Weight Loss and Muscle Gain Starts Outside of the Gym with IFBB Pro Matt Davis
Whether you’re planning a beach vacation and want to be confident in that new bathing suit, prepping for a body building competition, or you just want to accomplish your health goals, hitting the gym is what most people think is needed to build your best physique. The truth is much of the work is done outside of the gym and in your own home at the dinner table and your bed. Even if we train daily and exercise until we drop, if we don’t pay attention to what we’re eating, how much we sleep, AND what we do in the gym, few of us will actually meet the goals we set for ourselves.
Meet Matt:
On this week’s episode we have IFBB Pro Matt Davis to set the record straight. Matt’s huge, like crazy huge. But beyond that he’s an incredible nice guy with a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience that can help everyone reach whatever goals they may have for their own physique. Matt’s slightly unique in the fact that he adheres to a fastidiously clean diet and supplement regimen. The world of “sports nutrition” supplements gets a little sketchy at times, but Matt is proof that a simple diet, clean supplements and a lot of know how can give you the best physique you’ve ever had.
Some Questions We Discuss:
How can we prepare for an event to have the best looking physique we can? (3:15)
What do we tell people that have a goal in mind that will help them reach their goal? (7:07)
What are the four concepts needed for someone to build themselves to the physique they desire? (9:22)
What is the ideal nutrition plan to follow? (19:09)
You have to have adequate essential fats. Where do you get those from? (23:31)
What are your thoughts on sports nutrition supplements? (26:15)
How much protein per pound of body weight do you take? (27:21)
How do you choose the highest quality food? (29:15)
What are the foods you avoid? (30:34)
What do people need to think about when they are training? (34:20)
Some key takeaways from this episode:
Forget everything you thought you knew and be open to learning new things. (7:28)
People get lost in their macros and don’t realize that they could be doing more harm than good in the name of following their metrics. (8:08)
Slowing down your breathing and breathing properly is one of the most important things you can do. (10:35)
It’s not a question of how many times you hit the gym or what your diet is. Those things don’t matter much if you’re not sleeping well. (16:21)
Everyone’s nutrition is going to be different. Typically a lower carbohydrate approach is preferred. (19:26)
You will not have low body fat without also having low insulin levels. (21:45)
Decide what your goals are so that you know how much protein you should eat each day. (27:30)
The quality of your food is the most important component of your diet You are what your foods eat. (29:00)
If muscle building is your goal, ask yourself what you are training for performance vs actual muscle building. Target your training towards those goals. Be willing to try new exercises, switch up your reps and weight. (34:41)
The gym is your toolbox. Look at every exercise as your tool. You don’t have to bench press. You don’t have to squat. You can use so many exercises to build your physique. Learn what exercises are good for the goals you want to achieve. (38:00)
Products + Resources:
Get Social with Matt:
Instagram: @matt_davis_ifbb_pro
Facebook: @train.station.33
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
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Hey, listeners, welcome back to The Holistic Navigator Podcast where we believe in the body's ability to heal itself if it's given the proper nutrition and care it deserves. My name is Brian Strickland. I'm the producer of the show and here with me in the studio as always as your host Ed [00:01:00] Jones. On today's episode, we're incredibly excited to have Matt Davis join us. Matt is an IFBB Pro bodybuilder and owner of the Train Station Gym in Hixson, Tennessee. Matt lives and breathes training and spends his days competing and helping others reach their full potential in the gym all while following a completely natural and healthy diet and supplement regimen. We're going to talk to Matt about some of his favorite methods to get in the best possible shape. And while there's work to be done in the gym much of what Matt does happens outside of the gym. And on that note that's it for me. Let's get this episode rolling. Here's the host of the show Mr. Ed Jones.
Ed Jones: Thank you, Brian and welcome back to The Holistic Navigator here with Ed Jones. Got about 76 chapters under our belt now topics everything you can imagine. Believe it or not the number one most requested one is constipation, but we've got everything from hair loss to working out, losing body fat, thyroid issues, blood pressure, whatever you want with the natural perspective. [00:02:00] You can certainly find it here on The Holistic Navigator.
Today's going to be quite interesting. Totally different than any other podcast I have done in the previous couple years, and it's dealing with a gentleman that I have known now for several years Matt Davis. He's an IFBB Pro bodybuilder, and I'm talking professional. And he's a personal trainer. He has a business here in Chattanooga, Tennessee called the Train Station, been a bodybuilder for 20 years, but he's not just a normal body builder. He is, and I don't mean this to be to derogatory, he's a very intelligent and wise bodybuilder. I have been around this field of lifting weights, gyms and body building since 1972 and I find that the vast majority of men especially do not value health. That is totally different with Matt Davis. He understands the whole gamut of how to build muscle, [00:03:00] to lose body fat and also how to be healthy.
