Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Dealing With Failure, Workout Frequency, Steroid Usage, Balancing Sleep & Training, and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello there and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another Q&A episode where I answer, I have quite a few on this one. I think I have like 20 or 25 questions that I answer from people over on Instagram who have asked me questions in my stories. So what I do is once a week, I believe right now it's on Wednesdays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays, I put up a story of an image of me working out or a video of me working out or whatever with a little ask me a question sticker. And I then collect up a bunch of questions and I answer them there on Instagram in my stories. And then I bring everything over here to the podcast and answer them usually in more detail because I can do that here.

Starting point is 00:00:47 Whereas on Instagram, I'm limited to one slide of text. And so if you want to ask me questions, if you want to participate in my Q&A activity, follow me over on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, and then look for that story once a week, usually Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, something like that, and submit your questions. And I pick questions that are just interesting to me or that are topical or that I haven't already answered a million times before. So what are we getting into today? Well, I am answering questions on what I would do if I put a bunch of money into a project and it failed. How would I analyze what happened and how would I try to prevent that from happening again? I'm answering

Starting point is 00:01:31 questions about the new fourth editions of my Bigger, Leaner, Stronger and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger books that are in the process of coming out. Like for example, the ebook and audio book of the fourth edition of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger is already live, but the hard copy is not. And I explain why. And then TLS 4.0 is still in production, but all of my work is done on it. So we're getting there. We're getting there.

Starting point is 00:01:53 I talk about frequency, workout frequency as a newbie. Should you be going three days per week or five days per week as a newbie? And why? What about six days per week? Does that ever make sense? Like let's say an upper lower six day per week or a push pull leg six day per week as a newbie and why? What about six days per week? Does that ever make sense? Like, let's say an upper lower six day per week or a push pull leg six day per week. Who should be doing that and why? Talk about creatine. Is it okay to take it on your training weeks and then

Starting point is 00:02:18 maybe once every couple of months, just not take it for a week because you're not training, maybe you're deloading or maybe you're on, or is that going to reduce its efficacy, and more. Before we get started, how many calories should you eat to reach your fitness goals faster? What about your macros? What types of food should you eat, and how many meals should you eat every day? Well, I created a free 60-second diet quiz that'll answer those questions for you and others, including how much alcohol you should drink, whether you should eat more fatty fish to get enough omega-3 fatty acids, what supplements are worth taking and why, and more.

Starting point is 00:02:59 To take the quiz and get your free personalized diet plan, To take the quiz and get your free personalized diet plan, go to muscleforlife.show slash diet quiz, muscleforlife.show slash diet quiz now. Answer the questions and learn what you need to do in the kitchen to lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy. The first question and all of the questions will be coming from anonymous, unfortunately, The first question and all of the questions will be coming from anonymous, unfortunately, because this was during a period on Instagram when I wasn't able to easily capture screenshots of who was asking what. So let's get to the question. And it is, what would you do if all your money went into a project you worked on and failed. Well, I would get very interested in figuring out where I went wrong and particularly in the assumptions that I made about the project at

Starting point is 00:03:52 the outset that were clearly incorrect. And then the next time I'd figure out how to inexpensively test the assumptions before investing large amounts of time or money into them. That little bets approach, as some people refer to it, is extremely powerful. It's not very sexy. It's not as fun and as exciting as just going all in, pushing all of your chips into the middle. But it does allow you to take a lot of the risk out of risk taking. Some people will say that the number one factor that separates entrepreneurial type people from non-entrepreneurial type people is risk tolerance, that entrepreneurial people have a much higher risk tolerance than non-entrepreneurial people, and that entrepreneurial people generally take much bigger risks than non-entrepreneurial people. And there might be some truth in that. Entrepreneurs probably are a little bit

Starting point is 00:04:50 less risk averse than the average person, but I don't think that that is a major factor in determining whether somebody succeeds or not as an entrepreneur. Risk taking. In fact, or not as an entrepreneur, risk-taking. In fact, many successful entrepreneurs that I know and have known did not take major risks, especially not in the beginning. They didn't quit their day job to force themselves to make the side hustle work. No, they started the side hustle. They started it small in terms of investment of time and money. They often iterated on it on the side for some time. They made little bets until they found a bet that paid off. And then they followed that up with a slightly larger bet. And when that paid off, a slightly larger bet and so on and so on until the side hustle was clearly a bigger opportunity or even was providing

Starting point is 00:05:43 more income, was doing more for them than their day job. And for what it's worth, that's exactly what I did. That's how I approached my entrepreneurial activities. 10 years ago, I wrote a book called Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. I did it as a nights and weekends, little side project. I had a day job that paid me well, enough money to cover all of my expenses, a little bit more. I didn't have any real savings or investments at the time because I had credit card debt that I was paying down. But I was able to at least pay that down, chip away at that. And I was working on the side on this little book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger.

