Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Research Roundup: Activating Your Glutes, Vitamin D Reduces Injury, Blood Flow Restriction For Muscle Growth, and More

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Do glute activation exercises actually work? Is the 5:2 diet worse for muscle retention than a continuous calorie deficit? Does vitamin D supplementation protect you against injury? Can blood flow restriction training help you gain muscle just as effectively as traditional training? I’m going to give you the TLDR for the latest studies on these topics. This podcast is another installment in my Research Roundup series of episodes, where I give you concise and practical takeaways from studies that I think are interesting and that can help us gain muscle and strength faster, lose fat faster, perform better athletically, feel better, live longer, or get and stay healthier. There is a ton of scientific research that gets published every year, and even if you narrow your focus to fitness research, it would still take several lifetimes to unravel the hairball of studies on nutrition, training, supplementation, and related fields. That's why my team and I put a lot of time into reviewing, dissecting, and describing scientific studies in articles, podcasts, and books. In today's episode, I'm tackling studies on whether glute “activation” exercises boost glute growth, how effective the 5:2 diet is for preserving muscle while you diet, whether vitamin D can actually help prevent injury, and how well blood flow restriction training works for building muscle. Press play if you want to learn the answers to those questions. Oh and if you like this type of episode, let me know. Send me an email ([e-mail]) or direct message me on Instagram (@muscleforlifefitness). And if you don’t like it, let me know that too or how you think it could be better. Timestamps 0:00 - Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://buylegion.com/ and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! 4:20 - Do glute activation exercises boost glutei activation when you squat? 8:59 - How effective is the 5:2 diet? 14:44 - What are the benefits of Vitamin D? 19:06 - How can blood flow restriction training help you gain muscle? Mentioned on the Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://buylegion.com/ and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points!

Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another installment in my Research Roundup series of episodes where I give you TLDR versions of studies that I think are interesting and practical research that can help us gain muscle and strength faster, lose fat faster, perform better athletically, feel better, live longer, get and stay healthier, and so on. And in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about glute activation, boosting your glute activation in your lower body training, the 5-2 diet, and why it may not be as effective at preserving muscle when you're cutting as continuous dieting, how vitamin D can reduce the risk of injury and boost performance, and finally, blood flow

restriction training and how it can help you gain muscle as effectively as traditional training, even if you use much lighter weights and you don't train to failure. Before we get to it, did you know that you don't need supplements to build muscle, lose fat, and get healthy? That you don't need any pills, powders, and potions whatsoever if you know what to do in the kitchen and in the gym. You can get into fantastic shape without supplements and stay that way for the rest of your life. But if you have the budget and if you have the inclination, the right supplements can help. And that's why over 300,000 discerning fitness folk have chosen my sports nutrition company, Legion. Well, that's not the only reason why they chose us. They also chose us

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or get double reward points if it is not your first order and try my supplements risk-free. Okay, let's start with glute activation when squatting. Do glute activation exercises boost glute activation when you squat? Well, the study I am going to be discussing is called Activation Training Facilitates Gluteus Maximus Recruitment During Weight-Bearing Strengthening Exercises, and this was published on February 9th, 2022 in Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology. And I'm excited to talk about this because activation exercises are popular right now. Glute activation exercises are certainly popular. Every day I'm in the gym, I see at least a couple of women, usually younger girls, doing glute activation exercises before or sometimes in between bigger exercises that

they're doing different squats and other lower body compound movements. And these activation exercises are basically warmups that are designed to help a particular muscle fire harder or work harder in your workout. And while the benefits of activation exercises are often oversold, a study conducted by scientists at the University of Southern California shows that they might have some merit. So in this study, the researchers hooked 12 men and women up to an EMG and measured how active their glutes were during three sets of three reps of bodyweight squats and split squats. The participants then went home and they performed glute activation training twice per day for a week before returning to the lab to repeat the squat session.

