Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Interview With Jimmy Smith on How to Train for Sports

Episode Date: December 30, 2014

In this podcast I interview Jimmy Smith, who specializes in training athletes, and we talk about how to use weight training, nutrition, and supplementation to maximize your sports performance. Jimmy's website: http://physiqueformuladiet.com/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: The Definitive Guide to Why Low-Carb Dieting Sucks: http://www.muscleforlife.com/low-carb-diet/ The Definitive Guide to Pre-Workout Nutrition: http://www.muscleforlife.com/pre-workout-nutrition/ The Definitive Guide to Post-Workout Nutrition: http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-post-workout-nutrition/ My supplement recommendations: http://www.muscleforlife.com/recommendation/supplements/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

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Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because

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about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast, and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from MuscleForLife.com. Welcome to another episode of my podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be interviewing Jimmy Smith from JimmySmithTraining.com. Jimmy is a nutrition and training coach to professional athletes.

He's worked with a lot of basketball players, MMA fighters, hockey players, I believe even some football players as well. And I wanted to get him on the show to talk specifically about how training for athletics and for sports changes things. Because I get asked this fairly often, people playing all kinds of sports, do they need to train differently for the sports in terms of the exercises they're doing or the amounts of weight that they're lifting? Should they be emphasizing certain things over other things? And then also frequency. How frequently can you train in the gym if you're also practicing a few times a week?

Games, you have to manage your soreness. You can't blast your legs and the next day go play you know, play really any sport and not have your performance negatively affected. So yeah, so I had a lot of questions for Jimmy about this and I think you're going to like the interview. So let's get to it. All right. Hey, Jimmy, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Mike, it is my pleasure. You know, I've saw some other shows you've had in the past. I know it's a high quality show, so I wanted to get on it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited. I definitely want to, like I was saying, I want to dive into the subject of diet and training for athletes in particular. Because this is an area that I've worked with a handful of athletes, ranging from mainly rugby players, randomly enough.

And it kind of helped them tweak their training, tweak their diet. But I wouldn't say it's an area of expertise for me. I have some experience, but I know that you have a bit more. So I want to pick your brain on this. So first off, my first question here is obviously when working, and this is for the listeners, I mean, this isn't just like what we're going to talk about. It's not just for professional athletes, but this is if you're playing sports regularly, this is going to apply to you or if you want to play sports or whatever. And so, Jimmy, you find that like I found that you have to find a balance between what they do inside and outside the gym to prevent overtraining and burnout, right?

Yeah, I mean, you really do. A lot of people, especially athletes and overachievers to a large degree, are going to train so much in the gym. They're going to want to put so much effort in. They're going to want to do certain lifts. And they're just going to push it too much. And it's impossible to know what's under the hood until you know what's under the hood in terms of blood tests or even genetic tests with companies like 23andMe. So a lot of times it's about helping them find themselves, helping them find that balance in terms of where they want to take their body to with their personal life. And what do they enjoy doing outside the gym, you know?

And so when it comes to like types of training, for instance, like, you know, there's going to be, in my experience, I'm sure you've had the same, so you have someone that plays a certain sport. They want to get better at the sport, but they also want to look a certain way or they want to add some muscle to their body. But then they also then have to deal with, they have to manage soreness because if they have practices three times a week and a game every week, they can't necessarily be blasting their legs, you know, with one big workout a week and then try to go play, you know, let's say it's football or say it's, I mean, anything,

anything that requires running. I don't care if it's tennis, try to go play golf, try to go play after you squat, squat heavy. Right. So how do you find, like, how do you balance that when you work with athletes? Do you, do you split workups out, split workouts up into like increase in frequency, but decrease volume? I mean I'm a big frequency fan, believe it or not. I like frequency over volume. I know they're both related. They're both the top two things for muscle hypertrophy.

But at the end of the day, I find that frequency allows me to let them train the qualities they need more often obviously because it's the term frequency. But when they're doing a lot of volume because everybody's going to be volume-based. Everybody's going to want to come in and be volume, obviously, because it's the term frequency. But, you know, when they're doing a lot of volume, because everybody's going to be volume-based. Everybody's going to want to come in and be volume, volume, volume. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to the fact that, you know, how is your body recovering? What are you doing to help your body recover? Because too many people still go and want to push the pace. They want to do volume. And if we can up their frequency a little bit and get them maybe to squat twice a week

but have less overall volume so they're not as sore, that's where we really get the biggest benefit. But it's really more of a mental challenge with a lot of athletes and a lot of clients, believe it or not, is you have to convince them that they are doing enough because everybody thinks they can do more. Regardless of what me and you think, Mike, and regardless of what the science is going to show us,

everybody's going to want to be super sore the next day. It's true. I get emails from people, you know, hey, even though they're switching from, let's say, a more traditional, super high rep, ridiculous high volume bodybuilding program where you just get crushed. I remember that. I tried those programs in the past. So they switched to a more heavier lifting, lower volume, and then they're not super sore and they're worried. Like, I'm not going to build muscle. I'm not, you know, I can't, I can move my chest without it hurting.

