Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Pro Golfer Dru Love Dropped 40 Pounds and Fixed His Relationship with Food

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

Today's episode is the story of a professional golfer named Dru Love (son of the Hall of Fame golfer, Davis Love III), and how my team of coaches helped Dru lose close to 40 pounds and gain a bunch of strength and muscle. When Dru was first introduced to me and my work, he was struggling with his body composition and fitness. He’s 6’5” and at the time weighed about 250 pounds. He had no idea what to do with his diet because of all the myths he’d heard in the past. You’d be shocked what sort of fad diets make their way into professional sports, and most people don’t realize athletes don’t get good advice on how to eat, how to train, or how to do many things outside of how to play their sport. There are plenty of good coaches specific to their sport, but when it comes to diet and training, athletes have a lot of people giving them a lot of bad advice. And that was definitely the case with Dru. On the dietary side of things, he’d go from one extreme diet to the next, and fall off the wagon because it was too restrictive. His plans weren’t sustainable and he hated it. He couldn't wait to get back to eating what he wanted, when he wanted, and as much as he wanted. On the training side of things, Dru wasn’t much better off. Instead of strength training, he was working out with cables and BOSU balls—a bunch of “functional fitness” stuff—as it's often called in the golf space. Those are the workouts I see many professional golfers doing, and really, they’re kind of silly. It's a lot of very low weight, low resistance exercises, with tons of reps and a lot of isolation work. Of course, this is better than nothing. But I always wondered, why isn't strength training more popular in golf, especially considering most of the power in your swing comes from your lower body? Wouldn't it be helpful to have stronger legs, stronger hips, and stronger glutes that can produce more force and produce it faster? You know, more power. The faster you can swing the club, the more energy you can transfer to the ball, and the further you hit it. That's one of the things I talk to Dru about—why aren't more golfers doing strength training? We also talk more in-depth about how his training looked before and after working with my coaching team, and how that’s impacted his golf game. Dru has lost upward of about 40 pounds now, and while he saw his swing speed drop initially, he saw it come back up as he gained muscle and strength. Now, he’s 40 pounds lighter yet his swing speeds are higher than they were when he weighed 250 pounds. And Dru’s just getting started. He’s 6 months into coaching and probably has another 6 months of newbie gains to go. So it's going to be exciting to see where this journey takes him. Dru and I also chat about how his relationship with food has dramatically improved. Before, he struggled to “eat well”—eating a lot of fried foods and barbecue instead. (He lives in Georgia.) Then he’d go from some extreme diet to the next, yo-yo dieting his way to nowhere. Now, he's eating a lot of nutritious foods and fitting in indulgences to celebrate tournament wins on tour. Anyway, I found this podcast particularly enjoyable because I like golf and I admire people who are really good at it. And as you’ll hear, what Dru is doing now is setting himself up for future big wins, and has positive ramifications outside of his sport as well. Hit play and I hope you enjoy! --- 8:58 - Where were you before you found Legion and my work? 11:34 - What did your body composition and weight look like before and after Legion? 19:30 - What is the fitness scene like in professional golf? 26:42 - Is there a stigma in golf against losing weight? 31:03 - How have you managed your workouts so soreness doesn’t get in the way of your goal? What have you noticed in terms of flexibility? 42:50 - How was t

Hello, lovely podcast listener. I'm Mike Matthews. This is Moss for Life. And thank you for joining me for today's episode, which is the story of a professional golfer named Drew Love, son of the Hall of Fame golfer, Davis Love III, and how my team of coaches and Harry Barnes in particular helped Drew lose close to 40 pounds now and gain a bunch of strength and gain the muscle that comes along with that strength, and how all that has impacted Drew in many ways. You see, when Drew was first introduced to me, and then I put him in touch along the way with Harry. He was struggling with his body composition and his fitness. He is six foot five. He weighed about 250 or 255 pounds. He had no idea what to do with his nutrition because he had heard so many things and tried

so many things in the past, different types of fad diets that come and go, and that make their way through professional sports. A lot of people are surprised to learn that many professional athletes do not get good advice on how to eat, how to train, how to do many things outside of just how to play their sport. Often they have good coaches to coach them specifically in their sport. But beyond that, they have a lot of people giving them a lot of bad advice. And that was definitely the case with Drew when he came to us. So on the dietary side of things, again, he was all over the place and he would go all in on something for a couple of weeks and then fall off the wagon because usually because it was just too

restrictive, too extreme. It wasn't sustainable. He hated it. He couldn't get back. He couldn't wait to get back to eating the way that he was eating previously, which was kind of just whenever you want to eat, whatever you want to eat, you just go and eat it. And on the training side of things, Drew was not doing strength training. He was doing cable stuff in the gym and Bosu ball stuff, you know, functional fitness as it's often called in the golf space. I've seen quite a bit of this and I talked to Drew about it in the episode because he really sees it firsthand and that is that a lot of the workouts I see these professional golfers doing are kind of silly. Again, it's a lot of very low weight, low resistance exercises, tons of reps, and a lot of

very specific movements, just isolation work. And oftentimes taking pieces of the golf swing and then just trying to load it with a band or a cable machine. And then you just do a bunch of reps. And of course it's better than nothing. You're going to gain at least a little bit of something training that way. But I had always wondered when I would see these videos, why isn't strength training more popular in golf? Especially considering where most of your power comes from in your golf swing, which is your lower body. So wouldn't it be helpful to have stronger legs and stronger hips and stronger glutes that can produce more force and produce it faster, you know, power. And that would give you then more explosiveness in your golf swing. It would help you get your swing speeds up without having to feel like you're jumping out of your shoes,

which of course, you know, the faster you can swing the club, the more energy you can transfer into the ball, the farther you hit the ball. And anyway, so that's one of the things I talked to Drew about is like, why aren't more people doing what you're now doing? Because now Drew is doing traditional strength training, a little bit of isolation work. That's mostly for aesthetics, right? You know, you don't need to do bicep curls for golf necessarily, but biceps are cool. You got to have biceps, obviously. Anyway, so Drew and I talk about training stuff before and now after, as well as how that has impacted his golf. As I mentioned earlier, Drew has lost upward of about 40 pounds now. And he saw that as his weight was going down,

his swing speeds were dropping slightly, which he expected because you have less mass to just throw around. But as Drew has gained muscle and strength, he then saw them coming back up. And now his swing speeds at, again, at about 215 pounds, so about 40 pounds lighter. His swing speeds are a little bit higher than they were back when he was 255 pounds. And he's really just getting started too. Drew is six months into coaching and he has still probably at least another six months of newbie gains to go. So it's going to be exciting to see where this journey takes him. And Drew also talks about how he has dramatically improved his relationship with food. And this is going to be something that a lot of people are going to be able to relate to. Again, before he was working

with us, he struggled to quote unquote, eat well, right? So he would just eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted generally. And then he would do that for a bit. And that meant a lot of fried foods and barbecue and just delicious stuff. He lives in Georgia. And then after a bit of that, he would go on some extreme diet, do that for a little bit, and then eventually give that up and go back to his previous ways. So he was kind of stuck in this yo-yo dieting pattern. And now it's completely different. His relationship with food is much healthier. He's eating a lot of nutritious calories now, and he fits in the more indulgent stuff here and there as he feels like

it. Sometimes it's to celebrate something momentous. Like he just recently won a tournament on a tour that is right beneath the PGA Tour and so that's big. If he can keep up the solid play at that level, he will make it on the PGA Tour. And more importantly, with his diet, he enjoys it now. He actually enjoys eating the way that you quote-unquote should eat. So anyways, I'll stop rambling about what makes this interview interesting and just let you listen to it, but I hope you like it. I found it particularly enjoyable because I like golf and I admire people who are really good at golf, but it's also just a cool story. And as you will hear what Drew is doing now really is setting him up for a big win in his work, in his golf. And it's also, of course, having positive ramifications outside of his golf as well.

