Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A Part 1: Body Types, Family Cooking, Multivitamin Controversy, and More...

Episode Date: December 30, 2014

In this podcast I answer questions from readers on how body types affect gains, how to make diets work when cooking for multiple people, why I like and dislike multivitamins, and more... Want to submit questions for me to answer? Go here: http://www.muscleforlife.com/ask-mike-anything/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: Carbohydrates and Weight Loss: Should You Go Low-Carb? http://www.muscleforlife.com/carbohydrates-and-weight-loss-should-you-go-low-carb/ The Definitive Guide to Why Low-Carb Dieting Sucks: http://www.muscleforlife.com/low-carb-diet/ The Ultimate Calves Workouts for Quickly Adding Size and Strength: http://www.muscleforlife.com/calves-workout/ How Training Frequency Can Help or Hurt Your Muscle Growth: http://www.muscleforlife.com/training-frequency/ My recipes: http://www.muscleforlife.com/category/food/ How to Enjoy “Cheat Meals” Without Ruining Your Diet: http://www.muscleforlife.com/cheat-meal/ Adi Gillespie: https://www.facebook.com/AdiGillespieFitness 8 Proven Ways to Break Through Weightlifting Plateaus: http://www.muscleforlife.com/weightlifting-plateau/ Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger: http://www.muscleforlife.com/bbls/ The Definitive Guide to Vitamins and Minerals: http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-vitamins-and-minerals/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

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

muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my books for free, one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you're going to like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion.

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

all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don't take enough, then you're not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. All our formulations are 100% transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more

about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from MuscleForLife.com. And in this podcast, I'm going to do something a bit different. The first time that I've done this, I just kind of randomly got the idea. And it's something I'm going to make a regular thing. And that is going to be answering your questions.

So what I did is on MuscleForLife.com, I set up a Google moderator. I mean, I made it a blog post, embedded the Google moderator thing into it, and then which allowed everybody to go and submit questions and then vote on them, kind of like Reddit, upvote, downvote. And then Google's algorithms, you know, let the, it calculated the more popular ones, those in the rows to the top, and the ones that were not popular kind of just fall away. So what I'm going to do is go through, I will, you know, we'll do 20, I will do 30 or 40 minutes worth of questions and answers. And then the next time I'll go through, you know, the next batch that I didn't get to until we're

through all the, all the ones that, you know, were popular enough to, to warrant addressing. And then, as I said, I'm going to make this kind of a regular thing, going to be setting up a monthly subscription service on MFL. It's not going to be very expensive, but I'm going to be doing some more content. I'm going to be doing some more of this Q&A kind of stuff. I'm going to come up with some other cool things that I can do just because a lot of people have been asking for almost like a premium type of version of MFL. So I'm putting together a package of what that's going to be. I'm going to be building some tools and stuff into the website. Just make it cool, make it worth whatever it's going to be, $6 a month or whatever. It's not going to be expensive. Anyway, so let's get to

it. Let's get to the first question here. So the first question is from Alex K., Dusseldorf, Germany. That's funny. My wife is from that area. She's from Essen. I've been to Dusseldorf many times. I'm going to be there not this year for Christmas. I'm going to be there next year, though, for Christmas. Her parents live in the city. Anyway, so Alex asks, what does the science say in regards to training when you are an ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph, respectively? Does the body type actually matter? And, you know, this is a good question because it's something that I wanted to write an article on, and I've been doing research on it recently to see.

I have a bit of anecdotal experience, which I'll talk about, but I was looking to see if there's any sort of scientific validation of this. I mean we know it anecdotally. We know that certain people have faster metabolisms. They tend to stay leaner, just doing nothing, or be more muscular, doing nothing, whereas other people are bigger boned, bigger bodies, they tend to carry more body fat. And those types of people generally can build muscle easier than, you know, than the former, the ectomorph type of body, you know, which is naturally lean, usually smaller bones, has trouble putting on muscle. Or, I mean, that's kind of like where you get into the whole hard gainer thing, which isn't necessarily, well, it isn't true at all, actually. Like, a hard gainer, you're not a hard gainer, period, and you're never going to be big.

