Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Kyle Hunt on Bodybuilding for Beginners, Practical Training and Diet Advice, and More

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

If you’re new to working out or weightlifting in general, the world of bodybuilding can be intimidating, confusing, and contradictory. Maybe you’re getting mixed signals about how much muscle you can gain or how lean you can get. Maybe you’re struggling with the terminology of sets, reps, mesocycles, cutting, bulking, and so forth. Maybe you’re unsure of exactly what you should be doing in your workouts. Well, today’s guest, Kyle Hunt, addresses all of these things and more in his new book, Bodybuilding for Beginners, and I invited him onto the show to discuss some of the key takeaways from his book. In other words, Kyle shares a “bodybuilding 101” crash course that will help newbies get up to speed faster and remind more experienced lifters of the fundamentals that never change. We also touch on a few other topics including fitness quackery and credibility, exercise science degrees, evaluating scientific studies, and more. If any of that strikes your fancy, hit that play button! 32:43 - What is the book Bodybuilding for Beginners about? 35:27 - What are some practical tips for nutrition? 38:02 - What are some tips to sticking to a diet? 44:01 - What does the training program look like in Bodybuilding for Beginners? 45:05 - Are there options for different types of strength building in Bodybuilding for Beginners? Mentioned on The Show: Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ Kyle’s website: https://www.kylehuntfitness.com/ Kyle’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/huntfitness/?hl=en Kyle’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0oaevqIdo0CrYGIUJqjtRQ Bodybuilding for Beginners by Kyle Hunt: https://www.amazon.com/Bodybuilding-Beginners-12-Week-Program-Muscle/dp/1641523611 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.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime,

like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E, and sign up for your account. Welcome, lovely listener, to another episode of Muscle for Life. I'm Mike, of course, and if you are new to working out or weightlifting in general, the world of bodybuilding can be quite intimidating. It can be confusing. It can be contradictory. You know, maybe you are getting mixed signals about how much muscle you

can gain or how lean you can get. Maybe you are struggling with the terminology, sets, reps, mesocycles, macro cycles, micro cycles, cutting, bulking, and so forth. Maybe you're just unsure of exactly what you should be doing in your workouts. Well, today's guest, Kyle Hunt, addresses all of those things and much more in his new book that just recently came out called Bodybuilding for Beginners. And I invited Kyle onto the show to discuss these things. And I know I've talked about many of these topics before, but I thought it would be helpful to some people to review the fundamentals of bodybuilding and to others who have not gone through that beginner's rite of passage to give them a good overview of the most important aspects of the game of getting

jacked. In other words, Kyle shares a bodybuilding 101 crash course that is going to help newbies get up to speed faster and help remind even the more experienced lifters among us of the fundamentals that never change the major levers and buttons that we can pull and push to keep getting bigger and stronger and just because you know how i love my tangents kyle and i also discuss a few other things like fitness quackery and credibility, exercise science degrees, evaluating scientific research, and more. All right. Well, I hope I have whetted your appetite for today's interview. Here it is. Hey, Kyle. Welcome to my podcast, my friend. Mike, it's awesome to have you on here or have me on here.

Yeah. Well, just to give people context. So, Kyle had me on his show first, and then now I'm reciprocating. So... Yeah. We've done, what, two episodes on my show? That's right. It has been two, actually. I just remembered the last one, but yeah. And I'm obviously thankful for... It's strangely hard to get on other people's podcasts, at least for me. Have you experienced that at all? You know, I have. But what's wild is I think if you really want to be on the podcast circuit, and you've probably seen this recently within like the last year, I've been doing my podcast

for three years now, but within the last year, it seems like there's like PR agencies that people hire to get themselves on podcasts. Because I get hit up maybe once a week by these agencies saying, hey, I'm representing so-and-so, here's their bio. Would you be interested in having them on the show? And most of the time, I'm like, no, I've never heard of this person. But it's kind of giving me the idea that, okay, now I see why everyone's on the podcast or certain people are. Yeah. I mean, I get those emails often and often they're people I haven't heard of who don't have followings. And also see, I don't really

care too much about that. If I see potential for an interesting conversation or to talk about something that hasn't been discussed ad nauseum already, oftentimes the people these agencies are representing don't check any of those boxes. They're just kind of random people with no followings that don't seem to really have any deep expertise or anything all that interesting to say. And so it's usually a no. And the guests that I do get are almost always me reaching out to people, which is fine. People who run other podcasts, particularly resistant to having me on. I don't know. Is it just me? It could be. I don't know. But I've heard the same thing from other people though. Even in instances where my podcast is actually much bigger than theirs. And I don't even bring that up to try to flex or weird flex, bro.

Strange flex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. But trying to say, hey, so... And if it's an interview that maybe if we go in some different directions that my listeners haven't heard over and over, I could publish the audio on mine as well. Mine averages about 500,000 plays a month when you factor in YouTube as well. So it'd be good exposure for you. Like this could be a win-win. Still, I find it strangely hard to get people to want to have me on their podcast. So whenever someone who has a popular podcast comes along and has me, I'm particularly appreciative. Yeah, no, I get it. I think maybe, I don't know, maybe they feel like you'd kind of steal their audience. I know there's that idea in some

people's head. I've never had that. Me personally, I've always thought of it as like, hey, I just want to have people on who I want to have a conversation with. I don't really think of it any more than that. Yeah, no, that's completely silly. This is not a zero sum game. It's like, hey, I just want to have people on who I want to have a conversation with. I don't really think of it any more than that. Yeah, no, that's completely silly. This is not a zero-sum game. People listen to podcasts widely. I consider books the same thing, which is I want to talk about that first with you because you just released a book. But I'm happy to promote fitness books.

I mean, I find, unfortunately, a lot of the health and fitness books that at least a lot of new ones that come out, I don't really like. And so I don't promote very many of them. But if there is one that comes out that's good and somebody who has good information, someone like you, for example, I'm happy to tell people about it because, again, it's not a zero-sum game. People read widely. I don't even want people to only read my stuff.

I want them to read other things. I just would prefer they read other things that are good and not waste their time with quackery, which there is so much in our space. You can't go more than three clicks deep into the health and fitness book space on Amazon without running into something completely ridiculous. Well, that's just it. I mean, there's so much quackery in this industry that when you find somebody who has the same ideas that you do, I mean, that's why I like to have those type

of conversations to put those people on my platform and kind of help spread the good word because it's hard to sell the type of, I know we talked about this on my podcast, but it's hard to sell the type of information that we sell because it's not as flashy and it's not filled with bullshit. It's kind of a unique angle because we're selling the truth where the truth is hard to sell. Yeah. It's just kind of unpalatable, right? I mean, you can only make energy balance and mechanical tension and progressive overload and compound exercises and volume can make it so sexy. It only has so much sizzle before you just start to become the quack. So that's very true.