Now, before we get to the show, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and dose in every product of mine is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent, no proprietary blends, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. To check it out, just head over to legionathletics.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire order if it is your first purchase with us. And if it is not your first

purchase, then you will get double reward points on your entire order, which is essentially getting 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, that URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Hey, Drew, thanks for taking the time to come on and talk to me. Absolutely. Looking forward to it. Yeah, same. These episodes are always fun where I just get to hear people's stories and see the personal impact of the stuff that I do, which is gratifying for me. And people listening also like to hear other people's stories and just get inspired to keep going in their own journeys.

And I've been looking forward to this one because it's a bit different than many of these success interviews, as I like to call them, in that you are a professional golfer, which I think is cool because I like golf, but is also cool just because what you've been doing has that extra layer of value. It's not just, oh, hey, look at this. I'm a bit stronger. I like what I see in the mirror a bit more, but it also impacts your livelihood, which is cool. So here we are to hear about your story. And I think a good place to start, and it's how I usually do these, are why don't you just tell me and tell everybody listening where you were before finding me and my work with your fitness and what you had tried previously, what was working, what wasn't working, what were some of the obstacles you were

running into and so forth? Yeah, sure. So, you know, being a professional golfer in 2019, 2020 era is, you know, a lot different than when my dad was playing golf and when my grandfather was playing golf. I heard stories from my dad when he played on the high school basketball team, they caught him working out for basketball. And so he had to quit playing basketball because working out was, quote, bad for golf. So times have really changed. You don't really see very many guys playing any professional sport, much less golf, that don't stay in the gym and take care of their bodies. So I'd say for me, I always had a base in fitness. It sort of started when I was a little bit younger with my dad's trainers and with trainers around the resort town we live

in. I had a decent base for kind of the knowledge of working out and the knowledge of eating well, but also living in the South, I enjoyed all the barbecue and the fried foods and everything that goes along with living where we live. And I think that six months ago, I was not necessarily unhappy with where I was, but there was definitely some changes that needed to be made in order to get the most out of my golf game. I was playing really well for a couple of weeks at a time, bad for a month, play really well for a couple of weeks, bad for a month. It wasn't consistent. I could really see energy draining. I could really tell towards the end of rounds that I was losing the fire, the idea that, oh, it doesn't matter what happens, I can overcome it

with great energy and great positivity. And, you know, I feel like since starting with you guys and getting on a great plan that I can easily follow something that I just click a few buttons on an app or on my Safari on my phone, it's over, it's done. I can see that I've checked it and done it. It's been amazing to sort of simplify this process because I sort of had the issues of, yeah, I did work out, but it wasn't consistent. I did sort of have those times where I would get in the gym hard and work out well and eat well. And then I would fall off the wagon or I would do well at home for two weeks and then go on the road to play golf and fall off the wagon. I would eat bad foods. I wouldn't work out because the gym was, you know, just a rack of dumbbells and nothing else. And since sort of finding the correct balance, it's been a lot easier for me

on the road. It's been easier for me to follow the plan and a huge difference on the golf course. What specifically, just for people wondering, so where did you start six months ago in terms of, let's say, body weight, body composition, general strength, and where are you at now? six months ago in terms of, let's say, body weight, body composition, general strength, and where are you at now? Yeah. I would say I was a decently strong guy. I could hit the golf ball a long way, but I weighed 255 pounds and it was the heaviest I'd ever been. I think that ever since I got out of college, having a regular Monday, Wednesday, Friday, not always extreme, but pretty hardcore workouts. Once I kind of got out of college and out of the routine of working out every single week and having that structure kind of is the

way I like to say it now. I've realized that structure has been great for me, having Harry Barnes to check in with weekly and having all the things right at my fingertips has been great. I noticed that while playing, the first week I was okay. At 255, I didn't feel big. I didn't feel like I was tired. I didn't feel like my golf swing wasn't where I wanted it. I kind of thought that that was the norm. And in the past, my workouts have always been around golf strength. So I would say that underneath, I did have a good composition of strength. I did have a good base to play golf well, but sort of everything that I was loading on top of it was slowing me down. I could definitely tell on the golf course, last four or five holes, you could see the

energy going down. You could feel the power, the strength off the tee or out of the rough or out of bad lies really going down. And being able to say, all right, well, I'm not swinging as fast as I was to begin with. Let's take an extra club and swing, you know, a little bit easier. And I feel like since starting the plan, since starting with a great meal plan that is super easy to follow, a workout plan that is super easy to follow, as long as you just listen and do what you're being told and get in the gym when you can and follow the meal plan. My body weight is sort of melted off. I'm sitting at 215 right now, down about 40 pounds. I just played on the Corn Fairy Tour last week,

which is one step below the PGA Tour and had a great week. And, you know, sort of the way it works in golf is you have four days to get 72 holes in. And if it rains one day, you got to play 36 in one day. So the other day we had to play 30 holes to finish a round. I had to walk pretty much all day long. I got there at 6.30 in the morning, didn't leave until 6.30 at night. And the whole time was out in the Florida heat. I could tell the entire day I was fine. I was great. My energy levels were up. My strength was there. I could hit the ball as hard as I wanted to. And then even after the round, walking the long walk from the 18th tee to the scoring table to sign my scorecard and then

to the truck, I was just walking to the truck saying to myself, wow, I could really go back out there and play another nine. I could go back out and play another 18. My body feels good. It feels sort of like something, I don't want to say woke up, but it feels like I'm not falling off a little bit. It's everything sort of stabilized to where I can go out, play 18 holes, 30 holes, 36 holes, whatever it is, and maintain that same consistent balance throughout the whole day, which has really changed the way that I can perform at the end of my rounds. Yeah, that's huge. As a recreational golfer, I've noticed where if I go sit on the range for hours and hit a billion balls and then get out on the course, there's a point where

how I start to notice it is maybe it's not so much energy levels, but it's just even small muscles fatiguing where I just feel like my swing is not as controllable. I can imagine that even someone at your level, like you have such a higher awareness of what you're doing with your body that it doesn't take much in the way of muscular fatigue to get in the way of what you want to do with your swing, especially with how technically accurate you need to be with your swing. Because while I go out there and go, yeah, I would like to hit, you know, I'll take straight or a little bit of a draw here. And I'm just, you know, I'll just see if I can knock it on the middle of the green. That's not golf at your level. You have to hit very specific shots, which is like, it comes down to inches and

degrees, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. And like you said, the small muscles, it's, you know, standing over the ball and sort of when I was at my heaviest, I could really tell that when you bend the knees and you lean over a shot, the legs can be a little unstable. And if your base is the tiniest bit unstable, then the rest of your swing is either going to fall apart or you're going to have to use timing so much so that if your timing is slightly off, you're not ever going to perform. So I noticed that yes, when I was tired, I was able to still sort of time up my golf swing to hit good shots. You know, that's sort of, you know, when Michael Jordan had the flu, he didn't have all his strength,

so he probably had to shoot it a little bit harder from three and probably had to jump a little bit harder to dunk it. He could still adapt to how he felt and perform. But if he had to play like that every night, his timing's not always going to be there. He might score 30 when he is on, but when he's off, he's going to play pretty bad and it's going to look bad. That's kind of how I felt, I would say, the majority of the time was that I wasn't getting as much out of my body as I could to be as consistent as I could because golf nowadays is all about consistency. You know, you don't really hear much about the guys who win one week and then miss the cut four weeks in a row.

