Ep. #273: The Easiest Way to Maintain Your Muscle & Strength

Once you have paid your dues, so to speak, you can maintain your physique and much of your performance in as little as like 40 to 60 minutes of exercise per week. And yes, you heard that right.

Hey, Mike Matthews here. Welcome to yet another episode of the muscle for life podcast. Now, what if I told you that you could maintain and possibly even gain muscle and strength in as little as 40 to 60 minutes. And what if I actually wasn’t trying to pitch you on some PDFs pills or powders? Give me the next 10 or 15 minutes and I’m going to give you the secret right here in this podcast.

And okay, fine. It’s not really a secret. It’s more like a couple of simple science based strategies, but it’s going to be helpful nonetheless. And even if you’re not. Looking for a lazy way to stay ripped. This information can benefit you too, because while you might enjoy going great guns right now, you might like those early morning workouts, five days a week, every week, you might look forward to the sacrifices that you’re making to stick to your meal plans and those bruising late night cardio sessions.

Let’s not forget that life is tremendously good at throwing us curve balls. That new job. Might mean no more bright and early workouts that family obligation might impose and replace the time you’d normally spend meal prepping or doing cardio. Travel happens, holidays happen, and sometimes we just lose motivation and we skid for no good reason.

Oh, to be human. That’s why you need to listen to this podcast. It’s going to give you a very simple plan. to maintain those pretty biceps and those razor sharp abs even when your routine goes to hell. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine.

Specifically, my 100 percent natural whey protein powder, whey plus. Now, this is a naturally sweetened and flavored whey isolate protein powder made from exceptionally high quality milk from small dairy farms in Ireland. Weigh Plus also contains no GMOs, hormones, antibiotics, artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk.

And if I may say so myself, it also tastes delicious and mixes great. And all that is why Weigh Plus has over 1, 400 reviews on Amazon with a 4. 5 star average, and another 600 on my website with a 5 star average. So if you want a clean, all natural, and great tasting whey protein supplement that’s low in calories, carbs, and fat, then you want to head over to www.

legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Whey Plus today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code PODCAST at checkout and you will save millions. 10 percent on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100 percent money back guarantee that works like this.

You either love my stuff or you get your money back period. You don’t have to return the products. You don’t have to fill out forms. You don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans, so you really can’t lose here. Head over to www. legionathletics. com now, place your order, and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet.

And if for whatever reason they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let’s get to the show. Okay. So here we go. Let’s start with one of the great things about being in great shape. It is that it is much easier to stay fit than it is to get there in the first place.

While training three to six times per week is best for making gains and maximizing progress, you don’t have to work nearly as hard. To preserve your gains, to preserve the muscle and strength that you have gained by working so hard. Once you have paid your dues, so to speak, you can maintain your physique and much of your performance in as little as like 40 to 60 minutes of exercise per week.

And yes, you heard that if you know what you’re doing with your diet as well, you can stay pretty lean and mean too. So a good example of this is a study that was conducted by scientists at the university of Alberta and in it. 18 competitive female rowers went from 10 weeks of training three times per week to training just once or twice per week for six weeks.

And the result was they all gained strength in two exercises and maintain strength in the remaining ones. Another study worth mentioning was conducted by researchers at the university of Alabama at Birmingham. And in this one, Scientists had 70 untrained adults start with four months of weightlifting three times per week.

And then they divided those subjects into three groups for an additional eight months. So the first group did no exercise whatsoever. The second group did one workout per week, which consisted of three sets of just eight to 12 reps. And the third group did one workout per week of just one set. Of eight to 12 reps.

Now, after eight months, the no exercise group lost all of their gains. Of course, everything that they had gained in the first four months of weightlifting was gone, but both of the groups that were doing just one workout per week were able to maintain or increase their numbers on those exercises. So in other words, They cut their total weekly workout time down by two thirds, but saw very little reductions in performance in the gym.

And get this while the younger subjects, the ones who are 25 to 35 years old gained more strength in size than the older people who were 60 to 70 years old during the initial four month. Gaining phase, the older people maintained their muscle and strength equally well after reducing the workout frequency.

What that means is, yes, you really can stay fit at any age. You don’t have to live in the gym like the 20 year olds. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth.

If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness.

Now, if you are like me and you’ve spent the last many years putting in at least four to six hours in the gym every week, then you are not going to maintain your muscle and your strength on one set per week. I wish people like us are going to have to do a bit more. Which is why the workouts that I’m going to prescribe in this podcast are short, but not that short.

However, before we get to that, I do want to talk about one other important aspect to consider when talking muscle maintenance, and that is volume. So volume is the number of sets that you perform in a given period. That’s one way of looking at it. There are other ways of looking at it, but that’s the definition I’m using here.