But what is true is that some guys find it harder to build muscle than others. And by harder, what I really mean is that they have to eat a lot of food, and they have to train hard like everybody else, and it comes a little bit slower, whereas other people can be a little bit more looser with their diet. Like endomorph would be the naturally, you know, they, they tend to have higher body fat percentages. Naturally, they tend to build muscle fairly easily, gain fat fairly easily, and losing fat is more of a, of an issue for them. And then mesomorph is right in the middle. I'm kind of an ecto mesomorph. Um, myself when I was younger, uh, you know, I grew up playing sports. I wasn't really into weightlifting, but I was playing ice, ice hockey mainly. And, um,

you know, I would probably hang out around, I don't know, I'd say 13% body fat and had a little bit of muscle on me. Um, I wasn't as ecto as friends of mine though, uh, who were very, very lean naturally, probably in the seven to 8% range, uh, just naturally muscular, also athletic. So I wasn't that, you know, much of an ecto, but, um, so for me, it's been kind of like, I'm in the middle where I've found that I can build muscle fairly efficiently and lose fat fairly efficiently, which, um, meso in terms of body type is probably the best place to be for body, well, maybe not bodybuilding, but for what we want to do, for lifting weights and looking good and staying lean, being able to play sports, being able to stay healthy and so forth.

So I was kind of looking around recently if there's any science that I could find on body types and what the research says. And I wasn't able to really find anything that made sense to me and any sort of good research that I would put any stock in, which if you listening, if you know of any, shoot me an email or shoot me, tweet me, whatever, find me on social media and let me know because I've actually been looking for this. But anecdotally speaking, what I can say is, like I said, yes, there definitely is something to it, but don't think that it's, uh, uh, uh, really an impediment to building the type of body that you want. Whether you are a very ectomorphic type of guy, if you are naturally very skinny or very lean and you have

trouble building muscle, that's, that is what it is, but you can overcome it. It doesn't take drugs. It doesn't take, you know, it doesn't even necessarily take an obscene amount of food. Um, but you have to be very consistent with your diet. Uh, I've emailed and worked with a lot of people that are, that are ectomorphic, uh, or even some, some cases like very, very ectomorphic. Like, um, I'll run into guys that are a hundred and anywhere from 150 to 170 pounds that they need to eat, um, anywhere from four to 5,000 calories a day just to gain about half a pound to a pound a week. Uh, and you know, a little bit of body fat comes with it, but basically like a proper kind of clean bulk. So, you know, I've worked with that and it's been a gradual, like, you know, we started them around 2,900 or so, and then, you know, didn't get anywhere up

it to another, up that daily intake by 200 cals, doesn't get anywhere, 200, 200. So finally getting up into the 4,500, 4,400 range and then seeing the results you want and staying there. So there is definitely trial and error depending on your body. Some people's bodies need more food than others to build muscle efficiently. And on the flip side, when it comes to cutting, some people's bodies need less food than others to lose fat efficiently. Obviously a guy who is 170 pounds eating 4,000 calories a day gaining a half a pound a week or three quarters of a pound a week, when it comes time to cut, I mean, it's a joke. It's very easy for a guy like that

because he's just going to start, he'll probably start his cut at 3,500 calories, ride that out for a couple of weeks, drop that to 33 or 32, ride that out for a couple of weeks, dropped it to 33 or 32, ride that out for a couple of weeks, drop it to 28. He'll probably finish around 25. So that's the, uh, the benefit of, of genetics really. There's no, there's no way that you can change your body type obviously. Um, but then, you know, if you're on the, if you're on the more fatter side, like your body tends to hold body fat, uh, or store body fat faster, and it kind of seems to hold onto it, which would be an endomorphic type of body. Again, it might take you a bit longer to get lean than somebody else, but you can still get there. You're not doomed to always be, you know, talking about guys here, but you're not doomed to always be, you know, 16, 17, 18%

or higher or girls, you know, it would be like 25, 26, 27 or higher. You can definitely get as lean as you want. But it's going to be harder. That's all. And by harder means, I mean that it'll probably take longer than than somebody that has a more ectomorphic or mesomorphic type of body. And you might have to deal with hunger a bit more when you're dieting properly when you have you know, high protein intake, moderate to high carbohydrate intake, and moderate to low fat intake, you're going to find dieting much easier than lower protein intake or lower carbohydrate and higher fat intake. You're going to find with a higher carbohydrate intake, you are more satiated. You're going to be fuller from your meals. You're not going to be as hungry, uh, as you would be if you're on a low fat diet or sorry, low carb,

high fat diet. Um, and you're also going to find that your workouts are much better. You'd have more energy. And if you're sticking, you know, mainly to lower glycemic carbs, you're going to find that your energy levels throughout the day are also very steady. Um, so it's definitely, you know, what I, what I recommend for, for dieting. I think low carb dieting is very, very overrated. And I will link an article that I wrote on this below that kind of just goes over the reasons why people do it and why those aren't very good reasons to do it. And the reasons why high carbohydrate dieting is actually, actually much better for us physically active people. For the average person that's

