Barbell Shrugged - Measuring Muscle Mass Percentage with Dr. Chris Perry, Anders Varner, Travis Mash and Doug Larson #823

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

In this week's episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Chris Perry dive deep into the real science of muscle mass, why it's the single most important tissue in the human body and what happens when you don't have enough of it. They cover everything from how muscle mass impacts disease risk, hormone balance, metabolism, and injury prevention to why being "under-muscled" may be just as dangerous as being overweight. Dr. Perry explains how strength training and nutrition can reverse age-related muscle loss and why the decade between your mid-30s and mid-40s is the most critical window for building a foundation of health and longevity. The crew breaks down what healthy muscle mass standards actually look like for men and women across different age groups and introduces a new way to measure it. RAPID Health's new partnership with Springbok Analytics uses MRI imaging to directly quantify muscle tissue, pinpoint asymmetries, and reveal where strength or mobility imbalances may be putting you at risk. For the first time, anyone, not just pro athletes or research labs, can see their true muscle mass percentage and track real progress over time. The conversation wraps with practical takeaways for training and nutrition: how often to lift, how hard to push, and how much protein you need per meal as you age. They explain why cardio and resistance training both matter, how to optimize your muscle-to-fat ratio, and why "getting jacked" is one of the best health investments you can make. Learn more about RAPID's new MRI-driven Muscle Health and Performance program launching this week in Austin, TX go to OptimaMuscle.com beginning on Monday Nov 17th to learn more and get started. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shark family this week on barbedo show. Dr. Perry is back. Dr. Christopher Perry. And today we're talking about muscle standards. How you can get more of it. What is the right amount? Is there any negativity to having too much? You know, for all those crazy bodybuilders out there that are super, super beyond. Jack, looking like the bovine cow on the picture on Google. Just shredded cow, but shredded human. friends, as always, make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That's where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin, are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis, and you can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get it in the show.

Welcome to Warburne. I'm Andrew Larson, coach Travis Mash, Dr. Chris Perry, homies back on the show. Today on Barbel Strug, we're talking about muscle mass, how much you need, standards for it. But let's start off with talking about all the things. for the people that don't have it. This is the inspiration.

We're going to go down a rabbit hole of all the negativity that will come without you being jacked. Yeah. Yeah. You're screwed. Yeah. Handle it. Real science is telling you how bad your life is about to be in the long term without muscle

mass. And now, without further ado, destroy them, sir. Tell them to get jacked. You ain't getting that. It is muscle mass. Muscle is the most important tissue in the human body.

I'm just going to go ahead and say it. You hear so many individuals talk about that now when it comes to your injury risk, your disease resilience, like everything goes back to healthy muscle tissue. Because, yes, it's about strength. It's about your overall amount of mass you have. So, yeah, being jacked is cool. But at the same time, being healthy is cool. So, like, when you have healthy muscle mass, you have healthy cellular function.

You have healthier mitochondria that can do their job from a metabolic processing standpoint. And so when you do a lot of what we do it, right, rapid and we assess people and we tell people, hey, here's your body fat percentage looking at a dexa or here's your fat free mass index. It begs the question, is there a way to go deeper into that and really get even more insights? Because I can tell somebody, yeah, your body fat percentage is 22 percent. But from what context are we talking about here? If this is a person that has a lot of muscle mass and just happens to have a lot of fatty tissue too, that person would be a heck of a lot, how should I say this, healthier than an individual with.

lower body fat percentage, but also very, very low muscle mass. That is a really, really important thing, especially for age ranges where we see today or have the biggest amount of issues. So the biggest, I'd say the biggest age group we serve is what, or probably around late 30s, you know, 40s, 50s. And so these are the types of individuals who are much higher risk. 55 around there. And so what a lot of people don't understand is the most important decade is about mid-30s to about mid-40s or so, right? And then after they, that point, that's where we see testosterone, to go down naturally, and then we have that natural

onset of sarcopenia affecting our ability to be able to put on muscle mass. And so, and a lot of people don't have that sense of urgency, or they're just not educated on why that's a big deal. And so because it's not about being skinny when it comes to overall health and fitness, you need to have a healthy body composition, and that all has to do with having a healthy level of muscle mass.

Well, I can attest at this age, it is way harder now to put on muscle. I'm training harder than I've ever, just to like get a little bit. Have you ever gotten a tested mask? What? Have you ever gotten, have you ever done like a Dexa? Not lately.

