Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Early Morning Training, BCAAs and EAAs, X3 Bar System, and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Well, hello, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I'm your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today. It is January 17th, 2022, and this is the year where nothing is credible until it has been officially denied and where conspiracy theories are just spoilers. Anyway, if you haven't already, please do take a moment and subscribe to the show in whatever app you are listening to me in so you don't miss any new episodes. And of course it helps me because it boosts the ranking of the show in the various charts. And this episode is going to be a Q&A where I'm going to answer, oh, I don't know, probably about 20 different questions that people have asked me over on Instagram. Every Monday, I put up a ask me a question sticker in my stories,

Starting point is 00:00:51 and I get a bunch of submissions, and I answer quite a few of them there in Instagram, and then also answer them here on the podcast. And so if you want to participate, if you want me to answer your questions, follow me over on instagram at muscle for life fitness every monday or tuesday look at my stories well look at my stories every day multiple times per day of course but particularly on mondays or tuesdays look for the ask me a question post and submit your questions and i review them all. I try to choose ones that are topical or that are being asked by a lot of people or that are particularly interesting to me, just something that I've never touched on before, but I try to give it a fair amount of time. I do get through

Starting point is 00:01:37 quite a few of them. So again, at muscle for life fitness is where you can find me on Instagram. for Life Fitness is where you can find me on Instagram. And today's questions range from early morning training to where I like to get my news every day, to eating a lot of whey protein, how much protein powder can you eat every day, to my thoughts on COVID being a conspiracy or not, creatine and hair loss, the X3 bar system, and more. Before we wade into it, one of the easiest ways to increase muscle and strength gain is to eat enough protein and to eat enough high quality protein. Now you can do that with food, of course, you can get all of the protein you need from food, but many people supplement with whey protein because it is convenient and it's tasty and that makes it easier to just eat enough protein. And it's also rich in essential amino

Starting point is 00:02:31 acids, which are crucial for muscle building and it's digested well, it's absorbed well. And that's why I created Whey Plus, which is a 100% natural grass-fed whey isolate protein powder made with milk from small sustainable dairy farms in Ireland. Now, why whey isolate? Well, that is the highest quality whey protein you can buy. And that's why every serving of Whey Plus contains 22 grams of protein with little or no carbs and fat. Whey Plus is also lactose-free, so that means no indigestion, no stomach aches, no gassiness. And it's also 100% naturally sweetened and flavored, and it contains no artificial food dyes or other chemical junk. And why Irish dairies? Well, research shows that they produce some of the healthiest, cleanest milk in the world. And we

Starting point is 00:03:25 work with farms that are certified by Ireland's Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme, SDSAS, which ensures that the farmers adhere to best practices in animal welfare, sustainability, product quality, traceability, and soil and grass management. So if you want a mouthwatering, high protein, low calorie whey protein powder that helps you reach your fitness goals faster, you want to try Whey Plus today. Go to buylegion.com slash whey. Use the coupon code muscle at checkout and you will save 20% on your first order. And if it is not your first order, you will get double reward points. So that is 10% cash back. And if you don't absolutely love way plus just let us know and we will give you a full refund on the spot. No form, no return is even necessary. You really can't lose. So go to buy

Starting point is 00:04:18 legion.com slash way. Now use the coupon code muscle at checkout to save 20% or get double reward points. And then try Weigh Plus risk-free and see what you think. Okay, the first question comes from Comfy Sweats, and they ask if I've ever trained at 6 a.m. because they are trying to get used to it. And yep, I used to get to the gym between 6 and 6.30 a couple of years ago, and it takes time to get used to it. But research does show that if you stick with it, you should be able to adjust and perform about as well as at other times. And caffeine can help with that in particular. Research shows with shaking the morning cobwebs, so to speak. That said, studies also show that most guys in particular are stronger

Starting point is 00:05:07 later in the day, like the middle or the later part of the afternoon. And I've certainly found that to be the case in myself. So I've trained at all different times actually over the years. The earliest I've ever trained is probably arriving between 5.30 and 6.30. It's been some time since I did that. And I did that for a number of years. And then I switched to later in the afternoon, like 3, 4, 5 p.m. And then I switched to sometime between 11 and 1 p.m. And that's my current schedule. I get to the gym usually around 12 or 12.30. And also when I was younger, I mean, I used to go to the gym at 11 p.m., but I haven't done that in a long time. So out of all the times that I've trained, at least in the last 10 years or so, my worst performance consistently was early in the morning.

