Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: AI in Coaching, NMN vs. Creatine, Overcoming Workout Pain, Jet Lag Remedies, & More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, hello. This is Michael Matthews and I am Muscle For Life. No, I am Michael Matthews. This is Muscle For Life. Although I guess it works either way. Thank you for joining me today for another Q&A episode where I answer questions that people ask me over on Instagram every week or every other week because I have quite a few of these saved up now. So I'm not doing it every week per se, but certainly every other week over on Instagram. Usually on Wednesdays, I put quite a few of these saved up now, so I'm not doing it every week per se, but certainly every other week over on Instagram. Usually on Wednesdays, I put up a story asking people to submit questions. I get a bunch of questions. I answer questions there on Instagram, and then I bring everything over here to the podcast

Starting point is 00:00:36 where I can answer the questions in more detail. So if you want me to answer your questions, follow me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness and look for that story every Wednesday or Thursday or every other Wednesday and Thursday and submit your questions. And please don't take it personally if I don't answer your questions. I get a lot of questions. I haven't counted, but there are a lot. Maybe 8,000 people will end up seeing that story and a lot of them submit questions. And so I can't possibly get to all of them. I do go through and I look for ones that are interesting or topical or questions that other

Starting point is 00:01:11 people are asking me. I'm trying to pick things really to best serve my followers there on Instagram and my podcast listeners rather than my own interests. And so anyway, today's episode features questions about AI and working out, AI produced programming. I have a question here on a very popular supplement, NMN. Is it better than creatine is the question specifically. I answer a question on simple carbs or complex carbs before and after workouts, which is best and why. I share my little routine for beating jet lag when I'm traveling overseas. I talk about dealing with pain and injury. What's the best approach?

Starting point is 00:01:54 Do you just avoid exercises that cause pain? Do you put up with low levels of pain? Do you reduce the weight intensity or something else? I share a list of people in history who I've found very inspiring and more. Okay, the first question comes from unknown, no note here on the username, but they ask, will AI replace gym coaches? So I put up a poll to my followers and I asked them, would you follow a training program created by AI? And 41% of people said yes. 59% of people said no. I would not recommend a program created by AI unless your goals are very simple. Your circumstances are very simple. Let's say you

Starting point is 00:02:41 are just looking to maintain muscle and strength. You are going to work out two or three times per week, and you can basically follow a cookie cutter, push-pull legs, or maybe an upper-lower split that doesn't require any individualization. If that's the case, then yes, you could go into ChatGPT and you could probably get a decent push-pull legs, simple kind of boilerplate template or upper-lower template that would be reasonable. But if you are looking to make progress and you are not brand new to weightlifting, which means that progress is harder to come by, and you do have to know a bit more about workout programming to make a program that will produce progress if you are an intermediate or an advanced weightlifter,

Starting point is 00:03:25 or if circumstances are such that you can't do certain exercises because they don't play nicely with your body or you don't have the equipment. And so you need to know how to make the right substitutions and other such considerations. Things like those are going to be best handled by a human who understands more about workout programming and particularly workout personalization than an AI. Seandre asks, NMN better than creatine? No. So NMN is a popular supplement these days, and it's short for nicotinamide mononucleotide.

Starting point is 00:04:03 And this is a naturally occurring molecule in every cell of all life forms. It is, I guess you could say it's like a building block for life forms because it's present in DNA. And the idea with NMN is you take it and the body converts it into another substance called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, also referred to as NAD+. And if your NAD plus levels rise, the theory goes, all kinds of good things happen in your body, often associated with reversing the effects of aging or staving off the effects of aging. Now, the problem with all of that is the evidence for it is weak or very speculative. We do know, for example, that NAD plus levels do decline as we get older and that that decline

Starting point is 00:04:52 is associated with various negative side effects that occur when we age. But that doesn't necessarily mean that if we can use supplements to increase NAD plus levels, that we can reverse some of the effects of aging. That's speculation. Furthermore, if you look at NMN as a supplement, I think it's very overhyped. I mean, even the most promising studies, and I put promising in air quotes, that I've seen contained considerable flaws. They contained dubious interpretations of data, and they often contained significant funding and study author biases. I'm talking about companies and people involved in selling the supplements. So that's my position currently on NMN.

