Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Much Exercise Is Optimal for Your Health?

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Most people know that exercise is good for them. And most also know that not exercising is bad for them. Despite that, most people fail to meet even the bare minimum recommendations for physical activity (2.5 hours of moderate exercise or a little over an hour of intense exercise). Just 22.9 percent of Americans hit minimum activity guidelines, not even half (46 percent) of Europeans exercise or play sports, and only 16 percent of Canadians perform the recommended levels of activity. Then, of course, there’s a smaller group of people who go to the opposite extreme. The Ironman triathletes, gym rats, and so forth who spend every spare second in the gym or doing cardio, largely in the belief that more exercise is always better. But, what about the rest of us? What about people who want to be fit, healthy, and happy, who also have jobs, families, and other obligations that limit how much time we can spend working out? And what if we don’t just want to stave off disease and dysfunction, but also build a body we’re proud of? You’ll learn the answers to all of these questions in this podcast. The long story short is you don’t need to exercise all that much to stay healthy, but building a body you can be proud of takes slightly more work. Even then, though, it doesn’t take as much time or effort as you might think. 4:29 - What is the minimum amount of exercise that people should be doing? 11:27 - How does resistance training compare to cardio? 16:16 - How much exercise is optimal for being as healthy and as functional as possible for as long as possible? --- Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/ Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ --- 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.legionathletics.com/signup/

Welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I'm your host, Mike Matthews, and thank you for joining me today to learn more about getting fit and healthy, of course. And today's episode is about how much exercise should we be doing to optimize our health? Now, chances are, you know that exercise is good for your health. You know that not exercising is bad for your health. Many people know this, of course, including many people who don't exercise. Did you know, for example, that just 23% of Americans hit the minimum activity guidelines and not even half, about 46% of Europeans exercise or play sports. half, about 46% of Europeans exercise or play sports. And in Canada, it's only about 16% of people who perform the recommended levels of activity. And on the other end of the spectrum,

at the extreme end of this other end, you have a very small group of people who are exercising a lot. You know, you have triathletes, you have gym rats, you have people who spend just about every free minute they have doing something physical. And many of these people think that exercise works in a dose response manner, meaning the more exercise you do, the healthier you are. And that's true up to a point, but you can overdo it. And we will get into that in this podcast. And so then where does that leave people like us? People who want to be fit. We want to be healthy. We want to be happy, but we also have jobs and many of us have families and we have social obligations and other obligations. There are limitations on our time. We can only give so much to working out. And if you're like me, you don't

just want to stave off disease and dysfunction. I mean, that's the bare minimum we want out of our exercise habit. We also want to have a great physique. We want to have more muscle than average. And that's true for men and women. We want to have lower body fat levels than average. And so how does that factor into the exercise equation? How much exercise does it take to achieve that as well as at least most of the health benefits that exercise can provide us? Well, all of that is what I am going to be talking about in today's episode. check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example,

is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout, post-workout supplements,

fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to www.buylegion.com, B-U-Y Legion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want all natural evidence-based supplements that work, please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. All right, let's start this discussion with the minimum amount of exercise that people should be doing. Most research shows that if you just want to reduce your risk of dying an untimely, unnatural death, as little as 15 minutes of light exercise per day is enough to make a pretty big difference. Now, of course, more exercise is better, but that's really where the benefits start to become apparent. For example, a study

conducted by the National Health Research Institutes of Taiwan looked at the exercise habits and the life expectancy of 416,175 14% reduced risk of all-cause mortality, death from any and all causes, as well as a three-year longer life expectancy than people who were inactive. What's more, for every additional 15 minutes of daily exercise, beyond that minimum of just 15 minutes per day, the scientists saw a further reduction in all-cause mortality by about 4%. So at 15 minutes of exercise per day, a 14% reduced risk of all-cause mortality. At 30 minutes of exercise a day, an 18% reduced risk of all-cause mortality. And the researchers observed a reduction in all-cancer mortality, so death from any form of cancer, by about 1% for every additional 15 minutes of exercise. And again, that is an absolute reduction

in risk, not a relative reduction in risk. Now, to really drive this point home, think of it this way. According to the data in this study, if you were to exercise an hour per day, you'd have about a 28% lower risk of dying from any and all causes than someone who doesn't work out. And other studies have demonstrated similar results. For example, a study conducted by scientists at Jean Monnet University involved the analysis of over 122,000 people, and they found that exercising just 15 minutes per day reduced all-cause mortality by about 22%. Yet another study on the matter was conducted by scientists at the National Cancer Institute, and it found almost the exact same result when they looked at data from over a half of a million people.