Starting point is 00:06:18 And I approached it as a minimum viable product to use a lean startup concept, or at least that's where I came across that concept initially, the book by Eric Ries, which I would recommend. And I didn't have any master plan. I wanted to put the book out there. I thought there was an opportunity. I thought there was a gap in the marketplace. It was a book that I wished somebody else would have written and just given to me many years ago. So I wrote it, published it, and that was the beginning of 2012. And then by the end of 2012, that book was selling quite well, several thousand copies per month. So I was now making probably about as much money just from that book, maybe even a little bit more money from that book than I was from my day job. And I had already published one or two other books.

Starting point is 00:07:04 I don't remember the exact sequence. The Shredded Chef might have come next or it might've been Thinner Leaner Stronger, but I had a few books now, which all together were producing more money than my day job. So Bigger Leaner Stronger alone, if I remember correctly, was producing about the same amount of money as I was getting from my day job. And then when you factored in the others, it was probably close to double, let's just say 70 to 100% of my day job salary I was making from my books. And I didn't quit my day job until I reached that point and had put together now a bit of a business plan of where I wanted to go with writing more books and starting a blog. There was an opportunity there. It was a lot easier at that time to rank on Google

Starting point is 00:07:51 with health and fitness content than it is now. So March of 2013 is when I launched muscleforlife.com and I was writing a couple of long form articles per week there. By the end of 2013, that website was getting about 700,000 visits a month. That is probably impossible to do now with Google. They are much less generous to new health and fitness content than they were back then. But again, good timing, there was an opportunity. So it wasn't until the beginning of 2013 that I went full time as an entrepreneur for that first year. It was just, again, it was nights and weekends, just extra blocks of time. I would work on my fitness stuff. And so in that way, I didn't take big risks. All

Starting point is 00:08:39 I risked was my time, my free time. I didn't even risk my job time, just my free time, which otherwise would have been given over to just pleasurable activities, reading books, hanging out with friends, doing stuff with my wife, playing golf, all fine activities. And those types of things should be included in one's life. But sometimes it makes sense to do very little of that stuff when you have an opportunity like I had. At least that's how I looked at it. And so I didn't risk very much. And if we fast forward now a little bit to, let's say we're now in 2013, muscleforlife.com is growing very quickly. And there was a section on that website called recommendations, which I actually am going to bring back maybe at Legion's website or maybe I need to create a separate website, just kind of like a Mike Matthews website for this that I want to bring back and some other stuff that isn't really Legion related.

Starting point is 00:09:35 It's just kind of personal things that I want to do and some people like. But anyways, this recommendation section of Muscle for Life, it just had stuff that I like. It was a lot of fitness stuff. Here are the squat shoes that I am wearing or that I'm using. Here's what I like about them. Here are the straps that I use. I've tried a lot of different straps and I've settled on these. Here's why. And there was a section for supplements. And at the time I wasn't using many supplements, a protein powder, a pre-workout. I'm not even sure, a creatine and a multivitamin, maybe a fish oil.

Starting point is 00:10:12 And I wasn't very excited about what I was using. It was just the best stuff that I could find. It was the best stuff that was available. And my endorsements were pretty lukewarm. I wasn't paid by any of these companies. I wasn't interested in being an influencer for them because I didn't really like their stuff. I thought it was okay. And that's how I endorsed the products on the website. This is an okay multivitamin. Here's what I like about it. Here's what I don't like about it. Like if I had my own

Starting point is 00:10:39 multivitamin, here's what I would do differently. I don't, this is the best I could find. If you know of a better multivitamin, please do let me know. Same thing for the protein powder, pre-workout, creatine, and so forth. So that was over at musclefullife.com recommendations section, something that I didn't promote on my social media. I didn't email about it. It just existed on the website. People found their way to it. And I was linking out to Amazon for people to buy those products. And I was participating in Amazon's affiliate program, not because it ever made that much money, but only because I wanted to know if people cared about my recommendations. Would they buy things simply because I was using them? And would they buy them if I were not puffing them

Starting point is 00:11:23 up? If I were not lying about the quality of the products or my opinions about them? If I were saying, yeah, good enough, they're good enough. They're not great, but they're good enough. That's why I spend my money on them. And I am spending my money on them. I'm not getting them for free. They're not paying me to say this. And so the answer was yes. And a lot of people were buying supplements through those links. Amazon has 24 hour cookies. So there's just a 24 hour window to see if somebody is buying based on the click that came from my website. And I don't remember the exact numbers, but I want to say it got up to 50 to $70,000 of trackable sales every month.

