Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Pre-Hab, Ideal Cutting Protocol, and Doing a Single Cycle of Steroids

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

I’ve churned through over 150,000 emails, social media comments and messages, and blog comments in the last 6 years. And that means I’ve fielded a ton of questions. As you can imagine, some questions pop up more often than others, and I thought it might be helpful to take a little time every month to choose a few and record and share my answers. So, in this round, I answer the following three questions: Are there any pre-hab routines or programming you’d recommend prior to starting a weight training program When cutting with limited time would I do 5 days of lifting and 1 HIIT session or 4 days of lifting and 2 HIIT sessions? What’s wrong with taking a cycle or two of steroids and then cutting them out cold turkey? If you have a question you’d like me to answer, leave a comment below or if you want a faster response, send an email to [e-mail]. Recommended reading for this episode: https://legionathletics.com/body-recomposition/ https://legionathletics.com/side-effects-of-steroids/ 4:31 - Are there any pre-hab routines or programming you’d recommend prior to starting a weight training program 13:12 - When cutting with limited time would I do 5 days of lifting and 1 HIIT session or 4 days of lifting and 2 HIIT sessions? 23:50 - What’s wrong with taking a cycle or two of steroids and then cutting them out cold turkey? --- Mentioned on The Show: Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for a Q&A where I answer questions that readers and followers ask me. If you want to ask me questions that I can answer for you and that may be chosen for future Q&A episodes, shoot me an email, mikeatmuscleforlife, just F-O-R life,.com, and let me know what's on your mind. I get a lot of emails, so it may take me seven, 10, maybe even 14 days, or sometimes a little bit longer, to be honest, to get back with you,

but you will hear back from me, and you will get an answer. And if it's a question that a lot of people are asking or have been asking for some time, or if it's something that just strikes my fancy and it's something that I haven't already beaten to death on the podcast or the blog, then I may also choose it for an episode and answer it publicly. Another way to get questions to me is Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness. You can DM them to me, although that is harder for me to stay on top of. I do try, but the inbox is a little bit buggy and it just takes more time trying to do it, whether it's on

my phone or the Windows app, but there is a good chance you will still get a reply. Email is better. And I also do post, I think it's every few weeks or so, in my feed asking for people to give me questions, give me fodder for the next Q&A. So if you would rather do that, then just follow me on Instagram at Muscle For Life Fitness and send me a message or just wait for one of my Q&A posts. So in this episode, I'm going to answer three questions. The first one comes from CGBurkhead over on Instagram, and he or she asks, are there any prehab routines or programming you would recommend prior to starting a weight training program? And the next question comes from ManosalvaDaniel over on Instagram, And he asks, when cutting with limited time, would I do five days a week of weightlifting and one HIIT session per week, one HIIT cardio session,

or four days of lifting and two cardio sessions and particularly two HIIT sessions? And then the third and final question I'll answer in this episode comes from Jaden Brown 420. That handle sounds familiar. I think I've taken a question before from this person. So if so, here's another question from Jaden Brown 420. I remember making a joke about the 420. That's what's coming to mind. Anyway, asking for a friend. Sure, sure. What's wrong with taking a cycle or two of steroids and then cutting them out cold turkey? Would the loss of testosterone after quitting negate all your gains made during your cycle?

Would such a short period have bad side effects if you took safer steroids like Anovar or testosterone? Again, I would personally never. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef.

Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. And I should also mention that you can get any of the audio books 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account. And this is a great way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. And so if you want to take Audible up on this offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, just go to www.buylegion.com and sign up for your account. So again, if you appreciate my work, and if you want to see more of it, and if you want

to learn time-proven and evidence-based strategies for losing fat, building muscle and getting healthy and strategies that work for anyone and everyone, regardless of age or circumstances, please do consider picking up one of my best-selling books, Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, and The Shredded Chef for my favorite fitness-friendly recipes. Okay, starting at the top with C.G. Burkhead's question about prehab routines. Do I recommend doing this before starting a weightlifting program? Well, first, let's define prehab. So unlike rehab, which is a program that is designed to treat a preexisting physical problem, like an injury, for example, using a mixture of exercises and mobility drills, prehab is

a program that is undertaken before an injury or a problem occurs with the aim of avoiding injuries and problems in the future. And it does this by correcting deficits in strength, stability, range of motion, flexibility, balance, and joint function, just general joint function. And that may sound kind of unnecessary and biohacky, but there is some validity here. Lifting weights does have a way of exposing little problems in our anatomy and in our mobility. And we can have no idea we have these problems until we get into weightlifting and particularly get into heavy compound weightlifting.

And the best way to identify if you have any problems that may get worse as you load your body with heavier and heavier weights and put in more and more reps is to try some body weight exercises prior to serious weightlifting, serious strength training or resistance training that test how your shoulders work, how your hips work, how your low back is doing, your knees, your ankles. And this is very easy to do. So if you can do the following body weight exercises that I'm going to give you without any pains or without any restrictions, then you're good to go. So press-ups, and you can do modified press-ups if necessary, and do press-ups at different angles, like incline, standard, decline, wall angels, bodyweight squat, bodyweight lunges, planks, side planks, glute bridges,

bird dogs, and bodyweight back extensions. And if you're not familiar with some of those, back extensions. And if you're not familiar with some of those, just look them up online. Now, if you work through those movements and you find that you do have discomfort with some of them in certain positions, you can't move comfortably through a full range of motion in each of the exercises, then you can benefit from some prehab work. You can benefit from working on the problem. For most people, it's going to be lack of flexibility or lack of mobility. They are not going to be able to move through a full range of motion at all. They're just going to be stuck at a certain point because, for example, they have very tight ankles or they have very tight hamstrings or very tight shoulders. And if that is the case, and if there are any other issues,

again, doing those simple body weight exercises, other than maybe some of them are just going to feel hard if you are very new to all of this, particularly if you are a woman. Press-ups, for example, probably aren't going to work, but you should be able to do them on your knees, for example. But aside from difficulty, again, if there's pain or lack of range of motion or lack of mobility, or even strange, if something just feels off, if one of your joints feels off during the glute bridge, if your hips, for example, just feel a bit strange, then again, you can benefit from addressing that right away. You may not have to wait to start your resistance training. That

would really depend on what's going on and how bad it is. Chances are you will be able to get going with some strength training, but you should also get going right away with some mobility work or prehab work to resolve the problem and allow you to perform each of those exercises I gave you comfortably. And that's particularly true if you have suffered injuries in the past that you already know are going to give you problems. Then you definitely want to start working on them right away. To share a quick little story that I've shared many times on the podcast, so you may have heard it before. I'll just go through it quickly. Years ago when I was deadlifting, I had a fair amount of weight on the bar, maybe 420 to 430, something like that. And I was doing sets of four and on my third or

fourth rep, I'm at the top of the rep, I'm standing up and I let the core tension out. I just was exhaling and I didn't keep my core as tight as I should have. And I felt my hips kind of shift to the right. And I was like, oh, that's not good. Dropped the bar and immediately had some pain in my lower back. And because I was young and stubborn, I dropped the weight and finished the next one or two sets that I was supposed to do in that workout. I think I dropped to like 315 and then that aggravated my back a little bit more. And then later that day, my back was hurting quite a bit and I was getting like tingling in my leg. And then I had to not deadlift for several

weeks for the pain to go away and for me to get to a point where I could comfortably deadlift again. I probably couldn't squat as well. I don't really remember. But that then became an intermittent problem. It would come and go very randomly. Sometimes I'd be warming up with 225, I'd be warming up on the deadlift and something would just tweak in my lower back. At least that's how it felt. It turns out it was my SI joint, but I was feeling it in my lower back and I wouldn't be able to deadlift for a week or two. And sometimes it was squatting and it was usually not with heavy weight. Ironically, it was usually during my warmup sets, my heavier warmup sets, like 70% of my working weight, but not even during my hard sets, my working sets. So sometimes I'd be squatting and something would

