Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best of Muscle for Life: Newbie Gains, Stubborn Belly Fat, and Staying Motivated

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

As of right now, I’ve produced over 500 episodes of Muscle for Life, totaling over 700 hours of content. I’ve talked about a huge variety of things related to health, fitness, and lifestyle, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to fads like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein to more unfamiliar territories like body weight set point and fasted cardio. Some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few key takeaways that just about anyone can benefit from (that’s what I tell myself at least). And as cool as that is, it poses a problem for you, my dear listener: Ain’t nobody got time for that. Well okay, some people do make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts, but my wizbang analytics tell me that while many listeners tune in on a regular basis, they don’t catch every installment of Muscle for Life and thus miss out on insights that could help them get a little better inside and outside the gym. People have also been saying they’d like me to do more shorter, multi-topic episodes, like my Q&As. And so I got an idea: how about a “best of” series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from my most popular episodes? This way, people who are new to the show can quickly determine if it’s for them or not, and those who enjoy what I’m doing but don’t have the time or inclination to listen to all of my stuff can still benefit from the discussions and find new episodes to listen to. So, in this episode of The Best of Muscle for Life, you’ll be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes: Paul Revelia on How to Keep Making Progress After Your "Newbie Gains" Why Belly Fat Is So Stubborn (and How to Lose It) Motivation Monday: How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Working Out And we’ll be starting with number one, Paul Revelia on How to Keep Making Progress After Your "Newbie Gains" Timestamps: 7:06- Paul Revelia on How to Keep Making Progress After Your "Newbie Gains" 19:40 - Why Belly Fat Is So Stubborn (and How to Lose It) 31:43 - Motivation Monday: How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Working Out --- Mentioned on The Show: legionathletics.com/podcast-104-paul-revelia/ legionathletics.com/how-to-lose-belly-fat-podcast/ legionathletics.com/motivation-monday-working-out/ Shop Legion Supplements Here: legionathletics.com/shop/ --- 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: www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to me talk about health and fitness things. Now, as of right now, I have produced over 500 episodes of Muscle for Life and they total over 700 hours of content probably. And I've talked about a huge variety of things related to getting fit and healthy, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to stuff that is more faddish like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein and MCT oil to more unfamiliar territories like body weight set point and fasted training. Now, some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few key takeaways that just about anyone can benefit from. At least that's what I tell myself. And as cool as that is, it also poses

a problem for you, my dear listener. Ain't nobody got time for that. 500 plus episodes 700 plus hours i mean some people do actually make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts but according to my whiz bang analytic software many listeners do tune in on a regular basis but they definitely do not catch every installment of the show and thus miss out on insights that could help them get a little bit better inside and outside the gym. And people have also been telling me that they would like me to do more shorter multi-topic episodes like my Q&As, you know, stuff that is more easily consumed during a commute, for example. And so I got an idea. Why not do a best of series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from my most popular episodes? So this way, people who are new to the show can

quickly determine if it is for them or not, because if they listen to a couple best of episodes and don't like them, then chances are they're just not going to like the podcast. to listen to all of my stuff, well, those people will then be able to still benefit from the discussions and find new episodes to go listen to. So in this installment of the Best of Muscle for Life, you will be hearing hand-picked morsels from three of my most popular episodes. One, Paul Revella on how to keep making progress after your newbie gains have been exhausted. Two, why belly fat is so stubborn and how to lose it. And three, this was a motivational one, a moaty Monday, as I was calling them, how to motivate yourself to keep working out. Thank you. Продолжение следует... Thank you. And so let's start with Paul Revella on how to keep making progress as an intermediate

or advanced weightlifter. And if you like the little snippets that I've chosen for you, and you want to go listen to the full interview, this one was published February 20th, 2017. So you can go find it. If you just search for Revella, R-E-V-E-L-L-I-A, it'll pop up. You can search my podcast feed or my YouTube channel and it'll pop up. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent.

There are no proprietary blends, for example. And everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe. But there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products.

