Ep. #1175: The “Natty Limit,” the Best Time to Train, My Supplement Stack & More

[00:00:00] Hello there. I’m Mike Matthews. This is muscle for life. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode, a Q and a episode where I answer questions that people asked me over on Instagram. Follow me at muscle for life fitness. Look at my stories. Every couple weeks or so I put up and ask me questions story with the little sticker.

I get a bunch of questions. And I choose ones that are interesting, topical, ones that I haven’t answered a million times before, I answer them briefly there on Instagram and then bring everything over here to the podcast where I can answer them in more detail. And in today’s episode, I’m answering a number of questions.

The first one is, why am I not bigger? It’s actually a good question and I do have an answer for that. And then I answer questions about cardio at the end of a cut. What should you do? Should you stop doing it? Should you just reduce it? Very high rep training, like 15 to 30 rep training. And if you should be doing that type of training, how that compares to lower rep training, [00:01:00] if there’s any real utility in the deadlift, if you’re not a power lifter, and if you don’t really like the deadlift, should you be doing it?

Which exercises in my Bigger, Leaner, Stronger program are better suited to heavier rather than lighter weights? Which legion supplements I use every day? And spoiler alert, it’s a lot. We will get to today’s episode in a minute, but first I need to tell you about ashwagandha, which you’ve probably heard about because a lot of people are talking about it these days.

And the reason they are talking about it is because it is one of the most effective adaptogens that you can supplement with. And adaptogens are naturally occurring substances that introduce subtle, imperceptible stressors to the body, and that then can ultimately enhance the body’s ability to manage stress.

In a way, adaptogens work like weightlifting, where you continually subject your muscles and your [00:02:00] bones and other soft tissues to slightly more stress to make them stronger over time. Now, one of the reasons that ashwagandha is one of the most popular adaptogens on the market right now. is it contains a special type of molecule known as a with analyte, and that can support various systems in the body that are related to physical and psychological resilience, including and crucially, the hypo thalamic pituitary adrenal axis or the HPA axis.

Now you can think of the HPA axis as the body’s central processor for stress. In a way, it receives a bunch of physiological signals, and then it directs their responses via hormones. And in this way, the HPA axis affects many different functions in the body, like strength, recovery, immunity, cognition, mood, sleep, and even slight changes.

Disturbances in your body’s HPA axis can [00:03:00] impair any and all of those functions. Now, similarly, slight improvements in your HPA axis’s operations can noticeably improve the same functions. And it can give you better sleep, it can give you better workouts, it can give you better recovery, and so on. And that’s why studies show that supplementing with ashwagandha can increase power, strength, and endurance.

It can reduce stress. It can reduce stress, tension, aggravation, it can enhance sleep quality, it can support healthy inflammation levels and healthy antioxidant levels in the brain, it supports immune function and more. And that’s why my sports nutrition company Legion recently released an ashwagandha supplement.

We’ve had ashwagandha in our multivitamin triumph for a long time, but our customers were asking us for a standalone supplement. And so now it is here. And it is not just any ashwagandha supplement, but it is the patented KSM 66 form of ashwagandha, which [00:04:00] is the gold standard of ashwagandha supplements.

For example, 24 different peer reviewed studies specifically support the efficacy of this form. And if you have been feeling a bit overstressed recently And you’re looking for a reprieve or maybe you’ve been feeling groovy, but you just want to see what more physiological resilience can do for your body and mind.

Head over to by legion.com/ksm 66. That is B-Y-L-E-G-I-O n.com/ksm numeral six six. And to save 20% on your first order with Legion, and that applies to everything in the store, not just ashwagandha. Use the coupon code muscle at checkout and your instant discount will be applied. And finally, if you don’t like my Ashwagandha or any of my supplements.

All you have to do to get your money back is let us know. Just reach out. And tell us that it [00:05:00] didn’t work for you. And we don’t even ask you to send it back to us. We just give you your money back or give you a store credit. If you prefer you tell us. And so again, that URL is by legion. com slash KSM 66 B Y L E G I O N.

com slash KSM numeral. And again, don’t forget to use the coupon code muscle at checkout to save 20 percent on your first order with us. Gustav O. Durser asks, no offense, but why aren’t you bigger? That’s a good question actually, because I’m not very big by Instagram standards. I’m significantly bigger than the average guy.

