Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Rep Ranges, Life and Business Lessons, Supplements and Publishing, and More...

Episode Date: August 21, 2018

Rob Dionne over at Open Sky Fitness was kind enough to have me on his podcast to talk about various things that I thought you might find interesting, so I wanted to share the interview on my podcast as well. Rob and I go all over the place in the interview, from the best rep ranges for building muscle and training frequency, to key lessons I’ve learned growing multiple businesses while also raising a family, to the ins and outs of the supplement and publishing industries, to the most important rule I’ve learned about success along the way, and more. I hope you enjoy it. 5:11 - What’s your origin story? 9:13 - What was your college background? 18:21 - How many books have you written?   19:15 - What was the impetus behind your supplement company? 24:43 - What is a good profit margin for retail? 28:44 - Do you feel pressure from being the face of your company? 29:11 - Do you offer affiliate programs? 40:47 - Do you feel like you have a hard time connecting to people? 40:08 - Are light weights, higher reps better than heavy weights, low reps? 48:06 - How often should beginners workout per week? 58:24 - Where can people find you and your work? 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/

Unless you have a specific vocation that you want to go study for, if you want to be a doctor, if you want to be a lawyer, if you want to be an engineer, if you want to be anything that requires advanced education, of course, you go to college. But if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to do your own thing, then it doesn't make sense to go to college. Hello, Michael Matthews here from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics. And today's podcast is a little change of pace instead of me deep diving into one specific topic and monologuing for 30 minutes plus straight. This is an interview that I did with Rob, his last name I should have asked, D-I-O-N-N-E, Dion, over at Open Sky Fitness. And I thought you might find it interesting. And so I wanted to share it here on my podcast as well. Rob was kind enough to have me on his show to talk about various things. We kind of go all over the place in the interview. We talk a bit of fitness like the best rep ranges for building muscle and some of my thoughts on training frequency as well as key lessons I've learned growing

multiple businesses while also raising a family, some of the behind the scenes ins and outs of the supplement and book publishing industries, the single most important rule I've learned about success and achievement, and more. again, the reason why I'm sharing this is I get asked a lot of these types of questions, usually via email. And whenever I post stuff like this, I get positive feedback. So I figured, hey, your wish is my command. Hope you enjoy the interview. Now, before we dive into this episode, I have to shill for something to pay the bills, right? No, I'm just kidding. I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and really believe in. So instead, I am going to just quickly tell you about something of mine,

specifically my newest book, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, this book was fun to write because it really is my personal and 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for transformation, both inside and outside of the gym. And I promise you that it will provide you with new and valuable knowledge and skills that you will use for the rest of your life. In short, I wrote this book to help you fix the things that are most holding you back from doing and achieving the things you care most about. So if you want to learn how to overcome the mental blocks that are making you unmotivated, unhappy, and unhealthy, then the little black book of workout motivation is for you. And you can find it on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes,

Kobo, and Google Play. And I should also mention that you can get the audiobook 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audiobooks. I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend commuting, prepping food, walking my dog and so forth more valuable and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my audiobook for free, simply go to www.workoutmotivationbook.com

slash audio book, and you will be forwarded to Audible. And then just click the sign up today and save button, create your account, and voila, you get to listen to my little black book for free. All right, guys, I have Mike Matthews on the line right now.

He is a best-selling fitness author of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body, as well as The Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, The Simple Science of Building an Ultimate Female Body book. Mike is also- So creative, so creative. Yeah, you really did crush that.

We're going to dive into that. That was me being sarcastic. I'll tell the story, but yeah. I actually do think they're good titles. But yeah, very creative. We're going to dive into why Mike is unoriginal. He is also the creator of MuscleForLife.com and Legion Athletics. I can tell already this is going to be a fun conversation. science-based approach to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy, has sold over a million books and helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And his work has been featured in many popular outlets, including Esquire, Men's Health, Elle, Women's Health, Muscle and Strength, and many more. Mike, thanks so much for coming on, man. Yeah, thanks for the intro. Thanks for

having me. Of course, yeah. Happy to give you a great intro. And so, okay, let's give a little background here. I'm always curious how people got interested in being healthy, working out. What's your origin story? It's kind of boring and cliched. All right, let's skip it then. hockey. And when I was 17 or 18, I wasn't playing hockey anymore. And I was like, I want to continue doing something with my body. I've gotten used to using it. And I chose weightlifting because I was like, girls like muscles. So I like girls. I'll just do that. And I bought some bodybuilding magazines and recruited a few friends and we kind of just got into it together and actually found that I enjoyed it. Well, I enjoy, I enjoyed the activity of working out and also enjoyed the changes that I, you know, saw in my body.

And it became just something that I was doing, not necessarily just to be more attractive to girls, but also because I saw personal benefits. For years, I didn't really educate myself. And at least I knew that I was uneducated. I knew I was ignorant because I really had just read bodybuilding magazines and picked up little things from things before social media. Really, this was like MySpace days. Maybe Facebook was around, but picked up things on forums and whatever. But I hadn't really applied myself. I hadn't really tried to learn anything, I would say, important about building muscle, losing fat. It was more

just working out with something I enjoyed and I did it with my friends and I was happy enough with my physique and that was kind of it. And somewhere along the way, I'd say after about seven or eight years of that, I decided that I was going to educate myself and just to make it more interesting, basically. Like, sure, I could just, I'm very much that person that I like routine. I mean, from a psychological perspective, I'm very high in the trait conscientiousness, right? So I can just do the same things every single day for forever, basically, as long as I feel like I have a good enough reason to do it. But I figured that I might as well be a bit smarter about it and see if I can get more out of the time I'm putting into it.

And so that's when I actually decided to educate myself. And I started, I guess you could say, with the first principles. I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand the underlying physiological mechanisms as opposed to listening to other people's embroiderments upon them. So I could understand, like, how does the human metabolism work? How does muscle growth work? I know it's very complicated, but you know, practically speaking, how do these things work? I'd say the metabolic side is less complicated really than the muscle growth side if you're looking at the physiology of it. But if I can understand these first principles, then I can start weeding out the good advice from the bad advice and find people who are actually worth

listening to. So I did that and then found my way, I think in the beginning, to Mark Ripito for training advice, barbell training advice, starting strength, practical programming, dietary side of things. I want to say it was Martin Burkhan. I wasn't really that much into IF, but that was really, and I would say it was probably Lyle McDonald was the first real science-based smart guy that I really latched onto for diet advice. And also, as far as dieting goes, you really can read, there are probably five or six papers, scientific papers that you can read that are more narrative. They're reviews, right? So they're not overly technical and they really just break everything down. That's really all you need to know on the dietary side of things. I also got into the science of it, but that's a slower process because it's very technical and there's

a lot of jargon. And in the beginning, you're spending a lot of time just clarifying basic concepts, clarifying basic terms and putting basic pieces in place so you can actually start, it's like you're gathering all the puzzle pieces up so you can actually start putting it together and seeing what emerges in terms of a real picture and what you can do. So I'm curious, what were you doing during this eight years where you, well, first of all, you were kind of not necessarily learning and then you decided after about eight years, you're going to learn. What's your background here? Because you, you literally, you immediately gravitated towards the science of, and most people don't. You love diving into scientific study.

