Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Getting Super Lean, Strength Training, Book Publishing, and More with Ben Pakulski

Episode Date: April 13, 2018

Bodybuilder Ben Pakulski interviews me on his podcast to talk about how to structure a diet to get extremely lean, fasting, planning your diet over several months, supplements for fat loss, book publishing, and more. This interview is different from my normal routine of drilling deep down into one topic, because Ben wanted to cover a lot of different topics including the finer points of getting lean, the ins and outs of self-publishing, and the hard lessons we’ve learned growing both as individuals and businesspeople. For example, we discuss the value of suffering when it comes to achieving our goals, how to decide what projects are worth pursuing and which aren’t, what it takes to be the best at something, and really anything else that popped into our heads. :) 6:56 - What should people expect if they’re trying to get shredded? 8:28 - How does our unique physiological conditions affect fat loss? 11:00 - What are some of the challenges with tracking macros? 13:12 - What are your thoughts on muscle loss during extreme dieting? 16:38 - What was your experience with fat gain while fasting? 20:33 - What is your cut process? 27:12 - What’s the story behind writing Bigger, Leaner, Stronger? 30:32 - What are the main points in Bigger, Leaner, Stronger? 31:18 - Why do you recommend compound lifting and what is your experience with it? 34:13 - What do you recommend for people who don’t naturally fit a traditional exercise program? 39:58 - What advice do you have for people who want to start a business in the fitness industry? 44:52 - How do you overcome feeling like an imposter in the fitness industry? 53:56 - How do you grab people’s attention with content marketing? What’s the future of content marketing? 57:39 - What is muscleforlife.com and what is in store for its future? 59:31 - Where can people find you? 59:49- What books do you recommend for personal development, business, and fitness? 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/

Everybody wants everything, right? Everybody wants things. Great. That's fine. Goal setting what you want. Who cares what you want? What really matters is what are you willing to pay? What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to sacrifice? so Thank you. Продолжение следует... Thank you. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in, so instead I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my workout app, Stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple Store with a 4-star average, and it helps you get more out of your training in several ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out

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contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. All righty. That is enough shameless plugging for now, at least. Let's get to the show. What's up, ladies and gentlemen? Ben Pekulski, the Muscle Expert Podcast. Today, we're going deep on fat loss. My guest, Mike Matthews, is the author of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. You might know him for his online programs, The Shredded Chef, Eat Green, Get Lean, and Muscle for Life. Mike, what's going on, my man? Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me on the show. Mike is also the owner of Legion Supplements, which has been around since 2012 and properly dosed, efficaciously designed supplements.

Previous guest, Curtis Frank, is primarily the formulator, correct? Yeah. I mean, he's kind of the director of all research and development for us. And he's the super brain, the super supplement savant. Man, he's a super bright guy, and we're so grateful to have him on. And, you know, going forward, fat loss, Mike. So, you know, you teach a lot about muscle building and we can definitely go down that route if that's something you want to talk about, but there's a lot of misconceptions. I know people are putting out a lot of books these days about, you know, the most effective

way to lose fat loss in three weeks or 21 days or 19 and a half days. Yeah. It's always so many pounds in so many days, right? Yeah. Because the psychology, the human psyche is drawn to that. Oh, I can do this in a short amount of time. And even if you don't believe it, I think unconsciously it's still appealing. Because I don't know if I fall for it. What if? What if? Yeah. I'm like, oh, yeah. It's a hugely appealing proposition, right? But I don't know if I fall for it, but yeah, I'm like, oh yeah. It's a hugely appealing proposition, right? But I don't want to get into what's possible. What I want to get into is how should people be actually doing this shit? Let's talk about four months of like, hey man, I want to lose a little bit of body fat. Walk me down the path of your belief system and what you think the best line of approach is just for not just getting lean, right?

Like I always tell people, don't just strive to get lean. It's like striving to make a few bucks, right? Strive to get absolutely inside out shredded because that's what's going to rip you out of bed in the morning, right? For me, it's like, hey, I want to lose five pounds of body fat. I'm not going to get up in the morning at four o'clock to do cardio to lose a couple of pounds of body fat. Whereas if I have the goal to get striated glutes and get absolutely inside out, well, that's going to rip me out of bed at four o'clock in the morning and get super excited.

So let's not talk about just losing a few pounds. Let's talk about someone who wants to go for the gusto here and wants to get absolutely inside out, straighter, like you have numerous times for photo shoots, for book covers and appearances. So let's talk about that. I think the first thing, right, is you have to be ready for some pain like that. You don't get that lean without paying the price. And in the prices is not it's not long term, you know, physical or permanent physical damage. No, but it gets pretty uncomfortable. I mean, you know, you've again, you've been leaner than I've ever been. I've been like at the fitness model level kind of lean, but I've,

I've never gotten on a stage and competed. Like, I can't say that. I don't know if my glutes have ever been striated. You're pretty damn lean, man. I've seen pictures. You're pretty damn lean. So, you know, don't be so modest. Well, I've gotten, I've gotten to where I felt like, all right, I think this is about it, right? This is what I've got. And so the first thing is, yes, it's a pain in the ass, right? So you have to manage your energy balance properly. That's where you have to start, right? So you have to understand the relationship

between how much energy you are eating and how much energy you are expending, burning. And you have to understand that the only way to lose fat is to be in an energy deficit over time. You know, we have over a century of metabolic research at this point that shows that is the only way to significantly reduce body fat. So let's talk about that, man. I want to go down that route because I question that, right? I question the authenticity of that. As someone who kind of tends to be the devil's advocate in many

scenarios in my life, I question that calories in calories out theory because the more we learn about mitochondria, the more we learn about the microbiome, the more we learn about epigenetics, the more you start to realize that, you know, banana to me is not a banana to you, meaning our bodies can do completely different things biochemically when we eat these foods. There's got to be some, you know, for my, you know, and I'm not necessarily saying I know this, but this is my thought process. There's got to be some influence based on somebody's level of health, somebody's level of hormonal balance, somebody's microbiome, somebody's level of inflammation, somebody's level of cortisol, somebody's psychological state. You know, if I'm in a stress state, definitively, it's going to do different things in your body.

So what would you have to say around that, Mike? Yeah. I mean, I think there's definitely a case to be made there. Like, for example, I remember there were two papers that I had looked at two studies where people there with very overweight, with obese people that had very, very poor insulin sensitivity, they lost less fat on a high carb diet than obese people with, I mean, their insulin sensitivity was still kind of bad, but it wasn't as bad. So that immediately comes to mind, for example. So that's something where you have a physiological condition that appears to impair fat loss despite there being a caloric deficit. So these people lost less fat than was predicted by just energy balance alone. So yes, I do agree that it's not necessarily that cut and dried for everybody, So yes, I do agree that it's not necessarily that cut and dried for everybody, but I think that's where everybody should start is with, let's keep it as simple as possible to start.

