Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best of Muscle for Life: Understanding Exercise Science, Fasted Cardio, & Using “Environment Design”

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

I’ve recorded hundreds of episodes of Muscle for Life on 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: 1. Bret Contreras on Understanding Nutrition & Exercise Science  (Originally published March 3, 2017) 2. How to Lose Fat Faster With Fasted Cardio (and Keep Your Muscle)   (Originally published October 31, 2018) 3. Motivation Monday: How to Use “Environment Design” to Accomplish Your Goals Easier and Faster  (Originally published Sept 17, 2018) And we’ll be starting with number one, Bret Contreras on Understanding Nutrition & Exercise Science. 5:45 - Bret Contreras on Understanding Nutrition & Exercise Science 16:01 - How to Lose Fat Faster With Fasted Cardio (and Keep Your Muscle) 25:35 - Motivation Monday: How to Use “Environment Design” to Accomplish Your Goals Easier and Faster --- Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/ --- Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Hello, and welcome to the latest and greatest episode of Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews, and thank you for joining me today. Now, I have recorded hundreds of episodes of Muscle for Life, and I've talked about a huge variety of things related to health, fitness, lifestyle, mindset, 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. And 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. That's what helps me sit down in the chair every day and do this. And as cool as that is, it poses a problem for you, my dear listener, especially if you are new here. And that is, ain't nobody got time for that. We're talking about probably a thousand plus hours of content at this point. And while some people actually do make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts, my whizbang 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 they miss out on insights that could help them get even just a little bit better inside and outside the gym. Because if you just get a little bit better consistently enough, that can add up to big

results in the long run. And people have also been telling me that they would like me to do more shorter, multi-topic episodes like my Q&As and Says You episodes. 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, going all the way back to the beginning. This way, people who are new in particular can quickly determine if this is the droid they're looking for, if this podcast is for them or not. And then

those who are regulars and enjoy what I'm doing, but just don't have the time or inclination to listen to all of my stuff. And I do understand that. I don't take it personally. You can also then benefit from the discussions and the episodes that you are not listening to in full. And you can also find new episodes to listen to without having to give an hour of your time to determine whether it was worth it or not. So here we are with the best of Muscle for Life. And in this episode, you will be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes. So in this episode of the best of Muscle for Life, you will be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes. The first is an interview I did with Brett Contreras back in March of 2017 on understanding nutrition and exercise science. The second is a monologue that

I published back in October of 2018 on how to lose fat faster and not muscle, how to keep your muscle and lose your fat faster with fasted cardio, something I still get asked about fairly often. And the third episode that you are going to hear highlights from was a motivational monologue published September 2018 called How to Use Environment Design to Accomplish Your Goals Easier and Faster. And we will be starting with the first one, of course, with my interview with Brett Contreras on understanding nutrition and exercise science. 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. 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. How do you become more scientific? How do you, so, all right. You got to learn how to use Google PubMed and Google Scholar to search for things and try to find the studies. If someone's mentioning a study in a blog post, type in the title that that highlight the title and hit search search on google for it also if you add file type colon pdf and then put the title into

google just throwing that out there if it is just out there somewhere google will pull it up um right because a lot of times someone uploaded this to a forum or a server somewhere and you can actually get the full paper yep so um so it's nice so then you can peruse it you won't understand everything but like i said becoming a good scientist takes time if you do this for a couple years you'll start to figure it out you'll start to be become a lot better at it i would also say i don't know if you agree i'd interject and say that it what really helped me is diving into the terminology and the jargon and understanding the words. Like I kind of started there. What are the words these people are using and what do they mean?

So I was kind of sensitive to that. So look up words. Don't just skim over. If you're studying biomechanics and it's – Let's start with biomechanics. Make sure you understand what that word means. Right, right. You know what I mean?

A lot of like things have acronyms. RFD. What is – don't just skim over that. Go back and find what does RFD mean. Rate of force bump. What does that mean? Yeah. Okay.

It's the slope of the – you know, so like – but I – okay. In a perfect world, we would have like – there would be 30 studies on every single thing we wondered about and enough to have a meta-analysis and review papers where you're like, okay, think of a topic. It's all just tied up with a nice little bow. Right. And we can read it and go, okay, this is pretty obvious. It's pretty clear that this is superior to this. This is what I need to be doing. this is pretty obvious. It's pretty clear that this is superior to this. This is what I need to be doing. But for research, a lot of it's what gets funded because follow the money. People need

money to conduct research. Universities need money and things like that. So the things that get funded the most are like cancer research and obesity, problems in the world that are crises. And a lot of our stuff- And not having big biceps unfortunately big biceps doesn't rank very highly it's not the highest list of the priorities so you're not i don't know if that's on the cdc anywhere we have a small biceps it's a good predictor of like you know We have a small biceps epidemic. It's a good predictor of like, you know, all-cause mortality or something. But anyway. Not getting laid enough, right?

