Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Training Volume and Rep Ranges on a Cut, Brown Vs. White Fat, Amino Acids For Skin, & More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, hello, I'm Mike Matthews and this is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode, which is the 53rd installment of my Q&A series. And what I do in these episodes is I answer questions that people ask me over on Instagram every other week. Currently, I put up a story on Instagram. I get a bunch of questions. I go through them and find ones that are topical

Starting point is 00:00:23 or interesting to me or ones that I just haven't answered a million times already. And then I answer them briefly on Instagram and then bring everything over here to the podcast and answer those questions in more depth and detail. And so if you want to ask me questions, follow me on Instagram at Musclefly Fitness and look for that story that I put up every couple of weeks and ask away. Alrighty, so in today's episode, I'm going to be answering questions like how much should you reduce your training volume when cutting to reduce stress on your body, but also maintain muscle and strength? What is the best way to protect your joints when you're weightlifting? My thoughts on the hybrid athlete trend on combining endurance

Starting point is 00:01:06 exercise and strength training. I also answer a question on powdered fruits and vegetables versus daily multivitamins, which are better and why. The minimum amount of training required to gain muscle. Answer a question on brown fat versus white fat and more. Down fat versus white fat and more. Alessio Bell 897 asks, reduced 25% weekly volume number of sets since getting deeper into the cut phase. Is that okay? Yes, that is a good way to lower

Starting point is 00:01:40 the amount of training induced stress that you're putting on your body. And that can help quite a bit, especially if you've been cutting for some time and you are feeling it more and more. You're just feeling more run down. Your energy levels are worse. Your workouts have gotten worse. Your sleep is probably a bit worse. And you are looking for ways to continue to maintain a deficit, to continue losing fat without continuing to feel worse and worse. Reducing training volume is one of the most effective ways to do that.

Starting point is 00:02:13 And you can reduce it quite a bit and still maintain all of your muscle, maintain most of your strength, any of the strength that you do lose, you can quickly regain back. And just to put it in perspective, research shows that it probably doesn't take any more than three to max six hard sets per week for any individual muscle group to maintain what you have. Now, that doesn't mean you have to reduce your volume down to the bare minimum unless you want to, unless you have a good reason to. But just keep that in mind. If you are going from, say, training five days per week, let's say strength training five days per week, let's say that's your normal schedule. You're cutting, you're doing five days

Starting point is 00:02:53 of strength training per week. You're doing some cardio on top of it. It's working well. But after a couple of months, you're not feeling so great anymore. And you are afraid to go to maybe four days per week or even three days per week because you are concerned that you're going to lose muscle. If you go from, let's say, five days per week to three days per week, you're cutting your volume almost in half your weekly volume unless you try to make those three workouts to three hour workouts, which I would not recommend. Again, the point here is to reduce volume. But many people don't want to do that because they're concerned that they're going to lose muscle or they're going to lose even more muscle if they train, let's say, three days per week versus five days per week when cutting. And that is simply not the case. In fact, you could maintain all of the muscle that you have and a lot of the strength that you have more or less indefinitely on just one workout per week, one well-designed. It's going to be a bit longer. It probably is going to be 90 minutes, maybe two hours, depending on

Starting point is 00:03:51 your circumstances, but just one full body workout per week, well-designed. It's going to have you doing mostly compound exercises. So you can rack up a lot of volume for a lot of muscle groups in a shorter period of time. But one workout per week is enough to maintain more or less all the muscle and strength that you have. And two workouts per week, it could be two full body or it could be an upper body and a lower body workout is more than enough to maintain muscle and strength. And that applies to cutting as well. Now, a common mistake that people make when cutting is reducing training loads because they think that that is going to be more effective for losing fat or gaining muscle

Starting point is 00:04:33 definition just for cutting. Many people think that heavier weights, so let's say anything up to maybe eight reps per set, that's for gaining muscle and strength. That's for bulking. And then anything over, say, 10 reps per set is better. That's more suitable or appropriate for cutting. And that's simply not true. In fact, you are going to have a better time in your cut maintaining those heavier loads. Keep doing those fours, fives, sixes, eights. It's okay to do some tens and twelves as well. But generally speaking, when you're cutting, you want to keep lifting heavy weights. You want to keep pushing for progress. You may or may not be able to make progress, but that should be your mindset. You're pushing hard in your training. You are trying to beat your last workout.

