Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Luke Cut His Body Fat in Half and Got Strong in Just 6 Months

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

In this podcast, I interview Luke, who read my book Bigger Leaner Stronger and did 6 months of Legion’s VIP one-on-one coaching program to finally dial in his training and nutrition, improve his body composition, and get leaner and stronger than ever before. And the best part is he did it while spending less time in the gym, simplifying his fitness regimen, and learning to love the lifestyle. Now, he not only enjoys his training, but looks forward to it every day. Enjoyment is the secret to consistency, which will help Luke continue to make progress and maintain his physique for the rest of his life. Before finding my work, Luke had a “skinny fat” look and spent 2 or 3 hours in the gym per day. But through educating himself with my book and following the program of his coach, Nick, he was able to get down to 8% body fat, and get stronger than he’s ever been. In this interview, Luke and I chat about . . . - How he cut his training time in half while drastically increasing his strength - His cardio routine (even though he doesn’t like cardio) - The importance of learning to rest more between sets - How he adjusted his training to navigate lagging muscle groups and joint tightness and injuries - How he learned about nutrition and how he adjusted to eating appropriately sized portions and meals - How he learned to love the fitness lifestyle and look forward to his training - And more . . . So if you’re looking for a jolt of inspiration and like motivational stories, definitely listen to this episode. Timestamps: (0:00) - Save up to 40% during our Halloween Sale! www.buylegion.com (3:29) - Where were you on your fitness journey before you found my work? Where are you now? (7:13) - What was your body composition before and after my program? (13:51) - Did you find your new way of training more enjoyable? (22:41) - Which stretches did you find most helpful? (25:47) - What is a safety bar squat? (28:24) - Were there any obstacles in your training? (34:53) - What was the quality of the food you were eating before and during my program? (42:16) - How many pounds did you lose when you cut and how long did it take? (43:57) - What was your go-to cheat meal? (48:05)  - What are your fitness plans now? Mentioned on the show: Save up to 40% during our Halloween Sale! Go to buylegion.com and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% on any non-sale items or get double reward points! Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://www.muscleforlife.show/vip

Hey there and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another episode, which is a success story interview. VIP one-on-one coaching with my team, or simply read articles of mine or listened to podcasts of mine and used them to get into great shape. And today's episode is an interview with Luke, who first read my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and then signed up for six months of my VIP one-on-one coaching and transformed his body, transformed his fitness, transformed his relationship with food and exercise and his understanding of how to get and stay fit. And in six months, Luke cut his body fat in half. He went from athletic looking to pretty ripped. And he gained a significant amount of muscle and strength. In his own words, he went from a kind of a skinny fat look to a fit look, a super fit look, you might even say. And in this interview, you are going to hear Luke's story.

We're going to talk about what he was doing before he found me and my work, what was working, what was not working, the big changes that he made in his journey, working with his coach, what were the 20% that really gave him the 80% and some of the key takeaways and big aha moments for him and more. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me do more of it, please do check out my sports nutrition company, Legion. Because while you don't need supplements to build muscle, lose fat, or get healthy, the right ones can help. And that's why over 350,000 discerning fitness folk have chosen Legion. Well, there's that and our 100% natural products, our clinically effective ingredients and doses, and our no hassle money back guarantee. And if you check out Legion right now, you can save big on just

about everything in our store because our annual Halloween sale is underway. So head over to buylegion.com, B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com. And for the next few days, you can save up to 30% on just about everything in our store, including our protein powders, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, our fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, fish oil, and more. So skedaddle on over to buylegion.com now and save big before we run out of stock of at least something. It happens every year. We can never forecast these things exactly or before the sale ends and it's too late. Luke, here we are. We made it. We made it finally. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Yeah, man. Happy to be here. So these episodes, I like to just kind of keep it casual, open-ended conversation with somebody who has found some value in my work, whether it's books or podcasts or articles or coaching or some combination thereof. And I usually like to start these conversations with a little snapshot maybe of where you were at with your fitness before you found me and my work. And then now where you're at, you know, after finding me in my work and using whatever it is that helped the most. And what has that done for you in terms of your fitness? And, you know, that can be your body composition. It can be body composition plus the kind of downstream effects that happen when you get in better shape.

You know, pretty much every aspect of life gets better, you know. Yeah, man. Well, I'll give you background on me. I've always been a fitness guy. My dad's a big fitness junkie. I've always wanted to be like him. I've always had trouble putting on weight. I'm six foot five, always been tall and lanky, kind of basketball player body. So yeah, had a hard time putting on weight and, you know, I've always been into fitness and I always thought I was, in my mind at the time, I thought I was, you know, looking good and, you know, cream of the crop, but it still looked good, but I wasn't always where I wanted to be. Right.

So eventually my ex-girlfriend, she bought me Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, the book. And I'm just going to be honest. I do not like to read. That's not my thing at all. So it was funny. She bought me the book. I'm like, all right, it looks, I mean, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, those three things sound great. So's not my thing at all. So it was funny. She bought me the book. I'm like, all right, it looks, I mean, bigger, leaner, stronger. Those three things sound great. So

I'll give it a go. Ended up reading it, ended up loving it. I was coming home from work, lifting and then reading the book. And I got ex-girlfriends like, who are you? You know, who are you reading? Like, I've never known you to be this guy. Anyway, so I loved the book, really changed my mindset on fitness. And I said, you know, why don't I just try the program? Why don't I contact Legion and try out the program? And got in contact with them, signed up. And this is what I think you'll find funny.