And that's one of the things I like about your show. And what you talk about is that you're looking for the science. Was that your background? What'd you go to school for? No. So I actually never even went to college. I graduated high school at a young age because in Florida, you can graduate. It's at least when I graduated, it was credits based, right? So you needed like whatever it was. I don't remember how many credits to graduate from high school. I never took spring break. I never took summer break.

All I did was study. By the time I was 15 or 16, I had completed everything that I needed to complete. I was going to a private school in Florida, and I had completed everything that I needed to complete to graduate. From there, it was a question of, okay, where am I going to go from here? I can continue, but then it would be getting ready to go to college, which is fine. But in talking with my dad, who's a successful entrepreneur,

he's built and sold companies. So talking with him and associates of his and just friends of his, including people that have gone to Ivy League schools. And basically, it was like, what it came down to and what they were telling me is unless you have a specific vocation that you want to go study for, if you want to be a doctor, if you want to be a lawyer, if you want to be an engineer, you want to be anything that requires advanced education, of course you go to college.

But if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to do your own thing, then it doesn't make sense to go to college. And, um, and there's also like, if you want to go climb the corporate ladder and do that type of thing, then yes, it makes sense to go to college. And of course, if you want to go party and just like have a lot of sex and drink a lot of alcohol, then it makes sense to go to college. Uh, so in the way, you know, personally, you didn't want to have a lot of sex. I just want to, I want to, I need to interrupt you. There's no interest. I'm a weird person. I've, so I started dating, I started dating my wife when I was 17 and I'd had a few girlfriends up until then, but I wasn't like a sex crazed dude because I

wasn't, I don't know the, the, my previous relationships didn't really, I, once I got to know the girls a little bit better, I just kind of lost interest and I wasn't devious enough to want to like use them for sex. So I, I just would, would just kind of end it. Uh, so, so I've actually only had sex with my wife. Oh, wow. So, okay. So, so that makes, that makes a lot of sense in terms of not wanting to necessarily go away to college, but that's great, man. I mean, anyways, in the end I was like, eh, that doesn't, none of that really makes any sense to me. So what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to work.

And so I went and I also did a bit of traveling. That was a fun time when my wife's from Germany. And so what I did is I worked in one of my dad's companies. I worked in a company that he had invested in. And I worked in several other companies, just kind of used his network of people to get experience working. And also I've always been a good student and I've always enjoyed reading and learning. So that was another thing that I was told by the people, my mentors, I guess you could say at that age, was you can learn everything that you need to learn in business by reading the right books and just doing it. and just doing it.

Going to college is not going to help you unless you go to an Ivy League school and you can walk away with a really strong network of people who are going to go places who have access to a lot of money and things that you just wouldn't, that's very hard to gain access to unless you already are successful and can join the right types of associations, I guess you could say.

So anyways, in the end, I was like, eh, I'm just going to work. So that's what I did. And I also, my wife's from Germany. And so that was a fun time where she would come and visit me in Florida. And then sometimes I would go over there. We did long distance for like two years and I would go over there and, you know, spend, I don't know, two to four weeks there. And we would just kind of travel around and have fun. So that was my, you know, later teenage years, early twenties. And then I found my way into writing because that was really just kind of on a lark. I figured, hey, I like to read.

I like to learn. I like to study. Maybe I would enjoy writing. I didn't in high school. I did a bit of creative writing and my teacher said I was good at it, but I was like, whatever. It wasn't something that I felt particularly drawn to. That's kind of how I came into writing. My original interest was fiction. I wrote a novel, which I'm sure, I should go back and look at it

one of these days because I'm sure it's terrible. But from there, I found a way into creating employee training programs for companies, which is a very random thing, but it's kind of like a niche specialty publishing company, basically. And we really got into working with dentists and physical therapists, healthcare in the healthcare arena. And that was cool. It gave me some experience jumping into things that I don't know anything about and having to quickly come up to speed and then create training materials that can bring other people up to speed. So it's very much a sink or swim type of thing where you can't bullshit your way through it. You can either create good stuff that people understand and they can get results with, or you don't and you get fired. So I did that for several years. And then I came into my current

life where I had heard about Amazon's Kindle KDP publishing platform because there was a dude named John Locke, who was their first self-published author to sell a million books. And his story was kind of cool and they used it for publicity. And I heard about that and I was like, huh, I should write a book. And so I wrote Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And I figured I'll write the book that I just wish somebody would have given me back when I was like 17 or 18. And I'm very much a believer in this. It was a minimum viable product type of where the original book was maybe, I don't know, maybe 50,000 words, 60,000 words. And I did a good job on it.

I didn't just like phone it in. I tried to write a good book. Although now I would look back at it and I would hate it because I'm a much better writer now and I know a lot more. But regardless, I gave it a good effort, put it up on Amazon. I mean, I didn't have any network. I figured it's a waste of time to try to get a book deal because no publisher, and I know this very much now, no publisher would have ever cared. They would have been like, you're nobody, you have no following, you have no

background in this. Like, yeah, we don't care. Even though sure, I could get, I could at that time, I could have gotten licensed as a trainer. They'd be like, yeah, whatever. It doesn't mean anything. Um, cause it doesn't mean anything. And so I just published it myself and sold maybe like 20 copies the first month. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Somebody bought my book, maybe 40 copies the next month. And I put an email address in there just saying, hey, if you want to give me any feedback, email me.

