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030 - Bigger Leaner Stronger

July 5, 2018 1h 8m Full transcript available
030 - Bigger Leaner Stronger
0:00 / 1h 8m
In this episode, we're diving deep into 'Bigger Leaner Stronger' by Michael Matthews, a must-read for any man serious about transforming his body. I'll break down the key principles of physical resilience, emphasizing that neglecting your physical health is unacceptable for a Christian man.
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0:59 "This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it."
1:15 No matter how bad you think your genetics are, and no matter how lost you might feel after trying and abandoning many types of workouts,
1:23 you absolutely, positively can have the lean, ripped body that you dream about.
1:28 Guys, that is the opening line from the book "Bigger, Leaner, Stronger" by Michael Matthews.
1:34 And so today's podcast is going to be a review of that book.
1:38 And so basically we're going to look at the book in depth.
1:40 We're going to look at a lot of things it goes into.
1:42 There's so much content in this book, so we're not going to be able to get into all of it.
1:45 But again, I just want to go through this and give you a sense of some of the things
1:50 that I do within my own training regimen and some of the things that this book suggests.
1:54 And here's the thing. This is one of the four books that made the health section of the book list.
1:59 That's the 100 books every modern Christian man should read list.
2:02 So if you're not familiar with that list, I do talk about it a lot.
2:05 Just visit that list at www.Undaunted.life/booklist.
2:10 That's Undaunted.life/booklist.
2:13 And when you go there, I have a bunch of different sections of different kinds of books.
2:17 So there's biographies and apologetics and theology books and things like that.
2:23 But I do have a health section.
2:24 And I wanted to make sure that there was a good amount of different types of health
2:29 things that were in that section, not just the same book over and over.
2:32 And so this is one of the books that's there.
2:34 And so I want to get into a lot of detail about what this book goes into.
2:38 It's one of literally the best selling sports training and natural bodybuilding books of all time.
2:44 It has over 400,000 copies that have been sold. It's been translated into a bunch of different
2:48 languages. It's really helped a lot of guys kind of get the body that they were looking for
2:53 and kind of get through some of that head trash and some of the things that they may have heard
2:57 about in terms of how to lift or how not to lift or how to diet and how not to diet.
3:01 And so I want to make sure that I go into that fully.
3:03 Now guys, this is obviously the first podcast, you know, we're 30 podcasts in now.
3:08 This is the first one that I'm focusing solely on physical resilience.
3:13 So obviously, if you're familiar with us, by this point on Donta Life is all about cultivating
3:17 manly resilience. And our definition of manhood is a guy that cultivates spiritual, mental and
3:22 physical resilience daily, right? But here's the thing, I see a lot of Christian dudes
3:29 ignore physical resilience almost entirely. Like, it's kind of embarrassing, but here's the real
3:36 truth of it. If you're spiritually resilient, you can't really tell that in someone's eyes or,
3:42 you know, as they walk by you, if you don't know them, you can't tell, you know, that guy's really
3:46 spiritually resilient. You know, same thing with mental resilient. If you watch someone
3:49 for long enough, maybe you listen to a vocabulary or kind of hang around them long enough, maybe you
3:54 can kind of get a sense of their mental resilience, but you can't see it really. Physical resilience
4:00 is one of the easiest things for you to actually look at. Because if somebody is sloppy and overweight
4:06 and something like that, they're probably not very high on the physical resilience scale.
4:11 It's just kind of one of those things where you can literally look at a guy and be like, well,
4:15 he doesn't really take care of his physical resilience. He doesn't really take care of his body,
4:18 right? And so the thing is that I noticed when I walk through any church that I've ever been to,
4:24 it's just like the rest of America. Most of them are overweight. Most of the guys are overweight,
4:29 they're out of shape, or, you know, they're skinny, but out of shape, you know, guys like that,
4:33 they're skinny, but they couldn't run a quarter mile to save their life. And so this is something
4:37 that I really want to hammer home to you guys about how important this is. Because I see a lot
4:41 of guys just ignore this. You know, they've stopped worrying about their physique and how
4:45 in shape they were after their last practice, you know, in high school, whatever sport that was,
4:50 you know, they had they got married and that was their excuse for not going to the gym,
4:53 or they had their first kid and that was their excuse for not going to the gym,
4:56 or I kind of tweak my knee playing frisbee golf or something like that. And then all of a sudden,
5:00 they can't work out for the next two decades. But the thing about it is, is it's completely
5:04 inappropriate to walk through life as a Christian male and be a bad example to those around you,
5:09 especially with how you treat your body. It's just that simple. And we're going to get into that
5:13 more a little bit later about kind of the godly component of that. But I want to get more into
5:17 why I wanted to do this book and why I wanted to do this now. Here's the thing is I've had a lot
5:21 of people ask me about my workout routine. So I show bits and pieces of that on Instagram every
5:26 Tuesday. So if you follow us on Instagram at undaunted life every Tuesday, I do a workout of the week.
5:31 And I try to build workouts that everybody can do. So regardless of if you have a gym membership,
5:36 or if you have a home gym or any weights or any type of equipment, I try to do stuff that just
5:39 about everybody can do, even if they're just sitting at work at something that they can do.
5:43 But this book is, I guess the closest thing to a summary that I can find of my training philosophy.
5:52 And I was pleasantly surprised because a lot of the things that we're talked about in this book
5:57 by the author were things that I was already doing. And you know how it is, if you've been doing
6:01 something for any length of time, and then you read a book about someone who's an expert in that
6:06 area, there's kind of that a little bit of nervousness like, Oh, crap. I really hope I've been doing
6:11 this correctly for like the last five years or something like that. So I was really, really
6:15 satisfied with some of the things in this book, because this is a guy that backs up a lot of things
6:19 he says with a lot of different studies and different kind of peer reviewed things that have kind of
6:24 led him to make the recommendations that he does. But the thing is, is like I said earlier,
6:29 there is literally way, way too much information in this book for me to summarize it all. But I am
6:34 going to go ahead and point out some of the high points for you. And just the things that I think
6:39 are going to be the most helpful. And this is also distilled down from what a lot of guys have asked
6:43 me. So guys asking me about my diet, certain workouts, hey, should I use, you know, should I
6:48 use bands or shoes? I use free weights or should I, you know, things like that. And so I'm going to
6:51 try to get into as much of that as possible. So this book is broken down into five main sections.
6:57 Okay, so there's a couple other sections, but they're not really, you know, integral to the overall
7:01 story that we're going to tell today. So section one is about fundamentals. Section two is called
7:06 the inner game. Section three is nutrition and diet. Section four is training. In the last section,
7:13 we'll talk about a section five and that supplementation. But let's go ahead and get into section one.
7:17 So section one is fundamentals. And so this is just really, really basic stuff. It just starts
7:22 with a bunch of definitions. So it's, there's going to be a lot of kind of jargon used in this
7:29 book. And the author does a great job of not assuming that everybody knows what he's talking
7:34 about. So even when he says something like carbohydrate, like, do we know exactly what he's
7:38 talking about? Are we all on the same page? And there's some that go way more technical than that,
7:42 but that's just kind of how the book starts. But then also in this section, it talks about the
7:46 seven biggest muscle building myths and mistakes. And so there, there's seven there, but I just
7:51 wanted to go into a few of them. I didn't want to go through all of them and do exhaustive. I do
7:55 want you to be able to get the book in and refer to it and read it yourself. But the number one myth
8:00 or the first myth rather about muscle building is that more sets equals more growth. And so I'm
8:07 going to read a section from the book here. I learned that doing too many sets and reps for
8:11 any muscle group per week can lead to overtraining, which has a host of negative side effects.
8:16 Impaired muscle growth, general fatigue, lower levels of anabolic hormones, higher levels of
8:22 catabolic hormones, and in extreme cases, even muscle loss. And so this is something that, you know,
8:27 I can like feel the soul of jocko willing hovering over me right now being like, no, do more sets.
8:32 But it really is something that I have seen in my own personal training. And I've seen it other
8:37 places that people literally will overset themselves into drawbacks in their body. So they're trying
8:43 to get to a certain type of muscle growth or a certain type of body. And they think, well,
8:48 if I just do my biceps, you know, three or four times a week, I'm going to get that and actually
8:52 can kind of work in your, uh, not in your favor there. So myth number two, uh, in terms of the
8:58 biggest muscle building miss is you have to quote, feel the burn to grow. So all of us know that,
9:03 you know, you get that pump. So international chest day is Monday, you go in there, you get
9:07 your bench press on, you're feeling all you're feeling tight, you're feeling huge as you're walking
9:11 out of the gym, but you don't necessarily have to feel a burn in order to grow. So let's go to the
9:16 back to the book here. This is probably one of the worst muscle building fallacies out there.