Right, right. So there's not always a lot of studies. Sometimes there are no studies, and that's what's frustrating for me. Sometimes I'll be like, okay, there has to be a study on this topic. And I search for it, and I can't find it. So sometimes it's because you don't know the right terms to search for. And that's a whole skill in and of itself is what the hell terms do I use? So like if you're thinking of like the pump, is the pump,

is getting a good pump good for hypertrophy? So what the hell do you type in? So I'd start it with Google and go like you know is the pump good for yeah maybe even like study muscle pump or something and then see if you can just get lucky basically and but the studies use the term cell swelling and that's what brad schoenfeld linked so this cell swelling research so it's not cutting but brad and i have a paper called the muscle pump that's published in scj but i actually don't think that's linked to PubMed. So you'd find it on Google, but not necessarily PubMed.

But you have to learn the terminology, and that takes time. I like the term science-based or evidence-based because evidence comes in all forms. It's not just published research. In all forms. It's not just published research. I always say this. Your knowledge comes in, well, your knowledge in strength and conditioning and fitness and nutrition and all that comes in three parts. It's like a pie chart, you know.

One third of your knowledge is from what you've learned working with yourself and training yourself. Going to the gym, lifting weights. Yeah, where people, there's things that no one can tell you that didn't work or, you know what I mean? Right. There's just trying different diets, trying supplements. And you realize that didn't work. That did nothing. I just wasted my money. Um, and, and that's a third of your knowledge, but we're very unique. And actually when you you publish research this is what you learn okay this is a whole different topic i don't want to get too so so i'll address this in a minute the other third comes from what you learn working with other people if all you've done is work by yourself then you just tell your your this is my problem with people who go to non-coaches on

instagram and stuff and will you write me a, that person will just give you the exact program he does. And it may or may not work well for you or he or she. And they don't, haven't worked with enough people to individualize it towards you. And I can't tell you how much different we all are and how much I've learned just from working with so many different people. You learn so much. And when you study the research on genetics and individuality, it's crazy. I'll elaborate on it in a minute. Then the final third is what you learn through reading research, attending seminars and conferences, reading blogs, reading articles. Education, yeah. Education, exactly.

So it's one-third, one-third, one-third. So if you don't train people, you can't – You're missing out on – Yeah, you're missing out. If you don't lift weights yourself, I look at some strength coaches who don't lift weights and I'm like, how can you evaluate a new exercise or protocol if you don't try it out yourself? Yeah. And then if you just learn through training yourself and training others and never read anything or try to learn, then you're missing out. So it's all three.

And so you never want to ignore your personal experiences. You just have to know that, you know, that's an N equals one or that's a – N equals one means one person. Yeah. It's not a – It can be – I mean, at least it gives context, but it isn't necessarily law. You could have had an outlier.

Yeah, you could have had an outlier who would respond really well to anything or who wouldn't respond to anything. That's why you need ample sample size to wash out the effects of individuality. So my buddy James Krieger and I wrote an article on individual differences, and it's crazy, things you don't think about. But, oh, real quick, when you publish the data, you see this whole range of responses. you publish the data you see this whole range of responses and if you plot them you see this guy whether it's emg or train or strength gains or muscle size gains this person gained 20 percent increased hypertrophy this person lost three percent he worked out for eight weeks and lost three percent of his muscle mass how did that happen and everything in the middle it's like mysteries you have the mean but then you have the range you know the max and

the minimum the extremes and so you see like if i would have given put this person this this and so then you can think of your clients and go okay like i know that i looked I've looked at Brad Schoenfeld and James Krieger's meta-analyses on volume, on frequency, on all these things. But I have my client that seems to get a lot of muscle damage. She doesn't recover fast. If I give her too much, I run her into the ground. I have to train her with less volume and less frequency. I've come across a lot of people like that, probably honestly because a lot of my crowd are, I would say, mid-20s, 30s, and above.