And the glute activation training sessions consisted of three exercises, side-lying clamshells, side-lying hip abduction, so lifting your leg up, and quadruped fire hydrants. Now, the participants, they completed three one-minute isometric holds for each exercise, and they used resistance bands to make the exercises harder as necessary. And the results were, in the second squat session, the participants' glutes were 57% and 53% more active in the squat and split squat, respectively. So after just a week of doing the glute activation exercises, their glutes were working considerably harder in the squat and split squat exercises. Now, it is important to remember,

though, that more muscle activation does not always lead to more muscle growth. But given that these glute activation exercises are low risk, you are not going to get hurt doing them unless you really go out of your way to do them incorrectly, then including them in your workout routine, if you are trying to maximize glute growth, that might yield positive results. And so if you are very focused on growing your glutes, you might want to do what the participants did in this study, daily glute activation exercises. Again, what they did is three one-minute sets. So isometric holds three one-minute isometric holds of side-lying clamshells, side-lying hip abduction, AB duction, so away from the middle of the body, and quadruped fire hydrants. And use resistance

bands if you can hold positions for a minute easily. It should be quite hard at one minute. So you want to find the right amount of resistance for you to allow you to progress in the exercises. The idea isn't to just do them, but to progress in them always. Now, I should mention that one counter argument to doing that is that any possible benefits from glute activation exercises might disappear as you get stronger on exercises like the barbell squat, for example, which forces your glutes to activate regardless of how sleepy they might be. And so it's possible that doing body weight, warmup exercises, or even resistance band warmup exercises for your glutes every day. Oftentimes people do them in the gym, which is okay. Although if you are fatiguing your glutes to any considerable degree before you

squat, that is probably going to impair your performance on the squat. So just something to keep in mind. But regardless, it's possible that as you get stronger, doing those exercises is like trying to blow on a bullet to make it fly faster. Okay, let's move on to the next study, which is on the 5-2 diet. to the next study, which is on the 5-2 diet. And this diet may not be as effective at preserving muscle while cutting as continuous dieting. And the paper I will be referencing is called Intermittent Fasting and Continuous Energy Restriction Result in Similar Changes in Body Composition and Muscle Strength when Combined with a 12-week resistance training program. And this was published on January 27th, 2022 in European Journal of Nutrition. So what is the 5-2 diet? Let's just answer that one quickly.

Well, this is an intermittent fasting diet where you eat normally for five days, and then you severely restrict your calories for two days, normally five or 600 calories or so on those two days. And so that's your week, five days of normal eating and then two days of severe calorie restriction. And diets that involve any type of extended fasting periods have become very popular these days, particularly as a weight loss strategy. But many people who don't want to just lose weight, but who want to lose fat and not muscle, which should be everyone's goal, really improving body composition. Many of those people are reluctant to try diets like the five to diet and other intermittent fasting protocols because it's unclear how good they are for preserving muscle. And so this study, which was conducted by scientists at Swinburne

University of Technology, investigated that concern with the 5-2 diet. And so researchers split 17 untrained 18 to 45-year-old men and women into two groups. You had a continuous diet group that maintained a 20% calorie deficit and consumed 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. And you had a 5-2 diet group who ate at maintenance calories five days per week and then a 70% calorie deficit on the other two days. And the 5-2 group also had to consume 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day on their non-fasting days. And then on their calorie-restricted days, they were to get all of their calories between 12 p.m. and 6 p.m. and eat 1.1 to 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. And this regimen,

this dietary regimen, ensured that all participants averaged a daily calorie deficit of 20% across the week and consumed an average of 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, which is slightly below optimal, but it's not terrible. The participants also performed a strength test at the beginning and the end of the study, which consisted of a three rep max test on the bench press and leg press and a single set of as many reps as possible on each exercise using 70% of their one rep max. In addition, the participants performed three resistance training sessions per week consisting of three sets of 12 to 15 max. In addition, the participants performed three resistance training sessions per week consisting of three sets of 12 to 15 reps of push-ups, squats, rows, lunges,