9:21 Muscle burn and pump are not paramount in achieving muscle growth. When your muscles are burning,
9:27 what you're feeling is a buildup of lactic acid, which continues to accumulate as you
9:31 contract your muscles again and again. While lactic acid triggers what's known as anabolic
9:37 cascade, which is a cocktail of growth inducing hormones, repeatedly elevating lactic acid levels
9:43 higher and higher doesn't mean you build more and more muscle over time. Thus, for yet another
9:49 reason, when guys spend a couple of hours in the gym, pounding away with drop sets, burn out sets,
9:55 super sets and so forth, they're working very hard for little payoff. And so guys, I can, I can
10:00 raise my hand here. I can raise both hands and say, in, in my lifting, that's just something that
10:04 I've done on my own since I was like 14 or 15 years old. There were a lot of times where it's like,
10:09 well, I can't leave the gym yet, because I'm not feeling that burn. And everybody that's lifted,
10:13 you know what that burn is, right? Where you just feeling good, you got that burn. But again,
10:18 if you go to that area every time, it's not necessarily good for you. Now another myth. This
10:23 is myth number four on his list is this constantly changing up your routine constantly changing up
10:29 your routine back to the book. Guys who make the mistake of doing lots of ineffective exercises
10:35 often believe the quote, muscle confusion, unquote, myth, the muscle confusion myth,
10:40 which is the belief that you have to constantly change up your routine to keep your body guessing
10:46 and make gains. This is complete nonsense. You're in the gym to get bigger and stronger and that
10:51 requires four simple things. Do the right exercises lift progressively heavier weights over time,
10:59 eat correctly and give your body sufficient rest regularly changing exercises simply isn't necessary
11:05 because your goals limit the exercises that you should be doing. Now I will go out there and then
11:10 again, this one is one that hit me in the face a while back and I was actually surprised to see
11:14 it here in this book because we always hear about muscle confusion, right? We always hear that
11:19 where your body's used to this checks chest exercise. So you need to shake things up. But you know,
11:24 the author goes into much more detail, but but essentially, you know, different muscle groups in
11:28 your body, they don't have brains, right? They don't get bored. So if you know, you've only been doing,
11:35 you know, a single type of pushup, you're not necessarily going to get any gains by going to a
11:41 different kind of pushup, that's essentially going to be hitting the same muscle groups
11:44 or the same part of the same muscle group. And so that was one thing that I've heard a lot of
11:49 people talk about, which is, you know, how often should I change up my routine should it be every
11:53 eight weeks every six months, things like that. And you know, as we'll get into it a little bit
11:57 later, if you do some core things, you can change things up so you're not bored. But it's certainly
12:01 not your body that's going to get bored. And then another myth, I think this is the last myth I'm
12:05 going to go into here on this section is myth number six. And that's lifting like a wussy. So I like
12:10 this one a lot back to the book. Building a great body is a pain in the butt. It takes considerable
12:15 time effort, discipline and dedication. It doesn't come easy. And anyone who tells you otherwise is
12:20 either ignorant or lying. Quite frankly, most guys just train like wussies. They don't want to face
12:25 up to heavy weights and do the hard work. They seem to believe that just showing up and going
12:29 through the motions is enough. Well, it's not. And their bodies, which can change a little over time,
12:34 are a testament to that fact to that fact. The truth is these guys are just giving in to one of the
12:39 our most primal instincts. We humans are programmed to avoid pain and discomfort and seek pleasure and
12:45 ease in life. And in some circumstances, this works out nicely for us. If we let these inclinations
12:50 color our workouts, however, we're doomed. If you want to build an impressive physique,
12:55 you're going to have to work hard in the gym. You're going to have to move weights that are just
12:59 downright intimidating. You're going to have to dig deep and finish that last set. You're going to
13:03 have to deal with muscle soreness and other aches. But you're going to come to love it. You're
13:08 going to learn that these hardships are just part of the game. The do's you have to pay to meet your
13:12 goals. You're going to look forward to this daily hour of intense, uncomfortable, all-out physical
13:18 exertion, because you know that every workout you finish makes you a little bit stronger, both
13:22 physically and mentally, and gets you a little bit closer to the end game. So guys, this is
13:27 something that I think it may have in the first Q&A podcast I was asked about, you know, basically
13:32 the mistakes that guys make out at the gym. And this is one that I didn't really mention, but I
13:36 should have and I've been kicking myself ever since. But this is really true. So I know a lot of guys
13:41 that spend a lot of time at the gym. And frankly, you just can't tell. And again, going to the gym
13:46 is not all about just having giant traps and chest pounding out your shirt and all those different
13:50 things. But at the end of the day, I hear about guys all the time that don't have enough time to
13:55 do X, Y, or Z, right? Well, gosh, if I just had more time, I would spend more time with my wife,
14:00 or gosh, if I just had enough time, you know, I would do another Bible study. If I just had enough
14:03 time, I'd be a better father. But I see these guys in the gym. Well, first of all, they're farting
14:08 around on their phones. And they're working out at a gym that's like 20 to 30 minutes away from their
14:14 house. So they're taking another hour out of their day just by putting along getting to the gym.
14:18 They take their time warming up. They take their time getting changed. They're, you know, taking
14:22 way too long in between sets. And then whenever they get down to the business of actually lifting
14:26 weights, they're not serious about it. And again, I don't like the excuses here because there's a
14:31 lot of them here. But it's just like, well, I don't have a, I don't have a lifting partner. I don't
14:34 have a spotter. I know I have all those things. Guys, I haven't basically had a spotter or a workout
14:39 partner for the entirety of my life. There was like a little two year stretch where I worked out
14:43 with a buddy of mine. But aside from that, you can work out by yourself. Like, and again, I don't
14:47 work out by myself in a gym full with people. I work out by myself in a garage gym. That just
14:52 works best for me. And I'm not saying, you know, be the lone wolf and workout on your own. I'm just
14:56 saying that a lot of the excuses that you give for why you don't work out hard are not actually real.
15:00 Now he also goes into some other things in this section in this beginning section. And he goes into
15:05 the three scientific laws of muscle growth. So I want to talk about all of these. So the three
15:11 scientific laws of muscle growth, right? So we just did the myths. Now let's do the laws. The first
15:16 is progressive overload overall. The second is proper rest is just as important as proper training.
15:22 And third, muscles will grow only if they are properly fed. So let's go back to number one,
15:27 progressive overload over time. So this basically means lifting progressively heavier weights, right?
15:34 So as you move on in your lifting programs, you are not going to put 225 on the bench and only do
15:40 that ever, right? That's not going to be your your workout way. You're trying to inch your way up
15:45 two and a half pounds on each side at a time, five pounds on each side at a time, that type of a thing.
15:50 And this is really where we get into the four to six rep range. And we're going to talk more
15:55 about this later in the podcast, I believe, but four to six reps, that is the magic right there.
16:01 I know a lot of people and I've done this for for many, many years, and I've just recently
16:04 changed this in the last couple of years, but everything's eight to 12 reps, right? That's what
16:09 you're trying to do. But that's actually not helping you get stronger, right? You're doing more reps,
16:14 but you're not getting stronger. If you up the weight and lowered the rep range, it's going to
16:19 actually help you over time to grow muscle. Now the second thing, the second law here was proper
16:23 rest is just as important as proper training. I see this as a gigantic, gigantic mistake
16:28 for a lot of people. And this is not just rest in terms of sleep. Obviously, I've suggested a
16:32 podcast before about sleep. It's incredibly important, but that is something that guys do not give
16:37 certain body parts or certain muscle groups arrest. So I've talked to a lot of guys that, you know,
16:42 they put themselves in the category, they do bench press and bicep curls, right? You know,
16:46 just about two or three days a week is just a like that's that's what they do. And I get it.
16:50 It makes sense. You can kind of see that grow. It's like the easiest thing to watch grow.
16:54 But you have to rest certain muscle groups are just going to start working against you. And we're
16:58 certainly talk more about that later. And the third law here was muscles will grow only if
17:02 they're fed properly. So here's a quote from this section. You could do the perfect workouts and
17:07 give your muscles the perfect amount of rest. But if you don't eat correctly, you won't grow.
17:12 Period. It is that cut and dry. So again, guys, I know, I know certain guys, your diet is completely
17:19 unlocked. You know, some of you guys get a lot of of sleep. Maybe some of you guys do the perfect
17:23 workouts. But if you don't have all those things working in concert, you're going to end up working
17:27 against yourself and against your gains. So in this section as well, it talks about the five
17:33 biggest fat loss, miss and mistakes. So again, this first section is incredibly important,
17:37 because it kind of sets you up for all the different paradigms he's going to bust for you later in
17:42 the book. So the five biggest fat loss, miss and mistakes. And I'm just going to go over a few of
17:46 them here. So the second one that he lists is so number two, the myth and mistake is you do cardio
17:53 and you'll lose fat. So that is a myth. If you do cardio, you'll lose fat. So let's go to the book
17:58 here. Cardio can enhance fat loss in two ways, burning calories and speeding up your metabolic
18:05 rate. But that's it. And since I brought it up, let's talk briefly about the metabolic rate.
