Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Cold Showers, Financial Freedom, Legion Energy Drink, My Favorite Cardio, and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. I am slightly congested at the time of recording this, hence the nasally voice. But thank you for joining me today for another Q&A episode where I answer questions that people ask me over on Instagram. So what I do is every week, usually Tuesday, Wednesday, I put up an Instagram story, getting questions, you know, with the little questions sticker, the ask me anything sticker. And then I go through all of the questions 24 hours later, and I choose usually 15 to 20 that are interesting to me or topical or things that many other people ask me about and that I haven't already beaten to death.

Starting point is 00:00:45 And I answer them briefly there on Instagram in my stories. And then I bring everything over here to the podcast so I can answer the questions in more depth. And so if you want to ask questions of me, follow me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness and just look for that story every Tuesday or Wednesday. Submit your questions. And I get way more than I could ever answer.

Starting point is 00:01:11 And so please don't take it personally if I don't answer yours. And even if you submit questions regularly, I do wish I could justify sitting there for four or five hours answering every single question. But I have gotten myself into too many other things. So I have about an hour to answer questions when I do it on Instagram, and that gives me enough time to find an answer about 15 to 20. And again, I'm looking for questions that are going to serve my audience first and foremost. Again, things that are

Starting point is 00:01:45 interesting, that are topical, things that I haven't already answered many, many times before. And so, yes, let's move on now to what I'm going to be talking about in today's episode. Well, I'm going to be answering questions on cold showers, on achieving financial freedom, on Legion and an energy drink. Is that going to happen on sodium intake? What's my recommendation on my favorite type of cardio and more? Also, how would you like a free meal planning tool that figures out your calories, your macros, even your micros, and then allows you to create 100% custom meal plans for cutting, lean gaining, or maintaining in under

Starting point is 00:02:34 five minutes. Well, all you got to do is go to buylegion.com slash meal plan, B-U-Y legion.com slash meal plan, and download the tool. And if I may say this tool really is fantastic. My team and I spent over six months on this thing, working with an Excel wizard and inferior versions of this are often sold for 50, 60, even a hundred dollars, or you have to download an app and pay every month or sign up for a weight loss service and pay every month, 10, 20, 40, 50, even $60 a month for what is essentially in this free tool. So if you are struggling to improve your body composition, if you are struggling to lose fat or gain muscle, the right meal plan can change everything.

Starting point is 00:03:32 Dieting can go from feeling like running in the sand in a sandstorm to riding a bike on a breezy day down a hill. So again, if you want my free meal planning tool, go to buylegion.com slash meal plan, buylegion.com slash meal plan, enter your email address and you will get instant access. All right. The first question comes from Adam Newby 86, and he asks thoughts on cold showers after workouts. The long story short is it's not going to help or hurt. It can feel nice. I like it more than taking a hot shower after training personally, because if I take a hot shower, then I keep sweating for like the next 30 minutes. But a cold shower will stop me from sweating. And that feels nice.

Starting point is 00:04:13 And if you want to learn more about my position on cold showers and why I'm saying they won't do much of anything one way or another, head over to legionathletics.com, search for cold shower, and you'll find an article that I wrote on cold showers. There was a time when for, I think, about two years straight, I took cold showers more or less every day. This is when I was living in Virginia, and I could actually take a cold shower. Now I'm in Florida, and the best I can do here is like a lukewarm shower because the water

Starting point is 00:04:46 never really gets cold. But in Virginia, it gets cold, especially in the winter. And so I talk about my experience with it in that article. And I talk about some of the research on cold exposure and why cold exposure can definitely benefit you in different ways, but cold showers almost certainly cannot. So again, to learn more about that, go over to legionathletics.com and search for cold shower. All right. Andre Eckhart asks, where do you see humanity 100 years in the future? So I put up a poll actually, because I was curious what my lovely followers thought. And the first option was idiocracy. That is very possible. If you don't know what that is, it's a movie. You should definitely watch it because it sums up a lot of where we are at and going at least here in the West. And 33%