What I want to really focus on today is, I will call it contest preparation, but truly what this next 30 minutes should teach you is how can we prepare for a certain date or event to have the best looking physique we can with muscle, and fat loss, and tone, and and size, everything that Matt Davis has done to prepare for all of his professional and amateur contest. Where you can walk on stage and look your absolute best for that day. Because you know bodybuilding isn't like super popular, but this will apply to bodybuilders but it also is going to apply if you have a wedding or you want to go to the beach or you're going to do a photo shoot or you just are super motivated to set a goal of three months from now. I [00:04:00] want to look different than I do now. And so welcome to The Holistic Navigator, Matt Davis.
Matt Davis: Thank you so much, Ed. It's great to be here. And I've certainly been a big fan of the podcast myself and use it many times as a reference source. So great to be here.
Ed Jones: Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful compliment. I have to learn to shut up because sometimes I talk too much the first eight minutes, but I've got one little story I've got to tell. I want everybody and most people listening probably can't do what I'm going to say, which is go back to 1972. That was when I was a scrawny little fella. I went to a local high school that was very troubled and I had lunch money stolen probably three out of five days and was picked on constantly because one reason: I weighed 119 pounds at 5”11. And sometime during 1972, my father had purchased a membership to Cosmopolitan. A [00:05:00] Spa, an old-fashioned spa. We had men's days and women's days. You couldn't blend the two back in the 70s. So on Tuesday,Thursday, Saturday, I started working out at Cosmopolitan Spa where they measured me. When I first went in, as you may do with your clients, my upper arm was ten and a quarter inches and I weighed 119 pounds. Literally a beanpole.
Well within about eight weeks I had become addicted to weight training and the vision that I could see. And in three years, which was 1975, I had gained about 80 pounds, most of it muscle with no steroids and I did it through food, some of it very unhealthy. I will admit a lot of lot of lot of milk and sometimes some fried foods because I didn't know. You know, it was all about just packing the belly so you could gain mass and you know, I continued this process. Here I am 63. [00:06:00] I've never left the gym except for the five weeks of quarantine since I since 1972.
So what I want to talk to you today about Matt is, and my physique was, I've never been heavy and I've always had a small waist, but I was really not low body fat. I ended up being just your average guy that had a little bigger arms than normal, and I could bench a little more than most people. But I just and I look like kind of worked out but with my shirt off it wasn't anything at all different than average. Here I am 63. I measured my body fat yesterday and it was 10.2%. I think is pretty dang good because I have learned only in the past five years how to do this. Because here's what happens to most people: if they lose weight, they lose muscle. All these people dieting they're not going to look much better if they have a bathing suit on if they've lost muscle if they're losing weight. And secondly many times, this applies to guys [00:07:00] I want to get bigger, so when they gain size they gain fat. And I think you won't disagree with that Matt. So I'm going to turn this more over to you now. What do we tell the men and women who have a goal in mind as far as diet, training, other lifestyle habits that will help them get to a goal which like you have done 20 plus times and make sure your very best on that day? So I'm going to shut up for a minute and let you talk.
Matt Davis: I would say number one, Ed, and I try to do this routinely myself is number one forget everything that you thought you knew and be open your mind up to learn new things. And one of the things I see plaguing people when they're trying to transform their body and when I use that term bodybuilding we're going to say it's the pursuit to build more muscle and lose body fat and that gets it a little away from the competitive side. So anybody that's interested in doing those things I think [00:08:00] absolutely has the right to use that word. I'm bodybuilding. I'm trying to build muscle and lose fat. But a lot of people I think it caught up in they're counting macros. And there's, you know, there's diet plans out there. Like if it fits your macros, as long as you have this much fat, and this many carbs, and this much protein, even if it's from a McDonald's bagel. And you know, I actually read an article a number of years ago where they deemed that a Quarter Pounder from McDonald's was a better option than an apple with peanut butter on it because the macros lined up better for them. I think we can agree that that's a terrible option and a choice. So I think people get lost in some of these metrics.
And then also in the gym you go and you want to know how many sets do I need to do? Or how many do I need to do? And that's far [00:09:00] less important than just finding exercises and feelings that work well for you. So I think the first step is to kind of forget about some of these mainstream concepts and metrics that we feel like we have to do and we have to follow and focus on quality oriented stuff. And so from that perspective I always present people with 4 concepts to build themselves on. It's kind of in a pyramid fashion and these are in order.