just tweak down there. It would get aggravated again. And then I couldn't squat for a couple of weeks. And sometimes it was actually painful to walk. And after a couple of rounds of this with several months in between each, I was like, okay, I need to actually look into fixing whatever is wrong here. Because initially I was like, uh, that's not good. And then it went away and I was like, okay, fine. And then it came back and then it went away for several months and then came back. And then I decided to take it a bit more seriously. And what I found out is there is a connection between lack of internal rotation and SI joint dysfunction. And lo and behold,

the internal rotation on my left side, which is where I hurt myself, was really bad. My internal rotation on my right side, totally fine. External, bad. And then on my left side of my body, left side of my hips, I had the opposite going on. I had really good external rotation and really poor internal rotation. So I started to do some simple stretches to improve the internal rotation on the left side of my body and left side of my hips. And I continued lifting and I don't remember if I aggravated the injury during that period, but I didn't stop lifting. I just kept doing my thing and slowly just started improving the internal rotation on the left side of my body. rotation on the left side of my body. And it took probably about three or four months of doing stretches every day for my internal rotation to be balanced or close to balanced on both sides of my hips. And once I achieved that, that was years ago now, I have not had a single flare-up since.

And now I know that if I would have addressed that sooner, there's a chance I wouldn't have gotten hurt in the first place. Like, yes, it was a mistake to release the tension in my core muscles. But if I wasn't already predisposed to SI joint problems because of this lack of internal rotation, it may not have led to the injury. And, you know, now that I'm saying that, I realized that I should add one more little stretch. It's not an exercise. It's just a stretch to the diagnostic list. Sloppy, sloppy. And that is the 90-90 stretch. You should be able to do that comfortably on both sides of your body. You should be able to get your hips into internal and external rotation, both on the left and right sides of your body with good range of

motion and no major discomfort. Now, if you are somebody who has not sustained any major injuries and you are able to do all of the body weight exercises and the stretch that I have talked about, and if there are no problems, then you probably don't need to be spending any time working on prehab. You can just stick to your lifting. And if you do want to do some stretching or mobility work outside of that, then that's totally fine, but it may not be necessary. All right, let's move on to the next question from Mano Salva Daniel. And he asks if I were cutting and I had limited time, would I just do five days a week of lifting and one cardio session? And he specifies one HIIT session per week, or would I do four days of

lifting and two cardio sessions or two HIIT sessions? So if you want to maximize fat loss and minimize muscle loss and not run into any issues related to overtraining, then I would say when cutting, ideally you would do three to five, one hour-ish weightlifting sessions per week. And you would do one to at most three, 25 to maybe 30 minute HIIT sessions per week, high intensity interval training. And then maybe two or three, 30 or 45 minute low intensity cardio sessions per week, like walking or very easy bike riding, like never even getting winded. If you have a lot of time on your hands and you are willing to put in the work, then go with the largest numbers. Go with the five weightlifting sessions per week, the three hit cardio sessions per week and three low intensity cardio sessions per week. And if you

combine that with an aggressive, but not reckless calorie deficit of around 20%, it might need to be a bit less if you are lean, looking to get very lean. And it can be a bit larger than that. If you are, let's say 15% body fat and above, certainly 20% body fat and above in men and 25 to 30% and above in women. So if you do that, and if you eat enough protein and you make sure that you are getting enough sleep and you are eating enough carbs to satisfy you and to fuel your training and following the basic principles of flexible dieting, where you're getting most of your calories from nutritious foods, if you do all of that, you're going to lose fat quickly. You're going to have good workouts. You are generally going to feel good. You're going to have energy. You're going to be in a good mood. You are not going to deal with hunger or cravings all that

