Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Often You Should Change Exercises, Sitting and Your Health, and More...

Episode Date: July 3, 2015

In this podcast I take a few questions from listeners regarding changing up your workout routine (1:09), dealing with tight muscles due to too much sitting (30:56), and tips for starting a fitness business (42:45). Want to submit questions for me to answer? Go here: http://www.muscleforlife.com/ask-mike-anything/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: The Definitive Guide to Muscle Hypertrophy (Muscle Growth): http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-muscle-hypertrophy-muscle-growth/ How Much Muscle Can You Build Naturally? http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-muscle-can-you-build-naturally/ The Ultimate Chest Workout: Chest Exercises for Awesome Pecs: http://www.muscleforlife.com/chest-workout-best-chest-exercises/ The Definitive Guide to Mobility Exercises: Improve Flexibility, Function, and Strength: http://www.muscleforlife.com/mobility-exercises/ How to Improve Flexibility and Mobility for Squatting: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-improve-flexibility-and-mobility-for-squatting/ 5 Foam Roller Exercises That Improve Performance: http://www.muscleforlife.com/foam-roller-exercises/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

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and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks, and you'll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Hey, hey, it's Mike.

Thanks for checking out another episode of the podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be taking three questions from my Google moderator, from listeners and readers, which Google's killing moderator soon, so I'm going to have to find another solution for that. But the first question is going to be about changing exercises. How often should you be changing exercises? What types of changes should you be making and why and so forth? And the next question is going to be about sitting at a desk. For people that sit at desks all day and the problems that you kind of run into, which I've run into, hip flexor problems and lower back issues. What you can do about that. Last but not least is going to be a question regarding what advice I would have to starting up a fitness business, which I've kind of addressed here and there, but I'm getting asked it more and more these days,

so I figured I would just kind of talk about it again. All right, so let's get started. The first question here comes from Chris from the UK. He says, Hi, Mike. How important is it to change up exercises? Chest, for example. I stick to incline dumbbell press, flat dumbbell press, and dips, and just rotate. As these cover all areas of the chest, is there any real it to change up exercises? Chest, for example, I stick to incline dumbbell press, flat dumbbell press and dips and just rotate as these cover all areas of the chest. Is there any real benefit to changing up exercises? Cheers, cheers, cheers, cheers.

So that's a good question. So, you know, the years and years ago when I didn't really know what I was doing, you know, I thought the idea of muscle confusion, I thought that was an important aspect of training and that you had to be constantly changing up your, your exercises because your body would get used to it. Your muscles would get used to the exercises that you're doing. And you know, that it would then, if you did the same exercises every week, they just get less and less effective in terms of, uh, you know, building muscle and building strength. And that's bullshit. Basically. Uh, there's no scientific evidence of that. And there's a lot of evidence to the contrary,

basically that shows that it's not, yes, it's true that if you went and did the exact same thing every week in terms of exercises and then reps and weight, if you did all that the same every week, then you don't even need to look to research to know that your body's going to only get so far with that. Uh, you know, the whole point, like the reason why your body gets bigger and stronger is to adapt to the, you know, stimuli of the training that you're doing. So in, in terms of what those stimuli are, you have the amount of weight that you're, you're moving and, uh, the amount of total reps that you're doing. And you can look at that, you know, in terms of, uh, let's

say a one week every seven days. Um, so if you, uh, are, you know, pushing your body, pushing your body, trying to progressively overload your muscles by adding weight to the bar over time, then, I mean, again, this is kind of just logic would dictate, right? That your body would have to continue adapting to deal with the demands that you're placing on it. And, uh, that that's what it boils down to. That's why you're, that's why your muscles get bigger and that's why your muscles get stronger. Uh, of course you have to eat right and you have to make sure you're getting enough rest and do some other things correctly. And some supplements can help like creatine can help with that. Um, but you know, underlying all

of it is, is a, is a training program that has you, um, progressively overloading your muscles. That is more important than changing exercises. And in fact, I would say that changing exercises frequently actually is, uh, is detrimental in the long run because one, there aren't that many exercises that are actually all that great. When you're looking at different muscle groups, there really are only a handful of exercises that are optimal basically. And if, you know, why would you want to waste time doing exercises that are going to give you less than, you know, different exercises you do. Like, for instance, if you're training your back, then you have at the top in terms of effectiveness are exercises like the deadlift, barbell row, dumbbell row, pull-ups, weighted pull-ups, chin-ups, weighted chin-ups.

Those are very effective exercises. ups, chin ups, weighted chin ups. Um, those are very effective exercises, uh, and ineffective exercise comparatively speaking would be something like, you know, a hyper extension, or I would say the lat pull down is a, is a good exercise, but I prefer weighted pull ups more. I do recommend the lat pull down in, in my different workout programs, like bigger than you're stronger, thinner than you're stronger. I don't think it's a bad exercise. Um, and I think it's worth working in, but, uh, it's, I would say it's, it's under the deadlift, the barbell row, the dumbbell row and the weighted pull up. Um, but it is, it is, it is still a decent exercise, but like a hyper extension, unless you're having lower back problems or really need to strengthen your lower back more, not worth doing. Um, there are a lot of, a lot of machines like different rowing machines that,

uh, you're just better off using for like, instead of doing a seated, uh, rowing machine, uh, you're better off just doing a barbell row or a dumbbell row. Um, and you know, really actually kind of, I guess, looking at it back is not the best example because there aren't that many variations of pulling exercises that people do really. Um, so we could look at something like chest and say that your heavy or your, uh, barbell and dumbbell presses are definitely, those are the most effective exercises. Uh, but then you have a lot of variations of exercise that people do, uh, like, you know, let's say cable flies. Yeah, you can get a pump with cable flies, but you can't go heavy because you can hurt your shoulders.

And the movement is just not very effective because it is hard to progressively overload your muscles when all you can do is a bunch of high rep stuff, which is more about metabolic stress in terms of on a cellular level, which is a, is a one muscle growth pathway, you could say, but it's not as powerful and it's not as important as progressive overload. So when you look at like that, you need to be adding weight over time and you need to be as a natural weightlifter, you need to be able to emphasize heavy lifts, uh, to lifts to continue changing and improving your body composition. Then that limits the exercise you can do right there. So you're now looking at the bigger compound movements, squat, deadlift, military press, bench press, and dumbbell

variations of those kinds of exercises. There are some machines that would work for that, like the lat pull down, um, like the T-bar row machine, although it's usually just a plate loaded. So it's not, it's more, uh, it's not a machine in the traditional sense where you have a stack, a stack weight. It's more just a setup that allows you to row weight, you know, with your body kind of inclined. Um, and, but as opposed to something like peck deck, which is a real unnatural type of like, you know, you don't, it's just a, it's just a fixed range of motion and, uh, you're not moving weight against gravity in a normal, you know, type of type of way. Um, so when, when you do have to be lifting heavy weights and you

have to be able to push yourself, you know, you're now going to be, uh, you're going to be prioritizing the, the heavier lifts. And if you're going to be doing it, which is the compound lifts. And then, uh, you know, if you're going to be doing some higher rep stuff, then it's going to be, which you could do on machines. It's going to be later in your workout, but that's really the, the, the less important part of your workout is that higher rep stuff that you could do on machines. It's going to be later in your workout, but that's really the, the, the less important part of your workout is that higher rep stuff that you could do on machines. Like sometimes guys, they just like getting the pump from, from a fly, whether it's a dumbbell fly or a cable fly or a pec deck type of fly motion. And they'll ask me, can I do that?

