Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - 3 "Everyday" Weightlifting Mistakes That Keep People Small, Weak, and Frustrated

Episode Date: November 23, 2018

There's a reason why the majority of people that work out regularly don't have much to show for it, and why so few people ever build truly impressive physiques. And, contrary to popular belief, it's not (the lack of) steroids--many drug users are just as flabby and weak as the next guy. The reason why so few people are able to build muscular, strong, lean, healthy bodies is they are doing too many things wrong in and outside of the gym. Training and eating right isn't particularly complicated, but there are quite a few moving parts that need to be integrated and coordinated. It's not as simple as "train hard and eat big." There aren't a couple "secrets" to getting big, lean, and strong. There are a collection of principles that must be properly and consistently applied. In this podcast, we're going to talk about the training side of the equation. Specifically, the biggest weightlifting mistakes that I see people make, and why they keep you small, weak, and frustrated. Let's get to it. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural whey protein powder, Whey Plus. Now, this is a naturally sweetened and flavored whey isolate protein powder made from exceptionally high quality milk from small dairy farms in Ireland. Whey Plus also contains no GMOs, hormones, antibiotics, artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And if I may say so myself,

it also tastes delicious and mixes great. And all that is why Whey Plus has over 1,400 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average and another 600 on my website with a five star average. So if you want a clean, all-natural, and great-tasting whey protein supplement that's low in calories, carbs, and fat, then you wanna head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Whey Plus today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout

and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans.

So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.lesionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let's get to the show. In this video podcast, I want to talk about weightlifting mistakes that keep you small and weak. And I am speaking from experience here because while I am not exactly small and weak anymore, I once was smaller and weaker. And one of the major reasons why is I was making all of the mistakes that I'm going to share with you. So the first mistake is spending too much time doing high rep burnout finisher type work. So many years ago, before I started educating myself on the science of training and muscle

building and strength building, I thought that muscle gain was mostly a matter of volume, of doing a lot of reps. The more reps that you did over time or the more reps that you could cram into a given period of time, the more muscle you would gain. That's what I thought at least. And I also used to think that getting a big pump was also very conducive to muscle gain. And so what I used to do is I used to go to the gym five or six days per week and do a lot of reps, a lot of volume, a lot of high rep sets. I also mostly followed body part splits for the first six or seven years when I was doing just magazine workouts, traditional bodybuilder type workouts. And just to be clear what I mean by high rep sets, I was doing pretty much all of my work in the rep range of anywhere from 12 to 20 reps, depending on the exercise and how I was feeling. I guess there wasn't that much thought that was

going into the programming, at least on my end, because I was just following stuff that I had grabbed from magazines or the internet. And a lot of those workouts also often included various training techniques that are mostly used to just cram more volume into your workouts, like drop sets, giant sets, super sets, and so on. What's the problem here? Why is this a mistake? Well, first there is the rep range itself. If you are training mostly in the rep range of 12 to 20, or even if it's 12 to 15 reps, there are a couple problems here. First, it's very hard to accurately assess how many reps you still have in reserve, how many reps you still have left in the tank. And that messes with your progress because while you can gain muscle working in a variety of rep ranges, you do have to ensure that you are taking the majority

of your heavy sets, your working sets close to technical failure. A good rule of thumb is you should be ending most of your hard working muscle building sets with one or two reps still left in the tank, one or two reps shy of technical failure. And if you're not familiar with that term, technical failure is the point where your form starts to break down. You might be able to keep the bar moving or keep the dumbbell moving, but your form is going to start breaking down. That is technical failure, which is different than absolute muscle failure. That's where you just simply can't keep the bar or the dumbbell moving regardless of form. Now, the reason why that is important, the reason why your hard muscle building sets must be hard is that is the level of effort required

to force your muscles to grow bigger and stronger. Now, I know that's not a very technical statement and I would rather not actually get into the technicalities here or this video podcast will drag on. But if you want to get into the technicalities, head over to muscleforlife.com and search for hypertrophy. And you'll find an article I wrote on muscle hypertrophy, which is muscle growth. That's the technical term for muscle growth. And I'll find an article I wrote on muscle hypertrophy, which is muscle growth. That's the technical term for muscle growth. And I believe I have also recorded a podcast on it. So you can also search for that here on YouTube, or if you are listening to the podcast via whatever listening app you use, just search the feed. It should be in there.