If you have any questions, just email me. And so I got some emails from some people, which I thought was neat. And that was 2012. And by the end of 2012, I was selling several thousand copies a month. And I also had put up a few other books kind of as like little trial balloons. And that's where I saw there's a real opportunity to make a career shift. I guess you could say

that's, I guess my origin story. Yeah, that's no, that's great. And I'll just, I want to give people a little bit of perspective here. Cause I've been doing research on you just bouncing around and you're quite interesting because you, when you started out, if you look out like you had, quite interesting because you when you started out if you look out like you had and that was 2012 when you did the original bigger leaner stronger but then you also like deviated off course and you've written under a pen name sean patrick right and now you also have it's not a lot of books right it's just four different things on and some of them are small right uh short little things. But thousands of reviews for one of them, for this thing you wrote a little-

On Tesla. On Tesla. I know. That has been downloaded probably 3 million times since I put it up. It's insane. It's insane. And you have- I don't even include that.

I mean, it's a free book. I don't care about that one. Like the numbers, I don't even, that's just like a random, I was, yeah, fluke where I was like, wow, I guess a lot of people want to read about Tesla. And you're right. You wrote this book, the know your bill of rights. Yeah.

Seems like an odd, the know your bill of rights, but it was, it was just, again, these are like projects I just did for fun years ago. Well, they all popped out and they all popped out in, in 2013, uh, which I thought was interesting because it's like, how much shit is he cranking out this guy? But that one saw that has a 212 five-star reviews basically, and it's 12 bucks. And the Kindle version is only 327. But so the thing is, here's what I hear. The Bill of Rights book now, especially now, it actually sells quite well. I'd have to look at the numbers because I don't really pay attention, but I would say it's probably a thousand copies a month. Really? Between Kindle, paperback,

and audio book. Yeah. That's a reasonable estimate. It might be a little bit more, it might be a little bit less. That's awesome. That's pretty cool. So the reason I bring this up is because you're not necessarily, even though you have an expertise in fitness and nutrition, because you've personally taught yourself how to do it, but your general overall basic life strategy is basically curiosity and creativity because you see things that you want to know about, you learn about it, and then you write about it, right? You did it with the, you know, when you're writing manuals, who wants to write manuals? It's the most boring shit you have to read ever. And then you have to digest that and

then spit it out in a way that people are interested in hearing it. So nobody wants to do that job, but for some reason you, you know, and that's exactly, I mean, you wrote the book about Alexander the Great, what does it say? Makodian, uh, who conquered the world. Is that how you say it? Macedonian. Macedonian. Sorry. Thank you. That's, that sounds much more intelligent. Thank you. Um, but who does that? You do, which is interesting. And then the next thing, you know, you got this, this other bigger, leaner, stronger out that's crushing. And I know that your other, the other book as well, um, thinner, leaner, stronger is also doing really well. The women's book and I'm sure that there's, you know, the same information in certain amounts of it. And then you, and then you catered it towards women,

but you also wrote a cookbook. You have different challenges that you have out there. How many books do you think you have out there? Cause I'm just scrolling through and there's more than one page. Um, so yeah, some of them have, I mean, paid books cause I've done some free stuff kind of just for fun. And cause it's, it's, it's I guess, decent top of funnel, but for paid maybe like 12 and I have a new one coming out called the little black book of workout motivation. It's coming out in a few weeks, August 30th. Got it. Wow. Okay. So you're turning out some really good stuff. I think for most people, um, and if I, if that's all, if that's all I would have done is just write books over the years, if I would have not started the supplement company and not done all these other things that whatever I, I, I think I could have 30 books probably at this point.

Do you now let's, we'll definitely talk about that because the name of your supplement company is a Legion athletics. It seems like that's growing out beyond muscle for life.com. You're putting a lot more attention into that, but it seems like you're really leaning the business in that direction. What was the impetus behind that? Um, so to, to your first point, yeah, that, that has been true up until now, but now, uh, we're kind of swinging back and cause most of life has huge potential.

It gets a ton of traffic somewhere around a million and a half visits a month. And it's growing and it's very under-monetized. It should be doing, in my opinion, six to seven times the annual revenue that it does right now because we just put up a store like a month ago. Up until a month ago, we didn't even have a store. We have a coaching service that does very well, and that provides fair amount of revenue and we do meal plans and stuff. But again, you take that website and you take the traffic and you take the amount of goodwill that I've built with my readership and the brand Muscleful Life, it should be doing financially way better than it is. But that's just because it hasn't gotten nearly as much attention as Legion internally, which was an interesting

decision. I don't know if I'd say it was a mistake. Ideally, they would have kind of run in parallel. But to do that, the mistake that I made there is I would have needed to put more time and attention into recruiting more people because there's about 20 of us and everyone has a lot of work to do. And so if we really were going to make Muscle for Life into more than it currently is, earlier it would have required really an additional team of probably, I don't know, three to five people to do that. So to your second point, your question about Legion, it was really just scratching my own itch. It was making stuff that I wish other people would have made.

I mean, the idea came back from Muscle for Life. I would recommend supplements just to people who go buy them on Amazon, and I just would participate in the affiliate program. So not so much, I mean, it never makes more than, I don't know, a few thousand dollars a month or something. So it wasn't really so much from that perspective, but it was really like, what are people buying? You know what I mean? And I wasn't even excited about the supplements I was recommending.

I would openly say, yeah, this protein, honestly, I think it tastes pretty bad, but it's a good value. Like Optin Nutrition, I think their stuff tastes terrible. Sure. It's a good value if you just want cheap whey concentrate and you're fine with that. It doesn't upset your stomach or anything and you don't mind the nasty taste. But the pre-workout, whatever I was using back in the day, I would say, honestly, I don't, this isn't a very good pre-workout. It's just, I don't like coffee. So I use this. Um, and, but people were still buying it even though I wasn't, uh, they just want to know what am I using? And they maybe appreciated the honesty where I was saying, okay, here's one thing I like about this. Maybe this ingredient is in a decent dosage. So that's cool. This one is not really in a good dosage, but it's an okay dosage and I don't like coffee. So this is, this is my, if you're like me and that means if that resonates with you at all,

then this might be good for you kind of thing. I think that most people don't want to necessarily do all the research. They allow you to do the research and you're saying, look, this doesn't check all the boxes, but for me, it's an, it's enough for me. And if it's enough for me, they're thinking, well, if it's enough for Mike, I'll buy it. Exactly. So, so then, so I was like, there's a point where I was thinking, well, why don't I just make my own stuff? Why don't I just make the stuff I really want to make, which is, um, well, I mean that, that, that's, that's what turned into Legion. So I knew that, that based on the trajectory of what I was doing at that time and that things were growing quickly and that because of the affiliate sales, I figured there's

no way I can get stuck with product. So I put together, it was four products we launched with. It was a creatine product, like a post-workout, pre-workout, a whey protein, and what was the fourth? And there was another one I think that we launched with. Anyway, so I had three or four products and the first order was maybe $100,000 or $80,000 of stuff, my cost.