Starting point is 00:05:35 And honestly, I hope I'm wrong. studies are conducted on the supplement and confirm at least some of the marketing claims that are being made, because then I probably will start taking it myself and start selling it over at Legion. I would love to be able to sell something new, but I want there to be high quality human trials first. CowboyCA1971 asks, I read that eating simple carbs are better for you right after a workout than complex carbs. Is this true? No, that is not true. It's usually said to sell you fancy carb supplements that are a complete waste of money. So just eat whatever carbs that you like instead. That's all you need to do. And that applies to pre-workout nutrition too. So if you like fruit, eat fruit. If you like oatmeal, eat oatmeal.

Starting point is 00:06:25 If you like white bread, eat white bread. Emily Powell, 1979, asks, best part of Italy? And she asks this because I was in Italy earlier this year and people who follow me on Instagram saw some stories that I posted. And so to answer the question, it's hard. It's hard to pick between the people, the food, the settings. Italy really is one of my favorite countries to visit.

Starting point is 00:06:49 And I think next summer, my family and I are going to fly into Rome and do that and then work our way down to the Amalfi Coast. And that's going to be fantastic as usual. If you have not been to Italy, I highly recommend it. If you've not been to Europe, I highly recommend it. If you've not been to Europe, I highly recommend going to Italy first. It is going to make a good first impression. All right. Health by Nikki J asks, how to deal with jet lag? So what works well for me when I go over the Atlantic, so if I'm going to the UK or EU, I like to get a 6 or 7 p.m. flight, so a red-eye flight, and then sleep at least a few hours on the plane.

Starting point is 00:07:26 I don't sleep well on planes, but I can get at least a few hours of sleep. So maybe I am falling asleep at like 11 p.m. my time and sleeping until 3 or 4 a.m. my time. And then use caffeine and bright light upon waking, stay awake, arrive in the late morning overseas, and then more caffeine if needed. Although I did recently stop caffeine and I'll explain why. But at the time of answering this question, this is what I was doing. So more caffeine, more light. When I'm overseas now, I've landed and I stay up all day, no naps. And then I go to bed that night in the local time zone. So I'm going to bed quite late my time, like 4 or 5, 6 a.m. my time, take melatonin because that can help the body shift its circadian rhythm,

Starting point is 00:08:12 and then use melatonin the next couple of nights. And within a day or two, max three, I usually feel pretty good. So I was in Europe twice over the last several months, did this both times. And the first time it worked really well. It was my wife and I, we went to Italy for her 40th birthday, no kids, just the two of us. And then we went to France just for fun. And it didn't work quite as well because I wasn't sleeping very well because the bed wasn't very comfortable. So it's hard to adjust. It's hard to beat jet lag when you're just not getting enough sleep. But that general approach has worked well for me. And before I move on to the next question, just to finish commenting on why I stopped using caffeine, I'm a light sleeper. That started with the arrival of my daughter. Actually, I remember the night where I woke up like six times and I was like, what the hell? That never happens to me. So up until that night, I never had any sleep issues per se. I generally

Starting point is 00:09:23 would just fall asleep quickly, sleep through the night and wake up after maybe seven, seven and a half hours and go about my day. So it just changed one day. And it just was coincidentally when my daughter was about to arrive, my wife was still pregnant. So six, six and a half years ago, something changed and my sleep just got lighter. And it's not a big deal. It's just a little bit obnoxious because I lose a little bit of time waking up one to three times per night on average. Sometimes I have to pee. Sometimes I don't. I just have to kind of roll over and just go back to sleep. But even if it takes five minutes to go back to sleep and then maybe that happens

Starting point is 00:10:01 two more times and maybe it takes 10 minutes to fall back asleep one of those times. Again, that's just losing some sleep time, which means I have to spend a little bit more time in bed to get enough rest. And so I've tried many things over the years to improve my sleep. And a few things that have helped are melatonin and glycine and taking some time at night to relax and make sure my bedroom is cold. All the standard sleep hygiene things really. And then there are a few supplements. Valerian has also been fairly workable for me,

Starting point is 00:10:31 helps me relax. And magnesium as well for talking supplements. I take Legion's sucrasomial magnesium. If you want to learn about that, head over to buylegion.com slash mag. That's B-U-I-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com slash M-A-G. But something I've never tried is eliminating caffeine. And one reason I never tried it is because I didn't want to. I like espresso. So that is where I've been getting my caffeine for a long time. I use Legion's stim-free pre-workout pulse and I would get all of my caffeine from espresso, which has gotten up to or did get up to probably about 400 milligrams, maybe even a little bit more per day, probably about four shots of espresso. Maybe it's like four and a half. So it's hard to