much. You might have it a little bit here and there, and you are not going to lose any muscle to speak of, or probably any strength really to speak of. Now, if you don't have that much time or you just don't want to spend that much time cutting, that's totally fine. You can do very well with less exercise, even a lot less exercise, but we have to now modify things to make sure we are prioritizing the right exercise. We want to make sure that you are now using your time as effectively and efficiently as possible. So let's start with the examples that were given to me in the question. We have five weightlifting sessions and one HIIT session per week versus four weightlifting

sessions and two cardio sessions, two HIIT sessions. And if that were me, I would do the five one. I would lift weights five days per week, and then I would do one HIIT session per week. And the reason for that is your body is primed for muscle loss when you're in a calorie deficit. And if you're new to weightlifting, you don't have to worry about that. If you're in your first year of weightlifting, for example, you will gain muscle while losing fat. You will recomp, so who cares? But if your newbie gains are behind you and you are now an intermediate or an advanced

weightlifter, you do have to pay a bit more attention to what you're doing when you're cutting. And for example, not being in too large of a calorie deficit becomes more important as you become more experienced and not doing too much cardio becomes more important. And continuing to intensely train and intensely challenge your muscles with heavy weights and adequate volume also becomes very important for retaining muscle and strength. In fact, that is one of the best ways to maintain or even gain muscle and strength when you're in a calorie deficit, if that is still an option for you.

Again, if you're a guy and you've already gained your first 20 to 25 pounds of muscle, or if you are a gal who has gained her first 10 to maybe 15 pounds of muscle, you are almost certainly not going to be able to gain any muscle or strength to speak of when you're cutting, but you certainly can not lose it. You can retain more or less all of the muscle and strength that you have going into a cut. And so then when you finish your cut and you're able to eat more food, not only do you look great,

but you also don't have a lot of lost ground to make up in terms of regaining muscle and strength that you lost while cutting. Now, the question is how much weightlifting you need to do when you're cutting to optimize muscle and strength retention. And as far as I know, there isn't a clear cut answer to that in the scientific literature, but based on my understanding of things, I think it's fair to say that you want to do more or less the same amount of volume as you would do

when you are maintaining, if not lean bulking. Now, the reason why I make that distinction is some people push volume very high when they lean bulk 18, 20 hard sets per major muscle group per week. I wouldn't recommend doing that much volume when cutting. Actually, I would cap it at probably about 15, 14 to 15 hard sets per major muscle group per week. And I also would say that that is almost certainly enough volume for most people to gain muscle and strength about as quickly as they will be able to when lean bulking. I don't think most people are going to benefit much from the additional several hard sets per major muscle group per week when lean bulking. That is not always the case, but I've found again that with most intermediate and advanced weightlifters, so long as they know what they're

doing in the kitchen, and so long as they are not doing too much cardio, and so long as they're sleeping enough, and so long as the weightlifting program is well-designed, 14 to 16 hard sets per major muscle group per week is enough to produce steady progress. And so that's primarily why I am biased toward weightlifting when cutting. But there's also something to be said for the calories because heavy compound weightlifting is certainly beneficial for fat loss. It certainly helps drive fat loss. It can burn quite a few calories, which of course drives fat loss. Let's say anywhere from 300 to 800 calories per hour, depending on your body weight. If you weigh 120 pounds, for example, probably closer to three to 400. If you weigh 210, 220 pounds, closer to seven or 800 calories per hour. And a good study that illustrates the effectiveness of strength training when cutting

was conducted by scientists at Ball State University. And they had two groups of women perform two different training protocols. One group did high rep, low weight, superset, kind of bodybuilding style training with minimal rest in between sets. And then the other group followed a periodized strength training routine with most of the work in the range of 70 to 90% of one rep max. So a proper strength training program. And after 12 weeks, both groups had lost about 20 pounds, meaning the workouts burned about the same amount of calories. But the group that did the heavy strength training gained three times more muscle, so seven pounds versus two pounds, and lost over