This is a problem. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. No, you know, and that's the problem, though, is way too many people are under this idea and this notion that, you know, they have to have muscle soreness. And you and I are no different, right? Like, I love having sore arms the next day. Yeah, to some degree. Yeah, so a lot of it is just managing expectations and believe it or not,

that's the hardest part, both with training and with a diet is managing their expectations. Yeah. I could see that. So let's talk about that for a minute. So how do you see the nutritional and supplementation side of the game for athletes? You know, a lot of it's more basic than people think. You can make it super intense. You can say you've got to use this supplement, that supplement, and you can give them the weirdest supplement that no one's ever heard of. But at the end of the day, you have to focus on the base layers of their diet. Are they eating enough carbohydrates to recover? Paleo diet's a beautiful thing, but the problem with the paleo diet is there's obviously not a lot of

starchy carbohydrates. Not having a lot of starchy carbohydrates will increase cortisol production. And when your cortisol goes up, your libido is going to go down, your testosterone is going to go down, your ability to recover, your ability to buffer muscle soreness, all that's going to be impacted, all that's going to be affected. So, I mean, a lot of it is covering your bases. Are they getting enough starsaparilla carbohydrates to facilitate good sleep patterns, to facilitate post-workout recovery? Obviously, people, you have to pull them back on protein. People are going to go protein, protein, protein. But, you know, you really need to pull them back on the protein.

And you have to make sure they're getting enough high-quality fats. When you do that, then the 5% matters. You know, I just worked with a woman who was a well--known figure competitor and she switched and started becoming a master sprinter and you know we're doing the five percent stuff like we're giving her more curcumin to reduce inflammation and reduce her joints you know we're giving her other nutrients that her body didn't necessarily have because she was so you know busy focusing on other stuff so at the end of the day it comes down to the five percent stuff is important right like Like the not keeping your cell phone in your room before you go to sleep, that's important. But if your base diet's not there and, you know, if you're not continually trying to tweak that base diet, you're not going to get the results you want.

Yeah, I totally agree. And, I mean, coming back to that carbohydrate point, that's something I just continually harp on, that low-carb dieting sucks. Unless you're sedentary, unless you don't move your body and your body has no need for, I mean, carbohydrates are energetic. So if your body doesn't need energy, if you don't move around, sure. You know, you could probably do fine on whatever 50 to 80 grams of carbs a day and you don't need this. Like you said, I mean, yeah, sure. It fruits and vegetables easy, but if you are very active, even just if you're the average person lifting weights three to five times a week and doing some cardio, you're going to benefit hugely from, from a higher carb intake. Uh, your workouts are going to be better. Your recovery is going to be better. I mean,

I talk about different research that's been done to show that higher carbs equals more muscle growth over time. And it's probably even more so I'm sure with athletes that are just pounding their bodies, uh, you know, far beyond the average gym goer. No, no, you're a hundred percent right. You know, it's, it's just people are pounding their bodies. People are doing too much. We're doing more and more and more all the time.

And life is stressful for a lot of people, you know, like even guys like me and you entrepreneurs, people that don't necessarily work for anyone else, quote unquote, you know, that's actually more stressful. You know, like there's, you know, there's times where I'm like, you know, son of a bitch, like, you know, because you're always in front of the computer. So you get that brain fog or, you know, so a lot of it is just really, you have to manage stress and you have to manage expectations and, you know, and then you have to fill in the gaps from there. Yeah, I agree. Another question I get asked fairly often is for people that want to train to be more explosive. They want to be able to run faster, jump higher and farther and so forth.

What have you found in terms of exercise and training protocols that help with these things? So the first thing we want to do to build explosive power, you really need to enter the debate of do you want to do Olympic lifting versus just base power strength lifting. And there's a difference there. So CrossFit has popularized Olympic lifting better than Olympic lifting has ever done. Everybody wants to clean. Everybody wants to do snatches now.

But you can debate the variability of that and you can debate the value of it. But a CrossFit snatch or a CrossFit hang, while it's good for a beginner, it's not an Olympic lifting snatch. So I only bring that up to say this, is that you can learn those. Anybody can learn them on their own. They can watch good YouTube videos on it, but it's going to take some time. There's a big learning curve there. And it's dangerous if you try to go too fast and you think, oh, I got this. Let me try to throw up 225. It can't be that hard. Right, right. No, no, you're 100% right with that. My base recommendation for a lot of people is get really good at the deadlift, get really strong at the squat because those are your

base qualities. You have your hip extension, your hip flexion, your hamstrings, your quads. The good muscles, the power-producing muscles get strong by getting strong with a deadlift and a squat. The thing about this, Mike, you know, people – I played college basketball. I'm 6'6". The problem a lot of people have is that they do not have that base power. So as basketball players in college, you know, we'd be doing stuff with, you know, weird shoes on our feet or we'd be doing, you know, different plyometric drills and all that stuff. It's great.