sedentary, low-carbohydrate dieting can is, I mean, your body doesn't, your carbohydrates are energetic. So if you don't move your body much, you don't need much. The average person that doesn't really move their body around probably could get away with 80 to 100 grams of carbs a day, and that's all the body needs. They wouldn't have energy problems. They would feel totally fine. But if you have somebody that's very active, that's, you know, working out regularly, especially lifting weights regularly, which really pulls in glycogen stores or doing, you know, intense cardio type activities, that person needs a lot of carbohydrate and really going to benefit from it. So kind of wrapping up on the body types thing. Yes, there's validity to it. I haven't been

able to find any real good science on it. So I'm really just kind of speaking from my experience. Uh, but my experience says that, and this is not just with my body, we were working with a lot of people that regardless of your body type, you can get to where you want. Um, one thing that's probably worth noting is in terms of training, you don't have to change anything in terms of your training. Like if you're a natural weightlifter, you should be emphasizing heavy compound lifting for your first several years. That's going to build your foundation of strength and muscle. Then, you know, when you start looking at your body and you kind of have the general size that you want, which is kind of where I feel I'm at. I don't really want

to be much bigger. I don't like the bodybuilding look. I weigh about 190 pounds right now, probably 189. The battery on my scale died. I have to get another one. So I'm right around 188, 189, and probably about 7, 7.5% body fat. That's just where I want to be. I don't want to be bigger. But there are certain things about my body that I would like to add some size to. Like my shoulders are never big enough because that's the, you know, small shoulders kind of just come along with being natural.

You know, I'm kind of exaggerating. But it's tough to keep your shoulders in proportion to your arms, especially my arms tend to be on the bigger side, my biceps, triceps. And I really don't want them to grow more because the bigger your arms get, the bigger your shoulders have to get. Um, so my shoulders, my calves, which genetically I had zero calves and I've been working on them quite a bit. They're super stubborn. Um, for me, and I wrote about this in an article actually, which I'll link down below that kind of explains a bit of the reason why, uh, scientifically speaking, why some people's calves just explode or they never even have to train them and they just have big calves and other people like me train i train calves three times a week and they grow but it's a slow process it is not easy um and why that is so there are certain

things about my body that i want to change and that's where isolation work can help obviously there are you know compound exercises that involve the calves would be mainly squats and deadlifts would be the big ones. But for me, that's definitely not enough to train my calves to where they need to be. I have to, yes, I squat, yes, heavy and I deadlift heavy, but I have to be doing work for my calves or they'll never get anywhere. Um, so generally speaking, training doesn't change. What I have found is that certain, and I don't quite know if this is related to body type, certain types of bodies tend to deal with higher amounts of training, like higher training volumes better than others. And in my experience,

uh, endomorphic body types seem to be able to take more of a beating. Um, meaning that your total weekly volume can be higher if you're endomorphic. You know, again, I wouldn't take this as scientific. Don't take this as dogma. These are just observations that I've made working with a lot of people. Whereas ectomorphic types seem to run into overtraining or overreaching issues a bit easier or a bit faster that they have to watch their frequency a bit. I wrote an article on frequency as well, which I'll link down below that. Um, I know it's very popular right now to train everything two or three times a week, but a lot of people that do this, if you don't know what you're doing in terms of your

weekly volume, you're going to end up overtraining. You're only going to be able to do that for, wow, that's a loud train. You're only going to be able to do that for, you know, a couple months before your body just starts really feeling run down and you're going to have to reduce the frequency, which is just reducing the total weekly volume of your training. Um, but anamorphic body types, I've seen, uh, anamorphs get away with higher, like amounts of weekly volume that I wouldn't be able to do, especially with the intensity when you're lifting heavy weights. You only can do so many reps every week when you're lifting heavy, heavy weights. And beyond that, it becomes counterproductive.

So there probably is something to that as well. I've seen it enough where it does seem to be something valid, something almost predictable. But for the average person, most people usually have the mesomorphic type. And regardless of whatever body type you are, you don't really have to change that much. It's just diet is going to be a bit trial and error. You're going to have to find your body's sweet spots. And that's just kind of part of the game is finding where – like when, when it's time to cut, what does that mean for you in terms of calorie range, when it's for maintenance, given your workout schedule and your activity schedule and whatever, all the things you do, where does that fall for you?

