Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best of Muscle For Life: Bodybuilding Show Prep, Cardio or Weights First, and No Excuses

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

I’ve recorded hundreds of episodes of Muscle for Life on a huge variety of things related to health, fitness, and lifestyle, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to fads like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein to more unfamiliar territories like body weight set point and fasted cardio. Some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few key takeaways that just about anyone can benefit from (that’s what I tell myself at least). And as cool as that is, it poses a problem for you, my dear listener: Ain’t nobody got time for that. Well okay, some people do make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts, but my wizbang analytics tell me that while many listeners tune in on a regular basis, they don’t catch every installment of Muscle for Life and thus miss out on insights that could help them get a little better inside and outside the gym. People have also been saying they’d like me to do more shorter, multi-topic episodes, like my Q&As. And so I got an idea: how about a “best of” series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from my most popular episodes? This way, people who are new to the show can quickly determine if it’s for them or not, and those who enjoy what I’m doing but don’t have the time or inclination to listen to all of my stuff can still benefit from the discussions and find new episodes to listen to. So, in this installment of The Best of Muscle for Life, you’ll be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes: 5:04 - Eric Helms on the Science of Preparing for a Natural Bodybuilding Show 15:32 - Should You Do Cardio or Weightlifting First? What 20 Studies Say 24:30 - Motivation Monday: When You Can Do This, You Can Do Anything --- Mentioned on The Show: Eric Helms on the Science of Preparing for a Natural Bodybuilding Show (Published 9/30/16) https://legionathletics.com/eric-helms-podcast/ Should You Do Cardio or Weightlifting First? What 20 Studies Say (Published 12/5/18) https://legionathletics.com/cardio-or-weights-first-podcast/ Motivation Monday: When You Can Do This, You Can Do Anything  (Published 7/16/18) https://legionathletics.com/motivation-monday-do-anything/ 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 the latest and greatest episode of Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews, and thank you for joining me today. Now, I have recorded hundreds of episodes of Muscle for Life, and I've talked about a huge variety of things related to health, fitness, lifestyle, mindset, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to fads like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein to more unfamiliar territories like body weight set point and fasted cardio. And some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few key takeaways that just about anyone can

benefit from. At least that's what I tell myself. That's what helps me sit down in the chair every day and do this. And as cool as that is, it poses a problem for you, my dear listener, especially if you are new here. And that is, ain't nobody got time for that. We're talking about probably a thousand plus hours of content at this point. And while some people actually do make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts, my whizbang analytics tell me that while many listeners tune in on a regular basis, they don't catch every installment of Muscle for Life and thus they miss out on insights that could help them get even just a little bit better inside and outside the gym. Because if you just get a little bit better consistently enough, that can add up to big

results in the long run. And people have also been telling me that they would like me to do more shorter, multi-topic episodes like my Q&As and Says You episodes. And so I got an idea. How about a best of series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from my most popular episodes, going all the way back to the beginning. This way, people who are new in particular can quickly determine if this is the droid they're looking for, if this podcast is for them or not. And then

those who are regulars and enjoy what I'm doing, but just don't have the time or inclination to listen to all of my stuff. And I do understand that. I don't take it personally. You can also then benefit from the discussions and the episodes that you are not listening to in full. And you can also find new episodes to listen to without having to give an hour of your time to determine whether it was worth it or not. So here we are with the best of Muscle for Life. And in this episode, you will be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes. The first is an interview I did with Dr. Eric Helms, and it is titled Eric Helms on the science of preparing for a natural bodybuilding show. And then there is a

monologue that is titled, should you do cardio or weightlifting first? What 20 studies say? And finally, another motivational monologue called when you can do this, you can do anything. 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 audiobooks 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 slash audible

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 bestselling books, Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, and The Shredded Chef for my favorite fitness-friendly recipes.

