, building denser muscle, muscle that just looks harder and denser. Might be bro science. I don't know. It just, there seems to be an anecdotal connection there. I mean, I seem to see it with my own body and then I've seen it with other people and I don't actually exactly don't know why. But there does seem to be a connection there that the people that have that dense, and it's not just getting lean because there are guys that get lean, but they'll have a,

just a softer, puffier kind of look. But guys that get lean and have that rock hard look generally train heavy. Why that is, I'm not even totally sure, but it's worth mentioning, I guess. So let's now talk about two different types of muscle growth or muscle hyperfuture would be the more technical term. Although this theory, this is disputed, many of the smarter people in this industry acknowledge that there seems to be some validity to it. So I'm going to go with it until at some point we may understand things better, but you probably have heard of myofibular hyperfutry and sarcoplasmic hyperfutry. Uh, myofibular hyperfutry refers to an actual increase in the size of muscle fibers. Myo means muscle and fibril is like a, it's a thread-like kind of, uh, cellular structure, uh, which is is how the muscles are when you look at a picture of how they're a bunch of fibers that are wrapped around.

And then those bundles are all together wrapped around. Anyway, so that's what myofibular is. And sarcoplasmic hyperfutry is an increase in the volume of the fluid. And then you have like non-contractile, meaning they don't contract components of the muscle, like glycogen, which is stored in the muscle, water, minerals, and stuff. Sarco means flesh and plasma or plasmic refers to plasma, which is, it's like a gel-like substance in cells. So you have this myofibrillar and you have this sarcoplasmic hyperfutry. And when we look at rep ranges, we'll get a continuum of like very, very heavy, right? Let's say you're just doing one reps to like 40 plus rep kind of whatever, you know, super

giant drop mega sets or whatever. What is generally true is that heavier weightlifting kind of, it preferentially increases power and it induces myofibular hyperfuture. But I say preferentially because it's not exclusive. It doesn't only, it's not that there's no sarcoplasmic involved, but it's preferentially inducing myofibular. Whereas lighter weightlifting preferentially increases muscle endurance and induces sarcoplasmic, which is that pump, which I mean, you know, you do a bunch of set, you do a bunch of reps in a set.

And if you do that over time, your muscles, they'll actually be able to hold more fluid. So they can look bigger. But there's also something to be said for this where you see a lot of these guys in the gym that just, you know, if they're not on drugs, because drugs changes everything. If you're on enough drugs, you can go in the gym and just get a pump and sit in there for three hours, just getting pumps, doing a bunch of sets, bunch of sets, bunch of sets, and you will grow like period. But that's completely different when you're natural does not work like that. Um, this, this, what I was just kind of explaining researchers, uh, there's at least one paper, you know, I referenced it in this article, they call it the strength endurance continuum. So on one end of this continuum or this spectrum,

you have, you know, pure strength training. And on the other end, you have, you know, just pure sarcoplasmic type training. So as I said, heavier weightlifting does induce some sarcoplasmic and lighter weightlifting does induce some myofibular, but they do have their, what they preferentially induce. So this is what we want to go for is, and this is speaking from my experience with my own body and speaking from my experience now training with, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people, you want to focus on inducing myofibular hyperfutry. Yes, sarcoplasmic hyperforatory has a place in a natural weightlifters program, but it doesn't build that strong foundation of muscle and strength that you really want to be. That's your goal when you start weightlifting. Like

you want to put on that first 40 pounds of muscle in your first two and a half, three years, and you want to build your strength. You know know you want to be getting your lifts up to an advanced level and you don't do that by a bunch doing you know a bunch of high rep drop set super set 10 to 12 rep stuff you just yeah i i tried it myself for years and years and years and not like it didn't work for me but of course that's just me uh but on top of that you start looking at the research and it agrees. And then now in working with, like I said, I've worked with so many people now and I just see it again and again and again. And you've probably seen it as well. Like I said, if you've been in gyms long enough and you've seen

how people train versus how they look. And a lot of times, I mean, a lot of times guys are on drugs and training badly and they look terrible generally because they don't know how to diet or they don't know what they're doing with drugs and they're taking someone's advice and whatever so this is uh why i focus on uh the four to six rep range in my program what i'm actually doing myself is going to be in a follow-up book that i'm writing i'm just wrapping up it's a bigger leaner stronger it's a it's in a periodized version of the Bigger, Leaner, Stronger program. Bigger, Leaner, Stronger has you pound four to six reps, that rep range, 80 to 85% of your one rep max. And you're performing mainly compound lifts. And that is, I mean, you'll see it in

other programs too, starting strength. You'll see it in five by five, even in five, three, one is has, has some similar, like they're, you know, big, in other programs too, starting strength. You'll see it in 5x5. Even in 5-3-1, it has some similar, like their big but boring Jim Wendler is a similar type of approach, although I think he does 8-10 rep on the extra work. But that 5-3-1 approach, you're working with similar types of weights. weights. And, um, if you want to see the, like the change in my body from going from, uh, eight years of the typical hypertrophy, like, Oh, 10 to 12 rep. And even, you know, doing, like I said, I didn't deadlift. So take that into account. And I neglected my legs. I didn't not train them at all, but I didn't train them with a lot of intensity, but I hit my upper body, you know, wanted to have the beach body kind of thing. And I, and I was, uh, did all the exercises you're supposed to do for the upper body, um, except for deadlifts, 10 to 12 reps

and, and, you know, supersets, drop set, giant sets, all the magazine workouts, all that stuff. And, and then I switched, uh, at about the eight year mark, give or take, um, to just focusing on four to six reps, totally changed my exercise setup, changing my workout volume. My workout volume was much too high in the past, which is also a downside to most traditional 10 to 12 rep programs is you're going to be doing a lot of sets in a workout. You're going to be doing, you know, no less than 15, probably 20, 25 sets. And that alone is just overtraining period. Unless you're on drugs, that's overtraining. And that's an easy way to, you know, if a guy is big and lean and strong, I know I've said this before, and he's sitting in the gym for hours doing 25 sets, he's on drugs,

