Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A Part 3: Reverse Pyramid Training, Genetic Potential, Organic Food, and More...

Episode Date: December 30, 2014

In this podcast I answer more reader questions, and this time they're regarding the reverse pyramid style of weightlifting (1:33), determining our genetic potential (11:06), organic vs. conventional food (29:35), and more... Want to submit questions for me to answer? Go here: http://www.muscleforlife.com/ask-mike-anything/ Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger: http://muscleforlife.com/bbls/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: 6 “Everyday” Weightlifting Mistakes That Keep People Small, Weak, and Frustrated: http://www.muscleforlife.com/weightlifting-mistakes/ How Much Muscle Can You Build Naturally? http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-muscle-can-you-build-naturally/ Do Actors Use Steroids to Prepare for Movie Roles? http://www.muscleforlife.com/do-actors-use-steroids-for-movies/ Thinner Leaner Stronger: http://www.muscleforlife.com/books/thinner-leaner-stronger/ 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 Legion, my line of naturally sweetened and flavored workout supplements. Now, as you probably know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that basically do nothing, and I've always had trouble finding products actually worth buying, and especially as I've gotten more and more educated as to what actually works and what doesn't. And eventually after complaining a lot, I decided to do something about it and start making my own supplements. The exact supplements I myself have always wanted. A few of the things that make my products unique are one,

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then I guarantee you'll like my books. I make my living primarily as a writer. So as long as I can keep selling books, then 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're basically going to 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 live in the gym grinding away at workouts you hate. And 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 audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks.

That's muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks, and you'll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Hey, hey, this is Mike Matthews with MuscleForLife.com. Thanks for checking out the podcast. In this episode, I am going to do the third part of the reader Q&A. People have been liking it, been getting good feedback and getting more and more good questions. So I figured I'll just, you know, do another one. Maybe the next time, you know, I'm going to have a guest on the next show. And then after that, maybe I'll, you know, do a more

kind of in-depth discussion of something in particular and then come back to the Q&A. I'll probably just keep the Q&A thing going though in general because it's cool. It's fun. I like to get – like other people asking me, telling me what they want to hear. If you want to go vote for what you think I – what you can do is I'm using a Google moderator. So you can submit questions and then vote up or vote down questions that have been submitted. So that way I can just go through and Google's algorithms just tell me what are the most popular questions and I can just answer those and keep it going.

So I'm going to include a link to the moderator. It's actually hosted on Muscle for Life, but it's a moderator page embedded in a page on MFL. So I'm going to put that in the link down below. If you're watching this on YouTube and put that in the link down below. If you're watching this on YouTube and so forth, you'll see it. If you're listening, obviously you won't see it, but you can find it at muscleforlife.com forward slash ask hyphen Mike hyphen anything. And that's where you can submit questions, vote on questions and so forth. All right, so let's get to the first question here. David from Spain asks, what are the advantages and disadvantages of Martin Burkhan's RPT, reverse pyramid training, lifting method as opposed to your own method, flat four to six reps per set?

That's a good question. And I'm a fan of reverse pyramid training. I wouldn't say it's necessarily Burkhan's. Just how my recommendation of focusing on the four to six rep range isn't really my thing. It's been around for a while, but it's what I emphasize. It's what I recommend in my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and generally recommend is that you emphasize that rep range. But reverse pyramid training, in case, you know, if you're not familiar with it,

what it is is you are starting, you do your warm-up, and then you're starting your lifting with your heaviest lifts, and then you're progressing to your lighter weights sets after that. So in my book, Beyond Bigger Than You're Stronger, it actually – the program in that book is a RPT type of program. It's concurrent periodization is what it's called. So that means each workout – periodizing your workouts is where you're changing something about them. Usually it's rep range, which means heavier weights, lower reps, or lighter weights, higher reps. And you can periodize in a linear fashion. You could train, for instance, in the 4 to 6 rep range for a week, and then the next week do 6-8, and the next week 8-10, next week 10-12, and then come back to 4-6.

