Muscle for Life

Supersets are a staple of classic bodybuilding workouts. You find them in almost every muscle building magazine, book, and blog, and Golden-era bodybuilders like Franco Columbu, Frank Zane, and Arnold swore by them. But how effective are supersets? And how do they compare to simpler muscle building techniques like increasing volume (reps), frequency, or intensity (load)? Well, the short story is that supersets aren’t inherently good or bad—it all comes down to how you use them. Use them correctly, and they can help you finish your workouts faster without hurting your performance. Use them incorrectly, however, and they’ll probably slow down your progress. 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/

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/

Every so often, a sports supplement comes along that gets everyone excited. That's supposed to "change the game" and push the boundaries of what's naturally achievable. HMB is one of those supplements. It burst onto the scene in 1996 to much fanfare and hoopla, and many thought it was destined to dethrone creatine as the reigning king of natural muscle building molecules. Well, science has now had a couple of decades to look into it, and, well, it didn't quite pan out. Despite what supplement marketers would have you believe, it's not as anabolic as steroids. Ironically, the research shows that it can't even support the label of "muscle builder." That said, it does have some legitimate uses for us fitness folk, so it's not a complete flop. And we're going to break it all down in this podcast. By the end, you're going to know what HMB is, why people supplement with it, how it can benefit you, how much you need to take to see those benefits, what side effects there are, and more. Let’s begin … 3:48 - What is HM

If you want to burn calories and lose fat faster without even breaking a sweat, then you've come to the right place. You're not going to need any special equipment, gadgets, or skills. You're not going to need to track your heart rate, time your intervals, or log your miles. All you're going to do is something that you've been doing every day since you were a toddler, and that you'll do for the rest of your life. It's walking, of course, and while it's no high-intensity interval training, it deserves more attention than it gets. That is, it's not the best way to lose fat rapidly, but it's definitely the easiest way to burn additional calories and lose weight faster. So in this episode, you're going to learn why walking is an "unsung hero" of cardio workouts and how to use it to burn more fat without burning yourself 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/

In this episode I interview Esther, who recently completed my 90-day coaching service and dropped 13 pounds and 12% body fat, while also gaining a ton of strength (when she started the program, she struggled to deadlift the bar, and now she’s approaching her body weight for reps). As with everything, nothing ever goes exactly as planned, and learning to adjust and adapt to conditions is an important part of the fitness game, which is something Esther experienced firsthand. She ran into a number of roadblocks along the way that most of us can relate to, including issues with balancing work with her workouts, getting her meal planning just right, and dealing with hunger and cravings, dietary temptations, peer pressure, and more, and in our chat, Esther shares what has helped her navigate these barriers skillfully and prevent them from getting in her way. 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 y

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!

God I hate being sick. Truly. I would smoke a handful of Bill Clinton’s cigars if it meant never getting sick again. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll ever get an invite to the DC spirit cooking parties, so I’ll have to accept the fact that getting sick is just part of my abject existence as a lowly human. That doesn’t mean I can’t do things to help prevent sickness and reduce the duration and severity when it strikes, and that’s why I got the co-founder and former lead researcher and writer of Examine.com, as well as the Director of Research for my supplement company, Legion Athletics, Kurtis Frank to come on the show and talk immunity. As you’ll discover, this is a muddy topic with a lot of bad research and bad interpretations of research, but Kurtis has spent hundreds of hours reading through dozens and dozens of papers, and in this podcast, he breaks down his findings. So … if you’ve wondered what supplements do and don’t work for improving your immune function, and if changing your diet can really help y

Whey protein is commonly referred to as the king of protein supplements. Why?Why is whey seemingly the king here when there are numerous types of protein powders out there that all “work”?Do some work better than others and, if so, is it honestly a big enough of a difference to direct a purchasing decision?That’s what we’ll be discussing in this episode. Cataloging the best and worst protein powders and comparing them when comparative data is available.We’re also going to cover the taste and mouth feel of these supplements; it’s one of the times when the user experience of simply taking the supplement matters in ranking. 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/