And research validates the benefits of plyometric and reactive training, the ability to get off the ground quick. But a lot of those guys, basketball players especially, never picked up weight. I was the only guy squatting and I was the only guy deadlifting. And a lot of times if you don't have that base strength, everybody's focused so much on more, more, more and different stuff. But if you don't have the base strength, you're not going to get those results. So with a lot of people, and we can have this debate in a little bit. You can only get so strong with a barbell, but until you reach that point, there's no reason why you should leave it

and why you shouldn't focus on the basics. Yeah, I agree. And I think that, I mean, it takes a while where you could reach that, in my experience, to reach that point where you're saying, well, I've pretty much maxed my, what I can safely do with this barbell movement. I mean, that that's not a year of lifting that's years. Right, right. Absolutely. That's years of lifting. And, and I think people lose sight of that and I think people lose track of it to be honest. So, yeah, I mean, I've seen interesting things like for instance, I'll, uh, I like to play golf, right? So I followed a little bit. My one, I played ice hockey growing up, but I was thinking recently, like, I want to get back into a sport, you know, but ice hockey, I don't have the time for right now. So, so I'm

going to, I'm going to take golf back up. I'll pick that up faster. So there was, um, his name is Roy McElroy. He's like the number one golfer in the world right now. And his workouts, I see him doing a lot of Olympic lifting and stuff. And I just wonder why would you want, why is he, why do the, why do Olympic lifts for, for athletic performance? Like you're saying, unless you're going to really take the time. And I saw Instagram videos, his form was okay. I mean, it was not, he could use some coaching for sure, but like, why would you want to, why not split that up and do an overhead press and a deadlift instead of trying to combine and do these Olympic lifts where you can get hurt? I mean, it's not the

weightlifting is a particularly dangerous thing, but Olympic lifting, statistically speaking, research, you know, scientifically speaking, is the most dangerous of the disciplines. You know what I mean? Sure. No, no, absolutely. You know, that begs the question is why do that stuff? You know, why does a Rory McIlroy,

someone who's obviously a genetically gifted individual, or he wouldn't have achieved that success in the golf course. But why is he not just focusing on a squat or a deadlift? Why is he trying to make things complex? It's like when you deal with a high school athlete. A lot of people say kids should be cleaning or kids should be doing this or doing that. But you take a high school kid, they can't do a push-up. So I get it that you should do a push-up, you should increase your bodyweight strength,

and then get on the bench press. But these kids, they can't even do a full push-up. So I get it that you should do a push-up, you should increase your bodyweight strength, and then get on the bench press. But these kids, they can't even do a full push-up. So to give them dumbbells, their arms will be flailing everywhere. But if you put them on a bar, they'll be more stable in that sense. And they won't be shaking. A barbell press is actually a lot safer for a kid who's never done it than a push-up is. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but at the end of the day, it's about giving them the stimulus they need. And a lot of people just don't do that. They don't get it. Yeah, that totally makes sense. So in terms of specific sports, so basketball is probably one of the most popular. Basketball, football, hockey are probably the most popular. And going back to what you were saying earlier, then you'd say probably the most important

exercises to build strength there would be the squat and the deadlift. What are your thoughts on upper body for any of those? I mean, basketball, maybe it's not so much, but football and hockey. Yeah, I'm a big fan of overhead shoulder pressing. And that's just kind of a personal preference. It's one of those old-time lifts that no one really does anymore because everybody's so bench press dominant. And don't get me wrong, the bench press is a great lift. because everybody's so bench press dominant.

Don't get me wrong, the bench press is a great lift, but my argument and my debate is always for the overhead shoulder press because doing that and doing strict overhead shoulder pressing, we are going to have to not only get that upper body development, but we get a lot of upper back development. But we have to get that coordination between a push press with our legs and the ability to reach overhead and extend overhead. People will never have an issue with too much bench pressing they'll always bench press but yeah they will never miss chest day no right they never will but they will have the issue um with just overall upper back strength and when you do a strict overhead shoulder press

and when you have to hold that weight up for a tenth of a second or whatever it may be you will get a lot of upper back development and upper back development is the area that's really going to make an athlete an athlete. You know, it's really going to give them the results they want. So, you know, I'm a fan of overhead shoulder pressing. Obviously, the bench press, you can't go wrong with that. I'm more of a fan of dumbbell bench pressing, especially in younger athletes. Why is that? Why dumbbell bench pressing?

Because a lot of people are just not, they don't have the shoulder integrity to bench press heavy enough. Because people will jump and go bench press too much. And they'll be so focused on increasing how much they can bench press. Whereas if they're doing a dumbbell chest press, they're getting deep. They're stretching their pecs. Hopefully. Hopefully. I've seen a lot of people not so much.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're right. Hopefully they're getting that deep stretch on the pack, and they're doing more good at the beginning phases. You can argue the merits of it later, and I get it. I love flat barbell pressing myself too. Don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, it really is imperative that you get stronger

at a dumbbell press. And then from there, we're just going to finish off with a chin-up. No one does chin-ups anymore. I love chin-ups and I love dips. Same thing. No one does dips anymore. But, you know, at the end of the day, dips are one of the best things you can do for yourself. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, these are all things. These are all the exercises I recommend in all my books and all my writing. It's the old school simple movements that are safe. You can load them and progressively overload them. You don't need to get fancy. And you know, you don't, cause I did all that stuff wrong in the past and did all the emotional confusion and tried all kinds of splits. And what I wasn't doing is I wasn't just focusing on heavy compound lifting and making sure that I'm adding more weight to the bar over time and sticking to these simple exercises. So I can definitely

vouch for that. No, I, you know, and, and the thing with that is, you know, elite athletes. So you take people, I've worked with the UFC fighters. I've worked with people trying to qualify for the Olympics. They do the same lifts. Now,

when you become a more elite athlete or you add more muscle mass, like, like I'm six, six, two 40, I'm a big person. It's harder to do chin ups and dips. I still do them because I'm not, you know, bodybuilder big in terms of like 260, 270.

