Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Tips for Teen Weightlifting and Bodybuilding (Age, Diet, Training, Do's and Dont's, Etc.)

Episode Date: February 26, 2016

In this podcast, I answer a handful of questions I'm often asked about teenage weightlifting and bodybuilding, like does it stunt growth or make girls bulky, is it dangerous, what is appropriate for different ages, supplementation, and much more. 3:26 - Will weightlifting stunt your growth? 4:27 - Will weightlifting make girls bulky? 11:44 - Is weightlifting dangerous for teenagers? 14:47 - What age should teenagers start weightlifting? 17:57 - Why teenagers shouldn't try and get super lean. 21:59 - The ideal teenage diet. 25:18 - Dieting for overweight teens. 29:11 - My recommended training method for teenagers. 37:40 - Teenagers and steroid use. 42:57 - The safe and healthy supplements for teenagers. 49:54 - Sleep needs of teenagers. ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: How I Use Calorie Cycling to Build Muscle and Stay Lean: http://www.muscleforlife.com/calorie-cycling/ The Ultimate Bodyweight Workout Routine: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-ultimate-bodyweight-workout-routine/ A Simple and Accurate Macronutrient Calculator: http://www.muscleforlife.com/macronutrient-calculator/ 6 Things You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Steroids: http://www.muscleforlife.com/side-effects-of-steroids/ The Definitive Guide to Strength Training: https://legionathletics.com/strength-training/ How Many Grams of Fat Should You Eat Per Day? http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-many-grams-of-fat-per-day/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger If You're a Guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger If You're a Girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

in the gym grinding through workouts that you hate. Now you can find these books everywhere. You can buy them online, you know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audio books like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audio books and you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer, so as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check out my books if you haven't already. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I think you're going to really like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion. As you may know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted who knows how much money over the

years on worthless junk supplements and have always had trouble finding products that I actually liked and felt were worth buying. And that's why I finally decided to just make my own. Now, a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're 100% naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because we explain why we've chosen each ingredient

and we cite all supporting studies on our website, which means you can dive in and go validate everything that we say. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. Our formulations are 100% transparent. So if that sounds interesting to you, then head over to legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And you can learn a bit more about the supplements that I have as well as my mission

for the company, because I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it's long overdue. And ultimately, if you like what you see and you want to buy something, then you can use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your first order. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike from Muscle for Life teenagers and parents of teenagers asking what they should do or what they should have their kids do. And I thought maybe it could warrant a good article. Maybe I'll do an article as well, but I'm going to talk about it first here on the podcast. And this may not be directly applicable to you, but you probably know somebody who has a teenager that is playing sports or maybe get

interested in weightlifting or so forth. So hopefully you all find it helpful. Okay. So let's go over this first point here on my little outline. And that is that weightlifting does not stunt growth. That's a myth. I've done quite a bit of studying on it and there's, there's no scientific evidence, evidence of it. And it doesn't logically make sense. It's one of those things that you think, Oh, well, you know, because of compression, you know compression on the spine, maybe from squatting or overhead pressing or deadlifting, that that would stunt growth. It does not stunt growth. In fact, it actually, I mean, unless you were to go so far overboard, sure.

I mean, if you're going to be weightlifting for hours and hours every day, that could be an issue. But if it's being done semi-sensibly, it's not going to stunt your growth. If you're the teenager listening or, you know, it's not going to stunt your kid's growth or your friend's kid's growth or whatever. In fact, it may actually help because of the hormonal responses, especially the growth hormone response that is associated with exercise, especially intense exercise, heavy weightlifting, and also, you know, sprinting, high-intensity type of cardio, which you get quite a bit of, a lot of kids get when they play sports growing up. Another point here, this is specifically addressed to teenage girls and just girls in general, but I want to say it because I get it a lot. I get asked a lot about it, and that is that weightlifting is not going to make you bulky. Yes, weightlifting is going to build muscle, but realize that while girls can build muscle effectively, girls start with a lot less muscle. And that's really the bigger disparity

that we see in between girls and guys. It's not so much that girls can't build muscle anywhere nearly as effective as guys. Guys do tend to gain muscle faster, but the bigger difference is in the amount of muscle that they are starting with. So girls start with, comparatively speaking, a lot less muscle than guys. So if a guy puts on 30 pounds of muscle, that's a certain type of look. And if a girl puts on 30 pounds of muscle, she doesn't look nearly as large and is not going to be as strong as the guy because she still has quite a bit less muscle on her frame. However, this idea that weightlifting makes girls bulky is, again, one of those things that might seem to make sense on the surface because as muscles get bigger, you look bigger. And if you look, a lot of girls are turned off to weightlifting because they go

to CrossFit gyms or they see on the Internet videos of CrossFit girls. And a lot of them do look very bulky. And, you know, so if you look at, well, those girls are doing a lot of weightlifting and they look like that. I definitely don't want to look like that. So I'm definitely not going to do any weightlifting. But what you need to understand about that is, yes, there is a point where a girl can take on a bulky look. You know, even, I mean, genetics girl can take on a bulky look. Genetics are going to come into play here.