period. So yeah, you can go to the article if you want to see the change in my body. And I think you're going to be pretty surprised. Like, yeah, I'm leaner now and I'm leaner in the pictures you're going to see, but it's, um, the, the amount of development that I, uh, got in just three years, two, three and a half years is, is, is pretty staggering, especially considering the fact, uh, that I started out with eight years of weightlifting under my belt. I wasn't a newbie. These aren't newbie gains. These are, you know, eight years of training and I was disciplined. I didn't miss, I mean, sometimes I'd be out of town. I'd used to travel around and stuff. And so I'd go have fun for a few weeks, but when I, right when I was back, I was back in the gym. So it's, you know, it's

interesting to see if you're listening to this podcast, you can go to my website and search for hyperfuture, which is just hyper and then trophy. Combine those words, hyperfuture is how it's pronounced. Search for that and you'll find the article and you'll see, you'll also see my pictures. So it's about, yeah, it's about two and a half, maybe three years or so of progress. I don't remember exactly. I have to look at the timestamps, but give or take, that's what it is. So this is really the kind of the power of a proper weightlifting program when you see these pictures. And once again, a proper weightlifting program is one that focuses on that 80 to 85% of your

one rep max. Like, I didn't actually get to finish what I was saying on the program I'm doing. So what I'm doing is my first, I'm doing what's called a periodized program, which means it combines rep ranges into one workout. And I don't recommend this for beginners, and I'll explain why in a second. I recommend if you're relatively new to weightlifting or if you haven't spent at least a year or a year and a half just hitting heavy compound lifts and getting your squats, your bench press, your overhead press or military press, your deadlift. your bench press, your overhead press or military press, your deadlift, if you haven't, you know, if you haven't built these up to an advanced level, you know, if you're not, if you can't one rep,

at least I would say probably about 1.3, 1.4, your body weight on the bench. If you can't get at least one with one rep with one, rep with one times your body weight on the overhead or military press, if you can't get one rep on the deadlift with two times your body weight, and if you can't get one rep with two times on the squat, or maybe 1.75 times on the squat, then you want to be focusing on just heavy weight lifting, heavy compound, build that strength up. But once you build that foundation of strength, then you can actually benefit from these other rep ranges. Then higher rep ranges actually become useful because not only do you get some cellular fatigue, you get some of that, you get to stimulate that pathway, that muscle growth pathway. You also can then actually start

causing some muscle damage, which is another growth pathway. And it is even possible to progressively overload, of course, in that rep range. But when you start out in your week, you just can't. It just does not work nearly as well as when you get stronger. So my program, what I'm doing right now is I start my workout, I do a warmup, and I start with very heavy weight, two to three reps. And I do two sets of two to three rep. So, you know, if I'm today was back for me. So I was doing two, three rep deadlifts to start just two sets of that. And then I'm doing six sets of four to six rep. So I move on to today, it was barbell rows and it was T-bar rows, four to six rep, you know, heavy. And with all rep ranges,

when I get to the top of that rep range, when I get one set of the top of that rep range, I'm adding weight. So if I deadlift weight for three reps, then I'm adding, I actually add two and a half. So I mean, it's possible, it depends on your body. I might be able to actually add fives on either side and then bump me down to two. I probably could do that. But two and a half is definitely safe. Like if I add five pounds, I'll usually lose about a rep. I can add 10. And if I'm like maybe, you know, super pumped that I might be able to only lose one rep. Um, and then, so if I hit six on my four to six, I'm adding 10 pounds total that bumps me down to about four reps and I'm working with my weight every week. My goal is just to beat my last week's reps.

If I get one more rep, I'm happy. Really, if I deadlift, if I'm deadlifting 415, and I did two reps last week, and I did three reps this week, or whatever, my strength is kind of messed up because I had a flu a couple weeks ago, so I don't even, you know, I'm trying to build back up to, I think my last one I was strong, I was deading maybe 435. I could get three, but then I got sick and whatever.

But the point is, if I get three reps, then I'm adding a little bit of weight and I'm happy. Great. Next week I'm going to be starting five pounds heavier. If I then move to my barbell rows and I get one more rep than I did the previous week, that's great. And generally how my body works, this seems to be how people progress, is I will get, like, if I'm going to be moving up that week, if my body, you know, if it's there, then I'll see it in my first exercise. And I'll see it probably in my second exercise. And then my third exercise and fourth exercise will usually be the same as the previous week. That's fine. I'm not looking, you know, at this point, you know, realistically speaking, I'm only going to be gaining a few pounds of

muscle a year. You know, it's my strength does go up, but it's not, you know, it's a slow, progressive type of thing. And I know that. So I'm doing my six sets of four to six, and then I'm ending my workout with two sets of eight to ten rep. So then I hit each of these pathways where I get a lot of progressive overload. I get a very, very good amount of muscle damage coming from the very heavy and then the moderate, the four to six rep. And then I get some of that cellular fatigue with my eight to ten rep so that's how and my total workout sets are about 60 to 70 or so which is also an important point when you're when you're natural you can only train and in in this

next book i'll be going into the science of periodization and referring different studies and so forth but um training frequency is another subject. I'll probably talk about it in one of these podcasts. And like the ideal rep range kind of debate, there are a lot of theories on it, a lot of ideas. But the bottom line is you can only do so many reps. If you're training with the right intensity, which is focusing on this heavy weightlifting, you can only do so many reps every week or every five days. And your body needs that rest.

As much as I, sure, I could train back today and I could, you know, train shoulders tomorrow. And I could train back again. I could feel like, you know, come Thursday, my back is not, I don't really get sore at all these days. So sure, I could go train back again. I could feel that way, but I would overtrain myself fairly quickly because I'm doing that 60 to 70 reps, you know, in my, in my back workout. If I were to do half that and I wanted to then go train back again a few days later and do the other half that works.