All right, so let's start with the highlights from the Eric Helms interview. And this was published back in October of 2016. So if you like what you hear, you can go find the full episode and check it out. What are the three, four, five kind of biggest prep mistakes or myths that are kind of out there that you have to consistently disabuse people of and correct? You know, I'd say the most common one is just not dieting long enough. And it's almost cliche to say that now or at least it feels like it's I'm preaching it all the time but it has multiple reasons why I mean one is that

before I even say the early 2000s the conditioning standard was lower you know that the rarity of striated glutes was was well pretty rare you know like you'd see though the one the one show or the one guy in the show with the striated glutes, and he typically is getting very close to winning in natural bodybuilding where size isn't as much of a dominating factor. And then even if you looked at the IFBB pro ranks, if you follow the other side of the sport, it wasn't until probably the 90s where you started to see guys show up with striated glutes regularly, and it was pretty rare before that. So one is the conditioning standards. So what that means is that people were dieting under the constraints of a different system before,

so they didn't need to get quite as lean. And, you know, the leaner you get, the harder it gets. So it kind of adds a disproportionate amount of time that one should be dieting. And then a natural bodybuilding, holding on to your muscle in that phase is also the hardest. So it kind of extends further. So you've got the tradition going against the grain here

of the idea that maybe we should be dieting longer. And then you've also just got the unexperienced eye of a novice competitor. You know, these first time mistakes, they're based on your experience level. And when you've never competed,

you don't quite know just how much body fat is really there that has to go because it all has to go you know especially when with the lights and how harsh it is and what might look good under the right lighting that you like and then doesn't look so good or doesn't look right under competition yeah you you you spending 10 minutes to set up an Instagram photo and half netty lighting is not the same as being on stage for 20 minutes. Exactly. That natural lighting, the perfect, I think I see a little bit of ad vascularity. Right, exactly. So most of the time people need to lose sometimes as much as twice the amount they think they have to lose. I'll tell you a funny story because I'm not immune to this either. In 2005, I think, I did my first quote-unquote cut,

and I was 220 pounds at the time. I'm six foot, so it wasn't that huge or anything. I thought if I dieted down to 200 pounds, I'd be pretty close to stage ready. Fast forward about twice as long later than I thought it would take. I'm 198, and I'm probably 14% body fat. So I just didn't realize how fat I was to get there. So I basically died to the point where I'd want to start a prep. And so yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And then I was right. I ended up competing at about 178 in 2007. So there you go. So you're in the process now. We've gone over that you're not – the last thing was training. And so what is – so they're kind of rolling along. Their cardio is low. I mean at this point probably they haven't changed much in the way of training volume yet. And is there anything on the nutritional side that is worth

highlighting? That's the everything. Well, sure. That's why I wanted to get training out of the way first. So let's roll it back to the very start. So we've got an idea of what we're going to do with our cardio and our training throughout prep. When you're going to start, how heavy you should be. Another thing that you want to start at least, say, probably a month before your diet starts is actually tracking calories. Because during contest prep, to make sure you keep losing fat, you're going to want to be manipulating your calorie and macronutrient intake. And it's a lot easier to do that and less of a kind of shock to your mental system if you have some time doing that. If you go from just eating and not tracking at all, which there's nothing wrong with, in my opinion, so long as you're hitting a certain amount of protein, your calories are there, you're getting some fruits and vegetables in, and you're having protein around your workouts, and you're ticking a few boxes and making things as optimal as they

can be in the off-season. For example, right now, I ensure I hit a minimum amount of protein. I ensure I have at least four protein dosings a day. I ensure that I'm gaining or losing weight at the rate I want, and I make sure that I get my multivitamin, my fish oil, and I'm taking my creatine or whatever, or whatever. Yeah, definitely just creatine. My creatine or whatever, you know, just the D-vol. No, but so like I have the protons, protons right I have the boxes I tick in the off

season but it's a lot less it's the minimal amount I can get away with tracking and still being optimal which is a different formula than during contest prep where you want to make sure almost all your bases are covered because things matter more so anyway if I was to prep and what I recommend to people who

are in kind of that state in the off season where they're maybe just tracking protein is to start tracking all three macronutrients and weighing all their foods, eating out less and getting very used to keeping like either my fitness pal or a fit day or my macros, whatever tracking going so that it's not a huge pain in the ass and that's something they've integrated into their life and that is not a stress when they start prep and the side effect of this is you end up knowing exactly what your maintenance calories or your gaining calories are yep so you have a good idea of where to go so if you know you're maintaining roughly 3 000 calories and you know that there's roughly 3 500 calories in a pound of fat and if you want to create an x amount of deficit,

you can play with that knowledge. So for example, I'll use myself. I'm a 200-pound male, and I want to try to lose, oh, let's say 1% of my body weight to start. It's about the fastest you want to go, and then slower, like 0.5. So you're always going to try to fall between 0.5 to 1% of your body weight loss per week.