This is girls and guys. Some people tend to be big boned, big structure, and they just look more and more bulky or blocky as they gain size. That is just something that needs to be accounted for. But more, much more commonly, what you're looking at is you're looking at girls that have gained a fair amount of muscle, but have not gotten lean enough to not look bulky with that amount of muscle. So when, when, I mean, this applies to guys as well, but guys are not worried about looking bulky, you know, especially in the beginning, that's what most guys want is they want to look bulky. They start out skinny or skinny fat or whatever. And you know, yeah, sure. They would love to be big and lean, but in the beginning they'll take big at first because

you gotta get big first. I mean, you're not gonna, yeah, sure. You can, there's a bit of a recomp you can do in the beginning, but in the long run, you're really going to have to work on gaining your size and then getting down to a low body fat percentage and maintaining it. That's, that's kind of the bigger picture. So it's not so much of a worry where a lot of guys say, I wish they would say, I wish I could look bulky, whereas very few girls are going to say that. So it's very important for girls to understand that as you have, as you gain more muscle, you have to maintain a lower body fat percentage to have the look that most girls want. And I'm speaking from experience there working with thousands of girls, the look that most girls want, most girls want is a lean athletic type of look where you have muscle, you have muscle tone, you have muscle shape,

you have curves, but you're also very lean. So you have, you know, not a flat stomach or even a bit of abs you have in your, in your legs, you can see quads, you can see hamstrings again, where it's more curves. It's maybe not, does not, not the type of separation and shredded type of look that a lot of guys want. Um, and in terms of numbers, what that generally boils down to for, for most girls, uh, if they're starting from just a normal physique, uh, or even, or even overweight, or even overweight, let's say if they're starting from a normal amount of lean mass, which is obviously relatively low for most girls, then that requires gaining about, I would say, 20 pounds of muscle is probably 15 is it would be probably a minimum. So let's say 15 to 20 pounds of muscle and being at about 16 to 18% body fat.

That's the look that most girls want. And getting there again, you have to gain that muscle and how you go about gaining that muscle. You could, you can take a, the most direct approach, which would be a bulking and cutting type of a approach where you're kind of juggling your body fat percentage between 20 and 25, 26%. So you're in a surplus to go from 20 ish to 25 ish. And hopefully you can drag that out over time, gain a fair amount of muscle, cut the fat back, you know, cut the fat down, cut, cut back down to the 20% range and then rinse repeat until you have the amount of muscle that you want and then get, get under 20% and just stay there. That's the most direct approach, but you have to be okay with gaining size and losing size. And so that means your clothes are going to fit you kind of funky when you're bigger,

and then you're going to be smaller. And you're probably not going to like so much how you look when you get toward the end of your bulks. I mean, that's how it is for guys as well. like so much how you look as you, when you get toward the end of your bulks. I mean, that's how it is for guys as well. Very, I mean, when I haven't bulked in a while, but, uh, the, the last time that I was bulking was a couple of years ago. And by the end one, I was sick of eating food. I was eating over 4,000 calories a day. And I mean, I was ending my day with a massive bowl of pasta, which yeah, that sounds great, but I wasn't even basically it got to the point where I was, I was never hungry. I don't really get hungry, but I never even wanted to eat. Like I was every meal I could have gladly not eaten, but I had to eat it to get in my

calories. Um, so you have that. And then, you know, uh, I didn't get really fat, but I probably ended around 13% or so. And for me, that feels fat. And I just don't like how I don't, my, my clothes don't fit right. And I just, my chest looks way too big and I just don't like how my clothes don't fit right. And I just, my chest looks way too big. And I just don't like how my body looks at that size. So you're probably going to go through the same experience if you go through it on that road. But if you don't mind that, and again, I wasn't complaining about it. It's just one of those things you kind of look at almost with

amusement where you just think it's kind of funny. You know what I mean? Like, oh, look, I'm fatter now. All right, now it's time to cut. Um, then that's the most direct way to get there. Some girls don't want to really go through that. They would rather, they'd rather gain muscle slower to stay leaner. And you can do that through things like calorie cycling, which if you go to muscle life and search for calorie cycling, you'll find the article also link it down below for, you know, on YouTube. So you can, so you can go check it out, uh, or, or with, um, shorter, shorter bulks and cuts. And, uh, man, I guess those are really the two main things or, or being in a very, very slight surplus, uh, where you're almost at maintenance and sometimes

you're going to be at, uh, in a slight deficit on some days. And so that's how some girls prefer to do it. And they know it's just going to take longer. I do generally recommend the former method where you just get it done as quickly as possible. And, you know, it's going to take a couple years. But then at the end of that couple years, you have the body that you want and now it's just maintaining it, which you can do, uh, this, the same body at 40 years old, even at 50 years old, if you maintain it correctly, you know, for, for, for your entire life. So if you're a teenage girl or you have a teenage girl, or you're going to be sending this somebody with a teenage girl, just know that, uh, weightlifting is not going to, it doesn't make girls bulky as long as they stay lean. That's, that's the most important point. So weightlifting is not

inherently dangerous. This is the next point I want to talk about. It's an idea that many parents have and many teenagers have. And the caveat though is it's not dangerous if you go about it correctly. And going about it correctly means, of course, form over weight. So especially in the beginning, when teens are weightlifting for the first time, it's very important that they learn proper form first and not just go with their friends and try to keep up with everybody and try to one-up each other and ego lifting with bad form. You can find videos of this all over the internet that are very cringe because you do not want to get injured. If you're the teenager or you have a teenager, what we want to get injured. If you're, you know, if you're the teenager,

you have a teenager, what we want to avoid is any type of injury while your body or while their bodies are still developing. So I'm just going to, I'm just going to say you in general, as if I'm speaking to the teenager, um, whether I am or not, but just for, just to keep it simple. So that's what, that's, that's the key thing is want to avoid injury and you avoid injury by using proper form and not getting overzealous with the weights and just not being stupid. And, uh, you know, as a, when I was a teenager, I did all kinds of stupid things. So we have a, uh, proclivity to stupidity as teenagers, especially boys where now our testosterone is raging and we think we're awesome and we think