To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout, post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to www.buylegion.com, B-U-Y Legion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work, and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want all natural evidence-based supplements that work, please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. I'd love to hear from your personal experience and also your experience coaching people how things change. And so when you go from that, you're coming out of your newbie

phase into the intermediate phase and then eventually into the advanced, how does that really look? How does that play out? And what things do you really have to start paying attention to? And what is going to determine your progress from that? Again, so you've gained your first 15 to 20 pounds of muscle, and you want to gain, if you're a guy, if you're a girl, about half that. And you want to double that, though. What got you to that first 15 is not going to get you to doubling it. And how does that really look?

What got you to that first 15 is not going to get you to doubling it. And how does that really look? Yeah, it's such a great topic because as a child of weightlifting and nutrition and from the 90s and learning all that I could from the muscle magazines, you're often taught things about overtraining and eating twice your weight in protein per grams per day. And eating 10 meals a day and so forth. So I always felt like I was just missing out on progressing because I wasn't able to do some of those things. I wasn't resting enough or I wasn't eating enough protein. And so what I would often find is when I would get through a beginner phase

where I would make a lot of great progress and feel great for six, eight months, I would reach that place where you go into the gym, the weights aren't going up. Sometimes they're going backwards. You don't feel as good. And, uh, I would just stop going to the gym for a couple of weeks at a time just to get that feeling back. Yeah. Just to regain that, you know, like if you're not getting a positive response from something that you're doing, well, maybe I'll just go out drinking with my friends instead of, you know, spending all this time in the gym. And then lo and behold, when you get back in the gym, you make some progress again. And, um, so there was actually a lesson there that I was not paying attention to. And that was, you know, the, the lesson of tapering or deloading, um,

of, of undulating your intensity. And I think the most important thing when we talk about, when you go from a beginner to an intermediate is paying attention to your training volume. The best way to progress is to increase your training volume. But a lot of us, when we're a beginner, we just try to increase our training volume over a single session. So if you're training arms and you're getting 6,000 pounds of volume for arms, well, let's try 6,500 pounds. There is a maximum recoverable volume that you can train in a single session. And just so everybody listening knows, volume, we're referring to the number of reps, basically. And so you have the reps and the weight that you're moving, and there's the volume.

Yeah, volume is weight times reps times sets. So you're just multiplying 10 pounds times 10 sets times 10 reps, right? Or you could just say total reps multiplied by total weight. But yeah, it's getting to that bottom of how much weight did you lift in this workout in this week, month? Absolutely. For body part. And once you start training, paying attention to that, you can start saying, well, if I'm doing 6,000 pounds of volume per week, what if I split it up and did some different frequency? So maybe twice a week, you hit the same body part and you hit 12 or 11,000 pounds of volume, but split over two sessions.

This is where things get really interesting. And this was what I like to call my second newbie phase because I was so afraid early on, you know, after reading all the magazines over training, and you only want to hit a body part once a week, that hitting a body part twice a week was going to destroy me. The opposite was the case. When I found a program, when the internet started to become more fashionable, I started looking online and doing research on what was actually the truth. I found that more training volume, more frequency was what I needed to make that next level of progression. And so I find that when you take someone who's been on a single body

part per day split, or just training a body part once a week, even if they're pairing body parts, and then put them where they're training body part twice a week, but undulating intensities, right? So you're not doing the same exact workout twice a week. You're doing maybe a higher intensity one day. Meaning a heavier, harder workout. Intensity, what I'm referring to is percentage of your one rep max. So if you're training at 80% of your one rep max or in the 80 to 90 range one day, and then 50 to 60 another day, what we might consider a pump day or a high rep volume day day so those are the kind of things that become very exciting because then you're you're start to progress linearly again just like you did when you started you start to see increases in muscle fiber you start to see

increases in performance uh lo and behold the more you train the faster you recover from your training so although you'll initially see some more some more doms depending on how what kind of training you're doing you're going to start to notice you recover quicker. And so when you go from beginner to intermediate, that's probably the most important factor. Are there any like general tips that you can kind of, uh, just key lessons that you've learned that has gotten you to now where you can go, okay, I think I'm going to change this. And, you know, where you can now program your, your own workouts to really meet your, your psychological, emotional, and physical needs. Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing for me is that, you know, I've gone through different phases

where I've competed as a physique athlete, I've competed as a strength athlete. Um, you know, I have aspirations of doing more competitions, of wanting to look good for photo shoots, of just wanting to represent what I do, my sport, my lifestyle. I want to walk around and people to go, that guy is clearly doing something with fitness. Like, you know, like nothing makes me happier than checking out at the grocery store. And the clerk says, are these things good for building muscle? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm like, why would they ask?