I’m 6’2 193, 194, fairly lean, 9, 10 percent body fat. And so I look very fit by objective standards, but I would look small by bodybuilding standards, even natural bodybuilding standards. And so the reason why I’m not bigger [00:06:00] Is really a combination of a few things. So one, I’m natural and there are hard limits to growth.

I started at about 155 pounds. So I was on the skinnier side. I didn’t look grotesquely frail, but I was on the skinnier side when I started. And so I’ve gained 40 to 45 pounds of muscle, which is about the most that most natural male weightlifters can hope to gain period, no matter what they do in the gym for the rest of their life.

And so I’m definitely pushing up against my genetic limits for size. And then the second point is I just said it genetics. So genetically I was never a big, strong person. I was more of an endurance type of person. I’ve played a lot of ice hockey, for example, and that requires a lot of endurance. It requires lower [00:07:00] body strength, lower body power, explosiveness.

But you don’t have to be a big, muscular person to do well in ice hockey, at least when you’re younger. And so my genetics play into my, my current size. Also, I mentioned that I stay pretty lean and that makes further gains basically impossible when you’ve already gained quite a bit of muscle. So if I wanted to put on an appreciable amount of muscle at this point, I would have to accept Getting fatter, I would have to accept getting up to probably 15 to 20 percent body fat and staying there for a long time, staying there for 6 to 9 months.

And I don’t really want to do that. I’ve done that in the past. Yes, it works, but I like my body the way it is. I like how it looks. I like how it feels. I like how my clothes fit. And that brings me to my final point, which is my preferences. I am happy with my [00:08:00] physique as it is. I like the way that it looks.

And if I were to put on, let’s say 10 or 15 pounds of additional muscle, which I’m not sure I could do period. I really don’t think I have the genetics to get up to call it 55 to 60 pounds of total muscle gain over the course of my lifting career. Because that is definitely above average for for total muscle growth.

I not sure that I can even do that. Let’s say that I could, that look would actually be a little bit too body builder for me. I’ll take more calves because my calves are forever small. I would take more side delts because as a natural weightlifter, my side delts are forever small. Unfortunately, if I were to gain, just call it an extra 10 pounds, it probably would go into a combination of the biggest muscle [00:09:00] groups in our body.

So it would go into my lower body, and it would then also probably go into my genetic strengths, which have been my chest and my biceps in particular, which I feel like I have enough of for the look that I want. And I feel like I have enough lower body for. The look that I want, at least my upper legs and my calves are forever tiny, but my quads and my hamstrings are fairly well developed.

And a final comment in my defense in the defense of my physique is because I’m fairly lean, what in clothes can be deceiving, especially the clothes I wear because they’re not overly tight. I don’t care. I wear normal clothes. So if you see me in clothes, especially a long sleeve shirt, maybe a baggy one, and you haven’t seen me in a while, maybe the last time you saw me was with my shirt off, maybe also with a pump.

You might be confused. I’ve had this happen in the past where I hadn’t seen somebody in a while and the last time they saw me, [00:10:00] I had been lean bulking for a bit and then I had cut and I was wearing a baggy long sleeve shirt and they thought I stopped lifting. They’re like, what do you do not? Lift weights anymore.

What happened? Did you get sick? But then if they were to have seen me with my shirt off, they would have been like, Oh bro, you’re jacked, ripped, shredded. And so there is a bit of a visual illusion in play when you are lean and wearing clothes. Okay, it’s amethyst eat asks, do you have a podcast on optimally reversing cardio after a cut as your reverse diet?

I’ve probably commented on this Over the years in various episodes, but I don’t have a single episode that comes to mind however, I will say that doing this is Reasonable if you are going from let’s say five plus hours of cardio per week down to maybe two ish hours You But I wouldn’t recommend going from two ish hours of cardio per week to [00:11:00] none, simply because two ish hours of cardio per week is great for your health.

