Meet the coaches: Mike Samuels

This is a post that I'm extremely excited to share with you. You've probably seen me write a lot about Mike Samuels, or Healthy Living, Heavy Lifting. I've been an avid follower of his for a while now, and much of the content that I produce is based on experiences that I've had after following his articles and acting on many of the suggestions that he makes. In my opinion, he's nothing short of a genius with an awesome writing style, and to top it all off - he's a great guy. So without further ado, let's learn a little more about the man himself!

Q: Sum up yourself and what you do.

A: I'm Mike - an online coach, writer and personal trainer from England. I like eating, lifting heavy stuff, and helping others to feel better about themselves.

Q: Tell us a little about your background. Have you always been health and fitness oriented? Have you always been a coach? If not, tell us about what you did before and why you wanted to become a coach.

A: I was always the chubby kid at school and got pissed off with that, so I started running.

I ran myself down from a podgy 15-stone to about 9-stone, while following a low-fat diet. Essentially I got skinny! Then I discovered weights and decided I wanted to be a personal trainer. The only non-fitness jobs I've had were a paper round at age 14, and I did 6 months in a DIY store part-time while I was at college. I started as a full-time PT in 2009, got involved in online coaching in 2014, and have been mostly online since then.

Q: As a coach, what are the key things that you try to instil in your clients?

A: Life comes before diet and training ... ALWAYS.

Q: Have you ever competed in any bodybuilding/powerlifting/sport related competitions?

A: Yup. Last year I competed in both men's physique and bodybuilding, so had to strut my stuff on stage in skimpy pants! I also competed in 5 powerlifting competitions between 2012 and 2014, and am looking at getting back into it later this year

Q: Describe your own training style/approach

A: That's a tough one. I actually prefer not to have to think about my own training, hence I hire someone to program for me. But I suppose I like a mix of heavy stuff and pump work, along with basic powerlifting and "bro stuff." (because who doesn't love curls and pushdowns?)

Q: Who is your biggest inspiration? (Fitness or otherwise) and why?

Okay, these questions just get tougher.

I guess two guys - Nate Green and Jon Goodman - got me passionate about wanting to help loads of people, and live a cool life with purpose.

Q: What would be your words of advice to anyone just starting out?

A: Just do the basics really, really well. Pick a few people to follow, and whatever you choose to do, stick with it. An average program and diet done consistently and with intensity will always get better results than chopping and changing between the latest fads.

Q: Team HLHL is picking up speed and growing rapidly, are there any new projects on the horizon off the back of this success?

A: Plenty more ebooks, potentially a membership site and world domination.

(Two of those are true by the way.)

*Author's note - I have it on good authority that Mike has already invested in a death ray to hold the world to ransom.

Q: Are you currently affiliated with any brands?

A: Nope - I prefer to advise people on different products from a completely unbiased standpoint.

Q: Any favourite/recommended supplements?

I'm a big fan of the Protein Works - they're a UK-based company, and have grown rapidly in recent years but still have a nice personal touch.

Q: As an IIFYM'er, you're always experimenting with foods, what are your staple foods/what's your favourite meal to make at the moment?

Tuna, rice and broccoli.

Or protein sludge mixed with plain vanilla ice cream, digestive biscuits and sea salt.

So, there you have it - you're hopefully a little more familiar with Mike now. Why not head over to his website (link at the bottom of this article) and check his social media channels out to learn some more and get access to the amazing content that he's currently sharing with the world?

I'd also like to thank Mike for taking the time to answer a few questions for Muscle and Macros. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. 

Web: www.healthylivingheavylifting.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikesamuelspt

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HealthyLivingHeavyLifting?fref=ts

How to structure a workout

Workouts are a great tool in terms of weight loss, muscle gain and generally living a healthier lifestyle. That being said, there is a difference between strolling into a gym and randomly jumping on any piece of equipment that takes your fancy, leisurely throwing out a few reps then leaving, and structuring a training session to ensure that you get the most out of each and every minute that you spend in the gym. This article is just going to run through a basic structure that could go a long way in helping you to achieve more from your sessions. It boils down to this:

Warm Up

• 5-10 minutes slow jogging, rowing, cycling etc 
• Mobility work (focus on any problem areas)
• Activation work

Main Event

• Warm up sets
• Working sets (Strict rest times)

Cool Down

• Stretching
• Foam rolling

Image credit - relentlessgains.com

Firstly, let's start with the warm up. As I've said in previous pieces, warming up is an incredibly important factor in a training session. It gets blood flowing through your muscles, mobilises your joints and muscles and prepares your body for the exercises in the session ahead. There are various sources out there that can provide you with great warmup routines and videos explaining various stretches etc. Again, there's a lot of information and links that can be found here.