I need to though, you know, because I want to see, because after I compete this weekend, I want to go on a cutting, you know. I mean, I'm already pretty good. I've got my abs back, but I want to see how lean I can get before I bought. Before and afters on the Internet's crazy. I know. I've never done before matches. I probably still top 1% of his age for a minute.

of leading this like yeah perry i would uh probably the most comprehensive and easiest way for people to kind of start to get some like real numbers on what they're doing would be a dexas scan correct that would be the at this point that's what i would say be the most basic thing that you can do as far as getting a pretty pretty clear accurate representation what's the best way now nowadays what is the best way dex is still up there like dexia and bodpot i'm always going to hold in high regard it's what i'm trained on it's what you know we've used for so long, it's cheaper. But if we want to get, and we'll talk about this for sure,

and the cool thing that Rapid's doing now, is looking at something like the Springbok analysis, utilizing MRI. And the reason why that is just a step above is because ADEX is great, right? Because ADEX is able to show me the different densities of tissues and allows me to see bone mineral density, allows me to see the potential amount of visceral fat I have to subcutaneous fat, which is great for the average individual.

That is a great place to start. That allows you to get the fat-free mass index, your body composition and your body fat percentage and can even show you where the allotment of your fatty tissue is, whether it's around your midsection, do you hold it a lot in the legs? Now, you can't spot treat, but that's, you know, suffice to say. But the cool thing about something like the Springbok and doing things like the MRI analyses, I can get even deeper now. Like, I can actually see where is the fatty tissue?

Is it really visceral fat or is it in between muscle tissue as well? Because we know individuals with sarcopanic obesity, they're going to have fatty tissue within the muscle tissue as well, which is another sign of that particular issue. And so just per the listeners who are understanding what sarcopanic obesity is, this is one of the biggest issues that we see currently with older adults. And so if you are between that age of 60 to 65, this is basically having low muscle mass, strength, and a lot of adiposity. It puts you at damn near close to almost double the amount of risk when it comes to a lot of the cardiovascular-related issues, metabolic issues that we see. And older women tend to have it even worse off than those men.

And so it becomes a really big problem, especially where people that we're talking to who don't understand why strength training is so important. And it's because if you don't, you have a higher risk of diabetes, insulin resistance, even osteoarthritis. I can go off forever listing all the different types of issues that we have. If I were to give you a clear data point based off of what I drew up for us, the U.S. data shows at least 42% of the adults in our country are obese now, which is absolutely insane, where at least 10 to 20% of those seniors meet the criteria of the sarcopenia. obesity. That's anyone above the age 60. So that is a heck of a lot of people who are not only at 2.6 times more at risk of falling, 1.4 times at risk of getting a fracture and mortality anywhere up from 1.7 to 3.2% higher compared to people who don't have sarcopenia, all from simply not having enough muscle mass. It seems obvious to state that so much, so X percentage of the

population is overweight and X percentage is obese, etc. I've never seen any stats on X percentage of the population is under-muscled. That seems like an obvious thing that we should have at this point. And if you've probably heard me say this on the show before, but wanting to have this data forever, everyone knows their body fat percentage. I don't know anyone who knows their actual muscle mass percentage.

Separate from the fat-free mass index, it's irrelevant but separate thing. We all should know that we're 15% body fat and 42% muscle mass. Those things, those are things that we have some degree of control over that will fluctuate throughout different phases of our lives. We should know what the percentages are for each one and we should know the ratio between the two. Those are phenomenally important metrics to have and I can't believe that we have gone this far down

the road in the field of strength conditioning and human performance and it's not standard practice at this point. It baffles me. It's so interesting to flip the equation and start to look at it from that percentage. And honestly, look what's happened in media in current times. And this was done all the way back into the 1970s. How did we get the opposite gender into the gym? Because they were programmed to do a lot of these exercise modalities that were great for, you know, I hate the word.

And MASH will probably chime into tone, all right? Is the worst word ever when it comes to individuals improving their body composition. But what kind of modalities do they use? It was group fitness. It was a lot of these things that, you know, a lot of people are still into to get fit. and I'm all for that. It's great. And I will never downplay a group exercise class for people who

want to get moving. I think that's wonderful. The problem comes in is when you don't lack the proper progression of any of the training modalities that actually allows you to see a growth in muscle mass. Because I can move to and lift a five-pound dumbbell and might feel better from zero, but it's not going to be enough for me to keep going and actually make lasting change that's going to allow me to improve on the standards that we're about to discuss here when it comes to skeletal muscle mass. And so I know Anders actually asked this, what is the amount of muscle that people should be shooting for? And so now it should be clear that it's going to differ a little bit based off of your measurement method, whether you're doing a Dexa, whether you're doing a biological impedance, or whether you're utilizing an MRI,

like the spring buck, right? And so if we want to talk about, let's start with guys. All right, guys, if you guys are between the age of 18 to 35, let's flip the equation. Instead of looking at body fat, look at muscle mass. You should be between 40 and 44 percent approximately of muscle mass on your body. It's a considerable amount. If you're between 36 and 40, all right, if you're between, I'm sorry, 36 and 55, you need about 36 to 40, all right, in order to actually meet those minimums.