Now many people think that training frequency is the key to muscle gain, that the more frequently you train a muscle group, the better. Period. Research shows otherwise. Specifically, studies show that when training volume is matched, frequency doesn’t influence results nearly as much as some gurus or experts would have you believe.

So in other words, the total amount of work that you make your muscles do every week, the total amount of reps is more important than how frequently You work them. Now that said, if you want to achieve high levels of volume, you of course have to increase frequency because then you can do so much and you only should do so much in an individual workout.

But in that way, you should look at frequency simply as a way to increase volume, not as an end in and of itself. An example of this in the literature is a study that was conducted by researchers at Laurentian university. And what they did is they separated 29 untrained people into two groups. And one group did nine exercises.

They worked in the 10 rep range and they did three sets and they did that twice per week. And the second group did the same workout of nine exercises, two sets per exercise, 10 reps per set, but they did it three times per week. And by the end of the study, both groups had increased muscle mass and strength with no significant differences.

When you do the math here, you’ll notice that while group one did fewer workouts each week than group two, they both did the same amount of sets, the same amount of volume 54. And that’s why both groups got more or less the same results from the workout programs. And that’s also why the workouts that I’m going to prescribe Here use compound exercises to train a lot of the major muscle groups in your body.

And they’re also going to call for heavier loads, and they’re going to have you do a moderate number of sets and reps. We don’t need to go as far as 54 sets per week because of our exercise choices and the heavier loads, but we do want to make sure that our muscles are having to do enough work to grow bigger and stronger, or at least Stay big and strong.

So how might these muscle maintenance workouts look? How can you get the most out of your one to two hours in the gym every week? Let’s find out. Now, if you can only train once per week, you really can’t afford to waste time or energy. And that means ghosting through a few machine circuits to get a pump just won’t cut it.

So instead, what you’re going to have to is focus on the exercises that recruit them. The maximum amount of muscle, like the deadlift, the squat bench press and overhead press. You’re also going to have to move some heavy weights, probably heavier than you’re used to if you’re not a regular around here.

So those are my warnings. These workouts are going to be hard, but they’re going to be effective and here they are. So if you can train twice per week. Then I recommend you go with an upper lower split, which is exactly what it sounds like. You focus on your upper body in one workout and your lower body in the other workout.

So here are the workouts. Your upper body workout is the incline barbell bench press. You warm up in case you don’t know how to warm up properly, head over to most left. com and search for warm up. And you can read an article that I wrote on it, which probably should be turned into a podcast actually. But anyways, you start on the incline barbell bench press, you warm up and then you do three sets.

Of about four to six reps. So that is around 80 to 85 percent of your one rep max. Next is the barbell row. You want to warm up here and then do three sets of four to six reps. Then move on to the incline dumbbell bench press. And here you don’t have to warm up cause you’re already warmed up from your previous work.

And you just do three sets of eight to 10 reps, which is about 70 to 75 percent of your one rep max. And lastly. You do the one arm dumbbell row, three sets here of eight to 10 reps. So that’s your upper body workout. Now your lower body workout starts with of course, the barbell back squat, warm up here and do three sets of four to six reps, then move on to the deadlift.

And yes, it’s hard to deadlift after you squat, but you can do it. Warm up on the deadlift and then do three sets of four to six reps. Next is the leg press. Two sets here of eight to 10 reps. You do not have to warm up on this because you will be plenty warmed up from your squatting and deadlifting. And last you have the lying hamstring curl.

Do two sets here of eight to 10 reps and just a few points to keep in mind while you are doing these workouts. First, if you are very short on time, you can drop the last exercises from them. So these workouts should take about an hour. But if that’s too long, then leave out the one armed dumbbell row from your upper body and the lying hamstring curl from your lower body.

And that’ll save you a little bit of time. Another thing you should know is you should rest about three minutes in between your four to six rep sets and about two minutes in between your eight to 10 rep sets. And the reason why this is important is it gives your muscles and your body enough time to fully recoup their energy and their strength.

So you can give maximum effort each set. Very important. The next point you should know is you do not have to go to absolute muscle failure every set, but you should be coming close on most sets. So the subject of whether you should train to failure or not is a experts disagree. Each have legit. Sounding scientific arguments and many people report success with many different approaches.

And while I do break it all down in an article on muscle for life, here’s the long story short. We should be training to failure, but not so much that we risk injury or over training. Now, exactly how much? Is going to vary from person to person. So personally, I never trained a failure more than two or three sets per workout.

And I never do it on the squat deadlift bench press or overhead press as this can be dangerous. And I realized that I haven’t defined failure. So failure is the point where you can no longer keep the weight moving. You have to put the bar down, put the dumbbell down because it is simply not coming back up.

So that’s what I mean when I say failure. And of course, that’s why I do not. Go to failure on something like a squat or a deadlift or overhead press. Instead, I will save my failure sets for isolation exercises that you can fail on safely. Like for example, a barbell curl or a triceps rope push down or a side raise or a rear raise.