And I recommend the same approach with muscle building as well. So if you're somebody that wants to get, let's say you're a guy and you're at 20% body fat, what I generally tell guys at 20% body fat is, let's make 15% body fat your first milestone. And then let's see if you need to, your first milestone. And then let's see if you need to take a diet break. Let's see how you're doing psychologically. Let's see how you're doing physically. Let's see how you're sleeping. Let's see how your workouts are going. And you know, if everything feels good and you tell me, no, I mean, I'm great. Let's keep going. Then let's go. Let's make 10% that next milestone, right? I've worked with thousands of people now,

just, just staying in touch with people. And my email inbox is like over a hundred thousand emails by now. And so I've seen a lot with men and women, all ages, all circumstances. What I've seen most often is, yeah, every 5% or so getting down to about 10, most people seem to do well with a diet break. So, you know, you just raise your calories back up, give your body a break and then go back down. And from there getting to, okay, so getting to 10%. So again, probably a good idea to take a break before you want to get super shredded because every percent of body fat that you want to lose under 10% just gets progressively harder. You just have to work more and more for it and you feel worse and worse, right? So coming back to your original point is I think it makes sense

to start as simple as possible. So start with, let's say, 20 to 25 percent caloric deficit, which requires that you understand how to accurately estimate your energy expenditure, which many people do not. Many people incorrectly assume they're burning more calories than they are. And it also requires that you are able to accurately estimate how many calories you're eating, which many people are not. Even if they get to the point of like, let's say if they have their measuring spoons and they're measuring cups out every day and they think they're eating 2000 calories, right? What they don't realize though is, okay, so they go to measure a cup of oatmeal dry. And so they're like, cool, here's my cup, right? It's a slightly heaping cup, but it's a cup. And they log however many calories they log in their MyF fitness pal or in their log for that cup of oatmeal. What they don't realize though, is the cup that they logged was assuming, let's say 80 grams of dry oatmeal, but they just put a hundred grams in their cup. They just accidentally ate whatever that is an extra 80 calories. Let's

say in that meal, rinse and repeat for the tablespoon of peanut butter. That was a bit over for blah, blah, blah. And it goes on, you know, it goes on and on. Who does that, Mike? Nobody does that. A little bit more, a little bit more. Come on, man. It can't really matter. As long as it fits on one tablespoon, it counts. That's always the rule. Exactly. And so you have your energy balance, right? And then of course you have your macronutrient balance. And we all know that a calorie is not a calorie as far as body composition goes. We all know that. I recommend, again, if we're just starting at what's probably going to be the best place for most people is going to be a high protein, higher carb, moderate fat diet. If you are exercising a lot,

especially if you are doing a lot of resistance training, that's my general recommendation for people to start. Now, not necessarily if you want to get super shredded, because I think, again, the first goal is to get to, before you can get super shredded. Cause I think, again, the first goal is to get to before you can get super shredded as a guy, at least you got to get to like 10%. We got to get you to 10% before we can get you to six. Yeah. Let's talk about some of the limitations of taking someone from, from 20 to 10. So most people in their fat loss endeavors are going to go into some type of restrictive eating. Maybe they're going to start doing some type of cardiovascular, maybe they're going to be doing more weight training and cardiovascular. And you talked

about maybe the solution is they're taking a few days off in between to maybe get some type of metabolic reset happening. Any experience or thought process around those people who go from 20 to 10 and are actually getting substantial amount of muscle loss because they're in their caloric deficit, right? Yeah. I mean, I would say, honestly, I've only seen that and I'd be curious if you've seen otherwise, but where I've personally seen that I have not experienced it myself. I've never lost any amount of muscle that I could notice going from notice. Yeah. I mean, going from that's where the hormone thing comes in, right? Yeah. And, and, you know, actually funny enough. So to that point, yes, you have your, your catabolic hormones versus your anabolic hormones. And I've never actually gotten a blood test. I don't know

where my hormones are at. I never felt, I just never had the need to, you know what I mean? But I wouldn't be surprised. I did do a genetic test. And one of the little interesting things that came of that is that I had, what was, I forget the word. There's a technical term for this. It's like a, it's a way that a gene can express itself a polymorphism i believe that was associated that single mutilated polymorphism snip so so that is associated with higher testosterone levels so like this they would see that in a lot of athletes that they would work with for example and i also had another um polymorphism that was associated with it just enhanced recovery muscle recovery in particular and otherwise and that that would explain why i've been able to gain a fair amount of muscle polymorphism is associated with just enhanced recovery, muscle recovery in particular.

And otherwise, that would explain why I've been able to gain a fair amount of muscle, despite not really having the anatomy for it. I'm 6'2", I have long arms, I have long legs, the muscle insertions are not made for strength. I'm not naturally a very strong person. You know what I mean? My body is probably more made for endurance, honestly, than strength. So yes, to that point is, okay, so you have somebody who, let's say you have a guy, low testosterone, generally, you know, higher cortisol, which obviously there's, there is an inverse relationship there. If you have higher cortisol, you're going to have lower testosterone. And then that guy goes and tries to aggressively diet down from 20% body fat to five. That's just not going to go well. And I have come across a couple instances of that. I can't say I confirmed it because I didn't have blood work with them,

but based on what they were telling me, very high stress. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I think that they went super low calorie, blah, blah, blah. That's where I'm going, man. And I think that's a huge issue with people going doing these dieting phases who start doing cardio, which puts up cortisol, start blocking carbohydrates, which puts up cortisol or prevents it from coming down. And they go, man, you know, I'm just not losing fat anymore. And you go, okay, well, what are you doing? And they're back themselves into a corner and their cortisol is massively elevated. So their body's constantly breaking down muscle tissue. It's constantly typically storing fat.

Their testosterone goes in the toilet. And they back. Remember also water retention goes way up. So, you know, you could be losing fat. I mean, we have like the famous Minnesota starvation study, right? And so from that, we can definitely see that you can be losing fat. Now, I mean, obviously what those guys were under, it wasn't a true, I wouldn't say torturous, but it was pretty rough. Like they were eating half of their daily expenditure and they were having to do some, you know, five, six hours of physical activity every day. Because of water retention, of course, it can be completely obscured, which I'm sure sudden see that, oh, for the last month, I actually have been losing fat. My water retention was getting really bad because of these other factors.

What I've never seen and I've never seen evidence for, seen a convincing argument for is how you can gain body fat in a caloric deficit, a true caloric deficit. I'll tell you definitively that I've done it myself. I'm actually curious. What are the details? Like, how does that play out? I'm being honest with you. So man, I experimented with fasting. So with a guy with as much muscle as I have, and to be honest, I started, I was probably 8% body fat. And I started experimenting with fasting. My activity level was very high. My stress levels were very high. I've got three kids, multiple businesses, a bunch of things that are stressful in my life. And I was just like, hey, man, I feel good.

I'm going to fast. And I would do it for a couple of weeks at a time where I would have maybe one meal a day. Do you know approximately how many calories that meal was? I would say maybe about 1,200 calories, 1,200 to 1,400 calories a day. Why did you want to do that? That sounds awful. Well, because I was trying to lose muscle, right? So I was like, you know, so characteristically, yeah, characteristically I

walked around at 300 plus pounds for 15 years and I was like, all right, time to lose some of this. I just, I just wanted to lose scale pounds, right? Like I wanted to lose muscle mass. I wanted to lose fat definitively. I mean, I got my body weight went down. I went down from maybe where I started was two 68 and I got down to about two 58, but definitively my body weight went down. I went down from maybe where I started was 268 and I got down to about 258. Okay. But definitively my body fat went up like probably 14% in six weeks. Like not up 14%, but up to 14%. And how did you measure that out of curiosity?