Starting point is 00:12:07 So there were more sales that were occurring, but because of Amazon's cookies, I just wasn't aware of it. And actually, I just had like a flashbulb memory of Amazon's reporting. I believe they actually did report sales that were outside of that 24-hour period period and you didn't get paid on them, but they did report them. And so that might've been the 50 to $70,000 number. I don't remember exactly if that was the number I was getting paid on or the total. I want to say it was the number I was getting paid on. The total sales were higher than that, but you get the idea. And so then what that told me is if I put the time and money into making my own supplements, things that I actually could get excited about and I could promote more enthusiastically, honestly, but more enthusiastically, then I don't know if I could build a big successful business. But there's not much risk in that activity.

Starting point is 00:13:01 I'm not going to just lose my money. It is not going to just fail. And so even before I pursued Legion, pursued a sports nutrition company, I explicitly tried to de-risk the activity. And many other people would have been probably less risk averse than I was and just skipped that and figured, hey, I have a website that is growing quickly, gets six figures of visitors every month. I have 100,000 people on my email list. I have a social media following. People like supplements. Let's just do it. But that's not how I approached it. I wanted to take as much risk out of it as I could. And that's generally how I

Starting point is 00:13:45 approach big decisions, big changes, big initiatives in business and otherwise. I like to try to figure out how to minimize risk, how to minimize difficulties, how to maximize chances of success before making major commitments. And the ability to do that effectively, I think, is what mostly sets apart entrepreneurial, say also successful entrepreneurial people from non-entrepreneurial or unsuccessful entrepreneurial people. These successful ones are very good at problem solving. They're very good at big picture thinking. They're very good at posing what if scenarios and making predictions about what will happen, cause and effect relationships, creating hypotheses. If I do this by doing these exact actions, this will happen because blah.

Starting point is 00:14:48 happen because blah. And these people are also very good at exposing root causes, understanding why things work the way they do. And yes, risk tolerance is in the mix as well. That's part of the recipe. But I think it is not nearly as important as those other factors. Okay, long answer. I hope you liked it though. Next question. Anything from Thinner, Meaner, Stronger that you feel differently about now? Yeah, there are some things, mostly minor, mostly explanations. Like I think I've gotten better at explaining some of the information in that book and a couple of minor programming things that I would tweak. And I actually have tweaked and I've really actually gone through the book and reorganized it and basically rewrote it from scratch again. No major changes to the core of the book and the program and the fundamental

Starting point is 00:15:42 principles, the bedrock of thinner, leaner, stronger, of course, will never change. Like energy balance will never change. Progressive overload will never change. Exercise hierarchy will never change, et cetera, et cetera. But again, I think I have improved the user experience by reorganizing the book to make it a little bit more practical if you want to get right into the program itself. And I've also, I think, done an even better job explaining all of the information. And so all of that work has culminated in a new fourth edition of the book that is currently in production. So my work on it is done. I'm waiting on one or two illustrations from an artist and the audio book recorder, the professional I hired because I did not do a good job on recording the third edition. I read it like a robot. I'm really surprised I didn't catch that.

Starting point is 00:16:36 But anyways, this time I just hired a professional to do it. He is wrapping up. And I do think that we will have at least the ebook and the audio book live, let's say sometime in the next couple of months. And the hard copy will be a couple of months after that, simply because there is, I believe it's like a 10 to 12 week lead time on hard copies. So when I place an order with my printer, I have to wait a couple of months until I get them. And in the meantime, I have to sell through the existing third editions. And so anyway, that's coming. Of course, they did the same thing for Bigger, Littering Stronger as well. And the digitals, the ebook and the audio book of BLS 4.0 are live. They've been live for a couple of months now. And the hard copies, the paperbacks have been ordered, and those will start selling in the next, let's just say,