And I've, I've done those types of programs and they work. Um, but I don't, I have not found them to work any better than training a muscle group once every five to seven days. And you're not blasting it. You're not hitting it with, you know, that's where the, the one a week type of split has gotten a bit of a bad name because there are a lot of bad one a week programs out there that have you go do 150 reps. Yeah, that's terrible. Like that you're not as a natural weightlifter, you have no business doing 150 reps in a workout period at all, like ever. So, uh, if you are training with the right amount of reps in a workout and you're training with the right intensity, the right amount of weight, and you're doing the right exercises, you can do very well on a once a week or a once every five days type of split. You don't have to train your muscles.

You don't have to hit each major muscle group every three days to make gains. I mean, I'm not the only proof of this. You can just go on the website and look at success stories and look at all the people in there that you have guys, lost fat and built muscle. And you have a lot of guys that started out skinny. And of course then those types of transformations take longer to be the, Oh my God. But you know, you have guys that they start the program and they gain, you know, 22 pounds of muscle their first year. Like, and I have guys that have just, you know, they went and got DEXA scan just because they wanted to like DEXA scan before they DEXA scan the middle DEXA scan after it's not them just like weighing themselves and saying they gain muscle you know what i mean um so that's how i'm training and that's going to be uh it's for advanced weight

lifters and that's the the new book the focus is going to be for advanced weight lifters but if you're at that point where you know you've been focusing on your heavy compound weight lifting for a couple years and you're strong this type of program would be great for you. I don't know really where to go. My idea for people that are getting into weightlifting is they would start with Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. They would do that for one to one and a half years. They would learn how to diet. They would end that period 20 to 30

pounds, you know, 25 to 35 pounds heavier in terms of muscle. They're going to be relatively lean. And then they would make the transition to this, what I'm calling beyond bigger, leaner, stronger program. Now they're going to be working in some periodized training with their diet. At this point, they're going to want to in some periodized training and then with their diet at this point they're going to want to probably get really lean so i'll be talking about some more specific strategies for that um and then how to not mess your metabolism up so you don't because that's you really uh that's i'll talk about this in another podcast too metabolic damage just a big problem if you don't know what you're doing when you want a diet to get really lean if you just

keep on reducing your calories, reducing your calories, and then you leave them low, and then come, you know, worse is where you crash your calories, you severely restrict them, crash your metabolism, get lean, and then start pounding food, put body fat on very quickly, but your metabolism doesn't rebound. So you're now burning less energy than when you started your, this whole, you know, debacle. But you got fatter than when you started now. And, but now you're like, let's say you started, you know, you're dieting at 2,800 calories a day and you crash it down to 1,500 calories a day.

And you ride that out until you hit your body fat percentage. You just suffer through it. And then you hit it and you know, maybe it's for a show or maybe it's for whatever. And then you're like, okay. And you start just, you know, pounding food, pounding food over the next couple of months, you gain that fat back, or maybe even gain more fat back. So you're fatter than when you started, but now you're only eating 2300 calories a day and you're maintaining that fatter look and you're like, what the hell is going on? Well, that's metabolic damage. So I talk about how to prevent that, how to reverse diet correctly and some other things in this other book.

So yeah, that's basically what I wanted to say about rep ranges. To summarize, focus on the four to six rep range or five to seven rep range or six to eight is maybe it's okay, but four to six, five to seven, focus on that rep range. It's not that you can't include anything else in your workout, but do at least six to nine sets in that rep range of compound weightlifting for every workout, even arms, get as compound as you can. You know what I mean? Barbell curls, as opposed to cable curls or machine curls or creature curls, barbell curls, dumbbell curls, hammer curls. You know, I don't use machines really at all these days. Lap pull down I use sometimes, tri push down I use sometimes, just a handful of machines that I use. So that's really like

the main message I kind of want to send on that. If you want to include some higher rep work, uh, if you, you know, having a pump is great, whatever, um, that's fine. Do it after your heavy weightlifting though. If you want to go do a few sets, you know, you want to do your six to nine sets of heavy weightlifting and then you want to do, let's say it's chest day, you like flies, you like to get a pump, whatever, totally fine. Do your six to nine heavy and then go on the fly machine and, or the fly, you know, do some dumbbells or go on the cables and then do that in the end.

That's okay. And, you know, if, if you want to also, if you want to like know more about this type of training, I do recommend you read my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, because it goes into how to program your workouts. And it comes with a bonus report that gives you a year's worth of workouts all laid out for you. And it teaches you a lot about dieting as well, because you can train perfectly, but if you don't eat right, it's not going to do much for your body. You know, a lot of people say diet's everything, diet's everything. I wouldn't say it's everything. I'd say diet and training are equally important though. If one's out, the other one is going to be irrelevant. You can have impeccably perfect diet, but if you don't train correctly, you're not going to make gains and vice versa. So yeah,

so that's all I want to say about that. Let's move on to the next point here, which is ways to boost your testosterone levels, natural ways to do it. First, I just want to kind of preface this with that boosting your testosterone levels is not as important as some people think, or I can say many people think, especially when it comes to gaining muscle or gaining strength. The fact is it's really not going to make that big of a difference. And this is research has shown this. I'll post an article in the description below where I go into this, but basically what it boils down to is natural fluctuations because you have a range and testosterone is measured in nanograms per

deciliter. So you have a range of, you know, let's say 300 to maybe 900 or so, given your age and whatever, your genetics and circumstances and whatever. And if you're at right down the middle, somewhere around 500, 600 or so, you're going to feel good. That's normal. But if you bump that up to 800, you'll probably feel a difference. You'll probably have a better sex drive. But that's not going to mean that you're going to build more muscle in the gym. This has been proven scientifically with clinical research.

