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If you want to know how to build muscle, lose fat, and be healthier, happier, and wiser…faster than you ever thought possible…then this podcast is for you. Hosted by the bestselling author and entrepreneur, Mike Matthews, each episode gives you simple, science-based know-how and inspiration that will help you build your best body and life ever.
Find out more at www.legionathletics.com
Copyright: © Mike Matthews
In this episode, I speak with the grandfather of barbell training, Mark Rippetoe, who has given us many a great things, including books that everyone should read, Starting Strength and Practical Programming.
I’m a fan of Mark and his work, of course, because nobody has done more to promote, teach, and defend barbell training than Rip, and also because of his peppery personality, which always makes for a fun conversation.
This time around, we talk about pressing, specifically the bench and overhead press and all of their variations and subtleties.
These are two of the most effective upper body exercises you can do for gaining strength and size. It’s not a stretch to say that the stronger you get on these two exercises, the happier you’re going to be with how you look above the waist.
There are a number of factors beyond your control that influence how well you can bench and overhead press—your limb lengths, bone structure, height, and so forth—but there are also many things that you can control, like your technique and training methods, and these are what you’re going to learn about in this podcast with Mark.
Whether you’re new to the bench and overhead press or trying add a few more pounds to your powerlifting totals, I think you’re going to find today’s talk helpful, because we discuss a number of common questions like . . .
The bottom line is by the end of this interview, you’re going to know more about bench and overhead pressing than 90% of the people in your gym, including the trainers.
8:54 - What's your take on flat bench pressing versus incline versus decline?
11:17 - What are your thoughts on incline pressing to emphasize the upper chest?
24:47 - What are your thoughts on grip width?
34:39 - How much arch should you have in your back?
41:53 - What about elbow position?
44:40 - Do you prefer seated or standing pressing?
45:39 - What about seated allowing you to lift more weight?
49:34 - Let's talk about hip drive.
54:53 - How does a military press and strict press differ?
1:02:15 - Where can people find you online?
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This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.”
(Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…)
Seriously though, the idea here is simple:
Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.
As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it.
So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.
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/
Rob Dionne over at Open Sky Fitness was kind enough to have me on his podcast to talk about various things that I thought you might find interesting, so I wanted to share the interview on my podcast as well.
Rob and I go all over the place in the interview, from the best rep ranges for building muscle and training frequency, to key lessons I’ve learned growing multiple businesses while also raising a family, to the ins and outs of the supplement and publishing industries, to the most important rule I’ve learned about success along the way, and more.
I hope you enjoy it.
5:11 - What’s your origin story?
9:13 - What was your college background?
18:21 - How many books have you written?
19:15 - What was the impetus behind your supplement company?
24:43 - What is a good profit margin for retail?
28:44 - Do you feel pressure from being the face of your company?
29:11 - Do you offer affiliate programs?
40:47 - Do you feel like you have a hard time connecting to people?
40:08 - Are light weights, higher reps better than heavy weights, low reps?
48:06 - How often should beginners workout per week?
58:24 - 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 part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.”
(Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…)
Seriously though, the idea here is simple:
Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.
As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it.
So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.
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/
Today’s guest is Strauss Zelnick, who’s known in the Fortune 500 circles as the “world’s fittest CEO.”
At 61 years old, Strauss maintains a two-a-day workout schedule while running the media juggernaut Take-Two Interactive, which has given us blockbuster video game franchises like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and NBA 2K, as well as his private equity firm, Zelnick Media Capital, which has about $12 billion in assets.
Oh and Strauss also has managed to do all of that while also being a husband to his wife of nearly 30 years and father to his three children, which is no small feat, either.
As you can tell, I’m kind of a fan of Strauss’. You just don’t get to meet people like him very often.
So, in this interview, Strauss talks about his upcoming book called Becoming Ageless, which is his personal blueprint for looking and feeling young and vibrant at any age, as well as his thoughts on a number of topics, including work-life balance, goal setting and achievement, key life lessons learned, and more.
I hope you enjoy it.
5:15 - Why did you decide to write "Becoming Ageless"?
8:14 - What are the biggest lessons you've learned?
11:37 - Have you found that recovery isn't as good as you get older?
13:26 - Do genetics play a role?
15:21 - What about work life balance? How do you keep it all together and be successful?
17:40 - Start by knowing what you want.
20:47 - How important is it to look towards the future? How do you prioritize?
23:26 - What hard choices have you had to make? Any mistakes?
26:22 - Do you drink alcohol?
29:24 - What does your doctor say you should cut out of your diet?
30:24 - Have you developed any rules or principles that you live by?
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/
Like most everything related to health and fitness, there are quite a few opinions on warming up for your workouts.
Some people say it’s vital. That skipping it not only impairs your workout performance but greatly increases the risk of injury.
Others say it looks like a waste of time because it is. I mean, have you ever seen a lion “warm up” before it takes down a gazelle?
Who’s right?
Well, both are, to a degree.
What many people do to warm up is rather pointless. You know, twenty minutes on the treadmill, followed by stretching, rubber banded twisting, hopping, and bending, and so forth.