Starting point is 00:05:46 of people said idiocracy. That is where humanity will be 100 years in the future. And option number two here was nuclear holocaust. Definitely a possibility. Unfortunately, 17% of people chose that. The third option is global techno communism. Shout out to Klaus Schwab and all of his minions. 29% of people chose that. And finally, we have golden age. 21% of people chose that. So more people expect us to be in a golden age than a nuclear holocaust, which I would like to believe is true, but I can't quite get there. I think it is a toss up, most likely between idiocracy and global techno communism with nuclear holocaust coming in third place and golden age coming in a distant fourth place. All right.

Starting point is 00:06:46 CJ Sawyeri asks, where did slash do you get all of your fitness knowledge? I've just been very consistent in my self-education for almost 15 years now. It's a lot like working out, right? You just keep showing up and you keep doing the work and eventually you get jacked. Learning, well, anything is more or less the same process. You just keep showing up and you keep studying and you keep applying and you keep reflecting on the results of your application and you allow that to inform the direction of your continued studying and application. And eventually, one day, you are really good at something. Daniev B7 asks, how does using wine slash beer

Starting point is 00:07:34 and cooking affect the calories if alcohol gets burned off? It's a good question. Well, the caloric content is reduced a little bit, but remember that alcohol is only a fraction of the liquid by volume of whatever you're using. And so calorically, it's probably fairly negligible compared to the carbs in the liquid. Of course, it depends on the drink, but that is often the case. And so personally, I wouldn't make any adjustment for it because in any case, it's just too small to matter. And if I am tracking my calories or planning my calories carefully, because let's say I'm cutting and I'm lean,

Starting point is 00:08:13 wanting to get really lean, and now I really have to pay attention, I'd rather just kind of err on the quote unquote safe side and accidentally eat maybe a little bit less than I intended, rather than a little bit more. Next question comes from Immortal More, and they ask, any chance of removing sunflower lethicin, because it's a seed oil, from your supplements, from Legion's supplements? Unfortunately, whey is really not nice to drink without an emulsifier. And that's what the sunflower lecithin is. But the good news is basically all of the seed oil hysteria is pseudo scientific nonsense. To learn more, head over to legionathletics.com, search for seed oil and check out the article that I wrote on the

Starting point is 00:09:01 topic. There's a lot of research cited in that article. And my position is that seed oils are not bad for you and you don't have to worry about your consumption of them. Now, of course, if you ate too much seed oil, it would be bad for you. But that's true of literally anything. If you drink too much water, you die. All right. J.C. JCD Arkea 77 asks, what are the steps to reach your financial freedom? Well, this has changed for me over the years. When I started in the fitness industry about 10 years ago, I started with publishing a book called Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. I had a job at the time and I was making decent money, but I also had a fair amount of debt from just traveling and wasting money in my early twenties. My wife at the time, girlfriend,

Starting point is 00:09:53 she was my wife 10 years ago, but when I was doing all of the traveling, she was my girlfriend. She is from Germany. And so I used to go over there every several months or so we would just kind of alternate. She would come to the States. We did long distance for two and a half years. So she would come visit me here in the States. And then the next trip I would go visit her. And when I would go visit her, we would travel around Europe and waste money, stay in nice hotels and eat good food and do whatever we wanted. And so after all of that, I had about $50,000 in credit card debt that I had racked up over several years of doing that. I would get some money from my parents. They were willing to subsidize my traveling, I guess, to some degree, but I didn't ask for all of the money that I would

Starting point is 00:10:40 spend after these trips. So I might go on a trip and spend like 10 or 15 K and then be like, I can't ask my parents for 10 or 15 K for one trip. All right, I'll get like 5K or something and then just roll the rest over on the card. And then another trip and more money spent than I got for the trip, rinse and repeat until again, I was about $50,000 in debt. And so when I started out with bigger, leaner, stronger, and I had this other job, I was just working to get rid of credit card debt because consumer debt is just bad. There are no circumstances under which consumer debt is good, meaning using credit cards that you have to pay a lot of interest on to buy trinkets, to buy experiences, do it. If you can pay the cards off in full as a rule, I mean, you might be able to think of some reasonable exceptions, but as a rule, if you have the money