Visually, but we did calipers. So I've been doing it a long time. I've done 50 or 60 dex's in my life. So I've got a pretty good idea of what it is. So we did calipers. And it wasn't water. Like you were just straight fatter. Straight fatter. 100%. That's bizarre. That's bizarre. Well, so I

test everything, right? So everyone's doing this fasting thing now. I'm like, I want to test and see what happens. So there's outliers, man. There's outliers with this because if you look at my energy balance, I obviously have more muscle mass than I have fat. So my body goes, well, what do I have more of? And this is my logic. I could be completely wrong with this, but my body goes, what do I have more of? Well, let's burn more of that. And it held on to all my fat. And

because my cortisol was higher, it's honestly, it was surprising to me. My macros were, I mean, I probably ate, I don't know, man, not that I want to get into details, but maybe 40 to 50 grams of carbs a day tops and the rest of it was protein and fat. But like, it was very minimal, man. And it's really surprising. You know, my training, uh, intensity certainly dropped off, uh, which, which could be a consideration, but, uh, it's really interesting, man. Like, you know, cause I, and I don't put any judgment or weight on, on my results. I've just, just purely observationally for, to answer your question question because you brought it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, man.

It's interesting. And so it was 10 pounds because obviously as your weight goes down, a percentage is a percentage. But do you have an estimate of an absolute amount of fat that you feel like you gained in that? So you came down 10 pounds. Yeah. And I mean, if I had to guess, it's probably at least six to eight pounds. Like maybe, I don't know. That's a guess, man.

I should have probably did a little bit better job with the metrics, but I wasn't doing it for any particular testing reasons. Yeah, you're just doing it for your own personal, just like you wanted to lose, get a little bit smaller, basically. Man, like I said, I'm writing a book. I've also got hundreds of clients that we work with. And everyone always asks about fasting. Like, hey, Ben, what do you think? And I'm not against fasting, but I realized that

you need to do it in the right scenarios. You need to be very aware of manipulating hormones because if your cortisol is too elevated, your sleep is going to get very disrupted, which mine did. I slept much less. My energy levels were amazing during the day. I felt fantastic. Despite not sleeping. That's interesting or not sleeping as well. Yeah. Running on cortisol. I actually, I like the way I feel, you know, I could see why entrepreneurs like intermittent fasting because my energy is just consistent. My brain focus is great. My body doesn't spend tons of time digesting food. So I feel great, but it was an interesting observation. Like I said, that's, that's one time and equals one and I may do it again. I'm actually planning on doing it again.

So I'm currently going to be starting to get in shape to do some photo shoots for my book. Sure. And then after that, I may play with some more fasting and see how it goes. Interesting. But yeah, anyways, tangents, man. So tangents. So let's say you start into a 16-week fat loss preparation phase for yourself, Mike. Tell me what that looks like.

What happens with your training? What happens with your nutrition? Yes, I'm actually doing that right now. It's not going to be 16 weeks because I'm starting out already fairly lean, and I just want to get- So how long? So my plan is six to eight weeks. I think that's what it'll take. I mean, obviously, it'll go by what I see in the mirror first and foremost, but I'm thinking six to eight weeks.

And I'd say the longest cut that I've done in a while, even when I was at my leanest, I was probably 12 to 14 weeks, just because, I mean, generally I kind of have always been any, let's say anywhere between 10 and 13. Yeah. 10 to 10 to 13%. It's kind of where I hang out. Right. I like to start, I actually don't train anything. I don't change anything in terms of my weightlifting. So I do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting, you know, push for progressive overload. Again, I really kind of stick to the basics. I program some additional accessory work for, you know, at like shoulders, my shoulders are never going to be big enough, basically. So I do extra, I do extra shoulder work. I'm training lower body twice a week. I don't, I'm happy with where my lower body's at. I'm fairly happy with my physique on the whole. So it's kind of like I have a push pull legs. That's where I start.

And then I have some accessory work built around that specifically for what I want to do for with my physique. And so I actually don't change anything in that regard. I still try to make progress. I still try to gain reps if I can. And I usually don't start with cardio. I just bring my calories down and I like to add cardio in once it becomes necessary. So again, for some of the reasons that you just brought up, how do you gauge that progress? Right. So again, for some of the reasons that you just brought up, how do you gauge that progress? Right. So weighing myself every day and then doing a weekly average of seven or 10 day average, also taking caliper measurements. Not that I care to extrapolate that to body fat because who cares? It's more just, you know, it's just seeing, okay, cool. Is,

is my super early act going down? Great. Uh, and then waist measurement as well. And so then that gives you a picture obviously of what's going on with your body comp. You know, just knowing my body, it's usually about, I get three or four weeks of easy fat loss where I don't have to work that hard for it. All I have to do is, you know, drop my calories. And I don't want to then just continue dropping calories again, for all the reasons that we just discussed. I'm not going to go for what was loud McDonald's. It's like 500 calories a day, just protein. You know what I mean? Like really aggressive protein sparing modified fasting. I think it's called it's misery. I think it's obscene. Yeah. It's kind of silly. It's misery. So, um, so anyways, so at that point I will add some cardio in, I personally like to do high intensity cardio. I do it on a bike.

And the reason why is because you get the most fat loss for your time. So like obviously a 20, 25 minute high intensity bike workout is you're going to burn more fat than 20 or 25 minutes of just this. Not that I think there's anything wrong with this. If I were going to do this and I had more time I wanted to give to it, I'd probably just walk. I'd probably go with something that has the least amount of physiological impact. You know, because you get a good whatever, three to four hundred calories per hour of walking if you're like walking with some intention. So anyways, yeah. So I'll add, I'll add cardio in. Usually it's hit and I'll start with two, probably 20 or 25 workouts per week. And then by the end of my cuts, I'll usually be doing

four, but I don't do more than that because again, I can only push my body so far before things start to go upside down. The beauty of what you said there, Mike, is moderation. And that's where I think you're doing it right. And that's where a lot of people go wrong is because you're not in a rush. And this is why I suggest 16 weeks for people, man. So understand a little bit my thought process. The first four to eight weeks, depending on how much body fat you got to lose, is usually spent on accumulating muscle, improving contractile ability improving your body's ability to use more muscles in every contraction every in every rep and thereby increasing the caloric expenditure potentially even increasing your body's ability to sustain work to sustain volume so we get your

we get your volume and ability to work up and then we can start pulling your calories down a little bit right so a lot of people when i start you know quote unquote diet it ability to work up and then we can start pulling your calories down a little bit. Right. So a lot of people, when I start, you know, quote unquote diet, it actually calories go up and that, because we're trying to sustain more work. And then once we get this work capacity up, then we can slowly start pulling those calories down. All of a sudden, hooray, we were, we're actually eating more calories than we were before and we're actually

losing fat. So, um, you know, that's why I usually suggest for more people going a little bit longer. Yeah, I could see that. I mean, for someone like yourself, who's naturally very lean or at least stays very lean, I would say naturally anything, but, uh, stays very lean short period time in moderation makes a ton of sense. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, along the way, I usually also, if I'm going to, I like to train fasted, not because in and of itself, it makes a big difference, but I combine it with,, sinephrine, and yohimbine. And it's the yohimbine and sinephrine in particular that I like. I mean, caffeine is fine as well,

and it makes them more effective. But of course, yohimbine doesn't work really. If your insulin levels are elevated, it doesn't really do anything as far as fat burning goes. So I also will do my workouts fasted simply so I can get those supplements. Yes, I have a supplement company, but it's kind of a unique type of supplement company. And that one of the first things that I'll say about supplements is you don't need supplements at all, period, to do whatever it is that you want to do with your body. I would say if you have the budget and you have the inclination, some supplements make sense to add to your regimen, depending on your goals, even if your goal is simply to be healthy. So that's also something I do like to to add because i i've done it now several times with

and without supplements and the fat loss in particular and it goes faster with the supplements it just does sure hey before we continue if you like what i'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one-on-one coaching service. Now, my team and I have helped thousands of people of all ages, circumstances, and needs. So no matter how complicated or maybe even hopeless you might think your situation is, we will figure out how to get you the results you want. Every diet and training program we create is 100% custom. We provide daily workout logs

and we do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service as well as discounts on supplements and the list goes on and on. To learn more, just head over to legionathletics.com slash coaching. And if you like what you see, schedule your free consultation call. Now, there's normally a wait list to work with our coaches, and new slots do fill up very quickly.