Bulking, where does that fall for you? There are, I mean, I give formulas in my books and I, and I give different ways of calculating things on the website. Um, but even when you get very specific, you know, calculating TDE and, uh, and breaking that down into macronutrient, uh, compositions like 40, 40, 20 or whatever, um, there's still, there are variables of metabolism that, you know, some people need to eat a bit more, some people need to eat a bit less and you have to figure that out for you. Um, for me, my workout schedule right now is I'm lifting five days a week. I'm doing cardio, uh, two to three days a week, but I'm also golfing quite a bit on the weekend. So that's kind of like, I mean, it actually burns quite a bit of energy, especially if I'm on the range hitting balls. Um, so I kind of count that as cardio. So I'm doing really like probably four

days of cardio a week, five days of lifting and I'm reverse dieting back from my cut, but I'm going to be getting up to probably about the 2,800, 2,900 calorie range per day. That would be my maintenance. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to be in a bit of a surplus on my training days and deficit on my off days, but I just know my body and given what I'm doing, that's, that would allow me 2,900 calories a day. 28 would allow me to, um, I'd have plenty of energy for my training and I would remain the same in terms of body fat percentage, which is what I'm interested in. So you can extrapolate from there, what my cutting and bulking would be. My cutting would

generally start around 24 ish, give or take. And then my bulking, if I were just straight bulking, it would be probably about 32 or so. So, um, yeah, that's pretty much everything in terms of body types. Again, I'm going to keep an eye out for research and see what I can find because I would like to get a, I'm just curious on the, if there is good research out there, scientifically speaking, what's going on. So yeah, if you do run into something, let me know. All right, so let's get to the next question here. This question is, how does my wife feel about my fitness lifestyle? Does she eat the same foods as me?

Does she go to the gym with me? How does she feel about me posing in my tighty-whities for photo shoots? And this was from Jer Sat from Wichita, Kansas. So, yeah, Sarah's funny. She thinks what I do is cool. She likes the way that I look. She's not overly – she doesn't worship me and say how great I look all the time or whatever. for that. I mean, I, I I'm attractive to her, so that's good. Um, and she does her own stuff in terms of workouts. I mean, she takes care of our son. So her days are pretty random. He just turned two. So he's just, you know, a handful. Um, and so she's with him a lot, but, uh, we have a babysitter that helps out and stuff. So she likes to do, um, I mean, she likes to do cardio, you

know, just makes her feel good. Also her body type, she has an interesting body type and that she builds muscle very easily. Um, she like did a lot of ballet growing up. Um, I don't know if that would have had any effect on it, but she's just, she's careful with her weightlifting. Um, she hasn't been lifting recently because her schedule isn't kind of wacky between some work stuff she's doing and Lennox is teething right now. Lennox is our son. Um, but normally she would lift two to three times a week and just do, just focus on compound stuff, just like squat, deadlift, uh, bench press, military press, standard type of stuff. Um, and then she would do some cardio and she does that

at a different time. Cause I get up early in the morning and just get my workout done before I get to the office. Um, so in terms of food, uh, no, we, we tend to eat different foods I like to cook so a lot of times and I'm really into one pot cooking these days it's actually going to be my next cookbook it's going to be one pot so a lot of times I mean she weighs 100 pounds

so for her sometimes what I'm cooking doesn't even she's only able to eat so little of it so she usually she kind of has her foods that she likes and I have my foods. And then if we're going to, sometimes we'll, you know, it depends on what's well, if she's going to cook something that I can eat, cause a lot of times for the food she's cooking is like going to be a soup with, you know, a little bit of protein of some kind,

a little bit of carb of some kind. And I don't want to eat seven bowls of soup to get my numbers for, you know what I mean? I need like, I save a fair amount of my calories for dinner because I don't like, I'm here working all day and it's, I have to be concentrated. Um, and I don't like, you know, if I eat a lot of food, you kind of get that, uh, I, I don't get tired after, but I just want to, if I eat, you know, anywhere over probably a thousand calories or so, or 800 calories, I just kind of slow down a little bit. So I like to keep my meals a bit smaller. I have my big post-workout meal in the morning after I work out, come here to the office

and I have it here. And then I like to keep my meals kind of small throughout the day. I find that it just keeps my energy level, my energy levels up and keeps my mind clear. I'm able to focus on my work and not feel like, oh, I need a nap. You know what I mean? Even eating. I mean, I only, I eat, obviously I'm eating good food, but even if I eat a bunch of good food, I just kind of, you know, want to lay there for 30 minutes or something. Um, so when it comes to dinner, I need a lot of food and what she's cooking doesn't always work for that. But

