Ep. #671: Q&A: Pre-Hab, Ideal Cutting Protocol, and Doing a Single Cycle of Steroids

Hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I’m Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for a q and a where I answer questions that readers and followers ask me. If you want to ask me questions that I can answer for you and that may be chosen for future q and a episodes, shoot me an email. Mike, muscle for Life, just f o.

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So in this episode, I’m going to answer three questions. The first one comes from CG Behead over on. Instagram and he or she asks, are there any prehab routines or programming you would recommend prior to starting a weight training program? And the next question comes from Man O Salva Daniel over on Instagram.

And he asks, when cutting. With limited time, would I do five days a week of weightlifting and one hit session per week? Uh, one hit cardio session, or four days of lifting and two cardio sessions, and particularly two hit sessions. And then the third and final question I’ll answer in this episode comes from Jaden Brown for 20.

That handle sounds familiar, I think. Taken a question before from, from this person. So if, so, um, here’s another question from Jaden Brown. Four 20. I, I remember making a joke about the four 20. That’s what’s, uh, coming to mind anyway, asking for a friend. Sure, sure. What’s wrong with taking a cycle or two of steroids and then cutting them out?

Cold Turkey with the loss of testosterone after quitting, negate all your gains made during your cycle. Such a short period have bad side effects. If you took safer steroids like Anar or testosterone, again, I would personally never. Also, if you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one best selling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, bigger, leaner, stronger, and thinner.

Leaner, stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, the Shredded Chef. Now these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever, and you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Cobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores.

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Okay, starting at the top with CG Birkhead’s. Question about prehab routines. Do I recommend doing this before starting a weightlifting program? Well, first, let’s define prehab. So unlike rehab, which is a program that is designed to treat a preexisting physical problem, uh, like an injury, for example, using a mixture of exercises and mobility drills, prehab is a program that is undertaken before.

An injury or a problem occurs with the aim of avoiding injuries and problems in the future, and it does this by correcting deficits in strength, stability, range of motion, flexibility, balance and joint function, just general joint function. And that may sound kind of. Unnecessary and biohacking, but there is some validity here.

Lifting weights does have a way of exposing little problems in our anatomy and in our mobility, and we can have no idea we have these problems until we get into. Weightlifting and particularly get into heavy compound weightlifting. And the best way to identify if you have any problems that may get worse as you load your body with heavier and heavier weights and put in more and more reps is to try some.

Body weight exercises prior to serious weightlifting, serious strength training or resistance training. That test how your shoulders work, how your hips work, how your low back is doing, your knees, your ankles, and this is very easy to do. So if you can do the following body weight exercises that I’m going to give you without any.

Pains or without any restrictions, then you’re good to go. So press-ups and you can do modified press-ups if necessary and do press-ups at different angles like incline, standard decline, wall, angels, body weight, squat, body weight, lunges, planks, side planks, glute bridges, bird dogs, and body weight back extensions.

And if you’re not familiar, Some of those just look them up online. Now, if you work through those movements and you find that you do have discomfort with some of them in certain positions, you can’t move comfortably through a full range of motion in each of the exercises, then you can benefit from some prehab work.

You can benefit from working. On the problem, for most people, it’s gonna be lack of flexibility or lack of mobility. They’re not gonna be able to move through a full range of motion at all. They’re just gonna be stuck at a certain point because, for example, they have very tight ankles or they have very tight.

Hamstrings are very tight shoulders. And if that is the case and if there are any other issues, again doing those simple body weight exercises, other than maybe some of them are just gonna feel hard if you are very new to all of this, particularly if you are a woman. Precep, for example, probably aren’t going to work, but you should be able to do them on your knees, for example.

But aside from difficulty, again, if there’s pain or lack of range of motion or lack of mobility, or even strange, if something just feels off, if one of your joints feels off during the glute bridge, if your hips, for example, just feel a bit strange, then again, you can benefit from addressing. Right away.

You may not have to wait to start your resistance training. That would really depend on what’s going on and how bad it is. Chances are you will be able to get going with some strength training, but you should also get going right away with some mobility work or prehab work. To resolve the problem and allow you to perform each of those exercises I gave you comfortably, and that’s particularly true.