And in case you're wondering, exercise in most of these studies was actually pretty easy. We're not talking about intense weightlifting or high intensity interval training. We're talking about walking, jogging, maybe some gentle cycling. And so that just goes to show how powerful exercise is and how crucial it is to staying healthy and to living a long and disease-free life. Now, the reasons for this, the physiological, the mechanical reasons are myriad. They include improved body composition, improved blood lipoprotein profiles, and that means lower triglyceride levels. It means lower LDL cholesterol levels, the type of cholesterol that people generally think of as bad. It's not quite that simple,

but what is true is if your LDL levels are too high and your HDL levels are too low, that's not good. That does not bode well for your heart health and your heart function. And so anyway, some of the other major physiological benefits of exercise also include improved blood glucose levels. levels. So glucose control, insulin sensitivity, lower levels of blood pressure, lower amounts of systemic inflammation, decreased blood coagulation, improved coronary blood flow, improved cardiac function, improved endothelial function, which refers to cells that line the inside of our blood vessels and our lymphatic vessels. So you're going to get better blood flow and lymph flow, as well as lower levels of stress and anxiety. And the list yammers on. There are many, many ways that exercise benefits our body. You could look at it this way. Exercise enhances just about every important physiological process that keeps us healthy and keeps us alive.

It is very similar to sleep in that regard. If you exercise, everything in your body that matters, just about everything, is going to run better. The same thing goes for sleeping well and sleeping enough. same thing goes for sleeping well and sleeping enough. If you get enough high quality sleep, just about every major important process that keeps us alive and keeps us disease and dysfunction free is going to work better. And this fact is also highlighted by what happens if you don't exercise. So according to the World Health Organization, inactivity accounts for about 6% of global deaths and is the fourth leading risk factor for mortality behind high blood glucose, which is just over 6%, tobacco use, which is about 9%, and high blood pressure, which is about 13%. And then other conditions, aside from high blood

glucose levels and high blood pressure, that are linked with poor diet and lack of exercise, account for even more deaths. What's more, the WHO estimates that inactivity is the primary cause in around 21% of breast cancer cases, 25% of colon cancer cases, 27% of diabetes cases, and 30% of coronary heart disease cases. And so what that means then is inactivity, just not moving your body enough, is one of the leading causes of preventable death and disease. causes of preventable death and disease. And that's why the WHO recommends that adults do about 150 minutes of moderate cardio or 75 minutes of intense cardio and resistance training two or more days per week, as well as some mobility as time allows, you know, stretching, yoga, something like that. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading

brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Now, so far, I've been talking about exercise, the importance of exercise, moving your body. But how does resistance training compare to cardio? Cardio does great things in the body. It provides many health benefits. And if you really want to optimize your health, if you really want to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible, you should be doing cardio even if you are doing resistance training regularly, even if you're doing quite a bit of resistance training, even if you're like me and you're lifting weights five, six hours per week. will benefit from it. You are not going to get all of the health benefits of cardio from just lifting weights. And if you want to learn more about that, check out a podcast that I recorded a couple of months ago now called, Should You Do Cardio If You Lift Weights? Science Says Yes. And in that podcast, I explain specifically what you get from resistance training in the way of health benefits and what you get in the way of cardio and why combining them really is the best for overall health and