And for me, it's not even about finding people who necessarily have the same ideas. It's just people who know what they're talking about. They might have a very different idea. And sometimes that actually happens, even for me, where I come into a discussion. Maybe it's just an assumption that I know is an assumption that I haven't really looked into. Like I had a discussion with Andy Galpin recently, which unfortunately the audio was all garbled, so we're going to redo it. But it was about muscle fiber types. And I let him know early on, right in the beginning of the interview, I was like, you know, this is something I haven't looked very much into.

I've looked into a little bit of research and a bit too technical to have much of an opinion on. And it's something I know that it's not very important in the scheme of getting jacked. It's interesting, but you could not even know that there are different types of muscle fibers and you can get into great shape and do everything you want to do. And as I really serve, my crowd really is everyday normal people who want to get into great shape. They don't have though a tremendous amount of time or energy to dedicate to fitness, whether it's educating themselves or doing it. And I understand I'm in a similar boat, similar ish, just given that I'm busy. So I'm in the gym five or six hours a week, and I do study regularly as a part of my job,

but I have a lot of other things. I don't have hours a day to just like peruse random things and just take on hobby kind of learning projects at this point, because, you know, my routine that includes recording podcasts, writing articles, writing books, running businesses, it's maybe on average 50 to 60 hours a week that I need just to get that stuff done. So in that way, I can relate to the people I'm attracting the most. And for those people, something like muscle fiber types, I don't know, it's just something I never really looked much into. And so I had a couple of things where I was

like, this is what I've heard. And I wouldn't say I even assume it's true, but I don't know. This is what I've heard, or this is what the research I looked into seemed to suggest. And he was like, oh, no, no, that's not correct at all. You're completely wrong. Let me explain to you how this works, actually. And I was like, well, cool, actually, I get to learn something. So that's neat. But yeah, so I'm cool with that if people have different ideas. But then there are certain things, which I know this is what you're referring to. Like, for example, you take the fundamentals. Somebody says they want to come on the show and argue with me that energy balance is an antiquated model and it doesn't actually work. We need to move beyond that and really look at the quality of calories and hormones and blah, blah, blah. That I'm not

interested in. I'm like, no, you're wrong, actually. You're just wrong and I'm not going to waste my time. I'm sorry. Yeah. I mean, I'm all for having people on and trying to learn from everybody, even if they have crazy ideas. Cause I think once you have a really good understanding of the fundamentals, the basics and the science behind it, and you have a really strong understanding, you can take in information. You have that built in bullshit detector. So you can take information that might not be that good, run it through your filter, and then maybe you only pick out one little detail. Okay, well, that's something I'll use.

90% of it was bullshit. 10% I'll use. But see, most people don't have that built-in bullshit detector. So when they get 90% of that's bullshit, they want to jump ship from what they're currently doing. It's something that I feel like if I look back on just my experience in schooling and educating myself in various fields, I feel like I've always been pretty good at it. And I don't have any particular thing I can attribute that to, but I do understand how it can be hard, especially if, for example, many people, I mean, just humans in general, right? We are wired to defer to authority, right? And some of that might be biological.

Some of it is certainly social programming. But so that alone can mix people up where just because someone's an MD or they have some other fancy acronyms after their name, they're automatically given not just the benefit of the doubt, but they're automatically just given a pass. The assumption is this person knows what they're talking about and would not lie to me, would not want to teach me things that aren't true. And that is a dangerous way to live life. And that extends beyond just health. Again, if someone's modus operandi is just look to authority and do and take authority, take authoritative information at face value and follow it precisely, they're probably not going to have very fruitful life. Things are not going to go well for them.

Especially in this day and age, fake news and abundance of information. You know, I get this question. I'm sure you get it a lot, but they're like, Kyle, how can I know who to trust? You know, you probably get that question a lot too. And what are your thoughts on that? Because like credentials are good. I mean, of course, it's not that I completely neglect credentials myself when I'm trying to decide is somebody credible, but you have to go deeper than that. Yeah. Well, speaking on the muscle fiber typing, so I went the traditional route of getting an exercise science degree and we spend so much time on stuff that's just not practical

at all. So even somebody with an exercise science degree, you see from a business sense, like, oh, they have a degree in this. They must know what they're talking about. Well, still, that doesn't really mean that they know how to train you. They don't know the best methods of building muscle, losing fat, you know, et cetera. So, it's tough because you really can't just- I mean, that's a key point that you can have that degree and not actually be able to produce practical results. There's a disconnect there that you can have that degree and not actually be able to produce practical results. There's a disconnect there that should not be there, right? And I'm not saying you personally, obviously, again, you know how to get results. And the fact that you know how to get

results though, is not dependent on the degree that you have. And the fact that you can have people who get the degree that mostly comes down to then if we're talking about, if it's not something that I think of, actually, I'm not sure. I think of like computer science, for example, can you get a computer science degree without creating a program that works at least? Probably not. I don't know. If you can, then that also seems stupid. But so then what it comes down to is can somebody memorize enough stuff to get a degree, it shows that I guess they have some dedication and they have some discipline and they're probably, maybe they're at least average IQ or slightly above average, but you can't really infer much more than that if the degree is of

that nature. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, in four years of an exercise science degree, I think we talked about programming in one course in four years. And it was the most elementary programming ever. I mean, which is fine. I mean, you know, this is what it is, but one course in four years. That's wild. Now it makes me think of doctors who spend what, six hours on nutrition or something. Because they have the MD behind their name. It's, you know, there's some type of authority. Yeah. Or if you have, oftentimes online, you have quote unquote doctors who are chiropractors. They don't come out right and say that. They might even have pictures of themselves with the stethoscope and trying to look like an MD and they want you to think they're an MD, but they're not.

Yeah. Nothing against chiropractors as a whole, but it seems like if there's one area of the medical field that would, I don't know, just get behind bullshit, it's chiropractors as a whole, but it seems like if there's one area of the medical field that would just get behind bullshit, it's chiropractors. It's strange, right? There is quite a bit of that. And I don't know, is it people who are drawn to chiropractic probably tend to be alternative minded? I would assume that they're generally looking for alternative solutions to things, which I think is totally fine. But going back to, we were talking about having an attuned bullshit detector. If you're going to do that, you better be very good at teasing out bullshit because that's where you really get into quack land. And to just take supplementation, for example, from the many chiropractors that I've seen,

both online and offline, supplementation is usually pretty popular among them. And in many cases, the supplements being promoted are not going to work in the way that they're being. And I think oftentimes the chiropractors themselves don't even know that, like, you know, they maybe have gotten trained. They've gone to trainings from the company who sells the supplements and it sounds scientific and they're referencing research. And if you don't look into it, you could go, Oh, this seems legitimate. But the problem is if you do look into it, then it all starts to fall apart. Yeah. It's interesting that you'll go to a chiropractor and then you'll see them selling supplements that have very little scientific data to support them.