The broadest foundation of the pyramid is actually breathing and that sounds you know light-hearted and hokey and this and that and I won't get too deep into that. But I would encourage people to educate themselves on breathing. I think you did a Holistic Navigator only on breathing.
Ed Jones: Yes, yes I did.
Matt Davis: Yeah so I highly recommend people go back and deep dive a little bit on what breathing techniques can do for you health-wise. [00:10:00] I'm gonna also extrapolate that.
You know the second layer would then be sleep. If you're not breathing properly, then you're not going to sleep. Well, so that negates that. As fitness people, you know, we're also told you need to eat all these small frequent meals and we typically live a high stress lifestyle. We're training a lot. We're doing life. We're probably burning the candle. So we tend to be in this fight or flight stage most of the time. And the sympathetic nervous system, breathing can be a very effective tool for dialing that back. And what we do know is you don't digest your food properly when you're wound up when you're in fight or flight, you're just not going to digest. So it doesn't matter how much protein you eat. It doesn't matter how many fat. If you're not digesting it. Well, so some good breathing practices can help before each meal. Like I tell people, invest 5 [00:11:00] minutes and calming yourself down doing some deep breathing, doing some box breathing, nasal breathing before you eat your meal and that will totally prepare your body to uptake those nutrients that you're putting in. So it drastically affects your nutrition. From the training side, there's two guys. There's one name's Patrick McEwen and Brian MacKenzie's if people can Google them and look at some of their work, they got tons of videos up, but they talk about the performance enhancing benefits of breathing even to the tune of nasal breathing and how you can trigger the aerobic pathway. So for the fat loss, you know people your antenna goes up when you hear aerobics, you think fat loss. You can influence that with the way you breathe while you're doing it and you can also influence and enhance the anaerobic pathway when you're lifting weights. It's by breathing [00:12:00] a slightly different way.
Ed Jones: Let me interrupt you for just one second. I love your one of the few people I've ever ever spoke to who understands the value of proper breathing. And many people have been brought up actually with the wrong idea, which is super deep, fast breathing and and that's actually not the healthiest way. I encourage people to go back to my Holistic Navigator and listen to the one on breathing. But you and I both I think totally agree that this system called the parasympathetic sympathetic is kind of where the fight and flight syndrome comes in or the calming part. Everything in our human body has a balancing almost thermostat to it. And so if we're wired totally due to stress and other lifestyle problems, the part of us the parasympathetic needs to kick in in order to calm that system down and breathing is the ultimate way to do. I do feel that Dr. Buyteko [00:13:00] who was a Russian doc had a really cool take on this breathing, which is slow the breath down. He actually wants us to breathe about eight times a minute and also and I know we've all joked about this the thing I started pushing six years ago was taping your mouth shut at night because mouth breathing devastates your health. In fact, I say this on the other podcast, there's only about four animals in nature that can live with a crushed nose. Yes that's in dogs and cats can for some reason but a giraffe or some of the zebras and all this if they have a crushed nose and a mouth breather, they will be dead in four weeks. That's because of exactly what you're talking about. So thank you for being my fan of breathing. And it isn't something hokey that we just opened dismiss. This is vital to balance the system for everything, not just your physique, but for your health, your mental health and your anxiety, so please listen to my Holistic Navigator on breathing and do some more [00:14:00] research on it and I encourage taping your mouth shut. Nutritionw.com is the sponsor of The Holistic Navigator and on there they sell the tape that you can use for taping your mouth shut at night. And once you do it for five nights, I promise you people you'll never go without it. I have turned my car around and gone back to my apartment in order to get that tape if I'm on a trip that's how important.
Matt Davis: I agree a hundred percent. I actually proposed that to people that I am coaching that are competing. And believe it or not, that is the hardest thing to get people to do is to tape their mouth. It's low-hanging fruit. I mean, come on for the return you get on that investment might be the biggest one I think I've ever seen. But I tell guys, you know diet, check, training check, sleeping, it's getting better. Yeah. Everything's great. Are you taping your mouth? And if they tell me no, I say well get ready to lose and and and we're talking when we're talking about competition. I rate that on are you able to achieve your best [00:15:00] not what the actual placings at the show are but did you come in at your best. And I feel strongly enough about that if you're not taping your mouth shut then you're not taking being at your best very seriously.
Ed Jones: I love that because we are and so often we get into this competition with so many other people in the world, but truly the only competitor that is super important is yourself to be better than what you used to be is the noble path in life. So let's move on to number two.