Starting point is 00:11:41 and you want to just put it on a card to get points, okay, I understand that. But spending more money than you have on a trip, on a trinket, and then just carrying that debt is just a bad idea. And so initially, financial freedom was no credit card debt and build up a little bit of an emergency fund, which I didn't have at the time. And I didn't really care what I had to do to accomplish that. Meaning there was a lot of work that I did in the beginning that I didn't particularly enjoy in and of itself, but I was happy to do it because it was contributing to this book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, that was starting to pick up. And that then led to the next book, which might've been The Shredded Chef or Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, I don't remember. And that led to the next. And eventually that led

Starting point is 00:12:38 to the Muscle for Life website, which led to Legion and so on. And so during that period, I had to do a lot of things again that I didn't inherently enjoy, but I was willing to do them because I really wanted to get out of debt and I wanted to put my finances in order. I wanted to increase my income. I wanted to be able to get married and support a family. And at that time, I got a lot of satisfaction out of how people were receiving my work, that people were reading my books and liking my books and using my books to get in better shape and liking my Muscle for Life website and my articles and using those to get in shape. And at some point, I think around the launch of Muscle for Life, maybe it was around the launch of Legion, I started this podcast. And so that was very satisfying. But the money was also very satisfying because I had money problems. And so that was then. And if I fast forward to today, things are very different financially. I don't talk about it very much because I don't care to, but I've sold over 2 million books. 90% of those sales are self-published, which means that I've

Starting point is 00:13:53 received somewhere between, let's say, $3 to $5 per book on average. Legion is going to finish up this year with about $35 million in sales. And next year, we are forecasting about $45 million in sales with a very healthy amount of profit. Not extravagant because it is very expensive to produce good products. In the supplement game, you cannot have great margins and great products. You can choose one or the other. If you want great margins, you are going to have mediocre or worse products. If you want great products, you are going to have mediocre or worse margins. But I've been able to create great products with healthy margins. Better than mediocre, mostly because I don't have to spend nearly as much on payroll on people and marketing as my

Starting point is 00:14:47 competitors. So those are primarily where I'm able to make up some margin. I pay everyone who works with me very well, but I don't have as many employees as some of my competitors that are at a similar size. And that's mostly because the employees that I do have are really good. I don't need to have as many employees because I've been fairly picky with my hiring. So all of that is to say that I no longer have any financial problems. I don't have any consumer debt, of course, and I'm more than able to pay my bills and cover my lifestyle, which is not very extravagant. And so now for me, what financial freedom means and what it really represents is earning enough money to spend as much of my time as I can doing stuff.

Starting point is 00:15:40 And not really all I do is work, but doing work that I like to do. And that's mostly creative work and, you know, like writing, recording podcasts. I also like marketing partly because it's a creative activity. And so I like to work on high impact marketing activities as opposed to lower impact, usually more routine kind of maintenance stuff, you know, where a system is already worked out and now somebody just has to kind of push the buttons and pull the levers in the right order every day. That gets boring, but I like to create those systems or figure out ways to improve those systems. And I also like to spend as little time as possible doing stuff, I also like to spend as little time as possible doing stuff, doing work that I don't like to do.

