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Dr Mike T Nelson

Creator of the Flex Diet Cert & Phys Flex Cert, CSCS, CISSN, Assoc Professor, kiteboarder, lifter of odd objects, metal music lover. >>>>Sign up to my daily FREE Fitness Insider newsletter below

Featured Post

Your Muscles Feel Ready. Your Tendons Disagree. Violently.

Hola from chilly-willy Minna-snow-da Where it’s currently 10°F, the air hurts your face, and the forecast is basically Mother Nature whispering “hold my beer.” Your favorite nerd just went full Mad Max: Road Warrior Edition — hammer down from Weatherford, TX back to the frozen north.1,222 miles. Two days.Black Sunshine ate asphalt like it owed her money. Lots of windshield time.Lots of caffeine.Zero regrets. Then… wham. As my Aussie friends would say, I went “flat stick.”Translation:...

Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast! Today, I’m hanging out with the brilliant Katie Emerson, Senior Manager of Scientific Affairs over at Kyowa Hakko USA, aka the people behind Cognizin (CDP Choline), one of the few brain-boosting ingredients with legit research behind it. We dig into the real science of CDP Choline, how it supports memory, focus, and cognitive performance, and where it actually fits into the human physiology engine, not the hype machine. Katie and I also zoom out into the...

Hola from the middle of America, as I am making my way back after leaving S Padre, TX, this past Monday night. If all goes well, I'll be sleeping in my own bed tonight. Wish me luck! Here is what went down this week: Newsletters: Zone 2 Cardio for Lifting Meatheads is Dead....do this instead: Why Zone 2 cardio barely moves the needle for lifters — and how replacing it with Zone 3 and smart VO₂ max intervals can dramatically boost your strength, endurance, and recovery. BroTein: Learn the...

...and the Rise of the Meathead Auto-Regulator Hola from Black Rifle Coffee Company in Moore, Oklahoma —where your favorite nerd is currently vibrating at 240 Hz because I made the tactical mistake of ordering “quad shot, please” and the barista said “sure, cowboy” with zero hesitation. So here we are.One man.Four espressos with half-and-half in a drink they call "Smokey Joe."And a mission: To kill the lazy, zombie, cookie-cutter rest periods that are sabotaging your gainZ. Let’s descend down...

Your favorite nerd here coming at you from Weatherford TX where I am hanging out with my coach Adam Glass and his wife Ashely. I am currently levitating three inches off my chair because holy hell… Dan Garner — yes, that Dan Garner — dropped some words that hit me straight in my surgically repaired heart. Here’s what he wrote: “My buddy Mike T. Nelson has this massive library of bite-sized videos on physiology, performance, and metabolism stuff. Each one is like 5-10 minutes. All ridiculously...

Hola my fellow metabolic misfit — Yesterday I sent that email about surviving road-trip nutrition chaos with protein bars instead of gas-station despair… …and immediately someone lobbed this spicy meatball into my inbox: “What are your thoughts on the EPG in it?” Ah yes. EPG — esterified propoxylated glycerol — the mysterious “fat-but-not-fat” substance that Instagram doom prophets swear will dissolve your vitamins, kneecap your HDL, steal your firstborn, and possibly open a small shimmering...

Hola from Austin TX where it’s just me, your favorite nerd, and Black Sunshine (the Lexus GX460) ripping 1,676 miles back to frozen-face Minnesota like two caffeine-addicted bandits fleeing the scene of a metabolic crime as we head out tomorrow afternoon for Weatherford TX. Jodie yeeted herself onto a plane Friday to help her family,so now it’s just me, the open road, and an SUV full of kiteboarding gear that smells faintly of ocean, neoprene, and poor decisions. And here’s the thing nobody...

Hola from my brief stint here in Austin TX and today I have a great one for you! On this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with my good buddy and lab-coat-wearing performance wizard, Dr. Andrew Koutnik. We talk about how to boost muscle performance, improve body composition, and feel like an athletic human without dumpster-firing your health. We dig into cold water immersion (and when it can kick gains in the shins), blood glucose regulation, ketogenic diets, carbs (yes, they’re...

Hola from the road as I just rolled into Austin TX after a great time in SPI where I was alternating between getting violently slingshotted across the water by a kite and hammering out writing sessions powered by one of my not-so-secret-but-still-awesome cognitive weapons: Qualia Mind. If you’ve followed me longer than five minutes, you know I’m not the “just toss random brain dust into your face hole and hope for genius” type of bro. Most nootropics? Hot...

Every November, I sit down, crack my knuckles, stare into the abyss of my laptop and think: What the heck am I supposed to say this year that I haven’t already ranted about with too much caffeine in my bloodstream? And when the screen stays blank longer than my Oura deep sleep score after a red-eye…I walk into the gym. The iron tells the truth....always. The dumbbells don’t care about your feelings.The Concept2 rower doesn’t care if your HRV looks like a falling stock graph.The trap bar...