I've had that too. People actually at the grocery store ask for advice, you know what I mean? Like, yo, so what kind of, wait, what kind of program do you do? Whatever food you have on there is some kind of magic that they don't know about. Like, oh, are those chips good? Oh, is that protein bar good? You know, so yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing is just the internet is just so amazing. I mean, I get to attend seminars and be, you know, because I was associated with

Lane, he's dragged me around the world to be a part of these. I mean, I know more people with doctor in front of the, in front of their name than I can even name right now, you know, uh, you know, I already mentioned Dr. Mike Zordos, but there, you know, there is a whole slew of people that are now doing research beyond what people do in the gym. They're actually creating studies just for this purpose to look at how we should be progressing. How do you build more muscle is going to failure going to help you build more muscle or is it total volume? It's going to build more muscle. Like, where is the answer?

And the great part is there probably is no answer but we're just getting little pieces of what works and what works better for the person and that person and uh constantly challenging yourself i kind of see it as a puzzle that's being built from the inside out you know we don't know where it really ends but at least we're getting it gives us more of a picture comes in oh okay that's interesting we never really saw like that. And it'll probably be like that until we die. It'll probably never be done. Mike Zortos had a great quote. He was, you know, he's been studying daily undulating periodization. And basically you're doing three different models, power, strength, and speed. And so he basically did a study with them all in the same order, the power, strength, and hypertrophy day. And then he switched the order. And he

basically said, so what I found was this program is better than the other program. Does that mean it's the best program? No, it means it's only the second worst. So like, we're not, we're not, we're not eliminating. I think the unicorn is going to be what is optimal. Everyone wants to know what's optimal. You hit the nail on the head. What's optimal is what gets you most jacked up to get in the gym and do something. If that's orange theory, if that's power yoga, if that's CrossFit, if that's the, uh, Frank Seppi, uh, fitness disc, I don't care what it is, whatever gets you jacked up to go do something, that's going to give you much better results than a program that you look at and go, well, this is the perfect program. I guess I should do it. You're just not going to

get the same results. So that's why I like competing. That's why I like doing, uh, you know, physique competitions or powerlifting meets or, you know, whatever it is. If someone challenged me to do a CrossFit competition, who knows that that might get, that might get me excited to do something new, you know? So there's, I'm open to all of it. And like you said, when, when clients reach out to me and go, Hey coach, um, what if I do CrossFit one day a week? Is that bad? Oh, no. Are you excited? Do you go there and have fun and talk to people and push yourself past your perceived limitations? Then it's going to be good for you. So yeah, I'm all for blending the evidence-based optimization of your training with the

psychology of it, because the psychology of the athlete, I've said this before, is the most important thing. To the point of with diet. So just to make it clear for people listening, and you tell me if you agree or what you've experienced, and because I've experienced it myself with my body and then just working with people and so forth, is that again, like you were saying in the beginning, you can be pretty loose with your calories and pretty loose with your macros. And you'll see quickly that as long as you're in the gym and putting in the work and working on a decent program, everything just continues to go up.

So you're like, hey, I guess it doesn't really matter. Like maybe I only ate a half a gram of protein per pound of body weight for the last two days. I don't see any difference. And, you know, okay, I'll bring it back up. But then when you get into that intermediate phase, it seems like fluctuating, if your calories and your macros, especially your protein and carbs in particular is what I've seen. If they begin to fluctuate too much, it negatively impacts training. It gets in the way of, you know, it's hard to build that momentum, which I have, you know, anyone that has bulked in aros relatively tight. You get into that, like you build momentum and you feel good and you have energy in the gym and you continue to

make progress. And I, what I've seen is that the people that have the most trouble getting into that groove are people whose nutrition is very volatile. Is that something that you've noticed? Yeah. So you touched on a very important point and that is what is going to optimize your progress, and that is your performance in the gym. And if your nutrition is not consistent, if you're not eating enough carbs one day so that you're not hydrated properly, your muscles are not filled out, you're not able to perform and recover in a manner in which it's going to require you during that training session, that's going to negatively impact you. So, yeah, that's where we need to get into good habits. You know, although I'm not someone that disposes that everyone needs to be on the same meal plan, I do believe in meal planning, planning ahead, cooking in bulk. I agree.