So if this sounds even remotely interesting to you, head over to legionathletics.com slash coaching now and schedule your free consultation call. And let's see if our program is a good fit for you. So Mike, over your left shoulder, I see Bill Phillips' Body for Life book there. And I want to bring up your book, man. So Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. You wrote that in 2012. Tell me a little bit about that. So yeah, I I mean, it was just kind of a lark. I wrote it because I had heard about Amazon's KDP platform, right? I don't know what that is.

It's Kindle Direct Publishing. It's their self-publishing platform. So it allows you to just, hey, write a book, put it up on Amazon. You know, you're on their marketplace. Good luck, right? And I'd heard about it because there was a guy named John Locke, who was the first KDP author. So their first self-published author to sell a million books. And his story is kind of cool too. He made a bunch of money in insurance. I think it was, he like built up an insurance

company, sold it, did it again, sold it for even more money. And then he was like, all right, well, I'm done with money. And he always just wanted to write books. So he wrote, I haven't read any of them because they're like primarily for women. They're just kind of, I think, fun stories. They have sex, they have violence. He's just totally was like, this is what he wanted to do, right? Because he didn't care about money,

he priced them at 99 cents, which at the time was very unheard of. Now everybody has 99 cent books because he didn't give a shit. He's like, I don't care if, you know, whatever. If I make no money off, this doesn't matter to me. And it turned out to be a really good hook because Cause it was like, they were, you know, he actually put time into them and he really did try to write a good book and like 99, really 99

cents. Like I actually liked this book. You know what I mean? He exploded. And then Amazon used that to promote their platform saying, Hey, this could be you, right? You could be the next John Locke. So that's how I heard about it. And I was like, I had always been interested in writing and, um, just, and that was kind of just, again, random. I, I was always a good student growing up. I like to read. And so that's how one day I was like, I bet you, I would like to write. I mean, I like to read. I could probably, I could probably do this. I could, I could write stuff. And so my original interest, it was actually fiction. I wanted to write novels and I still have an abiding interest in it. It's just, I don't have time that I want to give it right now. That'll be in my next

phase. At some point I will do that, but it's just, I'm not going to give it the time right now. So anyways, I wrote Bigger, Leaner, Stronger as a simple kind of minimum viable product. What's a book that I wish somebody had given me back when I was like 17? That's exactly the answer, right? Yeah. So, so, you know, that, that, that's what that book was. And initially it was not very long. It was 130 pages. And I didn't try to like make it super sexy. I didn't try to say that I had some big breakthrough or even that I figured anything out. I mean, I was just like, I've learned some things from other smart people

and here are the things that I've learned and they've worked really well for me. And they're based on good science. So they'll probably work really well for you too. I don't know everything. I don't get everything right. Nobody does. So here, try this basically. And if it works great and it did very well. And so now, you know, I I've sold, I want to say close to 300. I have to look at my spreadsheet. I want to say close to 300. I have to look at my spreadsheet. I want to say about 350 or so thousand copies of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger now since publishing it in 2012. And I've published other books and I've sold over a million books now. So it's kind of very, again, just one of those serendipitous things.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Good for you. So it was kind of one of those things like most businesses start off, most entrepreneurs end up teaching what they needed to learn, right? Scratch your own itch. We go through struggles. Yeah, exactly.

We go through struggles and we know there's tons of people out there fighting the same battle. Yep, exactly. So what were the main points that you feel as though you touched on that book that, you know, looking back or anyone out there who's early in their journey, what were the things that you touched on that book that you think they should address? Well, I guess I think the first thing was probably the big mistakes that I was making

before educating myself, basically. So on the training side of things, for example, I didn't put very much work into heavy compound weightlifting. It was a lot of isolation work. It was a lot of very, very high rep stuff, a lot of fancier type of programming techniques that have their uses. But for most people, unless you're just a crazy high responder to weightlifting, it's hard to beat a simple approach of, let's say, heavy squatting, heavy deadlifting, heavy pressing, and pushing for progressive overload as opposed to…

So tell me about that. So I want to learn about your experience with squats, deads, and presses, because that's one of the sound bites that we hear most often and that people say, hey, man, you should just do more compound lifting. Why? people and give you the most bang for your buck, so to speak, right? And I do believe that that is the best place for people that are new to resistance training to start, assuming that they can do it, right? So assuming they don't have pre-existing injuries or issues that make that impossible or make that just, you know, they contraindicate that due to increased risk of injury and so forth. That's, again, the where I would say, this is where I would recommend people that start and specifically people that are limited in their time. So let's say you have anywhere

from three to five hours a week. That's how much time you can spend in the gym. And that's a lot of the people that follow me. I'm one of those people myself. I mean, I guess I can do whatever I want with my time, so to speak, but not really. Like if I wanna continue along all the, I want to keep all these plates spinning it, you know, then I can't be in the gym two hours a day,

six days a week, something else has to give. Right. And also of course, they're time proven principles. So you have strength training programs out there, like starting strength that have been around forever. And you can gain with good programming. I think the average guy, regardless of age should be able to gain anywhere from 15 to probably 25 pounds of muscle, of actual muscle, not just weight, you know, in their first year. And if you look at the research on that, that's probably 25 pounds. It's probably hard for anybody to gain more than that, regardless of what they do, assuming that there are no drugs involved. So if you can get there with a more minimalist type of approach, why not just do that? Do you find that you always executed those exercises? Well, do you find like you're kind of a natural squatter, deadlift or bencher?

They can pretty easily do. That's a good question. The technique I would say yes, but that's probably because I grew up playing sports. So, you know, I was used to, I grew up, I played baseball when I was younger, and then I played a lot of hockey. And I also played golf. Golf is a weird technical sport that requires good awareness of your body and what's going on and, you know, precision, right? And so, yes, I would say that what I did was, and this is what I recommend to anybody, is, of course, you watch videos, you learn about the technique, right? And then you video yourself. You don't try to just jump into heavy weights and just go balls to the wall, but make sure that, you know, on video, you can look at your squat, deadlift,

overhead press, bench press, or whatever. And you could compare it to a model and say, all right, I'm pretty close. And the movements being, yes, they're obviously a squat is a little bit more difficult to execute than a leg press, but I wouldn't say it's a tremendously difficult movement. It's not a golf swing, for example. A golf swing is much harder to do. Sure. But making the assumption that everyone is built differently and everyone's going to thereby get different muscular recruitment, different results, different potential pathologies from these exercises. What do you recommend for those? Obviously, you've dealt with a lot of clients in your life, a lot of people reading your books.

What's the suggestion for the outlier? So the funny thing about outliers is I think it's more like 75% of people that are actually outliers for those exercises, right? Like most people assume that you fit into those exercises, but I think more people than not don't fit into those exercises. And how so? How so? I'll explain. Yeah. So their inability to muscularly control those exercises, the ranges that you're being asked to go through.