Starting point is 00:17:32 eight weeks or so. And I may do a hardcover as well with a nice jacket. Just looking into the economics of it, the Amazon economics in particular, does it really make sense to do that? I may do it though. And I'll say again that these new fourth editions, I think are the absolute best renditions of that content that I am currently capable of and should hold me over for some time. I don't plan on doing fifth editions anytime soon because I don't know what else to do at this point. I'm gonna have to get the 4.0s out there probably for a couple of years and gather up a lot of feedback from people

Starting point is 00:18:10 to just get some new ideas about how I could improve those books further. Okay, next question. How to schedule your first month of workouts as a beginner, three or five days a week? Well, I would say that you can start with whichever of those frequencies appeals the most to you, but three times per week is plenty for a newbie. That's going to deliver,

Starting point is 00:18:32 let's just say 80% of your possible gains you can get from three, one-ish, let's just say 45 to 60 minute strength training workouts per week. You do not need to do four or five days per week. So don't feel obligated to do that if you don't want to. Now, if you do want to, just because you like it, you like teen and you want to get 95% of your potential, let's say year one gains, then sure, bump up to five days per week. And that's why, for example, my muscle for life book and programs, which are intended for men and women 40 plus who are relatively new to all of this fitness stuff. They're relatively new to proper strength training, flexible dieting and so forth.

Starting point is 00:19:15 And that's why the programs in that book are just three day. There are no four or five day programs and in bigger than you're stronger, which is intended for men who are, let's say, in the age range of the sweet spot is 25 to 45 and who are looking to train a bit more intensely than what you find in Muscle for Life. Like Muscle for Life has beginner programs that start with body weight. And then you add some bands, then you move into dumbbells, and then you move into the intermediate program, which is or programs for men and women, which are more dumbbells and some machines and a trap bar deadlift, not even a conventional deadlift yet. And then in Muscle for Life, you move into the advanced programs, which are kind of like

Starting point is 00:19:57 Bigger Leaner Stronger slash Thinner Leaner Stronger Light. They're similar to those programs. They're just not as difficult. And then you would upgrade from there from Muscle for Life Advanced, you would upgrade into Bigger, Leaner, Stronger or Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. So that's how it would work for somebody who let's say is 45, 50, 55, just starting out in all of this stuff. That's the progression I would recommend. However, if you have a 25 year old guy or gal who doesn't have any major health issues or injuries there and they're ready to go, I would recommend they just jump right into Bigger Leaner Stronger slash Thinner Leaner Stronger because they can. They're going to do well. fit. Whereas a 45 or 55 year old guy or gal who is obese and who currently doesn't even go for walks

Starting point is 00:20:48 and who has never lifted weights before needs to start with something easier than bigeliner stronger slash thinneliner stronger. If I were training this person one-on-one, I would not take them to the gym day one and start them with heavy squats and deadlifts. Of course, we would have to work up to that and it would take some time. And so that's why I wrote bigger, leaner, stronger, and created those programs because I wanted to have a range of options for people based on where they are at. Okay. Next question. Views on upper slash lower workouts six times per week. Well, as you can guess, that's overkill for most people. Also, you'll see some people going to the gym doing six strength training workouts per week. They'll do push-pull legs and then rest one day and repeat. That's another way of getting to six days per week is pretty common. And that's overkill for most everyone, unless three of those workouts maybe are pump sessions. So maybe you have like three hard workouts, and then three of those workouts are lighter weights and sub-maxable sets, meaning that you

Starting point is 00:21:57 are ending well shy of failure, and you're really just in there to get a pump. It's almost like light cardio with a pump. That, I guess, can make sense if you want to do that. Is that going to be more effective than three or four just intense strength training workouts per week? I don't know. Probably not. But some people do just like it. They like getting in the gym six days per week, and they understand they can't crush themselves six days per week. So when training is intense, then four to five times per week is really the most that I would

Starting point is 00:22:31 recommend. And two to max three intense strength training workouts per week is the most that's needed to maintain muscle and strength. And with three days per week, you might even be able to continue making progress. Even if you are an intermediate weightlifter, maybe an advanced, but less likely if you're advanced. But if you're intermediate, you might even be able to make slow but make progress with just three workouts per week. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new?

