In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I talk with my good buddy Chad Landers, veteran trainer, strength coach, and author of Building Strength and Muscle After 50, about how to keep gaining strength and muscle as you get older without falling off the “injury cliff.” We dig into why consistency matters most, how progress often drops in steps after injuries, and why smart modifications beat worshipping any single lift. Chad shares lessons from coaching clients for decades, including...
1 day ago • 1 min read
Hola from beautiful sunny MN, where it is a cool 55 F today and amazing. Black Sunshine, Jodie and I rolled back into town at 9:30 pm last night, completing the 806-mile drive in one day from south of Oklahoma City. Always fun to travel and always nice to be back home. Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and all the mothers today. I trust it was a good day. Reminder that the 10 clams off the Complete Creatine Manual goes away tomorrow night at midnight PST. https://creatine.miketnelson.com/ << Use...
3 days ago • 1 min read
The back of your creatine tub is not lying to you exactly. Worse. It is telling one tiny truth so confidently that half the room mistakes it for the whole gospel. Five grams. Printed everywhere. Repeated by every coach. Tossed into shaker bottles by lifters who read one label in 2008 and have been operating on that fossilized dosage scripture ever since. For muscle? Fine. But for everything creatine is being used for now? The 5-Gram Cult Creatine began its supplement life as a meathead...
5 days ago • 4 min read
What up, creatine savage! Before we drag the kidney myth into the alley and make it explain itself under a flickering fluorescent light, quick housekeeping item. Technically, the sale on the Complete Creatine Manual expired last night. I extended it until this coming Monday at midnight PST. Why? That is not my normal move. I do not like deadline necromancy, fake scarcity, or dragging a sale corpse around the internet like some marketing department taxidermist with espresso breath... ...but my...
6 days ago • 4 min read
In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I’m on the road and sit down with strength coach Martin Silva to talk about how to improve body composition, performance, and long-term health, especially for high-achieving clients in the 35–60 range. We get into unlearning a lot of the nutrition beliefs people bring in, why I still like keeping nutrition simple, higher protein, fewer ultra-processed foods, and how short-term tracking can build awareness without becoming a crutch. Martin also walks...
7 days ago • 1 min read
Walk into a gym and run this little social experiment. Ask who eats the most meat. Big dooode bro in the corner raises his hand. Traps like shoulder pads. Deadlifts that make the floor nervous. Probably has a freezer that looks like a cattle crime scene. Now ask who will respond best to creatine? Same guy raises his hand again. Confident. Certain. Completely wrong. What Nobody Tells You Your muscle doesn’t care about your identity. They care about saturation. Creatine lives in skeletal muscle...
9 days ago • 3 min read
Hola from Black Sunshine rolling towards Austin, TX today as we departed the sun-soaked sands of South Padre Island, TX. Here's what went down this week: much more is coming from the road. Newsletters: Does Your Supplement Cabinet Need Adult Supervision?: Most supplements only move the needle a few percent, but when you understand “coaching leverage,” you’ll see why simple, consistent tools like creatine can still deliver real results. The HCL Tax: Creatine HCl might sound fancy, but the data...
10 days ago • 1 min read
There’s a small, well-dressed lab-coated pickpocket living on your supplement shelf. Clipboard in hand. Too-friendly smile. Smells faintly of artificial lemon and bad decisions. Every time you reach for “creatine HCl,” “buffered creatine,” or some trademarked chemistry experiment… …he skims a few bucks. That’s the HCl tax. For two decades, the supplement industry has been running the same play. Take one of the most studied ergogenic aids in history… …then whisper that there’s a more advanced...
12 days ago • 2 min read
In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with creatine researcher Dr. Darren Candow from the University of Regina to break down what the research actually says about creatine for muscle, performance, and body composition—plus the newer interest in brain health, aging, and longevity. We dig into practical dosing (including higher-dose ideas for bone and brain), why timing probably doesn’t matter much, and what the data shows on safety, side effects, and common myths like hair loss....
14 days ago • 1 min read