So that's why, you know, don't go chasing these test booster, you know, type products that say that, you know, increase your testosterone by X percent, build more muscle, blah, blah, blah. Where higher T levels are more relevant actually is fat loss. Naturally boosting your testosterone levels could help you lose fat a little bit quicker. Now I say a little bit quicker because, you know, let's take that example of going from 600 NGDL to 800 or so. Will that really, like, what will that actually translate to in terms of added fat loss? Can't say exactly. It'll be something, but it won't necessarily, like, that's a, you know, 33% increase in T, but are you going to burn 33% more fat or burn it 30% quicker? Probably not.

Uh, so just know that boosting tea is not super important unless you're like bottomed out low, low, low. If you could take it from 200 NGDL to 900 NGDL. Yes, absolutely. It's going to be a huge difference. In the gym, you're going to build more muscle. You're going to feel a thousand times better. That will matter.

But most people are not. You have to really kind of mess your body up to wind up at 200 NGDL. Or you have to be very old and not have taken care of your body. So let's just go over a few things. There are vegetables, certain types of vegetables that actually have a substance in them called, it's just shortened to I3C, indole-3-carbinol. I might actually be pronouncing the indole, it might be indole-E, but I think it's probably indole-3-carbinol. And research has shown that it can just positively alter estrogen metabolism

in men. So it can lower estrogen levels. So that just, that ratio of T to estrogen matters. Um, so, you know, in the study they showed that 500 milligrams of this I3C per day, uh, reduced the bad estrogen, uh, by about 50%. Um, so this, uh, is found in, in cruciferous vegetables like bok choy, broccoli. This is why broccoli is kind of like a staple in the bodybuilding world. Uh, cause it, you can get this I3C from it. You can also buy it as a supplement. I don't know if it's really worth buying as a supplement, to be honest. But if you like broccoli, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, mustard, rutabaga, and turnip are good sources of it. Me personally, broccoli is okay. It depends how I prepare it. If I do it in a stir fry, I like it. Brussels sprouts, same thing. Depends how I prepare it.

Cauliflower, I like a lot. I eat a lot of cauliflower. Not necessarily for this reason, but also it has a lot of other vitamins and nutrients and such. Kale, I like kale a lot. So you have some pretty good choices there. And if you worked, the idea with these natural strategies is that they can give you a compounding effect. If you combine them all together, if you just added, you know, a serving of broccoli a day, it's not going to do much. But if you add a couple servings of these types of vegetables a day and you do these other strategies, they all could add up to something that would actually be noticeable. So the second strategy here is eat more meat. Protein from meat is particularly helpful just because studies have shown that meats increase testosterone levels and then that of course can increase to

a lead, it also can increase levels of lean mass. Meat in particular, this is interesting research and I've looked into like why is that exactly and researchers from what I could see, they have theories, they have hunches, but they're not even exactly sure, but the research is there. There's one study I referenced in the article that I'm going to put in the description below that had two groups of men follow a weightlifting program for 12 weeks. And by the end of the program, all had progressed about equally in strength strength but only the meat eaters had enjoyed significant muscle growth and fat loss so there is something to meat and it doesn't initially mean red meat you know fish chicken turkey pork buffalo and so on flesh there is

something to it in terms of optimizing hormones and building muscle i when when i i mean i haven't been bulking in a while, but on my last like real bulk, I would eat probably about one, two servings of red meat a day. Give or take some days, you know, I wouldn't, but that was generally what I would do. And I eat now when I'm, when I'm, you know, just cutting and maintaining, I eat a few servings per week. At the time of writing the article, I'd eat like four or so. But these days I've been trying different things. I've been trying ground turkey. I've been trying, I mean,

of course I do chicken, but you know, doing different types of like sausages, lower fat sausages and pork and stuff and just kind of mixing it up. So another important point for, for optimizing your, your T levels naturally is eating enough healthy fats. your T levels naturally is eating enough healthy fats. The reason why I say healthy fats is this is not saturated fats, not the enemy. Saturated fats are solid at room temperature. Stuff you'd find in meat, in dairy, coconut oil is saturated fat.

Whereas unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature, like olive oil and vegetable oils and so forth. So healthy fats, they do significantly impact your testosterone levels. And I want to address something quickly here that will, it just comes up, which is, is a higher fat diet the way to go? It's like, because it'll be out there that like, if you want to build muscle and strength, you need to be getting at least 40% of your daily calories from fats. I disagree. When you look at medical research in terms of fat intake, right around 20% of daily calories from fat is totally adequate for all bodily,

like what your body needs on cellular level, because fats are used to produce hormones, fats used for cellular regeneration and other things. And when you start getting under 15%, now you're getting into a low fat where you wouldn't want to maintain that for long periods of time. But if you're sticking around 20%, your body's getting what it needs. And what you're losing when you start going, because fat is very dense, It's nine calories per gram. So if you're going to be getting, you know, 40 to 50% of your daily calories from fats, and of course, you're going to need to be high protein if you're lifting weights, you're going to need to, you know, you'll never want to go below 0.8 grams per pound. Research has shown that especially when you're cutting, there are definitely benefits to

higher upwards of 1.2 grams per pound, which is I recommend when you cut helps in preserving your lean mass, which is really like the goal when you're a natural weightlifter is don't lose muscle, lose fat, don't lose muscle. Um, but when you start loading the fats, it doesn't leave much room for carbs and carbs are awesome when you're, when you're lifting, especially when you're lifting heavy weight, which, you know, is an anaerobic activity, right? You want carbs in your diet. And when you're cutting, you want carbs. It helps you preserve your strength in the gym.

It gives you energy. And also, even when you're bulking, you want carbs, not only for the same reasons. I mean, when you have a lot of carbs in you, you're strong. You feel it. Your muscles are full of glycogen. They're ready to go. Also, research has shown that insulin, it's not an anabolic hormone like some people claim it is. It doesn't stimulate muscle growth, blood plasma insulin levels actually are beneficial.