we can do anything. So just know that it's not dangerous, but you have to respect it. That's kind of the point. Because if you start getting into heavier weightlifting and you are making the common mistakes that you're going to see other people making in the gym, you're going to see people rounding their back during deadlifts and overextending in the back of the deadlift. You're going to see people bowing their knees in when they squat or half squatting with way too much weight, you're going to see a lot of this stuff. Um, don't emulate them even if they don't get hurt. And you know, it's, it makes them look cool that they can put five plates on the bar and, you know, pick it up with terrible form. That is really not the point. And it's also, not only is it increased the risk of injury, but it's counterproductive

in the long run because it actually, it's going to hold you back in your progress. When, when you use improper form, your form, you know, when, as you, as when, when you sacrifice form, it can allow you to move more weight, but that, that is not going to build the muscle and the strength that you need to continue progressing. Because once your form goes to shit, you can't go, there's only so shitty. There's only so far that you can go with shitty form. And then now you're stuck at this higher weight, risking injury every time you, you, you pull or push or squat or whatever. And you're going to get stuck because your muscles are not there. They're meant to move through, uh, certain types of ranges of ranges of motion. Your body is meant to work in certain biomechanical ways,

and the muscles support the skeleton in different ways and work through movement patterns in different ways. So when that starts breaking down, things are not working the way they should. And inevitably, it either leads to a plateau, which if someone continues with bad form in that plateau, they can get hurt, obviously, or it just leads directly to injury. So now we have a few kind of myths out of the way. Let's talk about age. In all the reading that I've done on this subject, I haven't found a great answer on what's the best age to start weightlifting. When I am emailing with parents or emailing directly with teenagers, my general recommendation

is if about 16 is probably a good age to start. Um, if, if kids are younger, 13, 14, 15, I generally tell parents to start with a good body weight program. There's a lot you can do with your body weight. Um, and that's a great safe introduction to resistance training that will get results. Um, if you go to muscle for life and search for body weight workout, you'll see a whole article I put together that gives a great routine that anyone can do that requires very little equipment.

The most you need is a pull-up bar and a dip station. You can skip the dip station. You don't need it. I wouldn't say station. It's like a dip bar, I guess. I don't know. It's maybe $60, $70, and it doesn't take up any space. And then a pull-up bar is, I don't know, maybe 30 or $40. And again, I keep mine in the box and when I'm going to use it, I take it out and then I put

it back in the box and that's it. Um, so that's, that's a great place to start. I do know of quite a few younger, you know, younger teenagers, 13, 14, 15, that started weightlifting and have done well. When that is the case, that kind of depends on the person's body. If you have a 13-year-old that is well-developed and maybe even a little bit big for his age and has good coordination, because that's also, I don't know if you remember, if you're not a teenager and you're listening to this, I don't know if you remember, but when you're a teenager, your body's kind of awkward and you're not a teenager and you're listening to this, remember, I don't know if you remember, but, you know, when you're a teenager, your body's kind of awkward and you're, you're still, you're getting, you're growing and now the muscles are getting stronger and you haven't really calibrated everything yet. So that's something to keep in mind when, you know, if you're trying to, if you're trying to do a heavy set of squats, for instance, you may not realize how much balance and how much muscle coordination goes into that. So, you know, younger weightlifters can run into problems if they try to lift really heavy and that their

bodies, they just don't have good enough control of their bodies yet to maintain proper form when things get hard. And, you know, when, when you're getting into that, if you're lifting heavy and you're at that third or fourth or fifth rep, you're really giving it your all, you want to be so kind of clumsy with your body that that's why your form falls apart. If you are, your kid or whatever, let's say a teenager is 13, 14, 15 and wants to start with weightlifting, I think that's okay. Depending on the situation, it can be okay. I would say, though, start in a higher rep range, maybe 10 to 12 reps, um, to really learn proper form and just start building a basic foundation of strength. And then after, after maybe a year or so of that, when, when, when the kid is very comfortable with what he's doing or what she's

doing, then move into some heavier stuff. Simple, like basically what I talk about, you know, bigger, leaner, stronger, it'd be my program for, for, for guys and thinner, leaner, stronger is my program for girls. So I would say in the beginning, just keep it simple. Lighter weights. It's still moderately heavy, but lighter weights. Focus on form. Focus on gaining control of your body and feeling comfortable in all the movements. And then start adding weight.

So the next point here that is very important for teenagers is don't try to get super shredded at your age. You don't want to spend a large amount of time in a calorie deficit because it can interfere with your body's natural development. So you have, you know, there are a lot of changes that are going on in the body of a lot of hormonal changes. You've a lot of things that are, that are, uh, you know, your body is building itself essentially and growing at a rapid rate. And that requires a, uh, energy to do. And when you're in a calorie deficit, when you're restricting your body's energy, its energy to do. And when you're in a calorie deficit, when you're restricting your body's energy, its ability to do that, especially to build up tissues is,

is impaired and you don't want that. So it also, you know, a calorie deficit, if, if depending on how large the calorie deficit is and depending how long you're in a calorie deficit, it's going to reduce the anabolic hormone levels, which again, you don't want. So this is important that, you know, and this is one of the most common pieces of advice that I have to give teenagers is, you know, because they watch these videos online of Ziz and Jeff Seed or Side or whatever. And, you know, these aesthetics people that are super lean always and going to rave parties and making out with girls and shit. And they think that's awesome and they they want to do that and okay, fine. You can do that, but just save it until you are, let's say 18, 19, 20 in that range. Um, and you know, your body can still be growing at that, at that age,

but I would definitely not recommend, uh, being in a calorie deficit for a long period of time when you're younger. So if you're a 14, 15, 16, you, and you're a guy, for instance, time when you're younger. So if you're a 14, 15, 16, you, and you're a guy, for instance, you do not want to, if you just naturally, like I've known kids growing up that were always seven, 8% body fat, just never had any fat on their body. That's just how they didn't try to be that way. They actually ate for them. What felt like a, a plenty of food. They weren't restricting their calories. They weren't even counting their calories. That's just the way they are or were genetically, whatever, you know, good for them. Fuck them. But, uh, that's not, that's not most people. So when I, I hear from teenagers that are, are not like that and they want to be like

