The Protein Corner

  I’ve churned through over 150,000 emails, social media comments and messages, and blog comments in the last 6 years. And that means I’ve fielded a ton of questions. As you can imagine, some questions pop up more often than others, and I thought it might be helpful to take a little time every month to choose a few and record and share my answers. So, in this round, I answer the following question: What type of water should you drink? Tap? Bottled? Alkaline? If you have a question you’d like me to answer, leave a comment below or if you want a faster response, send an email to mike@muscleforlife.com. Lastly, if you want to support the show, please drop a quick review of it over on iTunes. It really helps! Mentioned on the Show: Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching What did you think of this episode? Have anything else to share? Let me know in the comments below! The post What Type of Water Should You Drink? Tap? Bottled? Alkaline? appeared first on Legion Athletic...

If you’re looking to build a leaner, stronger, and more muscular body, you’ve probably got some questions concerning bulking vs. cutting .  Specifically, you probably want to know if you should “bulk” and focus on gaining muscle as quickly as possible, or “cut” to strip some fat and then bulk. Both bulking and cutting have pros and cons. Bulking adds both lean mass (yay) and body fat (boo), and cutting unveils your abs (hooray) but stunts muscle growth (hiss). And it’s this dilemma that makes for a fitness purgatory of sorts where you don’t really commit to one strategy or another and thus stagnate in terms of progress. If you want to avoid this pitfall, this is the article for you. In it, you’ll learn . . . How to know if you should bulk or cut How to cut without losing muscle How to “lean bulk” (gain muscle without gaining fat) How long you should cut or bulk How to cut and bulk when you first start lifting If you can bulk and cut at the same time How to tran...

How to Start a Meditation Practice Mindfulness is the foundation of my work in the Mindful Nutrition Method and all that we do here at Nutrition Stripped, however, most people don’t think of mindfulness as a key piece of nourishing themselves. Having a daily mindfulness practice can support your eating habits and give you countless other benefits of meditation itself. If you’re new to mindfulness, let’s first define what it is:  Mindfulness is experiencing the present moment by bringing awareness to your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, environment, and physical body sensations while practicing non-judgment and compassion as you observe. This awareness supports you in more ways than one with how you nourish yourself, so let’s explore why it’s so important for you to use mindfulness as you build your eating habits.  How a Meditation Practice Can Positively Support Your Eating Habits 1. You Cultivate a Positive Relationship With Food  With a mindful approach to nutrit...

  In this podcast, you’re going to learn how to be bad. I don’t mean Mad Max lone-wanderer badass bad. I mean how to be a bad client bad–that is, how to be uncoachable bad. You see, hiring a coach isn’t just a one-and-done transaction that gets you to your goal. If you want results, you still have to do the work. You have to be willing to learn, put in the time, and reach your goals with the help of a guiding hand.  A coach is there to make a plan and guide you, but it’s a team effort. And there are many ways to mess up that client-coach relationship. Someone who knows all about good clients and bad alike is Cody McBroom, and this subject of how to be uncoachable is the topic of this podcast. Cody is a repeat-guest on my show, but in case you’re not familiar with him, he’s the CEO and founder of the Tailored Coaching Method, a lifestyle training and nutrition coaching company (that also coaches how to coach), and host of the Tailored Life podcast.  In this episode,...

Go to any gym, spin studio, or exercise class, and you’ll probably see signs championing high-intensity interval training, also known as “HIIT.”  Or, maybe you’ll see HIIT in action as you walk past a room full of sweaty, stony-faced fitness folks stamping on their exercise bikes like a herd of Zebras trying to escape a lion attack.  The reason for HIIT’s meteoric rise in popularity is simple:  Proponents claim that it’s the single best kind of exercise to lose body fat, and that it’s made traditional, low-intensity cardio obsolete.  Why spend an hour puttering on a stairmaster like a hamster, they say, when you can burn even more fat in just 15-to-30 minutes of high-intensity interval training?  A tantalizing pitch, but is this true?   What does science have to say about all this? Keep reading to find out.  Table of Contents What Is HIIT?  What Is Steady-State Cardio? HIIT vs. Steady-State Cardio for Fat Loss What’s the Best Kin...

A “ bro split ” refers to any workout routine (or “split”) that trains different body parts (or muscle groups) on different days. For instance, training arms one day, chest another, shoulders another, and so on.  The bro split workout routine is commonly associated with bodybuilding magazines and dubious (and often fake natty) fitness “gurus.” As such, it’s often disparaged by the evidence-based fitness community for being scientifically unsound and thus ineffective for gaining muscle and strength.  Is this scorn deserved, though?  In truth, the efficacy of a bro split routine largely comes down to how it’s programmed. Plan your exercises, sets, and reps wisely, and you can make excellent progress following a bro split, especially if you’re new to lifting weights.  Plan your workouts poorly, though, and you’ll likely hit a plateau and spend months spinning your wheels with little to show for it. This is hardly unique to the body-part split, however—every othe...