18:10 Your body burns a certain number of calories regardless of any physical activity. This is
18:15 called your basal metabolic rate, your BMR, your total daily energy expenditure, which is TDE
18:21 for a day would be your BMR, plus the energy expended during any physical activities.
18:26 When your metabolism is said to speed up or to slow down, what this means is that your basal
18:32 metabolic rate has gone up or down. That is your body is burning more or fewer calories
18:38 while at rest. Cardio, especially a variety I recommend called high intensity interval cardio
18:43 or hit can increase your basal metabolic rate through what's known as the afterbird effect.
18:48 While that sounds fancy and is often used in sketchy marketing pitches for sketchy products,
18:53 it's simple. Your body continues burning additional energy after you exercise. And so, oh, sorry,
18:59 one last section here. But here's the thing with cardio. If you don't also eat correctly,
19:03 that nightly run or bike ride won't save you. So again, I know a lot of guys that will do a
19:08 ton of cardio. Maybe they they're big time runners or they crush the bike or whatever that
19:12 it is that they do, but they don't eat right. And it's it's what almost be better as opposed
19:17 to them running five miles, it would be better for them to run 15, you know, 15 sprints or something
19:23 like that. And so just doing cardio is is not enough. And it's not necessarily all that you need,
19:29 but potentially you need a different type of cardio. Another myth, a mistake here about fat loss
19:34 is doing tons of reps gets you shredded. So as as many of you have heard before, and as I've
19:39 even told people before is if you want to get bulky, you do highway low rep. And if you want to get,
19:45 you know, cut up and shredded, you do low weight high rep, right? But let's go to the book and see
19:49 what he has to say. Many gurus are recommend that you follow a high rep low weight routine to shred
19:55 up. But this is the complete opposite of what you want to do. The reality is, is that your body is
20:01 primed for muscle loss when you're in a calorie deficit. And by focusing exclusively on muscle
20:06 endurance, which is the higher rep ranges, you'll set yourself up for rapid strength loss,
20:11 with the potential for significant muscle loss as well. The key to preserving strength and muscle
20:17 while losing weight is to lift heavy weights. The goal is to continue progressively overloading
20:23 your muscles, which ensures protein synthesis rates remain elevated enough to prevent muscle
20:27 loss. There are fat loss benefits to heavy weight lifting as well. A study published by
20:33 Greek sports scientists found that men who trained with heavy weights, which was 80 to 85% of their
20:38 one rep max, increase their metabolic rates over the following three days, burning hundreds more
20:43 calories than the men who trained with lighter weights, which was 45 to 65% of their one rep max.
20:49 Yes, hundreds more calories. That's significant. And if you really want to,
20:54 and if you really want, sorry, start over. And if you want to really score extra calories burned,
21:00 focus on compound lifts like squats and deadlifts, because these are the types of lists that burn
21:05 the most post workout calories. The bottom line is getting that shredded look is just a matter of
21:10 having a fair amount of muscle and a low amount of body fat and nothing else. There aren't any
21:15 special exercises that bring out the striations and burning your muscles out with tons of reps,
21:21 does it nothing to improve your overall look. So this is one another one of those things
21:26 that I was just dead wrong on for a lot of years and have just really wiseed up in the last couple
21:30 of years. So if you're trying to shred up and you're trying to go low on weight, that's not
21:34 necessarily going to help you. Now there are our times whenever you should wait down in your certain
21:40 exercises and we'll get in that to a little bit more later, but that should not be your normal
21:43 regimen. And the last myth he talks about here in terms of fat loss is trying to spot reduce fat.
21:49 And this is this is important for a lot of guys back to the book. The reality is that training the
21:53 muscles of a certain area of your body burns calories and can result in muscle growth, both of
21:58 which certainly can aid in fat loss, but it doesn't directly burn the fat covering them to any
22:03 significant significant degree. You see fat loss occurs in a whole body fashion. You create the
22:10 proper internal weight loss environment, a calorie deficit, and your body reduces fat stores all
22:15 over your body with certain areas reducing faster than others. You can do all the crunches you want,
22:21 but you'll never have a six pack until you've adequately reduced your overall body fat percentage.
22:25 And that's more a function of proper dieting than anything else. So this is something for guys,
22:30 it's like, okay, maybe you've got love handles or maybe you got a little bit of extra weight on,
22:33 you know, on your chest or in certain parts of your legs or something like that.
22:36 So just doing certain exercises is not actually going to help that. So for guys with love handles,
22:41 I know a lot of guys, you know, they'll crush, you know, the side side crunches or they'll get
22:46 a dumbbell and they'll do side bins and things like that. And what that ends up doing for a lot of
22:50 guys is it actually ends up exacerbating the issue, because they're building a muscle underneath an
22:54 area that already has fat in it. So it actually has the illusion of making you look fatter in that
22:59 area. So it's just kind of one of those things. And the other thing about about weight in terms of
23:04 body fat guys is guys store body fat differently. Like there are certain people that just don't
23:10 store any of it. And those are the people that we're we're going to kill, you know what I mean?
23:13 But like, there are certain guys that they hold their their fat maybe right in the front,
23:18 like right around their belly button, like no matter whatever they do, I think I like Chuck Liddell.
23:22 Like that's a dude that even in his most ripped, he still had a gut. Like that was just that's just
23:26 kind of his look that's where his body stored fat, but he had no he had no love handles. He didn't
23:30 have any fat on his hips. And so for other guys, like they're incredibly ripped out, they even
23:34 have six pack, but then they still have a little bit of love handles. It's just we're genetically
23:38 their body is telling them to store that fat. So guys that wraps up the first section, which is just
23:43 basically going into the fundamentals of the things that we should know, but also just setting us up
23:47 for the remainder of the book. Now, section two is about the inner game. And I just got to be honest
23:52 with you, this is not a section that I spent a lot of time on. And I'm not really going to go
23:55 over any of it here. It's a lot of, you know, willpower and motivation and, you know, getting
23:59 yourself psyched up and all that stuff. And I just don't really ascribe to a lot of that.
24:03 Because again, I'm in the jocko willing camp of all this, which is like discipline over everything
24:07 else, essentially. So if you have the discipline, you don't need the motivation, because no matter
24:11 how motivated you are, eventually your motivation will wane. And there's not a YouTube video or Tony
24:16 Robbins quote that's going to get you out of bed that morning, you know what I mean? But if you have
24:19 the discipline, you're going to do it. So let's go ahead and move on into section number three. And
24:23 this is nutrition and diet. And I know for a lot of you guys, this is going to be a section that
24:27 you're not really going to enjoy, but it is an incredibly, incredibly important section for you.
24:31 So the first thing that we go into a nutrition and diet is we talk about the macro nutrients that
24:37 all of us guys should really be looking at on a daily basis. And those are proteins, carbohydrates
24:42 and dietary fats. So let's talk about proteins first, and I'll go ahead and go to the book here.
24:47 A high protein diet is absolutely vital for building muscle and preserving it when you're
24:51 dieting for fat loss. Regular exercise and weightlifting in particular increases your body's need
24:57 for essential meat amino acids and thus protein. Your best choices are meat, dairy products, and
25:03 eggs. And second to those are certain plant sources like legumes, nuts, and high protein
25:08 vegetables like peas, broccoli, and spinach. Protein from meat is particularly helpful when
25:13 you're weightlifting as research has demonstrated that eating meat increases testosterone levels
25:17 and is more effective for building muscle than vegetarian sources. It's hard to put an accurate
25:22 cap on how much protein your body can absorb in one meal. It's definitely a hell of a lot more
25:27 than the 20 to 30 grams that some people claim. So let's talk about protein just a little bit.
25:31 Guys, you can just drown yourself in research for the next 10 years, or you can just trust
25:36 trust me, trust this guy, you got to have more protein. I've rarely run into guys that kind of
25:41 give me an idea of what their diet is. And are they getting enough protein? And I'm mainly talking
25:44 about active guys, you know, guys that are doing the normal American lifestyle of being sedentary
25:49 in the normal American diet, they're probably getting enough protein to fuel what it is that
25:52 they need. But if you are an active guy, you got to get the protein because it's one of the things
25:57 that is going to help your muscles recover and grow in a way that you're going to want in a way
26:00 that you're going to feel is appropriate in a way that's going to make you actually feel good.