And then, yeah, sure. So just, you know, get your, get your heavy lifting in, do that first. that. And then, yeah, sure. So just, you know, get your, get your heavy lifting in, do that first. And then if you want to go do some, you know, pump type of stuff, sure. Why not? Um, yeah. All right. It's better. Um, so in terms of changing exercises then, uh, so that's one, one downside is if you're changing exercises too frequently, you're going to end up doing exercises, spending time doing exercises that just aren't that good. And another downside is it's very hard to track your progress if you're constantly changing exercises. And again, we go back to progressive overload. To know if you're achieving that, you need to be tracking your numbers over time.

You need to know that last month you were benching 225 for five and this month you're benching 245 for five or whatever, you know, there's progress there. If you're changing and some people, they change their exercises every week. And I used to be one of those people. I used to think that that was, you know, beneficial. So, you know, you might go, who knows how long before you come back to doing that exercise that, you know, it might be a month since you did that exercise last time. And you've cycled through all these other exercises in the meantime, and you've cycled through rep ranges. And maybe last time you were doing 10 to 12 reps on that. Now you're trying to do 10 to 15 reps, or now you're trying to do heavier. And it just becomes very disorganized in terms of tracking. And that is not optimal. What really, what you don't want to be doing,

like every time you go to the gym, you want to know, you want to have a clear goal in mind in terms of your weight that you want to be moving and how many reps you want, you want to get with that weight. And you need to base that on your previous workout, meaning that your goal in every workout is just to do a little bit better than the previous week. And by a little bit better, that could even be one rep more. So if you start, let's say you're going to be doing the same workout in terms of exercises, but last week, uh, you did, you, you benched 225 for four this week. You want to bench 220 in your first set. Let's say you just did four, four, four, you have three sets of bench.

And then you moved on to other stuff and you got four, four, four. So this week, your goal, when you, when you get on, when you, after you warm up and you get ready to do that first heavy set is you want to get at least five reps. If you can get six, great. Uh, but even if you, let's say you get five, you say you go five, four, four, and then the rest of your workout is exactly the same as the last week's in terms of reps. You try, but you just can't, you know, you can't beat last week's numbers, but you did beat that first set. That's actually, personally, I'm happy with that. That was a successful workout. Is it nicer to be able to, you know, beat that by a couple reps and go up in weight? Yeah, sure, but it doesn't happen all the time. And then sometimes you just can't beat, you know, you just, you're stuck at, you repeat the last week's workout. And that's not

a bad workout. It doesn't mean anything's wrong, but if you are stuck like, you repeat the last week's workout and that's not a bad workout. It doesn't mean anything's wrong, but if you are stuck like that over a longer period of time, then it means you need to change something. Some, you know, there's, there's a reason why you're not progressing and when you should be able to progress. And of course there is a natural limit to the amount of strength that you can build, but it takes many, many years of weightlifting to get there. Uh, that, you know, you're not going to hit your genetic peak in terms of strength, your genetic potential in terms of strength in like three, four years of weightlifting. I haven't seen any good research on this. But anecdotally speaking, from just people I know and a lot of people I've spoken with, it seems like maybe after 15 years you might be getting up there or 10 years you might be really getting to, um, I would say probably, yeah, I'd say 10 years. You you've, you've probably

if 10 years of like good work and knowing what you're doing, you're definitely going to be at the genetic potential or really at the top of your genetic potential in terms of your physique, how much muscle you've built. Um, but you can, it seems like strength can continue a bit beyond that. Like you might not be able to gain much more size, but the muscle that you do have can learn in a sense to, uh, contract harder, which translates to more strength, which is why muscles can get stronger without getting bigger. Um, you know, in the world of Olympic lifting, you see that because they have to meet weight. So they're trying to maximize strength that, you know, minute while minimizing while minimizing weight, body weight, at least in the lower weight classes.

And, you know, so depending on how you train and how you eat and what you're doing, you can get stronger without getting bigger. But that only gets you so far. There is a point where, like, your body only has so much muscle fiber and it can only work so efficiently. has so much muscle fiber and it can only work so efficiently. And then if you continue to put, you know, continue putting demands on it and telling it, it needs more, it needs more strength. It needs to be able to handle these heavier weights. Then it just has to add muscle fiber. And that's just that. Um, so back to this point of progressive overload. So you need to make sure that, you know, you're trying to beat those, those workouts. And then if you only beat it by one rep, maybe the next week you beat it by another rep and now you can go up and wait. Cool. Now you're at a new weight. And

then you push that, push that, push that. And over time you're getting stronger. And you, if you're on a graph, uh, if you were just to see your one rep max, just calculated, you want to see that going up. So if you're changing exercise too often, you just can't do it. It doesn't, it becomes infeasible because you don't know where, like, you just don't know if you're getting better when you're doing new exercises. And if you're changing the order of the exercises, that matters a lot as well. If you started out your workout with flat bench, that was your first set. And then the next week you do it as your ninth set. Of course, you're not going to be able to do what you did the week before. But, you know, is something wrong?

You don't know. Do you need to – and by something wrong, I mean do you need to address your diet? Are you not eating enough food? Do you need to address your rest? Are you not sleeping enough? Do you need to address your recovery? Are you trying to do too much in, you know, too into, are you trying to jam too much training into get a look at it every week?

Cause you only can do so much, you know, frequency is not as important as the total number of reps that you're doing every week and how much weight you are using on the, you know, for, for each rep. Uh, you know, you could, you could do it all in one workout or you could do it all in three workouts and that, that's not what matters so much. It's just, you can only do so much and you want to be in that optimal range where you're maximizing, uh, the body's ability to recover. You're doing enough to really drive muscle growth and strength, but not so much that your body falls

behind in recovery. So that's kind of the background information on, on, on the question of how often to change. And then to just get to a simple answer. What I like to do is, so there are certain exercises I'd never, I never leave out, uh, for each workout. So, uh, for, I'll just run down my, run down my, my week. So for my, for my chest training, I'm always going to be doing either heavy barbell or heavy dumbbell pressing and usually both in the same workout. So my, in my first exercise as a general rule, my first exercises in all my workouts are, are always heavy compound lifts. Always. I'm never starting my chest with, you know, some sort of silly fly movement or a bunch of lightweight crap or pushups or anything like that. You know, pre-exhaustion does not work. There was even a

study that I saw recently on that and, but I've experienced it myself cause I used to do all this fancy stuff. I used to think, you know, you pre-exhaust the muscle and then you really hit it. And then no, it does, it doesn't, it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't do anything special. What you want to do is you want to warm up and make sure that you don't want to, your warmup sets should not be fatiguing. They should not be hard. You just want to get muscle You just want to get blood flowing in the muscles. You want to warm up the joints. You want to get everything ready to go for your heavy lifting

without using as little energy and as little glycogen in the muscle. You want to be prepared to really hit your heavy sets, and then you just go right into your heavy lifts. So that's what I do. The beginning of every workout is going to be something heavy and compound, like barbell pressing, uh, dumbbell pressing for my shoulders. It's going to be barbell, barbell pressing, you know, overhead pressing. Uh, I used to do heavy shoulder dumbbell, shoulder pressing. Uh, but for some reason, my right shoulder is there's just an instability in there. And it really comes out, uh, when I dumbbell press and I, I work with a massage therapist every week and it's something we've

actually been addressing. Cause I think it's just been there for a while and I just didn't really notice it until I started getting heavier and heavier on my incline pressing. Like I really started to notice it when I was getting to about two 75 on my incline bench or two 65 or something like that. And it was just like tightness in my neck and my shoulder would get tight. And, um, I've had that for a long time actually. Uh, and then it's just not because I felt it before in the past, but I didn't really start to feel it until I really started going heavier and heavier. So, um, I'm not doing any dumbbell pressing right now. Not that I dislike dumbbell pressing. It's just, it's uncomfortable. And I feel like as I'm pressing up, I just feel like my shoulder isn't stable and I've even had it almost feel like it's going to kind of come out

of its fucking socket or something. I don't know. It doesn't feel good. So I'm just like, yeah, I'm not going to mess with that. So barbell pressing feels totally fine. All right, cool. I'm sticking with that. Um, and then, and then for my, for my back training, it's, I'm always starting with heavy deadlifts unless I'm taking a break on deadlifts, which I do every once in a while, depending on like, uh, really the only reason why I take a break these days is just if like something's bothering me. I've, I've been warming up with like two 25 before and just being sloppy with my form, just being like, yeah, whatever.