Most people can't actually actively control them with their musculature. Obviously, young people is an exception. Some people are very athletic. That's an exception. is an exception. Some people are very athletic. That's an exception. Most people that I run into are so banged up that they can't get to the bottom of a squat with anywhere past 90 degrees of hip flexion. They can't get to the bottom of a deadlift without rounding the thoracic spine. They can't get into the bottom of a bench press or touch their chest without doing some type of elevation and protraction of the shoulders. So that's my,

you know, why I bring up those questions, man. It's like, what is the troubleshooting for those people? So I'm not saying that your suggestion is wrong, because I actually agree with that too. But what's the step before that for all those people who go, man, you know, like when I squat, it hurts. When I deadlift, it hurts. When I bench press, my shoulders hurt. What do I do with those guys? I mean, I've actually, I've heard from a number of people, obviously over the years, I would say in my experience, and this is strictly speaking from people that have, I've heard via the books mostly, right. And also via the blog where I've recommended a lot of the same types of things. I would say that my personal experience has been that the majority of people can do fine with those exercises so long as they learn proper technique and don't get too zealous. But I

definitely have heard from quite a few people that have not been able to do them for reasons like you're describing or pre-existing injuries. Like there is going to be no deadlifting because of, you know, a lower back injury that they sustained doing know, doing who knows what at some time. Right. So for that, it's always just like, and I've had people email me worried that because they can't squat, they're fucked. Right. Like, Oh, I can't squat or I can't deadlift. Am I like, I haven't, there's no hope for me. Right. And that's totally not true. Not, not, not at all. You can do everything that you want to do with your physique without squatting, without deadlifting, without bench pressing, without overhead pressing. Absolutely. I'm a hundred percent like there's no question about that. So there it's just finding workarounds, right? So there are always like,

for example, if they can't squat, can they leg press? If they can't squat, can they do maybe a unilateral, like could they do a split squat or can they do a lunge or, you know, for hamstrings, you have various options. If nothing else, you can do a lying hamstring curl, right? Even, even take the deadlift. Okay. So we have to break that down now. We could do some hip thrusts for, for some posterior chain. We could do, you know, depending on their situation, they may be able to do something like good mornings. We have options. So yes, I would say that you don't have to squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, but if you can, and this has been, I mean, I can't say that there's any research that at least that comes to mind immediately.

There's some research out there probably on, on muscle activation for the squat and the bench press in particular versus, versus variations. But I'd say if you can squat and deadlift and bench press, overhead press, and progress without having pain or problems, then that's probably a good idea. You're going to benefit from it. You know what I mean? Completely agree, man.

Greatest bang for your buck as far as using the greatest amount of musculature at once if time is a consideration. One of the reasons I think that paradigm always needs to be questioned. And listen, man, my rule in life is always play the devil's advocate because it ends up bringing up a good conversation. But one of my reasons for always challenging that paradigm is if you look throughout the history of our lives and you look at the people that we model as far as being the best role models for bench pressing or the best role models for deadlifting or for squatting are the people who tend to be really good at it. Right. So you're watching somebody on YouTube and like Ed Cohen deadlifts a thousand pounds and, you know, and he has a huge ass and he's lower back. I want to get a huge lower back and I'm going to, I'm going to deadlift like Ed Cohen or I want to get huge quads like Tom Platt.

So thereby I should squat or I want to get a huge a huge chest like these power lifters thereby i should bench press but they fit that exercise and we don't always and that paradigm needs to be always challenged for some people out there being like hey man you may not fit in that exercise the same way i do so don't watch those exercises i do and do them yeah figure out what works i mean i agree especially when you're talking about weight you're talking about you see you know you're looking around on on instagram and you don't know what you're looking at half the time anyway of what's going on behind yeah what's going on behind the scenes but still i absolutely agree like uh your body your anatomy matters and what a lot of people don't realize

about you know people that are very good at weightlifting is one they generally have bodies that are just built for it they They have the way that their, their muscles insert that you have limb lengths you have, you know, so they just, they're just able to generate so much more force. And I've, I've run into that, you know, I've like squatting is very, it's hard for me. I've never squatted more than 365 for three. Now, to be fair, I haven't programmed for it. I never programmed for like squatting multiple times a week because I didn't want to. But I was not. I had to work hard for like what is considered like meh kind of numbers.

You know what I mean? That's a pretty good number for a guy who's six foot two, man. I mean, that's nothing to snuff at for sure. So, man, moving along, changing directions a little bit. I think what you've done in the fitness industry is very unique or at least very brilliant. So, you're an early adopter. You're somebody who came in and basically started your fitness journey. You said, I'm going to act right now. I'm going to create this business, create a really successful business, have a massive following. I think a lot of my listeners are sitting at home questioning whether or not they should get started in the fitness industry.

You dove right in and said, Hey man, I'm going to write a book. I'm going to create a supplement company. I'm doing all these things. What advice do you have for people who are sitting there? You know, maybe they're interested in the fitness industry. Maybe they're in the fitness industry and they don't know how to kind of get the ball rolling on creating a successful business. Yeah. And that's a good question. Another question I do get asked a lot. I'm sure it's a question you get asked a lot as well. And I'd be curious. I want you to jump in here too, uh, at any point. Cause I'm curious. Cause so my take on that, I mean, I think of several things. One is I'm big on, on content marketing personally. So that's something that I feel is my, um, my, my, what is it? I guess from, what is it from

Jim Collins's book, my hedgehog concept, like the thing, here's the thing that I can be excellent at. And, uh, that if I just do this very, very well, my one thing to reference another book, right. If I can do this very, yeah. Um, no, no, no, that's zero to one. Uh, uh, no, the one thing, the one thing by Keller, it's actually a good book. It seems to be, it looks like it's going to be a gimmick. So my one thing that I chose, the thing that I felt I could get so good at that people couldn't ignore me, right? Cal Newport is content creation, is content creation and writing in particular. And so that's what, I mean, I've put a shitload of time into writing. I've published over a million words of free articles on my blogs. I've written probably close, I don't know, maybe 500,000 words between the books and I'm working on new books and I'm always writing and I've improved a lot as a writer. I look at the stuff I wrote, you know, years ago and I'm like, this is terrible. It should be that way

though, right? I always say to myself, if I read something I read, I wrote 12 months ago and I don't think it's terrible. I haven't evolved enough. It's very true. It's very true. So that's, that's a first thing that is something that I was like, okay, what can I do that's going to stand out? So anybody trying to break into the fitness industry, I do think that you need to have something that stands out and it doesn't have to be content. That's what I've chosen. And the reason why actually I looked at it and I was like, just being objective saying, all right, I have a good physique. I do. And I'm happy with it. And I'd say most guys would be probably pretty happy to have my physique. I'm not interested in becoming a competitive physique athlete,

and I'm not interested in becoming a competitive bodybuilder. Good choice. I mean, and I don't think I even have the genetics for it, honestly. You give me all the drugs, it doesn't matter. Sure, I will look bigger and better. But I question if I would even be able to do it, right? Because a lot of people, I mean, just as a quick thing, don't realize that when you have guys that are professional bodybuilders, these guys, they were like the super responders to weightlifting from the first day they ever picked up a weight. Like there there's a, there's a, yeah, I mean, there's, Hey, I don't, I don't, I'm not, I'm not familiar with your career. All I'm saying is like, though you have the potential,

your muscular potential is much higher than the average person's period. I would assume maybe I'm not familiar with your career. All I'm saying is like, though you have the potential, your muscular potential is much higher than the average person's period. I would assume. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. And it looks like I'm wrong, but that's fine. But I don't ever want to, I try to get away from the genetic argument, man, because I started off as a fat 155 pound, five foot 10 guy, man.