There are much more productive ways to use that time, and that’s what we’re going to talk about in this podcast.
As you’ll soon see, a proper warm-up routine is an essential part of gaining muscle and strength safely and effectively.
You can take heart, too, because it’s easier and faster than you probably think. A good warm-up is short and simple, and helps you have noticeably better workouts.
So, let’s get to it.
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Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/
One of the most important aspects of weightlifting is progression.
This is the difference between exercise (moving your body to burn calories and improve health) and training (exercising according to a plan designed to produce specific long-term outcomes).
This is the key to avoiding stagnation in muscle and strength gain, and to breaking through the many plateaus that will occur throughout your fitness journey.
There are a number of ways to progress in your weightlifting workouts, but many of the most practical and effective ones share this in common:
They involve prescribed levels of difficulty in individual sets.
In other words, some sets are supposed to be moderately challenging, while others are supposed to involve near-maximum effort.
For example, one of my favorite progression models is known as double progression, and it works like this:
You work with a given weight in a given rep range, and once you hit the top of that rep range for one, two, or three sets (depending on the programming), you move up in weight, and work with it until you hit the top of your rep range again for the required number of sets, move up, and so on.
In this way, you first progress in your reps with a given weight, and then progress with the amount of weight you’re lifting. Hence, “double progression.”
Here’s a key question though:
How difficult are these sets supposed to be?
Well, if you want to get the most out of double progression, you want to end your working (heavy) sets one or two reps shy of failure.
In other words, you want your working sets to be pretty damn difficult.
This way of looking at the difficulty of exercise (in this case, weightlifting), brings us to the topic at hand: the RPE scale.
As you’ll soon see, the RPE scale is a simple but powerful tool for workout programming, and especially for strength training, because it can help you gain muscle and strength faster while simultaneously reducing the risk of injury or overtraining.
Let’s start by defining exactly what RPE is.
5:28 - What is RPE?
9:43 - Why do people use RPE scale?
13:47 - How do you use RPE to make progress and avoid overtraining?
14:49 - What is anchoring?
15:42 - What are Reps In Reserve (RIR)?
17:17 - How can you know how many reps you still have in reserve?
21:13 - How can you use RPE to get bigger and stronger faster?
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 part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.”
(Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…)
Seriously though, the idea here is simple:
Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.
As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it.
So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.
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 this podcast I interview bestselling author and competitive triathlete Ben Greenfield, and we talk about how strength training, muscle building, exercise, and diet affect aging, longevity, and health.
If you follow Ben and his work, you know that this is his primary hobbyhorse. He’s obsessed with figuring out innovative and cutting-edge ways to improve his body and mind, and in this show, he shares some of his most recent thoughts and strategies for optimizing his life.
Here are some of the things we talk about in this episode…
11:12 - What are your thoughts on muscle mass and longevity?
16:56 - What about the research showing an association between longevity and total lean mass?
23:53 - If you have sleep, diet, training, and stress under control, how much does it matter if you don't fast, or eat protein daily?
24:41 - Is moderate drinking helpful or hurtful?
27:27 - What is hormesis?
30:23 - How important is exercise?
32:56 - What are your thoughts on the ketogenic diet?
41:37 - Does everyone wake up in ketosis? How long does it take to become fat-adapted?
45:18 - What about the saturated fat and the paleo craze?
49:13 - Do you have any projects you're working on?
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/
Years ago, I was stuck in a rut in the gym, I was making minimum payments on tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt, and I had no idea where I should go in my life, let alone how to get there.
Today, I’m a “super-fit” bestselling author with over one million books sold, and the owner and founder of several 7- and 8-figure businesses, including Muscle for Life, Legion Athletics, and Oculus Publishers
(And more importantly, I also found a unicorn for a wife who has given me two kids who are kinda the coolest.)
How the hell did all that happen?
Did I sell my soul to the Dread Lord Cthulhu? Discover the one weird trick to melting belly fat, debt, and existential angst. . . in just 5 minutes per day? Develop an expensive but highly productive cocaine habit?
Not quite. What really happened is, well, kind of boring:
I read scores of books, worked thousands of hours, and overcame more setbacks than I can count. In other words, I did the hard stuff that most people don’t want to do, and I’m ready to share the biggest lessons I’ve learned along the way.
And now, while I don’t know everything about personal growth, I do know what it takes to develop the skills, habits, and spirit required to transform your body and life.
I also know that anyone can use these powerful strategies to overcome the biggest mental and emotional blocks holding them back from realizing their potential in the same way that I have.
No matter who you are or what difficulties you’re facing, you can empower yourself to have the body you want to have, become the person you want to be, and live the life you want to live.
That’s why I wrote this new book, called The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation.
It’s my personal—and 100% practical and hands-on—blueprint for transformation, inside and outside of the gym, and it will provide you with new and valuable knowledge and skills that you will use for the rest of your life.
In short, I wrote this book to help you fix the important things that are holding you back from doing and achieving the things you care most about.
Go to www.workoutmotivationbook.com now, get the book, and by the end of it, you will never again wonder what it takes to get and stay motivated to build your best body and life.
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/
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