And then had it something like kind of tweak in my back. And I'm like, and the thing is with little niggling things like that, like I don't push through pain. Now muscle soreness is fine. You can train if your muscles are sore, that doesn't matter. But if there's pain, you don't want to try to push through pain. And that's been something that I've always kind of kept in where if something is hurting, then I don't do it. I find an alternative exercise and I see what's going on. Maybe I need to stretch. Maybe it's mobility stuff. Maybe it just needs to, you know, like in the case of this deadlift, it wasn't an injury. It's just there was some pain and it was because I was just being sloppy. You know what I mean? I probably just moved, you know, it's enough weight where something can, can get mad, but it feels like nothing. So I was just like kind of sloppy, just doing my warmups, talking, you know, looking over, talking to the guy with me being

like, yeah, whatever. And then being like, uh, it didn't feel good. And, uh, yeah, it wasn't excruciating and maybe I could have just loaded up weight and went for it, but it was enough where I just was like, I don't think it's a good idea. And so by doing that kind of stuff, same thing with my shoulder. When my shoulder and neck start bothering with my heavy incline pressing, yeah, I could have kept doing it, but it was becoming more of an issue. It wasn't getting better. It was getting a little bit worse. So I stopped incline pressing for several weeks and, you know, had the massage therapist to work with really like it's uncomfortable. There's, there's, there are muscles in the neck called the scalenes that come down, digging in there did not feel good. Um, but it helped a lot. So,

so if it's the only reason why I would take a break from deadlifts or squats or anything really is if something's bothering me. Otherwise, I'm always starting my back training with heavy deadlifting. And then I'll go into then like heavy rowing. Really, the majority of my training is just heavy compound lifting. But there are some isolation movements. Like, for instance, dumbbell rows are a bit of a more isolation, I would say than a barbell row or a deadlift. Of course, on shoulders, side raises, rear raises are, I think they're, they're important

exercises for developing, uh, rounded shoulders, you know, that have that kind of cap. Obviously as a natural weightlifter, your shoulders are only going to go so far. You're never going to have the huge shoulders as big as your head. Uh, that's just, that comes from drug use. But you can have good shoulders that are proportionate to your arms and that, you know, give you that nice wide upper look. So then you can have that taper. So side raises are good for that. It's an isolation move. On chest, not a big fan of isolation moves, to be honest. I know some people like flies. Probably about the most isolation I get on my chest is dips,

which are not really an isolation move, so it's not even a good example. But I like weighted dips. I like even unweighted dips. If it's at the end of my workout and I'm going to do a couple higher rep sets, I think dips are great for that. Anyways, so that's my back training. And on my legs, I'm going to always be starting with some sort of squat, uh, you know, either a front squat

or a back squat. These days I've been doing a bit more front squatting because, uh, I neglected my front squatting for a while where I would like do it at the end of my workout or I just wouldn't do it for a bit. And, um, so like I started my front, really kind of being consistent with my front squats, I've always been consistent, or at least over the last four or five years, been consistent on my back squat. So my back squat, though, was getting up to the 360s or so and feeling good and deep, obviously. And that's not that impressive, I know, but my height works a little bit against me, to be honest. I have long legs. I'm 6'2", and I have long legs. You know, I have long arms too,

like abnormally long monkey arms. And that works against me on bench press, which has always been a weakness. Like the, the heavy, the heaviest, the strongest I've ever been on flat bench is like two 95 for two or three, which again, it's not that impressive. I mean, three 15 for one. Eh, that's, I mean, it's not bad, but that's not impressive. Um, and an overhead press, uh, like military overhead press two 25 for maybe two seated. And again, that's strong, but not that impressive. My long arms are like, I have to move the weight of freaking mile. And same thing with my squats. I have to, you know, for me to squat low as I like goes on forever. The reps never end. Whereas obviously shorter legs, shorter range of motion.

Anyways, so I was squatting maybe 360s on my back squat. And then, but I was like 225, maybe even a little bit less actually with on my front squat because I just didn't do it enough. And so now I've been working on my front squat and I had it last week. enough. And so now I've been, I've been working on my front squat and I had it last week. I mean, I'll be, I'll be training legs tomorrow and I'm going to go for two 55 cause last week I was at two 45 and it felt pretty good. Um, so whatever it's coming up, I would like, I mean, given my back squat, I really should be front squatting probably two 95 or so three 15 and I'll get there. Um, so anyways, I'm starting my leg workout with that heavy, heavy squat of some kind. And then, um, usually I'm moving on to whichever squat I haven't done. So if I'm starting my leg workout with that heavy squat of some kind. And then usually I'm moving on to whichever squat I haven't done.

So if I'm starting with a back squat, I'm going to move into a front squat. If I'm starting with a front squat, then I'm going to move into a back squat. And then from there, I might do some leg press or some hack squat or some lunges. It depends on what I'm doing. But that's the first thing with changing exercises is I recommend that you have your core exercises that you never change. And those are the exercises also that you, that you measure your progress most against what I want to see in myself and with everybody that I write with and everybody I hear from is weight going up, like getting stronger over time on those big lifts, those big first lifts, when you're having most of you have all your energy and your focus is there. And you know what I mean? If, as long as you're getting stronger on those big lifts, it, it, it doesn't matter

what you do after that. Like when you're bulking, you'll find when you're in a calorie surplus and you're a good groove, you'll probably find that you'll be able to, let's say you're going to this, the workout that you do, you're going to, you make progress where you go up, uh, you know, on your first exercise, you go up in reps on your second exercise, you go up in reps and on your third, maybe I've had the third happen sometimes, but usually I haven't bulked in a while. Cause I don't really want to get fatter. So I just kind of stay at a maintenance level. But, uh, when the last time I was bulking,

I remember that I would get first night first and second exercise gains, like gain reps on both of them. And then usually the third exercise would be the same. Um, because I've just, I'm kind of, you know, I've, I've expended a lot of energy by the time that third exercise comes around. So it's actually pretty good that, you know, I can go up on the first and second and still not lose anything on the third. And, um, so that's really what you want to be seeing. And that's why you need to keep those core exercises in and really don't change them out. Like there's really no reason to change out deadlift. There's no alternative. There is no, there's nothing you can replace the deadlift with. You either do it or you don't do it. Um, you know, you could, you could start,

if you wanted to go heavy on your barbell rows, you could start with barbell rows, um, and do that for four weeks or so just to see where you're at. But you, I wouldn't recommend that. Like I would recommend that you do a lot more deadlifting for your first exercise than barbell rows for your first exercise. Um, unless you're doing some sort of specialized program, of course. So your core exercises don't change much. And then in terms of changing the other exercises, so for me, those first and second, those first exercises rarely change for me, but the second and third, and if I do a fourth exercise, those can change, but I usually change them maybe once every eight to 10 weeks. And again, the reason is because I want to be seeing my progress with a certain setup.