Something like that. I don't find that to be the most effective way to periodize training, and I talk about why in Beyond Bigger Than You're Stronger, which I'll link each workout you're starting your workout with, like in the case of BBLS, you are starting with sets that are in the 2 to 3 rep range, so powerlifting essentially, and then you're doing a certain number of sets in the 4 to 6 rep range, and then you're doing a certain number of sets in the 8 to 10 rep range. Total workout volume doesn't change that much over beyond, or beyond, uh, sorry, beyond it doesn't change all that much, uh, from bigger than you're stronger. Um, you're still, you're doing, I'd say probably about 10 to 15 more reps per workout on beyond bigger than you're stronger,

but you're still around probably 70 to 80 reps for workouts. It's not super high volume because you can't go super high volume when you're doing a lot of heavy lifting. It really takes a lot out of you. Like when you're starting your workouts with some two to three rep deadlift sets and then a set or two of four to six rep deadlifts, you're pretty gassed by even the end of that. And then you have a bit more to do in the workout. So what I like about reverse pyramid training is traditional pyramid training, which I talked about just recently in an article about weightlifting mistakes, which I'll link down below. Traditional pyramid training is where you're starting with lighter weights, higher reps, and working your way up to heavier weights. And the problem with this is by the time you get to your heavy weight where you can really overload your muscles, which is really the key, key factor in building muscle and building strength is being able to

overload them with enough weight, is once you get to that heavy weight, you're so fatigued from everything you've done before, you just can't really push that much weight. You won't get nearly as many reps. You'll probably like, if you were to start your workout with your heaviest weights, let's say you could bench 225 for four, and that would be if you started your workout with your heaviest weights, let's say you could bench 225 for four. And you know, that would be, if you started your workout with it, if you were to work your way up to 225 with a traditional pyramid training program, you know, you might get one with 225. You might not even be able to get one. You might have to drop down to like 215 or even 205 to get, you know, maybe six reps or something like that. So the thing I like, what I like about reverse pyramid

training is you do your heavy lifting first when you're freshest, when you have the most energy and when your muscles aren't fatigued and you save your higher rep stuff for, for later in your workout. Um, it's a very effective way to hit the, the muscle growth pathways of, uh, you know, you have muscle damage, you have progressive overload, and you have metabolic stress. So the higher rep stuff is more metabolic stress on a cellular level. The lower rep, heavier weight stuff is more conducive to muscle damage. And it's also a bit, it's just better for progressive overload. If you've tried high rep workouts, yes, of course, you can apply progressive overload, but it's much harder to build up your strength in the 10 to 12 rep range or the eight to 10 rep

range when, you know, and by building up your strength, I mean, being able to increase the amount of weight that you can move for eight to 10 or 10 to 12 reps. It's, it's much tougher than working in the lower rep ranges, such as four to six, where you don't have as much, I mean, the, the pump and the burn and all that, uh, muscle fatigue makes it very hard to increase weights over time. Whereas the heavy lifting is a different experience. Um, you don't get all that muscle burn. You don't get all that muscle fatigue. You just give out at some point, you just can't move the weight anymore, but it's not because your muscles are on fire and you're like, God, I got to get one more. I got to get one more rep.

I used to do that kind of training. I used to do that for years and years and years. And yes, you can make gains on it, but I plateaued and for probably like two or three years just didn't really add much in the way of muscle and strength until I actually changed what I was doing and started emphasizing the heavy lifting. Now, a caveat with the RPT style of training is I don't recommend it for beginners. And the reason why is if you're going to, if you're going to be doing it effectively, it's going to involve some very heavy weight lifting, like what I recommend in Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, essentially power lifting. And it's going to involve doing that very, very heavy lifting with big compound movements like deadlift, squat, bench,