Those guys can't do it. But the elite athletes are still doing those movements. They're just – and the magazines are terrible for this because the magazines will go and say, oh, you know, the best way for hamstring strength is – and they'll show some new kind of movement. I get it. Don't get me wrong. That's great. But that's a 5% in the workout.

That's something you add in at the end or that's something you do with a special. After your squats and after your Romanian deadlifts. So don't think that professional bodybuilders or MMA fighters or whatever your professional favorite sport is, they're doing those same lifts. Yes, definitely. And back to what you're saying on the shoulders point, I was doing those same lifts. Yes, definitely. And you know, back to what you're saying on the shoulders point, uh, I was doing an interview with Mark Ripito yesterday for some, uh, it's going to be related to this book launch that I have coming up. It's going to be some

extra content and stuff. And he recommends, um, that you do one-to-one with your bench pressing and your shoulder pressing to make, to make sure that you don't get too interior to, to focus on your interior deltoids. Cause that's where, you know, the bench press, obviously it has a bad rep for being bad for your shoulders. And we know that's not true if you're doing it properly. And if you also are building up the rest,

you're not just only bench pressing and, you know, half repping three 15. Yeah. Go do that for a year and you're going to hurt your shoulders, but with proper form, proper weight and, uh,

balancing it with not only over like something like an overhead press or a seated military press, like a barbell overhead press, whether you're standing or seated and pulling, that's what, that, that, that was, those were his comments on that. And that's how he protects people's shoulders. Yeah. I mean, there, there are no, no half-wrapping bitches, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, uh, obviously something that just in terms of, and for the, for the listeners, when it's easier, your muscles are doing less work. Like that's all you need to know. You're half-wrapping. The reason why that half-wrapped for that person's half-wrapped squatting is because it's easier. It's hard for once you hit that halfway mark, every inch lower, it feels like a foot.

That halfway mark, every inch lower, it feels like a foot. No, totally, man. It's just a lot of people debate the merits of full reps and what an athlete should or shouldn't do. But at the end of the day, it comes down to just freaking training heavy. And heavy is relative, right? So heavy can be a lot of weight in the bar. Heavy can be more reps with the same weight. Heavy can be more time under tension. Heavy is just a word I'm using, but at the end of the day, if you don't kick ass in the gym,

you know, you're just screwing yourself in the long run. Yeah. And what are your thoughts on, uh, talk about heavy when, in terms of heavy weight, um, especially for, I mean, I've found that, I mean, the problem obviously on the science side is it's so conflicted and there's so much back and forth. You could make a scientific argument for any style of training really. But I guess anecdotally we see, even from programs like Starting Strength, that not that higher rep, lower weight has no place in a natural weightlifter's routines. And, you know, this would include athletes. But that the most

you're going to get the most out of emphasizing heavy lifting. And that's definitely the case with, with just somebody who wants to build muscle and look good. Do you find that also with athletes that building, like for instance, building that power, building that explosive strength, uh, that if you focus on the lower rep ranges, maybe four to six, five to seven, 80, 85% of your one rep max. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, so with training like that, you can't do that all the time and all the time. And a lot of people screw that up because, you know, they'll, they'll do something with, uh, they'll read a starting strength or read a Jim Wendler's program

or any of the good programs out there for strength, and they'll do it more than they should. You talk to a lot of top powerlifters, and they don't one, two, three rep bench press that often, maybe once a month, maybe twice a month, if that. The reason is because it's hard on your body. You shouldn't deadlift twice a week. Sometimes I push the envelope with high rep stiff leg deadlifts you know 72 hours after a heavy um deadlifting session it's a bit different yeah more of a difference and sometimes my body still feels like shit when i do that like sometimes my hamstring is still having to recover um so a lot of it is you know you have to to put recovery as paramount you know i will sometimes stupidly go

down and try to deadlift a few sets for one rep you know i'm feeling strong i'm feeling good i'm in the groove i want to push it how that is you're like yeah i can do this i'm gonna i'm gonna load it up right right right and especially like if you know if you're at 495 and you're like son of a bitch i can get this 500 you know yeah um but a lot of times for me i try to stay three to five reps and then with the accessory work and testing my you know main lifts i'll do that more often the only difference is overhead shoulder pressing. I love every week I do seven sets of three reps. That's a lot of volume.

Then I'll finish it off with just three sets of seated dumbbell high rep shoulder pressing. That's all I do for shoulders during the course of my growth. You're doing three rep overhead presses. That's heavy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm actually five pounds away from 225. That's going to be a hell of an Instagram video when I can have 245s on and I end up on each side and I end up, you know, overhead pressing and locking it out too at 6'6".