A week before I started the program, my girlfriend, I was living in the middle of Virginia, knew no one but her. My girlfriend decided to just up and leave, which is fine, but she dumped me. I was a week before starting. Like one day to the next. Yeah, just boom. Just gone. I was like, all right, well, oh well. I'm about to do this program, and it's just giving me added motivation, so it's go time. For me, I had a little bit more added motivation ready to rock for your program, but I just thought that was fun. I thought you might appreciate it. Step one, get dumped. Yeah. Step one, get dumped, take the program.

So that happened. And I got linked up with one of your, Nick Smoot. I love that guy, by the way. I mean, total legend. Not only did he help me with fitness, we'd talk about life and I would tell him about, hey man, I just got dumped. Can I talk to you about it? He talked to me about it. It was a real help to me and I'll love that guy forever. But one thing that I did want to tell you, the biggest thing I got out of this Bigger Leaner Stronger program, and we can get into this later, but I'll just go ahead and say this one now, is that fitness doesn't have to be so complicated. I used to go to the gym for two, three hours, lifting weights, maybe starting off with a mile on the treadmill, then doing chest and back for two hours. I mean, just ridiculous stuff. And never got to where I wanted to be as far as physically. I would kind of had like a skinny,

fat type look. That was always me because I just do a ton of cardio and a lot of weights and didn't have proper nutrition. So taking your program and doing the three compound exercises, bench, squat, deadlift, progressive overload, and then obviously Donna nutrition, which we can talk about later, really, really enhanced my fitness knowledge and just my overall physique. And I still do it to this day, still apply all aspects of that book and your program to my daily fitness regimen today. Now, when people hear that you were training two to three hours per day previously, and then when you were following the program, it was probably about an hour a day, 45, maybe 50, 60 minutes, no more than 70 minutes.

What happened in terms of your strength and your body composition? So yeah, it was probably about 45 minutes to an hour. And I thought, you know, in my mind, I'm conditioned, oh man, I'm not doing enough, you know? That's how I thought, really. So it was kind of a tough transition for me there. I remember it myself.

I went through the exact same experience. I didn't believe it at first. I mean, theoretically, I understand why I'm training this way, but I just have a hard time accepting that this is going to be better. Like I'll do it for a few months and see, but I was in the exact same place. Okay, good. That makes me feel better because I really was, I mean, mentally I'm like, man, I, you man, I should be doing more. I should be in there for another hour and finally got out of that. But my overall strength increased in an insane amount. I've been stuck at, let's talk about shoulder press, for example. I've been stuck at dumbbell shoulder press at 60, 65 pounds.

And over maybe two months later, I was at, in a calorie deficit i was at you know 70 75 pounds for four to six reps you know i mean like yeah and that kind of a that's just an example that goes across the board it you know numbers went up significantly i don't know why but i thought maybe you know i'll do 15 to 20 reps of bench press and that'll get me where i want to go but really you know it's about progressive overload which you preach And people ask me all the time, I preach that all the time, lift heavy and try to increase your weight over time. You don't have to increase it by 45 pounds every week, but try to increase your weight over time. And my overall physique changed dramatically. So I started off in a cut. I was too lean for my liking, but I like it that now I know how to get back there if I ever want to. But as far as my overall physique, I was still lean. I was still building

quality muscle. And again, I loved it that the workouts were so simple, four to five exercises, doing basically about a couple of warm-up sets, three sets, three working sets each. It was awesome, man. I fell in love with it right away. And another thing I love that we haven't talked about is the cardio section that I don't like cardio. It's just not my thing. I know it's needed, especially when trying to lean up. But the 20-minute intervals on the bike, the high-intensity interval training on the bike, I did that three times a week and loved it. It was quick, it was effective, and it got in and out of there in 20 minutes and I'm done. The other cardio that I loved, which I never did before, was just a simple walk on the off days that I didn't do the HIIT.

And, you know, I never liked walking, never liked anything like that and ended up loving it. It also is just good for you mentally. Clears your head, get out there, you know, if you're working all day, if you're sitting at a desk all day, you're not lifting or you're already lifted in the morning, just get out there and take a 30-minute to an hour walk and just, you know, decompress a little bit, which, again, I still do all the time today. Yeah, that's a great cardio routine, I guess you could say, is use a couple of high-intensity, you don't have to be long, 20, 30 minutes, a couple of high intensity workouts per week,

just to burn a lot of calories in a short period of time. Especially if you really don't like grinding out, let's say a daily or let's say five to seven days per week. You don't like grinding out 30 to 45 minute bike rides, even if it's on an upright bike and you're like, all right, I'm going to make a phone call or I'm going to multitask while I sit here on this bike. I don't particularly like it. I do it because I end up doing something. It's either a phone call that I have to make anyway, or like a work meeting,

or I just sit and read on my phone. Things I'm going to do anyway, I'm like, I might as well just get on that bike and burn some calories while I'm doing it. But if that doesn't work for you or anybody listening, instead, just doing a few high-intensity workouts on a bike or on maybe a rowing machine or in a pool. The point is not banging your joints up by doing sprints on concrete. So do something no impact. A few of those per week. Burn a bunch of calories.