You know, putting things in the refrigerator that are easy to grab and go, whatever that means for you. If that means you label 40 Tupperwares per week, fine. I tend to just cook a bunch of chicken, a bunch of potatoes, a bunch of vegetables, put them in the fridge, grab them, weigh them and eat. So whatever that looks like for you, depending on your goals, consistency with nutrition, you're just going to feel better. You're going to notice more consistent weight and the way you look and the way you feel if you're consistently hitting your diet. you know, weight and the way you look and the way you feel if you're consistently hitting your diet. You know, I'm not opposed to any one diet lifestyle as long as it doesn't negatively impact your performance or recovery in the gym. And that's it for the highlights of my interview

with Paul Revella on how to keep making progress after your newbie gains are long gone. And again, if you want to listen to the full interview, it was published on February 20th, 2017. You can find it by searching my feed or my YouTube channel for Paul's last name. That's the easiest way to find it. R-E-V-E-L-I-A. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Okay, let's move on to the next episode that is featured in this best of episode. And that is why belly fat is so stubborn and how to lose it. This is just me. This was a monologue that I posted

back on December 13th, 2017. So if you like it, you can go find it. And an easy way to find it is just to search stubborn fat, search the feed or the YouTube channel, and it'll pop up. So let's start at the top. Why is belly fat so stubborn? Now, if you are having trouble losing belly fat, I have good news for you. You don't have to worry that you are genetically cursed and that you're doing the wrong exercises and you just don't know which special exercises you should be doing. You don't have to worry about your hormones. Your hormones are probably fine. You don't have to worry about the foods you're eating. You're not struggling because you're eating the wrong foods. Sugar is not the problem. Carbs are not the problem. Grains are not the problem. Gluten is not the problem. I think you get the point. And the reality is you could follow

every thin belly rule that mainstream gurus prescribe. You could do every belly flattening exercise on the internet. You could get rid of every possible hormone clogging food. You could eliminate every form of sugar in your diet, and you could even subject yourself to the trials and tribulations of low-carb living and still have handfuls of ugly belly fat for the rest of your life. It doesn't have to be like this though. No matter what your genetics are, no matter where your hormones are at, you absolutely can have a lean ripped stomach and it can be easier than you ever thought possible if you know what you're doing and why. And all that begins with a physiological understanding of how fat burning actually works. So when we talk about burning

fat, what we're actually talking about is a two-part process consisting of lipolysis and oxidation. So lipolysis is the process whereby fat cells release the molecules of stored energy, which are called fatty acids, into your blood. And then oxidation is the process whereby cells utilize or burn those fatty acids for energy. Now, the body's primary method of stimulating lipolysis is the production of adrenaline and noradrenaline, which are known as catecholamines. So what happens is these chemicals enter your blood and they travel to fat cells and they attach themselves to those fat cells at points on the cells known as receptors. And once they attach to the fat cells, these catecholamines trigger the release

of the fatty acids stored within the fat cells. And then other cells are able to use those fatty acids as fuel. So the fatty acids travel around now in your blood and other cells grab them and burn them as fuel. What most people don't know is that fat cells are not all made alike. Some respond very well to catecholamines and some don't. Now, if you have dieted for any period of time, you have absolutely experienced this. You have experienced the frustrating reality that certain areas of your body, like your chest, your arms, your face, tighten up pretty quickly. But then other areas of your body and the areas that you probably care the most about, like your stomach, your hips, your thighs, seem to not change at all, seem to have no response to the diet and exercise. And the primary reason for that boils down to one simple fact. It's this