If you have suffered injuries in the past that you already know are going to give you problems, then you definitely want to start working on them right away to share a quick little story that I’ve shared. Many times in the podcast, so you may have heard it before. I’ll just go through it quickly. Years ago when I was deadlifting, I had a fair amount of weight on the bar, maybe four 20 to four 30, something like that, and I was doing sets of four.

And on my third or fourth rep, I’m at the top of the rep. I’m standing up and I let. The core tension out. I just was exhaling and I didn’t keep my core as tight as I should have, and I felt my hips kind of shift to the right and I was like, uhoh, that’s not good. Drop the bar and immediately had some pain in my lower back.

And because I was young and stubborn, I dropped the weight and finished the next one or two sets that I was supposed to do in that workout. I think I dropped to like three 15 and then that aggravated my back a little bit more, and then later that day my back was hurting quite a bit and I was getting like tingling in my leg and then I had to not deadlift for several weeks for the pain to go away and for me to get to a point where I could comfortably deadlift again.

I probably couldn’t squat as well. I don’t really. But that then became an intermittent problem. It would come and go very randomly. Sometimes I’d be warming up with 2 25. I’d be warming up on the deadlift and something would just tweak in my lower back. At least that’s how it felt. It turns out it was my SI joint, but I was feeling it in my lower back and I wouldn’t be able to deadlift for a week or two.

And sometimes it was squatting and it was usually not with heavy weight. Ironically, it was usually during my warmup sets, my heavier warm. Sets like 70% of my working weight, but not even during my hard sets, my working sets. So sometimes I’d be squatting and something would just tweak down there. It would get aggravated again, and then I couldn’t squat for a couple of weeks and sometimes it was actually painful to walk.

And after a couple of rounds of this, with several months in between each, I was like, okay, I need to actually look into fixing whatever is wrong here. Because initially I was. That’s not good. And then it went away and I was like, okay, fine. And then it came back. And then it went away for several months and then came back.

And then I decided to take it a bit more seriously. And what I found out is there is a connection between lack of internal rotation and SI joint dysfunction. And lo and behold, the internal rotation on my left side, which is where I hurt myself, was really. My internal rotation on my right side, totally fine, external, bad.

And then on my left side of my body, uh, left side of my hips, I had the opposite going on. I had really good external rotation and really poor internal rotation, so I started to do some simple stretches to improve. The internal rotation on the left side of my body on the left side of my hips, and I continued lifting and I don’t remember if I aggravated the injury during that period, but I didn’t stop lifting, I just kept doing my thing and slowly just started improving the internal rotation on the left side of my body.

And it took probably about three or four months of doing stretches every day for my internal rotation to be balanced or close to balanced on both sides of my hips. And once I achieved that, that was years ago now I have not had a single flareup. Sense. And now I know that if I would’ve addressed that sooner, there’s a chance I wouldn’t have gotten hurt in the first place.

Like yes, it was a mistake to release the tension in my core muscles, but if I wasn’t already predisposed to SI joint problems because of this lack of internal rotation, it may not have led to the injury. And you know, now that I’m saying that, I realize that. Add one more little stretch. It’s not an exercise, it’s just a stretch to the diagnostic list.

Sloppy. Sloppy, and that is the 90 90 stretch. You should be able to do that comfortably on both sides of your body. You should be able to get your hips into internal and external rotation, both on the left and right sides of your body with good range of motion and no major dis. Now if you are somebody who has not sustained any major injuries and you are able to do all of the body weight exercises and the stretch that I have talked about, and if there are no problems, then you probably don’t need to be spending any time working on prehab.

You can just stick to your lifting and if you do want to do some stretching or mobility work outside of that, then that’s totally fine. It may not be necessary. Alright, let’s move on to the next question from Mano Salva Daniel. And he asks, if I were cutting and I had limited time, would I just do five days a week of lifting and one cardio session, and he specifies one hit session.

Per week, or would I do four days of lifting in two cardio sessions or two hit sessions? So if you want to maximize fat loss and minimize muscle loss and not run into any issues related to over training, then I would say when cutting, ideally you would do three to five. One hour-ish weightlifting sessions per week, and you would do one to at most, 3 25 to maybe 30 minute hit sessions per week.

High intensity interval training, and then maybe two or three 30 or 45 minute low intensity cardio sessions per week, like walking or very easy bike riding, like never even getting. If you have a lot of time on your hands and you are willing to put in the work, then go with the largest numbers. Go with the five weightlifting sessions per week, the three hit cardio sessions per week, and three low intensity cardio sessions per week.

