Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews

What’s the easiest way to make your life better in every way?Exercise regularly.You’ll have more energy and mental focus, you’ll sleep better and get sick less frequently, and, of course, let’s not forget the fat loss and muscle and strength gains, either.Most people know they should be more active, but don’t know exactly what to do and how to go about it and often choose to do nothing instead.Unfortunately, the professionals who are in the best position to offer a helping hand here—doctors—are often just as clueless as their patients when it comes to effective exercise and nutrition.Why is that? And what can be done about it?Those are two of the questions I explore with Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum in this episode.If you’re not familiar with Jordan, he’s an elite powerlifter, strength coach, medical doctor, and the founder of Barbell Medicine, so he has a unique perspective on the failings of medical school in preparing doctors to offer pragmatic exercise advice to patients. In our conversation, we discuss:- Why Jordan unironically refers to barbell training as “medicine” - Major “blindspots” in medical school curricula - The problem with the “health at any size” movement - Red flags for supplement companies and Instagram influencers - And more . . .3:54 - Why did you choose Barbell Medicine as your company name and what does it mean? 7:43 - What are the healthiest things you can do? 13:36 - Why don’t doctors learn about exercise and nutrition in medical school? 43:01 - What do you mean by a dose dependent response on exercise? 54:00 - What are the top 5 red flags for supplement companies? 1:06:08 - How much does it cost to make a bottle of collagen protein? 1:10:30 - Where can people find you and your work?Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter!Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Blood flow restriction training is making waves of late.It sounds new. It sounds scientific. And some are saying it’s revolutionary.Well, it also smacks of artifice. Like it was contrived by marketers to sell the latest round of magazines, pills, and powders.And so if you’ve been skeptical, good. You should be.You see, the more time you spend educating yourself in the ways of muscle building, the more you become certain of one thing:If something sounds too good to be true — too easy, too effective, too innovative — it almost always is.Eventually, you learn that there really is no shortcut to building a strong, muscular, lean body. There are right and wrong ways of going about it, of course, but at least 80% of your long-term results will come from diligent application of the fundamentals:- An emphasis on heavy compound lifting. - Sensible workout programming. - Ensuring you recover adequately. - Proper diet and nutrition.Everything that falls outside of those boundaries should be viewed with a gimlet eye. As, at best, marginally important.Which brings us to the subject at hand: blood flow restriction training (also known as occlusion training).What is it? How is it supposed to work? How effective is it? Is it dangerous? How do you do it correctly?Well, this episode is going to give you answers to all those questions and more. By the end, you’re going to have everything you need to determine whether BFR is right for you and how to do it safely and effectively.4:05 - What is blood flow restriction training? 4:50 - How does blood flow restriction work? 6:17 - How does blood flow restriction affect muscle growth? 12:51 - What are the benefits of blood flow restriction? 14:18 - Is blood flow restriction safe? 16:08 - How do you use blood flow restriction correctly? 19:00 - What are common mistakes that people make with blood flow restriction training?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/

I’ve churned through over 150,000 emails, social media comments and messages, and blog comments in the last 6 years.And that means I’ve fielded a ton of questions.As you can imagine, some questions pop up more often than others, and I thought it might be helpful to take a little time every month to choose a few and record and share my answers.So, in this round, I answer the following four questions:How important is time under tension (TUT)?How important is periodization?What are the best weight loss foods?Is lifting lighter weight explosively better for gaining muscle and strength than lifting heavier weight more slowly?If you have a question you’d like me to answer, leave a comment below or if you want a faster response, send an email to mike@muscleforlife.com.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.legionathletics.com/signup/

In this interview, I talk with Jake, who used my Bigger Leaner Stronger program to transform his physique and, in many ways, his life.When he first found Bigger Leaner Stronger, he was about 16% body fat with middling strength, and now, he’s about 9% body fat and about 275 pounds stronger on all of his major lifts. Furthermore, and more importantly, really, other areas of his life have been impacted in tremendously positive ways as well, including his mood, energy levels, self-esteem, productivity, and more.In other words, Jake used my work to go from “fit” to “superfit” with quite a few cherries on top, and in this interview, he shares his story—he talks about how he was training and eating before finding me and my work, and how things started to change after implementing what he was learning in my books and articles.Two major parts of Jake’s journey were dispelling common misconceptions about diet and training he had bought into over the years and overcoming various hurdles ranging from focusing too much on the scale, scheduling workouts and meals, breaking through plateaus, program hopping, and more.So, if you like hearing motivational stories about how people have changed their bodies and lives, and if you want to pick up a few tips that may help you in your journey, this episode is for you.5:09 - How was your diet and training before and after you found Muscle for Life? 7:11 - How long did you feel stuck for? 10:36 - How much did you weigh and what were your lifts like before Muscle for Life? 11:30 - How did you cut? 16:10 - How do you keep dieting and training interesting when you’re getting close to a threshold? 22:14 - How do you look after following my program? 25:23 - What’s your Instagram, website, and podcast? 33:58 - What are your future plans? 40:33 - What are your favorite books?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/