And then you start thinking, okay, well, even chiropractic as a whole, I mean, how much scientific support does that have? I think it's questionable. Yeah. I haven't looked into it much. I mean, I had a chiropractor named Jordan Shallow, who's also a power lifter, super strong, super big dude, smart guy. Yeah. He has great information. Yeah. So, I had him on my podcast. We talked about this and his take made sense to me where he, basically there is validity to chiropractic methods that just need to be used correctly. They're not necessarily the end all be all or the fix all, but if used correctly, it's a useful tool for tuning up the body and improving performance and improving health. And he talked about some of the specifics of adjustments because I mean, I just had basic questions. I go to a chiropractor every few months just because I figure why not? I don't know. It feels good after, right? There's usually nothing particularly wrong or out structurally. And that's, I guess,

a testament to just taking good care of my body, exercising regularly, training smartly, not doing stupid shit in the gym, blah, blah, blah. And anyway, but I hadn't really looked into it very much. So I thought it was an interesting discussion. Anybody listening who wants to learn more about chiropractic from somebody who I think is credible and who has not just the knowledge and skillset, but has experience and a lot of experience in weightlifting and results. And he's also a strength coach at Stanford. He has to produce results. You don't get a job like that. And you don't keep a job like that unless you can keep those athletes firing on all cylinders. So if

anybody listening wants to check that out, just hit my podcast feed and search for Shallow. It'll be a bit back, so you might have to expand it out. But Jordan Shallow is his name. Yeah. I was just going to say that, you say that I'm sure it's like any other industry. You have people at the top level, very high level, and are super effective with it. And then, of course, you're going to have people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum too. Yeah, I have something else I haven't looked much into, but looked at some of the research on homeopathy.

And it seems like there's a similar argument to be made for that, where you have individual practitioners who are very knowledgeable and who can tailor homeopathic remedies to people and the exact issues they're having. There is some evidence to support that, but the random homeopathic junk that you would buy in Whole Foods is just that junk and there's no evidence to support any of it. Yeah, I haven't looked into that much. Another controversial health thing. Back to the point of credibility. So So how does that work for you? Like, for example, for me, and I, and I realized that this discussion, see originally just for people listening, I was thinking we would talk about power building, powerlifting and bodybuilding,

and we could still get into that, but I think this is an interesting discussion. So we may want to save that for another episode actually, and just keep on following this one. But so this point of credibility, one thing for me is if I see someone who is promoting something that is just blatant bullshit, like let's say I see someone promoting collagen protein, I immediately would discount everything they have to say. And even if that's quote unquote unfair or a little bit extreme, but the fact is, so let's say someone's saying it's going to make your skin and your hair and your nails prettier. No, it won't.

No, it will not. Collagen protein is actually trashed here. Protein as far as proteins go, at least for our purposes of why we eat protein every day, which is primarily to get essential amino acids, right? For me, that's automatically a turnoff. And I automatically assume that this person either is ignorant, like they just, they don't know what they're talking about, which means they don't look into things enough and they're willing to endorse things because you don't have to dig very deep in collagen protein to realize that it's shit. You just have to do a basic little bit of research.

Muscle fiber type is something that it actually does require a lot of time. That's why I never really went into it. To answer a question, for example, of can you really turn type one muscle fibers into type two with enough training? That's a technical question that if you're going to really answer that in an evidence based way and be able to explain the mechanisms and point to the evidence, it's going to take quite a bit of time and quite a bit of knowledge. And collagen protein, no. You really just have to do some basic reading on what this protein is comprised of, its amino acid profile, how it is digested. And that's about it actually. At that point, you realize you're like, oh, so this is essentially just like any other protein. The body processes it like any other protein. You do not have intact collagen molecules making their way

into your blood and then your joints and your skin and your hair and your nails. No, it just gets digested like any other protein. And okay, so that means it gets broken down into these constituent amino acids. What are those amino acids? What does that profile look like? Oh, it's really low in leucine and a couple other essential amino acids. It's high in a couple amino acids that we don't really care that much about and that you're not going to have any problem getting in your diet. Oh, okay. It's not really a good source of protein. That's the level of analysis that you have to reach. And so, if somebody hasn't done that and they're promoting collagen protein, what does that say? It's either, again, either they did do it and they're like, yeah, I don't care. I just want to make some

filthy lucre for my Lamborghini fund. Or they didn't know that and they don't really look into things then. Or they did look into it and they completely misunderstood it. In which, in each of those cases, then why do I want to be listening to, why do I care what this person has to say? No, I feel the same way. It's tough because, I mean, I know of people who actually have good information, but like you said, either they're not looking into things deep enough or they're just looking to make a quick buck. And either of those, I mean, that's a way for me to discredit them, but you'll see it

because let's say someone's an online coach and maybe they're even a pretty good online coach, but you see them constantly promoting stuff that has very little scientific benefit or really just bullshit stuff to their followers. And you're like, well, man, okay, you're trying to make a little bit of money off from affiliate codes, but you're promoting stuff that is not effective, has been shown to be not effective. So from my standpoint, which I'm sure a lot of other people who are semi-educated in fitness and training would assume, okay, well, if you're willing to promote that to make a little bit of money, well, then obviously you don't feel very strongly about your information because if

you have a very high standard for your information, you're not willing to risk it off from making a couple bucks off of an affiliate code that is promoting something that if you knew a lot about whatever it was, you'd know was not effective. Yeah. And you also can find something else to promote. And I understand making money. I'm all for making money. I'm all for selling things. I'm all for monetizing your following and earning the permission to make money from your following, which you do through building goodwill, through producing good content or entertaining content, whatever it is that you do that people are following you for. I have no objections to the economic factors, but you don't have to shill bullshit. There are good things out there that you can

promote. Take supplements. Of course, I'm going to be biased and I'm going to say you could promote my stuff, which is sure I'm going to say it's good. But if anybody goes and looks into, just look at any of the sales pages for any of our products and look at how much education is there. I'm actually going through and updating them, which I'm excited about because I'm able to clean up a lot of things and I think do an even better job selling the products and helping people understand what's in these products, why, and referencing research. And my point is it's easy for someone to stand behind my stuff because they can point to real research, good research that says, hey, here's why his joint supplement contains this type 2 collagen,

this undenatured type 2 collagen, which is different than collagen protein. And those things usually get conflated, collagen protein. And oftentimes what I've seen is people will share research on type 2 collagen and say that it applies to collagen protein. Not true. Those are very different things. Like type 2 collagen does make it through digestion. It doesn't get broken down into amino acids. It's a different thing. Take supplements or there are other companies out there that do a good job as well. You don't have to promote the shady company that sells testosterone boosters, completely overblown and overhyped fat burners, BCAAs, and collagen protein, you can find companies that have more integrity or at least are willing to do the work to create stuff that is actually evidence-based and is

likely to work for most people. And of course, supplements being natural, some people don't respond. Some people don't respond to creatine, but we're trying to create things that most people are going to get benefits from and create things that we can point to a large body of evidence for support. That would apply to whatever it is that you want to promote, right? Yeah, and that's just it, too, the large evidence of support here. Because another thing I get asked about a lot is like, oh, well, you can find a research study to support anything. So how do you really know? you can find a research study to support anything. So how do you really know? Well,