Image credit - gameplan.com

Then there's the main event - the actual workout. Even though you've already warmed up, it's always good to get some warm up sets in before you hit your working sets. Before each workout, think about the weight that you want to lift for each exercise. Perform your warm up sets as percentages of that weight. For example -

• 10 reps at 40% of target weight
• 8 reps at 60% of target weight
• 6 reps at 70% of target weight
• 4 reps at 80% of target weight
• 2 reps at 90% of target weight

It might seem like overkill, but these reps will ensure that your muscles are sufficiently warmed up, will minimise the risk of injury and will contribute to the overall volume of your workout. Bottom line - they're important. 

Then there's your working sets, these need little to no explanation. Just perform each exercise for the set amount of weight, reps and sets that you've defined before your workout. The only thing that I'd ensure you keep track of is the time that you've taken to rest between sets. Here are some rough guidelines for rest in terms of the type of sets you're doing. 

• Strength sets - 90-120 seconds between sets
• Hypertrophy (higher rep) sets - 60-90 seconds between sets
• Power (low weight, low rep) sets - 45-60 seconds between sets

Image credit - stopwatch.onlineclock.net

After that, you've got your cool down. This can take a very similar form to your warm up - just make sure that you're stretching your muscles out and working out any knots or kinks that may have formed during your session. 

So that's an extremely basic, but efficient way of structuring your workout. Dubious? Try it out and let me know how you get on by getting in touch with me on social media using the buttons below, or dropping a comment in the comments section! 

 

Using MyFitnessPal to Track Calorie Intake

In my last post I explained the basics behind calories and macronutrients, and provided you with a link to a calculator which would help you to calculate your own intake. Those numbers are great to have, but there's also got to be a way of tracking the foods that you eat in order to actually make use of those numbers. Enter MyFitnessPal:

Image credit - www.kent.edu

MyFitnessPal is an app that can be installed on any smartphone or tablet, or even just used as a web app as a means of tracking calories and macronutrients. It has an absolutely massive database of foods which can be searched for. If you're using a smartphone, you'll usually be able to scan the barcode of your food and the app will pull up the nutritional data for it.

The only issue with the app is that it tries to dictate what your calorie and macronutrient intake should be. This is just something that you have to ignore when using the app. Use the Macro calculator that I linked to in my last article to get your numbers for calories and macros, and then input those numbers into your app through the 'Calorie and Macronutrient goals' field, which can be found under the 'Goals' tab of MyFitnessPal.

Unless you purchase the full version of the app, you'll be forced to set your macronutrients as percentages of your calorie intake. Try and manipulate your percentages to be as close to the numbers that you were given by the calculator and set them up. My advice after this would be to purely use the app as a tracking tool through the use of the 'Nutrition' tab. Basically, make a note of the numbers that the calculator gave you, use the numbers on the left hand side of the nutrition tab as a guideline, and check those two sets of figures against each other instead of using the numbers on the app. 

The last thing that I will say about using MyFitnessPal, is that its up to you to keep yourself accountable. Track with honesty and accountability and stick to your numbers, and you'll find that you're on a sustainable path to your goals.

If you'd like to chat to me about this article, or you've got any feedback then you can get in touch with me on social media through the buttons below. If you don't have Twitter or Instagram then just drop a comment on this post and I'll get back to you!

 

Calories and Macronutrients - The Basics

In a lot of my posts I talk about nutrition and regularly reference things like 'macros', calories, IIFYM, flexible dieting etc. It has only just dawned on me that I'm excluding a lot of people and assuming that everyone is already clued in on the details of nutrition. So for that, I should apologise. However, instead of apologising, I'm going to dedicate this post to explaining the real basics of calories and macronutrients. I'll start with calories.

Image credit - www.mhpersonaltraining.co.uk

Calories are the fuel on which your body runs. Overall, they're the one set of numbers that you should always be looking at if you're serious about your nutrition. Whether its weight loss, weight gain, or maintaining weight; calories are important. There are too many 'experts' and nutritional zealots in the industry today proclaiming that calories aren't important. This is complete and utter rubbish. Yes there are schemes that help people to lose weight and they don't mention calories at all. People even lose weight on these schemes, but I guarantee that when they do, they're in a calorie deficit due to restricting some high calorie foods. Yes I'm looking at you guys on Slimming World - all of those 'Syns' that you're told to stay strict on are high in fat. You'll realise why its important to cut those down when I talk about macros later on.