And if you're older than that, we still want to be shooting for 32 to 35. And so it doesn't get too far away from the ranges as you're younger. And the more you do to send that strong signal to keep it in conjunction with a good, healthy diet and adequate protein, which is another topic we could talk about here, then you're going to be at much lower risk of cardiometabolated issues occurring. With women, once again, not all that different, right? 31 to 33% for women between the age of 18 to 35, 29 to 31 between 36 and 55 and 27 to 30 between 56 and 75 years of age.

So that's still a substantial amount of muscle mass that if we were to do any kind of analysis right now on just a average individual on either one of those sides would probably be out of range when it comes to the amount of muscle mass that they have. And it's just such a novel way to look at things that I think can really start to shake it up as far as bringing attention to people as the importance of healthy diet and body composition, but also including resistance training in their regimes. I think females have been over time that society has so screwed them over by trying to force them to look a certain way.

I feel like they're so far behind because of that. You know, like you start to add muscle. People are going to immediately chime in on social media. All you look like a man. No, you look like a bitch, but she looks great. You know, if we could stop doing that, that would be great, you know. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Artei program, which we're all incredibly proud of.

It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arte is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre-imposed pictures. Arte is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals,

each with their own special expertise to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Artee isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing, at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit artaelab.com. That's A-R-E-T-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show. I have a question for you.

Has there ever been a study on if you were to take two people, like let's say Travis Mash at 35% body fat? and then the skinny fat person at 35% body fat, and then the average of what those two blood works look like, because we always track body fat, right? Like everybody knows what 35%? They're like, you get your Dexter's scan, that's 35% body fat.

But without knowing the muscle mass attached to it. So has there ever been any studies done where they take two people, one, extremely muscled, like Travis Mash, but. But extra. That's not me, by the way. And not now. Not now.

Full Travis mask, Super Jack, a little soft. And then, maybe not soft. It's pretty soft. And then skinny fat, 35% body fat person. And then run the blood work to see what the, who's healthier? Right. So great question. So has research been done?

Yes. In multiple cohorts of people that look at the difference between someone who has I fat percentage and low muscle versus normal BMI or looking at someone who has a lot of muscle mass, but a considerable amount of fat mass too, all right? You can pretty much take a guess of who's going to be the winner in this equation. You don't even need a research study to do it. The individual that has more muscle mass, regardless of fat, so fat fit is fitter than the individual who has a large amount of body fat percentage and very, very low muscle mass. The skinny fat person is always going to be much far greater when it comes to the decimus to their health. And so we don't even need a

research study to do this. We can just look at what we've seen throughout rapid in the different types of profiles. Most individuals that have lower muscle mass are going to have more insulin sensitivity related issues and insulin resistance. You're going to potentially see higher levels of cortisol that usually occurs. You also potentially see some decrements to reproductive related hormones. Testosterone is normally lower. An individual is that have high cortisol and high body fat percentage. And so whereas the individual who has a lot of muscle mass, all right, now genetics plays a big role in this, right, which is a key reason for why some guys are much bigger, muscular compared to others.

But even with that said, mitochondrial function still more than likely is going to be better in the person that has larger amounts of muscle mass compared to the individual who is not. Now, you can also make the judgment call, well, that also is based upon cardiovascular capacity and cardiovascular exercise and adaptation, sure, okay? But just from the standard of having more muscle mass, from a metabolic perspective, their risk of things like diabetes is probably most likely going to be lower compared to the individual who has a high bite of that percentage and low muscle mass. But isn't there some, which I wish there wasn't, but as we get older, you know,

even if you're 210 pounds but jacked, isn't there still some risk of being, you know, at a higher, you know, what is it, BMI than other people, even though, like, for sure. Yeah, because if someone's 185 and they're the same body fat as I am at 210, just because metabolically it's more work, you know, for the body in general. Exactly. But that's also the problem with BMI, right? because the BMI does not give us those clear indications as to what's going on with the whole picture,

which is why it's necessary to utilize more advanced techniques like the DECSA, like the Bot Pod, like the Springbok analysis. Yeah, because eventually my goal is to get under 200 as quickly as I can. After this meet, that's where I'm at, you know, headed. And that would be simply changing your habits as far as what you're doing and what your body's responding to. You don't have to get skinny, many, Travis. I don't think anyone would recognize you if you did that. Nor would my wife enjoy that.

But like, you know, but I want to get under 200. So barely. It's barely under 200. You know, not that this is an issue for most people, but is there an upper limit to how much muscle mass is healthy? That's like begging the question. How much more gold do you want? All the gold.

Sure. All the shekels. I'm not sure there would be a limit. And even if you were to do so, let's say you're not utilizing exogenous. substances to help you build muscle. You're eventually going to reach your natural cap to where that question, you know, wouldn't be valid anymore to where it be like, I'm going to continue to work my

hardest to be healthy and stronger and that will continue to happen. But without having any exogenous needles coming into my biceps, I'm probably never going to have to worry about that. Now, if you're someone that actually has a genetic condition, like, who is the famous wrestler who is in one of my favorite movies? Oh, my gosh, Princess Bride. Under the Giant. Andre the Giant.