sometimes, you know, uh, we will come to some middle ground that works for both of us. Um, but, but speaking on that, what a lot of people do do is, uh, that have families is, um, cook, take recipes that like, I have a ton of these recipes on my website. I'll link to the, to the, uh, category, the blog category below where all the macros are worked out. So what a lot of people will do is they'll cook big batches of food, um, where they know for the portions, what the, what those numbers are. And then like the guy is going to eat maybe a portion, portion and a half, and the girl's going to eat half a portion or something like that. And then you have leftovers. You can do it again the next day. A lot of people do that. A lot of people also, you know, cook in the one

pot style like me. And again, it's just portions and you have leftovers, which is great. And in, in, in a lot of cases, I think leftovers can taste even better than, you know, when, when you first prepare it because the food can sit in all the juices and stuff. And then when you heat up the next time, it's even better. So, so yeah, that's an easy way to make that work. I know quite a few people, I, you know, email with quite a few people where you have a husband, wife, and several children, and everybody's picky and wants different things. But usually it's the wives cooking, and they get creative and they find recipes with the types of foods that their kids like that they can make that also work for what they need. Obviously, if the kids only want really fatty, high-calorie, really calorie-dense foods,

that doesn't work, but you can get pretty creative, which is going to be also in this One Pot Cooking cookbook that I'm working on. Just tweaking a lot of recipes that are traditionally very high-fat, but they don't have to be. You can use different ingredients and you can, you know, cut down on oils and you can change them in. Yeah. You know, maybe it's not as good as if you had all the cheese and all the high fat cheese and all the oils and all that stuff, but it's still really good. And you know, the macros are way

better and it's food you can eat every day. It's not just cheat meal food. And even, even as you know, if you saw the article I posted recently about cheating, which I'll link down below, high fat is even not great for cheat meals. High carb is really the way you want to go. So, um, yeah, if you're trying to fit in meal planning, you know, in a family, that's how I recommend doing it. It takes a little bit of work. Um, but once you get into the groove of it and you kind of get your meals planned out and know what you're going to be cooking, what you can cook, you kind of build your cookbook around your own little cookbook around that with recipes that work. And for me, I mean, when I find foods that I really like, I just stick to them.

I eat the same food every day and I change things here and there. I usually have a few different dinners. Uh, you know, if I'm, if I'm trying different recipes and stuff, then I'll have three or four different choices and I kind of just rotate those. But I generally keep my breakfasts the same because it's just delicious. I have a post-workout shake that's a frozen banana, two cups of rice milk, two scoops of protein, and some cinnamon. And I just blend it up, and it's delicious. Every day I look forward to it.

So I keep that the same. My lunch is usually pretty simple. Some meats and vegetables. I like to keep it light. It can be a salad or just grilled chicken with vegetables. And I usually have a little bit of carbs there but not much. I might work in the morning something like – they have these spelt English muffins that are super good.

So it's like a spelt English muffin. I do some PB two, which I reconstitute with water, um, and some jelly stuff like that. Like just lighter meals, not a lot of calories. And then I eat more at dinner and I'm, and I save my calories. I save like my dinner is probably generally about 40 to 50 grams of protein, a hundred to 120 grams of carbs. And I think what are my fats at dinner? Not much because I'm getting fats here. So maybe 20 grams of fat dinner or like my general dinner macros. So I'm kind of working different recipes. And that's also in this cookbook. I kind of want the recipes to follow. That'd be on the high end of carbs, but generally speaking, no recipe should be below 20 grams of protein. It should never really be above 100 to 120 grams of carbs. And generally,

I think they should be a bit lower, 60 to 70. It should never be higher than 20 or 30 grams of fat. In general, you should probably be around 15-ish, which then those types of numbers, you can work with those and kind of fit them into any type of meal plan so that's kind of what i'm doing right now oh and on the on the underwear thing she doesn't care whatever she trusts me to not not be weird about it which um yeah whatever he just kind of did it for fun actually kind of inspired by um i'm not going to pronounce his name correctly addy gillespie is how i'm going to pronounce it. He's a rugby player. I'll link him down below. Just a ridiculous physique and saw a photo shoot he did that was

similar and he did better than I did, but that's where the idea came from. So she thought it was cool. All right, let's get to the next question here. This is from the Ronin391 from Texas. He asks, what do you do when your lifts have stalled? I'm on your bigger, leaner, stronger plan. My main lifts, bench, deadlift, squat, shoulder press are still increasing, but moves like side lateral raises or curls have stalled. What should I do? Good question.