Starting point is 00:11:10 know exactly how much that is because a shot of espresso could be 80 milligrams or it could be 120 milligrams depending on the bean. And so my intake has kind of crept up over the years. And of course, I was completely desensitized to that. And that 400 milligram threshold, by the way, is the general evidence-based recommendation for maintaining health, to not exceed 400 milligrams per day, that up to 400 milligrams per day appears to be healthy for most people. It doesn't produce any unwanted long-term side effects. But caffeine is funny in that there are many people out there who can have a lot more every day for a long time. And researchers have looked at this with no apparent negative side effects. Now, that doesn't mean that you can do

Starting point is 00:11:55 it necessarily, but some people's bodies just deal really well with caffeine. Some time ago, I took a DNA test and there are two slots, so to speak, for genes that relate to metabolizing toxins and other molecules, drugs like caffeine. And you can have a fast gene or a slow gene in either of those slots. So you can be fast, fast. You can be slow, slow. You can be fast, slow. And I am slow, slow. And what that means is in a slow metabolizer of caffeine, the half flight, which is the amount of time that it takes your body to eliminate half of the caffeine in your blood is about 12 hours. So in me, when I have caffeine, it takes my body about 12 hours to eliminate just half of it. And then because of how drug metabolism works, the final half takes even longer to eliminate. So the time that it takes to eliminate 75%, so the quarter life of caffeine is upward of 50 hours in a slow metabolizer. And so when I would have the four-ish shots of espresso first thing in the morning, there still was a lot of caffeine in my blood when I would go to sleep.

Starting point is 00:13:10 And that was the case when I was younger. My daily intake was probably a little bit lower on average because there was a time when I wasn't drinking coffee. I didn't like coffee. So the only caffeine was from pre-workout and that was at most like a full serving of pulse, so 350 milligrams or so. And then some days it would be half that plus a scoop of Stemfree. And before there ever was a pulse, it was probably one or 200 milligrams of caffeine from another pre-workout. So maybe I'd say one to 400 from another pre-workout or just caffeine pills.

Starting point is 00:13:42 There was a time when I didn't bother with pre-workouts because I didn't really like any of the formulations on the market. So I'd just take a caffeine pill or two. So one to 200 milligrams of caffeine. As I've gotten older, my caffeine intake has increased and I also have just naturally become a lighter sleeper. And so eight or nine days ago, I decided to switch to decaf espresso, which I was a little bit sad about because at least 50% of the experience is the taste. It wasn't even so much about the caffeine and decaf espresso is not the same. However, I am pretty happy actually with the taste of the decaf bean that I'm using. It's good enough for me to keep drinking it. Although now I've thought about just saving the calories because it's probably about six ounces of whole milk that I'm frothing for it.

Starting point is 00:14:27 But anyway, so eight days or so ago. Well, first, actually, what I did is a few weeks ago, I went from the four-ish shots of espresso to two-ish. So I cut my caffeine intake in half and left it there for a week or 10 days just to let my body acclimate to a lower amount of caffeine. Because if I would have went from my normal to zero, the withdrawal symptoms would have been more severe. I would have probably had headaches for a day or two, at least one day, maybe two days, and the energy drop-off would have been more severe. And as I've learned, ironically, one of the common withdrawal symptoms when you stop using caffeine is disrupted sleep. And that has to do with melatonin production and some other things that have to normalize.

Starting point is 00:15:10 And so I cut my caffeine intake in half and then I went to zero, which I probably should have went if I wanted to absolutely minimize withdrawal symptoms. I should have went from 200 ish. I should have went from those two shots of espresso. And then I would just do two extra shots of decaf because I like strong coffee. I don't like coffee flavored milk. I like almost equal parts espresso and milk. And so I should have went from those two-ish shots to like one.

Starting point is 00:15:40 And then I could have just done three shots of decaf because decaf espresso is like one to three milligrams of caffeine per shot. It's basically nothing. But I didn't. I went from 200-ish to zero. And then my sleep got really bad for a couple of nights, waking up every hour, a little bit of insomnia, which again is actually fairly common,

Starting point is 00:15:57 especially if you've been having a fair amount of caffeine for a fairly long period of time, which I was. I was having anywhere from three to probably four or 500 milligrams per day for many, many years. And so anyway, I am on day eight or so now, and my sleep has steadily gotten better. Actually, I said my sleep was bad right away. That's not true. It got better right away. So like the first day of no caffeine, I slept better that night. I slept better the following night. And then it was the third night and the fourth night and the fifth night, I think that were particularly bad. And that does make sense. If you look at the literature on caffeine