Like when I say fat, I was maybe 16 to 18% body fat, 155 pounds at 17 years old. And by the time I was 19, I was two 60. See, but very few people could do that. They don't, it's not in them. I don't know, man. I had every, well, I also went from a long distance being a long distance runner to vegetarian. It doesn't necessarily mean it was a good 260, but it was a good 260, and it got strong. I don't know if I have great muscle-building genetics,

but certainly not as good as the guys I was competing against. I think my genetics was more for being stubborn and putting two middle fingers up to the world and saying, you think I can't do it, I'm going to do it twice. That's always the mentality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyways, but to get back to your question. So I was like, okay, that's not the direction I'm going to do it twice. That's always the mentality. Yeah. So anyways, but to get back to your question. So I was like, okay, that's not the direction I'm going to go in. I don't like the

fitness scene in general, the fitness community, the culture doesn't really, a lot of it does not resonate with me, the darker, the narcissism and the neuroticism. And so I'm like, I don't want to be an influencer, right? I don't care about vlogging and building a YouTube channel or getting a bunch of attention or cause again, I was like, eh, that doesn't build a business. Your entire, your entire everything is owned by another company. And if one day, who knows, maybe you're gone. That's it. YouTube decides to shut you down. Exactly. Oh, there goes your million subscribers. It happens, man. And so, yeah. So in looking at it, I was like, okay, so what I'm going to do then is I'm going to go all in on creating really good content. And first,

I'm going to focus on written content because that's what I like to do. There are a lot of people out there that like to consume written content. How did you get over the initial trepidation or feeling of inadequacy that so many people face? And I'm sure at some level, you question that too. Yeah. I mean, you always have imposter syndrome to some degree, right? in that too. Yeah. I mean, you always have imposter syndrome to some degree, right? I mean, this might just be something about my personality. I just personally don't struggle with that very much. And that's, that might even be a shortcoming. I mean, but it's, it's, it's something where I guess like in the beginning, um, I didn't, I don't think I'm into planning. I'm into like going, how am I going to do this? You know,

Bob, the builder, how do we fix this? How am I going to do this? What, until I can convince myself that I have a good plan, if I can do that, then I should be able to, at least there's a high probability that I can get the result that I want. And from there, I kind of just like no more thinking and I just do it and let's see. And yes, I could have wasted all my time. You know, not that maybe whatever the time that I spent on bigger than you're stronger could have been wasted, you know, could have sold nothing and who knows, but that doesn't bother me maybe because also fundamentally, and you're probably the same way is I like to work. I'm not afraid of exerting effort. I'm not afraid of, you know, spending my time and my energy and my attention on things. I actually enjoy it.

So there's a part of me, maybe it's a masochistic part that if I were out digging ditches every day, there's a part of me that would still enjoy it. It could serve no purpose, but at least I'm out there exerting effort. And there's something to be said about the nobility of just being able to do that for its own sake, kind of like mix a hell of, you know, flow. I mean, I butchered his last name, but flow state, right. Getting into that flow state. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Hey, you're better than I am. So, so, so yes. So in the beginning that was like, cool, I think this could be something who knows I'm just going to do it. And so that's kind of how I've approached everything. Even the supplement business in getting into it, where like, I was actually talking to my partner, Jeremy,

at the time we were like, okay, we can, there's an opportunity to do supplements, but how much pain are we willing to take for this? You know what I mean? Like how much pain are you willing to take for this? Uh, how much shit are you willing to go through? Because this is not going to be easy. Nothing's ever easy, uh, regardless of, you know, how easy it might seem going into it. It's always going to take more time, more effort. You're always going to have more distractions that you're going to have to shield yourself from. And there's always going to be, you know, reasons to quit and whatever. So going into it, I just know myself that that's again, just knowing my personality. And this has definitely been a thing, but it's become more of a thing as I've continued in my career that I don't care how hard something is.

It means nothing to me. If I think there's a way I can do it and I want to do it, then I do it. And if I have to suffer, who fucking cares? I don't care. You know what I mean? Similar, like we were talking with your dieting, like you're not sleeping or not, but you had a reason to do it. Yeah, you suffered. Yeah, whatever.

So a bit of that probably helped. Tomorrow is always another day to make a decision, right? And suffering today, it's always like if I, you know, people on a diet, like I have to eat this cookie. When you wake up tomorrow, that cookie's still there, you know? So at the, you know, so for you, like suffering through anything, you know, whether it be dieting or working, if I decide to stop tomorrow, one, I know that I've failed, but tomorrow's still there. I can still make a decision to go another direction tomorrow. Like, you know, failure just shouldn't be an option until you've achieved.

I totally agree. You can choose to pull the plug at any minute. But if you choose to pull the plug, realize you chose to pull the plug. Yeah. And that's okay sometimes, too. I mean, I actually have had that discussion back to even your original question with people saying, okay, so I've had people that have emailed me, Hey, um, so I'm thinking of starting a supplement company. How do you find a manufacturer? Okay. So if you're asking that question, don't, you're fired. Don't. Yeah. Just don't. Because

what you do is you fucking Google supplement manufacturer, you know, that's it. And then you got to start, you got to start humping. You got to start going. So there's nothing wrong. I think with saying everybody wants everything, right? Everybody wants things. Great. That's, that's fine. Goal setting what you want, who cares what you want? What really matters is what are you willing to pay? What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to sacrifice? Take the things that you care the most about. And for a lot of people, that's things that make them feel good. It's Netflix, it's food, it's hanging out with friends, it's sex, it's whatever. How much of that shit are you willing to give up? And how much, again,

coming back to how much pain are you willing to go through to get what you want to get? You know, I recently watched the Tom Brady, Tom versus time. I watched the first episode of it, right. As a Facebook documentary thing. And he said something that I really liked. So he said that he has given 18 years now of his life to football or 20 years or whatever it is. And basically he said, if you want to compete with me, you better be willing to give up your life because that's what I'm doing. And he lives it. He doesn't just say the words. I mean that dude. And when you really actually like, if you go read about how he has lived his life and even how he got to where he is, he gave up literally everything starting at probably 13 years old is when he started playing football. And he was bad in the beginning. Like he was slow. He had a good arm, but he was a bet. He is a nothing. He sat on the bench for his first season in high school. Right. But he starting then decided he was going to give up everything,

everything. He didn't care what he had to give up. He didn't care if every waking moment of every day had to be spent trying to be a, become a football player. That's what he was going to do. Oh, look at that. He's the greatest quarterback ever, arguably or whatever. Right. And so I don't think I'm necessarily, I don't know. I don't know if I could do what Tom Brady has done, even from that perspective alone. But I'd say I probably have a bit more of that than the average person. So for somebody, again, if you're thinking about how do I get into the fitness industry? If your thought is, how do I make a bunch of money really fast and really easily? Just don't. Just don't even don't waste your time because it's just not going to happen unless you have some super freak fluke type thing,

right? Where like, yeah, I guess if you're a 19 year old kid and you're super good looking and you have an insane physique and you just make a YouTube channel where you run around and show off. But even that only lasts a very short amount of time. We see so many of those, right? Flash in the pan, right? And a lot of those guys don't make shit for money actually, because you don't get paid that much if you're shilling for like Gymshark or something. So yeah. So those were two things I think is the pieces of advice I tell people is you got to find something that's going to set you apart, something that is valuable that you can really get good at. I like content creation personally. Entertainment is another

