Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Heart Rate Variability Scores, Alcohol During a Diet, Ab Training, and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for a Q&A where I'm answering, oh, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 questions that people have asked me over on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness every week or two. On Monday or Tuesday, I put up an ask me a question story and then gather up a bunch of questions, answer them on Instagram, and then come over here and answer them again on the podcast. And I'm always looking for questions that I have not answered many times before, you know, that I haven't written about or spoken about repeatedly, or questions that I'm just getting asked a lot about and that I haven't also beaten to death already. And sometimes I take some questions that just amuse me

Starting point is 00:00:51 and give me a chance to at least laugh at my own jokes. And so if you want me to answer your questions, just follow me over on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness and look for the ask me a question story that goes up every week or two and ask me some questions and maybe I'll pick one of yours. Before we wade into it, one of the easiest ways to increase muscle and strength gain is to eat enough protein and to eat enough high quality protein. Now you can do that with food. Of course, you can get all of the protein you need from food, but many people supplement with whey protein because it is convenient and it's tasty. That makes it easier to just eat enough protein. And it's also rich in essential amino acids, which are crucial for muscle building and it's digested well, it's absorbed well. And that's why I created whey Plus, which is a 100% natural

Starting point is 00:01:47 grass-fed whey isolate protein powder made with milk from small sustainable dairy farms in Ireland. Now, why whey isolate? Well, that is the highest quality whey protein you can buy. And that's why every serving of Whey Plus contains 22 grams of protein with little or no carbs and fat. Whey Plus is also lactose-free, so that means no indigestion, no stomach aches, no gassiness. And it's also 100% naturally sweetened and flavored, and it contains no artificial food dyes or other chemical junk. And why Irish dairies? Well, research shows that they produce some of the healthiest, cleanest milk in the world. And we work with farms that are certified by Ireland's Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme, SDSAS, which ensures that the farmers adhere to best practices

Starting point is 00:02:39 in animal welfare, sustainability, product quality, traceability, and soil and grass management. And all that is why I have sold over 500,000 bottles of Whey Plus and why it has over 6,000 four and five star reviews on Amazon and on my website. So if you want a mouthwatering, high protein, low calorie whey protein powder that helps you reach your fitness goals faster. You want to try Whey Plus today. Go to buylegion.com slash whey. Use the coupon code MUSCLE at checkout and you will save 20% on your first order. And if it is not your first order, you will get double reward points. So that is 10% cash back. And if you don't absolutely love way plus just let us know and we will give you a full refund on the spot. No form, no return is even necessary.

Starting point is 00:03:33 You really can't lose. So go to buy legion.com slash way. Now use the coupon code muscle at checkout to save 20% or get double reward points and then try Weight Plus risk-free and see what you think. Okie dokie, Edgar M. asks, what are your thoughts on drinking alcohol when on a diet to lose weight? Well, that is totally fine, but you do have to count the calories. And therefore, I would say that you are probably going to do best if you limit yourself to no more than a serving or two of alcohol per day. And most people I've worked with over the years and heard from over the years, they do best if they limit their drinking also to just one or two days per week. So a couple of servings of alcohol one or two days per week is not going to cause any problems. Adam Cadmon asks, what is the healthy choice of sauce for chicken or other foods? I like mayo,

Starting point is 00:04:33 but it is high in fat. Well, I personally like mustards, barbecue sauces, hot sauces, but you can also find really good high protein yogurt based sauces and dips on many recipe websites out there. And so if you like creamy stuff, that is a fitness friendly solution. Moving on to Alessio Bell 897. They ask, for how long should I cut? Well, you should cut for as long as you want to really for as long as you need to, to reach your goal. The major downsides of long-term dieting mostly apply to people who are getting very lean. So bodybuilders and natural bodybuilders in particular,

Starting point is 00:05:18 but if somebody starts their fitness journey, very overweight and has to lose, let's say, 50 plus pounds of fat to get to a healthy athletic body composition, that's going to take some time. And there is nothing wrong with that. They can cut consistently for that whole period. Let's say it takes about a year for them to lose the 50 pounds. Well, let's actually be generous because they can lose it faster. When you have a lot of fat to lose in the beginning, you can be more aggressive with your cutting. You can lose up to two-ish pounds of fat per week and feel totally fine and have no negative consequences. Whereas if you are lean, trying to get very lean, and you try to be that aggressive, you are going to feel really bad really fast. So let's say it takes the person about half of a year. Let's say it takes them