that, they want to be super lean. And, you know, so I have to kind of tell them, don't just save that for later. Don't do that right now. Your goal as a teenager, you know, and for girls in terms of body fat percentage, body fat percentages, it would be the equivalent of that for girls would be that 16, 17, 18% range. It's very lean and it requires one, it's going to require quite a bit of cutting to get there. And then also it requires when you're maintaining that it's going to be tricky. You're going to be in a calorie deficit, uh, at least several days out of the week, whether you like it or not, because your daily energy expenditure fluctuates and we're just estimating it. And the body also adapts its TDE based on how much food you're eating. So even if you were to be really, really strict

and you were to calculate your TDE and you were to eat just that amount of calories every day, realistically, you're going to go slightly over some days, you're going to go slightly under some days. That TDE calculation is not going to be 100% accurate. That actually may be a slight deficit that your body then just has to compensate a little bit for. And it's just, I really, really, really recommend that as a teenager, just focus on being in the healthy athletic body fat range, which is about 10 to 15% for guys and 20 to 25% for girls, because that's going to allow you to eat plenty of food. I mean, also, yeah, something I should, I should mention is that when, when you're very lean, unless you're on drugs, which we're going to talk about also,

um, you're not going to going to be able to eat as much food and stay that lean as you will be able to eat at a higher body fat percentage and stay at that body fat percentage. That's just the way it is. So, you know, like I'm about maybe 8% body fat. That's kind of where I hang out and I eat about 27, 2800 calories a day. But if I were 10, 11, 12% body fat, I know for a fact, cause I've done it before I could eat 3000 to 30, maybe even a higher, actually, I'd say 32 to 3,300 calories a day. And I would, and I would stay, uh, I would stay at that 10 to 11, 12% body fat range. So again, the, when, when your body's growing as a, as a, as a simple rule, more food is better.

It doesn't mean you have to like force yourself to overeat and force yourself to get fatter and gain weight and so forth. But you do want to, you don't want to be restricting your food. And I also don't like the idea of kids getting too caught up with counting calories and counting macros and doing meal plans and, you know, developing a weird relationship with food at that age. I think it's save, save the, the eating neurosis for, for later. And, uh, I mean, I joke, it's not, I think that you can, you can have a healthy relationship with food while planning, tracking your, your intake. Um, but as a, as a, as a kid, I would much rather see you like, I'd much rather when my kids, a teenager or kids, or, I mean, if I'm, if I have

more kids, I have one, um, when he's a teenager, I'd much rather see younger people, uh, just listen to their bodies. I mean, you realize that your body, uh, we, when you're planning calories and tracking all that, that we do is kind of like a hack in a sense around the body's natural mechanisms to force it to do something it doesn't want to do. So your body doesn't actually want to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat. It wants to just stay where it's at. It doesn't want to be in a calorie surplus to gain fat. It just wants to stay where it's at. And so it has hormones that it uses.

Primarily, its hormones are the primary influencers. There are other things as well, though, other physiological mechanisms to regulate how much your body, how much food it wants is regulated by these hormones and these other factors. So that's why if you follow simple dietary rules, like you eat a high protein diet, so you eat somewhere around, let's say 0.8 grams or a gram, a gram of protein per pound. You get enough fat in your diet, which should be somewhere around probably 0.3 grams per pound. And then the rest of your calories are coming from carbs. And you are eating a couple servings of fruits and vegetables every day, which I didn't do as

a teenager. I'll admit I do now. And I definitely recommend it, um, for health reasons and also for satiety reasons and for training. There's also something to be said for training your gut to work the way that you want it to work. When you get older, you don't want to develop. If you, if all, if you eat way too much sugar and way too much junk food while your body's developing and your gut is developing, cause you know, your gut, it's a very complex environment. You have, you know, a huge amount of bacteria and they do a lot of different things and it influences the brain and mood and all these things. So if you eat very, very poorly when you're younger, you're going to find it very hard when you get older to change your eating habits. I mean, there's the psychological side, but there's

also a physiological side. So if you can focus on getting the majority of your calories from nutritious foods, when you're young, you're going to be very happy when you get older, because it's going to be very easy. And when you get older, it gets more important. When you're a teenager, your body's invincible. You could just eat McDonald's every day and play sports and lift weights and do whatever you want and feel fine. most people. But trust me, when you get older, that's not the case. I'm 31, and I don't do that ever. I don't eat fast food ever or whatever. But I can tell you that I do a lot to take care of my body in terms of health.

I eat a lot of nutritious foods. I'm exercising a lot. And I take some supplements as well that have some things that improve immune function and improve insulin sensitivity and improve blood flow and improve heart health and blah, blah, blah. And it has paid off in that I have very high energy levels throughout the day. I don't need very much sleep, five or six hours a night. I wake up after five, six hours and that's it. I'm done. I play golf you know, I play golf, I play ice hockey, I lift weights. I'm able to get a lot from my body. So I put a lot into it. I mean, that's what I would

like to see for you. And the, the sooner you can get into the habits that, uh, produce that when you get older, the better, because what a lot of people do is when they're teenagers, you know, they abuse their bodies quite a bit. Bad diets, no exercise, alcohol, drugs, not sleeping, blah, blah, blah. But they still can function because the body is that resilient when it's young. But then they continue those habits into their 20s. Things start to dip. And then by the end of their 20s and my age, their bodies are just straight broken.