And otherwise, just walk. That's actually a great cardio routine, whether you're cutting, maintaining. You might even want to keep it up if you can lean bulk and don't have trouble gaining weight. I think it's smart for health reasons. It's smart for metabolic reasons. And depending on your appetite, it means that you can eat a bit more food. And then when you do finish your lean bulk and it's time to cut, you're already in the routine of doing cardio, which makes it a little bit easier rather than going from no cardio for like six months to getting back into it. So that's a great routine that combines calorie burning, just convenience. And you only have a few of those tough sessions per week and

otherwise you're walking. Yeah. And it was easy. I mean, to me, I got in the rhythm with it. I did Monday, Wednesday, Friday hit on the bike and Tuesday, Thursday walks. I mean, I do some walks on the weekend too, but it became just like a daily task that wasn't that hard for me. I ended up enjoying it. My point is I used to absolutely despise the fact that I have to do cardio that day. So it changed with me. One thing I wanted to bring up that helped me as well is from the book. Before I read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, I'd have my Apple Watch, and I'd track the calories on that all the time. So if I went to play basketball, for example, it thinks I'm burning 1,500 calories. I was like, dude, I got to do this all the time. So if I went to play basketball, for example, it thinks I'm burning 1,500 calories.

I was like, dude, I gotta do this all the time. So I think I'm burning 1,500 calories playing basketball in like 45 minutes. So having that thought in my mind, I'd go home and eat the house down, you know? And really didn't know that I actually was eating way more than I was actually burning, because I thought that I had done this big workout and that I earned it and that I actually was eating way more than I was actually burning because I thought that I had done this big workout and that I earned it and that I'm going to still be in a deficit

because I'd done all this cardio when really, in fact, I was gaining weight slowly over time, thinking that I'm about to be cut. That's really helped me a lot. I got rid of the watch. First of all, it kind of died on me, but I never bought a new one because I don't really use the watch only for fitness stuff, and I don't use it for fitness matters anymore. Yeah, the trick with those is turn them back 500 to 900 calories.

That's the diet hack. Turn back your calorie tracker like 700 calories. There you go. And then you'll be fine. Yeah, fixed it for you. Yeah, no, that was eye-opening for sure, man. Like I thought I was burning way more calories than I actually was.

How did your enjoyment of your weightlifting, how was that affected by going from, you said previously you're doing a lot of higher rep to lower rep, a lot more strength training. Did you find that new way of training more enjoyable, less enjoyable? More enjoyable, for sure. I mean, you know, like I said, I never really liked cardio. So 15 reps compared to four to six is a lot more like cardio. Especially if you're squatting, doing 15, doing sets of 15. Even if you're not

even getting that close to failure, if it's just getting hard after rep 10, it's turning into cardio. Exactly, exactly. So I loved it. And I started to see results very quickly because I had been doing something else that wasn't working for so long. And I started to do the progressive overload training that your program, applied and truly enjoyed it tremendously. Well, also I had a direction too. Once you have direction, you know something's working like your program did for me. I was excited to go to the gym every day, excited to lift. The app that you guys have is great. I love it. I do a set. If it's three minutes rest, click the timer.

I think you wrote about it in your book. You'd read a book. I'd go look at... I'd read articles on ESPN or something like that. Or maybe make a phone call for work or something. I really love the app. I miss the app, first of all. I don't have you programming anymore, but I miss that all the time. Maybe I have to pay you guys somehow to get some sort of app on my phone again ask nick i mean it's not

our app it's another company i believe it's trainerize and and we just use their their software so oh anyways well i i enjoyed that um no, as far as your question, absolutely changed my enjoyment level of lifting. every workout, but do you generally look forward to it? Are you generally having a good time or are you generally dreading your workouts? Are you generally having to push yourself through every set? Like there is no force that's pulling you ahead. You're just having to grind every workout every week. Even the grittiest among us can only do that for so long. No, that wasn't it at all. I mean, it was, I truly enjoyed it. And, you know, I want to ask your opinion on this. One thing that I also had to get used to was, you know, on chess day for, you know, you start off with bench press. Once you get to your working sets, you wait, you know, what Nick had me do was three minute rest

between each set. And to me, it's like, I, you know, I'm very ADHD. I was like, I gotta, I gotta get going. Like I gotta get my, you know, minute goes by, I gotta get my next set. So that was something that I had to, I had to really kind of calm myself down and actually wait the full three minutes. And that was probably the hardest thing I did with training, just getting used to waiting three minutes for those compound lifts that the three compound lifts that you have us do. Yeah. It just makes a big difference in performance. As you know, there's a big, I mean, one minute would never be enough. You'd be taking weight off of the bar. You'd be missing sets. You know, you try, you go for four or five, six, and you'd

get two and, and even two minutes though, there's a big difference between two minutes and three minutes. I'm sure you played around with this and just came to accept that on those bigger exercises, something around three minutes. And for me, like on squats and deadlifts, I don't usually-ish to failure, let's say within a couple reps of failure, that is very difficult. Talk about cardio. Like, you know, my heart is racing. It takes a good three and a half, four minutes just for my heart rate to come down to a normal for working out. I mean, it's not the same as when I'm lying down to go to bed, but it takes three and a half, four minutes just for me to feel ready for that next set physically. Our goal, again, is progressive overload. Our goal is to eventually add weight to the exercise over time. If we don't rest enough, and there are a number of studies have shown this, but we can