Starting point is 00:06:09 about 30 weeks to lose the 50 pounds. They can cut for 30 weeks. Now they may want to take some diet breaks now and then. And I do recommend at least considering that every maybe six to eight weeks of dieting. It can be nice to just raise your calories to maintenance for five or seven days, maybe even 10 days, and just give your body a break and give your mind and your nerves, so to speak, a break, and then just get back to your cut after the week or so of maintenance calories. And so you can do that every couple of months and you can do it more frequently if you want to. But if you do it too frequently, of course, now you are just making your cut take longer. So again, in having worked with many people over the years and heard from

Starting point is 00:06:55 many people throughout their entire transformation process over the years, every six to eight weeks or so seems to be a nice sweet spot for just kind of taking the edge off of cutting and making it more enjoyable on the whole. a bottle of Phoenix. So Phoenix is one of my fat loss products, one of Legion's fat loss products. We have two, we have Phoenix, which helps increase metabolic rate and reduce hunger and reduce cravings. And then we have one called Forge, which has yohimbine, which accelerates fat burning, but has to be used in a fasted state and it's best used with exercise. So you really have to be okay with doing some fasted exercise to benefit from yohimbine, at least to benefit in terms of fat loss. Otherwise, it's just a stimulant. So it can help you have a little bit more energy in your workouts. But if you are in a fed state, if your insulin levels are elevated because you have recently eaten food, your him bean will not help you lose fat faster. So anyway, the question here

Starting point is 00:08:11 is, do you have to pause for a certain amount of time after finishing a bottle of Phoenix? No, you don't. But I wouldn't bother taking Phoenix or any fat loss supplement unless you are cutting because it just doesn't make sense to take them when you are lean gaining in particular because then you just have to eat more food and i don't think it's worth the money when you are maintaining because it's not going to make much of a difference when you're maintaining and you are not trying to reach a body composition goal like you are with cutting. So then you can go back to maintaining.

Starting point is 00:08:47 Of course, you don't need fat loss supplements at all, and you don't have to take them when you are cutting. But if you take the right ones, if you take good fat loss supplements, you will reach your body composition goal at least a little bit faster. And for some people, that is worth it. So they can stop cutting so they can just start eating more food. But then once you are eating more food, I don't see any reason to take a fat loss supplement. Okay. C Andre asks how I overcame acne in my 15s to 20s. Well, I had

Starting point is 00:09:20 pretty shitty skin from maybe about 15 or 16 to 18 or 19. And I wish I would have at least looked into the drugs. I haven't actually looked into them even today. I haven't looked into them at all because now my skin is not breaking out anymore. So I'm not sure if the drugs are worth considering, but I wish that I would have at least looked into them. It just didn't occur to me. And my mom didn't want to suggest them, I guess, because she thought they were bad. And the acne that I had, it was quite the millstone around the neck, as they say. It was something that I was acutely aware of whenever I was around people. I really did not like it. And now I do have some acne scarring that is

Starting point is 00:10:12 probably fixable with laser treatments. Maybe it's not that bad, but I don't really care enough to look into it. I guess if I could just snap my fingers and make the scarring go away, I would. I care enough to do that, but that's about it at the moment. Maybe in the future, I'll care a little bit more and look into what treatment options there are, because I've heard that there are some laser treatments that actually work fairly well and that aren't too extreme and that don't carry risks of major problems, like grotesque outcomes that look way worse. Okay. David Richardson, he asks if your HRV score strictly says rest, but you have slept and feel, okay, would you train? Yes, absolutely. I would. HRV, which is heart rate variability,

Starting point is 00:11:02 in case you're not familiar with that acronym. And that is basically what it sounds like. It is referring to the variation of the amount of time in between heartbeats. And the more stressed the body is, the less variability there is in the timing in between the heartbeats. And so if you use an activity tracker, it almost certainly tracks HRV and some of them extrapolate from HRV into just general recovery and readiness for training or doing vigorous physical activities. And I think the science behind HRV is interesting, and there certainly is an association between heart rate variability and recovery and readiness and just stress levels. But I think HRV is most useful when it is viewed as a trend rather than just a single data point, similar to how you should treat your