And if you combine that with an aggressive but not reckless calorie deficit of around 20%, it might need to be a bit less. If you are lean looking to get very lean, and it can be a bit larger than that if you are. Let’s say 15% body fat and above, certainly 20% body fat and above in men, and 25 to 30% and above in women.

So if you do that, and if you eat enough protein and you make sure that you are getting enough sleep and you are eating enough carbs to satisfy you and to fuel your training, And following the basic principles of flexible dieting where you’re getting most of your calories from nutritious foods, if you do all of that, you’re going to lose fat quickly.

You are gonna have good workouts. You are genuinely gonna feel good. You’re gonna have energy, you’re gonna be in a good mood. You are not gonna deal with hunger or cravings all that much. You might. Have it a little bit here and there and you are not gonna lose any muscle to speak of or probably any strength really to speak of.

Now, if you don’t have that much time or you just don’t wanna spend that much time cutting, that’s totally fine. You can do very well with less exercise, even a lot less exercise. But we have to now modify things to make sure we are prioritizing the. Exercise. We wanna make sure that you are now using your time as effectively and efficiently as possible.

So let’s start with the examples that were given to me in the question. We have five weightlifting sessions and one hit session per week versus four weightlifting sessions and two cardio sessions. Two hit sessions. And if that were me, I would do the five one. I would lift weights five days per week, and then I would do one hit session per week.

And the reason for that is your body is primed for muscle loss when you’re in a calorie deficit. And if you’re new to weightlifting, you don’t have to worry about that. If you’re in your first year of weightlifting, for example, you will gain muscle. While losing fat, you will recomp, so who cares? But if your newbie gains are behind you and you are now an intermediate or an advanced weightlifter, you do have to pay a bit more attention to what you’re doing when you’re cutting.

And for example, not being in too large of a calorie deficit becomes more important. As you become more experienced and not doing too much cardio becomes more important. And continuing to intensely train and intensely challenge your muscles with heavy weights and adequate volume also becomes very important for retaining muscle and strength.

In fact, that is one of the best ways to maintain or even gain muscle and strength when you’re in a calorie deficit, if that is still an option for you. Again, if you’re a. And you’ve already gained your first 20 to 25 pounds of muscle. Or if you are a gal who has gained her first 10 to maybe 15 pounds of muscle, you are almost certainly not going to be able to gain any muscle or strength to speak of when you’re cutting, but you certainly cannot lose it.

You can retain more or less all of the muscle and strength that you have going into a cut. And so then when you finish your cut and you’re able to eat more food, not only do you look great, but you also don’t have a lot of. Lost ground to make up in terms of regaining muscle and strength that you lost while cutting.

Now the question is how much weightlifting you need to do when you’re cutting to optimize muscle and strength retention. And as far as I know, there isn’t a clear cut. Answer to that in the scientific literature, but based on my understanding of things, I think it’s fair to say that you want to do more or less, the same amount of volume as you would do when you are maintaining, if not lean, bulking.

Now, the reason why I make that distinction is some people push volume very high when they lean bulk, 18, 20 hard sets per major. Per week. I wouldn’t recommend doing that much volume when cutting. Actually I would cap it at probably about 15, 14 to 15 hard sets per major mouse group per week. And I also would say that that is almost certainly enough volume for most people to gain muscle and strength about as quickly as they will be able to when Lean bulking.

I don’t think most people are going to benefit much from the additional several hard sets per major muss group per week when lean bulking. Always the case, but I’ve found again that with most intermediate and advanced weightlifters, so long as they know what they’re doing in the kitchen and so long as they are not doing too much cardio and so long as they’re sleeping enough, and so long as the weightlifting program is well designed, 14 to 16 hard sets per major MU group per week is enough to produce steady progress.

And so that’s primarily why I am biased toward weightlifting. Cutting. But there’s also something to be said for the calories because heavy compound weightlifting is certainly beneficial for fat loss. It certainly helps drive fat loss. It can burn quite a few calories, which of course drives fat loss, let’s say anywhere from 300 to 800 calories per hour, depending on your body weight.

If you weigh 120 pounds, for example, probably closer to three to 400 if you. 210, 220 pounds, closer to seven or 800 calories per hour. And a good study that illustrates the effectiveness of strength training When cutting was conducted by scientists at Ball State University and they had two groups of women perform two different training protocols.

