Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The 3 Best Supplements for Muscle Recovery

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

If you can’t recover from your workouts properly, you’re going to have a hard time. You won’t be able to lift as much weight, progress on your lifts and get stronger as quickly, and you won’t enjoy your workouts, reducing the likelihood that you’ll stick to your routine over the long term. Muscle recovery supplements can get you back in the gym faster and allow you to train harder, speeding up your progress. And in this podcast, we're going to cover the 3 best ones you should be taking.  Let's get to it. --- Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will

save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. All right, let's talk about muscle recovery and particularly muscle recovery supplements. What supplements you can take to speed up muscle recovery. This is important. Muscle recovery is important.

Supplementation, not so important. No supplements are going to change the game, but they can help. And the reason why you should consider taking supplements to help with muscle recovery is ultimately the amount of muscle and strength that you're going to gain from your workouts, especially when you look at it over time, is going to be in a large part dictated by how well you can recover from your training. And there are a couple reasons for that. One is the obvious and that you go in, you do a workout, you cause damage to your muscle fibers and that has to be repaired. And if you provide your body with adequate nutrition and good sleep and so forth,

And if you provide your body with adequate nutrition and good sleep and so forth, hopefully in the process of repairing that damage, your body is going to make that muscle tissue a little bit bigger and a little bit stronger. And then there's a not so obvious aspect of muscle recovery and how it impacts your muscle and strength game in that the amount of training you can subject your body to is going to be determined mostly by how well you can recover, by how quickly you can recover. Because if you are, let's say you're trying to bring up a lagging muscle group, let's say that your chest isn't where you want it to be, or maybe it's your butt. If you are a woman, to grow your chest or grow your butt, you're going to have to subject the muscle group to progressive overload, of course.

And a lot of that comes down to getting stronger, adding weight to the bar over time or the dumbbells over time. But it also relates to how much volume you can do. You can look at volume in different ways, but a simple way to look at it is hard sets, working sets, muscle building sets. How many of those sets can you do per week for the muscle group that you are trying to improve? Generally speaking, the more volume you can do over time, the more you're going to grow. Now, of course, you can only do so much volume, practically speaking, mostly because of recovery, because you can't recover from, let's say, 40 hard sets per major muscle group per week. That'd be insane. But half that, that's probably a fair ceiling for most natural weightlifters. 20 hard sets per major muscle

group per week, you probably can't do more than that if you're like most people. And you probably don't need to do quite that much to maximize muscle and strength gain if you are an intermediate or advanced weightlifter. Certainly not if you're a beginner. But if you have a year or two of good weightlifting behind you, you're probably going to have to do anywhere from, let's say 12 to 16 hard sets per major muscle group per week to keep the needle moving. And if you can't do that much volume for all the major muscle groups that you want to train every week, because you don't have the time or you don't have the inclination, then what you're going to have to do is pick one or two major muscle

groups to really push the envelope on, to push that volume on, and then do, let's say, maintenance volume on everything else. So for example, if you're wanting to grow your chest or your butt, you might program your training in such a way where you're getting in 15-ish hard sets per week for your chest or through your pressing or whatever for your butt. And then you're getting in maybe nine-ish for the other major muscle groups per week. Or maybe in the case of smaller muscle groups like your biceps, your triceps, or your shoulders, you might be doing only six hard sets per week. And so in a way, the point is if you are not recovering well from your workouts, you're going to have a lot of trouble doing what I just said. You're going to have a lot of trouble getting in enough

volume to continue getting bigger and stronger. Now, how do you know if you are recovering well or not? Well, if you are not recovering well, then your workouts are going to be filled with soreness and fatigue and the weights are going to feel very heavy and you're not going to feel motivated to train. You're going to feel like you'd rather just lie on the couch than get underneath a barbell. And you also find that you just stagnate. If you look at your 1RM, for example, on any of your major lifts over time, it'll probably just hover in the same range. You'll go a little bit up, then a little bit down, a little bit up, a little bit down, but that average is going to be pretty much stuck if not declining. Now, on the other hand, if you are recovering well, you'll pretty much experience