and military press. And as a newbie, those exercises are not the exercises you want to be loading up a ton of weight, especially when you don't have a lot of strength in the beginning. I much prefer to see people start with a bigger, leaner, stronger approach, which would be the four to six rep range. Some people even like to start in the eight to ten rep range for the first four to six weeks just to kind of get comfortable with everything and build a little bit of initial strength. I wouldn't say it's entirely necessary. It's kind of like on a person-by-person basis. But what I've seen works very, very well now that I've worked with a lot of people

and been around for a couple years and, you know,, I've been in touch with thousands of people at this point is, uh, if you're new run BLS for, uh, probably about a year or so, a year and a half, you'll gain anywhere from 20 to 30 pounds. If you do everything right. And that's muscle, not, you know, you're going to gain some fat along the way as well. And, uh, you can take care of that with the proper bulking and cutting and so forth. Um, but in your first year to year and a half of lifting, you should be able to gain somewhere between 20 and 30 pounds of muscle. If you do everything right, you know, um, stick to your diet, train hard, put, don't, don't miss, don't miss workouts if you can't help it. Um, so do that. And then you should have a good foundation of muscle and strength to move into

an RPT RPT style, like beyond regular stronger or like what Burkhan recommends, um, and, and be able to do well with it. And one of the other reasons why is so you have, you have the heavy lifting and maintaining your form and being comfortable with, with pulling and squatting and pushing that much weight. But then you also have on the higher rep stuff, higher rep training. Some of the higher up training is bad. I mean, I guess I kind of talk, I kind of poo-poo it, but it's not horrible. It's just in the beginning,

it's really not effective compared to heavy lifting because you can't, in the beginning, you're not strong enough to really move much weight. Let's say you're trying to work in the 8 to 10 rep range or 10 to 12 rep range. You're just not going to be pushing much or pulling or squatting much weight if you work in those rep ranges. Um, but as you become a more experienced weightlifter and get stronger and stronger, you can actually start moving some, some decently heavy weights in the

eight to 10 rep range. So that's also why I recommend that save the heavier, save the lighter, uh, weights, save the higher rep stuff for when you're a bit recommend that save the heavier, save the lighter weights, save the higher rep stuff for when you're a bit more advanced. In the beginning, just focus on building strength and building through that muscle by focusing on the 4 to 6 or 5 to 7 rep range. And, you know, bigger, leaner, stronger is one way to do that. Starting strength, of course, is a good program. Strong lifts is a good program.

My only kind of gripes with those programs are if you look at people that run those kind of programs for their first year, year and a half, of course they make gains. And they're very viable ways they have very big lower bodies and the upper bodies are lagging, especially in the shoulders and in the chest is what you'll commonly see. But, you know, that's when you start moving into that intermediate stage, then you have to start looking at your body. You'll start getting an idea of your genetics, what your strengths and weaknesses are. For me, my chest was always a strength that grew quickly. Uh, but my back, especially my lats were weakness. My shoulders are weakness, which pretty much every natural weightlifter, their shoulders are a weakness. My calves are a weakness. So you'll start seeing what you need to start, uh, increasing frequency on to, to bring up, which I also talk about in beyond

bigger than you're stronger. So yeah, I guess the, those, that's kind of like a quick rundown of RPT increasing frequency on to bring up, which I also talk about in Beyond Bigger Than You're Stronger. So yeah, I guess that's kind of like a quick rundown of RPT style training and how I think it should be used. All right, so the next question here is from Charlie Bill from Kentucky. How would a person know when they have reached their genetic potential? Is it possible to get past genetics to achieve 19 to 20 inch arms without using drugs? Good question. And I'm going to link an article down below on how much muscle you can build naturally as a natural weightlifter. And I'm going to go over a little bit of the information here just in case you don't

want to read the article or if you're just listening to the podcast. So basically there are different models out there, but what it all kind of boils down to is in your first year, you should be able to gain somewhere around 20 pounds of muscle. In your second year of lifting, you should be able to gain probably about half that, maybe a little bit more than half. So 10 to 15 in your third year, about half that five to eight or so. And fourth year on is about half that. So let's just, let's just say three to three to four pounds of muscle, I would say max would be five. So those are good baseline numbers. And that's also something to keep in mind when you're judging the effectiveness of programs. There are, of course, a lot of opinions