big thing. Look at the bro science guy. He entertains people. He's very good at entertaining people. That is his thing. So you don't have to create educational, informative content. Entertainment is another option, but you get regardless, you got to find something that you can do very well that will make you unique to you have to be in very very good shape don't try to become a fitness person if you look like shit why would someone listen to you if you're going to go you know you're going to go learn to play tennis and you can go see the person that sucks at tennis you're not going to get lessons from the person that sucks at tennis regardless of how much they might be able to say they know about tennis sure so you

got to walk the walk which means you got, you got to pay the fucking price. Basically, again, of like, what does it really take to stay lean? And this is something I don't think many people talk about. You can talk about the mechanics of staying lean. Sure. Energy balance, macronutrient balance, you know, nutrient timing, blah, blah, blah. But in the end, what does it really take to stay? Let's say as a guy, I don't know, seven, eight, 9% body fat year round, you have to

not give a shit about food. You have to essentially, you're eating the same meals every single day, seven days a week. When you're that lean, you know this, you can't go out to restaurants and just blow yourself up and think that you can just, oh, your body will just, you know, those calories just evaporate into the air. No, a portion of them stick to you, like you said, with the cookie, right? And so are you willing to do that? Yeah. And some people will think, oh, I can just train harder tomorrow, but then the training harder leads to more inflammation and more cortisol, which sometimes- Or even more eating. Even like your appetite goes up and you're like, well, now I'm hungry. I'm training more, but I'm doing cardio every day now, but now I'm more

hungry. You have to at least have the type of physique that the type that the people you want to sell to want to have, right? At least you got to start there. And yeah. And then, and then from there, and then if you're willing to suffer, if it matters that much to you and yours, and you can say, I'm willing to like, to put numbers on it. If somebody were telling me they really want to be successful and they're not willing to work 80 hours a week for the first year to get somewhere, I would say, yeah, I mean, that's sure. I mean, I'm just trying to start, like I'm starting, if you're not willing to at least start there, then just don't bother, dude. Just don't bother because it's not going to happen. And there's nothing wrong with, I think, personally, I think there's nothing wrong with assessing a goal realistically, right? And actually challenging yourself.

How much do I really want this? And then if you decide, actually, I don't want this, I'm not willing to do that. I don't think that you should necessarily feel ashamed for not doing it. I think that's probably a smart decision. So you are a big advocate of content marketing, and this is my judgment of it. The world is becoming bombarded. And you'll probably agree at some level with messaging everywhere, right? We've got so much marketing. We've got so many bells and whistles. Overwhelming.

Yeah. So what's the future of content marketing? What's the future of getting people's attention in your eyes? Is it a different medium? What's the future? What does it look like? I mean, probably video, right, is a big part of it. The reason why I say that I'm not super excited about it is I don't particularly enjoy recording YouTube videos. I do it. I do it. But it's not something that I would enjoy if I ever say, oh, shit, that's what I have to do. I want to become a YouTube star. What does it cost to become a YouTube star?

I really don't want to be a YouTube star. You know what I mean? But video is absolutely exploding. There's no question there. And so, you know, we're going to be, I'm going to actually be doing some more video stuff. I'm hiring a videographer, but it's never going to be my sole focus. So there's that. And then on the written side of things, of course, written is always going to be a thing, right? People are always going to read articles and they're always going to read books. And so it's just the level of competition now is what you're up against is you're up against better content than you were five years ago. There are better books out there. I've seen this

take books. I've seen this now. When I first published Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, there was no book like it at the time that, yeah, I mean, if anybody that reads it, there was no book like that. If you read it and you go, oh, you know how everything's explained and blah, blah, blah. Now there are a bunch of books just like it and a bunch of knockoff kind of me too. So there's a glut of bigger, leaner, stronger wannabes that have gotten nowhere, though, because what a lot of people don't understand about Amazon in particular is Amazon is a whole world unto itself. Being good at Amazon

marketing, you can be a good marketer and have no fucking chance on Amazon because it's its own bizarre. It's actually a game. That's how I have to think about it. Amazon is a game that has certain rules and you have to play the game, basically, I guess is the way to say it. And if you don't know how to play the game, yeah, good luck. Unless you can just, you can write the next body for life. You can write the next book that just people, they freak out about and, you know, it, the amount of momentum you gain overcomes the fact that you don't know how to play the Amazon game. So, so yeah, I would say that, you know, from there, it's really just going to go. I think we're going to see better and better just written

content. Long form is the thing, obviously, and that's not going to change. So the better you can write long form engaging content, the better you are going to do on Google and on the other search engines. And of course, if you're going to play the content game, you're going for organic. You really want millions of visits a month from Google. You don't want to be paying for that. And so that's creating good content. And then also knowing the SEO game, which is not super complicated, actually. If you have some money, you can do some interesting things, but you don't even necessarily need money to get in there and start playing if you can create really good content. Because ultimately, as we know, Google's goal is to serve up, somebody goes, if we're talking about content, serve up the best possible content to their searchers. When that

person goes and says, how do I lose stubborn fat? They want the top result to be the absolute best possible result. So if you can go in that direction, not try to game your SEO and keyword stuff and get too lost in the weeds and focus on how do you create an article so good that someone is going to go send it to five of their friends. If you can do that, then you have what it takes to play the content game, basically. And that's my take on it. Right. Mike, Muscle for Life is one of your major brands, one of your major websites. Tell me about that. What is that?

Yeah. So it's right now, I really, I don't, it's the original website that was put up in 2013. So a part of me hates it because it's ugly and needs to be redone. But it's very popular. It gets about right now, one and a half million visits a month or so from Google. It's just all organic. And I publish articles regularly on it. And I have also a couple other people that write with me who also publish, who do a good job. And so it's a very popular blog at the moment, essentially, but we are overhauling it and we're putting a store, which it doesn't have a store. I'm a good marketer. And so we're putting

a store in it. And I mean, the reason why we've neglected is because we focus so much on the supplement company and now we're coming back to muscle for life anyways. So I'm putting a store and I'm also going to be launching a number of digital courses, which is something I just have none of right now. I'm excited for that just because, you know, I'm doing some of the courses myself and then I'm partnering with some people on other courses who I feel are more qualified. Like I'm doing a supplementation course with Curtis, for example. So the courses are gonna be going up on Muscle for Life

and so I'm excited to do that. And I have a coaching service that's a part of Muscle for Life as well. But yeah, essentially right now, I say Muscle for Life is like a glorified blog, basically. Like I could tell people, Oh, I'm a blogger. What do you do? I'm a blogger. It's funny, man. I'm actually doing a very similar thing to you with the courses because as you know, man, your knowledge is, is your knowledge and you can't go outside of that

knowledge base. And I feel like there's people out there who are much better at certain things than I am. So very similar to you. I'm doing a bunch of courses and bringing in some really brilliant people who I'm excited to learn from. And I'm sure my demographics can be excited to learn from man. So I'm super excited to see what you're doing and continue to learn from you. Where can people find more from Mike Matthews other than body for life? I would just say muscle for life is probably muscle for life.com spelled out muscle for our life.com is kind of the hub of all of my things. And if you want to check out the supplements, it's legionathletics.com, legion, L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. So you've thrown a bunch of book titles out there, Mike,

and I'm going to ask you, so specific to personal development, I'm going to go in three categories. So I'm going to go personal development, business and fitness fitness. Okay. Yeah, and you can't use your own. So for personal development, let's see. Flow. I really liked Flow by the name that I can't pronounce. Misa Csikszentmihalyi. Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi. There you go.

I liked that a lot. It really resonated with me. Mastery really resonated by Robert Greene. It really resonated with me. Meditations, which is cliche these days, I know, but whatever. No, it's still a brilliant book, man. I actually have it by my bedside. I read a part of it every night before bed.