And like in terms of a workout routine, like my back workout, or I'm gonna be doing deadlifting, barbell rows, dumbbell rows, and then pull-ups. I want to track my progress on those over the course of a couple months and see, you know, where am I starting? Where am I ending? And then, well, I mean, along the way, of course, let's say at the four week mark, if I haven't progressed on anything, then I need to look at my diet. Mainly would be the issue again, diet, you know, recovery, rest and see what, what needs to change. Um, and so really, I mean that those are my kind of

general recommendations. And I talk about all this in my books, of course, bigger than you're stronger for men, thinner than you're stronger for women, and also just lay out, you know, in there are like these free bonus reports that you get with the book that lays out a year's worth of workouts for each. And they're broken up into eight week phases. So you do like phase one, it's laid out for you. Phase two laid out for you. And that there are changes built into that, that walk you through all the exercises that are worth doing, basically. And that is a, there is something to be said for that. Different exercises do train muscle groups in different ways. It's not that the deadlift is the exact same as the barbell row,

or even that all you need is a deadlift. I would say that there are definitely benefits to doing other exercises than just the deadlift for developing an all-around thick, well-developed back. Or in the case of chest, I'd say pressing probably gets you the most of it, which kind of comes back to the question here that this guy was asking about. He does his barbell pressing, his dumbbell pressing, and his dips. I would say those presses are going to give you the majority of your, of your chest, but you have that dips, that third exercise, or maybe a fourth where, yeah, maybe you do dips one week, or maybe then you do, you, you could do something like flies. You have to go a bit higher reps. You don't want to replace your, your heavy lifting with it. And, uh, you could try

decline pressing. I'm not a big fan of decline pressing because it's a reduced range of motion, which means your muscles have to do less work and you're not targeting. There is no lower chest. You have the pec major, and then you do have an upper chest muscle that kind of runs like this. And it's actually a separate muscle. I'll link an article down below if you want to see. There's a diagram of it where I talk a bit about chest training. And that's one of the reasons why incline pressing is particularly important. And it's also harder, which generally speaking as a rule, if an exercise is harder, that's probably a good sign.

Like the exercises that a lot of people avoid are the hardest ones. Deadlift, I think the hardest exercise you can do. Squat, one of the hardest, if not the hardest. You could say, I don't hardest exercise you can do. Squat, one of the hardest, if not the hardest. You could say, I don't know what's harder, a deadlift or a squat. I think deadlift's a bit harder, but some people find squat harder. Proper bench presses where the bar's coming all the way down, good form, your elbow's tucked in and so forth, hard. Half reps, not hard. Decline pressing, not hard compared to incline, pressing, uh, incline, pressing much harder, especially full range of motion.

So incline pressing that was not just harder. That's not the only reason why it's good. It's because it emphasizes more of that upper clevict. It's like clavicular pectoralis. I think it's the name of the muscle and it's a smaller muscle and it's a real bitch to develop. The pec major develops much faster. So, and I used to have this problem where I never did any, all I did was flat pressing and decline

pressing because I liked that I could put more weight on the decline. I thought, you know, you look cooler with more weight in the bar. Right. Um, and, and basically this was years ago, I got into a basic situation where I had a bottom heavy chest. Like I had this, I had like, you would see maybe something like this line like this, like you can see on video, but then my upper chest was really underdeveloped. So it was almost like, it was like this flat area up here almost. And then you had this chest that just came out and you know, yeah, maybe that's me just being nitpicky, but you know, that's what kind of what this is about when you progress more and more and start

looking at your physique and going, all right, what really needs to be improved here? And you start really looking at it. There were some obvious things like I had no upper chest. My shoulders are too small. Um, my, my legs were too small. I wasn't dead lifting at all back in the day. So my back was underdeveloped and you could see that my lats were too small. I didn't have the middle. I didn't have like the rhomboids, the thickness that I have now. So I changed that to where I actually, what I did, the first change I did was all I did was incline pressing for like eight months.

I didn't do any flat pressing or any decline pressing and it worked really well. Actually, I, I finally had an upper chest start to fill in where it started to look a bit more, uh, proportionate. And now, um, I think I'm in a pretty good place. I'm pretty happy with my development. I really don't want my chest to be bigger because, um, I, I like the, I mean, I like the size the way it is now. And I think the shape is fine now. So, um, anyways, that's, And I think the shape is fine now. So anyways, that's the chest pressing question is, as long as you're doing your heavy dumbbell and barbell presses,

you're doing 80% of what you need to be doing. And then you can rotate through other exercises every couple of months or so. You know, if you want to, if you have, if your workout is four exercises, personally, I would do those first two would be pressing. It would either be double barbell, like flat incline or vice versa, or it could be double dumbbell even for a bit. I've done that for a while where I only train with dumbbells in my pressing. I like dumbbells because you can have a really good range of motion. I like to get them all the way down here.

And again, you can go flat incline or incline flat. And then if you did one or two other exercises after that, that's where you could do your dips or your flies or other things that you might want to try and see how your body responds. So that's pretty much the whole story on changing exercises and then chest training in particular. All right, so let's move on to the next question here. It comes from Chris from the UK again. Might be the same person may not be, but it's a good

question. And, uh, one that I get asked fairly often. So I take it. So the, here's what Chris says. Like the majority of desk workers, I suffer from lower crossed syndrome, which is short hip flexors and lower spinal muscles. Uh, it means weak, lower spinal muscles, weak hamstrings and glutes. Uh, it's on its way to being corrected, but squats are a problem. Pros and cons of back squats versus front squats. Um, I've run into this before and I actually didn't know that it was called lower cross syndrome until now. So I'll just learn something, but, um, I wouldn't say that I had my, my lower spinal muscles. I didn't never had any problem with just because of heavy deadlifting. And I have a pretty, pretty strong lower back at this point.

Uh, but I ran into hip flexor issues and issues with, uh, hamstrings and glutes not being strong enough for heavy squatting. And actually, there was a point where I had to dial back on my heavy squatting because my hip flexors were so damn tight from sitting all day that it just hurt. I couldn't squat more than, I think I had to stop at like 275. And I ended up just dialing back to like 245 and just working at a higher, higher rep range because, and this was a while ago, probably about a year ago, because my hip flexors were so tight. And again, it was because I sit, or was at the time, sitting so much where, you know, my average work day, I'm probably, I don't know, 12 to 14 hours, and that was just sitting. And, you know, obviously I'd get up to go to the bathroom and get water and whatever, but the majority of that time I was sitting.

And so not only is that not good for squatting and for – it depends. It's not good for cycling and other things that use those muscles. It's actually sitting a lot is really not good for your health. There's been research. Um, there's been research, you've probably heard this before, because there was research that showed that there was an association between how much time spent you spent sitting and just all cause mortality, which is death from all causes. And basically the people, the more that you sat, the more likely you were to get a disease and die later in your life or fall down and break your hip and, you know, have complications to that that will lead to your death and whatever. But the study that I had seen on that, there were actually one or I think there were two that I saw. The association was not strong for work sitting, but it was strong for sitting down after work, People would go home, sit on their – people would go from their bed to their car to their work to their workspace to their car to their couch to their bed.