And I knew that I wouldn't get stuck with it. I knew there's no, like maybe it doesn't go well. Maybe people don't even like the brand. They don't like the concept and the stuff doesn't really move. But eventually I'll sell it. And if it doesn't go well, I'll just move on with my life and delete the idea out of my mind. And if it does go well, then I'll pursue it.

It went very well. I mean, Legion in its first year did over a million dollars in sales and now it's doing eight figures in annual sales. And so, yeah, I mean, it was one of those things where it was the right, I feel like with Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, for example, that was the right book at the right time. That's one of the reasons why it has done so well. And Legion, I think, was the right sports nutrition concept at the right time. Now, it's for as well. And Legion, I think, was the right sports nutrition concept at the right time. Now, it's for as well as it's doing. I know people in a similar space, supplements, not necessarily sports nutrition, that are doing many multiples times better than I'm doing. And

so it's all relative. But it was a good time. It was definitely good timing. And it was the right message at the right time. And yeah, it's been, on the whole, a good time. It was definitely good timing, and it was the right message at the right time. And yeah, it's been, on the whole, a good experience. That type of business is a bit of a pain in the ass. Can you imagine? Yeah, because there's always inventory issues, and the cost of goods is quite high, which was a bad business decision, and I knew that going in. I didn't know actually quite how bad it was be. It was in the eyes of a more of a, just like a finance guy, because part of the thing with Legion was I don't want to make shitty products

and just lie to sell them. I want to make good products that in some ways sell themselves and nothing sells itself, but you know what I'm saying? And what that means in the, in the supplement game is you have to spend quite a bit. You know, my multivitamin cost me like $13 a bottle to make. And that margin means it'll never be on retail shelves. I mean, if it were to ever be able to be on a retail shelf, they would have to be taking a lot lower margins than they normally would take and my margins would be low. Whereas the standard, and this isn't just supplements, this is if you're going to sell anything that needs to be. Whereas the standard, and this isn't just supplements, this is if you're going to sell anything that needs to be manufactured, the standard multiple of cost to retail

should be six to 10 times. Six is bad. If you're selling something for six times your cost, that's pretty bad. Really? Absolutely, yeah. Give me an example here because I'm actually on your website. I'm kind of poking around Legion athletics, the, the, the supplements, which one are you referring to? That's $13. What do you sell? What do you sell? Triumph, triumph, triumph, triumph is 40. Got it. So, okay. So really bad. That's really bad. So you're like three, you're like three times three. Yeah. And, and the reason why people hear that and like, what do you mean that's bad? The reason why is if you want to be in retail, which is, that is the standard way to sell a lot of anything, right? Is you need distribution

because of the margins that everybody needs. You need your margins and then the wholesalers need their margins and the retailers need their margins. And generally it's doubling with each person that it passes through. That's what you get to six, six times as bad. A multiple of 10 times is good. So, you know, if you go buy a polo shirt for $120, it did not cost them more than $10 landed, done sitting in the store to offer that shirt to you. My thinking was at the time, okay, I don't care about retail then. I'd rather not even have the company if it meant that you have to make a crappy product, which is the problem. If you're going to use a six times multiple, so let's say you want to sell a multivitamin for $40. That's also a premium multivitamin. That's not a cheap multivitamin. It's still, yeah, it's still expensive.

And you have $6 to make it, $6 to make it and have it sit in your fulfill, not just make it, but like shipped at all, all the little ways that you can nickel and dimed on cogs. You have $6 for that formulation. You cannot make a good multivitamin for $6. At least by my standards, you simply can't do it. So what can you do? Well, you can make a pretty shitty multivitamin. And then what does that mean then? It means you have to then just go lie to sell it. You can't tell people, hey, this multivitamin is pretty shitty, but buy it if you like me. If you want to just give me your money, I'll take it. Yeah, that's not a very persuasive sales pitch.

So I decided, okay, I'm going to spend a lot more on my formulations, and my COGS is going to be a lot higher, which means profitability is going to be lower. And from a business perspective, that's a bad decision. Like a private equity guy would look at that and be like, yeah, you're dumb. Why would you do that? You know what I mean? You're halving, H-A-L-V-I-N-G. You're cutting your potential. Let's say you ever wanted to sell. That alone could cut the multiple on EBITDA. It could cut it by 50% depending on who you're dealing with. So I was like, eh, whatever though. I want to make good products.

And as long as it can be profitable enough and not just be a complete waste of time, then I'm willing to do it. So that's kind of the Legion story where the upside is for customers, you will get products. I mean, we offer stuff that you cannot get somewhere else because nobody else is willing to spend $13 on a multivitamin. And it only can be done direct consumer e-commerce, obviously, because retail is just out of the question. And really, the only reason why, in addition, we're able to do that is because I don't spend very much money at all to acquire new customers. I acquire a large, maybe even the lion's share of my new customers through my writing, through my podcasting, through my YouTubing.

And that's also a downside from a business perspective that adds volatility because what if something happens to me and I can't do that anymore. Or what if I just, I lose my mind one day and I like have a midlife crisis and just say, ah, fuck all this. I'm just going to buy Lambos and like snort cocaine all day. What happened? What happens to the business shuts down? Well, yeah, I mean, it has a lot of momentum. So, but you know, these are all things though that are, we're just, are just things to things to know. And let me ask, let me ask you this, Mike, like, does Mike. Do you feel that pressure on yourself? Do you feel like, no, you don't? No, I don't care. Oh, okay. All right. So then that's good. You're putting this on. I think, look,

the fact that you could talk about it like this, the transparency at which you talk about this makes people want to buy that stuff. I think it's actually smart. Yes. You're bringing it in. Yes. You are the only, you are the top of funnel. Everything you do is top of funnel. I can't even imagine you have affiliate programs. Do you offer affiliate programs? We, we have a referrer friend. Okay. So, so the answer to that question is no. No, we have, I mean, we have a sponsorship. We do have something like that, but not as developed as what you're thinking. Yeah. So, but that, but I think there's a certain amount of like, um, there's an integrity in that, like you, you want to be able to turn out a product that is everything that you would ever

want. You don't want anybody to dick you around. You don't want anybody to sell you a bunch of like filler. You want exactly what you think you're supposed to be getting. Because I think everybody that buys something off the shelves at GNC thinks they're getting exactly what that is sold is set on the box. And the truth is it's not, it's just a bunch of fillers and it's a bunch of crap. And it's why most of us have gut issues and problems digesting and why we don't see any kind of return on investment. So the good thing is, is that you're, you're, you're open about it and you're not even selling it and you're not even gouging. So I think it's great. Yes, maybe it's not the best business choice, but you know that going in. And you're probably knowing you. I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't change it going back.