all experience it just ourselves. If you don't rest enough, your performance rapidly declines. Again, you can't even keep the weight on the bar. You have to take weight off just to meet your rep targets. And the problem with that, of course, is yes, you still are taking these subsequent sets close to failure, but by taking weight off the bar, it's producing less tension, less mechanical tension in the muscles. And that's really what we're going for. We're trying to just slowly increase the amount of tension that we are exposing our muscles to over time. And adding weight to the bar is a very effective way of doing that. You can also add reps to your training. And you have to, as you get stronger and as it gets very hard to add weight to exercises, you usually have to increase your reps than 20 hard sets for, let's say, your lower body per week. Heavy sets, let's say no more than 10 reps per set. You can even work in a variety of rep ranges, but no more than 10 reps per set close to failure in each set try to do more than 20 per week and

see how everything feels after after six weeks so that's the problem with just adding more sets and even adding reps you can run into that issue too where you can only do that so much and so you have to get a right combination of those factors and you know obviously i talk about that in the book and i talk about that even more in the follow-up to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which is beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and talk about it in that follow-up book, more in the context of a more experienced weightlifter. I haven't read that one yet, but that one's next on the list. It's going to be very relevant to where you're at now. Like, you know, people will ask me, hey, which program should I follow? Or people will say,

hey, I'm following Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. When should I switch to the Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger program? And my simple answer is, if you're still getting good results from Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, just keep following it. There's no reason to change anything. But there is a point where you're going to plateau, where you're just not going to be gaining strength, any meaningful amounts of strength anymore. And you know what you're going to plateau, where you're just not going to be gaining strength, any meaningful amounts of strength anymore. And you know what you're doing with your diet. You know that you are recovering well enough.

You're sleeping enough, blah, blah, blah. And at that point, it's time to start working harder. That's really what it comes down to. So beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, similar to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, same types of exercises, but it changes the rep scheme a little bit. So you are doing some higher rep up to sets of 10 on the big lifts, but then you're also doing some very heavy stuff. You're doing twos, you're doing threes, you're doing some as many reps as possible, some AMRAP sets with heavy weight. And it really just comes down to

working quite a bit harder for not very much progress. That's the reality. When you get up close to your genetic limit for muscle and strength, you have to work tremendously hard to progress just inchmeal, just inch you know, just inch by inch. It takes a lot of work. And that's not what most people want to hear. And that probably doesn't sell many books, but that is the truth. No, I mean, you inspired me. That's my next challenge for sure, because I feel like I am getting there, you know, to that point.

Now, fortunately, you can still enjoy your training. I mean, you don't have to go back. Yeah, you don't have to go back to doing two to three hour workouts per day and you can still enjoy the workouts. And I would say that so long as you are eating enough food and getting enough sleep and you're, you know, really recovering, you're going to enjoy the program. You're just going to notice like, yeah, this is quite a bit harder. Yeah. Oh, I totally believe it. And, um, another thing I wanted to tell you was the stretching, you know, just do a basic stretches that, you know, the

program had me do help tremendously. Like I would never stretch before I was an idiot, you know, and, you know, it helps prevent injuries. You know, it just makes you feel looser and more able to lift all around. Which stretches specifically for people listening did you find most helpful? So the one that I love, I've always had shoulder issues. And the one that I love the most was you get a band and you put it over your head. I don't know what exactly it is. You go behind your shoulders and back over to the front. I don't know if you can tell your listeners what that is, but... It's just simple shoulder rotation. Sometimes people do it with a PVC as well. Exactly. I do that almost every day, you know, just to stretch out my shoulders because, you know,

they get so tight here in the front by your labrum. That's the best one. The other one that I loved was, you know, it's kind of like a couch stretch for your quads and hip flexors. Just stretches the hell out of those. And those are simple stretches, but it would just, just doing the program and having it as a checklist to get it done, you know, helped me actually do it, not say, oh, I'll do it later, which I never would just get it done right away

after the workout. And I felt so much better, number one. And number two, I probably prevented injuries. You know, if I did your program and didn't stretch, there's no way I could do that for six months and not, you know not most likely injure something without stretching. of stress injuries, which are annoying and just get in the way of things. And those are the little nagging issues that, you know, you start with feeling a little twinge in a workout and you just keep going. It's not a big deal. And then the next time you do that workout or those exercises, you're feeling it a little bit more and whatever you keep going. And then eventually it's kind of just hurting all the time. And now you actually have to change your programming. Like now, you know, there are three exercises you just can't do because it hurts too much. And if you do this long enough,

that is going to happen from time to time. That doesn't mean anything is necessarily wrong with your programming or that you're making any mistakes per se. There are some things you can do to reduce the likelihood of the frequency though and stretching is one. Also just changing up the exercises that you do every so often, obviously not every week or necessarily every month, but every couple of months, doing different movements that train muscles

in slightly different ways, different angles, different ranges of motion, that helps as well, as opposed to, let's say, back squatting for eight months straight. That's not necessarily a bad idea, but that is going to increase the chances of maybe your knee starting to hurt a little bit or your back or your hips versus back squatting for a couple of months, front squatting for a couple of months, maybe safety bar squatting for a couple of months, coming back. Well, actually, I made the mistake of going too long without back squatting. This

was kind of interesting. So back squatting for a couple of months, front squat for a couple of months, get pretty strong on the front squat too. I'm not sure. I want to say one or M of like low 300s, which is not bad given my body weight. Safety bar squat for a bit and get pretty strong on that. What is safety bar squat? Anybody listening, if you search for safety bar, you can see a picture of it. But it is a barbell that has a shoulder harness, basically. Think of like almost, and it has handles, right? So almost like a roller coaster kind of seat, right?