Starting point is 00:16:34 withdrawal, withdrawal symptoms tend to peak after a day or two of stopping. I think it was around day two is when most people are going to notice the most severe caffeine withdrawal symptoms, like day two of no caffeine, and then it should get progressively better. But those symptoms can last up to nine or 10 days, again, depending on your body, depending on how habituated it was to caffeine, and so on. And so I should be coming to the end of the withdrawal period. And my sleep has gotten progressively better. And my workouts are fine. My energy levels are fine. At first, I noticed a bit less energy. I noticed the absence of caffeine in my training and just throughout the day. But after a few days, that seemed to fade. After a few days of sleeping better, that is, there were those few days that were rough simply because I wasn't sleeping enough, but then that changed for the better over the last few days. And so long as I get enough sleep now, I feel good in the gym. I feel good throughout the day. So we'll see how it plays out over the next week or so. If my sleep is just consistently better,

Starting point is 00:17:40 then I'm done with caffeine. I'd rather sleep better. I'd rather spend less time in bed to be rested and have more time to do stuff throughout the day. I like that more than I like espresso. I really like espresso, but I will begrudgingly give it up. If it doesn't seem to make much of a difference with my sleep, if I'm still just kind of a light sleeper and I'm waking up one to three times every night, regardless of caffeine or no caffeine, I may reintroduce caffeine, but I'll probably limit it to two-ish shots of espresso. So 200-ish milligrams of caffeine per day, as opposed to double that. Because as I've gotten older, my body has gotten more sensitive to caffeine, that is clear to me. And so I just noticed that for the 10 days or so that I was doing two shots

Starting point is 00:18:24 rather than the four shots, I did feel a little bit better. I felt a little bit more relaxed at night, even though it didn't make much of a difference in my sleep. I didn't notice that until I stopped altogether. And so that's it. That's my caffeine chronicles. How would you like a free meal planning tool that figures out your calories, your macros, even your micros, and then allows you to create 100% custom meal plans for cutting, lean gaining, or maintaining in under five minutes. Well, all you got to do is go to buylegion.com slash meal plan, B-U-Y legion.com slash meal plan and download the tool. And if I may say this tool really is fantastic.

Starting point is 00:19:07 My team and I spent over six months on this thing, working with an Excel wizard and inferior versions of this are often sold for 50, 60, even a hundred dollars. Or you have to download an app and pay every month or sign up for a weight loss service and pay every month, 10, 20, 40, 50, even $60 a month for what is essentially in this free tool. So if you are struggling to improve your body composition, if you are struggling to lose fat or gain muscle, the right meal plan can change everything. Dieting can go from feeling like running in the sand in a sandstorm to riding a bike on a breezy day down a hill. So again, if you want my free meal planning tool, go to buylegion.com slash meal plan, buylegion.com slash meal plan, enter your email address and you will get instant access.

Starting point is 00:20:06 All right, let's get back to questions. Jessica Williams B asks, dealing with pain slash injury, best to avoid exercises or lower the weight or do what's comfortable? Well, the best thing you can do when you're dealing with pain or injury is to find exercises you can incorporate into your normal programming without pain. So find stuff that you can do that does not hurt. Do not do things that hurt. And by that, I mean anything over like a two out of 10 of pain. If it's a little bit painful, you might be able to get away with that. You might be able to do that at least once or twice per week and continue to recover. But if it's five or six out of 10, you can't be doing that. It's going to continually aggravate that injury, and then it may

Starting point is 00:20:45 even become a chronic injury. Now, if you can't do that, if you can't find exercises that you can work into your programming that don't hurt, what you can probably do is find exercises that don't hurt when you reduce the weight, so maybe even 50% of one rep max, for example, instead of 75 or 80 or 85% and reduce the intensity, meaning the proximity to failure. So if you are training correctly, you are often getting close to failure. You're probably ending sets within one, two, or maybe three reps of failure. And that's good. That's the training intensity that's required to gain muscle, to gain strength, to make efficient progress. If you're not going to train like that, if you're going to do a bunch of sets that are five, six,

Starting point is 00:21:29 seven, eight reps shy of failure, you're going to have to spend a lot of time in the gym doing many more of those submaximal sets to equal the training stimulus of fewer sets taken close to muscular failure. And you may not even be able to get the same training stimulus, especially if you are an experienced weightlifter. And so what you probably will be able to do with the pain with the injury is find exercises that you can do if you dramatically reduce the weight and end those sets well shy of failure. So end those sets with five, six, seven good reps still in the tank and stick with that until the pain or injury is resolved. And one other tip is to look into blood flow restriction training. It's