That's body weight, not body fat. Obviously, you want to see yourself get nice. Right. It'd be great. Yeah. And maybe that is happening. It's just you can't, there's no good measure to check that. So you really, am I maintaining performance? Am I looking better? And am I losing at the right weight with my body weight? So anyway, let's say I want to lose 1% of my body weight per week. That's two pounds. That's roughly a 7,000 calorie deficit over the course of the week. So that means I need to create a 7,000 calorie deficit over the course of the week. So that means I need to create a 1,000 calorie deficit on a day-to-day basis, mostly from my diet, right? So let's say I'm doing some cardio. So let's go to 2,200 on low days.

The last thing would just be laying out peak week. How does that look? Sure. Yeah. So peak week, like you said, a big piece of it is just getting a pump and carving up to assist that pump. And I mentioned how blood pressure drops. Well, you might have heard the recommendation from, you know, health organizations to reduce sodium intake, especially if you have a family history of heart health. And while I don't 100% agree with that, and there are maybe some people genetically who that would make sense for, for the vast majority of people, if you have a high sodium diet, your blood pressure comes up for a little while, and then it goes back down. And we go, oh, so it's not a chronic effect. Well, we don't want a chronic effect as bodybuilders. It'd be great if our blood pressure could come up temporarily.

And that actually assists with getting a pump and all that stuff. So I actually do immediately prior to the pump up, I have my athletes take a high sodium quick acting meal or literally just put table salt in the water. Yeah, just drink some salt. Yeah, which is not very tasty. Well, you don't need that much because it's, what is it, 2.3 grams of sodium per teaspoon of salt. Exactly. So yeah, a lot of the times it's right around there, putting a teaspoon of table salt into a glass of water, slamming it back, and then getting getting their pump up and that's after they've been carving up that day now uh yeah the peak week process is essentially just reversing flatness and in reversing that blood pressure drop i don't manipulate water i don't manipulate sodium and i don't even change the fat and uh and protein intakes that have typically been in the

diet i might up the fat a little bit because I don't want you in a deficit. But typically it is having carb intake levels that are closer to your refeed days and either a front or a back load approach. Neither method is better than the other. I might have said a different answer a year ago or two years ago. But essentially probably the easiest for those listening way to do this is on Friday and maybe even Thursday. Thursday, just take yourself out of a deficit. Then through a carbohydrate increase Friday, potentially go to a slightly higher than maintenance level.

Then the day of the show, be at maybe 80 percent between like maybe the average of your low and your high days on the diet you're trying to like maintain that kind of carved up look and if you really want to play a conservative and you don't want to spill over which is relatively rare just have a refeed the day before the show you know and then have the average of your refeed and your low day on the day of the show that'll prevent you from being flat in most cases that won't get you fully fully fully peaked but if you're riding solo it's very difficult to refeed and your low day on the day of the show. That'll prevent you from being flat. In most cases, that won't get you fully, fully, fully peaked. But if you're riding solo, it's very difficult to self-analyze this and you don't want to be in a position where you've spilled over and you can't pull back. I used to recommend front loads to first timers, but they're actually kind of complex,

you know, having highs and then lows and then highs again. So I think that's probably the easiest way to go for someone just listening. But essentially what you're looking to do is just get someone's glycogen levels back up yep and for what it's worth uh just for the listeners that's what i've experienced myself when i've done it a few times having to really lean for photo shoots is i just kept it simple like that the day before start eating a bunch of carbs. Uh, and, and the day of the shoot, eating a bunch of carbs and getting pumped. And I don't know, I thought, I think I looked pretty good at work. Yeah, no, it definitely does. And keeping it simple is very effective. All right. Well, that's it for Eric Helms on the science of preparing for a natural

bodybuilding show. Again, that episode was published October, 2016. So if you liked my choices, my audio snippets for you, then definitely go check out the whole interview. And I'd recommend that you check out every interview I've done with Eric because he is one of the most knowledgeable people in the evidence-based fitness space. And he's an all around good guy like Eric. All right. So let's move on to the next featured clips from the episode. Should you do cardio or weightlifting first? What 20 studies say. If your goal is to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible, you want to do your