Matt Davis: Two is sleep. So we touched on that a little bit and I think you did a Holistic Navigator also on that which is very well. So I won't get into the details on the supplement side of that. I would encourage people to go back and listen to that but I personally utilize a specific supplement regimen to go to enhance and make sleep more productive as well as try to practice good sleep hygiene particularly in the evening time. And so that generally includes [00:16:00] blue blocking glasses then go after a certain time. I try to stay off of screens or at least minimize it as much as I can in the second half of the day. And there again doing some breathing before I go to sleep to kind of wind myself down and things like that. But if you're not sleeping that's where your recovery is. So when people want to build the best body of your dreams, the first question is usually will how many days should I work out? And how many meals should I eat? And my reply to that is you gotta work on your sleep because neither of those things matter a whole lot and it's going to dictate a lot. If you're not sleeping well that person may only tolerate two or three days in the gym max.
Ed Jones: Because it's digging into recuperative powers, right?
Matt Davis: Exactly. I personally love training. I have to dial myself back many times because I would train six days or seven and multiple times a day if I can. I enjoy it. It's fun, but I also realize that can get very [00:17:00] unproductive as wellI if the sleep is not in line to support that.
Ed Jones: Can I ask your age Matt?
Matt David: I’m about to be 45.
Ed Jones: Okay. Yeah, and you would use wouldn't believe the quality physique that he has to so that and again where did these both of these topics, not only make you your best physique wise but your best health wise and most likely will extend your lifespan especially of quality years. So and and I admit that I had my chronic issue is often insomnia. That's why I'm so good at helping other people. I do believe. And it is a management issue, especially when you get past 55 to 60, it's not like you're going to have a fix fix. It's a management technique that you have to come up with that. Okay tonight, I'm feeling this way. So I'm going to do this and that but I'm I want to reiterate what you said about blue light. Blue light after 6 p.m. at night, if you're a normal go to bed at 9:00 to 10:00 to 11:00, it’s going to disrupt the brain chemistry [00:18:00] that will decrease the quality of sleep. And you know, luckily, I have a new iPhone that has the blue blocker you can switch on and I do that at six o'clock. I don't watch TV after six o'clock and I do have the glasses if I did watch TV. So thank you for that. So next?
Matt Davis: I don't want people to know if there are any bodybuilders out there listening to this I hope they can take this for what it is and realize how important it is. And I speak these because I've learned the hard way. As you said your story you had a lot of bad food coming. We all did that and that's one way you learn some of these things. So I also at one time thought that's you know, if you don't breathe, I diet, as long as I'm getting in I'll be fine. I feel like I'm in the bed for a certain amount of time. I'll be fine. You really got to work to optimize these things.
Okay the next one and the next two the nutrition and then the training, that's what most people really want to talk about the most [00:19:00] you know. But you know, let's understand you're not going to get the most out of those if you're not optimizing your breathing and your sleeping. First the nutrition though. It's impossible to give specifics because everybody's going to be a little bit different and when we look at the characteristics of how much of each macro do you need? My general Outlook is a low no or moderately low carbohydrate approach.
Ed Jones: Same here.
Matt Davis: And here's why. If you're not managing your insulin, and this touches on the point that you brought up earlier, about if you're going to bulk up you people usually get fat and when they cut down they usually gain muscle that is directly tied to your ability to be insulin sensitive. If you're really really insulin sensitive, you can gain a lot of muscle and get really really lean. If you're more insulin resistant, the weight you put [00:20:00] on is going to tend to be more fat and you're going to have a heck of a time trying to get that body fat off if you don't address those insulin issues.
Ed Jones: I want to, I'm sorry to interrupt but I want to say that everyone listening when you go get your physical, none of you have ever had an insulin test. And if you want to do that because you're going to have to take on yourself some of these chemistry and blood issues because physicians are very poorly skilled at any of this conversation. In fact Matt again, it's a breath of fresh air for me to have someone like you who has studied the implication of insulin. I probably have said the word insulin on 40 out of my 76 podcasts. It is a key component along with omega-3 for your long term health. You want insulin at two and under for optimal everything. How do we get a test? You can do it if you find a practitioner locally, but if not go to The Holistic Navigator under products, you just scroll down to Direct Labs in order an insulin test. There's no excuse for not having this knowledge today. [00:21:00] So yes continue on my friend.