when someone says that, I always am like, okay, yeah, you can find one individual research study that supports a wide range of outcomes. But the strength of evidence, you know, something like creatine, yeah, not everybody is going to respond to creatine, but there's an overwhelming strength of evidence that it is effective. And that's, you know, something I always look for as well. Yeah. Yeah. I have a book that is going to be next year is when I'll be rolling it out. Ironically, the manuscript is almost done, but I want to finish this project in the middle of first before I really get it fully done. And it's on understanding, it's just scientific research in general, but obviously it's mostly through the lens of exercise and nutrition research. And I worked on it with James Krieger and I'm excited to get it out. I don't expect it

to be a tremendous bestseller, but it does a very good job explaining the fundamentals to anyone who's interested in being able to look into research themselves and at least be able to, the book is where we give a checklist that helps. Okay, you have a study and you have the full paper, not just the abstract. You want to be able to go through it and have a pretty good understanding of what was done and what the results were, if it was a well-designed and well-executed study or not. You don't need to know that much. Like that, you can get enough information in one book to be able to do that. Are you going to be able to understand the nuances of the statistical methods used? No. For that, you have to go to... Well, these days,

you probably don't have to go to school. You can just do a lot of the stuff free online, but you're going to have to take high-level courses to understand really the world of statistics as they're applied to research because it gets very complex. But you can learn enough to be able to quickly understand, should this study, and even aside from the weight of the evidence, how much weight should I put on this individual study? I mean, even something as simple as, of course, many people don't know this, but just as something as simple as sample size, right? If a study had six people in it, that is not as robust as 60. And it goes over a lot of these things. So I'm looking forward to get that book out there just because I get a lot of

questions along those lines too. And it'll be the perfect, Hey, just read this and you will be in a really good place for, as far as a layman goes, you're going to know more about understanding research than probably anybody else that you know. Yeah. A hundred percent. And what's cool about the fitness industry right now is if you want to get access to information, like quality information, we have more availability to research right now than we've ever had before. So, I mean, more research is constantly being put out. So, it's there if you want to learn it. But the problem is, you know, a book like this, what it sounds like will be very valuable to people in the fitness industry, because I think most people, they don't really understand research.

You know? Yeah. And I understand it. It's a technical subject. You can't just pick up. I mean, you could pick up. There are reviews and meta-analyses out there that actually read pretty conversationally and you don't need to have much technical know-how. And, you know, there's not too much in the way of jargon.

And what is there, you can Google and you can kind of muddle your way through it and come to a decent understanding of what the authors wanted to communicate. But when you get into clinical trials and you get into more technical things, I understand it's very daunting and it might take if you were to apply the same approach going into it not knowing anything and thinking like, I'll just Google the things I don't understand and I'll work my way through it. Getting through one paper might take 30 hours because you're going to spend so much time online trying to at least get to enough of a conceptual understanding of something like p-value. Not that that's complicated, but okay, That's something, yeah, you got to go Google and you might, it might take, depending on how statistically and mathematically literate somebody is that might then lead them to other things. They have to now clarify, Oh, you know, yeah. What, what is this like, you know, standard deviation? What does that mean? Okay. And, and it might now hours might've gone by and they go, okay, I finally understand p-value. Let me get back to the one sentence that I, in this section, it was in the first sentence. And now let's go to the next sentence. Oh, what is this? And so I understand it's not easy to just grab a study and read through it and go, oh yeah, that makes sense to me. And at that point, they'll probably just say, I'll just read the abstract.

Yeah, exactly. Which you'd think would be okay. But oftentimes, as you know, but people listening don't know that oftentimes the abstract doesn't accurately represent the conclusions or the findings. Oftentimes, because it is just a summary, it's missing key points that might be relevant for like what you're looking for. For example, if something isn't statistically significant, but maybe it was close and the effect size was actually fairly significant, you would file that differently in your brain than something that is very statistically insignificant and the effect size is insignificant as well. In the former case, you might go, yeah, I know this is iffy.

I'm not sure if this really matters. But I feel like my understanding of these things makes me think it actually may matter if we did more research on this. And if the studies were designed a little bit differently, I feel like it might come out a bit differently. And the effect size is fairly significant. So I'm going to do it anyway, knowing that, say, it doesn me much money or time or say some training technique or some supplement or whatever, but being able to research like that requires a bit of training. It requires a bit of education

on it. Yeah. Cause there's a lot of details that just quite frankly, they don't fit in the abstract. Just quite frankly, they don't fit in the abstract. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Let's talk about your book that you just published. Yeah, let's start with like what it is

and what's in it, who it's for. I'd like to hear a bit about the experience too. Yeah, yeah. So the book is Bodybuilding for Beginners. And actually, I wrote this book, I think the way I came about this book was pretty similar to how you wrote your first book, was I wanted a book that I wish I had when I first started. And I recognize it's 2019, there's a lot of books like that. But in this day and age, I feel like they want two things. One, they want the information pretty much handed to them on a silver platter. Not everybody, but a lot of people. And two, they want to be able to take

what's in a book and be able to directly use it. So I wanted to make a book that's very, very practical. I spent a ton of time on each exercise. Take the squat, for example. You can read the three, four pages that are on the squat. And most likely, you'll probably still have questions, but you'll be able to go into the gym and know how to squat. So I spent a lot more time on things that I felt most beginner style books don't spend as much time on. Yep. Yeah. I did the same thing in my beginner books with diagrams, as opposed to you look in other books, other bodybuilding or weightlifting books. Sometimes you'll see a couple of paragraphs given to the squat with like three images, maybe even two images. That's fine if we're talking about maybe just a barbell on your back,

but you start to load that and you're going to want to know more. Yeah. You're going to run into problems too. So, okay, well, here's a problem. How do you address it? My hips are coming up early. What do I do? Things like that. I felt like we're in the gym and you're just beginning. Obviously the most important thing is being able to actually effectively do the workouts. I also provided a sample workout program to a 12 week plan, but I actually broke it down from exercise by exercise, because if you can't actually effectively do the exercises, what you're going to get out of the program is going to be drastically less. Yeah, absolutely. Do you go over nutrition stuff as well?