What you want to do with the majority of your sets though. Is you want to take them to about one to two reps shy of failure. So you want to bring them to the point where if you were to go for another rep or go for another two reps, you probably would fail. And it doesn’t take much weightlifting to get a good feel for this.

This has actually been shown in research that you don’t need that much weightlifting experience to accurately gauge how many reps you have left in the tank. So you just go by your feeling and the more you lift, the more accurate you’re feeling. Becomes and particularly with heavier weights. That’s also been shown in studies that most people are fairly accurate at estimating how many reps they have left when the weights are heavy, but not so much as they get lighter.

So for example, you’re going to be pretty accurate in estimating how many reps you have left in the tank when you are doing your four to six rep sets, but less so when you are doing higher rep, like eight to 10 rep sets. Again, if you’re new to weightlifting, Finding your way here is going to be a little bit tricky at first, but you will get used to it quickly and you will develop a feel for it.

So the last point here that I want to mention these workouts is progression. You need to make sure you’re progressing over time. You need to make sure that you are gaining reps and ultimately adding weight to the bar, getting stronger. That’s the goal here. So what I want you to do is once you hit the top of your rep range, For one set, move up in weight.

For example, if you’re on the incline bench and you push out six reps in your first set, then I want you to add five pounds to each side of the bar for your next set and work with that weight until you can press it for six reps for one set and so forth. Caveat here though, if you do that and you can’t get at least four reps, you can’t get the low end of your rep range in your next set.

Go back to the previous lighter weight. Work with that until you can get two sets for your next set. Top of your rep range and then move up and if for whatever reason that doesn’t stick work up to three Sets of your top of your rep range and then add weight to the bar All righty Now that we have all the rigmarole out of the way if you can only train once a week you have two workouts to choose from one is a One hour workout that looks like this It starts with a barbell back squat.

You warm up and you do two sets of four to six reps. Then you move on to the deadlift, the barbell deadlift, of course, and then you warm up and do two sets of four to six reps. Next is the inclined barbell bench press warm up two sets of four to six reps. Then the barbell row. Two sets of eight to 10 reps, no warmup here.

And then lastly, the close grip bench press that’s flat bench press two sets of eight to 10 reps, no warmup needed. And then there’s a 40 minute full body workout that you could do if you don’t have 60 minutes. And that is the barbell back squat, warm up and do three Sets of four to six reps and then move on to the deadlift warmup and three sets of four to six reps Finishing with the inclined barbell bench press warmup and three sets of four to six reps now if you’re wondering about cardio How does cardio fit into all this basically i’ll leave it up to you.

You don’t have to do cardio It’s good for of course improving your cardiovascular endurance And it also does Confer a number of health benefits, of course. And in some cases, some benefits that you don’t get really from resistance training. However, if you don’t have time for it, and if you just want to look and feel good, then you don’t have to do cardio.

So do as much cardio as it takes to achieve your goals and no more, and make sure that you’re not doing so much that it impairs your strength training, your post workout recovery, or your general health. And that’s it. Pretty simple. So in closing, I’ll just say that it definitely sucks when you have to work out a lot less than you like to, but the good news is it does not mean that your physique and your performance have to crater.

If you can spend just an hour or two per week, picking up some heavy things and putting them down. And if you can keep your calories and your macros in check, then you can dramatically cut back on the amount of time that you spend on the gym without any dramatic changes in your strength and body composition.

And even if heaven forbid that you can’t train at all for an extended period of time, Remember, you have muscle memory on your side, which means that when you are ready to get back in the saddle, you are going to get up to speed very quickly. You are going to see tremendous progress for the first few months.

It’s going to be newbie gains all over again. Hey there, it’s Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor, then please do give this video a and leave a comment down below. Not only do I like to hear from everybody and I jump in and reply to as many comments as I can, it also helps other people find their way to the show and learn how to build their best bodies ever too.

And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live. Then just subscribe to my channel and you won’t miss out on any of the new content. Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at Mike at musclefullife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better.

I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. Thanks again for listening to the episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in.

So instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100 percent natural whey protein powder, whey protein. Now this is a naturally sweetened and flavored whey isolate protein powder made from exceptionally high quality milk from small dairy farms in Ireland. Whey plus also contains no GMOs, hormones, antibiotics, artificial food dyes, Fillers or other unnecessary junk.

And if I may say so myself, it also tastes delicious and mixes great. And all that is why way plus has over 1, 400 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average and another 600 on my website with a five star average. So if you want a clean, all natural and great tasting whey protein supplement, that’s low in calories.

Carbs and fat. Then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Whey Plus today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee.

That works like. This, you either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don’t have to return the products, you don’t have to fill out forms, you don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. You really can’t lose here. Head over to www. legionathletics.

com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.