Starting point is 00:23:23 Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Next question. Can we consume creatine when off workout for a week? Yes, but you don't have to if you don't want to. You also don't have to consume creatine every day. Creatine stores don't really start to dive until you stop supplementing it for about two weeks or so. That's what research shows. So take it every day if you want to take it every day. But if you miss a day or two, like let's say you just average four or five days per week, totally fine. And if you don't take it for one

Starting point is 00:24:04 week every couple of months when you're off or you're deloading, that's totally fine as well. If you want to just like save some money. Next question, why do you work out in a public gym and not at home or in a private gym? Because without the gym, without my public gym, where I've made some friends, I would basically never leave my home. And I would basically never interact with anyone like aside from my family and, you know, work calls, some private calls, zoom calls. That said, I am building a house and that is going to have a home gym, not in the house. It's actually going to be in another building on the property. And so in a year or so, I guess I'm going to be a whole hog hermit unless I make it a point of socializing.

Starting point is 00:24:48 And I really am going to have to do that. I don't recommend living the way I've been living for some time now, which is basically nothing but work and then a little bit of time here and there for family, but no time for hobbies, basically no time for friends, no time for fun. It's not a great way to live. It's been very productive and it's been great for my net worth. And it's been great for people who like my work, who have commented that they don't understand how I produce so much content, so many articles, and there's always the next book and always the next podcast and blah, blah, blah. Well, that's, that's it. And And the secret is not is not very sexy. And it's not something I would recommend for most people and something I'm not probably going to be doing forever just because

Starting point is 00:25:36 it does take its toll. All right. Thoughts on a post lifting 10 minute cardio finisher three times per week. Yeah, sure. Not a big deal. If it were me, I would probably do some high intensity, like some sprint intervals, maybe on an air bike or a rower. I would avoid sprinting so I can avoid the impact and the extra recovery that that demands. But if it's just 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes, and you do some sprint training, like on an air bike, you can burn quite a bit more calories that way than like 10 or 15 minutes of walking on an

Starting point is 00:26:12 inclined treadmill or just moderate intensity cardio. And it's not going to beat you up. Those sprints are not going to cut much into your recovery and they're not mentally daunting either. Like it's a bit daunting to commit to doing, let's say a 30 or 45 minute sprint interval workout, right? Different ways you could program that. It could be like one minute sprints with 30 to 60 second rest intervals, or it could be four minute sprints with three minute rest intervals. That's pretty hard, sprints with three minute rest intervals. That's pretty hard. But 10 minutes is pretty easy to commit to. Next question, Ukraine versus Russia, who wins? I don't follow this too closely. But from what I've seen at this point, it would appear the only way for Ukraine to quote unquote win would be for NATO to step in and start World War III. So let's hope that

Starting point is 00:27:06 there's another way forward. Next question, who shot first, Han or Garrido? You know, Lucas made so many bad creative moves after the original trilogy that it really makes you wonder how much he even had to do with the ideas that made them so popular or who he had advising him that he lost and he did not have for his later projects. But anyway, as a side note, I did enjoy Andor. That was the first Star Wars show, Star Wars anything that I've enjoyed in a long time. The first half of it, of that season, I thought was quite a bit better than the second half, but I guess the expectations, my expectations were so low based on all the other Star Wars stuff that Disney has done that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. And that probably is the secret to entertainment, watching shows, movies, reading entertaining books,

Starting point is 00:28:06 low expectations. Some people would say that's the secret to life. I don't quite agree, but it is a strong argument that high expectations, they just set you up for disappointment so often. Next question, beside your business, how do you invest your money? Well, the vast majority of my net worth is in my businesses. And that's not a great thing and something that I will be changing in the next couple of years by bringing in some strategic partners who can simultaneously let me take some chips off the table, as they say, and help the businesses and Legion in particular grow even faster than it currently is. That's where I'm at right now. And otherwise, over the last number of years, I've invested mostly in TI and VXUS, simple ETF stocks, smaller amounts of money,

Starting point is 00:29:01 just kind of gamble money just for fun, have gone into Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. That was in 2017. So I'm still up. I don't really care. I'm just holding it more or less forever just for fun. It was up quite a bit. It was up about eight times what I put into it at the peak. And I could have cashed out, but then I didn't really have anything important to do with that money. And it wasn't an amount of money that really mattered. Like, you know, I'm building this house. I could have put it into the house project, but it wasn't an amount, again, that really mattered. And I have that to put into it anyway.