You hear about the guys who finished top 15 every single week. The consistency factor has been, you know been probably the most important thing for me to get fixed because the guys who do make every cut are the ones who are at the end of the year either moving on to the PGA Tour or getting off the Corn Fairy Tour onto the PGA Tour, the guys who keep their card, or the guys who make the Ryder Cup teams or the President's Cup teams. You don't make the big team events. or the President's Cup teams. And you don't make, you know, the big team events. You don't qualify for major championships just by having, you know, three good weeks a year. You got to be consistent for the entire season. And, you know, I can

definitely tell that once I've lost, you know, about close to 35, 40 pounds now that while I'm on the course, I don't notice the fatigue in the legs. I don't notice the fatigue in the arms and in the chest as much. And I can really tell that the shots that require balls deep down in the rough that have to be hit with a lot of strength to get them to get all the way to the green. I still have that late in the round or the ones that, you know, you hit a bad drive in the hay and there aren't very many people who could take one out of the bottom of, you know, a bunch of long grass. And, you golfers, hitting it hard enough to move it 10 feet sometimes is paramount to making a par. So you have to really be able to continue that strength throughout the entire day, because as soon as that goes away and you rely on timing,

everything's really going to fall apart. So the timing, the consistency, the ease of sort of being able to follow this plan, follow the steps that Harry and Mike give you and just click the buttons when you're done and submit it and then go to the course knowing that your work off the course is done. Now all I have to do is focus on my round, focus on where the pins are, focus on where the wind's coming from and be an athlete and pull off the shots. It's not something that on the back nine, I'm saying, oh man, I can feel I'm getting tired. Now I'm worried about whether I'm going to be able to perform at my best. And, you know, sort of having that out of the back of your head and having only the thoughts of I'm out here to pull off the shots one at a time till I run out of holes is sort of a lot more freeing.

And, you know, I think the results of my golf game have showed I had a solid week last week. And, you know, I can really tell that building off of where I am now is going to be much easier and much more consistent. And if I go to my tournament next week, I'm not going to feel tired from the week before still. And I'm not going to have to use up two of my days that I could be out preparing, resting and recovering. And I think that's been the most important for me is waking up Monday morning after my tournament feeling dead is not there. So I could go hit the gym Monday morning after five days in a row, four days in a row on the course and then go practice. And I don't feel like I have to burn a day sitting on the couch or

sitting in a hot tub or trying to recover in any way you do. That's huge. That's a big cumulative advantage over time. And what is the fitness scene like in professional golf? How many people are doing something similar to what you're doing versus a fair amount of what I've seen? I haven't looked too much into it, versus a fair amount of what I've seen. I haven't looked too much into it, but a fair amount of what I've seen is, I guess you'd call it functional fitness, a lot of bands and balls. And you could say the movements that are being trained are kind of pitched as golf specific, as if you're kind of mimicking certain parts of the golf swing with a little bit of resistance. And then when people found out that Rory, for example, was doing some Olympic lifting,

they were like, oh, wow, wait, what is that? That's dangerous. Why are you doing that? But what's it like? Because again, from what I've seen, there aren't that many people that are doing what you're doing. Yeah, of course, you know, golf fitness has changed so much. And I would say even in the last five years, but you know, incredibly over the changed so much. I would say even in the last five years, but, you know, incredibly over the last 20 years, I would say the amount of people who worked out maybe in the 80s were five or 10 guys. Nowadays, it's five or 10 guys. I would say just about everybody does something in the gym before the round to get loose or after the round to either recover or to get loose again for the next day. And I see that a lot of more guys just saying, I'm going to go get loose. And, you know, they're not going in there to build strength. They're not going in there to do cardio because, you know, we walk, you know, on average seven miles every round, I would say is about the average length of a golf course, you know, the length we play it. And you don't really ever hear

guys going, I'm going to go get a lift in, or, you don't really ever hear guys going, I'm going to go get a lift in, or I'm going to go get a leg day in because we got a long day, a hilly course this week. You just don't see guys really focusing on strength and lifting as much. You see a lot of, like you said, band work and a lot of, I know a lot of guys' workouts consist of foam rolling and that's about it. We see that still in weightlifter gyms. You see people, they'll come and they have 30 minutes of foam rolling. And these days it's Theragunning before they can even step under a bar. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of guys sort of go in the gym before the rounds because obviously, you know, getting loose, you can't really just stand on the range and do a few deep squats and a few, you know, I like to use a two iron in my bag and just kind of get my shoulders and arms loose and,

you know, use it to cross my leg over and stretch my hips out. And, you know, you see a lot of guys doing that before a round where it's not competitive. But, you know, last week in this Corn Fairy Tour event, I was in the gym for at least 25 minutes, 30 minutes before each round, sort of going through a small workout that you guys give me. So I'm not in there doing my full bench or not in there doing my full dumbbell work. I'm, I kind of adapt it a little bit for myself just as a way to loosen up all the small muscles and just get blood flowing. I'm sure. And exactly just to get everything moving and not feel stuck. I like to get to the range and feel like I could

already go out and play. So I want my first swing on the driving range to be my first swing that I could make on the tee box. I don't want to go out there and have to use 15 or 20 minutes to get loose and then warm up. You know, they call it a golf warmup. I'm out there really just to hit a few shots. You know, I want to hit a high draw. I want to hit a low cut. And then I want to hit the driver on the first tee shot has to be down the right because there's a lake down the left. So on the tee or on the driving range, I pick a tree and I say, all right, my ball can't go left of this tree. I hit my driver right of it. Then I go play. I don't want to spend the first 15 minutes swinging to get my body loose. So I would say the majority of guys do that.

Then you have guys like Tiger who sort of revolutionized working out for golf. You know, you saw his Navy SEAL workouts. You saw his crazy amounts of running and his crazy amounts of lifting. And he was the first person to do it. All of a sudden, Tiger was a skinny guy playing golf. And then he was a ripped guy playing golf and you know it never really changed the way he played it just made his longevity a little bit better and it made the more difficult shots easier to pull off under pressure i think having that strength for him was a way to sort of rely less on his putter in his short game now he could just bomb it around the course and it's now bled into Rory

McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka. You see these guys who are number one through number 10 in the world. Every single one of them has a physio guy and a trainer and a mental coach and a swing coach. They have every aspect of their game covered with someone who's an expert. And you'd be hard-pressed to see Rory McIlroy not go to the gym one day a week. He's in there every single day. He does it every day, no matter what. He lifts, he stretches, he takes care of his body. And you see a lot of guys sort of starting to develop that. And I think that was sort of the way I used to work out was, okay, I go in the gym, I do my cables and my bands and I do my foam rolling

and yeah, I'm loose, but did I ever really go in and gain strength? No, I didn't. And I would say that in college, we put a lot of emphasis on the off-season lifting. We really only lifted weights for about six weeks and the rest of the time was a lot of cardio. We did a lot of running. We did a lot of stuff like that, running stairs with vests on and being good enough to walk 18 holes in college every day, 36 every day, whatever it was, we were able to do that. But the emphasis on weightlifting has really, I've never done it myself. This has sort of been a new transition for me to focus more on gaining strength as opposed to sort of keeping exactly where you're at and then staying loose. And that's always been the quote I've heard

is, you know, you got to get in there and get loose. So I don't want to go into the gym and get loose. That doesn't, you know, really appeal to me. I didn't like going to the gym. I didn't want to go into a gym and ride a bike for 20 minutes and run on a treadmill and then use a couple bands and then leave. You know, It just didn't seem like I was getting much done in there until working out with you guys, this plan of, hey, just click daily link one and pull it up and go into the gym for 45 minutes and do it and walk out. And it's been a much more simple process for me to go in, have video links, watch the video if I forget how to do something and just pump it out and get out of there. And I've gotten to the point where I enjoy

