Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Absolute Best Way to Improve Your Muscle Definition

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

If you’re like most people, you don’t just want “big muscles”--you want defined muscles. For example, if you’re a guy, would you rather be big and “fluffy,” or smaller but ripped? And if you’re a gal, would you rather be skin and bones or lean and toned? Well, if you chose the second option, then you’re in the right place, because in this podcast, I’m going to teach you the simple science of not just gaining muscle, but gaining muscle definition. We’re going to cut through the myths and lies, too. “Clean eating” isn’t the key, and neither is exercise choice, rep ranges, or supplementation. Genetics aren’t the answer, either (fortunately!). You may not have the genetics to look exactly like your favorite Instagram model, but you don’t need singular genes to be a shining example of muscle definition. You have the same types of physiological hardware as the rest of us, and your body (and muscles) will respond fantastically if given the proper stimuli. So, if you’re ready to learn what muscle definition is, and what doesn't increase muscle definition and what does, then listen in. 3:51 - What is muscle definition? 10:22 - Do you have to eat clean to gain muscle definition? 14:42 - Do you have to do a lot of high rep training to gain muscle definition? 19:32 - Do you have to use cables and machines to gain muscle definition? 20:47 - Do you have to eat a low carb diet to gain muscle definition? 24:39 - Do you have to do a lot of cardio to gain muscle definition? 28:01 - How do you increase muscle definition? 32:48 - Do I need to take supplements to gain muscle definition? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And 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. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, 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. Hello friends, this is Michael Matthews.

This is the Muscle Life Podcast. Welcome, welcome. This episode is going to be about improving muscle definition, which yes, is a newbie question. So if you are a regular around here this may not be for you because you know exactly what to do to improve muscle definition but if you're not sure what to do this episode is going to be helpful for you and i wanted to record it because it's a question i get asked about fairly often, mostly from women who want to know how do I improve my muscle definition, but sometimes from guys as well. And I thought it would be helpful for me to record my answer. I have an article on it over at legionathletics.com and I have a copy paste that I can send people, but I figured, Hey, why not throw up

a podcast on it as well? Because it is not something that I have specifically addressed already. So if you have muscle definition on your mind and you're a guy, it means probably that you would rather be smaller, but ripped as opposed to and fluffy, as some people like to say. And if you are a woman, you would prefer to be lean and toned as opposed to skin and bones. And that's really what we're talking about when we say improve muscle definition. We're talking about getting that muscular, lean, athletic look. And there's a lot of bad advice out there about how to best achieve that. Clean eating, rep ranges, exercise choices, supplementation, even genetics are often talked about. And

fortunately, none of those things are really the answer. We can start with genetics, something that many people are concerned about because they think they just don't have it in them to look a certain way. Well, the truth about that is while you may not have the genetics to look exactly like your favorite Instagram influencer, you do not need exceptional genes to be a shining example of muscle definition and health and fitness in general. Fortunately, you have the same physiological hardware as the rest of us, and your body and your muscles will respond well if they are given the proper stimuli. And that's what we are going to be getting at in this episode of the

podcast. We're going to go over what muscle definition is and what does not increase it and what does. So let's start with what is muscle definition exactly? Very simple. Muscle definition is the combination of developed muscles with a relatively low body fat percentage. That's it. As you gain muscle and lose fat, your muscle definition increases. And that means then that simply having a lot of muscle is not enough. For example, you can find plenty of pictures of guys online who are big, they have big muscles, but not much definition. And really what this comes down to in terms of body fat percentage is once you get at and above about 15% body fat as a guy, you really start to lose muscle definition everywhere in your body. That's

where your abs start to disappear. Vascularity starts to disappear, muscle separation starts to disappear, particularly in like your shoulders and your arms, separation between your biceps and your triceps, for example, your legs and so on. But simply having a low body fat percentage is not the answer either. You can find plenty of people who have, plenty of guys in particular, who have a body fat percentage at or below 10%, which is quite lean, but not quite enough muscle to complete the look. Maybe they have abs and they have some muscle definition there, but everything else is just kind of soft and flabby looking. And again, that's simply