Some people say you absolutely need to eat protein before your workouts to maximize muscle and strength gains.Others say eating before you train doesn’t matter, but eating after is vital.Others still say neither of these “feeding windows” matter, and that you just need to make sure you’re eating enough protein on the whole.Science isn’t exactly clear on this matter, either, because each of these people have studies that purportedly bolster their arguments.And so you’re left wondering who’s right and what to do.Should you “play it safe” and just eat protein before and after every workout? Or should you just ignore everyone and just eat on a schedule that you like most?Well, in this podcast, we’re going to get to the bottom of all of it, and it starts with this:As far as eating protein goes, eating enough every day is what matters most for gaining muscle and strength as quickly as possible.Everything else related to protein intake--when you eat it, how many servings you eat per day, how large each serving is, etc.--is subordinate to total protein intake.That doesn’t mean these other factors don’t matter at all, though.If you scoff at them, you're overlooking an important part of natural muscle building:While 80% of your progress comes from the fundamentals, you can speed things up by making a number of minor improvements to your diet, training, and supplementation.Individually, the effects of each refinement may be slight, but collectively, they become significant over time.Well, protein timing is one of those slight refinements, and it includes pre- and post-workout nutrition.As you’ll soon see, eating protein before and after workouts isn’t as important as many people claim, but it’s not entirely without merit, either.Let’s get started.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/

In many ways, building the body of your dreams is just like building anything else worthwhile. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it . . . to a point.You’ll have to train hard to get the body you want, but you can’t only rely on your afterburners. Punish your body with intense workouts week in, week out, without taking breaks or deloads, and your journey will be marred by . . . - Regular plateaus - Overuse injuries - Lack of motivation - Lackluster workouts This is why top level athletes of all stripes—from hockey players to cyclists to powerlifters—include planned periods of rest and recovery in their training.In fact, the highest level athletes place tremendous importance on this because the consequences of overlooking it are so severe (chronic underperformance, career-ending injuries, and so on).When it comes to gaining muscle and strength, one of the best recovery tools at your disposal is the deload.If you’re reading this, you’ve likely heard of deloads before, but you probably aren’t sure why they’re done, how to do them correctly, or how often to do them.Poke around online for answers, and you’ll find many conflicting opinions:- Some people say deloads are a waste of time, others say you should just take a week off. - Some people say you should deload by reducing your weekly sets and how much you lift, others say you should only reduce your number of weekly sets. - Some people say you should deload whenever you feel like it, and others say you should plan them in advance. Who’s right?The short answer is that if you’re following a well-designed workout routine, deloads are an effective way to prevent injuries, plateaus, and burnout.That said, they need to be planned and executed correctly or they either fail to adequately boost recovery or simply waste time that could be spent doing just about anything else.So, by the end of this podcast, you’ll learn . . . - What a deload is - Why some people don’t benefit from deloads - How often you should deload - When you should deload versus just take time off - How to do a proper deload - And more! Let’s get to it.5:40 - What is a deload? 9:55 - Why do people deload? 12:39 - Why should I deload regularly? 15:13 - Why do a lot of people not benefit from deloading? 22:55 - How often should you deload? 28:38 - How do you deload properly? 36:46 - Will you lose muscle or strength in a deload? 38:38 - Should I take a week off instead of a deload? 39:39 - Can you do cardio on a deload? 40:23 - How should you eat during a deload?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/