26:04 But I do want to talk about something that they didn't really go into in the book,
26:07 and that is the bioavailability of protein. Okay. So not all proteins are created equal because they
26:14 have equal amounts of grams, you know, on the nutrition facts on the back. So the big thing that
26:19 I've heard a lot, and it's come from some bad documentaries and some bad research that people
26:23 cite, but they're like, well, you know, I don't I'm a vegetarian, or I'm a vegan, but I get the same
26:29 amount of protein as as you guys, I just get them from plants. You know, I do a plant based diet.
26:33 And so here I go, I get the same amount of protein. But here's the deal is the bioavailability
26:39 of red meat, for instance, like a steak versus the bioavailability of the protein in a black
26:46 bean is completely different. So what do I mean by that? Basically, your body does not
26:50 absorb both things the same. So let's say you have a serving of red meat that would equal 25 grams
26:56 of protein and serving a black beans that would equal 25 grams of protein. That's going to be
27:00 a hell of a lot of black beans, by the way. And you ate one or the other, your body is not going to
27:06 absorb the same amount of protein from both of those things. There's actually some research to
27:10 suggest that your body doesn't even know what to do with a black bean, like it doesn't really
27:13 have it super bio readily available for you. So not all proteins are created equally. So what
27:20 you have seen, and there's a lot of examples of this out there, there were, you know, vegetarian
27:24 bodybuilders or vegan bodybuilders that did this for a long time. But then, you know, their blood work
27:29 wasn't going very well. Their performance was suffering. And what they really need is they needed
27:33 more meat based protein in their diets. And so again, this is different for every individual body.
27:39 And so you just have to see how that goes. But in general, in general, it is better to get
27:44 your protein from meat than it is from non meat sources. Okay, now let's talk about carbohydrates,
27:49 the dreaded evil carbohydrates. All right, back to the book. Carbohydrates in all forms
27:53 aren't stored as body fat as efficiently as dietary fats are carbohydrates play an essential role
27:59 in not only muscle growth, but also an overall body function. High long term intake of simple
28:05 carbohydrates, carbohydrates, which is disaccharides like sucrose or high fructose corn syrup has
28:10 been associated with an increased risk of heart disease and type two diabetes. Overweight sedentary
28:16 bodies don't deal with simple sugar sugars nearly as well as lean physically active ones do.
28:21 If you exercise regularly and aren't overweight, your body can likely deal with simple carbohydrates
28:26 just fine. Insulin tells the body to stop burning its fat stores, instead absorbs some of the fatty
28:32 acids and glucose in the blood and turn them into more body fat. But that's not what causes
28:37 you to get fatter over time. Over eating does. So again, we got to talk about carbs here because,
28:43 you know, carbs are kind of like the that's the devil, right? Like you can't have carbs and,
28:47 you know, do carnivore diet and you know, only meat only get proteins, right? And proteins and
28:52 fats. And you know, let's do keto and let's, you know, do almost no fats or almost no carbs or
28:57 something like that. But this is what this is what I can just kind of throw out there to you.
29:01 And it just kind of is what it is. A lot of stuff surrounding some of the lower carb diets.
29:06 It's somewhat anecdotal at this point. It's still somewhat anecdotal. So perhaps we don't need,
29:12 you know, the 250 to 300 grams of carbs for a normal guy in a normal day. But your body has,
29:19 in a lot of ways has to have carbs if you're going to be able to perform well.
29:23 So I got a lot of buddies that, you know, they'll work out or maybe they've gone on these hikes
29:27 in certain areas and their bodies gas out because they doesn't have carbs to burn off,
29:32 right? And these are guys that are trying to be trying to do the ketogenic thing and maybe they're
29:36 doing it imperfectly or maybe they're doing it perfectly, but their body just doesn't respond as
29:40 well to it. But you know, there again, it's this idea that carbs are bad and they're evil and they're
29:45 they're not going to work out well for you. But again, there's way more research to suggest
29:49 the opposite than to corroborate that. And so I'm not saying to you guys that keto is bad.
29:54 I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it. I'm not saying that any other form of low carb diet
29:58 is bad for you. But it's not necessarily going to do what you think it's going to do.
30:03 And so for you, you have to just determine, do you make this gigantic life change to start doing
30:08 this extreme diet that is not normal and is hard to prepare for and hard to go out to eat and all
30:13 these different things, if it's not really going to produce what you're ending up wanting to do.
30:17 And so again, if you're a guy that's, you know, works out really, really hard, I know for me,
30:22 there's two or three days a week where I do train multiple times in one day, you got to have
30:27 carbs available in order for you to burn those into energy quickly so that you can get through
30:31 those workouts. And the last thing here, let's talk about dietary fats. Let's go back to the book.
30:36 Dietary fat is the densest energy source available to your body. With each gram of fat
30:41 containing over twice the calories of a gram of carbohydrate or protein, healthy fats such as
30:46 those found in meat, dairy, olive oil, avocados and various seeds and nuts, help your body absorb
30:52 the other nutrients that that you give it nourish the nervous system, help maintain cell structures,
30:57 regulate hormone levels and more. While we now know the saturated that saturated fat isn't the
31:02 danger we once thought it was, we don't quite know what the optimal daily intake should be either.
31:07 The most recent report of dietary guidelines published by the USDA in 2010 maintains the 2002
31:14 recommendation that we get less than 10% of our daily calories from saturated fat. Research has
31:20 associated trans fat intake with a variety of health problems to include heart disease, insulin
31:25 resistance, systemic inflation, or inflammation rather, female infertility, diabetes and more.
31:30 So the thing with fats is there has been a revolution as of late that has gotten people to
31:37 get more clean fats into their diet. So just like the things that were mentioned earlier,
31:41 so those were the let's go back up to that. So the meat, dairy, olive oil, avocados,
31:46 and then seeds and nuts and things like that. There's a lot of guys that are putting more of
31:50 that into their diet. And that is something that I think is incredibly beneficial. Again,
31:54 the thing that I'm not quite sure of is if we cut the carbs incredibly low and throw the fats
31:59 incredibly high, you know, that that may seem like it's swinging the pendulum too far in the
32:04 other direction. I can say for me, and I'm only talking about me. So here's my anecdotal evidence.
32:08 When I lowered my carbon taken up to my fat, I felt like sludgy sludgy garbage. Like I just did not
32:15 feel good. My workouts didn't feel good. I did not feel explosive. When I was doing certain things,
32:20 sprint work or jujitsu, it just it didn't feel right from my body. And you know, to be honest,
32:26 it may be if I had gone another month or two doing it, my body would have been able to reset,
32:30 but I did not feel as well. And this was not like a mental thing. Like, Oh, I need chips in case I
32:34 was like, it wasn't one of those things like any more carbs. But it was just the I wasn't getting
32:38 the performance I wanted. And that's what I use my diet for. I don't use my diet to make myself
32:43 happy. If that were the case, I literally wouldn't eat eggs all day every day. I eat like eight to
32:48 10 eggs a day, right? That gets a little boring and a little, little hard to choke down. So that's
32:52 certainly not the reason why I do that. But overall, you just have to figure out what type of thing
32:57 works for you. But you do have to make sure you got a good lock on your carbs, your fats and your
33:01 proteins. Okay. So let's get into muscle a little bit more on the nutrition side. And let's talk
33:06 about building muscle and losing fat. Okay, let's go back to the book. The only people who can
33:12 effectively and naturally build muscle and lose fat simultaneously are newbies who have a fair
33:17 amount of fat to lose. And people who used to be in great shape and are now getting back at it.
33:22 Muscle memory allows you to rapidly regain muscle you once had, which is interesting. If you've
33:28 if you're an experienced weight lifter who has already built a fair amount of muscle, however,
33:32 you won't be able to build any appreciable amount of muscle while restricting your calories for fat
33:37 loss. No matter what type of diet or training protocol you use, period, your goal while cutting
33:43 is to preserve muscle, not gain it. The big secret of experienced accomplished weight lifters who
33:49 are able to build muscle in strength while getting lean is drugs, lots and lots of drugs. So don't
33:57 become one of the many guys who spend their wheels for years chasing the recomb jumping from one
34:02 fat workout and diet to the next with a little to show for it in the end. Okay. So this is something
34:08 that I think is a really, really important because a lot of times when you're looking at different
34:12 workouts or you're following different workout regiments, it's like, all right, we're gonna be
34:15 able to gain muscle and cut fat here. But this is not the only place I've seen it in this book.
34:20 There are a lot of different places. It's a lot of the natural bodybuilding type things,
34:23 where it's just basically like guys, we got to be realistic about what some of these dudes in the
34:28 magazines are doing. These guys are roided out of their brains, like they're on anabolic enhancers,
34:34 they're on HCH, they're on a lot of different things. A lot of these guys do not have natural
34:38 bodies. And so you, you go to muscle and fitness or men's health or whatever magazine you choose
34:43 to do while you're browsing at the grocery store or something like that. And you see these bodies
34:47 and you're like, God, man, I feel like I'm crushing it at the gym. I feel like I'm doing so much.