It was that non-work sitting. That was the real association. And then on the weekends as well, not moving. So there's probably some confounding factors there in terms of lifestyle. If you're not exercising regularly, and if you're sitting on the couch every night, you're probably eating food. There's probably overweight issues there. And obviously some of these things are controlled for, but it can be hard to control for all these different variables. However, there was some newer research that just came out that I saw that showed that even in people that exercised regularly, um, the, there was an

association between the total time spent sitting, including work time, uh, and, uh, overall health and just all cause mortality. Um, so basically, uh, the long story short is you want to be spending, uh, the, you do not want to be sitting for eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 hours a day. It's just not what your body was meant to do. Um, I have a standing desk now, uh, and which I got from, um, what's the name of this company? Evo desk, Evo desk. And it's pretty fancy because it was pretty expensive. Um, I found out after that, like Ikea has ones for a lot cheaper, so I might've just done that, but it's cool. It has a button. I can like pre-program these different heights and I can just hit a button. It goes to

them. Uh, it's very stable. It was a little bit squeaky at first, but WD-40 took care of that. And I love it. So now I stand, the majority of my day is, is standing. I sit down or I sit down to eat lunch maybe. And you know, if I, sometimes if I'm writing something, I really want to be thinking for some reason, I feel like I do it better seated, seated. So I'll sit for that. Um, but now, you know, my total seated time, I do sit down at night. I don't have a desk at home. I actually just kind of sit in a chair and on my laptop when I'm working. Um, so I sit for a few hours at night when I'm working. That's not a big deal considering that I'm seated for no more than an hour really probably here. Because I even do the majority of my writing standing. Sometimes I just feel like sitting, I don't know, if I really need to think about something, then I'll sit down.

And so what I recommend is if you can't get a standing desk, which you can though, like you don't even necessarily have to have a desk. You can get, like if you have a normal desk, you can get these things. I don't know what they're called really, but they sit on the desk and then your monitors go on top of them and then you can just bring, you can lower them or raise them.

So you even have to have a fancy desk. You can just take the desk you have right now and then get one of these things and put your computer monitors on them. And then you can raise them when you want to stand, lower them when you want to sit. You know, there you go. And, you know, I like to be standing, like I said, the majority of the day. And I even got one of them.

What do they call these? It's like a standing mat. They make them. I got it on Amazon. They make them for chefs, people that have to stand all day. Cause it can be, uh, it can be, it can, it can, it doesn't, it actually wasn't happening to me. Some people that get like back discomfort from standing all day or, or even on your feet. So you can get like these foam pads, which I got one. Maybe I don't need it after all. Cause I didn't really notice anything standing on the floor, but it is

a little bit more comfortable, uh, to stand on. I guess it has like a similar effect, you know, like those Crocs shoes are popular with people that stand all day for the same kind of, they give you that cushion. So this does it. You can just, I have a mat on the floor that I stand on and yeah, that's, that's really what I do. Now, if you can't do that for whatever reason, if you can't get the extension thing or get a standing desk, then you'll just want to make sure that you're standing up and moving around probably every 30 minutes or so. That's what I was doing before. I had a little

timer, um, that I would have, you know, so just to remind me. So every 30 minutes I would just get up and I would go move around, maybe do a couple stretches, stretch my hips out, stretch my hamstrings out, um, walk and get some water and then sit back down. Um, so that can help. Uh, it's not as, not as good as just spending the majority of your day standing, but it's better than just sitting in a chair for, you know, six hours straight or something like that. Um, and then in terms of tightness, if you're actually having problems with your hip flexors right now, or, or your hamstrings or even your quads,ads, any lower body hip leg issues, go on muscleforlife.com and search for mobility.

And search for an article. There are two articles. I think there's what's called a definitive guide to mobility exercises. You're going to want to look at that. And then you're going to want to look at a mobility article that I wrote. It's like mobility exercises for squatting or something like that. You'll see it in the list. wrote for, it's like mobility exercises for squatting or something like that. You'll see it in the list and do, uh, start with the routine in the, uh, extra in the, in the article on squatting.

And then you can look in the definitive guide one, if there's anything else in particular for what you have going on, but it's, it's not comfortable. There are some different stretches that you have to do, uh, dynamic type stretches. Um, also search muscle for life for foam rolling and look on that. Cause that's what I had to do. So to handle my hip flexors and that I was, what I was running into is it took a fair amount of mobility work. It took like three or four weeks before I could really start squatting heavy again, mobility work. And then also like I see this massage therapist, so she was really getting digging in there, which, but you can do that with like, uh,

the right, you know, foam, you can foam roll your, your hips. You can use, uh, like a, like a lacrosse ball and get in there. It doesn't feel good. Whether somebody else does it or whether you do, it does not feel good. Um, but it works. So you really just need to really make sure you get those muscles stretched out and you have to, uh, you know, put up with some pain basically. And you have to back off on the, on the weightlifting that's causing the problems. Cause you don't want to continue to be aggravating. If your hip flexors are shortened and tight, you don't want to just try to try to keep loading weight and then cause an injury. You have to loosen them up and get your range of, get your, your movement patterns fixed, you know, and then you can get

back to the heavy lifting um so yes that's uh that's what i'd recommend and then in terms of the pros and cons and also by the way the i would recommend that you do that squatting mobility routine um every week even if you are standing uh it it's it just helps it, it just helps. It helps to, to keep your, your everything moving the way that it needs to move. So you can continue to progress and you don't get held back by weak muscles or muscles that are, uh, not, you know, that, that are too tight. Um, so they're not able to relax at all, uh, which is obviously a problem. Um, so yeah, I do recommend, and if you can do it, uh, it, a good massage therapist, like the lady I work with, she used to work on Olympic rowers, so she just is – she has strong hands,

and they're not like – they don't necessarily feel great, the massages, but they help a lot with weightlifting because we just – whatever's tight, like the neck tightness I was running into, sometimes my right quad tends to get tightened, which then it can cause pain in the patellar area of the kneecap. So if, you know, if that's going on, then she can help with that. So if you can do that, then it's nice. If not, you can do it a lot of it yourself, um, or with a friend just doing mobility type exercises, um, pros and cons of back squats versus front squats.

Kind of talked about this earlier. I wouldn't say that there are different exercises. The front squat puts more emphasis on the quads. It puts less stress on the knees, which is nice if you have any knee issues. Less stress on the back, which is nice if you have any back issues. Um, less stress on the back, which is nice if you have any back issues. Um, and the, you can go deeper as well. You don't need as much mobility, as much flexibility to get deep on the front squat. Uh, the back squat is, uh, especially as you get past that halfway mark and you start getting deeper, kind of like at the halfway point of the descent and to the bottom of the squat back to the halfway point is a lot of

hamstring uh obviously in the back squat more so than the front squat the quads are more dominant in the front squat although the back squat is genuinely thought of as a quadricep exercise it's just that the quads are more responsible for the first as you're as you as you start your rep and you're kind of getting so you're here and you start your rep and you're kind of getting, so you're here and you start getting to, well, you're here, right, and you start getting to there. That's quad, quad, quad. And as you get deeper, though, it becomes more hamstring, especially if you are set up correctly, where, you know, your feet are about shoulder width apart, your toes are turned out a little bit,

and as you are descending, you're keeping your knees tracking with your toes. And, you know, so you do these things that it puts more emphasis on the hamstrings. I wouldn't say it's so much of a pros and cons thing. It's that both are good exercises. The back squat is probably the foundation of your, of your leg training. And then front squatting would be done in addition to it. I like front squatting a lot. Like I said, I've been focusing on front squats just because I want to bring my strength up there. So I'd say do both. Okay, so now let's move on to the last question here from CWIE23 from Canada. What advice would you give someone looking to start an online fitness business? Obviously, it's a very kind of vague question, but it's one that I get fairly often.