Getting injured sucks.It’s not just the pain of the injury itself that’s annoying, either. You also have to alter your diet and training or even take time off altogether.Under-recovering sucks too. Push yourself too far and your training becomes a slog. You’re sore all the time, your lifts stagnate (or worse, regress), and you increase the risk of hurting yourself.Such are the reasons why it’s smart to make sure you’re playing good “defense” in your fitness journey by ensuring you’re not just pushing hard in the gym (“offense”) but also taking steps to prevent injuries and optimize recovery.As you probably know, the basics get you most of the way here, like proper sleep hygiene, a nutritious diet, and a well-designed training plan.There’s more you can do, however, and that’s why I invited Dan John on the show—to dive a bit deeper into this side of training and share some non-obvious tips on how to not only decrease the risk of injury and improve recovery but also better deal with nagging issues that we all have to deal with now and then.In case you’re not familiar with Dan, he has quite the resume—he has competed in the Highland Games, written 14 books, and coached athletes and weightlifters for over 40 years now. As you can imagine, he has seen and heard it all, and in this episode, we discuss:- Easy ways to prevent injuries - The surprising benefits of loaded carries and farmer walks - How to better recover from your training, especially as you age - Powerful fitness lessons that can be applied to life and finance - And more...6:37 - How can weightlifters prevent injury? 7:19 - What kind of injuries do box jumps cause? 16:22 - How do you do shoulder rocking? 21:59 - Why are you a fan of loaded carries and farmer walks? 26:35 - What’s a good milestone for the carry family? 28:15 - How do you like to run the sled? 29:43 - What is a good milestone for the sled? 30:33 - Is there value for the sled with everyday people who want to get fit? 31:46 - How can people over the age of 40 prevent injury? 34:57 - What can people over the age of 40 do to recover better? 43:13 - Where are your seminars and what are they like? 46:43 - What are lessons that you learn in fitness that can be applied to your personal life? 50:50 - What type of financial goals should I have? 54:18 - What type of vegetables do you eat every day? 54:36 - What type of peepers should I eat? 1:05:25 - Where can people find you and your work?Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter!Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is one of the 37 chapters of the new third edition of my bestselling fitness books Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, which is now live everywhere you can buy books online.I’m thrilled to release this new edition of the books because it has been in the making for about four years now, and has been reorganized and rewritten from scratch to make it as clear, practical, and effective as possible.Even more exciting, however, is the eBooks are currently on sale on Amazon for just 99 cents and when you forward your purchase receipt to launch@muscleforlife.com, you’ll be entered to win over $6,000 in free prizes, including . . .An all-expenses-paid trip to meet me and my team in Washington DC.Apple Watch Series 4Vyper 2.0 High-Intensity Vibrating Fitness RollerBose Soundsport HeadphonesNoBull training shoesAnd more...To get in on this deal, search your local Amazon site for Bigger Leaner Stronger or Thinner Leaner Stronger and navigate to the Kindle book or simply go to www.biggerleanerstronger.com or www.thinnerleanerstronger.com and you’ll be automatically forwarded to it.Then, buy the book for just 99 cents and forward your receipt to launch@muscleforlife.com and you’ll be automatically entered into the giveaway.You have to act fast, though, because the sale and giveaway ends on July 22nd, so don’t put it off for later and then forget! Head over to Amazon now!Oh and you can also gain additional entries in the giveaway by helping spread the word on social media. You can learn more about that at www.biggerleanerstronger.com/launch or www.thinnerleanerstronger.com/launch.Alright, let’s get to the episode. I hope you like it!

This episode is one of the 37 chapters of the new third edition of my bestselling fitness books Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, which is now live everywhere you can buy books online.I’m thrilled to release this new edition of the books because it has been in the making for about four years now, and has been reorganized and rewritten from scratch to make it as clear, practical, and effective as possible.Even more exciting, however, is the eBooks are currently on sale on Amazon for just 99 cents and when you forward your purchase receipt to launch@muscleforlife.com, you’ll be entered to win over $6,000 in free prizes, including . . .- An all-expenses-paid trip to meet me and my team in Washington DC. - Apple Watch Series 4 - Vyper 2.0 High-Intensity Vibrating Fitness Roller - Bose Soundsport Headphones - NoBull training shoes - And more...To get in on this deal, search your local Amazon site for Bigger Leaner Stronger or Thinner Leaner Stronger and navigate to the Kindle book or simply go to www.biggerleanerstronger.com or www.thinnerleanerstronger.com and you’ll be automatically forwarded to it.Then, buy the book for just 99 cents and forward your receipt to launch@muscleforlife.com and you’ll be automatically entered into the giveaway.You have to act fast, though, because the sale and giveaway end on July 22nd, so don’t put it off for later and then forget! Head over to Amazon now!Oh and you can also gain additional entries in the giveaway by helping spread the word on social media. You can learn more about that at www.biggerleanerstronger.com/launch or www.thinnerleanerstronger.com/launch.Alright, let’s get to the episode. I hope you like it!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/

This episode is one of the 37 chapters of the new third edition of my bestselling fitness books Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, which is now live everywhere you can buy books online.I’m thrilled to release this new edition of the books because it has been in the making for about four years now, and has been reorganized and rewritten from scratch to make it as clear, practical, and effective as possible.Even more exciting, however, is the eBooks are currently on sale on Amazon for just 99 cents and when you forward your purchase receipt to launch@muscleforlife.com, you’ll be entered to win over $6,000 in free prizes, including . . .- An all-expenses-paid trip to meet me and my team in Washington DC. - Apple Watch Series 4 - Vyper 2.0 High-Intensity Vibrating Fitness Roller - Bose Soundsport Headphones - NoBull training shoes - And more...To get in on this deal, search your local Amazon site for Bigger Leaner Stronger or Thinner Leaner Stronger and navigate to the Kindle book or simply go to www.biggerleanerstronger.com or www.thinnerleanerstronger.com and you’ll be automatically forwarded to it.Then, buy the book for just 99 cents and forward your receipt to launch@muscleforlife.com and you’ll be automatically entered into the giveaway.You have to act fast, though, because the sale and giveaway end on July 22nd, so don’t put it off for later and then forget! Head over to Amazon now!Oh and you can also gain additional entries in the giveaway by helping spread the word on social media. You can learn more about that at www.biggerleanerstronger.com/launch or www.thinnerleanerstronger.com/launch.Alright, let’s get to the episode. I hope you like it!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/