Starting point is 00:29:34 So I just kind of leave it and just watch the line go up and down and go. I've also invested in a couple of mobile home parks. Those projects have done well. Good cash flow, good appreciation. I would be interested in doing more of that probably in the near future, in the next couple of years. And that's about it. I mean, I really haven't cared to get fancy with my finances because my primary financial focus has been to build my businesses and particularly to build Legion because I own 100% of Legion. And so my plan has been to bring my businesses and particularly to build Legion because I own 100% of Legion.

Starting point is 00:30:10 And so my plan has been to bring a strategic partner into Legion at the right point, which will probably be next year. And that will be a significant liquidity event for me and a big win for Legion because again, the right partner is going to help Legion grow even faster, reach more people faster, expand internationally, expand into retail, et cetera, et cetera. And at that point, I'm going to get more serious about investing because then I'll have a chunk of money that I am going to have to deploy. And I don't see a scenario where I would want to become a full-time or near full-time investor, even if that meant I could earn big returns. So let's say I could get 20 to 25% per year, but it would take a lot of my time. I'd have to be very involved in investments,

Starting point is 00:30:56 maybe almost as like a private equity person who is coming in and helping the businesses grow faster, helping with their marketing. That's probably what I'm best at. And it would make the most sense for me to be involved in. I don't really want to do that. And so if I could earn, let's say, 10% per year and put no time into that, no time into managing that money, that's more attractive to me, at least right now. And according to people I've spoken with who have already done this or who are doing this, who live this right now, apparently that is a reasonable expectation.

Starting point is 00:31:38 10% per year with no cognitive overhead, so to speak, no time, no thought going into it. It's somebody else's problem. You just provided the capital. And that, of course, then allows me to spend my time doing things that I do want to do. Next question. Should you reduce volume and weight during your sets by 20% to preserve strength in a cut? No. To preserve strength, you may want to reduce volume when you're cutting just to reduce stress and to accommodate a reduction in your recovery capacity. And so if you are cutting

Starting point is 00:32:06 and you notice that you have more aches and pains than usual, that you have a lower energy level than usual, your workouts are feeling a lot harder than usual, your sleep is getting disrupted, you might be doing a bit too much. So you might want to dial your volume back a little bit, which would just be your number of hard sets that you're doing. So to keep it simple, let's say most of your workouts are four sets of four exercises.

Starting point is 00:32:30 Go down to three sets of four exercises. And so that's where you would want to reduce volume. And you don't have to reduce volume when you're cutting. If your workouts are still good, you generally have good energy levels, you're sleeping fine, you don't have to reduce volume. You can if you just want to spend less time in the gym when you're cutting because you

Starting point is 00:32:49 know you're not going to gain much muscle and strength to speak of, especially if you are an experienced weightlifter and you just figure, hey, I'm just here to maintain what I have when I'm cutting. I don't need to do as much as I do when I'm trying to make progress. Okay, you can reduce your volume. But if you just like your workouts, you like your routine, you don't really care to change it, then don't reduce volume unless you are falling behind in recovery. Now, as far as preserving strength, you want to make sure that you keep lifting heavy weights.

Starting point is 00:33:18 A common cutting mistake that many people make is they switch from doing a lot of heavier weightlifting, fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights to lighter, higher rep sets, 15 reps per set, 20, 25 reps per set. And they often do this because they think or they've been told that the higher rep training is better when you're cutting, it helps better bring out your muscle definition or it burns more calories. And yeah, it does burn more calories to some degree, but not to a meaningful degree. And if you want to preserve strength, you have to keep lifting heavy weights. That's very important. The specificity is important.

Starting point is 00:33:59 So I recommend lifting those heavy weights and reducing volume if you need to. Next question is, why have you never went on the juice if you have reached peak natty? Never attempted? Well, it's a few things. One, I am personally against recreational drug use, kind of on principle. It's not a good habit and it's not a habit that I would want to take up. And I'm also not interested in competitive bodybuilding or powerlifting. And, you know, I'm really not even interested in getting all that much bigger. Like, yeah, I would like a little bit more in my calves, which is why I'm training

Starting point is 00:34:37 them four days per week, four sets per session, by the way, my calves may be smaller than yours, but I train mine harder than yours, making me the victor. But generally speaking, I don't want to be all that much bigger. For me, the cutoff would probably be 10 more pounds of muscle. I mean, I couldn't gain that naturally, I don't think. And if I could, it would probably take 10 years. but 10 pounds of muscle added onto my frame. That's probably about as much as I would want. Beyond that, I would start to feel uncomfortable in my body. I would really start to look like a bodybuilder. That's not really the look that I want. And it starts to become kind of unfunctional, actually, like you start to struggle to like wipe your ass and you can't even like