because he has not gained enough muscle yet. To put a number to it, I would say that for the average guy to get the amount of muscle definition that he wants, it's going to require gaining anywhere from 15 to 25, maybe even 30 pounds of muscle. And to make some pop culture references, let's say the 15-ish pound range is like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, and the 25 to 30-ish pound range would be Brad Pitt in Troy. You see, in both of those cases, his body fat levels were probably about the same, somewhere around 8% probably, but in Troy, he had quite a bit more muscle. Now, that's not exactly a revelation to most guys, and it's not discouraging. I mean, we got into weightlifting to get bigger

and leaner, and we just want to know how to do it most effectively. But many women, however, are often skeptical or downright incredulous of advice to gain muscle because they've been told many, many times that that's going to make them bulky. That's not going to make them defined. And that is completely false. Gaining muscle does not make women bulky. Having too much body fat does. And no, that's not me fat shaming. That's just me stating a simple fact. You see, if you take a woman who looks very lean and athletic and defined, her body fat level is going to be, let's say, somewhere around 18%. That's oftentimes the level that many women aspire to and think of when they hear defined, toned, sculpted, and other similar terms. Ironically though, if you were to take that woman who looks like that at 18% body fat and raise her body fat to 30%, all of a sudden she's going to be looking pretty bulky, pretty quote unquote blocky, because the majority of that fat is going to accumulate on top of her

muscles, which she has to have quite a bit more of than the average woman to look that way when she's at a lower body fat percentage, to have that lean, defined, toned, athletic look. It actually requires, on average, probably 10 or 15 pounds of muscle above normal for women to get that look once their body fat level is low enough. And so that's why weightlifting can make women look bulky, but it's not the weightlifting per se that's doing it. It is simply having too much body fat. So women who are getting into weightlifting to get a lean tone defined body just need to know that the quote unquote price they have to pay if they don't want to look bulky is they simply have to keep their body fat level around 20%. If they let it get too high, they are going to look a bit bigger than they probably want to look. Their legs might start looking like logs

and their butts might start getting too big for their britches and their arms start to fill up like sausages. Now, also keep in mind, there are many women who don't care so much about those things and there's nothing wrong with 30% body fat per se. you can be perfectly healthy at that level of body fat. You start to get above that. And I would argue that it's probably going to start having negative effects on your health, regardless of how well you eat or how much you exercise. And as you start to get very high, start to get into the obese range, which actually technically starts around 30% body fat, technically starts around 30% body fat and it's going to impair your health. But 25%, anywhere from 25 to 30%, you can be perfectly healthy. And many women like that look. They actually would prefer that look over 18 to 20%. And that's totally fine as well. So I'm simply referring

to what I have experienced having worked with thousands of women over the years. And generally speaking, the look that most women want requires gaining 10 to 15 pounds of muscle in the right places on their bodies and reducing their body fat to around 20%. That's where the muscle they've built can really shine. So instead of looking flabby and malnourished, which they can look like at 18% body fat if they have very little muscle. They look lean. They look toned. Their butt looks perky. Their legs have sleek curves. Their arms look defined. So anyways, that's about it as far as what muscle definition is. Now let's talk about how to actually achieve it. And before we get to that, let's dispel five big myths. Because if you are struggling to

improve your muscle definition, you have probably bought into one or more of these myths. And I know I've made these mistakes and I've made many other mistakes and things didn't start to straighten out for me until I had wasted many years in the gym spinning my wheels. But here I am today, right? years in the gym spinning my wheels. But here I am today, right? Let's start with the first myth, and that is that you must eat clean to look lean. You've probably heard this many times. You've heard that you have to clean up your diet to tone up your body. Fitness magazines and experts and gurus have been dinning this into our heads for decades now, and it is one of the first and probably only things a personal trainer will tell you about dieting, and it is one of the first and probably only things a personal trainer will tell you about dieting, and it's simply not true. What is true is, as far as body composition is