I wouldn't change that. And knowing, it seems like knowing you based on like just hearing a little bit about your life, you're going to change tact at some point. And the next thing is probably going to be even bigger. I'm curious here. Obviously, you even said it before. It's like you treat your business the way you treat your nutrition in a sense. The way that you are structured, you're kind of built to follow a formula and you don't necessarily deviate all that much from it. Then you also said earlier that you don't necessarily have the traditional origin story around health. Do you feel like you have a hard time connecting with the people who are coming to you because

most people are struggling? It doesn't seem like you struggle. That's a good question. In some ways, I would say yes. And that sounds kind of pretentious, but it's an honest answer. Not at all. From what I gather from you, that's the reason I'm asking the question. It would seem like you follow things based on structure and thought, not necessarily based on emotion. Yeah. And I mean, again, if that's reflected in just my personality, even, even from a, again, from a, I guess you could say psychometric perspective, right? So I'm very much that person, the super disagreeable, super conscientious, super low compassion type of person. Now, that sounds bad.

It makes me sound like a sociopath. But I'm speaking in – like if you go – Jordan Peterson, he has a good test. What is it? I forget the – know yourself or something. If anybody is curious what I'm talking about, it's the big five. You have the big five traits, and then they break down into sub-traits. I would say that that has – I like helping people. That's probably where I – what saves me from just like being a, I don't know, Wall Street finance person that doesn't care and just like – you don't really produce anything.

You just get money for being clever. And maybe that's an unfair mischaracterization of all of them, but you know what I'm saying. And I'm open about this with people that will email. That's an unfair mischaracterization of all of them, but you know what I'm saying. And I'm open about this with people that will email. I mean, I have over 100,000 emails sent and received in my inbox, and I spend time on it every single day. Yeah, I quote unquote don't have to, but one, I like it because it's a nice reminder of why I'm doing this. It's easy for me to go in full hermit mode and just grind away on projects without even realizing if they're even having effects. So it's nice to

connect to people and, you know, they share their stories and it makes me feel good. It's kind of, I guess, selfish in that way, but it is, it is motivating. And I'll be open sometimes where people will ask me, you know, they're going through certain issues and I'll say, you know, honestly, I don't have personal experience with that, but I've worked with a lot of people that, you know, have run into that problem and I've studied a fair amount about it and I've taken, come up with little strategies that work. And so I can still be helpful, but as a person, and this, this isn't just in my work, this is something my wife has had to get used to is that I'm, yeah, I'm not the greatest person. I'm not that shoulder necessarily to cry crime where I have like a lot of sympathy in the sense

of, well, I guess just in the, whether it's in the sense of pity or, or where I can say that I, I deeply understand where you're coming from. I think empathy, empathy is the word that you're looking for. Well, empathy though, I can, I would say I, I'm not, I'm not a, I can create empathy, right? Like, but, but, but it doesn't necessarily come from in a lot of the things that like what you're referring to where, okay, take diet, people's struggles with diet, right? I totally understand. I've worked with literally thousands of people. So I've seen it all and I've helped people through it all. Have I myself ever personally struggled with dieting? No. Have I ever struggled on a cut, fall off the rails or go off on a binge? No, I've never done that. But that doesn't mean that I can't be helpful.

So to your question of, you know, do I struggle? Yeah, sure. I have always, life is problems. You're never going to get away from that. I think the best we can hope for is having the problems that we at least want to have and problems that are productive. It's just I don't necessarily struggle with the same things that maybe your average person struggles with. But in the end, the experience of struggling is what it is, right? It's just I think my experience is a little bit different, and that's fine. And again, I kind of don't even like saying that kind of stuff because it makes me seem like I'm sitting up on some high horse or something and kind of moralizing down to the lesser people. And that's not my perspective at all. I'm just being as honest as I can, as self-aware as I can,

I guess. No, and I don't think that you're not coming off, trust me, as someone who's like setting yourself up on a pedestal here. I know people like you, right? I have friends like you who are very successful. So here's the difference that I see. Like the average person has a little bit of an emotional attachment to a lot of things like to, you know, whether it be their food, their workouts, their self-image, um, their, you know, just their relationships, all of that. There's an emotional attachment there. And when there's, when certain information comes their way, uh, the way they interpret it as emotionally, like they might not be able to logically digest it, but it hits them emotionally. It might manifest into depression. It might manifest into, uh, into eating binge eating or

just, or maybe even excessive exercise. It could go the other direction, right? Or, or like orthorexia type stuff. Right. Some obsessive, something obsessive. But for you, like I said, like I have friends like you and I'm fascinated with people like you because I'm not that. I can relate very well to a lot of my clients one-on-one. It's probably one of the reasons why I work very closely with people because, and you seem to, and maybe, yeah, you seem to kind of be at a distance at – quite a bit. When you're a writer, there's a book between you.

You even had a pen name. There's not even a book but a fake name between you. And when you're interacting with people online, there's still the screen between you. Now, with me, I'm usually face-to-face. you. Now with me, I'm usually face to face and I can understand a lot of the struggles that people have because yes, because I've had a lot of them and I understand, I've worked through them, but I'm, what I mean by fascinated is like, there's a part of you that I wish I had a little more of. And I think a lot of people like me do that where it's like, it's calculated. You understand the good and the bad, or you understand where – you're calculating exactly whether or not this is going to be – like you even said, Legion, probably not a smart investment.

But it was almost out of your personality to do this because you were making a decision that was not as business smart as you would normally do. It was a bad decision in that sense. The emotion that would be associated with that would be a negative one, right? Like, I'm putting myself way behind the eight ball right to start. Right. But it was, for me, again, it was a point of, it sounded interesting, and it was a point of integrity where I was like, well, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it my way. Yeah. And in the end, I'm not afraid of work. That's the worst case scenario is I put a bunch of work into something that doesn't quite pay off maybe in the way that some people think that it should. And I'm okay with that. That's the worst case scenario is I put a bunch of work into something that doesn't quite pay off maybe in the way that some people think that it should. And I'm okay with that.