out there on what the best way to train. Really, diet is a bit more straightforward. The science is, I wouldn't say a hundred percent definitive, but there are certain things that we just know, like regarding energy balance and regarding high protein dieting and regarding the importance of, of higher carb dieting when you're weight lifting and things like that. But when it comes to training, it gets much more complicated and there are a lot more opinions and there are scientific arguments that can be made for all different types of things. And so you have to also look at the types of results that programs are getting. And a good way to judge that is just how much muscle are you able to build or are other people building on those programs? So if you have somebody that's brand

new and they follow my program or they follow anyone else's program, whatever, and they gain, let's say, 20 pounds of muscle or even 15 pounds of muscle in their first year, that's really good. You can't really expect much more out of anything. should be going on a flat rep, like four to six rep thing, or should be doing RPT or whatever. In the end, if you can, all you're looking to do in that first year is gain. Nope. Really. I mean, I've, I've come across some people that can gain upwards of 25 pounds, but that's, I would say that they're like a little bit on the outlier type of, uh, that's, that's not normal. Um, normal is probably closer to 20 pounds. Um, and some people that just are genetically, you know, not predisposed to, to be able to build a bunch of muscle or, or maybe down around 15 pounds. But if a program is only, let's say, let's say someone only gains 10 pounds of muscle on a program, that's not optimum. That can be improved upon for sure.

No question. So it was either the program was bad. Diet was bad. Compliance with that. Something, something was wrong and could be improved. Um, same thing goes for year two. I have, I have guys that all the time emailing me now that, uh, bigger than you're stronger has been out for a couple of years and I've had people that have stuck to it from the beginning and keeping track for everything and gaining anywhere from eight to 11, 12 pounds of muscle in their second year on the program. And you know, what more, what more can you ask for really? It doesn't, sure. I mean, they could have done a different program if it were pro if it were, if it's a good program and it's designed well, sure. They could have made those gains doing something else, but you know,

what else you're not going to be able to do any more than that. So in terms of determining your ultimate genetic potential, it's hard to really say, um, me personally, this is it for me, really. I mean, I, uh, I'm somewhere an ecto meso type of guy. I wasn't super lean. Uh, I wasn't like the, one of the super little muscular lean dudes growing up. I played a lot of sports, so I was always, you know, somewhere around probably 10, 11% body fat. I didn't have a lot of muscle on me, but I didn't look scrawny necessarily either. So I guess I was kind of ecto-meso type.

And when I started lifting, I was like 17 turning 18, and I was 150 pounds, give or take. And I'm 6'1", 6'2". I haven't measured myself in a while. But I was more or less the same like that. So I was like 6'1, 150, maybe 155. And now I'm about one 90, one 89. Uh, and you know, I'm leaner now than I was then. So I've put on a ton of muscle and that's it really. And I'm not looking to get any bigger, but even if I wanted to get a lot bigger, it wouldn't be possible. I mean, what maybe I could hope for

being able to gain maybe 10 pounds of muscle over the next, I don't be possible. I mean, what, maybe I could hope for being able to gain maybe 10 pounds of muscle over the next, I don't even know, it probably would take six, six years, five years. If I really were to work hard at it, I couldn't see, I couldn't see being able to do it in anything less than four years, three years would be like a miracle. Um, and it would take like, you know, I'd have to bulk and put on a bunch of body fat and, you know, cause I, I hang out around probably 8% body fat and that's just what I like. So I'd have to, you know, do the standard bulking thing, get up to the 15, 16% cut back down, blah, blah, blah. And I just don't, I don't have any real reason to do that.