going into the gym. I enjoy speaking with Harry every week and talking about my progress and having this meal plan is sort of also been another great thing for me because I would always ask, what should I eat this week? What should I, you know, I want to lose weight. What should I eat? And it was, oh, you know, just don't eat too much or hey, just- No carbs or- Use wheat bread on your sandwiches. Cut out the sugar or whatever. Yeah. It was just generic cookie cutter, go do this and try this and do this. And I

never had any accountability. I never had any sort of, I had all the help I could imagine, but not exactly the help that I needed. It works for a lot of guys. You see a lot of guys where I'm from, we have at least 30 pros where I live in Sea Island, Georgia, and every one of those guys works out, but none of them I would say have ever focused on gaining significant strength or losing significant amounts of weight, whatever it is. It's always sort of- Why is that? Is there a stigma in golf, in high level golf against losing weight, for example? Were you concerned that if you lost 30, 40 pounds that you would not be able to hit the ball as far?

Or is it the idea that, well, if you strength train, your muscles are gonna get tight and then you're not gonna be loose and it's gonna fuck up your swing or... Sure. I think the idea behind it was that if you find a place where you play good golf, you want to stay there. So you've seen guys like John Daly, who's a 300 pounder, lose a bunch of weight and play bad golf. Well, that's because he's not playing where he plays well, which is, you know, it's incorrect. You know, obviously guys can be comfortable in a state more so than others.

And, you know, I think that it's almost impossible to say that because John Daly was overweight, he wasn't a golfer. It's not the case. You know, maybe he was mentally comfortable and maybe he was miserable trying to lose weight, but he was probably doing it the wrong way. So once I found a way to lose weight that was tailored for me, you guys telling me, this is what you need to do. This is what you need to eat. Here's a cookbook with hundreds of pages. Just do what the information says

and you'll succeed. It's been easier to follow. It's been almost effortless in the diet plan once you get into a better. Not, I say worse, but I said better. Yeah, indulgent. It's a flavor, right? You know, just going and getting something that I'm going to enjoy more than eating, you know, extremely healthy. I do do that. And I think it's important for me. I think it's important for these guys out there to understand that it doesn't have to be

super strict. It doesn't have to be, you know, I think you see a lot of guys on tour that just like, they want to do the same things every day because, oh, I played good last week. Let's copy what I did last week so that I can play good this week. Obviously in a mental standpoint, yeah, that's the case. You want to be in the same mindset you were in the week before when you played well, but your body can get better and still be in the same mental state. Your body can lose 40 pounds and all of a sudden you're on the golf course and you're 15 holes in and it's 85 degrees out and you don't feel tired. You know, that's sort of keeping the same levels, staying in the same way you were before

is the way you began the round, the same way that you finished the round. I feel like a lot of guys stay away from lifting as much because they don't want to be sore or they don't want to put on strength and lose flexibility, or they don't want to sort of bulk up and shorten their swing or whatever. This thing is about sort of lifting weights. It's always been there. And if you just kind of take a step back, look at Rory McIlroy and look at his transformation from his first win, being a pudgy, curly headed guy to being, you know, one of the top athletes in the world now. And I would say you stand him up next to a tennis player or next to a soccer player.

He's not going to look any different than they do. And I think that's been great for him is because now he can play 30 weeks a year and not feel like he's killing himself out there because his body is in great physical condition and he takes care of it every day and he's constantly lifting and constantly taking care of his strength so that when he gets to the course, all he has to worry about is hitting that shot right next to the hole. That makes sense. You know, one of the things you brought up was something I want to ask you about is soreness and flexibility. Because in, again, my experience just talking with golfers here and there, not necessarily

professionals, but sometimes high-level college or even just recreational, that has been a common concern. Those two things have been common concerns. How have you dealt with that? Because there is some soreness that comes with working out. So it is something to be managed. If you do overdo it in the gym the day before you go out to play, then yeah, that's not going to be ideal. And flexibility, well, speaking scientifically, I'm sure your experience lines up with this is it's a myth that weight

lifting makes you less flexible, especially if you do it right, full range of motion and such, but how have you managed your workouts? So soreness doesn't get in the way of your golf. And what have you noticed in terms of flexibility, uh, good, bad, or nothing, if it's just remained the same. To be perfectly honest with you, I haven't really noticed a change in flexibility. Which is, yeah, that should be because you probably started out fairly flexible because you needed to be, and you haven't lost anything by getting stronger. No, not at all. And sort of, I think one of my main issues sort of throughout college and staying away from putting on muscle and lifting was I had a shoulder surgery and I have naturally loose shoulders. And, you know, the doctor's telling me to stay away from any sort of movement that would

put pressure on the backs of my shoulders, the labrums. For a while, I wasn't allowed to do push-ups in college. I wasn't allowed to do pull-ups. I wasn't allowed to bench press because that's what the trainers thought was going to mess up my shoulders. And what I found through this whole process is that when I do my lifts, obviously if I go to a golf tournament and I'm staying in a hotel that doesn't have a good gym, it's hard for me to sort of follow the plan. You do need the proper equipment. So I do my best and some weeks that means no lifting and some weeks that means sort of catching up for the week I miss. So I noticed that while I do these lifts, yeah, it feels maybe a tiny bit sore sometimes, but I'm starting to feel stronger in my shoulders. I don't hurt the next day

afterwards in the labrum of my shoulder. I feel like it's more solid. I feel like the next time I do my lifts, I'm not worried about hurting it because it feels more stable. And that stability is not for me being less flexible. It's the ability to actually flex it more. I can move my shoulder in two positions that I normally can't because that stability is there. I know that's talking about loose or injured body parts, but for my legs, you know, naturally have pretty flexible hamstrings and quads. And I don't notice that doing any leg work makes them less. I noticed that my legs feel stronger so that I can actually do the moves I need to do better. I don't notice any sort of, you know, less flexibility other than feeling, you know, more supported throughout my whole body. I feel like

in the top of my golf swing, if I need to reach back and get a little bit more backswing to hit it harder, I don't feel like my shoulder's going to pop out or I don't feel like I'm going to hurt something in my back or in my hip by making a much bigger, harder turn. I can turn more and make that same turn while feeling completely sound in my head that I'm not going to torque anything and I'm not going to hurt anything. You see these guys, commentators in golf, there's a guy named Brandel Chamblee, who every time he sees a video of Rory McIlroy doing a deadlift or a squat, he panics. Oh no, Rory's going to hurt himself. Oh no, Rory's going to do this. Rory's going to be out for six months, whatever it is. But what Rory's doing is making himself strong enough to where he can go on the golf course and use his flexibility and his strength and not have to worry about hurting anything.