concerned, which we were talking about there is muscle mass and fat mass on your body. How much you eat, how much food you eat is far more important than what food you eat. And that's not to say that the nutritional quality of your diet doesn't matter because it does, but as far as gaining muscle and losing fat and maintaining a certain body composition goes, calories, which are referring to the energy content in food, and macros, which refers to how those calories break down into protein, carbs, and fat are king and queen, not the individual foods that you're eating, not the foods that are providing the calories or macros. Now, the primary mechanism in play here is called energy balance, which is the relationship between the amount of energy that you consume versus burn. And this is ultimately what dictates whether you

gain, lose, or maintain weight over time. And if you're not familiar with energy balance and you really want to learn more about that, you can find an article that I wrote. If you just search Legion Athletics energy balance, it'll come up. I don't know exactly what the title is. I think it's like how to use energy balance to lose fat and gain muscle, something along those lines, but it will pop up. And I'm also going to record a podcast specifically on energy balance, but I'm not sure when. I'd have to look at my calendar. So for now, the easiest way to learn is just to check out the article I wrote. But I'm going to talk a little bit more about it here. I'm not going to go into all the

details, but what it really boils down to is losing fat. If you want to lose fat, that requires eating fewer calories or less energy than you burn over time. And that is true regardless of the foods that you eat, regardless of where those calories come from. So in that sense, a calorie is very much a calorie and that's never going to change. But when you want to quote unquote lose weight, what you really mean is you want to lose fat and not muscle. The goal should not be to just lose weight or gain weight for that matter either. In that case, you want to gain muscle and not fat. And when we are looking at body composition through that lens, then we do have to go beyond

just calories in and calories out. We have to now factor in where those calories are coming from in terms of protein, carbohydrate, and fat. And those three nutrients are also known as macronutrients because your body requires them in large amounts to stay alive. And that has been shortened to macros. So you've probably heard that before. And so here's what you need to take away from this first myth we are debunking. The quote-unquote cleanliness of your diet, of the food that you of calories and they're very tasty and easy to overeat, and that then encourages overeating. But that's a far cry from the prevailing belief that some foods just make you fat, including sugar or any other dietary boogeyman, and that other foods just make you lean inherently and magically. And the same fundamentals that we're talking about here apply to gaining muscle

too. To gain muscle efficiently, you want to consistently eat more calories, slightly more calories than you're burning over time. And you want to make sure that your macronutrients are properly balanced. High protein is very important. High carb is better for most people, but not all. Some people just do better with lower carb diets, even though they're not optimal for muscle gain. A high carb diet is certainly more conducive to muscle gain, but that doesn't mean that everyone should be on a high carb diet. And if you want to learn more about that in particular, just search for Legion Athletics lean bulking, and you'll find an article that I wrote on that. I may have already recorded a podcast on it too. I'm not sure. You have to search the podcast feed.

All right. So let's move to the second myth, muscle definition myth number two, and that is that you have to do a lot of high rep training. And this is one that I heard many, many years ago that to get defined, to get, to really bring out the shreds in your muscles, you want to get huge pumps and you want to really feel the burn and really work on those cuts in the muscles. And yeah, no, that's, that's fake news. Dropping the weights and increasing the reps does not do anything special other than increased workout volume and it can be easier on your joints. I mean, there definitely is a use for lighter weights and higher reps, but that is not something that you have to do to get good muscle definition and it doesn't speed up the process of bringing out muscle definition. And that means it