twice as much body fat. So again, don't get unnecessarily fixated on cardio when you're cutting. You don't have to do any when you're cutting if you want to get lean. If you're a guy who just wants to get down to, let's say, 10% to 12% body fat, somewhere in that range, certainly if you are looking to get to, let's say, 15%, you don't have to do cardio to get there. And for women, the comparable numbers would probably be around 22 to 25%. If you're above that and that's your goal, or at least that's the first big milestone and you don't want to do cardio because you don't have the time or you just don't feel like it, that's totally fine. You are going to do well with just strength

training. That said, I would challenge you to fit in some walking if you can, because it is such an easy way to increase energy expenditure without having to go to the gym or hop on the treadmill or the exercise bike. And it is very easy to work into the workday these days now that most of us are working from home, so if you have periods where you need to make calls, for example, you can just get outside and go for a walk. Or maybe when you are listening to a podcast or a lecture or an audio book, make it a 15 or 20 minute walk. Also, if you can, try to make it a walk in nature where you see pretty trees and flowers and plants and animals because it's going to make you feel

better. It's one of those things that we don't need science to tell us that. We can just go do it and experience it firsthand. But research does back that up. And as far as calorie burning goes, walking burns a couple of hundred calories per hour, 300 calories or so per hour, depending on how fast you're walking and how much you weigh. And that's no HIIT, of course. I mean, you can burn a couple hundred calories in 10 minutes of HIIT, but HIIT is a lot more difficult. It requires more effort, obviously. It is more strenuous. It impacts the body more, whereas walking has basically no impact on post-strength training workout recovery. Now, if you can't fit long walks into your schedule, if that's just not practical, think with maybe just walking more one way or

another. Look at your everyday routine and see if there are things you can do differently that would have you walking more, like maybe taking the stairs instead of the elevator or the escalator, maybe walking short distances instead of driving, or even parking further away than normal when you're running errands, for example, from the entrance to the store, or maybe you're commuting to your office with the goal of just getting more steps in, as people talk about. And shooting for that 10,000 steps per day is a good target actually. And you can track that of course, with your phone, you can just get an app and track your steps. One other little tip is if you are walking currently, and maybe it's a 10 minute walk,

that's your route that you take for whatever reason. If you have the time, think of how you might be able to just lengthen the route. Like, can you make it take 20 minutes instead? That's an easy way to increase your daily steps as well. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one best-selling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Okay, let's move on to the final question from Jaden Brown, 420, about steroids. What's wrong with just doing one or two cycles

and reaping the newbie gains of the glorious drugs and then cutting them out cold turkey. Asking for a friend though, for a friend. So it's probably worth telling your friend that steroids, particularly testosterone, for example, may not be as dangerous as some people believe, but they are still far from safe. And yes, that does apply to even a single cycle of steroids because a single cycle of steroids done wrong can cause major problems. For example, some of the changes that can occur when you're on drugs can be reversible and they include testicular atrophy, so shrinking, acne, cysts, oily hair and skin, elevated blood pressure and LDL cholesterol levels, increased aggression,

lowered sperm count. But there are irreversible changes too. They include male pattern baldness, heart dysfunction, liver disease, acne scars, and gynecomastia. Gyno? Bitch tits? And another problem with some of the drugs people take, not so much testosterone that there is a lot of research available on that has been around for a long time. But of course, when we're talking about doing a steroid cycle, that usually involves other drugs. And many of these drugs are unknowns as far as long-term effects in humans go because the research isn't there. And we're not going to get the research because it would never pass an ethics board. So all we can really do is observe what happens to people who use these drugs and see what happens to their body over time. A bunch of case studies, basically. And I would not recommend being one of those case studies, regardless of how long you or your friend plans on participating because while the chances are fairly low that you're going to suffer major side effects from one cycle that is designed well, which would mean a mild cycle, for example,

most people who get good advice start with just testosterone with a moderate dose or even a low ish like TRT kind of dose of testosterone to see how their body responds, the chances are quite high that you, I mean, your friend are not going to stop there. You are not going to just do one round of testosterone, a low or maybe moderate dose of testosterone and happily take your extra, I don't know, five to 15 pounds of muscle depending on your genetics and how much testosterone you're taking and how long you're taking it for and your training experience and so forth. And go back to being natty. Just chalk that up as a fun little N1 experiment. No, chances are you're going to love it and you're going to want a lot more of it.