fat cells contain two types of receptors for catecholamines. And those receptors are diametrically opposed in function. So these receptors have names. So one type is known as the alpha receptor and another type is the beta receptor. And while the physiology in play, the mechanisms are pretty complex, what it comes down to is alpha receptors hinder lipolysis and beta receptors trigger it. Therefore, fat cells with a high amount of beta receptors are relatively easy to mobilize, whereas those with a high amount of alpha receptors aren't. And this is why when you start a fat loss regimen, you see immediate results in certain areas of your body that contain large amounts of fat with

large amounts of beta receptors. The areas like our chest, our arms, our face, but then you'll see like no results in other areas like your stomach, hips, and thighs, because the fat cells in those areas of our body tend to have a lot of alpha receptors, which means they are just very hard to mobilize. So that's why belly fat tends to hang on for dear life when you're cutting. And before we look at strategies for breaking down these fat cells defenses, let's look at some of the biggest myths that are out there. Because if you Google around for belly fat loss tips, you're going to wind up reading a lot of bullshit. And I want to give you a quick antidote. So the first thing you need to know is that unfortunately you can't

preferentially target belly fat for elimination, at least in any way that makes a significant difference. So no amount of crunches or planks or anything else are going to directly burn your belly fat away. You should also know that there are no individual foods that are going to help or harm the process. The belly bulge that you want to get rid of isn't caused by high glycemic carbs or processed foods or dairy or whatever else that, you know, the health gurus say. And no amount of healthy fats or fancy stuff like MCT oil or exogenous ketones or anything else is going to just get rid of it for you. Meal frequency also isn't the problem. Many people say that you need to eat many small meals per day to stoke the metabolic fire, to really ramp up your metabolism and burn away

that stubborn fat. And that if you eat fewer, larger meals, you're going to send your body into some form of starvation mode, which is going to tell it to hold on to belly fat and stubborn fat. Not true. Eating at night also isn't a problem. That's another big myth. Another common culprit that is thrown around is that if you eat the majority or if you eat a large amount of calories late at night, you are going to either have trouble losing fat or even gain fat faster. And that is not true. Studies show that you can eat the majority of your daily calories early, late, whenever

it has no effect on weight loss parameters or body composition. Stress also isn't the culprit. While it certainly can promote behaviors that lead to weight gain, like overeating, for example, it can't directly cause weight gain through hormonal imbalances or any other mechanisms. And of course, supplements are not the key to fat loss. You can do just fine without any supplements, but if you combine the right ones with a proper diet and exercise routine, you can dramatically speed up the process. So here's my personal fat loss stack, so to speak. And this is what I use, this is what I recommend. So the first supplement is caffeine. And I guess you can get caffeine without supplementing, but I do get my caffeine from a supplement, from a pre-workout supplement. And the reason why it helps is caffeine increases

the amount of energy that your body burns throughout the day. It increases your basal metabolic rate. And it's also nice because if you take enough of it, it improves strength, it promotes muscle endurance, it enhances anaerobic take enough of it, it improves strength. It promotes muscle endurance. It enhances anaerobic performance. So it makes for better workouts. And it's also worth noting that studies have shown that caffeine is best delivered in a pill or powder format. But you do need to watch out for building up a tolerance, especially when we're talking about weight loss, because over time, the more you have caffeine, the less effective it becomes

in its fat burning effects. So therefore the best plan when you're cutting is probably to have caffeine three, maybe four days a week, I would say max five, and then have no caffeine on the other days. So you can preserve its effectiveness as much as possible. Okay. The next supplement is one that I mentioned earlier, but didn't really get into. And that is yohimbine, which is a natural chemical that's extracted from a species of African plant, the yohimbi plant. And studies show that yohimbine can accelerate fat loss by blocking the activity of alpha receptors in fat cells.