doesn't help with muscle separation, muscle density, vascularity. Those are all things that I once heard and maybe believed. At least I went along with them to try them out. And ironically, if you're like most people, you need to do more or less the exact opposite of that to really bump up your muscle definition. In other words, you need to focus more on heavy weight lifting for fewer reps. And what I'm talking about here is working with weights in the range of, let's say, 70 to 85, maybe even 90% of your one rep max in the rep range of anywhere from four reps per set to, let's say, up to maybe 10 or 12, not 20, 30 plus and beyond. And the reason for this is pretty simple. To increase your muscle

definition, you need to gain muscle. We already talked about that. The best way to gain muscle is to progressively overload your muscles, which means to progressively increase the amount of tension that they're producing over time. And the most effective way to do that is to get stronger. And the most effective way to get stronger is to lift heavier weights. That doesn't mean you only need to be lifting, let's say very heavy weights, 85 or 90%, but you definitely need to be training with heavy weights. Again, in the rep range of, let's say anywhere from four reps per set to 12 reps per set. And you need to be working hard in those sets too. You need to be taking those sets close to the point of technical failure, which is the point where your technique starts to break

down. And you could get a couple more reps if you really tried, but they're going to be ugly. They're going to be sloppy. They're going to be grinders. I like to end almost all of my hard sets, my working sets, my muscle building sets, one or two reps shy of that point of technical failure. And again, what that means is you're going to be working hard in your sets. You are going to be working up a sweat in your workouts. And if you want to learn more about this point in particular, exactly how hard you should be working in your hard sets, search Legion Athletics RPE scale, and you'll find an article that I wrote called, This is the Best Guide to the RPE Scale on the

Internet. I also have a podcast on it as well. So you could search RPE in the feed and check that out. And why RPE, you might be wondering, well, that stands for rating of perceived exertion. And it is a numerical measurement of how hard an exercise feels. And it's useful for understanding how hard you should be pushing in your weightlifting workouts. But let's get back on track here. The key takeaway here is if you want to increase your whole body muscle definition, then you want to increase your whole body strength. And that's going to require a lot of heavy weightlifting and a lot of compound weightlifting, which refers to doing exercises that are called compound

exercises that involve multiple joints and multiple major muscle groups like the squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press. Those aren't the only ones, of course, but those are the ones people are most familiar with. And focusing your efforts on those types of exercises over isolation exercises, which focus on one major muscle group and involve just one joint like the biceps curl or the triceps press down. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode

and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Let's move on to the next myth here, muscle definition myth number three, and that is

you must use cables and machines. Now, this is kind of a natural extension of the last myth because it's a bad idea to do burnout sets on compound exercises like the squat, deadlift, overhead press, and bench press. So if you are going to do that, if you're really going to chase the pump and really feel the burn, you're probably going to be doing it with quite a few machines and cable exercises. And these types of exercises can definitely have a place in your training, but as far as muscle and strength gain go, they play second fiddle to the free weight compound exercises that I've just been talking about. And so the takeaway here then is really in line with the takeaway from

the last myth. And that is just that most people need to have more muscle to have more muscle definition and grinding away on cables and machines is just not the best way to do that. So instead, what they should be doing is they should be focusing on the harder stuff, the big barbell movements that involve your entire body, as opposed to the fun stuff that pumps up your biceps and your chest. Okay, myth number four, you must eat a low-carb diet. Oh, low-carb dieting. It's all the rage these days. And everywhere we go, we hear that if we just cut the carbs out of our diet, especially the simple carbs or the white carbs, the heavens will part and we will be blessed with the body we've always dreamed of. It will be lean. It will be muscular. It will be

pain-free. It'll be full of energy. Well, no, it doesn't work like that. And especially not for many of us fitness peoples, because ironically, low-carb dieting will not only fail to help you improve your muscle definition more than high-carb dieting, it can actually make it harder. Now, I mentioned a little bit of this just earlier, but let's go through it again. First, let's talk about fat loss. Here's something I didn't mention, and that is that you don't lose fat faster on a low-carb diet unless it helps you stick to your diet better, unless you just like it, essentially, and maybe you feel fuller on it, although people often feel fuller on a higher-carb diet, not a lower. If for whatever reason,