Starting point is 00:05:21 You're on the bench press with however much weight. And in your last workout, you got six reps with that weight with maybe one good rep left. You're trying to beat that now. You're trying to get seven reps with one good rep left. Or you're trying to get six with two good reps left. And the reason it's important to keep using those heavier loads that you normally use and keep pushing in your sets close to failure and keep pushing for progress is that is how you're going to best maintain muscle and strength, especially if you are an experienced weightlifter. And especially if you are an experienced

Starting point is 00:05:55 weightlifter who is cutting from, let's say, lean to very lean, which is when you are actually at risk of losing muscle. If you're going from, let's say, overweight to just fit lean, it's going to be hard to lose muscle. You really have to mess it up. But if you're going from lean to very lean, you don't have much room for error. You have to train hard. You have to make sure that you are consistent with your calories, that you're not eating too little too consistently. You have to be consistent with your protein. You have to make sure you're getting enough sleep and so forth. Now, some people will say that higher rep ranges are better suited to cutting than lower rep ranges.

Starting point is 00:06:33 Some people will say you should be doing a lot more 10s and 12s and 15s and even 20s when you're cutting compared to 4s and 6s and 8s. And sometimes they'll say because that's better for losing fat, because it burns more calories if you're doing higher rep workouts, or they'll talk about other physiological mechanisms that purportedly will produce more fat loss. And some of these claims are not entirely wrong. Factually, you will burn more calories doing, let's say, a workout of 15 sets of 15 reps per set, taking each set close to failure compared to six or eight reps per set. However, what you need to know is it's not going to be that much better. You're going to burn maybe an extra 50, max an extra 100 calories in that workout. And if you're only doing a few of those workouts per week, what are we talking about now? We're talking about an extra 300 calories burned per week,

Starting point is 00:07:29 or if we want to be really generous, I don't know, 500 calories, an extra 500 calories burned per week. Now let's remember that it requires about a 4,000 calorie deficit to produce one pound of fat loss. So you have to underfeed yourself to the tune of about four thousand calories to lose just one pound of fat. And so then an extra three to five hundred calories per week is not going to make much of a difference one way or another. However, there is a counter argument, and that is that, well, yes, if you look at just that in a vacuum, you can say that it won't make that much of a well, yes, if you look at just that in a vacuum, you can say that it won't make that much of a difference. But what if you're doing a few things that are adding an extra three to five hundred calories burned per week? Well, then cumulatively they can add up

Starting point is 00:08:16 to significant improvements in fat loss. And yes, that's true. However, there aren't many other things that you can do. You can eat less or you can move more and you can add a couple of supplements that can further increase energy expenditure, further increase fat burning, decrease appetite. For example, yohimbine is a great one and you can find that in one of my supplements called Forge. If you want to check it out, you can go over to bilegion.com slash Forge. That's B-U-I-L-E-G-I-O-Nion.com slash forge. And there are a few others in a separate fat loss supplement of mine called Phoenix bylegion.com slash Phoenix. And you can learn about those there. You can read about each ingredient in Phoenix and how a few of them will

Starting point is 00:08:57 help you burn more calories. And so then you can say, all right, well, if you add up the effects of a few of these little things, these little modifications that you can make to your regimen, now you're burning an extra 800 calories per week. And that is fairly significant, especially if you're going to be cutting for several months, you might be able to finish your cut a month early because of that. And yes, that's true. I agree with that. However, coming back to this training modification point, we also have to consider what it's like to do a lot of high rep training when you're cutting. It sucks. I mean, it sucks when you're lean bulking and when you're cutting, especially when you are deeper into a cut and your energy levels are lower and, and, and it can be downright grueling