the opposite of those things. You'll have good energy in your workouts. You'll make good progress. You'll get stronger. You'll find that the weights that you're working with progressively feel lighter, and then you can get more reps with them and ultimately add weight to the bar or to the dumbbells. You'll feel motivated to train. You'll enjoy your workouts and so forth. Now, as for improving your post-workout recovery, your muscle recovery, supplements are not the key. Supplements are not the answer. The answer is the fundamentals. The answer is proper nutrition, proper workout programming, good sleep hygiene, trying to mitigate stress, just overall stress. Those are the things that drive muscle recovery. The 20% that produces the 80%. So just know that if you're not getting those things right, supplementation really doesn't

have much to offer. Supplementation is supplementary by definition and only can enhance the fundamentals. It only can enhance that 80% to maybe 90%, maybe 95%. But you certainly can't get the basics wrong and be at like 40% and then just add some supplements and get to the 80, 90, 95%. Okay. With that said, let's talk about these supplements. And first with the different types of supplements. So three different types of supplements that can help you recover better from your workouts. So the first type of supplement is something that can improve muscle soreness, can reduce muscle soreness, which then allows you to get back in the gym and train those muscles more frequently or more intensely. And these supplements work by helping the body clear out compounds that are associated

with muscle soreness, things that are produced as a result of exercising, like lactic acid and ammonia. Now, the second type of supplement that can speed up recovery is an anti-inflammatory supplement because exercise produces an inflammatory response in the muscles. And if it's excessive, it is going to contribute to soreness, which is again, going to impede the amount of work that you can do. Now you want to be careful with these types of supplements though, because powerful drugs, for example, like NSAIDs certainly are going to bring down inflammation, but they also are going to reduce muscle growth if you use them too frequently because that inflammatory response

is part of the muscle building response. We want post-workout inflammation, but if the inflammation gets out of control, if it is either too much or lasts too long, it just becomes counterproductive. And the third and final type of supplement that helps you recover faster is one that helps your cells consume nutrition better. Because the faster they can absorb nutrition, the faster they can get back to battery, the faster they can clear out the unwanted stuff, rebuild, remodel, and be ready for the next bout of training. And so the three single best recovery supplements that I know about are L-carnitine, L-tartrate, creatine, and I like creatine monohydrate because it's simple, it works, it is the gold standard, and fish oil. And protein powder could be considered, I guess, a fourth, a bonus,

but only because it helps you consume enough protein in general. And that's key, of course, to recovering fully and quickly from your workouts. like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere. And if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best selling health and fitness books. My most popular ones are Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical hands-on blueprint for personal transformation, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. 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 anywhere online where you can buy books like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. So again, that is Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and one other thing is you can get any one of those audio books 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account.

And that's a great way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. Now, if you want to take Audible up on that offer and get one of my audio books for free, just go to legionathletics.com slash Audible and sign up for your account. Okay, let's talk briefly about each of these. Why L-carnitine, L-tartrate? Well, this is a form of L-carnitine, which is a naturally occurring amino acid that's mostly found in meat and dairy products. And L-carnitine is an important amino acid in the body. It serves a number of vital functions, mostly related to producing cellular energy.

And the L-tartrate part of this is the combination of the L-carnitine with tartaric acid, which can help with the absorption of nutrients. Now, why L-carnitine, L-tartrate? Well, research shows that it helps the body clear various byproducts of exercise that are associated with muscle soreness like lactate and lactic acid. And it may also help the body deal with high levels of oxidation and other aspects of muscle damage as well. Another interesting line of research suggests that L-carnitine, L-tartrate can help tissues absorb oxygen better, which also would enhance recovery. And whatever the case, what research clearly shows is that L-carnitine, L-tartrate

reduces muscle soreness, which again helps you get back in the gym and training that muscle group sooner than you would otherwise be able to. And what's more, research also shows that L-carnitine and L-tartrate can reduce the amount of muscle damage that occurs from exercise. Now, if you're wondering why is that good? Because we want muscle damage to occur from exercise. That's one of the major things we're going for. That's true. But one, we don't want too much muscle damage to occur because that just becomes counterproductive. We want just enough to maximize the stimulus, so to speak, because muscle damage is a stimulus for muscle gain, you know, because then it needs to be repaired. So one, we don't want too much muscle damage to occur from exercise. And two, we don't want our body to be too sensitive, our muscles to