weightlifting first. And in fact, if you really want to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible, then you want to do as little cardio as possible. In addition to the timing of it, you also want to keep your cardio to a minimum for two reasons. The first reason is cardio is fatiguing. And the more cardio you generally do, the more general fatigue you are going to experience. And that is going to make it harder to progress in your weightlifting workouts. And reason number two is more of a long-term reason. There is research that shows that cardiovascular exercise interferes with some of the cellular signaling related to muscle building. So what that means is that the more cardio you do, the more impaired your body's muscle building machinery is. And even if the effects are

fairly slight, they can add up to a significant reduction in muscle and strength gain over the long term. A simple way to look at this is simply that resistance training and cardiovascular exercise send very different signals to the muscles in terms of what type of adaptation is supposed to occur. And so for example, if you want maximum strength gain and maximum hypertrophy, if that's the adaptation that you're going for, you want to send as clear of a signal over and over and over to those muscles as possible. And that is the signal that resistance training produces. Now, cardiovascular exercise sends a very different message to the muscles in terms of how they should respond to the stress. Getting bigger and stronger wouldn't be an appropriate

response because it would not help you run more miles. In fact, it would get in the way of your ability to run more miles because you'd be carrying more weight and you'd have a lot of muscle that is optimized for producing a lot of force quickly, as opposed to muscles that are very resistant to fatigue and can contract repeatedly for long periods of time without crapping out. And while we are on the topic of cardio and muscle building generally, it's worth noting that several studies have shown that the longer your cardio sessions are, the greater the interference effect is. And that is simply a technical term, by the way, for cardio's negative effects on muscle building. Interference effect is how it is referred to in the scientific literature. Now, all that does not

mean that you should not do any cardio if you want to get jacked. There are a few good reasons to do cardio, even if your goal is to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible. Now, the first one is research shows that cardiovascular exercise can provide some health benefits that we probably can't get from resistance training alone. And they are primarily cardiovascular in nature, big surprise. So while we do know that resistance training is good for our heart health, there's some evidence that doing some cardio in addition to the resistance training is even better for our hearts. The second reason is there is evidence that improving your cardiovascular fitness can also improve your recovery times in between your resistance training sets. So let's say that you normally need to take two or three

minutes to feel ready to give it your all in your next set, you know, where your heart rate has come back down into a normal range. You're not breathing too heavily anymore and you just feel generally ready to go. If it takes, again, two or three minutes currently, if you were to improve your cardiovascular fitness, there's a good chance that you might be able to shave, let's say, 30 seconds off of that, which you then could use to get more work done in the time that you have for your resistance training workouts. And the third reason why meatheads should consider including cardio in their routine, whether they are cutting, bulking, or maintaining is when you're cutting, it helps you burn fat faster, of course, because it simply increases energy expenditure. And especially in the case

of something like high intensity interval training. And, you know, I've written about that and spoken about that extensively. So I won't go off on that tangent. If you want to maximize fat loss, do some hit maybe an hour and a half, two hours max per week. And if you don't want to do that for whatever reason, I would recommend going to the opposite end of the spectrum and simply adding some walking in your routine. The reason being is walking burns three to 400 calories per hour and is very low stress. It's very low impact. It is not going to cut into your recovery and it is not going to interfere much if at all with your resistance training. So that interference effect, and this has been shown in studies, the interference effect in the case of walking is basically non-existent. It's when you get into stuff like jogging, you get to that level of intensity, regardless of the modalities,

when you start to see it more. And as far as maintaining and lean bulking goes, including cardio in your routine, again, even if it's something as simple as a few hours of walking per week, it can, there's evidence that it can help mitigate fat gain. It can make you more resistant to fat gain primarily by improving your body's improving your muscles ability to burn fat for energy. And by the same token, by keeping your body's fat burning machinery running well, so to speak, including cardio in your maintenance and or lean bulking routines can also make your cuts faster. You can shave off probably a couple weeks from your post maintenance or post lean bulk cuts. There is a significant downside to