And it’s also going to help you maintain the weight that you’ve lost, which of course is ultimately the point. I would love to see fewer weight loss competitions and more weight maintenance competitions. Because ultimately that is what we want. We want to achieve our ideal body weight, our ideal body composition, and then maintain it ideally for the rest of our lives, right?

And so because of that, I would rather see you continue the cardio at the end of your cut and then just eat more. So just add more food to offset. The energy that you’re burning in those cardio workouts to ensure that you are not still in a calorie deficit. Okay, James McKenzie asks, some say higher reps 15 to 30 add detrimentally more fatigue than say the 4 to 8 range thoughts.

High rep sets that are taken close to failure are much more fatiguing than [00:12:00] low rep sets with most exercises. And if you doubt that, go do a 12 rep set of a difficult exercise, like any sort of squat variation, any sort of deadlift or hip hinge variation, or even any sort of pressing exercise, go do a 12 rep set and go close to failure, maybe one or two good reps left, and you will see firsthand how tiring, especially the squat and the deadlift are.

Is 15 reps to near failure on a difficult exercise is basically torture and that’s not detrimental per se, but too much of it can be counterproductive because performance falls sharply and systemic fatigue can get out of hand if you’re doing a lot of that type of training. And so to put it a different way, there’s no good reason to do very high rep training if you’re just trying to get and stay jacked.

For that, you can top out at, [00:13:00] say, 10 to 12 reps, taking close to failure. You don’t ever have to do more reps than that. JunkMD asks, if you aren’t a powerlifter or just enjoy them, any real utility of a deadlift? If your life involves picking up things from the ground, especially heavy things, then yes, there is utility in the deadlift.

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And you can find it on all major online retailers, wherever you like to buy books, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, BN. com, even Audible, there is an audiobook, and yes, some people do buy cookbooks as audiobooks, who knew? And you can also find The Shredded Chef in select Barnes Noble stores. Jovial 1142 asks, for bigger leaner stronger, do you have a list of which exercises to do eight to 10 reps versus six, for example, seated triceps press?

There aren’t many exercises on the bigger leaner, stronger program that I wouldn’t do four to six reps of. That’s why I recommend four to six for a lot of the exercises, but there are a few that I recommend six to eight or even eight to 10 on any sort of side race for your side delts. [00:17:00] heavier than six reps is awkward even six reps is fairly awkward but the six to eight rep range tends to work well or eight to ten if six to eight is awkward any sort of rear raise any sort of rear fly of any kind same thing any sort of front raise of any kind skull crushers because heavyweights can be particularly hard on the elbows with that exercise.

Any sort of peck fly exercise is going to be more comfortable and effective at 6, 8, 10 reps versus 4. And that’s about it. But remember that the current 4th edition program of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger that comes with the current 4th edition of the book, It calls for four to six reps on really just the big compound exercises and then six to eight reps on the isolation exercises.

And that’s not to say that isolation exercises can’t work well at four to six or you can’t benefit from a little bit heavier work on isolation [00:18:00] exercises. You can, but I do think that the current setup where it’s a little bit heavier. That four to six rep range on the bigger compound movements and then a little bit lighter that six to eight rep range on the isolation movements.

I think that setup is going to work best for most people, but if there are certain isolation exercises that you want to use slightly heavier weights on that you do want to do some four to six rep work. For me, that’s always been biceps. My biceps have always responded well to a combination of rep ranges, including some heavier.

Now, I was never doing Singles or doubles or triples for the biceps, but I have done a lot of four to six rep work on my biceps over the years. And again, they’ve responded well to that. And so you may have muscle groups that you’ve noticed respond particularly well. To have your weights and there may be certain isolation exercises that lend [00:19:00] themselves well to have your weights, meaning that you can control the weights and it’s not painful and the risk of injury is negligible.

And if that’s the case, then you can replace some of those 68 rep sets with four to six rep sets. Okay, Mrs. Taylor 10915 asks, is there a benefit to doing alternating curls as opposed to doing them both at the same time? As the weights get heavier, the alternating part of the curls helps you maintain your balance and helps you maintain control of the weights, which makes for cleaner reps.