Everyone will have their own specific number of calories that is needed for them to gain, lose or maintain weight. Usually these numbers will depend primarily on your height, weight, activity level and age (there are many other factors that can be used to really hone in on those numbers but the ones listed are the basics and good enough to get you a reliable result). I've explained this in another articles, but the basics behind weight loss, gain or maintenance in terms of calories boils down to the following:

Calories consumed > Calories burned = Weight Gain

Calories burned > Calories consumed = Weight loss

Calories Burned = Calories Consumed = Maintain weight

Don't let anyone tell you different, your caloric intake for each day is extremely important, and you can't trick the science of it with any wonder supplements or by pretending that they don't exist. 

Macronutrients

So now you have a basic idea of calories, let's talk about the building blocks behind those numbers. Those building blocks are known as macronutrients, or macros for short. They consist of Protein, Fats, and Carbohydrates. Any food with a calorie content will contain a mix of those macronutrients. As calories are calculated through the use of numbers, so are macronutrients. Here's how those numbers look - 

Protein - 4 calories per gram

Carbohydrate - 4 calories per gram

Fat - 9 calories per gram

By that logic, 25 grams of carbohydrates would be 100 calories, 25 grams of protein would be 100 calories, and 11 grams of fat would equal 99 calories.

Image credit - www.joshwalliecoaching.com

For any Slimming World followers - that's why your syns are all fat heavy foods. By reducing foods that are high in fat, you're reducing the foods that are most calorie dense and therefore increasing your chance of being in a caloric deficit. 

In terms of calculating your own personal calories and macronutrients, I could give you a way of calculating those numbers but I'd just be taking credit for someone else's work. Instead, I'm just going to give you a link to my man Mike Samuels' Macro calculator on his Healthy Living Heavy Lifting website. 

Healthy Living, Heavy Lifting - How to Calculate Macros for Cutting

That article will give you everything that you need in terms of calculating calories and macronutrients. The Healthy Living Heavy Lifting blog is also a great source of information, so if you head over there then spend a little bit of time browsing through the other articles. 

If you'd like to get in touch with me regarding these articles then you can find me on social media through the buttons below, or drop a comment on this article and I'll get back to you!

 

Are you jeopardising your progress in the gym?

These days I see a lot of different styles of training from a lot of different people at the gym - Strongmen, bodybuilders, crossfitters, cardio kings and queens etc. Regardless of their form of training, there's one common factor that ties them all together - the vast majority of them seem to jump straight into their workouts without warming up.

I know that the concept of a warm up being something that could potentially jeopardise your progress if not observed/not done correctly is a pretty simple one, yet so many people neglect the process. Maybe they don't have the time to warm up, maybe it bores them, maybe they think that it doesn't apply to them. If the latter is the reason for not warming up then they're either not training properly in terms of mechanics, or they're not training very hard at all.

Image credit - www.winetoweightlifting.com

Why should you warm up? 

There are a few simple answers to this question, but I'll just highlight two. Firstly, working out without warming up means that you're going into a workout without preparing your muscles. This in turn means that you have an extremely high risk of injury, especially if you plan on performing some heavy compound lifts. Secondly, a warm up will stretch out your muscles and contribute to better mobility. Therefore if you're not stretching and warming up, your mobility will be affected and if you don't get injured, you won't be able to perform your lifts with the full range of motion, losing the effectiveness of the lift.

If you grew up in a similar environment to me then the idea of stretching and warming up probably involves a bunch of generic, static stretches like toe touching. I'm not saying that this form of stretching is redundant, but it definitely isn't optimal.

Image credit - crossfithelena.com

Where to start

Forget what you know about stretching and warming up, the first step is to re-educate yourself. There are a lot of stretching and warm up routines out there, some better than others. One that I'd particularly recommend to newbies is The Ultimate Warm Up Routine from Muscle and Fitness. Its also got a great article attached to it.

Another one (and one that I'm currently using) is a warm up routine featured in an ebook called Strength and Power. It can be found on Iron Mac Fitness. There's a lot of great information in that book, so I'd suggest downloading it. Its also FREE.

Image credit - www.ironmacfitness.com

When it comes to the time you spend stretching, there's not a prescribed amount of reps or time that you should do it for. You should switch between relaxing and holding a stretch until you feel the target muscle loosen up properly. Don't rush the process, impatience is a step away from injury.

If you've got any questions or feedback regarding this article, please feel free to drop a comment below or get in touch with me on social media using the buttons below.