Yeah, I pretty much did a very basic run through of nutrition. I would have actually liked to make it longer, but actually one of the things that I found going through a publisher is I tend to write a lot more than I need to. So working with a publisher was nice to be like, I think we should take some away from here, maybe add some there. But for the most part, it was like, hey, I think we could take some away from here, maybe add some there. But for the most part, it was like, hey, I think we could get this done in less words. So that really pushed me to make

it as streamlined as possible, which is I think ideally what we wanted to do for a beginner book. I didn't want to make it extra wordy. I didn't want to make it any longer than it had to be. But nutritionally, I pretty much just covered the basics, energy balance, protein, carbs, fats, and some practical advice on how to be more consistent with your nutrition. What are some of those practical tips? Yeah, from a consistency standpoint, I'm like, look, pretty much anybody you talk to with nutrition is going to have a different idea of what quote unquote proper nutrition is. But at the end of the day, energy balance is what's most important. Very close second is protein intake. So, how do we be very, very consistent with that? Yeah, we can take a

flexible approach. But I think for people who, and this book has beginner in the title, if people have never done anything with their nutrition before and you tell them, okay, here, start tracking your macros, do this and that, that's not very flexible. It's flexible dieting to people who've been dieting, but it's not dieting to people who've been dieting, but it's not flexible for someone who's never been dieting. It can also just be unwieldy. It can be, and I understand, I remember in the beginning, it can be kind of awkward where when you're going from never even thinking about the calories that you're eating, let alone the macros to you just now you feel like you have to go from no idea how

to juggle to just say, just give me three balls. Like, okay, go juggle these now to somebody who is an experienced quote unquote, flexible dieter. It's all so simple. They just jump into Excel and you just throw some stuff together or you take some previous meal plan that you made and you just tweak it a little bit and off you go. Or maybe you track on the fly even. And again, because you're so familiar, you even kind of know the calories and macros of the foods that you're eating anyway. So tracking is almost just superfluous unless you're cutting and you need to be very strict with it. So oftentimes those people don't remember what it was like to be a true beginner, to learn about energy balance the first time and even maybe even be skeptical of it too, because these days it's trendy to say that again, energy balance, oh yeah, that's old

hat. We've now moved beyond that. You need to take a much more comprehensive look at the foods that you're eating, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Cause you don't know where they're coming from, what other information they've already consumed. So it was kind of tough too, especially when you want to streamline a book and not throw in as much detail as probably would be required to convince somebody. You almost have to just kind of streamline your argument to where it's like, okay, look, here's what's most important. Give them a couple of reasons why, and then show some practical ways to actually put it into practice. So like for nutrition, for example, it's like, okay, I'm going to teach you how to set your calories, but hey, we don't need to track.

We don't need to get crazy with it. Just have an idea where your calories are at. Have an idea of what protein in every meal. Be very consistent with that. And then how can we be practical about it? Well, for one, we got to go shopping. We have to make the food. We got to have the food available to us. So, just those little details like that I think are important because again, I wanted people to be able to take the book and then actually put it into practice very quickly. And are there other just tips for compliance in particular, being able to stick to a diet? Because that's obviously an issue that many people run into, particularly when they're cutting, but also oftentimes when they're lean bulking, if they're in a surplus where it kind of goes in the other direction, it gets a bit out of control and they end up

gaining fat too quickly. Do you go into that or do you not go into that much detail? Not too much detail in that. Really, I talked a lot about consistency and then consistency with meals too. It's like, okay, if we have a basic structure of what our meals should look like, and I'll provide a bunch of examples there in the book, just try to make every meal look similar to this. Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it. I mean, there's also just eating similar times every day makes it easier to stick to your diet because you just get into a habit, you get into a routine. And also, I seem to remember some research I read some time ago that also influences hunger as well. Your body just gets used to being fed at certain times. And so, it's going to be harder if you find hunger annoying and it increases the likelihood of overeating, which is almost everybody, then eating at different times, it just makes it harder to stick to your calories than eating at more or less the same times every day. And particularly if you are eating your, let's say, half of the week you eat at certain times and then half the week you eat at other times. So then

again, your body's natural appetite regulating mechanisms, they can't get fully behind you. If you standardize your eating times, you can get these things to work for you. I don't remember if there was research that indicated that eating at random times lowered adherence, but anecdotally speaking, just having worked with many people over the years, But anecdotally speaking, just having worked with many people over the years, I can say that that has definitely been an obstacle for people. And a solution has often been to standardize eating times and just even the meal compositions too. Like some people like eating breakfast. Great. So you're going to be eating around this time and it's going to be around this in terms of calories and macros.

What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. In practice, I found that to be true. I think that's probably one reason why people initially thought there was a correlation between meal timing and metabolic function. Because if you start eating small meals more frequently, so you're eating six times a day, seven times a day or something like that, you start to get hungry six or seven times a day. But there's not a correlation between hunger and your metabolic function. But it's easy to kind of see where that idea would come in your head. If you're getting hungry more frequently, if you go from

eating three standard meals a day and you're only hungry three times a day, and then you start eating six meals a day and you're like, holy cow, now I'm hungry all the time. Yeah. It's a reasonable hypothesis and that could be where that came from. And then of course, Yeah, it's a reasonable hypothesis and that could be where that came from. And then of course, it was looked into further. That's not the case. But if you like eating, I actually personally like eating every few hours. And I know there's also, not that I'm too concerned about this anymore because I'm really at the end of my genetic rope, so to speak. There's not much left for me to gain in, at least in terms of muscle. I could probably get a bit stronger. I was a bit strong years ago. I could probably get back to that, but not much more muscle for me to gain.

However, if there were, then I would care a little bit more about protein timing because there I think is enough evidence to support the recommendation of eating protein three to five servings a day. It's going to be better than one or two servings a day for the purposes of muscle building. Mechanistically, that makes sense. And then there's some research to indicate that. But that aside, I like eating smaller meals every couple hours, three hours or so, three or four hours. Because if I eat too large of a meal, I'll get a little bit lethargic, which is just natural. Even if it's not a high carb meal, it's just if I'm very full, I find that I'm not as mentally sharp as if I'm eating a lighter meal. And as I'm working all day, and a lot of my work requires thinking, whether it's recording a podcast or writing an article or working on a book or even just the other random things that I need to do, just business things, I just prefer how I feel with less food in me. And therefore, in that way, my compliance is

enhanced by eating more meals throughout the day. It probably wouldn't matter in terms of hunger if I were to switch to let's say three large meals, but I know that I wouldn't like the diet as much, which would reduce my likelihood of sticking to it. Yeah. And I'm the same way as you. I like to eat probably about five meals a day. I find that is best for my adherence too. When it comes to meal timing, that's pretty much the only question we need to ask. What works best for you? What can you stick to? Because there are people that'll say, I think that's maybe one selling point for intermittent fasting for some people. They'll be like, oh, I just feel mentally focused in the morning if I skip breakfast and don't eat

until lunch. I'm like, hey, if that works for your schedule and it allows you to adhere to your diet better, so be it. I mean, do it. Roll with that. It's not for me. But the argument of equally distributing protein throughout the day, yeah, there is evidence for that. But if you don't enjoy eating six times a day, five times a day, whatever, I would say, all right, well, let's not even worry about that. How can we get at the end of the day, the numbers we'd hit and be very consistent with that. And if that's intermittent fasting, that's six meals a day, really within that range, it's probably okay. Yeah, totally agree. That protein timing point

would be most relevant probably to a bodybuilder and a natural bodybuilder at that, who is trying to squeeze out every last ounce of muscle and strength gain, which comes so slowly as you get toward the end. And you really are trying to just gain every little edge that you can. But for your just average everyday person who's, let's say, currently out of shape and just wants to get into really good shape, they can absolutely do that with an IF approach where they're eating protein. Maybe it's just like you were saying, a lunch and a dinner. That's it. They don't even have a snack. They just have, it's a dude and he has 80 grams of protein for lunch and 80 grams for dinner. And however he gets the rest of his calories, whatever. But yeah, finding a meal timing that works for you is definitely the key. In the book, which by the way, let's tell everybody the title

just in case they're like, how do I find this book? Yeah, it's called Bodybuilding for Beginners. I can't remember. Did I say that in the beginning? I don't know. When I started talking about it or not, I can't remember. Yeah, I can't remember, but I just want to make sure people know. So, they have to wait until the very end. What's the training programming like?