So, uh, I would much rather have coming back to the original point, a teenager learned to eat intuitively, meaning like follow some simple rules, eat enough protein, getting your fruits and vegetables, eat whole grain foods, you know, stay away from, uh, overly processed foods and make that a small percentage of your diet and eat on feel. Let's say if you just start with three big meals a day and some snacks, when you feel like having snacks, that is a much healthier way to approach diet, both physically and psychologically, I think. And if you do that and you exercise and you're playing sports and you're doing whatever, then you will have no

problem staying in the, that athletic body fat percentage range, which you're going to look great. I mean, um, a 16 year old boy with some muscle and at 10% body fat is like a superhero God at, at, you know, if you're that person and you're looking at some of the people my age or older that have been weightlifting for 15 plus years, maybe on steroids, super shredded or whatever, and you look at yourself and you're like, God, I look bad. Realize that that's our subjective – that's just subjective relativism at work. speaking, objectively speaking, if you're a teenager and if you're, or if you're a girl and you're at 20, 21, 22% body fat, and you have some muscle and you know, you're going to look great and don't just, just save the, the, the adult look that look that you see in adults, save it for when you're an adult. It's worth saying though, if you are overweight or obese, then I do recommend cutting. So calorie deficit, just standard, you know, you can go on

legionathletics.com search for calories. You'll see an article about how many calories should I eat? Um, I've written about, you can search for macro on muscle for life and you'll find a good article on how to calculate your macros. I do recommend. So if you're, if you're a guy or your son or whatever, and, uh, let's say, let's say like 20% body fat and up. It is, I think in, in your best interests to get down somewhere to somewhere between 10 and 15% body fat, just for health reasons. And for girls, um, I would say maybe, maybe 28, 29, 30% body fat and up again, it's a, it's going to be more healthy to get down to the 20, 25% range and

then just stay there. So that is the, that is the one exception to the rule of don't cut really like spend as little time in a calorie deficit as possible. It's the general rule, but if you are overweight or obese, then I do recommend you get to that athletic body fat percentage range. Cause it's just going to be better for your overall health and your body and your performance in your sports and in the gym and everything. And self-confidence too. It's going to make a difference. All right. So now let's talk about training.

I think that – and this is my general recommendation for teenagers. I think that strength training is a great place to start. Go on legionathletics.com and search for strength. Um, like go on, go on legionathletics.com and search for strength. You know, see an article I wrote where, um, I go over strength training as a whole, and then I go over some of the more popular strength training programs. The one that I generally recommend for teenagers is just starting strength. It's been around forever. It's simple. It doesn't take that much time. It works. Um, it's just, it's just a great program for, for, for people new to weightlifting in general the only caveat is

because it's a strength training program it is going to be more lower body centric the volume on lower body is going to be higher and that means that you're going to see more development and growth in your lower body than your upper body just keep that in mind but that's not necessarily a problem I would say you could put in a year on starting strength and

you're going to do great. And then from there, you may want to change depending on what you're, why are you in the gym? So if you're in the gym, just cause you want to look good, there's nothing wrong with that. Um, it's also very healthy and there are many other reasons to do it, but if you're driving motivation is to look good and have a great physique, then I would say maybe something, um, like my program, my pro, you know, bigger, leaner, strongest for guys, thinner, stronger, thinner, leaner, strongest for girls, uh, is going to be better for that in that the volume, the upper body volume, the lower body volume is, is a bit different because for guys, obviously you're going to find that when you get into weightlifting, your, your, your legs, your, your lower half develops much quicker than your upper half, because mainly because your legs are

your strongest muscle group and you can overload them and they respond very well to weightlifting and so forth. Um, so if you though want to have, uh, you know, an aesthetic type of physique, if that's what you're going for, there are some things, there are some drawbacks to strength training programs. Uh, one is that is the difference in lowered upper body volume. And then two is there are some isolation type exercises that help bring up smaller muscle groups, like your shoulders, like your lats, like your arms that are going to make progress on a strength training program, but are not going to, they're going to fall behind, uh, your bigger muscle groups that really get trained hard. Like your, for instance, your, your, your, your chest is, uh, gonna,

gonna grow. Most people find that when, if they do a few years of strength training, they have a decent chest, their shoulders and arms are too small given their chest. Um, they have a decent back, but their lats are usually underdeveloped and they have a very big lower body, big legs, big butt. And that's kind of the strength training look. A lot of people, some people, they don't care. They think that's cool. They like to do the strength training. Some people not so much. So strength training is a great place to start. It's a great introduction. Again, starting strength, there's a book. It's pretty technical. If you really want to dive into the technical details, then you're going to like it. And if you don't, there are certain portions which

are going to be right over your head, and that's okay. Again, if you go to legionathletics.com and search for strength, you'll see an article I wrote where I kind of break down, here are the big parts of starting strength, here's how it works. Here's how you do it. And then you can pick up the book as well. It's just going to, it's just a, it's a, it's a dense read. It's a dry read. And there are, you're going to find that if you really want to understand it, you're going to be on the internet quite a bit Googling terms and, you know, trying to understand what he is saying. StrongLifts is another good strength training program, similar to starting strength. And I wouldn't say one is necessarily better than the other. I generally recommend starting strength just because it's been around forever. And the creator, Mark Ripto, he just

knows his stuff. He's been in this game for decades. And I've had him on the podcast. He's very knowledgeable. And that's just the program that you know i say hey go start there another benefit of starting with strength training is a lot of teenagers also play sports and most sports are you are going to benefit more from uh lower body development than upper body development uh Uh, you know, the, the heavy weightlifting that you do in a, in a program like starting strength, it doesn't just increase your strength, but it increases your power to meaning your explosiveness. So if you play soccer, for instance, uh, you know, that's what you need. You need to be able to explode. You need to run fast.