So I've seen that with people, not so much in their 20s, but definitely with people even my age, I'm 32, and then people in their 40s that, yeah, theoretically it might be better if they were to get a bit more weekly volume or even up the intensity, but the recovery is just not there. more weekly volume or even up the intensity, but the recovery is just not there. So research gives you a good starting point, but only you can determine what works best for you. Things that people don't think about, okay, you want to start doing HIIT training, high-intensity interval training. Does it make you hungrier? Does it affect your sleep? Yep. Does it then make you less motivated during your strength workout? Does it affect your neat are you sluggish the rest of the day yeah all these things matter it's not just this

black or white well the research says this i want to know what happens when you start doing high intensity animal training if it doesn't impact your sleep and it blunts your appetite and it tends to get you supercharged the next day and you don't and you don't mind it you're willing to do it yeah and it's not that grueling for you then great but if it for me it interferes with my sleep it it just puts too much stress on your body i get hungry as hell and it's hard because i'm going you can give me a macro plan and i won't stick to it because i wake i have trouble sleeping and then finally i'm like my stomach's growling in the middle of the night what are you gonna do like sleep is actually more important than hitting my macros I'm gonna eat I'm gonna raid the fridge so I can freaking sleep

and so you have to consider all these different things and everyone's different and that's science is science is perfect it's the study of the universe and the way things work this is published research is one component to science the study of the universe and the way things work. Published research is one component to science. The scientific method is a component of science. So never blame science itself. You can blame humans and you can blame, but it's an evolving process and we all should very much care about science.

We all should strive to be scientific because not only will you see better results, you'll also save a lot of money not falling for gimmicks. All right. Well, that was it for the takeaways from the interview I did with Brett Contreras on understanding nutrition, exercise science. If you want to listen to the full episode again, it was published back in March of 2017. So you can just go back to that in the feed or you can just search for Contreras, C-O-N-T-R-E-R-A-S in the feed and it'll come up or if you're on YouTube, search there. And now let's move on to number two, which is how to lose fat faster with fasted cardio and how to keep your muscle.

fasted cardio, and how to keep your muscle. Okay, so the first question that we have to answer in today's discussion is what is fasted cardio? Now, many people think that it is simply exercising on an empty stomach, which they usually think is simply a stomach that just feels empty. Now, it's a bit more than that. Fasted cardio is cardio done while in a fasted state wherein your stomach is empty, but it has also to do with how your body has processed and absorbed the food that you last ate. You see, when you eat food, it gets broken down into various molecules that your cells can use, and these molecules are then released into your blood. The hormone insulin is released as well, and its job is to shuttle these molecules into cells so they can be used. Now, when your body is digesting and absorbing what you have last eaten and insulin levels are still high, your body

is in a fed or postprandial state. That's the technical term. Prandial means having to do with a meal. So after a meal, once your body has finished processing and absorbing the nutrients from the food, insulin levels naturally drop to a minimum low or baseline level, and your body then enters the fasted or post-absorptive state. That's the technical term. Now, how long it takes for insulin levels to fall back to this baseline depends on the size and the composition of your meal. Larger meals that include a mix of protein, carbs, fat, and fiber digest slower than smaller meals that are mostly composed of one or two macronutrients, like an apple, for instance, which is mostly carbs.

So for instance, in one study, it was found that after eating about 600 calories of pizza that provided about 37 grams of protein, 17 grams of fat, and 75 grams of carbs, insulin levels were at double the baseline level for at least five hours. Now, on the other hand, if you eat a smaller, much simpler meal, like let's say a single scoop of whey protein isolate, which only contains about 100 calories, 20 grams of protein and trace amounts of fat and carbs, insulin levels will fall back to baseline within a few hours, two to three hours or so. Okay. So now let's talk about exactly what you should do if you want to maximize the effectiveness of any fasted training that you might do. So if you are going to train fasted, I think you should seriously consider the following two strategies. So you can get as much fat loss and as much stubborn fat loss out of it as possible and negate its one big downside, which is muscle breakdown. So the two strategies are take the right supplements and eat a post-workout meal. Pretty simple. So let's go over each supplement first, and then we'll talk about eating.

So obviously I mentioned two supplements already, yohimbine and sinephrine, but there are actually five before my fasted workouts when I'm cutting. And they are yohimbine, beta-hydroxy, beta-methylbutyrate, HMB, caffeine, and sinephrine. So let's talk about each of them in that order. So yohimbine, you've already learned about, it boosts your metabolism, it boosts stubborn fat loss when taken before fastet training. And in terms of dosages, research has shown that 0.2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight is sufficient for fat loss purposes. And that taking it 15 to 30 minutes before exercise is particularly effective for boosting fat loss. Now, some people do not do well with your hymn bean. Some people get very jittery from it.