Optimal training frequency is a hotly debated subject. Some people believe that you must train your entire body 2 to 3 times per week or you’re simply doing it wrong, whereas others believe it doesn’t make that much of a difference. Recommendations run the gamut from extremely low workout frequencies (training each major muscle group once per week or less) to extremely high frequencies (training each muscle group 4, 5, or even 6 times per week). Who’s right? That’s what James Krieger and several other researchers wanted to find out in a meta-analysis that was just published just this year in the journal Sports Medicine. They combed through 22 different studies that compared how higher and lower training frequencies affected muscle and strength gains, and in this episode, James is going to break down exactly what they found. You’ll learn how training frequency affects strength gains, how to adjust your training frequency when you progress beyond your “newbie gains,” when increasing your training frequency does

Losing weight is hard. If you don’t agree with that now then spend some time in a gym and meet a few hundred people who do think that. Sometimes you diet and exercise and nothing happens. It gets frustrating at times, knowing that all the hard work you put into changing your body amounted to absolutely nothing. What if you don’t really need to lose weight to be healthy? More and more people are saying that being overweight isn’t necessarily what leads to ill health. It’s just lack of exercise, poor diet, high stress, and other unhealthy habits. This idea is part of a growing movement known as “health at every size,” that states that instead of focusing on weight, people should just focus on eating better, moving more, and practicing good habits, regardless of the outcome. Other people say that, no, your weight does matter, and one of the single best ways to improve your health, live longer, and feel better is to lose weight. Who’s right? Well, the short story is that being overweight or obese is, by definitio

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/

If you’ve spent any time in the fitness space, you’ve heard more weight loss pitches than a TV-loving insomniac. You know, stuff like… “This powder is the ‘secret’ to losing 10, 20, even 30 pounds in just a month!” “This pill blocks the absorption of carbs and suppresses your appetite!” “A few of these per day and you can eat anything and still lose weight!” And if you’re like most people, you’ve probably gone in for a few. “Who knows?” you’ve thought. “Maybe it actually works?” Well, it’s okay. We’ve all been there. And now we’re skeptical of anything that claims to help us lose weight faster. That’s good. We should be. (We should be equally skeptical of any supplement that claims to help with muscle building, too.) That brings us to this episode and to the supplement synephrine. It’s commonly found in pre-workout supplements because it’s a light stimulant and in fat burner supplements because it purportedly accelerates weight loss. How beneficial is it really, though, and what kind of results can you really

If you’re looking to lose weight, chances are you’ve heard a lot about counting calories.Some people say it’s crucial for weight loss, others say it doesn’t work, and others still say it depends on your body and circumstances.Well, I want to start this episode with the following:Counting calories in and of itself accomplishes nothing, and is not vital to losing weight. Count all the calories you want, but if you don’t know why you’re counting them, and if you’re not planning your food intake properly, you’ll never lose any weight. And ironically, you also need to fully understand these same things to effectively lose weight without counting calories.So, then, let’s start with these fundamentals of weight loss, and how they relate to calories, and then we’ll look at 6 strategies for losing weight without counting calories. 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/

Why can some people do things so much better than others? What makes one person good at something, another bad, and yet another so great that we can’t wrap our heads around it? Is it mostly just hard work? Talent? A bit of both? Some other X factor or factors? Today’s guest, Dr. Anders Ericsson, has spent most of his professional life researching these questions. In fact, it was his seminal research on talent that gave us the now famous--and generally misunderstood--“10,000 hour rule,” that was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. In case you haven’t heard of it, the 10,000 hour rule states that if you want to be great at something, you need to put in at least 10,000 hours of focused, structured, productive practice. To put that in perspective, that’s about 5 hours of “deliberate practice,” as Dr. Ericsson calls it, per day for about 4 years. That’s the idea at least. As you’ll learn in this podcast, the 10,000 hour rule is more fiction than fact. The reality is far more nuanced, and encourag