be too sensitive to exercise. We don't want to be in a position where too little exercise to produce considerable muscle and strength gain causes too much damage. Again, we need to be able to do enough volume without causing too much damage to our muscles. And in that way, L-carnitine, L-tartrate can help you ensure that you can do enough work in the gym to keep the needle moving. And a little shameless plug for my supplement company, Legion. You'll find a clinically effective dose of LCLT in my post-workout supplement called Recharge, which you can learn more about at legionathletics.com, or if you just search Legion Recharge, it'll come up. All right, next up is creatine. Of course, the king of sports

nutrition, the most researched molecule in the entire space, and the one supplement that anybody into any type of exercise really should be supplementing with. And there's emerging evidence that it's a supplement that probably everybody period should be supplementing with, even elderly people, because it can help them retain muscle. And that means fewer falls and stronger immune systems, mostly. Now, creatine can not only improve your performance in the gym outright, it can just increase the amount of work that you can do in the gym, especially with intense weightlifting. It also can enhance your recovery.

And this mostly comes down to reducing the amount of muscle damage that occurs through repeated bouts of exercise. You can think of it as improving your muscles' resilience and improving your muscles' ability to withstand a beating in the gym and not come out as damaged as it would be otherwise. And that's why research shows that supplementing with creatine can reduce muscle soreness, which again is what we want. Remember, muscle soreness is not correlated with muscle growth. Sore muscles feels good. It makes us feel like we did something and it can be gratifying, but just because a muscle is sore does not mean that it's going to grow. And just because a muscle is not sore does not mean it's not going to grow. Generally speaking, if you are doing everything right with your training and your nutrition and your rest, you should experience some muscle soreness here and there, but you really shouldn't feel that incapacitating soreness that maybe you

experienced when you first started lifting weights. You should probably never be much more than a five or six out of 10 in terms of soreness, unless you have made a dramatic change to your training. And by that, I mean dramatically spiked your volume, for example. Maybe you decided to really have some fun and do some 10 by 10 squats or something. Yes, you're going to be quite sore, but you don't really want to be doing that stuff at all. I mean, you can do it, I guess, here and there if you feel like it, but research shows that that, for example, it's just too much volume, especially for one session. You would be much better served by working out a properly periodized workout program that has you slowly increasing volume or maybe decreasing volume as you increase intensity. There are different ways to go about it, but you shouldn't be making any major, major changes like that that just make you incredibly sore.

At least you shouldn't be doing it often. Anyway, as far as what type of creatine, again, creatine monohydrate is the gold standard. You don't need to go with any fancier or more expensive form. And as far as specific products, I'm going to plug my own product again, Recharge, same product as before, because it contains a clinically effective dose of creatine monohydrate as well. All right. now that leaves us with fish oil, the third and final supplement you should take to recover faster from your workouts. And you should take fish oil for other reasons too. It's one of the best single supplements you can take for overall health and not just performance, but function. Now, why, as far as recovery goes, well, fish oil reduces inflammation and muscle damage. And we've

already talked about why those things are good. And again, you don't want to have too much of either of those things, but you're not going to have too much of those things if you're taking the three supplements I'm talking about here. Too much, again, would be like NSAIDs every day. As far as inflammation goes, that would be too much. Now, another interesting effect of fish oil that is relevant to working out and not so much recovering, actually mostly just working out, is research shows that it protects motor neurons. And that helps explain why other studies have shown that fish oil can help preserve range of motion and preserve strength after eccentric contractions of the muscle. And it's the eccentric contractions that cause the majority of muscle damage. And so what that really means is fish oil helps your muscles effectively execute more

training. Basically, it allows you to do more work over time, which, as I mentioned earlier, is mostly what getting bigger and stronger comes down to. You just got to work harder and harder for less and less. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my

podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over a hundred dollars. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should

check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you're using to listen. And you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming. And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.