Starting point is 00:16:33 And unfortunately, that is a lot of the other things that entrepreneurship entails. That is something I have learned about myself. I don't love business in the same way that some of my very successful friends love business. They, for example, just get a visceral thrill from growing their business, making more revenue, making more profit, even though they don't personally need any more money. I mean, in some cases, they're very rich. They don't need another dollar, ten dollars, million dollars. In some cases, even ten million dollars makes no difference to them. They just love to figure out how to make their business bigger and leaner and stronger. And so I've learned that I don't have that same drive to just grow my business and to get a lot of satisfaction out of simply seeing my business or businesses,

Starting point is 00:17:22 I guess, because I have a publishing business and Legion, I don't derive much satisfaction merely from watching them grow. It's nice to win, of course, and I would much rather the businesses grow than shrink. But again, I've learned that what I find most fulfilling is creative work. And so financial freedom is the freedom to focus on the stuff that I like the most that of course helps people and helps my businesses and to delegate basically everything else. Okay. That was a long answer. Jenkin Williams asks house of dragon or rings of power. Is that house of dragon or house of Dragons? Plural. I don't know. Anyway, well, neither. Both were so bad that I actually didn't even finish the first episodes. Rings was worse, though. Plot, Mary Sue protagonist, goofy casting, absolutely cringe

Starting point is 00:18:21 dialogue, almost as if the writers were just trolling the little ship and stone metaphor, you know, stone sink because they look down and ships float because they look up to the stars. Ooh, deep, profound life altering. That's something to get tattooed on your forearm and look at every morning as you start your gratitude journaling. Anyway, I think basically everyone responsible for that show should just be fired, except for maybe the graphic designers. They did a good job. Those vistas they created were pretty stunning. All right. Josh Creighton 129 asks, how should a man find a decent woman in this messed up world? Well, I can't say for sure

Starting point is 00:19:06 because I have not been single since I was 17 years old. That's when I started dating now my wife. However, I'm pretty sure that step one has to be become the type of man decent woman wants. become the type of man decent woman wants. Now, I'm not saying that this is Josh Creighton 129, but I've always been amused by people who are always complaining about their dating else without realizing that they are the only common denominator of all of their dysfunctional relationships. It's very much like the people who simply refuse to accept that they are overweight only because they just eat too much food, that it's their lifestyle, not their genetics, not their environment, which can incline people toward obesity, toward overeating, under moving, but ultimately it comes down to

Starting point is 00:20:06 personal choices, comes down to living a certain way. MFS Wellness says, I train five to six days per week, avoid most highly processed foods. What is your sodium intake recommendation? I don't see anything wrong with the time proven standard recommendation of two to four grams of sodium per day that should be fine and i also recommend getting enough potassium many people don't know that potassium is very important as well and that they should be going for five to six grams of potassium per day most people don't get that much they get maybe about half that amount so pay attention to your potassium intake as well as your sodium intake. Microcuts0719 says, Legion energy drinks or we riot. Excuse me, sweetie. I think you mean peacefully protest bigot, but there will be no need for that because Legion is doing an energy drink. It is on the

Starting point is 00:21:06 anvil and the sample has been, the production sample has finally been improved. It took quite a bit of back and forth to get it to taste right because natural sweeteners and natural flavoring is a pain in the ass. Artificial stuff is much easier to work with, but we got there. And so next year, let's say Q1 to Q2, probably sometime between April and June, Legion's Energy Drink will be available. All right. Mopars USA asks, favorite car? I'm not much of a car person. Like I drive a Tesla Y, which I guess some people think is cool. I did not get it because I thought it was cool. I got it because I like Elon Musk and I don't drive much. I drive basically to the gym and home. And I liked the idea of just not having to go to

Starting point is 00:22:00 the gas station and it was relatively inexpensive. and that's about it. That's why I chose that car. Whereas my last car before that was a Mercedes S 63 AMG, and that was a much quote unquote cooler car. And it was very nice to drive and it was just a very nice car period, but I don't drive much. Again, I was driving that basically $200,000 car to the gym and then driving it home every day. And part of the reason why I got it in the first place is I kind of wanted to look cool. I cared more about that when I was younger. So before the Mercedes, I had a Porsche GTS, which was a fun car, but part of the reason, if not at least 50% of the reason why I got the car is I kind of wanted to look cool and be cool. And now as I've gotten older and