I'm happy with my body the way it is. So I just kind of want to keep it here. So for you, the listener, if you're wondering what your genetic potential is, don't worry about it for your first few years because, um, you should be able to gain really anybody should be able to gain 30 to 40 pounds of muscle over the course of their first, let's say three to four years of lifting. And that's a dramatic, dramatic change. And you know, most guys, they don't really want to gain much more than that. They're not looking to gain 90 pounds of muscle and look ridiculously huge. Um, and you know, there's, uh, I'm also, I'm going to link an article down below. That's going to talk in the article. I talk a bit about a bit about something called the fat free mass index, which is, uh, a, a ratio, uh, between your height and how much lean

mass you have on your body. And it's a good, it's also something good to just keep in mind when you're comparing yourself to other people's, uh, physiques, because a lot of the people in this, in this industry that are well known for having amazing bodies, they all claim natural standard and they're full of shit. They're name, name a guy whose physique you think is amazing. And there's a 95% chance he's on drugs and has been on drugs for a long time. Um, and one great way to kind of know that is just looking at this fat free mass index. And you'll see why when you read the article, um, if you're listening, just, uh, go to muscle for

life and search for steroids. You'll see an article I wrote on, it was actually regarding if actors use steroids to get ready for movie roles, which of course many of them do. If you were going to be paid $5 million, but you had to gain 30 pounds of muscle in four months, you're going to do it.

Especially a lot of actors that do all kinds of drugs anyway. What's steroids? Who cares? Throw it in the mix. Um, anyway, so you can go check the article out. So it's something to keep in mind when you're looking at, at a guy who's like, you know, maybe my height, six, one, six, two, uh, two 27%. I don't care drugs. I mean that that's like, and you'll see why in the article you only, basically the research was, it was done with a bunch of athletes and bodybuilders, some on drugs, some natural. And they saw that natural, and these were like elite bodybuilders, natural, they only can go so far. Like you do not see an FFMI higher than blah. And once you start getting

up into above that, then that's where all the drug guys were. And, uh, then there was one like even drug outlier that, you know, had gained his FFMI was so high, it was ridiculous. So that's something that you'll, you'll just want to, you'll just want to keep in mind when you are evaluating what your potential is. A good guess is going to be if you just take the upper end of the natural FFMI, apply it to your body, and there you go. That's probably what your potential is going to be. So for me, my FFMI is right at the top of the natural range. Like I said, I probably have, if I were to max it out, I probably have maybe 8 to 10 pounds more that I could gain, but it would just take a lot of time. And regarding arm size or body part size, it's hard to say because that's genetic.

I mean, we can get a good idea of how much total muscle we can build, but how it's really going to grow on our bodies and how it's going to look in the end, that really changes person to person. Some guys I know just have naturally really big arms. Their arms, even before they were lifting, they had muscular arms. Then they started lifting, and their arms are just ridiculous now. In some cases, a couple guys I know stopped training arms, period, because they were just getting too big. Their arms kept on growing, growing, growing, and everything else has started to look stupid.

Like I said, my chest grew big quickly. And so that was kind of my genetic strength. So that's going to be part of just learning your body. If you just train right and make sure you're doing everything right, you're going to have to see how your body develops. And then if you have, you're going to have weak points. There are going to be things that are going to need some extra work. And then you just target those with some extra work, which again, I talk about this in Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger and stay patient and, you know, keep doing it all right. And over time, everything kind of, you know, comes together and you have the type of physique

that you want. All right. Here's the next question for women. So Anna from Brazil asks why women should train in the 8-10 rep range instead of the 4-6 rep range. And she's referring to my book, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, where I recommend that women train in the 8-10 rep range. And it's a good question, one I get fairly often and I'm going to be addressing in more detail in the second edition of the book, which I'm going to be starting on soon. I'm just wrapping up the second edition of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger currently. Anyway, so the reason why I recommend that is because, well, there's two reasons. One is most women, if you're new to weightlifting,

you haven't done any sort of resistance training in the past of any kind, you're going to find it's going to be very tough. I've worked one-on-one with quite a few women, not just through over email. And, you know, most women start with just the bar on most exercises and start with maybe five to 15 pound dumbbells, depending on the exercises. And even the eight to 10 rep range is pretty intimidating for most women in the beginning because they're used to doing just like, you know, 20 reps and not even going to failure necessarily, just kind of doing a bunch of reps and being like, okay, my bicep hurts now I'm going to put this weight down. And that's just because there's a lot of bad advice out there in terms of training for women.