Hey, before we continue, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one-on-one coaching service. Now, my team and I have helped thousands of people of all ages, circumstances, and needs. So no matter how complicated or maybe even hopeless you might think your situation is, we will figure out how to get you the results you want. Every diet and training program we create is 100% custom. We provide daily workout logs and we do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service as well as discounts on supplements and the list goes on and on. To learn more, just head over to

legionathletics.com slash coaching. And if you like what you see, schedule your free consultation call. Now there's normally a wait list to work with our coaches and new slots do fill up very quickly. So if this sounds even remotely interesting to you, head over to legionathletics.com slash coaching now and schedule your free consultation call. And let's see if our program is a good fit for you. For the purposes of this talk, all you really need to know is that your hard muscle building sets must be hard and they must stay hard as you continue to get stronger and so then circling back to the high rep point one of the reasons why working in higher rep ranges makes it harder to gain muscle and strength is it is much harder to know how many reps you actually have left in the tank when you are working

in the rep range of, I would say, 12 to 15 and on up. And that's not actually me just saying that. There are a number of studies out there that have shown that, especially in people who are newer to lifting weights, they are very inaccurate in guesstimating how many reps they actually have left in the tank and especially when rep ranges exceed 10 to 12 or so. What that means then if you are doing a lot of work in higher rep ranges is you are much more likely to just get stuck and just plateau and not add weight to the bar over time, not add reps over time, and just kind of continually do the same thing over and over, which is exactly the rut that I was stuck in many years ago. Now, another problem with high rep work is research shows if the rep range gets too high,

the muscle building effectiveness goes down. Even if you know what you're doing, even if you have a good sense of how many reps you still have left in the tank, and even if you push those hard sets to somewhere within a rep or three shy of technical failure. And specifically what the research shows is that when sets are getting up into the range of about 20 reps or higher, the muscle building effectiveness simply goes down. It can be great for building muscle endurance, but definitely not great for strength and not as good for muscle hypertrophy as lower rep ranges. And if you are interested in checking that research out, listen to the interview I did with James Krieger several months ago, because it's all about that. Just search for K-R-I-E-G-E-R in my podcast feed, and you'll find it. Yet another problem with doing too much high rep work is it makes for very

uncomfortable, unenjoyable workouts. And of course, we're not working out to be comfortable or to go enjoy ourselves per se, but the more enjoyable your training is, the better you are going to do over time, even if the training isn't scientifically optimal. Now, that's not to say that high rep training is scientifically optimal, but my point is even if you had the most scientifically optimized training program built for you by the most qualified coach, if you don't enjoy it, chances are you're not going to do very well on it because your compliance might suffer. You are not going to be 100% there in every workout, really trying to make the most out of every set. You are not

going to look forward to your workouts. That alone is going to impair your progress. And so similar to dieting, you know, it's very important that no matter what diet you are following, that you enjoy it. With training, it is also important that you have a training program that you enjoy and that you enjoy your workouts as much as that is possible. And for most people, and now I'm speaking from the position of having worked with tens of thousands of people over the years, virtually via mostly via email. Most people enjoy heavier, lower rep weightlifting than lighter, higher rep weightlifting. When you also have to be taking your sets close to technical failure. And that is particularly true when you are also doing a lot of compound weightlifting. And if you are skeptical, why don't you go do five sets of 20 reps of squats

this week with each set ended with two to three reps still left in the tank. And let me know how you feel at the end of that workout. And let me know if you're going to be looking forward to it again within the next three to seven days, depending on your programming. And I wouldn't even recommend that you try that with the deadlift because it would probably just be dangerous. Okay, so that's it for the first big mistake, which is doing too much high rep work. Let's go on to the next one, which is ascending pyramid training. Now, if you are not familiar with that, it is simply your traditional pyramid style of training where you are starting your first set with a lighter weight and a higher

number of reps and progressing to heavier weights and lower number of reps in your successive sets. Now, depending on how it's laid out, this can have a place in some people's workout routines sometimes, but for most people and how most people do it, it is a mistake. The reason why is by the time you get to the heavier weights, by the time you get to those heavier sets, which are really the ones that are going to drive muscle and strength gain, you are already fatigued from the lighter stuff that you were doing, which means it makes it harder to do a lot of high quality work with the heavier weights. And this is especially true when your lighter sets

are ending with five plus reps still in the tank when they're very sub-maximal. Because a 12 rep set ended with six reps still in the tank is not nearly as anabolic as let's say a six or an eight rep set ended with two reps left in the tank or a 12 rep set for that matter ended with two reps left in the tank. And then so all you are really accomplishing here with this traditional setup is in the first few sets, you are getting some volume in. It's usually very sub-maximal, but you are getting some volume in. But you are mostly just fatiguing yourself, which is going to reduce your performance in your heavier sets, which you are going to be taking closer to failure. And those are the sets where you want to maximize your performance.

