Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Fat Intake, Blood Work, Getting Lean Without Cardio, Farmer’s Walks, and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another Q&A, where I answer questions that people ask me on Instagram. If you want to ask me questions, follow me at Muscle for Life Fitness. Every Monday or Tuesday, I put up a story asking people to ask me questions. I get a bunch of questions. I pick ones that are interesting that I haven't answered a million times before. I answer them briefly on Instagram. I only have a slide and I only can fit so much text over there on Instagram. And then I bring everything over here to the podcast where I can expound on my answers. And so in today's podcast, I am going to be answering questions about blood work, particularly testing hormone

Starting point is 00:00:42 levels, testosterone levels in men. Should young men be doing that? Should you be getting blood work? I have a question here about cutting and why you often see rapid weight loss in the beginning of a cut, but you don't really see much of a difference in the mirror. Why does that happen? Recommended fat intake. How much fat should you be eating every day and how should that break down into saturated fat and other forms of fat? Farmer's walks. Very underrated exercise. Who are they for? Should you be doing farmer's walks? When Legion is going to get into retail stores and more. Also, 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%

Starting point is 00:01:33 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. 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 $100. 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

Starting point is 00:02:32 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, 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. Okay, where are we starting here? 19847dude asks, why is birthday cake Legion Way Plus so damn tasty? A self-serving question, I know, but he's right. It is one of my favorite flavors. It has been since we introduced it years ago. That cinnamon cereal and salted caramel are my favorite whey flavors, at least right now. And if you like whey protein, if you are currently using whey protein and you have not tried mine yet, you've not tried Legion Whey protein, if you are currently using whey protein and you have not tried mine yet, you've not tried Legion Whey Plus, go to buylegion.com slash whey immediately and fix your shit.

Starting point is 00:03:34 B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com slash whey. And if that is not the best whey protein that you've ever tried. The tastiest, the smoothest mouthfeel, the easiest on your stomach. Let us know and we will give you a full refund on the spot. You won't even have to return it to us. You can just give it to somebody you know who's also into this fitness stuff and maybe they'll like it. So again, that URL is byleach.com slash way. All right. Andrew Krieg 45 asks, is it important to get testosterone tested when I'm young to know where I am for future comparison?

Starting point is 00:04:15 No, not unless you have symptoms of low testosterone. It's not important to test your testosterone to get blood work done so you can understand where your testosterone levels are, your total and free testosterone levels, unless you're just curious and you just want to know, then there's no harm in doing it. idea to do it every so often. Clinical guidelines generally are along the lines of every five years from the ages 18 to 39, every two to three years from the ages 40 to 49, and every one to two years when you are 50 and beyond. And you can talk to your doctor about this the next time you see him or her for a physical exam or whatever else. And the point of getting that blood work done on a semi-regular basis is to just look at a host of health biomarkers and make sure that there aren't underlying conditions that haven't maybe produced pronounced symptoms yet, but if left unchecked will become problems later. So think about cholesterol levels, for example, if your LDL cholesterol levels are too high,

Starting point is 00:05:34 and let's say you are fairly young and so you don't notice anything yet. If you don't correct that, that can become heart disease as you get older. And you can catch that with blood work, and then you can make changes to your diet, to your lifestyle, whatever you need to do to bring those LDL levels down and drastically reduce your risk of heart disease. And the same thing goes for just about any disease. You can catch it early in a blood test, but of course, disease. You can catch it early in a blood test, but of course you have to be doing those blood tests to catch diseases early when they are easiest to treat. Okay. Beller717 asks, can you outrun your horses yet? I would say they're more like my wife's horses, but I suspect that if I were to try to do that, I would meet a similar fate to Greg Plitt. May he rest in peace.

Starting point is 00:06:28 C. Andre asks, it's been four weeks and I lost eight pounds on the scale, but I can't see any difference in the mirror. Why? Well, when you start cutting, you initially lose a fair amount of water and glycogen because of the reduction in carbohydrate intake. If you're like most people to create a calorie deficit, you are mostly cutting back on carbs. You are keeping your protein high. Your fat is probably moderate. Maybe you go a little bit lower, but you have to eat a lot less carbohydrate. And with carbohydrate goes water and glycogen, which is a form of carbohydrates stored in your liver and your muscles. And it is a fair amount. You are carrying around pounds of intramuscular water and intramuscular glycogen that you can shed in the first week or two weeks. And another factor that contributes to this phenomenon is the fact that the fat that we

Starting point is 00:07:27 lose at first, certainly in the first month or so of cutting tends to be in the areas that we don't pay that much attention to. So for us guys, we're normally looking at our abs more than anything else, but that is usually the last part of our body to really get lean. Initially, we will lose fat in our faces. We will lose fat in our upper body, like the upper part of our torso, our chest, our upper back, our shoulders, our arms, and not very much in our abdomen. And in women, it's usually their hips, their thighs, their butt. That's what they're focused most on. And that area of their body tends to take longer to get lean compared to their torso, compared to their upper body. And if you want to learn more about that, head over to legionathletics.com,