And it's tough to answer, at least in a semi-timely manner, because I feel like there's so much that kind of goes into making it work. But if I were to prioritize things and just looking at what other people are doing in this space and what I would do differently if I were them. One is being in very, very good shape yourself. You definitely have to show that you walk the walk and you have to have the type of physique that the people you're trying to sell to want to have. And of course that, like, I don't know why I even have to say that, but I see so many of these people that are trying to be fitness bloggers or we're trying to write books or kind of do what I'm doing, I guess, because I've seen a lot more of it come around since I've been doing what I'm doing. You know,

a lot of, a lot more books in Amazon with like almost copycat type of colors and, uh, or covers with, you know, color schemes and whatever, is that a lot of these people just aren't in very good shape. Like, yeah, I would say they're fit, but they're, they don't, you don't look at them, you don't go, damn, that person looks really good. Now, of course, a bit of that is a genetic. For instance, like my abs are not symmetrical. There's nothing that I can ever do about that. That's just genetically how my abs are. They don't, I don't have that perfect kind of six pack where it's just like, it looks, it looks great. I just don't have it. It doesn't matter how lean I get. It doesn't matter how much I train my abs. My abs are staggered. Um, not that that's a huge deal,

but it doesn't look as good. Um, my waist is fairly thin, but I don't have the super tiny waist. So, you know, my muscle insertions in general, not bad, but, you know, not incredible either. So there was a bit of a genetic thing to really have that, like, holy shit type of body. A big part of that's genetics. But, you know, as long as you have decent enough, you know, as long as your muscles look decent enough when they're trained and you can get lean, then you're going to look good. But a lot of these people that I see in this space, they don't really look that good. And they don't even have an example of pictures of a time when they ever looked really that good. And so, I mean, this is an obvious thing, but it's more from a marketing point of why should people – why should they aspire to – you know, why should they listen to that person if

they don't aspire, if they don't aspire to look like them? Uh, I mean, take it in terms of a more concrete thing where if you wanted to learn a skill, you want to learn how to play guitar and you have a lot of people out there saying they can teach you how to play guitar. Who are you going to be looking for? You're going to look for the person that was like, kind of okay at playing guitar. I guess they're good. Uh, or you're just going to go to the person that is really, really good at playing guitar and is like impresses you where you're like, damn, that person is really good. Of course, you're going to go to the person that's really good, especially if the person that's really good is also a good teacher and is able to communicate, you know, the different concepts you need to understand clearly and, and has a good system laid out. And there, you know, it's just, that's so much more attractive. So I would say that's the first thing that I see that, uh, is, is, is just causing people to not have the success that they want

in this space. Another thing that I see is, um, you know, you in, and this is I'm biased, just because of my experience, I guess, in terms of building muscle for life, and building Legion, and, and also just kind of seeing what's going on in the internet, is that if you if you really want to have a good chance of succeeding, you have to be able to produce good content. Well, I'd say you have to be able to produce really good content. And there's a subjective element to this where I think that the content I produce is pretty good. I think that some of the articles I do better on than others. Some of them, the words flow better, and I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of a perfectionist type of person where I, nothing is ever good enough, basically. Um, so I would say I'm a fairly good writer. I'm

a competent writer. I don't think I'm an outstanding writer. Um, but these are all subjective. Some people might look at my stuff and be like, Oh, it's not very good. Other people might look at my stuff and think it's very, very good. Now I can say that I get a lot more people thinking that my stuff is very, very good because there is an objective element to it, which is, for instance, stuff like traffic and growth rate. So Muscle for Life, I started in March of 2013, so a couple years in now, and it's over 1.2 million visits a month and it grows every month. It just grows, grows, grows, grows. And I get a lot of comments on my articles, people saying how much they like them. I get a lot of social engagement, people sharing, people liking. So those are objective things I can look at and be like, people are liking my content.

It's good content. I'm good enough to do what I need to do. Basically. Can I improve? Of course. Um, now, you know, like recently somebody emailed me and he was, he was saying that like, basically he's doing, he's doing what I'm doing. He's producing this long form content and he's doing stuff every day and he's getting no traffic. And that's because his content sucks. I guarantee you, I didn't even, I actually didn't even look at it. Um, I had seen some of his stuff before. He's not a good writer. He doesn't, there are many different ways content can suck. It can be poorly delivered,

you know, bad writing in terms of video content, can't articulate thoughts. Well, um, you know, whatever, there's a lot of different ways. Obviously people can do, can deliver content poorly, but then there can be bad ideas. So you could have someone that like is a great, is a great writer or a great speaker, but bad ideas, that person is going to do better than the person who, you know, can't communicate themselves clearly. Um, so in this space, in the fitness space, obviously, if you don't really know what you're talking about, if you're kind of just regurgitating, what else is, what, what is out there and you haven't lived it yourself, you don't really know what works. You haven't worked with a bunch of people. Um, it's

not that you can't build a following, but you're not going to be, you're not going to do it as quickly as you would if you understood it theoretically and had the actual experience to back it up and had the results in yourself to prove it and results in other people. So there's, so, um, there's, there's that on, on the content side of things where you have to be able to produce content, uh, and you have to be able to produce it regularly. That is good enough to where people are sharing it around. That's the key, whether it's social sharing or whether it's emailing or just sending links, it needs to be good enough to where somebody, where for every person that reads it, there's a virality factor in there.

You could think of it as even a multiplier. And the higher that multiplier is, so if a reader, let's say it's a one multiplier, so for every reader that reads it, they bring in one new reader, then that's one, they bring in one new reader, then that's one level of growth. If it's a two, if, and then, cause it's obviously exponential because that new, and it becomes, you know, uh, a self perpetuating cycle. Cause that new reader, if you have a, if you have a one-to-one, then you have a constant, you know, engine there. So then the new person brings in a new person, brings in a new person. And of course it's hard to, I mean, they're in certain ways there, these could be quantified using fancy types of things, but you can't exactly quantify this. It's just, you have

to look at it in terms of a, of a abstract kind of concept and what you're going for. If you have a virality factor of over one, let's say it's two. Well then now you're looking at like exponential growth type stuff. And I'll see this more in a micro scale. Like my game with my writing is that I'm always trying to, well, there are articles where I'm, I'm addressing a question. I know it's not going to be a super viral type of article, like article I wrote recently on deloading. I knew the deloading, an article on deloading is not going to get a ton of shares. It's not going to blow up, but it's something I get asked a lot. And lot, and I thought it would make for a good article, and it has value. So I wrote it.

But in a lot of cases, what I'm trying to go for, like my personal game with my content creation, is I'm trying to beat my – basically, if I get over 1,000 Facebook likes – this is organic. Obviously, I'm not paying for them. Where people are sharing it around and liking it enough, like that's, well, that's a lot. I'd say over 500 is where I'm like excited. And if I break 1,000, that's like I've only done that a handful of times. Like had articles that just did that well that within a day or two of being posted or let's say five days of being posted, it's over 1,000 Facebook likes. And that's given I have about maybe 70,000 followers or something. I don't have a ton of Facebook followers. Uh, if I had, if I had a million or something, of course that'd be a,

that would be a nothing number. Um, and then in terms of traffic, if an article can break, like, you know, an MFL, if, if an article day one breaks 5,000 views, I'm excited. Uh, if it breaks like 8,000, 7,000, 8,000, then that's like really, really going well. So that's kind of my game, right? So I'm, I'm, you know, trying to, whenever I'm writing, I'm always like, that's my, I'm trying to inform people, but then I'm also just trying to write the best possible article. And I'm thinking like, what could make this better? What can make this better? What could make this more shareable? What can make this, you know, better better than whatever everything else is on the first page search results?