If you have a specific heart condition like what he had, that's where we run into issues, right, the acromegaly. And so we don't want that. And pardon me if I use the wrong word or term there, if I misdefined it. I don't want anyone texting me saying, you got that wrong. The study said this. Pardon my English. I'm sorry. But having too large of a heart is usually what comes with that type of issue due to higher natural levels of growth hormone and everything else that can take place.

that's where you run into those types of issues. And then if you are on exogenous hormones, then that can, of course, cause those issues as well to where you have a much higher cardiovascular-related risk compared to someone who's not taking drugs. I'll just say it, steroids. Sure, sure. Wouldn't it be important, like, you know, for people on steroids,

you know, because there's so many of late, power lifters, bodybuilders, who are just, every week I see a different bodybuilder dead, you know, wouldn't it be a good idea, you know, as they're getting bigger, like to be doing some good cardiovascular, I mean, like, your art's still going to get enlarged, but, you know, maybe to do some good cardiovascular, to get it in large in a way that's actually good for you, you know.

I feel like they find out. I have always believed that there should be a balance. Like, when it comes to that, when it comes to that discussion that people have, like what's most important resistance training or cardiovascular training, I think we're asking the wrong question because both are great for you in terms of what their adaptations are. and what they provide.

And so I would think it would be foolish not to have either one of them in anyone's program, whether or not you're an individual who is specific to saying, I'm training for a power lifting meet, so that's all I'm going to do. Well, you're leaving gains on the table in your cardiovascular capacity is lower. You're not going to have the conditioning you need to be able to push yourself harder to be able to achieve better results throughout your training. And vice versa for the cardiovascular guy, the individual who's trying to get better for a marathon, or get better for, let's say, Irox, right?

Anything that involves a higher degree of aerobic-related conditioning, if you're not doing strain training from either the stability perspective or the endurance perspective, you're leaving a lot of potential gains on the table there as well. So it goes both ways. Because, you know, the muscular system is responsible for pumping the blood back to the heart. You know, there are so many advantages and physiological components

that help each, you know. Right. This time and getting ready for, you know, I want to compete like one more year. I've done cardio the whole entire time. It has not, in fact, I have gotten stronger every single week in a very, almost a very linear, you know, way. And I've done cardio the whole time, so.

Right. And once again, you want to go full science with this. It's VO2 max. That's the gold standard for health and longevity. It's a prognostic indicator. Like, strength, muscle mass is there too. Muscle mass is certainly there too. VO2 max is gold standard.

That's the best prognostic indicator for health. That's why Andy. I heard Andy say that and hurt my feelings. And Andy loves muscle too. So, yeah, I know he does. Wait, so earlier you stated the standards for different age groups for each gender for muscle mass percentage. What about what about the ratio of muscle to fat? Is there an ideal ratio?

Or what's the minimum ratio to be healthy? That's a great, great question. And I'll be honest, I'm not sure I went in deep enough preparing to find that answer. So that is definitely an answer that I went to find for you because that would be clear as to far as any level of body fat percentage wouldn't. You don't want to be overweight. is the issue there when it comes to any level of body fat percentage. Because you can be someone that has a lot of muscle mass and that's great, but you could still be above 25% body fat,

which would still push you at higher risk of insulin-related issues that you're not going to want, that are still going to be counterproductive towards your health. Because simply speaking, you're less sensitive to insulin, the more body fat you have. And so that is a key consideration to take, especially from either gender when it comes to your health, is minimizing that body fat percentage,

getting it into a normal range as best as possible. It's why at rapid, we tell our individuals, you want to be shooting guys, shooting between 12 and 18 percent, is where you want to be for the maximum level of health and athleticism. And then for women, it's just going to be a few percentage points higher.

And so I tell women 18 to 23 or so is usually what we shoot for. And then try to, if you go any lower than that, just make sure that you're doing the right things. Be careful. We're not all in a cold race when it comes to that level of body fat percentage. But making sure that you're within healthy body fat, percentage guidelines is always recommended. Well, I mean, below 12% are there, you know, in a man, if you go below 12%, are there

detriments at that point? I mean, what are those? That's where we see detriments to just the whole hormonal profile. So negative influences on cortisol, reproductive function, more stress on the body, you know, it tends to be more in a sympathetic drive with the autonomic nervous system. It's just, it's hard to handle. It's hard to keep up, too, especially, well, if you're on exogenous substances, you can do a lot of different things that normal people can't do when it comes to managing that.