Matt Davis: And to further that point I will testify I have never seen a person get into a competition ready type of state where the body fat is very low. Doing it, you know in kind of a drug-free manner that mean there are people out there that can eat a thousand carbs a day and their insulin sky-high and they take enough fat burners and thermogenics to maybe temporarily bypass that and that's the key word temporarily. But to do it the healthy way and please people don't buy into the idea that you have to do some of those things to acquire that it's not true at all. But you do have to follow the laws of nature and that is having those low insulin levels. You you will not have low body fat without also having low insulin levels.
Ed Jones: Bingo.
Matt Davis: It’s just not happening.
Ed Jones: It’s not.
Matt Davis: So that is a whole key. So there's many strategies [00:22:00] and many tools you can incorporate from fasting to different nutritional interventions, but generally controlling it. Now, I will tell you this. When I'm close to being in the shape that I want to be like for me to be on stage at a professional level, it's got to be around the five percent mark. Maybe even a little bit lower.
Ed Jones: 5% body fat?
Matt Davis: When I'm at 5% body fat, lo and behold I can tolerate a tremendous amount of carbohydrates at that percent body fat because I am very insulin sensitive at that point. As I back out of that and maybe I'm at seven. Now, I need less carbs. 10% I can now tolerate even less carbs. So generally I advocate some sort of cyclical plan where you're not all one way or the other, you know, so just for me personally, which is kind of my normal lifestyle diet and I try to stay in close to top shape most of the time. Is [00:23:00] some days I have a fair amount of carbs which for me and my age would be around my body weight. So 250 for me. It's about how much I weighed that would be a high carbohydrate day. On a day where maybe I don't train or I need to cycle down low anyway, I go almost complete I'm not going to say keto but keto-like where my desired number is the lowest I can get now. Now the other component of that real quick would be regardless of how you're handling those carbohydrates in relation to insulin, the other huge tool that you have to have in place is adequate essential fats. Bodybuilders chronically like to do the low-fat diet. That is not a long-term solution. You may lose somebody fat and get lean temporarily. But as you start having these health breakdowns and metabolic breakdowns, you're going to be eating less and less [00:24:00] calories less and less food. Your skin's not going to be healthy, your hair is going to fall out and you're going to wonder why and you're going to get fatter and it's probably because you may not be taking in enough essential fat. So I prefer to try to get as much of those healthy fat options from the diet.
Ed Jones: Give us some examples of the foods you eat to get those fats.
Matt Davis: So obviously you have your super food stuff like avocados. I think really high-quality olive oil. And you got to be careful about the quality. So good quality olive oil from plant sources, but I would also encourage people to not completely be terrified of naturally occurring saturated fats from really high quality pasture-raised meats sources.
Ed Jones: And butter.
Matt Davis: And butter. Yes. People would freak out if they knew how much butter and whole eggs I eat and my lipid profile is always great. So [00:25:00] high quality, naturally occurring and I also have to throw in the Omega-3s, which I do believe everyone has to supplement because you're not going to get those. I think you also did a Holistic Navigator on that so I would encourage people to deep dive on why that's important. There's really only two or three supplements I consider completely necessary at all times and that's omega-3 and magnesium. So those tie into and those are the two. I think it's just let's just say it's impossible to get an adequate amount of either of those from a no matter how good your diet is your possibly not going to do that.
Ed Jones: You almost cannot and we do blood testing for all of those and it's amazing how many people who eat very healthy and look great still are low on that. Now, I know this is going sideways, you know, you and I both know Adam Chauncey. I really think he's a walking encyclopedia and he encourages me to kind of the athletic supplement thing. Because I'm not a huge fan of [00:26:00] supplements for training in the gym. I do very little. I do everything from building my momentum of regular health which of course distills down into better gym performance which then makes of course better physique, but I did start back on using branch chain and a small amount of creatine because I tend to have a real problem building muscle size. And so those are okay aren't they branched chain after a workout? About 5 grams of creatine is what I'm doing now.
Matt Davis: I do love both of those. The creatine I think can be dependent on maybe how much beef someone is eating. And I like to rotate my meat. So I have days where I'm eating two or three servings of beef. I have days where I don't need any. So creatine supplement is critical on some days for me. For the amino acids. I'm a big fan of the essential amino acids because what we know from the muscle building is the branch chains or kind of the trigger. Yeah, but you do need the other essentials [00:27:00] to kind of make it all go. Now, I will say this if your overall protein intake is adequate and it's tough to put a number on that. I would say if you're gaining muscle and you're feeling good. It's probably adequate. If you're not it may be worth looking at increasing.
Ed Jones: And I hate to be nosy how much protein per pound of body weight do you try to do? Maybe give both maintenance and also for preparation?
Matt Davis: You know, the data suggests you're going to see great benefit from around about a gram of protein per pound of lean body weight.