34:51 But I'm just, I don't have that. Well, part of it's genetic and part of it is drugs. So I use this
34:57 example a lot for different people because they're worried about their diet and like, you know,
35:00 I'm working on a lot and my diet's going by still don't have a six pack. Well, the greatest bodybuilder
35:04 of all time is Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? You know, he's not the most prolific, but there would
35:09 basically be no other prolific weightlifters if not for him, right? That guy had like a five pack,
35:15 right? He had kind of a shorter torso, but his, his bottom row of abs was like basically one big
35:21 ab muscle. Like go look at pictures. And then he's got like the top four abs, which were incredibly
35:26 defined. So these guys have like these eight pack abs, that's a genetic thing. They genetically
35:31 have an extra row of ab muscles. There's no amount of sit ups and no amount of leg lifts that you're
35:36 ever going to be able to do to change the musculature of your body there. Okay, so that's just something
35:41 that's really important for a lot of these guys just know a lot of these guys are on drugs,
35:45 and it's not worth it for you to get on that. So the book also goes into cutting and bulking. So a
35:50 lot of you have heard that. So a lot of guys will try to bulk up in the winter time, you know,
35:53 when they're not walking around with their shirt off the whole time, and they try to cut down once
35:57 they get to summer. Now this section had a whole lot of information in it. It's pretty much too much
36:02 to talk about here, but it does go into that. So if that's something you're interested in, it was
36:06 very, very interesting, you'd have to look at that in the book. And then he also has actual diet plans.
36:12 So some things with a lot of these books are a lot of blogs that you follow. They'll suggest
36:16 things to you. But then at the end of the day, they won't actually say, well, here's a sample plan.
36:21 If you are 510 190 pounds, here's a sample plan for you of what you would need to do with how much
36:27 you're going to be working out. So this actually has some actual diet plans in there. But in order
36:31 to see those, you're going to have to get the book. It doesn't really do you any justice for me to
36:35 describe them on here. It's just too in depth to talk about here on the podcast and won't be able
36:39 to do it justice. But another thing I talked about is it did talk about cheat meals. So any of you
36:43 guys that have done any type of strict training regimen, you probably had a concept of a cheat meal,
36:48 right? You know, I think Duane Johnson, he's kind of famous for his cheat meals. And he'll eat like
36:53 a stack of like 20 pancakes. And that's just what he starts out with and all that kind of stuff.
36:58 But the big thing that he was talking about is think cheat meal instead of cheat day,
37:03 right? So cheat meal instead of cheat day. So I can say this for me, this was like four or five
37:08 years ago, I mean, I had a very strict diet and I did not cheat six days a week. But every Thursday,
37:16 I went ham, I went crazy. Like from the moment I woke up, I was eating candy, I was drinking milkshakes,
37:25 I was getting burgers and pizza. And in like, you know, slurpies and all kinds of stuff, I was
37:30 trying to mush as much garbage and crap into one day as possible. And at the time, it seemed cool,
37:36 because it's like, Oh, no, and I even had my people I worked there like, Oh man, you know,
37:39 today's cheat day, where are we going? Like it was kind of this exciting thing. But I was doing so
37:45 much damage to my body on that one day and my body just throwing it into shock that it would
37:50 take me sometimes until Saturday to like recover. Like I would do this Bible study with some guys
37:54 Friday mornings for breakfast and some mornings it was like all I could do just to choke down some
37:58 oatmeal because it's just like I was still full from all the garbage I'd put my system from the day
38:03 before. And so when we're thinking about cheating in terms of a meal, wishing consider it a refeeding
38:08 instead of cheating, that's how we called it's a refeeding. So you're you may be at a little bit
38:13 of a caloric deficit, or maybe you're not eating some of the carby sugary things most of the time.
38:19 And this is a one meal where you're going to get all that stuff in there. But in this section as
38:23 well, which I really appreciated this, he talked about eating healthy on a budget. Okay, so we all
38:28 know that healthy eating on a budget is really difficult. Because in your brain, you're like,
38:32 Oh my gosh, like, you know, it's already tied at the house right now on the budget still kind of crazy.
38:36 Like how in the world am I going to spend all this money at Whole Foods or at Sprouts or something
38:39 like that? And you don't necessarily have to go crazy, you can, but you don't have to. So he threw
38:44 out a bunch of examples of kind of budget friendly, healthy eating thing. So for in terms of proteins
38:50 and fats, he talked about eggs, chicken breast, almonds, low fat cottage cheese, protein powder,
38:56 like whey powder, and avocados, and going back up to eggs real quick. So there's the kind of this
39:01 fallacy out there about the cholesterol and eggs about how it will increase your risk of heart
39:05 disease. It doesn't like the cholesterol and eggs does not increase your risk of heart disease.
39:10 That has been thoroughly debunked. At this point, he talks about it here in the book. And also,
39:15 there's a documentary out there, I guess it's called what the health. I think it's on Netflix
39:19 or something like that. I think someone told me there's a claim in that documentary that one
39:23 egg is equivalent to smoking five cigarettes. Literally the dumbest thing that I've ever heard
39:29 in terms of diet. It's not true. They're full of crap. So in terms of healthy carbs, you know,
39:34 things that you could do on a budget, he talked about oats, black beans, brown rice, quinoa, fruit,
39:39 and sweet potatoes. And specifically on the fruit, he mentioned grapes, apples, bananas, and oranges.
39:44 So those are all things that are readily available at just about any place that you get groceries,
39:48 and they shouldn't really bust up the budget too bad. So that's good to in that section on.
39:53 But now let's get into the section. I'm sure most of y'all are the most excited about it. And to be
39:58 honest, I was as well in that section four and that's about training. And so at the end of the day,
40:04 a lot of guys don't really have the diet. They don't really have the sleep. But those are things
40:08 that you can take care of with discipline. But for the most part, for most guys, the hardest thing
40:12 is the training. If you're going to actually train hard, but then if you're already willing to train
40:17 hard, it's making sure you're doing it in the right way. So the thing is, is for us, and I mentioned
40:22 it a little bit earlier, we've got to get the fitness slash weightlifting magazine physiques
40:26 out of our brains. Okay, well, and let's go to the book here, we got a quote from the author.
40:30 Here's what it boils down to. Every professional bodybuilder going anywhere in the sport is on drugs,
40:36 a lot of drugs, like $50,000 to $100,000 of drugs per year. Yes, every single one,
40:44 regardless of what they say. And so again, just to reiterate, just to drive this home,
40:48 the guys you see online, the guys you see on Instagram, a lot of these guys have had their
40:52 their bodies, you know, touched up in Photoshop and airbrushed. And these magazines have certainly
40:59 done that. And a lot of these guys are freak beasts, like they're absolute giants, but they got that
41:04 way by basically sacrificing probably center 20 years off the end of their life so that they can
41:09 be jacked as a four year old, you know what I mean? So he goes into a lot of different things here
41:14 in terms of the training, but I just want to kind of boil down to some of the core things that I
41:17 think are essential for you guys to know. The first is that we should not focus on isolation
41:22 exercises that in order to build overall strength, that that is not the best thing to do. So if you
41:29 are not familiar with isolation exercises, that's like doing a preacher curl, right? So you're trying
41:33 to isolate the bicep muscle, or if you're doing a certain type of chest machine, so it's really
41:40 hitting a certain section of your chest, your your upper upper, your middle, or your lower chest,
41:44 right? But if you want overall strength, isolation exercises are not going to do that for you.
41:49 So I've had a lot of friends kind of ask me about my different workout regiments and are like,
41:53 well, how many days a week do you do arms and things like that? And I just straight up tell
41:56 I was like, look, I really don't. So the the I think there was a quote from the book, I kept
42:01 trying to remember off top my head, but it's like, if you want to gain an inch on your biceps,
42:05 you need to gain 10 pounds of muscle, like in not in your arms, overall, you need to gain 10 pounds.