So I always recommend that you start with half that 0.1 milligrams per kilogram of body weight for your workouts to assess your tolerance. And if you take that amount and you feel fine, then increase it to the clinically effective dosage of 0.2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. To further increase fat mobilization during your fasted cardio, you can also combine yohimbine with caffeine and sinephrine, which is why they're on the list and which you will learn more about in a moment. which is why they're on the list and which you will learn more about in a moment. Some people also don't feel good when lifting weights after taking yohimbine. Sometimes it gives them a bit of a queasy stomach. And if that's the case with you, I would recommend that you only take it before your cardio. So it doesn't cut too much into the quality of your resistance training workouts. You should also know that

yohimbine can raise blood pressure. So if you have high blood pressure, I do not recommend that you use it. And last is what type of supplement should you take? You can buy yohimbine by itself, but you can also find a clinically effective dosage in it in my pre-workout fat burner forge, which you can learn about at legionathletics.com slash forge. Let's talk about eating after fasted exercise. That was one of the two strategies for maximizing its effectiveness. And people often ask me what they are supposed to eat after fasted cardio, and my answer is this. Eat the same thing that you would eat after any workout, which should be about 30 to 40 grams of protein and the same amount of carbs. That's a good rule of thumb.

You can adjust those numbers based on your target calories and your macros, but that's a good starting place for most people. Research also shows that it is probably best to eat your post-workout meal within about 30 minutes of finishing your workout, your fasted workout, because as I've mentioned several times, muscle protein breakdown rates really start to ramp up. So you can prevent that by eating protein. Now, some people would disagree with that advice and they would say that you should wait longer before eating after a fast workout to really prolong those fat burning effects and especially if you're taking supplements i think this is unnecessary and i think it's counterproductive for two reasons. One is it's not going to help you lose more body fat.

So if you assume that your total calorie intake for the day is the same, you are going to lose the same amount of body fat, whether you have a meal right after or several hours after your workouts. The reason for this is with or without supplements, research shows that the increase in stubborn fat burning that occurs during fasted training, it disappears fairly quickly once you stop working out.

So in other words, most of the fat burning benefits of fasted training, especially when combined with the right supplements, occur during the exercise, not afterwards, which makes prolonging the fast unnecessary. Another reason why I don't like to prolong the fast after fasted training is it will probably result in muscle loss. Now, it's not going to be a dramatic amount. You're not going to see it in the mirror, but muscle protein breakdown rates do drastically ramp up and increase after both resistance training and cardio workouts. It's not just a cardio thing, it's also a weightlifting thing. What many people don't realize is exercise is really a catabolic

activity. Muscle building occurs after the workouts. Research shows that muscle protein synthesis and breakdown rates tend to increase while you're working out. And then when you finish your workout, synthesis rates plummet and breakdown rates skyrocket. So when you look at it on the whole, working out is a catabolic activity. And as I mentioned, this problem is only aggravated by fasted training, which increases those breakdown rates even further. And then just to add insult to injury, most people of course are using fasted training when they are cutting, which also makes you more susceptible to muscle loss. So by delaying your post-workout meal after your fasted training, you're really just setting yourself up for maximum post-workout muscle loss. All right. Well, that was it for the snippets from how to lose fat faster with fasted cardio and keep your muscle. If you want to learn more about that, then check

out the full episode. Again, it was published in October, the end of October, October 31st, 2018. So you can go back and find it, or you can just search for it. And now let's move on to the third and final part of this best of episode. And that is a monologue called how to use environment design to accomplish your goals easier and faster. 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. Now, most of us have a pretty good idea of what's good for us and what's not. Most of us know that we should eat well,

we should exercise regularly, we should drink less alcohol, we should stop smoking, we should spend less time on social media, less time in front of the TV, and so forth. And some of us even know more, and we could quickly outline the exact things that we should start and stop doing to markedly improve our lives. And most of us have also tried to live out these things that we know and failed to one degree or another, only to fall back into our old dysfunctional ways. Now, if you're like me, you've probably chalked up these failures to a lack of willpower or self-control or grit, and you were probably right to some degree. Those things definitely do matter. What you probably didn't finger though was something far more influential than most of us realize and fortunately far more easier to change than our personalities. This is something

that we can never escape from and something that is pushing and pulling at our ideas, our feelings, our behaviors every minute of every day. Now, what is this? If you guessed the environment, you are correct. The environment, this is the invisible hand that subtly molds our attitudes, our decisions, our habits. And over time, it molds our lives. For better or for worse, the environment is that dead hand that sways so many of us to engage in so many of the same self-destructive behaviors. In fact, I think it's not unreasonable to say that organizing your environment to support your values, to support your long-term goals is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to increase your chances of living up to them, embodying them, realizing them. What's also surprising is just how many elements of our environment have been carefully and scientifically engineered to elicit very specific responses, responses that often don't benefit us very much.

