Ep. #821: Q&A: Gains After 35, Counting Steps, Favorite Cheat Meal, and More

Hello and welcome to another episode of Muscle For Life. I’m Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for the second installment of my Rapid Fire Instagram q and a series of episodes. I posted the first one a week or so ago. It did well. So here is another one. The idea is pretty simple over on Instagram at most for life fitness.

If you wanna follow me once a week or so, I do a q and a. In my stories, I post a picture with the little, ask me a question sticker, and then I pick various questions to answer in the stories. And I got the idea a couple of weeks ago to turn those into podcasts because I currently don’t do anything like that.

Most episodes are just about one topic. Sometimes the interviews can wander, but most of the monologues are one topic and I’m talking about just it for 10, 15, 20 minutes. And so in this episode, I’m going to answer a bunch of different questions about a bunch of different things with. Answers. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and you want to help me do it better, please do check out my Sports Nutrition company Legion, which right now is holding its annual Halloween sale, and that means you can save up to 25% on.

All of our best selling stuff, including our protein powders, our pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, and more. And of course, you don’t need supplements to build muscle, to lose fat, to get healthy, but the right ones. Can help. And that’s why over 300,000 discerning fitness folk, probably like you have chosen Legion for their sports nutrition needs.

So if you want to check out my stuff and save up to 25%, head over to buy legion.com, b y legion.com and save big and hurry up. Because this sale is ending in a couple of days and then prices go back to their normal cruising altitude. So again, that is buy legion.com, bu i Legion do. Okay, so let’s start with the first question, which is, does it become increasingly more difficult to build muscle after age 35?

Yes it does, but by small degrees that are mostly irrelevant to most of us. They would be relevant to a person who wants to become a competitive strength athlete, a competitive power lifter, a competitive Olympic weightlifter, for example. But for those of us who just want to gain muscle, lose fat, get healthy, look good, stay looking good.

The physiological and mechanical disadvantages of middle age for muscle building versus let’s say college age just aren’t very significant, especially when you consider that the average guy, regardless of age, is looking to gain. Maybe 25 to 35 pounds of muscle and get his body fat down to maybe 10 to 15%.

And the average gal is looking to gain maybe about half of that in terms of muscle in the right places on her body, and looking to get her body fat percentage down to maybe 22, 20 5%. Just about anyone can do those things just about any man, Any woman can accomplish those goals regardless of where they have been, regardless of where they are starting in terms of age and ability and fitness.

Now, yes, there are exceptions. An 80 year old guy. Who can barely walk down the stairs is not going to be able to gain 25 to 35 pounds of muscle in his lifetime. That’s not going to happen. But a 60 year old dude certainly can. I have worked firsthand with 60 year old dudes who started lifting weights for the first time, and they, in the first couple of years, gained 2230 pounds of muscle.

Okay, the next question is the earth flat? A buffalo passes by the window, his head horns and four legs all go past. But why can’t the tail pass too? Think about that. Next question. Can you train for strength and hypertrophy while training to improve cycling performance? Yes, you can, but you are going to have to be okay with mediocre performance in each of those domains.

So if you wanna learn more about that, head over to legion athletics.com. Search for concurrent. Training and you’ll find an article that breaks it all down. Explains why that is, and explains how to do the best you can. If you want to get stronger, gain muscle, and improve your endurance. Okay. The next question, thoughts on the vaccine, lockdowns, masks, et cetera.

On pain of summary execution, I think everyone should have to take all of the shots. Now that we know we can mix and match them. So you have to take ’em all, and you should have to wear three masks, even when you’re at home and. You should stay inside and you should have to socially distance indefinitely, and you should eat the bugs and ignore grubby conspiracy theories and watch sports ball and punch Nazis, and ignore all unapproved data and research and just stop asking questions.

Next question. What do you think was your number one lesson you’ve learned in the fitness industry? It is very democratized. It’s very decentralized. It’s very accessible. There aren’t any major barriers to entry If you know how to help people and you know how to communicate. Next question is, you have the chance to make someone shit their pants at any moment in history.

Who and why? Oh, that’s a good writing prompt. Okay, so there are two wolves in me and one of them wants to say Caesar as he is strolling to the Senate house and the other. Wants to say Marilyn Monroe over the vent, how great would that be? All right. Next question. What’s your favorite cheat meal?

These days? It is good Italian food, so some really good pasta, some really good pizza. Those aren’t the only Italian foods, but those are the ones that I like for my. Cheat meals, or as I would call ’em, my treat meals. And I also really Jenny’s ice cream. I like their gooey butter cake flavor so good.

But I only do that occasionally because I can’t really enjoy just a couple hundred calories of ice cream. I have to go all the way. If I’m gonna eat ice cream, I’m gonna eat a pint of ice cream. And a pint of Jenny’s ice cream is a thousand calories, unfortunately. Next question. Should I work out if I’m really sore?

You can train when you’re sore so long as your performance isn’t impaired, because if it is, you probably have not fully recovered yet. So for example, if you can normally bench press 185 pounds for five reps and you’re a little bit sore and you get under the bar and you do 180 5 for five or six, you get at least five.

You’re good to go, but if you can only get two or three reps, you probably haven’t recovered yet, and I wouldn’t recommend training the bench press again until you are more recovered. Next question. After a bulking phase, should you go to maintenance before cutting and no, you don’t have to. You can’t if you want to, or you can just go straight to cutting.

Best part about moving back to Florida? I haven’t worn a science beca in months and people in my town in Ocala, Florida where at they care so little about covid, they don’t even talk about it. It is basically pre covid living. Next question is counting steps a viable source of determining activity level?

Yeah. Yeah, it is. I would say that the general advice of aiming for at least 10,000 steps per day if you’re not particularly active otherwise, is good. I, for example, don’t track my steps and I wouldn’t get anywhere near probably 10,000 steps per day, but I am doing cardio every day. I am moving my body outside of just my weightlifting.

I choose to do it on an upright bike. So next question, what made you decide to pick up golf? Ah it was mostly just white privilege, actually. How to handle fitness in sickness, unfortunately, you just have to rest. Don’t train and take a nap instead. Whatever time you would normally give to the gym, just get in bed.

How do you prefer getting fucked by your government lockdowns or taxes? I really can’t choose. I can’t get enough of either. I just want to be governed harder. Daddy. Do you have a favorite study that you have ever read? I do have a sentimental attachment to a study that was published in 2014 called Evidence-Based Recommendations for Natural Body Building, Contest Preparation, Nutrition, and Supplementation.

And the reason is that was the first overview of evidence-based dieting for body comp that I found that just clean. Summarized all of the key factors, and if you haven’t read it, I’d recommend reading it. Best advice for creating a scalable business? You have to have good marketing and you have to be able to create good systems and.

Teams. I have a couple of book recommendations if you are interested. Dear listener. The first is Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson, which I promise is not me writing under a very uncreative pseudonym. The other is The Lean Startup by Eric Reese, and the other is the. EMyth by Michael Gerber, or it might be the EMyth Revisited.

I think he updated the book, but the EMyth, Michael Gerber. What was the biggest thing or event that shaped your political views? Nine 11, because before that I didn’t have any political views. I didn’t pay attention to politics at. Really. But after nine 11, I did start to pay attention. I did start to do research to use a phrase that triggers withs, and I started to form my political views.

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, Feedback to share. Shoot me an email, mike muscle for life.com, muscle f o r life.com and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future.

I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.