But it's usually the reproductive system that gets hit the most. And especially for women, that's true as well, with the female athlete triad. That's why we're really, really big. When I teach special populations and we talk about female specific conditions, that's one of the number one things I tackle is the female athlete triad and how low fat for women is not okay when it comes to health and performance. Just throwing numbers around on my own head over here. So say I'm 14% body fat and my muscle.

mass percentages is 42. So I'm like a 3x muscle to fat. And say a woman's 18% body fat and her muscle mass is 36%. So she'd be like a 2x. I'd imagine healthy is somewhere like above the two to one ratio there. Right. What would you just described would be a healthy individual. You know, someone who is exercising if a reproductive system is not compromised, if that individual is still able to push it, not overly stressed, still sleeping well, cognitive function is there, then that that's a healthy individual, especially from if that's her genetic predisposition, then that's how her body is. It's, you have to look at the symptoms that usually come with that. And that's how you usually go to, oh, that person was an athlete for sure, as far as their designation was. And so, but

that doesn't mean that every general population individual who we work with has to be an athlete in order to be absolutely healthy. They just, they need a considerable more or average amount, more muscle mass than what they currently have in order to be significant, in order to be healthy as possible. Yo, can you run through when you get a Duxcan as an example, you get your fat mass,

you get your fat-free mass. It's like basically everything else that's not your fat-mass. What about your fat-free mass index? Like, how is that calculated? What does that really mean? We haven't really talked about that on the show in any real level of depth.

Yep. So the fat-free mass index is the proportion, and so we do this a lot of rapid, right? It's the proportion of fat-free mass that includes not only skeletal muscle mass, but everything else in between as well, away from fat. And so, like, for the average individuals, we usually like to see that, or depending on what your size is above, and the individuals that I have analyzed above 17.5 is usually what we like to see before that starts to bit flagged of being, oh, my gosh, okay.

So we're starting to get a little bit too much body fat in comparison because we'll usually loop both visceral and subcutaneous in that ratio as one. And then compare that to muscle, so skeletal, bone and everything else in between that goes with that. And so just comparing those two ratios of fat mass versus everything else and showing individuals, it's like that preview sign into why we would recommend someone to get something like a spring bot, right? Because looking at the fat-free mass index says, okay, we're doing okay. But we need to go further into this to see, all right, well, what actual percentage is of your fat-free mass is muscle mass? And that's a consideration we need to take. And that's often something that not a lot of us that ever really looked at or paid attention to.

We just say, okay, fat-free mass index is above 18. you're solid, let's keep going. Whereas, well, maybe we're not solid. Maybe we have some insulin related issues in the hidden stressors that have flagged and maybe we need a better answer why. Maybe the answer is more muscle masses needed. And that's what a spring block can potentially tell us. Why do you think up into this point, this, again, hasn't really been a thing. What's been the, what's been the limiter there? Do you have any thoughts there? I would say everything from lack of education or just simply not knowing, you know, what is it that the media tries to push, right? Skinny looks great. Skinny is healthy, right? Ratt.

than what should be pushed, healthy muscle is sexy, is really what should be pushed. And so if we were to educate more on what the actual benefits of muscle were, especially for women who are usually going to be the individuals who are more predisposed to not engage in the activities that upregulate muscle mass anyway, then I think that would go much further. Like so, for example, in a recent presentation I just gave, the benefits that come from having higher muscle masks relate to bone health. They relate to metabolic health. Cancer and survival have been shown. muscle supports both treatment tolerance and recovery. There was a study that was done at Arizona State with old colleagues of mine, but I haven't spoken with in a long time who were comparing

the different types of modalities to an individual's ability to be able to take treatment from cancer and survive breast cancer treatment. And what they have found is that usually the individual who has higher levels of muscle mass can better survive what happens after they go through certain treatments like, for example, Dr. Rubison. There's also exercise-induced myokines. I know Dr. Galpin was talking about myokines. He's talked about it quite a few times, that will actually have anti-tumor effects that also increase your survivability to cancer.

If we take it a step further with mental clarity, and this is one that I think a lot of people should pay attention to when it simply comes to cognition. And most of the research is done in older adults, but I guarantee that this would be the exact same in middle-aged adults as well. It will actually improve executive function-related actions or improve your memory and processing speed,

just from simply having more muscle mass, once again from those extra kinds that are released into the bloodstream when you exercise, when you do resistance training. So there's a lot of different connections that people just aren't educated on as far as, oh my gosh. So that's what it's like to have muscle mass that actually functions better for my body and my health overall that far goes beyond just my health, but my performance as well. I think we just need to do a better job of educating the masses on that.

As far as like decade by decade goes, like testosterone, they can kind of experience. expect it to lower as you age, et cetera. They'd say like one or two percent a year or whatever it is. If you look at your 40s and then you look at your 50s and then you look at your 60s, is there like a projected path of you're going to lose 10% a year or whatever those numbers are? So like you get as much as you can up until you're 50 and then you can't escape father time, but you start to, which is probably when TRT really starts to make a difference.

but is there is there expected uh it's i need to look at the exact percentage but what i know is from let's say from my age i'm 36 so i do know once you get around the age of 39 to 40 percent in males is when you can start to see that one to two percent drop per year um which is which is pretty significant and so and it doesn't seem like much but it is so to any guy who's worried about testosterone on. 0.1% is significant. Ego-centric, related to speaking, when it comes to this.