Starting point is 00:05:55 And that isn't to say that all of my workouts were bad. Of course, I had plenty of great workouts and I made progress training early in the morning. But if I train later, even if it's just a few hours, instead of training at six, it is training at 11. I do have a bit more energy and I can turn that into a bit more productive workouts. And some people experience that to greater and lesser degrees. So if you are currently training early in the morning and you could train later in the day and you're curious if it is going to make a big difference in your workouts, give it a try. And if you have to train early in the morning and you are concerned that it is impeding your progress, it's probably not. Your performance might be slightly worse than if you

Starting point is 00:06:42 trained later in the day, but that doesn't mean that you can't progress. It just means that your performance is slightly worse. All right, next is a question from Read J1, and they ask where I go every day for the news that I like to read. And I like news aggregators the most, so I go to a few. I go to Drudge Retort for leftoid bias. I go to Drudge Report. Drudge Report is almost like a tabloid now. It's not nearly as interesting as it once was, but it still is a center kind of left-leaning outlet. And then I go to Zero Hedge for fascist hate speech. Next is a question from Khaled Sawalma, and he asks if it's okay to eat 120 grams of whey protein per day if he is eating other whole foods to get up to 200 grams of protein per day. And that is okay. It's a little

Starting point is 00:07:35 bit much. My general recommendation is no more than 50% of daily protein from powders. And that's a little bit too much for me personally. I'm around 30 to 40% at most. And some days it's a little bit less because I'll just eat a little bit more whole food. Like I'll eat a little bit more chicken on my salad for lunch, for example. It just depends on my inclination, I guess, and what I'm doing that day, how much of a rush I'm in, how much prepped food I have, but I rarely ever exceed 50% of daily protein from powders. And I would include bars with that as well from protein powder, whether it is a powder you mix with water or it's a protein powder worked into something else. Again, I would recommend a ceiling of 50% of daily protein from protein powder. And the reason for that isn't that having more than that is unhealthy per se,

Starting point is 00:08:32 but it can upset your stomach, especially if you are using a protein powder with lactose, or you're just using a lower quality, even if it's a whey isolate. I have heard from many people over the years who will tell me that my whey isolate, Legion's whey isolate, is the first one that has never upset their stomach, that they can have as much of as they want without any stomach problems, but that is not normally the case. It was not the case for me. And I have the stomach of a sarlacc, I suppose, to use a Star Wars-ism, because I never get stomach aches. I have no food sensitivities that I know of. Although, no, if I eat raw carrots, my throat will itch, but it's not my stomach. So anyway, despite having a veritable trash compactor for a stomach before I had my own protein powder, every other way I

Starting point is 00:09:24 had tried would start to upset my stomach at about 60 to 70 grams per day. That was the limit. Beyond that, I might not get stomach pain, but I would get a little bit gassy, a little bit bloated. My stomach would just feel a little bit off. So that's one reason to not have too much protein powder. And even if you are taking legion's protein and it doesn't upset your stomach another reason to not have too much protein powder too consistently is it can lower your intake of key nutrients that are abundant in high protein whole foods different vitamins and minerals and other things that you are not going to get from a protein powder bigstergram asks where he can find friends who aren't completely in support of

Starting point is 00:10:06 the current COVID narrative. And, you know, I think that Australia's COVID internment camps could be great for this. You could head on over there. You could get yourself locked up by, you know, like going outside or something and meet all kinds of like-minded thought and speech criminals. Sakid1 asks, how to make his pee pee bigger? Start measuring from your Hershey hole, big guy. Yisro Levine asks if creatine can cause or promote hair loss. And probably not. The only evidence for this claim, this worry that many men have, I've heard from many men over the years since this started making the rounds, the only evidence for it is a study conducted years ago with young male rugby players that found after 21 days of creatine supplementation, so they loaded it for seven days, 25 grams per day. And then they had a

