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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 interview Cassandra, who recently completed my 90 day coaching service. As you will hear, she had some pretty outstanding results. She lost about 25 pounds and 6% body fat while gaining strength on her key lifts in just 90 days.
In this interview, she is going to share a bit of her back story. She is going to share with us what she had done previously and where it got her, what worked, what didn’t work, and how she found her way to me, my work, and my coaching service.
She is also going to share some of the things she learned along the way.
As with anything, you go in with a plan, but then you have to adjust. You have to adapt to what actually happens and what actually works and what doesn’t.
In her case, she was running into a lot of morning hunger, so she talked with her coach to find the optimal meal timing, meal sizing, and meal composition. Specifically, she talks about how she ate her carbs throughout the day to stave off the hunger and ultimately stick to the plan and get the results she wanted.
4:48 - What were your results after our coaching program?
8:21 - How much weight did you lose?
9:17 - What led to your weight gain and how did you begin your fitness journey?
15:53 - How did you overcome your embarrassment of going to the gym?
26:14 - What were some of the obstacles you had during our coaching program?
26:41 - What was your meal plan?
40:51 - What are your goals after our coaching program?
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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: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/
You’re probably here because you want to gain muscle or lose fat faster and you’re wondering if estrogen blockers can help.
You’ve probably also seen fantastical claims about what these drugs and supplements can do to your physique.
You’re not alone.
Thousands of others are searching about estrogen blockers every day, too, because they’ve heard the same blarney that brought you here.
And in this episode, we’re going to get to the bottom of it all.
Now, the war against estrogen is at a fever pitch these days because it’s riding on the coattails of its big brother, testosterone, which is also on a lot people’s minds.
It’s common knowledge that raising your testosterone levels can help you gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster, which is why more and more people are snapping up testosterone booster supplements and signing up for testosterone replacement therapy.
Most people also know that raising testosterone levels also raises estrogen levels, and that high estrogen levels is generally associated with higher levels of body fat, erectile dysfunction, and feminizing effects like gynecomastia.
Furthermore, it’s also often assumed that lowering estrogen levels in and of itself can improve body composition and virility, and especially in people that are “estrogen dominant” and thus incapable of gaining any considerable amount of muscle and strength.
Is all the estrogen hype warranted, though? And are estrogen blocking drugs and supplements effective, safe, and legal, like many people claim?
Well, here’s the long story short:
Synthetic estrogen blockers absolutely work. With the right drugs, you can plunge your estrogen to rock-bottom levels.
Unfortunately, however, that isn’t going to help you build a better physique, and it’s going to screw up your health, to boot.
And what about natural estrogen blockers?
Well, they’re even more worthless in that they won’t even significantly impact your estrogen or testosterone levels, let alone help you gain muscle or lose fat faster.
By the end of this episode, you’re going to understand all this and more, so let’s start at the top…
5:39 - What is estrogen?
7:01 - What are estrogen blockers?
9:38 - How do pharmaceutical estrogen blockers work?
11:31 - Why are estrogen blockers popular?
17:08 - Are estrogen blockers safe?
Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter!
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If you’ve spent any amount of time lifting weights, taken a break for a bit, and then started back up again, you probably noticed that you seemed to regain strength and size much quicker than the first time around.
Well, this isn’t your mind playing tricks on you–the acceleration in progress is a scientifically verified phenomenon often referred to as “muscle memory,” but what is actually going on?
Neurological mechanisms can explain the rapid regain of strength, but not muscle size. Do muscle fibers have some sort of “memory” of their previous, more conditioned states? Or is something else responsible for these effects?
Let’s find out.
Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter!
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In this episode, I speak with Dr. Mike Zourdos who’s an assistant professor of Exercise Science at Florida Atlantic University, published researcher, and competitive powerlifter, as well as the head Powerlifting coach at Florida State University.
Mike also produces a fantastic monthly research review along with Dr. Eric Helms and Greg Nuckols, called MASS (www.strongerbyscience.com/mass), and in this interview, Mike is going to break down one of the studies analyzed in their review.
The study he’s going to discuss is on training to failure, and in this discussion, Mike explains what training to failure is, how it relates to muscle growth, how necessary it is, how to best incorporate it into your training, and more.