you just find that you can hit your calories and your macros better with fewer carbs rather than more carbs, then that's a reason to do it. But you should know that study after study after study has shown that so long as protein intake is high, people on low carb diets do not lose fat faster than people on high carb diets. So what that means then is so long as you eat the right amount of calories and protein, how many carbs you eat has no effect on how much fat you lose and how quickly you lose it. It can affect weight loss initially, because when you drop your carbs, your body flushes out water and glycogen, which is a form of carbohydrates stored in the muscles

and liver. And so you can see a nice little burst of weight loss, but realize that is mostly water and glycogen loss, which of course stabilizes in the second or third week. And from there on out, you're not even going to see faster weight loss with low carb and certainly not faster fat loss. Another point is muscle gain. And I mentioned this earlier that you gain less muscle on a low carb diet because when you cut your carbs, as I just mentioned this, you reduce the amount of glycogen that's stored in the muscles. And that's an important source of fuel for your workouts, especially intense workouts. And that, in turn, reduces both your muscle endurance and your strength, which can make for lower quality workouts and slower progression in your training over time.

And that, of course, means slower muscle growth. And that's not just me saying that. That's been demonstrated in a training over time. And that of course means slower muscle growth. And that's not just me saying that, that's been demonstrated in a number of studies. And research also shows that low intramuscular glycogen levels impairs post-workout signaling related to muscle growth. So in other words, what low carb dieting does is it causes your body, causes your muscles in particular to respond less anabolically to your workouts, which makes them less effective for muscle building. And as if all that weren't enough, studies show that low carb dieting also raises cortisol levels and reduces testosterone levels. And as cortisol is a powerful catabolic hormone, it breaks tissues down and

testosterone is the primary hormonal driver of muscle growth. The downsides of that are clear. Now, I'm going to reiterate what I said earlier, though, and that is that you can gain muscle on a low-carb diet. You can. It's not optimal, but you can, on a keto diet. And so if you really like low-carb dieting or really like keto dieting, that's fine. Just know that it's not optimal. And if you don't particularly like low-carb dieting or keto dieting, then you can eat plenty of carbs and be plenty healthy and enjoy more muscle and strength gain in the gym. Okay, so let's move on to the fifth and final muscle definition myth, and that is that you got to do a lot of cardio. And yes, you're going to love me for this one because you actually don't have to grind your joints into dust to get lean and to

stay lean. In fact, you can lose all kinds of fat and you can stay very lean. You can have a six pack year round doing absolutely no cardio if you are so inclined because it's energy balance that drives fat loss or fat gain, not food and not exercise choices. And what that means then is so long as you know how to manage your calories in and calories out, you can get and stay lean without doing cardio. That said, cardio certainly can help you lose fat faster because, well, it burns energy. And research shows that doing cardio can also help you control your appetite, and that can make it easier to stick to your diet. And there are health benefits to be had with doing cardio. I'm not anti-cardio, but I do not recommend doing a lot of cardio when you are

wanting to lose weight or lose fat, and certainly not only cardio. I would much rather have you spend most of your time training your muscles to drive muscle gain, or at least to help you retain your muscle while you are restricting your calories, and then use calorie restriction to drive fat loss. And then if you want to supplement that with cardio to lose a bit more fat, then that's fine. You don't want to do too much though, because if you go overboard, you can actually lose quite a bit of muscle along with the fat that you are losing, which might first look nice because, oh, the scale's going down. But the more muscle you lose, the closer