Starting point is 00:11:05 maintenance dose every day for 14 days, five grams per day. And what the study found is that dihydrotestosterone levels, DHT levels were significantly increased at day seven, 56% above baseline and were 40 or about 41% above baseline at day 21. No effects were seen to testosterone, but dihydrotestosterone, DHT, which is a metabolite of testosterone, was up. And why does that matter? Well, DHT can induce hair loss and particularly in men who are genetically predisposed to losing their hair. Now, if I were to just leave it at that, it might sound bad. 40 to 50% increase in DHT and elevated DHT levels are known to induce hair loss, and particularly in guys who are genetically predisposed to losing their hair. And that's why many men who do have this genetic predisposition will not use

Starting point is 00:12:07 creatine. But a few things to keep in mind. One is this is the only study that has shown this effect. There are no other studies that have shown an increase in DHT levels. There are quite a few studies that have shown that creatine does not increase testosterone levels. That is the clear weight of the evidence. There are a couple of trials that have shown increases in testosterone, but the bulk of them have shown no increases in testosterone. So that alone casts some doubt on the findings of this study. But if we take them at face value, we see that even with the increase in DHT that was reported in this paper, it still was within the range of normal. And so we don't know if that, if increasing DHT levels, but keeping them well within the range of normal levels, if that increases your chances of losing your hair,

Starting point is 00:13:02 we don't know. And finally, there isn't an agreed upon mechanism whereby creatine supplementation could increase DHT levels. There are a couple of theories, one being that maybe it slightly increases free testosterone levels, which could significantly increase DHT levels. Another is it might upregulate an enzyme that converts free testosterone into DHT, which could significantly elevate DHT levels, but they're just hypotheses. One could be right. The other could be right. Neither could be right. Both could be right. We don't know. So if you are a guy worried about hair loss that is occurring or that is common in your family, and you are not sure if you should take creatine, one, you should know that you don't

Starting point is 00:13:54 have to take creatine. You can do just fine without creatine. It does work well for most people. It does help them gain muscle and strength faster. It does help them recover better from the training, but it is supplementary by definition. It is not necessary. So if you decide against it, you are not missing out on anything major. But if you would like to use it because you do notice a difference with it, you respond well to it and you like including it in your regimen, you also don't have a major cause for concern. Okay, the next question comes from Nova Corp, and he wants to know my best advice for my younger

Starting point is 00:14:30 self. Well, a few things. One would be try not to spread yourself so thin. This would be me speaking to younger me because moving faster on fewer projects is just a better way to work. I would also tell myself to be nicer to the people in your life who matter to you because being right is not enough. Being kind is often more important, especially with relationships, with interpersonal dealings. Another bit of advice would be to spend some more time with your little baby Lennox, my son, who I didn't spend very much time with when he was a baby because I was working all the time. He's a cute kid. Spend more time with him. And for what's worth, I have course corrected here. I do spend more time with him

Starting point is 00:15:16 now and make a point of spending quality time with him regularly doing something he wants to do, even if it's only for 30 or 45 minutes. And he really enjoys that. And the same thing goes for my daughter, who tends to get more of my attention by default. So I try to keep that in mind as well. All right, next on the list is to stop wasting time trying to fix broken people, especially ones who don't want to be fixed because they'll break you too. And lastly, I would tell myself to find out how to have some more fun or at least make a point of having some more fun, giving some time to just having fun because making money and achieving success are important things and they are rewarding to a point, but they are not

Starting point is 00:16:06 nearly as satisfying or motivating as I thought they would be when I was younger. Next, we have another one from Sakid1. Is COVID a conspiracy? Wow. Listen, sweetie, everyone knows that conspiracies are fake, like triangles and math. I mean, it's not like the CIA ran a top secret mind control project in the 50s and 60s called MK Ultra that involved using drugs and torture to try to obliterate people's minds and personalities and embed new ones. It's not like the US government employed more than 150,000 people to build an atomic bomb and then successfully kept the whole thing secret for nearly 30 years. That never happened. And there definitely was no business plot in 1933 involving a group of wealthy tycoons who