The stigmatism is you're going to hurt yourself in the gym. Well, if you have the right plan and you have the right coaching, you're not going to hurt yourself. And all you're going to do is prevent getting hurt. And that's sort of the way I've had to change my way of thinking is lifting all this weight isn't going to hurt me. If I do it properly with the right technique, with the right amount of weight, it's only going to make me stronger and be able to use my body more while not hurting it. You know, there's research on this. I wrote an article, I think I recorded a podcast on it as well, just about the supposed, it's a myth that weightlifting is dangerous and when

performed correctly, sure, if you do stupid shit in the gym, the risk of injury can rise sharply. But if you know what you're doing, statistically speaking, you just don't see very many injuries. And weightlifting, I believe it was, I want to say around one or let's say around two for every thousand hours when this was a study that looked at a lot of other studies on weightlifting with many untrained people. These are not even like professional weightlifters that are strength athletes and even necessarily knew what they were doing. These are just everyday people. So it is a bit of a myth that weightlifting is dangerous and that, oh, the deadlift is just dangerous. No, it's not. If you know how to do it and if it's programmed correctly,

it's not dangerous at all. I would probably argue to what you're saying is that if you look at injuries per thousand hours of golf at a high level where there's a lot of physical exertion, you might see more injuries there than just in the gym doing well-designed workout programs. Maybe not, but the injury rates are quite a bit higher in that same study that I'm referencing. They looked at other sports like CrossFit. Injury rates are a bit higher, for example, but even just like soccer, there was hockey in there. They looked at other sports and the injuries ranged from about five to upward of 30 per thousand hours. weightlifting as an activity is actually very safe if you know what you're doing. So you're totally right there. And I mean, you're experiencing it, many other people have, but it's just one of those myths that refuses to die. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's sort of adapting into golf as well. You see guys doing it more, you see guys working out more. I would say I didn't this week and I had a fantastic gym,

one of the better gyms you're going to see on a Corn Fairy Tour event, which goes to great locations and goes to great golf clubs. But they had a world-class gym this week. And I was in there every day. And I would say I only saw two other guys who were in there every day. What I mean every day is that before the round, you see guys theragunning while foam rolling. I'm telling you, I saw 20 guys doing it. It's funny that you said that.

And notice I use that after the rounds on my legs and on my feet and on my shoulder to loosen my shoulder back up. Yeah, I mean, to be specific, there's actually nothing wrong. There's a bit of research on foam rolling. I think there's a bit of research on massage gunning as well. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not the cure-all that some people will sell it as though. It's not, you know. Right. Or the golfer saying, you know, I spent my first 30 minutes of my day in the gym. Well,

yeah, I spent most of it on your ass. So that's sort of the way that I have tried to, I guess, adapt my way of thinking into going into the gym today and bench pressing and dead lifting and using dumbbells and doing all these new exercises I've never done before is not going to slow me down or make me sore or hurt my golf game. and stronger inside, which now unleashes everything in my brain of thinking, okay, now I'm going to get tired or when is the fatigue going to hit me? Or am I going to be able to play four or five weeks in a row without getting burned out, tired, hurt, whatever it is. And I feel like once you're able to sort of not worry about, oh man, well, bad meal I had last night, is that going to affect the way I play today? Because if you just eat the proper meal and do the proper workouts with the right amount of weight, with the right form to your workouts, everything else, you don't have to worry about. You don't have to worry about the next day saying, oh man, I didn't work out for the

last two weeks. Is this going to, my swing speed going to be slower today or whatever it is? You know, it's sort of as my dad and as my coaches say, doing the same things every day, having the same routine every day so that on the golf course and pre post round, everything is way freed up. So I could really tell this week that once I was at the golf course, once I got out of the gym and was loose, all I had to do was walk to that driving range, hit the shots that I wanted to hit to get prepared for the day and go to the course and just perform, just be an athlete and do what I'm supposed to do. You don't see Cristiano Ronaldo running around on the field thinking, oh man, I forgot to stretch my quads. He's not out there stretching his quads while he's running. He's just going out there, doing his job,

doing what he's supposed to do. And then afterwards going back and working on what he needs to work on. And I noticed that I would get stiff on the golf course and I'd have to lay down and stretch my hips out, or I'd have to get down and stretch my back out. And I just don't notice the fatigue. I don't notice the tightening halfway through the round. tightening halfway through the round. It's been great to sort of be able to get on a golf course. And then, you know, even telling my girlfriend walking from the last green to the truck, like, wow, I really feel like you could put me right back out on the golf course and I could just keep going. I could go all day. That's just kind of the way I feel now after losing, you know, 40 pounds and adding a little bit of strength. It's just been sort of this thing that's clicked for me on the golf course of, wow, now I don't have this burden anymore. So now I have, let's say it was 10% thinking about my fitness. Now I don't worry about that as much anymore. So now I have 10% more to focus on golf, focus on the next shot, focus on the surroundings. What's the wind doing? What's the lie like? Where's

the pin? How firm are the greens? Did I do my workout yesterday? That's gone. Now all I have to do is focus on exactly what I need to do to play well. And it's just been a lot of hard work and it's been a big adjustment to say, okay, well, even this week I had to take a hammer and a tee and poke a new hole in this belt I wore because my pants were falling down. It's definitely been an adjustment. I've had to change the way I do things and change the way I eat and change the way I think about fitness. And yeah, was it hard work in the first few months? And did I go backwards at times? Absolutely. But now that I can feel that I'm in this groove of like, yeah, I can go eat bad for a day and then

get right back into it. I don't have this sort of week where I slow down or two weeks anymore where I slow down. I noticed that I'm more in a where I slow down or two weeks anymore where I slow down. I noticed that I'm more in a groove, I'm more in a routine. And now I've unlocked this whole new way of thinking on the golf course, which is solely on what I need to do every shot to perform. Yeah. I understand, again, just having limited experience on the golf course, how big of a, anybody who's played golf will resonate with that. It's just, there's that psychological component that having confidence in being able to execute what you want to do is just seems to be a huge part of it. Hey, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives,

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and you will save 20% on your entire order if it is your first purchase with us. And if it is not your first purchase with us, you will get double reward points on your entire order. That's essentially 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, the URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. With your diet, that's something that I remember early on, we were talking about, Hey, when we were just initially kind of coming up with a plan,

how has that transition from how you're eating previously to how you're eating now go? And how was it to get used to? Cause the reason I ask is I just know there are a lot of people out there who are, let's say they're getting into fitness maybe for the first time in their lives and they're concerned that their diet is quote unquote bad. Let's say they're just eating a lot of, let's just say relatively unnutritious food, a lot of sugar, a lot of random type of eating, and they dread the thought of having to quote unquote, eat clean or get rid of all the stuff that they want to eat and have to follow some highly restrictive diet. And even if I tell them like, no, you don't really, you don't have

to do that. You just have to understand calories and macronutrients and put things together. And you have to come up with a plan that works for you that isn't just like pizza and hot dogs. So how has that process been for you and what is your diet? How does it look before working with us and after? I would say before it was the first thing I thought that I wanted, I went and got it. If I was sitting at home and I said to myself, oh man, Southern Soul was a barbecue restaurant on the island. It is four minutes away and they know us very well from our years of being a great customer. Sure, of course. And I would say, oh man, they would post something on Instagram. They got a big burger today with cheese and bacon and whatever. Oh, I want that. I went and got it. Oh, I want chicken fingers from

here because they're great. I'm going to go get it right now. I'm not going to lie to you. I do still have occasionally the want for a horrible meal. The thing for me was I gave into that a lot more in the beginning. When we first started with you guys, I had your cookbook. I would eat something out of it, feel great about myself. Then the next day, I would eat something terrible for me. I would say, oh, well, I ate good the day before I can eat bad today. And it was, you know, sort of me rejecting, I guess, wanting to get into this as much and sort of having the idea of, well, I'm not too overweight, so I don't have to do too much. I don't need to do this as much. And I think I had the wrong thought process on it. I looked at it as sort of a chore of eating healthy and, oh, I have to only eat vegetables or I have to only eat these things. When I got into your cookbook,

when I read sort of 15, 20, 30 recipes, it sort of unlocked like, oh man, you can still eat amazing foods and then be healthy. I noticed my girlfriend and I, when we cook now, we cook great foods. We cook a lot of them and we can eat sort of as much as I want until I'm full, you know, being six foot five, little over six foot five and, you know, having, you know, you know, six, two, 55, I was feeling like I had to eat a lot of food throughout the day and a lot of bad foods of what was going in. And now I can really notice that you don't have to just eat vegetables and raw, no seasoned chicken. You can eat a lot of really delicious foods out of your cookbook. You can eat a lot of really delicious things in a restaurant that aren't bad for you. And it was sort of changing my mindset of just because it doesn't have cheese and bacon on it, or just because

it's not fried doesn't mean it's not going to taste great. I figured it out and I got into a routine that was, okay, I eat these foods. I feel better. I don't feel remorse as soon as I'm done. I feel cleaner. I wake up in the morning and my stomach doesn't hurt. It was sort of something had to click for me to sort of accept what was going on. I needed to see the results really is sort of a bad way to say it, but I needed the validation of, okay, I ate good for a week. I lost 10 pounds and I feel better. And it was sort of this sort of, I guess a fire went off like, oh my gosh, I got this now. I started eating a lot healthier.