Ed Jones: Yeah.
Matt Davis: I do think people tend to overdo that sometimes. Now, I do think if there's high value in going through phases and the value being on gaining the muscle and going above that so many times I'll go muscle weight times 1.5 or even times [00:28:00] two for a short period of time maybe eight weeks and that can really catapult your progress in the gym temporarily. I don't think that's a great lifestyle healthy eating plan. I think in and I have great success maintaining muscle mass on much lower protein than that. So you kind of have to clarify. Are you happy to maintain? Are you very aggressively pursuing more muscle mass? That kind of answers the question on how much protein but about a gram per pound of lean body weight should be enough to build muscle.
Ed Jones:I like that idea. And I do go through cycles where I actually do probably a half a gram and then but then I generally am about close to 3/4 of a gram to 1 gram. I don't feel that I need a whole lot above that. In fact, I'm sitting here and I'm sure you know this guy Dr. Shaun Baker.
Matt Davis: Absolutely.
Ed Jones: He's on Instagram has some great things. He's very tied into a Very high diet of [00:29:00] a lot of protein and there's a lot of controversy about protein. Is it going to hurt my kidneys? Does it cause increased cancer rates? And many other issues. One is I know you'd all too well Matt, you're choosing as best you can the grass-fed, antibiotic-free. You fix a lot at home. I don't. That's one of my other issues is I have to eat out a lot. So I have to be satisfied with what I can get. But you are doing cleaner meats and I think a lot of the problems come from the terrible conditions they raise chickens in the cages and the antibiotics and of course cows are given a lot of drugs. That's why we know that antibiotics make all people including people and animals fatter. That's why they give it to cows. Well, we're getting some of those antibiotics and so that's scary because again, it's hard to be in contest shape if you're taking antibiotics because it's making you fat so your you live a clean life, so I don't want people to think they can get the McDonald's burger. Pull it off the bun and eat it.
Matt Davis: Absolutely, not and to [00:30:00] extrapolate on that even more when you're eating what I would call industrialized food, those animals are predominantly eating genetically modified corn and soy which will yield a much higher percentage of polyunsaturated fats. That's probably the other big component of insulin resistance and it's going to just cause all kinds of problems to generally, you know, if you eat an all natural diet on pasture raised animals your percentage of polyunsaturated probably going to be two or three percent. Most Americans are probably in the 30 to 40% neighborhood.
Ed Jones: and the things that have polyunsaturated fats just basically all vegetable oils, canola, safflower all the way down the list and an avocado doesn't if it's good quality olive oil doesn't but you know, all of all you have to be cautious when you can't cook it at high temperatures or it goes rancid. But most things you eat are being made with very poor oils. I mean just go to the grocery store and look at salad dressings canola, canola, canola on almost. And every single thing [00:31:00].
Matt Davis: I may be taken for granted that we all know. That is an absolute no-no. Absolutely on even on my worst day. I will not consume any processed vegetable oil that is a pure poison that and sodas and cigarettes are those are the big three poisons in my mouth. But even in some of the meats, I think it's important to think about the animal that I'm eating. Well, what did they eat then go eat those same oils or the ingredients those oils are derived from. So you can certainly have those toxins in those bad things passed down to you. If you consume enough of those products.
Ed Jones: I like that because the very last podcast idea with the lady from Garden of Life the trainer. She said you are what your foods eat. And I love that the way and you just rephrased it because what we're getting in our foods is basically what was fed to the food that we're now eating if it's a live animal. And that's why Omega-3s are essential [00:32:00] because we cannot get the level any longer of those healthy foods. And those foods are going to create so much better health, memory, less body fat, less triglycerides, better insulin. Everything you'd want is found in the proper dosing and proper brand of Omega-3. And again nutritionw.com they're vetting every single product to make sure it's of the quality. And they also ship with ice packs in the summer. Don't believe that omega-3s are fine ordered from Amazon sitting in a warehouse and five days later. You get them in the middle of summer. They're going to be partially rancid due to the heat. So be cautious people. Well, we got just a few minutes left. So what else?
Matt Davis: One last point on that and this is the people when you're talking about gaining fat and losing muscle and you touched on that again, but to drive that home the great news is if you really prioritize the quality of your food the foods that are going to help you build this great muscle mass. And respond to the stimulus [00:33:00] you're creating the gym are the exact same foods that are going to help you address the insulin and the getting lean part of it. So this old time I'm going to bulk up and cut down and bulk up and cut down and that's old news. That's not how all the top guys are doing it anymore. You're on a consistent high quality diet all the time and you may go through phases where you're eating more of that good food to try to gain muscle. And you may go through phases where you're eating slightly less of that same food, but there's no food differences. You do not going in one Direction and then say “Oh, it's time to bulk up. Let's go through the drive-through.” At no point will I endorse that type of behavior and a lot of people love this bulking and cutting and to me it's just an excuse to just go cheat on their diet and eat a bunch of crap that there's no physiological demand for crap food.