Starting point is 00:17:01 were attempting to recruit a Marine Corps major general named Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against FDR and establish a fascist regime. Do better. Mike Livin asks what I think about the X3 bar system. Unfortunately, it's mostly marketing puffery because bands and other contraptions like TRX, for example, they certainly can provide an effective training stimulus, but they can never match free weights and machines for achieving progressive overload and thus for gaining muscle and gaining strength. That said, bands and bands with bars and TRX, those things can be great for certain circumstances. For example, if somebody is new to resistance training and is very out of shape, that is

Starting point is 00:17:55 a great place to start. That is where I recommend those people start. That's why, for example, in my new book, Muscle for Life, the beginner programs for men and women use body weight exercises and bands. And then we work our way into dumbbell exercises and eventually machines and barbells. That is a very smooth on-ramp to being able to safely and effectively do free weight strength training exercises. Bands and bands with bars and TRX, those can also be great for training at home. If you don't have a home gym set up and you can't get to the gym and you just want to get something done that is an effective training stimulus that is going to

Starting point is 00:18:37 help you maintain your muscle and strength, good for that. Good for traveling. If you're on the road, can't do your normal training, you can have some bands in your luggage with you, or many hotel gyms have a TRX setup. There's a lot you can do with TRX to, again, just stimulate your muscles. The idea is to maintain your muscle, maintain your strength, so when you get back home and you get back in the gym, you can pick up where you left off ideally. But anyone who claims that their special way of using bands or their proprietary banded contraption is far more effective than lifting weights is ignorant or lying. Mark A wants to know if I have any tips for him with my bigger, leaner, stronger program because his joints are not

Starting point is 00:19:25 great. He had an accident and he had cortisone injections and it's pretty simple. You want to, and this is for Mark, but anybody else who might be running into joint issues and is struggling to follow Bigger Leaner Stronger as I laid out in the book, you want to one, avoid exercises that are causing pain and causing problems. So just find substitutions that don't, even if they are not optimum substitutions. For example, if the barbell back squat is causing too many problems and you can't barbell front squat and you can't safety bar squat, maybe your gym doesn't have a safety bar. Those would be my first recommendations, but your gym has a belt squat. Great. Do the belt squat. If you have to leg press, do that. My gym has a

Starting point is 00:20:11 pendulum squat machine, which is neat. That might work or a hack squat. Now is the hack squat or the leg press as effective ultimately as the barbell back squat? No, but it's plenty effective. And let's not let perfect be the enemy of good or even great, right? And another tip is to lighten the loads wherever you need to. Try six to eight reps instead of four to six. And if that's still an issue, go to eight to 10 or even 10 to 12, because often it is the heavy weights that are aggravating the joints less than the exercises. I've heard from many people over the years who can't squat heavy, heavy weight. They can't squat fours pain-free, but tens give them no issues. And remember that doing sets of 10 or 12 reps is not very enjoyable, especially if you are pushing close

Starting point is 00:21:07 to muscular failure, but it is a plenty effective training stimulus. You can gain muscle training in that range. Of course, you can gain strength. You're going to gain more strength if you can use heavier weights, but that's okay because your goal is probably not to be a competitive strength athlete. You probably just want to look good, feel good, gain muscle in the right places, bring your body fat levels down to an athletic range, and you don't need to be moving big loads to accomplish that. Kinger 214 asks, BCAAs or EAAs? Well, if you just want tastier water, yes. For literally anything else, no. In fact, BCAAs and EAAs are a good litmus test of any supplement company or promoter because if they

Starting point is 00:21:58 offer or if they plump for either of those products, you shouldn't buy anything from those companies and you should just unfollow the people promoting these products because they are either crooked or they are ignorant or both. And you can think of supplementing with BCAAs, just amino acids, branched chain amino acids, it's leucine, isoleucine, valine, right? Three amino acids or EAAs, the essential amino acids, the nine amino acids that you have to get from food. You can think of supplementing with either of those in addition to eating enough protein, like watering your lawn after a storm. David Tartaridis asks, what's the upper limit of protein you can digest