And of course you have the technical aspects of ball handling and shooting and all that stuff, but that lower body, uh, explosiveness and that having that strong core is going to help you a lot. If you play, you know, football, same story. You know, the only, I think I'm not really, I don't follow football much, but I would guess the positions that need upper body strength are limited probably to like the linemen, right? Cause they do a lot of pushing lower body strength too. But most, most positions in football are going to benefit a lot more from having a powerful lower body than a powerful upper body. Um, so you can run down, you know, basketball, same thing, uh, having that explosiveness and being able to jump higher,

obviously it's going to help a lot. And that helps a lot in a lot of sports. So that's another benefit. And, um, I actually, there's a local high school here that they want to start a weightlifting program for their football team. And the coach was talking to me, what do I recommend? Should they do my program? And I said, no, not really, because my program is, it's a hybrid between strength training and bodybuilding. It's kind of like strength training, but to, but addressing some of the deficiencies in terms of how your body develops by adding in some bodybuilding that is irrelevant to these kids. I mean, these kids are 15, 16, 17. They've never lifted weights before and they're doing it for football, starting strength. Just do that. You know, the, the, you also have, what was his name? Bill Starr, I believe he had, he had, that was that, that's where a lot of this, uh, that's where strong lifts, uh, came from was Bill Starr wrote a book about football training and that's what it was. There's a lot of, there's a lot of squatting, deadlifting and pressing overhead, pressing and bench pressing. And, um, I forget

the name of it. It's like the strong will survive or something. I don't remember. Actually I have the book. I just don't remember. It's been a while since I've read it. But so that's also another benefit of starting with strength training. So a couple other points here. I said this earlier, but I want to say it again. Be a real stickler on form. Don't let your friends browbeat you into messing with weights that are way too heavy or go get another rep, get another rep, and when you know that your form is falling apart, when you feel like that, and again, if you read starting strength and you really study the diagrams and understand how to do these exercises properly and then do them and get that feel, maintaining that form is super important. So I will abort a set if I feel like my form is slipping too much. I mean, there's a little bit of wiggle room, obviously, but if I feel like my form is slipping too much, I mean, a little, there's a little bit

of wiggle room, obviously, but if I'm dead lifting and I feel like this bar is not coming up without really having to round my back and do some things that I'm not, I shouldn't be doing, I just put, put it down. It's not worth it. And you know, okay. The likelihood of actually getting hurt is low, but if I do that frequently, the overall probability is now quite high. It's like, you know, if you, when you're living dangerously, it doesn't mean that you're necessarily taking huge risks every day. It can mean that you are taking a lot of little risks. You're doing a lot of little risky things every day where the probability of each individual

thing coming back to hurt you is low, but you're doing enough little things that are going to, that have that low probability that there's actually now a high probability of being hurt. So same idea with, with weightlifting is, is we want to put ourselves in as few situations as possible where there's really any, uh, likelihood of getting hurt. We want to minimize the amount, the total amount of probability that we're going to get hurt. And you do that by maintaining proper form. And, you know, I've, I've, uh, that's all, this is why I squat in a squat rack because I've had it many times where, you know, heavy weight and I'm trying to try to try to squeeze out one more rep and I'm down in the, I'm down in the hole and I'm trying to get up and I feel my knees kind of

moving in and I feel like my back is rounding a little bit. And then I just sit it down. I just, you know, sit the weight down on the, on the, on the safety bars and, and the set back is rounding a little bit and then I just sit it down. I just sit the weight down on the safety bars and the set. That is just a much better way to go about lifting and then trying to just do anything I can where I'm wobbling to try to get the weight up and then who knows what can happen. So the next thing is don't touch steroids. You're going to hear – if you go on the internet steroids. There are, you're going to hear, if you, if you go on the internet and read about steroids, you can hear a lot of things. You're going to hear, some people are going to say they're super dangerous and they're going to ruin your, your endocrine system and that's it. And then you're going to hear other people say that they're not dangerous and the dangers are overblown and over-exaggerated and you should

watch this documentary. We should do this. And there are, I've written about this. If you go to muscle for life and you search for steroid, then you can see an article I wrote. And there are, I've written about this. If you go to muscle for life and you search for steroid, then you can see an article I wrote. And there are some, there are valid, some valid, I would say that there's, there's more validity to, uh, the latter than the former, uh, steroids are not as dangerous or at least certain steroids. I'd say that. So like testosterone is not as, uh, dangerous as some people would have you believe, but

at your age, it is terrible see like if if i at 30 were on let's say a trt dose of testosterone um the worst case scenario is i'm slightly increasing my risk of prostate cancer which again that association is now it's it's kind of it's a controversial up in the air debated thing and there are things you can do to mitigate that risk controversial, up in the air debated thing. And there are things you can do to mitigate that risk and, you know, fine, whatever. And of course it shuts down natural production. And, uh, it's not, I, you know, I have no interest in, in being on testosterone or taking steroids at all. But if I were to do that, that is not the same as you doing that at 15 or 16, when your endocrine system is developing, you can really screw your body up. So really do not touch steroids. It is not

necessary. Uh, and it is the, the risk reward ratio is, is really, really bad. You have a very, very high risk of causing permanent damage to your body for a reward that who cares? Like, okay, you would gain muscle and strength faster. That's, that's what you would get out of it. Who cares? You're 15, you're 16, you have your entire life ahead of you. You have, if you start, I can tell you this, if you start weightlifting at 15 or 16, just do it right. Eat well. No drugs. You don't even have to necessarily take any supplements.