It's also a mild stimulant, but what really makes it special is that it blocks the activity of alpha receptors. Remember, alpha receptors are the ones that hinder fat burning. When catecholamines bind to alpha receptors, nothing happens. If they bind to beta receptors, the fatty acids are released and then ready for burning. So what yohimbine does is it enables your body to reduce its fat stores faster. And it also is particularly useful as you get leaner and you are dealing with more and more stubborn fat. It's those stubborn fat holdouts. Again, that as you

get leaner, you'll notice that, you know, you might've visibly lost quite a bit of fat in your face and basically, you know, most of your upper body, but then certain areas of your body, if you're a guy, it's probably your, your stomach and your, especially your lower stomach, your lower abs. If you're a girl, it's your hips and thighs. They haven't changed as much as you had hoped. That's definitely the case. And so as you get leaner, what you're dealing with, what's left to lose becomes basically more and more stubborn fat. So yohimbine is great in that regard because it just helps you get through that final slow period faster. Now, there is a catch with yohimbine though, because elevated insulin levels negate its weight loss effects. This is what we have seen in research. So if you want to reap its fat loss benefits,

then you need to be in a fasted state, which again, now that is why I've said multiple times that if you're going to train in a fasted state, when you're cutting, I highly recommend you combine it with a couple supplements because you're going to get a lot more fat burning out of it. And yohimbine also can improve exercise performance and studies show that it seems to be particularly effective at fighting off physical fatigue and increasing time to exhaustion. So that's more relevant to endurance exercise or maybe CrossFit type workouts. But because it is a stimulant, you probably will notice that you have a bit more energy in your workouts and can push yourself a bit harder. And as far as buying Yohimbian, you can buy it by itself. But as I mentioned, it is in my pre-workout fat burner

forge along with HMB and CDP choline, which I won't go into here because it's not particularly relevant to our current discussion. But if you want to read more about it or learn about forge, just go to legionathletics.com slash Forge, and you can check it out. Okay, that's it for that episode. And again, that was published on December 13th, 2017. And if you want to listen to the full monologue, just search my feed or my YouTube channel for Stubborn Fat, and it will pop up. Let's move on. I've been saying pop up too many times. I think I'm going to use a different phrase next time. Let's get to the final one, which is a motivation Monday, how to motivate yourself to keep working out. This one was published on March 4th, 2019. If you want to listen to the entire episode.

Today's discussion is just going to be about workout motivation in general because it's a tough nut to crack. I take a shirtless picture, I post it on Instagram, I get immediate feedback. I get some likes, I get some lulls, I get some digital high fives, maybe a troll or two, some lulls. I get some digital high fives, maybe a troll or two, but it's dopamine on demand. I poke the button and I get the testicular tickle. Building a great body, however, is nothing like that. Building a great body is spitting into a bucket every day and nobody really cares until it's almost full, including you. You're just there like, trust me, this spit bucket is going to shine one day. And then you hawk another loogie into it. You just wait. My point is, it is completely self-driven. You want to know what it feels like? It feels like this. You bust your ass through a workout. You look in the mirror and you whisper to yourself, was that any good? Then you reply, also uttering, I have no fucking idea.

Oh, okay. Well, should I keep doing it? I really don't know. Please stop talking to me. Okay. Okay. Then you try to use your quick drying anti-stink strategically vented workout shirt to soak up your tears, but it is water resistant, so it is not even good for

that. So how do you do it? How do you motivate yourself every day to drag your draggy body up to the barbell and muscle fuck it until a physique is born? Day after day, one month, one year, one decade, if that's what it takes. Here then are some practical thoughts of mine on finding the motivation to build your best body ever one sweat brick at a time. Train first. Seriously, do it now. Stop leering at me and go train. You see, here's something that I have learned over the years. It doesn't play nicely with everyone's schedule, but getting up early to pound out a workout helps keep it high on the list of things not to fuck up. You see, we only get so many drops of energy every day, and life always finds a way to siphon them out of our skulls in unexpected ways,

a way to siphon them out of our skulls in unexpected ways, like tailgaters, noisy eaters, and group text messages. Lavish these drops early on your training, however, and you never have to worry about losing the motivation to do it later. Next tip is to find your way. Sometimes to get things done, you have to stick square pegs into circle holes, which is also the opening of my sexual tell-all, but whatever. Point is, trying to eat and exercise the exact same way that somebody else eats and exercises can itself be demotivating. eats and exercises can itself be demotivating, but eating and exercising the way that you eat and exercise feels like a well-oiled machine. Also, well-oiled machine is the name of said salacious story. Trust me, it is going to be money. Point is, create a system that works for you. Get into the groove of eating foods you like and doing workouts. You actually look forward to develop good habits, develop momentum, which then beget more good habits and momentum. fixes and magic bullets are a myth. There are no weird tricks for melting belly fat. There are no