I started to forget about the cravings of the bad foods. And I started to forget about, oh, I used to have a sleeve of Oreos in the freezer and I ate at eight o'clock. Now it's 10. Let's go get them and eat them. And I don't snack in as much anymore. I don't crave the bad foods. And I notice that now when I'm at golf tournaments and I am looking up restaurants to, you know, when you're staying at a holiday inn right off the exit of a highway, you're surrounded by fast food and you're surrounded by bad chain restaurants that, you know, have delicious food on the menu, but something that's not going to be good for you to play golf the next day. And it was sort of unlocking that part of my brain that said, okay,

well, if I go into Mike's cookbook and find a recipe that looks something like I can find on a menu and then say, okay, I don't want this on it and I don't want this on it and I want to add an extra side of vegetables. All of a sudden, I was eating exactly what I was supposed to and I was in a routine of ordering what I was supposed to and eating less because I didn't have the cravings anymore. So now my appetite was down a little bit. I wanted the good foods. I wanted to feel good the next day. And I wanted to not have the remorse of eating two bad meals a day and feeling like, oh man, I just threw away all this hard work that I did for a week at a time. And now I have three weeks at a time and one day off and then back on the train. It's been

super easy for me to follow the meal plan when I get off of it, which is sort of how I've always been of, yeah, Drew works really hard for two weeks and then sort of falls off for three weeks and then works hard for two. And it's been a bad balance of sort of not wanting to do the work to see the results. And now that the results are flowing in, being down 40 pounds and none of my clothes fitting anymore and getting compliments at golf tournaments, Drew, congratulations on your success of your weight loss and your strength gaining. Getting the validation has really been what's been great for me, seeing the results and feeling better in my body and then noticing on

the golf course that my energy has been up. It's just been so much easier for me to eat proper. It's been so much easier for me to stay committed to what I'm supposed to do. And after I played well, we went and had us a nice meal at a chicken finger place. I had myself four chicken fingers and I had some French fries and I celebrated the fact that I had a great week and we drove home. And now this morning,'m back on my routine eating what I'm supposed to working out. And I don't feel bad for it. You know, it's sort of a reward. Now I don't look at it as, Oh, I got to kick myself in the butt now because I ate something bad. Now it's man, that tastes so good. That was a great reward. And I know I'm not going to have that for a while.

And I'm going to get back on it. It was very difficult to reshape the way I thought about fitness and dieting because it was sort of a chore for me, or it was sort of a, you have to do this, Drew, or people telling me what I had to do and, you know, sort of being able to do it on my own with the support from you guys and have all the information I need right at my fingertips on my emails and on my phone. It's just been an incredibly simplified process, something that has really changed the way I do everything. That's great. I love it. And that's just a huge part of the journey is getting that healthy relationship with food, which is exactly where you're at and

what you're experiencing, where you naturally desire nutritious foods and you understand that you get to eat a wide variety of things doesn't mean that you just have to eat steamed broccoli and boiled chicken breast every day and then occasionally when you want to have stuff that is not nutritious then you do it and you enjoy it and you know that you're you've been doing so many things right that it has no negative impact physiologically and therefore should have no negative impact psychologically. In fact, you should enjoy it. You should eat the chicken fingers and go in the French fries and be like, those are delicious chicken fingers and French fries. And then when

you're done, you're done. There's no moral component there because of the overall context and understanding that there's nothing inherently, I don't even like to say bad foods. I like to say, be more specific because really the issue, right, is we're talking about nutrition. So the chicken fingers, hey, they gave you some protein. So there's that. But yeah, French fries is maybe not the most nutritious source of carbohydrate, but in the context of a nutritious diet and you're experiencing this firsthand, it just doesn't matter. You're getting the majority of your calories from nutritious foods, relatively unprocessed stuff. And so you get to enjoy the indulgences, the treats, the rewards. And some people will say, just for people listening, I think this is worth my hijacking the

conversation for a minute. Some people will say that quote unquote cheat meals or reward meals or free meals, whatever you want to call them are just bad. You shouldn't do it. And they'll say that it promotes an unhealthy relationship with food. Well, I've always disagreed with this. And there's actually a study that came out just recently that showed that cheat meals or free meals, reward is whatever you want to call them, eating off your plan, eating stuff you wouldn't eat every day because it either isn't nutritious enough or it's just too many calories. It doesn't really work because if you had that meal every day,

there goes half of your calories. And now you're supposed to try to fit only, let's say, 1,200, 1,300 calories into these other six meals or five meals or whatever it is. It just makes for awkward dieting. But by including the occasional cheat meal or free meal, what the showed is it improved consistency over time. It helped people more enjoy their diets and therefore stick to them better and get better results. And when you compare that to the literally non-existent physiological or psychological downsides with doing it,

I think it's clear that it's something I still do. It's something anybody who's really into fitness still does. Most of us, we do exactly what you're doing, Drew. We eat a lot of the same types of foods every day and they're foods that we like, but they are chosen because they're nutritious. And then here and there, we go out to restaurants or we cook food ourselves or whatever. We eat off plan and we eat something that we have a meal or two that we wouldn't normally have simply because we want to. And that, I think, develops a very healthy and rational relationship

with food. I don't think there's any reason to be extreme one way or the other. Like it sounds like before you were working with us, you were more extreme to the end of, well, I guess you say you flip between extremes of being like all in on something hardcore, quote unquote, clean or healthy, and then go in the other direction. And somewhere in the middle is generally what makes sense. That's the cliche. But in the case of nutrition, it really is the truth that, you know, you want to err on the side of eating more nutritious than less nutritious, but you don't have to be dogmatic about your diet. So it's cool to hear that you've really internalized that. Yeah. It's been, like I said, it was difficult at the beginning to sort of rewire a brain that

is always just getting what it wants. And I know it's sometimes a bad way to put it, but when you want a cheeseburger with great toppings all over it and you just go get it and give it to yourself, you're not standing up or saying, all right, you're not being determined to sort of chase exactly what you want. And for me, it was looking at, okay, I'm at a point right now where I'm at my heaviest. I'm at a point where I can tell when I eat poor that it affects the way I feel the next day. And I would say in college, eat poor, that it affects the way I feel the next day. And, you know, I would say in college, when I had a high metabolism, then I was younger and we were more active and things like that. I could really eat honestly as poorly as I wanted to. And it didn't really affect the way I looked.