And there's some interesting research on this, which I actually can link below. It just talks about the importance of carbs in building muscle. So when you're eating high fat, you just can't eat that many carbs. And I've tried high fat diets. I'm not just like speaking in theories. I've tried everything myself. And what I found with high fat dieting is lower energy in the gym and then just lower energy in period, especially when I'm cutting. And what are you gaining when you go high fat? Why do people say do this 40%, 50%? They'll usually cite, there are one or two studies that showed that anabolic hormones

were higher in men when they compared very low fat, low, like, you know, media, like around low-ish, like 20-ish, 20-ish percent, like what I'm talking about versus high. They showed that the high fat, the 40, 45 percent, their anabolic hormone levels were higher. Okay, you go, oh, well, I guess I should just do high fat. But no, why? We've got to think back to what are you getting from that? Like, okay, you increase your T by 20 percent naturally. You go from 700 ngDL to 850.

You might feel that. You might have a little bit more sex drive. You might notice it, but is it going to do anything for you in the gym? No, it won't. You're not going to build more muscle. You're not going to build more strength. But instead of doing that, if you went with 20%, if you reduce that 20% of daily calories from, from fats and shifted those to carbs, that you're going to feel in the gym. I guarantee you, you're going to notice that big time, especially if you're timing it. Like if you're eating, you know, a good, nice carb meal before you work out 30 to 50 grams or so. And it's not just that,

but if you, when your overall carb intake is higher and that glycogen is in your muscles, you feel that. So I think you actually gain a lot more by having a more closer to a 40, 40, 20 split, 40% of your daily. And of course, this depends on total calorie intake. As you add more calories, your protein doesn't have to be that high. But if you're cutting somewhere around 40% of protein, 40% of daily calories from protein, 40% from carbs, 20% from fats. And when you're bulking, what happens is you start stealing from protein because your protein doesn't really need to be higher than one gram per pound when you're bulking. And you leave your fats around 20% to 30%, and you just start adding carbs, adding carbs, adding carbs because they fuel your training.

So eat enough healthy fats. And by enough, I mean between 20% and 25% of your daily calories from fat is plenty. And you can have saturated fats. You can have unsaturated fats. You can have the fats that are in eggs. Don't worry. It's not going to blow up your cholesterol. It's been totally debunked.

But what you don't want is trans fats. Trans fats are really bad. Trans fats are horrible for the body. They just basically break you. Like if you have, if you had five grams, five grams of fat, that's nothing. That's a, that's a piece of pepper jack cheese, a slice. It's half an ounce of normal cheese, five grams of trans fat every day. You have that over course of a few months, you will feel terrible. You will break your body. It's amazing how bad

this stuff is. I mean, this is like the one fat that is just recommended to just minimize your intake to as close to zero as you can bring it basically. It's what it is. It's a type of saturated fat, but it's, it's modified and it gives foods longer shelf lives. So what you'll find it in is a lot of like cheap foods like popcorn, yogurt, peanut butter, frozen foods like frozen pizza, packaged pastries, cakes. Fried foods are often fried in trans fats, margarines, trans fat, and so forth. So you want to stay away from that, like boxed cereals and stuff like that. Trans fats can actually really cause a lot

of metabolic problems as well. So the next strategy here is to just chill out. You know, when your body's stressed, it produces cortisol. And this is a, it's a catabolic hormone, meaning that it breaks down both muscle and fat tissue. But, but it also cortisol can interfere with testosterone production. Uh, it also increases your appetite and it can, it can promote the accumulation of belly fat. If there is a, if there's an energy surplus, of course you can't gain fat if you're not giving your body energy to store it with. But, um, if you're in an energy surplus and you are very stressed out, you can gain more belly fat basically. So cortisol, just so you know, it's fine. Like you'll work out your cortisol level spike, but that's good. That's

what you want. Your body's responding to the physical stress. It responds by breaking down fat cells, by breaking down, causing that muscle damage. You know, there's physical muscle damage from the weight, but cortisol also plays a role in that. And then when you're done working out, your cortisol naturally comes down to a normal level and all is good. But if you're chronically stressed, your cortisol levels are going to be chronically elevated, not good. It suppresses testosterone among, you know, causes other problems as well. So a simple way to deal with that is, I mean, I understand having a kind of a stressful life or having things to be stressed out over. You know, I have a lot of work. I have employees. I have this, that I, you know, need to make so much money for this and do all this stuff. And I understand.

And so, you know, what I've found is helpful is to kind of have, regardless how much you work, regardless of what's going on, take a little time for yourself every day have a little routine that you know you find relaxing for me it's reading it's watching I don't watch much TV but there are a couple TV shows I'm waiting for Game of Thrones waiting for that to come back you know I did Breaking Bad that's great get a house of cards I'm waiting for so you know I like to chill out and I'll do a bit of reading and then I'll do, sometimes I'll watch a little bit of a show, but for you, it could be anything, you know, I like to listen to music, also calming, relaxing music. Like I listened to a lot of classical music

when I'm working just because, I don't know, I just like it. It chills me out. And also at night, same thing. It just is like, puts me in the mood to just be relaxed. So have your own routine, take a bath, you know, whatever. Uh, and that can help. Another point here is get enough sleep. This is very important. Um, you know, once again, I know what, uh, it's very easy to steal from sleep because especially when you're busy and you have a lot of things that you want to do, uh, you know, it's annoying to have to go be unconscious for eight hours. I understand that. But, you know, cutting from sleep over time, it's just, it becomes a problem. Research has shown that sleeping, not sleeping

enough, it does, it reduces testosterone levels. I mean, in the study that I referenced in this article, it was, they had young, healthy men and they were restricted to five hours of sleep per night. So that's not a lot of sleep. Like I wouldn't be and they were restricted to five hours of sleep per night. So that's not a lot of sleep. Like I wouldn't be able to function well on five hours every night. But just by doing this for, I believe it was for 10 days or so, their testosterone levels, their daytime free tea levels were decreased by 10% to 15%. So that alone is not a huge deal, as you know, like going down by 10%.