6:36 - What is the study of training to failure and is it necessary
13:02 - When should you incorporate training to failure?
20:24 - How does training to failure effect strength and muscle growth?
27:10 - Does cardio with HIIT harm or improve muscle hypertrophy?
31:26 - Where can people follow you and find 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/
Let’s face it.
A big reason we work out is to look good.
Yes, there are many other benefits beyond the physical, but what we see in the mirror every day matters. A lot.
That’s why a big part of staying motivated to stick to our meal plans and training programs is seeing progress.
And this is where the mirror can mislead.
You see, it takes longer than most of us realize to see marked changes in our appearance, and when the squishy parts don’t transform as quickly as we’d hoped, it’s easy to lose heart.
It can feel like all that work in the kitchen and gym is more or less for naught.
Well, if you learn to track your body composition properly, you can avoid these problems because you’ll know exactly what is or isn’t happening with your physique, and you’ll be able to then adjust your diet and exercise accordingly.
It’s pretty easy, too. There are just three steps:
1. Weigh yourself daily and calculate weekly averages.
2. Take weekly body measurements.
3. Take weekly progress pictures.
That’s all you have to do to always have an accurate snapshot of your body composition and a clear idea of which direction things are going in.
Let’s take a closer look at each.
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: 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: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/
I have a rather long list of things in the fitness space that annoy the shit out of me.
To name a few…
If you feel the same way, you’ve come to the right place. We were tarred with the same brush.
And in this episode, we’re going to talk all about exercise and weight loss and how to best go about it.
I have good news, too.
You can reach your goals without sacrificing your life to the treadmill.
In fact, you can get as lean as you want without ever doing more than a couple hours of cardio per week.
(You can eat foods you actually like, too.)
If that sounds too good to be true, I understand.
Suspend your disbelief, though, and in ten minutes, you’ll know things most people will never know about not just losing weight but building a body they can be proud of.
Let’s get to 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/
In this episode I interview Jason Phillips from iN3 Nutrition, who runs a thriving coaching business that is particularly popular among Crossfitters.
Accordingly, Jason has worked with many Crossfit athletes, and many high-level Crossfit athletes, and has seen firsthand what a lot of extreme exercise and dieting can do to the body, and to the metabolism in particular.
In short, if you push the envelope too hard for too long, you can find yourself in a situation where your energy levels and mood are chronically depressed, it’s very hard to lose weight despite eating in what SHOULD be a calorie deficit, every workout is way more of a slog than it should be, your libido is gone, your sleep is disrupted, and your life is generally a lot less enjoyable than it used to be.
In this interview, Jason shares with us a bit of the Crossfit insanity that leads to severe symptoms of overtraining, as well as how he has helped people out of that rut, and we also discuss how to avoid falling into it in the first place.
8:16 - When Crossfit athletes push themselves too hard, how do you make them healthy again?
10:14 - Why are some Crossfit athletes suffering from hormonal issues?
11:57 - What makes you certain that your clients’ food logs are accurate?
13:12 - How do the health complications of Crossfit athletes impact their body composition?
14:14 - What does the path to sanity and health look like?
15:24 - How do your experiences with these athletes jive with the implications of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment?
17:18 - What shape are your athletes usually in?
23:08 - Why would a Crossfit athlete ever want to go on a lower carb diet?
24:10 - Is the Paleo diet still popular in the Crossfit world?
30:37 - Do you have any advice for normal, everyday people who are looking to get fit?
34:52 - Are there any general mistakes that everyday people can avoid?
36:42 - For the average person, what have you found has been the most effective when it comes to training and nutrition?
37:19 - Have you seen positive results with reverse dieting?
41:21 - What has your experience with an eating disorder been like?
51:10 - What keeps you going?
56:33 - Where can people find your work and reach out?
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 that anterior pelvic tilt is caused by weak and tight muscles, and that it’s likely to lead to back pain, injuries, and other dysfunctions.
Others say that anterior pelvic tilt is totally normal and can’t be changed, so it’s not worth worrying about.
Well, the short story is that anterior pelvic tilt is normal and probably isn’t a major cause for concern. If it is a problem, it’s probably just poor posture, which can be corrected.
So, by the end of this episode, you’re going to know know what anterior pelvic tilt is, how it affects your body and physical performance, and what you can and can’t do about it.
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/
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