well-being. Now, if you listen to that podcast, you will also learn about the unique benefits of resistance training because the opposite is true as well. If all you do is cardio and you don't do any sort of resistance training, you are not going to achieve optimal health and you're not going to achieve optimal longevity in particular because cardio does not help preserve lean body mass. And that is very important for maintaining health and function, especially as we get older. It does not help maintain our resting metabolic rate, which is very important for maintaining a healthy body composition and preventing the slow weight gain that many people experience as they get older, which in time turns into a real problem. If you only are five pounds or maybe 10 pounds heavier than your ideal weight or ideal body composition,

you can be perfectly healthy. But when you are 30 plus pounds heavier than you should be, and it's all fat and you've lost muscle, which does happen as we get older, if we don't do anything about it, now the risk of disease and dysfunction has gone way up. And now it is something to be concerned about. And because I love to beat the drum for resistance training, I mean, cardio is great, but I look at it as supplementary in the scheme of things. I want people spending most of their time training their muscles and a minority of their time doing cardio. That is the formula for success. That is the formula for success.

Resistance training can provide health benefits that many people are not aware of. Like, for example, it improves heart health. Now, if that is not surprising to you, to some people it is because for a long time, experts and gurus were saying that resistance training and intense weightlifting in particular is bad for your heart, period. It puts too much stress on it. We now know that is not true. We know also that resistance training is great for improving bone density, which of course is very important as we get older. in our 70s and beyond, we want to be able to function and not fall down and break a hip, for example, or break something because that can quickly spiral out of control and even lead to

death. Resistance training has also been shown to improve sleep quality, which then makes everything in life better and more enjoyable. It improves cognitive abilities and, and this is a very unique benefit of resistance training, it's great for improving self-esteem. Cardio, not so much. If it helps you lose fat, yes, then that can certainly boost your confidence, but there's something special about adding some muscle to the right places on your body for just making you feel better every day. Look in the mirror, like what you see, like how your clothes fit, like the compliments you get from people. And then there's really something to be said for being strong and not just for the purpose of lifting heavy weights in the gym. That is fun and that can be a bit of a rush, but just knowing in

general that you have a strong and resilient body that can go a long way in improving your outlook on your abilities and your life. And so if you are not currently doing much exercise or if you are doing maybe only cardio and you're not doing much or any resistance training, I hope I have sold you on increasing the amount of exercise you're doing if you are inactive or increasing or starting resistance training if you are not doing any. And as for how much you should be doing, if we want to get most of all of the benefits that I have discussed, if we want to really optimize our health and our performance and our vitality and our longevity and our self-esteem, here's the sweet spot. It is about four to six hours of resistance training

per week and about two to maybe three hours of cardio per week. Now, you don't have to do that much exercise if you can't or don't want to. If you did half of that amount, if you did, let's say, two or three hours of resistance training per week and maybe one to one and a half hours of cardio per week, that is very good and you are going to enjoy a much lower risk of many types of diseases and dysfunctions and you can gain plenty of muscle and strength and you can improve your cardiovascular endurance a lot and you can reap many of the rewards that exercise has to offer. But again, we're talking about how much exercise is optimal for being as healthy and as functional as possible for as long as possible. Well, again, four to six hours of resistance training per week and two to three hours of cardio per week. And I should be

specific with the cardio because most of that can be low or maybe moderate intensity and a minority of that time should be high intensity. It does not have to be two or three hours of HIIT workouts per week, for instance. If you are resistance training regularly and want to make progress in those workouts, I actually wouldn't recommend more than maybe an hour or so of HIIT per week because it is much more difficult to recover from than lower or moderate intensity cardio. And especially if you're doing stuff that's higher impact, which I wouldn't recommend again, if you want to make as much progress in your resistance training as possible. If you're going to do HIIT, I would not recommend sprints on concrete, for instance. If you want to do hill sprints, that's a little bit

better because it's less impact. But ideally, you do something like bicycle sprints on a recumbent bike or an upright bike because that added impact causes muscle damage that must be repaired. And if your body is trying to recover from a round of high impact hit and you now are trying to do a squat workout, you will not be able to perform as well in that squat workout than if you hadn't done the hit workout. Now, as for the resistance training, any resistance training is better than none, but the most effective type of resistance training uses heavy weights. And to be specific there, I'm talking about weights that are, let's say about 60 to 70% of one rep max and up. And to translate that into rep ranges, so you could think about it that way, most people could get probably about 12 reps with 70% of their one rep max before their form just

falls apart. And that's it. That's the end of the set, right? So think with training, let's say no higher than 15 reps per set, but ideally probably in the range of at the high end, 12 reps per set. And at the low end, depending on how experienced of a weightlifter you are and what you're doing, you might be using weights that only allow for two reps or three reps. For instance, you might be up there, you know, 95% of one rep max.