42:11 And so that's kind of the thing you have these guys just, you know, tearing away at these bicep
42:15 curls all day long, or, you know, hitting the tricep extension machine. And that's not necessarily
42:19 doing for you what you would want. If you want show muscles, yeah, go ahead and do that. But if
42:23 you want go muscles, which I think all of us agree, at some point you need to worry about those,
42:27 you should worry about your overall strength. So the entire book, and really the entire training
42:32 section can be summed up in the following formula. So it's not going to make sense initially,
42:37 but I'll explain it all. And that's one to two, four to six, nine to 12, three to four,
42:44 60 to 65, five to seven, and eight to 10. Okay, so what in the world is that some sort of Morse
42:52 code or something like that? So let's get into it. So one to two. So this is basically train one to two
42:58 muscle groups per day. Okay, so I know a lot of guys that they'll train four or five muscle groups
43:03 a day or something like that. But this is telling you train one to two muscle groups per day. And
43:08 then four to six, we already talked about this a little bit earlier, do sets of four to six reps
43:13 for nearly all exercises. So that's around 85% of your one rep max. Now there are certain things,
43:19 especially on abs, if you're not doing like a weighted ab thing, you know, doing five sets of
43:23 tote or, you know, five reps of toes to bar. Like that's probably not enough unless you're doing
43:27 it incredibly, incredibly slowly and incredibly controlled. But if you're just like doing the
43:32 super crossfity, like break dancing on the bar, like throwing your legs up and down, doing fives,
43:36 not really do anything for you. And then nine to 12, do nine to 12 heavy sets per workout. So when
43:43 we get into some of the workouts here in a little bit, that'll make more sense. But again,
43:46 you're, you're trying to be in that four to six rep range. You want it to be heavy. But overall,
43:50 when you're working your one to two muscle groups, you want somewhere in the neighborhood of nine
43:53 to 12 heavy sets. And then three to four, this is rest three to four minutes in between sets.
43:59 Okay. So so for me at different points, I'll do some anywhere between two and three and a half
44:05 minutes of rest in between sets. There's been some research and a lot of this has been done,
44:10 you know, by power lifters in Russia, these are guys that are doing super heavy squat and
44:13 deadlift and bench and all the overhead stuff. These guys will do one set of, you know, like
44:19 two to three reps, and then they'll take like 15 to 20 minutes rest, like 15 to 20 minutes.
44:25 They'll just walk around and just chill and let their body relax because they're overall just
44:30 trying to gain strength. Now for most of us, if we're going to get in nine to 12 heavy sets,
44:34 we're obviously not going to take 15 to 20 minutes in between because we'd be in there all day.
44:38 But that is something you need to be thinking about is getting a proper amount of rest just
44:42 because your workout partner is done with his set doesn't mean you need to hop up under the rack,
44:46 up under the bar and get after it on that one. And then we have 60 to 65. And this is important.
44:52 This is trained for 60 to 65 minutes. I tell people all the time, like, you know, how do you get
44:57 all this time in for working out? First of all, I roll out a bed and roll into my garage. That's
45:01 a great thing is that I just have, you know, the gym right there. I literally have no excuses.
45:05 But I do not lift longer than an hour. And this is something that I've just done for forever.
45:10 If you're in there lifting for an hour and a half, two hours, you're doing yourself a disservice.
45:14 You're not going to get that afterburn. You're doing an extra set for an extra pump is not really
45:19 helping you. All you need to do is 60 to 65 minutes. That's literally all you need to do as a maximum.
45:24 And the next is five to seven. And that's trained each muscle group one to two times
45:29 every five to seven days. So there are some muscle groups that recover faster than others.
45:34 So abdominal muscles, you know, trunk muscles, core muscles, those tend to recover quicker.
45:39 Cat muscles randomly. That's something that can recover from a difficult exercise fairly quickly.
45:45 But some of the larger muscle groups, so maybe like your hamstrings or your quads,
45:49 your back, your chest, these are groups that tend to take longer to fully recover. And so
45:56 those are groups that really should really only hit once in a normal workout week. And so that's
46:02 just really important. And then the last thing here was eight to 10. So basically you need to
46:06 dial it back every eight to 10 weeks. So you need to evaluate the whole time you're working.
46:12 But every eight to 10 weeks, you need to kind of gear down. Okay. So again, if you're doing this
46:19 progressive loading of weight, that's something that you have to constantly just you're inching up,
46:24 you're inching up the weight. But at the eight to 12 week, Mark, you got to take some time off,
46:28 you got to rest. And some guys are like, no, I'm going to lose all my gains. What's going to happen?
46:32 It's not going to happen for a lot of guys. And if you've seen this yourself, you know this to be
46:35 true, you take a week or two off and I don't mean off or you just, you know, snort and Cheeto does
46:40 the whole time. But like, you know, you're actually just, you know, chilling a little bit, maybe doing
46:44 a little bit more yoga, a little bit more cardio doing lighter weight, just for a short period of time,
46:48 you when you start hitting the heavy weights again, you're actually a lot, a lot stronger. So again,
46:52 one to two trained one to two muscle groups per day, four to six, do sets of four to six reps for
46:57 nearly all exercises, nine to 12, do nine to 12 sets, heavy sets per workout, three to four,
47:03 rest three to four minutes in between sets, 60 to 65 train for 60 to 65 minutes per workout,
47:09 five to seven train each muscle group one to two times every five to seven days and eight to 10
47:14 dial it back every eight to 10 weeks. So let's talk about cardio. So he's talking specifically
47:20 about cardio for fat loss. So essentially, we can break it down like this. If you want cardio
47:25 and you want to lose fat, you have to do high intensity interval training, you've got to do
47:29 hit work or sprint work. Okay, let's go to the book here. Research has shown that the longer
47:34 your cardio sessions are, the more they impair strength and hypertrophy, thus keeping your cardio
47:39 session short is important. When we're talking about maximizing your gains in the weight room
47:45 and preserving your muscle, only high intensity interval training allows you to do this and burn
47:50 enough fat to make it worthwhile. So here's the thing with hit training guys, this, this is like
47:54 my favorite thing to do. And the cool thing about hit training is it takes so much less time than
48:01 longer term cardio, and it's usually better on your body. So I mean, I'm not hating on runners
48:06 here or bikers, but that if you're running, you know, like seven to 10 mile, that's a lot of time,
48:12 even if you're booking it, like, and I know if you're training for a marathon, that's a little
48:16 bit different, you know, do you do your thing, but that that's bad. That's hard on your feet,
48:20 it's hard on your ankles and your knees and your hips and your low back and your shoulders and
48:24 your neck. Like it's just hard on you to do that much. But when you're running 10 sprints,
48:29 like all out sprints, 100 yards sprints, 80 yards sprints, something like that, like you're not
48:34 having a lot of that downward pressure on your joints. Now you're susceptible to more muscular
48:39 injuries, like popping a, you know, a hip flexor or a hamstring or something like that. But it's
48:45 going to get you better results. Now it's more miserable. Like let's just be honest, like if
48:49 you're running a 5k at kind of a, you know, kind of a mellow, you know, eight, eight and a half
48:54 minute pace or something like that. Yeah, you can just ride along at that pace all day. You know,
48:58 you hit your, you know, over three miles and boom, you're good. But running those 10 sprints,
49:03 you're going to want to die. You're just going to be like, this sucks. This sucks so bad. But my,
49:07 my advice to you is if you're doing sprint work and stuff like that is do not take an undefined
49:13 break in between sets. So even if I'm running a bunch of hundreds, like I'm telling myself,
49:19 you've got 30 seconds in between every single, every single one. And I will count it in my head.
49:24 And no matter what I'm feeling, no matter what's, you know, stretching out or whatever,
49:28 at the 30 second marker, at the 60 second mark or whatever, I'm gone. So I am on the line ready to
49:33 go before I've counted to whatever the number is in my head. Okay. So if you want fat loss,
49:37 you got to do that high intensity interval training. Okay. Now in this section as well,
49:42 he talks a lot about the four core lifts. So these are the lifts that should be a part of every single
49:48 guy's strength training regiment. And those are squat, deadlift, bench press and military press.
49:54 Some of you guys are like, what squat and deadlift? Okay. Here's the thing. I know bench press is
49:59 like the most popular thing in the world. Like I get it. Like, but if you want overall strength,
50:04 squat, deadlift, bench press and military press is what you have to do. This book goes big time
50:09 into detail on how to do those, like how to do all those books. But even this author kind of gives
50:14 a nod to Mark Ripito, who is the author of starting strength and has, you know, since built a big
50:20 company about starting strength. But here's the thing about these exercises, guys, is if you do
50:24 them incorrectly, you are very susceptible to injury. Like it's really hard to hurt yourself
50:30 on a Smith machine. It's hard to hurt yourself on a hack squat machine. But when you're putting
50:36 weight on your shoulder and you're squatting below 90 and your back's out of alignment and
50:40 your chest isn't where it needs to be. It's going to potentially open you up to some issues.
50:45 So my suggestion to everybody is just about every town that everyone of you listeners are
50:50 listening to this and has a strength and conditioning coach that knows what he's doing. Right. Now,
50:55 if you go to starting strength, I think they actually have a network of coaches that you can
50:59 actually reach out to and you can actually sign up there where you're taking video of your of your
51:04 lifts and then sending it to them and they're giving you pointers in real time, you know,
51:07 that kind of thing. But do not just have never squatted before and throw three 15 up on the bar
51:13 and just just get under it. Like that's that's bad news waiting to happen. Make sure you have all
51:16 the safety precautions ready to go. And you know, again, get that starting strength book. That's
51:21 that's one of the books that's on the on the book list as well. So, but in within each one of these
51:27 things, he talks about different muscle groups and he kind of lists the best exercises for strength
51:32 and muscle gains in these areas. So I'm gonna go through these fairly quickly, because it's just
51:36 listening them off. And if you if you're not getting them, if it's going too fast, just
51:40 rewind and you can go back to them later. So the best exercises for chest are incline barbell bench
51:45 press, incline dumbbell bench press, flat barbell bench press, flat dumbbell bench press and dips.