So the first thing is I'm going to link an article below that I wrote on breaking through weightlifting plateaus, which if you're listening to this on the podcast, just go search for plateau, P-L-A-T-E-A-U, over at Muscle for Life, and then you'll find the article. Those are the basic strategies that you should be using to break through weightlifting plateaus, stuff like addressing diet, training intensity, some different training techniques that you can use to help break through plateaus. some different training techniques that you can use to help break through plateaus. But I'm going to address this point specifically where your big lifts are going up. You know, if you're doing bigger, leaner, stronger, you're always starting your workouts with big lifts. You're always starting your workouts with squats, deadlifts, you know, bench press,

military press and so forth. But then, you know, after that, you could be doing more isolation type work in the case of shoulders, for instance, that's side raise, lateral raise, and so forth. And what I've found is that the first exercise, if you're going up on your big lifts, first, you're doing it right. That's a good sign. That's really ultimately what you want to see. Side lateral raises are one of the funny exercises that actually are very important as well if you want to have a full developed shoulder. Yes, it's an isolation move, but it's a worthwhile one. And it's really the only one that I know of that really effectively trains the side delt. You can get very, very strong in your pressing, in your military pressing,

but if you don't do any side raises, you're not going to have that roundness that you would have if you were doing the side raises. So generally speaking though, if you're going up in your main lifts, which would be your first exercise, and then if you were to stay the same on your second and third exercises over time, which you really wouldn't, what you normally will see, and this is, you know, again, speaking from experience, just working with a lot of people, generally you'll see most of your progress in your first, uh, your first two exercises. And by you, by the time you get to your third and, you know, if you're doing a fourth, which would be optional, um, you're generally, you know, you're getting to that point where you're kind of fatigued and you may, when you're bulking,

you may be able to see slight increases over time in terms of reps on your third exercise, probably not on your fourth exercise. But that doesn't mean anything's wrong. When you're moving up on, let's say it's chest day and you're starting with incline pressing barbell and you move up there and then you go hit dumbbell pressing and you move up there and then you hit your flat barbell and you do the exact same reps and weight as the week before. And then let's say you do some dips after, and it's the same as the week before. That's very good. That's, that's great. You're making progress and you'll see where you'll really see the progress. Let's say in that case, in your flat barbell is when let's say in the next phase, you're starting your workouts with flat barbell, and then you're going to see progress there and you're going to see your strength increasing. And that's why I rotate through

exercises in the program, because I just know how that goes. I know that when you get to your third and fourth exercise, it's hard. And like I said, if you're bulking and you just have a lot of energy in you, then you have a great workout, then yes, you can increase. But generally speaking, me personally, I'm looking to improve on my first two exercises. Third is I'm very happy, but if I can just continue doing what I'm doing, if I can improve on the first two and just continue where I'm at with the third and fourth, and then in the next phase, you know, those third and fourth, it's likely that those are going to become the first or second. So you can kind of make sure that you're progressing and everything equally.

That's really what you're looking to do. Now slide side lateral raises and rear lateral raises in particular can be tricky because you sometimes have to play with rep ranges. Like sometimes I've found that moving from four to six up to six to eight can help break through a plateau with side raises and rear raises in particular. It depends on, I guess not so much recently, like I have enough strength now in my shoulders that I don't have any reason to do that at the moment. Um, but so I'm usually in the four to six, but it depends on, you know, what I'm doing with my workouts. Uh, like I'm, I'm following the periodized program that's laid out and beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, which ends with some higher rep stuff starts with some very, very heavy stuff.

So it kind of depends how it works into that. But I've found that, and also with other people, if you find that you can't really hit your form correctly at four to six on side raises, move up to six to eight, work in that range for a while, go back to four to six, and you'll find that you now can progress and you can move the weight the way you need to move it.

Rear raises, same thing. Rear delts are very small, very stubborn, take time to grow. It just is what it is. And you have to be patient. In terms of curls, again, it kind of depends on where that falls in your workout. If you're starting your workout with barbell curls and you move up, chances are you're going to have trouble also moving up with your dumbbell curls curls just because the biceps are a small muscle. And when you blast them with that heavy weight and they overreach and do a bit more than the week before, it's tough, it's tough.

And they're already going to be a little bit, you already trained them on back day, especially when you're doing heavy deadlifting, heavy pulling, heavy rowing, your biceps are getting trained. So you really only, when it comes to arm training, the only reason for concern would be if you're not making progress on any, on any of your exercises. Um, but I've run into that. I've seen people that make progress on, on their, on their, um,

big lifts and they gain weight at the way that they should be gained, but their arms are stuck. And what we normally do is add a little bit of volume to it. So what we'll do is we'll add three sets of buys and three sets of tries on top of what they're already doing for their arms day. We'll, we'll tack the tries onto their chest day and the buy work onto their back day. And we do that in the eight to 10 rep range, um, three sets, eight, 10 reps. And you, you know, work at the same way when you hit 10 reps at, you know, go up and wait. If you can't get eight, it's too heavy. Um, and that has helped people bring their arms up. So I talk a bit more about this type of stuff in, in my new book, beyond bigger, leaner, stronger.