Okay, fine. But it compounds, these things can compound negatively when you have not enough sleep, which also can mess with your cortisol levels in itself. You have stress. So that messes with it. You're not eating enough fats. You know, if you're not doing all these things, you can actually quite dramatically decrease your T levels.

And then when you fix them, you can actually quite dramatically decrease your T levels. And then when you fix them, you can actually quite dramatically increase them. So another strategy here is to have more sex. Simple, good, fun, great. It's not only is the relaxation point of it, but research has shown that just regular sex increases testosterone levels. So girls, it's your duty for the health of your men. And then one final thing that's not in the article that I just want to mention is in terms of supplements, stay away from test boosters. The only supplement, the only, yeah, I mean, it's amino acid called diaspartic acid that actually has some science behind it, and I've used it,

and I've noticed an increase, what would seem like an increase in testosterone in that my energy levels increased, my sleep was better, my sex drive was a little bit higher. So I did notice that. I don't really care. I don't take it right now because I don't, it's not worth spending money on, but I'll try different things as I come across them,

as I see research and just, you know, I'm pretty skeptical. I'm not immune to the placebo effect, but I'm pretty skeptical. So, you know, whatever, I do my best to try to just take the pill and see what happens. So, D-aspartic acid is potentially worth using if, you know, you're dealing with a real low T issue. But also, just know that deficiencies in certain vitamins and minerals can actually quite dramatically depress your natural T levels. If you're deficient in vitamin D, if you're deficient in zinc, if you're deficient in vitamin C, calcium, magnesium. So these are also things to look at. And I may have it on my list of things with Legion, my supplement company, legionsupplements.com, if you're interested.

my supplement company, legionsupplements.com, if you're interested. I have it on my list to look into doing a male optimization type of product. I would never sell it as a test booster because I don't like that. And that marketing just turns me off. But something like with these different vitamins and minerals, everything that has, where if you're deficient in them, it's going to make a difference. And maintaining optimal levels of it's going to make a difference and maintaining optimal levels of them is going to optimize your hormones would be the idea. It'd be an interesting product. I actually would personally, I would like to take it myself mainly just from that point of like, well, if I have a deficiency, I would like to, I would like it corrected. And it's, it's so easy these days to have deficiencies in vitamins and minerals and such because, you know, I eat good food.

I eat, you know, organic vegetables and fruits, which I need to do an article on the whole organic thing one of these days. But, you know, there's a lot of controversy. However, there is good science to show that in the case of certain fruits and vegetables, organic does have more nutrients. And that's what I'm going for. I'm eating the vegetable, not just, not for macros, not for carbs. Like, yeah, sure. I can get some carbs from it, but I want nutrients. That's what my body needs. Um, so anyways, I eat organic and such, but you know, even that it's just the general quality of food is kind of just declining. It's hard to get everything your body needs, which is also why I do take a multivitamin supplement. I know, you know, this, there's this

latest research that came out and all the stories saying that multivitamins are worthless and so forth. Okay. But one, if you look at the types of products that they're looking at, yeah, those types of products are worthless. Centrum one a day, worthless stuff like that. Okay. It's low quality crap. You get what you pay for, but higher quality types of vitamins. Um, yeah, it's not going to turn you into a superhuman. It's not going to necessarily prevent disease, but you know, your body does need a lot of vitamins and minerals. I'll link an article where I go over all the different types of essential vitamins and minerals that your body needs and all the different types of foods that contain them. But it's hard to,

you know, you really, you know, micromanage your diet to that degree where you're like, all right, today I'm going to get my vitamins this, this, this from these foods and this, this from those foods. No. We try to eat healthy. We try to vary the different vegetables we eat and the fruits that we eat. And we try to eat our meats and such. And, you know, what our bodies, we're going to be getting probably too much or more than we need of certain vitamins and minerals and not enough of others. So I take a good multivitamin simply to balance out any deficiencies and just keep my body in as good as, you know,

as good as health as I can. Um, so yeah, so that's all I want to say about the, the testosterone subject. Um, let's move on to the final thing here, which is this Kardashian. The name of the article is the Kardashian school of getting rich, which I don't know, whatever. It's some silly thing, but basically what I was doing is just kind of looking over the Kardashian world and seeing like, well, what, what, uh, can we learn from them? Are there like some, uh, you know, lessons on success because they are very successful. I think, um, you know, lessons on success? Because they are very successful. I think, you know, I've seen the show before. Obviously, I'm not a fan. But it seems like

the girls themselves are all just morons. And the mom seems to be smart. That'd be my guess. It looks like the mom is the real businesswoman, the real mind behind what is going on. And the girls are just like, whatever. And they just go on tweet and stuff and be on magazine covers. Um, might be wrong. That's how it seems anyway. So the, the big thing, I think the big lesson here is that they get attention. Uh, you know, if you can get attention, you can get money, especially if you can get, uh, positive attention. I mean, you get enough negative attention. No, but you get attention where people, it doesn't, you know, they, they like you or they, they like what you're doing or they admire you for something. You get enough attention, you can make money. Um, and they

get crazy amounts of attention. These girls, I mean, this world of celebrity gossip, which you know, being on these magazines where it's like so-and-so broke up with him and this person's screwing this person or whatever, I guess it's, it really kind of boils down, him and this person's screwing this person or whatever. I guess it's, it really kind of boils down, I guess, to positive attention for that world because people buy the magazines. You know, I guess you judge your star power by the amount of exposure you have. And if you're keeping yourself out there and people, if they're not personally offended, if they don't see it and go like, oh my God, I can't believe that. You know what I mean? If it's just like, oh, the husband cheated and now she's with another dude and people are like, oh, then I guess that's positive attention.