51:51 And on the dips, that's obviously the chest variation where you are leaning a little bit
51:55 more forward and getting more action in the lower chest muscle area, as opposed to more on the triceps
52:01 and shoulders. So the best exercises for back are barbell deadlift, barbell row, one arm dumbbell row,
52:08 pull ups, lat pull down, T bar row, seated cable row, chin ups and barbell shrugs. For shoulders,
52:16 it's seated barbell military press or standing barbell military press, seated dumbbell press,
52:22 Arnold dumbbell press, one of my personal favorites, dumbbell side lateral raise,
52:27 one arm dumbbell side lateral raise, rear delt raise, face pulls, barbell rear delt rope,
52:34 and dumbbell front raise. For legs, it's barbell squat, front squat, hack squat, leg press,
52:41 barbell lunge, dumbbell lunge, Romanian deadlift, leg curls, calf raises, and calf press on a leg
52:48 press machine. And then finally for core, we have cable crunch, hanging leg raise, captain's chair
52:54 leg raise, ab roller, air bicycles, flat bench, lying leg raise, and decline crunch. So one quick
53:02 thing on some of these things. So some of the stuff I mentioned are body weight things. So that
53:07 would be, you know, your pushups or your dips or your pull ups or, you know, some of the different
53:13 ab things like hanging leg raises or things like that. For a lot of these, if you're wanting to
53:18 get more resistance, you've got to put resistance on your body, obviously. So think weighted vest
53:22 or body armor or something like that. And even with dips, you can wear one of those belts where
53:26 you can kind of hang a hang a weight in between your legs, things like that. So those are things that
53:30 if you know, if pull ups are really, really easy for you, you need to be weighted, you need to be
53:35 under some sort of a weight on dips, that's another one that guys can tend to do pretty well on after
53:40 a while, add some weight and it'll change the game for you. So before we get out of this section,
53:44 I do want to talk about my personal routine. So in a week, I normally work out somewhere between
53:51 five and seven days a week. So normally it's right at about six days a week. So usually Monday is
53:56 my rest day. But even on my rest day, I try to do about an hour's worth of yoga, just to keep the
54:01 body kind of stretched out and different things like that. But I normally will lift Tuesday,
54:05 Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And if for whatever reason, I got a late night on Thursday, I will
54:10 push the Friday workout to Saturday sometimes. And then I, but then I also do jujitsu classes,
54:15 like competition level classes and things like that four to five times a week. So I get quite a
54:20 bit in. But on my four lifting days, day one, I do chest and calves, day two, I do legs and core,
54:26 day three, I do back and calves, and day four, I do shoulders and core. Now normally, I would put
54:31 legs first in the week, because that's the number one thing I don't want to miss, because if you have
54:35 strong legs, it usually tends to lend itself to a stronger overall body. But as I was going through
54:41 kind of building it out and looking at when I was going to be doing jujitsu, and when I was doing
54:44 other things, it made sense to put chess on that first day. So you can put me in the international
54:48 chest day side of things, but that was kind of more, more strategic than it was by just kind of
54:54 happenstance. Okay. Now let's get into the last section of the book here as that kind of wraps up
54:58 the training portion. Let's get into supplementation. That's the fifth section and the last one that
55:02 we're going to talk about. So to the book here, if you're wondering how companies can even get away
55:06 with such an egregious scam, it's simple. The supplement industry is completely unregulated.
55:12 So here's the thing. I have a lot of guys that, you know, well, what pre workout are you doing?
55:16 Are you doing any testosterone boosters? Or, you know, how do you have energy? Do you take,
55:20 do you take spark? Or do you take, you know, whatever it is that the spark equivalent is now?
55:24 But at the end of the day, a lot of the stuff that you guys are taking and a lot of stuff I've
55:28 been asked about. If I take it, it's not stuff that I mess with and a lot of its garbage. Some
55:32 of it's dangerous. Because again, there's stuff that is sold on the shelves at GNC. And because
55:38 GNC is a recognizable brand, you're thinking to yourself, like, Oh, this is probably going to be
55:41 safe. And some of it is not good at all. Like I even even had a buddy of mine from college,
55:46 he overdosed on pre workout. The dude almost died, like legitimately almost died. He took like four
55:51 or five times the normal amount, which is his bad. I mean, just what a stupid thing to do.
55:55 But at the end of the day, there was nobody looking at him. He's like, you know, it's just like
56:00 anything else. He wasn't getting the same pop from the two or three scoops. So then he just bumped
56:04 it up to four or five scoops and it almost took his life. So I will talk about some of the things.
56:08 I'm just going to kind of go in order here about some of the things that should be supplemented
56:12 or things that you should maybe not mess with. So first is vitamin D. And this one's pretty simple
56:16 guys. Most humans do not get enough vitamin D. And here's the thing is those people like, well,
56:20 I drink vitamin D milk or I, you know, I walk around with my shirt off sometimes. Someone made
56:24 the comment once is like in order for most humans to get enough vitamin D, they would literally have
56:30 to sit outside all day with their shirt off on a sunny day and drink vitamin D milk the entire day.
56:35 So most guys, that's not going to be the best situation for you. You're not going to be able
56:38 to pull that off. So vitamin D supplementation is something that's really easy and really cheap to
56:42 do. The other thing is protein. So this is very good to supplement. And it's also good on a pocket
56:46 book. So and but you have to buy good protein. So I use ISO 100. That's that's one that I use. I
56:54 use in a way isolate. And so this is very good to supplement because when you every scoop is 25 grams.
56:59 And so if you're not trying to cook a bunch of meat all the time or buy all the meat,
57:05 it's usually better for you. Now hunters, y'all are some of the best guys guys that take down,
57:09 you know, deer and moose and elk and stuff like that, you pretty much got all your protein from
57:13 meat. And you got that on lock. So here's the thing about weight gainers. I know some of you guys
57:17 out there are like, well, I can't even gain weight, eat more food. That's the easiest thing I can
57:21 tell you on weight gainers. There's a lot of stuff about different supplements and different
57:26 things that'll help you gain weight. Just eat more food. That's kind of the best and most natural
57:29 way to do that. Another thing that we was talked about recently is branched chain amino
57:34 acid. So that's BCAA's. And so here we'll go to the book here. Research commonly cited that
57:39 demonstrates muscle related benefits of BCAA supplementation was done with subjects who didn't
57:45 eat enough protein. When you get all the BCAA's your body needs from food instead, which is cheaper
57:51 and far, sorry, you can get all the BCAA's your body needs from food instead, which is cheaper and
57:58 far more satisfying. So it's not saying that you shouldn't take BCAA's, but it's not necessarily
58:03 something that you have to do. Okay, then he talks about pre workout and essentially it's don't
58:07 freaking do it. You don't need pre workout. And I know some of you guys are like, what? You know,
58:12 like the record definitely screech to a halt there. Don't do pre workout. You seriously do not need
58:16 that garbage. All right, let's move on to creatine. So let's go to the book here. Research shows that
58:20 supplementation with creatine builds muscle and improves strength, increases anaerobic endurance,
58:25 and reduces muscle damage and soreness from exercise. So here's the thing with creatine is I had some
58:30 guys that, you know, were on creatine in high school, and they got super bloated. And you know,
58:35 there was issues with the supplementation at that time. And again, that was almost 15 years ago,
58:40 or maybe even longer, I can't really remember. But it's gotten a lot better. And creatine has
58:47 been something that has been studied for a really, really long time. So outside of, you know,
58:52 multivitamins, vitamin D and whey protein, creatine is the only thing that I use. And that's something
58:57 that I do I supplement with every day. And it's mainly for muscle recovery. It's not for muscle
59:01 growth. I don't really want much more muscle growth. I just basically need it for the recovery.
59:05 Okay. So basically again, it's just in terms of other supplements, it's just the way in the creatine.