So yeah, that’s the reason you usually see a lot of jacked people doing them alternating. Permdog22 asks, what is your current daily legion stack? To be honest, I’m a, I’m an avid abuser of my own products. I basically take everything because going all the way back to the beginning of legion, this was me scratching my [00:20:00] own itch.

This was me. Wanting to see if I could make a company that makes the exact type of products that I want to take and then I can take them and then maybe other people will want them as well. And it can turn into a successful company in addition to scratching my own itch. And fortunately, it has worked out.

I every day I take way plus I take plant plus actually like to mix them together. I take either recharge or creatine monohydrate, just the plain powder or what I’ll do is one scoop of recharge plus one scoop of the creatine mono on top of it to get up to 10 grams of creatine mono for the additional brain benefits that seem to require more than five grams a day to maximize.

And I take either STEM free or stem pulse before training, depending on where my caffeine’s at. I like to have espresso in the morning but I’m using pulse every day and I’m lifting three [00:21:00] days a week, and I’m doing cardio on the other days. So sometimes what I’ll do is stem, so the caffeinated pulse on my lifting days, and then the stem free on my cardio days.

But sometimes I use the stem free on my lifting days. I just listen to my body as they say. I also take a serving of Triumph every day. I take a serving of Ascend every day. Biome, Balance, Fortify, Elevate, Sucrosomal Magnesium, Triton. I basically use it all. So that’s the honest answer. Peter G. Doit asks, Doing an extra six sets of lateral side raises a week, good range or overkill 68 reps hypertrophy?

If you’re new doing six to eight sets of side delts per week should be enough to achieve maximum growth that is available to you as a new lifter, as you gain experience, though, if your side delts are lagging, it will probably take more than six to eight sets per week. It’ll probably take something [00:22:00] closer to maybe 10 to 15 sets per week.

And because of how the side delts function. It often takes a lot of direct volume, meaning you have to do some sort of side raise, you have to do some sort of side delt exercise because they don’t get sufficiently stimulated by other exercises that involve them. For example, with the front delts, you are training them.

You really can count it as direct volume for front delts when you are bench pressing, for example, but you can’t really count the bench press as direct volume for the side delts. And so that is one of the reasons why many natural lifters. Have clearly lagging side delts is they simply just don’t do enough direct side delt volume.

And often it just seems like that’s a stubborn muscle group for basically everyone. Rydog32 asks, Hey Mike, is it okay to use weightlifting to use a weightlifting belt all the time. It’s okay to I don’t [00:23:00] recommend that, especially if it is a good belt and you know how to use it properly, because it can become a crutch of sorts and it can negatively impact your performance without a belt.

And I’ve made this mistake and I’ve been training beltless now for probably close to a year. And for the first several months, it was hard. I had to drop weight on my poles, my deadlifts. I had to drop weight on my squats. And it was fairly significant. And now I’ve built that strength back up without the belt and I’m enjoying it.

So I haven’t brought the belt back in yet. And one other note on the belt is I think the best way to use it is only on your heaviest sets, but not All of them. So just maybe the first heavy set, or maybe your top set, if you’re training that way belt up for that, but then all your other heavy sets or moderately heavy sets, no belt.

Slambo six asks stretches slash exercises to help shoulder [00:24:00] impingement better now, but can’t overhead press due to strain. Dead hangs, which is something I know of recommended many times, but I’m going to recommend it again. Dead hangs, probably the single best option here. Do several sets several times per week, work up to two minutes of hanging per set.

And it’s very possible that within a few weeks of doing that, you’re going to notice major improvements that might let you get back to overhead pressing. Steve Schott asks, how come there is never anyone in your gym when you go? When Steve asked this question, I was going around 1 PM, which was a great time because if you go too early, the gym is full of normal people.

With normal jobs, if you go in the mid morning, it’s full of retired people. If you go in the mid afternoon, like maybe 4 p. m. or so the zoomer takeover begins. And then the evening is just the influencer orgy. And so 1 p. m. was great because it was just a handful of lunch breakers, a few unemployed [00:25:00] people, a few business owners.

