Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Volume to Maintain, Daily Meat Consumption, Calf Rep Tempo, and More!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Well, hello there and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for the 11th installment in my Q&A series where I give brief-ish answers, no more than a few minutes, which is hard for me because I like to talk, but brief-ish answers to questions that I get asked over on Instagram. So what I do is once a week, usually Mondays, I put up a story where I ask for questions. People submit lots of questions and I choose 15 or so to answer there on Instagram. And then I also bring everything over here to the podcast. And so if you have questions for me, follow me over on Instagram at most for life fitness and look for the ask me anything story. Again, it's usually on Mondays, usually in the afternoon ET and submit your questions. And if they are questions that a lot

Starting point is 00:00:57 of other people are asking about, or if they are questions that I haven't already answered many times before, or that are just interesting to me, then there's a good chance I will choose at least one of them. And so in today's episode, I will be answering questions about how much meat you can eat every day, how little training you can do to maintain a physique. So once you have the body you want, how much exercise, how much training does it take to keep it post-workout protein? And should you be having it within a certain time period of finishing your workout and more? Before we get started, 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 00:01:46 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 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

Starting point is 00:02:41 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. Okay, let's start with the first question, which comes from Joe D. Wessels. And he asks, what is the maximum amount of volume that can be done in a single workout? That's a good question. And I'm going to give a real simple answer. 10 to 12 hard sets per major muscle group. And a hard set is a set taken close to muscular failure up or up to muscular failure, depending on what type of exercise it is and what you are doing in your programming.

Starting point is 00:03:32 But 10 to 12 hard sets per major muscle group, not 10 to 12 hard sets per session, but per major muscle group. And the reason for that is beyond that research shows that the muscle building stimulus declines markedly. So for example, 15 hard sets for let's just say your chest is not 50% more effective for muscle building than 10. It's hard to put an exact number to it, but it is a lot less than 50% more effective. It might be only 5% or 10% more effective because once you reach 10 to 12 hard sets for a major muscle group in an individual training session, you are now entering the realm of diminishing returns and the quality of the additional volume tends to go down

Starting point is 00:04:23 as well. So the stimulus is already less effective and the training volume tends to go down as well. So the stimulus is already less effective and the training quality tends to decline. Okay, the next question comes from Josh Hurley, and he asks, thoughts on the anti-work movement and people who are demanding more from their employers? Well, to share, I guess, all of my thoughts, that would probably take a podcast. But I'll just say this. If these people, if their jobs can soon be replaced by robots, so computers and robots or some combination thereof, then these people are only speeding their demise.

Starting point is 00:05:00 And instead, they should be working to upgrade their skills. And instead, they should be working to upgrade their skills. They should be working to remain relevant in the economy of tomorrow. And that makes me think of trade schools, for example. Why aren't trade schools more popular here in America like they are over in Germany, for example, where it is not expected of everyone that they go to university and study something, anything, lesbian dance theory, who cares, just get your degree. It is more common for people to weigh trade schools versus university. And a lot of people go to a trade school and they learn a specific skill, a practical skill, an economically viable

Starting point is 00:05:47 skill, a skill that will allow them to earn a living for a long time, that will future-proof them, so to speak. Okay, Kinger214 asks, what do you hope for in 2022? Okay, so imagine this. We're on our sixth booster shot for the Decepticon Scariant, and Tiger King 4 was just released, and RuPaul is now president. And the camps, well, those are keeping us safe, and we're very excited for our day of sun next week. Life is good. Lucas James Johnson asks, once you've reached your strength slash physique goals, how little can you train to maintain? Very simple answer. I'm going to keep this one short. It is one third to even one fifth of the volume that it takes to make progress. So for most people, that's just three to six hard sets per major muscle group per week for maintenance purposes.

Starting point is 00:06:43 You might lose a little bit of strength, but you are not going to lose any muscle to speak of. Matt R724 asks, what is the proper tempo for calf exercises? That's a good question. Here's what I like to do. I like to do a hard contraction and a slight pause at the top of each rep, and then a full stretch and a slight pause at the bottom. And I will have you know that my calves have been progressing quite nicely, actually. Particularly in this current macro cycle that I am in the middle of, I have added nearly 25 pounds to my calf raises. That's a lot. And I don't even have a great explanation for it other than it might have to do with my intensity discipline. I realized that I wasn't pushing close enough to

Starting point is 00:07:32 failure. And with calf exercises, you really can just go to failure every single set. I was bailing on sets a little bit too early where I was telling myself, or I was thinking, oh, that's probably zero or one good reps left. But then I started to push harder and really push to absolute failure. And I realized that that zero to one was more like three, four, even five. And that was a little surprising to me. And I started to pay a little bit more attention with all of my training. And I found that that was true, not to that degree, but to a lesser degree in most cases, except for my biggest heavy compound lifts. I have maintained good intensity discipline, so to speak on my squat and my deadlift and my bench press and my overhead press. When I make a note that I had maybe one or two good reps left at the end of that set of deadlifts, I can be pretty certain that I'm