you get to the dreaded skinny fat look that nobody wants. And to be clear on that, what skinny fat really comes down to is a relatively low body fat percentage, but very little muscle. That's how you end up looking skinny fat. And I understand how frustrating that can be. Again, I've worked with many, many people over the years who came to me skinny fat and then worked their way out of it, but they had no idea what to do in the beginning because they already had lost a bunch of fat. Now they were fairly lean, but all they knew is they just didn't like what they saw in the mirror and didn't know what to do about it. Anyway, as far as cardio goes, here's a simple recommendation when you are restricting

your calories to lose fat. If you want to maximize fat loss, if you want to lose fat as quickly as possible, do one to two hours of high intensity interval training sessions. Keep those sessions though to no more than 30 minutes. I myself do 20 to 30 minutes if I'm doing HIIT, as you've probably heard it referred to, H-I-I-T. And if you don't want to do that for whatever reason, then you can do good old steady state cardio, but I would say do no more than two to three hours a week. It's just not necessary to do more than that. And your final option is just walking, the ultimate steady state cardio, which many people overlook because they think, oh, how effective can it really be? It's just walking. But walking is great, actually. If you walk at a brisk pace, not power walking, but just walking like you have somewhere to go,

you're going to burn, let's say somewhere around three to 400 calories per hour. And it's going to have a negligible impact on your body in terms of impairing muscle and strength gain or post-workout recovery. And it's a good excuse to get outside and off a screen and breathe some fresh air and so forth. All right. So that's it for the fifth and final myths. So now let's go over how to increase muscle definition. I know I've dropped various tips and hints throughout, but let's just summarize things. The name of the game here is adding muscle and dropping fat. We know that. And if you're a guy, that means that you are probably going to have to add somewhere between 20 and 25 pounds of muscle to your frame if you're just an average dude.

And then get your body fat to around 10% to get the look that you really want, the defined look. And if you are a woman, it probably means gaining 10 to 15 pounds of muscle in the right places and getting your body fat down to somewhere around 20%. And that's the bikini body. And as far as doing that, fortunately, it's pretty straightforward. The average guy can gain somewhere around 15 or 20 pounds of muscle in his first year of proper weightlifting. And the average gal can gain about half that. And what's more, if you're new to proper weightlifting, proper strength training, then you should be able to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. So you are going to enjoy a bit of that recomposition as it's referred to, at least for your first six months or so.

And to do that, you don't have to do anything special. You just set up your diet to lose fat. So you make sure that you are maintaining a calorie deficit, make sure that you're getting enough protein, probably should be getting enough carbohydrate as well. Again, a higher carb approach is probably going to work well for you. But once your newbie gains are behind you, which really just refers to the fact that for the first six months or so, some people see it for a bit longer, maybe eight months, max would be 12 months. Your body's hyper responsive to weightlifting. And so you are going to gain muscle and strength fairly quickly in the beginning. That's newbie gains. Once it's over though, it's gone for good. And then you really can't recomp effectively anymore. You can't

effectively gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. You really just need to choose one or the other. And so what that means then is if you are a guy who is over 15% body fat, then I would recommend cutting first. This is, again, this is the formula for increasing your muscle definition. The first thing is let's get your body fat down to the 10% range or so. And if you're a woman over 25%, let's get that down to about 20%. And I won't go into all the details as to why this is, but the long story short is your body's muscle building machinery, so to speak. It just works best when you're leaner. And if you keep your body fat levels generally lower, just in the athletic range, we're not talking about bodybuilding range. This is just athletic. It just makes it easier to manage your

body composition over the longterm. You're going to gain more muscle when you are lean bulking. You are not going to have to cut as long when you are done lean bulking and you want to get your abs back and see what you're working with. It's just you are going to find the journey more enjoyable. And so then once you have your body fat level where we want it, so if you're a guy, if you're around 10%, and if you are a woman around 20%, then it's time to focus on gaining muscle. And this is obviously where you'd start. If your body fat is already around that, if you're already around 10%, you don't have to be at 10% exactly. If you're 11% or 12% as a guy, or if you're 21% or 22% as a woman, that's totally fine. You can just focus on, you don't have to necessarily drop those