Starting point is 00:09:42 to do sets of 10 to 12 reps because remember, you have to push close to muscular failure. You can't do a set of 10 on any exercise and have six, five, six good reps still in the tank and call that an effective training set. That's a warmup set. No, you have to train. You have to push closer to failure. You don't have to go to absolute failure, but you shouldn't have more than probably two good reps still in the tank, maximum three. And so now think about that in the context of a lower body workout, for example, doing sets of 10, 12, 15 reps per set, close to muscular failure on each of your lower body exercises. We're going to start with some sort of squat. Let's start there. And then we're going to move over to the leg press. And then we're going to, let's say, isolate our hamstrings. We're going to do a lying leg curl or a seated leg curl or a Nordic curl or something. That is a hard workout.

Starting point is 00:10:35 And when you're cutting and you've been cutting for some time, that's a very, very hard workout. So hard that you might end up skipping it sometimes or cutting it short sometimes or not giving enough effort in those sets. So doing 10 reps per set, let's say, or 12 or whatever for each of the exercises, but not pushing close to failure, doing a lot of almost warm up sets, which, again, is not an effective way to train. And so that's one of the reasons why I recommend maintaining those heavier loads when you're cutting. Your workouts will be more enjoyable. It is more enjoyable to do a set of five or six reps on the squat when you're cutting than it is to do 10 or 12 reps, again, so long as you're pushing close to failure. Okay, so that was a lot of rambling for the first answer. I hope you found that helpful. I do want to mention one other thing,

Starting point is 00:11:25 a common mistake that people make when cutting. Okay, so they've been cutting for some time, they're starting to feel the effects of it, and they want to reduce the training stress that they're putting on their body. And instead of reducing volume, instead of reducing the number of hard sets that they're doing per major muscle group,

Starting point is 00:11:43 really, you could just look at it like for their whole body, instead of reducing that, and particularly the hard sets that they're doing per major muscle group, really, you could just look at it like for their whole body instead of reducing that and particularly the hard sets that they're doing for the bigger muscle groups, reducing the number of hard sets that you do for your biceps or your calves does not have the same systemic effect as reducing the number of hard sets that you do for your legs or your back, for example. So instead of doing that, they increase the reps per set. They figure that, okay, so doing those fours and sixes and eights is putting a lot of stress on my body. I can feel it in my joints more, for example. So if I lighten the load, but still maintain training intensity. So now I go up to doing sets of 10 or 12 or 15 and I still push close to muscular failure.

Starting point is 00:12:28 I can maintain my training schedule and reduce the amount of stress that I'm putting on my body. That's the line of thinking at least, but it's not correct because the stress primarily is coming from the number of hard sets that you're doing. It's not coming primarily from the number of hard sets that you're doing. It's not coming primarily from

Starting point is 00:12:46 the amount of weight that you are lifting in those sets. In fact, higher rep sets taken close to muscular failure put more stress on the body. If we're talking about systemic stress, then lower rep sets. And that's paradoxical. It sounds paradoxical because many people assume that heavier weights mean more stress on the body. Well, heavier weights put more stress on your joints, but lighter weights for more reps, again, pushing close to muscular failure, that puts more stress on your nervous system and on other aspects of your physiology aside from your joints. So then what can happen is someone's cutting and they know that this point there's just too much stress. The calorie deficit puts stress on them. The training puts stress on them. There are life stresses and so forth. And so they think that if they just lighten the loads in the gym, but still maintain that training intensity, they can reduce stress enough to better recover from their training

Starting point is 00:13:51 and to just feel better. And then it gets worse and they don't know why. Well, the reason why is they're putting more stress on their body now, not less. The most effective way to reduce training stress is to reduce volume, to reduce the number of hard sets that you're doing. Okay, Anna Is asks, what's the best way to protect joints while weightlifting? I think it's avoiding the go heavy or, go lighter and have a great workout and then go home. And anyone who disagrees with that can talk to me in 20 years and let's see how well your knees are kneeing and your shoulders are shouldering and so forth. Big Mike 64 asks, flat foot shoes, zero, vivo? I like zero's training