pills or powders for packing on muscle. And there are no biohacks for supercharging your chakras with higher vibrations of the green tea infinity. There's only the work. The work produces forward motion. The forward motion becomes more forward motion. To reiterate, momentum creates momentum. Fuck inertia. That is the motto. The sooner you accept this, the more you will come to appreciate progress, which is itself motivating. The next tip is to take breaks. Don't chase unicorn farts, but also don't keep running full speed off a cliff. Take diet breaks. Take exercise breaks. Get some extra sleep now and then. Enjoy your holidays and vacations. Stay out of the gym when you're sick. Pushing the envelope too far too often is like speeding too much. It feels good. It feels like

you are getting to your destinations much faster, but you're not really. And the risks far outweigh the benefits. The next tip is to drink some liquid motivation. Because look, some days getting out of bed and into the gym is just way harder than it should be. It's like earth's mass suddenly doubled overnight and now gravity is trying to stomp your bones into dust. Sure, you can trudge to and through your workout, but there is no shame in downing a hit of jitter juice to lighten the load. And especially when it is legion pulse, of course. The next tip is to get excited about your next workout. Seriously, sit there for a minute and contemplate your next workout. Feel the weights moving, your muscles contracting, your heart pumping. Hear the music

in your headphones. Picture yourself hitting your rep targets or maybe even a PR or two. Picture yourself hitting your rep targets or maybe even a PR or two. Bask in the post-workout bliss. Whatever it is, find something in your next workout that excites you. The next tip is to call on a cheerleader because we all need cheerleaders in our lives. We all need people who love and believe in us in spite of ourselves. You are not dreaming about working out. You are chasing that dream down in a pickup truck full of chainsaw-wielding juggalos. What you're doing is real, and you need someone who's willing to declare how real it really is. You need someone

who will always shake their pom-poms for you, not point, laugh, and fart in your general direction. And the next and final tip is maybe you can just stop looking for motivation. Because listen, working out is fucking hard sometimes. Working out is trying to draw blood from a turnip. It's trying to read a Dickens novel. It is wrestling a porcupine in heat. And when you get right down to it, there is a point where you either appreciate working out and it motivates you or not. You either have the spark or you don't. You can only fan flames, not dirt. And at the end of the day, if you're only looking for little tricks and tips, then you need to think harder about this thing that you say you want to

do. Because working out is a stormy love affair. It's an amusement park. It's a flickering neon sign. You are just drawn to it, even when it sucks like a pigeon to breadcrumbs. And that, I think, is what ultimately separates the aspiring, not-really-fit people from the really-fit people. The latter train even when it is hard, even when the motivation carcass is being picked by crows. They hook up the defibrillator, they crank up the dials, and they make the damn corpse dance again. It looks dead, but it isn't. Every day then is a revival. It is a resurgence of ability and action. Working out leads to more working out, just like crack leads to more crack. The best motivation to work out then is a workout. So work out when it's hard. Work out when it's

easy. Work out when life doesn't want you to. Work out when you don't want to. Work out when people say not to. Work out, and then work out again, and then work out some more. Build a fire that feeds itself. You might love the process. You might hate it. You might love some workouts and you probably are going to hate some others. You might thrill at how your body responds or you might curse it. Keep going though and I can promise you this, as difficult as it is, you are going to learn to love having worked out. There is no other feeling like it. So go, my friend, and work out and let that be your motivation. And that's it for How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Working Out, again, for how to motivate yourself to keep working out.

Again, published March 4th, 2019. You can just search for motivate yourself, search for that in the feeder YouTube channel and you'll find it. And that is it for this episode of the best of Muscle for Life. I hope you liked it. And if you wanna share any feedback whatsoever, shoot me an email, mikeatmuscleforlife.com.

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