Uh, I just call it weak point training and we all have different weak points and, um, there, it is more or less addressed. They all are more or less addressed in the same way, which is squeezing a little bit more work into your weekly setup and usually in a higher rep range. Okay, let's move on to the next one here. And this is from, let me pull it up, Braden from Okinawa, Japan. It's cool, all the different places people are from. So he says there have been several recent studies or she, I don't know, that have come out recently that state not only are multivitamins a waste of money, they may be detrimental to our long-term health. And then in my books and website, I recommend multivitamins. Has my position changed?

No, my position hasn't changed. And it's funny. This is good timing because next week's article, Monday article, is going to be all about multivitamins. This is good timing because next week's article, Monday article, is going to be all about multivitamins. I'm actually coming – I'm launching Legion's multivitamin, which is called Triumph. And I'm going to be addressing some of the points that – some of the common things that multivitamins are attacked for because there are valid problems with a lot of multivitamins out on the market. Just to, I mean, I'll go into it in full in the article, but I'll just kind of talk quickly about it here.

One of the things is that many multivitamins in the market, they have too little of, well, let's first just address what's the point of even taking a multivitamin. The point of taking a multivitamin is first to plug any dietary holes andivitamin, um, is first to plug any dietary holes and any, uh, essential micronutrients that you might be deficient in, uh, that you're not getting enough of in your diet, which is more prevalent than you might think because of the declining, you know, declining quality of soil, at least here in the United States. And, um, the variety of foods that, that you need to eat to really get enough micros. Uh, I have an article on all the different vitamins and minerals the body needs, which I'll link down below, and how much it needs. And if you look at the good food sources, you have to be pretty – it takes a little bit of planning.

If you want to make sure that you have no micronutrient deficiencies, you're going to be eating a lot of different types of foods, and you're going to be – you're going to have to plan it out as if you were planning out a meal plan. You have to be thinking with not just macronutrients now, but also micronutrients. So I do know some people that do that, but you can just take a good multivitamin instead. Not that you should eat junk food, but you can eat a variety of healthy foods. And let's say though your vitamin K, you're not getting enough vitamin K in your diet because you don't eat a bunch of leafy greens or something like that. You're not a big fan of leafy greens. You'll do some, but not to as much as you need. Well, then you can supplement with vitamin K. Vitamin D, you're not in the sun enough. How else are you going to get it? You supplement with it. So there are certain vitamins and minerals

that are worth supplementing with. But one of the problems that you'll run into with other multivitamins that are out there is that they have too little of the essential vitamins and minerals and micronutrients that we need and too much of ones that we don't need a bunch of. And I'll be going into the specifics of this, but that's very common that the formulations are just not, they're not put together well. They're not, especially not for the target audience. Like for instance, calcium, us, you know, fitness people that eat a bunch of protein, we don't need calcium. A scoop of protein powder has like 60% of the daily RDI of the RDI of calcium. So, um, and, and you'll see stuff like vitamin K left out or underdosed.

Uh, anyways, I'll, I'll go into the details in the article and you'll see. Um, so there's that side of it, which is plugging any dietary holes. And the research that's out there that links vitamin intake to, I think there's like cancer I've seen and a couple others. I talk about, I'm going to be talking about this in the article too, which is that certain forms of antioxidants are actually not good for us and high, high levels of them are also not good. And'll find that you know vitamin e and high levels and other antioxidants that you want them in the right form and you don't want to super dose them it's not that you don't want super doses of everything that's not the key to health you want to be giving your body enough of these different

vitamins and minerals and it takes a bit of research and you have to care. You have to actually want to put together the right kind of product and have people that know how to do that and know how to do the research and that understand it's not a simple matter of just reading an abstract of a paper and going, okay, well then we just need that much of that, that much of that. There are a lot of interactions that need to be taken into account. We've spent a lot of time researching and putting together this formulation to make sure that it addresses these points properly and that it has correct dosages of things that were low in, it has, you know, which would be higher dosages, uh, lower

dosage of things that we don't need to be supplementing a lot with, um, and, and forms of, of different vitamins, like forms of the form of vitamin A that, you A that you don't want retinol. I'll be talking why. And you want to use carotenoids, mixed carotenoids. And anyways, all this is going to be in the article. So yes, your average run-of-the-mill multivitamin might not do that much for you, but a good multivitamin is definitely beneficial because beyond just the essential vitamins and minerals, I think that's the bare minimum a multivitamin should have, plugging dietary holes. But I think you should do a lot more because that's cheap. As a product, even to do it right, it's not expensive to do that.