By the time, let's say it's, you know, by the time you're 20, 21, by your 21st birthday, you're going to, if you just stick with it and be smart about it and you know, don't take any long periods off, do any injury or just taking off time or whatever, you just kind of like, just keep going consistent. It's like how you go to school every day. If you just kind of keep it, keep, keep on the grind by 2021, you're going to look amazing. You're going to really, I mean, I, you could build your, the build the dream body. You could have the physique, whatever you really want right now, unless you want to be a massive bodybuilder type of person, which that's a whole other thing. And you can't do that naturally. And it takes also top tier genetics.

And I just wouldn't recommend even thinking about that. But if you just want to be like a fitness model looking type of person where you have a good amount of muscle and you're lean and you know, everything has good proportions and also be athletic, then you start at 15, 16 by 21, you're there. And then there are plenty of things you can do from there. Obviously it's not like, Oh, you're done now. And what do you do now? You can, you can maintain it. You can start doing different types of workouts to challenge yourself in different ways and you know, whatever that you can worry about it then. But, um, yeah, so with steroids, yeah, you could do that faster, but you are addicting, you're going to become addicted. You just will. I mean, it's not that there's so much,

it's not the physiological addiction, but I've spoken with a lot of steroid users and the ones that are a bit more self-aware and just honest with themselves, uh, will say that it's the psychological addiction is, is what sucks. And that's where, you know, they feel that when they, they feel so much better on drugs than off drugs, that it's very hard for them to just completely stop. Because, you know, the risks, it's like, why do people smoke so much? They think that when we know for a fact that, you know, every year of every, let's say, as you get older, every decade, as you get older, if you're still smoking, your risk of heart disease and cancer goes up dramatically. You can tell people know that smokers know that, but they just think, well, it's not going to happen to me.

It's not, they're not going to happen to me syndrome. You know what I mean? So it's the same thing with steroid users. Like sure. They know that some of these drugs are genotoxic, not, not testosterone, but that, uh, you know, you're damaging your DNA or increasing the risk of cancer. It's hard on your liver. It's this, that, whatever.

And they just go, well, yeah, but you know, there's this guy this guy online and he's been on drugs for 40 years and he's fine. Or I know this one guy. So it's not going to happen to me until it does. And maybe, you know, of course it's not guaranteed, but I, again, I'm all about not putting myself in a high risk situations of developing diseases that are going to make me suffer and kill me. So don't take steroids. That's, that's, that's just the bottom line. And don't let yourself get pressured into it. Um, because it's just not worth it. And it also increases your risk of injury in the gym because you're going to people that are on drugs, your muscles gain a lot of strength very fast, but your tendons and ligaments don't keep up with that. So you're going to feel like you can, you know, add that 50 pounds to the bar and your muscles are going to be able to, you know,

move it and engage. And then, you know, your, your joint blows out or whatever. So that's another reason to not take steroids. So then I mentioned supplements earlier and my general stance with supplementation and teenagers is I am kind of, I lean teenagers is I lean away from it. I kind of say, you know, I guess you don't need supplements. Nobody needs supplements. And there's not a great reason why. There's certain supplements like a protein powder. Okay, fine.

Protein powder is convenient. It helps you hit your protein needs. There's nothing wrong with a teenager taking a good protein powder. It's not necessary. They can just eat food. I know when I was a teenager, I didn't take any protein powders and I just liked to eat food. So I just ate food, but I'm fine with a protein powder. Creatine use is very common with all, with weightlifters of any age. The thing is with creatine and teenagers, physiologically speaking, there probably isn't a reason why it would be harmful,

but there's not any specific research on it that I know about on, on, you know, on people under 18 years old, all the crazy research that we have, of which we have hundreds and hundreds of studies, and we know it's a safe molecule for adults, but we don't have any research on teenagers. So my general recommendation of creatine is just no, because again, I don't know of a good reason why it would be harmful, but I'm not comfortable enough with that to say, and then, you know, Hey, yeah, sure. Whatever. And just take it because also one of the things with supplementation in general is people tend to overdose things. So they think that, you know, the, the standard creatine protocol is five

grams a day. There are a lot of people though, that even though they might hear from someone like me saying, you're not going to get more out of 10 grams a day, trust me. Or if you do, it's going to be so minuscule, it's not worth the added expense. They're still going to do 10 grams a day, or they're going to do 20 grams a day or whatever. And I think that that type of behavior is probably more likely with teenagers who are very, you know, Hey, I'm invincible. I can do anything kind of thing. So I would say no, no to creatine. It's not necessary. Um, yes, it does. It is a good supplement. It does work and it does help you build muscle and strength and so forth, but save it to save it for again,

kind of like with, when, when I was talking about earlier with getting super shredded, save creatine for when you're a little bit older. A good multivitamin is not a bad idea. Again, a multivitamin is not going to replace the need for fruits and vegetables in your diet because fruits and vegetables don't just provide essential vitamins and minerals. They also provide other molecules called cofactors that you just won't get in a multivitamin. These additional molecules are the main reason why you can't just supplement your nutrients. You have to also eat nutritious foods. A good multivitamin, I obviously would recommend mine. And if you go to legionathletics.com

and look on supplements, look at Triumph, that's my multivitamin, and read the sales page and you'll see why do I recommend mine over others beyond it's just mine. That's my multivitamin and read the sales page. And you'll see, why do I recommend, why do I recommend mine over others beyond? It's just mine. Like, that's not my, my sales pitch isn't, well, mine is just better because I made it. Um, it goes pretty in depth and talks about multivitamins in general and you know, how I went about creating mine and so forth. Um, the reason for, for, for taking it is if there are any holes in your diet, which there are most teenagers. I mean, every teenager that I know their diet is, is pretty Swiss cheesy. There are, you know, there, there are complete food groups that just are not really in there very much like fruits and

vegetables, for instance. And, uh, in some cases, whole grains, cause there's a lot of processed grains and then processed foods and sugars and whatever. So there are key micronutrients that they're just not getting in large amounts that their bodies could do better with or could do better if they were getting. So a good multivitamin is going to provide those nutrients and at least hopefully plug some of those holes. And a fish oil is also not a bad idea. If you go on Muscle for Life and you search for, it's actually kind of hard to find, but we're going to be revamping Muscle for Life completely and improving the search function. But the name of the article is how many grams of fat per day, I believe, how many grams of fat should you eat per day, something like that.