Starting point is 00:12:02 body weight. Yes, you can weigh yourself every day, but don't pay attention to the daily fluctuations. Pay attention to how that average daily weight changes. So average it out every few days, three, four, five, six, seven, doesn't really matter so long as you are consistent. And then watch how that average changes over time. similar with HRV. So if you see that your HRV is consistently low or if it is down trending, then yeah, you might be pushing a little bit too hard. You might be overreaching in the gym or it might be a combination of what you are doing in the gym, what you're doing outside of the gym, other things that are happening in your life that are causing stress, how you are sleeping. But keep in mind that one bad HRV reading doesn't necessarily mean anything. I have had fantastic workouts on low HRV days, and I've had low HRV readings despite great training and sleep. I've had high HRV scores despite terrible sleep. And so it's just not a great index of anything when viewed as a single data point. All right. Duke Duke 07 says always hungry

Starting point is 00:13:14 always. Well, I could share some kind of appetite control 101 tips here. I could say eat more protein, eat more vegetables, drink more water, eat soups with lots of vegetables, play around with your meal timing and your meal sizing. But it might be helpful for you, maybe speaking to this person, to first identify when you're dealing with true hunger versus the desire to eat. And an easy way to tell is the next time you have the desire to eat and you want to know if this is true physiological hunger or if it is more psychological in nature, imagine there were a bowl of boiled beans in front of you. Would you eat the beans? Well, if you would, then yeah, that is probably physiological hunger. But if you would not eat the beans,

Starting point is 00:14:03 that is probably just the desire to eat food. And if that is often the case, if you would not eat the beans, that is probably just the desire to eat food. And if that is often the case, if you are often just dealing with the desire to eat food, then you might want to reflect on what is causing that. Is it boredom? Is it stress? Is it simply the desire to have something tasty in your mouth. Those are three of the most common reasons people have a desire to eat that is not physiological in nature. And so if you can find what your trigger is, so to speak, then you can work to address that. Eli Hall 05 asks, is there a certain rep range or volume to use while cutting? My general recommendations when cutting are to keep the weights heavy. So at least let's say 70% of one rep max or heavier. So that would be no more than maybe about 12 reps per set. And depending on how you are training,

Starting point is 00:15:00 you can go as heavy as you normally go. When you are not cutting. You could go all the way up to 90, 95% of one rep max, like you do in my Beyond the Bigger, Leaner, Stronger program, for example. I would also recommend that you continue training close to muscular failure in your working sets. You don't have to go to muscular failure. You can now and then on isolation exercises if you want to. I would not recommend going to muscular failure on big compound lifts, squats, deadlifts, even bench presses and overhead presses because the risk of injury goes up markedly when the weights are heavy on those exercises and you're pushing yourself right up to failure and it's just not necessary for gaining muscle and strength.

Starting point is 00:15:43 Whatever slight benefit there might be, and there might be none actually, if you just train regularly close to failure, but let's say there is a slight benefit to including some absolute failure training on those lifts. I don't think that that benefit would outweigh the risks. So train close to failure and continue doing that when you are cutting. And if you are an experienced weightlifter, I would not be afraid to drop to, let's say anywhere between nine to maybe 12 hard sets per major muscle group per week. That is more than enough volume to maintain your muscle and your strength. You could maintain your muscle on probably half of that really, and maintain most, if not all of your strength as

Starting point is 00:16:31 well. So feel free to do that if you want to work out a lot less. However, what I've found working with many people is they like their workouts. They like their routine. They don't want to drop to, let's say, just three workouts per week if they are used to five, or they don't want to go from five 60-minute workouts to five 30-minute workouts. And so again, nine to 12 hard sets per major muscle group per week is a sweet spot, it seems, that allows you to have good workouts, workouts probably similar to what you are used to doing if you are an experienced weightlifter, but not so much that it causes problems with recovery.