So, but you have to, if you're going to produce content, you have to go into it like that. You can't just like go, oh, I have to write this fucking article now. Let me, yeah, whatever, fine, post. Or shoot a video, right? One of the reasons why you don't see a bunch of video content for me is right now I'm more focused on my writing in terms of time. And I'm not that interested in video content right now. Um, in the future, when I have a gym set up that I can, like, we're going to be moving into a new building, would have already done it actually, but we plan on moving out of the state by we, I mean, me and there's six of us all in my team. We're all going to move out of the state, um, next year, probably spring

ish. And then we'll get a building and, uh, we're going to move to like Virginia, Washington, DC area. If anybody's in that area, that's where, that's where we're going to, that's where we're going to go. Um, anyways, so we're going to get a building and then we're going to put a gym in there, not as a business, but you know, for us to use basically. And then I'll start doing more video stuff. Cause then we'll start doing some workout videos and you know, anyways, that's, that's one of the reasons why I'm not, I'm not really just like trying to produce half-assed video content. I'm trying to at least, uh, you know, with these podcasts, people really like them talk about things that people care about. And, um so my point is, if you're going to be

producing content, you have to be able to produce very, very, very good content that people share around. If you want to grow quickly and if you want to be successful using the type of business model that I'm using. And it's not easy. It takes, you know, in terms of writing, I've written millions of words over all the writing that I've done. And I've read a ton of books on writing. It's thousands of hours. And still at this point, I feel like I'm good. I don't feel like I'm great. I just feel like I'm good.

And it's thousands of hours to get to a point where I'm good. Good enough to make a living at it. And that's really what drives everything, obviously, is writing. So producing content, that's very important for making it in this space in terms of, you know, how I would go about it. Um, being able to get results matters a lot in the end. It doesn't matter how great your words are or how pretty your, your shit is. If it doesn't deliver, you're not going to have that word of mouth. And the vast majority, really, I mean, my entire business, muscle for life and Legion, they're driven by word of mouth. I spend no Legion is going to do, uh, we're shooting for about 4.2 million in sales this year.

And we spend basically nothing on advertising. We do some retargeting. We do a couple of things, but we spend basically nothing because we have muscle for life and we have my platform as an author. And, uh, you know, we are, we have a good ecosystem that we can use to promote it. Um, but it's mainly word of mouth. And that's really what I'm going for is I want to, to create that wow effect where people, you know, you're delivering a lot more than they expect. And so in terms of back to like Muscle for Life and books and stuff, one of the reasons why the website is very popular and my books are very popular is because they actually work.

Yeah, they sound good and they get you pumped and fired up and wanting to do it. But if it were that and then the program sucked and they didn't work, I wouldn't be nearly as successful or whatever. I wouldn't be where I'm at right now, that's for sure. And there are a lot of mediocre type of workout programs out there and mediocre types of diets, and they kind of work for some people and kind of don't. And yeah, if you spend enough money advertising them, you can still sell a bunch of shit. That's, there's no question. If you're a good advertiser and a good marketer, you can sell anything and make money. But if you want

to actually help people and you want to not have to have like a churn and burn business where you have to be constantly spending to acquire new customers and then you lose a lot of them because your stuff actually sucks, then you have to have, you have to be able to deliver the goods and deliver, deliver real results. Um, so in this space, obviously that means walking the walk yourself, like I was saying earlier, but then also showing that you can get results with other people. If, uh, you know, if you were, if in terms of, well, I'm saying what I want to say is like, if you're going to do one-on-one coaching, for instance, um, I don't offer that.

I never have. I actually am going to be launching a coaching service soon, but I haven't been able to really make the time for it myself because my time is better spent on other things, to be honest. But if you're going to be doing a coaching service, then, um, the first thing you need is success stories. Like personally, if I were just to do a coaching service, if the first thing you need is success stories. Like personally, if I were just to do a coaching service, if I were trying to establish myself from the beginning and that's what I wanted to lead with, you know, I would produce content of course, but I would take on

clients for free. I would take on my first 10 clients for free. I wouldn't even charge them anything. Or I'd tell them, how about this? We're going to get you to where you want to be. And then in the end, after you're there three months or whatever, if you want to pay me some money, And then in the end, after you're there, three months or whatever, if you want to pay me some money, then pay me some money. Here's maybe what I normally would charge and only pay me if you get there or just don't even pay me at all. And then I would want their success story though and I'd probably get them to do some video and stuff. So then I can take that and prove that I can get results. So proving you can get results is big and knowing which requires that you know your stuff. You know, if you really want to know your stuff, that means you have to do a lot of reading

and you're going to have to dive into some complicated stuff in terms of the science and the biology. And it might seem overwhelming at first, but if you just push through it and, you know, make sure that you understand all the, even the individual words that are being thrown at you and just make sure you take the time to study it like you would really study something. Then you can come out the other end with a good understanding of what it takes in terms of diet and training to get people to where they need to be. I guess I could go on and on with business stuff, but the last thing I would say is being good at marketing is very, very important. It's a skill that requires, again, a lot of study. It requires a lot of not just study in terms of book study, which it does require.

I don't even know how many marketing books at this point I've read, so many. But it's also a thing that you have to constantly cultivate. You have to be constantly looking at what other people are examples of good marketing, good advertising and other industries and what people are doing and constantly be thinking, like keeping your antenna up on what could you like, Oh, that's a good idea. I could use that in my business or how could you, it's a, there's a very creative aspect to, to, to marketing, which is one of the reasons why I really like it. Um, I don't really come across much as like an artistic kind of creative guy, but, uh, that, that, that's probably one of my strengths actually is, um, you know,

I have, I do have a very creative side and I'm, I'm, I'm good at coming up with, uh, in terms of marketing, whether it be product names or brand names or product design, I just have a good eye for that stuff. And I have a good ear for words that have good connotations and good meanings and good connotations. And then, of course, as you know, I do a lot of surveying. So I'm always asking for your opinion on things because ultimately what all of you think is much more important than what I think. I can think something's awesome and you could think it's shit and I could go put it out and then no one buys it. And what's the point of that? And it could all just be, maybe the product is awesome, but if I couch it in the wrong words or I call it the wrong thing or I make it look the wrong way, you know, that's going to be hugely detrimental. So

basically, I mean, a lot of this is that it's hard. It's a lot of work. And like anything, you know, I do not, this, this industry is hard to make it. It's not an easy industry to get in. Yes, people spend a lot of money, but people are also very jaded. They're very cynical in this space, consumers, as they should be, because they've been ripped off so many times, and there's so much bullshit in this space, and so many good marketers that sell shit products to where it's very hard to differentiate yourself,

and you have to really be authentic and really be, if you are the real deal, and you can prove that through your actions and through your results, then you can gain a lot of support. But if you are full of shit, then people are going to know basically, and you're not going to do well. So if you are one of those people that pretends to be natty and you're all drugged up, a lot of people know. You think you might be fooling people. Maybe you can fool some people. A lot of people know though, or they're suspicious enough or they don't trust you. If you pretend like you really you might be fooling people a lot maybe you can't fool some people a lot of people know though or they're suspicious enough or they don't trust you if you pretend like you really know what you what's what's what with diet and how to get lean and how to do this and how to build

muscle but you don't really know and you haven't really done it yourself and you haven't really done it with others you're not going to do well you're going to fail with training same thing if you say you know about all this about training and how to do this and how to do that, but if you actually don't and if you can't rely, if you can't say with certainty, I can take anybody and help them build muscle, lose fat, get strong, get the type of body they want. If you can't say that with conviction and really know that yourself, then you're not going to do well. And again, that's like anything. That's really any industry that if you wanted to get into any type of industry, it's, you have to be a real professional. You have to really know what you're talking about. You have to walk the walk. You have to prove that

you can get results in others, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You have to be, you have to understand business. It takes a lot of study. You have to understand marketing, takes a lot of study, takes a lot of doing, making a lot of mistakes, learning a lot of study. You have to understand marketing takes a lot of study, takes a lot of doing, making a lot of mistakes, learning a lot of lessons. There's just no shortcuts. And, um, I know I'm just kind of like ranting almost, but I just, I, I I'm getting more and more of these emails now where people are just, they think that because I've gone from nothing to something very quickly that, that it, there must, I must've had some secret or something like, no, there's no secret. I just work, I don't know, maybe 70, 80 hours a week on average.