That's a risk I'm willing to take. I don't care. And here's the difference between you and the average person. That would mean they were a failure and you would look at it as a learning experience. You know what I'm saying? That's definitely, that's definitely a good point. Yeah. That's something that's whenever, and I've had failures. I mean, I put $250,000 into an app that I really did not need. That was just a bad, that was dumb. Yeah, it was dumb. And obviously it probably affected you, but it did it slow you down? Did it send you into a world of depression? No, I mean, I didn't ever even cared that much. It came to what I just told you. I was like,

well, that was dumb. That was totally unnecessary. Let's just say at the time where I think it's decisions that are truly dumb are where you're sitting there and you're like, every part of me says I shouldn't do this. But for some unknown, who knows, maybe emotional reason, I'm going to do it anyway. That to me is something where I'll be like, okay, that's kind of a disappointment. But that wasn't the case. I just went in with the wrong assumptions and I didn't do enough due diligence. I thought it was going to be easier than it was going to be to just get to a product. I was like, this isn't that complicated. This is kind of a bunch of spreadsheets that work visually really is what this is, right? And I didn't find the right company to develop it and they did a bad job. And then I had to find another. And along the way, I could have easily just cut my losses, which was, now though, ironically, I'm on the other end of it and I have a decent app and I'm actually doing an update to it. I'm spending a bit more money. I might be able to turn it into a win because

I'm spending a bit more money to do an overhaul on the UI UX and it's going to look really nice. And I'm going to make it, I'm adding some features and I'm going to make it completely free. Like I don't care at this point. Like it doesn't, it'll never make an amount of money that matters. You know, if I'm charging upfront for it right now,

it's free with, if you like it, you can upgrade kind of thing. I'm just going to make it 100% free because who cares? And so making another top of funnel and if people really like it and it has gotten a lot of good feedback, and it has gotten a lot of downloads, but if it even picks up and does even better, then I'll continue actually to develop it because why not?

Because that's cool. If I had a free workout app specifically geared toward resistance training and weightlifting that is better than anything you could pay for, that's great. Yeah. And people are going to respect you for that. And the end, the story, the story is like, well, yeah, I already got so deep into it and I was like, eh, whatever, who cares? I'll just make it free. Yeah. Yeah. And that makes it a great story. So, okay. So let's, let's change gears here just a little bit because, um, I love your candidness and I really appreciate you being honest about how your psyche kind of works. The good thing is that the way that you think allows you to approach things in a more of a scientific way.

You don't get wrapped up in the emotional way of eating and the emotions of working out. You've learned a lot, right? You've learned a lot about working out. I mean you wrote a book about it. So in terms of working out, let's start there. Let's start with working out. Like, what should people do when it comes to, and I know you talked about this on a recent episode of your show, let's compare lifting, doing more aerobic exercise that lightweight, higher reps compared to lifting heavy. What are the benefits?

Well, I would say, I mean, the lighter stuff is perfectly valid exercise and you get in there, you're moving your body and you're obviously burning some calories and you're going to benefit your muscles to some degree. You're not going to get very far in terms of improving your body composition, but if it's something that you enjoy and it gets you exercise, it keeps you exercising, gets you in the gym, It's perfectly valid. I recommend more of a, uh, I'd say a training approach, which is more goal oriented. It's more methodical, it's more systematic. Um, and that's where the heavier weightlifting comes in. It doesn't have to be now when I say heavy, it's heavy by most female standards because

most women from what I've seen over the years are following, still kind of following the mainstream advice given to women, which is do a bunch of cardio, starve the shit out of yourself. And if you're going to touch weights, make sure they're not heavy or you're going to turn into a, you know, hulking monster. And that is, is a very counterproductive and miserable way to go about fitness. So when I say heavy, what I'm saying, just to quantify it, I would say working with weights that are in the range of, let's say, 75% to 85% of your one rep max. So kind of the rep range at the high end, you're talking about 10 to 12 reps. And that's at the point where you're pretty much can't do another rep that it's very, very difficult. And at the low, you're talking about maybe about four

reps. And if you do that, and if you combine that with a simple method of progression, my personal favorite, especially for people that are new is called double progression, which is where you are working in a given rep range up until you can hit the top of that rep range for a certain number of sets and then you're adding weight right and then you work with that new weight which bumps you down in your reps until you can do the exercise for with that new higher weight for the you know the target which takes something like starting strength right so it's three sets of five that's what you're working toward once you can hit that you're adding weight although you may be adding weight on

a fixed schedule depending on how it's programmed but but that's an example where you say, okay, once you can get three sets of five reps on that squat, I want you to add five pounds to the bar. Let's say that gets you down to three or four reps. You're going to work with that until three sets of five and so forth. And that's called double progression because you progress in your reps and then you turn that into progressing on your weight. And it's a great simple system that allows you to achieve progressive overload, which is the primary driving mechanical factor

in terms of muscle building. And what that is, is it's progressively increasing the amount of tension that's produced in your muscles over time. And the most effective way to do that is to get stronger, add weight to the bar over time. So really what I like to see is I like to see people getting strong. I like to see people doing strength training, which is familiar to guys, less familiar to women. At least many women that find their way to me are usually at the beginning of their fitness life cycle, so to speak, maybe they've tried a few things that haven't worked. But I have more beginners than advanced weightlifters, which is intentional. I cater to the GenFit crowd, to the beginners, because I just like it more.

I think I can help a lot. There's a lot more of those people out there. I'm more interested in taking an everyday person. I'm more interested in taking an everyday person. Let's say take a mom who has kids and a job and a busy life, and she wants to be in good shape and look and feel better. I'm more interested in working with her than a top-tier physique athlete who's trying to add three pounds of muscle to a few places on her body. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter.

It's just not my personal interest, even myself. Yeah, And I think the reward on that as well, it's so impactful because the, from reading starting strength as well, and then also your book, you know, I know that you pulled a lot of information from there. Uh, and that was, uh, you know, definitely a good guiding post for you in terms of the strength training protocols. And it's interesting because they talk about beginner athletes and, and I like this as well. I like, I don't like, I'm the same with you. I don't like training higher level because the improvements are smaller. It becomes a lot more tedious. It's not as much fun, you know, but when you like, when you run through a protocol with a, with somebody who's fairly new and I just, it's interesting because I'm, I'm starting to train way more women than I, than I thought I'd

ever trained because they've never touched a weight. The amount of increased strength is so fast, so significant, they feel so powerful and the results come so quickly that you're just like, it's so gratifying to do something like that. I'm glad that you said that. So yeah, so on the exercise side of things,

that's really what I emphasize. Strength training, getting stronger, using exercise to build and maintain muscle, using diet to reduce body fat and maintain desirable body fat levels. And as far as cardio versus weights go, it depends on ultimately, that really kind of depends on the person, their goals, what they like to do. But if you say your average run-of-the-mill person that just wants to be in good shape, I would like to see them spend 80% of their time, their fitness, their workout time on the strength training and 20% on the cardio. Doing cardio is smart. I do cardio two days a week myself, sometimes three days a week.