biceps curls, and dips. And the results of the strength tests revealed what you would expect. Both groups gained about the same amount of strength, but this is likely because all the participants were new to resistance training and therefore they were hypersensitive to its strength building effects. The body composition results were a little more interesting though. According to DEXA scans taken before and after the trial, both groups lost about the same amount of weight and retained about the same amount of muscle. However, results from the ultrasound and the CT scans showed that the group that dieted continuously experienced larger increases in a few measures of muscle size. And while most of these differences failed to reach statistical

significance, they probably would have if the study would have lasted longer than 12 weeks. And this suggests that continuous dieting may be better for maintaining muscle when you are cutting or gaining muscle when you are cutting if you can do that, if you are new enough to resistance training to enjoy re-comping, as it's called. Now, that isn't to say that continuous dieting will beat out all forms of intermittent fasting in improving body composition or that all forms of intermittent fasting are equally flawed. For example, if I were to follow an intermittent fasting protocol, I would not choose the 5-2 protocol. I would choose the tried and true lean gains protocol, the 16-8 protocol, where you basically skip breakfast. You have an eight-hour feeding window, and so you

start eating usually around 12 or 1 p.m. At least that's how most people do it. And then your eating window goes until 8 or 9 p.m., and no more calories after that. Research on that approach has shown that while it doesn't benefit body composition in any special way compared to continuous dieting, you are not going to lose fat faster on that type of diet. You are not going to gain more muscle and strength, but it doesn't appear to perform any worse either. And so my take currently on all forms of intermittent fasting really is the only good reason to do any of them is if you like them, if you prefer to eat that way versus a more traditional continuous type of diet. Okay, next up, I have some supplement research on

vitamin D and how it can reduce the risk of injury and improve performance. And the study I am going to be discussing is called the effect of vitamin D supplementation in elite adolescent dancers on muscle function and injury incidents, a randomized double-blind study. And this was published on June 12th, 2018 in International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. Now, most of us, we take vitamin D because of the many ways it can improve our health. But in this study, researchers found that it might also be beneficial for people who are very focused on physical performance. So the scientists at the University of Wolverhampton, that is an awesome name, they split 71 elite young dancers into a vitamin D supplement group and a placebo group. And both

groups gave blood samples at the beginning of the trial and then took 120 pills over four days. And in the vitamin D group, the pills contained a total of 120,000 IU of vitamin D. And in the placebo group, the pills were inert, of course. And if that sounds like a dangerously large amount of vitamin D to take, it is a lot. But research shows that it is safe and it is effective, provided you have clinical supervision. It is not a protocol I'd recommend you just do for fun, but it is not dangerous per se. pull, which is a machine exercise that's similar to a rack pull. And then they tested power using different jumping exercises. And for the rest of the four-month trial, the participants recorded all of their injuries and they consumed no other supplements. And at the end of the study, the participants gave another blood sample and then retested their strength and power. And what the results showed, unsurprisingly, is that the vitamin D group increased their

vitamin D levels significantly more than the placebo group, but they also increased their strength by about 7% while the placebo group lost a little bit of strength, which is interesting, but not mind-blowing. More surprising, though, was the effect that vitamin d had on injury rates the participants in the vitamin d group were more likely to be injury free 40 versus about 36 and far less likely to have a traumatic injury about 11 versus about 32 percent than the placebo group and this suggests that taking vitamin d might make you less prone to injuries and traumatic injuries in particular, and give you a little performance boost to boot, making it a beneficial supplement for most athletes. Now, the exact mechanisms in play here

are not clear, but given vitamin D's role in supporting the immune system and the immune system's role in muscle recovery and tissue repair, it seems possible that vitamin D boosts the body's ability to repair itself. Now, if you are not currently supplementing with vitamin D, you might be wondering what you should do. And my recommendation is to start with000 IU per day. That is a very standard amount that is safe and effective. Some people do need to take a bit more to have adequate levels of vitamin D in their body. But unfortunately, the only way to determine that precisely is to get some blood work done. And if you don't want to do that, you can take 5,000 IU