But that also makes a difference, right? It's also part of the reason why we become anabolic resistant. And so when we take a look at, well, why is it that older adults need more protein per bolus of food in order to get that same anabolic effect? And so this is a big reason why, once again, sarcopenic obesity is such a big issue, is because a lot of people who start to age and start to become inactive

don't realize that the same amount of protein that they used to eat when they were kid isn't exactly the same amount of protein that they need to eat when they're older adults. We know this now. And so this is part of the equation of why muscle mass tends to be lower in individuals who age and why they're at higher risk of this type of issue. So for example, if I'm probably the youngest one in here, so let's see, on average, a 30-year-old would need 25 to 30 grams to get the maximal stimulation muscle protein synthesis. And so I can have a little piece of chicken. I've got some chicken fingers right here that I always take to go with me. About four ounces right there. That's going to be enough for me to maximize protein synthesis for the next three and a half hours. But for someone who's 60 years old, they are no longer as sensitive to that same amount of protein. They're going to need more lucene in order to induce that. They might need closer to 40 grams of protein or more to get that same response per meal. And so, and that's a big deal because how many people do we know who aren't engaged in the fitness industry all the time like we are are into that type of lifestyle? I mean, the majority of people I talk to or that I coach have trouble getting in 100 grand

of protein a day, let alone 200. No doubt. So you need 30 grams. No, at 30 years old, you need 25 to 30 grams. When you're younger, you need anywhere from 25 to 30 grams or so to be able to have that antibiotic response. The older you get, the more protein you need for that same response. You're talking about per meal, not total.

Per meal. Yeah. So per meal or per three and a half to four hours within that meal, yes. And like, say a 50 years old, like what would you recommend me? 40, at least 40 grams per meal. Yep, from high quality leucine sources. That's another issue too. We could have a nutrition talk any day,

but it's making sure they're high quality sources of leucine is what you want, which means animal source-based protein as high quality as possible. None of that, soy or plant protein, you've got to be careful with those. Don't sweat that. That's not coming here yet. David bars have animal protein, I think. I think we're good there. Yeah.

Is there? A quality of muscle. This may be not a correct question, but like the actual quality of your muscle tissue, is there like a good and bad muscle, or is it all just dumb meat that's all the same? That's a great question. And if I were to give the best,

if I were to give, I'm going to be honest and just I'm going to just shoot for the wind on this one and see how well I do, all right? And so Dr. Lane and Dr. Galpin can help me out on this one if they ever get the chance. I would say if you're talking about quality, you have to see in terms of what is the level of mitochondrial function that it has or how metabolically healthy is that tissue. Can it process glucose correctly? Is the mitochondrial efficiency where it needs to be? That's how I would potentially qualify healthy versus unhealthy muscle tissue. And so for example, an individual who is pre-diabetic and starting to have insulin-related issues, that's how you can potentially infer someone that has unhealthy, muscle tissue function compared to someone who does not have

insulin sensitivity related issues. And therefore, when you have more muscle mass, you have more ability to then uptake glucose. You're more likely to have healthier muscular function from that perspective. But wouldn't like, you know, like type 2 fibers, would they be less monocondria? I mean...

So that's another question. So if you're stronger or if you're better adapted, I think that could also relate to that question too. All right. If you're someone who is, let's say for example, why we do grip strength testing at rapid health optimization, right? Because grip strength in itself is another great health or performance prognostic indicator

that we can use for sarcopenia for neurological function because anything has to do with your periphery, your hands or your feet, developing stability and balance that requires a hell of a lot more neuromuscular function and neurological development to do that. You have to, the brain has to help you synchronize multiple muscle groups working together for you to be able to balance yourself on one foot. It's hard. And so, but we see that the more that you develop that, the, actually healthier brain function you have.

You could infer from that that muscle function being healthier or not healthier is also related to that question as well. All right. Really loaded, but I think that's the multiple avenues that you could take if you wanted to give a clear answer to that question. So how strong you are, how much muscle mass you have,

and how metabolously healthy you are could answer that question. I think it like plays into the question I had earlier about the person that's super jacked, but still 35% body fat and the skinny fat person. Like the skinny fat person is going to fall victims. to the unmuscled issues that are going to arise in life. But then the obese-ish person that is still strong is going to have their own issues of just not being able to process food properly, even though they might be slightly healthier than the skinny fat, 35% person.