And that's why I walk my dog, but I don't count that. I actually do some biking. and because I enjoy it and because there are some unique health benefits to cardio that you don't necessarily get from weightlifting but the key to having not just the there's the type of body people want to have in terms of they usually are thinking about that visually that is resistance training that is strength training that is for both men and women for men it's a bit more obvious but for women it's not as obvious because they a lot of women have been – well, they've been kind of like indoctrinated over the years to think that gaining muscle, like gaining anything is bad. So if that scale ever goes up, that's bad and you live and die by the scale. And what I am teaching women through my writing and through anything that I – whenever I'm talking to women, I'm saying that forget about weight. Think about body composition.

Think about how that weight breaks down into primarily – I mean there's more to your body composition than this muscle and fat, of course. But that's what we can really change. That's what we want to change. And think about how your ideal body looks and who cares what that weight is. You probably won't even know what that weight is, but I can tell you having worked with thousands and thousands of women, if you're starting at a, whether you are underweight or overweight, if you've never done anything to really train your muscles, ultimately what it's going to require, if you want to look like most women, the body that most women want, which is that kind of lean tone defined athletic look is you're going to have to gain probably 10 to 15

pounds of muscle. And you're going to have to have probably 10 to 15 pounds of muscle and you're going to have to have your body fat percentage around 20 some women prefer to be a little bit leaner and that's fine and there's a point where it gets unhealthy but you know if you get down to let's say it's 17 or 18 that's perfectly healthy you can maintain that year round rather easily and that's a very athletic look and so that's uh yeah that that the goal. Now, how do you get there? Well, 80% of that is going to be your resistance training. You don't necessarily have to do cardio at all if you don't want to, but when you're losing fat, you're going to lose fat faster if you include some cardio. It does have some unique health benefits. I think

if you do have time for it, it's smart to work some of it in. That's really the, and the philosophy is similar for men. It's just more, obviously there's more muscle that needs to be gained for the average guy. How the average guy wants to look, he needs to gain, let's say 25 to probably 35 pounds of muscle and be around 10% body fat. That's like the Hollywood look, I guess you could say. Yeah. I think that's what most people, most guys are like aiming for. Um, in terms of lifting, right, let's give them an idea of how consistent, how often. So for both men and women, I would say that you can progress on as little as probably one or two workouts per week, at least in the beginning, the more you do the better. But if, if you have all the time in the world that you, that you can give to it, I would say ideally you'd be doing

about four to six hours of weightlifting per week and maybe an hour or two of cardio per week. And you can break that down into, you know, I myself, I lift five days per week. Rarely do I do a sixth day. Usually I'm doing cardio and I take one day off, at least one day off per week of weightlifting. So it depends on how I'm programming and it depends on how I'm sleeping. I have two kids. It depends on things like I wouldn't even mind working out a bit more, but I can only get away with so much. So three, ideally it's a, let's say three to five days per week. And you'd have the programming that I, that I have in my books and that I really like for, for newer people is a simple push, pull legs setup where one of your days you're doing heavy pushing.

is a simple push-pull legs setup where one of your days you're doing heavy pushing. So that's stuff like bench press and overhead press. And I personally like to separate my, if possible, this is more relevant to guys, like to separate my chest pressing with my shoulder pressing. But then you're going to have a heavy pulling day. So that's going to involve deadlifting and other barbell rows and stuff like that. And then you're going to have a heavy legs day, a squat day. We're going to be doing squatting and leg press. And there are a number of exercises that I think are,

at least they're the 20% of all the exercises you could possibly do for those muscle groups to get 80% of the potential gains. And again, focusing on free weights, so barbells and dumbbells, focusing on heavier weights, and focusing on progressing. Progression is the key. Rep ranges are – there are a lot of arguments that can be made for and against various rep ranges. I'm actually doing an update to both Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger. I'm going to be releasing third editions this year.

I do it semi-regularly. I mean, it's been a little bit, it's been, I think, two years since I did the last one, but it's time because I get a lot of good questions and suggestions from people and I have my own list of things that I want to address. And so this is a little something I want to add as an argument as to why I really like for guys working in the lower or sorry, the lower end of that rep range. I really like the four to six, five to seven, maybe six to eight, but I'd say closer to four to six, five to seven for guys and for girls a bit lighter, I'd say eight to 10. And the reason being is,

this is kind of a myth that's out there. A lot of women, a lot of people, but women in particular, guys as well, think that women just can't build muscle very effectively. They can't build nearly as effectively as men. And I've written about this. There's an article on Muscle for Life. If you search for female muscle growth, you can read it. But basically, that's just wrong. Women can gain muscle and strength very effectively, but their big disadvantage, it is not their hormones. Like, yes, they have much lower testosterone levels, but they also have higher estrogen levels, and that actually makes up for a bit of it. Higher growth hormone levels, that makes up for a bit of it. And research clearly shows that women can gain plenty of muscle and strength, but they start with

so much less than guys. You start a guy and you start a girl on the same program. The guy is going to outpace the girl not only because he's starting with a ton more muscle, but it's kind of like the accumulated advantage that you get in, let's say, kids that play sports, right? Where if you are good enough in the beginning to get more attention from the coaches, you're going to get now better coaching and you're going to get even better than – and you're going to get better faster than the other kids. And then that's going to turn into playing on better teams, which means you get better. And eventually you just leave everyone in the dust. It's similar in a training side of things where, uh, where women, because they start with very little muscle, they have to start with much lighter weights and it's harder for them to get in the groove. And the, the, even the technical, the skill acquisition side of it is harder when you are weaker. And so guys are able to progress faster and ultimately gain a lot more muscle in the long run.