The #1 weight loss problem that I help people with is, by far, sticking to their diet.This is especially the case with people that are new to a healthy weight loss regimen, which requires that you remain in a caloric deficit for many weeks, as opposed to a crash diet that you suffer through for a short period of time.The overall experience of being in a caloric deficit varies dramatically. For some (lucky bastards), it causes little-to-no uncomfortable symptoms–no hunger issues, no cravings, no energy lows. For others (the rest of us mere mortals), it can get quite tough due to hunger pangs, intense cravings (usually brought on by simple hunger), and a lingering lethargy (which can be particularly bad when you go low-carb).What gives? And what can we do to stave off hunger and stick to our diets? 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: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

When it comes to protein powders, whey and casein rule the roost, racking up close to $5 billion in annual sales. They deserve the limelight, too. Research has shown time and again that they’re two of the best sources of high-quality protein that you can eat. What if you don’t want to supplement with either, though? What other options do you have? You can simply eat more whole foods, but that can be easier said than done depending on your circumstances. Many people turn to soy protein powder, but that probably isn’t optimal, and especially for men. Many others choose other popular alternatives like hemp or rice protein, and many still go in for more obscure supplements like beef or collagen protein. Pea, however, is often overlooked because of concerns about its amino acid profile, digestibility, and taste. Many people simply think that peas can’t provide them with protein that’s suitable for gaining muscle or losing fat, and that it probably tastes godawful. Well, they’re wrong. As you’ll see, pea protein is

Intermittent fasting is pretty simple. At bottom, you don’t eat for most of the day, then you cram all of your calories into an “eating window” that can last anywhere from a couple to 6 to 8 hours. If that sounds stupid, uncomfortable, or even unhealthy, I understand. I thought the same thing when I first heard about it years ago. It turns out, though, that it’s not like other fad diets. It’s not going to go the way of the grapefruit diet, “detox” cleanses, and the dodo bird. On the contrary, intermittent fasting can be an effective tool for improving dietary compliance, it has good science on its side, and it doesn’t have to be unpleasant. In fact, many people enjoy IF more than traditional eating patterns, mainly because it allows you to have larger meals. What IF isn’t, though, is a miracle maker. It won’t automagically help you gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, burn away that belly fat, or stay young forever. As you’ll learn in this episode, the fundamentals of proper dieting still very much appl

If you’re into weightlifting, you’ve become very acquainted with sore muscles. You’ve done many reps of the “half-squat-toilet-fall.” You’ve had the “is this just muscle soreness or am I actually dying?” thoughts. And maybe you’ve even gone full Stockholm syndrome and now crave the daily debilitation. Well, I’ve been there, I’ve learned some things, and now I’m going to pass on those lessons. You see, like many people, I used to think muscle soreness was pretty black and white. I assumed that sore muscles were a sign that I was doing something right, and the more sore I was, the more effective my workouts were. (And as a corollary, I worried that workouts that produced little soreness also produced little results.) Well, it turns out it’s not that simple. Years ago, I used to do workouts that produced a tremendous amount of muscle soreness…and I made mediocre (at best) gains. After dramatically changing the way I trained, however, I experienced far less muscle soreness but made far better progress. In this ep

The Holy Grail of Fat Burning. A supplement that you can take once a day and will prevent you from getting fat despite allowing you to eat anything you want. That magic bullet to shoot away all your problems and, hopefully, not kill you at the same time. It doesn’t exist right now unfortunately, but that hasn’t stopped researchers from trying to discover it. And even if the researchers haven’t discovered it, it definitely doesn’t stop marketers from trying to sell it to you. There are many ideas that have popped up when it comes to how such an amazing theoretical fat burner could work and one of them, the topic of this episode, has quite a simple premise . . .   What if you just didn’t absorb the calories you ate? In one end and out the other? Carb and fat blockers are a sub-genre of fat burners dedicated to preventing calorie uptake and have been studied, well, not extensively, but they do have evidence behind them. Only one problem, they don’t always block calories alone. They sometimes block nutrients as w