59:10 So here's the thing testosterone boosters, human growth hormone boosters, fat burners,
59:16 like don't freaking do any of those. All right. So here's the thing is like, with a lot of fat
59:22 burners, there's some natural fat burners you can you can take. And it goes into that a little bit
59:26 in the book. But most people are doing like the hydroxy cut garbage, or they're doing whatever
59:30 the crap is at G and C for fat burning. Don't do those things. Like the thing about it is,
59:35 if you don't know this by now, especially on the testosterone side, the moment you start messing
59:38 with your natural testosterone levels in chart, start supplementing, your body's going to stop
59:43 producing testosterone. If you don't believe me, go look at pictures of VTOR Belfort early in his
59:48 event maker, and look at him in his last fight. That is a body that, you know, had abused steroids
59:54 for so long. And then he was on testosterone replacement therapy, even when he didn't need it.
59:58 But now he's going to have to have some sort of testosterone replacement therapy for the
1:00:02 reindeer of his life, just for him to operate normally, just because of what he did to himself.
1:00:05 And the last thing here they talked about is fish oil. And so the thing with fish oil is do it.
1:00:11 They're they're literally, I'm not going to bore you with the research in a bunch of quotes. Now,
1:00:15 if you're not taking fish oil, you're missing out. But make sure it's high quality triglyceride
1:00:20 fish oil. So in the book at TAR, it shows you kind of a label of crappy fish oil, what that
1:00:24 label looks like, and then a label of like a good fish oil, like what is describing in the
1:00:28 nutrition facts. So don't just go to Walmart and say, oh, so it's fish oil, I'll buy some of that,
1:00:32 like you're going to have to make sure you buy some high quality stuff because it's not all created
1:00:36 equal. So the cool thing about this book, guys, like I mentioned from the top, is I was really
1:00:42 excited to see that I was pretty much doing all of this already. There were there were definitely
1:00:46 some things that I learned. So I'm not trying to hover above all this here. Like there are certainly
1:00:50 some things that I've learned. And there's some things that I have even in the last few weeks
1:00:54 incorporated from what I learned in this book. But overall, these are very good guidelines for
1:00:59 you. But for some of you guys that may be a little bit still on the fence here, I want to provide you
1:01:04 three reasons why every modern Christian man should read this book. Okay. And I do this with
1:01:08 every book review that I do, I just try to narrow it down. Like if you if you tune me out for the
1:01:12 last 15 or 20 minutes, here's really the solid thing. So the first thing is in the convoluted world
1:01:18 of kind of holistic financial or financial holistic fitness advice, we need a solid
1:01:24 simple reference guide. So in the convoluted world of holistic fitness advice, we need a solid
1:01:30 simple reference guide. That's what this book is. So again, I tell you all the time, one of the
1:01:34 big reasons why I do ebooks is so that I can easily search, I just go up to the search bar,
1:01:39 type in, oh, man, he was talking about, you know, high fructose corn syrup, I need to find that
1:01:43 section and it's supposed to try to remember, well, I read that five years ago, I wonder what section
1:01:47 that was in, I can just type it in boom, and I'm there. So this is a very good reference guide for
1:01:52 you. So if you have no idea what you're doing, this is a great reference guide. If you're a super
1:01:57 experienced lifter, this is also a good reference guide. So the reason why this book has been so
1:02:01 popular is because it's not too dumbed down for the experienced person, and it's not so advanced
1:02:06 that the layman can't can't get on board. Okay, the second reason why you guys should read this is
1:02:11 most guys don't focus on diet and exercise. Okay, and I know we talked about sleep, but here's the
1:02:16 thing. Most guys don't focus on both. You have the guys that have the really good diet, but then,
1:02:21 you know, they couldn't bench rest their their body weight if they needed to, you know, and then
1:02:25 you have the guys that are just yoked up Jim bros that I talk about all the time, but they're eating,
1:02:29 you know, they're eating Doritos and washing it down with with Slurpee. It's just kind of one of those
1:02:34 deals. So for you, you have to have knowledge in both of those areas if you're going to have a very
1:02:40 good overall, overall setup for your health. And so this book will help you focus on both diet
1:02:47 and exercise. And the last thing is guys, and you know, I was going here, your physicality is an
1:02:52 act of worship. You've heard me say it, you've read it and the stuff that I've written, your
1:02:56 physicality is an act of worship. So for a lot of you guys, you're you first got familiar with
1:03:01 this concept when you read our men's devotional. So that's the 21 day men's devotional. That's on
1:03:05 the U version Bible app. It's called on Dante life of man's devotional on day 15. That is the first day
1:03:11 of the seven days where I talk about physical resilience. And I talk about first Corinthians six
1:03:15 and this is verses 19 and 20. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within
1:03:21 you whom you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in
1:03:28 your body. Okay, seriously thing guys, Paul does not leave a bunch of wiggle room left or right here
1:03:33 in these verses. Like he's basically telling us that the these are the things that we need to know
1:03:38 about our bodies. And I put this there in the devotional, the Holy Spirit is housed there. We do
1:03:44 not own our own bodies. Our bodies were purchased at a very, very high price. And we must use our
1:03:50 bodies to glorify God. So here's the thing going back to what I was talking about the very beginning
1:03:55 of this podcast. If you are a Christian male and you're fat now to shape, that is inappropriate.
1:04:00 You are not honoring God with your body. So do not miss hear me though. I'm not saying that if
1:04:10 you don't have 20 inch biceps and a ripped up app, you know, core area that God can't use you. That's
1:04:16 not what I'm saying. But for most of us that have bodies that work fully, and we are fully
1:04:21 capable of taking care of them. We just don't. And it's not right. And I am frankly sick and tired
1:04:28 of seeing these guys walking around, you know, these reformed guys and these theologians and these
1:04:33 everything. And they're just doughy. It's just like, guys, come on. You are a walking example of not
1:04:40 being disciplined. Like you're, you're trying to tell everyone to be disciplined in your prayer
1:04:45 life and be disciplined here and be disciplined there. All someone has to do in your congregations,
1:04:49 raise their hand and be like, ah, what about you, chief? You've been hitting the twinkies a little bit.
1:04:53 You know what I'm saying? The thing about this is, is this is not easy. Having a good sleep regimen,
1:04:59 rest regimen, and also having your diet and your workout under control. That's not easy.
1:05:03 But how much in the Christian walk is, especially for men, how much of it's super easy,
1:05:10 how much of it just comes naturally to you. So even if you don't have good genetics,
1:05:15 even if we're one of my family's fat, even whatever your excuse is, I'm basically taking all those
1:05:21 away from you. It's not good enough excuse. It's just not. You've got to take care of your body
1:05:27 in a way that is pleasing to God, because your physicality is 100% an active worship.
1:05:32 All right, guys, before I let you out of here, we're going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:05:36 And as you know, by now, we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating mainly resilience.
1:05:40 And specifically, we do that by providing content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
1:05:45 So what we're going to talk about today is we're just going to keep this going on physical resilience.
1:05:49 But I want to challenge you all to read at least one of the books that's in the health section
1:05:54 of that book list. Okay, so bigger leaner, stronger than what this entire podcast is about is on there.
1:06:00 But also there's starting strength by Mark Riptoe that that's on there. And we've talked about that
1:06:04 here on this podcast, the new encyclopedia of modern bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger,
1:06:10 or got fight by Forrest Griffin. So those are the four books that we put in that section.
1:06:14 They talk about a lot of different areas. It's not just a repeat a lot of different things.
1:06:18 I've got a couple of other books that may work their way into this part of the book list too.
1:06:24 But we'll just kind of have to see how it goes. So that's your challenge is pick up one of those
1:06:27 books and take it down. So thank you guys again, as always, for listening this far into the podcast.
1:06:31 Please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Google Play and refer your friends to listen and share
1:06:36 this on social media. If you use the hashtag on Daunton Life, we'll be sure to find your post
1:06:40 and give it a thumbs up. If we deserve a five star review, make sure you leave one. But at the
1:06:44 same time, don't just hit the five stars. Go ahead and write a short review, even just a few
1:06:48 sentences. It'll certainly help us out. I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the
1:06:52 remainder of 2018 and also the beginning of 2019. So if you want me to come speak to your team,
1:06:57 to your church, to your Sunday school, to whatever, hit me up at info at undaunted.life info at
1:07:03 undaunted.life. We'll see if we can work that out. Our website is www.undaunted.life. You can
1:07:08 follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undaunted life and facebook.com backslash undaunted life.
1:07:14 You can check out our free devotionals on the U version Bible app. Just search undaunted life
1:07:18 under plans. We also want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use our music
1:07:22 library for our content. The intro outro track on this podcast is their song King of Sorrow,
1:07:27 which is off their latest record entitled Phantom Anthem. The links to all of this are in the description.
1:07:32 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual,
1:07:39 mental and physical toughness, keep seeking the lion a deal.
1:08:02 You
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Kyle Thompson
If you're spiritually resilient, you can't really tell that in someone's eyes... Physical resilience is one of the easiest things for you to actually look at.
Kyle Thompson
It's completely inappropriate to walk through life as a Christian male and be a bad example to those around you, especially with how you treat your body.
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