So, um, the 18 rep range is, uh, it's not a bad rep range. Uh, like I said earlier, uh, it's not ideal. It's not an ideal place to start for guys looking to maximize muscle, uh, you know, muscle growth and strength, but it's a great place for women to start because it's sufficiently heavy enough to build muscle and build strength. And it's also not, uh, so it's, I mean, when, when, when, uh, when women try to start with four to six rep, they're usually, and I run into this on email, they usually do email me like some women want to. And I say, okay, cool. You're not going to hurt yourself. Just be smart about it and give it a go. And then they'll usually email me back, you know, later and just say they find it very, very hard to maintain proper form. And they're almost in some cases afraid of the weights, which I understand because it just feels so ridiculously heavy.

For guys, I mean, we come with so much more muscle and strength naturally. It's much easier to start there. naturally, it's much easier to start there. Another reason why is women's bodies are not able to repair muscle damage as well as guys' bodies, mainly because women's testosterone levels are so much lower. I mean, on average, a guy's testosterone level, your average guy is, he has about, I think it's like 10 to 15 times the testosterone of your average woman. And testosterone is the primary driver of muscle growth. It's, it is the primary driver of protein synthesis hormonally. So, um, I find this depends on a woman by woman basis. I do know some experienced female weightlifters that do fine training exclusively

in the four to six rep range. Um, but even in most cases, even with most experienced weightlifters, women, they usually will incorporate some – they'll do a reverse pyramid style training, which is what I'm going to be adding actually to Thinner Leaner Stronger. I don't know if I'm going to do a whole new book for women. I might just expand on Thinner Leaner Stronger and kind of like give them, okay, this is where once you've built your foundation in the 8 to 10, this is where you go next. Probably what I'll end up doing. I haven't totally decided yet. Um, but you can move into the heavier stuff and, and what, what works very well. And I've, and I've emailed with a lot of women doing this and they do great on it is they start their workouts with usually about three sets of four to six rep and it's their heavy compound. So like they're going to start their pull day or their back day with three, four to six reps, sets of four to six rep and it's their heavy compound. So like they're going to start their pull day or their back day with three, four to six rep sets of deadlifts. And then they're going to be moving on to eight to 10 reps for the rest of their workout. And you know, four to six reps

on the squat, four to six rep on the bench and the military press. Um, so they're getting the benefits of some of that heavier weightlifting without overdoing it, which eventually just causes overtraining. And then you just kind of go backwards. So those are the, those are the main reasons why I recommend that women start in the eight to 10 rep range. And then, as I said, they can move into the heavier stuff or including some heavier stuff. Uh, I would say I'd probably give, give the eight to 10 rep range a good six to eight months or so before you add the four to six rep and you'll make plenty of gains. You're going to gain a lot of strength. You're going to gain noticeable muscle working eight, 10 rep range. And then when you're, when you have that foundation, you can do very well by adding some four to six rep stuff.

Okay. Here's the next question is how much are you currently lifting in your workouts, bench press, bench press, squat, military, deadlift, curls, et cetera. I won't go over all exercises, but my, I just had finished cutting recently and I was sick for a week. So that sucks. But, um, you know, I lost a little bit of strength when I was cutting because I think it was, I stayed in a deficit a little bit too long. And also it was kind of hard to, to quantify how many calories I was burning because I was playing a lot of golf on the weekends, but it wasn't the range a lot hitting balls, which, uh, I don't know. I was looking online in, in apparently like an hour of that could be a thousand calories burned and I'd be out there for hours and hours.