But, you know, that's just one of those things. That's kind of the thing I want to do. But at the end of the day, you know, you have to really, you know, manage your fatigue. Absolutely. And that's a matter of learning your body. I mean, there are good general guidelines that, uh, that you can find and there's, we can be guided by, by science. But in my experience, I just found some, I find some guys can run and I have to ask them like two times, like, okay, but you're not on any anabolics, right? You're not like, I don't care if you are, but just tell me, cause I'm not going to recommend, like, I wouldn't recommend you continue this if you're not, you know, I don't know why they would lie to me and say they're not. And I'll hear, I'll stay in touch with a lot of people and I've run into people. They can, I don't, it's just their body types. They can, they can deal with a ridiculous amount of intensity and volume. Uh, and then I, and then

other people, you know, can deal with a bit less than the average. So I think it's part of it is seeing how your body feels and looking for those, those overtraining, like the fatigue, your sleep starts getting bad, you don't want to be in the gym, you don't have energy kind of thing. Right, right. No, absolutely. And you have to monitor that. Most people don't know how to monitor it. And when you can figure that out, that's how you get the results. Yeah.

And what's your strategy for you? So you start feeling those types of things coming on. Like for me with how I train, I do a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of compound stuff. So for me, it's probably every, every eight to 10 weeks. That's about when I start feeling it. Sometimes six weeks if I'm in a calorie deficit. What are your, what are your favorite strategies for giving your body a break without just taking, I mean, you could just take a week off. That's an obvious thing. But I don't know. I always come

back weaker. I don't like doing that. Yeah. I'm toying with things, honestly, right now because I'm kind of severely overtrained. I'm actually getting a blood work done tomorrow just simply because I want to see what's going on. I'm not feeling tired. Everything's good, but I know I've been pushing the envelope really hard. So, um, generally what I find that I do, and it's, it's not the best advice, but I'll just go until I don't want to go and then I'll take a week off, you know, cause I, I legit, I'm one of those dudes. I just love being in the gym.

I know. Um, I like working out. I mean, I don't, I don't like the, I don't like sitting there for two hours, but, and that's going to be a lot of the listeners we like. We're not just there because it makes us look good. We actually enjoy it. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, that's just one of those things where, you know. Have you tried deloading versus just that to me, I find to be the most optimal thing, you know, where every five or six weeks, I'll just go in the gym for about two workouts a week and I'll do two full body sessions. That's how I deload. I know there's millions of ways that you can deload, but that's how I found to be beneficial for myself where I don't take a week off. I go in, the reps are a little higher.

I'm not doing anything too intense, but still getting a good little pump and getting in and out. Yeah, me too. I like, I mean, I've tried different. I've tried like a push-pull legs deload, upper-lower deload, or full body. I find that like a three-day a week works well for me. Eight to ten rep range with about maybe 60% of one rep max. Same kind of concept where I'm just, I'm getting a pump, I'm moving my body around, but I'm not, I'm resisting the urge to load weight. Right, right. No, absolutely.

You know, and then that's what it really comes down to. Yeah, and anything, have you found anything like with supplementation or anything with diet that, any tips for improving recovery? Yeah, a few things. Well, the diet, obviously, you have to be point on with it. So what does that mean? You want to make sure you get enough starchy carbohydrates, but at the same time, you want to have enough healthy fats, Omega-3 fatty acids, you want to get your nuts in, Brazil nuts specifically for men for boosting testosterone and enabling testosterone production.

You want to make sure you have enough of that. Hydration is key. It's not a sexy thing and no one talks about it, but hydration is really key and guys don't focus on that enough. I talk about it. Yeah, well, you do. The guys that are at the top, we're talking about it. And it's just, you know, having enough hydration is so key. And, you know, electrolyte mixes are really good.

And just obviously drinking more water, right, which people don't do. Yeah, yeah. So that helps. What's your water intake? Like I follow the Institute of Medicine's recommendation, which comes to be about three-quarters of a gallon. But I'm in Florida, so I do about a gallon and a half a day because, you know, between my workouts and walking around outside, even it takes water out of you. Yeah, I do. I do about a gallon and a half, you know, every day, a minimum I'll do a gallon a day. I have a clean canteen bottle at

64 ounces, I believe. So, you know, I'll drink that. Hit them a few a day. Yeah. Yeah. I'll drink a few of those a day. So water hydration is important. And then you talk about supplements. I'm a huge fan of curcumin for reducing inflammation, for improving insulin sensitivity, a big omega-3 fatty acid fan, like I just said. Yeah. I like fish oil for that person. I like- I love it. Yeah. There's a product that I like. It has natural triglyceride, a lot of omega-3s per serving, which I like because the fish oils that I don't like are where you get – it's a gram of fat. So you're going to – obviously if you're – I take about five to six grams of omega-3s a day, which is the upper limit of what is recommended to take. Because I generally, when I'm – I don't know if you do the same thing, but I'm looking for some implementation. I want to get the most out of it that I can.

So I'm looking at, well, what's the most, there is a point where obviously it's diminishing returns. You don't just, so I knew the fish oil was real popular. I think it was like, was it like,

I don't know. It was, maybe it was months, six months ago or something where it was like this craze of taking ridiculous amounts of like 20 grams of Omega threes a day or something. And that's a bad idea. Right. But, uh, anywhere from probably two to two to five grams a day is the, is the general recommendation. Um, and you do, you do get that from nuts or do you do also, you do fish oil as well, or I do fish oil. I do about nine grams a day. Okay. But, but then obviously then that's not all like the omega-3s and that depends. That nine grams of fat is not then nine grams of omega-3s, right?