doing your cardio before your resistance training or before your weightlifting, which is slower progress in your resistance training and no real downside to doing it after, because if you keep it short, which I would recommend anyway, you are not going to interfere with those post-workout anabolic signals to any market degree. And that is not just theory either. This has actually been demonstrated in a number of scientific studies. For example, one was published in 2016 and weightlifting. Group two was morning weightlifting followed by cardio. Group three was evening cardio followed by weightlifting. And group four was evening weightlifting followed by cardio. And everybody did the same workouts for the cardio workouts. It was some medium intensity stuff as well as some high intensity stuff. And for the resistance training for the weightlifting, it was some full body workouts

that progressed from lighter to heavier weights throughout the duration of the study. And after 24 weeks, what the researchers found is that the people who did their weightlifting first gained a bit more strength over that period than the people who did their cardio first. than the people who did their cardio first. So if you can do your cardio workouts after your resistance training workouts, and you will minimize the cardio's negative effects on your muscle building and your strength game. Even better than that, I should note before we wrap up here is doing your cardio and your resistance training workouts on different days. And if that's not possible, separating them by at least six hours. And the reason being is a couple of studies have shown that separating your resistance training and your cardio workouts by anywhere from six to 24 hours can help further mitigate the interference effect and thereby maximize the anabolic response from your resistance training

workouts. Okie dokie, that's it for that one. And that was published back in December of 2018. So again, if you liked the highlights, go check out the whole episode. I'm sure you will like it even more. 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. Let's move on now to the final episode featured in this installment of The Best of Most for Life. And it is called When You Can Do This, You Can Do Anything. I want to talk about

a simple change that you could make right now that would change everything, everything in your life, your health, your happiness, your fitness, relationships, finances, career, you fill in the rest. And what if I told you that this single factor is what really at bottom, what really sets extraordinary people apart from everyone else? What if this is how Alexander the Great, one of my favorite characters in history, became the king of the world, how Thomas Edison became the king of inventing, and how Elon Musk is becoming the king of the impossible. And what if this is how you can find out just how special you can be as well? Find out what you are really capable of. What if this is a magic bullet of sorts? Now, what is it? Is it being obsessed? Is it being present? Is it setting big goals, admitting mistakes, or inspiring others? Nope, it is not. It is far more primal than any of that.

In fact, without this one thing, none of those things really matter. Now, I have to warn you, though, you're probably not going to like this thing. You're probably going to feel like I am asking you to step out into a blizzard naked, like I'm asking you to force a dislocated limb back into place. So ready? Here it is. It is simply refusing to make excuses, refusing to make excuses for every failure, for every shortcoming, for every disadvantage, refusing to believe that it's okay to give up and take the easy road out, refusing to look for reasons to be weak, refusing to blame anyone or anything else for your troubles and for your failures. Speaking of Elon Musk, early on in his career, in one of his first companies, he wooed investors by sharing that he approaches life and work as a

samurai would. He'd rather kill himself than fail. And I think the life that he has lived so far is a testament to that. For Alexander the Great's part, whether he was sieging a supposedly impregnable city or facing a supposedly invincible army, he refused to believe that he couldn't succeed. He said there is nothing impossible to him who will try. And Thomas Edison's take on this? Well, after he had gone through thousands of unworkable light bulb filaments, he was challenged by a reporter about his lack of results. And here was his reply. He said, results? Why, man, I've gotten lots of results. If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I'm not discouraged because every wrong attempt

discarded is often a step forward. That mindset is power. That is how people do the quote-unquote unimaginable. That is the big secret. So what about you? Well, the next time you say you're going to do something, whether it's big or small, don't do what most people do. Don't lard the decision with a code of maybe or leave yourself little loopholes or little outs. Don't saddle the decision with ifs or buts and don't allow excuses to wait in the wings. The next time you say you're going to do something, channel your inner Elon or Alexander or Thomas or whoever you might be most inspired by instead. You're either going to do the thing or you're going to die. And when you can really embody that mindset, you can do anything.

And that's it for the best parts of the motivational episode titled When You Can Do This, You Can Do Anything. And that one was published back in July of 2018. So if you want to go listen to the whole thing, please do. And as always, I have a lot more good stuff on the way, at least stuff I think is good, including interview with David Tao, who is the founder of barbend.com and who is on a mission to build the ESPN of strength sports. Another installment of says you, where I'm going to talk about people's disagreements with me regarding inclined bench pressing, trap bar deadlifting, and doing accessory exercises, followed by another installment of Q and A, where I'm going to answer

questions about resistance bands, getting laid, yes, and female lean bulking or lean gaining. 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.