Starting point is 00:08:34 correct on that. And the same thing on the squat because of the sheer amount of effort and the sheer amount of whole body exertion that those exercises require. But I noticed that on other exercises like biceps curls and shoulder raises and dumbbell rows, that I was ending some of my sets a little bit too soon. I was thinking that I only had maybe one or two good reps left when it was more like two or three. And so for the last couple of weeks, probably four weeks now or so, I have been doing more reps is really what it comes down to. My volume has gone up a little bit because I am training with better intensity discipline. And, you know, this would probably make for a good podcast unto itself.

Starting point is 00:09:26 So I'm going to make a note on that because I need to get to the next question. MB Haywood 117 asks, can you bulk half of the week and shred fat the other half? You can, but it's going to work out more like a maintenance routine unless you are new to lifting. If you are new to lifting, your body is hyper-responsive. You can do that and do well. But if you are an experienced weightlifter, if you have at least a year or so of proper weightlifting behind you, you are not going to gain much muscle or strength trying to go halfsies like that. And if you want to learn more about mini cuts and mini bulks and how to do that correctly, head over to legionathletics.com and search for mini cut two words, and you'll find an article

Starting point is 00:10:11 I wrote on that. All right, let's move on now to Sean Hale-Yaz question, and that is ways to work calves at home. Well, an easy way is just to do a bunch of sets of single leg calf raises and just take them to absolute failure. It's not fun. It hurts, but it can work better than you might think. And if you have a backpack and you have some books, put the books in the backpack, put the backpack on your back, and now you have some added weight. All right. Sergio heads asks anything to speed up healing of wrist inflammation besides pausing workouts? Any supplements? Well, as far as supplements go, Legion's Fortify might help.

Starting point is 00:10:50 And regular icing can help if you do it a couple of times per day, 10, 15, max 20 minutes per time. And I know that ice has been overhyped and overprescribed, but it is useful for bringing down inflammation. and over-prescribed, but it is useful for bringing down inflammation. If the problem is inflammation and you need to bring the inflammation down, ice can help. All right, next is a question from Vibe Colmetha. I'm sure I butchered your name. I'm sorry. But your question is post-workout protein shake within 30 minutes. As a general rule, eating 20 to 40 grams of protein within an hour or so of training is a good practice.

Starting point is 00:11:30 It's not entirely necessary. It is not nearly as important as eating enough protein every day. That is the 80%. But protein timing, I would say, is probably the biggest factor of the remaining 20%. And a couple of things here. One, eating four to six servings of protein per day spread out by a few hours between each serving. That is better for muscle building than eating, say, two or three servings per day with longer

Starting point is 00:12:04 periods in between each. And it makes sense to have protein before you train if you haven't had protein within the last couple of hours or so of your workout. If you have, then you don't have to worry about it, as well as protein after you train within about an hour or so. The next question comes from Vase K. Poko Bradsky, and they ask, how much meat can you eat daily? Now, if we're talking about relatively unprocessed beef and pork and so forth, then I would say as much as you want, so long as your saturated fat intake doesn't exceed 10 to 15% or so of your daily calories, which is going to limit you to maybe a serving or two per day. If you go and look at the saturated fat in even leaner cuts of meat. And if we're talking about

Starting point is 00:12:52 more processed, less nutritious stuff like sausages and beef jerky and bacon and the like, I wouldn't recommend eating that stuff every day. You could argue that if you live a healthy lifestyle, if you exercise regularly, if you maintain a healthy body composition, if you don't smoke, if you don't drink too much alcohol, if you sleep enough, then eating a serving or even two servings of the more processed, quote unquote, junk meats every day won't matter. And that's possible. I think that's a fair argument, but my general recommendation would be to limit your intake of those types of foods to maybe a couple of servings per week. Next comes from Yisro Levine, and they ask, is the new Frosted Cranberry Pulse flavor good? So this is Legion,

Starting point is 00:13:50 my sports nutrition company. Pulse is our pre-workout. Frosted Cranberry is a new flavor that we released a couple of months ago, a limited time flavor, a holiday only flavor that is going to be sold out soon. We are under a thousand bottles left. And anyway, I think it's good. But if you, gentle listener, want to try it, and if you don't like it, then just let us know, and we give you your money back. That's it. No forms. You don't even have to return it to us. Maybe find someone else to give it to. 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

Starting point is 00:14:35 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 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: Volume to Maintain, Daily Meat Consumption, Calf Rep Tempo, and More!

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