You said you'd mentioned that it's pretty simple, but what's it like? Yeah, yeah. So, that was another thing I wanted to spend quite a bit of time on where I think a lot of books pretty much just throw out more like a list of exercises than anything. Just like, hey, here's a sample week. Here's what you do on day one, day two. For beginners, it works. We don't need really intricate programming from a beginner standpoint. But one of the things I wanted to do is just show how you can progress a training program. So there's three phases, phase one, phase two, and phase three. And I actually threw in, ironically enough, we're going to talk about power building here, which we didn't get into. I would probably classify it as more of a power building program just because I wanted it

to have a strength element to it. Just because people, when they're first starting, you tend to see strength improvements before muscle improvements. So it's almost like you're going to get an easy win by getting stronger. So I incorporated that as well. Yeah, that makes sense. So, what does that look like specifically? What kind of split? Do you give people options or you just say, here, do this? Yeah. So, actually, I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I'm like, man, should I do like a three-day full body? Should I do like a three-day push-pull leg, something like that? Ended up settling on a four day routine of just simple upper lower. And I threw in some ways to make it more variable. So, okay, I can't go four days a week. Here's what

you do if you can only go two days a week. And then I also threw in some ideas for people who, because I always get this question and specifically me when I first started, I was one of those people that like, okay, well, the program says four days, shit, I'm just going to do it six days. Or you know what I mean? So I threw in some stuff to say, okay, look, it's a four day routine. I know you might want to do more for certain people. Here's what you can do on the off days to not ruin your progress by just doing too much that's worthless. And for that, is it just more accessory stuff? Like you can train your arms a bit more, you could do some, maybe some more side raises, but I don't want you doing more squats and deadlifts until the next week. Yeah. For the most part, just like, Hey, look on, on off days, you can even do some stuff outside

of the gym. Like that's kind of what I pushed people to like, okay, look, try to just do something. If you want to be active, do something outside of the gym. Yeah. I mean, something I often recommend is walking. I think walking is highly underrated, especially if you walk semi-vigorously, you don't have to rush around like you're about to shit yourself. But if you are walking with a purpose, like you want to get somewhere, obviously it's low intensity cardio, but it is cardio. It gets you outside. If you combine that with some nature, then that also can just increase your feeling of well-being.

And you burn some calories, on average, probably 300 or 400 calories an hour, which is not nothing. And that way, you get to eat a bit more food. So, you know, it doesn't have to be anything super intense. No, I 100% agree. I actually talked about that in the book, too, where I didn't put any formal cardio into the program. But one of the things I talked about is I want everyone to, and I think this is a good idea just for anybody listening too, is start tracking your daily steps. I mean, we all have our phones on us all the time. So if you have an iPhone, look at the health app, it tracks your daily steps. And I know for myself, if I'm not actively trying to be more active and doing some walks throughout the day, I mean, I work in my office. So I sit down from writing,

recording podcasts, working with clients, like I'm at my desk most of the day. So I mean, I'll only get like 3,000 steps unless I'm actively trying to get more. And I mean, 3,000 steps is, I mean, it's sedentary. It's extremely sedentary. So one of the things I talked about in the book is like, look, if you start tracking your steps and making an effort to get 8,000, 10,000, which isn't crazy for people. I know people listening are probably like, look, if you start tracking your steps and making an effort to get 8,000, 10,000, which isn't crazy for people. I know people listening are probably like, oh, I do that by lunch if I work an active job. Yes, you may.

But people who work an office job definitely don't unless they're actively trying to walk more. Just getting 10,000 steps a day for someone who's sedentary is highly, highly underrated. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these days, I guess I'm not walking that much. I mean, I do little things like I take the stairs instead of the elevator and I do go outside around lunchtime to get some sun. So I'm not tracking steps.

But when I was in Florida and I had dogs at the time, now they both died, but I would walk them every day. That was just my daily guaranteed cardio was, I didn't track steps, but it was like a 20 minute walk. And then I would walk to work as well. Cause my condo in Florida was a few blocks from my office. So I'd walk there, walk home, walk my dogs. I enjoyed it. And also found that it definitely helped with staying lean. Like I noticed a little bit of a difference because again, calories do start to add up. And if it is three or 400 calories a day, that's pretty significant actually. And I was doing some additional cardio at the time as well. I was doing some biking,

but I found walking to be a nice low impact in an obvious sense on the joints, but also on the body. I didn't feel like it cut into my recovery at all. If I was cutting, I didn't feel like it added anything in the way of stress, even though it did help with calorie expenditure. So yeah, it's an easy thing to add to the routine. If you just sit down and carve out a slice of time of saying, okay, even if it's like, I'm going to go on a couple 15 minute walks or max 20 minute walks, it might be first thing in the morning.

It might be figuring out, are there spots in my daily routine where I could walk instead of driving, for example, like maybe lunch. If it's only a few blocks instead of driving, can I walk? One of the guys I was talking to in the gym I work out with, he doesn't have a car. He takes the Metro in and then walks like 12 minutes to the gym. He works upstairs in the same building and then walks back to the Metro. It works for him. I mean, it's not that he can afford a car. He just, he's a young dude and he likes that it helps him just get an extra walking. So, or if nothing else, it's just, you know, taking 15 minutes at lunch to go out for a walk and then maybe taking 15 minutes when you're home to go out for a walk. Yeah, it doesn't have to be anything crazy. I actually prefer people break it up into small chunks rather than saying, oh, I need to wait until the end of it. Almost like the same thing as when you're tracking macros. If you're tracking your steps, but you don't do anything all day long, and then you look at eight o'clock at night and you're like, oh shit, I've

only done 2000 steps. My goal is 8,000. Now you got to go on an hour walk or something like that doesn't make sense. It's not good for adherence long-term. So I actually think like, hey, just look at little breaks in your schedule when you can get 10 minutes of walking in, 15 minutes of walking in. You can do that two, three times a day. Like shit, there'd be a big difference. And I've actually noticed with clients, people who are in a specifically a fat loss phase, being sedentary just makes it so much harder than it has to be. It's very true because you can only cut your calories so far until you just start to feel like shit.