Ed Jones: Every time in my past that I embraced that philosophy [00:34:00] my waist went up 2 inches every single time.
Matt Davis: And that goes well beyond worrying about counting calories and all this all of these underlying things. We're talking about manifest themselves from the quality of your food and you're going to see great results from great quality or you're going to see not too good and poor results from low quality food.
Ed Jones: Gotcha. Well, touch real quickly on the gym. What do people need to think about as far as the training program, even though you're not going to do that right now, but give us some bullet points.
Matt Davis: Two key components, obviously the cardiovascular aerobic portion of your training and then also the muscle building anaerobic portion of your training. The number one thing I would encourage people to think about is if muscle building is your goal really streamline your thought process of what am I training for performance versus actual muscle building and the whole key to muscle building is to apply tension and stress into a target muscle. It's not to complete [00:35:00] a certain amount of reps. It's not to get to a performance threshold. And I'll use myself as an example. If you give me the right amount of money, I would really like to think I could give you somewhere between 40 and 50 pull-ups. If we're just counting reps now from a muscle building perspective. If I back that down. I'm going to get my best muscle building response probably. From six, seven, eight reps after that, I'm doing something else. So you want to focus on the muscle you want to think about what muscle in my training is the exercise. I'm doing a good job of putting the tension in that target muscle and then I would call that a good exercise if the answers are yes, if the answers are no maybe you're doing say squats. I will tell you this and I'm a big I've been a big squatter historically. I've never had to stop doing a set of squats. Because it's my quads [00:36:00] that are burning so much. So if I do a squat and say I want to maximally build my quads, and I have to stop the set because my back is hurting or I'm about to pass out because I can't breathe or I can't. Maybe there's a better tool to target that muscle. So from a muscle building bodybuilding perspective on muscle, it's about targeting. And I can't give specifics, but I can encourage people to be open-minded and be willing to try any exercise if it looks like it might work. Give it a try. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. And also don't be beholding to what I call the golden calves. I know a lot of people that have spent years and years under the barbell squatting and it's brutal and they never really built the legs they wanted because it just wasn't the best exercise for them.
Ed Jones: That's such wise wisdom and here's the deal. I've been in the gym again since 1972 and I think [00:37:00] you won't disagree with me. Now you own a gym, The Train Station, which is different than what I'm about to say. But I have other than the five weeks of quarantin, I'm an observer people. 90% of all people I see who come to the gym three and four days a week never improve. They don't. They get better as far as health, probably, cardiovascular, their physique never improves. In fact, it starts sliding as the years go on. Again they are not addressing the actual things that you have just spoke about the nutrition, the training, the insulin, the blank, blank, blank. So I think people who are in gyms will also agree with me. It's very rare, even with personal trainers. There's like there's a guy at the gym right now. He's been doing personal training for a year and a half his clients getting fatter and fatter all the time.
Matt Davis: So, you know, and I think a lot of it is we have the stigmas that were beholden to you have to bench press, you have to do squats, you have to do this, you have to do that. You have to you don't have to do anything. [00:38:01] The gym is your toolbox. Ed Jones:There you go.
Matt Davis: There's nothing wrong with a hammer. But if you have a Phillips head screw, it's going to be a lot more you have a lot easier time putting that screw in if you have the right screwdriver. So look at every exercise as your tool and if you overtime you hopefully acquire a fairly decent sized toolbox and you have a lot of tools that you can use. But don’t restrict yourself to just a handful and think that's going to get the job done because everybody's you know nail and screw size and the job is going to be different for all of us with our proportions and our genetics and our age and what's appropriate as far as loads. So, it's really about choosing the right tool for your job. And I would also the last thing is encourage people every workout, every set, and maybe every rep ask yourself. Why am I doing this? You need to answer that question [00:39:01] and then is what I'm doing helping me in this. You know, so take something like box jumps. I absolutely love box jumps for what they are and what they're good for. Are they going to help you build bodybuilder quads? Probably not. There's probably a better tool for that. But kind of recognizing and learning to recognize what exercises are for what purposes that's huge. So I would definitely recommend trying to work with someone that's qualified and probably has good experience and a good resume of you know, if they have clients and they themselves look like and the goals that you want to achieve that's a good indicator, you know, hopefully they have some education and some background to go with that but a lot of the education you get in the gym comes from being in the gym.