Starting point is 00:22:12 particularly useful in this scenario. And if you want to learn about that, head over to legionathletics.com, search for blood flow, and you will find an article that I wrote on it and a podcast as well. Next, we have a question from Laura Power. She asks, when are you launching cute Legion tops for ladies? Later this year, designs approved, samples approved, even by my picky wife, who was the final point of approval. I didn't trust my judgment on it. So she knows what's nice and she really likes them. So that gives me hope. That gives me hope that other women are going to like them as well. And we're moving ahead on production. So they will be available for sale

Starting point is 00:22:50 later this year. We will be announcing, Legion will be announcing when they're available via social media and email and so forth. Michael Jekimov asks, read, write in the morning or evening? Well, I like to read and write in the morning and at night. Those are the best times for me. The afternoon is my least favorite time for either, although sometimes I will do it anyway. If it needs to get done, it's going to get done. But if I can have it my way, if I can set my day up exactly how I want, I'm going to be doing reading and writing in the morning and at night and more recently, just reading at night, because although I do get a bit of a second wind at night and find that I can

Starting point is 00:23:31 write fairly well at night, my language processing machinery works fairly well at night, probably comparable to the morning. What I found is if I work on a writing project too late, if I put in too much time at night, I have trouble just turning my brain off, relaxing, getting sleepy and sleeping well. Often what'll happen is I just won't be tired. So it's my normal bedtime now, which is like 10 or 1030. So let's say I've been working on a writing project from like seven or 730 until nine or 930. That's a mistake because come 1030, I am not going to be tired at all. I don't have a racing mind. I'm just not tired at all. And I do not sleep well,

Starting point is 00:24:13 generally speaking, unless I go to bed when I'm tired. I need to be sleepy. I need to be yawning. I need to be relaxed and ready to sleep. And then I will usually sleep fairly well. But if I go to bed when I'm stimulated, I'm going to wake up every hour or two. And so I've found that writing at night, unfortunately, even though I like to do it at night, I have to be cognizant of the timing. So my general rule now is to stop writing at 8 p.m. Don't do it later than 8 p.m. if I want to be going to bed 10 or 10.30 p.m. Now, if I were going to bed at 1 or 2 a.m., I probably could do it until 10 p.m. and then it would take a few hours, at least two hours probably, to just turn my brain off, get into a relaxed,

Starting point is 00:24:56 sleepy state. But I don't like going to bed late like that. Naturally Guided asks, do you enjoy being on display in my kitchen? Now, they're referring to my cookbook, The Shredded Chef, which features me shirtless on the cover. Not sure why I thought that that made sense. It's not a romance cookbook. It's just a cookbook. But what's done is done. And so anyway, how do I feel about being on display in this person's kitchen? Well, I wonder, is this how it feels to be catcalled?

Starting point is 00:25:26 There are worse things. Omar Joa asks, in BBLS, which is Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, book of mine, sequel to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, what could be a good trap bar deadlift substitute? No trap bar at my gym. The rack pull. That would be my go-to because it puts less stress on your joints. It acclimates you to heavier weights. I think the rack pull is a great alternative to the trap bar deadlift. Next question. Who is your biggest inspiration? A list. So Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Caesar Augustus, Marcus Agrippa, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Nikola Tesla, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Leonardo da Vinci, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Patterson, George Patton, William Shakespeare, and others.

Starting point is 00:26:14 Rlee278 asks, what are considered good numbers for the big three lifts? For men, the 3-4-5 milestone is a good, realistic goal that most men, if not all men, should be able to accomplish with enough work. So that's three plates on the bench, 315, four plates on the squat, 405, five plates on the deadlift, 495. And for women, it's basically half of those numbers. So it's kind of like 1.5-ish plates on the bench, 2-ish plates on the squat, and 2.5-ish plates on the deadlift. Now, there are many women who can get stronger than that, of course, but I do think that that represents a good milestone to work toward, a good strength milestone for most women, especially considering that most women don't want to eat and train like professional powerlifters. RSA Dog asks,

Starting point is 00:27:13 what do you do when shoulders give you trouble pressing, even using good form? So first what I do is I see if I can press differently without any trouble. So for example, if the barbell overhead press is just feeling bad, but a machine or a dumbbell overhead press is feeling good, then I'll do that for a few weeks and go back to the barbell and see how it feels. The Arnold press, the landmine press, those are good options as well. Landmine press, I think is a very underrated pressing exercise. very underrated pressing exercise. And then if all pressing feels bad, I switch to front raises or another front delt exercise while I work out what's going on. So for example, a couple of months ago, I was dealing with some biceps tendonitis that just happened for no good reason.