And I know there are theories on this like G flux, which doesn't really make sense to me, but there is something to be said for generally speaking, when you're cutting, if you can eat more calories, you can have the same deficit, but if you can just eat more calories, it's going to be easier. And you get there, of course, by burning more calories, you can have the same deficit, but if you can just eat more calories, it's going to be easier. And you get there, of course, by burning more calories. So to the point you just made, if you are in the gym lifting weights for 45 or 60 minutes, and that's it really for your, I mean, of course, you're going to be moving around a little bit more, but otherwise you're sedentary, that cut is going to be more difficult than if you do that and add in some form of cardio. And it could be something

as simple as walking. It could be some steady state. It could even be some hit there. I think there's a place for that as well, but by being more active, which then allows you to eat more food, I'm not saying, Oh, okay. So now you're just going to double your calorie deficit because you can no, no, no. Just maintain that. Let's just say it's anywhere from somewhere around 300, 400, maybe 500 calorie deficit daily, whatever that is for considering a person's body weight and where they're at, how lean they are, et cetera, et cetera. So it's maintaining the same calorie deficit, but it is much easier if you are more active. Yeah. And then you also have more calories to play with specifically women who have to, I mean, have less lean body mass, they have to diet on

less calories. Anytime you can make the same amount of progress while eating a few extra hundred calories, I mean, those are just a few extra hundred calories that you have to play with when you get to a point when you have to reduce calories later on in a diet. Yeah, that's true too. But for people who haven't experienced that though, it seems a bit random. Hey, the calorie deficit is the calorie deficit. And we're not talking about, oh, you get more hedonistic pleasure out of being able to eat more food. Yes, it is more pleasurable to eat more food when you're dieting for sure.

But no, there's a physiological difference. You are much more likely to struggle less with hunger and cravings, for example, if you do what we're talking about. If you burn quite a few calories every day from being active and maintain a sizable, you could say aggressive, but not reckless calorie deficit, that approach is whether you're a woman or not. Even if for women, yeah, I mean, if you don't do that, that means you're probably going to have to start your cut at BMR or maybe even below BMR. And there just is something to be said for keeping your calories above BMR for as long as possible, I think.

I can almost assume people are like, okay, well, so what they're talking about is cardio. Is like taking the stairs instead of the elevator cardio? Not really. It's just being more, yeah. Is walking a few blocks to get lunch instead of driving? You wouldn't exactly think of that as quote unquote cardio, but we're talking about just being active. Exactly.

I really wanted to emphasize that because I don't want to necessarily add another workout. If we can do it without it, and this is probably something I've changed my mind on over the last few years because before, I don't know, I just didn't really think of this as how effective it actually is. Just making a concerted effort to be more active can pretty much replace a solid chunk of cardio. I'm not saying you'll never have to do cardio, but it can replace a solid chunk of cardio. 100%. I think, I mean, just to give a specific prescription, for example, somebody wants to maximize fat loss, they could do probably no more than 40 to 60 minutes of HIIT per week and then otherwise do the things we're talking about. Just be active, get in a lot of steps every day. We're only talking about the equivalence of a couple miles or whatever, but that plus some HIIT cardio if you really want to maximize fat loss. And if you don't, and if you find it, it maybe gets in the way of recovery too much, or you just really don't like it, then fine. It could be a couple of steady state sessions of cardio per week. That plus of course, let's say it's three to five weightlifting

sessions per week is all you need to get as lean as you want to get. And speaking from personal experience to having done it myself a number of times, and then having worked with a lot of people who have gotten very lean. I mean, as a guy into the range of 6% to 7% body fat, a true 6% to 7% body fat, I mean, where you have ab veins. When you have ab veins, you're done. How much leaner do you really need to be, right? And for women, it's probably 13%, 14%, maybe 15% is where that's kind of the female equivalent of that. So, you can do that just doing exactly what we're talking about. Now, I wouldn't recommend trying to stay there because your life

is going to get pretty miserable. But if you want to do it for fun one time, just to see what it's like to be super lean, really, this is all you need. This plus patience and compliance. But then just beware that if you do that, that anything fatter than that is just going to be fat in your mind. So, you've been warned. The curse, the curse of having been shredded. Well, getting lean, I'm sure you've talked about this a lot on the show, but when you get lean, that period right afterwards is so critical, not only from a technical standpoint of like, okay, how do you handle that from a nutritional and training standpoint, but mentally, because like you just said, like once you get really lean, you can't maintain that. So, you're going to have to increase your body fat from that point.

But then as soon as you do, you gain a little bit of weight. Like you said, I'm fat now. Yeah, it is kind of a mindfuck. And it's something that I've experienced. I mean, each time I've dieted down to that level a few times for photo shoots mostly. Fortunately, I don't care that much about my body. I'm not an overly narcissistic person. I mean, I'm into working out, so there's some vanity. I can't deny that. But my identity is not entirely wrapped up with how much vascularity I have in my arms.

So that's still being said. So I'm a person who I think is maybe naturally resistant to that type of mental space. But of course, I've experienced it where it's really just the, I wish I were that lean. I wish I could stay that lean. I wish I didn't lose my ab veins. I like how that looks. Maybe even there's a certain level of getting more attention from other people. Again, I definitely don't go out of my way to get attention, but it's kind of hard to not notice

it if you are. You get a lot more attention in the gym, even just randomly walking around in a mall, for example. I'm not like I'm wearing super tight clothing or trying to show anything off, but when somebody is very lean and pretty jacked, it immediately just stands out. And so all those things, yeah, it makes it more desirable. It was a good lesson for me to learn that it really is not sustainable. And I would say from my experience, getting there was probably quite a bit easier than a lot of the people that I've worked with and just spoken with over the years for whatever reason.

When I cut, I don't run into much in the way of hunger or cravings. It's pretty straightforward. Physiologically, I have some sort of, I don't know, something going for me in that regard. Similarly, maintaining it wasn't, I feel like my experience was probably not as difficult as many other people that I've spoken with. It still was annoying. I still felt like I wasn't necessarily hungry, but I wasn't getting enough food. That was the feeling. The feeling was my body just wanted more food. My workouts weren't as good. My sleep wasn't as good. My sex drive wasn't as good. I noticed these things. And again, I was just like, is this really worth it? We're getting to the point of where it's actually just weird now where it's like, okay, I could have abs and it's part of my

job too, of course, to look fit. And so I can look perfectly fit, look great by anybody's standards and not have all these other issues. Or I can be a weird kind of neurotic narcissist and say, no, no, no, I need to have ab veins or bust. And so that's where I was like, all right, it's time to let go of this, you know? Yeah. I always put it like this. I want to be as lean as I can easily maintain and still maintain performance or even increase performance. So that's kind of my governance. Like, okay, I want to be lean. I think from an aesthetic standpoint, I just, you know, again, it's part of my job, want to be semi-lean, but I don't want to have to go through all those problems that you just said. So, it's like, okay, how can I maintain a certain level of conditioning, but still eat enough so

it's easy for me to maintain? I can kind of find that set point relatively easy. I don't need to diet, don't need to restrict calories, can eat at maintenance with no issues, performance is good. What is that for you? About 165 pounds. And approximate body fat percentage? Probably like between 10 and 12. Yeah, same thing for me. You have abs and you look good, but yeah, you don't have ab veins.