last percent or two. And similarly, when your body fat level gets up to, as a guy, let's say 15, 16, 17%, that's where you call it quits in the lean bulk and you start cutting again. It doesn't have to be exactly at 15%. And as a woman, 25, 26, 27, that's okay. Anyways, so you're a guy, you're at 10 to 12%. Let's say you're a girl at 20 to 22%. It's time to maximize muscle gain and know that does not mean that you have to gorge yourself every day or drink a gallon of milk and just pile on body fat. In fact, that's actually the opposite of what I want you to do when you're lean bulking. I want to see slow and steady muscle gain as well as fat gain. You can't completely eliminate fat gain because again, you do need to maintain a calorie surplus to maximize muscle and strength gain. And that

will come with some fat gain. But I'm talking about something that accumulates over the course of months, not days or even weeks. You're not going to see that much of a difference day to day, week to week. But if you're taking pictures and you look. You're not going to see that much of a difference day to day, week to week. But if you're taking pictures and you look month to month, you will see that you are definitely gaining some muscle size, but you're also gaining some fat and that's okay. Again, if you want to learn more about that, just search for Legion Athletics lean bulking, and you will find an article I wrote on it. And I'm not sure, I may have mentioned this earlier, if I have recorded a podcast or not, not entirely sure. If you search the feed for lean bulking,

it may pop up. Now, what about supplements? I saved this for last because it's the least important, but it is something that I get asked about a lot, obviously, and you might be wondering. And the first thing you need to know is no amount of pills and powders are going to get you jacked, are going to get you shredded, are going to get you the body you want. Diet and training is going to do that. And ironically, most supplements are just worthless. Most fat loss supplements do nothing. Most muscle building supplements do nothing.

But if you do know how to drive fat loss with proper dieting and you know how to drive muscle gain with proper dieting and training, like we've just covered in this podcast, then certain supplements can help speed up the process. And I'll just go over them quickly here. The first one's creatine, which is a substance that's found naturally in your body and in foods like red meat. And it's the most researched molecule in all sports nutrition at this point. I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of well-designed and well-executed studies have been done on creatine and the consensus, the weight of the evidence is very clear. Creatine will help you build muscle faster. It will help you gain strength faster. It will improve your anaerobic endurance, which is nice for weightlifting, and it will reduce muscle damage and soreness and help with post-workout recovery. It's also relatively inexpensive if you buy it in bulk and it is perfectly safe.

And that's why it's in my post-workout supplement Recharge, which also contains L-carnitine, L-tartrate, and corosolic acid. And if you are curious as to why and how Recharge can benefit you more than just plain creatine, just head over to legionathletics.com and navigate your way to the store and you'll see it on the menu. You'll see it in the store. All right, next up on supplements is protein powder. And that's not because a protein powder inherently helps you gain muscle or strength faster or lose fat faster. You don't need protein supplements at all, but considering how much protein you need to eat to maximize muscle

growth, which is somewhere around a gram per pound of body weight per day, you could go as low as maybe 0.8 grams per pound of body weight per day. Getting all of that protein from whole food can be pretty impractical, and that's why protein powders can be convenient and useful. You have several options to choose from. The best are whey, casein, and if you want to go with something plant-based, rice protein or pea protein, or I prefer a blend of both. And I offer all of those as well. If you want to learn about my protein powders, just head over to legionathletics.com. And again, just check out the menu and click on protein powders. And there you go. You'll see what I got. I have a whey, I have a casein, and I have a rice and pea blend that is delicious. We actually just reformulated it and re-released it. And I love it. I have it every day.