One group did high rep, low weight, super set kind of body building style. Training with minimal rest in between sets. And then the other group followed a periodized strength training routine with most of the work in the range of 70 to 90% of one rep max. So a proper strength training program. And after 12 weeks, both groups had lost about 20 pounds, meaning the workouts burned about the same amount of calories.

But the group that did the heavy strength training, Three times more muscle. So seven pounds versus two pounds and lost over twice as much body fat. So again, don’t get unnecessarily fixated on cardio when you’re cutting. You don’t have to do any when you’re cutting if you want to get lean. If you’re a guy who just wants to get down to, let’s say, 10 to 12% body fat, somewhere in that range, certainly if you are looking to.

To, let’s say 15%. You don’t have to do cardio to get there. And for women, the comparable numbers would probably be around 22 to 25%. If you’re above that and that’s your goal, or at least that’s the first big milestone, and you don’t want to do cardio because you don’t have the time, or you just don’t feel like it, that’s totally fine.

You are going to do well with just strength. That said, I would challenge you to fit in some walking if you can because it is such an easy way to increase energy expenditure without having to go to the gym or hop on the treadmill or the exercise bike. And it is very easy to work into the workday these days.

Most of us are working from home. So if you have periods where you need to make calls, for example, you can just get outside and go for a walk. Or maybe when you are listening to a podcast or a lecture or an audiobook, make it a 15 or 20 minute walk. Also, if you can try to make it a walk in nature where you see pretty trees and flowers and plants and animals, because it’s gonna make you feel.

It’s one of those things that we don’t need science to tell us that we can just go do it and experience it firsthand, but research does back that up. And as far as calorie burning goes, walking burns a couple of hundred calories per hour, 300 calories or so per hour, depending on how fast you’re walking and how much you weigh.

And. That’s no hit of course. I mean, you can burn a couple hundred calories in 10 minutes of hit, but HIT is a lot more difficult. It requires more effort. Obviously. It is more strenuous. It impacts the body more, whereas walking has basically no impact on post strength training workout. Recovery now, if you can’t fit long walks into your schedule.

If that’s just not practical, think with maybe just walking more one way or another. Look at your everyday routine and see if there are things you can do differently that would have you walking more, like maybe taking the stairs instead of the elevator or the escalator, maybe walking short distances instead.

Driving or even parking further away than normal when you’re running errands, for example, from the entrance to the store, or maybe you’re commuting to your office with the goal of just getting more steps in as people talk about and shooting for that 10,000 steps per day is a good target actually. and you can track that.

Of course with your phone, you can just get an app and track your steps. One other little tip is if you are walking currently, and maybe it’s a a 10 minute walk, that’s your route that you take for whatever reason. If you have the time, think of how you might be able to just lengthen the route. Like, can you make it take 20 minutes instead?

That’s an easy way to increase your daily steps as well.

If you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one best selling weightlifting books for men and women in the world. Bigger, leaner, stronger, and thinner. Leaner, stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, the shredded.

Okay, let’s move on to the final question from Jaden Brown for 20 about steroids. What’s wrong with just doing one or two cycles and reaping the newbie gains of the glorious drugs and then cutting them out? Cold Turkey. Asking for a friend, though. For a friend. So it’s probably worth telling your friend that steroids.

Particularly testosterone, for example, may not be as dangerous as some people believe, but they are still far from safe. And yes, that does apply to even a single cycle of steroids because a single cycle of steroids done wrong can cause major. Problems. For example, some of the changes that can occur when you’re on drugs can be reversible, and they include testicular atrophy, so shrinking acne cysts, oily hair and skin, elevated blood pressure, and LDL cholesterol levels increased aggression, lowered sperm count, but there are irreversible changes too that include male pattern, baldness, heart dysfunction, liver disease, acne scars, and gynecomastia gy.

Bitch hits. And another problem with some of the drugs people take, not so much testosterone that there is a lot of research available on that has been around for a long time. But of course when we’re talking about doing a steroid cycle, that usually involves other drugs and many of these drugs are.

Unknowns as far as long-term effects in humans go, because the research isn’t there and we’re not going to get the research because it would never pass an ethics board. So all we can really do is observe what happens to people who use these drugs and see what happens to their body over time. A bunch of case studies basically.