So you're holding here, the weights are out here and feels something kind of in between a back squat and a front squat is how it feels. And that's how it performs. Like you're not going to be as strong on the safety bar as you are on the back squat, unless maybe you high bar back squat. I low bar though. I'd got up to, I want to say like 280, 275 for maybe sets of eight. And that was kind of all out. That was about, maybe I could have done nine or 10, but that, that would have been it. So I got decently strong on that, but it, and then come back to back squat and it had been like seven months or six months because I did a couple of months back, a couple of months of front, a couple of months of

safety. And I was so pathetically weak on my back squat. I was surprised. I was surprised. My one RM was down probably like 40 pounds just by not doing it for that long. So now, you know, I'll back squat for a bit, front squat for a bit, back squat for a bit, safety bar squat for a bit, back squat for a bit. But simply making changes like that can also just reduce the chances of things hurting. Okay. No, that's good to know. Yeah. I mean, we, we, we did that in the program. I actually recall that. So we did, you know, three months of back squatting and three months of front squatting. When I was doing each, I kind of missed the other, you know what I mean? You know, I kind of wanted to do some back squats along with it, but I do, I get, I get the point that, you know, it helps prevent injuries. Yeah. And it also gives your back a little bit of a

break too. Cause if you're also dead lifting, not that it's bad for your back, but I appreciate it sometimes just to have a little bit less back stress. And then that also then that opens up the opportunity maybe to do some T-bar rows or do some barbell rows or maybe some good warnings, add something else in your program that stresses the back that you actually might not want to do if you're deadlifting and like low bar back squatting every week. You know, I've run into that. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even

who might want to learn something new? Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Are there any obstacles are there any obstacles that you ran into in your training? Any kind of changes that you had to make along the way, even if it were just, you know, just things that didn't quite work for you and you enjoyed more, you know, in a different way? I mean, the only thing that we changed in your program was, again, I'm a tall

guy and I've always had, you know, lanky legs. I've always wanted to build them up and I've tried tremendously. And your program definitely helped with that. I asked Nick, I said, man, can we, can we add another, not another leg day, but I need to, you know, I need to do legs, a few more sets than a week. And, you know, he helped me, you know, mess with the program a little bit and he tweaked it and we added another day. Just, I mean, you know he helped me you know mess with the program a little bit and he tweaked it and we added another day just i mean you know just because i was doing you know five working sets and then maybe a couple leg things on um like the deadlift day a back day but just adding another day i think helped tremendously just you know adding more mass to my legs even in a deficit

i felt like my legs were getting stronger and more muscular. And that's something that, not an obstacle, but something that we changed and I thought helped a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a matter of volume. It's like wherever you're at, there is an upper limit of volume that you can recover from. There is a minimum amount of volume required to make any progress whatsoever. And then usually somewhere in the middle there is kind of a sweet spot for at least getting, let's say, 80% of the potential progress that's available to you without having to push to that upper limit of recoverable volume, which is very difficult, especially with lower body. What you often find is if you're going to push, if you're an experienced weightlifter, that's probably somewhere around 20 hard sets per week. You might even be able to push to 25 hard sets per week. And any more than that is just going to be too much. But if you do that, what you might find is you're pretty drained when you try to go deadlift. You're pretty drained in your heavier upper body

days. And you might find also that your sleep starts to get worse, which is a sign that you're under recovering. And then you might have to dial back volume elsewhere to just make the room for all of that lower body volume. So the program as it is in the book provides probably about 12 to maybe 15 hard sets for the lower body per week, which is, uh, is not a low volume approach, but there is a little bit of room to, to increase that if you want to maximize progress really in any major muscle group. And if it's appropriate, given your experience level, like if someone were brand new, I actually wouldn't even recommend it. I would say, I mean, look, there's quite a bit of research on this at this point. And what it shows is that

by doing that 12 ish up to maybe 15 ish hard sets for let's say your lower body per week, you're you're that that's, that's, that's plenty. If we add volume, you're going to burn more calories, you're going to be in the gym longer, but you're not going to gain any more muscle and strength to speak of versus a little bit less volume. So I would say let's find something better to do at that time. Yeah, no, I totally agree there. I was about to say, what we haven't talked about and I probably gained the most knowledge of is nutrition. Dude, I was eating, after I figured out what to do with Legion, with diet, and I'll get to that in a second, I thought I knew everything. I thought I was just killing it with nutrition. Dude, I had no clue what I was doing. I mean,