Starting point is 00:14:53 shoes. And that's zero with an X, by the way. I just got a new pair of HFS2, they call them. And I think they're great. And I'm not getting paid to say that. I'm not sponsored by Xero. I just like their shoes. I used, I believe they call them Speed Force. I think there's Force in the name. I used a pair of those for years and I would use them for lifting. I would use them for cardio and I still actually use them for cardio. And you can see that they've been used, but considering how much they've been used, I would say they are wearing their years well. Franz Meyer 47 asks, thoughts on the hybrid athlete trend, endurance running stacked with weight training? Well, if you're trying to maximize your progress with the weights, so that would be gaining muscle, gaining strength. You can do cardio, you can run, but doing a lot of cardio and particularly doing a lot of running. So multiple hours of running per week, let's say anywhere from 50 to 10 plus hours per week, that is going to get in the

Starting point is 00:16:06 way. Research shows that cardio per se is not a problem, but high impact cardio like running in particular is a problem. It does produce an interference effect if you do too much of it. And again, too much cardio is much easier to achieve with higher impact forms of cardio. If you were bicycling, for example, you almost certainly could do, let's say, eight to 10 or 15 hours of cycling per week in addition to your weightlifting. And so long as you know what you're doing with your nutrition, you're eating enough calories, you're eating enough protein, you're eating enough nutritious foods and so forth, you almost certainly will not impair any muscle and strength gains. Now, eventually you will. If you're doing 30 hours of cycling per week, yes, that is going to get in the

Starting point is 00:16:52 way of muscle and strength gains. But as far as that interference effect goes, there is no question that high volume running produces it reliably. That said, if you really like running, then you should do it. If you like high volume running and that matters more to you than maximizing muscle and strength gain, then you should do it. And then you can simply keep an eye on your muscle and strength gain and see how your body is responding. And if you're okay with your progress with the weights, then keep doing what you're doing. And if you're not okay, let's say you're really just not progressing with the weights and you suspect that it is due to a lot of running, then maybe you want to cut back on the running and see if that allows you to achieve an acceptable rate of progress with your strength training. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to

Starting point is 00:17:42 help me do more of it, please do check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements. And we're on top because every ingredient and every dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation of ours is 100% transparent, no proprietary blends, for example, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. We don't use any artificial chemicals whatsoever, no artificial sweeteners, no artificial flavoring, and no artificial food dyes. What's more, Legion is also holding its biggest and bestest sale of the year right now. Actually, our biggest and bestest sale ever over at Buylegion.com. That's B-U-Y Legion.com.

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Starting point is 00:19:17 those are up to 40% off. We have custom flexible dieting meal plans that our team builds specifically for you so you can achieve your body composition goals, eating the foods that you like. Those are 50% off. We have merchandise. We have shirts and hats and other things, 50% off and more. So if any of that has tickled your neurons, head over to buylegion.com, that's B-U-I-L-E-G-I-O-N.com and save big. Hadad Suhail asks, I need at least five to six minutes of rest squatting near failure in the

Starting point is 00:19:56 six to eight rep range. Is this normal? No, that's not normal, but it is possible. However, I would ask what makes you think you need that much time? Because if you can rest, let's say, three to four minutes and maintain your performance, maybe those sets feel a little bit harder than if you rest five or six minutes, but you can still perform, then you don't need the five or six minutes of rest. Now, if you rest, let's say, three and a half minutes and you can't maintain your performance, let's say you miss your rep range, whereas you do not miss your rep range if you rest five or six minutes and you're not psyching yourself out, you're not already preemptively preparing yourself to underperform

Starting point is 00:20:42 by telling yourself that three and a half minutes of rest is definitely not enough. You are definitely going to miss your rep range. And then you do up self-fulfilling prophecy. As long as you're not doing that, you're not noceboing yourself. You may just need more rest in between sets to maintain your performance. That said, if that is the case, I would then ask about your cardiovascular fitness. If you are not doing any cardio and if you don't even have a good base of cardiovascular fitness, I would recommend if I were coaching you, I would look at how we can start building that up. Because if we can improve that, then I can all but guarantee you the amount of time that you need to regain your performance