2009 book Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein referred to this as choice architecture. And they believe that powerful organizations like corporations and governments can and should help create environments that incline us toward personally and socially responsible behaviors, a soft paternalism, if you will. I say, why wait for someone else to do it? Why wait for mega corporations or governments? Why not take up designing our environments as a personal project, so they nudge us toward the specific outcomes that we desire. Why not prearrange better default choices for ourselves in our lives so we can better stay on course, even when we're just cruising on autopilot? And I think a good place to start is to think about how we can change our environment to make the good habits we want to adopt easier and the bad habits that we want to kick harder. And a simple way to do this is removing steps from the former, from the stuff that we want to

start doing and adding them to the latter, the stuff we want to stop doing. So for example, if you want to start eating more nutritious foods, let's say, you can place them more visibly in your refrigerator, your kitchen, and your pantry, right? This makes it easier to grab something nutritious when you're hungry. And if you'd like to eat less junk food, you could tuck that stuff away in a cabinet that you don't open regularly, which are in a drawer somewhere or whatever, which would make it harder to access. Let's say you'd like to get better about doing your morning workouts. You could set your workout clothes out the night before, right? That removes a slight obstacle that can dissuade you from leaving the warm embrace of your bed at 6 a.m., 7 a.m.,

5 a.m., whenever you need to get up. If you'd like to drink more water throughout the day, you can keep a water bottle at your desk at work, which is what I do, instead of soda, for example, and you can fill that water bottle up every time it's empty. That way, you always have water at hand. Then, if you want soda, you'd have to get up, you'd have to go to the kitchen or you have to go to the vending machine, just adds a little step. And so when you feel the desire to drink something, when you have a little thirst pang, you could either reach for the water, easy, drink it, or you have to get up and go to the vending machine. Chances are you're just going to drink the water. And also I want to share with

you a little exercise that you can do, a do this now. So first I want you to write down three things that you want to start or stop doing, like exercise on a regular schedule, eat less at dinner, stop sleeping in and skipping morning workouts, for example. Then I want you to write down three ways that you can adjust your environments to make it easier to do the things you want to do and harder to do the things you don't want to do. For instance, in the case of exercising on a regular schedule, let's say you want to start your days with a 20-minute walk. What simple changes could you make to your environment to make this easier? Well, here are some ideas. You could put your walking shoes and your headphones in front of your bedroom door or in your car

so you see them when it comes time to walk. Let's say it's like early morning or after work, for instance. You could find a podcast or an audio book that you like to listen to so you have something else to look forward to while you're walking. You could go straight to the park after work and do your walk there before going home for the night. Any of these things might be enough to make the habit stick and eventually become an automatic, integrated, ingrained aspect of your life. Now let's look at eating less at dinner. You could plate your meal and place the leftovers in Tupperware and in the fridge before you start eating. You could brush your teeth immediately after eating the amount of food that

you intended to eat. You could take your dog on a walk immediately after eating the amount of food you intended to eat because they're not around to eat more. Each of those things would work well because of course they just make it harder or impossible to keep eating. And as for stopping sleeping in and skipping your morning workouts, you could, as I mentioned earlier, you could set your workout clothes and shoes the night before so you don't have to figure out what to wear in the morning. You could prepare your pre-workout meal the night before. So all you have to do in the morning is eat it and head to the gym. You could set two alarms so you can snooze one and still get up in time to work out. Or you could move whatever it is that you're using for an alarm, whether it's your phone or an analog alarm or some other device.

You could move it away from the bed, forcing you to get up out of bed to turn it off. That helps a lot of people. And I know these things might seem kind of trivial to act, you can greatly increase your chances of following through. in September of 2018, September 17th to be specific, where you can just search for environment design in the feed or on YouTube and it will come up. And that is also all I have for you in this best of installment, but I have a lot more goodies in the hopper for you.

I have a Q&A that is dropping tomorrow on weight gain plateaus, sleeping better, and how my training beliefs have changed over the last several years. So now versus then look at training. And then next week I have a monologue coming on partial reps and are they good for gaining muscle and strength faster? I have an interview I did with the CEO and founder of zero shoes, faster. I have an interview I did with the CEO and founder of Zero Shoes, Stephen Sashen, on the benefits of minimalist shoes and even barefoot running and why you don't need to spend a lot of money on fancy running shoes and why some of those shoes can actually even increase your risk of injury. And then next Friday, I have another Q&A coming. Again, as I've said a couple

of times now, this is going to be a regular thing. Every Friday, I'm going to come out with another Q&A. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility. And thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at

mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmuscleforlife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.