I was eating so much and just thinking that, okay, I'm eating all these carbs. I'm eating all this protein at once. It's really going to help me in my physique. Man, I was doing the opposite. I would eat chicken and rice. I'd have 400 grams of carbs, it seemed like, on my plate of rice. The chicken quantity was four times what it actually needed to be for one particular meal. Also, I was just chugging protein shakes all the time, just total meathead. I had no idea what he was doing. Your program definitely helped. When I did the cutting section of it, which is what we started off with, I was kind of a maniac. Again, I had a lot of

motivation. So I ate probably the same thing for the first three months besides dinner. Dinner, I switched up. But breakfast, there's two options that they gave me. I prepped that. I prepped lunch because I was out all day working. And then I'd get home and I'd eat some Greek yogurt and blueberries, go to the gym and have this protein smoothie that you guys recommended. And then dinner, I'd switch it up. But just knowing what I was eating and knowing what was actually going on in my body made me feel so much better, number one. But also, I just loved that I actually knew now that a whole packet of rice, a whole pan of whole, a whole pan of rice, isn't going to help you out at all. I'm just eating, eating in one session. And seriously, I did that all the time.

You know, I'd eat a whole rotisserie chicken, you know, in one sitting. I'm like, dude, your body can't even process that much protein. But I thought I was, I thought I was going to be so strong. I mean, even if it can, I actually, you might reach, you might reach the limit. I don't know how much he's in a whole. That's probably over 100 grams, I would think. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure it is. It has to be.

150 plus. Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot. I thought I was going to have monster biceps in an hour. So, no, the nutrition plan seriously helped me more than anything, really, just because now I know what I'm doing. I know the effects of a sugary drink, a sweet tea from Chick-fil-A, a Chick-fil-A meal, for example, that doesn't barely fill me up at all. Or you, being big guys, it has 1,000 plus calories in one meal that has no nutritional value. And then you're hungry two hours later.

Yeah, probably like 45 minutes, bro. Right away. So no, man, just knowing how to space it out and five to sometimes six smaller meals that are high in protein and high nutritional value. Man, I love it. It gets me pumped up thinking about it like that now i got one waiting for me in there you know so that that helped me probably in the best way and how did how did it look in terms of the nutritional quality of the foods that you're eating before and then after

were you eating fairly well before it was just huge amounts? Yeah. I mean, I had more cheap meals. And I knew then that those weren't really going to help me. But I wasn't as disciplined, number one. And yeah, I think what you said, you said it correctly. I just was eating huge quantities. I was eating chicken.

I was eating rice. I was eating broccoli. I would eat three times the amount that I would with the nutrition program that I had with Legion, you know, which was a normal size meal. I didn't know that, you know. Was it hard to make that adjustment? Were you really hungry in the beginning? I was. So the cutting program, I was starving, you know, like at first. But I started to see results too, you know. I mean, as I started to see results too you know i mean as i started to see results my abs started to become visible i always had kind of you know abs that were kind

of there but they really started to pop and become visible with this nutrition program and training but you know another thing that i would do was you know i with chicken i'd drown it in some sort of sauce you know like i didn't i had no idea how many carbs were in ketchup, for example. I love ketchup. I'm addicted to it still to this day. But one serving of ketchup has what? 27 grams of carbs or something like that? Something along those lines? I was blown away when I heard that. I always thought it had some sugar, some calories, but the amount of carbs that are in just random ketchup, I was shocked and annoyed. Yeah. Sauces, sauces in general, you gotta, you gotta look like, like even salad dressings. If you don't know, and you're not paying attention, you can easily put hundreds

and hundreds of calories of dressing on a, on a salad and think that, Hey, I just ate a salad. Like that. What is that, a couple hundred calories? Yeah, not at all, not at all. But that's the biggest difference, man, because I would just, you know, I'd eat chicken and rice, but I'd be adding a shit ton of ketchup on top of it or buffalo sauce or barbecue sauce that has sugar and carbs, et cetera, and just thought it was all, you know, no harm, no foul,

which it's not a huge deal, but it does make a difference in the long run, especially if you're trying to cut like I was. It's like drinking calories. Yeah, if you have a huge budget, so to speak, that you're working with, it's okay to drink. If you want to drink a few cups of milk because you just like milk, sure. But if you're cutting and you have, let's just say, 2,500 calories per day, do you want to be drinking three, 400 calories per day? Probably not. It just is going to make you hungrier. It just makes it harder. That was the hardest thing too was nighttime. I eat my dinner and I'm so used to eating two

dinners, really. I mean, even to this day, I want two dinners. And just having that one dinner and the mindset of, oh shit, it's like 8 p.m. Like, oh shit, I have nothing left to eat for the night? I'm freaking out. There's nothing left? You know what the best late night snack is? It's just going to bed. Go to bed and you'll wake up happier.

Be unconscious and then you'll be fine. No, man, that was the toughest part. Man, I would really love another full dinner. Like it would make me pumped. But I'm like, all right, well, do you want to reach your goals or not? And that was an obstacle that I had for sure that I had to overcome.