That's impossible. So I don't even know how many calories I was burning ultimately on the weekends. If I'd be on the range, like pretty hitting balls pretty consistently for like four hours. How much energy is that? I don't know. I couldn't find a good answer. So I lost a bit of strength on my cut. Probably like it was, I was good for, for probably about six weeks or five weeks. And then I was progressively losing a rep here, losing a rep there. And then I, I just think I

kept my calories too low, but anyways, before I was cutting, um, I hit, I was bench. I was two 95 for two or three. I think I even have a video of that on Instagram or something. And deadlift was like 435 or 445, something around there. I don't remember for three, I think it was. Yeah, it was three. And then squat was around 350 for three. My squat is, I've been working on it a lot over the last few years. I didn't squat at all for like my first or barely.

I did like some Smith machine squats from my first six or seven years of lifting. So my upper body was always much stronger. Although my bench press is tough because I have long arms. Like not only am I tall, but my arms I think are like abnormally long. So I have to move the damn weight so far to, you know, a full, a full range of motion. Of course, I'm touching the bar to my chest. It's just tough and it requires a lot of shoulder strength as well. Um, so I'm, I'm working my way up to three plates. I'd like to put up three plates for a few reps, but you know, some guys, the shorter guys, and if you have like

little T-Rex arms, you know, you have to move the bar like this far. And that that's, that's different for me because I have to move it so damn far. And I run into a similar issue with my squats, I think, because my legs are not small. Um, my upper legs, I haven't measured them recently. The last measurement was, I believe 27 or 28 inches. Like they're not small and they're not particularly weak, but you'd think that they'd be a bit stronger. At least I think they would be a bit stronger for their size. Like, I think I should probably be able to put up 405 for a couple, but I've never come close. I don't think I've ever broken 365 actually.

I might've been, I think when I was in LA a few months ago, I put up 365 for, I think it was two or one, but that's the highest I've been. Absolutely. And part of that probably is my height. I mean, I have, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm squatting to below parallel. I don't do ass to grass because I

was doing a full squats for a while, but I found that the amount like one, you have to high bar, you can't low bar ass to grass. Don't try it. You're going to hurt yourself and high bar. I just don't like, I like low bar so much more, um, much more comfortable for me. And the whole range of mode, the whole motion is more comfortable for me, the whole movement. So, um, I, I get to about an inch below parallel and then, and then I'm up. So that's where that's at military press. I was two 25 for two or three, which I was pretty happy about that seated military press. I don't do standing because it's very tough on the core and on the lower back. And I do a lot of heavy squatting and deadlifting. So I

don't really see a reason to, to do more core and lower back. When I train my shoulders, I prefer to just train my shoulders more than, you know, my entire body. Um, so that's why I do seated military press. And so, so I was happy with that. I think that's a pretty good lift. And curls, you know, I don't know. I've curled, I don't know if I've ever curled more than 80s, 75 or 80s for four. I haven't been doing curls recently though because my left bicep was bothering me. I think it was during my cut. I was like doing some really heavy deadlifting on my cut.

And it was when I was like, it was already going. I don't think I cut a little bit too long anyway. And so I didn't strain it, but it was just kind of uncomfortable. So I haven't been curling and it's getting better. So I'm just kind of leaving off of it. And I find that, um, curling while training arms directly is great for when you're building your arms, you can definitely maintain arm size without even training arms directly. Um, or without doing a lot, like I do six sets of chin

ups every week. You know, there's my, there's my bicep training right now, just cause I want to take it easy and just let my left bicep chill out. Um, and obviously I'm, I'm not losing any arm size, so that's good. So yeah, those are, uh, those are at least my big lift numbers and that's what I've hit recently. All right. So here's, here's the last question and I don't want to go too long. So Jenny from Louisiana asks, what are your thoughts on fruits and vegetables that are organic, conventional, locally grown, fresh, frozen, and or canned in terms of nutrient content and nutrient degradation?