Starting point is 00:21:24 capacity in between even your hardest sets in your strength training workouts will go down. And that, by the way, is one of a number of reasons that the ideal fitness regimen is not just strength training. That's the most important component, but it's strength training and cardio. And that cardio can improve your results in your strength training and reducing the amount of time that you need to rest in between sets or allowing you to perform even better given the rest time that you have is one of the ways that it can do that. There are a couple of other ways too related to the physiology of muscle growth. And it doesn't

Starting point is 00:22:00 take that much cardio to produce those benefits, to produce them noticeably, just one to two hours per week of moderate intensity where you're sweating, you're huffing and puffing, but you are not doing all out high intensity sprinting, for instance, you're giving it maybe a five or six out of 10 effort, whereas the all out sprint is the nine or 10 out of 10. Now doing some of that in addition to your moderate intensity is the absolute best you can do, but you can get the vast majority of the benefits that cardio has to offer. Let's say 80% will come from just doing enough moderate intensity work. Hannah Tobin asks, how do fruit slash vegetable powders compare with a daily multivitamin? Well, I much prefer a well-formulated multivitamin

Starting point is 00:22:46 because you can't replace actual fruit and vegetable intake with powdered fruits and vegetables. That doesn't work because you have fiber and other things in fruits and vegetables that you lose when they get turned into powdered fruits and vegetables. So please don't buy any of these greens supplements that claim to have so many servings of fruits and vegetables. So please don't buy any of these greens supplements that claim to have so many servings of fruits and vegetables in every scoop and that imply even that you can just take the greens supplement instead of eating the fruits and vegetables. You need to eat your fruits and vegetables. Now, coming back to the question, that's one reason why I like a well-formulated multivitamin compared to a fruit slash vegetable powder, normally just called a greens supplement. But another reason why I prefer

Starting point is 00:23:32 the well-formulated multivitamin is that is going to have precise amounts of key nutrients if it is well-designed, whereas a greens supplement can vary widely in its nutritional profile because the nutritional profile of the ingredients can vary widely. its nutritional profile because the nutritional profile of the ingredients can vary widely. Even the same ingredients from the same suppliers, they can vary quite a bit batch to batch. And by the way, that's also why it's often important to use standardized ingredients, ingredients that have been produced in such a way to ensure that they have at least a certain amount of key molecules in them, that they are at least 3% or 5% the intended molecule by weight, which then allows you to make sure that

Starting point is 00:24:13 you are providing enough of that key molecule to be effective. The clinically effective dose, in the case of many ingredients, is not just the ingredient, it is the specific molecule or molecules that you are trying to obtain from that ingredient. Okay, Igonzoi asks, what rep range and percentage should I work in while in a deficit to not lose strength? All right, I'll keep this answer short because I've basically already addressed it earlier. But just to summarize the approach that I've had a lot of success with myself, and I've now seen it work in tens of thousands of people over the years is this. For men, four to six reps per set with one or two good reps left in each set on the big compound exercises. Six to eight reps per set.

Starting point is 00:24:57 Again, close to failure. Maybe one or two good reps left in each set on everything else. In women, you can do that if you already have a base of strength, if you have at least probably, let's say six, maybe even 12 months of strength training, of good strength training behind you, that approach can work fine. If you are new to strength training though, as a woman, I would recommend lighter weights on the big compound exercises. So six to eight reps per set or even eight to 10 reps per set. Again, pushing close to failure.

Starting point is 00:25:28 So high training intensity, but just slightly lighter loads. And you could apply the rep range modification of eight to 10 to everything else, to isolation exercises as well, if you'd like. And the reason for that is only that when women start strength training, unless they're just naturally quite strong, they find four to six reps per set intimidating. Hey, I'm just speaking from experience here and impractical. And it's understandable. I mean, imagine you are new to strength training and you're told to go on the bench press and do a set of four reps. And you can press the bar for maybe four reps. And that fourth rep is a grinder.