Ed Jones: Absolutely and that is got some great points to find people who really know their stuff. And that requires a little bit of work [00:40:01] because not everyone does just because they have a title and I certainly say this constantly about conventional medicine. They're wonderful people in the system, but they don't have the toolbox. They don't know about nutrition. They don't know about intermittent fasting. They don't know about all these things that you're well schooled in and finding that person. Or and you know again you can learn on your own but it's slower because you make many mistakes along the path. I will say and you said something a little bit earlier about you know like the box jumps. Well, I did I did the what's the one the the the jumps on the floor where I'm squatting down and then I jump up?
Matt Davis: Oh like the burpees.
Ed Jones: Yeah burpees. I did burpees this morning. I'd do them every other week. I also like a guy named Frank Medrano. I do his work out on Wednesdays and so on Monday Tuesday, I do the weights, Wednesday I do Medrano, Thursday and Friday I do weights again. I do have to do heavy work because I'm so thin and I need to maintain muscle so I have found my niche through a lot of mistakes [00:41:01] as you have and other people in your field that are experts. I am going to experiment which I did yesterday again with blood restriction training bands. I'm going to do a podcast on that in the next few months and maybe you and I could partner on that. I would love to talk.
Matt Davis: I’m becoming more and more of a fan and especially as we're all getting older. I think we all know if I lift really heavy, I can build a big muscle. Well what if maybe lifting heavy isn’t the best thing for you right now at this time at an age? Or I know I certainly don't lift near what I did 10 years ago, but I feel like I can still build plenty of muscle because I have a better tool box.
Ed Jones: There you go. And that's one of them and The Holistic Navigator’s here to build a tool box. And and lastly we have a machine locally called SECA which we put a lot of people on which is state-of-the-art body fat machine that can truly define where you are and where you're going. So I would encourage people to utilize that machine [00:42:01] whether it be here locally or in your own town. It's about $15 to get checked on it. But if you do it every two weeks, you truly know where you're going and then you can readjust before you just waste too much time.
Well Matt, it's been totally informative and I know people are going to be thrilled to death to take on some of these pieces of advice that you've given. Tell me a little or tell listeners how where you're located in case people were close to Chattanooga and they wanted to access your amazing experience.
Matt Davis: Our facility, The Train Station is located just north of the Chattanooga City Limits where actually in Hixson so the locals will be familiar with that. Probably the best way for the mass majority of people to reach out is through social media. I'm just Matt Davis on Facebook. And if you find that you'll see the big train station banner and the bodybuilding pictures and same thing on Instagram, which is Matt Davis IFBB Pro, so I'm certainly open to answer [00:43:01] questions via private messages and getting out more information and sometimes just if somebody just needs a tip on, you know, maybe you know, what is a good source of monounsaturated fat and I'll give you my favorite.
Ed Jones: That's wonderful and you can email me also at The Holistic Navigator and I will pass any questions that you have along to Matt Davis. Thank you Matt for taking your time, you're busy man to join me on The Holistic Navigator and I know I don't know anyone who knows about blood restriction training, except you and I'm being the guinea pig as I do many times in my life about health. And so let's just kind of mentally shoot for about two months from now. I'd love for you and I to partner on this education of people on this blood restriction. It's really where you put bands on, you restrict the blood appropriately, and you're right what you can do. especially as we're getting older you could take your weights [00:44:01] down by 40 baby 50% to 60% and get just as much or more results from your training. That means literally no injuries because injuries come generally from improper technique and too much weight. Every injury I've ever had is basically due to that or the other one was due to super stretching before I did a heavy weight, which I've talked about it do not recommend stretching a lot before weight training or recommend after. But thank you Matt Davis.
Matt Davis: Absolute pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, and to all the listeners another great episode from The Holistic navigator. please stay tuned. I got a whole page of ideas that I have for future ones and please recommend us to your friends. And if you need any product nutritionw.com is the source for all the quality products that we speak about or others that you may read about. Have a healthy and safe day to everyone and thank you for listening to The Holistic Navigator.
Brian Strickland: The information on this podcast in the topics discussed [00:45:01] have not been evaluated by the FDA or any one of the medical profession and is not aimed to replace any advice you may receive from your medical practitioner. The Holistic Navigator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of any purchaser or listener of these materials. The Holistic Navigator is not a doctor or doesn't claim to be please consult your physician before beginning any health regimen.