Starting point is 00:08:24 search for stubborn fat, and you'll find an article that, head over to legionathletics.com, search for stubborn fat, and you'll find an article that I wrote. There's also a podcast there on this stubborn fat phenomenon, which sounds like bro science. It sounds like BS, but it's not. It is legit science. Certain fat cells in our body are easier to mobilize, easier to shrink than others. easier to mobilize, easier to shrink than others. And you can learn about that again over at legionathletics.com if you want to dive into that rabbit hole. Okay. Ethan Joel 21 asks on dumbbell press flat and incline neutral grip versus pronated. You can alternate between these

Starting point is 00:09:02 grips every so often if you want for a slightly different stimulus, or you can just stick with a neutral grip if the pronated is bothering your shoulders. Some people find that it does not play well with their shoulders, and so you don't have to do it. The same thing goes for a wide grip bench press. I generally don't recommend it. It is hard on your shoulders. Some people really like it, and it doesn't bother their shoulders at all. But in my experience, most people run into shoulder issues when they try to use a really wide grip on the bench press. HeartAttack58 asks, recommended daily fat intake? Let's just keep this simple. 20 to 30% of daily calories from fat works well for most

Starting point is 00:09:46 people. And that is usually between the range of 0.2 on the low end to maybe 0.4 on the high end grams of fat per pound of body weight per day. I would also recommend limiting your saturated fat to around 10% of your daily calories. That's the upper limit. You don't have to initially go that high, but maybe somewhere between 5 and 10% of daily calories and include plenty of monounsaturated fat in your diet. You can get that from nuts, avocado, olive oil. Those are my favorite sources because that type of fat is associated with many health benefits. jparky29 asks, what are your thoughts on farmer's walks? Beneficial enough to add to a program? Absolutely. Farmer's walks are very underrated, actually. They are particularly

Starting point is 00:10:31 good at improving work capacity. So your ability to just exert whole body effort to work hard, and they are also great for improving grip. And so if you want to improve those things in particular, yeah, I would say include them. And if you are not sure if you want to include, let's say your work capacity, you could try it out and see what you think. Luke M81 asks, when will Legion supplements be sold in stores? I'm not sure, probably in the next year or two but there is still an easy 50 to at least 100 growth like top line sales to be had in our e-commerce adventures and building retail correctly is almost like building another business that's what I've been told by a number of people who have done it successfully, that just because you have a successful e-commerce business doesn't necessarily mean you can just take it into retail and succeed at a level even remotely comparable

Starting point is 00:11:38 to where you are at online. It requires a new team of specialists. It requires new marketing and advertising initiatives. It requires new financial and logistical systems. It's not something that you want to just rush into blindly. You want to execute properly because if you don't, you can lose a lot of money. lose a lot of money. Let's say you try to go real big with it and you don't really know what you're doing and you spend millions of dollars putting inventory into stores and then it does not sell through quickly enough. You have problems. And so my current position on retail is there is no reason why Legion can't do well in retail, especially considering how well we are doing online and how quickly we are growing online. But I probably won't seriously pursue retail until I can work with a strategic partner who has successfully brought e-commerce brands into retail, who has the playbook and has the money to finance it. And as it stands right now, I will get serious about looking for that strategic partner, probably at this time next year, because I think that we have another year of big growth ahead of

Starting point is 00:12:54 us, both top line and bottom line. And I don't want to prematurely do a deal at a much lower number than I could get, let's say, a year from now, because a strategic partner buys into the business and then helps grow the business. And so you want to, of course, maximize the valuation of the business within reason when they are buying in. And if I were to do that deal now, it would be a good number. But if I wait a year, it could easily be 80 to 100% bigger. So I just have to stay patient. So that currently is my thinking on going big with retail, like trying to get Costco, for example. However, what probably will happen before then is going small into retail.

Starting point is 00:13:44 What probably will happen before then is going small into retail. We are looking at hiring a salesperson or two to just start getting us into smaller independent stores that are all around the country. that your products can sell in retail to start putting some of those marketing and advertising initiatives into place that would be needed to support a larger retail operation. And so that makes sense to me because I don't have to risk that much to do it. Alrighty, Steel TP asks, thoughts on fulcrum deadlifts worth it or just another fad? The fulcrum deadlift is a useful exercise. It is a creative way to improve stability and coordination, but I would not recommend it as a replacement for your traditional or sumo or trap bar deadlift. I would think of the fulcrum deadlift more as a fun and challenging accessory exercise. Now, as for programming, you might want to reduce the volume of your normal deadlifting if you are also going to be doing some fulcrum deadlifting, and that's fine.