even to do it right, it's not expensive to do that. Like for the proper formulation of vitamins and minerals, um, as a multivitamin, as from a manufacturing standpoint, uh, you know, maybe five, $6, maybe $7 a bottle, something like that, you know, that's cheap. And then what you see, they sell for $35 or something like that, or sometimes more. Uh, so you have, you know, good, you have all your vitamins, minerals covered. Now, if you want to create a real product, you have more money you can spend on manufacturing, which a lot of companies don't want to do. They want to spend as little as possible manufacturing as much as possible in marketing and have as much as possible, as much profit as possible left over after all that. But if you're familiar with what I'm doing

with Legion, I'm going in a different direction. I'm spending as much as possible on my manufacturing. And I don't put a lot of money into my marketing. I rely a lot on word of mouth and my platform as an author and muscle for life and so forth. I'm going to be doing an affiliate program and things, costs that I can control so I can continue spending a lot of money in manufacturing and making the best possible products. so I can continue spending a lot of money in manufacturing and making the best possible products. Where, like, in the case of this multivitamin, it's maxed out, not just financially and how much I can spend in manufacturing, but it's going to be two four-pill servings a day is going to be clinically effective dosages for everything. Now, you'll be able to do one four-pill serving a day if you want, and you will get benefits from it,

but I'm going to be taking eight a day for sure. And so, I mean, there are more things we want to stick into it, but there's a point where we had to go, all right, we can't ask people to take 15 pills a day. So we're going to stop it here. You know, we're going to stop at eight a day and make four a day a viable option as well. And what that, what you're getting with it though, is you're getting a lot of additional things, uh, natural, natural substances that have, uh, various different health benefits. Um, and that is also what I want to see, but I've always wanted to see in a multivitamins. I don't, I, I knew as a consumer that the, the, you're not going to expect, unless you have severe micronutrient deficiencies, you're not really going to feel a difference. Even if you're slightly deficient in things, cleaning those up

is good for long-term health, but you're not going to, you're not going to to feel a difference. Even if you're slightly deficient in things, cleaning those up is good for long-term health, but you're not going to notice it in the gym. You're not going to feel better. So what I've always wanted is a product that has that plus a bunch of additional stuff like ashwagandha, rhodiola, cisco Q10, aged garlic extract, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of things that are in my product in clinically effective dosages.

That's what I've always wanted. And I've taken, I take a lot of these things separately, but there's a point where like, how many pills do you really want to take a day? Even though, you know, this stuff would be great. You already, you know, take seven different, you have seven different bottles that you're, you're shuffling around with every morning. Do you really want to have five more? No. So that's why I'm very excited for this multivitamin is that it is basically going to be like six products in one. So yeah, you're going to take more pills than your average one a day or two a day or something like that, but you're getting so much more out of it. And a lot of these other things that are in there, you will notice a difference, like you're going to feel better. So it's going to be pretty cool. Um, so anyways, yeah, I hope I addressed that, um, that, you know,

uh, a lot of multivitamins are, are probably a waste of money and they're not really necessary, but, um, a good one I think is definitely worth it. And, um, you're, it's kind of a long-term buy. Of course, it's a faith buy where you're certain things you pre-workout, you're going to feel that if it's a good pre-workout, you know you feel it the caffeine hits if it has other stimulants those hit depending on what's in it you should feel it a multivitamin not so much like that even a good one it's over time it's you know a month down the line you might notice that you do feel a bit better that you are doing a little bit better in the gym you feel like you have lower stress levels and stuff and that's what we're going for with myumph. Okay, so we're at 40 minutes here. Generally

speaking, I try to keep the podcast to 40, 45 minutes. But I hope you like this Q&A. I have quite a few more questions that I'm going to be getting to in the part two of this. And then as I said, I'm definitely going to make this a regular thing. I really like this Google moderator platform, um, for just being able to like, you know, obviously I interact with people in a lot of different ways and I feel a lot of emails and questions and blog posts or a forum posts and so forth, but this is a great way to let the, let everyone collectively choose, you know, what do you want? What do you want me to talk about? So, uh, this will be the first of many. I hope you liked it, you know, comment and I'll, I'm always there to reply and I kind of do my thing every day. So if you have any questions, just let me know. I'm happy to help. Hey, it's

Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two, um, where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com, where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.