Starting point is 00:26:11 You had to give it everything that you've got. And so that means you need a spotter for every set. Your arms are probably also going to be shaking like jackhammers in every set, which is kind of uncomfortable and even a little bit unsettling if you're new to strength training. And then we have the issue of learning how to do the exercise properly. And if you are starting out at that level of training intensity, you are not going to be able to learn proper form nearly as effectively as if you were to lighten the load, do six to eight reps per set, maybe even eight to 10 reps per set close to failure, but not up to the point of failure, not zero good reps left

Starting point is 00:26:54 training intensity. So anyway, my point is over the last decade or so, I've seen that men generally can jump right into four to six reps per set on the big compound, six to eight on the isolation exercises, just follow exactly what's in bigger, leaner, stronger, and do quite well. Whereas I've seen women do better. They can do well with that approach, but I've just seen they generally do better. They generally enjoy the process more as well by following the program in my book for women, my strength training book for women, thinnerinner Leaner Stronger, which has them start with eight to 10 reps per set and work their way into heavier weights as they get stronger. Okay, It's Mashaw asks, do you think three sets of six reps is enough for muscle growth? I don't have strong evidence to support this, but I do suspect that there is a minimum training threshold, so to speak,

Starting point is 00:27:46 for an individual muscle group in an individual training session. I mean, you have to do a minimum amount of work to produce the adaptations that result in muscle growth. And I do think that's probably around three hard sets for an individual muscle group in an individual training session. And so what that means then is I would bet a fair amount of money that one set per day for three days, let's just say three days in a row, that that's going to be less effective than three sets followed by two days of rest, and especially in experienced weightlifters. James Jordan Real Estate asks, I've been hearing about brown fat and white fat. What is that all about? Well, brown fat is a type of fat in your body. It helps your body regulate temperature

Starting point is 00:28:40 in cold in particular. So the brown fat will activate before you start to shiver and that can burn calories. And white fat is just the typical adipose tissue that we think about when we hear the term body fat. So that white fat is not involved in regulating body temperature. It cannot increase caloric expenditure. And so some people will claim that you can turn white fat into brown fat and you can do various things usually related to cold exposure to activate your brown fat above and beyond normal levels of activation. And so much so that you can create a calorie deficit just with that alone. You don't have to change much with your diet or with your exercise regimen. And there's some truth in these

Starting point is 00:29:34 things. The white fat, brown fat distinction is interesting. The physiology is interesting, but practically speaking, it has no relevance to any of us unless you're willing to do a lot of cold exposure. And I'm not talking about a cold plunge. I'm not talking about a cold shower. I mean, daily winter swimming for extended amounts of time, not for five minutes, but maybe 30 minutes or more every day. If you're willing to do that, then you can enjoy some of the benefits that I mentioned, at least to some degree, some additional calorie burning, maybe some conversion of white fat into brown fat. But you can also accomplish those things, at least to some degree, by simply exercising. Now, as for special types of supplements, special modifications

Starting point is 00:30:28 to your diet or your training, none of those things are going to make any difference in terms of brown fat versus white fat. So go ahead and unfollow anyone who's trying to sell you on their supplement or their special diet program or training program that will purportedly optimize your body's fat stores. It will increase brown fat stores, which will then make it easier to get and stay lean and so forth. All that is nonsense. Carleen Rag asks, do you find these amino acids beneficial for youthful skin? Arginine, asks, do you find these amino acids beneficial for youthful skin? Arginine, lysine, and proline? Well, yes, in that those are important for collagen synthesis and wound healing, but there is not good evidence that supplementing with them or otherwise increasing your intake of them, maybe making

Starting point is 00:31:20 special dietary modifications, there's no evidence that doing those things are going to enhance skin quality if you are already eating enough protein, because if you are eating enough protein, if you are following a standard high protein diet, you are getting plenty of them. Now, if you're trying to have more youthful skin, a better choice would be glycine and supplementing with glycine, which has some evidence of efficacy. If you want to try it out, just buy some glycine in bulk. It's cheap. It also tastes good for what it's worth. It's sweet. And take two to three grams per day. You can also take it before bed, 30 to 45 minutes before bed, because research also shows that it can improve sleep