Starting point is 00:35:26 scratch parts of your back. And it's just not what I want. And if I were to just get on testosterone, which of course is the base of any well-designed steroid cycle is usually a pretty big dose of testosterone. That alone would probably blow me up bigger than I would want to be, at least with my current training routine. So if I were training four days per week or five days per week, and I got on a big dose of testosterone, I would not be surprised if over the course of a couple of months, I gained 20-ish pounds. And it would register probably mostly as muscle, even though it wouldn't all be like lean contractile tissue. Some of it would be fluid into the muscles, but I would still look about 20 pounds heavier, 20 pounds bigger,

Starting point is 00:36:12 and that would bother me. And so then how would I counteract that? Well, if I had to stay on the steroids, what I would have to do then is I'd have to train maybe once or twice per week. And that might not even be enough, actually, to bring my size down to something that I liked to look at and live with. Those are the big reasons why I've never done steroids and I don't see a scenario where I will do them. At some point, maybe I will do testosterone replacement therapy if I have to. If my testosterone is just clinically low and there's nothing I can do naturally to improve that, then at that point, yeah, I'm going to be doing testosterone replacement therapy because it's a matter of quality of life. It's unhealthy as a man to live with low testosterone and your dick doesn't work and you're moody and you don't have any energy

Starting point is 00:37:07 and you don't have any motivation. It's not a great way to live. Oh, and by the way, with TRT, if that day comes, I will be open about it. Of course, I will tell everybody, hey, this is what's going on. Here's my blood work. Here's what I've done to try to improve this naturally. I've tried every supplement that has even a little bit of evidence of efficacy. I have addressed diet. I've addressed training. I've addressed lifestyle, everything, and here I'm at. So this is what I'm doing. This is how much testosterone I'm taking. Here's my blood work again. Here's where we are keeping my testosterone. It would be in the range of 500 to 800 nanograms per deciliter. That is TRT dose. You go beyond that. That is now steroid dose and so on and so

Starting point is 00:37:52 on. And then I would report what has happened since starting TRT because many people probably find that interesting. What has happened in the gym, in my workouts, my strength, my performance, my body composition, my energy, blah, blah, blah. So we'll see. We'll see when that day comes. Next question, tips on how to stop eating sweets. buying them, put them somewhere inconvenient, put them at the top of the pantry or the back of a cabinet that you don't open every day because out of sight often means out of stomach. It often is that simple. And if that really doesn't work, then again, I have to implore you to stop buying them or stop buying them so frequently, make it kind of a treat that you have to drive to the store to get, for example. So maybe it's Friday, you want your treat, you have to drive to the store to get, for example. So maybe it's Friday, you want your treat, you have to drive to the store to get it. And then you can have it. And then you don't have it the rest of the week. Many people find that helpful as well. Next question, as a mom, is it better to sacrifice sleep so I can work out? Not as a habit? No. But if you're doing it occasionally, let's say once or

Starting point is 00:39:02 twice per week, then you should be fine. And research shows that doing just that can actually help a lot with the catabolism that occurs with sleep deficiency, sleep insufficiency. So when you don't get enough sleep, research shows that your body's muscle building machinery really does not work well. That protein synthesis rates can drop off a cliff if it's bad enough, especially if it's several nights in a row. But research shows that intense workouts can counteract that. It's hard to do intense workouts when you have not slept enough, but you can do them here and there and you can perform pretty well. Research shows that as well. If it's been several nights of little or very bad sleep, no, you're not going to perform well. Research shows that as well. If it's been several nights of little or

Starting point is 00:39:45 very bad sleep, no, you're not going to perform well. But if it's just one night, you probably actually will perform fairly well. And that training is very effective at maintaining the muscle that you have and the strength that you have. Again, even if you're not feeling good, and the workouts don't feel good, and you just get them done. And another little tip is napping. Napping can help a lot. Even if it's just like 30 minutes, that's all you have. And it's 30 minutes on a timer that can help a lot. If you just kind of get into that semi-conscious, you're just getting into light sleep and maybe it's only for 10 or 15 minutes, you might be surprised at how big of a difference

Starting point is 00:40:25 that can make. All right. The next question is why don't your calves grow despite your training, maybe change your approach? Well, I have changed my approach. Thank you very much. Since this person asked this question and at the time, what the problem was, was volume. I just wasn't doing enough volume for my calves, direct training volume every week. I just wasn't doing enough volume for my calves, direct training volume every week. And I knew that because I was doing maybe on average nine hard sets per week. Some weeks it might have been six. Let's just say average nine. And now I'm averaging, let's say 16. I'm doing four sets, four days per week. For the most part, I think I've missed one or two days here and there because of holiday and whatever, but that's my normal now is four sets every day I'm in the gym. And I've known that that is what it is going to take. And it might even take more than that to really get my calves to start growing because they're just very stubborn muscles.