So these girls get a ton of attention. And so I was kind of looking at that going, okay, I can see that. So what are the, like, what are we going to do? Are we going to like make sex tapes like Kim Kardashian and get a bunch of attention? No, that's not what we're going to do. So what are some ways that we can get attention that actually are valuable? And I came up with a few.

So one is this idea of be so good at something that they can't ignore you. I really like this advice. I mean, this is a quote from Steve Martin. And it was in, you know, he has a cool autobiography. I mean, he's a funny guy. If you like Steve Martin, you'll like it. I believe it's called Born Standing Up is the name of the book.

And in the book, he shares insights, you know, his success and what he's achieved and so forth. And that's his main advice is be so good at something they can't ignore you. And that's awesome. It's so true that if you want to really get attention at something, you have to excel at something. Uh, I mean, this is like such a basic, simple thing that a lot of people miss when it comes to making money or building a career. You don't have to be the best in the world. You have to be world-class and that's to get world-class at something is a, you a you know that that journey starts when you're

three years old and by the time you're 20 you've spent you know 15 000 hours doing something and you had probably a little bit of uh you know depending on what it is if it's like a sport you probably had some already physical advantages to begin with and whatever but you don't have to be world class but you have to be um very very very good you don't have to be world class, but you have to be very, very, very good. You have to get to that point where somebody sees you doing or what you've done and if 10 people see it, seven are impressed. They're like, wow, that person's really, really good.

When you can do that, you are in a very good position to be successful. And these days, I mean, especially with the Internet, you can make money with just about anything. Any skill that you can build up to that point, just about anything, you can figure out how to make money with it. I mean, I think of something like video games, right? Like that are generally considered a complete waste of time. Like, yeah, sure. You can kill some time, but to spend a ton of time playing video games pointless, right? Um, but then you look at some of these big video game players, these people that are popular

and they have their streams. And some of these guys, I mean, they're making a living off of just streaming them playing video games. People watch them playing video games and ads get played. So those are people have gotten so good at like Call of Duty or a game like what's that game League of Legends right where it's like a little guys fight and stuff whatever. They get so good at these video games that you know they'll play it and they'll have 40,000 people at any time just watching 50,000 people whatever watching them play the game, run ads. Some of these guys are making $50,000 to $100,000 plus a year playing video games all day. Just an example, they got so good that people couldn't ignore how good they were at this game and figured out a simple way to monetize it. work, very, very important lesson in terms of getting enough

attention to actually, you know, uh, achieve a great success in any field. And of course, I mean, what does it take? It takes thousands of hours of work. That's what you should, if you're going to say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to get so good at blah that they can't ignore me. Know what you're committing to. You're committing to, I'm going to spend, it's going to be probably no less than 3,000 hours of work. Maybe if you're

like, you know, you just have a very, very good attitude for something, you could achieve that in 1,000 to 2,000 hours. But think 3,000 to 5,000 hours probably to get really, really, really professional, really proficient at something. And, you know, that's, if you just think with that, and they might be like, oh, that seems, I don't want to look at that. No, if you just like, oh, okay, what does that break down to? All right. So if I just worked on it for three hours a day, every day, you know, it's a thousand hours a year. If I do that for three years, then I'll be at a point where I'm like so good at something people can't annoy me or can't ignore me. Okay. That's, that's not so bad. Three years of doing something every day for a few hours. I mean, at least when I think about that, I go, I can do that.

You know, I, I, I do that with, with writing. I'm writing, I mean, I write on different stuff, but you know, I'm writing every day. I'm writing at least 1,000, 2,000 words. It's not three hours, but, you know, I've done whatever. I've been writing all kinds of stuff for many years now. And I wouldn't say that I'm incredible at writing, but I'm good enough at writing where people have gotten good enough now where people get a lot of attention. So it applies to anything. So the next little attention-grabbing method here is to do something cool. Do something that's just different, that gets people's attention.

I mean, I share a story in this article of this lady who lived in Alaska. So think about this. Stay-at-home mom, lives in Alaska in the middle of nowhere, and she decides, and she's into building stuff, carpentry, right? So she starts a blog, okay? And now it's massive. I mean, now it's like, you know, tens of thousands of dollars a month in advertising revenues, millions of page views every month.

And, you know, what did she do? She just started sharing plans of how to build stuff. Now she has, I don't know, thousands of plans, like ready to build plans, uh, with step-by-step visuals, all shared for free. She may be, she may actually be doing some sort of, you know, um, monthly membership thing. If she's not, she should, but, um, you know, and, and she wasn't married to the CEO of, of Lowe's or anything like that. She was just some woman. That's what she liked to do. Started putting it on the internet. And that was her passion.

And then she found out there were a lot of other people that are passionate about it and it exploded. But it was cool. What she did is different. She was probably one of the first to really put these full... And it's cool stuff

what she's building too. Obviously, she has a style that resonates with a lot of people. And that's it. And it exploded. So it's like a lot of people, you know, and that's it, and it exploded. So it's like just, you know, do something. If you have an idea that you think others, to you, you go, I think that's cool. Well, that's enough.