And until I got 24, 25, now I'm 26, like, you know, It's scientific proof that as you get older, obviously, things slow down and you can't really do what you used to. I could eat whatever I wanted to in college and never see a change. And now, obviously, I can't do that anymore. So it's been sort of saying to yourself, all right, look, you're not where you used to be. You're not the same 20-year-old who could eat You're not the same 20-year-old who could eat four cheeseburgers a day and not see any ill effects. Now you see when you eat bad, you feel bad. So yeah, it's sort of been a way for me to rewire and readapt my brain to thinking about what's the best thing today for me to eat and for me to do to set myself up for tomorrow. Because I've noticed that you eat the crappy foods, you don't hit the gym, you sit on the couch all day for one day. That for me was really affecting the next day. I wanted to either do the same thing the next day,

sit on the couch, not do anything. Or I wanted to go and get the same foods again. Or I had this crappy food yesterday, let's go get this crappy food today. It was sort of kind of telling myself, all right, look, this is going to affect tomorrow. I know I want it right now, and I know that's not going to hurt right now. I know it's not going to affect me right now, but tomorrow morning, I'm going to wake up, my stomach's going to hurt. I'm going to be groggy. I'm going to have low energy. I'm not going to want to go to the gym. So it was sort of a way for me to rethink it and for me to sort of get into a different way of saying, okay, look, if I eat a decent meal tonight and I don't snack,

I'm going to feel good about myself. First of all, for following the plan. Second of all, my body is going to be healthy the next day, going to have energy to do what I need to do. And that's sort of really what's fallen into the golf tournaments and the golf course is that if I do what I'm supposed to that day, I will set myself up for the next day to be in the exact position I want to be in. So waking up, feeling high energy as soon as I wake up, that's what I've noticed is, you know, I get out of bed and I'm a person who takes a solid 20, 30, maybe an hour to wake up just to get the body moving, be alert, get the brain activity going. It happens a lot faster now. I pop out of bed, get in the shower, and I'm ready to go. It doesn't take me a while or I don't need a Red Bull or a

coffee or whatever it is to spark it kind of feel it when I wake up. You know, following the plan is difficult, but the rewards are so much higher because if you eat the right foods the next day, you're cleared out to do exactly what you need to do. And, you know, that's sort of been the change for me was getting out of feeling, just feeling bad a lot of days to where I was unmotivated now I feel all right if I eat great this week for the whole week and I work out all week I'm going to feel so great in two weeks you know the week after it's going to be a great setup for me to go and practice golf every day and not get tired and to work on everything and you know it's just the way

I've sort of changed the way I thought about fitness and thought about the diet plan has really sort of changed a lot of other things in my mental state that it's, you know, directly affected the way I play golf in a positive way. You know, just being out there, being in a good mindset, feeling good in your body, you know, it just relieves a whole lot of stress and worry and just unlocks a way for you to play the state of mind, almost a Zen to just go out there and perform. Yeah, I love it. It probably makes it more fun, I would guess. And that matters. I mean, that's something I've heard from not just golfers, but a number of athletes, high level athletes I've spoken to over the years that being able to retain that sense of fun is just a big part of being able to continually perform at a very high

level. And I can see that. I haven't been there myself, but I've done a lot of business work. So I understand building a business, the more fun you can make it, the better results you get. So I would assume that sports are very similar. Right. And necessarily in golf, you don't have to eat well. You don't have to work out. You could theoretically play a 30-year career without stepping foot in a gym. Obviously, you'd have to be incredibly talented and you'd have to have skills that are far better than a lot of guys who are putting in the proper work. It takes a lot of other factors, but theoretically you could not step foot in the gym and play decent golf. Nowadays, you really can't because everybody else is in the gym. Everybody else is eating well. And if you are not, you're just getting lapped every single day. Rory works out five times a week,

six, seven times a week, and eats good all week. If I do it one day a week and I eat good one day a week, I just lost essentially an entire week to my competition. Not that Rory is directly my competition yet. Hopefully one day it will be, but that's sort of the mindset I have to have is that if I'm not doing this work, somebody else is, and somebody else is passing me and somebody else is getting stronger and hitting it farther. And I've noticed that I cannot just rely on being the tallest guy in the golf tournament anymore. I used to walk out there, be six, five, be half a foot taller than the rest of the guys that I'm playing against bombing around a golf course and get away with

bad nutrition and bad physical condition because I was maybe a tiny bit more talented or had a tiny bit more of an advantage because my body was bigger and could hit the ball farther. Nowadays, it doesn't matter if you're 5'7 or 6'7 in golf, you have to put the work in every day or else you're getting laughed by everybody else. And it really shows at this level. I've worked with you guys for about, you know, six months and I've really grinded hard, I would say the last three. You know, once I started to see everything changing, I fired it up and, you know, I would say working with Harry, I've had to figure out a proper balance. I think at times I dialed it back too much and was eating maybe 1,500, 1,300 calories a day and found that that wasn't enough for me.

Yeah, I was losing a ton of weight, but it wasn't proper for me to have the energy levels and to perform. So finding that proper balance, getting in the gym and catching up with the guys who are passing me in their fitness and in their diet plans, it really does relieve an entire part of the sport. Now I feel and look and perform the same ways as these other guys doing all the hard work. And now all I got to do is just go out there, smash the ball around the golf course and make a few putts. That's really all I have to worry about. It's that easy. You just do that. And I wish it was that easy all the time, but it's starting to feel that way more, which has been able to, uh, you know,

really relieve a lot of pressure. That's great. So where do you want to go from here? What are your goals in terms of your fitness? What are you looking forward to, let's say over the next six months? Yeah. Um, yeah, I've been thinking about that. I think I've lost all the weight. I think I could continue to lose a little bit more, but I think now I really need to transition out of this feeling of I need to get smaller. I need to be skinnier. I was wearing size 40 pants that were a little too tight and my belts were on their last button or on their last hole. And, you know, I was getting to the point where, man, I'm going to have to upgrade pant sizes again and belt sizes again. And, you know, now I'm down and everything, everything feels good. And I feel,

you know, out of weight that I feel like I can maintain. Now I feel like I really need to start hammering it out a little bit harder in the gym. I feel like if I could get better physique and get a little bit stronger, obviously in my shoulders, because that's where I have these issues mainly with my body is my loose shoulders. I've noticed that gaining strength has just locked those things in a little bit tighter. I don't have the constant little aching pains that you experience with loose shoulders. And I feel like that's getting better, which is something I want to continue to do. I definitely want to try to put on, you know, a few pounds of muscle and I don't really know right now exactly what my goal weight

in the end of all this is. Yeah, it's hard to predict. You know, I assume that I need to continue to follow the meal plan and lose a little bit more weight. But I also feel like I need to up it a little bit in the gym. I need to probably put on a little bit more muscle. And I did notice that when I lost the weight, this is probably in middle December, late December, I'd lost a lot of weight pretty quick because I'd found the right balance. I'd found the right foods and I'd found the amount of calories I needed to feel okay and to lose weight in the same time. And when I found that it really, it was like flipping a switch. I mean, it just shed off of me like, you know, a dog in the summer, it was just easy and it just fell off and it was great. So I was able to, you know, sort of put the muscle back on, find the balance between being strong and being lighter so that I can walk and feel great on the golf course.