Starting point is 00:17:13 Gib Maka asks, deadlifts, back or leg volume? Indirect volume for the other muscle groups, I guess? A deadlift is direct volume for most of your back and your hamstrings. And it's probably fair to include your quads as well. And I would say it's indirect volume for your biceps and your lats. John Chalet asks, if there are weeks I can add an extra day at the gym, should I dedicate it to core workouts? Well, you could if you really like training your core, but remember, you don't have to do any core exercises, quote unquote, like ab exercises to have a great core if you are regularly squatting,

Starting point is 00:18:00 deadlifting, bench pressing, overhead pressing, because those exercises are very effective core exercises, especially the squatting and the deadlifting and the overhead pressing. And if you just remain patient, you will build good abs. Like if your abs are currently a little bit underdeveloped and you can see that when you get your body fat percentage low, you will grow those muscles just with those big compound lifts. Now, if you wanted to grow them a bit faster, I suppose you could include some ab exercises as well in your routine, some core exercises, particularly for the rectus abdominis, the quote-unquote ab muscles that are on the front of our body that most people think of as abs. But if you currently have, let's say a bit of fat to lose, so you're not sure what your abdominal

Starting point is 00:18:53 development really looks like, you don't necessarily have to do any ab or core exercises aside from just big, heavy compound lifts. And you might find that when you do get your body fat percentage low enough to see your abs. So if you're a guy and you get down to 10%, you're going to see all of your abs. 15% is where you start to see the top abs. And what you might find is that by the time you get there, you are very happy with your core development and you don't need to augment it at all. Like I haven't done a quote unquote core exercise in, I don't know, two years now because I do enough heavy compound weightlifting to make it unnecessary. And I'm just trying to maintain my current core development. I actually don't want bigger abs. Some guys really, they like

Starting point is 00:19:46 that look where you have big blocky abs and I like where I'm at. I actually don't want bigger blockier abs than I already have. And so coming back to this question, if you could add an extra day at the gym, if it were me, what I would do is probably a full body kind of pump session. So if I were to add something in addition to what I'm already doing, so I'm lifting weights five days per week, pretty, pretty intense workouts, you know, 60, 70 minute workouts, heavy weights, difficult exercises. And I don't do a sixth day because it would just cut into my recovery. It would be too much. But if that were not the case and I wanted to add a sixth day to my program, I would just do like a full body pump session because they feel great and they don't put large additional demands on your body.

Starting point is 00:20:37 So I'm talking about lighter weights. So maybe 70% of one rep max for like sets of eight to 10. So I'm ending those sets with several reps still in the tank. And I'm doing probably one exercise for my lower body exercise doesn't have to be a squat i suppose and then some sort of pulling exercise wouldn't be a deadlift but a pull of some kind a horizontal or vertical depending on my other programming and then a horizontal press like a chest focused press and probably a vertical press as well maybe I would replace the vertical press with some arms if I just wanted to. Okay. John Salty asks, rest timing when deloading still three to four minutes in between sets? No, when I am deloading, I do about two minutes of rest on the big compounds and about one minute, maybe one and a half minutes on the accessories, just because it's a deload and we're not trying to maximize performance. We're just trying to get some blood into the muscles and keep acquainted

Starting point is 00:21:52 with the heavier weights. So those workouts are pretty fast. Kamyar Shadman asks, why should hamstrings get hurt after doing deadlifts? It's my form or I have weak hamstrings. Well, that's actually a good sign. If your hamstrings are getting sore when you deadlift, it signals that you are probably using your hamstrings correctly in the lift as opposed to turning it into a squat-like movement or a good morning-like movement. Remember, the deadlift, at least when it's done correctly, it heavily involves

Starting point is 00:22:25 basically all of the muscles on the backside of your body, including your hamstrings. Luke M 81 asks if 15 ounces of red meat a day is bad for you. Um, yeah, I wouldn't recommend that because if you do that, it is going to be basically impossible to keep your saturated fat intake in the range of say five to 10% of daily calories, which is smart for keeping your heart healthy. M. Bistriakov asks tips on combining strength training and marathon preparation. Well, once your weekly hours of running starts to exceed your weekly hours of weightlifting, you are going to have to start taking time from your weightlifting to give to your running. I would not recommend trying to maintain five plus hours of heavy weightlifting per week, plus say 10 plus hours of running. It will burn you out. Many people, what they do is they go down to just a couple full body weightlifting sessions per week, just to maintain

Starting point is 00:23:23 muscle and strength when their running volume is at its peak in their training periods. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, 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

Starting point is 00:24:15 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: Heart Rate Variability Scores, Alcohol During a Diet, Ab Training, and More

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