Okay. So, yeah, so that really resonated with me. I mean, it goes back to a lot of that, like, yeah, just shut up and suffer until you're where you want to be. A lot of that kind of mentality is that that's old. Those are old ideas. mentality is that that's old. Those are old ideas. I also really like biographies from a personal development standpoint, just because I feel like that's a great way to get raw information that you can do what you want with, as opposed to somebody's pre-digested. And also in many ways, you know, you have someone that they want to sell you on an idea. And so they find supporting evidence to

sell you on the idea. Okay. Maybe the idea is good. Maybe it's not good. You can sell bad ideas very easily if you know what you're doing. Look at the communist manifesto for communism. Terrible idea. Easy to sell. But if you're reading biographies, I just like that you get to see people who in some ways did things that you would like to do yourself. And if it's a good biography, you get to walk in their shoes for, you know, whatever, 500 to a thousand pages. And it's, you can extract the lessons that I think are probably most relevant to you in where you're at right now. You know, biographies I really liked, I guess, range from more kind of pop biography, the, the Elon Musk biography by Ashley Vance, right? It was good. Uh, you know, again, everybody has read it. Everybody says it's good. It is. It's good. I also really liked Titan, which is, uh, about John Rockefeller and, uh, written by

Ron Chernow who from a, you know you like writing read Ron Chernow he is by far him and Will Durant are my two favorite writers just in terms of their ability to communicate with the English language I mean it's just it's at a it's it's a true art just I just enjoyed reading them I mean especially Will Durant because he was also just such a brilliant thinker. But it's truly pleasurable just to read their stuff. Okay. Which book would you recommend about Will Durant? The Lessons of History would probably be it or The Story of Philosophy.

Either one of those are a great place to start. And, yes, so biographies I'm big on. I'm reading the Da Vinci biography right now, Walter Isaacson's biography of Da Vinci. And it's good. Da Vinci is just unlike a lot of the people because I've been reading. Before that, I read about Ben Franklin. And so Da Vinci is just a very different character. So it's pretty interesting to see how he lived his life and what that ultimately turned into.

And so that's what I'm reading right now. So that's personal development, I guess, in a nutshell that, I mean, I could keep going, but that's a good start. And then, and then for business, I think it really kind of depends where you're at. Right. So I'd say like someone like you, I would recommend probably scaling up would be a book that I recommend because you have businesses, you have, you know, you don't need to read profit first, for example, which is a book I'd recommend to someone who's maybe just. Yeah, yeah. Everyone reads it.

Exactly. If you're starting out or the lean startup. I actually just read that. I just finished it. Profit First. That's funny. That's funny. Yeah, amazing.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it's just funny that everything you're like, oh, yeah, that one. Oh, yeah, I know that one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, clearly you read a lot of the same stuff, so you know what I'm talking about. So, yeah, scaling up would be something that would be more relevant to you, but not necessarily to somebody who's just starting out.

It'd be a bit overwhelming and not applicable. But profit first would be for someone starting out. The lean startup, I would definitely recommend for anybody starting out. I liked Tony Hsieh's. Also, if you're looking at starting a business, Delivering Happiness, I think was a good story. He had a good story and a good message. I like Danny Myers setting the table, particularly from the perspective of customer experience. You could say customer service, but really customer experience and the level that you need to be able to go to, to really delight people

and hug your haters has a similar message, silly name, but actually a pretty good book. And I think that's very important. I think that's going to be a differentiating factor Hug Your Haters has a similar message, silly name, but actually a pretty good book. And I think that's very important. I think that's going to be a differentiating factor in businesses more and more is that people are becoming more and more willing to pay a premium to be treated well and to be valued as a customer and actually have their questions answered and be taken care of. And I've seen that. That's a huge thing with Legion, the supplement business.

And it's contributed greatly to our growth because of, you know, it contributes to the customer lifetime value. It contributes to the average order size. It contributes to the, well, it lowers the churn, right? So it can, it contributes to the average number of orders. It's amazing how just doing little things and being like treating your customers, just the way that you would like to be treated if you were a customer and going a little bit above and beyond like makes people go from this is my first order to like i'm a customer for life now i'm never going away yeah absolutely and yeah so so i would say that and also on business um the 22 immutable laws of marketing i think if you want to get into business you have to become a good marketer or you have to have somebody who's a good marketer because you can have the best thing,

the best widget ever. But if you can't sell it properly, it's not going to go anywhere. Yeah. So that'd be a good place to start on marketing. Um, any fitness books you like? I mean, this is, this is an area where I think there aren't very many good fitness books. Completely agree with you, man. I 1000% agree. Okay, practical programming. You class me all the time. Starting strength, practical programming, the lean muscle. And then you have people who would argue that that's an absolutely atrocious book

as far as its ability to actually deliver good. Yes. I understand. I've had people recently tell me, like I've never read, but I have people that recently tell me, man, like don't ever go near that because it's not that I want to throw anybody to the bus, but apparently it's just not good.

So I don't know. I would be curious as to why they would be saying that because I like, I mean, it's very technical. It's not easy to understand. It's not, unfortunately, not written in a way that the layman could just like read it. Well, I was told it's because it's marketing. It's not written, uh, and with science behind it, it's written with, with, uh,

speculation and marketing. I mean, I would say from a marketing perspective, it's terrible. Oh, it's from a marketing perspective. It's terrible. Like it's ugly. Uh, it has a good name. It has a brand behind it, but the writing itself, I mean, first and foremost if you're going to communicate whether it's writing speaking you're first like you have to be able to be understood if people can't understand what it is that you're going to say don't say it you're actually inconveniencing people by wasting their fucking time you know what i mean so um so from a

marketing perspective that very much first and foremost means that's, that's my primary goal in my writing is to be clear. I'm not trying to show that I have a good vocabulary. I'm not trying to show that I know technical terms or that I'm a genius. I'm actually trying to explain things as simply as possible. So a person can just understand it and do something with it. So from that perspective, starting strength and practical programming fall very short because they require a lot of knowledge. But, you know, the lean muscle diet, Alan Aragon's book, Good Information, obviously, I think a little bit complex for the average person, again, when it comes down to doing it, but good information. And shit, man, I don't know. Do you have any books that I've found?

That's why I wrote Bigger Than You're Stronger. I was like, dude, where is just a simple good book that's going to give you some basics that get results? I tend to go down the route of like, tell me what you want to know and I'll tell you the book to read. Meaning like if you want to know about gut health, read this one. If you want to know about inflammation, read that one. If you want to know about a contra, read that one. There's not one that ties them all together. But that's health stuff. Health is another thing thing i think there are a lot of great health

books yeah well but what about fitness per se like fitness like getting in shape there's not a lot of good ones uh we'll we'll change that mike we'll work on that man we're working on it yeah dude i'm sure people should get out there and read be bigger leaner stronger because uh obviously you've got an idea of what you're doing. You got some great information and tons of people have read it and that sets volumes, man. Yeah, thank you. So dude, thank you so much for your time.

It's been a pleasure and we will definitely be linking all this information at the show notes at benpikulski.com slash podcast. Thank you very much, Mike. Awesome, yeah, thank you. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike

at muscle for life.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better i read everything myself and i'm always looking for constructive feedback so please do reach out all right that's it thanks again for listening to this episode and i hope to hear from you soon and lastly this episode is brought to you by me seriously Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my workout app stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple store with a four star average. And it helps you get more out of your training in several ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out your workout routines.

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