But for women, the reason why I like them starting with a little bit lighter weights is for that reason. It's intimidating if you take just an average woman and you tell her to get under a squat and do like three sets of five at an RPE of like seven or eight. So meaning that you're ending your sets like one or two reps shy of failure. Those are difficult sets. And I know that working one-on-one with women where I realized like a guy can do that. A guy, you can tell him, you know, he, he takes one or two weeks to acclimate. He gets up to speed on the basic form and you put them under, maybe it's only 135 pounds. It doesn't matter, but he gets his sets of five, no problem. And he just gained strength like crazy women. It's, I've just seen them struggle enough, especially with upper body stuff,

like a bench press, a five rep bench press in the beginning for a woman. So that's why I like that women start with a little bit lighter weights. They're still heavy. They're just not as heavy as the men's weights. Yeah. And it's, and I think also with a little bit lighter weights. They're still heavy. They're just not as heavy as the men's weights. Yeah, and I think also going a little higher rep into the hypertrophy zone. And also it's a little bit of an endurance zone. There's also a psychological benefit to it because if you're aiming for five reps and they're terrible, you're not going to want to continue to do it. But if you can aim for eight to 12 and you can fire them off, you're going to feel like you're doing something. eight to 12 and you're, you know, and you can fire them off, you're going to feel like you're doing something. Um, well, I mean, I would argue though, because what is very clear at this point,

I mean, obviously there's still probably more questions than answers in terms of the science of muscle growth, because it is very complex in muscle building. But, um, if you look at some of the more recent stuff by guys like, um, Eric Helms, uh, Greg Knuckles, Brad Schoenfeld, Mike Zortos, it's very clear that rep ranges in terms of muscle building, low can work just as well as high and vice, well, up to a point. You get too high and now you're really just talking about muscle endurance.

But if you're talking about four to six versus 10 to 12, you probably can build muscle just as effectively over the long term in both of those rep ranges. I'd say, personally, I might argue that four to six might be more beneficial over the long term if you had to just pick one. Ideally, you'd work in both as you get more proficient. But the point is you have to take your sets close to failure. That's the key. And I would argue, especially for guys, and again, this is one of the reasons why I like especially newer guys who are newer to weightlifting to lift heavier weights is doing five rep

sets at an RPE of like seven to eight, I think is much more enjoyable than 10 to 12 rep sets because 10 to 12 rep true hard sets suck. Dude, 10 to 12 rep real sets of squats that sucks deadlifts that sucks and i don't even know if i'd recommend that because i would say it might even be dangerous i mean that's me being a little bit hyperbolic but i would never recommend somebody doing 15 to 20 rep sets of deadlifts like amraps or something unless they were very experienced weightlifters and they knew that they're not gonna fuck their shit up but yeah sure do a 10 to 12 rep set of bicep curls to failure. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Well, the fatigue, if you're doing a squat, if you're doing a fatigue, there's,

I mean, if you're doing 10 to 12 reps of squats or deadlifts, there's fatigue that sets in. And when you're, and then at that point- And there's lactic acid and everything's on fire. It sucks. It really actually sucks. Yeah. It's painful. And there's something to be said for that, where if you're going into the gym and you look at your workout for the day and you know it's going to suck. You're like, oh, I have to do five sets of 10 on the squat. And then I have to do another five sets of 10 on the leg press and then finish with something else. Yeah, that's good.

You force yourself through it. But are you going to be able to force yourself through that for how long? How long until you're just like, nah. and you don't necessarily even have a backup. So you're in, and I've seen it firsthand where people, and I'll say this, I'll say, look, you could take the most perfect diet or training program, perfect from a scientific perspective. It couldn't get better based on our current understanding of the literature and of the physiology. But if you don't like them, they're not for you. If you don't actually enjoy following that diet, don't do it. Because there are non-negotiable things like energy balance, macronutrient balance, only a few.

There's only a few flexible principles that are very accommodating that you have to follow. Everything else is negotiable. Is it optimal the way that you want to do it? Maybe not. But if you can stick to it, that's what matters because long-term compliance is the key. And the same thing goes for training. If you are given the absolute best possible program

for where you're at and where you want to be, but you hate doing it, then you shouldn't do it. You should find something that is less than optimal in an abstract sense, but actually more optimal because you're going to be able to stick to it and enjoy it. That's a good point. You know, people ask the question, what's the best exercise? What's the best cardio? What's the best of this? And the answer is always whatever you enjoy doing. Doesn't matter. Do I mean, obviously there's ones that are better than the other, but if you're not going to come back, it really it really depends right that's the that's it's the one

answer but it depends yeah it's like yeah exactly it's like if it's walking your dog that you know that's the thing you enjoy most you're not going to really get any benefits but like you know if you're talking about the difference between you know should i should i bike or should i row or should i jog yeah which which one do you like? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, Mike, there's a whole nother section that we, I want to talk about and I'm going to have to bring you back on the show for it. But I want to talk about nutrition because, you know, in a different episode, you have

very, very, and it goes, it's so interesting after talking to you and getting to know you, everything that you do makes so much sense to me. Um, because it's so you, you know, and, and it's, but it's, it's great because it's, it's so specific. You are a very specific guy. You approach things in a very specific way. And, uh, it's just, it's who you are. And, but it's the great thing is, is that, you know, nobody has to wonder what you think because it's, it's right there in front of you. Um, so I, you know, I'd love to dive into nutrition next time. I want to bring you back on. If people who are listening, it's a great cliffhanger for them to, to go check out what you're doing because you've got your podcast, you have your YouTube

videos, you have your websites and your, and your supplements and everything like that. Tell everybody where they can find you and, and, and, you know, and basically the places you like to hang out. Yeah. I mean, muscleforlife.com is the hub. I think that's the best place to go. So it's muscleforlife.com. And there you'll find a ton of articles that I've written. And I have a couple of people that write with me, which is nice. And everything that is published under my name, I write, uh, sometimes I'll get first drafts, but then I go through and I rip them apart and turn them into something that I like. But there's also a couple other guys that do a good job,

and together we tackle all kinds of things that in some cases are things that are just interesting to us, and we hope other people will find interesting. Like, should you do cardio or weights first? That was, I think, the last article that I published on Muscle for Life because I get asked that,

and I was like, oh, that'd be fun to research and write about. In other cases, it's more just pillar staple content that people, you know, how do you lose weight fast, right? So I wrote a very long piece on that. So muscleforlife.com, you can find the podcast, the articles, and if you want to check out the supplements, they're in the store on Muscle for Life,

even though there's obviously Legion has its own website, legionathletics.com. Muscle for Life is a good place to check everything out. Awesome. Mike, thanks so much for coming on. This was great. I'm glad I got to chat with you. Yes, sir.

Thank you for having me. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies

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