And did you guys do anything in particular to address that? Or was it just a matter of your body had to get used to? Because part of the problem is your body just gets used to eating on the schedule that you eat, and it gets used to getting the amount of the volume of food that you give it every day. And so if you cut that volume in half, for example, maybe even the calories don't get cut in half, but the volume might get cut down, let's say significantly, it takes some time to adjust. There are no hacks that get around that. You do have to go through that a little bit if you are going from eating large amounts of food, really filling your stomach to a lot less food that is

much less filling, even if the calories are totally fine. It's not a starvation diet, so to speak. Yeah. I mean, I think you're totally right. It was my body just had to get used to it. I mean, I seriously think I was eating 4,000 plus calories a day before and thinking I was probably in a deficit, which my maintenance is probably 2,700, I think it was. I can't remember.

I had no idea, I had no idea. But so I bumped it down from 4,000 to 27 and then we cut it down even more as the cut went on. So yeah, my body was like, what in the world is going on, dude? I'm so hungry right now. So I will tell you this, when we switched from cutting to bulking, I was pretty damn pumped. I was like, hell yeah, I'm ready to get some more calories in. For the whole time though, or did you eventually reach a point where you felt like you were force feeding yourself? Well, with the cut, I reached a point where my body was okay with it. I eventually got used to it.

But then with the lean bulk, I'm saying like, it's fun at first, but my experience has always been after, especially when you've had to bump your calories up a couple times and now you're pushing 35, 37, maybe even 4,000 calories a day just to continue gaining weight. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, I never got that high with, with your program, but I might be there right now. Cause I'm kind of, I'm bulking at the moment, but no, I've never, I've never had a

problem with putting food in my mouth, even if it's 4,000 plus. I will say this, when I got to the, you know, I'm probably 228 right now, 228 pounds. When I did your cut, I got down to maybe 203 pounds, which I haven't been that low in high school. I'm 28 years old now, so high school. I felt kind of, not weak, but with my lifts there at the end, I didn't feel as strong as I could have been if I had some more calories, right? Which makes sense, right? It makes sense. So I was pumped to start adding some calories back, get my energy

levels up, and then eventually get my strength numbers up as well, which happened. Yeah, you can't get around that either. After a few after a few months of, of under eating your workouts, uh, are not quite the same, but I'm guessing that you were able to preserve most of your strength and you probably were happy with what you saw in the mirror. Oh yeah. I was pumped with what I saw in the mirror. I, you know, I just, you know, as far as just moving forward and, and with my numbers, that was, you know, you need, I needed more calories to keep going that, you know, in that direction. But no, I loved how it looked. I mean, it was awesome.

It just, you know, it required, you know, quite a good bit of effort, but, you know, I got used to it. And like I said, I enjoyed the training and then I enjoyed the nutrition as well. Even, you know, with my meals, you know, you have a lot of nice, you know, tasty recipes. Dude, I was doing bland, bland stuff. I don't know how I did it. I was doing chicken. Bachelor frog eating.

Remember that meme? What was it? Foul bachelor frog? No. It was a meme. It had this little nasty-looking frog, and it was just nasty bachelor things that guys do. Oh, yeah. Well, that was what I was doing for sure. I'm still doing. I mean, I could eat chicken or rice, bland chicken rice for breakfast. But anyways, all in all,

I really enjoyed it, man. I enjoyed everything about it. How many pounds did you lose when you cut? About 20 pounds. And how long did it take? A couple of months. Not long. I think when I got down to my lowest, it was maybe three months And how long did it take? results. But I'd say about three months or two and a half, three months to lose 20 pounds and get to my, I'd say, peak cut. Anything below that would be too much. Any diet breaks or no, you just went straight? Just went straight. Just went straight. I was ready to rock, like I said. I had that motivation. I think that I've been saying this for a while, that if you can be fairly aggressive on a cut and get to your goal faster, I recommend it because you're going to enjoy it more.

You might be a little bit hungrier, but you're going to see results faster and you're going to see the end faster. And in my experience working with a lot of people, that is more motivating than making it take twice as long. You're still kind of hungry. You're a little bit less hungry, but the results come much slower and you have to be on your diet for a lot longer, which just makes it not only harder to stick to, but also just the more time you add, the more things can go wrong. Yeah, I totally agree. I wanted to get to a certain point. And sure, I had cheat meals, you know, along the way, but not too many of them because, you know, it was tough, but I had to remind myself, you know, you have a goal. What were your go-tos for your cheat meals? And did you at least control yourself or did you just no i would i mean i control myself

but i mean it would it wouldn't be like a huge quantity but it would be uh zaxby's wings and things plus a sweet tea you know like that that's my i love that to this day that was that was my cheat meal but you know i have to remind myself you know when you know when i was doing the cuts like hey you know you have a goal and you want a temporary pleasure that you're probably going to be annoyed with yourself afterwards when you eat this thing. I mean, what's it going to do for you? Give you 20 minutes of pleasure,

and then you're back to, oh, now I have to go to the gym and work this off. You don't have to do that, but sometimes that's how my mind works. But no, that was it. I mean, a couple of things like that. What were the calories approximately for that meal? Oh, man.

I'm thinking about it. I'm pretty sure it was like 1,300. Like 1,300 to 1,500 calories. You can make that work though. Especially if, okay, on your day when you're going to have your cheat meal, I tell people this. If you can end that day around your maintenance calories, if you're a little bit above it, that's okay. But if you can just prevent the blowout, if you can prevent the 1,500 calories over maintenance type of day.