And the same goes even if you are taking each of your sets close to failure your performance. And, you know, the same goes, even if you are taking each of your sets close to failure, in that case, if you are, let's say you are periodizing your training and you are taking each of your working sets close to failure, even though they're in different rep ranges. And in that case, though, I would rather have you switch it around. I'd rather have you do a proper short warmup. and if you are not sure how to do that head over to Muscle Life and search for warm-up or warm-up separate words either one should pull it up and I do think I've also recorded a podcast on that as well and so you do your warm-up and then you do your heaviest training first which again requires the most energy it requires the most energy. It requires the most effort, requires the most focus. It requires

the most attention to form. So you do that first and then you do your higher rep stuff later in your workouts. Now that style of training is known as reverse pyramid training. And if you want to know more about that, head over to Muscle for Life and search for pyramid and an article that I wrote on it will come up. Okay. So the third and final mistake that I want to share is resting too little in between sets. And this is an insidious one because it seems a bit counterintuitive. We are in the gym to work out, to move, to sweat. And yet if we are going to follow proper evidence-based protocols for our weightlifting and we want to maximize muscle and strength gain, we should be resting a fair amount in between our hard

muscle building heavy sets. And so what I used to do is I would either superset muscles that were antagonistic in their relationship or just disrelated altogether. Like for example, I might do a set of squats and then just go do a set of shoulders or a set of biceps or triceps or whatever. Although I didn't do very many sets of squats for the first number of years, but that's an example of how I might've done it. Or maybe a set of biceps into a set of triceps or a set of biceps into shoulders and so forth with no real rest. So theoretically the first muscle group that was trained, yeah, it got some rest. So let's say I was squatting and then I go do some biceps. Yeah, my leg muscles are getting some rest, but because I'm going from one exercise into another, my heart rate is staying up. Like my

body is not getting a rest per se. And so then what would happen is when I would go back to the squat, even though it may have been a minute and a half, two minutes, which is not even that much time, which I'll get to in a second, my heart rate hasn't come down and my body's not ready to give maximum effort on this next set of squats, which just means lowered performance. It means less reps. And when I wasn't super setting, I just wasn't resting enough. I would rest a minute, maybe two, maybe two and a half at most, but most common would probably be a minute to a minute and a half in between any and all sets, regardless of exercise, muscle group, rep range, and so forth. Now, while I didn't personally

do this, you do see it a lot around the gym. Many people will do cardio stuff in between their weightlifting sets. They will do the ropes or they'll do the fancy obstacle course, you know, like NFL running back ladder drill or something like that in between their weightlifting sets, just to keep their heart rate up and keep themselves sweating. Now that's fine if you are in the gym primarily to exercise, primarily to just burn calories and reap the many benefits of moving your body a lot. But if you are there lifting weights or doing some form of resistance training and really what you want out of that is maximum muscle growth and maximum strength gain. You are

shooting yourself in the foot by not resting enough and not fully resting in between your heavy, hard sets. Now, this has been demonstrated in a number of studies at this point. The weight of the evidence is very clear. And if you want to dive into the details, head over to Muscle for Life and search for how long should you rest? If you just put in rest, actually, it'll probably come up. The article is called How Long Should You Rest to Gain Muscle and Strength, I believe. And it was written by my editor-in-chief who writes alongside me. Army is his name. Armistead is his full name. We just call him Army. Good article. It goes over all the research.

So the long story short is you should be resting two to four minutes or so in between each hard, heavy muscle building set in your weightlifting workouts. Now, there are some exceptions. Depending on what you're doing, sometimes you might be resting a little bit less. If you're doing something like rest pause training, which you can read about on Muscle for Life if you're curious, or a little bit more even if you are doing maybe some very heavy stuff on a squat or a deadlift and after four minutes your heart rate is still up or you just don't feel ready to get the next set. But for most of your resistance training, for most of your weight lifting that you're going to be doing in the gym, two to four minutes of rest in between your hard sets, not your warmup sets, but your hard sets is going to work well for me. Uh, three minutes or so is a sweet spot on my compound, my heavier. So like my heavy squats, my heavy deadlifts, my heavy

presses about three minutes is good. Two is a little bit, uh, short for me. My heart rate is usually a little bit up and I don't feel quite ready to give everything to the next set. And four minutes plus is excessive. I'm not gaining anything. I'm kind of just at that point probably talking instead of working out. That said, I have found that two minutes can be plenty of rest when I'm doing isolation work. So if I'm doing biceps curls or dumbbell side raises or rear raises or front raises or something like that, two to two and a half is my normal rest time in between my hard sets. And make sure that's true rest. You should be standing around, sitting around. You should not be actively moving

around. You can sit around and talk, which is what I usually do if I have somebody working out with me, even though that tends to make the workout to take a little bit longer. My excuse is I don't have much social time given my life, how I've set things up. I have a lot of work and I have a family. And so I work out with a buddy of mine who works with me. And then I also have made some other friends in the gym. So that's really my only social time. So that's my excuse for being chatty in between sets, but I still get my work done. So it's okay. It works out. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular

health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always

looking for constructive feedback, So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my 100% natural whey protein powder whey plus. Now this is a naturally sweetened and flavored whey isolate protein powder

made from exceptionally high quality milk from small dairy farms in Ireland. Whey plus also contains no GMOs, hormones, antibiotics, artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And if I may say so myself, it also tastes delicious and mixes great. And all that is why Weigh Plus has over 1,400 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average and another 600 on my website with a five star average. So if you want a clean, all natural and great tasting whey protein supplement, that's low in calories, carbs, and fat, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of whey plus today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps,

use the coupon code podcast at checkout, and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.