Starting point is 00:14:55 So let's say you are normally doing three or four sets of deadlifting per week. You could reduce your normal deadlifting to, let's say, two. So then you can do two sets of fulcrum deadlifts as well. Stuff by Steffi asks, do you ever do pull-ups as part of your training or any calisthenics work? Yes. Pull-ups and chin-ups are always on the list of important exercises to choose from. They are not always in my training, but at least every other training block will include some pull-ups or some chin-ups because those will always be some of the most effective back and biceps exercises you can do, especially because you can add weight to them

Starting point is 00:15:37 as you get stronger. So you never grow out of those exercises. The Iron Dojo asks, what's the best way to deadlift without hitting your junk at the top of the exercise? I don't know, man. Maybe you need to look into scrotal reduction surgery. I can't say I've ever had this problem. Maybe I'm just a hashtag team small sack. The Genius CEO, Robert, what's up brother, asks, my uncle got triple vaccinated and shortly after became a cuckold. Correlation or causation? Dude, come on. It was not the clot shot. It was probably climate change or Putin or the Second Amendment. Who knows? But don't worry. A little bit more inflation will probably fix it. Vibe Colmetha asks, ideal rest period between sets for hypertrophy? Two to three minutes. Let's keep it real simple. Rest two to three minutes in between your hypertrophy sets, which are going to be your sets either in a higher rep range, let's say anything, maybe eight reps and above, and usually not on the big compound lifts. That's usually not

Starting point is 00:16:48 going to be your deadlift or your squat or your bench press or overhead press. For those exercises, I would say three to maybe three and a half minutes, especially if you are doing some difficult deadlifting, some difficult squatting, two minutes is not going to be enough. some difficult deadlifting, some difficult squatting. Two minutes is not going to be enough. Three minutes might be enough. I personally rest probably on average three and a half minutes, sometimes even four minutes in between a set of say six or eight or 10 reps on the deadlift or the squat. That is basically cardio. At two minutes, my heart is still racing. So you got to keep that in mind as well. You are not ready to do your next set.

Starting point is 00:17:27 If you are still breathing fairly heavily, if you can feel that your heart rate is still significantly elevated. And so you are ready to do your next set when your breathing has returned to normal, at least normal for working out, not necessarily normal for lying in bed to go to sleep, but normal for being in the gym. And your heart rate has come down also to a more normal for being in the gym level. And you don't feel any burning in your muscles anymore. Your muscles feel ready to go again. And my last comment here is, you know, you are not resting enough if you are noticing major drops in performance from one set to the next.

Starting point is 00:18:09 So if you get 10 reps with whatever weight in your first set and then in your next set, you get five reps, six reps, you need to rest longer. All right. Rasa 22 asks, how low can you get your body fat percentage with good diet and strength training? No cardio. This is going to vary from person to person. Some people, for example, engage in a lot of spontaneous non-exercise activity. In the scientific literature, that's referred to as non-exercise activity thermogenesis. NEAT is the acronym, N-E-A-T. And in some people, that can be hundreds and hundreds of calories per day, just fidgeting, pacing, non-exercise activity that they just spontaneously engage in. And in other people, it can be not very much. It can be maybe one or 200 calories per day. I mean, that would be the low end of

Starting point is 00:19:06 what is normally seen in the literature and maybe a thousand calories per day is the high end of what has been seen in scientific tests. And most of us are somewhere in the middle of that. And so if somebody though is a high NEAT type, let's say they're a guy, they might find it fairly easy to get to 7, 8% body fat without doing formal cardio workouts. Maybe they go for a walk or two, and maybe they walk for 30 or 45 minutes per day, for example, but they don't do cardio workouts per se. They just strength train and move around a lot in general and go for some walks and find it fairly easy to get very lean. Whereas other people, and I would be one of these people, I struggle to get below 10% body fat or so without doing some cardio. And that is walks plus like 30 minutes, moderate intensity cardio sessions. I like to do it on an upright bike. And the reason why I struggle, that's kind of my threshold. If I'm just doing strength training is it just requires eating too little, that extra three to 500 calories per day that I can burn

Starting point is 00:20:20 with my cardio and with some walking, some extra walking really helps a lot. It helps with dietary compliance because I'm less hungry, fewer cravings, fewer negative side effects associated with dieting. And I would say that that is generally the case with the many people I've heard from and worked with over the years. Most guys find that they can get down to maybe about the 10% body fat mark with just strength training and dieting. And if they want to get leaner, they have to start doing cardio. Many women find that cut off to be around 20% body fat. 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.

Starting point is 00:21:08 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 mike at muscle for life.com muscle for life.com and let me know what i could do better or just uh 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: Fat Intake, Blood Work, Getting Lean Without Cardio, Farmer’s Walks, and More

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