per day. I personally wouldn't recommend taking 10,000 plus IU per day, even though some people do it. I myself take anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 IU per day. And if you are interested in doing that, check out my sport multivitamin Triumph. I have a version for men and women. Both have 2000 IU of vitamin D in them, as well as 30 other ingredients that are designed to enhance your health and mood and reduce stress, fatigue, and anxiety. And you can check it out. You can go learn about Triumph at buylegion.com, B-U-I-L-E-G-I-O-N.com slash Triumph. Okay, next up, I have a paper for you on blood flow restriction training and how it can help you gain muscle just as effectively as traditional training, even if you don't take sets to failure. paper called Acute Cellular and Molecular Responses and Chronic Adaptations to Low-Load Blood Flow Restriction and High-Load Resistance Exercise in Trained Individuals. And this was

published on September 23rd, 2021 in Journal of Applied Physiology. And blood flow restriction training is an interesting topic because there are several studies now that show that it is a perfectly workable training technique. It probably deserves more attention specifically for certain use cases that I will get into in a few minutes, but you don't see many people doing it probably because it looks kind of silly. It looks like it is a waste of time, maybe even dangerous, but it is neither of those things. Now, in this study, scientists at the University of Queensland compared the effects of training with lightweights and BFR and training with heavyweights without BFR. So that's traditional strength training on strength and muscle growth. They also examined other various molecular processes, but we don't have to get into those here.

So the researchers, what they did and knee extensions on days one and three and Bulgarian split squats and knee extensions on day two. The high load group, they began the study using weights that were about 75% of their one rep max for each exercise. And they did four sets of eight reps with two minutes of rest in between the sets. And then the BFR group, they started using weights that were about 30% of their one rep max for each exercise and did one set of 30 reps followed by three sets of 15 reps with 45 seconds of rest in between sets. All the participants recorded how many reps in reserve they had after each set, meaning how many good reps left did they have? How close

to muscular failure were they going? And participants in the high load group, they increased their weights if they had more than two reps in reserve after two consecutive sets. And then participants in the BFR group, they increased their weights if they had more than four reps in reserve after two consecutive sets. And what the results showed is that the squat one rep max increased in both groups, though it increased significantly more in the traditional training group. So nine kilograms in the BFR versus 19 kilograms in the traditional group and quad muscle size also increased about the same in both groups. And quad muscle size also increased about the same in both groups.

And so the main takeaway from all of that is that BFR training is just as effective for building muscle as traditional strength training, despite using much lighter weights and not taking each set to failure. And while it was not as effective at increasing strength, that's not surprising, of course, because strength is highly specific to the rep range that you train with. If you want to get strong, you want to do a lot of ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes, and not a lot of sevens and eights and beyond. And so then, should you be doing a lot of BFR training in the gym? No, not necessarily. There are a couple of situations where I think it makes sense to include BFR in your routine. If you have an injury, for example, and you are not able to use your normal training loads, BFR is a great way to get in effective training while healing. It also can help you get in more volume. So let's

say you are doing 15 to 20 hard sets per week for one of your limbs, which of course is another drawback of BFR. You can only do it with your limbs, with your arms and legs. But let's say you are doing about as much volume of normal, straight, heavy working sets as you can, which is 15 to 20 hard sets per week. If you try to do more than that for too long, you're probably just going to get hurt and you are not responding to that amount of volume because you are a very experienced weightlifter and you have been doing that amount of volume for some time now, and your body has simply adapted to it, you could add a few blood flow restricted sets per week to get in some additional training stimulus without the additional wear and tear that normally comes

from more volume. And I should also mention that as you become a more experienced weightlifter, the most reliable way to continue gaining muscle is to muscle with BFR versus traditional strength training. If we were to do a study for nine months or several years, I would bet a shiny shekel or three that traditional strength training will win bigly in strength gain, of course, but will also win in muscle growth. win bigly in strength gain, of course, but will also win in muscle growth. 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. 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.