Good question. And this is something that's on my list to write more about. I don't know if I've seen any research. I feel like I have. I think there's some research out there on canned vegetables. I'm not totally sure. I know, for instance,

if you microwave vegetables in water, that leaches a lot of nutrients out. So if vegetables are sitting in a water solution in a can for a while, I could see that some of the nutrients could leach out, but I'm not totally sure on that. I'd actually have to check it out. Um, and in terms of organic versus just conventional locally grown, um, obviously controversial. I do keep an eye on this subject though, cause it's something I'm interested in and something I do want to write

a kind of in-depth article on it. It is on my list. And basically from everything that I've seen so far, it kind of boils down to that the benefits of organic are that you're going to be eating less glyphosate, which does matter. You can see there's a lot of research out there on the negative effects of glyphosate. It is something that is better to just keep out of our bodies or keep our intake as low as possible. And also in certain cases, organic produce has more micronutrients, more vitamins and minerals. I don't remember. I have all this stuff saved, so I just don't remember off the top of my head, but I believe, yeah, there were some fruits and some vegetables, and I believe it was with meat. There was a grass-fed organic

study that I think the meats had, the fat content of the organic and grass-fed meat had higher levels of CLA if I remember correctly. There were a couple benefits in terms of meat and a couple benefits in terms of dairy. I know it's not a great answer. Like I said, I have – I've been saving a bunch of stuff on this, and I do want to write an in-depth article on it. But basically what I personally do is I eat as much organic stuff as possible for the reasons I just gave produce. I also find that produce and organic produce and fruit tastes a lot better. I mean, and I, there's that, that's not even a

placebo type. Like I've, you know, bought conventional nectarines, these massive Franken nectarines, and it tastes like nothing. Like I was like, what am I even eating? It, this tastes like slightly kind of sweetened flavored water pulp stuff that I'm chewing versus an organic nectarine that actually is like, one, it's smaller, and two, it tastes like food. It tastes like an actual nectarine. It's juicy and tasty. It wasn't because the other one wasn't ripe. It's just generally speaking, I find that not only the organic stuff tastes better,

but also I like the less glyphosate that I'm going to be eating the better. And the more micronutrients I can get from those foods, the better, because that's why, I mean, I do like fruits and vegetables, but I primarily include them in my diet to, for the, for the fiber and for the micronutrients. So, um, yeah, I stick to organic as much as possible. It is more expensive if you were thinking in a budgetary sense. Well, there's quite a few details to this. I'm going to leave that for the article where I want to go into not just the benefits of organic and then kind of weigh it against the – there are, of course, benefits to conventional as well. and then kind of weigh it against, you know, the, there are of course benefits to conventional as well. It's not the conventional vegetables or fruit are bad for you, but kind of comparing them and then giving an alternative to just going a hundred percent organic. Cause it is very expensive.

Um, I, I, most of them, I actually don't eat all organic meats. Um, I do like to get, although, I mean, I, at this point, I don't even know if it's just marketing or the, you know, it's antibiotic and hormone-free. I'd go with that for meat, and then I'd go with organic dairy stuff for the most part. Some things are not. Like I think the Parmesan cheese I use isn't, and I like Faya yogurt. That's not organic. I also like Wallaby yogurt.

They're really, really good. That is organic, so it kind of depends. And then pretty much all my fruits and vegetables are organic. So that's what I do. I'll be talking more about in the article that I write. I'll talk more about why though. Okay, so I'll cut it off there. I don't want to run on too long.

I hope you liked this one. If you did, please, you know, if you can leave a review for the podcast on iTunes, that would be great. Or comment below if you're watching this on YouTube. If you for the podcast on iTunes, that would be great. Or comment below if you're watching this on YouTube. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. And, again, if you want to submit questions or vote on questions that are submitted, just head on over to my website. I'm going to put the link down below. But it's muscleforlife.com forward slash ask hyphen Mike hyphen anything.

And then you'll see the Google moderator page, and you can vote and And, uh, I'll pick this up again in a few weeks, let some new questions come through some new votes and stuff, and, uh, we'll keep going. All right. Thanks again. And see you next time.