Starting point is 00:22:53 ironically, as I've made more money and gotten wealthier, I guess you could say, I really don't care about trying to look cool anymore. So I got rid of the Mercedes and I just went with something that to me is just a car. It gets me around and it's nice enough and that's good enough for me. Now, if I had more money than I even knew what to do with and I wanted to spend some of it on a car, I would go with something older. I genuinely like some of the old and unfortunately outrageously expensive collectible cars like the Aston Martins, Lamborghinis and Ferraris of the 1950s and 60s and 70s, for example. But even then, I'm not that much of a car person, so I might not get enough joy from driving it, from owning it to warrant the expense. Like it would look cool in my garage

Starting point is 00:23:45 and I would look at it and go, ooh, that's a really nice looking car, just as I would say if I were looking at it in a picture. But if I didn't get at least like a little bit giddy when I was driving it, I don't think I would spend the money. Nicole Mains asks, is popcorn a horrible snack? Absolutely not.

Starting point is 00:24:03 Ironically, popcorn is actually quite filling for the calories if you don't butter it up, making it a great snack. PWM3 asks, favorite type of cardio? Well, sports are my favorite, but I don't play sports these days. And therefore, basically all other forms of cardio are equally boring to me. Actually, that's not true. I hate running. I've never liked running for whatever reason. So that is my least favorite, but everything else is kind of just equally boring. So what I do is something that is kind of just practical.

Starting point is 00:24:38 So I have an upright bike. I hop on that. I grind out 30 minutes, usually five to seven days per week, although the last few weeks have been less than that just because I've been busy with other things. But usually five to seven days per week, I do 30 minutes on this upright bike. And then while I'm on the bike, I do something that I am going to also do anyway. So reading, for example, I read on my phone. Cool. I can just do that on the bike, making a personal or a work phone call that I need to make, or I'm going to make. Okay. I can just do that on the bike and I'm doing moderate intensity cardio. So wouldn't record a podcast

Starting point is 00:25:15 on the bike, but I can have a conversation. I'm just breathing a little bit. You can tell that I'm doing something, but it's not obnoxious to listen to. Or I will do my little Instagram Q&A, for example. I'll often be doing that on the bike. So that's just a good way to layer some cardio into my normal kind of work slash personal routine. And if I weren't doing that, I suppose I would get a rowing machine because rowing is no impact. I like that just like biking is no impact. So it doesn't cut into your recovery, particularly your recovery from your strength training. a whole body cardio workout. It burns a fair amount of calories and it feels nice. And if you have one of those machines that has a, it's like a circular container full of water. It also sounds nice. There's something soothing about it, right? Okay. Next question comes from the perfect man of, and then there's an ellipsis. So I'm not sure what the rest of the handle is, but they ask give hair routine. Here it is. I wash my hair with shampoo or sometimes soap if there is no shampoo handy.

Starting point is 00:26:32 And then I just kind of let it grow until I look homeless. And then I get a haircut and I rinse and repeat. Two bit three, three, three asks tips for reading on your phone for long periods without straining your eyes or neck. What I do is I just take a break at least every 30 minutes or so, and I get up and I get some water. I go to the bathroom. I just walk around, look around, and that is enough for me. And I have the last question here from Whoa, It's Manny. And they ask, I'm 18 and I want to start a business. How did you start? Well, my best advice, and this is how I started, is learning and practicing sales and marketing, getting good at sales and marketing and specifically getting good at communicating appealing offers, understanding how to create products and services that people want to buy. I think that that's actually the majority of effective marketing fundamentally is creating good offers. And so that means creating good products and services, but then also taking those products and services and offering them in a way that makes people want them.

Starting point is 00:27:46 And if you want to learn more about that, check out the book, The Irresistible Offer by Mark Joyner. There are probably other great books out there specifically on creating offers, but that one just popped into my mind. I read it many years ago and I remember liking it and using some of the information in it and finding it helpful. And so I recommend it. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just

Starting point is 00:28:36 feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Cold Showers, Financial Freedom, Legion Energy Drink, My Favorite Cardio, and More

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