Starting point is 00:22:39 per meal, generally speaking? And there's no universal limit for all people and all circumstances, but let's just say 50 to 60 grams per meal on the low end. And that would be a small woman and upward of probably a hundred grams. That would be the high end. And that would be a large man. Ryan F. Baker asks how much newbie gains are lost in a deficit versus a surplus while following the bigger, leaner, stronger program? And my answer will apply to following any and all programs. And it's hard to say exactly how much of the honeymoon phase you quote unquote waste by starting your resistance training in a calorie deficit, but it's probably not much, especially for the first six months, because I've seen many,

Starting point is 00:23:24 It's probably not much, especially for the first six months, because I've seen many, many guys and gals gain a lot of muscle and a lot of strength and lose a lot of fat in their first six to eight, even 12 months. Jake Alou asks, which of Legion's protein is better for people who have a lactose intolerance? And I would recommend trying Whey Plus first, if you like whey. That is our most popular protein powder. And for what it's worth, my favorite flavors right now are cinnamon cereal and salted caramel. And that is a 100% whey isolate. So the lactose has been removed. It also has basically no fat, which is nice. And one of the most consistent praises that product gets is no bloating, no upset stomachs. But if it bothers anyone's stomach, just let us know and we will give you

Starting point is 00:24:14 your money back. You don't even have to send it back to us. We will just give you your money back or we'll send you something else. For example, you might want to try our plant-based protein, which I really like personally. Plant Plus is what that is called. And that one is rice and pea protein. So of course, no lactose. Okay. Scott Zuhike, sorry if I got that wrong. He asks, when lean bulking, should I go to maintenance calories on rest days? You can, but it is going to increase the chance of accidentally being in a deficit, which wouldn't be ideal if you are trying to maximize muscle and strength gain. And it's also worth considering that the best case scenario isn't really that exciting. So let's say you are right at your maintenance

Starting point is 00:25:02 calories or just above them. You get it just right on your rest days, it is not going to make a significant difference in how quickly you gain fat. If you could clone yourself and run an experiment, you would not notice a difference unless I will add you are training, let's say only two or three days per week. And so if four or five days per week are rest days, then I would recommend maintenance three days per week. And so if four or five days per week are rest days, then I would recommend maintenance calories on those days and probably just maintenance calories on all days. I personally would probably just eat at maintenance until I could get in the gym at least three times per week, ideally four or five times per week when lean gaining to get the most

Starting point is 00:25:43 out of that calorie surplus to gain as much muscle as I can, knowing that I'm going to gain fat. Next, we have a question from anonymous and they ask how much weight should you look to gain per week as a percentage of body weight on your first bulk? Good question. And anything from one half to 1% of your body weight per month is good progress. If you've still have a lot of muscle to gain. Now, if you are already several years into this, you do not have a lot more muscle to gain. If you have been doing the most important things, mostly right. Most of the time. And if that's you, then I would say that probably a quarter of a percent of your body weight per month is a better target.

Starting point is 00:26:26 Okay. The final question comes from Chuck's Graham and he asks, when will this COVID madness end? Well, it's pretty simple. It's just a matter of injections because the third one, you see that strengthens your immune system. So then after the fourth injection, you are protected. And then when 80% of the population has received the fifth injection, we are going to be very close to a resolution because the sixth injection, well, that one, it stops the virus from multiplying and then it prevents it from spreading. And that means of course, that the seventh injection, that's going to solve all of our problems. And then we no longer have to be afraid of the eighth injection because clinical studies with the ninth injection, they've shown that antibodies are more stable after the 10th

Starting point is 00:27:14 injection and the 11th injection. That's the one that ensures that there will be no new mutations. So then, of course, there's no reason to not get the 12th injection. Well, I hope you liked this episode. 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 a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email,

Starting point is 00:27:57 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: Early Morning Training, BCAAs and EAAs, X3 Bar System, and More

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.