And I read, I don't know, four to five books a month. And I don't just read, too. I study. Like, that means reading, highlighting notes, taking all those highlights out, taking all those notes out, creating actionable lists. What am I going to do with what I just learned in this book? Uh, you know, reading, and I also read different blogs, not many blogs. Cause I like to spend my time reading books more than blogs, but certain blogs are useful in this industry and also some marketing blogs. And, you know,

I have a team of people. It's not just me. There's six of us. We all work really hard. We all, uh, we, we have like even like a little book club in our group where we all read one book together every month. And then we discuss how we're going to be applying that book and what we've learned from it. And, um, you know, it's just like a lot of work and it's a never ending lot of work basically. And if you're trying to chase it as a lifestyle business, then you're never going to do very well in anything. I mean, the whole four-hour work week, that type of, if that's your mentality, I could, if we were betting $10,000, that if that's your mentality and you stick to that, you are not going to do well. But if you're getting into something, willing to do whatever it takes to work as hard as it takes to study as many books as it takes to be as hard on your, and not hard on yourself,

but to be as real with yourself as you can in terms of what are your skills, where are you lacking, why is this really, something's not working, why, what needs to be done about it, doing it, no excuses, taking the actions over time, being persistent, not just being like, oh, for a month you go in that direction and then you Peter out and then you're, you know, in a slump for a month. And then, you know, then you kind of come back up and then a month you're good and then you're in a slump, you know, all that stuff gets in the way. And, uh, so, uh, And so that's my – there's my business rant. And if I had an idea, you can let me know if you're interested. You can tweet me or go respond to a blog comment.

I see them all. Or send me an email or whatever. You probably know how to contact me. I was thinking about doing like a book of the month kind of recommendation. I was doing those cool stuff for the week posts and I thought they were fun, but looking at the metrics, the analytics of them, um, I couldn't justify spending the time anymore when I can, I knew that people would much rather have me just like, instead of working, even if it was an hour a week on cool stuff, uh, they would rather have me just like spending that time writing health and fitness stuff. Um, so that's, or the next book or whatever. So that time now, like now I have the Legion blog, um, which is growing very quickly.

I'm excited about that. We launched it. I think this is like the second month or maybe it's the, yeah, I think it's the second month. Um, maybe this is starting month three actually. And it's, it's already at like 60 something thousand visits a month, I think, um, something around there. So that's pretty exciting. Uh, kind of a hundred, a hundred K a month is that first milestone in terms of blogging. You want to get to that a hundred K a month. That's when you really have enough traffic to really start doing something in terms of collecting emails and monetization and so forth. Um, anyways, the idea is, uh, that if I do like a book of the month where it's one book recommendation out of – like I said, I probably read – I'd say it's maybe three to five books. It depends on how long they are.

I'm not one to quit books. I pretty much always finish books that I read. But there was a novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, which I don't read many novels at all. But this one was like recommended by some big hedge fund billionaire guy and how much he liked it and blah, blah, blah. And I hated it. It was, I got halfway through it and just quit. I couldn't, I didn't care at all about the characters. There were no, nothing spoke to me in that book. It was literally just random events about these two narcissistic fucking people. It was, it was terrible. So, you know, wasted a hundred

pages is how I looked at it. It was almost like, it's almost like, I feel like I'm, it's like when you eat, you go to like have your cheat meal and it's shit food. And you're like, motherfucker, I just wasted my cheat meal on, especially if you're cutting and you know that like, this is your one meal, you're going to go into a surplus and for the day and that's it. And then it's garbage food. And you're like, great. Now I get to wait another week. I just wasted all those calories. That's how I felt about that book. I just wasted time, wasted 100 pages I could have read on something else.

Anyways, take from the books that I read every month and take one that I liked a lot and do a quick summary on it. Here's what I got out of it. Maybe like here are my favorite quotes from the book. Anyways, let me know if you think it's a good idea. It wouldn't take that much time. It wouldn't take much time. I would do it basically if everybody thought it's a good idea. It wouldn't take that much time. It wouldn't take much time.

I would do it basically if everybody thought it's a cool idea because I do get asked for book recommendations kind of frequently actually. So anyways, that's everything. I'm going to sign off here. Thanks again for all the support. Thanks for listening to the podcast and supporting MFL and Legion and everything you do. And more good stuff coming. Oh, I might as well just also, I get asked with Legion and what happened in terms of why we had a stock out of everything and blah, blah, blah. And I've talked about this a couple of times.

I'll just quickly. Basically, my manufacturer, they merged with another company. They were good for a good year or so. There weren't really that many issues, six, eight months, something like that. They merge with this other big company and do a terrible job in the merger, basically. It exploded themselves. It boiled down to this software that they wanted to switch over to to run everything, to run their financials, to run their production, everything.

And the company they hired instead of, cause like when you're doing software changes like that, I mean, this is like, even with web dev, you don't just make changes to your live website because things can go wrong. Everything can explode. We've learned that lesson too. What you do is you have a copy of your live website and that's your dev site. You make all the changes on dev and you make dev work perfectly, test it, beat the shit out of it. Dev's good. Then you push dev live. That's how you, then, then it's seamless. Um, of course you would think that a company doing $400 million a year would do that with the software that runs their entire company, where you wouldn't just take your existing software and throw it away and just put this new thing in and be like, all right, cool.

It should be working. But that's what they did. They didn't take the software and create a live working environment, dev environment, and work out all the bugs, make sure everything's good. They just went live and fuck it. We'll do it live like O'Reilly style, right? And exploded themselves basically for an entire month. The entire month of January, nothing happened. They couldn't even order raw ingredients. And they have basically some of the biggest accounts in the entire industry. And so you can imagine the amount of production backlog

that occurred and the amount of pissed off customers that they had basically. So they've been now playing catch up still now in July. They're still playing catch up from what happened in January. And cause it, it just raped them. Um, so long story short is because, yeah, I mean, in I, you know, it's a legion's a new company. It's growing quickly. It's a couple million dollar account to them. But yeah, that's fine. But oh, these guys over here pay $100 million a year. So who do you think is going to get bumped in terms of you only can run so many products in so many minutes of the day. for these other companies because they just couldn't afford to have the $90 million account, the $70 million account, have the same problems that I had, basically, be out of stock, out of stuff for that long, which sucks. But anyways, I have now in place some backup manufacturers, and I am still with the current manufacturer. We're going to give

them one more shot basically because I really do like the guy that is handling my account is a good guy and it's a good company all around. There are a lot of good things about being with this company but what happened previously is not one of them. So if there ever are any production issues in the future then I do have other companies I can go to, basically. I prefer not to, but if I have to, I will. So that's basically what happened. But it's all sorting out by the end of this month, by the end of July. We'll have everything back.

We have a lot of product coming, so we're not going to run out of stock for the rest of the year. That's for sure. And we're also putting some other things in place to really prevent this from occurring again. You know, sure, we're going to run out of stock of something because sometimes sales explode and what are you going to do? But it won't be like this. It won't be like two months out of stock on Triumph. I mean, this order of Triumph that I'm going to be receiving this month, I ordered it in February, the beginning of February. Five-month production time.

I mean, obviously you can't run a business on five-month production time. So that's what happened, and it's being resolved, a lesson that had to be learned the hard way, I guess. So I appreciate your patience. Everything is coming back this month, and we have a new website rolling out, and we have better prices and free shipping and, um, some other cool stuff. So, you know, new products and stuff. So I'll make it up to you. All right. See you next time. Thank you again.