All right. Next up is a fat burner. And fat burners mostly are junk and are never powerful enough to move the needle alone. junk and are never powerful enough to move the needle alone. But there are a handful of natural safe substances that have been scientifically proven to accelerate fat loss if you also know what you're doing with your diet, if you're maintaining a calorie deficit. And I have a fat burner that has the best of these molecules and it is called Phoenix and it contains a few things you've probably heard of like synephrine, green tea extract, and forscolin. And if you want to learn more about that, again, just head over to legionathletics.com, hit the shop or hit the menu and you'll see in the dropdown fat burners. Okay. The last supplement I want to quickly tell

you about that is worth considering is a pre-workout supplement. And that's simply because a good pre-workout supplement is going that's simply because a good pre-workout supplement is going to help you have better workouts. It's going to help you get in more high quality training, and that's just going to result in more muscle and strength gain over time. But you have to be careful with what you buy and ensure it's not something that is just full of stimulants. That's out there. A lot of pre-workouts have random ineffective ingredients or tiny doses of good ingredients with a lot of cheap stimulants. And in some cases, the stimulants have been banned. You may have heard of DMAA back in the USP Labs days. The JAKT or JAK3D,

as some people called it, contained a powerful stimulant that you can no longer put in products. There was another pre-workout called Craze, which ended up containing a chemical similar to methamphetamine. And I remember when that pre-workout was popular, people were writing me emails. I would get several of these emails a week where people would ask me if I've ever tried Craze and they would tell me how amazing craze is. And I went and looked at the ingredients and it contained almost nothing. I was like, that's weird. I guess people haven't experienced caffeine before. Now it turns out it was meth. Apparently meth makes for some pretty intense workouts. And anyway, if you want to learn about my pre-workout, which is actually light on stimulants, but heavy on natural, safe,

performance-enhancing ingredients like beta-alanine, betaine, citrulline, and alpha-GPC, then you need to head over to legionathletics.com and check out Pulse. That is the name of my pre-workout, or just search Legion Pulse. Okay. Well, that is pretty much everything that I wanted to cover regarding muscle definition. If you want more defined muscles, you need to get more muscle and lose body fat. You need to do one or both of those things. And that means then if you already have quite a bit of muscle, you probably just need to lower your body fat level.

If you get down to about 10% if you're a guy or 20% if you are a woman, you might be surprised how much muscle definition you now have. But if you don't have much muscle, if you don't have an above average amount of muscle, then you want to make sure that you focus on getting the muscle you need, which is somewhere around 20 pounds for most guys who are just starting from scratch and 15 pounds or so for most gals. And you do that by just juggling your lean bulking and your cutting phases or enjoying the recomp during your newbie gains, your first year or so. If you start out, if your body fat level is too high starting out, then you can just focus on reducing it and you will also gain muscle and

strength along the way. And then once your newbie gains expire, you just go back and forth between lean bulking phases and cutting phases. And those lean bulking phases should last quite a bit longer than the cutting phases. And eventually you are happy with the amount of muscle that you have. And then you get your body fat level down to the desired range. Somewhere around 10% of your guys, somewhere around 20% of your girl, and voila. Then you get to play the maintenance game. That's the big payoff because maintaining your ideal physique is much easier and takes a lot less work and discipline than building it.

For example, you can maintain a great physique working out just twice a week if you want to. I actually wouldn't recommend that because you should be exercising more than just twice a week for health reasons. But if for whatever reason you get busy and for an extended period of time, that's all you can do, you can still have a great body with just two workouts per week. I mean, hell, maybe even one workout per week. As far as your diet goes, you can just be more flexible when you're maintaining. You don't necessarily need to weigh and measure your food like you do when you're cutting. And if you overeat for a day or two or three, you can just eat a bit less for a day or two or three and see no real change in your physique. And so anyway, that's what you have to look forward to at the end of the rainbow. And even if you're someone like me who just enjoys working out, you know, I'm in the gym

five days a week, even though I don't quote unquote need to be. And someone who enjoys eating a bunch of nutritious foods like me, it's still nice to know that I can deviate from my routine if I need to with no real consequences. Hey, Mike here. And 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. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at

checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, 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.