Starting point is 00:28:00 Things like these happen when you train regularly for long enough. And I had to stop barbell pressing. I had to stop flat pressing. So even flat dumbbell, flat machine did not work, but incline felt okay. Incline dumbbell felt okay. Incline machine felt okay. For a little bit there, even a pec deck didn't feel okay. Like really the only pec exercise that felt good was an incline press. So I did a bunch of incline pressing to give my biceps tendon a break. And I had to work around it for a couple of other exercises as well. But I just followed the advice I gave in this podcast. I found exercises I could do, which was the incline pressing and a couple of other things.

Starting point is 00:28:41 And if I needed to reduce the weight and just do lower intensity sets, I did that. And then I just stayed patient. And then the problem slowly just went away. It took about two months, but then it was gone. And I made sure to not re-aggravate it by slowly working my way also back into the exercises that were causing problems previously. So instead of jumping back into, let's say, four sets of the flat barbell bench press with my normal training weights or something close to my normal training weights because I was able to maintain strength on my incline pressing, instead what I did is I worked just one set with lighter weights and higher reps into my pressing

Starting point is 00:29:22 workouts and did that for a week or two and then two sets. And eventually it was able to get back to a normal battery of four sets with normal weights without issue. And so remember that if you are dealing with an injury, once it's resolved, you don't want to aggressively start loading it again with the exercises that were causing problems previously. The next question comes from Seth D32. He says, love your stuff, good sir. Thank you. Thank you. Do you sometimes still follow the four to six rep plan from your book? So he's referring to my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which has you do a lot of work in the four to six rep range and has some work in the six to eight rep range as well,

Starting point is 00:30:00 where the four to six rep range is just too awkward. And the answer is yes. Actually, my training right now is it's basically just Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. So I went from five days of training per week, strength training, my Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger program from my book, Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, hard workouts, probably 70 to 90 minutes per workout and reps ranging from two to 10 with the loads adjusted accordingly. And then I went to a four day per week program, which was kind of a mashup between what you find in Bigger, Leaner, Stronger and beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And now I'm doing three days per week, just basically straight Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, just push, pull legs, heavy weightlifting and maintaining strength,

Starting point is 00:30:43 maintaining muscle. And I enjoy it. I'm in the gym less, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do it so I can have time for other things that I want to do with my time. And the workouts are a little bit shorter, 45 to 60 minutes. The workouts are a little bit less difficult. They're still difficult. I like my workouts to be challenging. That's that's fun. I don't like just going through the motions and barely breaking a sweat and leaving. And so for someone like me who has been training for a long time, who has gained going through the motions and barely breaking a sweat and leaving. And so for someone like me who has been training for a long time, who has gained most of the muscle and strength that is genetically available to me, bigger, leaner, stronger is great for maintaining,

Starting point is 00:31:14 enjoying workouts, not spending too much time in the gym. Whereas this same approach would be great for gaining muscle and strength if somebody were new. So if this were my first year, I could do the same workouts that I'm doing right now, three days per week, about 60 minutes per workout, probably about 10 to 12 hard sets per major muscle group per week and gain a lot of muscle and strength. And so anyway, that's what I'm doing. Stephen Hall 713 asks, you ever feel low back after deadlifts? Not necessarily pain, just tightness, soreness, anything? Yeah. Yeah. Low back soreness is not a sign that you did anything wrong, especially if you pushed yourself in your deadlifting. Maybe you set a PR. You are using your spinal erectors after all. You are using your hips after all. And if you are relatively

Starting point is 00:32:03 strong, you are also probably lifting a fair amount of weight, which puts a lot of stress on those muscles and puts a lot of stress on your skeleton, which is not a bad thing. Wit Gossel asks, how do I know if I'm recovered from a workout? Well, the single best indicator of recovery is performance. If your strength or if your endurance in a muscle group has recovered, if you can perform just as well as the last time you did the workout, or maybe even a little bit better, then you are almost certainly recovered. You almost certainly can train that muscle again, even if it is still sore. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions

Starting point is 00:33:06 or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: AI in Coaching, NMN vs. Creatine, Overcoming Workout Pain, Jet Lag Remedies, & More

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