Starting point is 00:41:27 get my calves to start growing because they're just very stubborn muscles. So I've now been doing four sets four times a week for a couple of months. And it just occurred to me that maybe I should have measured my calves, but I have not measured them like they did before and after measurement. But I can tell you that they've grown. I can see the difference. I even have video footage of me doing my my various exercises going back now a couple of months. And you can see the change just in a couple of months in the video. And so I'll just keep doing that until I'm happy with the size of my calves and getting there might even require more might even have to do 20 sets like do you know, five sets four times week, or if I go back to five days per week, do four sets per workout. But I suspect that maybe sometime in the next year or so, I'll be happy with the size of my calves, they will be proportionate to my biceps, that's usually what you compare them to as well as my upper legs. And at that point, I can drop to a maintenance volume if I want to. That's

Starting point is 00:42:25 probably what I'll do. Yeah. Once I get them as big as I want, then I'll just drop to probably six to nine direct sets per week, plus the squatting, plus the deadlifting. And that will be plenty to maintain my new and finally big-ish calves. Next question. Besides your family, what is your motivation in business? Well, business in and of itself, I've commented in previous podcasts that I don't love the game of business as much as many entrepreneurs do, but there are some things that I do like about business. I like marketing. I think it's very interesting. It is a creative activity. I like creative work where you have to come up with good ideas, new ideas, and you have to follow your curiosities and you have to generate hypotheses and you have to experiment and

Starting point is 00:43:20 figure out what works. I also like human psychology. I like persuasion. I just think it's interesting to understand how we get persuaded and how we can go about persuading others, selling others on our ideas. So that's pretty cool. I also like selling high quality products and services that people really enjoy. It's nice to see the effect that creates in other people. There are different elements of that. So there are the products and services themselves where they are presented and they are sold in a certain way. You're making certain promises. And then it's nice for people to experience those benefits the way that you said they would and for them to realize that

Starting point is 00:44:03 they didn't get ripped off even a little bit. In fact, I try to under promise and over deliver because that's an even nicer effect that creates that wow effect where people's expectations were here and then you exceeded them. There aren't many companies that do that. That's pretty rare with their products and services. And then there's the customer experience side of things where in my businesses and Legion is really the main business with like that interacts with customers. I have a publishing business for my books, but that's a little bit different. So with Legion, we have a high volume of customer interactions and our policies internally are all geared toward wowing people, making people really enjoy their interactions with us. And that also is just a nice effect to create. And a lot of people will reach

Starting point is 00:44:54 out to us or just comment, you know, in their interactions and just say that we have the best customer service that they've ever experienced. And that's been kind of engineered intentionally with all the different touch points that we have with customers and all the different kind of scenarios that we deal with. We're always trying to do more for the customer than they expect. And so that's cool. And finally, I do enjoy making money to a degree. I enjoy making enough money to have the freedom to spend my time how I want to spend it. So do the work that I want to do, work out when I want to work out, take time off when I want to take time off. And also to have enough money to provide a good quality of life for my family for the rest of our lives and to not have financial problems or stresses. And I guess one other thing is being able to offer a lot of opportunity and a lot of flexibility

Starting point is 00:45:52 to my kids to find work that is going to be fulfilling to them without necessarily having to worry about the financial component of it. Now, that isn't to say I'm going to raise little trust fund kids who have fake jobs working for daddy's company, but I would support my kids if, for example, they wanted to work in, let's say, the public sector or they wanted to work for a philanthropic organization. They wanted to go help little kids in Africa do something that either doesn't pay well or doesn't pay at all, but really means something to them

Starting point is 00:46:33 and is a positive activity, is a net gain to society. Well, that's something I would support. I would fully subsidize their life if that's what they really wanted to do. 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 feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com,

Starting point is 00:47:22 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: Dealing With Failure, Workout Frequency, Steroid Usage, Balancing Sleep & Training, and More

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