I think that's the next step for me is just really trying to pack the muscle on and get that ball speed going upwards and get the club speed going up. And, you know, I've noticed that with losing about 40 pounds, I did lose a few miles per hour of clubhead speed. That was in December. Now my club head speed is higher than it was. It took me, I would say maybe a month of practicing and of working out to sort of fill that gap of my club head speed, which wasn't something I was worried about. You know, I was out there hitting balls and I was swinging as hard as I could. And yeah, it was 112 miles an hour as opposed to 116 or 18. And all I had to do was focus a little bit more. And this is what I found out with Harry was that I ate a little bit more and I had a little

bit more energy there. My club head speed went up a mile or two right there alone, then hitting the gym another mile or two. And then now that I've settled into the current weight I'm in, you know, a few weeks of being, you know, about a month of being around 215, I've really kind of settled into this. And now my club head speed is, you know, all the way back up to 117, 118, which is, you know, at the highs of where I've been in my career. So it's all starting to line up here. It's starting to feel good. My next goal was to sort of add on some muscle and really just see where my ball speed club head speed will go because you know obviously the name of the game this day is distance everybody loves to see the ball go far and everybody loves the guys who can bomb it and you know I think that's important for me is feeling

like I can keep my club head speed and my ball speed at a competitive level with the guys who hit it the farthest because I did hit it a long way my whole life I've been taller than all the other guys I played against and bigger than all the guys I've played against. And the ball naturally went farther. And now that all these guys are in the gym getting strong, you see guys who are significantly smaller than me hitting it past me. So that's something that I think is the next step is just bulking up a little bit, you know, using my big body to make sure that that ball is still traveling farther than the guys who are smaller than me. I think that's, you know, first of all, a bit of a kick in the butt to see somebody smaller than you hit it past you.

Obviously, us guys, you know, somebody out there who's smaller than you is throwing the ball farther than you. You want to do it better than they do. So I think that's the next step is sort of gaining back that big power game of hitting it a long way. And that's really my main goal is getting to where this golf ball is just taken off and going forever. Makes sense. Yeah. It should be pretty straightforward of just really doing what you're doing. And when you're done with the fat loss phase, raising your calories up so

you can gain muscle and strength more effectively, which also, well, you've already experienced this. You'll just generally have even higher energy levels. I know that's not really been an issue, but you'll notice in your workouts when you're consistently eating around what you're burning or maybe even a little bit more, it really does make a difference in your workouts and then that'll carry over into your golf as well. So I think it's very straightforward. It's just going to be continue doing what you're doing and bringing your calories up when you are ready to stop losing fat,

which is probably on you. It's probably mostly an aesthetic thing. Once you start getting around 15% body fat, you start having abs. And as far as athletics go, generally getting too lean, depending on what you're doing, it can be a hindrance. depending on what you're doing, it can be a hindrance.

But with what you're doing, you probably could easily maintain, let's say, 10% to 15% body fat as your standard range. And that's where you look good, you feel good. And then you're mostly focusing on just getting stronger, gaining muscle, and translating that into more power on the course. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, being a golfer, it's not always important to hit it as far as you can every time it's having, you know, the ability to hit it 285 yards in the middle of the fairway and swing smooth all the time. And then when you get that big open fairway

on a par five or something that's downwind, to be able to step up there and unleash another gear that guys don't have, that's sort of something I felt like I used to have in college when I was more consistent in the gym. And losing a little bit of an extra gear, guys like Aaron Rodgers, when they need to throw that ball 70 yards, they can step back there and hum that thing out there 70. Now, do they do it every play? Rarely, but having the ability and having the mindset and having that knowledge in your head of being like, okay, well, whenever I need it, it's sitting there. I can reach back and I can put one out there 320, 330 whenever I need to. That's sort of the gear that I want to get back into my game. And I think that's exactly, you know, the next step is phasing out of this weight loss and into the muscle gain. Makes sense. Well, Hey man, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this interview. I found it very enjoyable again, just cause I appreciate what you're doing. And I, and I liked the sport

for those listening who are just interested in following your golf journey, your fitness journey, where can they find you? I'm assuming maybe Instagram. Is that the best place? Yeah. You know, I'm sort of in the middle of this season and throughout some of the things that have been going on the last year or so, I've phased out social media as much, sort of trying to get things a little bit quieter and get a better mental state. It's been an important part. But yeah, I am on Instagram DL underscore IV on Instagram and love 4D on Twitter. And, you know, the corn fairy tour

is my goal right now. I want to get out there full time. I qualified for the event last week and had a really great week out there and had a lot of fun and, you know, sort of getting myself out there around all my peers, guys I grew up against and competing with them has just, you know, been a lot of fun and it's, it's where I want to be. It's where I'm going to be. It's something I'm dedicated to getting there. So Korn Ferry Tour apps, I'm on there and playing tournaments and, you know, just trying to get myself out there like Rory and Tiger and DJ and these guys. That's the place everybody wants to be is on TV every weekend, making a ton of money. So, you know, that's the final goal here.

And the rest of this season for me is going to be trying more of those qualifiers. They have these little one-day qualifiers on Mondays, and you can qualify for these tournaments. And if you have a good week, you can be out there full-time. So we're just looking to catch lightning in a bottle and try to take it one week at a time right now. Awesome, man. Well, best of luck. I'll be watching. I'll be keeping an eye and I hope to see you doing exactly what you want to do. I think you're on the right path. I mean, you have the right mindset. You're putting in the work. You're

doing all the little things that add up to the big things. It's cool. It's fun to see. Yeah. Thanks, man. It's been a lot of fun to work with you guys. It's been a real game changer for me just getting out of the mindset of it being a chore. It's now fun, like you said, changing the way you think about it into being a fun activity of losing weight. It's not grueling like, oh, a lot of people say, oh, the beach season's coming up. I have to lose weight. I've gotten completely out of that. And now it's just fun. It's enjoyable.

I hate to say easy now because it's never easy to put in hard work. But once you get into that groove, once you get into that routine of doing it, it really does get a lot easier. And you guys have been a big help with that with the ease of all your methods and all your training things. It's just been so much fun for me and I can't thank you and Harry Barnes enough for all the help. Yeah, our pleasure. I was excited to take this project on when your brother-in-law first reached out to me because I knew that we could do well and I knew that we could really help you.

So it's cool to see. And it's just that point that you were mentioning where you've gotten to the place now where I think you would agree that it's easier to keep doing the right things than not. You get into the routine, you get those habits established, and it feels just natural for you now to do the things that I wouldn't say that you quote unquote should be doing, but it's the things that you know are going to contribute to the bigger picture. There's a bigger purpose here. You're not, like you said, you're not just losing weight for some random, oh yeah, I guess I'm going to be on the beach and I don't want to feel embarrassed. That's not very inspiring, but the reasons now that you're doing what you're

doing are much more inspiring and make it more inherently fun because there is something where you look at the trajectory and you get excited and you go, yeah, this is great. Like this, this could really take me to a cool place as opposed to, I just don't want to look like shit for my spring break trip or something. That's just not very motivating. That should be the bonus. I think the bonus for me has been my girlfriend saying, wow, you look great. Or people at a golf tournament saying, wow, Drew, I can tell you you've lost weight. That obviously builds into it, but that should be the reward for it. That shouldn't be the motivation, which is what I've found. For me, it's really been one day at a time. I do a lot of golf psychology reading and talking

to people like that who say the importance of it is one shot at a time, focusing on each thing, one shot at a time until you run each thing, one shot at a time until you run out of holes. It's kind of my mindset that I've put into this working out is take it one day at a time. Yeah. You have a bad day, eat like crap and forget to work out. Not a big deal. As long as the next day you get right back into it, you know, you hit a bad shot on the golf course. It doesn't matter. And you got another one coming up immediately. Just focus on that one and get into it. And so, you know, taking it one day at a time, it's all been great for me. And, you know, having the mindset of obviously the bigger picture and all this has just sort of changed the way I even have my ideas about fitness and diet

plans. It's just simplified it so much to where now it's literally just like an everyday habit instead of something I feel like I have to do. Totally. Totally. So cool. Totally agree. And thanks again for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it. Absolutely do. Totally, totally. So cool. Totally agree. And thanks again for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you, Mike. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from, because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search

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