Correct, correct. So if you're talking omega-3s, it'll come out to probably five grams of omega-3. Yeah, that's what I do. Yeah. So I love that for recovery. I'm a huge fan of – believe it or not, I love coconut for those medium-chain triglycerides. Coconut's so good. It's so fatty though. There's so good. It's so fatty, though.

There's so much fat in it. You know what? It is, but I really watch my starchy carbohydrates enough so that the fat doesn't, I don't think, negatively impact me. I'll know tomorrow when I get the blood work done. No, it's not. If you're balancing it, as long as your carbs don't get too low, I guess. Yeah. I love that for recovery.

And then a big part of recovery is sleep, you know, and it's improving sleep quality. And I hate the term hacking. Everybody uses the term. I know. I hate the whole biohacking thing. I hate that, you know, because what the hell do you have to hack? What you're doing is improving.

You're optimizing. Don't think you're smart enough that you can hack the human metabolism. It's so complex. We can do little things to improve it. That's what we can do. Yeah, I get the marketing, but I hate the term. So sleep is important, right? It's not looking at technology about an hour before you go to bed.

It's covering cable boxes. It's covering the light on your TV in your room. I have blackout shades. I sleep with a cool mist humidifier. in your room. I have blackout shades. I sleep with a cool mist humidifier. I make my room as cold as possible, 67 to 69 degrees.

I've been showing them research for optimal testosterone production. The important part, you can do all that, but if you're not ramping your body down at night, and for guys like me and you, entrepreneurs that see the possibility, it's hard to do that because you're like, I've been sitting on my ass since 7 o'clock and I went to bed at 10. Let me try to fire off these few emails something like that you know or you're connecting with fans on twitter or instagram whatever it is that stuff isn't good

for recovery you have to get to a zen like state um so in that situation i love adrenal support products i love uh phosphatidylserine specifically just calming my body down at night. Yeah. Have you tried, let's see what else is out there. Obviously, there's melatonin. There's, I think, GABA. There's lemon balm. There's some other things that have some good research that can help as well. I don't know if you've ever tried any of them. I have tried GABA.

I didn't notice anything personally. I tried it for sleep. I noticed it the first time I took it. I love theanineine and theanine is an amino acid found in green tea but you know i take a theanine gabba magnesium pill um not every night but some nights um a magnesium itself people don't really factor in magnesium but magnesium is involved in over 350 different enzyme processes in the body um but one of the best things is sleep quality so i take a good quality magnesium glycinate

before I go to bed every night. That's the only sleep support thing I'll take every night. I don't believe in taking them frequently, but I'll take 500 or 600 milligrams of mag glycinate before I go to bed. And then I find it really boosts my recovery and it helps a lot. And I know if I'm still sore a few days after and I'm still taking that magnesium, then I know I've kind of hit an overtraining point. That's how I know when to pull back. Yeah, I've found that magnesium helps both with recovery and sleep as well. I don't do it every night, but sometimes I think of it, and I have a magnesium drink, and I'll drink it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. What are your thoughts on Spiralina? You know, I like it, but it's one of those things where, again, how many things are you going to use? Yeah, that's true. I like Spirulina. I like – there's a ton of stuff out there. I mean, I take a green tea pill.

I love that because green tea is the best thing in the world, right? Right. But there's only so much you can really take, especially when you're dealing with the general population. Yeah, it's true. And that's also one of the, like, just, I don't really plug my stuff much, but the multivitamin that I recently released called Triumph. And there are a lot of things that I liked. Like, for instance, I'm just pulling up the ingredients.

But, like, how many pills per day are you really going to be taking? Right. So there are things, and the idea was to like replace a lot of the things that you'd have to buy separately, even things like vitamin K, you know, vitamin D to get enough vitamin D.

Um, uh, here we go. Now, now, now it pulled up. So like aged garlic extract, a lot of benefits of that immune benefits.

yeah. He's garlic is great. It really is. Yeah. And, and acetylcysteine yep bacopa minieri ashwagandha which uh rhodiola which those things the those previous two help a lot with reducing stress levels and um i've found gotten a lot of good feedback from from people noticing more energy sleeping better relaxing better at night so that you do kind of run into that. There's a lot of things you could take, but how many pills are you going to do? Like have 30 bottles?

Like your entire cabinet is bottles? It becomes impractical. Yeah. No, no. At the end of the day, it's one of those things. And sometimes a lot of people want to do it. I mean, I take a lot of stuff. Yeah, I take a fair amount.