For sure. What does it take as we get older, like, you know, to... What does it take to get better? Right? You got to lift weights, man. You got to lift weights. If we wanted to really improve the muscle to fat ratio, it's not this crazy amount. You can get a great response from three full body workouts a week that lasts 45 minutes to an hour. And so, I mean, and Galpin talks a lot about this too when it comes to certain programming. If you only have 30 minutes three times a week, then it just depends on how you use that 30 minutes, right? And so if you're doing the right amount of intensity that you need for fast-twitch muscle fiber recruitment and balanced standpoint, you need everything. So what I usually like to say is make sure you're targeting the whole body at least two to three times per week per muscle group. Try to work on balance at least once or twice. Make sure power is in there as well to be able to exacerbate that particular part of the issue when it comes to bone mineral density and not having that excitability. And then make sure you're doing some cardiovascular training. Make sure that you're hitting those requirements from the American Heart Association for whatever those ranges are, 150 minutes of moderate and 75 minutes of vigorous. that's all going to play a role in helping you have an optimal body composition.

But strength training is going to be the best thing you can do to maintain and to stimulate that muscle growth. But I'll also say this, start earlier. So the earlier you start, the easier time it will be. So don't put it off. If you're already 50 years old, it's not too late. You just got to start now. You're going to have to work hard. I'll say that.

Like, if you waited until now, you got to work really hard. Right. Because they've even shown Grandpa can build muscle, right? They just have to have the right stimulus. You just got to work super hard. You can't go light. I mean, I feel like we should tell you can't go into the, do your circuit and go light. I mean, it is, you know, you do need, you know, the.

Right. Go based off of regular intensity standards, right? If the goal is hypertrophy, that should be anywhere between 65 and 85% of your 1RM for anywhere from 6 to 12 sets at a decent tempo. If you're doing strength, which is recommended. you need to be higher than 85 to 90% of your 1RM for three sets of 5 to 6. And then if you're working on stability and endurance, then that's when you can use your lighter weights,

your lighter intensities of exercises for higher rep ranges. That has never changed. And so that is something that should always be enforced, no matter what your age range is. And when you say no matter what intensity you choose, like, you know, to maximize the perjave, you're still going to have to go to like at least a three or four RIR, correct? I mean, if you're like six out, it's not going to be enough to stimulate anything.

It won't be slow enough, you know, or, you know, stimulated enough. 100%. Got to push hard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but like, you know, but just to let everybody know before they freak out, like a, when you're talking about leaving three or four reps and reserve, it's not that hard. Like, you're not like, you know, it's just pretty, it's a pretty good workout. Right. Yeah.

It's just doing something and trying hard. Yeah, and going to where it's kind of hard and stopping, you know, nowhere near failure, but, you know, you know, you're, you know, you're, you know, you know, you know, you're getting there. I was actually hanging out with a bunch of dads this morning and they were talking about how it's kind of weird sometimes being like the meathead in the group and no one really knows. And they're like, man, so many girls are tearing their ACLs these days playing soccer.

Like, how do we solve this problem? Like easy, but. And I was like, it's like a big mystery. And I was like, you should get your daughters jacked. Like right now. The most important thing you can do is, just get your kids jacked at the youngest possible age. Like, mash.

Like, when it was like four years old and we're like, today we start getting jacked. Yeah. Lift weights. That's how you do it. The for life. The coolest path. And I, they all kind of looked at me like, that guy in the back is might be crazy. But it's like, no, whether you're 85 or you're 14, the path is just getting jacked.

And maybe don't go year round. And try support. If you're going to play a year-round soccer, I mean, you're going to be at risk. I understand you probably, if that's the one sport, I'm going to say you might need to go you around, but like it's probably going to get an injury. So know that too. Yeah.

We spent a lot of time talking kids sports last week, but the interesting piece of life these days for me is like how much movement is required if you kind of like get rid of the niceties of life. like having having to like walk everywhere you go like now that I have like a like a larger property it's like the amount of walking the amount of like carrying water every day like when you when you look back and like weight rooms didn't always exist like no you had to like go pick a rock up all the time and move it if you wanted it move like all these things are like so built into life that

you're going to be doing it just to be able to survive basically, and then all of a sudden, things got really, really easy. And all the niceties and the couches showed up and, like, this is very comfortable. But if you just, if you wake up in the morning and you just have to go do stuff all the time, you build a lot of muscle. Yes. It's just consistency. Yeah.

Yeah. It's consistency. But it's not that hard. I thought people think it's harder than it is. but just start. Like if you haven't been doing anything, it's super easy. Like just you're going to love it for a few weeks because you're going to get those newbie gains.

But start, you know. But it's harder to have low muscle mass and then live the rest of your life unhealthily with sarcopanic obesity. Sure. You're going to be falling and feel like a clown all the time. You know, yeah. It's hard though to suck at things.

That's the part that's really, really challenging. Yeah. And when you started lifting weights, you suck at it. It's like if I said to put a check. Chess board, maybe not chess, but if you put a chessboard in front of me, I would quit in two weeks. Be like, no, this is not for me. Let's go lift the weights. If you'll just stick, though, with weight training for two or three weeks, you'll start to see gains.

And that's when you fall in love with it. It's just if people can make it through a few weeks and you start to say, oh, I'm getting stronger. It doesn't kill me. I'm not as sore. Then they look in the mirror and you see a little muscle. You just got to do it for a few weeks, commit. And then you'll see those results. And that's what keeps people coming back.