And I would not recommend being one of those case studies regardless of how long you or your friend plans on participating, because. Well, the chances are fairly low that you’re gonna suffer major side effects from one cycle that is designed well, which would mean a mild cycle. For example, most people who get good advice start with just testosterone with a moderate dose, or even a low-ish like t r t kind of dose of testosterone to see how their body responds.

The chances are quite high that you, I mean your friend. Not going to stop there. You are not going to just do one round of testosterone, a low or maybe moderate dose of testosterone and happily take your extra, I don’t know, five to 15 pounds of muscle depending on your genetics and how much testosterone you’re taking and how long you’re taking it for, and your training experience and so forth, and go back to being natty.

Just chalk that up as a fun little n one. No, chances are you’re gonna love it and you’re gonna want a lot more of it. And then the second cycle will begin and it will be bigger than the first cycle. And then you’re gonna be even more thrilled by how much progress you’re making in the gym and how you feel and how you look.

And you’re gonna want even more. And there is more to be. There’s always more drugs to be had, and this is why, for example, one study found that 30% of steroid users who participated in the study had developed a dependence syndrome. And if you speak to enough people who are honest about their drug use, they will tell you about the addictive properties of the drugs, and particularly the psychological.

Addiction, how much better they feel when they are on drugs, how they feel, just invincible, basically. They always have energy, focus, drive, don’t need to sleep as much. I mean, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a long-term steroid user say that he started with the intention of just doing one cycle just to see what it’s like and.

Here he is today, 15 years in. While I would be making money, in a very strange way, too many of these people told themselves that they would try it out just to get a little bit ahead, kickstart their gains, and then they found themselves on the bike for the long haul. Now, I think it’s also worth directly addressing a myth here, which is that you can.

Do a cycle or two of steroids and dramatically increase your muscularity and your strength, and then you can just taper off maybe with a good post cycle therapy protocol and you’re gonna maintain your newfound gains. And the idea then is you can condense maybe like three years of training into one year or even six months with the right drugs.

And then you can go back to being Natty. And now you are maybe a year or two from your. Potential that is not true. Most of the muscle and strength that you are going to gain on steroids will fade after you stop taking them. And this is not surprising. You are artificially raising your hormone levels to supernatural levels to achieve supernatural results in your physique.

And then when your hormones return to normal, so does your physique. Your body has feed. Mechanisms that regulate these things and what you are certainly not going to be able to do is get on drugs early and stay on them to reach your genetic potential for muscularity or maybe even exceed your natural potential a little bit fairly quickly, let’s say in a couple of years, and then come off drugs and stay that way.

You will regress in your physique and in your performance. And depending on what you’ve been doing over the last couple of years, you may find it very hard to continue making progress because of what’s going on with your hormones. They can be bottomed out and it can take a long time to return to a normal, healthy level of testosterone production, for example, and you may never return to that.

So as you can tell, my position is stay away from steroids. It’s not necess. The risks far outweigh the benefits, and unless you’re getting paid millions of dollars to put your health at risk and to use these drugs, unless you’re a, a Hollywood actor and the big director has come to you and said, I need you to gain.

20 pounds in the next month or month and a half, and you can become the next Marvel superhero if that’s the case. Yeah, you do the drugs, of course, you do the drugs, or if you are a professional athlete and you have to use these drugs to keep up with everyone else who is also, for the most part, using these drugs.

I understand you gotta do what you gotta. , but if you’re using drugs or considering using drugs just to get more jacked for the purpose of getting more attention on social media or getting laid more, you need to seriously rethink your shit If you are going to sow the wind like that, you cannot be surprised when one day you reap.

The whirlwind. All right, Mr. Or Mrs. Listener, that’s it for today. I hope you like the episode. Thanks again for joining me, and next week I have an interview coming with Eric Helms on the Science of Auto Regulating Your Training. I think you’re really gonna like that if you are an intermediate or advanced weightlifter in particular, I have a monologue coming on exercises for low back pain, as well as another installment of Best of Muscle for Life.

And another q and a where I’m gonna talk about running and muscle gain, kids and dieting, and the pros and cons of creat. All right. Well, that’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don’t mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or.

Wherever you’re listening to me from in whichever app you’re listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility and thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to. Get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well.

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That is the best way to get ahold of me, Mike, at muscle life.com. And that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you.