If I went through my supplement cabinet, just in the morning, I take a B-complex, a vitamin C, I take an adrenal support, I take a green tea, I take a curcumin, I take a multivitamin. I take a bunch of stuff and then I take it a few times during the day. But we're the exception, not the norm. Yeah. Yeah, and that was also kind of the reason why I wanted to try to put as much good stuff as I could into one product to eliminate CoQ10 and other things that people – yeah, there are benefits, but how many bottles are you really going to buy? What would you say are – for the average person, let's say, and I run into this. This is a question I get fairly often. Okay, so I want to – they don't want to spend a ton of money on supplements. Let's say it's a weightlifter or even if they're doing some athletics as well,

what are the few supplements that you would say are, if they're going to spend the money, this is where you should put it first? I don't include whey protein as a supplement. It's optional. If you want to do it, do it. Or if you don't want to eat food, you know what I mean? Right, right, right. BCAAs, I'm a big fan of branched chain amino acids during training. Let's talk about that for a second, actually. Sorry to interrupt. Because BCAAs are interesting. Now, you'll find that, are you talking about more for athletes that are really putting a lot of demands on their body?

that are really putting a lot of demands on their body? I'm talking about for anyone. I'm talking about for the housewife that's going and training at 10 o'clock in the afternoon. People don't get enough protein. And in that sense, it's hard to convince people to eat more. So BCAAs kind of give them that benefit, right? It gives them the ability to turn on muscle protein synthesis. It gives them intra-workout energy. It gives them a lot of the things that they would

get from protein that they may not necessarily get. Then also just for reduced muscle soreness as well, a lot of that stuff is very important as well in terms of BCAAs. It's just one of those things you have to get in your diet. Now, what if you're eating enough protein? Let's say you're eating a gram of protein per pound of body weight, which you don't need to be eating more than that. What are your thoughts? And let's say you're not going to train fasted. Some people just don't do well with fasted training. So you're going to have maybe 30 grams of protein and however many grams of carbs before training. In that case, then BCAs, Is, you're getting your three to five grams of leucine from the protein. Right. No, absolutely. In that situation,

the only time I would recommend BCAAs would be actually during your training. I would have you sip a little bit of it before you train, a little bit during your training because I have seen and my clients have seen a performance boost with that during their workout, reduced muscle soreness. In that situation, that would be the only time I would recommend it. But then again, you look at a lot of the protein science out there and you can even be meeting that one gram goal and your muscle protein synthesis could be spiked. But you can't have the same protein within two or three hours and expect that same spike. Studies show it just won't happen. But you can take a leucine supplement and get that spike again. So your muscle protein synthesis is always high.

That's another debate. Do you always want it high? That's a whole different course. But when you look at it from a myopic view, so a small view, it makes sense to have BCAAs, at least during training, if not maybe one other time between meals during hard workouts. Okay. Um, and I think also like I've seen some good research with, especially for someone that is, if you're an athlete and you're playing a lot of sports as well. So if you're doing your workouts and then you're going and having an hour, hour and a half, uh, practice session or whatever, uh, then definitely just having the leucine. I mean, really BCAs, in my opinion, are a little bit overrated because isoleucine and valine are, isoleucine is a very weaker version of leucine in terms of stimulating protein synthesis and valine, as far as we know, it does next to nothing.

For, you know, yeah, we get it in our food, but in terms of acute benefits, there doesn't seem to be any for valine. So we're talking about leucine there, but so if you're an athlete and you're going to go out there, would you agree that like, they're gonna go out there and push themselves for an hour and a half, a lot of cardio, a lot of, you know, pushing their body that then it would definitely be smart to just have like be drinking BCAs throughout that period to prevent muscle loss. Right. Absolutely. And I mean, the thing is you can debate the merits of isoleucine and valine until you're blue in the face. But the one thing that always comes out there is that you need a ratio of leucine to isoleucine to

valine. So there's a lot of companies that do like an 8-1-1 or a 10-1-1 leucine to isoleucine to valine. Your body operates and your body uses BCAAs in that 2-1-1 ratio. That's why it's science proven. That's why it's, it's science proven. That's why it's been around forever. There's an integral play in there in terms of cellular health that a lot of companies don't factor in. They're just like, Oh, people know leucine is great. So let me give them 10, one, one. And at the end of the day, you're just, people are wasting money. You know, they're pissing their money away in that sense. So what, and this is, this is a legit question for me. What about though? Like, cause I've,

I've had people ask me, are you going to call, am I going to cause an, uh, an imbalance, an amino acid imbalance by taking three grams of leucine before my training? I mean, how, how, no, how is that possible? You're eating 200 grams of protein a day. So you're getting on top of that little three grams of leucine, you're getting a ton of other amino acids. It's not like adding three grams of leucine is all of a sudden going to throw everything out of whack. And now you're screwed. You know what I mean? No, you're a hundred percent right. Okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, that was actually, I'm just asking you on that. That's my,

it just doesn't even seem to make sense that, because people have been trying to be sold by supplement companies saying, oh, well, don't just use leucine. You want to use RBCA because if you just use the leucine, you're going to cause an imbalance in your body. Like maybe if you, I don't think so. It doesn't hold up. Maybe if you drink a bag of leucine a day, it might be a problem. Yeah, it doesn't hold up. Okay, cool.

Any other supplementation type? You have BCAs and what else? What are your thoughts on making sure you get enough vitamin D or even fish oil? I'm a huge vitamin D fan. You look at a lot of the research and you're going to need your vitamin D at around 60 nanograms per deciliter to really kind of see a lot of the positive benefits. So that's why I love leucine. I'm sorry. That's why I love vitamin D around there. A lot of people will say you can get it from food, you can get it from being out of the sun, but you really can't. The only thing that can process vitamin D from the sun are plants. Now, humans can, but we process it at such a slow rate that if you're outside for 15 minutes, maybe 30 seconds of that, your body is getting the vitamin D.