If you put it into Google as well, like Muscle for Life, how many grams of fat per day, it'll come up. You can read more about why I recommend fish oil. There's a certain type of fat called omega-3 fatty acid that is very important for your body's health. It is involved in many different physiological mechanisms in the body. And unless you eat a fair amount of fatty fish, you are not going to be getting very much. Or I mean, there are some plant-based sources of it, but again, there's like flax, for instance, but the conversion, the flax is just not a great source of omega-3s. And there are some other more obscure plant-based sources of omega-3s, but you're probably not getting, you're probably not eating any of them. So the easiest thing to do is supplement with fish oil. You want about, let's say,

one to three grams of omega-3 fatty acids per day. And that sounds like very little, it is very little, but it makes a huge difference in your body. It's very important. And the last supplement that I would recommend looking at is vitamin D. Vitamin D is, it's not just a vitamin, it's actually a steroid hormone. Every, about every cell in the body has a receptor for vitamin D. So it interacts in so many different ways in the body. And vitamin D deficiencies are correlated with many different types of diseases and dysfunction. You want to make sure that you are giving your body enough vitamin D.

And again, this is hard because the main way that your body gets its vitamin D is being in the sun. And so if you have, I believe it's like, you know, I'm in Florida. So we have, we're closer to the equator, obviously, than we're in really anyone else. And I guess you probably have some people in Texas that have sun like this as well. So this is strong sun in terms of UV rays. And in this type of sun, you would need to have about 70% of your skin exposed for, I believe, I want to say about 15 minutes a day. That would be enough. And then if I were to do that, then I probably wouldn't have to supplement. Although my body genetically does have a heightened need for vitamin D. So I still apply extra supplement with some, but the point is though, who does that? Who, I mean, I'm not, who goes sunbathing for 15, 20 minutes a day. Very few people we work with. I mean, it's just, it's just not, who goes sunbathing for 15, 20 minutes a day? Very few people. We work. It's just not practical.

So instead, I supplement. And a good place to start would be about 2,000 IUs a day for teenagers is a good place to start. And if you really want to know what your body's vitamin D needs are, you can get blood tested. And then you'll know for a fact that you could take 2,000 IUs a day, get blood tested, and then they'll tell you, okay, that looks good. Or they're going to say, I doubt they'll say you need less just because now we know that certain levels of D3 in the blood that were once previously thought as sufficient are now thought of as deficient. So if anything, they're probably, you're going to hear, okay, you're fine, or we're going to, you need to take more vitamin D. But the, you know, that's a, it's just getting that in at an, at a young age is, is going to help tremendously with your body's overall development and just with your overall health. Okay. So the last point here as a teenager is make sure you're getting plenty of sleep. And

I mentioned earlier that I don't sleep very much and that's how my body is. And also I'm 30 though. When I was a teenager, I was sleeping, I don't know, eight hours a night minimum. And then on the weekends I'd go out late and then I'd be sleeping 10 hours. I was a teenager. And so, uh, do not restrict your sleep is the point. And if you want to know how much sleep your body needs, then you can on the weekends, just don't set an alarm. I mean, this is also going to be affected though by your weekly schedule. If you're, if you are restricting your sleep during the week and then you're catching up on the weekend, um, that is that, that that's what's happening. So you might sleep longer on the weekend, but like the standard way that's recommended, if you want to really know how much body, how much sleep your body needs is like,

if you're on vacation for two weeks is to, is to, uh, go to bed at a normal hour, uh, every night, don't set an alarm. And in the beginning, if your body needs to catch up on sleep, you might find you sleep more than usual. But after a week or so, you should see that you start sleeping in a certain amount every night. It might be seven hours. It might be eight hours. In my case, again, I've been sleeping no more than six hours a night for, I don't know, years now. My body, I wake up before my alarm and I'm awake. So that's just the way that's.

And when I'm on vacation, it's the same thing. I sleep about six hours. Unless I've been up very late and doing that multiple times, then I have to catch up. But that's how you could know how much sleep your body needs. But that's not just necessary. Just make sure. I would plan in probably eight, nine, even 10 hours of sleep. And 10 is maybe a bit high.

But if you plan for eight or nine hours of sleep every night, and of course it's fine. Sometimes you're going to sleep less. That happens. But you don't want to make a habit of restricting your sleep because, again, this has pretty devastating effects in the body hormonally and in many different ways. And it accumulates over time. The purpose of getting enough sleep is supporting your body's natural growth processes. Your body is, there's a lot going on in it and it's very busy. And especially if you're playing sports and you're lifting weights and you're being active, it has to recover from all that. And it has to continue to build itself up.

Eating enough food is very important. Eating enough protein is very important. And getting enough sleep is very important. That's everything. That's kind of like, uh, the, the advice now, now I have, uh, something I can just send all the teens that, that write me instead of having to like copy and paste the whole thing. Now I can just send this video and that's everything.

Um, you know, putting questions down below or better yet, uh, reach out to me on Twitter or Facebook or email me or drop a comment in the AMA on Muscle for Life. It's linked on the homepage because managing YouTube comments is tough. It's almost not worth the time because the system just doesn't work very well, whereas I have a much better system for managing all that other stuff. So I hope you like this. And, yeah, that's it. I'll see you next week.