Starting point is 00:32:00 quality. Luke M81 asks, is the ab coaster an effective exercise? Yes, it is, but you will get the same effect from leg raises, which are also a great core exercise. The ab roller too is I think a highly underrated exercise. It was popular for a time and then it kind of just fell out of popularity, but it is a great core exercise, especially when you keep your lower back in a neutral position and you keep your abs feeling tight and tucked into your torso and you don't rush the reps. Those are some key tips to doing the ab roller correctly. Macy Goins asks, is avoiding snacking and just eating nutritious high volume meals really that much better? Yes, for the purpose of managing and maintaining a lean physique, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:32:48 Because snacking inevitably leads to overeating. And it's also often just done out of boredom rather than physical hunger. Now, if we're talking about managing health and just maintaining health, it doesn't matter so long as the snacking doesn't lead to excessive weight gain. Matteo Tatz asks, Do you do abs at the end of your workout or interspersed throughout? You can do it either way, but I would not recommend supersetting ab exercises with big compound exercises because those exercises do heavily engage your core and you want your core muscles to recover in between sets of your squat, of your deadlift, of your overhead press,

Starting point is 00:33:23 maybe not the bench press, but certainly squat, deadlift, overhead press. So if you are going to superset ab exercises just to get through your workouts faster, that's fine, but I would wait until you're doing easier stuff. I have another question here from Matteo Tatz. Is it worth having deadlifts for pull days and Romanian deadlifts for leg day? Yes, I've done that in the past and you can make it work, but you have to see how much your lower back can take, especially if you're also squatting. Personally, I wouldn't do more than four heavy sets of deadlifting per week of any style or any variation. And I would do fewer sets than that if I were doing more than probably three to six sets of squats per week. If I were doing, let's say, nine plus sets of squats per week, I would only do probably one to three sets of deadlifting of any kind per week.

Starting point is 00:34:17 Tribex Fit asks, is it OK to get 50% of daily protein requirements from Whey Plus, which is Legion's Whey. If you want to check it out, go to buylegion.com slash whey. And my answer is, yeah, that's probably fine, but I would not recommend more than that. I would not recommend getting more than 50% of your daily protein from any type of powder because it can upset your stomach. And also whole food protein is a good source of various nutrients. And in some cases, nutrients that are most abundant in whole food sources of protein. And if you are not eating those foods, you actually may not be getting enough of key vitamins and minerals. Next up, I have a question from Upasanapati. When PTs say to incorporate cardio in fat loss phases, do they mean cardio outside steps? Yeah, I mean, they should mean that because walking is great

Starting point is 00:35:13 and walking is exercise, but it does have limited utility for boosting fat loss because it's very low intensity. It doesn't burn that many calories. Like an hour of walking burns a couple hundred calories, whereas 30 minutes of moderate intensity cardio will burn two times that, maybe even three times that. And let's remember that the purpose of adding cardio to a fat loss phase, just in terms of fat loss, is just burning more calories. You're trying to increase your calorie expenditure, ideally by, let's say, 1,000 to 2,000 calories per week, which then will produce an additional pound of fat loss per month, give or take. Last question comes from Vin Anonymous. Is it safe to take L-glutamine every day for gut health? Yes, it's safe, but it's not likely to be beneficial unless

Starting point is 00:36:06 you have a specific gastrointestinal problem that glutamine supplementation is known to address. If you have a healthy gut though, if you don't have any gut issues, glutamine is not worth the money. That's one of the reasons why I don't sell a glutamine product. It's too specialized if we are going to stick to high quality human evidence. I can't make an honest argument why most of my customers should buy it if I were to offer it. And so that doesn't make for great product level economics. I'm generally trying to find products that I can recommend to most or all of my customers. Not that my customers need to buy everything that I offer, but ideally they can consider everything that I offer, that there's something in it for them.

Starting point is 00:36:54 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:37:37 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: Training Volume and Rep Ranges on a Cut, Brown Vs. White Fat, Amino Acids For Skin, & More

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