And if you are not sure what to do in your programming, check out Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a man or Thinner Leaner Stronger if you are a woman. If you are a man who has yet to gain his first 20-ish pounds of muscle, regardless of how long you've been training, and if you're a woman about half that, if you have not gained your first 10 pounds of muscle or so, then Bigger Leaner Stronger is for you if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger is for you if you are a gal. And you can just follow those programs and that's all you really need to get there. And chances are those programs can actually take you a bit further, but somewhere around, let's say the 20 to 25 pound mark of muscle gain for men and about half that for women is where the

bigger, leaner, stronger slash thinner, leaner, stronger programming slows down in terms of its results. And it becomes more of a maintenance routine. And at that point, you just need to work a bit harder and you can upgrade to the beyond bigger, leaner, stronger program, which is another book. It's just the sequel to bigger,, Leaner, Stronger. And of course it is skewed towards men, hence the title, but there's a lot there for women. And I actually will be creating a female version of the book. I will create Beyond Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, but I will not be able to do it until the earliest would be next year. And the reason for that is because I am publishing a book with Simon and Schuster for the 40 plus crowd, and it's going to be releasing next summer.

And part of the deal is they do not want me self-publishing anything between now and then. So they want a year of publishing silence from Mike Matthews. And that's totally normal. And I understand, I'm not complaining at all. However, I can start self-publishing books again. I believe I have to look in the contract, but I believe it's six months after the release of the 40 plus book, which is called Muscle for Life. So I can start self-publishing books again, basically like December 2021 or January 2022. And then I'm going to be releasing books on a six month schedule. So I have several books already lined up that I'm going to be releasing and Beyond Thinner, Leaner, Stronger will come. I'm not exactly sure where in the

sequence it's going to fall exactly, but let's just say I think a 2022 release is doable, maybe summer or Q4 2022. In the meantime, however, women can read Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, get a lot out of it. And if you are a woman who reads it, and if you want help modifying the programming, because the principles apply equally to men and women, but the program I include with the book, and I also include a year's worth of beyond bigger leaner, stronger workouts that I programmed in the bonus material for people who don't want to go through the work of building it all out. They just would rather do what I tell them to do. Then that's for them. The thing is though, many women might look at that programming and not like the amount of upper body volume. They may want to

bring the amount of upper body volume down and increase the amount of lower body volume because that is more reflective of what they're trying to do with their physique. And again, the book gives you all the information and all the tools you need to do that. But if you are a woman and you want some help with it, just shoot me an email, mikeatmuscleforlife.com, and I'll be happy to do that for you. In fact, I just thought of this. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put together a female version of the programming already, and I should just include it in the bonus material. Now that I think about it, I'm going to do that, making a note. However, if for whatever reason, your bonus material, if it hasn't made it

into the bonus material yet, or if you're just not exactly sure how it works, again, shoot me an email, happy to help. And lastly, I'll just quickly mention if you are a guy who has already gained his first 20 or 25 pounds of muscle, or if you're a woman who has already gained her first, call it 10 to maybe 12, 13 pounds of muscle, Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger is probably going to be more productive for you than Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. You may want to read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger or Thinner, Leaner, Stronger if you're a woman because it teaches you the fundamentals. And even if you know a lot or most of what is in there, sometimes it is helpful to be reminded of the things that matter the most and how they work. So you probably can benefit from reading the quote unquote beginner's book. But as far as the program goes, I think Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger will be more productive. Even if you can make progress with Bigger, Leaner, Stronger or Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, I think you'll do a bit better with Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review

on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility. And thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback,

even if it is criticism, I'm open to it. And of course you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmusclefullife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.