I don't know why I keep saying leucine. We still have leucine on the mind. Yeah, so that's the issue there with vitamin D. I'm a big fan of vitamin D supplementation. Fish oil, like we talked about earlier, I love. I think some people – and I just put a video up on YouTube.com slash Jimmy Smith Training about this this morning, believe it or not. There are people that say you shouldn't have a lot of omega-3s.

And the reality of it is – Well, they have to quantify a lot. What's a lot? Right. Well, you have to quantify a lot. And the thing is, if you're having huge amounts, so people that live completely, you know, natural, all the eaters grass fed, all the eater wild caught salmon two or three times a week, they don't have any nut seeds. You know, they don't have a lot of vegetable oils, things like that. They don't even fry olive oil because it gets, you know, it burns itself up. You can do all of that and not need a lot of omega-3s.

Absolutely. But for the rest of us, the people that like to live, I'm going to go out to Outback tonight, and I'm going to have a hamburger. It's not going to be grass-fed. I choose to only eat grass-fed, but when I go out with family, I don't have a choice. And I'm going to have french fries, so I'm going to have some bad fats coming in. I choose to live so in that sense if i'm going to bump my omega-3 up by another one two or three grams i don't see a problem with that there's not really an issue with it um so the only issue is don't make your

supplement intake try to uh cover up your bad diet yeah but you know what if it's around it was just around halloween we're recording this i had some halloween candy you know i little bit, so I'm going to have to try to have that trade-off. But you're always battling that omega-3 to 6 ratio. You really are. Yeah, and that's really what you're talking about there is that there's the ratio where research has shown that Western diets are very high in omega-6s and very low in omega-3s just because of the nature of the foods we eat. So for you, the listener, that's the key is that you're balancing. And there are a lot of negative effects that that imbalance has. I mean, even it can cause depression and things that would be seen as mental disorders.

It's pretty wild. And by just fixing that alone, just by, like, if you, the listener, or if that's what's going on in your body, and if you were to just start supplementing with omega-3s, that research has shown that if that was – if that's what's going on, it's going to handle. So a lot of other things. So yeah, I agree. Omega-3s are big. now write about, yeah, vitamin D is, especially with Dr. Michael Hollick, all the research that he's, I mean, he's really been the pioneer, um, that we know now that, you know, what used to be considered enough vitamin D in your blood, D3 is now basically deficient. Uh, and what is now,

you know, like you said, it's, I think, I think Hollick says somewhere between 60 to 80 is like what he likes to see. Right. Right. And, and so, yeah, if you're going to go out in the sun, what you'd have to be like in the Florida sun in the middle of the summer, 30 minutes, full naked, maybe you'll get it. Maybe you'll be somewhere you need to be, but who has time to do that? Right. Right. Absolutely.

No, you're 100% correct. Cool. Um, all right, great. So are there any other just general kind of like, you know, we could say training or diet, maybe the big type of mistakes that you see people making, any like key takeaways you want to kind of impress upon the listeners before we wrap up? You know what key takeaways? We kind of touched on the issues people have, you know, not sleeping enough, not recovering enough.

But a key takeaway is to always push your training and always try to get more out of it. And don't, you know, there is no limit to the human performance you can achieve to a large degree. So keep pushing for it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, learning your body along the way, that's what I always try to tell people that don't, don't necessarily compare yourself, like watch out for what you see on the internet in terms of people's physiques, in terms of people's performance, because a lot of people are on drugs and everyone's, everyone's going to say they're not so don't ever believe any of that right and you you have to learn your body and and listen to it and in a sense i mean you know auto regulation is real hot right now but i don't know very many people i don't know if you've run into this where yeah if you've been

training for a long time and you really know your body well you could probably auto regulate to some degree meaning and for the listener meaning where like you come into the gym and you kind of do based on how your body's feeling. But for me even, have you run into much of that? It just seems like, how do you, are you just being lazy today or are you auto-regulating? You know what I mean? Yeah. That's one of those things where people, it's just, they add more bullshit to it. I get heart rate variability. I totally believe in that science in that science but i mean there's good research on that there's great research on it and there's people that use it but i work with a lot of high level athletes that don't use it that a lot of it is if they feel shitty if they're not sleeping if they don't have

libido yada yada yada then they slow down you know and i think that's almost better to self-regulate i agree just it keeps it simpler yeah okay awesome well so where can people find you and your work and what do you got going on right now oh well i kind of have a lot going on people can head to physiqueformuladiet.com and that's kind of my hub my home page online where all my youtube videos are there my podcasts are there uh you guys go to itunes and it's the Physique Formula podcast. I do it a little different there. I jump one big interview a week and then a few smaller shows. They can just check out physiqueformuladiet.com. Everything's there. Okay, awesome. You also have that and then you have a line of workout supplements as well. I do. Physique Formula supplements, it's 100%

all natural, no artificial sweeteners, good quality products. Again, you can get all that information at physiqueformuladiet.com. Okay, awesome. Great. And I'll link everything on the post, I'm also sure you can see. Awesome. Well, I enjoyed it, Mike. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks a lot. I think this was great. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll

also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week and you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right, thanks again. Bye.