That's the point where, and that's something to keep in mind for people listening. When you see guys or even girls on Instagram, for example, who are straight shredded and who seem to not run into any of these problems. I mean, many people listening, they already know that that's drugs. That's how you do that. But it's unfortunate and it's funny. It's a joke, just a running joke in the office when we run across people on Instagram, usually fake now, and usually they're saying they're on drugs. Sometimes they just don't talk about it, but it's just drugs are such bullshit. It's just incredible what they let you do. It would require nothing different. You would change nothing in terms of your, it doesn't require more dedication or more discipline or more knowledge. You would be

doing exactly what you're doing. But with drugs, you would be like 6% year round and you would be 30% bigger to have twice the energy levels. Now your endocrine system would eventually pack up for good, but you know, until then you get to get a lot of likes on Instagram. Yeah. And I think that has created just the struggle that people have with expectations. Yeah, absolutely. Because let's face it, natural weightlifters, natural bodybuilders don't look anywhere near as impressive as people on drugs. It's not even close. Side by side, you put somebody on, I think of someone like Eric Helms, who, I mean, I know him personally, virtually, and I don't know him offline. I haven't known him for a very long time, but I do believe that he's natural. I do

believe that he hasn't used, at least there's no evidence that I'd see that he's used a bunch of steroids in the past. And if you look at his recent prep pictures, which are very impressive, and there was one picture in particular where it was kind of like a Frank Zane style picture. If you look at it on Instagram, it's obviously a smaller picture and the smaller picture gets the more shredded, the more jacked you look, right? So he looks very jacked there and very dry and very lean, obviously, and hard. There was an email that he sent out, which it just was a bigger version of that picture. And he still looked fantastic, but you lose a bit of that dry, hard, full, just muscle separations everywhere.

And again, I'm not saying that to knock Eric at all. He looked fantastic. I've never been in that good of shape. So that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that you look at it and you go, oh, he looks great, but he looks natural. And when people with guys on drugs, no, you're like, oh, he looks great. And that looks like a lot of drugs. It's impressive. In some cases, it goes too far. And then I find it's a look for sure. But there are plenty of people who are on enough drugs, just enough and the right.

And they balance everything. We were like, I got to say, it looks fucking impressive. No, 100%. What I was going to say was there was the famous study where they had three groups of people. Group A trained and took steroids, made the best progress. People who just took steroids made the second best progress. And then people who just trained, they made progress still, but made the least amount of progress in the three group setting, which obviously suggests you can just take steroids and still make progress without even training. So I think sometimes people don't even recognize that. I think it was the guys on test gained like six or seven pounds of muscle over the course of the study, which was like 11 or 12 weeks or something.

Yep. Just on test alone, like they did not train. And it wasn't even a super dose either. Yeah. So, you know, I agree on that point of expectations that it's just important to keep that in mind. And it's something that I'm sure even I keep it in mind myself when I'm looking. I mean, I don't spend much time on Instagram,

but I just keep that in mind that I look at everything that I'm doing and how disciplined I am with my diet and with my training. I think very good by anybody's standards, but I'll say, absolutely. I look like shit compared to some of the guys I could go pull up on Instagram right now. And maybe that's me being harsh on myself, but that's just me being honest. And I'm okay with that though, because I'm not willing to do what it takes to look like that. That is just drugs. There's no amount of training. There's no amount. I couldn't be more, as far as my diet goes, I couldn't be more disciplined with my diet. It's like micromanaged down to even the individual foods that I eat, because I want to get the extra

goodies that things like blueberries and garlic can provide, not just garlic, but raw garlic. And in my training, again, very disciplined, I put in the work. I could push myself probably a bit harder, which I'm actually going to be doing. I'm looking forward to because I've been working on an updated second edition of Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which is meant for intermediates. And so I'm changing the programming and I'm going to be doing it myself. I've done this kind of style of training in the past, but I'm doing it again. And it'll be whereas previously I was doing bigger, leaner, stronger. And that for me is a maintenance program. It's just not enough volume. I can make progress in a range where it kind of goes up and it goes down a little bit and goes up a little

and goes down a little bit, but it's just, it's simply not enough volume for me to progress. And also I find that auto-regulating can work well in the beginning. There's up to a point where I actually prefer just straight percentage of one rep max calculations, at least on the big lifts. I think auto-regulating on the bar and make it happen. I find that easier to accomplish than knowing that I could end this set a rep or two early. Well, I might tell myself that that was a rep or two shy of technical failure, but if I really would have pushed for it, I would have realized it was more like three or four reps shy of technical failure. You know what I mean? I could do that, but sure, that little bit of extra effort is not going to, no changes I could make. Diet supplementation training could get me anywhere near to what some of these guys are able to do with drugs. Yeah. And kind of going back to when I first

started, why I wanted to make a book geared towards someone in my situation when I first started the book, I wish I had. Because when I first started, a lot of the information I got was from drugged bodybuilders. And I was a hundred pound teenager reading content, magazines and books, whatever, from people who are on a lot of drugs and have been training for 20 years. Yeah. And who even look at like splits, for example, where for those guys just doing straight body part splits, where you're blasting your arms with like 20 hard sets per week, actually makes sense. And I mean, that's a whole nother discussion. I'm not against body part splits at all, but is that the best way for someone who's just stepping in the gym to start

training? No, of course not. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's something to be said for body part splits and how you distribute the volume. It's really, that's what we're talking about. But when you first walk into the gym, it's probably not the best idea. Yeah, of course. Well, hey, I mean, I think this has been a great conversation. So, I had, again, the reason why I'm like discombobulated when I'm listening, because I had, we were going to talk about, I had a little outline of like power building, power lifting and bodybuilding. And then we just went off on other tangents, which I thought was just as interesting. But I would like to Kyle, get you back on again to do that episode on power lifting and bodybuilding, because again, I haven't put anything out on it, but it is something that I get asked about and there's just interest about it. So I thought it would still make for a good discussion. Oh, for sure. That's right in my wheelhouse. But like we said, you know, sometimes it's really fun just to talk about random stuff and see what happens. I do that on my podcast a lot. I tend not to actually, I tend to go into

like, okay, this is what we're going to talk about. I don't know if that's maybe just a reflection of my personality or something. I'm not a very spontaneous person in general, I'll admit, but it can be fun. And this has been a fun episode. So for- Maybe I pushed into it. Outside of my comfort zone. That's the thing these days, right? You're supposed to stretch, you're supposed to live your fantasy and dream your vision. No, so where can people find you, your work? Again, you might want to tell them the title of the book, even though it's quite simple and memorable, but let's do the final tell people about your stuff part. Yeah. So you can pretty much find me anywhere. The website's kylehuntfitness.com,

Instagram, YouTube, all that. It's just Hunt Fitness. And then the book is Bodybuilding for Beginners, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, pretty much anywhere you can buy a book. It's available. Name is the big one, but Bodybuilding for Beginners. Cool, man. Well, thanks again for taking the time. And I look forward to getting you back on to do the power building episode. Definitely, man. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like A amazon itunes kobo and google play as

well as in select barnes noble stores again that's bigger leaner stronger for men thinner leaner stronger for women the shredded chef and the little black book of workout motivation oh and i should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audiobook books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash audible. That's L E G I O N athletics slash a U D I B L E and sign up for your account.