And so maybe that means, let's say your cheat meal is your dinner. So maybe that means you eat a bit less than you normally do earlier in the day, just to create a little bit of a buffer. And okay, you're going for, in your case, you're going for ending your day at 2,700, 2,800, 2,900 calories. All right, good. You're going to have this 1,300 calorie meal. Maybe that's your dinner, your lunch, whatever. And then if you can just figure out how to kind of trim the rest of your meals to make that work, then I think that that's a very viable strategy. You do that once per week, twice per week, if you really want to or feel the need to. Or maybe sometimes you do it every other week. Maybe the day comes where you normally would do it and you're like,

I don't even care to eat it, so I'm just going to keep going. Yeah. Well, we actually had to do that, but it's embarrassing to say, but I told Nick, and again, I was a new Baxter at the time. I said, Nick, I'm dedicated to this program, but Friday night I'm probably going to go out and try to meet people and have a couple drinks.

Do you have any, you know, like tequila soda was my drink, that I drank, try to be healthy. And I said, do you have any advice? Which is exactly what you said, you know, earlier in the day, try to eat high protein meals. We do that already, but with maybe some less carbs and then try to tailor it around, you know, three tequila sodas that night or something like that, right?

So that's something I tell people all the time. So that was something you were doing consistently while you were cutting. Yeah. I mean, you know, unfortunately, yes. I mean, it's not even an, I mean, there are many, many people who hear that and are motivated by that where they go, oh, I can, I don't have to completely give up alcohol. I don't have to completely give up Zaxby's. I don't have to. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, you don't, I didn't, you know, you don't have to completely give up alcohol. I don't have to completely give up Zaxby's. I don't have to. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, you don't have to shut yourself off completely from everything else. That was big because I didn't know if, you know, I was kind of embarrassed to ask him,

like, hey, you know, what about cheat meals? What about alcohol? And he's like, yeah, we can work around it as long as you're willing to stick with the program, right? Which I was, and he was willing to work with me. Yeah, man, it was definitely doable. And I still hit my goal, still got as lean as I possibly could, even with doing those two vices of mine, cheat meals and alcohol. And then did you learn that you're the only one who cares that much about your body fat percentage, that most people just don't care?

Girls do not care. They don't care at all. First of all, I never would. Hey, you want to guess what my body fat is? That's a meme right there. You think all the girls are going to come up to you after getting big and lean, but it's really all the dudes. All the dudes are giving me the compliments. Yeah, it's only the guys are noticing your ab veins. Hey, man, looking good, bro. That's all you get. Oh man. It's hilarious. So what are your plans now? Are you lean bulking right now? You mentioned. Yeah, I'm lean bulking right now. Um, and I love it. My numbers aren't like we kind of talked about earlier. I'm kind of starting to hit that plateau, but my, some of my numbers as far as strength numbers aren't going up as much, but I

generally enjoy my training. I work out in the mornings now and I wake up and I'm pumped, ready to go. What am I doing? Today I did squats, leg press, lunges. It's nothing exciting, but I'm truly pumped to go and make progress each day. That's something that comes with doing a program like yours and just having a fitness lifestyle and mindset. I mean, it's really... I used to like going to the gym. Now, I absolutely love it. It's a big, big part of my life. That's great. Yeah, it's awesome because that's what it takes to really make it a lifestyle. Really. I mean, that's just what it takes. Like I mentioned, if you don't like it, you can force yourself to do things you don't like, but why do that if you don't have to? If you can find something, it doesn't have to necessarily be

even my program or exactly. I try to teach people the underlying theory and the fundamentals so they can change the programming. They can change the workouts based on what they know now, the programming. They can change the workouts based on what they know now, again, to make it tailored specifically to their goals and their preferences and their lifestyle. So that's awesome. Yeah, man. Yeah. Again, really, really loved it. I mean, I may, like I said, I'm going to, my next challenge is the next book. What is it? Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. That's my next challenge. I'll let you know after, after I read that one. Yeah. Let me know. Let me know on the program.

I think you're going to like it because again, it's just, it's taking what you're doing and it makes it a bit more difficult, but there's also a bit more variety now because you know, you're doing some of the, like I mentioned, you're doing some of the higher rep stuff, which is growing.

I don't like it to be honest. I do think there's value in doing it. Like I don't enjoy, I don't know many people who enjoy doing sets of 10 on the squat and deadlift, but I wouldn't either. There's a good reason to do it. What is fun though, is when you get into the heavier stuff, I think it's fun to do sets of three, to do sets of two. I prefer that now. You, you, you, you've made me that way now. Thank you for that. No more 10-rep sets. Yeah, I understand. Well, is there anything else that we haven't covered that you think,

anything that I haven't asked you about that would be worth covering before we wrap up? No, man. I mean, again, I just wanted to say the best thing, my best advice for other people is that fitness does not have to be that damn complicated. It's very simple once you get down to the basics of it. It comes out with nutrition and it comes down to just progressive overload, a couple sets, a couple working sets for each main exercise. And that's it, man. It's not hard at all. I mean, like I said, I was going overboard and now I don't at all. Now I enjoy it 10 times as much as I did before.

That's awesome. Well, thanks again for taking the time to do this, Luke. And keep up the good work and let me know. Let me know on Beyond. I'd love to hear your feedback. Appreciate you having me, man. I appreciate you. Well, I hope you liked this episode.

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