There could be who knows. I mean, her name is Anna White, this lady. She didn't think that there were, like, millions of people out there that would be into woodworking and creating this furniture, especially the style she had as there are as there are she just went and did it so it could be the same thing your idea could resonate with maybe it doesn't resonate with millions but maybe it resonates with hundreds of thousands but you know hundreds of if you have a a tight community of hundreds of thousands of people i mean you can, that there's your living and doing something that

you love and working with people that love the same thing. I mean, it's great. Um, so if you have an idea, just do it, uh, you know, chronicle your adventures, share them online. And you know, that, that could turn into a whole thing. Um, also, I mean, if it's, if blogging is not your thing, you know, with YouTube, uh, with just the internet and how quickly you can get content out there and get noticed. I mean, it's just like those, you hear these overnight success stories and I actually don't like, I don't aspire to those kinds of things and I don't use those things as like, you can be an overnight success story too. But the truth is, if you do something very cool, you can get massive exposure very quickly. Things can go viral very quickly, more so now than ever. So that's that method. And then the final method I want to talk about here is to be startlingly

honest. So there's something just kind of like refreshing about somebody that is very open about how something actually is, goes against kind of like what the veneer is and goes and says, this is how things are actually working. This is what's right. This is what's wrong. This is what's acceptable. This is what's not acceptable. Of course, this is abused. This is a marketing tactic. Everybody knows that.

tactic. Everybody knows that. But when somebody speaks the truth and other people can see that, if somebody actually is telling the truth and other people, you know, go, I think this guy's telling the truth. I think this is, or this girl's telling the truth. I don't think this is bullshit. That is very, very powerful. You know, in the, in the article, I share the story of Ron Paul, the politician, right? Whether you're a fan of his or not, if you just look at what he did for many, many years, he was kind of just this nagging old guy in Congress, and he wouldn't stop talking about things that you're not supposed to talk about, like the Federal Reserve and psychiatric drugging of children and our involvement in the Middle East and so forth. And he was ostracized, obviously,

he never was like part of the congressional elite, he wasn't ever admitted into that group. But his message, right, just by being saying, being consistent and saying, this is how things are. And then of course, talking about here's what's going to happen next. And then people say you're you're crazy and then 10 years later it happens and enough of that and people this guy actually is telling the truth i mean now he's kind of the uh the the spirit of a you know of a movement that's millions and millions of people strong and uh it was once kind of just shunned as a nothing so uh telling the telling the truth and i and being kind of like, you know, I wouldn't say shocking, I wouldn't say sensational, but willing to be a bit controversial and not necessarily, not just kind of towing the line, not spouting the same stuff that everybody else spouts is very valuable. I mean, I have, even if it seems a bit brutal,

I think that attacking other people is not the way to go, but attacking unfair practices or, you know, things that are not right and kind of saying this is how it should be is very valuable. I mean, I have experience with this with my work, you know, talking about a lot of the scams of the fitness industry. And because it's not just about the money that people lose, like, OK, fine, you can lose a few hundred dollars on supplements. Most of us can afford that. We move on with our lives and we go, well, that, you know, those those bottles of whatever didn't do anything, no big deal. But it's more about the, you know, the, when people make goals to change their body, to get into shape, you know, these goals also usually are tied into other

things. You know, they want to, you know, let's say someone's at a very out of shape, their body's not feeling good. It's hard to operate well in life when you're, when, when your body's like that. So, you know, they want to handle their body. They want to get in shape. They want to get fit. And then there are ramifications of that. Maybe that means then if they're single, right, they can get a boyfriend or girlfriend or a husband or a wife or maybe it'll give them the confidence to move in their career or move toward other goals or whatever.

You know, getting fit is not just about looking good, in my opinion. So when a person has that goal, then they start looking for, you know they're getting fit is not just about looking good in my opinion so when a person has that that goal then they start looking for you know okay so how do i do this um and and then they're bombarded with all kinds of crap and they're told you know they have to buy all these different supplements they have to do these weird different programs they have to starve themselves have to do all this crap that doesn't work or it only works in the short term and then they you know they just can't be sustained it then gives them that failure which uh sucks and then you know if they try to go again and then they fail and try to go again a person can only take so much of that before that

purpose that original purpose just dies until you just go whatever. And then you adopt some, you know, my hormones or, you know, whatever, my genetics. And you just kind of leave it at that and just sit in apathy on that. And that sucks. So that's what I really don't like about this industry and about, you know, yeah, you have the people that are just like taking these people's money, you know, to sell them that crappy course or sell them that crappy book or sell them that crappy supplement. And those people move on with the money and whatever, but then they're leaving somebody there with, they didn't just lose $50 or a hundred dollars or $200, but that might've been the last, uh, you know, that might've been the fifth and final attempt this person was going to make to really try to make a change. And, uh, and then

now it doesn't work and now they've just abandoned it and that sucks. So, um, you know, I've really kind of stuck with, with that type of message and all my work and it's resonated, you know, with the people. Cause I experienced it myself. I mean, that's my story. I wasn't, I wouldn't say I was an apathy in my training, but I was like, I was just in boredom. I was just like, you know, wasn't making gains. I'd go to the gym cause I'd go with friends and it wasn't enjoyable activity. And I did like working out for working out, but I didn't ever think that I would have a great physique. I didn't really think that ever be that strong. I just kind of thought like, I don't know, I don't need, I guess I don't have the genetics for it or I'm not willing to do steroids. So I guess I can never be that way. But it's not true.

So yeah, that's what the kind of three methods I think that you can use to get out there, get attention, get people coming your way. And then if you're willing to do that, you're willing to help people, you can always figure out how to make money from it and you can eventually turn into your whole thing. So that's all I wanted to go over on today's podcast. I hope you liked it. This is the second week in a row. I said I'd do one a week, so I'm

keeping my word here. I'm going to continue. The plan is one a week. If things get in the way, I'll try to schedule it around. But worse, we do one every two weeks. So if you like it, please subscribe. If you're listening in iTunes, you can subscribe, obviously. If you're in YouTube, you can subscribe to my channel. I'm going to be posting some other videos too. I just have to fit it in in terms of my schedule, but I'd like to shoot shorter videos just talking about individual subjects. So that will happen. It's just I have to wrap up some of the things first before I put the time into it. That's all. So yeah, I hope you like the podcast and head over to my website, www.muscleforlife.com is where you can find me. I respond to all comments and all messages and all emails and stuff myself. And so any questions

that you might have, I probably have articles on it, but if I don't, you know, I'm open to helping you out. So thanks again. And, uh, 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, um, 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 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.