If they can just make it through that. There's you go. Dr. Perry, we're going to the people find you. Dr. C. Perry, zero one on Instagram and look forward to a lot of cool U.B content coming soon. There you go. Drafts mash. Mashlead.com. That was awesome, man.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Oh, by the way, anyone listening. I'm dropping a brand new product for the first time in a while. So it's all about power, jumping, and acceleration. Look at that guy. By the time we release this, it'll be out. E-Book programming and coaching.

You know, Doug, you mentioned Springbok earlier. How are we doing this big partnership with them? And like, what does all that entail? Yeah. We actually really do have a legitimately big announcement here. Our team here at Rapid Health Optimization, we are launching a new muscle health and performance program called Optima Muscle. This really is the first time ever that you can directly measure muscle mass with MRIs. Kind of as a quote unquote regular person.

Until now, this kind of data was only available for research populations or more recently. It's been available to like NFL teams and NBA teams, but there's nowhere you can go direct to consumer to get your muscle mass percentage calculated. There's, there's no one doing it right now. It's brand new. So we have partnered with a company called Springbok and they have just received FDA clearance for their total body rapid MRI scans to deliver. body composition, including hyper detailed analytics on muscle mass specifically.

So barbershoog slash rapid health optimization will be offering this this very first of its kind of direct to consumer program for our high-end clients and our professional athletes in our high-end programs. We will combine MRI, highly precise MRI analytics with physical therapy evaluations, muscle strength and performance testing to get a systematic look at your strength and muscle imbalances, asemeteries, etc. With our team of strength conditioning coaches, physical therapists and PhD sport physiologists, we can show you exactly where you're imbalanced, exactly where you're compensating.

They can show you on the MRI data, which creates a 3D digital model of your entire body where you can very clearly see exactly how big each muscle is relative to the same muscle on the opposite side. You can see that your left trap is 4% bigger than your right trap, etc. I set one of the records for for largest muscle, largest single muscle asymmetry at 45.6% for my, my optorator, no, my, not operate internist, my, my quadratus femurus, excuse me, because I had a posterior hip dislocation many years ago and that muscle kind of got ripped apart and de-intervated. So it's just in there, but mostly attributes like half the size of the on the other side, which probably explains why I get a lot of pain in my left hip.

And so I'm working with the team now to to work through that and try to try to fix that as best I can. But that's the type of stuff that you can discover with the scan that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise. So and then relative to related to this show specifically, you get your muscle mass percentage, but you also get your, your ratio of muscle to fat. That's probably another thing that you don't have. Like I don't know anyone that has their muscle mass percentage at all, let alone their actual muscle to fat ratio. Dextascans and hydrostatic weighing and, you know, skinful calipers, et cetera, like they will give you your body fat percentage, but they don't tell you your actual muscle mass percentage. They tell you how much of your body

is not body fat, but it's not your muscle mass percentage. So your muscle mass percentage, as you heard on the show, it's probably going to be closer to like, say 40, 35 to 45, something like that. And then, you know, if you have a healthy body fat percentage, you're going to be, you know, 10, 15, 20 depending on on who you are. So your your muscle to fat ratio is going to kind of range between, you know, one on the low end and like, you know, three or four on the high end. And these type of metrics have just never been available to anyone before. So again, the whole team here at Rapid, very excited about all this. Dr. Andy Galpin, one of the world's leading muscle scientists, muscle physiologists, and super fired up about this. And we've been

creating all this together, of course. And I really honestly believe that, This type of data is only going to be going to become more popular 10 years from now. We're going to look back and be like, how do we not know our muscle mass percentage? Like just like we can't, if we look back 100 years, like people didn't know their body fat percentage and they didn't really understand obesity. Like people don't understand how being undermuscled is a big problem. And we're going to help pioneer that whole world and bring muscle mass percentage to the masses. Starting in Austin, Texas, this coming Monday, November 17th, we are launching this in Austin,

Texas. We have the best infrastructure with our MRI centers in Austin. We do have some other possibilities with other cities around the country and we are expanding aggressively right now, but really starting with our first big push in Austin, Texas, again, starting this coming Monday, November 17th. On Monday, Optima, Muscle.com. Excuse me, Optima, Muscle.com. We'll have a full sales page and give you all the details, as well as have an example video of Dr. Doug Goldstein walking through Springbok data so you can really see what it looks like and what the 3D model of the muscle mass looks like and it's actually my data on there that's walking through so you can check that out until then that just goes that website or that

URL rather will go to a booking link with our performance team you're welcome to book a call and get your name on the wait list in advance and or just get on there and ask those guys any questions that you have so super fired up about that of course you can always DM me as well on Instagram at Douglas E Larsson beautiful do that and I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are barbell shrugged, Barbell underscore shrug. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.