And then the second cycle will begin and it will be bigger than the first cycle. And then you're going to be even more thrilled by how much progress you're making in the gym and how you feel and how you look. And you're going to want even more. And there is more to be had. There's always more drugs to be had. And this is why, for example, one study found that 30% of steroid users who participated in the study had developed a dependence syndrome. And if you speak to enough

people who are honest about their drug use, they will tell you about the addictive properties of the drugs and particularly the psychological addiction, how much better they feel when they are on drugs, how they feel just invincible, basically. They always have energy, focus, drive, don't need to sleep as much. I mean, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard a long-term steroid user say that he started with the intention of just doing one cycle just to see what it's like. And well, here he is today, 15 years in, well, I would be making money in a very strange way. Too many of these people told themselves that they would try it out just to get a little bit ahead, kickstart their gains, and then they found themselves on the bike for the long haul.

Now, I think it's also worth directly addressing a myth here, which is that you can do a cycle or two of steroids and dramatically increase your muscularity and your strength. And then you can just taper off maybe with a good post-cycle therapy protocol, and you're going to maintain your newfound gains. And the idea then is you can condense maybe like three years of training into one year or even six months with the right drugs. And the idea then is you can condense maybe like three years of training into one year, or even six months with the right drugs. And then you can go back to being natty. And now you are maybe a year or two from your genetic potential. That is not true. Most of the muscle and strength that you are going to gain on steroids will fade after you stop taking them. And this is not surprising. You are artificially

raising your hormone levels to supernatural levels to achieve supernatural results in your physique. And then when your hormones return to normal, so does your physique. Your body has feedback mechanisms that regulate these things. And what you are certainly not going to be able to do is get on drugs early and stay on them to reach your genetic potential for muscularity or maybe even exceed your natural potential a little bit fairly quickly, let's say in a couple of years, and then come off drugs and stay your performance. And depending on what you've been doing over the last couple of years, you may find it very hard to continue making progress because of what's going on with your hormones. They can be bottomed out and it can take a long time to return to a normal, healthy level of testosterone production, for example, and you may never return to that. So as you can tell, my position is stay away from steroids. It's not necessary. The risks far outweigh the benefits. And unless you're getting paid millions of dollars to put

your health at risk and to use these drugs, unless you're a Hollywood actor and the big director has come to you and said, I need you to gain 20 pounds in the next month or month and a half, and you can become the next Marvel superhero. If that's the case, yeah, you do the drugs. Of course you do the drugs. Or if you are a professional athlete and you have to use these drugs to keep up with everyone else who is also, for the most part, using these drugs, I understand. You got to do what you got to do. But if you're using drugs or considering using drugs just to get more jacked for the purpose of getting more attention on social media or getting laid more, you need to seriously rethink your shit. If you

are going to sow the wind like that, you cannot be surprised when one day you reap the whirlwind. All right, Mr. or Mrs. Listener, that's it for today. I hope you liked the episode. Thanks again for joining me. And next week, I have an interview coming with Eric Helms on the science of auto-regulating your training. I think you're really going to like that if you are an intermediate or advanced weightlifter in particular.

I have a monologue coming on exercises for low back pain, as well as another installment of Best of Muscle for Life and another Q&A where I'm going to talk about running and muscle gain, kids and dieting and the pros and cons of Kratom. 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, mikeatmuscleforlife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.