But now I’m going at I get there about 745 in the morning because my son wanted to start coming with me. And so he is wrapping up some tutoring that he has been doing to get caught up on his reading and math that he fell behind on during covid. And so in coordination with the school that he goes to, they recommended that he just focus all of his effort on getting his reading and math remediated because it is basically impossible to succeed in 5th or 6th grade when you’re reading several grades below and your math is at several grades below.

So he’s been doing that and that starts at 9 a. m. And so he wanted to start coming to the gym with me. And so we get there usually around 7 45. We’re there for about an hour and then we go home and he starts his tutoring. And so now I am enjoying the 745 slot because it’s after the 5, 6 am early morning rush.

It’s before the mid morning retiree rush. It’s not so early [00:26:00] that I feel like my performance is impaired. I have experienced a bit of that in the past when I was getting To the gym around six or six 30. I definitely noticed that I wasn’t as strong as when I was training a little bit later in the day.

But if it’s seven 45, I generally feel good. I feel energized. I feel awake and I’ve been able to make progress in my training. So it’s been nice. And also of course, it’s been nice to train with my son. We will wrap up today’s episode shortly, but first. Okay. I need to tell you about ashwagandha, which is one of my favorite adaptogen supplements.

And adaptogens are naturally occurring substances that introduce subtle, imperceptible stressors to the body, and that then can ultimately enhance the body’s ability to manage stress. In a way, adaptogens work like weightlifting, where you continually subject your muscles [00:27:00] and your bones and other soft tissues to slightly more stress to make them stronger over time.

Now, one of the reasons that ashwagandha is one of the most popular adaptogens on the market right now, is it contains a special type of molecule known as a withanolide, and that can support various systems in the body that are related to physical and psychological resilience, including, and crucially, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, or the HPA axis.

Now, you can think of the HPA axis as the body’s central processor for stress. In a way it receives a bunch of physiological signals and then it directs their responses via hormones. And in this way, the HPA axis affects many different functions in the body, like strength, recovery, immunity. cognition, mood, sleep, and even slight disturbances in your body’s HPA [00:28:00] axis can impair any and all of those functions.

Now, similarly, slight improvements in your HPA axis’s operations can noticeably improve the same functions, and it can give you better sleep, it can give you better workouts, it can give you better recovery, and so on. And that’s why studies show that supplementing with ashwagandha can increase power, strength, and endurance.

It can reduce stress, tension, aggravation, it can enhance sleep quality, it can support healthy inflammation levels and healthy antioxidant levels in the brain, it supports immune function and more. And that’s why my sports nutrition company, Legion, recently released an ashwagandha supplement.

We’ve had ashwagandha in our multivitamin triumph for a long time, but our customers were asking us for a standalone supplement, and so now it is here. And it is not just any ashwagandha supplement, but it is the patented KSM 66 form of ashwagandha, which is [00:29:00] the gold standard of ashwagandha supplements.

For example, 24 different peer reviewed studies specifically support the efficacy of this form. And if you have been feeling a bit overstressed recently And you’re looking for a reprieve, or maybe you’ve been feeling groovy, but you just want to see what more physiological resilience can do for your body and mind.

Head over to buylegion. com slash ksm66. That is b y l e g i o n dot com slash ksm numeral six six. And to save 20 percent on your first order with Legion, head And that applies to everything in the store, not just Ashwagandha. Use the coupon code MUSCLE at checkout and your instant discount will be applied.

And finally, if you don’t like my Ashwagandha or any of my supplements, all you have to do to get your money back is let us know. Just reach out and tell us [00:30:00] that it didn’t work for you. And we don’t even ask you to send it back to us. We just give you your money back or give you a store credit if you prefer.

You tell us. And so again, that Uur L is by legion.com/ksm six six B-Y-L-E-G-I-O n.com/ksm numeral six six. And again, don’t forget to use the coupon code muscle at checkout to save 20% on your first order with us. 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 [00:31:00] 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.